Food Stamps in the Way of Republican Plans to Increase Entitlements for Military

Paul Ryan’s plan for helping the poor is to cut programs for the poor.

Now this is the kind of logic and policy advise Mary Antoinette and Louis XIV could have used to prevent having their heads chopped off: in order to help the poor suffering from lack of opportunity and destitution, keep cutting programs aimed at helping them out of poverty. Now why didn’t they think of that back in 1789 when people were starving and instead said something intelligent like “let them eat cake.” This is much more effective. And smarter.

See folks, being poor is a pleasure and choice many people consciously and willingly make. As we all know, there is nothing more fun than being poor and struggling to make it and being at the mercy of anyone without much choice or autonomy. And yeah, nothing beats that $200 a month in food stamps, which means something like a whopping $7.21 a day for food. Now that is what I call taking advantage of the system. Those food stamp recipients are getting away with highway robbery. After all, there ain’t nothing better than sitting on your ass getting those great food stamps sent to you so you don’t starve.

And as we all also know, welfare recipients in a country with a practically non existent safety net already have it so good: they get to send their kids to top notch schools on tax payer dollars, they live in the best residences in the best neighborhoods in this country, also funded by tax dollars, they have the best health due to the immense and affordable health care resources at their disposal and let’s not even mention those food stamps they use to eat and not starve.

Since they do so much better than anyone else could ever imagine, we have to put a stop to that; we have to put a stop to these people living in the lap of luxury wanting food, health care and jobs. We need to do such things so we can give more tax cuts to people making $250k or more a year and millionaires, since clearly they need the money while these poor mooches don’t. They worked for it remember, while most people don’t work for it.

So what you live in a poor neighborhood and go to a shitty, underfunded poor public school with 100% racial minorities and metal detectors at the door; you can totally move upward if you put your mind to it. This is America.

You are hungry from not having enough money to pay for your food at the school cafeteria? Go ask daddy to dip into your trust fund and help you out (by the way you should remember this for when you get into that Ivy league school with those amazing grades you totally had the chance of getting in a school falling apart at the seams and metal detectors at the door – if you can’t pay for it, just ask your parents, silly). This is America.

The thing is, our military needs more money and we need to take that money off the back of those pesky food stamp recipients referenced above.  It is not enough that we have a military spending that is greater than that of the next ten nations combined. We need more.

Think of all the defense contracts we will get to issue to places like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon  - corporations that pay little to no taxes while posting record profits – to build more weapons and ships we don’t need, but which we can sell to other nations so they keep killing people we do not approve of.  Or heck even to people we do not know anything about. Business is business and war is great for business. Food stamps aren’t. Why spend money feeding the poor and children or any human beings for that matter if we could spend that money to wage wars and take lives? Don’t you know what America stands for? We are a peace loving nation.

You have to understand that the Republican efforts to slash the food stamp program is based upon the conservative belief that low paid soldiers will fight harder for their starving families.

Poor defense contractors not being able to make the payments on their yachts or refurnish their second dream homes on the private islands that they own, on the other hand, is the real tragedy here. It is a real shame to ask the rich to be responsible enough to provide food for the starving among us. We really would not want the rich to suffer because they deserve so much.

So what you have become ill and had to stop working, have no insurance because no one will insure you for any amount and lost everything – going from a $60,000 a year income to something like maybe $14,000 a year and now have to feed yourself on less than $200 a month in food stamps. So what you walk into the grocery store and eat a mostly non-meat diet since meat is so expensive for someone who has a less than $200 budget for food every month and become anemic. And so what the $14,000 you do make are considered “too much income” for all those cozy benefits they want to slash becasue “lazy” people do not know how to be responsbile and starve to death with dignity.

Go beg rich people to help out and be at their mercy for a loaf of bread, access to health care and a roof above your head. We do not need to have compassion and a safety net for our hard working fellow Americans in need of those benefits becasue of the policy decisions the likes of Ryan and Romney push for.

In addition to waging wars against a number of nations on our hit list of nations we do not approve of, it is especially fun to wage wars against decency, women, reason, Hispanics, blacks, freedom, gays, democracy, students and the 99%. Paul Ryan is a true Christian and human being in that regard.

Remember, we cannot place any burden on the wealthy. Sure their causes and policies are what created the recession but that doesn’t mean we cannot go after the elderly, the poor, the Medicare recipients, those damn starving parasites on food stamps,  hard working middle class wage earners and students to clean up and pay for the mess the wealthy created. This is totally what Jesus would have done.

Paul Ryan’s Christ Like Path to Prosperity Begins With Throwing Everyone but the 1% Under the Bus 

So as Paul Ryan suggests, to avert the above mentioned from happening,  cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as food stamps, in place of looming cuts to defense spending are necessary and just the first step because the buck doesn’t stop there.

