Let Them Eat Ayn Rand Novels
When Canadian über-wingnut Mark Steyn praises someone, particularly when it’s another Canadian wingnut, you can rest assured that the person being praised is likely to be as crazy as a closeted congressman on crank. So, say hello to Kathy Shaidle, a Canadian who, from her front-row seat in Toronto, knows more about poor people in America than we silly Americans do:
Are there even a thousand really poor people in all of America? Really poor. Dying-on-the-sidewalks-with-open-sores poor? The so-called poor have cars and cable tv and free medical. They live in America in the 21st century, where school is free and libraries are free and a bus ticket to a better town costs less than a bag of crack. If they’re “poor” it’s because they were too lazy and stupid to a) finish high school and/or b) keep their pants on. Jesus had something to say about folks who didn’t properly manage their money or other people’s, and who squandered free gifts and good will. He told the adulteress to sin no more, not to find herself another baby daddy.
You have just seen a rare view of the parallel wingnut universe where Jesus tells the poor to get a job and where free schools and free libraries eliminate poverty. It is a little known fact, but library books are indeed quite nutritious and can be eaten by the poor to stave off malnutrition. You can feed a family of four for over a year on War and Peace alone. Library books can even burned in the winter for heat! One must be careful not to eat the books that explain how to treat cancer and heart disease, however, since these books come in quite handy when you have no health insurance. And free public schools will keep a roof over your kids’ heads until the shelters open at night.
Once all the books in a library have been eaten or burned, a family can, for the price of a bag of crack, take a bus to a town with a library full of more books to eat and to burn. (By the way, it would appear that in Toronto either bags of crack must be very expensive or Greyhound tickets must be very cheap)
Finally, if Ms. Shaidle doesn’t think there are a thousand poor people in America, I invite her to forgo her next bag of crack and take a bus to Washington, D.C., where I will give her a guided tour of Ward 8. And, since there are no poor people there, she won’t be able to complain if I dump her out of the car and tell her to finish the tour on her own.
(Bonus Abuse: Kathy writes bad poetry too.)
[Thanks J— for the link to Kathy on TV, which was the source for the second picture.]
Are there even a thousand really stupid people in all of Canada?
(Apologies to all you normalish Canadians)
Tbogg’s Common Taters haz more.
(You’ll see this comment tomorrow around 8:30 A.M.)
That is one great big bag of stupid right there.
I’d love to take her the rural area where I grew up in the Appalachian mountains and have her tell some of those folks there that all they need is a cheaper-than-crack “bus ticket to a better town”. That’d be a knee-slapper.
Tbogg was on this yesterday, but who cares? Still noteworthy.
a bus ticket to a better town costs less than a bag of crack. Either she needs to learn more about bus ticket prices, or I need to buy more crack cause last time I checked it cost $35 to go anywhere on Greyhound, for one person. So, sure, load up your entire family on the bus, poor folks, and head off to the golden horizon to find a fresh start away from the utility companies, away from the creditors, away from the property management firms that all use the Internet to track you and make sure you never escape from the moveable debtor’s prison that is modern America.
a bus ticket to a better town costs less than a bag of crack.
Damn. Didn’t realize this. I’m goin downtown and smoke a bus…
mikey
Kathy Shaidle is right. For example, this person I’ve seen sleeping in the street twice actually has his or her own wheelchair!
Oh, she also has Lupus and has been taking free medical care from the (Canadian, natch) government for the better part of a decade. In one column she complains bitterly about her experiences at the social services office.
This is genuine evil.
Are there even a thousand really stupid people in all of Canada?
I don’t have ready access to the census figures, but I can confidently say its well over a thousand. Our dirty little secret…
a bag of crack.
These can actually get expensive if you get those shiny gift bags with the handles and the “Happy Birthday” message.
Cinnamon Stilwell’s long-lost twin?
don’t forget being able to clothe your children with Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style. Literally.
So, if you’re not dying on the sidewalks with open sores, you’re not poor? Whew.
Do NAFTA regulations currently permit the import of this level of stupidity? It’s reading dangerously close to 2,000 cubic rupperts on my stupidometer.
WTF is that ‘poem’ about anyway… Shit, I just read her “Jack Ruby”. I feel strangely lightheaded, got to sit down, breathe.
Is she wearing a Che t-shirt?
Can anyone else hear those bees?
Tbogg was on this earlier and a lot of interesting info pops up in his comments section. The punchline is that Kathy Shaidle suffers from severe lupus and, thus, had to rely on the Canadian health care system for four years to, basically, stay alive. She still benefits from the system, which is apparently why she doesn’t up and move to the U.S. So not only is she a horrible human being, she’s a flaming hypocrite. She’s also one of those folks who went batshit insane after 9/11, previously describing herself as an “anarcho-peacenick”, and there’s some stuff about her screwy relationship with the Catholic Church, but since I think all religion is as valid a philosophy as, say, New Age crystal worship, I’ll leave all that be.
It’s pretty pitiful. This is a person who should understand what the poor have to go through, since she went through it herself. But she lets her shame and self-loathing take over, and there’s nothing left but hate. As foul as she is, I can’t help but feel sorry for someone who’ll never allow herself to enjoy life.
Yes, we don’t have nearly as many poor people as, say, 17th century Calcutta. What the hell are we whining about?
If Jesus were here he’d kick our asses for worrying so much about poor people. He loves us, but it’s a tough love.
Okay, so everyone else writes faster than me. It’s also noteworthy how often she invokes the “Lakeeshas” of the world spending all their money on “weaves”, and the trots out the old “the people I hate (the poor) are the REAL racists, the stupid jigs”. Or when she lambasts the poor who suffer from “undiagnosed but easily treated mental illnesses”. Like mental health is free. Sheesh.
Davidovit, Steyn, and now Shaidle. kooky Canucko-cons are in control of the Sadly, No!
And happy death day, Che Guevara! It’s hard to believe it’s only been 40 years.
