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My Analysis of the Hurricane Irma Panic

by Rush Limbaugh - Sep 5,2017

RUSH: The hurricane is what I want to lead off with, folks. And I’ve gotta be very careful here because I am not a meteorologist, and nothing I say today should be considered to be a forecast or a prediction. I am not the National Hurricane Center. I am not a climatologist or meteorologist. All I do is analyze the data that they publish. Just as I am the go-to tech guy in my family and here on the staff, when it comes to a hurricane bearing down on south Florida, I’m the go-to guy.

Everybody says, “What do you think is going to happen?” The reason for that is that I’m not biased and I have no agenda with my analysis of the data. The data is what it is. But — and I don’t want to overdo this — but I do want to share with you the way I react to and listen. Do you realize here in south Florida, from where we are all the way down to Miami, you cannot buy bottled water. This hurricane, if it hits us, is not supposed to hit us until Sunday. It was never going to hit us before Sunday.

Even last week when it first popped up and when the first forecast models appeared and then the Hurricane Center track forecast, it was always a-ten-day-out event from the first day they started forecasting it. So how in the world does panic get created? How in the world is it that there isn’t any bottled water? And why does that cause a panic? Has anybody ever heard of the tap? I’m sure you have some empty water bottles from previous usage. Just put them under the faucet and fill it up. In many ways, it’s the same stuff you’re buying at the grocery store. You may not know that, but it is.

Tap water is entirely safe, and nobody can hoard it away from you. It’s in your house every day in whatever amounts that you want. But people have been conditioned to believe that tap water is dirty, is dangerous, and might cause them to get sick. So they avoid it.

You know, if I were the Big Oil guys I’d be so jealous of the Big Water guys. The Big Water guys don’t have to drill for it. The Big Water guys do not have to spend any research and development money. They don’t have to go through the environmentalist wackos. They just plug into some lake or some tap and fill up some water, put a label on it, put it in grocery store and sell it for more than gasoline costs, in many cases. That’s a side issue.

The reason that I am leery of forecasts this far out, folks, is because I see how the system works. Now, I don’t mean this to be a personal attack on anybody, but the one thing that’s undeniable throughout our culture is that everything has been politicized. And in that sense much of our public information system, including from the government, from the Drive-By Media, has been corrupted. It has been corrupted by the individual biases and whatever present bigotry of the people who hold these positions.

You can see it in the way the Deep State deals with Trump. You can see it with the way the intelligence community and the Washington establishment deal with Trump. So in the case of a hurricane, what happens? Well, there are many levels here. When a hurricane pops up — and we can’t forget Hurricane Harvey because Hurricane Harvey and the TV pictures that accompany that go a long way to helping further and create the panic.

Now, in the official meteorological circles, you have an abundance of people who believe that man-made climate change is real. And they believe that Algore is correct when he has written — and he couldn’t be more wrong — that climate change is creating more hurricanes and stronger hurricanes. And, of course, when Harvey hit, it was the first hurricane that had hit in 12 years. There haven’t been more hurricanes and no more dangerous than any others in previous years.

But it doesn’t matter because the bias is built in. So there is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it. You can accomplish a lot just by creating fear and panic. You don’t need a hurricane to hit anywhere. All you need is to create the fear and panic accompanied by talk that climate change is causing hurricanes to become more frequent and bigger and more dangerous, and you create the panic, and it’s mission accomplished, agenda advanced.

Now, how do you do this? Well, any number of ways. Let’s take south Florida television, for example. There is symbiotic relationship between retailers and local media, and it’s related to money. It revolves around money. You have major, major industries and businesses which prosper during times of crisis and panic, such as a hurricane, which could destroy or greatly damage people’s homes, and it could interrupt the flow of water and electricity. So what happens?

Well, the TV stations begin reporting this and the panic begins to increase. And then people end up going to various stores to stock up on water and whatever they might need for home repairs and batteries and all this that they’re advised to get, and a vicious circle is created. You have these various retail outlets who spend a lot of advertising dollars with the local media.

The local media, in turn, reports in such a way as to create the panic way far out, which sends people into these stores to fill up with water and to fill up with batteries, and it becomes a never-ending repeated cycle. And the two coexist. So the media benefits with the panic with increased eyeballs, and the retailers benefit from the panic with increased sales, and the TV companies benefit because they’re getting advertising dollars from the businesses that are seeing all this attention from customers.

