Last month, Paul Krugman noted that the battle in Wisconsin is not about the state budget, but about power. Against a political reality that is dominated by Those With Big Money, Krugman calls for “institutions that can act as counterweights.”

Perhaps I could interest him — or you — in joining Firedoglake,

I’d like to follow up on what Jane said this morning. I’ve just got four questions for you.

If you trust and value the reporting at FDL, from Hillman Award Winner Marcy Wheeler’s work from Scooter Libby to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to Dave Dayen’s work on mortgage foreclosure and Jon Walker’s reporting on health care, from Wikileaks and Bradley Manning to Audit the Fed and the BP oil spill, consider becoming a Founding Member of the Firedoglake membership program.

FDL is looking for a new logo ahead of the launch of our membership program, which we’ll have more details on soon. Since Jane announced our logo search yesterday, we’ve got hundreds of votes and lots of good feedback. We’ve extended the voting deadline to 11:59pm PST today – so if you haven’t yet cast [...]

Protected the progressive brand. Consistently fought for progressive values and applied the same yardstick to both Democrats and Republicans, demonstrating that progressives aren’t just fickled hacks who only care about demagoguing issues they will readily sell out in a cynical attempt to gain power for themselves.

Lawrence O’Donnell ropes FDL Newser David Dayen into some high-flying hyperbole, announcing the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party is joined! Between, according to Lawrence, the Leader of the Free World and his Vice President of the United States on one side — and a blogger on the other. Good luck, David!

Thank you for creating this wonderful place on the internet, Jane Hamsher. Won’t the rest of you join me in thanking the cosmos for Jane today, and wishing her a happy, happy birthday?

The last afternoon of panels is stacked, and three of our best have been scheduled at the same time, so FDL will attempt the unprecedented, unscripted and extremely dangerous triple liveblog!

Over on Emptywheel, Rayne will be covering Marcy as she takes on one of Obama’s signature broken promises: the failure to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. On our Elections page, Michael Whitney will liveblog a panel on marijuana policy and politics featuring Jon Walker. And at the FDL News Desk, my fingers will do their level best to keep up with David Dayen as he tackles the foreclosure crisis.

Many of your favorite Firedoglake contributors, diarists, and community members are gathering here at The Rio in Las Vegas for the next few days. . . and I am here, too.

For me, what matters most is Firedoglake’s coverage of LGBT issues, and the effort the blog has undertaken to cover the Prop 8 referendum and the subsequent historic efforts to overturn that civil rights rollback in federal court.