Pot, Kettle. Kettle, Pot.

Here's Ron Johnson being asked the tough questions:

Donald Trump. He described real estate mogul as a superb marketer, but doubts whether he is a serious presidential candidate.

That's funny, because last year the very same thing was said about a guy named Ron Johnson ... and yet here we are.

Incidentally, I'm beginning to pick up on a pattern with regard to Wisconsin-based media accounts interviews, press conferences or other interactions with Johnson: they all drip with a patronizing condescension that's subtle, yet very hard to ignore. Clink on the link above to see what I mean.

When asked what he thinks should be done about the budget deficit, Johnson replies "Constitutional amendment!" which is silly considering only 17 amendments have ever been enacted. It's a completely unrealistic way of correcting a problem, so unrealistic that you can basically visualize the reporter making the universal jerking off hand motion instead of asking follow-up questions like "How much support do you have for that in the Senate right now?" "How many meetings have you had to get an Amendment passed?" "What kind of legal issues are you running into crafting the Amendment's language?" and "Who are you consulting to fix those legal problems?"

The key to being a good interview is providing fresh answers to obvious questions, especially when the answers are already widely known that eventually lead into uncharted territory. Interviews with Johnson thus far have been the exact opposite and many consist of local reporters asking the bear minimum getting the obligatory bullshit answers and never bothering to do any follow-up because they know all too well there isn't any point.

The "Johnson addressed a variety of other issues" section is indicative of just how little reports warrant Johnson's opinion: I felt like Johnson was going to tell me what his favorite color was or how his favorite class is "recess."

Invisible Hand of the Free Market Crushes "Atlas Shrugged," Owners Blame Critics with Straight Faces

Funny stuff:

Twelve days after opening "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1," the producer of the Ayn Rand adaptation said Tuesday that he is reconsidering his plans to make Parts 2 and 3 because of scathing reviews and flagging box office returns for the film.

"Critics, you won," said John Aglialoro, the businessman who spent 18 years and more than $20 million of his own money to make, distribute and market "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1," which covers the first third of Rand's dystopian novel. "I’m having deep second thoughts on why I should do Part 2."

I how love movie-makers -- not just these movie-makers, but all of them -- blame critics when people don't like their entertainments. Just one of these days I'd love to see a producer lash out and say, "Frankly, the lead was too coked up to read his lines half the time, I only hired the hot chick because she blew me in my office during her audition and the director was an investor's nephew who never filmed anything more elaborate than cock shots with his iPhone. Why did I drop $20 million on this project? Because I'm a fucking idiot."

On a brighter note, the movie did provide someone with "deep thoughts" of some kind, so it has that going for it.

MORE: HotAir blames the poor box office on marketing problems:

The obvious Plan B here would be to reach out to prominent libertarians, starting with the Paul family, natch, and do whatever the producers are legally able to do to get them to help promote it. Rand Paul’s already regaling Senate committee hearings with paeans to his favorite Rand books; maybe it’s as simple as sending him a copy of the film (assuming he hasn’t seen it yet) and asking him to put out the word among the Paul army if he likes it. Say what you will about them, but devoted libertarians aren’t stingy when it comes to donating to causes they believe in. Or, if the Pauls are unavailable, the producers could wait a few months and then try to hire Gary Johnson to promote it. He should have plenty of free time by then.

Seriously? His idea is to hire a niche politician to sell the damn movie? Here's a much better idea: hire people who know how to make a fucking movie.

Shrugged apparently cost $20 million to make. This year's best picture Oscar winner, The King's Speech, cost $15 million. It's possible.

The Tea Party Express Included a Laundry List a Blurbs Describing how Bad Atlas Shrugged in an Email Telling its Membership to go see the Movie

Fucking brilliant.

We too can Make School Yard Taunts

See: Dooley, Fred:

By the way, does Fred own a mini-bike?

Separated at birth?

Just another example of a useless blogger who got shit-canned from his cushy gig at an eighth-rate "think tank" and seems to know everything about politics except winning a city council race in Racine.

