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Sept. 2, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:24
September 2, 2005, Friday, Hour #3
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Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Thank you.
And uh welcome back at 1800 282 2882 on Open Line Friday.
Now, putting aside the uh minute by minute breaking news of the aftermath of Katrina, let's talk now about next week.
Because next week, following Labor Day, uh Congress will be back in session.
The uh Judge Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court will be uh back on the front pages.
The uh repeal of the estate tax, which is part of uh George Bush's uh uh tax program will also be front and center, and some of the more political issues will be crowding back into the consciousness of the country.
Uh it looks like this situation with Katrina, of course, will be on the front pages for many, many weeks to come.
The uh Army Corps of Engineers asked today about how long it will take to pump out the water standing all over mostly uh most of all over New Orleans.
Uh couldn't even tell you.
Uh they don't know what state the pumps are in.
They don't know when they're going to get them back up and running, and they don't know when these levies are going to be repaired in the first place.
So it's uh all a wild guess at this point.
And meanwhile, of course, more than a million people have been displaced.
They are evacuees, they are basically there with a clothes on their back and uh maxed out credit cards in most cases, and uh a lot of working folks uh hurting today in this area of the country as they disperse to try to find relief in neighboring states and communities.
In the meantime, though, the political world does go on, and again, I'm I'm uh grateful to Kellyanne Conway for holding over, president and CEO of the polling company.
Uh it says here privately held women woman owned corporation.
And by the way, Kelly Ann has a book coming out, and I'm going to be interested to read this with uh Polster Celinda Lake, their book entitled What Women Really Want.
And the subhead is interesting how American women are quietly erasing political, racial, class, and religious lines to change the way we live.
Well, Kellyanne, I hope it's for the better.
It's much for the better, and uh it's it really is meant to s show that most decisions people make are cultural, not political.
And the main question many women ask themselves is not the difference between right versus left, but right versus wrong.
And I gotta tell you, those who believe in right are winning.
Well, it's a good thing to hear.
Now let's talk a little bit about the specifics.
What are you hearing?
What are the numbers?
Where are we on the Judge Roberts nomination?
That's a very interesting question, Roger, because as hard as people have tried to make him a wholly owned subsidiary of the Christian right or the gun lobby and all of that.
Americans, a know an awful lot about him for someone who's had a fairly anonymous existence, but for the last two months, and B like him.
They uh in poll after poll, when you ask about him personally, a majority of Americans say that they are mostly positive to him.
Very few people are saying that they're very negative.
I think seven percent in a recent poll said very negative.
Uh what's amazing is that only ten percent of those said they have no opinion on him.
I mean, usually you'll have a very high number of people saying, I just don't have a basis to judge.
I really haven't formed an opinion about that individual when you talk about almost anyone who's new to public life, so clearly folks are paying attention to the Supreme Court nomination battle.
But um, those who would cast him as extreme and uh negative and unacceptable really are not doing a compelling enough job, and I think that's because they cry wolf every day about everything.
Uh the other thing is that I thought the excellent question that was asked was do you believe that Bush's choice of John Roberts as a nominee is excellent, good, fair or poor?
And even with Bush's name in the mix, and of course the the when the media ask Bush's name, they don't say President Bush.
They try to dethrone him and just call him Bush.
So would you rate Bush's choice of John Roberts as a nominee?
Excellent, good fair report, excellent twenty-five, good twenty-six.
That's a majority only fair twenty poor fourteen.
So uh John Roberts seems to have even a greater approval rating right now than the president himself.
I think it bodes well, and here's the real thing.
If Chuck Schumer and Pat Legee and these Democrats in the Senate want truly, truly are the vanguards of the public and want to listen to the American people, they would take note that when asked, uh, would you, the public like to see the Senate vote in favor of Robert serving on the Supreme Court or not?
Yes, vote in favor of 51, no, not 28.
No opinion 21.
This is uh 51 to 28.
Survey says vote the guy into the United States Supreme Court.
