RUSH: All right, the press conference just started, our microphones are there, let’s JIP it just to see what he’s saying, just for a minute.
OBAMA: To try to stop the leak. This involves plugging the well with densely packed mud to prevent any more oil from escaping.
RUSH: And he never heard of it ’til yesterday.
OBAMA: And given the complexity of this procedure and the depth of the leak —
RUSH: Yeah?
OBAMA: — this procedure offers no guarantee of success.
RUSH: Just plug the hole.
OBAMA: We’re exploring any reasonable strategies to try and save the Gulf from a spill that may otherwise last until the relief wells are finished, and that’s a process that could take months. The American people should know that from the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort.
RUSH: It’s a lie!
OBAMA: As far as I’m concerned, BP is responsible for this horrific disaster, and we will hold them fully accountable on behalf of the United States as well as the people and communities victimized by this tragedy. We will demand that they pay every dime they owe for the damage they’ve done and the painful losses that they’ve caused. And we will continue to take full advantage of the unique technology and expertise they have to help stop this leak.
RUSH: You believe this?
OBAMA: But make no mistake. BP is operating at our direction. Every key decision and action they take must be approved by us in advance. I just designated Admiral Thad Allen who has nearly four decades experience responding to such disasters, as the national incident commander. And if he orders BP to do something to respond to this disaster, they are legally bound to do it. So, for example, when they said they would drill one relief well to stem this leak, we demanded a backup and ordered them to drill two. And they are in the process of —
RUSH: Where’s all this information been?
OBAMA: As we devise strategies to try and stop this leak —
RUSH: We?
OBAMA: — we’re also relying on the brightest minds and the most advanced technology in the world.
RUSH: Where are they?
OBAMA: We’re relying on a team of scientists and engineers from our own national laboratories and from many other nations, a team led by our energy secretary and Nobel Prize winning physicist, Steven Chu.
RUSH: Oh, save us. Save us.
OBAMA: We are relying on experts who have actually dealt with oil spills —
RUSH: No.
OBAMA: — from across the globe —
RUSH: Good —
OBAMA: — though none as challenging.
RUSH: — God.
OBAMA: The federal government is also directing the effort to contain and clean up the damage from the spill which is now the largest effort of its kind — (crosstalk)
RUSH: This is a crock. The governor of Louisiana can’t even get permission to build some sandbars down there to soak up the oil.
OBAMA: — in the response effort. And I will be discussing this further when I make my second trip to Louisiana tomorrow. But so far we have about 20,000 people in the region who are working around the clock to contain and clean up this oil.
RUSH: All right, that’s enough, that’s enough. I don’t believe a word of this. Twenty thousand people working around the clock? How come nothing’s been done? All we’ve ever heard about is what BP’s doing, and now we’re told today that BP hadn’t done anything without having been given permission by Obama and the Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu. Obama has not been on the case. All he has done is bad mouth the company, which he continues to do today, while the company struggled to stop the leak, (imitating Obama) ‘They’re going to pay it off. We’re going to make ’em pay for everything, and then some, it’s their responsibility,’ and he goes on to praise all the efforts that they have engaged in. I can’t take it. This is why I said we weren’t going to cover this thing front-to-back and we’re not.
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RUSH: There you have it. Obama just said, ‘Cancel everything, cancel all the drilling off Alaska, cancel all the new leases in the Gulf, off the coast of Virginia, cancel it all.’ Destroy the oil industry. He said BP is operating at our direction, which is bizarre. If that’s true then BP wouldn’t need permission from the Coast Guard or anybody else to do what they’re doing, right? If all they’re doing is following directions, why do they need permission, then?
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RUSH: Is that all you get from listening to this? This is the most rambling, stalling-for-time answer to a question I have ever heard. Jennifer Loven asked him, ‘What about the people down there that said that you weren’t on the scene for –‘ (imitating Obama) ‘Oh, uh, uh…’ I can’t even imitate it. I can’t make my mind that lazy. It took him seven minutes answer the question. Now he’s up there talking about BP and, (paraphrasing) ‘We told ’em to do this, we told ’em to do that, they’re responsible. We’ve been on the case here.’
