RUSH: The city of Baltimore and its government can be characterized in three words — and I might add, much of the country can be characterized in three words. This is literally incredible what is going to happen today in Baltimore. You’ll recall there was a Sunday Night Football game in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Eagles were hosting somebody, doesn’t matter who, and there was a forecast the day before game of something like eight inches of snow.
The mayor of Philadelphia canceled the Sunday night NBC telecast, canceled the football game because of the snow and all of the problems it might cause. I thought at the time, “We are being wussified. The wusses are taking over. The wusses are winning.” I could not believe it. I remember football games in Denver played in 25-inch snowstorms, and the players loved it. Elway. It was against the San Diego Chargers, and I’ll never forget the postgame locker room.
The Broncos won. They were talking about how much fun it was to play in a game like that. When you’re a kid, and you grow up and you think about playing football, playing in the snow is just a hoot. It’s what every young kid that’s interested in it wants to do, in the mud as well. Eight inches of snow. Maybe it was a little bit more, I don’t know. But the Eagles canceled the game, rescheduled it for the next night because, “Well, might have accidents on the way to the stadium, and the first responders might not be able to…”
To me, it was a big red flag, and it’s only gotten worse. The city government of Baltimore can be characterized as can much of this nation three words: Failure, Surrender, and Dysfunction. Let me add a word, four words: Failure, Surrender, Dysfunction, Democrat. And for those of you out there — and I know you’re there; you know who you are and I know who you are. You hear that and you say, “Come on, Rush! Do you have to put politics in everything?”
Folks, wise up. It is politics that’s dictating everything that’s happening in this country. There isn’t a thing that matters that’s affecting our culture that’s seemingly insignificant to you, that isn’t being caused by politics. If you don’t understand it, it’s time to get up to speed and figure out for yourself why all of this is happening, because it is nothing but politics. Let’s take a look at what the Democrat Party celebrates, shall we?
The Democrat Party separates single motherhood. Whenever anybody — particularly a Republican conservative, but when anybody — comes along and starts touting family values, what does the Democrat Party do? They condemn it! What in the world is there to condemn about family values? What in the world could possibly be negative or wrong about family values? Now, I know the answer. I’m asking these questions rhetorically.
I’m trying to get people to wake up and see what literally is happening here. All of the traditions, all of the institutions that have defined this nation, that have set this nation apart, that have made this nation the greatest on earth are under assault and have been for years by the Democrat Party, and it’s coming into sharp focus now because it is effective. The attacks on the traditions and the institutions on succeeding.
One of the reasons they’re succeeding is everybody’s laying down. Nobody is resisting. We’re afraid of offending people. Criminals are now victims! We feel sorry for them. Remember yesterday we had the news that the Baltimore City Council was proud to announce that the Crips and the Bloods had come together to help solve the problem? The criminal gangs are being celebrated as problem solvers! Who’s running the town, then? Who’s running the city, by the city councilman’s own admission?
Find it for me, Mike, while I’m doing this and shout in my ear what the numbers are. The point is this woman is being celebrated as a hero. This woman has six kids, no husband, no job. She just moved into a new house. She has no means of support. She’s trapped. This is a woman who’s obviously trying. She is trapped! (interruption) Thank you. She is trapped in a city. She’s trapped by a political party.
I’m not saying she has no responsibility for the situation she’s in. Don’t misunderstand. But clearly this woman wants a different life, wants a different way. She’s being celebrated as a hero, which is a good sign. But nevertheless her circumstances are sad, infuriating. Six kids, no husband. We don’t know how many fathers were involved or how many men were involved. No job, no prospect for a job. The economy is stalled. The growth rate is less than zero.
It’s an absolute disaster that is happening in way too many parts of this country, and single motherhood is one of the big selling points of the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party has celebrated, lionized, promoted single motherhood. Why? Because the Democrat Party gets to be the dad. The Democrat Party running the government — state, federal, local, you name it — gets to be the husband, with no concern for what it is doing to the people involved. It’s destroying them.
It’s destroying their dignity; it’s destroying their future; it is entrapping them into lives of servitude and no dignity, and dependence on a system that has proven to be ineffective in supporting them and helping them. How many years has this been going on? The evidence is in. It doesn’t work. It’s destroying things. It’s destroying cities, it’s destroying people. Yet the foundation, the building block for good, solid futures — at least the opportunity for one — the American family, is under assault by the Democrat Party.
We feel sorry for the Crips and Bloods. We feel sorry for all these poor victims, and they’re the ones that get all the attention. And then Mrs. Clinton comes around saying we’re putting too many of ’em in jail today. Wait ’til we get that sound bite. We got Mrs. Clinton, a couple of sound bites. She spoke out today. (impression) “We are incarcerating too many people,” and I’m gonna let you hear a sound bite from her husband back in the nineties praising 100,000 new cops idea.
