RUSH: I’ve gotta address this one more time, again because of listener feedback. I got a serious number of e-mails questioning my sincerity (which wounded me to the heart, by the way) on the fact that I was shocked last week when I learned that the Northeast was not back to normal following Hurricane Sandy. I’m telling you, I was not kidding when I said that. I really thought the problems had been solved. I honestly did, and I want to expound more on that.

We’ll move on to all the rest of the program.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Folks, I’m sorry to be repetitive, but I have to do it based on the feedback I got last week from people — and these were not spam e-mails or seminar e-mails. These are people that really thought that I was just trying to be sarcastic. I was not. When I was watching Fox last week (I forget what day it was) and I saw the graphic go by that talked about that cold snap and all of the people who still didn’t have heat or electricity in the Northeast and other things because Hurricane Sandy, I have to tell you: I really was surprised.

I was not kidding!

Since the election, I hadn’t seen one story about the Sandy recovery. What I did see was they had the concert to fix all that. They had the concert to solve the problem. They had Bruce Springsteen in there. Governor Cuomo, either shortly before or shortly after the election, was on television saying that never before in his life had he seen a faster, more thorough and complete response to an emergency disaster than what he had seen from President Obama.

He’d never seen a president act as fast, as thoroughly, and who cared as much. He was providing solutions. And then Governor Christie, too. As we all know, the week before the election he had the president on the ground in New Jersey for couple of hours, and they walked on the beach, and they ran into some citizens, and Obama promised everybody that he was gonna eliminate the red tape for anybody that had to call any government agency to deal with assistance.

He promised that every call would be answered and dealt with in 15 minutes, and that was the last I’d heard of it! In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, we saw the ongoing misery for months afterward. The news anchors were all over the place in New Orleans. NBC set up a bureau (not a New Orleans bureau, but a Katrina bureau) and Fox was down there. It went on for months. And the residents that left New Orleans that went to Houston and other places in Texas, they had reporters following them.

It was plain as day that New Orleans didn’t get back to normal for months, but there wasn’t any of that in the Northeast. There were no such stories. The last stories I saw about it were gasoline shortages and people standing in line at gas stations with individual cans of gasoline to fire up their generators. That was, you know, within a day or two (or week or two) on either side of the election, and then it ceased to be a story. Honestly, I’m telling you. I probably forgot it. I just assumed that repair efforts were underway and ongoing and taking place and happening.

And the power? I thought the power was restored long ago.

So I saw that last week, and I’m telling you: I was literally shocked. It’s why I made such a big deal about it. I mean, the concert alone should have turned on how many homes’ electricity? The concert equals what? I mean that’s why they did it, right? Concert for Sandy victims. So you do the concert to wipe out some of the victims so they can get their electricity back. And Cuomo’s saying that nobody’s ever been better, more thorough, more caring, more compassionate than Obama.

Okay, I figured it’s been done. Chris Christie was praising Obama the same way. I figured it was done. I’m not trying to stir anything up, contrary to many of the opinions offered in the feedback. Now, there’s another story today. Again, it’s a local story. I don’t know what you people in the Northeast were being told in your media. I’m just telling you that there was nothing about your circumstance in the national media until last week when we all learned that many of you still don’t have electricity and that you’re freezing in the cold snap.

Now, your local media may be covering this every day, but outside of New York nobody’s seeing it. Here’s another one. This is from CBS Eyeball News, New York: “Victims of Superstorm Sandy who are staying in temporary housing aren’t expecting room service, but some say that they are living in shocking conditions. ‘We’re victims of Sandy but we shouldn’t have to be punished because of that,’ a man who identified himself as Monroe, told CBS 2. Residents of these temporary lodgings have complained of a lack of heat and problems with infestation.

“‘The roaches, and a lot of it has to do with, the mice,’ said one man. Some Sandy victims have been lucky enough to be put up in hotels like the Holiday Inn and the Double Tree, but more than two dozen former residents of the Rockaways are living in a pair of run down rooming houses in the Longwood section of the Bronx.” Again this is local media, but I continue hear about it, and I continue to be surprised, and I’m gonna tell you people in the Northeast something else.

Everybody else in the country is surprised that you are still suffering. There’s no better word. I’m telling you. Because people outside of your region have not been told like the nation was told about the ongoing suffering in New Orleans. There was a little bit about Mississippi, but it was mostly New Orleans. There hasn’t been anything about you since the election. I don’t know if the president knows or not. Does the president know that the repairs aren’t getting done? I would think he knows. Maybe nobody’s telling him.