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Dec. 15, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:30
December 15, 2005, Thursday, Hour #1
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Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Looks like the Democrats lost another election.
*laughter*
Hey, can't win elections no matter how hard they try.
Democrats lose another election in Iraq, ladies and gentlemen.
Iraqis voted in a historic parliamentary election today.
Strong turnout in the Sunni Arab areas, even a shortage of ballots.
In some precincts, they had to extend the voting, just like in St. Louis.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome.
You are tuned to America's Talk Show.
I am America's anchor man, the all-knowing, all caring, all sensing, all feeling, all concerned.
Maha Rushi here on the one and only Excellence and Broadcasting Network, a thrill, a delight to be with you today on this historic day.
Do you you people realize, by the way, the phone number?
800 282-2882.
Hey, did you see the video podcast yesterday?
Was that not cool?
I'm excited about this.
So our first video podcast down after the program yesterday was the morning update that ran today on our affiliate uh radio stations.
And it's just a little sampler of what's to come.
By the way, the Adopt a Soldier program's still well underway if you're a military man, woman, or um uh well, if military person, I ran out of sexes, uh, and uh or family member, register yourself, and uh we got plenty of uh of Americans who want to adopt you and make you uh one-year complimentary subscribers to uh to our website.
You realize you realize how pathetic these uh these naysayers are gonna sound through the eyes of history, the the media of today, the Democratic Party.
Uh this election, this election shows how irrelevant the Democrats are when it comes to Iraq.
This election shows how Democrats and the media are totally irrelevant when it comes to the concepts spreading the concepts and principles that uh really define the epitome of the human existence.
They try to undermine us here at home.
They've tried to demoralize the troops, but despite their best efforts, Liberty marches on, ladies and gentlemen.
This war may mean nothing.
Probably means nothing other than a failed political opportunity now to the pampered left-wing politicians in Washington, the highly pampered willing accomplices in the mainstream media, but it means everything to the people voting today in Iraq.
It means a lot to our national security in that region and here at home.
I heard on TV today, every purple finger is a bullet in the chest of terrorism.
This was uttered by an Iraqi.
I just saw it on TV with a map 15 minutes or so ago.
Every purple pink finger is a bullet in the chest of terrorism.
So now what are the Democrats doing?
Well, like everything, nothing's changed.
They're moving the goalposts.
Now they're talking about the post-election.
Okay, we had a we had a big election, but now what?
What's the plan?
What's the exit strategy?
What are we gonna do about this?
You know, it is uh I I tell you what, uh here's what I want you liberals to do.
Is I know this is a tough day for you, and and it's a holiday season at Christmas time, and and we want to spread joy and good cheer.
We want everybody to experience it and feel it.
We are conservatives.
We want everybody to be happy.
We want everybody to be as happy as we are.
We want everybody to be optimistic.
I look around and I listen to you liberals and I watch you, and I see nothing but misery.
I see utter dejection, depression.
I see serious problems for you, and I want to try to help you get through this uh in in a way that that might help you share some of the joy.
So do this.
That's what I want you to do.
You gotta learn to cope with America's success.
See, the biggest problem liberals have is America's success depresses them.
America's triumphant march forward is a is a huge, huge depression item for the left.
I mean, it's uh well, you remember after the 2004 elections, this bunch down here in uh where was it, Boker, Fort Law, Fort Fort Lauderdale had the past post-election boca post-election stress trauma or whatever because Bush won.
These people uh need genuine help.
I'm not a licensed professional therapist, but but uh uh I can counsel uh in in a in a in a in a caring and giving way.
And I I I just I see liberals having so much trouble coping with our success.
That really boils down to nothing more than that.
And of course, as an adjunct to that, uh liberals are having uh deep trouble today coping with the success of the Iraqi election.
There's a way around this, and it's by the way, it's something you liberals are very familiar with.
It's something very easy to do because you do it every day.
So I'm not giving you a tough challenge.
This is not going to be hard work.
This is something you can do because you do it every day.
I want you to pretend.
Just pretend that your hero, Bill Clinton, is president right now.
I want you to pretend that all this progress has been made.
Why while Bill Clinton was president?
