RUSH: I think there’s a huge media scandal brewing here. I use the term loosely, and I referred to this on Friday I think what’s happened here has almost been scandalous in terms of the reporting of the aftermath of this hurricane. But you have to understand that for all the complaining and all the whining, that’s all the Democrats are doing. I refuse to believe they’re making any impressions favorably on the people. They may being succeeding in drumming up negatives for President Bush, but you know what the big problem is, as I see it? I still don’t think it’s the Democrats. The Democrats are who they are, and they’re a known quantity, and they’re going to behave in very predictable ways. What continues to bother me is these Republicans in Washington. John Fund has a great piece today at Opinionjournal.com. He says, you know, FDR and Truman both cut federal spending when they had to deal with their own crises and disasters that required a lot of massive spending. But the president who didn’t do that was LBJ. LBJ gave us this expansionist notion, guns and butter, chicken in every pot. That wasn’t LBJ, but there were no cuts at all. Of course, look where it got us. Now the New York Times has a big story (doing impression), “You know, this is a big coming debate for conservatives. Why, conservatives here have been suggesting limited government as the way to go, and I don’t think this is a very good examination of.” Robin Toner wrote the story. There’s no limited government here. Conservatives haven’t yet succeeded in reducing the size of government. 
If anything is on display here, it is how big bureaucratic government is sort of an albatross. But that really gets to the larger point, and that is, has this been that bad on the federal level? I mean, the big smoke screen here is being blown around the local officials, and the federal officials, you have already had one guy act as the fall guy, take the fall for President Bush, and that’s Mike Brown, but you got these Republicans — Mel Martinez, the new senator from Florida — is now talking about not making tax cuts permanent in order to pay for — well, we might as well have elected a Democrat if he’s going to run around saying things like this.
The real question ought to be this. All the big-government types ought to be asking, you know, are the people here that were not well served by government going to be as supportive of government in the future? We’re already getting stories, too, about Mary Landrieu’s base fleeing from New Orleans and not returning and not going home. We led the discussion on this on Thursday and Friday. I know, we’ll get to Landrieu in a minute. She said something yesterday on Fox News Sunday that — and I have the audio of it here, just amazing. It’s flat out unbelievably humorous and amazing.
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All right, people say, “Rush, what do you mean media scandal?” Let me put scandal in quotes. The simplest way, I think, to clue you in as to my thinking is to give you the — well, before I do that — how many people did you expect after two weeks of news coverage to be in body bags? Ten to 20,000, right? We had 25,000 body bags, and the death toll was constantly predicted at 10,000, the mayor down there, thousands upon thousands, the figure grew and grew until finally someone put a number to it, 10,000 was the number I saw most frequently. And, of course, that figure was constantly bandied about as graphics on television screens over the destruction of New Orleans, or shots of poor people in New Orleans trying to leave. And of course the impression — we’re a nation of pictures — the impression was left that some of these people we’re looking at are not going to make it, they’re going to die because nobody is getting there soon enough because nobody cares about them — why? — because they’re black. And, of course, the local government and the state government in Louisiana, of course always exempted from any criticism or concern here because it was a fast route to George W. Bush who, as a Republican, automatically is a racist. And so we were expecting huge numbers. And it was so bad — but the federal government wasn’t concerned, they didn’t get down there soon enough afterwards, they didn’t try to get people — you know the drill. Here is the death toll as of this morning; 197 dead in Louisiana, 211 dead in Mississippi, where you still have a tough time finding a news camera, 7 people dead in Florida.
