Primarily Annoying

Congratulations! You are the least barfiest!
Future general election loser Mitt Romney was the BIG WINNER this weekend, as he ran away with Nevada's Republican Primary, taking more than 50% of the vote. And if there's one place in America where people will trip over each other to put down money on a bad bet everyone sees coming from a mile away, it's Nevada, so that makes sense.

Speaking of how Mitt Romney is an awful candidate, this is my favorite poll result in ages: "By better than 2 to 1, Americans say the more they learn about Romney, the less they like him." LOLOLOLOLOL! Awesome.

In other terrible news for Romney from the same poll: Even though the economy is still a shambles, and even though President Obama's "ratings on handling the economy and job creation remain negative," and even though nearly "nine in 10 people still rate the economy negatively," US voters still rate Obama more highly on "who would better protect the middle class."

Even more damningly: "Fifty-two percent of voters say Obama better understands the economic problems people are having, while 37 percent say Romney does."

And: "Two-thirds of all Americans say they do not think [Mitt Romney] is paying his fair share [of taxes]."

Whoooooooooooooooooops!

Gee, it's almost like US voters are—despite their garbage media and the preponderance of bootstrap narratives implicitly lionizing corporate and individual greed, at both of which Mitt Romney has excelled—clever enough to have determined that Mitt Romney is a gross jerk who lives in a bubble of privilege and supports policy that condones the exploitation of workers and codifies job-killing corporate welfare at the taxpayers' expense. Huh!

In case the point was not yet clear enough, a Mitt Romney biographer is making the rounds with the not-news that the candidate "grew up in a series of bubbles."

#noshitsherlock

Meanwhile, Dick Armey (insert deep breath where SO MANY JOKES want to be) has accused Newt Gingrich of waging "a first-rate vendetta" against Mitt Romney. I guess? Personally, I've always been under the impression that Newt Gingrich could never hate anyone as much as he hates himself, but if Dick Armey says Newt Gingrich hella hates Mitt Romney and it's totes vendetta time, then who am I to argue with Dick Armey?

Something something Ron Paul. Liberty, freedom, liberty, freedom, forcible pregnancy. It's in the Constitution! Look it up.

Now it's time for another Rick Santorum FUN FACT! In his book, It Takes a Family (take THAT, Hillary Clinton!), Rick Santorum asserts: "The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness." And that is why there are no more children and no more families in the United States of America today. The end.


^ Also a fun fact.
Finally, in related news, E.J. Dionne, Jr. takes a fun look at the Citizens United catastrophe: "We have seen the world created by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, and it doesn't work. Oh, yes, it works nicely for the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, especially if they want to shroud their efforts to influence politics behind shell corporations. It just doesn't happen to work if you think we are a democracy and not a plutocracy." Whoooooops!

Tomorrow: Minnesota!

Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.

Number of the Day

4.5 million: That's how many people reportedly signed Google's anti-SOPA/PIPA petition yesterday.

A spokeswoman for Google confirmed that 4.5 million people added their names to the company's anti-SOPA petition today.

Not too shabby.

...Of course, Google's anti-SOPA and PIPA petition is not the only one out there on this day of mass online protest. As of this writing 1.458 million people signed a similar petition at the activist website Avaaz.org, and Fight for the Future said that between its two sites, Sopastrike.com and AmericanCensorship.org, at least 350,000 people have sent emails to representatives in the House and Senate.

A graphic put out by Google shows that before today's coordinated protests, 3 million Americans had signed various petitions against the two bills.

In other SOPA number news, a spokeswoman from the popular blogging platform WordPress, said that at last count, 25,000 WordPress blogs had joined the SOPA and PIPA protest by blacking out their blogs entirely, and another 12,500 used the "Stop Censorship" ribbon.

Today, the White House Blog reports that 103,785 people signed petitions through the We The People website asking the president to protect a free and open Internet.

This fight is not over. It is going to require vigilance, because both Republicans and Democrats want to pass this legislation, and they will try to sneak it past the public every legislative session.

Yesterday there was some consternation in comments about why it is that otherwise progressive Democrats would support this legislation. I noted: "My guess: Because Democrats are bought and sold by corporate entities and private wealth, too. It just so happens that a lot of the big financiers of Democratic campaigns are part of the entertainment industry, whose lobbyists probably authored SOPA/PIPA. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of back-room blackmail going on right now from Democratic super-fundraisers who raised and donated huge amounts for President Obama last election, like Rob Reiner, for example."

This morning, I read this: Hollywood Moguls Stopping Obama Donations Because of President's Piracy Stand: 'Not Give a Dime Anymore': "[Several media] moguls privately are having 'direct and personal conversations' with Obama and his administration and the Democratic Party. Several moguls have informed Obama's newly anointed Hollywood re-election liaison to the entertainment community, Nicole Avant, and her husband who is helping her, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos, that they are pulling out of major fundraisers planned over the next few days and won't participate in any more headed by Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (whom they see as in the pocket of the Internet giants like Google)."

