And the truth is, over the next -- I mean, once Labor Day clicks in, which is next week, it's going to be the same pattern as before. They're going to play off fear, and who's going to be in tough shape -- let me tell you, the country's never been tougher shape than it is now.
My mom never wants me to tell her age, but she's not here, so I'm going to do it: she's 88 years old. I was talking to her a few years ago, she was railing on Bush, and I said, he's not the worst president you've ever seen?
She said, no he's the worst. And I said, worse than Hoover? She goes, worse than Hoover.
If you look at our standing in this world, right now as a country, it's never been worse. We've got to have somebody that's willing to step up to the plate and re-establish us a world leader.
If you take a look at where we're at with energy, health care, with jobs, with opportunity, outsourcing, companies outsourcing in this country -- I mean, just go down the list. Name me something that's going good.
Besides what's going on in Montana. (Applause.)
If all this is going to be fixed, we need different leadership, and that starts in the White House, and we can do some great things in the Senate, and they can do some great things in the US House, and we've already seen, we can do some great things in the state of Montana, but it takes people to do it.
It takes Carol Williams to be majority leader in the state senate. (Applause.)
It takes people that have vision for the country and have a feeling for our kids, and where this country needs to go for our kids. Because that's what it's about. We can screw this place up, or we can make it last for generations.
In my folks' generation, we've been living off of them for 30, 40 years. And now it's time for us to step up to the plate and do it, and do it right and last for decades to come. It's not going to happen without a lot of hard work, it really isn't.
You guys are here; you guys are the folks that get it done. You are. That's a fact. I've worked with every one of you at some point in time. And the fact is, that, you know, this election can be a big thing. It can really be a big thing.
Gosh, I'll tell you what. Let me tell you what happened the last two weeks before we got out of session. The last two weeks before we got out of session, there was vote after vote on energy bills that they were not giving us the opportunity to move forward on. It happened time after time. Everybody says drilling -- Harry Reid agreed to do drilling -- and amendments on the energy bill allowed for wind energy tax reduction credits to be implemented, and they were voted down. Every single time. Very, very partisan votes. People that were at risk in the Senate voted with the Democrats, but the rest of them voted against us, every time.
And I happened to be sitting in the Chair, that Thursday night about eleven o'clock at night. And you'd see the people come by -- it's different than Montana, you have to voice vote it -- and they'd come by and say, yes, yes, I want to adjourn. Then somebody got a hold of me, and all the Republicans switched their votes to "no," and then they stand up and say, well, we didn't get a chance to vote on drilling.
I don't know what happened in the House, but that certainly wasn't the case at all in the Senate.
The truth is, was that we have been here before when it comes to energy. We were here in the 70s, we were here in the 80s, we were here in the 90s, we're here again, we'll be here again if we don't figure out a way to make this country energy independent and utilize the energy sources we have available to us.
It's not all petroleum.
It's going to be solar, it's going to be wind, it's going to be geothermal, it's going to be hydrogen-powered, it's going to be new battery technology, it's going to be making our cars get better mileage, it's going to be all our conservationist and renewable energy sources we can find. Hopefully at some point in time supplement it with a minority, with fossil fuel energy.
That's the direction we have go for our kids.
This country, if you want to talk about security for our country, the best thing we can do is get us energy independent. It will stop billions of dollars going overseas to help countries like Iran, Russia, and Iraq, and Venezuela, and it will help this country become more economically secure.
That's the way it is.
So, this is a huge election, bottom line. You guys wouldn't be here if you didn't know it, and in the end, it's going to be really good, I think, it's going to be a good November.
I think it's going to be a good November, too, because people are coming out of the woodwork, people who never got involved in politics before are now knocking doors, making phone calls, writing blogs.Something's afoot, and Jon Tester, a politician created by Montana energy deregulation, he's our point man, the tip of the iceberg, a real symbol for the changing political landscape in Montana and everywhere.
This isn't the 60s. This is something new.
