RUSH: John in Chicago, let’s go to the phones, grab you first today, sir. It’s nice to have you with us.CALLER: Hello, Rush. I got a message for Mr. McCain. We as Americans, we aren’t cynical at all. We are outraged. I mean, you’ve got gas going up sky high, plus in turn, it making everything else go up. He ain’t doing one thing to address this problem. In fact, the government is hindering the oil companies from going out and finding the oil, bring the prices down, or build refineries (cell garbled). They’re crippling the oil companies. And like you said, the market is dictating this, not the oil companies. They would love to find the oil, but we can’t because of the government, and no one is addressing this problem.
RUSH: Okay. You’re exactly right. We can’t because of the government. But who’s influencing the government? Who is the government in this case?
CALLER: Us, the people, and we deep voting these dunderheads in (cell garbled) do something.
RUSH: Well, but it’s the environmentalist wackos who have influence with the government. Do you realize, if you’re outraged over the price of gasoline, you don’t want to listen to today’s program because you don’t want to hear what California is thinking of doing, which will then spread all across the country. If you are upset about the price of gasoline, you don’t want to listen to this program today because you don’t want to hear the fact that every one of the presidential candidates, all three of them have a global warming plan that’s going to raise taxes and the cost of doing business, which will be passed on to you. None of these three candidates has any desire to drill for our own sources of oil. There is a story in the stack today about how we could end our dependence on foreign oil totally with reserves found in one of the Dakotas.
CALLER: Well, that’s just great.
RUSH: It is just great, and of course we’re not going to be allowed to go get it because the environmentalist wackos and the Democrats will not allow it. They’ll stop it. ‘This is just a scheme by Big Oil to raise their profits at your expense.’
CALLER: Let me ask you a quick question. How did we get in this predicament on a consensus? There’s no fact or anything saying we’re in a global warming crisis.
RUSH: I’m going to tell you how we got into this predicament. Have you seen the latest report from Colin Powell’s bunch on the status of high school education in America?
CALLER: Yes, I have. He said it’s abysmal.
RUSH: Well, what did you conclude from it? I want to make sure you know what I’m talking about. What’s the story that you saw?
CALLER: The story that I saw, that the school system is basically run by the liberal Democrats and they ain’t getting educated because the dropout rate — I mean, in all the major cities — is 30, 40, 50%. That’s ridiculous. But in the suburbs, it’s much higher, like 60, 70, 80%, but graduation.
RUSH: That’s exactly right. You must have heard today’s Morning Update. Let me give all of you this. If you missed the Morning Update, this is the answer to the question. I keep telling people: The most expensive commodity we have in this country is ignorance, not gasoline, not rice, not wheat, not corn. The most expensive commodity we have is the ignorance of way too many Americans. It is ignorance that allows liberalism to prosper. Get this: ‘Three out of 10 US public school students do not graduate from high school, and major city school districts only graduate one out of two students, according to a study released Tuesday. In a report on graduation rates around the country, the EPE Research Center and the America’s Promise Alliance also showed that the high school graduation rate — finishing 12 grades of school…’ They have to even throw that in there because half the country reading the story doesn’t know what it takes to graduate! Can you believe this?
‘[T]he high school graduation rate — finishing 12 grades of school…’ They have to add that? Really? I thought you only had to get to tenth grade and you graduated! ‘[T]he high school graduation rate — finishing 12 grades of school — in big cities falls to as low as just 34.6 percent in Baltimore, Maryland, and barely over 40 percent for the troubled Ohio cities of Columbus and Cleveland. And it said that black and Native American students have effectively a one-in-two chance of getting a high school diploma.’ Now, stick with me on this, because while this is tragic and while it is horrible and while it is disconcerting, this is a French News Agency story, and it doesn’t even bother to analyze why this is. It doesn’t even bother. Let me give you the dirty little secret here. America’s Promise Alliance was a group founded by Colin Powell, and they looked at high school graduation rates at America’s 50 largest cities. In 17 of our 50 largest cities, not even half the kids attending high school finish. That doesn’t even touch on what the hell they’re being taught while they’re there.
