Sheriff Clarke Makes A Joke - Of Himself

As the gentle reader has probably already heard, Graeme Zielinski, the former spokesman for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, was arrested and charged with his third count of driving under the influence.

I'm not going to defend his actions because they are simply indefensible.  He screwed up.

And predictably, the cheap shot artists and the hate-filled have been having a field day attacking Zielinski day in and day out.

With the frenzy they were working themselves into, one just knew that it was only a matter of time before one of the right wing nut jobs went over the line and made an utter ass out of themselves.

Unsurprisingly, that idiot turned out to be Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who tweeted this:

Guffaw.

It might have been funnier if it weren't for the fact that Clarke had is own little issue of driving drunk.

Then again, Zielinski might have wished Clarke was the officer that found him, since Clarke seems to have a soft spot for drunk drivers, to the point of personally trying to help them out of snowbanks.

Someone must have tipped Clarke off that he opened himself up for ridicule because he quickly reached out to Media Trackkkers and issued a "clarification":

UPDATE: Sheriff Clarke elaborated to Media Trackers on his tweet saying, “It is a common request when a Milwaukee resident is arrested in another county that they ask to serve their sentence in the county where they live.”

I got news for Clarke - it's also common that a county sheriff act with decorum and dignity as opposed to acting like an adolescent and immature bully.  

The Media Yawns

By Jeff Simpson

Recent memory shows us that former Dem Party Spokesman Graeme Zielinski compared the size of Governor Walker's legal team(much much bigger) during the John Doe Investigation to that of Jeffrey Dahmer's legal team...suggesting that while he was never charged, Walker paid a pretty penny to make sure he was never charged. The analogy was bad, the fake outrage was worse!

The mainstream media jumped on the story in pure outrage and horror, ignoring the fact that numerous politicians have used the Jeffrey Dahmer comparison to collective yawns from the media.

In the never ending quest to prove to the republican party that they are not the "liberal media" they blatantly attacked someone on the left in a huge bit of fake outrage and even carried it on, until Mike Tate unfortunately gave into the pressure and relieved Graeme of his duties.   


The same media outrage never seems to apply though to Bradley Schneider.   Schneider is a "writer"(term used loosely for the Bradley Foundations PR piece - WPRI.   Unfortunately for the people of Wisconsin, WPRI seems to get unlimited column space in our local newspapers, and if that is not enough, Schneider even gets his own column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.   

We know that Schneider has never let the truth get in the way of a good, PR piece for the republican party, and neither have his editors.   Schneider has blatantly lied about the numerous things from Wisconsin Democracy campaign to the smearing of Mark Pocan and never once been even remotely stopped by an editor.   As Bruce Murphy points out:

In the old days the Journal Sentinel would never have had a columnist who wasn’t a former journalist. Nor would its editors have signed off on a column like Schneider’s without fixing the misstatements of facts. The paper seems willing to pay any price to show its friendliness to conservative activists.

 Schneider is up to his dirty unethical tricks again.  This time he compares Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett toa psychotic narcissist character on Televisions "the Walking Dead". 

On the television show "The Walking Dead," the small zombie-resistant town of Woodbury is ruled by "The Governor," a tyrant who delivers orders to shoot any resident who escapes from the town walls. (Aside from being a fan of residency requirements, The Governor wears an eye patch and keeps severed zombie heads in fish tanks in his house — which means he and Barrett share only one of these three traits.)

 Apparently the Mayor of Milwaukee wanting his Milwaukee public employees to reside in the city that they serve in, is equal too shooting anyone who escapes from the city walls? 

That makes the Mayor equal to "the Governor from "the Walking Dead"!

Unfortunately there are  crickets from anyone who feels he goes to far.

Are Bad analogies and virtual lines in the sand are only enforced on one party in this state or has Schneider proven he is a big enough hack that no one takes him seriously anymore?   

I guess Christian Schneider has a free pass to do or smear whoever he wants, all in the name of the Bradley Foundation and the Wisconsin republican party!

 

Graeme Zielinski Leaves DPW Even More Adrift

You could have knocked me over with a feather on Friday when I saw the following email from Graeme Zielinski, former spokesman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin:

After three-and-a-half years before the mast at the Democratic Party of

Wisconsin, I'm moving on. It was one hell of a ride and I'm proud of the work I've done, both before- and behind-the scenes.

