Look who wants in on the class war: It’s the undead vs. the Teabaggers as hordes of pro-labor zombies roamed around Madison, Wisconsin over the weekend in search of some brains. Looking for high IQ dining anywhere near the Tea party-dominated statehouse was perhaps a poor idea for a zombie banquet…
Via Joe My God
Above, WI Judge David Prosser AKA “Prosser the Tosser” and his dimwitted pal Scotty…
Although I doubt there are many Wisconsinites who need reminding, tomorrow’s WI Supreme Court election between incumbent Judge David Prosser—who has said he’d rubber stamp Gov. Walker’s ticket to destroy the unions—and challenger Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, will be of the most important statewide elections in decades. Important not just for Wisconsin, but to all of America’s working people. What happens tomorrow—and fuck it, our team is gonna win this one—should scare the shit out of the Republican Party, because when the dust settles, they are going to know—definitively—for whom the bell tolls. Guys, make no mistake about it, it’s tolling for your dumb asses.
Judge Prosser’s top aide said that Prosser would be a “complement” to Walker. How can a Supreme Court justice be anything BUT impartial? And Sarah Palin’s brain-dead Twitter-endorsement? I thought Republicans were against activist judges? Oh right, only when they’re on the other side? Seems to me that the Republicans don’t want to live by their own rules, and they damned sure don’t want others to live by their rules either. These people are clowns, just fucking clowns… and tomorrow they are going to have their heads handed to them on a Vanity Fair paper plate. They have to know it.
Last week former Gov. Patrick Lucey withdrew his support for Prosser and endorsed JoAnne Kloppenburg. Lucey released a statement that Prosser’s sleazy behavior has revealed what he described as “a disturbing distemper and lack of civility” in the Republican’s conduct. Earlier it had come out that Prosser is prone to hissy fits, including one where he called Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson a “total bitch” and threatened to “destroy” her.
David Prosser is a slug that needs some salt thrown on him.
Working people are starting to wise up and the events in Wisconsin have educated even some Tea party-types as that movement burns itself out and loses steam. In the past week alone, it’s been reported that GOP-affiliated special interest groups (many of them from outside of Wisconsin, of course) have bombarded the state with $2 million dollars worth of anti-Kloppenberg advertising. For a state supreme court election? Incredible. Clearly, the Republicans are scared shitless and they should be…
According to Kloppenburg, “The events of the last few weeks have put into sharp relief how important the Supreme Court is as a check on overreach in other branches of government.” The American Federation of Teachers issued a statement that “a Kloppenburg victory will swing the balance to our side. A vote for Prosser is a vote for Walker. It’s time to ‘get even.’”
Get even? Sure, but as much as I love me some Republican schadenfreude—their misfortune, my comedy—I just want to see some justice for the working people of Wisconsin. Tomorrow I expect both.
Republican Representative Sean Duffy (WI) who some of you may recall as the conservative guy on MTV’s The Real World Boston, has a difficult time justifying his $174,000 salary to a constituent who makes quite a bit less…
I think it’s a bad time, generally speaking, to be a Republican from Wisconsin. Endangered species, aren’t they?
I mean, no way, right?
Joe Klein writing on the 2012 crop of potential Republican presidential nominees on his TIME magazine blog:
This is my 10th presidential campaign, Lord help me. I have never before seen such a bunch of vile, desperate-to-please, shameless, embarrassing losers coagulated under a single party’s banner. They are the most compelling argument I’ve seen against American exceptionalism. Even Tim Pawlenty, a decent governor, can’t let a day go by without some bilious nonsense escaping his lizard brain. And, as Greg Sargent makes clear, Mitt Romney has wandered a long way from courage. There are those who say, cynically, if this is the dim-witted freak show the Republicans want to present in 2012, so be it. I disagree. One of them could get elected. You never know. Mick Huckabee, the front-runner if you can believe it, might have to negotiate a trade agreement, or a defense treaty, with the Indonesian President some day. Newt might have to discuss very delicate matters of national security with the President of Pakistan. And so I plead, as an unflinching American patriot—please Mitch Daniels, please Jeb Bush, please run. I may not agree with you on most things, but I respect you. And you seem to respect yourselves enough not to behave like public clowns.
