Wind And Noise Revisited

Well, there he goes again. It's not bad enough that McCain decided to attack Senator Obama and lie about his motive for not visiting the troops (by showing him playing basketball with the troops) but now we get this little maverick-trailbiscuit.

What the McCain campaign doesn’t want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was...wait for it...using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch. I guess that’s political hardball. But another word for it is the one word that most politicians are loathe to use about their opponents—a lie.

The Straight Talk Express is running further and further off message every day.

The Video Charlie Doesn't Want You To See

Charlie's posted that inane video from McCain's camp (which they created to take attention away that he is really running for Bush's third term).

In short order, Progressive Accountability showed that Britney Spears has more in common with McCain that with Senator Barack Obama:





They also provide a tidy list of McCain quotes that perfectly display how much McCain is like Bush, down to not even knowing what the hell is going on.

Kind of like some squawk radiophites.

Sykes Is Haunted By Bogeymen

Last night, I linked to a post done by Illy-T, which pointed out that Sykes and company could do damage to one's mind.

Sykes took umbrage to Illy-T's post, and decided to squawk about it today on his show.

Unfortunately for him, he didn't have an argument he could win with, so he invented a whole new bogeyman to drive fear into the hearts of his listeners.

During his paranoid rant, he started to complain about the Fairness Doctrine, even though not one blogger had mentioned it.

Luckily for me, I got to my destination before he was done, so I didn't have to listen to the whole slew of garbage he was trying to sling. But to Charlie's credit, he did say that he was ashamed that Savage was a conservative squawker, and that he found Savage would often go over the line.

However, Charlie then through any credibility away in a classic Sykesian maneuver. While stating that he was disappointed in Savage, there would be no way he would ever condone censorship or limiting anyone's free speech...as he was cutting off and hanging up on a liberal caller that was disproving his arguments.

Hopefully, It Was Just Writer's Block

Of all the squawkers that we cover here at Whallah!, Patrick McIlheran is usually the most intelligent by far. He's usually dead wrong on almost every subject, but at least he can use his own words (for the most part), and do so with multisyllabic words, that don't include blatant bigotry (lots of codewords, but usually not as blatant as the rest).

So you can imagine my surprise when he looks to one of the worst bloggers for inspiration for a blog post.

As a small condolence, at least Fischer didn't write the post, just linked to it. If he was actually using one of Fischer's posts as the source, and not just a channel to the source, I would be forced to take away the small benefit of the doubt I afford Paddy now.

If I Were A Right-Wing Blogger

Christopher Hayes is right on target.

Sykes Is Just Hopeless

Six months ago, there was some talk about whether talk radio was on its way to the media graveyard. The theory was that with McCain becoming the presumed Republican candidate for presidency, despite all the squawking of the squawkers, that talk radio was no longer effective.

At the time, I had stated that the feckless squawkers would just flip-flop, like McCain, and would continue on like nothing happened.

Of course, I was correct. Sort of.

Talk radio is still alive, but it is not well and kicking.

It appears that squawkers, like our own litttle Chuckles, has been reduced to mewling about the popularity of Senator Barack Obama, while they desperately scramble around to find something, anything from the McCainiacs to crow about.

But being the squawkers that they are, all they end up doing is laying big goose eggs.

Constancy

A politician gets pilloried for attending a political event held within his own party because it's a waste of city dollars and a mayor should never attend purely political events.

A politician gets pilloried for NOT attending a political event not held by his own party because he's not showing proper respect or being a good host.

There is no way to get past the wind and noise. Not much sense to try to make the unhappy people happy.

Rephrasing For Clarity

Charlie takes on one of the main topics of the concern trolls this morning. Why isn't Senator Obama leading by more in the polls?

It is a question that has hovered over Senator Barack
Obama even as he has passed milestone after milestone in his race
for the White House: Why is he not doing better?

Years ago I was taught that a useful tool for analyzing a question was to rephrase it as its opposite just to see how it stands up. Let's take a look at that, shall we?

Based on the last few Presidential elections and unreliable common knowledge there is a base of around 40% who would never vote for one of the candidates or the other. That leaves about 20% of the electorate in play.

One recent poll showed Senator Obama leading by 8 points. (It's an example. Don't think for a heartbeat that it's anything definitive.) If the Undecideds break even (Another unsubstantiated assumption. Remember that the particular polls aren't the point of the post.) then Senator Obama leads McCain something like 54-46 in the November.

Which brings us back to Charlie's cut-and-pasted question, rephrased. Why are so few people willing to support McCain?

GWB viewed his scant 3% spanking of Senator Kerry to be a landslide. With McCain hanging on to a deficit 3 times the size of the one that sent the Senator packing 4 years ago, what has John McCain done to show that he even belongs in the race?

McCain is already playing around in the margin-of-error sandbox. How many more of the Bush dead-enders are there that he can lose?

