Saturday: Solidarity, Sisterhood

Posted: March 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Economy, Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us, morning reads, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 74 Comments

Good morning, gleaners!

Grab your morning brew, and let’s go!

Wisconsin

  • It’s farmer-labor day today at the WI Capitol building, starting at noon, complete with a “tractorcade.”

Hillaryland

(second link will take you to an AFP report on Hillary’s remarks at Friday’s Women in the World conference in NY. See also her remarks at the 2011 Women of Courage event for more.)

  • This week–on International Women’s day no less–our advocate-in-chief helped to launch a Global Partnership on Maternal and Child Health, bringing a long-neglected development goal further out of the shadows. Brava, Madam Secretary!

(see also Hillary’s 100 Women Initiative. If you don’t know what it is, click and find out.)

— Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, introducing the president of Kyrgyzstan at a State Department event.

Women’s Rights

  • See here for RH Reality Check’s exhaustive coverage of the latest developments from yesterday. Also, Minkoff Minx wrote to her Georgia state representative, Stephen Allison (R-8) and received a letter from Rep. Allison that you might find of interest. Scroll to the end of the post to see it.
  • My $0.02 on Allison’s response: The excuse that the most draconian of these bills will never pass is baloney. The rise of mini-Stupaks in states across the country has built up a momentum in the war against women, and that momentum is helping to get other horrible versions of these bills passed. Furthermore, the preponderance of such nonsense legislation clearly indicates a concerted effort to use women and their civil rights as a tool of division and distraction from the economy, degrading those rights in the process and blocking unfettered access to reproductive healthcare for women–all women. The rich will get their safe abortions on demand one way or another, and we all know it.

Tired of hearing about Charlie Sheen?

Economy

  • Bernie Sanders introduces The Emergency Deficit Reduction Act. Sanders’ press release says the bill would a) create a 5.4% surtax on millionaires, yielding up to $50 billion annually for the US Treasury, and b) end tax breaks for Big Oil, yielding about $3.5 billion a year in new revenue. Thank you, Bernie Sanders!

CLICK TO GO TO ECONOMIX

US Politics: 2012

  • US News & World Report says wedge issues are back just in time for the 2012 electoral cycle. In other news… Water? Yep, wet as ever. (When did wedge issues ever leave?)
  • Here’s a derivative piece if ever there was one… Cameron Lynch says Barack Obama is the “Surprisingly Silent President.” This echoes Ruth Marcus last week suddenly discovering that Obama is the “Where’s Waldo” president. Obama told America who he was from 2004 to 2008. The creative clueless class was too busy chattering away and creating “a different kind of politician” narrative to take note that Obama was telegraphing very clearly that he would make an indifferent kind of president.

Civil Liberties

King hearings

  • Adam Serwer (via the American Prospect) has an important read up that puts it all in perspective… Good Cop, Bad Cop: “On counterterrorism, the only difference between Republicans and Obama is rhetorical.”

Disaster in Japan and Elsewhere

(Also, Crowley confirmed his comments about Manning to The Cable:”What I said was my personal opinion. It does not reflect an official USG policy position. I defer to the Department of Defense regarding the treatment of Bradley Manning.”)

  • See the NYT’s photojournalism blog — Lens — for dramatic shots of the devastation from the 8.9 quake and tsunami in Japan, as well as other harrowing pictures from around the world yesterday, that tell the story of tragedy and strife.

Environment

  • “The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century. Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to seven billion people.”

–Achim Steiner, the executive director of UN Environment Programme

This Day in History (March 12)

  • First fireside chat: “It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail.” –FDR, 1933 (even FDR sounds like he’s saying Solidarity forever!)

What Kind of Liberal are You?

  • Take the quiz. I’m a “Working Class Warrior.” How about you?
  • I mostly linked to this silly quiz so I could share this priceless bumper sticker quote from the first question: “May the fetus you save be gay.”

Song of Protest for Saturday

Extra verse added to the PPM version: “Show me the famine, show me the frail, eyes with no future that show how we failed, and I’ll show you the children with so many reasons why there but for fortune, go you or I.”

