Waiting for the Pinkertons

Corporate media is slowly deigning to acknowledge what’s going on in Madison. The NYTimes has an article about how the police refused to remove the Capitol protesters (but despite giving the “background” neglects to mention that Wisconsin’s budget crisis was wholly manufactured by Gov. Walker’s intemperate tax cuts and giveaways to corporations). Paul Krugman writes about how tax cuts for the rich (and rich alone) have impacted children in Texas. (Apparently private charities aren’t stepping up as promised.)

In the WaPost, Robert J. Samuelson has a thoughtful history of modern labor that completely leaves out the union fight for job security (corporate competition and cost-cutting doesn’t sound so scary if you don’t think about all the jobs lost or shipped overseas by American labor hating CEOs and thuggishly anti-union boards of directors). Samuelson also neglects to acknowledge union concessions, an omission so glaring as to invalidate his highly specious conclusion:

The result is a dilemma that transcends partisan union-bashing. Striving too hard to protect existing wages and benefits will stimulate more political opposition, and not just from Republicans (see Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York). But sacrificing too much may trigger a revolt from angry rank-and-file members. Private-sector unions couldn’t solve this dilemma; they never reconciled past successes with future survival. So Big Labor became Little Labor. If public-sector unions fail, Little Labor could become Mini Labor.

Mini-labor, in case you’re wondering, would mean the end of overtime, paid vacations, sick days, minimum wage, etc. — freeing employers to schedule employees in bizarre and heartless ways (it would be much more efficient if McDonald’s could schedule workers to come in at breakfast, lunch and dinner hours only for a total of six hours a day, seven days a week). No overtime also means when things get busy as they do in agriculture, your shift could lengthen to 12, 16 or even 20 hours, again with no days off, not even to attend church.

And let’s not forget that without unions kids could work long hours too.

These bastards aren’t breaking unions, they’re breaking America.

Live stream of the Capitol occupation (that’s not a small crowd and those aren’t pot-smoking hippies)

Even Forbes knows Walker’s lying

Boing Boing diagrams the relationships between the Kochs and Walker

Glenn W. Smith on the arrogance of the rich

Driftglass on the Sunday morning anti-union talk shows

A flash back to the good old days of my early childhood

More on Anonymous vs the Kochs (if breaking the internet hurt them more than us, I’d take a hammer to my modem in a heartbeat but unfortunately, the net is about all we’ve got left) [PW on Anonymous and the corporate media's noncoverage]

Hurting the economy in the name of ideology

Fish Wrap

Links to more photos

Gov. Bridgefail with more on how to make things worse [how much worse? read this]

Roy Edroso on how offensive it is of the unions to do in Wisconsin what the Kochs paid for on the national level

Weigel on accusations v reality

Avedon Carol with still more

And City Pages is saying there will be a rally in downtown Minneapolis today at 4 pm.

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More:

The more some Republicans trash the First Lady’s anti-obesity campaign, the more other Republicans think twice (and still others refuse to think at all)

An economy so bad the birth rate is dropping

More reasons to ignore the Daily Beast (now with more Howie the Whore!)

Clarence Thomas equates attacks on his sleazy personal finances with an attack on the Supreme Borks themselves

It’s not shocking that Roger Ailes broke the law, but his getting caught has shocked the establishment

Obama shields mercenaries from war crimes prosecution (because the establishment covers its own ass always)

Another FDL Book Club interview with authors of a book about how the rich got richer at everyone else’s expense

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Interesting how they finessed my favorite part of the Oscars. I love listening to the applause while they show pictures and clips of industry biggies who passed away in the last year. For almost everyone who’s not an actor, the applause was my only clue of who was good or popular or both.

Not this year. They had Celine Dion singing live and that stopped the applause. Nicely done (the distraction, not the overwrought singing) but I miss the applause.

In all honesty, I had my back to the TV most of the night, but even so it wasn’t hard to tell that Hollywood was even more full of itself than usual this year. The harder they try to make the Academy Awards into good TV, the more they fail. My solution would be to hold the Oscars and the Razzies at the same time. Nothing makes success look good like standing next to failure.

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Etc.:

Synthetic pot popular in Annapolis (the Air Force Academy has already introduced Sharia-style penalties for imbibers)

Harper Collins unilaterally declares ebooks dead after 26 library checkouts (which serves the public good how, exactly?)

