Palin Blasts Labor Leader, Calls Conservatism a Better Fit for Union Workers

[Omaha Steve]

Source: CBS News

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Thursday night responded to an attack from the president of the AFL-CIO, refusing to back down from her claim that union leaders behave like "thugs." While blasting union leadership for using "scare tactics" to promote a "big government agenda," Palin painted herself as a better representative of union members and blue collar workers.

Yesterday during a speech he delivered in Alaska, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called Palin "almost a parody of herself" who will "go down in history like McCarthy."

"In this charged political environment, her kind of talk gets dangerous," Trumka said at the Alaska AFL-CIO Biennial Convention. "'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."

Trumka also criticized Palin for referencing "union thugs," a loaded term given the history of labor unions in the United States.


Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20014883-503544.html

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(Credit: AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

[Kingofalldems]

1. Conservatives brag about destroying unions

Why would any union person vote for his own destruction?

[Turbineguy]

6. There are plenty that do.

[saigon68]

41. I'm an Astronaut

[Frisbee]

8. Guns. At least that's what I've witnessed.

They just can't wrap their heads around the fact that no one, Democrat or republican is going to take their guns.

[PearliePoo2]

10. good question...

I have a brother who is a retired Teamster and Operating Engineer.
With lousy reception in his dump truck, all he could get was Eastern Washington AM stations that blasted out Rush's HATE at a gillion watts all day long, year after year.
He went to the dark side. Our family has lost him (apparently forever) and we are 3rd generation union members.
It's sickening.
:cry:

[SpiralHawk]

15. Why would a gay man choose to work for the Republicon Homelander party?

And conceal the truth about himself from himself and everyone else, while actively supporting efforts to persecute human beings who are gay?

These are questions that sane and honorable people must wrestle with as they consider the degenerate state of modern republiconism, and the side sicknesses it spawns.

[w4rma]

16. Money. Conservatives are easily conned out of their money.

And they want to take the rest of us down with them.

[Citizen Worker]

27. Sadly, too many of us did and still do vote against our own interests.

It started as far back as Nixon and went on steroids with St. Ronnie the B actor. And many of us continue to this day having bought into the idea that government is bad, taxes are bad, abortion is evil, gays and lesbians are evil, democrats are going to take our guns away. Never mind that under successive regimes wages continue to erode, jobs and factories are sent overseas. As long as god is front and center in the public square, gays and lesbians are relegated to outcast status and I have my guns all is well. To those friends and relatives who embrace this "vision" of society I've said you will be safe resting your weary head on your bible, arms and legs wrapped around your guns, and knowing that you're protected from the gay hordes while you sleep in your cardboard box under the freeway overpass. The satire is lost on them. But I keep working on them in the hope that eventually they will come 'round.

[Arkana]

2. Burn in hell, you terrible, horrible, job-quitting, lazy-ass, gold-digging, moronic,

racist, xenophobic, homophobic, leave-it-to-Beaver trip back to the 50s, gun-toting, wingnut-boner-inducing, armed-rebellion-fomenting, Facebook-posting useless waste of ape sperm.

Shut up, Sarah. For the love of God, shut up shut up SHUT UP.

[dhill926]

24. what you said...........n/t

[Crowman1979]

35. +1000 from a Teamster!

[LiberalFighter]

3. Those union thugs had to be thugs back in those days because companies

used thugs such as the Pinkertons who acted above the law to the point of killing people.

[DBoon]

12. look up "Memorial Day Massacre"

this is what it took to unionize the steel mills

[MadMaddie]

38. Ding, Ding, Ding we have a winner!

I am guessing that QuittafromWissilla doesn't know the history cuz she doesn't read books.

[LiberalFighter]

4. How the hell is that pos a better representative of union members and blue collar workers?

She doesn't know the pains and problems that union members and blue collar workers suffer.

