The big-hearted, loving, kind and Christian Rush Limbaugh (note the sarcasm here) opened his mouth and used it to prove once and for all that the teachings of Jesus are as foreign to him as diet ice cream. In a recent radio broadcast Limbaugh queried, “Who said it first: whoever will not work, should not eat?”
Rush eagerly and pointlessly latches on to the part of the bible that contradicts the part of the bible that tells Christians to love their neighbors as themselves. I understand why Christian Conservatives are lost when it comes to morality; the Bible seems to be a bit lost itself. Jesus was a “commie socialist,” compared to the Apostle Paul who wrote the passage above. Rush goes on to point out that in the version of the bible he is reading, it uses the word should, as if we must assure that they don’t eat.
This graph from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics shows how he got his raw numbers:
Screen capture from The US Bureau of Labor and Statistics.
Sorry, but your lack of morals doesn’t mean I have to become a heartless, brainless conservative like you, Rush. His first talking point is as follows:
Here in the United States we have 94 million not working: and they are all eating!
Well Lord knows we can’t have people experiencing the luxury of eating just because they are human.
The chart does show that about 94 million people are not in the workforce, and as Rush Limbaugh points out, we are still feeding these free loaders! (Except the ones who are starving or dying of malnutrition.)
Here are five reasons Rush’s numbers are completely wrong:
1. Look at the highlighted line: the numbers are recorded from 16 years of age to infinity?
- 16 - 18 year-olds should NOT be counted as being out of work, that is ridiculous, 74.3 million Americans are under 18.
- Also 13 million are full time college students under 25, and should also not be on this list.
- 14.5 percent of our population is already over 65, roughly 45 million.
- Also, about 1 in 5 Americans will be over 65 years of age in 2030, only 15 years from now. If we don’t expand medicare now our elderly citizens are going to face some troubling choices - not enough food, not enough money, and not enough healthcare will make being an elder in america kind of like living during The Great Depression.
2. In 2010 the US Census revealed that our labor force is reducing to numbers not seen in modern times. At this point if you subtract the people that shouldn’t be in that number, we have an unemployment rate of about 5% (Thanks, Obama!) - and that isn’t a bad number in a world where 20% isn’t odd, just ask Greece.
3. There are over 10 million mentally ill adults in the United States alone. With up to 40% of the seriously mentally ill, such as schizophrenics, not receiving any treatment or help. If they are not living in an institution, those adults are in this number too.
4. Disabled Veterans are also in that number. My husband is one of them, so f*ck you Rush for saying feeding him is bad for the country:
In 2013, there were 19,344,883 civilian veterans ages 18 years and over living in the community, 5,522,589 of which were individuals with disabilities—a prevalence rate of 28.5 percent.
5. As many as 3.9 million babies are born a year in the USA. That means that at any given point roughly 7.8 million parents should be on maternity leave, and not part of the workforce, for some part of the year. However, heaven forbid we feed them because they could become takers and entitlement users!
Just for a quick reference card I have included this great meme by The Nawty Troll:
Some more information for you, courtesy of The Nawty Troll.
If you think that the elderly, teenagers, the disabled, the war veterans, the mentally ill, and the parents of infants should be in the “work force” and counted in this stupidly vague statistic you are wrong. If you think feeding them is bad for the country, you are a douchebag.
Rush Limbaugh is using conservative talking points that make sense only as long as you squint your eyes and turn your head sideways. He is using them to whip low information Tea Party and ultra conservative republicans into a frenzy over feeding ‘lazy assholes’ that refuse to work, like their grandma and their kids.
Are you surprised? I am not; we live in a country that measures teen unemployment rates, and that is sad, because teens and young adults should not have to work - they should be getting an education. Maybe we could keep up with the rest of the developed world’s labor forces if we realized this simple fact.
You can’t tell me that he is confused, or that he actually believes this. I think he is well paid to regurgitate it, or was; how many stations have dropped your fearful hate-mongering drivel, Rush?
Predictably Rush begins to lose cohesiveness in his commentary while whining that people don’t understand him.
No, really. He complains that we don’t understand that he isn’t saying they should starve, we just shouldn’t be feeding them, and he gets “snarky emails” about it. Snarky emails aside, Rush is clearly saying that feeding those that fall on hard times, or are not even out of school yet, are elderly, mentally ill or veterans is bad for the country.
No, sir, it is not, and you are quickly fading into obscurity, as you should be.
Featured Image Courtesy of Huntress Uncommon Sense
Gee, I guess Jesus really set a bad precedent by feeding the poor and hungry. Maybe his healing the sick wasn’t such a good thing either, because that could lead to socialize health care.
