RUSH: Yeah, I just double-checked it, and it looks to me, ladies and gentlemen, like Democrats are not gonna get exactly what they want with Hurricane Isaac hitting New Orleans. They want Hurricane Isaac to hit New Orleans, and they want disaster. They want floods, they want homelessness, they want despair, they want human misery so that they can contrast that with the Republican convention. They want to split screen it, and that’s the key.

Here’s the only problem. As I have looked at the hurricane track, the hurricane is not forecast to make landfall until around eight o’clock tomorrow morning. At eight o’clock tonight, according to the latest forecast, which is as of eleven o’clock this morning… Well, there’s been an update now, too. Yeah, the latest update was two o’clock. At eight o’clock tonight when convention gets going, the hurricane is still offshore.

And unless the media has cameras out there to show upset fish, there really isn’t a whole lot they can do except run highlights of Hurricane Katrina (which they will do, if they have to). The only question is: When they run highlights of Hurricane Katrina, will they say so, or they will they try to make it look like that’s happening now? So you’re gonna have Christie up there doing his speech, and it’ll be split screened. On some networks, it’ll be split screened with disaster preparations, maybe Obama talking to FEMA people.

Who knows what they’ll show? The landfall is expected at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Now, there’s nothing going on at the Republican convention at eight o’clock in the morning. So there’s no live damage. There’s no live destruction to show. And the hurricane will then proceed to move through town, and by eight o’clock tomorrow night, it will have finished its swath of destruction through New Orleans and will be further upstate up the Mississippi Valley.

And outside of New Orleans, they don’t care what happens to it. It’s gotta be New Orleans. They’ll show some cows in distress if they have to. But they’re not going to get, according to the latest forecast… Of course these things can speed up or slow down unexpectedly, but it looks now like they’re not going to have live death and destruction in New Orleans during the actual primetime televising of the Republican convention.

And that’s what they were hoping for.

So they’ll have to make use of the videotape. I just enjoy the fact that they’re not gonna get exactly what they want. Folks, I think it’s fascinating that they are perfectly comfortable with the idea of a hurricane going in and wreaking havoc on poor people again just for the express purpose of advancing their agenda. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. This is yesterday and last night. We got a little montage here of the media trying to relive Katrina and bring it back to life for this Republican convention.

DIANE SAWYER: New Orleans brrrracing, with the memory of Katrina still so fresh.

LESTER HOLT: Clearly the memory of Katrina is in everyone’s mind.

ANDERSON COOPER: I’m at the 17th Street Canal. Seven years ago, during Hurricane Katrina, the levees failed here.

JEFF FLOCK: … seven years to the day after the day that Katrina hit. I remember it well. I was there in a parking garage for a couple days.

PAUL GOODLOE: Here along the coast of Mississippi riding out Katrina, and I remember, I — I worked that night.

SHEP SMITH: … here in New Orleans in the lower Ninth Ward when Katrina came, and they didn’t send the buses.

CHRIS CILLIZZA: … seven years after Katrina. The memories that brings back for people.

ROB MARCIANO: I’m getting chills thinking about it!

RUSH: Yeah, he’s “getting chills thinking about it,” thinking about what we can do to the Republican convention! “I’m getting chills thinking about it!” Now, if you missed the first hour, I, of course, Mr. Solution, El Rushbo, suggested that the Republicans head off some of this criticism that they know is coming their way by doing two things. First thing is send 500 bus drivers to New Orleans right now. Because, remember, it was Mayor Nagin of New Orleans who didn’t mobilize the buses to help evacuate the poor citizens.

Bush got blamed for it, of course, but it was the mayor who didn’t activate the buses. So we send 500 bus drivers in. The second thing we do: Instead of sending sandbags to shore up these levees, which have ostensibly been repaired since Katrina, we send in bags of money! We send in bags of money delivered by Mitt Romney’s sons. And we take those bags of money down to those levees.

We maybe even set one bag on fire just to show ’em we’re Republicans. This will accomplish a couple things. A, it’ll show we care. “We have sent money directly to New Orleans, in bags at the levees.” The second thing that will happen is that citizens in New Orleans, when they find out there’s money in those bags, will head down there and try to steal the bags, steal the money, at which time the levees will fail because the bags are being taken away.

And more destruction, damage, and injury. In the process, the Republicans succeed in having fewer Democrat voters in Louisiana again. Just like they did with Hurricane Katrina. And everybody knows that was the point. Steer Katrina in there; wipe out New Orleans. Have the people that survive go to Texas and take Democrats away from Louisiana and make it not a Democrat state. That’s what the media told us Republicans did with Katrina. So relive it.

Those are my ideas.

I don’t expect them to be acted upon.