It was her husband’s idea to put all kinds of new cops on the street in this country to deal with crime 20 years ago. Guess that doesn’t count anymore! Now we have too many cops, and now we have too many cops pursuing too many criminals, and that must stop. Really. Seriously. Democrat Party, thank you. Our exceptional nation was built on an exceptional Constitution and was built on families and the concept of freedom and liberty and private property.
Families where children have two parents and at least one of them has a career. Now that is attacked, that is mocked, that is laughed at. That is said to be old-fashioned. That is said to be unworkable because it doesn’t work for everybody. Look where the Democrat Party has focused their attacks. Just take a look at this. This is not me claiming anything. I’m just pointing things out. The Democrat Party has been attacking marriage as it has existed for millennia.
The Democrat Party is attacking Christians and Christianity as it has existed for millennia. The Democrat Party attacks and is attacking school choice, a simple plan to give parents like the woman in Baltimore an opportunity to send their kids to a decent school rather than a dilapidated shack populated and administered by Democrats. What else does the Democrat Party attack? Free markets. Free markets, trickle-down. “That doesn’t work! It’s unfair! The 1% get rich.
“They take everybody’s money and don’t give it back and don’t share it. We can’t rely on the free market. The free market celebrates Wall Street criminals. The free market…” You’ve heard the riff. You’ve heard the criticisms of the free market. Everybody who works hard, everybody who achieves something, to the Democrat Party, is a suspect; needs to be investigated, needs to be impugned and discredited.
Because not everybody can or should be able to succeed, so it’s humiliating to those who don’t. The Democrat Party’s attacking this nation’s borders. The Democrat Party has been at the forefront of seeing to it that the identity of this country is dropped and changed and transformed — in their minds, hopefully, forever. The Democrat Party attacks the rule of law. I mean, I could go on and on. The Democrat Party’s enemies list is every successful, big corporation.
Big Beer, Big Beverage, Big Oil, Big Pharmaceutical, Big Retail, Big Auto. Take a look at who they attack each and every day. Industries, individuals, people, institutions. They claim none of it works! It’s unfair, it’s unseemly. And look at the what they end up providing as an alternative. I give you Baltimore, Detroit. Pick your spot. Go anywhere where the people attack everything traditionally, institutionally great about this country.
Go anywhere where those people are running things the way they think things should be run and ask yourself if you want to live there, if you have a choice. Now we have the Baltimore, and what’s the prescription? What’s the prescription for a cure? Why, more of the same! Barack Obama says that the problem is the fault of the Republicans. Did you hear that? And you know why? The Republicans have stood in the way of “funding.”
The Republicans have refused to allow funding and spending for the inner city because the Republicans (he didn’t say it; it’s implied) are racist pigs. It’s funny how all of this always comes back — as far as the Democrats are concerned — to the Republicans’ fault, and you can’t find a Republican anywhere in Baltimore that has the power to do anything, and you haven’t been able to for 50 years.
Same thing Detroit. Same thing anywhere where the left has been in power for decades. You can’t find a Republican to blame. They aren’t there. Not in positions of power. According to the Heritage Foundation, since 1965 American taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs — three times what we have spent on all the wars in our history — and Obama says the Republicans are responsible for Baltimore because they have stood in the way of funding!
In the mid-nineties, the figure was $5 trillion. We had transferred — there had been a transfer of wealth or a redistribution — of $5 trillion that had been spent on the welfare state as of the mid-nineties. That figure is now $22 trillion! Look at how much we’re spending per student in the public school system. It’s 17, twenty grand — and if you look at Baltimore, 16%, 16% can read and write at an eighth grade level.
Those people end up being in the gangs, and that’s who we’re told hold the keys to solving the problem. The city council says so!
$22 trillion.
Again, three times the cost of all of the wars in our entire history.
And there’s gonna be a baseball game there today in about hour and 45 minutes. They’re gonna play a baseball game at Camden Yards, and they’re not gonna let a single person who built it into the place. The taxpayers are not being allowed in. Why? “It’s too dangerous. It’s too provocative. Can’t guarantee safety.” They’re going to play a baseball game — Chicago White Sox vs. the Baltimore Orioles — and there’s not gonna be anybody in there but the media, in the press box.
Unfreaking believable.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: That’s right, my friends. Baltimore is going to pay tribute to gangs and community organizers and freelance thugs today. The Baltimore Orioles will play at Camden Yards without fans because it’s too dangerous. You know how much economic impact a baseball game, a baseball season has in Baltimore that’s being shut down today? It’s incredible, the economic impact of a home game for the Baltimore Orioles, and it’s just gonna be wiped out.
