RUSH: Let’s look at the nuclear stack just to give you an idea of where we’re headed here. From the French News Agency: ” “US Ill-Prepared for Emergency Radiation: Study.” From San Francisco, Reuters, Peter Henderson: “‘Special report: Big California Quake Likely to Devastate State’ — California will experience unthinkable damage when the next powerful quake strikes, probably within 30 years, even though the state prides itself on being on the leading edge of earthquake science.” That’s good. They had me worried there for a minute. But if a quake might not happen for another 30 years, we’re all gonna be dead from global warming anyway. Oh, and guess what? Diane Sawyer, ABC News, in Japan, reports that in the midst of all of this, the meltdowns, the radiation, the earthquakes, a new one near mount Fuji just a couple of hours ago 5.8 to 6 on the Andy Richter scale. Well, that’s close to Tokyo, another earthquake. And Diane Sawyer has a report on how the Japanese, despite this, are still heavily engaged in saving the planet by recycling their waste. No, no, no. I kid you not. I’ve got the audio sound bite. I wouldn’t dare joke with you about something as important as this. Diane Sawyer has it, they are recycling out there. They’re recycling their own refuse. Here it is, Diane Sawyer.
SAWYER: This is a shelter. Some of these people here for daaays, and, look. (cackles) It’s recycling! Organized for recycling!
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Plastic, combustible, burnable, cans.
RUSH: They’re recycling. I mean give ’em a gold star over there. Diane Sawyer reports we can all, ladies and gentlemen, rest easy that in the midst of this meltdown disaster the Japanese are still doing their part to save the planet. (interruption) Well, I do, too. I feel a little guilty. I gave up recycling a long time ago. It’s bogus. I gave it up. No, they come to my house every day for one reason or another. There may be people recycling, making up for the fact that I’m not at my house, but I don’t care. I see a trash can, and if it’s got room, bammo, I throw whatever is trash into it. That’s why I’m feeling guilty now that the Japanese in the midst of all this are still engaged in their recycling. So the US is ill-prepared for an emergency, radiation, big California quake likely to devastate the state. Germany has announced they’re gonna shut down seven nuclear reactors. Panic. This is liberalism. This is how liberalism spreads. Germany’s leaders think their people are all concerned, so gotta shut down seven nuclear reactors because of the earthquake in Japan. That equals leaders being prepared. It has nothing to do with whether or not it’s gonna happen. It has nothing to do with whether there’s gonna be an earthquake. It’s just, “There’s a nuclear meltdown going on over in Japan, okay, we’re gonna shut down our reactors.” This shows leadership. This shows concern.
Felix Salmon, in the analysis and opinion sector of Reuters, says: “Don’t Donate Money to Japan.” They’re a rich country, they can print money. We are letting the poor and the hungry and the thirsty in the Third World starve by sending money to Japan. I kid you not. It’s right here. I have it in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. “Earmarking funds is a really good way of hobbling relief organizations and ensuring that they have to leave large piles of money unspent in one place while facing urgent needs in other places.” There’s all kinds of hunger, starvation, disease, and conflict in the Third World and every dollar donated to Japan leaves the hunger, the starvation, the disease, and the conflict untouched in the Third World. That would be Felix Salmon of Reuters.
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CALLER: Good afternoon. I’m a senior reactor operator licensed on a facility in the United States that’s very similar to the ones that are having the issues in Japan.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: And I wanted to bring up a point that the liberal media would never talk about, they probably don’t even know it, but General Electric designed these plants. General Electric manufactured the reactors for some of them. American companies were the architectural firms. And the mistake here was made by the Japanese, because General Electric designs a plant and they say here are the specifications of this plant, then they bring it to the potential buyer, in this case the Japanese, who say, “Here are the natural phenomena — seismic events, atmospheric events — that may occur in our region.” Then they do a final safety analysis report to determine whether this plant can meet those specific local events.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And then the Japanese, their regulatory agencies confirm that. So the Japanese miscalculated on what those natural phenomena could be. Yet the American-designed plant, American-built plant withstood what is called a beyond-design basis event. So the media should be praising America.
