Note to Gov. Scott Walker: You should really,really make an effort not to do this face so often in public, because it’s just too easy for bloggers to find images of you looking stupid, forlorn and like you’ve had your ass whipped.

Wisconsin’s District 94 Assembly seat has been held by Republicans for some sixteen years, but last night it was won by a Democrat running a campaign openly disdainful of Gov. Scott Walker and his clownish, heavy-handed attempts to end collective bargaining rights for public employees in the state. Democrat Steve Doyle, a labor-supporter, smashed his opponent, Republican John Lautz in a 54% to 46% bludgeoning. This was a special election, called to replace Mike Huebsch, a GOP incumbent who was appointed Walker’s secretary of administration, and has was seen by many as a symbolic referendum on the unpopular Gov. Walker himself.

If this is anything to go by—and obviously it is with such a lop-sided margin—the statewide effort by progressive activists to remove eight Republican senators just got a major shot in the arm. Every elected Republican in Wisconsin’s government—not the least Scott Walker himself—has to be pissing themselves in terror of what is to come.

So far, the recall effort has been going great, already easily making the quota of signatures for six GOP senators to face recall by Monday’s deadline. You piss in the wind, it comes back to hit you in the face. That’s the way it works. That’s life. That’s karma. The Wisconsin GOP, I think, is going to get what it deserves, a right thrashing! It’s going to be a hot July in Wisconsin, something tells me…

What’s that line about “Don’t quit your day job?” I give Huebsch, like Walker himself, sometime until mid-2012 before he gets thrown on the scrap heap of history with the rest of the Wisconsin Republican party.

If you live in Wisconsin, you can volunteer for the Walker Recall. He has to be in office for one year before a recall against him can come into play, but that gives activists several months to organize a Bronx cheer for this nitwit. If you are from outside of the state, you can donate some money to the Walker Recall efforts at the same site.

 
This guy takes the cake. And it’s a wedding cake that will serve a thousand guests. Give a round of applause to the BEST Teabagger I’ve yet seen… this guy!

He never really shows this sign to the camera completely, but you can see that the word “Hitler” is written on it. 

They give that nobody Joe the Plumber his own webs series? Sign this guy up, He’s an inadvertent comedic genius! The non-thinking man’s Michael Savage!...
 

 
Via Wonkette

 
I laughed to myself the other day when I saw longtime Republican pollster/spinmeister Frank Luntz on one of the cable news outlets—probably Fox News, but I can’t recall—giving some GOP talking points a dry run.

Not that he was exactly trying anything new, or innovating. In the context of the budget battle, Obama’s speech and the DOA “Ryan plan” etc., Luntz merely trotted out the by-now familiar threadbare Republican shuck and jive routine about how American families understand that you can’t live beyond your means and that the only remedy for that would be to tighten belts, stop living on credit cards and pay off debts. And the Ryan plan is going to achieve this in Washington by blah blah blah. I don’t even know why he bothered to finish his thought, he just should have said “blah, blah, blah” and everyone still would have understood what exactly he meant, anyway. Who cares? Who gives a shit? We’ve heard this all before, ten thousand times… Enough.

It’s too predictable. Too rote. Too by the numbers. Too old-fashioned. Shtick. The Republican orthodoxy is over-exposed. Transparently obvious. People are sick of hearing it, and when they are forced to listen to it over and over and over again ad infinitum on Fox News and elsewhere, what might have sounded like simple down home “common sense” when Ronald Reagan said it, just sounds like disingenuous bullshit in 2011. Bullshit being dished out, in most instances by mean-looking old white guys on the tee-vee talking about lowering the nation’s prospects, en masse, of living out old age with dignity, in favor of still more tax cuts for the top 1%. The problem with this simplistic focus group-tested “homespun” GOP messaging stuff is that no one buys it anymore except for the very least sophisticated characters amongst us, i.e. the real Republican base: The Dummies.

Republicans need some new material. Badly. With Donald Trump in the race it’s going to take a turn for the “even dumber.” It’s bad not just for them, but for everybody. (Everybody except Obama… and Donald Trump, of course, who is playing everyone, or thinks he is. He wins no matter what!)

A short item that ran on Wonkette, I think, sums up just how stupid the “Republican message” is getting to sound to… the rest of us, when the latest gloss on their talking points goes something like this… Quoting from Team Sarah:

The $60 billion that the Republicans wanted to cut from spending (simple cuts, not “reductions in rates”) was to the Federal Budget what 1/2 of a French Fry would be to a Big Mac Value Meal (medium size). That’s right, 1/2 of a fry. So why did the Dems manage to get the Republicans to cut that down to $38 billion? Do you realize what that amounts to in the same Value Meal? 1/4 of a French Fry. That’s the equivalent amount of calories in the Big Mac Value Meal that the $38 billion represents in terms of government spending. Think about that the next time you get a Value Meal (of any kind) at the fast food drive-thru.