I’m turning the Saturday reads over to you in the comments… Take the quiz and let us know how you score, share a song, link us to what’s on your blogging list this weekend…and have a great day!

[originally posted at Let Them Listen; crossposted at Taylor Marsh and Liberal Rapture]

Friday Reads

Posted: March 11, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: collective bargaining, Domestic terrorism, Environment, Environmental Protection, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, right wing hate grouups, The Media SUCKS, the villagers | Tags: , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

Good Morning!

I’ve noticed that we seem to be seeing a lot of change recently along with a lot of people that would prefer to stick their heads in the sand and try to legislate the world back 100 years.  It really seems like science, voter sentiment, and the world are at odds with the vision of our leaders these days.  Here are some examples.

A study done by the U.S. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was just published in Geophysical Research Letters here provides some pretty clear evidence that the  polar ice sheet mass loss is accelerating at a rate that is increasing exponentially.

It’s been clear for a while that the  polar ice sheet mass loss is accelerating (see Large Antarctic glacier thinning 4 times faster than it was 10 years ago: “Nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier”).

But the new study is a bombshell because of its credibility and thoroughness — and because it provides perhaps the most credible estimate to date of the sea level rise we face in 2050 on our current emissions path, 1 foot.

The JPL news release runs through the calculation that leads to the 1-foot estimate:

The authors conclude that, if current ice sheet melting rates continue for the next four decades, their cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) from glacial ice caps and 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) from ocean thermal expansion, total sea level rise could reach 32 centimeters (12.6 inches). While this provides one indication of the potential contribution ice sheets could make to sea level in the coming century, the authors caution that considerable uncertainties remain in estimating future ice loss acceleration.

It is always worthwhile to make clear that the projections are uncertain.  On the other hand, one would have to say that the uncertainty is greater on the high side — since the rate of human-caused warming is itself projected to accelerate, and the poles are the place where the planet is heating up the most, much faster than expected (see “Deep ocean heat is rapidly melting Antarctic ice:  Oceanographer at AGU: Western Antarctic Peninsula is seeing “the highest increase in temperatures of anywhere on Earth”).

Senator Lindsey Graham wants Director of National Intelligence General Clapper to resign because he answered a question truthfully. It’s even unclear if Graham was even in the hearing for the entire committee interview.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in an exclusive interview with Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron, called for Gen. James Clapper to resign or be fired as Director of National Intelligence, citing his comments before the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning, on which Graham sits.

Clapper had stated his belief that the Qaddafi regime, in the long term would “prevail” in Libya, and also assessed China and Russia to be primary threats to the United States.

Graham told Cameron that he lacks confidence in Clapper’s understanding of his job, that President Obama should “repudiate” Clapper’s remarks, and that this is the third time Clapper has faltered in this way.

It’s rather evident from the news reports that the evil empire is winning against the ewoks right now.  What’s Graham’s problem? He’d prefer the varnished untruth instead?  Clapper was also asked a very specific question in terms of threats to the US from just numbers of weapons and troops. The answer?  China and the USSR, of course.  I guess they wanted to hear Iraq and North Korea.  Clapper directly answered pertinent the question.  He just didn’t spin it the way the warhawks wanted.  I guess every one decided that he should’ve discounted the huge number of weapons, troops, and WMDS held by the other two super powers and gone straight to the little guys that can’t reach us from their neck of the globe.
Clapper clarified that North Korea and Iran are “of great concern,” but questioned whether they pose a “direct mortal threat” to the United States. The intelligence chief seemed to be focused on which countries have the capability, not necessarily the intent, to threaten the United States.

WonktheVote posted a thread earlier this week showing that the threat of terrorism in the US comes more from white, right wing military groups than from radicalized American Muslims. This evidence contrasts Peter King’s McCarthyism style hearing yesterday which relied on only personal stories.  There were no people invited to testify from law enforcement, the FBI, or Homeland Security.  Understandly, so there’s more evidence on who we should fear at C&L. Dave Niewert must’ve read her!!!  Niewert document 22 cases in these kind of violence in the last tw0 years and shows a map.  They’ve occurred all over the place.

