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.

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.

Outrage From The Right: Justified, Selective And Hypocritical

Several of the conservatives have their outrage going on regarding a truly reprehensible post from Wonkette, in which they are demeaning Trig Palin. Their outrage is justified in that there is no excuse whatsoever to attack an innocent child like that.

However, it is also a rather selective outrage. The same people that are condemning this post are the same ones that support Scott Walker and the GOP legislators in cutting benefits that would aid thousands of special needs children across the state.  How can they be so concerned over one child, living thousands of miles away, and be well taken care of, but be so calloused to similar children in their own community both baffles and sickens me.

And to top it off, they are being quite hypocritical about how they are addressing this.  There are many who are advocating a boycott of the companies that advertise on the Wonkette site, regardless of the fact that they are using blogads which randomly put up different advertisements.  However, when the unions and pro-worker advocates chose to boycott companies that supported the Walker regime, they were called thugs and worse.

Then again, cognitive dissonance from the right is nothing new.

Hypocritical Outrage

The folks at WisDems are putting out a bumper sticker regarding Scott Walker's bungling of the high speed rail and the consequences stemming from his stupidity.

Actually, the have two. The first sticker looked like this one:

But then after it hit the Intertubes, the right, led by State Representative Robin Vos (R-Crybaby) started whining that it was violent somehow. I suppose, if you have a propensity towards violence, anything appears violent.

The Democrats acquiesced to the right's faux outrage and changed the sticker to look like this:

It definitely loses some of its impact with the change. Instead of clearly showing that it was Walker who was responsible for the lost revenue and the lost jobs, it makes it look like the train was his brainchild and that he failed to get it done.

But the real silliness is the right's hypocritical outrage regarding this. Take, for example, Freedom Eden, who bewailed the original sticker as being some gruesome death wish. However, just four months ago, when gave us the ridiculous image of him donning a pair of boxing gloves and telling voters how he was going to fight and beat Tom Barrett, who had been the victim of a vicious beating at State Fair the year before, this same blogger said that it was no big deal and that Barrett and the Democrats should have thicker skin than to complain about it.

Just your typical hypocritical outrage that we see from the right any day of the week.

Oh, and if any Democratic operatives are reading this, save me a couple of the original ones, OK?

It's An Outrage!

Heh:

Source

Where's The Right Wing Outrage Machine Now?

When it comes to law and order, the right is pretty consistent with certain themes. They regularly denounce crimes involving sex and children, they regularly blast plea deals and criminals getting off with a relative slap on the wrist, and they correctly get outraged when the perpetrator blames the victim for the crime.

They're pretty consistent with these things, so I was surprised that no one that I saw had anything to say about Donald Fleischman. Fleischman is the former head of the Brown County Republican Party who was recently sentenced for having two teenage boy runaways in his home, giving them pot and alcohol, and exposing himself to them.

Fleischman was initially charged with child enticement, exposing himself and contributing to the delinquency, but did a plea bargain to lose the felony charges. This allowed him to maintain his insurance sales license, stay off the sex offenders list, and greatly reduced any potential jail time.

Fleischman was sentenced to only a month in jail and given Huber and good time privileges for what he did to these boys.

But, in my opinion, the worst part of it was instead of offering any kind of sincere apology, he tried to shift the blame on the kids (emphasis mine):

"I'm very sorry for what I've done," Fleischman told the court. "It was unbecoming of a professional. My actions were not appropriate for someone of my stature.

"I should have called the police when those boys entered my house uninvited."

I can't think of many people, when faced with two intruders entering their house uninvited, that wouldn't automatically be calling the police. Instead, Fleischman thought it would be a good idea to give them drugs and alcohol, hide them out in various places, and try to take advantage of them. Then to blame the kids for his failure to do what any normal, responsible adult would do is beyond the pale.

It is also mind-boggling that the right wing outrage machine has been strangely silent about this whole thing. I do recall some giving a token post about it when he was first arrested, but not many, and not nearly with the same vehemence they would use if someone would do something like suggest raising a tax or something.

I guess it's just a matter of priorities.

Palin Truth? Squads

When I heard the news that there were going to Palin Truth Squads roaming the country, I got excited. I thought to myself, "At last, an organized group to go after all the lies told by McCain and Palin. Lies like the jet lie, the tax lie, the bridge lie, the patriotism lie, and all the other lies told by this group of miscreants."

Unfortunately, I learned shortly thereafter, how terribly wrong I was.

They were just another group of selective outrage professionals.

Oh, well, there is still hope.

In The Interest Of Fairness

Apparently, when I wrote a post yesterday about Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi getting married, it struck a sore spot with some people on the right. I have been accused of being a hypocrite and of having a double standard, because I had the audacity of including a clip in which Ellen Degeneres explained to John McCain how she felt not having the same rights as other Americans.

The odd thing is they seemed more outraged that I did not have a clip of Degeneres confronting Barack Obama about the same issue. This is even though no such clip exists.

I do find it quite ironic that now, the right is all for the Fairness Doctrine.

But, unlike Charlie Sykes, I won't whine about how the right is trying to shut me up. Instead, I will acquiesce to their demands by showing not one, but three different clips with Obama and Degeneres.

The first one shows that Obama has a dirty, shameful family secret:



Then we have one that comes via Brew City Brawler, showing how Obama really wants to take over the world:



And finally, another one in which Obama gets grilled over his role as a father. Please note, I think this may be where the Messiah thing got started:



There. Three separate videos. But somehow, I don't think this will satisfy the right's craving for histrionic, selective outrage.