“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

New York Times Editorial: The Abuse of Private Manning

Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been imprisoned for nine months on charges of handing government files to WikiLeaks, has not even been tried let alone convicted. Yet the military has been treating him abusively, in a way that conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects. Inexplicably, it appears to have President Obama’s support to do so.

snip

Far more troubling is why President Obama, who has forcefully denounced prisoner abuse, is condoning this treatment. Last week, at a news conference, he said the Pentagon had assured him that the terms of the private’s confinement “are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards.” He said he could not go into details, but details are precisely what is needed to explain and correct an abuse that should never have begun.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Who’s Afraid of Elizabeth Warren?

The attacks on Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) just keep coming, fast and furious, facts be damned.

The CFPB will be “powerful, hard-nosed and unaccountable,” warns Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard.   The agency “will decide its own budget,” its “rulings can’t be vetoed,” and it “will be almost impossible to challenge” in court.

“Who in the world would consider it appropriate to have one person appointed to set the rules for the entire financial industry?” wonders Senator Bob Corker.

The Wall Street Journal describes Warren’s “ideological agenda that banks are the villains of the credit crisis while distributing cash to homeowners who will presumably be grateful on Election Day 2012.”

Jim Hightower: The Corporate-GOP Attack on America’s Middle Class

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s autocratic attempt to abrogate the democratic right of public employees to bargain with their governmental bosses is not wearing well with the public. Recent polls show that a mere one-third of Wisconsinites favor his blatantly political power play, and that if he had told voters in the last year’s election that he intended to do this, he would’ve lost.

After only one month in office, Walker’s approval rating has plummeted. He’s become a national poster boy for right-wing anti-union extremism–so out of step that even democracy fighters in Egypt are jeering him.

Yet, Walker is but one of a flock of far-right, corporate-crested Republican governors and Congress critters who’re waging an all-out class war on unionized workers. It’s a shameful effort to bust the wage structure and legal protections that support America’s already endangered middle class.

Dean Baker: The Key to Rebuilding Workers’ Power: Unrig the Rules

The battle in Wisconsin over the rights of public-sector workers holds the potential to reawaken workers across the country to demand their fair share of the economic pie. This could be an important turning point. However, if workers are to make real progress they must move to alter the rules of the game. These rules have been deliberately rigged against them over the last three decades.

The most obvious of these rules are those governing the rights to unionize, such as those that Gov. Walker directly attacked in Wisconsin. However, this is just part of the story. Unionization has become almost impossible in the private sector, since companies routinely fire workers engaged in an organizing drive.

Daphne Eviatar: Obama Gets Pushed Out of His Comfort Zone — and Pushes Back

The news on Sunday that State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley was forced to resign for his frank comments about the treatment of Bradley Manning is sparking lots of justifiable criticism. The question is, why would the administration do something so “ridiculous, counterproductive, and stupid”?

Those are, of course, the exact words that Crowley used to describe the treatment of Manning, the Army private suspected of leaking secret government documents to WikiLeaks, now imprisoned at the Marine Brig at Quantico. Although the Pentagon and State Department have themselves acknowledged that the leaks haven’t actually endangered national security, they’ve been treating Manning as if he’s a hardened terrorist.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Wisconsin Governor’s Allies Ran a Toxic Bailout Bank… and Got Rich

People in Wisconsin are pulling their money out of Marshall & Ilsley (M&I) Bank because they know it’s been helping their Governor’s crusade against public employees and the middle class.

They might also like to know that M&I’s executives ran one of the most conspicuous dumping sites for toxic financial waste in the country. And that the same executives are about to get very rich, even though TARP rules supposedly don’t allow big bonuses for underwater bankers like the leadership at M&I.

These executives didn’t just contribute to Scott Walker’s campaign. They also helped the governor avoid the press — and his own constituents — by letting him use their bank’s underground tunnel, which leads directly from its parking lot into the Capitol Building in Madison. Using it for this purpose may have been a violation of the bank’s own Code of Business Ethics.

That tunnel’s not just a convenient way to help a political crony. It’s also one heck of a metaphor.

Richard Wolff: What’s Left of the American Left?

There’s no denying its historic decline, but the left does not lack for issues. It needs only organization.

“In contradiction” best describes the American left today. On the one hand, it is fragmented and dispirited, feeling itself distant from the tumble of daily US politics and acutely disgusted by its many-layered corruptions. It hardly knows itself as a part of society, so deep runs its alienation. After all, leftists, too, are affected by the mass media’s wishful pretense that the American left has simply disappeared and the extreme right’s paranoid caricatures that recycle 1950s McCarthyism. [ AP Photo/Wisconsin State Journal, John Hart)]

And yet, the US left is actually quite strong and getting stronger by the minute. Very many young people find far more meaning in the left social criticisms of Jon Stewart, Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert than they do in the stale Republican or Democratic activities that those popular comedians mock. The devotees of much current popular music want and respond to lyrics rich with social criticism. The assaults of the right in the US on access to abortion, on civil rights and civil liberties, on the separation of church and state, and on immigrants, are less and less suffered in silent resentment and increasingly opposed by a revived left criticism and activism. From the mass mobilizations of immigrants to the outpouring of support for the embattled public employees in Wisconsin to the gatherings of support for Planned Parenthood, the US left’s size, depth and diversity are evident.

Bob Herbert: The Sport Needs to Change

Dave Duerson was once a world-class athlete, a perfect physical specimen whose pro football career included Super Bowl championships with the Chicago Bears and New York Giants. Friends and former teammates would tell you that he was also a bright guy – a graduate of Notre Dame with a degree in economics and, at least for awhile, a successful businessman.

When he shot himself to death in his South Florida home last month, the despondent Duerson, who was 50, fired the bullet into his chest rather than into his head. He did not want to further damage his brain. As he explained in text messages and a handwritten note, the former all-pro safety wanted his brain tissue studied, presumably to determine whether he had been suffering from a devastating degenerative disease that is taking a terrible toll on what appears to be an increasing number of pro football players and other athletes.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

March 15 is the 74th day of the year (75th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 291 days remaining until the end of the year.

In the Roman calendar, March 15 was known as the Ides of March.

On this day in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to urge the passage of legislation guaranteeing voting rights for all.

Using the phrase “we shall overcome,” borrowed from African-American leaders struggling for equal rights, Johnson declared that “every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.” Johnson reminded the nation that the Fifteenth Amendment, which was passed after the Civil War, gave all citizens the right to vote regardless of race or color. But states had defied the Constitution and erected barriers. Discrimination had taken the form of literacy, knowledge or character tests administered solely to African-Americans to keep them from registering to vote.

“Their cause must be our cause too,” Johnson said. “Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

The speech was delivered eight days after racial violence erupted in Selma, Alabama. Civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King and over 500 supporters were attacked while planning a march to Montgomery to register African-Americans to vote. The police violence that erupted resulted in the death of a King supporter, a white Unitarian Minister from Boston named James J. Reeb. Television news coverage of the event galvanized voting rights supporters in Congress.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. §§ 1973 – 1973aa-6 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S.

