Wow, the Pope is Catholic!

From the apostolic exhortation:

"How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality."

This is Pope Francis.  The leader of the Catholic Church.  He's not screaming about gays or abortion.  He's talking about something Jesus Christ actually talked about, the idea that we should help the poor.  This is the Church I remember from when I was but a wee lad, a church that actually cared about human beings and not just social issues.

While the Church has still a long way to go when it comes to who we love and the role of women in our society (and I certainly don't see myself rejoining the Church anytime soon), it's important when the leader of over one billion people speaks strongly about an issue as monumental as income inequality and actually stands up for the least among us.

If nothing else, the Pope made Rush Limbaugh shit his pants and that's always worth the price of admission.

Peace,
emaycee

Please, sir, I want some more

And the answer for America's hungry is "no."

On the first of November, benefit cuts to food stamps took effect leaving a family of four  with an average cut of about $36 dollars a month.  Benefits will now be less than $1.40 per person per meal.

In a word--actually it's not a word but an amalgamation of a word--un-fucking-believable.

Have you ever really given thought to how much $1.40 per person, per meal, is?  For my family (three of us, three meals a day) that comes to $88.20 a week.  Our current grocery bills consistently run better than $150 a week--and believe me, we do not eat like millionaires.  We cut coupons, use lots of store brands, take part in store loyalty programs, and eat lots of leftovers.  We also don't eat fancy meals--meat, side dish, vegetable, or along the lines of spaghetti or tacos.  Could we cut from our grocery bill?  Sure--my gut could definitely use with a few less sweets and we spoil the Beautiful Boy with a few treats, but cutting better than 40% from our food budget?  There's no way we could eat three decent square meals a day on $88.20 a week.

Sadly, though trying as valiantly as they can, food banks (despite republican groupthink) cannot keep up with the demand (also here).  This means that these cuts have resulted in more Americans going hungry, hardly  an optimal outcome (not to mention it's bad economics for all of us).

While Democrats do shoulder some of the blame (deals with the devil rarely pay off) and Michigan's own Debbie Stabenow has been a colossal disappointment (despite two different appeals from me--imagine that, a poor motherfucker with no influence) for spouting the usual fraud bullshit (less than 1%) it's important to remember that this is a republican initiative.  Republicans are happy to watch their fellow Americans go hungry so long as the wealthy have to pay less in taxes (and Democrats like Kirsten Gillibrand and the Congressional Progressive Caucus are certainly fighting the good fight).

Let's just hope that--as the leader of America's largest food bank noted--when America's poor begin rioting because they can't afford to eat that their first target are the congressional offices of heartless republicans.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Peace,
emaycee

Sweet dreams aren't made of this

Bishop Shirley Holloway, the leader of an anti-poverty group that Rep. Paul Ryan (he of the Randian groupthink on the hungry, "let them starve") supports recently had this to say:

“Paul wants people to dream again,” Holloway said of Ryan. “You don’t dream when you’ve got food stamps."

Considering our system provides for about $1.40 per meal per person for food stamp recipients, you don't suppose it has anything to do with it being awfully hard to dream when you're fucking starving, do you?

Peace,
emaycee

600,000

That's the number of Americans who are homeless every day in America (one quarter of which are children).  600,000 homeless Americans every goddamned day in the (and I hate to sound like a broken record) wealthiest country in the history of mankind.

While this may just be fine to the heartless (and lying) bastards on Faux News, it sure doesn't sound very "exceptional" to me.

Peace,
emaycee

Boom goes the dynamite, BOOM!

The funniest thing about today's use of the nuclear option to end republican filibusters of the President's judicial and executive nominees (and wasn't it wonderful to watch Democrats go badass on republican obstructionism) was the republicans' claims that eventually Democrats would regret it.

Regret what?  Democracy working the way it's supposed to?  If the republicans win back the White House in 2016 (and, boy, what are the odds I take up drinking and smoking again should that happen), they should be able to nominate and have an up or down vote on who they want for the nation's courts.  Frankly, we have hearings on the nominees--if a republican nominee turns out to be a member of the Klan (not as unlikely as you might think), Democrats can vote against him, republicans can vote for him and try to explain to the American people why they think a member of the Klan belongs on the bench of one of our courts or in the President's inner circle.

What the republicans are really bemoaning is that this was another colossal fuck-up on their part--they pushed too far and the Democrats had finally had enough.  And now there are 93 judicial vacancies that President Obama can fill if he so chooses which would give the Democrats a commanding majority in America's courts.

Peace,
emaycee

No medals from the Wizard for them

Rep. Fred Upton from some shithole right here in Michigan put forth a bill this past week that unlike Obamacare, manages to ensure that Americans either have no healthcare or have shit healthcare.  It also does nothing for those with pre-existing conditions and reinstates lifetime caps.  Although the bill was the health insurance industry's wet dream (with no chance of passing the Senate or not being vetoed by President Obama), 39 "Democrats" voted for it.  Thereisnospoon says it is just politics--the "Democrats" were those in tough districts who were freed from an issue that could be used against them in their re-election campaigns.

He is wrong.

There is a reason that Elizabeth Warren is much beloved in Democratic circles and that same reason is why she will cruise to re-election as long as she so desires to be a Senator from the state of Massachusetts.  She has political courage and it is something the 39 "Democrats" noted above are sorely lacking.  Senator Warren cares much more about her constituents that she does about her poltical fortunes.

As Digby notes, of the 34 "Democrats" who voted against Obamacare in 2010, only five are still in Congress.  Here's hoping the same fate befalls the gutless 39 of 2013, but that they be replaced by real Liberals who put the people who elected them before their career ambitions.

Peace,
emaycee

Cue "Taps"

Fresh on the heels of McDonald's McResources telling its employees to apply for SNAP benefits and Medicaid in lieu of actually paying them a living wage, we have Wal-Mart, which is owned by the Walton family with a net worth just north of $150 billion, encouraging its employees to donate food to help out their fellow workers in need this Thanksgiving.

Sweet fucking Jesus.

Folks, the American dream is officially dead.  These are the jobs of the future (and why the recent strikes against fast food chains and Wal-Mart are so significant) and if the powers that be are more than happy to let their workers depend on taxpayer largesse and their employees' families being fed by their co-workers there is no limit to how low it can go.

Shit--we're even more fucked than I thought.

Peace,
emaycee