This is just another smokescreen of unattainable goals that the right would put in the path of Senator Obama. They know that they have a badly flawed candidate who stands little chance in a head-to-head matchup and that their only hope of winning is to turn the election into a referendum on Senator Obama.

Now that McCain has abandoned his campaign of honor and begun his race to the bottom we may find out how low he can go in more ways than one.

Keeping things straight

Jessica McBride in the Waukesha Freeman:

Someone needs to take Obama aside and inform him, "Senator, you’re not the president yet."

Oops, Obama already said that himself:

“I’m more interested in listening than doing a lot of talking,” Mr. Obama told reporters before leaving Washington for a trip cloaked in secrecy because of security concerns. “And I think it is very important to recognize that I’m going over there as a U.S. senator. We have one president at a time.”

McBride adds:

Someone needs to tell the media, "Obama is not Princess Diana."

Jessica, in fact, thought she was until a few months ago.

Beating Sykes to the punch

How long before this story appears on Sykes Writes, with a headline like, "So much for those compassionate liberals"?

Blind man robbed in Madison
Madison police are seeking citizens' help with a weekend strong-armed robbery in which a blind man was robbed of his wallet by an assailant who claimed to have a knife.

Nothing Sadder

There's nothing sadder than to watch an old, diminutive, petty man flail around for attention, refusing to acknowledge how irrelevant he really is.

Illy T shows that McCain isn't doing so well, either.

Breaking News: James T. Likes Gore Over Bush

While looking for the links for the previous post, I made an interesting find.

To quickly recap:

• The right compares Al Gore to the Joker
• The right compares George Bush to Batman

Now I notice this post, from James T., which he titled:

The Dark Knight Gets Trumped

and goes on to say how the Joker was better than Batman.

Somedays, I love this job.

This Should Be Interesting

First, the right wing squawkers and their lackeys have been circulating a cartoon portraying Al Gore as the Joker for the most recent Batman movie.

Now, a couple of them, like James T. is comparing George W. Bush to the Dark Knight.

Since the right appears to be stuck in their developmental growth, and can only relate to comics, I can't wait to see how they try to measure up John McCain to the upcoming movie involving cartoon heroes. It should prove to be thoroughly enjoyable.

That's Responsible Journalism

First came local wingnut Kevin Fischer calling the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources the "Wisconsin wing of the Nazi Party" after the DNR took steps to protect a portion of the Wisconsin Dells - land and views that are in the public domain - from encroachment by a condominium development. Now comes Fischer's latest Nazi comparison, again at the expense of the DNR. In a recent blog entry, Fischer referred to the DNR as "Gestapo-like" due to their attempts to enforce regulations covering cranberry growers.

Now I know this kind of speech is protected under the First Amendment as well it should be, and I know this is just Fischer's attempt to stay relevant and bring eyeballs to his quaint little blog, but someone - maybe even his boss, State Senator Mary Lazich - ought to explain to him what's in good taste and what's not.

illyT has more on the Fischer situation.

He Keeps Trying, He Keeps Failing

A couple, three days ago, I pointed out how McIlheran misses the mark with a post on whether the surge worked. I simply highlighted how it should be irrelevant, because we shouldn't have been in Iraq in the first place.

Later that same day, McIlheran puts up a long, winding post in an effort to justify that we needed to be in Iraq because Saddam was such a bad man. Now, old Paddy is absolutely correct in asserting that Saddam was a bad man. He was responsible for the murder of thousands and thousands of people.

What Paddy doesn't tell us is that Saddam's evil nature was not why Bush chose to invade Iraq. In fact, that did not become the reason until long after the invasion and the capture of Saddam.

The original reason was that he had nuclear weapons. When that was proven to be a lie, it was weapons of mass destruction. Oops, another lie. After trying a few more on for size before discarding them, the Bush administration, and his backers, like McIlheran and Sykes, settled for the bad man line.

Another thing that McIlheran willfully fails to mention is the fact that Saddam was able to gain his power and the WMDs that he did once have. Reagan and his cronies gave them to him in the 80's, when Reagan was using Saddam to go after Iran. You might even recognize one of the guys that gave him the WMDs before deciding it maybe wasn't such a good idea after all:

Truth In Blogging

Methinks Charlie is selling himself a wee bit short.

He's been sleazy a lot longer than a week.

The subject of that post, by the way, is trying to promote Alberta Darling during her latest meltdown and hissy fit.

If you want to see how it Darling's latest breakdown breaks down, I've got it all for you right here, at my other castle.

Newsflash!

Candidate gives speech in foreign country!
World does not end!

"We've been through an awful lot together, Canada and America," he told an
audience of several hundred at the Economic Club of Canada. "And together we
have achieved great things. We have a long shared history to draw from, and deep
reserves of good will and mutual admiration."

Now will you guys give it a rest? You're sounding bitter way too early in the campaign.

Pants On Fire

Charlie cries poor-mouth on behalf of the richest 1% of Americans and claims that they're being "soaked." He even points us toward a Wall Street Journal OpEd to back up the 7 words he managed to string together as commentary.