Because they don’t have the courage to let fans in, because they don’t think they can control the riffraff. This is unprecedented. According to John Thorn, the official historian for Major League Baseball, this will be a first. There has never been a game played before an empty stadium. The previous low record for attendance happened on September 28, 1882, for a game in Worcester, Massachusetts. The lowest attended game was then, and 1882 is back in the days of the founding of the game.
So we have yet another unprecedented moment to add to our long list of unprecedented things since the Golden Age of Obama. I can’t help but think back to 2008 and all hope and change and all the vibes of people. Man, they were feeling happy, all this new transformation. Boy, it was gonna get so much better ’cause that Bush, he was so stupid! He was so bad. He was so idiotic and so mean. Obama was gonna fix it all.
By the way, a little heads up on a stat that will be relevant in moments. The left-wing Justice Policy Institute — yep, Justice Policy Institute — reports that 225,000 more blacks were incarcerated under Bill Clinton than under Ronald Reagan, the Republican president most disliked in black America and the Democrat Party. It’s like that with practically everything you look at, and the Democrats get a pass on the hypocrisy and the damage that they are incurring on this country with everything they do.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: According to a report I saw, ladies and gentlemen, the Crips and the Bloods are out there protecting property. Some property. When the rioters get near a black-owned business or a Muslim-owned business, the Crips and the Bloods and the Nation of Islam move in and say, “No, no, no, no, no, not here,” and they steer them to businesses owned by Chinese families and Indian families. If you want to go destroy a business, go down there, and they steer them as shops owned by people other than African-Americans.
These are the people being praised as the people that have the answers to the problems of Baltimore. City councilman’s talking about how they’ve all come together here. Can you imagine, folks? Can you imagine living in a place where the people that run the city call a press conference and want applause and gratitude for working with the gangs in order to keep some semblance of order? The inmates are running the asylum.
And there’s no condemnation of this; there’s only a celebration of it, as though it’s job well done. What in the world kind of standards must there be in liberalism, for this kind of jaundiced, 180 degrees-out-of-phase value systems to have surfaced. Not canceling, but not allowing fans into this baseball game? At first I thought it was last night, so I turned on the tube, and I searched for the game, and I found that it was postponed.
I said, “What’s this? They end up canceling a game?” I found it was to be played today at 2:05, and I’m curious. There has to be a public address announcer; the public address announcer is who makes it official that people are in the game. Pinch hitters, pitching changes, this kind of thing. The media is gonna be up there in the press box, and there will be concessions and food galore for them.
Will they play commercials on the scoreboard between innings? Will they take the usual three or four minutes between innings that they would if the game were televised? They could just race through it. (interruption) There won’t be any hot dogs. That’s the point. There won’t be any hot dogs, won’t be any cotton candy, won’t be anything. No seventh inning stretch. There’s no reason to stretch. I mean, there’s… (interruption)
I don’t know if they’ll play music before the game during BP. Will they play commercials between innings? Will they do those things they normally do with fans? What’s it gonna be like for the players? Do you realize the people in the press box are gonna hear everything that is said on the field in this circumstance where you normally never can? I wonder if people watching the game on TV be able to have it mic’d in such a way that the TV viewer will be able to hear all this stuff.
What’s it gonna be like for the players? They are gonna be playing a game alone. They never play before no crowds. Maybe spring training is as close as you could get but there’s always people milling around. But the pace of the game is what’s gonna be interesting thing to me. Anyway, I just think the capitulation that is taking place her — the surrender, the caving — is just incomprehensible. And all for the so-called safety things.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Bob in Coronado, California. Hey, Bob. I’m glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Thank you. Isn’t it strange that only three weeks ago liberals in Indiana proclaimed a War on Christianity and boycotts and so forth, and then ironically three weeks later in Baltimore they go straight to the black clergy? They go to the Christians for the rescue. It’s just… I know in the past you’ve mentioned that Bill Clinton did this with the black clergy, but it’s so strange that they would go to the Christians when their liberal communities are falling apart.
RUSH: Well, yeah, it’s an interesting point. In fact, it’s a great point that African-American are allowed to get away with it and be prominent in the Democrat Party. Why is that? The answer is what I’ve always said: Liberals are liberals first. And as long as you are proven to be ideologically correct, whatever you are after that will be dealt with accordingly. So the black clergy, that branch of Christianity will never, ever come under assault by the Democrat Party.
