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March 14, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:38
March 14, 2011, Monday, Hour #2
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Sorry, folks, it took uh 30 seconds to print four lines out of my printer.
That's why I was delayed opening the second hour of today's excursion at a broadcast accidents.
We're here now.
You can stop panicking.
Thirty seconds into the theme intro, and there's no me.
People go, what's wrong?
What's wrong?
Sometimes I do it on purpose, just to uh just to pique your attention.
Great to have you back, El Rushbo.
Things in the news outside of the Japan tsunami and earthquake.
We'll get to those as the program unfolds.
Just a couple of other things I want to focus on here on this before we uh get to those uh other items.
A reminder here from Dr. Spencer, our official climatologist.
Practical energy sources.
See, this is this is the thing.
Practical, it's such an important word, and it is so absent.
Practicality takes a long vacation during an event like this.
I mean, it it here we are in the middle of a major news event, and the news cannot be relied on for clear thinking and facts.
I mean, that's that's the basic problem.
And that's why, ladies and gentlemen, I am endeavoring to deal with this as I am.
I can't tell you any more about the tsunami.
I can't show you anything in addition to what you've seen video-wise.
But I can be relied on for clear thinking and facts.
That's what we do here.
We make the complex understandable.
We bring common sense when it is in such short supply.
As Dr. Spencer, our official climatologist, Dr. Roy Spencer, University of Alabama, Huntsville, points out practical energy sources are inherently risky.
There is risk associated with virtually everything, particularly in energy production.
And the reason is that we need so much of it.
There's no way to provide it without using concentrated forms of it.
Petroleum, natural gas, coal, nuclear, those are all think of concentrated, concentrated frozen orange juice in your can, and the way you make it is you dump that into a pitcher of water and you stir it.
Our energy sources, before we refine them and prepare them for practical use, are really concentrated in their power.
A barrel of oil, natural gas, coal, what have you.
Solar and wind never compete because they produce so little energy.
When you look at it, say per acre of land required, it's just not practical.
We get less than one percent of our nation's energy from solar and wind, even now.
Thirty percent in this country comes from nuclear.
The rest, sorry to tell you, fossil.
Natural gas, and all the derivatives, and we have an appetite for it.
And we better be producing it to meet our demand and grow.
Otherwise, our economy is going to stagnate.
We cannot have a growing economy and stagnating energy production at the same time.
Cannot happen.
We cannot grow an economy with wind energy or solar.
It isn't practical.
There is no concentrated form of it.
You can't even guarantee it.
The wind will stop blowing, the sun will be obscured by the clouds.
So all of our energy sources, all of our options, have dangers, have risks inherent to their existence.
Look at the deaths due to coal mine disasters.
That's all in the name of fulfilling our energy needs.
Natural gas explosions.
Even the occasional oil rig explosion, the occasional oil tanker springing a leak.
And in the context of all this, nuclear really is our safest option in the long term, especially with newer technologies.
These Japanese reactors are over 40 years old, and they didn't fail because of them being inherently flawed.
I'll tell you something else the Japanese are doing to illustrate their genuine concern for humanity.
These are boiling water reactors for the most part.
They're destroying them.
You throw salt water into these things with boron, boric acid, you're destroying the nuclear power plant.
It's history.
They'll never produce another kilowatt of energy after this.
But they have to do this in order to protect the population and limit any further damage, danger, destruction from any fallout, what have you.
You start throwing saltwater in there to cool a core.
They still don't know some of these explosions, they don't know if these explosions are being maintained inside the containment buildings or not.
The explosions are happening.
And then they think some fuel rods have been totally exposed and melting, but they're not sure.
But regardless, they're taking steps to limit the damage, and in the process, they're wiping out these new plants.
They'll never produce again.
So my point is you can't get rid of the risk.
So to me, being adult about this, being mature, juxtapose this with the media panic that we're getting, which is to say nuclear is now not even an option.
Why look at this?
China syndrome movie, it's a never-ending anti-nuclear energy is as much a part of the leftist agenda as public sector unions are.
