From Eric Dondero:

The Wisconsin State Supreme Court is 4 to 3 conservative to liberal. An election was held on Thursday to replace the outgoing Supreme Court Justice, a conservative. If the conservatives would have lost the election, it is highly likely that Governor Scott Walker's government union-busting reforms would have been overturned.

But despite what looked like a nail-biter late Tuesday night, the Right got the news it was hoping for.

From the NY Times, Politics, April 8:

Mr. Prosser — who had been about 200 ballots behind JoAnne Kloppenburg in a contest that seemed bound for a recount — had a net gain of more than 7,500 votes, and now has an overall lead of about that size. Although the election may still go to a recount, it is now highly unlikely that the outcome will change, unless another county discovers a discrepancy of the same magnitude, but in Ms. Kloppenburg’s favor

A vote counting error of more than 14,000 votes, by Kathy Nickolaus, the county clerk in Waukesha County, led to an early night call for liberal Kloppenburg.

Note - Prosser was enthusiastically endorsed by Sarah Palin.

From Eric Dondero:

Lo and behold. It took a Republican to quote one of the greatest monster metal bands of all-time on the House floor:

I was sitting here today and I realized why it was I wanted to listen to the melodius strains of Page, Plant, Jones and Jon Bonham. It's because for the Democrat Party the Song remains the Same.

Cong. McCotter plays lead guitar in an amateur rock band in his home State of Michigan.

H/t Weasel Z...

From Eric Dondero:

Now this is very cool. One of the very top Right websites, Ace of Spades with 50,000+ visitors a day, linked to Libertarian Republican yesterday. I believe this was our first link ever from Ace. We've been linked before from NR, InstaPundit, and HotAir.com.

The link came for our article on the American media covering up the Muslim connection to the Brazilian shooting of 29 schoolchildren.

As Ace dryly notes, even the Muslim media overseas is talking of a strong Islamic connection to the shooting.

Al Aribiya, oddly enough, notes that the New York Times is pinning this on... Jehovah's Witnesses. Well, not really, but the New York Times buries his Islamism very much down-page and makes a muddle of his actual religious beliefs.

The link to LR was as follows:

While the New York Times expresses bafflement, Brazilian media is actually doing some reporting.

In an interview with Radio Band News, Rosilane Menezes, sister of gunman Wellington Menezes de Oliveira, said he was strange, reserved and without friends.

"He was so focused on things related to Islam and had let his beard grow long. He was weird, he was on the internet all day reading related issues and it was very strange, very secretive," she said.

Then a couple paragraphs later, Ace quotes LR again:

As that last blog notes:

The 36-paragraph AP article, makes no mention of his Islamic affiliation or beliefs.

36 paragraphs. And not any room to tell Americans (or anyone who doesn't speak Portuguese) what the Brazilians already know.

I speak fluent Portuguese (Spanish, Italian & French), and was able to quickly translate texts from Brazilian media reports.

"Racist, Bullshit, Birther Shit!"

From Eric Dondero:

Seems anyone who supports having native-born Americans elected to the Presidency of the United States of America is now considered "a racist."

Actor, John Legend calls Trump a "racist." From HollywoodGossip.com:

"He needs to stop saying that racist bulls**t birther s**t," Legend told N.Y. Magazine. "Quote me please. He should be ashamed of himself. It's awful, really."

And this from Hollyscoop on Trump asking to see Obama's birth certificate:

Bill Cosby appeared on the Today show, saying "Oh please, with Donald Trump. The only thing he's running is his mouth."

See related LR article, "Cosby takes a nasty bigoted swipe at White People" Jan. 2009.

"You look like a racist, stupid, idiot. C'mon. Knock it off, please!"

From Eric Dondero:

And so it begins... The 'R' word has been trumpeted by a prominent columnist for the SF Gate. Zennie62 asserts:

One thing's quite clear this week: America has not rid itself of racists... on the matter of Donald Trump's "Obama Birther" blathering, this issue was killed years ago.

To be frank, that the vast majority of people issuing these wild claims about Obama's birth place are white should give pause to anyone with half a brain.

Donald Trump's image is now toast, and will become darker toast with every week he continues to push it. If he does this, he looks like a racist. Period. End of story.

Zennie62 then suggests an Al Sharpton type boycott of Trump (and presumably his NBC television show The Apprentice.)

If Trump keeps pushing this, advertisers will start to shun any television show he currently produces. Indeed, his actions could trigger a backlash where companies are encouraged to avoid him.

