| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

going to the mattresses

Page history last edited by Mike 14 years, 2 months ago

Mitt Romney is willing to "go to the mattresses"

Reasons to agree

  1. Mitt Romney fought with Willy Bulger
  2. Mitt Romney fought with Matthew Amorello
  3. “Reilly, Romney Spar Over Immigrant Tuition Bill”, Evan Lehmann, AP, Lowell Sun, “A bill to let children of illegal immigrants pay the same lower tuition rate at state colleges as other Massachusetts residents sparked a political sparring match yesterday between Attorney General Thomas Reilly and the Romney administration.”, “Reilly held a mid-day news conference at the Statehouse to urge lawmakers to pass the legislation. He called Gov. Mitt Romney "out of touch" for opposing the legislation. Romney vetoed a similar bill last year.”, “Romney quickly called reporters into his Statehouse office to chastise Reilly for advocating a bill he said would encourage illegal behavior.”, “Romney said the state's focus should be on helping legal immigrants. ‘Giving children of illegal immigrants a tuition break would act as an incentive to draw in more illegal immigrants to Massachusetts,’ Romney said.“’I believe the attorney general has taken leave of the law,’ Romney said. ‘The law has to be enforced by the chief law enforcement officer of the state.’"
  4. That guy from the Media that Romney told, "No, I represent the people."
  5. Mitt Romney fought with Brian Camenker

 

Reasons to disagree: 

  1.  

Interest / Motivation of those who agree:

  1.  

 

Interest / Motivation of those who disagree:

  1.  

Books that agree:

  1.  

 

Books that disagree:

  1.  

People who agree 

  1.  

 

People who disagree 

  1.  

Web pages that agree

  1.  

 

Web pages that disagree 

  1.   

 

Go to the mattresses

 

Meaning

 

Prepare for a battle or adopt a warlike stance.

 

Origin

 

San Miniato al MonteConsider these two tales:

 

In 1530 the combined troops of Charles V and Medici Pope Clement VII lay siege to Florence. The bell tower of San Miniato al Monte was part of the defences. Michelangelo Buonarroti, as he was good at most things, was put in charge of defending the city. He used the ploy of hanging mattresses on the outside of the tower to minimize damage from cannon fire.

 

In times of war or siege, Italian families would vacate their homes and rent apartments in safer areas. In order to protect themselves they would hire soldiers to sleep on the floor in shifts.

 

Ordinarily we would want to verify such stories before publishing them here as part of a phrase derivation. In this case though it isn't really important. The meaning of the phrase turns on the association in Italian folk-memory of mattresses with safety in wartime. The phrase wasn't well known outside of the USA and Italy prior to the Godfather movies. It was used there, and later in The Sopranos television series, to mean 'preparing for battle'. Whether or not the stories that originated it are true doesn't alter the fact that the screenwriters of those films used them in that context.

 

Here's the dialogue from Godfather:

 

Clemenza:

 

That Sonny's runnin' wild. He's thinking of going to the mattresses already.

 

Sonny:

 

No, no, no! No more! Not this time, consiglieri. No more meetings, no more discussions, no more Sollozzo tricks. You give 'em one message: I want Sollozzo. If not, it's all-out war: we go to the mattresses.

 

 

Obama is wrong

on immigration,

about Republicans

on driver's licences and social services for illegal immigrants,

on partial-birth abortion,

on parental notification,

on affermative action,

on the new-deal,

on the cap and trade auction system,

on private accounts for social security,

on the Program Assessment Rating Tool Bill 

on the ownership society,

on Cuba

on the surge in Iraq

Obama is Right:

about race

about the Confederate flag

to expand the United States Armed Forces

on his approach to abortion debate,

- on PayGo

on his approach to parenting,

on tax havens

to challenging "so called leaders of the Christian Right" for being "all to eager to exploit what devides us",

to support civil unions,

to oppose gay marriage,

to reach across the isle for common ground on abortion,

to try to bring more educated english speaking people to America,

to give the director of National Intelligence a fixed term independent of Presidential control,

to provide tax incentives for corporate responsibility 

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.