RUSH: And I’m going to tell you exactly why you feel that way, because I bet you a lot of people are just fit to be tied. Snerdley just said to me, I saw him staring intently right into my eyes, I wasn’t saying anything. I said, ‘What are you staring at?’ He said, ‘It feels like one of these days everything is spinning out of control, like nothing’s going right.’ Well, for me that started last night. I blew my top so many times last night and I was ready to blow my top this morning. I had so many just BS minutia things going that prevented me from doing work I needed to do, and they’re still going on, but, nevertheless, we’re here, behind the Golden EIB Microphone. We’ve got broadcast excellence straight ahead. Telephone number, 800-282-2882. E-mail address, Rush@eibnet.com.
If you feel like things are spinning out of control; if you think nothing is going right, I’ll tell you what the primary reason for it is. If you’re like me, you’re watching these fires; you’re watching a million people evacuated; these are homes. Now, there may be just stuff in those homes that you can replace, but these are homes. The stuff is what made those structures homes and people are losing them left and right. This is worse than any hurricane and what are we getting? We’re getting the Democrats politicizing it. They’re blaming Bush. They’re blaming the war in Iraq. They’re blaming global warming, for a natural disaster. Drudge found an AP story that was on USA Today from 2003: ”FBI: Al-Qaeda Detainee Spoke of Fire Plot.’ The FBI alerted law enforcement agencies last month that an al-Qaeda terrorist now in detention had talked of masterminding a plot to set a series of devastating forest fires around the western United States. Rose Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, told The Associated Press that officials there took note of the warning but didn’t see a need to act further on it.’ Ah, it’s speculation. It’s just an interesting story. This is obviously now from four years ago. Nobody’s come forward to claim any credit. It’s just interesting to throw into the mix out there.
But this is a genuine disaster, and you see a lot of people are talking about the differences between Hurricane Katrina and the Superdome and Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. There are myriad differences between the Superdome and Qualcomm Stadium, beyond the obvious. One of the primary differences is that the local and state officials in California have done their job in getting people out of the danger. In New Orleans they screwed that up. They didn’t get all the people evacuated, and then the roads finally got damaged and flooded and they couldn’t get people out of there, so you had all the mayhem in the Convention Center and the Superdome. The Drive-By Media is trying to blow this thing up in California in ways they did with Katrina because they think they really did a great job with Katrina. There are too many witnesses out there. They cannot tell things that are not true. That’s a little side issue. The point is, you have this disaster happening, you have local and state officials who are doing fine, don’t need FEMA in there, the feds are going to get in there, but they’re doing a great job handling this and protecting life and doing their best to save it. Five deaths in all of this, which is amazing when you consider this stuff just started five o’clock in the morning. People woke up in many areas of California to see the sky glowing red and a glowing orange, and they had to get the hell out of there.
We’ve got stories about, ‘Oh, Hollywood is having to shut down and Hollywood this and Hollywood that.’ It ain’t about Hollywood. There are a whole lot of people out there being affected by this. A million people evacuated, San Diego Chargers had to decamp, go to Arizona, don’t know where they’re going to play their game Sunday. It was scheduled for San Diego, Qualcomm Stadium, but all depends on what happens with the fires. In the midst of all of this, which is a genuine human tragedy, we’ve got Democrats politicizing it. We hear talk all over the country, and we have for the last three or four years, people have called here, discussed it, ‘Rush, I’m just feeling, I guess, depressed,’ and you’re depressed because the Drive-By Media had been reporting wrong news, bad news, trying to make you think the economy was going to hell in a handbasket, we’re losing the war in Iraq, we got terrorists held against their will, all this stuff that made no sense whatsoever. It’s the same thing happening here with these fires. Plus, just the fires themselves, without any of the accompanying politicking going on about this, you have just the destruction that is visible and massive on television every day and every night. I guess we need to start with this, the pièce de résistance. Here is Dingy Harry Reid. Folks, he is losing it. This was at a press conference yesterday about global warming and the fires in California. He has his big energy bill coming up, and he’s trying to get it passed, and listen to what he said.
REID: One reason that we have the fires burning in Southern California is global warming. One reason the Colorado basin is going dry is because of global warming.
RUSH: There is a blatant attempt to politicize this, and people don’t want to hear this right now, and everybody, ‘What, global warming responsible for fires?’ We have fires every year. We have fires every decade. We had fires on this planet for as long as the planet’s been around, lightning strikes, who knows how these fires were started. But it’s a tinderbox out there. If we want to start assigning political blame, we can do that, but now is not the time. But then later on, about six minutes later, a reporter said to him:
REPORTER: You said that the reason the fires are burning in California is global warming.