More Firefly rumors

What happens if you leave your car door open in the winter (I have never seen anything like this)

Blue Ribbon Bacon Fest (check out this video on how to make perfect bacon, and no, that’s not how I used to cook bacon)

No commenting on Titian at the Strib

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Frank W. Buckles, R.I.P.

The last American victim of the worst war, he is survived by a 109-year-old Aussie and a 110-year-old British woman.

Madison! Madison! Madison!

Saving as I go so yeah, more links than any sane person would ever try to click.

WISCONSIN:

C&L says 100,000 turned out

Michele Bachmann compares Walker to Lincoln and Reagan

Raw Story liveblogged the protest [WARNING: HUGE COLLECTION OF PICTURES] [MN pix] [NYC pix]

WINston has pix from Saturday’s protest [more]

David Dayen on 100,000+

David Dayen with still more pix

Eric Kleefeld on the massive crowd in Madison

Phoenix Woman: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Wisconsin….

Restaurant boots Gov. Walker, FDL has to delete restaurant name due to threat deluge

Madison Journal [not pro-union, but increasingly fed up with Walker]

Rigidity? isn’t that just another word for hard-on?

Even rigged conservative polls can’t find a majority for Walker

Overreach? (and since when does the Strib do in-article links?)

NYTimes’ lame coverage (Madison is being hugely undercovered by mainstream media, just like they ignored the tens of millions of antiwar protesters ten years ago)

CLASS WARFARE:

Frank Rich on the Republican war on workers

Steve Benen on a war with two fronts

NBA players union opposes anti-union bill (if only more NBA players were born rich, they’d understand the need for the rich to stick together)

Banksters

Turley on the Kochs

Yves Smith calls out Joe Nocera

What corporate taxes?

State-sponsored religion

How bad is the mortgage crisis when even AZ Republicans demand accountability?

Shrinking paychecks creating backlash (note: polls like this one are heavily skewed because Americans don’t like to admit to making less — I’m sure actual statistics would show more than 20% of Iowans with smaller paychecks)

CNN on income disparity

MORE HATE:

SPLC tags Pam Geller’s anti-Islam mob as a hate group [more]

Map of anti-abortion strongholds

Scarborough denounces Glenn Beck

NEWSINESS:

Poll shows Iowans into 3-way sex

Roger Ailes to be indicted? (Goebbels committed suicide, is Ailes that classy?)

ETC.:

Anonymous v Westboro Baptist, cont.

I introduce Timberwolves fans to Pharyngulation (and a comment fight about atheism breaks out)

Jailbreaking your Kindle (let me know if it works for you as I’m very tempted)

Judge asks why quality isn’t a factor in handing out piracy fines

Former coworker writes a teen sleuth novel

Philip K. Dick’s impact on SF movies is now officially a hoary cliché (isn’t it time for some follow-up stories on Dick’s meth habit?) (I ran into an acquaintance who’s written a book about Dick at an Xmas party, and he told me that after he finished the book, he stopped thinking about Dick because he’s not that pleasant to think about)

Roy Edroso’s Oscar picks (I turn it on so I can catch the Parade of Dead which, for me, is the highlight of the evening)

 

Crushing the middle class

What’s it all about? If you’re a righty, Wisconsin is about your deep resentment of public sector workers whose wages and benefits haven’t yet been completely eroded by the selfish few at the top (those who seek always to make their enormous piles even more grotesquely ginormous). If you’re a lefty, the public sector is the last line in the battle to preserve the middle class.

If you’re sane, you wonder what kind of dimwitted middle class moron would support killing unions when it’s obvious that the decline of unions has resulted in wage slavery for most Americans.

In the history of the world, have slaves ever done well? And how exactly did the side that keeps screaming FREEDOM become so enamored with reducing options and gutting safety nets? Is there more dignity in begging for charity than cashing a government check?

Feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance? Hard not to when the propagandists turn everything upside down. I’ve been feeling pretty weird myself lately. How is it that the more I move to the left, the more conservative I feel? What is Wisconsin other than a movement in support of preserving a contract? 70,000 people in the street protesting for the maintenance of the status quo?

All of which makes perfect sense if you believe, as the left does, that the right is little more than a sock puppet for the insanely greedy. The right pisses on war heroes and lionizes draft dodgers so it’s not surprising they’re fans of those who create wealth through financial manipulations just so long as the perps keep mouthing the words to the Pledge of Allegiance as they do so. If they won’t honor contracts with unions, why would these greedballs honor a Contract with America? (Easy answer: they didn’t because they got distracted by the Clenis, other people’s sex being infinitely more interesting than honoring campaign promises you never intended to fulfill.)

