{"id":14765,"date":"2012-08-27T16:42:10","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T16:42:10","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-08-27T16:42:10","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T16:42:10","slug":"tracking_the_hurricane_with_the_media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2012\/08\/27\/tracking_the_hurricane_with_the_media\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracking the Hurricane with the Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: It is required that we talk about this hurricane. I\u2019m going to walk you through Saturday, keeping in mind I pay close attention (as does everybody who lives here). We were never originally targeted by the eye of this hurricane, but we were going to be close enough to it that we did have to consider whether or not to decamp, to be able to do the program today. Would there be power failures? Would there be loss of satellite uplinks and so forth, making it impossible to do the program?<\/p>\n

So we pay close attention (I do anyway) whether or not to put up the hurricane shutters, what steps to take to protect the property, all these things. So I\u2019m eagle-eyeing this thing, and not just like everybody else does here, too. I\u2019m not just paying attention to whatever the hurricane center says; I try to get hold of as much data as I can. With the Internet, there\u2019s a plethora of it.<\/p>\n

The model runs, for example, other analysts besides those at the hurricane center trying to tell you what they think might happen, because nobody knows. There\u2019s worlds of data, trend lines. This kind of thing can show you the likelihood where it\u2019s gonna end up six hours from now, 12 hours, 24, 48. But nobody really knows, so you eagle-eye it. Let\u2019s move to Saturday, because that\u2019s when this really all started happening. And keep in mind the reason I\u2019m taking you through this.<\/line><\/p>\n

The media is now out there saying that Hurricane Katrina is hanging like a pall over the Republican convention in Tampa. So this whole thing has been politicized, as the Democrats politicize everything, and that\u2019s why we are talking about it. Now, I want to remind you: All last week… And, no, at no time here am I alleging a conspiracy. At no time. With none of this am I alleging conspiracy. All last week what was the target? Tampa. What was going on in Tampa this week?<\/p>\n

The Republican National Convention. A pretty important one, too. Introducing the nominee, Mitt Romney. It\u2019s only after the convention that Romney can actually start spending all of this money that he\u2019s raised, so this convention is very important. It\u2019s a chance to introduce Romney to a lot of people who don\u2019t know him yet. And I noticed that the hurricane center\u2019s track is — and I\u2019m not alleging conspiracies here. The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the government.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Obama.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m noticing that that track stayed zeroed in on Tampa day after day after day. And the Republicans reacted to it accordingly over the weekend, canceling the first day of the convention. What could be better for the Democrats than the Republicans to cancel a day of this? Even though the media wasn\u2019t going to televise a lot of it anyway, they can\u2019t televise it if it isn\u2019t happening. And the GOP brain trust decides, “Well, you know what? Looking at this forecast track, we don\u2019t want to have this thing on Monday.<\/line><\/p>\n

“We have delegates flying into town here, the port may be closed. It\u2019s too dangerous. We don\u2019t want people put at risk trying to get there. So we\u2019ll shut it down. We\u2019ll gavel it to order on Monday and we\u2019ll do a bunch of pro forma stuff, but we actually won\u2019t do anything seriously \u2019til Tuesday.” They made this announcement Saturday or Sunday, I forget which day. Now, Saturday night and all day Saturday I\u2019m looking at the model runs, and the model runs come out every three to five hours, depending on which model. It\u2019s two p.m., five p.m., eight p.m.<\/p>\n

And at eight p.m. Saturday night I see one of the biggest, one of the largest shifts in model forecast I have seen since 1997 when I moved down here and started caring about this stuff and started studying it. Up until Saturday night\u2019s eight p.m. model runs, this hurricane was gonna either hit Pensacola or someplace a little further south. Never Tampa. They had moved it away from Tampa by Friday. But they hit the Florida Panhandle, close enough to Tampa. And the primary wind field is on the right side of this thing, so even if it\u2019s 50 or 25 miles offshore, the bulk of the wind is right there over Tampa.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need a direct hit, in other words. So Pensacola. Saturday at five o\u2019clock Pensacola. Every model agreed. At eight o\u2019clock, I look at the model runs. Folks, only one of them — out of about 12, 15 models — still had it going to Pensacola. Every model had it, at eight o\u2019clock Saturday night, either at New Orleans or Mobile, Alabama, or something in Mississippi. I looked at that. That is a huge spread. That is a huge change in a three-hour period, for the models to move hundreds of miles.<\/p>\n

