LAT: Social Security Debate Turns Nasty

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-social26feb26,0,5519225,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

After several months of relatively civil debate over President Bush's proposal to restructure Social Security, the gloves are coming off.

This weekend, newspaper readers in Shreveport will find a full-page ad placed by a liberal advocacy group questioning the political integrity and financial ties of Louisiana Rep. Jim McCrery, the hometown Republican who heads the House Social Security subcommittee. "Who does this man work for?" the ad asks. "Not you."

Last week, a conservative group launched what it promised would be a sustained attack on the credibility of the 35 million member AARP, which opposes Bush's plan. It posted an Internet ad suggesting, incorrectly, that the seniors' organization had embraced same-sex marriage, calling that "the real AARP agenda."

Mainstream political groups are getting in on the act too. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee unveiled a Website featuring GOP lawmakers "caught on tape," expressing inconsistent positions on Social Security. And the Republican National Committee denounced McCrery's critics as a "liberal front group" representing "the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party."

Faster than you can say "swift boat," the Social Security debate is veering into new and potentially toxic political territory.

[Cha]

1. bush "works"("hard") for the corporations and

wall street..he does not work for me..

They got him in there and he's shillin' for them like there was no tomorrow.

[bpilgrim]

11. 10. Hey-Hey, Ho-Ho, Social Security has got to GO! ----------------> MP3

http://news.globalfreepress.com/mp3/aar/mr/hhhh-ss-long.mp3

psst... pass the word ;->

peace

[Rainscents]

20. This is what need to be plaster all over the TV and Radio!

[charles_nys]

21. Here's a video of it .....

Rick Santorum enters the town hall to chants of 'hey hey, ho, Social Security has got to go!'

http://www.chuck2006.com/videos/PFP.Video.SantorumForum.HeyHey.mov.mov


I say ....

Hey hey, ho ho, bush and his fucktards have got to go !!!!


and ..

Chris Bowers of MyDD catches Santorum stretching the truth. Earlier in the forum, Santorum said that there were some Democratic Senators who supported privatization of Social Security. Nice try, Rick.

http://www.chuck2006.com/videos/PFP.Video.SantorumForum.BowersQuestion.mov.mov

[bpilgrim]

24. thank you!

"Hey hey, ho ho, bush and his fucktards have got to go !!!!"

i second that!

peace

[Trajan]

2. And so it should ....

Fuck the GOP agenda ... its all about ego with them ....

Smack them down, and smack them again when they get up ... Theyre lying about what they are trying to do and SHOULD be held up to ridicule and contempt ...

[shanti]

3. and it's going to get much nastier

most people HATE this!

[Rose Siding]

4. Look at the criteria for "nasty" applied to dems v repubs

Dems are nasty for citing FACTS about individuals records.

Repub nasty (lets call this "real" nasty) means lying about AARP's positions and flinging what they consider the insults of "liberal" and "Moore"-like.

DAMN, how can we get a gig like that?

[sadiesworld]

12. Pugs don't lie...

they are "incorrect". :eyes:

[lonestarnot]

14. My dog is a pug...she a crat! She doesn't lie...they repukes! n/t

[Daphne08]

5. This situation could get so ugly,

and the public could become so thoroughly disgusted that they may vote many incumbents (from both parties) out of office in 2006 (although I think it might be worse for the Republicans).

[aquart]

8. Well, yes. Because there are more of them.

Maybe people will finally realize the manipulation and turn on it.

[AuntiBush]

6. Hats off to Shreveport Newspaper!

And let the chips land where they should!

[teryang]

7. The phony Social Security "crisis" is toxic

...When you start out with fraud as your opening premise, it's incorrect and misleading to call the response part of a "toxic" debate.

This is the phony dialectic for spin artists. When one side is totally wrong, morally and factually, there aren't two sides to the "debate."

If a legislator is taking money or being rewarded for selling out his constituents for corporate interests, it is not "toxic" to point out his bias and lack of accountability to those he represents, nor is it an ad hominem attack. It is appropriate to do so.

[retread]

9. The pirates have boarded your ship and are swinging cutlasses at

you. You fight back and then it turns "nasty?" Everything these pirates do is nasty!!

[MadisonProgressive]

10. Scaring the rubes works, might as well try it again

Anti-Moore, Anti-Gay Marriage = pro-privatization ?????

[lonestarnot]

13. Gloves should have been off at the first mention of this scandalous talk!

Why do we always wait until it could be or is toooooo late! Take off the gloves! Never use gloves with these people! It's just in insane!

[davsand]

15. They are grabbing at the "third rail."

It may be where the power is at, but it can also kill you before you have any idea what you did. SS may be the only thing that can bring these SOBs down, and I will celebrate the GOP demise...

Funny thing, we Dems spend a lot of time pissing and moaning about our ideals and our moral compass, but we never seem to manage to get focused. The GOP has controlled the message and set the agenda for a long time, and it may be they will finally give us the one message and issue we can win with with SS.

Let the battle lines be drawn...


Lura

[Ernesto]

16. Agreed, the pukes have over reached on this one

Looks like they "shit in their mess-kit".
Best thing the Dems can do is keep this one out in front of the MSM for as long as possible. I'm convinced that repuke congress members want nothing to do with their chimp's wet dream.

[davsand]

17. Are they opening the door to GOP abandonment?

I've been wondering how long it would take for the GOP to finally start acting like Republicans rather than neo-cons. I have to wonder if this particular issue, oddly enough, will e the one to open the door to the GOP's defection way from the Asswipe in the Whitehouse.

The GOP controlled Congress has jut been giving the Asswipe every agenda item he asked for--with a deficit that is just huge. More then one Republican has made the comment to me privately that in some ways, they'd hoped that the Dems could take some control and shut down the spending. You just know that there are others who probably feel the same way...

