RoJo: The Teleprompter Set Me Up!

 After Felon Trump got his ear nicked on Saturday, the Republicans decided to make the theme of their national convention unity.  You know, regular kumbaya stuff.  Of course, unity and peace are such foreign concepts to the Republicans that you just knew that they wouldn't be able to pull it off.

And sure enough, on Monday night, Senator Ron Johnson, our dumb senator, blew it immediately when he gave his hate speech attacking Democrats and the LGBTQ+ community:

When asked about what happened to the unity, RoJo immediately blamed it on the teleprompter:

NEWS: I asked Wisc @SenRonJohnson about him calling Democratic policies a "clear and present danger to the country" while calling for unity - he says speech he just delivered at RNC was not the one he intended to give, that prompter loaded old version, new one called for unity

— amna (@IAmAmnaNawaz) July 16, 2024

He then doubled down on the lie by saying that someone didn't enter the revisions he made to his speech, thereby confirming he originally wanted to give the hate speech:

 

I wonder if RoJo would also blame his teleprompter for the op ed he wrote, which was published Monday morning, in which he not only blames Democrats and the LGBTQ+ community, but also displays his racism and anti-Semitism for good measure:

Make no mistake, the current Democratic Party bears little resemblance to that of my parents and grandparents. The Democratic Party of yesteryear cared about workers and people struggling to get by. Today’s progressive Democrats divide our nation with open borders, identity politics, critical race theory, transgenderism, and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children. Their massive growth of government with all the deficit spending it requires, combined with their insane war on fossil fuels, has put achieving the American Dream out of reach for too many of our fellow citizens.

[...]

Unfortunately, Milwaukee suffers from many of the problems experienced by other large cities that have been governed by progressive Democrats for decades. George Soros-backed radical left District Attorneys refuse to prosecute crime, which only encourages more crime, endangers citizens, and causes businesses to shut down, resulting in economic blight. Public schools are failing inner city children, denying them the education and skills they will need to lead successful lives. Even worse, instead of focusing on education, radical leftist teacher unions ensure our children are indoctrinated with their divisive ideologies of class and social warfare. 

The progressive Democrats’ open border policies will only exacerbate big city crime and education problems. Resources that could otherwise be used to address those issues will be diverted to deal with the illegal immigrants flooding into Democrat-run sanctuary cities. Human, sex, and drug trafficking facilitated by the progressive Democrats’ open border will plague our society far into the future. Foreign terrorists and members of some of the most brutal gangs from around the world have taken advantage of the porous border. America will be the recipient of Venezuela’s emptied jails and mental institutions. 

RoJo is simply incapable of unity.  All he can do is hate anyone and everyone who is not a white, conservative, filthy rich man. Which is also most of the GOP when you think about it.

Wisconsin's Very Special And Meaningful Independence Day

As the gentle reader already knows, Thursday was the Fourth of July, Independence Day.  It's the day the country sets aside to celebrate the birth of our country with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

However, in Wisconsin, the party started a little earlier.  

On Wednesday, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jacob Frost ordered that Wisconsin workers are once again free and independent, when he found that Act 10, Scott Walker's attack on public sector workers and their unions, was unconstitutional, which is something that we had been saying all along:

The lawsuit argues the 2011 law violates equal protection guarantees in the Wisconsin Constitution by dividing public employees into two classes: "general" and "public safety" employees. Public safety employees are exempt from the collective bargaining limitations imposed on "general" public employees.

"Rational basis review provides a simple premise. Can you explain a law’s differing treatment of different groups in a way that makes sense and supports a public policy? If not, the different treatment is irrational and violates the right to equal protection of the laws. Because nobody could provide this Court an explanation that reasonably showed why municipal police and fire and State Troopers are considered public safety employees, but Capitol Police, UW Police and conservation wardens, who have the same authority and do the same work, are not," Frost wrote in his ruling.

"Thus, Capitol Police, UW Police, and conservation wardens are treated unequally with no rational basis for that difference. Act 10 therefore violates their rights to equal protection under the law and I declare those provisions of the Act relating to collective bargaining modifications unconstitutional and void."

