Michelle Obama served food at a food bank, and a picture accompanying the write-up has caused outrage among the usual suspects. Take it away, K-Lo:
Robert Rector has been pointing out for longer than I can remember that America has the wealthiest poor people in the world. And here seems to be a photo illustrating that: Michelle Obama was at a homeless shelter. While distributing lunch, one of the men she was serving lunch to took a picture of her on his cell phone.
You honestly must have to work hard to be this ignorant and out of touch. Put aside the fact that no one knows this man’s situation, and it may very well be that he is recently unemployed and may not have that luxury cell phone for much longer. This guy may very well be a fraud (or, has been suggested in the comments, a volunteer or someone who just stopped by to see the First Lady), but no one has any idea from the picture. However, what shocks me is that I thought initiatives like this were common knowledge:
Beginning Thursday, a San Francisco startup tech company is going to help the homeless reconnect with society.
The company, GrandCentral Communications, will offer free voice-mail service through local shelters. Users will be able to dial in from anywhere to access messages from, say, family members, social workers or potential employers.
“It’s a stake in the ground,” said Craig Walker, GrandCentral’s chief exec. “It’s a tether to the rest of the world.”
Often, one of the hardest things about “pulling yourself up by your boot straps” is the difficulty in getting a callback from an employer when you have no phone or permanent address. I am not sure how you get to be this callous, this out of touch, and this clueless, but these folks, who cheerleaded the nation’s way into this mess, have mastered it.
Up next, K-Lo mocks the unemployed for their fancy clothes. I am so sick of these people. They mock things they simply do not understand, they are completely out of touch with the concerns and reality for the majority of their fellow citizens, and then, when the tax cuts of the Bush years are going to be allowed to expire (as was always planned- you do remember the “sunset provisions”), they shout “class warfare.” Just plain sick of these people.
*** Update ***
More here.
Nikki
Cell phones with cameras are extremely cheap (I paid 19.99 for my refurbished model) and, with pay-as-you-phone minutes, keeping cell phone service is not that expensive.
SnarkyShark
You call them people. I am not sure I agree. They have lost (or never had) their humanity. I call them hollowmen.
TS Eliot style. No bang, just whimpering.
Doctor Gonzo
Conservatives like K-Lo do not want to help those in need. They want them to be punished for their "sins", whatever they imagine them to be. Homeless, unemployed, pregnant teens, drug addicts…they are all being punished by God for some transgression in their lives, and so K-Lo is just helping by piling on the scorn.
Take away her job, home, and support network, and I wonder how long she would survive.
chrome agnomen
callous, out of touch, and clueless, indeed, but more to the point, utterly bereft of anything constructive to add to the discussion. all that is left in the arsenal is blind, ignorant, random attacks upon whatever is the perceived outrage of the hour.
Comrade javafascist
Nikki’s cell phone and service probably costs less than the average lunch bill for one member of the Corner and that’s before you factor in drinks (but does include tips which =0 since the waiter was wearing an Obama button…Redistributionist!)
jibeaux
You gotta love that point of view that as long as someone, somewhere, is surviving off a sack of millet and a recycled oil jug of water, America is doing A-OK by its poor folks.
Dork
And the NRO has the fattest dumbfucks in the intertubes. I bet it’s never occured to her as she mainlines her 8th cheezberger and galloon-drum Frostee that a cell phone is an absolute necessity to getting back into the work force. Or that not all people who visit a food bank are completely devoid of all money.
I guess when you devote 98.4% of your brainpower constantly thinking about where to acquire your next Cornish Hen, you lack an ability to consider these things.
Can we officially call for her to DIAF yet?
Atanarjuat
I completely agree.
Listening to music on an iPod while texting on a Sidekick, all the while ambling down the street in new Nike basketball shoes with a North Face jacket to protect you from the brutal elements are all sure signs of extreme poverty and misery.
You’d have to be out of touch, clueless, and callous to not understand the stratified despair of such people who are obviously on the tipping edge of homelessness.
Also, cellphones are a Constitutional right, not a privilege, so suck on that, conservatards.
-A
jhaygood
OK, I’ll gladly pile on. What a freaking heartless and ignorant A-hole that K-Lo is. Damn. This tendency to accuse the weakest and lowest in society for problems that are clearly created by those at the top is a long-standing tradition with conservatives.
What have they ever done for society, anyway? Seriously. Every great feature of this country, the things we are most proud of, its compassion and movement away from cold, law-of-the-jungle industrial age harshness they have consistently fought against.
At least they are reliable, if not useful.
Dexter Morgan
@SnarkyShark: I prefer the term "soulless f-cking husks" myself.
Scott
Hard-line conservatism is a mental disorder. Most people call it sociopathy, though…
jibeaux
Quick, someone find out what kind of countertops that guy has.
sgwhiteinfla
I wonder how many times KLo has taken her fat ass to a homeless shelter for a meal. I can promise you its not something that people do for fun if they have money in their pocket. But conservatives make a living off of judging other people. Just look at Dreher and how he thinks shame is the tool we should be using to make people conform to what THEY think they should be doing. There are homeless people with cars too, I guess we should all be aghast at that. Nevermind that they are living in that car. Nah they should be broke, penniless and living under a bridge somewhere before they get a chance at a hot meal. If there really is such a thing as karma some of these santimonious assholes will one day be separated from their money and see just how miserable a life it really is. There are now almost 5 million documented unemployed people in this country and probably many more who aren’t drawing unemployment and these cretins are obsessed over a cell phone. And they wonder why people aren’t flocking to their side.
Rick Taylor
To be fair, K-Lo doesn’t seem to be trying to be snarky, and ends the post,
It’s certainly not as awful as some of the stuff I’ve seen, like going after a kid’s family because he spoke about how he benefited from a government insurance plan.
Nonetheless, it’s bizarre. The economy is cratering, people are losing their homes and their jobs while we try to convince the CEO’s of the companies we’re being forced to bail out that maybe now is not the time for million dollar bonuses and private jest and such, but by god some people who are forced to swallow their pride and go to a shelter for food have cel phones! What a great country. Surely, there’s no place else on earth where they could be the case.
Uh huh. . . ..
Lesley
I was a case manager for homeless teens for years. One thing that stood out was how much stuff they had. Not because they were wealthy, but because it was either donated, bought with money that didn’t have to pay any bills, or "acquired", and not always illegally. Goods exchange hands quite a bit at the low end of the ladder. People mistake this for "wealth". But cellphones don’t provide a roof over your head or financial stability, any more than a warm coat does.
Many middle and upper middle class people get uncomfortable seeing poor and homeless people with cellphones because they want it exclusive. It puts the uncomfortable truth before them- your stuff doesn’t really make you rich.
libarbarian
Homeless Lucky Duckies
Hunter Gathers
Couldn’t agree more. I wish these jerkwads would put thier money where thier mouth is : if you feel oppressed by the federal government then fucking leave already. Don’t like the fact that the government helps people out who are down on thier luck? Go somewhere else then. Live out your Atlas Shrugged dream scenario and go way and don’t come back. We don’t need you. These people fucked up in a way that will make the rest of us look like fools 100 years from now for letting them get away with it. Considering the wasteland that lies before us, thanks to so-called ‘Conservatives’, I’m pretty sure we’d get along just fine without you. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
R. Porrofatto
What’s particularly disgusting is the abhorrent ethos that underlies this crap: that there are no genuinely poor people, just lazy-assed parasites pretending to be poor while stealing America’s bounty from us. Of course, K-Lo has an excuse, she mocks them only out of the fullness of her Christian love for the downtrodden.
Oliver's Neck
What does that even mean? In America we allow people to be homeless and destitute but if they have the cast-offs of our over-consumptive society then we think everything is ok? Great. Good for us.
Zifnab
One more Lucky Ducky!
If he was so poor, why didn’t he just eat his camera?
