“An Ohio state Senate panel voted on Wednesday to strip public sector unions of some collective bargaining rights and end their right to strike.”
 — This bill goes before the Republican-controlled Ohio Senate this week; it should pass. It’s nasty, too! “The Ohio proposal also eliminates binding arbitration of contract disputes by a neutral third party.”

“Al Jazeera English may be coming to American television screens. The Qatar-based network is currently in talks with cable giants Comcast and Time Warner.”
 — Coming maybe-soon to channel 1645 near you, next to those other 780 channels you actually don’t watch, what the hell are all those channels anyway? I mean, my new cable box has HBO at 1801!

This is relevant not just for the highly-entertaining string of profanities being released on Twitter but because his office discovered he was trapped in the elevator because of said Twitter account.

Today’s the day, and we’re covering it live!

1:03 PM: Steve Jobs takes the stage. Audience goes crazy.

1:05 PM: Jobs waits for sustained applause to end, calls crowd “suckers.”

1:09 PM: Jobs shows audience a white ball attached to a white paddle via a white rubber band. Product name is “iPaddle.”

1:10 PM: Audience applauds enthusiastically.

1:11 PM: Jobs: “That’s right, you trend-sucking freaks, worship at my altar. I could connect two Dixie cups with a string and you’d pay extra for the privilege of advance ordering it. You sicken me.”

1:13 PM: Jobs indicates that the audience should rise. He drops his pants and begins to fart the chorus of Looking Glass’ 1972 hit “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl).” Raucous cheering.

1:15 PM: Jobs, pants still around his ankles, takes a first generation iPad and makes a doody on it. Crowd is silent. Jobs: “We call this The Daily.”

1:17 PM: Apple exec Phil Schiller begins auction for the doodied iPad.

1:20 PM: After feverish bidding, doodied iPad sells for $72,028 to unidentified man in front row who tells Schiller that he probably doesn’t “really need it, but everyone else is going to have one soon, so I have to keep up.”

1:22 PM: Audience shown brief video called “2010: The Year of the iPad,” which is actually just scenes of Steve Jobs twiddling his thumbs, intercut with clips from the 1984 Paul Rodriguez sitcom “A.k.a. Pablo.” Audience on feet again.

1:24 PM: Jobs introduces new iPad. First three rows simultaneously wet pants. “It’s so beautiful,” shouts a woman in the back who immediately bursts into tears.

1:27 PM: Jobs discussing features. Lighter, faster, comes in black, white and fuchsia.

1:29 PM: “Helps treat erectile dysfunction.”

1:30 PM: “Controls US military Predator drones in Afghanistan.”

1:31 PM: “Can be used to surf Internet.”

1:32 PM: “Makes the TV show ‘Mike & Molly’ funny.”

1:33 PM: Apparently new iPad can raise dead, but only if they never viewed pornography during their lifetimes.

1:35 PM: Now Jobs is talking accessories. For an extra $39 there is a special cord that connects directly to your bank account and sends money to Apple every time they come up with a new product.

1:37 PM: There is a new adhesive cover available which, using the latest in voice-driven technology, will periodically alert nearby strangers that you have an iPad. Celebrity voice options: Mickey Rourke, Allison Janney, that annoying woman from the Progressive insurance commercials.

1:40 PM: Jobs briefly pauses to deliver an apparently impromptu lecture on the evils of DC’s “go-go” style funk. The band Rare Essence is berated particularly vehemently. Audience applauds wildly.

1:43 PM: VP Scott Forstall comes up to talk about the new iOS software. Chants of “You suck!” and “Get off the stage!” from the crowd, who clearly want more Jobs.

1:45 PM: Shouting to be heard over the din, Forstall tries to explain how FaceTime is integrated. Someone from audience yells, “You’re gonna get some FaceTime with my fist if you don’t get off the fucking stage!”

1:47 PM: Forstall is struck in head with a second generation iPod. It’s a pretty clean shot, and he goes down hard. Looks like he’s bleeding. Crowd still chants for Jobs.

1:50 PM: Paramedics have removed Forstall, who does not appear to have regained consciousness, from stage. Jobs returns to wild applause, says he has two more surprises.

