White Boys, Food Stamps, and Eliot Spitzer
Some news stories are infuriating, some are validating, some are positively and pathetically amusing. One of each classification follows:
White Boys: They may not be able to jump but at least one black judge in Pennsylvania thinks they get favored treatment.
It should be ironic given President Obama's post-racial America that Allegheny County Judge Joseph Williams still thinks that way but it's not ironic at all since Obama's post-racial America is a sorry joke.
Williams rejected a plea deal of 3 months probation for 24 year old Jeffery McGowan in a case involving a fight with a traffic cop saying that it was "a ridiculous plea that only goes to white boy," adding that a black defendant in that situation would not have been treated as leniently: [http://tiny.cc/o4g9j]
The first problem I have with Williams' statement is that he referred to a 24 year old man as a "white boy." Unless I'm seriously mistaken, had a white judge called a black defendant, whether he were a 24 or 16 "black boy," would have been censured, if not fired. Why wasn't Williams?
The second problem I have with him is that Judge Williams had the audacity to not merely imply but to voice a definitive opinion that his or any court treats blacks and whites differently. If he has any substantive proof of the existence of such blatant racism, he should make that proof known-or keep his mouth shut on the issue.
Such is the state of Obama's race-neutrality in 2010 America,
Food Stamps: The ancient Romans had a different name for welfare and for buying votes. They called it "panem et circensis," bread and circuses, bread and games. Among other things, America calls it food stamps.
Anyone who has ever shopped in "mixed neighborhoods" or today, even in many middle class locales, has seen its results.
Very often as employed, hard working, and upright citizens purchased hamburger or cheap cuts of meat to feed their families, plus lots of pasta and gut-filling rice, others in the supermarket line were buying top sirloin, loin lamb chops, tons of expensive TV-dinners, and loads of chips, pretzels and other snacks-with food stamps generously provided by taxpayers.
To be sure, every such food stamp purchase is not of high-end products. Furthermore, the federal Supplemental Assistance Program, SNAP, as it is bureaucratically known, long ago abandoned paper food stamps in favor of cards which look like credit cards. Those original paper stamps must have been considered degrading to the dignity of their recipients whereas if those recipients could falsely feel as if they were using credit cards, they were happier.
SNAP has also long been plagued by corruption, fraud, and widespread abuse whereby food stamp "entitlements" were customarily sold for cold, hard cash which enabled needy recipients to buy their beer, booze, and drugs. In addition, according to the GAO, 44.8% of food stamp benefits were found to be overpaid.
But, who cares? They bought votes just as those Roman bread and circuses bought votes. Whatever the traffic will bear, right?
With that as a track record, the United States Agriculture Department announced that in July some 41.8 million Americans were on the food stamp/"credit card" dole. Furthermore, "Participation has set records for 20 straight months" and was up 18% for the year: [http://tiny.cc/l0gz1i2dtt]
That's a whole lot of deserving, and undeserving, citizens-and non-citizens-more than one-eighth of the population-even for these trying times with at least 9.7% unemployment despite the president's promise that passage of his humonguous stimulation bill.
Eliot Spitzer: Poor Eliot, what would your mother think? Caught almost literally with his pants down pursuing happy hookers in 2008, the former New York attorney general and governor who resigned the governorship in shame has landed on his feet just 30 months after conceding "private failings."
Desparate for ratings and after canning Rick Sanchez for daring to say the news media, and his employer, CNN, were controlled by Jews, CNN hired Eliot to co-host the primetime "Spitzer Parker" with alleged conservative journalist, Kathleen Parker, who is about as conservative as Spitzer was faithful to his wife.
"Spitzer Parker" turned out to be a ratings bust on a par with MSNBC's Keith Olberman but that was the least of the indignities Ol' Eliot was forced to endure.
Adding grave personal insult to Spitzer's political injury, "The Manhattan madam who supplied hooker-happy former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer a slew of high priced call girls has labeled his new CNN primetime show a bore -'just like he was in bed.' "
Good grief, Eliot must be thinking, Is nothing sacred?
Apparently not. At least his sack proficiency is fair game to his madam who explained that his boring CNN performance "is sort of synonymous of what the girls told me about him in bed, that he was boring, so I guess the expectations were met."
That madam, Kristin Davis, "who wrote The Manhattan Madam: Sex, Drugs, Scandal & Greed Inside America's Most Successful Prostitution Ring," didn't leave it at that. She went on to admit that "she couldn't watch Parker Spitzer for very long before flicking the switch. "It wasn't worth the ten minutes that I watched it and if that's what it's going to be like then I'd rather watch paint dry."
Davis added that, "I thought Kathleen Parker did a good job, and I don't know how she stomached sitting next to him. It actually put me to sleep... CNN should at least let him be the jerk that we know he can be. It is a train wreck of a show:" [http://tiny.cc/ovud5]
A sort of friendly word of advice to Eliot Spitzer: Cut your losses, cut CNN, and retreat into a cocoon where you contemplate your navel or maybe contemplate the future of white boys and food stamps.
