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I'm sure you'll join me in saying: Awwwwwwwwwwww:

We now find Snyder as one of the most unpopular Governors in the country. Only 38% of voters approve of him to 56% who disapprove. There are only 2 other sitting Governors we've polled on who have a worse net approval rating than Snyder's -18. He's dropped a net 28 points from our last poll on him, the weekend before the election, when he was at a +10 spread (47/37).

There's not much doubt that it's the right to work law and his embrace of other actions by the Republican legislature that are driving this precipitous drop in Snyder's popularity. Only 41% of voters in the state support the right to work legislation, while 51% are opposed to it. If voters got to decide the issue directly only 40% of them say they would vote to keep the law enacted, while 49% would vote to overturn it. This comes on the heels of voters overturning Snyder's signature emergency managers law last month. The simple reality is that Michigan voters like unions- 52% have a favorable opinion of them to only 33% with a negative one.

That probably explains Snyder's veto of that concealed-carry gun bill. A little too late for this piece of future political roadkill.

You mean after all that, they didn't even bother to have their new law checked against existing legislation? Ha, ha! Boy, the Kochs really should be more careful about the quality of the handmaidens they buy:

Lansing – Less than 24 hours after Governor Snyder signed his damaging “Right to Work” legislation into law, analysis shows that the flawed legislation may not even have the result the Governor claimed it would, raising serious questions about whether the Republican leadership even read the language of the bills before voting it through and signing it into law.

“It's become increasingly clear that the Governor presented the legislature with bills written by out-of-state extremists who had no understanding of Michigan's constitution or how our laws apply to Michigan workers,” said Senate Democratic Leader Gretchen Whitmer. “This is what happens when the Governor does an 11th hour about face in a lame duck session showing utter contempt for our people by cutting out all public input, scrutiny and debate. That isn't leadership, it's epic incompetence .”

Someone needs to tell ALEC to get better lawyers!

Reports today show that HB 4003, which the Governor said would provide “Right to Work” type policies for public employees in Michigan, could not be implemented as intended as the Michigan Constitution gives clear authority to the Civil Service Commission over conditions of employment for the state's workforce. Experts have suggested today only a vote of the Civil Service Commission could enact Right to Work policies for state workers.

“The public was not given an opportunity to read these bills, legislators were not given an opportunity to read these bills, and we now know that the Governor himself either didn't read or didn't understand these bills himself,” said Senator Bert Johnson (D – Detroit). “This process has been a complete affront to democracy from the start and was nothing more than a political gift to the Koch Brothers and ALEC who bought and paid for this legislation.”

A series of questions have been raised in recent days over the legality of the “Right to Work” legislation as well as the process in which it passed. A lawsuit has already been filed against the Michigan House of Representatives for violating the Open Meetings Act as these bills were passed while the public was illegally locked out of the State Capitol and additional legal challenges are expected in the coming days.

I took a look at their Open Meetings Act, and it sure looks like Democrats have solid grounds to sue and overturn the new law. See, under open-meeting or "sunshine" laws, politicians aren't allowed to meet in secret to plan these little legislative coups, and since the Democrats had no idea what was coming, looks like a de facto violation to me,

This is Ed Schultz' outstanding segment last night on the insanity going on in Michigan right now. As I write this, thousands of protesters are flooding the capitol in Lansing, Michigan to protest the state legislature's cramdown passage of right-to-work laws.

Ed has some stunning statistics, but the one that should most stun is this: only SIX PERCENT of people in Michigan support the lame duck legislature addressing this issue.

After being condemned by endorsees like the Detroit Free Press for ramming through a law like this without any debate or consideration, Governor Rick Snyder should sit back and realize he has an opportunity and a decision to make.

If he signs this bill into law, he will serve the six percent who support taking undemocratic action to destroy the middle class and workers all over this country.

If he vetoes it, he will serve the 94 percent who do not want this law crammed down their throats in a lame-duck session of the Michigan legislature.

That's his choice. The people or the oligarchs. He can be a hero or a pariah. Granted, he could be a wealthy pariah, but still a pariah.

If Snyder is interested in any kind of political career beyond where he is now, he should choose to serve the 94 percent. If he isn't, then he will sign it and take his place as a Tool of Oligarchy.

His call.

For social conservatives, it is often said, life begins at conception and ends at birth. If so, nowhere is that more true than in Mississippi. After all, the Magnolia State seems poised to pass Amendment 26, the so-called "personhood" initiative which by defining a fertilized egg as a human being would ban virtually all abortions and inevitably outlaw many forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization.

But while Mississippi is focused inside the womb, there seems to be little concern about what happens to its residents outside of it. As the dismal rankings in out-of-wedlock births, poverty, family income, education, health care and almost every other indicator of social dysfunction show, personhood is a painful struggle for the actual persons of Mississippi.

With some of the most draconian abortion restrictions in the nation, Mississippi is now home to only one clinic providing the procedure. But as it turns out, Mississippi is also home to the most depressing statistics for out-of wedlock births in the entire nation. As the numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau show, Mississippi has the highest percentage of total births to teen mothers (17.1 percent, compared to the national average of 10.5 percent) and unmarried women overall (53.7 percent, compared to 39.7 percent nationally).

