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I can't quite tell if it's because of Christian Schneider or Aaron Rodriguez, but you know it's bad either way.
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To appreciate how much traction the legalization of same-sex marriage has gained, you can look to the Inaugural Address that President Obama just delivered, in which he used some of his precious 18 minutes to throw a spotlight on the issue and to make his support for it clearer than ever.
Or you can look in a much different direction: to the rough-and-tumble, testosterone-charged world of professional football, and to a succinct but extraordinary email that(former Bear)Brendon Ayanbadejo, a linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens, sent only hours after his team defeated the New England Patriots on Sunday night and gained passage to the game of all games, the Super Bowl, to be played this year in New Orleans.
...
With his team now headed to New Orleans, and with sports reporters eager to lap up each player’s every word, had he just been handed a louder megaphone than he’d ever possessed before?
He tapped out an email to Brian Ellner, a leading marriage-equality advocate with whom he had worked before, and Michael Skolnik, the political director for Russell Simmons, a hip-hop mogul who has become involved in many issues, including same-sex marriage.
Ayanbadejo wrote: “Is there anything I can do for marriage equality or anti- bullying over the next couple of weeks to harness this Super Bowl media?” The time stamp on the email was 3:40:35 A.M.
A player for the Super Bowl-bound San Francisco 49ers gave a controversial, anti-gay interview just days ahead of the NFL's championship game.
Speaking with shock jock Artie Lange, cornerback Chris Culliver said he's not OK with gay players in the NFL or on his team.
"I don't do the gay guys man," Culliver said, according to Yahoo. "I don't do that. No, we don't got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here if they do."
Culliver went on to say that gays would not be welcomed in the locker room, but if they remained closeted, he might be all right with them playing.
"Yeah, come out 10 years later," he said.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 25, 2008Not only did Russell work with the Maxwells on Walker's last campaign to be Milwaukee County Executive, but Pierick also fits in this big, warm, politically incestuous family. As we learned in Russell's sentencing memo, Pierick used to work for Attorney Maxwell.
Contact: Tim Russell (414) 298-0008
GEORGIA MAXWELL NAMED WALKER CAMPAIGN MANAGER
WEST ALLIS – Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker announced today the hiring of long-time Wisconsin political professional and small business owner Georgia Maxwell as campaign manager of his
Milwaukee County Executive re-election campaign.
“Georgia has extensive campaign experience and great enthusiasm. I am pleased to have her in this leadership role,” Walker said. “She will make an excellent addition to our already strong team.”
“It is an honor and a privilege to serve in this role on Scott’s campaign,” Maxwell said. “I am excited to play a part in his re-election efforts so that he can continue to fight for the taxpayers of Milwaukee County.”
Maxwell has extensive Wisconsin campaign experience stretching back over a decade. In addition to helping elect Dan Vrakas as Waukesha County Executive in 2005, she has worked on numerous attorney
general, congressional, legislative, and municipal elections, including Bob Welch’s 1994 U.S. Senate race.
Currently, Maxwell is President of the Maxwell Group, a public affairs, grassroots, and message development consulting firm. Previously, she was employed as Government Affairs Director for the
Wisconsin Credit Union League and as a Capitol staffer for more than 10 years, working for State Senator Mike Ellis and State Representative Luther Olsen.
Maxwell received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin –Madison. She is married with three children. Her husband, Mike Maxwell, is a prominent attorney in West Allis.
At least half a dozen local, black, conservative authors, including Wonder Woma - who had stood up to Glenn Grothman's attack on Kwanzaa - offered to submit contributions to the web site. Each and everyone was turned down.A quick check of the news and you see this is not just in Wisconsin where prominent republicans are scared of minorities, but it is happening nationally also. When you have someone who likes to beat the "minorities are taking over fraudulently" drum as much as their leader reince priebus does, this is to be expected.
The “American Diversity” class was taught to students at Delavan-Darien High School in Wisconsin, Fox News has learned.Of course Fox news is always available for stories like this. I am proud to say that our school district has attended the White Privilege conference in the past!
“They’re teaching white guilt,” one parent told Fox News. “They’re dividing the students. They’re saying to non-whites, ‘You have been oppressed and you’re still being oppressed.’”
The parent, who asked not to be identified, has an 18-year-old son who was enrolled in the class and became alarmed after she looked at some of the handouts provided to the students.
“I felt it was indoctrination,” she said. “This is a radical left agenda and ideology that is now embedded in our school.”
The parent said the students were taught “if you’re white, you’re oppressing. If you’re non white, you’ve been a victim.”
