House GOP Too Stupid To Quit While They Were Ahead

Unrestrained obstructionism as a political strategy practically guarantees that the epitaph on the GOP’s 2012 presidential aspirations will read “too stupid to quit while they were ahead.” Is John Boehner serious about not holding a vote on tax cut extensions for the middle class because he thinks it might pass? Can House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Republican who has completely and utterly failed at his primary function—keeping the party as united as possible when holding roll call votes—see that he stands a good chance of replacing Ebenezer Scrooge as the epitome of a cold-hearted miser on the eve of Christmas?

Every conservative in Congress these days claims they are either a Tea Party Republican or a Reagan Republican, but they are all really Reactionary Republicans, ready to demonize anything their political opponents support at the drop of a hat. There is a point, though, where the demonizer can become the demon. The general public doesn’t care about the political pickle John Boehner is in. What they see is a guy who won’t hold a vote on their tax cut extensions, tax cuts that will otherwise expire in 11 days because Boehner knows it might pass.

“The gop has become so reactionary it has no longer has any guiding principals. They define themselves by taking the opposite position to their political opponents and now they don't know what their talking points will be until they know what to be against. No wonder they are rudderless”
Anonymous comment on political blog

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House GOP Too Stupid To Quit While They Were Ahead | Resurgence | Big Think

Governor Brownback Needs To Fire His Communications Director

Governor Brownback’s communications director, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, has taken a 100% certified molehill—an indecorous tweet from a bored school kid who happened to be in an audience in front of the governor at the time—and turned it into a textbook example of how to build a mountain of negative public opinion for your boss overnight. Could you imagine Governor Chris Christie’s staffers making a decision like this?

Ms. Sullivan didn’t actually make any critical comments in person, but the tweet, sent out to a following of about 60 people (though it’s over 800 now), somehow caught the eye of the Governor’s Director of Communication, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, during her daily monitoring of social media mentions of Governor Brownback. Shocked – shocked! – that a teenager’s tweet about a politician was “disrespectful,” she complained to the high school. “It’s also important for students to recognize the power of social media, how lasting it is. It is on the Internet,” she said.
High School Student Punished For Joking Tweet About Governor Brownback

It is on the internet, Ms. Jones-Sontag. The internet, the one the rest of us uses when people like you aren’t clogging it up with press releases you and your staff are bulk emailing by the thousands to people who aren’t reading them, actually thrives on these David versus Goliath narratives. And when I put a link to this article on twitter, Ms. Jones-Sontag, I will be sure to give you and your minions your own hashtag: #HisUnderlingsBlowALotToo.

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Governor Brownback Needs To Fire His Communications Director | Resurgence | Big Think

History Is Everywhere On Big Island Of Hawaii

Usually on Thanksgiving I put on a sweater, crank up the heat, eat some turkey and watch some football. This year, I am trying to decide between kayaking along the coast of Hawaii’s Big Island or simply slipping on one of the many Hawaiian shirts I’ve packed, cracking a beer and just enjoying the view. I started out with good intentions towards keeping up a steady stream of blog posts this week, but the temporary office I chose, a picnic table on a outcropping of volcanic rock thirty feet above the waves, probably wasn’t the best choice for getting my creative juices flowing. And my body still has no idea what time it really is.
One of the unique things about Hawaii is the prominence the islands give to the stories of those whose lives shaped the nation’s 50^th state. To have the equivalent kind of heritage displays in a continental U.S. state like say, my home state South Carolina, you would have to have a tableau of the Dred Scott decision, a replica of a slave auction block, and a depiction of juju in every rest stop in the state.
History is everywhere here. You can go to one of the numerous state parks and see Hawaiian tikis. You may be in the middle of a shopping mall and see a sign that says “0.3 miles to the petraglyphs”. Here in Keahou, at the Kona Surf and Racquet Club just south of the Kona commercial district, there are two or three heiaus, sacred places surrounded by large piles of black lava rock, scattered throughout the complex where we are staying.

History Is Everywhere On Big Island Of Hawaii | Resurgence | Big Think

Controversy Thy Name Is Cain

The Republican Party has a big problem right now, and his name is Herman Cain. He can’t win the nomination, he won’t go home, yet he makes all the other presidential candidates look like also rans, mostly because he is very, very good at speaking through the TV cameras to right wing America.

The GOP brain trust has got to be wondering right about now how to graft Herman Cain’s effusive personality onto Mitt Romney, who is going to turn into a yellow stripe if he gets any more middle of the road. Aside from Jon Huntsman, who came off yesterday like he was an applying for a job as a teaching assistant in a college philosophy department, and Rick Perry, who needs a stunt double for any comment over two sentences, the rest of the field of Republican presidential hopefuls are a chorus of Negative Nancy’s whose palpable disgust at the idea of Barack Obama sitting in the White House has turned them all into grotesque caricatures of themselves. The pessimistic drumbeat of their gloomy rhetoric is so depressing it overshadows any constructive ideas any of them may have.

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Controversy Thy Name Is Cain | Resurgence | Big Think

"Our Blacks Are So Much Better Than Their Blacks”

 

"Our blacks are so much better than their blacks. To become a black Republican, you don't just roll into it. You're not going with the flow..."
Ann Coulter on the Sean Hannity Show, October 31^st, 2011

“Volcanic” is probably too gentle a word to describe the Mount Vesuvius that raged within me as I tried to process this sentence. I will leave it to someone like Melissa Harris-Lacewell to deconstruct the tone of ownership in Coulter's voice that jumped right off the screen and smacked me and countless other African Americans dead in the face. To Ann Coulter, and her surrogates, all I will say is this—there is no need to apologize, or walk this statement back, or tell me that I am “taking it out of context”, because I got the message loud and clear the first time. This is just the kind of thing that makes black people yank out their credit cards, pull up www.barackobama.com, and click the "Donate Now" button.   

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"Our Blacks Are So Much Better Than Their Blacks” | Kris Broughton | Big Think

Can Herman Cain Beat Sexual Harassment Rap?

Twitter exploded last night when news about payoffs to former employees of the National Restaurant Association who had accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment during his tenure hit POLITICO’s front page. Since the Sunday night game between the Eagles and the Cowboys was a bust, I started rooting around the nether parts of the internet to see what people were saying about these revelations.