It was an honor to fight passionately, honestly and with integrity for the values I love that have sustained the state and Party I love, all during some pretty momentous days.

As my Church teaches me, the rich and powerful can fend for themselves. It is up to progressive institutions to stand up for the rest of us, and that's what I intend to do as I move forward, buoyed and strengthened by the great experience of my time with the Party.

Stay tuned and be in touch. In the immediate future, I'm working on an exciting writing project which you'll hear more about soon-Cheers, GZ .

I was shocked. I have known Graeme for a number of years and the one thing that no one could deny about him is that he is the ultimate party loyalist. I mean the man is loyal to a fault.

Now, I don't know what prompted this sudden departure and I won't pretend that I do.

However, Zielinski did post this on his Facebook page:

Friends: Not to be mawkish, but I'm facing a serious health scare. I've told some of you about it, but there are tests and MRIs and (blech) IVs and whatnot. I ask for some prayers, since this is sort of freaking me out. If you're a practicing, believing Catholic, I ask that you pray to Francis for intercession, since I've been dumping everything on him. I'm in fine spirits, etc., but let's all hope that this passes.

There are some who have speculated that Zielinski's departure is too coincidental to the upcoming party elections in which long time party head Mike Tate is facing a challenger. Friday, the day Zielinski made his announcement, was the day when nomination papers were due.  It is reported that Joe Kallas, Mike Tate's opponent for DPW Chair, had filed his papers just before Zielinksi's announcement.

There are many disgruntled Democrats who are frustrated with party leadership after losing both houses of the legislature, the governor's office twice and seats on the Supreme Court three out of four times.

There is also frustration stemming from the apparent lack of direction and lack of cohesiveness.  These issues are exemplified by things like:

• Chris Abele attacking members of the same party and financially supporting Teapublicans.
• The ongoing betrayals by Lena Taylor
• The Dirty Thirteen Democrats who voted for AB 110
• The lack of support for grassroots candidates

As I said earlier in this article, Zielinski is loyal to the Party to a fault.  The same can be said about the way Zielinski feels towards Tate.  If Zielinski thought for one second that Tate's reelection was in jeopardy, he would not leave his side, regardless of the role he had within the Party.

When Zielinski's role in the Party was diminished, the Party definitely showed the loss.  Now that Zielinski is done with the Party altogether, the loss will be even more noticeable.

But whatever the cause of Zielinski's departure, I wish him the best of luck and look forward to seeing him around for a fish fry and/or just a beer.

White Wisconsin Is On The Air

It should not come as a surprise to anyone that Charlie Sykes is a racist.  His show and his blog is full of examples of his race baiting.

Heck, he's so bigoted that he will only let the "right" conservative black writers

publish articles on his latest endeavor, "White Wisconsin."

But even as inured as we are to Sykes' race baiting and bigotry, he went to new lows last Thursday.

Image courtesy of
One Wisconsin Now

On his show, he was doing his usual race baiting, ranting that poor people might actually get a pittance each month instead of that money going to the poor corporate special interests.  After all, if groups like the Bradley Foundation isn't allowed to get all the money, Sykes and his wife, Janet Riordan - who is the director of communications for Bradley Foundation - won't get their hundreds of thousands of dollars for being good little propagandists.

But I digress. 

On his show, he played the audio for part of this song, which is called "It's Free Swipe Yo EBT."  I must warn the gentle reader that this is most definitely Not Safe  For Work.

The video is full of exaggerated racial stereotyping of black women that one would expect from racists 

Here is the transcript for the part that Sykes played for the seven people who still listen to him:

“Will the restaurant accept the EBT cards where they have food, Jack In The Box, KFC, Subway, El Pollo Loco, Rally’s Burger, most of the donut shops, and the burger stands, Woody Barbecue, R Fish Market, the beauty supply stores on Crenshaw, and Rainbow on Lebrea, you can buy you some clothes. How much you got on your EBT card?” 

“Girl,  I got enough to get turned up, and I took the kids to the baby-sitter, and which liquor store take the EBT card where you get that Patron last time?” 

“Public Service Announcement. This is where the taxpayer money goes. 

“Come to California. Free welfare, free liquor, free food!”

You can read more about the video here.