Joe, tell us how you really feel…
American Embarrassment (Swampland)
You gotta hand it to him, Rick Santorum, that wacky wingnut Republican no-hoper presidential candidate, a man with even less of a chance of gaining the GOP nomination than, say, Newt Gingrich (or any of the rest of them for that matter), just won’t give up. Despite the fact that NO ONE, I mean NO ONE thinks he’s got a snowball’s chance in hot hot Hades of gaining traction with, you know, actual voters, Rick’s out there, fighting the good fight… or something. It’s hard to say what he’s really doing or what he thinks he’s accomplishing.
Could there be a less-inspiring, less-intelligent, less-attractive candidate than Rick Santorum? Of course there could be, never count out the GOP when it comes to scraping the bottom of the loony bin, but the odds are against a lesser contender turning up in this election cycle. Even Ron or Rand Paul have better chances of moving into the White House than Santorum—effectively none, of course—and yet like a buffoonish Energerizer Bunny, he just keeps on going. BUT WHY? WHO is urging him to run? What kind of people shows up at his campaign events? What’s his motivation to run for President in spite of overwhelming indifference?
Who the fuck knows? Michele Bachmann probably even thinks Santorum is a pinhead. What alternate conclusion could anyone, even a Republican, come to when faced with a statement like this one:
“The social security system in my opinion is a flawed design, period. But, having said that, the design would work a lot better if we had stable demographic trends. … The reason social security is in big trouble is we don’t have enough workers to support the retirees. Well, a third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion, because one in three pregnancies end in abortion.”
Mull that one over. Nope, Social Security’s problems have nothing to do with the fact that after $106,800 the wealthy don’t have to pay anything else into the fund. Repeal Roe v. Wade and America’s financial woes will magically right themselves…
I can’t even get a hard on to make fun of Rick Santorum anymore. Why let perfectly good mockery go to waste on a guy like him?
Via Wonkette
Above, Carlos F. Lam, former Indiana Deputy Prosecutor, now and forevermore, just an unemployable idiot!
The gods of Republican schadenfreude have once again smiled on America’s working class. However the events in this story took place so quickly that there was scarcely enough time for it to make the news nationally, so here’s a post-mortem on the dead as a doornail legal career of one utterly silly fellow, a former Indiana deputy persecutor prosecutor—and arch Republican buffoon—by the name of Carlos F. Lam.
Amidst the more than 50,000 emails sent to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker during the heat of the anti-union uprising, a two paragraph email from Lam, shall we say, stuck out like a sore thumb. In it, a PUBLIC OFFICIAL WHO ACTUALLY HAS A LAW DEGREE wrote:
“If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions’ cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions. Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC (Democratic National Committee) and umbrella union organizations in the protests. Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions. God bless, Carlos F. Lam.”
According to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism:
Carlos F. Lam submitted his resignation shortly before the Center published a story quoting his Feb. 19 email, which praised Walker for standing up to unions but went on to say that the chaos in Wisconsin presented “a good opportunity for what’s called a ‘false flag’ operation.”
At 5 a.m. Thursday, expecting the story to come out that day, Lam called his boss, Johnson County, Ind., Prosecutor Brad Cooper, and told him he had been up all night thinking about it. “He wanted to come clean, I guess, and said he is the one who sent that email,” Cooper said.
He came into the office and gave his resignation verbally, Cooper told the Daily Journal in Franklin, Ind. The resignation was announced after the Center’s initial story was published.
Email headers with detailed IP addresses suggested that the message was sent from Indianapolis.
Lam, an Indianapolis resident, at first told the Center he never wrote it.
