Rush Limbaugh, still pissed about hippies after all these years.

Even though I am kind of a hippie — an evolved hippie —I was amused this rant from Friday's show, which I listened to in podcast form just now. What set him off was this dreamy Nancy Pelosi murmur:

PELOSI: Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or, eh, a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance, or that people could start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risk but not [be] job-locked because a child has asthma or someone in the family is bipolar. You name it. Any condition is job-blocking.

Now, I think it's really important that under the current system, for health insurance reasons alone, people stay put in jobs instead of moving freely and efficiently into work that would be better for them. Insurance and work shouldn't be linked like that. I would love to find a way out of that problem, even though I loathe and dread the Democrats' heath care bill. Conservatives who like free markets and economic liberty ought to care about de-linking career and insurance choices. But what set Rush off was the kind of work that Pelosi used as her examples. You could be an artist or a photographer or a writer.

RUSH: So this is what the Democrats are fighting for. They're fighting for you not to have a job and still have health care so you can pursue your entrepreneurial risk of writing, painting, taking pictures. 

Because it's never an actual job to write, paint, or take photographs. In Rush's mind, artists have just got to be freeloaders.

It's just such a pain in the rear end to have to have a job. It's so damn mean of this country to require people to have a job. It stifles people. It stifles creativity and economic growth to require people to have a job, to have health care. What a country. Man, are we horribly rotten mean to people. So Pelosi says go ahead, health care will allow people to quit their jobs and write, take pictures and paint while the rest of us work to pay for it. While the rest of us work to pay for these... never mind.

[AFTER A BREAK] This is what Democrats are fighting for. Nancy Pelosi, this idiot Pelosi, thinks this country is Woodstock or Moscow or something. [PLAYS PELOSI AGAIN.]  So they're fighting for people to be able to quit work while the rest of us pay for their health care while they go out and be artists and photographers and tend to bipolar kids with asthma or what have you, and we're going to pay for this. This idiot thinks this is Woodstock. I mean, it's right out of the San Francisco mentality. It's just breathtaking here....

... I mean, she thinks of the country as Woodstock or as San Francisco.

...So quit work. Indulge your fantasies. Become an artist or documentarian, photographer, what have you -- and let the rest of us pay for your health care bill. And, by the way, while you're out there finding yourself, if you happen to get pregnant and want to have an abortion, no worries! We'll pay for that, too. But I want to focus on something here. "Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance." Now, one of the things that Obama has promised is that you will not lose your coverage. If you like it, you'll be able to keep it. Here is Pelosi admitting: If you're able to quit your job and have "free," quote-unquote, health coverage, who is hell is providing it for you?

I thought people were supposed to buy health insurance and the reforms (if they were any good) would make it possible to afford to buy health insurance individually, even if you had a pre-existing condition.

Pelosi inasmuch as confirmed single-payer, public option, universal health care in this quote, while she's attempting to establish solidarity with the nation's freeloaders! She's encouraging the freeloaders to freeload. Isn't it such a shame that this country requires people to work to have health care? How inhumane is that? So we're going to enable you to quit! If you want to dabble sitting there writing things, taking pictures or painting garbage that nobody will ever be able to understand, go for it!...

Art can't be work in Limbaugh's mind: Those writers and photographers and painters aren't going to be buying their insurance. As Limbaugh sees it, Pelosi is sending out a coded message to the nation's hippies: We will have taxpayer-funded health care as a government benefit in the end.

Just move to Haight-Ashbury. Just be done with it. Move out there and start painting murals or whatever you want to do, and all of your neighbors will come up and pay for your health care for you. 

... be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. 

I'd say the 60s left quite a mark on Rush Limbaugh. They left a mark on me too — quite a different mark though (and I was born on the same day in 1951 as Rush).