Don’t You Know That You Can Count Me Out (In)

The primary purveyor of violent revolution on local mainstream radio is the putrid Vicki McKenna on WISN. McKenna – who phones in her shtick from Madison, where she has been a thorn in the side of Truth and Common Sense for years – fancies herself a leader of the Tea Baggers. She even manages to get herself on the podium at their dog-and-pony shows, opening for such brilliant orators as Not-Joe the Not-Plumber and Michelle Malkin.

As the loopy right lost its collective mind over the passage of moderate health insurance regulation last week, McKenna was right out there with them, baying at the moon and pretending the People would soon extract Vengeance for this Tyrannical attack on Liberty. Or some such nonsense. McKenna offers up her two hours of free radio time every weekday morning to provide remarkably free advertising for all things Tea and GOP (same thing). Any staged astro-turf “rally” is promoted for weeks on her show. Republican politicians have a free pass to visit McKenna by phone or in studio any time to blather about their latest campaigns or ludicrous legislation. It has gotten to the point that she and Scott Walker should just, well, get a room.

And McKenna had a special message last week for anyone stupid enough to take her seriously, post-health insurance reform. In her standard “come on, people” mode, McKenna said, yeah, we gotta win Congress back in 2010; gotta take back the White House in 2012, gotta repeal and (hah) repair the health insurance legislation. But if she and her band of (now and future) losers can’t win at the ballot box...I mean, obviously, democracy be damned. Early last week, McKenna was forced to try to talk one of her dimmer listeners out of taking a gun to Washington -- for now, anyway. But McKenna’s only problem with that was timing. If we don’t win Congress back; if we don’t take the presidency back; if those elected to office don’t do what we say, well, then....

Then – what, exactly? The right-wing talking-point of alluding and winking at violent revolution throughout its echo-chamber got me to thinking – exactly what would that look like? When a supposed military guy like Owen Robinson says that violent revolution in the United States is inevitable, he must have some idea how that might happen as a practical matter (and some idea which side he would be on). I’m no military strategist, but it seems to me the following options are available when the unspontaneous combustion of the astro-prairie fire takes place:

• Luxury Tanks and Jet Stream Air Force – I imagine there are still training camps in northern Wisconsin used by the long, lost Posse Comitatus willing to provide space to train the silver-spooned would-be revolutionaries. (The racist Posse guys  and the other loopy McVeigh-wannabees are all at the Tea Party, anyway). After a couple weeks of hi-balls and paying the poor slobs who buy their crap to do their push-ups for them, the whole group will load into luxury coaches and private jets to head off to take their rightful place at the seat of power. The first problem will come at the Illinois border, where unanticipated toll booths will slow down the Charge of the Light-Headed Brigade significantly.
• Join Us! – In their fevered imagination, the Tea Baggers think all they have to do is grab their torches and pitchforks at the anointed time, head out the door and have the oppressed populace follow them out into the streets to storm the barricades of Washington. I’d like to see them try it. Out in the street, the Paul Revere in their heads pounding like a bad migraine, they will look back and see – nobody. Nobody is going to follow these arrogant clowns into the street, least of all to take away the new stability of their health care coverage. They will see only each other, at the designated place, seeing only the same red-necks who were at the meeting where they planned this fiasco in the first place. Welcome to the revolution. Now, who wants to go for beers
• Military Coup – The wet-dream of every political military man like Owen Robinson is to have the military commit treasonous mutiny and overthrow the inconvenient civilian government. Otherwise, how do they expect to overcome the finest military in the world that, if not co-opted would surely defend the government from the violent revolution they imagine? Such an expectation is an insult to the men and women who pledge the support the nation and – most importantly – its Constitution. The fine men and women who serve are not going to risk their reputation, honor and liberty for a bunch of greedheads who only want a change in health care policy to benefit their corporate benefactors.
• Terrorism – In the end, since the other types of violent revolution above are doomed to fail, this is really what the Tea Baggers are hoping for – a violent campaign of terror that will cause the sensible among us to crumble under their favorite tactic: FEAR. You could see it already last week in the campaign to break windows of non-pliant Congressmen, in the hateful voicemails, the white powder mailed in envelopes. Pretty funny coming from those who have been the first to wave the red flag of foreign terrorist Fear every time they wanted to curtail a civil liberty or elect a doofus like Junior Bush. But, in the end, it’s the only violent revolution they will have. Terrorism, after all, is the last refuge of the powerless, and the unelectable Tea Baggers are and will remain as powerless as they come.

So, bring it on, would-be violent revolutionaries. As President Obama said about Republicans repealing his moderate health insurance reform, “let them try”. Let’s get this phony specter of violent revolution out of the way by them trying and failing miserably. We shouldn’t even bother locking them up. Just pat them on the head and send them home. Come on back when you get a clue, losers.

You Say You Want a Revolution? Really?

Still trying to wake from my own posting slump, I had a little fun yesterday in the comment section of Owen Robinson’s Boots & Sabers blog. Robinson, with the help of fellow-traveler Charlie Sykes and others, has somehow developed a side-career as Wisconsin’s premier nut-right blogger. This, even though (when he’s not trying to purify the West Bend school board) his blog consists primarily of pasting-in commentary and news from others with nothing but a pithy “heh” or “wow” comment of his own. His position as the go-to guy for what passes for right-wing “thought” shows how weak the competition is for that dubious honor.

This week, Robinson decided to stretch a bit and expound on the possibility – no, probability – of violent revolution in the United States, now that the democratic process has had the temerity to produce a Democratic president and Congress that has actually managed to accomplish something with health insurance reform. Taking power in our glorious republic by force is apparently something the right-wingers discuss seriously while cleaning their guns over a few beers in Robinson’s garage. Robinson comes down squarely on the “just a matter of time” side, speculating that the Wing-Nut Revolution would come “around 2035 or 2040". This would put it somewhere around Malia Obama’s first term or the Rapture, whichever comes first.

Why then? “That’s when the crushing weight of what we are doing will no longer be able to be sustained and it will only take a small spark to ignite a conflagration,” writes Robinson. Oh. And why is the violent overthrow of American constitutional government necessary again? “We are headed down a path with exploding entitlements funded by taxation and the prospects of a less robust - or declining - economy and a demographic shift. Fewer and fewer people paying more and more to support out of control entitlements that are tweaked at the whims of politicians. It’s a powder keg.”

Well, obviously. I mean, a little entitlement here, a little taxation there...these are the kinds of things that have always sparked violent revolution, like in...ummm...well, nowhere, but who says we can’t be original? It will be the first revolution of the over-taxed landed gentry. To arms! You have nothing to lose but your shrubbery!

I joke, but this is serious stuff for the tyranny-and-liberty crowd. They are so worked up into a lather about the uppity Negro in the White House, they can barely contain themselves. Egged on by the right-wing media into thinking that the Constitution is being subverted by the entirely legal actions of their legally elected representatives, the Tea Baggers stand on the astro-turf of their phony, well-paid grassroots and bark at the moon. Soaking up the unearned attention and legitimacy bestowed on them by pliant real and fake (Fox) news outlets, they hurl racial slurs and spit towards black lawmakers who, like the president, would dare to exercise their well-earned political franchise. Wrapping themselves up in the flag and perverted, self-serving definitions of words like “freedom” and “liberty”, they are the ultimate anti-Americans – unable to win elections and unwilling to accept the results of the democratic process when they lose.

