Celebrities For Ron Paul: Juliette Lewis Edition

Ladies Love Disco Brotherman Ron Paul, apparently. Last month it was chanteuse supreme Kelly Clarkson, this week it's queen of the damned, Juliette Lewis:  

For the uninitiated, Lewis played the weird girlfriend in Natural Born Killers, the weird daughter in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and is the former weird lead singer of Juliette and the Licks. She is NOT a Republican. 

(Rumor had it that California ska-pop band No Doubt also endorsed Ron Paul on Twitter last night, but really their account was hacked.) 

In other news from the celebrity/politics nexus, fashion prince Simon Doonan tries "to read at least one thing" on the New York Times Op-Ed page every day "because I don't want to become a complete idiot"; Snoop Dogg, recently arrested for having too much fun, would like to get high with President Obama: "Before I even said 'Hi' to President Obama, I would change the aroma of the room. And then we could start conversing after we had that aroma change. You know what I'm talking about?" Yes, Snoop, we know exactly what you're talking about. So does the president, for that matter. 

Comments

[sarcasmic]

Juliet Lewis in a bikini

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs…..taway.html

[John]

Not nearly as scary as I thought it would be.

Surprised you are not all over this chick. She is so hot I don’t even mind that she is too skinny.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs…..-fame.html

[sarcasmic]

Too much of a butterface.

[sarcasmic]

Lewis that is. No idea who that Lana chick is.

[John]

I said it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. I didn’t say she was attractive. I have no idea who the brit chick singer is. But she is quite easy on the eyes.

[Molly]

Very cool upcoming pop star and she is actually American

[John]

And apparently Britny Spears got off the cheeseburgers and back on coke and diet pills.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs…..amily.html

[sarcasmic]

You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl.

[sarcasmic]

Special for you John.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem…..ustry.html

[Resto Druid FTW]

Looks delicious!

[Resto Druid FTW]

Looks delicious!

[John]

She could lose some weight. But would you really kick her out of bed?

[sarcasmic]

Yes. After I let her suck my dick.

[chris]

Backside in the second pic is fantastic.

[Brandybuck]

My God does she have an weird looking face! She looks just like Justin Beiber in that V cover photo.

[johnl]

She looks just like Tom Hanks.

[Colonel_Angus]

Droopy.

[R C Pissed-Off Lefty]

I always thought she had the whole Trailer Park Hot thing nailed.

[P Brooks]

Who the blazes is Juliet Lewis?

[Jerry]

It’s Juliet Lewis-Dreyfus; she hyphenates now.

[Abdul]

Oh, the chick from Seinfeld.

[Suki]

She seems to have a foot following.

[Ska]

Another “benefit” of working with Tarantino I’d have to think.

[sarcasmic]

You haven’t seen Natural Born Killers?

Come on!

Anything where Robert Downy Jr dies is a good movie.

[Ska]

From Dusk Till Dawn, too.

[Mensan]

Not to mention Kalifonia and Cape Fear.

[Ice Nine]

Dunno but she be way homely.

[Fat Tony]

Da kiss of death. That’s just what I need.

[P Brooks]

Juliette, whatever…

[BakedPenguin]

Snoop Dogg was busted at a Border Patrol checkpoint – because, you know, illegal aliens are hiding in pot baggies now.

[SIV]

They are called “immigration checkpoints” but when I asked how the K-9 can smell out foreign nationals they just smile and say “Good day, sir”

[Tak Kak]

She’s a racist, anti-semitic homophobe too? Oh, jeez.

[OWS-VPS]

8 Union Victories Progressives Should Be Watching–And Learning From

By Erik Loomis

We always hear that unions are in trouble. But that’s not the whole story.

While nearly one of every three American workers were union members in 1945, today only 6.9 percent of private sector employees have union representation, a historic low. Tea Party governors like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker have pushed anti-union bills through state legislatures. Wisconsin’s bill stripped public employees of most of their collective bargaining rights and was the most significant direct attack against unions by a leading politician since Ronald Reagan crushed the air traffic controllers strike in 1981.

Yet despite the odds, over the past few months unions have achieved significant victories around the nation. Workers continue to fight for better wages, job security, safe workplaces, and health care, regardless of the struggles unions face. Their long-term struggles have not changed. But their success rate may be improving.

Why is this? The terrible economy may have convinced more workers that standing together with their fellow employees is the best chance they have to hold on to middle-class dreams. The less-negative media climate surrounding unions after the draconian anti-union bills in Wisconsin and Ohio may have helped.

