"The Facts Will Set You Free"

Scott Walker has found his epitaph:

Walker, whose office released a detailed analysis of savings schools and local governments could attain, said many school officials are supportive but afraid to speak out. “And I understand that. We’ve seen the pressure, we’ve experienced that,” said Walker. “The facts will set you free. The facts are clear, and the facts clearly show that there are more savings for school districts across the state, then there are net reductions.”

Here's Politifact on Walker's tenuous grasp on the facts.

Here's Rusty King's instant classic "20 Lies (and Counting) Told by Scott Walker."

Here's the Journal-Sentinel saying that the Walker-led state GOP "did what they had said they would not do."

May Your St. Patrick's Day be as Merry as Glenn Grothman's Really Weird Encounter with some Random Dude

Police Incident PDF
via WSJ

Scott Walker's Plan for the Federal Government

Walker takes to the Washington Post editorial pages this morning to graft his budgetary solutions for Wisconsin on to the Fed's books. The only opponents he bothers mentioning in the piece are President Obama and "union leaders in Washington." and its not because he's already won the fight against Wisconsin Dems.

This entire budget/-repair fiasco has nothing to do with Wisconsin and everything to do with Scott Walker positioning himself to reach the next office.

Now This is Rich!

State Sen. Randy Hopper (center) posing with several marks union thugs constituents in what appears to be his capitol office.

Who is that fine-looking stud in the upper left hand corner?

[via Zach, who has been battling some epic technical issues due to a ton of traffic, but continues to soldier on.]

This Should Probably be the End of Randy Hopper

There isn't a radio ad in the world that save someone from this shit:

Matt Phillips, Hopper's policy adviser, said Monday that Hopper is not breaking state law because he is living in his district, which includes Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Waupun and Omro.

Phillips provided The Capital Times with the address where Hopper is living in Fond du Lac on the condition the address would not be made public. He and Rebecca Hogan, Hopper's chief of staff, cited ongoing threats against Hopper and his family as the reason.

According to the online Fond du Lac County property tax map, the address is not an apartment, as Phillips said, but a roughly $600,000 home owned by a high-ranking employee of Hopper's media company, Mountain Dog Media.

Cue the filing of an official complaint! That's going to leave a mark.

If the above is confirmed, it will be a classic case of the cover-up outshining the "crime." Regardless of where Hopper was living he could have argued it satisfied the residency requirements (just as his opponents could have argued the opposite) and regardless of the outcome, he could have done so in good faith the same way folks have been earnestly arguing how many angles can dance on the head of a pin for centuries. But if, as this article suggests, his staffer passed on what appears to be a lie, then there will be hell to pay. It may not be in a court of law or before his colleagues in the senate, but it will be in terms of public opinion.

[via FW]

Hopper's Radio Ad

Audio here.

The ad actually contains the line "They (i.e. unions) want to hand-pick a senator that will vote the way they tell him to."

As if Hopper is a towering monument to independence that doesn't do exactly what the GOP leadership tells him to do...

Greg Sargent points out the inaccuracies in the ad and calls it evidence of Hopper's panic. Unfortunately, radio ads like these are fairly common around here during election season. While I agree that they certainly do get run from a position of weakness, negative garbage like this is usually the harbinger of an exchange of attack ads from both sides that lasts until the end of the campaign, which in this case might not be until June or July.

That means Hopper is taking the "high road" -- by which I mean he's going straight into the gutter so as to make people so sick of negative campaigning after being bombarded for months with the stuff that they lose interest.

Anyway, for something that might inspire a small chuckle take a look at the first entry under the "Likes" section of Hopper's Facebook page. Good stuff.

Everyone Hates Music Critics

I find this line profoundly hilarious:

One GOP aide unloaded on the conservatives, offering a more colorful view privately held by many other Republicans.

“These people aren’t thinking clearly. Their logic doesn’t pan out. They have NO plan. What concessions were they going to get if it failed? They were going to shut down the federal government over Planned Parenthood?” the source said, “It was totally reactionary. These people got elected to lead. Instead they got jerked around by the political equivalent of music critics. If these people knew anything about governing, they’d be in Congress, not lobbing bombs from the cheap seats and sending out fundraising emails.”

MORE: Wow, this post keeps giving!

So the very next line in this post is as follows:

The aide offered contempt for Pence in particular. “Pence is running for governor, and has to get through a primary, so his position is about as genuine as a $10 Gucci hand bag on Sunset Boulevard.”

