Why RoJo Is Supposedly Leading In The Polls

From the New York Times:

But the Wisconsin electorate he faces seems to have lost its progressive streak and become more like other Midwestern states. Several polls have shown that the number of likely voters who consider themselves conservative has risen from a quarter of the electorate to nearly half. The misinformation and simplistic solutions propounded by talk radio and the Republican Party are having an effect even in a state that preferred Mr. Obama by 14 points two years ago.

Of course, along with the misinformation being spread out like so much bovine excrement is whether RoJo is really leading by a comfortable margin.

Not all the polls agree on that. And given his recent total flop at doing a money bomb, I don't see his support being as great or as strong as squawk radio would have us believe.

The Sykesian Rule Of Politics

The louder Charlie Sykes squawks about something, the more likely it is that he really is trying to cover up something else.

Would Be Assassin Inspired By Glenn Beck

From Media Matters:

Fifteen years after militia-movement-inspired bombers killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City federal building, right-wing domestic terror plots are a fact of life in America. Since 2008, violent extremists -- many of whom subscribe to the hate speech and conspiratorial fantasies of the conservative media -- have murdered churchgoers in Knoxville, police officers in Pittsburgh, and an abortion provider in Wichita.

Conspiracy theory-fueled extremism has long been a reaction to progressive government in the United States. Half a century ago, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote that right-wing thought had come to be dominated by the belief that Communist agents had infiltrated all levels of American government and society. The right, he explained, had identified a "sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt's New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism."

n a 2009 report, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that the anti-government militia movement -- which had risen to prominence during the Clinton administration and faded away during the Bush years -- has returned. According to the SPLC, the anti-government resurgence has been buttressed by paranoid rhetoric from public officials like Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and media figures like Fox News' Glenn Beck.

Just last month, Gregory Giusti pleaded guilty to repeatedly threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- including threatening to destroy her California home -- because he was "upset with her passing the health care law." His mother told a local news station that he "frequently gets in with a group of people that have really radical ideas," adding, "I'd say Fox News or all of those that are really radical, and he -- that's where he comes from."

After the 2008 election, Fox News personalities filled the airwaves with increasingly violent rhetoric and apocalyptic language. On his Fox News show, Beck talked about "put[ting] poison" in Pelosi's wine.

Observers of this most recent act were mystified by one of Byron Williams' reported targets: the Tides Foundation, a low-profile charitable organization known for funding environmentalists, community groups, and other organizations.

Beck, it turned out, had attacked Tides 29 times on his Fox News show in the year-and-a-half leading up to the shooting.

Now, in exclusive interviews and written correspondence with journalist John Hamilton, Williams speaks for himself. He asks Hamilton to be his "media advocate" and repeatedly instructs him to watch specific broadcasts of Beck's show for information on the conspiracy theory that drove him over the edge: an intricate plot involving Barack Obama, philanthropist George Soros, a Brazilian oil company, and the BP disaster.

Williams also points to other media figures -- right-wing propagandist David Horowitz, and Internet conspiracist and repeated Fox News guest Alex Jones -- as key sources of information to inspire his "revolution."

In a separate exchange with Examiner.com's Ed Walsh, Williams sought to defend Beck from "Obama and the liberals," whom he said are afraid of Beck "because he often exposes things that are simply forbidden in news." Williams said that Beck advocates non-violence and that he had already researched the conspiracy theories that informed his alleged plot -- before seeing them "confirm[ed]" on Beck's show.

Similarly, Williams tells Hamilton that "Beck would never say anything about a conspiracy, would never advocate violence. He'll never do anything ... of this nature. But he'll give you every ounce of evidence that you could possibly need."

From the Santa Rita Jail, Williams opens up about the websites he frequented, the broadcasts he listened to, and the "evidence" of "sabotage" he "uncovered" that eventually led him to target Tides.

Makes one wonder about people like Dad29 who is always saying to "get more ammo" and listens to the likes like Sykes and Belling or Mr. Congeniality, aka J. Rawson Schaller, from Badger Blogger.

A Disturbance In The Force

rightviewwi, that collective blog by not a single mind seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth.

Wherever shall I go for my weekly dose of regurgitated WDN lunacy?

Where will I be able to find the really cutting-edge conspiracy theories?

Who got custody of buck?

This leaves more questions than when White Shadow got cancelled and left us with no closure. With tatertotmike dormant and the northshoreexponent abandoned, who speaks for the poor downtrodden right-wing culture warriors?

Sykes Blames High Ranking Dem For Lack Of Clarivoyance

In this morning's show, as he does every Friday, Charlie Sykes was doing his scatologically-orientated feature of his "Deep Tunnel Awards."

The first runner up was Graeme Zielinski, the top communication guru for the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Zielinski's sin, according to Sykes, was calling Rebecca Kleefisch a lunatic when she just announced that she just had life saving cancer surgery.