Perry Como
1) K-Lo is a fucking moron. 2) Does K-Lo even know what a food bank is? See #1. 3) How does K-Lo know the guy taking the cell phone picture isn’t also working at the food bank?
Captain Haddock
Maybe if they didn’t server lobster bisque and filet mignon at the "homeless shelter" you wouldn’t attract this Thurston Howell character and his million dollar magic phone.
I mean taking pictures on a phone??? How much does that James Bond shit cost????
Bill White
We must remember this: John Galt was a sociopath.
CalD
Homeless people in every country have phones these days. One of the great thing about mobile phones is that you don’t need a home to have one. You don’t even need a billing address. You can buy the cards to add minutes to the pre-paid kind for cash in convenience stores and bodegas.
I note that it’s also a real plus to have some way for people to reach you if you happen to be, say, looking for work. Or a place to live. So I don’t know if I’d call it a such luxury to have one and even some of the dirtest cheapest ones have cameras these days.
But of course, far be it from any right-wing screaming head to try and manufacture a controversy out of thinnest air on premises thinner still. Krazy Kat must know something we don’t, right?
Rick Taylor
Moreover, the premise of the whole piece is just false. There are countries especially in Europe that have a much stronger safety net than we do. I’ve had friends in Holland who didn’t feel much pressure to find work because the safety net was so strong. We can argue if that’s a good thing or not (in my opinion that was going to far in the far in the opposite direction), but it’s simply not the case that if you compare, say, the bottom 1% of our population with that in France, or Sweden, or many other countries, that we come out better. If you measure infant mortality, the United states comes in 28th, which is absolutely shameful for the richest country in the world. So it’s simply not true that our poor are the richest in the world, even if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy to say so.
The thing that drives me nuts about conservatives like this is that they just insist on living in a fantasy world.
Persia
It’s especially stunning in this economy, where people lose their jobs overnight. Somehow– and I know K-Lo would find this a shock– when you don’t have much savings, the money goes away quite quickly but the bills and services you already had and paid for are still there.
So magically, the cellphone that you bought on a year contract is still there, even after your job’s gone away.
SpotWeld
It seems like anyone accepting public assistance is expected to completely give up any expectantion of independce (or at least to fit the right-wing narrative of "big governemnt"), when in reality a lot of public support is supposed to be fairly light-weight aid to just keep people out of a downward spiral while they try to regain thier job/health/etc….
joe from Lowell
We must remember this: John Galt was a sociopath.
So was Howard Roarke. In the very first chapter of The Fountainhead, there’s a passage in which Rand approvingly describes how Roarke can’t understand the emotions of other people.
This was supposed to be an admirable quality, thus demonstrating that Rand herself was a sociopath.
CalD
Homeless people in every country have phones these days. One of the great thing about mobile phones is that you don’t need a home to have one. You don’t even need a billing address. Cards to add minutes to the pre-paid kind can be had for 5 or 10 bucks in any convenience stores or bodega.
I also note that it’s a real plus to have some way for people to reach you if you happen to be, say, looking for work. Or a place to live perhaps. So I don’t know if I’d call it a such luxury to have a phone in the first place and even some of the dirtest cheapest ones have cameras these days.
But of course, far be it from any right-wing screaming head to try and manufacture a controversy out of thinnest air on premises thinner still. Krazy Kat must know something we don’t, right?
malraux
Currently T-Mobile has a pre-paid cell phone with camera for $30. The package comes with a $25 card. So its not like camera phones are expensive.
Nancy Darling
Was she outraged when, a few years ago, some telecom exec threw a million dollar birthday bash in which an ice sculpture of Michaelangelo’s David had vodka pouring from his penis? I seem to remember a party with Venus di Milo spurting champagne from her breasts. Oh! I forgot! Those people worked hard and earned the money they spent on such vulgarity.
Napoleon
Within the last week I saw a story on someone had been laid off and how they were cutting back and one thing they said was they ditched the land line and kept the cell phone because of the portability.
Napoleon
And even if they were he likely bought it when he was employed. I mean its not like there is some strong market for second hand cell phone where he could have sold it, bought a cheap replacement and pocketed the difference.
Perry Como
Didn’t that guy get busted for fraud?
Porkulus fka Media Browski
Pardon me, but Fuck K-Lo. Seriously, fuck her. I work weekends in one of DC’s biggest food banks, and they are struggling right now just to get donations as their clientelle increases incredibly. The manager told me that they have tripled their clients since SEPTEMBER.
When I work there I see people cry with joy over getting a damn bag of canned food, some peanut butter and some bread to feed a family of 5. And yes, these people have cell phones–their family’s ONLY phone.
Fuck her. Just fuck her selfish hateful self. These people are starving.
The Moar You Know
I’ve been hating these people for 25 years, regardless of which political party their brand of stupidity belongs to. Oddly, they are usually Republicans. Just something I’ve noticed over the years.
I get K-Lo’s unstated point, which is this: we’re doing so good that poor people have cameraphones, therefore we should do nothing to help the middle-class who is finding themselves in deep financial shit.
Of course, if we were doing nothing to help the middle-class, who are, as I stated previously, in deep financial shit, K-Lo would be screaming bloody murder about how the Dems are heartless unfeeling bastards and only her Blessed Republicans cared about the common man.
K-Lo is a fucking asshole is what this all boils down to.
JL
Just imagine K-Lo wearing a sleeveless dress. (ick)
We give used cell-phones to clients where I volunteer.
Leelee for Obama
Here in FL, there are ads running about cell phones FOR people on AFDC, Food Stamps etc. For safety, for job contacts, for whatever. Maybe they are not camera phones, but like someone mentioned, maybe the guy works there, or just lost a job!!!
I used to peek at the Corner once in awile, but I simply can’t do it anymore.
K-Lo has no idea what Jesus was talking about, so I can no longer go there to point and laugh. Nothing there is funny lately.
BTW, I watched Jon Stewart’s take down of CNBC late last night, and while I did laugh some, I once again wondered why he and Colbert are the best newsguys on TV?
El Cid
There’s always a shifting standard of what people are allowed to possess in order to be considered ‘genuinely’ poor and deserving.
The underlying message is that America would be a better place if our poor resembled the destitute of Sudan or Darfur, including not just the starving, ill, possession-free existence but being isolated and hidden in their own desert.
You know, the same way that our Appalachian destitute peoples, with children dying regularly from malnutrition and curable disease in the 1960s were just fine until Michael Harrington, JFK Jr., Robert Kennedy, and LBJ created their terrible welfare to impose on these happy, hidden-away country folk.
Svensker
Yes, it’s true, there are people in poor countries who are poorer than our poor. They frequently starve to death. Does K-Lo want Mrs. Obama to wait until our poor are starving to death before she expresses any kindness? Don’t help them until they pass out from malnutrition before lifting a finger? What’s her point?
Maybe she’s from the Ma Bush "this thing is working out quite well for them" school of philanthropy.
I really need Obama’s help on his bipartisanship thing, because I am starting to absolutely hate these people.
Josh Hueco
Next up: K-Lo wonders out loud how it’s possible that homeless people can be starving when they have so many grocery carts.
Gus
I have a hard time getting too worked up over K-Lo. I mostly feel pity for her. She kind of reminds me of the Onion’s Jean Teasdale character. Really stupid, no self awareness. Pathetic, really.
Shinobi
Conservatives want the poor to look really really poor so that when they deign to give them a few quarters on their way to the train they will feel like they’ve really helped someone out. If they have actual necessities it makes tossing your loose change at someone seem less magnanimous.
Gus
Yeah, that was Tyco’s Dennis Koslowski. He did (is doing?) some time. There was a piece on him on 60 Minutes a year or so ago. He proclaims innocence, and 60 Minutes made that claim seem believable. I say the douchebag should do time just for being a douchebag, but that’s just me.
