The Plum Line - No labor officials on Sunday shows this weekend? Posted at 2:37 PM ET, 02/24/2011 By Greg Sargent I tend not to get into the business of questioning the guest choices made by the Sunday shows. But if there were ever a time the networks would want to book labor officials to appear, you'd think it would be now. The Wisconsin standoff is the most important domestic political story in the country right now, and as many commentators at those same networks have pointed out, both sides view this battle as ground zero in a national war that may determine the fate of organized labor in America. But labor officials are beginning to fear that none of them will be invited on this weekend to give voice to the labor point of view.
This, even as tough-talking anti-union governor Chris Christie is set to do a major appearance on CBS on Sunday. No labor officials have yet been booked to appear. Like I noted above, I tend not to see any point in questioning the Sunday lineups. UPDATE: Meet the Press has now agreed to host AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka.
Weigel : Glenn Beck and Mitt Romney on the Caliphate. Fox Mistakenly Claims Obama Misquoted Bible. Report: Republicans Give Up On Redefining Rape. Conservatives Stage Backlash Against Gay Republicans. Reaction to President Mubarak's resignation in Tahrir Square, Cairo. Egypt, Wisconsin, and the Future of Our Democracy. Are Wisconsin Republicans preparing to break with Walker? Interview: Felicia Day On Her New ‘Dragon Age’ Web Series. Fans of super-successful web series The Guild know Felicia Day best as Cyd/Codex, the shy MMO-addicted violinist who has trouble navigating relationships IRL.
She’s also portrayed monster-slayer-in-training Vi on the late, lamented Buffy the Vampire Slayer and teamed up with that series’ creator Joss Whedon to play Penny on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, helping the internet musical become a hit. But she’s about to embark onto a new fantasy journey with Dragon Age: Redemption, a new web series rooted in the mythology of BioWare’s action RPG games. We spoke to the Huntsville, Alabama native about getting to work inside a fictional world she loves and get some hints as to what to expect in Season 5 of the Guild. How did Dragon Age: Redemption come about? What was the idea there?
Did BioWare approach you or the other way around? Yeah, they approached me. What is it about the Dragon Age world that makes you a fan? I’ve read every single fantasy novel there is. Yeah. Scott Brown Claims ‘No Republicans’ Are Talking About Shutting Down The Government — 9 GOPers Disagree. The great Lightbulb War goes on, funded by energy companies. Johann Hari: Obama's robot wars endanger us all - Johann Hari, Commentators. Now imagine it doesn't end there: these attacks are happening every week somewhere in your country. They blow up funerals and family dinners and children. The number of robot-planes in the sky is increasing every week. You discover they are named "Predators", or "Reapers" – after the Grim Reaper. No matter how much you plead, no matter how much you make it clear you are a peaceful civilian getting on with your life, it won't stop.
What do you do? This sounds like a sketch for the next James Cameron movie – but it is in fact an accurate description of life in much of Pakistan today, with the sides flipped. The US government doesn't even officially admit the programme exists: Obama's most detailed public comment on it was when he jokingly told the boy band the Jonas Brothers that he would unleash the drones on them if they tried to chat up his daughter. But is this true? True, the programme has certainly killed some real jihadis. Is the same thing happening in Pakistan? Support for Wisconsin unions pouring in worldwide--in pizza form! It’s Official: More Private Sector Jobs Created In 2010 Than During Entire Bush Years. The September jobs report was just released and demonstrates that America is on a far slower path to recovery than anyone originally predicted. Despite this, the shedding of government jobs cloaks a glimmer of hope: more private sector jobs have been created this year than during the entire Bush administration.
Read that again: This is the 9 th straight month of private sector job growth in the midst of a devastating recession that has put a serious strain mostly on the poor and middle class. There has been a total of 863,000 private sector jobs created in 2010, exceeding the total created under the Bush/Cheney regime. The numbers are not all good however. This is also the central agent that has caused the overall net job loss for the last four months, following a net gain for the first 5 months of the year.
