{"id":246125,"date":"2017-09-06T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=246125"},"modified":"2017-09-06T22:30:05","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T02:30:05","slug":"i-never-ever-said-the-hurricane-was-fake-news-drive-bys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/09\/06\/i-never-ever-said-the-hurricane-was-fake-news-drive-bys\/","title":{"rendered":"I Never, Ever Said the Hurricane Was Fake News, Drive-Bys"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: I didn\u2019t know this yesterday, but they called me a hurricane denier all over social media last night. Did you guys know anything about that? Well, I didn\u2019t, either. I\u2019m minding my own business, it was at 10:30 last night. I had not even turned on the TV. I was too busy.<\/p>\n

By the way, greetings. Rush Limbaugh here, the EIB Network, now in the direct target area of Hurricane Irma.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it was 10:30 last night, I got a note from our old buddy Erick Erickson, and it says: “Passing this along. It goes live in the morning at five a.m.” on his website theresurgent.com<\/a>. It says: “Everybody Freaked the Hell Out Over Rush Limbaugh Yesterday, But He Was Right.”<\/p>\n

\"\"I said, “What is this?” I didn\u2019t know a thing about this. I got zilch feedback about this, I mean, none. I didn\u2019t get any feedback about anything yesterday. I never get feedback about anything anymore. To be totally frank, I go home and that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

So I get this note from Erick that says: “‘A hurricane denier,\u2019 they called him on social media yesterday. Rush Limbaugh started his show talking about Hurricane Irma and liberals along with a number of Republicans who have decided talk radio is the enemy, freaked. the. hell. out. But did they actually listen to him?”<\/p>\n

He goes on to tell me what happened here. And apparently — you know that reporter that got clocked by the Republican out in North Dakota, Ben Jacobs? Apparently this guy heard — well, I don\u2019t think he heard, I don\u2019t think any of these people actually listen. They probably got an out-of-context, erroneous report of things I didn\u2019t say yesterday, and he tweeted that I am a hurricane denier. Which, by the way, does that not prove that these people are using this storm to advance the climate change agenda, which was one of my focal points yesterday?<\/p>\n

And that apparently caused an eruption in various sectors of social media. So Erick wrote a piece here to try to set these people straight to tell \u2019em what exactly happened on the program yesterday versus what they — (interruption) I know they\u2019re not gonna read that. Well, they might. I mean, Erick is on social media, and we of course here at the EIB Network have steadfastly maintained a state of distance from that cesspool. We\u2019re not there. That\u2019s why I don\u2019t get any feedback on it.<\/p>\n

So all I did yesterday — this is the thing. Folks, it is so frustrating. And it\u2019s actually getting more and more frustrating. When these people, who are so emotionally invested — emotionally, not intellectually — so emotionally invested in an event and in an outcome, you can\u2019t get to them with the truth. In fact, the truth is the greatest enemy they face, and they treat it that way. They reside in these little self-made cocoons where they safely are hidden away from anything that challenges their emotional construct.<\/p>\n

And when something permeates the cocoon — and I have a practiced way of permeating. I know how to permeate emotional cocoons. I do it well as the mayor of Realville — and they just freak out. Anyway, there was a story about it today in The Daily Beast, which is a left-wing — not The Daily Caller. And the headline: “Limbaugh: Hurricane Irma Coverage Is Liberal Media Plot to Advance ‘Climate-Change Agenda<\/a>.'”<\/p>\n

\"\"And then they go on and they fairly accurately report what I say and they even mention that I constantly pointed out that I was not a meteorologist, which I did yesterday. I didn\u2019t say that anything I\u2019m predicting here as any the authority. I didn\u2019t say I\u2019m trying to replace the hurricane center or any of these experts. I\u2019m just telling you how I analyze their data, which we are still free to do. I analyze their data a little differently than they do.<\/p>\n

