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Dec. 15, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:31
December 15, 2005, Thursday, Hour #2
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You know, I I I'm getting so many emails.
People want me to talk about this latest McNabb Snafu in Philadelphia, and I did.
I talked about it last week, and nobody has seen fit to report what I say or include it in the media up there.
Because there is a there is a new development in it, but it's just absurd.
And anyway, greetings, folks.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, serving humanity, America's anchorman from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The phone number, if you'd like to join us today is 800-282-2882.
Email address rush at EIB net.com.
Britt Hume interviewed President Bush yesterday.
It was on the Fox News channel, and uh you'll forgive me for doing this, but the president said a couple things that are rush.
See, I told you so.
So we'll get to that in uh in due course.
First, this uh wacko environmental news, uh, some New Orleans neighborhoods are covered in a layer of sediment containing lead above the concentration the federal government considers hazardous to human health.
This according to a new study.
The dirt poses the greatest hazard to small children who might play in it.
Said Stephen Presley, a toxicologist at Texas Tech, who led the soil survey team.
The uh hazard could be reduced by keeping the dirt from becoming dry and airborne by covering it with uncontaminated soil, or if necessary, by hauling it away.
Right, what would you do if if you've this in the Washington Post today, by the way, if you have if you have soil, you got dirt down there that's got uh uh higher than safe lead content, and you get three options.
You could uh keep the dirt from becoming dry and airborne, which I guess you mean to water it down.
You can cover it with uncontaminated soil, or if just hauled it away.
What what what would you do?
What do you think the easiest thing to do?
I don't I don't know how much soil we're talking about here.
Uh Snerdley says, I wouldn't believe it.
But on the basis that nothing else that's been reported about think that has been accurate.
Um Presley, that would be uh Stephen M. Prestley, the toxicologist at Texas Tech, said these levels are not astronomical.
It's not like this is an insurmountable hazard, but we are saying that we did find levels that exceeded these thresholds for human health.
The uh study will appear in the environmental science and technology uh and is posted on the American Chemical Society's website.
The source of most of the lead was exhaust from a centuries work that'd be a hundred years for those of you in Rio Linda, of leaded gasoline burned by automobiles.
In many places, it was under the soil surface and covered with vegetation, but the hurricane to flood suspended it in the water and then redeposited it sometimes a long way from where it originated.
So gasoline is uh is at fault here.
What would you do?
Snerdley knows what he was to do.
What would you do now?
Well Snerdley says he'd wear shoes.
Yep.
It doesn't, it doesn't help.
It does it doesn't help uh if you if it's airborne snurdly, that's the point.
You can wear shoes all day long, but a lace to stuff shoes in your mouth and up your nose is not gonna.
All right, here is the next story.
Christmas is damaging the environment, says a new report by the uh Australian Conservation Foundation.
The report titled The Hidden Cost of Christmas calculated the environmental impact of spending on books, clothes, alcohol, electrical appliances, and and lollies during the festive season.
So it's consumerism that's causing the environmental destruction because you people spend too much money, the economy's doing too well, and you're sp have you seen it on the consumer prices and how they f lowest 56 years the drop.
It's incredible.
All the economic news is good.
It's another reason why there's doom and gloom and misery throughout the left today.
They just they can't cope with American success.
You know, this is the worst time of year for for for liberals anyway.
It's Christmas time.
They don't want any part of that.
Um it's it's Because it's not fair.
It's it's they have this radical egalitarianism about that.
If not everybody is is celebrates Christmas, then nobody should.
It isn't fair.
It's just not fair.
What about all the people who don't believe in it?
What about them?
What about them?
Hey, it's a democracy, uh, minority rules.
Well, these people are talking about the tyranny of the minority.
95% of the people in this country profess to believe in God.
That scares the liberals, too.
So we have Christmas as a national holiday.
Well, what are we supposed to do?
Cancel it, the libs say, because not everybody celebrates it.
Not everybody enjoys it.
Okay.
So in this case, we have we have uh liberals just can't cope with with American economic success.
They can't cope with Christmas.
It's a tough time of year for them, and now they learn that it's even the worst time of the year for the environment.