I want you to pretend that Bill Clinton led the liberation of Iraq.
By the way, they're probably already believing it.
No, I'm I'm serious.
I uh I just want him to be happy.
I don't care if it's fake happy right now.
We just need happiness.
These people are having trouble coping with our success the way of just pret.
Well, what sturdly you're missing the point.
You are sturdily saying it's not possible.
It's not possible for us to imagine it.
It's easy for the libs to pretend it.
They long for the day when Clinton's gonna be president again anyway.
They rue the day that he had to leave the White House.
They can pretend.
I mean, they're pretending that Clinton got rid of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
You mean these people can pretend easily.
They're pretending that Bill Clinton fought terrorism.
I mean, th they they're pretending that you know Bill Clinton was the safe.
So pretend that all this progress has been made while Clinton was president, pretend that Bill Clinton led the liberation of Iraq, pretend that Bill Clinton led It is tough for me to say this.
I have to But it's I'm trying to perform a public service here, folks.
I want you liberals to pretend that your boy, Bill Clinton, led the liberation of Iraq and the forces of freedom and democracy.
Uh I just pretend that this election occurred on his watch just as uh you believe the economy got better on his watch, just as you believe he got rid of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
And if you can do this, I guarantee you you will feel much better today.
Now, some of you say, but Russia, it's a phony fake feeling.
No different than any other phony fake feeling they have every day, but I want him to have good feelings.
I want him to be happy.
And if you can do this, uh uh uh good friend liberals, if you if you can pretend that Clinton did all this, Clinton led this, Clinton fought the war on terror.
Clinton is winning the war on terror.
Clinton led the fight against the insurgency, Clinton's spreading democracy around the world.
If you can do that, I'll bet you'll see through all your hate and contempt and recognize the tremendous accomplishments that we've made.
Uh and it'll have the added benefit of keeping you off of the rooftops and the ledges of tall buildings today.
Just pretend.
By the way, we have some exit polling data that uh we I think we're the first to get this exit polling data, uh, ladies and gentlemen.
Uh 80% of Iraqis coming out of the polls today say they want Senator Kerry to resign.
85% of Iraqis leaving the uh the polls today say they want Senator Biden to resign.
90% of the Iraqis coming out of the polls today want uh Carl Levin and Dick Durbin to resign.
And 95%, this is interesting number here, 95%.
Actually, it's 94.8, but we're rounding it up.
95% of the Iraqis in exit polls today said they haven't the slightest idea who Harry Reid is.
We'll take a brief time out and be back after this.
Stay with us.
All right, a little announcement here, uh, folks, before I get into more of the polling data, exit polling data from the Iraqi elections today.
Uh my attorney Roy Black is going to appear on CNN tonight between seven and eight o'clock with Wolf Blitzer on the situation room because of all of this media confusion, this this this actually irresponsible and horrible reporting on the ruling from the judge uh this past Monday in my so-called legal case.
Uh uh Wolf Blitzer called and and asked uh uh for Roy, and we've Roy's we've decided to do it.
So Roy will uh appear tonight, seven to eight on CNN, the Situation Room, uh to explain the uh the the well, yeah, give the truth about the ruling.
And to clear up some of the uh confusion about all this as it was reported.
I mean, I got so many emails.
That's why I talked about it myself yesterday.
I got so many emails.
Rush, I'm confused.
The first thing I thought it was a big win, but now the media says you lost.
It didn't lose.
It was a big win.
And uh better to get it for Mr. Black, seven, eight o'clock tonight, CNN.
Don't know the exact time.
Uh, but it uh they may even run a little teaser interviews, a teaser bits from the interview between uh four and six.
Uh the taping, it's a pre-tape.
Anyway, more exit polling data from the uh Iraqi election.
85% of the Iraqis want United States tax cuts made permanent, and they also have said that uh they they think Congress ought to revisit the alternative minimum tax.
Uh there was a setback for President Bush in the Iraqi alleged polling data.
Only 65% support the uh Bush Social Security Plan.
Uh and uh in the most stunning response, 84% of all Iraqis named the man they want to see put on trial after Saddam Hussein, and that is John Murtha's polster.
