Food prices are skyrocketing, but us poor food stamp shoppers won’t be seeing an increase in benefits until the fall.

Damn summer vacation.

Summers are always hard money wise. I can never be sure if I am going to work (and this year I am pretty sure that I won’t even be able to find temp work like I did last year) and I can’t count on the Kid getting 2 meals a day at school like I do the rest of the year, so grocery costs go up because I have 10 more meals a week to provide.

It used to be that food stamps got us through almost 3 weeks. And I can cover a week on my meager salary. But with the prices like they are, I’m lucky if they last 2 weeks. And that is during school, when I don’t have to think about breakfast and lunch. For the last 6 months or so, the end of the month has been scary. Even our staple poverty food, brown rice, has had the price shoot up drastically.

So when people start bitching about poor people eating crap, I want you all to remember this:

“The level of desperation is just frightening,” she said. “People are calling, saying they have no idea what they are going to do.”

But even as demand is rising, many food pantries nationwide have been forced to cut back on the amount of food give to individual families because higher fuel costs and commodity prices have sliced into private donations to the pantries.

For now, many of the needy, including many in Kladis’ store pushing carts laden with soda pop, bags of cookies and chips — much of it cheaper than healthier food — are doing what they can to stretch their shrinking buying power.

“The bottom line is, a mother trying to feed her kids is not really picky about what she puts in their bellies,” said Dan Gibbons, executive director of the Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation. “She just wants them full.”

ETA: Remember kids, the milquetoast Dems could have fixed this problem back when they were deciding on stimulus checks, but they lost their spines on the way to Capitol Hill

So once again the milquetoast Dems that we’ve elected are taking something that is wanted, hell needed by a huge part of the population and squashing it.

Universal healthcare- “it’s too expensive”.

All I can say is- wevs dudes. You haven’t done your fucking homework.

We are spending 16% of GDP on healthcare now. We will be spending 20% in less than 10 years. Our nearest rival in amount of healthcare spending is Switzerland- at 11% (and Switzerland is one of the late comers to universal healthcare, that’s why they are about 3% higher than countries who have had universal healthcare for decades).

Unless we reign in spending on healthcare now, there will be no way to do it in the future. And that means we need politicians to grow the spines we elected them for, stand up to the insurance and pharmaceutical companies and institute universal healthcare now. Not later.

And we need somethings that make well funded politicians quiver in their boots. We need real universal healthcare, with everybody on it. Yes- it must be compulsory. You may not need healthcare now, and you don’t want to pay for it. But I can guarantee that at some point in you life, you will have to go to the doctor. It is unfair to everyone else if you get to opt out of the system and then burden it when you’re most expensive. Not just unfair- it breaks the system.

The pols are also going to have institute caps on medical costs and make participation in a national system a requirement for practicing medicine. We have seen, with dental programs for the poor, that if you don’t require participation then you don’t have anyone participate. Perhaps we throw the industry a bone with more student loan forgiveness?

And, maybe the most scary thing, caps on drug costs.

And for the whiners, the “We’ll have to wait forever for appointments” people, the “I don;t want the government picking my doctor” people, I suggest you watch this:

The PBS Series- Sick Around the World. It goes through five capitalist democracies and their health care programs. It’s worth watching the whole thing to dispel all those myths about the horrors of socialized medicine.

Part 1

Links for the rest

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Some of you may remember that way back, this used to be a different blog, with a different name, and a bunch of boy writers. It was always my blog, my idea, but I shared it with other people because I wasn’t entirely sure of my ability to write everyday.

And when I wrote about feminism, one of two things happened. Either it got so quiet in here you could hear the crickets. Or the trolls came out.

None of this was due to the boy writers, really. Deek at the very least is, was and always has been a super feminist ally. But when women speak, they are either ignored or chastised.

So about a year ago, I changed the name of the blog and made the focus way more feminist than before. Wonder is still here sometimes, and Chang’e is an awesome moderatrix. But we are all women.

And I got a bunch of awesome women readers. And once it became clear that this was a safe place for them to speak, the comments went up. And the number of readers went up. I know why. Like I was they are hungry for a place where they can speak without being shouted down for having a vagina. A place where what they think matters and where what matters to them gets discussed. I know cause I was just as hungry. I found Shakesville a few years ago, and Feministe right when Lauren left and Jill, Piny and Zuzu took over. And Pandagon, before it became the pink Obamabot ghetto.