What Sykes really did was a fine act of faux and selective outrage.

Zielinski did describe Kleefisch as being a lunatic in this tweet:

We're going to have to get treatment for the poor staffer who has had to listen to and watch the lunatic Rebecca Kleefisch speeches.

Said offensive tweet occurred on Tuesday, September 28th at 10:49 in the morning.

However, the Kleefisch story didn't come out until the next day, on the 29th. Heck, Sykes didn't even put up anything about it until the day after that, on the 30th.

But since Sykes has such a crush on Kleefisch, maybe he could explain to his listeners why Scott Walker's campaign has clamped down on her and won't even allow her to do a debate with Tom Nelson.

Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word

After getting busted for being a pants-on-fire class of liar, Belling admitted today that he was wrong with his silly argument that Russ Feingold faked being in front of his own home during a commercial shoot.

But if you were looking for Belling to be classy about it, you are in for a severe disappointment:

Feingold has spent so many years inventing his phony image of being a “maverick” while
actually voting in tandem with the Harry Reid crowd to tax and spend that he now looks
like a fake even in person. How else to explain the manufactured unnatural look in the ad
with the reality that it was indeed the actual Feingold at his house? Russ has been such a
fake for 20 years that he looks like a fake when he’s not really faking. It sure fooled me.
Russ, my deepest apologies.

But being the nice people we are, we at Whallah! would like to bring in an expert translator to say it for Belling:



But something tells me that Belling won't appreciate our help for some reason..

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.

McIlheran: Walker's Failings Aren't Walker's Fault

In his column in Sunday's paper, Patrick McIlheran tries to stand up for Scott Walker and his failed economic development program.

McIlheran manages to blame everyone and everything shy of sunspots for Walker's failure:

Barrett's real point was the geography. The former freeway is county land. When former Mayor John Norquist ordered the freeway destroyed, he and others predicted that development would flock there. It hasn't, and Barrett said this was Walker's fault.

It must be someone's fault, since such great things were predicted. So sure was the Milwaukee County Board of the site's appeal that it added some conditions. Anyone buying Park East land from the county had to pay union-scale construction wages, had to hit certain racial hiring quotas, had to prefer city contractors, had to meet certain "green" building standards.

These rules add significant costs. Builders warned the board of this. The board scoffed. Walker vetoed the conditions as job-killing social engineering. The board overrode him. The land was "so valuable that, in my mind, we will get what we want," said the plan's sponsor, Willie Johnson Jr.

What we got was gravel. Walker, it turns out, was right. The land lay unbought through boom years as developers took their capital to less costly, less bossy places. This was the predictable result of harnessing economic development to an urge to re-engineer society.

At this point, I should note that Barrett, when running for mayor, supported a package of such requirements for that land.

In other words, it's the fault of African Americans, people wanting to make a wage that would support a family, environmentalists, the County Board and Milwaukeeans that Walker couldn't get that land sold in eight years. At least in McIlheran's world.

Unfortunately for McIlheran, his world and reality don't often sync up together.

If these conditions were so abhorrent, why has Tom Barrett and the City of Milwaukee, who face much the same conditions as the County, able to excel at economic development? In fact, Barrett and the city have such a good track record that Walker had once proposed that the County give the City the land for them to work on the development.

What McIlheran doesn't mention is the fact that instead of competent people, Walker had a revolving door for his appointments to that position until he put in campaign staffers like Bob Dennick and Tim Russell to lead the economic development efforts. Their success was somewhat less than spectacular, often leading up to massive deficits. Then in 2009, Walker totally abolished the Economic Division, only to ask for it to be reinstated this year. Even then, it took him until last month to fill the position.

I'm no expert in economic development, but I would suspect it would make things easier for companies who wanted to come to Milwaukee County to have someone to contact rather than get lost in a bureaucratic shuffle. Likewise, things would probably be greatly expedited by having some actually actively trying to sell the land than hoping a passerby might see the lot full of gravel and think this would be a great place to build his business.

Even if McIlheran was correct that the prevailing wage laws or the expectations of the building to be tinted even the slightest bit of green might have made things a little more difficult, Scott Walker never allowed it to get that far to find out by sabotaging the process well before it got that far.

See also: James Rowen vs. the Mr. Teflon

Wagner Rule #1

"Nothing ever good comes from being outside a strip club at 2:30 in the morning.'

-Jeff Wagner

But does he mean what says?

From the Brawler:

Jeff Wagner, always fond of doing stories on strippers, is deploring the Common Council for unanimously shooting down a proposed strip club on Old World Third Street. It would have been "an attraction for conventioneers!" it would have been an upgrade over what's already there! It would have "attracted jobs and attracted people." It's decisions like this that turn people against Tom Barrett!(?) Perhaps he should lobby for a Silk to open near his North Shore home.