“since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating from individuals and groups who self- identify with the far-right of American politics.”Some of the very same people who fund these far right extremist groups also fund Scott Walker(but thats a for another post)
Written by Arie Perliger, Director of Terrorism Studies at the Combating Terrorism Center and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Sciences at West Point, the paper asserts that three distinct ideologies exist in the “American violent far right.” Those are “a racist/white supremacy movement, an anti-federalist movement and a fundamentalist movement,” the last of which “includes mainly Christian Identity groups such as the Aryan Nations.”
“Findings indicate that…it is not only feelings of deprivation that motivate those involved in far right violence, but also the sense of empowerment that emerges when the political system is perceived to be increasingly permissive to far right ideas,” it later reads.
When word of the kerfuffle began to circulate, Alexander misled the Journal Sentinel by saying there were no problems. She retracted that explanation last week, saying Dimitrijevic urged her to mislead the media.Does Alexander really expect us to believe that after sending out press releases for a year, she is suddenly unable to do anything on her own and is getting bullied by Dimitrijevic?
"I was told to send that to you," Alexander said.
Dimitrijevic disputed Alexander's remarks.
"As for any emails she's sending or retracting, I have no control over any of them," Dimitrijevic said in an email. "Supervisor Alexander writes and sends them at her own discretion."
"A friend of mine, Ben Ganther, who is a small business owner and owner of a construction company, called me up one day and said there is this bid ole statue on the side of the road for sale. It was Atlas and he had the world and it was obviously the Atlas shrugged symbol, and said you know he was thinking about buying it. I said absolutely, I will pay for half. So he bought it up right away because he is a contractor, put it up in front of his business, you know in a really nice stand with a nice little patio around it lights and he puts Christmas lights on it in the winter time. So I was proud to actually participate in that project."
Image courtesy of One Wisconsin Now |
This is the grand opening of RightWisconsin, our new digital community. Our team has created a new distribution channel for conservative ideas and a new forum for you. Unlike my radio show, we don't sign off. Unlike my TV show, Sunday Insight, we don't have a time slot.Yada, yada, yada. Like I said, they're just aggregating free stuff and hoping people will be stupid enough to pay them for it.
The conversation continues, on demand, when you want. We're here 24/7, helping rise above the mainstream media filter and providing a one-stop shop for conservatives who care about Wisconsin--which as you know, continues to be the center of the Political Universe.
Our Perspectives page is home to exclusive columns from prominent conservatives as well as new voices which you need to hear.
Daily Takes is our mega blog, which will update throughout the day with new items from our cadre of contributors.
And, I think you're going to love The Feed. It's our look at the conservative social media stream, packaged just for you. Scroll through it. Just like RightWisconsin's potential, that feature is endless.
We continue to bring you the Key Reads each day. We serve up the best takes from around the web and we'll ask you a different polling question each day.
This is your site. This is your community. Welcome.
Check us out, kick the tires and let us know what you think.
Let's roll...
-Charlie Sykes
Eschweiler Buildings |
Milwaukee County may be asked to take a haircut on the $13.55 million agreed-upon price for selling a large chunk of the County Grounds in Wauwatosa for a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee development in order to pay for preservation of the historic Eschweiler buildings, county supervisors were told Monday.The evil County Board of Supervisors, who the GMC wants to destroy, are pointing out that the developers knew what they were getting into before they made the deal and that they made a deal with the taxpayers and ought to be expected to keep their end of the bargain.
Wauwatosa City Administrator Jim Archambo said the city was grappling with how to meet a shortfall of $2.5 million to $6.55 million to restore five historic buildings on the site designed by noted architect Alexander Eschweiler. The century-old structures were originally used for the Milwaukee County School of Agriculture and Domestic Economy, and efforts to save the buildings were a key part of the sale negotiations some four years ago.
The county sold the buildings and an 89-acre parcel to a UWM Foundation affiliate in 2009 and has collected $5 million toward the purchase price so far. A second $5 million payment is due in 2014, with four additional annual payments of $887,500 made from 2015 through '18.
Brendan Conway, a spokesman for County Executive Chris Abele, said it was too early to speculate on whether the county might agree to take less money for the property.How the heck is it to soon to expect that the developers keep their end of the bargain?
Abele is third from left, happy to destroy the county grounds for his rich friends. |
Lord Stern, author of the government-commissioned review on climate change that became the reference work for politicians and green campaigners, now says he underestimated the risks, and should have been more “blunt” about the threat posed to the economy by rising temperatures.
In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Stern, who is now a crossbench peer, said: “Looking back, I underestimated the risks. The planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects are coming through more quickly than we thought then.”
hould a recently introduced bill in New Mexico become law, rape victims will be required to carry their pregnancies to term during their sexual assault trials or face charges of "tampering with evidence."