You know, Murph has been running around saying 80% of the Iraqi people want us out of Iraq, and they heard about that.
They were asked about this in the exit polls.
84% want Mertha's pollster um uh put on trial after Saddam Hussein.
A couple of news stories here, just just to just just to highlight this.
Um Washington Post today, undeterred by violence, Iraqis head to polls to choose new government.
Iraqi voters went to the polls uh in force on Thursday to elect the country's new National Assembly, which in turn will ultimately form a uh a new government.
Mizar Abud Salman heading to a screw house polling center in Saddam Hussein's home region of Tikrit said, even though there were many explosions last night, even if there are more now on my way to the polling center, I will come and vote.
Uh you remember when the Liberals said uh, ladies and gentlemen, that uh these people can't handle democracy.
Remember that?
They said it about the Soviet Union when we liberated a Soviet Union, eh?
They're not gonna know what to do with freedom.
And the Iraq, hey, democracy in the Middle East, who is Bush kidding?
He's an idiot.
So uh the Iraqi voters are gutzier than the Libs, especially Lib Democrats in Ohio.
They whine and moan about having to stand an hour for four or five hours.
Here are the Iraqis wading through explosions now and then uh in order to be able to vote.
Just to put this in perspective.
If President Bush had not gone to war in Iraq, if the Democrats and the mainstream media had gotten their way, Saddam would still be in power.
Rape rooms would still be open.
His two sadistic wacko sons would still be terrorizing people.
Uday, and what was the other one?
Kusay.
Was it Kusay?
Whatever.
It was Uday.
I know it was Uday.
I can't remember the other guy.
Anyway, he would still be getting money from the corrupt oil for food scandal.
That would still be going on.
He would still be amassing parts and supplies for his weapons of mass destruction program.
The families of Palestinian suicide bombers would still be getting $25,000 per from the Iraqi treasury.
There would still be the Al-Qaeda camps in Northern Iraq and Al-Qaeda members being given shelter, and the Iraq people would not be out voting today to have a say in their future.
That's what would be the case had we not gone uh into Iraq and had we not taken the action uh that we did.
Uh so ladies and gentlemen, uh it it moment and and and and well, I'm just thinking that this disappoints the liberals as I go through this list.
Saddam would still be in power.
Democrats are not made happy by this.
This is my point.
This this kind of news makes them miserable.
Why is it making miserable?
Because America's doing good things.
They just have a problem coming to grips and coping with American success.
Uh it is Uh you know, I I I just I think it's it's that's amazing to watch.
I've I've I've never seen a political party this invested in the defeat of its own country in my lifetime.
I it may have happened in this country before, but uh in my lifetime and our lifetime, we've not seen a p a major political party this invested in defeat uh at all.
Now, there's other big news coming out of Washington today.
The White House has agreed to accept uh Senator McCra uh McCain's proposal um to uh to ban cruel treatment of terrorism detainees.
This according to congressional officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
I wonder, wonder who leaked this.
Wonder who leaked this with great glee out there.
I'm gonna we're gonna get into this in some detail, but I I just want to tell you this this whole this this anti whatever he's calling this, this cruel treatment of terrorism detainees, whatever this bill is called, uh I I think it will, and I I I think it should damage his run for the presidency.
This is utterly gratuitous.
It is it is harmful.
Uh you know, my old buddy F. Lee Levin has uh has re has referred to McCain's amendment as the Al-Qaeda Bill of Rights.
And that's the best way in the world of describing this.
It's the Al-Qaeda Bill of Rights.
It folks, it's it's absurd.
Uh what is what what is happening out here?
This is and he's attached this to the defense appropriations bill, and it's it the president really, I think was up against the wall because money for the military runs out at the end of the year.
McCain, no, and not negotiating.
I'm not gonna change a single word.
Stay.
Negotiate.
I'm John McCain.
I don't negotiate.
I win.
Got that.
Limba!
He just entertain it.
That's all you are.
I'm not worried.
Well, I am.
I'm worried because of what this guy's up.
With that folks, this is gonna inevitably lead, inevitably lead to our soldiers being dragged into civilian courts in our country.