I looked at one of those poems. It’s like a monologue, it’s like a long cell phone call, overheard from the seat behind you on a long ride on the Metro. The kind of phone call that makes you swear silently to yourself and change cars. Like if a chain saw on Sunday morning wrote poetry, or the power lug removers at tire stores, or great big honking horse farts. It was like this really really drunk woman I once heard trying to explain to a bartender how to make some sort of midwestern hot dish. I hear the same flat affectless bumbling that can’t switch itself off. Pickled in pure meanness, that Kathy.
Jesus also had something to say about beneficiaries of mercy who were in turn merciless to others.
I think that’s one of those “Reagan Revolution” shirts that has a Che-ish photo of Reagan on it.
Fun fact #1: Actually, we most certainly have more people than 17th century Calcutta, as it started as a British trading post and administrative center in the early 18th century!
Fun fact #2: Wingnuts think there’s an upside in going after kids, parents of kids who needed extensive medical and educational treatment and middle-class people who think government services are a good thing.
Bush will lose big on this. The GOP, many of whom support the compromise expansion Bush vetoed, will get absolutely CRUSHED because of these demented losers.
Jesus also had something to say about beneficiaries of mercy who were in turn merciless to others.
I imagine our Kathy would protest she was no beneficiary of mercy, oh no. She had to wait in line in a dirty office with smelly poor people. Where’s the mercy in that? She battled the system to get a necessary treatment; those other people are the ones taking charity when they could turn their lives around by jumping on a bus to the next town.
To be fair to Steyn, while he thinks a handicapped 12- year old is fair game, General Petraeus is too much of a sensitive pansy to receive any criticism at all.
I really can’t stand it anymore.
You know, it must be so *easy* to be a Calvinist, especially when you’re on the blessed-by-God side of the spectrum. You don’t have to think about anything at all; you don’t have to imagine that things might be different; you simply assume that people deserve what they got–end of story.
My favorite part of this rant, though, is her claim that the poor are poor because, among other reasons, they “are suffering from undiagnosed but easily treated mental illnesses.” Right. Most of the mumbling homeless guys on the street have some form of schizophrenia, which is not “easily treatable” by any stretch of the imagination. Even if you can keep these people supplied with meds, which is not always an easy or cheap task, some of the symptoms still remain, which makes it hard for them to hold jobs, which makes it hard for them to get health care on their own, which…well, you get the idea.
I won’t even go into the efficacy and cost of various kinds of behavioral therapy. To a creature like this, those details would almost certainly be irrelevant.
This is quite a choir you have going here. I predict you may get some other points of view today, however, as this piece appeared on news.google for the keyword “Ayn Rand.”
So — without putting me in your basket with Ms. Shaidle — let me ask you this:
1) Out of every 1000 ADULT people in Canada, or the US, who are ‘poor’, how many of them TRUELY did not cause their own problem by dropping out of school or have a baby when a teen, or using drugs, etc.?
2) Out of those same 1000 people, how many TRUELY cannot get themselves out of their problem? In other words, are truly helpless and will always be dependent no matter how much they try.
My opinion: 1) I think 800 caused their own grief; and 2) I think probably 500 could get out with no government help if they really wanted to. Another 400 might need a lot of the current “safety net” aid, but if used properly could escape poverty. The other 100 are dependent and we should help them, privately.
How many of those 900 will actually get themselves out? Some.
John Donohue
I think I found her a boyfriend!
You know, not very many threads back, the question was asked: What would it take to outrage those of us suffering from outrage fatigue?
Well, between the rantings of this awful woman and the Malkin Stalkin I’ve been in a state of outrage pretty much non-stop the last couple of days, so I guess the answer for me is clear.
Took my son to the doctor this morning. He has a sinus infection. They gave us a scrip for an antibiotic. We go to the pharmacy. Medicaid won’t pay for the drug because . . . well, I don’t know why, exactly, but apparently Title 19 has new rules, because we never had this problem before. (He was on Hawk-I, Iowa’s s-chip program, when I was still working at Big Cold Ins. Co., because I couldn’t afford to have him on my insurance, and just recently went back on Medicaid.) It’s just a basic antibiotic. The pharmacy called the doc and they changed it from Biaxin to Biaxin XL and it went through fine. The woman in line ahead of me was having a similar problem with Title 19. She wound up just putting the meds on her credit card, poor woman. Isn’t that just great?
I hate these people, the Malkins and the Shaidles. It’s an emotion I’ve tried to avoid. It isn’t healthy to go around hating. But I’m sitting here with lupus, uninsured, and this incredible, hateful, pathetic excuse for a human being, enjoying her spiffy medical benefits which keep her ugly ass alive, talks about the non-existence of need in America . . .
I need to go lie down.
Damn. Didn’t realize this. I’m goin downtown and smoke a bus…
Awesome
Words fail me in the task of considering the kind of person who would have ‘Ayn Rand’ as a keyword in their newsreader. Although I would note that there’s probably a one to one correlation with the kind of person who considers teen pregnancy or drug use a satisfactory reason to consign a human being to a lifetime of privation and exploitation.
Get thee behind me, Randroid.
This is from her original column: No one I know uses food banks. No one THEY know uses food banks. It is a common feature of human nature to think that invisible “other people” must be suffering even though my neighbours and I are pretty much cool. The people I’ve heard about who do spend all their government cheque money on beer then go to the food bank, or dress up as poor people to scam the Daily Bread.
Milk of human kindness and all that, but my point is I think it’s an even more common feature of human nature to think that “other people” must be “cool” when in fact they’re struggling like mad to make ends meet. It’s easier for her to assume people are ok or, failing that, cheats and liars because then she doesn’t have to feel any compassion for them
I’d take her on a walking tour of Ward 8, Clif.
On the t-shirt (This is important to me!):
Kathy Shaidle, July 24, 2005.
Here she is on the TV back in January, in two parts (1, 2).
I predict you may get some other points of view today, however, as this piece appeared on news.google for the keyword “Ayn Rand.”