Even though it's been days since Sykes played this offensive piece of offal, there has been no series of stories by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as they did to Graeme Zielinski.  There's been no hypocritical, selective outrage from the left or the right about this, as there was with Zielinski.

In fact, the only ones to even mention Sykes' race baiting at the time of this writing is the Wisconsin Democratic Party and Zach Wisniewski at Blogging Blue.

I find this double standard very disappointing.  What is good for the goose is good for the gander.  

And as Zielinski had consequences for his ill advised tweets, Sykes should receiving consequences for this, the latest and most severe of his race baiting stunts.

UPDATE: Sykes says he'll be as racist as he wants to be.  What a classless and hypocritical fool he is.

Karma is a Bitch!

By Jeff Simpson

By now we all know what happened with Graeme Zielinski, he posted a couple tweets where he as trying to point out that Scott Walker spent so much money on his legal defense firm,  that it dwarfed the money spent by our most famous criminal Jeffrey Dahmer.   It was a poor comparison, the righties went crazy and Graeme was demoted!  

One of the loudest voices criticizing Graeme was Green Bay right wing radio sqwuaker Jerry Bader.   If you have not heard of Bader, dont feel bad most people have not.   He has never been able to break into "the main club" which consists of the right wing hate triumverate of Sykes/Belling/Pyzinski.   As a matter of fact the only time you probably might have heard of him is when he "factually" made up a story about former Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton's sexuality.   That did not work out so well for him.

So someone who has a history of saying stupid things, jumped all over Graeme's tweet and couldnt stop dancing on his "communications director grave"

This story raises an interesting point: libs are hacked off that Graeme is still drawing a paycheck. That part is really hard to figure, although I have my suspicions. I suspect a legal liability issue is keeping the DPW from terminating him, but I wouldn't go beyond that here.

I also disagree that the difference this time was the Journal Sentinel ran a story. Everybody knew about Graeme Zielinski. The difference is he offended a constituency libs are supposed to care about; the families of crime victims. Libs don't care about Scott Walker and they don't care what Zielinski said about him.

Well the little brother of hate talk radio is at it again,   This time he took time out of confessing his love for Pat Roggensack to let us know what racist and sexist thoughts were in his head!   Double Whammy!  

 "How is chess like real life?  It's better to be white and there's only one woman in the room and she get's to do whatever she wants. (belly laughs)."

Apparently republicans do not care that he offended anyone who is NOT a white male because the righties dont care about that constituency,

In jerry's defense, he is the victim here, pesonal responsibility is for the little people.

UPDATE: In an interview, he said he was being targeted for criticism because he is a conservative.
"It can't be recognized that I understand white privilege," Bader said. He added that it wouldn't be a story if liberals Bill Maher or Ed Schultz told the same joke because the media would immediately understand what they were saying.
On Monday morning, Bader spent a half-hour on his show saying he was being unfairly accused of being racist simply for mangling the joke.

Besides he isnt racist, he has a black friend( or at least he possibly once voted for a black man).

He pointed out such things as the fact that his wife is an Asian-Pacific Islander and that he once voted for Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson. He also said he exposed a Green Bay alderman who made racist remarks on the show in 2005 while using a fake name.
This isn't the first time the conservative news commentator has made headlines. In 2009, he retracted his claim that then-Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton had decided not to run for governor because of an extramarital affair. He issued an apology and served a two-week suspension.

Of course if you believe that one, I have a clean environmentally safe mine loaded with jobs ready to go in Northern WI!

The Disappearing Dems!

I wrote a post last week criticizing the Wisconsin Democratic Party for how poorly they handled the Graeme Zielinski situation.   Another post was written last night criticizing their support of labor.   With so many people taking shots at the party leadership, and with Graeme being gone for more than a week now, I thought I would check and see what their plan was with the Graeme demotion. Keep in mind Graeme was fired for keeping the democratic party and the issues of the day IN the news.

Taking a tour of the internet we see on Madison.com, not mention or story of the democrats.  Jsonline.com has a story on Tom Barrett but other than that nothing.  Remember that Mike Tate took Graeme's twitter account away from him, so what else did he have lined up to replace him on the free ever popular twitter?   7 whole tweets all week, most about Scott Walkers failed jobs promise and international women's day.   Not a single mention of the mining bill and the fact that our Assembly democrats fought so hard against!  Their facebook page and any mention of the mine?  Nope!