BREAKING NEWS...

From Eric Dondero:

11 School Children were killed and at least another 18 injured in a western Rio de Janeiro school yesterday. According to various reports he came into the classroom shouting "I'm going to kill you all." He then lined many of the victims, mostly all girls, up against the wall, shooting them in their heads execution style.

From the AP:

A gunman roamed the halls of an elementary school in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday and killed 11 children, lining them up against a wall and shooting them in the head at point-blank range as he shouted, "I'm going to kill you all!"

It was the worst school shooting in Brazil — and would have been deadlier if the gunman had not been shot in the legs by a police officer, who said the man then fell down some stairs and shot himself in the head.

Images taken with a cell phone posted on YouTube showed students fleeing wildly, screaming for help, many with white and blue school shirts soaked in blood.

The gunman a 23 year-old former student of the school Wellington Oliveira. A police officer responding to the shootings, shot him in the legs. The gunman then killed himself on stairs outside of the classroom.

The Brazilian media is reporting that the gunman was a Muslim, and that his prime motivation for the shootings was his Islamic beliefs.

Translated from the Brazil Journal "Sister says shooter was strange, and had no friends":

In an interview with Radio Band News, Rosilane Menezes, sister of gunman Wellington Menezes de Oliveira, said he was strange, reserved and without friends.

"He was so focused on things related to Islam and had let his beard grow long. He was weird, he was on the internet all day reading related issues and it was very strange, very secretive," she said.

Wellington left a letter with disconnected sentences, but with fundamentalist tendencies, said Lt. Col. Djalma Beltrame, commander of Battalion 14.

"He was on the internet using Muslim sites... It's crazy. Only a crazy person could do this to children, said the commander..."

The 36-paragraph AP article, makes no mention of his Islamic affiliation or beliefs. In fact, no American MSM are reporting on the Islamic link. CNN report, even suggests that he may have gone on the rampage over an infection with AIDS. Only a handful of right news blogs, are reporting the full story.

UPDATE!! Ace of Spades, one of the very top rightwing blogs with 50,000+ a day visitors, has linked to this story, and our Portuguese translation above.

You Free Market extremists have no "social conscience"

From the Opinion section of the Grand Junction Free Press, "My thanks to the right side of the aisle," E. Michael Ervin, Grand Junction, April 8:

The long-awaited Republican/Tea-Party/Libertarian federal budget proposal has now been made public; and as a progressive Democrat, I can only thank the right-wing for providing plenty of campaign fodder for the 2012 election season. The conservatives have just handed our side the White House, a filibuster-proof Senate majority and the possible regaining of control of the House of Representatives.

Created almost single-handedly by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Chair of the House Budget Committee... and trumpeted as the “Path to Prosperity” by true believers on the radical right, a top-line analysis reveals the proposal to be nothing more than toxic financial nonsense (including the destruction of Medicare and ending federal contributions to Medicaid)... and is a direct attack on the very existence of our government.

Again, thank you Republicans, Tea-Party types, and “no-government is the best government” Libertarians. 2012 is going to be a great year for those of us who believe that having a political and social conscience is a good and necessary thing.

QUOTE OF THE DAY!

We'd be living under a Planet of the Apes before the dream came true

This zinger from our old friend John Hawkins, editor-in-chief at Rightwingnews.com. John was commenting on the column by Bryan Caplan burning up the blogosphere, "Libertarians can breed ourselves to Success," (via Forbes).

From Hawkins:

Even if we accept the idea that Libertarians will marry each other and produce kids who also tend to be Libertarians, which is an enormous “if,” Libertarians are so all over the map about everything that we’d probably have an ape world run by gorillas who keep humans as slaves before there would be enough Libertarians to make up a political majority.

Editor's comment - Make sure to thank a Christian Libertarian (especially Mormons), next time you see them. They tend to breed more than the secularists and atheists among our ranks.

NANNY-STATE WATCH!

From Eric Dondero:

This from Eater.com, "Your Tax Dollars at Work" April 5:

Today, NYC Councilman Leroy Comrie is expected to introduce a piece of legislation that will effectively ban happy meals at fast food restaurants in the area. Under the proposal, kids can only get toys with their junk food if the meal has less than 500 calories, and 600 milligrams of sodium. A similar piece of legislation was passed in San Francisco last fall. [Chicago Breaking Business]

The Councilman calls McDonald's tactics "predatory" (via Townhall):

"The City Council can empower parents by making it harder for the fast food industry to target children with predatory marketing techniques", Councilman Leroy Comrie, of Queens claims.