January 14,000 February 39,000 March 208,000 April 313,000 May 432,000 June -175,000 July -66,000 August -57,000 September -95,000 This pattern of job creation does not go without precedent. Anti-Walker Protests Continue, Outnumbering Pro-Walker Showing. Limbaugh: 'How Many People Really Think Of Obama As Black?' Group Behind Bills Seeking To Legalize Killing Abortion Providers Revealed. National People’s Action Takes Over Bank of America Branch in DC. CO-Sen: Buck didn't prosecute rape case because he believed victim had abortion. One of the reasons Colorado GOP Senate nominee Ken Buck declined to prosecute the rape of a 21-year-old college student in 2005 was that he believed she had previously had an abortion of a child fathered by the suspect.
According to Buck, that abortion gave the victim motive to lie about the suspect "to get back at" him. Of course, Buck's theory made no sense -- given that an abortion would have been the victim's choice, it would be the suspect who would have a revenge motive, not the victim. Moreover, Buck himself is an outspoken foe of abortion, opposing it even of cases of rape and incest, giving Buck himself a plausible motive to want to punish this young woman.
But perhaps the most obvious problem with Buck's theory is that he did not have enough facts to support it. M#2 [An unidentified male who attended meeting with victim]: We’ve talked about a motion to compel prosecution, and that’s the only other option. Maine Gov. On BPA: 'Worst Case Is Some Women May Have Little Beards'
Poll: Most oppose Wisconsin-style bills - Jennifer Epstein. Loading Image... Most Americans say they oppose limiting or ending collective bargaining for public sector unions, according to a poll released Tuesday. Sixty-one percent of Americans surveyed for a USA Today/Gallup Poll said they would oppose a law in their own state similar to the one that has sparked massive protests in Wisconsin, while 33 percent said they would support such legislation. Six percent said they had no opinion. Continue Reading The poll also found that 71 percent of Americans said they would oppose a hike on sales, income or other taxes to tackle budget shortfalls, while 27 percent said they would oppose such increases.
Fifty-three percent of those surveyed said they opposed reducing pay or benefits for government employees, while 44 percent said they would support such a move. The poll surveyed 1,000 adults on Monday night and has an error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Christine Pelosi: We Are All Wisconsin Workers. By carpool and caravan, populists are crowing the capitol to stand up for working people. Millions of Americans are standing together today saying "we are all Wisconsin workers. " All eyes are on Madison, watching to see whether America's public service workers will continue to have a voice on the job and whether -- by extension -- any of us will. The outpouring in Wisconsin erupted after years of downward pressure on wages and benefits that public employees have been feeling for years.
Benefits negotiated when private sector jobs were flush are resented now that recession takes its toll. Last September, as I blogged here at HuffPost, I participated in an American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) training where workers told me about over 100,000 jobs mowed down by the 2008 market crash and some seedlings growing from new business expansions. As I reported then: Well we know what happened. If you want a voice on the job, you're a Wisconsin worker. Politics News. GOP cuts abortion, needle exchange funds for D.C. - Jonathan Allen. Proud Of Being Ignorant. Coerced Abortions: A New Study Shows They’re Common. A new study shows that “reproductive control”—when a man allows or forces his partner to get pregnant, then makes her have an abortion—is more common than you’d think. A 21-year-old woman is in a relationship with a man who repeatedly tells her he wants to get her pregnant. Even though he is physically abusive, she too, wants to have a baby with him.
But a few months into her pregnancy, he changes his mind. He threatens to punch her in the stomach to induce an abortion, or to throw her down the stairs if she doesn’t have one. Because he has been violent so many times before, she doesn’t want to risk it. Another relationship snapshot: A woman, 24, doesn’t want her abusive boyfriend to get her pregnant, so she goes on the pill. These disturbing stories were recounted to researchers from the Guttmacher Institute by women sitting in the waiting rooms of family planning clinics and domestic violence centers.
But they acknowledge that there’s a huge amount of gray area. Is Birth Control Preventive Medicine? ABC This Week's Elites to Wisconsin Workers: "We Won, So Screw You All" ABC’s This Week didn’t even make a pretense of being fair and balanced, let alone honest, because the truth probably frightens them. In covering the historic labor protests in Wisconsin, ABC stacked it’s panel with the elitist right wing propagandist George Will (left unchecked by his nemesis fact-checker, Paul Krugman), a Tea-GOP freshman from Florida, and a senior ABC reporter apparently okay with deficit hysteria, all arrayed against “labor Democrat” Donna Brazile. Even the usually sensible host Amanpour wondered if the President’s mild statement about an “assault” on public employees went too far. Heavens, pass the smelling salts! Ms. Brazile thus got barely one chance in four to push back on the rest of the elitist panel’s defense of why it’s absolutely essential that states balance their budgets on the backs of public employees immediately after Wisconsin’s Governor and the elitists Obama/Congress just gave corporations and the wealthiest Americans massive tax gifts.
