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It seems Bill O'Reilly is terribly upset that that damned communist Mother Jones went and did something horrible, like letting us here Romney's own words from his time at Bain Capital, and so naturally he does his best to try to deflect from the situation by attacking the messenger.

I hate to break it to Bill-O, but if he thinks the average voter out there who hasn't been propagandized by Fox and right wing hate talk is going to hear the word "harvest" and not think of a vulture capitalist that just wants to extract the wealth from a company and raid pensions and salaries, I think he's sadly mistaken.

And you've just got to love the irony of O'Reilly in one breath defending the type of business Mitt Romney ran, and then in the next bemoaning median income going down. Par for the course for a network that keeps telling its viewers that everything that's wrong with the world started the day America elected Barack Obama.

Talking Points Memo & Top Story

The far-left magazine Mother Jones (possibly one of Fidel Castro's favorite publications) has put out another old video of Mitt Romney, in which he says Bain Capital 'was formed to invest in start-up companies and ongoing companies ... then harvest them at a significant profit.' Even though Mother Jones is appalled, that's what capitalism is! You grow companies, you make them more profitable, then if you're lucky you sell them for lots of money. Sometimes the free market is brutal, but it does provide vast opportunity for those willing to work hard and take chances.

Capitalism has made the USA the most powerful nation on Earth; it's the primary reason people all over the world are desperate to come here. But apparently some who support President Obama don't much like capitalism. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who criticized Romney's comments, doesn't like the fact that some American companies maximize profits by limiting compensation to workers and controlling their hiring. Reich wants guaranteed wages, salaries, and tenure, all the things that happen in socialistic countries. The question is, does President Obama believe the same things that Dr. Reich and Mother Jones magazine believe? The answer to that question is ... maybe.

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From this Saturday's Forbes on Fox, more attacks on labor unions and calls to privatize the United States Postal Service. Host David Asman opened the segment talking about the postal union's decision to hire Ron Bloom, one of the advisers that helped steer the auto industry out of bankruptcy.

That was followed by a call from panel member Dennis Kneale to just shut down the whole Post Office and allow FexEx and UPS to buy it and in his words to “chop it up.” Fellow panel member Victoria Barret, while disagreeing with Kneale that it's not possible to just “junk the whole Post Office” and said she still likes sending Christmas cards, but of course thought that the union contracts need to be ripped up.

Here was host David Asman's response to that:

ASMAN: Well Steve, you can send Christmas cards for free on the Internet now! I mean the Internet changes everything, doesn't it?

To which Barret and Forbes responded, “It's not the same.” Well, no it's not but how about someone reminding Asman that the Internet is not free?

Forbes continued with the fearmongering that if the Post Office is not privatized, tax payers are going to be on the hook for their pension funds and finally one of their panelists actually pointed out the real problem the Post Office is facing right now, which is that Congress has forced them to over fund their pensions to the tune of $75 billion and if some of that money was returned, it would solve their problems immediately.

Which was naturally met with scorn from the other panel members. When Asman also brought up the fact that shutting down the Post Office would likely harm services for those who live in rural areas, Forbes claimed that private industry would take care of the problem on its own and Dennis Kneale chimed back in and said if they're unhappy with not having service after the business is privatized, they can...get this... just move. So if you live in a rural area, according to Kneale you'd better suck it up and move to the city if you want to get mail service. What a guy. So much for those claims of “compassionate conservatism.”

Our own Kenneth Quinnell has been following this story which you can read about here:

New York Times Blames Workers for Postal Service Woes, Glosses Over Real Cause of Problems

here:

More Details Emerge in Republican Assault on Post Office and Postal Unions

and here:

The Plot to Kill the Post Office...And Its Union Contracts.

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Via Fox News:

A Philadelphia mother was left jobless Tuesday after she took time off work to donate a kidney to her dying son and was fired during her absence.