To which epic asshole, RedState.com founder and, yes, CNN contributor Erick Erickson quipped:

I’ll first point out that Eric Cantor is well known to wear Gucci loafers. Second, I will pass comment on the sexual orientation of whoever came up with the Gucci hand bag line. Third, I would like to ask exactly whose side these Republicans are on.

In other words, "I'll just insinuate the aide is a fag instead of calling him one outright."

Which I find amusing largely because the gender of the aide is never mentioned and Erickson seems to dismiss the possibility that aide could be a woman out of hand.

He's also a homophobic dick, but you already knew that.

Spin of the Day

Oh, this comment was delightful:

"Timing is everything," said Robert Wood, BGR's government affairs president and a former top aide to Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson (R). "With Democrats' groups like MoveOn, Public Citizen and the International Socialist Organization committing upwards of $2 million in each of these potential Senate recalls, every dollar can help."

I'm going to wager that it took Mr. Wood every ounce of restraint in his body to keep himself from rubbing his nipples as he feed the reporter that quote.

I actually think this is a pretty positive development for Dems: instead of just being called socialists, Republicans are now citing specific socialist organizations to which they are allegedly aligned.

Also, the ISO must be making a killing selling enough copies of the "Socialist Worker" newspaper to pony up some political donations these days. My, how times change.

A Brief History of how Randy Hopper Lost Touch with his District

The big story in the paper today is that state senator Randy Hopper has hired  an out-of-state campaign operative to fight allegations that he doesn't live in his district, as well as to manage the recall campaign against him. This was probably counterproductive, in so far as it feeds into one of the long-broiling criticisms of Hopper: namely, that he's become too cool for school.

The thing(s) about the Hopper residency issue debacle is that isn't only that it's happening at a time when he's being recalled for unrelated reasons, but primarily because it's happening only after he's been in office for about two years. Why is that a big deal?

By all accounts, Hopper is really a splendid retail politician. He charmed the pants off a ton of people in his district (and apparently a few staffers in Madison, literally -- rimshot!). In fact, the word used to describe Hopper that I heard most frequently was "smooth." He campaigned as a reasonable, common-sense moderate in front of a good deal of locals who, not surprisingly, thought he would govern that way.

He may have only won by 187 votes, but he did so during 2008, a year that lesser Republican campaigns and candidates would have gotten steamrolled.

Needless to say, folks were a bit disheartened when he lurched hard right immediately upon taking the oath of office. During Hopper's first year in the Senate many folks began to get the impression that he enjoyed being a politician, and not necessarily "the representing his constituents part," a lot. Perhaps too much. So by the end of his first year Hopper had developed the reputation as someone who had gone Hollywood, er, Madison: he enjoyed the perks of office and was content with just being told what to do by the leadership.

At the same time it was clear the GOP leadership saw him as a potential rising start. Even as a freshman legislator he was given a leadership role on the partisan sideshow known as the Wisconsin Jobs NOW Task Force, a traveling series of listening sessions that concluded its business with a report that "coincidentally" (wink, wink; nudge, nudge) parroted the recommendations advocated by the local chapter of the Koch Brothers'-funded Americans for Prosperity. Hopper was proving to be a good soldier in Madison, and rumors started to circulate that Hopper was being groomed to inherit Rep. Tom Petri's congressional seat (or even something bigger).

Rumors of Hopper's issues back home really started to make the rounds among Oshkosh's water cooler in the fall of last year. By the time 2011 started, it was something of a shibboleth among people who kept up with public affairs, but weren't eager to appear as gossips. When Hopper earned an appointment to the powerful Joint Finance Committee in November, many people were incensed that Hopper was being rewarded with a prime seat at the cool kids table despite his lack of seniority and extracurricular issues.

Hopper's base has always been in Fond du Lac County, where he, um, resides. That portion of his district is much more conservative than the Winnebago county segment (FdL Co. voted for Scott Walker with a whopping 65% of the vote in 2010). Fondy is home to a good deal of union households who have jobs working for Mercury Marine, which explored relocation to Oklahoma (a so-called "right to work" state) in 2009. At the eleventh hour Mercury canceled the move after receiving generous tax incentive packages from state and local governments, as well as significant concessions from the union. The move would have cost Fondy at least 1850 jobs, in addition to many ancillary jobs from suppliers and so forth, and would have essentially decimated the city.