Where are the breakout groups of all these Harvard professors and the like? Who was it that came up with the magical ‘plug the hole, just plug the hole’? What brilliant mind came up with that? He said that British Petroleum went to the Coast Guard admiral, Thad Allen, and asked him if they could use the Top Kill method, and the Coast Guard guy said, ‘Yeah.’ How is that the Coast Guard’s directing them? This is so predictable. Obama is trying to glom on and take credit for what BP has done here that might be working. (imitating Obama) ‘They can’t make a move. They can’t make a move without us giving them permission. Make no mistake about it.’ He said that 20,000 people were working around the clock. No, BP has 20,000 people working around the clock. British Petroleum has spent more than $750 million so far in oil spill response initiatives. Their spokesman, John Curry, said the company has hired more than 20,000 people as part of the response to the April 20th accident and its aftermath, some are contractors, some are subcontractors, some are laborers hired to set booms. But BP hired the 20,000, not Obama, not the federal government.
Obama said that Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, has cleaned up the MMS. Okay, he’s cleaned ’em up, the Mineral Mines — whatever the hell the name of the agency is. If he’s cleaned it up then somebody tell us how did the accident happen if Salazar has the answers to all of this? Obama has shut down drilling. He has determined that oil is the problem. He has shut down even the exploration. He shut down for a time, I don’t know how long, the attempt to even find oil. What, pray tell, is the danger of exploring for offshore oil? So let’s unravel this because Obama is such a fool. British Petroleum has been working with the Coast Guard, as would be expected, but Obama and his political appointees have done nothing effective to deal with this. All they’ve done is tried to politicize it and deflect criticism for their incompetence. They have contradicted each other, they have stepped all over each other, they’ve lied to the public, and now that it looks like the latest effort by BP might work, Obama wants the credit for it and is brazenly out there taking it today in his press conference.
Now, the Coast Guard admiral, Thad Allen is his name, he made quite clear the other day that BP was making the technical decisions. Yeah, they were coordinating, as they must, both for practical and legal reasons, but BP was taking the lead. The Coast Guard guy said this himself the other day. There’s far too much in the public record now for Obama to rewrite history to spin and, for crying out loud, to claim credit, which is what he’s doing in this press conference. That Thad Allen, the Coast Guard guy, was not even put in charge of this until May 1st. The spill happened on April 20th. If the government was in charge from day one, then these five weeks of failure are Obama’s, correct? Not BP. He wants the credit in week six. (imitating Obama) ‘From day one 20,000 people working around the clock, our nuclear physicist guy –‘ by the way, Chu is a co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, 1997. What did he win for? The development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. Well, I can see how that would make him an expert about drilling for oil. Development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light, yeah, I’m sure they’re using whatever he’s learned about that to stop the flow of oil.
The public record now is simply too vast. Thad Allen did not come on line, wasn’t put in charge until May 1st. Obama’s out there saying, ‘We were in charge of this on day one, day one we were on the case.’ Well, these five weeks of failure are then Obama’s. If British Petroleum couldn’t could do anything without their permission then everything Obama came up with was a failure. Remember all those domes they were going to — yeah, that was an Obama idea, that’s what he wanted us to believe and that didn’t work because ice crystals formed down there, blew up before they could get it down there. They tried a miniature version, that didn’t work, another Obama idea that failed. And now plug the hole and simply run a pipe down there with sludge and mud and all this. Now, a lot of you people I’m sure, ‘Rush, why the big deal, what does all this matter?’ I don’t know, folks. To me it’s about honor and integrity. It’s about professionalism. It’s about honesty in our leaders. To me, the audacity here of somebody who has no clue what he’s doing, who’s clearly exhibited incompetence, now at the end of the day in his first press conference in 309 days, coming in and trying to claim credit for it.
See, I happen to think that the best and brightest minds in our country are in the private sector. I don’t believe they’re in the government sector. I don’t believe the best and brightest minds come out of Harvard. I think we’ve got a lot of smart people at Harvard and Yale and Cornell, and they come out of there, but they have no experience in the real world. They are theoreticians, they are academics, they sit around the faculty lounge and they conjure up theories and the way things ought to work. But they’ve never gotten their fingernails dirty doing anything. They wouldn’t know the first thing about making a payroll, making investments, taking a risk in something. And to see this man who’s not accomplished anything, he’s the most unqualified guy in any room he walks into, for him to now be pointing fingers at British Petroleum — you know, let Obama and his guys, if they’re so smart, let them go find the energy that we’re all going to need to grow and sustain our lives.
