Perspective: The Media MeltdownMarch 14, 2011
BEGIN TRANSCRIPTRUSH: You know, the longer you live and the more disasters you see, the more you realize, ladies and gentlemen, that almost, and it's very close, an almost equally important part of the story is the media. It really is. The media's getting really ticked off. Why aren't the Japanese panicking? Why aren't there any looters? There are actually stories about this. Of course it is interesting that the Japanese are not looting, and in fact evil Japanese businessmen are lowering prices on commodities and in some cases even giving things away to aggrieved citizens.
Hi, folks, hope you had a great weekend. We're back. El Rushbo here behind the Golden EIB Microphone. There are only two of those. One permanently attached here and one that travels with us. When we take this program on the road, very rarely that we do that but when we do there's a second Golden EIB Microphone that goes with us. Anyway I'm behind it today. Telephone number is 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
I actually heard a CNN reporter ask, hopefully, "Is there widespread looting going on?" These people are looking for disaster. They want disaster upon disaster. They want the nuclear meltdown. They want the Japanese syndrome, if you will. They want this stuff. A friend of mine, ladies and gentlemen, is in the business of the film arts, otherwise movies. And he tells me that he once had a movie director who used to say all the time, "Do not be afraid because fear kills." And I have to wonder if you look at the coverage here if this isn't what he had in mind. This is just the wanton spreading of fear. When in fact most of these nuclear reactors in Japan are behaving as designed. They are containing. There's not this widespread disaster.
Our climatologist here, Dr. Roy Spencer, University of Alabama Huntsville sent me some statistics, the Chernobyl disaster. Chernobyl was a horrible design run by idiots in the old Soviet Union. Why are you frowning, Snerdley, is something wrong in there today? You're watching the coverage of the tsunami and the earthquake? It is depressing. That's the point. It's depressing as it is. We don't need this made worse. I've got a bunch of See, I Told You So's, the media making it about Obama, the media saying it's due to global warming. Within two hours the media was saying it's gonna happen here. The media was saying, "Well, that's the end of the nuclear power industry in America." No, it shouldn't be, but guess who owns the nuclear power industry in this country? Good old General Electric, good old Jeff Immelt, good old buddy of Obama.
So what's Obama gonna do now? Is Obama gonna throw Immelt and GE overboard to satisfy his base? I mean this is the kind of stuff that we have to look at here in the face of human disaster. We now have to wonder, okay, what's gonna happen with Obama and Immelt, because GE, Immelt, is a power player on one of Obama's consumer or some sort of economic committees. And GE has paid a huge amount of money for the privilege and they've been rewarded with a bunch of government subsidies for green energy. Well, this ain't green energy. Nuclear ain't green, according to the way the leftists look at it, so what's going to happen here?
Meanwhile, Obama's out playing golf. I didn't even play golf. I stayed glued to gathering the news. Obama's out playing golf and playing basketball. Most people when it comes to Obama, you know what they're anticipating? His NCAA brackets. Every year at this time people wonder what the president's brackets are going to be, who he's gonna pick? We got the world on fire. We got Libya and the Middle East on fire and the guy's out playing golf. "Yeah, well, he needs his rest. He needs his relaxation, Mr. Limbaugh. He needs to be able to recharge." Yeah, right, all these times, our poor stressed-out young president. In the meantime, I told you on Friday, you look at this footage and you feel insignificant. I mean if it doesn't put in perspective everything, the idea that manmade -- (interruption) Yeah, I saw the picture of the fighter -- I've seen it all. I've seen everything that you've seen. It's mind-boggling. It is.
But, would I get in trouble -- this is part of my theme today -- would I get in trouble with you in the audience, would I appear to be, what's the word, insensitive, if I were to tell you it's not as bad as they're making it out to be for Japan at large? This affects a portion of Japan that is responsible for 1.7% of Japan's GDP, for example. Yep, 1.7% of their GDP, where this thing happened. Larry Kudlow even stepped in it. Poor old Larry Kudlow who, by the way, has been questionably one of us since Obama was immaculated, Larry Kudlow stepped in it. He since apologized. But this is what happens when you work for an Obama News Network. Kudlow said the human damage is much worse than the economic damage and we can be thankful for that. He had to go out and do a correction on this, saying he misspoke, he was talking about something and the words didn't come out right. But he did a quick mea culpa.
