Not least because the story at the link has changed significantly from what I emailed home this afternoon so that I could post when I got home. So some of the parts below are not currently at that particular link, or not in the earlier form.
Anyway, a lot of people seem to be raining scorn on the octuplets mom. A few days ago, I had a little bit of sympathy but more irritation that someone who already has too many kids she can't support (because she's living with her parents). I have less sympathy now.
Octuplets' mom: No one can care for 14 kids alone
Then WTF were you thinking, lady? Expecially since you have no husband and you live with your mother. BTW, that's earlier headline, the current headline (before they change it again with no notice) is:
Taxpayers may have to cover octuplet mom's costs
Even when I thought she wasn't on the dole, just sponging off parents, I figured that was going to happen. Oh, and for the (earlier) headline:
Suleman responded to her mother's claim that she is incapable of caring for her newly enlarged family.
"What human on this planet is capable to take care of 14 independently without support from family, from friends, from church? No human is," she said.
Again, WTF were you thinking, lady? One commentater in the current version put it a little more bluntly:
"It appears that, in the case of the Suleman family, raising 14 children takes not simply a village but the combined resources of the county, state and federal governments," Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten wrote in Wednesday's paper. He called Suleman's story "grotesque."
Now, admittedly, I did take some amusement from the hypocrisy of some liberal commentators, like Rutten and
Ellen Goodman. It is just a bit hypocritical to claim absolute sovereignty over one's reproductive organs when it comes to abortion, but to
lose that sovereignty just because one has more kids than others deem appropriate.
There's also that part about screaming about how she's just squirting out kids at gummint expense, which is rich coming from the same people who call Repubs evil for railing about "welfare queens" squirting out children.
That's the advantage I have for leaning libertarian and not being an absolutist about many things, I get to complain about both flavors wasting my tax money.
Still, at least I thought, "she's not on welfare".
The single mother who gave birth to octuplets last month after having six other children said in an interview broadcast Wednesday that she's "not living off taxpayer money"...
Well, good for her. Wait...
...even though she receives food stamps.
WTF?
Suleman, 33, told NBC's "Today" show that her family receives no cash from the government and that the $490 in food stamps she receives are "not affiliated with welfare."
What planet are you living on, lady? Of COURSE it's welfare! It doesn't matter if it's cash or groceries. If it comes out of my tax money, it's welfare.
Now, I'm not going to call for her to be sterilized (yet). And I can't weigh in on the claims that her doctor violated medical ethics, though he rather obviously violated common sense. But I am going to say that the government certainly should not be an enabler, and she should not be subsidized.
And I wish to hell her mother would slap some damned sense into her.