[diane in sf]

5. she is such a f***ing venial maroon, and her followers are as well

[goforit]

7. Oops.......I do believe this is where she trips and falls.

[defendandprotect]

9. Conservatives have destroyed unions and prevented unionization..... and that's good for labor--???

[gratuitous]

13. Palin translated: Working people are stupid

I will tell a flat-out lie, and expect to be believed.

[defendandprotect]

29. Nice wrap up there of Palin -- !!

:evilgrin:

[Bombero1956]

11. I have said this before in other threads

members of my own local have voted against their best interests solely on one issue alone, guns.

[PearliePoo2]

17. Yep...guns...guns... they are coming to take your guns.

A young man I work with has a wife, two little kids and can barely pay the rent.
He told me he is going to buy an expensive gun and fabricate a hidden vault in the wall to conceal his gun from Obama's "guys". I told him to use the money instead to buy food and shoes for his babies.
Where do they get this SHIT?? :shrug:

[defendandprotect]

30. Thanks for telling us that --

Macho will kill us all!!

But we also have to get rid of this Drug War the right wing is using

so effectively to limit our freedoms and as an excuse for creating a

violent America . . . where you must have those "guns."


:evilgrin:

[yellowcanine]

14. Spoken by someone who probably has never punched a timeclock.

[BootinUp]

18. Is this the next lie I have to read over and over and over?nt

[w4rma]

19. This could stick if the DLC isn't put down and purged. (nt)

[FarLeftRage]

28. +1000

it could also be cut, spayed, nuked and asphyxiated too!

[defendandprotect]

31. +1000% --

[activa8tr]

20. She's certifiably batshit crazy and we all know it, but the trouble is:

Everybody that loves her is too stupid to figure out how crazy she is.

These people are dangerous, all of them, and Sarah Palin is the most dangerous of all, now that she's on the Fixed Noise Nincumpoop network.

[cyr330]

21. Yeah, right. . .

And I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell the unions as well. . .

Any self-respecting union member should see right through this fraud.

[olegramps]

22. It is my sincere hope to see someone like Trumka form a Labor Party.

A Labor Party could chose to back only candidates that actually represent the working class. I believe the time is ripe for such a movement. They should push for the repeal of every unfair trade agreement that have only served to outsource American jobs to line the pockets of corporate managers who have bought and sold nearly every politician in Washington. They could demand that a fair tax system should be enacted to reward the workers with a fair share of the profits. Real Health Care Reform could actually be achieved along with actual financial reform. The usury rates should be totally outlawed and fair interest rates on savings guaranteed instead of making bankers multi-millionaires while bankrupting responsible people who saved money for their retirement. Don't believe the crap that tariffs are bad. They could be the most instrumental means for drying up the exploitation of desperate workers in foreign countries who are the victims of corrupt cesspools of bribing politicians who have sold out their own citizens to international corporations.

[defendandprotect]

32. Hartmann had someone on talking about LABOR PARTY the other day ....

but I was tuning in at the end of the conversation!!!

Evidently, they had been working on it --

You know the dream of Susan B. Anthony was that WOMEN and LABOR would form

a political party!!

What a dream that would be!!

[Bozita]

23. So how's that free trade thingy working out for all those union workers, Sarah?

[SoapBox]

25. Hey, St. Sarah the Quitter McMoneyWhore...STFU!

...all I've got to say...

Well maybe also,

SHUT your PIE HOLE!

[Javaman]

26. she takes big mouth fulls of the ray-gun bullshit.

fascist with eyeliner.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

33. The Half term governor is 'off her rocker'

[chelsea0011]

34. Conservatives are better for workers because they all want the working class

earning less than the current minimum wage when they eliminate it.

[sofa king]

36. ...Because they'll get so much more time off?

[DLine]

37. How ironic for Mrs. Death Panels herself...

.. to accuse somebody else of using "scare tactics"

[daleo]

39. She should unionize all the quitter governors. n/t

[Supply Side Jesus]

40. Sounds like my boss...

"Why do you need a Union? You got me!"
idiots