Because the courts are gonna be in charge of all this now.
Terrorists are gonna end up being represented by ACLU lawyers, claiming that their rights, including maybe even their Miranda rights against self-incrimination have been violated.
After all, if you confer due process rights, which is what McCain's bill does, you are conferring all due process rights belonging to U.S. citizens.
And so McCain is in in talking about his uh his legislation, uh he he makes reference to the fifth and the eighth and the fourteenth amendments, and that's why this is so troubling.
These are enemy combatants.
They are the these are the equivalents of enemy soldiers, only worse.
And and through by the way, th through through all of this, McCain has made no effort to define the terms of inhumane treatment, subhuman treatment, inhuman.
Whatever, what are the terms are torture?
What is torture?
What's cruel punishment?
What's undignified treatment?
It's not specified.
Guess what?
Somebody's gonna have to define it.
Guess who's gonna get to define it?
Our court system.
This is why the founding fathers invested the commander-in-chief role of one guy, not the court.
The courts what judges relevance, what experience.
Uh and I and you might be asking, well, Rush, I mean, I'm I agree with you, Rush, and I but why the Republicans cave?
Very simple question.
It's the way everything else works in Washington.
They didn't have the guts to oppose this because they didn't want to be cast as pro-torture.
This thing was set up.
If you're against this, then you must be for torture.
It's like when they come out with a clean water bill.
I'm not gonna support all your for dirty water.
That's the way this happened.
You could pass any legislation in Washington today if you put if you just call it Civil Rights Act of 2005.
Whatever civil rights, you could pass whatever you want.
Just call it Civil Rights Act of 2005.
Nobody would have the guts to oppose- Oh, you're opposed to civil rights, huh?
No, I'm not really.
I don't think this is civil rights.
Well, in this case, nobody's got the guts to oppose torture because it's been made such a cause celeb.
In addition to leaving the definitions of what is torture and inhumane or cruel punishment or what have you to the courts, who, by the way, are all ill-suited for dealing with war given the lack of experience of lawyers and judges relating to national security, uh, these interrogators, our interrogators, will now have to decide whether to expose themselves to personal charges of mistreatment or aggressively interrogate terrorists for national security information.
That's the choice they're gonna have.
And what do you think the choice is going to be?
Everybody's gonna try to protect themselves, and the last thing you want to do is get dragged into a U.S. court because you got old Achmed to admit he had a nuclear bomb ready to go off in San Francisco.
So you'd rather say I'm not gonna what I if Ahmed knows that I can't go as far as I would go to get that out of him, because I might be dragged into court for being mean to him.
It's a Hobson's choice, and they should not have to make it, talking about our interrogators.
A quick, a brief EIB, obscene profit center timeout back after this with much more.
Merry Christmas to one and all from all of us here at the EIB Network.
Well, one thing we know, folks, we learn from history on this program, and we um we learn from experience, if McCain's uh torture bill uh is true to form, we're gonna end up with more of it.
Just like campaign financial reform design to get more money out of politics, what do we get?
We got more money into politics, but it happened under the table on secret roots.
We're gonna end up with more torture.
Because it's just like the law of supply.
If McCain says we can't torture anybody here or there or whatever, we'll find some place to do it.
And I'm just I'm I'm making a joke, but but it's just it's it's when you when you tell people you can't do this, it's like you tell an entrepreneur we're gonna raise your taxes so you don't earn as much, entrepreneurs just go work harder so they don't lose ground.
Uh uh What?
What's scary?
Oh, Ray Nagan?
What's Oh Snerdly this pointed out is a scary image.
Ray Nagan is at the White House and he's in the White House briefing room and he's standing in front of the White House logo.
It is Oh, breaking news, levies to be built stronger than previous ones.
Well, who would have thought of that idea?
My God, that is brilliant.
Dear Honor, folks are just breaking news.
Uh uh they're gonna build the levies in New Orleans stronger than they were.
What a what a government, what a country.
What where do we find these people that are this bright?
Ah, give thanks to God.
Each day that I live in America, these people s are brilliant.
Folks, they come, and they're not even from universities.
It's wonderful.
Okay, so McCain took the money out of politics or got more money.