Reached Tuesday by phone at the number listed on the email, Lam confirmed his email address matched the Hotmail address appearing on the Walker email, but said he had never written to Walker. “I am flabbergasted and would never advocate for something like this, and would like everyone to be sure that that’s just not me,” he said, after being read the email.
Except that it was him. And he SIGNED IT WITH HIS OWN NAME and even added his telephone number! And it came from his IP address! Of course it’s not him, why, a um, a UNION THUG must have sent it!!!!
Shit, these Republicans crack me the fuck up! How can someone able to pass the bar exam not realize this is a PREPOSTEROUSLY stupid thing to do???
From Mother Jones:
Lam wasn’t alone in proposing to undermine unions with sleazy tactics during the Wisconsin protests. The day after Lam sent his email, radio talk show host Mark Williams [former Tea Party Express leader] wrote a blog post urging his followers to cause trouble at a Sacramento solidarity event by wearing Service Employees International Union T-shirts and say outrageous things to embarrass the union. “If I do get the ‘in’ I am going to do my darnedest to get podium access and take the mic to do that rant from there,” Williams wrote. “With any luck and if I can manage the moments to build up to it, I can probably get a cheer out of the crowd for something extreme.” This, of course, was the same Mark Williams who infamously wrote a blog post in the voice of black slave who said that slavery was “a great gig.”
You expect such buffoonery from Williams. But from a deputy attorney general and a county prosecutor? All in all, it’s been a rough month or so for prosecutors in the great state of Indiana.
That last sentence, should you have already forgotten, refers also to disgraced Indiana state Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Cox, who wrote on his Twitter account that riot police should “use live ammunition” in the Wisconsin capital against union members and protesters. When Mother Jones reported on this matter on Feb. 23, Cox was fired from his job.As he should have been.
With all their new-found free time, Cox and Lam will have lots of time to consider the fact that career-wise, they’re both KAPUT in the legal profession. Who would hire lawyers THIS STUPID? An idiotic, loose cannon attorney is the last thing any respectable law firm requires. These stunts will follow them around on Google like shit on their shoes for the rest of their lives and I sure hope they’ve both got some INSANE debt from law school. Imagine what it must be like googling yourself and reading articles like this one calling you an abject moron and there are tens of thousands of them! And if either one of them is married, good luck holding onto your wife!
Indiana prosecutor Carlos F. Lam resigns after recommending Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stage fake attack against himself (Post Crescent)
YES!!! It really looks like the dingbat MN Congresswoman from what must be the lowest IQ district in all of America—they elected her didn’t they? I rest my case—is going to, or has already, if you’ve been watching her behind the scenes moves, thrown her hat in the ring for the Republican Presidential nomination. CNN reports that she’s planning to form a national exploratory committee in June, if not earlier and she’s already making moves in Iowa (where her office could open as early as this weekend) New Hampshire and South Carolina. Comedians, lefty pundits and every single Democrat in the nation are praying to the gods of schadenfreude that Michele Bachmann makes good on her threat. Hell, the woman might even be able to keep the great Garrison Keillor from retiring!
Me? Lets just say, I think it will be good for democracy…. and leave it at that!
One extremely funny thing to contemplate is “Who would be her running mate?” should she secure the nomination (in some fucked up parallel universe, I mean). Looking at the field of all possible candidates—and American electoral politics being what they are—it would almost assuredly be a male Republican. Which one of them would to craven enough to take a strap-on up the ass and be her bitch boy? Obviously, figuratively speaking, that would be a requirement for the job.
I just got this via email from Daily Kos. This is totally worth kicking in a few bucks to.
Wisconsin Republicans say the state is too broke to pay for teachers, but they just gave the 26-year-old mistress of a union-busting Republican Senator a state job with a fat raise. It’s a classic Republican scandal filled with hypocrisy, cronyism, and their special version of “family values.”