Very interesting.
Now, the the uh estate tax is coming back up, and uh and again for a lot of people, this is uh one of the key pieces of uh the Bush tax legacy.
Can he repeal for all time the estate tax or not?
How does that look?
The estate tax is very unpopular when people understand what it really is, and how it is not a tax that just soaks the rich one more time after the grim reaper comes to meet them when they understand people are losing the family farms, when they understand that it's becoming increasingly difficult for middle class folks to uh leave a legacy uh to their children uh that would pass to their estate in a regular courses.
And and the thing is people find it very offensive that you're taxed your entire life when you turn on your water, when you get into your car, when you turn on the electricity, when you go to work, when you eat, you're taxed constantly for everything from cradle to grave, from morning to night.
That fact that you'd be taxed one more time posthumously is just over the top and un-American.
Um I think it's gonna be a close vote.
I know Republicans are lobbying other Republicans to make sure they vote the right way in the Senate.
But um, but I've got to I've got to believe that tax, if you look at all the numbers, tax is still a four-letter word, folks.
And uh many people out there are starting to to get the joke on spending as well.
So I think the combination of three things going on right now, people, middle class people feel overtaxed, so that includes the estate tax.
Uh number two, they're starting to understand that spending in Washington is out of control, and that includes with the Republican Congress.
That that is the low-grade fever that could spike up and hurt us as a majority.
And number three, the number one best seller book right now is the Fair Tax by Neil Bortz and John Linder.
What does that mean?
It means that average Americans are going to these book sellers and buying a book called the Fair Tax.
Um, you know, it's not a boring book to people.
It's not some policy wonkish kind of book.
It's a very serious treatment of one potential solution that apparently many Americans are interested enough to buy the book.
So I think the senators should do the right thing and vote to uh for permanent repeal.
All right, Kellyanne Conway, we're gonna keep in touch with you.
I appreciate the information.
Thanks for being with us.
All the best.
All right.
Kellyanne Conway.
Boy, she is uh bright and got a lot of good information.
She looks at all the other polls, too, which I like.
And uh there's a little preview of what's coming up next week uh on the national scene as well.
Now, fires uh continue to burn in New Orleans.
One of them looks like it was out, looked like they did get a pump down there, and they did get some water on it.
Uh another uh couple of mid rises are uh are burning, and this is of course a big problem.
The earthquake, uh what it didn't destroy in San Francisco in nineteen oh six, the fire that followed destroyed the rest of the city because uh the uh water lines were of course broken, water pressure was non-existent, and uh and that was the uh f the final destruction of San Francisco.
We have not seen uh that uh kind of destruction in American cities since then.
Uh suppose uh that you can look back at the uh great fire of uh Chicago in the nineteenth century, Galveston, of course, hit by a hurricane a hundred years ago and uh the San Francisco earthquake.
We haven't seen anything since then anywhere near of that proportion, although we're seeing something like it right now.
And by the way, I wanted to get back to the theme of the first hour of the program in which I was talking about the story.
I think the story today in the United States is not what the media, and I'm sorry, all the media is covering.
They're covering government.
What is government doing?
What is government at the local level, the state level, the federal level, Bush, the politics, the National Guard, all of that.
Who's evacuating us?
Who's gonna give us food?
Who's gonna give us I love I loved it when that uh woman with her kid got the MREs, meals ready to eat that we feed our troops.
She took one bite of this thing.
She hadn't eaten in three days, threw it away.
So I I don't need stuff like this.
Um anyway.
The the uh the the media is so linked to government, to the idea that all of our solutions come from government, all of our disappointments come from government, all our frustrations, all of our all of our waking thoughts should be about government.
I'm uh not in that position.
Uh I think government relatively should have and uh little to do with what goes on in everybody's daily life.
You should be your life.
And what we do for each other is our collective life.
What we do for these people who are hurting, for the millions who are hurting as a result of the dislocations in the aftermath of this uh of this awful uh hurricane.
