So. Do we think this is really going to happen?

I swear, a new day, a new outrage. I'm asking you politically savvy and experienced types to weigh in and give their educated guesses. Urban legend? Or real possibility? And if possible, what do we do about it?

Via Suburban Guerrilla, from the Dallas Morning News:

It became obvious last spring that the foot soldiers of the Republican party, the Religious Right, felt uneasy about privatizing SS. Total * supporters who were pro-life and anti-gay marriage were saying things like -- well, please don't start any more wars and no more tax cuts, please. But in a pinch, maybe they would support him.

But now Katrina changes everything. Confidence in the prez is at a record low. The Ownership Society agenda was never all that popular, even during the campaign.

Yes, I want the Dems to pick up seats in '06, but not at the price of looking at a privatized SS!!!!! Say it ain't so, Whometense.

But they have such a long history of arm-twisting and of sneaking in provisions that weren't even voted on into bills in committee (from which meetings dems are routinely excluded that it could happen.

I just don't know.

I posted on this several times in here. The Rethugs will absolutely do this. This is why they are in office. This is what they do. I may hate the bastards, I may despise their policies but I have to give them credit for one thing. They abso-friggin-lutely do what they say they are going to do. When they are blocked in one way, they find a sneaky go-around way.

The Rethug agenda will not be put off by anything. Not mass death in Iraq, not mass death in the Gulfport region. Nothing. Have you seen the hate mail going around blaming the crisis in New Orleans on the poor themselves. It seems that this is the end result of the welfare state and that those who died, got what they deserved. If they had been thinking, they never would have chosen poor black people as parents. It's their fault.

The Rethug agenda, for real, is to defund the government, end all entitlement programs, end all programs that don't fund defense, end the labor movement, remove any barriers to the 'free market' system and remove the ability of the marginalized to petition their government for a redress of greivances. This is why they want 'tort reform', in order to remove the right of people to sue companies and government agencies in court. This is why the don't care about FEMA or any of that stuff.

They do not care. They want Social Security gone. Not a little, not amended, not any of that. They want a trojan horse style assault that will destroy social security as an effective poverty reduction program from within by weakening it's funding system.

These people will do what they said they would do. It's as simple as that. Grover Norquist is not satisfied with his bathtub in New Orleans. He wants to drown the rest of the country and remove anything that doesn't funnel money into his friends hands. They have publicly stated this. It is their goal. It's what they live for and fight for and amassed power to do.

It's why we still fight. Someone has to fight these bastards.

Don't sugarcoat it. :P

Just teasing. I know you're right. Did you hear the discussion on Morning Sedition this am about the Patriot Act? Same f***ing story. Make up whatever shit you want. Don't give anyone a chance to read it, let alone think about it. Hold the vote open long enough to threaten the lives of whatever household pets (and if necessary family members) you might need to in order to squeeze out enough votes to pass the criminal mess.

Right now I would give my right arm for two hours alone with JK in an unbugged room just to hear him talk about his view of what the democratic endgame might be. Are they counting on violence in the streets? Even that would only be an excuse for martial law. How do we get rid of them and return to a government ruled by sweet reason?

If they call it something completely different and confuse people into thinking it isn't part of social security, they might try to pass this. With this FEMA disaster though, I'm not sure they'd dare mess around with something as important to the poor and minorities as social security. We could end up with a true uprising, unlike anything we've seen since the revolution.

Via Raw Story:



How do you vote intelligently on a bill you haven't even seen?

I don't know how you get Mr & Mrs Joe Six-pack to turn off American Idol and even let this seep into their brains, but if it ever did get in there, even Mr. Six-pack wouldn't much like that their elected representatives are being forced to cast votes on bills they haven't had a chance to even review.

It wasn't just this one 'emergency' episode. The rethugs have been pulling stuff like this over and over again. (Like 24 hours to review the 3000-page omnibus spending bill last fall.)

My frustration is how to you get this across to average Americans? How do you get through to people that this is what's going on?

We can blog till our fingers bleed, and all we're really doing is helping to raise the volume so maybe some credentialed media person will run with it. And spreading the word to the already receptive.

Outrage fatigue?? We're talking outrage EXHAUSTION.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Democrats_will_oppose_Katrina_committees_Sham_and_0908.html