Having tasted blood with the resignation of Van Jones, the Right is busily congratulating itself and looking for new victims.
The next target might be Ron Bloom, who will serve as senior counselor for manufacturing policy. Via Thers at Whiskey Fire, here is the dreadful truth about Bloom as unearthed by Jammie Wearing Fool:
Anyway, the name Ron Bloom is one that we need to start paying attention to. He has a long history of being the negotiating face of unions in a suit. He is a Harvard Business School graduate who has worked for the unions beginning with SEIU for decades. The most recent union he represented was the United Steel Workers (USW) before becoming a part of the automotive team that Obama put together.
Get that? He’s connected to unions. The sharks are zeroing in already.
Even to the casual observer it is impossible to miss the numerous connections between Barack Obama and the unions.
I’m not sure if the right music for this is Orff’s “O Fortuna” or Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
The Fool notes that the United Auto Workers (UAW) got a “sweetheart deal,” which I assume means when GM was put through bankruptcy UAW members were not completely stripped of all pension and health care benefits and busted back to minimum wage. Although everyone took a hit, the final deal did favor workers over investors, which I guess proves Obama is a socialist. [Update: For the benefit of my more thick-headed readers — that was sarcasm.]
But you see the conspiracy so immense, etc. The implied allegation is of a quid pro quo — unions donate money to and endorse Democrats; Democrats tend to favor policies that are good for unions. This must not stand. Maybe Democrats and Unions are collaborating out of mutual concern for the well-being of workers? Naw, can’t be.
However, if corporate interests give money to Republicans and get favors from them in return, that’s OK.
The Right for some time has seemed to me nothing but a mindless attack machine; something like a school of hungry piranha. But it’s probably more accurate to think of them as an army of Joe McCarthys. It’s as if some secret laboratory has been making clones of Tail Gunner Joe all these years, and now the clones have taken over the nation.
Really, the Van Jones episode has been right out of McCarthy’s playbook. Find a target who can be smeared with “guilt by association” to groups and causes considered radical, and there you are. He’s a Communist. No, really. Charles Krauthammer actually said:
I’m not even disturbed that this guy is a communist. It is not the first time we had a communist in the U.S. government. And anyway, with the death of communism, it is a kind of a pathetic intellectual anachronism to remain a communist.
To which Andy McCarthy responded:
The Jones incident, moreover, does not indicate that “we had a communist in the U.S. government.” To the contrary, as I argued last night, we have a U.S. government in which Van Jones was quite consciously selected because his views are representative of the president who made him the “green jobs czar.” Van Jones isn’t Alger Hiss. There’s nothing covert about him. He didn’t snooker Obama into bringing him aboard. He is who he is, and that’s why Obama wanted him. Having a Communist in that job was perfect since the “green jobs” initiative is an important part of the hard Left’s agenda to use environmentalism as an additional justification for usurping command of the economy.
In fact, the death of the Soviet Union has actually been a boon for neocommunists. Now, Obama and his fellow travelers like Jones, Ayers, Wright, Klonsky, and ACORN, can spout all the same totalitarian, anti-American, central-planning ideas the hard Left has always pushed, but in the abstract — under such mushy labels as “social justice” and “green jobs.” That is, they are liberated from having to defend the Soviet Empire, which, until 1991, was a living, breathing, concrete example of how horrific these ideas are when put in practice.
According to Wikipedia, Jones declared himself to be a communist in 1992. Yes, the words echo through the ages — are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?
Joe McCarthy presided over a genuine reign of terror that was as totalitarian in nature as the communist governments he railed against. For a time, just to be subpoenaed by McCarthy’s Senate committee was a career-killer. McCarthy ruined so many careers in the State Department it created a huge knowledge and experience vacuum that hurt U.S. foreign relations for years. It is said one of the reasons the U.S. blundered into Vietnam is that McCarthy had cleaned the State Department of anyone who knew anything about Asia, for example.
