Ha! I was coming here to dump this link in reader tips and you already have the pic up!

Too funny!

C'mon John Galt!

of course Lt. Worfe works in the raw food section.

Where's the secret service to knock down this possible threat to Mich O?...

...I guess sometimes "judging someone by the colour of his skin" applies. ;-)

Build it and they will come ..........!!

Post by: The Right Honorable Terry Tory

Look in the top right hand corner of pic. Just because they can,t be seen doesn't mean they aren't there.

"I paid for these teeth. I'm gonna put 'em to good use."

Hmm. I see the point of the post, America does have the wealthiest poor, and the optics of a guy with a cell phone in a soup kitchen line are pretty bad. On the other hand, I hate to bring something like that up for this reason. My theory about poor or homeless people is that they should get a job, and getting a job these days is quite difficult if you don't have a phone to be called at. I bet there are loads of people who abuse the privilige, but I would be unwilling to prevent the one guy out of ten from lifting himself out of poverty because he didn't have a phone despite the optics.

Risotto … muffin with carrots & pecans … freshly baked whole wheat roll …fruit salad...

I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I’m starving, I want some meat. Chicken, beef, pork, you name it – if it bled then I want it! Nothing wrong with a nice risotto, just not when I’m starving.

He's checking the Powerball numbers.

When I worked at a grocery store in Iowa, I remember people coming in and buying carts full of meat with food stamps then paying cash for their liquor and cigarettes. Infuriating.

America, home of the richest "poor" people in the world. That guy has a nicer phone than I do. Probably nicer shoes too, and lets not forget the obligatory bling.

Pharmaceutical sales, y'think? Or is it that cell phones are SO much cheaper in the States that even soup line dudes can afford it on their alms money?

That's a possibility, we're getting REAMED by cell carriers here in Kanuckistan.

Who says he paid for the phone or that the minutes arent paid "by someone else's" credit card.

All joking aside, this may well be his home phone.

Cell phone penetration is quite high in some very poor countries as well. But yes the general point is there that being poor in the US, or any western country, makes you better off than most of the rest of the world.

Numerous studies have shown that poverty is a relative concept, based on the society and your "neighbours"

Jaysus, my parents were still using an outdoor toilet in Liverpool in the 50's, the rental flat, and yet they weren't "poor".

But nothing wrong with any of this, the desire to not be "poor" is what keeps driving humans. If we were happy with just what we need then we would have stopped development a long long time ago, like the lost tribes in the Amazon.

"But nothing wrong with any of this, the desire to not be "poor" is what keeps driving humans. If we were happy with just what we need then we would have stopped development a long long time ago, like the lost tribes in the Amazon."

Unless you are an Obamabot which strives into going back to caves it seems.

Remember even Oprah set up her school for black girls in Africa as opposed to the US of A because over there they were willing to work for and value an education over material things. Remember, all they wanted here was a blackberry, an I pod or a cell phone, and anyone would wonder why they need more soup kitchens?

I'm just happy that somebody in the Obama family finally found an honest job.

http://translate.klingonreference.com/

try "say mama , wheres da malt liquor"

I cant believe she has her pipes covered up.

cant CNN photoshop this better.

CanuckInMI makes a good point — cell phones in the U.S. can be had for a song, and without access to a number at which you can be contacted, nobody can acquire employment.

A lesson I learned a long time ago when I was a teenager.  Want a call back?  Stay by the phone instead of going out and goofing off.  Nowadays you can take your phone with you.

That's kinda freeing, actually...

Garth

Half the third world has cellphones, with people paying for phone cards and minutes instead of food,shelter,etc. I think that's why that Richard Branson dick positions himself as a left wing nut all concerned with poverty.

Are ya sure he is using his phone to take a photo? Possibly he is calling 911 to report that he ordered McNuggets and they are forcing him to have Risotto. Perhaps the White House philanthropists could send their culinary staff to this kitchen along with all the food purchased for the White House and then eat all their meals there with the proletariat. Vey easy to be magnanimous on the taxpayers' dime.

People line up to get free meals.

People line up at Food Banks to get free food.

Why won't someone open up a Gas Bank or a Beer Bank.

I want something for free too.