It's real easy to go down this road. Come up with something better next time, Dooley.

Cujo Burglarizes Recall Hansen Office in Green Bay and Eats All of the Tea Bagger Homework

Jesus, this is going to be a mess:

Green Bay police are investigating an apparent break-in at the office of the “Recall Dave Hansen”effort at 1136 W. Mason St.

Petitions, a computer and T-shirts were among the items reported stolen, police said.

The Democratic state senator is among the lawmakers being targeted in recall efforts stemming from Wisconsin’s ongoing budget controversy.

The burglar or burglars broke a window to make entry, police said. The incident occurred between 5 p.m. Thursday and 8 a.m. Friday, police Lt. David Paral said.

Organizers of the effort, in an email to media, blamed the break-in on “the (opposition) of ‘Recall Dave Hansen.’” Police said they did not have descriptions of suspects.

Total value of the missing items is slightly more than $1,000, Paral said.

Before the Recall Hansen folks get too carried away pointing fingers, let’s get a few things straight here:

• There is NO INCENTIVE for Hansen supporters to commit such a crime. Hansen won his district by 32% most recently, so even if enough signatures did get gathered by the recall effort, there’s little likelihood of Hansen losing a recall election.

• The Recall Hansen team also has had some organizational issues, like finding enough volunteers. This was apparently such a problem that they offered to pay people to do gather signatures by posting an ad on Craigslist:

The recall Hansen group is even looking to pay people to collect signatures. In a Craigslist ad they posted, they offer 50 cents a signature saying there is an unlimited short term earning potential.

This, of course, is the same kind of pay-for-names scheme that conservatives used to blast the artists formerly known as ACORN for doing, under the auspices that it led to voter fraud.

• Or just regular old felons. The Recall Hansen folks recently had to fire a paid, out-of-state canvasser after he was arrested for stealing and subsequently was shown to have an extensive criminal record.

• Originally there were two Recall Dave Hansen efforts, but they merged, a process that can lead to leadership quarrels and disgruntled ex-members.

But the biggest reason of all to be skeptical of the Recall Hansen folks is how they’ve publicly marked their progress thus far. It’s been scatter-shot at best. On April 1st they said:

The recall Hansen group says they are halfway to the 13,852 required signatures, and hope to be all the way, by Tuesday, election day [April 4th].

So they thought they could bring in 7000 signatures in 4 days. Which they apparently accomplished:

The recall campaign against Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, said its haul of more than 3,000 signatures Tuesday likely propelled it past its goal of getting enough signatures to force a recall election.

Keep in mind this was before both recall campaigns merged, a process that should have added signatures to the grand total, but somehow, three days later on April 7th, they were still short of their goal:

That combined effort is now very close to having the required number of signatures after a surprising release of the total this afternoon.

After combining signatures and adding up the total, we are at 12,973. We need 13,851. Victory is a reality with 19 days to go.

And even though they were able to bring in "4000 signatures" during the three days before the Election Day, they still needed another week to gather the 900 signatures that put them over the hump (yet again) yesterday, when the campaign announced that it had finally gotten the signatures required to start a recall:

Organizers of the campaign to recall state Senator Dave Hansen of Green Bay say they have  enough signatures to deliver to the State.

The groups targeting the Democratic state senator are planning a victory party Saturday. Then they say they’ll double-check their petitions before handing them over to the State.

Wow, what awful timing. (And given their track record, I'm sure they'll find a few duplicate signatures or whatever and once again be just short of the goal. Probably not a good idea to throw the party before the chickens are counted ... or hatched ... or whatever, you get the point.)

Here’s what one can reasonably suspect happened:

The Recall Hansen organization is basically being run by amateurs who are having a trouble finding signatures. The problem is that they are probably accountable to someone, somewhere in Wisconsin (my guess is in Madison). This looks like they have inflated their progress to the press and, more importantly, their superiors and now find themselves in a bit of a bind with only ten days left before the recall period ends. So someone, who is probably pretty new to politics, but still thinks of themselves as the next Karl Rove cooks up a little plan wherein a mysterious robber steals away with the recall signatures in the middle of the night, before the gang has had the chance to turn them in to the GAB, which not only spares them the wrath of their overlords in Madison, but also has the added effect of making the opposition look crooked.