After wading through comments at the conservative websites Redstate, FreeRepublic, and Townhall for awhile, the conspiracy theories started to run together, although there seemed to be three main threads. About a third of the comments went right for the jugular and blamed all of this on President Obama and the “liberal” media. Another third of the comments seemed to take the position that one of the other candidates for the GOP presidential nomination had been in possession of this information for awhile, waiting for the right time to leak it to the press. And the remaining third of the comments were all over the place, with a few people going so far as to suggest that Mr. Cain’s camp had planted this story themselves to in order to draw support as the victim of a smear campaign.

Can Herman Cain Beat Sexual Harassment Rap? | Resurgence | Big Think

Elizabeth And Hazel Story Humanizes Little Rock Nine Icon

Elizabeth And Hazel Story Humanizes Little Rock Nine Icon | Resurgence | Big Think

“Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate!” The black and white picture from the fifties of a teenaged white girl yelling racial epithets at a young black coed who marches through an angry white mob to desegregate a Deep South high school in 1957 is world famous.

"I walked South on Park Street toward 14th Street until I got in front of the school. I walked across the street and started to go up on the sidewalk. About 12 members of the National Guard stood in front of the school along the sidewalk on the West side of Park Street. As I stepped from the street to go toward the sidewalk the National Guardsmen stood in front of me and would not let me pass them.

They held their rifles in front of them but did not point them at me. I tried once to walk around them and as I did they moved to the side in front of me and would not let me pass. They did not say anything to me and I did not say anything. I then walked back across Park Street to the East side and walked South again to the corner of 16th and Park Streets where I sat down on a bench.

I want to say there were white people all along the East side of Park Street as I walked along, and they moved along with me as I walked. Some of them followed me closely also.”

Statement by Elizabeth Eckford to FBI Special Agents Gilbert Strickland and Robert Hickam September 4, 1957

Not much was known about Elizabeth Eckford, a member of the Little Rock Nine, as the pioneering African American students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas came to be known. Even less was known about Hazel Bryan, the young white girl who personified to the rest of the world all that was wrong with the South. Elizabeth And Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock by David Margolick attempts to fill in the blanks and tell us what has happened to these two women through the years.

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Herman Cain Is GOP Affirmative Action Baby

I've been having a high old time the last couple of weeks watching both Republican presidential candidates and TV political pundits squirm whenever the phrase “9-9-9” is uttered. Nevertheless, Herman Cain has shown no real ability to raise the tens of million dollars a serious candidate needs to compete nationally. Herman Cain has proffered no viable field strategy to build sustainable voter support for his candidacy across the country. Herman Cain didn’t have more than a handful of campaign staffers on his payroll until last week. Herman Cain is not willing to answer tough questions about the positions he has taken and the things he has said. No matter how you slice it, Mr. Cain looks like the GOP’s definition of an affirmative action baby, and there isn’t a thing the Republican Party powers that be can do about it.

Herman Cain Is GOP Affirmative Action Baby | Resurgence | Big Think

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Candid Cain Is Suddenly Too Black For GOP Faithful | Resurgence | Big Think

 We've Got DISQUS now at Big Think! Come on over and give us a piece of your mind!

How does Herman Cain become the bad guy for telling the truth, something every true blue member of the GOP says they want to see more of in a candidate? If you are a Republican, you really need to stop for a second and ask yourself—what other answer could a successful African American who has never shied away from the color of his skin possibly give to such a loaded question about race that wouldn’t sound like he was the second coming of Stepin Fetchit?

If Mr. Cain, who has suffered recent loss of key campaign staffers and is averaging in the teens in presidential nomination polls, was really seen as a serious contender for the nomination, he might find that his recent comments to Christiane Amanpour on ABC’s This Week about Rick Perry's connection to the Niggerhead Ranch could put his candidacy in jeopardy with conservative Americans.

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Tavis Smiley And Cornel West Want To See Peel And Stick “Black Agenda” Labels On Obama Policies

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:


Tavis Smiley And Cornel West Want To See Peel And Stick “Black Agenda” Labels On Obama Policies

To Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, and all other African American pundits who want to own the conversation about the black community - President Barack Obama is not Captain Save-A-Negro. He is the president of the entire United States. The way Smiley and West have been carrying on lately, though, you would think President Obama is supposed to wink his eye at the TV camera at least once a week and whisper, "I'll get that hook up for y'all when I get done with this announcement." What do these two commentators expect the president to do? Open up special branches of the U.S. Treasury in black communities that sell dollar bills for fifty cents?

Which is why I was pleasantly surprised the other day, while cruising through the Ta-Nehisi Coates blog at The Atlantic, to come across a video recording of professor Randall Kennedy's appearance on Tavis Smiley's PBS show. Kennedy, the author of The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency, provides an analysis of the dilemma Barack Obama faces as America's first African American president that is so rational and thoughtful that I took the time to transcribe some of his more illuminating comments.

READ MORE AT BIG THINK

The Help Elbows Accepted Historical Narrative Of The South Aside

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

The Help Elbows Accepted Historical Narrative Of The South Aside


For some strange reason, I ended up watching the new movie The Help yesterday, less than twenty four hours after viewing Driving Miss Daisy for the first time. The most enduring conclusion I could draw from the whole experience? General Sherman should have burned every god damned thing in the entire Confederacy down to the ground during the Civil War.

In my mind, Viola Davis had already earned the Oscar for best actress for her portrayal of maid Aibileen Clark as soon as I saw the look in her eyes, a soul numbed stare that America had invested over three hundred years of intense and unceasingly relentless physical and psychological terror to produce. The combination of outstanding cinematography and astonishingly precise dialogue in both films had me, a middle aged African American man who has lived in the South his whole life, short of breath and anxious, even though I knew it was all make believe. The brown skinned actors on the screen who so artfully brought these two scripts to life were not just actors, but people who looked and acted just like members of my own extended family. They are my great uncles and aunts, they are my grandparents, they are stand-ins for the stars of my family’s own sagas from this same era. Much of this family lore ends benignly, just like these two movies did, which has always led me to wonder about the unspoken stories with much, much worse endings.

Sean Yoes at WEAA still needs your vote!

