“we need to understand how we got here”

antarctica?? :-)

The ever-growing number of countries ordering pizzas for the Wisconsin protestors at Ian’s Pizza

libya

President Obama speaks about the situation in Libya in the Grand Foyer of the White House, Feb. 23

Text of remarks here

President Barack Obama meets with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon in the Oval Office, Feb. 23, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

‘six purple hearts’

President Obama returns to the White House after a trip to the National Naval Medical Center in Washington, February 23. From White House spokesperson Nick Shapiro: “During his visit to the National Naval Medical Center today, the President met with 22 service members – 21 of whom served in Afghanistan, 1 of whom served in Iraq. While at the hospital, the President awarded 6 purple hearts.”

digby? i think i love you.

Digby: …it started off well, calling out the Governor on his union breaking goals. But then he … proceeded to denigrate the protesters as fools….

I’m so glad we have Jon Stewart around to reduce all political activities of ordinary people into a clown show. It makes it much easier to maintain our ironic distance. Silly people making noises in public is really beneath all smart liberals … the only respectable way for people to engage in politics is to let Jon Stewart explain it all to us in our special coded hipster humor…

… he’s telling liberals that it’s more important to behave in a dignified, fair fashion than to stand up for your beliefs in a way that could be perceived as unseemly or one-sided. That makes you as bad as the other side.

Except, of course, it really doesn’t. It’s really about what you’re fighting for. Tea partiers were trying to stop the federal government from reforming our health care system so that middle class workers will not go broke or die if they get sick. The Wisconsin protesters are trying to stop the Republican governor from making it illegal for them to belong to a union so that they can live a decent middle class life …

…. I’m sorry that people are misbehaving and failing to have the Oxford style debate that Stewart seems to think we should have … calls for “civility” are usually just a way to shut people up … this is why Colbert’s satire is so much more effective and, frankly, much braver. His satire is firmly aimed at the right, so he cannot take both sides. That’s why it works – it takes a position. By contrast, I’m increasingly not finding Jon’s church-lady finger wagging all that funny….

Read the full post here (also includes clips from the Daily Show)

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I loved this post so much, I almost hugged my monitor 😳 – it summed up everything I feel about Stewart, the kid who reckons he’s cool because he sneers at anyone who shows some real passion about a cause. Of course I loved him when he targeted Bush, but that’s because I thought he actually stood for what is right. I get it now, he just sneers at everyone – it’s the cool thing to do.

Stewart would, most probably, sneer at this man’s passion too:

State Rep Gordon Hintz – from Crooks and Liars

bethesda bound

President Barack Obama waves as he leaves the White House, Feb. 23, as he travels to National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda to visit wounded soldiers

‘obama action against DOMA coming’

Washington Post (Jonathan Capehart): A well-placed and trusted source tells me that, any minute now, Attorney General Eric Holder will issue a statement announcing that it will no longer defend so-called Defense of Marriage Act lawsuits in court. The source believes DOJ had come to the conclusion that heightened scrutiny would apply, and that these cases cannot be defended in court. A 530d letter has been sent to Congress informing it that, if it wants to defend the statute, it is free to do so. A case is pending now that has a filing deadline of March 11.

This is huge, folks. By definitively stating that gay men and lesbians deserve heightened scrutiny, the Obama administration is declaring that there is no government interest in perpetuating the discrimination aggrieved parties are trying to redress.

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The Attorney General made the following statement today about the Department’s course of action in two lawsuits, Pedersen v. OPM and Windsor v. United States, challenging Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for federal purposes as only between a man and a woman:

In the two years since this Administration took office, the Department of Justice has defended Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act on several occasions in federal court … After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny. The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases. I fully concur with the President’s determination.

Thank you Hachikō! This is a seriously BFD!

his master’s voice? well, no….

Wisconsin Governor takes call from prankster posing as a Koch brother

From Buffalo Beast – the link now appears to be down, presumably because of the traffic

Read about it on Salon

‘David Koch’: “We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.”

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: “You know, well, the only problem with that – because we thought about that…..”.

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‘Koch’: “You’re the first domino….”

Walker: “Yep. This is our moment….”

‘Koch’: “Now what else could we do for you down there?”

Walker: “Well the biggest thing would be – and your guy on the ground is probably seeing this…..”

***

‘Koch’: [Laughs] “Well, I tell you what, Scott: once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.”

Walker: “All right, that would be outstanding.”

Read all about it at Buffalo Beast

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Ezra Klein: “….if the transcript of the conversation is unexceptional, the fact of it is lethal. The state’s Democratic senators can’t get Walker on the phone, but someone can call the governor’s front desk, identify themselves as David Koch, and then speak with both the governor and his chief of staff? That’s where you see the access and power that major corporations and wealthy contributors will have in a Walker administration, and why so many in Wisconsin are reluctant to see the only major interest group representing workers taken out of the game.

The critique many conservatives have made of public-sector unions is that they both negotiate with and fund politicians. It’s a conflict of interest. Well, so too do corporations, and wealthy individuals. That’s why Murphy – posing as Koch – was able to get through to Walker so quickly. And it shows what Walker is really interested in here: He is not opposed, in principle, to powerful interest groups having the ear of the politicians they depend on, and who depend on them. He just wants those interest groups to be the conservative interest groups that fund him, and that he depends on.

***

“The governor takes many calls everyday,” Walker’s spokesman, Cullen Werwie, said in a statement. “Throughout this call the governor maintained his appreciation for and commitment to civil discourse. He continued to say that the budget repair bill is about the budget. The phone call shows that the governor says the same thing in private as he does in public and the lengths that others will go to disrupt the civil debate Wisconsin is having.”

oh boy

Remember yesterday’s poll from USA Today/Gallup showing that 61% of Americans oppose taking away collective bargaining rights from public unions?

This is how Fox reported it:

See? It’s easy! If poll results don’t fit your agenda, just reverse them!

Read more on this at Media Matters

Media Matters update: I’m willing to grant the fact that when you put together a daily three hour morning show like Fox & Friends, mistakes are bound to happen …. however, incidents like this really test the limits of what can be considered an honest mistake.

….If you thought Fox would either ignore the poll or claim it is inaccurate, you underestimate the network’s capacity for blatant dishonesty in service of pushing GOP propaganda.

….At the end of the show, Kilmeade offered a brief correction, saying that he “had it reversed” when discussing the poll. Now, it’s possible that Kilmeade’s butchering of the poll results can be chalked up to his inability to read a poll or misspeaking.

However, it wasn’t just Kilmeade who “had it reversed.” Fox News had a graphic ready to go that repeated Kilmeade’s distortion, suggesting that this misrepresentation was premeditated by the network…

More here

Join the ‘Drop Fox’ campaign here

From a rally in New York City in support of the Wisconsin demonstrations held in front of the Fox News building on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan

good morning, chicago