The Donald Dilemma: Loves The Crowds, Hates The Presidency

I've been watching Donald Trump pretty closely (How to avoid it? Dear God in Heaven, how to avoid it?) and I have a theory.  Bear with me now, because at first you're going to laugh.  I know I did.  But here it is:  The billionaire Trump would rather die than be president of the United States.  But then he'd rather die than give up the attention, the fabulous, almost surreal attention.  From the people, from the press, from the Big Guys in Washington, from the world!  It's all his!  Donald Trump's!  He can't give it up!  He just can't!  But, damn, he does not want to be president.

One day, back in 2015, the showman Trump, the billionaire Donald, ridiculed by many, unliked by most, on a lark, dipped his toe--the most amazing toe in the world, let him tell you--into the presidential pool, and something magical happened.  People--ordinary people--liked him!  They really, really liked him!  Some of them thought he'd make a great president! Not just a great president but the greatest president this country had ever seen!  Maybe the greatest in the world! Him! Donald Trump!

Photo credit:  Richard Drew/AP

He came up with a clever slogan.  Such a clever slogan, you wouldn't believe: "Make America great again!"  Word got around that this billionaire with no political ties was going to make America great again.  The crowds came.  They roared.  He roared.  They were hooked.  He was hooked.

It didn't matter that he didn't have a plan.  It was enough that he agreed to hate all the people they hated, that he spoke off the cuff, that he said the most outrageous things--godawful things--and got away with it.  It became a spectacle and the show began to run on its own steam.  It was better than any juicy, shocking reality show.  It was better because they were all in it, participating, instead of just watching it on their TV screens.

But then something happened.  Donald Trump began to be taken seriously.  Some members of the fawning press went from enjoying the pure folly of it to asking him the hard questions.  The questions any serious presidential candidate should know.  Questions about the economy, about policy, about world affairs. But that's not what interested him.  Not in the least.

He saw he would need to attack the press and make them look silly.  And again, because everything he touched miraculously turned to gold, it worked!  Beautifully!  The press, because his campaign was the best copy ever, became his lap dogs.  To his own surprise, they gave him so much free time he didn't have to spend a dime of his own vast fortune to get him to the very top.

Heady stuff, that.  Not something a narcissistic egomaniac could easily turn his back on.  So what to do?  He didn't want to be president!  Live in the White House, that tacky old relic?  Deliver him!  Deal with a Congress that wouldn't give him his way?  Not on your life!  Learn the names of all those countries, their leaders, their cultures, and whether or not they liked us or  wanted us dead in our beds?  He was a Wharton graduate--a graduate.  School was over!

So Donald being Donald, he decided he needed to put an end to it.  The president part, at least. He was enjoying the hell out of the attention--who wouldn't?--so he would have to figure out a way to keep the crowds coming, even though the idea of being president was beginning to seem like a real loser.

He would be their fearless leader, instead, demagoguing his way into their heads and hearts; he would keep those auditoriums, those stadiums filled to the rafters.  He discovered, to his utter shock, that all he had to do was talk.  He could do that!

He recognized early on that it was the throw-away, comedic insults that drew the heaviest crowds, that brought the shouts, the laughs, the catcalls. They loved him, not as a presidential candidate, but as an entertainer! Who knew?

He kept it up and they kept coming.  The press couldn't get enough of the Phenomenal Donald  He could insult them, call them "scum", point at them in their press boxes with a finger that oozed hatred, and still they would come.  What the hell was going on?  He didn't know, he didn't care.  He was Number One.  Numero Uno.  One.  As in O.N.E.

But, Good God, he might be president!  How could he tell Melania Darling she might have to leave their Park Avenue penthouse?  What to do, what to do?  One day, as he was busy bragging himself up so as to avoid having to contend with real issues,  he told the crowd that his followers were so loyal, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."  The press went wild!  The internet went wild!  No way! Did Donald Trump really say that?

He did.  He did say that.  And even though he hadn't planned it that way (I'm guessing), it could well have been the moment he'd been waiting for.   Who says something like that and gets away with it?

