$1362 for Face Cream v. Hungry Children and the Wall Street Demonstrators

I'm mad as hell, and I won't take it any more. There are hungry children in America, the richest country in the world. I worked all my life against this sinful injustice, and it is back! I am one ferociously angry grandma, and I'm going to nag the hell out of you until YOU change this. My generation of activists and I did so much for you! Now you've got to help the children!

Thank God that there are some folks now demonstrating against Wall Street. Good for them! But that's not enough.

What are YOU doing about it? Still arguing the finer points of Democratic policy with each other? That's of NO use to anybody. Or have you instead called your Congressional rep to urge support for Obama's American Jobs Act? Did you or did you not make that phone call? Did you send Obama even just $5? Did you push back when family, co-workers or cronies repeated some GOP nonsense?

This is your grandma here speaking! And I want to know!

Or did you just let this stuff slip your mind?

Well, here's something I hope sticks in your mind the way it has in mine.

A couple of weeks ago I read in the NY Times that the rich are spending again. Oh, swell. One of the things they're spending on is face cream at $1362 for a 16 ounce jar. Yes, that's one thousand three hundred sixty-two dollars. Before sales tax. For a lousy jar of face cream!

I can't get that jar of face cream out of my mind. $1362 to stoke some idiot woman's vanity? There's no magic in that face cream. All creams, lotions, lipsticks, etc. are effectively the same. You get the same value for $1 that you do for $100. I worked a stint at a big fashion magazine and know whereof I speak.

But I don't care that the rich get fleeced sometimes. A lot of them have sure done a good job of fleecing the rest of us.

What I care about are the children going hungry. In America. Right here. In the cities. In suburbia. In the rural countryside. The hunger is not as visible as the starvation in Eastern Africa, but we know it's here. A couple of weeks after the $1362 face cream story, the NY Times and other major media  gasped at the large percentage of American children who are now below the poverty line.

"Below the poverty line" means going hungry while rich women cream their faces. Kids going hungry. Maybe not every day. But near the end of the month when the food stamps run out. Or the unemployment insurance is gone. Or the Walmart wages won't cover the electric bill and also buy food. That's when parents give kids candy because just a little of it fools the hunger pains. At least for a while. I know because not only did I do a stint on a fashion mag but my six kids and I once did a stint on food stamps.

So what's the answer about today's hungry kids? Give up on Obama and bring back the GOP, the folks who created this mess? Are Americans really that stupid?

Well, it seems like "the best and the brightest" of the Democratic "intelligentsia" are just that stupid, the ones who have ceaselessly shredded Obama for three years because he didn't do things their way. For example, they still grouse that he should have MADE the GOP House back down and do what he wanted.

Yeah? How do you do that exactly? Lock the Congressional washrooms? Cut off their air?

Obama is fighting for those hungry kids. That's why he compromises with the GOP. Last winter that was the only way to get unemployment benefits extended. And don't anyone forget it!

It is a sin that there are hungry children anywhere. Some good people are trying to do something about those poor starving people in East Africa, even risking their lives to help.

So what are you doing about the hungry kids right here? If you don't do something to help Obama, it's going to get a whole lot worse. If the GOP wins next year, it may be YOUR kids that start going hungry. For almost 60 years I've seen what the GOP does to the economy. The" Nixon recession". The "Reagan recession". The "George H. W recession". Now it's still the "George W. recession." Hell, there was even an "Eisenhower recession." These guys really know how to trash an economy. They've had lots of practice with their "supply side economics" and their "trickle-down" tax cuts for the wealthy. And they're talking the same crap now!

So keep in mind that $1362 face cream. And the hungry little children. And your children! For their sake, do something about it! Make the phone call. Send the $5 (or more). Push back against the idiocy!

We CAN do this thing! We have to!

And keep your hand out of the face cream jar!