It appears, though, that even the WSJ could see the underlying impact of the new numbers Charlie snarls about.

In a new sign of increasing inequality in the U.S., the richest 1% of Americans in 2006 garnered the highest share of the nation's adjusted gross income for two decades, and possibly the highest since 1929, according to Internal Revenue Service data.

Meanwhile, the average tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest level in at least 18 years. The group's share of the tax burden has risen, though not as quickly as its share of income.

Even the WSJ can see that this consolidation of wealth is killing the American dream. Wealth isn't being left on the table for the Middle Class to work for anymore. Elitists like Charlie like it that way.

Good Words, Wrong Man

Patrick McIlheran had a column in Wednesday's paper touting the surge and how it made Iraq safe for Senator Barack Obama to visit there. I won't get into whether or not the surge worked (it seems it just moved the enemy from one spot to another, but didn't get rid of them). But I would like to highlight the last paragraph of Paddy's column (emphasis mine):

Not that McCain should expect gratitude, which is for monuments, not elections. But that events have proved one candidate so right and the other so spectacularly wrong tells us something about their respective ability to judge what to do in the next crisis. That really is an issue worth voting on.

This passage struck me as being ironic, coming from McIlheran. Even while McIlheran was touting the supposed effectiveness of the surge, he was missing the key point to the whole thing.

There would have been no need of a surge, if there was no al Qaeda in Iraq. And there would have been no al Qaeda in Iraq, if our country hadn't bought into the false bill of goods that Bush, McCain and squawkers like McIlheran was selling.

But it was Obama, not McCain, that saw the folly of going into Iraq, which was contained, and ignoring the real enemy, bin Laden, who was holed up in Afghanistan.

So, let us review again what McIlheran wrote:

But that events have proved one candidate so right and the other so spectacularly wrong tells us something about their respective ability to judge what to do in the next crisis. That really is an issue worth voting on.

I am sure Obama would thank McIlheran for the vote of confidence.

Charlie's Right! The Media Is In The Tank

Sykes is parroting the McCain whine this morning about the Press attention on Senator Obama.

Nevermind for a moment that one campaign is doing campaigny things and the other seems to have pulled back into their little bunker to whine about how unfair it all is.

Nevermind for a moment that McCain has had a decade of soft-focus press and revelled in the jellied lens of maverickness.

Charlie says that the media has a man-crush on one of the candidates and I offer proof that he's right. I have a picture of a media man so sycophantic, so unblushing that it proves Charlie's point beyond any doubt.

That Happens To A Man Of A Certain Age

There's Just No Pleasin' Some People

I had the misfortune of hearing Sykes squawking away the other day. He was griping and groaning that the media is paying attention to Senator Barack Obama while he is touring the Middle East war zones.

Excuse me? Wasn't he one of the majorettes who, not so long ago, was criticizing Obama for not going to Iraq? Now he's complaining that he did go to Iraq?

Perhaps he's just annoyed that they're not giving the same kind of coverage to McCain. Perhaps they would if McCain did something besides go to baseball games, take naps and recycle Bush's campaign speeches from 2004.

Then again, does Sykes really want us paying closer attention to McCain? It never seems to help, but usually hurts, his standings in the polls.

Who are the 'morally weak?'

Owen "Old Lady" Robinson rates the candidates for the Waukesha Freeman in an election roundup column:

[State Sen. Alberta] Darling has always been a middling Republican. Her fiscal record is solidly conservative, but she’s pro-choice and overly sympathetic to the morally weak.

"Morally weak" is clearly a code phrase. But for what?

People who are so morally weak they don't have any money?

They commit crimes?

They have sex outside of holy matrimony? Do it with people of their own gender? Get abortions?

Some would say it's a sign of moral weakness, or lack of morals, to engage in torture, or to engage in unjustified war that kills hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Maybe what he means is that Darling supports George Bush, Dick Cheney and the Iraq war.

But, somehow, I don't think so.

What's your theory?

The Cacaphony Of The Clueless

Won't it be tougher for Suder and Hahn to criticize Senator Obama's positions on troops in the Middle East now that McCain and GWB are rushing to embrace those same positions?

Wagner Sez- "Enforcing The Law Is Just A Scheme"

Failed AG candidate (No, really. He was) Jeff Wagner wants the cops to stop enforcing the law.

A month and a half ago, I wrote about the legalized scam
currently being operated by the City of Milwaukee.

Based on a new ordinance, the City has begun issuing $50 tickets to any auto parked on a city street that doesn't have a current renewal sticker displayed on the rear license plate. These vehicles are also subject to being towed - which will cost the owner over $150.

Prior to parking checkers writing a ticket, the technology available to them tells them whether or not the vehicle is properly registered. Therefore, even though they know that the vehicle's registration is current, they are still writing tickets because the sticker is gone.

