But what they really hate is the uncertainty

by folkbum

Millions of small business owners may now have to fire their employees or cut off their health insurance because of an activist judge in Florida. Plus, he just blew a, what? $500 billion hole in Wisconsin's long-term budget?

Thanks, GOP.

Is it too soon to start sending bon-bons to Anthony Kennedy?

Grab the Defibrillators

By Keith R. Schmitz

This is from one researcher, and of course results may vary as the commercial says, but based on his findings, 93% of time The Wall Street Journal in their editorials miss-represents science. Can ya all handle the shock!

With objective science being so important to business success in this country, you'd think the country's leading newspaper would know better or at least have some respect for the activity. It is doubtful that the leading business papers in India and even China dissemble about this subject as the WSJ, so it is no wonder those places and others not pulled in by tethers like this are surging.

Here in this state we are on the verge of foolishly kicking embryonic stem cell research out the door.

No wait. This is a Murdock operation so when it comes to fact vs political fiction, you know where to lay you money.

Dean Yager's lecture from Ghostbusters sums up Murdock and the right wing world's approach to the discipline:

The purpose of science is to serve mankind. You seem to regard science as some kind of dodge... or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable!

You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman!

Sykes Twits Off

by folkbum

There was a time, not that long ago, when Milwaukee radio showman Charlie Sykes embraced the mantle of "alternative media," dubbing himself "the blogfather" of local conservative blogger/typists and maligning any political figure who shunned the blogs and talk radio in favor of the "mainstream media" as foolish and out of touch.

("Alternative media" of course being a relative term: If you can get through that post linked above, one, have a cookie or something, that was hard work; and two, you'll see why I resent Sykes's attempts to bogart the non-MSM label for himself.)

But it should not, of course, come as a surprise that when it suits him, Sykes is happy to use an opponent's association with bloggers and alternative media to attack, as he did by putting the twit in twitter yesterday:



Yes, at the fundraiser for Jason Haas's county supervisor campaign Wednesday, a lot of Jason's friends were there, including me and ZeeDub and capper (whose actual twitternym is @Cog_Dis)--and Chris Abele, whom I had not previously met in person. And I talked with him! As did a dozen or so other people I saw who don't, as far as I and apparently Abele's campaign know, have blogs or even the twitter. But some might! Mostly, though, they were Regular Milwaukee Folk who were trying to get involved in the local election-y stuff. Sykes doesn't even live in Milwaukee County; not only do I live here, I live in the district Jason's trying to get elected to represent!

So I am not sure what Sykes hopes to accomplish with his tweet there, especially since he never bothered to complain about, for example, Ron Johnson at "Drinking Right" with those paragons of media excrescence excellence, the afore-mentioned conservative blogger/typists that are his "blogchildren."

Actually, I am pretty sure: Sykes is simply scared that finally Milwaukee County is free from being run by a Sykes toady--and that auxiliary toady Jeff Stone will sink like one come the election, and now he is desperately scraping for any foothold he can.

FriTunes: RIP, Charlie Louvin, plus a preview of this weekend's entertainment

by folkbum

RIP, Charlie Louvin:


If you can get to Turner Hall tonight, you won't regret it:


And tomorrow night, get up the WSSS in Cedarburg for another great songwriter:


People give me crap for playing with two capos at a time. I hope that stops now.

Coincidence?

by folkbum

Barack Obama is in Wisconsin today, visiting a green energy manufacturer in Manitowoc and other locations yet to be announced, the radio told me this morning.


Also, my friend Jason Haas is holding a fundraiser for his campaign for County Supervisor tonight at Transfer Pizza, potentially while President Obama is still in the state.

Now, this surely seems like a coincidence, right? But you may have to go to the event yourself just to be sure.

He just needs the jumpsuit

by folkbum

Jack LaLanne may be, finally at 96, dead, but let us all thank jeebus that there's this guy who will save us all from, what? an asteroid? Tojo? something.

Quote of the Day: Actually, it's about Paul Ryan edition

by folkbum

Now if you happen to be operating in a low-trust environment like a prison these downsides may be small relative to the logistical hurdles involved in setting up a central bank. But if you already have a functioning central bank and a widely accepted currency, it’d be kind of crazy to give it up and revert to prison conditions.

--Yglesias, writing about how Paul Ryan (R-Galt's Gulch) wants to make America into "Oz," and I don't mean the land of Munchkins and poppies

I'm not in

by folkbum

Contrary to popular internet rumor, I have not been hired to replace Keith Olbermann at MSNBC.

FriTunes: Go see John Stano, plus RIP Don Kirshner

by folkbum

My friend John Stano is playing Saturday night (1/22) at the Coffee House in here Milwaukee. A great venue for a great performance, and totally worth braving the cold:



And RIP Don Kirshner. We can debate the merits of the Monkees, but--look over there! Bobby Sherman!