In their eagerness to promote Peter King’s dubious and nakedly Islamophobic hearings on homegrown Islamic-radical terrorism, O’Reilly and his Fox colleagues have openly sneered at suggestions that we ought to do the same for right-wing extremists and their mounting acts of violence. This case definitively underscores that need, embodied in the 22 cases we’ve documented over the past two and a half years:

Simultaneously, it’s also not very clear that the Islamic radicals pose a serious threat in terms of domestic terrorist activity. Certainly, there’s plenty of reasons to believe that the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism is wildly overstated — not least of which is the fact that, as Zaid Jilani at ThinkProgress reported, terrorism incidents in the USA have been coming from non-Muslim sources at nearly twice the rate as that of Muslims.

Lexington at The Economist had this to say about the hearings.

It is indeed hard to find much to like in Mr King. The representative for Long Island has approached this most sensitive of subjects with the delicacy of a steamroller, plus an overactive imagination and a generous dollop of prejudice. To be clear: he may not be prejudiced against America’s Muslims (the “overwhelming majority” are “outstanding Americans”, he says) but he long ago prejudged the question his own hearings are supposed to answer, being already firmly of the view that the country’s Muslims are doing too little to counter radicalisation within their ranks. He is the author of a novel, “Vale of Tears”, in which a heroic version of his thinly disguised self busts a home-grown al-Qaeda cell at a Long Island Islamic centre. His own attitude to terrorism, though, is conveniently elastic. In the 1980s this Irish-American Catholic sympathised strongly with the Irish Republican Army, going so far as to compare Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the terrorist group’s political wing, to George Washington.

Beyond these objections to his person, prejudices and past, most of the available evidence suggests that Mr King’s central thesis is overblown, if not flat wrong. Muslim co-operation with the authorities is not perfect, but by most accounts—including those of Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, and Eric Holder, the attorney-general—the community has in general worked hard to expose terrorist plots in its midst. In one prominent case last year, for instance, five men from northern Virginia who had travelled to Pakistan in search of jihad were convicted after their families tipped off the FBI. The Triangle Centre on Terrorism and Homeland Security, a research group affiliated with Duke University and the University of North Carolina, reported recently that 48 of the 120 Muslims suspected of plotting terror attacks in America since the felling of the twin towers in 2001 were turned in by fellow Muslims.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka calls Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker the “mobilizer of the year”.

While blasting Walker and Wisconsin’s Republican legislators for their “absolute corruption of democracy” in passing an anti-labor bill, the leader of the nation’s largest union group thanked the governor for getting activists fired up. “We probbably should have invited him here today to receive the Mobilizer of the Year Award,” Trumka said Thursday morning while speaking to the National Press Club in Washington D.C. “Wisconsin is the beginning — it’s pushing the start button” for pro-labor activism.

ED Kain at Forbe’s American Times says that the GOP’s war on collective bargainning will turn out to be its Waterloo.

And not just Wisconsin, but also Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, Florida, and the rest of the over-reaching state Republicans. Governors like Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and Jan Brewer are riding on the coattails of the Tea Party, but they’ve become blind to the dangers of their radical policies.

In Wisconsin, Democrats are already promising to step-up recall efforts. But the recalls are only a small part of what is likely going to be a huge anti-Republican backlash across the nation, as working Americans finally realize what that party actually stands for: an playing field heavily tilted toward the rich and powerful, toward corporate power, and against worker rights.

Wow, what a week!  What’s been on your mind and your reading and blog list?

High Noon in Madison: Wisconsin Open Thread

Posted: March 10, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Breaking News | Tags: , | 51 Comments

Graphic credit: Detlef.Schrempf via Flickr

This is an open thread to post on what’s happening in Wisconsin during the day.