The important thing to remember is that not one target of a McCarthy investigation was ever found guilty of espionage. And, right-wing myth to the contrary, not one of McCarthy’s targets was shown to be a Communist spy by the Venona Papers. Yes, there had been Soviet espionage going on in government, but by the time McCarthy began his rampage, U.S. intelligence already had broken up their operations. McCarthy was just targeting people he could get away with smearing. I understand J. Edgar Hoover was feeding McCarthy names, but the names were of people Hoover didn’t like personally, not people who were threats to the nation.
But what the Right is doing now is exactly what McCarthy did then — using half-baked “evidence” and guilt by association tactics to smear good people. And the “even the President is one of them” theme is pure Joe McCarthy.
The comparison McCarthy is spot on. The big difference is McCarthy didn’t have 1 1/2 24hr cable news stations (CNN is only half crazy), or 95% of the nut job talk radio business. I can’t imagine the paranoia spread as fast and comprehensively as it does today. Unfortunately this witch hunt has the potential to be much more successful (success meaning failure of modern civilization).
For two years I chucked the AARP’s “Join Now!” mailings into the trash; two weeks ago I joined, just because the anti-reformers have been leaving the organization in droves, like lemmings.
I’m at the point now where I’m ready to stand up and declare “I’m a communist!” (even though obviously I’m not), just to piss off the ragers on the Right. To have an abortion even though I’m past my childbearing years. To join a Wiccan coven and just skip the meetings.
I get the feeling all this ugliness will end up having a powerful reverse effect from what the Right intends. Unfortunately the administration doesn’t realize that good, intelligent people should have one rule these days: Whatever the Right says, do the opposite.
The fool appears to have named himself accurately. The witch hunt connection is very apt. I am so embarassed to live in the same country.
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please tell me why you believe that having a union to represent you in barganing for better pay or benefits is socialsm?
please tell me why you believe that having a union to represent you in barganing for better pay or benefits is socialsm?
Please tell me why you can’t understand sarcasm. Are you new here?
You know, I’m less focussed on the right and their predictable Joe McCarthy attacks, than I am on the stoopid Democrats – Obama included – who allow this to continue. This is what Orcs do (and please allow me to switch metaphors from Joe McC to Lord of the Rings) – and it isn’t going to change – it’s what they do. It’s up to the forces for reason and light to stop the invasion of the Orcs. If we don’t, we have only themselves to blame.
I’m not even going to focus on Ron Bloom and the nutty demonization of unions by those who would directly benefit from such “socialism”. They’re looking for any target whatsoever. Instead of Ron Bloom, it could be the guy or gal who delivers the mail – the socialist postal service, ferChrissakes. They’re attempting the death by a thousand cuts, and Van Jones was only the first victim. I can imagine hordes of bloody Orcs going ecstatic when he resigned. They’re emboldened now. Stoopid, stoopid Democrats.
Maha, I think you mistake PJ Wearing Fool’s concern about Ron Bloom. What’s clear from Bloom’s resume is that, because he has worked for unions in the manufacturing sector, he may, in fact, know something about manufacturing that that would be relevant to his job.
As we know from the past administration, particularly such stars as Michael Brown, the concept of knowing something about your job is complete anathema to the right-wing.
Now, if Bloom had previously been head of a horse show organization, that would be different!
A Hundred Ways Of Looking At Van Jones
For those who think this was just Obama caving, a different perspective there … essentially, that Obama has actually stood by most of the people who have been attacked by the right, but this was just one instance where the guy involved was (a) genuinely at least a little controvertial, and (b) not really that important in the grand scheme.
This does not take away even a little bit from Maha’s points about the right as an army of would-be McCarthys. It is instructive to note, I guess, that eventually the public got sick of McCarthy and to this day his name is synonymous with paranoid delusion…
-me
-me
The problem is, to these insane witch-hunters, being compared to Joe McCarthy is a compliment. They think what McCarthy did was important and correct, they defend him and believe they are carrying on his important work.
