So there is a lady who can’t work because she has kidney failure and is on dialysis 12 hours a day, and also she takes care of her aged mom, and her husband works only part time so he can take care of her! What a hard life that is, you guys; society, in the form of government, should really do something to help her out. OH IT DID! We mean, it was probably literally the least we could do, but at least this lady and her family get some food stamps so they will not starve. SAFETY NET! But then some total dick manager at her local Kroger purposely humiliated her (she alleges) by, after they’d had a long back and forth about whether things in her cart were eligible for EBT (they were), saying “‘Excuse me for working for a living and not relying on food stamps!” This was written about by the Huffington Post, because apparently they don’t know anybody on food stamps, and thus are unaware that cashiers roll their eyes and huff their breath every single time a Poor with food stamps has the brass to try to use them to buy some food.
But what is interesting here is the kidney-failure lady’s reaction, which is that she doesn’t think she will even vote, because sure, Romney “just wants to let poor people die,” but Obama has “spending and healthcare reform.” See, this lady was almost a high-information voter (being aware that Romney “just wants to let poor people die”) but then she was not (being totally fucking ignorant that health care reform might help a person who’s poor because she’s on dialysis 12 hours a day). “So,” she says, “either way we’re doomed.” Amazing how that messaging can trickle down, innit?
[HuffPo]
{ 156 comments }
Kroger sells kidneys in the meat department. I'll even chip in for some liver, just in case. God, to I have to fix everything? Jesus!
Mmmm sweetbreads. I love sweetbreads.
I had a typo. Let's pretend it didn't happen.
How do you prepare sweetbreads?
After cleaning carefully, dust them with flower, saute gently, then scrape them into the disposer or give them to the cat.
No one, absolutely no one is going to eat my balls. Unless it's a lady and then not literally, duh
As Mr Pynchon says, clean (separate the meat from the membrane), saute in olive oil until browned. Sea salt, lemon juice. They're kind of like fluffy, white bacon. Delicious.
EDIT: sweetbreads are thymus glands. They will not hurt you.
I will throw in a can of kidney beans, too.
This post made me want to cry, until I started reading the comments.
Kidney failure affects brain function?
Electrolyte imbalance can be a real pisser.
I know I can't think when I have to pee.
Can you think when you don't have to pee?
Well, I would if the answers weren't blindingly obvious to me.
It does when your blood fills with urine.
No, that would be the government subsidized full-frontal lobotomy she got through medicaid.
Did she remember to pick up the cedar cheese?
IMHO a better alt text for the picture above would be "Thinking about cakes we like."
There's a cheese for seder? OY.
Well, there is Fromunda cheese, so it's only logical there'd be a passover cheese too.
Now, now, don't get crotchety.
Or, get our panties in a knit. Oh, crotchety, not crochet?
And those cakes we like.
While you're up, get me and you a 2packs a peace cigs.
Next aisle over from the popcikles.
"but Obama has “spending and healthcare reform.”"
In other words, she'd rather starve and die than vote for a black man.
You mean the Food Stamp President.
I think she's one of those freeloading bitches I heard about hogging up the time at the ER dialysis machine. Where the hell are our Death Panels?
GET GOVERNMENT OUTTA MY FOODSTAMPS MORAN!!!!
Obama has “spending and healthcare”
And she doesn't want either of them.
So, then, hopefully, she has Medicaid to pick up the tab on her dialysis. But she's against healthcare????? If Rmoney wins, she would be lucky if she got a voucher for a couple of hours of dialysis….
Both sides kill poors etc. etc…
Which side is killing them softy? That's the side I will vote for.
Yeah, a football team gets screwed and loses a game and it's all over the "news". The poor get screwed evey damn day, not a peep. Seems…not right.
If she had worked hard and been successful -I mean really wealthy – she could have easily bought a new pair of kidneys from some entrepreneur in Russia or Thailand by now. Do we want to reward failure? Give a boost to losers (Thorny policy stuff gets real easy when Ayn Rand is your starting point – that is as long as you are a sociopath)
Maybe we should call Prosperity Jesus. It's too bad Joel Osteen keeps his line tied up all day.
Maybe she should plan to auction her own spare organs off. Looks like she may not need them that much longer.
The new Fatalist Party is gaining adherents, apparently.
"Damned if you do, damned if you don't, so don't vote Fatalist"
Damned right! I mean damned wrong. Annoyingly, just found out my blood type gives me extra genetic resistance against cholera. Damn. But decreased resistance against malaria. Even better!?
Sometimes the herd thins itself.
However, when Mrs. Nerger presented the family-size package of microwaveable Repub Talking Points that she found on Aisle 4, the cheeky manager's expression relaxed and he piped, "Oh go ahead that'll qualify just fine. How would ya like them teabagged?"