I certainly shall!

Sarah Palin herself has always seemed “one fry short of a Happy Meal” to me—a whole fry, mind you, not half of one—but even accounting for the bottomless pit appetite for the regurgitation of ludicrously simplistic talking points on the right, this is a new, groan-worthy, anti-intellectual low. Even coming from her blinkered camp. Why wouldn’t someone conclude that the Teabaggers are idiots after reading the kinds of… uh… fucking idiocy they espouse?

I mean who can take a metaphor about a Value Meal seriously?

It’s obvious: Dummies.

Below, pro-labor demonstrators nearly drown out Sarah Palin as she screeches nonsense addressing the Tea party faithful some dummies in Madison, WI, on April 15th. She tells them to fight for America, to take their country back and blah, blah, blah…
 

Whoops, wrong stolen election!

If you are looking for a way to get your head around what happened today in the hotly-contested Wisconsin election shocker, this clip from Daily Kos explains it in a rather succinct nutshell.

In WI, an automatic recount at state-expense is triggered if an election is within .5%, and we have a fully verifiable paper trail to audit election results. That means in this election with approximately 740k for Kloppenburg and 739k for Prosser, the vote gets recounted at state-expense if the election is within ~7400 votes.

So the last 2 days the WI-GOP has been scrambling trying to figure out how they can still get Prosser into office. What was the result of their brain-storming? Add a few extra votes in a friendly area (Waukesha), and call it a clerical error. But in order to steal the election, they NEED to be able to keep a recount from occurring, because a recount would expose their attempted fraud to the light of day.

So they couldn’t just give Prosser a couple hundred to put him barely in the lead by 40. They had to give him more than 7500 in order to get above the threshold for automatic recount, so that the only way for a recount to happen would be if Kloppenburg ponies up the money for a state-wide recount, which could be expensive. Granted, all of us in WI would be happy to donate to a potential recount effort if it gets to that point, but the resolve of the Kloppenburg camp remains to be seen.

When the Republicans have declared victory starting tomorrow, they will use the full power of their media empire to pressure KloJo to concede instead of paying for a recount. They’ll say she’s a sore loser if she pushes for a recount outside of the .5% margin. They’ll say the gap is so wide that a recount couldn’t possibly swing enough votes her way, so she shouldn’t waste the time of election workers. They’ll say she’s just further trying to divide the people of WI. They will do EVERYTHING they can to make sure NO ONE checks the paper trail. Because the paper trail will be the nail in their coffin.

We must not let them succeed in this attempted fraud.

It is NOT a coincidence that Prosser didn’t get +300 votes or +1000, it had to be +7500 or more in order for the fraud to work. +7400 just wouldn’t have been enough.

RECOUNT WISCONSIN!

Now read this, from OneWisconsinNow. Does Kathy Nickolaus in any way seem kinda shady, do you think? Do ya?

Election Returns: What Went On in Waukesha?
After Hours of Silence, Embattled Clerk Reports Wildly-High Turnout in Prosser’s Top County

Madison—As counties statewide move to certify Tuesday’s shocking upset victory by JoAnne Kloppenburg over heavily-favored David Prosser, unanswered questions remain about returns from Tuesday night in Waukesha County—the top-performing county in the state for Scott Walker’s self-proclaimed “complement” on the Supreme Court.

“Wisconsin deserves elections that are fair, clean and transparent,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. “There is a history of secrecy and partisanship surrounding the Waukesha County Clerk and there remain unanswered questions.”

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, a former staffer for the Assembly Republican Caucus, has been sharply criticized in recent months for her handling of recent elections. Even the archly-conservative Waukesha County Board has sharply condemned Nickolaus after past elections, demanding an immediate audit of her practices following ominous red-flags that emerged regarding her lack of oversight, failure to create backup files and her stubborn insistence to “keep everything secret.” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/18/10; 1/17/11]

The County auditors said it was eminently possible—including historical precedent—for Nickolaus or a rogue employee to tamper with data. Why? Nickolaus insists on controlling password access and has unilaterally decided to move sensitive files, like election results, onto her personal computer.