And in that sense, folks, I mean, look, it’s the way the world works. I’m not accusing anybody of anything illegal here, it’s just the way the world works. I don’t want mention brand names because that’s not the point. Let’s call it Basement Depot. Basement Depot huge, huge business, Basement Depot spends gazillions of dollars every year in local advertising in hurricane forced areas.

Here comes a hurricane, local media goes on the air, “Big hurricane coming, oh, my God! Make sure you got batteries. Make sure you got water. It could be the worst ever. Have you seen the size of this baby? It’s already a Cat 5. Oh, my God, oh, my God, it’s bigger than the island of Haiti. Oh, my God.” People run to the stores, they stock up everything, and they hoard. And they end up with vacant stores, nothing there. And it’s a big success. TV stations got eyeballs, the advertising businesses have sold out of business, gotta restock, and the cycle repeats.

This is exactly what’s happening. You cannot find a case of bottled water here in Palm Beach. You can’t. Miami, probably even worse. Now, a hurricane center. How does this work? Well, there are a lot of things involved in this. The models for computer hurricanes come from meteorology departments all over the world. The U.K. meteorology office has a bunch of computer models. There’s whole bunch of people. Universities have them. And these model runs happen four to five hours apart, six hours apart multiple times a day.

The models are publicly available. Anybody who knows how to log on to hurricane websites can see the models. And you can track which way the hurricane center, which models they believe and which ones they don’t believe.

Now, my theory — and it’s only a theory — is that because of the biases, because of the politicization of everything, because you have people in all of these government areas who believe man is causing climate change, and they’re hell-bent on proving it, they’re hell-bent on demonstrating it, they’re hell-bent on persuading people of it. So here comes a hurricane that’s 10 to 12 days out and here come the initial model runs, and if it’s close — sometimes it’s not close, sometimes the hurricane will turn to the north out in the mid-Atlantic and there’s no way you can fake that. But if, if they are going to approach a hit on the U.S., you will note that early tracks always have them impacting a major population center.

Unlike UFOs which only land in trailer parks, hurricanes are always forecast to hit major population centers. Because, after all, major population centers is where the major damage will take place and where we can demonstrate that these things are getting bigger and they’re getting more frequent and they’re getting worse. All because of climate change. I’ve got the audio sound bites to support. I can’t tell you the number of media people and elected officials all talking about this hurricane, Hurricane Irma, it’s no doubt due to climate change. And it never ends, it just never ends.

I’m constantly on guard against it. I’ve lived here since 1997, and I have developed a system that I trust, my own analysis of the data. And I’m not a meteorologist. I’m not gonna tell you what mine is because I don’t want to be misinterpreted as giving you a forecast. Well, I’m tempted to, though, because I’ve been exactly right since last Friday. I am tempted to tell you. ‘Cause I had people asking me back then. I’m tempted to tell you. But my better judgment says don’t go there.

Let me just put it this way. The latest National Hurricane Center forecast map, the track, which was released at 11 a.m. puts the Sunday target exactly where I told my buddies on Saturday and Friday night that it was gonna go, while the models all had it turning north up to North Carolina and Washington, D.C., and the Northeastern coast. That was just one data point that I kept looking at that told me where I thought this thing was gonna go.

My prediction of where it was gonna go was not shown on but two or three outlying models. The point is, we still don’t know where it’s gonna go. The Sunday impact in south Florida is to be Sunday, so that’s six days, five days. They still can’t tell us. And not that they should be able to. I mean, these things, there’s too many variables, atmospheric conditions, sea surface temperatures, and unknown. There’s just no way to predict where these storms are gonna go until probably the day before. (interruption) What do you mean, we’re sitting ducks? What, are you in Key West? You’re not a sitting deck unless you’re in Key West. What do you mean? Why are you a sitting duck? What are you talking about?

My point, you’re not a sitting duck. You could be a sitting duck tonight or tomorrow depending on what they do with the track. This is another thing. At the current speed, we know the day is Sunday. Saturday night, Sunday morning, we know that. Unless something happens to slow it down like happened with Harvey. Once it came to shore, it stopped and that’s why Houston flooded. And nobody predicted it. Well, they did predict it was gonna stop. The models did predict that once it came ashore it was gonna stop for a while. They knew that. But they didn’t know this a week in advance. They knew it days in advance.

