In propria persona I would never, etc. M/lls, step away from animated gif.
Um, what?
On a not quite related note, my coworker's ex-husband is having his sexual reassignment surgery as I type this.
But would you ever in priapic persona?
I would not, could not with a painful erection.
I could not, would not with protection.
One ball, two balls
Red ball, blue balls
2: A good friend of mine in MTF TS. I was shocked to find out that fully half the cost of transition was electrolysis.
I was shocked to find out that fully half the cost of transition was electrolysis.
rim shot
On a not quite related note, my coworker's ex-husband is having his sexual reassignment surgery as I type this.
One would think there would be rules against texting while performing surgery. Yet again we see the decadent excesses of privatized medicine.
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Change.gov's Open for Questions is mostly very earnest, but also provides a cross-section of people-with-bugs-up-their-asses of all varieties - causes including food stamps for farmer's markets, UFOs, unopenable consumer packaging, and the Trans-Hudson Express Tunnel. Most inexplicable so far:
The grease on the end of a man's nose is a human pheromone that is passed in kissing to his children. A low dose of only 150 mg p.o. has cured more than seventy people. Will you ask BOP to at least entertain research among inmate volunteers?
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The smiley face seemed out of character.
I thought it was a unibrow
Jan Schakowsky is the hottest politician who is older than me.
Pelosi's older than Schakowsky. Or don't you like the work she had done?
Nose grease is also good for keeping your banjo (or guitar) strings slick.
The perpetually surprised look is an acquired taste, JE.
Well, as long as we've turned to this topic, I will admit I have had impure thoughts about Spain's Defense Minister. But she's three years younger than me, even, so no threat to Ms. Schakowsky's crown.
Yulia is the hottest politician younger than me.
Chacon is cuter, but Power and Slaughter are scarier.
Apo prepares to invade Spain, IYKWIMAITYD
There are some oddly brunette picyures of Yulia out there. We have a scandal on our hands.
Emerson volunteers as a drapery/ carpet inspector. For the good of the people.
Wow, not one on-topic comment about Dickerdoodles? I think the concept is as good as the execution. And it's so fun to say. Dickerdoodles! So hard to choose a favorite, though... this one? Or this?
It's hard to decide which most blatantly appealed to prurience: This one? This one? This one?
the last photo looks like a father and a daughter, how open relations
strange customs anyway
What's wrong with food stamps for farmer's markets?
The person in the third photo looks familiar.
What's wrong with food stamps for farmer's markets?
The government controls which retailers it will reimburse for the foodstamps, I think for quality control purposes. Farmer's markets are generally cash only.
29: He's got a strong resemblance to the guy who sells Oxi Clean on TV.
16: What a bizarre story. The RCMP spokespeople are sort of amusing (though of course it's a gruesome story) because they always sound so resolutely serious and firmly committed to the principle of understatement: no matter how sensationalistic the material, they're not about to let the media push them into any displays of excitability.
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette not shying away from the profound and hard questions this holiday season.
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Read, you know that we here are not completely typical Americans, I hope.
27: the last photo looks like a father and a daughter
Funny, that would never have occurred to me.
30: The Hollywood Farmer's Market accepts WIC. (Women with Infants and Children.) It's a good idea. Certainly not a quality control problem.
The Hollywood Farmer's Market accepts WIC. (Women with Infants and Children.)
How much kale does a woman with two children and an infant get you?
35, 36 physiognomics
well, i said strange not in a reproachful way, coz it's okay if people are having fun
it also could be me, like, not emancipated enough to get some aspects of American life
26: No, not a one. The provenance is unclean.
9: Minivet, I'm quite acquainted with the oddities of people who think their pet peeve should be a federally regulated issue, but I'm with Wrongshore on the farmer's markets thing. It IS federal policy, and it has the power to really change people's lives:
Vouchers that permit low-income women to shop at a local farmers' market increase fruit and vegetable consumption in poor families, a new study shows.
The research, published this month in the American Journal of Public Health, comes just as states are making important changes to national nutrition programs. For years, the federally-funded Women, Infants and Children (W.I.C.) program, which subsidizes food purchases for low-income women and young children, hasn't included fruits and vegetables, except for fruit juice and carrots for breastfeeding women. After a push by health groups and a recent report from the Institute of Medicine, the United States Department of Agriculture in December revised W.I.C. to include monthly subsidies for fruits and vegetables. [...]
