Remember during the government shutdown when those World War II vets went to see their memorial in Washington, D.C., but they couldn't go in because it was closed?

You don't do that to our vets! We're a vet-honoring, thank-you-for-your-service kind of country. Don't disrespect our vets! We'll put a boot in your ass or a sneaker up your nose. We're not sure, but it will involve our shoes and one of your holes.

And then the Republicans, official sponsors of American hunger, decided to cut the food stamp program.

Here's a woman, an old woman, say 87 years old. She dropped out of high school during World War II to make parachutes. And at war's end, she married a guy who dropped out of high school to join the Marines.

He drove a cab for 40 years. She waitressed, did light assembly factory work, worked as a receptionist in a dentist's office. They had three kids and love and, when they were young, they liked to go dancing at the Elks hall.

And he died when his kidneys failed. And the kids got married and started their own lives of work. Two of them moved away to find the kind of work they wanted.

And she got old.

And she gets his Social Security, and it's damn near enough. Her oldest son still lives in town and he does her grocery shopping and gives her $20 when he can. He's got two kids and a mortgage.

She's the widow of a veteran and a former maker of parachutes, back when her eyes were good and her fingers were fast and she'd walk giggling out of the factory gate with the other girls.

And the oldest son, desperate to keep his mom eating, gets her on food stamps. She gets $149 a month, based on need. It helps.

And that is being cut. She'll lose about $11 a month, which is bearable, if her son will just stop buying the luxuries, maybe a half gallon of ice cream a month, a couple packages of cookies, maybe a dozen eggs and some of that deli ham she likes in her sandwiches.

Hell, she'll still eat. If she eats cornmeal mush and boiled potatoes every day, she can probably put a couple of bucks in the bank for her funeral.

And she made parachutes that brought men safely out of the skies over France. She's the widow of a veteran and a former maker of parachutes and she has never been late with the light bill or the phone bill. Not once in her life.

And she'll take it. She knows how to go without. She fought Hitler with her keen eyesight and quick hands.

Hitler's dead and her husband's dead and, in Washington, guys with flag buttons in their lapels took $11 off of her as a way of "reducing entitlements," of finally cornering those lobster-eating, drug-addicted, screw-like-bunnies welfare cheats.

Yeah. We're a mighty nation. We kick down the barriers to get into cold, stone memorials and we swipe $11 off grandmothers.

Thanks for your service, Grandma. Now give us back that loaf of bread. You're not worth it.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com