Here’s the story. Last year, Wisconsin Republican state Senator Randy Hopper left his wife to live with a young Republican political operative. Last month, as Governor Scott Walker unveiled legislation calling for deep cuts in state workers’ salaries and collective bargaining rights, Hopper’s mistress was hired by the state on the advice of Scott Walker’s cabinet as a “communications liaison.” Further, her salary is 35% higher than her predecessor’s.Randy Hopper is now facing recall. At Daily Kos, by using something called Google Surge, we can make sure that when anyone in Hopper’s district goes online for almost an entire week they will see an ad about the scandal.
It will cost us $12,128 for us to do this. Can you contribute $12 to Daily Kos help make it happen?
Randy Hopper is one of the most vulnerable Republicans facing recall. He is a freshman, and only won his seat by 163 votes. A poll conducted by Daily Kos and PPP shows Hopper losing to a generic Democrat 49%-44%.
You can see the ad we’re going to run on the right-hand side of this email. When it runs, it will link to a local Wisconsin news story verifying all the details. Since we are using Google Surge, any voter in Hopper’s district who goes online will see the ad multiple times.
With Randy Hopper already teetering on the brink of defeat, it’s hard to imagine how he could win a recall election after an ad campaign like this. Please, contribute $12 to Daily Kos and make sure every voter in Randy Hopper’s district knows about this scandal.
Keep fighting,
Chris Bowers
Campaign Director, Daily Kos
Hold these filthy lying bastards’ feet to the fire. Do your part to see a Republican humiliated!
Fantastic. New York Congressman Anthony Weiner razzes the Republicans over the “NPR emergency.”
I love Weiner’s appearances on Sean Hannity’s program. He always treats Hannity with the respect he deserves, like he’s talking to a child or a complete idiot…
Amazing but true: Upstate New York asshat Jack Davis, once a Democrat asshat (he’s run for Congress three times as a Democrat and lost each time), is now taking his unique brand of idiocy to what you might expect would be the warm embrace of the GOP/Tea partiers, but that’s not been the case. Apparently Davis, who is running in the special election to replace scandalized Republican Craigslist tranny-chaser, Chris Lee, is too much of an asshole even for the folks who gave us Carl Paladino!
According to the Buffalo News:
Congressional candidate Jack Davis shocked local Republican leaders in a recent interview when he suggested that Latino farmworkers be deported—and that African-Americans from the inner city be bused to farm country to pick the crops.
Several sources who were in the Feb. 20 endorsement interview with Davis confirmed his comments, which echo those he made to the Tonawanda News in 2008, when he said: “We have a huge unemployment problem with black youth in our cities. Put them on buses, take them out there [to the farms] and pay them a decent wage; they will work.”
When Davis repeated those sentiments in the recent interview, the Republican leaders—who later delivered the party endorsement for the vacant seat in the 26th Congressional District to Assemblywoman Jane L. Corwin of Clarence—said they couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
“I was thunderstruck,” said Amherst GOP Chairman Marshall Wood. “Maybe in 1860 that might have been seen by some as an appropriate comment, but not now.”
When asked his controversial comments prior to a campaign event Davis replied: “It’s politics.” Rim-shot please!
Obviously, Davis has an ice cube’s chance in Hell of winning the seat. One of his challengers, Assemblywoman Jane Corwin has been given the endorsement of the state GOP, the Conservative Party and the Independence Party, and so will have three spots on the ballet.
(And speaking of idiocy, the GOP doesn’t have the market cornered: two prominent Democrats in Michigan, Michael McGuinness, former chairman of the Oakland County Democratic Party, and Jason Bauer, former operations director for the Oakland County Democratic Party have been indicted on felony charges for their amateur hour “creation” of two fake Tea party candidates. They forged signatures and everything! One of the pair falsely notarized petitions for a dozen statewide candidates! HOW in the world did these morons expect this would go unnoticed? The county prosecutor is a Democrat, so this ain’t a partisan hit job. These two need a long spell in the pokey to reflect on what they did to themselves, their political party and to their families’ future. I shook my head in disbelief when I read about this. It’s far worse than anything James O’Keefe has done, if you ask me.)