Stopping them, being opposed to nuclear power plant, uh, they are as adamantly opposed as they are in favor of public sector unions or anything else in their agenda.
And I'm sorry, folks, when there's a political agenda attached to anything, hello, El Rushbo, that's when we get into gear.
Because these people, media, leftists, whoever, want to try to hide behind the notion they have no agenda, that they're just reporting to news.
They're just concerned about people.
They're just concerned about public safety.
Yeah, just like they were with the war on poverty, the Great Society, all these wonderful things that were going to help people.
They've done just the opposite.
So, yeah, I have a bias.
My bias is based on intelligence guided by experience.
Liberalism fails.
I don't care what these people are for or against, take the opposite side.
It's so simple that it seems complex.
There are three separate and distinct issues facing Japan.
The earthquake was one.
One of the worst in history, followed by the tsunami, one of the worst in history.
And then, and only then, the third crisis, the nuclear problems.
The nuclear problems are not number one and two.
The nuclear problems result from the earthquake and the tsunami, neither of which, I don't care what anybody says, we have anything to do with.
We can't stop them and we can't cause them.
We'd simply have to deal with them.
There have been earthquakes, tsunamis since the beginning of time.
And when the destruction results in no destruction, it's no big deal.
But when there are houses and cars and boats and planes and so forth in the way, oh, look how horrible this is.
But when a valley of nothing, vegetation gets swamped, wow, it's really cool.
So the perspective is damage happens because we chose to put things there.
But the earth is the earth, and the earth does what it does.
And there are tsunamis and there are earthquakes.
Everything associated with life is two things risk and compromise.
People build houses on the beach in Hurricane Alley, knowingly take a risk.
It happens.
People say it's worth the risk because It's beautiful to live there.
But it's an absolute risk.
It's not the Earth's fault if houses happen to get destroyed when these things happen, because the Earth is what it is.
A tiger's a tiger.
These things happen.
It's terrible.
It's tragic, but you can't take the risk out of human life.
You can't take the risk out of anything anyone does.
It's not possible.
And so much of liberalism is fabricated on a false pretense that they can create a utopia that is risk-free, that there is never ever going to be anything horrible that happens.
There won't even be a risk of a risk if you just leave it to them.
Everything will be pristine and beautiful, as it was intended to be before humanity came along and started tampering with things.
I said earlier on in this program, fear kills.
We cannot develop an hysterical fear of nuclear power because of the risk of an accident.
We will.
I mean, we'll gonna do that.
We're going to develop an hysterical fear of nuclear power because of the risk of an accident.
Now the Japanese, more than any other nation, know the dangers of nuclear power in any number of ways.
They also realize that we have to harness it.
They have no alternative.
They don't have any oil.
They don't have any natural gas.
You talk about dependence on foreign oil.
They are 100% dependent unless they go nuke.
Japan also has, I mentioned three crises the earthquake, the tsunami, nuclear problems.
They got a fourth one now.
They've got the highest debt of any country in the world, 200% of GDP.
And one of the reasons they've got 200% of GDP debt is because they tried what we're trying now.
Endless stimulation.
Endless stimulus, quantitative, quantitative easing, printing money, what have you.
And that's going to cause uh a lot of problems when they have to rebuild in a crisis like this, because they are going to have to rebuild.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the real lesson Obama should learn from this.
That we cannot run up debt for idiotic reasons.
We cannot go into tremendous, incalculable debt spending on idiotic programs because someday we are going to have to need that money when we have a real crisis.
Something like this.
Well, we've had our Northridge quakes, we've had our quakes, we've had uh 9-11, we've had Katrina.
We're gonna have another one.
Japan's a socialist country.
200% of their GDP is debt.
Uh better stated, 200%.
The debt is 200% of GDP, is the is the is the better way to put that.
So many major events in the news, from Wisconsin to Tokyo to Tripoli.
I made a command decision this weekend for you.
I gave up playing golf this weekend.
Show prep Trump's golf.
