TMJ's Mercure Uses Fallen Heroes For Cheap Political Hits

For the past couple of days, John Mercure, the pseudo-reporter that does the afternoon drive time on WTMJ radio, has been harping on the fact that Tom Barrett wasn't at a ceremony to honor fallen police officers.  Mercure spent two full days on the subject, and upped his faux outrage when he found out that Barrett was speaking to retired UAW workers.  You know, the people that worked for their entire lives helping keeping the economy going.

Was it a faux pas on Barrett's part? One could definitely call it that.

Was it worth two days of news coverage? No.

Especially when one considers that the two days Mercure spent haranguing about Barrett is two days more than what he spent discussing the fact that we have the only sitting governor in the state's long and storied history to have a legal defense fund to help deal with the fact that he ran a caucus scandal-type of campaign machine out of his executive suite at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.

And if Mercure was really concerned about the police who sacrificed their all and their families who survived them, why didn't he report about how the Republicans who threw these brave men and women, and their families, under the ALEC-driven bus, as one of our bravest and finest, and my friend, Brian Austin, reported.  The state legislature was preparing to pass a bill that would have provided health insurance protection for the surviving spouse and children of a fallen officer.  Firefighters already had that protection, but omitted the police.  They were aiming to fix that.  The bill passed the Senate by unanimous vote.  Then it went to the State Assembly where things went bad fast:

At the last minute, the Republican legislators in control of the Assembly blocked the bill from being brought to a vote. Blocked the bill that unanimously passed the Senate. From what I have discovered, the Birkholz family was given the choice of coming to the Capitol for the resolution only, but understandably opted not to attend. In a horrendous display of partisan politics in what should have been a unifying issue, John Jagler, spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, called SB 18 an "unfunded mandate" on local governments that "isn't ready to become law." "We're looking at a more fiscally responsible way of funding it," he added. 

These officers, and their families, have given everything in service to the people of the state of Wisconsin. Lives are lost, and countless others are shattered. The least we could do for them, on behalf of a grateful public, is to give the survivors the peace of mind of health care. It doesn't seem like a lot to ask, but the Assembly Republicans apparently believe it wouldn't be "fiscally responsible." Since that unconscionable decision last year, there has been no progress made in convincing the Assembly Republicans to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. 

The contract broken. 

To the people who blocked this bill: It isn't enough to attend the funerals of fallen officers in your districts, or memorial services during Police Week. It isn't enough to get teary-eyed when the bagpipes play, and to talk about how grateful the citizens of Wisconsin are for this ultimate sacrifice. Your words are hollow, because your actions have broken the contract. These families are trying to put their shattered lives back together, yet all you can talk about is fiscal responsibility. For the sake of decency, please do not attend another officer's funeral, or another police memorial service, until you make this right. You are not welcome to share in our grief until that happens.

You know, Jagler used to work for TMJ as well.  There is no reason why Mercure couldn't call up his old coworker and ask him what this was about.

Or he could have asked Scott Walker why he didn't push to have this law pass.  Doesn't Walker care about the police either?


Well, there is one reason.  Because, like 99% of everything the Republicans have done in the past eighteen months, this would have made them look bad.  And considering that Walker is just weeks away from being recalled, if he doesn't get indicted first, he can't afford any more bad press.

So Mercure spent two days attacking Barrett for no other reason to give cover to Walker's shame and the Republicans' abandonment of Wisconsin's finest.

I sure hope Walker is claiming all these in-kind contributions on his campaign finance reports.

James Wigderson Lied About Walker's Record On Labor

On April 25, James Wigderson attacked Mayor Tom Barrett, saying that Barrett had lied when he said that Scott Walker was for right to work.  Wigderson emphatically declared that Walker is not in favor of a right to work legislation:

Walker supports private sector unions and even the “prevailing wage” for public projects, and he is opposed to Right to Work legislation.

As it turns out, it is Wigderson, not Barret, who is the bald faced liar.

As my co-author at Cog Dis, Jeff Simpson, points out, there is now footage of Scott Walker discussing making Wisconsin a right to work state.

