Tag: detroit

Did Steven Crowder sucker punch a union protester?

Now this is very interesting:

The Photo:

The story:

The washed up child actor is apparently to stupid to realize just what he was admitting in that interview. He is apparently too stupid to understand that the video they showed last night includes proof that he sucker punched the demonstrator before he himself was hit in retaliation. This is why you don’t let ignorant washed-up child actors serve as correspondents on your fake news show. It never turns out well for you or your neoliberal agenda.

So brainiac Crowder inadvertently admitted yesterday that he went to the demonstration to provoke a response; to “prove the left for who they really are”. This mindset of Crowder holds true to his current alignment with the  Andrew Breitbart  “war against the institutional left.”   philosophy and it makes what happened and it puts the subsequent misleading editing of the first video he released in the proper perspective.

And apparently after he was unable to garner something he could use on Fox “news” that night after being belligerent all day long to people who are literally out there fighting for their jobs, their pensions and their futures, he decided to step it up a notch.

As the Fox cameraman was focused on one confrontation, Crowder ducks under the view of the camera and sucker punches  the demonstrator who was then filmed getting up off the ground and going right at Steven in retaliation.

Above is a still taken from the extended video Fox ran on the Sean Hannity show last night. Notice the extended crawler they ran over the bottom 3rd of the screen in an effort to hide Steven’s hand. It ran so fast you can barely make out what happened, but I took it frame by frame and as I pointed out last night when I first saw the edited video, Steven clearly hits the man, I think he sucker punched him, in order to provoke a response.

The still above is a screen capture taken from that video. You can see Steven’s arm is outstretched and he pulls it back quickly. It’s outstretched in the direction and approximate height of the demonstrator’s head. He’s also got his right hand up covering the right side of his face in what appears to be a defensive posture taught in fight training and probably a conditioned action by Steven when he throws a punch.

via Steven Crowder Sucker Punched Demonstrator in Crowd Before he was Hit « American Everyman.

No wonder the dude slugged him. Like I said, this was all done intentionally and they got what they wanted. It is too bad, that one poor man got caught in the middle of it all.

 

UPDATED Heartbreaking: Black hot dog vendor caught in middle of union protest

This one breaks my heart. It appears that someone was caught in the middle of the protest in Lansing.

The Photo:

Clint Tarver, known as “The Hot Dog Guy” here in Lansing.

Here is the part that breaks my heart, it comes Ironic Surrealism:

The woman (Lorilea Susanne) who set up the fundraising page for Clint has spoken to his wife. Apparently Clint was hired to provide catering for the Americans For Prosperity tent which was also destroyed by union thugs.

*UPDATE* 11:40am – I have spoken with Linda Lee, Clint’s wife. She says he is absolutely overwhelmed with our support, even more so than by the events of yesterday. I would like to clarify the events, however. Clint hired as a caterer for the AFP tent which was torn down. He was much more concerned about the others, and particularly helped to get the women out of the tent. It was when he returned to gather his equipment that the taunts and racial slurs began. He says the working people did not respect the working man. He was not there to be political; he was just there to serve. This is the Clint we know and love. Please, let’s respect him and leave our political opinions out of this. This is about our support for Clint.

You know, I am just going to say this; and believe me when I tell you, I am quite serious about this  one: I support the Unions and their right to protest that Governor Rick Snyder lied about not going after the labor movement and I do not much mind people like Steven Crowder getting their jaws jacked for being idiotic tools.

However, I do not support a black man being beaten up and being called an “uncle tom” or even worse the “N-Word,” especially seeing when the man was simply there to serve others and not really even involved with the protest at all. I believe that this one is just a bit too much and goes over the line in a big way.

Of course, the right is going to blame the unions, and this is quite short-sighted in my opinion. The person that should be blamed here is Governor Rick Snyder for picking a fight with the labor movement — and over what? Because the labor movement tried and ultimately failed to get collective bargaining written into the Michigan State Constitution?

