Priebus Not All That Popular After All

Charlie Sykes has been spending a number of weeks just gushing his man love for Reince Priebus, head weasel of the WISGOP, who wants to stab his buddy, Michael Steele, head of the RNC, in the back. Even though Priebus was supposedly Steele's confidante and advisor, he's turned the tables and wants his former friend's job.

Although the latest news reports show Priebus taking an early lead in the RNC race, things might go south for him quickly as his two-facedness becomes more commonly known.

Consider these:

• Gateway Pundit points to Priebus and his law firm working to help clients snag up stimulus dollars even though Priebus was often a critic of the stimulus package (sounds like Scott Walker and Ron Johnson, doesn't it?)
• Think Progress points out that Priebus and his law firm came out calling the health care reform as being Constitutional and touting the benefits of the reform
• National Review Online also discusses Priebus and his pursuit of stimulus funds.

So why is Priebus so unpopular? Is it his double talk? Is it that fact that even though Wisconsin turned temporarily rather red, it was with buffoons like Scott Walker and Ron Johnson who have already proven themselves not to be up to their respective jobs even before taking office? Could it be his bad hair? Who knows?

But what is rather telling is not many conservatives are standing up to the plate for him. In fact, his most strenuous defender is Illusory Tenant, who could hardly be labelled as a conservative.

Regardless of the turn out of the RNC eat-your-own contest, it will be fun to watch. I'm going to go pop some popcorn and wait for the next installment of this comedy.

Quotable

Erik Gunn:

The November issue of The Wisconsin Interest has a behind-the-scenes look at Ron Johnson’s successful campaign to unseat Russ Feingold in the U.S. Senate, written by Christian Schneider. WI, edited by Charlie Sykes, is put out by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a free-market think tank and policy mill for the state’s GOP.

See? No one is buying the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's malarkey about them being "non-partisan."

H/T iT

Speaking of Entertainment Value

Patrick McIlheran put up a rather weak, even for his standards, post about the upcoming county executive race. He has a grand old time yukking it up about Ieshuh Griffin, former state legislature candidate who ran with the slogan of "Not the whiteman's bitch."

I thought the most comical part was when he offered the half-hearted endorsement of Jeff "Walker Lite" Stone, with the only positive he could come up with was calling him "polite."

But the commenters stole the post with their thread and this one-liner:

I hate to add this in but the Cudahy comb-over comment is hilarious. I've been wondering about that loaf of hair for a long time. Pat- your not fooling anyone.

Glass House Denizen Throws Stones

Would someone please explain why Kevin Fischer thinks he should be criticizing anyone on appearances?

He Might Not Know Art...

Patrick McIlheran uses his best bud's witticism to take some pot shots at The Calling, inferring that it should be dropped into Lake Michigan.

Illy-T points out the hypocrisy of Paddy and friends:

So do you think you'll catch Patrick McIlheran or Charlie Sykes or Mark Belling publicly lampooning the aesthetic predilections of their own conservative Republican fellow travelers and popular benefactors?

Me neither.

But this is the journalism that wins awards.

Paddy might not know art, but he knows what he likes.

Exceptionally Fatuous

The line in the song "Up on the Roof" goes, "you just have to wish to make it so."

Pretty much defines the Syksian perspective when it comes to this concept of American exceptionalism.

Now just about all of us regard the good old US of A as the greatest country on earth, liberals included. We love our country warts and all, but an adult recognizes that if you want to be Miss America, you'd better burn off the warts.

In his continuing efforts to whip up his herd, Charlie Sykes is taking umbrage that President Obama is insufficiently delusional about where we stand in the world. Or as Sykes puts it:

Republicans, including a string of prospective presidential contenders, have taken their objections to President Obama's policies to a provocative and controversial level. Over White House objections, they're accusing him of not embracing the concept of American exceptionalism, saying he is pursuing an agenda on health care, the economy and foreign affairs that is at odds with fundamentals that distinguish the United States.

Sykes thinks he has a winner here. By gum, no president born in Kenya is going to tell us that we lag in health care, or education, or infrastructure. The sad truth however is that we are in fact staring at the behinds of other countries, and usually our rankings come in at around the low 20s when compared to other nations. In that health care issue Sykes talks about, we're number 37.

But we also rank at the low 20s when it comes to taxes. Think there is a correlation? Of course there is. Other countries are investing in ourselves, while here all the deep pockets fritter away their money on financial speculation, not job creation as some assert. As for the rest of us, a lot of our money that is untouched by taxes goes into buying products made overseas. Again, not job generators.

Charlie apparently thinks that being exceptional comes through wishing, or can be had on the cheap. Like W put it, "it's hard work" and it also takes hard cash to measure up to our world wide competition.

Sargent Sykes always whines about how bleeding heart parents and teachers like to hand out trophies in order to bolster the self-esteem of their looser kids who come in second.

