Re: Ted Rall Subscription Service (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

Wow.  I think Jonathan Swift would've been proud.

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2023 08:00:22 -0800 (PST)
 >
 >  > From: Ted<http://www.send.mailchimpapp.com/~tedrall.aol.com>
 >  > Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2023 12:37:49 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > Mr. President, Please Kill the Homeless Woman Who Lives Outside My Apartment
 >  > by Ted Rall
 >  > 
 >  > Dear Mr. President,
 >  > 
 >  > Won’t you please kill the homeless woman who lives on a bench on the 
 >  > median strip of the street near my apartment building?
 >  > 
 >  > She doesn’t bother me. As far as I know, she doesn’t bother anyone else 
 >  > either. The woman who lives in the middle of the street is nice. I like her. 
 >  > Last week, as I was waiting for the traffic signal to change, she beckoned 
 >  > softly from under her pile of soiled blankets, asking for change, and I gave 
 >  > her a ten-dollar bill. I’m not usually that nice. She’s that 
 >  > sympathetic.
 >  > 
 >  > I pitied her. I’ve watched her decline since spring. As six months dragged 
 >  > by this probably-fiftysomething-year-old woman has deteriorated from “how 
 >  > did someone so normal become homeless?” to talking to herself to severely 
 >  > sunburned to “this person will die this winter.”
 >  > 
 >  > It was in the high 30s last night and it will only get colder and it is not 
 >  > a question of when or how she’ll die—the answers are (a) this winter and 
 >  > (b) hypothermia—but whether the usual circle of votive candles and $5 
 >  > bouquets of flowers will be placed by her bench or on the southwest corner 
 >  > of the intersection near the other one.
 >  > 
 >  > They say that dying of cold isn’t that bad. That you feel warm, cozy, 
 >  > disoriented.
 >  > 
 >  > I don’t believe them. Whatever the physical sensations, dying from cold a 
 >  > hundred feet from a couple hundred housing units so overheated that many New 
 >  > Yorkers keep their windows open all year long has got to be one hell of a 
 >  > lonesome suck of depressing. The nice woman who lives in the median deserves 
 >  > better than drawing her final breath while staring at the glow of a laptop 
 >  > screen through a frosted window pane the opposite side of which, under 
 >  > different circumstances, she would live inside.
 >  > 
 >  > So, Mr. President, won’t you please kill this lady? You’d be doing her a 
 >  > favor.
 >  > 
 >  > I know this isn’t your fault, sir. In a different world, you could 
 >  > allocate the tens of thousands of dollars needed to provide my outside 
 >  > neighbor with emergency shelter, transitional housing, permanent rehousing, 
 >  > substance abuse and/or mental health treatment. In reality, that money is 
 >  > tied up. The government’s budget is stretched thin. You have a massive 
 >  > deficit to think about.
 >  > 
 >  > Plus you have big expenses. For example, you’re asking Congress for $106 
 >  > billion  “in funding for Israel, Ukraine, countering China 
 >  > in the Indo-Pacific, and operations on the southern U.S. border.” These 
 >  > are, obviously, all very important needs. Before she succumbed to 
 >  > schizophrenia, the woman who is going to die in my New York neighborhood 
 >  > wouldn’t dream of suggesting that her desire to live indoors ought to come 
 >  > ahead of countering China in the Indo-Pacific.
 >  > 
 >  > I understand. If she hadn’t gone crazy, she’d understand too. Defense is 
 >  > one pot. A big pot. Anti-poverty is another pot. A very small pot. Like the 
 >  > tiniest pot in the smallest dollhouse ever. Everyone knows—you can’t “
 >  > just” move money from one pot to another pot. That’s not something we 
 >  > even want to think about.
 >  > 
 >  > All that military spending got me thinking, though. Although Ukraine and 
 >  > Israel and Taiwan clearly need fighter jets and tanks and drones and ships 
 >  > and cyber weapons and missiles and bombs and light arms and bullets in order 
 >  > to kill as many Russian and Palestinian and Chinese people as possible, will 
 >  > they really miss…one?
 >  > 
 >  > Euthanizing a homeless New Yorker wouldn’t require anything as fancy as 
 >  > one of the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems we’re sending to Ukraine. 
 >  > This lady isn’t worth $1.5 million  . Not to mention, one ATACM would take out a whole 
 >  > block or two—including my place!
 >  > 
 >  > I’m thinking something more modest, along the lines of the Switchblade 300 
 >  >  “suicide” drone, another gizmo we’re 
 >  > providing to Ukraine. As I’m sure you’re aware, Mr. President, the 
 >  > AeroVironment Switchblade is an expandable loitering munition  so small it can fit in a backpack. You launch it 
 >  > from a tube. Then it flies to and crashes into its target, where its 
 >  > explosive warhead detonates. Like the homeless, it’s expendable. And it’
 >  > s only $6,000  !
 >  > 
 >  > Come on, Mr. President: We both know the Ukrainians and the Israelis and 
 >  > Taiwanese don’t need all the weapons we’re sending them. The Ukrainians 
 >  > don’t; they’re selling the extras we send them on the black market  and the dark web (v) . I only need one. One!
 >  > 
 >  > I know—“operations on the southern U.S. border” address an existential 
 >  > threat to America. What if an illegal terrorist migrant were to sneak past 
 >  > the border wall and make his way to New York and then were to kill the 
 >  > homeless woman on my street who would otherwise die of exposure this winter? 
 >  > Of course, that would be OK.
 >  > 
 >  > Still. It’s not like you can’t let $6,000 “accidently” fall out of 
 >  > your budget for “operations on the southern U.S. border.” Send that 
 >  > drone. Please blow up the old lady.