As my children constantly lament, I have long been a fan of country music. Accordingly, I could not resist this tempest in a teapot over at MSNBC where the network has had to apologize for the comments of Ebony.com senior editor Jamilah Lemieux who was mocking the statement of Senator Ted Cruz that he switched from rock to country music after 9/11. Lemieux quipped “nothing says ‘let’s go kill some Muslims’ like country music.” Yikes. Lemieux’s comments came on the MSNBC program “Now with Alex Wagner” and she appeared with Michael Steele and Joan Walsh. Lemieux added, “Fresh from Lynchburg, Virginia, so he obviously doesn’t want to be a polarizing candidate, he wants to bring people together. That’s absurd.” This would be akin to saying “nothing says ‘let’s go kill some cops’ like rap music.” As a country music fan, I will only note that country music is far more likely to be singing about your typical Cheatin’ heart than your Chechen rebels. Visiting host Ari Melber did note at the time “Well, but I mean, there’s plenty of country music that doesn’t have that message.” Melber later ended “We have a programming note. A few minutes ago on this program, a guest made a comment about country music that was not appropriate, and we want to be clear this network does not condone it.” In the end, it was a joke, folks. Country music will survive. After all, we know how to say goodbye to those who do not appreciate us. . .
110 thoughts on “MSNBC Guest: “Nothing Says ‘Let’s Go Kill Some Muslims like Country Music””
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Richard: “BFM, mistakes the American founding documents for the Communist Manifesto which is the handbook of unions.”
I suppose that someone who thinks there are no ‘American Workers’ and that ‘worker’ is a collectivist concept might think that.
But I can usually distinguish the constitution and the manifesto. And I don’t think for a minute that the manifesto is the handbook for unions.
On the contrary, if you believe in a constitutional right to contract then it is clear that unions are as American as apple pie. Why shouldn’t workers be able to cooperate and control the supply of their labor to negotiate better wages with business owners? There is nothing unconstitutional about that.
Finally people like me don’t care where a concept comes from. We don’t care whether a concept of definition was first mentioned by John Stewart Mill or by Marx or anyone else.
What matters is whether the term is useful in finding the truth, in leading to understanding. We care if the concept illuminates the subject.
As for worker being a collectivist term, I can tell you that for decades many of all political persuasions have found it useful to recognize that workers, managers and owners have interests that bring them together and interest that distinguish them. It is hard to imagine a modern discussion of economics, society or politics that some how fails to touch on the interests of workers, managers and owners.
The important point of a concept is not who first spoke it. The important point is whether it illuminates our subject and leads us closer to the truth.
Richard: ” Temporary “guest worker” passes have no bearing on the nation of America.”
I don’t think that stands up to scrutiny. If you believe that demand and supply play a role in determining price then it seems to me that the increase in supply of labor by guest workers ought to, centeris parabus, influence the prevailing wage rate. That is one effect right there.
In addition it seems that guest workers would both influence and be influenced by their interactions with citizens. I would expect to see influence in language, music, cuisine. Who knows, we might even see friendships blossom with marriages and children to follow.
The claim that temporary worker have no bearing, that is no influence, on America seems questionable to me?
You know, I will even go further. I can imagine that temporary workers might even gain enough political and social influence to change laws. How about that. Temporary workers making friends and political alliances that lead to court cases and legislation that change the culture of American. Who would have thought?
@Richard: “American corporations are free to hire anyone anywhere.”
Perhaps the concept of child labor law is new to you.
Perhaps you have never heard of the many licenses and restrictions place on employees and employers. In some jurisdictions you can’t even run a kitchen without somebody with a food handlers card on site.
Perhaps you should read a bit about the many restrictions on international trade. Perhaps you should check to see what it takes to open a business in Cuba or North Korea or Iran.
“The birthrate leveled in the 1960’s. Americans STOPPED increasing the population. This was not a governmental order. The people did it because they considered that there were enough people. I’m not debating that, it’s a fact.”
I don’t doubt that the fertility rate changed.
But I would argue that your ‘fact’ claiming people did it because ‘they considered that there were enough people’ is pure, unsupported conjecture.