Per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article that Jeff cites, we see this exchange between Walker and Diane Hendricks, a big time right wing nut job who likes to associate with the same crowd as Walker (see Koch Brothers) and is reported to freely lend her private plane to Walker as he goes jaunting about the country collecting his bail money from those who would buy our state if we let them:

In the video, Hendricks told Walker she wanted to discuss "controversial" subjects away from reporters, asking him:

"Any chance we'll ever get to be a completely red state and work on these unions -"

"Oh, yeah," Walker broke in.

"- and become a right-to-work?" Hendricks continued. "What can we do to help you?"

"Well, we're going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill," Walker said. "The first step is we're going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer. So for us, the base we get for that is the fact that we've got - budgetarily we can't afford not to. If we have collective bargaining agreements in place, there's no way not only the state but local governments can balance things out . . . That opens the door once we do that. That's your bigger problem right there."

The entire conversation was not released Thursday with a video trailer of the documentary, but Journal Sentinel reporters were allowed to view the raw footage, in which the governor goes on to talk about curbing liability lawsuits and government regulations.

If you don't believe that the paper accurately reflected the conversation, you can see it for yourself in this preview of the movie "As Goes Janesville." The conversation starts around the 7:40 mark.

The MJS article also notes that Walker sponsored right to work legislation as a freshman legislator in 1993.

But since Wigderson considers himself to be a reputable writer and has threatened anyone and everyone he perceives as impugning his reputation, I look forward to see him suing himself. After all, I'm sure he doesn't like that he made himself look even worse than he normally does.

PolitiFact's Two-For-One And Why Is Sykes Still On The Air?

PolitiFact, the hit and miss "fact checking" product in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel gives Scott Walker a "Pants On Fire" rating for falsely blaming Governor Jim Doyle for one of Tommy Thompson's taxpayer's cash giveaway:

Facing a near-certain recall election, Walker that day used his Twitter account to highlight the story as a failure of the previous administration, that of Democrat Jim Doyle. (Other tweets included the fact he stopped for ham and rolls after church.)

His tweet: "Headline ‘State spends millions for 202 jobs’, missed rest of sentence:, ‘under program approved by Gov Doyle.’"

In other words, the poor performing program was created under Doyle. And that’s where the blame should fall, Walker says.

Did Doyle approve the plan?

The legislation creating the program was introduced in 1997 and passed and signed into law the following year -- not by Democrat Doyle, but by then-Gov. Tommy Thompson, a fellow Republican now running for a U.S. Senate vacancy.

Doyle didn’t take office until 2003, five years after the CAPCO bill was signed.

Indeed, the proposal had bipartisan support. It was authored by Democratic state Sen. Gwen Moore, now a congresswoman from Milwaukee. Among the 89 members of the state Assembly who voted in favor of the bill March 25, 1998: Walker himself.

But the go on to write how Charlie Sykes, Milwaukee radio squawker, took this from Walker and ran with it, even though he knew it to be false:

Walker’s tweet gained a broader audience the following day. WTMJ radio talk show host Charlie Sykes picked up on the topic and in a three minute segment linked Doyle to the CAPCO program five times. He called it "a Jim Doyle idea," and said the program was "one of Jim Doyle’s signature venture capital bills."

In an email, Sykes acknowledged that the program was created under Thompson. And he pointed out that Walker had tweeted on the subject the day before.

Sykes whined about it on the radio and sniveled about it on his blog, but not once did he even come close to apologizing for misleading his listeners or bothering to correct his lie. If anything, he doubles down on his dishonesty by mewling that Doyle wasn't mentioned enough in the original article, even though he just acknowledged it had nothing to do with Doyle.

Why Sykes is still on the air despite openly lying about things, and admitting he is lying, is simply beyond me. But it goes to show why a person can't believe anything that comes from corporate media shills like Sykes.

Something Else Sykes Won't Be Talking About

Last week, Charlie Sykes was so excited you could hear the spittle hitting the microphone as he squawked about Mike Tate, head of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin going to Chicago to talk to someone about something or other.  He was going on and on about dirty Chicago politics and the such.