Wagner wants a free pass for folks who don't properly display the renewal sticker because, he claims: Typically, the reason the sticker is gone is because somebody (not the owner) has stolen it.
Well! There you have it. Jeff says that all of those missing stickers are on cars of the righteous instead of someone who is using the "Twofer" registration system. He's positive that no one would take the paid renewal sticker for this car and put it on the other one, knowing that the chance of being pegged with a sticker is mighty slim.

Now, our ne'er-do-well has one car with a sticker that won't draw attention and another with no sticker that shows in the system as being legally registered.

Sorry, Jeff. There's a reason for those laws to be on the books. I'd have thought you would be supportive of local law enforcements efforts to carry it out.

The New Mickey

First, we were entertained by the McBridean acolyte, John. But then McBride closed up shop and we were deprived.

Then we were entertained by mickey, but he as been banned from a variety of sites, and seems to have disappeared. Again, we were deprived.

But cheer yourself, for all is not lost. We have found one that is grooming himself to be new "Chosen One."

His name is Gus. He has commented here and there on the conservative type of blogs. Here is some of his work. As you will see, he is really starting to hit his stride.

From a post regarding a conservative blogger's misinterpretation of an Obama quote, Gus responds to our friend Jay Bullock, who has been trying to bring a voice of reason to the discussion:

Folkswagen, your tired liberal rhetorical dodge is tedious. It's all been done before. You actually responded to Roseindigo with one of the most nonsensical lib pieces of pap that I could ever imagine. Folko, you said......."rose, the Peace Corps actually has a lot to do with national security". Folko, are you high on something? What you posted is nonsense. Again my friend no offense, but you living on a different planet.Rock on dude.

Later in the same comment thread:

Mr.Folkdoom, you don't think, you emote. Your world is fantasy island. Again my dear friend, no offense, but you aren't mature yet. You believe crap that is beyond belief. Obama says total garbage and you hear the Gettysburg address.....because you WANT to believe.
Jay Folkblossom, Obama is a con man. He is a manipulative phony. He isn't bright, he doesn't have experience at anything except running his mouth. But running his mouth has been his ace in the hole. People like you Mr. Folkbuns, want to believe in him. You are desperate to find a black man to make your world complete. You need to prove your moral superiority in 2 ways. One, you spend others money on failed causes. 2 you need to show others that you are not racist and are morally superior to everyone else.
You're not J. You're just another government paycheck liberal who
pretends.Someday I'd love to see you play your guitar and sing.

Gus hits mickey/John nirvana later in another comment thread about a political cartoon:

Debra, O'baaaaa baaaa "black sheep", understands the P.C. world of racial politics.
In Barry O's audio books, (printed tripe as well), he tells of his ability to CON whitey. He says that he knows how to make Whitey not distrust or fear his "blackness". He is a manipulative, oppurtunistic, racial demogogue.
Again, Debra, Barry O's own words give a glimpse into his character. Barry, speaks candidly of his Hawaii experience and he openly displays his own RACIAL bigotry. He describes how he "placates and panders to" white people. He IN HIS OWN WORDS, describes how he taps into the White persons bigotry and turns it to his advantage.
IT'S CHILLING. IT ALSO SHOWS HIS MANIPULATIVE NATURE and displays his own ASSUMPTIONS vis a vis "the WHITE MAN".
Obama isn't a disadvantaged "African-American" kid. There is nothing about Obama that relates to the African-American culture such as it exists in America today. He isn't a "brutha". He has contemplated, and purposely "manipulated" his skin color, so as to garner the "black/grievance/victimhood...vote.
Barack Obama is a complete and utter fraud.
But, millions WANT TO BELIEVE.
Obama is not an honest man. He is not qualified nor experienced in any
facet required to lead our nation and the free world.
None of that matters to those who are not logical and mature.
Frankly, Obama isn't anything but a side show, with willing buyers.

Desperate Marketing Measures

Sykes must still have thousands of copies of his latest waste of paper book laying around. In an effort to get even one sale promote sales, he is now trying to portray them as a "Banned Book."

Does McIlheran Have Memory Loss Or Is It Just Hypocrisy?

Poor old PaddyMac. He must have received a nasty bump on the head during his absence, and now is suffering memory loss. Either that, or it's just the same old hypocrisy from the right wing squawkers.

PaddyMac points out to a post from The Crusader, which is critical of some of the abhorrent comments left by the left regarding the passing of Tony Snow. And they are correct, to a degree. While I had no use for Snow while he was alive, I did not feel the need to disrespect him in his passing. And I also find some of the vulgar comments that they have highlighted as being rather distasteful and completely inappropriate.

However, when they seem to feel that the left has a corner on the market of distasteful hatred, Paddy seems to come up a wee bit short in the honesty department.

Perhaps he forgot about his good buddy Sykes had his COEXIST scandal, in which Charlie thought it was "brilliance" and "genius" to insult two out of three of the world's major religions. This bigoted behavior is something that Paddy himself had participated in as well.

