Quote of the Day - Badger's Edition

From Kieth Crum, a friend on Facebook:

I'm not pissed that Kentucky beat Wisconsin in the Final Four; I'm pissed that Kentucky beat Wisconsin in implementing Obamacare.

So true, my friend. So very true.

I Need A Favor!

By Jeff Simpson

I am a member of the parent's advisory committee and also someone whose children has benefited greatly from Camp Kesem - UW and they need your vote.  It only takes a few seconds, and you can only vote once.  


 Please go here and vote for Camp Kesem - UW Madison.


They have a chance to win $10,000, which will help send kids to their free summer camp. 

 A little About Camp Kesem:

Camp Kesem UW-Madison is a college student run summer camp for children throughout Wisconsin with a parent who has, or has had, cancer. This free, week-long summer camp is offered to children ages 6-16. Lead by college students, Camp Kesem is a national organization with 54 chapters across the country. Camp Kesem UW-Madison has grown from serving 16 campers to 120 campers in just four years. They strive to provide each camper with a supportive, lifelong camp community that recognizes and understands the camper’s unique needs.

Camp Kesem UW-Madison reaches out to local hospitals and related organizations to find families that would benefit from their services. In addition to the week-long summer camp, Camp Kesem UW-Madison provides year-round support for the campers and their families, including hosting camp reunions, sending birthday and holiday cards, and providing extra support to the families when needed.

If they won Sentry’s $10K for a Cause, Camp Kesem UW-Madison would put the money directly into sending kids to camp. As the only national organization serving kids with a parent affected by cancer, Camp Kesem UW-Madison understands that when cancer strikes, the whole family is affected. To provide camp for 120 kids, Camp Kesem UW-Madison raises nearly $70,000.

Also if you know someone who has or has had cancer, and has children,  PLEASE give them this information

For inquiries about Camp Kesem, please contact us at
info@campkesem.org  or (260) 225-3736 / (260)22-KESEM
For fundraising inquiries, please contact us at magic@campkesem.org

If you know someone who is currently attending UW-Madison - send them this link! 







Thank you!  I appreciate it, and so do they. 

Happy New Year!  

Jeff 

Is Walker Looking Too Far Ahead

This came through to me via Facebook:

Gee, why do you think Walker dropped the "for Governor of Wisconsin" line?  He's already gearing up for his presidential run when he hasn't even won reelection as governor.  Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

Knot Their Facebook

Most people who have a liberal or progressive leaning and are on Facebook have probably heard of the group called Knot My Wisconsin.  They are a group of extreme right wing nut jobs that are so fearful of the truth that they have made a gang of bullies that have learned to game the system on Facebook, getting people suspended or even completely kicked off of Facebook.

Here is a blurb of one of the stories of one of the knotsies' victims:

Yesterday, I got logged out of Facebook and when I tried to log back in, I was informed that some content posted on a political satire page, which I launched but haven’t touched in a year, violated Facebook “Community Standards” and therefore I am being banned for 24 hours. This means I can log on to Facebook (though not on my phone), check and send messages, but I cannot post anything. Shortly after, I received an email from a person with whom I ran that political satire site. He was banned from Facebook for even longer than I was. Much longer. This makes little sense unless you take the bigger picture in consideration:

There are these two women in Wisconsin. One’s name is Stephanie and the other one, we’ll refer to as “X”. They, with help from others, run some of the most popular political news Facebook pages on the left side of the political spectrum in Wisconsin. All in all, over 100,000 people reportedly follow these Facebook pages, where readers can find the latest political news about Wisconsin, and political humor (not all of it in good taste). Since the beginning of the Wisconsin Uprising in February 2011, the co-admins of these websites have been engaged in a silent warfare with the right-wing “Knots” as they are sometimes called, a group formed originally to support Governor Scott Walker during the period leading to and including the failed attempt to recall him from office. Knots, in turn accuse the left-wing Facebook site publishers of trying to do the same thing to them, which is to wipe them out of existence. The fact that both sides call the opposition “trolls” only serves to muddy the waters and to rally supporters.