[...] It's not clear why mothers visiting a farmers' market wound up buying more vegetables than grocery store shoppers, but some women told the researchers that the produce sold at markets seemed to be fresher and of higher quality than supermarket offerings. Many shoppers also said they enjoyed the pleasant community experience and the chance to interact directly with growers, the authors noted.
Sentence bolded for my own amusement.
Here's a list of farmer's markets that accept SNAP (new name)
http://www.fns.usda.gov/FSP/ebt/ebt_farmers_markstatus.htm
They have to be able to take an ATM card
I will always love Rachel Maddow.
By my count Obama's honeymoon lasted exactly -40 days. Today's news was all Blagojovich-Obama.
Which one looks like father/daughter? I'm confused.
Vouchers that permit low-income women to shop at a local farmers' market increase fruit and vegetable consumption in poor families, a new study shows
Can I say how much it irritates me that we need a fucking study for everything before anyone will accept the sensibleness of it? The mere phrase "I don't see any evidence for" is enough at this point to drive me up a wall. (And yes, it happens here.)
Tangentially: not a lot of farmer's market places will be able to accept a stupid ATM card.
44: read was talking about the third picture in 26.2, I think.
Which one looks like father/daughter? I'm confused.
I think read was referring to last year's winner, viewable here (scroll down).
I think Read is right. The daughter has that exasperated look kids get.
Can I say how much it irritates me that we need a fucking study for everything before anyone will accept the sensibleness of it?
Yeah, it's pretty remarkable how thoroughly the paradigm has permeated the culture. (My bolded sentence cries out for further study, don't you think?)
In semi-related news, Jennifer 8. Lee redeems herself with a biting examination of why Costo won't take food stamps:
According to Mr. Gioia's office, executives at Costco told the office that they declined to accept food stamps for three reasons.
1. They did not think they would qualify based on the federal government requirements.
2. It was too expensive to adapt their equipment to accept food stamps.
3. With their annual fee/bulk-purchase model, people on food stamps probably could not shop there anyway.
Are these valid concerns? If the corner bodega could qualify to accept food stamps, why would Costco, a publicly traded company with $71 billion in annual revenue, not qualify?
A look at the Agriculture Department's store-eligibility requirements showed that the process of applying seemed simple and pretty straightforward. Merchants can even apply online.
[...] Even if qualified, is it hard for a store to start taking food stamps? According to the Agriculture Department's Web site, there are three ways for stores to accept food stamps. One uses old-fashioned paperwork -- for stores that do not have electricity or a phone line, or do not average at least $100 a month in food stamp transactions. (Costco has electricity and phone lines and would be likely do more than $100 per month per store.)
Larger stores that average more than $100 a month in food stamp transactions per customer can receive devices from their state governments that accept the debit cards free of charge. They simply have to sign an agreement to cover the use of the equipment and provide banking information to the company that handles processing before they can receive a device. And the number of devices per store depends on the percentage of food stamp sales. (Having a separate food stamp card-reading device can be cumbersome, so most businesses simply reprogram their payment-processing machines to accept the food cards. This would not seem to be a big stumbling block for a Fortune 500 company like Costco.)
I think Read is right.
Um, guys? If I'm reading the right caption, it says:
We can tell by her shirt that her dad has forced into helping make these cookies. We can also tell that she is not amused.
Physiogomy, my left pinky. Read just has better reading comprehension skills.
not a lot of farmer's market places will be able to accept a stupid ATM card.
The link in 42 explains some of the ways they're dealing with this.
really, they look alike, i didn't read anything in the link just looked at the photos and told my first impression
the most recent flckr visit i thought DW looks a bit like Witt
50: amazing! that almost reads like real reporting! Good thing it's sequestered the to times' blog section, where it probably won't infect the paper proper.
Why on earth doesn't the US gov't just let the people getting assistance decide what to spend it on themselves -- i.e, give out proper money, not food stamps?
Is there a morally defensible reason, or is it just anti-poor?
re: 56
It's anti-poor, I'd imagine. The UK government started giving asylum seekers vouchers rather than real cash and there was no real reason for it other than to punish them and make their lives less pleasant.
I signed a couple of times for a few months (I remember getting the first Ir£50 note I'd ever possessed) and I used to get butter vouchers occasionally with my dole. They were to help reduce the EU butter mountain rather than to provide any kind of improved nutrition to the unemployed. There were always rumours that some shops would just take them instead of money so you could buy fags.
