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Sept. 1, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:18
September 1, 2005, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 Podcast.
Oh, man, this is...
Well, actually, HR, thanks for sending me this.
This makes an even further point that I was going to make later to the Tallahassee Democrat.
Okay.
We're on the fly here today, folks.
Just bear with us.
It is, you know, my worst fears are actually fears that I did not even dream of are actually starting to take place out there.
Everybody's worst fears have already happened.
Greetings.
Welcome.
It's the Rush Limbaugh program, and here we are on the EIB network, and the DittoCam is up and running for those of you who'd like to watch the program today.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882, and the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
And if you, of course, watch the program on the DittoCam, it's www.rushlimbaugh.com.
I actually am sort of overwhelmed.
I don't quite know where to start with all this.
There are two disasters going on here.
The actual disaster that we're all watching on TV.
The second disaster is all the political jockeying and some of the just outrageous insanity that is being brought forth in the media by people, frankly, most of it on the left, but there's some things I don't understand that are being done by people on the right.
And there's some really ugly undercurrents that are effervescing below the surface, and particularly on left-wing blogs.
And the effect here eventually will be for this stuff to be picked up by the mainstream press.
And I want to touch on some of this as the program unfolds today.
Also talk about the energy aspects of this that we've been talking about all week.
We've got $6 a gallon gasoline in Atlanta.
We have gas lines.
I just ran out in the hall here to get something before the program started.
And Brian said, have you heard that we're running out of gas in Florida?
I said, no, I've heard just the opposite.
He said, well, I can't find a regular anywhere and so forth.
Well, this is how all of this stuff gets started.
People start buying gasoline or other things outside of their normal buying habits.
No, I'm not.
Brian's not panicking.
He was just telling me what he's heard.
I mean, this is how this stuff does get started.
And so people start stocking up and buying things outside the normal buying pattern.
And that does create an alteration in the normal flow of supply and demand.
Anyway, let me get started this way.
Let's talk about the gasoline issue.
This is something that I think is evidenced by the things I'm reading and people are saying to me today that this is something that's starting to just boomerang all over the country here, particularly on the East Coast right now.
I mean, the West Coast, pretty much they have their refineries, they have their stockpiles, they've got their infrastructure and their pipelines and distribution system.
But as we said, taking out the port of New Orleans has put the Southeast and some of the eastern seaboard states up for grabs in all of this, as it was, I think, predictable and understood.
So what do we have?
We have a bunch of different proposals, a bunch of different solutions to problems, supposed solutions to problems.
What we should do about gasoline.
Now, let me give you an example.
Here in Florida, this just had this story sent to me.
This is from today's Tallahassee, whatever it is, Democrat.
Is that what the name of the paper is?
Yeah, Tallahassee Democrat.
The headline story, Nelson calls for freeze on gasoline prices.
Senator Warrens of new bid for drilling in Gulf.
That's warns of new bid for drilling in Gulf.
This illustrates the point I wish to open with.
Liberals have absolutely no answer to the gasoline issue.
The Democrats and the Sierra Club-inspired environmentalist wackos and liberals have no answer to the gasoline issue.
Bill Nelson calling for price controls.
Chuck Schumer is calling for releasing oil from the strategic reserve.
And what happens after the 60-day supply of that runs out?
Hillary Clinton is urging investigations of price gouging, all of which does zero.
It does absolutely nothing to increase the supply and lower prices.
And that's how prices come down.
This is economics 101.
It's all supply and demand here, folks.
I'm not going to say there's no gouging.
I'm not going to say there's no profiteering going on.
But that's not what's causing this.
And if you take care of the gouging and the profiteering, you're still going to be paying a price higher than you were yesterday, the day before, and last week because the supply is down.
The supply has been interrupted.
You cannot take 30 million barrel or gallons of gasoline off the market and have the price stay the same.
It's just not possible.
And what we have here with Nelson calling for a freeze on gasoline, how do you do this?
