(originally posted May 26, 2023)

Much of the current hand-wringing over the fake U.S. debt limit ¹ centers on whether middle-aged people over 50 should be forced into workfare to collect food aid, and further, whether everyone under 55 [now 65] should be put to work to collect Medicaid benefits in the 40 expansion states. This is occurring against a backdrop of states' welcome elimination of forced inmate labor, but conservative resistance to the cheap labor provided by legal immigration.

The GOP complaint, per Politico:

“Democrats right now are willing to default on the debt so they can continue making welfare payments for people that are refusing to work. And I’m talking about people that are without dependents, people that are able-bodied between 18 and 55,” [R-La Garret] Graves told reporters on Friday afternoon. Asked if Republicans were willing to drop work requirements, he added: “Hell no.” ²

Legally, “able-bodied” means everyone without a “disability determination based on Social Security Administration criteria.” Specifically, persons with the following disabilities are considered both “able-bodied” and “medically frail” and may or may not be exempt from forced labor:

-Disabling mental disorders, including serious mental illness; -Chronic substance use disorders; -Serious and complex medical conditions; -Physical, intellectual or developmental disabilities that significantly impair the ability to perform one or more activities of daily living ³

Keep that in mind when the millionaires who collect big tax credits scream about 54 [now 64] year-old grandmas getting free medical care without being forced to commute for hours each day on public transit to an unpaid job cleaning gutters at state office buildings ⁴ for “only 20 hours!” a week.

1. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/publicaffairs/the-u-s-hit-its-debt-limit-again-why-balancing-the-federal-budget-isnt-the-correct-response/?lens=publicaffairs
2. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/26/debt-talks-default-deadline-00098978
3. https://www.kff.org/report-section/key-state-policy-choices-about-medical-frailty-determinations-for-medicaid-expansion-adults-issue-brief
4. https://web.archive.org/web/20230208181401/http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/workfare.html

In the farm fields outside of Las Vegas, the temperature was 100 degrees and rising*. As the senior citizens were bent over their shovels, doing unpaid farm labor for Medicaid, a weak female voice suddenly crackled over the two way radio. “Front desk to overseer, front desk to overseer, come in.”

The surly guard, a steroid enhanced 19 year old sitting on horseback, replied brusquely, “What do you want, front desk?”

“Overseer, I'm having trouble speaking, please send Agnes to help me.”

“I don't hear nothing wrong with your voice, Jan,” replied Officer Jones.

“I'm having trouble speaking, and you know it. Send Agnes.”

“Alright Jan, if you must.”

Officer Jones lifted up his bullhorn and yelled, “Agnes, get the hell over to the office!”

Agnes, the 64 year old widow who was working for cancer chemotherapy, didn't know what the office wanted her for, but at least she was happy to be getting out of the heat. Despite the temperature, the workers hadn't been given water in over an hour.

“Move your ass, grandma!” yelled the young punk on horseback as the old lady shuffled as fast as she could. Someone buzzed her into the office, where she found Jan, a 50 year old stroke survivor, partially slumped over a desk. Jan, assigned as an indoor worker because she wasn't medically fit to handle farm tools, didn't have to wear an orange jumpsuit, instead wearing a white tee shirt that said 'volunteer.'

Jan said quickly, “I'm glad to see you, I need you to take the phone. My speech is starting to get garbled and I don't want to answer the phone if the sheriff calls.”

“Jan, you don't look well. Don't they allow you to take any time off?”

Jan handed the handset to Agnes, then turned to cover her face. Jan began hearing a loud whistling noise and then started having vertigo, followed quickly by the sense of an overwhelming smell of ammonia.

“Honey, what's happening to you?” asked Agnes. Jan was having a seizure.

After a few moments, Jan raised her head and looked at the unfamiliar grandmother sitting beside her, not quite recognizing her. “Who are you?” the confused receptionist asked. She wasn't yet completely aware of her surroundings. “It happened again, damn it.”

Agnes, looking concerned, noted, “This business of using us old people to replace migrant farm labor isn't working so well.”

