Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Bark louder, little dog.

We still have time to mess this up!

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

How stupid are these people?

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

“But what about the lurkers?”

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

So many bastards, so little time.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

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162Comments

  2. 2.

    pixelpusher

    You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
    Another day older and deeper in debt
    Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
    I owe my soul to the company store

  3. 3.

    PurpleGirl

    DougJ — It’s Union MAID.

    ETA: I don’t have a particular labor-themed song but I like almost anything sung by Pete Seeger.

  7. 7.

    Davis X. Machina

    Avvanti populo a la riscossa
    Bandiera rossa, bandiera rossa
    Avanti popolo, alla riscossa,
    Bandiera rossa trionferà!

    Best part of Matewan, when the scabs throw down their shovels, and the bosses realize just whom they hired to strikebreak.

    Viva lo sciopero!

  8. 8.

    SiubhanDuinne

    What pixelpusher said. Also, “Workin’ in a coal mine, goin’ down down down” is catchy.

  9. 9.

    SiubhanDuinne

    What pixelpusher said. Also, “Workin’ in a coal mine, goin’ down down down” is catchy.

  14. 14.

    FlipYrWhig

    Billy Bragg does a bracing “Which Side Are You On?” I should dip back into his back catalogue sometime soon.

  15. 15.

    Davis X. Machina

    “Bread and Roses.”

    Mimi Fariña and Joanie Baez, a capella.

    Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
    Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.

    If I were a US history teacher, I don’t think I could keep a job.

  16. 16.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Whole buncha Springsteen would fit… The River (whole damn album), Youngstown, Atlantic City, etc.

  20. 20.

    MikeJ

    Athens GA labour:
    Pylon – Working is no Problem
    REM – Finest Worksong

    OK, neither one really advances the movement, but fun. And I just fucking love Pylon.

  26. 26.

    lamh34

    I’m hearing that POTUS gave a pretty good speech in Detroit, introduced by Queen of Soul and hometown Detroit girl Aretha Franklin.

    But if a tree falls in a forest…?

    Anyone else see or hear it?

  30. 30.

    adolphus

    Does Stan Ridgeway’s I Wanna Be a Boss count?
    If not his 16 Tons is haunting, if a bit long.
    Also:
    Primus Those Damn Blue Collar Tweekers
    Oingo Boingo Wild Sex (in the working class)
    XTC Love on a Farm Boy’s Wages
    Timbuk3 Down in the Mine
    Rush Working Man
    Tom Waits Heigh Ho (The Dwarfs Marching Song)
    Men They Couldn’t Hang: Rain, Steam, and Speed and Iron Masters.

    I’m really dating myself here.

  33. 33.

    Yutsano

    @eemom: He’s gonna send about ten angry e-mails to JC a day, then when the ban is lifted will be even more argumentative than before. I’ll make popcorn.

  36. 36.

    adolphus

    Also One’s on the Way written by Shel Silverstein and made popular by Loretta Lynn is an awesome song about the work of a housewife in the age of women’s liberation.

    So it is kind of a labor song AND a labor song.

  37. 37.

    eemom

    @Kane:

    Is Take This Job and Shove It a labor song?

    most certainly. I love the rap version of that at the end of Office Space.

  39. 39.

    Davis X. Machina

    @lamh34:

    Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa had some profane, combative words for Republicans while warming up the crowd for President Obama in Detroit, Michigan on Monday.
    __
    “We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war,” Jimmy Hoffa Jr. said to a heavily union crowd.
    __
    “President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong,” Hoffa added.

  53. 53.

    eemom

    @Yutsano:

    ain’t it delicious though? Mr. Too Cool For School reduced to groveling for re-entry at the feet of that same John Cole whom he routinely mocks and ridicules.

    bwaaahaaahaaahaaahaaaa. Again.

    Where is mon General? I must share this moment with him.

  61. 61.