If you work hard you might find some evidence to indicate why the birth rate fell.
But the idea that millions of adults of child bearing age in the 1050’s through the 1980’s decided to used birth control because of their collective concern regarding national demographics a generation or two in the future strikes me as questionable.
I will bet there are many reasons why adults and families decided to limit the number of children. I would guess that many made decisions on the basis of their income to support a additional child, time to parent a additional child, housing and room for an additional child, and women’s growing interest in jobs and careers were important considerations.
And those reasons do not even touch on the improved technology for birth control. The increased effectiveness of birth control techniques including the pill and intrauterine devices would have reduced the fertility rate regardless of changes in attitudes.
I could be mistaken but I believe there is a very extensive literature regarding the causes for declining fertility rates. You might want to actually read some of it.
We can talk the Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights and the intent of the Founders,
or we can talk statutes and enforcement in Las Vegas, Nevada, irrefutably the home of the Mob.
My point is that “immigration” is important and bears on America. Temporary “guest worker” passes have no bearing on the nation of America. “Guest workers” do not become citizens, they do not vote, there is no need for them to become citizens, they are not assimilable and they have no understanding or grasp of the American culture as described by the Founders, which, as evil as it sounds, is European.
Americans stopped increasing the population in the 1960’s. The collectivists began using “immigration” as a tool to manipulate the vote. Temporary “guest worker” passes circumvent the collectivist vote fraud accomplished through “immigration.” That really makes them mad.
BFM, mistakes the American founding documents for the Communist Manifesto which is the handbook of unions. The Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights establish Freedom and Free Enterprise without government interference, NOT unions and their right to strike and preclude the hiring of replacement workers, etc. Free companies can hire free foreigners as “guest workers” but companies don’t need to. Corporations aren’t stupid, they can get around the dictates and dictatorship of communist unions.
If we’re free, we can’t be dictated to by unions, homosexuals, racists or any other entities.
Free people live their lives and live with the consequences of freedom,
understanding the laws against mental, physical, financial, etc. damage.
P.S. How about that corruption, which, in America, starts at the SCOTUS which blatantly falsified that compelling a product purchase, healthcare insurance, was constitutional in the Obamacare debacle. And can you read, the “exchanges must be state and cannot be federal?” The SCOTUS can’t read that; just imagine. Next thing you know the SCOTUS, because it can’t read, will force busing, “fair” housing (unfair to the property owner, imagine, in America, a property owner is told by the government what to do with his property and that is constitutional? WTF?) and things like affirmative action which provides welfare education and welfare jobs. Oh, hell yeah! That SCOTUS really knows the Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights, in the context of the intent of the Founders and the American thesis. The American Revolutionaries got rid of the dictatorship of the King, only to have it replaced by the dictatorship of the collectivists, those elitist, judgmental and morally superior collectivists, the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Richard – the Preamble is not enforceable.
@Richard
So far as I can tell you seem to think that just about everything that has happened since roughly 1812 is a communist conspiracy furthered by a corrupt supreme court that can’t read.
Even as hyperbolic satire your remarks seem a bit over the top to me.
I will leave it to readers to decide whether they think it makes any sense to claim, as you did, that there are no American Workers – and then go on and discuss, at length, the effects of foreign workers and guest workers.
I will leave it to readers to decide whether they think your sentence:
‘ The government doesn’t restrict workers or businesses, either at home or in foreign country.’
makes any sense. I have to wonder, if the government does not restrict workers or businesses then why would government laws and actions be of such concern to so many? Why would we be discussing the constitution and government here?
And I will give a brief hint to readers regarding your statement:
“The Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights establish Freedom and Free Enterprise without government interference, “.
Maybe, just maybe during your careful, in depth study of the constitution you missed that part about patent and copyright which are specifically intended to regulate certain kinds of enterprise.
I think I would have to argue the founding fathers had a very different idea about free enterprise than the one you have made up.
Of course you might want to argue that aspects of the constitution such as patent and copyright were put in the constitution by those sneaky communist founding fathers.
Considering some of the readers here, you might actually convince some of them.
