RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, it is raining here where we are. I mean, it is raining out there, and it’s raining really hard. As a result, this program will be delayed until the rain ends and I feel safe coming in here to once again execute broadcast excellence. No, I melt if I get wet. I’m not gonna do the program if it’s raining. I’m just not gonna do it.

I’m gonna make everybody understand how sensitive and concerned and caring I am about things. Anyway, just teasing, my friends. This was the second week in a row a National Football League game has been delayed by rain and lightning. Now, I understand the lightning. They get the players off the field, but the fans are still out there exposed. I mean, they can’t get all those fans under cover.

So we had a shooting in the Washington Naval Yard today, multiple fatalities and many people are wounded. The government is saying that it is not terrorism. That is only reserved for when they think the Tea Party is involved. If they think the Tea Party’s involved, then they will start speculating immediately that it is terrorism. But in this case, we’re being assured right off the bat that is not terrorism.

“Navy officials say at least six are dead in this shooting.” The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Navy officials say one suspect killed by law enforcement in the Washington Navy Yard shooting, and Fox News is reporting at least 10 people shot, multiple fatalities reported at the DC Navy yard. Tell me, have you heard? Is the Tea Party being blamed for this yet? (interruption) Well, give it time. And there’s not a video to explain this yet either. (interruption)

No. No. But… (interruption) Well, so nobody knows, really, what this is all about. Which means everybody’s wide open to guess, which means that everybody can be a journalist here, which they’re now gonna be deciding in the US Senate. Dianne Feinstein actually wants to decide who is going to be a journalist. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna get into this in due course. I just want to set you up for this.

The pressure that is being brought to bear on what remains of any opposition to this government, this administration in the Republican Party is daunting. The pressure being brought to bear on people like Ted Cruz and others is intensifying. The president of the United States is joining with other Republicans and supposed conservative media, and they are doing everything they can now to get rid of the last remnants of any opposition to what is happening in Washington, even as far as Obamacare is concerned.

You know, there was a little incident, I guess. It’s a provision where members of Congress and their staff were going to be required to get their health care like everybody else according to the Obamacare law. Members of Congress and their staffs objected, saying that they couldn’t afford it, that it was too expensive, and they wanted an exemption. Well, they got it. Members of Congress and their staffs got an exemption.

Their health care via Obamacare will be subsidized, not through the exchanges, but rather through the personnel department and the federal government. It’s a different way, but it adds up to the same thing. They are going to have their health care subsidized, and it turns out that an effort in the House and the Senate to defund Obamacare is being undermined by Republican staffers who don’t want to upset what they have achieved for themselves along with Democrat staffers in terms of Obamacare being subsidized.

There actually are Republican staffers who have no interest in defunding Obamacare. It really is a dwindling number, even though you look at the polling data, and it’s unpopular. The Pew Research Center poll is out today, and the number of people who want Obamacare is dwindling. The number of people who support it is dwindling. There is nowhere near, and it hasn’t been for a long time, majority support for Obamacare. There is vast majority opposition to it.

But the ruling class in Washington, having taken care of itself and essentially exempting itself from the rules and regulations of Obamacare is just fine and dandy with it. I’ll tell you, folks, there’s another thing out there. There are two stories here that dovetail, and it’s about the income gap in this country, and it is widening. Under the Obama administration, the income gap is wide. The 1% is getting richer and richer; the 99% are falling into deep poverty.

This is an AP story, and the 1%, most of them live and work in Washington. The median income in this country is $51,000 per household. That’s the “median,” not the “average.” For those of you in Rio Linda, what this means is that there are as many households earning above that number as there are households earning below it. Average does not mean that, but a mean does. There are four counties in the United States where the mean household income is over $100,000 a year.

Three of them are suburban Washington: Two of them in northern Virginia, and one in Maryland. The other is out in New Mexico, I think, near the nuclear installation there. Now, we also know that in all of Washington, primarily the suburbs, there is no recession there. There is no unemployment there. The unemployment rate in the metro Washington area is 3.5% to 4%.

Now the median household income. It’s $51,000 in America, but there are two counties, maybe three in suburban Washington (two in Virginia, one in Maryland) where the median household income is over a hundred grand. The point is that the people in Washington are fine. There is no recession. There is no unemployment. They have their exemption from Obamacare. There’s no problem. They don’t see what’s wrong. They’re fine. It used to not be this way.

Of course the Democrat Party is comprised of people who have amassed power under the false premise that they care about the little guy, that they care about the downtrodden and that they’re gonna do everything they can to make sure that the little guy doesn’t get stomped on and they’re gonna do everything they can to make sure that the little guy is elevated and raised and does okay. Well, that has never really been the case with the Democrat Party.

