The Politics of Hurricane Coverage

RUSH: Okay, testing, testing, one two. Okay, folks, we're in Los Angeles here as we have migrated. We have moved to the Left Coast in order to evacuate ground zero for Hurricane Matthew. And, as always happens, we gotta do some things live on the radio because what we do beforehand never holds. So this is called mix minus. You need to bring the audio up. Bring it up... There we go. Bring it up a little bit more. Bring it up just a little bit... You are not hearing the changes I'm hearing. This is only how I hear things. If I don't hear myself, folks, it doesn't matter what you hear. Okay, that sounds good. As long as I'm here, doesn't matter where "here" is. We have come to the Left Coast hopefully for just a couple of days.

Great to have you here. Telephone number is 800-282-2882. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

It's amazing the number of people who have looked at the this hurricane and think that it's aimed right for where I live. And, of course, when these things happen... As I alluded to it yesterday, folks, I have become an amateur hurricane tracker. By no means do I suggest anything I say should be believed over the National Hurricane Center. I must... Actually I think you should, but I can't officially say that. I can't officially say it. I have been studying these things as long as I have lived in Florida because that's the first time they actually began to have any impact on me.

It's the way things work for most. Growing up in Missouri, hurricanes happen, yeah. You watch 'em. But there's no personal attachment to it. But there has been since 1997, and so that's how long I've been studying these things, and I've comparing the data that I collect independently versus what the government puts out via the National Hurricane Center, and there are always variations. For example, I can give you some stats right now that are true. Hurricane Matthew just went through Nassau. How many of you have been to Nassau?

It's a beautiful place, don't misunderstand. But it's 150 years old. The buildings downtown are very old. Look, the maximum winds, according to people on the ground there that have been tweeting out -- and, yes, people are still able to tweet out. They still got electricity. They still have the internet in Nassau despite this hurricane going through. Top winds, they said, were 85 miles an hour. Now, the forecast is for much higher than that. So somebody like me and those of us who live in Palm Beach, we look at that and we feel optimistic. We will feel hopeful.

Now, we also look at models, the hurricane models that predict in advance the track the hurricane will take. They never agree. They're always all over the place. But as you get closer to ground zero, get closer to impact, they do get more accurate and they group together, and oftentimes the hurricane center will not follow what the model guidance is. So you say, "Okay, why?" I do. I ask, "Why do they not?" Well, let's look at what's happened here. Since -- I don't know -- the last 24 hours... If you live in Florida you know this.

For the last 24 hours the reports have been, "Get the hell out. We have a storm that's gonna hit the central coast of Florida that has never hit the central coast of Florida before in terms of this strong and this powerful." So the evacuation orders have been given. The local Drive-Bys are inciting all the panic. They're doing what they usually do. You can't go to Publix and find any bottled water, for example. It's been the case since yesterday. You see people in there staring at an empty shelf of water. You know, I didn't see it, 'cause I can't do these kind of things anymore.

But I have spies who tell me these things. (chuckles) So maximum winds of 85 in Nassau yet we're told to suspect 160-mile-an-hour winds. Well, what if it's not gonna be as bad as they say? I don't expect them to change. If the tracks in the models take it further away -- and I'm talking about where I live. I mean, they can't accommodate the entire state. It's gonna hit somewhere, or it's gonna hit closest to somewhere in Florida. So given where we live, that's the focal point for us, obviously, being selfishness as we are, as anybody would be.

You look for track information that might say, "Hey, you know what? It's not gonna get as close here as they think." And you think you find it. Then you wait for it to be reflected, and it isn't. Well, here's one of the reasons why. The East Coast of this country... You'd be amazed at the percentage of the population in this country that lives on the East Coast near the water. It would stun you. A lot of people live in Florida and a lot of people in Florida on the east coast. A lot of people, therefore, have been tuning in, and they have heard every warning, everything said.

Well, if it's not gonna be that bad, you wouldn't expect the hurricane center to back off of it, because what if at the last moment it strengthens and they're wrong? So even if it might not be as bad as they forecast, they're not gonna say so. On the other hand, let's say that they did. Let's say that, in my case, the track... Let's say I want to see it move east, and let's say in the model runs I see it moving east, and I go, "Yay," and then I look for the next hurricane forecast, and they're not moving it east.