56: As I understand, food stamps started specifically to find some more demand for agricultural surpluses. But why the program stayed that way - yeah, probably marking out the poor.
Allyall: OK, got it, it's a real issue. But considering the number of farmer's markets, and how often they're open, it seems a poor SWPL-style substitute for "get more local/organic food made and available." (Or maybe a poor Third Way-style substitute: what nice-sounding policies can we enact that don't increase government spending by one cent?)
Re: change.gov
Is there a good way to submit a comment about healthcare reform. I'd like to send a copy to my Congresscritter too, and I don't want to host a healthcare discussion.
Massachusetts health care reform is pretty awesome but parts of it were compromises that were necessitated by its being a state program rather than a Federal one.
The suckiest thing is that your eligibility can change from month to month. If your income goes down, then you pay less, if up, you pay more, if it's above the limit you may fall out of the area where you get subsidized comprehensive care and have to buy more expensive less generous care--even if you have a seasonal spike in income that won't last the whole year.
But the big one is that you have to take any employer coverage that's offered to you even if your share of teh premiums would be higher tan what you would owe under Commonwealth Care and if the benefits are less generous.
If you're unemployed long enough and nolonger eligible for ui, they put you on MassHealth Essential and you'd better hope that your doctor who took Network Health or Neighborhood Health also takes that. Getting seasonal work would probably screw the whole thing up.
I don't want to force the issue on single payer. I can live with a multipayer system, but I want to be able to keep my health plan no matter where I work.
Sorry for the Rambling Rant. I will not send a letter that is that poorly organized.
Why on earth doesn't the US gov't just let the people getting assistance decide what to spend it on themselves -- i.e, give out proper money, not food stamps?
There is a cash assistance program, which people can qualify for in addition to food stamps. Cash (also known as General Assistance or Temporary Aid to Needy Families) and food stamps each have their own tangled web of eligibility rules. You can qualify for either or both, depending.
It's basically an eternal struggle between advocates who think that there is a moral imperative to give something to people, and others who think there is a moral imperative to make sure that that "something" is restricted to those who deserve it. Advocates are fine with a certain level of false positives (people qualifying who maybe shouldn't) and restrictionists are fine with false negatives (people getting denied when they shouldn't).
So with food stamps, it plays out like this:
Advocates: Poor people need food!
Restrictionists: Yes, but they might buy bad food! Or liquor! [No, they aren't worried about poor-quality liquor]
Advocates: OK, what if we give them coupons so they can ONLY buy approved types of food?
Big Agriculture: Yeah! And make them have to get the kind of food we have extras of!
Everybody: What a yucky compromise!
Poor people: Hey, this farmer's market looks pretty good. Why can't I buy my food here?
This struggle exists on basically every level of the program, such that it's possible for an adult's welfare benefit to be "sanctioned" (that is, taken away) but the child's to remain. Again, Faustian compromise, in which advocates bow to restrictionists' idea that people should be punished if they don't follow the rules, and restrictionists pretend to believe that "child-only food stamp cases" are somehow actually going to guarantee that the child gets all of the food that the parent buys.*
*Use of the word "Faustian" not intended to mean people are selling their souls over this stuff. Although in some cases that's not so far off the mark.
Aren't you glad you asked?
ut considering the number of farmer's markets, and how often they're open, it seems a poor SWPL-style substitute for "get more local/organic food made and available."
Yeah, I kind of agree with you. That said, it's harmless and it's does actually help some folks, and I suspect some of the newer Farm-to-City markets actually could not survive if the people in their target neighborhoods could not use food stamps there. Farmer's markets aren't all SWPL-y.
62: In addition, there is a substantial faction on the right who assume that poor people are all essentially lazy and crooked and therefore must be closely monitored so that they don't blow their assistance checks on Cadillacs. Sadly, that's only a minor exaggeration.
It's hard to overstate the hostility towards the poor in certain segments of the right.
58.---There's a butter mountain in the E.U.?
65. Certainly. the Battle of the Butter Mountain marked the outbreak of the Thirty Year's War. Or something. It's over by the wine lake.
Is there a lake of stew and whiskey too?
I don't think so. There used to be bread and cheese mountains (separately), and occasionally there's a milk lake, but it dries up from time to time like those salt flats in Australia. Or not.
