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Sept. 27, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:36
September 27, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Say, folks, I have a uh I have a question here.
I just want you to ponder.
Which company does more for the people of this country?
Halliburton or the New York Times Company.
Which company does more for the people of this country?
Halliburton or the New York Times Company.
Greetings and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have America's Anchorman.
Doing play by play of the news.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, and the email address is Rush at EIBNet.com.
By the way, we are ditto camming today.
We've been ditto camming the whole program since the top.
It'll be on for the remaining uh two hours.
I will not be here tomorrow, have a charitable function.
I have to attend.
My old buddy, good friend Tom Sullivan from Sacramento will be guest hosting the uh the program uh tomorrow.
Uh so uh but we'll be back on Thursday and then finish the week out on uh on open line Friday.
Now, we got these Dan Rather audio sound bites coming up from his appearance last night with Marvin Marvin Calb at where was it?
It was the National Press Club, and it was a name, it was a it was a George Washington University something or other Georgetown University, I forget which of the George Something University in Washington put on this thing, they did it at the National Uh Press Club.
It's unbelievable.
But New York Times yesterday, just beside itself, all these no bid contracts at FEMA.
You know what I'd like to find out?
I I just to re to rebuild New Orleans.
I I I would like to uh find out what the bid process is when you go to FEMA.
What is the FEMA bid process?
If we're gonna do this, how many pages are there which describe the policy and spell it out?
How long would the bid process take, in other words?
And I'll bet you it is a bureaucratic nightmare, and I'll bet you that's why they suspended the the bidding process in this, also because of the kind of work necessary.
There aren't too many people that do this kind of work.
There aren't too many companies, Halliburton's one, Bechtel's one, and there's another group that does this called the Shaw Group.
Now, one of the people coming under fire for all these no bid contracts is a lobbyist by the name of Joe Allbaugh.
Now, Joe is from Southeast Missouri like I am.
Joe was the uh campaign manager, one of Bush's campaign managers in 2000 was the first head of FEMA in the Bush administration.
And as MSNBC reports, it's the same thing the New York Times said, at least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Albaugh have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.
One of them is the Shaw Group, Incorporated, and the other is Halliburton, subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root.
Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.
Well, I I read the rest of the story.
I can't find anything in here about the Shaw Group.
Who the hell is they?
Or are they?
Uh oh, wait.
All boss other major client, the Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group, has updated its website to say hurricane recovery projects apply here.
Shaw said on Thursday it's received a 100 million dollar emergency FEMA contract for housing and management construction.
Shaw also clinched uh a 100 million dollar order on Friday from the Army Corps of Engineers.
Shaw Group spokesman Chris Salmon said that all ball was providing the company with general consulting on business matters and wouldn't say whether he played a direct role in any of the Katrina deals.
Well, okay, fine, but who is the Shaw Group?
Well, you know, you can easily find this out.
You just go to their website.
You can really easily find this out if you want to.
Yeah, we all know that Cheney heads up Halliburton or headed up Halliburton, but we don't know anything about the Shaw.
Well, the Shaw Group, well, now we do.
J. M. Bernard Jr. is the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of the Shaw Group, a Fortune 500 company offering a broad range of services to the power process, environmental infrastructure, and emergency response markets.
The company's stock is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Under Mr. Bernard's leadership, the Shaw Group has grown dramatically, and through a series of strategic acquisitions to over three billion dollars in revenue since its inception in 1987.
Shaw is one of the youngest companies to be named to the Fortune 500 and recently debuted on the magazine's list of America's most admired companies, headquartered in Baton Rouge.
The company employs over 18,000 people at its offices and operations in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia Pacific region.
Uh Now, you know where I'm reading this from?
I said you all you have to do is go to the website.
I didn't say the Shaw Group website.
Because I'm not reading from the Shaw Group website.
You know what I'm reading from?
The Louisiana Democratic Party website.
And you know what the headline is?
Over the details I just read to you about our chairman.
Turns out that J. M. Bernard Jr., founder, chairman, chief executive officer of the Shaw Group, is the chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party.
Now, why couldn't the New York Times tell you this?