I doubt it, if they’re all Ayn Rand fans. That view – and it is a singular one – has already been thoroughly expressed by Ms. Shaidle. I mean, how many ways can you say “Fuck everyone but me” anyway?
So — without putting me in your basket with Ms. Shaidle — let me ask you this:
How the Hell would we know? We live here. You want answers about American poverty and health care issues, you’ll have to ask a Canadian. All of our information comes from the lying liberal bastards at the Census Bureau and bleeding heat organizations like churches and food banks and homeless shelters and other lying organizations that lie to us for a huge profit while they hate America and don’t support the troops.
J–: I think we should pitch in and send her a “George Washington: Murdering Treasonous Bastard” T-shirt.
1) A percentage.
2) A percentage.
Next question.
John,
As you know, the numbers are necessarily guesses, as there’s no clear way to determine who could or couldn’t escape from poverty on their own. Someone else could suggest the converse breakdown–200 responsible for their own grief, etc.–and it’d be just as plausible to me. I could believe, for example, that more than 2/10 poor people are afflicted with such grievous mental illnesses that they can’t function without help. I’m including in this list (1) people who are mentally ill, particularly with schizophrenia; (2) people who are mentally disabled, such as those afflicted with fetal alcohol syndrome, severe cases of Down syndrome, and the like; (3) the elderly demented, who have Alzheimer’s, mixed dementia, or something similar; (4) patients who suffered severe head injuries through no act of their own. If these people have good family support–and “good” can mean “24-hour-a-day care” in some cases–then they’ll make it. If not, well, they’ll be on the streets.
Now, on to the people who truly caused their own problems. I don’t think it’s quite as simple as you make it seem. For example, some older people I’ve worked with ended up dropping out of (wholly inadequate) schools because of financial necessity. (This is rarely the case for younger people, but it is reasonably common in the current generation of seniors.) As for teen pregnancy, I see adolescents as in a gray area when it comes to personal responsibility.
And if I felt confident that the remaining 100 (or however many) people could get themselves out with the help of private aid, I’d be all for it. I’ve worked in government healthcare programs and am no fan, to say the least. But the attitude of people like Shaidle helps explain why private aid tends to be underfunded.
And happy death day, Che Guevara!
And those bastards at Google completely ignores it. It’s a outrage!!!!
I think probably 500 could get out with no government help if they really wanted to
Interesting. Do tell. Got any theories about why, considering it’s THEIR choice, they would all choose poverty over wealth?
I mean, I sure can’t imagine that it’s more fun…
mikey
I honestly thought she was being heavily, clumsily ironic.
Because no Canadian can be that dumb and not either a) living in the US off wingnut welfare; or, b) Stockwell Day. Can they?
I predict you may get some other points of view today, however, as this piece appeared on news.google for the keyword “Ayn Rand.”
Oh great, an avalanche of maladjusted pot-smoking conservatives who confuse selfishness with profundity. Fantastic.
My opinion: 1) I think 800 caused their own grief; and 2) I think probably 500 could get out with no government help if they really wanted to. Another 400 might need a lot of the current “safety net” aid, but if used properly could escape poverty. The other 100 are dependent and we should help them, privately.
Thanks, serious objectivist, for such penetrating sociological insights, full of the steely, studied numbers that you and your fellow cultists are known for.
Actual people who “cause their own grief”: People who volunteer for the army and suffer through war, people who choose to marry people who volunteer for the army (since your ‘stats’ specifically omit children, who must not actually exist, I’ll skip them), people who lose a job that they chose to have in the first place, people who keep a job, but lose their healthcare because they need to pay rent, then get sick and…oh forget it.
I’m sure your worldly experiences and deeply compassionate tough love for humanity are right.
A bit OT, but since we’re talking about supporting children, the Shrieking Harpy is in full, foaming, cockroach-analogy glory about an Arab man with a remarkable number of children.
Interestingly enough, the fact that he’s an Israeli and lauded by the state won’t stop Pam or her drooling racist fanboys. I guess wingers agree that it is sometimes possible to criticize Israel without being an antisemite.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2007/10/israeli-arab-ha.html
If the poor are responsible for their own misery, that means people like Shaidle never have to feel guilty for standing idly by. Is it really more complicated than that? Typical wingnuttery, espousing her opinions as fact. “There ARE no poor people! I looked it up in my gut.”
John Donohue,
In your quest for the latest news about Ayn Rand, I hope you didn’t miss this item.
Clem
ps: Don’t panic, but there’s a murderous polar bear behind you.
“why, considering it’s THEIR choice, they would all choose poverty over wealth?”
Duh! It’s because they get all that nifty free stuff like, um, picked over food bank vegetables, dented cans and pitying looks from the staffers. And food stamps! All you gotta do to get $90 a month in food stamps is go in and reveal every detail about your personal life to some government beaurocrat. Then there’s the fuckin’ -excellent- health care you get from the emergency room, where you only have to wait five or six hours to see an intern if you’re not bleeding. Poverty is teh ROXXOR.
Oh great, an avalanche of maladjusted pot-smoking conservatives who confuse selfishness with profundity.
And won’t share their weed, that’s the worst thing about them.
Duh! It’s because they get all that nifty free stuff like, um, picked over food bank vegetables, dented cans and pitying looks from the staffers. And food stamps!
LUCKY DUCKIES!!!!!!!!!!
I think 800 caused their own grief;
I remember reading that passage in the bible where Jesus specifically said “fuck those who caused their own grief, verily will they get jack shit from me.”
how many of them TRUELY did not cause their own problem by dropping out of school or have a baby when a teen, or using drugs, etc.?
Who cares? Nice people let other people make a mistake now and then and fix a problem when it needs fixing.
Sadly, No!
And, Wow!, she’s a racist bitch, to boot:
Charming.
Yep, Steyn. she write like a dream, alright. The kind where you have eleven minutes to count to a million or something unnamed and terrible will happen.
John Donohue, you are the finest example I’ve seen in about two years of the I’ve-got-mine libertarian. I had a comfortably middle-class upbringing, and I got a college degree (on an academic scholarship), and I’m still two missed paychecks or one major illness away from being homeless.