Now, About That Award, Mr. McIlheran

Last night, we pointed out that Patrick McIlheran should return his "Defender of the American Dream" award that he received from the corrupt Americans for Prosperity, which conspired with Tea Parties and the Republicans to perform an illegal voter suppression technique know as voter caging.

McIlheran, disappointingly, but not surprisingly, defended this scheme by minimizing the true intentions.

Unfortunately for Paddy, this scheme is peeling away like the layers of an onion to show the fetid insides. As xoff shows:

The documents included in Dake's email, which is available here,

--A non-disclosure agreement for voter suppression participants from the state GOP.

-- An affidavit and instruction process for voter suppression activities, which includes direction about photographing the homes of people targeted for voter suppression activities.

-- A strategic planning memo that includes the first part of the plan was a voter caging mailing to the 16th Assembly District, which has the third-highest number of African-American voters of any Assembly District in the state.

So again, McIlheran needs to return that award, unless of course he does not support the the voting rights of all Americans.

McIlheran Should Return His AFP Award

Last year, Americans for Prosperity rewarded Patrick McIlheran with their "Defenders of the American Dream" Award. He needs to give it back, unless they mean the American Dream is to deny minorities and young people their voters' rights.

It has been revealed by One Wisconsin Now that Americans for Prosperity has been in cahoots with the Republican Party and some Tea Party Groups to conspire to commit the illegal act of voter caging.

Voter caging is an illegal method to try to suppress voters' rights and is usually aimed at college students and minorities:

Usually, caging occurs when an official-looking, non-forwardable piece of mail is sent to a group of registered voters, often to minorities and students. The parties involved in caging then compile a list of voters whose mail was returned as undeliverable. On Election Day, these organizations will use the undeliverable mail to challenge voters at the polls, utilizing law enforcement and attorneys to support their challenges.

The goal of caging is two-fold. First, is to force as many voters as possible to cast provisional ballots, which require voters to follow-up the day after an election for the ballot to be counted. Historically, about 35% of all provisional ballots are never counted. Additionally, voters whose registration is challenged at the polling place are unlikely to have the required material to complete an Election Day registration, meaning the voter will be turned away at the polls.

The second goal is to create long lines at the polling place as the caging operation challenges voter after voter. Many people cannot afford to sit in line to vote for hours on end. Long lines discourage voters and many simply leave without casting a ballot.

Via OWN, you can read the conspirators' outline of how they were going to do this and the transcript of the tape of Tim Dake of the Grandsons of Liberty talking about this plot.

Even McIlheran's own Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who tried to minimize the reality of this grave injustice, ends up showing Dake, Reince Priebus of the WISGOP and Mark Block of the AFP tripping themselves up in one contradiction after another.

So now will P-Mac give his award back and stand of for voters' rights? Of course not. He probably won't even acknowledge this exposure of wrong doing.

No, Patrick, Competence Matters

Patrick McIlheran has his Sunday opinion piece up and this one is a real laugher. Patrick is actually trying to portray Scott Walker as the responsible candidate in the race for governor.

To prove his point, he decries the state's failure to keep petty criminals locked up for excessive lengths of time or to be able to turn around Milwaukee County's Income Maintenance program in one day:

The state doesn't pick up garbage anyhow, but surely the mayor meant it as a sign of some task that no one questions. The state has some of those - keeping prisoners locked up, for instance, or passing out food stamps. Gov. Jim Doyle decided the state couldn't afford the former and started releasing inmates early. His administration so badly botched the food stamps that federal authorities stepped in.

However, before Walker dumped the House of Correction on the Sheriff's Office, one of myriad of problems occurring there were prison escapes. I guess it's better if you make it look like you're not releasing them intentionally, but through negligence.

Paddy also forgets to mention that the reason the state took over the food stamp program was because Walker had mismanaged it so poorly that it was either the state take over and fix it (which they did do) or let the taxpayers in the state and Milwaukee County be hit with a multimillion dollar class action lawsuit.

Not exactly a stellar example of Walker's responsibility, is it?

But the best of the worst is when PaddyMac tries to make Walker's use of a private cleaning company better for the courthouse and the tax payers, and that budgets should be cut.

Apparently, in Paddy's world, instead of some county worker making $10 an hour is much better to give the CEO of a cleaning company a big old contract. Never mind that said CEO is a campaign contributor.

And about those budget cuts. They only produced situations like the horrible events that have been occurring at the mental health complex or the county's infrastructure to fall down. I wonder if Paddy would also call these things a "trade off."

Sykes' Operatic Dissonance

From xoff:

For a guy who's married to a former opera singer, right-wing radio's Charlie Sykes sure had some nasty things to say about the money in the state budget to help preserve the Oshkosh Opera House:

No money to catch child molesters, but cash for an opera house in Oshkosh. How’s that going to look on a bumper sticker next year?