It's gotta be tough to get up each day this time of year for a liberal.
Uh the report said that gifts like DVD players and coffee makers generated 780,000 tons of greenhouse pollution even before they were unwrapped and used.
That's due to fuel consumption during production and distribution.
Do you see how wackled you could say that about every day of the year?
This is the solution to this is shut down capitalism.
Shut down production of anything.
Just a bunch of nuts.
Clarice Feldman, American thinker.com.
I'm always amazed, she writes, at the selective reportage of environmental issues.
Yesterday, the AP reported, an AP analysis of a little known government research project shows that black Americans are 79% more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger.
Thus, we have a news media analysis of a government research project which concludes that industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger in the neighborhoods where blacks are 79% more likely to live than whites.
We are not given the factual basis for these suspicions.
We in fact are given no evidence to conclude that industrial pollution poses a greater health danger to the residents of these neighborhoods than those of other neighborhoods.
We do have rather stringent environmental protection laws to prevent harm from industrial and other pollutants, yet the articles never indicate they are inadequate or not being properly enforced.
And as usual, the AP article devolves into anecdotal, not scientific reports to plump up this thin gruel.
In sum, we have speculation on top of speculation, which gets top billing because it has a highly charged minorities as victims of capitalism, and the Bush administration is bad subtext.
And she is exactly right.
Population control advocates blamed DDT for increasing third world population.
In the 60s, the World Health Organization believed that there was no alternative to the overpopulation problem but to assure that up to 40% of the children in poor nations would die of malaria.
As an official, the Agency for International Development stated, rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing.
That was the...
So get rid of DDT and people die, and that will that will save a poverty problem.
Or help alleviate a poverty problem.
So here we have this report: industrial pollution suspected of posing the greatest health danger in neighborhoods where blacks are 79% more likely to live than whites.
And it goes back to an old joke that I love to tell.
God says world to end tomorrow.
This is a media template.
God says world to end tomorrow.
Calls all these newspaper reporters, calls it Times, calls the USA Today, calls Wall Street Journal, calls the Washington Post.
The next day, the New York Times says God says world to end tomorrow.
They put the headline and story on page A16.
USA Today.
We're doomed.
Wall Street Journal, God says world to end tomorrow, markets to close early.
Washington Post, God says world to end tomorrow, women and minorities hardest hit.
So it's the same thing here.
You get this pollution story, minorities.
Hardest hit.
By the way, the Die Galeo hotline poll, a hotline.
This is uh one of the Bibles of Inside the Beltway, shows that among registered Voters, President Bush's approval rating is now at 50%, up from 39% last month.
47 currently disapprove.
Meanwhile, congressional job approval at 26%, down from 36% last month.
This is Diego Hotline poll.
Bush approval numbers at 50%.
As I as I say, uh ladies, and here's a companion story from uh from Mark Murray.
This on the MSNBC website.
He's an NBC reporter.
Polls suggest Bush's free fall appears to be over despite our best efforts.
Now, it doesn't actually say despite our best efforts.
I just added that in there on my own because I know that's what they're thinking.
But uh they've they they're talking about their own poll, the NBC uh Wall Street Journal survey, and uh Bush's free fall appears to be over.
For the first time in months, Bush's job approval is increased.
In addition, as elections take place Thursday in Iraq, Americans are more confident about success there than they were a month ago.
And an overwhelming majority backs Bush's stance the U.S. should not immediately withdraw all of its troops from Iraq.
Not a good day for the left.
Not a good and remember, folks, the worst news of all, Democrats lost another election today, this one in Iraq.
Be right back.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
I'm gonna get to the Barrett report.
I'm gonna get all that stuff today.
We got we got an hour and forty minutes left.
Can't do it all in three hours.
That's why it is a three-hour program.
Welcome back, El Rushbow, having more fun and a human being should be allowed to have doing what I was born to do.
All right, let's let's do this McNabb business and it did it won't go away.
I keep saying, let's do the McNabb business to get rid of it, but it won't go away.
ESPN now running a poll, a vote on their website.
Should McNabb answer barbs from Black Leader.
