Berry Craig: Called the “Ride for Respect,” the demonstration at Walmart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, will be modeled on civil rights volunteers who rode buses into the South in the 1960s to protest Jim Crow racial injustice.
About Berry Craig
Berry Craig is an emeritus professor of history at the West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah and a freelance writer. He is a member of American Federation of Teachers Local 1360, the recording secretary for the Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO, and the author of True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon and Burgoo, Hidden History of Kentucky in the Civil War, Hidden History of Kentucky Soldiers and Hidden History of Western Kentucky. He is a native of Mayfield, Ky., where he lives with his wife of 33 years and their 20-year-old son.
What Would Washington Think?
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Berry Craig: We are getting closer to that “more perfect union” the constitution was supposed to make us. Far more people enjoy “the blessings of liberty” cited in our national charter than they did in Washington’s day.
Kentucky Students: Ditch Mitch as Graduation Speaker
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Berry Craig: Mitch McConnell headlining Murray State’s graduation might be less egregious if he hadn’t made his entire political career flipping students the bird.
Coach McConnell’s Special Chicken Salad
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Berry Craig: Reporters would do well to skip the chicken salad and start asking, Where’s the beef? The main course should be about McConnell’s politics of slime and smear, not how the tape recording whodunit.
United Mine Workers Need Your John Hancock
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Berry Craig: Peabody, Arch and Patriot Coal appear willing to stand by and do nothing as these brave miners and their spouses suffer and die from their work-caused illnesses and injuries without the health care these companies promised them.
DINOs
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Berry Craig: Some of the DINOs will lambast “liberal unelected judges” if the courts toss out the “religious freedom” law. Bless their hearts, these DINOs still won’t get to first base with the Lee-leaning “You can’t be a Christian and a Democrat” crowd.
Ashley Judd: Kentucky’s Joan of Arc?
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Berry Craig: If movie star Ashley Judd runs for the senate in Kentucky she’ll likely find friends among Bluegrass State voters who pack union cards.
‘There Is No Alternative to Ashley Judd Right Now’
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Berry Craig: It’s hard to tell who is more worried that Ashley Judd will run against Mitch McConnell next year – Kentucky ’s senior senator himself or some Democratic Party bigwigs.
‘Henny Penny’ Paul
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Berry Craig: More than a few of Paul’s tea party boosters don’t shy from Obama-Hitler comparisons. They love Paul’s Hitler rants and his raves about how government run by “socialist” Democrats — and even “statist” Republicans — imperils “freedom.”
Sequester: Please Pass the Humble Pie
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Berry Craig: Polls show the Republicans are about as popular as a wet dog at a wedding in most parts of the country. Even so, count me not among lefties who think the sequester snafu is the last nail in the GOP coffin.
Mustering a Million Against Mitch
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Berry Craig: Mitch McConnell is anti-worker and anti-union and we need political leaders in Kentucky who are here for us. Unions work well for Kentucky but Mitch McConnell doesn’t work well for unions.
More Profiles in Courage from Lincoln
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Berry Craig: I’ve heard it joked that if Lincoln were alive today he’d be a Democrat and if Jeff Davis, the Confederate president, came back, he’d be a Republican. Many a truth is spoken in jest.
Mr. Obama, You’re No Socialist
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Berry Craig: One of the strangest—and for me, most annoying—perversions of politics in the Obama era is the meme pursued by so many on the right suggesting that this president is a raging socialist who seeks to install a permanent welfare state in America—despite all evidence to the contrary
Rand Paul, You’re No Henry Clay
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Berry Craig: The well-heeled Rand Paul was not named for Ayn Rand, as has been claimed. But he shares her deep disdain for government programs designed to help the poor, the elderly and the working class.
“Big Government” Republicans
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Berry Craig: I haven’t seen anything written about the great irony of “Lincoln:” Lincoln the president and his Republican party were big fans of “big government,” the bane of the current GOP.
‘Please Jesus, Protect Me From Your Followers’
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Berry Craig: My idea of hell would be to spend eternity with Dobson, Morris and the rest of what another of my union buddies calls “The Christian Taliban.”
School Shootings: ‘God’s Gonna Run From People Like Them’
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Berry Craig: What Huckabee and Fischer lament is the absence of their version of public school prayer: Protestant, fundamentalist and mandated by school officials.
Republicans Down, Not Out
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Berry Craig: Don’t get me wrong. I fervently hope I’m off base in sweating a GOP comeback. Yet I don’t see the Republicans going the way of the dinosaurs, at least not any time soon.
Walmart Workers ‘Are Not Serfs’
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Berry Craig: We want employees to have a chance to form their own association and have their own concerted actions without retaliation and unfair treatment. Walmart is not a feudal manor.
Bigotry ‘Just Might Be Down for the Count’
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Berry Craig: The GOP is what the Democratic Party in Texas and the rest of Dixie used to be: mostly the white folks’ party.
“The Great Pacificator” and “Darth Vader”
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Berry Craig: Mitch McConnell’s critics nicknamed him “Darth Vader,” a handle he evidently likes, for his hard-edged, uber-conservative, compromise-equals-surrender politics.
Chicken’s Tastier Than Feathers
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Berry Craig: Romney and Ryan are two of the most anti-labor politicians around. But they think they can peel off some union votes with the old social issues sucker bait.
God and Politics
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Berry Craig: Here I was thinking that only uber-right-wing Protestant Fundamentalists of the Jesus-loves-me-but-He-can’t-stand-you persuasion went around saying you can’t be a Christian and a Democrat.
The Proto-Paul Ryans of My Salad Days
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Berry Craig: Like the college Republicans of my day, Ryan is crazy about all things military. He also opted for college over military service.
Giving Unions the Edge
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Berry Craig: Showalter’s fighting to help give labor a stronger voice on the radio. “We want to unite with other progressives and progressive groups and build support for issues that are important to all working families.”
‘Henny Penny’ Liberals
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Berry Craig: Suddenly, it’s 1858 and gaffe-a-minute Mitt is Abe Lincoln and President Obama is Sen. Stephen A. Douglas. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the MSNBC TV talking heads show up for work tonight in sack cloth and ashes.
Who’s the Real Wimp?
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Berry Craig: Romney is hardly the only chest-thumping Republican who seems to have never met a war he didn’t like so long as others did the actual fighting.
“Bocephus…You’re Not Fit to Carry Ammo for a Real Veteran’”
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Berry Craig: Given his macho talk and fondness for the flag and firearms, you’d think Hank Williams Jr. would have volunteered for what surely would have been the ultimate hunting trip for him — Vietnam.
Yankee Republicans Big Jim Eastland Could Have Loved
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Berry Craig: Even in the Empire State and elsewhere up north and out west, the GOP is largely what the Eastland wing of the Democratic party used to be: the white peoples’ party.
Crow and Humble Pie
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Berry Craig: Not until after the polls are closed on November 6 and the TV news networks declare my candidates the winner will I say, “when they lose.”
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