Today Randi Rhodes made a statement attributed to Rush Limbaugh which I found so outrageous that I couldn't believe it was true and went to the web to track down the actual quote. I never rely on the media to report accurately or on the truth of any provocative statement anyone makes to me without researching it myself until I'm satisfied as to the facts of whatever it is. I thought the best place to check this statement would be Limbaugh's transcripts, on his own site. Amazingly, unfortunately, as usual, Ms. Rhodes wasn't exaggerating and she didn't get it wrong.Rush Limbaugh compared the US healthcare crisis to choices for care for dogs.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_061509/content/01125107.guest.html
"Animals are, by definition, pets, essentially helpless. They become domesticated they become dependent on human beings. They attach themselves, some might say they fall in love with their human beings, it's a debatable thing but they still do get attached and so they're cared for. I go through this list of options that a dog owner has for its health, for its well-being and they're all in the private sector, and there's no federal dog health care plan out there and it's working just fine. And it's based on the dog owner's ability to pay. There's no insurance involved. Some of them don't even take credit cards. But it works."
Besides the obvious fact that this is just absolute CRAP, "it" doesn't work. If I can't afford to take care of a dog, and many people can't, I don't have one. I don't have that option for my health - if I can't afford health, I don't have it?
Many people never take their pets to the vet because they can't afford it. Craigslist is full of people who can't afford to feed or get vet care for a pet asking for help before they have to kill their pet. We've all known people throughout our lives who've "put down" a pet that needed surgery or was severely injured. It's been my experience that it's pretty standard for the vet to offer to kill your animal painlessly as an alternative to surgery or in case of a severe injury. I NEVER want to see a day when the doctor offers to put down one of my children because they're severely injured and I can't afford surgery.
Legend has Marie Antoinette, queen of France, responding to being told that the peasants were starving because they had no bread, "No bread? Then let them eat cake." This quote was probably falsely attributed to Marie Antoinette to make her look like a better candidate for execution following the French Revolution. Unlike Marie Antoinette, Limbaugh really DID say this.
This statement is either so unbelievable, so clueless, so absolutely out of touch with real people's lives OR he's a completely treasonous media whore who will say or do anything for the Republican cause, regardless of the damage that it does to the rest of us.
Either way, this is a man who doesn't give a tinker's damn about any other American citizen or, indeed, any other human being and who is completely unfit for public life of any kind.
Break out the guillotine.