How in the world do you freeze gasoline prices?
I heard somebody suggest last night that we actually enact a law that the president, by executive order, tell the oil companies to reduce their profits by 20%.
How do you do this?
The oil company profiteering and profits are not the problem.
The gas stations gouging is not the problem.
These are incidental problems.
And again, I'm not taking them for granted or saying they're irrelevant, but that's not why all this is happening.
This was predictable, folks.
Just like this storm and what's happened in New Orleans, everybody is saying it was predictable because we didn't have levees down there that were big enough and strong enough to handle anything stronger than a category three storm.
I hate to remind you, but I and others have been telling you for years that we haven't built any new refineries and we're not developing our own domestic supplies of oil and its refined products, including which is gasoline and jet fuel.
All it takes is one interruption and bamo, guess where we are?
We're right where we are.
We are a growing economy.
You cannot grow an economy without growing every aspect of it, particularly the fuel of the engine of that economy, which is oil.
It is just, it's just plain common sense.
So now, in addition to the interruptions that we've had because of a natural disaster that was not man-made, we have these solutions, which are not solutions and not answers at all.
Price controls on gasoline are not going to get us any more gasoline.
Bill Nelson may think it's going to get him votes next year, but it isn't going to get us a drop more gasoline.
Releasing oil from the strategic reserve is not going to get us appreciably more gasoline, particularly in the short run.
And if this disaster, and certainly the recovery is going to last longer than two months, the strategic reserve is going to be gone.
And then what do we do?
And Hillary Clinton, congressional investigations now?
Yeah, okay, let's take that even a step further and let's have congressional investigations into what happened in New Orleans.
Let's have Congress fix it, the normal way they fix things.
This is why last week I went into great detail about who it is that makes the country work.
And it's not these elites who live in the Northeast or other parts of the country who are not affected by these things who then dare to come forward and give us their answers.
This Bill Nelson story is particularly dangerous because not only does the senator, the Democrat senator from this state, Florida, not only does he suggest that we freeze the price of gasoline, he's out there warning.
He's warning of a new bid for drilling for oil in the Gulf as though that would be an added crime.
In addition to the price going up, an added crime would be drilling for oil and finding more of it.
I said yesterday on this program, this is going to provide a glorious opportunity for the anti-development, anti-growth, pro-environmentalist wacko left to step forward and show themselves.
And thank you, Senator Nelson.
You have made me once again a prophet and a seer.
You have just illustrated for the people of your state and this country what an absolute ignoramus you are when it comes to this subject.
He is more concerned with currying favor with Democrat environmentalist-leaning voters than he is in solving the problem.
What did we say yesterday?
These people on the left of the liberal persuasion offer no solutions.
They whine and they complain.
Freezing prices isn't going to get you anymore.
When you go to the gas pump, what do you want?
You want gasoline, right?
Who cares what it costs if there isn't any?
Bill Nelson's not going to get you anymore.
Chuck Schumer's not going to get you anymore.
Hillary Clinton's not going to get you anymore.
None of the Democrats I've heard speaking on this are going to get you a drop more gasoline.
They're going to get you higher prices.
They're going to create panic.
They're going to create shortages, but they're not going to get you any gasoline.
This is, I mean, in all my dreams, I never thought that it would only take one day for this glaring ignorance to show up.
And in no less than a personage than a United States senator whose big concern, you see what's happening in New Orleans.
You see the suffering.
You see that it's incomprehensible.
And we've got a U.S. senator worrying and worrying about we might drill for oil in Florida.
And he's sounding the warning bells.
Now, no doubt this will take, it'll manifest himself in some way as Bush actually, you know, on the Democrats websites, Bush manifested this.
Bush has always wanted to drill for more oil.
He's always wanted to drill for more.
Now he has the reason.
I don't know what kind of inane, insane cockamami explanations they'll come up with, but they don't need to add to it because they're already illustrating it.