I highly doubt that he's gonna be squawking about that now that Walker has hired two attorneys as he gets ready to meet with John Doe investigators.  One of Walker's attorneys is from Chicago and the other's father made his name representing mob boss Frank Balistrieri.

Sykes probably also won't talk about how he's named in one of the criminal complaints stemming from Walkergate.

He'll probably just do what he's done every day for the past two weeks: Whine about DA John Chisolm and about yours truly.

The Right's Questionable Tactics

The right wing media has been beside themselves for the last couple of weeks.  What got their dander up is Ian Murphy had been traveling the state a few weeks ago to help encourage and reinvigorate recall volunteers in the last few weeks of the signature gathering phase.

Media Trackkkers did a story about Murphy.  Christian Schneider, paid propagandist, did a story.  (By the way, would some tell Schneider that Scott Walker did indeed meet with the Koch brothers?)  Sykes not only posted Schneider's article, but has been ranting about this and little else to his remaining 4.3 listeners.

Their collective faux outrage stems from the fact that Murphy wrote a piece years ago railing against the worst parts of war, things like what happened in Abu Graib.

But that is not what they are upset about.

What they are upset about is that Murphy is the guy who imitated David Koch last year in a phone call to Walker and showed Walker's true corrupt nature.

I don't know.  I could be quite wrong about this, but I wouldn't thing it's generally a good idea to keep drawing attention to the guy who naturally reminds everyone about that phone call and thus Walker's corruption.

But that stategy could explain why Walker's popularity numbers are so low and falling lower by the day. Maybe instead of criticizing these people, we should be thanking them for making our jobs that much easier.

Sykes on recalls, back when they were OK

"Businessman Michael Cudahy derided the recall supporters as a “lynch mob,” but outsiders who saw only the anger misunderstood the depth of the outrage. Supporters were neither puppets nor radicals: they were taxpayers who had raised their families in Milwaukee, bought homes, paid taxes, and played by the rules all their lives. They remembered when Milwaukee was known for its efficiency and integrity, and were offended at the insult to both their intelligence and their integrity."

That's Charlie Sykes, back when recalls were okay, when they led to Scott Walker coming to power, and when Sykes was paid by a group that also was funding Scott Walker. Recalls AGAINST Scott Walker? Not so much.

-- Source.

How Charlie Sykes Came To Support The Walker Recall

A couple of weeks ago, the morning crew at WTMJ-620 AM, had Graeme Zielinski, Communications Director of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin on the air. The station's battle plan was to ambush Zielinski with the bogus and discredited non-issue regarding the validity of the signatures on the recall petition.

Only thing is, Zielinski was ready for them. He came on the air, knowing that this was one of those rare opportunities to say it the way it is and he let them have it almost as well as I could have. Take a listen, thanks to Steve Hanson at Uppity Wisconsin:

Graeme Zelinski lays it on WTMJ

I really get a kick out of how Gene Mueller tries to say he doesn't worry about what happens after his show, even though he's often chatting away with Sykes and promotes Sykes' crap frequently.

And the "news" man, John Byman might want to brush up on his facts before he opens his mouth and shows his ignorant prejudices. Byman claims that there were no recalls against Governor Jim Doyle, when the truth is the misnamed group Citizens for Responsible Government tried not just once, but twice, to recall him.

When Sykes came on a little later, he was apoplectic. He was so upset that he almost mussed up his helmet-like, heavily-hair-sprayed coif. He threw a tantrum like never before.

But Zielinski and the Dems weren't done yet. The following Monday, they sent out this email:

Dear capper:

Charlie Sykes is a bully with a bullhorn and the other day we called him out on it. You can listen here.

For years, he's used WTMJ 620 as a platform to dishonestly advance an extreme and divisive agenda - and carry water for Scott Walker.

Day-after-day, 365 days a year, WTMJ 620 radio, the biggest station in the state, amplifies radical Sykes-Walker talking points in what amounts to millions of dollars of in-kind contributions to the Republican Party.

And now, at all costs, they are attacking the historic recall movement against Scott Walker.