Anyway, here are the statistics from Dr. Roy Spencer, our official climatologist, University of Alabama at Huntsville. Chernobyl disaster released 400 times as much radiation as the Hiroshima bomb. Now, hang on. Nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and '60s when you were growing up, Snerdley, when I was growing up, released 100 to one thousand times as much radiation as Chernobyl, right here in our own fruited plain. What is your memory of Three Mile Island, folks? This is in the eighties. I guarantee your memory of Three Mile Island is gonna be almost a hundred percent with what the media told you about it. (interruption) Okay. Nobody died and nothing leaked out. But the media didn't tell you that. Total meltdown, state of Pennsylvania was almost wiped out, everybody had to be evacuated. You would never want to live in that region again. All of Pennsylvania was worthless, the country might be over. I mean it was disaster times disaster on parade. But the fact is nobody was killed, nothing leaked out. It worked especially as it was designed. Three Mile Island, virtually no release of radioactivity.
Somebody Dr. Spencer knows worked there at the time and said they routinely got higher radioactivity readings when the wind was blowing from a nearby coal-fired power plant than any of the radioactivity released by the accident at Three Mile Island. Now, in addition, what are the numbers here? Yeah, put it in perspective, and I always love doing this. More and more I have found as this program evolves, unfolds, that more and more, one of the important objectives, one of the crucial jobs I have is to put in perspective what the media's doing. I've got a couple blog posts that I found from nuclear physicist experts who are saying that everything that they have seen written or reported about nuclear anything in Japan is wrong. Every paragraph contains something that's wrong, some so-called fact is wrong. And, of course, all of this is written with the narrative, "My God, we're all gonna die! This is the worst thing that's ever happened, oh, jeez, it's the worst." Nobody's denying this is a horrible thing, but emotions are pretty fragile and you got people whipping them up into a frenzy simply because that's their job, not because it's rooted in reality.
So one of the ways to put this in perspective -- and this according to a number of reports -- over the last ten years the wind farm industry has killed far more people than the nuclear power industry. You remember the old joke that more people have died at Chappaquiddick than have died in nuclear power accidents? That was true for the longest time. Nuclear fatalities of the last ten years: seven. Wind farm fatalities in the last ten years: 44, and that doesn't count the birds. And we certainly have got a heck of a lot more power out of nuclear plants than we have from windmills. Have you seen all the news stories of how there are now shortages of bicycles in Japan? Obviously the Japanese did not have their priorities in order. I mean there's a whole industry that's cropped up now. The environmentalists have seized upon this nuclear problem in Japan to try to shut down America's nuclear program.
Meanwhile, the USS Ronald Reagan steaming over there, which, as Jed Babbin said today in the American Spectator, is a game-changer. Once the USS Ronald Reagan, it's a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, it can because of its nuclear reactor -- by the way, the Navy has had nuclear powered vessels since 1953. Not a single accident. Since the USS Ronald Reagan showed up, 400,000, what is it, gallons of potable water produced every day because of desalinization, it can take the saltwater out -- that's how they get their drinking water on board these Navy vessels. You couldn't policy load all the water that you need, so every nuclear powered Navy vessel takes seawater and makes it drinkable and the Reagan can do 400,000 gallons a day, and the flight deck is filled with helicopters running rescue missions back and forth. The United States of America. So there are plenty of heartwarming great stories in association with this. And now Time and Newsweek. Let me get in the fear game. They had a story in the latest issue, Newsweek magazine, Daily Caller, whatever the merger is, Tina Brown, you know, if you look at these earthquakes in the Pacific recently there's one area yet to be hit. First you had New Zealand, Christchurch, that's bad. Almost exactly a year ago we had Chile. Then we had this thing in Japan. There's one area of the Pacific plate yet to happen. It's the northwest, and it happens to be right near the San Andreas Fault.