Here’s another thing. Have you seen the graphics of these hurricanes as depicted on TV or on the internet? They’re these giant, flaming red, “Oh, my God, Mabel, look, it’s bigger than the Gulf of Mexico. We don’t have a prayer, Mabel. Even if it strikes 300 miles away, we are dead!”

Folks, what do you think the bright red area in the satellite imagery, radar imagery of a hurricane is? Mr. Snerdley, do you know what it is? No, no. What does the red represent, that giant blob of red? Not the center. No, no, no, no, no. I’m talking about the whole diameter, the red and the yellow and the green, what are those colors? What do they represent? No. Everybody thinks it represents rainfall. That’s not at all what it represents.

Cloud top temperature is what those colors mean. Bright red means coldest temperatures at the top of the clouds. It has nothing to do with precip. But people don’t know this, and they look at these giant graphics of these hurricanes, it’s moving up, it looks bigger than Cuba. When in fact the eye of the storm, any hurricane on average the real damage occurs in the 20- to 30-mile radius, circle around the eye. That’s where when you hear Category 5, that’s where the Category 5 winds are. They’re not throughout the whole thing. They’re not throughout the giant, big blog.

Another thing I’ve found, folks, these storms, once they actually hit, are never as strong as they’re reported. If you look at graphics, the data you can find from sea buoys and on the ground in spots in the Caribbean where hurricanes hit before they get here, it’s amazing that the actual wind speeds are never or very rarely as high as what they would be if it’s genuinely Category 4, Category 5.

Now, somewhere in the storm they are, but not the whole thing. The eye wall and within, that’s where these things are killers. It’s bad. I mean, it’s not a piece of cake when you’re not in the eye wall, but the whole thing is not Category 5. The whole thing is not 30 inches of rain. It’s a much more compact area of the storm. But the graphics have been created to make it look like the ocean’s having an exorcism, just getting rid of the devil here in the form of this hurricane, this bright red stuff.

So, anyway, I gotta take a break. I’m up against it right before I get to conclusion.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To wrap up the hurricane business, folks, is simply that I wish that not everything that involved news had become corrupted and politicized, but it just has. And I’m just sharing all this with you ’cause this is the way I look at this stuff now, and I see people being led to panic. I see people being led to hoarding. I see all of this being, if not created, encouraged. And it’s extremely frustrating. Time will tell, as it always does, on these storms. And where it goes and how much damage it causes and what its eventual strength actually is.

The point is, you ought to see the model tracks from Saturday. I was showing them to Snerdley today. The model tracks from Saturday, it doesn’t even get to the Bahamas. They don’t even get close to the Bahamas. It curves northwest and barely, only a couple of models have it touching the United States at all. And then by Sunday, it’s gonna eat Florida. And hello runs on the grocery stores and hello no water available, hello no batteries available and so forth.

“But, Rush, but, Rush, what are people supposed to do?” That’s my whole point. You can’t blame people. They’re reacting to what they’re seeing. And I’m just telling you that there’s a vested interest on the part of a lot of people. Folks, the hurricane doesn’t even need to strike land. The hurricane doesn’t even need to hit in order to for the agenda to be advanced. All they have to do is create the panic and then show you that graphic of this giant red blob that, “Oh, my God, is gonna eat the country, you see this thing, is horrible, Mabel, look at how big…” And they create the fear and panic after they’ve already told everybody climate change is responsible for these bigger and more frequent storms.

And the image is powerful, the picture, the graphic is powerful, and the fear that it might hit is all it needs. If it ends up not hitting where you are, hits somewhere else, you might temporarily breathe a sigh of relief, but you’re still gonna think, “Man, there might be something to this climate change,” which, do not doubt me, with everything being politicized, of course it is an objective of some, not everybody, of course, but some of the people involved here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The extreme weather circumstance, you know, last week and the week prior it was Houston and Hurricane Harvey, and of course the people — you know, I found something fascinating. When I did not live in Florida, when I lived in Missouri growing up or when I was in Pittsburgh, or New York and then out in Sacramento, you see the weather forecast of hurricanes, but when you live in a place you know that they’re not gonna hit, there just isn’t any personal stake. Now, if you have family where they’re gonna hit, you have some connection to it, but it’s nothing like actually in a target area.