Now, the situation here in south Florida\u2019s dire. The governor, Rick Scott, is asking certain people to begin evacuation plans. Hurricane Harvey is supposed to hit Miami Sunday morning at eight a.m. with 145-mile-an-hour winds and come right up and dead hit West Palm Beach and Wellington at 130 miles an hour and then keep going north. Now, yesterday at this time, the hurricane center had Key West as the target. The day before that it was an entirely different target.<\/p>\n

But if you study this, as I do, you will find that from the beginning of coverage of Hurricane Irma, Florida has always been in what would be the cone, the long range cone. And all I\u2019m telling you is that I think there are reasons for that beyond meteorology. That\u2019s all. I\u2019m not gonna waste your time repeating everything I said yesterday, because most of you were here and heard it.<\/p>\n

Last night, before the 11 o\u2019clock update happened, everybody was looking at the hurricane center forecast track and thinking<\/a>, “Okay, it\u2019s gonna hit Naples, maybe further west offshore and head on up to the Gulf, like Mississippi-Louisiana.” And I was chatting with people, I said, “This is not what\u2019s going to happen. They can\u2019t move the track where they really want to move it yet, because the track is dependent on many things, primarily on all of the different hurricane models.”<\/p>\n

\"\"You\u2019ve probably been to enough websites where they have these spaghetti models, but you have to know that not all those models are paid attention to by the hurricane center. You have to, over years and years of diligent study, you have to figure out which models they find credible. I know this. You have to find which models they give weight to and others that they ignore. I know this because of 20 years of study. As a resident of south Florida, this stuff matters to people like me who live here.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll just tell you this. I was having a chat with someone you all know last night whose name I\u2019m not gonna mention, we were making bets with each other, and I made a prediction. I said, “When we wake up” — this is after the 11 o\u2019clock track had moved it close to Naples and Fort Myers and moved it off of Key West. I said, “I\u2019m gonna tell you exactly what\u2019s gonna happen. We\u2019re gonna wake up at five a.m. tomorrow and that track is gonna split the state in two. It\u2019s gonna come right up the center of the state of Florida,” and damned if that isn\u2019t what happened.<\/p>\n

But I told him. That\u2019s not the news. The news is that 11 o\u2019clock tomorrow West Palm Beach is gonna be dead hit. I told my buddy this at midnight last night. And, lo and behold, that\u2019s exactly where the track is right now. We\u2019re still four to five days out when talking about impact on south Florida. And if you look at the discussion page at the National Hurricane Center\u2019s website where you find the graphics, the forecast maps, they have updates, advisories, and they have a discussion that they issue every six hours.<\/p>\n

And every discussion mentions that when you\u2019re looking at the track, days four and five usually have an error, an average error that they apply of 175 to 225 miles, which is why their cone is that big, that far out, because they really can\u2019t predict. So my point, the track\u2019s gonna move again. I don\u2019t know where the track\u2019s gonna end up. Most of the models do not have the hurricane hitting Florida. There\u2019s still a few that do, and there\u2019s an outlier or two that have it going due west through the Florida straits, due west and up into the Gulf.<\/p>\n

The hurricane center\u2019s ignoring those models. And if you look at the cluster of models they pay attention to, it almost looks like a repeat of last year\u2019s Hurricane Matthew. Remember that one? Hurricane Matthew was making a beeline for Florida, and then about, I don\u2019t know, 50 miles out, it turned north, and it paralleled the Florida East Coast on its way north. And I remember, all kinds of people — this is fascinating, too — it missed us, and everybody I know who knows where I live called me breathlessly, “Did you get much damage?”<\/p>\n

I said, “No. It missed us.”<\/p>\n

“Oh, no, it was a direct hit. I saw it on TV, it was a direct hit.”<\/p>\n

“Oh, no, no, it missed us. It remained offshore. It didn\u2019t come ashore \u2019til way north up in Florida.”<\/p>\n

“Oh, good. Oh, good. I could have sworn I saw it was a direct hit. I was so worried.”<\/p>\n

“No. No. We could wave at it out there on the upper deck of the second floor. We could wave at it as it went by.”<\/p>\n