It’s one thing to sit up there and have a computer and start drawing little beanie cars or start imagining green energy with solar and wind, oh, it’s wonderful to imagine all this stuff, but let’s see these guys go do it. If they have these answers, if they have the answer to replace the oil, let’s see ’em go do it. I mean they have the ability to manage everything else, Social Security, health care, financial services industry, the automobile industry, and none of them have any experience at all in this, yet they deign to sit up there and point fingers of blame at people in the private sector who are making the country work. There will always be things that go wrong. There will always be accidents any time that you are forced to go get oil five miles offshore and ten miles deep. You have to expect that there are going to be accidents, therefore you have a plan in place to deal with it. Obama’s plan is to not do it. We can’t have these accidents. Oil is just a big problem. It’s dirty, it’s filthy, it’s foul, we’re not going to have it, we’re not going to drill anymore.
In spite of this spill, no other nation has suspended its drilling for oil. The Russians haven’t; the Vietnamese haven’t; the Mexicans haven’t; the Chinese haven’t. Continuous drilling for oil goes on in the very Gulf of Mexico where this spill took place, or the accident took place. But we’re the only country that’s going to shut it down. We’re the only country that’s not even going to explore, and yet these same people tell us we can’t keep depending on foreign suppliers. Well, there’s nothing to replace oil right now. But the reason why this matters to me is we have a total fake and a fraud serving as president. We have somebody who has no qualification for the job, who is propelled there because a lot of elitists thought that he was as smart as they are simply ’cause he can speak well. And that ability to speak well translated to them as superior intelligence and superior competence. And they looked at his campaign as an example of those managerial skills. Well, he’s become president, and everything he’s touched has gone to hell. The economy’s gone to hell; job creation has gone to hell; health care’s gone to hell. Virtually everything that he sought to fix has gotten worse, and there’s no end in sight to this.
In fact, from a shocked Associated Press: ‘Economic Rebound Slowed Last Quarter — The economic rebound last quarter turned out to be slower than first thought, one of the reasons unemployment is likely to stay stubbornly high this year.’ One of the reasons? There are many reasons unemployment’s going to stay high, but the primary reason is Barack Obama. Barack Obama has instituted policies which make it insane for businesses to start hiring people because businesses are not growing. The economy grew at a 3% annual rate, and most of it was government growth. None of it took place in the private sector. The Commerce Department said that this was slightly weaker than an initial estimate of the 3.2% estimate a month ago. ‘The new reading, based on more complete information, also fell short of economists’ forecast for stronger growth of 3.4 percent.’ The reason for the small downgrade, consumers spent less than first estimated. Well, now every time these reports come out we always say wait, wait for the rewrite, wait for the revisions. The economic rebound slowed last quarter? There is no rebound. The numbers showing a rebound were just a result of government intervention, like home buyer credits. When the government backs away, we see the true numbers. God love ’em the AP here having a hard time admitting it, all the numbers first reported have been revised, as usual.
Barack Obama doesn’t even know how to pronounce the Army Corps of Engineers. He thinks it’s corpse of engineers. And now he’s the best person to run the Army Corps of Engineers, when he’s not. So, yeah, this stuff matters to me. Nitpicking liars parsing the statements that they make. It does matter to me because we’re dealing here with somebody who is just outclassed by the job. He’s just not up to it. And it is infantile, it is really childlike infantile to come in here with the record now as vast as it is to try to claim credit for this, and he stepped in it because he said, ‘We were on the case since day one, and BP couldn’t make a move without permission from us.’ Well, by virtue of that you have to admit the first five weeks you were an utter failure. But here in week six, when BP comes up with a method that we now know they ran by the Coast Guard, and the Coast Guard said, yeah, go ahead and try it, wasn’t Obama’s idea, it wasn’t the Coast Guard’s idea, it wasn’t some breakout study group from Harvard professors that came up with the Top Kill method. It was BP that came up with it and the Coast Guard signed off on it, and now we have the president of the United States, a man-child, trying to claim credit for being on the case from day one, when in truth he’d rather be on vacation here. He doesn’t like having to go down to the Gulf in the first place.
