As IF Times

link Unions Spurn Democrats Seen as Turncoats on Health, Organizing – Bloomberg.com.

Some may remember the 1974 movie Blazing Saddles, rife with comedy which would never be acceptable by today’s PC standards.  In one of the scenes, the black sheriff played by Cleavon Little is surrounded by hostile white men in a bar.  Seeing no way out, the sheriff points the gun at his own head and commands, “stop, stay right there or the n—–r gets it.  This is exactly the same tactic the unions are threatening to employ against the Democrats for the  upcoming elections.  Apparently, the unions will snub the Democrats whom they helped elect  because there was no quid pro quo once the legislators took office. 

The worst keep political secret in the U.S. is the dependable support by the big labor unions of the Democratic party.  Despite the claims of the unions as representing the ‘working’ people, the reality is, the union movement has done more harm to the cause of ‘working’ Americans via their demands on employers than any imagined oppression by them.  What the union movement has become and there’s no attempt to even disguise it, is a political action group dedicated to the interests of those few in the union hierarchy.  The union movement and the Democrats are the Chucky siamese twins of politics.  Both are fans of submitting to a hierarchical power structure which regulates and dictates people’s activities and their incomes without regard to any economic reality. In the 2004 national elections, it was estimated that large labor unions spent $65 million dollars in order to try to defeat George Bush.  Maybe that money would have/should have been spent on the poor workers instead?  Oh and the bosses get paid pretty well too.  From the Human Events website comes this list of top salaried union bosses, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21533

This is interesting because the percentage of workers belonging to a union has fallen from about a third in 1950 to barely 12 percent today according to Fortune Magazine.  As a very crude measure, it’s difficult to say that the U.S. is worse off now than it was in 1950 despite this downtrend in union membership.   Actually, there is practically an inverse correlation, but that’s admittedly a tenuous link and perhaps an idea for someone’s PhD thesis.  You could however easily make a case for the obsolescence of the union movement entirely, certainly as a champion for the ‘people’.  If someone were to connect the dots on how many jobs and industries have been hampered, extinguished or moved overseas because of union intransigence, they’d be lucky to have any members.  The woes of the auto industry are just the most recent examples of this. 

As an aside, in a delicious piece of irony, the reverend Jesse Jackson had his big SUV stolen and stripped while he was in Detroit giving a speech promoting ’green’jobs.  http://www.detnews.com/article/20100903/MIVIEW/100903001/1467/opinion01/Payne–The-irony-of-Jesse-Jackson-s-stripped-SUV

 The green movement as we know, helped to kill the manufacture of big SUV’s, exactly like the one he was driving.  Oddly, he was not driving a Prius.  So the people who helped to kill an entire industry are now promoting their next big union idea.  Guess what, they’ll need government help to get it going. So getting back to the unions threatening to pull support from Democrats in the upcoming elections?  As if.

link The Associated Press: Discovery Channel hostage-taker hated programming.

Most people will tsk tsk this sad event and write off Mr. Lee as some nutbar.  Another headline reads “Crazed Eco Terrorist shot dead by Police…” Really?  Let’s take a look at his beliefs. 

“…Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding cultures…,”

Isn’t that essentially the message of greenies and environmentalists?  We never hear the end of the next human activity that threatens to disrupt, destroy or lay bare some part of the earth because of man’s footprint.  As has been illustrated in past comments, the logic and legitimacy of these views are generally spurious and the fixes political in nature rather than productive.

No one’s arguing that Belchfire Factories should emit less crap into the air, but what the Gore people and their acolytes want to do is to tax Belchfire on their emissions and to distribute this money to their pet causes.  Saving the children, creating sustainability, yada yada yada.  Except that saving the children and fostering well being in other parts of the world will logically create more demand for goods produced by factories, either in the west, or more likely in China and India. 

The best and most logical solution as seen by Mr. Lee is to have fewer people.  Heck, if taken to the extreme, why have humans at all?  How many people can the earth manageably sustain? 1 million? 100 million? 1 billion? Do we do away with all technological advances?  Are people expected to wear loincloths and eat grass?  Is there some authority which will decree that certain activities are earth friendly and others not? It’s the perverse logic of killing all the people to save them!  So if Mr. Lee was crazy……

The other part of Mr. Lee’s demands are likely to cause less outrage among most people;

“…he had demanded an end to Discovery Communications LLC’s shows such as TLC’s “Kate Plus 8″ and “19 Kids and Counting…”  Amen to that.

link Welcome To Kiryas Joel: Please Dress Accordingly « CBS New York- News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of NY.

Interesting spin on this story.  The headline is expected to create shock value and tsk tsking I’m sure.  Readers will note that there is no law compelling people to dress a certain way and there is no real consequence if you don’t abide by the suggestion on the placard.  This kind of sign may be as useful as “No Loud Motorcycles” signs in many municipalities, sure to be ignored by most.

In the case of the now celebrated Imam who is spearheading the building of a prayer center near the site of the 9-11 bombings in New York, there is no outrage in the press at all given that he is a proponent of Sharia law in the U.S.  Sharia law as many may know is the somewhat medieval system of justice and punishment meted out to those not in compliance with someone’s idea of proper behaviour.  Usually that someone is a revered holy man who somehow is the interpreter of such things. 

It would inflame the sentiments of most people today, much less vocal libertarians and liberals if anyone suggested that one couldn’t do this or that thing, whenever or wherever they felt like doing it.  Yet somehow, the  somewhat restrictive edicts espoused by this gentleman, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, escapes the scrutiny and criticism of the media crowd and especially by those in the entertainment racket.  I’m not so sure we’d have to hear about the adventures of Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton and their latest drug/booze binge if Sharia law ruled the land.   The stoning to death of such miscreants in the Sharia world would make those stories pretty short lived.  Hmm. 

If people are all a-flutter because the wearing of shorts and tank tops is frowned upon, imagine the joy they’ll express when covered head to toe in a tarp that makes them resemble tents at a boy scout camp.  It is especially amusing observing the knee jerk liberals defending the ‘moderate’ Imam in New York, claiming the red herring of religious freedom.  This Imam is considered a moderate probably because his interpretation of Sharia law means that women can drive on odd numbered days and can actually attend school beyond the 3rd grade.   He’s practically a liberal.  It’s amazing that groups such as The National Organization of Women do not question some of the pronouncements made by this moderate guy.  If they don’t, soon their workload will shrink to lobbying for the size of the slits allowed for eyeholes in the burquas; the freedom to wear shorts and tanktops will be a laughable memory.