President Obama spent Labor Day at a big union rally in Detroit, a city absolutely destroyed by top-shelf Democrat politics combined with union muscle. A more sardonically appropriate venue for the Zero Job Growth President to deliver a Labor Day address would not have been possible.
Among the other speakers at this event were Vice President Joe Biden, who recently declared he “fully understands” and would not “second guess” China’s forced abortion policies, and has been known to describe Americans who favor smaller government as “terrorists.” On Labor Day, he told the union crowd, “You are the only folks keeping the barbarians from the gate. You are the only non-governmental power. The only non-governmental power! The only one that has the power and the capacity to stop this onslaught.”
Watching the Vice-President shriek “You are the only non-governmental power!” to the people who own his Administration lock, stock, and barrel will be an enduring image of the Orwellian disintegration of the Left – the kind of line that sounds better blasting out of a giant monochrome video screen, and falling upon the upturned faces of uniformed followers standing precisely at attention in neatly-organized rows.
It’s always tricky to guess what Joe Biden is actually thinking when he speaks, but it sounds to me like he was expressly telling the union guys they’re the only constituency that really matters to his Party at the moment. How do the rest of you Democrat vote serfs feel about that? Especially the ones who don’t have jobs, and can only dream about the job security and lavish benefit packages unions extract from this dying economy?
At any rate, Biden’s “barbarian” talk was merely the cold soup served before the ugly totalitarian main course dished up by Teamsters president James Hoffa, who said this, in the course of introducing President Obama’s speech:
We’re going to hear from President Obama in a few minutes. And I’m so glad he’s come to Michigan because this is where he sees the real America. He looks out on this army of people and you know what I say, “President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march.”
And President Obama we want one thing – jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs… That’s what we’re going to tell him. When he sees what we’re doing here he’s going to be inspired. But he needs help. And, you know what. Everybody here’s gotta vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize… Let’s take these sons a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong. Thank you very much.
Sad clowns on various liberal blogs, such as Media Matters, are trying to claim this quote was edited or taken out of context in some way, and is actually a harmless call to political action using military metaphors. That’s absolutely hilarious coming from the people who desperately tried to make conservatives accessories to the Tucson murders based on the type of symbols they use, on maps never seen by the killer.
Unlike the Tea Party, which a desperate and dishonest Left is perpetually trying to depict as a powder keg ready to blow if someone uses the word “reload” in their presence, unions do have a history of violent behavior. But we’re supposed to accept violent martial rhetoric from a union boss without comment, only a few months after the Left’s sustained and despicable attempt to slander their political opponents for inciting violence with far less incendiary language?
Where are you, Paul Krugman? The New York Times propagandist had this to say, within hours of the Tucson shooting, about Jared Loughner’s selection of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords as a target:
For those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that ‘the whole Tea Party’ was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous ‘crosshairs’ list.
If the New York Times had a shred of editorial integrity, that would have been the end of Krugman’s career, but he doubled down with a featured op-ed the next day. It began as follows:
When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?
Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence.
Conservatives denounced that report. But there has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials, including both Judge John Roll, who was killed Saturday, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords. One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has.
How about it, Mr. Krugman? Are you going to apply those views consistently to the president of an organization with a history of violence, using a call to mob action and disturbing totalitarian imagery as “metaphors” in a speech that introduced the President of the United States? What say you, editors of the New York Times? Will you finally demonstrate a speck of integrity by requiring Krugman to write an editorial denouncing Hoffa, using the exact same terms he deployed falsely and maliciously against innocent Americans?
As for Obama, he blathered on through a laundry list of thanks to the unions without denouncing or questioning Hoffa’s rhetoric in any way. That makes an utter sham of his famed Tucson speech, in which he called for mutual understanding and calmer rhetoric, after allowing his Party minions and media allies to ruthlessly slander Republicans for days without saying one damned word:
You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations - to try to impose some order on the chaos, and make sense out of that which seems senseless. Already we've seen a national conversation commence, not only about the motivations behind these killings, but about everything from the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health systems. Much of this process, of debating what might be done to prevent such tragedies in the future, is an essential ingredient in our exercise of self-government.
But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized - at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do - it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.
[…] So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.
But what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.
It’s time for the Absentee President to set aside his teleprompters and find his voice, and make a full-throated and thoughtful denunciation of Hoffa’s violent, profane, and divisive rhetoric. It tells America a lot about this hypocritical President that he didn’t lead off his Labor Day remarks with that denunciation, without any prompting from outraged Americans or pollsters. Obviously, he doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the words his speechwriters gave him to deliver in Tucson.