Donald Trump, that's who.  So far, it hasn't hurt him AT ALL.  He hasn't moved from the top of the polls, the mighty polls.

But Trump has just announced that he won't be attending the Fox News GOP debate--the last debate before the Iowa caucuses.  Why not?  Because Megyn Kelly will be moderating and he can't stand her.  At the first debate she was rude to him.  Downright mean. She dared to ask him how he would handle the criticism about the nasty comments he's made about women over the years.  In answer, he began to make nasty comments about her.  Over and over, day after day. He called her a bimbo, a loser, a bad reporter.  He suggested it could have been menstrual flow causing all that meanness.

When he heard Kelly would be on the moderating panel, he gave Fox an ultimatum.  Megyn or Trump.  He harrumphed that Fox would never give up the crowds his presence would bring.  They would have to cave.

They chose Megyn:

"Unlike the very stupid, highly incompetent people running our country into the ground, Mr. Trump knows when to walk away," Trump said in a statement. "Roger Ailes and Fox News think they can toy with him, but Mr. Trump doesn't play games."

Trump can talk like that because he is not now and never will be a politician.  He is a businessman who glories in his ruthlessness, a wheeler-dealer who always wins, a showman more comfortable in an arena than in an oval office.

He finally gets it: That, while the power and the glory of the presidency could be his, it won't come without four long years of compromise and crushing responsibility.  He won't always get his way.  He'll be required to work hard and give much.  His every action will be answerable to millions of people who aren't among his gushing followers.  The Megyn Kellys of the world will dog his every step.

He won't be able to stand it.

I want to help him.  I really do.  I want to make sure he's never president.  Oh, I know he won't be grateful. He won't thank me.  But sometimes it's those thankless jobs that are the most rewarding.  So, how about it?  Care to join me?  Can we put this poor guy out of his misery already?

_______________________

Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks and Liars

Obama Says He'll Politicize Guns. NRA, Fox, GOP Say No Way, That's Our Job.

". . .And, of course, what’s also routine is that somebody, somewhere will comment and say, Obama politicized this issue.  Well, this is something we should politicize.  It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic.

. . .This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America.  We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.  When Americans are killed in mine disasters, we work to make mines safer.  When Americans are killed in floods and hurricanes, we make communities safer.  When roads are unsafe, we fix them to reduce auto fatalities.  We have seatbelt laws because we know it saves lives.  So the notion that gun violence is somehow different, that our freedom and our Constitution prohibits any modest regulation of how we use a deadly weapon, when there are law-abiding gun owners all across the country who could hunt and protect their families and do everything they do under such regulations doesn’t make sense."  - President Obama, October 1, 2015, yet another speech after a mass shooting His 11th.

We've had another mass murder, this time on a community college campus in Oregon, where nine students and the shooter are dead. We're outraged, we're grieving, we're looking for answers.  We've been through this before, and the worst part is, we know for a fact we'll go through it again.

Those on the right, when they're not blaming mental health, are blaming liberals in general and Obama in particular.  Those on the left are blaming the NRA and an out-of-control gun culture.  There is enough goddamned blame to go around, but I blame Congress.  They're in control.  They can read the same impossible numbers  that I can.  They can twist arms.  They can make laws.  They can declare the gun epidemic a moral crisis--a national disaster--and go at it full force.  But they're cowards and they won't.

When it comes to gun murders we're so far ahead of any country on earth, there's no danger of any of them catching up with us.  And still we do nothing but argue about it.  We're so good at rehashing the same old stuff, we've become experts at it.  Not at finding solutions, just at rehashing.

I wish I knew what else to do.  I don't. So let me rehash.  This is the column I wrote after the Republicans in Congress voted down what should have been a slam-dunk reform move after the Sandy Hook massacre at Newtown, Connecticut. Congress had all the public support it needed to grind to a halt the bloody mess our love affair with guns has caused.  They wouldn't do it.  They still won't do it.  And without them, we can't do it.  (It's long, I know, but there are voices there that deserve to be heard again.  As you read this, keep in mind that the vote happened more than two years ago.  We've had an election since then and many of those same congressional culprits have been re-elected.)


