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Trumka: Palin’s Rhetoric Is Dangerous, Poisonous
It’s a speech that is getting a big reaction from the press and pundits across the country and it hasn’t even been delivered yet. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will tell the Alaska AFL-CIO convention in Anchorage tonight that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the self-appointed queen of the ultra-conservative movement, has betrayed her fake populist image and, instead, is spouting dangerous and “poisonous” rhetoric that could incite her followers to violence.
According to his prepared remarks, Trumka will say Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, has come “close to calling for violence,” and will go down in history like another discredited Republican Joe McCarthy.
But in typical Palin style, she couldn’t bring herself to face the press to respond to Trumka. Instead, she threw a temper tantrum on Twitter, questioning Trumka’s motives. But Trumka’s message was crystal clear: Palin, whose husband was a union member, left working families in Alaska behind when she tried to trade up to FOX News and the Tea Party. Despite her faux populism and image as caring about ordinary people, her actions and policies and the candidates she supports speak volumes about who she is.
For the record, here’s what Trumka plans to say tonight in Anchorage:
In this charged political environment, her kind of talk gets dangerous. “Don’t retreat…reload” may seem clever, the kind of bull you hear all the time, but put it in context. She’s using crosshairs to illustrate targeted legislators. She’s on the wrong side of the line there. She’s getting close to calling for violence. And some of her fans take that stuff seriously. We’ve got legislators in America who have been living with death threats since the health care votes.
Down in Tyler, Texas, she’s talking about—and I quote—“union thugs.” What? Her husband’s a union man. Is she calling him a thug? Sarah Palin ought to know what union men and women are. That’s poisonous. There’s history behind that rhetoric. That’s how bosses and politicians in decades past justified the terrorizing of workers, the murdering of organizers.
Quite frankly, America works because lots of people contribute lots of ideas—that’s good—even when some of them are just plain wrong. But people need to come to the table in good faith. That’s not Sarah Palin. She’ll go down in history like McCarthy. Palinism will become an ugly word.
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23 Comments
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Come on man. Palin is not for killing the unborn like the dems are for. The dems are making a big mistake and turning off the prolife people. If the dems are for the common folk like in the past then you should be consistent and be for everybody that includes the unborn. If you want to win elections in the furture you will have be prolife. I love Unions. They are necessary. Wake up and get the radicals out of the party.
A Republican in the UNIONS? You are the radical, Palin, McConnell, and the rest of the republicans have been tring to bust Unions since the Union’s inception, Republicans & Big Businesses are hand in hand, if you don’t like the Union, drop out! See how long you keep your Job!
Vote Republican and see how long make union wages, I suppose you would like to work for minimum wage. Go flip your burger at Mc D’s!
I vote prolife. In other words God comes first. That is the problem with america. We are corrupt and no matter who wins election we are going down. In the past America was good. Its not good now and that is why we are falling apart. You think Dems or Rep will make a difference? What a joke. I worked for 40 years and I have seen the moral collaspe of our nation. The mess we have now started many years ago. It is now bearing fruit. The chickens have come home to roost.
The Palins may care for the unborn, but are they willing to kill the old people, the poor people, and the unemployed. Sucicides are up 75% for the unemployed. The tea party has not jobs platform. They have also insulted me and the other 30 million unemployed. I am a college grad, 20 years of experience in the computer field. I am in my 50′s. I am a hard worker and I have been outsourced to India twice.
I agree with you that unions must represent the unborn, as soon as they can start paying dues. Also – the undead. Vampires and zombies need unions to. By the way, isn’t it high time that fetuses had the right to vote?
For 6 years lil W., both houses of congress and the supreme court were controled by republicans and they didn’t do anything about abortion because their rhetoric is just that. They probably have more abortions than democrats because they have the money and keep it quite. But they didn’t change the law, did they??
And speaking of radicals!!!! I’ve been voting and into politics for over 40 years and have even come close to hearing so many outlandish radicals as I have in the past year and a half. As far as I’m concerned, they have stepped over the line and for the first time in my life I am getting a little scared.
To: AFL-CIO President Trumka
What will your “labor day” speech have to say to the working people of America this coming Monday, September 6th?
Please do not trivialize yourself or the AFL-CIO on this Labor Day by further belaboring the obvious, as you have done here, by denouncing absurd Sarah Pallin, the Tea Party kooks, or the evil Republican Party! These easy targets are distractions are nothing but corporate media entertainments to divert attention from the crises now facing millions of working people today.
