This "Julia" Needs a Life, or a Calico Cat

With due apologies for the title, I have to say I agree with everything else David Harsanyi has to say about a hypothetical character, created for an Obama campaign piece, given the name "Julia":

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=51265

About a year ago I wrote a very controversial Yahoo article titled "What Some People Need Is a Calico Cat." The reference was to an old belief that calico cats attract money. The article also referred to a newspaper write-up of a young man who appeared to be living entirely on his father's disability pension, who didn't know how to repair a bedstead, and his pleas for donations from readers, and my preference to support people who made me feel a little less ashamed of my species. It's been reposted here:

http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-some-people-need-is-calico-cat.html

For the distant relatives who read this blog, here's the update. The calico cat Candice is still living in the Cat Sanctuary. She's not been attracting much money...on average about $125 a month over the time she's been alive. You still need to support this blog.

Both Candice and Bisquit have new kittens; these kittens are certainly not being "bred" for profit, and it's too early to promise that anybody can adopt or even meet them yet. For those who want to adopt a natural cat with smart, tough, and human-friendly ancestors, it's not too early to add yourself to the short list of people who get to know the Cat Sanctuary cats. You don't have to donate food, transportation, or the cost of food and meds, but that helps.

Now, back to the fictional Julia: I can't write about her as well as I'd like to, because this computer does not handle slideshows well. PDF slideshows run slowly and awkwardly; the "Life of Julia" slideshow, which seems to be something different from PDF, doesn't open at all.

However, Harsanyi doesn't mention it if there's any physical reason why Julia can't finance her own life without depending on government handouts throughout her entire lifetime.

I would like to see the United States remain a country that has been able to take care of people like Ruth Sienkiewicz throughout their lifetimes. I regret that, in order to do so, we've already become a country that's not able to take care of all of the people with disabilities less total than Sienkiewicz's.

I fear, and I think you should also fear, that if we let people like Julia--who is shown on the non-functional opening page as a person who can stand up, and even wear high-heeled shoes--depend on tax-funded subsidies for their education and elective medical expenses and so on, within the next ten or twenty years we'll become a nation that can't afford to provide emergency appendectomies to disabled senior citizens.

Get a life, Julia. Grow up. It's a terrible thing not to become a woman when one ceases to be a girl.

Update: About the time I was writing this post, MSNBC's "Morning Joe" crew took their own bash at Julia...

http://voices.yahoo.com/biggest-threats-red-wolf-11275808.html

And megadittos to Rush Limbaugh, who analyzed the "Julia" slideshow in detail:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/05/03/cradle_to_grave_obamaism_slideshow_the_life_of_julia