And uh here is uh here's how it opens.
Donovan McNabb is on the defensive again just two years ago.
After responding to Rush Limbaugh's claims that he received accolades in the press because he's African American, McNabb is now reacting to Philadelphia NAA LCP leader Jay Wyatt Mondesire, who wrote an opinion piece for the Philadelphia Sun in late November, claiming McNabb used the race card as an excuse for his poor play.
This Mondesire guy did something totally different than I did.
Mondesire is attacking McNabb, calling him mediocre, saying he's not good, and also criticizing his blackness.
I didn't do either.
Yet I continue to get lumped.
I ripped the media.
So they got this this poll.
They want people to participate.
I'm not gonna give it to questions because they're inane and silly and they're just designed to stimulate web usage.
But there's an interesting thing here from McNabb himself.
You know, one of the things that that's interesting about McNabb in his press conference after the rush Bruha, uh, McNabb lamented the fact that his race was even a factor in things.
I thought we were past that, he said.
Then they had the NFC championship game in Philadelphia last year.
I haven't said this.
I haven't commented on this before because you know what's what's happened has happened.
But there's McNabb talking about how great it is that two black quarterbacks are playing an NFC championship game, meaning he and Michael Vick of the Atlanta Falcons.
And in the media has continued to make my point by not letting go of the race factor of this whole story from the get-go.
They're the ones that brought it up, made it happen in the first place.
But then the the real interesting thing here is this quote from McNabb.
He said, if you talk about my reacting to this Mondesire guy in Philadelphia, if you talk about my play, that's one thing.
But when you talk about my race, now we got problems.
If you're trying to make a name off my name again, I hope your closets clean because something's gonna come out about you.
I always thought the NAACP supported African Americans and didn't talk bad about them.
Now you'll learn a little bit more.
Hey, Donnie.
If I may paraphrase Jay Wyatt Mondesire.
And let me remind everybody that last week when I talked about this, I came out in strong support of McNabb for being criticized by the local Philadelphia meetings, not this Mondeseir guy, but the the mainstream Philadelphia press is all over McNabb ever since His uh last game against the Cowboys.
And they're talking about his reputation's ruined.
He lost the locker room.
There are more Eagles players that love Terrell Owens than like McNabb.
McNabb is not a leader.
They're dumping on this guy all because the team's in the tank this year.
Team's in the toilet, not in the tank.
Teams four and nine, going nowhere, playing third and fourth stringers and so forth.
And they're dumping on McNabb saying he's lost his reputation.
I got an example of this that just published today by some clown named Rich Hoffman.
But Donnie, let me tell you something.
You know, you think you're a crusader here, pal, and and on the football field you may be.
But when it comes to forging progress for blacks, let me give you some names of people that the NAACP has tried to destroy.
Does the name Clarence Thomas ring a bell?
Have you have you heard of Clarence Thomas, Mr. McNabb?
Have you heard of Condoleezza Rice?
Have you seen some of the cartoons that the mainstream press has written about Condoleezza Rice?
Talking about how she got where she got because she's performed sex acts on George W. Bush, portraying her as nothing more than a an Aunt Jemima and accentuating her African American features to make her look like a step and fetch it idiot.
Have you seen any of this, Mr. McNabb?
Does the name Michael Steele ring a bell?
Michael Steele is a lieutenant governor of Maryland, not far from Pennsylvania.
In fact, it borders Pennsylvania, not far from Philadelphia.
I don't know if you know about this, but he wants to run for the Senate.
And the NAACP and the white liberal plantation owners of this country are out trying to destroy Michael Steele.
They're throwing Oreo cookies at the guy when he goes out and makes speech.
And they're claiming he's black on the outside, white on the inside.
Does it name Thomas Sowell ring a bell?
One of the most brilliant economists and writers in this country, who is regularly impugned, along with any other successful black conservative in this country by no less than the uh Reverend Zax and others from the NAALCP.
If you are, what is he, 30 years old now?
I know he's as a football player, but come on, he's taking on a crusade now.
If you are just learning that the NAA LCP criticizes black people, then uh you've got a lot of learning to do.
