Quick blog today due to work schedule but I just wanted to address the story of Mike Huckabee that's been buzzing in the media since some comments he made Tuesday on a right wing talk radio show.
On the Steve Malzberg show, Mike Huckabee was addressing something about Obama removing a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. Apparently the bust was removed because Obama's people were making it so that all the busts in the office were of Americans. I'm not sure if that's actually the reason but that's not important.
Huckabee made a statement that the removal of the bust was due to Obama being raised in Kenya which was a British colony for quite some time. Here's Huckabee's statement:
“If you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.”
In fact, Obama's grandfather was arrested by the British and detained for a period. This isn't the fun stuff though.
In response to the media pointing out that Obama was in fact not raised in Kenya, Huckabee came out with this statement:
"I simply misspoke when I alluded to President Obama growing up in 'Kenya' and meant to say Indonesia."
Well, except for the fact that there was not a Mau Mau Revolution in Indonesia and Obama's grandfather didn't live there and Indonesia was not a British colony.
What happened here is that Huckabee got caught pandering to the far right. I've seen Huckabee on MSNBC where he comes off as a real gentleman and almost, dare I say it, kinda middle of the road politically. On networks like MSNBC, Huckabee is confident of Obama's American birth.
What's happening these days though is that politicians like Huckabee, lest we forget, he's an ordained Southern Baptist minister, play to whatever audience they're addressing.
When conservative politicians go on shows like Malzberg's they frequently get put into positions where correcting lies and propaganda can be political suicide. Yet, they have to put themselves out there to pander. They can't win without that lunatic fringe that makes up the conservative base.
There are only two ways Huckabee's statements could have gone down. Either he actually thought Obama grew up in Kenya or he simply lied. The fact is that Obama never visited Kenya until he was an adult.
But then Huckabee followed up with a statement claiming he simply used the word Kenya rather than Indonesia as he intended. Obviously a lie since he elaborated on it being Kenya.
So, you're busted playing to the right and lying to them so what's next? You blame the whole thing on the left wing media! Here's the statement on his website about that:
"I'm not surprised the NY Times chose to sensationalize this story. In fact, the New York Times, the AP, and other news organizations ran with the "sensationalized story" despite being specifically told by Steve Malzberg himself that they were incorrect in their assessment of the sound bite. You just can't help but laugh when my simple slip of the tongue, becomes a huge story - and a certain Presidential candidate claiming to visit all 57 states, gets widely ignored."
Well, except that Obama saying 57 states is an obvious speaking mistake. He didn't go on to elaborate how the additional seven states were incorporated into the union. The whole point of Huckabee's Malzberg interview debacle was that Kenya was the point of the story.
You can find many examples of right wing media and bloggers out there right now defending Huckabee and making him the victim of a left wing media smear campaign and I'm sure the majority of right wingers are taking that bait.
Fact is that they're getting played and, since they don't typically get actual news thrown in to their daily mix, they'll keep getting played like this.
Baptist minister, obviously a liar, no biggie.
To me though, the funniest thing about this whole story is that Huckabee says something about Obama being raised to believe the Brits "were a bunch of imperialists". As in, how could somebody believe anything like that about those nice British folk? All they were trying to do is help!
I'll save the blog on the British and their colonial period for later. A history lesson on the Mau Mau Revolt is good background though. Here's the link to the Wiki on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Revolt
Populist rants from a little blue dot in deep red Alabama.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Self-Slaughtering Sheep, History Lessons, Bah Bah Bah
Aside from the fireworks in the Middle East and North Africa in the past weeks, the media in America has been focusing on the fun in Madison, Wisconsin. The new Republican governor of that state, Scott Walker, and the majority Republican congress in that state began work on pushing through a bill that would make state workers have to pay more into their own pension plans, pay more for their own health care plans, and basically lose the right as unions to engage in collective bargaining.
Union members, teachers, auto workers, etc. have been rallying outside the state house since last week pitted against smaller numbers of Tea Party, uh, patriots?
Let me say that I understand that there are some problems with modern unions in that they frequently demand too much. I do totally get that. They have to learn to meet in the middle on some issues when local, state, and federal budgets are strapped as they currently are.
What I'd like to discuss here though is those citizens who are aligning themselves against the unions: the far-right and Tea Party folks.