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RUSH: Yeah, this press conference getting good. Jake Tapper standing up there and saying (summarized), ‘Mr. President, what you’re saying isn’t true. Bobby Jindal said you haven’t been on the case. Some of the fishermen down there are saying the federal government hasn’t been on the case.’ Jake Tapper is throwing it right back at him. Obama saying he was singularly focused on the leak when it first happened. We’re singularly focused on jobs, singularly focused on the debt. From day one he was blaming Bush for this problem! From day one he was blaming Bush and Halliburton. Yet he wants us today to believe that he was on the case from day one. We have a couple sound bites. This is the Jennifer Loven question. He just babbled and babbled and babbled, and the whole press conference is an example of babbling here. Jennifer Loven (who wants Obama to look good) from the AP, here’s the question: ‘You just said the federal government’s in charge and officials in your administration have said this repeatedly. Yet how do you explain that we’re more than five weeks into this and that BP is not always doing as you’re asking? For example, with the type of dispersement that’s being used. And if I might add one more: To the many people in the Gulf — who, as you said, are angry and frustrated and feel somewhat abandoned — what do you say about whether your personal involvement, your personal engagements has been as much as it should be either privately or publicly?’
OBAMA: The day that the rig collapsed and fell to the bottom of the ocean, I had my team in the Oval Office that first day. Those who think that we were either slow on our expanse or lacked urgency don’t know the facts. This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred. We understood from day one the potential enormity of this crisis and acted accordingly. People are gonna be frustrated until it stops. And I understand that. If you’re living on the coasts and you see this sludge coming at you, you’re going to be continually upset — and from your perspective the response is going to be continually inadequate — until it actually stops. And that’s entirely appropriate and understandable.
RUSH: He wasn’t finished. The answer just keeps going.
OBAMA: This notion that somehow the federal government is sitting on the sidelines and for the last three or four or five weeks we’ve just been letting BP make a whole bunch of decisions is simply not true. What is true is that when it comes to stopping the leak down below, the federal government does not possess superior technology to BP. We had a meeting down in the Situation Room in which I specifically asked Bob Gates and Mike Mullen, ‘What assets do we have that could potentially help that BP or other oil companies around the world do not have?’ We do not have superior technology when it comes to dealing with this particular crisis. Now, one of the legitimate questions that I think needs to be asked is: Should the federal government have such capacity?
RUSH: Oh, so now it’s a big pitch for more power. It’s a big pitch for more involvement. Jake Tapper stood up and said, ‘You say everything that can be done is being done, but some people disagree. Bobby Jindal, the fishermen, they’re training to run the oil cleanup missions. How can you say everything is being done when all the officials say it’s not true?’ That’s a question that Jake Tapper asked him. So it just continues. So you have to basically a little boy, a little boy here who is trying to glom on and take credit for what appears finally to be having some impact on this. But he’s not going to get away with it based on these questions and the fact — again, I say — there’s far too much in the public record now for this kind of history to be rewritten. And to claim credit when you say for the first five weeks you were in charge and nothing got done? Back to the phones, Susan in Jackson, Mississippi, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hi.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: I just wanted to comment on if you like the way he’s running the show in Arizona and Louisiana, then you’re going to lot of your health care when you’re forced into government health care in a few years because it’s going to be the same exact thing. (kid screaming) There’s going to be a doctor somewhere in Mississippi that makes you treat a specific patient for a specific reason and he’s not going to be able to because he’s going to have to ask permission from the bureaucracy (kid screaming), and by the time you cut through all the government red tape and gets to it, you’re gonna be six feet under.