Uh that should be our problem.
Our problem as individuals.
We express our support, our money, our contributions through the local agencies we trust, through the national agencies we trust, whether that is a uh a faith uh organization, whether it's uh a Red Cross, whether it's some other kind of organization that you trust, you give your money, your support.
Uh you take people into your home.
We've had people in San Diego calling me on my local show.
Uh my friends, my relatives, they're out here uh from New Orleans.
We just opened up the uh uh gee, I uh five people are in my uh my guest bedroom, said this guy who called me the other day.
So we're opening our hearts, we're opening our homes.
We are the story.
I know the media will, and you know what?
Maybe it's good.
Maybe it's okay.
Maybe I shouldn't even be saying this.
Because as soon as the media figures out that the genius of America is not the government of America, it's the people of America.
Maybe we'll be in trouble.
Maybe they'll be reporting all the nasty bad news that they can dredge up about us individually.
I don't know.
But all I can say today is I look at these screens, and I've got six of them sitting in front of me with all these cable news networks, and I say, you guys have all missed the point.
The United States of America is a great nation, not because its government is fumbling around trying to figure out how to do the immediate relief, but because beyond the city limits, a million people have been housed and fed and clothed by the generosity of millions of other people.
That story is barely covered.
And of course, we want to thank the places like uh Houston and the city government, the state government of Texas and other places, Arkansas and uh and other places that are doing their parts as well.
Memphis is taking in a lot of people.
The uh Baton Rouge uh was a 400,000 uh people uh two weeks ago, now it's six hundred and fifty thousand.
They're gonna have to deal with that.
In fact, there's a real estate boom going on in uh Baton Rouge, I'm told, because of all of that.
So uh we're gonna again urge you and the and the people of America to make the kind of quiet news that we all know we make.
We pull together when these things happen, we pull together, we uh help our fellow Americans.
It isn't any other issue, it isn't a political issue, it isn't a racial issue, it isn't any of those kinds of issues that the media likes to just wallow around in.
It's a personal issue.
It's other Americans are hurting, we have the capability of helping, we're gonna help.
I'm Roger Hedgecock filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
Let's take a short break back with your calls on open line Friday after this.
Shake rattle and roll, Zydeco style, celebrating the music of New Orleans.
I'm Roger Hedgecock filling in for Rush Limbaugh, 1800-282-2882.
Generosity coming from all over here, uh, professional and collegiate sports teams mounting financial relief campaigns.
New York Yankees National Football League uh announcing their donations coming up.
The real estate industry, uh Fannie Mae, the National Association of Realtors, uh individual realtor organizations are talking about uh their contributions today and many of the updates I'm reading.
The uh as of yesterday afternoon, the American Red Cross had uh something like 72 million dollars in from individual donations.
This is uh this is the heartbeat of America.
This is the story today, as far as I am concerned.
It isn't the failures of government.
Didn't we as conservatives expect that?
If you expected an efficient and effective government response, then you haven't been listening to this program.
Here's David in Panama City, Florida.
David, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Roger.
Hi, David.
Good.
Uh there are some great stories going on in Panama City, uh, Florida.
Uh a lot of people evacuated from Louisiana and Mississippi, and we drove 200 miles east of that storm, and and this community has taken us in, and uh it has been unbelievable.
Uh there are uh uh churches uh giving out free dinners, there are people opening up their homes.
Uh it's been uh uh just uh wonderful the way they've accepted us.
And uh uh I'm not hearing any of that on the news, but there's been some great stories here in Panama City.
Well, absolutely, uh uh uh David.
I uh this is the story I'm telling you isn't being told.
Now, where did you evacuate from?
Uh I live in Long Beach, Mississippi, uh, which is right uh west of Duff Port in Biloxi, right on the beach.
It's uh right in the middle of that destruction.
It's uh uh It's not much left.
Yeah, what happened to your house?
Well, I made it back in a few days later, uh, just to check on my property.