I'm talking about those people who are middle to low income workers and follow right-wing media for all of their "information". I discuss these people frequently because it's such an amazing dynamic. I don't know if they are so stupid that they think wealthy people are really concerned with their welfare or if they are so patriotic that tey think that labor unions are communist and anti-American.
These people make me imagine a herd of sheep. Somehow these sheep have been given the right to vote. There's a wolf at one end of their pasture and a shepherd at the other end. The shepherd tells the sheep he needs them to give him some money to fix their fence and keep the wolf out. The wolf tells them he's a vegetarian now and he'll let them keep their money if they let him kill the shepherd.
Well, history tells us that a wolf will not be a vegetarian for long if he ever actually was and common sense tells us he just wants to eat the sheep. But, because he's told him they can keep their money some of the sheep vote in favor of the wolf. After all, the shepherd's wearing a new coat and how did he pay for that? Why didn't that money go to fix the fence.
I'm currently watching season three of The Tudors which is focusing on the life of Henry VIII and what I watched last night was so timely I had to include it.
First you need to know that Gov. Walker in Wisconsin is firmly in the pocket of the Koch brothers. That's pronounced like coke if you're not familiar with them. They are billionaire industrialists, some of the wealthiest people in America, and they pour millions into right-wing political causes including Gov. Walker's election campaign. They are basically the heart and soul of many "grass roots" political movements in America right now.
A hilarious incident happened yesterday in which a liberal blogger got Gov. Walker on the phone posing as one of the Koch brothers and talked to him for twenty minutes, recorded it all, and put it out on the internet.
I must add that, in an attempt to delay passage of the bill in Wisconsin, Democrat law-makers have left the state so that no quorum can be reached and the bill in question can't be passed for now.
In the phone call Gov. Walker says he and his people have discussed telling the Democrats that he is willing to negotiate with them, having them come back to the state house, and, once they are in the building and a quorum is reached, quickly putting the bill on the floor and passing it. Like a trap. Hah! Got ya!
So back to Henry VIII. In 1536 Henry had passed all sorts of laws abolishing the Catholic Church in England, confiscating Papal lands, abbeys, churches, all their loot, etc. The people in the North of England, under the leadership of a lawyer named Robert Aske, started a rebellion and, with a fair sized army, set out for London on foot in order to bring their grievances before the king. This march came to be known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.
Henry got very concerned about the size of the group and sent mediators to talk with them. He promised them clemency if they disbanded, promised to hold a special parliament to hear their claims, and basically allowed them to think all would be cool and he would work things out with them.
Sound familiar? These trusting souls (sheep) took him at his word and, after they disbanded their army and went back home, Robert Aske was tortured and hung and hundreds of peasants, men, women, and children were taken from their fields and hung as an example to others.
These are the kinds of "Oh, I've seen something like this before!" realizations you get all the time if you know history. There are always examples of sheep exposing their necks to the butcher's knife and thanking him for taking care of them.
The labor movement in America was a reaction to abuses of a medieval magnitude. Workers in this country have not always been well treated. In the 19th and early 20th centuries there were great pockets of workers who were treated like chattel. Child labor, sure, eighty hour work week, check, no overtime, check, safety?, sorry. It was literally a war with many casualties that led to the rise of unions in this country and they forced companies to begin to treat labor with dignity and decency. The American prosperity of the 1950s through the 1980s was defined by these people, many who gave their lives for it, killed by scabs and Pinkertons who were the Blackwater contractors of that time.
The jackasses in Wisconsin, the commoners fighting against the unions, know nothing of the history of labor in this country. They view labor as an outside force trying to take their money and wanting to live the high life for doing no work. Their perception of the situation is so far out of whack that it freaks me out.
I would love to kidnap some of these folks and give them a history lesson. Make them watch the movie Maitwan, show them photos of union workers getting clubbed to death or shot with machine guns. The irony that the struggle of those early union members closely resembles that of the original Tea Partiers back in the 18th century isn't lost on me.
The fight in Wisconsin is against union members who are public sector employees: teachers, police, firemen, garbage workers, etc.
I think it's probably pretty important to gain some perspective on why these people are in unions to begin with.