RUSH: Well, you could say the same thing about Arizona. You know, Arizona’s been begging for help to fix their problem down there. They haven’t gotten any response at all from Obama and they’re sending…
CALLER: (kid screaming)
RUSH: We got screaming kids on the line down there. We’ve got 1,200 troops going down, but guess what? The 1,200 troops are not to affect immigration at all. They’re not going to be involved in stopping illegal immigration. They are there to make sure weapons don’t go back and forth across the border. We may as well not even be sending them down there. It’s simply for show. They’re not going down there to help. They’re not even the front lines. They’re positioned back from Border Patrol officials and local officials when it comes to illegal immigration. It’s just a show play, nothing more than. But this woman is exactly right from Jackson, Mississippi. Here Bobby Jindal wants a permit, a simple permit to build some sand berms just to make sure the oil gets soaked up on those first before it gets to the coast. He can’t get a response from the federal government. Wait ’til your doctor has to go to ’em to get permission. They’ll have to go to whatever policy manual somebody writes, some medical board populated by government bureaucrats to get permission or not get permission to perform this particular treatment or what have you. In the Jindal case, whatever happened to a state’s rights? One of the problems here is the federal government owns 30% of the landmass on this continent, 30% they own. Whatever happened to states? Why can’t Jindal just go out there as governor of Louisiana and build his protective berms without having to get permission from the feds?
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RUSH: Here’s the Jake Tapper question, audio sound bite number 27. Jake Tapper said, ‘You say everything that could be done’s being done, but there were those in the region, those industry experts who say that’s not true. Governor Jindal obviously had this proposal for a barrier. They say if that had been approved when they first asked for it, they would have had ten miles up already. How can you say that everything’s being done that can be done with all these experts and officials saying that’s not true?’
OBAMA: Let’s take the example of Governor Jin-doll’s (sic) barrier islands idea. When I met with him when I was down there two weeks ago, I said, ‘I will make sure that our team immediately reviews this idea, that the Army Corps of Engineers is looking at the feasibility of it, and if they think — if they tell me — that this is the best approach to dealing with this problem, then we’re going to move quickly to execute.’ If they have a disagreement with Governor Jin-doll’s experts as to whether this would be effectively or not, whether it was going to be cost effective given the other things that need to done then we’ll sit down and try to figure that out, and that essentially is what’s happened which is why today you saw an announcement from the Army Corps’s perspective there were some areas where this might work but there are some areas where it would be counterproductive and not a good use of resources.
RUSH: No response. So there’s no response. Jindal does not get an answer. ‘Well, we’re going to compare what our Corps of Engineers said with Jindal’s experts and if they say it can be done with cost effective.’ When did cost effective all of a sudden matter? Somebody tell me when cost effective matters to this president, the cost of things? He spends money left and right when we don’t have it. Here it’s for a legitimate purpose, ‘We’re worried about cost effectiveness the Army Corps of Engineers, ‘Well, it may work, may not work. Might be counterproductive, might work. Might not be a good use of resources.’ We don’t really know.’ Right before the press conference, right before, ‘Well, we don’t know.’ What did I tell you yesterday? ‘We cannot let Jindal get credit for this.’ This is what Obama is saying. Jindal is a Republican — and you doubted me yesterday, Snerdley, when I brought this up.
I know it sounds to infantile, but I’m telling you: We’re looking at the world’s oldest 13-year-old in Barack Obama. Of course Jindal’s idea is great. That’s why it can’t work. Jindal’s a Republican. So it has to be Obama’s Corps of Engineers that signs off on it. ‘If the Corps of Engineers says it’s no good, we can’t do the work.’ Jindal doesn’t have a response. It’s pure and simple, and that’s the answer. That’s why Jindal’s not getting an answer is because Obama’s trying to hog and claim credit for all this today with the Top-Kill method. The last thing that’s going to happen is Bobby Jindal’s going to get any credit for it — sorry, Governor ‘Jin-doll.’ Notice how he pronounces his name: Jin-doll.
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RUSH: Sandusky, Ohio, here’s Tom. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: It’s great to be here, Rush. I love your program. I’ve been listening to it for quite a while.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: My question is this. I have seen a lot of noise and a lot of talk about the cleanup and how we’re gonna stop this — and this is very, very important. Don’t get me wrong. But I haven’t heard one thing or seen one bit of news that tells us why this explosion happened. And that’s got me real concerned, because if they don’t know what caused this accident, that means one of two things: That BP does know what caused this accident and it is not telling us, or nobody knows the answer and it might be some other outside influence that may have caused this accident. When I say ‘outside influence,’ I don’t believe in conspiracy things. It may be some fluke-type thing, but until we know that answer, we can’t prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future. The second point was that it’s my understanding that this is the first type of accident of this nature in offshore oil drilling. Do you know that to be true?
