425 Comments

Well. Soylent Green IS people.

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Everyone thought government cheese referred to cheap-ass "cheese food". Government cheese was actually real cheese. The government granted subsidies to prop up the dairy industry, then accommodated their need to sell their products by buying them up and storing them in warehouses.

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What city or area do you live in? Maybe we can help you find some services or help.

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Oh, I really want to be clear, I totally, totally agree with you. Here in L.A., in the poor neighborhoods, there aren't even any decent grocery stores, let alone decent fresh fruit and vegetables. It's something the city is actually really trying to work on, and I think finally someone like Whole Foods actually opened a branch in an underserved neighborhood. And as you say, no time to cook because working so hard and at two jobs, and having to commute perhaps on our terrible public transport system, and fast food is so cheap and so filling, of course that's what they get. I even get the 2-liter sodas. Hey, in the 1940s, you would see ads for candy bars advertising how filling and sugary they were. I totally agree.

But I just also see some people, when my son and I were up in Northern Northern Idaho, way up near the Canada border in real wingnut territory, and I'm seeing these pasty white folks, the kind who were making nasty remarks about my son (adopted, he's Hispanic), and me (Jewish and dark haired), while sitting in their coffee shops, scarfing down their fatty food, giving us side eye, and they could certainly eat better, but they're choosing not to.

I guess I'm angry at them for their racism and hate and narrowmindedness and ignorance, and so it translates to judging them for their eating habits.

No bookstores in Northern Idaho, either. My son wanted to get something to read. "Where's a bookstore?" I asked at the Holiday Inn Express in Ponderay and everyone gazed at me in wonderment. Bookstore? I finally took him to Walmart, where I wept as the small-towners waddled around, greeting each other happily, with no idea and no life experience that would allow them to understand the sheer venality and evil of the Koch Brothers or the people they vote for, and asked for the book section, which turned out to be between checkstands 15 and 16. Literally, no books anywhere, other than a few romances and mysteries. No newspaper, nothing but Fox News playing everywhere. No information. Just propaganda.

AND, what kind of a name is Ponderay? I said to my son, I bet it's a French word that got corrupted into English. Sure enough, the nearby, beautiful lake is called "Pend D'Oreille," which means earring, and is pronounced, of course, Ponderay. But here's the thing, they pronounce the LAKE's name "Pend" (like our word pend, as in pending) "door-elly." THEY HAVE THE CORRECT PRONOUNCIATION RIGHT THERE!!! So, is it any wonder I sit in judgment? I ask you!

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Chicago

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Oh HOW could I forget "the Blahs are Taking Over by Wanting an Iota of Recognition Instead of Giving Us All the Attention, Which is Our Due" month, February! Forgive me! And yes, it's true, the You Killed Him holiday often falls in March, and that's the Jews' fault, of course, for forcing the You Killed Him holiday to come so close to that thing they do with the bitter herbs.

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Fuck your autoplay

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If you're actually worried about fraud, lobby for more enforcement. The fact that some people break the law is not an excuse to demean people. Even the poors.

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Flaming ouzo with a chaser of bloody mary mix?

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The right doesn't see poor people as "their own". But I guess I don't see the right as "our own" anymore either.

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Like an over-cooked turkey.

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The time for shame would have been if you didn't laugh.

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Robert Mercer is the vilest of parasites.

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Exactly! Michigan tried that a few years back - hired a bunch of people to investigate fraudulent welfare claims, and voila! Found some fraud and shut it down. But Teapublicans don't want to pay for the extra workers (even though their salary is paid through fraud elimination), so that was shut down.

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Let's just replace the SNAP scheme with MRE's.

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LOL. I am with you on all of this. I loathe vapid, stupid, bloated big-box American suburbia. The worst part of it to me is that people like this believe they live in paradise. When, in fact, they are in hell.

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