And I say, "Why not?" Then I stop and think. This where political comes into it. Okay, they've already got everybody feverishly pitched. If they move it further away and it doesn't go further away, they are going to catch hell like they caught hell in Katrina. They didn't do anything wrong in Katrina. They had the proper warnings. It was just that people didn't hear them enough so the hurricane center got beat up after Katrina. That's really the demarcation point.

Ever since Katrina, I think they do a risk assessment and figure it's much better to forecast really bad and be wrong -- if it doesn't end up as bad, everybody's happy -- than to forecast, "Hey, folks, it isn't gonna be that bad," and it turns out to be bad. They're gonna be hated and despised and defunded and all that. It's a long way around saying that it's... We all look for hope. We all try to find scenarios where it won't be as bad, like I found the wind speeds in Nassau nowhere near where they were predicted to be. The damage in Nassau...

I've been looking for reports of catastrophic damage, structural damage along the path of this hurricane. Can't find any. Doesn't mean it's not gonna happen in the future. Doesn't mean it's not gonna strengthen. So for us where we live, the worst point, according to forecasts, eight p.m. 'til two a.m. tonight. Now, they're focusing... Here's another anomaly. The hurricane center is telling us to look out for winds of 130 and gusting to 150 or higher. You get the National Weather Service forecast, and the maximum winds are 97 miles an hour.

You say, "Yay! Okay, cool." But then you wonder, "Who's right here? Are they talking to each other?" Who knows what some of the others do? Why...? So you start imagining all of this. Now, I know some of you hearing this saying, "What do you mean, politics?" Folks, I have been trying to convince everybody who listens where the government is concerned -- and the hurricane center is part of the Commerce Department, and so is the National Weather Service. In fact, that's 80% of what the Commerce Department does is the weather.

You know that every cabinet department in our government has been politicized. It's undeniable. But some people don't understand it. They don't get it. They don't think politically; therefore they don't see it. Let me give you an example of how this has been politicized. After Katrina, remember, Algore and all the global warming people? They were happy! They were beating their chests like Tarzan out there, and they were saying, "This is just the beginning! Because of climate change and because of global warming, we're gonna have hurricanes like this every year, many of them.

"It's going to be devastating! It's going to destroy coastlines. Miami will be destroyed!" All of that. And for the next 11 years, not a single hurricane. So global warming became "climate change." There hasn't been a single hurricane that hit Florida, not a major one, in 11 years. Now this one comes along, and they're all excited! "We got crisis! We got doom and gloom, and we have our climate change issue." And if you think that I'm wrong, let me tell you what happened. I mentioned this to you yesterday.

Ron Allen -- a major, major credentialed Drive-By Media reporter working for NBC News -- had been there for years. He was on MSNBC the Late Show, and he was talking about the upcoming United Nations "interpanel governmental" whatever it is on climate change. And he said... He gushed about how Obama believes so deeply in protecting the environment, and that this U.N. climate change deal marks one of the most significant aspects of Obama's legacy, because deals like this are designed to stop hurricanes like Hurricane Matthew.

So here you have an NBC reporter. Does he know better? Is he really this dumb or ignorant to think that a piece of paper signed by a bunch of leftist nerds at the United Nations means the end of hurricanes? Because somehow that piece of paper signifies action that major governments are gonna take to affect climate change. They have been predicting the end of the world since 1980. There hasn't been any significant warming in the last 15 years. That's the thing I've been asking myself, for the last 48 hours (that's two days, for those of you in Rio Linda) we've been tracking the direction of this hurricane.

And it's been changing. Every six hours, the hurricane track forecast changes, and it's different somewhere along the track. So I'm saying, "Why can't we get a consensus of scientists to tell us where this thing's gonna hit in the next 12 hours is? If we've got a consensus of scientists that tell us in 50 years there isn't gonna be Miami, in 50 years the sea levels are gonna rise, in 50 years we're gonna be scorched and roasted because the temperatures...