I hope you will take the time to write more about your views of what the constitution contains, immigration, free enterprise, the constitutionality of laws passed since the early 19th century, corruption and reading ability at the supreme court and the many other issues you have touched on.
You have clearly given these issues some thought. You do have an interesting view. And I look forward to reading more.
BFM, American corporations, as a private matter, capture labor at low wages in China and elsewhere, as you well know. Just like you buy the low price items at Walmart.
The only CONSTANT and the only thing government can provide is freedom.
Unions can complain about everything all day long.
The only universal axiom is freedom.
American corporations are free to hire anyone anywhere.
Please direct me to the section of the Preamble, Constitution or Bill of Rights that restricts the freedom of individuals and the companies they comprise to do business anywhere, or free foreign workers with “guest worker” passes to work for free American businesses anywhere.
Richard – as part of the Free Enterprise system (or rather corrupt government) Sen. Harry Reid pressured INS for 260 guest worker cards for a Las Vegas Casino with ties to his son Ray. It appears the 260 guest workers are actually investors in the casino rather than workers. The card will fast track them as citizens.
BFM,
The birthrate leveled in the 1960’s. Americans STOPPED increasing the population. This was not a governmental order. The people did it because they considered that there were enough people. I’m not debating that, it’s a fact.
If we assume the last fact, Americans made the statement that they did not want to increase the population. Americans were polite and had no intention of disparaging foreigners. The “government,” whoever that is and whatever realm it exists in, took steps to increase the population against the demonstrated desire of the people of America.
Now, polling produces many results. The problem with contemporary polling is that it is not polling of Americans as it includes population levels that, as we discussed, were undesirable in the 1960’s when Americans leveled the birthrate. Contemporary population levels were compelled by actions, including no action to control the border, of the government. To poll Americans one would have to use population statistics generated by Americans in the 1960’s.
***
There is no such thing as an American worker. That would be a collectivist’s reference. According to the founding documents, there are free American citizens. Foreign workers are also free to apply to immigrate or to apply for a “guest worker” pass if a free American company wants to hire them. Immigration appears not to have been the desire of Americans because they stopped increasing the population on their own. “Guest workers” must be allowed to temporary passage to jobs when hired by free American companies.
Labor unions do not dictate anything in America or any part of the freedom of free individuals or free enterprises. Unions are not dictators under the founding documents. Unions are usually criminal thugs engaged in illegal activities in America. Government unions are illegal and antithetical. Union attempts to usurp power and dictate is nullification and insurrection. That is treason.
There is American free enterprise and conducting business is legal. Conducting business with companies and customers in foreign countries is legal and free enterprise as conducted without interference by the government.
Workers from any free country can go to any free country and work or conduct business.
I simply do not understand where government has any authority in the conduct of free enterprise or the particular work of a separate individual.
Companies are free to do business.
Workers are free to work.
Workers are free to strike.
Companies are free to hire replacement workers.
Freedom and Free Enterprise.
You imply that the conduct of business and work is somehow related to government in free America under the founding documents.
There is an entirely different situation under the Communist Manifesto.
I’m not sure which part of free you don’t understand.
The government in America was absolutely NOT established as a collectivist workers union hall. The government was not established to be an arm of DuPont, Colgate or Harford.
The Dept. of Labor has absolutely no Constitutional basis.
The Constitutional obligation is to assure that all Americans are free to “pursue happiness” in their careers and their businesses.
If you read the Preamble, you see before the entire government which is:
Justice, Tranquility, Common Defence, Promote the General Welfare (utilities).
The “blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” (not to the government)
are Freedom and Free Enterprise without governmental interference.
It’s really quite simple. In America, the dynamics are in the private sector as “blessings of liberty” without government interference.
The government doesn’t coddle workers or businesses. The government doesn’t restrict workers or businesses, either at home or in foreign country.
” America is overpopulated, polluted with people and overcrowded.”
The fact is that US workers have more in common with immigrants than with the elites.
If you want to reduce immigration then, once again, you ought to talk to the corporations, and their lobbyist, that benefit from low paid workers entering the country and the economy.
Pitting workers, and the economically displaced, against immigrants is a ploy to distract the lower 60% from recognizing who benefits from the economic policies that prevent workers from sharing in economic growth.
