Lucid Links (051911, Morning): Strolling Through the Progressive Paradise

Reports from the Progressive Paradise, Item 1:

Senator questions benefits to ‘adult baby'
Coburn sees possible fraud

A key senator has asked the Social Security Administration to investigate how people who live their lives role-playing as “adult babies” are able t o get taxpayer-funded disability payments — after one of them was featured on a recent reality TV episode wearing diapers, feeding from a bottle and using an adult-sized crib he built.

Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican and the Senate's top waste-watcher, asked the agency's inspector general to look into 30-year-old Stanley Thornton Jr. and his roommate, Sandra Dias, who acts as his “mother,” saying it's not clear why they are collecting Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits instead of working.

… In an email response to The Washington Times, Mr. Thornton threatened to kill himself if his Social Security payments are taken away.

… In an extensive biography on his web page, Mr. Thornton says he worked as a security guard for a year and a half but said trauma stemming from childhood abuse, combined with other mental problems, made it impossible for him to hold the job, and he has been receiving SSI payments for most of the last 10 years.

But, according to progressives, there's absolutely no way Washington can make meaningful spending cuts or reform the unsustainable entitlement state without unconscionably harming people.

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Reports from the Progressive Paradise, Item 2:

Michigan man still on food stamps despite winning $2M

A man who won $2 million on a Michigan lottery show has told a TV station that he still uses food stamps.

Leroy Fick of Bay County admitted he still swipes the electronic card at stores, nearly a year after winning a jackpot on “Make Me Rich!” He told WNEM-TV in Saginaw that more than half the prize went to taxes.

Fick says the Department of Human Services told him he could continue to use the card, which is paid with tax dollars. He told WNEM: “If you're going to … try to make me feel bad, you aren't going to do it.”

Quite the sense of entitlement, eh?

According to USA Today, “Department of Human Services officials confirmed that they had told Leroy Fick, 59, that he could continue to receive aid because he took his Make Me Rich earnings in a lump sum and still met the income threshold for food assistance.”

This story proves, as if any proof was really needed, that the example Matt Hurley at Weapons of Mass Discussion cited in Warren County, Ohio (his original post; my related column) is not isolated. As I noted at the time, incidents such as these continue to demonstrate that the original intention of Food Stamps has been perverted in “a conscious expansion of the program to people who have the resources to buy their own food.”

But, according to progressives, there's absolutely no way Washington can make meaningful spending cuts or reform the unsustainable entitlement state without unconscionably harming people.

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Reports from the Progressive Paradise, Item 3:

You idiot! Shamed politician John Edwards rages at mistress Rielle Hunter for not destroying sex tape

Furious John Edwards has allegedly vented his anger at mistress Rielle Hunter over the steamy sex video they made during his White House run.

In an amazing outburst, the shamed politician reportedly exploded after a judge ruled portions of his testimony under oath would be made public.

… According to the Wall Street Journal (former Edwards aide Mr. (Andrew) Young has described the tape as like “watching a traffic pile-up occur in slow motion – repelling but also transfixing.”

Edwards did what he did because the fawning leftist press made him think he was untouchable. The fawning leftist press wouldn't follow up on the National Enquirer's dead-on accurate reporting in late 2007 because he adhered to the complete menus of correct progressive political positions, especially protecting and expanding the entitlement state. John Edwards, if he had caught a few other breaks, could have been the Democrats' freaking nominee for President.

The media elites in “progressive paradises” around the world treat their rulers with overindulgence and look away when hints of scandal appear. That ultimately leads to situations like the next item.

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Reports from the Progressive Paradise, Item 4: By now, most readers probably know of the arrest of International Monetary Fund head and French Socialist Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who has resigned from the IMF.

While the reporting in the U.S. has tended to play the story straight, FrontPageMag.com tells us that the French press has gone on the offensive — in defense of Strauss-Kahn:

… leftists defending one of their own have been shameless, mixing equal parts of attacking the alleged victim with an odious denial of Strauss-Kahn's long track record of “seduction.”

The onslaught has been relentless. French newspaper Le Monde and the French version of Slate Magazine have printed the woman's name, with Le Monde adding information about the size of her breasts and the shape of her behind. A photo of the alleged victim has been revealed on Twitter, and a Facebook profile of her was linked to blogs and other social media sites before it was deleted. Bernard Henri-Lévy, who once called it “shameful to throw a 76-year-old man into prison for unlawful sex committed 32 years ago,” in reference to sexual predator Roman Polanski, is using one of the left's favorite expressions when it comes to defending Strauss-Kahn. Henri-Lévy contends that Strauss-Kahn, more familiarly known as DSK, is a victim of sexual “McCarthyists” and “nothing in the world can justify a man being thus thrown to the dogs” which one would assume is a reference to the American justice system.

Leftist politicians were quick to follow suit. Socialist Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Gilles Savary, while admitting that “[E]veryone knows it's true to say that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a hedonist,” declared that the real problem is American culture “where everything is shaped by unforgiving Protestantism[.]” Socialist Party Member of Parliament (MP) Jean-Marie Le Guen contended, “[W]hat they are asking us to believe…it's just hallucinations. I'm a doctor and I know this can happen,” adding that pictures of DSK in handcuffs are “hyper violent.” Socialist politician and Strauss-Kahn loyalist Manuel Valls described the handcuffing as “an unbearable cruelty…Political life in France, will now be remembered as being before and after this moment.”

Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) leader Jean-Francois Cope was worried about France's international image. …

… Prospect Magazine columnist Tim King explains the genesis of the French media's “remarkable solidarity with a man who has been accused of attempted rape,” which has resulted in 57 per cent of French voters believing that Strauss-Kahn was the victim of a setup.

Like progressive John Edwards, Socialist Strauss-Kahn clearly thought he was untouchable, thanks to the just-described “solidarity” of his country's press with the man and his supposed causes, especially his party's promotion of the seemingly bottomless but in reality unsustainable entitlement state. In advanced stages of socialism, the “progressive” press goes into attack mode against those who dare question their leaders, no matter how corrupt, venal, or criminal.

The press defense and subsequent lionization of ARIFPOTUS (that would be “Accused Rapist and Impeached Former President of the United States” for those of us who refuse to forget his full, sordid history) Bill Clinton is, sadly, an object domestic example.

Update: Here's a Poliwood segment from Pajamas TV which covers the French media's sympathetic treatment of Strauss-Kahn, accompanied by a warning that this is what happens when you have a monolithic government-media complex, and why we must avoid the Obama administration initiatives which clearly point in that direction:

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Reports from the Progressive Paradise, Item 5, via Investors Business Daily:

Why Won't Media Stand Up To White House?

The Obama administration has picked another fight with a dissident newspaper, kicking the Boston Herald out of the press pool on an unprecedented claim that its coverage is unfair. Who died and elected them judge?

If the mainstream media had any gumption at all, they would vigorously protest the strange, new self-appointed arbiter of “fair” press coverage as an implicit threat to their own capacity to cover the news fairly.

The Herald is being hung out to dry with no establishment press defense because the establishment press agrees with and promotes the Obama White House's agenda, particularly its grim determination to protect and expand the entitlement status quo. To them, that's far more important than the freedom of the press it champions only when its sympathizers suffer the least little trifle.