What is it that these Knots do to take down progressive pages? They find ways to attach themselves to various protest sites – become fans, leave comments, share posts, become friends with the page administrators, if it all possible, and then report some or all of the content produced and shared, to Facebook claiming that this content violates Facebook’s “community standards”. Facebook asks some qualifying questions and then issues a decision, but what has become evident, is that Knots gained an upper hand by figuring out how to navigate Facebook standards in order to effectively shut down progressive news pages, affecting how tens of thousands of people receive information and communicate with each other.

All of this may seem somewhere between “someone else’s drama” and “geek warfare”, but I find the situation deeply disturbing.

And then the author goes why this is actually important:

From a distance this may seem to be nothing more than a social media tiff gone too far, easy to ignore because it’s “just Facebook”, but this would be wrong. What is happening with Facebook bans does matter, and not only because people have a right to express themselves. For better or for worse, Facebook is a private company, and from the financial point of view, it is only their stockholders who suffer from the damage caused by a group of political activists exploiting Facebook “community standards” in order to gain advantage over their political enemies. Facebook management who has to be aware of this situation, may consider it to be nothing more then cost of doing business where from their point of view the benefits of deleting most questionable content and banning users indiscriminately, is better than risking turning off the advertisers who are the ones paying the tab for the whole enterprise. Welcome to Capitalism 101, right?

However, what our political leaders need to remember is that Facebook and other social media outlets are the Grassroots and this is how the information is relayed these days. If these grassroots are damaged or disappear, at some point in a not-too-distant future, when our leaders will need the support of the people, they may not have an important opportunity to communicate, engage and motivate their supporters if pages such as “I will get more “Likes” than Scott Walker” and others, are gone.

The knotsies have attacked both my personal page and the Cog Dis fan page. I'm sure that this will inspire them to attack again. If you get a chance to read this before the knotsies attack, make sure you book mark the site and/or follow me on Twitter at @Cog_Dis. They might be able to put a temporary gag on us in one place, but they sure as hell ain't gonna shut us up.

Facebook Goes To Iowa, Wisconsin Not A Contender

An alert and quite irate reader notified me of this story about Facebook deciding to build a $1.5 billion data center in Iowa:

Facebook is planning to build a $1 billion data center project in Altoona, Iowa, that will cover 1.4 million square feet and serve as what the company says will be “the most advanced data center in the world.”

The article reports that it was down to Iowa or Nebraska. No mention of Wisconsin ever being a contender.

Why not? Where was Scott Walker and his Economy Destroying Cronies?

Reading the article can give us clues why. For example, the second paragraph (emphasis mine):

The Des Moines Register, quoting sources in the state legislature, said the data center, code-named “Catapult,” will be built in two $500 million phases. When completed the total cost of the data center is expected to hit $1.5 billion. As part of the deal, Facebook is also seeking wind energy production tax credits that would require legislative action.

Oops. That could present a problem when we have cartoon caricatures like State Senator Frank Lassee, who has a severe phobia of windmills.

Reading on, we find another hang up:

The Register reports that the Facebook facility will be located in what is being called a “data center corridor,” due to its access to an extensive interstate fiber-optic cable system that is already installed within the city and running along Interstate Highway 80. It is in proximity to adequate power and water utilities. Land is affordable and has low natural-disaster risks. It is accessible to interstate highways.

Oops. They did it again!

Thanks to Walker's myopia, Wisconsin lags in the area of broadband availability and speed:

A lack of reliable and affordable broadband service in many areas in Wisconsin is hampering the ability of individuals and businesses to capitalize on new technologies, the chief executive of the state's economic development agency said Thursday.

Wisconsin ranks 22nd among states in average broadband speed and 26th in adoption of broadband service faster than 4 megabits per second, according to new figures from Akamai Technologies, a Cambridge, Mass., firm that tracks global broadband trends.

The article doesn't say, but I would hazard to guess that Walker's insipid postings about getting hot ham and rolls on Sundays or Tonette's chili also only served to shoot our chances down.

Solidarity Fish Fry Week 4

As promised last week, we are going back for our fourth helping of Solidarity Fish Fry.

There might be some local celebrities there again this week, besides Randy Bryce.

