Right Wing Blogger Mars Memorial Day With McCarthyism

The school district for West Bend is looking for a new superintendent. The old one is stepping down after having used Act 10 to drive the district into the ground and to terrorize his staff.

Judy Steffes, writing at the West Bend Insider, has an article about whether or not the three finalists to be the new superintendent had signed the petition to recall Scott Walker.

No, seriously.

No word on qualifications.  Just whether or not they signed the recall petition.

Right wing blatherer and plantation economist Owen "Old Lady" Robinson celebrates the news that none of the finalists signed the petition and calls the question an important litmus test for the candidates:

In the comments of the post at the Washington County Insider, former West Bend Mayor Kristine Deiss asks, “What has whether or not they signed the Walker recall got to do with being qualified for the job? I would hope our School Board did not ask this question.”

It’s a valid question, but it is important and I do hope that the School Board asks about it. Act 10 is the single-most important school reform in this millennium (it sure sounds impressive that way, doesn’t it?). We need to know if the incoming superintendent view Act 10 as a detriment to public education or as a tool with which to make the West Bend School District better. Given that the citizens of the district overwhelmingly support Act 10 and turned out in huge numbers to vote for Governor Walker during the recall election, a new superintendent who hates Act 10 will come in immediately out of a step with the community he or she is supposed to serve.

So yes… ask the question. Do the due diligence.

As if this display of McCarthyism wasn't vulgar enough, Robinson does it on Memorial Day weekend.

Memorial Day is the time that the nation stops and joins together in paying tribute to the brave men and women who have given their all to protect the rights and freedoms that we all enjoy today.

Robinson, of all people, being a veteran himself, should know that.

Yet here he is, demanding that a candidate to lead his community's school district have shown their fealty to the present regime.  Apparently, being qualified as an educator and a leader is secondary to needing to know whether or not they are loyal to the petty tyrant, Scott Walker.  Instead of celebrating freedom, Robinson is trying to enforce fascism.

Robinson should write an open letter of apology to the families of our fallen veterans for showing such disrespect to the sacrifices their loved ones had made for us all.  But he won't. That would require an ounce of decency.

Walker's Enemies List

Last week, I wrote about how a black Wisconsin legislator, Representative Mandela Barnes, was ousted from Scott Walker's presidential campaign announcement event.
My friend, Bert, also had a negative experience when he tried to attend the event. In his own words, as he wrote for Cognitive Dissidence:

I printed out my ticket. I cleaned up a bit and even raised my clothing game to business casual. Then I drove across Waukesha Monday to the Scott Walker campaign announcement extravaganza at the county fairgrounds. What happened once I made it to the first entrance and handed the ticket to a smiling young woman is both appalling and entirely predictable.

The flow of people from the parking lot brought me to the entrance, a temporary shade tent where attendees were channeled by tables through three lines. The friendly woman scanned the code on my printout, said okay as it beeped recognition, and then called me back as she looked at the hand-held gizmo's screen. It's been rejected, she said in a surprised tone.

Then she pointed me to the far row of tables to talk to another aide there. The young red-headed man named Nathan started punching at his pad and looking at the ticket. He wasn't resolving the rejection right away, asked for me email and then said this with his eyes on the pad: "Oh, did you sign the recall?"

"Yes," I said. "Oh, that's it then" he replied.

Others who had been behind me continued to pass through to the main building. Nathan, a cool cat for being in his early twenties, told me I could watch the proceedings from the overflow tent with the people who had no ticket or who got to the event later than me. I pushed him and then he would not make explicit that the rejection was given to any and all petition signers.

As I say, my rejection is predictable. A similar, but funnier, denial happened to Democratic state assembly member Mandela Barnes. The careful managing of a TV bite's backdrop is par for the campaign course.

I have gone to other events in the Waukesha area and seen Walker at least three other times, even chatted with his sons at a rope line once about Wauwatosa East High sports at the Country Springs Hotel. I am a former reporter and news junkie and would attend any event in my neighborhood that garners national attention. Since my neighborhood is Waukesha, though, these events tend to all be Republican deals. However, I am not surprised I did not get in to this Walker announcement Monday because now Scott is in the big time and the place was bristling with police and handlers.

Not a huge deal, then, but I bring it up anyway because it is a good reminder, on the occasion of Walker's official entrance into the presidential race, about some of the core weaselisms of a sadly craven man.

Sadly, Bert's experience isn't a solitary one.

Walker's McCarthyism has been going on for years.

Immediately after the recall election in 2012, Walker started retaliating against anyone and everyone who stood against him.

