May 4, 2013

If you can stand it, read these Ronald Reagan Wikiquotes:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan

It's a pisser. All the keys are right there. Along with his joke about recession and depression. Good old Saint Ronnie.

May 4, 2013

Protecting and Preserving Social Security Act and the Social Security Fairness Act of 2013:

More about part 2 from the link:

The second part of that bill would revise how SS payments are adjusted to better reflect how America’s senior spend their income. Currently, payments are based on a Consumer Price Index model that does not accurately reflect higher costs seniors pay, for medications, for example. The bill would create a CPI – E for elders.

Increases Benefits for Seniors and Persons with Disabilities.

Currently, Social Security benefits are adjusted by the Consumer Price Index for workers. However, costs and spending patterns for seniors do not mirror those of the workforce. That is why Sen. Begich’s bill calls for adjusting cost-of-living increases with a Consumer Price Index specifically for the elderly which was created to more accurately measure the costs of goods and services seniors actually buy.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/03/1206754/-AK-Sen-Mark-Begich-D-Will-Introduce-The-Protecting-Preserving-Social-Security-Act-On-Monday

Not sure about first paragraph, but the second is exactly what people getting COLA have said for years. Spending habits are vastly different than those in the work force, and predicating the index on that measure was not geared for those on SS, etc.

This is much like what Begich suggested last year. I'll be calling my representatives about this, since it is a specific proposal and not media spin. All members of Congress need to be called, Senate and HoR, to let them know in line with the faulty 'austerity' tables, we expect better from them.

Thanks for posting, will be sharing.

May 3, 2013

Those people only know what the media spins, but you know what's really going on. Thanks.

May 3, 2013

Glad he managed to get this. I have friends who are losing thousands of dollars in wages and other

things due to the Sequester, but they agree that the most needy are a national priority.

May 3, 2013

From the comments on the Politicusa page, things I'd heard briefly, compressed:

Reynardine Reply 
May. 3rd, 2013 at 11:13 am 



The evidence has been pointing that way for some time: in the stochastic incitements to violence; in the increasingly extreme” Second Amendment” advocacy; and, last summer, in the brazen parading by the youngest Koch brother of his very own tanks and heavy artillery through a small Colorado town, though in fact the very wealthy have been war-gaming with this stuff for some time.

National Guard and regular military units have for some time been infiltrated by Dominionist chaplains, anti Muslim indoctrination of the most murderous kind is carried out there, and – in contradiction to the United States Code – even our overseas units in combat zones are bombarded with Fox-wing newscasts implying our President is “one”.

We are looking at some grim prospects. Maybe Jakarta. Maybe Santiago. Maybe worse.

Don’t let fear write the script, but let vigilance and prudence inform it.


Remember last year's soldiers who killed some people as they prepared their mission to kill Obama and overturn the government? And all of these open threats in various states?

All of my state leaders were under death threats and these people are getting elected with a lot of out of state money and organizing. Representative government is under siege, and what we've been denying, and fleeing from here are the siren calls that to bring order is to be a police state.

We're being hit from the right and the 'left,' which seems so like the right it's hard to believe they want a representative government to exist as they do nothing but degrade it, attack those who say it can do some good and refuse to work in it. The CT is funded by the Koch, so are the Teas and Libertarians, they are not stupid, but damn if they aren't vicious in the extreme, and not stopping.

As the comment said, not to live in fear, but we are seeing this country physically torn about by this philosophy. At what point do we say that it's against our lawful government, when so many refuse to heed anything the government says it is charged to do, enforce laws, healthcare, etc?

If DU is any representation of what we are going to do to resist these reactionaries, we are setting ourselves up to fail.

May 3, 2013

Tired of the ratfucking. Hope you're doing well. I edited that other comment.

May 3, 2013

There have been stochastic killings and assaults. People are not being allowed to assemble to do

lawful governmental activities with they or their representatives without being mobbed and even followed to their homes, their families threatened there or at work or schools.

This was most notably done in Wisconsin to attack those who were organizing the recall against Scott Walker, but it's a feature of all the areas with Koch money funding these folks.

We should stop dignifying them by calling them political activists, they are criminals and thugs. This is why we have so many low-life's getting elected because people who believe in government service as a higher calling are being shut out or have decided it's not worth the danger to life and limb.

So we have a legion of teabagger grifters and their supporters who are generally not well educated but see this as way to get ahead of the people they resent. Such as the effete intellectual liberals, just as the brown shirts saw the educated Jew in Germany.

