Immediately following Barack Obama's inauguration, I was informed by serious, patriotic conservatives that the just-elected president had taken the country away from them. My reaction then was....wow, call me uninformed and crazy....but wasn't that, like, pretty fast?

Judge Roberts had barely finished stumble-f*cking his way through the administering of Obama's oath of office before Tea Party protests began forming wherever a Fox camera could be set up.

Progressives have rightly pointed out that what Tea Party-elected state governors are doing is exploiting the recent economic downturn for political gain. Union workers, public or private, tend to support and actively work for Democratic candidates and progressive initiatives. Therefore, denying or dismantling union workers collective bargaining rights will result in a weaker opponent for Republicans moving forward.

Historically, Republicans have been anti-labor, anti-union. Today, conservative voters still characterize unions and union workers as communists, as enemies of the state, even though union membership has dwindled to less than 12% of all American workers today, down from a high in the 30% range some 50 years ago.

Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker got punked yesterday. It's great stuff. If you are not familiar with the story, go here and listen to the twenty minute phone call Walker thought he was having with billionaire David Koch. I was going to write an entire post on the hilarity which ensued.....including Walker's posture as a servant of the Koch billionaire Bros......but it would have been, you know, overkill at this point. Walker has already lost the public perception battle.

Doubts about that? Let Fox's Shep Smith clear it all up for ya'....

Transcipt of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's "fireside chat" last night is found here.

A few excerpts....

Conservatives from both parties have surveyed the wreckage of the last 30 years and have concluded that the only way to clean up the mess left over from three decades of laissez-faire economics....is more laissez-faire economics.

As a refresher...

There's a battle going on inside Ohio. The crux of the dispute is over the same union-busting proposals being fought over in Wisconsin under the leadership of Neo-Confederacy Governor-General, Scott Walker.

In Ohio, Republican Sen. Shannon Jones (Springboro) has authored the anti-union bill tagged SB-5.

First two minutes....if you can stand it....

As with all events, there are now two wildly different narratives out there explaining what's happening in Wisconsin.

In one of these two narratives, Governer Walker's Wisconsin is buried under mountains of debt. The debt is so bad, goes this narrative, that dealing with it is a dire emergency which the new Tea Party governor has rightly, and immediately, taken on by unilaterally eliminating collective bargaining rights for unionized state employees.

Obama yesterday....

Yesterday it was all about Tea Party elected officials' war on unionized workers as declared by the governors of Wisconsin and Ohio. Today, it's Missouri Baggers waging war on.....children.

Since the midterms, Republicans and Republican voters have been taunting Democrats and progressives over their landslide win in the House and gains in the Senate, state legislatures, and governorships.

That's fine and all.....politics ain't beanbag.....winners deserve to celebrate while losers need to contemplate.

Digby blogged yesterday about President Obama's six principles for reforming Social Security which were included in the president's budget proposal.

Fox analyst and WaPo columnist, Charles Sour-Krauthammer....

A 30 year dictatorial regime has ended in Egypt....and now the hard slog to form a democracy will begin. A good thing, to be sure.

One middle eastern country begins it's democracy while the world's most powerful nation seems to be losing it's democracy.

Is it possible that the United States population is moving ever-so-closer to actually rejecting America?

I realize that sounds like an odd question. I mean, how could America be anti-America? Right?

Our "shared sacrifice" situation....

Home ownership...

Immediately after the Tucson Tragedy, Arizona Republican District 20 Chairman Anthony Miller resigned his post. Why did he resign?

Current Republican governor of Florida, Rick Scott, used to be the CEO of health care provider, Columbia/HCA. While he was CEO, Scott's company was raided in 1997 by the FBI....

If you missed the interview of President Obama by Fox's Bill O'Reilly last night, here it is....it's a little over 14 minutes long...

I suppose it's all because a Democratically controlled federal government dared to pass legislation to confront our national health care cost crisis. It could, of course, just be another attempt to delegitimize a Democratic president.

Whatever the reason, our national discourse, such as it is, has been filled with numerous claims about the Constitution, mostly asserting that the federal government was assigned very limited powers in the writing of the Constitution.

Former president, and still unindicted war criminal, George W. Bush, had some interesting things to say over a week ago when he spoke at Southern Methodist University, home to W's hagiographic library.....

Unguarded, unregulated capitalism is one of the most destructive combinations on earth. If kept in check, if tightly regulated....capitalism, with it's built-in motivation of greed, works the best for a national or even, world, economy.

I am extremely proud to call myself a liberal, and yet, I embrace capitalism....if tightly, closely regulated....as my economic theory of choice. Regulated capitalism works.

U.S District Judge Roger Vinson.

Florida federal Judge Vinson's ruling to appease Tea Partiers hopeful of dismantling federal government power.....is found here. The ruling is so radically biased that it even takes the time to please TP'ers by including a silly and inapplicable throwaway comparison to.....wait for it.....the original Boston Tea Partiers.

Unfortunately for Pennsylvanians, Republican Pat Toomey was swept into Arlen Specter's old Senate seat on the inertia of the angry, angry Tea Party voters last November. I felt sorry for Keystone Staters when Toomey won that election....they deserve better.