Rush Limbaugh says "America's poor are living better than the poor..."

[UdoKier]

Rush Limbaugh says "America's poor are living better than the poor anywhere else in the world. They have color TV sets, microwave ovens, and even CARS!"



Mr. Limbaugh, do you think that anybody in most areas of America can even GET a job today without at least a clunker of a car? Do you think single moms working two jobs to keep a roof over their kids' head look at a cheap ($50~80) microwave as a LUXURY? Color TVs start at under $100 new. They are not a big-ticket item anymore now that your big biz pals have moved all the production overseas. But that doesn't change the fact that food and housing have become unaffordable to working people, and now gas is on its way there.


How DOES someone sitting in a $25 million mansion in Palm Beach get off pontificating on how well off America's poor are? Have I mentioned today how much I HATE these people?

[Pawel K]

1. Your are poor because you want to be poor

...according to these idiots.

[TexasSissy]

2. One of my sisters is poor.

I know something about this subject. She does not have a color TV or a microwave oven. She does have a car (for shame, for shame!) that my mother gave her years ago. It's 1992 model or something like that. Cars are necessary for employment in most areas in America; where my sister lives there is no mass transportation to speak of.

Limbaugh is full of sh*t.

[UdoKier]

6. Hell, even DVD players go for $30 on special at Best Buy.

That's 2 days groceries for even a frugal family. The fact that people own a few cheap imported gadgets that were pricey 20 or 30 years ago does NOT mean they are living well.

[Lusted4]

52. All the while Rush keeps getting FATTER and FATTER and FATTER.

[joefree1]

3. He's right

Thanks to Democratic programs like Social Security Americans do live better. I'm sure OxyRush and his ilk will find a way to f**k that up somehow.



on edit: oh wait, they've already started (slapping forhead). Duh!

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. limburger is out of touch with humanity. His comment was sick and callous.

Why would anybody listen to that idiot?

[TexasSissy]

5. Do you have a link for the Limbaugh Misstatement? I'd like to

post it in a bipartisan forum. But I like to link, or I'll be accused of fabricating it.

[UdoKier]

12. I heard him say it years ago on his radio show.

And I'm pretty sure I saw it in one of his two moronic books many years back.

I couldn't find the quote on google, but it's out there.

[gumby]

20. This crap goes the fascist Heritage Foundation

directly out of Limbaugh's mouth. Here is just one example: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1713.cfm

There are many many more examples, if you can stand that site.

[Maestro]

35. That link is friggin'

disgusting. The poor really don't have it so bad so let's not help them. :eyes: :shrug:

[walldude]

50. And the best part is money for social programs

is going to go to "faith-based" organizations like.... The Heritage Foundation!! Woo-Hoo we're living high on the hog now!

[Auntie Bush]

37. No thanks...I'll take your word for it...I just ate.

[Cleita]

7. Rush is a big, lying idiot and the people who put him in that

mansion in Palm Beach are even bigger idiots. Why would you want to be one of them by adding to his audience? This creep will continue to have a platform for his verbal vomit as long as he has ratings.

[UdoKier]

15. Don't worry. I haven't listened to him for years.

nt

[gumby]

8. The rich are too poor, and the poor are too rich.

That's been the operating principle of "conservatives" for as long as I can remember.

"Rugged Individualism" and "Personal Responsibility" are the myths they have embellished to sell their social Darwinism.

[Ravenseye]

9. You Forgot Healthcare

How can America's poor even begin to think about healthcare without Medicare and Medicaid?

Decent insurance for a family runs upwards of 800-900 dollars. Cheaper 'emergency' alternatives can be had in various forms around 400-500 dollars a month. Of course those don't protect you against huge disastrous health situations.

Still two poor working adults in this country making minimum wage in full time jobs would bring in probably around 600-700 dollars a month after taxes, if they're lucky. So two would put their total monthly take for their family at around 1300 dollars a month.

There are plenty of parts of the country where that won't even cover rent, forget about health care. Good thing they picked up that 20 year old color television at the flea market for 20 bucks though, and the old small microwave for 10. Of course they got there in their beater car that cost them 500 bucks. On their way there though they prayed it wouldn't break down on the way back, otherwise they'd probably have to abandon the televion.

But sure, they're living better than the poor in some other random country.

When did it become an argument of the right in this country to say 'hey it's better here than in Cambodia, so people shouldn't complain.' ?