Echoing the language of the 15th Amendment, the Act prohibits states from imposing any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure … to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” Specifically, Congress intended the Act to outlaw the practice of requiring otherwise qualified voters to pass literacy tests in order to register to vote, a principal means by which Southern states had prevented African-Americans from exercising the franchise The Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, who had earlier signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.

The Act established extensive federal oversight of elections administration, providing that states with a history of discriminatory voting practices (so-called “covered jurisdictions”) could not implement any change affecting voting without first obtaining the approval of the Department of Justice, a process known as preclearance. These enforcement provisions applied to states and political subdivisions (mostly in the South) that had used a “device” to limit voting and in which less than 50 percent of the population was registered to vote in 1964. The Act has been renewed and amended by Congress four times, the most recent being a 25-year extension signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006.

The Act is widely considered a landmark in civil-rights legislation, though some of its provisions have sparked political controversy. During the debate over the 2006 extension, some Republican members of Congress objected to renewing the preclearance requirement (the Act’s primary enforcement provision), arguing that it represents an overreach of federal power and places unwarranted bureaucratic demands on Southern states that have long since abandoned the discriminatory practices the Act was meant to eradicate. Conservative legislators also opposed requiring states with large Spanish-speaking populations to provide bilingual ballots. Congress nonetheless voted to extend the Act for twenty-five years with its original enforcement provisions left intact.

 44 BC – Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.

221 – Liu Bei, a Chinese warlord and member of the Han royal house, declares himself emperor of Shu-Han and claims his legitimate succession to the Han Dynasty.

351 – Constantius II elevates his cousin Gallus to Caesar, and puts him in charge of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire.

933 – After a ten-year truce, German King Henry I defeats a Hungarian army at the Battle of Riade near the Unstrut river.

1311 – Battle of Halmyros: The Catalan Company defeats Walter V of Brienne to take control of the Duchy of Athens, a Crusader state in Greece.

1493 – Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his first trip to the Americas.

1514 – Jodocus Badius Ascensius publishes Christiern Pedersen’s Latin version of Saxo’s Gesta Danorum, the oldest known version of that work.

1545 – First meeting of the Council of Trent.

1564 – Mughal Emperor Akbar abolishes jizya (per capita tax) .

1672 – Charles II of England issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence.

1776 – South Carolina becomes the first American colony to declare its independence from England and set up its own government.

1781 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Guilford Courthouse – Near present-day Greensboro, North Carolina, 1,900 British troops under General Charles Cornwallis defeat an American force numbering 4,400.

1783 – In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy.

The plea is successful and the threatened coup d’état never takes place.

1820 – Maine becomes the 23rd U.S. state.

1848 – A revolution breaks out in Hungary. The Habsburg rulers are compelled to meet the demands of the Reform party.

1877 – The first Test cricket match begins between England and Australia.

1906 – Rolls-Royce Limited is incorporated

.

1916 – President Woodrow Wilson sends 12,000 United States troops over the U.S.-Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa.

1917 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the Russian throne and his brother the Grand Duke becomes Tsar.

1922 – After Egypt gains nominal independence from the United Kingdom, Fuad I becomes King of Egypt.

1926 – The dictator Theodoros Pangalos is elected President of Greece without opposition.

1931 – SS Viking explodes off Newfoundland, killing 27 of the 147 on board.

1933 – Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss keeps members of the National Council from convening, starting the austrofascist dictatorship.

1939 – World War II: German troops occupy the remaining part of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceases to exist.

1939 – Carpatho-Ukraine declares itself an independent republic, but is annexed by Hungary the next day.

1943 – World War II: Third Battle of Kharkov – the Germans retake the city of Kharkov from the Soviet armies in bitter street fighting.

1945 – World War II: Soviet forces begin an offensive to push Germans from Upper Silesia.

1952 – In Cilaos, Réunion, 1870 mm (73 inches) of rain falls in one day, setting a new world record.

1961 – South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations.

1965 – President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to the Selma crisis, tells U.S. Congress “We shall overcome” while advocating the Voting Rights Act.

1985 – The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).

1989 – The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is established.

1990 – Iraq hangs British journalist Farzad Bazoft for spying.

1990 – Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first President of the Soviet Union.

2004 – French President Jacques Chirac signs the law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools, commonly known as the headscarf ban.

Holidays and observances

   * Christian Feast Day:

         o Clemens Maria Hofbauer

         o Leocritia

         o Louise de Marillac

         o Raymond of Fitero

   * Constitution Day (Belarus)

   * Earliest day on which Palm Sunday can fall, while April 18 is the latest; celebrated on the sixth Sunday of Lent. (Christianity)

   * International Day Against Police Brutality (International)

   * Ides of March (Roman Empire)

   * Honen Matsuri (Japan)

   * National holiday, celebrating the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 (Hungary)

   * World Consumer Rights Day (International)

   * World Day of Muslim Culture, Peace, Dialogue and Film (International)

Japan radiation leaks force 140,000 indoors

‘These are figures that potentially affect health. There is no mistake about that’

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

SOMA, Japan – Dangerous levels of radiation leaking from a crippled nuclear plant forced Japan to order 140,000 people to seal themselves indoors Tuesday after an explosion and a fire dramatically escalated the 4-day-old crisis spawned by a deadly tsunami.

Adding to the mounting crisis, the international nuclear agency said a fire in a storage pond for spent nuclear fuel at a tsunami-stricken Japanese power plant had released radioactivity directly into the atmosphere.

In a nationally televised statement, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said radiation has spread from four reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Fukushima state, one of the hardest-hit in Friday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami that has killed more than 10,000 people, plunged millions into misery and pummeled the world’s third-largest economy .

Libyan rebels arrest ‘Gaddafi death squad’ that killed journalist



By Kim Sengupta in Ajdabiya Tuesday, 15 March 2011

Four men have been arrested for the murder of an Al Jazeera journalist, and rebel officials claim evidence has emerged that Muammar Gaddafi’s regime is sending undercover squads to carry out assassinations.

The Independent was told that four men were caught in the city of Ajdabiya with evidence linking them to the death of Ali Hassan Al Jaber, who was killed near Benghazi on Saturday. Under questioning, the suspects allegedly confessed that they had been ordered to silence opposition figures and drive out international presence from territories of the protest movement.

Mohammed al-Majberi, a commander of militant fighters, the Shabaab, said: “The men had five guns, some of them with silencers and they also had night sights.

How Bavaria became a European silicon valley

The region is home to hundreds of biotech, IT and environmental technology firms that have emerged in the past 20 years

Julia Kollewe in Munich

The Guardian, Tuesday 15 March 2011

The mention of Bavaria may still conjure up images of rowdy beer halls, oompah bands and red-cheeked folk in dirndl and lederhosen, but the state capital, Munich, is revamping itself as Germany’s answer to silicon valley.

