Republican Congressman Stephen Fincher (R, TN-8) wants to cut $4 billion from the SNAP food subsidy program for the poor. Since Mr. Fincher’s party crashed the economy, 47 million people – one in seven Americans — get this meager food aid, but the Congressman wants them to go hungry. He thinks God does, too. and backs up the assertion by quoting 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”
(“You Ain’t Nothin’ But a) Hound Dog” first became a hit 6o years ago.
“The song was born in the famed Brill Building of New York, written by two Jewish teenagers named Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber. They had intended it, Leiber later recalled, for a female blues singer, and though they had several candidates in mind, it was Willie Mae Thornton who first took it into the studio on August 13, 1952. Big Mama, as she was known, growled that the songwriters were ‘a couple of kids,’ but the great bandleader Johnny Otis put her through her paces with several takes even as she tinkered with the lyrics, threw in a few suggestive howls, and changed the accent to make ‘Hound Dog’ wholly her own.”
– “‘Hound Dog’: An Old Dog That Keeps on Running,” Gregory McNamee, Britannica blog
Related:
“Mama’s Voice: The lasting influence of Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton,” Maureen Mahon, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
“Domestic house cats, it seems, may be alien sentinels—sent to spy on us and report their findings back to the mother ship. Or, as some theorists have put it, they’re like alien camcorders tracking our every move.”
– ”Are Cats Spies Sent by Aliens? A Deep Examination of One of the Internet’s Best Conspiracy Theories,” Austin Considine, Motherboard
Image (“The Blogger and His Cat, After Edward Penfield”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Odds of being struck by lightning this year:1 in 700,000.
The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math, according to Ambrose Bierce, but it’s worse than that. It’s a tax on the hopes and dreams of the poor. The only way lottery corporations get away with it is by giving a kickback to state governments, a small cut of their vast profits.
UPDATE:
“$590M-plus Powerball: 1 winning ticket sold in Florida,” Barbara Rodriguez, AP via Boston Globe
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Image (“Investment Portfolio of the Working American”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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The highlight of the 28th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Society of Hypertension this week was a study suggesting that mobile phone calls may raise your blood pressure. The study, conducted at Northern Italy’s Guglielmo da Saliceto Hospital, found that subjects talking on their telefonini had a significant rise in blood pressure, from 121/77 to 129/82. Frankly, we wonder if BP rose because subjects were irritated when their phone calls were interrupted by blood pressure tests.
More:
“New research shows what raises and lowers blood pressure: Cell phones, salt and saying om,” EurekaAlert
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Image (“Cell Phones & Blood Pressure, after Adriaen Brouwer”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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“For six years, Rafat Shororo longed for the taste of a KFC sandwich he had eaten in Egypt. This week, he got his finger lickin’ fix at home in the Gaza Strip after a local delivery company managed to smuggle it from Egypt through underground tunnels.
‘It has been a dream, and this company has made my dream come true,’ says Mr. Shororo, an accountant, as he receives his order from the delivery guy.
The al-Yamama company advertises its unorthodox new fast-food smuggling service on Facebook. It gets tens of orders a week for KFC meals despite having to triple the price to 100 shekels ($30) to cover transportation and smuggling fees. The deliveries go from the fryers at the Al-Arish KFC joint 35 miles away to customers’ doorsteps in about three hours.”
– ”KFC smugglers bring buckets of chicken through Gaza tunnels,” Ahmed Aldabba, Christian Science Monitor
Also:
“Delivering KFC by Tunnel, Not Too Fast but Satisfying,” Fares Akram, New York Times
Image (“Arabian Delights, after Ludwig Deutsch [detail]”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Mr. Gingrich is the leading intellectual of the Republican Party and its chief (perhaps only) Futurist. So what should he call this miraculous machine?