UPDATE 2, 11 am — BREAKING:

***Senate Dems returning from Illinois***

UPDATE 1: this is Breaking news out of WI via madison.com

Capitol access denied, protesters dragged away; huge crowd outside

10:15 a.m. — Reporters are being denied access to the Capitol. The State Patrol told a State Journal reporter the building is shut down and they’re not letting anyone else in.

Four or five protesters sitting in front of the Assembly doors were dragged away, but not put under arrest, by State Patrol troopers and other officers.

Other protesters who were in the hallway leading to the doors of the Assembly left voluntarily.

(there appears to be a running live blog via The Cap Times, so check back for more updates.)

***

Robert Schlesinger has a nice wrap-up of yesterday’s developments over at US News & World Report — “Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and His Allies Drop All Pretenses“:

To review: Walker–having created a budget crisis by enacting a huge tax cut–proposed a bill to “fix” the “crisis” by not only sharply cutting the compensation of public employees, but also by stripping public unions of their collective bargaining rights. This was, Walker claimed, what he campaigned on, a declaration which PolitiFact termed “false.” It was not, Walker insisted, about breaking Wisconsin’s public unions but rather about fixing the budget. This lie was made transparent when the public unions’ offer to accept the compensation cuts in exchange for keeping their collective bargaining rights and Walker refused to budge. And a stalemate descended upon Madison as all the state senate Democrats fled to Illinois, leaving the legislature’s upper chamber without the minimum number of members required to pass a budget-related bill.

How to break the impasse? Simple: Drop the pretense that this was about the budget. They stripped out all the actual fiscal items from the law and hastily passed a bill that simply went after the unions.

There’s been a lot of buzz about the legality of what the GOP did and lawsuits, but by Schlesinger’s account, there may be only so much that can be accomplished via the legal route:

The state house Democratic leader loudly proclaimed that the passage of the law was illegal because it violated the state’s open meeting laws. The courts will decide that, but even if it so, it seems like a process issue–the GOP can presumably run the same play but correctly dot the I’s and cross the T’s.

And if the GOP was trying to trick the Wisconsin 14 into coming back to protest and be forced into providing a quorum for the whole bill, so far that doesn’t seem to be working:

“We’re not going to go back because there are still a lot of games they can play,” State Sen. Jon Erpenbach told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “We’re going to sit tight here for a while.”

Schlesinger closes with this:

There is talk in Madison of a general strike to protest the bill. And more broadly, the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman warned on Lawrence O’Donnell’s Last Word that this could be a broader ploy to try to incite an overreaction among progressives that could be used against Democrats in swing states in 2012. Stay tuned.

Fineman is such a putz. SOLIDARITY FOREVER!

And get this —even the rightwing thinktank Cato Institute says Karl Rove’s Crossroad GPS anti-union ad is a misleading use of the Cato study the ad cites! For more info, see Greg Sergent and Talking Points Memo.

When even the Cato Institute points out that the GOP’s anti-union push is making a misleading charge “that seems intended to turn non-unionized workers of all kinds against unionized public employees,” you know you’ve gone way down the rabbithole.

Also, yesterday on Fox we heard straight from one of the horses’ mouths what this is about. This is not about any budget crisis. It’s electoral politics plain and simple.

Think Progress (video at the link):

In an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly moments ago, State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), one of Walker’s closest allies in the legislature, confirmed the true political motive of Walker’s anti-union push. Fitzgerald explained that “this battle” is about eliminating unions so that “the money is not there” for the labor movement. Specifically, he said that the destruction of unions will make it “much more difficult” for President Obama to win reelection in Wisconsin:

FITZGERALD: Well if they flip the state senate, which is obviously their goal with eight recalls going on right now, they can take control of the labor unions. If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.

So that’s a little bit of what happened yesterday.

This is from the facebook page of one of the Wisconsin 14 just this morning. Chris Larson:

3 weeks ago, we stepped away from the Capitol & family so that thousands could step up and be heard in Wisconsin. Neighbors spoke up in a way we never could have anticipated. Whatever happens next, I hope each person stays engaged by speaking against injustice, by encouraging friends to vote, by helping campaigns they believe in and by running for office themselves. Democracy is YOURS and it is what you make of it.