My man Sean Yoes STILL needs your vote in the WEAA Talent Poll!!! His entry in the competition is a new radio show called The Dialogue.

Why am I asking you to vote for Sean Yoes and Dr. Renee Parks? I am a regular guest on Sean's current affairs show on WEAA, the AFRO's First Edition that airs on Sunday nights. Two years ago, I had never been a guest on a radio show in my life, but Sean made it seem like it was as easy as pie.

You can do this in less than 5 seconds from your desk at work - just click this link.

You can do this in less than 5 seconds from your IPhone - just click this link.


So VOTE for The Dialogue!!!

Debt Ceiling Deal Smells Like A Subprime Loan

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

Debt Ceiling Deal Smells Like A Subprime Loan


With the nerve wracking threat of a default by America on its outstanding debt being broadcast on all the news channels practically twenty four hours a day, I am reading a lot of chatter on the web by progressive Democrats who are insisting that President Obama suddenly morph into Samuel L. Jackson and start kicking ass and taking names. Conversations at the more extremist conservative websites I’ve come across often veer off into John Wayne territory, with calls by staunch Tea Party supporters for the GOP congressional leadership to simply reject any compromise proposals and stand their ground. Neither one of these groups should be wasting their time on the charade of this artificial debacle, because the fix has been in for some time.   

How The Debt Ceiling Talks Have Strengthened President Obama | Resurgence | Big Think

Forcing President Obama to focus on the debt ceiling issue night after night for weeks on end has changed him for the better. Unfortunately for congressional Republicans, this manufactured fiscal crisis has drawn battle lines in the sand that are impossible even for the president and his cherished bipartisanship ideals to ignore. President Obama normally has a tendency to see himself as a open minded big picture thinker with the ability to keep a lot of balls in the air at once, tethered to no particular ideology other than the most efficient solution to a problem. This may be a good way to manage an administration, but it leaves something to be desired when it comes to the care and feeding of a presidential image.

It often takes a crisis to get this president to remember that he is a Democrat. In fact, it often takes a moments like these to get this president to remember how to speak directly and clearly to the masses on whose behalf he ostensibly toils in the Oval Office.

How The Debt Ceiling Talks Have Strengthened President Obama | Resurgence | Big Think

U.S. Press Too Busy Cheering On Vile Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn To Be Real Reporters

 

I didn't pay any attention to this Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case until I started reading "can DSK resurrect his political career?" type headlines. Because the victim in this case is not a squeaky clean, never broke the law before type of person who can be portrayed as an innocent wide eyed victim, does that mean that the same act of forcible sexual conduct that got Strauss-Kahn locked up in the first place, the act that we have established WITH PHYSICAL EVIDENCE, is moot?

The victim, who has been relegated to being "the maid", or "the chambermaid", is written about as if she is so much trash for daring to spit out Strauss-Kahn's unwanted sperm from her mouth AND COMPLAIN ABOUT IT. As if she is less than a human being for NOT HAPPILY THROWING HER LEGS OPEN and allowing someone with DNA matching Strauss-Kahn's to rip at her vagina to his heart's content.

Why is this case really going south? Could this revelation about the direct connection between Strauss-Kahn's legal team and the D.A.'s staff have something to do with it?

The attorney said he found out for the first time when he read a recent New York Times article that one of Vance's top aides is married to one of the lawyers on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. Thompson explained: "That troubled me because I believe that as a lawyer for the victim, the DA had an obligation to tell me that one of his aides is married to one of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's lawyers."

I had to read this IN A TURKISH NEWSPAPER'S ONLINE EDITION, because the punk ass motherfuckers in our press are too busy cheerleading Strauss-Kahn to victory as the next president of France.

Can you believe this shit? Is Cyrus Vance Jr. or III or whatever version of the acorn he is that has fallen from the tree of A FAMOUS FATHER that fucking stupid? But then again, I guess it doesn't matter if the national press doesn't see fit to lambaste the Manhattan D.A.'s office about such an obvious conflict of interest for a few days.

Our jails here in America are full of men who have been convicted of rape on less evidence than what has been publicly revealed in the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Maybe the latest allegation against Strauss-Kahn by the blond haired, doe eyed French novelist Tristane Banon will provoke some of our slack assed media types to remember how to do some homework on their favorite international playboy banker.

"It ended really badly. We ended up fighting. It finished really violently . . . We fought on the floor. It wasn't a case of a couple of slaps. I kicked him, he unhooked my bra, he tried to open my jeans . . . I said the word 'rape' to scare him but it didn't seem to scare him much, which suggests he was used to it." 

— Tristane Banon, French journalist, in a 2007 interview reprinted in The Telegraph.

Most of the people who hold themselves out as journalists and publishers should just jump off the top of the nearest tall building for all the good they do their profession. If rich white man worship is the beacon that guides their so-called "research" into ALL aspects of the case, they need to just print a disclaimer on the front page of their publication, just like cigarette manufacturers do - WARNING: THE WAY WE DOWNPLAY FACTS, LOGIC, AND ESTABLISHED LEGAL PRECEDENT IN ORDER TO PANDER TO THE NEEDS OF THE RICH, FAMOUS AND POWERFUL MAY CAUSE A READER'S HEAD TO EXPLODE. 

Investigative journalists should need bullet proof vests. They should require a bomb sweep of their houses every so often. They should have the crooked and corrupt among us afraid of every issue they publish, lest another one of their sordid secrets sees the light of day.


Instead, we get love notes to a vile, ill mannered motherfucker like Dominique Strauss-Kahn strewn all across the front pages of our papers and our evening news because he is rich, speaks French, and has become an expert at appropriating the power derived from handing out a pile of someone else's money as if it is was his own.

Today At Big Think: Why The Hell Is Strauss-Kahn Wearing A Halo All Of A Sudden?

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

Why The Hell Is Strauss-Kahn Wearing A Halo All Of A Sudden?




The words in every story I read about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case seem to trill at the thought that he may go free. I am seriously convinced that we really should think about closing all of our journalism schools down. How does Strauss-Kahn, a man with a long sordid history of abusive behavior towards women whose sperm was found on the uniform of accuser Nafissatou Diallo, get to wear a halo all of a sudden?

