I Hope You're Sitting Down on Your Fainting Couches

It turns out that living on food stamps isn't the life of indulgent luxury that we keep hearing it is. (No!) Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton (D) was challenged "to live on a food stamp budget for a week to mark Hunger Awareness Month" and found that it was no picnic. Literally.

Stanton kept a diary on the challenge, which allotted him roughly $29 a week, the same amount 1.1 million Arizonans receive from the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) each week.

By day four, Stanton noted that he was "tired" and "it's hard to focus" after leaving the house for work without time to scramble eggs or eat a decent breakfast:

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.

There are conservatives, lots of them, in this country (and not a few liberals, too) who genuinely believe people aspire to live on food stamps, who believe that being poor is easy, who believe that we've got a social safety net that is providing well for the people who need it.

Mitt Romney, for instance: "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich, they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling."

This insidious myth that poor people are doing fine, that they're just a bunch of lazyasses who don't want more out of life, this bootstraps bullshit, is one of the grossest stories told by the Republican Party.

You try "lifting yourself out of poverty" when you aren't eating enough for your brain to work. Try lifting anything. It isn't easy when your body's devouring its muscles to stay alive.

These are easily discernible facts about poverty and our garbage social safety net. I mean, most USians probably know someone who is or has been on food stamps (if we haven't used them ourselves). Most USians don't need to Google this shit, which goes to show you how out of touch Mitt Romney really is.

Then again, Mitt Romney thinks people are not entitled to food. MITT ROMNEY THINKS PEOPLE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO FOOD!!! So.