If embattled WI Governor Scott Walker can’t win fair and square at the ballot box in the now all but inevitable recall election he faces—WI Dems are making a big announcement on Thursday about the recall campaign’s progress—then why not try something immoral and shysty?

I’ll tell you why NOT, Scott: It makes people hate your fucking guts even more and it makes them all the more determined to kick your ass to the curb. 

For every story of voter suppression and menacing of Recall Walker volunteers by brain-addled reichwingers, there are more people making up their minds by the minute to boot this toxic motherfucker out of office.

It’s odd that it didn’t occur to to Walker and his weasely Republicans cronies that this kind of story might prove to be a bit of a public relations NIGHTMARE and that there would be push-back—and plenty of it—with this sort of extremely ill-advised move. From People’s World:

For more than 60 years Ruthelle Frank has not missed an election in her town, her state and her country. She first voted in 1948 and has voted in every single election since then.

She is herself an elected official in her hometown of Brokaw, Wisconsin. She is a member of the Brokaw Village Board.

Now, however, because of the new Republican voter ID law in Wisconsin, 2012 will be the first year Frank can’t vote.

Under the new law people must carry a new state issued photo ID in order to vote. The ID itself is free but one must have a birth certificate in order to get the free ID. Birth certificates, for those in Wisconsin who don’t have them, cost $20. Opponents of the Republican voter ID law argue that this, by itself, amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax.

Frank’s first problem is that she does not have a birth certificate. People born at home in the 1920s in Wisconsin did not receive official birth certificates. Like many others in 1927, Frank was born in her own house.

The ACLU have stepped in on Ruthelle Frank’s behalf to challenge this vileness in court.

WHO would think something like this is smart politically??? Well… Republicans apparently. If you can’t beat ‘em, CHEAT ‘em.
 

 
Taking current GOP front-runner, Newt Gingrich—and his plan to put inner city children to work as janitors—to task, Crooks and Liars managing editor Tina Dupuy writes of her own experiences working as a child janitor for the princely wage of $4.25 an hour (she made $75 a week before tax!). As Dupuy writes, it’s not that America’s poor children need jobs to discipline them and to make them better workers, it’s that the jobs need to be better for America’s adults!

Full disclosure: I, too, worked as a janitor at a municipal park in West Virginia at the age of 14 and made this exact same wage. I don’t really think it harmed me in any way. In fact, I wanted to do it so I was able to buy punk rock records, marijuana and LSD, but that’s not the point here: It’s that apparently Newt Gingrich thinks that America’s adult workforce should be competing with their own children for jobs that pay a third world wage.

Why isn’t it being framed like that in the media? It seems so obvious, doesn’t it?

You’d have to be a fucking Republican to believe such nonsense…

Now 49 million Americans live in poverty – with 2.6 million falling into the category last year. That’s 16 percent of Americans. There are more Americans living in poverty than there are Canadians on the planet.

Gingrich is trying to equate poverty with a moral shortcoming. It’s a warped offshoot of the prosperity gospel – riches are a sign of god’s love – poverty is a sign of his indifference.

But also in this richer-and-therefore-holier-than-thou diatribe of Gingrich’s is an attempt to bust unions. He suggested firing union janitors to hire children to clean their own schools. Yes, a janitor with a job that pays him enough to live on is, in Gingrich’s eyes, a problem. In the call for hiring children and ending child labor laws is the call to end working for a living.

All the anchors of a middle-class living (pensions, benefits, decent salaries) are being dubbed “luxuries” by Republicans, to be sacrificed so magical “job creators” can be cajoled into saving us all.

Because, really, the greatest threat to America is that janitors are paid too much. Please. Wealthy janitors are, to borrow Gingrich’s phrase, “an invented people.”

Gingrich has a dark vision for a Shining City Upon a Hill: where poor children work in place of union labor. It’s basically the 20th century played in reverse.

Working (even scrubbing toilets) should mean making a living. If someone who works is still eligible for food stamps and government assistance – it’s really the employer who is federally subsidized. These “job creators” are taking advantage of government programs so they won’t have to cut into their profit margins to pay living wages.