White Boys: They may not be able to jump but at least one black judge in Pennsylvania thinks they get favored treatment.
It should be ironic given President Obama's post-racial America that Allegheny County Judge Joseph Williams still thinks that way but it's not ironic at all since Obama's post-racial America is a sorry joke.
Williams rejected a plea deal of 3 months probation for 24 year old Jeffery McGowan in a case involving a fight with a traffic cop saying that it was "a ridiculous plea that only goes to white boy," adding that a black defendant in that situation would not have been treated as leniently: [http://tiny.cc/o4g9j]
The first problem I have with Williams' statement is that he referred to a 24 year old man as a "white boy." Unless I'm seriously mistaken, had a white judge called a black defendant, whether he were a 24 or 16 "black boy," would have been censured, if not fired. Why wasn't Williams?
The second problem I have with him is that Judge Williams had the audacity to not merely imply but to voice a definitive opinion that his or any court treats blacks and whites differently. If he has any substantive proof of the existence of such blatant racism, he should make that proof known-or keep his mouth shut on the issue.
Such is the state of Obama's race-neutrality in 2010 America,
Food Stamps: The ancient Romans had a different name for welfare and for buying votes. They called it "panem et circensis," bread and circuses, bread and games. Among other things, America calls it food stamps.
Anyone who has ever shopped in "mixed neighborhoods" or today, even in many middle class locales, has seen its results.
Very often as employed, hard working, and upright citizens purchased hamburger or cheap cuts of meat to feed their families, plus lots of pasta and gut-filling rice, others in the supermarket line were buying top sirloin, loin lamb chops, tons of expensive TV-dinners, and loads of chips, pretzels and other snacks-with food stamps generously provided by taxpayers.
To be sure, every such food stamp purchase is not of high-end products. Furthermore, the federal Supplemental Assistance Program, SNAP, as it is bureaucratically known, long ago abandoned paper food stamps in favor of cards which look like credit cards. Those original paper stamps must have been considered degrading to the dignity of their recipients whereas if those recipients could falsely feel as if they were using credit cards, they were happier.
SNAP has also long been plagued by corruption, fraud, and widespread abuse whereby food stamp "entitlements" were customarily sold for cold, hard cash which enabled needy recipients to buy their beer, booze, and drugs. In addition, according to the GAO, 44.8% of food stamp benefits were found to be overpaid.
But, who cares? They bought votes just as those Roman bread and circuses bought votes. Whatever the traffic will bear, right?
With that as a track record, the United States Agriculture Department announced that in July some 41.8 million Americans were on the food stamp/"credit card" dole. Furthermore, "Participation has set records for 20 straight months" and was up 18% for the year: [http://tiny.cc/l0gz1i2dtt]
That's a whole lot of deserving, and undeserving, citizens-and non-citizens-more than one-eighth of the population-even for these trying times with at least 9.7% unemployment despite the president's promise that passage of his humonguous stimulation bill.
Eliot Spitzer: Poor Eliot, what would your mother think? Caught almost literally with his pants down pursuing happy hookers in 2008, the former New York attorney general and governor who resigned the governorship in shame has landed on his feet just 30 months after conceding "private failings."
Desparate for ratings and after canning Rick Sanchez for daring to say the news media, and his employer, CNN, were controlled by Jews, CNN hired Eliot to co-host the primetime "Spitzer Parker" with alleged conservative journalist, Kathleen Parker, who is about as conservative as Spitzer was faithful to his wife.
"Spitzer Parker" turned out to be a ratings bust on a par with MSNBC's Keith Olberman but that was the least of the indignities Ol' Eliot was forced to endure.
Adding grave personal insult to Spitzer's political injury, "The Manhattan madam who supplied hooker-happy former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer a slew of high priced call girls has labeled his new CNN primetime show a bore -'just like he was in bed.' "
Good grief, Eliot must be thinking, Is nothing sacred?
Apparently not. At least his sack proficiency is fair game to his madam who explained that his boring CNN performance "is sort of synonymous of what the girls told me about him in bed, that he was boring, so I guess the expectations were met."
That madam, Kristin Davis, "who wrote The Manhattan Madam: Sex, Drugs, Scandal & Greed Inside America's Most Successful Prostitution Ring," didn't leave it at that. She went on to admit that "she couldn't watch Parker Spitzer for very long before flicking the switch. "It wasn't worth the ten minutes that I watched it and if that's what it's going to be like then I'd rather watch paint dry."
Davis added that, "I thought Kathleen Parker did a good job, and I don't know how she stomached sitting next to him. It actually put me to sleep... CNN should at least let him be the jerk that we know he can be. It is a train wreck of a show:" [http://tiny.cc/ovud5]
A sort of friendly word of advice to Eliot Spitzer: Cut your losses, cut CNN, and retreat into a cocoon where you contemplate your navel or maybe contemplate the future of white boys and food stamps.