I’d worry about this more if the right-wing wind-bags were more of a threat than they are. As it is, they have painted themselves into a political and social corner, talking only to each other in a language only they understand, constructing arguments based on facts only they believe. Still, I wish they would try to start a violent revolution, just for the sheer entertainment value of their guaranteed failure. “How far do you think a couple hundred of your fellow nutballs will get on the way to Washington?” I asked in Robinson’s comment section. “I’m guessing you get turned around about, oh, Nashville. The Feds aren’t even going to bother to arrest your treasonous asses—just pat you on the head and tell you to come back when you get a clue.”

The whole notion of a violent revolution simply because the American political system is just too much for you is arrogance at its worst. They know better, you see, and if you don’t agree, they will make their point and achieve their selective notion of “liberty” at the point of a gun. Or, as I wrote in comment 30:

“Your problem isn’t that there is no democracy; it’s that your crackpot ideas can’t win in a democracy. So you grab your racist signs and your little toy guns and you try to intimidate us into submission by threatening violence. Typical bully tactics by people who know they are wrong.


And I’ll do what I’ve always done with bullies: Laugh at them. Because you guys are funny. Truly amusing. Especially when you lose. I haven’t watched anything but Fox “News” for a week. You can’t make up comedy like this.”

PLAISTED PLAYS - THIS SATURDAY AT THE COFFEEHOUSE

Join me and a few old friends for the 28th (!) reunion of the Milwaukee Musician's Co-op at the Coffeehouse.  I'll play for 20 minutes sometime after 8.  Come early -- stay late.  Great people, great music.  See you there!

Long Time, No Post

The statistics that still come to me once a week from some cyber-place I signed up for years ago tell an ugly tale.  The number of people still checking this site every day for something -- anything -- new from me has whittled down to a hardy average of 23 soul survivors.  In this site's hay-day -- somewhere between Gov. Doyle's trouncing of Mark Green and the racist Gableman campaign against the far-superior Louis Butler -- I had as many as 250 people checking in every day.  My posts were discussed on Charlie Sykes' wing-nut radio program.  I was a featured blogger on Wisopinion.  Gov. Doyle saw at my nametag at a fundraiser once, looked up and said "Hey, I like your blog!"

How times have changed.  My output has gone kaput for months now, slowing to a trickle before I found myself looking up at a situation -- now -- where, after managing something every couple of weeks or so, I haven't posted anything for a month-and-a-half.  I find those friends and family who used to ask me once in a while when my next post was coming just pass me in the halls of the Courthouse and other places in my life with a silent shrug, quietly mourning what they assume is the end of my attempts to comment on local and national politics and media in an amusing, informative way. 

Well, I have to admit, the political demise of the dangerously hapless Junior Bush entourage and the arrival of Barack Obama in the White House did do a lot to take the edge off of the outrage that spurred much of the writing here.   In the months after the election and the first several months of the Obama era, the members of the right-wing echo chamber were completely flummoxed by the new president's thumping of McCain and (hah) Palin and his popularity.  The highly-scripted wing-nuts on radio and Fox Noise reverted to their tiresome anti-Clinton mode, trying to impose the death of a thousand cuts on a popular president they could not defeat in a fair election.  Absurd allegations recycled from the campaign, like the supposed Messiah complex, socialism...please. 

All of this would have fallen on deaf ears outside of talk-radio's targeted demographic (Stupid People, 34 -51) if not for the Great Recession created by unchecked capitalist greed and the indifference and deregulation of the reckless regime fronted by Junior Bush.  With the powerful banks soaking up and spitting out TARP funds and refusing to extend credit, it could have been predicted that the stimulus would fail to accomplish anything that anyone would recognize over the 24/7 screeching of the lunatic right.  "It Would Have Been Worse" hardly works as a political bragging-point, even if true.  The Republicans in both house of Congress threw up an amazingly united front, voting unanimously against anything -- anything -- that would have given Obama and the Democrats credit for governing.

Then came the phony Tea Baggers.  Driven by a collection of well-paid right-wing functionaries, promoted non-stop by Fox Noise and the vast network of wingnut mainstream radio stations and always featuring manufactured celebrities like Not-Joe the Not-Plumber and the putrid Michelle Malkin, the gathering of several hundred fearful and infirm Stupid People with racist and otherwise insane signs and sentiments has been held out as proof of the "outrage" of average Americans.  Seems to me there have been people gathering in the streets for years -- most recently, in opposition to Bush's Stupid War in Iraq -- in much greater numbers without being given credit for speaking for anyone but themselves.  Let people like that get out there, and the right-wing portrays them as a bunch of unemployed, loser troublemakers.  On the other hand, they make wild claims about a vast consensus of America based on whatever restless crackers respond to weeks of talk-radio promotion and manage to get off their Lazy Boys for a chance to listen to clowns like Vicki McKenna live in person.

Which brings us to Glen Beck.

Beck is the most nakedly insincere demagogue in the history of demagoguery.  His contempt for his audience of stupid rednecks is barely concealed under his dripping smirk, as he twists history and logic in knots on a distracting chalkboard of lies and distortion.  His guests, when he has them, are universally admiring fellow-travellers, there only to prop him up as an intellectual healer of the nation's wounds and sins.  Can't you see what he can see?  What's the matter with you?

But Beck and his handlers made a big mistake by inviting a liberal Democrat, Eric Massa, onto the show after he resigned from Congress on Tuesday, a classic hour of political comedy that has to be seen to be believed.  Fox Noise booked him because they wanted him on to tell tales about "corruption" and such in the Democratic leadership.  But Massa, who has been making all kinds or conflicting irresponsible statements since he announced he was going to resign last week, did not follow the Beck script.  Beck response was to sit in stunned silence for most of the hour, ultimately apologizing to his audience of slack-jawed simpletons who are used to having their pablum served in more predictable fashion.  "I think I've wasted your time," said the greatest time-waster on the planet. "I think this is the first time I have wasted an hour of your time."  Cue the howls of laughter on that one.

...But I digress.  I'll try to post more, OK?

The Death of Democracy -- and the Wisconsin Court

This week brought historically bad legal news, both nationally and locally.

First, the political system of the United States was, for all practical purposes, destroyed by the right-wing of the U.S. Supreme Court. The usual narrow majority of the Roberts Court summarily steamrolled the original intent of the founders (for instance: corporations are not “persons”. Duh.) and a hundred years of stare decisis in deciding that national and international corporations can buy-and-sell elections without restriction.

The radical Citizens United decision is a landmark accomplishment in the decades-long Federalist Society campaign to take over the federal judiciary in the service of their corporate and (by default) Republican political masters. By the time the relatively young, healthy ideologues of the Bush Four – initiated by Bush Senior with Scalia and Thomas; completed by Bush Junior (thanks, Ralph “It Doesn’t Matter Who Wins” Nader, not to mention the then-existing Bush v. Gore Court) with Roberts and Alito, with the help of the gullible Anthony Kennedy (“I get to write the opinion? OK.”) – are done with the nation’s laws, the Constitution will be a dead-letter; its words twisted into unrecognizable knots by those who care not about the intent of the founders or sound reasoning of the 100+ justices that came before them, but of the selfish interests of the greedy bastards who put them in place. Unapologetically, the blind zealots of the Roberts Court continue to provide their handlers with the kind of power they always wanted but couldn’t get elected to do – to shape the nation in their own image, with liberty and justice for them, and for you only if you can afford the buy-in.