The Republicans were besides themselves, accusing Frost of being an "activist judge," and complaining how it was held up by the Supreme Court through several challenges.  What they forget to mention is that those supreme court justices who went along with it were beneficiaries of the same dark money groups that the other Republicans were and were just as corrupt. 

Exactly what parts of Act 10 are going to be struck down is yet to be seen yet.  Judge Frost has ordered both parties to submit letters to address this:

Frost concluded his order with this: "As my decision appears to resolve all issues, I order the parties to file a letter or memorandum to the Court as to whether the Court should issue judgment on the pleadings in light of this Decision or take some other action to bring this action to a final judgment. As part of that discussion, Plaintiffs should address what sections of Act 10 must be severed and struck under my ruling and Defendants shall respond on this issue as well."

No matter what the end result, the biggest thing is that it opens the door to better things, including people being able to go to work and knowing that they will be going home again, unlike the way they are now.

To make things even sweeter, it means the end of Walker's legacy and probably the end of any further political aspirations he might have had.

Act 10 Has Been Very, Very Good To Me - But It Can Go Away Now

Act 10, Scott Walker's legacy legislation attacking public sector unions is being challenged again in the court system.  There's a very good chance that that unconstitutional law will finally be put out of our misery, especially now that justicehas been brought back to Wisconsin with the election of Justice Janet Protasiewicz.  

Right wingers, knowing that a major key to their reign of terror is about to end, are in a panic.  Their propagandists are spewing their thoroughly debunked numbers of how much money Act 10 allegedly saved, although Scott Walker testified, under oath, that Act 10 had no fiscal ramifications whatsoever.  

But, having been a Milwaukee County employee for over 24 years, I have a slightly different perspective than my fellow union members or from the right wing nut jobs.

Milwaukee County has a policy called the Rule of 75, which means that when a person's age and years of experience totaled to 75, they were eligible to retire with full benefits.  However, the Rule of 75 did not pertain to union members represented by AFSCME.  

When Walker and his fellow Republicons rammed through Act 10, the Milwaukee County Executive Chris "Walker-Lite" Abele immediately turned around and said Milwaukee County was no longer recognizing AFSCME and that considered its members to be non-represented employees.  

But by virtue of doing so, he automatically made 1,100 workers, including myself, eligible for the Rule of 75.  

Abele and the county board tried to deny this simple fact, which led to eight years of court battles between AFSCME and Milwaukee County.  Ultimately, the state supreme court sided with AFSCME, in a decision written by Rebecca Bradley - yes, THAT Rebecca Bradley!

Thus, five years ago today, I punched out for the last time, seven years ahead of when I was supposed to be eligible for retirement, as a Milwaukee County employee and have been enjoying my retirement ever since, along with our three dogs.

But that said, Act 10 has done a lot more damage than good.  Two very recent examples include the multiple inmate deaths at Waupun prison and the murder of a youth worker in Lincoln Hills.  And that's doesn't even include the Scottholes all over our roads, the soaring overtime costs in almost every department, the decrease in services that people depend on, and - well, this list is almost endless.

So, all in all, while Act 10 helped me and some of my coworkers out, it's long past time to finally get rid of that law that should never have been in the first place.

The David Chokehold Prosser Law Library Gets Major Upgrade

Another great injustice has been corrected by the new and improved Wisconsin Supreme Court. The Wisconsin state law library is not named after the state's first woman attorney, Lavinia Goodell. From 2016 until now, the law library was inappropriately named after the infamous former Justice, David Prosser. Predictably, the name change caused faux outrage among the current and past fascist members of the court:

There was no apparent opposition within the court to honoring Goodell, but there was not unanimous support for removing Prosser's name from the law library. "There are many ways to honor Lavinia Goodell, which is entirely appropriate, without dishonoring a lifelong public servant like Justice David Prosser," Chief Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday.

As for Prosser himself, he was less outwardly outraged, but did prove that he was the same old liar he has always been:

"I was a person, for 18 years, who probably used the library … as much as anyone, and more than a lot of people," Prosser said, adding that he has continued to support the library financially since his retirement. When the library was named for Prosser, then-Chief Justice Patience Roggensack said, "no justice has been more dedicated to the research that happens in the law library than Justice Prosser."

