RUSH: From CNNMoney.com: ‘The number of Americans fighting off hunger stayed level last year –‘ have you seen that out there? Have you seen people fighting off hunger? I see it all the time. I drive around and — I do drive, I do drive myself — and sometimes I look out the window and a lot of people are waving at me as I go by. Have you seen people fighting off hunger? I mean you can actually see it. You go inside Publix or any grocery store, you can see ’em walking down the aisles, they’re reaching for something and then they don’t. It’s an amazing thing to watch, people fighting off 
hunger. ‘U.S. Hunger Remains at Highest Levels in 15 Years.’ I think one of the reasons — look at Richard Blumenthal, the guy’s gotta be hungry. He never eats. If Blumenthal would just swallow, maybe our hunger deficit would drop somewhat.
I interrupted myself at the first sentence of this. ‘The number of Americans fighting off hunger stayed level last year, though food insecurity –‘ Not to be confused with food justice ‘– food insecurity rates remain the highest they have been since the federal government began keeping track 15 years ago. About 14.7 percent of U.S. households were ‘food insecure’ in 2009.’ Well, it’s not the food that’s insecure. It’s the people in the houses that are insecure about food. ‘About 14.7 percent of U.S. households were ‘food insecure’ in 2009, meaning they had difficulty feeding one or more of their members.’ Whose member? Whose member eats? The way this is written, my friends, it’s stunning here. Let me try this again. I’m just reading this for the first time, so bear with me. ‘About 14.7 percent of U.S. households were ‘food insecure’ in 2009, meaning they had difficulty feeding one or more of their members at some point last year due to a lack of financial resources, according to the report. That equates to 17.4 million households total, or roughly 45 million people.
‘Households headed by single parents were more likely to struggle with food insecurity than those with two parents at home.’ I wonder why that is. ‘Hunger-related issues were more prevalent among African-American and Hispanic households than white ones.’ Well, of course, food is racist. We know that. ‘Most of those classified as ‘food insecure’ reported getting benefits from the federal government’s three main anti-hunger initiatives,’ which apparently are utter failures. If we have three main anti-hunger initiatives to deal with food insecurity, and there’s still 45 million households or people not feeding their members because of food insecurity, you’d have to say that the three government programs are failures, much like the Obama administration. Do you realize, folks, if Obama had just listened to me, he would not be a failure? If he had just taken me up on my op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on my way to stimulate the economy, if he had just listened to me none of what we’re going through now would we be going through.
Did you notice Obama came home? I was stunned. He actually came home from Asia. He’s going back over to Europe. He’s just passing through America, probably needed some clean underwear, one of the reasons why he came home. He’s heading back over to Europe now to deal with whatever economic strife he’s causing there. They are in bad shape, folks, Europe is. I’m not finished with the food insecurity story, either. Europe is scrambling now to deal with Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. It’s worse than they told us about Greece, the deficit, the debt situation there is worse than they told us. Ireland’s on the brink. Portugal and Spain are nearing economic collapse. They have all spent themselves into bankruptcy. They have all followed liberalism off the economic cliff. China, the ChiComs are fighting inflation. The ChiComs may impose price controls. The world economy is weakening. Nobody knows where this is headed. There were warning signs everywhere, but our president, lame-duck Democrats, are not taking steps to deal with this looming economic storm.
Now, the markets, the ChiCom markets have tanked three days in a row. By the way, food insecurity in China, you don’t even want to go there. I mean it’s a major problem in China. It’s not reported, but I mean lots of food insecurity. And Haiti, I mean, folks, if you want to talk about food insecurity, plus cholera, first cholera outbreak in 40 years and what’s different? The UN finally went in there so the UN caused the cholera outbreak in Haiti. Food insecurity, no food justice anywhere, China or Haiti. Now the ChiCom markets have tanked three days in a row. We’re now below 11,000 in the Dow Jones Industrial Average as we speak. The ChiComs are tightening over there which means that they are fighting inflation. That has caused or started the global effects, ripples from what the Chinese are doing being seen now. The ChiComs even that said they are looking at buying less USA Treasuries. And so now Europe is in the midst of coming apart over Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. Austria refused to send the bailout payment to Greece today. They said no way. You’re on your own. It’s got its own problems anyway.
So far, QE2 has been a negative, has had the absolute reverse effect. The dollar is way up, the market is way down, interest rates on bonds are climbing, the yields is climbing, the exact opposite of what they all thought was gonna happen is happening. It’s an absolute mess. And Obama is gonna stop in and visit America for a couple days between his vacation homes in Asia and in Europe. Now, we ought to be taking steps to strengthen our economy, and if Obama had listened to me, or any other economic conservative — but of course no other economic conservative had the guts to disagree with Obama at the outset except for yours truly.
