Archive for May 28th, 2010
Mitt Romney's main strategy in the GOP primaries of 2012 is to hammer Sarah Palin as "a quitter". Message to Mittens: it's not going to work
Yesterday, I was interviewed by a reporter for CBS, for a story on the diverse groups of people supporting Sarah Palin online. The reporter authored a book on Palin last year, after being embedded with her vice presidential campaign, following a stint covering Mittens Romney. I can’t imagine how many cucumbers-and-mayonnaise sandwiches this guy had to eat on the Romney Express (to nowhere), but I gave him the same kind of awed respect I grant anyone who’s ever spent more than half an hour with Tim Pawlenty — and didn’t succumb to T-Paw induced narcolepsy.
We (the reporter and I, not Tim Pawlenty or Mittens) met up at Nookie’s Tree in Boystown and talked about Sarah Palin over coffee. Doing enough of these interviews over the course of the last few years, and being interviewed by some great people like Andrea Shea King and Tammy Bruce, I can usually spot the story the reporter wants to tell by the way his questions unfold and what he keeps coming back to whenever I take the conversation on one of my tangents about how terrible the current administration is. The story CBS wants to do on Palin’s supporters appears to be something in the realm of “an unthinking, personal, and emotional defense of a woman they love”. It’s not a negative story, and the reporter doesn’t seem like the kind who would write a hit piece, on either Palin herself or on me as a Palin-supporter, but the impression I got from him was that he’s projecting the Left’s Obama cult of personality onto Palin supporters — when nothing could be further from the truth.
Most of the questions asked of me were in the vein of how I felt whenever Palin was attacked, and what makes me defend her.
I stopped the reporter on that one, because I don’t think Sarah Palin needs to be defended ever — she is more than capable of doing that for herself, far better than I personally could ever do. See, for example, her Facebook ninja throwing stars, and marvel at the sublime and politically deadly effectiveness of her patented personal brand of self-defense.
The role I see Palin’s supporters playing is, as we’ve said consistently here on HillBuzz, of Scoobies to Palin’s Buffy. She’s the slayer. She’s got far more strength, smarts, power, and voice than any of us. She leads, we follow. We’re her support team, whose mission is to make sure the public at large knows about all the good things she’s doing — and that her supporters never succumb to Eeyorism and listen to the Lamestream Media as it tries, desperately and pathetically, to foist Mittens Romney, T-Paw, John Thune, Mitch Daniels, or the rest of the born-losers in the cucumbers-and-mayonnaise soggy sandwich club upon us as the 2012 Republican nominee.
In talking about Romney, the reporter gave me a little insight into him as a man, which confirmed what I know firsthand from all the Romney guys here in Chicago: he will never accept being VP, to anyone, and believes he is destined to be president. I’m amazed no one surrounding Romney, not even his wife Ann, has the clarity or good sense to tell this man how delusional he is. Romney believes the “it’s his turn” mentality of the Republican Party is going to hand the 2012 nomination to him, the way this same thinking gave the GOP the stellar campaigns of Bob Dole ’96 and John McCain ’08. ”It’s his turn” is a steaming pile of moose droppings.
Sarah Palin is running for president, folks. She will be the Republican nominee in 2012. I personally am going to do everything I possibly can to help her in every way possible. Everyone here at HB feels that way, and we’re all committed to giving up another two years of our lives for a presidential race — which is something we didn’t want or expect to do, but we all believe in the Governor and believe she’s the one woman out there who can turn this country around and defeat Obama.
The reporter, who is a very nice guy, and handsome in that nonthreatening Sears catalog model sort of way (he actually looks a lot like the actor who played Brighton Sheffield on “The Nanny” in the 90s, and for the entirety of the interview I was convinced it really WAS that actor, because I heard somewhere that kid grew up to become a journalist), believes Obama will have his second term, and couches everything he asks in terms of that. Such as questions about whether Hillary Clinton would stay on as Secretary of State in Obama’s fictitious second term, etc. Me being me, I never let those slips go, and kept reminding him that Obama is not going to have a second term, because Sarah Palin is going to clean his clock in 2012. He’d smile at that, which made him look even more like the kid from “The Nanny”, but Wikipedia indeed maintains they are not one and the same.