Nickolaus has actually scoffed at complying with impartial audits, thumbing her nose at critics. A move that drew a sharp reaction at the time from the County Board Chair:

“There really is nothing funny about this, Kathy,” said Waukesha County Board Chairman Jim Dwyer when Nickolaus willfully ignored complying with the earlier impartial audit. “Don’t sit there and grin when I’m explaining what this is about.” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/18/10; 1/17/11]

On Tuesday, shockingly-large turnout suddenly emerged from Waukesha County, which did not comport with either the results of previous spring elections, or even internal estimates from city officials mid-day. In fact, a Waukesha City Deputy Clerk said at 1:18pm that turnout was very typical, predicting somewhere between 20 to 25 percent. As Tuesday night wore on, reporting in Waukesha County stopped altogether for hours, leaving observers to wonder what was going on. Then suddenly, results suggesting massive turnout started to pour in rapidly with Prosser adding dramatically to his total by a 73-27 percent margin.

One Wisconsin Now estimates put overall turnout near 38 percent, a wild outlier to historical data and the earlier mid-day estimation of Waukesha’s own officials. In April 2009, turnout was 20 percent; April 2008, turnout was 22 percent and in April 2007, turnout was 24

Fishy or not? You decide!

Vice Presidential candidate Emil Seidel ran with the great Eugene Debs on the Socialist Party ticket in 1912.
 
On a day when the eyes of the country are on what would otherwise have been an obscure election in Wisconsin, if not for the heavy-handed overreach of state Republicans, it’s worth pointing out that today marks the 101st anniversary of the election of the first Socialist mayor of Milwaukee (he was the first of three), Emil Seidel.

Milwaukee has a long, proud history of pro labor, progressive and Socialist politics. The first openly Socialist member of Congress, Victor Berger was elected from the state in 1910. It was Berger who proposed the first bill to care for the elderly in US Congressional history.

Compare and contrast what you read below, with what’s going on in Milwaukee today, you’ll learn something!

Nate Pederson wrote the following for The Progressive Populist with the title “When Socialists Cleaned Up Milwaukee”:

On a balmy night in April of 1910, Emil Seidel, a quiet, unassuming woodcarver received word that he had been elected mayor of Milwaukee with a plurality of 7,000 votes. History was made that night, for Seidel was a Socialist, and the first of his party to be elected mayor of a major American city. Seidel, at home with his wife and daughter, had spent the day working in his pattern-making shop and accepted the news with his usual modest grace. He declined to offer a speech initially, instead opting for early bed, but when he assumed the platform the following morning he gave a speech indicative of his character:

“We intend to do all our limited means permit to make Milwaukee a better place for every citizen … We are today only accumulating material for a larger and more beautiful structure of life that we have ever had. Not all of our work will be successful. But much of it will be. We shall learn, and, continuing to learn, we shall make good. We are today beginning a new civilization.”

And for two years Seidel did just that. Milwaukee had long suffered under corrupt municipal rule and Seidel’s election swept the slate clean. Along with the mayorship, the Socialists took the majority in the City Council and thus were able to quickly enact a number of progressive reforms. Indeed, the reforms enacted by the Socialists in two short years reads like a laundry list of good municipal government: the first public works department was established, the first fire and police commission was organized, the city park system was created, the city’s bars came under regulation, its brothels and illegal casinos closed down. All this from a party usually associated with radical thought and revolutionary activity.

The well-known secret, however, was that the Milwaukee Socialists were of a different order than the Socialist agitators sweeping the rest of the country. The Milwaukee Socialists were moderates, even conservatives, by the principles of their party, seeking to enact fair government at benefit to the most people through prudence and moderation. They stressed the need for basic services — so much so, in fact, they were stuck with the label “Sewer Socialists” for their preoccupation with the cleanliness of Milwaukee’s sewer system.

Furthermore, the Milwaukee Socialists were not partisans. One of their slogans on winning the election was “Get Experts!” Thus, Seidel sought out the best and the brightest to help run the municipal government, regardless of party affiliation. He declared, “I believe the city’s affairs should be administered without party lines,” and quickly followed through by hiring a committee of businessmen from the Democratic and Republican parties to advise him on financial affairs. Other municipal positions were filled with the most qualified candidate, irrespective of party. Thereby Seidel built an effective coalition of capable government officials who were able to enact meaningful reform.

It’s a telling fact that for the first few weeks after the Socialists took control of Milwaukee, not a single Socialist approached the new administration for a job. The Socialists were by and large honest, hardworking laborers, raised with practical German values of self-sufficiency. They were not interested in hand-outs.

Seidel refused to accept any profits from his own pattern-making firm while he was serving as the mayor of Milwaukee. Instead, he insisted that the profits be divided amongst his eleven employees. Such displays of integrity inspired trust and confidence in the Socialists by the larger populace. This in turn provided Seidel with the political capital necessary to enact his agenda.

