Biden Joins UAW Picket Line

This is so wrong.  Just as wrong as Trump plugging businesses and products he liked while he was in office.  Both are forms of demagoguery - taking sides, appealing to one segment of the population instead of another.

Other Democratic presidents from FDR on down have voiced support for worker's causes - but this is going much, much too far.  It's not leadership - it's electioneering.

 

Biden has done good things too, but he should be called out on this egregious mistake.

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Becoming Donald Trump

Rep. Maxine Waters (D.-Calif.) told a crowd of supporters in Los Angeles on Saturday to mob and harass members of the Trump administration:

Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.

Now Waters may have done some good things along the road, but this is stupidity in action. It is childish demagoguery, inciting hatred and possibly riot, and inviting a terrible backlash. It is completely un-American, uncivilized, and dumb beyond words. It is just what you might expect out of Donald Trump, only this time it comes from a voice on the left.

The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer's editorial board has this to say:

It might seem satisfying to liberals to see members of Donald Trump's administration fleeing from restaurants after being shamed by patrons or booted by the owner. That happened to three of Trump's people last week, including press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was asked to leave the Red Hen in Lexington, Va., by its owner Friday night. Earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Trump adviser Stephen Miller were shouted out of Washington restaurants. . . .

But such behavior shouldn't feel satisfying, and it's not necessary. It's liberals trying to beat Donald Trump by becoming Donald Trump.

It wasn't long ago that these same Democrats fretted about Trump's crassness and willingness to demean anyone who dared disagree with him. They and we worried that his bullying would do more harm to political discourse, and that's exactly what's happening, as nastiness has bled from the political fringe into the political mainstream.

Certainly, that's been encouraged by members and supporters of the Trump administration, who regularly ridicule the press and political opponents. All the more reason to punch back, say progressives, who contend that the only way to defeat Trump is to fight bile with bile. But that's not true, as liberals themselves showed last week by getting Trump to back down from his policy of separating immigrant children from parents at the border. How'd they do it? By shining a light on injustice, by flooding social media, by swaying public opinion and eventually Republicans in Washington with the force and volume of their voices.

The same approach, by the way, helped save Obamacare last year from Republicans in Congress.

Adding a dollop of shame at some restaurants last week didn't add to the progressive victory. It was self-indulgence, and it gives license to similar behavior. It's not a great leap from disrupting the meal of White House officials or members of Congress to doing the same to any Republican who wears a MAGA hat or Democrat who wears a Planned Parenthood t-shirt. Are we ready for restaurant owners and other businesses to decline service for all manners of firmly held convictions? Are we ready for all the shouting that's ahead?

This is the path we're careening down, in Washington and across our country. Instead of extending grace to those with whom we disagree, we're increasingly deciding they are unworthy of it. We're following the lead of our president, whether we agree or disagree with him. We're losing.

Your Head Trucker agrees. What everybody needs to keep in mind is that just because you've been oppressed or victimized, that does NOT mean you can do no wrong. Every human being on the face of this planet--and yes I mean women, blacks, gays, "liberals," "progressives," "conservatives," and all the other subdivisions of the species, real or imaginary--is capable of wrongdoing at every point in life--it takes constant attention and self-scrutiny to stay on the path of goodness and human decency. We step off the upward path, the path of peace and civility, at our great peril.

Even if you are the sort of person who just doesn't give a flip about decency and fair play and the Golden Rule--do you really want to start this kind of stupid shit?  Because it will surely become in a very short time a game of tit for tat.  How about the first time a howling mob gathers around a member of your particular subcommunity or affiliation, and drives them out of a public venue--or worse yet, starts beating on them, as mobs are wont to do? How will you feel then, bucko?  Hah?

What goes around, comes around.  Count on it.

Don't go there. Just don't fucking go there. We are Americans, we may disagree loud and long in the political arena--but we leave it there. We don't harass the other side in the ordinary streets and shops of private life. We don't check party IDs at the door of any business. We don't persecute people for their politics. That's a filthy thing to do, and so was booting Sarah Sanders from a restaurant on political grounds.  That's not the America I love and believe in.  Waters spoke like an ignorant, self-centered, short-sighted rabble-rouser.

Just like Donald Trump, in fact.  How ugly, ugly, ugly.

We are all standing at the brink of a deep, fiery pit.  Do we really have to jump into it?


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Rick Perry's Army of God

Oprah Winfrey is the Antichrist - or at least his BFF: you can tell by all the good deeds she does. Japan is cursed because the present Emperor is banging a sun goddess. The Statue of Liberty is a demonic symbol. And only certain Christians have a right to rule America.

And all this is coming soon to a holy nation near you, if Rick Perry has anything to do with it.

Its 14 minutes, but you really should watch this excellent presentation Rachel does on the raving Dominionist preachers who are lined up as the main demagogues for that prayer rally in Houston next month that Butthead Rick Perry, our governor, is heavily promoting:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And the District of Columbia has been renamed the "District of Christ" by this loon, who says, "I have more authority than the Congress does."



And this peckerwood says man-woman marriage is going to be outlawed now that gay marriage is here, and straight from hell:



And forget about Magna Carta and Parliament and a thousand years of British legal history: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States all came straight out of the Bible. Don't you remember from civics class?



It's not just a few isolated wingnuts. Texas and other red states are loaded with them, go read this excellent exposé in the progressive magazine Texas Observer. Excerpt:

On September 28, 2009, at 1:40 p.m., God’s messengers visited Rick Perry. . . . The two Texas pastors . . . told Perry of God’s grand plan for Texas. A chain of powerful prophecies had proclaimed that Texas was “The Prophet State,” anointed by God to lead the United States into revival and Godly government. And the governor would have a special role. . . .

At the end of their meeting, Perry asked the two pastors to pray over him. As the pastors would later recount, the Lord spoke prophetically as Schlueter laid his hands on Perry, their heads bowed before a painting of the Battle of the Alamo. Schlueter “declared over [Perry] that there was a leadership role beyond Texas and that Texas had a role beyond what people understand,” Long later told his congregation.

So you have to wonder: Is Rick Perry God’s man for president? . . .

The movement’s top prophets and apostles believe they have a direct line to God. Through them, they say, He communicates specific instructions and warnings. When mankind fails to heed the prophecies, the results can be catastrophic: earthquakes in Japan, terrorist attacks in New York, and economic collapse. On the other hand, they believe their God-given decrees have ended mad cow disease in Germany and produced rain in drought-stricken Texas.

Their beliefs can tend toward the bizarre. Some consider Freemasonry a “demonic stronghold” tantamount to witchcraft. The Democratic Party, one prominent member believes, is controlled by Jezebel and three lesser demons. Some prophets even claim to have seen demons at public meetings. They’ve taken biblical literalism to an extreme. In Texas, they engage in elaborate ceremonies involving branding irons, plumb lines and stakes inscribed with biblical passages driven into the earth of every Texas county.

If they simply professed unusual beliefs, movement leaders wouldn’t be remarkable. But what makes the New Apostolic Reformation movement so potent is its growing fascination with infiltrating politics and government. The new prophets and apostles believe Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take “dominion” over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the “Seven Mountains” of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world. They believe they’re intended to lord over it all. As a first step, they’re leading an “army of God” to commandeer civilian government.

In Rick Perry, they may have found their vessel. And the interest appears to be mutual.

Honk to Right Wing Watch.