Tell ya one thing about being a veteran DUer here...

you are PREPARED for local-yokel FB-type message boards with morons (and morans) who think they can "best" you using tactics which are strictly amateur hour...

There was a post yesterday in our closed neighborhood/boro site on FB where a gentleman complained that the water was being shut off for maintenance precipitously on whole blocks without informing the residents. This is not the kind of post I respond to because there are enough folks who have an immediate vested interest in the issue.

What got me going was some idjit who's apparently head of the business-group who posted a retort that although perhaps people should be apprised of that beforehand the pipes are old and are in need of dire repair, and basically dismissed the OP. My turn: I posted that although the pipes were old, that had nothing to do with the fact that there are reasons why people should know that the water's being turned off in a reasonable fashion. I added (of course, as an 11-year DU Veteran should) that if the nation hadn't been sending hundreds of billions overseas to fight unnecessary wars, then there'd be fewer old pipes around if better attention had been paid to the infrastructure. Well, that must have hit a nerve somewhere because he came at me with the old "where do you live, does this even affect you" routine. My response was that my pool wasn't open yet and when it was, I'll let him know so he can come over for a swim, since he wants to know my address. I then followed by saying that if a utility company which is regulated by the Public Utility Commission and is thus working for both the customers and therefore the taxpayers is not treating said customers properly then it doesn't matter where I live, I am entitled to an opinion regarding their treatment of the masses. He then stated that if someone wanted to address the situation involving the infrastructure, then it needed a separate thread. My retort to THAT was that a new thread isn't needed to segregate the conversation, it's part of this issue which we are addressing in THIS thread. I then went on to tell him all about the infrasructure on 16th Street in Center City Philadelphia in detail and how we have had one catastrophe (and I mean catastrophe: fires underground, three blocks of leaking raw sewage, destruction of phone lines, perennial gas leaks) after another. Crickets...

It was like Hank Aaron playing A-League Ball! Fun to play with these amateurs to work on the swing, so I can come up here in the Majors...

Chuckie Todd caught himself just now...

he was on with An-dray-ah and she was mentioning Hastert's multi-million dollar job and Chuckie interjected with a "and his son too..." and began to say that he was "trad...." and then stopped saying that Junior was TRADING on his old man's name...

Just in the nick of time!

Go Chuckie...chickenshit....

There may be more to this derailment than meets the eye...

Mother's Day Reflections:

I've often posted about my pragmatically Progressive family, my father of blessed memory was a four-year combat veteran of the Pacific Theater, my mother was a trained educator, dancer, and marionetteer who worked in the Philadelphia Navy Shipyard during WWII. They grieved when Stevenson lost twice, they marched in the Civil Rights marches, my father wearing his Purple Heart marched in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and was the greatest fund-raiser for the United Negro College Fund at his workplace, the Main 30th Street Post Office here in Philadelphia. They understood full well the march of the Industrialists and the World Economy and that in the end, it is the money which rules, even after all the perceived-as-fair-to-the-poor-and-middle-class adjudication by the Courts.

My Mother of blessed memory was a pessimist: she felt that the Earth was deteriorating societally even after it had the opportunity to ascend and achieve. She was particularly upset with Democrats who did not defend the Liberal tenets of the time. She both despised and understood the Republicans, the Conservatives, the racists and anti-Semites. But she saved her real enmity for those who ostensibly stood with the working class but betrayed them at the highest levels. (My father, on the other hand, accepted it as part of the landscape.) One of the seminal moments of my young political life was a family story about Harry Truman. The paragraph was repeated EXACTLY thus: "When Truman became President, they showed him the plans and the mission to drop the atomic bomb and told him that that was what was going to happen, and he said, 'OK'". MY mother was appalled that they hadn't dropped the first one off the coast of Japan after warning the Japanese that there would be a demonstration. But the point of the story was that Truman, in her opinion, had no control over any of the military or industrial aspects of the country. She went on to state that this was borne out by Eisenhower's Farewell address, which was quoted more often in my home than Shakespeare, and that was saying a lot. When Kennedy was assassinated, well, that was the end for her. She knew that he must have been bucking the Powers That Be, and got 'hit' for it. Reagan, Bush, and Bush-the-Lesser were just nails in the coffin.

Well, the older I get, and the more I see of what is happening with "Business" around the world, the more I believe that she was on to something before it was in fashion to be keenly aware of who and what is running the show. She would look at TPP as she looked at NAFTA at the time and said that we're sending decent jobs out of the country to sweatshops around the world and this is a patriotic thing to do according to these people.The Plan is in place and by all accounts there is no one and nothing as far as they're concerned which is going to stop or even slow the pace of implementation.

You were right, Mom. (For the most part, you were 'always' right!). Happy Mother's Day - I miss our talks and our political-conviviality as we watched the burning and the sacking of our Country.

All I'm allowed to say in this matter is that all DUers

need to take a look see at next month's MAD Magazine. I cannot say more. As far as what it's gonna be…trust me: you'll know! And it's GREAT!