By 1912, Seidel and the Socialists had cleaned house, sweeping out corruption and pushing through necessary and progressive reforms. The Democrats and Republicans, however, banded together for the 1912 election, nominating Dr. Gerhard A. Bading for the mayorship, who officially ran as a “nonpartisan” candidate. With the backing of the two major parties, and a heavy dose of pro-American, anti-Socialist proselytizing, Bading handily defeated Seidel in his re-election bid.

Seidel only served one term as mayor and his star is largely outshone by the other two later Socialist mayors of Milwaukee who served for much longer periods: Daniel Hoan and Frank Zeidler. His legacy, however, was pronounced considering the brevity of his term. Seidel pushed through a number of reforms still benefiting Milwaukeeans today, such as the expansion of city parks. He also restored a sorely needed respectability to the mayor’s office, raising expectations for Milwaukee’s municipal government and sweeping out the open corruption of his predecessors.

Seidel and his comrades proved the Socialists could be entrusted with the practical management of city government. As such, Seidel deserves a prominent place on the shelf of both Milwaukee’s history and the history of our nation as a whole. In a country founded on the premise of political experimentation, Milwaukeeans deserve special credit for their willingness to look beyond easy labels and pass judgment based on merit.

In return they received clean government, clean parks, and clean sewers. Not a bad trade, really.

Nate Pedersen is a Minnesota native, Wisconsin-educated librarian now living in Scotland.

 
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker just can’t get a break. Only in office a few months, already he seems to posses a bottomless pit of sleazy, stupid things that he’s done that are making it, you might say, a little hot for him.

On the eve of his buddy Judge David Prosser getting his ass kicked all over the electoral map, word has leaked out of a new scandal that’s taking shape in Madison: It seems that the ne’r do well. loser drunkard progeny of one of Walker’s biggest donors, Jerry Deshane, was given a plum state job.

From the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel:

Just in his mid-20s, Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions.

Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state.

How did Deschane score his plum assignment with the Walker team?

It’s all in the family.

This is what happens when you vote for Republicans…

Can you imagine being a high school teacher worried about having your benefits cut or losing your job and hearing about some idiot rich kid with TWO DUIs getting a job at the taxpayer tit for over $80k a year and getting a fucking 16% raise in just eight weeks? Rep. Brett Hulsey, a Democrat from Madison said of party boy Deschane: “It doesn’t look like he’s ever had a real job.”

No, but he’s got a real rich daddy... Did he even have to write a resume or fill out a job application? I kinda doubt it, don’t you?

And in related news, a second WI Republican, Sen. Randy Hopper is likely going to face a recall election. You may recall Hopper as the fellow who left his wife for someone half his age who also got a government job well above the standard pay scale. Wisconsin Democrats and labor supporters have previously collected 145% of the necessary signatures needed to recall another Republican senator, Dan Kapanke. I don’t think either of these gentlemen will see out the end of the summer in their current offices. Nor will their buddy Scott Walker be in any position to give them sweetheart jobs when the voters sack them, because those days are over. Walker’s being watched for ANY slip up at this point and although for sure he’s DUMB, he’s not so dumb that he can’t read the writing on the wall. (Can you imagine what it must feel like to be Scott Walker? What a god-damned buffoon!)

This is getting sooooo gooood. I can’t wait for tomorrow’s vote in Wisconsin. Republican schadenfreude? Count me in, I feel like a little kid on Christmas Eve…

 
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.
 

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)

 
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!

 
Yay team! Yesterday protesters crashed a fundraising event for the Wisconsin Republican Party in Washington D.C. A Salon videographer was there:
 

 
Via Scott Walker Watch

So tell me your name?

Ken Larson.

And where do you work?

I work for the University. I work for the elevator crew, and in the electric shop.

And this year, you’re retiring?

Yes, I’m retiring in June, prompted by all of the goings on. I had planned to retire in December, but I can’t take the chance.

And how many years do you have in?

I have, with the University, seventeen years.

And what does this mean to you?

Aw this, it started out, to me, as an issue between collective bargaining, and the fact that, uh…[breaks down]

I’m a Vietnam vet. That’s alright.

But when he talked about the National Guard, it became personal. He talked about bringing out the Guard, you know, hinting that the Guard would be called, it became personal. But I’m over all that now, that’s why what’s really personal to us all, is [pauses to collect himself]

...are my grandchildren. I don’t want them to be deprived, because this guy has to give it to millionaires. He doesn’t deserve that. My kids, my grandkids deserve everything. So this became personal to me, very personal now, because of all the families, the poor, and moderate-income families that he’s depriving of a better life.

That’s the best I can say.

Via Tina Dupuy/Crooks & Liars

 
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 committees

Dear 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.)