Here are some of Paul Ryan’s truly humane and conscionable cuts everyone in the lowest tax bracket, hedgfund millionaires, the 1% and Jesus himself completely endorse:

1) Paul Ryan’s most recent budget proposal would save those making between $20,000 and $30,000 just $246 in taxes, compared to savings of $265,011 for those who make over $1 million, according to analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

2)  The “Path to Prosperity” would cut $2.4 trillion from Medicaid and other health care programs for people with low or moderate incomes, according to analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

3) Under Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” as many as 44 million fewer people would be covered under Medicaid, according to CBS News

4) Ryan would raise the age of Medicare eligibility from 65 to 67. If the Affordable Care Act was repealed, something Romney has pledged, that means many 65- and 66-year-olds would be left uninsured, theCBPP reports..

5) Under Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity,” senior citizens would have to pay as much as 68 percent of their health care coverage, up from 25 percent today,

6) Ryan’s proposed “Path to Prosperity” includes $134 billion in cuts to SNAP, according to analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, CBS News reports.

7) A single mother of two working full time at the minimum wage would have her Child Tax Credit cut by more than $1,500, assuming she made $14,500 a year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

8) Compared to the most recent White House budget proposal, Ryan’s budget spends 33 percent less on education, training, employment and social services according to the Washington Post reports..

9) The current government worker pay freeze would be extended under the “Path to Prosperity,” meaning public-sector employees wouldn’t get a raise until at least 2015, the Washington Post reports

10) Ryan also plumps for his Medicare reforms as a solution to inequality. As you’ll remember, his budget proposes converting Medicare into a voucher system where seniors would be given a check and sent into a regulated private market to purchase insurance. The plan saves money because the check would grow at the rate of inflation, while health-care costs often increase three times faster than inflation, so, quite quickly, the check would cover only a small portion of an individual senior’s costs.

For rich seniors, this wouldn’t much matter. They could easily afford the cost of private insurance. For middle-income seniors, or lower-income seniors, it would be a disaster. Ryan offers them some subsidies, but not nearly enough. The cost of coverage would quickly outpace the resources many of them have to pay for it.

Republicans Aren’t Pro Life For No Reason

We are a government that deeply cares for its citizens, after all, we need them to pay taxes so the rich and corporations don’t have to, we need their kids as soldiers in wars that the rich kids don’t have to go to (that is, by the way where being anti abortion and “pro life” comes in handy *wink*), we need them as low wage workers in corporations whose stockholders and corporate executives are enriched by their labor, and if they get sick, hungry, disabled or become homeless well… tough luck. This is America, don’t you know.

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are both deeply religious, god fearing  men to whom life is precious and begins at conception.  Exploiting people is the American Dream and the Christ like thing to do.

And if you end up not being able to pull yourself by the bootstraps you do not have, well then your demise is collateral damage for the wealthy and smug politicians who always get the best health care, nice pensions and benefits paid for by those warm bodies we call the middle class and the poor.

Do not mistake the GOP’s hostility toward the majority of the population as a sign of them not caring. They do. They want you to not abort a child so there is one more source of tax revenue for them to pay for all the programs that benefit the 1%. They need you to work long hours without benefits so they can keep getting richer at your expense. This is all part of the compassionate path Paul Ryan keeps endorsing.

So see you insolent fools, the real enemy here are starving people on food stamps and single mothers and college grads, not to mention the elderly. We do not want to create a society where people have rights, are well fed, get an education without going bankrupt, have access to quality and affordable health care and job prospects with fair wages and benefits. Such a world would make it so hard for the wealthy to keep exploiting everyone – which is their god given right after all. Remember, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of god“…er, no wait.

Just remember that all the Republican policies referenced above  are nothing but a sign of love and care and respect for the American people and this grand nation, this beacon of light at the end of the tunnel, under the flag, guns and a cross.

Stupid Things People Say: Obama is a Closet Atheist

In what was yet another speech full of lies and high class bullshit uttered in a world of his own, fiber glass coif Mitt Romney accused Obama of essentially being an atheist, stating that Obama wants to “establish a religion called secularism.” 

As if that was a bad thing.

But I must admit that I am pretty stunned that everyone is treating atheism as some kind of a  terrible insult. Being an atheist in the US ranks high up there with pimps or drug dealers.

Controversial billboard paid for by the North Iowa Tea Party

What’s wrong with this country? Since when has rationalism and a life based on knowledge and fact as well as a desire to learn and find out about the world we live in and our place in it from more than just the confines of dogmatic religions,  become an accusation; an intolerable liability.

The President has been called many things, from likening him to Hitler or calling him a socialist, but atheism has become a huge party favorite among the faithful members of the hate and bigot party, also known as Republicans.

It is utterly ridiculous.

If Obama is an atheist, he should be proud and he would certainly have my respect.