Does it matter if "Hollywood" decides not to contribute to the president's reelection campaign? Well, yeah. All those attacks during the last election about Obama being cozy with celebrities weren't just (racist and anti-Semitic) appeals to the conservatives who emit a Pavlovian snarl in response to the mere suggestion of "Hollywood liberal elites"—they were also a dog whistle about whence comes Obama's corporate donations.

The piracy issue is a big problem for Democrats, whose corporate sponsors want legislation like SOPA/PIPA passed and don't give a fuck how ineffective (and counterproductive) such legislation actually would be, but whose tech constituency will fight this shit tooth and keyboard.

And that's all the surface stuff. Below that lies a darker reality, which is that both parties would happily use any excuse to kill social media, because it's a lot easier to do their business in the dark, without accountability, in a culture where the hoi polloi doesn't have such a convenient means of organizing.

Which is all why we're going to have to be vigilant even if, as it appears, we have won this round. It was merely an opening salvo in what will be a very long war.

Number of the Day

Five: That's how many minutes it took the Indiana House Republicans to shove their anti-union bill through committee this morning, forcing an immediate roll call vote without any debate or opportunity for Democrats to offer amendments.

Republicans won the roll call vote on party lines, 8-5, clearing the way for the full Indiana House and Senate to vote on the bill.

They're not even pretending it's a democracy anymore.

Previously: News from the Conservative Legislation Lab.

[H/T to @NatashaChart.]

News from the Conservative Legislation Lab

When I was a kid growing up in Northwest Indiana in the 1980s, there were two things I was really scared off: Nuclear war and my dad being laid off. The first was an incessantly-evoked threat which hung over our heads like the specter of terrorism does now. When adults would talk about "the bombs" being dropped, they would give a mirthless laugh and say things like at least we'll be first to go because we lived at the feet of steel giants. The Communists would take out the steel mills first, and we'd go with them.

The second was scary to me because, even as the steel mills remained a supposed target for "the bombs," they were collapsing, leaving the most popular occupation among my friends' fathers "laid off." There were a lot of dads at home when I was a kid, some of whom were angry and smelled like booze in the morning, and some of whom were friendly and hopeful and talked about "getting back on the job" someday, and some of whom just looked empty and hollow as they stared into the distance of an uncertain future.

I was scared my dad might become one of those dads, because I didn't understand that my fear was unfounded. My dad didn't work at the mill; my dad was a teacher, a unionized worker employed by the state, whose job was secure.

Northwest Indiana has never recovered from the decimation of its steel industry, and now the Republicans of the state legislature want to erode what remaining security there is for the dwindling number of unionized workers with "a so-called right to work (RTW) bill that Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) says is at the top of the state's agenda."

The AFL-CIO has a fact sheet on right to work laws here, which weaken collective bargaining and eventually erode both workers' rights and compensation: "The average worker in a right to work state makes about $5,333 a year less than workers in other states." And here's even more from the Economic Policy Institute, which also looks at what the real effects of a RTW law have been in Oklahoma:

In the 10 years since the law was passed, the number of new companies coming into the state has decreased by one-third (Oklahoma Department of Commerce 2011).

...In the 10 years since Oklahoma adopted its right-to-work law, the number of manufacturing jobs in the state has fallen by one-third (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011).

Indiana will be the first state in more than a decade to enact right-to-work legislation if the Republicans in the state legislature ram it through this week.

As you may recall, Indiana state Democrats walked out last year to protest this same Republican foolery; in the interim, the Republican majority established a new rule that fines them $1,000 a day for conscientious absenteeism.

Although this is happening in Indiana, it should be of grave concern to all USians, especially those in purple-leaning-red and red states—because Indiana has, over the past couple of years under the garbage leadership of Mitch Daniels, turned into a conservative legislation lab, which is why we now lead the nation in anti-abortion restrictions, and why Indiana is the new front on eroding workers' rights.

What's happened in Indiana is that the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded entity leading the corporatocratic charge to steal control of the nation from its people, has 17 of its task force members seated in the Indiana House of Representatives and 5 of its task force members seated in the Indiana Senate. In fact, Senator Jim Buck from IN-21 is a member of ALEC's Board of Directors.

Indiana is "now playing a central role in ALEC's agenda."

This model of corporate takeover will be rolled out state-by-state if successful in Indiana. If that sounds like some kind of tinfoil conspiracy, well, it's not. It's all being done right out in the open, where nobody's paying any attention.

What can you do? Well, if you live in Indiana, you can sign this petition in support of Indiana workers. If you don't live in Indiana, please consider donating here or here to support the Indiana House Democrats and/or here to support the Indiana State AFL-CIO in their fight against this heinous legislation and similar bids to erode workers' rights.

They're not going to stop with Indiana. They just started here, because we already lack the resources and progressive infrastructure to effectively fight. Help.