After a year and a half of heated debate, many brutally cold winter days and plenty of heroic, hard work, it’s judgement day in Wisconsin.

I hope for the best (a Tom Barrett win) but expect the worst (polls are tight, but favor Scott Walker), so first a little levity:

A CEO, a Tea Partier and a union organizer sit down at a table, on which there is a dish of 12 cookies.The CEO takes 11 of the cookies and says to the Tea Partier, “That union guy wants part of your cookie.”

Remember that joke, it’s going to come in hand—quite a bit, probably—in the coming years…

In the final stretch of the recall election, it cannot be denied, the Republicans did what they do best: They divided and now they look set to conquer. Who would have thought that even a $30 million dollar war chest would have been enough to turn the tide that saw well over a million signatures on Walker recall petitions?

Not me, to be honest. I should stop underestimating the GOP, I really should.

Why Scott Walker could be the new Nixon.

Walker himself said the other day that he’s meeting people all over the state who tell him how RESENTFUL they are that public sector employees have better benefits than they do.

So hey, lets cut ‘em down to size, and give some tax breaks to the Koch brothers and that billionaire plastic surgery disaster who is Walker’s single biggest donor?

Woo-hoo! Now THAT is a plan!

A plan for DUMMIES and people who’ve had 30 million dollars worth of cynical propaganda and bullshit fill their mental space for months now… 

Obviously there IS a class war going on in America today, but in Wisconsin, the GOP has (brilliantly) hit upon a new recipe for (probable) electoral success: Pit working class people vs OTHER working class people.

If Walker does manage to hold onto his job today, expect much more of this exact same strategy in the future, in other states and even on a national, presidential level. Wisconsin was a laboratory of how to subvert democracy and a popular uprising with lies, cynicism and lots and lots of money.

Whether or not it’s Walker or Tom Barrett who wins when the votes are counted tonight, the GOP has learned a seriously fucked up new trick that has grave implications for American democracy.

Pit the middle class against each other! It’s a genius move. The politics of resentment are in full flower in Wisconsin today.

The GOP will hold the red states until the end of time with that strategy.

This, I think is the biggest take-away lesson of the entire process, especially for the Republicans. A certain segment of Wisconsin’s population has been successfully “moronized” (in the sense that “father of the New Left” Herbert Marcuse used the term in the 1960s). They’ve got a working blueprint for doing it. Win or lose this one, the implications are fucking enormous for well-funded, state-of-the art Republican political campaigns moving forward.

If Walker wins today, as expected, team GOP will have pulled off an election miracle (albeit a very well-funded miracle). When you consider how the palpable anti-Walker tidal-wave that saw over one million signatures gathered on the recall petitions and compare that with where we are today, when the polls are all telling us that Walker will squeak by and get to hold his job… I mean fuck it, it must be said WELL DONE REPUBLICANS.

They might be evil geniuses, but they are geniuses, nevertheless.

Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce summed up, very eloquently, the, I suppose, existential reality on the ground in Wisconsin this morning in a piece called “Beyond the Money, the Great Wisconsin Recall Election of 2012 Has Been the Fight Our Democracy Deserves.” His pre-vote observations about what has happened in the deeply divided state of Wisconsin—ironically a state known, until recently, for the geniality of its residents—were striking, indeed,:

Later, as night fell over Milwaukee, Walker rocked the Serb Hall, presenting himself as a man of courage and big ideas who is trying to move Wisconsin forward, only to be stymied by backward-thinking Democrats and out-of-state “special interests.” (We pause here for a moment to laugh loudly enough that the Koch Brothers to hear us.) The governor’s speech was just as spirited as Barrett’s was, but oddly disjointed. “Isn’t it amazing,” he asked the crowd, “that politics is the only business where you get credit for courage just for keeping your word?” He also deplored the recall for what he said was the uncertainty it had created among the “job creators” and the small-business community in the state. “Truth,” he told the crowd, “is on our side.”