But in this one case, the proof is in the accusatory case. When wages are going down for all but the rich, what kind of wretchedly hateful person resents the few who have held on to some of what they once had more of? That is what modern Republicanism has been reduced to: hating the survivors of a thirty-year war against workers. Just like they hate those who practice sex or religion differently.

Wisconsin is the last stand against the politics of bigotry and hate, and none of this would be necessary had Rupert Murdoch not founded a 24/7 propaganda channel that lobotomizes its viewers, scooping out their brains one spoonful at a time, replacing gray matter with dark thoughts, paranoia, hatred and resentment.

The left is saying enough is enough. The right replies that enough is never enough, and that the point of having is to have too much, however many have to live with less to enable the winner-takes-all lifestyles of the modern rich.

Links later. For now, I think this enough.

Link waggling

FUCK THIS SHIT. WORDPRESS JUST ATE ABOUT 40 FUCKING LINKS AND I’M TOO DISGUSTED TO EVEN FORMAT WHAT’S LEFT OVER.

And it fucking crashed because I thought to try to save the post in progress, which is pretty much what happened the last time it did this.

Seriously, dozens of fucking links and I’m not about dig them out of the trash to load them again.

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I want to highlight one story because no one else is picking up on it, and it’s pretty damning.

Did you know that before the pirates killed those four American Bible thumpers, the U.S. Navy threw their negotiators in the brig? THEN the hostages were killed. And, it’s entirely possible the hostages weren’t killed on purpose, but died in a fire fight.

Not exactly the story the major media is telling, now is it?

I’m not pro-pirate in the sense of actual piracy on the high seas, but no one wins when the military gets to make shit up and the media salutes before sharing. And, as always, we’re not getting any of the back story on why Somalia is the way it is, and how fucking little Africans have to do with any of the shit East Africa is in.

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A remarkable but not terribly critical look at the Koch brothers in today’s NYTimes. Tobin Harshaw includes a lot, including a lot of hooey. Example:

So who are David and Charles Koch? “The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama,” according to Jane Mayer of The New Yorker. Two philanthropists who “want to use their wealth to give others the same opportunity to succeed that they have had,” according to Kimberly O. Dennis at National Review.

Same opportunity to succeed? OK. let’s go back in time and give our parents tens of millions of dollars so we can get that kind of head start. Fred Koch made his money developing oil production for Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, letting Charles and David start life with platinum spoons in their mouths.

Politically, Harshaw jumps straight into the he said/she said, and closes with … [insert drumroll]… a blog comment from some paid troll:

The KOCH brothers must be stopped. They gave $40K to Scott Walker, the MAX allowed by state law. That’s small potatoes compared to the $100+ million they give to other organizations. These organizations will terrify you. If the anti-union thing weren’t enough, here are bigger and better reasons to stop the evil Kochs. They are trying to:

1. decriminalize drugs,
2. legalize gay marriage,
3. repeal the Patriot Act,
4. end the police state,
5. cut defense spending.

I would appreciate any links in support of any of those specious claims. Whatever ideological beliefs the Kochs may have, their money hasn’t gone to anyone who’s introducted any bills to do any of those things. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Harshaw also links to OpenSecrets.org which looks at money in terms of Kochs v Soros, and then refuses to tally it all up at the end because they can’t make sense of all the money the Kochs shovel into think tanks (and they double list Soros’ 527s to create a false sense of balance). No tallies for the money the Kochs have given the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, Market-Based Management Institute, Mercatus Center, or the Reason Foundation. Soros’ list is much shorter, and much of his think tank money goes to promote democracy in other countries and to advance healthcare.

But of the money OpenSecrets does tally, the Kochs shut down Soros $61 million to $47 million.

Just the way our nation’s Founders intended.

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Zillions of Wisconsin links:

One million union supporters expected to rally today nationwide

WI voter ID (i.e., voter suppression) thwarted, for now

IN Deputy A.G. Jeff Cox fired for “live ammo” tweet

David Dayen tours the capitol

Lifelong Minnesotan Jonathan weighs in

Gov. Bridgefail endorses Walker [more]

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Other atrocities:

Michelle Malkin makes more stuff up

Even the ADL has had its fill of Glenn fucking Beck

[Beck dropped by Madison

Coarsening MN's quality of life for a few bucks

Consistently hypocritical

One of the many crimes of Roger Ailes

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News:

Why you don't read about the GM bailout anymore (hint: it worked)

Leading candidate to be next Chair of Joint Chiefs of Staff is being smeared (and the fact that he was right about Afghanistan being a clusterfuck waiting to happen pretty much spells out who's doing the smearing)

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Etc.:

However it got started, Anonymous has shut down Westboro Baptist's website

Dirty air triggers more heart attacks than cocaine (and the penalties for polluting are?)