Some of this success may also come from the structural changes within the National Labor Relations Board that have helped level the playing field for workers. President Obama has disappointed many unionists in his administration. He did not push very hard for the Employee Free Choice Act, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has expressed frustration with the Democratic Party for its continued rightward tilt. But behind the scenes, Obama’s appointees to the NLRB, Craig Becker and Mark Pearce, have reenergized the board, and the recent NLRB decision to expedite union elections, undermining employer attempts to intimidate workers, brought howls of protest from corporations.

Here are eight recent examples of forward momentum for organized labor:

1. Writers Guild Organizes Writers for Cable

In the past week, the Writers’ Guild of America, East, has had two significant victories. Writers at the Onion News Network television show on the Independent Film Channel successfully negotiated a collective bargaining agreement that provides retroactive pay increases, as well as pension and health insurance, to workers.

The Writers Guild has also targeted cable television writers in recent campaigns, winning victories to represent workers at Animal Planet, Food Network, National Geographic, and Travel Channel. (Read AlterNet’s coverage of the WGA victories here.)

Lowell Peterson, executive director of the Writers Guild of America, East, said of the importance of organizing cable TV writers, “Most work in basic cable TV is nonunion so working conditions are much less favorable than in Writers Guild shops. No health or pension benefits, grueling hours at low pay. Writers and producers shuffle between companies, and the most effective way to improve conditions is to organize multiple companies at one time, so that is what we are doing. Hundreds of writers and producers are eager to join the Writers Guild because our members know what it’s like to be devoted to creating the best possible content and at the same time earning a reasonable living.”

2. Ikea

In late July, workers at a Danville, Virginia Ikea furniture factory voted overwhelmingly to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. With European companies moving factories to anti-union and relatively low-wage states in the American South, the Ikea victory is a significant step toward unionizing those workers. Ikea found its anti-union efforts hamstrung by its own image as a company whose products appeal to political progressives. Using the most draconian anti-union tactics threatened to undermine the brand.

This is an interesting paradox for Ikea. Their marketing scheme in the United States appeals to the urban consumer, often politically liberal, who sees Sweden as a democratic-socialist model. But Ikea was awful to these Virginia workers. Its workers cited low wages, mandatory overtime, long working hours, and even racism against African-American employees as reasons to join the union. This victory is also significant for its location?southern Virginia has one of the nation’s lowest concentrations of union members, so a major victory here could be a sign of real change coming to the traditionally anti-union South.

3. UFCW Victories in Clothing Stores

Similarly to Ikea, sales clerks in New York branches of the Swedish clothing chain H&M joined the United Food & Commercial Workers last month. Unlike Ikea, which has vigorously fought unions across the United States and Europe, H&M played to its progressive image by refusing to force an election after a majority of workers signed union cards. They thought it a bad marketing strategy to alienate many of their consumers to keep out a union that will barely affect the chain’s bottom line.

UFCW has worked hard to expand its membership in the service economy with some significant successes. Retail workers are hard to organize because they often don’t see themselves in the jobs long-term, but their working conditions are often poor and in an economy with increasingly limited options, UFCW has real opportunities to unionize these workplaces. Its affiliate union, the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Workers, just succeeded in organizing 1,400 workers at Filene’s Basement stores and a distribution center in New York, suggesting a longer trend of success.

4. Rite-Aid

In May, workers at Rite-Aid’s Southwest Distribution Center in Lancaster, California successfully organized under leadership from the Longshoremen’s union (ILWU). Over 500 workers became union members with a remarkable contract for these times, ensuring annual wage increases for the three-year deal. Rite Aid engaged in classic union-busting strategies, including asking for a long delay before the union election to give them more time to intimidate workers, a tactic recently banned by Obama’s NLRB. It took Rite Aid workers five years to get Rite Aid to sign a union contract, but it was a huge victory after a long and costly struggle.

5. The IWW Returns, Organizing Food Chains

The Industrial Workers of the World has seen its recent renaissance expand as it organizes restaurant chain workers. The IWW was famous for its radical unionism in the early 20th century, organizing workers the American Federation of Labor would not: women, immigrants, industrial labor, African Americans, and children. It was crushed during World War I and for most of the 20th century barely survived. But in recent years, the IWW has had successes at Starbucks, and has also pursued unionization of the sandwich chain Jimmy John’s. Although the IWW narrowly lost a recent election to unionize Minneapolis Jimmy John’s workers, the NLRB threw out the election results after finding intense corporate intimidation of workers.

6. Turning Up the Heat on Hyatt

Even where workers have not yet won their union battles, they have received positive publicity. Hyatt hotels, owned in part by Penny Pritzker, a close friend of President Obama, turned heat lamps on striking workers during the summer’s worst heat wave. This act of corporate malevolence from the nation’s most stridently anti-union hotel chain gained national sympathy for their workers, in a struggle for improved working conditions for housekeepers that has mostly operated under the radar.