I've joked before about Buchanan making sense (and it creeped me out to agree with him!) but he does represent the traditional conservative views pretty well. He's been out front for quite a while talking about the out of control spending and the invasion of Iraq. Again, there are probably other Republicans who share those same sentiments but don't step up to say so.

I've been wondering if the real Republicans were ever going to step away from the WhiteHouse--maybe do a bit of distancing because of HOW extreme it has been. It might be that the issue of SS is the beginning of that.

Once they begin to back away, who KNOWS how far back they'll step if the opinion polls show his popularity is continuing to drop...


Laura

[Rainscents]

18. I hope MoveOn.org and everyone else will run the commercials

that shows Republicans chanting about Social Security must go. This will show the people... they want to get rid of Social Security, NOT privatize it!

[SomewhereOutThere424]

19. What we need...

Is a well focused voice who concisely speaks and the people will listen. Look at how they still use powell, even though he'd resigned? There needs to be someone with political umph on our side, I'm hoping that's dean. A clear concise well spoken message from someone the people can trust without the GOP smearing them to the point they resemble a chimney sweep version of cousin it.

the 'gloves coming off' is a kind of dangerous display. It more shows how the dems are now attacking the stance of republicans, makes them seem weak and desperate (to your average herbivorous sheep that is). The clear message should be there is no battle, because there's never been a problem with social security. The only battle will be when they successfully ruin it. They're simply speaking sense and the republicans had confiscated a bit too much of the hippie's drugs and it's they who don't know what they're talking about.

The message they painted with AARP faces more than just the AARP. People think of senior citizens, especially with their smear ads to AARP, and think of a confused and inconcise breed of people, a dying race who cling to their ideals so long as they have to live. That's the message they're now giving to the democrats, and pro gay marriage and pro not demonizing social security into bush's pocket people. What I think would be best, personally, is to get someone to speak a message they don't change on. There's so many lies to address, but to focus only on one instead of diluting your message so it sounds like a foreign language to the weaker minded.

Democrats are generally a highly intelligent breed of political party/supporters, republicans are not. So long as we breed ignorance by destroying the fabric of our education (which has been happening since the reagan era), we need to learn how to speak ignorance. Not so much feigning the issues, but learning to speak the one thing that might be on someone's mind so we click. 'The gloves are off' and comparing us to the AARP is swiftly attacking their real goal. Social security is a huge prize for the republicans, but it's more or less bait...I think they're trying to swiftly silence the voice of democrats as a rational and concise group. That is perhaps the greatest victory for them.

To remedy it instead of staring at the gannon things they're feeding us and the many different baits we're sent so we have no real singular message while bush is still preaching the exact same (and plagiarized I might add) quotes again and again, this is the reason he's catching ground. Why the republicans are catching ground. Karl rove is both an idiot and a genius, he knows that you don't have to be intelligent to speak only one phrase, but you do need to be intelligent to speak many. He uses our intelligence against us by speaking the language most americans speak, the language of ignorance. It's a language democrats need to learn...and I don't mean issue wise. I mean in the sense that it clicks with the people we're talking to more than trying to use etiquette to say the message in 50 different ways.

I mean heck, look at an obvious example. Whoever read this far of my post is most likely thinking 'What the heck are they talking about?'. Not in the sense of not understanding of course, but to the degree I'd said way too much to illustrate just one point in which your average idiotic right-wing nut can say in just four words. I know many here at DU can read through a long rant, but many of whom will decide the fate of importances such as social security will not be able to read through it, or listen for that matter. Perhaps that has more to do with what they're attacking, taking our ability to speak and illustrating it as confused and disattached banter through baiting us with different important topics they can turn around and illustrate us as discombobulated when we'd fought for it. The people who can't understand all the points democrats make will see it as just that, then, confused and disattached banter...perhaps that is the image we must fight most.

We democrats were once respected and thought of as intelligent for what we said, you know? When bill clinton got up and made a speech for a few hours and used intelligent and well spoken views (which I can't always claim to have, heh), people listened. Then they bastardized clinton as this figure who is still mocked today as this womanizing lewd irresponsible man who's just as good as your normal one night stand frat kid. They continue to use it to damage what was once found as intelligent...

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I figured here was just as good of a place to say it being the topic of painting democrat=AARP and AARP=whatever they smeared it as to display their tactic of attacking our voice more than what we stand for.

[ninkasi]

22. Something that seems to be dawning on some repubs

I've heard discussions between some of them who, while they are doing very well under Shrub due to tax cuts for their brackets, and their personal philosophy is "Me, me, me, the hell with anybody else", are wondering what will happen if their own parents end up impoverished.
Some states may place the financial burden of caring for elderly, poor parents on their children, since the states are broke now.

The fact that these same parents sacrificed to put their ungrateful brats through college so that they could be successful won't be enough to soften the painful blow of having to be responsible for them. It's all well and good to get together and buy a new washer for the parents when theirs give out, but that's a far cry from the kind of responsibility I can see the states placing on grown children if there is no Social Security for them to depend on.

[prabtahoe2005]

23. Art Linkletter

So our trusted pal from the '60s, Art Linkletter, has become the mouthpiece of the anti-AARP campaign conducted by the conslutant/lobbyist/PR group that brought us the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Art L. is viewed by many as one of the most trusted men in America, so his opposition to AARP will be taken very seriously by many senior citizens.

To counter this, we need our own trusted throwback from the '60s to be the mouthpiece in support of AARP. I suggest the Godfather of Fitness, Jack La Lanne (yes, he, like Art Linkletter, is still alive and in his 90s). Does anyone know if Jack opposes Bush's SS plan????