This is not hyperbole. I’m a contract worker in the IT industry, which means I can be dismissed at any time without cause; although I’m eligible for group insurance through my staffing firm, the best plan available has a $3,000 deductible for major illness and a $10,000 limit on coverage.
Let me propose a question for you: what separates you, with your belief that 50% of “the poor” have as their only real problem a lack of will, from poverty?
John Donohue, did you mean “truly” by any chance?
Your terms are spectacularly vague. 800 out of 1000 “poor” people “caused their own grief”? What’s that based on? You want us to pull numbers out of our butts, too?
Let’s back off the specifics and just say this: in any society there are people who have more and people who have less. Sometimes people deserve what they have, sometimes not. For the people who have less, does society offer a helping hand to them so they can support themselves and potentially lift themselves up? Or does society say “screw you, I’ve got mine and if you don’t, it’s your own damn fault”?
It’s pretty simple. We are either a society that helps the less fortunate among us, or we’re not. I know what society I want to live in. Do you?
As I read it, your line of argument is basically attempting to assign blame to people for being poor, apparently so that you can avoid looking like a complete bastard when arguing that these people should be left to their own devices. Some of these people probably are to blame for their circumstances. Some certainly not.
The fact is, 800 out of 1000 poor people are caused by John Donohue. The rest by a combination of William Donohue and Phil Donohue.
“how many of them TRUELY did not cause their own problem by dropping out of school or have a baby when a teen, or using drugs, etc.?”
as has been said many a time, the fact that these actions do not cause rich people to become poor pretty much decimates your attempted argument.
but have fun wasting your time trying to make yourself feel better, John. because when it comes to poverty, it’s really all about you.
I would like to know where these idiots were hiding out before the emergence of the religious right in the political arena. There seems to be an over-abundance of them more than willing to send the human race back into the dark ages. Will they disappear when there is a change of government?
John Donohue, did you mean “truly” by any chance?
Apparently if it is screamed it is “TRUELY” but if said in a conversational tone is “truly”.
Ah yes, Randian Objectivism; Taking the enlightenment out of enlightened self-interest for 50 years now!
Actually 49 years, 362 days. Friday is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged. I think I’ll consider myself special with no proof in celebration… and then I’ll go get loaded.
as has been said many a time, the fact that these actions do not cause rich people to become poor pretty much decimates your attempted argument.
Well, he has a point. I mean, you don’t see Paris Hilton or that doofus that married Britany Spears sucking off the government teat! Remember what the wise man said, the law makes it illegal for both the poor AND the rich to beg.
Wow! again.
In her companion piece, Hate Mail is Fun!, KKKathy uses the “Yeah, I had Lupus and was on total welfare for 2 years but even if Canada didn’t have socialized, I suspect I may have been able to cover it anyway” line of reasoning that is so common amongst the wingnuts and libertards.
Seems there should be a name for this line of reasoning, but all I can think of are the lyrics to an Outkast song…
And now that I’ve read the comments, I see that Johnny Oldfish was already on this angle.
Oh, and Matt T., too.
If “easily treatable mental illness” is a cause of poverty, do she and Steyn support government funded mental health care? If teen pregnancy is a cause, are they pro-abortion? Or do they support policies even when they believe those policies cause poverty?
How strange. Until I saw that photo, I never realized Jonah Goldberg became female when he went to Canada. Wonders never cease.
Gavin-
You have to give her teh sammich.
GIVE HER TEH SAMMICH!!!1!
Jay B., thanks. I was going for the “poverty-ridden, pestilent hellhole” thing, but I should have looked it up first.
“Yeah, I had Lupus and was on total welfare for 2 years but even if Canada didn’t have socialized, I suspect I may have been able to cover it anyway”
Well, then, out of principle, she really should turn down the government’s generous offer.
But reading her “work” really makes me seethe at my neighbor! She was thrown from a horse (who needs to ride horses?) and got severe brain and back injuries, spent weeks in a coma, still has major and unpredictable seizures 17 years later. Now she gets government help and bennies. Seems like an awesome trade for a working body and normal life. Lucky beeyotch!
ortho_bob,
“cubic Rupperts on the stupidometer”–GENIUS!
Exactly how much stupid is in a cubic Ruppert, anyway? Is the universe large enough to contain it?
Are there other units of measure to stupidity?
How many Goldbergs in a Ruppert? How many O’Reillys? How many Swanks? The possibilities are endless.
When you pull numbers out of your ass, you end up with ass numbers.
I just noticed that the title of her book of poems is “Lobotomy Magnificat.” So, there *is* some self-awareness there.
There are four cubic Goldbergs in a cubic Ruppert, two cubic Rupperts in a cubic O’Reilly, and sixteen cubic O’Reillys in a Swank (which is already a unit of volume [or is it volubility?]).
One Goldberg is precisely the length described by the combined width of the two fingers Jeff Goldstein uses to eat paste with (another part of Goldstein, coincidentally, also measures precisely one Goldberg).
Confusion often arises because of the odd, English-like conversion system (128 cubic Goldbergs in a Swank), because using tens is too metric and Frenchy. Another point of vexation is that “one Goldberg” is also a unit of mass equal to 10^3.1415… of an Imperial Stupid, or approximately four infinities’ worth of Pam Oshry brains.
I had my suspicions, but the poetry proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that Kathy Shaidle is, in fact, a Vogon.
Rufus.
You nailed it!
She is an honest-to-fucking-god Vogon.
First the Raelians, now the Vogons. Is there some kind of Intergalactic Convention going on?
Normally, your wingnut is at least dimly aware that Jesus spoke occassionally about helping the poor, and refrains from citing him directly when bitching about what a bunch of worthless pieces of shit poor people are.
Interesting stat in that Ward 8 page you linked to, which complicates the notion that education is a curative for poverty: while the % of the population with a HS diploma has increased over the past twenty years, so too has the % of folks who are living in poverty and/or unemployed.