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

28. To answer your question

It was probably after they decided to bomb the living shit out of Cambodia

[Ravenseye]

36. LOL

Sorry, I shouldn't laugh at that, but it's funny.

Your peons complain about their living conditions? Bomb another country back into the stone age.

"See, things are better here than there. You have electriciy and running water and bombs aren't dropping on you. Why are you complaining? Support the trooops."

[Guckert]

10. Cowards addicted to hillbilly heroin are higher in America than in other

Countries...

[Pawel K]

11. And the rich in this country live better than they do in other countries

What is this idiot's point?

[gonefishing]

13. As Always that Idiot Missed the point ... Again...

Since we live in a country where $wealth$ is so abundant we should focus even harder to make sure their are no poor people in this country. Instead he wants to tell them how good they got it.

It's comical to listen to that idiot.

[IrateCitizen]

14. Actually, I'd say that poor in Western Europe live better than here...

After all, they mostly don't have to worry about not having a car -- because there is extensive public transit and bikeable/walkable communities. Nor do they have to worry about whether or not to go to the doctor, because they all have full health insurance. Nor do they have to worry about keeping a roof over their head -- because they have adequate subsidized housing. Nor do they have to worry about their kids being limited in higher education options, because higher education is available to EVERYBODY, paid for by the state.

Yup, I guess since some of the poor in the US can afford CD players or DVD's, rather than any of the above, means that they're better off. :eyes:

[Zenlitened]

16. "Some people should die...

... That's just unconscious knowledge"

Perry Farrel
From Pig's In Zen

Discuss... :evilgrin:

[madrchsod]

17. so? what`s the point rush?

oh i forgot rush never defends or even explains what his "statements" mean. oh by the way-i heard that there was a gay prostitute "invited" to the whitehouse press conferences

[GiovanniC]

18. It's a Good Thing That We Don't Have Homeless People

Or anyone starving to death on the streets of our cities. It's good that there are no children in these United States living in squalor amongst their own waste, in horribly unsanitary conditions, totally malnourished and lacking health care, like in third world countries.

Wait, what? There ARE people living in those conditions here?

Oh, well in that case, shut the fuck up, you fat, bloviating, hillbilly-heroin-addicted, gap-toothed, cousin-fucking, goat-raping cauldron of liquid shit.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

19. Yes and no, Rush

In a country where you can find $300 worth of warm, fresh pizza in a dumpster, not as one lucky find to tell your friends about, but every single day at the same dumpster, no one is as poor as, say, a middle-class Somali.

However, there are numerous places in my state (California) where indigenous people from Mexico and Central America live exactly as they did in their home countries (building reed huts, etc.) There is "white" poverty in Appalachia and rural black poverty in the south comparable to this.

In my opinion what impoverishes the poor of this country more than anything else is their disenfranchisement. By that I don't just mean voting or not; I mean that they are looked on as an anomaly, as abnormal people, as less than full citizens, as a thing to be commented on by fat slobs like Rush.

Within their own countries, the poorest people in the world endure nothing like this. A campesino in Mexico is not only a full citizen and a normal person; the elites at least verbally honor him as the backbone of the nation. Here, listening to the news, you would think it was suits who did all the work.

I think I've said enough.

[UdoKier]

22. Nice post.

NT

[SammyWinstonJack]

39. Well.

"Here, listening to the news, you would think that it was the suits who did all the work." They ARE certainly paid as if they do.

[Vanje]

40. Campesino transport

...." A campesino in Mexico is not only a full citizen and a normal person; the elites at least verbally honor him as the backbone of the nation."


The Campesino in Mexico does not need a car. Each little pueblo has a funky bus which passes through through it on a more or less regular schedule . A ride to the next town cost about 10 pesos (~= a dollar) last year.

Here in the USA, Greyhound stopped serving most small towns a year ago.
Here in USA, you got no car, You go NO WHERE!

[BiggJawn]

70. "...you got no car, You go NO WHERE!"

Which is why I sneer derisively everytime I see one of those "You know what would be a good idea? If gasoline went to $20 a gallon, so everyone would stop driving and take The Bus..." posts.

Those people should leave NYC for a week and come out to cornfield country. Hey, it's only a 30-mile roundtrip from my house to the nearest Starbucks. Start walking, because there's NO bus...

