The business world is abuzz over the National Labor Relations Board’s complaint vs. Boeing’s new South Carolina production line. For NLRB critics, the case boils down to one thing: “right-to-work” laws. Right-to-work states have generally lower unemployment, higher job growth, lower taxes and better business climates. They have growing populations and have been attracting businesses from other states.
In most states, once a workplace is unionized, employees are required to join the union or they can’t work there. But 22 states, including South Carolina, have passed laws that give employees the right not to join. Hence the term “right-to-work.”
The Pledge of Allegiance is a simple, yet ironic litmus test in contemporary America. Protein Wisdom notes that the Pledge, designed to bring Americans together, is divisive.
And who is rejecting this pledge? Is it those who want to preserve liberty?
Why, no. No, it’s not. The people rejecting the Pledge are those who would take liberty, binding Americans together with laws, to quote Zappa
. . .carefully described in tiny paragraphs, so as not to conflict with the Constitution . . . which, itself, is being modified, in order to accomodate The Future!
When a Progressive gripes about the pledge, it’s just another superficial attempt by liars to distract from their subterfuge. I think they seriously believe people are stupid, sheepish, and incapable of seeing through the distraction offered.
It would probably be funny, if not so corrosive and threatening to the moral fiber of the country.
President Obama’s press conference performance Wednesday caused me to declare that there was no prospect for bipartisan cooperation. This morning on MSNBC, it caused Time magazine’s Mark Halperin to be even more blunt:
“Do we have a seven-second delay? I want to characterize how I thought the president behaved. . . . I thought he was kind of a dick yesterday.”
Unfortunately for Halperin, an inexperienced assistant producer on the Morning Joe program failed to hit the “bleep” button, so that Halperin’s comment was broadcast to hundreds of thousands of MSNBC viewers. Halperin immediately apologized, but was suspended “indefinitely” from further MSNBC appearances.
Ed Morrissey quips: “It was a dumb remark, but if MSNBC suspended everyone who made dumb remarks on their channel, they wouldn’t have any hosts left.”
Halperin’s resort to locker-room language may be regrettable, but “kind of a dick” is really rather a mild criticism of Obama’s outrageous assertion that Republicans are “willing to compromise your kids’ safety so some corporate-jet owner can get a tax break.”
Halperin’s remark is all the more regrettable in that it distracts from Obama’s comment, which was as false as it was offensive.
In candor, I don’t much care that Halperin sides with the right over the left, and takes cheap shots at Democrats. I care that Halperin is presented to the public as a neutral, even-handed expert, when that’s plainly not the case. . . .
Forget Halperin’s choice of words, and instead consider the argument he and his “Morning Joe” colleagues were pressing. They were annoyed, apparently, because President Obama wasn’t docile and conciliatory during his press conference. He showed some backbone, and this seems to have troubled the political establishment to no end.
Note that, in Benen’s worldview, “show[ing] some backbone” means accusing political opponents of bad faith. Would Benen praise a Republican for having “shown some backbone” if the situation were reversed and John Boehner had made a similar accusation of mala fides against the president? No, he wouldn’t.
Benen expects Democrats to employ class-warfare rhetoric, and expects liberal journalists to praise Democrats who do so. And while Halperin is a liberal in good standing, his accurate assessment of Obama’s press-conference performance — which was off-putting, in that the president seemed peevish and petulant — permits the Left to renew their bizarre claim that the media has a right-wing bias.
I’m sure oh-so-responsible MSNBC kept every host and correspondent from saying “teabagger,” right? … No?
Good point: In what sense is “dick” more offensive than “teabagger”? MSNBC has lowered the standards of discourse, but arrogates to itself the authority to decide just how low the standards should be.
[W]hen it comes to empowering women, no Teutonic drive or deference seems to work — even under one of the world’s most powerful women, Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Many leaders in business and politics profess to want to employ and promote women. But a decade of earnest vows from the corporate sector has not dented male-dominated Deutschland AG.
“Germany is good at structural reforms, but not at cultural reforms,” said Thomas Sattelberger, human resource chief at Deutsche Telekom, which in spring 2010 stunned fellow members of the DAX 30 index by announcing a voluntary goal of 30 percent female managers by 2015.
“There is a very traditional image of women and men that was taken to an extreme in the Third Reich: female mother cult and male fraternity. These mental stereotypes have not yet been culturally processed and purged.”
Alice Schwarzer, founder of the magazine Emma and perhaps Germany’s best-known feminist, likens this mindset to “a leaden blanket across all of German society.”
Despite a battery of government measures — some introduced in the past year or so — and ever more passionate debate about gender roles, only about 14 percent of German mothers with one child resume full-time work, and only 6 percent of those with two. All 30 DAX companies are run by men. Nationwide, a single woman presides on a supervisory board: Simone Bagel-Trah at Henkel. . . .
Read the whole deranged thing. Germany has suffered much in the past century having been defeated in two world wars, and then divided by the Iron Curtain. Politically correct feminist nonsense, however, may be too much even for the most stout-hearted Germans to withstand.
“I’ve said to Republican leaders, ‘You go talk to your constituents and ask them, “Are you willing to compromise your kids’ safety so some corporate-jet owner can get a tax break?” ‘ “
This kind of hateful divisive rhetoric renders impossible any thought that Barack Obama is someone Republicans can “work with.” There can be no political peace on any terms with someone who thinks in such categories.
Well [Representative Bachmann]’s right — the media is always looking for a cat fight, it’s tabloid journalism as its finest. But she is only half right — the real power brokers of the Republican party want a Bachmann-Palin cat fight to split the crazy vote and pave the way to a Romney victory — the only Republican who has a chance to defeat Obama.
Only? Really? Are we that stupid? Because if we are that stupid, it means we might as well re-elect BHO. Which would prove we’re not raaaaacist.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 72.73 points, or 0.60%, to 12261.42, capping the blue-chip measure’s biggest three-day gain since March. . . .
Stocks have swung up and down for weeks on worries that Greece poses a contagion risk to European banks and other heavily indebted euro-zone countries. The passage of unpopular austerity measures Wednesday was seen as paving the way for the heavily indebted country to get another round of aid, staving off a default. It was also viewed as moving the euro zone closer to containing its debt crisis.
Greek lawmakers voted on Wednesday to sharply reduce government spending and sell off an array of national assets, staving off default on the country’s debt and easing, for the moment, a crisis among countries that use the euro. . . .
[C]ritics said they doubted that Europe had done more than postpone a day of reckoning for the euro, with Ireland, Portugal and Spain, as well as Greece, all struggling with slow or negative growth and rising debts.
The passage of the measures, a difficult and possibly debilitating feat for a Socialist Party elected on a social welfare platform, ensures that Greece’s foreign lenders will unlock the next installment of $17 billion in aid that the country needs to meet its debt obligations through August.
While the Greek vote was cheered by financial leaders — who had warned of a possible global financial meltdown if the austerity measures had not passed — the approval of the budget-cutting plan by the Greek parliament sparked a third day of riots in the streets of Athens.