1:52 PM: First up is the announcement that George Michael will cover New Order’s “True Faith” for a British charity organization. “It doesn’t have much to do with us,” says Jobs, “but I know you hang on my every word and I actually think it could be kind of good. I mean, it’s unnecessary, sure, but I bet he does a decent job with it.”

1:54 PM: Jobs still talking about George Michael. Calls “Father Figure” one of the greatest works of popular culture from the 20th century. Wonders if we’ll ever see Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 2.

1:55 PM: “Remember the video for ‘Freedom’? The first time I saw it, I knew the supermodel era had reached a ceiling.”

1:57 PM: The pants are down again. Jobs farts saxophone riff from “Careless Whisper.” Much of crowd holding up lighters, or using iPhones as lighters.

1:59 PM: Pants back up. “Now, the moment I’ve been waiting for since I founded this company in” — here crowd chants along in unison — “a Los Altos garage.”

2:00 PM: Lights go down. All we can see is Jobs’ barely illuminated head.

2:01 PM: Jobs is uttering some sort of incantation in what sounds to be vulgar Latin.

2:02 PM: Correction: I am informed that it is Coptic Egyptian. Jobs continues to chant. Weird vibe going on in the hall. Crowd eerily silent.

2:05 PM: It’s… I can’t quite describe it. Have never seen anything like this before. They’re all changing. Whole crowd changing! Jobs keeps chanting and crowd seems to grow furrier.

Now growing addition limbs. They… seem ovine.

OH MY GOD, he is LITERALLY TURNING THEM INTO SHEEP.

Bu fskldfjm deioreprg faiohepeebj m,akjml rkjem alfbhabvjuljf ba afbjbenvjvfhbvhbjarjl jaj

2:09 PM: Baaaa.

[NOTE: Liveblog ends here. — Ed.]

“A decade ago, in Boston for her 35th birthday, she paid a call on a body-modification artist. Ms. Hamilton wanted what’s known as a ‘slash and burn.’ She selected a spot on her right arm to be ritualistically cut, dabbed with alcohol and set aflame. ‘It’s sort of like a tattoo except 5,000 times more painful,’ she said. ‘And when they cut you, my God, they cut you.’”
 — I really like the monkfish liver at Gabrielle Hamilton’s restaurant, Prune. She seems like an interesting person and, judging from the recent excerpt in the New Yorker, her new book Blood, Bones & Butter could be very good. And I am a wimp. But still, OWWWW!!!! Why would anyone choose to do that to themselves?

Solving a seemingly impossible quest, Farhad Manjoo has discovered a group of people more annoying and self-satisfied than average NPR listeners: the people who write angry letters to NPR.

by Abe Sauer

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s budget address was delivered beneath a dead and stuffed eagle. His address made commitments to a better educated Wisconsin, even while offering almost guaranteed decreased funding of the state’s schools. He criticized the state’s wasteful use of “our tobacco settlement,” and then minutes later praised, for his “bold new ideas and strong leadership,” former Republican Tommy Thompson — the state’s key architect of that tobacco settlement spending.

He twice passed into reverence for “our state’s constitution,” even while it was being broken two floors below him: the Capitol’s doors were still locked.

One possible reason for why the doors remained locked to Wisconsin citizens nearly six hours after a judge ordered them open soon became clear. The assembly gallery had been packed with ringers.

In the run up to Walker’s address, a press pass allowed me access to the goings on inside the dome, as well as to the assembly address itself.¹

By noon, as chants of “Let us in” at the King Street entrance to the Capitol grew, none of the police officers I spoke with knew what was happening. Everyone had heard a judge had ordered the doors open, including the thousand or more demonstrators outside, but nobody knew who actually would say “open the doors.” One sheriff’s deputy guarding access to the west wing said he only knew to do what the DNR officer in charge told him to do. Later, just after Walker’s address finished, I found myself face to face with grim-looking Madison Police Chief Wisconsin Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs. “What’s going on here?” I asked. “We’re still debating,” he said. I tried to follow up; “Later, later,” he said. I never saw him again.

The Department of Administration’s battle against the judge’s order to open the capitol is ongoing. (Follow the Isthmus reporter in the courtroom, Alison Bauter, for the latest.)

About 120 porters remained in the capitol from the night before. Wearing his construction hat, Chad from Cross Plains said he’s been in the dome for days now; his boyish face was just barely sprouting patchy whiskers. He is with Union Local No. 599, Operative Plasterers’ & Cement Masons’ International, who constructed and renovated the capitol. “We built this place,” he said. “And I’m not leaving.”

