Some think Newt Gingrich scored by calling Barack Obama the "food-stamp president," but isn't it really a compliment?
Obama tried to get everyone jobs -- he even had the surefire plan of spending hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus money -- but it turns out, making lots of new jobs is really, really hard. Who knew?
But Obama was easily able to relax the requirements for receiving food stamps and increase the program's benefits. So now if you can't get a job, it doesn't matter, because you still get to eat. More biting satire from Frank J.
#3
Actually, food stamps are the one form of welfare that makes complete sense, at least in the Bizarro world of American agribusiness.
Since the start of the 20th Century, America has had too much food. By the time of the Great Depression, farmers could no longer afford to ship food, because prices were too low.
So every year, the government both pays farmers to not grow food, and still buys thousands of tons of food, to expensively warehouse until it rots.
Just doing things the way we do them today, every poor person willing to cook unprocessed food could eat for free, and the government would *save* money.
And it wouldn't hurt the retail market, either, because people who can afford to buy their food much prefer processed food to unprocessed.
So the end result would be people eating the food instead of it just spoiling and being thrown away.
Perhaps the solution would be to set up government food distribution sites, where the poor who were authorized would just be given free food, based on how many family they had, and how much at one time, the site had excess of particular foods.
Say Tuesday, 20 lbs of potatoes per person, because we have too many potatoes. Wednesday, lots of flour and oranges. Thursday, 1 gallon cans of peanut butter.
#4
Well before there was food stamps there were USDA Commodies which were distributed to the poor and those on Welfare. Flour, Rice, Beans (lots of beans), Powdered Milk, Powdered Eggs, Big Blocks of Cheese, etc...
When I was a young kid we used to get some for awhile. Huge blocks of cheese with the big USDA stamp on the side of the package.
#5
I had posted a couple of lines from this as my Facebook status for the day. It disappeared. I guess somebody took offense and flagged it for removal. Liberals... no sense of humor.
#7
You're gonna end up eating a steady diet of government cheese and living in a van down by the river!" -Matt Foley (motivational speaker in SNL skit)
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
01/25/2012 22:01 Comments ||
Top||
[Dawn] HUMAN Rights Watch's criticism of western policies towards the Arab world makes eminent sense, seen in the light of President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... 's final departure from Yemen and the victory of Islamist parties in the Egyptian elections. Mr Saleh left for the US on Sunday after apologising to his people for "any shortcomings" -- a gross understatement, for he leaves behind him a nation in tatters after a civil war which killed nearly 2,000 people. It was during his rule that Al Qaeda managed to consolidate itself and bring more territories under its influence. In Tunisia, post-Ben Ali elections last October led to the victory of an Islamist party, Ennahda, a phenomenon also witnessed in neighbouring Morocco. In Egypt, however, the victory of the Islamist parties has been sweeping after results finally became available on Sunday. The Moslem Brüderbund, taking part in the polls as the Freedom and Justice Party, won 48 per cent of the seats, while (Salafist) ...Salafists espouse an austere form of Sunni Islam that seeks a return to practices that were common in the 7th century. Rather than doing that themselves and letting other people alone they insist everybody do as they say and they try to kill everybody who doesn't... Al Nur grabbed 25 per cent of parliamentary seats in the first post-Mubarak elections. Together, they captured two-thirds of the assembly's seats.
We do not know what results the Libyan elections, as yet uncertain, will produce, and how Syria will go if and when Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... falls. But there is no doubt that the absence of all avenues of dissent throughout the Arab world for decades helped not the liberal parties but the Islamist ones, which because of better organization and motivated cadres managed to increase their influence with the people. The 676-page HRW report attributes highly negative motives to western democracies' Arab policies. Briefly, it says western policies were guided by a fear of political Islam, and this made them rely on secular dictators to ensure regional stability, secure uninterrupted oil supplies, maintain peace with Israel, stifle migration to the West and crush Islamist parties. The report considers this policy counterproductive, and asks the West to accept the change which the Arab Spring has wrought, adopt pro-people policies and "abandon the autocrats and embrace rights".
The victorious Islamist parties, too, must heed this advice. Now that the people have voted for them, it is time they themselves respected human rights ...which often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... and refrained from persecuting dissenters in the name of 'ideology'. What led to the collapse of Arab dictatorships was their weak foundation, which rested on force. The Islamist parties must respect the rights of all people, including the minorities and those who differ with them. Otherwise, dictatorship in the name of religion will produce conditions no different than what prevailed before the Arab Spring.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/25/2012 00:00 ||
Comments ||
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Top|| File under: Arab Spring
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Some think Newt Gingrich scored by calling Barack Obama the "food-stamp president," but isn't it really a compliment?
... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it...
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
