Yesterday when I watched KO, I found myself disturbed both by Obama's announcement that he intended to continue the Office of Faith Based Initiatives, and by KO's reaction to it.  Talk about a soup of conflicting feelings.  Then I started thinking.  (Yeah, sometimes I actually do that.)

Yes, I suffer from "bag lady syndrome"- the irrational fear of being poor and homeless in my old age.  I am afraid I won't have money for health care or necessities as I age.  I am less afraid than many women, since I have been working all my adult life, minus about 6 months when I didn't work to stay home with my infant children.  I saved and put away, but we are still not living in a home we completely own and I can't throw things out- junk like happy meal toys and soap from hotel.  Even my daughter fears becoming a bag lady.  

But this fear, "bag lady syndrome" is one reason Hillary Clinton resonated so well with American women voters, and why they can be persuaded rationally (or subliminally if needed) to vote for Barack Obama over John McCain.  

That's what the BBC is saying to Americans today.  Memorial Day smells still linger on in our homes and we are greeted with these headlines:
US army suicides at record level
US veterans sue over 'poor care'
Veterans 'quarter of US homeless'  
It is a bit overwhelming to see these listed on the BBC site.  We talk about these things here, but we do little else.  Our mercenary military seems to be a conversation piece but it does not really get us very excited. I'm one of those people over 70 (Sorry Hillary, not this veteran) who is looking forward to electing a president who will care about this.  I am looking forward to electing a congress who will care about this.  Yet I look at these headlines and feel a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Please read on as I try to understand why.

If it isn't one thing it is another for the people who agree to serve in our National Guard and reserve forces. If having to go to Iraq and Afghanistan wouldn't be a shock on their system enough, how about ignoring the requirements of their civilian occupations? That certainly won't help their return to civilian life.

I am commenting on an article that appears in todays cnn.com link http://www.cnn.com/... if John Edwards' only price for his endorsement of presumptive Democratic nominee Obama was to arrange a tour of poor areas for his campaign, then I believe Obama should be thanking him.    I present this issue for discussion, and the homeless women in this article and in their cars tonight for everyone to burn into their souls.

http://www.cnn.com/...

Read it and weep, folks.

This makes me feel especially bad today because a family member of mine has been laid off her job, and will be moving out of the area.  I will not relay too many details because she wants to keep it private for now, but suffice to say this 59 year old woman, mother of four, is going to live with her 80 year old mother because it's all she can afford to do.

I wish I could help her, but I am barely making it myself.

I left work late today, around 7:45, and was in a rush to get home because I wanted to go for a run before The Office season finale at 9:00.  In one hand I carried a briefcase full of papers and scripts and in the other, a plastic bag containing half a loaf of bread, a container of sliced turkey and a container of cheese; I hadn’t had time to make a sandwich that morning and had been spending too much on lunches recently so I decided to bring all the materials with me to make a sandwich at work.  

As I exited the building into the surprisingly hot air I noticed an old Korean woman standing in the middle of the broad sidewalk.  She was short, with greasy hair and ragged clothes but she stood firm with a straight back and a smile on her face.  I could tell right away that she was homeless and, being in a fairly uncharitable mood, I quickened my pace and hoped she wouldn’t place the guilt on me of having to deny her inevitable plea for money.  I approached and then passed her without eye contact and breathed a small sigh of relief as my peripheral vision had caught no sign of her turning towards me.

This isn't funny.

Homemade "BumBot" Wages War on Riff-Raff

Using the control and a walkie-talkie, he approaches the vagrants around his bar and a local day care center to inform them via the robot's loudspeaker that they are trespassing on private property. If that doesn't do the trick, he gets rough with the water cannon. Apparently the robot has been so successful that the owner of the day care facility wishes she had three more just like it.

Rufus O'Terrill, local idiot, uses robot to assault, batter, and recklessly endanger homeless people, gets some attention for it. Then he runs for mayor of Atlanta:

I can't help but wonder why we Americans call it "panhandling" in the US, but everywhere else the act is "begging."  Does calling it "panhandling" somehow remove the stigma of begging?

The Idaho Progressive Student Alliance (IPSA) an student organization from Idaho State University, held their 3rd Annual To the Streets Homeless Awareness Event last night on the ISU Quad.  They had about 50-80 people attend and just 1 hour into the event had raised over $300 for the Bannock County Aid for Friends Homeless services; wise investment in successful programs.

Where the issue of homelessness is a community issue, this event is intimately connected to the Democrats of Southeast Idaho.

