So we got Democratic senators hiding out somewhere in northern Illinois.  Meanwhile, back at the Capitol… well, I’ll let the Madison altweekly scribe pick up the story, seeing as he wrote the damn thing:

If anyone thought Gov. Scott Walker — in his frantic push to extract unilateral concessions from state employees and break the back of public employee unions throughout the state — could not possibly be more arrogant, they were wrong. Walker took this aspect of his character to a whole new level late this afternoon, in a press conference in his office.

…

In what he obviously thought was an effort to be diplomatic, Walker said the teeming masses of protesters, who, even as he spoke, packed the Capitol inside and out, had “a right to be heard.” But, he added, they don’t have the right to “drown out” the millions of state residents he claims support his moves.  Walker called on the Democratic members of the state Senate to return to work to do the job “they were elected to do.” Again, he insisted this is what the state’s residents want, overlooking that the Democrats’ decision to not show up for work today was drawing audible cheers from many thousands of people.

…

I asked if he thought his proposal — which called on the Legislature to act six days after it was introduced — did not amount to ramming things through. He denied it absolutely, and chided me for editorializing.  Walker reiterated that it should have been obvious to everyone what he had in mind before he announced it, saying, “If anyone doesn’t know what’s coming, they’ve been asleep for the last two years.”

It certainly appears, if the activists don’t suddenly get bored with it all, that we could all be on this story for a while.

I lived in Madison, Wisconsin for three years.  I went to the U.W. Law School, and participated in my share of standard-issue Madison protests.  The anti-war protests were large, and loud.  There was a walkout just before spring break in 2003 that underwhelmed, but the crowds got big, in a hurry, on the day the bombs started dropping.

As I got some distance from Madison, I looked at the protests cynically.  I came to view them as exercises in toothless, mindless, directionless idealism that sounded cool, but would change absolutely nothing.  (To boot: some of the leaders of the rallies were absolutely batty.)  And that’s because that was, and is, the truth of it.

But what’s happening in Madison now just feels different, somehow.  Yes — it will change nothing.  After November, Republicans have a hammerlock on both chambers.  And Scott Walker is completely deaf to the protests that, if thousands of people were rising up against Obamacare or socialism, would become magically unplugged.  The removal of collective bargaining rights for state employees is a done deal (apart from the inevitable lawsuits).  The math tells me so.  No amount of pickets or sickouts, or even a general strike (which I don’t think Wisconsin labor leaders have the stones to do), will change it.

And yet, for tonight at least, my whole heart is behind these guys.  They can change the world.  The bill will be passed — that ship has sailed.  But they can still change the world, maybe.

Yes, friends: it is that time again.  Violence and committee meetings, together with overeating, commercialism, and lowbrow humor.  All the things that make America THE GREATEST NATION ON EARTH, wrapped in a neat four-hour package (which expands to a twelve-hour unholy mess if you count the pregame dreck on Fox).  So welcome to Stinque’s Third Annual Super Bowl Liveblog, reporting on the big game between —

Wait a second.  One of the things that does not make America THE GREATEST NATION ON EARTH is socialism.  And, what’s this?  Organized labor?  Collective bargaining?  Bad faith negotiation tactics?  Work stoppage?

Yes, indeed. We are facing a deadline (3 March) for the League and the NFLPA to ink a new contract.  Under the current deal, the players take 59.6% of league munnie, and the inter-club revenue sharing deal make the haves (Patsies, HOW BOUT DEM COWBOYS, etc.) subsidize the have-nots (for example, Cleveland).  In other words, SOCIALISM!  For this red menace in our midst, the owners have built massive stadia (often with a little help, or total and complete backing, from local taxpayers).  The old deal signed in 2006 just does not fit the modern spirit, then.

Thus you have it that, with this negotiation, the owners want major concessions (to the tune of about $1.4bn by one estimate).  They also want two more games in the regular season (from 16 to 18).  The players, in response, asked the clubs to open up the books and demonstrate claimed economic distress — to which the League said, diplomatically, “no dice.”  Which leads us to conclude that this may be the last professional football game we see for a long, long time.  If the lockout lasts into August, as it might, the NHL Memorial Doomsday Scenario — the cancellation of a whole season — starts to become real.

But enough unhappy talk.  Somebody’s going to get beaten to a pulp tonight — follow along after the jump with this liveblog as we find out who.

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Well, not much to say about Snobama / Snoprah / SNOMG except to say that, at 1800 Central War Time, we are in whiteout conditions at Chicago Bureau World Headquarters & Chowder Club.  And the worst of it is not going to hit for another three hours.

