Nudnik at Nite

(Reuters) – Tea Party activist and Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann on Saturday defended moves by fellow Republicans in Wisconsin to reduce state union bargaining power.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has sparked mass protests in the state this week with a proposal to cut state employee benefits and roll back public union collective bargaining rights.

“Don’t let anyone tell you that the government workers in Wisconsin are losing their collective bargaining rights over wages,” Bachmann said in a speech to a South Carolina Republican women’s group.

“They are not. They are retaining them. It’s their collective bargaining right over their benefits.”

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Walker vs. Walk-Out

From msnbc:

MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Scott Walker on Friday ruled out a compromise proposed by a key union to retain collective bargaining rights in exchange for public workers accepting benefit cuts.

At a press conference, Walker said he could not consider the offer by the largest state workers union because it only covered some public employees and came late in the process.

Walker and other Republicans have been trying to pass a controversial bill that would end a half-century of collective bargaining for most public workers in Wisconsin.

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Talk Like an Egyptian…Tyrant

From The Washington Post (Editorial):

In Egypt, workers are having a revolutionary February. In the United States, by contrast, February is shaping up as the cruelest month workers have known in decades.

The coup de grace that toppled Hosni Mubarak came after tens of thousands of Egyptian workers went on strike beginning last Tuesday.

…snip…

But even as workers were helping topple the regime in Cairo, one state government in particular was moving to topple workers’ organizations here in the United States. Last Friday, Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s new Republican governor, proposed taking away most collective bargaining rights of public employees.

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CPAniC

From TALKING POINTS MEMO:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, the last of the possible Republican presidential candidates to address CPAC on Friday, strode to the podium at tonight’s Ronald Reagan Banquet and turned back the clock to the 1980s: the thing we have to fear, he said, is the growing Red Threat.

“In our nation, in our time, the friends of freedom have an assignment, as great as those of the 1860s, or the 1940s, or the long twilight of the Cold War,” he said. “As in those days, the American project is menaced by a survival-level threat.”

“I refer, of course, to the debts our nation has amassed for itself over decades of indulgence,” he added. “It is the new Red Menace, this time consisting of ink.”

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Hosni-jerk Reaction

From The Telegraph:

Hosni Mubarak used the 18 days it took for protesters to topple him to shift his vast wealth into untraceable accounts overseas, Western intelligence sources have said.

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CPAChydermititis

Washington (CNN) — Potential Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Sen. John Thune, Tim Pawlenty and Rep. Ron Paul all get their chance Friday to address the annual Conservative Political Action Conference — a gathering of more than 10,000 GOP activists from across the country.

The list of speakers for the three-day meeting is a virtual “Who’s Who” of GOP presidential politics.

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OMG! What’s next? Caliph-ornia?!

Chris Matthews:

Yesterday when we were giving you the latest news from Cairo and the White House, Beck was preaching the coming of the caliphate. That’s right, the coming of the caliphate. ‘Oh, we’ve got trouble in River City.’ The mad professor is prophesizing now that Britain, France, Spain and Portugal are all going to be grabbed up by the second coming of the Ottoman empire.

Why is Beck selling this fear? Because he  doesn’t want to deal with the problem at hand. It’s too tricky for him, as it is for most of us. So what are Beck and the troublemakers doing? They’re scaring people into a frenzy over the coming of a global caliphate. And to what effect? To fight for Mubarak? To place blame if we don’t? To encourage Mubarak to fight the people in the streets? No. I’ll bet Its to begin a long campaign of fear, something to talk about on the radio, something to scare people with.

(Video at BUSINESS INSIDER)

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How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sharia?

From THINK PROGRESS (2-1-11):

Amidst the political upheaval in Egypt, conservatives are scare-mongering about the possible Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt. But leading neoconservative Frank Gaffney is taking Muslim Brotherhood fearmongering to new heights. This past weekend, Gaffney was a featured speaker at the Educational Policy Conference in St. Louis, an annual gathering of social conservatives. Gaffney used the opportunity to discuss how the Muslim Brotherhood is not only poised to implement a new theocracy in Egypt, but is also operating in the United States under “front groups” like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil liberties group dedicated to “protecting the rights of all Americans, regardless of faith.”

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