Take Five (right, wrong & beyond edition)

[JeffR]

ONE: Take two legislators and don't call me in the morning.

As the standoff between labor and America's Worst Governor continues in Madison, so too does the running battle between Wisconsin Republican legislators and rudimentary human intelligence.

Sen. Mary Lazich, R-Waukesha, and Rep. Mark Honadel, R-Milwaukee, authored a bill that would prohibit tricking the call’s recipient into believing the caller is someone they are not for malicious purposes.

“While use of spoofing is said to have some legitimate uses, it can also be used to frighten, harass and potentially defraud,” Lazich and Honadel said in an e-mail to legislators.

The bill language forbids a caller from intentionally providing a false phone number and convincing the person receiving the call that it comes from someone other than the actual caller.

The bill's authors disavow any connection between this proposal and the fact that Governor Scott Walker had a chummy and very public conversation last week with a blogger who represented himself as Walker's crypto-fascist sugar daddy David Koch.

That's right. In an astonishing coincidence, mere days before this bill was unveiled, Walker just happened to become a victim of Wisconsin's second-worst problem, spoof telephone calls. Why, in Honadel's hometown of Milwaukee alone, I'd bet that malicious calls of this nature have upset dozens, maybe even hundreds of people since telephone service was introduced there back in 1879. So cheers to Lazich and Honadel for finally taking on this scourge.

Now, if they could only do something about Wisconsin's worst problem, Scott Walker...

TWO: Walkermania.

With Scott Walker's approval ratings and future electoral prospects now beginning to falter, it was predictable that several delusional Republican presidential hopefuls would decide to hitch their wagons to his falling star.

Former Minnesota governor and possible presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty released a

today that uses dramatic music and quick cuts of protest footage to show support for Walker. At the end of the minute-long video, Pawlenty is shown on a news program saying, "It's really important that America stand with Walker, stand with Wisconsin."

Pawlenty also launched a petition on his political action committee website to gather public support for Walker.

"Governor Scott Walker is making tough choices needed to avoid financial ruin," the website reads. "The nation's governors don't need a lecture from a President who has never balanced a budget. All levels of government need to bring public employee compensation in line with the private sector... I'm confident Governor Walker's reforms will succeed in Wisconsin. Stand strong, Scott -- average taxpayers everywhere are rooting for you."

If that's not simultaneously funny and sickening enough for you, there's this from the same article:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another potential GOP presidential nominee, just published a public appeal on the conservative website Human Events for support for Walker.

"It is vital that every one of us help Governor Scott Walker today," Gingrich writes. He urges readers to call their elected representatives and ask them to back the Wisconsin governor.

"In Madison, Wisconsin, we are witnessing a profound struggle between the right of the people to govern themselves and the power of entrenched, selfish interests to stop reforms and defy the will of the people," Gingrich writes. "However, through a campaign of intimidation and cowardice, the government employee union bosses and the Democratic Party that is beholden to them, are trying to thwart the will of the people."

The article goes on to mention gestures and words of support for Walker from other potential Republican candidates like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, but it was the buried lede in the piece that really fried my okra:

Walker said this week he communicates regularly with Republican Govs. John Kasich of Ohio and Brian Sandoval of Nevada, suggesting he isn't the only governor willing to take on public unions.

"There's a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big," Walker said this week. "This is our moment."

Within days of his swearing-in, John Kasich was my nominee for America's most offensive new governor, but in no time at all, Scott Walker has become the poster boy for unabashed wingnuttiness. Frankly, I was blindsided by this, but it all makes sense to me now.

It's one thing to be as stupid as John Kasich, but it's another thing entirely to be so stupid that you'd seek out John Kasich's opinion on anything.

Game, set and match, Scott Walker.

THREE: What if they gave a party and nobody came?

Speaking of Republican presidential contenders, the New York Times noted the other day the curious fact that – officially, at least – so far, there actually aren't any:

Sure, there are “hopefuls” and “those who are considering making a bid.” There are people with PACs, and some have hired a few staff members. But with the click ticking toward the first Republican presidential debate in 66 days, there seems to be a reluctance among potential candidates to make it official.

By this time four years ago, Senator John McCain of Arizona had already begun opening campaign offices around the country, had multiple consultants on retainer and was just days away from the official, glitzy relaunch of the Straight Talk Express.

Given how McCain fared last time around, maybe the potential GOP candidates are playing it right. Since not one of them has a single new idea to offer the nation (much like McCain last time around, come to think of it) it might be best if they just kept their pie-holes shut right up until next year's election, which will be won handily by the incumbent in any case.

FOUR: Not just on the wrong side of history. On the wrong side of reality.

Timid, neo-liberal, labor-hating corporatist toady Barack Obama – hey, I read it on the internet all the time, so it must be true – might have just caught a break with American workers, or 45,000 of them, at least:

As a result of its performance, G.M. said 45,000 union workers would receive profit-sharing checks averaging $4,300, the most ever.