Zach
This is the millionth time that the Corner would serve to be educated by watching an episode of the Wire (Season 5: cub reporter learns that most folks eating at a shelter aren’t homeless).
LOL how can they ask for money w/ nice shoes right?
The Grand Panjandrum
Republicans arguing against allowing the sunset provisions in the Bush Tax Cuts is quite humorous. Why were they put in? Gosh could it be that the country’s circumstances may have changed? If they wanted the tax cuts to be permanent they should have written it into the legislation. You know, this reminds me of the Democrats who voted for the AUMF in Iraq. If they didn’t want us to go to war they should have voted against it.
I am all for compromise and getting things done but if you really feel strongly about something as a matter of principal you should probably vote that way to begin with. The political posturing gets tiresome after a while.
I think a good counter argument for Democrats is to remind Republicans that they voted FOR the sunset provisions. They didn’t just magically appear after the Democrats won control over both chambers of Congress.
flounder
This is why I count things the rich do in ‘Coach’ bags. When someone complains about how much more taxes they are going to pay under the Socialist Obama, I simply respond:
"You are complaining about one Coach bag’s worth of money to save our economy. You must really hate America and love purses."
Brian J
People can mock San Fransisco and its residents all they like, but many of the interesting ways to help those in the world who need a temporary hand, like the start up described above, seem to be associated with the city. I have more respect for those who try innovative ways to cure society’s ills no matter how many times they fail than goons like K-Lo who judge without thinking.
Dexter Morgan
@Leelee for Obama:
BTW, I watched Jon Stewart’s take down of CNBC late last night, and while I did laugh some, I once again wondered why he and Colbert are the best newsguys on TV?
It’s probably because they’re not a part of the insulated media elite, and actually have an understanding of what average people have to go through in order to survive.
Laura W Darling
@Josh Hueco: I feel horribly guilty for laughing so uproariously at that.
Singularity
Fuck Katherine Jean Lopez with Willard Mitt Romney’s shriveled dick.
Wait… nvm.
Rommie
How dare you poor people spend my money on anything more than Mac and Cheese! Why you ungrateful bastards – you are lucky us Rich Folk don’t make you live on bread and water – see how you unappreciative ingrates like that!
As someone who was a welfare/food stamp kid, same song, different year. Back then it was having a Television (we had a big, old Zenith that was a family gift). I also remember one time someone back in line was mumbling about Ice Cream – yeah, having IC once a month was over-the-top selfish. There’s nothing like feeling two inches high at the supermarket.
I know some people who get out of the poorhouse can’t eat those kinds of foods anymore – but I still like Mac and Cheese myself. But I understand how someone would never want to touch the stuff again.
Alex
Let them eat cake.
Updated for a new century.
Xanthippas
@libarbarian: great link. I know the term of course, but I had no idea there was a Wikipedia entry for it (but then, isn’t there for everything?)
Matt
@Bill White: We must remember this: John Galt was a sociopath.
A more important thing for libertarians to remember is that John Galt is a fictional character in a shitty book. Everything works out just great when the author is pulling for you!
milo
Innumerates such as K-Lo really ought not to write about wealth.
The marginal manufacturing cost of that camera in the cell phone is roughly equivalent to a round trip on a city bus.
Or in terms that K-Lo can understand: the price of the Big Mac you ate for lunch yesterday.
kay
@Leelee for Obama:
Here in FL, there are ads running about cell phones FOR people on AFDC, Food Stamps etc. For safety, for job contacts, for whatever. Maybe they are not camera phones, but like someone mentioned, maybe the guy works there, or just lost a job
Of course they need a phone. They need to be applying for work to qualify for AFDC, for one thing. They have a monthly contact with the Agency just to stay on food stamps. You need a phone contact number if you have a child in a public school system, for obvious reasons. They pass the phone around. You never know who you’re going to get. They relay messages.
I don’t know: carrier pigeons? Notes left on telephone poles? I’m stumped. I would appreciate a suggestion on a cost-effective and morally permisable alternative to the cell phone.
passerby
@Scott:
Your comment has caused me to realize that it boils down to 2 extremes: Socialists and Sociopaths.
I’d rather come down on the socialistic side of the spectrum.
But, for what it’s worth, the welfare state was created and fed by the federal government. There will always be those who would rather not work if they didn’t have to and among that group, there are those who now expect the government to take care of them.
Can there be a systematic way (politically speaking) of weaning folks off of government support? After all it was originally intended to be transitional support, not a way of life. Communities and churches used to take care of this before government welfare was instituted. How do we get back there?
I don’t know if it’s even a realistic idea given the human tendency to want more money, especially as an entitlement. And consider that corporate welfare is driven by the same dynamic as social welfare.
Ash Can
@Rick Taylor: I agree that this puts K-Lo’s column in a different light. That light, however, is still disturbing. She appears, in this case, to be giving her readers tacit permission to not worry quite so much about those less fortunate than them, since, hey, they’re not so bad off after all. Maybe not quite as out-and-out sociopathinc, but pernicious nonetheless. (BTW, I want to clarify that I’m not taking issue with you, but with her.)
BC
Ahhhh, the good old days of Republican supremacy, when they wrote the legislation and had to have a "majority of the majority" in order for anything to pass in the House! Brings back memories, that does. The reason they had to sunset the tax cuts and the end of the "death tax" was to lie about the true effect on the deficit of these tax cuts. If they only lasted 10 years, then the budget deficit only had to be counted for the 10 years. I remember, also, that once they were passed with the sunset provision, there was a push to make them "permanent" since they would no longer have to count them on the budget deficit. Another reason not to trust these "deficit hawks" – if their mouth is moving, they are lying.
John Cole
Quit defending K-Lo. Go check the links and the comments at memeorandum. It is pretty clear the message that K-Lo, Malkin, and Malcolm are sending, and their readers are getting it loud and clear.
One more time- I thought I was supposed to be the naive one around here.
Rick Taylor
I’m repeating myself, but this is what drives me nuts about conservatives. Reasonable people can differ about what the right policy is. Conservatives can argue that if there’s too much assistance to people in need we lose some incentive for work and productivity will be hurt, liberals can argue back that it’s very difficult to be productive now matter how well intentioned one is without things like decent health care, education, nutrition, and a roof over one’s head, and besides in a rich country no one should be going without these things out of decency. There’s merit to both arguments, different societies may make different compromises (I don’t expect the United States to become like Holland), and there’s room for intelligent discussion and disagreement. But when one of the parties says with a straight face, you know we can have our cake and eat it too–Not only does America have lower taxes and less social assistance than other countries, but we have the richest poor in the world–Why look at this picture of a guy with a cel phone at a soup kitchen–You wouldn’t see that anywhere else– when someone says that, then what the hell are you supposed to do? How the hell do you start an intelligent discussion with someone who bases their conclusions on wishful thinking and anecdotes?
Also, just to add again in K-Lo’s defense, at least here she doesn’t seem to be arguing that there was something wrong or bad about a poor person having a cel phone in a soup kitchen, or that they ought to sell it before being allowed in. She’s just being sentimental about what a great country this is, what with someone in a soup kitchen having a cel phone. To me it’s more bizarre than mean spirited.
AnotherBruce
To put it simply, conservatism has become pathological. The philosophy not only lacks compassion, but it makes fun of and denigrates the sick and the weak. It allows no room for human error. All people are fuck ups on some level, but the elite class of people get to have their fuck ups disguised by money. So they get to pretend that they are some kind of advanced class of humanity when humanity is precisely what they lack.
LITBMueller
OK, first, that’s a frickin’ Blackberry not a cell phone. AND, if that IS a homeless person, how does anyone know they still have wireless service? Maybe that person worked for Merrill Lynch and lost their job because K-Lo’s heroes let them loot the country for years. Maybe that phone is all that person has left, and now its only good for taking pictures because they can’t afford to pay for a wireless service?