The Democrats continue to be powerless in the face of silly, unfounded, exaggerated and irrelevant accusations.
It really sounds like they suffer from that delusion you’d cited in a post some time back about how racists perceive the rest of the world in agreement with them. I keep thinking that if given enough rope they’ll hang themselves.
They’re going to have their hands full given how target-rich an environment it is…I mean unions are not exactly rare. There’s no doubt that their outrage will be proportional. LOL.
Definitely the Orff ‘O Fortuna’. Meant for the gamblers that let it all hang out and dice with Death. May they please lose.
You’ve got to love them. It’s as if they like to make a remake of a really bad song. Instead of “Ebony and Ivory,” they remake it as ‘Ebony and None for Whitey Me…’
Can’t we EVER let go of The Cold War and Vietnam?
AH! Here’s something new! This country is going to Hell in an anchor-weighed handbasket, and we have a segment of the country that thinks the President’s “Stay in school message” to school children is akin to Lenins innaguaral speach to The First Soviet!
Sweet Jesus, please have the FDA check the water for lead. Every morning, I think we’re closer to Rome than the day before.
And sadly, as for the ‘end of the stupid,’ I see NO end in sight.
What can these mercury-poisoned madmen think of next? In the future of American History, “Mad-as-a-hatter” will be a compliment to sanity. Truly insane act’s will be descibed as “Mad as an early 21st Century Republican.” And future generations will wonder how people THAT insane could possible remember how to breath, or not die of choking from the frothing coming from their mouths… Hell, people in THIS generration are wondering that now!
When people ask me why I don’t quit smoking or drinking, my answer is, “I have absolutely, positively no fucking interest in living one second more than I have to in this moral cessool that we call a country.”
Now, offer me a job somewhere else, and I’lll quit my nasty habits in a second. OK, maybe two or three…
I have not understood since the 1950’s, why any minority would ever vote for a republican. Since the 1960’s, I never understood why any woman would vote for a republican. Since the 1980’s, I have never understood why anyone in their right mind would possibly vote republican.
It wasn’t until I got on the Internet and started getting enough information that I could find out that the only thing republicans had going for them was purely MONEY. I’d always suspected that 95 per cent of politicians were corrupt, now I can look up donations by sector and see exactly who owns which congress critter.
I can, also, find out who it is that actually owns in stock the “news” organizations. Hell if every single “news” organization that has over 35,000 listeners, readers or watchers, it is owned by the rich, no wonder I’ve decided they are propaganda organs. Hell, I read Pravda in college and in the 1970s I started experiencing deja vu about the “news” stories. Where in Pravda, I had a feeling that something was being left out.
So I’ve been right for the last 30 some odd years to not read “newspapers,” watch television or turn on a radio. I personally thank my lucky stars for books and the internet.
yes ms. maha i think i can now will you answer my question?
I DO NOT believe “that having a union to represent you in bargaining for better pay or benefits is socialism.” I am a big supporter of unions.
Now, my question to you is, how STUPID do you have to be to think that I believe bargaining for better pay or benefits is socialism?
Answer well, or you will be permanently banned. I get really annoyed with people who demand I explain an opinion I DON’T HAVE, because they can’t bleeping read.
i dont know ms maha. i only know what you said. i didnt know your feelings about unions . mine are tht same as yours . i feel very strongly about all the good unions have brought to this country . sorry i upset you .
Once again, the right-wing demonstrates their total lack of understanding of history. Democrats have nbeen aligned with organized labor since the 1880s. How is this news to them? In fact, in Minnesota, the Democratic Party is called the DFL, which stands for Democratic Farmer-Labor party. Labor is explicitly in the title. They also need to compare the number of people killed by management thugs in labor disputes, as compared to those killed by labor. Look at the history of labor disputes and you will see it is management that are the violent, unreasonable thugs.