The idea, the idea that in the face of all this, we don't realize how vulnerable we are because we can't handle, when we can't handle folks, four refineries going down, when we can't handle one refinery going down, when we can't handle a refinery losing the ability to be online, what does that tell you about what we've been doing the last 20 years?
I get so sick of hearing all these complaints.
We've been warning New Orleans for 40 years.
We've got that idiot Sidney Blumenthal, who can only be published in German magazines for some reason, now saying that Bush is responsible for what happened in New Orleans because he cut FEMA budgets back in 2001 in order to fund the war in Iraq.
Mr. Blumenthal, who did you work for for eight years?
And what the hell did you people do in those eight years?
Because we've been warned about New Orleans for 40.
Where was your investment, so to speak, with all of your tax increases?
Where is all the investment that you people in the Clinton administration sent down in New Orleans?
Frankly, folks, to have to speak about this in this fashion is repugnant to me.
On Monday, I told you this was going to happen.
I hoped it wouldn't happen.
Have to come here every day and respond to the loony left while the real story is on our television screens is repugnant to me.
But I don't know what to do.
I can't sit out here and let some of this just go by.
I can't let what some of these people are saying go uncommented on.
And I can rely on the fact that the other networks and media are focusing on what's happening in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region.
But some of this stuff has to be responded to.
And so I'm going to continue to do it as long as they make it necessary.
Quick time out.
We will be back.
Stay with us.
Hi, welcome back to the Excellence in Broadcasting Network and the Rush Limbaugh program.
I want you to hear some of the quotes from Senator Nelson in this speech that he gave to the Economic Club of Florida luncheon speech yesterday.
He said the President Shoots is influenced to jawbone the oil industry into freezing gas prices, as he said the administration did in the interest of economic recovery before the September 11th terrorist attacks.
But Nelson said long-term solutions to the fuel problem lie in making the auto industry produce more hybrid cars that run on gasoline and electricity and a wider use of alcohol-mixed fuels.
Senator Nelson, you're an embarrassment, sir, and I just, I have, I have no recourse but then to say it.
Hybrids.
Today?
In this situation, hybrids, Senator?
A wider use of alcohol-mixed fuels, electricity?
Let me tell you what an automobile executive told me two weeks ago about hybrids.
If everybody could be made tomorrow to be driving a hybrid, every automobile on the street today, thrown away, replaced by a hybrid, it would only take six years for us to get right back where we are in terms of the use of fossil fuels and gasoline.
Because we are a growing economy.
Hybrids are not the answer.
Alternatives are not the answer, particularly now.
You go to a gas station where there's no regular senator and you tell the people who have to buy premium unleaded or super high-test unleaded.
You tell them, well, if you were driving a hybrid, you wouldn't have, what do you mean, senator?
There's no gasoline, period, in the regular pump.
Go there and tell them your solution.
Go leave the Economic Club of Florida and go out to the gas pumps and tell people they shouldn't be driving the cars they're driving.
They ought to be driving hybrids.
And then they'll tell you, what difference would it make today, Senator?
It's just, it's unfathomable.
You know, sometimes you think that the people that are in elected positions and have had previously held high-esteemed jobs are maybe a little smarter than the rest of us.
But more and more, you learn that they're not as smart and that that's one of the problems.
It gets even worse, though, after suggesting the solution to this problem is hybrids.
Nelson then said he stifled offshore drilling in the past by mounting a filibuster on energy legislation.
But he said that oil lobbyists now plan to attach a drilling authorization amendment to a tax bill that's not subject to filibuster.
But Nelson said, I've got an ace up my sleeve in dealing with the Interior Department and the oil companies.
He said they're absolutely hell-bent that they're going to drill off our coast.
Well, the oil industry and the Secretary of the Interior, Gail Norton, are coming back at us since we beat him the last time because I did my first filibuster.
They hatched a plan to attach a drilling amendment to a fiscal bill that cannot be filibustered, but Nelson said he will use military needs for jet training and naval firing ranges to head off such an amendment.