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RUSH: The dirty little secret is the supplemental nutritional assistance program, the national school lunch program, and the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children better known as WIC, are all failing. Those three federal anti-hunger initiatives have not cured food insecurity. ‘In a press release, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that 18.7 percent more people had participated in the former program in 2009 over 2008. Rates also rose for the ‘free lunch’ program (up 5.4 percent) and WIC (up 5.8 percent),’ and still food insecurity, which, again, is defined as households having difficulty feeding one or more of their members. Have you ever been hungry? Well, I know, but everybody gets hungry, right? That’s why people eat. How do you even calculate hunger, US hunger? I mean hunger, at some points, is a hundred percent. Virtually everybody on a diet is hungry, which is the point. Everybody on a diet goes to bed hungry, gets up hungry and spends the whole day hungry and is ticked off about it. You talk about food insecurity, a person on a diet goes to the drugstore, grocery store, and see’s 99% of what he or she can’t have. You want to talk depression? I mean look at it.
Now, we can’t have it both ways. We are either morbidly obese, fat slobs needing the attention of the First Lady Michelle (My Belle) Obama, or we are a hungry nation with food insecurity. Which is it? To say that there is hunger in America insults the starving people in this world, and there are people starving. Here we go belly-aching and whining and moaning about food insecurity. I’m beginning to think that food insecurity is what causes obesity. There can be no other explanation. If you’re food insecure, what do you do? You eat. If you eat too much to deal with your food insecurity then you get obese. Food insecurity is probably the leading cause of morbid obesity. Another thing, this study says that single-parent homes are more hungry than two-parent homes. Okay, so is that the real cause of this? Sure a damn good one to look into, but they never address that problem. Why are there so many one parent households? ‘Well, it’s just the way it is, Mr. Limbaugh. It’s just the way it is. You have to learn to accept society as it is caused by years and years and years of Reagan economics, Mr. Limbaugh.’
Okay, that’s the way you look at it. So it seems to me the solution is not to help people that have two-parent homes. It’s to give the single ones more of our money, is that the solution here? More food programs, which this is encourages single-parent homes. If you are a single parent home you get more food goodies from the government than a two-parent home. The Feds, the ruling elites, the food ruling elites to boot never address the real reason why these things happen because it points to their failures. Why do we have single parenthood? Well, one is called abortion, it’s called welfare programs, it’s called the federal government’s taken over the role of being father and husband.
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RUSH: To Washington, DC, Melissa, nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. It is nice to finally talk to you. How are you?
RUSH: Fine. Thank you very much.
CALLER: Great. Listen, I just wanted to go back to one of the things that you mentioned earlier in the show today about children coming from single-parent homes who have food insecurities. I myself am a single mom, and, you know, I made the decision five years ago, and obviously I had my son, never thought of anything else, and ironically I named him Ben because the Steelers won the Super Bowl that year, so we’re Steeler fans.
RUSH: What a day this is, incredible.
CALLER: Yeah. So he lives up to his name. He’s a good Ben, though, but I know a lot of people I guess may have this perception that all single parents are kind of like the welfare moms who take advantage of the government and those sorts of things, and my son is absolutely healthy and fine and thriving and, you know, I —
RUSH: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You shouldn’t take this personally. The survey didn’t say that every single parent household has food insecurity. It said that of the households where there is food insecurity, the largest percentage are in single parent families.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: It didn’t say that every single parent family deals with food insecurity.
CALLER: Right. Well, I also think that education goes along with that factor, too, because personally I have seen people use food stamps and other government means of I guess money to purchase food for their —
RUSH: Well, I mean that’s another thing. Food stamps, the whole notion of food insecurity in this country is a bit far-fetched. To try to imply here there’s starvation —
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: — in this country and that government programs haven’t — there’s food stamps plus three other government food providing programs, it’s a silly notion. Food insecurity, food justice, it’s ridiculous.
CALLER: Right. I just think a lot of people do take advantage of it and they just spend it on frivolous things and that’s why children are not thriving. They’re feeling those food insecurities because the parents aren’t really doing anything much about it. They’re not teaching them what to do, what needs to be done, so that was my whole point.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: My whole point is the more the government does this stuff, the more the government takes over the role of a parent or parents then the less self-sufficiency, the less self-reliability that there is and there’s no reason for parents to be parents. And the problem with this is it’s dehumanizing, and this is an objective of the Democrat Party. This situation exists precisely because this is how the Democrat Party derives its power, creating this kind of dependency, creating this kind of dumbed-down irresponsibility. ‘The government will take care of it, the government will do this. I got my benefits coming. I know what I’m entitled to,’ this kind of thing. It really bums me out. If I see the wrong thing at the right time I’ll hit a tipping point, it could ruin my whole day.
