The Senate is cutting food stamps to pay for Medicaid. (via)
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
No one could have predicted…
We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.
Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.
Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.
Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.
Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.
JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?
If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.
Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.
“Squeaker” McCarthy
Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.
But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.
Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.
Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.
An almost top 10,000 blog!
This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.
The revolution will be supervised.
“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”
Come on, man.
Second rate reporter says what?
Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.
We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.
When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.
Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.
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Scott
Fuck.
geg6
Well, at least they’ll be able to get treatment for the malnutrition they’ll suffer as a result.
See? It’s all good!
BlueDWarrior
Well it’s nice to know that the Republicans and a few Democrats have so brought into the idea that the way to run the government is to tell poor people to F*ck Off And Die that we’re basing all of our public policy on that.
These are people who are seemingly beyond shaming and public ridicule; in a just world the entire Republican Caucus and about 1/3rd of the Democratic Caucus in the Senate would have been ousted in one way or another just on the principle of gross negligence while governing.
Then again some people in the public believe that the only way to get to prosperity is to punch hippies and struggling (former) breadwinners, hey if we punch enough non-rich people, I guess that’ll make those punching them rich. (Hell it’s worked for some of them already, look at Rush Limbaugh.)
jon
It’s sometimes too bad Obama has decency and honesty, unlike his predecessor. Because if there’s anything that should be an “off-budget item” it’s stuff like food stamps rather than wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
WereBear
These over privileged, arrogant, self satisfied, lying, cheating, amoral sacks of protoplasm are a disgrace to the human race.
New Yorker
Since when is the war(s) paid for? I thought we were funding them through Andy Fastow-style accounting.
ronrab
Thank god we worked our asses off to get that Democratic majority.
Yes, I know this is whining because my feelings are hurt, but seriously? Food stamps? When I heard this was being discussed last week I dismissed it as Fox and/or FDL blowing something out of proportion. A week later, here we are, slitting the throats of the poor in history’s worst recession.
Forget letting Texas secede. Maybe we can convince DC to form its own country and leave us alone.
Gen. Jrod and his Howling Army
No, this is good news. I have it on good authority that Americans really need to tighten our belts and learn to get by with less, because if we let the deficit get any bigger we’ll have rampant inflation.
Of course, the good authority who told me this also thinks that Jane Hamsher is the most dangerous menace facing our nation, so he might just be a moron.
henqiguai
Well, I didn’t go chasing after detailed analyses of the proposed bill or, especially, the current state of SNAP funds; but given the convoluted way Federal programs are usually funded, administered, and distributed, can anyone really say, at this point, that Federal nutritional supplemental funding is actually being cut ? Or does this constitute a regigering of funds and maybe reducing program redundancies ? Don’t know, but I try to avoid the chicken little knee jerk reactions, even when the topic is a Republican proposal.
New Yorker at #6
Our lil’ adventures over in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are now being carried on the books, and our deficit spending on said adventures are at least being acknowledged. Baby steps, dude, baby steps.
Svensker
@jon:
Maybe I haven’t had my coffee yet so I’m not getting what you’re saying — but it was the Obama Admin that suggested the Food Stamps cut in order to get the money for Medicaid, at least according to the article.
jon
@Svensker: I’m just saying that Obama made a pledge to pay for any budget items not related to the military and Social Security and such, and sometimes it sucks. It would be nice if he had Republican-brand Ethics and could do whatever he wants, but Obama isn’t like that. In this case, that’s unfortunate. Dealing with a Senate ruled by assholes while simultaneously sticking to his principles leads to some version of Asshole Rule, but that’s just how things are right now.
As for where this idea originated from, it originated from the inability to cut anything related to the military, from the inability to even consider raising taxes, and from the inability to ever get away from politics.
Do I blame Obama? No. Am I disappointed with him anyway? Yes. He should be giving a news conference right now saying that Congress has forced him to choose sick people over hungry people at a time when Republicans are insisting that his priorities are big government. He should be insisting that a tax be levied to pay for the military venture in Afghanistan or our military presence there will be curtailed to fit with a balanced budget. He should be putting fees levied on phones and cable bills be used to build infrastructure to put high-speed internet into every American home. Then he should start to insist on some more roads and bridges. And greener energy. And so forth. He’s mentioned all of these things to some degree, but hasn’t done much on them. What he has done is prioritize some very difficult fights (healthcare, financial reform, Guantanamo) and got battered even when he won.
He’s not Michael Moore in the Oval Office. He’s more like a Walter Mondale with charisma. I wasn’t expecting a revolution and a progressive utopia, but I do wish he would call the bastards bastards more often.
Judas Escargot
We’re less than halfway through this inter-generational war… so get used to it, I suppose. The real fun starts when Science figures out how to harvest stem cells from Mexicans to extend human lifespan.
Maybe if the poor would demonstrate or maybe like, you know, vote en masse as a bloc like their elders, they’d get more attention.
Hugin & Munin
Judas Escargot: the structural obstacles to voting-while-poor are numerous: voter cadging, propaganda, intimidation. Finally, how do you take time to vote in the fifteen minutes you have to get from one job to another. Feature, bug, etc.
mclaren
The next step is the old Saddam Hussein move: draft poor people, strap bombs to ’em, send into the war zone in Afghanistan and Iraq and blow ’em up when they reach the enemy lines.
Soon the senate could order unemployed food rioters gassed. After that, DHS can start feeding dissidents into industrial meat grinders feet first.
The people who run America need to remember that Nicolae Ceausescu had a lot scarier secret police than the DHS and the FBI and the Secret Service, and he still wound up dead in a ditch.
Corner Stone
@Hugin & Munin: Not to mention little things like stable residency, and my precinct keeps changing the polling location for each election.
If I didn’t have internet access to check and confirm where to go it would be very difficult to find the energy to keep calling the county office for info.
Judas Escargot
@Hugin & Munin:
Not going to disagree with any of that, and I’ll throw in “you are free to vote during working hours on the first Tuesday in November, citizen.” for good measure.
I’d just read Politico and McMegan before posting that. My dry morning mood was apparently… too dry.
Svensker
@jon:
Ah. Yup. LOL. Sigh.
Maude
I’m one of the 40, soon to be 43 million.
The amount was raised. Before that, it was low and kids were indeed going without. The 4th week was starch week.
People on Medicaid and food stamps are vulnerable. I think it’s safe to say, we are thinking, now what do we do?
Perhaps we’ll go back to ketchup as a vegetable.
MikeTheZ
Ugh. Just ugh. God forbid we have a living wage and actually tax greedy corporate assholes who don’t need all that money to buy some more foreign cars. We’ll be lucky to make it to 2012.
El Cid
Hey, what counts is all the people losing food aid knowing that they are going hungrier in order to not increase the deficit, because that’s important when it comes to social support policies.
Hugin & Munin
El Cid: INNNNFLAAATIONNN!
</Kirk>
El Cid
@Hugin & Munin: Inflation is why nobody can afford food any more.
Corner Stone
@Svensker: If what Obey alleges is true it’s pretty damaging.
At least I’d be pretty damned mad about it if the WH was suggesting skinning a little more off me instead of suggesting other solutions.
Ruckus
It all those poor people would join the military we”d solve so many problems.
1. 3 meals a day. no need for for food stamps. Wait what? some military families are on food stamps?
2. health/dental and vision care, no need for HCR
3. more personnel/fewer rotations in war zones will allow us to start another war. In Iran or wherever, good for the MIC, good for wall st, good for politicians and we’d get rid of some more poor people. Wait, can a 70 yr old still join the military?
/snark, in case it was not oblivious.