I have a strong suspicion that she gets her news from forwarded emails.
Still, bless her heart.
There is so much wrong with this story, I really don't know where to start.
Maybe at the place where it says "Huffington Post."
Kroger also offered Nerger a $15 gift card, which she declined.
How the hell did Kroger decide that $15 was the right amount–and why are they so cheap?
She should have gone to the Express Humiliation Lane. 10 shamings or less.
Clean up in Aisle Condescending!
I feel horrible for these people, I really do. I feel even worse for U.S. of America because of the their ignorance, we keep getting assholes like Steve King and Louie Gomert inflicted on US.
You really have to see the full quote to get a feel for the stupid:
"They’re all gonna kill us," she said. "Most of the people that we have to choose from — Obama with his spending and his health care reform, and then Mitt Romney, he just wants to let poor people die, so either way we're doomed. So I don’t see any point in voting."
So, as a sick person who would benefit from increased health care spending, Obama is going to kill us "with his spending and his health care reform"? And that is just as bad as Mitt Romney wanting to let poor people die. The spending on health care is just as bad as wanting to let poor people die, so she isn't going to vote. This from a woman waiting for a kidney transplant and on food stamps.
Some herd-thinning is apparently impossible to avoid.
This is the kid of person that needs a tin foil hat. Over their radio.
Cognitive, meet dissonance.
Darwin awards candidate I'm thinking…
Never, ever underestimate the power of stupid.
Humans are essentially tribal. Her connection to her wingnut tribe is such that even though she knows her tribal leaders don't care about her, she can't quite bring herself to switch teams. She's fucked either way and she knows it. If you're on dialysis 12 hours a day, who occupies the White House is probably not high on your list of priorities. Hopefully she'll find a donor and recover. I don't harbor any animus for people too ignorant to vote in their own best interest. I save that for the overlords, talking heads, apparatchiks and true believers who continue to spread venom and misinformation that enriches themselves at the expense of all of us.
Just borrow some kidneys from your parents.
But, wouldn't they have the oldz smell?
Besides, she only needs ONE! Jeez….some people are so needy.
Idiot manager at Kroger should also realize that food stamps help him – they allow more people to buy food at his store, thereby helping to keep him employed and off food stamps. But no, he thinks that the government should cut all of the poor people out of the loop and just give the money directly to the CEO of Kroger instead!
Right! For every dollar spent on food stamps, economic activity is increased by $1.73. It is the most effective form of stimulus (tax cuts are way at the bottom of cost effectiveness, but shh… don't tell all of those job creators.)
Regulayshons are killing American businesses.
Rather than vote for the blah guy whose programs would give her family a lift and maybe save her life, she will stay home. An ABCD vote. Karl Rove wins. SMH.
Maybe we need to just let the Republicans turn the world into a charred cinder. After the massive die-off we can repopulate with a less odious population. We would need to stock a bunker with enough supplies to wait out the dark times and a core group of liberals to repopulate the earth.
Ve vould haff perhaps three or four vimmen for each man, Mr President, and…
I know a good mine shaft.
Wait so…the GOP is just a Front for Ra's Al Ghul and the League of Shadows?
That makes a disturbing amount of sense, the more I think about it.
Never go full Krogan.
If LimeyLizzie is in, I am in.
What we have here is a mountain of stupid, and we have not yet reached the pinnacle.
Shhhh. You might trygger an avalanche. (See what I did thyr?)
From the Huffpo article:
"A Kroger spokesman subsequently apologized to Nerger and told WMAZ that the manager has been transferred to another store."
So, Kroger is run along the same management principles as the Catholic Church?
Well, not entirely. Kroger does allow women to be managers.
Zing!
Yep, they're both businesses. It's a bald fact on the face of it.
Attended Mass sunday and received a coupon for 10% off a Dispensation. Can't wait for Easter's Marriage anullment deal.
Ah, I worked for a store that did that to managers they didn't like. They were afraid of firing them and getting sued so they transferred them to a location 50+ miles from their home. They'd either put up and shut up (commute) or quit. Most chose to quit.
I'm outa here. I'm heading for Spain where they have well stocked food bins it's all free.
Take me with you! Let's fly into Barcelona, head to Basque country for a spell, and then make our home on the Galician coast. Deal?
Isn't Spain quickly spinning into economic and financial hellfire?
Yep, ergo ‘free food’ outside all the eateries, in the back, in the alley.
"I'm not concerned about the very poorly functioning kidneys."
I want someone to pay for my being sick but not the black man.
“So,” she says, “either way we’re doomed.”
Well, she does have a point here.
To be fair, she is in GA, and like mine, her dem vote isn't worth much, as far as presidentin' goes. But the reasoning hurts my brain muscle.
