Donovan Slack Auditions for the Onion

Politico's Donovan Slack got his her (thanks for the correction, Tim) undies in a bundle over President Obama's appearance in Milwaukee yesterday. Looking for some red meat to feed the wingnuts, she reported that the stage featured not only a U.S. flag, but an equally prominent one for "the local union, Wisconsin 1848" (the unintentionally humorous article has been pulled from the site, but a screenshot can still be seen here). (h/t, Dane 101)

Yes, that is the Wisconsin state flag that Donovan Slack criticized.  She probably didn't recognize it without the palm trees in the background.

Scott Walker: Clueless, Incompetent Manager

An official statement from Scott Walker's campaign organization claims: “The Milwaukee County Executive's Office expressed policy was that county employees were not permitted to use county time or resources to conduct any political activity. Scott Walker expected everyone to follow the law and made that clear publicly and privately.”  (h/t, Capper)

I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe his claim. That means that several employees completely ignored their boss' clearly-expressed expectations and willfully violated his policies (and the law), while the boss remained blissfully ignorant.

It makes me wonder how well his current staff are following the laws and policies that are supposed to govern their conduct on the job. He seems to attract corrupt employees who take advantage of his easygoing, laissez-faire employment practices.

Be careful out there

Many years ago, I heard a comedian refer to shopping the after-Christmas sales as "gladiating for bargains" -- and that was long before the Black Friday door-busters inspired shoppers to trample and assault each other in Wal-Mart parking lots.  This year, a California woman took some inspiration from Fox News' assertion that pepper spray is basically a food product and used it to beat the crowds.

Before you enter into the fray, remember that Consumer Reports says that most items are actually cheaper after Cyber Monday. Is it really worth endangering yourself for a shot at one of the mere handful of deeply-discounted televisions? Of course, if it's really the thrill of danger you're after, by all means shop today.

Good Thing Lambeau Field Banned Firearms

Patriots Partisan Pulls a Plaxico in Parking Lot.

Republican Rep. Scott Suder says the Legislature's intent was to leave it up to applicants to determine how many hours of training they needed.

Because idiots are so good at recognizing their need for training.

Not All Communications Are Better in Electronic Form

I get my bills from Madison Gas & Electric electronically. They include "electronic bill stuffers" (basically PDF versions of the glossy brochures and flyers they stuff into their paper bill envelopes).

Behold their natural gas scratch & sniff card.

Really, MG&E?  For an electric utility, you seem surprisingly unsophisticated when it comes to electronic communication.

Don't Be That Guy*

Wisconsin's new concealed carry law takes effect on Tuesday. It will take slightly longer for the first permits to be issued, as the rules for training courses were just completed.

Keep in mind the axiom that Bad Facts Make Bad Law.  It will only take a handful of screw-ups by permit-holders to make voters pressure the State Legislature to reconsider.  It won't matter that the same kinds of screw-ups have been committed by non-permit-holders for years; everything will be viewed differently when people are carrying legally. The proponents of concealed carry have long claimed that everyone will be safer when law-abiding citizens are allowed to arm themselves, that it will be a deterrent to crime, and that no one but a violent criminal has anything to fear from legally-armed citizens.

So, in order to fulfill that promise and keep Wisconsinites from turning against legal concealed carry, here is some advice to those who obtain permits:

1. Keep your gun safely stowed in a proper holster or compartment in your bag rather than loose at the bottom of your purse or stuffed in your waistband.

2. Don't assume your gun isn't loaded.

3. Don't count on a self-defense plea if the circumstances are shady.

4. Do not use your gun to settle a domestic dispute.

Really, this should all be common sense. Unfortunately, I have noticed over the years that the people with the least amount of common sense often feel the need to be armed.

And to the opponents of concealed carry out there, relax.  Your odds of being shot by an idiot or a stalker really haven't increased significantly.

Finally, I find it highly ironic that the same Republican office-holders who tried to argue several months ago that the State Capitol must be closed to the public for security reasons because a handful of bullets were found on the grounds now think it's OK for the public to bring guns into the Capitol.

* I am using "guy" in the colloquial Midwestern, gender-neutral sense (as in "you guys"). Wisconsin has plenty of armed idiots who are female.

Just Call Him Randy Hopalicious

In the latest episode of the dark comedy that is Randy Hopper's life, the recently-recalled ex-state-senator was busted for driving erratically on Highway 151.  He refused a breathalyzer test but failed field sobriety tests and was charged with OWI.  His reportedly-pregnant girlfriend Valerie Cass was a passenger in the vehicle. I assume she was not drinking if she is pregnant, so it would have saved everyone a lot of grief if Hopper had let her be the designated driver. But the middle-aged Hopper was perhaps unwilling to let a 26-year-old woman drive his car.  Hoist by his own patriarchy.

Maybe he'll blame it on the mind-numbing ordeal that is driving on Highway 151.  Even former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager couldn't face the trip to Fond du Lac without first fortifying herself with a couple goldfish-bowl-sized glasses of wine.