McCain taking the torture out of war.
We're gonna get either more war or more torture.
It's shut up, Limboy, you can't save it.
Yes, I can.
I don't care.
I don't care what you I don't need you.
I get the media, Limboy.
You're just a pretender.
Yeah.
You got it?
Uh you know, in the 1970s, seriously, in the 1970s, we had a church committee led by Senator Church of Idaho.
He gutted the CIA's ability to use human intelligence to gather information abroad.
We pay the price for that to this day.
It was followed by efforts to prevent a perceived problem with intelligence gathering on U.S. citizens with the creation of this wall of separation between law enforcement and the intelligence service, Jamie Gorellic's wall, acting for Bill Clinton took it a step further by building the wall higher and wider and longer than the law required.
So even over the the objections of several federal prosecutors who warned that doing so would tie our hands in the war on terrorism, but they didn't care because they had other reasons for the wall of the Clinton administration.
So today, we are told that this wall, you remember the wall for the 9-11 hit.
This is exactly what we're gonna get here with his McCain amendment, folks.
It's the same type of thing, same type of thing we got with the church amendment.
And I think if with in McCain's case, it's all about him.
It's all about his future, it's all about his standing with the media, it's all about his chances for political advancement.
Uh it's uh I it just it boggles the mind.
Today we're told that this wall, by the way, uh and the lack of human intelligence were among the weaknesses in our security that led to 9-11.
And ironically, as you all remember, Gorillix sits on the 9-11 Commission, which did everything it could to cover up the existence of this wall as well as able danger.
So instead of learning from all this, instead of learning from the um church committee era, instead of learning from the mistakes made by a Ruckda erecting this wall, we now have Congress with uh Senator McCain in the lead, passing the Al-Qaeda Bill of Rights, which we will one day come to rule.
It is a disaster.
And those who are voting for this do so for purely political reasons.
Our armed forces are not torturers.
That's the thing about this that just boils my blood.
They're not torturers.
They're not committing atrocities.
They're not, as Dick Durbin called them, killers like the Nazis, Stalinists, or Paul Potts Army.
It is a disgrace to impugn these people with such conduct.
And make no mistake about it, that's exactly what has happened here.
The leader of this effort is remarkably a man who should know better, John McCain, himself a prisoner of war.
Because this bill literally assumes that all American interrogators, or most of them engage in torture and brutality, and we need this massive federal legislation to stop it.
As I say, this is why the founding fathers wanted the power of war in the hands of one person, a president.
They wanted him to be the commander-in-chief.
We can't we can't have 535 members of Congress making these decisions.
And when their actions redound against us, as the church committee did, they don't take responsibility for their votes.
They hold another hearing and they demand it on what happened.
As though they were innocent bystanders.
Somebody else did this.
They blame some bureaucracy.
They blame some bureaucrat, the military, they blame the president himself.
They hold hearings that point fingers in every direction.
Never at themselves.
Just as they did in the Katrina aftermath.
We're going to build the Levi stronger than we do.
Well, who built them weak in the first place?
Well, we had congressional hearings to find out.
And the people that appropriated the money for it, the people that were in charge of following through, seemed to get a total pass as they got to pretend to be spectators.
The bottom line is this.
If we if we end up uh failing uh to gain crucial intelligence from an al-Qaeda detainee as a result of this effort, will anybody say McCain's responsible?
Nope.
So it's easy to vote for dangerous nonsense like this.
These politicians want to be able to say that they are opposed to torture, that they voted against torture, and they are not going to tolerate torture.
And then to really twist reality, they will say they are helping the troops by being more clear about what is or is not torture.
When in fact they've done nothing to clarify it.
All they've done is muddle it.
They've bowed down to these false, reckless allegations of the left from Europe to the anti-war movement in our own country.
I mean, just today, the European Union Parliament announced they're going to start investigating these secret CIA prisons.
This is a grievous blow to our national security, this kind of law is, folks.
And it it's you just wait, it's gonna it's gonna be seen for what it is in uh in due course.
Washington Post uh yesterday, just just to give you a flavor for what the reporting on this McCain bill was yesterday.
Senate set to require details on secret prisons.
