So my cab driver is playing Rush Limbaugh on the radio...

KeepItReal

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Tue May-31-11 01:41 PM
Original message

So my cab driver is playing Rush Limbaugh on the radio...

Edited on Tue May-31-11 01:43 PM by KeepItReal

I am actually able to withstand about 45 seconds of Rush before I ask the driver to please change the station or just turn the radio off. He obliges and turns Rush off.

To see where his head is at, I state "I can't stand that guy." At which point I can see him get visibly bothered and he hurriedly asks me to have a conversation with him man-to-man. I'm like "sure!" but get interrupted by an incoming phone call. After I finish my call, I turn my attention back to the driver so we can engage in conversation.

He immediately launches into how bad President Obama is, how people today are asking for handouts, how Bill Clinton was a pervert, and Al Gore was just terrible (on that one, I was like "What did Al Gore ever do?"). His main thrust was that we are paying excessive taxes and people today should be on a "I gotta do for myself" kick instead of just asking for handouts.

As we drove to my place. I asked him some questions on this do-for-yourself philosophy like "you must think that we should pay for our own Police and fire protection, then? And if your neighbor can't afford it, his house should just burn down." His only response: "You're putting words into my mouth!".

He was incredulous as to the concept of nationalized health care that other prosperous countries have and thinks that if you need care you can always just go to the emergency room like he did. I told him the point of doctors was to give PREVENTATIVE CARE so you can make sure you are healthy before it's too late and you end up in the emergency room - and that's what a lot of people cannot afford. I also told him those preventable Emergency room visits are what makes health care so un-affordable.

I continued by saying "I pay taxes to have this road we're on and so do you." He says "I mean *excessive* taxation". I told him we are paying some of the lowest taxes in decades and that we have been getting tax cuts for the last 10 years. He's got no answer to that and tries to shift to the price of gas as if that is a product of high taxes. I told him gas prices are high because it is a commodity and is traded like stocks. He tries to blame Obama's oil drilling moratorium for high gas prices. I told him that moratorium was there to fix safety issues that f*cked up my home state of Louisiana and that we IMPORT most of our oil anyway.

He was saying Obama was a disaster, so I asked him "well what about Obama taking out Bin Laden?" It was as if he was upset that it had happened. I was like "so you will not give Obama any credit for killing Bin Laden?" The most he was say was that "George Bush put those pieces in place." I said "Bush had like SEVEN YEARS to get Bin Laden and he pulled our best troops (like the Army Rangers) out of Afghanistan to go to Iraq!" I told him we have been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq longer than World War II. He had no response.

I stunned him when I actually agreed with him that Obama's economic team sucked. Although his reason was that Obama did all the bailouts - of course I corrected him that they actually started under Bush. He said Obama's guys were worse than Bush, I also corrected him that a lot of Obama's guys are just like Bush's team. He seemed to have amnesia about the Bush years. I brought out the point that George W. started out with big surpluses and by the time he was gone Obama inherited huge deficits. I told him how Bush didn't account for the wars in the budget and how Obama actually does that now. And he still attacked Obama for being horrible for the economy.

I asked him about the fact that they want to raise the age for Social Security and he basically dissed the whole program as if it was optional and that you should make enough money to support yourself and don't count on the government to be there. I told him SS was a promise between you and the government - you pay into it all your life and when you reach 65 you get that investment back. He said SS was broke, and I said no it's not and remember when Al Gore promised to protect the SS trust fund so no one could misuse its funds for other spending?

I did offer him a "well done" compliment when he told me he educated his daughter on how to invest in property so she could become a success. I said a lot of folks don't have that kind of good guidance and it takes generations to climb up economically like my family as descendants of slaves did. He thinks that everyone has the ability to pull themselves out of bad situations and make something of themselves. He gave examples of Bill Gates and Donald Trump as successes and I told him " you do realize that Gates' family had money and connections and Donald Trump inherited millions, so his bootstraps came with boots that had millions of dollars in them already." Again he seemed to not know that.

Ultimately l learned that this guy - although passionate in his beliefs (selfish as they may be) - had little grasp of the facts and had either blocked out the history of the last eleven years, or is being daily misinformed by folks like Rush about it.

As we got to my place, I told him I thought Rush was funny a long time ago (I used to listen in '95), but now he is just a hypocrite. How can someone that advocated locking up all drug users be a big time addict himself? He got a little wobbly in his defense so I finished him off with the oxycontin scandal and how Rush almost went to jail for doctor shopping and having his maid score the drugs for him. He tried to get biblical on me with the "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" verse and I countered with "and that's exactly what Rush did that makes him so wrong. " The cabbie had to acknowledge that was true and with that I paid him, shook his hand, said goodbye, and noted the astonishment on the Brotha's face when he realized I'd given him a good tip.