Mornin’, freedom fighters

Thanks, SD. The end of the key program aimed at getting the U.S. out of its last declared war is depressing. Seems like just getting out might work, let’s go there, how about it?

Morning.

Keep your Democracy close and personal. Otherwise it will surely disappear.

Good morning everyone.

Thank you for the post SouthernDragon.
Anytime Rahm takes a hit is a good day. This is not going to be good for his image.

Good morning, everyone. Kate’s boob? Now what did I miss?

From the first bullet…

The last few days have been … terrible for the image of the mayor, Rahm Emanuel.

Awwww. What a shame. Where’s my tiny violin?

You missed it? OMG! It was the single most important news story for the week!

Forget about wars and bank collapse. The real story is the Duchess and her tiny mammilia.

Very good thought. If we stay part of our community, where we live, it makes a much better ground for democratic government building there at home.

Good morning pups.

Romney will lose any Hispanic voters he had supporting him today.

You just cannot write stuff better than this reality.

Seriously, guys, we’re facing eviction in less than two weeks unless we get some help. If you have a blog, please spread the word.

Good morning folks.

So Chavez is about to get re-elected again. That is no surprise. What should be troubling is that he apparently has not figured out a succession plan. That means that when he goes, likely his socialist party gets fragments and loses power because of personal conflicts and ambitions among successors. The longer he goes without retiring, the worse it will be when it unwinds.

The second problem is that strong leaders like Chavez rarely develop strong leaders among their direct reports. Consequently, the bench of possible competent leaders is not very deep.

What I keep reminding myself is that Rahm was elected mayor, and he’s inherited the kind of mess the Prez did. What to do, it’s a position a lot of folks have been faced with. I contrast what Walker in Wisconsin and other wingers elected in 2010 tried, and my sympathies are not in that direction.

I’ve had three people in the past week tell me that Obama is a socialist and is trying to turn the country into a socialist quagmire. After I laughed for a while, I asked why I haven’t gotten anything from him or his policies. Told them I kinda like some of the socialist entities we have like public schools, public roads and highways, and the like.

1) Kate’s boobs are very nice and worthy of most front pages.

2) The teachers got the best deal they could reasonably expect IMO. Hopefully, Rahm is destroied by the fallout from his attempts to crush public education. I sure wish Obama had backed the teachers rather than Rahm.

3) I don’t blame India. Those corporations have depresses wages and living standards wherever they’ve gone. Wish we had the guts to break up Walmart. Or unionize it.

4) Welcome Suu Kyi. Congrats on your aware! You might ask why you get such an award from the government that still imprisions Bradley Manning.

5) Joint Ops go away. But I bet the number of raids stays the same. Obama is not going to stop kicking down doors just because he has no locals to provide diplomatic cover.

6) Sounds like that fellow we’re trying to kill has WAY more support than our puppet Karzai. Perhaps we should talk to him.

Boxturtle (Woke this morning with a headless mouse beside the bed. And a smug cat on the bed)

What it seems we don’t reckon on is the appeal of typical ‘machismo’ in Latin America, where peasants were turning out the refugees from Europe that made countries that were divided into the 99% from native populations and ruling 1% from Europe. Chavez did pretty well in his situation, and his voters won’t turn him out like old castoffs.

All the tiny violins are currently in use. Between Rahm, Mitt, and Obama there’s just nothing left.

Boxturtle (There’s a signup sheet for Akins and the Komen foundation)

That’s a hard situation, because what they’re telling you is that they’ve totally fallen for the label of ‘socialist’ as it describes social necessities that government is supposed to provide, and what our taxes should be applied toward. The other side of the coin is that our taxes are being shunted to those that don’t need them, who should budget their expenses better, not ask for public support, a.k.a. socialism for business.

His replacement is a topic of concern. I was so proud of him for taking the country’s oil and placing it back into the hands of the populace.

“Anne Onymous” maybe is the next Bradley Manning. This gets curiouser and curiouser, as AO threatens to release the MittBot’s Tax Returns! Very sweet escalation. The following tweet may or may not be legitimate.

I released the full video as you requested. Would you now release your tax returns? Or shall we?

Rock on AO and release the returns!
That of course puts AO into legal jeopardy and the Establishment would want punishment. When AO first posted at Great Orange Satan, AO was trashed quite viciously.

If AO actually has the returns, we have a new hero to celebrate.

Anne Onymous appears to be primarily concerned with the clip of Romney talking about his visit to the Chinese factory. A Google + page for the user Anne Onymous, which uses the same picture as the YouTube channel and the Twitter user, describes the user as living in Dongguan, China, and working at Global Tech Appliances, Inc., the company that owns the factory Romney is reported to have visited.

http://www.businessinsider.com/romney-fundraising-video-leak-2012-9#ixzz26uyZC6ef

Morning SD, and Ruth,

“Own the tools of your production.”