Next, how the HELL does she know the person taking the picture is NOT a volunteer or something? Because the person is black?
Seriously. What a dumb fat whore…
Peter J
This asshat does that though.
Jay in Oregon
@Hunter Gathers:
It seems Buenos Aires is already becoming popular…
Karmakin
Re:Stewart, I suspect a lot of it is that he probably has a lot of friends/colleagues that are still working hard to make it on the comedy circuit. Not to mention that it’s something that he did himself at one point. So that gives him more insight. He’s actually walked that path.
One thing about cell phones, that a lot of people have mentioned, is that they can actually be MUCH cheaper than a land line. Especially if you’re in a situation where you have to move fairly often. And some sort of contact number..and I’m not talking about leave a message and I’ll get back to you..I’m talking you pick up the phone right now because we need you at work NOW is needed for most places of employment, especially in the service sector. It’s not unthinkable that this is a guy who makes near minimum wage or has reduced hours or something, and as such needs a bit of a boost, but his cell phone is actually not a luxury, it’s a necessity.
I actually have a problem with this, for a variety of reasons. But I’m not going to blame the victims here.
malraux
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Honestly, is anyone surprised by this? It was pretty apparent to me at the time that the sunset clause was just a fiction to make the long term cost of the tax cuts seem small, and that as soon as it approached, the republicans (and moderate democrats) were going to insist that we not raise taxes. Its a classic bait and switch. They sell the tax cuts on the idea that the cost will be low, but once they are in place, the cuts must be permanent. See also Reagan, Greenspan, and Social Security.
Keith
What next? Gold-plated grocery carts?
Zifnab
@Jay in Oregon: Only because Dubai imploded.
Leelee for Obama
I hope no one thought I was griping about the cell phone program. I thought it was a great idea, maybe I wasn’t clear. I’ve spent some time on both programs and Medicaid, so I can tell you, back in the day, you drove to an office in the middle of nowhere and waited, maybe for several days to get any help at all. Good thing we had a vehicle, cause on Long Island, public transportation was not helpful.
If we had a real sense in this Country that we are all in this together, as I’m hoping for, there would be No poor people, No homeless people, No uninsured people. There would be Americans at many levels of prosperity who, nonetheless, felt a part of the greater whole.
Child of the 60’s, so this has not just come to me. Insofar as the trolls saying Obama is attempting too much, I say, when everything is broken, re-build everything better. I hear that’s the Brad Pitt Theorem.
Martin
Shorter GOP:
BlackPoor people are fucking up the world by trying to not be poor.Napoleon
@Karmakin:
I have long thought this is the reason actors and entertainers lean liberal, they are one payday away from never working again in their industry, and they realize (or at least feel) that in large part it is out of their control and almost random in nature (since for everyone of them that made it they can name 10 people they know have talent but did not), so I think they sympathize a little more with economically disadvantaged because but for the grace of God that is where they would be at.
Napoleon
@Napoleon:
PS to my post – I would extend it to all of Hollywood. I read a few years ago that like no other industry in America it is dependant on small shops and independant contractors, and that everyone lives from job to job and has no idea if the phone is going to ring tomorrow and if they will be working 6 months from now, in a way you just historically have not seen in other industries.
JL
When Bush cut taxes on the wealthy, I mentioned to a conservative co-worker that he should start watching how the middle class benefits from Bush’s policies.
Does K-Lo have a job besides bitching about the poor?
Tsulagi
One of the financials should pick up Cameraphone Guy. Probably hasn’t lost tens or hundreds of billions in other people’s pension funds. Would hope that might be a plus on a resume.
PattyP
When my (then) husband was working full-time on a Ph.D. and I was the only one with a job, I bought lots of clothes at the local Goodwill. It was quite common to find brand-new outfits with the tags still attached that had been donated by local department stores because they didn’t sell or were out of season. Once I bought what I later determined to be a $150 (at least) brand-name business suit for four bucks. The Cons are just fucking clueless about how resourceful some "welfare queens" need to learn to be to try to stay productive members of society.
patrick
I gave my old phones — which were camera phones but useless to me with a new carrier — to a charity that recycles the phones for free to the poor.
I don’t know what these right wing f*?)s expect of the poor in this country — maybe a sackcloth and an apology for not being worthy of living here.
Erika Froh
Bless you, John Cole, for your compassion and understanding. I wish there was a way to inject your empathy and sympathy into other conservatives. I don’t really understand when conservatives got this mean. The Reagan years? Or was it before then? Do they really lack the ability to put themselves in the shoes of others and to realize there’s not much that separates them from those in the homeless shelters and food banks? Something is wrong with these people.
Comrade Stuck
And after that, she will point out that these icky homeless people aren’t homeless at all. The freeloaders have a roof over their head and get to live rent and property tax free on public lands. They even have accessible transportation with free boxcar rides in either direction, on top of a camera phone to photograph it all.
jcricket
@Zifnab: Maybe that’s where all the fuckwads at the Corner can "go galt" on us? Dubai has some gleeming towers all empty, just waiting for Libertarians to come live in their tax-free paradise. Just don’t be gay. Or jewish. Or a working woman.
This sort of mockery of the poor, and a "it’s not so bad for them" attitude is what’s losing the GOP votes across the middle class. The middle class aren’t living in homeless shelters, but as the recent Time article points out, you’re only one healthcare crisis away from something like that being a real possibility. And even the "upper middle class" are feeling that type of pressure (if not so immediately).
And all the GOP/Libertarians do is make fun of the poor, blame anyone with a health problem for not "shopping around" for better/cheaper healthcare, and bemoan the "church of universal coverage". They don’t get it.
America is rejecting the GOP and Libertarians for good reasons. Not out of ignorance, but increasingly because we get what their agenda really means, behind the rhetoric: Fuck you, I’ve got mine.
Xanthippas
I know right-wingers fly off the handle when you even imply that they might be the racist assholes they actually are, but I think this is a pretty good point.
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
He also has a hat and is dressed in black, which is slimming, making him appear malnourished when he really isn’t. So the homeless are both rich and fashion knowledgable.
Zifnab
@jcricket: There was a time when more Americans had mine and so could tell each other to fuck off. The bloom’s come off the rose somewhat. I just hope that, ten or fifteen years from now when we’re subjected to GOP Revisionist History about the Bush Golden Era of Success and Happiness, people don’t forget.
Cyrus
@sgwhiteinfla:
Yeah, I wonder about that "probably many more." Does anyone try to figure out how many more? The number of documented unemployed is simply those who have applied for unemployment benefits, right?
If so, I have to assume that’s less than half of all the actual unemployed. Some jobs aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits, some people probably don’t know about the option or how to claim it… I spent about three months between leaving my previous job and my first day at my current one, during which time I was burning through savings. (And it’s sheer, dumb luck that things have worked out as well as they have for me.) However, I’m pretty sure that I didn’t show up in any count of the unemployed.
Comrade Stuck
This is a news story from Albuquerque but my guess it applies around the country.
Of course to wingnuts, it’s always a case of likely democratic parents slacking off and not providing for their kids. They piss me off, heartless and ignorant motherfuckers.
HerrBerr
Coincidentally, the United States also has the world’s wealthiest fraudster criminals, and the world’s dirt-poorest Milton Friedman free-market economists.
DFH no.6
It’s Calvinism, people, just without any real grace or salvation.
The bedrock, the core, the very heart and soul and guts of conservatism is "I’ve got mine, Jack, keep your hands offa my stack! Devil take the hindmost".
Not, as many have claimed, some "hewing to tradition" or "whoa, slow down there, let’s be prudent" or (most laughably) "individual liberty".
Conservatism can be as reactionary, or just as often, as radical, as is most expedient for its practioners. It’s in no way intrinsically cautious or careful.
