UNDERWHELMING: A blog report on the union rally at the Ohio State Capitol.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on portable generators.

JOHN HINDERAKER: So, why’s the left suddenly going after the Kochs hammer-and-tongs? Plus, an unanswered question for the New York Times’ Eric Lipton. And some tutoring about the importance of quotation marks for the kids at Think Progress.

CNBC: Stagflation Still Regarded as Economy’s Dirty Little Secret. It’s not that secret if you look at your paycheck, and then go grocery shopping . . . .

ANDREW BREITBART: Meet Three Anti-Koch Left Wing H8 Ralliers: Roger Fraser, Bonnie Reiss, and Don Wallace.

Related: SEIU Protester Harasses Black Gay Tea Partier. Will the hate never stop?

THE RADICAL SUITS and their suckers. “Not to get too Marxist about this, but we are talking about the inevitability of a law of history. The productive forces are changing, and the social superstructure is going to have to change too. The liberal and the radical suits can help their Big Unit followers through the change or they can drive them into the ditch. It’s their choice.”

IS DAN QUAYLE running the White House Libya strategy?

UPDATE: Reader McKee Stewart writes: “If Dan Quayle was running the White House’s Libya policy, at least they would have a policy.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: I haven’t heard from Quayle, but here are some ideas from Michael Ledeen. I like ’em. Bomb the Libyan Air Force — it’ll save lives now, if Qaddafi survives he’ll be weaker, and if he doesn’t survive we’ll look good with the new guys. And if they turn out to be bad, well, at least they won’t have much of an Air Force. . . .

JULIA SEYMOUR: Networks Stand with Wisconsin Unions, Ignore $1-3 Trillion Pension Deficit for Five Days.

For roughly a week, a battle has been raging in Madison, Wis. Evening news programs on the three broadcast networks framed these as “citizen uprisings” over pay cuts and “eliminating unions’ collective bargaining powers to negotiate wages and benefits.”

Reporters also portrayed this as a national union issue, but mostly failed to point out the national problem of pension underfunding.

Actually, the battle is the result of Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s attempts to balance the state budget by asking roughly 300,000 state employees to contribute more to their pension funds and health insurance and give up the ability to negotiate more than their wages. According to CNNMoney, the state faces a $3.6 billion budget deficit.

Only 1 out of 24 network evening stories about the Wisconsin “feud” since Feb. 16, reported a critical number relating to union pensions: $1 trillion. That’s the huge deficit facing public workers’ pensions in America and the reason Walker and other state governors are facing tough choices including demanding public workers contribute more.

You want that kind of coverage, you’ve got to go to premium information sources like InstaPundit.

SORRY ABOUT ALL THE BOMBS: William Powell, the author of The Anarchist Cookbook, now regrets his work. But given the poor quality of his explosive recipes, he’s probably killed off as many terrorists as he’s helped . . . .

Note, however, the way that actual violence by 1960s radicals is largely given a pass in this story — it was “the times” — and compare that to the horror with which nonexistent, conjectural violence by Tea Partiers is treated in the press.

TAXES: Wisconsin Education Association pays back taxes. “The Wisconsin Education Association Council has voluntarily made $171,091 in payments to the Internal Revenue Service after a review of past federal tax returns, the state’s largest teachers union said Wednesday. In April, the Landmark Legal Foundation asked federal officials to investigate its claim that WEAC failed to report or pay taxes on $430,000 in contributions to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee between 2000 and 2002 in apparent violation of federal law.”

GETTING “A LITTLE BLOODY:” Video: CWA union thug strikes young female FreedomWorks activist. The activist is Tabitha Hale, whom Helen interviewed at SmartGirlPolitics a couple of years ago. And you’d think someone from the Communications Workers’ union would know better than to strike someone with a camera. But take a look at the video and you’ll see the angry, yet impotent face of today’s labor movement — right before the punch.

CHANGE: Al-Jazeera in Talks With Comcast Over U.S. Distribution.

REP. MICHAEL CAPUANO (D-MA) CALLS FOR LABOR PROTESTS TO “GET A LITTLE BLOODY,” and James Taranto comments:

It will not surprise you to learn that Capuano is another “civility” hypocrite. On Jan. 9, the day after a madman in Tucson, Ariz., got a little bloody, the Globe quoted him: “What the hell is going on? There’s always some degree of tension in politics; everybody knows the last couple of years there’s been an intentional increase in the degree of heat in political discourse. . . . If nothing else good comes out of this, I’m hoping it causes people to reconsider how they deal with things.”