    Cat Lady

    @SBJules:

    I just saw Arlo perform Saturday night at the Guthrie Center in Great Barrington. He told a funny story about how the song came to be, with Woody and Pete being approached by the head of a ladies auxiliary complaining that all the union songs were about the men and nothing about the ladies auxiliary. After they wrote and performed Union Maid, the same lady came up to them again complaining they didn’t write about the ladies auxiliary, and then Arlo sang the song that Woody made up for her right on the spot. Then he led us on a sing along of This Land Is Your Land, and a couple of other Pete Seeger songs. It was pretty great.

  63. 63.

    FlipYrWhig

    @adolphus: Wow, haven’t seen the name “Men They Couldn’t Hang” in 20 years! I was happily reminiscing until you said you were dating yourself. I must be downright superannuated.

  65. 65.

    Bruce S

    #60 – when this moron manages to post one solitary thing on this thread that isn’t totally irrelevant and ridiculous, you might end up with some shred of a point. I won’t hold my breath.

  66. 66.

    MikeJ

    @BBA: One thing has always annoyed me about that song and the type of person who might sing it.

    We’ll change the country bit by bit
    so nobody will notice it

    Is supposed to be a shot at how those undermining the principles of the party will eventually get everything they want. Which is a valid thing to complain about. Except that it’s usually sung by the type of people who in the US would say “public option or nothing!”.

  69. 69.

    Cat Lady

    @Cat Lady:

    After they wrote and performed Union Maid, the same lady came up to them again complaining they didn’t write about the ladies auxiliary

    Proto-firebagger apparently, it occurs to me.

  75. 75.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Yutsano: Hours will go by when it’s possible to have a conversation with him, and it might be pointed, but it’ll at least be on topic and represent an exchange of actual opinions. Then a moment will come, unexpectedly, where he seems to stop having fun entirely and instead wants to throw down with whoever happens to be around.

  76. 76.

    eemom

    There is also John Mellencamp’s Rain On The Scarecrow, though I guess technically farm is a different category from labor.

  79. 79.

    Bruce S

    eemom – you’re right at #70. I’m mortified…but you’ve still managed to fuck up the thread with horseshit that no sane person could possibly give a shit about. No apologies for calling you out. And definitely do your best to counter my “pompous ass” or “clown” comments in suitable circumstances. I look forward to it.

  83. 83.

    Amir Khalid

    @eemom:

    technically farm is a different category from labor.

    Depends on what kind of farmer you’re talking about, I guess. If the farmer works the land himself, I’d say he counts as working class.

  86. 86.

    burnspbesq

    “A Miner’s Life” by the great Irish-American band Solas.

    http://new.music.yahoo.com/solas/tracks/miners-life–34383680

    Also, “Union Man” by Blue Highway. And Patty Loveless’ version of “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” never fails to send chills up my spine.

    I’m two generations removed from one of those mill towns in Upstate New York that doesn’t have any mills any more. There but for the grace of God, and some scholarship money that my old man got, go I.

  88. 88.

    eemom

    @Bruce S:

    horseshit that no sane person could possibly give a shit about.

    as is evidenced by the fact that at least three other people have commented on the merits of such “horseshit.”

    hey Yutsy, Suzanne and Flip — did you know yer not SANE?

    And definitely do your best to counter my “pompous ass” or “clown” comments in suitable circumstances. I look forward to it.

    Counter as I may, you will still be a pompous ass.

  91. 91.

    Amir Khalid

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    Ah, but would that legal classification place farm workers — or for that matter, small farmers — outside the cohort we call “the working class”? I think not.

  92. 92.

    burnspbesq

    @Bruce S:

    You’re being an idiot here. Corner Stone got what he’s had coming to him for a very long time. Even if you disagree, you lost when you took the bait. So stow it.

  95. 95.

    burnspbesq

    @Amir Khalid:

    Well, small farmers have benefited from price supports, government-guaranteed loans, and a variety of other sorts of welfare for a very long time, so it’s a little ambiguous.

  97. 97.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    .
    .
    Favorite Labor Day song? Obviously, I vote with c u n d gulag – “(You’re) Having My Baby” by Paul Anka.
    .
    .

  102. 102.

    barath

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Hmm…I don’t see a comments section. (Maybe it’s adblock plus that’s blocking them.) Anyway, it’s for the best…unmoderated newspaper comment sections are usually troll breeding grounds.

