Ned had not been feeling particularly outraged today, until Mrs Ned reported on her recent solo visit to her rather dysfunctional family over the weekend. Mrs Ned's family are, as are many proud Americans, devout "Christianists", which means they attend cult functions regularly but eschew any attempt to live a life that Jesus himself advocated.
What distressed Mrs Ned was the extent to which these proud citizens were scamming the system. That is, squeezing benefits from the state and local government in a manner similar to an intestinal parasite, taking nutriment but ensuring that the host is not killed in the process. Some of Mrs Ned's family are "veterans," which apparently entitles them to all sorts of benefits and preferences, although none of them actually saw combat of any kind. Now they qualify for all sorts of money, health care, and educational benefits while the average citizen is finding it hard to afford tuition at state run universities. Other members of her family are on "disability" which apparently involves convincing a government paper pusher that one's health is impaired by one of a myriad of so-called "diseases." Then, as long as one doesn't earn too much money above the table, one continues to draw benefits for life. What distresses Mrs Ned is the fact that these "disabled" persons exhibit every other indication of being healthy enough to carry on a perfectly normal (by American standards) lifestyle.
Another thing that Mrs Ned found objectionable was that one of her morbidly obese siblings apparently recently had a face lift, on government benefit, and was counseled what to write on the form to make the face lift seem medically necessary.
Now of course, these are the same folks who believe that government should "tighten its belt", cut taxes, and foster a culture of individual responsibility.
For everyone else, that is.
And it goes without saying that they are Republicans and, as Ned mentioned, Christianists.
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