But Mercury didn't move and Hopper was visible in the negotiations that kept them here. A victory, right? Not quite. Last March Mercury started paying out bonuses to salaried employees, a move that did not sit well with hourly workers. Many of these folks are classic Reagan Democrats who have probably been voting Republican for years and may now realize that that they're damned if they do and damned if they don't.

If perception is reality in politics, then the pervading perception of Hopper is that he's "gone native" during his brief time in Madison. For some elected officials it takes years, even decades, to earn this reputation, but Hopper fell into it so quickly that it's hard to both miss and defend. None of these issues by themselves are exactly minor -- the relationship with a Madison staffer/lobbyist, the residency questions, the out-of-state operative hires -- but they all come together to form a narrative of a fundamental disconnect between Hopper and his district, and that's before anyone mentions that he's been in unflinching lockstep with Scott Walker since January.

PPP Looks at the Recall Senate Districts

Above all, this data is fascinating in so far as it represents the rare occasion whereby state senate districts are given a thorough polling and then the results are made public. There's a funky chart you don't want to miss at the link, but here's the take-away:

"Vote Incumbent" and "Vote Democrat" summarize data from our most critical question. We asked poll-takers whether, in a hypothetical election that would be held later this year, they'd support the incumbent (whom we mentioned by name), or his/her "Democratic opponent." (This sort of question is often described as testing a "generic Democrat.") Here, the results give us reason to be cautiously optimistic.

Three Republican incumbents actually trail "generic Dem": Luther Olsen, Randy Hopper, and Dan Kapanke. Two more have very narrow leads and garner less than 50% support: Rob Cowles and Sheila Harsdorf. And one more, Alberta Darling, holds a clear lead but is still potentially vulnerable. (Two recall-eligible senators, Mary Lazich and Glenn Grothman, sit in extremely red districts and look to have safe leads.) These numbers suggest we have a chance to make five and possibly six recall races highly competitive.

 Also worth noting:

One final detail: You'll notice that in the table up above, the last column reads "Number of Responses." That refers to how many people actually completed our poll when we called them. If you're familiar with electoral polling at all, those numbers are simply eye-popping, particularly for state senate districts. Our target was 600 to 800 respondents per poll, and yet we got well into the two thousand range for all but one of them (and even that outlier had over 1,300). What does this mean? The only reasonable conclusion is that an unusually high proportion of Wisconsinites are tuned into this conflict, and when given the opportunity to make their opinions heard, they jumped at the chance. While we can't yet say for sure whether the enthusiasm gap has been erased, we do know that folks in Wisconsin are very definitely paying attention.

45% of Recall Signatures

From Greg Sargent:

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 roughly 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.

[...]

According to Wisconsin Dem spokesman Zielinski, Dems are ahead of pace in signature gathering in every single one of the eight districts being targeted, and in three of the districts, Dems have well over 50 percent of the number required.

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out in Grothman's and Lazich's districts, which are the most conservative of the eight eligible. I would have thought these were lose causes from the get-go, but these figures suggest that perhaps a Dem might be able to slip into those seats during a special election wherein the the conservative base to dispirited or otherwise occupied with something else. I wouldn't count on it happening, but the odds seem a little less ridiculous than they did just a month ago.

MORE: This will not help things:

As WisPolitics reports, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) sent a letter to his fellow Republicans, reminding them that they had previously found the Democrats to be in contempt of the chamber -- and as such, they are not to be allowed to vote on committees.

It will be absolutely fascinating to watch happens to Fitzgerald should he suddenly find himself in the minority in the next six months. From the outside it appears that Fitzgerald doesn't seem to care what kind of damage he is doing to his relationships with his colleagues across the aisle, so long as he is able to shepard Walker's legislative agenda through the senate. It will be interesting to see what kind of recriminations, if any, he will have to deal with in the future.

Sheboygan Press Excoriates Scott Walker

Yeah, it was three days ago, but it minces no words doing so:

The shell game Gov. Scott Walker has played the last two weeks is pathetic. Say one thing, and then do another.

[...]

We can't say if the conference committee meeting that led up to the "new" budget repair bill — which used the "emergency" and "special session" exceptions to the 24-hour notice required by state Open Meetings Law — was illegal. But the way Republicans conducted themselves was unethical.

[...]

Last fall, The Sheboygan Press endorsed Walker, Sen. Joe Leibham, Rep. Steve Kestell and challenger Mike Endsley (over incumbent Terry Van Akkeren) because each of the four, in interviews, public forums, debates and campaign literature, listed their primary goals as job creation and balancing the state budget.

