Today's Short Reminder

There're 4 individual dudes on this planet who have amassed a combined fortune greater than the combined fortunes of 4 BILLION other people on this planet.

But yeah - the world's problems are all about the lady in front of you at the grocery store buying ramen noodles and peanut butter with her SNAP card.

A Woman's Work

We're 5 years post-Ledbetter, and it's kinda like it never happened.  I just really don't get what people have against what I was always taught were basic American concepts like equality and fairness and treating regular human beings like regular human beings.  When did the idea of lookin' out for each other become all "girly" and weak, or a political liability, or nice and warm and fuzzy, but something we simply can't afford anymore?  That's pretty fucked up right there.

From The Institute for Women's Policy Research:

Nearly 60 percent (59.3 percent) of women would earn more if working women were paid the same as men of the same age with similar education and hours of work.

The poverty rate for women would be cut in half, falling to 3.9 percent from 8.1 percent among working women. The very high poverty rate for working single mothers would fall by nearly half, from 28.7 percent to 15.0 percent.
The total increase in women’s earnings with pay equity represents more than 14 times what the Federal and state governments spent in fiscal year 2012 on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

Excerpts from The Shriver Report, A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink, and additional information are available at ShriverReport.org and AmericanProgress.org.

C'mon all you hardcore pragmatic capitalists - pay a little out, take a shitload back in.  Isn't that what you guys are always saying it's all about?  Or are you just too meat-headed to do the right thing until it jumps up and kicks you in the nuts?

(hat tip = FB friend MM)

Today's Douchey Congresscritter

Mr Stephen Fincher (R-TN08).

Wikipedia:

A seventh generation farmer, Fincher is a managing partner in Fincher Farms, a family business that grows cotton, corn, soybeans, and wheat on more than 2,500 acres in western Tennessee. The company has received $8.9 million in farm subsidies over the past decade, mostly from the cotton program, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.[6][7][8] Fincher received a $13,650 grant to help buy grain hauling and storage equipment from the state Department of Agriculture in 2009 as part of the Tennessee Agricultural Enhancement Program.[9]

Barre Montpelier Times Argus:

The House bill cuts projected spending in farm and nutrition programs by nearly $40 billion over the next 10 years. Just over half, $20.5 billion, would come from cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. The Senate voted to cut spending by $23 billion, with $4.1 billion of the cuts coming from the food stamp program.

 --and--

Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., then quoted a verse from the 26th chapter of Matthew, saying the “poor will always be with us” in his defense of cuts to the food stamps program.

Fincher said obligations to take care of the poor should be left to churches, not the government.

--and--

A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan Washington research group, said the cuts in the food stamp program would eliminate 2 million people from the program, most of them children and older people. The report said the cuts would come in addition to a reduction that food stamp recipients would experience starting Nov. 1, when benefits that were increased under the 2008 economic stimulus expire.

“Placing the SNAP cuts in this farm bill on top of the benefit cuts that will take effect in November is likely to put substantial numbers of poor families at risk of food insecurity,” the report said.

I had to look up the bible quote, thinking the full text would say something to contradict Mr Felcher Fincher.  But it didn't, and I admit to being a bit surprised.

Matthew 26:

⁶ While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, ⁷ a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.

⁸ When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. ⁹ “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

¹⁰ Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. ¹¹ The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. ¹² When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. ¹³ Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

So now it occurs to me that while quoting the bible out of context is a useful thing for guys like Fincher, sometimes they can get an even bigger boost from the passages that reveal the simple fact that Jesus could be just as douchebaggily self-centered and prickish as they are.

Well played, sir.

hat tip = Wonkette

Selectively Predictive

Once upon a time, we heard a lot of blather from the "right" about what we could infer about future events, based on our observations of things happening in a certain place, at a certain time, and in a certain order.

My example here is when Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice were always going on about "the obvious nexus" of Al-Qaeda, Iraq, and WMD.  They put these things together like the pieces of a matched set, and they used it to sell a specific plan of action.

Not to shift gears too abruptly here, but how come the rubes are always willing to buy all the phony shit using the Nexus Argument, and then completely ignore something that's real, and should be just as obvious about the Nexus of Economic Desperation and Access to Firearms?

From Crooks and Liars:

The 38-year-old woman entered the Texas Health and Human Services Commission office in downtown Laredo on Monday afternoon and demanded to speak to a supervisor, said investigator Joe Baeza of the Laredo Police Department.

The woman, whom he declined to identify, pulled out a handgun and started walking through the office, threatening several employees, he said.

And now there are 2 motherless kids in critical condition in a Texas hospital.