The best example of this is also the biggest private employer in the country: Walmart.

If Newt and his Republican same-thinks want to go after Welfare Queens and those who don’t value work – go after the Walmart heirs. According to economist Sylvia Allegretto in 2007 the six Walmart heirs own more than the bottom 30 percent of Americans. And that was four years ago when their wealth was estimated at $69.7 billion, now it’s thought to be around $93 billion.

KA-POW. ‘Nuff said.

And this evil piece of shit is the Republican front runner!

On point, it’s hardly because GOP primary voters are rejecting Mitt Romney for a more conservative candidate: They just want someone MEANER!

Confessions of a Child Janitor (Crooks and Liars)
 

 
Wisconsin Tea party favorite, Sen. Ron Johnson, defended his vote against raising the minimum wage on Sunday by suggesting that only “bad workers” earned minimum wage.

From The Raw Story:

“Bottom line: when you’re a good worker you don’t stay at minimum wage for long,” he said. “Trust me on that. It’s not universal, but trust me as an employer, as an employer I certainly didn’t want to lose good employees. And so you actually have a better marketplace. And so if your employer is not paying you good wages and you’re a good worker, you go look for other places.

“Now that’s hard to do, that’s hard to do when we have such high levels of unemployment. But again I would get back to we don’t have a very attractive place for business investment.”

Johnson added that he earned minimum wage while working during college and lived in his parents house.

And then he married a woman from a family worth millions!

Every minimum wage worker should follow Ronnie’s example!

Johnson only spent $8.2 million—64% of total campaign contributions—buying the election in 2010. It’s because of elected officials like Ron Johnson that America is the laughingstock of the entire world.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate blasted this pathetic fool with a withering statement:

“We know he doesn’t like workers and we’re not even sure if Ron Johnson supports a minimum wage, but the least he could do is keep his mouth shut on the subject when his fortune came not because of his hard work, but because of a fortunate marriage. Being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple has led Ron Johnson to dangerous ideas that would shred our social safety net and drive wages into the dirt all to appease a master class of people that sees fit to celebrate its riches while the rest of America suffers in rags.”

THIS is the guy who defeated Russ Feingold? Man, WTF was Wisconsin thinking in 2010?

As I was reading that item, an image of Senator Johnson on the ground in a fetal position being kicked about the face and neck by a hostile mob of people wearing McDonald’s uniforms popped into my head. I wonder why?
 

 
On every level…

 
SUPERB! Pure class, ladies!

“A lesbian married couple and their two daughters powerfully address Troy, MI Mayor, Janice Daniels, at a city council meeting about her derogatory Facebook posting about “queers” marrying in NY.”

They get a well-deserved standing ovation at the end, too.

This Janice Daniels is an embarrassment to her town, the Tea party and to herself. She needs to resign and crawl back under the rock that she came from…

This clip is destined to become a classic. It’s a blueprint for WIN!
 

 
Via Joe.My.God

 
As reported by Mary Clarkin in The Hutchinson News, a Kansas Tea party group calling itself the Patriot Freedom Alliance, posted a picture of a skunk on its website saying that the skunk should replace the eagle as the country’s symbol.

“It is half black, half white, and almost everything it does, stinks,” the website captioned the picture.

“It’s satire is what it is,” said Thomas Hymer, who maintains the group’s website, told Clarkin. “Satire in a politically incorrect form.”

Or, you know, a racist form…

Another Tea party supporter, an apparently not very bright fellow named Chuck Sankey, agreed with Thomas Hymer that it’s satire to call a person of mixed racial heritage a… skunk.

“It just makes a point that we’re in trouble and what’s happening doesn’t smell right,” Sankey said. “That’s what it means to me.”

That’s because you’re a fucking idiot, Chuck!

Sankey told The Hutchison News, “Isn’t that the truth? What’s wrong with the truth?”

Obama’s mother was a white American, and his father was a black African.