Bravo, Machiavelli.

Do I have any proof of this? No more than the Recall Hansen people do of Watergate-style burglaries led by the opposition. Throwing a brick through one’s own campaign office window in an attempt to win some sympathy is one of the oldest tricks in the book, but at the end of the day the Recall Hansen people have to answer one very simple question:

What the fuck were the signatures doing in a place where someone could steal them? Why didn’t someone bring them home at the end of every day and put them in a safe place? I don’t care how safe the neighborhood is, they should have at least put in place a system that would have made accidental loss or misplacement of the signatures damn near impossible.

This doesn’t look like a crime so much as an idiotic hoax. I'd be more than happy to eat crow on this if proved wrong, but when it's all said an done I doubt we will ever be any closer to knowing what actually happened after an investigation than we do right now. Unless, of course, the Recall Hansen people broke the window from the inside or something incredibly stupid like that. Which is entirely possible.

MORE: Holy shit! There's actually a picture of the broken window! The commenters at the WTAQ site aren't buying it either. Here's "Chris," who also makes a great point about the stolen t-shirts:

Look at the photo. You can't climb into a window like that without knocking down the glass on the lower ledge or you will find yourself in the hospital.

Do you seriously think the opposition is going to want to steal t-shirts? It doesn't have any significant effect on the opposition to take them, and make it far more likely that you would get caught. Petitions, you bet, T-shirts, no, you would have to be an idiot to take them.

The main thing though is the glass. Clearly nobody climbed in through that window.

For the uninitiated, WTAQ is the Fox Valley's major FM conservative talk radio station. By the way, the picture above, which I ganked from the station's web site, was taken by the Recall Hansen office's lead organizer, David VanderLeest, for what it's worth.

Widgerson also has the pic and notes that only 150 signatures were supposedly taken. Fair enough. (I still find the arithmetical skills of the organization wanting and would happily wager that the signatures collected by the felon who was recently released from his employ will be challenged.) He also asks (in jest, one assumes) if the negros have an alibi.

The proprietor of Seaside Sadness also seems to be a psychic detective who knows who committed the dastardly deed!

Cartman's Incredible Gift
Tags: SOUTH
PARKmore...

FOX11 out of Green Bay is calling the incident, a "possible" burglary, which suggests either they or the GBPD aren't entirely convinced it was wasn't an inside job (So this is the rabbit hole through which the Truthers must have slipped!).

NBC26 out of Green Bay, has the last available update:

Those with the recall campaign say police are now involved after someone smashed a window, swiping everything from dozens of recall signatures to a computer. The organizer of the effort is accusing one group of committing the crime.

"There were some petitions stolen, our computer is missing, some of the recall signs and they cleaned us out of all our recall T-shirts," says Hansen recall organizer, David Vander Leest.

That's a lot of stuff to cram through that little window ... unless they tossed the aforementioned t-shirts out the window one by one through a kind of bucket brigade of thieves, which would be a killer named for a garage band.

NBC26 also has a comment from Hansen himself:

Senator Dave Hansen was shocked to hear about the break-in, but says it's too early to point fingers. "I think that's up to the police to determine, I mean that's out there.  Let the police make that decision and determination of who is responsible," explains Senator Hansen.

 Well, what did you expect him to say?

One last thing: the Recall Hansen folks aren't the only gang to issue Mission Accomplished! pronouncements in the press only to have to re-examine their figures. The Recall Wirch -- another incumbent who won his last election by 33% -- folks claimed they had enough signatures almost two weeks ago, but so far as anyone has been able to tell haven't even submitted their signatures to the GAB yet.

Teabagger Tax Day Rally Update

Sounds like it's going to be a quiet affair.

Once and Future Recalls

If you missed the State Journal's piece on the the midpoint of the recall efforts around the state, give it a quick read.

It's worth pointing out that if Dems manage to pull in all the signatures required to recall the 8 eligible senators that would have no less than 138,671 signatures, all of whom would presumably be game to sign recall petitions against Scott Walker. That's just over 25% of the 540,206 signatures needed to recall Scott Walker -- all of them coming away from the Democratic strongholds and population centers of places like Milwaukee and Dane counties (not to mention other target rich environments).

This is probably one of the reasons spending time and money trying to recall Grothman and Lazich aren't necessarily bad ideas. Both senators should be able to handily beat back any recall elections, but there are bigger points to be scored. 40,000+ signatures represent over 7% of the total needed to recall Walker and if the Dems can pull those kinds of numbers out of extremely hostile territory they shouldn't have too much trouble finding signatures elsewhere.

The GOP doesn't have this kind of fall back plan. Those poor cats running through Mark Miller's district looking for signatures? Those names will probably just end up on a list they already belong on. And the volunteers? They'll probably end up pretty demoralized. The situation would only get worse if Dems manage to force 3-6 recall elections, while the GOP fails to force any. (And this is a decent possibility, since the only district they seem to have a fighting shot in is Holperin's, which is difficult to traverse on account of its ruralness.)

So on January 3rd, 2012 Dems wake up with a list of 140,000 people who want to recall Scott Walker, and that's before the even unlock the offices in Milwaukee, Madison, Kenosha, Racine, Eau Claire, Superior, Appleton/Neenah/Menasha, Stevens Point, Sheboygan, parts of Green Bay and so forth. They'll also have funds to go after the 11 senators who become eligible for recall the same day that Scott Walker does.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

Maryann Sumi has Made Her Decision; now let Her Enforce It!

Scott Walker thinks he's Andrew Jackson.

There's a good chance that the Wisconsin Supreme Court will be asked to decide the legality of  Walker's union-busting bill in the near future. Given how receptive Walker has been to the legal system, one can reasonably assume that if the Court decides against his favor, Walker will essentially ignore the ruling -- and, in essence, an entire branch of state government. That will prove to be an actual "constitutional crisis" of the kind Scott Fitzgerald tried to gin up earlier this month.

It's now also entirely possible that voters will deprive Walker of control of another branch of government -- the legislative -- before the biennial budget has a chance to be passed later this summer, which will undoubtedly result in the kind of political gridlock which leads to the kind of fiscal crisis that Walker has tried to gin up since his first day in office. That will provide him with an branch of government to ignore.

I'm not saying it's going to happen, but don't be surprised if it happens.

The Wisconsin GOP Must Crave Attention more than a 16 year-old Cutter with Daddy Issues to Pull Another Stunt Like This

So very nice of them to pull this shit at the end of a Friday (you know, because the courts are closed until Monday):

Madison - A controversial bill limiting collective bargaining for public workers has been officially published despite a temporary restraining order barring its publication by one state official.

The legislation was published Friday with a footnote that acknowledges the restraining order, but says state law "requires the Legislative Reference Bureau to publish every act within 10 working days after its date of enactment."

The restraining order was issued against Democratic Secretary of State Doug La Follette, but the bill was published by the reference bureau. The reference bureau was not included in the temporary restraining order.

Laws normally take effect a day after they are published, and Gov. Scott Walker's administration is proceeding as if it takes effect Saturday.

"Today the administration was notified that the LRB published the budget-repair bill as required by law," said a statement from Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch. "The administration will carry out the law as required."

So is it actually a law, even thought the published version specifically acknowledges the restraining order against its publication? Damned if I know. Damned if anyone else knows, for that matter, but it sure as hell doesn't legit. All it does is drag out this incredibly bitter conversation in an environment where Democrats are trying to gather enough signatures to recall GOP senators.

Oh, that's right! They're doing this precisely because they're getting creamed in the recall effort and must now believe that the upcoming Supreme Court election is rapidly becoming a lost cause. Best get this shit done now before the levers of government are wrested from the GOP.