I listened to Michael Moore’s reaction to the GOP’s crazymaking from yesterday on Democracy Now, and he thinks Saturday is going to be big:

“This is a turning point. I feel it deep in my heart right now. […] This is our moment. Everybody up off the couch now.”

Below is the song that came to mind when I heard the news… it’s cheesy, and I figure that’s appropriate for a cheddar revolution.

What song are you thinking of right now?

Tuesday Reads

Posted: March 8, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Catfood Commission, collective bargaining, Foreign Affairs, Libya, Middle East, morning reads, Psychopaths in charge, Social Security, Team Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, worker rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Good Morning!! There is a lot of news breaking this morning about Libya. The Guardian just posted this story: Barack Obama raises pressure on Gaddafi as no-fly zone gains support

Barack Obama has stepped up pressure on Colonel Gaddafi, saying the US and Nato allies were considering a military response to violence in Libya, with the list of options including arming the rebels.

Obama’s remarks came as Britain and France made progress in drafting a resolution at the UN calling for a no-fly zone triggered by specific conditions, rather than timelines. Downing Street is hopeful that a resolution with clear triggers such as the bombing of civilians would not be subject to a Russian veto at the security council.

The foreign secretary, William Hague, told the Commons a no-fly zone would have to be supported by north African countries and rebel leaders and would also need an appropriate legal basis.

There is concern by Western governments that Gadhafi may succeed in defeating the opposition forces if they don’t get more international support soon. Obama is getting pressure from Senator John Kerry who has been pushing for the no-fly zone for some time now.

Kerry, chairman of the foreign relations committee, argued at the weekend that a no-fly zone would not amount to military intervention, adding: “One could crater the airports and the runways and leave them incapable of using them for a period of time.” ….Obama is believed to oppose US military intervention in Libya, partly because it could boost Gaddafi’s standing. But if civilian deaths mount and the humanitarian crisis worsens, his hand may be forced.

The New York Times says discord is growing in DC over the Libya situation.

Of most concern to the president himself, one high-level aide said, is the perception that the United States would once again be meddling in the Middle East, where it has overturned many a leader, including Saddam Hussein. Some critics of the United States in the region — as well as some leaders — have already claimed that a Western conspiracy is stoking the revolutions that have overtaken the Middle East.

“He keeps reminding us that the best revolutions are completely organic,” the senior official said, quoting the president.

At the same time, there are persistent voices — in Congress and even inside the administration — arguing that Mr. Obama is moving too slowly. They contend that there is too much concern about perceptions, and that the White House is too squeamish because of Iraq.

Furthermore, they say a military caught up in two difficult wars has exaggerated the risks of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, the tactic discussed most often.

The American military is also privately skeptical of humanitarian gestures that put the lives of troops at risk for the cause of the moment, while being of only tenuous national interest.

It really makes me angry that our government had no problem going into Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein over weapons that didn’t exist, but now that we have a humanitarian crisis with people being slaughtered by a vicious tyrant, our President is dithering and the military doesn’t want to help because our own selfish interests aren’t involved. What about doing something because it’s the right thing to do? For once we actually have a chance to be the good guy. Yeah, I know that’s crazy talk…

According to Reuters, Gadhafi is “looking for [an] exit deal.”

Two Arab newspapers and al Jazeera television said on Monday Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was looking for an agreement allowing him to step down, but there was no official confirmation of the reports.

Al Jazeera said Gaddafi had proposed to Libyan rebels to hold a meeting of parliament to pave the way for him to step down with certain guarantees.

It said Gaddafi made the proposal to the interim council, which speaks for mostly eastern areas controlled by his opponents. It quoted sources in the council as saying Gaddafi wanted guarantees of personal safety for him and his family and a pledge that they not be put on trial.

Al Jazeera said sources from the council told its correspondent in Benghazi that the offer was rejected because it would have amounted to an “honourable” exit for Gaddafi and would offend his victims.