Increasingly hapless Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, still trying to prove how utterly and spectacularly clueless he is, took his show on the road this weekend to the small town of Washburn in Bayfield County, WI. Walker spoke at an invitation-only event where he was met by a large, angry and very vocal group of people who hate his guts. The video below is what we can now safely refer to as “Classic Walker”—boy, this motherfucker is DENSE! He honestly seems to think this is going to blow over! He suffers from this weird, pathological delusion that he’s right! Reality is going to be smacking Scott Walker in the face—HARD—in the very near future. From the Duluth News Tribune:
Walker arrived in a convoy of six unmarked police cars that pulled up at 5:45 p.m. to the Steak Pit for a Republican Lincoln Day fundraiser. The large, boisterous crowd, which had been lining the streets leading to the restaurant since 4:30, quickly recognized him and erupted in boos and shouts of “Recall Walker.”
The convoy moved through quickly and without incident, and most of the protesters began to follow a circuitous route on public pathways to a spot behind the restaurant where they continued the protest within earshot of the Republican Party faithful inside.
Bayfield County Sheriff Paul Susienka said Saturday evening that he didn’t have a crowd estimate, but various people had estimated the size at between 2,000 and 5,000. So the protest
probably at least doubled the size of Washburn, which has a population of 2,271.
—snip—
People were definitely saying their piece, greeting each vehicle that arrived for the dinner with shouts of “Shame!” while waving protest signs and shaking their fists. One person videotaped the license plates of at least some of the vehicles that entered.
Protesters banged pots, shook tambourines at car windows and sounded horns. Most of the drivers and their passengers stared straight ahead. They had to navigate through a narrow tunnel formed by protesters on both sides, held back by Bayfield County sheriff’s deputies and rally organizers.
Signs included “Gov. Walker, you probably can’t remember me, but ... I can recall you” and “At least my Grandma’s Walker helps her.”
—snip—
“The thing that really got me here is the disparity of wealth that has grown way too out of hand,” Griffiths said. “This is not a Wisconsin thing. This is a global pandemic of wealth buying power.”
Richard Bergsrud, 26, of Duluth agreed that it wasn’t just a Wisconsin thing. The way Walker’s proposal to strip public employee unions of most collective bargaining rights was passed into law was wrong, Bergsrud said.
“It should be a dialogue, not a monologue,” he said.
Bergsrud acknowledged he felt a little bit sorry for people arriving to the event. But he said they were wrong for supporting actions that deprived public employees of long-fought-for rights.
Not everyone who disagreed with the protesters was in the Steak Pit.
Mark Goodrich, a building contractor in Ashland, stood at the corner where protesters passed between Stage North and the entrance to the Steak Pit with a large sign bearing the words, “God Bless Gov. Walker.”
Goodrich said he had heard a few taunts from protesters.
“I know some of the people,” he said. “I have friends on both sides.”
But he added: “Collective bargaining is not a right. It’s never been a right.”
Not sure if I am reading this correctly, but was there just one idiot in the whole town who “stood up” for Dead Man Walker against all the other protesters who loathe him?
That’s a visual! One I don’t expect was very comforting for the embattled Republican governor, do you?
It would be amusing to know whether or not class traitor Mark Goodrich was invited in out of the cold by the Republicans for his misguided efforts on their behalf, wouldn’t it?
Democrats in Wisconsin got out of the gate with a very strong start for the race to gain the necessary signatures needed for a recall election in the “Forward” state. This can’t come as good news to the Republicans and Gov. Walker (nicknamed “Dead Man Walker” by no less of a representative of mainstream American opinion than TIME magazine).
Greg Sargent writes in the Washington Post:
Dems have now collected over 56,000 signatures supporting the recall drives, according to party spokesman Graeme Zielinski, after another surge in organizing activity over the weekend. That’s up from rougly 14,000 after last weekend. This means Dems are well ahead of schedule: In each targeted district, Dems need to amass the required signatures — 25 percent of the number who voted in the last gubernatorial election — by a deadline of 60 days after first filing for recalls, which happened nearly two weeks ago.
