When Elaine Chao attacked workers

The only thing that stops the Republican Party of Kentucky from shriveling into a petrified husk is a friendly media that props it up and amplifies its demagoguery.

Elaine Chao - Secretary of Labor under dictator George W. Bush - is the wife of Kentucky's embattled multimillionaire Sen. Mitch McConnell. It's a fact that Chao's father James is a friend of some of mainland China's political leaders and has contracted to do business with a shipbuilding company owned by the Chinese government. McConnell has used his position in the Senate to enrich James Chao and the Chinese government, make slaves of Chinese workers, and send American jobs to China.

This information is factual. Republican apologists say it's racist to bring it up. But it isn't - as long as the story is true. I don't judge anybody based on their ethnicity. When an immigrant comes to America and works hard, great. The real story here is that a senator abuses his power to benefit his father-in-law - killing American jobs.

As an official in the corrupt Bush regime, Elaine Chao carried out an endless war against American workers. She supported union-busting and refused to endorse raising the minimum wage. She tried to erase government regulations that protected workers from repetitive motion injuries.

In 2007, Chao launched a stunning broadside against the industriousness and intelligence of American workers. She flatly claimed that American workers have poor workplace skills, and that this justifies moving jobs overseas. "American employees must be punctual, dress appropriately, and have good personal hygiene," she scolded. "They need anger management and conflict resolution skills, and they have to be able to accept direction. Too many young people bristle when a supervisor asks them to do something."

Incidentally, that cry wasn't new - but it was as bogus as ever. Our corporate masters had long complained that there was something wrong with the American workforce. Many of you have probably had a dickish boss who grumbled about your "attitude" because you wouldn't come into work on Thanksgiving every year to clean the toilets. Usually, complaints about workers' "attitude" is shorthand for a desire to subjugate. When your boss says, "I don't like your attitude," it means, "I don't like it that we can't pay people only 12 cents an hour to sort used syringes with their bare hands."

It's easy to picture well-known officials in the Bush regime telling someone, "I don't like your attitude." Authoritarian personality types are the people Bushism appealed to. If you're stunned that there were actually people out there who thought Bush was a credible politician, now you know what his base of support was. Normal people would consider Bush one of the least compelling politicians around, but the authoritarian GOP base considers his reign to be an era of shimmering national greatness (as a Daily Kos user put it).

The Department of Labor was created to protect workers. But under Elaine Chao, its only function seemed to be to scold workers, call them stupid slobs, and offshore their jobs.

Conservative dogma has failed, so diversion is now one of the Evil Empire's last tactics. They accuse their enemies of the same things they're guilty of themselves. It's a propaganda technique. Forewarned is forearmed.