Or perhaps Paddy has forgotten that he actually came to the defense of Peter, who had the peaceful, appropriate language of making threats towards another blogger, in the most base language available and who had compared Islam to Nazism. In fact, Paddy called Peter's bigoted, insulting and vulgar writings as "refreshingly caustic and pungent" and did not seem the least put off by these types of writings.

Memory loss or hypocrisy. Either way, I still can't figure out why this guy calls himself a professional.

It's Like Putting Lipstick On A Pig

The Brawler has had a series of posts pointing out the errors in the thinking of Rick Esenberg, and the double standard that Esenberg has been applying as of late. The most recent one has to do with Esenberg's take on Captain Blowhard, aka Charlie Sykes.

Brawler gives us Esenberg's generous take on Sykes, and then adds his own astute views:

I don't know ... but when I listen to Charlie Sykes I hear him:

• call people lined up at the Coggs Center for free food vouchers moochers and
  suggest they're all chiselers
• say Milwaukee voters (i.e. blacks) will vote to require private employers
  offer sick days because they're shiftless
• read a story of some teens robbing a Wauwatosa family and conclude by asking
  if people seriously believes a summer jobs program would have stopped them (this
  was some years ago)
• categorically reject any argument that economics have played a role in the
  central city's meltdown and instead blame it on the "culture" or people just not
  taking responsibility for their lives
• use the tragic drowning of a child at a family pool party at a downtown
  hotel to riff on the sickness of the "culture" yet ignore the story of a
  Waterford girl who nearly drowned at a house party

And so on.

The Brawler allows that Charlie Sykes has some compassion for inner city
crime victims. But the Brawler also suggests that he's more concerned with
trundling out right wing talking points (Charles Murray, your office is calling)
or stoking the flames of self-righteous indignation among his listeners in
Oconomowoc. You know: entertainment.

Usually, Yes.

Falling For The Old eRumor Trick

Randy Hollenbeck, the same CudahyNOW blogger that brought us such classic posts like the racist anti-Obama one (until he had to take it down, or it was taken down for him), brings us another sure to be classic.

In this new one, Randy schools us on how rotten those lying Democrats and tree-hugging liberals are. All because Big Oil can't take over even more of Alaska for exploitation, namely ANWR.

Well, let me tell ya, folks. Randy ain't much of an original thinker. A quick Google and Whallah! the first page shows three different sites on the first page alone with the exact same words and pictures on it.

I know that old adage about an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters, but I have a hard time believing that that many right wingers came up with the same idea.

So how did it happen. The viral email. I should know. I've been burned by it before. In Randy's case, truthorfiction.com shows that it is what they call an eRumor:

The part of the eRumor about Al Gore, Democrats, and gas prices is a political comment. We could not find an occasion when Al Gore advocated $5-per-gallon gasoline, but many environmentalists are in favor of steps that would reduce the use of fossil fuels. It's possible this is a reference to a speech he gave in the U.S. Senate on April 11, 1991 in which he voiced support of a National Academy of Sciences study. He said it, "rings the alarm bells again and tells us of the urgent need to take action now to combat global warming." Among the recommendations of the study was "restructuring energy prices to more accurately reflect environmental costs."

For another look at the bogus claims from the right's screed about the need to drill more and more, I would refer the gentle reader to my good friend, the mighty folkbum.

Dumbest. Question. Evah.

PaddyMac has a post up today which cites some stats about how assaults are supposedly higher in Britain than in the United States. He ends this piece with the dumbest question I've seen in a long, long, long time:

And ask yourself: Why might those inclined to assault someone feel that
much less risk in Britain than in a country where one's victim might be
armed?

He answered his question in the first paragraph of his post:

As everyone knows, you're far more likely to be murdered in the United States
than in Britain, which so nicely has banned guns, which as we know are the cause
of violence.

In other words, those that would feel inclined to assault someone are much more likely to just shoot you in the U.S. of A. And given the number of gang related shootings, in which everyone is seemingly carrying a gun, albeit illegally, it does not appear that knowing that the intended victim is probably, not just possibly, armed does one damn thing to slow down the shooter.

Even more to the point, I would definitely consider getting shot to be an assault on my person.

And if one checks out the link that he so kindly provides us, you can see that murders in the USA is almost equal to the amount of assaults in Britain. And while neither is a pleasant thing to experience, I would much rather deal with someone trying to hit me, than someone trying to shoot me.

Some days, he just makes this job too easy.

Getting One's Hopes Up For Nothing

I got very excited when I saw this:

But it turned out to be the wrong Fischer, dang it!

Hey Paddy, Lance, whoever -- Boycott me!

Our old friend Paddy Mac at the Journal Sentinel doesn't do any heavy lifting on this blog post,entitled, "Hey" Let's Boycott the Ghosts of Greater Wisconsin," except to lift the content right from Lance Burri in FoxPolitics.

His topic: Why is everybody picking on Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) when there are those liberal groups out there:

The Greater Wisconsin Committee -- a shadowy interest group if there ever was one -- spent $1.4 million on the race. About a third of all third-party expenditures.

