From The Vault: Labor Day Memories

Today is Labor Day, a national holiday on which we celebrate the labor unions which have improved working conditions and pay so dramatically that the actual jobs now go to illegal aliens, because that's the only way for many manufacturers to keep from going out of business.

Not that it's my intention to bash unions today! Over the years, they've accomplished many positive things and put an end to some horrific working conditions. If you doubt us, try looking up some vintage photos of 8-year old coal miners and then try to get their eyes and faces out of your nightmares.

That being said, my personal experience of working in a union shop left me with a highly negative attitude. It was in the early 1970's, and I had to join the United Auto Workers to work at a Ford factory in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was a summer job to earn college money, and I was moved around from position to position in the factory to cover for vacationing employees.

My first position was a night shift driving a forklift. The work was simple enough - transporting pallets of materials from one place to another. The problem was that there wasn't nearly enough work to fill the hours. When I asked the foreman what I should be doing to put in 8 hours of productivity, I was A) glared at for being a college-boy asshole and B) told that I should find a place to hide and sleep through the shift like everyone else did.

It seems the other forklift drivers did all of their work in the first hour, then retreated to hideaways inside stacks of boxes where there were makeshift beds, Playboy pinups, and the all-important alarm clocks which told my fellow workers that it was time to wake up and go home. My Protestant work ethic wouldn't allow me to do this (not to mention my fear of being crushed by falling stacks of crates "accidentally" tipped by my coworkers) so I was soon moved to daytime work on the assembly line.

This particular assembly line was for building steering columns. Every nine seconds, a unit would roll slowly by and I'd perform one quick operation on it...then move on to the next and the next and the next. There was nothing challenging about getting my contribution done in nine seconds (the union had established that this was exactly the maximum amount of work a laborer could do)...but I soon learned there was a complication.

Every man on the line not only knew how to do his own job, but also his neighbor's job within that nine second window (and without breaking a sweat). And so one man would come in every morning, punch in for himself and the second worker (who was still at home in bed) and do both jobs until lunchtime. Then the second man came in and the first man left for the day - with both time cards punched out at the end of the shift. Management knew this, but didn't dare challenge the union.

The "half day, full pay" scam eventually reached its logical conclusion when two geniuses sharing job duties figured out that neither of them would have to come in if they simply had a third guy punching their time cards in and out. And that's what they did for a long time.

And it worked out great until people driving Fords started dying because their cars suddenly veered out of control owing to the missing part in the steering column.

A massive recall followed, millions of dollars were paid in liability settlements and, of course, the two workers who were to blame were fired.

Briefly.

Yes, the UAW got them their jobs back. So fire up your grills, have a great Labor Day and  for the love of all that's holy drive carefully.

AND ONE MORE THING...

Cowabungled

Covid variants, including the new and improved "Mu" strain, continue to burn through the Greek alphabet when acquiring names. Which seems appropriate, considering we're all taking the pandemic Greek-style, if you catch our drift.

Fortunately, Mu isn't really prevalent yet because its much-more-popular cousin Delta is pretty much infecting the world right now. It's so infectious that virtually all serious scientists have agreed on the conclusion that we're all going to get it. Fortunately, vaccination seems to make it much less likely that you'll be hospitalized or have serious symptoms, but Covid has been added to the "Death and Taxes" list as something that will now always be with us.

As manmade achievements go, that's pretty damn impressive and is worthy of commemoration. Specifically, we're fatasizing about something that "escapes from a lab" and is accidentally dropped on the Wuhan Institute of Infectious Bat Viruses and Screen Doors. Nothing flashy, really - just something big enough to make the residents of Hiroshima say "Holy crap, I'm glad they didn't drop that on us."

FROM THE VAULT: LABOR DAY PAINS

Today we observe Labor Day, a celebration of the unions which gave new freedoms, wealth, and dignity to peons who previously suffered under the cruel oppression of capitalist bastards. Nowhere is this more the case than in the editorial cartooning industry, which has come so far in the past century.

Once considered a "job that Americans won't do," 100 years ago editorial cartoons were farmed out to Irish immigrants and Chinese coolies who were functionally little more than slaves, working at crude drawing tables in return for a weekly ration of potato peels or fish heads.