“Make a Living, not a killing.” -Utah Philips (interview with Amy Goodman)

Yes. I don’t think they will speak to me again. I laughed so hard it really turned them red in the face. They have children and grandkids in the public school system because they are not wealthy enough to privately educate.

Took me a few moments to figure out, that one. I guess the sensational release of Mitt’s revelations has clouded out the usual titillation the news throws out.

Morning, and it’s spoken to myself, I don’t do enough in my own community. Especially when the summers are so hot I have to run off.

Good morning all and thanks for the post and host.

On a lighter note; Found myself in cool, crisp predawn air this morning with the scooter gently purring in 6th at 80 and couldn’t help but feel OK about the world for just a few minutes. It really is the little things.

Here’s the entire show/interview.

I’ve had three people in the past week tell me that Obama is a socialist and is trying to turn the country into a socialist quagmire.

Let me guess. None of the three can cite a single fact in support of their claim, and they become noticeably inattentive when you try to refute it.

Here in Detroit’s western burbs, the temperature broke 40 on the downside, and some areas in the middle of the state got their first frost.

It’s going to be a good day for talking a morning stroll.

Rahm has been so used to having his own way, he thought he could sledgehammer the teachers into submission and thank goodness it did not work. They said “enough” and took to the streets.
I am thinking that all of this was good because the public now know the conditions under which these teachers were working.
I could not agree more with your assessment about the mess he inherited, but unlike Obama working to dig out of the mess, he just got down and mucked it up more imho.

LOL! Yeah. I asked why I haven’t been given any of the socialism benefits he is wrapped up in.

Excuse me, I don’t usually comment here, but can you clarify a little? Rahm “inherited a mess” and the only thing he can think of to do is sell off public assets, close mental health clinics, fight the teachers, privatize the schools. To me this is Walker-lite. I don’t mean this as a hostile comment. I’m trying to see where there is some common ground among those who are ready to dismiss or have dismissed the Dems as no longer redeemable, and those who still lean Dem, because apart from party we do share many of the same goals and values. Thank you.

Thanks SD,

Discovered Utah in my last year of HS and I think what he spoke has more or less stuck and structured my behavior ever since.

Music for Mitt

Ruth, after the summer most of us experienced, who could blame you for running off for awhile to get relief.
As oldnslow and tammanytiger just said, the weather sure is a changing. Last night we too ended up on the lower side of 40 degrees.

It’s the neoliberal way. In 1997 Cato Institute was advocating privatizing the public school system. The neoliberals, led by the University of Chicago Economics Dept with Milton Friedman, have been tryng to turn the economy into a totally private sector for 40 years. In the neoliberal world, of which Obama is a dues paying member, the private sector is king. Corporate run government is the desired outcome. Profit over people. When Emanuel was at the WH he was instrumental in the defeat of many progressive Dems running for office in favour of more conservative, read neoliberal, Dem candidates.

anticipating pushback showing list of Rmoney&co’s wealth redistriibution to himself…

Bain bailout
SLC Olympics…

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

US KIA Afghanistan: 2,121

Afghan, Iraki, Yemeni and Pakistani casualties: estimates vary to over 2M

US MBS 2012: 32,488 and counting

No war but class war

Chirapaq

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things

Namaste

Never. Give. Up.

marym,
I would never presume to speak for Ruth, but I would like to say welcome to FDL and I hope you comment more often. I have seen your comments on other sites and they are excellent, well thought out and provoke a lot of thought just like the one you made here.
When I was talking about Rahm’s inherited mess, it was the poor condition of the schools, lack of textbooks, no airconditioning in the extremely hot weather,very large class sizes that the teachers had to endure, lack of support staff and the list could go on and on. I am not really sure he caused all of this situation and that is what I was talking about.
Did he use a sledgehammer to solve his problems, you bet he did and he thought the teachers would take it. Thank goodness they did not and walked out. As a teacher for 38 years, right here in Illinois, and still subbing, I certainly can identify with some of those problems in past experiences.
Again, sorry this is so long, but once again, your comments are really appreciated here.

could add in every farmers’ co-op, rural electrification, dams, that damned Eisenhower and his socialst highways, every Chamber of Commerce, …

What most people know about “socialism” could be put on the head of a pin. It’s just a dog whistle for the low information voter and the chronically clueless.

Man, have you got that right.

oh and, parasites, Mary Matalin? Really?

Looked to me like the parasites were the ones sitting around th ose tables in that video. Feeding off The Help…

Yes, it is the “free market” that will lead the way. Of course, there is always a little corruption to help it along.

So they are lining up a third of the teachers for termination. Then they can hire them back in the charter schools at far less salary. What happens to the difference? You guessed it. The “free market” allocated the reduction in pay to profit. Perfectly natural. It’s called neo liberalism.