And it’s awesome that we have these spaces to go to now. But I worry that we are creating an online version of a zenana. I worry that we are being pushed into women only spaces to shut us up. It’s not an accident that the top female bloggers (Arrianna Huffington anyone?) are sexists themselves. They have achieved “legitimacy” by selling out the rest of us. Way to break the glass ceiling, girls!

But how do we keep our safe place while also being part of the bigger discussion?

And I think this is a really important discussion to have right now. We are seeing the left side of the blogosphere split between those that think misogyny is a valid political tool and the tools people that support them, and those who think it is unacceptable. And for those of us who feel it is unacceptable, places that used to be safe for us now are not.

So do we wall ourselves off in a safe zenana, free of boys because so far the majority of them have not been terribly supportive (no, not all- note the some in there) or do we keep exposing ourselves to hate in the hope that minds will be changed before our wounds get too serious?

I go back and forth. At the moment, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who has read this blog just over the course of this weekend, I want to bring up the drawbridge and behead anything that looks remotely dangerous before it comes close.

But that doesn’t change the outside world.

Not that he’s ever tried to care, mind you. His supporters want to cattle car off the Latino vote as bad as they want to purge the white working class.

But at least the Blogger Boyz are being blunt in their brown people hate now. Stupid, but blunt.

Hey Dems! Way to write off the fastest growing section of the American populace. Much like McGovern, you know how to pick the winning side, doncha?

Wonder’s awesome My Flag Decal Turned Upside Down

In The Ghetto- or why poor people are war fodder

After we had the LONGEST discussion about Israel in the history of the world. No- seriously longer than any peace talks ever.

Another world is possible.

What does it take to get three members of the media to agree with each other, including right winger Blanquita Collum?

Just make sure they are all women. And they are all talking about the misogyny of this campaign.

Now in googling around to get more information on Collum, here’s an example of what I found:

I hope you don’t confuse me with Gloria Allred, that B – I – Etch or Nia Vardalos (throat choking sound) or Blanquita Collum (you know, the right-wing one with the car-wreck face you see on Geraldo).

From the always lovely Arrianna Huffington (sorry, I just threw up a little in my mouth typing that)

Then over at Democratic Underground, the comments on this very video included:

Blanquita Clollum, apparent graduate of the Katherine Harris School of Cosmotology

And then this one, bolds by me for future bingo squares

Hillary has played into this sexism fantasy! She has used it against any an all males to get what she wants. Is there male chauvinism pigs out there, you bet there is. She knew this when she ran. Barack Obama is dealing with racism. It’s the world we live in. She needs to go away. If she just stop lying, people will give her the benefit of the doubt. She also too DAM calculating! I’m sorry, people don’t like her, including women. That’s her fault, and not men. She need to stop blaming everyone for her own deficiencies. She has hurt woman causes for years to come. I have no problem having a women as President, just not this one.

But nooooooooooooo, sexism hasn’t hurt Hillary in this campaign. It hasn’t also hurt Every. Single. Other. Woman. In. The. Country. Whether they support Hillary or not. Whether they are feminists or not. Whether they are Dems or Reps. or something else.

Just not this woman really means just not any woman who might change the status quo. And any woman can change the status quo.

Video via Hillary 1000

Say you are an unexperienced politician with the audacity to run for president after a mere 3.5 years of national experience.

Say that as part of your campaign strategy you spend of 5 or 6 months straight ignoring all the successes of the only Democratic president to be elected in 28 years.

You also spend a lot of time calling him a racist.

And you spend the rest of your time spurring your misogynistic sycophants towards his wife and your fiercest competition.

How then could you ask the same former president to be your Unity Pony?

What do you think the former president would do, after spitting out his coffee through his nose while laughing at the request?

To both lighten the mood and to get myself de-earwormed after OuyangDan posted the Fine Young Cannibals at her place.

It’s time for They Might Be Giants! W00t.

When I was pregnant with the monkey, I promised that I would never play those crap kid’s music tapes, he could listen to They Might Be Giants instead (a few years later TMBG came out with an album for kids)

Birdhouse in Your Soul (I won tickets to see TMBG at a little club in Atlanta because I shamelessly sang this song on the radio)

Why Does the Sun Shine (The Kid’s fav TMBG song set to scenes from Invader Zim- I want a Grrrr)

And last but not least Don’t Start- just cause I like it)