RUSH: Here’s Baghdad Jim McDermott on the House floor this morning during one-minute speeches.
RUSH: Baghdad Jim McDermott this morning on the House floor. (laughs) You people will remember that we had this story, it was an astounding story that kids are going to starve because the schools are closed. No breakfast, no lunch, no dinner! As though they don’t have parents, as though their parents have no idea how to feed them, as though their parents have no idea as to their responsibility to feed them — and that the kids don’t know where to go to get food. So we have this bit where they tell ’em where to go. It’s called a kitchen, and there’s cupboards in there and sometimes there’s a refrigerator in there, and if you have responsible parents there’s going to be food in there. If you find that doesn’t work, go to a neighbor’s house. Then there’s also McDonald’s and the Happy Meal.
Oh, McDonald’s is being sued. McDonald’s is being sued over Happy Meals. McDonald’s is being sued now by left-wing activists. And then we said, ‘You know, if that fails, Dumpster diving,’ because the homeless advocates push that. We had this back in the nineties. Homeless advocates actually produced a video for homeless people to healthfully, quote, unquote, Dumpster dive. This is a leftist idea, Baghdad Jim. It’s not mine. I’m just trying to bring it forward and make it relevant to 2010. I mean, you guys claim to have all this compassion defined as giving homeless people a shopping cart. ‘Hey, man, I love you. Take this shopping cart. Make this your home,’ and then here’s a video on Dumpster driving, how to get in there and find the healthful stuff. All these great liberal ideas. I’m simply saying, ‘Well, if you’re a kid, you can’t find food, do what the left, do what the Democrat Party is advising homeless people do — and that’s jump into a Dumpster!’ Of course this pretty close to Patsy Schroeder falling for another joke I made.
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RUSH: All right, I just sent a YouTube video link up to Koko at RushLimbaugh.com that has the original Dumpster diving video from our TV show. We have that on our website video archives anyway but I wanted to make it easy for Koko to find. So, Koko, I want you to put that up there on the orange banner on the homepage. Put that up there and when you get it done let me know, and you can go see the original Dumpster diving video that homeless advocates put together. We played portions of it on my television show back in the nineties. But, you know, this Baghdad Jim McDermott and people like him have to constantly — this has been going on my whole life — portray this nation as a soup kitchen nation, and the truth is they’re driving us that way, and they lash out at others because of it. These people are really stupid and they have no sense of humor, but that’s beside the point. They have tried to cast this country as a soup kitchen economy — especially the last ten years — and they’re at it again now.
And this portrayal of people as being helpless, starve to death because the government-run schools are closed, and people have no idea where to go get food? How stupid is this notion? I want to take you back to 1995. I was invited by GOPAC to make a speech. A big budget battle was going on at the time, always seems to be. And the open to my speech was a bit of humor in response to the current crisis that the Democrats back then were trying to promote, and that is that the economy was so bad and the Republicans were trying to cut the budget so much that old people, senior citizens, were soon to have to choose between food and dog food. And I told the GOPAC people to open the speech that I had heard about this dilemma and because I’m a good son, I had sent my mother a new can opener so she could more easily eat the dog food. And of course the crowd laughed. They got it. A few days later, Patsy Schroeder, then a congressperson from Colorado, took to the House floor much like you just heard Baghdad Jim McDermott.
SCHROEDER: And they had the Big Kahuna of GOPAC come speak, none other than Rush Limbaugh himself, who stood there and said to all these people who paid all this money to keep GOPAC rich, he was hailing the GOP budget! He said, according to the paper and according to the C-SPAN tape, he thought it was wonderful because it would starve the poor and it would drive Medicare recipients, including his mother, to eat dog food, but not to worry, Mom, he says, I’m sending you a new can opener. Wow. That tells you what today’s about.
RUSH: Folks, I’m not making this up. This is actually how it happened on the House floor. ‘Not to worry, Mom, I’m sending you a new can opener.’ She thought it was for real! Somebody got to her and said, ‘Uh, Limbaugh was making a joke about you and the Democrats,’ and she went to the floor, I think, and said, ‘Limbaugh was making a joke, but we know what he really meant. We know what’s in their heart. Limbaugh was joking, but if he had his way, old people would need new can openers.’ This is the kind of stuff that they have been doing. Along these lines they have been trying to discredit me for all these years.
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RUSH: Elmira, New York. This is Amanda. Great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, there, Rush. It is the greatest honor to get to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I am actually calling about your comments earlier about Dumpster diving.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a group called Freegans.
RUSH: A group called what?