(A bit of service journalism for the politically active in Wisconsin. “Koch” is pronounced “coke.” This detail makes many of the otherwise “clever” Koch-pun signs invalid.)

Another group was the drum circle; they appeared not to have left since last Wednesday. Their energy was high and sporadically they would break into loud percussion. The children’s area has reopened on the second floor and for those concerned, yes, food is still quietly getting in.

Sitting behind the Capitol’s information desk in his green vest, Jim gave directions to protesters, media and even legislators. He’s been a seasonal Capitol tour guide for the last 12 years. Jim grew up in Medford and claims his friends were the founders of Tombstone Pizza. He moved to Madison 30 years ago. “Everyone who moves to Madison never leaves,” he said. Jim said that usually at this time they get more than a thousand fourth-graders a day as part of their government education class — “some from northern Illinois even, as Springfield is too far to drive.” Asked if he’ll ever work recent events into his tour, he said, maybe — but that “I just give you the facts.”

Throughout the afternoon, those having an appointment with a legislator were allowed access, with each legislator only allowed a small number of badges. At about 2 p.m., I noticed an increase in the number of men in suits and long overcoats being brought into the capitol and then allowed upstairs. One sheriff’s deputy asked me, as four more came in, “Do you know who those guys are?” Later, I would find out.

Thanks to mobile technology, those with access to the Capitol really know very little more than those locked outside. In fact, without fast access to email, Twitter, and numerous news sites, I am, in a way, less well-informed while inside the capitol than somebody sitting with a laptop at home… anywhere.

At 3:40 p.m., I took a spot in the back of the Assembly room and waited for Walker.

In a red suit that screamed “Look at me, fuckers” Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch worked the Republican side of the assembly like a brothel’s madam. From the way she bawdily glad-handed among the Republican leadership, it was clear that Kleefisch, a former TV news reporter renowned for refusing to debate her opponent during the 2010 election, thinks she is somehow important to the GOP’s goals in Wisconsin. She thinks she’s a player. It’s adorable.

The shades were drawn and, with the limited number of protesters in the Capitol below, one wouldn’t have known there was anything at all going on outside… or inside. In the background, a dim drum beat could be heard. Only during Dan LeMahieu’s (R-59) pre-event prayer did a huge cheer go up from outside. Reporters and legislators alike largely ignored it.

Peter Barca (D-64) said many Democrats had a difficult time coming to the event and he lodged his “concern” that the address “might be a violation of the open meetings law” and “if we don’t follow our own rules we cease to be a nation of laws.”

Whatever, dude.

Walker entered to thunderous applause, though not from the Democrats, who refused to rise. At least two-thirds of the East audience galley was loudly applauding but they had nothing on the West coast. It was now clear who the men in business attire were. Nearly without exception, the west gallery was all men in black suits and, when the governor said something meaningful, they all rose and applauded, and they did it with verve and volume. I’m not saying these guys were not from Wisconsin, but if you know Wisconsin, you know for a fact that even for most businessmen, black suits are not part of the wardrobe. In general, the only time one will see a large gathering of Wisconsin men in black suits is at a funeral, or, apparently at a Governor Walker budget address.

Reporter Kristin Knutsen found evidence that many of these ringers may have entered through the capitol’s access tunnels, noting the presence of the Division of Criminal Investigation — the same officers I saw upstairs outside the Assembly chambers following the address escorting unidentified men.

Needless to say, with no citizens allowed past the doors, and none of the rotunda’s encamped protesters allowed past the first floor, the GOP had stacked the audience. So what if the move is declared unconstitutional now? Walker’s address, and the heavy applause, has already been broadcast.

* * *

In the coming days, everyone is going to hear a lot of specifics about what Walker’s bill means. Some will say it means 10% of teachers will be laid off. Others will say it means a $900 million cut to education and a $250 million cut to the University of Wisconsin system — all while increasing funding to prisons. After the address, outside, I asked one of a handful of protesting corrections officers if Walker’s commitment to spending more on prisons in any way offset him losing his collective bargaining rights. Brian — a corrections officer from Black River — said, “No. And anyway, I don’t see him doing it.”