Golden rule here at the golden microphone.
And you know how much I love.
What do you mean, am I serious?
Yes, I'm serious.
But I also know that the president of the United States did not give up his weekend golf game.
Who was his candy, by the way?
Is it Chris Matthews or Nancy Pelosi?
Does anybody know?
Let's uh let's grab a phone call here, and I have just one more little blurb, a couple more may I want to share with you, then we'll get on to domestic politics here.
Uh one of them I want to share from the business insider.
You can stop worrying about a radiation disaster in Japan.
And here's why.
And we'll have what this uh nuclear expert has to say.
Mere moments.
First, this is Mac, St. Petersburg, Florida.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
You're up next, and hello.
Kiddos from St. Petersburg, the home of the St. Petersburg Times, probably by the bay.
Thank you, sir, very much.
Rush, I'm a retired engineer.
Um, I've got 30 years in commercial and naval nuclear power.
Um I had the interesting experience of being a Babcock and Wilcox employees, part of the recovery team at Three Mile Island six months after the accident.
Uh, a minor player, but uh had access to all the technical information, and it's it's gone unreported in the mainstream media, but you can find it in the technical literature.
At Free Mile Island, the reactor core was in fact uncovered, and it did in fact melt down.
Now, when I talk about the reactor core, what I'm talking about is the fuel rods, although that's technically inaccurate.
The fuel assembly is a bundle of half-inch tubes.
Uh, and the structural material that support those fuel assemblies actually melted down into a homogeneous mass in the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel.
Now, in the classic China syndrome scenario, this molten mass glob, if you will, would meld its way through the 8 to 12-inch boilerplate that the pressure vessel is fabricated from, and then it'll meld its way through the 10 to 30 foot concrete base mat underneath the pressure vessel, where it finally gets into the dirt and ultimately uh uh hits the groundwater and creates a giant steam explosion that would throw all this stuff all over the place.
Well, of course, that didn't happen at TMI, as we all know now, because the pressure vessel maintained its structural integrity, and it's very, very likely that the pressure vessels in the Japanese plants that were made at about the same time using the same fabrication techniques will also survive.
We'll see.
I I I um all I have to go on there is you look at Three Mile Island, and uh you know, it worked.
The containment systems worked at Three Mile Island, and yet the panic that resulted from this was it was incongruent with the uh with the result.
You know, I could even say, if I wanted to really start stirring things around here, nuclear power plants and nuclear energy generally are thoroughly regulated by government.
So why isn't this said to be a failure of government when these things go wrong?
How come the regulatory agencies always escape any kind of blame?
How come how come the liberal bureaucracies always escape any blame when there's any kind of panic or problem?
These nuclear boys just out there on their own are not renegades, they're not cowboys.
Everything they do is regulated beyond reason.
And yet when you have an accident, somehow the regulators end up as spectators, demanding to know what happened.
Same thing with Katrina.
Uh same thing with mortgages.
The very people that gave us the regulations that led to the subprime mortgage, all of a sudden act shocked and surprised and outraged when it happens.
And they get to conduct the hearings, which means they get to point fingers of blame at anybody but them.
Which, what happened during Katrina, it's what's going to happen here with his nuclear business.
This is a very serious event, and it requires very serious news reporting.
And uh we're just not getting it.
In any way, shape, manner, or form.
Now, here's a post.
It's by Dr. Joseph Oman, a research scientist at MIT.
So you can stop worrying about a radiation disaster in Japan.
I repeat, there was and will not be any significant release of radioactivity from the damaged Japanese reactors.
And by significant, I mean a level of radiation of more than what you would receive on, say, long-distance airline flight or drinking a glass of beer that comes from certain areas with high levels of natural background radiation.
I've been reading every news release on the incident since the earthquake.
There has not been one single report that was accurate and free of errors.
And part of that problem is also a weakness in the Japanese crisis communication, says this MIT research scientist, nuclear expert.
By not free of errors, I I don't refer to tendentious anti-nuclear journalism.