Help us fight back against the Republican Party's free air time on WalkerTMJ 620 by making a donation of $6.20 to the grassroots effort to recall Scott Walker right now.
http://www.wisdems.org/donate/Stop-WalkerTMJ-Radio

Does WalkerTMJ 620 ever allow for any balance? Do they ever portray the other side? Do they ever hold Scott Walker accountable his extreme agenda that has torn our state apart?

Never. Well, almost never, since they let me on for a few minutes the other day when I told them to stop attacking our people-powered movement that has collected 507,000 signatures in just one month.

Sykes and WalkerTMJ have gotten away with it for too long. It's time for all of us to stand up to their lies, to their blatant coordination with the Scott Walker Republican Party and their irresponsible divisiveness.

Under Scott Walker's watch, more than 34,900 Wisconsinites have lost their jobs in the last five months. As a direct result of Scott Walker's exteme policies we now have the worst economic indicators of any state in the country and we lead the nation in job losses.

But that's not the message you'll get if you tune into Charlie Sykes on WalkerTMJ 620. He'll tell you that everything in Wisconsin under Scott Walker is just dandy and he'll continue to attack the hard work that you and our grassroots effort to recall Scott Walker.

Show that you're not going to put up with Sykes and WalkerTMJ 620 by giving $6.20 to help us continue our fight for Wisconsin values. http://www.wisdems.org/donate/Stop-WalkerTMJ4-Radio

With your support, we'll be able to communicate Scott Walker's terrible record to working, middle-class families across Wisconsin despite WalkerTMJ4's attempts to drown out our people-powered movement.

Thank you,
Graeme Zielinski
Communications Director
Democratic Party of Wisconsin

Well, if Sykes was apoplectic before, he popped a few blood vessels on this one. He was so upset about this, he couldn't shut up about it and kept talking about it all week. That could only have helped the cause. I guess he's no good without his masters at the Bradley Foundation telling him what to say.

Anyway, if you want to help Charlie Sykes support the recall movement, feel free to make a donation to the cause by clicking here.

Not Her Day Time Gig

Today's TMJ 4 did a segment this morning at 8:45 on the "Kristi" ad that is being run lately by the Walker campaign.

In it, a teacher named Kristi talks about how she thoughtfully arrived at the conclusion that the recall campaign against Walker is wrong.

The segment that 4 ran shows the ad and then talks about the Facebook battle over the ad, leading off with a recall supporter writing how she wanted to "punch" Kristi.

No where in the piece did they mention that Kristi, is a choice teacher (and by choice, I don't mean elite), and that she is a Republican activist.

On it's own this is an effective ad. And quite it is possible that the people who put together this piece at 4 might have missed this information.

They will be running it again at 9:45 am this morning and hopefully some mention will be made. It would be took bad if they run it as is.

Why? This is yet another example of how the Walker campaign can't handle the truth, because they dole it out in pieces -- those pieces that suit their cause.

It was the case when Walker failed to mention that he would go after collective bargain, and oops, he's doing it again with the "Kristi" ad.

It's up to 4 to take the ball and run with it.

UPDATE -- TMJ 4 did not alter the piece at 9:45am. I know that this piece was no doubt produced the night before, but there was a comment that could have been made when the camera went back to Tom Murray that Kristi is a private school teacher has been pointed out, but then didn't give him copy to that effect.

If anything, why didn't correspondent who did the original piece when she communicated with Kristi over Facebook ask the teacher where she taught. The reporter could have kept the info as background, but at least she would have been able to point out the kind of school where Kristi taught.

Forward To The Past!

Charlie Sykes, faithful water carrier for Scott Walker, gives free advertising to the Walker campaign by repeating their spin on the recently released results of a survey done by DPI. They compare it to the report from WEAC in 2004.

First, you have look past the fact that they are comparing apples to oranges by using reports from two wholly different agencies.

But Walker is saying that things are just as good or better than they were seven years ago, which only goes to confirm one of the recallers major complaints, he is making Wisconsin a regressive state by trying to take us back in time when things weren't as good as they have been in more recent years.

Of course, compared to last year, things are much, much worse.  Sadly, if Walker is not recalled, things will be even uglier next year when his "tools" are all used up.