April 18, 2013:

Politicians out of control on Guns: Never Forgive, Never Forget

Yesterday 46 members of the Senate voted down a proposal that would have been a logical first step to gun control--universal background checks.  They were able to vote it down, even though 54 members voted for it because they rigged the way the votes count now.  Voting it down for no good reason is bad enough but they did it through cowardice, lies and cheats. The whole process was despicable, made even more so by the fact that it happened in the chambers where expectations of fairness and fidelity used to run quite high.

These public servants ignored the wishes of at least 90% of Americans and caved, instead, to willful profit-oriented special interests.  They lied about the content of the bill and insured their success by forcing a 60-vote approval instead of a fairer, more honest majority vote.

In a sane world, this would be enough to cause those who voted against the wishes of the people some actual discomfort, if not some actual punishment.  Our outrage (those of us who have sense enough to be outraged) comes today because we know nothing will happen to them.  They will go on for another day and another day after that making bad decisions that will affect all of us in one way or another, and all we can do is shout about it.

We are outraged.  The parents and families of the Newtown School massacre are outraged.  Gabrielle Giffords is outraged. The president is outraged.  The Democrats (all but four senators) are outraged. Certain members of the press are outraged.  But our rage at these 46 members of the United States Senate who voted to keep guns out of our control is, in the end, no more than hot air.  Rage, like hot air, dissipates.  It weakens to anger, and anger, when it is not satisfied, weakens to a sigh.  We're exhausted.  We'll inevitably leave it behind and go on.

They get away with these undemocratic actions once again because we have neither the authority nor the strength to stop them.  And they know this.

The president gave a masterful speech yesterday, designed to both clarify his rage and to shame them for their actions.  They don't care.

A portion of what the president said:

Families that know unspeakable grief summoned the courage to petition their elected leaders –- not just to honor the memory of their children, but to protect the lives of all our children.  And a few minutes ago, a minority in the United States Senate decided it wasn’t worth it.  They blocked common-sense gun reforms even while these families looked on from the Senate gallery.

By now, it’s well known that 90 percent of the American people support universal background checks that make it harder for a dangerous person to buy a gun.  We’re talking about convicted felons, people convicted of domestic violence, people with a severe mental illness.  Ninety percent of Americans support that idea.  Most Americans think that’s already the law.

And a few minutes ago, 90 percent of Democrats in the Senate just voted for that idea.  But it’s not going to happen because 90 percent of Republicans in the Senate just voted against that idea.
A majority of senators voted “yes” to protecting more of our citizens with smarter background checks.  But by this continuing distortion of Senate rules, a minority was able to block it from moving forward.

Gabrielle Giffords wrote an impassioned editorial in the New York Times yesterday, designed to show her rage and to shame those senators.  They don't care.

From Gabby:

Some of the senators who voted against the background-check amendments have met with grieving parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook, in Newtown. Some of the senators who voted no have also looked into my eyes as I talked about my experience being shot in the head at point-blank range in suburban Tucson two years ago, and expressed sympathy for the 18 other people shot besides me, 6 of whom died. These senators have heard from their constituents — who polls show overwhelmingly favored expanding background checks. And still these senators decided to do nothing. Shame on them.

James Fallows wrote a great piece in the Atlantic yesterday called "For the Love of God, just call it a Filibuster".    They don't care.

1. Today a provision that would increase background checks for gun purchases was blocked in the Senate, even though consideration of the bill was supported by 54 senators representing states that make up (at quick estimate) at least 60 percent of the American population.
2. The bill did not fail to "pass" the Senate, which according to Constitutional provisions and accepted practice for more than two centuries requires a simple majority, 51 votes. Even 50 votes should do it, since the vice president is constitutionally empowered to cast the tie-breaking and deciding vote, and Joe Biden would have voted yes.
3. It failed because a 54-vote majority was not enough to break the threat of a filibuster, which (with some twists of labeling) was the real story of what happened with this bill. Breaking the filibuster would have required 60 votes.

The Twitterverse clogged the place yesterday listing one by one the names of those senators who voted "no".  They don't care.