Goodness gracious, how can this be? Every Republican in front of whom the mainstream media stuck a microphone and/or a camera predicted that the GM bailout would end in tears for the American taxpayer.

Let's take a look back at some of the GOP's confident Kreskinations:

Sen. Bob Corker (Rep-TN):

[The Obama] administration has decided they know better than our courts and our free market process how to deal with these companies….This is a major power grab.” [March 30, 2009]

Rep, Eric Cantor (R-VA):

“I know that I don’t want Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid designing the car that I drive, and I don’t think any New Yorker — or any American — does, either.” ... “Washington, the president, Congress, none ... has any business running that car company. They’ll run it into the ground.”

Sen. John McCain (Rep-AZ):

"No, I don’t think we ever should have bailed out Chrysler and General Motors. We should have let them go into bankruptcy, emerge and become viable corporations again. It was all about the unions. The unions didn’t want to have their very generous contracts renegotiated so we put $80 billion into both General Motors and Chrysler, and anybody believes that Chrysler is going to survive, I’d like to meet them." [Nov. 2009]

And some more:

“Now the government has forced taxpayers to buy these failing companies without any plausible plan for profitability. Does anyone think the same government that plans to double the national debt in five years will turn GM around in the same time?”

– U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

“I think the long-term outcome will be the same. It’s unlikely to ever recover the huge investment that’s been made in it, and you will then be carrying this forever and ever and ever.”

– Ronald Utt, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation

And still more:

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL): “It’s basically going to be a government-owned, government-run company. …It’s the road toward socialism.” [5/29/09]

RNC Chairman Michael Steele: “No matter how much the President spins GM’s bankruptcy as good for the economy, it is nothing more than another government grab of a private company and another handout to the union cronies who helped bankroll his presidential campaign.” [6/1/2009]

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX): The auto company rescues “have been the leading edge of the Obama administration’s war on capitalism.” [7/22/09]

As President Obama is wont to say: Now, here's the thing.

Republicans – elected ones, their voters, their propagandists, their miscellaneous subcontractors, their running-dog lackeys, their "intellectuals" – have been wrong about everything since at least A.D. 1960. Totally and utterly wrong. Breathtakingly wrong. Amazingly wrong. Infuriatingly wrong.

Wrong about the economy, in good times and in bad. Wrong about foreign policy, in times of war and in times of peace. Wrong about the Constitution. Wrong about human rights. Wrong about social issues. Wrong about fiscal discipline. Wrong about science. Wrong about taxation. Wrong about the environment. Wrong about GM. Wrong about every stinking thing I can think of as I write this, and wrong about every stinking thing anyone could possibly suggest to me that I might be overlooking in my spittle-flecked rage about how fucking wrong these people are about, simply, everything.

FIVE: And a fetus shall lead them...


If you've never heard of Janet Folger Porter, you're very fortunate and should stop reading right now.

If you have heard of her, you probably won't be surprised by the next "pro-life" stunt being staged by Porter and her organization, Faith2Action.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A fetus has been scheduled as a legislative witness in Ohio on a unique bill that proposes outlawing abortions after the first heartbeat can be medically detected.

Faith2Action, the anti-abortion group that has targeted Ohio to pilot the measure, called the in-utero witness the youngest to ever come before the House Health Committee at nine weeks old...

An aide to committee Chairman Lynn Wachtmann said a pregnant woman will be brought before the committee and an ultrasound image of her uterus will be projected onto a screen. The heartbeat of the fetus will be visible in color.

After testifying, the fetus is expected to hold an autograph session outside the courthouse, before sitting down to a round of interviews with major media outlets.

It was announced late yesterday that the fetus has contracted the William Morris Agency to handle what many observers believe will be an inevitable slew of requests for speaking engagements and other personal appearances.

Miramax is said to be interested in bringing a dramatization of the fetus's story to the big screen. No word yet on who might portray the fetus, but it seems Charlie Sheen is available.

[yowzayowzayowza]

(03-02-2011 12:58 PM)JeffR Wrote:  After testifying, the fetus is expected to hold an autograph session outside the courthouse, before sitting down to a round of interviews with major media outlets.

[Cha]

And, they did that with a straight face?!

I suppose Lazich and Honadel thought it was their job to try and cover Walker's ass by implying it's the Prank Phone Calls that have to go..not the stupid governor who takes the call and makes an a$$ of himself in front of the whole world that's watching. You can-not make this shyte up.

Of course, the recon hopefuls are hitching their empty wagons to a teabagger gov who takes "personal calls" from David Koch..that's where the money is..and, cnn betting all their $$$$ on a teabagger in the White House with their big propaganda lie machine supporting them all the way..what could go wrong?

It's part of everybody's job who cares about this country to make sure that doesn't happen at this, once again, critical juncture in history.

Brilliant job, JeffR~

[NJMaverick]

Well done as always Jeff

[nofurylike]

excellent excellent excellent excellent excellent, JeffR!!!
thank you for your delightful, and informative, column, again!

laugh till i cry