In retrospect, had any of them even hinted at the draconian measure of scraping collective bargaining for public employees, we would most likely have thought differently.

[...]

But the way things have gone these last three weeks, it appears Walker's motive all along has been equally focused on union busting as budget balancing.

He said nothing about taking away collective bargaining when he demanded in December that Democratic Senators — who were soon to be in the minority — not push through new state employee contracts. Walker said he wanted the ability to get concessions from state workers. It wasn't until then that Walker said he would consider abolishing state employee unions if he didn't get his way and he apparently had no intention of ever negotiating or even talking with unions.

Like many others who supported Walker and Republicans last fall, we are feeling like we've been duped.

State Senator Randy Hopper Needs to be Investigated for Voter Fraud and Embezzlement

UPDATE:

In Wisconsin legislators who live outside Dane County get a per diem of $88 a day when they travel to Madison for work (inside Dane Co. legislators get $44/day). If Hopper claimed the outside Dane County per diems when he was, in fact, living inside Dane County, now we're talking about possible embezzlement charges. This would probably make him subject to Dane County prosecution. If that's the case, he should be investigated by the Dane County DA.

ORIGINAL POST:

Alright, this post was inspired by a painful conversation Zach is having with a troll over at Blogging Blue, so let's go through some of the residency issues associated with Randy Hopper's displacement.

Evidently, he no longer lives where his state web site says he lives.

That's a problem. Now, since he's going through a divorce and houses are usually contentiously disputed items between parties, there's a possibility that Hopper still owns part or all of his home and pays property taxes on the residency. Fair enough, but he wouldn't be the first legislator to own two residencies. His predecessor in the 18th district, Carol Roessler had homes in Oshkosh and Waukau, for example (and towards the end of her tenure in the senate she was criticized for spending more time outside the district than in it), so it could be an issue of determining what Hopper's "primary" residence is.

One of the ways of determining this would be to compare the number of nights he's spent in Fondy to the number of nights he's been in Madison. Presumably Hopper didn't stick around Fondy after he filed for divorce on August 18th of last year and there's a possibility that he's been crashing in Madison every since. If that's the case, then Hopper is a Madison resident when it comes to voting.

In fact, if Hopper lived in Madison between August 18th and the November 2nd election, yet returned to Fond du Lac to vote during the midterm election, he may have committed voter fraud. Voting laws in Wisconsin require people to vote at the polling place for where they have been living for 10 days prior to the election (that's the extremely short version of the law). If Hopper was essentially living with his girlfriend during that time then his proper polling place should have been in Madison.

Now we have to ask ourselves what constituents "living," which isn't an easy question to answer under the circumstances. Did Hopper plan on returning to Fond du Lac? If so, did he make an effort to find another residence in the district? When? How often? How many nights did he spend in Fondy? How many in Madison? Did he co-sign the lease with his mistress when they moved in together? Has he payed part or all of the rent of his Madison residence? What about the phone bill for a land line? Does he rent a parking space in Madison? These may seem like trivial questions but they will now have to be asked to determine a pattern of living that should dictate where Hopper should have voted during the last election.

Right now there's a very good case to be made that Hopper is a Madison resident, has been for the last 6-7 months, and was on November 2nd of last year. If he voted in Fond du Lac, he may have committed voter fraud. It's entirely possible he committed voter fraud unintentionally, but he still broke the law. There's a very similar case involving an elected official in Indiana moving through the courts as we speak.

Let me stress the conditional nature of everything written above. It's entirely possible Hopper's done nothing wrong. The nature of the information currently available to the public, however, seems to suggest otherwise. I'm going to go ahead and assume that Hopper is on good enough terms with the Fond du Lac county district attorney that he won't be investigated by that body, nor will the J.B. Van Hollen give much thought to the matter. I doubt the Dane County DA would have an jurisdictional authority to look into something like this (I could be wrong, but doubt it). [See update above.]

So this is now a job for an aggressive an inquisitive media. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Cap Times, State Journal, Oshkosh Northwestern, Fond du Lac Reporter -- this is your time to shine. Again, it's entirely possible that Hopper didn't do anything illegal. Hell, he may not have even voted in last year's election at all, but if he did, he sure as hell better have done it properly.