Claudia Rendon did not hesitate when doctors delivered the news that her son Alex was in desperate need of a life-saving kidney transplant and offered him her kidney, myFOXphilly.com reported.

But she had already used up her vacation time at the Aviation Institute of Maintenance, in northeast Philadelphia, earlier in the year following the death of her mother and uncle and her father's diagnosis with leukemia.

Randon said, "Everything was coming down all at once. I felt like the best thing that happened to me this whole entire year was that God gave me the blessing of being able to give my son my kidney."

Through it all, Rendon showed up to work but needed a leave of absence to donate her kidney to her son.

Before Rendon left, she said her boss made her sign a paper, saying her job would not be guaranteed, and late last week -- just as she was preparing to return to work -- her employers told her they had hired someone else.

Rendon's former boss refused to comment and a company representative said it was in its legal rights to let Rendon go as the Family Medical Leave Act, which covers an employee for 12 weeks leave, does not apply to companies with under 50 employees.

Since this story aired a couple of days ago there's been international outrage, with stories in the UK's Daily Mail, the Associated Press, ABC and others. The ensuing horrible publicity has forced her former employer to make an offer only a lawyer could write:

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Good for these kids for doing the right thing and for exposing yet another abuse by corporate America and their race to the bottom on wages and exploiting foreign students rather than paying workers in the local community a living wage.

From Democracy Now -- Alleging Captive Labor, Foreign Students Walk Out of Work-Study Program at Hershey Plant:

We look at the story of 300 foreign students who came to the United States as part of a work-study program and found themselves engaged in what they refer to as captive labor at a Hershey’s packing plant in Palmyra, Pennsylvania. The students — from Eastern Europe and Asia — went on strike two weeks ago, after they were reportedly required to lift heavy boxes, work eight-hour shifts beginning at 11 p.m., and stand for long periods of time while packing candy on a fast-moving production line. Federal agencies have launched four investigations into the alleged exploitation. The walkout apparently marks the first time that foreign students have engaged in a strike to protest their employment. The guest workers are demanding a return of the $3,000 to $6,000 each student paid for the cultural exchange program to work at Hershey, that Hershey end exploitation of J-1 student cultural exchange workers, and that the 400 jobs the guest workers filled instead be given to local workers paid a living wage. We speak to two of the student guest workers who took part in the strike at the Hershey plant: Decebal Bilan, an economics student from Romania, and Zhao Huijiao, a foreign languages student from China. We are also joined by Saket Soni, director of the National Guestworker Alliance. "Today the J-1 program has essentially become the United States’s largest guest worker program," says Saket. He notes that while students are recruited ostensibly for cultural exchanges, "they do learn about American culture, just the wrong part of American culture."

Some highlights from the transcript below the fold.

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A daily non-violent singalong at the Wisconsin Capitol turned ugly Tuesday when it was interrupted by a former Republican state senator and two pro-gun advocates.

Former state Sen. David Zien yelled "Walker for president" while the two other men attempted to cover some of the union activists with the former senator's "Don't Tread On Me" flag, Sue Trace, who was participating in the singalong, told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Michael Dickman came over and tried to grab the flag. That's when Henry Rahr allegedly put him in a headlock and punched him in the face, chipping his tooth.

Rahr was arrested on the tentative charge of attempted battery. He was released after posting $650 bail.

Eugene German, the man holding the flag, was cited for disorderly conduct.

Zien, Rahr and German were among others there to support a bill allowing the carrying of concealed weapons.

Lisa Wells provided The Wisconsin State Journal with video of Zien using his wheelchair to disrupt the singers, but it did not appear to show the altercation.

For Richer and For Poorer

For Richer and Poorer - Teachers and Wall Street

When will America's teachers follow the lead of Wall Street and start making some sacrifices for the children?

Jon Stewart & Company go to town on the blatant hypocrisy and utter foolishness of Wisconsin's class war on teachers.