Why couldn't NBC tell you this on their website?
Why couldn't Chris Matthews tell you this on Hardball last night?
Why can't Katie Current tell you this?
Why can't anybody at CNN pass this on to you?
Why doesn't anybody at any of these networks or newspapers, the Washington Post, tell you who this Shaw group is?
Mr. Bernard was recently inducted into the LSU Alumni Association Hall of Distinction.
He's received the Corporate Champions for Children Award and lists a bunch of other awards that he has received.
An active participant in many civic and philanthropic endeavors, Mr. Bernard was recently selected as chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party.
He co-chaired the transition team for the governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco.
Mr. Bernard is also a member of Select Council for Revenues and Expenditures.
The acronym is SECURE for Louisiana's future and serves on the Committee of 100 for the state of Louisiana.
You know, it's possible, folks, it's possible, just as is the case with Halliburton and Kellogg Brandon Root.
It's possible a Shaw Group is a good company.
But you would never know this from the New York Times.
You probably will end up hating the Shaw Group like you've been made to hate Halliburton simply because the media wants you to.
Well, they're going to be pretty embarrassed when they find out that Joel Albaugh, evil Republican crony of Bush and lobbyist, gave one of these no-bid contracts to the chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party.
And I know what the Democrats are going to say.
This is just smokescreen.
He just did this to cover up for giving it to Halliburton.
This is so nobody can complain about him giving Halliburton and no bid contract.
He's displaying politics.
Oh, okay, that's how we'll look at it.
Is that how the press is going to look at it?
Is that how the Democrats are going to look at this?
I kid you not.
I am reading the resume of the chairman and chief executive officer of the Shaw Group from the Louisiana Democratic Party website.
You can find it yourself.
Just Google it.
Just Google J. M. Bernard Jr., B E R N H A R D. Does Google Louisiana Democratic Party?
It's all there, folks.
But of course, the mainstream press doesn't understand the internet.
They don't trust the internet.
They think the internet's made up of a bunch of irresponsible reporters that don't have any filters.
So I just wanted to pass that on.
Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals.
That's the MSNBC website headline to this.
White House connections attract renewed attention from watchdog groups.
Really?
Firms with Bush ties, snag Katrina deals?
What's the tie to Bush that Bernard has from the Shaw Group, other than Joe Allbaugh?
And why is Bush busy helping out Democratic Party chairman in Louisiana and why is he one of his cronies?
Isn't it amazing what the people that package today's news just leave out?
While including Cheney works at Halliburton.
Who the hell doesn't know that already anyway?
Yeah, they keep adding it to the story.
One other thing, during the newsbreak here at the top of the hour, Mr. Snerdley went back to his desk to sniff some of his potpourri back there.
And while he was doing that, he had on these hearings.
You're watching C-SPAN or whatever they are on and the Mike Brown hearings.
Now, this is interesting.
He heard Mike Brown being uh uh uh pretty expansive on why FEBA was late getting into the superdome.
They had the buses and they were ready to go in there to rescue these people.
And Brown said on TV look, we heard all these reports that there was uncontrolled anarchy in that with violence going.
We heard rapes.
We heard murders.
We're FEMA.
We are not armed.
We don't go into these places like the military or a law enforcement agency does.
We are FEMA.
We are we are volunteers.
We are emergency management workers.
And we heard all this uh all these reports of the horrors going on at Superdome.
We're not going in there under those circumstances.
So now that we know none of that was happening in the Superdome, now that we know there weren't gang rapes, there weren't massive deaths, there weren't bodies piled high in the basement of the Superdome.
Who could we actually point a finger at and say maybe they are the reason that the recovery efforts were so slow in getting people out of the Superdome?
Could it be that the media with all of their filters to make sure lies and untruths don't get on the air?
Could it be that the media is responsible for the lack of a timely response in getting people out of there because they were reporting things that were not going on in there that kept unarmed FEMA people scared to go in there.
Just something to ponder.
We'll be back.
Stay with us, my friend.
All right, now I promise a lot of you people have been on hold for a long time out there, and we're going to get to you.
Lots to do here today, and we'll squeeze it all in.