Murder is always murder. Assault is always assault. It would seem to follow that rape is always rape. But rape is often seen by the public and the press as situational, although the number of variables involved in determining whether a person has been raped are very similar to the number of variables involved in determining whether a person has been assaulted.

The number of women who have been willing to go on record about Strauss Kahn’s tendency of sexual harassment and violent sexual behavior towards women suggest very, very strongly that the number of women he is likely to have sexually terrorized in his lifetime is up into the triple digits. Because for every woman who is willing to talk about this to the press, you can believe that there are dozens who will not.



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Today At Big Think: Sean Hannity's Sucker MC Obsession With Common

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

Sean Hannity's Sucker MC Obsession With Common



This fake controversy about the rapper Common and his invitation to a White House poetry reading had me thinking about “Sucker M.C.’s”, an old rap song by RUN-DMC. Sean Hannity has proved once and for all that he is a real Sucker M.C., a “sad face clown” who “just ain’t right.” To Hannity’s core Fox News audience, the kind of people who delight in listening to him decry subversive Negro madness, this manufactured controversy lines right up with what they want to believe about African Americans.

But most of my mulling has not been about Hannity and his Hee Haw Posse of attack dog guests over at “We Wish We Were A Real News Channel”, who will be sputtering and muttering about a Christian vegetarian pro-life rapper from Chicago for the next six weeks, a rapper whose biggest group of supporters are white and college educated. Some of my mulling has taken place because unlike most of the general public, I actually go to real live poetry readings from time to time, the kind that feature poets no one has heard of yet. And some of my mulling has taken place because I grew up on rap music, and have often wondered, at various junctures during my early adulthood, what it would have been like to try my hand at rapping for a living.



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Today At Big Think: You Are More Likely To Drown Than Die From A Terrorist Attack

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

You Are More Likely To Drown Than Die From A Terrorist Attack



A friend of mine sent me a text message yesterday. “Should we be worried about retaliation?” I was in the middle of something, so I gave her a one word reply. “Yep.”

It wasn’t until later that I thought about the level of anxiety that the public is feeling right now. So even though I need to give some topics other than the Osama bin Laden whirlwind some attention this week, I've decided that stuff can wait another day while I try to come up with a more satisfying answer.

My first inclination is to tell my friend that if she were to apply the laws of probability, as boring and as predictable as they are, to the likelihood of her or her loved ones being the victims of a retaliatory terrorist act, she would find out that she is more likely to:

-- You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack

-- You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack

--You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack

-- You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack

-- You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack

--You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack

--You are 8 times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack

EXCERPT SOURCE: News Blaze



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Today At Big Think: “If Obama Gets Bin Laden They Will Forget He’s Black”

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

“If Obama Gets Bin Laden They Will Forget He’s Black”



I heard about the death of Osama Bin Laden the same way a lot of other people across the country did – while I was doing something else on a Sunday night other than watching cable news on TV. In fact, I was sitting outside, finishing off a mediocre but still satisfying stogie while in the midst of firing up my trusty dusty laptop when S. opened the door, all ready for bed with her curlers in her hair, and said “they killed bin Laden.”

It took me a few moments after she had closed the door to process everything she’d said. Then I sat the laptop down, laid my cigar down gently and went into the house to get the phone, for the words my buddy had uttered back in the spring of 2009, soon after the death threats against President Obama had escalated and the Tea Party had been born, came back to me.

“…come on man…I think if he gets bin Laden they will forget he’s black.”




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Today At Big Think: Donald Trump Slapped Black America In The Face This Week

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

Donald Trump Slapped Black America In The Face This Week



The sixty four thousand dollar question this week is, “how long do we have to wait before Donald Trump and the rest of the inhabitants of Pale Nation, that stubborn subset of white Americans who still feel like they are doing all of us minorities a favor by letting us breathe the same air they do, realize that this discombobulating feeling they have been wrestling with these past two and a half years is going to be permanent?”



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President Obama Chumps Donald Trump and the Birthers

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

President Obama Chumps Donald Trump and the Birthers




Donald Trump has been running around the countryside, playing the CEO of Village Idiot, Inc. to the hilt these last few weeks, and our lazy, unprincipled national media corps has hung right with him, broadcasting every inane, bombastic utterance that explodes from his mouth. I figured President Obama was going to release his birth certificate at some point, although, for my money, I would have waited a little longer, just to keep Karl Rove from sleeping at night as this cancerous obsession with the legitimacy of our President’s citizenship ate away at any chances the GOP had to regain the White House.



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Today At Big Think: Why Does Having Black Friends Matter So Much To Racial Bigots?

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

Why Does Having Black Friends Matter So Much To Racial Bigots?



When someone these days is exposed publicly for perpetrating an act of racial bigotry against African Americans, somewhere during their non-apologizing and excuse making, you are almost certain to get the phrase “I have friends who are black”.

Why does that matter? What does it mean? Is the perpetrator trying to tell us that the kind of black people they claim as friends are the type of black people who simply love being denigrated and belittled? Or that their black friends are all direct descendants of Buckwheat, ready to start skinning and grinning at the first sign of any racist bon mots? Or that the rest us black people are just being uppity, and need to quit expecting to be treated like human beings all the time?


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Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

Grant Hill Takes A Charge From Jalen Rose



The Grant Hill Jalen Rose debacle captivated black bloggers all last week. I was out of town at the time the Fab Five special produced by Jalen Rose aired on ESPN, and out of my normal all internet/ no TV routine, so I actually saw parts of the show while channel surfing. I don’t know if was serendipity, or happenstance, but I obviously flipped channels during all of the most controversial statements Rose made on the program, because I was surprised this week to see so many comments at so many places on the web about this. The Grant Hill op-ed in the New York Times last Thursday was an eye opener on so many levels. Saturday’s response by Jalen Rose in the Wall Street Journal, by contrast, sounds a lot like those apologies politicians make after they make controversial statements.


