Even before all the votes were counted and President Obama declared the winner Tuesday night, Bill O’Reilly sneered on Fox News that minorities who “want stuff” were President Obama’s base and therefore responsible for his re-election. It’s a meme that has been repeated all over Fox News lately. It also just happens to be reminiscent of Mitt Romney’s infamous 47% comments. This morning, without citing a single statistic to back it up, Fox & Friends suggested that people who voted for “Obama phones” are selfishly bankrupting the country. Gee, who might that be?
As he stood before a chart showing, “U.S. households getting gov’t benefits,” Steve Doocy said, “Today, nearly half of all American households receive some form of government welfare. That’s up from 30% in 1980 (when Saint You-Know-Who was elected president).”
Doocy asked, “So is our country in a cultural decline?” Any viewer in doubt would have been tipped off by the large banner reading: AMERICA IN DECLINE: WHAT GOV’T HANDOUTS SAY ABOUT THE COUNTRY.
For more “answers,” Doocy turned to Mark Steyn, the guy who smeared Virginia Tech shooting victims as being part of a “culture of passivity” and has a remarkable gift for making the wrong predictions.
Steyn said he emigrated to the U.S. to get “a piece of” The American Dream but that just as he arrived, those welfare queens stole it:
The U.S. “adopt(ed) the policies that have brought the rest of the western world to ruin. When the takers are able to outvote the makers, you are a nation in steep decline. In this case, it’s one thing to talk about redistribution of wealth but we’re actually redistributing from the future to the present. We are borrowing money that is yet to be earned by generations yet to be born, in order to bribe people with the Obama phones and all the rest right here and now in the present tense. That’s very immoral apart from anything else.
…There’s nothing compassionate and communitarian about saying, as they do in Greece, ‘I got mine and I don’t care if it bankrupts the state.’ Just keep the checks coming until I’m dead. And basically, on Tuesday, we had a U.S. electorate that voted for pretty much the same thing… In the end, you’ll pay for that Obamaphone, either by paying off (each person’s) share of the debt or by total societal collapse.”
Doocy was in complete agreement, murmuring, “right” and “sure,” as Steyn spoke. After showing another graphic that depicted how “gigantic” entitlement spending is now, Doocy, "wondered" if such growth is because people are gaming the system. He said, “There’s no doubt” that some people need Social Security and other programs. But, he added, “The number has just gotten so big, you gotta figure some of the people are simply gaming the system. And perhaps they could work but choose not to because many feel, ‘You know, why go out there and do a job for $45,000 a year when the government would essentially give me about the same. I can watch TV.”
Well, maybe Doocy has “gotta figure” that but he works for an outfit that calls itself a national news network and they've surely got the resources to uncover the facts before one of its hosts slimed a lot of needy Americans. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, however, did the math that Doocy didn’t. They found that Contrary to "Entitlement Society" Rhetoric, Over Nine-Tenths of Entitlement Benefits Go to Elderly, Disabled, or Working Households. So I’ve gotta figure that Doocy deliberately chose not to find the truth.
I’m gonna figure Steyn didn’t either. He said, “You can go to the local strip joint and pay for a lap dance with food stamps.”
“I’m going to have to just trust you on that,” Doocy said, only half joking.
