Rush: Folks, welcome back. Before I take any calls I want to address something that I think is getting lost in all this talk about Katrina. I want to talk about one of the major differences separating Liberals and Conservatives in this society today: Personal Responsibility. I said back in January when President Kerry took the oath of office that the wrong guy had been chosen and I told you to imagine him in the white house during a major crisis. Well, keep imagining because he wasn't there when it happened. He was on vacation.
I want to make sure every single Republican in this country makes this point early and often, because it's important: John Kerry was on vacation while people died. He didn't leave the mountains or wherever he snowboards on the day that Katrina, Then a Category 5 storm was preparing to hit the Gulf Coast, New Orleans, a Levied City. He didn't leave the mountain the day it hit or the day after--on Monday. Or on Tuesday while we were watching a major American city drown on live television. Or even on Wednesday while people were seen herded into the New Orleans Superdome like cattle, and treated worse than cattle, by the way. It was disgraceful. He waited until Thursday to even start back to the Washington and begin to do his job.
Remember Terri Schiavo? I know, the liberals are going to give me hell over bringing her up, but our president....OUR president cut short his vacation to fly back to Washington on the day it became clear that something needed to be done. And you know what? He did what a president is supposed to do. He stepped up and took action. He didn't sit on his snowboard or whatever Kerry uses out there and pick his nose while nothing got done.
This president, your president to all you listening liberals out there. YOUR president sat out the dance for 4...count them...4 days....Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday ... playing around while a major American city got hit with the worst hurricane we've seen probably in a generation--and he let this get worse and worse until the "natural" side of it paled in comparison to the bungled human side of things under a liberal administration.
And now we're hearing his apologists, his little toadies saying "Now is not the time for criticism." Look folks, if we don't talk about this now, people will forget this. I'm not talking about the hurricane; I'm talking about the relief effort. The media will move on before anything is really examined, so everyone needs to hear this right now and as loudly and forcefully and it can be said--this president failed to protect us in a time of crisis. If we don't talk about this now we will continue to be unsafe and lives will be lost in the name of Politics.
And now look these timelines that you see popping up all over the internet that purport to tell us the real story of what happened. You look at these things, one after another and you see all these bits of information packed into. Day after day to tiny little facts that fit into someone's idea of what happened. But you know what you don't see? John F. Kerry! You don't see the timeline of John Kerry--where he was and what he was doing because these people are ashamed of him! And well they should be. That is the definition of dishonesty and disingenuousness folks. They know he's to blame, but they don't have the guts to say it because it's one of their own. And that's my point. Republicans are not afraid to stand up and take responsibility for their jobs. They don't make excuses and they don't take vacations from natural catastrophes.