The southern German state – the country’s most prosperous together with its neighbour, Baden-Württemberg – has tried hard to shed its buttoned-up image. Historically an agricultural region that lacked natural resources, its transformation into a more hi-tech economy began after the second world war.

Putin’s win marred by charges of ballot fraud



The Irish Times – Tuesday, March 15, 2011  

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin hailed his ruling party’s victory in regional elections as a vote of confidence in his government, but opponents claimed the balloting was marred by fraud.

United Russia, the party Mr Putin has used as an instrument of power since his 2000 to 2008 presidency, outpolled rivals in contests on Sunday for legislatures in 12 regions from the Bering Strait to the Baltic Sea, election officials said.

Mr Putin suggested that United Russia had passed its last big test ahead of December parliamentary elections and a March 2012 vote in which he has hinted he will return to the presidency or endorse incumbent Dmitry Medvedev for a second term.

Pakistan trial court to rule on agent



Ben Doherty, Lahore

March 15, 2011  

RAYMOND Davis, the CIA agent who shot dead two men in a crowded Lahore street, will go before a Pakistani trial judge after the Lahore High Court refused to rule on whether he has diplomatic immunity.

Instead, the district trial court, where he has been charged with two murders, will decide whether Pakistan has the right to prosecute him.

The chances of the US engineering a financial settlement with the slain men’s families appear all but extinguished.

CBI questions Kalmadi



TNN | Mar 15, 2011, 11.11am IST  

NEW DELHI: The CBI on Tuesday questioned Commonwealth Games Organising Committee’s former chief Suresh Kalmadi in connection with massive financial irregularities in the Games.

Kalmadi is at the CBI headquarters in New Delhi.

Forensic evidence linking Suresh Kalmadi to contracts being investigated for alleged corruption, delivery deficits and manipulation of tender terms had come to light recently.

Details of Kalmadi’s links to dubious decisions taken during his tenure as chief organiser are with the V K Shunglu committee probing an array of Games-related irregularities.

(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

With the evolving nuclear disaster in Japan taking much of the front page attention, there are still some other news events that are noteworthy.

The Human-Hydrid Turtle is holding the government hostage

From TPM:

• Republicans Escalate Debt Ceiling Fight
  

  Senate Republican leaders in recent days have escalated a showdown that has been lurking in the background of the more immediate fight over funding the federal government through September. While the funding issue remains unresolved, Congress will soon have to turn its attention to the need to raise the national debt limit, or the country will default in just a few weeks.

  “There are 53 Democrats and 47 Republicans. My prediction is not a single one of the 47 Republicans will vote to raise the debt ceiling unless it includes with it some credible effort to do something about our debt,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Fox News Sunday. “I think to get any of the 47 Republicans, you’ve got to do something credible, that the markets believe is credible, that the American people believe is credible, that foreign countries believe is credible . . .  in addition to raising the debt ceiling.”

• GOP Senators Blocking New Commerce Secretary Until Trade Deals Go Through
  

  Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took a break from budget negotiations this week to get back to one of the Senate GOP’s most popular pastimes: blocking presidential nominees. McConnell, along with Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), pledged in a letter on Monday to hold up any White House nominee to replace departing Commerce Secretary Gary Locke as well as nominees for any other trade-related posts until trade agreements with Colombia and Panama clear the Senate.

  “My fear is in trying to appease their union allies the administration is willing to let these two agreements wither on the vine,” Hatch said at a press conference Monday announcing the move. “We are here today to make clear that we will not allow that to happen.”

Robbing the poor to give to the rich

From Think Progress:

• Michigan’s GOP Gov. Slashes Corporate Tax Rate by 86 Percent, Hikes Taxes for Working Poor
  

  As we’ve been documenting, several conservative governors have proposed placing the brunt of deficit reduction onto the backs of their state’s public employees, students, and middle-class taxpayers, while simultaneously trying to enact corporate tax cuts and giveaways. Govs. Rick Scott (R-FL), Tom Corbett (R-PA), and Jan Brewer (R-AZ) have all gone down this road.

  Following suit, Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI) has proposed ending his state’s Earned Income Tax Credit, cutting a $600 per child tax credit, and reducing credits for seniors, while also cutting funding for school districts by eight to ten percent. At the same time, as the Michigan League for Human Services found, the state’s business taxes would be reduced by nearly $2 billion, or 86 percent, under Snyder’s plan.

Anonymous starts its release of BoA info

From Yves Smith at naked capitalism

• “Anonymous” Whistleblower Charges BofA With Large Scale Force Placed Insurance Scheme With Cooperation of Servicers
  

  
  Ooh, this is ugly.

  The charge made in this Anonymous release (via BankofAmericaSuck) is that Bank of America, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Balboa Insurance and the help of cooperating servicers, engaged in a mortgage borrower abuse called “force placed insurance”. This is absolutely 100% not kosher. Famed subprime servicer miscreant Fairbanks in 2003 signed a consent decree with the FTC and HUD over abuses that included forced placed insurance. The industry is well aware that this sort of thing is not permissible. (Note Balboa is due to be sold to QBE of Australia; I see that the definitive agreement was entered into on February 3 but do not see a press release saying that the sale has closed)

  While the focus of ire may be Bank of America, let me stress that this sort of insurance really amounts to a scheme to fatten servicer margins. If this leak is accurate, the servicers at a minimum cooperated with this scheme. If they got kickbacks, um, commissions, they are culpable and thus liable.

You cannot make this up, ever. ROTFLMAO

From Raw Story with a h/t to Dependable Renegade:

• WI Repub lives outside district with mistress, says wife
  

  Protesters who marched at the home of Wisconsin state senator Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac) were met with something of a surprise on Saturday. Mrs. Hopper appeared at the door and informed them that Sen. Hopper was no longer in residence at this address, but now lives in Madison, WI with his 25-year-old mistress.

  snip

  Blogging Blue also reports that Mrs. Hopper intends to sign the recall petition against her husband. The petition has already been signed by the family’s maid.

Health care reform ala our corporatist President

From Jon Walker at FDL Action:

• One Year Later, Evaluation of Health Care Reform Virtually Impossible
  

  As we approach the one-year anniversary of Obama’s health care reform scheme becoming law, it is important to note that the number of uninsured people in America has remained roughly the same, or actually increased slightly, in the last year-and the cost of health insurance has continued to rise.

  This isn’t because the new law has failed to work as designed, but due to the fact that the law was actually written to help almost no one for a full four years after passage. This incredibly long delay was done solely to get a better, lower CBO score, which, incidentally, the vast bulk of Americans either don’t know about or refuse to believe.

Holding the unborn hostage. This is what Obama called “health care reform”?

• Monopoly with No Price Controls Leads to 15,000% Markup on Drug for High-Risk Mothers
  

  I’ve found the absolute best way to make incredible profits is to first convince the government to grant you a monopoly (in this case through the patent system) for an essential service, and then fight to make sure the government never puts in place any form of price control over your product. The story of progesterone is a perfect example of this winning corporate welfare strategy. From ABC News:

     Preventing preterm births just got 150 times more expensive, now that KV Pharmaceuticals has gained exclusive rights to produce a progesterone shot used to prevent premature births in high-risk mothers.