RUSH: Ha.
CALLER: They should be praising General Electric and their designers.
RUSH: (laughing) Essentially the meat and potatoes here, the Japanese failed to be honest and say they could experience a 9 Richter scale earthquake?
CALLER: I wouldn’t say they failed to be honest about it. Maybe their assessment was incorrect about the tsunami, because the tsunami is really what caused the failure of the components over there. The plant handled the earthquake.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: The Japanese miscalculated, I would say.
RUSH: Well, but this plant is 40 years old. That means they miscalculated 40 years ago. Wasn’t this intended to be taken off line within the next —
CALLER: This was intended to be taken off line in 2011.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: The Japanese have given it a ten-year life extension.
RUSH: Well, it’s off line.
CALLER: Yeah. So my point is the American nuclear industry, we have designed our plants and analyzed our local events —
RUSH: Look.
CALLER: We’re not gonna have a tsunami here.
RUSH: Yeah, but you understand as well as anybody — and I don’t mean to be rude here, I’ve got a time constraint problem. You understand that the media is the American left and the left and nuclear power, there’s never, ever gonna be a story on good news. There’s nothing positive about nuclear power as far as the left is concerned, even if it’s built by a company that’s in bed with Obama. Just isn’t gonna happen.
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CALLER: Thank you, Mr. Limbaugh. With that disaster taking place over in Japan right now, I was wondering if you knew how much of our debt Japan owned and if they were gonna cash in on it.
RUSH: I have the latest statistics on that from the US Treasury. The ChiComs hold $1.154 trillion in American debt. Japan has $885 billion of our debt currently owned. The UK has $278 billion. Now, that’s the latest. That’s as of January 2011.
CALLER: They could do a lot of rebuilding with that.
RUSH: Yeah, but they can also print their own.
CALLER: True.
RUSH: They can print their own. Thanks for the call out there. Let me get to some of this stuff here that I titillated you with at the beginning of the broadcast. Mr. Felix Salmon, who is degreed, I believe, in art literature or art criticism or something. He’s an artist, but he has a piece at Reuters today in their “Analysis and Opinion” section, and his piece is entitled, “Don’t Donate Money to Japan — Individuals are doing it, banks are doing it — faced with the horrific news and pictures from Japan, everybody wants to do something, and the obvious thing to do is to donate money to some relief fund or other.
“Please don’t. We went through this after the Haiti earthquake, and all of the arguments which applied there apply to Japan as well. Earmarking funds is a really good way of hobbling relief organizations and ensuring that they have to leave large piles of money unspent in one place while facing urgent needs in other places.” Now, I don’t know about you. Does Japan strike you as being like Haiti? I don’t think there’s gonna be a lot of money unspent in Japan, frankly, but let me continue here with Mr. Felix Salmon.
“And as Matthew Bishop and Michael Green said last year, we are all better at responding to human suffering caused by dramatic, telegenic emergencies than to the much greater loss of life from ongoing hunger, disease and conflict. That often results in a mess of uncoordinated [non-governmental organizations] NGOs parachuting in to emergency areas with lots of good intentions, where a strategic official sector response would be much more effective. Meanwhile, the smaller and less visible emergencies where NGOs can do the most good are left unfunded.” So this guy’s complaint is we have this thing in Japan, these horrible pictures, and people say: “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! We gotta do something. Send money!”
But that’s the wrong thing to do. It’s the wrong thing to do to send money to Japan because elsewhere around the world “ongoing hunger, disease, and conflict” is responsible for much more damage, many more deaths than are happening in Japan. “In the specific case of Japan, there’s all the more reason not to donate money. Japan is a wealthy country which is responding to the disaster, among other things, by printing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of new money. Money is not the bottleneck here: if money is needed, Japan can raise it,” they can print it, but the Haitians can’t and the Third World countries can’t.