RUSH: Well, no. I don’t know that that’s true. The specific cause may be a first, but this is not the first leak from an underground well.
CALLER: Yeah. The other thing is that I noticed that there is an absence on the part of the media to even talk to any of the members that were on the oil rig itself when this accident occurred. I’ll continue to call it an accident until something else comes up. What is going on with that? Why are these…? Are these guys in —
RUSH: Well, now, I saw family members. They were testifying before a congressional committee. Two family members of men lost on the rig were called to testify. I don’t know the details of what they said. But when you ask, ‘Where’s the media on this?’ remember: I think Obama has really stepped in it today, because up until today the media was looking to protect Obama on this.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Now it’s brazen: Going out there claiming credit for this when really we just still don’t know if the Top-Kill method has worked. It takes a lot to stun them, and a lot of them are stunned. That question that Jake Tapper asked, ‘Well, you say everything’s being done but practically everybody else says that not enough has been done, hardly anything is being done: The governor, the fishermen down there. What do you mean everything’s being done?’ Obama did, by the way, folks, admit that he was wrong about one thing. Obama admitted that he was wrong to think that oil companies were prepared to deal with accidents like this. So that’s another slam at BP, and in the early days of this, the media was looking to blame Halliburton, Cheney, Bush. Wherever Obama pointed them is where they were going to go in terms of blame. But now it’s been six weeks. There’s a vast public record of people saying what needs to be done, seeking permission to try this method or that from the governor to British Petroleum to Louisiana, any number of people. Obama’s denied it all and is now coming in and trying to glom on and take credit here. So this is tough for even the media to swallow. Thanks for the call. I appreciate it.
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RUSH: Ed, 28 and 29 sound bites coming up. Our last caller said he has not heard an explanation yet for what happened. The Wall Street Journal had an article on May 11th containing the following: Eyewitnesses and Halliburton say that they didn’t do the usual procedure right before the thing blew up and that the MMS had approved the different method. The MMS, the federal bureaucracy here. Remember, that’s the Wall Street Journal on May 11th. From congressional testimony a couple weeks ago, ‘A worker who was on the drilling rig said in an interview that Halliburton was getting ready to set a final cement plug at 8,000 feet below the rig when workers received other instructions. ‘Usually we set the cement plug at that point and let it set for six hours, then displace the well,’ said the worker, meaning take out the mud. According to this worker, BP asked permission from the federal Minerals Management Service to displace the mud before the final plugging operation had begun,’ which normally was not what happened. You normally plug it first, let it set for six hours, and then you displace. ‘According to this worker, BP asked permission from the federal Minerals Management Service to displace the mud before the final plugging operation had begun.’
This is close as we’ve gotten to an explanation here for what might have happened, what might have gone wrong.
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Here’s Obama, F. Chuck Todd, the question: ‘Can you respond to all the Katrina comparisons people are making about this with you?’
OBAMA: I’ll leave it to you guys to make those comparisons and make judgments on it because what I’m spending my time thinking about is how do we solve the problem, and when the problem is solved and people look back and do an assessment of all the various decisions that were made, I think people can make a historical judgment. Part of the purpose of this press conference is to explain to the folks down in the Gulf that ultimately it is our folks down there who are responsible.
RUSH: I thought it was BP.
OBAMA: If they’re not satisfied with something that’s happening —
RUSH: What?
OBAMA: — then they need to let us know, and we will immediately question BP and ask them —
RUSH: Oh.
OBAMA: — why isn’t X, Y —
RUSH: Oh!
OBAMA: — Z happening.
RUSH: Oh. Oh, oh. I was getting confused here. Our folks down there are responsible, if they’re not satisfied, let us know and we’ll rip into BP. Basically what Obama is saying here, ‘I’m all about process, don’t ask me about results. I’m all about process here.’ He loves the discussions, he loves the meetings, but he never makes decisions. If anything goes wrong he’s going to ask BP about it. And CBS Chip Reid said, ‘Mr. President, first of all, Elizabeth Birnbaum resigned today. Was she fired, was she forced out? If so, should other heads roll as we go on here?’
