What Do You Do When You've Got kNOthing?

You launch a new website.

The great thinkers have deferred to Ted Nugent to name the newest conservative flavor of the weekend and are fronting it with Vicki McKenna wannabe, Jerry Bader.

Now, normally these websites turn out to be little more than pop-ups in the grand scheme of political discussion. Does anybody remember the Wisconsin Institute for Leadership? That disappeared like smoke as soon as the checks all cleared. But this one has a hook on which to hang its silliness. Bader doesn't want to race to the bottom but, gosh darn it, he just has to.

I do not make Hitler analogies lightly; nor would I compare Barack Obama with Adolf Hitler, the greatest mass murderer of all time. BUT the dramatic changes that took place in Germany in the 1930’s and America today ARE analogous; in fact it’s happening even quicker here.

You may have seen some of Bader's listeners outside the Pres' Green Bay appearance. They were the ones holding signs that called for, "No Health Care," without a shred of awareness of the irony.

Bader has a chiseled himself some market share outside the Milwaukee/Madison AM reach and is using it to mobilize the Fox Valley to chant, "Stop That." No matter how he spells it, "kNOw means No."

No Talk Radio On Mars

Zippy The Pin Headed Journalist

Preview Paddy is never more at his worst than when he thinks he's being clever.

Today, he blogged about the high speed trains that he doesn't think is so high speed:

Seventy-eight mph to Minneapolis? Wow. That’s, um, well, that’s as fast as pretty much half the traffic in I-94 now travels, and those cars will actually get you to wherever you’re going, not just to the train station.

Really now. I suppose in the summer, if it's not raining, and if it's not rush hour, and you have a good traffic fairie sitting on your shoulder, that could be true.

But this is Wisconsin. Often, you don't get those kinds of breaks.

I'm Feeling Smarter Already

One of our regular readers and commenters is "Dan." Well, old Dan has had enough of just being a spectator and has gone for being a blogger himself, with a site he calls The Las Vegas Badger.

Since he was always kind enough to come visiting here, I would humbly ask the gentle reader to give him a visit as well.

My only dilemma now is this: When he screws up, do I correct him here or at Cog Dis?

They Taught Her To Be Illogical

From the scholarly Jason Haas:

UWM teaches elementary logic and other such logic classes.

Logic is a very good tool for turning the hollow arguments of right-wing squakers on their heads.

UWM also teaches journalism.

You need to take a class in formal reasoning in order to graduate with a journalism degree.

Jessica McBride is a non-tenured journalism instructor at UWM and a known right-wing squaker.

Therefore, a UWM journalism major taking Philosophy 211 or another course in reasoning and logic can turn Jessica McBride’s arguments on their heads.

Logic is a beautiful thing.

Don't Adjust Your Set

Yet another visit to that alternative reality known as conservative thought.

Help Wanted: Journalistic Babysitter

From Heartland Hollar:

We don't expect the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to provide a correction because of course to do so would be such a slippery slope that would amount to doubling their costs and creating an entire new paper to keep up with McIlheran. But we have a better idea (again), why don't they just fire the guy.

He is not only factually wrong more often than he is "right on," his "thoughts" have such a clearly narrow and shrinking appeal he makes bad business sense for a paper that is losing money. Any other worker who made this many mistakes would be shown the door.

What makes McIlheran so privileged, so entitled?

The least they could do is offer some "competition" on their own pages with an opposing (and accurate) view. Or they could simply provide the journalistic babysitting that McIlheran so obviously needs.

Read the whole post to see what Preview Paddy got wrong this time.

McIlheran Wrong On Rights (But What Else Is Old?)

Preview McIlheran undermines the Constitution by saying that the protected right to vote is not as important as attending a teen pop rock concert.

