Poverty is Overblown by Liberals...

[Ripley]

I heard that statement from the mouth of Ben Stein on TV this AM. He also named Susan Sarandon (pronounced her name wrong) and Al Gore as the biggest dividers in the country on matters of race and poverty.

Al and Susan are to be feared?!?

The Rich Fucks are getting really desperate!

He went on about how poverty today isn't what it used to be...

I don't know, maybe I should just take pictures of folks within 10 miles of my city that have: no running water, no A/C when it is 100, no chance at finding work other than field work which is not enough to live on...and send it to Ben the totally unaware of Reality man interviewed...

[freetobegay]

1. I wonder if if all the people at or below the poverty level think it over

Blown?

:eyes:

What a fucking idiot!

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. I would enjoy, greatly...

Sticking my amazingly impoverished foot up Ben Stein's ass. Purely as a therapeutic regimen for the scourge of denial.

[Snoggera]

2. Ah, the good old days

When 3 or more families had to stay in the same rundown shack, work their asses off for 15 hour days from the age of 8.

Poverty IS relative. How would the smarmy fuck like to take a walk through the small, but highly visible barrio in this little town?

[saracat]

6. Wow !I hadn't heard anything about Susan lately. Thanks Ben for

putting her back in the news.Any publicity is better than none!

[the Kelly Gang]

4. " poverty today isn't what it used to be"..another gem..just bizarre

[trotsky]

5. Very common Repuke attitude.

The fact that people in poverty can afford a $50 television or maybe even meals out at McDonald's once in a while means that they are't really "poor" and that social programs are a waste of money.

Obviously if people are wearing something more than burlap sacks, they don't need government handouts.

[Ripley]

7. Hammer hit nail.

Yes, trotsky, that is exactly what he was conveying...

Poverty has a new meaning under the Compassionate Conservatives...

Poverty means you are living under a bridge eating bugs. And HEY! that's down...isn't it?

I would bet that is up anyway.

[WLKjr]

8. Let Me Just Say This, another little treasure from a parent

My Mom told me once when I was little when I asked her why we didn't have a lot of money, and she said it was because she didn't go on to school(and married my dipshit dad, sorry. I love my dad but he is a dipshit.)and that being poor to begin with isn't all that bad and I should do really good in school and go onto college and stay there for a while.

Here is how she explained it to me.

When you grow up poor, you tend to appreciate life a little more. You pay attention to the 'little' things. You love people more and get along with them better because you have a more humble outlook on things. You value hardwork, and get what people call dignity. You no the difference between wrong and right and try to help anyone who needs help, even sometimes sacraficing your needs to do so. You also learn to respect people.

She then went on to tell me about why going to school was important, you know the usual stuff parents tell their kids.

Then she told me to look at it this way. When your poor and become wealthy, it's nice and you adjust without forgetting where you came from. But when your wealthy from the get go and become poor, your life becomes chaos because you have a hard time adjusting to a new lifestyle. You lose what you thought were friends, dignity that you thought you had, and some won't even feel sympathy for you. Then you lose respect for yourself and that is the worst part about it.

But most of all being 'poor' is a word. Yeah it still means a lot but it's only what you make it mean. And she told me to never let anyone disrespect me or anyone else because they were or are poor. If those who did it only knew how rich the poor are, the poor would be the envy of the world.


Take that however you want, I live by it. Remember it everyday and try to better myself in anyway shape or form I can. I take things like what Ben Stein say and get angry about it. I get angry enough to want to change it. I do something about it. That is one reason why I continue to go to college to this day to get ahead one day so I might be a beacon of light for someone that is where I used to be. I look at it this way so I can be the example for other generations to follow.

I guess the best thing is to not let it get you down, because when they see that, the rich feel even better about it and look at it as a easier way to control you and your life. Don't let that happen.

Plus, My grandpa used to tell me this all the time when things would get me down just before he died. He told me to remember that,"The sun doesn't shine on one dog's ass all the time."(I know that's kind of crude but he grew up in Eastern KY during the depression and saw a lot of the New Deal help a lot of people in that area.

Oh well, I think I have typed a long enough response now, take this bit however you want.

[Snoggera]

11. Beautiful response

Thanks!

[Sugarbleus]

18. That made me cry.... I completely agree with the wisdom

your family imparted to you. I feel the exact same way. I often tell my sister that if the whole economy fails, we will fall the shortest distance and feel the least pain because we've already been down here for awhile. It is the ones waaaaaay up top that will hurt the most.