Apropos of nothing

by folkbum

This, if you must know, is perhaps my favorite paragraph in all of the English language:

He had a habit throughout the twenty-seven years of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber’s snake, could work its way through the ear down the throat, halfway to my heart. He would then disappear, leaving me choking with equipment. What I mean is, I sat down on the library steps and he went away.

MLK day and unity: What digby said, and then some

by folkbum

I literally had the same couple of paragraphs from Dr. King's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" cued up to post and comment on today, but she beat me to it:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

This is key to remember, as Obama re-stocks his key staff with other Third-Way Democrats and Clinton-era moderates. Bully for Obama--really, bully for the Congress--for nailing some key progressive legislation this last term, from the end of DADT to the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the food safety bill. But the tendency for Democrats to give in and compromise an adopt the right's rhetoric--to be the moderate Dr. King so rightly recognized as the worse enemy--is dangerous.

And digby also beats me to making the connection to the challenges public employees face. Do not forget that Dr. King was in Memphis on April 3, 1968, to support striking public workers, only to be shot dead the next morning. Reasonable Democrats everywhere--even stalwart Andy Cuomo in New York--are giving in to the right's rhetoric on the only remaining middle-class jobs outside of the clutches of Our Corporate Overlords, public employees. Rather than seeing the public sector as the last refuge of any American who wants a stable, adequately compensated job that can support a family, the left is getting set to cave and turn us all over to the oligarchs, the rich who are so desperate to avoid paying their fair share in taxes that they have turned the average citizen, not to mention the average Democratic legislator, against the people who educate their children, collect their garbage, and put out their housefires.

If this sounds over the top, it is not. Remember that no matter what the white moderates they tell you, there is an obvious and easy way to pay for the public services we all need and use: taxes. Per-capita personal income taxes are lower than they have been in generations. You have to go back almost to the day Dr. King died to get to an era when they were lower. And income tax, of course, is paid primarily by those with more income. As those taxes have declined, reliance on regressive taxes like property and sales taxes has increased. The rest of us, the ones not so rich as to be soaked by an income tax, are having a hard time keeping up with this change.

Since Dr. King's death, the real-dollar household income of the bottom 80% of us has declined. For 81% to 90%, it's been (barely) stable. For the top 10%, though, the top 1% especially, it has soared. All of the wealth created by deregulation and creative accounting in the financial services has been hoovered up from below: The top 10% of earners sucked up nearly a trillion dollars of wealth that would have gone to the middle classes if the growth trends of Dr. King's day had remained in place.

Instead, the rich got very rich. Everyone else lost ground. And rest assured, this is not because some bond trader in New York is more valuable to society than the retired teachers of Whereversville USA whose pension fund burst with the bubble. That bond trader got a bailout but the teachers are going to lose their pensions because austerity is the new American Dream.

I won't presume to speak for Dr. King, nor claim that if he were alive today he would support x or y policy. But remember what he said in that speech in support of the striking public workers in 1968:

Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.

The right and the wealthy have successfully turned this country upon itself; they have led a class war and they have nearly won. When you look at the retired teachers of Whereversville USA, and see them as the enemy and not those who have actually waged war upon you and your middle-class lifestyle, you surrender the fight, and let them keep winning.

Quotation of the Day

by bert

Not for nothing is the most repeated three-word phrase on the internet "What Digby said".

I think my favorite right wing gambit is their ability to pivot from being aggressive defenders of the right to say and do anything in a free country to a bunch of Victorian spinsters calling for the smelling salts over the ill-mannered behavior of their political opponents -- in the same day!

FriTunes: Something up for a change

by folkbum

Politi"Fact": science, women's health, and basic public services now "partisan"

by folkbum

I am supporting Jim Sullivan for Milwaukee County Executive, though this is not the way I planned to announce it (not that my endorsement carries any real weight anymore, if it ever did). I say that because the following post is in part a defense of Chris Abele, and I don't want anyone to think I am doing this out of some kind of blind partisan loyalty.

I'm doing this because the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's franchise of the PolitiFact brand is at war with truth and with public employees and letting that bias get in the way, repeatedly, of any semblance of fairness on related issues.

Today they examine Abele's claim to be non-partisan. Abele said, "I’ve worked with Republicans, Democrats and anyone who has good ideas to find solutions. And I’ve fought for our shared values without being an ideologue or a partisan." And it's true--Abele has a history of playing well with members of this community on all sides of the aisle to make Milwaukee a better place to live and work.

He's a Democrat, no doubt, and has a history of supporting Dems financially (including, ironically, Jim Sullivan). But identifying with one party is not the only criterion for being labeled partisan, and certainly doesn't prove Abele's an ideologue.

But, oh, does PolitiFact try hard to make it so! Despite a lot of fevered rhetoric, when they start citing specifics, the needle moves toward true: the bulk of his charitable money goes to arts or no-brainer efforts like fighting cancer. His announced positions on County issues are hard-right (and this is part of why I don't support him)--gutting employee contracts, ignoring the public will on a parks/transit sales tax, and more. I personally have problems with his support of for-profit education enterprises and a mayoral takeover of MPS.

