RUSH: Mexico has had to provide electricity to Texas. It’s amazing. I have friends, I have coworkers, I have colleagues on the ground in Dallas. But they actually can’t touch the ground because there is still a sheet of ice one-inch thick over — and they’re pouring sand on it, not salt. It’s a shame, too. Dallas is getting ripped through all kinds of media for being unprepared and uncaring. I even saw (I forget who it was last night) somebody said, ‘Yeah, well, it’s just because the Cowboys aren’t playing in the game. That’s why Dallas doesn’t care.’ That’s silly. There are establishments from Fort Worth all the way to Grapevine who have invested a lot of money getting ready for this week and they’ve had to shut down. I’m talking about retail shops, bars and saloons with adult beverages and so forth. The crowds aren’t there.
You tune in, you watch ESPN (I kinda smile at this) and these guys are freezing themselves. They’re outside in Fort Worth, and at the Super Bowl you can see their breath. As they speak, their mouths are getting frozen, which is a benefit for the viewer in many cases at ESPN. But Mexico has now had to provide electricity. ‘Mexico will provide electricity to Texas to help the state weather an ice storm that has forced rolling blackouts.’ So now we have to thank Mexico. Dallas has… Pshew! Not effectively shut down, but it’s been bad. They have rolling blackouts in some areas. Some areas are without power for eight hours or more. Schools are closed for the third straight day. As I said, a lot of businesses can’t open because of the power problems. This never happened, this never happened when J. R. Ewing ran the show down there. Never one time. They were driving big cars all over the place down there, everybody was. It’s just a shame we can’t maintain traditions. Mexico helping Texas out with electricity!
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RUSH: Now, I mentioned earlier Senator… Oh, let me grab a phone call here. We have people from Dallas who want to weigh in here. They’re not happy down there when the news has gotten out that Mexico has to provide them electricity. (sigh) You know, I know Texans. I have a lot of friends who are Texans. I love going to Texas. I’ve been to South Fork, and this story out there that Mexico is having to provide electricity for Texas — particularly in Dallas during Super Bowl week — is not sitting well. Here’s Andrew in Dallas. It’s great to have you on the program, sir, and hello.
CALLER: Hey, brother Rush! It is an honor, a pleasure, and a privilege to speak with you, sir.
RUSH: I know. Thank you very much.
CALLER: It is absolutely crazy here in Dallas with all the ice — and, yeah, the whole global warming thing? That’s a freaking joke, let me tell you. I think a lot of the reason that we’ve had so much trouble with the power is what they’ve said on the local news stations is because a lot of the pipes going into the power plants as far as like the natural gas lines and the water-cooling pipes and all that stuff, it’s not prepared for this kind of weather ’cause, you know, it’s extremely out of the ordinary here.
RUSH: It is. Wind chills in the double digits below zero.
CALLER: Yep.
RUSH: Temperatures in the single digits. It is highly unusual. So the cold weather is the culprit here in the power plant’s ability to function and produce electricity?
CALLER: Right. The scariest thing about it is driving ’cause Texas people don’t know how to drive on the ice, and it’s the nature of my business that I drive a thousand miles a week.
RUSH: Wait a minute.
CALLER: So trying to watch out for all these people, it’s scary, man.
RUSH: Wait. Who does know how to drive on ice?
CALLER: Well, definitely not Texans.
RUSH: Folks, driving… (interruption) All right, Snerdley. Snerdley, is saying, ‘Northerners know how to drive on ice.’ (interruption) I’m not talking slush, and I’m not talking snow. I’m talking ice. You can’t stop. There is an inch of ice on everything. The temperature has gotten nowhere near freezing. It isn’t melting. They’re putting sand on top of the ice, not salt. It isn’t melting. Santa Claus would be having trouble down there — and the fact that people down there aren’t used to driving on, of course, is a factor. Andrew, I appreciate the call. This is Michael in Plano, Texas. You’re on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Good morning, Rush. It’s a great honor to speak to you. Terabyte dittos from cold Plano, Texas.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: I just wanted to call and tell you, I lost it yesterday morning. My wife thought I was having an aneurysm. The business I work in is dealing with a lot of the power outages and branch outages that occurred to us because of these rolling blackouts that were instituted by a group called ERCOT [Electric Reliability Council of Texas]. They manage the unregulated utility companies in Texas. And they were the ones that requested these rolling blackouts — and they were all over the state. They weren’t just in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
RUSH: Oh, I know. It’s all over the state.
CALLER: They had this parade of people on the local news media about crying about being without the power, and I understand all that. But the media was just beating up on the utility companies, and I turned around at the TV, and I’m like, ‘That’s not the story. The story is why don’t we have the capacity to deal with this?’ We haven’t built a power plant in this state in God knows how many years because of all the environmental regulations and everybody screams about all that. We can’t build a power plant! We shouldn’t have this problem and we certainly shouldn’t have to be borrowing electricity from Mexico.
RUSH: I wouldn’t borrow it, steal it! What are they gonna do? How are you gonna give it back?
CALLER: Exactly. I told my wife, ‘This is the United States of America in the year 2011, and in the great state of Texas we’re having to have rolling blackouts like a East German Soviet bloc country in the ’60s.’
RUSH: I’m telling you… Look, I appreciate your call, Michael. He’s in Plano. This is affecting them down there. Texas? In Texas, this is not what they’re made of. Rolling blackouts? I mean, this is Texas. They think they could secede and have a stronger economy than the rest of the country. So it’s grating on them down there, and he’s exactly right. And we’re not even talking nuclear power plants. It’s just trying to ramp up and build even larger ones or brand-new ones. You’ve gotta jump through hoops. And it’s not just in Texas, that’s everywhere. And, folks, let me tell you something: If Obama gets his way, rolling blackouts will be the new norm. What do you think ‘green energy’ is?
‘Mr. Limbaugh! Mr. Limbaugh! Do you have to politicize everything?’
Look, Mr. New Castrati, I don’t initiate anything here. I react. You know, I’m sitting here minding my own business, trying to enjoy life and have a great time on my 23rd year of this program. I could phone it in, but the problem (well, my professionalism wouldn’t permit me) is I get here every day and I have to look at how attacks on my country are materializing. So we’ve gotta an administration that wants to somehow roll back prosperity in this country for whatever perverted reason. So, yeah, here’s some rolling blackouts in Texas. What they’re trying to do is come up with this new ‘green energy.’ They’re throwing all kinds of money into it, bribing GE one way or the other. Maybe it’s a mutual bribe, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
The fact of the matter is that in weather like they’re having in Texas and throughout the country, the windmills shut down — and you need wind, anyway. If there’s no wind, you can’t fake that. You can’t manufacture that. The rolling blackouts would be the new norm. Because, don’t forget, as far as Obama and his crowd are concerned, we are wasting electricity. We’re using way, way, way much more than our share — and we have to learn to do with less. We need to learn what the rest of the world has had to put up with because of us. It’s time we learned. It’s time we experienced the rigors of life that we have inflicted on others. There are people in this country who view America in that way, and some of them now have positions of power and leadership in our administration.