     Although the shot has been available in unregulated form from specialty compounding pharmacies for years for $10 a pop, the Food and Drug Administration recently granted KV Pharmaceuticals sole rights to produce the drug, which will be marketed as Makena and cost $1,500 per dose – an estimated $30,000 in total per pregnancy.

  snip

     Many doctors are particularly frustrated with the price hike because to date, KV Pharmaceuticals has not had to bear the cost of the clinical trials used to get the drug approved, but they have announced plans to conduct further trials in the future.

  A special government-protected monopoly without any government price controls means a company can charge what ever it wants, which is about apparently 15,0oo percent markup. Nice work if you can get it.

No need to worry about nuclear reactors here in the US, just fly

From Teddy Partridge at myFDL:

• TSA Slips Scanner Re-Testing into Busy Friday News Day
  

  Friday was a busy news day: a presidential press conference in the wake of Japan’s catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, as well as Wisconsin reverberations after passage of the GOP’s union-busting bill. And the ongoing Charlie Sheen background buzz we’ve all had to get used to recently.

  So you’d be forgiven for missing this gem in The USAToday, from America’s Transportation Security Administration, the folks who previously waxed positively rhapsodic about the safety of their scanners:

     The Transportation Security Administration announced Friday that it would retest every full-body X-ray scanner that emits ionizing radiation – 247 machines at 38 airports – after maintenance records on some of the devices showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.

Just how constitutional is this?

From TPM:

• Wis. GOPer Scott Fitzgerald: Dems In Contempt, Not Allowed To Vote In Committees
  

  The saga of the “Wisconsin 14” — the state Senate Democrats who fled the state in an attempt to block the three-fifths budget quorum on Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-public employee union proposals — isn’t over just because Republicans used a parliamentary end run to pass the bill with a simple majority quorum last week, and the Dems have since come home.

  As WisPolitics reports, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) sent a letter to his fellow Republicans, reminding them that they had previously found the Democrats to be in contempt of the chamber — and as such, they are not to be allowed to vote on committees.

Regular Features-

• Late Night Karaoke by mishima
• Muse in the Morning by Robyn
• Six In The Morning by mishima

Featured Essays for March 14, 2011-

• The Next Deepwater Horizon by ek hornbeck
• On Taking It Back, Or, Wisconsin Recalls, Explained by fake consultant
• Meltdowns: From Bad to Nightmare by TheMomCat
• CBS 60min.: "Curve Ball" by jimstaro
• Obama Adopts Nixon’s Tactic by TheMomCat
• Gha! by RiaD (start of a new regular feature)

DocuDharma

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Reposted from Daily Kos

I graduated from a relatively large public high school in a impoverished area in rural Maine last year, having completed all 12 years in the local public school system. In case you haven’t noticed, there has been a lot of discussion on this site since the attacks on teacher’s unions. As someone who has experienced first hand the effects of No Child Left Behind and the budget shortfalls at the federal, state, and local level, I feel like I should share my experience. There have been quite a few diaries posted here by teachers and parents, but I haven’t seen any by students.

Before I begin to talk about everything that is terribly wrong with the public school system in this country, let me just say that I’m not doing it because it ended badly for me. I couldn’t be in a better place, and I’m happy to have spent all my years in the schools and surrounded by the people that I was. However, it worked out so well for me largely because I had a solid family situation, and I was self-motivated enough to accomplish what I needed to accomplish. However I did stand witness to all of those kids that it didn’t work out so well for, and it was obvious that things were only getting worse as I left.

So, let us begin.

First of all, the impact of the man, the myth, the legend, Mr. George Walker Bush and his No Child Left Behind. This introduced a whole new era of public education, and it’s not a pretty one. As I’m sure you’re all aware, this, in a nutshell, was intended to increase the education of all students by requiring them to meet certain standards of education. Those schools that didn’t measure up would be held accountable for this. In theory, it really doesn’t sound so bad; it seems reasonable to make sure that kids are actually learning things at school.

But it was bad; it was really bad. Somewhere between the forming the concept and enacting the law, something went horribly, horribly wrong. Instead of simply keeping tabs on students’ progress over the years, it turned into a way of forcing students to only try and be average. Adding to that, someone thought it made sense to cut funding from under-performing schools as punishment for not living up to the national standards, which of course only made things worse, trapping some schools in a steady decline that was only compounded by the recession.

For instance, everyone in my school had to take the SAT in junior year; apparently the state said that it could be used in place of some other state standardized test we would’ve had to take otherwise. The school made a very huge deal about this. We had assemblies about it, just about every relevant class would do some test prep, there were study sessions offered after school for months beforehand, and the school basically did everything they could to make sure we knew this was a BIG DEAL. It turns out my school did really well, much to my surprise, considering I knew many people who either slept most of the time or just went C, C, C, C, C, etc. But, apparently all that extra work paid off, so crisis averted, we didn’t lose even more funding. It makes me wonder though, what happened to the school in last place? Where one too many kid made cool patterns in the bubbles? Obama hadn’t instituted his “Meet The Standard Or We Burn Your School To The Ground” policy, so at least the school was probably still there. But now, this school that obviously needs a way to motivate and educate their kids, which can really only be done with extra funding, is going to have to cut programs and positions, and likely offer less support to the kids. Whose idea was this again? Sure, the fear of not passing motivated my school enough to get enough of the kids into gear and meet the standard, but now those who don’t cut it are basically just left for dead.

The result of this loss of fundings means that schools start losing vital things. These schools end up with larger classes, and can’t level kids as well anymore. Since the only motivation was to make everyone meet the standard – there was no real reward for having some people exceed – then everyone just gets mushed together into the same classes to try and make everyone pass.

They started to do this at my school too because they found some grant that required following this system, but fortunately I just barely escaped this part of the mess. As I moved into my junior year they decided to stop leveling certain freshman and sophomore classes. While mathematics may say this simply means everyone just comes closer to the former median in education, reality says that it just brings everyone way down. The smart kids completely lose motivation because they can do everything with incredible ease and are just bored out of their minds all day, and the kids who struggle with the class feel beat down because they see how easy it is for some of the kids and so they lose motivation too. It just isn’t possible for everyone to get mixed together, and then BAM everyone can meet the standard. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and in public school, chances are you’ll have a very weak link in just about every class. The reason we have public school is so that everyone can achieve some level of education, but its ridiculous to try and make everyone reach the same level.