Everybody achieves their own level of poverty regardless of how much moey they.

So if you guys lost your job and perhaps had no place to live would you throw out your phone as it would be your primary point of contact for a job. I would think that a phone would be my last, and cheapest, lifeline to getting out of my situation.

I can just see it "well I am poor now might as well throw away this phone, no sense in having a pay as you go program to look for work"

As far as we know that guy could be a volunteer there too and heaven forbid if the reporter took a little creative approach to sell a story.

I live where all the bums collect, and I used to regularly talk to some of them.
Here's what I learned ,NONE of them are on the street because they're poor.
I have never met one, truly poor person here, ever.
They are poor because they choose to be.
They are all, yes every single beggar in Toronto is one of three things:
1) an alcoholic
2) meth/crack/smack user,
3) Schizophrenic.

Food is free here.
It's everywhere, the grocery store owners don't even care when they get shoplifted for food, they let them go.
They don't even have to go into the Tim Horton's dumpster.
(I know the owner)
People and organizations leave money and hot food with new sleeping bags beside pissy panted passed out half dead zombies, every day.
There are over a hundred homeless organizatons in Toronto.
They patrol and deliver everything 24/7 to the alleys and heating grates, they pick up and deliver the homeless people to and from shelters.
Free crack kits, free money, free hot food, free daily bedding if they choose to sleep outside and wine if they come in.
We spend more on the homeless than we do on the police or snow removal in Toronto.

None of them are poor they're either sick (schizophrenic and should be hospitalized, against their will if need be) or they're trying to kill themselves, the slow way.
Giving money to Toronto beggars just funds the smash and grab industry here and makes the use of public washrooms downtown either insanely disgusting, or impossible.
Don't leave anything in view in your car when you park it anywhere downtown, ever.
Jack Layton, Olivia Chow and their tribe of dippers on the city council built it, feed it and grow it, they are responsible.

BTW, Incredible anacondas of charity on Michelle.

I bet she could BRRRRIING, the stir'n to a 45 gallon drum of Risotto.

Check out the latest ctv.ca poll. "work harder" first, and "I'm not working anyway", a close second...

Does the unstable job market make you want to:
Work harder 41%
Find a new career 17%
Go back to school 10%
I'm not working anyway 32%
This is not a scientific poll

Don't take my caddy away - I need it to drive to the post office to pick up my welfare check.

Hahaha! very funny!
This only proves that being poor doesn't merely means having nothing at all. Being poor sometimes mean, having the usual thing in a cheaper sense and sometimes free.
Get it? ;)

I thought "gun shows" were banned in DC?

The "poor" have sure come a long way, from when I was young. They dress well too. Not as skinny as I remember either.

I think today the "real" poor are the homeless. Very few cell phones there I'm sure.

No different than the 'poor' 20 years ago in Ontario...'Rae daze'. Hubby worked, I was SAHM, mutual choice.
We were content but we pinched pennies,did the thrift shops and drove the beater.
The poor had the huge sat dishes and snow machines, $300.00 per kid to start the school year, and taxi's whenever to wherever.

Don't rationalise here, please, people.

There are very few "poor" people in Canada, just alot of people who have no wealth.

But how can they expect to have wealth when they blow most of their disposable income on cell phones, high speed internet, plasma tv's, phat farm jackets($300-$400), etc, etc, etc.

I am personally sick and tired of having to pay for all of this excess through my taxes.

If a person can afford the aforementioned luxuries, then there is no way in hell that they should be collecting welfare from the state !

CUT. THEM. ALL. OFF.

I do laugh at some of the comments. I'm not poor, but if I ever were to fall on really hard times I'd ditch my cell phone to save that money for better purposes - like buying a book to learn a new skill.

It's amazing to see what was once considered a luxury item is now considered a necessity even for the poor.

Shows you the power of marketing to change expectations.

My parents grew up at the tail end of the great depression, worked hard and never wasted a penny. They have a decent retirement income, yet they don't own cells phones because they think they are too expensive.

It shows you just how damn spoilt we have become.

In 2009, Fred said:
"People line up to get free meals.
People line up at Food Banks to get free food."