Now my house is standing, uh, my roof is heavily damaged.
Uh uh it's a severely damaged house, but it's probably repairable.
I have a lot of family though that lives closer to the beach and they are all wiped out.
Uh I would say everything from uh from the beach to three or four blocks inland is all gone from what I can see.
And then you evacuated out to Panama City, is that what happened?
Yes, uh last minute my wife, thank goodness uh she talked me into leaving because uh I usually don't this is the first storm I've ever evacuated from.
I I've never had one that's done anything close to this.
I'm usually okay uh to just sit it out, ride it out.
Uh but my wife taught me into leave and we left last minute.
Uh ten hours on the road to get that two hundred miles.
We were stuck in traffic, we didn't get here till uh Sunday night, the storm was starting to hit the edges of it.
We were driving through that, but it was just the edges of it.
And we found a place that took us in in the middle of the night, and they've just been great ever since.
Uh uh it's some really good stories coming out of here.
That's great, David.
Well, thanks very much for the call and thanks for the uh story because it is a story that's not being told.
The generosity of these surrounding communities and various uh directions away from the Gulf Coast that have been taking people in and uh and the work of the churches and community groups and local city governments and state governments in doing that has just been remarkable.
David, I appreciate the call.
Uh thanks.
Here's Kevin, uh a hurricane survivor, it says.
Uh hi, Kevin.
Hey Roger, how are you doing?
Good.
Where are you?
I'm uh actually uh south of Little Rock, Arkansas at the moment.
Okay, and and did you evacuate?
Yeah, we did.
So I lived uh north of Lake Poncha train uh in in Mandeville and uh you know, I I just gotta really disagree with you on Ray Negan.
Oh, okay, go ahead.
So I don't know if you can hear can you hear me all right?
Yeah, go ahead.
I'm listening.
Okay, sorry.
So, you know, the thing with Nagan, he had a choice to make.
It was re either either either rescue people or control the looting, right?
And the problem is with limited local police, because he doesn't run the National Guard either, right?
With local police, he had to assign those folks to help go pull people out of homes that were being flooded.
And the reason there was flooding is because the levees broke.
Right.
And they can ask, you know, he asked the state to step in and try to, you know, get helicopters and whoever else uh you know owns helicopters or boats, what have you to come plug the levees.
As a local city, and maybe he should have thought of I need fifty helicopters that can carry two thousand pound barriers at a moment's notice and drop them in, but they didn't.
And so what they did is they asked, you know, Negan on on Monday, as soon as they heard the levees broke, he said that's the number one thing you gotta do.
Once the levees broke and nobody has plugged it, I think until maybe last night, he had to focus on rescuing people.
And it was either pull people out of houses so they don't continue to drown, or you know, plug the d plug the levees.
And maybe he should have said, Well, some people are gonna die and I need to plug the levees first and then go rescue people, but he was hoping I think the state stepped in, you know, at the at the uh state level with national troops or whatever from the governor.
But uh he prioritized on saving people and there just isn't enough resources at a city level to plug a huge break in the levee as well as rescue folks.
And I never his frustration is people are dying in front of him.
And that's the case.
Kevin, I never expected that the city mayor would be able to plug the levee break.
That was that's a core of engineers uh federal state problem.
What I did expect, he's got he said he had this morning he said he had fifteen hundred police officers.
We have um, you know, in San Diego with a population three times that of New Orleans or two and a half times anyway.
We have uh about eighteen hundred and uh we're you know it it's um I understand what he's trying to do dealing with uh resources, but he did have fifteen hundred people and he was in a rescue mode, but as soon as they got shot at, as soon as the thugs took over, as he put it, as as soon as the as the gang started uh uh breaching the uh Walmart gun department and walking away with guns, uh those officers started turning in their badges and walking away and becoming part of the evacuees.
And then some of 'em were uh pushing the shopping carts around Walmart, picking up the shoes on the way out and all the other stuff that we saw.