"Epic's outrage is, however, directed only at WMC. Not at WEAC, nor at GWC, whose money would easily have 'bought' the election, had WMC's not evened things out.

"Of course, expressing outrage at those groups would be a meaningless expression of outrage. How does one 'boycott' WEAC? Refuse to do business with anybody who pays school taxes? With anybody who sends their kids to Wisconsin public schools? With anybody who graduated from Wisconsin public schools?

"How does one 'boycott' GWC? We don't even know who they are.

"One doesn't boycott them. That's how. Because one can't. There's nothing to boycott. WMC, on the other hand...we know who they are. They're businesspeople. They're the creators -- the ones Winston Churchill described as the horse that pulls the wagon."

Gotta give Burri credit for some great Orwellian work. He says WMC "evened things out" to prevent those loony lefty groups from influencing the election. Right. Except that WMC had done the same thing last year for Annette Ziegler and announced right afterward that it intended to do the same thing again. It's the liberal side that has been trying to play catch-up and level the playing field.

I'm hardly a disinterested observor. I was GWC's general and media consultant the first two years it existed, 2004-06. Then I retired from consulting but became a member of the GWC board in the spring of 2007. That's no secret, and neither are the identities of others at GWC. The organization is incorporated as a Wisconsin non-profit, recognized by the federal government as a tax exempt advocacy group, and also operates a state political action committee and a federal 527. It files every required report and obeys every state and federal tax and campaign law.

The reason you can't boycott GWC is that its board members are people who share an interest in promoting progressive issues, not changing the laws so they can make more money. The board consists of a couple of community activists, a couple of lawyers, and me. I suppose you could not use the law firms of those two lawyers and call that a boycott.

But feel free, Paddy, Lance, or whoever else, to boycott me, if that will make you feel any better.

Not that any conservative has ever given me a nickel anyway.

Let the boycott begin.

The Lawyer Is Teh Funny

Rick Esenberg has been riding Paul Soglin pretty hard for the last week or so because of the Mayor's work on behalf of WMC Watch. The Rickster, who if memory serves has cashed at least one WMC check for his own self, wants Soglin to share the names of his clients.

In his latest howler, Goose and gander: WMC and Soglin, Esenberg makes a funny. Although speaking of a generic candidate he inadvertantly reminds us of the foibles of Michael Gableman, WMC's latest, greatest patsy.

Although there is arguably not as great a possibility for quid pro quo type
corruption, i.e., a candidate deciding that she owes a funder favors

In Gableman's case, of course, this worked both ways. Not only is Gableman beholden to his benefactors but he owes his career to his fundraising work on behalf of others.

I'll let you go now. I just wanted to let Rick know that I got his little wink at reality there. Carry on.

Belling's At It Again. What Else Is Old?

From James Rowen:

During his anti-Summerfest monologue Monday in the wake of its decision to remove a violent US Army game from this year's festival, WISN-AM 1130 talker and self-described jilted Summerfest sycophant Mark Belling listed all the apparently unappreciated "water-carrying" he done for the Summerfest.

Including this odd, racially-charged bit of 'defense' for Summerfest:

"It's decision to eliminate virtually all Black groups," Belling said, in favor of acts that appealed to what he called "Oldfogeyville."

Hey, Summerfest: How's all that sitting with you?

I don't know which is more telling: That WISN and Clear Channel keep racist idiots like Belling on staff, or that there is not more of an outrage about the continuous onslaught from the likes of Belling. Are people getting so used to this kind of crap that they have become numb to it?

Just For Capper

Since he's such a taskmaster, I've decided to humor capper and post a little something I found as I was surfing the Cheddarsphere today. In a post over at his blog, The Way I See It!, Cudahy blogger Randy Hollenbeck posted a few of his favorite pictures of Barack Obama:







Now call me crazy - and you wouldn't be the first to do so - but the pictures above strike me as being more than a little racist, and not even in a subtle, *wink wink, nod nod* kind of way. Now I'm sure some will say, "Zach, don't you think you're making a mountain out of a molehill?" and I'll say I don't think I am. While I know these kinds of prejudiced and racially insensitive aren't representative of how all conservatives feel, they sure don't do much to dispel the idea that there's a large group of conservative folks who can't bear the thought of an African-American serving as President.

EDIT: In order to see the pictures in true size, you'll need to right click and then click on "view image."

EDIT EDIT: I emailed Randy and commented on how racist I felt the pictures were, and his response was to ask what I felt was racist.

Whallah! Around The World

Let's take a look at how others are doing their own Whallah!'s, shall we?

First up, Bert at folkbum's rambles and rants takes on the great Rush "Into" Limbo. Although the pill-popper isn't part of the local right wing media, they are all interchangeable anyway, and Bert's write up is a compelling analysis.

