Scott Walker picking up the most idiotic trope of the decade

Pretty sure an "abortion after birth" is on the books in Wisconsin as murder.

How did Wisconsin survive Scott Walker?

And if you don't know that the billionaire doesn't lose $7 billion of his $10 billion to taxes, then you don't know how marginal tax rates (which is the system we have) works.  Please educate yourself.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

How about a little schadenfreude?

And some Houston area good news:



Lina Hidalgo, a 27-year-old Colombian immigrant won one of those spots.

UPDATE:  What a spiteful asshole loser Judge Devlin turned out to be.  Good riddance.

Congratulations Wisconsin!

It was a narrow save.

Will Wisconsin actually get shed of the scourge?

Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) is trailing Democratic challenger Tony Evers by 13 points in the upcoming Wisconsin gubernatorial race, according to a new poll released Thursday.

Of the registered voters surveyed in the NBC News/Marist poll, 41 percent backed Walker in the race, compared to the 54 percent who supported Evers.

  The Hill

The Russians must already be working for the Democrats, yeah?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Here it comes

I was wondering how many GOP Congressmen were involved in the Russia scandal themselves. Let the outing begin.

Party loyalty is often cited as the reason that GOP leaders have not been more outspoken in their criticism of President Donald Trump and his refusal to condemn Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. Yet there may be another reason that top Republicans have not been more vocal in their condemnation. Perhaps it's because they have their own links to the Russian oligarchy that they would prefer go unnoticed.

Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch [Leonard "Len" Blavatnik] who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.

[...]

In 2010, Oxford University drew intense criticism for accepting a donation of 75 million pounds from Blavatnik for a new school of government bearing his name. Faculty, alumni and international human rights activists claimed the university was selling its reputation and prestige to Putin's associates.

[...]

Blavatnik's relationships with Russian oligarchs close to Putin, particularly Oleg Deripaska, should be worrisome for Trump and the six GOP leaders who took Blavatnik's money during the 2016 presidential campaign.

  Dallas

I wonder how many of those few knew where their money was coming from.  Even if they did, I don't think that automatically makes them criminally complicit in anything, but it does make them suspect on the Russian-influence-kompromat front.  While Blavatnik appears to have UK-US citizenship, he is a co-owner of a Russian company, RUSAL, that is under US sanctions.  RUSAL is the second largest aluminum company in the world.

Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million.

[...]

Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at $800,000, Ohio Governor John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.

[...]

Ironically, the shared address of Blavatnik's companies is directly across the street from Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Scott Walker Strikes Again

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"Right to Work"

Scott Walker proves that pranks don’t work. Four years ago, when Walker first waged right-wing jihad on Wisconsin’s public sector workers, an old comrade of mine, “Buffalo” Ian Murphy, pulled off the single greatest phone prank ever. Posing as billionaire David Koch’s voice, Murphy managed to swagger his way past Gov. Walker’s aides and into the governor’s handset for a long 20 minute call, which revealed Walker as a grotesquely slavish Koch towelboy. Four years later: Walker is a top presidential contender, the Kochs are worth over $100 billion, Koch-backed groups passed “Right To Work” in Wisconsin…and “Buffalo” Murphy is an ex-con, jailed in 2013 for brandishing an unconcealed, fully loaded dildo at a mob of homophobic religious fanatics. As the saying goes, “The Koch is mightier than the prank.”

[...]

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article for NSFWCORP (since acquired by Pando) exposing the ugly, racist roots of the whole “Right To Work” movement, tracing it back to the brains behind “Right To Work”: Vance Muse, the loonie anti-Semitic, anti-black Texan who coined “Right To Work” in the early 1940s, and worked Karl Rove-like to push through the first “Right To Work” laws in the South in the 40s and early 50s. Since a lot of people these days are not in tune with labor union struggles and what “right to work” laws even mean, my article exposing the KKK racist who started “Right To Work” created a bit of a PR headache for the union-busting movement.

[...]

In the 1920s and 30s, before Muse invented “Right To Work,” he was notorious for lobbying against women’s suffrage, against outlawing child labor, against the 8-hour workday, and for “Americanization of the Supreme Court” to remove Austrian-born Jewish Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Muse and his groups were investigated by numerous committees and the FBI, but he always landed on his feet thanks to his wealthy sponsors, ranging from Texas oil and cotton magnates, to northern petrochemicals titans like the DuPonts and the Pews.

[...]

Today most of us, including liberals and progressives, couldn’t tell you what Right To Work is or why it’s bad. But Silicon Valley’s favorite politician, Rand Paul, is the Right To Work candidate for president. Rand Paul’s senate staff is led by people from Stan Greer’s National Right To Work Committee — including Doug Stafford, executive director of RAND PAC and Paul’s former chief of staff, previously vice president of the National Right To Work Committee.