Crisis in Dairyland - Odor in the Capitol Building

Crisis in Dairyland - Angry Curds

Crisis in Dairyland - Message for Teachers

Since the regular networks have done such a piss poor job of covering what has been going on in Wisconsin and explaining it, The Daily Show devotes most of their show to the issue and does more in a few minutes, really getting to the heart of the matter than the rest of them have done in weeks of false equivalences and simplifications.

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Greta Van Susteren asks Tim Pawlenty about this nasty little screed he wrote recently attacking public sector unions and their benefits. Here's the opening.

Tim Pawlenty: Public-sector unions burden the taxpayer:

When Americans think of organized labor, they might think of images like I saw growing up in a blue-collar meatpacking town: hard hats, work boots, tough conditions and gritty jobs.

While I didn't work in the slaughterhouses, I did become a union member when I worked at a grocery store to help put myself through school. I was grateful for the paycheck and proud of the work I did.

The rise of the labor movement in the early 20th century was a triumph for America's working class.

In an era of deep economic anxiety, unions stood up for hardworking but vulnerable families, protecting them from physical and economic exploitation.

Much has changed. The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or "strong back" jobs.

They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming "industry" left in our economy. Since January 2008 the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs, while local, state and federal governments have added 590,000.

Pawlenty apparently thinks if you don't wear a hard hat or steel toed boots as part of your job, you don't deserve the protection of a union. I guess he also thinks that no one who's drawing a check from the government does physical labor.

Transcript and a response from the Minnesota Nurses Association below the fold.

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Ed Schultz talked to the United Steel Workers President Leo Gerard about the "anonymous White House official" who decided to go shoot their mouth off to the Drudge rag Politico and slam labor for supporting Bill Halter in the Democratic Senate race in Arkansas. Gerard said he is extremely disappointed in what was said and that the person who said it is entitled to their opinion but not to make that opinion anonymously and that if the matter is not cleared up by the President it could likely fester.

Gerard made it clear that the objective of labor is not to be the "ATM Machine" of the Democratic Party and that Blanche Lincoln was not representing their members' interests.

He expressed his disappointment with Bill Clinton for going out there and campaigning against labor for Blanche Lincoln and said he'd do it again because they're obligated to stand up for the rights of working people. Leo, I refrained from doing any posts on Bill Clinton campaigning for Lincoln because I don't think I could have written anything about it when I first watched him in action without the post being full of obscenities every other word and ending with telling him to bite me, so you're being way kinder to Clinton than I would have been capable of.

Gerard is still giving the President the benefit of the doubt about the comments coming out of the White House. I'm not. If he disagreed with what one of his aides said to Politico, he should have said so immediately. Apparently he doesn't care if he pisses off labor any more than Rahmbo does - who is the one I suspect called up Politico, since taking cheap shots at liberal Democrats seems to be a hobby of his.

Organized labor knows what side of the debate they're on. The White House on the other hand seems confused about who helped put them in office and thinks that kicking the unions and progressives in the teeth is somehow a good idea just months before a midterm election. I guess we'll see how that genius plan works out for them this November.

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Ed Schultz expresses his anger of the White House deciding to stick its finger in the eye of organized labor after Blanche Lincoln won her primary race for the Senate in Arkansas. I might have chalked this up to just Politico starting trouble had it not been for Robert Gibbs standing by the statement by an "unnamed senior White House official". I agree with Ed.

Schultz: The last thing the White House should be doing right now is picking a fight with working families across this country. And to come out and diss labor for spending millions of dollars to get rid of a corporate Democrat I think puts the White House on the wrong side of the fence.

If the White House doesn't like our democratic process and the right of the electorate to run primary challengers against these corrupt corporate Democrats who don't have the interest of the voters at heart, well that's too bad. And as Ed says, we'll see you at the next showdown. Why they think alienating organized labor publicly is some good political move beyond me as well. It sure as hell isn't going to help them win any elections in November.

Dave N.: Kinda makes you wonder if labor unions threw away all those millions in 2008 helping Obama win the White House, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, what Digby says.