But using bags of money would be cheaper than giving taxpayer dollars to the local Democrats who have been in charge of the levees, because that money has just ended up in the back pockets of the Democrats and didn’t go to levee repair. They used the money to buy votes, or in the case of William Jefferson (Democrat-Louisiana) he just put the money in his freezer.

That was excused, by the way, if you’ll recall. “Well, you have to look at his background. He’s the son of a sharecropper. He grew up with nothing. Everybody else had all the money. Here’s a chance! He was just trying to score. We — we really can’t blame him. We have to understand the socioeconomic circumstances that Congressman Jefferson came from.” Oh, yeah. I remember all this.

If they can’t get the Republicans to cancel the convention — which is what they hoped to do, by the way. They’re not just trying to get Romney to shut up and not criticize Obama. They have been trying to get the Republicans to cancel this convention for a rainstorm. “How can the Republicans dare do this while this is going on? Have they no shame? Have they no heart?” But if they can’t get ’em to shut up, and if they can’t get ’em to stop the convention, maybe they’ll just split screen the thing.

Here we have another montage from yesterday and last night…

BOB SCHIEFFER: (background noise) The optics of a split screen of people in peril and people at a convention having fun is something they really don’t want.

RONALD BROWNSTEIN: We’re now in a split screen mode…

SUZANNE MALVEAUX: The Republicans are going to be faced here with the next couple of days of a split screen.

DOUG BRINKLEY: You’re going to be having a spectacle of a split screen.

MARTIN KADY: … the Split Screen Convention.

BRIAN SULLIVAN: … this split screen, which is a speech and the other side is New Orleans getting walloped.

STEVE SCULLY: A split screen here in Tampa and Isaac…

WOLF BLITZER: (haltingly) It would be pretty awkward to have a split screen with, uh, speakers here and devastation.

ARI FLEISCHER: The worst thing would be that split screen of speeches as people are being evacuated.

RUSH: That’s Ari Fleischer, by the way, Bush’s first spokesman in the White House, agreeing: “Oh, we can’t have that! We can’t.” Now, what is Obama gonna be doing tonight? You know what Obama is doing tonight? That’s exactly right. Obama’s raising money tonight. He’s out campaigning at a fundraiser. Will they do a split screen of that? Would they do a split screen of Obama out fundraising while there’s devastation in New Orleans? Yes, and it would be timed to the point in Obama’s speech where he explains to the people he’s trying to fleece — uh, raise money from — all he’s done to get New Orleans prepared for this.

No, there’s no way that they would embarrass Obama the way they want to try to embarrass Republicans.

NBC Nightly News, “Angrier” Mitchell, in an attempt to tie the Republican National Committee to Hurricane Katrina.

MITCHELL: A political challenge here with this approaching storm, especially for the Republicans. No one here can easily forget the iconic picture of President Bush flying on Air Force One looking out the window and looking down at New Orleans during Katrina. They’re not gonna forget that.

RUSH: Oh, no, not gonna forget that picture, no way. We’re not gonna let people forget that picture. We got these doofus Republicans here in Tampa, they won’t cancel their convention like we’re demanding, so we’re gonna put up that picture of Bush flying back to Washington doing a flyover of New Orleans.

It was a picture of him looking out the window of Air Force One at the devastation. I remember the picture. What they don’t tell you is why Bush didn’t land. Bush didn’t land at that time because he would have taken away a bunch of uniformed officials, security, law enforcement, to make up his security detail away from the recovery work they were doing. In essence, Bush didn’t want to get in the way. Presidents just can’t drop in someplace. Arrangements have to be made, security, Secret Service, telephone lines have to be established, all kinds of things. Presidents don’t just drop in without causing all kinds of havoc.

But what was the crime of flying over Katrina anyway, New Orleans? I never understood that. You listen to Andrea Mitchell, it’s a crime just to fly over it and look out the window. What was the crime there? What they want you to believe is, he didn’t care. He tried to make people think he cared by flying over it. He didn’t care. Bush never cared. Bush didn’t care about anybody. Republicans don’t care about anybody. And that’s what they’re trying to revive. He couldn’t even see the people he was looking down on. That’s right, he was so high above them, he couldn’t see the pain and suffering on their faces. Because he didn’t care. And even if he had seen the pain on their faces, he was in the comfort of Air Force One, just like he was a coward after 9/11. That’s the impression they wished to convey. Jonathan Karl, this was on Good Morning America today. Jonathan Karl reporting about Tropical Storm Isaac and the Republican National Convention.

KARL: Officials are watching warily as it heads towards New Orleans. What they’re worried about is that image of it slamming the Gulf Coast as they have a big celebration here. Technically the convention has already started. The first session lasted just 32 seconds, long enough to take the first swipe at President Obama.