[stanwyck]

43. excellent points

poverty is treated as a choice of lazy, amoral people by folks like Rush. We've become such a greedy country. Our CEOs (who profess like Bernie Ebbers to "know nothing of financial or technical matters") make 300% more than their employees. For doing a poor job. We worship the rich. As though they're better people. Which makes the poor less than the rest of us. Not exactly what Jesus would do...for a nation which professes to be Christian.
Thanks for your post.

[UdoKier]

47. Small correction - CEOs don't make 300% of what employees make.

That would be a reasonable wage differential. CEOs make 300 to 500 TIMES as much as their employees make. It's wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, and yet they claw for more, and cry about their tax burden and the pampered poor sucking off the government teat.

[DinahMoeHum]

21. Rush sings: "I'm a Nazi. . .I don't care about the middle class. . .

"...'cause I'm a fat conservative butthead with the face of a horse's ass..."


http://servercc.oakton.edu/~billtong/bnsp/imanazi.htm


Mega Dildos, Rush!


:evilgrin:

[LibertyorDeath]

23. Do the Planet a favor & Die already Limbaugh you fucking piece of Shit.

[The Backlash Cometh]

24. He's full of shit. Mr. Limbaugh, you clueless whore, The American

poor should be compared against America's resources; and not those of other countries. For one thing, you sadly omit that the poor in other countries, have their own social networks to remedy the isolation and alienation that occur to the poor here in America. They may not have much, but they truly have each other. In America, anyone who let's go of their native country to get "Americanized" often loses the very thing that makes life worthwhile. Because becoming an American these days is all about self-loathing. It's the only way that idiots like you will accept them.

[JohnnyCougar]

25. Fuck, I knew some poor people in India that had color TV's

Of course, they weren't the poorest of the poor, but they still didn't have running water, and had a all concrete, one bedroom apartment for an entire family. The open sewer ran right by their door.

Limbaugh needs to be sterilized.

[ultraist]

26. What a sick fuck! Is the US a third world country?

Do we have the same standards as a third world country or do we have higher standards, such as food, shelter and medical care for all?

Maybe we should forget about public sanitation systems in poor neighborhoods too. Why should our taxes go to pay for poor areas? Let them live in squalor and disease.

[CindyDale]

27. Yes, that is lame

We should build better public transportation so the poor don't have to waste so much of their money on transportation and so we all don't have to contribute so heavily to destroying the climate and waging incessant war. Self-destruction is the goal of Limbaugh and his ilk, and he thinks we are lucky to be going along for the ride.

edit: added missing word

[adigal]

29. America's drug addict preaches to others about

self-control and personal responsibility.

If this was not so painfully ridiculous, I would be laughing.

[Canuckistanian]

30. John Stossel did a show using these exact "facts"

Show me one person who got out of poverty by giving up a TV or microwave.
And as for a car, if you live in a rural area (where there is plenty of poverty) a car is a NECESSITY. There are no buses or subways in Crawford, TX.

[Zenlitened]

34. Same for suburbia. No car? You're a shut-in. - n/t

[ultraist]

38. What a bastard for distorting reality.

Does a one time purchase of $50 pay for healthcare?

I have worked with many low income families, and MOST have few personal items. Typically, they have a small wardrobe from Goodwill, one crappy $30 microwave, one piece of shit tv from the Salvation Army they paid 20 bucks for and used, dilaptated furniture from a thrift store. Most do NOT mismanage their money. They don't have any money!

The idea that these people are poor because they mismanage their money is a RW myth. People living on minimum wage or less don't have enough money to mismanage.

The basic measures for standard of living are not ownership of a 'tv or microwave' they are adequate shelter, food, & medical care. People on minimum wage cannot afford even the basics.

[Bridget Burke]

54. And some people have "things" because they weren't always poor.

Layoffs, divorces & medical expenses can change peoples' circumstances fairly quickly.

If your TV, microwave, etc., is a few years old, you won't get much return for selling it. And you usually need the car to get to work--if you can keep it running. --and if you have work.

[Zenlitened]

66. Perhaps the brave and insightful John Stossel would...

... like to try living for one year on poverty-level income?

It would make good television, wouldn't it? It might even make an interesting story, one worthy of ABC as it used to be.

Whaddaya say, Stossel. Care to give it a try? How about 6 months? Then you can come back to us and demonstrate all the clever ways in which you were able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

Or, failing that, you might offer us a view of the impoverished that's informed by compassion and understanding. As opposed to the dimwitted braying you usually give us.