Out in the parking lot, I fell into conversation with Phil Waseleski, who was wearing a T-shirt celebrating the U.S. Postal Service that was festooned with Scott Walker buttons. Phil was a letter carrier in the neighborhoods around the Serb Hall for nearly 40 years, but he retired last year when his days were cut back to three a week as part of the fiscal crisis forced upon the USPS by Republican legislators who would like to see it go away entirely.

“A friend once told me, ‘Well, we only need mail three or four days a week,’” Phil told me. “I politely told him, ‘Dave, we’re gonna have to agree to disagree.’ I could have told him, ‘Dave, you know, maybe at that engineering place where you work, they only need you three days a week, and then you could come help us.’

“The politicians, I think, it’s a tough call, because if you don’t keep the postal service in business — you and I will both agree that there’s nothing more personal than taking pen in hand to write to your mother, sister, or brother. Until June of last year, I gave my heart and soul to my job. I worked right through lunch most days.”

Eventually, I asked him why he was here, at the Serb Hall, supporting Scott Walker, whose politics were far more in tune with the people who are trying to strangle the postal service than they are with the people who still work there. Phil told me that it was about his sister-in-law. “The problem is that, when you start handing out free health care out to teachers, that annoys me to no end,” he said. “I never got free health care. My brother’s wife is a teacher and I once asked her, when I was getting my teeth worked on, what it cost her and she said, ‘Nothing.’ It should never get to that point where somebody’s getting free health care. Something’s way out of whack there.”

Something IS, of course, out of whack, but it’s not what Phil Waseleski—a man who was himself a GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE—perceives it to be. Why on earth would one working person who himself saw his work days cut back support a union-busting asshole like Scott Walker in order to see that the hard fought gains of other middle-class people LIKE HIMSELF will get erased???

The answer, of course, is that Phil Waseleski and other fucking idiots like him have been cynically manipulated to essentially cast a vote AGAINST other working people so that billionaire “job creators” like the Koch brothers can move on to breaking the backs of the private sector unions, too, and rape and pillage the state of Wisconsin without much further ado.

Phil, that’s what you voted for, buddy. Do you realize how stupid you—a former GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE with a chest full of Scott Walker buttons—appear to someone who is (there is no delicate way to put this) smarter than you are? You don’t quite get it, do you, Phil?

It’s sheer idiocy for the working man to support Scott Walker and the Republicans. Nothing but sheer blinkered, uncut idiocy… and you, Phil, with a USPS tee-shirt and Walker badges could be the idiot’s poster boy…

Phil Waseleski, are you really the kind of man who wants to cast your vote in a democracy to cut other working people down to size and take what was theirs and give that to people like the Kochs and Diane Hendricks who make more in ONE HOUR than you did in your best year ever?

Charles Pierce must’ve puked in his mouth a little when he heard you speak this nonsense, you old coot!

If you find yourself reading this, Phil, can you please explain to the people who read your comments to Charles Pierce (in the comments either here or at Esquire), how you came to think this way. I cannot for the life of me understand how Walker and his billionaire reichwing patrons were able to convince one working person to resent other middle-class wage-earners, wish to see them economically punished and to reward two billionaires who inherited their money in the first place? It all makes zero sense to me. I need your help.

It’s not exactly a secret that the Republican party’s natural constituency is obscenely wealthy people and older, easily-manipulated idiots, especially Fox News watchers. Phil, as an obvious older idiot, would you mind, please, explaining to Dangerous Minds readers what happened in Wisconsin, from your perspective as an easily manipulated fool?

PS Phil, have you ever seen this clip? Which one of these guys is you? This is not a trick question, I promise:
 

 
Do you recall the sordid saga of Stefanie Woods, the sociopathic Paris Hilton doppelgänger of Palm Beach, FL who first came to the nation’s attention in 2008 for stealing money from a Girl Scout? Woods’ flagrant bad girl antics included stabbing her boyfriend, armed robbery and kidnapping  and brought her infamy and jail time (but sadly no reality TV show contract). Her nickname was the “Cookie Monster”? Remember her?

