Vandal

From the talented Stuart Carlson:


Go to the above link and see the words that Carlson wrote about the upcoming farce.

The thing that gets to me is the hypocrisy of the whole stunt. The same people going to and supporting Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin's defacing of the Lincoln Memorial and of King's memory, are the same ones that are having holy fits about a mosque/community center being built near Ground Zero in New York City.

Well, Technically, He's Telling The Truth

McIlheran has a post up today that is commemorating Stuart Carlson's last day as an employee of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. PaddyMac starts out with this:

Today is cartoonist Stuart Carlson's last day of being on the Journal Sentinel opinion pages. He is among those journalists here who took voluntary buyout offered by the company.

He then continues on with a half-hearted tribute to Carlson's work with the company. But McIlheran does not tell the whole truth in those two sentences.

While it is true that Carlson took the buyout, it's not like he had much of a choice. Mr. Carlson wrote to Michael Horne, of MilwaukeeWorld, who first reported the names of people being forced out of the paper. In his letter, Mr. Carlson wrote:

Hi, Michael,

'Fraid it's true. Given the cutbacks planned at the JS I was told they could no longer "justify" having a full-time editorial cartoonist. Although I'm taking the buyout, I'm not going willingly. I'm being forced out.
Another sterling decision by the best and brightest in the paper's management.
I'll continue to be nationally syndicated in papers like the Wash Post.
I'll be looking for some other career around here.
Hope all is well with you.

Yours,
Stuart Carlson

I'm not Catholic anymore, so I don't know what the penance is for the sin of omission, but McIlheran best hie himself to the nearest church and do some confession time.

And the fact that MJS would force out a quality person like Stuart, but keep PaddyMac, shows that it is no longer worth the paper it's printed on.

Schizoid Thinking From the MJS Editorial Staff

So I come back from touring the damage that has inflicted on my holdings in the northern regions of my kingdom, and am greatly pleased by the progress that is finally occurring, and in about 10 minutes lose my sense of bonhomie towards my fellow man when I read this piece of gutter tripe.

Now, I have to say first, that I was not surprised that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel came out to endorse Scott Walker. The paper is not nearly as liberal as Sykes, McIlheran, McBride or the rest would have us believe.

But when one reads the editorial, it is hard to fathom how they came to recommend Walker. They point out, correctly, that Walker has ruined the parks, but transit on the road to its demise, made a mockery of the court system, and has jeopardized our safety by his bumbling regarding the House of Correction and the mental health system. They even point out that Walker is promising only more of the same mismanagement that has brought Milwaukee County to its knees. Yet they go on to recommend him. It simply boggles the mind.

At first I wondered if Sykes was a guest writer, but I quickly realized that it couldn't have been him. There was no self-aggrandizement and it was way too long for him to write without copying and pasting something.

I was also able to quickly determine that it wasn't McIlheran, as that it didn't include a lot of superfluous words, nor did it cite any factual errors by McBride or Esenberg.

I am apparently not the only one that found their endorsement perplexing. Mike Mathias points out that even Walker is apparently feeling desperate enough to attack Taylor on any conceivable tangent, whether or not it has to do with the position, he too feels that their endorsement is due to not wanting to jeopardize alienating their suburban base of readers.

James Rowen says it correctly and dead on, in plain English:

So failure is an option after all.

Too strong for some of you?

Look no farther than the ongoing breakdowns at the jail and House of Correction, in the parks, the pension system, and the transit system.

All failures, and getting worse.

Walker is not a visionary, or a leader, or a problem solver.

He's an unimaginative one-note (tax freeze) tactical politico, a willing tool of talk radio, a place-holder waiting his turn to run for F. James Sensenbrenner's Congressional seat.

He got elected in 2002, despite an undistinguished career as an anonymous GOP Assemblyman from Wauwatosa, because the Ament administration corrupted itself out of office.

But Walker has not been the breath of fresh air he promised he'd be, and basic county services, like the parks and the transit system, are worse than they were when Walker took over.

And continuing pension system malfeasance is simply unacceptable.

Little wonder that county government is living on credit, and teeters towards financial bankruptcy.

Lena Taylor is an attorney and State Senator. Her credentials are more substantial than Walker's.

She would have been a breath of fresh air, and a fresh start for the county and local politics.

The paper got this one wrong.

The thing that makes their endorsement of Walker even more baffling is the fact that they got it right on the Supreme Court race.

At least Stuart Carlson gets it: