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After Gov. Scott Walker appeared on CBS's Face the Nation, touting the voters looking for someone who's going to lead and "make touch decisions" as the reason he survived his recall election, the AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka pointed out that what Walker did was not lead. He was following the same right wing agenda as his Republican counterparts, who are allowing the American Legislative Exchange Conference, known as ALEC, to write their agenda for them.

As Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley pointed out, part of the reason Walker survived his recall election is that the voters did not like the idea of recalling their elected officials for any reason, short of criminal offenses, "And right now Governor Walker has only had three people in his administration indicted." As O'Malley also noted, for all his talk of leadership, Walker's state has the worst job creation record in the country.

Transcript via below the fold.

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Naturally after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker managed to survive his recall election this Tuesday evening, Fox just had to bring in former half-term governor and failed vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin to weigh in for her perspective.

Palin told Fox's Greta Van Susteren that Walkers' win showed that "responsible austerity measures" and and reigning in the size of government, have proven effective. I'm not sure what's so "effective" about firing teachers and making classroom sizes larger and busting unions as an excuse to give your corporate buddies tax breaks, but that's their talking points and they're sticking to them. Palin also called the union leadership in Wisconsin "thugs" and said maybe they're the ones who need to be "recalled and replaced." I guess Palin believes they were acting without the support of their membership, because otherwise I'm not sure just who she thinks is going to be doing that "recalling and replacing."

Palin also went after President Obama for failing to campaign in the state and used the win by the Republicans as proof that "his goose is cooked" for the general election, ignoring the fact that the exit polling there showed the state would still support President Obama's reelection in the state by a margin of 52-43 percent over former Gov. Mitt Romney.

We're going to have a lot of hand wringing over whether President Obama showing up there would have made any difference in this recall election. I don't think it would have made a bit of difference unless we had some parity with the amount of money poured into the state. Sadly what this recall proves is that when you've got millionaires and billionaires willing to pour what's pocket change for some of them into buying an election and there's nothing to counter it on the other side, along with voter disenfranchisement, and dirty tricks, that all of us have a huge uphill battle facing us in the age of post Citizens United.

This was a big loss for labor unions in America since this recall election will be looked at as a model to further bust unions and push for more right to work for less laws and Palin won't be the only one out there ready to rub salt in that wound. It's shameful that she can talk like this and at the same time talk about her and her husband's former union membership as though she has an ounce of respect for the labor movement. Anyone who plays the divide and conquer game with unions and their elected leaders doesn't understand that the members are the unions and when you go after the people they elected to represent them, you're going after the members as well. Neither exists in a vacuum.

h/t Media Matters

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Ed Schultz reporting from Wisconsin awaiting the upcoming recall election of Scott Walker spoke to Salon's Joan Walsh and The Progressive's Ruth Conniff about the latest in the GOP's attack on women and their reproductive health.

As Ed noted, we had another attack on a Planned Parenthood facility in Wisconsin Sunday night. Here's more from the HuffPo on that -- Planned Parenthood Bombed In Wisconsin:

A small bomb exploded outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Grand Chute, Wis., on Sunday night, and police are investigating to learn who planted the device.

According to WGBA-TV, police fire crews found the homemade explosive outside a window sill that they believe had set off a small fire, which burned out before fire crews arrived. The building sustained a small amount of damage.

The FBI has joined with the local police department to investigate the bombing. Leonard Peace, a spokesman for the FBI's Milwaukee Division, told The Huffington Post that the agency was notified of the incident on Sunday evening and initiated an investigation on Monday.

"The information that I have is that an unknown suspect placed a device at that location last evening, approximately 7:30 p.m.," Peace said. "The device caused minimal fire damage to the facility. At this point in time, we're reviewing the evidence to determine exactly what type of device it was."

Grand Chute Police Chief Greg Peterson told the Appleton Post Crescent that the bomb was made out of a plastic bottle and chemicals and "included agents of an incendiary quality." He added that he had not heard of any threats to the clinic prior to Sunday's incident.

