With all of France’s oil refineries out of action and a quarter of its filling stations without fuel, Nicolas Sarkozy broke his silence to call for an end to the disruption.
With all of France’s oil refineries out of action and a quarter of its filling stations without fuel, Mr Sarkozy broke his silence to call for an end to the disruption.
“We cannot be the only country in the world where, when there is a reform, a minority wants to block everyone else,” he said.
That from the Telegraph, from coverage of the riots aimed at stopping the French government from hiking the retirement age.
“Never try to get your peter sucked in France,” sings Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson on Frank Zappa’s In France. “They got some coffee, eatin’ right through the cup!”
The lyrics are funny, juvenile and half supercilious and but the band can’t wait to get back to France. Well, maybe they can but the view is not as unremittingly hostile as the usual treatment given to the French in the US.
Here’s a rhetorical question: Have you ever not seen some American, when presented with a critical view by a Frenchman (or an Englishman), retaliate with a version of “We saved your rotten asses in WW II!”
Anyway, news from France these days shows the French have guts, something lacking in the land of exceptionalism in all things.
The Interior Ministry said that 1.1 million people demonstrated throughout France on Tuesday, down from 1.23 million on Oct. 12. In Paris, the police said that 67,000 people demonstrated, down from 89,000. The main union, the C.G.T., said that 3.5 million people demonstrated throughout France on both days.
Unions, students and other workers have protested in a way that’s highly disruptive — blocking fuel distribution, ensuring one third of the country’s gas stations have gone empty. Among with many other actions.
All of it in response to austerity politics by the French government, the raising of the retirement age in France, along with other attacks on the social safetynet, for purposes of deficit cutting have the people in the street.
The French do not want American-style capitalism.
In 2010, that’s a logical and decent view to hold.
In the US, it’s obvious the opposite is in place.
The only social protester is by angry and nuts hick whites who hate the president and everyone not like them, who wish to destroy what little is actually left of any social safetynet. And, of course, protect the very wealthy from taxation.
Like Zappa, you could write a funny song about it. However, generally, the only songs written are like this or this. And they are neither funny nor satirical.
The French do have some American-style rub off. The current national argument over the Roma has some similarity to the GOP antipathy toward Mexicans and the US Latino population. Only, by our standards, it’s more tepid. Their social generosity and tolerance would still seem to currently be much greater than ours.
“If it is not stopped quickly, this disorder which is aimed at paralysing the country could have consequences for jobs by damaging the normal running of economic activity,” [Sarkozy] said in a statement yesterday.
Jean Pelin, director general of France’s chemical industries association, said that the strike had already cost his sector an estimated billion euros in lost turnover, around 100 million euros (£88 million) for every extra strike day.
Before appearing on stage Saturday night, rocker and activist Ted Nugent went pheasant hunting. But once he grabbed the microphone, it was red meat that Nugent threw out to an appreciative audience.
“The evidence is overwhelming if you’re not asleep,??? Nugent told the small crowd at the rally sponsored by Citizens For Liberty, a tea party group. “If we don’t make a dramatic change this November, we’re done. They will rape and pillage your paychecks to reward monsters.???
Nugent castigated Democrats in Washington and around the nation, describing them as tyrants and power abusers. He told the audience of about 250 people that it wasn’t enough for them to vote out “leftists.???
The Mao Tse-Tung Fan Club in the White House, his positions “reek” of logic, etc.
From time to time I’ve referenced an old guy who lives in the Lehigh Valley, a former union man now rabidly anti-union, obsessed with gold and interpreting the Bible. His political blog is here.
And it’s only notable today for a too short explanation of his union hate, entitled “I Can Has Cheezburger“ “Unions — What Has Happen [sic]?”
“I remember some 40+ years ago taking some courses at Lehigh University,” writes the fellow, rather surprisingly. So we have something, however small, in common.
“I had first hand experience of the labor unions because at the time I was working as a Union Carpenter and was president of the (at that time) Allentown Local #368 carpenters union,” he continues.
“What I am about to say will be hard to believe but both courses were presented in an objective fashion with fairness to historical facts, for you see I was a conservative even back then and constantly argued with the radical element of the union.”
And then comes a short piece of which the underlying message is that union men all turned into communists and Nazis.
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi was on MSNBC earlier this week, talking to Olbermann about his Tea Party article. He gets the demographic.
Logic and reason don’t work there. Nothing can get past the embedded delusions. They’re pitiful and dangerous at the same time.
It’s easy to admire the individual pluck, ire and gutsiness. And still be repelled and astonished at the agency, the visible result of malicious political leadership and a class war they’ve always been losing.
Ted Nugent constantly sells the idea that Barack Obama is unfriendly to business. And one wonders if he will use his place at the WaTimes to lobby for the US Chamber of Commerce now being properly framed as an enemy of the middle class.
True to form, the Obama administration’s response has been to oppose any action that might upset the banks, like a temporary moratorium on foreclosures while some of the issues are resolved. Instead, it is asking the banks, very nicely, to behave better and clean up their act. I mean, that’s worked so well in the past, right?
