From the Guardian:

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi will fight attempts to unseat him until “the last man standing,” one of his sons said on Sunday after days of protests reached the capital.

At least 233 people have now been killed since unrest started last week, Human Rights Watch said, making Libya’s uprising one of the bloodiest to have erupted in the Arab world over the past two months…

From what I can gather from the news, a civil war is shaping up in Libya, with the eastern part of the country effectively out of the control of Gaddafi’s regime. Violence is breaking out everywhere and Gaddafi’s hired goons seem to be using extreme force where ever they can.

I have to say, nothing would give me more satisfaction than to see Gaddafi’s regime go down – and him face the justice of his long-oppressed people. For most of my life, I’ve seen the Gaddafi regime just go from bad to worse. Justice is some times slow, but it always arrives in the by and by…and this may be Gaddafi’s last stand.

UPDATE: Good news! Our State Department is “gravely concerned“. Only 6 more steps before they get to “worried”!

UPDATE II: A liberal friend of mine got a bright idea – contact the State Department and urge them to work against Gaddafi getting asylum anywhere…probably a quixotic effort, but some times you just have to lay down the marker no matter what comes of it.

From the AP:

Jittery Chinese authorities wary of any domestic dissent staged a concerted show of force Sunday to squelch a mysterious online call for a “Jasmine Revolution” apparently modeled after pro-democracy demonstrations sweeping the Middle East.

Authorities detained activists, increased the number of police on the streets, disconnected some mobile phone text messaging services and censored Internet postings about the call to stage protests at 2 p.m. in Beijing, Shanghai and 11 other major cities…

Rebellion won’t, at the moment, get anywhere in China – the Chinese government is still too strong and has too much experience in oppressing the Chinese people. But as China gets further and further in to acute economic crisis – and rising food prices – tensions will rise and all bets will be off. Whether this will take days or months to develope remains to be seen…but China is about to enter a period of crisis.

Fundamentally, an unfree nation cannot have long-term economic success. It just isn’t possible to free up an economy while leaving a people unfree. China has had what looks like success in this effort, but all that has really happened in a select group of people have been allowed to rake off enormous profits on the backs of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people. The Chinese economy isn’t so much free as it is gangsterized…everyone who pays protection to the Chinese government gets to rip off everyone else (including us in America, as it turns out). The inconsistencies of the Chinese economy are now starting to rip it to shreds and only genuine economic and political liberty can fix what is going wrong…but that would mean the end of China’s current ruling class.

And they didn’t do anything about it – from Oregon Live:

Three days before the Nov. 2 election, U.S. Rep. David Wu’s most loyal and senior staffers were so alarmed by his erratic behavior that they demanded he enter a hospital for psychiatric treatment.

Their concern had been spiking for weeks in tandem with the Oregon Democrat’s increasingly unpredictable performance on the campaign trail and in private. He was loud and sometimes angry, some of them told The Oregonian. He said kooky things to staff and — more worrisome with a tough election fast approaching — around potential voters and donors…

It is clear when you read the rest of the article that Mr. Wu is suffering some rather severe mental problems – he needs, and needed, counseling of varied types…probably psychiatric, certainly spiritual. But here’s the thing – as Mr. Wu went ever more clearly ’round the bend, his Democrat staffers never thought to inform the voters that the man they were preparing to re-elect was not fit to hold the job of Representative! In other words, winning the race and keeping power for Democrats was rated more important than the people of Mr. Wu’s district or the health of Mr. Wu!

Nothing has better illustrated the Democrats’ lust for power and willingness to set aside everything – even basic, human decency – in the pursuit of it. From what I can tell, none of this leaked to the press pre-election – not so much as a whisper, and towards the end when Mr. Wu became very erratic, they just took him off the campaign trail and apparently crossed their fingers and hoped the Democrat advantage in the district would carry them through (which, in the end, it did). This is disgusting on a lot of levels.

But it is also what we have to deal with: people who are absolutely power mad. People who will do just about anything to stay at the public trough. Keep that in mind as we head in to 2012.

Ann Althouse got this:

The doctor is admitting that he’s giving out medical excuse notes regardless of whether a person is actually sick – he should lose his license, any teacher or other government employee who used the notes should be fired. We can’t have this sort of thing – it is never, ever justified to lie in the course of official business.

UPDATE: Herman Cain at the TEA Party rally

I like this guy; he’s really good.