But we can't find a consensus of scientists that can tell us where this hurricane's gonna be in two days, and now we have an NBC reporter actually suggesting to people -- and the danger here is, how many people believe this? We have a crisis of stupidity in this country that is born of the defects in our public education system for two generations now. So here we have an NBC reporter lauding Obama and his great, great work on climate change. By the way... I will not lose my place here.

Did you see Obama yesterday said that he'd met with the Joint Chiefs, and the single greatest national security threat this nation faces is climate freaking change? It's not Saturday Night Live, folks. It is real-life American government, and Obama's out there saying -- and he's got these Joint Chiefs. They gotta go along with it or they don't continue to rise their career ladder. And then he went on and said... Somebody said it, it might not have been Obama. Somebody said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah! This war in Syria? Climate change! Climate change has had the number one impact on the war in Syria."

"Well, no, Mr. Limbaugh. Climate change is dictating the movement of the refugees."

Oh, you mean they're trying to escape Syria 'cause it's so hot, not because bullets are flying?

"Exactly right, Mr. Limbaugh. Now you're getting it. Climate change is causing all of these immigrants to leave Syria."

We got people telling us this. Now we've got people telling us that if we sign this United Nations climate change deal, and this is gonna be like the third one, the aim is to stop hurricanes like Hurricane Matthew. It's just... It boggles my mind. This is the first hurricane to make landfall in the United States since Hurricane Wilma in 2005. Hurricane Wilma also went over my house. That was a Category 2. There wasn't any of damage. There was some trees down. It's obligatory you lose power, lose the phone lines for a while.

But there wasn't any structural damage, and that was 2005. So that's, what? Yep, 11 years ago. But, gee, if we'd'a just signed that climate change deal last week, this hurricane would have quit! You know what? The hurricane would have seen that the UN had finally gotten serious and would have just dissipated, or it might not have even formed in the first place. Don't accuse me of being sarcastic. I'm telling you, that's exactly what they want you to believe, that if the UN had taken action, hurricanes like this can be stopped.

The aim of the United Nations interpantinental, whatever it is, climate change deal is "designed to stop hurricanes like Matthew from forming." Now, leftists, liberals can try. They can promote all they want; they don't care. But the fact that people believe it is what's scary, and a lot of people do. NBC's Ron Allen thinks the climate deal is designed to stop storms like Hurricane Matthew. These are acts of God. You ever...? You have an insurance policy on your home or anything?

You know, the force majeure, the act of God, which is events that you can't control that man has no say-so over? Hurricane's one of those. But I guess the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is gonna steal the purview of hurricanes away from God. And next we're gonna go, we're gonna stop war with climate. Look, the long way around telling you that there is politics in everything. There's politics in the weather. There's politics in the forecasting of the weather. There's politics in hurricanes. There's politics in the forecasting of hurricanes, because there are votes.

And, look, most people already... What do you think happened...? Do you remember when...? You may not believe this. Port St. Lucie, which is one of the target areas, remember some babe walks into a McDonald's and they're out of McNuggets? She called 911 wanting to speak to Obama to fix it. So what if that same woman or somebody like her goes into Publix because she's been told to stock up on canned goods and water and all these other things and get ready for the hurricane? She goes in there and there's no water.

She just stands there. "Well, what do I do? You ever thought about getting a jug and turning on the tap? So, anyway, this is the kind of stuff that goes through my mind as I'm also tracking the strom. I'm not gonna tell you where I think this is gonna go because that would be irresponsible. The hurricane center, they have a monopoly on this. If they tell us the winds in Nassau were a hundred miles an hour, then that's what the official record's gonna show. And I don't work for the hurricane center. I'm not a trained meteorologist.

But I am the world's leading expert in dissecting liberals and liberalism, and it's everywhere. They are everywhere. And they are corrupting everything because they are infusing their political agenda into everything. You know what? Try this. Hillary Clinton's campaign has gone out and made a major media buy on the Weather Channel. Now, some people say, "Oh, man, that's brilliant." I don't know. We're watching the Weather Channel because you really want to find out where the hell this thing's going, and all of a sudden here comes a Clinton for President commercial talking about what a reprobate Trump is?