I want to now go to these Dan Rather uh sound bites.
Dan Rather was interviewed last night at the National Press Club in Washington by former CBS News uh employee reporter Marvin Calb.
Marvin Calb now runs the John F. Kennedy School of Government's Schorenstein Center at Harvard.
And you know, so this is I think this is when you hear these fights, you're gonna understand what I'm saying here.
This is one of the problems with the mainstream media today.
When these when these uh when these reporters that get long in a tooth get laid off or retired, they farm them out to these think tanks and these journalism schools and these government schools, and and then these old guys start inculcating their old media, old world views into these students, and that's why nothing changes.
Yeah, you you just some especially soundbite number two here, uh, which is actually of uh of Mr. Calb.
But here we go.
Uh last night, among the questions that Marvin Calb asked Dan Rather was this.
Uh, what about Rush Limbaugh, Dan?
Is he a journalist?
Uh I've spoken to uh Rush Limbaugh.
I remember being somewhere at lunch with him.
I remember he gave me a very good cigar.
Um I don't know whether Rush Limbaugh considers himself a journalist.
I'd be so consider him.
No.
No.
I think he's uh But he's got a talk show?
He's a he's a mass, he's another master of the talk show format.
Whether you like him or dislike him, he's a good thing.
So he's part of the media.
He's part of the media.
Marvin Calb, not sure.
He's a talk show.
Uh oh, as a talk show, right?
Now, yeah, this this lunch was at Bill Buckley's house.
Uh Bill Buckley had a lunch, took a day off for this, by the way, to uh introduce Ward Connorly to people.
John Leo was there, uh uh Walter Isaacson, who at the time was at Time Magazine was there.
Uh and Ward Connolly was doing great things out of the University of California on the race-based admissions policy and trying to wipe that out.
And and uh so Bill Buckley had him to lunch to uh introduce him to um so in fact I remember giving uh uh Mr. Connolly a uh a ride to his next appointment after lunch, and I was talking to Rather.
He he was there, and I did give him a cigar, and he after that sent me a case of his uh favorite California wine.
Uh now uh I I think also you you probably need to know this.
Back in the days I had my television show, we taped the TV show at place called Unitel on um on West 57, is right across the street from the CBS Broadcast Center.
And yeah, I know Marvin Calb was questioning whether or not I'm a member of the media.
He could that that's what he was trying to get.
Is he a journalist?
Is he a member of the media?
But forget that for a second.
The the the Marvin Calb money quotes coming next.
But my mother would come in now and then, of course, to uh to see the show, to see me and spend some time in New York.
And I uh I I at the time knew uh uh Dan Rather's publicity person.
Her name was Donna Dees, and she was she was very nice and very confident, she was excellent at what she did.
And uh she took my mother over to meet Dan Rather.
Dan Rather gave her a tour, the CBS uh you remember this, Mr. Snerdley.
Uh Dan Rather gave her a tour of the CBS evening news set, and and the next time I went home to Cape Girardo, I was stunned.
I went to the kitchen, and my mom had Dan Rather's picture magnetized to the refrigerator.
And it was he'd signed something very nice to my mother.
And then I I I went to the CBS uh news Christmas party one year with Donna.
And and and Dan was there, and we we spent some time talking about Roger Ailes.
Uh so I I've spent a lot of time with uh with Dan Rather.
Uh it wasn't just this one time at lunch.
Uh so I don't know if he remembers any of that or not, but but well, I don't.
It's been a long time ago.
This is going back to 93, uh 94, somewhere uh somewhere in there.
But at any rate, uh uh yeah, gave him gave him a good cigar.
And and I remember at this lunch, uh, but before, you know, we're during the uh the while everybody was arriving, we're sitting in uh Mr. Buckley's uh parlor, the red room at his Masonette uh there on Park Avenue.
Uh Rather was telling Buckley about this new shotgun he'd gotten.
I was sitting there stunned, rather was going on and on about how excited about this new shotgun he had.
And I thought, hell, here I'm listening to some guy that probably gun control and all this, and Dan's talking about all the big game that he's bagged and he's planning on bagging with this new shotgun.