Mr. Sarah Palin's new best-seller reveals that she's still stuck on 2008. - By David Weigel. We can't say we weren't warned. When HarperCollins announced the publication of Sarah Palin's America by Heart, six long months ago, there were signs that it might not be interesting. The book would contain "selections from classic and contemporary readings that have moved her" and "portraits of some of the extraordinary men and women she admires. " If you translated this from press release-ese, it sounded like a clip job. A clip job wouldn't have amused readers who paid $5 or $6 more for this book than they paid for the deeply discounted Going Rogue. But I read America by Heart the same way I read Sarah Palin's first No. 1 New York Times best-seller: I bought it, then tore through it.
Keep your expectations for the new book low, and they will be met. What do we learn that we didn't know before? "Remember the 2001 interview about the Constitution by then-Illinois state senator Barack Obama that surfaced during the 2008 campaign? " The reader knows what's coming next. Apparently Wife-Beating Isn't Big News in Ohio. Judge allows states' healthcare suit to proceed | TPM News Pages.
'Anonymous' Targets Koch-Backed Americans For Prosperity. More Republicans Come Out Against Palin. WI Budget Protests.mov. GOP Legislator Who Crusaded Against College Sex Ed Classes Owns Company That Sells Kinky Sex Gadgets. By Zaid Jilani on October 18, 2010 at 7:00 pm "GOP Legislator Who Crusaded Against College Sex Ed Classes Owns Company That Sells Kinky Sex Gadgets" In the winter of 2009, Georgia state legislator Rep.
Calvin Hill (R-Canton) led a high-profile campaign against the teaching of public university courses that dealt with sexual health and related topics. Hill was joined by a small cadre of other conservatives who sought to end the teaching of courses dealing with topics such as male prostitution and gay history, and some of his acolytes even called for firing professors who taught these courses. Now, the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Jim Galloway reports that, while Hill may think that sex is too hot of a topic for the young adult students at public colleges in the state to handle, he’s perfectly fine making a buck off it. Stephanie Webb is Hill’s Democratic opponent. The products being referenced can be found here, here, here, and here.
Making Ignorance Chic. Poll Shows Support for Public Employees, Protesters in Wisconsin Fight. This new ad from the AFL-CIO features Mike DeGarmo, a firefighter from Racine, making two points about the standoff in Wisconsin between Senate Democrats and Republicans led by Governor Scott Walker. One, “we stand together or we fall together.” Firefighters are exempt from the collective bargaining restrictions in the budget repair bill, so having one of them as the spokesmen delivering this message is powerful.
In fact, firefighters have been at the lead of many of the rallies and have a big presence in the Capitol. Second, he emphasizes that public employees have agreed to the financial concessions in the bill, but draw the line at having their rights taken away. Time to see if that message is getting through. Public employees favorability: 62/11 Unions favorability: 53/31 In the current situation, agree or disagree with: Public employees: 67/24 Protesters: 62/31 Unions: 59/37 Democrats in the legislature: 56/39 Republicans in the legislature: 48/46 Gov. Indiana Democrats Walk Out to Protest Union-Busting Bill, Deny Quorum.
For the second time in a week, a group of legislative Democrats from a Midwestern state has bolted to protest an anti-union bill. We know about Wisconsin, but now Indiana Democrats have walked out: House Democratic lawmakers in Indiana have begun a de facto walkout in an effort to block a Republican-backed bill that would restrict private-sector union rights.Republicans arrived at the statehouse Tuesday morning to find no Democrats present, as protesters applauding the walkout could be heard inside the chamber.The strategy is possible because Republicans make up 60 of 100 House seats. Without any Democrats present, Republicans lack a two-thirds majority needed for a quorum to act on the bill. There are differences between the proposed Wisconsin and Indiana measures: the Indiana ones are actually quite worse.
Governor Mitch Daniels de-certified the state’s public employee unions on his first day in office back in 2007. It got little response at the time. Wisconsin now has some company. House Republicans vote to protect child marriage. Palin's reckless views on obesity. Roland Martin says Sarah Palin slammed Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" anti-obesity campaignHe says Obama's site says obesity tripled in 30 years, diabetes in kids is upHe says a group of generals told Congress increasingly people are too overweight to serveMartin: Palin's comments show she is reckless about the nation's health Editor's note: Roland Martin is a syndicated columnist and author of "The First: President Barack Obama's Road to the White House.