The United States is Not a Country Founded by Christians, for Christians 

Someone should brief Romney that atheism is not a religion, but that in fact atheism is the absence of religion; it is irreligion.

America is also not a Christian nation per its Constitution and while it protects citizens from persecution based on their religious faith, it does not allow for its integration into laws and legislation, which is exactly what Romney and Santorum have in mind.

Furthermore, nowhere does it say in the Constitution that anyone running for office, but especially the President, must be either Christian or religious for that matter.

Article VI, paragraph 3 of  the Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” In fact, the words “Jesus Christ”, “Christianity”, “Bible”, “God”, “Creator” and  ”Divine” are never mentioned in the Constitution.  The only time religion is mentioned in the Constitution is in exclusionary terms. The term In God We Trust was adopted as the official motto of the United States in 1956 as an alternative to the original, and more appropriate motto of E Pluribus Unum - and that only to set us apart from those allegedly godless evil communists. McCarthy era anyone?

When the Founders wrote the nation’s Constitution, they made sure not to leave any room for religion to come back and make the claim of being the official, national religion, such as England had. Giving equal citizenship to believers and non-believers alike was a radical concept in those days and apparently it still is today.

The Declaration of Independence gives us important insight into the opinions of the Founding Fathers, who  were men of  The Enlightenment, not men of superstition, intolerance and Christianity. They had learned the lessons of humanity as it played itself out in Europe for centuries and vowed not to repeat those mistakes.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that the power of the government is derived from the governed. That is because up until that time, it was claimed that monarchs ruled by the authority bestowed to them by God. The Declaration was a radical departure from the notion that the power to rule over other people comes from god or anything divine. The Founding Fathers made it clear in their letter to the Crown that power they wanted in the colonies was to be derived by the people, for the people. In fact, escaping the corrupt oppressiveness of the church and religious institutions and leaders was he driving force behind the creation of this nation.

When I hear Republicans, including supposedly educated men like Romney and Santorum,  go on and on about how this is a Christian nation where somehow being religious and Christian were the required prerequisites to run for office – or do anything else for that matter, including creating legislation, it makes me cringe, because obviously this is a lie.

Mitt Romney is a liar.  Rick Santorum is a liar. Gingrich is a liar. Republicans are liars.

The truth is that if you are asking a politician to talk to you about his faith,  you are just asking to be lied to. And America has been asking to be lied to for decades now.

Another American Exceptionalism Bullshit Argument

Regardless of the facts and intentions of the Founding Fathers that laid down the law of the land clearly barring religion from playing any part in it, America – since its foundation – but in particular since the end of World War II – has been increasingly viewing itself as a religious nation entrusted with a special mission from god.

The only thing America is exceptional at is promoting ignorance and greed

The fight against communism – a philosophy always falsely associated with atheism, as if there was some sort of a causality or correlation between them – has further aided in entrenching religion deeply into our society, much to the detriment of rationality and rational people who have to constantly run around apologizing for their rationality and refusal to let fairy tales and anecdotes and the unfounded belief in a divine be used as the basis of governance and decision making in this country.

Ultimately, America’s self-righteous views, as well as the war on communism, have managed to  portray atheists as a godless enemy, a fifth column either for Satan or for totalitarian communism.

Ironically, religion in this country has never been a bigger opium for the masses, manipulating people to vote against their own self interest much in the same way fascists (i.e. the totalitarians from above) did, including in Germany in 1933 with the burning of the Reichstag and granting Hitler more power than an absolute monarch.

Imagine how much better things would be in this country if the President were an atheist…

Why Keith Olberman Got Fired Again

Keith Olbermann, former host of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, from where he was eventually fired, faced the same music again yesterday when Current TV decided to let him go as well, stating that their values of “respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to [their] viewers” were  ”no longer reflected in [their] relationship with Keith Olbermann.” They did not make any mention of any specifics or what might have precipitated their decision to can Olberman who will be replaced by former New York governor and CNN host Eliot Spitzer.

I must say I was shocked and saddened when they fired him so unexpectedly last year. I always knew that he was quite an opinionated person who did not shy away from saying it like it is, but he never crossed the line or divulged in tasteless banter or in any other way comprise the integrity of his show and the viewers. Yes he was outspoken and passionate – and I hate having to say that in this apologetic tone as if it was a liability – but he was never rude or unreasonable.  I especially loved his insight and willingness to swing a heavy hammer to the privileged and demand they cough up their fair share. So needless to say that it was really strange to me that they fired him so promptly. He wasn’t even given the opportunity to say goodbye, he was just booted.

Olbermann’s firing from Current yesterday leaves much of the same bitter aftertaste in my mouth. His position at Current was supposed to be his triumphant return to television in tatters. After his bitter departure from MSNBC, Current sought to make him the centerpiece of its rebranding as a progressive news network.

