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.