Then, using a database which included the names of all the people that had signed the recall petition, Walker and his goons started going after others, including yours truly:

As of the time of this writing, some of the first victims of the New McCarthyism includes Dane County Judge David Flanagan, who was the first judge to rule against the Jim Crow laws; UW staff and Regents; and Mary Lou Young and Linda McFerrin, officers at United Way of Greater Milwaukee.

Even yours truly isn't immune from the harassment from the right. For the umpteenth time, someone has filed an Open Records Request against me with my employer. The requester wants to see if he can find more dirt on me from the acts of retaliation Scott Walker and his minions threw at me as well as to see if I'm qualified to do my job.

I am not worried about this in the sense that they will find anything to discredit me or get me into trouble. But I do find it irritating that they will not cease in their harassment because they don't like that I speak the truth and keep exposing Scott Walker and his allies for the miscreants that they are. And yes, questioning my qualifications to do my job is nothing short of an act of harassment and retaliation.

Walker even went so far as to withdraw the name of Joshua Inglett as his nomination to the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, because he had signed the recall petition two years ago.

There is a myriad of other stories of people being harassed, threatened and intimidated by Walker and his supporters for no other reason than they signed the recall petition.

Whenever a person announces that they are running for an office at any level - even nonpartisan positions like judges or town councils - the first thing the Republicans do is run the name on the database to see if they signed the petition. If the person did, the Republicans will try to pin it on them like a scarlet letter.

Richard Nixon's Enemies List had only 20 names on it. Walker's has nearly one million and counting on his Enemies List. It's McCarthyism on steroids.

Let's just hope that we don't have to go through the embarrassment of another Nixonian presidency and Watergate (although Walkergate would be a highly appropriate name) before people realize that Walker is not fit for any office, especially not president.

(Cross posted from Crooks & Liars.)

Sensenbrenner Said What?!

Michele Bachmann (R-Batshit Crazy) has been spouting off her latest rant of right wing nuttery by making the accusation that the Muslim Brotherhood has "penetrated" the federal government.

At a recent townhall meeting, one of the wingnuts in Wisconsin's Fifth Congressional District asked Rep. James Sensenbrenner about supporting Bachmann's version of McCarthyism. His response is jaw-dropping:



Part of the transcription between Sensenbrenner and the wingnut, as well as the background story, can be found at Think Progress, which is also the source of the video.

I do believe this might be the first time Sensenbrenner actually made sense and took the correct stand on any issue. Which is probably why I have not seen this in any of the right wing blogs. Making sense and doing the correct thing is just an embarrassment to them.

McCarthyism Leads To Death Threats

Because the right wing nut jobs can't handle the fact that they can't control the people of Wisconsin, they resorted to attempting to intimidate people, including myself, with the rise of a new sort of McCarthyism.

Media Trackers, the propagandists for the Bradley Foundation and the Koch Brothers, took this McCarthyism to new heights, or to be more accurate, to new lows, by trying to demonize anyone who exercised their constitutional right of signing a recall petition.

This wave of McCarthyism was enough to prove that the end of all credibility for the mainstream media.  And what the McCarthyism didn't kill, their hypocrisy finished off.

Sadly, the predictable end result of this irresponsible behavior, fascism, has now been realized, as the right wing nut jobs have taken to issuing death threats because people stood up for Wisconsin (spelling errors theirs):

Lammers adivsed that at approximately 1:21 pm, she received an incoming phone call from an anonymous male caller.  Lammers stated that the suspect started the conversation by complaining about Rob Starbuck signing the "Recall Governor Scott Walker" petition.  While the suspect indulged in his verbal tirade, Lammers stated that the suspect stated, "he should be wearing a bullet proof vest, better yet he should be wearing it on his head," referring to Starbuck. 

Lammers express that the suspect articulated that the reason Starbuck should wear a vest was because he was going to "shoot him his head." Upon the suspect making the statement, Lammers stated that he had disconnected from the phone conversation.  Lammers advised that she was disturbed by 40 second phone  conversation, and forward the information to her supervisor Colin Benedict.

Sadly, this is becoming the norm for too many people on the right as the panic sets in that Walker is in serious trouble, both from the recall and from Walkergate.  They see that their grand schemes of ruling over the state and the country slipping away and this is their way of giving themselves a sense of control.

I hope they catch the bastard that made the phone call and hold him accountable for it.

MAL Contends and Jeff Simpson have more.

Fracturing Media Trackers' Manufactured Fairy Tales

Author's note: I wish to thank, once again, the research team at Politiscoop.com for their assistance in the research for this article.

The propagandist group Media Trackers is at it again.