“Really?”<\/p>\n

“Yeah.”<\/p>\n

\"\"Now, this is a much stronger hurricane than Matthew. They claim right now that it\u2019s 175-mile-an-hour winds gusting to 225, 55 miles east of I think St. Thomas, is it? Yeah, St. Thomas. It\u2019s barreling toward it. By the time it reaches Florida, the strength is gonna be down to 145, 135, with gusts even higher. But we\u2019re still — what is this, Wednesday, and they\u2019re forecasting eight — I don\u2019t have it right in front of me. Eight a.m. Sunday I think for Miami. Wednesday, Thursday.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re still four or five days out from this thing, so you know this track is going to change again. And even with the vast movement of the forecast track in the last three days, if you go back — I keep all these screenshots. I do overlaps, comparisons. The track movement in the last three days is like one of these spaghetti models; it\u2019s all over the place. So it\u2019s gonna continue to move. And even the hurricane center with their admission that there\u2019s a 175-225-mile error, that\u2019s the average distance of the error that is made, because you can\u2019t forecast these things precisely until it\u2019s like six hours out, six hours, 12 hours out. Even then, even 12 hours out it, it can take a totally different tack.<\/p>\n

Now, don\u2019t confuse this with climate change. ‘Cause climate change they can tell you what the sea level is gonna be in 50 years. I mean, they have no doubt what the sea level is gonna be in Manhattan, south Florida in 50 years. The direction of the hurricane, six hours out, beyond that it\u2019s the best guess that they can put together. And that\u2019s what it is.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a way of illustrating this. One of my favorite things to read is a weekly article by Gregg Easterbrook, who is an environmentalist wacko, by the way, and you have to know this, that I know this, and it doesn\u2019t factor. He writes a piece called Tuesday Morning Quarterback, used to be at ESPN, then at the New York Times. Now he\u2019s published in the Weekly Standard<\/a>. It\u2019s every Tuesday.<\/p>\n

His piece yesterday was the first piece before the NFL season begins, and that\u2019s where everybody makes their predictions. He had a long section in Tuesday Morning Quarterback debunking the entire notion of predicting sporting events, individual games, who\u2019s gonna win the Super Bowl, the utter futility of it and how nobody ever really gets it right. And his analogy was all of the data experts forecasting the 2016 election.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>He just smears Nate Silver and all of these pollsters and all of these big data analysts as nothing but a bunch of dressed-up wild guessers. He doesn\u2019t hit them personally. I\u2019m sure he likes them. They\u2019re on his team. But he makes a brilliant point. I\u2019m gonna share it with you during the program today, because it\u2019s fascinating.<\/p>\n

And in fact, you know what? When I read this, I understood even better why the left has gone insane. ‘Cause they believed all of this. Nate Silver says Hillary\u2019s got a 90% chance of winning, Hillary\u2019s got a 65% chance-of-winning, Hillary\u2019s got an 84%. The Huffing and Puffington Post, the same thing. The New York Times, they were all issuing these percentages based on their big data analysis, and they were all wrong!<\/p>\n

And I remember making the point during the campaign, these people are falling victim to their own side\u2019s dishonesty. They can\u2019t be precise, but they\u2019ve got these reputations as big data analysts, that they know more than anybody else, and when they make these predictions that Hillary has a 91.1% chance, you put the decimal point in there and it adds credibility and authority, but it means nothing. These people believed all of their big data gurus and every one of them got it wrong, and every one of them wasn\u2019t even close. And these gurus, these big data gurus are like gods to people on the left. It\u2019s why they felt betrayed.<\/p>\n

How many of you watch the FX TV show American Horror Story? None of the staff here on the other side of the glass does. Well, it\u2019s produced by a guy named Ryan Murphy, who\u2019s gay, so there\u2019s a lot of risqu\u00e9 homosexuality in this series. I think they\u2019re on season 5. But this season\u2019s issue is American Horror Story cult, and I had heard that the opening scenes in episode 1 are of a bunch of people losing their minds and going nuts watching election night coverage as Trump wins.<\/p>\n