Greg at Blogging Blue, who forgets that he is supposed to be helping out here, while I am busy with an ever-growing number of other projects, has a suggestion for the next objet de selective outrage. According to one of his commenters, Sykes already did a piece on it, but Zach's last comment is worth the read:

I try not to listen to conservative talk radio, because I have to listen to bullshit all day at my job; I don’t want to listen to it on the radio too.

Illy-T, an all around wordsmith if ever there was one, takes on the blackguard McIlheran on the word "thug."

And we end our tour of the Whallahsphere with a stop by James Rowen's place, where he shows us the weaknesses which is inherent to the local hate-talk radio, including this nice summary:

This Milwaukee AM righty radio crew comes across as a bunch of bitter complainers, usually with a predictable, over-lapping group of targets:

Big Guvmint, big cities, Democrats, the Journal Sentinel, and an assortment of liberals, environmentalists and other Friends of the Earth.

Station managers are making money with these interchangeable, talking parts, but the righty talk radio monotone on WTMJ and WISN, Milwaukee's two leading AM stations, has driven away a substantial percentage of the general public that doesn't define itself as ideologically right-wing.

Kevin Hates The Free Market

Airlines everywhere are dealing with rising fuel costs and trying all means possible to do so without raising ticket prices. Just about all have raised fees for extra baggage and bulky items.

What does Kevin think of these free market solutions to an ongoing problem?

The airlines are in full "stick it to the passenger" mode, finding creative ways to add on new charges.

It seems that Kevin doesn't believe that there's a problem so big that he can't make it go away by closing his eyes and saying he doesn't believe in it.

I Wonder How Sykes Will Twist This

As we all know, Charlie Sykes has issues with reality, especially when it doesn't conform with his view of the world.

One of the most recent displays was the way he tried to spin Michael Mathias' writings in this hack job regarding the way that the U.S. Army was glorifying war in order to recruit kids.

Today, Michael has put up two posts that concern Iraq.

In the first one, Michael has a link and cites some text from Think Progress, including these paragraphs:

“If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he’d turn off the tap,” said Roger Diwan, a managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, a consulting firm in Washington. “He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel” — about six times what it sells for now.

Bin Laden didn’t have to become king of Saudi Arabia to achieve his goal; in fact, Bush’s policies delivered it for him. The Bush administration’s catastrophic decision to invade Iraq, sink the nation into debt to pay for that war, and consequently, weaken the dollar have all caused oil prices to soar astronomically.

So, how's that war going for us, Charlie?

In the second post, Michael connects us to a much more somber and tragic story:

PINEHURST, N.C. A former Army medic made famous by a photograph that showed him carrying an injured Iraqi boy during the first week of the war has died of an apparent overdose, police said.

Joseph Patrick Dwyer died last week at a hospital in Pinehurst, according to the Boles Funeral Home. He was 31.

[...]

His mother said the military could have done more to help with post-traumatic stress. "He just couldn't get over the war," Maureen Dwyer said. "He just couldn't do it. Just wasn't Joseph. Joseph never came home."

His wife, Matina, said: "He was just never the same when he came back, because of all the things he saw. ... He tried to seek treatment, but it didn’t work."

Hey, Charlie, tell us again how glorious this f-ing war is again.

Ah, but knowing Sykes, he will probably just ignore this sad story. He can't let reality get in the way of spreading his propaganda.

How Are You Spending This Independence Day?

Most people will be gathering with friends and family for cookouts, picnics or just going down to the lakefront for Summerfest.

But not Sykes. Sykes is celebrating the birth of this country by mocking them furriners.

Yup, nothing says God Bless America or celebrating the creation of the "great melting pot" like making fun of those different than you.

A New Place To Hang My Crown

Life events happen to everyone, even kings.

I had some recent live events happen to me, both in my personal and my professional life, which gave me cause to pause and reflect on where I am, what I am doing, where I wanted to be, and the best way to get from here to there.

That is when I realized I needed to change some things in my life, including the way I blog.

About a year ago, Jay Bullock was kind enough to take this blogosphere newbie and invite him to join his site, folkbum's rambles and rants. For this, I will be forever grateful to Jay, along with sage advice he gave me as I started.

About a month later, the infamous Template gave me a key to this place. I took over the joint last fall when Template moved on to other things.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Now, due to those darn life events, I find I have less time available for blogging. Not only that, I also realized, I've had other things to say, other than continuously trying to correct the multitudes of falsehoods, foibles and hypocrisies of the local right wing squawk brigade.*

I still had Jay's site that I could do that sort of writing, but I found that this was becoming too time consuming. I was becoming unable to write all the things I wanted to. I would either have to give up sleep, give up doing my responsibilities around the house (which I knew I wouldn't have been allowed to do), or change my blogging pattern.

Since I am a fan of sleep, and of keeping my hide attached to my body, I chose to change the blogging pattern. Therefore, I, with a lot of help from my good friend, Illy-T, set up a new home, or castle, if you will. Its name is Cognitive Dissidence, and I hope you'll come to visit me there.