Paypal shut off an account raising money for Bradley Manning, then turned it back on (after getting 15,000 signatures on a Daily Kos petition) (don't use PayPal, they're Christianist patriots)

New Bits

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And just in case you haven't figured out where this is all headed, fuck you if you're not a millionaire, and to hell with you if you don't live your life the way the libertards who fund the Republicans tell you to.

For being all about freedom, they sure hate it when you do something they disapprove of:

Take a totally fucked up, all-but-brain-dead baby off life support, and you're committing assisted suicide

YEAH, THERE'S ABOUT 15 LINKS MISSING RIGHT HERE, AND THEY WERE NASTY. LOTS OF [MORE]S ARE MISSING AND I’M FUCKING PISSED BECAUSE I’VE BEEN WORKING ON THIS POST FOR TWO AND A HALF FUCKING HOURS.

 

No post today

I’m up to my elbows in editing an ESL student’s post-graduate education paper and by the time I’m finished the only thing I’ll be good for is torturing small animals while drinking copiously.

And, not for the first time, I beg Congress to pass a Constitutional amendment requiring all Education texts to be written in simple English. Education jargon is an affront before God and man, and should be prohibited by force of law.

Say what the fuck you mean and shove the rest of the verbiage where the sun don’t shine.

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UPDATE: Well, that’s finally finished. This installment of that particular hell, at any rate.

If any of you have been considering suicide, give some thought to letting me kill you instead. It would make me feel much, much better if I could kill someone right about now. You don’t even have to be in education.

Feeling my hands around someone’s throat would be quite therapeutic. It would also help me get over the caffeine jag I’ve got going having replaced tea with coffee for the purposes of cranking myself up into ESL-anti-jargon editing mode.

Also, fuck. As in fuck Education, fuck editing ESL-generated content and most of all fuck fuck fuckity fuck, damnit.

Absent any volunteers stepping forward, I would accept a donation of a family pet or any small creature that you have at your disposal.

Don’t make me resort to Craig’s List.

Answering the call

Yes Virginia, gabbing with a prank caller for twenty minutes is a big deal, especially when you think he’s your sugar daddy. Everyone seemingly has a comment or an angle on the call and the goings on in Wisconsin. Sorted for your amusement:

The call:

Koch Whore (the original Buffalo Beast story)

WI newspapers headline prank

Lambert with loads of links/commentary

Steve Benen

AP

State senator calls on Walker to resign (former A.G. wants investigation)

Spocko

Wolcott

Walker’s response

The prank caller:

Peter Wallsten

PZ

Taibbi’s very proud

The pension:

Strib on how wonderful it is to be on a WI pension plan (then at the end they point out the unique clause that lets the state unilaterally lower pensions if Wall Street tanks) (keep in mind apples and oranges as you read about these pensions)

George Skelton on the national race to the bottom

Bernie Sanders [video]

Jane Hamsher on Wall Street vs pensions

Jon Talton

TBogg

Misc.:

Koch bag man Jeffrey Schoepke

Avedon Carol (incl. Noam Chomsky)

Joe Conason on unions

Wingnut news editor says “It is time to drive public schools out of business”

Agents provocateur (via PW)

Keith Ellison calls Walker a dictator

More posters

“Real” journalists scold the Buffalo Beast (for accidentally committing journalism?)

Call was totally legal

“Live ammo” cont.

Indiana bails

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More:

Citigroup tied to Madoff’s Ponzi scam

Wall Street compensation up, up, up

Military unit ordered to conduct psyops against Senators, and refused

Setting playground on fire to make a point

Fox ghettoizes their Shawna Forde coverage to Latino news only

The Awl’s pizza fund

Arne Carlson v Tim fucking Pawlenty

Pretending Hollywood = Lefty America, part XXIV

Alabama

Crushing small businesses just because they can

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Etc.:

Citizenship test full of errors

DEA to legalize pot? (for Big Pharma only!)