Again, on a day when the watchword around the state was McCarthyism, there is no better friend to the long-term interests of Wisconsin Democrats than Wisconsin Republicans.

On What Planet did the Wisconsin GOP Think this would be a Good Idea?

It's really insulting just how stupid Scott Walker thinks the people of Wisconsin are:

Professor William Cronon, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is now in a serious tangle with none other than the state Republican Party, in yet another battle over Scott Walker's new anti-public employee union law. After Cronon posted a piece on out-of-state think tanks and interest groups that would spur the law, the GOP has responded with an open-records request on Cronon's own state account e-mails.

On March 15, Cronon posted a blog entry entitled, "Who's Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere? (Hint: It Didn't Start Here)", seeking to focus attention on out of state conservative groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the infamous phone call that Walker had a month ago with blogger Ian Murphy, who posed as Republican financier David Koch.

"I don't want this to become an endless professorial lecture on the general outlines of American conservatism today, so let me turn to the question at hand: who's really behind recent Republican legislation in Wisconsin and elsewhere?" Cronon wrote. "I'm professionally interested in this question as a historian, and since I can't bring myself to believe that the Koch brothers single-handedly masterminded all this, I've been trying to discover the deeper networks from which this legislation emerged."

Then on March 17, as Cronon announced in a blog post Thursday, the state Republicans have filed an open-records request -- seeking to read his e-mails from his state university account.

I'm amazed that Walker supports are even able to feign such cluelessness of the absolute vitriol he inspires in opponents. There's a reason for it and it begins with the abject contempt Walker displays for just about anyone with the ability to add one and one.

MORE: Seriously, these people are tone deaf. From the MJS:

Thompson was not available for comment. But in an statement, Mark Jefferson, the party's executive director, said, "Like anyone else who makes an open records request in Wisconsin, the Republican Party of Wisconsin does not have to give a reason for doing so.

"I have never seen such a concerted effort to intimidate someone from lawfully seeking information about their government.

Un-fucking-believable. This asshole now thinks he's the one being intimidated!

And unlike anyone else "who make an open records request in Wisconsin" the state GOP is major political party. It may not be required to explain it's reasoning, but it sure looks suspect if it doesn't. Here's the rest of Jefferson's asinine statement. It's a shining example of transparent douche-baggery as you'll ever read:

"Further, it is chilling to see that so many members of the media would take up the cause of a professor who seeks to quash a lawful open records request. Taxpayers have a right to accountable government and a right to know if public officials are conducting themselves in an ethical manner. The Left is far more aggressive in this state than the Right in its use of open records requests, yet these rights do extend beyond the liberal left and members of the media.

"Finally, I find it appalling that Professor Cronon seems to have plenty of time to round up reporters from around the nation to push the Republican Party of Wisconsin into explaining its motives behind a lawful open records request, but has apparently not found time to provide any of the requested information.

"We look forward to the University’s prompt response to our request and hope those who seek to intimidate us from making such requests will reconsider their actions.”

The Wisconsin GOP seems hellbent on destroying the party brand. Keep digging, folks!

The Surgery that Saved Ron Johnson's Daughter's Life was Probably Developed in Socialist Hellhole that doesn't Speak the King's English

From Wonkroom:

America has certainly had its share of medical breakthroughs, but the procedure Johnson’s daughter received may not have been developed in the United States but rather in Brazil or France — nations that now benefit from some form of universal coverage.

According to CAP Senior Fellow (and resident biochemist) Dr. Lesley Russell, it is most likely that the surgery Carey had was first performed and reported in Brazil in 1975, where doctors described their version of the procedure as “the first successful report of total correction of transposition of the great vessels at the arterial level.” Alternatively, Johnson’s daughter may have had what’s known as The LeCompte procedure, which was developed in France in 1981.