The Senate is poised to approve a measure that would require the Bush administration to provide Congress with its most specific and extensive accounting about the secret prison systems established by the CIA to house terrorism suspects.
While the CIA has provided limited briefings to members of Congress about these facilities, the information has generally been shared with only a handful of congressional leaders.
Oh, really?
That's interesting.
Might one of them have leaked.
No, I guess not even Jay Rockfeller.
I guess he wouldn't wouldn't do that.
So um we don't even know these secret jails exist.
I mean, the Bush administration has never officially acknowledged this.
This is a Washington Post story, obviously from some leak somewhere.
But uh once again, the the Senate hoping to handcuff the administration in the war on terror.
Quick phone call, Scott in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Thank you.
I love you, man.
You're great.
This is your favorite.
You may not remember me.
I talked to you right after uh Rove uh after Livy was indicted.
But uh favorite uh Southern Democrat, uh liberal uh pro-life, pro-gun, pro-military, evangelical.
Commemorative.
Yeah, I got you.
I I I I remember that package because it's rare.
Uh pretty moderate Democrat, I guess you could say.
Uh bottom line, I I just I'm trying to figure out which uh which Democrats on this uh were coming out against these elections being successful.
I you know, it's once again, you just kind of seem to be making this up as you go along and create your own reality, uh, which you're great at.
And I you know, I really respect you for that.
I'm you're the master, but uh could you could you tell me who that was and what they said?
I just uh I don't have enough time to list all the names.
Let me just give you four or five.
John Murphy, John Kerry, Dick Durbin, uh Harry Reed, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer.
Where do you want me to stop?
Scott, you you know what you're what you're you're you're you're making a big mistake.
These people, these Democrats, Mertha, have been out there saying, even when asked about the elections, we're not making progress.
There's not we got a pull out.
There's no sense in being there.
This war is lost.
There's a lost cause.
They have mocked the whole concept of democracy in the Middle East for as long as Bush has been saying it.
I don't know how you can you they're not invested in one aspect of victory.
They already think that we have lost this.
So here we come up to the election.
I'm just gonna tell you the best way for you to understand this is to understand how depressed the Democrats are today that this election succeeded.
I had a soundbite, yeah.
I didn't get back to it.
I didn't get to it yesterday, but I had a soundbite, a montage of all these fate Democrats whose names I've mentioned to you, talking about it's two or three months ago, talking about how our policy has failed and how we don't have anything to go.
It's all gonna ride on these elections.
It's all gonna ride on these elections.
Well, there's elections in December.
That's gonna be in every election we've had, they've said that.
They have predicted doom and gloom for every election.
This election wasn't gonna work because the Sunnis weren't going to be a part of it.
This election wasn't gonna work because the terrorists are going to blow up the country.
The first election wasn't gonna work because we didn't have enough precincts open, said John Kerry.
Every election has worked.
It has been more successful than the previous election, more successful than what was forecast or even hoped.
They have all been under the impression that this was not going to work.
That means they have hoped it wouldn't work, because this is success for Bush in the country, and that's not success for them.
That's not an alternative reality.
That is reality.
I do not live in an alternative reality, and I'll bet you never even came up with that phrase on your own till you heard me use it, talking about your side.
Thanks for the call.
Great to hear from an evangelical Democrat, even though it's odd.
Back in a sec.
Well, since uh since Mayor Negan was at the White House uh announcing that the levies are going to be rebuilt stronger than they were before.
And uh since uh since Senator Landrew was also on television just a moment ago, it it's time for I think for some uh for some New Orleans news.
Uh statistics released by the Louisiana Department of Health and hospitals suggest that fewer than half of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were black, and that whites died at the highest rate of all races in New Orleans.
Well, it turns out Katrina was a racist hurricane, just in a way that people missed uh at first.
Um in the aftermath of the storm, uh some some liberals uh were quick to allege that the Bush administration delayed its response to the hurricane because most of the victims were black.
Damu Smith, the founder of the National Black Environmental Justice Network in September said that the federal government ignored us.
They forgot about us because we look like we look.