From the end of the recession 2009 till the end of 2014 gdp grew from about 14.4 trillion dollars to about 17.7 trillion dollars.
Yet the lower 80% took home amazingly little of that growth in income. the top 1% took nearly 95% of all that recovery.
That did not happen by accident. They did not earn it all them selves. Much of the gain pocketed by the top 1% flowed to them because legislation, economic rents – returns above and beyond what competition would allow due to position and power, the ability of management to influence compensation committees and write their own contracts. Sure the elites work hard. But the benefit far beyond their contribution because of sacrifices made by the bottom 80%.
The elites and their lobbyist put in place legislation that sent jobs abroad, made it impossible to negotiate a living wage, and destroyed unions. The situation has improved over the past year. But still there are nearly 2 unemployed job seekers for every job opening.
America was FULL and mature in the 1960’s. Americans stopped increasing its population by leveling the birthrate. That was the polling data on the popularity of so-called “immigration.” America is overpopulated, polluted with people and overcrowded.
All “immigration” post-1960’s is invasion not immigration and it is insidious.
Dave Stamey put it politely and in an earthy fashion:
“Someone needs to go back home,
Cause the West ain’t gonna hold us all.”
SOMEONE NEEDS TO GO BACK HOME
Written by Dave Stamey
Go west, go west
That’s what Horace Greeley said,
But that was years and years ago
Now Horace Greeley’s dead
But the people all keep commin’
And there bringin’ all their stuff
If Horace was around today
He’d say that’s enough
For there’s houses on the coast line
There’s houses in the hills
If there’s room to build a house there
You can dang sure bet they will
And sidewalks and super marts
And parkin’ for the cars
And big old golden arches shinin’
Where there once was stars
Someone needs to go back home
Cause the west ain’t goin’ to hold us all
The western green got covered up
They built a shoppin’ mall
Someone needs to go back home
Where grandpa use to run his cows
There’s now a Chuckie Cheese
And you can’t stop ’em boys
Your just spittin’ in the breeze
The desert blooms with golf courses
Green grass grows
And where the water’s comin’ from
There ain’t nobody knows
Someone needs to go back home
Cause the west ain’t goin’ to hold us all
The western green got covered up
They built a shoppin’ mall
Someone needs to go back home
There must be towns back east
Where there ain’t nobody left
Someplace they might go back to
If they ain’t pooped in their nest
Out here there’s only traffic jams
People every where
A bunch of rolin’ hemorrhoids
Fowling up the air
Someone needs to go back home
Cause the west ain’t goin’ to hold us all
The western green got covered up
They built a shoppin’ mall
Someone needs to go back home
Yeah, someone needs to go back home
BFM, the last time I checked the DIFFERENT words meant DIFFERENT entities such as STATE and MAN. If citizens have the right to private property, that property cannot be public property, presumably, with the exception of Eminent Domain, the extremity.
The Founders, in their lives and in their documents, did not take money from one man to give it to another for his discretionary or any other type of spending. The Founders had no concept of direct cash payments or welfare as we know it today, other than charity.
It would appear, not being a lawyer, that there is complete separation between literal men and levels of governments referred to here as states.
Taxation occurred without doubt or argument for GOVERNMENTAL OPERATIONS such as those enumerated brilliantly in the Preamble: Justice, Tranquility, Common Defence and Promotion of General Welfare (not individual “welfare”).
Redistribution of wealth was not introduced until Marx’s Communist Manifesto. The Manifesto, obviously, did not need to be written if redistribution existed in the American Founding documents and thesis.
The lives Americans lived in 1789 did not consider or include direct cash payments, of what is known commonly today, as “welfare.”
It is interesting that the USA is not simply America but the United States of America. It’s as if the Founders planned for SECESSION as Scotland, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the entire USSR experienced. Oops. If those were legitimate, they would make Lincoln a criminal and wrong and VOID HIS UNCONSTITUTIONAL EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION AND ALL HIS UNCONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS.
I presume that the Founders recognized the unity of the states as one “America” and provided money for that level or form of governance, while, simultaneously, providing for spending at the individual state level, presumably funded by state taxation. The U.S. military is funded by all states, correct?