[Vanje]

31. We can afford a microwave but we cant afford to keep our own teeth!

Have you priced a root-canal recently?

I am still haunted by an event that happened in well-to-do, Bend, Oregon a couple of years back.
A man was found dead in his car at the side of the highway. The man was identified and an autopsy was done to rule out foul play.
The man was found to have died from absess in his cranial vault which had started as an untreated tooth absess which had infected the bone.

But hey! He was doing great. He owned a car!

[jpgray]

32. Yes, the slums of Norway really beat out ours, don't they?

Jesus, why does anyone bother with this asshat? :eyes:

[CBHagman]

33. Mr. Limbaugh, your ring of hell is ready.

You go below the treacherous and adulterous, too, by the way.

[LynnTheDem]

41. That is one of the most ANTI-AMERICAN things I've heard in ages.

How bloody damned OFFENSIVE.

There are POOR CHILDREN, an estimated 3 million of them, in THIS COUNTRY, who go to bed HUNGRY EVERY NIGHT.

HOW DARE a SO-CALLED AMERICAN just blow them all off with his talk of "color TV sets, microwave ovens, and even CARS!".

THEY ARE AMERICANS. YOUR OWN PEOPLE, you PIG. And they go HUNGRY while you trivialize and denigrate their suffering.

They can STARVE to death. That's fine with you. As long as we don't actually kill them IN PERSON that makes us better than nations who do...the nations YOU call "evil" and "scum"??? THINK AGAIN, PIG.

There are Americans in this country who work 2 or 3 jobs to put their kids through school with at least one new pair of runners each year, Americans who as a single parent have to work 2 and 3 jobs to survive and feed their kids because their spouse died and they hadn't been able to afford life insurance.

OH WELL THEY JUST SHOULDN'T HAVE HAD A LIFE THEN, RIGHT, PIG?

You don't even know or care if these poor AMERICANS you mock and denigrate and whose suffering you trivialize are Democrats or Republicans; at least then you'd just be a partisan hack.

NO, YOU JUST HATE A WHOLE BUNCH OF AMERICANS; MEN, WOMEN and CHILDREN, WHOM YOU DON'T KNOW AND DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT.

How, pig. HOW does your HATE for MILLIONS OF AMERICANS because they're POOR make you ANYTHING but an AMERICAN-HATING ANTI-PATRIOTIC BASTARD?

[strategery blunder]

65. *claps*

A couple of years ago, (single parent) Mom told me that she had gone without dinner more than once a week so that I could eat until satisfied. I knew she wasn't rich, but I had absolutely no idea how bad things were...I had always assumed that she didn't eat because she was constantly working overtime and as such didn't really have a regular schedule.

F*** YOU, OXYRUSH, YOU HYPOCRITE.

[GOPBasher]

42. This just in: Rush Limbaugh is a lying, distorting piece of shit.

Just to let you all know. I realize you may be confused or something.

[UdoKier]

44. my point in posting this was not to validate anything the Pigman said.

The point really is that I heard him say this about 10 years ago, and I continue to hear it echoing from the lips of complacent suburbanites I know personally - people who can afford trips to Europe, but still whine about their tax "burden".

And as another poster mentioned, it's been echoed by the likes of John Stossel, who is a right-wing shill, but poses as a nonpartisan reporter on a "legit" news show.


It's just amazing how crap like this circulates around and around and around without EVER being questioned.

I wonder how many democrats at dinner parties have sat silent when some ass mouthed these "statistics"?

[GOPBasher]

46. Oh I knew the point of your post. I just wanted to take a swipe at Rush.

I knew you weren't trying to validate anything the asshole was saying. I just wanted to throw a quick swipe at that piece of shit, because I was too lazy for a long, drawn-out response. I've heard such utter bullshit for so long now that I get sick of answering the points. So, I just decided to throw my quick 2 cents in, by making a jab at Rush to a friendy crowd here at DU.

I know what you mean, though. That shit pisses me off to no end. I'm just so sick of commenting on it now.

[Vinca]

45. Don't think that applies to the homeless guy who apparently

took a dive off a bridge near my home a couple of nights ago and was found frozen to death on top of the ice the next morning. As far as I know they didn't find any color TVs or microwaves around the body.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

48. And somewhere in America, some poor ass who can't afford a pot to piss in

is listening to Rush and nodding his head.