So I I'm sorry, I just think that the local government broke down and shouldn't have.
And and I just don't think that he's in any position to be blaming this all on Bush because Bush didn't react fast enough to save him when his own local city uh infrastructure of safety and support, the the personnel that this local citizenry rely on, the firefighters, the emergency medical technicians, the the uh cops, uh those sorts of folks uh seem to be nowhere in sight when it really hit the fan.
And I think that's something that needs to be talked about first before the mayor can start talking about somebody else's problems.
And we're back at the EIB network, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I'm Roger Hedgecock, In for Rush today.
He'll be back next week, of course.
This is the Creole Stomp.
We're doing a little New Orleans music today on open line Friday at 1 800 28282.
So uh yeah, the front line of defense in uh New Orleans is the local government.
Uh the bigger questions, of course, still exist, and we will be asking them.
Uh those of us who don't expect uh government to be effective and efficient, uh, those of us who know that government wastes money like um like you breathe.
Um what happened to the eight point six billion dollars in federal money handed out to the states since September 11 for emergency preparedness?
Where were the satellite communication systems that were promised?
The satellite phones when the uh cr the um cell phone network went down, which is gonna happen.
Um heck, these cell phones don't work that well in peacetime.
I mean, you c you go around a building and it cuts off my call.
I know maybe I have the cheap one, but I'll tell you, uh they don't work that well to start with.
Uh we get into a crisis situation, everybody's going, hey, my cell phone doesn't work.
Duh.
The cell phone towers underwater, pal.
Here's Nidah in uh Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Hope I pronounced your name correctly.
Go ahead.
Hi.
Uh Roger, thanks for taking my call.
Um first of all, kudos to George Bush for having dealt with so many major traumatic disastrous disasters in our country.
It was such common um composure.
I I gotta hand it to him.
Um the point I'm trying to make is our country or society is made up of reaction and not prevention.
I think that so many things that have happened in this country could have been prevented.
Uh 9-11, we knew for years that this could happen.
We ignored it, it happened.
Um this hurricane, we had plenty of time to prepare for that.
Um it started out as a category five, um, slowly downgraded to a category three.
Well, they were talking about the levees that they knew that they wouldn't be able to handle those um that magnitude of a hurricane.
Um and even downgraded to a three, we already knew that this would could be a very, very bad and serious situation.
Um now they're bringing in the buses into New Orleans and shipping people out.
What they could have done, and yes, this is in hindsight, but they could have brought in those buses while there was a mandatory, whatever that means, evacuation in New Orleans and all those other states that ship them out, it would be less costly financially, it would be less costly life-wise.
Um, you know, it's just really, really sad to see that this actually happened.
Well, but prevented all of it.
Yeah, I understand.
And you and I and a common sense people would have the same thought.
Uh, but uh can we in in your experience, can we expect the government to be proactive and to act with a sense of understanding this uh is gonna take planning ahead.
This is gonna take common sense application of uh six thousand buses uh two days ago, not five weeks from now.
Can we really I see I don't expect that?
Well, I don't expect six thousand buses, but I would have expected some sort of effort to help those people who are not able.
I mean, I I'm happy that the people that were able to get out that got out.
I was really worried when I saw the gridlocks and uh people just stop and go on the highways trying to get out.
I was worried that they're not gonna make it out on time.
I was even more worried about those who didn't even have the means to get out.
And we should have used uh the opposing traffic lanes to to get buses in and at least make some sort of an effort.
Not a lot of people.
No question about it.
But again, whether it's local, state, or federal government, do you really think they have that mindset?
Do you really think they operate that way?
I don't.
I know.
I'm sorry to say that.
I don't either, but it would be nice if for a change that we have to do.
Sure.
The private sector acts that way.
You know, if you have a business, a service, you're constantly asking yourself, what's going to be the demand next week and next month and next year?
What can I do to to get up on my uh on my uh competitors?
What can I do better in order that that guy's going to come into my shop to buy what I have rather than going into the guy down the street?