In fact, these black clergy are given seats of power at the Democrat Party table of power. And they have to do certain things to keep that seat, and that largely is vote turnout on presidential years. That’s their purpose. That’s the deal. That’s the civil rights coalition. If they turn out their voters, then they get a seat at the table of power for the Democrat Party. Your point is really well taken. When it comes to African-American Christianity, hey, the Democrats look to it.
Yeah, Bill Clinton got in trouble with Monica Lewinsky, and who’s right up there praying with him? The Reverend Jackson, and they’re praying to God, hoping that Clinton can find guidance and so forth. Yet for any other minister not African-American, Christianity is under assault. That’s why I… Folks, that’s why I get so frustrated. Everything that’s happening in this country is politics, and everything that’s happening in this country can be understood if you simply are willing, courageous enough to accept the ideological component of everybody involved.
And once you’re able to do that, everything is understood. Not that it makes sense, but you’ll be able to understand the players and why they do what they do and who they are. I find it interesting that it’s always leftists and their minions who run around whining and moaning about politics, when everything they do is political. Everything that orients them, that informs them, that motivates them is their political agenda. And there is a single ideology that is required of you, and that’s liberalism, some form of it.
Anything else is not tolerated, and that’s when being a Christian becomes something that you can be condemned for, is when you’re not a liberal. I mean, the left embraces whatever liberal ideology might make its way into the Episcopal Church, for example. So that’s the key to understanding this. One other thing. I want to go back and keep pounding this number of $22 trillion, because Obama is out blaming the Republicans for this.
Right here it is. This is a Breitbart story, a YouTube video of Obama yesterday. Headline: “Obama on Baltimore: Republican Congress Won’t Invest in Urban Communities.” Folks, that is such an out-and-out lie. That’s only… In the real world, that would be an actionable lie. We’ve spent $22 trillion, and Republican presidents have signed the bills. Republican members of Congress have voted for them. In many cases, you dare not vote against it.
So $22 trillion spent on anti-poverty programs, and there’s Obama saying Baltimore is the result of the Republicans not caring and not funding and investing in the urban communities of America. I think the more relevant aspect is who’s running these communities and has been for decades. Now, when we started the War on Poverty, LBJ announced his grand schemes — the War on Poverty and the Great Society — do you know what the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line, in poverty was?
By the way, the poverty number’s an arbitrarily chosen number. The Census or somebody chooses it based on market characteristics and what it costs to feed a family of four, do this or that, live in a place. I think the poverty line’s 35 or 34 grand a year right now, family of four, maybe a little higher. Whatever, poverty in this country is not poverty around the world. Rector’s also done the research on that.
We’ve reported that and gotten in big trouble for it. But number of cars, air-conditioned homes, big-screen TVs possessed by people in poverty in America would astound the poor people in the world. But, anyway, the percentage was 14% the American population lived below the poverty line when we started the Great Society and the War on Poverty. Well, $22 trillion later, the Census Bureau reports the poverty rate last year was — Dadelut! Dadelut! — 14%, the same as it was in 1967, three years after the War on Poverty was announced, which was 1964.
And 1967 was also the last year Baltimore had a Republican mayor.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Nobody in the stands. Not a single person in the stands. I have never in my life seen this. I cannot believe what a cave this is.
You know, I don’t want to repeat the first half hour of the program. If you missed it, I really would like you to hear it. The first half hour of the program is really timely today. It was poignant, and I don’t often say this, but I think everybody should hear the first half hour. We’ll have it at RushLimbaugh.com. It may already be up, for that matter.
I remember it was a couple of seasons ago when Philadelphia canceled a Sunday night game just because of snow in the weather forecast, and I just said, “We are wussifying ourselves.” We are caving to the wusses everywhere you look in this culture, and this is another classic example. They can’t even confidently throw a baseball game in Baltimore. They don’t even want to take the chance. I can imagine some of you, “Rush, you do not realize, this is the only sensible thing.”
See, it’s that attitude that I reject. It’s not the only thing they can do. At some point you have to stand up and say you’re not gonna put up with this. At some point the bad actors in society do not get the sympathy. At some point we have to stop justifying all this bad behavior. We have to stop explaining it. We have to stop telling ourselves we are responsible for it and that we must pay the price.
This is all absurd. This is not gonna lead to anything good. This is all part of the unraveling of the backbone of this country. The spine, the foundation is clearly under assault and it really, really bothers me. Then you hear Obama come out and say the reason we’re in trouble in Baltimore is because Republicans refuse to fund urban communities. It’s absolutely a lie.
You can’t find a Republican anywhere near Baltimore. The Democrats have been able to spend whatever money they want to the tune of $22 trillion that we do not have, by the way, on eradicating all the problems that they and their policies create. And then the gall of these people to run around and blame it on the Republicans.
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