1) Kate’s boobs are very nice and worthy of most front pages.

I googled this yesterday and I have to disagree.

On the more mature side, good morning everyone! Thanks as always for the post and host SD.

I heard this morning from a Very Serious Republican™ that if Obama wins he’s going to make everyone in the country convert to Islam.

Gaaahhhhhh!! I can’t stand Obama, but damn! Batshit Crazy Republicans.

The problem is our mindset. We have all come to believe that profits are a socially good value along with free markets. Both parties buy into that, one a little more than the other, but both are complicit. The real problem is that profits are not the best value, but once the capitalists get control of it corruption ensues. They will try to privatize everything schools, bridges, roads, prisons all in the name of “free markets”. Then they extract rent aka profit like charter schools.

There really is something very seriously wrong with Republicans both mentally and psychologically.

The U.S. public has been led to believe “capitalism” and “democracy” are synonymous.

Agreed.

They don’t have to be large to be nice. tastes differ, I suppose. :-)

Obama IS going to make everybody convert to Islam. See, he’s discovered that none of Congress, the courts, or the American people care if he drones Moslems and he’s got a list of people currently NOT moslems who don’t really appriecate him and…

Boxturtle (So don’t dismiss VSR out of hand, I suppose)

Defective DNA. I seriously support sterilizing the lot of them so they can’t perpetuate it.

The same Mary Matalin who got her college degree from Western Illinois University, a socialist state-run college.

Maybe he wants to convert everyone so he can drone-bomb them, and then claim they were al Qaeda #2s.

And it wasn’t a size thing.

Yes.

Sorry to be slow getting back, I’m in transit at the moment and have lots tugging me away from the computer. Thanks for your comment, and glad you came in.

While my sympathies are with the kids, and see that there are things offered by Rahm will not benefit them, I see an untenable situation that has to be dealt with. Frankly, I think voters in Chicago chose a tough person they knew would not shrink from a job he took on – and while there will be a response that he’s got lotsa benefits to look forward to, know he could have chosen an easier path with higher benefits later.

First, everything offered as negotiation is not the wish of the negotiators. When some one has to talk down the teachers, who are asking for more than they can possibly expect, some of the offers are going to be minimum and scary, to be balanced off with concessions.

Privatizing is very much to be avoided, and I agree that we need to keep public services. Choosing to close some down so that finite resources can be stretched to support the absolutely necessary is not the end of all life, though it does hurt and has to be a last resort. Chicago is at that point, the last resort.

Sorry I don’t have more time, will try to get back to this at a later time.

Thanks for the kind words. We should probably also point out that here in IL the mess wasn’t for lack of Democrats in city, county, and state government!

My problem isn’t with how people are going to spend those few minutes in the polling place this horrible election year. It’s that with the policies, and increasingly even the rhetoric, of both parties so closely aligned now in, as Southern Dragon described, the neoliberal agenda and also the world-wide permanent war, being not-Walker or not-Romney has less and less meaning every day.

The problem is that there’s no alternate vision coming from the D’s. Whether people think the way forward is reforming the D’s, third party organizing, or non-electoral movement building – that vision has to come from somewhere, whether or not one thinks LOTE is still a necessary voting strategy.

the inmates are running the insane asylum.

good morning all. i’m in drive by mode with breakfast and rushing off to shower and hope the doc says my wrist bone is now healed.

I was already typing my reply to AppleCanyon2, so I’ll let that stand in for most of my response. I think I probably disagree with you on why and how the resources are limited. I would say the resources are being diverted. But this is a continuing discussion. Thank you for the clarification of some of your thoughts on this issue.

(Was response to AppleCanyon2 @36 not @28)

marym in IL

.. being not-Walker or not-Romney has less and less meaning every day.

I am of the opposite opinion. In the last two weeks the differences between Romney and Obama have been starkly delineated.

That this has occurred at this time in the election cycle is unusual in our two party political system. The normal course is for each of the two viable presidential candidates to move towards the political mean as the election draws close. Romney as a consequence of political malfeasance has done the opposite.

hi marym

@ #55: re “resources being diverted” any truth to Hiatt hotel school board member getting the school systems’ maintenance fund? it was a linkless comment that i may have misunderstood.

as a personal predjudice, I have difficulty in trusting the loyalty of dual-citizens and where their allegience truely belongs and whose best interests they serve . . .

Aaaaaaaaarrrrr! Jus be sayin’. #talklikeapirateday

I’m not well-informed about the details of this, beyond what you’ve mentioned, but here’s a story that gives some further information.