And I'm looking at Buckley, and I can't, it Buckley's polite guy, but I didn't think Buckley particularly was interested in shotguns, but he was, you know, he was the host, so he was uh he was being quite quite uh uh tolerant, if that's the word.
But no, I've um uh I've never been over to the CBS.
No, I've never been to the CBS Broadcast Center, and I've not well, I've been over there.
I when I I used to appear as a guest occasionally on their morning show when it was uh uh when the studio was over there, but I've never been to the CBS evening news site.
Yeah, Harry Smith, uh my favorite liberal.
I used to call him that on the air.
Harry Smith, my favorite liberal.
I appeared with him at uh Houston in the Democratic Convention back in uh 92, and I danced with Paul Lazan on that set uh as a promo to my heart's a fire appearance.
Uh oh, they got a great history over there.
And but but the I mean the clincher was my mom with that autograph picture rather on magnets are on the refrigerator door.
I said, Mother, what are you doing?
He's a nice man.
He's a nice man.
And every time she came to town, bam, she make a beeline over there to say hello.
Sometimes instead of watching my show.
I still excuse me, of getting over the ravages of this common virus that has afflicted me.
I usually escape these days.
I actually think the reason I don't get very many of these things is nicotine.
Uh here's Marvin Kalb, uh, ladies and gentlemen.
This is Marvin Kalb, and this is a question to Rather.
This is this is just illustrative of so much, and it's also at the same time astounding.
He's questioning Rather about the Bill Burkett forged documents story.
Every now and then it even looks as if the new media is at war with the old media.
I want to go back to the National Guard story of last year.
I've always been astonished that even before the program ended, it was still on.
A block site called FreeRepublic.com, run by an active Air Force officer, blasted the program.
Four hours later, another website called Buckhead ran a detailed critique of the documents that you used in the report.
What happened then was that dozens of other bloggers joined in.
Then the mainstream media joined in, and then everything shifted, and the focus was on you.
The focus was not on the substance of your story.
Stop it.
Hey, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it right there.
Folks, do you realize what you have just heard?
Marvin Calb is astounded.
Then the mainstream media joined in, then everything shifted, and the focus was on you.
The focus was not on the substance of your story.
Mr. Calb, the documents were forged.
The documents were forged.
There was no substance to the story.
But see, this is what Dan's continued to say too.
He said, Well, partisan political operatives uh continued to make me the focus of the stories.
Dan, you became the focus of this.
The documents were forged.
You had experts in your pre-interviews who told you that they couldn't vouch for these documents and you didn't use those in the report.
But here's Marvin Calb cannot, but he's teaching future journalists at Harvard.
He can't believe that this could happen on the internet.
And then he wants to know from rather what we can do about this.
What can we do about this, Dan?
You became the substance of the story rather than the substance of your.
There was no substance to the story.
They don't, folks, get it.
They literally to this day don't get it.
You're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the excellence in podcasting network.
Actually, folks, I need to correct myself, and this doesn't happen much, so listen closely.
I was wrong when I said Marvin Caleb and these guys just don't get it.
They get it.
Forged documents, so what?
Whatever we say is, is so if we say if the if we if we put these documents out, even though they are forged, that says Bush was AWOL from the National Guard, he was a wall from the National Guard because we say it.
And he's incredulous here that these blogs would challenge this.
And he's amazed that they were able to take the focus of the story off of the substance of the story, which was that Bush was a wall from the guard, proven by Forged Documents, and make Rather the substance.
It's an alternative world out there.
It's it's not only do they create an alternative reality that they package as news every day, they live in it.
Here's John in Atlanta.
John, uh, I'm glad you called.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hi.
Thank you, Rush.
Ditto.
I've got a question as I sat here and ponder the things I learned listening to you every day.
You made mention uh a little bit ago about uh Dan Rather, who is a journalist needing a publicist, a publicist or a publicity person.
Why is that?
Uh that's not unusual.
Uh it's not that, I mean, Dan Rather has one, but it's a C the PR people for all of these shows are uh actually employees of CBS and they are assigned to work with various uh people.