In the current economic environment, I suspect most corporations won’t be spending much just because they like a candidate’s good looks. Corporate political spending (before yesterday, using legal fictions in the former law) has always been about each company’s parochial interests – i.e.: they are for anything that gets them more money and against anything that requires them to spend it. As it happens, the companies with the most to lose or gain by the agenda of the Democrats elected to fix a raft of long-neglected issues – the health insurance industry, the polluters and the banks – have the most disposable income (read: obscene profits) to wield the sledgehammer just provided by the radical Supremes to defeat progress of any sort at any time.

Cynically exploiting the soft underbelly of an electorate too distracted by their own Republican-induced misery and too stupid to know who the enemy is, we can expect all manner of smarmy ads in the next election cycle, promoting Republicans (who, after all, not only can, but expect to be bought) and against Democrats (who can’t). In fact, many of those in the politics business expect that messages from the actual candidates for office are the last thing you are going to hear or see, as media buys, especially in small markets with one or two TV stations, become saturated with corporate messages promoting the Republicans who, as only they can, have agreed to carry their water once they get to Washington...

...or, as we now know, Madison. It was a strange but revealing confluence of events that, on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that elections can be bought – unfettered by annoying laws – by corporations, our own elected Wisconsin Supreme Court announced that, once bought, they need not recuse. The right-wing majority of the state Supremes, decided this week that, if quaint, archaic rules about silly things like conflicts of interest (real and the appearance thereof) are getting in the way of their increasingly conflicted existence, they would just change the rules.

The declaration that such obvious conflicts of interests such as Annette Ziegler ruling on anything having to do with the WMC -- who recruited and promoted her (and Michael Gableman) to the tune of millions of dollars -- could be ignored flies in the face of everything we have come to know and love about the historical impartiality of the ultimate court in the state. As a close friend who knows quite a bit about the current Court told me a while ago, anyone on the right (as in correct) side of things who doesn't like the result below and takes a petition for review up to this Supreme Court hoping to get a better result is crazy.

Never before in this state have we had a Court with a majority that is more conflicted, more politically driven and less willing to give every side a fair hearing. I guess, by confirming their purchased bias and promising to go ahead and rule on cases involving their generous benefactors, they get points for honesty. You know what you are going to get with this Supreme Court before you get there. And that is very, very sad.

With the de facto leader of the Court’s right wing, David Prosser, up for reelection in 2011, we’ll get the first application of Citizens United to a judicial race in Wisconsin. No longer will the dark side of Wisconsin’s business community have to hide behind legal straw-men like the WMC PAC. The poison lead paint industry can now come right out and proudly trumpet Justice Prosser’s accomplishments. Other polluters like the asbestos industry can get in the act and try to make their lives a little less accountable. Here come the doctors, whining about medical malpractice claims when they screw up. My guess is that lots of corporations will get into the act, buying the influence that the Court now gleefully encourages, much less allows.

And, as an added bonus, the U.S. Supremes just showed the state Court how easy it is to brush aside all those conflicting and annoying precedents by all those former justices who couldn’t possibly be as smart as they are. Let’s get those lead paint and the medical malpractice cases back up here. Obviously, just like namby-pamby concerns about conflicts of interest, stare decisis is for wimps.

2009 Predictions -- More Right Than Wrong

On New Years Day this (last) year, I made a few predictions for 2009.  It's a silly excercise reserved for people with some kind of media presence who think anyone cares what they think.  It's also a reality check to see how well you are tuned in to an unpredictable world.

What'd I say?  Oh...

Barack Obama will start his term with a tremendous amount of good will and support for his economic stimulus package – whatever it is – because too many people will want and need it to succeed. True, as far as it went, and the plan has had more positive effect than it has been given credit for.  There is no way to know how much the injection of hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy stopped the deadly skid Obama inherited. Except that it did.

If Republicans get in the way on the basis of their usual petty nonsense, they will just dig a deeper hole for themselves. No "if" here.  The Party of No has been remarkably unified in their opposition to any hint of grown-up, Democratic accomplishment.  They are feeling pretty good about themselves right now, snuggled in the soft bosom of their alternate-universe talk-radio/Fox News circle-jerk, where Tea Bagging opportunists cavort with bad actors like Glenn Beck and bad legislators like Michele Bachmann.  We won't really know how deep a hole they are digging themselves until the 2010 elections they have already declared won, when they pick up only a few seats in the House and one or two in the Senate.  If they're lucky.


Barack Obama will start his term with a tremendous amount of good will and support around the world as he tries put the nation in a position to recover from the tremendous damage done by the arrogant, radical and reckless Bush administration...Not all of the damage is reparable, but Obama will have an advantage because of his background, because he has Clinton leading the effort and, most importantly, because he is Not Bush. Exactly right, his success in turning around America's image in the world exemplified by the premature awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama's nuanced, intellgent juggling of America's responsibilities in the world has led to a lowering of the anti-American temperature around the globe.  And he is certainly Not Bush.  And Not Cheney. And Not McCain.  And Not Lieberman. And that's all good.

Hillary Clinton won’t be home much as she jets around the globe on a mission to unruffle feathers and get America back to its deserved respected-leader status. Clinton has been Obama's secret weapon around the globe, as she has employed her remarkable talents in the service of American interests.

America and the world will breathe a collective sigh of relief when our brave troops start coming home from Iraq. Iraq?  What Iraq? Bush's Stupid War continues to wind down as the focus of our anti-al-Qaeda campaign moves where it belongs; to Afghanistan, Pakistan and -- now, apparently -- Yemen.

Violence there will increase, as the kind of thugs who have always run that country make their move. In the end, Iraq will end up right where it started – with the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the country presiding over a brutal regime. The only difference between that guy and Hussein will be that Iraq will be a theocracy, aligned with Iran, and even more of a potential threat to Israel. Nice work, Bush.  Recent celebrations of the success of Iraqi "democracy" in the continued propaganda campaign to validate Bush's Stupid War after-the-fact are drastically premature.  When the dust settles in five or ten years, Iraq will be much more of a threat to Israel and our interests than it ever was under Hussein.


Obama will have a chance to appoint at least two Supreme Court justices and, unlike Bush, will nominate people with impeccable legal pedigrees and no discernable ideological tilt, except for the inclination to be fair, which is a lefty trait, anyway. Republicans and their wing-nut lap dogs will pretend they are all lefty socialists anyway, and the general public will ignore them and move on.  Well, only one vacancy in the first year, but everything else was exactly right.  The public was not impressed with the Republican's childish attack on Justice Sotomayor.


Obama will end the year with an approval rating in the high 60s or higher. Yeah, well, a bit off.  Obama has met the perfect storm of 10% unemployment, an unprecedented echo-chamber of right-wing blather willing to tell any lie, and a bunch of snooty lefties who think they could do it better than he can.  Under these circumstances, it's amazing he's hovering at 50%.


Talk-radio clowns will continue to be completely flummoxed by Obama’s success and popularity, and will suffer ratings problems as a result. By the end of the year, they will spend more than half their time talking about finances and sports. The wing-nuts found their groove by creating and latching onto the Tea Party concept, which found obnoxious voice for all the imbicles who hate and resent Obama for racist and other reasons.  Their demogogory of health insurance reform, including (especially) scaring the elderly about "death panels", has been the most reprehensible performance by mainstream politicians since Florida congressmen like Joe Scarboro defended Bush's theft of democracy in that state in 2000.

Locally, the radio wing-nuts will shill full-time for Scott Walker’s campaign for governor. Their in-kind contributions will not be reported to the Government Accountability Board.  Just wait.  They are just getting warmed up.


The conversion from analog to digital television in February will be delayed when it becomes clear that the need for a converter box will take free TV away from millions of Americans who still don’t have the box and couldn’t figure out how it works if they did.  The first of my predictions to actually come true, as the date was moved to June.  Unfortunately, it has now taken place.  All over the poor and underclass, TV showing nothing by snow are gathering dust in closets.  Sadly, a little less Judge Judy for everyone.

 The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will follow the lead of the Detroit Free Press and limit home delivery to three days a week. By the end of the year, the paper will stop pretending to have separate sections and fold everything into two sections; maybe one. The paper continues to be flumoxed by its crashing business model, but no limited home deliveries yet.  The Local section has been folded into the front page on Monday.  A four-page Business page here, a four-page Cue section there.  And after the Packers finish their run this year, can a four-page Sports page be far behind?

The paper will resort to hysterical headlines and endless self-righteous campaigns, like its current one about drunk driving. The paper's various hysterical campaigns against drunk driving, BPA, backups at the Patent Office (wha?), and the inner-city child care industry (while those reaping millions of state dollars scamming the J-S precious "choice" school program remain uninvestigated) continue apace.  Last Sunday, the paper spent three or four whole pages telling you how wonderful they were. 

If something is missing from the paper, referrals will be made to the on-line edition. All day, everyday.

No matter what happens, the J-S will continue to find room to run 25-inches of Patrick McIlheran's blathering three days a week. By the end of the year, his tedious right-wing talking-point recitals will take up 25 percent of the available non-ad column inches.  I think his column in the dead-tree edition are now down to two a week, but Paddy Mac continues to be the most fact-challenged, unaccountable, talking-pointed columnist in the paper's once-distinguished history.  The Illusory One has made tracking McIlheran a hilarious special project, to everyone's benefit.


The Brewers spend money and, maybe, trade one of their young superstars to create a decent-enough starting rotation.  Not quite.  They could have got some decent arms for Corey hart or J.J. Hardy early in the season, but even they didn't see how far they would fall.  The rotation was a mess all year.

Prince Fielder will come into camp having dropped 30 pounds.  Wishful thinking, but what a year after a slow start. 

Corey Hart will drop his at-bat country music for Nirvana and, this time, have a complete season. Ooops.  Sorry.

National League pitchers will continue to be stymied by Ryan Braun, who will hit 45+ homers despite being the most-walked batter in the league.  Not Braun -- Fielder.

The Brewers will win 90+ and win the division.  No.  Not enough pitching.


Despite strong lefty credentials and occasional accidental brilliance, Plaisted Writes will not be recognized by the Shepherd Express' Best of the Blogs page.  An easy prediction. 

Also, sometime this year, society page embarassments Boris and Doris will be invited to a party where no one but them shows up. They will write it up as a wonderful evening with Lou Fortis, Rip Tenor (as S-E mascot Art Kubalek) and other close friends.  All true but the write-up.

Finally, although I didn't predict it, this has been an admittedly shit year for Plaisted Writes.  I posted half as much as last year, even though there was plenty to talk about, and what I did write wasn't all that hot.  My Blogger page tells me this is my 300th post.  Here's to a better, more productive 2010.

God Bless Us, Every One

One of my guilty pleasures on Christmas Eve day is driving around listening to old radio plays on WISN. For that one day, the primary purveyor of right-wing poison in Milwaukee gives their local and national chuckleheads the day off and runs three holiday-season radio plays from the late 1940s – “It’s a Wonderful Life”, “A Christmas Carol” and “Miracle on 34th Street”. It’s a trip back in time to a lost art form, featuring talented, familiar voices from the past. The material – smarmy and corny as it often is – is crafted for moderately intelligent, thoughtful people who might be in the market to think well of sponsors Campbell’s Soup (“Christmas Carol”) or Lux Soap (“Wonderful Life” and “Miracle”).

This Christmas Eve morning, the historic passage of health insurance reform in the Senate that I watched live on TV that very morning was on my mind as I took off for a long drive. Tuning to WISN looking to amuse myself with wing-nut hysterics about the vote, I instead found the “Christmas Carol” recording; hosted by the great Orson Welles and featuring the incomparable, crusty Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge, being led around by a bunch of ghosts.

I picked up on a detail I hadn’t noticed in the story before. During his tour of the Future, Scrooge is shown the Cratchit family in mourning over the demise of the sickly Tiny Tim. For some reason, Scrooge thinks he can do something about this if he is given the chance to go back to the Present and be a nicer guy. And, indeed, he does somehow “save” him from this apparent fate – according to Wikipedia (yeah, yeah, I know...but I don't pretend to know Dickens), Tim survives even to attend Scrooge’s funeral.

Now, what could Scrooge have possibly done to affect the length and quality of Tim’s life in such a dramatic way? What else but get the poor kid some damn health care? Dicken’s tale is set in pre-industrial, pre-nationalized health-care England, where the poor and (in Bob Cratchit’s case) underemployed were left to fend for themselves. The pre-ghost Scrooge was the epitome of the social Darwinist, more than willing to let the chips fall where they may on the unfortunate heads of the underclass; even unto death, inasmuch as it “decreased the surplus population”. After his fever-dream, he cares too much – at least about the poor he knows – buying more giant turkey than the Cratchit family can handle. And Tiny Tim must be saved. No doubt Scrooge headed straight to the health insurance exchange and got his employee on his plan (alas, with high deductibles – hey, Scrooge was saved, but not crazy).

If the Republicans, Tea Baggers and their purported intellectual enablers national and local were like Scrooge, we could say their salvation is only a nightmare (or history lesson) away. But they lack Scrooge’s internal consistency. Scrooge was a dick with his money because he thought he had to be – it doesn’t seem he was doing all that great either (certainly not as good as Barrymore’s other iconic role – Henry Potter). He just decided (at least for one night) not to make whatever success he did have on the back of his employee, the long-suffering Bob Cratchit.

Right-wingers, on the other hand, only care about one thing, and that is the reinstitution of their political power. They know as well as you and I do that the health insurance industry is an elaborate, bureaucratic scam designed to siphon money off of people’s (mostly) unavoidable misery. They know the small business people they pretend to champion are suffering under the crushing weight of health insurance policies that are costing more and paying for less.

They had a chance to do something about it when they were in power and didn’t even try. Now, the grown-ups in the room – the Democrats – are finally showing some leadership on the issue, and the shrinking GOP knows it cannot survive if Obama and the Democrats succeed in actually making millions of lives better. Even the weak, incremental, industry-friendly bill that passed the Senate is something that – like Social Security and Medicare – will be a landmark of positive government action that will solidify the Democratic Party as the Good Guys for another generation.

The power-mad Republicans and their fellow travelers know the long-range implications of Democratic achievement, which is why they have unleashed the most repulsive, demagogic campaign of lies and hyperbole in U.S. political history. From the constant screeching about socialism to putting the fear of “death panels” into our seniors, the disloyal opposition has become completely unmoored from reality, floating in its own fetid sea of phony facts, deliberate exaggerations and badly-acted hysterics. Using its all-too-convenient vehicles – talk-radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and their echo-chamber counterparts in the blogosphere – an alternate universe has been created where these people can talk to each other and at their vulnerable target demographic of fearful, stupid people. Most of their commentary would be laughed out of the legitimate media – and are, when they make the mistake of showing their sorry asses in the real world.

