and rising.

I'm blue collar, graduated HS in the early '80's. I liked the early groups, like the Pistols and Clash, Pogues, who didn't like the name "punk". But I never went forward with the kaliedescope of different musical movements that seems like an important part of the different social movement types.

I remember the mods vs rockers, and read Lydon's Rotten. Saw him perform here a few years ago. Never saw the Mescaleros but always liked them. It was always a slam pit to me, the term mosh seemed too new fangled. I remember seeing a Cobain vid that called 1989 "The Year Punk Broke". (I wasn't following his group, or grunge, but thought it was interesting that he saw grunge's success as a vindication of punk.) I love Love and Hole, saw her here before they broke up. I got shut out of a sold out Slits show here, before Ari Up passed. The movie This is England seemed realistic to me, and I liked a lot of the descriptions of culture surrounding the Punks from Alex Cox, though he behaved very bitchily toward Johnny Rotten (probably Alex is incorrectly too much hooked into McLaren and Westwood, who are poisonous toads.)

I was in the Bay area in the late '80's, and read Maximum Rock and Roll there, but looked at the political stuff from the Irish Rocker (web of interconnection) and Look Out It's Lawrence Livermore, so I didn't glean a lot about the different musical movements. I was at the '89 Anarchist convention in S.F. Mission Park, when the authorities harassed it with a military chopper buzzing the park super low. I called the FAA and ratted them out.

I saw Anti Flag here, right after the '08 election. It was a novel experience, was in an ex-church. I went in and looked at the much younger crowd, listened to the music for a while, then went outside and talked to some of the older fans. Mentioned that I'd never been to a punk rock show that was in a church surrounded by cops (there were a ton of them all around the perimeter of Mr. Small's Theater). I wasn't being snotty, just making an observation. They didn't take offense, just blinked.

This area is more industrial hinterlands than cutting edge, music and social movement wise. I worked in a famous hot dog joint here a couple of decades back with the then-leader of a nazi skin group. The guy was a well-connected, middle class, extremely duplicitous fascist, out of town import, not a tough guy, but extremely evil with a happy smiley face put on over it and good social skills. He wound up getting an extensive interview with our city's paper, later. After a couple of months of polite political give and take with him, I told him "you know, you don't seem like a crazy bad guy, you're not nasty, we can talk politely about politics anytime. But if I ever see your people out in the street as a group causing trouble, I'll shoot you. (I didn't own a weapon, but he didn't know that.)" It didn't result in a fight, he wasn't a fighter, but it made an impression, because a few weeks later he started trying to sound me out about what kind of weapons I had. It was just me throwing an inside fast ball, verbal concept wise, because he was crowding the plate with his fake smiley faced friendly fascism.

The violent rhetoric is not meant to be alienating in any way, hope it is not taken as such, F A. Long winded as usual, such a turn off for 99% of fellow D.U. participants, I apologize for that.

And it IS hilarious how treasonous they are, always.

Love the nickname 'pollingsoon', especially as it relates to the 'election hacking' jpeg the Post Gazette posted.

The story doesn't say if he was ever believed to be in the area, but if he was, facial recognition software would easily pick him up on the hundreds of surveillance cameras that are jammed into our city infrastructure, and all over the county, on the parkways and so many of our main road intersections at traffic lights.

That's assuming he doesn't have protection from the "loyal" opposition party. How did he get into the country, anyway? The story doesn't mention, but it would be interesting to see how he gained entry, and who gave him his visa.

Speaking of PNC and the russians, at the end of Rendell's admin, into Corbett's, management of PA's non-direct deposit unemployment fund payments was by contract turned over to a private bank, PNC. When I was getting unemployment, (at periods in '10, '11, '12,) I would go to my local PNC branch, ~ 1/2 mile from the golden triangle as the crow flies. I would take the entire 2 week payment out right after it was made, to avoid paying fees on getting my own money, and deposit all the cash in my wife's account at a different bank a block away (we use to pay household bills.) So I got to know the 3 women who had worked there for years.

They weren't exactly friendly, because their bank wasn't really making money on my unemployment, except the interest it made for carrying the balance of everyone's unemployment funds on its books. But I scrupulously avoided PNC getting fees from me, so it was like I was a non-paying customer, and their attitude showed it. But a couple of years into PNC's management of all direct deposit unemployment accounts, the 3 American women were joined by a Russian woman, a new employee behind the counter, in mid to late '11.