Apparently they aren’t showing their HS kids how to properly stew Crime and Punishment…
Geez, Clif, you left out the most stunning fact about about Kathy (as per my comments yesterday). She collected welfare for four years in Ontario and benefits from Canada’s OHIP plan. See comments starting here.
“I know you get down about your job, Peter. But just wait, good things CAN happen to you! I mean, look at me!”
…how many of them TRUELY did not cause their own problem…
John, I’ve been trying to to get this across to my city commissioners for years–when there’s a fire, they don’t even check whether the person deserves having the fire put out, or even if they brought the fire on themselves. They perform health inspections without even checking if the patrons of the restaurant are watching their diet. Why, the fucking police will go and arrest burglars when the homeowners deliberately bought a house in a bad neighborhood.
Two years ago the city gave a grant to the neighbor down my street because he couldn’t afford to fix his house himself. They wouldn’t even teach this bastard a lesson and let the place decay into the ground–just because the city thinks that “maintaining property values” and “keeping up the neighborhood” are more important than spiting this guy I’ve never met!
John Donahue, You Enormous Tit–
There is no such thing as “truly deserved.” Either in fortune or misfortune. Or are you one of those people who think that CEO’s really “deserve” to take home 450 times (or whatever the factor is) what their employees make? Including those who steer the ship onto the reef.
The term “deserve” itself is a scam, used for the benefit of churches and capitalists. “An honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.” By whose calculus? Yours? Your parents’? It is beyond arrogant to think you have some conception of the moral worth of complete strangers. Jesus Christ on a Triscuit. How old are you? 15? 25? 30? Don’t you possess a single gram of wisdom that isn’t fuckhead Libertarian cant?
And please, come back to this “choir” when you or your child is hit by a bus and tell us how you don’t “deserve” to be bankrupted, although 800 out of 1,000 people you don’t know, do.
are
you or your child ARE hit by a bus
See? I gets all agitated and forgets my grammar.
Picture needs caption.
INVISIBLE CYMBALS!
The punchline is that Kathy Shaidle suffers from severe lupus and, thus, had to rely on the Canadian health care system for four years to, basically, stay alive.
No, this isn’t the punch line. Nobody in Canada would begrudge Kathy’s dependence on the health care system since everybody in Canada is covered under the same system and we all depend on it. The punchline is that Kathy collected welfare benefits in Ontario for four years. This is not “health care” – but welfare certainly would have absorbed her health insurance payments. Employed Canadians pay a pittance for health insurance under the public plan and unemployed Canadians (except those on EI) are not required to pay. They receive automatic coverage. See comment link further up for more.
That she collected welfare is the big punchline because Kathy hates the poor, especially the poor who collect welfare. She wrote an essay about this…at the time she admits shame for the hate. She is no longer in touch with that shame just as she is no longer a peacenik (something she was in the 80s).
Lesley–
Then she’s certifiably, quantifiably insane. Literally. Just because people can type on a keyboard and upload their text doesn’t mean they’re ipso facto not actual crazy people.
I don’t mean big-time schizophrenic–or at least I think I don’t. But at a certain point you have to observe their behavior, set it in the context of what is objectively true about them, and realize, “Ohhhh–this is not an argument to take seriously. This is a symptom of dysfunction that just happens to be typed and uploaded like a sane person’s text.”
Did someone say Clarence Thomas?
“poverty is anecdotal” – ronald wilson reagan 666
so called “conservatives”, or rather the people i now prefer to refer to as “30 percenters” [which is itself a generous figure] have a peculiar vision problem – they cannot see poor people. in fact, one of the features of our glorious capitalist society is that it is in fact possible to not see poor people, as long as [1] neither you, nor anyone you know personally, is poor and [2] you don’t give a shit.
if neither of those is true for you, then you probably see poor people every day.
and fuck you with a shotgun to those who say that all poor people are stupid fuckups on drugs who are lazy. i can’t force you to have compassion or a conscience, but i can tell you first hand that there are quite a few college educated people i know who have been poor, myself among them. one of the reasons is that poverty is often inherited, like your fucking trust fund.
if you ever leave your fucking house and your little comfort zone for two goddamn minutes, you will find people who go hungry in your neighborhood. i guarantee it. they don’t always wear a big sign that says “i am poor”. sometimes they are elderly people whose children have abandoned them. sometimes they are single mothers. sometimes they are war veterans. sometimes they have too much dignity and pride to ask for help even if they deserve it. and sometimes, they don’t answer the fucking door when a fucking census taker knocks.
I don’t mean big-time schizophrenic
try “personality disorder”.
Mr. Wonderful, Kathy’s essay: Where the Clocks And The People Don’t Work reveals just how disconnected she was (and still is). Not only does she admit hating herself for having to apply for welfare (because of the lupus) – revealing a complete lack of compassion for self – she states that although she lived most of her life below the poverty line she never felt poor. Having worked from the mid-70s to 1980 with the poorest residents in Toronto, there is no way in hell she didn’t feel poor. Even back then when the benefits were better and the housing costs were more reasonable (i.e. rent=a quarter of one’s monthly income), survival on minimum wage, never mind welfare, was tough. It became grueling in the 80s and even more grueling in the 90s as governments cut back benefits and real estate prices increased. And yet, Kathy states that neither she nor her mother realized they were poor even though they were living below the poverty line.
See her other essay: Beyond The Fringe: My So-Called Life
http://www.lupusontario.org/kathy2.html
For an (Governor General) award winning writer, Kathy shows a stunning lack of perception. Of course, the Gov Gen who shortlisted her isn’t the brightest bulb on the planet. Adrienne Clarkson was a laughing stock and her appointment was short-lived.
There are no poor people in the USA. It is, after all, a wealthy country… wealthy enough that millionaires and billionaires are popping up like dandelions in my front lawn. With such affluence all around them, how could anyone possibly be poor? They must have opted for it, as a life-style choice.
