RUSH: This from AP. ‘Chrysler Rolls Out SUV After Government Scolding — Just a week after the White House scolded Chrysler LLC for relying too much on gas guzzlers, the company is heading to a marquee auto show [today] to unveil a new SUV.’ You gotta love these guys at Chrysler! Bob Nardelli runs the show there. ‘Chrysler insists the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which clocks in at 20 mpg in its two-wheel-drive version and 19 in four-wheel-drive, is a crowd favorite and a crucial part of its lineup.’ It’s showing a profit. It’s one of the vehicles Chrysler makes that’s showing a profit.
”This is a very important vehicle for us. It’s one of the primary legs of the Chrysler stool,’ Chrysler spokesman Rick Deneau said. ‘Customers have told us they want this vehicle and that it’s the right size.” Holy smokes, folks, do you understand what you just heard? Chrysler is listening to customers! Chrysler is actually listening to customers here, which is a novel idea, particularly in the auto business as run now by Obama. Chrysler should be listening to Obama. Chrysler should be listening to the government. But Chrysler is listening to customers. ‘The 2011 model is 11 percent more fuel efficient than its predecessor, powered by a cleaner and more powerful engine.
‘Still, Chrysler’s decision to debut an SUV as its only new car at the New York International Auto Show seems like odd timing to say the least. On March 30, the Obama administration issued a scathing rejection of the company’s survival plan and gave it 30 days to secure a merger with another automaker, most likely Italy’s Fiat SpA. The White House slammed Chrysler for having a product lineup so heavily weighted with trucks and SUVs. It added that the automaker does not have enough products in the pipeline to meet an expected increase in demand for small cars.’ Now, can I ask who is expecting this demand increase in small cars? Government is!
Who’s expecting an increase in the demand for small cars? We know that the demand for small cars happens, at least our empirical evidence is, when gasoline hits four bucks a gallon — and it isn’t at four bucks, and Chrysler said this is what their customers want. ‘But Chrysler is standing by the Grand Cherokee. It’s profitable, recognizable and the No. 2-selling vehicle in the Jeep lineup. Grand Cherokee sales fell by almost half during the first three months of the year, but its market share has remained steady, according to Autodata Corp. ‘It is one of their most important vehicles,’ said John Wolkonowicz, senior automotive analyst for the consulting firm IHS-Global Insight.
”The market for SUVs has not completely gone away, particularly for smaller ones like the Grand Cherokee.” But, but, but the government said that Chrysler ‘does not have enough products in the pipeline to meet an expected increase in demand for small cars’! Now, again, I ask: Where is that demand for small cars coming from? That’s right: Obama Motors Corporation. And we learned that General Motors has 20 vehicles that they make that show a profit. Eleven of them are trucks or SUVs. And what’s the big news yesterday? This stupid little wheelchair with a motor on it. There’s no market for that just like there’s no market for the Segway on which it’s based.
Speaking of this, I want to go back to this pirate ship for just a second, because I’ve been watching video of this ship. Now, I don’t know how big it is in relation to other cargo freighters, but it’s big. This thing is huge. It’s so big, I’m wondering how much the pirates can actually commandeer the thing. I would think after all this time that some of these ships would have at least some machine guns there for the crew to use if the pirates start showing up, but despite that, I have another observation about this — and I mean this from the bottom of my heart. This episode here with Chrysler illustrates it. They’re making an SUV. Their customers want it. It’s a profit center for them. And they need profit centers.
The government is saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You gotta go small. We gotta go green. We gotta go hybrid. We gotta go electric. We gotta save the planet! We need alternative forms of energy.’ Folks, I don’t know about you, I’m 58 years old, and I am worn out on alternative energies. I’ve been hearing about it my whole life. This is the third or fourth time people have gotten the people of this country ripped into a tizzy over alternative energy, alternative fuels — and finally, after three or four times, it looks like it’s set in. The American people actually believe that their cars are destroying the planet. If they don’t their kids do, and when your kids believe you’re doing something to destroy the planet, ‘Mommy, Mommy! You’re killing the polar bears!’
‘Shut up, kid! Okay we’ll get a little lawn mower out there and you’ll be happy. Just get off my back.’