What in other words, that's the mindset of someone in a competitive private sector business.
The mindset of a bureaucrat is how can I protect my ample backside today from criticism?
How can I insulate myself from politicians asking me questions?
How can I squirrel away money so that I'll have money for things that I want to do and the politicians don't want me to do?
How can I uh uh do the least amount of work and get the most amount of uh of support from the local union uh who's constantly looking out for more days off and better pension benefits and uh less work.
See that that's the way that's the great divide for me.
You know, I agree with you, and right.
Um it's sad to say.
I you know, I just my question is just will we learn from this?
Are we gonna try to do something in the future?
Because we will have more disasters.
Will we be prepared next time?
Because this is this is just too much.
I'm almost embarrassed to even watch the news and um see what's going on down there.
Yeah, me too.
Nidha, thanks.
Uh I appreciate the call.
You're absolutely right.
Did we learn from Pearl Harbor?
Uh I don't know, nine eleven happened.
Did we learn from Galveston, which was overcome by a hurricane and wiped out six thousand plus people dead.
By the way, uh the Republican uh senator from Louisiana saying it may be ten thousand, I don't know how he knows, in uh New Orleans.
Here's uh Amy in San Antonio.
Hi there, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi, Roger.
Thanks for having me today.
Um I just wanted to say thank you for all that you have done.
Um I work with Operation Homefront, and I'm an active participant in Operation Home Front, and we wanted to thank you for being involved in that and setting up Operation Homefront.
Um, you know, we have a lot of families who are helping that are part of this hurricane relief effort.
Um Guard members reservists that have been recalled to to do work in the area that we're helping their families.
Um we also lost a couple of military installations in that.
So we've got military families that have been relocated.
Um we've got you know people waiting to take them in.
We've have people in the Astrodome pulling out military families, um checking ID, trying to find them placement.
Um here in San Antonio where I am, we're working with some of the um patients that came in from the different military hospitals that were evacuated to try to get items for their babies that they're in the in the hospital having.
Um so I mean we're we're glad to have Operation Home Front, and we just wanted to thank you for all that you've done and starting Operation Home Front, and just to let people know that you know, we have hurricane relief um efforts on our site and um at Operation Homefront.net.
If anybody is interested in helping the military families that are affected by this as well.
Amy, thanks very much.
Thanks for your efforts.
Uh what she's talking about, folks, is uh sh since shortly after nine eleven uh in our local efforts here and it spread through the country through other talk shows and other means.
Uh we have uh home we've taken this home front idea of helping military families with whatever it is they need uh as their loved ones are deployed in this war and they leave behind families of various sizes and uh immediately after deployment, of course the transmission goes out and uh and uh the uh kids need uh diapers and there's no furniture and uh something falls down and somebody you know.
So we're we're we stand behind our military families in this area.
We call it Homefront San Diego, and uh we hope everyone throughout the country would do the same for our military families and just simply be there.
We have a hotline number of the military families call in and uh we have volunteers and uh no overhead and we uh simply get the repairs and the help and whatever it is that the family needs out to them.
Uh and that's what uh Amy's doing down there, and I'm I'm glad she's doing it.
All right, here's Lawrence in is it Callio, Virginia?
Hi, Lawrence.
That's right, Callio.
Calio, I never heard of it.
Where is it?
Well, it's in the northern neck of Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay.
Well, that's uh that's a good neck.
It is.
All right, Lawrence, go ahead.
You're on the rush show.
Thanks for taking my call.
I'd like your comments on the woman I saw on television in the Super Bowl who got food but it was cold and not uh hot food.
Was this the MR MRE Yeah, this was this the MRE one where she got the meals ready to eat uh didn't like uh she didn't really explain that, but she complained that it was not hot.
Yeah.
And that disgusted me because she should have been pleased to get any food or water with all of the problems that were going on.
Now let me threat uh get out on thin ice here, Lawrence, because this struck me as well.