Then, of course, there was the financial crisis. Any school that had already been having budget issues because of NCLB was surely done for now, and my school – which had so complacently succeeded at the SATs – had already been struggling with money for awhile, so it became even worse. My school decided to implement a budget freeze in order to try and save jobs. Besides paper, classes couldn’t buy anything. I was in Advanced Placement chemistry last year, a class where you take a test at the end of the year for college credit. Fortunately, a lot of the chemicals were already stockpiled enough for our class, but still, by the end of the year there were some experiments that we just had to skip because the school couldn’t buy more chemicals. My teacher is also supposed to get rid of chemicals that have been around too long, since, according to state safety people, they might have been unsafe to use. So my teacher was supposed to get rid of some of the chemicals he had, and he wasn’t allowed to buy more. That is just a crappy situation to be in. I can only imagine what that class is doing this year. This was a similar story for every class in the school that required any resources at all, which was basically all of them.

But somehow, even though we had resorted to a complete budget freeze, in the past couple years no one got laid off. Teachers offered to take furlough days instead of people losing their jobs. The school also did not fill most positions left vacant by people leaving the school.  Chemistry classes didn’t buy chemicals. Great, I thought, we can all make some sacrifice so people can keep their jobs. But it is so sad for me to realize that this was a victory. Our school had accomplished what so many public schools, especially in impoverished areas, had failed to do: not lay anyone off. Our public school system has come to the point where the best anyone can hope for is not that class sizes will decline, not that more people will get into ivy leagues, not that more classes can be offered to give students a more varied education, but that no one gets fired this year.

It is shocking how far the system has fallen. Thirty years ago it wasn’t uncommon for people from my school to get into Harvard and Stanford and the like. But in the four years I was there I saw two people get into ivy leagues, one who spent the first three years of high school at a math and science charter school, and one who was homeschooled most of his life. Ninety percent of kids in the U.S. go to public school, yet only about sixty percent of kids at Stanford went to public high school. That’s a pretty huge difference, and unfortunately it’s somewhat common with Ivy League type schools. But these are students who are trying to learn while surrounded by the chaos of deficits and cuts, and are probably being taught by a teacher fighting to keep their job.

Fiscal conservatism has basically turned the public school system into Lord of the Flies, and something huge needs to happen to fix it. The first huge thing of course would be to tax the rich so hard it makes their head spin and speed up that goddamn trickling down. But it’s going to be a very, very long time before that happens – or any positive reform it seems – so all we can do is just hope the kids still going through the system make it out alive.

Let me start with a reminder that as of tomorrow I’m suspending Prime Time and am instead live blogging the television coverage of the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments.  If you enjoy and will miss Prime Time I certainly encourage anyone to pick up the franchise and continue it.  As I mention I’m not particular about the format, mine is simple but time consuming (about 2 hours, most wasted finding quotes).

Those interested might co-ordinate in comments as there is no need for 16 one day and none the next.  I publish at 7:30ish so that you have time to read it.

Tonight on broadcast there’s nothing much interesting unless the Season Finale and aftermath of The Bachelor floats your boat.  A fair number of premiers.

We seem to be paying some of our employees an awful lot of money.

• ABC Family– Pretty Little Liars x 2 (pretty sure this is the Season Finale premier + Instapeat)
• AMC– The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen x 2
• Comedy– Disaster Movie, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia marathon
• Disney– 16 Wishes
• Discovery– When Pigs Attact!
• E!– The Soup (this week’s)
• ESPN– Hoopies, Spurs @ Heat, Magic @ Lakers
• ESPN2– The Show, Yanks @ Sox
• Food– Kid in a Candy Store, Triple D x 2, Meat and Potatoes (premiers)
• FX– Baby Mama x 2
• History– Pawn Stars and Pickers
• Lifetime– Half a Dozen Babies, One Fine Day
• Sci Fi– Being Human x 3 (last week’s and new + Instapeat), Stargate Universe x 2 (9 of the final 10 premier + Instapeat)
• Spike– Man on Fire
• TBS– Family Guy night
• Turner Classic– The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, The Man From Laramie
• TLC– Cake Boss (premier)
• Toon– MAD (premier)
• Travel– Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations marathon (with premier)
• TV Land– Trading Places
• Vs.– Sharks @ Blackhawks
• VH1– Basketball Wives x 2 (after the Finale premier + Instapeat)

The good part, William, is that, no matter whether our clients make money or lose money, Duke & Duke get the commissions.

Later-

I believe we paid $35,000. But if I remember correctly, we valued it for the insurance company at $50,000. You see, Mortimer? William has already made us $15,000.

• AMC– From Dusk Till Dawn
• Disney– Phineas and Ferb x 2
• Turner Classic– Strangers on a Train
• USA– White Collar (this week’s)

Dave hosts Charles Barkley and Cold War Kids.  Jon and Stephen in repeats from 3/1 and 3/3.  Alton does Devil’s Food Cake.  Conan in repeats from 1/10 (for the Tournament).

We took a perfectly useless psychopath like Valentine, and turned him into a successful executive. And during the same time, we turned an honest, hard-working man into a violently, deranged, would-be killer!

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

(midnight. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Regular Daily Features:

Blondie begins the day in Late Night Karaoke, mishima DJs

Gha!

Six Brilliant Articles! from Six Different Places!! on Six Different Topics!!!

                Six Days a Week!!!    at Six in the Morning!!!!

Essays Featured Monday, March 14^th:

are RiaD‘s Monday Open Thoughts

fake consultant  shares ideas On Taking It Back, Or, Wisconsin Recalls, Explained

Out of the Cave and into the Light , a shared story from TheMomCat

The Latest Pique the Geek from Translator Firearms 103. Propellants

A frothy piece from Xanthe

join the conversation! come firefly-dreaming with me….

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Crossposted at Daily Kos and Docudharma

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

:: ::

INTRODUCTION

Standing Up for Their Political Principles in Wisconsin

Count me as one of those thoroughly impressed with the steadfastness of elected Democratic legislators from the State of Wisconsin as well as with important constituencies of the party.  

Over the past month, their resolute and unified display of solidarity with the state’s working classes and sticking to their political principles offers an important lesson to national Democrats.  It simply means that if you stand up for principles of social and economic justice that have long defined the Democratic Party, your political base will not only stand behind you but, also, enthusiastically offer its support.  And if you do not, then, we all are very familiar with what happened in the November 2010 Elections.  (Paul Szep, Comics.com)

The courageous Democrats of Wisconsin have put the national Republican party on the political defensive and exposed them as surrogates for privileged economic elites.

Political discourse should be about competing ideas and not just about shady behavior and the corrupting influence of money in politics.  If that were the case — and given unlimited amounts of corporate money behind their scheming ways — the Wisconsin Republicans would have coasted to an easy victory.  As Rachel Maddow explained it so well on her MSNBC Show this past Tuesday night, they didn’t. What this tells us more than anything else is that there definitely is space in our national politics for vigorous and principled debate.  (Fat Cats Charles and David Koch by Jim Day, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Buy this cartoon)

The Koch Brothers may fancy themselves as kingmakers in the Republican Party and their money may well help the GOP win a battle or two in this fight.  But make no mistake.  They are losing the war of public opinion.  Who’s winning the fight over public-employee unions?  The unions are according to polls conducted by Pew Research

Public attitudes about labor unions have been largely stable since the start of the battles in Wisconsin and other states.  A Pew Research poll last week found favorable opinions of unions outnumbering unfavorable opinions by a 47%-to-39% margin, essentially unchanged from a poll conducted in early February.  But the battles have energized union households and liberal Democrats.  Among both groups, very favorable attitudes about unions jumped sharply in the past few weeks.