Mississippi may not be a Hobbesian dystopia where life is nasty, brutish and short. But as a quick glance at the poverty and income data show, life there isn't easy. The Census Bureau's 2011 Statistical Abstract (which is based on 2008 data), shows poverty and median household income is worst where GOP's laissez-faire crowd finds its strongest support. Financially speaking at least, life is no heaven on earth in America's most religious state.

Of course, Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the Union and has been for some time. According to the 2011 data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, Mississippi ranks first in the number of people living below the poverty line. Unsurprisingly, its 50th ranking median household income of $37,790 is the lowest in America, and over $14,000 below the national figure. Per capita income is similarly dismal. It's with good reason that in 2007, Mississippi ranked fourth in per capital federal aid.

That need for federal funding is especially acute when it comes to one of the Magnolia State's greatest failures: education.

The education of its children provides just one of many heart-breaking stories of failure for the people of Mississippi. At $7,890 per student per year, Mississippi ranks 45th in school funding. (And even that meager figure is only made possible by substantial funding from the federal government.) According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests administered by the U.S. Department Education, only 22% of Magnolia State fourth graders read at or above grade level. By eighth grade, the figure falls to 19%. (Only the District of Columbia does worse.) It's no surprise that Mississippi has the lowest mean score on the ACT college admissions test taken by 96% of the state's high school graduates. And as it turns out, only 63% of its children even graduate, less than the national average of 69% (and much lower than the 81% in, for example, that target of right-wing retrograde reform, Wisconsin.)

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Frank Luntz really is great at conning the American public with words. He's the king of conservative catch phrases which are most excellent when you try to fool swaths of people with false narratives.You've probably heard the term "right to work" state. To the ordinary person it might sound like a participating state is guarantying their constituents cushy jobs with pensions, health care benefits, free barbecue and two weeks of vacation time to start. They also might think it's the 28th amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Anyway, all the braggadocio you hear on Fox and Fox Business about how totally awesome it is if you reside in a "right to work" state because you'll be gainfully employed and then those nasty unions can't destroy your lives and corrupt your children's morals. So how's that working out for them now?

thereisnospoon: Right To Work

One of the favored conservative talking points during this prolonged recession (and yes, it is one long continuous downturn for most Americans, regardless of how GDP-obsessed economists cook the growth numbers) has been that unemployment in mostly Southern, so-called "right to work" states has been stronger, while unemployment in more progressive states has been higher. These talking points, of course, have totally ignored the myriad factors involved in creating those statistics, including that most of those jobs tend to be near minimum wage; that low real estate prices, not business-friendly and jobs-friendly policies, are often driving growth in those areas; that many of the gains in these states are due to energy-related booms rather than core economic successes; and that the comparative lack of social safety nets in many of those states often makes life more difficult even for those who have been lucky enough duckies to get one of those low-wage jobs.

But even with those advantages, it looks like the "economic miracle" in the right-to-work states won't be a conservative talking point much longer:

When the unemployment rate rose in most states last month, it underscored the extent to which the deep recession, the anemic recovery and the lingering crisis of joblessness are beginning to reshape the nation’s economic map.

The once-booming South, which entered the recession with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, is now struggling with some of the highest rates, recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show.

Several Southern states — including South Carolina, whose 11.1 percent unemployment rate is the fourth highest in the nation — have higher unemployment rates than they did a year ago. Unemployment in the South is now higher than it is in the Northeast and the Midwest, which include Rust Belt states that were struggling even before the recession.

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Like Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and many other states, Alabama has a big, new Republican legislative majority working hard to undermine unions. The House passed HB 64 yesterday, which would amend Alabama's 1901 constitution to require secret balloting for workplace unionization. Democrats objected to the bill, challenging sponsor Kurt Wallace on the relevance and necessity of such an amendment. Wallace had few answers to offer, but to his credit he never wavered from insisting the bill was "common sense." Part Two and notes below the fold:

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So now another lying right-wing hack in the James O'Keefe/Andrew Brietbart mold has hit the market. Just what we need. A man with no purpose in life but to feed conservatives their daily dose of Librul Hate. It's a very profitable endeavor.

You've probably seen this schmuck already, but people like the very unfunny Steve Crowder do this type of carnival-barker act with working-class people as his targets just for attention, and now for more Twitter followers. And it's coming out that it appears to be a set-up. Of course there was no mention of police brutality against protesters like Rep. Mark Schauer.

Crowder tells Fox & Friends that he nicely asked very angry protesters why they are protesting since the MI Right to Work bill is teh awesome.

“Didn’t that remind you of all those violent Tea Party protests?” Steve Doocy asked him sarcastically. Crowder replied that it was more reminiscent of the The Dark Knight Rises — even offering up his best Bane impression.

Crowder: I've never seen an angry mob filled with vitriolic hatred..... I want to be clear. I did go in and provoke these people, I tried to provoke rational thought I tried to provoke civil debate....they stop destroying private property..

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