Apparently the party is doing so well, they do not need to reach thousands of people with free social media. I am not sure if anyone told them, but disappearing from the headlines is not a good thing and its hard to win an election as an anonymous candidate.

It appears that Mike Tate made a pitching change when he relieved Graeme, but forgot to replace him with someone to finish the game.   Unless the mine bill(which was opposed by a vast majority of Wisconsinites) was not on the party's agenda or mind this week.

The republican party has proven they are for the out of state corporate interests and have no interest in what the people of Wisconsin want.  Unfortunately as bad as they are, we do not seem to want to grab the bulls by the horn and show the people what we stand for!   

Time for the democratic party to lead, we just need someone to step up and show the people of Wisconsin, who is on their side.

Right now it is hard to tell!

Mike Tate Has Got To Go!

There has been a big dust up this week when Wisconsin State Democratic Communications Director was relieved of his duties thanks to a tweet where he compared the legal fees of our own Governor Walker to those of Milwaukee's own Jeffrey Dahmer.   Well Charlie Sykes went crazy, and local reporters picked up the story also helping Sykes echo chamber grow and grow.   Couple that with the outcry of a few self righteous democrats and Graeme Zielinski was relieved of his duties.  

Then thanks to some good research from the blogosphere, we find out that the righty's faux outrage and the reporters who rushed to judgement were just being blatant hypocrites.  Unfortunately Mike Tate took the bait, and Graeme's twitter account away.

Let's look at this story a little more in depth.  

1.  Many people have stood up for Graeme because he helped them out when they needed it.  I respect that.  However that is not me.  I do not write this from that angle, as a matter of fact, I asked for one small favor once and did not even get that. So I am not repaying a favor.  I just feel this situation was handled incredibly poorly!  

2.  I think Graeme has done many things that have deserved scrutiny and even discipline for....this is NOT one of them.  

3.  While I understand the comparison he was trying to make, it was not a good one.  Like telling a joke, if you have to explain it, it failed. 

4.  If he was NOT relieved of his duties for this one incident, then why would he be relieved so soon after it? 

5. Charlie Sykes really wanted Graeme fired.....last i checked Sykes does not run the Democratic party the way he does the republican party.  Unless we let him! This week we let him.

6.  Graeme and Mike Tate have been Synonymous for a while now and Graeme has even been known to be too zealous in attacking anyone who would dare criticize Mike Tate.  Then he got demoted.  If Mike Tate does not even have Graeme's back whose back does he have?

7.    Check the newspapers since Graeme has been relieved of his duties, where are all of these positive stories now?   Look at the state, public education is in shambles, we are about to pass an incredibly poor mining bill,  Paul Ryan wants to accelerate the end of Medicare, the Assembly is making it harder to vote, easier to lay off people and making a mockery of the democratically elected Secretary of State position.   Yet still nothing from the Democratic party. 

8.  I am sick of losing elections!


It is time for Mike Tate to tender his resignation.  We have lost seat after seat after seat under his "leadership".   The campaign for Governor in the recall election was horrible, there is no clear message to take to the people and no real interest being shown by the party to come up with one, no aggressiveness by anyone in the Democratic party, no real effort to bring a group of new blood into the fold, no one stepping up to run for Governor, there has been a complete disconnect between the party "leadership" to the grassroots(We had a tremendous amount of momentum two years ago that has all been squandered), a non-existent set of principles that they never waver from and no one who seems interested in running for Governor. 

We need some decisive action to actually win in 2014 and it HAS to start now.   Here are some of my suggestions:

1.  Mike Tate HAS to go(see above).

2.  Brett Hulsey also has to go - nuff said! 

3.  Actually get out and talk to people about what they want to see from the Democratic party.  

4.  Come up with a set of CORE beliefs that no one wavers from in the party. 

5.  Get Ed Fallone elected(when is the last time you saw Fallone in the news anyway?)!  

6.  No more consultants, no more BS and get aggressive. 

7.  MESSAGE! MEASSAGE! MESSAGE!  find your own Frank Luntz to help get it out of you need to but GET IT OUT!   We are in the minority and we need to do some things on a little more grandiose scale to get noticed by the people.  It does not have to be to the extent or tone that Graeme took it, but we need to do something!  

