Posted on 09/29/2017 11:55:25 AM PDT by Kaslin
RUSH: The Democrats are trying to connect Trump to the ongoing so-called failure of getting aid and relief to Puerto Rico. And that’s gonna bomb. You know, it’s starting to happen. Actually, I think it’s been happening for a while. The left does not innovate. The Democrat Party, let me specify it. The Democrat Party does not innovate. They don’t have any innovators, and they don’t have any forward thinkers. If the Democrat Party produced a smartphone, it would still be 30 years old. And the only thing that would change in it is the numbers of people that you can call.
They really don’t innovate. The way they’re going after Trump on Puerto Rico is a replay of how they went after Bush on Katrina, which is a replay on how they went after George H. W. Bush on Kuwait, which is a replay on how they’ve gone after Reagan for not caring about — it’s just a replay. They just go to their playbook and repeat things that, in their minds, have worked very well, and they try to adapt them to the modern era, but it doesn’t work, and it’s all falling apart.
The same thing with the NFL. That is falling apart on them. Trump is being proven a winner on this. They don’t want to admit it. The NFL doesn’t want to admit it, of course. But if you look at any number of indicators and any number of teams now announcing in advance, “Hey, we’re standing on Sunday.” The Steelers. “We’re standing on Sunday.”
Drew Brees, New Orleans Saints, came out and said, “We’re gonna do both. We’re gonna kneel and then we’re gonna stand.” That I predict is not — like I said last night, the NFL is making a tactical error here and maybe even strategic. And I think corporate America has been doing the same thing. Corporate America — the NFL’s in that world — gets caught up in media and they see everything through the lens of media, as the most people do. But the picture of America that the media paints or broadcasts or portrays isn’t accurate. And let me give you an example.
I hearken back to this all the time, because, to me, it’s one of the best. Mike Pence was governor of Indiana. And they passed a religious freedom restoration bill because in Indiana people were being prevented, they were being protested, they were having trouble expressing religious freedom, which is granted in the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution.
So what Governor Pence and the Indiana legislature did was pass a state law that basically reaffirmed it. They found it necessary to do so because not enough people knew that religious freedom was guaranteed in the First Amendment of the Constitution. It cannot be abridged.
But there were ongoing protests and other hassles that were being visited upon Christians in Indiana. So they come up with a religious restoration bill. Well, immediately the media tried to portray the state of Indiana as homophobic and racist and bigoted. And you remember, the media went all over the state knocking on doors of businesses. They were trying to find a business that would admit that it would not cater a gay wedding, if it was a pizzeria, if it was a bakery, if it was a photography studio.
It took them two weeks, and they found a little pizzeria in a small town in Indiana, and the daughter of the owner was 21 or 22, and they run into her shop with their cameras and microphones and ask her, “If a gay wedding asked you to cater their reception, would you do it?” And she said, “No. It’s a violation of my religious beliefs,” and they were off and running. So they found one example.
The coverage of the whole incident in Indiana was made to look like Indiana was an outlier, that the rest of America sees Indiana the way the media was portraying Indiana — as backwards, as Christian, as restrictionist, as exclusionary, as racist, as bigoted, as homophobic. So now if you happen to be a corporate CEO — a titan of industry living in Montana, living in Arizona, living in Texas — you watch this, and you might be forgiven if you believe that the media portrayal, the narrative here is right.
In other words, I think that a number of people and institutions — corporate leaders — have mistakenly bought the media narrative of where American culture is, and they believe that American culture is moving left — and it is in certain spots. I’m not denying that. They believe that American culture all is united against Christian conservatives. In other words, the people the media portray as enemies is made to look like everybody in America thinks so.
And you can see when you look at corporate marketing how they choose to advertise and sell their products. You can tell who they think their audiences are, and I believe in many cases they’re missing the mark. And I think the NFL is one of these corporate entities that’s missing its mark. I think there are people there who really believe that sideline protests of the flag and disrespect for the flag and the honoring of Colin Kaepernick was going to improve their image. Why would they do it otherwise?
Why would the NFL purposely engage in activity if they knew it was going to be harmful? Now, wait. There are institutions that are doing that. ESPN is continuing to lose subscribers, and yet they are continuing to take action and implement policies that will guarantee the continued erosion of subscribers. While saying they’re not a political organization, they’ve gone all left, all the time. Do they know that they are offending a great majority of their audience? Do they not see the cancellations of subscriptions to cable TV and online?
What if they do? What explains why they continue to do this? Well, what explains CNN continuing to do what they do when they stay in tenth place? Why? Why doesn’t CNN adapt? Why does CNN…? Well, part of it is niche advertising and pursuing a niche audience and trying to own all of it, but another aspect of it is — I guarantee you — that CNN believes it’s hip. CNN believes it is where the majority of thinking is; it’s just taking a while for people to admit it, and CNN’s gonna be loyal to the cause no matter what.