Thank you, Senator Nelson.
Thank you for speaking for the Democratic Party.
Exactly what I forecast yesterday is already come to pass.
We now learn that you have no interest in producing more oil.
You have no interest in solving this problem.
You have no understanding of the laws of supply and demand.
And Senator Nelson, along with Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, so long as your record of opposition to energy exploration and production, as long as that's your record and you keep embracing the extremist no-growth policies of the environmentalist left, you cannot deal with the reality before you.
And you shouldn't be in a position to deal with that reality because you are showing that you will not deal with it and you will not understand it.
To have, I'm sorry to keep emphasizing this, folks, but you know what they say.
Say it over and over and over because people are tuning in all the time and it's got to be heard one time, two times, three times it takes to sink in.
Here we have, we are in the midst of a gasoline supply crisis.
And that's what this is, a gasoline supply crisis.
There is no shortage.
There's just a supply crisis.
And what does Bill Nelson want to do?
Nothing.
He wants to freeze gas prices, which will have zero effect.
He wants to somehow punish the oil companies and he wants to make sure we don't drill for any more oil.
I hope more people like Senator Nelson come forward and make it as crystal clear as he has where the anti-growth, pro-environmentalist Democrats and leftists today stand.
You know, the reality here is supply and demand.
Just like Mother Nature, liberals think that they can change it.
They think they can change Mother Nature by doing something with global warming, with fossil fuel production.
They also think that they can change the laws of supply and demand with hybrids and freezing prices and whatever other cockamame ideas that they come up with.
Oh, let's not forget Mrs. Clinton, who wants to convene immediately the anti-gouging hearings up on Capitol Hill.
For 35 years, these people have advanced an agenda of obstructing energy exploration and production.
And that 35-year history is what has made us vulnerable to disruption.
And this storm constitutes the disruption.
And now we're vulnerable because we haven't been allowed to build a refinery.
We can't drill for any more oil.
We cannot expand our own domestic supply.
And thus we are where we are.
They can talk conservation all they want.
You can talk conservation all you want, but you still have to drive from home to work and then back.
You still have to drive from home to school and then back.
Senator Schumer, Senator Clinton, not everybody in America takes mass transit.
And they don't want to and they won't.
Thank you and welcome back.
Great to be with you, ladies and gentlemen.
Really appreciate this opportunity to deal with some of the damaging things that are being said.
There's some really, really damaging things that are being said out there by people, and they're going to only get worse in a moment as the program unfolds.
I've been spending some time poking around the Democrat websites because I have figured something out.
Some of these most extreme Looney Tune websites will advance a notion, and it isn't long before I see it being echoed in the mainstream press.
One of the most recent examples of that is this foolhardy question about National Guard troops.
We don't have enough National Guard troops because they're all in Iraq.
Well, no less than Diane Sawyer picked that up today in her interview with President Bush on Good Morning America.
And that interview, that's going to require its own little segment here to deal with.
Regardless what the president said, her questions were just simply outrageous.
The idea that all this has become just partisan, it just sickens me, folks.
I'm going to tell you what I think is, I think the news media, and I want to indict the whole news media.
But as I look at these pictures, one thing is obvious to me.
The stark reality of this is unmistakable.
Some of you may not want to admit it or face it or go as far as it takes mentally, intellectually, or emotionally to get there.
But we have no idea yet just how bad this is going to be.
We are not being told how bad this is going to be.
We're not being told because people would panic.
But you can't look at something like this and not understand, grasp what we face here.
And the idea that all of this now has become a political football that's being kicked back and forth.
And the most hideous aspect of this is about to be raised nationally.
It is percolating.
I'm going to talk about this.
I'm just getting a little heads up here as the program unfolds.
And I think I'm going to take a career risk doing it because it's going to be in great violation of the so-called political correctness.
But some of the most offensive, obscene, repugnant comments on some Democrat websites about race have been made all week about this.