School board member Penny Pritzker’s Hyatt Hotels Corp. is benefiting from a $5.2 million [tax increment financing] TIF subsidy on 53rd Street – while [Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS’s)] proposed 2013 budget cuts seven schools surrounding the hotel project by $3.4 million, which is roughly the portion CPS is losing from the TIF deal.

LINK

Hoping for the best for you, gw.

Romney has taken on the most distasteful, disdainful, divisive, repulsive rhetoric of the worst of the right wing.

However, on most major policy issues the framing (deficit hysteria, war fever, etc.), the policy proposals, and the interests most well served by the policies, are, in my opinion, extremely close.

I’m sure you’ve seen any number of statements of these parallels, but here’s one anyway.

The purpose of my comments on this particular thread was to talk about goals and vision. If the Dems and their most loyal supporters aren’t going to articulate something more than not-Romney, where is that vision going to come from?

It’s going to come from a left that is rebuilding. It’s certainly not going to come from the Democrats.

Yes, I’m sure you’re correct.

Ruth, I usually agree with you whenever you make a comment. This time I must disagree. rahm has no interest in making things better for the kids of Chicago; his priority is shutting down public ed and building corporatized schools so he and his buddies can get at more tax money. Yes, he had a mess to deal with because tptb had let the schools rot for so long. He thought that he would come charging in and drive the teachers into the corner and totally smash the union. rahmbo would then be lionized by o and arne as well as his big money cronies. All of his corporatizing the Chicago ed system is based on the ideology that corpses should have access to the taxes and not use that for better public facilities. The education provided in those corporatized schools is no better, and in some cases worse than what is available publicly. No matter what he says, the teachers knocked him down. Now the whole world can see that he is giving millions to pritzker and the u of chicago while he was denying air conditioning for the students. The only reason he didn’t do as much as walker is that rahmbo is a mayor, not the gov. I will try to provide some links in a later comment.

thank you, marym @ 60

another hotel vs. 7 public schools + $1.8 million is certainly looking after the public interest. s/ (s/ = snark, i.e. sarcastic)

as far as looking for “goals and vision,” just read any boiler plate incorporation statements; the public sphere has to show profit or break even. If it shows a “profit,” as USPS did, then make them fund pensions 75 years in advance; when economy melts down, “loan” USPS the pension fund and proceed to cut and privatize the “service” as it is only beneficial to humans as a community resource.

a visionary statement i haven’t read lately is probably still available: PNAC — 1992 (?) Project for a New American Century. The authors are alive and well and the 2-page outline is approaching full implementation.

I agree. Destroying unions is a priority for both parties. That Trumka and the rank and file of the AFL-CIO don’t fight this kind of stuff is an absolute disgrace. Trumka has convinced the unions that crumbs from the Ds are acceptable. Asshole.

Rebuilding America’s Defenses – 90 page pdf

A blueprint for totalitarianism if there ever was one.

p.s. 1992 NAFTA made corps equal to national governments. TPP will make corps superior to ALL governments.

Probably unnecessary to point this out to our very informed Dinerzens, but do keep in mind that the law in Chicago limits strikes to specific issues, and many of the worst problems teachers face are not among those “strikeable” issues.

Anyone know of The Progressive magazine? Searching for something else, I came across coverage of Sherrod Brown’s campaign and the article is interesting. I’d love to know if it’s worth subscribing.

hi soudrag! truely appreciate your lakeside diner — it’s my “morning paper.”

re your #68: the chicago school’s Pinochet-Chile model is sufficient evidence of where we’ve been headed since Eisenhower-Nixon. It took Chile 30 years to start reversing the anti-people policies. We haven’t quite reached the bottom of our countriy’s destruction–let alone the equally long climb back to a people-oriented society.

Don’t know anything about the magazine except that Howard Zinn wrote for them for 30 years (reading a collection of some of those essays now).

Correct, but they forced those issues to be looked at and some of them were included in the settlement framework. They had to strike on salaries, so they did, and they had a good basis for that.

I don’t know how the workers in trumpka’s union continue to follow him. By the same token, I don’t know why the teachers continue to allow the dims to beat on them and still endorse o. When we look at the cognitively dissonant actions of the repugs, we must also look at the similar silliness of the dims.

Definitely agree, BearCountry.

marym in IL, happy to see you at the Diner. I’m thinking of subscribing to their digital edition. I subscribed to Mother Jones for awhile, but was disappointed in it (although I do read things from it online occasionally). Only $15 so maybe I’ll try it. OTOH, I have trouble keeping up with my online reading and my stack of books, so …

The salary issue gave the union a chance to air out all the other stuff and imo is what brought out such community support.

Before I have to go, I wanted to second your comment about giving the award to Aung San Suu Kyi. I hope, given her heroism in defying the authorities in her land, she will make some statement about political prisoners here, as well as potential ones.

Must go now; it’s been very interesting as usual.