This is something about television that frankly, I have uh I don't want to get too inside baseball here, folks, but have you ever have you ever wondered, as I don't know how many of you read newspapers and entertainment sections, but every day, every day there is a listing of the television shows that are on that night,
and as and there usually is a review of the TV shows they're on that night, and then there are media reporters and entertainment reporters who then offer columns and commentary on these various television shows.
And it's not just prime time.
Good morning America has a team of publicists, as does the Today Show, as does The View.
They all do, and their job is to call the print media every day and to get their television show in the news.
So if something uh why would why would the CBS Evening News have a publicity person?
Because have you ever noticed on Friday, at the end of the CBS Evening News, they promote what's coming up in the Monday edition of the CBS Evening News, and you sit there and say, wait a minute, how do you know what's going to come out of my Monday?
The news hasn't happened yet.
Doesn't matter.
There's going to be some special report.
How Bush forgot New Orleans.
The second in a two-year-long series sponsored by Bob Schaefer.
So the PR person will call all these people at the news media and the print business and say, hey, we got this special feature coming up tomorrow night on the news.
Bam, it's in the newspaper.
Uh, or Peter Jennings has a documentary coming up on whatever it is.
They work these shows, they get these shows to all kinds.
There's a lot of noise out there that you got to cut through.
And I've always, you know, I've I've looked at television doing this, and radio has never done it.
There isn't one PR person.
Uh, well, there may be the number of radio stations that actually have a PR person that knows what he or she's doing, you can count on one hand in this country.
And even at that, they don't do what the TV PR people do.
You know, they they because it's not the same, it's not the same mindset.
But you don't see in newspapers uh anything about, did you hear what happened on the EIB network yet?
And because the reason that the um TV people have these publicists is because these media people can't watch everything.
So a publicist for say for Dan Rather or whoever will call or make the rounds of TV Guide, uh, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, whatever, the the entertainment reporters and wherever they are, and they say uh Dan Radder last night or Dan Rather tonight's gonna say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they'll try to get print on it.
Uh, and that creates word of mouth.
It makes it look like people are talking about what's happening on these shows.
Uh, the radio business has never done that.
They've never tried to do it.
Uh, well, no, take it back, they've tried to do it, but nobody gets it.
Uh, nobody understands it, and and nobody, nobody has the uh the understanding of it, I suppose.
But it's not unusual.
All of these, and I understand your question.
Why would a journalist is just reporting a news?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
That's what I'm trying to tell you.
They package their product.
And don't let anybody tell you they don't care about ratings.
Why would they have PR people trying to get the word out and create word of mouth and a buzz about their newscast if there's not any interest in ratings there?
It's a slick operation.
And plus the PR person also has to deal with the negative side.
I would have hated to be the PR person after the forged document story.
Because that person was getting phone calls left and right and having to explain what happened and what the CBS position on it was, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So, uh, they're they're uh, I don't know what you want to call it, they're legitimate.
They're I mean, they're they're they have a legitimate purpose as far as the business plan of these networks uh is concerned.
And in television, it's not just the networks that have PR, every show has one.
Every show has a PR department.
There's a head of PR, I don't know what they call it, uh at the network level, and then each show that they really care about has a person or a team of people assigned to get the buzz started and the word out on these shows.
Uh, you know, like the the NBC Today Show, their concert in the street series that they sometimes do on Fridays.
Uh it's not enough for the Today Show to promote that on their own show.
They'll run ads and other PR people calling, and then they'll get the artists to do an interview.
Yeah, I'm gonna be on today's show Friday morning for 20 seconds, playing my greatest hits or my album ten years ago, blah, whatever it is.
Uh so it's it's a business, folks.
It's a pure 100% business, and it's about creating buzz.
All right, back to the interview now.
After Marvin Cowb says, Dan, these bloggers, everything shifted.
And the focus was on you, not on the substance of your story.
Of course, as I say, there was no substance of the story.
The documents were forged, but that that's irrelevant to Marvin Cowb.
Calb finishes with the National Guard aspect of the whole thing, sort of drop to the side, and this media focus was on you.
And this was uh Dan Rather's reply.
