Monday, September 3, 2012

Eric Cantor puts foot in mouth again, claims that Labor Day celebrates celebration of entrepreneurs and business owners

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) on Monday mistakenly described Labor Day as a celebration of entrepreneurs and business owners, rather than workers.
“Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success,” the conservative congressman said in a statement. “I am committed to keeping taxes low and reducing red tape to make it easier for Virginia’s small business owners to start hiring again, create more jobs and ensure a thriving economy for the future so more people can achieve the American dream.”
However, Labor Day actually celebrates the victories of trade and labor organizations in the United States, who fought for 8-hour work days and other standards that most Americans take for granted.
The Raw Story (no, it's really not The Onion)

China only went to the five day work week in 1995.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not foot in mouth - just emphasizing the standard Republican talking points. Republicans have been hating on Labor Day and redefining it forever.

jeg3 said...

1. Agree with Dan.

2. With the election around the corner I have been waiting for a big Obama speech in the media on Labor Day to drum up support with the middle class. He has something on his website, but seems like he is just going through the motions.
http://www.barackobama.com/news/entry/the-bargain

Hope is eternal and Obama continues to be a disappointment (from bad economic policies to a lackadaisical attitude toward fraud).

Good luck with the election.
"Obama has conceded he has not changed the tone in Washington. And that, at times, he has lost a connection with the American people."
http://news.yahoo.com/obamas-election-road-hope-hard-climb-150438971--election.html

Tom Hickey said...

Obama's secret weapon in the election is Romney. People don't like the guy. Obama, on the other hand, is well liked.

Anonymous said...

Romney reminds every person who works for a corporation of the top boss man. In 2012 that is not a selling point.

DJF said...

@Tom

You can say Obama is well liked, as in there are still enough people who like him to allow him to still be a viable candidate for the Presidency. But he is deeply and fiercely hated by a not insignificant segment of the population. When I think of someone who is well liked its usually somebody who has a gaggle of supporters (like Obama) and non-supporters who are at worst indifferent (not like Obama). Obama has become even more polarizing than George W. Bush, something I didn't think was even possible.

You are correct in that Obama's saving grace is that there are more Obama fans than there are Romney fans, and the side that wins these things is the side that has more voters going to the polls to for FOR someone rather than AGAINST someone else. Obama will win, but there will be a large swath of deeply fearful, bitter, angry, and scared sore losers waiting for him in 2013.

Trixie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
John Zelnicker said...

y -- I dunno. Sounds like the definition of psychopath to me. :)

Matt Franko said...

Trixie,

"And I no longer believe it's just a theory."

FWIW (and FD/caveat emptor: I do not believe in 'free will' wrt these matters) I came into this revelation too a while ago now... this has become a "they know not what they do" type of thing for me.

They are made morons you can just see it, or I believe the scripture goes: "alleging themselves to be wise, they are made stupid".

Sad really for them as human beings. They are disgraced, ie UN-graced.

rsp,

mike norman said...

@Tom:

Yet despite Obama's personal popularity, his poll numbers remain weak. Neck and neck with Romney is a poor showing. He's a sitting president up against a Republican party that has done nothing to dispell their image as the party of the elites, who hate women. Let's see where Obama stands after the Dem convention.

Tom Hickey said...

Mike, I think that Nate Silver at 538 is the go-to guy on the polls.

Nate has Obama with 308.2 in the electoral college to Romney at 229.8, Obama up 9.2 since 8/27. He puts Obama's chance of winning at this point at 74.8% and Romney's at 25,2%

Anonymous said...

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-13540-5/taking-it-big

Taking It Big: C. Wright Mills and the Making of Political Intellectuals
by Stanley Aronowitz

Cloth, 288 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-13540-5
$32.50 / £22.50


C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) was a pathbreaking intellectual who transformed the independent American Left in the 1940s and 1950s. Often challenging the established ideologies and approaches of fellow leftist thinkers, Mills was central to creating and developing the idea of the “public intellectual” in postwar America and laid the political foundations for the rise of the New Left in the 1960s. Written by Stanley Aronowitz, a leading sociologist and critic of American culture and politics, Taking It Big reconstructs this icon’s formation and the new dimension of American political life that followed his work.

Aronowitz revisits Mills’s education and its role in shaping his outlook and intellectual restlessness. Mills defined himself as a maverick, and Aronowitz tests this claim (which has been challenged in recent years) against the work and thought of his contemporaries. Aronowitz describes Mills’s growing circle of contacts among the New York Intellectuals and his efforts to reenergize the Left by encouraging a fundamentally new theoretical orientation centered on more ambitious critiques of U.S. society. Blurring the rigid boundaries among philosophy, history, and social theory and between traditional orthodoxies and the radical imagination, Mills became one of the most admired and controversial thinkers of his time and was instrumental in inspiring the student and antiwar movements of the 1960s. In this book, Aronowitz not only reclaims this critical thinker’s reputation but also emphasizes his ongoing significance to debates on power in American democracy.