Blowing hot air in Florida

Hurricane Irma has already claimed lives in the Caribbean. Thousands have already heeded the mandatory evacuation orders for the Florida Keys. And anyone with a functioning brain in the storm’s path would be making adequate preparations — to board up, stock up, get out or all of the above.

And then there’s Rush Limbaugh, resident of Palm Beach, Fla., from which he also broadcasts his increasingly bizarre radio show.

Limbaugh as recently as Tuesday was still advancing the theory that the “panic” over Irma was just so much fake news.

So after a disclaimer — presumably to make his lawyers happy — that he is not the National Hurricane Center or a meteorologist, he insists “when it comes to a hurricane bearing down on south Florida, I’m the go-to guy.”

Because, of course, this is all political and it’s the media’s fault.

“There is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it,” Limbaugh claimed on his talk show.

“The media benefits with the panic, with increased eyeballs, and the retailers benefit from the panic with increased sales, and the TV companies benefit … These storms, once they actually hit, are never as strong as they’re reported.”

The governor of Florida is urging evacuations. The president has pulled out all the stops to make sure Florida has the federal resources it needs ahead of the storm. But Limbaugh rants, “I wish that not everything that involved news had become corrupted and politicized, but it just has,” he said.

It’s one thing to rant about politics in the wackadoodle world of talk radio. But quite another to convey disinformation about an oncoming hurricane that could endanger anyone dumb enough to believe those rantings.

Don’t you wonder where Rush is actually waiting out the storm.