OK, so Johnson goes national with the story of his daughter's surgery on Wednesday and two days later a little fact-checking turns out that one of the central origin myths of his campaign turns out to be dubious. Last year, however, the same story went unchallenged in the state of Wisconsin for six months. I know we don't have tthink tanks that can tackle the issues like CAP (unless you're in the mood to do the bidding of the Bradley Foundation), but couldn't someone have discovered this bit of information with a simple phone call to, say UW Hospital or the Mayo Clinic or something?

"Senator Johnson has this completely backwards."

I was going to take some time to go over Ron Johnson's rehash of his health care argument form last year's campaign in the Wall Street Journal, but someone has already done a much better job of doing so. Enjoy.

MORE: Memeorandum has more on just how shallow Johnson's argument is: Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, LA Times, Krugman, and Steve Benen, Steve Benen again, and Igor Volsky.

Voter ID Advocates getting ready to Screw U.S. Military Personnel

We've been harping on the Voter ID issue for a week or so now and today we were given a sparkling example of just what's kind of reform Voter ID advocates will be pushing for in the near future.

Over at the Northwoods Patriots blog (a tea party group based up north), there is a post detailing just how difficult Voter ID folks want to make proving one's identity at the polls. Not only are driver's licenses not acceptable forms of identification in their view, but neither are military IDs:

The MILITARY ID is not acceptable because you do not have to be a U. S. citizen to be a member of the U.S. military. The U.S. military does have as members, citizens of other nations.

Not once in the post is there any solution offered to any of its objections.

Yet Another Sketchy Randy Hopper Story

The guy is nothing if not prolific:

Sen. Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac) told WKOW27 News he played no role in the recent hire of a state employee.

Sources told WKOW27 News the employee is the same woman Hopper’s estranged wife,  Alysia Hopper referred to as Hopper’s mistress in a public statement and in a letter to a radio station.

Department of Regulation and Licensing spokesperson David Carlson said the woman, 26, was hired in February as a limited term communications specialist.  

And then...

In a telephone interview with WKOW27 News,  Hopper initially refused to respond to whether he had written a letter of reference or recommendation,   or intervened during the woman’s hiring process.

“I want to keep my involvement of anything as a private matter.   So, I’m going to maintain that.”

But Hopper later called a WKOW27 News reporter and said he had no involvement in the woman’s hiring.

And now...

State officials said the pay of a limited term employee  hired last month at the department of regulation and licensing is the equivalent of more than $42,000 annually.

WKOW27 News requested employment information after sources said the worker, 26, was the same person identified by Senator Randy Hopper’s estranged wife as a woman involved in an affair with Hopper.

Hopper denied to WKOW27 News any role in the woman’s hire.

Department of Regulation licensing spokesperson David Carlson said the employee was hired Feb. 7 to a limited term position as a communications specialist.

Carlson said the worker’s hourly wage is equivalent to an annual salary of $42,328.

Maybe I'm wrong, but a "communications specialist" who probably can no longer talk to the press should be paid a little less than the annual equivalent of $42,000.

Reagan on Unions

We've noted this before, but Ronald Reagan supported collective bargaining and he supported unions. Let's look at the tape:

The Amazing Paradox Implicit in Randy Hopper's Residency Woes and the Wisconsin GOP's Voter ID Agenda

Seriously, does anyone know where Randy Hopper voted last fall?

If I'm starting to sound like a broken record it's only because there are some rather significant ramifications that result from the answer to this question. There's also a pretty fascinating paradox that is evolving from this situation that should have ethicists and political scientists devouring this recall like an ice cream social at fat camp.

The Cap Times apparently knows the address of Hopper's current residence, but is keeping it under wraps in deference to security concerns. Fair enough (for me, at least, and at the moment; I'm sure there are some legal issues surrounding no one knowing where a law-maker lives, but in this case at least someone does). Determining where Hopper voted should be a pretty easy trail to follow considering records of who voted in each election are public information.

The residence Hopper vacated when he filed for divorce is in the Town (as opposed to the City) of Fond du Lac, where the polling place is at Town Hall. Keeping that in mind, there are a number of ways in which Hopper may have broken the law last November. Again, let me stress this is all hypothetical, since we don't know the details where he voted. We're outlining these scenarios in the hopes that someone will track this information down (something that anonymous bloggers can't really do).