But here's what really pisses me off about the story: In trying to decide what's "progressive" or "liberal" or ideologically "left" or whathaveyou, they offer this kind of BS (my emphasis):

[Abele's family foundation] has funded progressive social causes such as Planned Parenthood, homeless prevention, global warming, alternative energy and the Wisconsin Citizen Action Fund, the sister organization of group representing a coalition of labor and social justice causes. [. . . S]ome of Abele’s rhetoric seems designed to reassure progressives--suggesting we can protect services even in the county’s time of fiscal peril.

Yes, you're reading that right: PolitiFact is here suggesting that such things as scientific truth (global warming and alternative energy), women's health, helping the homeless, and providing basic public services like parks and transit are "progressive" now. Unbelievable! Science is not a party, the homeless are not a political movement, taking care of each other is not ideological.

It is remarkable to me how far off kilter our political discourse has become that a self-appointed arbiter of truth, like Politi"Fact," can not only ascribe a partisan orientation to such things, but then use that to call a complicated and inscrutable figure like Abele a liar.

Added: xoff sees other problems with PolitiFact today.

Collage

Can we all at least agree

by folkbum

that by now Sarah Palin has thoroughly made herself unelectable?

Right Wing: I'm the Real Victim Here

by bert

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is on tape from last spring agreeing with an interviewer that Sarah Palin's crosshair map is troubling. Her office was vandalized. A protester brought a gun and dropped it at a Giffords appearance in Douglas, Ariz. last August. Her campaign opponent Jesse Kelly ran an event "to get on target" and "remove Gabrielle Giffords from office" that attracted people by offering them the chance to fire M16s.

Then Mrs. Giffords was shot in the head.

I didn't like this kind of crap before, and I like it even less now. I guess I am heartened that the right wing suddenly believes in intellectual rigor and making careful distinctions. We've all been lectured about blame and told the suspect Jared Loughner did not actively conspire with any of the folks they always defend no matter what.

Whatever. The fact remains that Mrs. Palin and all the goons mixing politics with gun play should be ashamed of themselves. I'm talking about decency, not blame. And I don't care if stating the obvious hurts their feelings. They don't get to be the victims right now.

The Shooting

by folkbum

I don't have a lot to add that hasn't already been said. In cases like this, the more important factor is always that the shooter seems to be a plain-old nutjob, not a ___-wing nutjob (with the blank being right or left). From the distance of a couple of days now, it seems that there is no connection between the shooter and the kind of eliminationist rhetoric that is real and exists and literally targeted Gabrielle Giffords last year. That's just a gut-wrenching coincidence. This shooter is just plain stoner-crazy. Based on the kinds of things on his youtube channel (and that he seems to believe a lot of the same things as this Milwaukee man), we're deep into Time Cube kinds of insanity, not partisan meanness.

But I do have to wonder: If Congressional elections were to be held two months from now, instead of two months ago, would Sarah Palin have released a map with Congressional districts in gunsights? (And they were gunsights--Palin admitted as much last year.)

If the debate among candidates for chair of the Republican National Committee were held this week instead of last week, would Grover Norquist still have asked the candidates how many guns they own?

If the "tea party" movement started today, instead of two years ago, would they proudly bear signs and wear t-shirts proclaiming, "We came unarmed--this time"?

If Sharron Angle were a candidate for Senate this year instead of last year, would she still tell a radio audience that people who disapprove of their government may have to resort to "second amendment remedies"?

Again, there is obviously no connection between any of those things and what happened on Saturday. But all of these people, in retrospect, must be feeling incredibly sick and guilty about what they have said. Or at least, they ought to be, if they are remotely human.

Thank jeebus that political assassination in this this country is rare. However, I think it is that rareness itself that allows people to shrug off violent rhetoric and imagery from candidates, campaigns, media figures, and elected officials. It's all fun and games and metaphor--until someone gets shot in the head. Again, there is no reason to believe any of those things made the shooter do what he did, but this is the time for reflection. Does it help, does it do any good, does it add one positive ounce to the universe to run around spouting that kind of violent rhetoric and promoting guns? Think about Gabby Giffords--no, better, think about Christina Taylor Greene.

Lyrical Love RIP edition

by 3rd Way

tons o' guns

by guru

"tons o' guns everybody's getting strapped
tons o' guns got to watch the way you act
tons o' guns real easy to get
tons o' guns bringing nothing but death
tons o' guns are in the streets nowadays
it's big money and you know crime pays
check your nearest overpopulated ghetto
they greet you with a pistol not trying to say hello"

...

"tons o' guns but i don't glorify
'cos more guns will come and much more will die
why, yo i don't know black
some mother&$#!'ers just be living like that"

Quotation of the Day

by bert

From Robert Reich, of all people:

"If you widen the lens, the public is being sold a big lie -- that our problems owe to unions and the size of government and not to fraud and deregulation and vast concentration of wealth. Obama's failure is that he won't challenge this Republican narrative. . ."