Is she one of Mitt's flunking 47?
It's apparently down to 46.999 percent, now!
Needs moar sticky treats.
She's just thinking long-term. Sure she might "get hers" with a bit of healthcare reform, but then she'll have to continue paying it forward to other poors who are certainly not like her in the least and are just leeching the system.
I think that hits the nail on the teabag.
Ouch.
It started with Reagan when i was three……………….
The comments below the Huffpost article are predictably enraging and depressing. I liked this one, though:
"Screw human dignity. Vote GOP."
It's true – people are habitually humiliated at grocery stores (for trying not to starve to death) by using food stamps. I was at my local store the other day. Woman in line ahead of me with a small child. The woman used her food voucher card, and the little girl said, "Mom don't use that. People make fun of us. Can't we do with out it?" The mother tried to pretend like she didn't hear her daughter, and I can't help but wonder who crapped on this woman in front of her child. I would love 5 minutes alone with those people.
This lady on dialysis needs more than a safety net. I hope we can help her get IT.
In all of my years of living in a poor rustbelt city, I've seen exactly one EBT card user treated how a customer should be treated.
But, on the other hand, this particular woman obviously fell hard and fast– designer sunglasses, Coach bag, some tasteful gold jewelry and she couldn't figure out the debit swipe for the life of her. Perhaps the cashier pitied her because she obviously wasn't one of "those" (blah or white trash) poorz, you know?
All of these stories are making me love El Barrio more and more, as EBTs are more common than debit cards at the register and the cashiers are typically friends and family and hardly even bat an eye at it.
OTOH, I did have to spend most of yesterday evening educating my roommate, who's from AZ and identifies Republican, on what various public benefits are and how they work (i.e, they're legitimately hard to get and keep, and only cover portions of bills) and who uses them (i.e, not just people in housing projects). I honestly think she might not be a lost cause, but converting her is definitely a real work in progress.
Damn, they really grow them dumb in Warner Robins, GA.
Makes me want to punch someone. Or cry. Maybe I will punch someone who is crying.
Your comment makes me stabby, so save some of that for my knife.
Too often these days I find myself with that "Migrant Mother" facial expression and body language and I'm a "Settled Father".
"The Republicans are awful, but the Democrats want me to have healthcare. I'm so torn right now…"
Well, you know, given her experiences with food stamps, it's not that big a surprise that her first reaction is to shy away from a gubmint program.
"But at least the Republicans are white…"
Are polls even opened for 12 hours in Georgia? Hard to fit a dialysis machine in those tiny booths.
the campaign should contact this woman and make it a campaign goal to educate her.
or i don't know, let biden alone with her for a few minutes.
I want video of that.
She should get her food at those $50,000 a plate deals. They even have other poors serve it to you and you get to listen to Romney hector your sorry ass for not paying taxes.
I know a guy whose daughter was born with cancer during a time when he was unemployed and receiving benefits. Beautiful child and I'm glad it worked out as well as it did, although she will have repercussions all her life. He will tell you with tears in his eyes how his daughter received top notch care at a teaching hospital, including a mercy flight in a private plane from Texas to the Mayo Clinic for treatment and he never had to pay a dime. Then he will tell you that government funded healthcare is socialism. None are so blind as those who won't see. Sorry for the lack of humor, but this stuff depresses me. I really, really had hoped we'd hold out for a single payer system.
Tell me about it. I know a guy who bitches constantly about Obummer, about health care reform, and when his spouse became ill he high-tailed her out of the country to their own country where health care is FREE.
Tastes irony, huh?
I don't get it either. Yes, it IS socialism. Wonderful, life-saving socialism that takes a few extra dimes off all of us so that babies born with cancer to unemployed parents can be cured.
Oh…I got one…a former coworker of mine told us that his wife will work for the evil public school system only long enough for her to receive the generous maternity leave benefit and then she will quit. It is called living with integrity.
Why wasn't this lady a featured guest at the GOP convention? She could have brought the house down.
She could always show up at a Republican convention in blackface and hope that they throw peanuts at her, for food.
I'll bet she votes for her favorite X-Factor contestant 32 times per episode, though.
Poor, sick, fat AND stupid is no way to go through life.
Fairly soon, Bishop Romney is going to figure out that "Rich Slick Loser" is no way to go through life, either.
Don't they give away free food at emergency rooms?
How is this person not related to me?
Interesting nom de Wonkette. IRB?
I'm a huge nerd and love the Belmont Report. I deal with IRB on a regular basis, but I'm one of the few that thinks that IRB is amazing and essential (despite being a frustrating hurdle at times). You work in research?
Of course being a different kind of nerd I was thinking "Castlevania."
Ha! Me too!