And I would be glad to teach you.
I'd be glad to bring you into the 21st century in terms of the world.
Rather than the link, which is the stadium in Philadelphia where the Eagles purportedly play.
Now here's this piece in the Philadelphia.
What is this?
This is the Philadelphia Daily News piece by Rich Hoffman.
It's titled Alone in a Crowd.
It no longer seems like McNabb's team.
Talks about how McNabb was the leader four years ago when the Eagles went into championship games St. Louis, barely lost to the Rams.
McNabb stayed on the field to watch the Rams celebrate so he could soak it in and find out what it was all about.
And he was leading this team.
Now, fast forward to last Sunday night, four days ago.
Very different picture of McNabb, the place the Eagles locker room after the loss to the Giants.
McNabb had watched the game from a luxury suite.
He went down to the locker room to shake hands.
About a minute after reporters had streamed out, Coach Andy Reid's news conference, McNabb entered.
He began shaking hands in a room where fewer than half the players were at their lockers.
It's hard to describe now how awkward the whole scene looked.
How out of place.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a player do it before.
He goes on to talk about it all seemed forced.
The players didn't want McNabb there.
McNabb didn't want to be there.
McNabb only felt comfortable when he was hanging around the other quarterbacks, Mike McMahon and Troy Coi Detmer.
And then he talks about however all these Eagles went to the birthday party at uh to Terrell Owens through over in Atlantic City, and uh how these players quote how their love for T.O. and so forth.
And then the worst thing in the last few days, it wasn't the reported 19 Eagles who went to TO's birthday party.
No, the worst thing was McNabb's press of press availability on Saturday.
The worst thing was McNabb saying there's never been a question of me losing the locker room until this year.
If I've lost the locker room, the question goes up, why?
Is it because now people are starting to look at me sideways for what I've been doing or what I make or whatever Owens had a problem with?
That's the question I'm trying to get answered.
I've lost if I've lost the locker room or not, no answers come my way.
The fact that McNabb doesn't know the answer is an answer in itself.
McNabb has only one option left to be great again.
Otherwise, career's over, respect is over, reputation's gone.
This is stuff it's running all week.
And I ripped these guys last week for writing this kind of stuff.
McNabb was probably this has been a very courageous season, but isn't that there playing hurt, trying to take the team and lead it, even though most players wouldn't have even been on the field.
It's not good enough for him because he wasn't able to play with a ripped groin muscle.
He's worthless now to these people.
And I you know, it's just incredible.
And I defended him last week, but you would never know it anywhere else.
Doing what I was born to do as a man, a legend, a way of life, Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
All right, um, here's Mr. McNabb.
Uh you you may be wondering, you know, the NAACP criticizing you in Philadelphia why they haven't come to your defense.
They've been occupied in ACP trying to save the life of Tookie Williams.
Um now they are planning his grand funeral out in LA, and they're a little bit too busy at the NAACP to be worried about you right now.
Executed gang founder Stanley Tookie Williams will be memorialized at a grand funeral in LA next week.
And then his ashes spread on the African soil of his ancestors, his supporters said.
Williams, 51, who was found guilty of four killings, but became an anti-violence crusader on death row.
California Governor Arnold rejected appeals to spare Williams, making the actor turn politician a target of derision for the thousands that stood vigil at the prison gates during the execution.
What a sentence.
More than two thousand people, including actors Sean Penn and Mike Farrell, and the well-known communist sympathizer Joan Baez, gathered outside the prison renewing calls for an end to the death penalty.
Civil rights activist, the Reverend Dax was among the people to visit with Williams in the hours before the execution.
He condemned the U.S. criminal justice system as a racially biased and socially broken one.
Jackson and the rapper Snoop Dogg are reported to be on the roster of speakers for a funeral service for Tookie Williams at a large venue in Los Angeles earlier next week.
Among the celebrities that campaigned to stop the execution were the actors Jamie Fox and Danny Glover.
Barbara Becknell, or best now, I'm sure pronounces it.
