Photo by Micah Walter, Reuters.
On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh suggested that the government manipulated hurricane forecasts in order to force Republicans to cancel a day of their national convention, saying the model “allows them to do it.”
“The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department. It’s the government. It’s Obama,” Limbaugh said.
In reality, the National Hurricane Center forecast is, roughly, what you get if “you average together the track forecasts from” several models, most of which are done by other organizations, in some cases other countries. Obama would have more luck using his apparently omniscient powers to alter the course of the hurricane itself than somehow trying to rejigger the storm tracks from all these different models, which are publicly available and updated continuously.
Limbaugh communicated his absurd theory on this imaginary scheme while simultaneously claiming “I’m not alleging conspiracy.”
His latest conspiracy theory matches the absurdity of his claim from last July, when he said the heat index was “manufactured by the government” in order to convince the American people that it’s hotter outside.
Listen to Limbaugh’s paranoid rant on hurricane forecasting:
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Here’s part of the full transcript (emphasis added):
So this whole thing has been politicized, as the Democrats politicize everything, and that’s why we are talking about it. Now, I want to remind you: All last week … And, no, at no time here am I alleging a conspiracy. At no time. With none of this am I alleging conspiracy. All last week what was the target? Tampa. What was going on in Tampa this week?
The Republican National Convention. A pretty important one, too. Introducing the nominee, Mitt Romney. It’s only after the convention that Romney can actually start spending all of this money that he’s raised, so this convention is very important. It’s a chance to introduce Romney to a lot of people who don’t know him yet. And I noticed that the hurricane center’s track is — and I’m not alleging conspiracies here. The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department.
It’s the government.
It’s Obama.
And I’m noticing that that track stayed zeroed in on Tampa day after day after day. And the Republicans react to it accordingly over the weekend, canceling the first day of the convention. What could be better for the Democrats than the Republicans to cancel a day of this?
… Again, I’m alleging no conspiracy. I don’t want anybody thinking I’m going somewhere with this. I’m just telling you what happened.
I’m sharing with you my thought process, ’cause I know full well that if you give these people the slightest chance and they’re gonna turn this into Katrina and they’re gonna scare the hell out of New Orleans and they’re gonna revive, “Bush doesn’t care about people” and revive all of it. They’re gonna politicize everything ’cause they do it. And now they had the model runs allowing them to do it.
Now they had these model runs allowing them to start scaring the hell out of people in New Orleans and make political connections to Bush.
It was all there.
I’m afraid Limbaugh isn’t all there …