Most polls have found majorities opposed to recent efforts to limit or eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees.  A late February Pew Research poll about the Wisconsin dispute found 42% siding more with the public-employee unions than with the governor (31%).  Despite recent Republican criticism of public-sector unions, Pew Research’s polling has found little difference in opinions about public-sector vs. private-sector unions.

Earlier this week, Rachel Maddow emphatically said that the working classes were winning this prolonged fight in Wisconsin.  What these protests have shown is that America’s workers are mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore.  They believe in “shared sacrifice” so long as it is fair and equitable.  

This is what effective organization looks like.  This has been one hell of an impressive display by people truly committed to the preservation of real democracy in this country.  There is a lesson for Washington Democrats too: the activist base of the Democratic Party is not asking for the moon but we definitely want our elected leaders to fight on our behalf — win or lose — and show some backbone.  It’s not that complicated.  

:: ::

This diary has several other cartoons about the turmoil in Libya. With concern rising over higher oil prices, many editorial cartoonists are urging the country to take a good, long hard look at itself in the mirror and re-evaluate its wasteful ways in terms of consuming energy. Gaddafi’s future in Libya may be uncertain but what is evident is that the country’s long-term energy policies — and its fragile “economic recovery” — should not be held hostage by external events.

(Steve Benson, Comics.com (Arizona Republic)

Additionally, you find editorial cartoons about the anti-gay protests by members of the Westboro Baptist Church, Republican Party shenanigans, hostility towards women’s issues, and a number of other events in the news.

I may post some more cartoons in the body of the diary.  Hope you like this edition.  Comments are encouraged.

:: ::

1. Cartoons of the Week

The Eyes of the Nation Are on Wisconsin

Kap, La Vanguardia and Mundo Deportivo (Spain), Buy this cartoon

Don Wright, Comics.com (Tribune Media Services)

Anarchy in Libya

Tim Eagan, Deep Cover, Buy this cartoon

Ghaddafi Sailing in a Barrel by Riber Hansson (Sweden), Buy this cartoon

Oil – America’s Drug of Choice

RJ Matson, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Buy this cartoon

Steve Benson, Comics.com (Arizona Republic)

The GOP – Nation Destroyers, Not Builders

Tea Party Barbarian by Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune, Buy this cartoon

Boob Fight by Matt Bors, Comics.com (Idiot Box), see reader comments on the Bors Blog

Michelle Obama was out advocating for breastfeeding, so Palin and Bachmann attacked her like a hungry infant attacks a milk laden tit — except for the part where they shut the fuck up for a minute after latching on.

— Bors clearly sees the irrationality in the attacks on Michelle Obama

Primitive Baptist Preachers

Mike Scott, NewJerseyNewsroom.com, Buy this cartoon

Kevin Siers, Charlotte Observer, Buy this cartoon

The 2012 Silver Medalists

Jerry Holbert, Comics.com (Boston Herald)

Will Gingrich Run? by Mike Keefe, Denver Post, Buy this cartoon

NPR – Stung By Conservatives

Conservative Gotcha by Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune, Buy this cartoon

John Sherffius, Boulder Daily Camera, Buy this cartoon

Leave Big Bird Alone

Proposed Cuts to PBS by Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com, Buy this cartoon

GOP Trophies by Milt Priggee, www.miltpriggee.com, Buy this cartoon

The King of Kings

The Kings Speech Wins the Oscar by Randall Enos, Cagle Cartoons, Buy this cartoon

Jack Ohman, Comics.com (Portland Oregonian)

Peter King – The King of Paranoia and Xenophobia

Hearings on Muslim Extremism by Jimmy Margulies, New Jersey Record, Buy this cartoon

Steve Breen, Comics.com (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Is This the Beginning of the End for DOMA?

Drew Sheneman, Comics.com (Newark Star-Ledger)

Walt Handelsman, Comics.com (Newsday)

Tragedy in Japan

Earthquake in Japan by Aislin, Montreal Gazette, Buy this cartoon

Nuclear Drama in Japan by Peter Broelman (Australia), Buy this cartoon

2. America Held Hostage By Middle East Oil

Chan Lowe, Comics.com, see reader comments on Lowe’s blog in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

:: ::

Lowe thinks it is sheer madness that we haven’t developed an effective strategy for alternative fuels and as great as this country is, its future and economy is hardly independent of foreign events.  It need not be that way

Gadhafi and Fuel Prices

We like to think of ourselves as the most powerful nation on earth, yet our fragile economic recovery risks being strangled by, of all things, the reluctance of a semi-obscure North African madman to vacate his seat of power.  Every day that he counterattacks and digs in is an extra day of turbulence and uncertainly in the world’s oil futures markets, with direct consequences to the prices of everything we consume here at home.

One could not blame the average American taxpayer for questioning the expenditure of so much of our treasure on the greatest defense machine in the history of mankind if we remain so vulnerable to discrete events in far-flung places.  One way out of this mess is to begin thinking of “national defense spending” as something other than a series of jobs programs for defense workers scattered throughout a collection of congressional districts.

Hard as it might be for our representatives in Washington to get their minds around this, the fact is that every dollar spent on energy independence is a dollar we don’t have to spend worrying about keeping our oil supply lines open.  It’s up to us to educate our politicians that a salary earned by a voter manufacturing, say, photovoltaic cells consists of the same legal tender as a salary earned building tanks or bombers.

Unravelling by Brian Adcock, The Scotland, Buy this cartoon

Cal Grondahl, Utah Standard Examiner, Buy this cartoon

Nick Anderson, Comics.com, see reader comments in the Houston Chronicle

Cry for Help by Joep Bertrams (The Netherlands), Buy this cartoon

Martyr by Cam Cardow, Ottawa Citizen, Buy this cartoon

Gas Prices by Clay Bennett, Comics.com, see reader comments in the Chattanooga Times Free Press

Rob Rogers, Comics.com, see reader comments in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  

Dependence

Dependence on foreign oil often means dependence on Arab regimes.  It should be interesting to see how Americans embrace democracy in the Middle East when it means they’ll be paying more for gas.

— Rogers wonders if most Americans would support the spread of democracy in the Middle East if it meant that their own pocketbooks would be negatively affected by it

Kevin Siers, Charlotte Observer, Buy this cartoon

:: ::

3. Protesting for Fairness and Equality

Jen Sorensen, Slowpoke, see reader comments on Sorensen’s blog, Buy this cartoon

:: ::

Sorensen reminds us why unions are important and is optimistic about the final outcome in Wisconsin and ramifications for workers

Union Envy

As unions grow less and less powerful in the US, it seems we’re losing our collective memory of why they are important, and also of what a decent job looks like…

I empathize with anyone trying to support a family on crap jobs like that — but this also illustrates how the working class plays right into the hands of the very elites who want to do away with unions.  First, eliminate the good jobs that allow workers their fair share of the nation’s wealth; next watch them turn against each other…

Fortunately, polls show a majority of Americans support workers keeping their bargaining rights — so our case of crabs is not an epidemic, as some billionaires might have you believe.