Becknell, uh Becknell, is uh uh Tukey Williams confident and co-author of Tookie Williams books, vowed publicly to prove his innocence and show the world that Arnold Schwarzenegger is a cold-blooded murderer for sanctioning his education.
Well, whatever you think of all this.
The point is that they're they're they're pretty busy out there uh occupied with Tookie and uh and his uh circumstances to be concerned with McNabb's problems uh with Jay Wyatt Mondesire in uh in Philadelphia.
I don't think the victim's families will be invited to the funeral.
Is that what you asked me?
I don't think so.
I don't I don't think the victim You mean Tookie's victims' families?
No, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I don't think so.
I don't think it happened.
I don't even know if I don't know if they'd go if they were.
Casey in uh Santa Maria, California, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, Rush, Mega Megadiddos T. Thank you, sir.
I'm a big fan of yours.
I am an African American Republican out here in California.
Imagine that.
Anyway, what I want to do.
I'd like to uh get an autograph picture of you and send it to Donovan McNabb.
Right.
Anyway, what I wanted to tell you today is that you know, scientists have extrapolated the rate of ocean incursion into the next 5200 years off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
And what they found is that New Orleans will be about twenty miles off the coast of Gulf of Mexico.
So maybe it'll be an island.
Well, they're gonna rebuild it and they can do it.
Now, New Orleans, you know, a lot of people asked me, and the post-hurricane aftermath.
People would call and say, why did why did they build it there now?
Why would they build a city underwater?
And they didn't.
When New Orleans was first built, it was not underwater.
There's so many arguments.
You'd have to talk to people that live there.
This is an ongoing argument of what the Corps of Engineers and others have done with the levy and diverting water and so forth.
I I'm not nearly qualified to tell you this, but I've heard the arguments, and there are people that claim if we had just left nature alone, everything would have been cool, but we thought we could manage nature better than God and nature itself, and so we did this and that thing in the city sank over the years below 15, 15 feet below sea level, and then we had to build the cemeteries above sea levels, to build the levees and so forth and uh and all this.
So I I you know if the the bottom line is that you you're forgetting, Casey, that if the ocean is going to rise 20 feet, we can stop that.
All we got to do is stop burning fossil fuels.
All we have to do is stop polluting, stop driving SUVs.
The oceans are rising because of man.
And I think New Orleans would be a great test to show that we care enough about one of our great cities to finally get a handle on global warming.
Because the only reason the oceans are rising, the Gulf in this case, is because of us.
So if we're causing the oceans to rise, we can stop it.
And in addition to that, you may not have heard the news, we're going to build the levees even stronger than uh than they were.
Jim in Princeton, I'm glad you called.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Yes, Rush, Naval Reserve Ditto's uh to you.
Uh thank you, sir.
I'd like to tweak your uh liberal listeners just a little bit and uh suggest that that our military uh efforts to democracy uh democratize the Middle East could be considered probably the most uh successful military achievement ever in the history of the world.
Give me your perspective on that.
I mean, I there's a lot of there's a lot of achievements out there.
World War II and getting rid of Hitler and uh Mussolini.
Uh the Soviet Cold War, that was not a military, well, it was in a way, we built things that we didn't have to use as deterrence.
Um clearly your knowledge on history is most likely greater than mine.
No, no, no.
I just want I just want your perspective.
It's an interesting perspective.
I want your perspective.
Well, in just over two and a half years, we have 50 million people free from tyranny and dictatorship.
We have uh 70% of those uh the population, and at least Iraq, uh voting now and uh uh and a democracy, uh with just just over 2,000 U.S. deaths.
Uh has that ever occurred, ever in the history of the world.
Well, um yes, I uh I I know what you're saying, but you'd have to say we've democratized a whole Eastern bloc.
Um that we we enabled, see when you say democracy, uh what I what I actually interpret is freedom, and we have liberated over the course of our nation's existence.
How many was it?
50, is it a billion people, 50 million people we've liberated?
It's incredible.
The number of people that we have liberated, the whole Eastern bloc after after defeating the uh the evil Soviet Union uh uh is just a great recent example.
This is no uh the Iraq situation, I'm not trying to underplay it, downplay it at all, because I think uh understand exactly what you're saying to go into that part of the world and to achieve this.