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Today At Big Think:Empirical Accuracy And Logical Rigor Elude Foreign Policy Experts

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

Empirical Accuracy And Logical Rigor Elude Foreign Policy Experts




I used to think, when I heard the words “foreign policy expert”, that it really meant something, the way the phrase “nuclear power expert” connotes the image of someone who has an impressive level of comprehension of vast amounts of empirical data about the care and feeding of radioactive isotopes in a nuclear reactor. But these days, I am more inclined, when I see the moniker “foreign policy expert”, to picture someone more along the lines of a sports betting handicapper, who routinely divines the future outcome of basketball or football games as if the incomplete and often contradictory information he has access to about a team’s past performance is always indicative of its future results.

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Collective Bargaining Helped Level Playing Field For Black Workers

I got this email from the guys at Color of Change a couple days ago - couldn't have said what they'vee written here better myself:
 

There was once a time in this country when Black folks would work 12-hour days for less money than their White co-workers who worked only eight. The key to leveling the playing field for Black workers was collective bargaining — and now Republicans around the country are attacking this basic right.

The right of workers to negotiate as a group for better wages, benefits and working conditions has been important for everyone, but it's been especially meaningful for Black Americans. Before we could collectively bargain, we had little control over our working conditions and no protection from racial discrimination in the workplace.

That's why it's critical that we stand with the workers in Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, and everywhere else collective bargaining is coming under attack. Please join us in sending a message of support to all those fighting this battle on the front lines. It takes only a moment:

http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/workers

In Memphis in 1968, Black sanitation workers worked in dangerous, inhumane conditions under abusive White supervisors for little pay. After two workers were crushed to death by a malfunctioning city garbage truck, the city's Black sanitation workers sought to unionize. They demanded better wages, safer working conditions, and the right to collectively bargain for these things. They took to the streets of Memphis bearing signs that read, "I am a man." During the strike, police attacked and jailed Black workers for peaceful protest. Months later, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said that "all labor has dignity," joined these workers on the front lines. He was assassinated while leading the effort to win collective bargaining rights for these workers.¹

Collective bargaining has helped Black workers vulnerable to workplace discrimination win needed on-the-job protections. “Black workers have an interest in unions as all workers do, because they give them power in the labor market to improve working conditions, and allow them due process and fairness on the job,” says labor scholar Stephen Pitts. “Any sort of institution that allows due process procedures and reduces arbitrary behavior in decision making is positive for black folks.”²

More than just protection from discrimination, collective bargaining has won Black workers fairness in pay and advancement, access to health insurance and retirement savings, and basic worker safety protections.³ This is especially true for Black public-sector workers. Twenty-five percent of all Black college graduates work in the public sector, and government work is second only to health and education services in concentration of Black workers.⁴ As scholar Michael Honey points out, "The one toe-hold many black and minority workers (and especially women among them) still have in the economy is in unionized public employment.⁵

Now, Republicans in state legislatures around the country are attacking public employees' collective bargaining rights. The battle began in Wisconsin, when Republican Governor Scott Walker offered a bill that would strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights. In response, thousands of regular people filled the state capitol in protest — with many camping out there for days or even weeks. To stop the bill and force Republicans to negotiate, 14 Democratic state senators left Wisconsin, (preventing Republicans from voting on the bill). Despite the overwhelming public opposition to the bill, Republicans were eventually able to pass the law using procedural tricks late last week.⁶ But the protesters in Wisconsin drew the world's attention to this fight, and exposed the attack on collective bargaining rights as hugely unpopular and politically motivated. And right now they're working to hold Republicans accountable in powerful ways.

Wisconsin is one of many states where collective bargaining is under attack. Republicans in Ohio just passed a law similar to Wisconsin's, and states from Indiana to New jersey are prepared to follow suit.

Republicans say that their effort to roll back collective bargaining rights is necessary to curb spending in times of economic hardship, but that just doesn't square with the facts. In no state are public employees' salaries or pension benefits a major cause of their current financial problems.⁷ The Republican efforts are part of a strategy to attack public employees' unions, which overwhelmingly give money to Democratic interests. Without the strength of the unions, many expect that President Obama and other Democrats will have a tougher time raising funds for the 2012 election.⁸

DePaul University law professor Terry Smith says that, "Dismantling bargaining rights will disproportionately affect African Americans."⁹ This right has played a vitally important role in Black Americans' move into the middle class. For Republicans, the economic well-being of Black folks (and all workers) is only collateral damage in a political battle. It's shameful.

That's why it's important that we stand with the brave workers around the country fighting to preserve the right to collectively bargain in their states. They're on the front lines, and your message of support will help them keep going even as circumstances get tougher. Please join us in telling these workers that you stand with them, and then ask your friends and family to do the same.

http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/workers

Thanks and Peace,

-- James, Gabriel, William, Dani, Matt, Natasha and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
   March 15th, 2011

Help support our work. ColorOfChange.org is powered by YOU — your energy and dollars. We take no money from lobbyists or large corporations that don’t share our values, and our tiny staff ensures your contributions go a long way. You can contribute here:

http://act.colorofchange.org/go/205?akid=1932.1020101.-S56jl&t=6

References:

1. “How Unions Helped Bring Economic Justice to Black Workers," AlterNet, 2-25-2011
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/785?akid=1932.1020101.-S56jl&t=8

2. See Reference 1

3. "Gutting Unions Hurts the Black Middle Class,” The Root, 3-11-2011
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/779?akid=1932.1020101.-S56jl&t=10

4. “Black Workers Central to National Union Battle,” ColorLines, 3-1-2011
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/780?akid=1932.1020101.-S56jl&t=12

5. “It’s 1968 All Over Again and King’s Fight for Unions Is Still Essential,”
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/781?akid=1932.1020101.-S56jl&t=14

6. “Wisconsin Union Law to Take Effect on March 26,” Wall Street Journal, 3-14-2011
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/782?akid=1932.1020101.-S56jl&t=16

7.“Unions aren’t to blame for Wisconsin’s budget,” The Washington Post, 2-18-2011
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/783?akid=1932.1020101.-S56jl&t=18

8. “WI Senate GOP Leader Admits On-Air That His Goal Is To Defund Labor Unions, Hurt Obama’s Reelection Chances,” Think Progress, 3-9-2011
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/784?akid=1932.1020101.-S56jl&t=20

AFRO First Edition on WEAA: Sean Yoes And Kris Broughton Talk Politics Tonite At 8:30

I will be on the radio tonight at 8:30 pm EST with Sean Yoes, senior reporter at The Afro American, giving my own two cents on the citizens rebellion in Libya, the populist uprising in Wisconsin,  and the steamy memoirs of the ex-girlfriend of Clarence Thomas, and the . Yoes is the host of "The WEAA/AFRO First Edition", an hour-long political talk show on Baltimore's NPR affiliate WEAA-FM (88.9 FM), which airs Sunday nights at 8 p.m.