Under HB 206, if a woman ended her pregnancy after being raped, both she and her doctor would be charged with a felony punishable by up to 3 years in state prison:Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime.Sexual assault trials are infamously grueling for survivors, who are often subjected to character assassination and other attempts to discredit their accounts. State Rep. Cathrynn Brown's (R) bill would add the forced choice between prison or an unwanted pregnancy to these proceedings.
Majority Whip Erik Helland, who is on a subcommittee assigned to the controversial bill, laments over how he was blasted in a blog about the bill during the earwigged conversation. He then goes on to complain about his part in the Alaska bill:
“I’m the dirty hatchet man for the [Republican] caucus. Something nobody wants to do, some dirty, nasty job. I’m the one who gets dropped in. You know why? Because I’m expendable.”Speaker pro tem, Jeff Kaufmann, sympathizes with Helland’s plight, calling the Alaska Bill, “the crazy, give-a-handgun-to-a-schizophrenic bill.” At that point, someone – an aide, perhaps – rushes to the rescue, informing the unwitting Republicans that their off-the-cuff conversation is being overheard via a hot mic, and the conversation comes to a quick halt.
The comments by Majority Leader Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford) came as Assembly Republicans bid Rivard, a Rice Lake Republican, and other losing incumbents goodbye in the state Capitol.I hope the people in Suder's district who have daughters, nieces, cousins, sisters, etc... remember this in 2 years!
“I cannot say enough about the person you are,” Suder told Rivard. “I’m proud to call you a dear, dear friend. … You are always welcome in this caucus.”
Alas, it is true that Tennessee State Sen. Stacey Campfield has now reached a low beyond which I wouldn’t have believed even he could sink – both as an elected official who continues to waste tax dollars with his continual “stunt” legislation, as well as a human being.5a. Republican Stacey Campield hit the crazy waves a second time!
Mr. Campfield has introduced a new bill which slashes Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) payments for parents or caretakers of TANF recipients whose children fail to maintain satisfactory progress in school.
Luckily there is sanity everywhere, as a local restaurant refused to serve him!
Campfield is under fire for comments he made last week on a Sirius XM radio program. On the Michelangelo Signorile Show, the Knoxville senator said that the HIV epidemic came from a single gay airline employee having sexual relations with a monkey and that it is "virtually impossible" for AIDS to be transmitted during heterosexual sex. Experts say both of those claims are false.
The actual quote comes from Washington's address to Congress on January 8th, 1790 and goes like this: "A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a Uniform and well digested plan is requisite: And their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories, as tend to render them independent others, for essential, particularly for military supplies." Note that the quote has nothing to do with gun rights and is clearly concerns properly equipping the military.Perhaps the Barron County GOP really shouldn't have guns. They can't seem to shoot straight no matter what.
After following the site for several weeks, I have ascertained that it serves two main purposes.Now think about this for a minute.
The secondary reason they created this site is an effort to control the message. It will be a great resource for right wingers that are afraid of the real world and only want information that supports and reinforces their own skewed sense of reality. You know the type. The ones that think American for Preposterousness is really a grass roots movement or that President Barack Obama is a communist, socialist, Marxist, socialist, Nazi, space alien, baby-eating Kenyan.
The primary reason for this site is the same one that any conservative organization does anything - to make money.
With that in mind, welcome to this week’s episode in the stirring adventures of Scott Walker – the ‘truth challenged’ Governor of Wisconsin.Is there anything Walker won't lie about?
Today’s chapter involves the Curt Manufacturing Company, a large manufacturer of trailer hitches located near Eau Claire, Wisconsin where the Governor traveled last week – with news cameras and writers in tow – to make a big fuss about providing the funding that will create 125 new jobs at the company.
No problem there. Anytime a new job is created in this country, that is reason, indeed, for a celebration.
In a news release, Walker said –
This project directly creates 125 new jobs and indirectly creates 129 jobs, resulting in $12.6million in annual wages right here in Wisconsin. By providing these funds, we are bringing quality jobs to Wisconsin while improving road access to Curt Manufacturing’s expanded facility.Way to go Governor!
Via Wisconsin Journal Sentinel
And by ‘Governor’, I am, of course, referring to Governor Jim Doyle, Walker’s Democratic predecessor who is the one actually responsible for arranging the funding that created the 125 jobs.
In a December, 2010 press release (prior to Walker taking office) the Wisconsin Department of Commerce in the Doyle Administration announced that they were awarding Curt Manufacturing the $400,000 in tax credits and $11 million in tax-free bonds that would create the 125 new jobs.
