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.

Belling Is A Double Liar

Mark Belling is being ridiculed in the paper for making the false accusation that Senator Russ Feingold had not actually been at this house during the filming of his most recent commercial. This is, of course, blatantly false.

The article does have a couple of key lines that gives an amazingly harsh and honest look inside squawk radio:

We asked Belling for his evidence.

"I have none," he said in an e-mail to PolitiFact Wisconsin. "It’s an accusation. They can deny it and if they're right, I'll admit it.

"But it's very fishy."

[...]

"I have no proof,’’ Belling said. "I'm making an accusation that it's faked, and they can confirm or deny it."

[...]

As for Belling’s accusation, the veteran talk show host tried to turn Feingold’s own ad against him, to suggest he’s so out of touch with state voters that he was even out of state when the ad was filmed. He said he based his assertion on his own review of the photography and on one unnamed source, who had no knowledge of how the shoot was conducted but who thought it looked fishy. As for Belling’s proof, we’ll use his own words to describe it: "I have none."

And we’ll add three words of our own: Pants on Fire.

It should be pointed out that, at least locally, Zach Wisniewski was the first to point out the allegation was false, a full week before Belling decided to come out with "his" findings.

Why Is He Even On The Air?

Leave it to Glenn Beck to make Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter look almost human:



And why do right wingers think it is even close to acceptable to pick on someone's kids?

Sounds like a certain troll I know...

H/T Zach

My God, if Charlie Sykes thinks you're out of touch...

"Of course it’s going to be a problem. You know, and the more you try to explain it, the more you’re essentially explaining that you live in a completely different fiscal environment than most of the working people of Wisconsin.”
--Right Wing Squawker Charlie Sykes to GOP Senate hopeful Terrence Wall

Would it kill Sykes to credit Zach Wisniewski at Blogging Blue, who has been beating the Terrence Wall tax dodger drum for at least a couple of months? Probably. And then Steve Wexler would lose the only reason he still has a job. But I digress. The point is that Terrence Wall has apparently never met a tax he wouldn't attempt to avoid. I don' t care whose party's office you're running for, the public just doesn't like that. I mean even Jim Sensenbrenner pays taxes, and he's not even technically a human being.

Read the rest at Pundit Nation.

Tis The Season To Be Banned

A few months ago, someone or someones started doing some sock puppetry, using my name on Badger Blogger. Even though it was shown not to be me, I was blocked from their site. (Meh, no great loss for me.) (Even though they admit that they were having these problems, they have yet to apologize.)

The same thing has been going on around the blogosphere, including at this very site. The most recent victim is Fred Dooley, who accused Mike Mathias and I of doing things completely out of our character. Even when this was pointed out to Dooley, he claimed that "he checked" and confirmed it was us.

Lo and behold, Dooley finally figures he was duped, and apologizes to those whose names who had been used. However, he makes no mention of how he had "checked" and confirmed it was us, which should raise suspicion in anyone's eyes about what statements Dooley makes that might be true and which ones are false.

In all of the hoopla, Zach Wisniewski points out the hypocrisy that Dooley has shown over the years on what he tolerates from the right, but won't take a fraction of from the left. For his troubles, Zach joined a growing list of impressive people by getting banned himself.

And in related news, Charlie Sykes has just started using twitter. I am proud to say that I am one of the first, if not the first person he has blocked from following his account.
That said, I can still read it, so it is nothing more than a minor nuisance. Look for more fun with this.

Why The Squawkers Should Be For Health Care Reform

The right wing should be all for health care reform. After all, it's pretty obvious that their current coverage lacks the mental health treatment they need.

Case Study #1:

James Rowen shows us how Mark Belling is forced to keep altering his reality to be able to keep up with his unrealistic rants against health care. Unfortunately, the only thing that was real about Belling's screed was his blatant racism.

Case Study #2

Kevin Fischer, who has never been in touch with reality, shows how delusional he really is when he states that Congresswoman Gwen Moore wouldn't interact with the crowd. Fortunately, we have Zach Wisniewski who, unlike Fischer, actually gives a damn about his community, and went there and found the reality would be something to scare Fischer sober.