It could backfire over there. By the way, we have Dittocam here. It's a strange angle. I'm not avoiding looking at you. It's just odd. I don't like looking to my left anyway, which I have to do here, but at least we have one. It's a makeshift studio. Everybody did a great job getting this set up on a moment's notice. I mean, I didn't make the decision to move until noon yesterday right before the program started. Now I gotta take a break. We'll do that and... See, folks, even in discussing a hurricane, I got the reasons you listen to this program front and center right in the middle of it. Nobody does that. That's right.

RUSH: Okay. Couple quick things. Hillary has pulled her spots from the Weather Channel. Backlash. I knew it. And try this. The weather isn't the weather anymore. The Environmental Protection Agency -- not the National Weather Service, the EPA -- has just issued a 50-state climate warning. Flood, drought, and insect outbreaks. This is how they do it. Fifty-state climate warning? It's bogus! This is just... It's maddening as it can be.

RUSH: Rush Limbaugh here like this. I had to decamp the homestead in advance of the oncoming Hurricane Matthew. And even while doing the program today, continuing to monitor during commercial breaks the track of the hurricane, measuring it against the National Hurricane Center's track and seeing if there are any deviations, not just in direction, but intensity, wind speed, barometric pressure and all that. It's not really a distraction, but part of me is fascinated by it. Well, I guess some of it is a distraction.

But because of it we're here, and we're gonna be here tomorrow, too, and depending -- we had a hurricane go through where we lived, Hurricane Wilma 11 years ago, it was a Category 2, and I think the place where we live was without power for a week. Now, it didn't affect me. As a powerful, influential member of the media, I have a generator that the neighbors hate because it's so loud, but we were able to stay functioning there. It was like 11 days that the power was out and the phone lines and all that. And this is said to be a Category 4 at the time it strikes, so we're all deeply anticipatory.

I have a friend who defied the evac order and stayed. He lives about a hundred yards away from me, says, "Hey, nothing going on here, 25-mile-an-hour winds out of the Northeast, it's a great day."

I said, "Look, I sent you the note, it's eight o'clock tonight 'til two in the morning is when you're gonna get the worst of it. So, you know, tell me what's going on then."

He said, "No sweat." He stayed when Wilma went through. We got both ends of Wilma 'cause it came from the west, got the eye wall twice, and it went right over us. You know the thing that really stands out about a hurricane, if you've not been through one, is the noise. Imagine yourself being out on the tarmac when a Boeing 747 revs all four engines, and it goes on for hours until the hurricane passes. The noise associated with it.

Fortunately me being deaf, if I ever got stuck in one I could take my implants off and I wouldn't hear anything. But for people that have to hear it, that's one of the most noteworthy things that people who have withstood and lived through hurricanes have to say about it.

Rush is wrong about when the NWS started the hurricane panic machine. That was after Andrew. But he’s definitely right that something’s mighty fishy about these national hurricane center bulletins. Anybody checking the on line weather stations and buoys will not find a wind speed over 80 knots. Florida is in for a rough night, but these dire and catastrophic predictions are not panning out.

“Florida is in for a rough night, but these dire and catastrophic predictions are not panning out”

I agree. I got attacked by quite a few posters on this site on one or 2 of the Hurricane Mathew threads for daring to actually have the audacity to type words that said that Mathew wouldn't be as bad as the media and the government agencies made it out to be.

I'm sure the media and gov agencies want it to be an Armageddon and that's the way they've been reporting it.

Watching FOX News now and some skippy named Steve Harrigan was reporting live in a drizzle suddenly flinched at the sound of an obvious lightening strike (thunder) and claimed a sign had been knocked down, no video verification. Kind of hillareous considering the wind was maybe 30-40 mph at most. These guys are overhyping this thing in spades, the word went out and the Ministry of Propoganda is complying. 140 mph winds, I think not.
Okay, now it’s downed palm fronds blocking the street, cars can’t pass, hell I could drive right over those in my car no problem, fronds on the sidewalk and everyone know that humans cannot step over small palm fronds. Do not go outside, there’s palm fronds on the sidewalk, good grief.

It seems to me that Matthew is making landfall. I guess this oblique approach is unusual. But being that close to shore, it’s reach extends all the way across Florida, and the rain dries out there. So, on the south side there is very little rain banding, but on the north side there is rain “piled up”, extending far to the north. The hurricane is losing its shape and the eye is expanding.