In fear of the repercussions coming out of the ongoing Walkergate investigations, this group of bad actors decided to try to emulate Richard Nixon by trying to disparage the Milwaukee County District Attorney's office.

Media Hackers tried to do so by brandishing the McCarthyism that has become so popular among the wannabe bully boys of the right, and crosschecking the names of employees of the DA's Office with the recall petition database.

Before sending out a press release announcing their "breaking news,"* these sad sacks then went so far as trolling the people's Facebook pages to see what anti-Walker groups they might have joined.  That would be the cyber version of dumpster diving and stalking rolled into one.

As they had hoped, the fools that haven't figured out not to trust them yet, mindlessly echoed this noise.  Owen Robinson, who has an irrational hatred of unions, breathlessly called the staff members "activists."  Even more comical and simultaneously tragic, Mary from Freedom Eden, wants everyone fired for exercising their constitutional rights.

The real tell came from Charlie Sykes, who probably wet himself in trying to post about it, showing that this was proof positive that the Walkergate investigation was nothing but a political witch hunt.

As a late entry, James Wigderson of the affiliated MacIver Institute, was even more histrionic with his attempt to discredit the office and the investigation.  (He seems to forget to mention his own biases in his story, such as his tie to MacIver or MacIver's connection to Michael Grebe, Walker's campaign chair.)

But they have some serious problems with this line of attack.

For one, Media Hackers couldn't come up with a name closer to the Watergate investigation than a clerical staff member that works somewhere in the same unit.  They couldn't show that this person was in any way involved, so settled on their usual fallback, innuendo.

Secondly, Dan Bice, who is already aware of the poor reputation and even poorer reliability of Media Hackers, verified that none, as in not one, of the prosecutors handling the various trials signed the petitions.

Thirdly, there is nothing wrong with these people signing it if they had.  In fact, because of political bullying like these miscreants are trying to pull, the civil service code, which Scott Walker approved of, specifies that the County should not "interfere with the right of any employee in the classified service to become a member of a political club, to attend political meetings, to express his or her opinion on all political subjects, and to enjoy freedom from all interference in casting his or her vote."

So, the people from the DA's Office had nothing to do with the Walkergate investigations and even if they had, it would have been perfectly legal and ethical.

This isn't the first time this group got things majorly wrong.  During the signature gathering phase of the recall, they had "breaking video" of two teenage girls getting cigarettes for signatures, or "cigs for sigs," as they tried to call it.  Yeah, that turned out to explode in their face like a trick cigar. This stunt earned them the moniker of "Media Trackkkers," which the gentle reader will learn a little later was not an exaggeration

Brian Sikma, the face of Media Trackers, said that they did their act of McCarthyism because "“In the interest of transparency we believe the public should know about the political leanings of those who work in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office."**

Well, alrighty then.

In the interest of transparency, I believe the public should know about the political leanings of those who are involved with Media Trackers, as well as just what that group is.

Per SourceWatch, Media Trackers receives some of its funding directly from the Bradley Foundation, but gets the bulk of its funding from American Majority, which in turn gets its money from the Koch Brothers-sponsored Sam Adams Alliance.  SourceWatch also reports a strong alliance to the MacIver Institute, who gets its funding from the same sources and does the same kind of propaganda and smear jobs.

As the reader already knows, the Bradley Foundation is headed by Michael Grebe, who is also Scott Walker's campaign chair and one of his presumed handlers.  And with the Koch Brothers money funneling in, who could ever forget Walker's chat with whom he thought was David Koch.  So I guess this means that MacIver Institute and Media Trackers are siblings with two daddies.  And like many siblings, they have their sibling spats.

But remember, these are independent, fair and balanced news services!  Yeah, right.

And just like the MacIver Institute, Media Trackers is staffed with former GOP and GOP-allied operatives.

Whereas MacIver has Bill Osmulski, who actually had some journalistic experience if no journalistic ethics, Media Trackers is stuck with Collin Forth, a wanna be operative apparently still trying to earn his chops.

Media Tracker's more interesting member is Brian Sikma, the Communications Director for the group.

Brian Sikma

Sikma is quite the busy little man.

Sikma is not only the mouthpiece for Media Trackers, he has ties to a site called Hoosier Access, a political site for - outside special interest warning! - his home state of Indiana.

He also ran a blog called Reclaiming Our Heritage.  Why a Hoosier would say he knows anything about Wisconsin heritage is beyond me, but in Sikma's case, it's obvious that he knows nothing.

Sikma, or should I say, Sikkkma, really adds to the name of Media Trackkkers, when one sees his contributions to a site called White Locust.  Look at this post and that post and you will see the unbridled racism, all the way down to the tag "Anti-White Movement."