Why Randy Hopper's Residency Matters

In case anyone doesn't immediately see the consequences of the Randy Hopper Residency question, allow me to explain:

Voter ID is going to be the next thing the Wisconsin GOP rams through the legislature and protecting a senator who may be committing vote fraud as a legislator really undermines the GOP's ability to try and make the case that IDs are need to control fraud at the polls.

Wisconsin will get some kind of change to it's voting laws, that much is certain, but to the extent that Hopper is legitimately living where he claims to be living could determine just how much change we're going to get.

Does Randy Hopper even meet the Residency Requirements to Represent his District Anymore?

Well, here's a funky development on the Randy Hopper recall front:

[P]rotesters outside the Hopper house this week in Fond du Lac were met by his wife who reportedly came out and told them: Hopper no longer lives there, but with his 25-year-old mistress in Madison. 

If he no longer has a residence in Fond du Lac, but instead is keeping a love nest in Madison, Hopper might not meet the legal residency requirements for serving his Senate District.

Infidelity aside, this is a legal issue that voters might want to get straightened out.

MORE: Actually, lets take this thought experiment further: If he has not been fulfilling the residency requirements for some time now, has Randy Hopper been ineligibly representing his district in the Senate for however many months he's been living shacked up in his Madison love nest? What does that do to the votes he's since January?

Now those are some questions that will require professional attention.

EVEN MORE: From WBAY:

Citing recent threats during the budget repair bill battle, Republican Senator Randy Hopper says he will not participate in Saturday's St. Patrick's Day Parade in Fond du Lac.

In a written statement, Senator Hopper said, "I had looked forward to walking the parade route and sharing this celebration with my family, friends, neighbors, and constituents, but I, in no way, want to put the citizens of Fond du Lac in harm's way."

Yeah, I'm sure it has nothing to do with potential YouTube clips of Hopper being booed and heckled continuously during a three mile walk through downtown Fondy.

In fact, I imagine Hopper's going to keep a pretty low profile as news of unique living situation starts to work its way through Wisconsin.

MORE STILL: If I'm reading this correctly, Hopper's roommate might have lost her job today.

A Word of Advice for Sen. Randy Hopper

There's an ancient Chinese proverb that goes something like this: Try not to cheat on your wife with a 20-something year old Madison staffer on your way home from work.

Maybe it's Japanese, I forget just which one.

Video link here.

All Hail the Internets!

via.

Read Sen. Randy Hopper's Desperate Cry for Help Money, Coming to a Mail Box Near You Soon!

Got this in the mail today. Someone sounds scared:

RECALL ALERT! I URGENTLY NEED YOUR HELP NOW!

Hello My Friend,

Last November, you and I witnessed a historic election will not forget. All across the country, voters elected leaders who share our principles of fiscal responsibility and economic freedom.

In Wisconsin, our newly-elected governor and newly-elected majority in the legislature immediately went to work on the issues you elected us to do. Governor Walker called the legislature into a Special Session, and I am proud to say we have already enacted a number of bills to kick-start job creation and economic development in Wisconsin.

But now, more than ever before, I need your help!

Governor Walker recently introduced a budget repair bill to help Wisconsin climb out from the massive budget deficit we face. In order to address our problem, Governor Walker proposed that government employees pay a modest amount of their pension and health insurance costs -- something individuals in the private sector began doing long ago.

But with these bold new measures, comes a battle.

As you have seen, this is not sitting well with the leaders of those government employee unions who are desperately trying to undo last November's election. First, they tried to bully and intimidate me into abandoning my principles. When that didn't work, the minority party in the senate fled the state in an attempt to procedurally block any ability to pass the bill. Now they have filed a RECALL against me and seven of my colleagues. Democrats are amassing a huge war chest to go after those of us who have the courage of our convictions. They are already gathering signatures.

I am asking for your support so I can fight back. Please contribute $1000, $500, $250, $100, $50 or even $25. Please know that any and all contributions are very much needed so I can promote our message of fiscal conservatism.

Government employee union representatives and their members have come out in full force against Governor Walker's proposal. The protests are daily, and the political unrest is escalating. Now they are threatening me with this RECALL for standing firm to my beliefs of smaller government, less taxes and creating jobs in the public sector.

But you and other voters spoke loud and clear in November. You gave us a mandate to change the way government operates in Wisconsin. For too long we have ignored the real problems of our fiscal challenges, and the time to fix them has come. But change is HARD, and the opposition is FIERCE.