So this do-gooder liberal doesn’t want you to send any money to Japan because the money you send to Japan will not end up in Angola or whatever Third World country where there is conflict, starvation, thirst, death, and what have you. So never — you got this, folks? Never donate money to a wealthy country no matter the size and scope of their disaster because they can always print more money. Never mind that Japan’s current debt is 220% of its entire economic output. You are supposed to save your donations for Third World countries, preferably ones run by dictators.
You know, Swiss bankers have to eat, too.
“On top of that, it’s still extremely unclear how or where organizations like GlobalGiving intend on spending the money that they’re currently raising for Japan — so far we’re just told that the money ‘will help survivors and victims get necessary services,’ which is basically code for ‘we have no idea what we’re going to do with the money, but we’ll probably think of something.'” So this guy’s out there now ripping the people raising money. They got no idea what they’re gonna do with it; they’re just doing it to feel good about themselves. (sobbing) Don’t you care? Can’t you spare a dime for these poor people?
“GlobalGiving,” he says, “it’s worth pointing out, was created to support ‘projects in the developing world,’ where lack of money is much more of a problem than it is in Japan.” So Mr. Felix Salmon of Reuters seems to be annoyed that a group that started out to help Third World would help Japan. Why, the outrage. “That said,” he concludes here, “it’s entirely possible that organizations like the Red Cross or Save the Children will find themselves with important and useful roles to play in Japan. It’s also certain that they have important and useful roles to play elsewhere. So do give money to them — and give generously!
“And give money to other NGOs, too, like Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which don’t jump on natural disasters and use them as opportunistic marketing devices. Just make sure it’s unrestricted.” In other words, make sure you only give to dependable, left-wing charities and be sure to let ’em do what they want with your money. But don’t give it to Japan! They’re a rich bunch of creeps. They can print their own money. They don’t deserve your money. Only approved left-wing organizations should get your money.
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RUSH: Let’s go to audio sound bite number six. We have here a media montage. The worst case scenario: possibly doomsday. If this happens, and if that happens, and if this happens, then it will potentially be doomsday.
BLITZER: Dramatic stuff happening, the meltdown potentially, a worst-case scenario.
MADDOW: If that happens, if a total nuclear meltdown happens, that pile of hot radioactive goo, will burn through most everything around it.
FOREMAN: If this goes further you start looking at a meltdown.
WALSH: If, if, if that’s true, that’s bad news.
MYERS: If there is a major release of radiation, if the core melts down.
RATIGAN: What is the worst case scenario?
JOHNSON: What’s the worst case scenario?
MEADE: What is the worst case scenario?
RADDATZ: What is the worst case scenario?
HIRSCH: There is the Homer Simpson effect.
CORWIN: Potentially 30 years of impact of this ecosystem.
ROBERTS: Three decade ripple effect.
CIRINCIONE: The fires could be so hot that it would send radioactive particles across the Pacific.
COOPER: The possible outcome is Three Mile Island times three. The nightmare scenario is Chernobyl times three.
RIVERA: What happened in northeastern Japan; it’s doomsday.
RUSH: Yeah, and now there’s a run on potassium iodine sales. US drugstores report sudden increase in potassium iodine sales because of all this. Soon there will be a shortage of potassium iodine because of the fervor, the fever pitch here. (interruption) You mean the iodine sales? Oh, no, this is all over the place. Let me ask you a question, folks. When we go to the break here, just a question I want you to ponder, which is the bigger problem, Japan’s reactors or our over-reactors in the news media?
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RUSH: Mike in Peru, Indiana, I’m glad you called, sir. You’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. This is quite an honor.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: Yeah, my dad passed away last year. I would love to be able to talk to him, but this is right up there. I was watching the news Friday when the disaster happened, and I heard one of the reporters look out over the devastation and say, “Oh, there’s just… There’s millions of dollars worth of damage here.”