Oh, I'll still post here when the matter is germane to this sites specialty, and I'll still post at Jay's place, when I want more than myself to read my work, but otherwise, Cog Dis will be my primary focus, blogwise.

But I would want to thank all my friends and allies (some of them coming from surprising corners of the Cheddarsphere) for the support, understanding, and help that they have given me over the past year. I would also be remiss if I did not thank you, gentle readers, for making these past few months so much fun.

*Ironically, my two of my first three posts have to deal with Sykes anyway.

The Summerfest compromise

Summerfest, which took a courageous stand on Tuesday and shut down an Army game which allowed teens to virtually kill people from a Humvee, took a step back after getting some heat.

The new compromise re-opened the game but replaced people's images with inanimate targets.

Reaction is mixed. Charlie Sykes, while crowing that he's responsible for the change, is still unhappy that Summerfest would even speak to a peacenik.

My take is that, while the fest tried to do the right thing, it has buckled to Army, right-wing and corporate pressure, as evidence by its boot-licking statement about how the Army is Summerfest's best friend. Read it here.

Michael Mathias, who first wrote about the Peace Action campaign to stop the killing game, says that Summerfest still deserves our thanks for trying to do what's right.

And Jim Rowen writes about Charlie Sykes's tantrum this morning, claiming Summerfest has capitulated to moonbats, including yours truly. So maybe Mathias is right.

What's your take?

Which One Is Charlie?

John McCain sez...





Charlie thinks that war should be romanticized for fair goers or that it's a game to be played by 13-year-olds on Summer break.

Sorry, Charlie. John McCain says that you're a fool. It's not just Milwaukee anymore.

An Unlikely Confluence

This may never happen again. Brad, Rush and I agree. From an NYT Magazine piece.

At dinner the night before, Bill O’Reilly’s name came up, and Limbaugh expressed his opinion of the Fox cable king. He hadn’t been sure at the time that he wanted it on the record. But on second thought, “somebody’s got to say it,” he told me. “The man is Ted Baxter.”

Knock on Woodheads

The woodwork is bursting regarding the Virtual War display and Charlie Syke's post. Here are some comments left at Charlie's place.

From Dianne Emmerich:

It's interesting that the peaceniks are so concerned about this "violence" and Summerfest panders to them, but neither are concerned about the hundreds of people that are overserved and leave the festival drunk on their arses only to get into a car and become lethal weapons on the ride home or to the next bar. Summerfest will get no more patronage from me.

Good idea. Uncaring liberal voices everywhere, let's all unite and ban the serving of beer at Summerfest. Sheesh.

From María Negrón Piñero:

As a very religious, very patriotic, very Puertorrican, very American, very conservative person I have only one comment: How sad! Let us remember the song “…I am proud to be an American…” and stand by those who defend us, our rights, our freedom, our peace, our lives and even the oppressed from other counties. God bless America, our arm forces and all of us!!!

I got all weepy-eyed just reading that. Sniff, can't we all just get along?

And finally from Amy P.:

I would like to know - for you peace groups and lefty bloggers out there - if war is "not the answer", is there nothing in your lives worth fighting for? Not your freedoms? Not your loved ones? Not your homes, your jobs, your lives? If that's the case, it speaks VOLUMES about how sad and pathetic the anti-war position is. "War is not the answer"? It depends on the question...and in the case of Islamic facism, Nazism, Communism war *is* the only way to ensure our peace and freedom.

Nazism?

In any case, you left out another question ... what about illegal wars? And another: What about fighting the erosion of personal liberties and rights? How about: Not wanting to expose our childrens to virtual violence.

And finally, a number of commenters got all bent out of shape because the video game Grand Theft Auto can be played at Summerfest. Way to stand up for your rights.

Truth In Advertising Finally Reaches Sykes

I couldn't come up with anything better about Sykes blog or squawk show:

Sykes On McCain

At least I think he is referring to the video I posted the other day, when he put this up:

Then again it could have been this one.

Festival's halt to virtual killing is killing Sykes

Peace activists won a small victory for humankind Tuesday when a phone call campaign convinced Summerfest to shut down an Army recruiting exhibit that invited 13-year-olds and up to "hop into a Humvee simulator and fire machine guns at life-size people on a computer screen," as the JS described it.

Added bonus: It sent Charlie Sykes off the deep end, causing him to write some things that made even less sense than usual -- and that's saying something. Says Sykes:

Political rallies for Barack Obama: OK.

Virtual warfare games: Out.

While men and women continue to fight (and win) in Iraq and Afghanistan, Summerfest gets all squeamish about the Army's virtual reality war game. But, just remember: they support the troops.

How's that again?

We're winning in Iraq?

Political rallies for Barack Obama are the same as Army recruiters using violent video games to recruit teenagers?

If you don't want your kids exposed to that sort of "reality" at Summerfest you don't support the troops?

Sorry, Charlie. You clearly don't have a leg to stand on, or you'd have done better than that.