Essentially, the EU system of agricultural subsidies is even more dysfunctional than the American, and occasionally results in vast quantities of food being produced (usually in France) that can't be sold because of quotas. But you knew that.
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The NY Times is out-swippling itself today:
But for a truly one-of-a-kind gift, nothing could beat what Michael Chambers received for his 40th birthday on Thursday: a world-class runner from Kenya for a day.
...
Michael Chambers, an investor in various Web and media companies, and his wife have made a habit of inventive, if expensive, gift-giving. The two took a trip to Africa in 2000. A couple of years later, he had a wing of a school built in her name in Tanzania. Last year, he adopted an elephant in her name through a wildlife federation.
Chambers had become enamored with the strength of the Kenyan runners, and the stories of poverty and perseverance behind them.
...
"It's literally like running next to a cheetah," Chambers aid.
Hang on, are you still allowed to buy and sell Africans in America?
Essentially, the EU system of agricultural subsidies is even more dysfunctional than the American
I'm not sure about this, perhaps it's more that the fallout is different (see the primacy of HFCS). Anyway, `which one is stupider' isn't such an interesting contest.
Hang on, are you still allowed to buy and sell Africans in America?
More of a rental, sounds like.
The hostility to people who receive welfare/food stamps is pervasive -- my friend told me about a cashier giving her a hard time because she was buying a birthday cake for her daughter with food stamps.
72: only if they play professional sports.
re: 73
The only right and just response to that would be to punch the cashier repeatedly in the face.
73: If I was ever in line and witnessed that, I'd make it my mission to get that cashier fired.
76: So they would have to go on food stamps.
ttaM and apo sketch out the immediate vs. delayed gratification conundrum.
77: No world could be that perfect.
Witt gets it right. It's a compromise between politicians who say "There are people in this country who are desperate and need money to feed their families", and politicians who say "I know how poor people are, they're stupid and selfish, that's why they're poor. If we give them money they will spend it on booze."
Doesn't every country have a split between those two factions in the government?
It's better than nothing.
Doesn't every country have a split between those two factions in the government?
I'm sure they do. Of course, the vast majority of roughly comparable countries have come up with a better balance, too, so there is that.
Tangentially: not a lot of farmer's market places will be able to accept a stupid ATM card.
Here's an example of a way of dealing with it, and it seems to work pretty well from what I can tell. I know that other farmer's markets around the country are trying similar things.
82: The farmer's market near my house in DC uses that system. It's nice even for people who don't use food stamps--if I don't have cash on me, I can use my bank card to buy tokens rather than needing to run back to the ATM.
Allyall: OK, got it, it's a real issue. But considering the number of farmer's markets, and how often they're open, it seems a poor SWPL-style substitute for "get more local/organic food made and available." (Or maybe a poor Third Way-style substitute: what nice-sounding policies can we enact that don't increase government spending by one cent?)
I'd love to hear your or anyone else's ideas for better ways to "get more local/organic food made and available" to low-income people.
The document I linked to above states the goal of that particular program:
"This initiative will benefit food stamp users by allowing them to purchase fresh, local, and healthy foods for their families. It will also add to the customer base of the Austin Farmers' Market, which will contribute to the financial sustainability of farmers and their farms."
And from what I know of how it's currently working, it appears to be successful at meeting those goals, and not just a swpl feelgood measure. It's important to look at such programs critically, of course, but it's also important not to get all kneejerky about it.
A lot of demographically low income areas have pretty serious access problems for decent produce. The sort of thing M/tch is talking about has to be at least worth looking at carefully.
There's also the FMNP, which the markets I go to in DC participate in; recipients get paper coupons for use at farmers markets not set up for electronic benefits transfers.
84: Yeah, that's part of why I hate the SWPL discourse. Farmer's markets are SWPLy, but they're also a source of high quality fresh produce, and letting people use foodstamps to shop there isn't a 'substitute' for improving access to fresh produce for poor people, it is actually an improvement -- not a complete solution, but a genuine improvement.
Identifying something as SWPL doesn't have anything useful to say about whether it's a good idea.
Should also keep in mind that it's not like farmer's markets are just in white bread areas of the city. The one near my house is in a pretty economically diverse area of the city (at the regular grocery store nearby, a large number of people I see in line use food stamps), and the FM gets a lot of business from the low-income slice of the neighborhood during the summer. Would be interesting to see the actual breakdown, though.