By the way, in what less than three years?
It is it is nothing less than phenomenal.
But see, my my take on this, Jim, is that this is what we Americans do.
This is American exceptionalism.
There are Americans with this kind of vision, that these things are possible.
There are also Americans who think it's not.
They are Democrats and liberals.
They don't think it's possible.
I think it's worthless to try, despite our nation's history, despite the history we can point to and say, look at what we've done.
We we we are we are not trying to uh harbor all the world's good and decency in our country and not share it.
We are not that at all.
We're not the evil of the world.
This is an exceptional country.
We have exceptional people.
We have been fortunate to elect exceptional leaders, which gives us confidence in the American voters.
And that vision is all about making the world safer as well as our own country safer.
And the idea that you have naysayers and negativist doom and gloomers who say it's not possible that these people who are living in tyranny cannot understand freedom anyway.
It's a waste of time.
It's not worth the effort.
It's not worth the loss of American lives.
This is why I say they can't be trusted to defend the country.
The principles that they hold are not strong enough to even defend.
And it's a it's an amazing thing.
So I'm not trying to downplay what you say at all.
I just think this is typical of what we do and what we've done as Americans.
And I think we ought to be proud as we can be that this is happening.
Now there are drum beats constantly being heard and sounded throughout much of liberal America that attempt to discourage people, and there's no question that they those drum beats are heard by more people than we would like.
But despite that, we have success.
And we will continue to have success as long as we continue to produce these kinds of great visionaries who have the guts and the courage to ignore the drum beats and all of these other sounds of doom and gloom and negativism.
Let's take a brief time.
I Snerdley just sent me a note I know, folks.
I we have uh we all set up these Google alerts here.
You can you can put in your name, uh well, any name you want, and if that name appears anywhere in the news, Google sends you an alert to the email address that you specify.
So I got a Google alert.
Mine actually came in uh I think it was around a little before one o'clock.
Google alert on my name.
Philadelphia TV station has just posted their original story on me and McNabb from 2003.
With all this other stuff going.
So it's out there on all these RSS readers and whoever else reads Google.
And in fact, uh Grab Cut 12A.
The the media try to make it sound like it happened today.
Here, this is this is uh CNN Headline News Sports.
And here is a portion of Larry Smith's report at uh they just ran this within the past 45 minutes.
I don't think he's been that good from the get-go.
I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL.
I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.
Conservative tonkaroo Rush Limbaugh ended up losing his short-lived gig on ESPN as a result of that comment two years ago.
Now the head of the Philadelphia chapter, the NAACP is standing by his similar comments made.
Stop the tape.
I don't know who Larry Smith is.
And I'm I don't have time, and I'm if I had the time, I wouldn't waste it.
But Mr. Smith, somebody needs to call Larry Smith at CNN and tell him that what Mondesier is saying is nothing like I said.
Even Mondesier himself in a Philadelphia Inquirer Daily News story was asked, well, so what about what Limbaugh said?
Mondesier said Limbaugh wasn't talking about McNabb, he was talking about the media.
I'm talking about McNabb, and I'm telling you he's mediocre.
This guy now says similar comments made by Limbo.
I didn't, I didn't, I it just I love this.
This is gonna be its eternity, forever linked.
Never ever I bet you McNabb invites me to the introduction speech when he goes to the Hall of Fame.
Back after this, stay with us.
We have on the phone uh state representative from uh Louisiana, actually from New Orleans, uh John Labruzzo.
Mr. Labruzzo, welcome to the program.
Great to have you with us.
Thank you, Rush.
It's good to be with you.
You um uh you told the call screener that you uh you you only heard about the uh lead in soil content being uh uh irregular and and too high on this program.
You've not heard it from the author of the study.
Correct.
Well, I serve on the both the environment and health and welfare committee.
And uh we we just met, the environment committee met two days ago, and we heard testimony from uh a lot of different uh um entities, and we've heard nothing about um dangerous lead levels uh in this city.
I I haven't heard anything about it.
It's a it's a Washington Post story.