In 1899, Gustave Le Bon said:
"Socialism is in fact nothing but the religion of the Stomach."
urlm.in/buud

Well judging by that picture,at least nobody can ever again say that Michelle Obama has never done an honest day's work in her life!

Now if we can just find a picture like that of Barack..................

Shaidle nails it on her site...

"Today's "poor" are the rich Jesus warned you about: fat, slovenly, wasteful of their money and other people's."

The 'organic' food stores here in Edmonton are filled with 'poor students' buying food at three times the price of Safeway (which itself is pretty expensive). Every time the U of A announces a tuition increase, there are always demonstrations, though when the student paper carries out street surveys of students about what they would do with the money they would save if the tuition rise were retracted many of them say they would buy more beer. It's really quite funny.

PS. I don't own a cell-phone. Never have. Never will.

Not that I disagree with the general sentiments here, but I do support a men's shelter here in Ottawa, and by looking at him I don't think this guy with the cellphone is homeless. He's dressed well and clean shaven, and he doesn't have that beaten-down look I see in a lot of these guys. Now, he could be trying to bum a free meal (soup kitchens generally will serve anyone who comes in the door, whether they look like they need help or not), or he could just be another helper at the kitchen, or some passer-by who wanted a picture. Let's not jump to TOO many conclusions about who this guy is, because it doesn't really say, does it?

Huh. She eats three-figure filet mignons and such and cleanses her image via a photo-op...

Dude with the cellphone camera... how the hell can someone who can't afford food afford a cellphone with a camera?

The whole picture looks a tad reverse-ersatz to me.

Then again, nothing is what it seems in Obammunist Ameristan.

Now, Neo, think carefully about your options and choose your pill... reality, or the ObaMatrix?

Are we sure that we have all the facts with this photo?

Is this man taking the picture homeless? Maybe he is a volunteer, he seems better dressed and clean shaven then most homeless people I have encountered, He could be a member of the church.

Why is this photo crooked, was the person taking this photo concealing their camera, and if so why?

Who was taking this picture, another homeless person? What if their photo had been taken, then they would be the homeless person in line for a free meal with a camera/cellphone.

If this photo were of 100 homeless/poorer people in line for the meal, all decked out in designer clothes, all taking snap shots of the First Lady with their cells, it would be a little less ambiguous.

The title of the picture dictates how we interpret it, were I to see this without the caption I would have just assumed it was someone taking a picture of the First Lady. I know I would, if she were in town and we crossed paths.

Damn these Richy Poor People, I remember when poor really meant poor! Damn the poor were luck to have a loin cloth, were cover in boils and sores and they would kiss your feet if you just smiled at them and told them to get a job. Why even looking back to the Great Depression that FDR created, the "Poor" were still rich, lining up at the soup kitchens in Suites and Fedora Hats, riding the trains for free, camping outside and eating beans.

We should do nothing to help these "Poor" people until they are near death, naked, cover in boils,... it their own fault anyways, working for companies that failed,...

Poverty is relative!

A young hard working “middle class” person with a mortgage and car loan has less net worth than a penniless welfare recipient living in a rental with no debt or obligations.

He’s a great video from a Katrina “victim” talking to a Fox reporter…………Listen to the end!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1iaNaYT4wc&feature=related

Hey Kate, I know you live in the boonies with a pentium II or some other kind of archaic computer. Heck it wouldn't surprise me if you still have a rotary phone.

So it may surprise you, but in many urban centers people are skipping the land line these days. Actually that's happening all over the world. Never mind the fact that if you have a cell phone and you're out looking for a job, people can reach you.

Were you expecting employers to get in touch through post?

I should add, unlike Canada, American cell service is often the same price as a landline, perhaps even cheaper.

"Oh but he must have bought the phone!"

No, probably not, most cell companies subsidize phones and provide them for next to nothing, and in many cases nothing, if you sign a contract...even picture phones..actually I think almost all of them take pictures these days.

Tim, Zorph, thanks for stopping by with the obligatory "unfeeling Conservative bigots!" comment.

Back to your culverts now, good boys.

Another day, another post criticizing those that help the poor. And the poor themselves.

Leave it to small dead minds to decide who is poor enough to deserve help. Jesus is so proud of you.

