RUSH: All right, I have a sea turtles light update. I’m sorry to keep bugging you people, but I can’t keep this in. I had some friends over for dinner last night, a bunch of golf buddies. The Honda Classic is in town here this week up at PGA National. I had some people over and the sun goes down here about 6:25 this time of year. By the way, we got a new date for Daylight Savings Time this year, March the 11th. So in less than two weeks it will be 7:25 here when the sun goes down. So I was out. I have my outdoor lights on a timer, and as you know, beginning March 1st, even though the turtles don’t arrive here until May, we have to turn out the backyard lights, particularly any lights that light the ocean or the beach. I don’t have any of those but I light some of the palm trees and some of the other landscaping in the back. It is said that that can distract these poor little hatchlings and they can be attracted to the lights instead of going to the ocean where they’re supposed to go.
Since I had bleated and moaned and whined about all of this yesterday on the program, I suspected that there would be numerous spies out on the beach, environmentalist wackos roaming the beach looking for violators of this serious ordinance. So I wanted to make sure that the auto timer worked and that at sundown, when the lights come on automatically, the lights in the back were not on. And they were. So we had to make a mad dash and go back to the equipment room and get all the appropriate lights turned off. It took about 15 minutes after sundown to get this done. And then, lo and behold, after dinner last night, as we were leaving the dining room and making our way back to the library, we walk through one of the living rooms and through the sliders you can see all the way out to the beach and the ocean — and damn if there wasn’t a bulldozer on the beach, at night, with all kinds of lights on it! Yes, ladies and gentlemen. What is happening is that we live on the north end of the island. We live near what’s called the Lake Worth Inlet. They have to dredge the inlet every year to get the sand out of there so that the cargo ships and cruise ships can get in there to the port without any problem. They ditch the sand on our beach, which is great, that’s fine. The bulldozer is out there leveling the sand that’s being deposited on the beach. Now, here it is the first day of lights out of turtle season, and there are bulldozers on the beach. Bulldozers! I mean, the whole thing is just beyond my ability to comprehend other than to chalk it up to the power of the environmentalist wackos over a little town council here. They are allowing construction on the beach until April 30th, and they got bulldozers on the beach now at night, and that’s gonna be the case for the next month. It takes a month to dredge the inlet. There are going to be bulldozers on the beach. But I gotta turn my lights off, and I wanted them on last night because I wanted to show my guests what the landscaping lighting looks like in the back. I had to turn ’em off and there’s a bulldozer running around out there.
What if some turtles showed up? They’re going to get run over! Of course the turtles don’t show up this time of year. This is one of the reasons why I am a conservative, ladies and gentlemen. This is just a typical government bureaucracy where, in many cases, ordinances and laws are passed for literally no reason that makes any sense. I saw that bulldozer out there, and I pointed it out to my guests. ?Look at that.? I told ’em what was going on. The bulldozer had been out there for a couple weeks. It’s going to be out there for another month. They got pipes on the beach and all that to distribute the sand as it’s pumped out of the inlet. What are the turtles going to do when they don’t show up until May?
All right. I?m sorry. I had to get it off my chest.