Patti Smith and rare books

Humbulances

Nick Coleman responds to D.J. Tice’s “don’t tax the rich” plea with an online poll

McSweeney’s does Sunday funnies (I’ve totally lost the habit thanks to the excruciatingly slow transition of funnies from print to online)

Toyota recalls 2.17 million more cars rather than admit they don’t know what’s wrong with their on-board computers

Restaurant bans TSA assholes

Too many assholes with drivers licenses, period

New study shows farm kids get less asthma because they don’t live in sterile, super-clean environments. Yes, I know some kids are the way they are just because, but keeping kids squeaky clean isn’t healthy.

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Fair and balanced courts in Iowa, R.I.P.

Remove the other side’s judges, then replace with your own. Clip and save for when progs take over Congress and impeach and remove Thomas, Scalia, etc.

 

Koch’s suckers

Remember, record snow is just more proof of global warming. No warm fronts colliding with cold fronts and no snow.

We gots warm fronts up the ass.

WI:

Cheeseheads about to get fee’ed (Pawlentyism: all the hate but twice the weasel)

Wisconsin Californicates itself (laws that keep your successors from fixing the problems you created are, of course, the most perfect of all perfect laws)

Tim Rutten (who’s full of shit on the subject of Cali pensions: a pension is more than a promise — it’s wages deferred until retirement and breaking that covenant is like demanding a retroactive pay cut)

Driftglass

WINston

Harold Meyerson

NYTimes editorial

Loose lips

Changing the rules to punish the quorum busters

Florida

Energy Co  bonanza buried in Walker’s bill?

Koch Bros run ads for new plant managers in WI

Live ammo? [more]

Another chart (and another bleat about fucking benefits — anyone ever factor in the need to heat your house in Northern states? Is living in Dixie a benefit or a feature?)

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Far be it from me to call D.J. Tice a liar, but after having written over 7,000 resumes I find it hard to believe his “successful young friend” exists.

John is in the food business. Currently, he handles U.S. sales for an international seafood company and travels constantly around the country.

If you think it odd that you can make six figures selling seafood in the Midwest, well, it’s improbable but not impossible. But Tice adds this:

What’s more, I gather that this foreign seafood firm’s U.S. sales are based 1,000 miles from the sea simply because this is where John wants to be, and they want him. So when and if John departs, so too may this well-paying job.

That makes more sense, and Tice is trying to point out that jacking taxes on Minnesotans with top incomes would drive people like “John” from the state. John, being so super special, can obviously live wherever he likes…assuming it’s a major airline hub and centrally located so he can service accounts on both coasts.

John could upgrade to the living hell that is Chicago and O’Hare, the squalid hell that is St. Louis, the submerged hell that is New Orleans or any of the lesser air hubs in between. Most sane people, if they were John, would stay where they are.

Like Tom Friedman’s taxicab drivers, John appears to be a very convenient construct for Tice’s oh-by-the-way-Dayton’s-tax-the-rich-proposal-will-kill-Minnesota drive-by op-ed. Which of course involves citing unnamed tax experts (Michele Bachman, btw, is widely considered to be a “tax expert”).

I call bullshit on this one. If there is a “John,” I’m betting his real story wouldn’t be nearly so convenient to D.J.’s mission of stopping the Guv from taxing the rich AT THE SAME FUCKING RATE AS THE MINNESOTA MIDDLE CLASS.

But Tice didn’t once use the word fuck, so I’m sure he’s right and I’m wrong as civility trumps facts every fucking time.

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More:

For the greater good of marching bands everywhere

Half of all U.S. seniors have zero savings (of course they didn’t break this down by race because that would make it too obvious as to exactly what’s going on)

Shit involving Sarah Palin (it gets harder and harder to give a fuck)

Rahm: FDL, Driftglass, Scott Turow

Limbaugh’s latest atrocity [more]

Prenatal Murder, Inc.

Re-rape

Daily Beast polling rep craters

When Ron Paul is right, Dems make sure he loses (we’re still in Afghanistan because….?)

Revolving doors

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Etc.:

Pot scientifically proven to aid in restoring cancer patients’ appetites

Choral music for Jonathan [via Tild]

Fucking up oatmeal (because that’s what big corpos do — if crack ever got legalized, McDonald’s would put sugar on it and stick it into every Happy Meal)

Defunding the “climate czar” because . . . . ? ? ? ?

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Shawna Forde, Rot in Hell. but it won’t happen nearly soon enough

Bernard Nathanson, already rotting in hell

Also

This should go without saying, but don’t feed the troll. I find his comments instructive, and they remind me that when you’re on the Right, being right is more important than feeding babies, paying people an honest day’s wage or promoting democracy in places where they don’t listen to Ted Nugent. In fact, being right is so important that being correct has little or nothing to do with it.