Some of the raw news footage from 2008 of Woods and her accomplice discussing how they stole $168 from the 9-year-old Girl Scout is rising to the top of the reddit hit parade today—Woods has been back in the news recently for probation violations—and it’s simply jawdropping.

THIS is social commentary!

Reporter: Why did you do it?

Woods: I mean, who doesn’t like money? I mean… I don’t know.

Reporter: But it’s a crime.

Woods: I know it’s a crime (laughs) but it was an easy crime!

This raw video manages to be both hilarious and deeply disturbing at once. When the reporter asks Woods (who was 18 at the time because they don’t pixelate her face, unlike the first girl who became known as “Carrot Top”) what lesson she learned, her answer is a classic for all the ages.

The same two girls were nabbed doing a “dine-n-dash” at a Denny’s restaurant just three weeks later and the aftermath of that stunt, included jail time/mandatory drug rehab for Woods. Apparently the juvenile “Carrot Top” got immunity for testifying against her partner in crime.
 

 
Via reddit

“Socialism. The new “S word”—it’s the worst thing you can call someone. It’s like the “C word” and the “N word” had a baby.”

—Comrade Jon Stewart

 
A contemplative article by Dan Kaufman in The New York Times Magazine, “How Did Wisconsin Become the Most Politically Divisive Place in America?” tries to make sense of what’s happened there since Scott Walker was elected governor of the state in late 2010:

This past March, standing outside a Shell station in Mellen, Wis., in the state’s far north, Mike Wiggins Jr. told me about a series of dark and premonitory dreams he had two years earlier. “One of them was a very vivid trip around the North Woods and seeing forests bleeding and sludge from a creek emptying into the Bad River,” Wiggins said. “I ended up at a dilapidated northern log home with rotten snowshoes falling off the wall. I stepped out of the lodge, walked through some pine, and I was in a pipeline. There was a big pipe coming in and out of the ground as far as I could see.

“I had no idea what the hell that was all about,” Wiggins continued. But he said the dream became clearer when a stranger named Matt Fifield came into his office several months later and handed him his card. Wiggins is the chairman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and Fifield, the managing director of Gogebic Taconite (GTac), a division of the Cline Group, a mining company based in Florida. He had come to Wiggins’s office to discuss GTac’s desire to build a $1.5 billion open-pit iron-ore mine in the Penokee Hills, about seven miles south of the Bad River reservation. The proposed mine would be several hundred feet deep, roughly four miles long and a half-mile wide; the company estimated it would bring 700 long-term jobs to the area. Fearing contamination of the local groundwater and pristine rivers, Wiggins told Fifield he planned to oppose the mine. He didn’t know at the time that the company’s lawyers would be working hand in hand with Republican legislators to draft a bill that would weaken Wisconsin environmental law and expedite the permitting process.

What followed was a drawn-out fight that resembled other statewide battles over labor, education and voter-registration laws — all of which have been introduced since the election of the Republican governor Scott Walker in 2010. The most bitter of these fights began in early February last year, when Walker proposed eliminating virtually all collective-bargaining rights for a vast majority of the state’s public-employee unions. Around the time that Walker announced the measure, similar laws were introduced in Michigan, Ohio and Florida, and a nationwide demonization of public employees caught fire. Within two months, the National Conference of State Legislators had tracked more than 100 bills, initiated across the country, attacking public-sector unions.

From the beginning, Walker, who declined to comment for this article, seemed cognizant that his move to end collective bargaining placed him at the forefront of a national conservative strategy. His attack on public-employee unions was lauded by Mitt Romney, John Boehner and Karl Rove, and he has received significant financial support from the billionaire conservative donors Charles and David Koch. In a widely publicized prank phone call with Ian Murphy, a blogger impersonating David Koch, Walker described a dinner he held for his cabinet at his Executive Residence on Feb. 10, the night before he announced the collective-bargaining measure. “It was kind of the last hurrah, before we dropped the bomb,” he said to the faux-Koch. At the dinner, Walker held up a photograph of Ronald Reagan and told his cabinet that what they were about to do recalled Reagan’s breaking of the air-traffic-controllers’ union strike in 1981. “This is our time to change the course of history,” Walker said.