[Deep13]

49. 3rd world poor the new benchmark.

Drug Limbaugh is such a hypocrit. If he got what he said drug users deserve, he would have been executed by now.

The issue is not whether the American underclass or working class are as destitute as it is possible to be. The issue is could we as their neighbors be doing better to insure decent living conditions for everyone? It is not like we cannot afford to be generous. The poor of many European countries do better than Americans because society there understands that it is their job to take care of the whole country. Some of these billionaires need to repay society for the fortunes that this country has allowed them to accumulate. Some of these politicians need to stop allowing corporate whores to destroy our towns and neighborhoods with their predatory business practices.

[durutti]

51. Not true.

Living standards are higher in several European countries.

[UdoKier]

53. According to right-wingers,

having a pile of cheap imported plastic gadgets, no health insurance, a mountain of debt and unaffordable food and housing is a better standard of living than having universal health care, comprehensive mass transit, a good safety net, unions with teeth, free university, low crime, etc. etc. etc.

[Spinoza]

55. Throughout human history

and for most human beings alive today, poverty=hunger. If you are not going to bed hungry, you are not suffering from poverty according to the customary usage of the word over thousands of years. Without question, under this definition, some people in the U.S. ARE living in poverty. Hunger does exist in the U.S. However, as a percentage of the total population, the number of "hungry" people in the U.S. is quite small. (Admittedly, it shoud be zero.)

[UdoKier]

56. Hunger is also next to nil in most of Europe.

It's pretty silly to compare a first-world country like the US or a European country to a nation like Haiti or Rwanda.

[Spinoza]

60. I wasn't comparing

the U.S. to a third-world country like Haiti. I just said that, according to customary usage, you should not be called poor unless you are going to bed hungry. The fact that, by that definition, there may be less "poor" people in Europe than in the U.S.--really has nothing to do with my point.

The fact that so many people believe that poverty in the U.S. (and Europe) can exist even though people are NOT suffering from hunger--simply attests to how rich and relatively well-off the West is compared to the rest of the world.

[UdoKier]

62. Well, I would disagree with that definition.

It's the 21st century, not the 18th, and it's not unreasonable to expect that the US make sure that everybody who works isn't just fed, but can afford to keep a roof over their head.


I think it's fair to call people in America getting by on very little poor simply because of the gaping disparity between their income and wealth, in comparison to the rich and upper middle class in this country, who have vast amounts of capital at their disposal and live in unbelievable luxury.

And I'm sure we could do more about starvation in the third world too.

[Spinoza]

68. Fair Enough

Good point.

[ProfessorGAC]

57. Talk About Lowered Expectations!

Sheesh! What an idiot!

So now because we have poor people who aren't as poor as the Sudanese, it's ok. This is about as sylogical as one can be.

I just don't get how this guy gets 3 million people to listen to him every day. (And, it's only 3 million, so save your posts and links. I know how they get the number they tout, and it's really only 3 million.)
The Professor

[KansDem]

58. Yeah, sure, Jeff, but when they get caught with a trunk full of drugs...

...they go to jail.

Period.

No "ifs," "ands," or "buts" about it.

[Swamp Rat]

59. Rush hates America and her hungry, tired, and poor.

AMERICA HATER!!!
AMERICA HATER!!!
AMERICA HATER!!!

[rzemanfl]

61. And drug addicts have their own radio shows. What a country! nt

[Fleshdancer]

63. so we can't care about America's poor until they have malaria and

no running water? Is that his point?

[Pepperbelly]

64. What kind of standard is that?

Our poor vs. THEIR poor. What a doofus. What we need is a confiscatory tax plan to redistribute some of HIS money, the shit-sipping offspring of Fatty Arbuckle and a buffalo. Or better yet, fine his sorry ass BIG, confiscate HIS house under the Drug Forfeiture laws, and ship his ass to fucking Rayford and see if his anal cysts gets him out of that one.

[FlyByNight]

67. Oh, and don't forget "our" poor can always join...

the military too - if being cannon fodder is your type of thing.

Rush, isn't it about time you OD'ed already? Do us all a favor, please.

[UdoKier]

69. The military pays McDonald's wages.

Only real difference for enlisted folks is that they get health care at our decaying and overtaxed military hospitals. Oh, and the GI Bill, assuming they get out alive...