Not so much, apparently. Plus this:

Capuano’s rhetoric at yesterday’s rally was not just violent but authoritarian. He urged government employees to “get a little bloody”–to commit violent acts against citizens, as if this were Libya. As we noted yesterday, public sector “collective bargaining,” in which public officials “negotiate” with the unions that helped elect them, is essentially a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers. Capuano, it seems, would like to escalate that to armed robbery.

Indeed.

ORIN KERR: The Executive Power Grab in the Decision Not to Defend DOMA. “I can understand the intense political pressure on the Obama Administration not to defend DOMA. Presumably Obama and pretty much every significant lawyer in the Obama Administration opposes DOMA, whether or not they can take that position on the record. For what it’s worth, I oppose it, too. At the same time, I worry that the decision may have serious long-term effects on the role of the executive branch and executive power.”

NEO-NEOCON: Why isn’t Obama talking about Libya? Well, he’s talking now. Does that help?

LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: “Our country is bankrupt. It’s not bankrupt in 30 years or five years. It’s bankrupt today. . . . I’m not sure whether censoring the fiscal gap is more dishonorable than fudging it. What I do know is that we can’t assume our problems away and that I expected far better of this president when I voted for him.” Well, live and learn. . . .

A BACHELOR’S DEGREE FOR $10K? Yes, We Can! “Texas Governor Rick Perry proposed it for his state schools, and it’s a perfectly plausible goal.”

JOHN SCALZI’S OLD MAN’S WAR now has a movie deal. “Paramount Pictures has bought the rights to the ‘Old Man’s War’ series and have already pinned down Wolfgang Petersen to direct and David Self to adapt.” Sweet.

WHAT WOMEN WANT: Ask Me Out On A Damn Date.

REASON TV: Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the Porker Of The Month.

OBAMA TELLS JUSTICE DEPARTMENT to stop defending the Defense Of Marriage Act. Well, I think this, together with some other recent moves, means that he’s giving up on the center and moving to hold the base together.

PETER FERRARA: Why FDR Opposed Collective Bargaining For Public Employees.

OVER AT PJM, THE INSTAWIFE WRITES about Kay Hymowitz’s new book, Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys. She has some issues with Hymowitz’s analysis. “I do believe Hymowitz tried to be sensitive to the plight of today’s men, but the book presents as being more concerned about how men fit into the world of women rather than how men actually feel themselves.” Plus, a bonus Star Trek reference. (Bumped).

UPDATE: Interesting discussion in the comments. So do you think Helen should write a book?

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts on Hymowitz here. And this post by Phillis Chesler seems somehow relevant. . . .

I DOUBT FRANCES FOX PIVEN WILL CALL FOR AMERICANS TO EMULATE THIS GREEK PROTEST: ‘I won’t pay’ movement spreads across Greece: In light of austerity measures, citizens ignore tolls, transit ticket costs, even bills for healthcare. “Many see the ‘I Won’t Pay’ movement as something much simpler: the people’s refusal to pay for the mistakes of a series of governments accused of squandering the nation’s future through corruption and cronyism.”

I mean, if citizens quit paying taxes because the government is dominated by cronyism and corruption, the whole lefty feedlot would be gone.

THE DAYS AND NIGHTS of an NBA groupie. “One thing that has become more common since the Kobe case, says Brenda, is the bodyguard-chaperoned encounter. Watching isn’t new. But these days, for a player to have his security guy or his boys hang around to watch isn’t just kinky, it’s smart business.”

Plus, condom etiquette: “Smart NBA players—well, okay, even dumb NBA players—know to use their own: There have been too many love children born of a condom that, oops, had a hole poked in it to make that ‘mistake.’ ‘You’d be amazed,’ says a former Fly Girl I met in Houston, ‘how many women I know who actually do that. Because let’s face it, if you get pregnant, your life is made.'” This is the kind of thing Michael Higdon is writing about.

UPDATE: Reader Julian Ferry emails:

I wondered as I read the article, what class of folks can afford the time and money to jet around the country with cases of top shelf booze, just hoping for a chance to party with NBA players and rappers?

A bus driver, a police officer, a subway conductor, and a 911 operator…..

Public employees!

Heh. Yeah, that’s an angle I should’ve caught.