REID: No. Here’s — here’s what… I didn’t say the reason the fires were burning in Southern California is global warming.
RUSH: He said it and then he denied it in a period of six minutes. I want to play these two cuts back-to-back. We’ll start again. This is Harry Reid late yesterday on Capitol Hill holding a press conference about global warming on fires.
REID: One reason that we have the fires burning in Southern California is global warming. One reason the Colorado basin is going dry is because of global warming.
REPORTER: You said that the reason the fires are burning in California is global warming.
REID: No. Here’s — here’s what.. I didn’t say the reason the fires were burning in Southern California is global warming.
RUSH: But he did. He’s an idiot. He also doesn’t know, we pointed this out yesterday, it’s a desert! There is no water there. They have to bring water in from any number of places. They put a town — they populated a desert — which is fine and dandy, but it’s got certain characteristics of a desert and one of those characteristics is it’s dry. Then you have the wacko environmentalists who will not let anybody go in and clear out the deadwood. I told you this yesterday, Bush signed the Healthy Forests Initiative, or some such thing, I don’t know what the name of it was, which was designed to let people go in there and clear out the deadwood and the kindling that’s at the bottom of these forests and they’ve had 59 lawsuits from environmentalist wackos not allowing that to happen. So you’ve got a tinderbox out there. What do you make of this? Here is Harry Reid trying to politicize this, then denies saying it was about global warming after blaming global warming. No. That took place, those two bites took place at the same press conference within a span, ladies and gentlemen, of six minutes. This is the height of irresponsibility, and it goes on. Here’s Barbara Boxer. She couldn’t help it. This is yesterday’s Senate committee hearing.
BOXER: Right now we are down 50% in terms of our National Guard equipment because they’re all in Iraq, the equipment, half of the equipment. So we really will need help. I think all of our states are down in terms of equipment.
RUSH: So we have to politicize now the war in Iraq. We have to blame our inability to do things and put the fires out on the war in Iraq. Then California’s lieutenant governor, John Garamendi, gets in on the act. He was on Hardball with Chris Matthews yesterday, who said, ‘Is the federal government doing what it has to do here?’
GARAMENDI: Well, they’re doing a lot, and we appreciate what they have done thus far. I got some doubt about the value of President Bush coming out here. How many times did he go to New York — to New Orleans — and still made promises, but hasn’t delivered? Okay, President Bush comes out, we’ll be polite, but, frankly, that’s not the solution. How about sending our National Guard back from Iraq so that we have those people available here to help us?
RUSH: This is what makes you think things are spinning out of control. These are two Californians, Barbara Boxer and John Garamendi, the lieutenant governor, and rather than focus and praise the people who are doing great work out there — and they are civilians, they are volunteer firefighters, they are business owners. The private sector is coming together here, working together with state officials. The feds are late on the scene, but that’s okay. This is a demonstration of how it should be done. And yet in the midst of this, with people in droves losing everything, two Californians, one a senator, one a lieutenant governor, makes it their priority to bash President Bush and the war in Iraq. Now, I maintain that the country is fed up with this kind of action, fed up with the politicizing of these things, and if you’re feeling like everything’s out of control and nothing’s making any sense and everything’s going wrong, this may be one of the reasons. You may not be feeling that way, after today’s show you might, depends.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: If you’re feeling sick, folks, it’s the Democrats making you feel sick. By the way — are you certain about this? One of these fires was arson? Okay. Okay, the cops picked up an arsonist and one of these fires was arson. So you might say, ‘Well, what does global warming have to do with arson?’ Their answer for that is, ‘Well, global warming has dried it out. There’s drought out there and, of course, however the fire starts, why, it’s just going to go crazy!’ The interesting weather aspect of this is that really one of the fuels for this is the Santa Ana winds, and yesterday I remember reading some global warming hack talking about the fact that the period of the Santa Ana winds is extended, like 38 days longer or 78 days longer than it used to be, or whatever it is. I forget the exact number. Local meteorologists in Southern California are saying they were surprised that the Santa Anas had not arrived at the same time they usually do. They were late arriving this year. Now they’re there in full force, but they’re not any more outrageously strong than on average, according to local meteorologists out there. So here we have a United States senator, Barbara Boxer — who is not even back in California trying to help out!