Read her complete comment

Balancing Act by Nick Anderson, Comics.com, see reader comments in the Houston Chronicle

Walker – Union Buster by John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Buy this cartoon

CEO Pay by Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune, Buy this cartoon

Stuart Carlson, carlsontoons/Universal Press Syndicate

(click link to enlarge cartoon)

We in Wisconsin are all expected to share in budget cuts and sacrifices, some more than others.

— Carlson explaining the above cartoon

Steve Breen, Comics.com (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Former Democratic Governor by Joe Heller, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Buy this cartoon

GOP and Civil Servant Pensions by Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com, Buy this cartoon

Hat tip – Political Gates

Teachers by Clay Bennett, Comics.com, see the large number of reader comments in the Chattanooga Times Free Press

:: ::

4. Westboro Baptist Church: Exploiting the 1st Amendment

Chan Lowe, Comics.com, see reader comments on Lowe’s blog in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

:: ::

Just like the vast majority of editorial cartoonists — be they of the liberal, moderate, or conservative persuasion —  Lowe cannot stand the despicable behavior exhibited by members of the Westboro Baptish Church.  But, he also has respect for the rule of law and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution that protects free speech, even if it is offensive to most people

Anti-Gay Funeral Protests

What the Westboro Baptist Church people are doing is so repugnant, so outside the bounds of human decency, that many of us hoped the Supreme Court would blow them out of the water.

Surely, we thought, their vicious hate spoeech and bizarre antics at military funerals — mocking the idea of military service to one’s nation and subjecting the families of the dead to further misery — constitute an abuse of the First Amendment…

Navigating their way through this fog of anger, however, eight justices of the Court realized that the beauty of the First Amendment lies in the fact that it can’t be abused. Other than crying “Fire!” in a crowded theater or inciting to riot, just about anything goes.  They made a compelling argument, too, as to why Westboro’s right to spew its ugliness is just as precious as Martin Luther King’s right to give his “Dream” speech on the National Mall: The church members are addressing an issue in the national discourse, and they are doing it in a place that enjoys a particularly sacred status in the Constitution… the public street…

We can love the First Amendment or hate it, depending on the circumstances, but it’s ours.  The inherent and inviolate broadness of the protection it provides is one of the many things that continue to make our country the envy of the world.

Robert Arial, Comics.com (formerly of The State, SC)

Phelps and the First Amendment by Mike Keefe, Denver Post, Buy this cartoon

Mark Streeter, Savannah Morning News, Buy this cartoon

Milt Priggee, Politicalcartoons.com, Buy this cartoon

Rick McKee, Augusta Chronicle (GA), Buy this cartoon

Jeff Koterba, Omaha World Herald, Buy this cartoon

Jeff Stahler, Comics.com (Columbus Dispatch)

Steve Sack, Comics.com (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

:: ::

5. 2011 International Women’s Day

Jen Sorensen, Slowpoke, see reader comments on her blog, Buy this cartoon

:: ::

Sorensen points out that choices are shrinking for women given the overtly hostile attitude of most Republican elected officials towards issues of concern to women

Unplanned Parenthood

As you may have heard, House Republicans are looking to solve our nation’s economic problems (not) by defunding Planned Parenthood.  What you may not know is that there are currently over 4,000 anti-choice “crisis pregnancy centers” around the country, more than five times the number of abortion providers.  These largely “faith-based” operations, known for disseminating medically-dubious advice, received at least $60 million under the Bush administration. (You’ll recall the many Republicans who howled about that instance of deficit spending, no? Hmm… neither do I.)  So, in a sense, Unplanned Parenthood already exists, and this cartoon is merely absurdist exaggeration.  I hope.

Paul Szep, Comics.com

Bring it on Home by David Cohen, Asheville Citizen-Times

(click link to enlarge cartoon)

Huckabee Family Values by Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com, Buy this cartoon

Bill Day, Comics.com (Memphis Commercial-Appeal)

Sex War by Petar Pismestrovic, Kleine Zeitung (Austria), Buy this cartoon

Joel Pett, McLatchy Cartoons/Lexington Herald-Leader

(click link to enlarge cartoon)

Bill Day, Comics.com (Memphis Commercial-Appeal)

Lalo Alcaraz, LA Weekly, Buy this cartoon

:: ::

6. RIP Frank Buckles, Jane Russell, and David Broder

Vic Harville, Stephens Media Group (Little Rock, AR), Buy this cartoon

Last US WWI Veteran by Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com, Buy this cartoon

Washington Doughboys by John Cole, Scranton Times-Tribune, Buy this cartoon

Mark Streeter, Savannah Morning News, Buy this cartoon

Jeff Stahler, Comics.com (Columbus Dispatch)

:: ::

7. Final Thoughts

LA Bikeways by Monte Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons, Buy this cartoon

:: ::

Finally, are you an outdoorsy kind of person?  If so, do you like to bike or do you always rely on your car, bus, train, or subway for transportation?  Where you live, how clean is the air and is air quality there better than in Los Angeles, California?

:: ::

A Note About the Diary Poll

:: ::

What do you think of the (almost) month-long protests against the Republican Party in Wisconsin?  Do you feel encouraged, discouraged, or are indifferent to this political uprising?

Will these protests revive the labor movement, put the GOP on the political defensive, and result in long-term gains for the working classes?  With recall elections in the works for WI state legislative seats and a real possibility that even the Governor of Wisconsin may be recalled in 2012, what does this mean for the Democratic Party and the Progressive Movement?

Share your thought in the comments section and don’t forget to take the diary poll.  Thanks.

:: ::

Update #1

8. The GOP 2012 Presidential Field: Not a Contender Among Them

Mike Huckabee by Bob Englehart, Hartford Courant, Buy this cartoon

:: ::

Englehart is not at all impressed with either Mike Huckabee or Newt Gingrich as potential Republican candidates for 2012

The trouble with politicians like Mike Huckabee is that they are surrounded by toadies who tell them how right they are.  Good politicians have someone in the organization who can tell them no and make the boss think.  Huckabee doesn’t have a prayer to be elected president of the United States. Well, he has a prayer, but that’s all he has.

It’s good fun to watch and listen to these early candidates make fools of themselves.  I can’t wait until Newt makes an announcement.  He has more baggage than a 747 on the way to Australia.

