Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois) went after Newt Gingrich Wednesday for calling President Obama the "food stamp president." Gutierrez ran through a series of charts about food stamps, showing the rising cost of the program, and the increase in the number of people on the program.

Armed with facts, the Congressman has a little fun setting the record straight.

Can you guess which president owns the first chart, about the increase in people who get food stamps, and which president owns the second one, about the rising cost of the program.

I'm not going to tell you the answers, but I will give you two hints. There is a father and son in the answers, and neither is named Barack Obama.

Congressman Gutierrez closes his presentation with some eloquent words on hunger:

And here's another fact for Newt Gingrich, just in case his "food stamp president" name-calling was designed to make a political point that he wasn't quite so willing to come right out and say:

Of recipients whose race we know, 22 percent of SNAP recipients are African-American. And 34 percent are white. Because hunger knows no race, or religion, or age or political party. Hunger is color-blind.

So today I say thank you to President Obama.

From now on, my nickname for you, President Obama, is "The 'In America, kids shouldn’t be hungry' President."

They didn't use those words, but that's what they're saying, nevertheless. There are two principles at stake here: First, that discrimination against sick people is a thing of the past; and second, that the days of cherry-picking insured groups are over.

Either insurance companies can get on board, or else they are begging for Lynn Woolsey's newly-revived public option to become the law of the land. They certainly appear to be crying out for one. Here are a couple of stories that prove the point:

Insurers stop writing policies for children

This story could likewise be headlined "Insurers throw hissy fit, kick and scream on the floor, choose those least able to defend themselves as targets."

Nothing screams public option like screwing kids. Via MSNBC:

Some major health insurance companies have stopped issuing certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday.

Continue reading »

This is such bullshit. HarperCollins photoshopped the cigarette out of the Clement Hurd's hand in the "about the illustrator" picture in the 50th anniversary edition of the children's book Goodnight Moon, Worse still they bowdlerized an illustration by erasing an ashtray:

In the great green room, there is a telephone, and a red balloon, but no ashtray. "Goodnight Moon," the children's classic by Margaret Wise Brown, has gone smoke free.

In a newly revised edition of the book, which has lulled children to sleep for nearly 60 years, the publisher, HarperCollins, has digitally altered the photograph of Clement Hurd, the illustrator, to remove a cigarette from his hand. [NYT permalnk]

Don't smoke, kids. You might end up frozen in an incomprehensible pose for posterity.

--Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise

Kerry's Kids First Act Needs Your Support

via Yellow Dog Blog

John Kerry isn't a man who forgets about the issues he said were important while running for president.

The Senator is the author of the Kids First Act (S.114/H.R. 1668), which will ensure that the 11 million uninsured children in America have health coverage and a healthy childhood – and he needs our help.

Check out the television ad that Kerry's organization is running in key Republican states and districts. While no Republican ever got kicked out of their party for being heartless, it is Senator Kerry's hope that running a public relations campaign targeted at the constituents of Bill Frist and Tom DeLay will put pressure on them to at least feign compassion for children. (Though it is interesting to note that, of the legislation's eight cosponsors, none has an 'R' next to their name.)

Please take a look at the ad, give whatever money you can to help run it and sign Senator Kerry's web site to be a cosponsor of the act yourself.

As a parent fortunate enough to be able to provide care for my son, I can't imagine the heartbreak of having to watch a young child be sick and be unable to get them help.

This is important legislation. Please support it. It'll make you feel good.

Blessed are the sneaky bastards TBogg

Sometime back we referred to Mel Gibson's theological snuff film as Crouching Jesus, Hidden Agenda. Now reader Ed (no, not that Ed, the other one) provides us with a link where handy tips are provided for slipping Jesus through the eye of a needle cracks:

If you are worried that your local schools are teaching children that religion has no place in the study of biology, please consider donating biology-related books, posters, CDs, and DVDs with religious content to your school. These materials can be given to public libraries, too, and even directly to science teachers who can keep them in the classroom as convenient reference sources. Students benefit greatly from being exposed to alternatives to the theory of evolution, which is the bias of most textbooks used these days.

These donations are completely legal, and provide a very good way to provide balance in the school without formally challenging the agenda of the mainstream curriculum.

[...]

"These donations can also be tax deductible, but are best made anonymously so that a connection is not easily made to the religious affiliations of the donor. Purchases made at Amazon.com can be sent directly to the school's librarian." (my emphasis)

Oh. And if you want to have some fun, there's a contest to rename Intelligent Design. Why? Here's why:

As you know, lately we have enjoyed increasing success in getting religious explanations of life reintroduced into public school curricula, and we believe our strategy of "repackaging" every 10 years has been a critical contributor to this success. In particular, it has allowed our members to appear more "fair and balanced" at school board meetings.

Because appearing to be "fair and balanced" is much more important than actually being "fair and balanced".

Reefer Madness: The debate about Medical Marijuana is on!

Does marijuana help people like Angel Raich? Is it illegal if a doctor prescribes it? "The justices refused three years ago to protect distributors of medical marijuana from federal anti-drug charges." Or do people just want to get stoned?

There’s also the argument that says we need the FDA to study it more closely. What about the Vioxx scandal and a supposed coverup by the FDA that David Graham brought to the public? I think all you need to do is talk to someone from the seventies and you'll get all the information that you need to know. Why did it take a study from 2001 to tell us that pot gives you the munchies?

I'm surprised the big drug companies aren't pushing to allow them to distrbute yet another drug legally out into society. There are ads on 24/7 that makes it seem like happiness is a just a pill away!

Yet children are commiting suicide from these Antidepressants that are supposed to be a godsend.

Where’s the outrage?

When has anyone jumped off a bridge after smoking a joint? You might want to eat the bridge, but normally, one wants to lie on the couch with a bag of chips and a subway footlong sandwich and watch the tube.

The side effects for oxycodone, percocet, and vicodin often include addiction and painful withdrawals, yet are almost completely ignored as a deterrent in their prescription by doctors.

The other argument that doctors will write prescriptions blatantly like drug dealers is capricious at best. I don’t think a person will be able to walk into a doctor’s office and say, "I have this twinge, can you write a script for chronic?" They can already go to the mall and do that. If marijuana will help people, then what is all this hubbub? Do we still have Reefer Madness on our minds?

Talk Left has a series of great articles about MM.

Here's an in-depth video clip segment from Aaron Brown on the subject:

Video

Pandering To Hypocrisy...Digby writes: Yes, we may be in different tribes. But vast numbers of people from both tribes are watching the same "trash" on television and getting divorced and having children out of wedlock and all the other horrible outgrowths of a society that is evidently in horrible decline. The difference is that one of the tribes seems to like to consume this crap and then pretend not only that they don't, but that the other tribe is forcing it on them."

Racism stands tall!