Shocka! Welfare Recipients Are Not Using Their Public Assistance For Its Intended Purposes.

It turns out that the much ballyhooed $200 that went to a bunch of welfare recipients in New York may not be going for its intended purpose.

Yeah, shocking.

Members of Gov. David Paterson's administration defended the program, saying tales of increased sales of video game equipment and televisions are just anecdotes. The program allows families who couldn't otherwise afford back-to-school supplies to equip their children for a new year.

What's clear is that the actual amount of fraud will never be documented because state officials said there is no way for them to see how families are spending the $200-per-child benefit.

The benefit was distributed on Tuesday to families who receive welfare benefits and food stamps, including working families who only receive a limited food stamp benefit. Families with children between the ages of 3 and 17 are eligible, though the children do not need to be enrolled in school.

Wegmans and Tops report that ATMs in their stores ran out of cash on Tuesday, the day the money was deposited to food stamp accounts. The county reports that employees at the Wal-Mart store on Hudson Avenue called the Department of Human Services to say they thought welfare fraud was going on because there was a run on high-end electronics.

The stores received no notice of the program and would have been prepared had they known, spokeswomen from Tops and Wegmans said.

Seriously, how much can $200 stretch for "high end electronics" in NYC?

It's shit like this that pisses me off something fierce. And how much you want to bet that the fucking leeches who used this money to buy junk and not for their children's school supplies will be boarding an ACORN funded bus and start banging on somebody else's door demanding more money later?

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Obama on "End of Life Care"

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right? I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

LEONHARDT: So how do you — how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

Yeah, that Palin is sooooo crazy.

Go fuck yourself (especially St. Andrew of the Perpetual Outrage)

Via Ace, natch.

Update:I'm at work so no link but I've started to see people claim that JESUS would want us to have universal health care. Now, beyond being a fucking stupid argument on its face, the meat of the argument is also incorrect.

Jesus would want everyone to have health care. That is a VERY DIFFERENT THING than government controlled universal health care. I presume they are making their argument from Jesus' dedication to charity and kindness to our neighbors. Of course, Jesus (and his father) was also very dedicated to the idea of FREE WILL.

And that is the crux of the matter. FREE WILL (freedom) allows us to decide what we want to do with our time and, by the oldest equation in history, our money. Saying that we SHOULD make sure everyone has health care is very different than mandating that everyone contribute to the provision of such.

Of course, I wouldn't expect Commies to be too great at explaining what Jesus thinks anyway.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 04:03 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Sheila Jackson Lee is funny.

Via greginseattle in the comments at Ace, we find this newsbusters link of her doubling down on stupid.
She's tries not to say the video is doctored but skates very close
It's a beautiful example of "Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Her problem? She's not Obama and CNN occasionally practices journalism instead of journal-gizm.

Posted by: Veeshir at 05:45 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Remember, kids...

...Just Say No to whatever Robert Gibbs is smoking, snorting, or huffing:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs rejected suggestions Wednesday that President Obama's town hall meeting in Portsmouth, ...

... N.H., was unusually civil — and accused the White House press corps of hoping for a fight.

"I sense disappointment that he didn't get yelled at," Gibbs said.

Yeah, because there's no group in the whole, wide world more hostile to Barack Obama and his agenda than the White House press corps.

Posted by: Sean M. at 11:59 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Is Socialism The New "N" Word?

Don't like it, dickfisters?

How about Communist, you feckless shitweasels?

Look, I've had enough. Arrogant is a racist code word. Elitist is a racist code word. Now Socialist? How fucking 1984 do things need to get before we finally lock these bastards' heads in a rat cage?

And how is it that the media is only now figuring out what Astroturfing is? Davis Axelturf has been pioneering the field for years and that's after MoveOn.org and ANSWER and ACORN turned it into a professional sport.

How is it these continuously lying shitheads get to set the narrative this completely? Isn't there some method we have to combat this nonsense?

No. In order to have a mouthpiece powerful enough to matter, we'd need the President in our corner and as much as I liked Bush in many ways, his insistence on staying 'above the fray' has set us back decades in the information war.