That's quite normal these days.
By not free of error, I mean blatant errors regarding physics and natural law, as well as gross misinterpretation of facts due to an obvious lack of fundamental and basic understanding of the way nuclear reactors are built and operate.
I have read a three-page report on CNN where every single paragraph contained an error.
This again is Joseph Ullman, research scientist, MIT, posted at Business Insider.
He's a nuclear expert.
It goes on and on with all the technical jargon to back up his claims here, and he corrects the incorrect assertions and the lack of factual reporting that he cites.
Much too lengthy here for me to recount in in detail, but we will link to this at Rushlandboard.com.
You can read it for yourself if you choose.
He points out that at Chernobyl, the explosion was caused by excessive pressure buildup, hydrogen explosion, rupture of all containments, propelling molten core material into the environment, a dirty bomb.
What that did not and will not happen in Japan.
Did not and it will not.
And he explains why.
Jed Babin, American Spectator, Godzilla Redux.
Basically a post here, a quite lengthy story on some of the errors and the hysteria accompanying what's happening put in perspective.
And welcome back, Rush Limboss serving humanity.
Executing assigned host duties flawlessly here, zero mistakes.
And happy to have you along to Marrietta, Pennsylvania.
This is John.
Great to have you, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Rush, pleasure to speak with you.
You bet, sir.
I want to talk about senior Ah, geez, we gotta so yeah, uh we're gonna dump him in.
You get on the phone and see if you save this guy or getting his number or get him to pull over to the side of the road and go to a landline or whatever, we'll try to re-establish contact with him.
Uh in the meantime, Mount Hope, New York, Keith, welcome to the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Hi, Rush.
It's it's great to talk to you.
Thank you, sir, for the work that you and those like you do.
Um one like me.
But I appreciate your sentiment.
Nevertheless.
Yeah, uh, concerning this fracking, I'm I'm sure I saw an article a few weeks ago on uh the Fox website that I thought it was Arkansas, I don't quite remember.
Um they were fracking for I think natural gas or somewhere, and they had some Earth tremors, and the scientists were already wondering if that had to do with the fracking.
So this is this was something that uh that they're already working on.
That's exactly right.
I don't know, I saw that too.
I don't really like you.
I don't recall if it was Arkansas or wherever, but it's and it is something that's that's uh routine now.
Well, that's I know.
This is the buildup.
This is how it starts.
Of course, I don't have to tell you this.
I'm actually writing a novel on how it's gonna be in another 50 or 75 years if things keep going the way they are.
Well, here's it look at it it gets back, folks, to what I was uh talking about mere moments ago regarding risk.
The left would have you believe that there are risk free ways to eat.
There are risk-free ways to produce energy.
There are risk-free ways to live.
There are risk-free ways to build a house, all this, whatever it is, if you just let them be in charge of it.
So we have I don't think people think this way.
They're too busy leading their lives.
I've often thought about the people we've never met, the people that we've never heard of who make this country work.
The production of so much of what we need, forget our wants and desires sibaritic pursuits, just the production of things that we need.
The amounts involved are unimaginable.
The human brain is not possible, not capable of calculating it all.
We hear how many barrels of oil a day that we use.
I dare say none of us can picture it.
This one day, imagine uninterrupted for as long as you live.
You go to the gas station, it's gonna be there.
You adjust your thermostat, it's gonna matter.
Whatever it is, where energy is concerned or any other need, it's there in this country.
You don't even question it until it isn't there.
Or until the price goes up so high that having it there is a choice that you have to make.
But with all those factors, nevertheless, think of it has to be made available, it has to be produced, it has to be found.
In many cases, it has to be refined.
Then it has to be distributed.
This boggles my mind.
The people that do this, the people who take the risk at finding this stuff, and you know, we're talking about fracking for oil or natural gas.
Let me stay focused on that.
There is no mistaking our need.
Whether we're talking about American citizens and their desires and their expectations for comfort.
Their desires and expectations of security.
Their desires and expectations of economic affordability.
Producing all of this requires risk.