She was a real sharpy. One time she tried to fast count my money, with the aim of shorting me $100. She was obviously a quick change artist, like a card mechanic. She set up a cadence in counting verbally and differed that cadence in thumbing through the bills. I corrected her, and she tried to do it a second time, either toughing it out to still try and get away with it, or just not wanting to get caught. I told her no, again, caught her just as her verbal count mis-matched her quick hand count. The long-time American employees' attitude towards the new Russian hire was studied non-observance, for the most part. I looked at them while this was going on, and they looked away, wouldn't meet my eyes. They had never tried to pull a scam in any of my dealings with them.

The new Russian employee apologized after getting caught, and I said, "oh, I know it was a mistake, and you would have had trouble if your drawer came up unbalanced, it's just that I'm depositing the whole amount up the street, and I don't want trouble with them if I come up short."

2 or 3 visits (4 to 6 weeks) later, I got waited on by her again, and she tried to give me too much money. I said "well at least it's in my favor this time", which made the Americans laugh. She thanked me for being so honest, and I pointed out I had nothing to gain by trying to keep the extra money, since I came in there regularly, all the time. (I wouldn't have kept it, anyway.)

Within a year, that Russian lady quickly got promoted to assistant manager, instead of one of the 3 ladies who had been there for years. Maybe they didn't want the extra responsibility, I don't know. I wonder what kind of juice she had to get hired and promoted, anyway.

Work was good for me from late 2012 all the way until the beginning of 2016. During that time period, PNC lost the state contract, to Chase I think. I kept the PNC account (dormant) so if I got laid off, my unemployment money wouldn't get held up or disappear into a bureaucratic void. When I went back to PNC after getting laid off in '16, the entire branch's personnel had changed. All the long-term American women were gone, and so was the Russian.

If I was D.A. Hickton or the Feds, and was looking for a weak point in PNC's security system that allowed this russian hacker from the o.p. to get PNC data, I'd look at the hiring practices in the Shiloh Street / Virginia Ave. branch, 15211, in '11 and '12. It isn't definite that the short change artist gave the hacker access, but the way the short change artist got hired and promoted may point to the weak point in the PNC management structure. You don't need to be especially "bold, imaginative, and relentless" to pursue that lead.

That's assuming, of course, that our career civil service law enforcement people are working for the US, instead of the repugs, like Comey, Kallstrom, and their NY field office buddies.

It'll be a terrifying sight, a little gang of violent criminal youths, garbed in combat boots, suspenders, and dRumpf wigs.

So the repuglinazis are using the same tactic to govern as they used to run for office.

dRumpf Treasury Sec. pick Mnuchin announced "we got to get Fannie and Freddie out of governmental ownership", and immediately their stock prices took a huge jump, a 50% increase in value. One appointee "says something, and the stock takes off like a rocket."

"If you're president elect, you could make a LOT of money if you sent your people out to make pronouncements like that, while you held investments that could benefit from the impact of their words."

"dRumpf's financial disclosure statement he filed (instead of releasing his tax returns) shows that he has between 3 and 15 million dollars invested in a hedge fund that has bet heavily on the expected privatization of Fannie and Freddie."

"Now that we know dRumpf may have gotten a huge personal financial boost from his Treasury nominee's public pronouncement, the Prez elect is not commenting about whether he still holds that investment. The NYT (Matt Goldstein and Alexandra Stevenson, 12/19) asked the transition team about it, and dRumpf flack Jason Miller said "We're not sharing any additional information at this time." "

"Maybe the prez elect sold that stock months ago, or maybe he made a TON of money when his Treasury nominee said that. We don't know, we're not allowed to know."

(All quotes from Maddow.)

Of course, over sharing info by using public pronouncements is how the incoming admin made the stock situation occur. Now that they created the situation with their big mouths, the dRumpf admin has decided they're not going to share any info, at all.

That's 2 Shroedinger's cat moves in one incident.

big brother, survivor, apprentice, etc., have always struck me as fascist propaganda. People sticking it to each other, doing each other down, there can only be one winner, everyone else has to be defeated, beaten. People tune in to hope someone they don't like, who they're rooting against, will be eliminated. Players making alliances that both sides know will end in betrayal. Horrible crappy nazi b.s., horrible Un American sentiments. But the big corporate tv networks think they're fantastic, wonderful, entertaining.

The violent attack and rape dRumpf committed on Ivana and the non-retraction retraction by her definitely said so much about that nazi pig.

He couldn't take the idea that he was going bald. He's so superficial, so immature, so vain. So she recommended a plastic surgeon. He was very dissatisfied and unhappy with the surgery's results, and he was in pain from the surgery. He blamed her, like somehow she did this to him, with malice. Or he was just in pain, and couldn't deal with feeling pain. So he lashed out like an unthinking lesser evolved life form on autopilot, purely on instinct, a person who is used to denying themselves absolutely nothing, a person who always acts on whatever whim or fleeting impulse they have. Whatever he feels like doing, he does, every time, everywhere. He attacked her, tore out chunks of her hair, and raped her. He can feel better if he can spread his misery and pain to others. It didn't make his pain decrease physically one iota, but in his diseased mind, as long as she was in terrible pain and humiliated, he could be happier.

