Full Moon

According to the lunar cycle: just happened, on the 19th.

Judging from behavior: the full moon would seem to be permanent. And this was another routine week—of mass, and other, murders that were not caused by guns. This time around, it's people who hear voices in their heads, or play games with toddlers, that kill people.)

Days later: this.

In the narrative that's been settled, such things just happen: Act of God, Nothing To Be Done, and so on.

For some time, Digby has been doing "Dispatch From Taser Nation" posts. This week's incident: tasering of a deaf 12-year old.

And Pierce last week wrote of "the casual cruelties we no longer notice," from the 107-year old man killed by a SWAT team, to vulnerable elderly losing homes to shady tax lien operators.

No matter how many mass murders or other grotesque events there are, nothing slows the war against the poor.

There's this, from Clever Sister: Michigan lawmakers approve bills for drug testing the unemployed, and requiring community service for anyone receiving public assistance.

Sen. Vincent Gregory, D-Southfield, said it didn't make sense to make someone — such as a single mother, for example — have to pay child care costs because of state-required community service. He offered an amendment — which ultimately failed — that would require the Department of Human Services to pick up child care costs while parents performed community service.

CS adds, "Will kids die when left alone?"

With the right's success at state levels and in controlling the House, eagerness to hurt the poor is in newly high gear. It's an agenda being served by the "balanced" coverage of news like the House's vote to defund food stamps. Digby's rundown of the cruelty and lies, includes Dan Froomkin's noting—

Everyone is concerned when there are a lot of people getting food stamps, but the problem is that they are hungry, not that they are being fed.

The GOP argument boils down to a nonsensical: When people are hungrier, we should feed them less. It shouldn't be treated as if it makes sense. But it was.

As David Atkins goes over the stats—

SNAP provides families with an estimated 22 million children with resources to purchase a nutritionally adequate diet. This represents close to 1 in 3 children (29 percent) in the United States. Almost half of all SNAP recipients are children (47 percent), and an additional 26 percent are adults living with children. ... Forty percent of all SNAP recipients live in households with preschool-age children (ages 4 and below).

Over 70 percent of SNAP benefits go to households with children. In 2011, SNAP provided an estimated $51 billion in benefits to families with children, over half of which went to families with preschool-age children.

And so on. One can only agree with Atkins' conclusion, that—

This is not a rational disagreement about public policy. This is a gulf of basic decency, a demand by fearful people for the sacrifice of innocents to sate a perversely sadistic form of cosmic justice.

Interestingly, most people demanding the starvation of children so that billionaires can buy more yachts call themselves Christian. Perhaps they're reading a Biblical translation that calls for blood sacrifice of innocents so that the rich may enjoy more fruits of Mammon. I missed that part in my copy.

Wednesday morning, I caught this on NPR—

"We should reform the food stamp program so we can get the aid to those who need it most in their hour of need, without the kind of rampant waste and abuse that you see," said Rep. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas.

It's not clear that waste and abuse really is all that rampant, but when House Republicans talk about the problem, they are most likely thinking of Jason Greenslate.

Greenslate is an unemployed San Diego surfer dude seen in a using his Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP card, to buy sushi and lobster. The story from correspondent John Roberts was reportedly circulated to GOP lawmakers.

The report shows Greenslate heading to the automated checkout counter and paying with his food stamp card. "Two hundred dollars a month, and you just go like, boom," Greenslate says on camera. "Just like that, all paid for by our wonderful tax dollars."

In reality, the vast majority of SNAP recipients either work or are children, disabled or elderly. Greenslate is the exception, rather than the rule. He's been described as the new welfare queen — a caricature used to push welfare reform in the '80s and '90s.

Indeed, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor describes the new House food stamp bill as an extension of welfare reform.

What, instead of a Cadillac-driving welfare queen, the cheat is all of a sudden a white guy? Or is the missing racist bait trumped by California ?

It may just be another example of the laziness granted the propagandists. After all, their base needs no consistency of narrative; Balance will ensure the memes are broadcast to everyone else, and the GOP is once more given cover for its war against the poor.

With the typical SNAP recipient being a working single-mother—employed by Walmart or McDonald's, at pay making her eligible for food stamps—Jason Greenslate is very much an outlier. Yes, NPR noted that, while it dutifully disseminated the "welfare reform" meme. And the Greenslate audio is a more obvious attention-getter than a bunch of boringly real statistics.

The audio is from Fox. I had expected to learn next that Greenslate is on a think tank payroll, but under California rules, he has been an eligible recipient. Media Matters looked at how Fox set this up and inserted it other media before the House vote, and some very knowledgeable readers responded with perspective on who typically receives SNAP. A commenter also linked to the San Diego Union-Tribune's coverage of the local surfer dude story, including remarks by a Greenslate relative (who happens to have written this book).

But never mind the facts: the GOP's white surfer dude story is "out there." Which, in observance of "Cokie's Law," makes it worthy of heavy coverage.