In any case, it will be an entertaining segment, with plenty of information about the plight of the Libyan freedom fighters, the disgrace in Wisconsin, and the foreign policy challenges facing the Obama administration going forward.

You can click this link and push the "Listen Live" button at the top of the page to hear the show.

Enjoy!

Snoop From The Wire, My Favorite HBO Series Of All Time, Gets Got

I was talking to my buddy from Alabama last night when he mentioned that "Snoop" from The Wire had been arrested. So today, after taping a segment for the AFRO/First Edition political show, I asked host Sean Yoes about it, since he played Lt. Brent Hoskins on the same show.

"Actually," he said, "I wrote about it for Black America Web today."

'The Wire' Star's Arrest Imitates Her Real Life

Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Life imitates art far more often than art imitates life.”

Felicia “Snoop” Pearson, who portrayed the diminutive but cold-blooded drug assassin with the same name on HBO’s “The Wire,” has unfortunately lived out the life she played on cable and has landed in legal trouble again

As much as I enjoyed her authenticity, I had hoped that the dope game was a life she could finally leave behind.

Today At Big Think: Hillary Clinton Pins The Tail On The News Media

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

Hillary Clinton Pins The Tail On The News Media



Hillary Clinton, of all people, made my day last week when she said the news in the United States consists of “…a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads…” To add insult to injury, she held up Al Jazeera, the Arab news station, as a model of responsible information dissemination. But Clinton is absolutely right - our national nightly news shows and cable news channels are mostly a waste of time, whether you are looking for domestic news or world news. When you spend as much time on the internet as I do, not only do you already know all the details of stories they run, you can see how little information these elaborately produced newsroom efforts actually impart to viewers.


Read More...

BigThink.com is a global forum connecting people and ideas.

You can access hundreds of hours of direct, unfiltered interviews with today's leading thinkers, movers and shakers, and, best of all, respond in kind. You can respond to the interviewee, respond to a responder or throw your own question or idea into the ring.

President Obama, Stay The Hell Out Of Libya

Mr. President, there are too many white boys on your staff and in the news media and in the cartoon character gallery (this means you, Newt Gingrich), white boys that have never served a day in their god damned lives in any branch of this country’s military who have a got a tremendous hard-on these days for simply whipping out the artillery and going to town on some Libyan ass.

Contrary to popular belief, blue balls have never killed anybody. But can I guarantee you, Mr. President, that if you start sending our troops to Libya, less of them will come back alive than you sent there. Men with loaded guns in foreign countries, even when they are on humanitarian missions, can turn small battles into huge regional conflicts overnight. And in case the geniuses on your staff forgot, WE DON”T HAVE ENOUGH SOLDIERS LEFT TO FIGHT ANY MORE WARS RIGHT NOW than we are already in.

One private plane leaving the country with Gaddafi on it is all it takes to end this.

I’ve actually kind of gotten to like your posturing on the world stage, Mr. President. It is a lot cheaper for you to make pronouncements to the world than to tell the Joint Chiefs of Staff to gas up the tanks and the C-130’s. And in case you have forgotten what happens when the people in a country aren’t quite ready to push out their dictator, tell the boys at the Pentagon to send some highlight reels from their triumph in Iraq over so you can watch them in the White House movie theater. Meanwhile, even as the freedom fighters in Libya call for help, they have put a whole lot of pressure on Gaddafi to leave the country with the secret CIA troops we've given them all by themselves.

Another 30 days of civil war is about all Gaddafi can stand. It doesn't look good on the nightly news, but the citizenry of Libya who want to be free of their dictator have done a helluva job with the secret CIA troops we've given them all by themselves. The financial starvation diet you and your European allies have put him on is working, but it will take a little more time for him and his family to see the light.

What’s more dangerous to you right now than Gaddafi are these wannabe war mongers who are itching to let the world know that America can still blow shit up when it feels like it. Your “less is more” doctrine of letting events unfold according to their own timetable is driving the group of Type A control freaks you are surrounded with absolutely batshit crazy. They are all longing for the day when they can go out for some drinks after work with their buddies and brag about how many of the enemy our military killed today.

I mean, if the U.S. was really all that committed to being the humanitarian police, half of our troops would have already been scattered all over the African continent anyway, with a big ass military presence in Darfur and Somalia and Sudan.
If the oil flowing out of Libyan wells is important to America, just say so, and tell the people of Libya that their revolution will benefit as a result. But please, please, Mr. President, let’s leave all this he-man posturing that nitwits like Newt Gingrich want you to engage in with a “no-fly zone” alone, and keep your own counsel a little bit longer.

You have proven over the last two months that a little diplomacy and lot of lip service can go a long way in the Middle East.

Because 43 Billion Is Not Enough

It’s a great day in the morning when you get billionaires crying the blues in the Wall Street Journal op-ed section.

It’s an even greater one when that particular billionaire is Charles Koch, who has elected this year to play the role of the obscenely rich autocrat who is just fed up with all this cauterwauling from the masses about how much money he makes and how little taxes he really pays. He is just TIRED of people worrying about what government programs his corporations gladly participate in, because when you live in KochWorld, the government is only supposed to provide services and funding and tax breaks to those who hold the reins of commerce – all the rest of you lazy, good for nothing, molly coddled proletariat who just want police and schools and roads TO GET TO WORK ON to make KochWorlder types even more billions be damned.

"The interest of the second order, that of those who live by wages, is as strictly connected with the interest of the society as that of the first. The wages of the labourer, it has already been shewn, are never so high as when the demand for labour is continually rising, or when the quantity employed is every year increasing considerably. When this real wealth of the society becomes stationary, his wages are soon reduced to what is barely enough to enable him to bring up a family, or to continue the race of labourers. When the society declines, they fall even below this."

An inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations, Volume 1 By Adam Smith

It’s as simple as this for KochWorld inhabitants – all regular, non-millionaire and non-billionaire rank and file employees, or "second worlders", as Adam Smith puts it, whether you make $20,000 a year or $200,000, DO NOT DESERVE WHAT YOU MAKE.

You are overpaid, in the eyes of KochWorlders, if they are handing out anything more than it takes to sustain life. A dollar a day and a bowl of rice, in their calculations, would still leave you ahead of your Chinese counterparts in total compensation, and finally level the playing field enough, once those pesky TAXES and GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS have been removed, for them to make REAL MONEY.

It’s a fantasy most KochWorlders go to sleep by.

But that’s all it will ever be (have my TV economists all gone to sleep on the job? Or are they trying to figure out the exchange rate of a bowl of rice?), just a fantasy.

Because rich people can’t buy enough of anything to keep our economy running.

Because cutting corporate taxes doesn’t have anything to do with job creation. The trillions sitting on corporate balance sheets right now aren’t funding any new hiring initiatives, because there aren’t enough people with any money left to stimulate any kind of sustainable demand for any more goods or services than we consume right now. Cutting taxes saves a corporation money. Cutting taxes does not grow top line revenue, one of those bothersome but necessary results that happen when demand for a company's good or service actually increases. Cutting consumer wages in an economy driven by consumer spending seems to be the quickest way the United States can emulate the Roman empire's death spiral.

Putting even more money into the hands of people who won’t spend it (have you ever seen a billionaire back up a tractor trailer at a one day sale?) on anything but a raft of tax consultants to help them figure out how to avoid paying any taxes on it would stall an already unbalanced fiscal equation even further.

You are probably reading this at work. You need to quit reading and work harder, so the people on Wall Street who pushed the buttons that blew up the economy in the first place can be assured that you produce enough surplus value for your company and your 401(k) so they can roll the dice again.

Why has the nation’s toilet paper king has taken to writing op-eds? Because YOU PEOPLE JUST DON'T GET IT. His billions aren’t coming in fast enough. It’s high time someone had some sympathy for the rich and THEIR PROBLEMS, instead of worrying about paying EMT technicians and schoolteachers and firefighters – you know, those lowly Americans who buy practically every product KochWorld sells.

AFRO First Edition on WEAA: Sean Yoes And Kris Broughton Talk Politics Tonite At 8:30

I will be on the radio tonight at 8:30 pm EST with Sean Yoes, senior reporter at The Afro American, giving my own two cents on Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin protests. Yoes is the host of "The WEAA/AFRO First Edition", an hour-long political talk show on Baltimore's NPR affiliate WEAA-FM (88.9 FM), which airs Sunday nights at 8 p.m.

If you are a fan of Scott Walker and his heavy handed tactics to strip the Wisconsin public unions of their collective bargaining rights, you do not need to click on the link above tonight.

In any case, it will be an entertaining segment, with plenty of information about the plight of the protestors and the challenges facing the Obama administration going forward.

You can click this link and push the "Listen Live" button at the top of the page to hear the show.

Enjoy!

"You're Doing A Heck Of A Job, Scottie"

The dumbassedness continues in the governor's mansion in Wisconsin, where Scott Walker's guts are probably starting to curdle and twist in fear of the no show Tuesday by the state senate's Democratic caucus, an act that will effectively force him to deal with his budget shortfall without the benefit of a bond refinancing.

I couldn't see it happening to a nicer guy.

I told you earlier this week why this kicked out of college nincompoop would be an idiot for giving the rest of the world time to really study the entire 146 pages of that bill he and his posse were trying to pass so fast.

I could never have imagined that he would be dumb enough to TAKE A CALL FROM A BILLIONAIRE WHO IS ON FUCKING SKYPE! I actually have a similar recording device on my Skype account, although it doesn't work nearly as well as the one used by the editor of the Buffalo Beast.

Which is why "you're doing a heck of a job, Scottie" is getting half hearted endorsements from his fellow GOP governors, including ole Chris Christie, who just can't seem to form his lips around the words "no collective bargaining in my state."

But that's not why I'm posting here on a Saturday when I am almost half a day behind schedule already. I'm here because I am disgusted at the way this entire debacle, as ridiculous as its underlying premise is, has been discussed by the mainstream media solely in right wing talking points, as if the Fourth Estate doesn't own any dictionaries. Most of the people who call themselves journalists these days need to pour gasoline on their keyboards and set them on fire.

FOR INSTANCE, the entire conversation this week has focused on the compensation of public sector workers. But instead of describing their salaries and benefits accurately, as a combined salary and benefits package, they have mostly fallen down on the job, insisting that the taxpayers are "footing the bill" for public employees pension plans, when any fifth grader can tell you that if you agree to give him an apple to take out your trash, and he tells you to cut the apple in half and so he can have some later, the half you give him later is still a half that he earned for taking out your trash.

But I guess I shouldn't expect much from an entire contingent of journalists and pundits who continually refer to the Social Security as an "entitlement program" even though it has always been set up as an INSURANCE PLAN, one that has provided a whole lot of cash for our Congress to piss away like water back when times where good.

So if you have fifteen minutes today, you need to read this article on the Forbes magazine blog that takes the rest of their brethren to task for royally fucking up a fundamental part of the whole Wisconsin union pension argument - whose money is this?

Pulitzer Prize winning tax reporter, David Cay Johnston, has written a brilliant piece for tax.com exposing the truth about who really pays for the pension and benefits for public employees in Wisconsin.

Gov. Scott Walker says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to “contribute more” to their pension and health insurance plans. Accepting Gov. Walker’ s assertions as fact, and failing to check, creates the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not. Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin’ s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.
The Wisconsin Lie Exposed

This is why newspapers are going out of business - because their publishers insist on keeping their staffers on a leash and printing the kind of bullshit stories the general public could care less about.

As Gordon Gekko said to Bud Fox, "tell me something I don't already know."

And if you can't do that, just present the facts - ALL OF THEM - whether or not they look "objective" or "balanced" - and quit wasting our time with "response quotes" from bald faced liars, no matter which political party they support.

Brown Man Thinking Hard Is Now Mobile

I've been haranguing my buddy to death about his company website lately because he doesn't have a mobile version. Ever since I succumbed to the urge to get a smartphone, I have been amazed at the number of websites I can visit with just the touch of a few buttons during lunch or on a trip.