Aren’t we talking about the inherent and inexorable inequality of “taxation” and a separate and different issue of giving free money to the arbitrarily chosen “victim du jour” or affirmative action beneficiary?
If you pass legislation related to things like trade agreements, balance of trade, exchange rates for the dollar that take the “victim du jour”s job then you own him some kind of support till he can get back on his feet.
When you start complaining about the corporate handouts to people like the Koch brothers then I will believe you are not a hypocritical troll for the top 1%.
From the end of the recession 2009 till now the top 1% took nearly 95% of the recovery. That did not happen by accident. The happened because laws paid for by corporate lobbyist directed income to the top. Now they have the nerve, the audacity and the pain stupidity to complain about food stamps that let families eat.
It is an outrage. It ought to make you furious. What we need are some recall elections to pull out the bought-off flunkies.
Do you really think you can keep fooling people when you transfer their jobs to third world countries and make the ones who still have jobs compete with workers who ride a bicycle to work, eat rice twice a day, and have no hope of sending to children to college. That did not happen by accident. That happened by legislation.
When you legislate a citizen out of his job, his house and his future you better find a way to give him a hand up.
In the mean time there is will be plenty in the budget for food stamps when we re-direct the tax stream from corporate handouts to the economic victims of short sighted corporate policies.
BTW, the founding fathers never had the experience of corporate lobbyist buying legislation. The times change. The facts change. And the required solutions change.
Keep you eye on the problem and the solutions become apparent.
bfm – speaking of hand-outs. There is talk that the real reason the Harry Reid is retiring is that there is a better than even chance there will be a Republican AG after 2016. The is an IG report out this week that shows he pressured INS to fast-track green cards for some 260+ people for a casino. He also is involved with Melendez on some shady deal.
Although there is another report that the mob beat him up and he decided it was time to save his life.
Thanks for the heads-up. We will be watching Reid’s career trajectory with great interest.
Isn’t it wonderful that the house and the senate have an outplacement program for those who have to leave their position for what ever reason.
SF, you hardly ever think about it but you present it on these threads persistently. I’m just guessing that were your “needs met,” you might be less conscious of, less desirous of and less vociferous on the subject. It’s anecdotal but it appears to be continuing theme as if compelled by some emotion unrequited. Are you out of batteries, of course, I mean you cell phone?
The American dream turning into a night mare when workers have not had a raise in real wages in thirty years and ‘return to prosperity’ after the recession means the top 1% gets 95% or the increase in GDP since 2009.
That means some communities are still in the depths of the recession and will be for the foreseeable future.
But don’t think about that because we have a new TPP trade agreement that turns your sovereignty and your legislation over for adjudication by tribunals run for and by corporations.
Don’t believe me? Just look it up and see for your self. Oh, that’s right, you can’t because its all being done in secrecy and passed Fast-Track without debate.
Nick and Paul
I still think the medium was better done back then. Listen to a Phil Ochs record.
Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’ still beats anything done today, and guess what, no profanities, no bling, no secret hand signals.
That is a false stereotype. In general, white, rural Americans– crackers, rednecks, hoosiers, oakies, etc.; are just and hospitable to different sorts of people, even those who keep hating them. Like Mme. Lemieux, or should I call her Le Mauvais….. just because poor white people have been this nation’s cannon fodder in the wars to protect American corporate interests, doesn’t mean they really believe the phony slogans and excuses for these wars. Like “They hate us for our freedoms” what nonsense.
@Richard
No, I don’t think my libido is a problem, because I hardly ever think about it. Yes, I could get men easily, but I don’t want them, sooo the problem there is trying to chase them off without hurting their feelings too much in the process. Sometimes when I go out drinking with my BFF Fabia Sheen, Esq,, an attorney, I will wear a ring on my left hand and tell the goobers I am married so they will quit pestering me.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky Fromm, this is anecdotal but YOUR obsession seems related to libido. That theme appears to run through your posts. If that proposition has a degree of veracity, what would you attribute it to? Presumably, you are sufficiently attractive to obtain resolution of your requirements.