It’s Calvinism. A deeply cynical view of humanity that justifies oppression and inequity and suffering by claiming that the well-off and the not-well-off (the rulers and the ruled, the aristocracy and the serfs, the investment bankers and the working poor, etc.)"deserve" their station in life.
Everything else about conservatism is secondary.
Mouse Tolliver
I donated my last two cell phones to a charity that recycles secondhand phones. I did this because I’m not a Randian asshole. Being an acolyte of Ayn the Swine it probably never occured to K-Lo that such charities could (or should) exist.
Brandon T
She does realize that even people in African villages have cell phones now, right?
Comrade Darkness
@Napoleon: PS to my post – I would extend it to all of Hollywood
There are only a handful of true virtual organizations where disparate entities come together as a team for a project and then dissolve again and may or may not get the call for the next project. The other is construction.
I don’t know that that would make people lean liberal, per se. Hollywood just attracts the literate crowd with a story to tell. *That* might make someone lean liberal, just like it does on Broadway.
chrome agnomen
zimbabwe has the poorest rich people in the world. can ours please join them?
Comrade Stuck
@Brandon T:
Well, of course, everyone knows they are all terrorists and terrorists always have phones. How else would they send word to attack rich Americans. This is especially true in Obama’s village. The one he was born in/wingnut
Perry Como
Plus, that looks like an awfully nice blouse and sweater for a homeless person. And why is she serving the food? At least she’s doing some work instead of being a freeloader.
Wait..wut?
Ed Drone
I hereby bequeath, upon my death, Katherine Jean Lopez with exactly nothing, under the sure knowledge it will be distributed to the poor. I also bequeath to Rush Limbaugh one of my words, since he seems never to have kept one of his.
Ed
xochi
I worked for years at a homeless shelter/food program/social service agency, and people always asked about people in the lunch line with cell phones. Rarely did they ask about the people wearing uniforms, construction hardhats & gear, or business casual wear in line, because the assumption is that anyone who would be searching for a free lunch must be jobless, and those people didn’t raise hackles as much as when someone’s cell phone starts playing some annoying tune.
Cell phones are a very important tool for someone who is trying to lift themselves up out of poverty. How are you supposed to get a job if no one can call you? They are no longer a luxury, no more than having an email address. So the fact that this guy has a cell phone is a good thing, right?
Such idiots.
Xanthippas
Yeah, but actual Calvinists at least had some principles.
Mike P
Can I say Fuck K-Lo in this forum?
Oh wait, I just did.
Rick Taylor
@Ash Can:
I agree with you.
dan robinson
I don’t know about a startup doing voicemail for homeless shelters, but I used to work for a company that was instrumental in putting voicemail into homeless shelters back in the early-mid 90’s.
The problem for homeless people is that the need a way to be contacted for jobs. No phone, no job. No voicemail, no job. ActiveVoice was a company that made voicemail and other phone processing systems (now part of Cisco). The president, Robert "Bard" Richmond, established Community Voicemail http://www.cvm.org/index.cfm to help homeless people get voicemail. Richmond got a Presidential Service award from President Clinton in 1999.
Having a cell phone make sense if you are homeless. You are reachable for work.I don’t know about a startup doing voicemail for homeless shelters, but I used to work for a company that was instrumental in putting voicemail into homeless shelters back in the early-mid 90’s.
The problem for homeless people is that the need a way to be contacted for jobs. No phone, no job. No voicemail, no job. ActiveVoice was a company that made voicemail and other phone processing systems (now part of Cisco). The president, Robert "Bard" Richmond, established Community Voicemail http://www.cvm.org/index.cfm to help homeless people get voicemail. Richmond got a Presidential Service award from President Clinton in 1999.
Having a cell phone make sense if you are homeless. You are reachable for work.
tavella
It’s just another example of how out of touch they are. Cellphones are the default in the modern world, especially if you are poor. They aren’t a *luxury*; people who think like that are still stuck back in the 80s when they were prestige.
Landlines require deposits and bureaucracy, and don’t move when you have to. Landlines get cut off when you can’t pay the bill, and even once you scrape up a bit of money you have penalties on top. Cellphones can be obtained in any 7-11, and you can buy a prepaid card for minutes when you have some money, and when it runs out all you have to do is scrape up a few more dollars, no penalties involved.
Napoleon
@Comrade Darkness:
Hey, it was a theory. I doubted that it was the sole reason, and your point about them being literate is a good one. I hadn’t thought of construction as another great example of a virtual organization.
Doug
One thing that’s clear is that these advocates of private charity over a public safety net don’t spend a lot of time in food banks.
Bubblegum Tate
OT but too good to not share: Some of the most hardcore Bushies on the planet discuss when it will be appropriate to call for Obama’s resignation. The discussion-starter thinks it should be done in October.
Wile E. Quixote
What I love is that K-Lo claims to be a Christian and is constantly getting her panties in a bunch about abortion, gay marriage and the like. But helping the poor? Fuck that noise, that’s not mentioned the K-Lo bible, only the "love teh fetus, hate teh gay". It almost makes me wish that there were a Christian God, because if there were K-Lo and her Christoid buddies would be burning in Hell for all eternity.
Oh, and exactly what has K-Lo, or any other member of the Corner ever done in their lives that counts as useful and productive work? If the entire Corner crew had been aborted society wouldn’t be any worse off than it is today. I mean it’s not as if anyone at the Corner has ever contributed, or will ever contribute, any great works of art, scientific discoveries, philosophical insights or even a decent day of hard and honest work on some task, that while completely inglorious, needs to be done for society to keep running, in their lives.
wasabi gasp
Food shelters could tighten things up a bit with some simple regulations like, say, if you can walk through the door, walk back out, come back when you hobble or crawl.
Or, say, unless you’re dressed like Tom Hanks floating on a raft in Cast Away, your dinner choices are limited to liver and grizzle.
But, if you’re one of the lucky ones that forces the food shelter to call 911 because you passed out and appear to be on your last breath, you win an apple tart.
‘Sticks and Carrots’ and ‘Our Dessert is To Die For’ would be a couple wonderful food shelter slogans.
The Populist
Uhhh, some people live in the streets or in shelters even if they have crap paying min wage jobs. I know people who basically own a cellie and a car and some basic possessions.
They can’t afford housing in the cities they work, PERIOD. Oh and anybody can get a pre-paid cellphone, shit the right are stupid.
The Populist
Why do we hate the needy so much in this country? I mean who cares if somebody has a cell phone? It’s not that different from the days when people lived in low income housing and had BASIC phone service. I’d rather see a person with a cell so they can feel a bit safer.
KRK
Isn’t this Reagan’s "strapping young bucks buying T-bones" all over again?
Cris
Children, every last one of them. They honestly think "you did it to me, so it’s only fair if I do it to you!!!!" is all that matters. They only believe in teams and loyalty, not in actual reasons for supporting or opposing policy.
The Populist
Now that I think about it…have we ever seen Laura Bush handing out meals at one of these food banks?
QrazyQat
How about maybe, just maybe, the guy with the cellphone got it through one of the free cellphones programs for low income and/or homeless people, designed to allow them to have access to emergency calling, calls for employment, etc. SafeLink Wireless has such a program that covers Florida, Georgia, Massachussets, Michigan, New York, Tennessee, Virginia, and Pennsylvania… and oh yes, the District of Clumbia.
Cris
I don’t know, but I’m going to bet on "yes." It’s not that tall an order to put in a few hours at one of these places, especially when you’re a public figure like the First Lady. Laura Bush? Hell, I bet even Barbara Bush put in a token food bank appearance at least once.
Rick Taylor
@John Cole:
Ok, now I have to go throw up. . . .