The June 5 recall election against Walker and four Republican state senators will be a decisive and momentous day in American history—no matter which side of the political divide you are on—and not just for residents of Wisconsin. If the reichwing and the Koch brothers get beaten back, it’ll send a definitive message to Republicans—and draw an iron line in the sand—letting them know how far is TOO FAR and what NOT to do if they don’t want to end up like Scott Walker. If Democrats take back control of the statehouse, I get the sense that things would largely calm down in Wisconsin, after two years that have seen friendships ended, family arguments and nasty, nasty local politics, vandalism, etc. Clearly in this way, Scott Walker has been a disaster for life in his state. How many people who live there, no matter what their political affiliation is, would argue that the mood in Wisconsin has improved under Walker?

However, if the Democrats and the unions lose, and it appears that they will lose, it’ll be a sad day indeed and will be seen as a demoralizing lesson in just how DEAD democracy really is when billionaires and out of state interests can come in and defeat the determined solidarity of tens of thousands of Wisconsin’s most politically engaged progressive citizens. If Walker wins, it will be a significant blow to the labor unions and progressive morale in general.

With repetitive TV and radio ads blanketing Wisconsin’s airways (Walker is spending over 20x what his challenger Tom Barrett can afford) the Koch brothers and the GOP have brainwashed people into supporting policies that would beggar their neighbors, friends and relatives and destroy the hard fought gains of the unions in the state where the labor movement was arguably born merely so that the rich can get richer. It’s not like everyone in Wisconsin doesn’t already know what’s going on and I doubt that many people are still undecided if they’ll be voting for Walker or Barrett with just two weeks to go. The polls are TIGHT, and incredibly—when you consider how his governorship has torn the state apart and Walker’s SHITTY record on jobs—favor the governor. It’s going to be all about the ground game and the side who can get out the most voters (something the Republicans excel at ).

You can kick in a few bucks to kick Walker’s ass at ActBlue. Fingers crossed and GO WISCONSIN.

 
Dark Side Of The Moon was broadcast on Canadian TV series “The Passionate Eye” in 2005. It was written and directed by William Karel.

CBC television describes the film thusly:

How could the flag flutter when there’s no wind on the moon? During an interview with Stanley Kubrick’s widow an extraordinary story came to light. She claims Kubrick and other Hollywood producers were recruited to help the U.S. win the high stakes race to the moon.  In order to finance the space program through public funds, the U.S. government needed huge popular support, and that meant they couldn’t afford any expensive public relations failures.  Fearing that no live pictures could be transmitted from the first moon landing, President Nixon enlisted the creative efforts of Kubrick, whose 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968) had provided much inspiration, to ensure promotional opportunities wouldn’t be missed. In return, Kubrick got a special NASA lens to help him shoot Barry Lyndon (1975).

Some of you may already be familiar with the theories discussed in this film and the “conspiracies” exposed…familiar enough to know it’s a deftly made put-on composed of manipulated archival footage, false documents, actual interviews taken out of context or altered with voice-over or dubbing, staged interviews and some real ones. Like all good satire or parody, there are truths to be found within the artifice. When truth and the lie seem indistinguishable, we’ve entered a zone in which both possess a bit of each other.
 

 
Bill Moyers continues to make astonishing television with his truly great new PBS series, Moyers and Company. It’s unmissable, the most intelligent hour of programming on American TV today, bar none.

In the latest episode, Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello—a man I have a lot of admiration for—joined Bill Moyers for a particularly moving and inspiring conversation. From the show’s website

Songs of social protest—music and the quest for justice—have long been intertwined, and the troubadours of troubling times—Guthrie, Seeger, Baez, Dylan, and Springsteen among them—have become famous for their dedication to both. Now we can add a name to the ranks of those who lift their voices for social and economic justice: Tom Morello.

