6 days of protesting over austerity measures. 6 fucking days, not a word in the nooz.

Speaking of protests over austerity measures, I actually had a convo about this last night. (It’s so nice when the reality proves my babbling correct). Austerity doesn’t work as an economic driver because riots and protests over basic things like jobs and food tend to discourage foreign direct investment(FDI). Foreign investors see the country as unstable (rightly so) and put their cash in other places. FDI is important because it is the only way to increase the overall surplus in a closed loop economic system. To shorthand that for you- imagine a country’s resources are a pot of soup and that soup has to be divided among all the people. Regardless of how you divide the soup (equally among everyone, more going to some people and less going to others, whatever) you only have the soup you have in the pot to play with. FDI adds extra soup.

Keynesian economics tries to avoid the riot problem during downturns by having a country borrow from itself during downturns to keep everyone in soup and paying itself back during upturns by increasing taxes. This not only creates a more stable country, but a more stable investment environment. (And yes, I am aware of the problem of speculation creating a vampire investment economy that sucks the life out of the real economy. And yes, I think financial products should be extremely limited and regulated to death. But this post is about a quick and dirty explanation of what we’ve got going on right now and not what a better way of doing things might be).

Latoya Peterson at Racialicious has a pretty good post about If You Haven’t Been On Food Stamps, Stop Trying to Influence Government Policy and what follows is going to be a bit of minor quibbling because I think she’s on the right track.

Food stamps, per the law that created them, are supposed to provide an EMERGENCY food budget only. Think of the food stamp allotment as similar to minimum wage. It is by no means enough for you to live on healthily for an extended period of time. It is just enough to keep you from the most severe effects of malnutrition and hunger, like minimum wage is just enough to keep you above the poverty level but not enough to provide the basics for an extended period of time. Both of these assume that individuals will only be at that level for a short period of time before improving. We all know that there are lots of people who never advance from minimum wage jobs or who qualify for and require food stamps for extended (years, decades) periods.

Not having enough money to eat healthily while on food stamps is then an institutional problem and not a problem with individual choice. It can only be fixed by the institution. Even if you once knew a person who ate nothing but organic locally sourced fresh veg and meat and whole grains while feeding a family of 10 on foodstamps and cullings from her personal garden. That would be an exceptional INDIVIDUAL case and not a viable solution to the INSTITUTIONAL problem of emergency food assistance not being enough to eat healthily over the long haul.

And Peterson seems to get that, mostly. But then the end of the post includes a bunch of links about how to eat healthy on food stamps. It changes to focus back to bootstrapping individualism instead of social justice institutionalism. While those links may be mildly helpful for a few food stamp participants, they water down the message of institutional change.

though that is probably being to hard on horses. You might remember Mr. Dimon as the fuckface who went to Davos and complained about us poors calling him mean names. Sticks and stones Jamie. If you don’t want to be called a lying, thieving asswipe bankster then stop being one.

So today he’s whinging on about how if we default on the national debt it’s a moral disaster or something. The good news is that in comments on the Gawker piece Modern Monetary Theory is being bandied about a little bit.

(Do we need a quick and dirty guide on the national debt? I could do one if you all would like.)

against the assholes, douchebags and fuckwads who are currently causing strife in your life. Be specific. Be vague. Just let it out. That said…..

God damn fucking useless loser! You are less useful than hot shit on a sunny day and you probably smell worse. Underneath the definition of deadbeat in the dictionary is your picture. I know you always like to be thought of as the good guy, but good you ain’t. Useless, pathetic, weasely, overgrown man-child. For fucks sake, you are nearly 40! Pay your fucking child support you giant shithead. If you think your kid just simply doesn’t notice the difference between when child support is paid and when it isn’t, you’re a bigger asshole than I give you credit for. Of course he notices, but then he’s a wee bit quicker on the uptake than you are. You are quite simply a waste of a skin bag. May you be blessed with a flesh eating bacteria.

Now, deep calming breath in. And out. One thing I learned is that it is important to figure out why you are actually angry and focus your energy on that actual source rather than ignoring or minimizing it. So focus and release. I actually feel a bit better now and can probably finally get to sleep.