It was not long, though, before the tensions between Olbermann and his superiors exploded into the open. In January, his sudden absence from Current’s coverage of the Iowa caucuses led to open warfare between the two sides. Olbermann fired off a statement saying that he was “not given a legitimate opportunity to host under acceptable conditions,” adding, “They know it and we know it. Telling half the story is wrong.”

There were also reports that Olbermann was incensed by repeated technical problems with his show, and miffed that he was not being given a greater say in deciding which shows were going to precede and follow his.

All this of course just seems to be nothing but a ruse to get rid of Olberman whose direct approach on a lot of liberal causes don’t stomach too well with Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, the founders of the network.

A few things have been swirling around that could have given us all a clue as to the fat of Olberman on Current:

1.) Comcast became a partial owner of Current
2.) Keith’s background during taping kept going black, lights kept fading out on him, and audio would be sketchy at his “new” desk
3.) Keith did not host the NH primaries for Current
4.) Jennifer Gandholm, former Governer of Michigan, was lauded and courted by Al Gore, on Chenk’s program. Jennifer, looked and acted as if she swallowed a cheshire cat, and her behavior of overt aggressiveness with the two men, made me think she was going to have a big role in Current soon.
5.) Jennifer has her own heavily promoted show, non-stop ads, huge new layout, all the cameras, big TV screens, etc…and Jennifer covers the NH primary; surprise!
6.) Keith, once again is forced to table “Worst Persons” and his absences are growing.
7.) Rumors are surfacing about Keith being in dispute with Current, but Keith has a nasty cold and bronchial cough and had to take time off; he was still sick upon his return

Why Keith Olberman was Really Fired

The problem, if one can call it that, is that Olberman wants to rake his opponents over the coals,  which he is very good at, and which, frankly, his opponents largely deserve. Al Gore, on the other hand, wants to play  ”nice” with his opponents, which is most definitely not Olberman’s (or mine for that matter) style, not to mention detrimental.

Wanting to “play nice”, however, is precisely what the problem is with the Democrats in Congress (and the White House), and why little has gotten done in the past four years to benefit the middle class: Obama wants to play nice with Republicans.  Over the past four year, more often than not, he has continuously been giving in to the credence of their cut throat policies that only benefit the 1% at the expense of everyone and everything else; he has been pushing for  bipartisan politics in a Congress that mostly loathes him and where they have so little respect for him as a person and the office of the Presidency that he occupies that they yell “you lie” while he is addressing Congress. In fact Obama took playing nice so far that the Republicans conned him into extending the much loathed tax cut for the wealthy – the one thing he had vowed during his campaign he was not going to do. It was so bad they even got him to apologize to the UK for having criticized BP for the devastating oil spill it was responsible for and which since has left the Gulf in shambles.

Yes, BP was responsbile for the spill and Obama ended up apologizing to the UK for saying that BP was responsbile for the spill. The fuckery went so far that even US legislators, such as Rep. Joe Barton from Texas, ended up apologizing on Obama’s behalf for the $20 billion escrow account that his administration asked BP to create for paying out damages in the case.

These are just a few examples of the kind of nice play folks like Al Gore and Obama have been engaging in during some futile attempt to somehow do what exactly….gain the sympathy of conservatives, make them understand? To reason with them? To show that they are reasonable?

The truth is, however, that you can’t ‘reason’ with conservatives who – out of principle – say that up is down when Obama says so; just as you can’t reason with irrational people.  Al Gore, of all people, should already know this from the way he was treated for his global warming documentary.

Yet here we got Keith Olberman who – official reasons for his dismissal aside – is being basically fired because he has been refusing to play along when conservatives once again stepped forward to take a long shit on the majority of the American people and their causes to enrich the pockets of banks, corporations, oil companies and millionaires.

I like Keith Olberman. He stands up for the truth and justice; he wants things investigated, explained and straightened out to better humanity. He champions the cause of those who otherwise may not have a voice.  He is their advocate. And he says those things with conviction and valor.

One cannot deny his passion in this regard. In a way he might be feeling the anger of those people whom he defends so definatly for. He is very unapologetic and quite relentless about it but he is also fair.

He is also not afraid to continue standing by the things he said and believed to be the truth even if it means he is not being popular or liked. That is a rare quality. We have entirely too many sheep in this world who think it is just really cool and classy to be giving credence to everyone’s outlandish, often ignorant views that are detrimental to society and human kind.

Current prides itself in being a progressive news outlet, but they are not really progressive if they are letting Olberman go for essentially being too progressive and liberal. The fact that he got canned twice now tells me he probably refused to cave in  and is a really awesome guy who wont relinquish his beliefs to be polite to people with destructive and sinister notions.

My take on this is that if the Establishment approves of you and likes you, you know you are doing something wrong. As Mark Twain once said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”