Major cuts to food stamps going effective today, All Saints Day.

[No Elephants]

Obama entered office promising cuts to "entitlements."

The very first budget that Obama sent to congress included cuts to fuel subsidies for the poor.

Obama has doggedly taken one step after another to effect cuts to Social Security and Medicare, while trying to make said cuts look like a necessary concession to Republicans.

Some of the most allegedly liberal Democratic Senators, such as Franken and Wyden, have voted consistently against food stamps (SNAP) and Obama signs.

Gee, take away home heating in winter, food, medical care and money to pay for shelter, and what do you get?

Same thing you get with drone killings.

Corpses.

Someone tell Obama that increasing the numbers of the deceased is not the recommended way to observe All Saints Day.

Thanks.

All Saints' Day (also known as All Hallows, Solemnity of All Saints, or The Feast of All Saints)<3> is a solemnity celebrated on 1 November by parts of Western Christianity, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Christianity, in honour of all the saints, known and unknown. All Saints' Day is the second day of Hallowmas,<4> and begins at sunrise on the first day of November and finishes at sundown. It is the day before All Souls' Day.

In Western Christian theology, the day commemorates all those who have attained the beatific vision in Heaven. It is a national holiday in many historically Catholic countries. In the Catholic Church and many Anglican churches, the next day specifically commemorates the departed faithful who have not yet been purified and reached heaven. Christians who celebrate All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day do so in the fundamental belief that there is a prayerful spiritual bond between those in heaven (the 'Church triumphant'), and the living (the 'Church militant'). Other Christian traditions define, remember and respond to the saints in different ways; for example, in the Methodist Church, the word "saints" refers to all Christians and therefore, on All Saints' Day, the Church Universal, as well as the deceased members of a local congregation, are honored and remembered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints%27_Day

[Enthusiast]

1. This is also disappointing.

It will be more than disappointing to those that have their food subsidies cut. What happened to our country?

[No Elephants]

2. The votes on this raise a lot of questions in my mind.

In the House, where Republicans alone can pass anything they want, not a single Democrat voted for it.

And the House vote was followed by news that the White House strongly opposed the cuts.

However, the Senate version of the Bill was sponsored by a Democrat (Stabenow) and 46 Democrats (including Stabenow) voted for it (along with 18 Republicans). Among the Democrats who voted for it were Blue Dogs, like Nelson and Tester and. Franken and Harkin, among the more left of the Senators, but also among those that consistently vote for cuts to SNAP. More surprising votes perhaps were those of Warren and Sanders. However, SNAP was not the only topic in the bill.

Still, it is all disconcerting.

I wish each Senator and Rep had to put on his or her website a brief statement of why they voted on each bill as he or she did.


ETA: And, of course, MSNBC today is making it sound as though Republicans and only Republicans were responsible for the cuts. :banghead:


Lord, I am so sick of the red team fan, blue team fan game and the deception from both politicians and media. None of them do their jobs. But, we are still supposed to pay out federal income taxes every year? For what?

And don't even get me started on FICA, from the inequitable structure to theft of the funds by one administration after another to pay for wars and other crap that only harms us.

[No Elephants]

3. "What happened to our country? "

Maybe, that is what the 1% asked themselves after Lincoln, FDR and LBJ. And ever since, they've been "correcting course."

I see those three as the aberrations, not the norm. If you mentally remove them, it's been a fairly consistent theme since the East India Company.

Not sure exactly where JFK fits in.

He did cut taxes for the rich, but they had been increased to pay for WWII and his cut was not huge.

Anyway, he met the same fate as Lincoln--not to mention his hungry kids in Appalachia visiting brother.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Single bullet, crazy Sirhan Sirhan, everyone acted alone, yadda yadda.

[Enthusiast]

4. None of the assassinations were done by a

single crazy man. The more things are verboten to discuss the more you know it is being covered up. They are covering up so much stuff that it is like a teetering house of cards.

[No Elephants]

5. Everyone acted alone. Move along, now.

[Enthusiast]

6. Of course.

And if you disagree you will find yourself on a secret list somewhere. You will be subjected to special surveillance, you know, for the good of the nation, lol.

They hate us for our freedumbs.

[No Elephants]

7. Poll says only 24% of Americans today believe that Kennedy was killed by Oswald, acting alone.

16% are unsure.

The rest--60%--believe the death of President Kennedy was attributable to a conspiracy.

This was the lead in to an interview of Oliver Stone by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, in part on the 50th anniversary of the assassinaton (which itself was only months after the civil rights March on Washington, whose 50th anniversary we marked recently).

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/11/5/oliver_stone_on_his_next_project

So, 76% of Americans are some kind of lunatic conspiracy theorist fringe, or so we sophisticates in the 24% are supposed to believe.

Stone was saying that our fear of Communism was always disproportionate to "their" actual threat to us. By "their," I think he means nations that were at the time officially Communist.

Oddly, he doesn't seem to put that thought together with the witch hunts of domestic Communists, including in the military and in Stone's very own industry. The very same witch hunts that supposedly led then film industry union leader Reagan to switch from Democrat to Republican.

Hmmmm.

Anyway, I think their worry in the Thirties to the Sixties of American Communists was great. Perhaps not as great as their worry about Russia, et al., but still great.

Are they worried now? Yes and no. Worried enough for the surveillance/security state, yes. Worried that a rebellion will ever reach the 1%? Probably not.

[Enthusiast]

8. The national security apparatus appears to have

changed its priorities from communism to terrorism to protecting the interests of the wealthy elite.

[No Elephants]

9. No change. It's all been about protecting the interests of the plutocrats.

That's what the fear of communism was about. And the fear, both real and ginned, of the terorists, which got us things like Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. And which now is being used to excuse the NSA by terrorizing us about terrorists.