And if the pattern holds, those comments will find their way into the mainstream media sometime soon.
I don't know in what form they can't take the form that they are present in on these websites, but they will provide a foundation and a basis for it.
And it is simply repugnant.
We're looking at American citizens whose lives have literally been destroyed.
And there are some on the left who only see skin color and see political opportunity or decades-old template views of the world come to their forefront when they see this.
And I'm going to address it as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears today, because I can't take it.
I just literally cannot read this stuff without blowing a gasket.
It is so uncalled for.
It is so unnecessary.
It's so irrelevant.
And you'll understand a little better what I'm talking about when I get to it.
Now, this energy business, though, is still not quite through here.
The bottom line here is we don't need to put a break on our economy right now.
And everything that I'm hearing from Democrat politicians would do just that.
Bill Nelson, freeze gas prices, no oil drilling, and make sure that there's no price gouging.
Hillary Clinton, congressional hearings on no price gouging, and Chuck Schumer, whatever the hell it is that he wants to know, the strategic reserve.
Rather than put a break on our economy and the energy industry right now, we need to press down the accelerator, folks.
We need to hit the pedal to the metal and get going on our entire energy industry.
And that means production of new resources, development and production and construction of new and greater, bigger refineries.
There's no greater time than now, and there's no greater example of the reasons why than now.
It is just, to me, it's pathetic to listen to all of these anti-growth people come up and actually start sounding warning bells that we may actually produce more oil.
That there's going to be a trick and a conspiracy to make sure we drill for more oil as though that's a crime, as though what's happening in New Orleans has no relevance to crime, as though the fact that we can't deal with this, that's not criminal.
The fact that we haven't been able to deal with this kind of thing, that's not criminal.
That we didn't make plans, that we didn't take precautions, that we didn't look forward enough.
Oh, no, no, no, that's not criminal.
What's criminal is to drill for oil and keep the engine of the world's greatest economy going.
I mean, Diane Sawyer in this interview, the left, they've all said this to show you how idiotic the whole Iraq war was about what?
To them.
It was about oil.
It was about Bush trying to go get oil.
And even at that, it was not good.
Anything involving oil to the left is criminal.
Drilling for it, going to war for it to protect the free flow of oil at market prices, that's criminal.
When are people going to get up, wake up and realize what these people actually mean to the future of this country?
Oil may as well be a poison.
The people who are involved in it are criminals, and it only harms the country and the economy and the people.
Meanwhile, the problems we face in this country today, and especially those in the Gulf Coast area, are precisely because we don't have enough energy to meet the demand that this disaster has caused.
So if we went to Iraq for oil, where is it?
Where is all this oil that Bush and Halliburton went over there to try to secure?
And if we went to Iraq for oil, why do we go to all the trouble?
Why do we just go to Kuwait and say, you know what, we're taking your oil.
You can't stop us.
You couldn't kick Saddam out.
You needed us.
What are you going to do?
We're going to take your oil.
We can say the same thing to people in Qatar.
We're there.
Your oil is ours.
Screw you.
Why don't we just do that?
Why go to war and do all of this?
The left is senseless.
The left is brain dead.
The left is so warped for what knows, who knows what reasons, I don't even care anymore.
All I know is that they are warped to the point of posing a serious threat themselves with this kind of inane thinking and posture.
Look at that.
We can't even drill in a 2,000 square acre area in the biggest state in the union that is not a wildlife refuge.
It is a tundra.
The same thing they're saying about ANWAR is what they said about the whole Alaska pipeline.
No damage from the Alaska pipeline, particularly to wildlife, only improvement in the circumstances for wildlife.
We can't even drill in a 2,000-acre area in the biggest state in the Union.
They say and war won't make a difference.
Yet they demand the release of far less oil from the strategic reserve.
That's their big idea.
And war won't make a difference, but let's tap the strategic reserve.
Folks, it's insane.
It's absurd.
