Favre Traded To The Jets

JSOnline is reporting that the Packers have confirmed that three time MVP Brett Favre has been traded to the New York Jets.

The Green Bay Packers have issued this statement:

"Brett has had a long and storied career in Green Bay, and the Packers owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude for everything he accomplished on the field and for the impact he made in the state. It is with some sadness that we make this announcement, but also with the desire for certainty that will allow us to move the team and organization forward in the most positive way possible.

"We respect Brett's decision that he could no longer remain here as a Packer. But there were certain things we were not willing to do because they were not in the best interest of the team. We were not going to release him nor trade him to a team within the division. When Brett ultimately decided that he still wanted to play football, but not in Green Bay, we told him that we would work to find the best solution for all parties involved. We wish Brett and his family well.

"We appreciate the tremendous passion shown by our fans. We, like them, always will see Brett Favre as a Green Bay Packer and our respect for him never will change. Moving forward, we are dedicated to delivering a successful 2008 season for all Packers fans."

The Jets have there own statement here.

I'll write more on this later. Right now, I'm feeling more than a bit queasy.

The Election System Works, Conservatives Outraged

JSOnline is reporting that a number of voter registration cards produced by ACORN were fraudulent.

Predictably, the conservosphere is in an outrage, demanding to know why the heck we don't have Voter ID. I won't give you a link, because then whoever I link to will only whine that I'm picking them out. And to link to all of them in the outrage cloning tank would just take too dang long. So just go to any of the conservosphere's bloggers, and you'll find one version or another of the same song and dance.

Anyway, the righties claim that this is just more proof for the need for Voter ID. But they are ignoring a few facts, because that would deflate the good pout they got going for them.

One is that ACORN is the one that pointed out the flawed cards and turned in the bad people. From the article:

ACORN found the problems and fired a dozen workers, Castore said. But under state law, all of the voter registration cards had to be turned in to the election commission, even if they were clearly fraudulent or incomplete, Edman and Castore said. So ACORN sent in the cards but flagged the fraudulent or incomplete ones, they said.

Two, as Cory at One Wisconsin Now points out, the numbers are relatively small in the grand scheme of things, and the fraudulent cards were picked out right away and the system is still intact.

Three, all of the fraudulent registration cards were found without the need for one picture ID.

Good For What Ails You

Heh, someone used the following on a Google search, and ended up here:

bush derangement syndrome medicine

I guess that means if you're deranged like Bush, Cog Dis will cure ya.

You Stay Classy, John McCain

No other commentary necessary:

Obama Leads In The Polls

Despite all the concern trolls on the right that wonder why Senator Barack Obama doesn't have a bigger lead in the polls, the AP-Ispos shows that Obama is doing just fine, considering it's still early in August, and McCain has been desperately trying to smear Obama, even though McCain cannot come up with one substantial attack that doesn't backfire on him.

From Yahoo News:

Obama is ahead of his Republican rival 47 percent to 41 percent, The Associated Press-Ipsos poll showed. The survey was taken after the Democratic senator from Illinois had returned from a trip to Middle Eastern and European capitals, and during a week that saw the two camps clash over which had brought race into a campaign in which Obama is striving to become the first African-American president.

McCain, the senator from Arizona, is leading by 10 points among whites and is even with Obama among men, groups with whom Republicans traditionally do well in national elections.

Obama leads by 13 points among women, by 30 points among voters up to age 34, and by 55 points among blacks, Hispanics and other minorities, the poll shows.

Even McCain's lead among white men is not something that McCain rest easy about. The erudite Brew City Brawler, citing a piece from TPM, points out that Obama is doing more than alright among working white voters, leading McCain by 10 percentage points. Brawler continues citing TPM:

In an even bigger shocker, it turns out that Obama's advantage is partly driven by the fact that he's better on an issue of importance to these voters: Health care. Seven in ten working class whites polled say government should focus on getting people like them health insurance they can afford, a key Obama position.

If this poll is accurate, McCain is dramatically under-performing among these voters. Will we be hearing a "McCain's working class whites problem" meme anytime soon?

Maybe McCain might want to hold onto some of his air gauges. He may need them when he is working at the gas station to work off that big gift that he got from Big Oil.

Le Snark De Triomphe De Paris

The Hilton's donate thousands of dollars to McCain's campaign, and he repays them by running what he calls a "funny" advertisement, belittling Paris Hilton. That says a lot about what kind of leader he would be, doesn't it. Sort of "Hey, thanks for the help," before stabbing someone in the back. It also shows that McCain has all the maturity of someone a tenth his age.