She’s pontificating from the Senate. What has she ever done to support the National Guard? Here she’s all worried about the National Guard being depleted because it’s back in Iraq. What has she ever done to support the Guard, or the thinning of these forests by the logging companies? They keep the logging companies out of as many wooded areas as they can. You know, the leftists are always complaining that there are not as many military personnel. They’ve spent decking cutting military personnel! California universities won’t even let military recruiters on campus. These people speak with disdain of the US military. We’ve chronicled this. They are invested in the defeat of the US military. They constantly impugn them, and now when they need them (crying), ‘Bush sent them to Iraq! Where are our National Guard troops? Wah-hah-hah,’ and so forth. They complain about burning forests, when Clinton and the environmentalist wackos opposed thinning the forests — and are filing lawsuits now to prevent going in and doing some of the thinning. Duncan Hunter last night, a Republican presidential candidate, was on MSNBC with Dan Abrams, and Abrams said, ‘What do you make of this, Representative Hunter? I mean, the idea that you have Barbara Boxer now and others coming out saying, ‘Look, there’s no question the war in Iraq is straining our abilities to handle nationally disasters like this one.’ What’s your thought?’
HUNTER: This is a big stretch, and I can tell you, I’ve been chairman of the Armed Services Committee for the last four years. We’ve got two-and-a-half-million people under arms. We’ve got less than 8% of those people in the war-fighting theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan. You’ve got a 60-mile-an-hour wind hitting tinder-dry sagebrush. You could put the entire US Army in front of it, and you’re not going to stop it, and the proof of that is this. We’ve got thousands of US Marines right now at Camp Pendleton available to fight fires where we can use them here in San Diego County, but you simply don’t throw a wall of bodies up against an incoming wall of flame that’s coming with high winds behind it.
RUSH: Exactly right. So what are the National Guard troops going to do, just stand there and blow in the opposite direction and say, ‘Fire, go away’? What are they going to do? This is such meaningless BS, and it is nothing more than politicizing a disaster — and California officials, the lieutenant governor, Garamendi (who I knew when I lived out there), and Barbara Boxer (who I’ve not met, wherever I’ve lived) are trying to turn this into a political issue, along with Harry Reid, blaming global warming, and then six minutes later, denying he had even said it. Here’s the Early Show this morning. Hannah Storm was talking to David Paulison — who is the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA — and she said, ‘Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer complained of the ability of the state’s National Guard’s been compromised because of too much of their equipment and personnel is in Iraq is that true.’
PAULISON: I have not seen that at all, quite frankly. I have not seen that at all. I was just at Qualcomm yesterday and last night, actually. Things are under control. There’s plenty of food. There’s plenty of water. There’s lots of security. I have not seen an issue with the Guard. In fact, they are moving lots of National Guards in there on the ground, working with NORTHCOM and others to make sure we have the right people here to do the job.
RUSH: Well, Duncan Hunter made the case: all the Marines at Camp Pendleton and his statistics. We got two and a half million people under arms; less than 8% of those people in the war fighting theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats are just lying again. They’re just trying to politicize a really tragic event that is causing all kinds of disruption, and sadness, and devastation of people’s lives. It just makes me sick, folks, and I’m sure that it does some of you. Now, on ABC’s Good Morning America today, Claire Shipman talked to Governor Schwarzenegger. She said, ‘You say everybody’s working together, but you’ve heard that there’s been some complaints from officials, for example, in Orange County who say if we’d only had more resources earlier — more planes, more firefighting resources — we might have been able to head off those fires that are ravaging Orange County right now.’
SCHWARZENEGGER: Everyone complaining about the planes just wants to complain, because it’s a bunch of nonsense. The fact is that we have all the planes in the world. We have 90 aircraft here, and they can’t fly because of the wind situation.
SHIPMAN: The point he was making you have to be ready to fly.
SCHWARZENEGGER: Trust me when I tell you: You’re looking for a mistake and you won’t find it, because it’s all good news — as much as you maybe hate it, but it’s good news.