Let's take teachers as an example. Public workers are maybe the one sector of our economy where, well in the case of teachers, public defenders, etc., you have to have a college degree and your earnings cap out at a ridiculously low level compared to similar levels of education in the private sector. These people are doing a job that must be done at economic disadvantage to themselves. The lack of salary is hopefully made up for in pension money and healthcare. Without these incentives we lose these people to the private sector.
Of course, this is what union busters want. They want it all to be privatized. BFI and Waste Management handling all trash collection, private security force rather than police, fire protection provided like a privately owned ambulance service, all that.
Many on the right have drunk the Kool-Aid and think this is the best and most cost-effective and "American" way to do things. It's the free market! Unfortunately these people have a total lack of knowledge of the way things worked when this was the norm, when all these things were handled by the private sector.
You think police unions are bad? I'd like to imagine a Blackwater run police force. Oh but they changed their name, hang on, they are now Xe Services. So if you can't pronounce the name you can't speak evil of them. (Xe is pronounced like zee if you have something bad to say)
Imagine having to call your child's teacher and speaking with a call center in India instead.
I could go on all day with scenarios like this but the bottom line is that we need to maintain a public sector and, in lieu of salary, these people deserve their benefits.
I don't think personally that a VP with Koch Enterprises should make a hundred times more money than a policeman who actually risks his life protecting his community every day.
I think people like that VP from Koch should share a huge tax burden to keep the public sector afloat.
Current poster child for this country's Right, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, says these people already meet far more than their fair share of the tax burden in his fight against the unions. Something like they are responsible for 40% of New Jersey's tax income.
Of course, this is that same argument you keep hearing from these people. They do the simple math that if I make x dollars and the tax rate is 30% then I've paid into the state and federal coffers by this equation: x x .30 = y and y is what they've paid in taxes.
This is just simply not the case. Business tax breaks, subsidies, loopholes, off-shoring of accounts, etc. are all discounted in this argument and it's just nonsense.
Until the sheep on the political right begin to understand that wolves aren't going to look out for their best interests, we can expect to see a lot more of this union busting in America. Welcome to the 1800s!
Union members, teachers, auto workers, etc. have been rallying outside the state house since last week pitted against smaller numbers of Tea Party, uh, patriots?
Let me say that I understand that there are some problems with modern unions in that they frequently demand too much. I do totally get that. They have to learn to meet in the middle on some issues when local, state, and federal budgets are strapped as they currently are.
What I'd like to discuss here though is those citizens who are aligning themselves against the unions: the far-right and Tea Party folks.
I'm talking about those people who are middle to low income workers and follow right-wing media for all of their "information". I discuss these people frequently because it's such an amazing dynamic. I don't know if they are so stupid that they think wealthy people are really concerned with their welfare or if they are so patriotic that tey think that labor unions are communist and anti-American.
These people make me imagine a herd of sheep. Somehow these sheep have been given the right to vote. There's a wolf at one end of their pasture and a shepherd at the other end. The shepherd tells the sheep he needs them to give him some money to fix their fence and keep the wolf out. The wolf tells them he's a vegetarian now and he'll let them keep their money if they let him kill the shepherd.
Well, history tells us that a wolf will not be a vegetarian for long if he ever actually was and common sense tells us he just wants to eat the sheep. But, because he's told him they can keep their money some of the sheep vote in favor of the wolf. After all, the shepherd's wearing a new coat and how did he pay for that? Why didn't that money go to fix the fence.
I'm currently watching season three of The Tudors which is focusing on the life of Henry VIII and what I watched last night was so timely I had to include it.
First you need to know that Gov. Walker in Wisconsin is firmly in the pocket of the Koch brothers. That's pronounced like coke if you're not familiar with them. They are billionaire industrialists, some of the wealthiest people in America, and they pour millions into right-wing political causes including Gov. Walker's election campaign. They are basically the heart and soul of many "grass roots" political movements in America right now.
A hilarious incident happened yesterday in which a liberal blogger got Gov. Walker on the phone posing as one of the Koch brothers and talked to him for twenty minutes, recorded it all, and put it out on the internet.
I must add that, in an attempt to delay passage of the bill in Wisconsin, Democrat law-makers have left the state so that no quorum can be reached and the bill in question can't be passed for now.
In the phone call Gov. Walker says he and his people have discussed telling the Democrats that he is willing to negotiate with them, having them come back to the state house, and, once they are in the building and a quorum is reached, quickly putting the bill on the floor and passing it. Like a trap. Hah! Got ya!