Well I learned is that there are bloggers who have as much integrity as I, or the most integrity feel people I know have, and who feel that it's their mission in life to ask questions and keep on asking questions.
There are other bloggers, and I'll go ahead and say it that some of the quote mainstream press seem to take, you know, if not delight in our dilemma.
Uh they picked up pretty quickly on those bloggers who were uh partisan, politically affiliated, and or had an ideological axe to grind with us.
And instead of saying, well, they've raised these questions, for example, about the documents, are these questions true?
Next thing I know, they were in mainstream newspapers, and away it went.
Well, because the documents were forked.
It's just, folks, it is priceless to listen to a partisan political operative complain about partisan political operatives.
It's it's just too, it's choice.
It's just too much fun to listen to a partisan ideologue like any journalist is, sit here and complain about partisan critics with an axe to grind.
What are forged documents trying to affect the outcome of an election, if not ideological and an axe to grind and partisan.
But you see, to understand this, you have to understand the old monopoly mentality, and that is whatever they said was it.
Whatever they said was gospel.
Nobody questioned it.
You weren't supposed to question it.
You were to accept it.
Their reality that they created was the reality.
There have always been two realities, the one they create and the one that is.
And the one that is most often was ignored, and it was recreated to fit whatever the template or the mindset or the news cycle of the day happened to be.
I mean, how many this is this is um this is 2005.
We're we're almost a year now from this.
And they are still talking about this in terms that they claim they don't understand how it happened.
And and and so forth.
So rather, then explains what his major failure in this story with the forge documents was.
My principal uh I didn't say cram, my principal problem was uh that I stuck by the story, I stuck by our people for too long.
Uh I'm guilty of that.
I believed in the story, the facts of the story were correct.
One supporting pillar of the story, albeit an important one, but one supporting pillar was brought into question.
To this day, no one has proven whether it was uh what it purported to be or not.
I stuck with the story because I believed in it.
He stuck with his people.
I didn't give up on my people.
You just said that um you think the story is accurate.
Well, the story is accurate.
Okay.
What's Cowd supposed to do?
Call for the men in the white coats?
What's he supposed to do at this point?
Uh the facts of the story were correct.
One supporting pillar of the there was nothing that was correct.
The guy who wrote the memo was dead at the time he wrote it.
They couldn't find Bill Burkett.
Mary Mapes was off trying to get Joe Lockhart interested in the story, trying to get Lockhart to talk to Bill Burkett, partisan political operatives.
So Calb then said, Well, you have an opportunity now, Dan.
Uh your reporter for 60 minutes.
That's a very important program.
Would you go now and go back to that story and do it again and find the documentation that would in fact prove what you believe to be the accuracy of the story?
Straight up, no chaser, no.
Uh one, CBS News doesn't want me to do that story.
Well, that's a question you'd have to ask them.
But I've moved on from it.
And I've done my best to put it behind me.
You know, taking my licks, taking my shot.
And how many people got fired?
Uh how many, how many people were uh asked to resign?
Oh, baby.
Cakes.
This is a case of denial that I mean, even if even a therapist in New Orleans would give up the job there and come to New York to work with rather on that.
I mean, this is a bad, bad, bad case of denial.
Finally, is this the last one?
Yeah.
Last one here.
Uh Dan gets choked up uh and teary when he discusses uh courage uh and slams CBS for not showing any.
My father's favorite word uh was courage.
He liked the strength of the word.
I think he liked the definition of the word.
And so it begins with that.
That's part of it.
Um the other is that I came to like the word a lot.
Uh sometimes saying it uh gives me my best chance to mount maybe just a wee small part of it.
Uh, but it was no big deal, and I became convinced uh that it was not a good idea to end the broadcast with it when I made it an effort to do so.
But for you and you alone today and today only, I'll reveal something to you.
As part of me, it says, you know, damn, I wish I hadn't caved.
I wish I'd stuck with it.
Do you think that your network showed courage last fall?
I don't want that silence to indicate indicate uh an answer.
I think that's something each person has to judge for themselves.
Okay, we'll be back.
On the cutting edge of societal evolution, El Rush Ball and the excellence in broadcasting network.