From Zero Hedge:

A recently released report by the World Bank’s Food Price Watch confirms that rising agricultural products are sharply pushing up global food prices in lower-income nations (see “World food price uncertainty presents social risks,” in AsiaNews, 4 February 2011), especially among the poorest (where the poverty line is defined as US$ 1.25 per person per day).

The WB’s global food price (GFP) index increased by 15 per cent between October 2010 and January 2011, 29 per cent above its level a year earlier. The global prices of wheat, maize, sugar and edible oils especially saw sharp increases. According to the WB estimates, an additional 44 million people fell into poverty…

This is caused by governments around the world printing money like mad – not just in the United States, but almost everywhere. All of this money printing was done to sustain a global financial system which collapsed in to complete bankruptcy in 2008…and which is just as bankrupt now as it was then. The financial system will stay afloat just as long as the free money keeps flowing form central banks – but as long as that money keeps flowing, the poorest of the poor will suffer.

And, in the end, it won’t work. Eventually, all the attempts to sustain the financial system will fail because the problem is just too much debt – the global credit card isn’t maxed out, it is massively over limit. The debt cannot be repaid – not in any time frame which makes it reasonable. The only way to get out of the mess is by default – and the resultant economic depression which will allow all assets to sink in price to their actual value. This will be painful no matter how we do it – but it will be more painful the longer we put it off by printing money…and those who are in the worst condition (ie, some poor man trying to live on $1.25 a day – you just go ahead and try that!) will feel it first, deepest and for the longest time.

This is the end of a fiat-money based, usury-driven economic model – a model which wise people warned about more than a century ago. This is not some deep, dark secret – anyone with a bit of knowledge understands – and has always understood – that you can’t borrow your way to wealth; that money printed up by central banks without any hard backing is destructive; that only hard work, savings and careful investment can build long term, sustained growth.

The latest from Bahrain, where it looks like the government blinked after an attempt at bloody suppression – from Al Arabiya:

Anti-government protesters in Bahrain swarmed back into a symbolic square on Saturday, putting riot police to flight in a striking victory for their cause and confidently setting up camp for a protracted stay.

Crowds had approached Pearl Square in Manama from different directions, creating a standoff with riot police who had moved in earlier to replace troops withdrawn on royal orders. Suddenly police raced to their buses, which drove away mounting kerbs in their haste to escape…

Meanwhile, there is a report that Libyan security forces have killed many in Benghazi; more worries about continued instability in Egypt; demonstrations in Syria and Djibouti; anti-government protesters shot in Yemen…the lid has definitely been torn off in the Moslem world. What will come next?

Impossible to say, but I doubt it will be a lot of good things. Fortunately our crackerjack State Department is on the job…oh, wait…

UPDATE: What do the Moslem Brotherhood types want? Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains:

‘Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” So goes the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood.

What’s extraordinary about this maxim is the succinct way that it captures the political dimension of Islam. Even more extraordinary is the capacity of these five pillars of faith to attract true believers. But the most remarkable thing of all is the way the Brotherhood’s motto seduces Western liberals…

From Rasmussen:

…The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 27% of American Adults believe Reagan should be chosen if there were another federal holiday celebrating a past president. Twenty percent (20%) pick Kennedy. Fourteen percent (14%) say Thomas Jefferson should be recognized with a holiday, while nine percent (9%) think Franklin D. Roosevelt deserves it most…

Just from the sheer fun of making MSMers and liberal school boards work out ways of honoring President Reagan once a year, this would be worth it. And we should continue this effort. We should put Reagan on the $20 bill, so that every liberal out there will have to see his smiling face every day. Put a “Reagan Blvd” somewhere in DC – preferably which ever street has the most liberal lobbying groups located on it. And put statutes up to him on whatever federal land we can find in San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Monica, Martha’s Vineyard, etc. We should also see about carving his likeness on Mt. Rushmore (I believe there is room). In short, shove Ronnie in their faces until they get so mad they finally carry out their 2004 threat to move to Canada…

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=politics/2011/02/18/bts.wi.gov.walker.protests.wisn

Meanwhile, the union thugs running amok in the Capitol forced the closure of the State House due to security concerns…imagine if it were a TEA Party group which had done that? The MSM and the left would go ballistic. But, of course, the TEA Party wouldn’t do that – that is undemocratic. It is the left – the very anti-democratic left – which is causing the problem here. They don’t want votes – they want intimidation, sabotage and back room deals…

Keep it up, liberals…you’re digging your own political grave.