Finally for all of the righties who are going to be giddy about posts like this.  Graeme Actually apologized for his tweet.  When Scott Walker apologizes for wanting to bring "Agent Provocateurs" to the  Capitol where I took my 4 year old daughter and 7 year old son, then lets talk!

Dahmer, Dahmer Everywhere!

Thanks to Uppity Wisconsin where we found out that Scott Walker himself used a Jeffrey Dahmer comparison in politics. 

"The key is, we feel that in particular you are hiding behind these issues that are legitimate issues, but do not necessarily make you a legitimate candidate, any more than in the city of Milwaukee, if Jeffrey Dahmer were to stand up and talk about family values, he’s not a legitimate candidate."

For the lazy press who did not use google, we can also be reminded that Republican Senator Bob Kasten, running against an upstart candidate named Russ Feingold,  actually blamed Feingold for Dahmer!  

The 50-year-old Mr. Kasten, who has championed supply-side economics, is on the attack with a bus tour and television advertisements accusing Mr. Feingold of promoting radical plans to tax the middle class and coddle criminals. Many Grains of Salt
In a televised debate last Friday night, Mr. Kasten associated Mr. Feingold's vote in the State Senate against a no-parole bill, which was enacted, with last week's early release of Gerald M. Turner, a local convict who killed a 9-year-old girl 19 years ago. Then, over the weekend, Kasten volunteers called voters to suggest that Mr. Feingold had voted against preventing serial killers like Jeffrey L. Dahmer from receiving parole releases.

 I guess what got Charlie Sykes gander up, was that he felt that republicans had a monopoly on the Dahmer comparisons and did not like Graeme treading in their territory.  


 



I also have listed below, links to articles who, for context, included either of the above mentions in their story about Graeme.   

Graeme Zielinski: Victim Of Bipartisan Hypocritical Selective Outrage

This past Friday, the news broke that the Walkergate investigation, at least the one in Milwaukee County, was over, and that it appeared that Scott Walker was going to walk scot-free from facing any consequences for his illegal behavior.

This caused a myriad of reactions.  Predictably, the Teapublicans called it a vindication of Walker.  To do so, they had to ignore the more than a half a million dollars he spent on a legal defense fund to hire two of the leading white collar/syndicate crimes attorneys in the country.  They also had to stop believing their lying eyes which showed them the emails that Walker sent regarding the illegal politicking he was coordinating from the Milwaukee County Executive suite.

The left had a hard time dealing with the news.  We experience frustration, depression, disbelief and anger that such an injustice was being done for no fathomable reason.

Graeme Zielinski (image courtesy
of me, since I took the picture)

Among those who felt this frustration the most was Graeme Zielinski, who issued three unfortunate tweets that night.  Those tweets were an effort to point out that Walker had a legal defense team that rivaled OJ Simpson's and was far more than what one of the most notorious figures in state history - Jeffrey Dahmer- had at his disposal.

But just seeing Dahmer's name caused a knee-jerk reaction among both the right and the left.  The right started screaming with their selective outrage, falsely claiming that Zielinski was comparing Walker to Dahmer.  The fact that Zielinski was actually talking about the legal teams is irrelevant.  Why let the facts get in the way of a good round of selective outrage?

Likewise, more than a few on the left also expressed their outrage and demanded Zielinki's ouster, either publicly or privately.

The same politicians that Zielinski worked so hard for were more than willing to through him under the bus as well.

Well, now they have gotten their way.  The news broke on Monday that Zielinski was removed from his position as party spokesman and docked a full week's pay.

The Teapublicans, as you can imagine, are practically besides themselves with joy.  First Walker gets off the hook and then Zielinski gets the hook.  What more could they possibly want?

Even the ones on the left were giddy and euphoric about this turn of events.

The thing is that all this outrage, especially from the Teapublicans, is simply so much hypocrisy.*

Where was their outrage when Christian Schneider, who we already know to be a proven liar, made his comparison of former Milwaukee Brewer Prince Fielder to Dahmer?

Got that? It’s not the Senator who’s spent 18 years in Washington that’s connected to Jack Abramoff – it’s the guy who’s never had anything to do with the corrupt political machine in D.C. for the entirety of his life. This is like saying that since Prince Fielder plays in Milwaukee, he must eat people like Jeffrey Dahmer.

Nope, there was no outrage when Schneider made that comment.