In 2008 you gave millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours of precious AFL-CIO resources to support Obama and the Democratic Party. He was supported by you, and tens of millions of working people, with a promise of hope and of change from the eight years of reviled Bush policies.
But President Obama, with full Democratic Party control of Congress, has not brought about any change. Instead of change Obama has continued and expanded the very policies most opposed to the needs of working people.
He has expanded the wars in the Middle East, and not ended them. He has re-established the profiteering gangsters on Wall Street with trillions of dollars in “bail out” funding. Obama has continue Global Warming by supporting “cap and trade” gimmicks and not shut down profitable polluters. “Socialist” Obama has not nationalized the oil companies as a first step to end the pollution or wars for oil profits.
Most of all, President Trumka, in opposition to the expressed wishes to the delegates at the Pittsburgh convention that elected you into office, you supported Obama’s Health Care Reform instead of single-payer universal health care. Obama has continued the destruction of public education.
Most tragically, Obama and the Democrats are now implementing the destruction of Social Security.
Mr. Trumka, the time is now on this Labor Day, to renounce President Obama’s corporate agenda and announce that you can no longer support the Democratic Party, now complete inebriated with corporate campaign contributions and corporate agendas.
Mr. Trumka today announce that the AFL-CIO is now calling for the foundation of a new political party that will be “of, by and for” the economic interests of working people. By 2012 the new party should be established with a platform and candidates to run at every level of federal, state, and local government, up to and including a candidate for President of the United States.
The effect of this historic announcement would once again restore the hope for needed change held by tens of millions of desperate working people.
ditto!ditto, ditto, OBAMA SHOULD NOT JUST BE RENOUNCED!<HE SHOULD BE IMPEACHED!!
Go place your faith in the Republican party, the Tea Party, or what ever you wish, but first drop out of the Union, lose your Job, start a Minimum wage job, flip burgers at McD’s and see what you think of the unions then.
As I stated in my reply to the first radical idiot’s comment, Republicans would love you to vote them and then in the future, when the bust the unions, because of people like you, you and everyone else, will be working for nothing and the CEO’s, CFO’s, Foremen, etc. Will be making thousands while you work for pennies!
What the hell is wrong with you people? What do reproductive rights for women have to do with whether there are good jobs? Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are MOCKING people like you with the stunt they’re pulling tommorrow and instead of seeing though it, you choose to criticize the first President since Bill Clinton who cares about people like us. You attack Rich Trumka for speaking truth to the radical powers-that-be of the “Tea Party Movement!” The AFL-CIO and the Democratic party ARE there for us. Did you think we could repair 8 years of damage in only two years? What you’re doing here is laying the groundwork to permitting yet another malevolent paring like Bush/Cheney (perhaps on steroids) to hijack the White House in 2012. The views expressed here ARE THE REASON that you get the disaster that was the Reagan/Bush era, and the bigger disaster that was the Bush/Cheney era. We finally flushed them out and now you people want to divide the broad left-labor coalition and hand the country back to those maniacs again?? Don’t you ever learn?
sweartogod, I am a Democrat and completely pro-life. I know the Dem. stand is wrong , but is a stand for unlimited war good for anyone? I can be a Democrat and still stand for my pro-life beliefs by yelling loud enough and making THEM listen. You yell in the enemy camp, it helps.
Jerry Wells, You have a tremendous idea and your article is good. You say what all of us have tried to say and you say it well. I wish you were standing in front of Obama and I pray hard that he will get your message because it is true and so important.
Krugman should get Geithner’s job…the unemployed are suffering while the politicans lobby and lie in an effort to keep THEIR jobs and, at the same time, ignore the unemployed who are begging for help.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’m going say it again: please get in involved in the organized efforts to help the unemployed. There are many such organized efforts, but the most prominent effort was just launched by the AFL-CIO in partner with their non-union affiliate, Working America.
Things are going to get worse, my friends. But, if the Republicans gain control in either chamber, we (unemployed) might as well just pack up our tents and move into the Wilderness CO Senator Mark Udall is so concerned about – because there will be no UI, no hope of private-sector job creation and no safety net.
Thank you President Trumka for getting out there and making our case as working people.
Sara Palin always introduced her husband as, “A proud member of the United Steelworkers of America,” on the campaign trail in 2008, when it benefitted her.
Now she calls union workers thugs!
This scapegoating of workers has to stop. We all need to stand up an shout-down the Palins and the Glenn Becks.
Ralph Lyke
Local 624, UAW
I am retired, recieving a decent pension, because of the Union, I am a Democrat because the things(job, better wages, etc.) that I lost over the years, are because of the ^%*& republicans such as Reagan, Both Bush’s, and the Republican congress of their era.