Can anyone explain what is the difference here, except for Sykes' continual effort to come up with something, anything, to criticize our President?

For the realists among us, and oddly lately they happen to be liberals, there is a fear that we are in our sunset years as a country. We can reverse this course, but this is a classic case where we have to put up or shut up.

The more that people like Sykes talk the voters out of insisting on the investments needed to make us a leading country in college education, research, infrastructure and other areas, the more we put ourselves farther behind.

He Don't Know Swhat!

From Charlie Sykes, author of the book "Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, Or Add"*, comes this piece of incite, er, I mean, insight:

*BTW, yes, we know the second comma in the book title is superfluous and shouldn't be there, but that is how Sykes, author and editor of WPRI, wrote it.

PolitiFact burns Sykes's ass

Charlie Sykes's pants are on fire on a daily basis between 8:30 a.m.and noon, and probably when he's off the air, too.

The Journal Sentinel's PolitiFact, which has been criticized by lefty bloggers for failing to fact check Sykes, gives him a Pants on Fire rating on his claim about University of Wisconsin Rose Bowl expenses.

It's more than a a little self-congratulatory:

PolitiFact doesn’t just look at politicians or elected officials. It will take on anyone who speaks up in the civic discourse, even if their radio station is owned by the same company (Journal Communications Inc.) that owns the Journal Sentinel.

And Sykes, like his counterpart Mark Belling did awhile back, cheerfully admits he made it up, as though that is perfectly OK:

"My ‘evidence’? Absolutely none."

Sykes went on to label his remark "an off-hand wisecrack" -- "You know, humor, hyperbole, joke."

Hilarious, huh?

While it's nice that the JS challenged Sykes, at long last, it's too bad it chose a fairly trivial topic after ignoring all sorts of whoppers on much bigger issues during the recent campaign.

We rate this one as Window Dressing.

Dooley Plays The "Blame The Victim" Card

Fred Dooley, in an amazing bit of twisted thinking and circular logic, decided what was the real reason that the state legislature failed to pass the union contracts:

If the left wing blogosphere, the unions and all their left wing pals had stuck with Jeff Plale instead of throwing their weight behind a truly radical left wing primary challenger they would have likely been able to get Plale's vote and had their new contracts.

Funny thing is, as Zach and xoff each point out, Plale enjoyed more backing from organized labor, including the very workers he screwed over, than his challenger, Senator-elect Chris Larson.

Thank goodness that old Fred isn't a counselor. With his kind of logic, he'd be telling battered women to stay with their abusers or they'll get what's coming to them.

If he wants to blame the left and the unions for anything, it's for not recognizing Plale for what he was years ago and allowing him to stay in office as long as he has.

I Can't Wait To See Sykes Explain This One

So, Chuckles Sykes, like his paper counterpart, keeps trying to hammer into people's heads that Scott Walker is doing them some kind of favor by making them pay hundreds of millions of dollars in order to chase thousands of much needed jobs out of the state, likes to play adolescent games by referring to high speed rail as the "half-fast" train. Get it? If you say it quickly, half-fast sounds like half-assed.

Oh, isn't Sykes the droll one?

But I wonder how Sykes, or Patrick McIlheran, will say a half-fast train is worse than a dead-stop car:

Travel times on the busy section of freeway will more than double during a repaving project scheduled to last about three months, from early April to the end of June.

Motorists commuting between the Marquette Interchange and Wisconsin Highway 16 can expect to add an hour per day to their drive time.

McIlheran Jumps The Tracks For Walker

In Sunday's issue of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Patrick McIlheran claims that Scott Walker did our neighbors to the west a grand favor by cutting off high speed rail. McIlheran's effort is to discredit the majority of Wisconites who are might steamed about Walker turning away all those jobs and making state tax payers cough up hundreds of millions of dollars, all for some malignant ideology.

One of the arguments that pro-train advocates have argued is that by killing the train, Walker has also put Minnesota into great fiscal danger.

In his effort to undermine that argument, ol' Paddy finds one of the few politicians from that state that was in agreement with Walker. Of course, McIlheran also cites Michele Bachmann, and we all know what that is worth.

Patrick even manages to get in touch with the Minnesotan version of WPRI (Wankers Promoting Republican Ideology) who claims that no one in the great state really cares about some dumb old train anyway.

Pretty convincing stuff that Patrick writes. Pretty convincing, indeed, unless one has access to Teh Google Machine which blows up Patrick's craven lies in about .047 seconds.

You see, despite Patrick's claims that the politicians in Minnesota are about to erect a 100 foot tall statue of Walker along the Mississippi River, the fact is that they are much less than pleased with Walker's silliness:

Earlier, Minnesota's Gov.-elect Mark Dayton reacted to the news, lamenting the loss and worried about its impact on Minnesota's plan to be part of a high-speed rail route from Chicago to the Twin Cities.