But to accuse them of Scrooge-like behavior gives them too much credit.  Scrooge at least could articulate the self-interest involved in his previous behavior.  The Republicans can't articulate anything except "NO".  If Obama was against health insurance reform, they would find a way to be for it.  All they know is that if the Democrats succeed at something -- anything -- they lose (again).  Succeed Obama did (or will, soon).  Lose, they did, the Republicans, all standing together as a convenient and unfortunate whole.

Scrooge saw in the Future the unnecessary suffering and death of Tiny Tim and sought redemption through change.   Republicans know a million avoidable medical tragedies are out there and have one word for them -- NO!

Nod 2 Bob - Benefit for Hunger Task Force - TONIGHT

Join me and many other entertainers TONIGHT (Wednesday) as we pay tribute to the music of Bob Dylan at Linneman's Riverwest Inn, 1001 East Locust in Milwaukee's bustling Riverwest neighborhood. I have the honor to MC the show once again this year and get to play a set myself with a brand new talented band (including the Illusory One and Eric Blowtorch) at about 8:40.  This is the 11th annual Nod to Bob, a benefit for the Hunger Task Force. Come early (the show starts at 7 and the place gets packed pretty quickly -- lines out the door last year) and stay late for a great night of music. See you there!

Religious Fanatics Infect Nation's Capitol

It seems patriarchical religious zealots who often favor medieval robes and rituals have descended on the nation’s capitol recently. Strategically placed in the offices of fearful congressmen and holding brow-beating sessions with parishioners not toeing the selective edicts of their secretive hierarchy, they seek to conform the nation’s secular laws to their random religious preferences.

If such an organized effort was put forth by Islamic clerics or Buddhist monks, investigations would be held as to why our elected leaders are holding audiences with such obvious fanatics, much less reshaping essential legislation to meet their unyielding demands. But these are representatives of the Catholic faith. Those not unduly impressed by their paternalistic zeal to keep women underfoot will be struck like so many of their cloistered nuns wielding metal rulers.

I know these people. I have spent more time on my knees in the service of various Vicars of Christ (mostly John XXIII, as I recall) than most of the right-wing commentators that use Catholic doctrine to beat up on those who would dare to let a woman control her own body. Sure, it was mostly back in the ‘60s, when I was a kid, a dedicated altar boy throughout grade school, back when we had to go to Mass every morning before class. I sang the ritual cants and even played in some of the first guitar Masses at the small parish in my small town.

Back then, the only politics the church involved itself in was a quaint notion of social justice. We gave lip-service to the poor, while spending most of our money on vestments and gold chalices. There was even an anti-war tinge back during that ugly Vietnam thing.

But now, the Catholic church is in the middle of a hard-right swing, careening around in political circles like a bull in a Holy Hill gift shop, slapping down any politician who would dare show independence or common sense on issues related to women’s health. When the House of Representatives was debating a health insurance reform bill a couple of weeks ago, a conservative German “pope” headquartered in Rome sent various functionaries (called “bishops”) – all, incidentally, carrying some fine health coverage – scurrying across Capitol Hill in an effort to scuttle the legislation if it dared to allow coverage for reproductive services, even in cases of rape, incest or danger to the life of the woman (read: incubator). The foreign, medieval effort was scarily effective, weakening and almost killing the bill.

This week, comes word that one of the scions of the Catholic family that has done more for the church’s historical goal of social justice than any other in the nation’s history – Patrick Kennedy – has been informed by one of the costumed clerics that he shall not be allowed to receive the sacrament of Communion until he toes the religious party line on the disfavored right of a woman to control her own body. “If you freely choose to be a Catholic, it means you believe certain things, you do certain things,” declared the bishop. One wonders what would happen if, say, Keith Ellison, the congressman from Minnesota who happens to be Muslim, would receive such a threatening directive from one of his religious leaders. You would hear the screeching all the way from here to Mecca.

But, we allow the Catholics to interfere in the most important issue of our time on the grounds of their narrow, male-centered campaign to rid the women of the world of their right to choose. “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament,” Florence Kennedy famously said. Such irony is lost on the Soldiers of Benedict as they fan out to undermine social justice in the guise of protection of the “unborn”, even at the expense of the lives and health of adult women. Jesus famously threw the money-changers out of the temple. It’s time for someone to throw the medieval prelates out of the Capitol.

Walker Undermines Courthouse Security

Scott Walker isn't a County Executive -- he's a cartoon.  Every statement, every proposal, every budget he's made since he took advantage of Tom Ament's misfortune to gain an office he never would have otherwise has been an unserious joke, meant only to strike poses for the right-wing base he thinks is going to advance his blind ambition to be Governor.  When Walker proposes something, you know it's not going to happen -- the only question is who is going to be the adult that fixes the mess.

Among the proposed victims of the political document he calls a budget and his grandstanding vetos are the mentally ill, bus riders, lakefront tourists, park users and the entire community, who will suffer increased crime because they no longer have the benefit of the rehabilitation efforts by the highly-successful Community Justice Resource Center.  Also high on Walker's let's-beat-them-up-for-political-gain list are county employees, who will have to suffer through unbargained "furlough" days, and the citizens who expect the services the employees, on random days, will not be around to perform.

And then there are the county employees in the Courthouse itself that Walker doesn't want around at all.  Those would be those who maintain and protect it.  Of course, since Walker spends as little time there as possible -- and, when he does, he spends all his time on the phone with wing-nut radio hosts -- what does he care if the place is cleaned or secure? He probably figures he can get the Merry Maids in there for the $125 a week he plops down to get his house in Tosa cleaned and save money by not having all these annoying county cleaners all over the place.

But, of most concern to me as a daily visitor to the Courthouse is his attack on the security staff that have gotten people in and out of the building since early this decade.  After 9/11, everyone in the country responsible for public buildings went nuts.  In the Courthouse, they put metal detectors at the entrances they left open and closed many others (the Ghandi statue at the MacArthur Square former entrance stares at three permanently locked doors).  It took a while to get the system working -- a fellow lawyer and friend of mine once refused to take off his shoes while entering the building, spurring the current system of security passes that get us trusted regulars in the building without the petty indignities suffered by the thousands of visitors who come to the Courthouse everyday. 

The veteran security staff gets us passed through and the citizens screened in a pleasant, efficient and professional manner.  I am terrible with names in the first place, but I know their faces and they know mine.  Besides waving me in, I can see them dealing with the county residents who come to the Courthouse to conduct business; perform jury duty; attend court hearings; get licenses; drop small claims cases on unsuspecting neighbors; get copies of deeds, birth and death certificates, etc.  They are absolutely superb in getting people through the metal detectors and directed to where they are trying to get to in the complicated three-building Courthouse complex. 

Proposing bringing in third-rate security goons from Bob's Security Service or whatever it would be is insane. The only people who would support it -- other than Bob -- are people who never come to the Courthouse and have no idea what it takes to make the security system efficient and competent.  That would be people like Scott Walker and his roving band of goofballs, who are only concerned with scoring vapid political points and couldn't care less about making the county government work.