So I’m worn out. Frankly, I’m bored with alternative energy. It is nothing but a political ploy. The market will take care of that when and if. I’m looking at this giant ship, and I got to thinking about all the oil tankers that are out there. When I flew into Dubai for a two day rest stop before the troop visit to Afghanistan… I’ve seen oil tankers. I never saw as many in one place as I saw on the descent into the United Arab Emirates out there in the Gulf. I look at pictures of this cargo ship, the Maersk, and I’m thinking, ‘Okay we’ve got all these engines that burn some derivative of a fossil fuel, and they’re destroying the planet, and they’re creating global warming, and the carbon footprint! The pollution is just intolerable. I’m looking at these giant things and I’m thinking, ‘Okay, what of the alternative energy plans being pushed is going to replace the power plants in these giant freighters and tankers as they plow through the ocean?’
What this thing carrying? It’s carrying cargo. It carrying the trailers that you see on a tractor-trailer, on an 18-wheeler. You’ve seen Maersk all over the place. Now, just what alternative energy is going to replace the power plant in these things? Are we going to have giant windmills on these freighters? Are we going to have solar panels, fuel cells? What the hell…? The answer is, there isn’t anything yet that’s going to replace the engines necessary to get these things plowing through the oceans. Yet everybody is worked into a tizzy here over getting rid of SUVs and getting rid of large, combustible engine cars that don’t get much miles. You know talk about the miles per gallon one of these things gets, one of these freighters get? I know you don’t measure it that way but if you did you’d be stunned. We’re never going to replace, not in our lifetimes, an energy source, a power plant for any of these tankers or cargo ships.
‘That’s okay, Mr. Limbaugh. That would be fine. If everybody else got rid of their big cars and so forth, then we would have some playroom there. We would have some latitude. We’re going to throw out some of these big tankers to take…’ Yeah, but it’s cargo. It’s commerce. Okay, so we’re going to start having exemptions. Now we’ll have exemptions. We’re going to have — and that’s the way it’s always going to end up. After three or four times in my adult life of being hit up constantly with how my lifestyle is an affluent, prosperous American is destroying the planet, I cannot tell you how that offends my intelligence and my sensibilities — and it really makes me mad when I see Americans (unable to resist the tug of popular sentiment) go right along with it because they think that they’re going to be doing some good.
The whole thing is so intellectually absurd. It’s so political. But I understand the human condition. I understand most people think they don’t matter. In a population of — what’s the world population, six billion? — it’s easy for somebody to think, ‘Eh, I don’t matter.’ Hell, even the greatest country in the world. ‘My vote doesn’t count. I don’t matter. It doesn’t matter.’ People want to matter. They want to think their lives have meaning. They want to think that their lives mean something, and what better way to do that than to live your life in such a way that you are ‘saving’ the planet. So it’s very seductive, the entire climate change, global warming approach or appeal, but it’s nonsensical.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mike in Houston, great to have you here on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, mega robotic cult dittos. It’s great to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: You know, just keeping in mind that the best callers are the ones who make the host look good, I offer the following comment in support of your contention that these eco-, you know, envirowackos really don’t care about the environment. If they really did, Rush, what they would do is something that would take effect immediately, and that is they would tell the teleprompter to tell his boss to make any kind of racing illegal today. I mean you got NASCAR racing, right, you got Indy car, you got speedboats, you got motorcycle racing, and surely that’s of no use to anybody, right? That would take effect today, Rush, rather than, you know, trying to get people to switch cars or, you know —
RUSH: I know. When you look at things like this, and then you listen to the global warming people, from Obama on down, talking about how we’re too excessive, we waste too much, we’re too greedy and so forth, go to any city, if you live in a big city, just look out the window at night and imagine that city literally dark because people said, ‘We gotta save the planet.’ It isn’t going to happen. That kind of backward regression is not progress. This country has always been about progress and the recipe for the supposed sins that we have created is rolling back progress. If it ever did seriously start, there would be a revolution against it. That’s not what life in America is about. Getting rid of racing, getting rid of this, I don’t doubt there are people who would like to do that simply ’cause they resent the people who either race or who go to the races ’cause they’re elites, but, anyway, I appreciate the call, Mike.