So, while Western leaders argue and Libyan rebels hold out for a better deal with the madman, Gadhafi’s forces continue to attack the ragtag opposition from the air. I think our indecisive President needs to think about how he is going to look if Gaddafi manages to crush the opposition and stay in power.

In other news, Alan Simpson is out in public making a fool of himself again.

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday Reads: Midwest, Mideast… and More!

Posted: March 7, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , | 30 Comments

Good morning, news junkies!

Hey everyone, Wonk here… this will be a little lighter than usual because I’m putting this together on the fly this morning.

Let’s start off with the status of the cheddar revolution in the American Midwest. According to the national media, it sounds like the Wisconsin 14 could be heading home from their undisclosed hideout(s) in Illinois:

Here’s the latest from the NYT — “Talks to Resolve Wisconsin Battle Falter“:

Senator Fred Risser, one of 14 Democrats who left Wisconsin last month to prevent the Republican-dominated Senate from approving the collective bargaining measure, said it now seemed conceivable that he and his fellow Democrats would return to Wisconsin, at some point in the future, without a negotiated compromise.

“We have always said we would go back eventually,” Mr. Risser said, adding that the Democrats had yet to make any decision about when to go back to Madison, a move that would open the way for a vote on the proposal by Mr. Walker, a Republican elected in November. “We will have accomplished some of our purpose – to slow things up and let people know what was in this bill.”

And, from the WSJ — “Democrats to End Union Standoff“:

Playing a game of political chicken, Democratic senators who fled Wisconsin to stymie restrictions on public-employee unions said Sunday they planned to come back from exile soon, betting that even though their return will allow the bill to pass, the curbs are so unpopular they’ll taint the state’s Republican governor and legislators.

[…]

Sen. Mark Miller said he and his fellow Democrats intend to let the full Senate vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s “budget-repair” bill, which includes the proposed limits on public unions’ collective-bargaining rights. The bill, which had been blocked because the missing Democrats were needed for the Senate to have enough members present to vote on it, is expected to pass the Republican-controlled chamber.

But, the following was posted in response to the WSJ piece on one of the Wisconsin 14’s facebook pages (which I found via wisopinion.com) — this is from freshman senator Chris Larson:

Sen. Miller’s comments are taken out of context in the Wall Street Journal article just released. Dems will return when collective bargaining is off the table. That could be soon based on the growing public opposition to the bill and the recall efforts against Republicans. Unfortunately, the WSJ fished for the quote they wanted, skipping this key step in logic: we won’t come back until worker’s rights are preserved.

Switching to the Mideast, Robert Fisk has an important read in the Independent this morning that I’ve only had time to skim — “America’s secret plan to arm Libya’s rebels“:

Desperate to avoid US military involvement in Libya in the event of a prolonged struggle between the Gaddafi regime and its opponents, the Americans have asked Saudi Arabia if it can supply weapons to the rebels in Benghazi. The Saudi Kingdom, already facing a “day of rage” from its 10 per cent Shia Muslim community on Friday, with a ban on all demonstrations, has so far failed to respond to Washington’s highly classified request, although King Abdullah personally loathes the Libyan leader, who tried to assassinate him just over a year ago.

Washington’s request is in line with other US military co-operation with the Saudis. The royal family in Jeddah, which was deeply involved in the Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, gave immediate support to American efforts to arm guerrillas fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan in 1980 and later – to America’s chagrin – also funded and armed the Taliban.

But the Saudis remain the only US Arab ally strategically placed and capable of furnishing weapons to the guerrillas of Libya. Their assistance would allow Washington to disclaim any military involvement in the supply chain – even though the arms would be American and paid for by the Saudis.

[…]

If the Saudi government accedes to America’s request to send guns and missiles to Libyan rebels, however, it would be almost impossible for President Barack Obama to condemn the kingdom for any violence against the Shias of the north-east provinces.