The Courthouse is one of the few places where almost the entire community has to appear at some point or other for the important or mundane business of life.  The visting, taxpaying citizens should be greeted by permanent professionals who have a stake in getting them through and keeping the building safe.  The security staff at the Courthouse entrances have grown into a talented bunch who represent our county well.  To lose them to the greedy political ambitions of a opportunistic punk like Scott Walker would indeed be a tragedy.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Say Goodbye

At the close of the official set last night -- before the epic multi-song encore -- Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band ripped through a riviting "No Surrender".  With photos from the band's career projected up behind them, they made the subtle explicit.  "There's a war outside still raging/You say it ain't ours anymore to win," he sang, as they celebrated the life of the band as they put it -- for now and probably forever -- loudly to bed. 

Springsteen was serious and joyful at the same time, all night long.  Starting off with the celebration of the mysteriously interesting "Wisconsin night" of "Cadillac Ranch" and ending almost three hours later with a soulful rendition of Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher", he was a man on a mission.  No "Are You Loose?" tonight because he wasn't; savoring the last moments of the most-talented band of rock musicians to ever come together by draining each perfect note from every player ready to give it to him.  After three more shows -- in exactly a week -- this tour will be over, with nothing further planned. 

But it wasn't just about the band.  Springsteen also engaged his other partners in his life's work -- his fans -- in every song.  He pointed to various people in the crowd all night long, waving "hi", pretending like he was encountering long lost friends.  He also gave up his body more than he has since he was crawling up the aisle during "Spirits in the Night" back at the Uptown in his famous first trip here in 1975; running down the side of the crowd to a small riser in the middle of the floor and letting the crowd in the front pit pass him back up to the stage during "Hungry Heart".  Always the earnest populist, Bruce knows his strength as a showman has always derived from his abilty to connect, and he made the most of it this night.

The centerpiece of this show was the end-to-end playing of Born to Run, one of the greatest albums ever made.  The idea of playing a whole album is an interesting one in concept, but less so in practice.  Sure, you get eight of the best songs in anyone's catalog, in their original context.  But the spontaneity of a usual Springsteen show is out the window for 50 minutes as one song follows the other.  Also, some of the treatments of the songs have changed so much through the years -- I'm thinking of "10th Avenue Freezeout" -- that you wonder why it was ever placed between "Thunder Road" and "Night" in the first place.  "Born to Run" seems jarring in the middle, unless you remember that it led off Side Two back when there were two sides to an album and you had to get up and flip the thing over.  After watching the same exercise to much the same effect the night before at the Steely Dan show -- Royal Scam, all the way through -- I think I'd just as soon these guys go back to trying to surprise me.

Which he did, after he got back in control towards the end of the set.  "Into the Fire", the most explicit of the The Rising's 9/11 songs and "The Rising" itself set a surprisingly serious tone before the "No Surrender" pseudo-finale. 

But the highlights were both in the encore, with a long "Kitty's Back" and "Rosalita".   During "Kitty's Back", Bruce led the individual band members in their solos, giving guest trumpeter Curt Ramm some extra time to stretch out and giving pianist Roy Bittan his full attention for a solo that must have gone on for over two minutes.  It reminded me of the first time I saw him at the Bomb Scare show back in '75, when he left the stage and sat in a seat in the first row while he just admired his band.  There was something he wanted to get from Bittan last night, and he was getting it.  Again, savoring the moments.

With old age, Clarence's health, Max Weinberg's TV career and numerous projects pulling the E-Streeters in different directions, they'll never put this thing together again.  Since they reunited from the last major break in 2000, Springsteen and the band has produced some of the greatest concerts of their career, as the strength of The Rising as a record and the incredible Rising tour gave them a momentum that carried them all the way through to last night. 

They've done all they need to do and said all there is to say.  There ain't no more, and there doesn't have to be.  Springsteen will be out with various solo projects and maybe he'll be able to cobble together a better replacement band than he did in '92 or stumble into another interesting project like the Seeger Sessions.  But Springsteen with E Street Band was a once-in-a-generation happy accident, both for him and for us.  And they shared the results with us last night, one more time, with joy and pride and passion.

UPDATE: The most pleasantly chaotic moment of the night is up on YouTube.  After the first bow, Bruce sees a sign for "Living Proof", a song about the joys of fatherhood from one of his non-E-Street projects in the misbegotten early '90s.  The band acted like they never played or heard the song before (if so, what's this?) and they fumbled around like a rehearsal until they found the groove -- or a groove, anyway.  Bruce holds up 1, then 4, then 5 fingers to let the band know where he is in the I-IV-V chord progression.  It was an interesting way to watch he and the band work.  The next song was..."Kitty's Back".

The Company They Keep

I don't know about you, but I always thought that the concept of "guilt by association" has gotten a bad rap.  I think you can judge a person -- certainly a politician -- by who they choose to hang out with and use to advance their political careers. In fact, as secretive and unknown as some of these people are, sometimes that's all you have. 

Take right-wing darling Rep. Paul Ryan from Janesville.  Ryan has been a rising star in the Republican galaxy for some time now, if only because he is one of the shrinking party's' few congressional members who can appear on TV without triggering the gag reflex.  At least that's what I hear from others. I still have throat trouble when I see his slick head of hair and boyish smirk appear on yet another talk show, but then I have always had trouble laughing and swallowing at the same time.  If you want a good laugh, check out his recitation of the GOP's health care "plan" to maintain the status quo.  It's a riot.

Anyway, in this morning's paper it is reported that Ryan has caught some flack from his constituents for attending an event presented by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.  FAIR has been called out by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its racist leaders and funding sources, but continues to be one of the many questionable places where Republicans like Ryan go to soak up attention and contributions.  You might even feel sorry for GOP glory-hounds like Ryan who have to patronize the well-funded rapid-right activists in Washington to gain street-cred with their dwindling base. I mean, you can't swing a stick in a room full of those people without hitting someone who is racist, homophobic, anti-feminist or some form of offensive. 

For his part, Ryan blamed his FAIR appearance on a radio talk show host in St. Louis.  It's an interesting defense.  I suppose if Charlie Sykes invited Ryan to some other slimy greed-fest with a cast of unsavory charactors -- Citizens for Responsible Government comes to mind -- Ryan would go and blame it on the radio guy if somebody with any sense found out about it.  This is the way it works with Republicans these days, I guess, getting jerked around on a chain by wingnut radio hosts to take full advantage of the hours of free political advertising mainstream radio currently provides the GOP.

We should take the "guilt by association" meme and move it to its next logical step.  It seems incompetent part-time Milwaukee County Executive and full-time gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker has a free pass to call in to any right-wing radio show in the state any time to promote his candidacy.  It happens on almost a daily basis, on shows large and small. 

If the wingnuts are going to get that involved in the campaign, they should be held up to scrutiny themselves, and Walker should be held to account for the company he keeps.  Hey, Scott Walker -- when you spent a half-hour getting stroked by Mark Belling, did you sit around with him during the breaks and tell wetback jokes and talk about how to prevent obnoxious minorities from creating another Crimeville? Tell us, Scott, do you agree with Sykes that black leaders like Al Shaprton should be referred to as "pimps" and that Lee Holloway is a "thug"?   All of these are fair questions, I think.  And, if the answer is "no" to each, what are you doing hanging around people like that?

Actually, the problem may be for the radio squawkers hanging around with Walker.  Do they really want to be associated with someone who would soak up all these in-kind political contributions from your radio stations without reporting it on his campaign forms?