Eeep.

Open weather thread, y’all!

Part of this is down to me watching oodles of Sport.  Part of it, too, is that I finally decided to get a new car (first in eleven years — which tells you all you need to know about my love of the car retailing industry — a dark blue Mustang V6 convertible if you must know).  But I am wanting for nominees for this week’s Psychometer.

But you ask: “what? Are you blind? The Talibunny’s “blood libel” speech counts, doesn’t it?” See, I envisioned the Psychometer as a tool to measure how badly Republicans would do it if they had unified control over the government again.  The point is, after this week, Sarah Palin will not, under any circumstances, hold any lever of power in the United States of America.

If you can tell me how any truly moderate person in this country (who are supposedly the pivot-point on which all elections swing) would ever pick Sarah Plain and Dumb over Black Eagle, please…. enlighten me.  Absent that: Sarah Palin quotes, in my mind, are out — because she will never, ever get elected to anything, ever again.

(There’s that.  But also: I can’t find a source on Louis Gohmert’s (Tex.) claim that Jared Loughner is some sort of ideal citizen for dirty hippie liberals.)

That’s my thinking this week.  Please add yours.

[We interrupt Stinque’s ongoing coverage of collegiate Sport (at halftime, which is a natural interruption point, so there) for a story about Glenn Beck being Glenn Beck.  Apologies in advance.  Sport thread appears below.]

So Glenn Beck made a pledge today to denounce extremism “from the Left, the Right or middle.”  [Note, of course, that two-thirds of that set is NOT HIM.]  Included in the pledge is this specific plea:

I denounce violent threats and calls for the destruction of our system – regardless of their underlying ideology – whether they come from the Hutaree Militia or Frances Fox Piven.

Well, isn’t that a refreshing thought from a guy — wait.  Rewind that last little bit there:

or Frances Fox Piven.

Dude.  I haven’t heard about Frances Fox Piven until today.  What puts her in the same discussion as a violent militia group?  Or anyone more radicalized than, say, Garrison Keillor?  Follow me for all the horrid details, post-jump.

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An editor’s note: this post was researched and drafted late Saturday morning (CT), with the tweets on which they were based sent by me around noon.  And then, after a dash to the laundry room, I turned on the TV and heard the news.

The title you see here was initially chosen because of the fact that — as the first draft put it — “a Nor’easter full of wind, snow and stupid is due next week when they bring up the (oh, dear) ‘Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.'”  But, of course, that vote isn’t going to happen next week, given what has happened.  And yet the title remains on this post, unchanged; to some extent, it still seems apt, in a very odd way.

The Psychometer was launched in the last week as a way to call attention to the fact that House GOP members sometimes lose their grip, in a way that allowed for audience participation, and was fun in general.  But maybe, now, it will serve as one of thousands of canaries in a coal mine.  (If it continues at all — that discussion can also happen, and perhaps should.)

Everybody is swearing-off hyperbolic, emotionally-loaded language now.  They’re saying that they’re going to be more civil, to “disagree without being disagreeable.”  But you watch how long that lasts.  And, in its way, the Psychometer will watch too, if in fact it remains a going concern.

Will, for example, Ted Poe (Tex.) take it down a notch?  If you don’t know him yet, he’s entering his fourth term, and was a judge from the Gulf Coast north and east of Houston.  He was one of those judges who handed out Scarlet Letter sentences — sandwich boards saying “I’m a thief” and such.  Also, he has this adorable habit of closing every speech he gives by saying: “…and that’s just the way it is.” Perhaps it is an homage to Jim “BEAM ME UP!” Traficant. (Or, perhaps, he’s just a fool.)

Anyway: he had several rants this week — a couple about border security, and one on the plight of a guy who flew the American flag but got hammered by a homeowner’s association. (To be fair: homeowner’s associations are a bunch of suburban busybodies who are obsessed with perfection. Screw ’em.)  But, those comments didn’t make the cut in my eyes.  What did get nominated?  This:

T Poe calls HCR “totalitarian” act of “oppression,” placing “chains on the American people.” CR 1/6, H50

Now that’s some Grade A Crazy.  Slavery and dictatorship in the same breath, almost.  So the question is this: does this sort of statement get made after what happened yesterday?  If so, how soon from now, and to what level?

That discussion continues post-jump, together with Mike Pence giving himself a stump-speech talking point at the expense of ladybits, and Steve King, twice, on health care, and a possible expansion of the criteria beyond House GOPers to cover clueless press hacks.

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