God Exists And She Loves Me

@All: More news from the economic front. I’ve been worrying about my sister-in-law, who works for a law firm in Charlotte and was the executor for my father-in-law’s estate [modest, he was a lifelong Democrat, only moved to C after retirement], invested with Wachovia. Hadn’t liked to ask her recently how things were. This evening the news came. She and 35 other not-lawyers have been fired. She’s 61, and her spouse, younger by almost a decade, has been jobless for several months already. Like me and everyone else who has a child or children, she has been propping up her child financially for a long time now. Not much chance he can return the favor. What I would like to see happen to Republicans now is not good to imagine.

Re my hopes for Republicans: They could be converted to pucks. This resonates with me because my husband and my son have devoted huge blocks of their lives to hockey.

@All: Thanks for being here, so I can vent.

@lynnlightfoot: That’s rough. Are your in laws gonna vote? That’s still free.

@lynnlightfoot:
That is terrible.

My coworker’s scared that he is going to lose his job (like I am) except he is in the same age range as your in-laws except his kids are not teenagers yet.

I wouldn’t make all Repubs into hockey pucks (too soft) but I’d be more than happy to crosscheck Grover Norquist and his ilk head first into the boards.

@lynnlightfoot: I’m sorry to hear that. I’m beginning to think the theme over the next few years will not be striving toward more money, but more security. Which I don’t think will even happen in government jobs, either. Which makes me extremely paranoid, working in the Ivory Tower and being in a red state where there’s anti-intellectual sentiment and the belief that we’re all out to corrupt their precious suburban children. When the General Assembly starts its session in January in Georgia, it is going to get very ugly and I really hope that I can keep from losing my job, much less being furloughed.

I think the whole changing-jobs-in-only-a-few-years thing that my generation liked to do will change as we will probably have long, long memories into the future, just like our grandparents and great-grandparents who lived through the Depression, and generally worked at the same job for decades after World War II. But then, there was some sort of social contract where employers were loyal to loyal employees.

@lynnlightfoot: That’s an awful thing to have happened. right at the time of your life when you’re expecting, not unreasonably, to be able to start looking forward to retirement.

@ManchuCandidate: Grover Norquist. There are no words to describe his stupidity.

As to the ice sport affair. It’s the perfect job for Palin. She could spend the next eight years dropping pucks. That and opening supermarkets.

@lynnlightfoot: crap. I’m sorry. Remind them to go vote.
@rptrcub: Yep, at this point I’m just happy to still have a job. Raises, COLAs, that’s just gravy. If I can hold on to the paycheck and the health insurance, I’m relieved.

@SanFranLefty: Isn’t this the world that Grover Norquist and his ilk want us to live in? I’m sure that some people are making money, and a lot of it, so the system works. And this is a mere shadow of the world they want to usher in: a world with no government. It’s always struck me as being the point of view of sentimental thugs who’ve always been coddled by privilege. Those of us who actually do work in a free-market world know what it’s like to live with no security. Less than 5% of the members of Actors’ Equity are employed at any given time. I’ve become accustomed to it but it’s not easy. I’ve always thought that actors would make the best grief counsellors: we’re used to losing what we love. We get a really good job and the show closes, or loses its backing and isn’t produced (3 times for me), or simply ends its run. Not to compete with the troubles of others but it’s a bitch out there when degrees and experience count for nothing. When chance and the whim of others is in control.

And this is the world that Hopey will, please God, inherit and for which he will be blamed.

There has been class war in this country for the past 30 years. Waged by the rich on the poor. Once again I think of my great uncle who took up arms against the owners of coal mines in Scotland. The social protections for which he fought were dismantled by Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the US. And now we see the result of their policies writ large. Will any one of them accept responsibility? Of course not. It’s all Bill Clinton’s fault.

Now I go to try to make the world safe for musical theatre. What better time to choose to try to launch a hugely expensive new project? When everyone’s pockets are stuffed with money to burn?

@Lyndon LaDouche:
Correct.

It’s more of a return to the age of Serfs and Lords, Feudalism, where the Golden Rule applies (as in he who has the gold makes the rules–it applies today as well, but not as open or as vicious.)