Jerks of the Week

As if to prove how petty and irrelevant he is to the film fesitval business, Shepherd Express publisher/editor and Charles-Foster-Kane-syndrome sufferer Lou Fortis uses the formerly-interesting Expresso column in his newspaper this week to try to piss on the Milwaukee Film Festival that replaced his vanity-based Milwaukee International Film Festival. It was an embarrassing effort that resulted, as these things often do, in the pee running down his legs and soaking his shoes.

Under the headline "Issue of the Week", Fortis' paper mentions the MFF for the first time; claiming that the first year of the new festival "failed to generate the excitement [well, for Fortis and Dave Luhrssen, maybe] and attendance of the original and very successful [of course it was successful -- just look at it now] Milwaukee International Film Festival".  Fortis gloats that the last year of the MIFF -- which might still be active if he and Luhrssen had only gave up control and allowed the appointment of an independent board -- enjoyed a "45% greater attendance than this year's event." 

Still, an impressive 20,000 attended the event, one of which, you would hope, was Dave Luhrssen. Luhrssen's supposed love of independent film was exposed as a fraud when he failed to cover or even list the films in the festival in the S-E.  If he showed, maybe he would have learned something about cinema itself, or at least bumped into some other critics who could have given him some badly-needed pointers for his own bland, often incomprehensible film reviews.  While Luhrssen ignored the independent films and pounded out tripe about Hollywood product like "Bright Star" and "The Informant!" during the weeks of the festival, much better writers in the Journal Sentinel (your welcome, Duane) and places like OnMilwaukee covered and promoted the films in the festival.  Luhrssen used to cover and promote the films in "his" festival like he was in the midst of film rapture.  Was it about the "love of cinema" or his, Fortis' and the S-E's self-promotion (and finances)?  I think we now have our answer to that one.

The real film-lovers are the dedicated culture-builders like Chris Abele, who justifiably moved their money away from Fortis' ego-enhancement project and built an independent festival to go along with the independent film it celebrates. "The numbers speak for themselves," writes Fortis in his snide jibe at the MFF -- and, indeed, they do.  The numbers go something like this: 20,000 people celebrated independent film in Milwaukee for a couple of weeks in theaters all over town.  2 people -- Lou Fortis and Dave Luhrssen -- spent those two weeks hunkered-down in their bunker, plotting revenge and lawsuits; putting out their dreary 56-pages-and-shrinking lame excuse for a weekly paper.   

Silent Movies at the Shepherd Express

You know, I can’t help myself. Every Wednesday, on my way to the Courthouse elevators, I still have to see if the new Shepherd Express is on the sloppy racks on the ground floor, right next to the Milwaukee Courier and Conquistador. By late morning, the next issue is usually there in bright stacks and, ever hopeful, I pick it up. Hey, I convince myself, I have to have something to read before the Onion appears on Thursday.

Alas, the decades-long disappointment of the failure of Milwaukee to develop a decent alternative weekly continues. Lou Fortis’ vanity sheet has fallen into a predictable tediousness, even worse than we last discussed it almost two years ago. Now, to go along with the embarrassing Boris and Doris society column (now attributed to "Shepherd Express Staff"), the shrinking weekly paper features a full-page (or two) sports "conversation" between formerly respectable sports writer Frank Clines (late of the Journal Sentinel) and S-E’s never-funny mascot Rip-Tenor-as-Art-Kumbalek (on the cover this week as one of the potential governor candidates — hilarious, ain'a? Stop, yer killing me!).

It is the most ludicrous kind of half-informed sports-talk, run through the stupid-on-purpose Kumbalek shtick. Who reads this stuff? Who could possibly think it is funny (if that’s what it is supposed to be)? Who has ever read all the way through even one of these dreadful indulgent exercises in amateur prognostication and sloppy yuk-yuk tripe? Imagine an out-of-towner reaching for the S-E with the Packers cover a couple of weeks ago and finding nothing about the Green-and-Gold but....this crap.

Maybe the S-E can run one of its cheap little polls on this issue. No publication in history has run reader polls less creative and more sloppily presented than the S-E. Whoa! Beer is the preferred beverage by 46% of Shepherd readers! Who knew? Who cares? Next week, how about a poll asking: Which regular S-E feature do you like to read more: Boris and Doris or The Fairly Detached Observers? None of the above – 96%!

But, for all that the Shepherd Express isn’t and never will be, I have noticed something else missing over the past two weeks. There is nothing – absolutely nothing – in the S-E about the Milwaukee Film Festival that is wrapping up this weekend at various theaters around town. No listings, no reviews – nothing. The absence of any recognition of the festival’s very existence is another example of the typical thumb-sucking by Fortis and the S-E’s supposed film advocate, Dave Luhrssen, who lost their attempt to control the former Milwaukee International Film Festival for their own self-aggrandizement and as a way to keep the struggling paper afloat and are now taking their ball (the one no one wants anyway) and going home.

Since 2002, we have had the fall pages of the Shepherd filled with puff pieces about the big and small films that somehow made their way to the MIFF, which began as a noble effort led by Fortis and Luhrssen and ultimately crumbled last year under the weight of self-imposed financial problems and Fortis’ outsized ego. The interesting story is told here by film actor Mark Metcalf at OnMilwaukee (skip to this page for the money shot).   For Fortis' self-serving version, there is this last-gasp essay.

The bottom line is the chief financial backers pulled the plug and created a new Milwaukee Film Festival, independent from Fortis’ control and machinations. Fortis responded by getting his friend Ed Garvey to file a lawsuit trying to get money out of the festival idea in a way he couldn’t when he controlled it. The lawsuit is properly languishing in the Courthouse. Question: What’s the first thing you do if you file a lawsuit claiming someone is about to hijack your film festival? Answer: Ask for a restraining order to prevent the new festival from going forward. No such effort from Garvey here, showing he knows the strength of his case. Perhaps the defendants will settle at some point for the suit’s "nuisance value", although it is the community at large that is being annoyed.

In any event, Fortis and Luhrssen’s supposed love and support of independent film apparently exists only as far as they can control it.  Their failure to cover any aspect of the new festival puts the lie any notion that they care about cinema in any meaningful way.  If they did, they would put aside their petty disappointments (and get past the Journal Sentinel's sponsorship) and cover, if not promote, a major cultural event in the city.  That they can't makes them even more irrelevant than they were before  -- which was pretty damn irrelevant. 

The Mighty Mudhens of Milwaukee

The Mighty Mudhens of Milwaukee lost to the Astros in the second round of the playoffs of the Milwaukee Men's Senior Baseball League (47+ division) this past weekend.  The game was tied going into the bottom of the 8th, when the Astros scratched across the winning run on a two-out bloop single with a man on 3rd. 

The tough 9-8 loss left the Mudhens with a season record of 10-5 in a break-out season.  The Mudhens formed three seasons ago, a motley collection of middle-agers, most of whom hadn't played real hardball since high school -- if then.  I saw a story about the MMSBL in the Journal Sentinel in September 2006, visited the website, made a phone call and ended up playing in a pick-up game in Sheridan Park the next weekend.   I played baseball all of one year in high school, and not very well; pitching badly and hitting even worse.  I thought I might have learned something from 5 years of Little League coaching -- what if I did what I was teaching the kids to do? -- and gave it a try.