So Newsweek's got a story saying San Francisco could be next. If you just look at the Pacific plate, where these earthquakes have happened, "Hey, three out of four corners and the fourth corner happens to be pretty close to the US, and it could be the next year or two, you never know." Then I saw some guy from UC Davis on TV: 46% chance, a geology professor, 46%, not 45, not 50, not 51, 46% that there could be an earthquake on the West Coast of the United States in 30 years, a 46% chance. So I don't care what the story is, whether it's the government shut down, whether it's the Tea Party not being happy with the Republican leadership, whether it's Libya, whether it's Obama and anything he's doing, whether it's Japan and the earthquake, whatever it is, the other thing that you have to keep focused on and keep straight is the media. It's a sad reality. Somebody has to do it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I did something I always do during the break. (It's always a telltale sign.) I checked the e-mail, and some people (I just love doing this) ask, "What do you mean, Rush, these nuclear things are working as designed? You see that place where 10,000 people died?" That's the earthquake. The reactor didn't cause the earthquake. Before this is over, they're gonna blame us in the Dakotas for causing this by fracking for oil. They're gonna blame us. Before this ends the oil industry, drilling for oil is gonna have played a role because Japan -- I told you this Friday: Get a globe -- is on the exact opposite side of the globe as the Dakotas where we're doing the fracking.
Fracking is a controversial kind of drilling to extract oil from the Bakken field. It's as easily predictable that environmentalist wackos are gonna blame us (or Big Oil, whatever) for creating the shift in these plates that caused the earthquake. The earthquake that causing the tsunami that's wiping out 10,000 people at a time, cities and so forth, it's devastating. You can't watch that without feeling totally helpless. What can you do? What can you do? And then you ask yourself, "What good are you doing by sitting there going, 'Oh, my God?'" I mean, even caring about it doesn't accomplish anything, does it? It's really frustrating.
You can sit there, you can watch this, you can go, "Oh, jeez, I don't believe it. Oh, man, I feel so bad," but it doesn't do anything to stop it, does it? It doesn't accomplish one thing, other than maybe make you feel better. But everybody feels so powerless. Nothing you can do. (interruption) The people working in the nuclear plants that're supposedly nailing down? The Japanese have a very different culture in that regard. No, the only person considering leaving is Anderson Cooper. He heard about the second explosion and he asked his audience, "Maybe, should I get outta here?" I'll make your prediction. Since I'm off and running here today, let me make you a prediction. (interruption)
Anderson? No. He's... (interruption) Snerdley, I mean, you... (interruption) See, I can't win on a day like this. There's no way. I can't win. Even if you remember that what we do here is "illustrate the absurd by being absurd," even if you remember that, you can't win here today. Anderson Cooper is the only guy I know thinking of leaving. The guys doing the nuclear cleanup, they're still in there, wearing their antinuclear suits and so forth. They're still there. They've got this commitment to it. Cooper can split. I'll just... (sigh) I'll just make a little prediction. (chuckles) I need a vacation. This will probably guarantee one for a couple, three days, maybe weeks.
I will bet you that the Japanese make more ground in their rebuilding, in their recovery, sooner than we get the World Trade Center rebuilt -- and we got a ten-year head-start. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the Japanese make more progress in rebuilding all this. I'll stop there. I'll stop there. Snerdley, let me just stop there. That's a safe enough bet. (interruption) What? (interruption) No, not Haiti. Katrina! (interruption) No. I'm just... (interruption) They're not gonna have the encumberments. They're not gonna have all the obstacles. Look, there isn't even any looting going on. The media in Japan is having to search for cultural decay and rot. They can't find any.
We'll be back. Don't go away. I might be back, too. (You never know.)
BREAK TRANSCRIPTRUSH: Keep in mind here, folks, Japan's construction industry is... How to put this? Japan's construction industry is, um... (sigh) Cha-cha-cha-cha. Maybe I don't want to go there right now, but it's pretty good. The bottom line is I'm like you. I've tried to find as much as I could over the weekend about all this, and I'm finding some people -- and I weigh everybody, what their vested interests might be, because everybody who offers an opinion on this has an agenda. You have to know that. You have to be able to read the stitches on a fastball. You have to be able to reject the conventional wisdom. You have to understand where people are coming from.