RUSH: Sometimes… You know, Arnold’s crossed the line here. He’s gone to the center, but he’s got these conservative instincts–, and the media, apparently, can still stir them, and rouse Arnold from his sleep, because, ‘Trust me when I tell you: You’re looking for a mistake and you won’t find it because it’s all good news — as much as you may hate it, but it’s all good news,’ and that’s exactly right. They’re out there trying to find the Hurricane Katrina-type stories in Southern California, and they can’t, and they can’t make them up like they did during Katrina because there are too many eyewitnesses. Everybody’s involved down there. There’s nowhere the Drive-Bys can go that everybody else can go. People are already aware of where the Drive-Bys want to go so what they’re going to have to do is roust a couple of citizens out there who are willing to tell tales of woe about how the Bush administration didn’t do enough for them — and they’ll find ’em. But Schwarzenegger is not biting on it, not getting involved in this and letting them set the agenda, as they did during Hurricane Katrina. On the Today show today, David Paulison was back, the FEMA guy, and Matt Lauer said, ‘I think there’s one real success story in this situation from my personal experience out there yesterday. This reverse 911 calling system seems to really be working.’
PAULISON: It worked phenomenally well. The city was able to call out over 500,000 people and give them the direction to evacuate. Most everybody listened to that. They got out of harm’s way and that’s the most important thing. (chainsaw sound on tape) You know, people may loose their homes. We can rebuild a home, but get out of harm’s way. You cannot replace your life.
RUSH: That’s the great thing. It’s a point I made about one of the big differences between Hurricane Katrina and this. I guess that noise was on the sound bite; is that right? It was a chainsaw? Oh, good! Chopping down trees. Yes. Remember the old timber update we used to do with it? Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah! It might be time to bring that back at some point. But, at any rate, in Hurricane Katrina, they didn’t evacuate the people. They didn’t get them out of there. They didn’t use the school buses, and then they were forced to hole up in the Superdome, which, of course, sprung a leak — four feet of water in there, all kinds of sewage problems — same thing at the Convention Center. But they evacuated people in the danger areas in California. They got them away from danger.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: These Drive-Bys and the Democrats are trying to politicize and look at every disaster through their political bias and lens. Any governor, or mayor, or councilman, or supervisor with any degree of competence knows that states and localities are the best at dealing with this kind of disaster, assuming you have competent leadership at that level, and it’s apparent that we do, in Southern California, with some federal help going in. Their first actions, by the way, were not to call Barbara Boxer. Their first actions were not to call FEMA. Their first actions were to attack the fires. They don’t want to be thought of as victims. When this all started this past weekend, in Malibu there were people with garden hoses stamping out fires in tennis shoes, the tennis shoes were catching fire. By the way, another one of these fires was caused by a downed power line, so we have suspected arson in one of them, a downed power line in another, and Dingy Harry is out there blaming it on global warming and then six minutes later denying that he had blamed it on global warming.
We’re going to keep playing those bites. Unbelievable, these people are cracking up out here. If global warming caused these fires, then global warming should put ’em out since it’s supposed to also cause flooding, right? The people in both the state government and the public are acting responsibly in fighting this disaster. It is the federal politicians who have nothing to do with this, who are looking to exploit it, liberal federal politicians. Why do we care what Harry Reid has to say about it? Why do we care what Barbara Boxer has to say about it when she’s not involved in any of the rescue efforts? All the media attention that they receive has nothing to do with fighting these fires. All they do is make political pronouncements. They’re not news except to the Drive-By Media, because the media is searching, lurking for political angles that fit their political bias, right along with the Democrats.
Grab a couple phone calls. Auburn, Kentucky. This is Robert. You’re first up today on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I have been listening to you since 1987. I’m a retired Marine. I served 20 years. I retired in 1978. And when I was listening to your monologue, I got myself all heated up and saying, ‘Wait a minute, there’s Marines in Pendleton that were promised to be there,’ and I heard the report yesterday that they were there, they were just waiting for the conditions to be right to fight this fire, but, of course, after listening to you, I see you’re on top of it, you had all those reports. But listening to you and not being able to respond sometimes I get a little uptight.
RUSH: Why, because you want to add to what I’m saying or —
CALLER: I just want to say, ‘Hey, look, they’re our people out there that are doing something.’ I think most of the people look to the politician. Our military has served this country well and they’re doing a great job in Iraq but they’re getting blamed for murders and all kind of crazy things.
RUSH: See, it’s all combined into one. This is why you feel like things are spinning out of control. Everything is going wrong, nothing makes sense. It seems like immorality, lying, and depravity have become the norm in the Drive-By Media, which is people’s primary information source, and it affects their moods. Look at you? You have just made my point. You listen to these guys attack the military for four years, and then a forest fire breaks out or a hurricane, ‘Where’s the military? Where’s the military? We need the military! We don’t have the military because Bush sent the military to Iraq.’ We have plenty of National Guard personnel here. We have thousands of Marines at Camp Pendleton.