Too many boy bands lately. Must have some girls.

For some reason the news bunnies think that knowing what the American populace thinks Osama Bin Laden got after death is important. Did he get his 72 virgins? Did he end up in heaven or hell?

Well I can be pretty sure, without even doing a poll, that 100% of atheists think that Bin Laden didn’t get his promised virgins.

I am also sure that 99% of this blog’s regular readers are smarter than all the Fox News viewers put together (I have to leave the 1% for stalkers and trolls).

Mildly dated Chris Brown rant, but still awesome.

Once upon a time, Ouyang Dan and I decided to watch an episode of Gilmore Girls together via the magic of the interwebs (what with her in Korea and me in Seattle, watching in the same room would be difficult). This is where the name Conservative Bootsrap Single Mom Dreamboat comes from.

Here’s the thing about Lorelei Gilmore, a character created by Amy Sherman Palladino who was a co-producer on Rosanne, she’s a Republican’s wet dream of a single teenage mom. She “chose life” instead of an abortion. She works as a hotel maid instead of collecting either Welfare or child support. She has one kid and then seemingly doesn’t have sex again until Rory is a sophmore in high school, with a man she eventually gets engaged to (and dumps at the alter). And this is all from a progressive tv show.

So when polls come out that say more people approve of gay marriage than of single mothers, I’m not shocked. Judging by pop culture alone, single moms are either of the conservative dream boat model or a hideous creature on display in Law and Order type shows who are abusive and mentally unstable (in the tv version of mentally unstable, which is a whole nother ball of oppression right there). There is a very tiny box that single mothers have to fit themselves into in order to be approved. That box includes:

1) Never ever have sex or a romantic relationship unless you’re sure it will lead to marriage. (True fact, I’ve had progressive friends apologize for having been douchebags because I have a sex life. I’m lucky to have gotten the apology, most don’t). But you better choose wisely, if you have sex and marriage and babies with more than one person, you’re a whore and a bad mom.
2) Only bitches and gold digging whores go after child support. If you can’t live without child support (and 70% of us do) then you shouldn’t have spread your legs.
3) Every child you have increases the amount of disdain society has for you. Every child you have with different fathers increases societies’ disdain for you exponentially. This doesn’t work in reverse though. See Donald Trump or various NBA stars.
4) You should be ready, willing and able to apologize for your unwed status when children ask questions. Not to do so is like child abuse. You should probably also apologize to adults as well, just in case. I had a boss who was a conservative Catholic with a son in Catholic school. The son once asked me where my husband was (I don’t have one)then how do you have a baby (you don’t actually have to be married to have a child) at which point I realized that I should probably make nice or lose my job (but it’s better to be married if you have kids) so I had to spout lines I don’t actually believe and know for a fact to be false.
5) Your children can never ever make a mistake, or it will show just how much of a loser you are. Children are not actual people, but an extension of their parent(s) and the children of a single mom will obviously be liars, thieves and strippers (per Ann Coulter).
6) You must always be submissive to the dominant theme of marriage and then babies, and grateful that society lets you dirty up the place with your whorish ways and bastard children. To be angry about shit like being paid less than a woman without children (which is still less than a man) is not ok. To lobby for a better social safety net makes you a Welfare Queen. To point out the failures of both Welfare Reform and child support collection makes you a lazy bitch.
7)You will be subject to more interference from “official” types, like school counselors etc. Because obviously single parenthood alone is enough of a marker for abuse & neglect type situations. I don’t know anyone who was abused in a two parent home (cough*bullshit*cough).

These are just the top of my head, back of the envelope examples.

(It’s the new fall lineup announcements, so you get tv posts)

New show- H8R will feature celebrities confronting people who hate them. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PLLLLLEEEAAAASSEEE LLLEEEET ITTT BEEEE MEEEE!
I want to confront Gwyneth Paltrow so bad I am practically bouncing like a kid in school with their hand raised that has to pee. I think I could make her cry, and that would be awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, that’s enough over-enthusiastic expando typing for one post.