The media is liberal, you understand what that means, so in case of somebody like me I'm suspicious of everything they say, 'cause they're liberals. "But, Rush! But, Rush! How did you know Obama wouldn't close Gitmo?" He's a liberal; that's all I needed to know. "But you had to know more than that." No, I didn't know any more than you did. I might have had some educated guess characteristics thrown in there, but all I needed to know is Obama's a liberal. It really is that simple. The media is liberal. What do we know about the US media? We know that they are in an unalterable alliance with the American left and the worldwide left. What do we know about the American left and the worldwide left? What do we know that they oppose and what they hate?
It's very simple: Once you understand who the people are, what their politics are, then you can understand the rubric and the umbrella in which they do their jobs. So you therefore conclude that pretty much every story coming out of Japan from the American media is gonna be anti-nuclear industry, and it's gonna have not just reporting about what's going on in Japan. There will be accompanying stories why we never, ever should built another nuclear plant ever anywhere in the world much less the United States, pure and simple -- which, of course, has nothing to do with the story in Japan. It has nothing to do with the facts on the ground in Japan.
The media is tweeting things left and right. The AP just tweeted: "Japanese Utility Says Fuel Rods at Troubled Quake-Hit Nuclear Reactor Dully Exposed Again." Oh, no! The fuel rods are exposed! Ho! Oh! What are we supposed to conclude from this? You have to. There's a cumulative record from people like this. I'm just trying to help you discern and understand how I observe these things, how I watch it, how I digest it, and how little of it I believe. I believe more of what I see, footage-wise, than what I hear or read being reported. You can't deny what you're seeing. It's when I start reading the stuff that they write accompanying it or so forth that I instinctively begin scratching my head.
For example, I have noticed things. Based on things I have learned as a student of journalists, of the media, there are things that I have noticed -- several dangerous, disturbing things -- while watching the tsunami videos out of Japan. Houses, cars, boats, and aircraft are not earthquake proof. Nor are they tsunami proof. Have you seen them? They're tossed around like toys. They are death traps. They're like bowling balls. Everything else in their way is the pins. Therefore, we need a moratorium on the building of houses and cars and boats and aircraft in this country until the problem can be studied and safety measures enacted.
Well, I mean if building nuclear plants in non-earthquake zones should be off-limits, then so should things far less stable. Now, from what I can tell it would be safer working in a nuclear power plant during an 8.9 earthquake than practically anywhere else. Of all the things that I've seen floating along, I haven't seen a nuclear power plant floating. The nuclear power plant has remained anchored where it is, so I was curious: How does this happen? The cars, the boats, the planes are being tossed around like a bunch of matchbox toys, but there is the nuclear power plant.
So I found out: Japanese buildings build these things to sway, to move, to accommodate earthquakes 'cause they know it could possibly happen. They have the most recent designs. I would feel safer in a newly built nuclear power plant during an earthquake and a tsunami than if I were in one of those cars I've seen being tossed around. Safety first, folks. I wonder how many mercury-filled lightbulbs were destroyed in Japan this last week? What about all those automobile batteries, particularly the Leafs and the Priuses and stuff, they were made in this area. There are a lot of automobile batteries. I wonder how much of that refuse is being swept away now into the ecosystem for the general population.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let's go to the audio sound bites. I told you this. Grab number 13. Audio sound bite number 13. This is what I said Friday on this very program.
RUSH ARCHIVE: How long's it gonna be before the press starts talking about this earthquake and the tsunami and how it impacts Obama?
RUSH: And here they are talking about it, a media montage Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
KATIE COURIC: President Obama got that infamous 3:00AM phone call this morning -- though it was actually closer to 4:00 -- when Chief of Staff Bill Daley called to tell him Japan had been hit by a catastrophic earthquake.
AL HUNT: President Obama had a press conference on Friday. What was the purpose?
JULIANA GOLDMAN: It was an opportunity for him to respond to the tragic earthquake in Japan.
JOE CIRINCIONE: So imagine Obama's job today. As if all of this wasn't enough, you have a major natural disaster.
JAKE TAPPER: President Obama found himself battling twin global crises this week. The natural and nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan and the showdown in Libya.
MILISSA REHBERGER: President Obama -- obviously having grown up with the Japanese culture in Hawaii -- has pledged every bit of assistance from the United States.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Was this a good opportunity for the President to remind everybody he grew in Hawaii?