Those claims of being a patron of the library sure as hell weren't true in 2011, when Prosser issued a legal ruling regarding Act 10 and open meeting laws, without "apparent deliberation or research of the laws. Prosser must be really seething that "his" law library was named after a woman, given his long history of misogyny. In 2010, Prosser got in trouble for threatening then Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson:

The Feb. 10, 2010, incident occurred as the court privately discussed a request to remove Justice Michael Gableman from a criminal case. "In a fit of temper, you were screaming at the chief; calling her a 'bitch,' threatening her with '. . . I will destroy you'; and describing the means of destruction as a war against her 'and it won't be a ground war,' " [Justice Ann Walsh} Bradley wrote in a Feb. 18, 2010, e-mail to Prosser and others.

But there's more. There's always more. I would be grossly remiss if I did not include the incident in which Prosser assaulted Justice Ann Walsh Bradley and put her in a chokehold:

It all started when the story was finally brought out that Justice Ann Walsh Bradley accused her fellow Justice David Prosser of choking her. What earned her his wrath and alleged attempt of dispensing corporeal-bordering-on-capital punishment was telling him to leave her chambers.

For any of these examples, Prosser should not have even been allowed to stay on the Court, much less be honored by naming a building after him. The significance of what the liberal justices were doing was not lost on them either:

"Lavinia Goodell was a pioneer for Wisconsin women and the legal profession," said Justice Jill Karofsky in a statement. "She never backed down from this critical fight, which paved the way for so many women in our state who have proudly served as lawyers, judges, and justices." When people enter the library, Protasiewicz said in a statement, "they need to know they are somewhere named after a leader who inspired others to do good and do what is right."

Every time that SCOWIS corrects another wrong, it's like another breath of fresh air blowing across the state.

Charlie Sykes Criticizes Trump For Acting Like Sykes

When one deals in politics long enough, you come to expect hypocrisy and outright lying from right wingers.  But sometimes, they take it to such extremes that even the most hardened are left with their mouths agape. Charlie Sykes reached that plateau on Friday morning when he made an appearance on Morning Joe to discuss Donald Trump's dissing of Milwaukee:

 

Sykes actually had the audacity to say this:

This was probably not the most significant thing. But this is going to stick. It's going to stick around here. You know that it's going to be mentioned every single day, if not every single hour, during the RNC convention here in Milwaukee. 

I will tell you one caveat, that one of the things that, you know, the Trump Republicans are going to try to do is they're going to try to divide the rest of Wisconsin from Milwaukee and say, yeah, you know, Milwaukee is this terrible thing and have other people in Wisconsin, you know, go along with that kind of view. I don't think that that's going to work because, and I think you touched on it, cities like Milwaukee have a great deal of pride, but they also have a chip on their shoulder. They have a little bit of a sensitivity to this sort of thing. 

You know, back in the 1950s, you know, when the Milwaukee Braves defeated the New York Yankees in I believe was the 1957 World Series, remember the there was there was a lot of sort of sneering about Milwaukee, you know, being, you know, being in a small town and Milwaukee's resented that. Right. So Donald Trump has messed with a city that, you know, we may here in Wisconsin be willing to criticize ourselves and, you know, talk about the problems they have, but we don't need Donald Trump coming in and dumping on on a city that we love and that I think is going to really shine next month.

Even more amazing was that Sykes said that with a straight face. 

What makes it so breathtaking in its hypocrisy is that Sykes spent over 20 years ripping on Milwaukee day in and day out while he was a squawk radio host in Milwaukee for WTMJ-AM and on Sundays when he hosted a TV show on TMJ4. He would rip on everything fromm the city's infrastructure, such as the Deep Tunnel project which helps abate some of the raw sewage runoff into Lake Michigan, to smearing and even libeling local elected officials, like inferring that then County Executive Chris Abele was a pedophile. And he did that after getting his employer sued and nearly losing his job for committing libel against a community activist. Sykes, along with fellow squawker, Mark Belling, have been credited for the ultimate demise of Northridge Shopping Mall through repeated criticism of alleged crimes, lack of security and various racebaiting statements:

...“Sykes is credited with, among other accomplishments, having blocked public funding for needle-exchange programs and having helped drive into bankruptcy an urban mall after harping on security issues there.” Sykes disputes the second part of this sentence, a reference to the closure of Northridge Mall in 2003. But he was credited for contributing to the mall’s woes, by a former Milwaukee County supervisor, Democrat Jim McGuigan, who wrote in a 2006 blog post that “for me and many of my neighbors the reason for Northridge malls demise has a great deal to do with talk radio show host Charlie Sykes personal harangues against security at the mall and implications that black kids at the mall were creating an unsafe environment.” 