Boots and Fables

Ol' Boots Robinson promises to play hardball with any recall petitioners he sees, argue with them till he's blue in the face, record, video and photograph them, boycott their businesses, publicize their names, and do whatever he can to make their lives miserable.

He's from Texas, you know, and that's what they do to liberals down there. Just ask Rick Perry what he'd do if Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake showed up there.

Maybe United Wisconsin should make sure it has the Robinsons' address and send a steady stream of people. We can start a pool on how long before he blows his cork, goes apoplectic and foams at the mouth. And we could record, video and photograph it.

But that would be wrong

Media Trackers Exposes Their Own Flopsweat

Media Trackers, like the MacGuyver Institute and WPRI, are sham groups that serve no purpose than to be the propagandists for the conservatives and for Corporate America.  They get their funding from the likes of the Koch brothers and the Bradley Foundation.

But they do serve one useful purpose.  They are a gauge of sorts to see how nervous the conservatives are at any given time.  The more desperate the story, the more desperate or their masters.

Judging from a recent story from Media Trackers, they must be very nervous as the movement in which the people of Wisconsin rise up and reclaim their state by recalling Scott Walker begins.

This propagandist group, represented by one Collin Roth, if that's even his real name, claims they have "exposed" a cabal of lefty politicians and community leaders who are poised to bring Walker down by following the rigged rules the Republicans have rammed through in an effort to shred the Constitution and stop the people from exercising their rights.

Their proof of this cabal? The alleged members received an email!

Obviously, because they received an email, they must be in cahoots.

But this gave the researchers here an idea.  Why not find out who these people at Media Trackers are by seeing what emails they might be receiving.

Seeing what kind of group Media Trackers is, our crack research team concluded that anything dealing with them closely resembles spam, since that is what they produce.  Hence, they further concluded that the best way to see who Media Trackers is was to check the spam files.

Preliminary reports show that it is possible the members of Media Trackers are friends with various Nigerian princes and widows and English attorneys who are involved in a money laundering scheme.  It is also believed, judging by the likely emails that they receive, they are looking for high-paying easy work, cute girls that want to chat, and suffer from erectile dysfunction.

And now you know and knowing is half the battle.

Saving PolitiFact The Trouble

It's been a while since PolitFact has taken a look at Charlie Sykes' outrageous statements and lit his arse on fire, so we'll just have to do it for them.

Thursday morning, Sykes was ranting and raving about this article in the paper which told of how hundreds of people came out to Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele's budget hearing to speak passionately about saving paratransit.

I only caught parts of Sykes' steaming pantful, but there were two glaring lies he was telling his audience.

One, he said that the advocates for the disabled were saying that the paratransit fees were going to more than triple.  All this proves is that Sykes is illiterate.  The article actually reported this (emphasis mine):

The cuts proposed by the Milwaukee County Transit System also include elimination of service on six regular routes, ending Freeway Flyer service and shortening routes or cutting bus frequency on 28 other routes. The transit system also is proposing to raise paratransit fares for riders with disabilities by $1.25, to $4.50.

Again, it only shows that Sykes can't read.

But where Sykes really got it wrong, and thereby set his own trousers ablaze, was when he claimed that no one has ever threatened to cut paratransit services before and that he was outraged about it.

The only thing is that paratransit services have been threatened before, even as recently as last year when then Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker threatened to cut that service to the bare minimum required by federal law.

Secondly, per county records, now Governor Walker and his Republican allies in the legislature have decided to cut transit and paratransit funding by $5.5 million in the recently passed budget.

Don't expect Sykes to admit to that any time soon, though. He's too busy trying to keep the flames from his pantaloons from reaching all that hairspray in his helmet-hair.

Walker-union clash sells newspapers

Journal Sentinel circulation is up slightly, due, the paper says, to the Packers' success and Scott Walker's war on unions.

Recount, anyone?

The Message Isn't The Problem

For the past week or so, Charlie Sykes and some of his trained parrots have been going on about how Scott Walker and the Republicans are doing such a wonderful thing by stripping people of their rights.

Sykes also said that Walker's biggest problem is that he just isn't "messaging" very well and people just don't recognize that their impending fiscal doom is going to be the best thing that happened to them.