Nation of Islam leader Calypso Lewie in October said that FEMA wasn't fit to help the storm's victims because, quote, there aren't enough blacks in the FEMA, and certainly the Red Cross is the same.
Rapper Kanye West used his time on NBC's telethon for the hurricane victims to charge that George W. Bush doesn't care about black people.
And they got a Grammy nomination because of that.
He was rewarded.
However, the truth has come in.
The state's demographic information suggests that whites in New Orleans died at a higher rate than minorities.
According to the 2000 census, whites make up 28% of the city's population.
But the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals indicates that whites constitute 36.6% of the storm's fatalities in the city.
African Americans make up about 67% of the population.
59.1% of the deceased.
Other minorities constitute maybe 5% of the population, represented 4.3% of the storm's fatalities.
Overall for the state of Louisiana, 658 bodies have been identified.
47% were African American, 42% were Caucasian.
The remaining bodies were either non-black or minorities.
Non-black minorities are undetermined.
But in a percentage basis, the larger percentage of the white population in uh in uh New Orleans died than did the black population.
Now, um 658 bodies is uh is a far cry from the what was it?
10,000 body bags who are gonna need 10,000.
Uh other news uh from uh from well let me uh do I have time to get both these in.
Uh tell you what, let me there's other news about New Orleans, but it relates to other news elsewhere.
So I will save that.
I want to go to get a couple audio sound bites before we have to go to the break here today.
Don King was on uh Wolf Blitzer's CNN Situation Room yesterday, and uh Wolf Blitzer said you uh you love George Bush?
I love George Walker Bush because I think he's a revolutionary.
He's a president that comes in with inclusiveness that what they're doing tomorrow in Iraq is a demonstration of that for the vote for democracy.
The fundamental parts of demography is freedom of speech, uh law and order, you know, and being able to have freedom of working with people and working and governing yourself.
George Bush is dead.
Wolf says uh uh well, do you have any regrets supporting him?
I mean, taking taking a look at the picture.
Uh that take a look at that picture.
What when you and I were there at the at the at the diner last year, at the dinner last year, dude, I guess it was at the White House.
Uh you have any regrets supporting him as enthusiastically as you did.
No, I don't.
In fact, I want to do and you know, support him more now because seem like everybody is punching him, you know what I mean?
But he's fighting back and he's throwing great combinations.
And so I think he's the guy that is really revolutionary president.
I think he's a president that cares about the people he represents, but he doesn't compromise himself to the extent that he acquiesced and accommodate.
He goes out there and says like it is and and he in and tries to make things better.
Inclusiveness, last uh, you know, education is fighting for that.
These are the things that many guys that don't fight for.
George Walker Bush is a tremendous advocate to America, a great president for the great American people, and he's decisive.
He's don't he's not equipped, you know, he doesn't equipate.
Don King on CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer yesterday.
I don't know how, I don't know what King was on there for.
I don't know if he was on to talk about Bush or something else.
I heard about the appearance and uh it was then suggested that we get the sound bites for it.
But there you have it.
We got to take a brief time out here, folks, because I forgot to light the cigar at noon to celebrate the um Iraqi elections, and I can't do that and talk at the same time.
And I want to do that.
Uh so we'll take a break now.
We'll come back and uh finish out the hour in mere moments.
Stay with us.
Okay, a couple of things coming up in the next hour.
New York City transit workers, a local insurgency threatening a strike tomorrow, unless they get a what is it, 24% across the board pay raise.
Uh environmental news, just the headlines, details to come.
New Orleans soil poses hazards.
Study finds elevated levels uh of lead in uh neighborhoods.
Uh the the environmentalist wacko is pulling out all the stops now.
Christmas is damaging the environment, according to uh late report here.
It's called the hidden cost of Christmas.
And uh then, of course, we have the new as didn't get to it yesterday that uh smog uh industrial pollution uh well hits uh blacks, women and minorities harder than uh anybody else.
Uh that the pollution apparently knows where to go.
Uh so anyway, we'll have details of all this, plus lots of other things, as well as uh as your phone calls.
We have a guy on the phone who doesn't want New Orleans to be rebuilt.
We'll talk to him.
Uh lots of other stuff headed your way.
Be patient.
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