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[Shinra]

What the FUCK, Arizona?

Jon Kyl: It's like the judge telling the woman who got raped, 'You asked for it because of the way you dressed.' OK? That's the same thing. 'Well America, you should be the ones to apologize, you should have known this would happen, you should have done — what I don't know — but it's your fault that it happened.' You know, for a member of our State Department to put out a statement like that, it had to be cleared by somebody. They don't just do that in the spur of the moment.

[Büge]

The Mayor of Phoenix takes up a challenge to live on a food stamps budget for a week

OK- ran out the door today with no time to scramble eggs or even make a sandwich. So I’m surviving on an apple and handful of peanuts, and the coffee I took to the office until dinner. I’m tired, and it’s hard to focus. I can’t go buy a sandwich because that would be cheating- even the dollar menu at Taco Bell is cheating. You can’t use SNAP benefits at any restaurants, fast food or otherwise. I’m facing a long, hungry day and an even longer night getting dinner on the table, which requires making EVERYTHING from scratch on this budget. It’s only for a week, so I’ve got a decent attitude. If I were doing this with no end in sight, I probably wouldn’t be so pleasant.

It's something, at least.

[Thad]

Good for him.

$29 a week -- Jesus.

[Disposable Ninja]

Jesus fuck, is that how low it is in Arizona? That's... just... fucking criminal is what it is.

[Brentai]

This should be a requirement for every elected official at any level.

Also, it should be for a month.

[Classic]

As someone who is functionally barred from holding any public office, I feel that making people who want to hold public office suffer is a great practice.

[Brentai]

I'm 100% serious, though, and it's not about "I DEMAND THAT YOU FEEL MY SUFFERING" or anything like that.  I mean, look.

My budget practices, to this day, are based on a system I developed back when I was living, alone, on minimum wage, back in inflation-infested Boulder, CO.

Back then, it was a matter of fucking raw survival.  Today, it's a matter of... well, coming off as being muct more wealthy than I actually ought to be, basically.  My income is pretty high on a national scale but around here I'm sort of a higher working-class, and everyone else in my salary range still rents and makes payments on their Camries.

I have no illusions about the fact that, had I not been forced to adapt to fucking eat, I would be every bit as broke today as I was back then.  Probably moreso, since I'd be taking a leisurely swim in a bottomless pool of debt.

So demanding that the people in charge of our budget at least experience a little bit of ascetism isn't petty, it's goddam practical.  This country's economy has been run into the ground 100% by privileged ignorants who never had any frame of reference for understanding how money works when it's actually practically limited.  Most of them aren't even really rich, per se - it's mostly the comfortably middle-class people who have never been poor enough to understand why an underwater mortgage is a fucking bad idea.

If I had my way with society, every man and woman would have to live for a year independently with their wages capped at minimum before they could be considered an adult.  It's like young Leonidas killing a wolf, only in this case the vicious predator is Capital One.

Short of that, though, demanding that the lawmakers and macro-economists have at least a working understanding of how people live?  I'll settle with that, for now.

[Classic]

I'm a firm believer in the idea that shared points of reference (especially suffering) is the ultimate key to human empathy.

Also it turns out I still can't read:

lawmakers and macro-economists have at least an understanding of how working people live?

[Thad]

My budget practices, to this day, are based on a system I developed back when I was living, alone, on minimum wage, back in inflation-infested Boulder, CO.

Yeah, it's funny how those habits form.

This year has been fucking bizarre because I've been making more money than in any previous job and yet I've been keeping less of it.  My paychecks are bigger and yet I've all but exhausted my savings.  And I haven't made lavish purchases (I bought a sound system at the beginning of the year, a phone last month, and I keep a modest entertainment budget; I got an Xbox 360 but that was with my fiancee's new computer and all told I've spent less than $100 on it); it's just that for the first time in my life I've been the sole breadwinner in a two-person household.  (Since then she's gotten a scholarship and that's helped us breathe a little easier -- though I'm out of a job in three weeks now.)

So demanding that the people in charge of our budget at least experience a little bit of ascetism isn't petty, it's goddam practical.  This country's economy has been run into the ground 100% by privileged ignorants who never had any frame of reference for understanding how money works when it's actually practically limited.  Most of them aren't even really rich, per se - it's mostly the comfortably middle-class people who have never been poor enough to understand why an underwater mortgage is a fucking bad idea.

Yeah, I think of that Tea Party numbnut who, on his first day in office, whined about how he didn't have healthcare yet.

Head of State wasn't a great movie but it DID have some fucking great Chris Rock speeches in it.  Most of which, yes, were about the total disconnect between the ruling class and the common man.

[François]

$29 a week -- Jesus.

I cook almost everything from scratch, try my darndest to buy only stuff that's on sale, and live in an agricultural area where fresh produce is inexpensive and plentiful, and even then I would find it difficult to spend less than 40-50 dollars a week on food unless I was willing to settle for cheap, low-nutrition/unhealthy processed stuff.