They’ll go down with the ship. They’ll go down with the flag. If liberalism kills CNN, if CNN dies as a network, they’ll go down on the ship with it, because they’re loyal to the cause. Is that the NFL? Is the NFL so devoted to a political ideology that they willingly allow the product to suffer just to stay loyal to the political ideology? I don’t think so. We’re already seeing the league try to backtrack. They had a big meeting yesterday, and do you know the thing that came out of that meeting?
There were owners in the meeting. There were players in the meeting and NFL execs, the commissioner. You know what the big thing to come out of the meeting was? Have you heard? The big thing to come out of the meeting was they all agreed that this approach — that it’s the players and the NFL versus President Trump — has got to stop. Why? Because they’re losing it. They didn’t think they were gonna lose this. When owners and management promote — and that’s what they were doing.
That’s why I was sad. That’s why I was despondent on Sunday and Monday. When the owners, when the league officials — the commissioner, his executive team — tout this public display of anti-American symbolism — which they did. They all lined up with the players, and they all touted what the players were doing, and they all said it was about “unity,” when it’s not. It’s about division. They lined up against their customers and with their employees, and I contend to you they did so for a number of reasons.
A, they rolled the dice. They’d much rather lose the fans (what they think is temporary) than have the players walk out. So the owners, they were scared. They had to side with the players on this. The league did, too. But in the process, they went the wrong way. They went down the wrong path, and all the polling data shows it. You can see now by the league trying to backtrack and all these teams announce there will be no sitting; we’re gonna stand.
Not all of them, but those who are are making a big deal of it. Now, the point in all of this is that I think a vastly incorrect picture of America is portrayed and painted by the media each and every day, and unwitting people (who otherwise are smart and intelligent in their own right) believe it, and it makes them make incorrect decisions. Climate change is another example of this. Climate change is not happening.
But if corporate America thinks that a significant percentage of America believes it’s happening, they’ll market to it. They’ll do whatever they can to separate people from their dollars. But it isn’t working. A majority of Americans do not believe America is destroying the planet, because in every one of these left-wing issues, guess who the culprit is? America. America’s racist. America’s unjust. America’s destroying the planet.
America is creating havoc around the world. America is this and that. America’s wrong. America’s evil. America’s mistaken. People have had it; they’re fed up with it. Because a majority of Americans don’t believe that, will not believe that, and don’t want to be made to believe it. And so they’re reacting now in numbers that look like they’re a surprise, because the media has made people believe that that is a very small percentage of our country, when what we’re learning is that it is a majority.
So it’s all good in this sense, but I’m still amazed at how easy it has been for people to make these powerful entities misjudge. Now, folks, look, it could well be, too, in some of these examples that the CEOs and the boards of directors are full-fledged libs, and they’re gonna be loyal to that no matter what and they’re gonna take it as far as they can until economics dictates they back off of it. I mean, there’s also that possibility too. Bottom line: The country is not what the media portrays it to be.
The country and its cultural values have not yet been erased and destroyed. The founding ideals — the founding principles, the traditions and institutions — are not yet the minority of thinking in this country. And yet so many entities seem to think that progressivism has become the majority of thinking and acting and behavior in the country, when it isn’t, largely because the media makes it look as though that’s hip and that’s cool and traditional American values are uncool and unhip and nerdy and what have you.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Morning Consult with polling data on the National Football League. This is a major drop, by the way, in seven days. On September 21st, 25% of Trump supporters said they had a very favorable view of the NFL; 11% had a very unfavorable view. So September 21st, basically eight days ago, 25% Trump supporters favorable NFL, 11% unfavorable. Yesterday, the numbers have dramatically changed. Thirty-three percent of Trump supporters now say unfavorable view of the NFL, 16% favorable.
So the favorable has fallen nine points, and the unfavorable has gone from 11 to 33% in just a week. What’s happened in that week? The NFL has appeared on television and in the media to be defiant of the concerns of their fan base. They’ve been very vocal. They have been very defiant. They have continued to talk about their unity, which isn’t unity; it’s division.
And I think they probably would be shocked, maybe not now, because I think the NFL is starting to exhibit signs that they understand it. But in their view they’ve got a real balancing act because these players are off now on this. I mean, they’re into it. And the league is between a rock and a hard place. They can’t just replace. I mean, in some cases players are a dime a dozen, but star power isn’t. So we’ll see how this manifests itself.
Here’s a story that dovetails precisely with my observation that the Democrat Party and the left really are having trouble innovating. Don’t misunderstand me, by the way, folks. I’m not saying that they’re wilting away, fading away. They are still a powerful force led by the media, and they still have the ability to entirely misrepresent anything they want and have a lot of people believe it. Don’t misunderstand. I’m talking about opportunity here. You know me; I’m always looking at opportunity.