Add to this the political force known as the left, trying as best they can at every point to stop this, to make it more difficult for whatever their reason.
It's destroying the planet, it's too expensive, it's not fairly distributed, whatever.
You've got an entire political force trying to stop those who do this production, who take these risks.
It is an amount of energy that we cannot humanly fathom.
Yet it's met every day.
And it is met every day with the expectations can be there tomorrow.
We have people today designing aircraft that will not go into production for 10 years, that are assuming there will be jet fuel ten years from now.
Why design and manufacture something, it'll never get off the ground because we're gonna run out of the fuel?
They are expecting it.
Plus, I think they happen to know that it's there and will be there.
So here we have some people who have come along and found deposits of oil and natural gas in places that five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago we had no hope of getting.
We didn't have the technology to do so, and at the early stages of the invention of said technology, it was still so expensive it made no practical sense.
If it cost 150 dollars a barrel to get it via fracking and the price of barrels eighty bucks, why?
Makes no economic sense, you're not gonna do it.
Well, you sit around, you got your patents and permits, and you wait.
Market forces eventually make it profitable to go get the stuff.
Ergo, here we are.
We're going out there now because there is this demand and there is this expectation, and not just here, the Europeans have it, the Chinese are starting to have it, the Indians are starting to have it, expecting it to be there every day.
Just as turning on a tap, there's gonna be water coming out, they expect it.
Somebody has to produce it.
Some evil corporation, some group of people, somebody has to trans it.
So now, amidst all this talk of running out, there's a finite life supply of uh oil and natural gas.
Oh no, that's why we gotta go green and all that rot gut where there is no concentrated form of it.
There is no market for it.
It doesn't exist yet as a viable source of any perceptible energy need or desire.
It just isn't there.
And we got a regime totally pushing it at the expense of these other things.
Ergo.
Here come these guys, these companies, whoever they are, come up with this fracking to get more natural gas to meet these expectations, more oil to meet these demands.
And now what do we got?
We have a bunch of panty wastes who couldn't produce a damn thing for themselves if they have to, trying to stop it by claiming it's causing earth tremors.
Which could lead to earthquakes.
Panic mode in full tilt.
Economist TV Today, 46% chance San Andreas Fault blows in 30 years.
46% chance.
so Well, there's risk with everything.
And these guys that are trying to stand in the way of the production, the discovery, production, transport of all of this stuff that you and I expect, demand on a daily basis, are going to try to shut it down.
They're going to try to stop it and shut it down using fear.
Innuendo, and here we are.
In the timing wonderful.
So he had an earthquake over in Japan.
Guess what?
Fracking might have caused it.
So we have enemies.
Enemies of our energy needs.
And they happen to have their friends and allies in the Democrat Party.
Yet they say people, Tea Party, we're a bunch of fear-mongers.
We're not fearmongers.
The fearmongers among us are found on the American left, the worldwide left.
It's gotten to the point where you expect the gasoline to be there at an affordable price.
You expect the thermostat to make a difference when you change it.
You want it hotter or colder in your house, apartment, whatever, you expect it to happen.
The people who make that possible are portrayed as your enemies.
Big oil, big retail, big gas, by the people who are promising you that they can provide these wants and needs and desires for you risk-free if you just listen to them.
They also want to ban toilet paper, have you start using leaves.
And I'm not making it up.
We have serious choices here.
And you can't, as a rational human being, you cannot expect that human life, even in as an advanced country as ours, to be without risk.
You just can't expect it.
Disasters, horrible, unfortunate things are going to happen.
Just like beautiful, wonderful, unbelievable things happen.
It's a mix.
But this desire, or this hope, whatever, to take the risk out of things, because it is the risk that is threatening people's lives and threatening their happiness.
It's the exact opposite.
It is the risk that leads to the reward.
And in our case, it's the highest standard of living in the history of civilization.
And when you understand that, the United States, the highest standard of living in 250 years of existence.
Other civilizations have been around thousands of years, 250 or less for us, highest standard of living in human history, however the hell long it is.