In fact, I mentioned it earlier in the program that this this was on uh TV that I saw too.
That was a woman who uh who said uh she hadn't eaten in a couple of days.
Uh if I hadn't eaten a couple days, I wouldn't be worried about what the temperature was of this food or the quality of it.
If it wasn't cuisine, I'd still be eating it.
But uh it was an MRE.
It was what we feed the troops in the military, that's right.
Yeah, in battle.
I mean, this is what they eat.
And here's this woman turning up her nose at it.
Uh wasn't hot, it wasn't very tasty, and I understand they have good food down in New Orleans, they're used to that.
But I understand also something else.
There is in New Orleans and throughout our society, a group of people who believe they're entitled, who believe no matter what they're given, it's not good enough, who believe that they should be given even better because they're disadvantaged, they're poor, they're whatever.
Uh this welfare mentality that we've been battling in this country is something we've got to continue.
Welfare reform didn't get rid of this mentality.
This mentality of whining, no matter what is given to you, that it isn't enough.
That's what that example.
That was a great example of it.
Exactly right.
That's right.
Lawrence, thanks for the call.
I appreciate it.
1-800-282-2882.
Now, many people have also contacted me saying, Okay, Roger, what about those other countries we've been helping for a hundred years?
Are they rushing to our help now that we need help?
Well, some of them are.
I'm going to talk about that when we come back.
I'm Roger Hedgecock, filling in for Rush Limbaugh, taking your calls on Open Line Friday after this.
The happy Zydeco music of New Orleans, Cajun country.
you All of that devastated today.
People of this great nation and throughout the world extending sympathy and aid.
Well, almost all of them.
The uh country actually has received, uh, according to the State Department, Sean McCormick spokesman, saying that about a dozen countries have made offers of assistance, uh, government assistance.
Individuals from all over the world donating to the worldwide uh Red Cross in the name of those who have been displaced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and uh individual uh countries, even Honduras and Jamaica, which know about hurricane damage and have been recipients of U.S. aid have offered to help the residents of the Gulf Coast.
We discussed uh Venezuela's government earlier on, Hugo Chavez criticizing Bush for not doing more, and then offering one million dollars to the um people who have been displaced.
And soon after asking the uh Bush administration to uh release part of the petroleum reserve to the uh sitco uh petroleum company, sitco is sit go, is it C I T G O, uh, is the uh company owned by CITGO Petroleum Corporation is owned by the uh the country of Venezuela, and therefore the profits, the price gouging, if you will, at the pump by Sitco goes directly back to Hugo Chavez.
You may want to think about that when you choose your uh service station.
In any event, a lot of uh Eastern Europeans uh very uh unhappy about what's happened in New Orleans because they had big flooding in Romania and places like that in Central Europe here just a couple of weeks ago.
Uh the French have not forgotten this is a French uh city.
Uh Shirac's letter uh started Dear George.
I don't think he sent a Dear George letter recently to uh George Bush uh offering his assistance.
And of course, as you might expect if you read the left wing blogs, the Saudi King has said he will start pumping some more oil and uh helping with the supply problem if that uh helps.
And of course, we know there's a very tight close association there between Bush and the Saudis.
They're just one and the same.
Uh and they and they love to kill blacks and uh whatever else we can now get from the left-wing blogs.
Uh I should stop reading that stuff.
It drives me nuts.
Here's Jim in Tallahassee, Florida.
Jim, welcome to uh the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hello, Roger.
How are you?
Hi, good, and you.
Doing fine.
I just was driving back to the office and heard some of the comments and been reading on the web today, and I really got incensed by the fact that people are basically bitching and complaining at at George Bush and the federal government for for inactivity when you had the mayor of New Orleans in Biloxi and the governor of Louisiana who knew about this storm well beforehand and could have taken steps to have mandatory evacuation as a as a
way of you know possibly preventing loss of life.
Uh I live in Florida.