This stuff really, really bugs me, this whole notion of an entitlement society, the benefits here, because it is destroying people. You know, we conservatives love everybody, we love people. We want the best for everybody. And one of the reasons we’re so opposed to big government is that government deprives people of their humanity and their dreams and their opportunities under the guise of taking care of them. It’s one of the biggest swindles to come down the pike, liberalism, Democrat Party and all this. So I can understand you want to stand up for yourself as a single parent, you don’t want to identify with the others. I’m frankly happy that you wanted to call here and differentiate yourself from that bunch. Keep it up. You’re sadly, somewhat unique. But don’t change. I’m glad you called.
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RUSH: Tom, Seattle, great that you held on, nice to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush. I’m really honored to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: Hey, I wanted to get back to your hunger issue that you were speaking about earlier.
RUSH: Food insecurity, yeah.
CALLER: Yeah, tell you about a couple things I noticed locally here. I live about 20 miles south of Seattle, and my kids go to public school, and a few times a year we get harassed by the school, they keep sending us home trying to urge you to get on free lunches. I guess the statistics in my child’s school are close to 70% of the kids are on a free or reduced lunch program, and I can tell you that there’s no way that they all need it. Their parents apply for it and they get it just because it saves them from having to feed their own kid.
RUSH: Yeah, I know.
CALLER: I go to the grocery store and here in Washington they replace food stamps, they started giving them EBT cards and its like a debit card and it’s to reduce the stigma of using food stamps in the line.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Others in line can’t tell you’re using food stamps.
RUSH: I have a debit card, too, but it debits my own account, not Washington’s.
CALLER: Oh, sure. But about the beginning of the month, shortly before they give the cards out, when I go to the grocery store I get accosted when I’m going in the store and going out of the store by people standing outside trying to sell me their EBT cards for a reduced price. They obviously don’t need the food. They’re just trying to get the money. So I mean this happens to me regularly.
RUSH: Have you ever bought somebody’s EBT card?
CALLER: I have never bought anybody’s EBT card, no.
RUSH: What’s the average price that they ask you for them?
CALLER: You know, I don’t know. They usually just say, ‘Hey, I got EBT cards for sale,’ and I just say, ‘No thanks,’ and keep walking. You know, I don’t even stop and talk to them. But I mean this is a constant thing. Every month you can always find them outside the grocery store and their EBT cards are for sale. Washington is an extremely blue state.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: So I’m very much in the minority here. You know, my wife and I, we try really hard to support ourselves. You know, we got kind of caught up in the whole housing market crisis, we bought our house at the peak back in 2006, and I’m currently probably about $60,000 upside down on my mortgage —
RUSH: So you have house insecurity but not food insecurity?
CALLER: Well, no, that’s the other thing. I recently quit work to go back to school to try to get my degree in Web application development and some programming. I’m trying to provide a better future for my family —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — above what I could before. We made it so that we could pay our bills barely. I mean we’re sacrificing a lot for me to spend two years to go back to school. We’re mainly trying to live off of my wife’s income. We have a financial deficit every month. Every month it is stressful just trying to find the money to pay the bills. You know, I mean I could probably go down and apply for a bunch of state programs and I’d probably qualify for a majority of them, but I don’t. We’re very proud people. We try to support ourselves. And I just don’t like the idea of going out and taking a handout from the state. I mean, I’m partially supplementing my income with student loans, you know, my left-over from student loans —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — I’m gonna have to pay all that back with interest.
RUSH: Well, good for you.
CALLER: We have some help from family, but not much and I won’t take any state handouts.
RUSH: No, it’s still good that you’re not running around looking for benefits. But good for you, sir. I applaud you, I appreciate the call. Thanks very much. This reminds me, you know, last week, a couple days I was really over the edge. I saw the rioting, the longhaired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking FM types in the UK rioting over the fact that their college tuition was going up some, they were gonna have to pay for their own education. You know, it sent me over the edge for two days. I was just, as many of you remember, fit to be tied. I remember getting e-mails, a lot of them. ‘Rush, why do you care?’ All these e-mails, ‘Why do you care about this? You could retire today. I mean, you don’t have any financial concerns at all.’ These people think that I have whatever and that I don’t have to worry about things, so why do I care about it?
And it’s very simple. I care about it because I care about the country. None of this stuff is just about me. If I were so inwardly focused and self-focused, yeah, I wouldn’t have a concern in the world. Yeah, go ahead and tax everybody, and go ahead and give it away. I got mine. I can live behind the gate, the hell with the rest of it, I can go ahead and live my life ’til I die and not have a single care in the world. I could do that, but I would be miserable. This stuff, it eats away at me because it’s a country that we’re talking about here. Every person that we create, or every person that we make a dependent, member of the dependent class, the tougher it’s going to be for the country to survive as we’ve known it. And that matters to me. Plus, I love people and I would love for everybody to have the chance to enjoy the great things this country provides as I have, and I see that opportunity flittering away for many people not for any reason other than politicians and government people are taking it away by robbing people of their humanity, by making them dependent, by telling them that their lot in life is benefits, their share of whatever government’s giving away that year. It really offends me, really offends my sensibilities. It bothers me to see people reduced to that degree of having no consequence to their lives.