Kathy Hilton expressed her displeasure on the way McCain abused their daughter's celebrity status:

"It is a complete waste of the money John McCain's contributors have donated to his campaign," Kathy Hilton said. "It is a complete waste of the country's time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States."

Today, Paris Hilton did her own smackdown back at McCain with an answering video:

A description of the ad from the AP article goes as this:

Hilton's rebuttal includes plenty of humor at McCain's expense.

An announcer calls him "the oldest celebrity in the world, like super-old, old enough to remember when dancing was a sin and beer was served in a bucket," and asks, "but is he ready to lead?" Hilton's spoof also intersperses images of McCain and Yoda from Star Wars and the cast of television's "The Golden Girls."

And if it wasn't bad enough that McCain got punked by Paris Hilton, his campaign spokesman shows how clueless they really are by saying they're in agreement with her.

Think about that for a moment. Someone calls his campaign a joke, and his campaign agrees. Yet people still seem to support him. Of course, there is still what, 18 % of the people that support George Bush.

And that isn't the only bad news for Camp McCain, where the snafus and flip-flops never end. It was reported today that Camp McCain could also be sued. It appears that they never had permission to use her picture, which violates "right of publicity laws."

So, with one ad, McCain has managed to show that he has no judgment, no loyalty, no class and not even a clue.

Meet And Greet For Southern Suburb Democrats

For those that are in US Congressional District, here is your chance to meet the candidates that are vying for the chance to face Paul "How the hell do you fold a road map" Ryan. From the inbox:

JOIN US IN TAKING BACK THE SOUTHERN SUBURBS FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

FRANKLIN, GREENDALE, GREENFIELD, HALES CORNERS, OAK CREEK, SOUTH MILWAUKEE

MEET THE CANDIDATES

For U.S. Representative from the 1st Congressional District

A Political Forum Will Be Held On

TUESDAY AUGUST 5, 20086:00 p.m. To 8:15 p.m.

FRANKLIN PUBLIC LIBRARY

9051 W. Loomis Road In Franklin

Hear The Democratic Candidates For U.S. RepresentativeFrom The 1st Congressional District
AGENDA

6:00-6:30 p.m. – Meet And Greet The Candidates

6:45-7:00 p.m. – Opening Remarks By The Candidates

7:00-7:45 p.m. – Written Questions From The Audience

7:45-8:00 p.m. – Closing Remarks By The Candidates

8:00-8:15 p.m. – Meet And Greet The Candidates SPONSORS

The Southwest Regional Democratic Organization Of Milwaukee County

Are We To Expect More Shootings?

Right now, our economy sucks. I don't care how much the conservatives point out that we're not technically in a recession. The economy still sucks, with literally tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people losing their jobs, losing their homes, and wondering what they will do.

It is common knowledge that poor economic times causes increased violence.

The shooter in Knoxville was unemployed.

The shooter in Niagara was unemployed.

There are what seems to be endless shootings in the poorest neighborhoods of the country.

Should we expect these horrific shootings to continue, and maybe even increase, while the economy continues to sour?

And McCain doesn't want to change a thing, if he was elected?

Talk Radio-The Conservative Version Of Rap Music

A week ago today, tragedy struck a church in Knoxville, Tennessee. A man, armed with a shotgun and a fanny pack full of shells, entered the church while children were giving a musical concert and opened fire. Two people were killed and several others were injured.

I had pointed out what I still consider to be a very thoughtful post by grumps, and had left it at that.

Initially, after the shooting, it was immediately known that he had targeted the church because of their more liberal teachings, including a tolerance and acceptance of homosexuals. It was later learned that the shooter was also an avid listener and reader of conservative ranters like Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

Bloggers and talk radio have been going on about the shooting and the findings most of the week. Even the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel picked only two blogs for today's Best of the Blogs, one from James Rowen and one from Rick Esenberg, to highlight the two sides of the issue.

They're both correct. And they're both wrong.

This guy obviously wasn't mentally stable to begin with. Reports indicate that he had a poor work record and couldn't hold down a job. Whether the mental imbalance led to the poor job record, or the poor job record led to the mental imbalance is not known. Regardless of how the causal relationship goes, talk radio did not cause his anger at the world. But it did definitely give this guy a focus for his anger.

Talk radio has continuously put the blame of every woe known to man on liberals, Democrats, or anyone that doesn't conform to their way of thinking.

Gas prices too high? Blame the Democrats, ignoring the fact that the Republicans owned the White House and both houses in Congress for six years and did absolutely nothing.

