50 Shades of Orwell . . .

I mean truly - is anyone outside of the Fox News wingnut bubble even remotely surprised by this?:

Earlier this month, Mitt Romney was welcomed for a campaign event at the Century Mine in Beallsville, Ohio, by hundreds of coal workers and their families. Now many of the mine's workers are saying they were forced to give up a day-worth of pay to attend the event, and they feared they might be fired if they didn’t, according to local news radio WWVA.

The claims have been mostly denied by Rob Moore, Chief Financial Officer of Murray Energy Company, which owns the mine. He acknowledges that workers weren’t paid that day but says no one was made to attend the event. Well, kind of.

"Our managers communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend," he told local news radio WWVA, which has received several emails from workers claiming that the company records names of workers that don't attend those types of events.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/century-mine-romney-ohio-mandatory_n_1836674.html


And check out those priceless non-denial denials ("mostly denied") by the Mine company official in that they acknowledge that the miners were docked a day's pay for the event, yet purportedly "no one was made to attend the event."  Yet in the very next sentence the same official admits that the miners were indeed informed that attendance at the Romney speech was "mandatory."

Now - I don't know what kind of dictionary right wingers use, but I checked three of the most popular dictionary sites on the web and looked up the word "mandatory" and the definition was consistent and similar in all three editions.  The definition was something like this:

1: authoritatively ordered; obligatory; compulsory:
2: permitting no option; not to be disregarded or modified:

I am unable to comprehend how the right wingers can see this for exactly what it is - and no - online dictionaries do not have a well known liberal bias.

There is a well known word for this type of behavior.  It is called authoritarianism -- bordering on fascism.  It is dangerous to Democracy and freedom.  It is sinister.

Some of you may actually believe that you aren't part of the 99% simply because you identify your political affiliation as Republican or Libertarian or Independent, but if that is the case, you best wake up and smell the coffee.  The Romneys and the Kochs and the Adelsons of the world do not give a flying fuck about you after you've pulled that lever for their chosen puppet in the voting booth.  They are aristocrats, as are their puppets, and you and I are just the hired help, and the sooner you accept that reality and feel betrayed enough by it to want to do something about it, the better off all of us will be in this country.


----TFG