———————————-
You’ll know that Kathy Shaidle has lost it completely when she starts arguing that poverty – if indeed it exists – is caused by food banks, soup kitchens and private charities. Once upon a time in New Zealand we had a Finance Minister who was spouting this line – that charitable organisations foster poverty in order to justify their continued existence.
It’s the next step from proposing that private charities are more efficient, and more moral, than the compulsory charity of government handouts.
Kathy Shaidle’s versifying is every bit as snazzy as her insightful social commentary. I especially liked this line:
And now even the Trotskyites are accosting me.
Uh-hunh.
John Donohue wrote:
Gee, that’s swell. We all have tremendous respect for Randwipes. We await their guidance.
I find it funny that she has Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-like perception.
Iran = No Gheys
Us = No Poor
You’d think they’d like Little Orphan Abbie a little more…
I usually just lurk, but had to chime in. I am Canadian, and darned proud of it. Kathy Shaidle is representative of everything that is wrong today in both our countries. Despite benefiting greatly from socialized medicine, which the rest of us were taxed for, and despite benefiting from welfare, which the rest of us paid for, she now turns and savages everything that she has had the advantage of. Lesley is correct – very few Canadians would begrudge her the necessity of using OHIP to get the medical treatment and drugs that she needs to survive. And very few Canadians would begrudge her the necessity to rely on welfare to get back on her feet. But EVERY Canadian I know are outraged at her total lack of empathy for those in similar situations as she. ( I don’t know any of Kate’s friends or synchopants, so I’m sorta deprived of the alternate viewpoint, and darned glad of it)
Kathy wants to be rich and famous. What better way than to emulate her idols – Steyn, Frum (both Canadians to my eternal embarrassment), Limbaugh, Coulter, Riehl ad nauseum. These folks got rich from being vindicative, sociopathic blowhards, writing books and spewing invective on the most disadvantaged of society. I don’t really believe that they believe what they spew. They just want money, more money, most money. Kathy saw a winning formula and she’s going with it. Personally, I have no pity for this woman. She is riding the whirlwind, and I truly hope she gets tossed out with the rest of the garbage. That’s not to say I would wish to see her destitute with no food, but I sure would like her in the line at the Food Bank where I volunteer – which is in Toronto – her home.
She’s a self hating, pathetic, bitter butterball.
Gavin-
How can you resist the Sammich? She is basically making the same gesture as Daffy. We demand a sammich and we demand it now!
Equal Sammiches for Equal Dumbasses!
Kathy has a big schoolgirl crush on Steyn and gushes every time he links to her or approves of something she’s written. She’d certainly lose his support if she started sympathizing with the poor.
Kathy is also bitter about the fact that she’s plain. Plain girls don’t get the Fox Network gigs. She has written that if she were better looking she’d have her teevee spot just like Coulter, Malkin, and Marsden. If only God had made her a pretty Lupus-free psychopath…she would never have needed welfare and she could be on teevee, too!
Oh, man, perfect. Free market fetishism in a nutshell. Well done, Mo’s Bike Shop.
I hate to blogwhore, but if we’re gonna talk about randroids and racism, well, Megan laid a real stinker yesterday.
People are probably getting sick of me saying this, but she found yet another new low.
Can anyone cite me the verse where Jesus said “fuck the poor” because I can’t find it in my bible?
That’s a cute variation on the “welfare queens” meme.
I’ve been staked out in front of Kathy Shaidle’s house now for two days. I can see the kitchen cabinets with my binoculars, they look like that cheap crap you put together yourself. I can’t see the counters, to see if they are “Corian” or not, because there are too many empty peanut butter jars, empty Weight Watcher’s choclate cake and McDonald’s rappers on it. I can see the grass hasn’t been cut in weeks. I also tipped a few garbage cans over and found a pair of size 18 granny panties with a 8 inch long skid mark on them and a damaged dildo with worn out batteries. Tommorow I’m going to go to her workplace and see if I can dig up as much dirt on her as I possibly can.
What do you think guys…are there any other creepy stalker things I should try? I was thinking about digging up her electric bills, to see how much electricity she uses.
Please give me some tips. I so badly want to be like Michelle Malkin. Maybe I’ll even get a job working at Fox News for Bill O’Reilly, even though I’m a dude.
Because no Canadian can be that dumb and not either a) living in the US off wingnut welfare; or, b) Stockwell Day. Can they?
I came across her a little while ago and she is a hateful, stupid, racist, bigoted, bitch. I have it on good authority, however, that she works with the disadvantaged and/or minorities on a daily basis, yet still spouts her nasty garbage day after fucken day. Frankly, with this one, the best thing to do is ignore her, she seems to get a orgasm out of islamofachist commies linking to her (probably the only orgasms she has had for a while). She is also in the habit of sending herself nasty emails to prove the hate on the left, and appears to love the c. word.
Forasmuch as the king’s majesty has full and perfect notice that there be within this his realm as well a right great multitude of strong valiant beggars, vagabonds and idle persons of both kinds, men and women, which though they might well labor for their living if they would will not yet put themselves to it as divers other of his true and faithful subjects do, but give themselves to live idly by begging and procuring of alms of the people, to the high displeasure of Almighty God, hurt of their own souls, evil example of others, and to the great hurt of the commonwealth of this realm; as also divers others old, sick, lame, feeble and impotent persons not able to labor for their living but are driven of necessity to procure the alms and charity of the people. And his highness has perfect knowledge that some of them have fallen into such poverty only of the visitation of God [accidents] through sickness and other casualties, and some through their own default, whereby they have come finally to that point that they could not labor for any part of their living but of necessity are driven to live wholly by the charity of the people.
Hilarious, like a gaggle of squawking geese.
I’ll make one clarification, then respond to one civilized responder.
I should have said “based on your own contact with poor people” because that’s what I was looking for, a gut-check, not some statistic. When you work with, encounter or hear the story of someone considering themselves poor, which of my categories do they fall into, upon reflection. My offered opinion was based on that. I have met and personally heard the story of at least several hundred poor people in my life, perhaps not 1000 directly, and thousands indirectly. This was my judgement. How about you?