Journalists, essayists, bloggers, and hundreds of thousands of enraged activists took to their preferred soapboxes and shouted out in anguished rage.  The senators ignored us all.  They don't care.

They're counting on our inattention, our tendency to be distracted and manipulated, our refusal to believe our elected politicians could turn against us so cruelly, so blatantly, and so often.

This is our chance to show them how much we care.  We can't forget.  We must not forgive.  We will not let them get away with this latest insult.  They should not be allowed to win again.  Not if we are who we think we are. 
_________________

So that was then.  This is now.


(Also at Dagblog and Crooks & Liars)

What's in a Name? Depends on Who's Calling It.

Over this past week I packed and cleaned and wore myself out getting ready for a long trip toward the places where I'm hoping merry holiday spirits abide. It would be a cruel trick if they didn't.

During our long, long travels we got caught in not one but two snowstorms.  We spent three nights on the road when one night in a motel would have been more than enough.  When we could finally travel we had to drive well under the speed limit watching for black ice.  Here in Michigan we try not to think about the fact that winter won't even officially begin until Saturday.  We are sick of it already.  (Oh, I know--you New Yorkers have it much tougher, even though--may I remind you again--nearly every storm you get has already come roaring through our neck of the woods.)

You can see where I'm at these days, so forgive me if I don't give two shits about what somebody I don't even know is saying out loud, even if it offends more than half the country's tender sensibilities.

Megyn Kelly said on Fox News that there is no question that Santa and Jesus were two white guys.  This was in answer to an article in Slate by Aisha Harris, who wrote that maybe Santa shouldn't be an old white man anymore; maybe he should be a penguin, instead.

Maybe it was just my mood--I was looking for something to laugh about--but I found the whole thing hilarious.  In fact, I must remember to thank Megyn for putting a ray of sunshine in what was otherwise a bleak couple of days.  The fact that she's not the brightest bulb on the tree was a foregone conclusion even before she said what she said.  Nothing has changed, except that, honest to God, I got an email asking me to sign a petition to get her off the air!  Are they nuts?  For what?  Being so successfully bad at what she does?

And then there's Phil Robertson, that long-bearded Duck Dynasty guy:  I'm betting he was an established oddball long before he said what he said about gays, the bible, anuses and vaginas.  I caught about 20 minutes of that show once, and after the first 10 minutes of it nothing any of them might say would ever surprise me.  But yesterday I got an email from a friend asking me to sign a petition to demand that A&E come to their senses and put the guy back on the air. If the petition hadn't suggested that the suspension was blatantly anti-Christian, I might have been tempted to sign it.  Nobody should be forced out of a job over a few rancid words.  Even that guy.

When MSNBC fired Martin Bashir for saying something truly foul about what should happen to Sarah Palin in order to make her understand how terrible slavery really was, I objected to that firing, too, even though I thought Martin went way over any decent line.

If MSNBC had wanted to fire Alec Baldwin for dismal ratings they were well within their rights--his ratings were dismal--but they chose instead to tell the public he was fired for uttering a homophobic slur while lashing out at a photographer.  It's not as if MSNBC didn't know going in that Baldwin was a loose cannon.  That must have been part of his appeal for them.  In fact, his (or their) decision to play it straight (as it were) is probably what killed the show.  He was no Jack Donaghy.  He was barely even Alec Baldwin.

None of these people are politicians or leaders.  What they say has no impact on policy-making; nor does it change anything for any stranger who might feel victimized by their words.  We don't know those people and they don't know us.  I'm not defending any of them--every one of them said something stupid--but how sensitive is too sensitive?  Is a single utterance reason enough to cause someone to lose a job?

After a successful career spanning decades, the ever-entertaining Howard Cosell found himself at the center of controversy for directing the term "little monkey" to a black player during a televised football game in 1983.  Cosell, clearly no racist, had used the term at least three other times within a span of about 10 years.  He refused to back down, and left broadcasting at the end of that  season.

Thirty years later, we're still looking for insults inside stupid sentences.  It's as if we've never experienced a comments section.  