Xanthippas
Seriously. I don’t know why I punish myself by visiting Memeorandum and succumbing to the temptation to read the droolings of various right-wingers. Like, this for example, where douchebag right-winger whines about all the "free phones" for the poor that we taxpayers are paying for. Oh uh, except that’s not true:
All that, to give out 68 minutes of free airtimes a month. But who are these lucky duckies who get 68 free minutes, when I have to pay out the nose for my Blackberry Storm with unlimited minutes? Damn them!
ksmiami
The right is always angry, always a victim of the malfeasance of poor people. These people are sociopaths that lack basic empathy and are completely delusional. Please go away you smug, smarmy assholes.
Thanks,
The Management
Rick Taylor
And I found something even worse. Glenn Beck. This is all about Obama who thinks he’s Jesus taking your money and giving to crack smoking kids with irresponsible octo-moms. . .ulllllllg.
Oh yeah, and progressives are always demonizing rich people and blaming everything on them.
Blue Raven
@Erika Froh:
To backtrack by over 150 years and switch nations, the cold-heartedness of the conservative mindset is sadly displayed by noting that a member of the British Parliament in 1847 went on the record as saying they had no need to change their food shipments out of Ireland as the invisible hand of the marketplace would determine whether the Irish lived or died. Granted, that man was probably a raving bigot against the Irish as well, but how is that different than many neo-cons and any black man who isn’t named Powell, Steele, or Thomas?
scarshapedstar
And did you know that the average "poor" person has a color TV?
You can’t get a color TV without spending at least $5 at Salvation Army. This is what’s bleeding us dry, my friends.
Mnemosyne
Because he’s black.
SASQ.
JenJen
Malkin got the memeorandum.
Truly one of the more ridiculous RW hissy fits of late.
daryljfontaine
@Xanthippas:
Well, instead of complaining about their tax dollars, now they’ll just bitch about the Universal Service Charge on their phone bills. "Why should my free market dollars subsidize these freeloading losers?"
D
Memo to wingnuts: While you’re denying those facts—desperately, as you will—we’ll act again, fixing the shit that’s wrong in reality, which you can deny too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re the people who fix shit… and you, all of you, will be left to just deny everything and smear yourselves with your own feces. (original here)
lilybart
Lesley, thanks, that was very wise:
Your stuff doesn’t make you wealthy.
Alexandra
Just as I was reading this, I heard an ad on TV for people to get cellphones if they fall below a certain income level. It was called something like "Trackback." Why can’t people understand that if you are poor, a cellphone can be a lifeline, one that can summon the police or help you to stay connected. Also, a relative could have given their homeless family member a cellphone. Why do we begrudge such small things to people who don’t even have a home?
binzinerator
@Lesley:
Profound observation there.
That fear’s gotta register on a deep level in most people.
It is beginning to dawn on a lot of middle class families that one serious medical emergency could bankrupt them. And that was even before any of the mortgage problems and job layoffs.
I am inclined to think conservatives like K-Lo have even another, even more uncomfortable truth they desperately want to avoid facing: Their whole world view emphasized getting rich and getting more stuff (the "greed is good" ethos, Bush’s admonition to go shopping, Cheney’s ‘deficits don’t matter’ — i.e. grab what you can, buy as much as you can, and even go way into debt to do it.)
This was the republican prescription for the good life. And it was all a fraud. A fraud on several levels. Not only does our stuff we went into debt to buy not make us rich, their promotion of their Ownership society and entrepreneurial spirit and rugged individualism and self-reliance and bootstraps and all that other bullshit was one big fraud too.
The only thing now that separates the middle class from homelessness is luck. One bad test result, one layoff, one disabling accident, one tragedy and most people in the middle class would soon be homeless too. After 30 years of agreeing to let conservatism shape our society and our economy and our prospects, we discover that in return we have nothing more than dumb luck with which to rely on to keep us in our homes.
No wonder K-Lo and other conservatives like her lash out at the the homeless. The truths the mere presence of a homeless person puts before them are so uncomfortable as to be intolerable. So they attack whomever might cause them, even inadvertently, to face who they really are.
joe from Lowell
Because they don’t want to.
Mike in NC
The late NBC news anchor John Chancellor used to provide commentary at the end of his show. One time (early Reagan era) he noted an increase in the public attitude along the lines of "I got mine but I’ll be damned if I let you get yours". You won’t hear that from Chris Matthews or the other talking heads today.
Arclite
It’s pretty easy to get nice clothes in this country for pennies on the dollar. I make 55K a year (live in HI tho) and my wife does the majority of our clothes shopping at Goodwill and garage sales.
Not to mention with unemployment at 15%, you have a lot of recently formerly employed people who need to eat. Clothes can stay nice for a decade if you take care of them, but folks have to eat every day.
Frank DD
Businesses are in a difficult situation. They cannot employ people if they don’t have money coming in.
Ultimately, the social contract that was forged as we emerged from the Great Depression was based on business needing employees more than they do now. Business can often hum along with very few employees, due to technology.
Of course, that avoids the very important question "Who will buy the products of business?"
I am really at a loss to figure out what we will end up with. I don’t think that either capitalism or communism have answers for what we are seeing. Both seem like they are roads to misery in their own right.
The 20th century appears to have been the century of "the job" and perhaps, a historical anomaly.
Maybe we will eventually return to the feudal system, or something similar. I don’t have much confidence in politicians to solve this as they can’t even admit what the real problems are.
We need to embrace new technology because the answers to our problems are there if we look. Just as new technology eliminates jbs, it also creates them. Somewhere.
(Just a lot less.)
In the meantime, we should seriously consider a 30 hour week, universal healthcare, decentralizing everything (so a single blip wouldn’t throw everything off, sometimes, super efficiency is problematic.. for example, closing hospitals might make sense from a profit perspective, but what happens when you suddenly need beds..etc.)
We need to do what we can to help small and medium sized business survive, even if it is less efficient.
the problem is, they can’t afford access to Washington. They don’t have lobbyists..
We also should invest heavily in robotics and business automation, otherwise the other developed nations will get all those jobs. Without a scientifically literate workforce, we wont have anything.
Don’t forget, with Moore’s Law making computers cheaper and cheaper, and with communication and hardware costs approaching zero, there is no reason a farmer in Kansas can’t hire a driver in India to steer his tractor, remotely.
Thats what we are competing with.
Things could get a lot worse before they get better unless we are willing to all put our heads together to preserve the human race though this transition..
We have to think "abundance" NOT "scarcity"
Thats what Jesus was trying to tell us, 2000 years early.
(maybe He knew something about our future we didn’t!)
Cal Gal
Gotta get going so I’m going to just jump right in here without reading the other comments.
What kind of phone are the homeless SUPPOSED to have? Land lines are kind of impossible. Pre-paid phone service is incredibly cheap, and there are charities that recycle old cell phones for the homeless or even for the poor.
Ever tried applying for a job without a phone contact OR a fixed address?
People without empathy are usually considered sociopaths. I’d apply that to anyone criticizing a homeless person for having a cell phone. I just hope there are convenient places for this man to recharge his phone.
Greg
Yes K-Lo, most poor Americans wouldnt be poor if they could have their incomes in, say, the Dominican Republic…… and you wouldn’t be as heavy if we weighed you on the moon either.
Randy
That was the thing that struck me about the Reagan reelection slogan "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Up till the current crash, this would be true for a majority of people. You stay in the same job and get a raise. You got married and have dual incomes. You finished school, etc. But Reagan encouraged us to ignore any questions about whether the country had improved and vote for him if you got yours.
And not only to think only in terms of how much of the pie you got, but also to give the credit if just by living four years you got more of the pie.
HRA
We give our old cells to the shelter for abused women.
Looks like some without charity for the less fortunate want to turn the clock back to the olden days.
Bubblegum Tate
They’re not supposed to have any–they’re supposed to buy houses instead of phones. Or something.