Well, I’m no expert but it seems like all the Weather Channel talk of 130 Mph winds and 7-11 foot surges is on a purely rhetorical basis.

None of this is making sense to me.

Palm Beach International recorded a 98 m.p.h. gust. Fortunately the eye was many miles offshore when it passed the area and none of my friends got hit very hard.

I won’t condemn them for providing a probability based storm track when the news purposefully misuses it. The National Weather Service is tasked with preventing hurricane deaths and the one way you can guarantee that you won’t die in a hurricane is to not be in the hurricane.

A couple of hurricanes back, I read comments from a professional meteorologist to the effect that they can get a pretty good estimate of track, but their intensity projections are not so good.

I have seen it over and over, in major and minor storm events. NOAA overstates the intensity. You can see it clearly when you compare the predictions with the actual events, as recorded on the various “personal weather stations” available through the Weather Underground site.

And make no mistake-virtually all of the predictive data that is available comes directly from NOAA, even when you hear it on the local evening news.

And the warmists in the mainstream media and the big commercial weather sites amplify the data, and use it to feed the fires of panic. Panic breeds views and clicks, and that creates ad revenue. And that is why Hillary’s campaign ran to the Weather Channel with a fist full of money.

Fox and Friends reported earlier that Hillary Rotten Clinton had taken advantage of Hurricane Matthew and bought a political ad. But there were so many complains that she had to take the ad down

Anybody checking the on line weather stations and buoys will not find a wind speed over 80 knots.

I found one near the Bahamas with a high of 90 mph (78 knots) and peak gust of 101 mph (88 knots):

https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=ITHEBAHA5#history/s20161006/e20161006/mdaily

It was at 3:48 PM. But more interesting was the total rainfall for yesterday: 37.79 inches!

The way I see it, there are at least three hurricanes. There’s the real one that’s out there, there’s the virtual one consisting of scientific observations and predictions (with inevitable flaws), and finally there’s the one invented by the media and government panic machine. People frequently confuse one of these things for the other.

But there were so many complains that she had to take the ad down

Now THIS sounds fishy!

Since WHEN has she EVER listened to ANYONE??

In addition, the color scale of the sat images of the hurricane can be adjusted easily to make the storm look more ferocious than it actually is, red always looks scarier than pink or green. I’m not sure what to believe anymore. I do not want to underestimate the potential damage to property and suffering of all the people affected by this storm, however if weather forecasting ever becomes politicized people will stop regarding real warnings and evacuation orders. The boy who cried wolf syndrome.

It does appear that the meteorology is panning out, but how often do you have to hear “horror storm” or “monster storm” to make you wonder?

Also, it does appear that the meteorological discussions are “flattened” ... i.e. reduced to doctrine. This seems to be a very unusual storm. We have that predicted path right along the coast, for example. Evidently, this is a “known effect”, and presumably why the prediction was made. I thought that Tom Swiftie looking young guy on TWC alluded to this at one point, but he didn’t go into it. Probably on strict instructions!

I’ve been tracking the weather radar record of Matthew, and it looks like it’s trying to come ashore at Hilton Head, SC. All this time they’ve been touting the high winds at the “eye wall” , but to me, the eye has looked rather diffuse and I don’t picture a big storm surge due to it. Mind you there have been storm surges all along, but these are due to the transverse winds sweeping east to west ahead of the northward track of the eye. So, I’m about to find out if this “eye wall” is myth or reality.

Well, they’re totally hyping on TWC right now, although it’s kind of “rear guard” hype. This is the second time I’ve seen them go back to a guy in Daytona Beach, describing the carnage to a particular gas station, which makes a nice backdrop of course.

I watched a locally produced drive through tour of Daytona Beach on the net, with the tone. “There’s trees down, but not so bad.”

This was a big storm with broad impact, and yeah it was a disaster in Haiti. That’s more of the hype, BTW, with headlines like “842 dead in Horror Storm as it hits Haiti and Florida with 100mph winds.” I guess it’s easier than one might think to make humor out of tragedy.

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I can guarantee that it'll end up being Trump's fault; along with all the other Human Induced Climate Change deniers!