When you beat up the Poors everyday, not for what they've done–but for random, insane reasons to apeal to Crazy Baggers, then of course you will instill a feeling of helplessness.
Obama just needs to send them some coupons and stamps, so they "feel involved" in the process. Direct mailers learned this long ago…
…thus explaining how Dubya won two fucking terms.
Somehow the GOP-leaning brain is just not wired for irony. Pretty sure it was yesterday Scott Walker was tweeting about how the NFL needs to bring back the striking refs…
I expect to find 'baggers in grocery stores.
OT – (a little) when did "compassionate" conservatism turn into "callous" conservatism?
From the day they came up with that phony slogan.
Actually, the transformation was the other way around.
It petered out with the Bush presidency. Compassionate Conservatism gave us unfunded Medicare Part D, so obviously as funding things is bad (TAXES) it's best to get rid of the compassionate bit, for FREEDOMS and the deficit.
9872 BCE.
About 4 minutes after W started calling it "compassionate conservatism".
Hell, even the possiblity of flying cars wouldn't cheer this lump. Personally, I am waiting on a time machine, but hey.
Mom?
What she needs is some brains
Maybe she's a Gary Johnson supporter.
Get a job, lady. You could be assembling iPhones while you're sitting there having dialysis.
Dumbasses
and thus are unaware that cashiers roll their eyes and huff their breath every single time a Poor with food stamps has the brass to try to use them to buy some food.
I am sad to admit I know someone very well, who has often reacted in the same way. Their knowing bias, of course, is on the material possession (a nice car) the blah people own and uppitily parade around in (that a word?).
Why can't she just get a kidney the time-tested way? Roofie someone and leave him in a bathtub full of ice.
This reminds me of a lady I helped register to vote the other day. She said she liked what Obama did with healthcare, but can't vote for him because he's a socialist who'll bring doom upon America.
It's been (nearly) four years already– where is the doom?
Jesus, it's like sitting around and waiting for The Rapture® with these people.
When will the poor learn that instead of sucking off the government teat for things like food and healthcare, that they can just prostitute themselves and let someone suck off their teat and get the same services while being a maker, not a taker.
Yeah sorry to break it to you enterprising whores out there, but not all teats are created equal.
When my dear old grandpa woke up in the post op room after major heart surgery, the head of nursing at that hospital, a black woman, was just coming out of heart surgery herself and was in the bed right next to his.
Grandpa opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was this woman who was still unconscious and the very first words out of his mouth, after he frantically pulled all his tubes out was, "Get that ni—-er out of here."
Kind of reminds me of that.
At least she was still unconscious at the time.
And also, lemme tell you that you gotta be smarter than this woman apparently is to keep a loaner kidney running properly. When she goes back on dialysis, it's gonna be soshalist medicine all over again.
Having the name Nerger must be a hindrance in Georgia.
This is thanks to Karl Rove, who knows that the GOP purposely made Nixon's campaign so ugly and mean-spirited that it convinced a lot of hippies to just not be involved in politics at all, mainly that aspect where you AT LEAST vote for the lesser of two evils.
Take a look, the nets are overwhelmed with paid trolls and/or "progressives" who've bought into the manipulative propaganda that you're showing superior intellect by noticing that politics sucks, and that the way to really stick it to the system by not voting.
Nah, those are just dicks. Some people get off on nihilism and negativity no matter what.
PS So if we didn't quite believe that Huff Post went 1% when they were bought by the, uh, 1%, might this bit of obvious Lying Liars' Lying give us a hint?
On one hand Mitt is an insensitive old fart with fake looking hair but on the other hand Barack is a handsome, energetic man with a personality….so either way we're screwed. I see her pont.
Look, her kidneys are basically 47% lazy. They're on Dialysis almost half the day. We can't reach them because they feel they're entitled to health care. We can really only hope to wake them up and get them to try changing their own destiny by working for a change by humiliating them at the grocery store.
This woman is advocating self extinction of Obama haters.
Quick, someone call the suicide hot line, or not.
I find this story supremely tragic as it shows how constant corporate media spin can fool people to vote against their own self-interests. Not even to make them vote for Rmoney – just to dupe people with the spurious "it doesn't matter who you vote for" that will keep them home & not involved in any political process. A dumb nation is a RepugliKKKan-favoriting nation — hence why the right-wing hates education!
White people suck. At least a poor black person on food stamps would be smart enough to know who to vote for.
North Carolina's Dept. of Education promises that every child completing the 4th grade will know how to read. I mentioned this to a school administrator friend today, and she said "Well, read AND comprehend."
Just sayin'… They aren't dumbing them down for nothing.
These are the death panelists the GOP told us about, right?
*YARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRN*
Sorry, I got sleepy. What did you say?
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