Five interesting things about Joe the Plumber getting a union job

As LU readers know, Joe the Plumber (Samuel, or “Joe,” Wurzelbacher) recently got a job with Chrysler, for which he had to join the UAW.  He wrote about his first few days on the job at Joe for America.  So, in turn, did a lot of reporters and bloggers.  Here are five things I found interesting.

1.  The first fellow union member to make a freighted political comment to Joe was someone who called him a “teabagger.”

I had three days of orientation, and now I’m “on the job” over here at Chrysler and on Day 4, I’m outside on a break smoking a cigarette and right on cue – some guy calls me a “teabagger.”

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There may not always be an England

Q.  When does the British government subsidize a TV channel that carries the rants of anti-gay religious fanatics?

A.  When the TV station is run by Islamist extremists.

OK, that one was a softball.  But it’s worth pointing out a telling contrast in the British government’s stance on people’s right to think unapproved thoughts about homosexuality.

Here is what Mr. Abdullah Hakim Quick, a speaker who has been featured on Britain’s Ramadan TV, has to say about gays:

Read the full post at Hot Air

Existential crisis: Apparently, the political left has gone completely insane

First, there was the Lena Dunham ad – released by the Obama campaign – in which Dunham riffed coyly on a girl’s “first time” as an apparent metaphor for voting.  Make Obama the one for you, was the point of the ad.

Then came the creepy ad for Obama – not released by the Obama campaign itself – in which ghoulishly lit children sang Stalinist social-justice accusations against their parents.

Now comes an ad produced by Michael Moore

What do Liberals Want?

This is a question that continues to nag at me.  At the outset, it is important, I think, to qualify “liberals,” as that is a diverse group that may not all want exactly the same thing.  What I am really referring to is Obama supporters – so of course by “liberals” I mean left-liberals (not classical liberals, as Europeans define them, who tend to embrace policy stances that resonate with conservatives in America).  This category of left-liberal may include progressives, radicals, statists, socialists, and collectivists, but its largest contingent is probably just people who have a sense that by voting for leftists, they are doing something morally superior to voting for rightists; although they don’t seem to have a lot of positive definitions that clarify how that works.

That is the question I am trying to get to the nub of.  What is it, in a positive sense, that Obama supporters want?