And even though one could do a whole blog on Schneider's BS, he is still a darling of the right.

But that's not all.  Because, well, y'know, when it comes to anything doing with Scott Walker, there's more.  There's always more.

And this time the more is Walker himself comparing his political soul brother, David Duke to - guess who - Dahmer.  The comparison comes in at 6:15:

For those than cannot or do not want to stomach these two blithering idiots, the money quote is this:

"The key is, we feel that in particular you are hiding behind these issues that are legitimate issues, but do not necessarily make you a legitimate candidate, any more than in the city of Milwaukee, if Jeffrey Dahmer were to stand up and talk about family values, he’s not a legitimate candidate."

Yet there is no outrage at Walker either. Where are the cries for him to lose his job?

I could go on and on and on about all the vile things said by Teapublicans, like the crap from Charlie "Megatroll" Sykes, and still never run out of things to right about.

And speaking of the Megatroll, he is the first one to barge through the opening Mike Tate gave them by using Zielinski's demotion to beat on the Democrats' elected officials, like Tom Barrett.  (Note to Megatroll: The vets fund that Zielinski correctly tied you to was Walker's ersatz campaign fund known as Operation Freedom, something you and Jeff Wagner collaborated with most willingly.)

Jeff Simpson has put up a list consisting of just a fraction of the things that we could call the right out for vile comments, for which not one of them had to take any responsibility for.

I would add to Jeff's list one name: Jill Bader.  Bader was Walker's campaign spokeswoman who had made the racist tweet.  Yet not one wingnut made a complaint and she was allowed to keep her job.

In closing, I just want to say that Graeme and I have had our differences.  I don't like all of the things he's done and said.  And Graeme has made it perfectly clear to me that he doesn't appreciate all the things that I've done and said.

I do think that the Dahmer comparison was a poor choice.  He should have gone with John Gotti, the Teflon Don.  Not only is Gotti's crimes more similar to Walker, so was the way he avoided jail for so long.  And Gotti would have been much less inflammatory, although the right can get selectively outraged over anything.

But regardless of whether I agree with him or not on any given issue, and regardless of what anyone else thinks about Graeme, he's been my friend through thick and thin.  I am not ashamed to call him friend, and given the evidence above, I think he should have gotten a fairer shake.

ADDENDUM:  As others have pointed out, one of the reasons that Zielinski has been such a lightening rod isn't because he's so edgy, it's because he's so effective.

*The biggest of tips of the hat to Man MKE at Uppity Wisconsin for finding these gems.

GRAEME

By Jeff Simpson

I really tried to not get involved in the Graeme Zelinski twitter Battle, I really really did.  However, the self righteousness of the democrats and dripping hypocrisy of the right wing, along with the cowering to the right wing pressure meant that Graeme Zelinski lost his position today.

It was the wrong move, done by a party notorious for making wrong moves, and everyone in Wisconsin will suffer for the consequences.

Graeme posted a tweet comparing the Jeffrey Dahmer legal bills to the Scott Walker legal defense fund spending upwards of $500,000 to skirt charges.   Well the corporate media, lazy as ever, turned the story onto Graeme and not the fact that "son of a preacher man" is the ONLY governor in the US with a legal defense fund.  

It is beyond the pale to compare anyone and anything to Jeffrey Dahmer so Zieleinski had to go because the right wingers said so.  Thank Goodness, no one on the right ever said or did anyting stupid.


*  It is not like Robin Vos compared recall elections to having cancer right?    As a cancer survivor, that would offend me and a few million people.  If he did that there is no way the republicans would reward him with the speaker position right?

*  If Roger Rivard had ever said that "some girls rape easy" regarding a story about a 14 year old girl who had been raped, there is no way that the republicans would have supported him and cried when he lost right? 

*  Its not like radio hate sqwuaker Charlie Sykes has never libeled someone on the air right? If he had then there is no way he would be rewarded by JSONLINE with his own website!

* It is not like Graeme is  local blogger,  who advocated shooting volunteers who supported the recall effort. 

*  Its not like he is a republican senator who wants to get rid of a national holiday that many African Americans in the United States celebrate 

* It is not like he is a republican senator who went on a childish democrat name calling rant and people still pretend to take him seriously. 

*  It is not like he is a "non-partisan" independent Supreme Court Justice who sat front row and cheered said Senator's childish extreme partisan rant. 