  104. 104.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @PeakVT: And Aussie friend once told me that Garrett has three dance moves, all involving his arm movements: 1) the scissors (self-explanatory), 2) the box (wherein his hands alternately indicate the top and sides of a box), and 3) the spastic (also self-explanatory).

  108. 108.

    eemom

    omg, Telegraph Road! An absolute masterpiece of both lyrics and music.

    I used to like to go to work
    but they shut it down
    I got a right to go to work
    but there’s no work here to be found
    And they say we’re gonna have to pay what’s owed
    We’re gonna have to reap from some seed that’s been sowed
    …………..
    But believe in me baby and I’ll take you away
    from out of this darkness and into the day
    from these rivers of headlights, these rivers of rain
    from the anger that lives in the streets with these names
    ’cause I’ve run every red light on memory lane
    I’ve seen desperation explode into flames
    and I don’t wanna see it again
    From all of these signs saying sorry but we’re closed
    all the way down the telegraph road.

    …..and the guitar run that follows is INCREDIBLE.

  110. 110.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    Industrial Disease.

    Yeah, now the work force is disgusted down tools and walks
    Innocence is injured, experience just talks
    Everyone seeks damages and everyone agrees
    That these are classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze

    On ITV and BBC they talk about the curse
    Philosophy is useless, theology is worse
    History boils over, there’s an Economics freeze
    Sociologists invent words that mean industrial disease

  111. 111.

    Yutsano

    Getting my oil change and CNN has the conservatard hackfest on. Newt is up and babbling talking points like no end. Tax cuts, deregulation, throw out the Messicans, and drill baby drill. And no plans to pay for any of it.

  112. 112.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    Harlan Man – Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band

    Last verse:

    I’m a union man
    Just like my daddy and all my kin
    I’ll take a union stand
    No matter what the company said

    I’ve got me two good hands
    Just as long as I’m able I won’t give in
    Cause I’m a Harlan man
    Be a coal minin’ mother tell the day I’m dead

  113. 113.

    Sly

    Though not an explicit labor anthem, Bill Wither’s Lean On Me was based on his childhood in a coal mining company town in West Virginia.

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    The Austrian Schoolers have always made up for their numerical inferiority by adding more decibels and mendacity to their already existing panoply of obnoxium ever since the Keynesians began kicking their ass in the European academies in the 1930s and 40s.

    The signature Austrian School text of the 20th century, cited by more Austrian Schoolers than virtually any other, posited that Great Britain would turn into a fascist dictatorship because of the NHS and the National Insurance Act (their version of our original Social Security Act). That Clement Attlee, one of the most milquetoast and deferential politicians ever to hold the Prime Ministership, was some kind of ne’er-do-well, ersatz Adolf Hitler. And Ludwig von Mises, the man from whom Mises.org derives its name, is now mostly famous among economists for insisting that Milton Friendman was, in fact, a communist.

    They’re irrelevance has made them crazy.

  116. 116.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    @Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:

    I was born and raised at the mouth of the Hazard Holler
    Where the coal cars rolled and rumbled past my door
    But now they stand in a rusty row of all empties
    Because the L & N don’t stop here anymore

    Jeanie Richie

  117. 117.

    arguingwithsignposts

    Someone mentioned Billy Bragg earlier, but not There is Power in the Union.
    Now I long for the morning that they realise
    Brutality and unjust laws can not defeat us
    But who’ll defend the workers who cannot organise
    When the bosses send their lackies out to cheat us?

    Money speaks for money, the Devil for his own
    Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone?
    What a comfort to the widow, a light to the child
    There is power in a Union

  119. 119.

    Pappy G

    If you consider white collar profit drone work to be labor, Corporation Enema by Royal Crescent Mob.

  120. 120.

    Yutsano

    Ron Paul is up next. Hoo boy is he going for the crazy. I’ve counted three dogwhistles so far.

  121. 121.