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: I kind of let that slide because I thought, “That’s not even touching what I’m seeing here,” and then last night I was watching some more news and kind of looking at it and pictures and stuff like that, and this time they upped it to: “It will take tens of billions of dollars for Japan to rebuild.”
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And even at that number, I thought, “That just doesn’t even look like it would make a drop in the bucket to what they’re gonna go through,” but then the thought started to hit me that even if it’s ten of billions or hundreds of billions, that’s a fraction of the trillions that we’re talking about. One trillion, two trillion, 14 trillion, whatever the number is, it’s just mind-boggling. I guess I finally got a life lesson of how large a number a trillion is.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: If you can rebuild a country with tens of billions, how far in debt are we that we’re this far behind the eight ball?
RUSH: Yeah. Well, whatever it takes to bring the number home to you, I’m glad it happened.
CALLER: Yeah. It’s just amazing.
RUSH: It certainly is. The debt number in this country, which is an announced $14 trillion, it’s incomprehensible. There’s no way to conceive of it. If watching Japan and the guesses as to how many billions, hundreds of billions it will take to rebuild that part of the country that’s been damaged brings it home to you, fine. But, look, there’s help coming. Cavalry is on the way: $10 billion in serious savings in the latest continuing resolution. Does anybody know how much it cost to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina? Anybody have the number? (chuckles) Snerdley, they have started it. I have been to New Orleans. They have started rebuilding. It’s gotta be several hundred billion, right? Has to be. I’ve been to New Orleans. They started rebuilding. Don’t start getting snarky on me like that: “When are they gonna start rebuilding?” They have.
Chris in Indianapolis. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Great to be on the program.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: (Unintelligible) conservative dittos.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I need some of your wisdom. I’m confused. At the top of the first hour you played a clip — Diane Sawyer, I believe — about the recycling that’s still going on in Japan.
RUSH: I did. You’re right.
CALLER: If these are the people that invented the Prius and have mastered public transportation, recycling, why did Mother Earth — Gaia, if you will — hit them with this disaster?
RUSH: Well, that’s an interesting question. Now, let’s go back and grab Diane Sawyer. Audio sound bite number nine. This is her report on a shelter for refugees in Japan and how they’re handling their waste management.
SAWYER: This is a shelter. Some of these people here for daaays, and, look. (cackles) It’s recycling! Organized for recycling!
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Plastic, combustible, burnable, cans.
RUSH: Did I really hear this? Did I really hear this? (laughing) Diane Sawyer is in refugee camp in Japan… (laughing) Play this again! This is almost like a kindergarten teacher talking to the four-year-olds. That is how old you are in kindergarten, right? Five? Four or five, all right. This is… (laughing) “Some of these people are here for days, and look! Look! It’s recycling? Organized for recycling!”
SAWYER: This is a shelter. Some of these people here for daaays, and, look. (cackles) It’s recycling! Organized for recycling!
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Plastic, combustible, burnable, cans.
RUSH: My gosh, she sounds like she saw her husband for the first time in six months there. (breathless) “Oh-ho-ho! It’s recycling! Looo-k! Organized for recycling!” These people are in the midst of earthquake devastation, and the credit they’re getting is for recycling — and our caller, Chris, with a great question. The Japanese have done so much to save the planet. He’s right. They’ve given us the Prius. Even now, refugees are still recycling their garbage, and yet, Gaia levels ’em. Just wipes ’em out. She wipes out their nuclear plants, all kinds of radiation.
What kinda payback is this? That is an excellent question. They invented the Prius — and, in fact, where Gaia blew up is right where they make all these electric cars. That’s where the tsunami hit. All those brand-new electric cars are sitting there on the lot. I like the way this guy was thinking. It’s like Gaia hit the Prius and Leaf plants. It’s like they were in the crosshairs (if we can use that word). It does. What is Gaia trying to tell us here? What is the mother of environmentalism trying to say with this hit? Great observation out there, Chris.
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