Saturday, May 21, 2016

Slow Saturday Special: Crumb Fakes?

Brought to you by....

"Clinton-era welfare rule gets little notice in election" by Akilah Johnson Globe Staff  May 21, 2016

$4.40 is also the daily allowance for thousands of Massachusetts’ poorest residents on food stamps — an allowance that was cut off for some 10,000 people in the state earlier this year under a provision of a landmark 1996 welfare law. The provision required recipients to find at least an average of 20 hours of work a week or face a cutoff of benefits.

Twenty years after the welfare law was signed by President Bill Clinton, the food stamp cut-off and other provisions remain controversial with advocates for the poor, even as underlying policies to address the most extreme poverty are getting little attention on the campaign trail.

That was the big first bite I took today, and for an instant it tasted good. How Clinton is winning over minorities and the poor is beyond me.

Then they mention that Bernie Sanders has brought it up, but....

Neither the Democrats nor presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump responded to e-mails asking if they had plans to propose changes to the 1996 welfare legislation.

The post-recession labor market looks much different than the one that existed before the 2008 economic crash, when there were more manufacturing jobs and opportunities for people without college or high school diplomas. Many of those jobs did not come back when the economy rebounded, and so a gap exists between available jobs and workers with the skills to fill them, advocates say....

There is that tired old excuse for mass unemployment and the importation of lower-cost, non-unionized foreign labor while “the very poor [are] becoming slowly invisible, and it’s also terribly embarrassing to say ‘I can’t find work. I can’t eat.’ ”

That's why I don't.

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At least that will get you a 4 for $4 deal and put some meat on your bones.

Soon you will be all mu$cular like the war machine.

Also seeMayor Walsh trying to keep focus amid scandal

Just gotta cool down there, and what began as a playful sign war has now pit neighbor against neighbor (it really is war pre$$, right down to the choice of words to frame conflict and division).

"Armed man shot by Secret Service near White House critically wounded" by Peter Hermann, Clarence Williams and Fenit Nirappil The Washington Post   May 20, 2016

Awww, gee, my printed copy is by Ben Nuckols of AP.

"A U.S. Secret Service officer shot a man with a gun who approached a checkpoint outside the White House on Friday afternoon and refused to drop his weapon, the Secret Service said. The White House was briefly placed on a security alert after the shooting, which happened within view of sightseers as sidewalks were crowded with families, school groups and government workers. President Barack Obama was away playing golf, but Vice President Joe Biden was in the White House complex and was secured during the lockdown, his office said. The security alert was lifted about an hour later. The gunman never made it inside the White House complex, and no one else was injured, the Secret Service said."

I don't mean to have a "panic attic" and go all "freaky," but this has the absolute stench of another staged and scripted psyop oozing from the very page, and of course it is just a coincidence that gun control has recently become an issue on the campaign trail

Btw, have you seen the opposite side of the coin?

"First, police fatally shot two minority suspects carrying knives. Then transcripts surfaced showing officers using racial slurs in text messages. Finally, a young black woman was shot to death as police found her in a stolen car."

Where? Some state down South? Texas maybe? 

Nope. San Francisco. 

Speaking of Texas:

Teen fatally shot stepson, authorities say

‘I quit,’ man says in video of his death by Taser

Im getting pretty close myself, and good thing they don't shoot you dead in Massachusetts, and I'm picking up a definite theme today.

Dorchester man arraigned in shooting outside church

I suspect the motive is....

"The Catholic church paid $153 million in the United States last year to settle lawsuits, and fielded hundreds of new accusations, as fallout continued from the clergy sex abuse scandal exposed in the early 2000s, a new report from church leaders says."

Not covered by insurance, either (who knew Mike Huckabee had been abused? That does explain the transgender comment that sunk his campaign, though), although “I have no opinion about that” and have not chosen sides.

"Flight 804 debris found but offers few clues to tragedy" by Heba Habib Washington Post   May 21, 2016

The implication is terrorism and we are already being told it will be hard to gather evidence, blah, blah.

CAIRO — US officials also urged caution on drawing conclusions about the cause of the crash. Analysts at the CIA and other agencies, meanwhile, have worked with foreign counterparts to scrutinize the flight’s passenger list and crew roster.

The disappearance of Flight 804 was Egypt’s third major air incident in eight months, further eroding confidence in the safety of the country’s air travel and delivering another blow to government efforts to revive a struggling economy and tourism sector. In October, the Islamic State’s affiliate in Egypt claimed responsibility for bringing down a Russian charter flight over the Sinai Peninsula with a possible bomb smuggled aboard, killing all 224 people aboard. In March, an EgyptAir flight from Alexandria was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus by a 59-year-old Egyptian man wearing a fake explosives belt. He later surrendered, and all hostages were released.

In a sign that Flight 804 could have serious economic ramifications, the Egyptian stock exchange plunged on Thursday, its last trading day of the week, recording more than $300 million in losses. And the Egyptian newspaper al-Wafd quoted an adviser to the country’s tourism minister as saying the government expected an industry downturn following the crash ‘‘due to fears of traveling with EgyptAir.’’

Interestingly enough, this all comes after Sissi endorsed the Paris peace talks next month regarding Palestinians.

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Well, I've reached my limit and somehow am always left with the same taste in my mouth. Must be all the ink.