Now…..
Trilateral Chairman said,
QUOTE: As you know, the numbers are necessarily guesses, as there’s no clear way to determine who could or couldn’t escape from poverty on their own. Someone else could suggest the converse breakdown–200 responsible for their own grief, etc.–and it’d be just as plausible to me.EndQUOTE:
Not to me, based on the above clarification. Eighty percent of the poor not causing their own situation…that is not plausable. Remember, this is not just people destitute on the street; it is also people who ‘have things’ but cannot pay for their own existence or advancement, or are right at the breaking point….in other words, the poor.
QUOTE: I could believe, for example, that more than 2/10 poor people are afflicted with such grievous mental illnesses that they can’t function without help. I’m including in this list (1) people who are mentally ill, particularly with schizophrenia; (2) people who are mentally disabled, such as those afflicted with fetal alcohol syndrome, severe cases of Down syndrome, and the like; (3) the elderly demented, who have Alzheimer’s, mixed dementia, or something similar; (4) patients who suffered severe head injuries through no act of their own. If these people have good family support–and “good” can mean “24-hour-a-day care” in some cases–then they’ll make it. If not, well, they’ll be on the streets.EndQUOTE:
okay, that is a legit list of people who are and will be dependent. I have stated we should help them, volutarily; that is my position. However, there is no way that people in that category and others just as unfortunate constitute a majority of the poor.
QUOTE: Now, on to the people who truly caused their own problems. I don’t think it’s quite as simple as you make it seem. For example, some older people I’ve worked with ended up dropping out of (wholly inadequate) schools because of financial necessity.EndQUOTE:
This category is either a small number of strictly older people who cannot resume learning/re-education…or else: not an excuse, go to work, earn the money, save money, find an adequate school, resume school — unless you are truly unable to do it.
QUOTE: As for teen pregnancy, I see adolescents as in a gray area when it comes to personal responsibility. EndQUOTE:
Here’s one for the geese, and I am not kidding: If an underage teen gets pregnant, it is rape. She is the victim of a crime. Rapist should pay for baby, or a private fund that has been set up for this. Okay, you don’t like that? You say she consented? If so, there is no grey area; she caused her grief 100%. “Father” and “Mother” should pay for baby’s upbringing, or give it up for adoption.
QUOTE: And if I felt confident that the remaining 100 (or however many) people could get themselves out with the help of private aid, I’d be all for it. I’ve worked in government healthcare programs and am no fan, to say the least. EndQUOTE:
so far….so good…..you might be surprised to hear that i believe people who need to SHOULD make use of the governnment programs at this time (which does not mean I am in favor of those programs; I want their extinction.) Whatever gets them through to productivity and responsibility.
QUOTE: But the attitude of people like Shaidle helps explain why private aid tends to be underfunded.EndQUOTE:
an unfortunate error. You have it exactly backward…it is government’s overwhelming intrusion into the realm of helping others (government that is not tasked to differentiate the deserving from the undeserving, and which get its funds by force) that causes private aid to be underfunded.
John Donohue
P.S. To the many who detest my position, and especially those who mentioned global warming, here is some geese food…
i am the author of this site
http://earthintime.com
Wow, that is some seriously terrible “poetry”!
And some delusionally uninformed opinion. Since Ms. Shaidle is such a fan of the US, I am surprised that she has not moved here to enjoy our great medical care and excellent bus transport.
In answer to the very first commenter, we do not have stupid people in Canada anymore. Free education, our public health system, the importation of bright immigrants to spice up the gene pool, a scientifically supervised eugenics program and free abortion on demand have taken care of that. Stupidity is a thing of the past.
But we do have a problem with spiteful, mean-spirited, shrieky, hateful people. For the moment. Big Government is working on yet another drinking-water drug for that. Just hang on and be patient, please. We’ll handle this.
J. Donohue:
I know well over 1000 homeless people personally, and I can tell you as a matter of record that the VAST majority of them are either physically or mentally ill or both, and many of them also suffer from systemic exploitation and oppression due to class, gender, and/or race. The number of people with developmental disabilities and such physical conditions as juvenile diabetes, traumatic brain injury, and major recurrent depression alone account for more than half of your theoretical 1000.
The remainder almost entirely DO work, but wage structures are such that they generally work physically demanding or dangerous jobs for very low wages without insurance, and inevitably they become unable to continue to work those jobs. AND those jobs do not pay enough for a decent place to live or a decent diet without assistance.
So yeah, I detest ignorance, and I particularly detest willful ignorance, so I detest your position,
J Donohue,
Of the roughly 39 million poor in the U.S. (as defined by the Census Bureau), about 13 million, a full 1/3, are under the age of 18.
(http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/STTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_S1701&-ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&-redoLog=false&-CONTEXT=st)
The problem as I see it is that by exporting our manufacturing base overseas all of the good jobs for little hands are going to kids in China, Pakistan, The Dominican Republic, etc. and there just isn’t the market for boot blacking and selling wormy apples that there used to be. Good thing they can all be fabulously talented but little understood architects and network engineers, if they would just get off their little asses and show some initiative.
odanu, the issue is not homeless people, it is poor people. The vast majority of poor people are not homeless. And I continue to submit that — in my direct experience — a large proportion of poor people do NOT expend an adequate and fair amount of energy toward problem solving. Those people need tough love, not easy qualification for faceless government aid. For the record I will repeat: those that truly cannot provide for their own lives ought to be helped, voluntarily, by the rest of us.
“systemic exploitation and oppression due to class, gender, and/or race” as the cause for a large number of people being poor or homeless? I don’t buy it, it’s too easy and broad a sinkhole for an excuse, sorry you gave a canned kneejerk response.
my position is not out of ignorance, let alone willful ignorance.
Samwise, i stipulate your figure for the moment; what does it mean? Children are not responsible for getting themselves into poverty, nor responsible for gettting themselves out of it. What was your point? Even your sarcasm was too simplistic to make a point.
J Donohue:
You’ve dropped this weaselword ‘voluntarily’ a couple of times. What does it mean?
