and I mean actually belly laugh ha ha funny, not funny weird funny, if
the best thing to happen to non-legacy parties is Barack Obama?
Even if it’s not- I’M OUT. Decidedly, unequivocably, can’t be guilted,
harrased or abused back in, out. Now what the fuckity fuck am I Gonna
do with all the free time I’ll have during this election season since
I won’t need to be an unpaid gate keeper for the kleptocracy’s faux
voting matters plan? Suggestions?

Oh yay, multiple spammy emails from the Obama campaign. I can’t
fucking wait. Once you get over the idea that Obama in particular and
the Democratic party in general are the liberal/left party and realize
they’re just better used car salesman for the kleptocracy, watching
the Obama fan base twist every negative, Bush-like action Obama takes
into some kinda ’12 dimensional chess’ positive is actually kinda
funny (as long as you can disconect from the real world implications
of those policies, like torture, imperialsm, disemployment, poverty,
sexism and on and on). I am going to start calling our dear leader
‘Barack HOOVER Obama’ since it turns out that my 2008 primary
predictions about his economic prowess we not, sadly, hyperbole.

Blue Lyon has a great post up called ’employed but not getting by’
about living wages,etc. In it she uses the most recent census
calculation for the percentage of people who live in poverty, 14.6% is
the amount I believe. But (and I’m not criticizing Blue Lyon’s
research, but the census numbers) I’m pretty sure that we were at 17%
in 2007 or earlier. So either my brain is fuzzy (entirely possible) or
at the same exact time that we have record levels of disemployment,
shrinking wages and what little work is available is part-time, we’ve
also managed to cut poverty by almost 3%. That’s a fucking
miracle.That might even be better than Clinton’s record on poverty
amelioration. (As I type this I’m also remembering an 11.5% or 35
million people being floated about that time period, which means a 3%
increase or 10 million new members of the lowest class).

All the British actors who can pull off a convincing American accent
are not working for you. They are on our tv shows, like Hugh Laurie,
or in our movies, like Kate Winslet. Every single time an actor does
an American accent in a BBC I want to puncture my eardrums. Either
hire better dialect coaches or hire actual Americans. And I know it
goes both ways. I think I speak for a huge swath of the American
public when I say express how very sorry we are for inflicting Gwenyth
Paltrow and he awfulness on you.
Sincerely,RQ

Someone at Corrente (forgive me for forgetting the tag, I’m typing on
my phone and can’t comment or link to the post) thinks we need a good
old fashioned blogswarm on the subject of jobs just at the NYTimes is
writing about the happy ‘News’ that Dems in general and Obama in
particular will be getting an upward bounce because of March’s
creative accounting of a tiny employment number increase. I’m in, but
not just a blogswarm. We need it to trend on Twitter and annoy all
friends and family members on facebook. And we need to pick a
politically crucial day to do it (perhaps reminding Obama of his
failures as a Democrat is not a bad thing to do while he gives away
the farm, I mean makes compromises on the budget with republifuckers.
Not that I think he’ll listen, mind you. But real debate is never
about enlightening your opponent, it’s about catching the attention of
the audience.

I almost always have the ingredients on hand to make them. Baking was
my first solo foray into cooking from a recipe. I started with these
god awful vanilla refridgerator cookies, again because the ingredients
were what we had on hand. I was in 5th grade so I was probably 10. I
had my mom’s vintage 70’s Betty Crocker cookbook and the cookies were
supposed to be vanilla and chocolate pinwheels, but we didn’t have
cocoa powder and rolling the doughs was complicated for a lone 10 year
old. Shortly after I found the peanut butter cookie recipe that I
still use 25 years later, with one tiny alteration. Baking was also
the Kid’s first solo in the kitchen, and with no motherly bias I can
say his from scratch brownies are the best brownies on the planet,
outshining those dry things they sell in fancy bakeries by kilowatts.
Last night he made pork chops with mushroom sauce, mashy potatoes and
asperagus (the pork was a wee bit undercooked, but shhhhh. Everything
else was so perfect I didn’t wanna bust his happy).

Go read her cannon fodder piece. It’s shit like that study that makes
me give a hard side eye at virtuos foodies and environmentalists.
Whenever they open their mouths I know I’m in for a whole lot more
work added to my load and a bigger bite of my tiny budget being eaten
into, when the best solution is an istitutional, not personal one.

Good god y’all that was the longest interview EVER. Good news, I am
the applicant for the apartment that I’ve already seen in the
neighborhood I like. Yay. Bad news, in order to hold the space and
finish my aplication today I paid the $40 fees myself (the housing
program will only pay to approved vendors with W-9s on file. I’ll just
pay the phone bill late) and it will be at least a week before I know
if I’ve got it. A week of nail-biting, for sure. I may be able to
squeeze a little extra time in the temp digs, but damn I hate to do
that. I know there’s another family that needs the space and every
extra day adds to their stress. So wish me luck. Lots and lots of
luck.

Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan CEO who whinged about how us peasants just
don’t understand and are so mean we hurt his twee widdle feelings when
he was at Davos, is now whining to the US chamber of commerce about
how the very mild reforms enacted by congress will ruin everything for
rich banks. It reminds me a wee bit of an overindulged teenager, who
gets caught stealing the family car and driving while drunk after
mowing down a group of pedestrian nuns, complaining because now he has
to ask permission before taking the car on a drunken joy ride. What
the banksters need is some tough love, like maybe they have to spend a
year living on 8 bucks an hour with no health insurance or credit.

I spend a ridiculous amount of time filling out forms and knowing what
kind of forms I’m filling out makes the difference between getting
assistance or not getting assistance. There are forms to prove I don’t
make enough money (food stamps and medicaid), forms to prove I do make
enough (rental and credit apps) and forms to prove I make neither too
much nor too little (most housing programs). I am fortunate that I am
fluent in both bueracratese and English, which makes me an efficient
form filler. But not everyone is and the complexities and nuances of
what each program requires are a way to make the programs less
accessible to people who need them. It’s one of the reasons
Republifuckers hate the Earned Income Tax Credit. The form is
relatively easy to figure out, and if you find it too difficult the
IRS will figure it for you. But in general, complex applications are a
feature, not a bug, in assistance programs. The tiniest mishap gets
you either denied, or worse, criminally liable for fraud.