So the death toll now is a little more than 400, and don’t misunderstand, I am not suggesting that that’s acceptable or okay. I’m simply saying it ain’t 10,000, it isn’t 25,000 body bags. It’s not total destruction, it doesn’t even rank as we speak today in the top ten deadliest natural disasters in the country, not even close. Economically is a different thing because of the wide area which was hit by the hurricane, but in terms of the human toll, it appears it’s not even going to show up in the top ten. So has all of the caterwauling and all of the hysteria and all of the predictions, has it been in proportion with reality? No, it hasn’t. There’s been a little hope. The Democrats, as someone said last week, were dancing on the graves of the dead in New Orleans. They were celebrating, they were happy. Why? Because they think they finally have their issue that’s going to destroy George W. Bush. And no doubt they think they have destroyed George W. Bush, as they look at the current polling numbers. It got to the point where we were even told to excuse looters. Well, it would be simplistic, it would be simplistic to say that looting was simply going on by poor people in New Orleans. No, it’s not simplistic at all to say anything of the sort. You see, we live in a society here which features — I have been amazed. I was telling someone yesterday, I’m amazed at the self-loathing I see on the left. An example of self-loathing, to me, is to say that it is simplistic to say that the looters are all of one race or that the looters are mostly one race, or that the looters are even bad. It’s simplistic. Why is it simplistic? Well, because we have to understand why they’re — oh, we have to dig deep to the root causes, then. Well, what are the root causes? Well, the primary root cause is the inequality of America. 
You see, most of the hate-America crowd first is a bunch of socialist, and they look at socialism as well intentioned. Socialism is an equal opportunity promise. It’s an equal opportunity “opportunity” if you will. Capitalism, of course, is by definition unfair. You have the have’s and you have the have-nots. You have the successful and the unsuccessful, and the less successful and the not-as-successful, and that’s just not right. And so since America is capitalist, it is inherently unfair. And therefore we can’t blame any of the people who are not in the upper echelons of capitalism because it is the American system which has doomed them there or condemned them there. Ergo, the self-loathing of America. Now, never mind that the experiments of socialism results in failure after failure after failure, never mind that the experiments of socialism result in dictators who take power by coups, who then rule by murder and plunder. Never mind that that’s the reality of the situation. No, it’s that, “Well, we just haven’t given it the best shot.” And even so, there are still people trying. How else is it excused that Castro has a wonderful island nation? Everybody there has health care. He’s trying to make everybody equal so that nobody has anything more than anybody else. And so when we see these pictures from New Orleans, the blame-America-first crowd, the hate-America crowd, the self-loathers simply see their predictions having come true. America is evil because America is unjust because capitalism assigns winners and losers, Dick Gephardt, the winner’s of life’s lottery. And so if the American system of capitalism has consigned you to loser status when the controls are off and you have a chance to get that television set that they’re denying you in America, or you have a chance to get whatever you want from that store where there aren’t any cops anymore, you’re entitled, it’s understandable, it’s too simplistic to suggest that they’re maybe committing crimes. Too simplistic, we must understand — and that’s the thinking. Well, there are other examples of this. I’ll give you one.
Throughout the news stack today I have stories, the rich are returning to their homes in New Orleans. “Rich returning to their homes in New Orleans. Subhead: Poor with nowhere to go.” Then there is another story. “Rich protect their homes and businesses with hired security.” As if there’s something wrong with this. We have looting that has gone on. We have a police force in large number that abandoned the city. We have anarchy. And so the rich, the successful, the middle class, whoever you want, whatever you call them, don’t believe that rich here means multimillionaires, this is just the upper middle class and the successful people. And, by the way, it’s not stated, but one of the things that’s understood, whites, rich, white people moved back to their homes, rich white people hiring security guards. Poor black people can’t. Same kind of self-loathing that you get in these stories. As though there is something wrong, unfair, unjust about somebody wanting to protect their property after having witnessed what’s gone on there the last two weeks. What kind of an idiot would not want to protect their property? What kind of responsibility to your family would it be to just sit there and let your property be subject to vandalism and crime and what have you? But no, no, no, no, Rush, it’s not fair that they have the ability to do that. Everybody should have their goods and their possessions open so anybody can take them in a circumstance like — I guess goes the thinking. It’s just not fair. It’s just not right. And in the midst of all this, Mary Landrieu shows up on television yesterday. I don’t even want to paraphrase this, folks. In fact, I don’t even want to read the quote. I want you to hear the quote yourself. I want you to hear what she said to Chris Wallace as her explanation for why the mayor and the governor did not handle this well on a local issue side of things.
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