But I will guaran-damn-tee you it’s not Economics 101 in a way that they could understand it. I will guarantee you that most of what they’re being taught is a multicultural hybrid of hate America; America sucks. America’s out to screw you. You don’t have a prayer in America. Ronald Reagan sucks. George Bush sucks. Bill Clinton was fabulous. The Founding Fathers were racists, and they were atheists, and this country originally belongs to the Indians from whom it was stolen by evil white Europeans. This is what these people come out of school knowing, thinking. ‘In large metropolitan areas, you may as well draw a target around the inner cities if you want to isolate this problem. In Baltimore suburbs, over 80% of the kids graduate. Thirty-four percent who live in Baltimore’s inner city graduate.’ Suburbs okay, not great, 80%. We shouldn’t even be happy with that. There’s no excuse for anything less than a hundred percent! It’s basic. We all talk about education. ‘We gotta educate our children. We need more money to educate our children, educate,’ then how can we be happy with anything less than a hundred percent?
Anyway, by contrast, we’re ecstatic about 80% in the suburbs of Baltimore, because the inner city is 34%. In Detroit, about a quarter, 25% of the kids graduate. Twenty-five percent! Indianapolis public school system, 30% graduation rate, Cleveland, 35%, inner city. In response to the report, Secretary Powell said, ‘When more than one million students a year drop out of high school, it’s more than a problem. It’s a catastrophe.’ It’s worse than that, Secretary Powell. Let’s go back to Obama’s big race speech for a second, shall we? Obama like every other Democrat, talks about schools failing minority kids, but he never addresses how they got that way. There’s no question that inner city schools are failing minority kids. Why do you think the biggest supporters of school vouchers are the parents of kids in inner city schools that will take the first chance they can to get them out of there and get them into a decent school? These are primarily black and Hispanic kids in Democrat Party-run cities, and they are left to fail year after year, decade after decade! Liberalism is giving us this problem, and it has for a long time — and look at the billions that we are spending on education to boot. You throw that into the mix.
You talk about being mad about something? You talk about being mad at the high cost of something and getting nothing for it? These kids are caught in a stranglehold, folks, of liberal politics. Liberal politics is designed to keep unions strong, including the teachers, and minority kids underachieving. I mean, to the extent that there’s institutional racism in America, it is in these blue states, run by liberal Democrats for years. Their own kids are not even being disserviced. It’s just criminal, the way they’re not being taught and what they are being taught. So you asked me, ‘How do we get this way where people don’t understand we gotta go get our own oil to become independent?’ They don’t have the education; they don’t have the information. They’ve been taught that America is bad, that America is rotten, that America steals from the rest of the world. America deserves to suffer. America deserves to be hated by the rest of the world. That’s what they’re taught. So when Big Oil boys get calls up there, and get called on the carpet for these prices, ‘Yeah! Yeah! You stick it to them. You stick it to them, those big, fat white guys taking all the prices, just getting rich while I’m sitting here poor. That’s right, you stick it to them!’ The sad thing is that, actually, this is not a catastrophe, Secretary Powell. This is just liberal business as usual.
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RUSH: By the way, Colin Powell’s group, is run by Morton Kondracke’s wife.
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RUSH: In all of this stuff, the education problems that I detailed in the last hour in the inner cities of this country, the problem’s not the American people. I’m still bouncing off Senator McCain’s speech to the midshipmen at Annapolis. The American people are spoiled and they’re a little too cynical and they take their freedom for granted, blah, blah, blah. Overall the problem is not the American people. The problem is the government and how government manipulates people, how the government literally abuses people, and how the government uses them. The problem, folks, is liberalism, liberalism which controls most of the government and how it seeks to transform our society for the worst. Senator McCain could easily address that and contrast himself with the Democrats also seeking the presidency, but he doesn’t, he doesn’t address it in this way. He doesn’t blame the government or liberalism for this, because he believes in a lot of it. I’m just saying this by virtue of the legislation that I’ve seen him propose. We can’t run around and say the American people are great one day, that left to their own devices they’ll succeed, but on the other hand condemn them or most of them or a lot of them. This is an argument against liberalism and Big Government.
Here’s what liberals do. What do they do? Liberals say that people are too lazy, too stupid, and whatever, they need to be managed. Liberals have contempt for the average American. Liberals do not believe the average American can overcome obstacles in life. So it is sort of unfortunate to hear Senator McCain parroting this message of the left with his speech at Annapolis today. Our position is just the opposite. We have the greatest faith in the world in the American people. We want a great nation. We as conservatives do. We want people to be the greatest they can be. We don’t want to hold anybody down and we don’t want to give anybody any excuses. And we don’t want to make ’em victims of anything. We don’t want to treat them like children. There are people out there like that, but not overall, but the liberals are out there trying to create as many of those people as they can.
Now, the oil price, the gasoline price, we had a great call in the last hour from somebody who said, ‘We’re not cynical. We’re outraged at the government because it’s the government that’s leading to high gasoline prices because we won’t drill for our own oil.’