Morello is the Harvard-educated guitarist who dabbled in politics, then chose rock music to make a difference. He played guitar for the popular band he co-founded—Rage Against the Machine—and then for Audioslave. Rolling Stone chose his album “World Wide Rebel Songs” as one of the best of 2011, and named him one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

As likely to be spotted at a grass-roots rally as he would at a concert hall, Morello was in Madison, Wisconsin last year, braving bitter winter weather to sing on the steps on the state capitol in support of public service workers. Morello defended their collective bargaining rights against Republican Governor Scott Walker.

He was in New York City at the May Day demonstrations, an honorary commander of a battalion of musicians they called the “Occupy Guitarmy.” That same night, Harry Belafonte presented Morello with the Officers’ Award from the Sidney Hillman Foundation, honoring his “advocacy for and support of working people across the world.”

Tom Morello shares his music, his message, and mission with Bill Moyers, who’s all ears.

Two badass motherfuckers in conversation….
 

 
I’ll join the chorus of folks asking why the fuck Obama and the national Democrats aren’t doing more to support the Scott Walker recall efforts in Wisconsin???

Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, Walker’s opponent in the recall match-up, lost to him in 2010 by 125,000 votes, or 5%. You’d think that after all that’s happened, Barrett’s victory in the recall would be a sure thing, but some recent polls indicate otherwise. Probably has to do with Walker having 20x the cash on hand, thanks to his super-rich pals, like the Koch Brothers.

Although I am not a Democrat and have never self-identified as one, I have voted a straight Democratic ticket for my entire life, SOLELY to vote against the Republican candidates. The beginning and end of any perceived loyalty that I have to the Democrats has to do with my lifelong hatred of Republicans and nothing else.

I’m someone who is resigned to voting for the lesser of two evils, because I believe you get less evil that way. I am, however, a staunch socialist, and strongly believe that the outcome of the WI recall election is of supreme importance to the future of organized labor and all working Americans, not just in Wisconsin. If the anti-Walker movement in WI fails to oust that cross-eyed weasel, Charlie Brown-looking dickhead, the implications for the future of labor unions in America should be seen as dire indeed.

SO WHERE THE FUCK IS OBAMA?

Why hasn’t the President already been in Wisconsin several times to support the state’s progressive Democrats and the labor union members who have worked tirelessly for over a year to kick Walker’s dumb ass to the curb? I thought the unions were the Democratic base, just like the GOP relies on billionaires and IDIOTS. Have Obama and the DNC completely written off big labor? WTF???

They couldn’t have done any less than they have if they decided to do nothing at all.

ONE fundraising email! ONE!

And where are the Occupy folks? THIS is the real battle of 2012, not holding down a park or clogging up the Brooklyn Bridge, as important as that might be symbolically, this is THE REAL DEAL. The Wisconsin recall election is equally important to the 2012 election, I think much more so, in some respects. Want to show the hard right what democracy looks like? Get thee to Wisconsin for the next few weeks and help out.

Clearly this is a battle between people power and the millions upon millions of dollars being funneled into WI by reichwing interests who have a big stake in seeing the unions crushed. The WI recall election is going to be a tight one and in the end the single biggest factor in whoever wins will be the ground game. The DNC could, if they wanted to, make a major impact in this regard, but for whatever reason, their support has been tepid, at best.

Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce—who is one of America’s finest political wordsmiths—laid out another, very compelling factor that should be of great concern to the DNC: Call it “The Future Newt Gingrich Factor”:

Right now, if nothing else changes, it looks very much like Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, is going to keep his job. If that’s the case, and assuming he doesn’t go down in the ongoing John Doe investigation in Milwaukee, I predict that he will have an “exploratory committee” set up in Iowa within the month, and he will suddenly discover a deeply held desire to spend a lot of time in places like Nashua and Manchester. Make no mistake: If he hangs on, he will be the biggest star in the Republican party. Chris Christie yells at all the right people, but has he ever faced down the existential threat that schoolteachers and snowplow drivers brought to bear on Walker? Marco Rubio? Has he withstood the wrath of organized janitors and professors of the humanities? If Walker wins in June, it wouldn’t take very much effort at all for Fox News and for the vast universe of conservative sugar-daddies and their organization to decide that Walker should be the odds-on choice for 2016.

