Irony is not dead

 

Sometimes they're so close

 

Oh, SNAP

Much like grocers in the stamp towns of the late 1930s, grocery chains today continue to bring in increased sales from SNAP receipts during recessions. Remember last winter when stimulus funds expired and Wal-Mart disclosed lower than expected fourth quarter profits? While Wal-Mart refuses to disclose its total revenues from SNAP, it is estimated they took in 18 percent of total SNAP benefits in 2013, or close to $13 billion in sales. They publicly reported lower earnings per share as “the sales impact from the reduction in SNAP benefits that went into effect Nov. 1 is greater than we expected.”

SNAP recipients, then, are not the program’s only beneficiaries. Businesses profit handsomely from them, too. How ironic that in today’s concentrated grocery-retail market, the chains most ideologically opposed to welfare spending benefit the most from this welfare program. Even more ironic is the fact that the idea behind SNAP originated with grocery men in the 1930s who saw a way to route welfare spending through their businesses.

  Salon

Some times I think that the ideological opposition to welfare from corporate types and politicians is not really an opposition.  It's a political ploy.  They know that they all benefit from welfare programs in one way or another, but they also know that Fox News fans are gullible and undereducated, besides being moral pygmies; they know there are a whole lot of those people; and they know that if those people are blaming welfare recipients for all their woes, they won't stop to notice who is really responsible.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"Let Them Eat Cake" Is Not a Good Election Year Slogan

Senator Kay Hagan, a North Carolina Democrat who is up for re-election, is admonishing Republicans back home as “irresponsible and cold-hearted” for slashing unemployment benefits. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, says that her party’s thinking is “stale and old and doesn’t really address the magnitude of the problem.”

Poverty is suddenly the subject of bipartisan embrace.

President Obama will highlight income disparity in his State of the Union address this month, part of a broader effort by Democrats to push a populist theme for their midterm campaigns against Republicans.

  NYT

Things must be finally bad enough that both parties see an advantage in taking up poverty as an election year issue.

Hmmmm….

Pew Research Center reported in December that the 113th Congress (2013 to 2014) was the least productive Congress in its first year. Gallup reported in November that the 113th was the least popular Congress of all-time, with a 9 percent approval rating.

[...]

The most unproductive and least popular US Congress in history can count on another distinction: For the first time ever, most members of the Legislative Branch are millionaires.

[...]

Net worth for Republicans and Democrats went up 10.3 percent and 11.6 percent, respectively.

[...]

The Center for Responsive Politics found that investing in the stock market, after declining for several years with congressional members, is again on the rise

[...]

Financial powers like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, among others, make up most of the top 10 congressional investments.

  RT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Unbelievable

Or it would be in a world where Barack Obama was not the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

He has killed scores of his own citizens and political opponents. He has devastated a nation, reducing it to unspeakable poverty while he and his family live in unrivaled luxury. He has denied everyone in his country every basic right and liberty. He has turned Zimbabwe into a pariah nation. And now Robert Mugabe is the newest ambassador for tourism for the United Nations.

[...]

Ironically, Mugabe, 88, is under a travel ban.

[...]

Mugabe will join Drew Barrymore, David Beckham, Orlando Bloom, and Ricky Martin as the ambassadors for the United Nations. I cannot understand why those celebrities have not refused the ambassadorships rather than be associated with one of humanity’s greater war criminals.

[...]

The only letter to Mugabe should be the announcement of a war crimes tribunal and an invitation to be an honored guest behind the defense table.

  Jonathan Turley

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.