I I was lived in Clearwater last year when we had all the hurricanes, and they had police driving through my apartment complex saying that you are at a risk of flooding with this storm coming, and you get out.
And that's that's the end of it.
So people are gassing up their cars, and you see cars lined along I 75 in long stretches.
But we got out because we cared about ourselves and we cared about our families, and and it was our personal responsibility to deal with that.
It's not the government.
We're given a warning.
We need to get out.
And if God you know bless you and it doesn't happen, then you go back home and you count your blessings for it.
But to blame George Bush uh for for the responsiveness of this, I think the eyes need to be squarely on the mayors and and the governors of those states that could have taken some some preemptive kind of measures before this ever happened.
And and as you as you're pointing out though, too, uh Jim, the eyes should be on the individuals who decided to stay, didn't they accept a risk?
The other point of that though is the other the other point of that though is that there are uh a number of people in New Orleans who don't have cars, didn't have access to getting out uh in a timely fashion.
They simply uh were poor enough to simply stay put.
It was also the 29th of the month, and I don't know, their paycheck or their welfare check was coming in at the end of the month, and they were going to sit there to get that.
They were living month to month on these paychecks.
They don't have a lot of money to get on a greyhound bus or whatever else is available.
There's going to be a certain portion of that population in uh New Orleans that's not going to be able to leave.
But if you know that's going to happen, and you are the governor of that state or you're the mayor of that city, and you know you live 69 feet below sea level, that if something like that is coming, then you need to plan for that, and you know you've got a certain amount of the indigent population that can't afford to get out.
You make those services available ahead of time.
I mean, for God's sakes, you've got school buses and you've got, you know, contact Greyhound or whatever and say, we're in the midst of having a storm come our way.
And this is what we need to do to protect our city.
That's their that's their responsibility.
I think that's absolutely right, and that's exactly the way I would have looked at it uh as a mayor that uh your school district is going to get wiped out anyway.
In fact, the school district there in uh Orleans parish is uh is shut.
Uh the kids are dispersed uh all over the all over the land and are going to school wherever they have wound up.
And the school teachers are being uh told there go get a job somewhere else.
We're closing the door.
So those school buses are sitting there and they never have been used.
Uh in fact, a young man commandeered one of them uh yesterday, according to news reports, drove it over to the convention center to pick people up and drive them to to Houston.
So that's the kind of thing that should have been done, I agree with you, by some kind of local authority looking into this and saying, okay, here's what we expect.
Here's what's happening.
Certain amount of our people don't have cars, don't have a lot of money.
Let's go pick them up.
Let's let them know through the radio, through the television.
Here's our rendezvous point.
And then if you don't get on these buses, we don't want to hear any whining because this thing is a hurricane five, and you're below sea level.
We're out of here.
None of that happened.
Of course, hindsight, 2020 hindsight.
Nonetheless, this is a pretty predictable thing.
The first time it's happened, isn't the first time and did they had days and days of warning.
And yet, what did local government do in this respect?
I haven't heard anything.
I'm Roger Hedgecock, in for rush back after you.
From Shreveport.
So we're going to stick that into the uh heritage of music we've been celebrating all day.
I'm Roger Hedgecock filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
Just a couple of words here now.
It's Labor Day, where the uh traditional thing is to travel all around and see everybody.
I'm uh I'm gonna open up the um Barbie and uh flip the burgers and have the people over because uh traveling in terms of gasoline, probably not a good idea this weekend.
Let's save it.
Let's lower the price, let's reduce the demand.
Let's uh put our hearts uh and minds to the people who've been displaced in this uh our fellow Americans who've been displaced uh as a result of Hurricane Katrina, contribute to money, do what needs to be done, take some people into your house if you're in that area.
Uh make sure that they uh find out where their relatives are.
Uh many of them are hurting bad now because they get they don't even know what happened to their families.
Let's say uh hats off and uh and uh a job well done to those doctors and nurses in those hospitals in New Orleans who held out for these last three or four days with uh all those patients.
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