The Republican Party has always stood for everybody doing better. We want everybody to do well. We don’t like this income gap business. We want everybody to do great. That’s what equals a great country. We want everybody to have a good car and a nice house. We want everybody to do well. We’re not selfish. We’re not hoarders. We believe in an economy that can grow and expand and accommodate anybody who wants to work hard and put themselves out there and engage a little ambition.

We believe in everybody doing well. But now it appears there’s nobody looking out for the little guy. Everybody is looking out for themselves in this time of economic malaise. It appears that leaders who, in the past, have always cared (or at least professed to care) about the middle class and what was happening to those people, are now totally absorbed in, “Are they okay?” And if so, that’s it. That’s enough.

There appears to be enough to indicate that this is true. You look at the nation’s capital, and there is none of that — other than metro Washington. Now, that’s a whole other story there. But outside of DC, the actual city, you look in the entire suburban area, and there is no recession, and there is no unemployment, and everybody’s doing well. It stands to reason. That’s where all the money is, and everybody in Washington’s found a way to get their hands into that pile somehow.

Now, that’s always been the case, but you at least used to have people who, by virtue of the notion of service or ideological belief, wanted to — by virtue of policy — structure things so that economics could be something that everybody would benefit in. Now I’ll tell you what’s happening. The economic circumstance in this country is so bad, the future is so dismal, that even among the ruling class in Washington, what appears to be the case now is that everybody there is simply grabbing everything they can for themselves and trying to hold on because that’s about all they can hope to do.

It’s almost like it’s an every-man-for-himself mentality now. You know, women and children get to get off the boat first? That’s not true. The ruling class gets off the boat first, and they don’t care who’s left on it, and they don’t really care if it sinks. All they want to make sure of is they’re nowhere around when it happens. Well, it’s social Darwinism in a way. By the way, folks, there just two stories I have here that form the basis of this thought.

One of them is the AP story: “The gap in employment rates between America’s highest- and lowest-income families has stretched to its widest levels since officials began tracking the data a decade ago… Rates of unemployment for the lowest-income families — those earning less than $20,000 — have topped 21%, nearly matching the rate for all workers during the 1930s Great Depression. US households with income of more than $150,000 a year have an unemployment rate of 3.2%…”

Now, it stands to reason that with a household income of 20 grand, there’s something going on there that says you’re really not qualified for much. But it still is a number, and those are people. They’re still human beings, and now US households with incomes of more than 150 grand a year have an unemployment rate of 3.2%. Now if you go to the story here on these six counties in the US with median income greater than $100,000, most of them are in the DC metro area.

Here they are: Loudoun County, Virginia; Falls Church City, Virginia; Fairfax County, Virginia; Los Alamos County, New Mexico; Howard County, Maryland; and there’s one in New Jersey. Hunterdon County, New Jersey. All six of those are the only counties in America where the median income is greater than $100,000. Elsewhere, everywhere else, the median is 51,000. So the people in the ruling class in Washington have found a way to take care of themselves, and since they’ve done that, then to hell with it.

Now, you’ve known people like that. You’ve known ’em all your life. You could actually say four of the six. Howard County is close to DC, Howard County, Maryland, too. So four of the six are suburban Washington. Four of the six. I’m telling you, there’s no unemployment there is 3%. There’s no economic strife. There aren’t businesses closing down. None of that is happening where these people live. The news media, members of Congress. It isn’t happening.

That’s fine. That’s all that matters. Everybody’s taking care of themselves now. Even America’s leftists. They have always done that, but they’ve gotten away with enriching themselves while supposedly caring about the little guy. But there’s a whole bunch of people that think of themselves as the little guy, and they’re hoping to be taken care of or thought of or accounted for in government policy, economic policy. But it isn’t happening.

All of this is happening after five years of a Democrat, a liberal Democrat — an extremist, radical, liberal Democrat — president. The Democrat Party was the one always complaining about the widening income gap. Look at the administration under which it’s wider than ever and continuing to get wide. The ruling class in Washington is less and less defined by party affiliation. So it’s intense. When you have people in Washington who stand in opposition to what’s happening in that town, there aren’t very many of them.

Ted Cruz? I’m telling you, the onslaught is in place. David Brooks was on PBS on Friday night, The NewsHour with Judy Woodruff, and he just impugned Ted Cruz. I’ve got the audio sound bites here out the wazoo. We’ll get to them in just a second. There’s an all-out assault on anybody opposing the defunding of Obamacare. Anybody opposing anything in the Obama agenda, there’s an all-out assault on dealing with those people. One way or the other.