I am against abortion, & gun control, etc. but I was around for over 37yrs. and any thing we lost, was because of a REPUBLICAN!
I respect Obama, because he’s trying to clean up the mess G W Bush left when he left office.
Each time I read a tirade denouncing our president, I cannot help but wonder whether that person is a born again republican. No true Democrat would denounce Obama for GWB’s mistakes, including his final tribute to working America by giving the first of the relief dollars to the CEOs of the credit card companies–the bank–and other institutions bold enough to steal in broad daylight.
President Obama and no other Democrat was prepared for that type of behavior. As a result, the republicans have spent every waking moment trying to transform the truth by blaming Democrats for our nation’s woes. As long as we let them by not calling repeat attention to their ostentatious behaviour, we will continue to reap what they sow and they will walk away laughing.
No, the health care bill is not perfect, but it was the republican, “No,” that kept us from having single payer health insurance and any of the other causes espoused by Obama and the Democrats during the election.
Palin is being groomed by the United States media (owned by a few very wealthy people, regardless of what the city of publication or comment). Never stop remembering how deregulation cost us the fairness doctrine as it concerns our (the American people’s) airways.
GHWB, GWB, Cheney and others were bad, but they cannot compare to the damage Ronald Reagan, turncoat Democrat, did to this country. The very first public act of RR was to remove the licensed air controllers and place people substandard to them in places where they could have caused extreme national damage had it not been for the outstanding legacy those air controllers left the situation in. RR was never president after he was shot and this nation was ruled for many years by GHWB and minions before GHWB became president. Bill Clinton did America a huge favor when he decided to run for president and won. Eight plus eight years of Bushes would truly have been disastrous for America.
And, a final word to the wolves in sheeps’ clothing, “If you do not like the union movement, publically declare your allegiance to corporate America and go to work for them. We poor folk do not need you to muddy the scene with your constant referral to issues not being discussed.
Talking heads pulled by strings. Attack, criticize and block progress.
Has anyone heard ANY solutions from Sarah?
Palin, Beck and Limpdick are all the same spread lies get people to beleive you and make money doing it . Hell of a way to make a living isn’t it.
Beck wanted to go to Washington to make a speach the same place MLK made one, to bad the end result wasn’t the same. oh sorry that wouldn’t be nice to say and I don’t want to start sounding like a republican.
These nuts love fetuses and even embryos, but hate actual human beings. When you are unborn, you are holier than holy, but once you are born – screw you, you’re on your own.
Thats the problem. Union people are selfish and care nothing about anybody else else but themselves. They are always tearing down anybody that is sucessfull. End the class warfare. No programs were cut under Republicans. In fact all programs were increased. Obama has made Bush like like a cheap skate by bailing out the rich. OBama is not bringing down the unemploment rate. Its getting worse. The democrats ought to do what Robert Reich said and give the working people a tax break by making the first 20 thousand tax free. Will the dems do it? Hell no. That would be giving up to much power. End the Marxism in Washington and impeached the community orgainzer.
I’m sorry, I don’t remember getting that 20,000 tax free status under Lil W.
And union “people” are selfish???? If it weren’t for union people over the last 100+ years, you’d be making $2 an hour, if you had a job. And there wouldn’t be any OSHA or EPA or DEQ or any other safeguards for us working class people. You need to do a little reading up on the history of unions. If it were up to the republicans,10% of the people in this country would control and own everything and the other 90% of us would be virtual slaves with no say so. You’re just a fool being led around by your nose, thinking that one day “they” will let you join the club. You’re just a tool with no brain of your own. And I stand by that.
Whats happening now. I do not see the economy doing better in the last three years under the community organizer. Dems have control of all three branches of government . They have the votes. They are blowing it and will lose big time in Nov. Thats is Bs that we be slaves. The dems went along with all the free trade agreements. Every president did. My question to you is why did Obama bail out thre rich bankers,and all the big time money guys.
I guess I just don’t get it.I still fail to understand how abortion pro or con,gay marriage pro or con,gun rights pro or con has anything to do with the BS the American people are fed a steady diet of from the Dems and the Reps none of these issuses will put a single unemployed person back to work or fix your underwater mortgage or undo the damage done by several decades of misidirection by both policital parties.
[...] attacks on former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. He indignantly accused her of “getting close to calling for violence” and suggested that her criticism of Tea Party-bashing labor bosses amounted to “terrorizing” [...]