Read the comment section of any article smacking of even a hint of controversy and you'll see name-calling soaring to spectacularly vile heights. Some of it comes after a public figure has done the wordy deed and the commenters respond in kind, as if they're competing to see how ugly it can get.

Some participants in the comment sections have a talent for it; the vast majority don't.  F-bombs and its various variations dropping all over the place, as if there is no word it can't replace.  MFing L-bombs lobbed at even little old liberal ladies (just saying. . .).

So here I'll make a confession.  I hate the F-word.  I don't just hate it, I despise it.  I have never used it, never written it, and even now, when its usage is more common than breathing, it still offends me.  I grew up in a time when it was so rarely used it was shocking to hear it spoken out loud.  We saw it in writing even less. But even when it's directed at me I don't fall apart over it. What kind of sissy would I be if I went off pouting or calling for heads to roll every time I heard it used in a way that I found offensive?  (Which, for me, don't you know, would be every way.)

I was a young adult when feminism grew strong enough to become an F-word itself. I've heard it all. Words hurled at me by strangers have almost always been meaningless.  They can't hurt me unless I let them.  And why would I let them? Water off a duck's back.  Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me. 

And nyah nyah, you lousy cootie.

Black Friday as Myth-Buster

After the Thanksgiving Day gluttony is over and after our teams have either won or lost (Our biggie between the Lions and the Packers went horribly awry for my loved ones, poor dears.) and after we've taken our tryptophan-induced naps, the next fun thing to think about, talk about or plan for is Black Friday, our annual Big Huge Shopping Extravaganza.  It's the day when primitive survival skills kick in and the absolutely-must-haves traditionally go nuts and stampede in scenes that make even NatGeo-watchers go "Wow!".

(Rumor has it that Black Friday is the one day of the year when China pays homage to US. They would make it a national holiday, except everyone is busy at work manufacturing things for our Christmas rush.)

There's a myth in this country that goes like this: America is broke.  Aside from a paltry few tax-evading King Midas wannabes, nobody else has anything much.  That's the story.

Our jobless, our homeless, our soup kitchens, our empty former homes, our overflowing ERs--that's all real.  Painfully real.  But what's also real is the hefty percentage of 99 Percenters who spread out at the stroke of Black Friday to go whole hog spending astonishing amounts of ready cash and pay-later credit on stuff.

It's an American tradition contrived and perpetuated by the merchant class and, really, who are we to tell people (other than Congress) how to spend their (our) money?  But a group known as "Occupy Black Friday" , an off-shoot of Occupy Wall Street, while admirably opposing the longer open hours which would take employees away from their own families on Thanksgiving, and endorsing the efforts to buy locally,  took it one step further and came up with the idea of boycotting, instead of occupying, the major chains on That Day.  (The Occupying part wouldn't work at all, you see, since millions of shoppers would already be camping out and milling around, waiting for the doors to open.) 

Attempting to show the strength of the masses by boycotting major retailers on that all-important shopping day is one of those ideas that seems okay on the face of it, but which, in reality, is doomed from the start.  It's a whisper in the wind, a dusky dot in the night sky, and here's why:  I've been boycotting "Black Friday" for years now and nobody has ever noticed.  Multiply me by, say, several hundred thousand and we still wouldn't be noticed.  It's a happy tradition, the official start of the Christmas shopping season.  Even in the worst economic downturn in decades, it's still a force bigger than all of us.

Okay, granted, this year, for whatever reasons, it seemed more intense than fun.  A woman took to pepper-spraying other shoppers threatening to get too close to the prize she was after.  A man slipped a DVD under his shirt, not to steal it but to prevent it from being stolen from him, and got himself shoved to the ground and bloodied for his efforts. People were knocked around and bruised. There were grim reports of shootings and parking lot robberies.  But to the victors went the spoils and it's those success stories that make it all worthwhile.   (More to come the day after Christmas.  Another happy tradition.)

As might be expected, the activities at "Occupy Black Friday" came to the attention of the folks over at Fox "News" .  Their idea of the perfect smack-down was to tell people to go out and shop 'til they drop.  That'll show those damned Occupiers.  Hah!

