Rachel Maddow | Michael Moore: The Rich and the GOP Are Destroying America's Working Class

via truthout...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

yep, that's what it's all about...

john nichols adds his thoughts...

Wisconsin State Representative Mark Pocan, the former co-chair of the legislature's powerful Joint Finance Committee, says he is starting to feel as if he lives in a “third world junta.”
The crowd inside the State Capitol after
protesters stormed the building on Wednesday
night.
(MIKE DEVRIES — The Capital Times )

Wisconsin State Senator Bob Jauch, a senior Democrat, says that what he is witnessing feels like “a coup.”

Marty Beil, the head of the AFSCME Council 24, the state’s largest public employee union, said Wisconsin had been turned into “a banana republic.”

And thousands of Wisconsinites, men and women, adults and their children, public employees and private-sector workers, have poured into the state Capitol in Madison, shouting: “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

There were 7,000 people outside the Capitol at some points during night, and thousands inside.

At the close of one of the most remarkable days in American political history, a state once regarded as among the most enlightened and progressive in the nation finds itself ruled by rogue Republican operatives whose disregard for rules – and the popular will – is so extreme that the longest serving legislator in the nation, Wisconsin State Senator Fred Risser, a Madison Democrat, says: “They have not just bent the law. They have broken it.”

Risser is right. After weeks of intense debate inside and outside the Capitol, and at a point when most Wisconsinites thought a compromise was in the offering, Republican legislative leaders suddenly announced that they would pass the most draconian components of Governor Scott Walker’s budget repair bill – including a move to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights.

yes... shame, shame, shame...

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Scahill on Maddow: is Blackwater still around because Obama's afraid?

here's an interesting twist on the on-going blackwater story...

Despite news reports that the security contractor formerly known as Blackwater has seen its contracts dry up and its influence wane, the company continues to do brisk business in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and the Obama administration may be too afraid of the firm to do anything about it, says investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill.

"You know who's guarding Hillary Clinton in Afghanistan right now? Blackwater," Scahill told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Tuesday night. "You know who guards members of Congress? Blackwater. They have half a billion dollars in contracts in Afghanistan right now. CIA, State Department, Defense Department. Why is President Obama keeping these guys on the payroll? There has never been a company in recent history that made the case that corporations are corrupt, evil organizations [better] than Blackwater."

Scahill was on The Rachel Maddow Show discussing the New York Times' revelation that senior Blackwater executives allegedly arranged for bribes of up to $1 million for Iraqi politicians in a bid to retain its contracts and silence criticism of the company in the wake of the Nissour Square massacre in 2007, in which 17 Iraqi civilians died after Blackwater guards opened fire.

so, afraid why...? afraid to lose a kickback...? afraid of what they know and would be willing to tell...? afraid for his life...? afraid why...?

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Punish the weak and vulnerable...? Absolutely...! The REAL crooks and criminals...? Not so much...

jeremy scahill in the nation via raw story and msnbc's rachel maddow...

Lawmakers’ defunding of community activist group ACORN “means there is no spine in Congress when it comes to standing up against the real crooks and criminals in this society,” military-affairs reporter Jeremy Scahill says.

Scahill, a writer for The Nation who this summer broke the story that Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater, had been implicated in at least one murder, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that ACORN got “pennies” compared to military contractors who have been convicted of crimes but continue to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from US taxpayers.

Scahill suggested that it’s relatively easy to go after a grassroots community group like ACORN, while pursuing much worse allegations against defense contractors requires actual courage.

“This is political, this isn’t really about upholding the law,” Scahill said on the Rachel Maddow Show. “On the one hand, you have an organization that registered 1.3 million people to vote, 400,000 members, works with the poor and working class people of this nation, and they don’t have lobbying power in the form of massive campaign contributions.

O beautiful, for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America! God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.

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Marital infidelity is a big no-no for everybody but us

in one of my rare forays into the - for me - barely tolerable world of television news, i watched this on rachel maddow last night...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

while i'm far from a voyeur that feeds on gossip about illicit affairs, i do find it extremely fascinating that those who attempt to set and enforce so-called standards of "morality" for the rest of us somehow can't be bothered to walk their talk... also fascinating is the group that calls itself "the fellowship" or "the family" that seems to be at ground zero of more and more of the emerging hypocrisy...

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Let's all join hands and say a silent prayer lamenting the demise of the 4th amendment [UPDATE]

we're so screwed...

rachel maddow and jonathan turley on countdown...



[UPDATE]

yeah... kiss the 4th amendment and any semblance of government accountability goodbye...

Senate Approves Immunity for Telecom Companies in Wiretapping

By a vote of 69-28, the Senate approved a bill overhauling
the rules covering secret government eavesdropping and
granting immunity to telecommunications companies that aided
in the wiretapping of Americans without warrants.

i thought it was a dark day when the military commissions act passed, but this is just as dark or darker... i never thought i would come to a point where i am so profoundly ashamed of my country and its government...

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Olbermann: "The only thing they're even half-way good at is half-assed lying and they're not very good at that"

mission accomplished, celebrating the deadliest month for u.s. troops in iraq since september of last year...



and, lest we lose sight of the true depth of the iraq tragedy, i'm going to do something i'm loathe to do, and that's to re-post one of the saddest photos i've seen in a long, long time, not for voyeuristic purposes, but simply to keep the horror visible...


Ridh Hadi places his two-year old nephew,
Ali Hussein, into a coffin in the Shiite
stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq
on Wednesday, April 30, 2008. The child
died on Tuesday after U.S. forces struck
back at militia fighters with 200-pound
(90-kilogram) guided rockets that
devastated at least three buildings in the
densely packed district that serves as the
Baghdad base for the powerful Mahdi
Army militia.
(AP Photo/ Karim Kadim)

so very, very sad...

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