Vitriol Espresso "I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you all." General James Mattis

Meanwhile the rest of the country has begun to burn. The Porkulus Package, the Generational Theft Act, has passed the Senate. Clicky here to see who voted and how. Now, let me be perfectly honest here. This act has the capability of putting our children at severe financial risk. However, this honestly won't touch the majority of lower middle and middle class Americans. Upper classes will suffer as their tax rates will rise and their deductions will vanish. And poor Americans already suffer, but will be jumping through hoops they might not be able to see to get the benefits that this package outlines. Anybody that has a job should make plans to keep it for 10 years or more. Anybody without a job needs to search GLOBALLY to find one. Yes, I said it. Emigrate, my people. Get the freaking hell out of this quagmire if you have to. Just be careful you aren't dropping into the fire as you do so.

If you'll notice, the Dow isn't confident that this Package will help anybody except the lobbyists that pushed for it. Dipping below 8000 is one of the big indicators of a heavy drop (something that I have said several times before). We've come close to a collapse and continue to dip down every time Congress decides to stretch it's socialist fingers in the American pie.

Benefits for me personally!

Hoo-boy! Here comes the grub! As some of you may know, I have been disabled for about the last ten years or so. Techincally 17 years, but I worked through it for a while to get a little nest egg. Well, nest eggs only last for so long and although I still have some of it with my parents, I rely mostly upon Social Security to get by. There's no choice in the matter. I take out what I put in (unlike most recipients who get SSI on top of SSD) and live off the interest. Which puts me well below the poverty line. Whereas some inner city recipients are driving flashy cars and listening to iPods and iPhones an shit. So there you get the gist of how I survive in the world.

The Senate bill would give me $300 bucks for being on SSD. The House would give me $450. As much as I love my Republican roots, the dollar signs look nice to someone who has to survive on what I do. Actually, it's not something I would accept given the option. But they don't give people like me that kind of option. It's take it or take it. All electronically added to my SSD account. *shrug* I can pay up a credit card or buy myself a cat.

I can tell you right now that the Food Stamp benefit increase is complete bullshit. If anything the criteria are even harder to match than before. And yes, that's with new rules. I'll update as any alterations are made, but according to the last calculations things have grown even harder to get because of the payments given by the Act(s). If you benefit in ONE area, you lose in another. Something a Senator apparently has no capability of understanding.

Temporary welfare payments? Dudes, that isn't much of an increase. $2.5 billion will barely scrape the surface and NONE of that money will ever leave the cities. Rural Americans will still have to deal with whatever they can scrape together and assistance from local churches. The only welfare I get outside $27 worth of food money is like $50 a month for housing. Big fucking deal. Lower my goddamn utility bill and I'll be impressed. Vaguely. I hope that part works, I sincerely do.

Another big one for me is healthcare benefits. I am on Medicare. That's because I could not get other coverage because of the pre-existing bullshit rules. A lot of folks are in the same boat as me so I feel no shame in admitting it. The care is okay as long as you aren't replacing body parts. I also get Medicaid (though that may change as the rules have drastically changed, I just sent in this year's convoluted application and I'll find out in a week or so) and private drug insurance. Under the Act in the Senate my Medicare will remain roughly the same, but in the House things will improve via updates in the system. Which is actually a good thing. The paperwork when using Medicare/Medicaid is pretty hairy and sometimes I find myself carting my ultrasounds/x-rays along with me whenever I have to see a specialist.

Small Edit: Yes, I saw the provision for 'Appropriate and Effective Treatment' as deemed by a Coordinator of Health Information Technology and keeping doctors from performing some treatments because they are not 'meaningful.' This part needs to change. Daschle has been trying to stuff this overall Government tracking of healthcare whether or not you use the Government system for over a decade. And he's finally fit it into a bill that's passed the Senate. For me, personally, this isn't much of an issue. But for the elderly this could pose a serious health risk as treatments are refused because of the relevence of age versus viability. Call or email your Senators about this. Because it will affect EVERYONE, not just those of us using Medicare/Medicaid.

As things happen, I'll update. Because honestly this whole Generational Theft Act thing affects me on a personal level. This would not be my method of improving the country, keep in mind. The updates to Medicare were long overdue and should have been handled privately instead of chunking a bunch more bureaucracy into the mix. Welfare SHOULD be revamped, but again, without the red tape. We should be working to reduce the cost, not increase. And yeah, maybe that takes a bit of a bump in benefits to make it finally smooth enough to work, but it shouldn't be a continuous and exorbitant amount of cash input into a system that never worked to begin with. Fix the system and stop throwing money at it.

Btw, Senators? Prez? There's no such thing as clean coal. Really. Look it up. Or come to a coal town and ask. If you want to burn coal it's going to be a dirty operation and that's just the way it is. Seeing the advert on TV touting 'clean coal' makes me want to throw a rock through my TV set. Because the only clean coal is not using coal. God, that double entendre bullshit gets on my last nerve. If Obama wants to stop using coal in the US he should just fucking say so and stop with the reacharound. They've been playing this bloody stupid commercial in my area for a solid month several times a day during PRIME TIME. Basically, guys, what he's saying is that anybody who works for a coal company needs to find another job soon before the big bad Obama Administration comes to shut them down. Asshole.