    Jewish Steel

    Was trying to think of a working man’s reggae song

    In the period when the song was written, virtually all the power in the Jamaican music industry was in the hands of Coxsone Dodd and Duke Reid, who represent the “big tree” that musicians would have to cooperate to cut down.[1]

    Small Axe

  126. 126.

    KRK

    The whole 25th Anniversary Revue album of the 1937 Broadway show Pins and Needles, including:

    “Sing Me A Song With Social Significance”
    “Doing The Reactionary”
    “One Big Union For Two”
    “It’s Better With A Union Man”
    “Not Cricket To Picket”
    “Back To Work”
    “Chain Store Daisy”

    Pins and Needles was an ILGWU production and is purportedly “the only hit ever produced by a labor union, and the only time when a group of unknown non-professionals brought a successful musical to Broadway.”

  127. 127.

    superluminar

    @Sly
    Agree with the rest of your comment, but your characterization of Attlee is BS. The guy was the greatest PM of the UK bar none, and is remembered as our equivalent to FDR, so “milquetoast”? GTFO.

  133. 133.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    are there any songs about the Triangle Factory Fire?

    Don’t know, but there really ought to be. Some songwriter should be able to tie it together with the chicken house fire in North Carolina in 1991. Management locked the exit doors in both of them.

  135. 135.

    celticragonchick

    Great song for the north Carolina cotton mills by Si Kahn:

    GOODBYE MONDAY BLUES

    Chorus:
    Goodbye Monday blues
    Goodbye card room fever
    Cotton dust has got my lungs
    You know I’m bound to leave you

    Verses:
    When I was a little thing
    Up in Pickins County
    My daddy took me from the farm
    To be a mill town baby

    Not a man in all these mills
    Could beat me once for doffing
    Now it’s all that I can do
    To sit here without coughing

    Old man staring at his glass
    In some back street bar room
    These was once the fastest hands
    In spinning, spool or card room

    Si Kahn here with Gone Gonna Rise Again

  137. 137.

    celticragonchick

    For the white collar working drone, here is a great one from Scythian called Cubicles and Tylenol…</a

    Cubicles and Tylenol

    Slave away the day

    Pass the glass, make the moment last

    Tomorrow's just a day away

    Screaming clock, crooked walk, ungodly hour

    Curse the man as you stand in the shower

    Wondering how you ever landed the subscription

    To punching clocks and wearing socks and office friction

    As you snake, brake, make your way through traffic

    You see the SOB's in HOV are laughing

    Run the hall, to your stall, all perspired

    You find you're late, it's half past eight and you're fired

    Cubicles and Tylenol

    Slave away the day

    Pass the glass, make the moment last

    Tomorrow's just a day away

    Pass the glass, make the moment last

    Tomorrow's just a day away

    Like a drone, on the phone, taking orders

    Hide in bathrooms and wander in the corridors

    Pleading, begging as the seconds pass like hours

    For salvation from the clock's sadistic power

    Afternoon, as you swoon, at your desktop

    Jump online, wasting time, feel your brain stop

    Suffer endlessly from your boss's mood swings

    As you think about your drink when the bell rings

    Cubicles and Tylenol

    Slave away the day

    Pass the glass, make the moment last

    Tomorrow's just a day away

    Pass the glass, make the moment last

    Tomorrow's just a day away

    Five long days in an office space

    You wonder where the years have gone

    (Five long days in an office space

    You wonder where the years have gone)

    If this isn't just a white collar prison

    Tell, where did the promises go wrong?

    Cubicles and Tylenol

    Slave away the day

    Pass the glass, make the moment last

    Tomorrow's just a day away

    Pass the glass, make the moment last

    Tomorrow's just a day away

  139. 139.

    suzanne

    @eemom:

    hey Yutsy, Suzanne and Flip—did you know yer not SANE?

    I thought that if I did in fact know that, then I was sane. The greatest catch there is, right?

    I also think this is a great song, though it’s more about health care than labor. But the point is the same.

  140. 140.

    Bruce S

    #92 – “Even if you disagree, you lost when you took the bait. So stow it.”

