This is a pretty good Louis CK riff on cell phones for kids and the pain of being alive. Open thread.
“Top-Down Class Warriors” Are Always Our Enemies
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Alex Pareene knows what he’s talking about:
House Republicans voted yesterday to cut $40 billion in funding for SNAP — the anti-poverty program commonly known as “food stamps” — because, as Jonathan Chait ably points out, they are dedicated top-down class warriors. Republicans voted to gut SNAP not long after they voted to preserve agriculture subsidies, and indeed to spend more on farmers than bleeding-heart liberal President Barack Obama wants to. Crop subsidies overwhelmingly benefit rich (and white) people. SNAP, not so much. These are the sorts of positions that make “they hate poor people” sound not particularly hyperbolic….
The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison published a report in 2006 on the failure of welfare reform as politics, and not as policy. (As policy it was a huge success if you consider the goal to be “getting people off welfare” and a mixed bag if your aim is “provide adequate levels of support for needy people.”)… The paper seeks to answer two questions: Whether welfare reform improved public perception of, and support for, government assistance to the poor (it didn’t); and whether embracing reform led more people to support Democrats. (“We find no evidence that the Democratic Party benefited from welfare reform,” the authors say.) Nothing Morris and Reed predicted came to pass. Democrats gave conservatives a public policy victory and in return they won nothing besides perhaps a short-lived “truce” on the use of explicitly racial “welfare” attacks against Democrats in national campaigns. That truce lasted approximately as long as it took for Democrats to regain the White House. And now Republicans can point to this reform — a bipartisan reform pushed by a Democratic president! — as precedence for their proposal to slash spending on poor people even more.
If you want to know why left-leaning Democrats oppose “modest” “reforms” to Social Security and Medicare, look at food stamps and welfare. If you want to know why even a change as “progressive” sounding as “means testing” — lowering benefits only for richer retirees — is opposed by liberals, look at food stamps and welfare. Co-opting the conservative line on anti-poverty programs did nothing to halt conservative attacks on anti-poverty programs. Programs aimed strictly at the poorest Americans are always and forever under assault from a Republican Party that still has not dared to cut spending on programs — like Medicare and crop insurance — that also benefit the rich. The “Grand Bargain” is always going to accelerate the destruction of the safety net.
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@ZaidJilani "and decrease the surplus population."
— billmon (@billmon1) September 20, 2013
“Top-Down Class Warriors” Are <em>Always</em> Our EnemiesPost + Comments (62)
Damn Right, My Thread’s Better Than Yours
Here is Steve bitching for food as my brother feeds him:
And this is mild for Steve’s talking.
Damn Right, My Thread’s Better Than YoursPost + Comments (25)
Late Night Open Thread: Folkways Among the Unreconstructed
When I see a story like this one in the NYTimes, I particularly regret that DennisG is too busy in the meatspace to explain it for us. All I can summon is Faulkner’s “The past isn’t dead — it isn’t even past”:
Secret Society Dips Toe in City Politics, Prompting Lawsuit
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The college students began arriving a little before lunch at Calvary Baptist Church, far more than usual for a local election. The poll workers knew immediately: the Machine was here.The school year at the University of Alabama has barely gotten started, and already the campus has found itself in a charged self-examination on issues of politics, power and race, with the exposure of tenacious segregation among fraternities and sororities drawing national attention.
But the turmoil began some weeks earlier. It raised the specter of the Machine, a secret society representing a league of select and almost exclusively white fraternities and sororities, which has been around for a century or more. Once a breeding ground for state political leaders, the Machine (it has long been known by that nickname) today maintains a solid hold on student government through an effective, and critics say coercive, brand of old-fashioned organization politics.
But the Machine’s apparent involvement in an August school board election, a rare appearance in municipal politics, has prompted a lawsuit, accusations of voter fraud and an outcry that in many ways primed the campus for the larger storm over inclusion and tradition that is now taking place….
Accounts of intimidation tactics attributed to the Machine over the decades include cross burnings, threats and boycotts, although students these days speak mostly of social pressure, both implicit and overt and at times intense. Despite changes that the university has made to student government — like expanding polling days and switching to online voting — and despite the fact that Machine-affiliated organizations account for less than one-third of Alabama’s student population, its candidates have continued to win, if not as decisively as in the past…
Late Night Open Thread: Folkways Among the UnreconstructedPost + Comments (19)
Friday Evening Open Thread
This week, Congressional Republicans have voted to take both food and healthcare from Americans in need. #JustKeepingTrack
— Brad Friedman (@TheBradBlog) September 20, 2013
@billmon1 "they did skip water & breathing." // Uh, not really. Didnt see their House hearing on climate, eh? LISTEN: http://t.co/pG9A0bX6S3
— Brad Friedman (@TheBradBlog) September 20, 2013
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Apart from hoping the TeaHadists’ Jesus shows up to explain to them exactly how wrong they are, what’s on the agenda for the start of the weekend?
An Open Letter to the Makers of Qrunch Quinoa Burgers
Dear Makers of Qrunch Quinoa Burgers:
I am writing to express my dissatisfaction with the product heating instructions your company provides on Qrunch Quinoa Burgers packaging and to beg you to alter it immediately. I attempted to enjoy a Qrunch Quinoa Burger for lunch a short while ago, and to describe the ensuing mess as a clusterfuck would be a disservice to both clusters and fucks.
When I first retrieved my package of Qrunch Quinoa Burgers from the freezer and consulted the instructions, I was very happy to see that it was possible to heat the patties in a toaster because I dislike the texture of microwaved food and was in too much of a hurry to use a skillet:
It never occurred to me that the photo of the toasted Qrunch Quinoa Burgers that illustrates your instructions was misleading. But it’s a filthy lie, employing as it does a half-scale replica of an actual toaster to lull overly credulous consumers into thinking they can safely toast their patties.
See how the patties in the picture extend well above the top of the toaster slot? In reality, Qrunch Quinoa Burgers disappear into the slot completely, coming to rest about an inch BELOW the top of the slot — even before the toast-lowering lever is engaged.
No matter, I thought, watching my patty disappear into the bowels of my toaster. I’ll just unplug the toaster after the toasting operation is complete, use a fork to retrieve my patty, and before you can say “Jack Robinson,” I’ll be enjoying my Qrunch Quinoa Burger.
Alas, I was entirely too optimistic! Here is what happened when I tried to retrieve my patty:
And then it got even worse, with the patty completely disintegrating in response to my frantic attempts to extract it from the toaster. Finally I had to turn the toaster over onto its side to leverage gravity. The result was an eviscerated patty adulterated by random toaster shakings. Worse yet, IT WAS STILL COLD, even though I’d followed the instructions and run two cycles:
I’m not blaming you for the fact that it has clearly been too long since I’ve cleaned my toaster. I’m not even expecting an apology or recompense. I’m just begging you, in the name of corporate good citizenship, to change the heating instructions copy on your packages and spare other consumers the pain, disillusionment and toaster wreckage I’ve suffered today.
You can either remove the toaster suggestion completely or alter it to alert consumers that they’ll need to use a special miniature Qrunch Quinoa Burger toaster and THREE heating cycles. I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely, etc.
[X-posted at Rumproast]An Open Letter to the Makers of Qrunch Quinoa BurgersPost + Comments (159)
It Never Gets Bergman Bad
If you find another song that references the great Bergman film Wild Strawberries, please tell me in the comments. And what better gauge of the state of your relationship than “sometimes it gets bad, it never gets Bergman bad”. Here’s a Friday open thread.