  All the good ad space is gone. Buildings, signs, store fronts, the tops of taxis, the sides of buses – all taken. So I’ve got an answer. One major advertising space has not been utilized. It’s a blank canvas located in every big city – homeless people. Now, some might say "Great idea! Paint the homeless!" but that wouldn’t work. They don’t hold still long enough. Instead, I’m saying that the big name companies and corporations should instead sponsor homeless people. I say pay them to wear a sign, a jacket, a hat, etc. Pay them the same as buying a giant billboard in a major city – maybe ten grand per month.
  It’s the perfect...

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

Among all the great gifts that Earth has bestowed upon us, what is the greatest natural resource in the United States of America?

It’s an excellent question, I think, in gauging the corporate influence over our journalism and entertainment industries, the vehicles we use to tell stories about ourselves and keep informed on what we think is important.  This particular question is of the utmost, primal importance to the health of any country, no nation has ever survived when they ignored it or got it wrong.

Here is the first paragraph from the official  Overview of Homelessness  page from the United States Department of Veteran Affairs.

About one-third of the adult homeless population have served their country in the Armed Services. Current population estimates suggest that about 154,000 veterans (male and female) are homeless on any given night and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year. Many other veterans are considered near homeless or at risk because of their poverty, lack of support from family and friends, and dismal living conditions in cheap hotels or in overcrowded or substandard housing.

Estimates from other sources vary but the general consensus is between 150,000 and  250,000.
I have noticed that in the last year under the Bush administration they have  steadily lowered the official number. Go figure.

73,000 in a single Southern Calif. County, that is hard to digest. I knew things were bad because I have written about the homeless quite a few times over the yrs but the numbers never seemed this big or shocked me in this way. In the last couple days my eyes seem to have been landing of stories along these lines. Even on Cspan this morning the topic was HB1 Visas and bringing in High Tech workers from overseas while we have so many out of work.

I don't want this diary to be about immigration, but about the poverty and the way it is growing here. In Ohio, where I was born and grew up, my old hometown newspaper had a shocking report. You may of seen it, many have picked up this story tho I haven't noticed it here at dkos yet.

"We can lie in our beds and hear the moans of dying snobs who are soon to find equality for once in their lives."

This is the raving hallucination of a drug addict, Hypo Sleigh, speaking as one already in his grave.  But he is delivering this fantasy to the bored mates in his jail cell at the turn of the century, in Jim Tully's "Shadows of Men."  Tully's books are mostly forgotten, but they are torn from his experience as a road kid (a young hobo), an apprentice roughneck in circuses and traveling shows, and a boxer.  Tully came of age with the lowest of the low, and his writing about it eventually earned him a three acre estate on Toluca Lake.

And somehow, that one line from Tully brought to mind a book by the brilliant Norman Spinrad.  His "Bug Jack Barron" from 1969, is a frightening and prescient novel that points at the ultimate exploitation of the rich by the poor.  The way in which those "dying snobs" could escape Tully's final equality

Despite Bill O'Reilly's ignorant denials, a community of around 200 people sleep in pup tents and makeshift shelters under the I-10 on Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans, just steps from tourist hotels on Canal Street.

I went back, you know – though I promised myself I never would.  Nine years later.  The overpass looked cleaner – less cluttered.  No bedding piled in the wet shadows.  No people either.  Maybe it had been abandoned – I don’t know.  It’s possible.  San Jose was cleaned up by then.  The whole downtown looked as it used to back in the ‘60’s – restaurants, theatre district - brand, spanking and new.  No animal bodies in the street or on the sidewalks, no empty cans of sterno littering shit filled alleys.  So maybe no one slept under that particular underpass any more.  If so, that would be a good thing.  When I was there – people were dying – or at least that was the rumor.  One of the old guys – the regulars – told me.  Said I should find somewhere else to spend the night – that it was too dangerous for a girl on her own.  I believed him.  So I moved further in – more towards the downtown.  Not that it felt any safer – especially at night.

Good evening and welcome to Outstanding in the Field. A weekly diary devoted to people who are doing the right thing. A reminder of the American spirit we so rarely see in American government.

I almost passed on this because it seems like a book advertisement but since all of the book’s proceeds go to the homeless, tonight’s story may be worth the effort. A man who has a hobby that he uses to raise awareness in America and the results is a View of the Homeless from a CEO’s office;

"Finding Grace" (Palace Press) is not the first published work documenting the struggles of the homeless, but it is the first photographed by the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. An amateur photographer since he was 10 years old, Blodgett’s work is a compilation of 50 photo shoots—the results of which are powerful black-and-white portraits of homeless men, women and children across the country, from a veteran living on the gritty streets of Newark, N.J., to resilient children surviving in the affluent beachside community of Santa Monica, Calif. The book says as much about the humanity of the homeless as the efforts of one man willing to spend the time, money and emotion required to complete it.