And not once, in all the model runs of the days prior, had New Orleans been in the picture. Maybe a stray model had it going there. Maybe stray model or two over to the Houston area, but outliers. Nowhere near the model consensus. Model consensus was always Pensacola or someplace in the Florida Panhandle, affectionately known here as the Redneck Riviera. Until eight o\u2019clock Saturday night. At eight o\u2019clock Saturday night, Tampa wasn\u2019t even in the picture anymore. There wasn\u2019t a curve to the north, or even back to the Northeast.<\/p>\n

This was a beeline. This is gonna follow the coast of Cuba right up to New Orleans, in every model. So I started sending out e-mails to people, politically flavored e-mails, and said, “Uh-oh, folks! I\u2019ve been worried about this. I have been concerned every model now says New Orleans. Now, the next hurricane report will be 11 p.m., three hours later, Saturday night. Let\u2019s see what they do with it. Let\u2019s see what the hurricane center does, because this is a huge shift.” At 11 o\u2019clock Saturday night, hurricane center had not changed. It was still Pensacola. Maybe a little left of Pensacola.<\/p>\n

So I read the discussion, which is where they tell you how they arrived at their forecast track and other data. And they acknowledged that the model data had moved “precipitously to the west.” But for the purposes of continuity with the previous forecast — and this is almost a quote — they\u2019re gonna leave the track unchanged. And I said, “Okay, well…” Again, I\u2019m alleging no conspiracy. I don\u2019t want anybody thinking I\u2019m going somewhere with this. I\u2019m just telling you what happened.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sharing with you my thought process, \u2019cause I know full well that if you give these people the slightest chance and they\u2019re gonna turn this into Katrina and they\u2019re gonna scare the hell out of New Orleans and they\u2019re gonna revive, “Bush doesn\u2019t care about people” and revive all of it. They\u2019re gonna politicize everything \u2019cause they do it. And now they had the model runs allowing them to do it.<\/p>\n

Now they had these model runs allowing them to start scaring the hell out of people in New Orleans and make political connections to Bush.<\/p>\n

It was all there.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Republicans had not canceled Monday yet, I don\u2019t believe. Find out for me when they officially canceled Monday. My thinking is it was Sunday afternoon, Sunday morning, but they coulda done that Saturday night. I don\u2019t want to be wrong about that, or anything else. So I went to bed Saturday night and said, “Okay, let\u2019s see what they do at the five a.m. hurricane center track on Sunday.” I got up Sunday morning. I had my iPhone set on the track. All I had to do was get up and hit reload.<\/p>\n

And, lo and behold, I guess they figured out that they didn\u2019t need the continuity with the previous track, because now the official hurricane center track on Sunday morning at five o\u2019clock was anywhere from New Orleans, to Biloxi, to Mobile, Alabama. But clearly nowhere near Pensacola anymore. And with each hurricane center track since five a.m. Sunday, it\u2019s inched closer and closer to New Orleans. Now, I\u2019ve continued to watch the models. The models are now, many of them, west of New Orleans.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not dead center New Orleans. They keep moving west. The forecast track, National Hurricane Center, is right at New Orleans. And the Republicans canceled the first day of the convention. Today it isn\u2019t happening. And there\u2019s nothing going on in Tampa; there\u2019s no reason not to do anything in Tampa today. They\u2019re probably getting weather not as bad as we had on Sunday. And it was cool. You know, we made a decision not to leave.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t even fly the airplane out. I kept everything here. I knew it was gonna be okay. I wanted to live through it. It was gonna be cool. Big storms, you get prepared for them. Lots of rain and wind. You know, the wind on the beach never got any higher 35 or 40 miles an hour. Yeah, I had to take the dogs out<\/a>. Of course I went out. I\u2019m not a wuss. Of course I went out there. Damn straight to take the dogs out! What do you think I\u2019m gonna do, say, “Here, dogs. Use the garage”? No. The dogs went out there and we toweled off when we came in. Yeah, it was cool.<\/p>\n

Anyway let\u2019s go to the audio sound bites.<\/p>\n

Last night on NBC Nightly News, the anchor Lester Holt is speaking with the chief White House correspondent F. Chuck Todd about Tropical Storm Isaac and the Republican convention. And Lester Holt said, “You have this storm churning offshore. It may not make a big deal in Tampa, but is there some concern about the tone of the convention if we are seeing communities along the Gulf Coast suffering some heavy damage?”<\/p>\n