OBAMA: With respect to Ms. Birnbaum, I found out about her resignation today. Ken Salazar has been in testimony throughout the day, so I don’t know the circumstances in which this occurred.
RUSH: I thought he was in charge. I thought Obama was in charge, and now the MMS chief resigns and he didn’t know about it? And he admits that he didn’t know about it?
Here is Vinny in — Vinny, it’s not fair. We only have 30 seconds before we go to the break and I doubt he can get his question and answer in in 30 seconds, so, Vinny, please hold on, we’ll get to you a little bit later. I’ve gotta take a brief time-out here, folks, sorry, Vinny, I misread the clock there on the fly.
Back right after this, folks. Don’t go away.
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RUSH: Hubba hubba. Welcome back. As usual, Rush Limbaugh, talent on loan from God. Now, in a sane world, the reviews of this press conference would be that it was a disaster, a babbling brook of a disaster. But as we all know, we don’t live in a sane world. We live in a surreal world. But trust me on this. This was a walking disaster. You know, we hear about homeowners being underwater in their houses. Obama was underwater in this press conference today, and he was gasping for air. It was an amazing sight to behold. Never seen an oil spill like this before. This is not the worst oil spill in our history. The Mexican spill, Ixtoc I, was many, many times worse than this, went on for nine months. It was 30 or so years ago.
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RUSH: I’m still struck by — well, I’m struck by everything in this press conference, but one thing that stands out is Obama’s answer to the question about, ‘Well, Governor Jindal wants to do some stuff, and the fishermen down there want to do some stuff,’ and Obama said, ‘Well, I told him we’re going to look at the idea and the Corps of Engineers look at it. If our experts disagree with your experts, then we’ll go from there.’ Obama said he likes to sit around thinking about ways to fix this. Now, that had to really inspire Bobby Jindal. The Corps of Engineers came up with the method to protect the levees that failed during Hurricane Katrina.
Greetings, welcome back. Rush Limbaugh, EIB Network. 800-282-2882.
Interesting news stories came out today prior to the Obama press conference. From The Politico: ‘Obama Under Fire for Spill Response.’ There was an ‘unnamed Democrat’ in this piece. They don’t name the Democrat. ”There are times and places where his cool, technocratic mastery is a great blessing. … But, ideology aside, what do you think (President Ronald) Reagan would have done in this situation? He’d be down there. Look at (Louisiana Gov. Bobby) Jindal. … It is puzzling, the detachment,’ said one veteran Democratic strategist, a frequent defender of Obama. ‘I just cringe at the specter of the president doing a political fundraiser in San Francisco during the memorial service instead of going to the memorial service” for the people that were killed when the rig exploded.
That’s Politico this morning. Yet at Obama at his press conference (doing impression), ‘We’ve been on this from day one! We’re in charge. BP doesn’t do anything without consulting us,’ and it’s just a lie. Everybody knows he wasn’t there.
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RUSH: From the press conference, New York Times Jackie Calmes says, ‘I want to follow up on something, an exchange that you had with Chip Reid. Leaving aside the existing permits for drilling in the Gulf, weeks before BP you had called for expanded drill. Do you now regret that decision, and why did you do so knowing what you have described today about the sort of dysfunction in the MMS?’
OBAMA: I continue to believe what I said at that time, which was that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall energy mix. Where I was wrong was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios. Now, that wasn’t based on just my blind acceptance of their statements. Oil drilling has been going on in the Gulf, including deepwater, for quite some time. And the record of accidents like this, we hadn’t seen before. But it just takes one for us to have a wake-up call.
RUSH: We have seen accidents like this. Ixtoc I. How many times, I’m getting blue in the face. Ixtoc I. It’s a Mexican well. It lasted nine months, far worse than this, 30 years ago. Another question, Major Garrett: ‘Two issues. Some in your government have said the federal government’s boot is on the neck of BP.’ That’s another reason why, by the way, I called them a regime. I mean that’s the kind of stuff regimes do, a boot on the neck. ‘Are you comfortable with that imagery, sir? Is your boot on the neck of BP? Can you understand, sir, why some in the Gulf who feel besieged by this oil spill consider that a meaningless, possibly ludicrous metaphor? Secondly, can you tell the American people what your White House did or did not offer Congressman Sestak to not enter the Democrat senatorial primary? How would you meet your levels of expressed transparency and ethics to convey that answer to satisfy what appear to be bipartisan calls for greater disclosure about that matter?’