But also come prepared.

I am hearing that management is again going to be playing around with the availability of union waitresses.  And since old man Tom Miller has been snooping around me, I wouldn't be surprised if he is up to something.

Just stay calm, stay polite and stay firm.

If the wait is too long, or if there are no union waitresses available at all, feel free to leave.  Just make sure you let management know why you're taking your business elsewhere.

One fish fry longer, one fish fry stronger.

In Solidarity and tartar sauce, we'll be there around 6:30 or 7.

And in case you somehow forgot, we will be at Serb Hall, 5101 W. Oklahoma Ave, Milwaukee, where the management has made the very poor decision to try to bust the unions.  Instead of causing a ruckus, we are showing support for our union brothers and sisters by having a fish fry - served by union waitresses - and a nice cold beverage of your choice, whipped up by a union bartender.

Oh, and another last minute tidbit, Serb Hall is now on Facebook.  Go ahead and give them a like...as long as they stay a union shop.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Lieutenant Governor

Unbelievable:

Cheap and trashy is no way to go through life, much less be a lieutenant governor.

Thompson's Got More Than Money Problems

It's been noted that Tommy Thompson has been absent from the campaign trail and is hardly running any ads. Pundits have put this on the fact that Thompson's campaign doesn't have a lot of cash left after a grueling primary. In fact, Scott Walker and Mark Neumann have both sent out email blasts in an effort to raise funds for him. And in the near future, Paul Ryan will be making one of his rare public appearances to help raise funds for Thompson's campaign. Betcha it ain't gonna be anywhere near the $2.8 million he raised to bolster the ticket he's dragging down, like Romney really need any help doing that.

But Thompson is going to need more help than just money.

Reminiscent of the Great Twit-Off between Walker and Neumann, Thompson has taken to desperation and is begging people to like his Facebook page:

Thompson is currently sitting at 19,578 "likes." If you subtract reporters and lefty bloggers looking for fodder, that number would probably drop to about 17,500. And if you take out paid Koch/ALEC employees and campaign staff, he might, just might, still be in double digits.

This is not surprising, since we know that he started out unpopular and has been losing ground ever since, as it becomes more obvious that he is not really interested in being the people's senator.

And for what it's worth, Tammy Baldwin is currently at 27,626, showing she is far above Thompson in more ways than one.

Just To Set The Record Straight

Swiped from Facebook:

Welcome, New Readers

I thank you for stopping by and hope you'll come back to keep up on all the news of the recalls and the aftermath.

You can also follow me on Twitter here: @Cog_Dis

I'm also on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/chris.liebenthal

Here's to a lovely, progressive future together.

The Great Twit Off: The Facebook Round

In honor of Cory Liebmann's original look at the Great Twit Off between the two major Republican gubernatorial hopefuls, I thought it would be interesting to look at how they are doing on Facebook.

Last week, Scott Walker tweeted a boast of how he added 1,000 friends on Facebook in one day:

That's pretty impressive, I have to admit. I won't even cheapen this feat by posting the porno-spam pictures that was on his Facebook page either.

But even as impressive as that might seem, he is only up to 3,142 at the time of this writing. That's not so good considering how long he has been running for governor.

In contrast, Mark Neumann, who only entered the race about six months ago, is doing so much better that he sent out a press release regarding this:

Reaching a significant benchmark today, the Mark Neumann for Governor campaign announced that it now has over 5,000 supporters on its Facebook fan page, which can be found at http://www.facebook.com/strongwisconsin. The Neumann campaign is the first of the Wisconsin gubernatorial campaigns to reach this goal.

At the time of this writing, Mark's numbers are actually much better than advertised and he is currently at 5,843.

For kicks and giggles, I thought I'd check out Tom Barrett's gubernatorial page. He only announced his candidacy a couple of months ago, and he is already ahead of Walker as well, and is currently at 3,777.

It appears that maybe Scott Walker is having a hard time getting his message out. (Does he even have a message?) Or, probably more accurately, he is getting his message out, and it is being roundly rejected by the people of Wisconsin. They can see what he's done to Milwaukee County and see through his lies and deceptions, which does not bode well for him at all.