"Another day, another post criticizing those that help the poor. And the poor themselves.

Leave it to small dead minds to decide who is poor enough to deserve help. Jesus is so proud of you.

Posted by: ulianov at March 6, 2009 3:58 PM :

Yeah SDA'ers!!! Leave that job up to uli.After all,his hero,Stalin,did such a good job of figuring out who was poor! Mind you,that's pretty easy when you turn everybody but your buddies into serfs.
Back into your hole.

Yas, another troll heard from.

ulianov, I know this won't have occurred to you, but we're not actually making fun of the guy with the cell phone. I'm not, anyway.

We're making fun of -you-. Yes indeed, you and all the other bleeding heart confiscationists who are pretending as hard as you possibly can, trying to convince us that guy is poor.

You suck, your propaganda sucks, and Michelle Obama sucks golf balls through garden hoses for practice.

ulli assumes too much.

I didn't show any malice toward the people that Rae labeled as poor.
In fact I found out about this stuff by hanging out with them...just like Jesus would.

Yep. Uli... you know, your opinions sound eerily like those of James Travers at the Red Star... just FYI that I noticed...

And guess what? You're paranoid... if you look at the comments herein, you'll see that, in fact, no one is dumping on the poor, nor on the act of helping them. The criticism is based on the picture of Mrs. O. The fellow with the phone-cam doesn't look the least bit poor- new, clean-looking clothes and everything... it has the feel of being staged, as a photo-op, to make Mrs. O look good, despite being infamous for living hedonistically on the taxpayer dime, dining on the most expensive cuts of meat, throwing lavish parties... as people lose their jobs and themselves become "poor"...

Wake up, Uli, pal! Those elite Leftists are just pretending to care about the poor so as to assuage whatever guilt they've got about being rich... and sometimes failing to pay their taxes, as we've learned is the case with many of Obama's appointees...

Vancouver. Downtown Eastside.

2000 - 2008: Amount spent on 'helping the poor' - $1.3 BILLION.

Improvement: 0

And thats because all of that money goes to people like Ulianov and his ilk who have made an industry out of being poverty pimps.

Human nature dictates that if you support and encourage a behavior, you get more of it. So we provide food banks, soup kitchens, needle exchanges, safe injection sites and in Vancouver, social housing in the most desirable and highest cost areas - and then wonder why we have evermore 'homeless' people in Vancouver.

Oh, and let's not forget judges who declare that our parks are now available for 'tent cities'.

We taxpayers can simply hire more poverty pimps to clean up their messes of needles and other human detritus while we find other places for our kids to safely play.

POOR

he!!, most people in NA don't know what poor is

when we first landed on this side of the pond we were with out money or and fancy trimmings, but we had cloths and food and roof over our heads, so not poor

if these lefty fools want to see poor, they pay the fare and I'll take them to see poor, maybe even watch one or two die because of poverty

I love being scolded by non christians like Ulanov who've never cracked open a bible.

The poor in Jesus' time were poor. They had literally nothing to their name, and no chance of changing their station in life through education or better medical care.

Jesus had a lot to say about people of any station who squandered their money, didn't manage other people's properly either, and were lazy, gluttonous and ungrateful.

Yep, that sounds like Bernie Madoff. It also sounds like most of the 'poor' people I grew up with, when I lived below the poverty line as a child in a single parent household.

'Know what I've noticed uli -- and I live in a neighbourhood of panhandlers: 10, last count, within three blocks.

"Homelessness" in Toronto is a lifestyle, with most of the "beggars" I encounter simply choosing not to work. I give only to the obviously homeless; you can tell who they are as they look ravaged and their teeth are a mess. Either that, or they're obviously mentally challenged.

What about the guy my husband was recently accosted by? While asking "can you spare some change?" he was talking on his cell phone, dragging on a cigarette. My husband doesn't own a cell phone, and does't a pack of ciggies cost over $7.00? Lousy PR for "the poor."

BTW, our church communities sponsor "In from the cold/heat" programs at which both my husband and I volunteer. I'm not heartless. But I have eyes to see with and ears to hear with. And I hate being taken for an idiot.

Pictures are worth a thousand words. Isn't that what 'they' say?
A thousand words or not, this pic says it all.