I think what needs to happen right now is this: Everyone that reads this blog posting, needs to head to this fundraising page here (LINKED REMOVED GO READ THIS UPDATE!) and give as much as you can afford; and be sure you leave your name and maybe a message to the fact that you are a Union member or supporter; and that you do not support this sort of violence and racism toward a black man.  It is immoral and it never should have ever happened in the name of the labor movement at all, ever.

I might support the labor movement in a big way and the love affair between me and the Republicans might be over. However, I did not leave my moral compass at the divorce court — so to speak. This little incident was wrong and we, as supporters of and/or members of the labor movement can make it right.

Others, who are helping, like we should be: Michelle Malkin, Weasel Zippers and The Daily Caller

BIG UPDATE TO THIS STORY: Please, click here to go read the update to this story. Needless to day, I feel like a freakin’ chump. 🙁 Never again will I ever blindly trust anything by the right blogosphere again, ever. Because they just lie way too much. 😡 

A possible way out of this “right to work” mess?

This could be some very good news, hopefully, the unions and the Democrats can pull this one off and quickly:

Today, Governor Rick Snyder is expected to sign “right to work” legislation in Michigan. Obviously, this will constitute a hard blow to organized labor, for a host of reasons, symbolic and practical alike.

But NBC’s Michael O’Brien reports that labor operatives believe they may have it on a new procedural way to force a vote on the legislation. If the major unions avail themselves of this option — and if it pans out legally — this means the Dem threats to turn this into an extended all-out war could come to pass.

Republicans have tried to protect the law from going before the voters by attaching an appropriation to it; spending bills can’t be overturned by legislative referendum in Michigan. But union operatives think there is another mechanism by which the law can be challenged. According to one good government group’s analysis of the state constitution, there exists the option of the “statutory initiative,” which would be forced by the collecting of signatures equal to at least eight percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.

Will unions and Michigan Democrats avail themselves of this option? Eddie Vale, a spokesman for the labor-funded Workers’ Voice, which played a big role in the Ohio and Wisconsin labor wars, tells me it’s being seriously considered. “The Michigan Constitution allows two other ways to let the people decide this issue on the ballot, and whether it’s one of those options or the 2014 Governor’s election itself, Michiganders will be heard loud and clear,” Vale says. (There may also be another referendum option as well.)

via The Morning Plum: A way out for labor in Michigan?.

This a good thing and hopefully the Democrats use it and the Unions get behind it.

The best darned thing written so far about Detroit, The Labor Movement, and “Right to Work”

This is very good:

To understand why the impending transformation of Michigan into a right-to-work state is so mortifying to labor and its supporters—far worse, even, than what happened in Wisconsin and Ohio—one must consider the totemic status of the United Auto Workers (UAW). Although there are, despite all you have heard, many good reasons for public-sector workers to have the right to unionize, nobody ever made a movie or wrote a song about a public-sector worker; public-sector organizing campaigns are pretty tame affairs. But if someone were to write a book titled (with apologies to Vivian Gornick), The Romance of 20th Century American Unionism, it would likely be a dual case study. One story would be about the United Farm Workers of the 1960s and 1970s, courageously built from the grape and lettuce fields by migrant Latino laborers in California.

The other would span from the mid-1930s until about 1970 and tell the story of the United Auto Workers, the union that the Prospect’s Harold Meyerson correctly called the other day the “best” American union. Mass industrial workers, whom many believed were impossible to organize, spawned the UAW. These workers, the immigrant laborers of their time, shocked the nation with the imaginative militancy of their factory-floor sit-downs and “flying picket” lines at the legendary Flint, Michigan, strike in 1937. The union’s brilliant, incorruptible president, Walter Reuther—himself beaten and bloodied in organizing campaigns—sought, with the power of his union and his ideas, to leverage the United States into something resembling the social democracies of Western Europe. He had to settle for millions of working-class people ascending into the middle class in the 25 years following World War II, benefiting directly from UAW collective-bargaining agreements, or seeing their own wages and benefits tied to those of the UAW (and Steelworker’s union) standard.