Trolls live to argue, and there’s no winning an argument with the modern right because their sources are as impenetrably circular as anything ever cobbled up by the campus Marxists of my youth (it helps when your sources’ lies are congruent with your fake media-fed fevered beliefs). Who else but the Right would blame Lara Logan for being a victim? Who but the Right would treat their pet media like stenographers? Who but the Right would accuse the left of envying the rich, then steal from workers to give still more to the rich? Who but the Right would fabricate the case for war against Iraq, then take a job lobbying for Muammar fucking Qadhafi?

Also:

Driftglass on David Brooks’ latest

Republicans disgusted by so-called Republicans (they’d do well to pick up on my Dixiecrat meme: everything wrong with today’s Republicans stems from their acquiring the Dixiecrat dregs of the Democratic party and then turning the GOP over to the socially conservative (i.e., racist) newbies)

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Wisconsin:

Accept decertification or get laid off

More on how Walker’s just paying back the Koch brothers [more]

Walker’s earlier union busting

Indiana Dems follow WI’s lead

Ohio ‘pugs can’t even get their union baiting out of committee

Fox News calling the doctors black

Lying liars spin test scores: WI students clearly above national average

Real polls (not Rasmussen) show support for unions

Kicking the hornet’s nest

Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello was at Monday’s rally

Walker pulls a Mubarak on internet access from the capitol

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More links:

Fed up DOJ employees demand a special prosecutor for Scott Bloch (sounds more and more like he ratted out his own to save his neck after having done Rove’s dirty jobs and Holder, like any prosecutor, rewarded him for being a snitch)

Politifact leg humps the truth (again)

James Howard Kunstler on peak oil [from my emailbox]

Anon v Phelps may not be exactly as billed [more] [more]

Fighting predators here and abroad

Chris fucking Dodd joins the MPAA as a fucking lobbyist (I will always think of Kos as a bit of a tool for embracing Dodd at the last Yearly Kos convention)

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Etc.:

Mom with young kids gets 10 years for selling $31 worth of pot

Global warming hoax now expected to produce 50 million environmental refugees in the coming decade

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Driver’s side car window is stuck in a down position. Took it in and they absolutely could not get the window up because the motor is fubared. The cost of a USED fucking motor and installation is $400+.

Fuck Detroit. A new motor would have been $700.

They weren’t building cars, they were building future revenue streams. But at least they saved the original owner a hundred bucks by not putting backup window cranks in the doors.

 

 

The links less read

From today’s online front page of the Star Tribune:

So fucking deep into the tea they can’t call “red meat” politics by name, and instead substitute “meat and potatoes” even though the article makes it damned clear they’re talking about red meat, as in “throwing red meat” to the ravenous hard right.

Bridgefail is a contemptible weasel, a backstabbing prick like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker. Say what you need to get elected, then once in office move even further to the right because God told you to.

Review the checklist. How many of the defining characteristics of fascism have these schmucks incorporated into their big stick schtick?

Ezra Klein’s not my favorite pundit, but even he gets Walker’s schtick:

The deal Wisconsin made with its state employees was simple: Accept lower wages than you could get in the private sector now in return for better pensions and health-care benefits when you retire. Now Walker wants to renege on that deal.

Rather than stiff the banks, in other words, he wants to stiff the teachers – but the crucial twist he’s added, the one that’s sent tens of thousands of workers into the streets, is that he wants to make sure they can’t fight back once he does it.

WaPost readers’ heads are spinning right now because that paper hasn’t been eager to share basic truths about this fight. Wisconsin teachers have settled for less in exchange for pension guarantees. They’ve made the sacrifices and have been willing to negotiate more pain, negotiate being the key word there. The governor is negotiation intolerant, and wants what he wants when he wants it because he said so.

Just like Tim fucking Pawlenty, another governor who would never negotiate. And both of these creeps have been aided and abetted by the George Soroses of the Right, the OK-based mavens of inherited wealth (originally earned by doing business with Josef fucking Stalin and the Soviet fucking Union), the Koch Brothers. Union busters from the get go, the Kochsters bankrolled Walker in the hopes of creating exactly this kind of confrontation.

The right has pushed as hard as it can, the only step left is to call out the Troopers and the Guard to make this war on workers official and if that isn’t the bottom line, why is union hater Swiftee chortling in my comments?