If an and war was first proposed in 1995 and if it had passed in 1995, we would already have finished the construction and we would have oil flowing.
It was 10 years ago and we'd have a million barrels a day.
You don't think those million barrels a day would pick up a little slack for what's happening today?
Wouldn't make a difference?
What do you mean?
Course, it would make a difference when we have no margin for error.
As this storm has illustrated, we have no margin for error.
A thousand million barrels, that's not going to make any difference.
We can't drill up there.
No, let's go tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Can't listen to these people.
We cannot rely on them.
This country will not be what this country has been if we rely on these people.
And it is becoming patently obvious to any casual observer even today.
And for that, I will thank the people on the left.
And for that, I hope you keep talking.
And I hope for every Senator Bill Nelson, there is another one that comes forth to echo him and to pat him on the back and say, way to talk, Senator.
And I hope the next one's Hillary Clinton.
And I hope she's followed by Chuck Schumer.
And then I hope Teddy Kennedy gets in on this.
Quick time out.
We'll be back.
Get some of your phone calls after this.
Stay with us.
All right.
Just check the email.
By the way, welcome back to the Russian Limbaugh program here on the EIB network.
I just checked the email, and I've got some people arguing with me about the freezing gas prices.
Rush, we need those prices frozen.
It's gotten way too expensive.
You're wrong about this.
Freezing gas prices would help.
I'm glad you wrote me, and I appreciate the opportunity here to explain something to you.
And I want you to listen very carefully.
Got to put this in context.
Forget the laws of economics, which are always going to rule here.
They'll rule the day.
The laws of economics will.
And that will eventually be where I go here.
But let's first talk about the context.
What do we have here?
We have $6 gasoline in Atlanta, for example.
We've got rumors all over the Southeast and East that they're running out of gas and there isn't going to be any gas.
What is this causing?
This is causing panic.
It's causing people, there were 40 and 50 car lines at gas stations in Atlanta during the afternoon rush hour yesterday.
And it's going to be happening all over the place.
And there are people going to be lining up to get gas because they think there isn't going to be any.
Okay, in the midst of all that, here comes some brilliant idea to freeze gas prices.
Now, two questions.
In the context of the existing panic, what is the freeze of gas prices going to do?
It's going to cause even more people to head to your local gas station.
It's going to lengthen the lines and it's going to cause the gas supply that's already there to evaporate even faster.
If you think freezing gas prices is a great idea, Senator Nelson's idea, if you think that's a great idea, if you want to run out of gas twice as fast and sooner than you ever hoped or thought you would, then freeze the price today.
And you'll find out by Sunday you won't be able to get any.
You freeze the price and you, you, I mean, it has a market impact, folks, supply and demand.
If the price is allowed to fluctuate according to the laws of supply and demand, they always work if just if meddling hands are kept out of the way.
If you just keep your hands off of it and you let the price go as it does, there will be an impact and there will be a reaction and it will cause less lines.
It will cause less panic in the long run than freezing the price because freezing the price would just compound the problem that exists today because the problem is not price.
The immediate problem is not price.
The immediate problem is supply.
And when you interrupt supply, that means you have less of it.
The law says the price is going to go up and that's exactly what's happening.
Then you've got our friendly liberal Democrats rushing in, typically and predictably blaming big oil and gasoline station owners for gouging.
And there may be some of that.
That doesn't explain the price rise.
And it's not going to be any solution.
You can stop the gouging today.
Not going to get.
You're not going to do anything to affect this supply.
Not one thing, folks.
Supply has nothing to do with what's going on, the big oil companies or the uh or the gas station uh dealers not in the big scheme of things.
In fact, Steve Forbes uh, let me find this.
I put this uh in this stack.
Where did I put this real close here to the top?
I yeah, here we go.
This is from the Daily Telegraph, Uk Daily Daily Daily Telegraph.
Pardon me, trying to speak too fast here.
Steve Forbes, the billionaire business publisher, predicted that the oil bubble will burst inside a year and the price will plunge as the impact of hurricane Katrina sent the price of oil soaring to new record levels.