7. Even in Failure, Positives

One doesn’t want to focus on losses, but even in recent defeats there are snippets of hope. Honeywell locked out workers at its Illinois uranium processing plant in order to keep out the union. After over a year, the company came to terms with its workers. It’s true that the new contract forced workers to accept many concessions and that Honeywell forced the issue by convincing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow scab workers to work in the nuclear industry for the first time. At the same time, the contract actually increased job numbers at the plant. Moreover, the strike gained international attention, with German and Belgian unions inviting locked-out workers to Europe to speak of Honeywell’s draconian tactics. In the age of globalization, this sort of international support can have great meaning in putting transnational pressure on mobile corporations.

8. The Verizon Strike

On Sunday, the Communication Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers called a strike against Verizon. The phone company has demanded radical cuts to workers’ benefits and refuses to negotiate. With the call for 45,000 workers to go out, this is the largest strike in the country in several years. A success here could serve as a firewall in the corporate war on workers.

The strike has turned nasty already, with workers claiming three injuries, including one woman knocked unconscious, after bosses sped past picket lines in their cars. These workers are in the traditional landline phone operations, but CWA and IBEW are hoping to use this as a springboard to organize other parts of the Verizon empire.

With all of this pretty good to great news all of a sudden, one wonders, is this coincidence? Or is it a sign of a rejuvenated labor movement ready to take on aggressive corporate attempts to destroy worker organizations in order to promote an increased profit line? It’s important not to overstate the impact of the labor-led protests in Madison against Scott Walker’s anti-union bill. Lowell Peterson noted, “What we witnessed in Wisconsin was very inspiring but the voting at nonfiction basic cable production companies was mostly done before the Wisconsin gov started slinging his six-gun. Organizing requires hard, patient work, and folks have to believe the union can make a difference in their lives. I think we have made that case to folks.”

That’s absolutely true, but at the same time the climate of unionization is important. Workers have historically joined unions when the media reports positively about them and when the government plays a neutral role in union elections rather than openly supporting employers. The Republican overreach in Wisconsin, Ohio and other traditionally pro-union states led to a great deal of attention for unions. Obama’s NLRB is making a real difference in working people’s lives.

But while these factors are important, the real credit goes to the people bravely risking their jobs to improve their lot and that of all workers. Workers may have tough employment prospects if they lose their jobs through union organizing, but the increasingly desperate economy has also helped many understand that employers will not take care of them and that their best chance for a respectable paycheck lies in uniting with their fellow employees. We must work to build off these recent victories to make the labor movement a force in America again. The survival of middle-class America depends on it.

Erik Loomis is a professor of labor and environmental history and a blogger at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

[AlmightyJB]

Wait…there’s still landlines?

[John]

Not just landlines. Union landlines.

[John]

I work for the union ’cause she’s so good to me;

And I’m bound to come out on top,
that’s where she sais I should be.

I will hear ev’ry word the boss may say,

For he’s the one who hands me down my pay.

Looks like this time I’m gonna get to stay,

I’m a union man, now, all the way.

The smell of the leaves,
from the magnolia trees in the meadow King Harvest has surely come.

[DesigNate]

Walker didn’t push an anti-union bill. He pushed for an anti-public sector union bill. Since you shouldn’t be able to campaign for and elect the person you are negotiating with.

[Pips]

Someone should have told that to the officials that made the deal for the private union to become a public sector union. Free markets be damned, they will just ignore it and try and wipe away that mistake by fascism.

[P Brooks]

fashion prince Simon Doonan tries “to read at least one thing” on the New York Times Op-Ed page every day “because I don’t want to become a complete idiot”

You’re doing it wrong.

[AlmightyJB]

lol.

[wylie]

came to make this exact post. thanks for saving me the time Brooks.

[John]

Well I guess Paul has the ugly weird chick vote sowed up.

[Ice Nine]

ugly weird chick vote sowed up

I see what you did there.

[Ska]

But did John see it before you pointed it out?

[John]

Yes., Honest

[Ice Nine]

I’m sure, cuz his spelling is always impeccable.

[AlmightyJB]

I liked Juliette in NBK and Kalifornia.

[John]

Just cause you’re an ugly weird chick doesn’t mean you can’t act.

[AlmightyJb]

I dont think she was acting.

[Mensan]

I don’t either. In fact, I think she’s a terrible actress. Every character she plays is exactly the same, and they’re all exactly like her in real life.

[K.P.]

“With European companies moving factories to anti-union and relatively low-wage states in the American South, the Ikea victory is a significant step toward unionizing those workers.”