But Walker's problem isn't the message he's trying to feed us.

Walker's problem is that there just simply isn't enough lipstick for that pig.  And now that he has awoken and revitalized the sleeping giant of the middle class and the unions, he has bigger problems to worry about.

Such as if he can ever make an appearance without having his supporters outnumbered 10:1.

He Should've Made It A Year

Oh boy, I bet this will create a lot of jobs!

Scott Walker is bringing his full weight of office to bear by issuing a proclamation that he wants all to participate in the openly bigoted, anti-homosexual "National Marriage Week."

Word is he is going to ask his good pals Charlie Sykes, Newt Gingrich, John McCain and Rush Limbaugh to be honorary spokesman for the special occasion.

If you gave each of them a week per marriage, you'd have most of the year covered.

They Won't Squawk About The Real Haves

Scott Walker started the ball rolling during his perpetual campaign for governor by falsely claiming that public sector workers were the haves while the rest of the world's were the have-nots.  This was despite his $130K salary as county executive and his big new house with the big new swimming pool.

Charlie Sykes, making $170K himself*, picked up this meme in his beak and squawked about it every chance he gets.  And this does not include the money his third wife brings in as Communications Director for the Bradley Foundation or the graft he gets for pushing their hateful agenda.

But what you won't hear about from Walker, Sykes or any of the other squawkers is one complaint about the real haves.  You know, the CEO's of the big corporations.

*You'll note that I said Sykes makes that much money, not that he earns that much.

McIlheran Deals From The Bottom

Patrick McIlheran has a snide little post up, in which he cites the psuedo-news organization McIver Institute* who found that former Governor Doyle had slotted a handful of people into state jobs before leaving.

Even though every politician leaving office at any level has done this, apparently now it is a bad thing.

I guess that is because Scott Walker needed those spots for his cronies. So far, we know he's only found a spot for his former Director of Administrative (Lying) Services, Cindy Archer, as reported by his own newspaper.**

But that isn't even the most egregious part of his post.

McIlheran then has to go on lying about Russ Feingold, labeling him as being for infanticide. Gutter press, indeed.***

*Just how does that propagandist group keep their 501(c)(3) status?

** A quasi-news organization

***Factoid: McIlheran only buys Bibles with that pesky commandment about not bearing false witness redacted.

McIlheran Hedges To Make A Sale

Patrick McIlheran is trying to convince his readers that Scott Walker's power grab isn't really a power grab, but is something totally benign. But one word in his verbose oversell of the power grab is what poker players and human lie detectors call "the tell."

The governor's power to veto is a big one. Wisconsin’s governor can rewrite budgets with the partial-veto power, and that power used to be even stronger. Conservatives liked it when Tommy Thompson did this and didn’t when Jim Doyle did, and perhaps it’s better if no governor could so edit law, but the point here is that Walker’s not seeking the power to rewrite laws or even regulations. We haven’t seen a bill, just the idea, but Walker appears to ask only for the ability to veto new regulations -- not edit new ones, not veto old ones. The result is one more opportunity to deny power to the state overall, a reasonably safe bet.

The use of the word "appears" would indicate that either McIlheran isn't sure of his facts (which is highly likely) or he knows that he is lying and is carefully choosing his words so he can't get called out for telling a flat-out lie (which is even more likely).

Either way, Walker shouldn't be given this kind of carte blanche. And before any conservatives would try to argue otherwise, think about this: How would you feel if Jim Doyle had that same kind of power?

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.

Stone announces for Walker's third term

He practically said as much.

Could Walker, who got 38% of the vote for governor in the county, win a third term himself? Doubtful.

But we do have to ask: Everyone has known for six weeks that Walker was leaving the job.

A small army of Democrats are still milling around, asking each other whether to run, while time slips away. It is now about nine weeks to the primary, and then seven more to the general election.

That's precious little time to assemble a serious campaign or raise the kind of money it will take to win. Stone will be well-funded, and will no doubt be able to build on the Milwaukee County organization Walker just built for November.

What in the hell are the Dems waiting for?