So ex-Senator, current member of the Catfood Commission Alan Simpson thinks Americans are greedy for wanting some kind of financial security in retirement, and he’s not afraid to say so in response to perceived critics, in rather crude terms:
“I’ve made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree. You know ’em too. It’s the same with any system in America. We’ve reached a point now where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work!”
As always, what Digby said on this score. The issue isn’t Simpson’s vocabulary, but that he’s a heartless bastard who, for lack of evidence to the contrary, seems to have been chosen to lead “reform” of Social Security for that very reason.
In that regard, it’s instructive to put Simpson’s words up against the witness of scripture:
Even the jackals offer the tit
and nurse their young,
but my people has become cruel,
like the ostriches in the wilderness.
Okay okay, so the original says “breast.” I don’t think we need to be overly sensitive in our descriptions of jackal mammaries,* do you?
The serious point here is: the more things change, the more they stay the same. The United States may not have been laid waste by a foreign power and its citizens dragged off into slavery in a hostile land, but we’re not in the greatest shape. And still there are people who think the way to deal with social problems is to take it out of the hide of the vulnerable.
What have we become?
*Some translations render it as “sea monsters” and their breasts. It’s jackals.