Today, Jerry Miller, chair of the Minnesota High-Speed Rail Commission called Wisconsin's loss of funding "a setback" but said the commission will continue to work to get the rail line established.

And regarding the common folk that are being affected by Walker's acquiescence to the road builders, well it's seems like there is still an interest by John and Jane Q. Public after all.

So why is Patrick telling lies for Scott Walker? After all, Walker has already won the election, so why continue with this farce?

Well, the main reason is that Walker is not too popular with the people. And that poll was taken before it was learned that Walker was to chase away thousands of jobs or adding insult to injury by making the tax payers foot the bill for the chance not to have a job. I would imagine that his popularity is considerably less now that people have had tome to absorb what the implications of Walker's folly really is. (Also not included in this is his Walker's push to make Wisconsin a right-to-work-for-less state.)

Another reason is that as of November 3, Walker started laying the groundwork for his eventual run for POTUS. It just wouldn't do to start off his presidential campaign by making obvious and egregious blunder after obvious and egregious blunder, so he needs the fallible services of Charlie Sykes and Patrick to keep the lie going that he is not a completely incompetent fool.

Next Pulitzer project

Posted first on Uppity Wisconsin, but then realized this is the appropriate venue.

Comment on Ed Garvey's blog:

As a vilified Wisconsin state employee and member of the Wisconsin Professional Employees Council at UW-Milwaukee, I would LOVE to see some facts/figures on the benefits, health care premium costs and coverage, salaries (including per diems claimed) and pensions of Wisconsin legislators, who, at best, are part-time employees of the state.

I suspect one could not find a better example of feeders at the public trough than our less-than-illustrious assortment of elected senators and congressmen/women. And why not throw in the figures for our soon-to-be governor for good measure?

Everyone is so concerned with state employee salaries and benefits, why are we not getting more information and the full picture concerning that particular breed of state employee known as elected legislator?

-Marie Fernleaf Milwaukee (unverified)

Plenty of meat there for one of those long, wordy series some newspapers (not to mention any names) love to do. Let's put half a dozen reporters on it.

Then, when that's finished, we can look at salaries, benefits and pensions of newspaper editors and executives.

Stone announces for Walker's third term

He practically said as much.

Could Walker, who got 38% of the vote for governor in the county, win a third term himself? Doubtful.

But we do have to ask: Everyone has known for six weeks that Walker was leaving the job.

A small army of Democrats are still milling around, asking each other whether to run, while time slips away. It is now about nine weeks to the primary, and then seven more to the general election.

That's precious little time to assemble a serious campaign or raise the kind of money it will take to win. Stone will be well-funded, and will no doubt be able to build on the Milwaukee County organization Walker just built for November.

What in the hell are the Dems waiting for?

The Real Have Whines About The Have Nots

Part of Charlie Sykes' almost daily repertoire is to attack union workers, especially if they are public employees. He does this because it is one of the normal Republican talking points as well as to bolster the already flagging popularity of Goobernatorial-elect Scott Walker.

But interestingly, I have recently received the latest issue of Milwaukee Magazine, in which they have a piece discussing various people's salaries. And yup, Ol' Chuckles is among the ones listed:

CHARLIE SYKES, Conservative Talk Radio Host, 620 WTMJ-AM: $170,000 plus bonus

(Salary estimated by WTMJ radio insiders; Sykes declined to confirm.)

This does not mention whatever he gets paid directly by the Bradley Foundation, or indirectly from the Bradley Foundation as editor of WPRI (Wankers Promoting Republican Ideals).

I guess the conservatives put high value on talented liars and blowhards.

Remember this when he is bitching up a storm about the county parks worker making $12 an hour. Now you know he isn't looking after Joe Taxpayer when he is attacking union workers. He's only promoting the talking points of the Greedy Old Perverts who are angry because they don't have all of our money yet.

The Ever Classless Kevin Fischer

Kevin Fischer is one self-centered, selfish, egotistical blowhard if there ever was one.

Tonight, Fischer is whining about the meteorologists handling of the weekend's weather. He feels that they were too excessive in their warnings and alerts. After all, Milwaukee County, his little part of the big, wide world, only got 1.1 inches of snow.

Unfortunately, the rest of the state didn't get off so lightly.

The storm was so severe that a 150-mile stretch of I-94 had to be closed and many parts of the state received 18 inches or more, not counting the blizzard like conditions caused by the high winds.

And even that isn't the most grievous part of Fischer's egomania. The weather caused five people to lose their lives and that isn't cute or funny.

It's amazing how insensitive and unaware Fischer can be at times.

Oh, That Liberal Media!

We've all heard it a million times. Whenever some news outlet reports something that conservatives don't like to deal with, they blame it on "the liberal media."