We also discuss how odd it is that poorer people seem to reach out to others and/or family MORE than those with bucks...yes, even to the extent that it makes us sacrifice our own comfort.

Hope, your story is wonderful as well. We are our brother's keeper..I've always believed that. I try to live my life that way.
I am older now; my days are numbered. In my time, it was pure joy for me to be able to serve or help someone else whereever I found them in need.

As a child of low income working class parents, we didn't have much money to "play" with. My mother would rework our old dolls..clean them up and sew new clothes for them to re dress them for the following xmas and we were happy. Occassionally, we'd get a new doll or stuffed toy. One year, at loooong last, I got the bicycle of my dreams...I broke down and cried as I knew my folks had to cut something else out to get that bike.

Even so, my mother was a "giver". We grew up in Calif....many fruit trees. We rented a place with two orange trees, a lemon tree, another fruit tree. My mother would take our old clothes, wash and repair them nicely, pack some of that sweeeeeeet fruit and other odds and end into a "gift basket", then take them out to the country side where there were people who were in much more dire straights than we. She'd leave those goods anonymously at the doorsteps of these people, several of them, each winter.

I remember. It was a beautiful lesson to last a lifetime.........

[drthais]

9. I'll think about that tomorrow morning

when I'm working the Food Pantry

...idiots

[cosmicdot]

10. Ben Stein is overblown by Ben Stein

eom

[HopeArrival]

12. How many people here put their money where their words fail?

Where I grew up there was an elderly woman unable to work and no family to help her with the bills. My family and neighbors helped her pay the huge property tax bills along with the electric and gas bills every month. She had enough cash from her SS and dead husband's pension along with a garden to put food on the table but good neighborly assistance helped her enjoy her final years at home on the farm instead of a home.

That's what we need more of.

[Snoggera]

14. Many

Many contribute in a thousand different ways. Points of light, you might say.

[bread_and_roses]

19. No, that's not what we need more of

We need a social system that makes sure people who work all their lives don't have to beg charity to stay in their homes. If that woman's husband had a pension, someone was making or at least seeking a profit off the labor from that household. And not only the husband's labor - society as a whole "profits" from the unpaid labor of women. Why should she have to beg? Does the utility company have to beg for its' profits? The bankers who held her mortgage?

That your family and neighbors helped her shows their own generosity, but is NOT an answer to the problem. Surely you have some idea how many appeals are constantly in everyone's mailbox to help the needy? How much of our incomes are we supposed to give? And why? Why should our charity support the profits of corporations paying dismal wages? Why should our charity support the profits of utility companies gouging and manipulating for more profit?

[pbg]

13. Not to mention stupid

If there's one political truth, it's that you CAN'T SPIN jobs and unemployment. If an unemployed person (or someone working two or three jobs and making a third of what they used to make) hears a Republican say "this poverty thing thing is overblown" and bloviates on how the economy is roaring along, guess what that person is going to feel?

Like a Kerry supporter.

And for every unemployed or underemployed person, there are five or six waiting for the axe to fall, storeowners seeing tremendous business drop off, or with a LOT more unemployed friends than when the Big Dog was in office.

The only way the R's can respond to this is 'we're working on it, trust us'--which the Cheney/Bush campaign is using. (That 'turn the corner' thing was a real mis-step, though.)

They can't afford statements like Stein's.

(And why anyone would go to a game show host for political commentary is simply beyond me.)

[Ripley]

20. Stein was a Nixon speechwriter I believe...

But I didn't know that when I watched his show...and his show was actually funny.

The horrible thing is that they interviewed him like he was a person involved in the campaign....yet you bet your last dollar that when they interview Michael Moore or Susan Sarandon the tone will be different, in fact, the tone will be adversarial, not complicit.

[Trajan]

15. Thank the Democrats ...

for making the selfless effort to REDUCE poverty ....

So Ben Stein could make thoughtless commentary out of that fact years later ....

Ben Stein ? ...... FUCK YOU !

[Jackpine Radical]

16. Maybe this comment could be circulated a bit more widely--

especially among those who drive 1982 Rustmobiles barely held together with Bush/Cheney and Support the Troops stickers.