In effect, he gave the left 8 full years to set the narrative and now that twisted, hypocritical, verifiably FALSE narrative has so pervaded the public consciousness that even an awesome person like Sarah Palin can be demonized, destroyed and discarded so quickly and efficiently in the public zeitgeist that we almost missed it.

I hate to say it, but what we really need is a new Newt. We need a guy to get up in the fucking faces of our opponents in nice, sweet, sound-bite sized outbursts of scathing, condescending truth. We need somebody to call them out on their bullshit loudly and in public.

Enough timidity, GOP politicians. Go for the throat. We aren't going to get a better opportunity than this because if I know anything, I know that Obama is a very skilled politician and we won't be able to keep him off balance forever.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 05:16 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Five Things Democrats May Want to Remember

Here are five interesting points drawn from recent history that Democrats may want to remember as we move through August.  If you are a Democrat, or you know someone who may be, it would be in their best interest to run over this list and remember that while fortunes can change rather quickly, usually in hindsight the warnings that trouble was brewing were pretty clear.

 

1)  It's never wise to say "Fuck You" to your constituents.

Republicans learned this the hard way in the 2006 and 2008 elections.  Swept into power on promises of clean government and reduced spending, Republicans spent the next 14 years becoming a caricature of political excess: out-of-control spending, poorly explained policies, and corruption out the ying-yang.  When public rage reached its breaking point, the Republican counter-argument varied between "shut up" and "trust us, we're better than the Democrats."  Voters responded predictably and threw the bums out.

 

2)  It's sometimes wise to say "Fuck You" to the president from your own party

You'd think Democrats would know this, having seen George Bush Jr. lead the Republicans to ruin with his compassionate, money-hemorrhaging conservatism and ill-considered explanations for invading Iraq.  If the Republicans had stood up against out-of-control spending instead of squealing for their piece of the pie, we'd be talking about the fine fashion sense of our Alaskan Vice President. 

 

3)  People complain about how expensive stuff is, but that doesn't mean there's a problem that needs solving

Life is full of things people bitch about the cost of.  That doesn't mean they're crying out for complicated governmental relief from it.  People bitch about the price of Starbucks but swill down four cups a day of it.  People bitch about how much gas SUVs guzzle, yet they choke the roads.  People's bitching about something bears no relationship to their satisfaction with it.  Yet Democrats appear to labor under the false assumption that because people complain about the high cost of health care that means that they hate their health care.  It's human nature to not only want to have your cake and eat it too, but also to pay nothing for the pleasure of it.  If push comes to shove, though, most people are willing to pay, if they can do a little bitching about it.  What people are not willing to do is blindly assume that the pie you want to sell them is just as good as cake.  Especially when they have neighbors in Canada and England who are warning them that the pie is actually poisonous.

 

4)  Healthcare: where presidential popularity goes to die

In the heady post-election days of 1992, Democrats believed they could do almost anything.  Public goodwill from the Reagan years had been washed away by "read my lips."  So it was only natural that Democrats turned to their longtime wet dream, health care, deciding that the time was right to get the camel's nose in the tent.  The public, whose only complaint with health care is that it costs too much, responded by getting angry and turning against Clinton, who would never achieve such heights of popularity again.  Even more importantly, their anger lasted long enough to sweep Republicans into power (temporarily).

 

5)  If you sell somebody one thing, but give them something else, they're going to be pissed

Barack Obama was sold as a moderate, bridge-building, bipartisan candidate.  The Blue Dogs were sold as moderate, fiscally conservative Democrats who want to move past the negativity of the last eight years.  Demonizing those who oppose ballooning the national debt has proven these as lies, iced off by some unfortunate bloviation from the President following a press conference.  It's natural that the electorate will now vent their spleen on the Blue Dogs, who were supposed to rein in the tax-and-spend impulse of the bluer coastal elites (like Pelosi).  Telling them to fuck off brings us back to the first point, and will lead to electoral heartbreak for the Democrats in 2010 (and possibly 2012). 

 

Don't believe me?  Just ask Trent ("damn Porkbusters!") Lott how his permanent Republican majority's working out.

 

Posted by: plebian at 03:17 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Please, World! Make The Stupidity On Obamacare Stop!