This is the tawdry side of fascism where you have to know someone to get anything. No due process or equal treatment, because they prey on others. Sloppy, maddening, and destructive.

May 3, 2013

A clear and present danger that is going forward daily, all around us.

Especially the depotism. You cannot reason with them because their living is paid for by reactionaries.

May 3, 2013

Right here! We celebrated it in elementary school.

Sheshe posted a thread about May Day on April 27th being celebrated in Boston, but it sank like a stone:

Mayday Mayday



BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally

Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston, Dominican Development Center

http://www.bostonmayday.org/

We have work to do!

http://election.democraticunderground.com/10022766354

I was going to add what we were taught about American socialism and the labor movement in public school in the sixties.

No one was interested, but here's the May Pole dance pretty much how we did it in the fifties and sixties:



I was going to post this next to it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day

And this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers%27_Day#United_States

Also this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_socialist_movement_in_the_United_States

It's a natural evolution. I was a member of the YSA, SWP and a union steward for years and we learned even more doing that work. I guess this is all something new to some here now. But it's not because most of us don't know, much less that we don't care.

May 2, 2013

Someone explained it to me. It's called ratfucking, invented by the Nixon operative, Segretti:

Donald Henry Segretti (born September 17, 1941, in San Marino, California) is a former political operative for the Committee to Re-elect the President (Nixon) during the early 1970s. Segretti was hired by friend Dwight L. Chapin to run a campaign of dirty tricks (which he dubbed "ratfucking"[1]) against the Democrats, with his work being paid for by Herb Kalmbach, Nixon's lawyer, from presidential campaign re-election funds gathered before an April 7, 1972, law required that contributors be identified. His actions were part of the larger Watergate scandal, and were important indicators for the few members of the press actively investigating the Watergate break in in the earliest stages that what became known as the Watergate scandal involved far more than just a simple break in.

Segretti's involvement in the "Canuck letter"[2] typifies the tactics Segretti and others working with him used, forging a letter ascribed to Senator Edmund Muskie which maligned the people, language and culture of French Canada and French Canadians, causing the soon to be Democratic presidential candidate Muskie considerable headaches in denying the letter and having to continue dealing with the issue.

Many historians have indicated over the years that Muskie's withdrawal from the Presidential primaries, and the disastrous Iowa primary loss to George McGovern that precipitated it, were at least partly the result of Segretti and some of the other "Ratfuckers" creating so much confusion and false accusations that Muskie simply could not respond in any meaningful way.

In 1974, Segretti pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of distributing illegal (in fact, forged) campaign literature and was sentenced to six months in prison, actually serving four months. One notable example of his wrongdoing was a faked letter on Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie's letterhead falsely alleging that U.S. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a fellow Democrat, had had an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old; the Muskie letters accused Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of sexual misconduct as well.[3]

After testimony regarding the Muskie letters emerged, Democrats in Florida noted the similarity between these sabotage incidents and others that involved stationery stolen from Humphrey's offices after Muskie dropped out of the race. A false news release on Humphrey's letterhead "accused Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.) of being mentally unbalanced" and a mailing with an unidentified source mischaracterized Humphrey as supporting a controversial environmental measure that he actually opposed.[3]

In the 1976 film about Watergate, All the President's Men, Segretti was played by Robert Walden.

Segretti was a lawyer who served as a prosecutor for the military and later as a civilian. However, his license was suspended for two years following his conviction. In 1995, he ran for a local judgeship in Orange County, California. However, he quickly withdrew from the race when his campaign awakened lingering anger over his involvement in the Watergate scandal. In 2000, Segretti served as co-chair of John McCain's presidential campaign in Orange County.[4]

He holds a B.S. in Finance from the University of Southern California (1963) and a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law (1966). While at USC he became associated with Dwight L. Chapin, Tim Elbourne, Ron Ziegler, Herbert Porter and Gordon C. Strachan, they all joined the "Trojans for Representative Government" group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Segretti

It's been working for years. We get so many misrepresentations posted to divide us and have us at each other's throats. This guy was still involved a decade or so ago, why would they stop now when it's so effective?

Rush savaged Hillary when she tried to reform healthcare, saying it would create Death Panels. Palin used it in 2000, and they've never stopped using these lies and distortions. That is just one example only.

It won for them in 2010 and they plan to use it for 2014, too. So, there it is, writes like a ratfuck, makes you feel you've been ratfucked, it is ratfucking. I'd apologize for the language, but I didn't invent the term.