Thus has the Arab awakening, the demand for democracy in North Africa, the Shia revolt and the rising against Gaddafi become entangled in the space of just a few hours with US military priorities in the region.

Hillary talked about a perfect storm brewing last month. Deja vu.

More coverage on Libya:

Check out the title at the top of your browser on that NYT link at the end — I don’t know if the editors will change it by the time you check, but when I saw it it said, “Qaddafi’s Cult of Personality Faces Greatest Challenge.”

Here’s another item echoing the Bryce Colvert piece on the “Womancession” that I posted about on Saturday. From economics professor Nancy Folbre –– “His Recession, Becoming Hers“:

Men are more concentrated in industries that are both more sensitive to the business cycle and trending down as a share of total employment.

However, women are more concentrated in state and local jobs that are now on the chopping block as a result of efforts to cut taxes and reduce public spending. About 52 percent of state employees and 61 percent of the much larger category of local employees are women – many of them working as teachers, secretaries, or social workers.

Women make up a majority of two important public sector unions, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees and the American Federation of Teachers.

The economist Randy Albelda asserts that the conservative attack on public-sector unions resembles the welfare reform discussions of the 1990s, in which recipients of public assistance were labeled greedy, lazy welfare queens.

In more economic doom and gloom headlines…

From the Nation. Christopher Hayes — “Why Washington Doesn’t Care About Jobs“ (h/t Bostonboomer):

This disconnect between the jobs crisis in the country and the blithe dismissal thereof in Washington is the most incomprehensible aspect of the political moment. But I think there are two numbers that go a long way toward explaining it.

The first is 4.2. That’s the percentage of Americans with a four-year college degree who are unemployed. It’s less than half the official unemployment rate of 9 percent for the labor force as a whole and one-fourth the underemployment rate (which counts those who have given up looking for work or are working part time but want full-time work) of 16.1 percent. So while the overall economy continues to suffer through the worst labor market since the Great Depression, the elite centers of power have recovered. For those of us fortunate enough to have graduated from college—and to have escaped foreclosure or an underwater mortgage—normalcy has returned.

The other number is 5.7 percent. That’s the unemployment rate for the Washington/Arlington/Alexandria metro area and just so happens to be lowest among large metropolitan areas in the entire country. In 2010 the DC metro area added 57,000 jobs, more than any in the nation, and now boasts the hottest market for commercial office space. In other words: DC is booming. You can see it in the restaurants opening all over North West, the high prices that condos fetch in the real estate market and the general placid sense of bourgeois comfort that suffuses the affluent upper- and upper-middle-class pockets of the region.

What these two numbers add up to is a governing elite that is profoundly alienated from the lived experiences of the millions of Americans who are barely surviving the ravages of the Great Recession.

I think Hayes is on the money highlighting the 5.7 percent figure, but I’ve heard a lot of people with college degrees getting laid off or having trouble finding a job. Of course that’s anecdotal, but I’m still wondering about that 4.2 percent figure.

Two quick headlines related to the mess our Asshat-No-Cattle governor here in Texas is making of the ‘Don’t Mess With’ state:

Washington Post with a headline that shouldn’t surprise anyone who is paying attention — “In Afghanistan, U.S. shifts strategy on women’s rights as it eyes wider priorities.“

Some really nasty and revealing quotes in there about what Obama Admin insiders think of women’s rights in Afghanistan:

A senior U.S. official involved in Afghanistan policy said changes to the land program also stem from a desire at the top levels of the Obama administration to triage the war and focus on the overriding goal of ending the conflict.

“Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities,” said the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy deliberations. “There’s no way we can be successful if we maintain every special interest and pet project. All those pet rocks in our rucksack were taking us down.”

But, again, anybody who’s been paying attention is not surprised to see that Hillary’s agenda for women and girls does not translate into Obama’s agenda for women and girls.

Alright, I want to get you this thread up as soon as possible, so I’m going to cut it short there and maybe update later if I find more.

What’s on your blogging list today? I’m sure I missed a lot of important stuff, so help us all out this morning by sharing what you’re reading.

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