Nice to see this guy, who is an opponent of ID cards for voters, demands one for attendees in his town hall. But I guess a union card from anywhere in the country woul dcount, right? Additionally, we read about guys holding rallies in union halls or outside of their own districts.

Nice job, Oh Brave Ones. Throw on top of that a nice steaming pile of doggie diarrhea known as the White House Reality Check Site, and we have us a nice big bowl of assholeishness.

I am seriously starting to believe that the pro-Obamacare people just want to throw so much bullshit at everybody, so that most people will just throw up their hands, say "Fuck It!", and walk away, ceding the battlefield to the left. Well, that horseshit will not fucking happen on my watch. No fucking way indeed.

You arrogant cocksnogglers seriously fucking think I am going to stand back and let you assfist my family and their healthcare without a fight? Do you seriously think I am going to take a vibrating colon crusher up my ass from you guys without demanding what the fuck you intend to do with and to my family and me? Do you seriously fucking think I am going to let you get away with lying to me with an arrogant smirk? Who the fuck do you think you are, and more importantly, who the fuck do you think you are messing with in this deal?

Those of us who are energized to fight your fucktastic plans to send our country along the path of Socialized Shittiness misunderstand us. We care. We fucking care for our country, our families, and our futures. And no fucking way are you going to get away with this, you Cock Von Bulows of the political discourse, without us doing all we legally can do to prevent your shit sandwich from beig forced down our throats.We will factcheck your asses. We will protest. We will not stop until there is nothing left to do.And you liberals don't want to debate? Fine. Fuck you will now be our response to everything you say and do.

Fuck you, you shitspined ass clowns. Fuck you.

Posted by: eddiebear at 12:02 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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AARP throws Obama under the bus

"This is not the healthcare plan we knew."  OK, maybe I'm paraphrasing there a bit.

Posted by: Alice H at 09:20 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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As if needlessly yanking out your kids' tonsils wasn't bad enough...

...now, those greedy butchers are coming for your feet!

Is there nothing these money-hungry sawbones won't slice off of your body or the bodies of your loved ones to make a buck?

(Thanks to Rosetta.)

Posted by: Sean M. at 12:45 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Will Ed Koch Be Sent To The Soylent Green Plants Soon?

Who knows. But he concedes that his recent health issues have changed his opinions on Obama's health care plans.

The President, I believe, has said that there will be no restrictions on private insurance coverage, other than to expand that coverage for all by, for example, denying the insurance companies the right to reject persons with prior existing medical conditions. But he has not spoken loudly enough, nor has there been any discussion on the premiums that companies will be able to charge in such cases.

Most alarming for people like me, who at 84 years of age recently needed a quadruple bypass and aortic valve replacement, are the pronouncements of President Obama's appointee, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who, according to a New York Post op ed article by Betsy McCauley, former Lt. Governor of the State of New York, stated, "Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, 'as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others' (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008 )." He also stated, "...communitarianism' should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those 'who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens...An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.' (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96). "

Opponents of Obama's health care proposals raise the specter of a panel making decisions on who should receive health care. I am not aware of any proposed panel. However, an article in today's New York Times, referring to a Senate bill, stated, "The legislation could have significant implications for individuals who have bought coverage on their own. Their policies might be exempted from the new standards, but the coverage might not be viable for long because insurers could not add benefits or enroll additional people in noncompliant policies."

So, where lies the truth? I don't know. But I do know that I want the continued right to purchase and have available insurance that will permit me, no matter my age and physical condition, to purchase with my own money all the medical care I can afford.

Oil Painting Adam Smith, what say you?

 

more...

Posted by: eddiebear at 08:53 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Obviously this is correct since I agree with it

Actually, that's part of the point of this article about the intellectual "elite".  Selection bias operates to make people far more likely to accept information with which they agree than information they do not.  So when you have a group of people, all of whom share a certain worldview, meeting together to discuss an issue, challenges to their solution are deemed not only unworthy but per se incorrect.