Jan, starting to come back to her senses, replied, “It's almost as good as the way landlords, cops, and psychiatrists have been treating us for the last 40 years: destroying the working class to further enrich the rich.”

*Kudos to anyone who knows where Saigon was.

“As it has been throughout history, pornography is once again the canary in the coal mine of free expression,” said Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition. “The government should not have the right to demand that we sacrifice our privacy and security to use the internet. This law has failed to keep minors away from sexual content yet continues to have a massive chilling effect on adults. The outcome is disastrous for Texans and for anyone who cares about freedom of speech and privacy online.”

Regarding the article at https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/20/adobe_price_hikes/

• Libre Office can create basic PDF and EPUB files: https://www.libreoffice.org
• Sumatra Reader can open PDF and many other formats: https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader
• Photo Demon can handle complex image editing tasks: https://photodemon.org

(CW: suggestive)

Microsoft Windows has lately become a really good advertisement for Linux. It was a little after midnight, when I opened the video player, getting ready to play a hand of solitaire with my favorite sheriff. Now I don't know what Microsoft was thinking, but when you open a video player after midnight, you probably don't wanna see a full screen overlay advertisement for Windows 11. But that's what I got. And there's no easy way to close it. I know I'm using Microsoft's own speech to text features to trash Microsoft, but it's the best I can do right now. So, long story short, I paid the sheriff his due, but I didn't really need the interruption from Bill Gates's love child. (Scroll down for photos!)

Me with the sheriff:


The sheriff's name?

And how about the names of medications. Like clopidogrel, which they gave me after my heart surgery. Doesn't that sound like horse medicine? Clop, clop, but it's better known as Plavix.

And speaking of horse medicine, how about the names of those Covid vaccines. The one from Pfizer is called Comirnaty, which is supposed to be a mash-up of community and immunity. On the other hand, the one from Moderna is called Spikevax, which sounds kind of like a metal band. I finally got my updated vax a few days ago, and it was the metal one. I'm still feeling knocked out by it. I feel like I should have enough immunity for a whole community by now.

Thank you all for being such a great audience. If you enjoyed this program, please think about buying me a cup of coffee. It doesn't have to be Starbucks, which would cost a Satoshi these days.

Audio version HERE

At least around here it does. Since I moved out of the shithole apartment to a somewhat better part of town — which I can't afford — the nearest store is a Kroger, versus a dollar store with boarded-up windows.
I'm still reverberating from the dietary change from off-brand cookies and tuna to actual food that has flavor and nutrients. Honey peanut butter, which my teddy bear likes 😉 was only 1.00 at Kroger, while the short-dated one at the D.S. was “on sale” for 2.35. (I can't put a dollar sign w/o fooking up the page.)
As to bug spray, better known as “B.S.,” I haven't even had to use it at the new place, which is why I'm keeping the title of my novelette flexible as “B.S. and Teddy Bears.”
Enjoy my teddy bear enjoying honey peanut butter and instant coffee:

So I was on Post for a few months but found it to be a centrist echo chamber, just “Biden” its time, as it were.
Since the B.S. site didn't really work out for me (too much B.S., not enough teddy bears), I had planned to be more active on Post as well as Mastodon, but Post recently announced it is closing down (or has already done so by now).
Even though my risqué sense of humor got me “cancelled” at the B.S. site, I'll still be posting images on Pixelfed, some real and some not so real. All my active Social Media links are pinned at the top of this blog.

I famously can't read dark themes on a PC — that is, thin light text overwhelmed by a dark background.

I've tried various fixes, including a bookmarklet and Stylus for Firefox, but I just found the most counterintuitive and easiest fix yet. The Firefox add-on “Dark Background and Light Text,” despite its name, is fully configurable to do the opposite by swapping the background and foreground colors and making link text a little darker. The icon can be pinned to the toolbar and easily be switched on and off as needed.

I hope this helps other people with vision sensitivity. You can find this recommended add-on at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-background-light-text/

(I'm using it now: it's the only way I can read this blog!) 😀