He spoke as Katrina shut down almost all the flow from the Gulf Of Mexico, which provides over a quarter of the U.s oil.
He said, i'll make a bold prediction, in 12 months you're going to see oil down to 35 to 40 dollars a barrel.
It's a huge bubble.
I don't know what's going to pop it, but eventually it will pop.
You cannot go against supply and demand.
You cannot go against the fundamentals forever.
And he's talking about the bidding up of the price of oil on the futures market, which has nothing to do with supply and demand.
You, there is some tremendous panic bidding going on at the at the Nymex, which is the, the futures market, and it's bidding this stuff up well beyond 70 bucks.
But it's, it's going to come down.
It and and people are not going to believe it when it happens they're going to be, they're going to be stunned.
Well, why is big oil giving away all these profits?
But it is going to come down and I frankly think that large, one of the large factors will be this, this this uh, this interruption, because at some point the interruption is going to be over and the supplies are going to triple trickle back to eventually normal and that will cause the price to come down.
This, the laws of supply and demand work every time they're tried, if you just keep your hands off of them, and that's, that's the danger posed by the left.
They, they think that they can change those laws of supply and demand, just like they think they can change the laws of mother nature.
Henry in Indianapolis hi, welcome to the program, sir.
Hey Rush uh, little league football coach Dittos, thank you, I am uh calling because I I thought I was beyond being surprised about the liberal left media and um, this morning on CNN, Miles O'brien just would not stop browbeating Haley Barber, first it's Haley's fault that it's the hurricane, I understand.
But then he says how come the government, the federal government's not doing enough?
And Barber said, well, feminine here.
He said yeah, but the military and uh, the National Guard, let it, let me I, I have, I have the audio sound bites to this and it's a i'm, i'm glad you called.
I don't have much time here, so let's really get to the Miles O'brian talking to the Mississippi governor, Haley Barber um, and and the basic question, the first bite, uh governor, do you have the sense that the federal government's dropped the ball here?
I really don't and I think it's very unfair for the federal government for you to say, we knew this was a great, powerful storm.
This is a category one hurricane.
When it hit Florida governor, it was.
It was the federal government, the federal government storm, category five storm.
When it was a category one, it was a category one storm.
When it hit Florida, it was a category five storm a few Hours before it came ashore.
The federal government has been tremendous.
Now, you see what's going on here.
Miles O'Brien is trying to get Haley to indict Bush, indict the federal government.
The federal government didn't do enough.
Bush didn't do enough.
That's the whole point of the mainstream media today.
And he continues, Governor Barber, surely there was enough knowledge in advance of this.
A matter of days, not hours before it ever struck landfall.
If you want to let me tell you what I think, I will.
Okay, go ahead.
Stop the tape, stop the tape.
I'm going to tell you what he said here since that's muddy.
Barber said, Now, Miles, this is an interview.
Is this an interview or an argument?
I don't care.
But if you want to let me tell you what I think, I will, what I think.
And O'Brien says, okay, go ahead.
And Barber says, this is the storm strengthened in the Gulf.
We begged people to leave.
Thousands of people left.
Thousands of people left New Orleans.
The federal government came in here from the first minute, in fact, in advance.
They've been tremendously helpful.
Whereas the Coast Guard, the Corps of Engineers, FEMA.
Now, I don't think it's at all fair, O'Brien.
But, and I'm not going to agree to that because I don't believe it's true.
This indictment, and it's all over the place now.
Why didn't Bush, Scott McClellan just got it in the White House press briefing?
Why is Bush letting these people die?
Why isn't Bush rescuing these people down there in New Orleans?
It's getting ugly.
I told you it was going to be.
And we've got to take a break.
Back in just a second.
Say for the record, Mrs. Clinton has twice voted no on drilling and end war.
Once on national security grounds.
First hours in the can.
It won't be long, and we will be back and continue.
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