* It is not like he seriously considered adding agent provocateurs to the protest, then refused to answer questions from the local police chief about it.   I took my 4 year old daughter and 7 year old son, to the protests, if our Governor had said that, the press would have skewered him with questions right?

Finally, I get it, any comparison to Jeffrey Dahmer should be the end of your political career.  There is no way the republicans would ever forgive this sin, so the democrats shouldn't either.

I actually agree with Robert Mentzer that Graeme has a checkered history, with much to answer for, BUT i do not agree that this is a fireable offense.  

It is too bad we allowed the right wing noise machine to set Democratic policy.   

The Right's Greatest Fear: Independent Thought

It is no secret that the right wing spends unfathomable amounts of money on "controlling the message."  They have ersatz news media like Media Trackkkers, Wisconsin Distorter and MacGuyver Institute which are daily spewing the right wing talking points and trying to support them, even when they have to make up their own facts.

This was again demonstrated over the last couple of days.

Media Trackkkers thinks they have  a real scoop by trolling the Twitter feed of Graeme Zielinski, spokesman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, pointing out to a tweet showing that Zeilinski thinks that abortion is wrong.

ZOMG!

Zielinski dared to show independent thought!  He dared to have an opinion that did not meet the marching orders of the party!  Actually, it's not that out of line.  The Democrats have long believed in giving women the choice of what would happen to their bodies.  

Furthermore, Democrats believe in keeping abortion legal and rare.  That's where education and preventative actions come in.  Y'know the things that the right opposes.

Another example is that the right wing propagandists have also did their usual practice of McCarthyism by searching the recall petitions for the names of Ed Fallone and Vince Megna.  Sure enough, they found them.

They tried to make the fact that these gentlemen signed the recall petition mean they they are somehow impartial and extremely liberal  (as if being liberal is a bad thing.)  This theme was picked up by the usual suspects such as Charlie Sykes.

They have a few problems with this approach.  

First of all, the recall was hardly strictly partisan.  I know of several conservatives and Republicans that signed the recall petitions and voted against Walker.

Secondly, if Act 10 is contrary to the Constitution as Fallone demonstrated, well, wouldn't that actually make him more conservative than Pat Roggensack who has already shown that she doesn't care what the law or the Constitution says?

Supposedly, the conservatives are pro-Constitution, although that would be a hard one to prove if one judges by their actions and beliefs.

What Fallone and Megna did is what every Wisconsinite, including Brian Sikma, Charlie Sykes and all of the other sockpuppets did - they exercised their right of democracy afforded to them by the Constitution.

For the right wingers to be so desperate to make it appear otherwise is only a sign of their fear that they will lose another statewide race.

The Daily Caller: More Media Bias

Even as I was finishing the earlier post pointing out the blatant bias and hypocrisy being spewed out by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, another example of media bias came across my desk. This time, it's The Daily Caller.

The story actually starts with the Wisconsin Reporter, who had put up a story touting Walker's exaggerated jobs numbs a couple of weeks ago. Not satisfied with hyping the hype, they then went on to misquote and misconstrue the words of Graeme Zielinski, spokesman for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

Zielinski responded to their propaganda by sending them a scathing email and advising them to stop pretending to be a news source and just admit that they're a front group for the right wing.  The poor little darlings at the Wisconsin Reporter got their undies in a bundle and wrote a whiny, fact-free piece pretending they're the victim.

Enter The Daily Caller, who jumped at the chance to defend the "independent Wisconsin news outlet."  The Daily Caller's bias quickly became evident when they referred to Zielinski as the "Democratic flack" and tried to portray the Wisconsin Reporter as some kind of trusted news source.

There are two glaring problems with both the Wisconsin Reporter's and the Daily Caller's positions.  Both involve the fact that they are telling glaring, easily-disproved outright lies.

The first glaring in your face lie is that the Wisconsin Reporter is an "independent Wisconsin news outlet."  

Both articles admit that the Wisconsin Reporter is a branch of the Franklin Center for Government and Public integrity.  That much, at least, is a factual statement.

However, I would point the gentle reader back to the piece I wrote regarding the false advertisements that were flying around during the Democratic primaries. In that piece, I wrote the following:

And this is where we go into the same sordid incestuous intermingling that the Koch Brothers are known for.