29$? Man, I'd have to sell drugs or something.

[Mongrel]

Hm... $3 for a week's bread if I buy cheaper stuff like pumpernickel, about $4 for fruit. Bag milk's $4, but that's two weeks worth, so call it $2. So breakfast cuts me down to $20 (no lie, my breakfast really is just 2pcs fruit, some bread or pita, and milk).

I've been trying to give up lunch entirely in favour of earlier dinners, so that's a savings already. But then I do still eat snacks, so not really.

We can probably get a good 4 meals out of our more common scratch-made stuff, but those still cost $15-$25 in ingredients. Joke answer: Guess I could just go to the local roti place 7 nights in a row (one $6.50 meal is good for 2 dinners worth of food, so it barely works!).

Technically possible for me, and not THAT far from my actual practice, but I do eat out often (mostly lunches at work) and eat way too many snacks.

[Classic]

Man, I'd have to sell drugs or something.

I get the impression that having undocumented (and therefore, untaxed) income is how most people make this work.

[Mazian]

Arizona privatized health care in its prisons three months ago.  How's that going?

Pittsburg-based Wexford Health Sources Inc., was fined for the actions of a nurse who caused a hepatitis C scare in August [...]

In the state cure letter, a series of problems were noted. They included a Wexford nurse administering medication to an inmate by having the inmate “lick the powdered medication from her own hand,” instead of putting the medication in a small cup of water.

Other problems included a significant number of inmates not receiving medication. One of those was a Florence inmate who was found hanging in his cell Aug. 23 after not getting his psychotropic medication for the entire month. The letter does not state if the inmate died.

Wexford's already been kicked out of prisons in WA and NM for similar problems, but Arizona is getting tough: they're socking them with a $10,000 fine.  Their $349 million contract remains intact.

[Büge]

Judge blocks Arizona law that bars funding to Planned Parenthood

The fact that this was even an issue is troubling enough.

[Thad]

The Atencio family files suit.

It may be October but it's not really much of a surprise.  Still, "Remember when Arpaio's goons beat a mentally ill veteran to death last year?" is probably a good headline right before the election.

[Bal]

In Maricopa County? Might be a good headline for Arpaio ads. "Sheriff Joe will keep you safe from all the things you fear most. Immigrants. The Mentally Ill. Veterans. Jews. And all the other undesirables that are ruining our sun blasted wasteland home."

[Thad]

MCSO inmate escapes by putting his jail uniform over a stack of milk cartons.  Tough on crime, rule of law, etc.

Meanwhile, in Gilbert, woman doesn't understand how electoral college works, blames husband for Obama's reelection, runs him over with her car.

Man, how could someone lack such a basic understanding of how our electoral system works?

On a completely unrelated topic, Gilbert just voted for $17M in budget cuts for their elementary school district.

[Thad]

Lemons runs down the final Maricopa County ballot tally.

On the whole, the percentage of provisional ballots was up by a point and a half from 2008, but the percentage of REJECTED provisional ballots was actually DOWN four points.

Lemons believes, and the final tally seems to support, that the people faced with provisional ballots were largely a cross-section, and the problem doesn't seem to have disproportionately targeted Hispanics, though he acknowledges it wasn't consistent across all districts and he still has some numbers to crunch before he can say that for sure.

Something he doesn't mention: even acknowledging that 2008 had a similar number of provisional ballots, I don't remember reports of long lines and hours-long waits.  It is entirely possible that thousands of people walked away before their turn came.

So I guess the good news is it looks like there wasn't a concerted effort against Hispanics -- at least, not a very successful one.  The bad news is, not a whole lot has changed; my county's still pretty far to the right.

The sorta-good news is that at least it's starting to swing just a little bit toward the left.  The Republicans no longer have a legislative supermajority, and my district put Democrats in office at both the state and federal level.  (Bit of a pyrrhic victory in Ableser's case; I generally agree with him and have voted for him in the past, but the redistricting put him up against Jerry Lewis -- a guy who I don't agree with on a lot of issues but who I respect as the guy who toppled Russell Pearce in last year's recall -- and Ableser ran a pretty disgusting campaign.  Including sending flyers out that insinuated Lewis supported Pearce, which is of course about as far from true as any statement can conceivably be.  I was incensed enough by it to leave the state senator box blank and not vote for either candidate; I couldn't bring myself to vote for Lewis on policy, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for Ableser on principle.)

[Ted Belmont]

Where in the World is Carmen SandiegoJan Brewer?

[Thad]

This after jabbing a reporter in the arm for asking about global warming.

"Where in the hell did that come from?"  Er, you're standing outside in 78-degree weather in December; I'm sure if you take an hour or two you can puzzle it out for yourself.