Can't wait to see how Sykes squares that with the revelation that anti-stimulus Senate candidate Ron Johnson wanted to get stimulus money for that same opera house.

Will Sykes try to help him weasel out of it, as usual, or ignore it completely?

Pride Goeth Before A Fall

Patrick McIlheran, echoed by the other half of McSykes (version 2.0), are busy slapping Charlie Sykes, Mark Belling and Jay Weber (what, no love for Jeff Wagner or James T. Harris?) for Walker's victory in Tuesday's primary victory.

xoff had already addressed that silliness here, as did The Chief at his site.

But I just needed to add my two cents to the matter, since I already debunked that drivel two years ago.

Jessica McBride was complaining about the budget that had just been recently passed and how so many Republicans had voted for it. She had put the blame on the fact that these upstate Republicans just didn't have talk radio to tell them how to vote.

The problem with her argument, and with that of McSykes, is that there is talk radio all over the state:

Too bad that she is lying, or at the very least mistaken. A quick Google of radio stations in Wisconsin, and Whallah!, there is a list of radio stations in Wisconsin, at least 20 of which are identified as talk or news/talk stations in the northern and central parts of the state. Now, if one looks at the map again, a good third of the legislatures are within easy range of WTMJ. Some of the other talk radio stations are located in Wausau, Green Bay, Superior, Wisconsin Rapids, Marshfield and Eau Claire. That pretty much covers all of the other Republicans as well.

The fact that there are so many talk radio shows all over the state eliminates the argument presented by McBride, or two years later, by McSykes.

The other issue with McSykes self-congratulations is the simple fact that Paddy Mac was lying about another part (emphasis mine):

The real difference between La Crosse, Eau Claire, Green Bay and Appleton on the one hand and the places around Milwaukee is explained, rather, by the fact that an AM signal travels only so far. The major talk-radio players in Milwaukee -- Charlie Sykes, Mark Belling and Jay Weber -- all covered the contest exhaustively. I think they did so fairly: Notably, both Walker and Neumann got on the air repeatedly with these hosts and were allowed to explain their views. The hosts, of course, formed opinions and expressed them, but given that both candidates were conservatives, the commentary was heavy on analysis and light on excoriation. This analysis and opinion, it seems, made a huge difference in turnout and result.

And that result was this: If a county was within the sound of Milwaukee talk radio’s voice, it voted Walker overwhelmingly. This is the power of ideas, well expressed.

I don't listen to Weber, but I distinctly recall both Sykes and Belling criticizing Mark Neumann at every turn, for grievances real or perceived, in order to help the establishment candidate.

But one shouldn't be shocked at this misrepresentation of reality by McIlheran and company. If it wasn't for their misconstructions and confabulations, they wouldn't really have any way to promote their candidates or themselves.

Big stick packs little wallop

The Journal Sentinel's map of the GOP primary for governor, at left, prompts all sorts of analysis about how and why Scott Walker beat Mark Neumann. (The redder it is, the bigger Walker's margin. The greener it is, the more Neumann won by.)

Patrick McIlheran would have you believe it's because of rabid right talk radio, which backed Walker, who cleaned up in southeastern Wisconsin.

Let's think about that for a moment.

The area Walker won is basically the Milwaukee television market. Walker, as Milwaukee County executive, has been all over the news in that market, on a daily basis, since being elected eight years ago.

Eight years of free media coverage is an immeasurably huge advantage. Neumann hasn't been in the news at all since he ran for the Senate in 1998. It is absolutely no surprise that Walker would win in his home media market.

It is true that Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling made untold contributions of corporate air time to the Walker campaign, and also backed the Jessica McBride protege, Rebecca Kleefisch, who won for lietenant governor. But she also is known in the media market as an ex-TV announcer, is from southeastern Wisconsin, and was the only woman in a multi-candidate field.

What would have really been news would be a Neumann victory in southeastern Wisconsin. Who on earth doubted Walker would win here?

Talk radio's audience is simply not that big. If everyone who listens to Belling and Sykes votes for Walker in November, that might give him 15% of the vote. A nice start, but a long way from 50.

The test on Tuesday was not whether Walker would win southeastern Wisconsin. It was how Walker would do in the rest of the state, and now we have the answer: Not so hot.

The map tells the tale.

One more note, as Paddy Mac sings out of the Sykes-Belling hymnal: The biggest stick in the state, taht 50,000-watt megastation that Paddy credits for Walker's win, apparently doesn't reach Milwaukee's east side, Bay View, Cudahy, Oak Creek, or South Milwaukee. Sykes did everything he could to slime Chris Larson and promote Jeff Plale, the Democratic state senator the Repubs love. But Larson creamed Plale by 20%.

Can talk radio have some influence this market in a Republican primary? Sure. But beyond that, as Sykes might say when he gets really risque, it isn't worth a pound of poop.