There are already rumors that one of the 14 AWOL Democratic senators is returning. That’s a rumor. Do the research. Don’t believe any one source.

After the address, some of the Democrats addressed those in the rotunda. Nick Milroy (D-73) thundered against Walker’s promise to deliver 250,000 new jobs in four years: “It’s clear now those jobs are going to be in license plate manufacturing.” David Cullen (D-13) said: “Screw the middle class, that’s Scott Walker’s message.” One accidentally criticized the Tea Party, and was reprimanded by a guy who said, “Hey, I’m the tea party!” Apologies were made.

While spirits were high, the Democrat rebuttal message came across a bit like a eulogy. Taking turns standing atop a plastic delivery crate and using a small PA system to address no more than 80, each encouraged listeners to go back to their communities and fight there. “We’ve done all we can do here,” one said.

I exited the capitol into blazing sunset. While many spoke of a collecting gloom inside, it had been a sunny day in Wisconsin, a real rarity. Thousands and thousands of protesters appeared as my eyes adjusted. “What’s going on in there?” one goateed man yelled.

“Is the address over? Is it still going on?” asked another. “How many are in there?”

I left them at the King Street entrance. They were still chanting: “Let us in!” On the way to my car, I passed the Northeast Wisconsin Fox affiliate shooting an update. While its parent was willing to trip over itself to cover any gathering of tea partiers greater than 100, Fox 11 has chosen to shoot from the vantage of East Washington — highlighting a nearly empty Capitol grounds.

Of all the angles of the Capitol, that one up East Washington is the sole view that would make it appear as if nobody was there. (Though, I’m not even sure why Fox 11 is even bothering given that Fox News has just started passing off stock footage of fights as the Wisconsin protests.)

Thousands continue to gather every night at their capitol in Madison. Many are now camping out on the grounds overnight.

Sure, they are teachers and corrections officials and nurses and other public employees who stand to lose the most from the bill. But increasingly, the numbers of private employees joining those threatened are the very middle class private employees who’ve seen recent statements by the governor as indicative that he’s coming for them next — including his plans for BadgerCare recipients to pay more for the coverage as they get jobs in the private sector.

And now, some of them are even self-identified Walker voters. And like good Wisconsin boys, they’re apologizing for it.

¹ The press credential process at the state capitol was not set up to handle a lockdown situation. Passes are issued by the press corps themselves, and while generous, they are faced with having to make the difficult decision about who to credential as legitimate press and who is, say, with the Heritage Foundation. The Awl’s pass was arranged by Mr. Dick Wheeler who writes The Wheeler Report, an excellent source of state news and information. Please go follow them on Twitter.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.

by Ben Dolnick

One and only one episode of “ALF” survives in my memory: the full moon is coming and ALF, knowing that he’s about to transform into a monster, asks to be locked in a cage in the kitchen. He’s going to beg to get out, he warns the Tanners, he’ll weep and shout and make extravagant promises, but they must ignore him no matter what.

In this, the last stretch of days before the 2012 presidential campaign gets underway (Newt Gingrich is apparently almost ready to announce the results of his explorations into the question of forming an exploratory committee), I find myself feeling the need to haul out the old kitchen-cage. I’m not in danger of transforming into a cat-eating monster, but rather a Politico-reading, blog-commenting, Sunday-show-watching lunatic. Stop me before I care again.

In the run-up to the elections of both 2004 and 2008, I was one of those people who woke up in the middle of the night to check primary data. I regularly had my day ruined/made by polls of states I’d never set foot in. I wrote checks and impassioned mass-emails. I could (and worse, did) explain the intricacies of the Texas two-step primary/caucus. I have no idea why or how political campaigns became my drug of choice, but now, in this brief window of daylight, I dread the coming darkness.

There is, I think, a small but sturdy subset of political junkies (how terribly apt that word seems!) who will know whereof I speak. We have jobs that enable/demand near-constant proximity to computers. We have over-active opinion-producing glands. We take great and idiotic pleasure in knowing things first. We go on months-long news binges followed by days (OK, hours) of sobriety.