I’m always looking at things optimistically. Like I do hope that this NFL stuff can be erased. It may be the first time in any issue that we’ll be able to totally erase — if the NFL hopes to become what it was — and who knows, maybe they don’t. Maybe they’re run by a bunch of people that themselves are social justice warriors. I don’t know. Frankly, I have been stunned at how the NFL has chosen to respond to this concussion business. I have been shocked at how they’ve chosen to respond to that.
I mean, we’re watching a concerted effort to destroy this game take place, and the people running it seem to be strategically thinking they have to cooperate with it, and by virtue of that, they acknowledge some of the allegations and then claim they want to work with those attacking them. It never works out that way. You give an inch to the people that want a pound of flesh, they’re gonna keep asking, taking, demanding. I’m stunned at this. I really am.
I used to think that these people in these leadership positions were brighter than everybody else. I admittedly was younger and more naive. I used to think these people were really smart, that they were there because they were smarter than average and they were in these positions of power because they knew how to protect and grow their enterprises. But as more and more people have come under the — I call it the spell — the education of liberalism and the corrupting effect and impact that it has, I sometimes wonder, are there any adults left?
Are there any mature adults with the confidence to reject that which seeks to destroy who they are? Big Oil as gone through it. Big Pharma has gone through it. Every big corporate concern is under constant attack and has been. And watching them navigate it has been fascinating. Some of them have failed big time. And the NFL is one of these things that I hope gets its act together at some point.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Luke in Charlotte, North Carolina. Luke, great to have you on the EIB Network. How are you?
CALLER: Hey, Rush, dittos. The reason I called you is last night was a terrible night. I sat there and I did not turn on — for the first time in 60 years of my fandom — the Bears-Packers game, and I used to play for the Little Bears in Chicago. I actually played at halftime during the Bears game at Wrigley Field. That’s how old I am. I got to shake Papa Halas’ hand, and I’ve been a die-hard Bears fan. If they’re losing people like me that are so upset, so angry, so frustrated, then I can’t imagine how many people are tuning out.
RUSH: Why…? Look, the answer may be obvious; I just want to hear you say it. Why’d you not watch?
CALLER: It just… You know, I’m a veteran, okay? That’s one thing. I’ve devoted my life to service in one way or the other, and to the country — and to see that disrespect. And this holding-arms thing? I was telling Bo, this holding-arms thing is not a compromise. That’s an act of defiance.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: It says in the protocol for the American national anthem —
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: — you stand at attention, you place your hand over your heart and you show respect.
RUSH: The problem is —
CALLER: Locking arms as an act of defiance.
RUSH: That is exactly right. This linking arms thing, it did not work in Green Bay. The fans were shouting, “U! S! A! U! S! A!” They did not link arms. Their star quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, asks the players, asks the fans to join the players and link arms. That’s not how you honor the national anthem and the flag. That’s not how you do it. The league… (sigh) Folks, the NFL is 75% African-American. The players in the NFL, by any objective comparison, are wealthy.
They are stars, they are celebrities, and many of them are hero-worshiped. Many of these players are popular beyond their wildest dreams, respected beyond their wildest dreams. There is no oppression in the NFL. There is no racism in the NFL. It’s quite the opposite. So overt, in-your-face America bashing in front of America-loving, big-spending customers isn’t sustainable. The league simply cannot sustain itself if its players are going to engage in this kind of behavior.
Because they… I don’t care what they say. By doing all of this on the stage… The playing field is a stage. It is owned by the owners. In some cases, there’s public financing of stadiums, but you get my drift. If they’re gonna take the stage and engage in activity that makes it look like they have grievances, what are people gonna think their grievances are? They’re gonna think the grievances are the league. Why are they doing this? Why are they doing this to the NFL?
Why are they messing with this stuff on the sideline at NFL games? People don’t know Kaepernick. I mean, they do, but they’re not gonna sit there and put it together the players are in solidarity with Kaepernick. And, by the way, the players are now all backing off. “It’s not about the flag. We’re not protesting the flag. We’re not.” Well, then what are you protesting? It doesn’t matter what you say; we know that you align with Kaepernick, and we know what Kaepernick said. Kaepernick specifically said he was protesting the flag.
He cannot honor a country and its flag that treats people of color this way. There’s all so much revisionist history going on here. But just the picture of these players acting as aggrieved victims or malcontents, it doesn’t fly, because nobody has ever said the NFL discriminates against them. Nobody has ever said the NFL is a racist organization that needs to be changed. Nobody has ever said this, and yet that’s where these protests are taking place.
So the protests are actually harming the NFL, and it is my contention that that is the objective. People on the left — nameless, faceless people — have a desire to inflict great harm on the NFL for reasons I’ve detailed before. The players, I believe, are unwittingly… Some of them know what they’re doing, of course; there are exceptions to everything.