Dear Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: That heinous future actually could happen if you don’t get out of the Green Room and get the DNC off the stick here. I’m still not kidding. If the Democrats blow this one, and if it’s proven that the DNC could have helped in any way and didn’t, you should be fired before the sun goes down. In 1990, the DNC declined to help fully a congressional candidate named David Worley in Georgia. The Worley people were begging for money, for organizers, for a lifeline of any kind. Very little was forthcoming. Worley lost to Newt Gingrich by 978 votes. How would the subsequent 10 years have been different if Gingrich’s political career had ended ignominiously in 1990? That’s the kind of chance that you seem to be allowing to go a’glimmering in Wisconsin. Let Walker win, and Democrats not yet born will curse your name. [Emphasis added]

I am less than optimistic about Tom Barrett’s chances because he’s getting outspent about 20-1, and because the numbers stubbornly refuse to move. This should be a base-vs.-base election, but it’s being played, at least by the Democrats, as yet another unicorn-hunt after “independent voters.” Barrett keeps talking about the “civil war” that Walker incited in Wisconsin. But that’s not the argument. There should have been a “civil war” over what Walker was trying to do. There wouldn’t even be a recall without what Barrett calls “the civil war.” The “civil war” was entirely appropriate. Sometimes, in politics, there are issues worth screaming about. I’m no expert, but the end of collective bargaining during an era of flat-lining wages would seem to be one of those. By citing the “civil war” as the reason for voting for him, and without, I believe, intending to do so, Barrett makes all those people standing in the cold last January marginally complicit in what he says as the problem the recall was meant to solve. But the problem with Scott Walker was not that he inspired an outburst of incivility. It’s that he tried to screw the workers of the state of Wisconsin, and that he got more than halfway there, and that he apparently intends to go the rest of the way if he manages to survive the recall. It’s not idle speculation to say that a lot more is riding on this than who gets to be governor of Wisconsin. This is the first real fight of the 2016 presidential election.

If you’d like to support the drive to recall Scott Walker, without giving a dime to the national Democrats, you can donate at ActBlue. Even $5 will help offset the 20 to 1 spending by Walker’s billionaire supporters.

Below, an inspiring trailer for We Are Wisconsin: The Movie premiering soon.
 

 
More epic brilliance from the geniuses at the Alamo Drafthouse.

If you live in the Austin area or if you’re planning on being here Friday, May 18, this a must-see event.

Alamo Drafthouse and Film School Rejects will be screening a brand new 35mm print of The Road Warrior preceded by a Thermonuclear Death Race - four cars in a demolition derby!  The shit hits the fan at the Thunderhill Raceway. Only the strong and the weird survive.

Here’s some vintage demolition derby film footage to get you in the mood. It ain’t thermonuclear, but it’s pretty damn hot.
 

 
So the recall race is on in Wisconsin, a match-up that once again pits wildly unpopular Republican governor Scott Walker against Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, the Democrat who Walker beat by 125,000 votes in the 2010 election.

A lot has changed since then.

Like massive protests and an unprecedented grassroots organization to send a certain sleazy GOP shithead back to the rock he crawled out from under. What is currently transpiring in WI is one of the single most important things that has happened in American politics and the labor movement in many years, perhaps for a generation. The forces to oust Walker have much in common with the Occupy movement, but Occupy needs to watch what’s been happening in Wisconsin closely and learn a few lessons. Protest is one thing, but getting out the vote, to my mind, seems far, far more important. The progressives in Wisconsin have got it sussed.

Via Salon/AP:

The recall drive was sparked when Walker and Republicans passed a law that effectively ended collective bargaining rights for most public workers and forced them to pay more for health insurance and pension benefits. Walker contends the moves were necessary to help balance a state budget shortfall of $3.6 billion, while Democrats argue the law’s primary purpose was to eviscerate the unions, which tend to back their party.

