I've talked before about Rush Limbaugh's staunch opposition to getting a flu vaccine, just because SOME DOCTOR - and a lady doctor at that - told him it's a good idea.  And about how Rush feels that school children should fend for themselves.  Today he posted the best "perfect storm" of these two crazy threads mashed up at once.

The Secretary of Health and Human Services (who he insists on calling "the Health and Human Services secretary," just to be extra demeaning) is advising against closing schools in a pandemic.  She feels that we can control the flu fairly well with vaccinations and hand washing (probably true), and that the risk to inner-city and children of extreme poverty, to miss the school lunch, would be too great.

Here is what Rush has to say about that:

She doesn't want to close the skrools [sic] because then many children will not be fed.  That is the level of the welfare state we've become: if kids don't go to school, they'll go hungry, and even at the risk of getting the swine flu.  We gotta send 'em to school, otherwise they won't eat!  Otherwise they won't be fed!

That's right: suddenly Rush is against the school lunch program.  He is against feeding school children, even - especially - the children of the poor, for whom school lunch is often their first meal of the day.  Sometimes, school lunch is their only meal of the day.  And Rush Limbaugh is against that!

It boggles my mind that anyone could be openly against the school lunch program.  And in such a divisive, sneering, derogatory manner.  I understand that he has a serious hate on for Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who is both a woman and a Democrat, the two things that Rush apparently hates most in the world.  But to take it out on little kids as part of the backlash?  

The national school lunch program was signed into being by President Harry Truman in 1946, and currently serves low-cost or free lunches to over 30.5 million children across the country.  If we were to cease the school lunch program, it would require parents to pony up approximately $300 million per day per child, nationwide.  

Rush is always talking about how the best way to stimulate the economy is to cut federal programs, and save us the tax money.  I'd like to see him explain this theory to a single working mother in Baltimore, as she ransacks her pockets for enough money to give to her son for school lunch.  "It's stimulating our economy!"  Rush would explain.  "Your job is more secure!"

"Well that's great, Mr. Limbaugh," I imagine her saying.  "Hey, can you spot Bobby some lunch money today?  Because he spent the entire day hungry yesterday, and it was a drag."

Apparently Rush cares little for our educational system, or educational levels as a whole, either.  Here's a tip, from me to you: if you want kids to learn, they need to not be sitting there in math class with their stomachs growling!

But let's be honest.  Rush has always advocated an "eat the poor" Darwinian system, where people who are hungry should stay that way, because they obviously deserve it.