PRIEBUS: We also want to draw your attention to the unprecedented fiscal recklessness of the Obama administration.

RUSH: That was the swipe? That was the swipe at President Obama? That was the Republican National Committee chairman there. “We want to draw your attention to the unprecedented fiscal recklessness of the Obama administration.” Yeah, didn’t take ’em long for their first swipe at President Obama. So the effort is clearly underway and it’s in full steam to intimidate the Republicans into shutting up.

This morning on CNN on Starting Point, the co-host John Berman spoke with Representative Randy Forbes, a Republican from Virginia. It’s about the Republican convention and Tropical Storm Isaac, and Berman had an observation about me and then wanted to know from this congressman’s point of view if I was right. Here’s the first of two sound bites.

BERMAN: Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh is saying that the media and the Democrats are making more out of this storm than we should.

RUSH ARCHIVE: The media is now out there saying that Hurricane Katrina is now hanging like a pall over the Republican convention in Tampa. So this whole thing has been politicized as the Democrats politicize everything. It’s the government. It’s Obama.

BERMAN: Is this being politicized?

RUSH: So he asked that of Randy Forbes, Republican from Virginia, and here’s Randy Forbes’ answer to, “Is Rush right? Are we and the Democrats politicizing this hurricane?”

FORBES: We hope that it won’t be politicized. Our big concern is the victims that could be there. As I mentioned to you before, Americans all across this country are very, very concerned about getting this country back on the right track, getting the economy going, creating jobs, and I think they’re gonna be listening to that message as well. And, you know, Americans, again, are gonna have a lot of challenges as we move through the next several years.

RUSH: I don’t think Forbes answered the question. He just said, “We hope they don’t politicize it.” Randy’s too late. It already has been politicized. It’s already being politicized. They’re already salivating over the split screens tonight. They can’t wait. Stop and think of that. They can’t wait for devastation and destruction so they can split screen it with Chris Christie making his speech. Last night CNN, Wolf Blitzer, special coverage of the Republican National Convention. The reason why it was special coverage is that there wasn’t a convention last night. They canceled it. Having a discussion about conducting the convention while Tropical Storm Isaac, now Hurricane Isaac, is hitting New Orleans, is Wolf Blitzer and Marco Rubio.

BLITZER: If you were speaking tomorrow night and had to make a decision, do I speak at a time when a hurricane is hitting the Gulf Coast maybe on the seventh anniversary of Katrina, or do I say, you know what, maybe it’s not the best time for me to speak, what would you do? ‘Cause there are plenty of speakers lined up for tomorrow night.

RUBIO: We need to wait and see what the intensity of the storm becomes, whether that continues to be the path. But let me say this, the convention’s not just a big party; it’s a working session. I mean, there’s business to be transacted here.

RUSH: So Wolf’s beside himself now. He just basically said to Rubio, “Are you gonna have the guts to make your speech while all this crap’s going on in New Orleans? Don’t you understand that it’d be better to cancel your speech? What business do you have making a speech when that hurricane’s hitting New Orleans?” And Wolf didn’t get the answer that he wanted, so he kept on.

BLITZER: It’s one thing to do a roll call which is obviously critically important. The legal, the technical things you gotta do. It’s another thing for people to go up there and start bashing, let’s say, President Obama at a time when there’s a national crisis.

RUBIO: Well, again, I think this convention’s gonna be a lot more about the choice that the American people face. I hate to get into the speculation.

RUSH: Right. How can you go bash Obama? How dare you give your speech during a national crisis. It’s already a national crisis. It’s a rainstorm, it’s a Cat 1. And I’m not diminishing Cat 1 hurricanes here of course, but national crisis? Anyway, just a heads-up what’s coming.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, pop quiz, Mr. Snerdley. Name for me one thing — and there’s more than one — name for me one thing that kills more people than natural disasters does. Obesity? Perhaps. Eating carrots? True. More people have died after eating carrots than have died in natural disasters. Not the answer I was looking for. Those are both correct. Heart disease, yes, kills more people than natural disasters. Jury verdicts in Los Angeles. That’s a toss-up. That would be close. But there is one thing that kills more people than natural disasters and that’s poverty. Poverty kills more people than natural disasters. Poverty has always been a killer. Why worry about it otherwise?

Now, who has done more to increase poverty in this country in the last four years? Barry. The One. The Big O. You could say that President Obama has been tied to more misery than people in natural disasters. I mean, if you wanted to be real about it. Of course, that’s being critical of Obama, and we’re not supposed to do that, ’cause, of course, that’s racism.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Tonight the split screen convention: Hurricane Isaac destruction in New Orleans, side by side with Governor Chris Christie doing the Keynote Address to the convention. There are reports of thousands already without power, according to a local power supplier in New Orleans. They’re ginning it up.