If the racism isn't enough for you, Sikkkma also has a touch of sexism.  When disgraced former Senator Randy Hopper was caught cheating on his wife, Sikma called it "ill-timed."  I'm still waiting for his explanation of when would be a good time to commit adultery.  I bet half of the Republican Party, including Newt Gingrich and Charlie Sykes, are even more anxious to hear his explanation, but theirs are for much more personal reasons.

The site itself for Media Trackers is registered to Andrew Ryun.  Ryun is co-founder of American Majority, the filter for the Sam Adams Alliance money pouring into the Media Trackers.  American Majority is a group started by the kooky Pat Robertson.  As a fun fact, Ryun, who has been trying to enact his interference in our elections from his -another outside special interest warning! - his home state of Texas.

As a side note, apparently there is a lot of hypocrisy with these groups as exemplified by this story which describes on how one of the group's Teahadist members, even while protesting the high cost of government, was trying to cash in on some herself.

As noted at the beginning of this article, a growing number of people are marking the growing hysteria from the right regarding the Walkergate investigation. So, instead of trying to defend Walker or his allies, most likely because they realize that they are in real trouble with more trouble for even more people, including Walker, coming soon, Media Trackers and their allies are trying to use McCarthyism and Nixonian tactics to smear the DA and his staff.

This malicious and transparent effort to undermine justice by attacking the DA's office and the investigation is intolerable.  The authorities need to take a look at these groups and the way they are continuing to violate their tax-exempt status.

*Because all credible news sources have to send out press releases for their news stories, right?

**Keep in mind that several Republicans signed the petition as well, so that statement is meaningless.

Jim Crow Falls, McCarthyism Rises

On Monday, voters in Wisconsin won a temporary reprieve from the onerous and oppressive Jim Crow voter suppression laws enacted by Scott Walker last year, when a second judge found the law to be unconstitutional and imposed a permanent injunction against it.

The money phrase comes from the actual ruling:

A government that undermines the very foundation of its existence – the people’s inherent, pre-constitutional right to vote – imperils its legitimacy as a government by the people, for the people, and especially of the people. It sows the seeds for its own demise as a democratic institution.

As I said above, the reprieve, as significant as it is, is only temporary.  I believe that Walker and company will not only appeal the ruling, but will try to take it directly to the Supreme Court, citing some nonsense about how it is needed in time for the upcoming recall elections.

And we all know how well things turn out in the Supreme Court of Fitzwalkerstan, where David "Choke Hold" Prosser doesn't bother reading the lawsuits, the law or the Constitution, but rather makes his decisions based on what his campaign donors, the Fitzgerald boys and the Walker administration tell him on how he should rule.

I hope that the recallers are ready to file immediately in federal court to have that act of disingenuousness turned over

But sad to say, with the falling of the Jim Crow laws, there is another disgusting relic from the past on the rise recently: a new version of McCarthyism.

To practice this art of intimidation and bullying, the right wing is using their "Verify the Vote" database from the recalls.  Whenever someone does or says something they don't like, the lemmings on the right scramble to the database to see if they signed the petition.  They then use this in an effort to intimidate their chosen victims.

As of the time of this writing, some of the first victims of the New McCarthyism includes Dane County Judge David Flanagan, who was the first judge to rule against the Jim Crow laws; UW staff and Regents; and Mary Lou Young and Linda McFerrin, officers at United Way of Greater Milwaukee.

Even yours truly isn't immune from the harassment from the right.  For the umpteenth time, someone has filed an Open Records Request against me with my employer.  The requester wants to see if he can find more dirt on me from the acts of retaliation Scott Walker and his minions threw at me as well as to see if I'm qualified to do my job.

I am not worried about this in the sense that they will find anything to discredit me or get me into trouble.  But I do find it irritating that they will not cease in their harassment because they don't like that I speak the truth and keep exposing Scott Walker and his allies for the miscreants that they are.  And yes, questioning my qualifications to do my job is nothing short of an act of harassment and retaliation.

The person who made this request is a sloppy blogger turned GOP operative named Kyle Maichle.  Maichle has worked for the Koch brothers and Herman Cain, to show you the type of person he is.  As a blogger and researcher, he has a very poor reputation.  But given his severe man-crush on Walker and his flailing efforts at besmirching people that oppose his hero, who knows what he will try in his desperation.

But I'm sure the right wing will have no problems with their harassment, bullying and intimidation of Wisconsinites.  They'll just keep telling themselves it's only fascism when the other guy does it.