But the players are unwittingly being duped into this thinking that they’re engaged in activity promoting solidarity and unity and diversity. And that’s not how people are seeing this at all, and it’s patently obvious now. This isn’t sustainable. Overt, in-your-face bashing of America in front of big-spending customers? It isn’t gonna work. You can’t sustain this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Colin Kaepernick said he was protesting the flag and the anthem. He specifically cited them. Now a bunch of people are saying, “We’re not about the flag. We’re not protesting the flag!” Then what are you protesting? ‘Cause I’m telling you guys, it looks like you’re protesting the NFL and it looks like you’re protesting America, and people don’t understand it, and they’re reacting unfavorably to it.
Absolutely so. These are the same people who ignore that Bobo DESTROYED the Democrats as a party. DESTROYED. It's like Rush said Wednesday, it's like nothing we'll ever see again in our lifetime.
To me, it's like Donk witchcraft boomeranged ... they elected a hoodoo jive-ass half-white half-gay half-leader self-defeater who could not DEAL ... but who led his party in the only direction he knows - tragedy. They will not recover until enough time has passed for them to be able to call him out for the disaster he wrought upon their party. Maybe another 5 years, maybe more.
This is the karma they bought for themselves when they tried to assert that Joe Sixpack was a racist from birth. The liberals among them were paralyzed by fear that they would be called out next; meanwhile Trump said FU Bobo, hung political correctness around Cankles fat feet, and won an Electoral College blowout...
"Since 2009, when President Obama took office, his party has lost a total of 919 in state legislatures nationwide, according to NCSL data."
"Progress: since 2008, Dems lost 69 House seats, 13 Senate seats, 910 State seats, 30 State chambers, and 11 Governorships" - David Kahane, 2016
I think pro-football....probably by the end of the 1980s...had turned into a pyramid-type scheme. They used hyped-up video pieces, sports journalists and trends to entice people to go a notch or two.
The typical fan is middle-class, and willing to pay $200 a year for fan paraphernalia. The same guy has no problem in paying $80 for a ticket, and spend near $100 on beer and food for a game. All of this was coming out of the working-class guy’s pocket. I don’t think the players, the union, or the NFL management ever understood that. If just 25-percent of the fan base walk away permanently...everyone down the line will have to take a paycut in the next twelve months. If you owned a billion-dollar franchise and wanted to sell? You’d have to discount the sell-price by 10-percent now.
These NFL team announcements signify the beginning of a yuge victory for our side in the culture wars. The Enemy is in the process of suffering a severe rebuke as I write this.
Why? Because, before long, there will be no disrespectful kneeling whatsoever during the anthem, and that will make kneeling before the anthem look even sillier.
The few remaining stubborn assh-le NFL players who do keep kneeling will feel increasing pressure to "get your hands out of my pocket" from those NFL players and personnel who would like to continue earning money in this lucrative entertainment enterprise they've engineered over the past couple of decades.
And when these divisive players' contracts expire, they're going to find out that suddenly, their services are no longer in as much demand as they might have thought.
Money talks, and bullsh-t walks.
This ain't no Marxist playground; this is American free enterprise; this is delicious.
Kudos to the President and his supporters—who just happen to comprise a yuge segment of the NFL's fan base—for collectively squashing this Leftist BS like an insect.
I hope the Left has enjoyed their little NFL temper tantrum, because it's about to end, and the grownups are about to reassert their authority. The NFL's Leftists might as well get this childish behavior out of their system during this rapidly closing window of opportunity.
NFL owners, players, and staff, having been suitably chastened, will return to doing their jobs—entertaining us. In rapid succession, from college and high school, all the way down to the Pop Warner level, American football leagues will all follow suit by ending these shameful anthem protests.
Like a lover's spat, most NFL fans who have forsaken the league will slowly but steadily drift back, now that it's been established who wears the pants in this relationship: the consumer—the fans—the ones who ultimately pay these entertainers' salaries—us.
And all will be well in the American football world once again.
The writing is on the wall. A blind man could see it with a cane. It's going to be fun watching these wayward children squirm as they absorb their discipline and snap back into line.
Once in a while, and especially in situations like this, it's important to let these conceited millionaires know which side their bread is buttered on when it comes to presenting this entertainment product we call the NFL. We've just reminded them who the boss is—we, the consumer, are. Period. End of story.
“You may think that the only people who’d be bothered by vagina-related imagery at the Women’s March on Washington would be puritanical conservatives, but it turns out that some of the social-justice crowd is upset, too — because, apparently, it “isolated” transgender women from the march.
“In an article for Mic titled “How the Women’s March’s ‘genital-based’ feminism isolated the transgender community,” the author, Marie Solis, explains that even though those pink, knitted “pussy hats” may have seemed like a cute idea, they “set the tone for a march that would focus acutely on genitalia at the expense of the transgender community.”
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