In other words, Dems are reporting they are nearly halfway to the finish line, with roughly three-fourths of the alloted time remaining.
Though the national media has largely treated the Wisconsin story as resolved, now that Republicans used a procedural maneuver to pass Scott Walker’s measure, the new signature numbers suggest the GOP’s maneuver may only be giving more momentum to the recall drives. The recall fight has drawn the attention of national Dems, who are keeping attention on the battle in hopes that it will have ramifications in the 2012 Congressional and presidential elections, by galvanizing the Dem base, persuading independents that the GOP has overreached, and reawakening the affection of blue collar whites for unions.
Some will insist that these numbers are unreliable, because they are coming from Dems. But if they did cook the numbers, such exaggerations would quickly become apparent if they fell well short of their goals by the deadline. (Republicans are refusing to reveal the amount of signatures they’ve collected to recall Dems.) What’s more, these signatures numbers claimed by Dems mirror other indicators of enthusiasm: Dems and labor continue to raise money for the recall drives at a dizzying clip, and a huge rally amassed in Madison over the weekend.
According to Wisconsin Dem spokesman Zielinski, Dems are ahead of pace in signature gathering in every single one of the eight districts being targteted, and in three of the districts, Dems have well over 50 percent of the number required.
And in a related note, popular Wisconsin resident, Jeff Skiles, who was co-pilot of the “Miracle on the Hudson” plane, told WISC-TV that he will be closing his accounts (totaling over $400,000) at M&I Bank today. M&I’s executives were amongst the largest donors to embattled Gov. Scott Walker’s election campaign. Below, Skiles speaks to pro-labor protesters in Madison on Feb. 26, 2011.
Mafia -style politics in Madison? This is the text of the email that went out yesterday to Wisconsin Republicans from their Majority Leader, Scott Fitzgerald. Stunning, isn’t it? It’s as if these people have no clue what is about to hit them.
From: Sen.Fitzgerald
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 3:52 PM
To: *Legislative Senate Republicans
Subject: Senate Democrat voting privileges in standing committeesDear Members,
With the return of the Senate Democrats this weekend, questions have arisen regarding Democrat members’ participation in Senate standing committee public hearings and executive sessions.
Please note that all 14 Democrat senators are still in contempt of the Senate. Therefore, when taking roll call votes on amendments and bills during executive sessions, Senate Democrats’ votes will not be reflected in the Records of Committee Proceedings or the Senate Journal. They are free to attend hearings, listen to testimony, debate legislation, introduce amendments, and cast votes to signal their support/opposition, but those votes will not count, and will not be recorded.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact my office.
Thank you,
Scott Fitzgerald
Senate Majority Leader
13th Senate District
Below, Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald discusses his version of democracy(!!), but look what happened when the Wisconsin 14 actually did return. Fitzgerald thinks he can have it both ways. He’s wrong. What an appalling hypocritical scumbag this man is. I will look forward to his recall and hope it’s chock full of juicy Republican schadenfreude, because Republican schadenfreude is the best kind of schadenfreude there is. (And how fucking dumb—and politically tone-deaf—would you have to be to make a statement like this with THAT racket in the background? Fitzgerald only appears slightly less stupid than Sarah Palin did when she pardoned the turkey... and that’s nothin’ to be proud of, pal.)
Boy, considering what this is—and how utterly appalling it is—not all that many views so far. Watch in horror as decades of hard-fought labor gains are done away with within a matter of minutes by some over-reaching Republican bastards politicians in Wisconsin… Did anyone actually see any of this on TV? I didn’t.
Thank you Chris Musgrave!
Contribute now to the official PCCC Wisconsin Recall campaign!
After ignoring the public and voting to attack working families, Wisconsin’s Republican state senators need to be punished. We are mobilizing volunteers and preparing new TV, radio, and online ads that urge the recall of vulnerable Republican senators—can you chip in $3 to our recall fund?
Via Mike Hudack