PSC Prohibits Plale Purchasing Privileges

OK, so that's grammatically incorrect. I should have said revokes rather than prohibits, but I couldn't resist the alliteration.

There was an episode of The Sopranos where Tony and his crew went after a small businessman who welshed on a gambling debt. They raided the man's sporting goods store and took whatever inventory they could easily sell, then used company credit cards to buy plane tickets and other big-ticket items.

I've often thought that episode provides a useful metaphor for what Scott Walker is doing to the State of Wisconsin, turning civil service jobs into overpaid patronage positions, hiring high-priced private lawyers at taxpayer expense rather than giving the work to the Justice Dept., and privatizing whatever he can for the benefit of his donors.

However, Walker appointee Jeff Plale and his staff seem to be literally copying that episode.

Steve Nass Wants More Police Brutality

Rep. Steve Nass is blaming Capitol police for the escalation of protestors' behavior, claiming the "kid gloves" treatment encouraged disorderly and dangerous conduct.

Apparently, Nass would have liked the police to arrest not only those who were breaking laws, but also those who were peacefully assembling. If the police had treated the protestors like their counterparts did during the Vietnam War era, things never would have escalated.  Oh, wait...

Quote of the Day

If you'd like to make an ass of yourself, just throw a hat upside down on the State Street sidewalk and start your rambling: you might even make some tips.

Oshkosh blogger Jb, commenting on the protestors who disrupted yesterday's committee hearing at the Capitol.

Rooster's Revenge

Apparently, illegal cockfights are insufficiently bloody for some people, so they actually strap knives to the combatants' legs.

What could possibly go wrong?

There may be a Darwin Award nomination here.

What a Jackass

A student at the U. of Colorado-Boulder paid his tuition in $1 bills as a form of protest against high out-of-state tuition.  Does he believe that Colorado taxpayers should subsidize his education?  Does he think a prospective employer will be impressed by the amount of time and energy he spent inconveniencing other people?  Clearly, he needs to spend more time studying (or working) and less time on useless stunts.

On This Week's Episode of the Kiln Hillbillies...

Brandi's meth lab is busted.  Meanwhile, brother Brett secretly buys a Falcon's jersey to wear during tonight's playoff game against the Packers and a Patriots jersey to wear during Sunday's game against the Jets.

Good Grief

While braving the holiday shopping hordes over the weekend, I noticed a couple of young parents browsing in the adult novelty section of Spencer's Gifts at the mall.  I knew they were parents, because they had two young children with them.  While the baby in the stroller was probably oblivious to the sex toys at child's-eye level, I wouldn't assume the same for the pre-schooler.  Just wait until he tells Grandma about the funny toys that Mommy and Daddy bought.  Maybe one parent should have had gone into the store alone to make the purchase while the other stayed with the kids out in the mall corridor.

Were They Too Cheap to Get a Babysitter?

A Fond du Lac man may face charges (once jurisdiction is determined) after a home video showed his young children in the room during a bondage party in an unidentified hotel room.

What part of "consenting adults" does this man not understand?  Perhaps he thought the kids were too young to notice (or care) what was going on, or that they would sleep right through it.  However, the sound of whipping has to be distressing to a toddler, no matter its target.

If the "dominatrices" in the video were professionals, they should lose their livelihoods over this. I can't think of an appropriate punishment for the father involved, for fear that he might enjoy it.

I happen to know some responsible parents who enjoy bondage from time to time, and I think they would agree with me on this.

I Hope Jenny McCarthy Is Proud of Herself

Whooping Cough is sweeping the U.S. in a way that hasn't been seen in decades. In California, nine babies have died. Indiana has more cases than it's seen since 1986.

The most vulnerable victims are babies too young to be fully vaccinated, like the ones who died in California. In the past, they were protected by a firewall of vaccinated people around them.  That is why public schools require vaccinations -- not just to keep your kid from getting sick and missing school, but to keep your kid from spreading contagious diseases to those who are too young or too immune-compromised to be vaccinated.

In recent years, a discredited quack has spread misinformation blaming vaccines for the rise in autism diagnoses.  D-list celebrity Jenny McCarthy, whose son has autism, has bought into the quackery and used her celebrity soap-box to brainwash other parents into not vaccinating their kids.

Taking medical advice from Jenny McCarthy is a lot like letting Viscount Monckton influence energy policy.

68 Pages!

Trying to prove that his ideas have substance, Scott Walker has released a 68-page jobs plan. To emphasize the sheer length of the plan, he has named it SCOTT WALKER'S 68-PAGE JOBS PLAN! (The caps and exclamation point are his).

Apparently, it was written in crayon on 68 leftover brown paper bags and dutifully transcribed by his genius campaign staff, one page per bag.

Does Walker understand that he doesn't get extra credit for killing more trees? Maybe if he had bothered to finish his college education, he would have learned to write concisely rather than pad his prose with pointless fluff.