And this week we have the big bull’s-eye painted on us. All the hurricane models — well, not all, causative there are now so many of ’em that you can’t keep track of ’em. But the reputed high class models, the ones that have been around a long time that are respected and used, one way or another have south Florida in the crosshairs. And so everybody here is explicably, I mean, understandably, totally focused on that. Grocery store runs, there’s nothing there now. There’s no bottled water.

For those of you, by the way, in panic, there’s this thing in your kitchen called a sink, and at the sink there’s this thing called a faucet. And what you should do, if you like bottled water, is when you finish a bottle of water, don’t throw the bottle away. You put that bottle underneath that thing called the faucet and you turn it on, and water will come out and end up in the bottle and you’ll have bottled water, much like the water you buy in the bottle in the store anyway.

It’s perfectly drinkable, perfectly fine. It may not be vitamin enriched, but how do you know the bottle stuff is? And it may not have a bunch of electrolytes in it, but it’s water. God made, God created, has everything in it to keep you from being dehydrated. So it’s there, even if you can’t find it at the grocery store. So you don’t need to panic over the water. “But, Rush, but, Rush, when the hurricane hits and the water stops and the water…” I understand that. It’s why you should keep your empty bottles and fill ’em up from the tap.

If Sam’s Club’s out, if Costco is out, if Whole Foods — does Whole Foods sell whole water? Whole water. Right. Well, whatever, I’m sure you can find gallon jugs, you know, when you finish your low fat skim milk, rinse it out, fill it up with water, put it in the fridge and keep it chilled until the hurricane. I mean, there’s ways around this. Rain barrel. You get a rain barrel. But that’s not an immediate fix or solution to the stores being out of water.

When did bottled water become fashionable? I mean, how long ago was it that — Evian was first, was it not? Evian. Yeah, prior to the eighties, the water that you drank came from the tap. It’s perfectly fine is the point. Anyway, airline flights getting out of south Florida are — I think Miami sold out, I think exits out of Miami are sold out. Which, look, I totally understand. My point to you is, folks, that even though we are all here, we at the EIB Network are all in the crosshairs, we have that bull’s-eye painted, we’re going to be devoted the usual 125% of this program to you.

We’re not gonna turn this program into crying over spilt milk. We’re not gonna do three hours of, “Oh, no, what are we gonna do? Oh, God, it’s headed for us. Oh, my God.” None of that here. You won’t hear that here. And if it does happen here, you won’t hear it, because there aren’t any microphones in there. So I just want you to know that even though we here are in the cross-hairs, you are going to get the full-fledged, come to expect it, 125% effort every day the EIB Network that you get when there is — (interruption) it already is. (laughing) They’re asking me if I have a way. I’ve already arranged it.

Look, the program has to go on. I can sit here and say, “You know what, I’m gonna stay, I’m gonna ride this out.” And I would if it weren’t for the fact that we’re gonna lose electricity. If we lose electricity, then there’s no way we can get the show done outta here. What are you laughing at in there? You think I’m making this up? I’m just telling you that we have a generator, but I don’t want to give away how it’s fueled. That’s a security breach.

But there are just too many variables when I could go someplace and have no concerns. Because I guarantee you people outside of south Florida aren’t gonna care. They gonna be hurricaned out, Harvey and now what is this, is Irma. People are gonna be begging for budget news. (laughing) Yes, I know, there’s another storm out there. Big red X on the hurricane center map, right? Giant, big X, another global warming destructive force is brewing. Yes, I know the drill. Jose. That would follow because J comes after I. So Harvey, Irma, Jose. Hurricane Jose. Yeah, wait ’til La Raza hears about that. Of course, depending on where it hits, they might support it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Well, I just saw that officials in Miami-Dade County are thinking of asking some of the people that live there to start evacuating as early as Wednesday. That’s unofficial, but I think it’s gonna be pretty close. I just saw that now. Not enough time to delve into it, but you’ll probably be hearing about it in due course.


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