And we have enemies.
On our own shores in our own country.
We have people who are trying to bring that aspect of life in America to a screeching halt for whatever convoluted sick reasons.
They're feeling guilty.
It's unfair that we should live as well as we do when others around the world don't.
When that's not our doing.
In fact, to the extent that standards of living around the world have risen, it's because of us.
Because of the risk taking and the ingenuity, the freedom to be that has existed in this country.
So there's an economic terrorism going on.
These people now on this anti-fracking business, just to use an example, saying the anti-nuclear business, what have you, they're just using scare tactics trying to stop progress.
And that's really what it boils down to.
You have a group of people trying to tell us that progress is deadly.
Progress kills.
I don't know about you, it just offends my sensibilities.
please.
Profoundly.
These are not the kind of people I would want to depend on in any aspect for anything in my life.
For two reasons.
One, I just wouldn't want to depend.
I see them, I hear them, I listen to them, I know that they're not capable, and two, their track record.
Whenever they've been in charge, particularly unfettered, you have poverty, disaster, tyranny, totalitarianism, junt dungeons, political prisons, what have you, when they are in charge.
Because of course, theirs is a false promise.
There is no utopia, there is no risk-free existence, and people who are originally befuddled and taken in by this promise of theirs soon enough realize it's crony and they want out.
So these people, portraying themselves as our saviors, build walls to keep people in who want to leave.
Dungeons and prisons.
It's the history of the world.
We are that exception.
I must take a break.
Don't go away.
Let me give you another illustration of how this all happens.
It's amazing how the liberals distribute their talking points.
Every liberal politician, every liberal journalist is reading from the same playbook.
All together now, the Peter King hearings on domestic terrorism will create a whole new generation of jihadists.
We've seen this, right?
You saw it all weekend, all last week.
We better be careful.
They're gonna really get ticked off at us is gonna create, just like Gitmo, just like going to Afghanistan or Iraq, gonna create a whole new generation of terrorists.
All right, how about this?
For those of you at the New York Times and CBS ABC, NBC, the Washington Post, using the same talking point that you can't let go of.
Peter King hearings, Guantanamo Bay, prison, Abu Grab, whatever is going to lead to a whole new generation of jihadists.
How about this?
Any criticism of the Tea Party will create a whole new generation of freedom lovers.
You keep ripping into the Tea Party, and all you're doing is creating more of them.
Well, would you think of yourselves and your reporting that way?
Why are you thinking of the Peter King hearings?
Your criticism, your never-ending irrational criticism of Sarah Palin, it's just going to create more Sarah Palins coming out of the woodwork.
Would that stop you?
From your irrational, immature, inexplicable hatred and reporting of Sarah Palin?
No, of course not.
You're going to keep telling us what a bunch of teabaggers the Tea Party is, you're going to tell us what a bunch of racist, sexist, bigot homophobes they are.
You're going to keep telling us how stupid and how dangerous and how whiny and how immature and how everything else Sarah Palin is.
But we're not supposed to do the Peter King hearings that might lead to more jihadists.
So everything these people do is aimed at shutting us up, is aimed at intimidating us.
And the thing that really ticks me off is when it works against our people.
Like it apparently is working in the House leadership now.
You keep going on this, and you're gonna lead to government shutdown.
And you're gonna get blamed for it.
Oh, we don't want a government shutdown, and we certainly don't want to get blamed for it.
So I hate it.
I hate it when they set the premise and we react to it.
I just despise it.
Because, see, I don't.
Just refuse to.
But living in Washington, New York apparently changes your attitude about that.
Well, the latest Reuters story, they're not happy.
The nuclear crisis in Japan, unlikely to turn into another Chernobyl, the world's worst nuclear accident, according to the head of the United Nations atomic watchdog today.
Damn it, says Reuters.
Not gonna be another Chernobyl, despite all of our stories about cores having melted down, despite the fuel rods being exposed, despite every report we've had, it's not gonna be Chernobyl.
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