    If I were an utterly childish loser and moron I’d tell you “Make me!” like a certan “eemom.” But I’ll pass and simply set you straight. I haven’t lost shit because as it stands, my only point is that the childish crap dominating ABL’s threads is beyond absurd and best kept where it seems to matter to some who are invested in the crazy. It’s annoying to see it spill over into other blog posts. If that makes me “pompous” I’ll take accusations of “pompous” over the quality of intellect exhibited here by eemom. “Teehee” indeed.

  144. 144.

    Chad N Freude

    OMG! How could I have forgotten the Union rally in “The Pajama Game”? For all you kids on my lawn who are too young or too straight (Doris Day is in the clip) to know this, The Pajama Game was a ’50s musical comedy about labor relations in a pajama factory. For maximum impact, you have to watch it all the way to the end.

  146. 146.

    Sly

    @superluminar:

    Agree with the rest of your comment, but your characterization of Attlee is BS. The guy was the greatest PM of the UK bar none, and is remembered as our equivalent to FDR, so “milquetoast”? GTFO.

    I’m not saying he was a bad politician, just referencing Attlee’s personal style. Out of any leader of the Western world at the time, he was the politician least likely to engage in any kind of bombastic demagoguery or self-adulation. The man was practically congenial to a fault, and not exactly the harbinger of jack booted fascism.

    As for the UK’s equivalent of FDR, I think that would more likely be David Lloyd George.

  149. 149.

    dilford

    Late to this thread, but for my (unemployed) 2 cents worth, I enjoyed hearing Fats Waller singing “Hallelujah! I’m a Bum” today.

  153. 153.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    james connolly
    black47

    Marchin’ down O’Connell Street with the Starry Plough on high
    There goes the Citizen Army with their fists raised in the sky
    Leading them is a mighty man with a mad rage in his eye
    “My name is James Connolly – I didn’t come here to die

    But to fight for the rights of the working man
    And the small farmer too
    Protect the proletariat from the bosses and their screws
    So hold on to your rifles, boys, and don’t give up your dream
    Of a Republic for the workin’ class, economic liberty”

    Then Jem yelled out “Oh Citizens, this system is a curse
    An English boss is a monster, an Irish one even worse
    They’ll never lock us out again and here’s the reason why
    My name is James Connolly, I didn’t come here to die…..”

    And now we’re in the GPO with the bullets whizzin’ by
    With Pearse and Sean McDermott biddin’ each other goodbye
    Up steps our citizen leader and roars out to the sky
    “My name is James Connolly, I didn’t come here to die…

    Oh Lily, I don’t want to die, we’ve got so much to live for
    And I know we’re all goin’ out to get slaughtered, but I just can’t take any more
    Just the sight of one more child screamin’ from hunger in a Dublin slum
    Or his mother slavin’ 14 hours a day for the scum
    Who exploit her and take her youth and throw it on a factory floor
    Oh Lily, I just can’t take any more

    They’ve locked us out, they’ve banned our unions, they even treat their animals better than us
    No! It’s far better to die like a man on your feet than to live forever like some slave on your knees, Lilly

    But don’t let them wrap any green flag around me
    And for God’s sake, don’t let them bury me in some field full of harps and shamrocks
    And whatever you do, don’t let them make a martyr out of me
    No! Rather raise the Starry Plough on high, sing a song of freedom
    Here’s to you, Lily, the rights of man and international revolution”

    We fought them to a standstill while the flames lit up the sky
    ‘Til a bullet pierced our leader and we gave up the fight
    They shot him in Kilmainham jail but they’ll never stop his cry
    My name is James Connolly, I didn’t come here to die….”

  158. 158.

    BC

    Anyone remember that “We Shall Overcome” was once a union song and then Pete Seeger took it to the civil rights marches? This isn’t the only one, just the only one I can remember right now.

  160. 160.

    suzanne

    @ABL: Eh, she’s a bigot, too. But it’s her lack of anything remotely resembling the Queen’s English that’s like nails on my personal chalkboard.

  161. 161.

    burnspbesq

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    He’s now descended to beating the plaque that commemorates the long-ago death of a horse on this spot. But chastened and set straight am I. Boy howdy and you betchum.

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