So back to Henry VIII. In 1536 Henry had passed all sorts of laws abolishing the Catholic Church in England, confiscating Papal lands, abbeys, churches, all their loot, etc. The people in the North of England, under the leadership of a lawyer named Robert Aske, started a rebellion and, with a fair sized army, set out for London on foot in order to bring their grievances before the king. This march came to be known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.
Henry got very concerned about the size of the group and sent mediators to talk with them. He promised them clemency if they disbanded, promised to hold a special parliament to hear their claims, and basically allowed them to think all would be cool and he would work things out with them.
Sound familiar? These trusting souls (sheep) took him at his word and, after they disbanded their army and went back home, Robert Aske was tortured and hung and hundreds of peasants, men, women, and children were taken from their fields and hung as an example to others.
These are the kinds of "Oh, I've seen something like this before!" realizations you get all the time if you know history. There are always examples of sheep exposing their necks to the butcher's knife and thanking him for taking care of them.
The labor movement in America was a reaction to abuses of a medieval magnitude. Workers in this country have not always been well treated. In the 19th and early 20th centuries there were great pockets of workers who were treated like chattel. Child labor, sure, eighty hour work week, check, no overtime, check, safety?, sorry. It was literally a war with many casualties that led to the rise of unions in this country and they forced companies to begin to treat labor with dignity and decency. The American prosperity of the 1950s through the 1980s was defined by these people, many who gave their lives for it, killed by scabs and Pinkertons who were the Blackwater contractors of that time.
The jackasses in Wisconsin, the commoners fighting against the unions, know nothing of the history of labor in this country. They view labor as an outside force trying to take their money and wanting to live the high life for doing no work. Their perception of the situation is so far out of whack that it freaks me out.
I would love to kidnap some of these folks and give them a history lesson. Make them watch the movie Maitwan, show them photos of union workers getting clubbed to death or shot with machine guns. The irony that the struggle of those early union members closely resembles that of the original Tea Partiers back in the 18th century isn't lost on me.
The fight in Wisconsin is against union members who are public sector employees: teachers, police, firemen, garbage workers, etc.
I think it's probably pretty important to gain some perspective on why these people are in unions to begin with.
Let's take teachers as an example. Public workers are maybe the one sector of our economy where, well in the case of teachers, public defenders, etc., you have to have a college degree and your earnings cap out at a ridiculously low level compared to similar levels of education in the private sector. These people are doing a job that must be done at economic disadvantage to themselves. The lack of salary is hopefully made up for in pension money and healthcare. Without these incentives we lose these people to the private sector.
Of course, this is what union busters want. They want it all to be privatized. BFI and Waste Management handling all trash collection, private security force rather than police, fire protection provided like a privately owned ambulance service, all that.
Many on the right have drunk the Kool-Aid and think this is the best and most cost-effective and "American" way to do things. It's the free market! Unfortunately these people have a total lack of knowledge of the way things worked when this was the norm, when all these things were handled by the private sector.
You think police unions are bad? I'd like to imagine a Blackwater run police force. Oh but they changed their name, hang on, they are now Xe Services. So if you can't pronounce the name you can't speak evil of them. (Xe is pronounced like zee if you have something bad to say)
Imagine having to call your child's teacher and speaking with a call center in India instead.
I could go on all day with scenarios like this but the bottom line is that we need to maintain a public sector and, in lieu of salary, these people deserve their benefits.
I don't think personally that a VP with Koch Enterprises should make a hundred times more money than a policeman who actually risks his life protecting his community every day.
I think people like that VP from Koch should share a huge tax burden to keep the public sector afloat.
Current poster child for this country's Right, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, says these people already meet far more than their fair share of the tax burden in his fight against the unions. Something like they are responsible for 40% of New Jersey's tax income.
Of course, this is that same argument you keep hearing from these people. They do the simple math that if I make x dollars and the tax rate is 30% then I've paid into the state and federal coffers by this equation: x x .30 = y and y is what they've paid in taxes.
This is just simply not the case. Business tax breaks, subsidies, loopholes, off-shoring of accounts, etc. are all discounted in this argument and it's just nonsense.
Until the sheep on the political right begin to understand that wolves aren't going to look out for their best interests, we can expect to see a lot more of this union busting in America. Welcome to the 1800s!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)