Having a hard time making ends meet? Blame the Democrats for raising your taxes $12 dollars, while ignoring that electricity, natural gas, health insurance, etc. have gone up exponentially every year, with the help of both parties.

The list goes on.

So, here we have a guy with either a mental illness and/or unmanageable stress being told that liberals are to blame for all of his problems. Is anyone really surprised that when the guy did snap, he went after liberals?

There are two real ironic twists from the right regarding this. One is that they are more than willing to through Michael Savage under the bus, in order to defend the likes of Charlie Sykes, Mark Belling, and Rush Limbaugh, who are no better than Savage. So much for their sense of loyalty. It's only a matter of time before the others get thrown under the wheels, one at a time.

The other irony is that every time, every single time, that there is a shooting or other violent crime, the right is awfully quick to blame rap music and video games. Sorry, folks, but you can't have it both ways. Either both talk radio and rap music have an influence on people's behaviors, or neither do.

As for me, I'm in with the "both" crowd.

This Will Settle The Patriotism Question

In response to several left wing bloggers pointing out that McCain wasn't wearing a flag pin on his lapel, and questioning his patriotism, McCain made a recent appearance showing who the real patriots are:






H/T to Just Ain't Right

Who Needs Kwalificashunz?

Swiped from lolcats.

Let Them Pass It On

While writing the previous post about the ongoing search for a decent fish fry, a thought occurred to me.

Whenever someone from the left points out that part of the problem with the taxes in Wisconsin is the fact that the businesses aren't paying their share of the burden, someone from the right would argue that they would only pass that tax along to the consumer by raising their prices.

That is a straw man argument. Look at the fish fry business. The cost of fresh fish went sky high. Serb Hall decided to pass that cost along to the customer, and their business has dropped dramatically. Other restaurants chose to either eat the cost, or only pass on part of the cost, and they're still doing a considerable amount of business.

So if a company wants to pass the cost of higher taxes on, let them try. There will be other companies that won't, or at least not to the same degree. If they want to lose customers to the smarter business, that is their choice.

And at least this way, the customer will have a choice on who gets his or her business. That option isn't available under the conservatives' way, when everyone gets hit by having their taxes go up.

The Search Continues

A couple of months ago, I wrote about Serb Hall and their sudden and drastic decline in quality and affordability. We haven't been back since then.

Last night, my family and I decided it was time to find a new place for our beloved fish fry. The first place we thought we'd try was Meyer's Restaurant & Bar. We had heard good things about it from many different people. While it wasn't all you can eat, we were told they do serve seconds on request, so we thought that was worth the try.

When we arrived, we could tell it was very busy, which was promising. I dropped my father and wife off at the door and went to park. When I got in, my wife told me that there was a twenty minute wait. So I thought I'd use the time constructively and went to the host station to get a menu to look at. While there, I looked around and my heart sank.

By far, the majority of people their were senior citizens. I know this is stereotyping, and I apologize, but it has been by experience that as people get older, they don't tolerate a lot of spice or seasoning. I became concerned that the food would be generic.

Our wait was much less than the twenty minutes, and we were seated at our table. Our waitress, was nice enough, but it appeared that she was so rushed that the service was a little sloppy and impersonal. She served us rolls, which were supposed to be rye, but it was so light that we thought they were whole wheat. Then she brought out a bowl of potato salad, bean salad, and cole slaw. All three came in small metal bowls, while probably a smart idea as they don't break and clean easily, reminded me of dog food dishes.

The salads and slaw were OK, but nothing very special.

She then brought out the fish. It was all I could do to bite my tongue and point out that we didn't order any appetizers. Each plate had three small, and I do mean small, pieces of fish, and our choice of potatoes. Each piece of fish was about the size of a large fish stick. I noticed that there were no lemon wedges to squeeze on the fish, which is the way I prefer my fish fry. I asked her for some, and she brought out a plate containing three wedges that were each about one sixty-fourth of a lemon.

I also asked her for seconds right away, as did everyone else. After a quizzical look at us, she said she would get them. It took her very little time to get them, but we were still finished with the first plate when she came. There were two more fish sticks for each of us. Oh, boy.

The fish itself was OK, but again, rather pedestrian and plain.

We decided without any hesitation that we would be willing to try Meyer's again, but definitely not for a fish fry.

The search continues...

If It's Not One Thing, It's Another

Late Thursday evening, as everyone knows, Blogger had a bit of a problem. It shut a lot of bloggers out of their sites, some for more than a full day. Of course, at least some on the conservative side of the blogging world immediately saw it as a massive conspiracy to shut them up.