[Selwynn]

17. What's really sad is that I hear this argument often--

people arguing that people in third world countries would think our "poor" were living in luxury (implying I guess that the poor should shut up and get over themselves or something...)

[ibegurpard]

21. Isn't he the "Bueller?, Bueller?" teacher from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off?"

Who cares what that droning sad sack thinks about anything?

[guitar man]

22. overblown?

I'll tell you what's overblown. What's overblown is the "improving economy" of GW and co. Whose economy is improving? Damn sure isn't the economy of the working class.

I am earning on average 30k less per year since the Boosh gang took over. On top of that, I have shelled out about 12 grand over the last 2 years to help struggling family members who are having a much worse time of it than I am. I'll say any damn thing I want about the state of the economy in this country and I double dog dare any one of them to walk up and make their "overblown" comment or any similar comment TO MY FACE! It wouldn't be a pretty scene. :grr:

[Ripley]

23. Hah! Walk up and make their ...

This is the game: They are rich. They get face time on TV. They get to blast liberals up and down.

But do they have a liberal on TV to give stats and explain how lots of folks are suffering.....? crickets ?

I am very saddened to say that I see hungry people in my area. I see poor people who walk long distances to carry food home. I see people living in places that used to be called "shotgun shacks" and you can see right through their outside walls. This is not in the booneys, this is 1 mile from $300,000 homes.

There is definitely TWO Americas. And I am sick that TV land says there is no "poverty" anymore....

[Cleita]

24. Ben Stein knows about that or he should know better.

He vacations in a place that I used to work in. I have actually met his obnoxiousness more than once in a service capacity. In this particular place, the poor live in cabins without tested drinking water, electricity, toilets or other amenities most Americans take for granted. The people who wait on him and clean for him and take care of his vacation needs live this way. I am sure he thinks it's their fault because he thinks they are backward. I have never considered him funny. Mean humor doesn't do it for me.

[Ripley]

26. Ahhh, but it wasn't always "mean"

when he had his show. I remember laughing and only getting pissed at the Jimmy guy for his remarks.

It is annoying that this guy who has done....teenage movies, game shows and eye-drop commercials is interviewed as a Republican speaker.

Yet, they can't find a Dem to respond except for a Natalie person I heard, and then they told her to cover her Kerry T-shirt!

Hell you say?

[Columbia]

25. You know all we have to do is eat the poor

Then we don't have to worry about them anymore

[Ripley]

27. Is that a joke?

[Columbia]

29. Satire

I stole it from Jonathan Swift though.

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

[Ripley]

31. Well, I was almost projecting there....

you and your "Columbia" name got me to thinking about a cousin who is engaged to a guy working in the Space Coast. Not you right? Hope not, cause this dipstick is so dumb...when I asked him about the Hubble he said "yeah, we do a lot with that...it goes around the sun right?"

I lost all respect for him then.

[Columbia]

32. LOL... no, not quite...

Sorry to disappoint you. :)

And a small technical point, the Hubble *does* revolve around the sun as it revolves around the Earth.

[Ripley]

35. Yeh, but this guy is so into his hair!

Thanks, I'm not dumb. Long story....

Cool to you for working in the field...

[Columbia]

36. Hmm.., I don't have much hair to be into..

But I don't work in the field (aerospace), just an amateur space enthusiast.

[Kanary]

28. Well, then, FIE on Susan! I didn't know she was the one responsible

for my poverty. Now that I know she's the one to blame, I'm gonna really let her have it!!

"Here, Susan, here's my poverty. It's yours now."

Did that work?

Kanary

[Snoggera]

30. How many children go to bed hungry in this country TONIGHT

How many families have no home?

How many veterans have undiagnosed diseases? How many lose their families? How many become homeless?

How much misery is necessary to cross the threshold for ignorant fucks like Ben to admit:

There is poverty, there is suffering, there are families struggling.

Wake up, you sheltered fucks. Wake up.

[Ripley]

33. Too many for the "Beacon of Light"...

Too many people are in Poverty, yes Poverty in America.

I find it hard to believe that anyone, yes anyone in America can not wander out of their zone and see people hurting.

I think people try to block them out. When I talk to locals about "those people" the answer I get is "lazy."

[mhr]

34. 60% Of America Works For Minimum Wage - How Much More Impoverished

Do you need to be?

[leesa]

37. Does he mean it's just no fun anymore?

How do Republicans get to be so mean and self-centered?