Jimmy Hoffa Takes The Early Lead For Douchbag of the Week

The award noted in the headline does not exist yet, but Hoffa really deserves it.  I'm going to have some thoughts, but let's start with the story itself...

Warming up the crowd before President Obama’s speech in Detroit this afternoon, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. had some choice words for the Tea Party.

Hoffa warned the largely union crowd that there was a “war on workers” and urged organized labor to take to the ballot box to fight lawmakers that oppose the president’s agenda.

“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,” Hoffa told thousands of workers gathered for the annual Labor Day rally.

“President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march… Everybody here’s got a vote…Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong,” he concluded.

See, it's stuff like that which makes me a sad panda.  But let's break this down with a few random thoughts...

1.  Jimmy Hoffa advocating violence.  There are so many different threads here that I'm going to tiptoe around it as a matter of taste.

2.  Greg Gutfeld made the point on "The Five" earlier today, but it's worth noting that since the left made such a big show of screaming about civility following the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, they're now getting called on their own bullshit.  The language is inexcusable by any standard of civil discourse, but everyone used to let it go for the left because (rightly, in my view) politics is rough and tumble, and words don't break bones.  But Hoffa's assertions are a call to violence, and the standard established following the Giffords shooting means Dems should be scrambling to condemn this crap.  An yet... silence.  But now the silence is being noticed.

3.  Ann Althouse's point here is a terrific one -- Hoffa's calling for war on behalf of unions, but he's claiming that it's on behalf of working people.  The two are not one and the same.  Perhaps they once were, but as Allapundit noted, Hoffa makes north of 300k per year.  The hypocricy of union leaders would be galling, if anyone wanted to notice.

4.  Homer Simpson is far superior to Jimmy Hoffa as a union leader.



5. I'd expect Barack Obama to dress down Hoffa for this rhetoric at about the same time he comes up with a credible econoimc recovery plan. But it would be nice to be surprised once in awhile, huh?