RUSH: What did I tell you? He played golf, Chris! What the heck does it have to do it where he grew up? The female journalista prior to Chris Matthews was Milissa (sic) Rehberger. "President Obama -- obviously having grown up with the Japanese culture in Hawaii -- has pledged every bit of assistance from the United States." I thought Hawaii was American state, and I this Obama was black. I thought Obama was Hawaiian and grew up with a white mother, grandmother. Now all of a sudden we're learning: Well, maybe the birth certificate is in Osaka. Who knows?
BREAK TRANSCRIPTRUSH: Okay, to the phones, and we're gonna start in Chicago. Rich, it says here you just got in from Tokyo. Welcome to the program, sir. Hi.
CALLER: Yeah, dittos, Rush. As soon as I got in to the hotel I turned you on, had to hear what you had to say. You were right on. I cannot believe how right you are about what you're saying about the Japanese people. I've been trapped in the hotel over there all weekend, and one of the only channels you watch --
RUSH: Are you there now or are you back from there in Chicago now?
CALLER: No, I'm in Chicago --
RUSH: You're in Chicago.
CALLER: -- just arrived this morning, flew in from Tokyo --
RUSH: Gotcha.
CALLER: -- over the evening.
RUSH: Right. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I understood. I was confused. But I got it. So you were saying.
CALLER: Well, I was saying one of the channels in the hotel, the English speaking channel they had was CNN. I've been throwing things. I finally had to turn it off. I couldn't take it anymore. The Japanese people, I'm just amazed at how well they're handling it and how quickly they're trying to get back to normal. They're stoic, even.
RUSH: What were you seeing on CNN that was so disturbing or stupefying while you were in Tokyo?
CALLER: The tragic stuff they kept reporting, none of the good stuff that's going on. They really started cleaning up. Sunday afternoon it was a nice day, I even went out for a walk on the outskirts of the city. People were on the golf course. Their lives are disrupted very little. You know, of course Tokyo is a hundred miles from Sendai where most of the damage occurred.
RUSH: I read a good analogy of this over the weekend. It would have been like Mayor Daley in Chicago deciding to shut down the city after Hurricane Katrina leveled New Orleans. Why? What can you do? Whatever the mileage is, it was similar, New Orleans to Chicago is similar, Tokyo to this prefecture where this happened. And so like you're telling us, life went on in Tokyo, they're playing golf, they're doing whatever they --
CALLER: They're going out to eat. As far as I can tell at the airport, there's a little damage in the terminal buildings, but as far as I can tell, flights are back to normal, or getting back to normal, and very little disruption as far as the remainder of the country.
RUSH: Well, one thing the Japanese do have experience rebuilding after nuclear accidents and blasts. They do. They've done it before.
CALLER: That's true. Look at Hiroshima.
RUSH: Well, and Nagasaki.
CALLER: It's amazing city, if you've ever seen it.
RUSH: Well, I've not been there. I've only seen it in the Fast and Furious movies. But, nah, I've not been, but I know people who have been. They talk about it the way you have, the way you are now. Hell, if Obama was there he'd be on the golf course. He was on the golf course here.
CALLER: Well, the weather is a lot better there than it is here right now. I can understand that. But give the people credit. I don't want to run down America. I'm pro-American, but I don't think we would have handled it as well, a tragedy -- well, we did. I think we came back from 9/11, but I think we're starting to be more negative about the tragedies that occur here and also there. I don't know why they have to dwell on the bad.
RUSH: Well, for crying out loud, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but a lot of people in this country, if I dare say, have a reason to feel a little troubled about being positive in this country because we're led by an administration who does not believe in American exceptionalism. We are led by an administration who believes this country's guilty. We are led by an administration that does not have the traditional view of this country, can-do, rugged individualism, the United States is the solution to the world's problems. This administration thinks we are the problem and have been. There's a reason that people feel uneasy about cultural things in this country. Again, what I want to stress, nobody on this program, certainly not I, nobody is denying the reality of what's happening in Japan. It's not the point here. You can see what's happening. I can't tell you any more than you don't already know. You can see the video. But I can help you keep this in perspective by pointing out how the reporting is taking place and what the agenda is behind the reporting of the American media on this. Rich, thanks for the call. I appreciate it.
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