I think it's apparent that I am quite firm in my political beliefs.  However, I do believe in hearing from those on the other side of an issue.  Why?  Because I know that there are perspectives that I will miss.  Those from the opposition will point out those flaws.  Then it's up to me to address those issues.  If everyone agrees on something, those problems will likely never be addressed.  Thus, I want more voices in the argument.  There's also the fact that I want to be able to point and laugh at the stupid but that doesn't rebound to my favor so let's ignore that.

This article does sum up the source of much of the rage against the Tea Party movement and those protesting Obamacare.  The people advocating these plans quite honestly do believe that they're smarter than us.  After all, that's what they've been told.  They went to the Ivy League schools.  They were the top of the class.  They are the Masters of the Universe.  How dare the unwashed masses question their wisdom!  It's a strike directly at the heart of the concept of self.  That usually provokes a vicious backlash. 

I can attest to this from personal experience.  When you've been able to solve all the problems on your own, having someone tell you that you can't and that you're wrong is intensely upsetting.  It's very difficult to swallow your pride and accept that's true. 

That doesn't excuse Pelosi, et al, particularly as I don't believe they're smarter than the average lump of dirt, let alone the average voter.  But they've been told that they are and now that's being questioned by those they view as inferior.  Striking out against that is a comprehensible psychological response. 

Posted by: alexthechick at 08:47 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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"The Purple Senator"

Hey Lanny?

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 05:51 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Tom Harkin: Economic Genius.

OK, Senator, you don't really understand capitalism, maybe Oil Painting Adam Smith can explain things for you:

more...

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Wow. Yet Another Congressman Who Loves Debate And Discussion

I am starting to sense a theme with these congresscritters. They really don't like to debate and hear from their constituents.

Baird said a "coordinated national effort" to disrupt public meetings with shouts and demonstrations, which he said Republican leaders were "egging on," was reminiscent of the kinds of things that drove Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

"He believed himself to be a patriot fighting against an oppressive government," Baird said of McVeigh, whose act killed 168.

Asked for an example of violence in recent demonstrations, Baird said someone warned that Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., might die and that another demonstrator wielded a tombstone bearing a member of Congress's name.

"It does violence not to the member per se, but it does violence to the process of civic discourse," Baird said.

I have no further words. But Happy Dick Cheney does:

more...

Posted by: eddiebear at 10:55 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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Protip: Keep your pets away from noted failure and anti-Semite Jimmy Carter

So, he not only gave his sister in law's cat a charge of birdshot,

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 08:26 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Can we feed them to the bears?

Just tie 'em up at Donna Munson's cabin, let them 'take care' of the bears for a while.  Since they love animals so much.

Posted by: Alice H at 03:43 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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So, Who Is Astroturfing?

I have to go out for most of the rest of the day, but I couldn't ket this pile of shit go. As predictable as vote fraud in N. St. Louis you could count on Nancy Pelosi to bring the stupid. You see, just days after claiming the TeaParty people were astroturfing, Madame Botox's forces engage in astroturfing themselves. Read it and laugh.

Oh, and just as Obama is listing, Kathleen Parker comes to the rescue.

Though mired in the unemployment doldrums, none of my friends fit into the categories of outraged citizens known as "teabaggers" or "townhallers." Teabaggers are conservatives who staged tax protests this year; townhallers are those now confronting congressional leaders as they return home to chat up constituents. 

Yeah, non of your friends, because they all are Democrats and DC Cocktail Partiers. Fuck you, you fucking scrunt.

Posted by: eddiebear at 12:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Libelous kindergarten instructor shitcanned

Adios, shitbag!  Now Sarah needs to show this scuzzy little bitch that her pimphand is way strong and bring the libel suit.  Lefty bloggers are just making shit up about her out of wholecloth, sending these bogus stories far and wide, often to be picked up by the media, and it just can't be left unopposed anymore.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 10:30 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Buyers remorse is awesome covered in awesomesauce

Bwah!

Posted by: Alice H at 08:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You are being watched

Especially if you post with the hashtag #iamthemob on Twitter. 

Of course, I would never encourage anyone to crapflood the hashtag with a single user ID.  That's a job better done by thousands of separate IDs.

Or you can just use it as a guide to where the cool kids are hanging out.

Posted by: Alice H at 12:23 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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