If she can flip flapjacks and wrangle a grill full of sausage and bacon, we should invite her to be a celebrity cook/server at some Alberta charity Stampede Breakfasts...think she'd come? ;-)

When my mother and father where married they didn't have a pot to p--- in; probably nothing unusual to many of the people that post here as their parents most likely built themselves up and their families the same, from hard work and holding certain principles dear.

The way I see it- if my mother and father made a life for themselves by working hard and keeping things simple, in a community that did the same as a whole.

Anybody can.

As long as the useful idiots would see the light and get rid of the excuses,but that's not very likely.

One of the things I most like to do is find work for those that have no homes, are abandoned by family and have at best temporary work. I found a job for six such people and while we were waiting for the work to start a cell phone rang. Every one of the homeless reached for their pockets to make sure that theirs was not the phone ringing! I asked them if they all had cell phones and one of them quipped, "Well we can't have a land line!"

The fact of the matter is that the number of 'homeless' who are homeless by choice far exceeds most 'homed' people's expectations.

If people only knew the real story about the homeless scam. Watched it for 24 years. Trust me, most of these folks are there because they want to be. Some even work but sleep outside just to have more money to gamble.
Helping the so called homeless is a band aide. You have to go to the root cause. A lack of a few things like self reliance with self respect.
You keep telling people they are helpless without a program. Than you make sure they never had a real education or will. Add some real nuts you have freed to starve with the cons, pretending to beggary. Drop a few criminals who have been released to soon, preying on the drug addicts & drunks.
Bingo. Instant cloths, food, to teach them a free ride is their right because society afflicted them. With full blown government programs with six figure salaries for activists. That’s when the racket grows exponentially.
I might add because not a few are natives or some who have afflictions get checks. Some welfare ones, others WCB or pensions. Of course handicapped pensions are there as well.
Now they yell for free homes which will be rubble in weeks. All of course costs them nothing. Meanwhile the Junkie in Vancouver gets free needles to shoot up. While down the street both parents have to work hard just for supplies, food or cloths plus rent. For an ill child or themselves. This is Canada today. Guess who pays for the freebee folks in taxes? Yup you! Like the HRC’s the public must pay for their own bondage, because Marx with his ”progressives” has decreed thus. Notice who the enemy always is. Perceive also its all collectivist talk. Individuals never enter the “compassion” narrative. The engine is envy with a spirit of plunder used to rive people into hostile camps while these parasites at the top of the racket skim most of the money. In the end its of no profit for any of these programs to work. Without them the nanny state becomes irrelevant.
JMO

Go to hell big nosed Kate.

I rarely watch CNN but this morning, in my hotel room (they don't have FOX) I heard that, amidst the terrible loss of jobs in various sectors of the US economy - two sectors stood out as "net employers". These surely must be the Key to providing more and maybe even enough sources of employment for Americans that the country can eventually come out of the terrible recession that it finds itself in.

The two sectors, you ask? Health care and government. OH! HAPPY DAY!!!!

Its the "Lorne Calvert solution" to providing a higher level of employment!

If you can't expand the economy to provide new and sustainable employment - simply expand the bureaucracy with more........ you know..... bureaucrats. These people pay taxes, you know. They will pull us out of this terrible recession..... or is it a depression. Whatever, if we hire enough people within all the various government departments surely to god... no - make that "goodness" we will pull ourselves out of this terrible malaise.

Guess what, folks? That is what the American people have installed in the White House. This guy wants to bring in the big, and I mean BIG - bureacracy that will be necessary to administer the monster that will be National Medicare in the United States of America!

Can you even begin to imagine it? Yes, it will put alot of people to work. It will also create a monster that will drain that country of its financial resources crippling its ability to create enough growth to dig itself out of the deep financial hole it sits in today.

It is a recipe for disaster. God help us all.

One huge bar to people getting their lives together is a lack of contact, e.g., no way for a prospective employer to cal back an applicant. Strong helping organizations find cell phones to be a best cost, when coupled with a mailing address. Also, here in the States, Verizon refurbishes and donates thousands of old cell phones to literally serve as lifelines to sheltered abused women who can use appropriate intermediary addresses for safety reasons. As husband of a psychiatric social worker, I can tell you that (at least in Philadelphia) there are a number of genuinely homeless (and fragile formerly homeless) people, although there are many panhandlers masquerading as homeless people.