• If the address Hopper gave to the Cap Times is located outside the town of Fond du Lac, then we next have to see where he voted. If Hopper's new digs are outside the town of Fond du Lac and he continued to vote inside the town of FdL, even though he has said publicly that he moved out 10 months ago (presumably to this new "apartment" cited by his staffers), we have a problem.

• If Hopper's new abode is inside the town of FdL he would still vote there, where, presumably, he would still be registered. However, a poll worker would have likely asked him if he still lived at the address he is registered at in the voter rolls. If he answered yes for the sake of convenience, and had not changed his registration since moving out, we now have to ask ourselves if this constitutes lying to a poll worker.

• If Hopper voted absentee or early voted, he would have had to essentially sign an affidavit confirming his residence. (Note: that's how it works in Winnebago County and I'm told that every county in Wisconsin has slightly different rules, but I can't imagine absentee/early vote procedures are all that different.) In any event, if Hopper did early vote, as many politicians and campaign workers apparently do, there would be a paper trail, a document that makes this all very cut and dry. He would have also been required to show a photo ID (again, at least in Winnebago County), and on that particular detail we have much more below.

Again, these are all hypothetical situations that could probably be dismissed with a quick trip to the Fond du Lac County Clerk's office and an open records request, but all of this is small ball compared to the larger Voter ID issue coming soon to a state legislature near you.

For years Wisconsin Republicans have been crying foul with allegations of voter fraud and stolen Elections. They've claimed that the only way to maintain the integrity of the vote is to require people to show a photo ID at the poll without giving much consideration to the lives lived by students, minority and low income families (traditionally Democratic voters, by the way) that have lives with less housing stability and can't take off 1-3 hours to go stand in line at the DMV between the hours of 8:00-5:00, Monday through Friday.

Hopper is also a busy guy, which is why I'd wager that Hopper availed himself of either early voting or absentee voting and in so doing left a paper trail that can resolve a lot of these questions. In both cases he would have had to sign documents certifying his residence. If he voted early (or "in-person absentee" as the kids call it), then he would have been required to show a photo ID.

Why is that important? Because when we look at the big picture of not just Hopper, but the laws governing how millions of people vote each year an amazing paradox becomes clear:

If Hopper has a state-issued photo ID for his current address, the apartment cited by his staff, which he received prior to last year's election when he voted legitimately at the proper polling place, then all of this discussion is kinda pointless. However, if he doesn't, as is his current right as a voter in Wisconsin, then the Wisconsin GOP's Voter ID argument falls through the floor. If the party backs him, Hopper becomes an extreme case of someone who can still vote legitimately despite serious questions about his ambiguous legal residency, which legitimize similar conditions for anyone who is not a state senator and demonstrates that IDs aren't necessary. Or the party can remain true to its own rhetoric, throw him under the proverbial bus and possibly lose the chance to push comprehensive Voter ID reform through the senate.

That's a dilemma that's almost cinematic in scope (albeit long on minutia). There's a lot going on here, but there's also a lot at stake. Voter ID is on its way and given the events of the last 6 weeks its entirely possible that Scott Walker will order it passed if he starts to get nervous about losing the senate. All of these questions and conjectures and hypotheticals can simply disappear with just a few answers. Unfortunately, Hopper's constituents -- of which I am one, may I remind you -- aren't being given those answers and that vacuum seems to get filled with even more questions.

MORE: This according to WKOW:

Campaign manager Jeff Harvey said Monday Hopper rented an apartment in the district.   But when an aide in Hopper’s senate office provided the address,  property records reflected a single family Town of Empire home co-owned by an employee of one of Hopper’s radio stations.   Campaign finance records also show the employee has contributed $450 to Hopper’s senate campaign committee.

Great. How long has he lived there? And where did he vote last November?

Crowdsourcing is hard.

MALcontends has more, as well.

"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.