And another Council member chimed in:

"The child wants the toys. Not that fries and nuggets", says Councilwoman Inez Dickens, of Harlem.

Dickens has been under fire lately for having a Charlie Rangel-type problem of owing back taxes on her Harlem properties.

From the NY Daily News March 21:

City Councilwoman Inez Dickens co-owns four Harlem apartment buildings that have for months owed the city more than $100,000 in property taxes.

Dickens' properties have also been the subject of numerous building and housing-code complaints in the last few years, a Daily News investigation found.

Note - the NYC Council has 51 members; 46 are Democrats, 4 Republicans, and 1 (Republican Caucus) Libertarian Party member Dan Halloran of Queens.

From Eric Dondero:

The Associated Press editorializes this morning, in their "Fact Check" story "Are federal workers overpaid."

They quote Republican Congressman Dennis Ross of Florida:

"Our taxpayers can no longer be asked to foot the bill for these federal employees while watching their own salaries remain flat and their benefits erode," said Ross, chairman of the House Oversight subcommittee on the federal work force.

Not ultimately, the "Fact Checkers" at AP side with the Democrats, that fed workers are actually underpaid in comparison to the private sector.

Are federal employees overpaid?

Republican leaders in Congress think so, and they are calling for an overhaul of the entire federal pay system to help slash government spending.

Democrats and other defenders of the government work force say federal workers are actually underpaid compared with their private counterparts.

A closer look at the data shows that both sides have a point but that supporters of federal workers are a bit closer to reality.

What example do they use on the top of story to make their case?

Lawyers.

Among lawyers, for example, the average pay in the federal government was about $127,500 a year in 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average lawyer in the private sector earned $137,540. And the starting salary at large law firms in Washington, D.C. -- where most government lawyers work -- is $160,000, and can grow to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, according to the National Association for Law Placement.

Editor's comment - Of course, the AP never considered affirmative action hiring by the Feds of far less qualified employees as a potential factor.

Photo h/t lawyersonretainer.com

"He's spent $2 million dollars on lawyers. He can't produce a birth certificate"

From Eric Dondero:

Trump is sounding even more like a candidate for the presidency.

Among the Tea Party folks I'm Number One. [New polls] Frankly it does encourage me a lot. And from what I understand NewsMax is coming out with a poll which frankly is through the roof. It's a 56% or 58% for me, and 16% for the next person. And the CNN shows me I'm the only one who can beat Obama.

Then at the 7:40 mark:

His own family doesn't know the hospital he was born in in Hawaii. He's got a grandmother who says he was born in Kenya and she was there. Ya know they always talk about the newspaper ads... they were put in by the grandparents. The grandparents obviously wanted him to be a US citizen. Being a US citizen has big advantages, hospitalization, welfare...

I've actually developed a great deal of respect for the so-called Birthers... I've had reporters screaming because they have no answer to some of my questions. For instance why doesn't he give the birth certificate.

He can't produce a birth certificate.

Suggested by a regular LR reader.

From Right Guy:

Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips will discuss Wisconsin Politics and John Boehner's role in the current budget crisis.

Host Andre Traversa
Co-Host jim Lagnese

Showtime 8:00PM CST

Call in at 949-203-4821 or stream here.

Please register for the convention here: http://lpin.org/events/2011-lpin-state-convention/ Friday evening, April 29th 5:00 – 9:00 PM Reception - Join Libertarians from every corner of Indiana on the indoor patio for cocktails and casual fun! Catch up with old friends, then enjoy the music in Rother’s Pub. Free food and drink provided courtesy of your hosts the La Porte, [...]

I was born in Henry County, and raised on a small farm near Millville. I was the second of eight children. At an early age it was expected and accepted that the children would help with the farm chores. We drank milk from our own cows, ate eggs from our own chickens and bacon from [...]

Greetings and Salutations! Just a reminder. Please consider running for one of the local offices listed below, or if you know someone that would make a good limited government candidate, have them get in touch with me. The Libertarian Party of Wayne County will hold its 2011 Convention on Saturday, April 16th, at 6:30 P.M., [...]

I’ve done a fair share of whittling over the years, even though I was never very good at it. For those of you who weren’t raised in the country, whittling (I believe the correct spelling and pronunciation is whittlin’), involves taking out your pocket knife, picking up a stick or a piece of wood, and [...]