Newt Gingrich for President 2012 by Jimmy Margulies, New Jersey Record, Buy this cartoon

Newt Gingrich’s Pick Up Lines For Cheaters by RJ Matson, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Buy this cartoon

Pat Oliphant, Yahoo Cartoons/Universal Press Syndicate

(click link to enlarge cartoon)

Mike Luckovich, Comics.com (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Jack Ohman, Comics.com (Portland Oregonian)

:: ::

Update #2

9. Sports Talk: March Can Be Maddening

March Madness and Bosses by Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com, Buy this cartoon

Drew Litton, Comics.com

Drew Litton, Comics.com

Clay Jones, Freelance-Star (Fredericksburg, VA), Buy this cartoon

Joe Heller, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Buy this cartoon

Drew Litton, Comics.com

Drew Litton, Comics.com

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Evening Edition is an Open Thread

With 49 Top Stories.

1 Japan reels as second blast rocks nuclear plant

by Hiroshi Hiyama, AFP

1 hr 41 mins ago

AFP

2 Tokyo stocks hammered, BoJ unleashes record funds

by David Watkins, AFP

Mon Mar 14, 11:11 am ET

3 Japan battles nuclear emergency after deadly quake

by Kelly Macnamara, AFP

Sun Mar 13, 7:20 pm ET

4 Kadhafi forces in new attacks, powers hold talks

by Karim Talbi, AFP

1 hr 20 mins ago

5 Kadhafi forces advance towards Libyan rebel capital

by Tahar Majdoub, AFP

Sun Mar 13, 10:42 pm ET

6 Gulf troops enter Bahrain as protests escalate

by Mohammad Fadhel, AFP

1 hr 16 mins ago

7 Ouattara forces make gains, seize west Ivorian town

by Christophe Parayre, AFP

Sun Mar 13, 4:41 pm ET

8 Renault apologises to managers wrongly sacked for spying

AFP

1 hr 7 mins ago

9 Pakistan reach Cricket World Cup quarter-finals

by John Weaver, AFP

24 mins ago

10 Dalai Lama pleads for right to ‘retire’

by Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy, AFP

Mon Mar 14, 9:15 am ET

11 Retired and on the road: older tourists embrace Asia

by Ben Sheppard, AFP

Mon Mar 14, 12:44 am ET

12 India world’s biggest arms importer: think tank

AFP

Mon Mar 14, 12:05 am ET

13 Twitter, a five-year-old changing the world

by Glenn Chapman, AFP

1 hr 46 mins ago

Reuters

14 Japan grapples with nuclear crisis after tsunami

By Taiga Uranaka and Ki Joon Kwon, Reuters

2 hrs 26 mins ago

15 Japan economy shudders after shocks, BOJ pumps cash

By Leika Kihara and Rie Ishiguro, Reuters

Mon Mar 14, 8:12 am ET

16 Special report: Can Japan find "New Deal" after triple whammy?

By Linda Sieg and Nathan Layne, Reuters

1 hr 7 mins ago

17 Humanitarian crisis deepens in quake-hit Japan

By Yoko Kubota, Reuters

1 hr 7 mins ago

18 Europe split over nuclear safety amid Japan crisis

By Pete Harrison and Marine Hass, Reuters

2 hrs 23 mins ago

19 Japan earthquake cost estimate hits insurer shares

By Myles Neligan and Ben Berkowitz, Reuters

55 mins ago

20 No immediate fiscal crisis in Japan: rating agencies

By Rachel Armstrong and Saeed Azhar, Reuters

Mon Mar 14, 8:07 am ET

21 TOPIX hit, seen falling further as quake costs

By Antoni Slodkowski, Reuters

Mon Mar 14, 7:29 am ET

22 Japan’s crippled coastline: "It doesn’t get worse than this"

By Damir Sagolj, Reuters

Mon Mar 14, 7:09 am ET

23 Japan’s shipping, steel, energy start trudge back from

By Clarence Fernandez, Reuters

Mon Mar 14, 5:20 am ET

24 BOJ eases policy to shore up confidence, pumps cash

By Leika Kihara and Rie Ishiguro, Reuters

Mon Mar 14, 4:00 am ET

25 Analysis: Quake impact seen deep and long, recession possible

By Kristina Cooke and Natsuko Waki, Reuters

Mon Mar 14, 12:42 am ET

26 Japan nuclear woes cast shadow over U.S. energy policy

By Jeff Mason and Will Dunham, Reuters

Sun Mar 13, 6:21 pm ET

27 Libya jets bomb rebels, French press for no-fly zone

By Mohammed Abbas, Reuters

2 hrs 10 mins ago

28 No consensus after UN talks on Libya no-fly zone

By Louis Charbonneau, Reuters

48 mins ago

29 Saudi sends troops, Bahrain Shi’ites call it "war"

By Lin Noueihed and Frederik Richter, Reuters

2 hrs 25 mins ago

30 Wisconsin Democrats say down but not out in union fight

By James B. Kelleher, Reuters

Sun Mar 13, 5:54 pm ET

AP

31 Meltdown threat rises at Japanese nuclear plant

By ERIC TALMADGE and MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press

26 mins ago

32 Tide of bodies overwhelms quake-hit Japan

By JAY ALABASTER and TODD PITMAN, Associated Press

1 hr 35 mins ago

33 Obama: US will stand by longtime ally Japan

Associated Press

1 hr 7 mins ago

34 Japan central bank feeds markets money after quake

By TOMOKO A. HOSAKA, Associated Press

Mon Mar 14, 9:19 am ET

35 Calif. port town attracts tsunamis: 34 since ’34

Associated Press

2 hrs 10 mins ago

36 Gadhafi forces bombard cities key to rebel supply

By RYAN LUCAS and ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press

42 mins ago

37 France, Britain pushing for action on Libya

By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press

2 hrs 13 mins ago

38 Clinton in Paris for talks on Libya crisis

Associated Press

1 hr 51 mins ago

39 Migrant workers fleeing Libya vow not to return

By KARIN LAUB, Associated Press

Mon Mar 14, 5:34 am ET

40 Bahrain ‘arena’ for Gulf forces and wider fears

By REEM KHALIFA and BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press

21 mins ago

41 Yemen clashes and Bahrain chaos as protests deepen

By BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press

Sun Mar 13, 4:45 pm ET

42 PROMISES, PROMISES: Little transparency progress

Associated Press

2 hrs 40 mins ago

43 Big East lands a lucky 11 in March Madness

The Associated Press

Mon Mar 14, 3:48 am ET

44 Spanking 1-year-olds is common in depressed dads

Associated Press

Mon Mar 14, 4:25 am ET

45 EXCHANGE: Illinois town dreads road construction

By MICHAEL SMOTHERS, (Peoria) Journal Star for the Associated Press

1 hr 28 mins ago

46 Amid high demand, states cut mental health care

By The Associated Press

1 hr 48 mins ago

47 Obama prods Congress on education law renewal

Associated Press

2 hrs 53 mins ago

48 SeaWorld trainers may go back in water with orcas

By MITCH STACY, Associated Press

Mon Mar 14, 3:24 am ET

49 Ag industry, lawmakers try to limit secret videos

By ANDREW DUFFELMEYER, Associated Press

Mon Mar 14, 3:12 am ET