CALLER: Freegans, kind of like the word free. They’re called Freegans, and it’s this group I watched a documentary about. It’s a socially progressive group that goes around diving in Dumpsters in big cities due to like all the waste of restaurants and this kind of thing and it was all about how they find all these great unused foods, vegetables, breads, that kind of thing and just how they go through and find all this stuff and they’re completely financially viable people, they’re not homeless people, they’re usually pretty rich people. But they go around doing it —
RUSH: Right. Because restaurants have laws. Whatever is left on the plate they have to throw out.
CALLER: Absolutely. So it’s not even just that. It’s like bags of fruit that just passed their expiration date and that kind of thing. And I just love it that they’re giving you a hard time for saying these things. That’s actually what I thought you were talking about the other day.
RUSH: No, they give me a hard time just for the sake of it. You know, they get so caught up in their cliches that they’re just trying to portray me as some heartless person with no compassion and it’s silly. They’ve been trying to discredit me for years on this basis, it never works. I appreciate the call. I’d not heard of the Freegans, dumpster diving Freegans. Hell, it’s even more widespread than even I knew.
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RUSH: Klamath Falls, Oregon, Vincent, I’m glad you called. Welcome to the EIB Network.
RUSH: Well, the fact of the matter is — By the way, we have upon the evidence the video, it’s up there now at RushLimbaugh.com. You can see the original Dumpster diving video, portions of which we aired on my television show back in the nineties. There’s just one glaring thing here. It’s like the budget battle of 1995 with school lunch cuts, when there weren’t any, but the accompanying criticism was that children were gonna starve. And now school’s out. Where are kids going to eat? It’s called ‘parents.’ I am flabbergasted that this rises to the level of crisis? Are we really to believe that parents are so uncaring or so incompetent that their own children will go hungry without schools open providing meals? And some places, schools are open throughout the summer for that express purpose. We know what the purpose of all this is. It’s to create the notion that you don’t get anything you need without government — that you can’t count on yourself and you can’t count on your parents, your family, your church, your village, your community. You’ve got to have the government. And the idea that people fall for this? The kids are going to starve if the schools close for the summer? Look, folks, that is patently absurd. It’s insulting, it’s egregious, and yet people accept the premise and start debating the merits of it.
Sources told the Associated Press, rather, that Obama will name Petraeus, David Petraeus, to succeed Stanley McChrystal as the top war commander in Afghanistan.
Debbie, Westover, Maryland. Great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush! I love you. I’m so happy to talk to you today.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I wanted to comment on the Dumpster diving as well. And I’ll tell you, that is way better than the actual school lunch that I got to eat one day when I ate lunch with my son. It really needed to be in the Dumpster.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. When was that?
CALLER: It was when my son was in grade school.
RUSH: Yeah, but when? When was that?
CALLER: I went eat lunch with him.
RUSH: When was that?
CALLER: Well, he’s 17 now. So it was years ago, but let me tell you: The state-run lunch program is awful. County, state, whoever runs it, it was awful. I paid a dollar more for my parent lunch, and it was the worst thing I ever ate. I pack my son’s lunch and, you know, trust me: I can feed my child, and I’m sure there are many other parents out there that can.
RUSH: This is —
CALLER: And if they’re getting reduced lunches —
RUSH: This is —
CALLER: — they’re probably on food stamps anyway.
RUSH: What were you…?
CALLER: So they should be able to feed their children.
RUSH: Of course! I mean, that should go unsaid. If we have to say, ‘Parents can feed their own kids,’ where the hell are we now? Now, why were you going to school to eat with your kid?
CALLER: Just to spend the afternoon with him, it was like a parent day.
RUSH: Oh, we used to have those.
CALLER: I had to pay for my lunch and I got a grilled cheese sandwich that wasn’t even cooked, that had a hard piece of fake cheese on it. I got three little tiny celery sticks and a fruit cup that was the size of a condiment cup that you would get at McDonald’s, and that’s what my $2.50 got me that day for lunch.
RUSH: Yeah, well —
CALLER: It was awful.
RUSH: And I don’t understand how these —
CALLER: Ever since then, I packed my son’s own lunch.
RUSH: Here’s what I don’t understand. I don’t know where the obesity problem is. Kids don’t know where to go to find food when the schools are not open, the schools are serving rotgut food according to your testimony, and yet we got this massive child obesity epidemic — and we’re told that kids don’t know where to go to eat with this massive obesity problem? What do you mean they don’t know where to go to eat? You know, I always said I’m not going to become an old fuddy-duddy, but I hear stuff like this, I have to hearken back to my schooldays. You know, 25 cents bought lunch a day when I was in grade school. It was good. Juicy burgers, all that stuff, it was good. You could smell it throughout the school all day, couldn’t wait for lunch. It was good stuff. Sometimes my mother packed a box lunch if I told her I didn’t like what was on the menu that day, but the school wasn’t responsible. My parents were responsible for it, whatever it was, giving me the quarter or the lunch box. We’re cooked! Do you understand this, folks? We’re cooked!