Belling and Fischer obviously need psychiatric care, which they apparently lack under their own coverage. Call your U.S. Representative and Senator and tell them to support health care reform, so that we are no longer exposed to the insane ramblings of these racist, delusional and schizophrenic madmen.

Sexism In The City, Revisited

Over a year ago, I wrote about the sexism that is prevalent amongst the right.

Zach tells us that some things, unfortunately, never do change.

Fred Dooley: The Epitome Of Hypocrisy

Shortly after the election, right wing blogger Peter DiGaudio made some outrageous comments on his site, Texas Hold'em Blogger, as well as some comments on Boots and Sabers, that could be considered to be criminal. This drew a rather large amount of criticism from the left, like the Prodigal Brawler and Zach, as well as some conservatives, like James Wigderson.

I chose not to write about it for a few reasons. One, I know Peter has a history of flying of the handle and saying irresponsible and totally unacceptable things. Secondly, I do believe, based on what I saw, and from what others have told me, that Peter does have a clinically diagnosable mental health issue. I have a different perspective than most, as that my training and my career is based on helping those with mental illness. Thirdly, with everyone else piling on him, both publicly and privately, I did not feel that I would have anything to add, and did not want to add to any issues Peter might have. Another major reason for my silence on the issue was simply that I had bigger fish to fry.

Well, Peter, in a fit of pique, chose to delete his entire site. A few days later, he came back with a new site. Badger Blogger and Fred Dooley both proudly announced it, but had never publicly denounced the original problematic posts and comments. This caused them a bit of grief, I'm sure. Again, I said nothing, because this was what I expected from them, unfortunately.

Dooley became so incensed with the criticism, that he felt compelled to put up a post explaining his actions. Now, for the uninitiated, Dooley is an extreme right wing blogger that has problems with polite interactions. His site, mistitled "Real Debate Wisconsin" is anything but that. Dooley has the tendency to use irresponsible rhetoric and over the top hyperbole from time to time as well.

He has also banned many people from his site, mostly for the sin of disagreeing with him. The most recent being another one of our prodigal contributors, Other Side.

Dooley also hates a lot of people, including yours truly. He has written many posts and comments attacking me personally and attacking this site. One of the many insults he flailed about in my general direction was that I am some sort of sexist, just because I had the audacity to disagree with Jessica McBride.

So, you can see, I was just amazed at the level of hypocrisy when Dooley wrote this:

In short, these complainers are the same people who don't seem to have any problem with similar speech from the left. If you'd like to see the local equivalent of Peter's work on the left, do a search for Blue Racine. That's a particularly vile and vulgar site that these same paragons of virtue complaining about myself, Peter and Patrick @ Badger Blogger have no issues at all with. Funny how an acerbic conservative bothers them yet they have no issues at all with acerbic lefties. I prefer to just ignore them, they are not worthy of any energy or effort on my part, I have enough to do.

Yup, Dooley, who had accused me of sexism for disagreeing with a woman, calls a site run by a woman vile and vulgar. Interestingly, one of the contributors at his site is also a contributor at Blue Racine. Perhaps it's just a jealousy issue. More likely it's hypocrisy.

Another funny thing is that none of his commenters found anything vulgar or vile about Blue Racine. In fact, many of the commenters remark that Fred's site is much, much worse than this site.

So, let's review.

• He calls me sexist for disagreeing with McBride, but then attacks a woman, calling her site vile and vulgar.
• The site he calls vile and vulgar is found by independent commenters to be anything but that, but do notice that his site is actually vile and vulgar.
  
• He says that he ignores us terrible, terrible lefties, but felt that he had to respond.
• He calls his site Real Debate, when he bans people for disagreeing with him.
  

About the only way Dooley could have been more hypocritical is by telling someone that they need to seek out mental health counseling.

And has an added bonus to his ridiculousness, we have another comment on Dooley's post from the (in)famous mickey/gus:

Allah-is-a-ok, isn't that far from the truth.
Libs have been known to burn the flag. Virulent strains of LIBTARD-ism still do.
Libs have been known to pretend that VIOLENT ISLAMOFASCISTS...(a "virulent strain" of Islam), are not a threat and need libs protection.
Libs are known to support groups and individuals that will not work and are a drain on society. They have "lot's of time" on their hands.

Lastly, Patriots support, defend and love America.
Libtards don't. They believe others should support, defend and love America. Libs want an America that is weak and full of lazy weak libtards.
And Allah-is-a-ok, thinks taxing those who have achieved is a bottomless LIBBY-BANK.
Libs want an America that is funded by successful people, and Libs want to punish the successful, because LIBS constituents are generally weak and not successful.
Thanks Allah-is-a-ok!

McIlheran Hearts Jay Bullock, Clubs Ethics

As I was catching up on my reading from my long adventure at Leafapalooza, I came across McIlheran's column listing his spin away from reality, and why he thinks McCain should even be considered to be president. The column in itself is a laugh riot, including this classic line:

With McCain, however, you get an adult now. His growing is accomplished. The best speech the man delivered was at his nomination, and its heart was his story of war imprisonment. What started sounding like a boast turned out to be its opposite. McCain told of how his captors broke him. This shamed him, he said, but also took away his youthful self-regard. He learned, he said, "the limits of my selfish independence," to understand that "I wasn't my own man anymore; I was my country's."

Those are the words of a man who has had time to think and comprehend the meaning of freedom. Obama seems like a bright fellow. Someday, he might achieve such understanding. Until then, I'd trust the guy who seems to know what he's doing.

I was then going to point out the absurdities in this one column, which would have been a Herculean undertaking to say the least.

However, there is something even more alarming than PaddyMac's usual running and hiding from reality. It is that he apparently likes to give sneak previews of his columns.

Jay Bullock, my friend and mentor, received an email from Paddy, with this column. Jay writes:

I am a lucky guy. I think. Somehow, after all these years of duels and ripostes, in the last couple of weeks Patrick McIlheran has added me to his mailing list. That means every few days or so I get an email from him with the full text of a column of his slated to run in the next day or two.

Thursday night I got his preview of Friday's column*. (Confidential to PM in Bay View: Next time, use the BCC field. Your sole liberal correspondent might feel a bit weird about being your sole liberal correspondent, and was probably happier when he believed there was a more even distribution.) "Here’s an early look at my column in Friday's Journal Sentinel. You’re seeing it because I send a heads-up to a select group of talkers and bloggers whose work I admire. You’re among them." See? Lucky!

Jay then goes on to do the fisking of the column, so that we don't have to. But it seemed disconcerting to me that Paddy was giving out advanced copies of his column, mostly to conservative bloggers. Sort of like giving them a heads up so that they can gear up the echo chambers, in a futile effort to make his column look rational.

I am not the only one that caught onto this disturbing behavior.

Gretchen Schuldt Doege, who in a former life was a real journalist, with all the skills and ethics that are associated with the best (cuz she was, and still is, among the best, in my humble but royal opinion), also noticed a problem:

The changing ways columnists and bloggers communicate may mean that maybe hard and fast journalistic rules — like you don’t spread newspaper content around in advance of publication — are changing. To allow columnists to sneak-peak their writings to a handful of friends seems a slippery slope the MJS ought not want to start down. It damages the paper’s credibility and chips away at the trust it must have from its readers. We are left wondering: Who else at the MJS is showing what else to a politically friendly audience?

Zachary of Blogging Blue also picked up on the story. What is truly remarkable about that post, besides his usual fantastic work, and worthy of our attention, is a comment left by none other than Sonya Jongsma-Knauss, the letters editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She comes to Paddy's defense, sort of, but with a really strange twist at the end (emphasis mine):

I think this may be a little bit of much ado about nothing…

First, the ethics agreement refers to articles, not columns. Second, depending on what time in the evening Pat e-mailed his column, it likely had already been typeset for print and probably even already published online. JSonline producers often have Editorial Board content — columns, editorials, etc. — posted by around 7 p.m. the evening before they’re in the paper.

Newswatch and JSonline both tend to disclose, on a daily basis, what will be published in the next day’s paper. So, perhaps it’s time for that policy to be updated…

And as a side note, the Newspaper Guild doesn’t officially recognize the ethics policy.

Is she saying that the newspaper doesn't follow an ethics code? Or that MJS has one on paper, but that it is meaningless in their eyes?

That opens a Pandora's box of disturbing possibilities. As Gretchen points out, it raises the question of what else they are sharing, and with whom are they sharing it? Not only that, but what are these outside influences sharing, and telling, MSJ staff to write? And of equal importance: Why am I not on Paddy's email buddy list? I'm sure it's just an oversight on his part.

No wonder their circulation is dropping faster than Bush's approval ratings. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: This rag isn't even worth the paper it's printed on

The Poisoned Political Environment

James Rowen has been busy.

When he is not championing ecological causes, or promoting good citizenship, he takes time to go after the squawkers.

He points out to the bad logic and bad typing of PaddyMac (wasn't Paddy supposed to be a spellchecker or something?). Perhaps Paddy would have been better taking on subjects he might have a chance on, like cream puffs.

He points out that both Chuckles and Limbo are nothing more than bloviating boors.

Then James takes it a little easy on himself with another cream puff, Kevin Fischer, and his regular use of irresponsible hyperbolic, histrionic rhetoric (got a dictionary, Kevin?).

Then he gives not just one, but two, posts on the schmuck know as Michael Savage. But we already knew Savage was a major league dumb-ass.

Which leads to one question for James: Why the heck aren't you blogging here yet?!?!?

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.

Pride In Prejudice

Sykes, Belling and others on the right have commented about the California Supreme Court's ruling finding the ban on same sex marriage to be unconstitutional. A good take on the meaning of the ruling is found here:

In a 4-3 120-page ruling issue, the justices wrote that "responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation."

"We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples," Chief Justice Ronald George wrote for the majority.

Sykes and the others take comfort in the fact that Wisconsin passed a constitutional amendment two years ago making this illegal. They rationalize their comfort with blatherings about "activist judges".

But considering this country's long struggle in trying to bring equal rights to African Americans and to women, and also considering the Declaration of Independence , which reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

it would seem to me that it is more shameful to embrace a position that is so prejudicial, that the only way to enforce it would be by tainting the Constitution, be it of a single state of the United States. But honest introspection from these people is probably asking too much.

For other good reads on the matter, I would refer the gentle reader to the Bubbly Barrister, who writes, in part:

And that's why Milwaukee medium-wave think tanker Charlie Sykes wants you to replace all judges committed to equal protection under the law with reliable GOP cronies and underachieving rubber stamps.

As if conservatives never go running to the courts to try and invalidate legislation they don't like. Mitch McConnell filed for an injunction against McCain-Feingold before the ink was even dry.

And the Blue Knight, Sir Zachary, presents us with his perspective, along with an interesting article that highlights the hypocrisy of those who hold to the strict religious reasonings for such prejudice.

O'Reilly Meltdown: An Act In Three Parts

Zachary of Blogging Blue brings us the original meltdown of Bill O'Reilly (WARNING: Adult Language):




This is followed by David Casper, who shows us the behind the scenes view:



And for your listening pleasure, Mike Mathias gives us "Bill O'Reilly: The Meltdown, the Musical":

Note: The Context Is Important To Consider

Yesterday, I mentioned the fool in Georgia who is selling racist t-shirts with Senator Obama's name below a picture of Curious George.

Today, in his only posting, McIlheran also discusses it. He correctly points out how inappropriate it is. But then he goes and compares this blatantly racist piece of trash to people comparing Bush to a monkey. He deems them to be equally bad, both in his post, and repeatedly throughout the comments section.

Excuse my language, but that is utter bullshit.

There is a big difference between the two, and that is the context and the spirit in which each one is presented. The Obama shirt is based on an age-old prejudicial attitude that would compare African-Americans to monkeys, in an effort to make them seem less than human. The comparisons of Bush to a monkey is based not on race, but demeanor, decision-making skills, and general behavior.

In other words, the insult to Obama is based on his heritage, his race and his skin color. The insult to Bush is based on Bush is based on himself, and his actions.

For McIlheran to try to make the two comparable is beyond the pale and is unacceptable. It is the height of intellectual dishonesty and shows poorly on him.

Just as egregious is his attitude that "Well, the left started it." But what can one expect from a man who would not only defend, but actually compliment and praise another blogger who compares Mexicans to "chattering chihuahuas", makes ethnic jokes, and insults a major religion on a regular basis?

On this issue, you should read the takes by Dan Cody and our own Zachary.

The thing that concerns me is that James T. Harris is correct in one aspect of his post on this subject: We ain't seen nothing yet.