Um, no. It was a technical glitch my the good people at Blogger. I happened to be writing a post at the time that it happened. I just went to bed and completed it in the morinig. Annoying as it was, it really was no big deal. At least to most people. Some bloggers, usually on the right, still want everything for nothing.

Then, sometime late Friday afternoon, Microsoft and Sitemeter decided that they didn't like each other. Internet Explorer wouldn't open any site that had a Sitemeter configuration on it.

Again, panic struck the blogosphere. Based on a tip from James Wigderson, I simply deleted Sitemeter and decided to worry about it later. Today, IE again works fine on the blogs, but still doesn't want to go Sitemeter's site itself. I'm sure that will be worked out in due time as well. So, for the nonce at least, Sitemeter is back and running, but if I want to access it, I need to go through Firefox.

Yeah, I might have missed a few hits, but given that it was late on Friday night and a Saturday morning, normally slow times anyway, I don't really think I'll lose any sleep on it.

UPDATE: Even as I wrote this, the problem appears to be solved and IE and Sitemeter are once again fully compatible.

But it is interesting to see how people will react to a little inconvenience from services they receive for free. Imagine if they paid for the stuff...

Saving Danieal Was Just Too Much Trouble

There was a story from JSOnline' AP feed, regarding the tragic and completely avoidable death of Danieal Kelly. Danielle was a fourteen year old girl that lived in Philadelphia. She was allowed to die through malicious neglect. Nine people have been criminally charged with her death, based on an investigation and report by a grand jury. Four of the nine are social workers. Two were from the Philadelphia Department of Human Services and two were from a private contracted agency.

Danieal was killed by her mother's willful neglect. At the time of her death, Danieal weighed only 42 pounds, suffered from starvation and dehydration, and had maggot-infested bedsores that went to her bone.

Via the website Philly.com, I was able to find the grand jury's report (pdf, 258 pages). (Warning: The report contains graphic photos, including at least one from the autopsy.) The report reveals a long history of ineptitude and unethical behavior by the governmental social worker and his supervisor, including the falsifying of official records to cover up their failures.

The report points out that the private agency was even worse, with the case worker being known for falsely billing the government and failing to follow court orders for the level of supervision needed. His supervisor knew all this and still called him one of her best workers.

I was sickened by what I read.

This poor child not only had Cerebral Palsy and was for the most part defenseless, but she had to go through being psychologically tortured. She had to watch while her mother openly showed favoritism towards her brothers and sisters, was denied food and water, and watched as her mother wouldn't even allow one of her sisters to call for medical help when she was dying. Her father knew what was going on and did nothing. At least three friends of the family, who also have been charged, knew about it, and not only did they do nothing, they even lied to try to cover for the mother, up to the day before the girl died.

And I can only imagine the psychological scarring the other siblings must have from watching their own mother treat their sister like that. This will affect them the rest of their lives. The article doesn't say, but I certainly hope that those children are all being offered counseling.

So, what does the death of this girl in Philadelphia from two years ago have to do with Wisconsin or Milwaukee? Judging by what I read, their system of child welfare sounds awfully similar to the the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare. The BMCW is a state-operated system, with government workers taking the referrals, doing the investigations and then passing the cases off to private agencies, just like in Philly. The private agencies are to manage these ongoing cases under the watchful eye of the BMCW, again like in Philly.

The BMCW has had their share of problems as well. Many children have died, and no one is ever held accountable. And every six or twelve months, a report is issued that states that the BMCW is not doing their job adequately, and the director of the program, Denise Revels Robinson, tells the papers, the courts and everyone else that they are aware of the problems and are taking steps to address them. Then everyone, satisfied, goes back about their business until the next child dies or the next bad report comes out. Then the whole cycle is repeated.

Even the board that was created to keep a watchful eye on the BMCW has been failing in their job. Board Members often don't attend meetings, and some have not been to one single meeting.

I don't know for sure how we fix this problem. I do know that we need to start holding these people more accountable, both on a personal level, like they did when charging the workers in Philly, and on an agency level. Right now, there is too much leeway for the State and the private agencies to point fingers at each other without either of them really being held accountable, and the board that is supposed to help guide the whole shebang is AWOL. They also need to have people on the board that are willing to invest the time and energy needed to make the system work as well as it possibly can.

We, as a society, also need to do better. We need to make sure that these workers have the tools they need to get their jobs done the way they ought to be done. And when there are people that do want to do the right thing by the children, we need to let them do so without interfering or putting up roadblocks.

We need to stop worrying as much about what it would cost to do the right thing, and worry more about what it would cost not to do the right thing.