We only get one life, and it is such a blessing to have that life be an American life. And to have it frittered away for that opportunity to not be promoted, for people to reach for it and access it really does tear at my heart. I can’t explain it any other way. But, yeah, it would be easy for me to say, ‘I don’t care, ah, country is going to hell, I got mine, fine, I’ll sit around and watch while you all destroy yourself.’ I couldn’t live with myself if I did that. It bothers me to no end. It bothers me when I see people with potential sitting around not using it. And then I learn if they happen to be politically liberal, it grates on me, it’s so unnecessary. I look at all of the wasted opportunity and all of the wasted production and productivity that we have in this country because of the way people are being programmed, I think of how great the country could be, and then I hear a president going overseas happy about this decline and happily telling the people of the world that the American people are never gonna lead the world economy again, that we realize we’re never gonna — that’s just bohunk to me, and it infuriates me.
So that’s why this stuff makes me mad. It’s not that I have an animus against these people. In some cases it really isn’t their fault. They’ve been born into this mentality. Their parents had it, their parents were Democrats, their grandparents are Democrats, they voted Democrat all their lives, and they believe that life is inherently unfair because there are Republicans. And so to get even, the government has to give people stuff. And any time you start depending on anybody else but yourself for your needs and then your wants, your goose is cooked because there’s nobody that’s gonna care about you as much as you do, no matter what you think. I don’t care what you think of Ted Kennedy or John Kennedy or pick your favorite liberal, they don’t love you anywhere near as much as you can love yourself. They don’t love you, period. You’re an asset to them. You’re a profit and loss sheet. You’re a registered voter to them, pure and simple. They actually hold you in contempt.
The less you need them, the more independent and self-reliant you become, the bigger threat to them you become, which is the exact opposite. You think about the best teachers that you ever had in your life, probably the ones you didn’t like, but those were the ones that got more out of you than you knew you had. You only realized this long after you were out of that classroom and in some cases out of school. And there’s not a liberal that anybody’s gonna ever say that about. Liberals do not want to get the best out of you because they don’t believe it exists. We’re all flawed human beings, and the best in humanity is running the country, them. The fact that you’re not in the club translates to them that you’re incompetent and incapable, and you are to be managed, propagandized so that every four years or every two years you vote the right way. The more of you that show up at the Social Security office, the better. The more of you that show up for the latest government handout, the better, as far as they’re concerned.
It’s like that circumstance in Detroit where thousands and thousands of poor people showed up for the opportunity to get a very small amount of vouchers that would allow access to some affordable rent, and I remember telling you that if I were president of the country and that was happening during my presidency, I would be humiliated, I would be embarrassed, and I would want to do something about it. And Obama and the liberals look at that, that’s a measure of success, how many people depending on them, how many people believe the country is inherently unfair and will look to the Democrat Party to get even with the people who are responsible for it being unfair, and it’s the exact opposite, the truth is. So that’s why I care about it. ‘Cause I hate seeing opportunity missed. I hate seeing it destroyed, in this country especially.
And then you look around at the people around the world who come here because they are escaping that kind of tyranny or bondage. They understand what this country is all about, even today. It ought to wake people up. But, no, the people we want to let in are not those kinds. The people we want to let in are going to get the Democrat Party bigger and fatter and so forth. I just hate it when people are used. I guess it’s no more complicated than that and to me the Democrat Party, the American left uses people until they’re finished with them, never caring about them at any stage of the process.
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RUSH: Elsa in Downey, California, nice to have you on the program.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Wow, I finally got through after years. I’m calling regarding what you were talking about this morning of hunger and food and shortages and the prices rising. Think back just a few months ago up in the San Joaquin Valley when they were begging for water for their crops, and neither Feinstein nor Boxer nor my congressman, Lucille Roybal-Allard, did one thing to help them get water for their crops. They died, thousands lost their jobs. They chose, rather, to pitch in with the environmentalists and save the salamander.
RUSH: That’s right. That’s exactly right.
CALLER: Not only that, but I think corn is one of the most important crops that we have, and what are they doing with that? They’re putting that in our gasoline tanks —
RUSH: That’s right.
CALLER: — choosing, rather, to go with the environmentalists than the people.
RUSH: I know. And that is a food staple for our Hispanic brothers and sisters. Tortillas, tacos, south of the border, the price is skyrocketing, it’s one of the reasons they’re coming here — because we’re taking their food staple and making ethanol gasoline out of it. You’re exactly right about this.