Rick Santorum condemned the bombing, but is still pushing to defund the organization. And as Ed noted, Mitt Romney is still out on the campaign trail pushing to take away federal funding from Planned Parenthood as well.

Walsh and Conniff weighed in on the recent poll numbers showing a large shift for President Obama, primarily due to women voters and whether Mitt Romney or the Republicans are going to be able to do anything to shift those trends before the general election later in the year.

Video of their interview below the fold.

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Ed Schultz talked to The Nation's John Nichols about the recall drive of Gov. Scott Walker that just started this Tuesday in Wisconsin. Although as John noted, due to the dirty tactics of Walker allies with their fake recall petition, the money rolling in for Walker already started last week.

Here's more from Nichols' article at The Nation -- From Ohio to Wisconsin: Stage is Set for Scott Walker Recall:

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker claims that Ohio’s overwhelming rejection of anti-labor legislation modeled on the measures he developed and promoted in the Badger State will have no bearing on the debate about whether he should remain in office.

The governor is in full spin mode.

No surprise there. The governor faces the threat of a recall drive that begins at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday — a grass-roots initiative organized by the same sort of labor, farm and community coalition that overturned the Ohio law.

By any measure, last Tuesday’s election results from Ohio represented a devastating rejection of the agenda Walker and his allies have been peddling since February. Offered an opportunity to endorse a Walker-style attack on collective bargaining rights for state, county and municipal workers and teachers, Ohioans voted “no” by 61-39 percent.

Of Ohio’s 88 counties — with big cities, small towns and rural areas — 82 voted to defend public employees and their unions.

More Ohioans took a pro-union position in 2011 than voted for the governor who promoted the anti-labor legislation, John Kasich, in 2010.

Faced with the facts, Walker’s political team claimed that comparisons of Wisconsin and Ohio were “ridiculous.” The governor, appearing at a hair-styling school in Green Bay, said of the Ohio results: “I don’t think they will have any correlation (here in Wisconsin).” Read on...

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Ed Schultz talked to Wisconsin state Sen. Chris Larson and The Nation's John Nichols about the latest in Wisconsin. As Larson noted, he's supporting his fellow Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin in asking Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the voting irregularities and the "surprise discovery of 14,000 votes" in the Supreme Court race in Waukesha County.

Congresswoman asks U.S. Attorney General to investigate Waukesha vote reporting:

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is asking for a federal investigation into the surprise discovery of 14,000 votes in Waukesha County for the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

Rep. Baldwin sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Friday night asking him to assign the Justice Department Integrity Section. It oversees the federal prosecution of election crimes.

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said "human error" resulted in the miscount there. The change gave incumbent Justice David Prosser a 7,500-vote edge over challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg.

Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle said Saturday in an email that the department would review the letter. He declined further comment.

In the letter, Baldwin says the mishap raises serious doubts as to the integrity of the state's electoral process.

And as they noted, their wingnut Governor Scott Walker went running to Newsmax to accuse the unions of trying to "steal" the election from Prosser and compared what happened to Al Franken's narrow election win there. That's rich, isn't it?

Meanwhile, Scott Walker is going to be called to testify before Rep. Darrell Issa's committee next week. I'm sure we'll get to watch a union bashing side show from the Republicans during that hearing.

And as the recall efforts in Wisconsin are still moving along where it would be very nice to see this union busting Republican shown the door -- Wis. Dems To File First Recall Petitions Against GOP State Sen. Dan Kapanke.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has one of the best ads I've seen in a long time running in Greenbay and Milwaukee, targeting 6 Republicans eligible for recall in Wisconsin.

You can go here to support their efforts.

Oh the irony. Gotta' love the line about not wanting to be among a "lot of angry people." Sorry Scotty, but I think that's what you get to look forward to until they recall you next year.

h/t Laffy