More:

Your best source for WI protest stories

Bob Herbert on our Left Behind economy

Blue Texan on Walker

Again, bending the rules to fight back isn’t smart, especially not when your opponents control the agencies that do the punishing

Best protest signage

NPR smears the workers

Comrade Bob on the conflict (guest appearance from Swiftee in the comments)

Howard fucking Kurtz weighs in

-

Other news:

Greenwald on the NYTimes kowtowing

Chris Hedges on Arianna’s big payday

Ruthless doesn’t always win

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No matter how you look at it, baggers are remarkably flexible. The same folks who think property owners have a right to shoot kids cutting across their lawns with an Uzi, also believe you have the right to poison your best friend if you figure out she’s been sleeping with your husband.

No hyperbole: Bush Solicitor General Paul D. Clement is representing the defendant who’s got the backing of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, the Cato Institute, six state attorneys general (AL, CO, FL, SC, TX, UT), and wingnut busybody David B. Rivkin Jr. all of whom say that this is a matter of states rights, and that the feds had no business stepping in after the cops kept blowing the victim off.

Not just a one-time thing, over 24 poisoning attempts have been documented. Documentation that includes photos taken by postal inspectors of the alleged poisoner applying her lethal chemicals to doorknobs, car doors and a mailbox.

For some, states rights are more important than putting an attempted murderer behind bars. Yes, this is about states fucking rights, which is Klassic Konservative speak for hell no we’re not letting niggers vote. Not letting undesirables vote is more important than the attempted poisoning of a woman or her fetus.

They really are the worst people imaginable, capable of bending or sacrificing any belief if it advances a goal because once they’re the boss of everything they’ll change it all back to the way it should be, the way it was in 1860.

More:

Another phony spitting on veterans story

How fast talkers rip off the gullible right [more from Masnick]

Hating Sesame Street, loving NASCAR, cont.

Neiwert on the kids they kill

Money sluts

And here’s a handy link that’s like a garlic stake for the blood-sucking stupid.

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MN ‘pugs are still pushing for a “you can’t sue your poisoners” bill. Protecting fast food chains from lawsuits is fine by me ONCE YOU’VE PASSED LEGISLATION MANDATING CALORY/FAT GRAMS ON MENUS. Let people know what they’re eating, and then I’m OK with caveat emptor.

Republicans, otoh, think that a free market is one in which they’re allowed to market the hell out of sugar with animated half-hour commercials on Saturday mornings. Their free markets allow vendors to buy shelf space, turning supermarkets into POP displays for soda and candy. They openly mock vegetables and engage in juvenile fantasies about arugula.

All the money and power is behind junk food. The only people speaking out for healthy food are hippies, nutritionists and other commonists. The rise of the radical right parallels perfectly the rise in American obesity. Fat cats for fatter Americans (win/win/win: more sales/comatose consumers/less Social Security paid out).

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Etc.:

The online game revolution, sweeping Hasbro aside like the retrograde biztards they are

Another response to the blogsRdead meme

Prayercopters

Recording industry exec spitting mad over Justin Bieber snub (you have to eat what they feed you or what’s the world coming to?)

So are states rights OK when they’re about legalization?

Crucifying the irreverent (amazing how handy those child porn laws are)

Buddy Jason’s band on Facebook

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Westboro Baptist Church, R.I.P.

Never, ever fuck with Anonymous (or 4chan).

Economic justice not everyone’s cup of tea

Paul Krugman:

Representative Paul Ryan made an unintentionally apt comparison: “It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison.”

It wasn’t the smartest thing for Mr. Ryan to say, since he probably didn’t mean to compare Mr. Walker, a fellow Republican, to Hosni Mubarak. Or maybe he did — after all, quite a few prominent conservatives, including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum, denounced the uprising in Egypt and insist that President Obama should have helped the Mubarak regime suppress it.

In any case, however, Mr. Ryan was more right than he knew. For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.

You would think, but of course that’s not how everyone thinks. There’s a big, fact-ignoring segment of our society that’s in this for the “win,” a win being the destruction of public unions.

Long-time reader and Norwegianity fan Swiftee left a comment last night to that effect:

No matter what you hear from the union bosses, or read on the Sorosphere, it was clear their lackeys know the days of whine and raises are O.V.E.R. baby, and I enjoyed rubbing their feral little snouts in it immensely.

If you happen to see a pic of a sign with the despicable minority graduation rates for Madison and Milwaukee accompanied with “UNION PROUD!” on it…that’d be me!