(Of course, that fake alpha male animal self-conception he holds is one that he's shown himself capable of conveniently shelving when it comes to him ever putting himself in any situation that presents even the tiniest bit of danger or pain to his precious self. Like any other average run of the mill little bully. Alpha male drumpfenfuhrer run away from the draft during wartime, but he's so hawkish and warlike now. And David Cay Johnston reported that whenever dRumpf had to do business with the extremely dangerous and violent Scarfo family, he never went himself to negotiate. He always sent subordinates. He never took even the smallest chance that there would be risk of harm to himself. But he struts around talking like he's a made man, all the time, now.)

Ivana's retraction was such that she didn't retract a word of her report of the incident, she just said she did not mean to imply he raped her in the criminal sense of the word, she didn't want to press any actual criminal charge of rape against him.

I don't think I'm telling you any particular specific info, here, Hek. Just typing it out to make sense of it myself.

https://www.thenation.com/article/donald-trump-is-a-textbook-abuser-and-women-everywhere-know-it/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=daily

What struck me especially was the pattern of his tactics being like both an abusive spouse and a government brainwashing program.

"...Every woman who has ever had to deal with a Trump-style tyrant in her own home or at her job already has Trump’s number. We recognize him as a bloated specimen of the common garden variety Controlling Man, a familiar type of Household Hitler.

In fact, Donald J. Trump perfectly fits the profile of an ordinary wife abuser—with one additional twist. Expansive fellow that he is, Trump has not confined his controlling tactics to his own home(s). For seven years, he practiced them openly for all the world to see on The Apprentice, his very own reality-TV show, and now applies them on a national stage, commanding constant attention while alternately insulting, cajoling, demeaning, embracing, patronizing, and verbally beating up anyone (including a “Mexican” judge) who stands in the way of his coronation. ...
...
The tactics of such controlling men, used not on women but on other men, were first studied intensively decades ago. In the wake of the Korean War, sociologist Albert Biderman, working for the US Air Force, explored the practices used by Chinese communist thought-reformers to try to break (“brainwash”) American prisoners of war. (Think The Manchurian Candidate.) He reported his findings in “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War,” a 1957 article that caused the Air Force to change its training tactics. Following Biderman’s report, that service chose to give its high-risk personnel a taste of those tactics and thereby steel them against the pressure, if captured, of “confessing” to whatever their interrogators wanted. The Air Force program, known as SERE (for survival, evasion, resistance, escape), was extended during the war in Vietnam to special forces in the other US military services.

In 1973, Amnesty International used Biderman’s article, augmented by strikingly similar accounts from political prisoners, hostages, and concentration camp survivors, to codify a “chart of coercion.” Organizers in the battered women’s movement immediately recognized the tactics described and applied them to their work with women effectively held hostage in their own homes by abusive husbands or boyfriends. They handed that chart out in support groups at women’s shelters, and battered women soon came up with countless homespun examples of those same methods of coercion in use behind closed doors right here in the USA.

The great feminist organizer Ellen Pence and the staff of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) in Duluth, Minnesota, worked with battered women to refine and summarize those coercive tactics on a handy circular chart they named the Power and Control Wheel. Since its creation in 1984, that chart has been translated into at least 40 languages, and DAIP has become the international model for community-based work against domestic violence. ..."

(excerpt end)

The whole article is worth reading. It's important because it not only shows exactly where dRumpf is coming from, he's both a violent abusive self styled 'alpha male' spouse / womanizer, and he's also using tools that are actual totalitarian government brainwashing psychological tools, he's aping those tools exactly. This doesn't explicitly say that swinish l'il donnie studied totalitarian gov brainwashing techniques (but keep in mind that there's no doubt that he did study hitler's speeches in depth, that's documented.) though, as a 'successful' businessman, there's no reason to believe he DIDN'T study those techniques to give him a leg up on the competition, a blueprint on "how to dominate opponents and underlings". It's a moot point, because he's using those techniques, even if he's just a sleazy unintelligent evil person who stumbled across them through low animal cunning.

What's in dRumpf's toolbox are threats, trivial demands, a flash of charm, occasional indulgences, violence, overt lies, explosive blowing their stack anger, followed by a fear the victim feels of doing anything that might 'set them off' again. It leaves you bewildered, confused, not knowing that it wasn't you that triggered them, and not understanding you'll never figure out how to placate them to keep them from going off again. They go off when they want to, when it serves their purposes.

But he's a repug pol, so the descriptive language is redundant, obviously.