FreeRepublic member msnimje, whose user profile rather appropriately indicates she is "Looking for enlightenment in all the wrong places."

I will get to this person's quote in just a moment, but I have to tell you a thing or two about FreeRepublic. It is a website organized for conservatives to discuss and comment on the latest issues of the day. These are not Republicans, these are conservatives, for whom Dubya is only acceptable about two days out of four. Their biggest problem with Abu Gharib is that it didn't go far enough. These are people who are upset that Democrats can attack "our President," but had no such compunction spending eight years accusing Bill Clinton of everything from murder to tearing tags off of mattresses. (If only that's what he'd been doing on mattresses.)

It's sort of like this. I get up in the morning and I read the Bible; then I check out FreeRepublic to see what the other side is doing.

Anywho, I go over there not just to rescue my blood pressure when it's dangerously low but also because the perspective is interesting and, as happens whenever you have a lot of people in one place, you can sometimes learn something. Despite harboring conservatives, there are a lot of people who are otherwise intelligent. If I engage in discussions, I generally try to stay away from anything that's going to get me in a fight.

In any case, the idea is they comment on news articles, and they are commenting on one in Time suggesting, basically, that the Congressional Black Caucus should create an Antipoverty Caucus, and work to basing preferences on economic need rather than race. (Frankly, I think this is an idea that hasn't been explored nearly enough. Realize that if Oprah Winfrey had children going to college, they could very well get preferences over poor, white A students for assistance to get in.)

OK, anyway, poverty. Conservatives. What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing. We have a solution, courtesy of our friend msnimje, who states the following:

I can save everybody a lot of time and money.

If you don't want to be poor, get a job.

Of course! Let me run downtown to the inner cities and let the poor folks know that! I bet they never considered that!

Yes, of course. Get a job! I remember when you could do that. Back in the bad old days of the nineties, before Our President was in office and that low-level, no-good, Arkansansan slick willy weasel was running around, everyone could get a job! (We were also not at war at that time.) Yes, I remember the nineties. It was a primitive time, back when we didn't have a budget deficit, et cetera.

Get a job. Yes, what a great solution. Ever heard of working poor? Apparently not. Because, while you, presumably (and I) are making pretty decent money, there's a ton of folks out there who are working a job, or two, or maybe even three, and they're still poor. That's not surprising in a country where we haven't had a raise in minimum wage SINCE SEPTEMBER 1, 1997.

1997. Think of that. Eight years ago. Michael Jordan was playing basketball. Few of us had email. None of us had heard of Monica Lewinsky. I was a senior in high school.

Beyond that, please remember that, while jobs are easier to find than weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it's only slightly so. We opened a new business this year and had about 220 openings. I would guestimate 500 people applied, easily. You do the math and figure out how many got a job. If we take out the people who were coming to us from the company that was in our stores before and just consider everyone else, I would guess that 40% of them had left their previous jobs because of "layoffs" or their employer going out of business.

There's another problem to this, btw. What's one thing employers look for? Job stability. So, all this moving around in jobs because of the bad economy has made it more difficult for people to get good jobs, in a tangential way.

In any case, msnimje, yes, getting a job is a great idea. If you can find one. Which is tough, because of the economy Our President has presided over. And, please, let's not make the elitist snob decision that simply getting a job means a good living. You have to have a job in which you can actually make a living.

Yes, msnimje, you are looking for enlightenment in all the wrong places. Try leaving Free Republic and checking in with the real world.

*end rant of someone sick of living in a right-wing driven theocracy*