Michelle
I wish the right-wingers would make up their damn minds: into which social status do we liberals really "fit" into, in their small minds? Are we all elitist, highly-educated, latte-sipping, arugula-eating upper-middle-class effetes, or are we the impoverished masses siphoning cell phones and free meals off the public teet? In the right-wingers’ black-and-white world, we surely can’t be both because conservatives aren’t big on diversity and nuance. Yet they seem to rip us apart for being "too" rich and rip us apart for being "too" poor. I am convinced that K-Lo and the likes of her are truly schizophrenic.
Jesse
It almost seems useless to say at this point, but…
There are hundreds of programs in each state to give access to some form of telecommunication, be it landline, cellular, or some other form.
How else do you expect the homeless to stop being homeless? How do you get an interview if you can’t receive a callback?
I guess some people love to engage in useless contradiction. "You don’t have a phone or home because you can’t get a job, and you can’t a job because you don’t have a phone or home address. Let’s lambaste this individual, and make sure things stay the same."
B. Manifesto
Sociopaths. That’s what these people are. They have no soul or conscience. They run on pure ego and ambition.
Jade
The saying goes that a picture speaks a thousand words. I think in this case the saying should be…’a thousands words that I’ll just pull out of my clueless butt.’ Yeesh already.
A one point in my life I hit a bad spot. Lost my job and unfortunately it took much longer to find another one then I thought it would to get another one. It almost broke me and basically it came down to using what little I had to keep a roof over my head and keep the bare necessities going and eating. I also had a crappy car which was paid for and thank goodness insurance that was pre-paid for a few more months as well as pre-paid phone that I used sparingly. It was for job search calls only. So I made a decision which was something that I never ever thought I would do. It was freaking embarassing actually. I went and ate at a free food program for just over a month and got one good meal a day. If it wasn’t for that I would have had to give up the things that actually helped me be in a place to work when I found it, like phone, home and crappy car which was next on the list to try to sell if things didn’t turn around really quickly. It was something I was dreading because it actually put more limits to my job prospects.
Well thankfully things did and by the end of that month I did get a job and thankfully still had my car to get to that job because transit wasn’t an option for it. I came *this* close to crashing and burning completely.
I still find it somewhat embarassing that I went there but you know what I am sure grateful it was because it helped keep me from possibly losing my home and getting into an even worse situation and possibly becoming an even bigger drain on the system. Also as soon as I paid off the credit debt I accrued trying to stay afloat during that unemployed time I gave back to the place that helped me through that patch. That reminds me I should send them some more money.
Mud
I’m currently homeless, living on food stamps and the good graces of close friends. I own a cell phone and I use it to find jobs and keep in touch with said gracious friends. It cost me 40 dollars (my LAST 40 dollars, incidentally). And while it has the capability to take pictures, I don’t have occassion to use the camera lately, as there’s little worth remembering at this point in my life. I am struggling to get by and using the internet at a local cafe just to be able to look for jobs (that aren’t there). To read such out of touch, incredibly callous words shocks me to the core of my soul. Can a person be so heartless? Cell phones are hardly a luxury item. And the way I see it, if the gentleman in the picture felt like documenting his visit with Michelle Obama, more power to him. Everyone needs something to smile about, especially in such hard times.
..And to think that they were the party of Lincoln. Abe would be rolling over in his grave if he heard such hateful commentary from that nutjob K-Lo.
I have the feeling that conservatives would be happier with things if us homeless folks were left to out own desert..I’m guessing they’d stick us somewhere in Nevada..
Ariadne
"We are so blessed to have poor people with cell phones"
Get used to it. Most of the video news that comes out of places like Zimbabwe and Myanmar is taken by local people with cell phones. During the elections in Zimbabwe, people documented that Robert Mugabe lost by taking cell phone pictures of election results posted at polling stations and emailing them to MDC headquarters.
Americans are so provincial they don’t even realize that much of the world has passed us by technologically in many areas. Asians have faster internet, more sophisticated cell phones, and the rest of the developed world has not only far better access to health care than the US, it also has scientifically more advanced health care than the US.
Americans are not "blessed"; they are stupid. Stupid enough to be scared away from health care everyone else in the developed world enjoys by the magic word "Socialism". Say that word and American brains turn off.
This stupidity is not an accident. Americans are stupid by design. The ruling class needs a stupid citizenry to maintain control, and it ensures we have a stupid citizenry with a terrible public education system — another area where the US is behind the rest of the world.
seventwentyfour
I’ve been hunting for a job for months now and for the first time in my life can’t put a roof over my head. I’m almost 37 so I guess that’s some sort of accomplishment. Only thanks to a few close friends am I not homeless and won’t be even if this job hunt goes on several more months. And they’re the few people who don’t question every last f’ing thing like idiotic shit about how I can still have a cell phone but can’t pay rent. I explain that my rent was about 35x the cheapest phone plan I could go down to in my contract. Well, why didn’t I find a cheaper place to live sooner? Ok, I had a lease and breaking it would have been a world of hurt, the landlord would not allow someone to take it over (probably because he had to knock $175/month off the rent when he advertised it after I moved out) and no one responded to my roommate ad because who the fuck wants to share a studio, and my boss was kind enough to not lay me off until my lease was up and then once I was out of my lease people don’t want roommates who are unemployed…so, motherfucker, that’s why I’m on a friend’s sofa. Well, didn’t you have any savings? I did and and burnt through as much of them as I could and by the way can I see your savings account statement or is that none of my motherfucking business?
Anyway, that’s the way it goes when you’re unemployed. You are under scrutiny, suspect.
Anastasius
Fuck you poor people! What are you doing holding a cellphone instead of a beer can? Act according to your class already! Poor people having a phone to try to get a job? Head go boom!
I hope this becomes the new tire gauges and maybe leads to a real discussion about poverty.
jonzee
With these folks there angst, anger, and outrage is just symbolic of their "freaked out" fear of ending up in the situation. Their only way to respond is to, as my great aunt, muh dear would say, ‘act an ass’.
You should see some of the responses I got on my post about "Jane"
Pursang
Whoops, I better run back over to Goodwill and take back those suits that no longer fit. I wouldn’t want a homeless guy getting one to go to a job interview and have him run into K-Lo. She’d probably freak out and spit out a four page diatribe about how good the homeless dress.
I’m not a violent person but I swear, the more I read crap like this the more I just want to drag these people by the hair into a food pantry or soup kitchen. Not just to look but to talk to the people and maybe get some idea of who these people really are. Maybe that way the stereotypes they’ve built up in there demented pointy little heads would go away. Nope, what was I thinking. Conservatives like
K-Lo will never get it because it would challenge everything they’ve believed in their whole lives.
In a hundred years history books will document the end of the United States as a world power. The morale of the story will be that the conservative movement shot this country in the head and left it for dead. The only good thing is that they will have taken themselves down as well.
jonzee
Folks like K-Lo act this way out of a subconcious freaked out fear that it could be them–though they purport to not understand how anyone of us could end up homeless, broke, jobless…period. Do we make decisions that might not help bad situations? Hell ya’. Its called human nature.
As my great aunt, muh dear(RIP), would say, all folks like k-lo know how to do is ‘act an ass, ‘steada trying to listen to folk’.
You should some of the responses I got on my post about "Jane"
Pat "the Christian"
This is my first time on this website. I can’t help but notice that you folks are VERY negative. You control both houses and have a Progressive in the White House. Smile, it won’t ever get any better than this for you people.
I’ve read studies that show we Republicans and especially we Christians are much happier people than you on the left but I’m surprised by how much hate and venom (and ingnorance) many of you have. Some responses mention that we don’t care about the poor. On average, we give more to charity than you do.
To notice that the poor children in America ask for Ipods when the poor elsewhere ask for food isn’t heartless. It’s just noticing what an incredible country we live in! God bless America!
Love, -Pat
Pat "the Christian"
This is my first time on this website. I can’t help but notice that you folks are VERY negative. You control both houses and have a Progressive in the White House. Smile, it won’t ever get any better than this for you people.