O'Reilly Claims Victimhood In Tiller Murder

From Griper Blade (my newest must read site):

I wasn't going to comment on Bill O'Reilly's reaction to the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Keith Olbermann is right to call him "Bill-O the Clown." O'Reilly's just a self-important blowhard idiot with a tremendous ego, a braying ass who freaks out over made-up non-issues like his childish "War on Christmas," where saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" is just the worst possible insult to the Christian faith. He's impossible to take seriously. Sure, he's got a top-rated cable news talk show, but that's a case of being big fish in a very small pond. In terms of market share, O'Reilly probably gets his ass kicked nightly by reruns of Everyone Loves Raymond on TBS. Why anyone takes him seriously is beyond me.

The author goes on in a must read piece highlighting the psychoses of some right wing extremists, and end with this:

And O'Reilly didn't just feign surprise, he pretended (or maybe believed) he was being attacked unfairly by people pointing out his hate speech. "Now it is clear that the far left is exploiting the death of the doctor," Bill-O said in response to Tiller's murder. "Those vicious individuals want to stifle any criticism of people like Tiller. That and hating FOX News is the real agenda here."

That's right, a man was shot dead in church -- in front of his family -- but Bill O'Reilly and FOX News are the real victims here. Because people are being mean to them. Bill then moved on to what he considers the "real" news -- a story about comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and rapper Eminem. Bill's US Magazine-level intellect has never been so apparent.

You're not Hal Turner, Bill. You're really not. Apparently, there's someone out there who's even more stupid and irresponsible than you are and who can't see that line you do your highwire act on. But you aren't Edward R. Murrow, either -- as much as you obviously believe you are. You're just a melon-headed fool who's been lucky enough to find an audience of idiots more simpleminded than even you.

Damn, but to be able to write like that.

Melanin Is Skin Deep, But Racism Goes Down To The Bone

Preview McIlheran has a simple philosophy in life: If it didn't happen to him, it doesn't exist.

This can be seen on subjects like waterboarding, which he claims isn't really torture. In other words, since he's never been waterboarded, he's never felt tortured, so waterboarding isn't torture.

He gives us another fine example regarding racism.

National columnist Leon Pitts, who is African American, wrote an article which was reproduced in Friday's issue of the local newspaper. This article pointed out some of the way that many people will fabricate stories to cover their own misdeeds. These fabricated stories have an overwhelming chance of involving a white person being allegedly attacked by a person of color, and go as far as being heavily laden with typical racial stereotypes.

PaddyMac, who has never been called the "n word," or labeled as nappy-haired, or have been falsely accused of a crime based on his skin color alone, believes that Mr. Pitts is making all of this up:

And, hey, while you’re at it, why did you – yes, you again – deny Pitts a job and then call him a thief? Read to the bottom of his column. That’s what he says you did. And you blew up his school and then called him ignorant. Why did you do that, huh? Why did you kill his father and then complain he was filled with rage?

What, you say you didn’t? You were born after Jim Crow died, after MLK was already regarded a martyr? You grew up thinking black people were just as good as anyone else because “Sesame Street” and every adult you’ve ever known has told you precisely that?

Hmm. Must not have been you Pitts was thinking of. He was addressing his own ginned-up boogeyman, I guess.

Perhaps PaddyMac thinks that these types of things only happen in faraway places and that is why they don't really exist in his mind. Well, let me see if I can jar his selective memory with this name: Jesse Anderson. If that was insufficient, read further:

Anderson was serving a life sentence for killing his wife, Barbara E. Anderson, whom he stabbed 23 times in August 1992. Anderson had blamed two black men for attacking him and his wife (both white) as they left a Milwaukee restaurant, T.G.I. Friday's, at the Northridge mall. Anderson presented police with a Los Angeles Clippers basketball cap he claimed to have knocked off the head of one of the assailants. When details of the crime and the cap were made public, a local teenager told police Anderson had purchased the hat from him a few days earlier. Anderson eventually confessed to the crime.

The incomparable Emily Mills has more on Paddy's perverse view of reality.

Double Standards

From Harris Kane:

Their theory goes something like this. "The media" has given more attention to the murder in Kansas because "the media" is biased against the shooter, a radical, right-wing extremist.