I think you can sift through his nuances without my assistance but if you need help, Roy Edroso has a few words on this subject. This wasn’t Swiftee’s entire message however. Outnumbered by a factor of at least 20:1, Swiftee and pals fought back (easy to do when paid FBI infiltrators aren’t trying to shove a Molotov cocktail into your hands):

I presented myself to a doctor who was signing excuse slips on the street. Told him I felt great, but needed the slip so I could get paid for the three days I had been protesting…response? “What’s your name?

I’ll be sending the slip, along with my affidavit to the WI Board of Medical Standards. Malpractice and conspiracy to commit fraud are not part of the Hippocratic Oath, I’m pretty sure.

The point of mass civil disobedience isn’t to get a doctor’s note to cover your ass later. A well-meaning doctor to be sure, but fool all the same. Sure, a few workers get their ass covered, but that just puts more pressure on the rest who don’t get slips. No one gets a slip? What’s a school board or chief going to do about it?

Nothing. You can’t fire everyone, or at least you can’t fire everyone and win any popularity contests. It wasn’t just Swiftee grabbing documentation. He also left a link to an ABC story about the doctor who’s about to get disciplined. [ABC distinguished itself Sunday morning with some partisan analysis of the protest.]

Not banned from practicing medicine or suspended, just disciplined. Because Swiftee and pals collected pieces of paper, this doctor will continue to practice with a piece of paper in his permanent records. Oh, and probably a butt chewing.

Not quite on a level with federal charges being brought by Sheriff Bob “Weapons of Mass Urination” Fletcher, but the objective was the same. When the right is in charge, dissent is criminalized (or sabotaged)(more). Unless it’s a Glenn Beck rally, and then you get actual Fox News coverage, something the Madison labor rally lacked because fair and balanced networks don’t give out free P.R. to their ideological foes.

More:

It would only take three Republicans to end this farce (or one quorum-sustaining Democrat)

Robert Reich on class warfare

Noam Chomsky on this assault on the public sector [video]

The Awl on the union-busting origins of this fight

Making shit up (taking up the slack when there is no fair and balanced coverage) (more on the huge presence of labor leaders on the Sunday talk shows)

Teach by day, protest by night

Egyptians and others buying pizza for Madison protesters

If  you haven’t already seen it, do check out the Imperial Walker pic

TBogg

WINston with more pics

Still more pictures (better than the newspaper stuff)

Bob Collins: the 5 states without collective bargaining for teachers rank 44h, 47th, 48th, 49th and 50th on ACT/SAT scores (the numbers rebuttal simply reflects the politics of ACT vs SAT — Midwesterners take the ACT — and ignores the Deep South-based reality of low scores)

Utterly unhinged

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More of that:

Why this latest snow storm is more proof of global warming (plus global swarming)

With Ramesh Ponnuru on his side, Gov. Bridgefail will go far (without advancing an inch)

Clarence Thomas scandal keeps building

Another off-the-top-of-their-heads bit of reichwing theo-ideological “analysis” (I’ve had liberal friends whose kids became cops, but they were liberal cops)

Lileks featured in the NYPost [Lambert's take (4th graf)]

Tweetie duped (again)

Restored Nuremberg documentary speaks to our times

Harold Ford still getting talk show time despite having no constituency other than his corporate backers

They’ll just keep rewriting the Civil War history books until the South wins

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Other news:

Jose Padilla sighting (isn’t it amazing how Obama instantly “fixed” all these problems?)

Amtrak to O’Hare? (gee, that bright idea didn’t take long to occur to them, did it?) (If you could take Amtrak to O’Hare, how many Minnesotans would just take the train to O’Hare rather than catching flights that always seem to route through Atlanta?)

L.A. Times continues to be the only national paper that’s heard of Shawna Forde

Israeli left more embarrassed by Obama than we are

Copywrong: thinking of something doesn’t make it so, or entitle you to royalties (or a piece of someone else’s business)

I have seven of the 10 Most Downloaded Movies which is easily five too many

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Etc.:

In Sweden, Jammie Thomas could have paid her fine with no problem

My peeps [animation]

Ted Rall with another installment of Disposable Dan [animation]

Best commentary on Star Wars ever

Buy.com tells me I can get a 42-in hi-def TV for under $500 now. If I could remember the last time I turned the TV on, that would have been tempting.

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I totally don’t get this Mr. Fish cartoon because I have no idea who’s playing Adam.

Leave a comment if you know.