 Now, I really hate to think Fox had that much influence, but this year Black Friday alone took in $11.4 billion, a 6.6% increase over last year, while the Thanksgiving weekend broke all sales records with a staggering $52.4 billion spent over four days.  It was a jump of 16% over last year's sales, with record numbers of shoppers spending even more bucks on average.

No stats yet on the sales outcomes of Small Business Saturday, a truly sensational idea, even if it did come from American Express.

Today is Cyber Monday (designated by the online merchants who felt left out, no doubt), the lead-in to Cyber Week (Because why stop the momentum of a very good thing?), and on to Christmas, the Big Kahuna of cash heavy, gift-giving holidays.

So about that whole "America is broke" business.  We're looking into it.  We'll have to get back to you on that.

Fox News and the C of C thank you for voting Republican. But don't call us, we'll call you.

So, all you "Mad as Hell" people who idolize Fox "News" and their partners in crime, the Koch Brothers, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Republican Party, let's hear what you've learned from that bunch you've been following so religiously.  What's the plan?  What's marvels are in store for you when they take out the government and make it obsolete?

Wait a minute--you haven't asked?  Okay, then.  Obviously you haven't been thinking about it, but I have.  I've made up a list of questions for you to ask as soon as you've put all those constitution-loving patriots back in the cat-bird seat:

How soon will all the jobs be back?
What's the forecast for a booming housing market?
Can we stop paying taxes now?
When will all wars end?
Can we get the the gays and liberals and non-Christians and brown-skinned people out of our sight ASAP?
Now can we force all kids to pray in school?
How soon before the poor aren't among us?
Do we have to take our guns to town?
When you outlaw abortions are you going to expect me to take care of those little brats?
When DC is a ghost town will the rents go down?
Why is Obamacare bad again?

and last but not least (because this one is very, very, very important):
 Do you like me?  Do you really, really like me?


Ramona

S.O.L -- Save our Labor

It's fashionable these days among the politicians, pundits and so-called experts to claim that free trade is actually good for us. They say it enables us to buy cheaper goods made with cheap foreign labor and this, in turn, raises our standard of living. With all due respect, the free traders need to ask themselves a more fundamental question: how will Americans buy those goods when they don't even have a paycheck that covers their mortgage, much less the college tuition for their children?

Virg Bernero, Mayor, Lansing, MI


Virg Bernero is my new hero. The mayor of Lansing, Michigan is taking the message of the American laborer and shoving it so tightly down the throats of the pundits, they're getting bilious just thinking about him.

When they began inviting him onto their shows last fall to talk about the prospects of a Big Three bailout, they thought they were dealing with the biggest yokel on the planet. This'll be fun! You could see it in the smirks on their faces, in their sit-back-and-laugh postures, in their questions meant to provoke rather than inform. Outside of Ron Gettelfinger, the president of UAW, (I'm elevating him to hero status, too), who the heck would be out there speaking FOR labor these days? And who in their right mind would do it on, of all places, Fox News?

Well, it turns out that Virg would--every chance he got--and once he was on a roll, nobody was going to shut him up. In November he sparred with Neil Cavuto twice in three days.

In December he did it again, caling the Auto Companies "the most patriotic companies in America". Virg says when all the other companies were shipping their jobs overseas, the American auto companies stayed in America. It's true--to a point. They have shipped some jobs overseas, just not as many. But can we talk about this? Apparently not. See how quickly he's bid a fond adieu by the interviewers.

Here he spends some quality time with some of the folks at CNN--John Roberts, Ali Velshi, Ciran Chetry and Christine Romans--all apparent experts on what this country needs to get going again.

Ali Velshi to Virg: ". . .It's the fact that things are made more cheaply in other parts of the world, which has, in a lot of cases, helped many Americans in their standard of living. They've been able to buy cheaper goods."

Virg: "I disagree vehemently. . ." (It was early in the interview. Virg hadn't gotten his steam up.)

Virg, picking up speed: "I'm tired of hearing the American worker being beat up upon, and people told you need to be more competitive; you need to be more competitive. What they're really talking about is 'cut your wages, cut your benefits, work for nothing, like some peasant somewhere else in the world'. Well, I'm sorry--I'm tired of the American standard of living brought down to the lowest common denominator. We need fair trade agreements fairly enforced."