Both the reporter and the Romney Guys here in Chicago believe it’s an effective attack on Palin to criticize her for leaving the governor’s office last summer. These guys are CONVINCED of this, and they honestly believe Republican voters in 2012 aren’t going to support her because she made the executive decision to remove herself as a target for Democrats nationwide to attack in our northernmost state. Palin removing herself from the governor’s mansion eliminated a means for DNC-funded lunatics like Andrea McCloud to file nuisance ethics complaints against her office every day, in a clear effort to cost Alaskan taxpayers an enormous sum of money and prevent the governor’s office from doing the work the people of Alaska needed the Governor to do. Resigning to save taxpayers so much money took a lot of guts — and it’s one of the things I most respect about Sarah Palin on a personal level. She’s forever in a position of being damned if she does, and damned if she doesn’t, and every day she’s attacked for something ridiculous. Leaving office was a hard decision to make, but it was the right decision for Alaska, and I believe for Palin personally (because she would not be able to travel the country and give speeches so often if she was tied to Juneau and Anchorage…and that means she would not be able to fulfill the role of Shadow President the way she is doing now, living rent free in the Obama White House and occupying a choice niche in the current president’s nightmares).
I can guarantee you Mittens Romney gives no one nightmares. The White House doesn’t care what Romney thinks or says. When Romney holds an event, all of 12 people attend, and no one’s particularly enthused to be there. Not even Romney himself.
When Sarah Palin gives a speech, the atmosphere is electric. I’ve seen big, beer-bellied, bearish men sporting pink PALIN 2012 shirts, as excited as school girls at a Jonas Brothers concert to actually hear the Governor speak in person. I’ve spotted fathers bringing their daughters to see “the next president”, Sarah Heath Palin. This excitement, support, and enthusiasm actually exceeds what I experienced at Hillary Clinton’s own events in 2007 and 2008.
If Palin wants that nomination and wants to be president, she’s going to win. I do not believe Mittens or T-Paw can stop her. And I don’t believe she’ll pick any of those boring, soggy losers as her VP. I think she’ll go rogue, and choose an Alan West, a Michael Williams, a Michele Bachman, or someone else incredibly awesome and give the GOP establishment and “It’s His Turn” club the shaft. Alaska-style. You betcha.
But, I don’t want Palin supporters to ignore what the Romney people are up to. Though I don’t think the “she quit as Governor!” nonsense is going to have any traction against her, I wanted to communicate just how absolutely CERTAIN this reporter was about this “ending her campaign before it begins” and how the khaki-pants, blue-blazered Romney Guys here in Chicago think Palin is a “non-starter” because of this.
I think these guys are all nuts, but I want all of you, and everyone at Conservatives4Palin especially, to start thinking about ways to diffuse this attack before it can even be made. If you love this country and want to prevent Obama from having that second term the media believes is guaranteed to him, then you need to work hard every day on ways to prevent the GOP from running Mittens, T-Paw, or any of the other members of the cucumbers-and-mayonnaise brigade in 2012.
I have no idea when this piece for CBS is going to come out, but if I hear more about it, I’ll be sure to let you know. As I said, the reporter was a very nice guy and showed great respect for the Governor, but it was very clear to me he voted for Obama and wants to see him get a second term — though I don’t think he had an Obot agenda with the article he’s writing, or I would not have agreed to sit down with him here in Boystown.
- K.
Confront City Union Employees Loafing on the Job With Video Equipment At Every Possible Opportunity — It Makes Them Scurry Like Rats
H/t DK for illustrating this union mentality perfectly
Last night, something remarkable happened at the Belmont Red Line stop around 330 in the morning.
We had just left a party at Hydrate, where DJ Chi Chi LaRue (shee-shee, like “fancy”, not Chee-Chee, like the defunct Mexican restaurant) was spinning, Cyon Flare was holding court (as always, and looking FABULOUS in a leopard catsuit and tribal pom-pom wig), and just about everyone interesting in Boystown was on hand for the pre-Memorial Day-pre-party. This is similar to the way that Boystown starts celebrating Halloween on October 1st, with pre-pre-pre-parties just about every night until the 31st. A good time was had by all, and Panda got to play his favorite game, which is spot and identify the porn stars in the room incongruously wearing clothes — he’s like Rain Man with this, and can not only ID all of them, but knows their real names, all of the titles they’ve been in, and is generally on hugging terms with all of them (“Well, the rest of you can do that with all those people in Congress, and you know who they are and stuff, so I know who people are too”).