" He is a commentator for TV One Cable network and host/managing editor of its Sunday morning news show, Washington Watch with Roland Martin. (CNN) -- It's clear that we can't go 24 hours without Sarah Palin saying something so stupid that it defies logic, but leave it to the Kim Kardashian of politics to find something wrong with first lady Michelle Obama's effort to curb obesity in America's kids. In the wacky world of Wasilla's finest, Palin tries to cast the effort to fight obesity as part of Michelle Obama's "different worldview. " Terror in Arizona: Just another 'isolated incident'? Funny how that list keeps mounting. REPORT: In 22 Statehouses Across the Country, Conservatives Move to Disenfranchise Voters. Murder Case Puts Spotlight On Abortion Clinic Rules. Hide captionAbortion doctor Kermit Gosnell catered to minorities, immigrants and poor women at the Women's Medical Society in Philadelphia.
He was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies. Matt Rourke/AP Abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell catered to minorities, immigrants and poor women at the Women's Medical Society in Philadelphia. He was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies. A murder case involving a sordid Philadelphia abortion clinic is fueling debate about how clinics should be run, with several states considering stricter regulations. Ebony Behlin says five years ago she went to Kermit Gosnell's clinic in Philadelphia to get an abortion. "When I went, it seemed clean to me," Behlin says. The red brick building at 38th Street and Lancaster Avenue where the clinic was located is deserted now.
"In my mind this is not about abortion," Williams says. "Dr. "They regulate the width of hallways. Lunch with Napster co-founder Sean Parker. - By John Gapper. Spider venom that causes four-hour long erections 'could be the new Viagra' Indiana Official On Wisconsin Protestors: ‘Use Live Ammunition’ Video: Boehner Calls Middle Class Tax Cut Vote "Chicken Crap" The voting public doesn't necessarily believe what Mitch McConnell says it believes. - By John Dickerson. If Banks Paid Their Full Taxes, We Could Rehire All 132,000 Teachers Laid Off During The Recession — Twice.
SCOTUS: A corporation is not a person. Shariah: Tennessee Lawmakers Propose Ban Practice of Islamic Holy Law; Homeland Security Pitted Against Religious Freedom. Anti-Abortion Activist On Trial For 'Wanted' Posters. Why Health-Care Reform Will Survive. Exclusive: First Autistic Presidential Appointee Speaks Out | Wired Science. Deceived By Satan’ Re: His Fave Grandma, Sarah Palin. Efforts Rising to Ordain Women as Roman Catholic Priests. Message to Christine O'Donnell: Hands off my hobby. - By Joel Stein. Politics News. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's very political 'joke' - Ben Smith and Keach Hagey. Obama Confronts 'Tea Party' Santelli, His Accuser, Sort Of : It's All Politics. Think Progress » John Fund To O’Donnell: Gender Discrimination Lawsuits Are ‘Not The Responsible Thing For A Conservative’
Rove: O'Donnell should explain 'witchcraft' comments. Bill Clinton: Democrats Need National Plan : It's All Politics. DE-Sen: O'Donnell calls being gay an 'identity disorder' U.S. Walks Out as Iran Leader Speaks. A vanilla-scented pledge. Politics News. Christine O'Donnell To Cut Off America's Johnson. Angle takes bold stand against family health care. John Shimkus: 'Global warming won't destroy planet because God promised Noah'
Investigate Christine O'Donnell. The Republicans' "Pledge to America" revives the most disastrous economic ideas in U.S. history. - By Eliot Spitzer. Obama's role in Md. governor's race remains unclear as O'Malley visits White House. Income Gap Between Rich, Poor the Widest Ever. DE-Sen: Fox poll shows GOP teahadists jumped the satanic altar.
Little pink houses for you and me... In Record Time, Fox Host Confuses Taxes, Spending, Socialism, And Fiscal Responsibilty (VIDEO) With Just 42 Votes, Republicans Block Debate Over Defense Authorization Bill. Barack Obama's battle to get out of Afghanistan | World news. New Rasmussen poll of Wisconsin is devasting for Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans.