Why Chuckles Should Do Better Than Rip and Read

Charlie had a good time with this today before it came out that, well, just give it a look.

From Brett Davis' press release (emphasis added):

Lieutenant Governor candidate and State Representative Brett Davis has learned that the Wisconsin Department of Corrections is now
using state dollars to pay for driver’s licenses and state-issued identification
cards for prison inmates. Davis learned the policy change went
into effect on July 1 of this year.

“These absurd spending programs continue to show Governor Doyle to be hopelessly tone deaf to the will of the people of Wisconsin.”

All really good, inflammatory rhetoric that looks boffo on a campaign website. It overlooks the fact that the measure was part of the 2007-08 budget that Scott Suder and Mark Pocan put together.

I guess though, as one of Brett's constituents all these years, I kind of assumed he was reading the bills he was voting for.

Maybe he should have talked to Scott Suder about the problems that being careless with ID can cause.

Cross-poted from The Happy Circumstance

Paddy Rewrites Recent History

Patrick McIlheran somehow manages to write that voter ID did not hamper the voter turnout during November's historic election. It is not know if he actually typed this with a straight face or not.

And here I thought that the large amount of turnout among Democrats and African Americans had something to do with the opportunity to vote for a man that was going to offer a chance to correct the errors for the past eight years.

Another thing that Paddy fails to mention was that the turnout was also higher in states that don't try to disenfranchise voters.

Another Whallah Sighting!

It's catching on everywhere. Fox Head is trying to explain why my 104-year-old Grandmother should be willing to spend "just a few hours" to get a new ID so she can vote when it happens.

See if you can find it.

An id is not that hard to obtain, it requires a simple trip to your local
DMV office, fill out an application, and pay a small fee. And Walla, you have an id. I just cannot see how anyone can be
disenfranchised by that event. How anyone would have a problem with obtaining a little piece of plastic with your picture and name and address.

Now I hope that he's talking about getting an ID so you can vote and not getting an id so you can, well, you know. That would be just a little icky at the polling place.




Editor's note: "Walla, you have an id," just might be my new favorite phrase.

Nothing To See Here, Folks, Just Move Along

Charlie says no one had their votes supressed in Indiana, despite their Voter ID law.

Grumps shows us a newlywed woman, some college kids and a dozen nuns who must be nobodies.

Misdirected Anger

You've heard it before. Sykes goes off about it all the time. So does McIlheran. Even Fischer is getting into the act.

In their inane and barely veiled elitist, bigoted attempts to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters in Wisconsin, they keep hammering on their desire for Voter ID. They keep asking when, oh when, will Doyle get it, and cave in to their nefarious ways. After all, Doyle passed a law that requires a person to show a picture ID when buying medication that has pseudophedrine in it, right? So why doesn't he do it for voting?

Well, the answer is pretty simple really. Every state has passed a similar law. Why is that, you may ask? Well that is to be in alignment with the federal law passed by the federal government (emphasis mine):

On March 9, 2006, President Bush signed into law the “USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005.” Among that bill’s provisions was the “Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005” (“Combat Meth Act”). The Combat Meth Act seeks to curb the availability of certain chemicals used in the manufacture of methamphetamine. These precursor chemicals – pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, or phenylpropanolamine – are common ingredients in many over-the-counter cold, flu, and allergy medications. The Combat Meth Act subjects retailers to new sales restrictions, employee training obligations, and reporting requirements if they wish to continue to sell these over-the-counter medicines.

[...]

Logbook Requirement – Beginning September 30, 2006, retailers must maintain a list of all sales of pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, or phenylpropanolamine (with the exception of single dose sales). The log may be maintained electronically. The logbook must include the following information:

• Product Name;
• Quantity Sold;
• Name and address of purchaser; and
• Date and time of the sale.

The retailer must require that the customer present, prior to purchase, a photo ID card issued by a state or the Federal Government, a passport or an Alien Registration Receipt Card or Permanent Resident Card (“Green Card”). The Customer must also sign the logbook, writing his or her name, address, and the date and time of the sale. The retailer must confirm that the name in the logbook corresponds with the name on the ID and that the date and time are correct. The retailer must then enter into the logbook the name of the product and the quantity sold. Retailers must retain the logbooks for at least two years. Logbooks will be subject to certain privacy protections which will be discussed in regulations promulgated by the Department of Justice.

The time that this law was passed and enacted, the Republicans were definitely in power in the Congress, and last time I checked, Bush was still considered to be a Republican.

So if Syke, Belling, PaddyMac and Fischer want to gripe about having to show their photo ID every time they go to the pharmacy for their Sudafed, whether for allergies or to make the meth they must be smoking, they ought to be remembering the rightful place to put the blame. Themselves and the politicians they support.

McIlheran: Buy Our Elephant Repellent

You know the old joke that goes something like this:

"Hey, mister, you better buy a bottle of my Elephant Repellent. If you don't buy it, the elephants will come into the neighborhood and trample you! My proof that this stuff really works is that there are no elephants around here."

Well, that is what McIlheran is telling us when he touts SCOTUS's ruling to uphold Indiana's Voter ID law, in his column in this morning's paper.

Unfortunately, there are too many that buy into this false argument. And this is unfortunate, since it has been proven to be a bogus talking point, time and time again, that there is not enough fraud to justify the disenfranchisement of more than a hundred thousand people in Wisconsin alone.

McIlheran tries to say that people wouldn't be disenfranchised because the state could provide free IDs to those who need it, or to use other forms of identification. But in the same breath, he advocates for the abolishment of same-day registration, which, ironically, uses the same forms of ID he says is OK. Go figure.

Not only does McIlheran, who claims to hate taxes, advocate for this unnecessary tax burden (and I thought he only did that for unnecessary freeway expansions), but fails to acknowledge that one of the problems is that the poor are often transient. So this may require multiple issuings of a picture ID to the same person, just to keep it current and accurate. How much you would want to bet he'd be blaming the ever increasing tax on the nearest Democrat?

Despite all of his posturing, McIlheran is not really sincere in his interest to stop the non-existent voter fraud. For if he was, his first concern would be to clean up the largest area of voter fraud, the absentee ballot. But he wouldn't dare do that. That's the Republicans' favorite way of committing their own fraud while throwing their red herrings at the poor, the minorities and the elderly to keep the public's attention from the real concern.

She's Alive!!!

Yes, McBride is still alive...and still not making any sense.

She shows a picture of five white state senators verbally attacking an African American state senator. His crime: Defending the right to vote for ALL people.

McBride's take on the picture:

You've got to admit.... this picture is pretty funny.

No, Ms. McBride, I don't see what is so funny about some elitists trying to supress people's rights.

Voter Fraud Frauds

So some unnamed individuals in the Special Investigations Unit of the Milwaukee Police Department released "the results" of their investigation. However, this report is quickly becoming more and more suspect.

In an another one of his acts of clairvoyance, our own Brawler noted that the new top cop was not happy that this report was released under the MPD auspices, but that it never went through the proper channels. Even more interesting is that it wasn't released to community leaders first but instead it went to political hacks and radio squawkers.

Today, Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel confirms the Brawler's conclusions with an interview of the chief, who is righteously ticked off at the shenanigans of what has happened and the tenuous position that these unnamed actors has put the Department in.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the local right wing squawkers are either in denial or outrightly ignoring the cloud that hovers around this report, just like they did with Annette Ziegler, and are currently doing with Gableman.

The Brawler, in a follow up post he did on this story, writes an interesting question:

The Brawler's new question is: Will Charlie Sykes and other law-and-order types who have praised Ed Flynn mention that he's gone after this report and its pretenses of policy making? Tune in Monday!

On his TV show, Sunday Incite, Sykes purposely ignores this little fact. Kevin Fischer ignores the suspicious conditions of the release of the report. Then again, Fischer tends to ignore anything that concerns reality.

The other thing to note is that all of these right wing, foaming-at-the-mouth, Voter ID fanatics are ignoring the elephant in the room. The highest area of voter fraud, and voter intimidation, but since that is their bailiwick of committing voter fraud, I don't expect the right to really want anyone to look at that too closely.