[...] 

I reached McGuigan late last week and asked him whether he stood by that assessment and he said he did. “Charlie was one of the big people who were railing on Northridge Mall. I’m sorry if they don’t want to take credit for damage they did—too bad, too sad,” he said. “We don’t have a mall there because they were screaming about [security].”

In fact, Sykes' racist attacks led to the ongoing "white flight" Milwaukee has seen over the years. Likewise, Sykes's reckless rhetoric only fed into the anti-Milwaukee attitude that Republicans have fostered in the rest of the state, painting Milwaukee has a wild, crime-ridden city and feeding into their own racist phobias they already have against Black people and other minorities.

Woman Fired Twice By The State Now Running To Be A State Rep

 

Milwaukee County Supervisor Deanna Alexander, a Republican, is reporteddly running for State Assembly.  That's a pretty gutsy move for a woman who was fired from the state not just once, but twice.

In 2016, Alexander was fired from Economic Support for using her position to get favorable treatment. She was late in getting her renewal for child care in and trying to use her position to have it bumped up instead of waiting in line like everyone else would have to do.

Somehow, she managed to then land an $86,000 a year job as a section chief overseeing parts of the Milwaukee County Child Welfare System (foster care).  She was fired from that job in 2018 for illlegal politicking.  She was helping a woman run her campaign while she was on the state clock.  

It's more than a little ironic that she would get fired for that by Scott Walker, since that is how he got elected and stayed in office.

But there's more.  There's always more.

Alexander is running as an independent for the state rep position. That is because then she can bypass that pesty primary business and wait until November before losing.

However, it is amusing that Alexander keeps applying for all these other jobs and running for all these other seats.  She must not have been happy about the consequences of voting to cut her salary as a county supervisor in half.  Poor widdle diddums.

Virginia School District Can't Quit Their White Supremacy

The school board in Shenandoah County, Virginia, did the right thing a few years ago by trying to catch up to modern times by losing the Confederate names to their schools. It was more than their feeble minds could handle.

Mountain View High School will go back to the name Stonewall Jackson High School. Honey Run Elementary School will go back to the name Ashby-Lee Elementary School. 

The board stripped their names after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, fueling a national racial reckoning. The calls for racial justice and equity inspired some communities to remove Confederate symbolism and statues of Confederate generals. 

But in Shenandoah County, the conservative group Coalition for Better Schools petitioned school officials to reinstate the names of Jackson, Lee and Ashby. “We believe that revisiting this decision is essential to honor our community’s heritage and respect the wishes of the majority,” the coalition wrote in an April 3 letter to the board, according to a copy posted online. The board considered a similar motion in 2022, but it failed because of a tie vote.

So they're claiming that their heritage is white supremacy? Pretty soon their heritage will be unemployment. The only thing shocking about this story is that Rick Esenberg and WILL weren't involved.

Eric Hovde: The Ultimate Carpetbagger

Pornstache Carpetbagger

Everyone knows that Eric Hovde, aka Pornstache Carpetbagger, is really a Californian banker.  He lives in Laguna Beach, California and was awarded Citizen of the Year in Orange County for three years running. 

But apparently, old Pornstache is such a carpetbagger that he might not even be from this country.  Take for example, via Heartland Signal, a few days ago when he tried to pretend to be a Wisconsinite by going to the Slinger Speedway.  After giving a short speech of monolistic jingoism - America is great. Yay. - he wanted to lead the crowd into a rousing rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance.  But as soon as he started, you could see his mind blank out and he started looking like a deer caught in the headlights.  And it only got worse from there.