OBAMA: There will be an official response shortly on the Sestak issue which I hope will answer your questions. You will get it from my administration. And it will — it will be coming out when I say shortly, I mean shortly. I don’t mean weeks or months. I can assure the public that nothing improper took place. But, as I said, there will be a response shortly on that issue.
RUSH: Now let’s talk about Salazar.
OBAMA: With respect to the metaphor that was used, I think Ken Salazar would probably be the first one to admit that he has been frustrated, angry, and occasionally emotional about this issue, like a lot of people have. I mean there are a lot of folks out there who see what’s happening and are angry at BP, are frustrated that it hasn’t stopped, and so, you know, I’ll let Ken answer for himself. I would say that, you know, we don’t need to use language like that.
RUSH: Don’t give me ‘we don’t use language like –‘ no, we just send SEIU thugs to the front doors of private citizens. All we do is hit back twice as hard. The boot on the neck, we don’t need to use language like that. So he throws Salazar under the bus, but I mean this administration does far worse than just utter the words. I mean this administration directs union hacks to beat up black guys at congressional town hall meetings. (imitating Obama) ‘We don’t use words like that. We don’t come close to using words like that.’ And then this. This is close to the end of the press conference.
OBAMA: When I woke up this morning, and I’m shaving and Malia knocks on my bathroom door and she peeks in her head, and she says, ‘Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?’ Because I think everybody understands that, you know, when — when we are fouling the Earth like this, it has concrete implications not just for this generation but for future generations. I grew up in Hawaii where the ocean is sacred.
RUSH: You know this is all over the top here, people frustrated, angry at BP. If they were angry at BP they wouldn’t mind Salazar’s language having their boot on BP’s neck. Obama’s gotta understand, it’s because of people like him and liberals, the people of this country have come to look to government to solve every problem. Obama positioned himself and touted himself and so did his supporters as Mr. Competence. He’s the guy that was gonna lower the sea levels; he was the guy that was going to bring us all together in unity; he was going to be postpartisan; he was going to end racism and all of these things. He was so smart. Why, we had never seen anything like this man in our political scene before. No one had ever trod the earth with this kind of competence, this rare form of intelligence. And as we all will agree, we get frustrated that so many citizens seem to look to government to solve every problem, even the problems government has created, even the problems government has caused. Well, we might not like it, but it happens.
I would bet you there are more people angry at the government for not fixing this than there are people angry at BP. Go back and look at Katrina. A lot of people got mad out there, and they got mad at the government. The government wasn’t there to fix it; the government wasn’t there to give ’em money; the government wasn’t there to pass out their welfare checks; the government wasn’t there to make the waters recede; and the government wasn’t there to rebuild their houses. But the government was there to take William Jefferson back to his house to get the 90 grand out of his refrigerator freezer. The dirty little secret, Mr. President, the people do look to you to solve this stuff, and especially you because you presented yourself as the guy who was more competent than anybody who had ever served as president to deal with all of these problems. And now you’re not dealing with it, you’re going on vacation, you’re having lunch with people, you’re having a ceremony with the Duke basketball team, and your supporters have to tell people that you care.
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RUSH: I don’t have a daughter, but if my daughter knocked on my bathroom door and peeked in and said, ‘Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?’ my first response would be, ‘Honey, that’s really none of your business.’ But that came at the end of the press conference, and do you know what the real trick in that was? I mean, it was innocent little child asking, ‘Daddy, did YOU plug the hole?’ ‘Daddy, did YOOOOOOOU plug the hole yet?’ That’s not an accident at the end of the press conference, and everybody will repeat the anecdote, and on the day we think the hole might be plugged (child impression), ‘Daddy? Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?’
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RUSH: Daddy, did you plug the oil leak today? Did you plug the leak yet, Daddy? All right, so we had to endure Amy Carter and her concerns about nuclear proliferation, Billy Carter and his concerns about gasoline stations selling beer, and now an Obama child asking her dad if he had plugged the hole yet. Wonderful.