“It may be offensive to some, of course, but in humor there is always an element of truth,” said Sankey, saying he is neither racist nor bigoted but is concerned about the direction the country is going.

If people are offended by it, Sankey said, his advice is: “Don’t look at it.”

Sankey also said Sarah Palin has been the target of worse insults.

Uh, maybe so, Chuckles, but how many racist insults do you reckon were leveled at Sarah Palin? Wanna hazard a guess?

And Tea partiers wonder why everyone thinks they’re a bunch of dumb racists?

 
Hilarious!

Dig Gretchen Carlson! You know, I’ve always thought she was acting. Look how flustered she gets here trying to wrap her befuddled brain around the latest Fox News poll that shows Obama besting Romney or Gingrich. Maybe she IS as dumb as she seems? Is that even possible? I thought it was an act, like Gomer Pyle?

No?

The other two, for sure, are as dumb as they seem.
 

 
Via Crooks and Liars

 
ADULTS.

Adults did this. Adults did this to a 13-year-old child born to a crack-addicted mother, on national television.

From Dave Holmes’ X-Factor recap on Vulture:

Rachel hears her name and literally falls to the ground in sobs that put Drew’s to shame. Her mother runs out to embrace her, and Rachel screams: “Mommy, you promised! You promised me!”

It is, no exaggeration, the most excruciating thing I have ever seen on television.

If you haven’t seen this show, and you’re wondering what this moment is like, imagine taking a precocious, impoverished child, dangling $5 million in front of her face, and then yanking it away from her on live television because a Pussycat Doll doesn’t want to damage her brand by making a decision. It’s almost exactly like that.

Steve Jones is clearly getting instructions in his earpiece to ask Rachel what she’s feeling, because he says loudly and clearly right into his microphone: NO.

Somewhere in this sad, sordid, tacky episode is a metaphor for what America has become. I just don’t know what the fuck it is.

The X Factor Recap: Witness the Most Excruciating Moment on Reality TV (Vulture)
 

 
Andy Cobb and The Second City’s take on Rick Perry’s ridiculously misguided new TV ad.

“I’m a godless heathen and I approve this message!”

Bonus insanity: Rick Perry, Barack Obama and the War On Christianity (Fox News)
 

Ties are supposed to be “slimming.” Doesn’t work too well with Newt’s toned physique, does it?

The organizers of New Gingrich’s big money fundraiser in Washington, DC last night had the misfortune of choosing a location that has glass doors facing outwards on both sides of the ballroom. Dozens of mostly unemployed workers affiliated with “Take Back the Capitol” gathered at the entrance of the swanky Willard Hotel in downtown D.C., passed out fake $100 bills with Gingrich’s swollen head on them and chanted “The poor get poorer, the rich get rich, that’s the platform of Gingrich.” Earlier in the day, the group brought traffic to a near-standstill on K Street.

From a firsthand account of the protest from Mother Jones’ Andy Kroll:

Earlier, protesters had gathered outside the front doors of the Willard, chanting, “The poor get poorer, the rich get rich, that’s the platform of Gingrich.” They hoisted a “We are the 99%” banner, and the hotel locked several of its entrances.

The Gingrich fundraiser protest was part of “Take Back the Capitol,” a five-day, 99-percent-themed series of protests targeting lawmakers at popular fundraising and deal-making spots in DC, including the Capitol Hill Club, a GOP haunt, and Charlie Palmer Steakhouse, a favorite lunch spot for lobbyists and legislators a stone’s throw from Capitol. On Tuesday night, protesters lined the entrance to the swanky Lincoln restaurant to protest a fundraiser thrown by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). At least a dozen were arrested on Wednesday during a march on K Street, the symbolic heart of DC’s lobbying industry.

The protesters’ schedule includes a full day of events on Thursday, including actions at the Capitol Hill Club and elsewhere around DC. But no 1-percenter knows where they might strike next.

Beautiful. Turn up the heat on these bastards. Boil that Newt!

Earlier this week: OWS Takes the Fight to GOP Donors at Cantor Fundraiser (Mother Jones)