So it finally dawned on me yesterday that my own blog was not mobile friendly. This is usually the point where I wonder why I don't break down and get a Wordpress blog, which would make all of this as easy as uploading a plugin.

Luckily, the folks at Blogger are actually working, because while I was looking for a mobile friendly template to install, something I really don't have time for right now, I discovered that they have introduced a new feature to Blogger that makes getting a mobile friendly version of my blog as easy as clicking "yes" underneath the right tab on my Blogger dashboard.

So if you've got an IPhone, or a Android phone, (haven't tried it on a Blackberry, but should work there as well) this should be automatic. If you've got a Nokia phone like I do, or a Windows phone, or a  phone that uses Opera Mini, click the "Mobile Version" link at the top of the page and you should be all set.

The Brown Man, taking it to the streets one cell phone at a time.

Is Scott Walker Stupid Enough To Keep Playing Chicken With Unions?

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has already lost whatever it was he was fighting for days ago. The question is, is he stupid enough to ante up what's left of his credibility to prove a point? With a 3.2 BILLION deficit looming just around the corner, is he planning on paying state employees with actual peanuts next year, unless the price of peanuts go up?

The state's Democrats will ultimately have to come back. But they never had anything to lose in this debacle. The only ones with any political skin in the game on this one are the Wisconsin Republicans, and to a lesser extent, their fellow brethren in the Ohio legislatures and others who seem to be in lock step with their "kill the unions" agenda. The union members in Wisconsin have their backs against the wall. They are almost in the same boat the Egyptians were in last week.

Walker's real problem is public scrutiny. One hundred and forty six page bills, like the two thousand plus page healthcare bill the Democrats passed last year, are bound to have some embarrassing tidbits in them. Like this questionable proposal to outsource state government work to Deloitte Consulting, a firm that, as the writer puts it, "outsources much of it's own work of this type to India."

People who can barely work their remote controls at home suddenly become aware of the amount of taxes corporations really pay in your state when its on TV every night, corporations like Harley Davidson, who can book A BILLION in pretax profits and pay only ONE MILLION in state corporate taxes. In case you don't know how much that is, its less than 0.01% of Harley Davidson's profits for 2008.

The only number in this whole debacle that even comes close to this is the Consumer Price Index percentage increase for the year, which is 0.2%. In other words, most of the state of Wisconsin's public employees would retain only the right to bargain for less than a $100 raise this year.

Are you getting this yet?

Wisconsites are. A pro-business poll and a pro-labor poll both show the same thing - Governor Walker is well on his way to matching Sarah Palin's unfavorable numbers among Wisconsin voters.


If I were you, I would turn my TV off tonight and root around at the links below for a few minutes. NOBODY in Wisconsin sees this as anything more than it is.



Eau Claire (Wisc.) Leader-Telegram:

And while the way some protesters expressed themselves went overboard, the motivation for their sentiments was real. Walker's sudden attempt to eliminate most collective bargaining rights for public employees was heavy-handed, and some of his statements and actions since the Feb. 11 budget repair bill announcement have unsettling police-state connotations. ...

Add to this Walker's categorical unwillingness to negotiate with public employees, his efforts to avoid critics (after an appearance at an Eau Claire business Tuesday, he "slipped out a side door and into a waiting vehicle" to avoid hundreds of protesters, the Leader-Telegram reported), and his beefed-up security detail, and it seems our new governor may be on a power trip.

While that doesn't make him a dictator, Walker's "my way or the highway" approach won't win him any friends, and that will make it even harder to solve the state's critical problems.

John Nichols at the Madison (Wisc.) Cap Times:

I have always argued that Wisconsin leads the nation: We do better, ask little and give much. Our ancestors fought to end slavery, break up the trusts and make our state what Teddy Roosevelt called America’s “laboratory of democracy.”

A week ago, it seemed as if the laboratory was producing something toxic -- an assault on public servants that would quickly spread from Madison to other state capitols where Republican politicians want to use fiscal challenges as an excuse to score political points against unions.

But then Wisconsin pushed backed.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Democrats in the state Senate should return to their jobs and stop pretending their escape to Illinois was about democracy. It wasn't. In fact, quite the opposite. Democracy has creaked to a halt in their absence.

Republicans, led by Gov. Scott Walker, should stop pretending their budget repair bill is only about repairing a budget. It's not. It's also an attempt to break up Wisconsin public employee unions. Not necessary, governor.

But even now, there is ample room for compromise.

Green Bay Press Gazette:

This newspaper, which endorsed the governor in his race against Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, has a tradition of supporting fiscal conservatism on the local, state and national levels. We think Walker is on target in his intention to reduce a massive projected deficit. And frankly, it's difficult to imagine every public employee union in the state would have agreed to the changes Walker seeks. Still, bypassing labor without even trying only muddies the waters.

Walker wants public employees to accept changes in pension and health care contributions already thrust onto workers in the private sector. We support the governor's insistence on taking those steps. That said, his approach casts the debate as an anti-union campaign, and not a tough-but-fair shared sacrifice.

We also are troubled Walker's budget repair bill makes an exception for police, firefighters and the Wisconsin State Patrol. When he introduced the bill, Walker said Wisconsin always has treated those groups differently from other state employees, but critics have a valid argument in that their exemption smacks of political payback for support in the fall election.

The Northwestern in Oshkosh, Wisc.:

The problem with Gov. Scott Walker's state budget repair bill isn't what it ends, but what it begins. If it ended at simply requiring public employees in Wisconsin to pay a higher share of health insurance and pension costs, it would be a tough, but reasonable and appropriate response to a projected $3.6 billion budget deficit.

Truth be told, the bill is the beginning of an effort to roll back the right of workers. Its lesser-known provisions set a dangerous precedent for granting the executive branch broad emergency powers where an emergency does not exist. The speed in which the bill is heading from proposal to adoption is also of concern. It is slated for a vote Thursday, just six days after it was released to the public. The fact that a national special interest group, The Club for Growth, began broadcasting ads in support of the proposal at the same time the bill was released shows that this is not a homegrown effort to fix Wisconsin's problems, but an orchestrated, ideologically driven campaign.