True-life tale of terror? Okay, here goes:

[kpete]

Germy Shoemangler says:
October 31, 2015 at 9:22 am

It was 1979. I was 21 years old. I was working full time in a publishing company. We were busy, but we weren’t overworked. The company regularly posted job openings on a bulletin board. That’s how I got my first promotion: I’d seen a job in a different department I was interested in and applied for it. The company offered to help pay for college tuition, so I could become even better at my job.

There was no balloon-juice back then. No crooksandliars, lawyersgunsandmoneyblog or Matt Taibbi column. But I read other progressive writers, and found out that an actor I remembered from some corny old B-movies was running for president.

I remembered him because the National Lampoon used to mock him as the worst and silliest governor of California that state had ever seen. I knew he spoke out against medicare, and was a spokesman for GE, a major polluter.

A chill ran up my spine as I opened my morning newspaper the day after election day. The hair on my neck stood up: He’d been elected president of the United States.

Soon after that, the publishing company changed. The tuition assistance disappeared. There were layoffs. We were all told to work 110%. “But that’s mathematically impossible,” I remember thinking.

Some co-workers in my department tried to form a union. Next thing I knew, the ringleaders of that movement were laid off, and the rest of our department was physically moved to a different building about 100 miles away. “They want to cut out the cancer” someone told me.

After I was finally laid off from that job, I worked in a series of other companies that treated employees the same way. Lower pay, “work 110%”, no unions, longer hours, more mean and nasty bullshit.

Sometimes on dark nights, I can see the ghostly figure of John Mitchell, climbing into a ghostly limo. Before he closes the door, he tells a ghostly reporter: “This country is going so far to the right you won’t recognize it.”

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/10/31/true-life-tales-of-terror/#comment-5539151

[JohnnyLib2]

1. Dang! Brings back so many memories.....

none good, except for Rep. Jordan's speech.

[zentrum]

2. Quite a saga.

I remember reading somewhere that even Nancy Reagan left her first Republican Woman's Silent Majority fundraiser, ashen faced and shaken. Something about how she didn't recognize the Republican Party anymore and how rightwing Christian, with "big hair" it had become. (Paraphrasing her.)

If even a Reagan is frightened—then you know the fanatics have taken over.

Rockefeller said something like this way back in the Goldwater days. He said there's something really ugly forming in the Republican Party. We've always know this of course, but it's fascinating when the insiders see it too. F'ing enablers, everyone of them.

[1monster]

3. And under Bush I, I worked for a company who demanded no overtime, so when a

manager inadvertently (or on purpose) booked overtime, he would erase the overtime on the time cards and put it on the next week's time card as regular time. If one [protested, one was asked if they needed the job. That was during the Bush I recession of the early '90s. If you had a job, you held on to that job in any way you could.

[Dont call me Shirley]

4. The night of Reagan's inaugurating I had a prolific dream about the coming of the Nazis. The dream

is still as clear as it was then. I wish it would fade along with the Reagan/bush De-evolution.

[Tikki]

5. What I remember...reagan: average worker lost income tax write -offs and corporations got greater...

write offs. Plus reagan truly despised young people, unless they were reagan youth.


Tikki

[mountain grammy]

6. Real scary stories from 1980 and beyond..

[LiberalElite]

7. I remember the chest pain I got when I saw the headlines.

[csziggy]

8. It always brings back memories of this show

Part Two introduces the most frightening character!

[hunter]

9. Reagan started out as a venal fool who would say anything for a few dollars and a blow job...

... and he ended up as President of the U.S.A., a literal meat puppet of Satan.

I was attending a Reagan appearance during his second term as President. (Long story how I got a pass, and unimportant.) I'm certain everyone saw exactly what I did, but most were afraid. Regan was a confused old man who didn't know where the hell he was or what he was doing there, surrounded by handlers. Nevertheless his acting skills kicked in, he read his lines, and that's what we saw in the mainstream media, especially television.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States.

My shiny white ass he was.

It's one of many life events that made me the cynical son of a bitch I am today. (I have my mom's permission to say that, so don't go all language police or politically correct on me. My family is very strongly a matriarchy, the great grandmas, grandmas, and moms make the rules.)