Posted by: The Phantom>>

“ulianov, I know this won't have occurred to you, but we're not actually making fun of the guy with the cell phone. I'm not, anyway.
We're making fun of -you-“

Possibly the best and most accurate comment I’ve read on SDA all week!

This is the whole point that the left and the lefty SDA trolls do not understand. No one is mad or blaming the poor, other races, Muslims or gays ect………………Their blaming YOU! At the end of the day it’s YOU who has F*cked it all up.

You ask what is it that is F*cked up? Well you will know when you explain to your children or grandchildren why their lives are miserable and “back of the bus” as they grow up in our society in the next few decades. Bloody morons.

I have to agree with Mike; where does it say that this guy is actually homeless? Maybe he volunteers at the place, and he gets a meal in return for his help. When he hears Michelle is there, he wants to take a picture to show his friends. The picture could be explained completely innocently.

I agree that, after seeing real poverty in the Philippines, there are no "poor" in most Canadian cities, except possibly for the drug addicts and the mentally ill (and I've never been to a native reservation, so I can't comment on conditions there). But people on welfare get cheap rent, clothing allowances, free food, and I still see them smoking cigarettes (of course, you can buy a bag of 200 for about $10 under the counter at most convenience stores), and most amazingly, taking cabs to the grocery store instead of the much cheaper bus. Then I hear them complain that they only get basic cable, and not the extended channels. Poor babies. I saw people in the Philippines living in plywood lean-to's set up on the fence next to the airport runway in Manila. No running water, no electricity, and 747's landing 50 feet away 100 times a day. That's poverty.

Posted by: KevinB>>

You’re absolutely right!

And I have even seen worse than that. Try children living in the Algerian desert in the garbage dumps across from expatriate camps. Yes, making homes or little caves of yesterdays truckload of garbage once it’s been dropped off and scrounged through for any meaningful sustenance then protecting yourself from the 57C heat and sandstorms with its empty remnants……………..In India they step over the evenings deceased laying in the street on the way to work in the morning with tie and briefcase in hand………….Have seen it and done it – the overwhelming helplessness of this monstrosity of overpopulated impoverished humanity simply desensitizes over time. Canadian poverty……….please. THEN ASK THE QUESTION, Why would we encourage more to fill the ranks of our impoverished, and why would we impoverish ourselves by spending billions on the hopeless and helpless?

Once we have no hope of our own, we will do nothing more for anyone else.

"I have to agree with Mike; where does it say that this guy is actually homeless? "

sarge here too true no one knows who that cell phone guy is but it dont stopp old kate from tryin to make you hate poor black folks or the poor black folks old kate imagines thats wha t ya do though when ya got nuthin and ya lsready baxcked the worst president in american history among other mistakes sarge caint help but notice yall seem a little desperate fer issues these days must be hard with no one at the helm but rush limpdick and a few as yet unindicted politicians from the traitor southern US

Uhhhhhh, Sarge? Layoff the hooch before your next post, K?

Kate, you can't be that stupid?

I have -- personally -- been homeless and had a cell phone.

Further, I was homeless without even a car and used my cell phone to get 2 part-time jobs. Here. In Canada.

Eventually I was no longer homeless.

K Shaidle

Jesus had lots to say about the rich. full stop.

RE: camel/needle/rich man/ heaven.

Let's have no more of you twisting the words of Christ into your bizarro-reverso world trying to justify your sucking up to the rich & your racism. M'kay?

OK bleet, are you one of the rich? It's so easy to be sanctimonious. Something I definitely am not.

"how the hell can someone who can't afford food afford a cellphone with a camera"

Do you know how inexpensive these phones with cameras actually are? Many people upgrade their cell phones and give the old ones away, and pay-per-use plans can cost as little as $10/month. That's hardly an extravagant expense.

Sorry, I don't see the problem here.

In 2009, POWinCA said:

"Socialism is in fact nothing but the religion of the Mouth."

Nothing but crap going in and out the same orifice.