Does it mean that selfish, attitudinizing prigs like yourself can opt out of welfare schemes anytime you like and leave your more compassionate fellow citizens to pick up the slack?
Keep your ‘tough love’. It has a bad smell.
And the smarmy, insulting attitude? Give it up, John. You’re not the smartest person in the room. Not by a long shot.
Good day, sir.
Webster’s New Randroid-English Dictionary
* * *
Section III: Common Phrases
It can be difficult to engage the true-believer Randroid in a converation armed only with a dictionary. There are legion phrases used by the Randroid the meaning of which entirely escapes a reasoning human or that has a different meaning from commonly-accepted English counterparts. A close study of the phrases and terms in this section will benefit anyone who engages a Randroid on even an infrequent basis. . . .
“Helped, voluntarily, by the rest of us”: Fanciful phrase used as a rhetorical crutch to avoid fact that the disabled, mentally disturbed and chronically ill were historically left to die in the streets before widespread government aid programs. Generally precedes claim that government taxation prevents charity from meeting all genuine social needs. For historical counterexample, see generally, pre-1900 European history; specific study of Victorian Britain and the Gilded Age in the United States is highly recommended.
Similar famous quotations: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”; “Let them eat cake”; “Since he is of no use anymore, there is no gain if he lives and no loss if he dies.”
Webster’s New Randroid-English Dictionary
“Child”: n., pl. Children; English term lacking Randroid equivalent. See also: compassion; morality; literature. [Many common English words lack a direct Randoird equivalent–Ed.]
What a hateful creature she is. Everything selfish and myopic in human nature.
My favorite part is that she herself suckles at the teat of goverment programs, but belittles them out the other side of her disgusting mouth.
I certainly wouldn’t begrudge someone using a government program when they’re down and out and in need of all the compassion our society can offer, but to then sass against it is beyond mean-spirited and hypocritical, it’s downright duplicitous.
At this point, I really wish these losers would start a “civil war” because the truth is they are all braying cowards who have to target people weaker than themselves to feel strong.
I’d like a straight up fight with these losers because the minute some stands up to them, they set the land speed record in crying for their mommas (and daddies).
So was this woman a communist before her “awakening”? Funny how so many wacko wingnuts began as wacko Stalinists or Trotsyites or some other such dippy shit. I guess if Stalinism’s totalitarian side appeals to you, but you just get disillusioned with it for some reason, then, hey, why not be a totalitarian fascist instead? You still get to brutalize people and you get to own private property and badmouth lazy, stupid poor people, too! What’s not to like?
Ignoring the juvenile personal hatred expressed by the execrable objectivelypro, I will nonetheless make a point referenced by this creature. By the way, it is enjoyable being in a forum that does not reject extreme language! I am all set to call one or more of you an asshole, but I am saving that for the right moment.
“voluntarily” is a very noble word. volition. look it up. It is actually the entire point here. It is not ambiguous. When the government takes my money at the point of a gun and gives it to someone else not of my choosing, that is involuntary (to put it politely). When a person with need engages me and makes a case for me to help him, and I give time or money, that is voluntary.
The geese here have a huge, smothering blanket of victimhood and a paradigm of a vast helpless populace, making a case that this gigantic portion of the populace cannot actually exercise volition and sustain their own lives. When pressed to look closer at this group, only extreme cases of the truly dependant are cited, with the implication that the gigantic swarms of the poor are all helpless. Millions and millions of Americans and Canadians who have become unable to function. What a world.
To this constructed belief is added the moral obligation of all others to attend to this huge dependant population without judgement. However, the idea of simply calling forth a moral requirement as a means of destroying poverty lasts for about 3 seconds, immediately to be replaced by the opposite of volition, the compulsion of delegating the government to confiscate wealth from those not in the pool of dependency.
No one need speculate on my meaning for tough love; here it is in no uncertain terms: Any person capable of helping themselves who instead demands help from others should be shut out completely. Let them eat nothing.
“…. historically left to die in the streets before widespread government aid programs…”
What’s the matter? Have you not read Jane Eyre? I guess you only read Dickens.
When the government takes my money at the point of a gun and gives it to someone else not of my choosing, that is involuntary (to put it politely).
Contrast with this:
The geese here have a huge, smothering blanket of victimhood and a paradigm of a vast helpless populace
You’re a nitwit, Mr. Helpless-in-the-Face-of-a-Thieving-Government.
Mr. Donohue, you have the ability to convince us. Post your links proving the majority of welfare recipients are not elderly, disabled, or working poor in two-parent households, or that medical assistance does not constitute the majority of all welfare benefits, all of which even the Heritage Foundation admits to be the case.
Personal hatred? Hardly, John. You suffered a rebuke, that’s all. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try not to fantasize so much. You have a warped outlook on society; it seems to have skewed your view of the commenters here. We’re generally a nice, friendly bunch, but we appreciate honesty and we naturally bristle at anyone who drops in and begins their first two comments with gratuitous insults. Have you forgotten your social skills?
As for extreme language, the saltiest word used in the comment at 19:14 was prig. That’s a long way from ‘asshole”.
If this harpy lives in Toronto, she must be thrilled that the Conservative party got their asses handed to them in yesterday’s provincial election. As for bus tickets, I lived in a city of 20,000 in SC that didn’t have a Greyhound Terminal, or any sort of mass transit at all. Want to look for work in another town after your job has been sent to China? Walk.
I liked how she didn’t just stop at unkindness, but went straight into blasphemy by misquoting Jesus. This woman doesn’t do evil by half, does she?
[…] This is the vision the right has for the world: Are there even a thousand really poor people in all of America? Really poor. Dying-on-the-sidewalks-with-open-sores poor? […]
Let the American poor eat Kathy Shaidle and they’ll easily weather the recession.
[…] force behind Canada's recent "teabagging" movement bitching about government over-spending and an appalling hypocrite in her own right:The punchline is that Kathy Shaidle suffers from severe lupus and, thus, had to rely on the […]