The ironic part is that the world Grover wanted is going to end up destroying the very people it was supposed to benefit. One gambling mogul with ties to Repub 527s apparently lost about 80-90% of his fortune in eight weeks. He’s still a billionaire, but not as fabulous a billionaire as he once was and not donating to those 527s.

The National Review depends on donations from rich sugar daddies. Who is going to donate? Those scumbags will be too focused on rebuilding their fortunes to care.

Many of those “think” tanks are going to wave bye bye as well, including possibly/hopefully Grover. All this elaborate network of well funded douchebaggery will disappear (not immediately) but within a decade or so.

In a grim ugly way, this meltdown looks like a “burn down the village in order to save it” moment…

@rptrcub: @Lyndon LaDouche: @nabisco: Not in order, the responses , I mean. The sympathy. [Why I can’t sppello, sh’s drunk, but htanks tomarkcle of elayed acioical sssi cn dlok mabe mebel.

\\

@Lyndon LaDouche: Cue Billy Bragg! Lets go watch Brassed Off. Never cross a picket line! I love you old wobblies.

@lynnlightfoot: whoooaaa, lynnlightfoot, you pulling an all-nighter? Careful there, theres no good to come of that. It just ruins the next days drinking to have to start it hungover, thats what I have learned, I like the first martini of each day to be like the first one, ever.

@lynnlightfoot: I am so sorry. That’s terrifying. Since I now work for a small business, ecerytime my boss say “we need to have a meeting” I’m terrified that I, last to be hired, am about to be jobless.
@ManchuCandidate: My favorite college econ professor warned us back in the late 70s that we were heading for corporate feudalism, where we would all be serfs, and that the US had nothing to fear from communism, but fascism was another story. Smart woman.

@Prommie: As a member of 3 unions and one professional guild I never do cross a picket line. Ever.

My grandmother gave me the medal awarded to my great uncle by the Communist Party before he was shipped off to Strine. I’ll scan a picture and post it. I am inordinately proud of it.

Old wobbly? I can’t think what you mean.

@Lyndon LaDouche: I am not making fun, Lyndon, thats true admiration. I love Billy Bragg, the sincerest commie in the patch.

@lynnlightfoot: My xon you will dire!

@Prommie: I know that. Just teasing you.

@SanFranLefty: I was just about to say that, but I thought it would be cruel. Kudos on Motel Sikhs, by the way.

@Prommie: It was too easy, I had to take it. I was waiting for five of us to say it in a 3 minute span.
@lynnlightfoot: Didn’t mean to mock. Hope the hangover isn’t too bad.

@Lyndon LaDouche: Wobbly = IWW. Old Labour like granny used to make.

rptrcub: Of course, the Wobblies are, basically, down to (if I have this right) a printers’ collective in Madison, Wis. Sad, but true.

But also, Lyndon LaDouche, the problem is that there’s money in strike-breaking.

ManchuCandidate: “Many of those ‘think’ tanks are going to wave bye bye as well, including possibly/hopefully Grover. All this elaborate network of well funded douchebaggery will disappear (not immediately) but within a decade or so.”

Untrue. The funders for AEI / Heritage / Manhattan / Hudson / Bradley / etc. are going absolutely nowhere. In fact, I bet the foundations are buying up shares of Sport-Killed Baby Seal, Inc. (NASDAQ: YELP) as we speak. It’s on a two-year low. Buying opportunity, as PM Fatboy can tell you.

lynnlightfoot: I have nothing to add that is either relevant or true. Thinking of you.

@Lyndon LaDouche: I refuse to cross picket lines myself, which we’ve had a few in downtown Atlanta — the only place in Georgia where labor has any strength thanks to our Right to Get Fired “Right to Work” laws.

@chicago bureau:
That’s where PM Steve is wrong. No good buying ops as far as I can see.

Prommie’s post on Mad World highlights the problem.

Many of the RW sugar daddies are going down which is why the great 527 Anti-Hope Counter offensive didn’t materialize.

To make matters worse, there is a sudden drop in oil prices. Means that the usual boogey men like Exxon and Haliburton won’t have as much spare cash to “support” “research.”

I figure the AEI will still be around, but a lot of the smaller but just as toxic ones will be going.

@lynnlightfoot/Ewalda’s Friend: Need to talk? I’ll send you my phone number if you need it.