Reuther, furthermore, supported both the nascent civil-rights movement (and fought hard to cleanse his own union of racism), the New Left, and even supported the beginning of modern environmentalism. The Port Huron statement—the founding, now canonical, document of Students for a Democratic Society—was written in 1962 at a UAW-owned campground for use by its members. You can see Reuther standing behind Dr. Martin Luther King during the “I Have a Dream” speech on the Mall in 1963, while George Meany’s AFL-CIO, from a mixture of racism and red baiting, shied away.

The UAW had enormous political clout, too. It couldn’t change the political economy of the country, but it was a powerful member of the Democratic Party coalition. Reuther had the ear, and vice versa, of every Democratic president and candidate of the postwar era. During this era, the presidential election campaign would begin for the Democratic candidate in—where else?—Cadillac Square in Detroit before a throng of union, mostly UAW, members. One can measure the changes in the Democratic Party, Michigan, and the country from, for example, reading the text of JFK’s 1960 Cadillac Square speech.

When Reuther died in a private plane crash in 1970, every auto plant in the country stopped its assembly lines for one minute in silent tribute—thus the “Big Three” car companies honored their remarkable adversary and the formidable institution he and his members built.

via This Is Not Wisconsin. It’s Worse – RICH YESELSON  – American Prospect

I could not have worded it better myself. This isn’t about “right to work”, this piece of legislation is simply about destroying the labor movement in Detroit. Which is what the Republicans in Michigan and in Washington DC have wanted to do for ages.  If the labor movement is smart, they will stand up to the weasel Snyder and not let this stand. Hopefully, they have the guts to do it.

Governor Rick Snyder starts to feel the heat for his idiocy

I find this to be very encouraging, perhaps Governor Snyder did not realize what he was getting into, or maybe he did.

The Story via Greg Sargent at Washington Post:

The “right to work” battle in Michigan may not be over quite yet.

Top Democrats in the Michigan Congressional delegation just wrapped up their meeting with Governor Rick Snyder, during which they urged him in no uncertain terms: If you go forward with “right to work” legislation, you’ll be consigning the state to years of discord and division. They urged him to consider vetoing the legislation or postponing it until the next session — or even agreeing to subject it to referendum.

According to Dems who were on the call, Snyder told them he would “seriously” take into account their objections — which they took as a genuine indication of possible willingness, for now, to reconsider.

“The Governor listened, and he told us he would seriously consider our concerns,” Senator Carl Levin said on a conference call with reporters.

The tenor of the meeting, which participants described as urgent and intense, underscores the gravity of the situation — not just for Democrats, but for the state itself. Dems told Snyder that forging ahead with “right to work” legislation risked undermining the progress in labor-management relations in the state and could create a situation similar to Wisconsin, where an ongoing battle over collective bargaining tore the state apart for over a year.

I do not trust the weasel myself, and here is why; This comes via Deadline Detroit, which I had some choice words for once, and which I retract those words too — granted, I have not always liked what I have seen there, but I was a bit harsh on them, they have the right to publish what they wish, just like I do…:

Signing right-to-work legislation will have serious, even dire consequences on the state, congressional Democrats told Gov. Rick Snyder this morning, according to Kathleen Gray in the Free Press.

In a private meeting in Detroit between seven members of Congress and Snyder, Sen. Carl Levin told reporters afterward they asked Snyder to either veto the legislation or remove the appropriation attached to the bill, which would allow a statewide vote on the issue.

“The labor environment has dramatically improved in the state,” Levin said. But with right to work, “instead of having a Michigan united, we’re going to have a Michigan divided.”

A couple of hours after meeting with the delegation, Snyder signaled his continuing support of the right-to-work bills when he tweeted, “Freedom to work is all about creating more and better jobs in Michigan.”

So, basically, this guy is nothing more than a lying snake. If I were the labor movement, I would not trust him at all. if anything at all; I would begin to mount a recall effort against this man and get him out of office as soon as they possibly could. Like others have noted, Governor Snyder has proven that he is nothing more than a lying stack of crap and will say and do anything to stay in power — including straight up lie to get elected, like he did to me and every other person who trusted him.