Panda had to take the Red Line downtown that late because he’s dogsitting for someone in the Loop, so we walked onto the platform to wait for the train with him, just to be safe.
What we saw was absolutely amazing in a City that constantly claims it’s broke, with a Transportation Authority that is forever threatening more Doomsday service cuts because it swears it has no money.
Yet, at 330am on the northbound Belmont Red Line station, we saw a team of five union CTA workers, standing there in their chartreuse caution vests and hard hats, watching one of them sweep the same spot of concrete with an old-fashioned push broom.
One man sweeping something that didn’t need to be swept, four men SUPERVISING.
Here’s where things get even more remarkable.
For some reason, every time we’ve spotted union crews like this “working”, we’ve been disgusted by the waste that goes into all of this standing around — though we never thought about doing anything about it. These guys easily make $30-40/hour. The supervisors probably make more. For doing nothing. But, growing up in big cities, we’re so used to this kind of waste and union-mentality that we usually forget about it if we notice it, or just completely ignore it to begin with.
Last night, things went differently.
Sebastian started talking about how much money was being spent sweeping and supervising said sweeping by that crew in front of us — we figured these guys would probably bill at least two hours for this job, at a rate of $30/hour per guy, times 5 guys, so that’s $300 right there. We thought about union crews doing this all over Chicago, and marveled how easily massive amounts of tax dollars could be saved if only the public stopped accepting this sort of thing as acceptable reality.
That’s when Sebastian decided to get loud.
He called across the train tracks at the crew and asked, “Why are there five of you needed to sweep one small section of this platform over and over again? Why is the Union assigning one of you to work and four of you to supervise? How can the CTA cry about needing more tax money when it has four guys loafing and one guy pretending to work?”
One of the union guys, who was leaning against the metal railing, quite comfortably, yelled back, “We’re doing safety control”. Then he and the rest laughed a little.
Sebastian then whipped out his phone and pointed it at them, as if he was taking a video. Unbeknownst to them, his phone was dead, the battery drained hours ago, but it still made an effective prop.
Sebastian repeated his questions to the union crew, this time while pretending to take video of them standing there.
The response was instantaneous, and very reminiscent of bugs or rats scurrying away from a light that’s startled them. They saw the camera and collectively these men all left the platform as a group, disappearing down the stairs. There was no more talk about being “safety controllers”. Once they were challenged, and feared they’d end up on YouTube loafing and wasting money like this, they broke up their gang and left.
What if the public did this to every union crew working in the city?
What if citizens took out their camera phones and taped all the “supervising” that’s being done on the City’s dime?
What if people started challenging the need for a five man crew to sweep one small part of a platform over and over again?
Today, we’re going to buy extra batteries for all of our phones, so that we’re never in a situation like the one above where we can’t take video like this. We’re going to start posting this stuff to YouTube, and with your help maybe we can open the public’s eyes to the amount of waste committed by unions every day in cities like Chicago.
We’re beyond furious that several bus lines were recently cut, and buses and trains run less frequently in general, because the CTA claims it didn’t have the funds to operate properly. Well, maybe things would run better if the union wasn’t operating the way it’s always run.
Increasingly, we’re coming to understand a very simple truth: for America to prosper, labor unions need to be smashed. To smash them, regular Americans need to start documenting union waste and exposing these people as the crooks that they are.
Just calling them out isn’t enough, as evidenced by our example above. Sebastian called them out, and they just laughed, and made a joke about how worthless they are with that “safety control” crack. But, once these guys thought they were being videotaped, they had a Ruh-Roh moment and knew they were in trouble, so the joking ended and they hid downstairs until we’d left the platform. No doubt, they went back to their scam after Panda got on the train and the rest of us headed home…but we wonder what great footage we could get if we regularly staked out the Belmont Red Line at night.
What else is the union up to?
What other scams could we expose?
Better question: what could you expose the unions doing to waste tax dollars in your own cities?
Friday Open Thread: May 28th, 2010
What’s on your minds this Friday?
What are people in your part of the country talking about?