He even got help and he still could get it right!

But wait! There's more! There's always more!

When his totally ineffective spokesperson, Ben Voelkel, tried to do damage control, all he could do was point and yell, "Squirrel!"

Hovde's campaign spokesman, Ben Voelkel, responded that President Joe Biden is also known to stumble over words and phrases, including while on the campaign trail in Wisconsin.

Voelkel added that the media should instead focus on other things: "Families are struggling to afford groceries, terrorists and hundreds of thousands of criminals pour into the country illegally, mortgage rates are almost 8 percent, and leftist anti-Semitic protests rage across college campuses."

I wonder, is Hovde a Russian name, perchance?  I don't know, but given the stilted way he tried to be All American Guy and not being able to recite the pledge even with help, I'm no longer sure Hovde is actually American.

Everything Old Is New Again

 In breaking news, The Onion has just been sold and will be soon returning to its former glory.  

It's just another example of how things come around to a full circle.

Another example is that I am back home, at long last. 

I started this blog some 15 or so years ago.  Then I got invited to write for Crooks and Liars, an opportunity I eagerly accepted.  I thought I could manage both blogs, but with me retiring, Jeff passing away and other parts of life getting in the way, it turned out to be too much. 

But things change, life moves on and, well, Whallah!, I am back.  Oh, I'll still be writing at C&L as long as they will let me, but I will be able to spend more time here as well.  

Anyway, while I've been gone, there as been some marked improvements in the state, with the most notable being the election of Justice Janet Protasiewicz and justice finally returning to Wisconsin after all these years.

However, there is still a lot more work to do and it's not going to do itself.  Yes, there's more.  There's always more.

So, what do you say, gentle reader?  Shall we roll up our sleeves and get to it?  

Propagandist Dan O'Donnell Pulls Out A Big Nugget Of Hypocrisy

Dan O'Donnell, squawk shock jock at WISN and propagandist hack for the MacIver Institute, followed orders, dug deep and pulled out a big, old nugget of hypocrisy as he tried to spin Tuesday's election results as a win:

Wisconsin voters spoke loudly and clearly Tuesday, striking a blow for democracy by forever banishing private money from election administration. Such donations, commonly known as “Zuckerbucks,” led to an utterly lawless 2020 presidential election in Green Bay and the illegal coordination between liberal activists and Milwaukee election officials. On Tuesday, however, voters approved a pair of constitutional amendments that will prohibit this sort of interference. The first, which bans private election funding, passed in a 54%-46%, 100,000-vote landslide. The second, which reaffirms that only election officials (not liberal activists hired with private donations) can administer elections, passed with an even greater margin—59%-41% and nearly 200,000 total votes. The most likely reason for the nearly 100,000-vote discrepancy between the two was the confusing wording of the first ballot question, which prompted many voters to believe that voting “no” would have banned private funds. Despite that, the fate of Zuckerbucks in Wisconsin was never really in doubt.

Now, we all know that in reality, the results of those amendments means that elections will continue to be underfunded and understaffed, meaning having to travel further and to stand in longer lines in order to vote. In other words, they are trying to make it more difficult to vote, especially in more liberal communities and in minority communities. The Republicans are hoping that this will keep people from the polls, because, as we all know, when more people vote, Republicans lose. 

 But that's not the hypocritical part. That comes from as a side comment from Dan Bice:

One Republican insider noted that Vos helped push through "two election integrity referendums that address the thing his haters say he refused to address." He got a helping hand from the conservative MacIver Institute and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which combined to spend more than $100,000 on the proposals.

You read that correctly. 

The amendments passed because of more than a $100,000 being laundered from outside special interests and used to interfere with an election. And one of those money launderers is Danny Boy's own employer, MacIver. Of course, Danny Boy doesn't mention that tidbit. Telling the truth is not his job. In fact, it's anathema to what he gets paid to do. 

And as added bit of irony, the same people that were touting the passing of the amendments are also the ones whining about a late batch of absentee ballots in Milwaukee that helped pass an education referendum. Wait until they realize that this will become more and more of the norm due to their amendments. 

Just don't hold your breath for the Republicans to fix another mess they made.