I have always said it is more important to do this job than keep it. But I will not lie down. I will keep fighting for what we believe. I know you will join me in this fight.

I look forward to and appreciate your support.

Sincerely

[signed]
Randy

Randy Hopper

P.S. - Our fiscal conservative principles are under attack and I need you help. Please also consider contributing online at XXXXXXXXXXXX or by mailing in the enclosed card today!

This looks like the kind of fund-raising appeal written by some consultant who will collect 30% of whatever comes in; so if you're in a giving mood, why not see just how strong Hopper's convictions really are by dropping some coins in this bucket?

Commence Editorials!

The Journal-Sentinel wasted little time in criticizing last night GOP power grab:

But the Republicans went too far in their zeal to bust the unions and too far in their stubborn tactics to accomplish that mission. They are forcing these changes on an unwilling state at great cost - and they still haven't filled the budget hole the original measure was designed to fill.

And then,

Republicans, in the end, did what they had said they would not do: They cast aside provisions in the "budget-repair" bill that actually dealt with the budget and took an up-or-down vote on ending most collective bargaining. Fiscal matters require a Senate quorum of 20; the Republicans have only 19 members.

The editorial specifically calls out the Brothers Fitzgerald, which is almost as much fun as watching video of Scott Fitzgerald running out of the conference committee like a thief being replayed on every news channel this morning.

I'm sure various polling firms are going to be pounding the pavement in Wisconsin pretty hard this weekend. I can't wait to see what the numbers look like next week.

Kickflipping a Surfboard

Since Wisconsin is about to devolve into a rage-filled cesspool of vitriol for what one can only assume will be the next year and a half (seriously, folks, think about that for a second: we may be in the middle of what amounts to a 2 and 1/2 year election season here in the Badger State), so take a moment an appreciate this gnarly use of a surfboard:

Pretty cool, no?

The thing that impresses me the most about this little trick is that the surfer (whose name is Zoltan Torkos, also impressive) is actually wearing a leash. I don't know how he's able to keep it from getting wrapped around the board during the kickflip.

Confessions of a Walker Recall Skeptic Scott Walker is Fucked

Regardless of how the current run of state senate recalls works out, I still think a successful recall of Scott Walker isn't likely, but the more more the Guvna and Fitzgerald try to bull rush legislation, the better the odds that Walker -- or anything he manages to get done during his tenure -- is not long for this world:

We're still trying to clarify the details. But it looks like Wisconsin Republicans have decided to make their move, redefining the union-busting portions of the budget bill as non-budgetary and voting through those provisions tonight.

The irony here is that the union-busting provisions really are not budgetary -- they're simply an attempt to eliminate unions in the state. But Gov. Walker's argument throughout has been that they are budgetary measures and necessary to avert fiscal catastrophe.
More details as we get them.

Late Update: Word we're getting is that the state unions were basically caught flat-footed by this move, did not see it coming.

Unions can probably hold out on whatever Walker does to dismantle them for a calender year, so by all means, please keep up the fine work.

MORE: Let the shitstorm begin! I think we can now expect at least three senatorial recalls, possibly more.

Oh, Lord...

It's sorta pathetic watching someone who really should know better fall flat on his ass when trying to make a point, but if you want to see a tuckus do a Triple Lindy and stick the landing, go no further than to Marquette University's very own  right-wing shill esteemed professor of something John McAdams, who is able to unearth vast demographic insights into the listenership of NPR from a single voluntary online poll.

I'm sure that for his next post Prof. McAdams will explain to the world why Ron Paul will be the next President of the United States.

Scott Fitzgerald (allegedly) refers to Protesters as "Long-haired Goof Fuckers"

(Alleged) details here. (Alleged) video below.

Kindly Return the Kraken to its Humble Abode, Good Sir.

Here's Charlie Sykes trying his damnedest to spin the disastrous results of the recent WPRI poll that came out this weekend:

Bottom line: three weeks into the fight, Walker (a) needs to sharpen his messaging, and (b) while the unions have clearly scored some points, this fight is eminently winnable.

It's such a measured and sedate statement that Sykes had to print it in bold to give it any energy.

Contrast this glass-is-half-full sheen with his post on Election Day morning:

What a difference four months makes.

Hey, You Know What's a Great Idea?

Holding a fundraiser in the midst of a budget 'crisis' and free-falling approval ratings, because that's not at all an easy place for demonstrators to target.

Everything Scott Walker seems to touch seems to turn to shit these days.