The response from the right is, however, even worse. Republicans in Congress are lying low, but conservative commentators like those at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page have come out dismissing the lack of proper documents as a triviality. In effect, they’re saying that if a bank says it owns your house, we should just take its word. To me, this evokes the days when noblemen felt free to take whatever they wanted, knowing that peasants had no standing in the courts. But then, I suspect that some people regard those as the good old days.
However, in shared mythology sometimes the peasants rioted, burned stuff and went after their tormentors with pitchforks.
Hasn’t happened here yet and, perhaps, is not likely to as explained here last week:
That luck never seems to come [the Pennsylvania voters’] way, or any semblance of economic fairness at all, doesn’t seem to matter.
While they may rail against the bailout and the wealthy people in Washington, when it comes down to it they still harbor the hard kernel belief that they might be part of a class-less society, or at least one in which they share something with the old customary rulers — their whiteness. Its irreconcilable — but the human brain can carry such collisions around for a lifetime.
=======
[In the end], they have always voted for the worst patrons of the ‘business people’, anyway. And they will again.
The Democratic Party always runs afoul of it, Too much Max Baucus, Bart Stupak, Ben Nelson — pick your favorite among the feckless. Not enough Alan Grayson.
They can be presented with irrefutable news of manipulation by those they claim to despise. But they will vote for the wealthy to put fingers on the scales against them. It’s proof of the brain’s limitless capacity to encapsulate notions which should, from a logical standpoint, not be able to exist together.
However, theoretically, there remains the possibility of pitchforks, riots and sackings.
Here’s Ted, still complaining about his California hunting infraction conviction.
Ted fell on his sword to protect his buddies, taking one for the team because the state’s evil-doers were putting on the pressure. He could have fought it in court for years but legal advised him not to speak of details.
Then Nugent goes off on a tangent, querulous over the news media not publicizing his charitable work. And this has been a conspiracy, of sorts, to pick on Ted.
Memo to Mr. Ted:
That’s how the media works. And, coincidentally, the media was actually rather generous to Ted Nugent this summer. It gave him print space, in small to large publications, every time he came to town on his tour of casinos and fairgrounds in the hinterlands.
It’s chronicled here and still readable, from original source, on the web.
And Ted also gets regular land in the pages of the Washington Times, and via syndication in a Detroit newspaper, to promote whatever he wishes, including his music, along with his political views.
So whine all you want about the hunting foul-up in California. However, the media has been very good to Mr. Ted Nugent, all things considered.
I suppose one would call them Reagan Democrats, if pressed. Drunk manly men who own Civil War patches, look like the guy on HBO’s Eastbound and Down and adopt the Democratic camouflage to, perhaps, impress women they’re unsuccessfully courting.
Since the mainstream media is now back in such places, looking for stories which show the obvious — that they don’t dig Obama — they’ve reappeared.
A newspaper in Pittsburgh ran a Politico piece today with this laugher (it was on the race in Arkansas):
Such an argument may attract John Miller, a Democrat and owner of a Civil War-era antique shop, sporting a revolver on his holster. After meeting with Lincoln, he said there isn’t a “nickel’s difference between Republicans and the Democrats” in Washington, but he believes Obama is a “socialist.”
Asked about his vote, Miller said: “I’ll vote for whoever Ted Nugent tells me to vote for.“
It’s difficult to understand how any journalist could be a stenographer for such a comment without immediately throwing it out. Or at least pressing the man on his real political identity. But such is the state of the rotting carcass these days.
Speaking of Ted Nugent, now that he’s off the road his columns have not disappeared. However, they’ve slumped in inspiration and vehemence. No run-on sentences in a while. It’s been a couple weeks sans Islam-o-phobia and insisting Muslims need smart-bombing. The repeated references to ‘hunting season’ in November are gone, the calls for crowbar-swinging violence a bit more muted.
It may be that being on the losing end with the game wardens is still gnawing at him.
Smart Americans won’t be surprised if the president makes an announcement before the election that he is going to extend the George W. Bush tax cuts for all Americans, including those making more than $250,000. Though this will upset his ultra-liberal base, he will do it to try to prove to moderates that he is pro-business. Don’t believe him. It will be more political smoke and mirrors, more doublespeak, more balderdash and more Illinois political deception for fools.
The president is not pro-business. Regardless of what he says, he doesn’t know or truly believe the private sector is the engine that drives our economy and creates jobs.
Good news, lads! Good news! There’s no satire here!
If you view this on YouTube, you’ll notice the video is the property of the PasadenaTeaParty. Of which I am not a member.
Everyday, DD takes a walk to pick up lunch supplies, crossing the el Molino Street bridge on the way to Lake. On the right hand side just back of a church is a rambling mansion, fenced in by iron and guarded by a Doberman which has been de-barked.
Big sign in front yard: “Putting liberals in Congress is like putting PIRANHAS in your child’s playpool!”
