This should be Exhibit A in any trial held to prove, once and for all, that the "gang" at SNL suck the Big Red One. THEY ARE NO LONGER FUNNY. This skit, which drrraaaagggsss on for what feels like forever should have been over after what's-his-name holds the book and states the title. But (as Belushi would say) NOOOOOOOOOO!! Instead the premise is hammered over and over and over again!!

And that's not funny.

Peoople cannot just "stop" consuming when they have no money! It doesn't work for food or health care. Sorry kids, no money because your daddy's job got outsourced to China. The 600 dollars of Welfare for a family of four lasts about 2 weeks after you pay rent on your trailer site! Go look for food in the dumpster by McDonalds! Maybe you could sell stuff on the street.

You stupid New Orleans people who lost your homes, Too bad... What did you go borrow all that money on a mortgage for? Tough luck now that your house is totally destroyed by the Federal Government's incompetance and purposeful neglect. You have to pay back every dollar anyway under the new Biden/Bush 'Screw Everyone' Bankruptcy bill. Go live in a trailer in a dust bowl in Texas and shut up! So what Enron stole millions, corporations are always good and poor people are poor because they are lazy.

The unfunny premise of this skit: "Hey you stupid poor people! Your debt is all your own fault! Tell that to grandma who has to liquidate all her assets and sell everything to pay a hospital bill or assisted living. That debt is all your fault grandma! You should just die. Now don't eat anything, we need all that Social Security money for Mr. Doctor, HCA corp. and Medicare Part D! Where you gonna live after we sell your house so Mr. Doctor can have a third home in the Cayman Islands, huh grandma? Too bad we sucked all your assets dry its cat food time or dumpster diving for dinner!

Fact is this skit is just another attempt to blame the poor. This SNL skit is not funny and neither is the fact that the working poor are in debt up to their ears.

I have ZERO sympathy for anybody who owns property in a floodplain and doesn't carry flood insurance. Should the taxpayers bail out people who were outside the Federally designated floodplain, and didn't have flood insurance? Maybe. Those inside it? No way. They chose not to buy insurance and take their chances. They gambled and lost. Tough. I don't ask the Feds to compensate me if a blackjack hand goes south, and neither should they.

People have been living in New Orleans since 1720! It isn't a "floodplane"!!!! Its a coastal city! A coastal city whose flood walls were flawed and incompetantly executed by the Federal Army Corp of Engineers. Thus, the Federal government failed hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents through purposeful neglect, incompetance and reallocation of Army Corp staff and funds to Iraq. Bush might as well just bombed the place. Now, the new Bankrupcy bill forces them to pay back mortgages on these worthless properties and you compare it to a Black Jack hand?

That is not the "fault" of the 9th ward. That is fault of Joe Biden and Bill Frist! OWNING A HOUSE BEARS NO RESEMBLACE TO A BLACK JACK HAND! Having an entire American city destroyed is not the fault of that city! It is the fault of the Hurricane. Which we as American have always given billions in the past. Why should White Florida residents get everything restored, but 250,000 Black folks get a trailer in a dust bowl? Why?

Because we haven't had a disaster like this since San Francisco was destroyed or perhaps the great Chicago fire of 1871. But in this case, FEMA and The Army corp made the disaster 100 times worse through incompetance, neglect and malfeasance. And now the Bankrupcy Law ensures none of the Black residents will ever be returning.

9/11. Iraq. New Orleans destroyed. All first order disasters. All bungled. Take responsibility. You are your brother's keeper.

This is right up there with Marie Antoinette's famous edict "Let them eat cake!"

So, a bunch of millionaire comedians are going to no-nonsense tell us like it is? Highly unlikely. Or, are they going to make the upper classes feel better about the disappearance of the middle class at the expense of those slipping into poverty because life costs more than they earn? I think its really sad that the SNL writers can't research an issue a little bit before they crack wise at the expense of the poor.

My college teaches a class in inequality, its a 200 level sociology course. I could reccomend a reading list if they like on how povery functions and how social classes replicate themselves, but that isnt the real problem.

The real problem is the urban myth that the middle class is disappearing because of its insatiable and irresponsible hunger for luxury goods. Watching network TV for a day can show you how plausible this is. But to all those who would believe that it is irresponsibility that gets people in financial trouble, I would ask them to read this book.

The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke

by Elizabeth Warren, Amelia Warren Tyagi

From Publishers Weekly

Warren, a law professor at Harvard (The Fragile Middle Class) and her daughter Tyagi, a former McKinsey consultant, have joined forces here to argue here that the two-parent middle-class working family is on the brink of financial disaster. The number of families declaring bankruptcy or receiving a foreclosure against their house has shot up dramatically. Presenting carefully researched economic data to support their arguments, the authors contend that, contrary to popular myth, families aren't in trouble because they're squandering their second income on luxuries. On the contrary, both incomes are almost entirely committed to necessities, such as home and car payments, health insurance and children's education costs. When an unforeseen event such as serious illness, job loss or divorce occurs, families have no discretionary income to fall back on. The authors recommend a number of useful societal solutions to get families out of this trap, such as legally prohibiting credit card companies from charging grossly unfair interest rates and exposing banks that employ a loan-to-own strategy that steers minority customers to higher mortgage rates with an eye to future foreclosures. Warren and Tyagi point out that families buy homes they cannot afford in order to live in a neighborhood with better schools. Their proposed solution, however-to institute a public school voucher system with wider choice-is less carefully thought out. Overall, however, this is a needed examination of an emerging social problem.

Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

- Time Magazine

"A startling account of the elusiveness of the American Dream."