No surprise then that Senator Rand Paul has been pushing for a federal “Right To Work” law covering all states, whether they like it or not. With all the Silicon Valley money pouring into his 2016 campaign coffers, a President Paul may just get his Right To Work wish.

  Pando

Seriously?

Scott Walker plays Dropkick Murphys in his campaign? (Hell, in his LIFE.)  Now THAT's ironic.  And strange.  (Here's an article explaining what prompted the Tweet.)

Lyrics below*

I want to see Scott Walker at one of these shows.


 


*Worker's Song - Dropkick Murphys

This one's for the workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead

In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We've often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed

[Chorus:]
We're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And we're always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about

And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
Though we've never owned one lousy handful of earth?

[Chorus x3]

All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We've been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can

The War on Journalism at the Local Level - Wisconsin

Liberal writer and [Govenor Scott] Walker critic Matt Rothschild was arrested by [Madison] Capitol police on a misdemeanor obstruction and resisting arrest charge and released on $300 bail after photographing the arrests of other demonstrators singing in the rotunda. Rothschild said he didn't comply with an officer's order to move from the area of the arrest but did identify himself as a working journalist.

[...]

. Rothschild was also arrested at the Capitol in November 2011 for wearing a sign and taking pictures in the Assembly gallery, both practices that lawmakers in that body have not allowed.

  JSOnline

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

United We Fall

Can we have a discussion now about how truly bad most of these guys are at their jobs?

Jindal's virtually handed over public education in Louisiana to charlatans and Christian nutballs. Scott Walker's going out marching in Fourth of July Parades wearing an American flag shirt made overseas a week after a Wisconsin company that makes American flags goes bankrupt. And Rick Scott is closing the hospital housing Florida's only tuberculosis treatment smack in the middle of the state's biggest tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years. And Rick Perry, who never met a big idea he wouldn't cover with barbecue sauce and try to eat, has decided that he will fight federal intervention in his state's ghastly health-care system by taking a stand that will guarantee that the federal government takes over even more of it.

"We've got some of the finest health care in the world," he said. "So the idea that this federal government, which doesn't like Texas to begin with, to pick and choose and come up with some data and say somehow Texas has the worst health care system in the world is just fake and false on its face."

[...]

I was in Iowa at the end of last summer when everybody in Republican circles was positively sweating from their teeth for Governor Rick Perry of Texas to get into the presidential race. Then he got in and everybody noticed quite quickly that the man was even a bigger box of rocks than the last governor of Texas to run for president, and even the current Republican electorate realized that "Even Dumber Than George W. Bush" was no way to go through life, or the presidency, son, so Perry got to go back to Texas and be egregiously dumb there for a spell.

And you can't say the man didn't grasp the opportunity.
  Charlie Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Condolences to Wisconsin

Or, to the whole of the United States.  That's the direction we're going, and we're not turning around for a very, very long time.  Get used to it.  Or plan your exit.

Read about it from Charlie Pierce.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I Can't Think of a Reason

Pres. Obama is a charismatic figure and many still believe in him. It would have been courageous for him to stand on Wisconsin soil next to Tom Barrett, and speak out in support of labor and the grass roots folks who are the heart and soul of the Democratic party. I think that it would have given Barrett a good lift. The democratic turnout in 2008 was great, and many independents still swing toward Obama.

But that's the problem: Obama doesn't want to lose those swing voters, including the ones who back Scott Walker or who don't like the recall. So Obama was a no-show.

This is just another confirmation of what you and I know in our hearts: that when the chips are down, you can't count on Obama to back up his words with actions.

But if Obama won't come to Wisconsin, why should we go to the polls for him?

Posted by: Chris Stroebe

  comment at First Draft

But you may be glad he didn't show, if you really want Barrett to win.

Go For It, Wisconsin

"I know that Governor Walker wants to make this a national race," Barrett said at his final rally here on Monday night. "This is, and should be, about the values of Wisconsin, not about his national ambitions, not about his wanting to be the poster boy for the Tea Party. I don't want this state to be the experimental dish for the right wing. That's why people look at this and say, 'This is wrong. Why is this governor raising 60 or 70 percent of his money from out-of-state? Why does he have his own criminal defense fund?' It just doesn't add up."

[...]

The local papers are full of stories about families that have divided up over the recall, about divorces that have been sought because a Walker husband found that having a Barrett wife — or, to be fair, vice versa — amounted to an irreconcilable difference.

[...]

For once, anyway, all the talk about how Americans don't care about politics, how disengaged and removed from our obligations to the political commonwealth we've become, have been refuted for the moment by what's gone on in Wisconsin.

  Charlie Pierce