” ‘I’m a beginner political activist,’ said former ‘Saturday Night Live’ star Victoria Jackson, who took to the stage with a ukulele and sang ‘There’s a Communist Living in the White House,'” wrote LA Times columnist Steve Lopez on a Tea Party rally in Beverly Hills last week. (Unbelievably, there was one.)
“I thought either Jackson was satirizing the movement or that she was doing a Porky Pig impression,” continued Lopez. “But I later saw video of her insisting on various occasions that President Obama is indeed a communist.”
Ted Nugent’s latest column in the WaTimes, more on trying to build his speaking engagements at Tea Party events. It’s unoriginal standard Tea Party cant, concocted by the wealthy men backing the movement: Give tax cuts to the rich, get rid of the IRS in favor of the Fair Tax, end all taxing of corporations, kill Social Security because it’s “a Ponzi scheme.”
Freeze all government hiring except for the military. Cut federal government by 25 percent at once, which would seemingly mean eliminating the Dept. of Education as well as other things most Americans take for granted.
It’s only startling in its degree of bootlicking for the interests of the most wealthy. The only thing not in it is some utterance like “Taxation eats the seed corn of freedom and democracy.”
More interesting is Ted’s appearance on a show called Deer and Deer Hunting.
Uploaded to YouTube, I’ve taken the only segment worth viewing.
Nugent’s misdemeanor conviction for deer baiting has rattled him. The hosts of the show, if one watches all the segments, never actually make him address it, though.
However, at one point Nugent does begin ranting about regulations. “We have to attack the game laws,” he begins. Seconds later he’s complaining about blue law preventing hunting on Sunday in eleven states, that it is unethical, anti-freedom, anti-goodwill and indecent.
Nugent continues that when he was a kid in Michigan, four counties prevented his hunting on Sundays. And he only had the weekend to hunt, being at school, so 50 percent of his time to do it was lost.
DD had to laugh. Having grown up in the heart of deer country in Pennsylvania, all the kids who hunted simply didn’t come to school on the first days of hunting season. Their parents were all right with it. So was the school.
After decreeing that Sunday prohibitions on hunting must go, Nugent then sputters on angrily about “spilled corn.” This is in reference to his deer-baiting conviction. He nearly blows a spoke over it.
Ted Nugent’s latest essay in the Washington Times is the third in a series of anti-Muslim rants he’s penned this summer. Bafflingly, some of these are now being reprinted in a Detroit newspaper.
Nugent endorses the Team B report that Muslim extremism, in the guise of Shariah law, is taking over America. Indeed, if so, it is nefariously subtle, since most cannot see it.
In the fact-based world, Nugent’s essay — as does the Team B report — takes on the air of something heard from General Jack Ripper, telling Lionel Mandrake at Burpelson AFB, why he launched the bomb wing at the Soviet Union.
Nugent uses the word “poisoning” twice in his essay. It’s a less elegant construction than Ripper’s dialog, concocted by Terry Southern and Peter George for the script of Dr. Strangelove:
A foreign substance is introduced into the precious bodily fluids, without the knowledge of the individual and certainly without any free choice. That’s the way the commies work…
In Team B’s case (and for Nugent’s essay), the nefarious foreign substance is Shariah law, not fluoride put into ice cream by the commies.
“What if it turns out that some of the people the Obama administration has been embracing are actually promoting the same totalitarian ideology and seditious agenda as al Qaeda, only they’re doing it from White House Iftar dinners?” is the stand-out quote from Team B.
In Dr. Strangelove, Jack Ripper was the plainly nuts character.
The most bone-chilling finding by Team B is that America faces the threat of Islamic Shariah law slowing poisoning our legal system and ultimately destroying it.
He continues:
Shariah should be banned in the United States and those Muslims and imams in America who advocate Shariah should be charged with sedition. Trying to overthrow our constitutional government through peaceful or violent means should never be tolerated.
Shariah will only be allowed to poison our legal system and culture if we allow it.
This from a guy who only shouts and writes about overthrowing the present US government.
Team B is the work of Frank Gaffney. Earlier this week, I wrote about him in connection with a post on the Cult of EMP Crazy, of which he is a charter member.
He represents the core of the Cult — the sole property of the GOP — also sharing double membership with Islam-o-phobes and those who believe the President is a secret Muslim.
You can think of them as a lamentable collection of poor men’s Jack Rippers. They hold political office or seats in insane right-wing think tanks but do not have command of a strategic bomb wing.
Yet.
The only reason they’re not truly dangerous right this instant is because they don’t have majority power.
Hoekstra is famous for being mostly a loud Congressional do-nothing. And an Islam-o-phobe. I wrote about him back in 2006, when he was first venting rubbish on Islam sapping and impurifying the precious bodily fluids of America.
As with the Tea Party, Nugent has adopted ever more extreme positions. These ideas are not new, having always been present in the US politics. However, in gentler times they were easily suppressed and kept to the fringe.
Now they’ve been vetted as acceptable by large sections of the population. They anticipate and welcome an even more harsh and cruel country, one of great social and economic inequality, intolerant of everything except its paranoid white appendix of wealth and power.