It gets better. Where do you imagine this funding came from?
A transportation grant created in the dreaded Obama stimulus program-the very legislation Governor Walker never misses an opportunity to trash.
So confusing was the dog and pony show Walker created to take credit for someone else’s work, the media actually found themselves confused. Was Walker announcing 125 jobs in addition to the 125 the media knew the Doyle Administration had already created?
“That’s unfortunately not accurate,” said Jim McKissick, the spokesman for Curt Manufacturing.
When the Governor’s office handled the matter in its typically disingenuous way (pretending there was nothing to see here), Commerce Secretary Paul Jardin stepped into the breach and made the effort to explain it away by blaming the confusion on Curt Manufacturing.
Generally, the press releases or press conferences are tied around when the company wants to do something,” Jadin said. “Obviously, they want to do it with a governor present. That’s probably what occurred here.
Yes, that is probably what happened here.
Clearly the Governor was caught in an odd situation where the receiver of the grant wanted whatever Governor was in office to show up in person to highlight the good news coming to Eau Claire.
Or not – or at least not according to the president of Curt Manufacturing, Curt Tamborino.
“Walker’s office had called and said they wanted to do this final presentation with a press release in front of the media,” Tamborino said Friday.
Grant funding awarded to the city of Fond du Lac will support a project that adds 70 new jobs at McNeilus Steel.To make it even more ironic is that it is taking to bodies of government to create these jobs.
Gov. Scott Walker announced the $600,000 Transportation Economic Assistance grant on Thursday. It represents the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s contribution toward rail improvements to serve McNeilus Steel. The city will not provide funds, but will act as sponsor of the grant.
“It’s exciting news to have things finalized and moving forward and we’re excited about the support from the state,” McNeilus General Manager Greg Head said.
For the record, Ron Johnson believes affordable contraception is easily distributed over the Internet, thinks "sunspot activity" is responsible for global warming, believes the Great Recession ended before President Obama took office; and sees public investment in alternative energy as roughly the same thing as "the Soviet Union."The thing is, RoJo will gladly be the laughing stock of all of the country, because he know got a line that the echo chamber can use when they want to throw out red meat to the crazies!
They have what they want: a soundbite they can rip from context and use as a cudgel to beat the administration and Secretary Clinton with. I’m not sure if they really expect their efforts to color mainstream coverage of this story, but it’s clear that that’s what they’re hoping. They have a new “you didn’t build that,” a new “spread the wealth around,” and they’re going to wring everything they can out of it.How do we know that this analysis is spot on? Check the crazy right wing blogs that are incapable of their own thoughts.
This Koch-funded reanalysis of millions of temperature observations from around the world, “A New Estimate of the Average Earth Surface Land Temperature Spanning 1753 to 2011,” concludes: solar forcing does not appear to contribute to the observed global warming of the past 250 years; the entire change can be modeled by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic (human-made) proxy.Read the whole thing here.
State Rep. Joe Sanfelippo (R-West Allis) said in an interview that he'll still introduce a bill in about a week that will call for a later referendum and likely include a major cut in the County Board's budget.What Sanfelippo is saying to the county board is basically this, "Don't make me kill you...Kill yourself instead."
He wants the Assembly to act on the measure soon but would consider recommending amendments to the state Senate if the County Board enacts its own reforms that he considers adequate, said Sanfelippo, a former county supervisor. "I'm using the old trust-but-verify approach," Sanfelippo said. "I'm proceeding with the bill but in a way that will allow time for (supervisors) doing some things on their own.
"If they don't do it, the state's gonna do it."
[...]
Sanfelippo said another reason for backing off the April 2 referendum date was the concern that supervisor pay would be greatly reduced just one year into supervisors' four-year terms. All 18 supervisors won those terms last April. It would be unfair to chop the pay and convert the job to part time in midterm, some have argued.
Sanfelippo said he'd be willing to make some adjustments to his bill on how much the board's budget should be cut but did not suggest a different figure. He said he wants to see what the board may come up with on its own.
Abele said it was great some supervisors realized "the train has left the station, this (reform) is going to happen, that it's no longer a question anymore." He cautioned supervisors that voters expect major change, as evidenced by last spring's advisory votes in favor of a smaller and part-time board.That's a lot of bluster from a guy that just had his whole plan for usurping control of the county fall flat.
Anything that falls far short of the parameters of Sanfelippo's draft bill probably won't be viewed as sufficient, Abele said.
"The board can contribute whatever ideas it likes - the bill's going to happen," he said.
The public is tired of "half-measures," such as the board's own redistricting last year, which reduced the number of supervisors by one, to 18, Abele said.