Political obsession is thus easy to fall into and hard to climb out of, in large part because following politics doesn’t feel, in quite the way that following sports or celebrity divorces does, like an obvious vice. Political informed-ness, after all, is a civic good. The stakes really are massive. The liars really are lying. Many of the things that a politically obsessed, internet-attached person finds himself doing are easy to see as a kind of voluntary homework: what could possibly be the harm in watching this panel discussion on C-SPAN? Isn’t learning the history of cap-and-trade at least as important as whatever else I’d be doing?

But here, I think, is when the politically obsessed mind pulls off its great trick. Because yes, understanding climate change: definitely important. The influence of money on politics: pernicious. Civil liberties and financial regulation and education reform: important, important, important. But the mind — or anyway my mind — isn’t really in it for these bits of nutrition. The moment it understands the necessity of the individual health care mandate, the obsessed mind sets out like a villager with a torch. Who dares fail to appreciate this argument I learned fifteen minutes ago? If you don’t knock it off I’m going to leave a five-hundred word comment about it! Ooh, wait, what’s that? Joe Lieberman made a funny face on “Hardball”? And someone made it into an Auto-tuned web-video?!?

Pretty soon a couple of things happen:

First, your mind begins to become about as habitable as a pinball machine. Morning newspaper stories lead seamlessly to midday Huffington Post talk-show clips which lead to evening panel discussions which must of course be lampooned on “The Daily Show” and “Colbert.” Your brain is twitching with informed-ness; you dreams are full of indignation and Breaking News Alerts.

And second — and this I think is harder to accept — your level of political understanding actually decreases. Are you familiar with the Laffer curve? In the 1970s, a man named Arthur Laffer apparently scribbled a simple graph on the back of a napkin showing that tax rates, increased past a certain point, actually decrease government revenue. I can work myself into a lather arguing about why this curve has no bearing on our present economic situation, but I find myself arguing here for the existence of a different kind of Laffer Curve, one to do not with taxes but with political informed-ness. And we, who have opinions about the reliability of various polling outfits, who believe it’s perfectly reasonable to watch C-SPAN in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, are well past its apex. A nine-year-old on the street, his brain free of conflicting data and nervous-making on-the-ground reports, may well have a clearer sense of where the presidential race stands at any given moment than a twenty-something newshound tapping away at his iPhone.

So, as the campaign season gets set to begin, with what everyone assures us will be unprecedented types and quantities of coverage, I hereby remind myself of a few basic certainties.

There will be scandals involving campaign aides; there will be brief, early periods of candidates’ lives dusted off and taken to be revelatory; there will be polls released on weekend nights, followed by ambiguous Nate Silver dissections; there will be supporters saying moronic and/or incendiary things on afternoon cable shows; there will be recklessly dishonest commercials; there will be breathlessly awaited speeches, carried live; there will be offense taken; there will be facts checked; there will be financial improprieties; there will be pseudo-suspenseful endorsements; there will be Twitter self-immolations; there will be debates and debates and debates.

And all of it will matter unfathomably less than the ALF within me will insist.

So yes, the moon is going to be full before we know it, and unfortunately most of us have no choice but to be both ALF and the Tanners. Already I can feel myself probing for weak spots in the cage. I can hear Harold Ford getting ready to deliver some infuriatingly vapid commentary on MSNBC. But I’m going to try this time, seriously. I’m going to set up camp at forest-seeing altitude. I’m going to read some books in the time I’d otherwise spend watching Politico’s Candidate-Implanted Live-Cams. If you see me in a comment section, don’t feed me, please, no matter what I say.

Ben Dolnick lives in New York. His new novel, You Know Who You Are, comes out March 22nd.

Good news, Jews: Pope Benedict XVI has cleared you of collective responsibility for killing the shaygetz god Jesus Christ. Benny, who, as the AP delicately notes, “has had his share of mishaps with Jews,” takes up the issue in his new book, Jesus of Nazareth 2: Bigger and Blacker, wherein he “re-enacts Jesus’ final hours, then analyzes each Gospel account to explain why Jews as a whole cannot be blamed for having turned him over. Rather, Benedict concludes, it was the Jewish leadership, the ‘Temple aristocracy’ and a few supporters of the figure Barabbas who were responsible, but not Jews as a whole.” So that’s sorted, then. As of press time, however, Jews still retain collective responsibility for Yentl, running the New York Mets into the ground and kasha varnishkes, which are just plain nasty.

Photo by Sergey Gabdurakhmanov.