David Brown's the uh the writer, and the source is Stephen Presley, a toxicologist at Texas Tech University who led the soil survey team.
So apparently uh they've been doing this independently.
They uh uh but you've not heard for you do you even know Stephen Presley or the or the uh uh the team from Texas Tech that's been doing this?
No, I know nothing about it.
And uh like I said, I serve on the environment committee and the Health and Welfare Committee.
So something like that, or that information would come through either one of those committees.
Uh I would I would imagine relatively soon I would be the first to hear about it if there was an issue because we would we'd start to uh develop ways to deal with it.
Um you know per our job as legislators.
Well this is really puzzling to me.
Uh if this ends up in the Washington Post uh I mean there there's a way that happens.
Somebody mean uh a reporter is not just floating around New Orleans digging this stuff up.
Somebody clues the reporter in that they're working on this reporter gets interested, digs deep, finds out the source, so it becomes a media story before you know about it.
Now what what do you say?
Are you s are you s do you have any doubt that the story's true because you've not had it presented to your committee or are you upset that it might be true and hasn't been reported to your committee.
Well uh n I I don't know that it's true or it's not true.
I am upset that it hadn't been presented to the committee, if it is true.
Although, also, if the dirt has been scuffled about due to the hurricane, it seems logical that with some rain and with potentially some new vegetative growth, wouldn't the problem be resolved or at least put back to its place where it was pre-Katrina?
Yeah, they say there are three methods here of dealing with this.
You can reduce the lead content by keeping the dirt from becoming dry airs, an airborne, which you just have some rain, covering it with uncontaminated soil or, if necessary, by hauling it away.
Now, it doesn't specify which, well, it might specify the neighborhoods.
I didn't read the whole story, but it says some neighborhoods are covered in a layer of sediment.
And they say the source for this is old leaded gasoline, the contaminated soil that was well buried for all these years.
The hurricane came along, ripped everything up, and all this got spread around in the air.
It deposited itself in these neighborhoods.
It wasn't originally there.
It came from somewhere else.
I'll tell you what we are finding.
After the pre-Katrina, a lot of the areas, especially in my district and others nearby, were coated with fine dust.
And it was really, you could smell it, and it wasn't very pleasant.
But after each rain, what we found is it kind of cleansed itself.
Isn't it amazing how that works?
All the dust and debris was washed away into the drains and then, you know, removed.
And every time we have a rain, we find that it's cleaner.
city is cleaner and and better than it was uh before it's amazing how that works it's incredible how nature really can take care of a lot of problems yeah I remember one day when I was a kid it was really the really hazy in the summertime and then and uh look like a small town there weren't any smokestacks uh well or with a cement factory but uh other than that there weren't any smokestacks and I asked my dad well how where did this come?
Don't worry about it, son.
It's gonna rain soon it'll washed all away.
And pretty soon a coal front came through it rained and bam oh the sky the next day was clear as it could be Prince William Sound got cleaned up faster on its own by nature instead of all these people with dawn dishwashing detergent out there rubbing the rocks with paper towels to get the oil off it it just it does happen.
Are you optimistic about New Orleans'return?
Absolutely.
I think we'll be a smaller city coming back, but already I see the life is coming back.
In my district, we were 83% of my district was flooded, and 52% of the businesses are back, and they're coming more and more every day.
And as you go deeper into the New Orleans area, I think you see more of the same.
if you are a tourist i think and you came back next year uh I doubt you would notice a a big difference in the city itself the places that you'd want to go.
Um we're gonna have Mardi Gras uh this year I invite uh everyone to come to New Orleans and and enjoy um you know New Orleans and and the restaurants are opening up and I think real soon this city will be uh recognizable by anybody coming back into New Orleans.
We welcome them I'll tell you we all we all certainly hope so because I I myself love the place.
I have I have always loved going down there and I uh it is the it's it's truly unique city in this country.
It really is.
Uh Mr. Labruzzo thanks for the call.
We got a time constraint problem and I have to run.
Nice talking to you.
We'll be back in just a sec, folks.
All right folks two hours down one to go the fastest three hours in media.
Plaud right on right at race right on actually.
Stay tuned.
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