Patriot Advisors is headed up by Tim Dunn and Denis Calabrese.

Calabrese, the former Chief of Staff for Dick Armey, is also on the director of the Sam Adams Alliance, yet another Koch Brother front group and money chute. This Sam Adams Alliance also funnels the Koch dollars to other groups like Americans For Prosperity and the Franklin Center for Public and Government Integrity*.

The sharp-eyed reader might have already noticed, but it was the Franklin Center which is quoted in the anti-King flyer.

Just to be clear, the Sam Adams Alliance, Patriot Advisors and Franklin Center are all Koch-funded groups with incestuous ties to each other. One of them is using the other to justify voting for the fake Democrat instead of trying to defend the Republican and his boorish behavior or facing the consequences for his actions.

In that same article, I mentioned the article by Gene Gibbons, writing for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Again, I would point out this passage:

At the forefront of an effort to blur the distinction between statehouse reporting and political advocacy is the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, which finances a network of websites that focus on state government. This center has ties to a number of conservative organizations, including the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, whose founder is billionaire David Koch. He is a longtime financier of right-wing causes whose shadowy political dealings were highlighted this past summer in a New Yorker article by Jane Mayer headlined “Covert Operations.”

In summary, we know that the Wisconsin Reporter is a puppet for the misnamed Franklin Center for Goverment and Public Integrity, which is in turn funded by the Sam Adams Alliance, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Koch Brothers. This looks more like a money laundering scheme than an "independent Wisconsin news outlet." The Koch Brothers do not have a history of being concerned about unbiased reporting, but rather only in manipulating state and federal governments, and local newspapers, to smooth the way for them to get more money and more power.

The other blatant and egregious lie these two Newspeak operations propogate was Scott Walker's claim that Wisconsin produced half of the jobs in the country in the month of June.

Mike Rosen easily names five statesthat produced more jobs than Wisconsin. Rosen did add that Wisconsin was in another sort of rare class, but not a good one (emphasis his):

Let’s put Walker’s jobs victory dance in perspective.

Several states; Texas (+32,000), California (+28,800), Michigan (+18,000), Minnesota (+13,200) and Massachusetts (10,400) had more job growth than Wisconsin.

Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics data Walker touted, Texas was responsible for almost 200% of net job growth in June, California 150%, Michigan 100%, Minnesota 65% and Massachusetts slightly more than 50% .Nor was Wisconsin’s monthly percentage increase among the nation’s largest. Alaska experienced the largest over-the-month percentage increase in employment (+1.7 percent), followed by North Dakota (+1.2 percent), Vermont (+0.9 percent), and South Dakota (+0.8 percent).

In fact, Wisconsin was one of only 9 states that reported statistically significant over-the-month unemployment rate increases in June.

In fact, the claim was so bogus, that the erratic PolitiFarce had to point out that Walker was lying about it.

Even more telling, Walker himself had to backpedal from the claim and lie about what he had originally lied about.

Yet I saw no evidence of either of these sites reporting the retraction or the fact that Walker's facts were, in fact, nonfactual.

I can fully empathize with Zielinski's frustration. However, I would advise him not to worry about the press credentials. Groups like these two don't worry about such things, and the Republican politicians will still give them the soundbites whether they are credentialed or not.

With groups like these, you have to hit them where it hurts. Put a call in to the IRS and Department of Revenue for violating their legal status. After all, on Wisconsin Reporter's own website, they have this:

WisconsinReporter launched in January 2011 as a division of StateHouseNews. It is a nonpartisan organization, dedicated to playing the watchdog role on state government, while localizing stories to certain districts: La Crosse, Kenosha, Eau Claire, Wausau, Stevens Point, Chippewa, and Beloit.

Statehouse News Online utilizes a state-specific approach, in order to provide readers with information that is of proximate and practical interest. Interested parties can contact info@FranklinCenterHQ.org for more information.

StateHouse News Online began in June 2010 and is a product of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to promoting non-partisan, new media journalism.

I believe that this claim* of non-partisanship is easily shown to be a false claim, and would open them to all sorts of fines and penalties**.

PS: If any of my researcher friends want to look into the Daily Caller and who sponsors them, I'd be glad to do that story as well.

*I also screencapped this page for future reference, if it's needed.
**While you're at it, file one against the equally egregious McIver Institute, would ya?