Alex Koppelman of the famous War Room over at Salon on Friday noted that the people from the 'Right"...are in a tizzy over an Associated Press photo that shows a man taking a picture of Obama using a cellphone....The first lady visited a Washington, D.C., homeless shelter on Thursday, bringing fruit collected in a White House food drive and serving some of the shelter's clients...It seems Michelle Obama can't even do a good deed without inspiring some outrage on the right.


Another favorite over there, Joan Walsh  followed up:

It's Friday, I'm tired, and I'm not proud of this: I broke one of my rules today, and clicked on a link to Michelle Malkin's blog.

I couldn't help it: This phony "controversy" over the homeless man who took a cellphone photo of Michelle Obama while she was serving food at a shelter made me sick. Short version: The wingnuts are raving about the audacity of a homeless guy having a cellphone, ignoring that many shelters help their clients get prepaid cellphones so they have a phone number to leave when applying for jobs or looking for housing. Duh.

But Joan also noted that this Michelle Malkin has a lot of followers that do not think that African Americans should vote let alone go to food shelters with cellphones.  Really caused a racist storm on Malkins Blog.  But Joan also took the time to cite those commenters who noted that racism has no place in the discussion.        

I am putting aside the racist aspect of all this, remembering that in DC there are tens of thousands of poor people and most of them are African American. But not without noting that most of our country's blatant racists come from the right wing, the republican party.

I thought I would look up some facts:

1. How many people in this country receive Food Stamps ?:

 "The number of Americans receiving food stamps reached 31.5 million in September 2008 (10.3% of the total USA population), the highest absolute number since the program began in 1962; but the highest ratio was reached in 1994 with 10.5% of the American population.[2] " (Wiki)

2. How many people are receiving unemployment benefits?

The national unemployment rate rose to 8.1 percent in February, the highest rate in a quarter century, as the economy shed 651,000 jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday. (More from Economic is here.) NYT3/6/09

3. How many people are receiving benefits from Social Security Disability program?        

The amount of time it takes for an application to be approved or denied varies, depending on the level of the process at which the award is made. In 2006, there were 2,532,264 applications for SSDI.[4] As of March 31, 2007, the number of pending applications (or "backlog") was 1,463,153.[5] Experts have asserted that this backlog is being caused by the increase in applicants, the increase in retiring SSA workers, the inability of the SSA to replace the retiring workers and budget limitations.[6] wiki

4. How many people are receiving benefits from Social Security, as retirees?
I can't find the damn number. I assume 50 million people. If it is forty million, sue me.

5. How many Medicaid recipients? :

2000---------42,763,164

Great up to date governmental statistics, huh?


I really did not wish to get into a research project here. I am too lazy this AM. If anybody is reading this tirade, give me the link that takes care of all this, some fascist tax payers revolt blog or something.

The point of this blog was to take another look at whom in this country we like to blame, whom we like to point at as being less than deserving, whom we desire to shame or embarrass.

I am always taken with the vice presidential debate of 2000, when dicky c looked at lierman and said that his success in the private sphere had nothing to do with governmental hand outs.

I have recited many times the history here of our last vp. 1992 dicky saw the end of a governmental career so he took a 200 page advertisement from Haliburton and had the government pay it seven million dollars by calling it a study on outsourcing and promptly awarded it a bunch of no-bid contracts from the Pentagon. Well some were bid contracts, but since Haliburton had written the rules for bidding in the first place, it hardly seemed fair.

In 1995, dicky was appointed CEO of this fine company and promptly got it a 2 ½ billion low interest loan from the government through his old contacts; of course it was all set up before he 'took' the position.   He then proceeded to do $70,000,000 worth of business with Saddam in violation of US law as well as international law and, of course, at one point during our two wars that he started, made sure that the big H received ten cents of every dollar spent on those wars. The big H of course is no longer a US corporation but a Dubai corporation.  There, two short paragraphs on the single biggest welfare pay out to one recipient in world history.

In order to save our economy, one trillion dollars just went to the institutions that cause the crisis in the first place.Who is the right blaming for the crisis?  The poor and the powerless for getting mortgages they could not afford. 

Everybody knows that those poor people would never have gotten those mortgages in the first place without cellphones.

Doolittle in Pygmalion notes that:

I am a member of the undeserving poor, I am. But I have my own needs, I do.

This whole blog was about outrage from the right about someone who took a picture of our First Lady at a food bank.

And me, I am a member of the undeserving poor, I am.