Duncan Hunter is exactly right. What do you do with these people? You just send ’em out there to perish in the fire? You just send them out there as a show of force as though the fire is going to be impressed with their presence? Fighting fires is not just a matter of manpower going out there. There’s a science to it. How many forest fires have we had, how many fires like this fueled by the Santa Anas in your lifetime where the Democrats and media tried to make a political issue out of it? I mean, it’s common to take certain things, disasters, and make political issues out of them, I suppose, but this just seems to be more over the top than usual, and they’re having to lie in the process, which is, I guess, common.
Let’s go St. Louis. Jim, hello, sir, nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Mega dittos to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I’m just wondering where the call for defeat from the fire is? It’s already too strong, and they’re actually calling for a surge for the fire, but, you know, where’s the call for defeat in all this?
RUSH: You know, that is somewhat interesting. Here you have pictures all over the country of utter destruction and devastation, and no way to stop it. We had pictures coming out of Iraq of the same type. We had explosions, dead bodies, burning and smoldering cars, and the Democrats’ common reaction, ‘Oh, we gotta cut-and-run, our troops can’t win, this is horrible,’ wave the white flag and so forth. These pictures, the same people, say, ‘What are you going to do to stop this?’ they’re asking people. It’s an excellent point, but you have to understand, I guess this is the disturbing thing, folks. As far as Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer, and some apparently in the media, and John Garamendi, the lieutenant governor, apparently this devastating series of fires presents a greater political opportunity that has them all excited than actually dealing with this, putting these fires out. I look at those fires and I look at these homes going up, and I put myself in the shoes of those people, and I don’t think politics at all.
My thoughts are pure, 100% feelings, emotion, what must it be like, even though you have insurance, it’s still dicey. How long is it going to take, who you going to have to fight with the insurance company to get your money, and get your house rebuilt, what you do, where you go, all these things. The last thing I think about is politics. It would never occur to me to find a way to blame Democrats for this or one of the presidential candidates, like Hillary Clinton. But boy, when they start in and do that, you have to defend. That’s when you start talking about the environmentalist wackos. You want to start applying blame, and this is what the Democrats love to do, they see a disaster, rather than dealing with it, putting the fires out, putting lives back together, all they want to do is find blame through their political lens, and it’s just depressing to a lot of people. It’s not depressing to me. Fires me up and makes me mad. Does not depress me.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s question for you to ponder, ladies and gentlemen. Every winter in California, in certain parts of the state, we get heavy rains and mudslides, do we not? And some of those mudslides carry with them houses down the hills. We all remember this. It will happen again this year, and we will be told that this is due to ‘global warming,’ and we will be told that it’s due to the fires, that the fires have taken away some of the natural forestation that would stand in the way of the floods and the mud, soak up some of the rain, but now it’s not there. They’re going to be predicting disaster, all based on ‘global warming.’ Now, when they blame it on global warming — by the way, how much pollution do you think these forest fires are creating? It is so much more. There’s more pollution, more carbon, more gunk belching into the atmosphere than the combined pollution of General Motors or ExxonMobil. It is stunning, and Mother Nature is doing this.
You know, Mother Nature creates more pollution than man ever could — and then Mother Nature reverses it, too. Harry Reid wants you to think that you did this, that this is your fault. Look, folks, when these people blame ‘global warming,’ don’t forget what they’re blaming. They’re blaming prosperity. They’re blaming advanced lifestyles. They’re blaming people for the way they live, because the ‘fix’ to global warming is to roll back lifestyles to a more primitive level. That’s what this is all about, and turning over more power to the government to tell you how you can and can’t live. So when they start talking about this is because of global warming, you gotta hear ’em and what they’re saying. What they’re saying is, ‘It’s your fault. You people in California, your lifestyles are too this and too that.’ Here is Jason in Fletcher, Ohio. Hi, Jason. Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
CALLER: Hi, sir.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: I still (unintelligible) that I hear on CNN Paul McHale saying they have 17,000 National Guardsmen, 550 Marines, and I understand — I agree agree with your point — about not sending all these people in. But what I heard them say is they have not been ‘asked’ to go in. Now, I — I’m wondering, why does the government need to be ‘asked’ to help in a catastrophe like this?