Thank goodness funiture can only be made in the American South. Things can only get better for the worker now.

[Pro Libertate]

I feel bad. I vaguely insulted her acting just a couple of days ago in this very forum. At least she’s supporting the right guy.

[mr simple]

No Doubt is still around? Why?

[NAL]

Weirdos, no doubt.

[Franco]

No one has seen Cape Fear either? Not that it means anything but she’s a real second tier celeb.

[P Brooks]

Just for you, cut-and-paste spambot:

“The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.”
-H. L. Mencken

[OWS-VPS]

You can delete our Occupation, but the articles are already occupying the most important place now, before you deleted them–they’re occupying people’s brains.

[Occupy Wall Street]

We will not be stopped.

[Occupy Wall Street VPS]

Because those articles, though no longer occupying this blog, are now occupying people’s brains.

[o3]

whatever happened to freedom of speech libtoids?

[AlmightyJb]

There’s a difference between contributing and polluting. When your copy/paste hogs up half the thread you should get deleted.

[AlmightyJb]

Maybe a 500 character limit on comments would help but the trolls would probably just copy/paste 50 comments.

[NAL]

Freedom of speech has never meant people are required to support your free speech. Just like you are not free to scream outside of Walmart all day long.

[NAL]

By “support” meant “provide a medium for”

[wylie]

Just like you are not free to scream outside of Walmart all day long.

Walmart could probably find a way to make that a profitable service.

[R C Pissed-Off Lefty]

I’m thinking new profit center: put those expired veggies to use.

[T]

Just like you are not free to scream outside of Walmart all day long.

No, but wandering around the aisles muttering to yourself appears to be ok. At least, they haven’t kicked me out for it yet.

[.]

Yeah, totally.

[cthorm]

I can’t wait until someone starts saying

“A Vote for Ron Paul is a vote for Scientology”

[WWNGD?]

Missed your comment before I posted below.

[Richard]

Juliet Lewis was also the weird ex-girlfriend in Strange Days, where she showed what passes for her boobs. NSFW, but barely.

She works pretty steadily. She’s a regular on the upcoming NBC series “The Firm.”

[Ice Nine]

Good lord, my eyes! Looks like a tranny who’s not taking enough hormone pills.

[Joe M]

Gah! Reasonable combined with apparently laxer website restrictions just posted a huge image on my screen that I did NOT want to see.

[John]

Wow Reason is actually deleting the griefer trolls. amazing.

[.]

I think you meant to say: awesome.

[SugarFree]

It’s about damn time. But pruning will only get you so far; to truly get at the weeds you have to dig up the root.

[Warty]

Excellent.

[Joe M]

Yeah and I missed the original post. It must’ve been a good one for the amount of fish it caught.

[Warren]

Ladies Love Disco Brotherman Ron Paul, apparently. Last month it was chanteuse supreme Kelly Clarkson, this week it’s queen of the damned, Juliette Lewis

You call those celebrities? You’re only vindicating the “nobody likes Paul” trope.

[John]

The Reason people are working diligently on getting the ShamWow dude to endorse Paul.

[Vince Shlomi]

Your gonna love my nuts.

[Vince Shlomi]

Have I mentioned that I like to beat prostitutes. To be fair, I got my ass kicked too.

[P Brooks]

now occupying people’s brains.

Ummm, no.

TL;DR

Thanks for playing.

[PS]

“Let me be clear…”

Sounds like she’s an Obama supporter.

[Suki]

Or Matt Welche’s secret girlfriend.

[WWNGD?]

Well Ron Paul has the crazy Scientology vote now!

[Suki]

Goes right along with the Zionology vote.

[Paul]

*looks around nervously*

Did someone say Juliette Lewis?

[Brandybuck]

It sounds like she really wants to make sure that NO ONE MISTAKES HER FOR A REPUBLICAN. It would be awful for a Hollywood actress to be IDENTIFIED AS A REPUBLICAN. It could be a career killing move.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

Yeah, that was hilarious. How neurotic has Hollywood become that you have to qualify your political credentials in case the “People of OWS” hordes flood your Twitter feed with sub-literate butthurt?

[Pips]

If I had a penny for every LINO since Bush destroyed the Republican name… No one wants to be associated with that.

[*]

Juliet had me at “Daft”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGJy822geAg

[Tulpa]

(Rumor had it that California ska-pop band No Doubt also endorsed Ron Paul on Twitter last night, but really their account was hacked.)

That shit is bananas.

[Rev. Blue Moon]

That’s from Gwen Stefani as a solo artist. /nodoubtnerdery

[Diomasach]

And people wonder why Ron Paul is considered a nut?

With friends like these…