Churches hide behind gay marriage and abortion the full of crap Chinese out with his new book no I listen to him today on the rush all talked about the schools a couple times he could kill less about the schools must
Rush Limbaugh is just a huge bag of wind. He has no purpose in life other than to spew crap out of his overfed mouth. Why doesn’t he talk about the part of the Bible that condemns slothfulness? The swelled up piece of crap, I have never understood why anyone would want to listen to anything he says. It’s all poison.
Rush would have taken the three loaves of bread and fishes and sold them to the wealthiest family at the Sermon on the Mount, using the proceeds to buy Oxycontin…
the ¨labor force¨ is defined by the feds…. complain to Obama.
Because Obama is the one that defined Labor force. SMDH. The labor force is defined as those who can work over the age of 16, and there is no maximum age, to change that would take Congress actually DOING something. They have been practicing how to sustain gridlock for 6 years, good luck with that.
“The Feds”, that nebulously sinister organization in the eyes of conservatives, uses many terms and definitions in its line of work. If you are going to use one of those definitions, as Rush, Cruz, and many others do, then you should honestly divulge that definition and all caveats associated with it.
But no, all they care about is making cheap talking points at the expense of the most vulnerable segments of the population.
The worst thing that can be said about our current president is in the form of what he hasn’t changed and is still exactly as it has been for decades.
Of course, to you president Obama isn’t just a president with constitutionally-limited power; he’s somehow simultaneously a mighty tyrant that finds time to micromanage thousands of civil service workers while also someone so ineffectual that he’s also personally responsible for the bloat of the government. The fact that the (currently republican-controlled) Congress is, according to the constitution, responsible for both writing laws and creating the federal budget is irrelevant.
Rush the treat you sniffed.Glad I never sniffed any of that Rush stuff they used to sell in headshops.
Limbaugh queried, “Who said it first: whoever will not work, should not eat?”
Misquoting the Bible is pretty standard fare, but, this one is getting pressed into extra duty. I can’t decide if Rush&Co are merely ignorant or whether they’re willfully ignorant, but, with the misquote comes fundamental misunderstanding.
And why is 94 million people out of work. Why don’t Rush ask the corporations that question. Their the ones that put most of them out in the street.
Rush Limbaugh shouldn’t eat then.
This author shows her blatant attempt to justify the failures of progressivism
Any figures on data can be manipulated
The bottom line is we can all be as compassionate as we want and the intentions that are genuinely trying to help the poor don’t mean the results will be positive.
In fact history proves it did not work.
As humans we all require certain life sustaining items like food water and shelter.
Those 3 items are required to survive for everyone.
The unintended consequences of good intentions was overlooked.
And it continues today in the form of enabling and victimization of poor people.
Both cripple the poor and entrap them in a world that is very difficult to escape.
That is the results of progressivism.
It fails to see the pitfalls of taking away the discipline of failure that we all need.
That is what drives us to get up in the morning when we feel like crap because we know we have to eat and put a roof over our head and also 8f we have the responsibility of a family we realize they depend on you to feed them.
Welfare was designed to help the people that are incapable of working for either physical or mental problems.
It has morphed into a way of life for many that have never developed the skills or discipline or desire to work because we gave them a safety valve to exploit we have unintentionally taking away the discipline of failure.
So now many Americans are feed up with the one’s taking advantage of the system and are themselves becoming disenchanted and discouraged about working themselves when there is no reward for doing so.
That’s called socialism.
What made America great was the concept that you could come to this country with nothing and work hard and actually have a good shot at becoming more that just self sufficient but actually affluent that’s what capitalism brought to the table.
Now the big liberal switch is towards socialism without looking at the unintended consequences of the ideology.
Dr Ben Carson wrote in his book one nation that shows how to not enable the poor but en power them to the status of not just self sufficient but affluent.
It calls for stopping the victimization as a tool to get benifits and the excuse of failure.
I suggest you read or listen to what he says on this issue.
You may not agree with all of his policies I know I don’t either but he has the best solution to end poverty then any other candidate .
I looked up the correct quote from the Bible, that book conservatives always cite to justify their hate. It says: those UNWILLING shall not be fed, nothing about those unable. So, maybe we should deny Congress food. After all, I don’t see them willing to put forth much effort to actually work!
So the right wingers solutions to our country’s problems are to literally starve the poor and feed the rich?
How is that going to help them in the long run? Was Rush around before the days of SNAP and Medicare and Medicaid? It wasn’t a pretty picture back then. There were a lot of people malnourished and starving in the South because they couldn’t get enough food to eat.
The government had to step in and save them from death.
Makes me wonder why they want to repeat that awful history in the here and now? In the 21st century?