The problem with this false argument is that the shooter in Arkansas is a radical, right-wing, extremist too. He is Muslim-convert who has embraced the Islamic jihad, something the wing-nuts incorrectly believe is a "left-wing" movement. It's not, but that doesn't fit their frame so they all parrot the misinformation in order to have it fit neatly into their "media bias" whine.

Read the rest here.

Nice Racks

Today was the official unveiling of the bike racks on Milwaukee County buses. County Board Supervisors Chris Larson and Patricia Jursik gave them a ceremonial tryout to introduce them this morning.

Sykes had a little stroke about them. He wailed about how the racks were paid for with "free money" and mocked the two supervisors for their excitement on this. Sykes then complained that this was a big boondoggle and claimed that no one would use them and they weren't good for this climate.

Sykes was, of course, lying through his teeth again. First of all, cities with much worse climates than ours have found great success with them, and where ever the bike racks have been tried, there has been a great increase in ridership.

Secondly, the federal tax dollars came from a program under the Bush administration and had nothing to do with the stimulus funding that the right try to dismiss as being "free money." The local match came from a bicycling group.

If Sykes wanted to complain about a real waste of taxpayer money, he should have talked about how Scott Walker sold the grounds and used some of the proceeds to rent the land he just sold. Or on how Walker wanted to use the rest of the proceeds, as well as the County's share of the "free $91 million" transit grant from the feds to give the beneficiaries of this land deal their own private rapid transit bus and bus route.

But the really amazing thing is that Sykes, given his past history of behaviors and attitudes, was unable to appreciate these really nice racks.

You Don't Mess Around With Slim

Some people learn the hard way. Kevin Stevenson got the boot from his job as spokesman for the Republican Party of Marathon County. His crime? Not genuflecting enough and daring to question the authority and infallibility of the head of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh:

Kevin Stevenson said he believes his March guest column in the Wausau Daily Herald criticizing Limbaugh turned local party members against him.

"They felt I was too moderate in what I was speaking and printing," he said.

Stevenson, who characterizes himself as a "John McCain-type of Republican," said the conflict was a microcosm of a national debate about what political message to put forward. A debate at a local Republican meeting on Thursday "got hostile and it got personal," he said.

When Stevenson criticized Limbaugh for saying he wanted President Barack Obama to fail, other local Republicans wrote to the newspaper, arguing that conservatives ought to want Obama's policies to fail.

"This is just part of what you're seeing nationwide," he said. "(Party members) know that I don't agree with Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh is hurting us more than helping us."

It only gets funnier:

Party Chairman Joe Wachtel said he disagreed with the decision to remove Stevenson as spokesman, but that he also disagreed with a moderate position."I don't think the Republican Party and the conservative movement is going to be served by being Democrat-lite," Wachtel said.

Apparently, they don't like ancient Greek or Roman artists either.

Their Silence Is Deafening

Not too long ago, Charlie Sykes, Patrick McIlheran and the rest of the Posse Comatose were simply outraged at organizations like MoveOn.org, when they called General Patraeus "General Betray Us." They were completely beside themselves that those dirty liberals would try to belittle and smear one of America's greatest military minds, or so they said then.

Now, they are completely silent about their military hero. Probably because of this (emphasis mine):

Speaking with Radio Free Europe on Sunday, General David Patreaus came out with two very clear statements that are not likely to make former Vice President Dick Cheney very happy. In short, Patraeus is siding with President Barack Obama on the matters of closing Guantanamo Bay prison, and ending the government sanctioned practice of torture on detainees.

As Charlie would say, "Cue the crickets."

See also Heartland Hollar.

The Obvious Flaws

From Illy-T:

iCelebrated Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel advertorial calumnist Patrick McIlheran promises them here. Needless to say, he delivers none.

That's how obvious they are: they just go without saying.

[...]

Although I'm not inclined to voice the concern, many others have: Maybe this is why newspapers are going down the tubes?