Now we've got some audio sound bites from the uh the Mike Brown FEMA hearings that are going on today.
And the uh we we we do have some questions here from Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, who so far as I think about the only Democrat that's been there.
Uh it uh it's hard to see any Democrats at this hearing.
Uh, Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana was there, and maybe the Democrats ceded this responsibility to uh to him.
But what you need to know about this is that Mike Brown has given them hell this morning.
He has told them in no uncertain terms, it wasn't FEMA's responsibility to evacuate or establish law and order.
Uh said his biggest mistakes were in failing to give enough press conferences and failing to get the mayor and governor to work together down there.
Uh you know, we've had a lot of conservatives over the uh past couple of weeks jump all over Mike Brown just to make sure that the liberals out there think these conservatives are reasonable.
Uh and and it's it's frosted me.
We don't, for example, let me just repeat something.
For two days now, we have two consecutive stories.
Yesterday, New Orleans Times pick a you, and today LA Times.
We now know that it was a media scandal, the reporting of what was not going on in that town.
There was no mass murdering, there were no mass rapes, that none of it, nothing of the sort was happening at the Superdome or the Convention Center.
Two days now we know this, and this has still not been corrected by the people that reported it, primarily on the cable news networks, all of them.
And so one of the things that came up today at Mike Brown's hearing, the FEMA hearing, this, well, it's congressional Republicans conducting the hearing.
Mike Brown said, Look, I am FEMA.
We are volunteers.
We are unarmed.
We are not law enforcement.
We heard the media reports of the anarchy in the superdome.
We had buses ready to go.
We were ready to evacuate those people.
But I'm not sending those people into a war zone.
I'm not sending people where there are murders taking place and when there are rapes taking place and there's total anarchy.
I'm not sending people in there to that.
Now, we know that none of that was happening.
We know there was no anarchy in there.
We know there were no mass rapes.
There weren't any rapes.
There weren't mass murders.
There was there was six deaths in the superdome, four at the convention center.
Four of these deaths were natural causes.
One was a suicide.
I forget what the other was, but there were there was there was nothing that like we were told at all was going on in there.
So could we say?
Could we say that Mike Brown could actually be honest, say, look at I believe the reporting that was going on in there?
I can't send in a bunch of volunteers who aren't armed to go evacuate that place.
Well, none of that was happening.
Who's responsible then?
Ultimately, could it could it perhaps be said that the media, which was reporting all this hysteria, compounding rumor after rumor after rumor?
Again, folks, I have to tell you, since the first days I started this program, the same media that followed up rumor after rumor after rumor by reporting it and amplifying it has been asking, well, you know, Limbaugh's a good entertainer, but he has no filter there.
He just he'll make things up, he'll get put up on it, whatever he wants to say, if it fits his worldview, makes the point he wants to make.
You can't trust what Limbaugh says.
A good entertainer, but you can't trust what he says.
Then Drudge comes along, and all the internet people come along, and these same mainstream media people say, there's no filter there.
Meaning there's no editor to check it out, check sources, doubled and triple source it.
Where were the filters in New Orleans?
So rumors spread about mass murder, rape, death, pillaging, and all this, and it didn't happen.
And yet it was reported as it as though it did happen and were happening, coupled with those pictures coming out of there, then the mass reporting of all the looting.
In fact, one of the New Orleans officials said in the Times Picky Yoon story yesterday that the number of murders that happened in the aftermath here in New Orleans was average.
We have 200 murders a year here, and the number of murders that took place in the aftermath is about the same number of murders that would have taken place if there had not been a hurricane.
So Mike Brown could say, look, I believe the media.
I can't send people in there who are not professionally trained and not law enforcement to evacuate a place where that kind of anarchy is going on.
Folks, I'm telling you, this has been a media scandal.
And it's not the first.
And we connect the dots big term, right?
We connect the dots.
The same type of false phony Template-based reporting coming out of New Orleans in the aftermath.
The hurricane is exactly what we're getting out of Iraq.
Remember, news is packaged like any product on the shelf.
We'll take a br-and it's packaged by people who want to market it in certain ways to influence opinion in certain ways so that you will buy it.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
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