(h/t The Chief and the Recess Supervisor)

Interstate Etiquette

Hey, dickless wonder.

We all see the State Patrol car sitting in the turn-around.  It isn't a construction zone, and you're in the passing lane.  The trooper isn't going to pull you over for driving 70 mph on the Interstate.

Suddenly slowing down to 65 mph while passing a semi will create a safety hazard behind you.  It may also lead the trooper to suspect that you have (a) drugs in the car or (b) outstanding warrants.

Moron.

A. Because they would have needed passports to search for Eldorado

Q.  Why did three sixty-something Utah men go into Arizona's Superstition Mountains looking for the fabled Lost Dutchman goldmine?

Tragically (and predictably), the three men have gone missing.

Surprisingly, none of them was Joad Cressbeckler.

How long will it take before CSI does an episode inspired by this news story?

Confused By the Internets, CRG Jumps the Shark

Citizens for Responsible Government, Southeast Wisconsin's leading group of angry white folks (who converted outrage into action several years before the Tea Parties), have fallen victim to the law of diminishing returns.

Flush with success after their recall victories in Milwaukee and Waukesha Counties several years ago, they had ambitions of taking on Jim Doyle and influencing statewide government in 2006.  In a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article which is no longer online, but which was quoted in this Dailykos post, CRG co-head Chris Kliesmet explained the group's goals:

"Chris Kliesmet, the CRG Network's Milwaukee-based executive administrator, says the group aims to have ‘boots on the ground’ in all 72 counties and raise a war chest of $1 million from a membership base of 10,000 people. That's a long way to go from the current loose confederation of local operations, mostly in the Milwaukee area, operating with about $5,000 in the bank, according to a campaign finance report," Epstein and Johnson write. "To become the force Kliesmet and his partner, Orville Seymer, envision, they'll need to figure out how to transform people angry over very local issues like lake management districts and the removal of a high school football coach to a united, statewide political machine."

How's that working out for CRG?  Well, they seem to have scaled back their ambitions.  A spin-off group, Franklin Citizens for Responsible Leadership, was charged with campaign finance violations and had to disband in 2008.

They still hope to get their chosen candidate, Scott Walker, into the Governor's mansion, but their efforts have met with limited success.  Last fall, they held a rally to encourage Walker to veto spending in the Milwaukee County budget that had been added by the County Board.  Check out this slideshow and notice how many of the attendees (presumably CRG's core constituency) are elderly.  That may have some bearing on their recent actions.

CRG's other co-head, Orville Seymer, has proven himself to be a hypocritical attention whore. After making snarky comments that got him ejected from a County Board meeting in 2006, Seymer sued Milwaukee County for $1 million, claiming he had been subjected to public humiliation and that his free speech rights were violated.

This same champion of free speech has now filed charges with the County District Attorney claiming that County employee Chris Liebenthal must be blogging on County time.  Seymer's evidence?  A bunch of blog posts on dates that turned out to be furlough days or Liebenthal's scheduled vacation days.  It was pointed out by none other than Owen Robinson, the warden of Wisconsin's asylum for the nuttiest of right-wingnuts, Boots and Sabers, that blog time stamps are meaningless anyway. But Robinson still thinks this is sufficient evidence to warrant an official investigation, costing the County time and money as Liebenthal's work computer is seized and examined.

As conservative (but not wingnut) blogger Jeremy Shown said on his thoughtful blog:

The fact of the matter is that if you have to resort to having the civil magistrate confiscate the computer of your rhetorical opponents, you have already lost. Can't the Walker camp come up with some smart folks to simply counter the pronouncements that Capper makes on his blog? Just read it for a while and it shouldn't be all that hard. Even I could, and I couldn't figure out that Capper and Chris Liebenthal were the same guy.

The old white guys seem to feel that Liebenthal can't possibly write so many blog posts during his free time.  Here is where the generation gap becomes apparent.  Baby boomers (and Gen-Xers, for that matter) do not fully comprehend just how much of their free time younger adults spend online.  Rather than reading newspapers and watching television, younger adults blog, tweet and post Facebook updates.

Also, men who began their careers in the IBM Selectric era tend to be hunt-and-peck typists (since typing used to be a skill reserved for secretaries).  They overestimate the time it takes to compose blog posts when you are primarily writing about stuff you know really well (limiting the need for background research).

Oh, and CRG also misspelled the link on their website that is supposed to point to their Num6ers Game blog, where their version of this principled stand on behalf of the taxpayers is chronicled.  Instead, it points to a "Mega site of Bible studies and information."  I guess the word "blogspot" is strange and exotic to the elderly scribes who are designing the CRG's site.  Or maybe Moses is volunteering his time.

Is there anyone under the age of 50 who can possibly take Citizens for Responsible Government seriously?  No wonder their more recent recall efforts have been less successful than their initial round several years ago.  Their constituency is literally dying off.