Christine Romans, using the tired 'some people say' tactic , said: "You will hear from a lot of decision makers that manufacturing is very 20th century and this is a service economy and that we have to innovate and we have to come up with the next thing that's going to move the economy forward. How does that square with Michigan and its labor base?"

Lordy, did she really say that? Yes, Virg heard it, too, but to his credit, given the condescension dripping from her tongue, he remembered what his mother taught him about being polite to women--even silly women--and gave Ms. Romans way more nice than she deserved.

"With all due respect," Virg said, "That--what you just said--I've heard it before. I'm not saying this about you. . . "

Okay. With that out of the way, he wasted no time in getting back on track:

". . .But that is absolute bull. That has been perpetrated by Wall Street. The idea that you can be a service economy. . .What are you servicing? How can you service. . . What are you going to serve? Hamburgers? That is total, utter nonsense that Wall Street has been spewing for years. That's part of the unholy alliance. We need manufacturing in this country. Manufacturing is at the apex of the economy. When you give up manufacturing, you are giving up your future."

That interview was on February 6. I don't know where else Virg has been since then, but just the other day (February 18) he finally quit sparring and went for the jugular, totally obliterating Fox News's Greg Jarrett, who just wanted to know why the unions shouldn't go ahead and give their concession speeches already and get out of Big Business's hair.



Oh, that Virg! He has to talk fast, and he has to talk straight, because it may not be long before the air waves are closed to him forever. You can't have pro-labor people out there making too much sense.

The interesting thing about the Bernero blitz is that those talking points are nothing new. It's a conversation that has gone on in every labor family, ever since unions began surfacing in the early part of the 20th Century. During the Reagan years, when the systematic undermining of labor unions began to get serious, the conversations grew hot and heavy, but, outside of the interested few, nobody else cared.

Along with watching the government-condoned slow but sure destruction of our labor unions, most of the country sat passively still while Big Business thumbed their noses at good old American Can-Do and Know-How by moving major chunks of our formerly vibrant manufacturing base outside our borders. A precious few protested when millions of jobs were outsourced and lost to Americans on the strength of wage packages alone. For years it was okay by us (you, that is) that millions of American wage-earners took home smaller paychecks and forfeited better benefits so that the Fat Cats who owned the businesses could live the life-styles of Sultans and Kings.

This is what happened because of it:
Our economy has collapsed in ways we couldn't have even imagined a mere eight years ago, on Inaugural Day, 2000.

We're in a protracted war brought on by hubris and greed, and encouraged by stupidity.

We owe our souls to our national credit company, communist China, and we can't pay them back because we don't make anything anymore.

Health care costs are going through the roof while health care benefits are a thing of the past for many, many millions.

Our food, our water, our very air isn't safe.

We're slowly selling off our natural resources to the highest bidder because we can't afford to keep them anymore.

And hundreds of thousands of American citizens are losing their jobs every month. (That's every month.)

So this shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody, given the sorry state of our nation, but the Fat Cat glory days are over. You'll be getting no more sacrificial lambs from what's left of our puny work force. Even the workers in the south are finally waking up to the con game called "low wages and no benefits are good for me and you--especially me".

In order to build an essential, strong labor force in this country, we need labor activists to combat the still mighty hold of the greedy Kings of Commerce who would rather see our nation destroyed than give up their thrones.

People like Virg Bernero and Ron Gettelfinger and, occasionaly, Barack Obama, understand the important role labor needs to play in order to bring us back to prosperity. We need good jobs that pay well in order to get back to spending again. (People without money don't buy things. I'm just saying, because some people still don't get it.)

On the campaign trail Barack Obama said, loud and clear, "I believe we have to reverse many of the policies toward organized labor that we have seen over the past eight years, policies with which I have sharply disagreed." and "You cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement."

Hold him to that. Labor doesn't have a chance if it doesn't organize. "Solidarity Forever" isn't just a song. It's a battle cry again.

Ramona