RUSH: Uh, I’m really having trouble understanding you because, I guess, a combination of your phone and my implant, and I don’t know who Paul McHale is. Oh, the assistant secretary of defense, Paul McHale. (It’s spelled like Mikhail Gorbachev here on my transcriber machine. Russians infiltrated the defense department!) We haven’t been asked…? Because the states have to ask the feds. The feds just can’t send willy-nilly troops wherever they want them to go.
CALLER: It’s the government’s job to protect us? So why is it they have to be asked on something this large —
RUSH: Oh, please.
CALLER: — you know, this magnitude?
RUSH: Please. It’s your job to protect yourself in the first place. If a fire comes to your house, are you going to sit there and burn to death waiting on the government to show up or get the hell out? Come on! Come on. What? What? Hello? Testing, one, two, three.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Yeah. Go ahead.
CALLER: Why does it have to be asked? I understand, you know, they can’t send all these people —
RUSH: Have you ever heard of the Constitution? (tapping fingers) One…two…three…four…five… Damn it! I didn’t get to ten. Have you ever heard of the Constitution? If you let the feds send the military anywhere for anything, they can come get your gun, if they want to, if you have one. I… I… (tapping fingers) ‘Their job is to protect us.’ They’re doing that in Iraq and the guy probably wants us out of there.
RUSH: Vinny in Manhattan. Save me here, Vinny! I’m on the verge of a nuclear explosion here at the EIB Southern Command.
CALLER: (laughter) You know, FDNY dittos, Great One, first off. I expect, and I even understand the type of dishonest behavior and demagoguery from the likes of Boxer and Reid, but just who the hell is this nobody — this insignificant little man — this lieutenant governor from California? I am outraged that he could say such as he said about the president and what he expects the president to do.
RUSH: Wait, wait. Let’s be precise. You’re not outraged that he could, because he can say what he wants. You’re outraged that he would.
CALLER: Yes. Well, I’m outraged that he did! How’s that?
RUSH: Okay, better.
CALLER: He did it. The world has heard it. But you know what? This is this guy’s grab. Nobody’s ever heard of this guy. I certainly haven’t. Maybe you’re the only one on this radio program who have heard of this guy, okay, and yet we do feel like we’re being ground into the dust by an oppressive liberal media and the party they love and support, the Democratic Party. But at the end of the day, Rush, at the end of the day, it is we on the side of right. Rugged individualism and conservative ideas are going to win the day. To hell with these people. Period.
RUSH: They are winning the day. They are winning the day. It’s one of the reasons that there is such desperation on the part of the libs, they are jumping at everything. They know that they can’t get anything done of any consequence in Congress, the House or the Senate on Iraq, all of these things, and they’re just desperate. By the way, I’m not going to have this whole show sidetracked by this today because there are things going on. Dingy Harry and Dick Durbin got this little plan in the Senate today called the DREAM Act, which is amnesty all over again, and we’re going to talk about this today before the program ends. But let’s go back, grab audio sound bite number 11, this is Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, California. He was on Hardball last night with Chris Matthews and this is the guy and his comment that had Vinny so outraged.
GARAMENDI: Well, they’re doing a lot, and we appreciate what they have done thus for. I’ve got some doubt about the, uh, value of President Bush coming out here. How many times did he go to New York — uh, to New Orleans — and still made promises, but hasn’t delivered? Okay, President Bush comes out. We’ll be polite, but, frankly, uh, that’s not the solution. How about sending our National Guard back from Iraq, so that we have those people available here to help us?
RUSH: That’s just irresponsible. It is just irresponsible. He knows it’s irresponsible. That’s who these people have become. They tried it with Hurricane Katrina. They’ll try it with any disaster — a Midwestern flood, mudslide, whatever. Get used to it, folks, if you’re not already. Vinny, thanks for the call. I appreciate it. Listen to Katie Couric. Here Katie Couric of CBS Evening News — we have a little montage here of her report — gives credit to an inanimate object, Qualcomm Stadium, for doing a good job.
COURIC: Qualcomm Stadium is now home to as many as 15,000 evacuees. One woman I spoke to described it as ‘Woodstock without the drugs.’ From afar it looks like a massive tailgate party — and, inside, the mood is much the same. During Katrina, New Orleans attempt to shelter people in a sports stadium went terribly wrong. The Superdome turned into a small city of violence, filth, and chaos. But even with an estimated 10,000 people sleeping in Qualcomm, the stadium is getting high marks.
RUSH: The stadium is getting high marks? How about the people that are administering what’s happening at the stadium? For crying out loud.