In the greater Milwaukee area, you can't go a day without hearing Charlie Sucks Sykes, Mark Belling, or any of the other hate-mongerers continuously belittling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (even though Sykes, Jeff Wagner and James Harris all work for the same parent company) or one of the local TV stations, especially when they show Scott Walker, RebeccaKleefisch, Ron Johnson or any of the other misanthropes that we will have to deal with for the next four years as being the putzes they truly are.

Well, next time you hear someone carping about the liberal paper, tell them to shove it. No liberal paper would have done this:

That's right. Steve Smith, CEO of Journal Broadcasting (remember I told you about his ties to Walker), had his company donate $15,000 to Walker's campaign. And that doesn't count all the free air time that Walker was allowed on WTMJ-AM 620 or other favors that they did for old Scooter.

Steve Smith is sort of like the skinflint version of Rupert Murdoch, isn't he?

Cross posted at Cog Dis.

McIlheran Gets Schooled

A couple of weeks ago, Patrick McIlheran crowed about a school district that chose another health care provider besides WEA. In McIlheran's world, anything to do with teachers is obviously evil, and thus should be condemned as such.

Too bad for Paddy that reality, as usual, is not on his side on this issue. Thus comes the schooling:

I am writing in response to columnist Patrick McIlheran's angry attack on my company, the WEA Trust.

He wrote in a Dec. 2 column on Perspectives that my company just lost the Milton School District as a health insurance customer because we were outbid. That is true. We competed in a fair bid process, and in this instance, the school district chose another carrier.

But McIlheran went on to make a series of unfounded and unwarranted statements that we must refute. He concluded that because we lost the business, my company, therefore, "sucks away scarce school money" from all of our state's schools where we do business. It's a choice between "more taxes or more ignorance," he says.

That's outrageous.

If P-Mac holds true to his nature, any day now he will be putting up a blog ridiculing the corrective post.

The funny thing, though, is that I never would have thought McIlheran was so much against the free market system.

H/T Illusory Tenant

McIlheran: Fighting Racism Is Pointless

Once again the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wastes paper and expensive ink by giving some of its precious space to Patrick McIlheran, who now has a beef with a new law requiring police to keep track of who they stop. He feels it's pointless because all cops know that it is wrong to stop someone just on the basis of the color of their skin:

There could be some value, Jungbluth says, if the exercise reassures the worried that police aren't stopping people on account of race. Lawmen already get that, however. They're trained that racial profiling will end their careers.

He's correct if he's talking about the good cops. Unfortunately, while most law enforcement officers are good people, not all cops are good cops, and there is still a lot of evidence of institutional racism.

Or perhaps Paddy thinks that is what makes them good cops...

Stop The Lies!

The right wing squawkers lie about something? Whodathunkit?

Walker Calls On Squawkers To Help Fight Against Jobs

One Wisconsin Now, along with a slew of other pro-Wisconsin agencies, have been pushing for Walker to see the light and reverse his refusal on high speed rail and all the jobs it would be bring to the state.

Apparently, these agencies are having an overwhelming effect on Team Walker, and Walker has done every other time he gets himself in trouble, he goes crying to squawk radio.

Vicki McKenna has responded to Walker's mewls for help, according to a good find by OWN:

The transition office of Republican Gov.-elect Scott Walker appears to be working with right wing radio host Vicki McKenna to manufacture opposition to the Midwest high speed rail project for Wisconsin, according to an email from, McKenna’s corporate account, obtained by One Wisconsin Now.

“For all Scott Walker’s bluster about ‘widespread’ opposition to high speed rail in Wisconsin, his taxpayer-financed transition office is desperate to manufacture a paper trail of opposition,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. “With a multi-billion dollar deficit, Walker’s use of taxpayer resources to manufacture public relations opposition to high speed rail seems about as inappropriate as sending 13,000 jobs and $810 million in rail fund to Illinois, California or North Carolina.”

In the email obtained by One Wisconsin Now, Clear Channel’s right wing radio host Vicki McKenna begs supporters to contact the Walker transition office and register opposition to high speed rail. The email appears to be sent from McKenna’s Clear Channel email address and includes not only her contact and fax number at WIBA-AM in Madison, but identifies her as a WIBA and WISN-AM Milwaukee employee.

And here is the email in question.

Which one will it be Walker? Your pride or our jobs?

Sykes' Reality Check

Charlie Sykes gets put through a reality check and comes up negative for reality, but positive for crap.

My favorite part:

Afterthought: One fresh face who did win was a Democrat, Chris Larson, elected to the State Senate despite the best efforts of Sykes and Co. to defeat him. Another was Rebecca Kleefisch, LG-elect and a Sykes favorite, but he didn't mention her. Maybe she already has become an embarrassment.