There is two things in this world that I have little or no use for — and that is thieves and liars; and this idiot Snyder is a lying piece of crap, if there ever was one to be behold.  As the Detroit Free Press rightly noted, Governor Rick Snyder knowingly lied to the people of Michigan, including disillusioned Democrats like myself, who come from Democratic Party voting families and who happen to care about this State and this Country and do not agree with the far socialist left agenda of President Barack Obama. This does not mean, however, that we think that unions ought be outlawed and busted up.

Again, as I wrote before on here, this was nothing more than a pander to the extremist wing of the Republican Party and by doing this; Governor Snyder will pay a terrible price.

 

 

 

Local Story: Lizard bites man

Wait a second…. Lizard?  What the heck was Charles Johnson doing in Michigan?!?! Surprise

I kid….I kid… Batting Eyelashes

The story comes via Detroit Free Press:

Authorities say a Michigan man has been taken to a hospital after being bitten by his 4-foot-long pet lizard.

The Macomb Daily of Mount Clemens reports emergency workers were called Sunday night to the home in Macomb County’s Lenox Township, about 35 miles northeast of Detroit.

Lenox Township Fire Chief Dennis Fouchia says it’s the first time he’s encountered a reptile bite in his career.

Here is the real funny part of the story, or at least I think it is funny:

The pet owner was expected to be treated and released. Additional details about the man and the circumstances surrounding the bite weren’t released.

Well, let’s see here; the Lizard was most likely hungry and really wanted something to eat and this guys hand — was, um…. Handy? Hee hee

Yeah, I know, I’m terrible. Sue me. Phbbbttt

The Detroit Free Press rips Governor Rick Snyder a new one

It is very good, trust me:

Click here for Editorial: A failure of leadership: Snyder’s about-face on right-to-work betrays voters —Detroit Free Press 

Quote:

Two years ago, a newly elected Rick Snyder told the Free Press editorial board he was determined to be a new kind of governor — a pragmatist focused like a laser on initiatives that promised to raise standards of living for all Michiganders.

And until last week, we believed him.

For two years, we supported Snyder as he took painful steps to restore Michigan’s fiscal stability and confront a crisis in which plunging tax revenues and mounting obligations to retired workers threatened to cripple the state’s cities and school districts.

[…]

 But we also indulged many compromises Snyder maintained were necessary to advance his pro-growth agenda. And when ideologues on the right and left mounted campaigns designed to hamstring state government by limiting its authority to raise revenues, regulate labor relations, and fund critically needed infrastructure, we joined the governor in opposing them.

In short, we trusted Snyder’s judgment.

That trust has now been betrayed — for us, and for the hundreds of thousand of independents who voted for Snyder with the conviction that they were electing someone more independent, and more visionary, than partisan apparatchiks like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker or Florida’s Rick Scott.

Last week, in an abrupt about-face Snyder’s defenders said was born of his frustration with organized labor, the governor unleashed a legislative blitzkrieg that seems certain to bring a bill barring closed-shop contracts to his desk next week.

[…]

Snyder’s closest brush with candor came when he suggested that his endorsement of right-to-work was less than voluntary — a decision “that was on the table whether I wanted it to be on the table or not.”

But that is less an excuse than a confession that Michigan’s governor has abdicated his leadership responsibilities to Republican legislators bent on vengeance.

What reasonable person now believes that Snyder has the will or the wherewithal to deliver Michigan, or even his own party, from the failed politics of division?

Michigan voters who provided Snyder’s margin of victory in 2010 feel betrayed, and they have every justification. If he was ever serious about being the governor who brought Michiganders together, Snyder has just sent himself back to Square One.

I suggest you go read the rest of that; this spells out exactly why I have basically decided to say to hell with the Republican Party and the Conservative movement as a whole and now just call myself an independent. My family comes first; and this jackass declared war against them, namely my Dad.