I’ve read studies that show we Republicans and especially we Christians are much happier people than you on the left but I’m surprised by how much hate and venom (and ingnorance) many of you have. Some responses mention that we don’t care about the poor. On average, we give more to charity than you do.
To notice that the poor children in America ask for Ipods when the poor elsewhere ask for food isn’t heartless. It’s just noticing what an incredible country we live in! God bless America!
Love, -Pat
wystler
sorry to hear that you’ve misunderstood, brother Pat (doubly sorry if it’s sister Pat, but i digress).
it’s obvious this is your first visit here. brother John Cole was, for years, an unabashed conservative/libertarian who finally managed to remove the plank from his own eye recently.
perhaps some day soon, Pat, we’ll be able to say the same for you. until then, know that you’ll be in our prayers.
EvilJam
Well, the other thing K-Lo is likely clueless about is anyone can buy a cell phone for $19 at Wal-Mart, K-Mart or Target. Camera phones are more – in the $69 range – but even the poor own cell phones these days. Hardly an item used exclusively by the rich.
joe from Lowell
On average, we give more to charity than you do.
This isn’t actually true. Liberals give a higher % of their available income to charity. The geographic divide between liberals and conservatives, in the aggregate (with more liberals in expensive metropolitan areas, and in the more-expensive urban and inner-ring suburban areas of their regions, while more conservatives live in cheaper metro areas and in the more outlying, less-expensive parts of their regions) leaves liberals with a smaller percentage of their income as available income.
Ariadne
Dear Pat "the Christian",
It has taken almost 30 years for the Voodoo economics of St. Ronnie to destroy the economy of the entire planet. It will take more than a generation to undo the damage — and some of the damage (thinking of lost time in dealing with global warming and other environmental depredations) can probably never be repaired.
Obama doesn’t represent the apex of progressivism, He represents a turning point, a turning away from selfish capitalism and towards social democracy — but it will take a long time for Americans to get to where Europe has been for decades… much longer than 2 terms of Obama.
Take religion for example. US presidents are expected to invoke the Almighty every time they speak, but the British foreign minister once observed that the UK government "doesn’t do God." The majority of Brits self describe as "not religious", and a hefty minority self describe as "atheists". That is what a mature, educated, modern democracy is like. And France is even more fiercely secular than England. The US is a medieval anachronism by comparison.
In the long run, it is Obama’s education initiatives that will change America the most, but that won’t be obvious until a couple of decades have passed.
SFAW
Pat "the ‘Christian’ " –
I can’t help but notice that you folks are VERY negative.
As compared to you guys, the "Party of No", I suppose? "I hope he fails", sayeth one of your fellow "Christians", the apparent leader of the Repugs. Nice to know you guys hope the country’s economy gets destroyed.
I’ve read studies that show we Republicans and especially we Christians are much happier people than you on the left …
As you should be: generally, ignorance (or is it ingnorance?) is more oblivious re: dangerous situations than is intelligence. And since there’s also a high correlation between states with low academic test scores (and such) and voting Republican, I guess ignorance IS bliss.
… but I’m surprised by how much hate and venom (and ingnorance) many of you have.
Apparently you’ve been in a coma since before Bill Clinton was elected. Otherwise, you’d remember the non-stop shrieking from your side about how terrible Clinton – in fact, ALL liberals – was/were. The stuff you’re whining about is nothing compared to the crap you guys have been pulling for 20+ years.
It’s just noticing what an incredible country we live in!
It was, until you and your Rethuglican brethren (and sistern) started on your/their holy quest to destroy the American ideal that most of us liberals have been trying to uphold. We just hope it’s not too late to reverse the destructive course the Rethugs have set.
Love, -Pat
It’s been my experience that most people – especially "Christians" – who keep telling how much they love us, actually have a ton of anger and hate boiling just beneath the surface. They think that if they say "I love you" (in the "Christian" sense) enough times, that their anger and hatred will magically disappear. No doubt it will. And no doubt the economy will miraculously recover next month.
But to show you that I’m not all bark, I’ll make you a loving offer: give us your PayPal information, and I’ll try to arrange for us to send you A CLUE.
[delurk]...[/delurk]
As a left-coaster who doesn’t work in an office, I’m always late for these threads, but here’s my contribution, anyway, because this makes me so fucking mad!
I lived in my car for exactly a year (10/12/90-10/12/91.) I lost my apartment because once my phone was disconnected it was absolutely impossible for me to get a job. Fortunately, my car was a small wagon, so I could actually lie down in it!
Cell phones existed, of course, but nobody in my class, even when I was working, had one in those days. After about 8 months and losing 110 pounds, I found out I could actually get Food Stamps even though I didn’t have a kid. I got them–$110 worth a month as I remember. I had to spend them all in a few days walking from grocery store to grocery store (couldn’t afford gas,) buying things for hopefully $1.01 so I could pocket the 99 cents change to buy shaving cream and deodorant and bus fare trying to find a job.
You can’t do that any more because they give you debit-card type things now. Finally I found a program that gave me a free voice-mail number that I could check frequently from a pay phone with change from those Food Stamps and actually got a job. That program ran out of money and ended before I got my first paycheck, but it quite literally saved my life.
If cheap cellphones and pre-paid minutes had existed in those days, I might never have been homeless and certainly wouldn’t have been for so long. (I really lucked out, because I never got pulled over to reveal my Driver’s License had expired because I didn’t have the $14 to renew it.)
So fuck K. Lo sideways with a nail-studded cricket bat, Mmm-kay?
Insight
Here’s how they (conservative wingnuts) think:
1) Person with cellphone is black, not wearing a suit
2) Therefore person must be homeless
3) Poor people are poor because they don’t work hard enough and are lazy or stupid
4) Therefore, this person had money at some point and ‘chose’ a cellphone over food, and eats free food.
5) Therefore, they can’t possibly be that bad off.
John
I haven’t read the comments and I assume someone has mentioned this but there are many cell phone donation programs in most cities in order to keep cell phones from ending up in landfills. Non-profits take cell phones that would otherwise be thrown away and give them to women’s shelters, homeless shelters, and the like. Often they work out a deal with a cell provider which allows the cell provider to donate cell service and use it as a tax write-off. Not to say that is the case here, just wanted to point out that cell phones are easy to come by for people in need and that is a *good thing*.
kathy
Land lines work so well when you’re homeless.
Kevin
Pat The Christian,
Go watch the 2004 Republican convention, and then tell me Republicans are happy when they control the government.
Jen Jacobsen
Hi Everyone
I don’t understand all of the commotion about this article. So what, the man had a cell phone. Other than that, we know nothing else about the situation. Like many others have said, prepaid phones are very cheap nowadays. If he is homeless, maybe he bought the cell phone before economic disaster hit him. Or, maybe his mom bought the cell phone for him so he could stay in touch with her. The reasons could be unlimited.
Before we judge others, what does it mean to be poor in America? If I had to define poorness, the answer would be not having enough money to meet your basic needs ie. food, shelter, clothing. I don’t remember what the statistics are exactly, but many Americans are a step away from homelessness, just surving from paycheck to paycheck with little or no savings. If you lose your job in that situation, the resources are not going to last long. Furthermore, between a minimum that does not support basic needs and an economic climate where layoffs and pay cuts are common, he could be working and still not have enough to meet his basic needs. Where does it say that to recieve help, the only thing you can own is the clothes on your back?
When I was growing up, my mom had a plaque on her wall. It said something to the extent that before you judge others, walk a mile in their mocassins. It’s shamless the way some people are so petty nowadays. Rather than judging others, they should get down on their knees and thank God that they are not in that situation.
R. Schmidt-Orren
@Randy:
.
Very late to this thread, but I think your comment is a very significant insight, especially the time frame part.