It’s hard to find anyone in the state who doesn’t have an opinion on the matter, and that interest was underscored by Tuesday’s 30 percent turnout, which was the highest for a Wisconsin primary since 1952.

Barrett told supporters Tuesday night at a victory party in Milwaukee (attended by leaders of the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees Union and other union members) that:

“We will be united because we understand we cannot fix Wisconsin as long as Scott Walker is the governor of this state.”

He’s right, too. There’s no way that the state legislature is going to be able to get anything done with that goofy-faced clownboy in office. He’s gotta go for the good of the people of Wisconsin and he should have had the decency to fucking resign a long time ago. Walker is just too divisive of a figure. This seems obvious to everyone, but Walker himself doesn’t seem to have picked up on the hint: He can’t lead the state. It’s just not possible anymore.

It’s time to throw this Charlie Brown-looking motherfucker on the scrapheap of history and move on, in the process sending a powerful and LOUD message to the rest of the Reichwing Republicans: It could be your job next, asshole!.

And with ground forces like the recall movement has, why not make an effort to defeat Congressman Paul Ryan in the Fall?

Jon Dzurak, a 55-year-old assistant principal in Milwaukee, said he initially was leaning toward Democrat Kathleen Falk, but decided to vote for Barrett because he was up in the polls and projected to fare better against Walker.

“I just would like to see Scott Walker defeated. I’ve never seen a division in our state like this. I’m not talking to some of my friends right now because of it,” he said.

One woman even tried to run her own husband down with her SUV when he tried to prevent her from voting in the May 8th primary. That’s division!

Although Walker has raised $25 million so far, most of it from out of state, natch, I don’t think it’s going to help him all that much, but at least he’ll be spending that bloated Koch Brothers-funded war chest within Wisconsin, so perhaps the Walker camp can even create a few jobs, for once, before WI voters give him the boot.

Is that a fat lady I hear singing in the near distance?

Ask not for whom the fat lady sings, Scott Walker. She sings for thee!

Roll on June 5th general election!

If you’d like to contribute to ActBlue to get this powerful commercial shown on Wisconsin television stations, you can donate here. Watch it. If you agree with the message and support the cause, kick them a few dollars. Even $3 will help.

I’m With-consin, how about you?
 

 
May Day action in New York City heats up as protesters and cops clash.

The Gothamist reports:

At least six people were arrested after hundreds of protesters streamed through the streets of Chinatown, SoHo, and eventually the West Village in a march that began with several violent arrests at Sarah Roosevelt Park and ended at Washington Square Park. For much of the march, the NYPD kept its distance as the demonstrators, many clad in black with their faces covered, overturned trash cans and newspaper boxes, and dragged NYPD barricades out into the street.

The police caught up with the protesters shortly before they crossed Houston heading north. One plainclothes officer stopped a protester from tampering with the undercarriage of a bus. Though these sort of “black bloc,” extralegal tactics were used by the protesters, no projectiles were thrown and no other property was destroyed, at least not that we witnessed. As we noted earlier (scroll down), some protesters were seen knocking photographers cameras out of their hands, and in one instance shooting black paint at a lens.

Several times police officers attempted to yank protesters onto the street from the sidewalk or the side of the street to be arrested, only to find other protesters pull them away from their grasp. Two protesters were thrown to the ground and arrested at West 4th and MacDougal, before police violently shoved photographers and media to a distance at least 20 feet away. At least six protesters were arrested during the march, which dispersed in the general direction of Union Square, where all the marches are converging for a rally this afternoon.

Looks like a series of bad moves by both the cops and the activists. It’s a shame, but deeds and not words seems to be the only way to get the media’s attention.

The march on Wall Street started at 5:30pm EST and rallies are planned downtown for 8pm.
 

 

 

 

 
Scroll down Dangerous Minds and watch a livestream of the rally in New York City.