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It wouldn't be a Saturday morning on Fox "news" if they didn't have at least five or ten of these type of segments their so-called "business block," bashing unions and blaming workers for the problems with our economy. And as always on these shows, they have one Fox "Democrat" on there, who agrees to come on and be ganged up on five to one with very little chance to speak.

Host Brenda Buttner opened up the show asking if the protests against Wal-Mart and the airlines are a bigger threat to a jobs recovery than this "fiscal cliff" which is usually their favorite topic to fearmonger over and push for cuts to our social safety nets and austerity.

Naturally, most of them agreed and did their best to portray unions as the big, bad bullies, even though unionization in the United States is at an all time low and the companies as the poor, aggrieved parties who are being "kicked around" by those union thugs. And the unions are now going to get Congress to allow for easier unionization because President Obama won reelection, never mind the fact that Republicans are still controlling the House and that they couldn't get that passed when the Democrats did have both houses of Congress and the presidency.

I will give their lonely "Democratic consultant" Steve Murphy credit for at least pointing out that it's a good thing for the economy for workers to have money in their pockets and that wages are at all time low right now. He also pointed out that there are economies in northern Europe doing very well with high levels of unionization and that the United States' economy was doing better when we had higher levels of unionization as well, which of course was met by jeers and sneers from the rest of the panel members.

And of course the notion that we should be able to do anything about outsourcing, states competing against each other with a race to the bottom on wages was treated as an impossibility. And naturally, the topic of CEO pay, hedge funds and the Romney/Bain model of extracting wealth from companies, and the increasing income disparity we've seen for decades now never came up.

Another day on Fox, another day of divide and conquer and attack workers as being overpaid, or unreasonable for wanting to earn a living wage and maybe retire with some dignity before they drop dead. I'm sure their wingnut welfare from Uncle Rupert for spreading this anti-worker propaganda pays a whole lot better than those people out there working in the Walmart stores, or for the auto companies or for the airlines.

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Anyone who thinks Alan Grayson is going back to congress neutered after his loss in 2010 would be sadly mistaken. If anything his activities over Thanksgiving seem to indicate he's more ready to fight than ever.

Video and text by WKMG, Orlando.

ORLANDO, Fla. -U.S. Rep.-elect Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) joined a Walmart worker as she walked off her job in St. Cloud as part of a nationwide protest against the country's largest employer.

Grayson joined Walmart associate Lisa Lopez on Thanksgiving night to protest what employees says is the store's retaliation against workers who speak out for better job conditions.

On "Black Friday," Grayson also joined a walkout at a Walmart in Orlando.

Union-backed groups OUR Walmart and Making Change at Wal-Mart, along with watchdog group Corporate Action Network, are calling on the retailer to end what they call retaliation against employees who speak out for better pay, fair schedules and affordable health care.

Photo of @alangrayson with #WalmartStriker Lisa as she walked out of the store in Orlando, FL tonight. twitter.com/ForRespect/sta…

— ForRespect (@ForRespect) November 23, 2012

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Ah yes... somebody's got to look out for those poor, oppressed millionaires and billionaires and stand up to those evil union thugs and Occupy protesters: Malkin Reacts to Union Protests: ‘People Need to Understand That Big Labor Thugs Don’t Have Workers Best Interests at Heart’:

Unions are now flexing their muscle, targeting ports, airlines, and stores just as holiday travel and the shopping season kick into high gear. Adding to that, billionaire George Soros is reportedly urging people to join anti-Walmart protests on Black Friday, even if they don’t work for Walmart. Critics claim it’s all part of a massive effort to unionize Walmart’s 1.4 million employees nationwide, which could bring in billions in union dues.

According to Michelle Malkin, these strikes aren’t about protecting workers, but are about protecting entrenched big labor power. During an appearance on Your World, Malkin called the protests a “toxic combination of these left-wing activist groups funded by George Soros … along with a rag tag group of Occupiers across the country who’ve been fomenting this kind of agitation for agitation’s sake for more than a year now.”

She stressed, “People really need to understand that these big labor thugs do not have workers interests at heart.”

How many people think this hateful woman would ever put up with the conditions or the wages of those who are working these jobs at Walmart? She's got that wingnut welfare coming in which pays quite a bit more than those minimum wage workers make and she's more than happy to help Fox attack them in yet another day in upside down land on GOPTV.

Media Matters has more on their latest Soros conspiracy theory -- Fox Brings Soros Paranoia To Walmart Labor Protests:

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I would really love to see Sam Seder get his own show at either MSNBC or Current TV. He did a fine job filling in for Chris Hayes on Up this weekend, and here's his opening from Sunday's show -- How Republicans are using the crisis of poverty... against Obama:

At the Values Voters Summit on Friday, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan whose budget was approved by the House with sweeping cuts to aid for the poor responded to new figures from the Census Bureau this week showing that 46.2 million Americans were living below the poverty line last year—a rate basically unchanged from the year before—but a rate not seen in this country in nearly 20 years.

Here's what Ryan had to say about Obama's record on poverty:

"The Obama economic agenda failed, not because it was stopped, but because it was passed. And here is what we got: Prolonged joblessness across the country. Twenty-three million Americans struggling to find work. Family income in decline. Fifteen percent of Americans living in poverty. Here we are, after four years of economic stewardship under these self-proclaimed advocates of the poor, and what do they have to show for it? More people in poverty, and less upward mobility wherever you look."

It's not the first time this election cycle that we've seen the right raise the specter of the poor. But poverty is raised not to offer prescriptions or remedies but to be used as a cudgel, as a means of playing on middle class fears of losing ground by suggesting not so much that they, too, could become impoverished but that the threat to their economic stability is the poor themselves, who are taking that ground from them.

Calling President Obama the "food stamp President" is not bemoaning the plight of those Americans who, in the wake of a devastating financial crisis have lost the means to put food on the table for their families, but rather, to imply that some "other" is living large, while the rest of "us" struggle. That said, we do know something about the people Romney relies on and what they believe about poverty.

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