UPDATE: And the TEA Party shows up to back Walker.

UPDATE II: NRO’s The Corner has an overhead shot of the pro-Walker (well, really, pro-People) crowd in Wisconsin…pretty good size…you see, we had to wait for Saturday for our side to show up because we can’t call out sick on the taxpayer’s dime…

UPDATE III: A bit more fraud from the public sector unions in Wisconsin…passing out fake doctor’s notes for the “sick” teachers. Arrests really should be made. This has got to be a crime under some Wisconsin statute.

You know, this is a bit brazen – if you go to the link, you can see the actual videos of this going on…completely fake notes put out without an examination of the “patient”…and which they’ll fill out covering you not just for the past couple days, but for the next week. The MSM, naturally, will not cover this…but one has to assume that this sort of criminality isn’t new, that this sort of thing has been done before. Just how many laws do our liberals break in their political actions? From illegal campaign funding to fake doctor notes – is there any law they haven’t violated?

I think everyone knows that I’m not in favor of a truce of any sort with the left, but I’m also not about to say that my word is law – not even on this little blog. Honest people can reasonably disagree with me – and Jay Cost puts together an able argument in favor of the truce. Reviewing the 1896 election, Cost points out that the GOP was able to stop an insurgent Democrat party under William Jennings Bryan on the strength of William McKinley’s moderation, this allowing him to appeal to a section of Democrat voters turned off by Bryan’s populism.

This is a good analysis, as far as it goes – but in 1896, both Bryan and McKinley were not the President. No one knew what either man would do once in office; as is true of most men who aspire to be President, they were a bit of a blank slate for the larger electorate. In 2012, Obama will have been President for more than 3 years, and people will know full well what another 4 years of Obamunism will bring. Given this, the analogy with 1896 as a watershed election doesn’t hold true, in my view.

The election of 2012 will not be about the Republican, it will be about Obama. Sure enough, Obama and his MSM allies will try to make it about the Republican because they won’t be able to defend Obama’s tenure – even more so if, as I expect, the economy takes a further turn for the worse as 2012 approaches. It doesn’t, in a large sense, matter whom we nominate – anyone we nominate will be accused of being a racist, homophobic, anti-immigrant tool of corporate interests and the bitter clingers of Bibles and guns. Anyone we nominate will be portrayed as stupid, ignorant and not up to the job of President. Obama will receive endlessly glowing praise in story after story in print, on TV and over the internet. A billion dollars will be spent by Obama, directly, and probably at least half a billion more by groups coordinating illegally with the Obama campaign. It will be the nastiest, hardest fought political campaign at least since the Civil War, and probably of all time.

In such a fight, appeals to a moderate middle will be drowned out. There will be no moderate middle in 2012 – there will be an attempt on the part of the Democrats to so badly smear the Republican that people will hold their nose and vote Democrat (and/or just stay home out of disgust for the process) while the Republican will attempt to keep reminding everyone that a vote for Obama means four more years of Obama. Who will win depends on who is most successful in getting the battling message out – and trying to tack to the center and appear to be all things to all men will mean less time spent reminding people that Obama is trying to be re-elected.

While there is no upside for the GOP in inflaming passions further than current (in contrast to the Democrats who can only win by generating ever more hatred and anger), there is also no upside for trying to pry a gay voter away from Obama by muting opposition to gay marriage, or a pro-abortionist by backing off support for life. And, of course, if any GOPer does try that and manages to get 1 such voter to switch, 5 pro-family/pro-life people will sit it out, or vote for a Third Party. The GOP needs enthusiasm in the ranks to go toe to toe with Obama and his minions…enthusiasm which can only come from a robust social and fiscal conservative agenda…certainly with fiscal issues predominating, but no retreat from social issues.

At least, that is how I see it.

Quite a lot:

For the first time in history, the average annual compensation for a teacher in the Milwaukee Public School system will exceed $100,000.

That staggering figure was revealed last night at a meeting of the MPS School Board.

The average salary for an MPS teacher is $56,500. When fringe benefits are factored in, the annual compensation will be $100,005 in 2011…

And that was posted on March 3, 2010 – and thus wasn’t generated just for this current controversy.

Its not like they are starving out there – and its not like Governor Walker is cutting their pay and benefits to the bone. Just a little adjustment, given that the State is broke…and they go on a rampage.