Later, when the Irish turned to police work and the Chinese turned to ruining SAT scores for everyone else, the greedy editorial cartoon barons put women and children (as young as four years old) into forced servitude, penning cartoons in dingy, airless factories. Their work shifts were 24 hours long, every day except Sunday - when they got 15 minutes off to pee and whimper.

Some died of ink poisoning, others died violently in the process of collecting the ink by milking octopuses, while many simply lost the will to live after being forced to look at grim news items every day.

But then the unions entered the scene and changed everything. The sweatshops were closed, women went back to prostitution, and children were again free to be beggars and pickpockets. But actual editorial cartoonists, now holding the reins of collective bargaining, became the masters of their own fate.

Today, editorial cartoonists are among the most highly paid and respected professionals in our nation, loved by all, desired by beautiful women, and universally sought after for their wit, intelligence, and dashing good looks.

Not to mention their vivid imaginations...

Kabulshit

Joe Biden took to the microphones yesterday to announce to the American public that the demonstrably disastrous pullout from Afghanistan was really a whiz-bang success of historic proportions! Everything went perfectly smoothly and according to plan, with every single goal being met. Seriously, this is the approach he decided to take (along with barking forcefully because someone told him to) and I just couldn't watch the whole speech. Especially knowing how successful "The Big Lie" can be.

Because if Joe Biden's rush for the exits was a "success," what in blithering blue Hell does a "failure" look like? Jihad Joe just gifted the Taliban with $85 billion in state-of-the-art weaponry and munitions, making them one of the best-equipped armies in the world. And that same world watched as Biden showed that America's promises no longer mean anything and we can't be trusted as allies. Moreover, hundreds of Americans and thousands of our military's Afghani partners were simply left behind despite being promised, repeatedly and recently by Biden himself, that we wouldn't pull out until he'd personally rescued each and every one of them. 

Not that these unlucky wretches will be suffering long: Joe's crack team gave the Taliban the names of all of the Americans and anti-Taliban allies left behind, seemingly not caring that this would quickly become a "kill list."

There's a lot more to be said, but I don't think I can continue without breaking into an Internet-melting stream of obscenities about Biden, his handlers and unindicted co-conspirators, the media, and every blankety-blank moron who cast a vote for this blood-drenched buffoon of a Marxist president.

So instead, I'm presenting this cartoon and commentary about Afghanistan (and Biden) from the vault, to show - sadly - how very little has changed in the past decade.,,

FROM THE VAULT (June 24, 2011)

Today's cartoon isn't subtle...but neither is war. You fight or run. You win or lose. You tell the truth or you lie like a rug. Which brings us to Barack Hussein Obama, the commander-in-chief of the United States military...God help us all. 

After recently overruling his top Whitehouse lawyers on the definition of "war" and "hostilities" in Libya (and giving the finger to Congress), Mr. Obama is now overruling his top generals and withdrawing troops from Afghanistan not when it's militarily wise, but when it will do the most good for his reelection campaign.  And it was important to announce the actual withdrawal dates right now to give our enemies time to plan for their big victory parties. 

The president and his trusty teleprompter explained all of this to the American people in flowery language that would have seemed more appropriate coming from a Poet Laureate than a president. A drunken Poet Laureate. 

"The tide of war is receding," quoth surfing aficionado Obama, indicating that he thinks military success is likely based on the gravitational pull of the moon. "Even as there will be dark days ahead in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance," he continued over a background of soothing new-age harp music. 

And Obama loves using those light/dark, future/past rhetorical juxtapositions when he speaks, because they sound great but when you put them together they mean absolutely nothing; things will be bad and things will be good? Wow, thanks for the insights, genius. 

And just where is Obama getting the military advice to take this action and likely lose a war? Not from General David Petraeus, but from his reelection campaign planners and Joe Biden, who hasn't been correct on a single foreign policy matter in his entire inexplicable career. 

Finally, Barack Obama is basically giving Afghanistan to the Taliban because, in his words, "it is time to focus on nation-building at home." Funny, we thought that a pretty good nation had already been built here... but it's obvious that this despicable little political worm of a man is intent on building something else. -