Take "Limited Local Action" Against The USCoC

I betcha didn't know: Lately the US Chamber of Commerce, the nations LARGEST, richest, most powerful INTERNATIONAL (despite the name) business lobbying association, has been engaging in political dirty tricks against opponents, tricks that would make Richard Nixon, Chuck Colson, and Karl Rove proud. Via ThinkProgress:

EXCLUSIVE: US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Hackers To Sabotage Unions, Smear Chamber’s Political Opponents
ThinkProgress has learned that a law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business trade association representing ExxonMobil, AIG, and other major international corporations, is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign.

According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Hunton And Williams’ attorney Richard Wyatt, who once represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, solicited a set of private security firms — HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.

Follow this link for the whole story. But unlike is so many OTHER situations when it seems there may be nothing an individual can do to express their disappointment with corpoRat behavior, a possible strategy for expressing disapproval has occurred to me.

To wit: Whenever you go shopping, look around by the cash register or the front door and see if you see the sticker of th local CoC. If you see it, ask to see the proprietor and ask her or him if they were aware that THEIR Chamber of Commerce was actively involved in moving USer jobs off-shore, lobbying for foreign interests in Congress to move USer businesses overseas,, and attacking american unions, and that, though you had planned to shop there, you will now try to find a merchant who DOESN'T support those DEEPLY UNAMERICAN practices...

A Philosophical Investigation: What IS 'Compromise?"

The following exchange occurred between a correspondent an me on his FakeBook "Wall" this morning; in fact it may be on-going even as I write this. I post it here because it contains a fairly concise and I hope cogent defense of my skepticism about "compromise" with one's mortal antagonists.

(Correspondent): Posted by Eric Smith~
"Just because I am willing to meet my opponent halfway doesn't mean that I am willing to go over to the side of my opponent's for therein lies the difference between compromise and surrender."
58 minutes ago · Like ·
Steve A....., (Correspondent) and 8 others like this.

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak: Just out of curiosity, where's "half-way" on:
The Wars?
Abortion?
Universal Health CARE?
Social Security/Medicare cuts?
Climate change?
Off-shore drilling?
Fracking?
Whaling?
Civil rights?
Separation of Church/State?
Jis' askin'...
52 minutes ago · Like · 1 person

(Correspondent) When you can give answers...solutions to real problems you go more than half-way...keep up the effort! You can rise above the opposition by staying true to your principles and setting the goal of ''agreement'' as a step to a solution to the problem at hand!

FACE FACTS!!! BE HONEST!! LOOK FOR AGREEMENT!!
37 minutes ago · Like

(Correspondent): MORAL REASONING inters into the equation also!
8 minutes ago · Like

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak: Alls I asked was show me WITH WHAT I should agree, with folks whose views on those issues are mutually exclusive of my own.
Where to start? "Well, you'd agree that at least abortions should be rare?"
According to whom? What is "rare?' Who's counting?
"Well, we can't just pull out of those places where we're invaders. We're responsible, aren't we?"
Give 'em reparations in the amount of half the amount we'd spend to stay there and get the fuck out.
Etc.
You cannot 'negotiate' with someone who wishes you ill, dead, or silent.

Michael Moore On The REAL Reagan

On the theory that one can NEVER say enough ILL of dead fascists, fucktards and fuckwitz (all of which Ronnie Raygun was), here's a clip from Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" in which the very real contributions of his regime to the crises we are now enduring are made crystalline:

R E S P E C T ~~ What That Word Means To Me!

I am hopelessly smitten!

Greg Palast on "Coward, Cheat, and Con-man" Ronnie Reagan

Killer, Con-Man, Coward
Good Riddance Gipper

Sunday, June 6, 2004
by Greg Palast

You're not going to like this. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. But in this case, someone's got to.

Ronald Reagan was a conman. Reagan was a coward. Reagan was a killer.

In 1987, I found myself stuck in a crappy little town in Nicaragua named Chaguitillo. The people were kind enough, though hungry, except for one surly young man. His wife had just died of tuberculosis.

People don't die of TB if they get some antibiotics. But Ronald Reagan, big hearted guy that he was, had put a lock-down embargo on medicine to Nicaragua because he didn't like the government that the people there had elected.

Ronnie grinned and cracked jokes while the young woman's lungs filled up and she stopped breathing. Reagan flashed that B-movie grin while they buried the mother of three.

And when Hezbollah terrorists struck and murdered hundreds of American marines in their sleep in Lebanon, the TV warrior ran away like a whipped dog -- then turned around and invaded Grenada. That little Club Med war was a murderous PR stunt so Ronnie could hold parades for gunning down Cubans building an airport.

I remember Nancy, a skull and crossbones prancing around in designer dresses, some of the "gifts" that flowed to the Reagans -- from hats to million-dollar homes -- from cronies well compensated with government loot. It used to be called bribery.

And all the while, Grandpa grinned, the grandfather who bleated on about "family values" but didn't bother to see his own grandchildren.

The New York Times today, in its canned obit, wrote that Reagan projected, "faith in small town America" and "old-time values." "Values" my ass. It was union busting and a declaration of war on the poor and anyone who couldn't buy designer dresses. It was the New Meanness, bringing starvation back to America so that every millionaire could get another million.

"Small town" values? From the movie star of the Pacific Palisades, the Malibu mogul? I want to throw up.

And all the while, in the White House basement, as his brain boiled away, his last conscious act was to condone a coup d'etat against our elected Congress. Reagan's Defense Secretary Casper the Ghost Weinberger with the crazed Colonel, Ollie North, plotted to give guns to the Monster of the Mideast, Ayatolla Khomeini.

Reagan's boys called Jimmy Carter a weanie and a wuss although Carter wouldn't give an inch to the Ayatollah. Reagan, with that film-fantasy tough-guy con in front of cameras, went begging like a coward cockroach to Khomeini pleading on bended knee for the release of our hostages.

Ollie North flew into Iran with a birthday cake for the maniac mullah -- no kidding --in the shape of a key. The key to Ronnie's heart.

Then the Reagan roaches mixed their cowardice with crime: taking cash from the hostage-takers to buy guns for the "contras" - the drug-runners of Nicaragua posing as freedom fighters.

I remember as a student in Berkeley the words screeching out of the bullhorn, "The Governor of the State of California, Ronald Reagan, hereby orders this demonstration to disperse" -- and then came the teargas and the truncheons. And all the while, that fang-hiding grin from the Gipper.

In Chaguitillo, all night long, the farmers stayed awake to guard their kids from attack from Reagan's Contra terrorists. The farmers weren't even Sandinistas, those 'Commies' that our cracked-brained President told us were 'only a 48-hour drive from Texas.' What the hell would they want with Texas, anyway?

Nevertheless, the farmers, and their families, were Ronnie's targets.

In the deserted darkness of Chaguitillo, a TV blared. Weirdly, it was that third-rate gangster movie, "Brother Rat." Starring Ronald Reagan.

Well, my friends, you can rest easier tonight: the Rat is dead.

Killer, coward, conman. Ronald Reagan, good-bye and good riddance.

"It's So Easy To Buy Guns In AZ That The Mexican Drug Cartels Shop in AZ For Their Weaponry"

John Fugelsang (The Man W/The "Funniest Twitter Stream In America") Deals The Public Option To The GOP