The Hens evolved out of those pick-up games somehow, and we started play as an expansion team the next spring.  We had a couple of informal meetings, picked our team name (in honor of Corporal Klinger's home team) and invested, as the middle-aged with Field of Dreams asperations will, in the kind of mahvelous uniforms we always wanted as kids.  Most of us were strangers, some from far-flung parts of this corner of Wisconsin.  In the dead of winter, we practiced in a converted aluminum warehouse in West Bend, just long and wide enough for a couple of mesh batting cages.

We were a joyously miserable team that first year -- revelling in the joys of dirt, grass, and leather; the snap of the ball hitting the glove; and getting used to the metal chink of ball on aluminum bat.   Although we held our own most innings, we always had that one or two innings a game that produced 6 or 7 runs for the opposing team.  We didn't win a game that first year, but most of us believed that a bad baseball game was better than most anything else we could be doing (kids, grandkids and spousal units notwithstanding).  In the second year, we brought in some fresh blood and improved a bit, winning two games and keeping a lot more closer.

When I showed up at my first spring practice this year, though, I knew our fortunes were about to change.  As I stepped in for batting practice, a tall stranger was throwing like no one I'd seen in the entire league.  I blamed it on the late evening shadows, but I never saw any of the ten fastballs he threw me and flailed helplessly at the curveball that dropped out of nowhere.  His name was Dave Boinski, a star pitcher back in the day at Pulaski High School, and he gave the Mudhens instant credibility.  In the first few games of the year, as I stood playing 1st base, the 1st base coach from the other team would try to get some information.  "Where'd you get that guy?"  I just smiled and shrugged.  I didn't really know, and didn't much care.  We were now in every game. 

Dave's pitching was great, but what really let us take advantage of it was good hitting.  We scored 10 or more runs in 6 of our 10 victories.  And, as with most of the 47+ teams, the key was the top of the order. Original Hen and lead-off hitter Craig Kennedy hit an outrageous .636 and stole 17 bases.  Rookie co-All-Star Steve Andrasic covered a lot of ground in center field and hit a timely .490.  Dave Boinski batted third (.561, and our only 3 HRs), gaining a lot of respect from opposing teams with 10 walks, many of them intentional. Second-year catcher Al Gramlow not only proved a great battery mate for Dave, but also provided left-handed power in the clean-up slot.  And yours truly, batting fifth, managed to bat .412 for the year after a horrible slump early in the season was solved by the revelation of an open batting stance.

Jeez, now I started mentioning names -- don't want to leave anyone out.  Suffice it to say Coach Dave North (out for most of the year with a shoulder injury, batting .533 in the last five games) got the best out of us and everyone up and down the order had their moments during the year, which is one of the great things about baseball. It was a year of old-man maladies -- everything from bad shoulders, knees and ribs to blood clots and prostate cancer.  We couldn't beat the two perennial top teams in the league (who look like they do nothing but play baseball, but I know that's not possible at our age...is it?), but we played every game with heart.  I reconnected with an old friend who I hadn't seen for 20 years and suddenly popped up on the team (finishing the year with crucial emergency work behind the plate in the playoffs).

In the late innings of the Mudhen's first-ever playoff victory, Dave Boinski launched what must have been the longest home run in MMSBL history, blasting a ball completely over a 50-foot tree located just over the left field fence at the Wisconsin Ave. field.  It was an incredible thing watch and something we take with us into next year.  Thanks, Mudhens, for a great season.  See you next year.

Plaisted Plays -- Tonight at Y-Not III

Friday Night at Y-NOT III, 1854 E. Kenilworth, Milwaukee.

With ERIC BLOWTORCH and DJ LANDO LAND.

Plaisted sets at 10:30 and Midnight. Theme: KICKIN' IT OLD SCHOOL!

Journal Sentinel: Taking Credit Where Credit Is Due – Or Not

One of the strategies the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has employed during its present death-spiral as a daily newspaper is the constant patting of itself on the back for a job so enormously well done. For a couple of months earlier this year, the paper used Page 2 on Sundays for a series of often-embarrassing essays by various editors about how great this or that area of its coverage is. It was the worst kind of self-serving pap, substituting real reporting for glossy reviews of past reporting, written for those who, damn you, just did not appreciate the company's product enough.

The Behind the Headlines series has ended for the most part – when last seen in August, managing editor George Stanley made a lame attempt to pretend everything was just fine after the latest staff purge that ripped the heart out of the fine arts staff and other parts of the paper. But the cheerleading for itself continues in Journal Sentinel news articles that celebrate the real and imagined impact of the paper’s various tabloid-type sensationalist campaigns against BPA, drunk driving, child care providers and whatever other hysterical button Stanley decides to push for the benefit of anxious legislators and right-wing radio hosts.

Usually, a story about a couple of city residents getting indicted for bankruptcy fraud would barely make the back page of the Business Journal, if that. But, unfortunately for them, Willie and Pamela Kohlheim were two of several subjects of the Journal Sentinel’s campaign against inner-city child care providers who were gathering just too darn much money from the state’s Wisconsin Shares program. So, not only were the financial details about their lucrative business in the story three months ago in apparent conflict with their bankruptcy filing; their resulting federal criminal case was blazoned across the front page of the Saturday paper.

What’s the big deal? Oh yeah – here it is in paragraph 3: "The charges, revealed Friday, come three months after the Journal Sentinel published a story exposing how the Kohlheims received nearly $1.3 million from the troubled Wisconsin Shares program..." Thus does the small news become big – not because it has any special significance, but because it makes the newspaper look better (if you think things like campaigns against child care providers "makes the newspaper look better").

This sort of self-congratulation in your own newspaper can, however, get so contagious it spreads to places it doesn’t belong. On the same Saturday front page, there is a fairly hilarious story about some roadway roundabouts planned for the area near Lambeau Field. It seems a Green Bay legislator wrote to the Department of Transportation pointing out that, er, some people coming out of Lambeau may not be quite, er, capable to negotiate the intricacies of roundabout yield signs. One could imagine the impaired Chucky Cheesehead circling endlessly in the roundabout until dawn as he tries to find his way back home.

Failing to find the humor in the situation, the Journal Sentinel took the occasion to act shocked – shocked! – that anyone would suggest that Packer fans might not need unnecessary directional challenges after three hours of tailgating and three more hours of high-priced stadium beer (and, last night, anyway, an exciting victory). In case you might wonder why the paper is waxing sanctimonious about an entirely reasonable request to avoid confusion on the road, the J-S takes extraordinary credit for the entire anti-drunk-driving that has been going on nationwide for at least the past 20 years; again in paragraph 3: "The issue of drunken driving has taken on a new prominence after the Journal Sentinel's ‘Wasted in Wisconsin’ series and other news reports about the toll of drunken driving in the state."

Well, no. The Journal Sentinel’s anti-drunk campaign has nothing to do with exaggerated concerns about tailgating roundabouters in Green Bay. But their attempt to claim credit for the concern does lead to some interesting possibilities for the paper to take credit for all kinds of things they have nothing to do with.

• Flights out of Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee have become 20% cheaper this year. Full page ads for Air Tran in the Journal Sentinel contributed to the awareness of the new fares throughout the Greater Milwaukee Area.
• Five Taliban leaders were reported killed in Afghanistan. The Journal Sentinel took a strong stand in 2001 in favor of the killing of Taliban leaders.
• President Barack Obama’s plans for effective health care reform took a significant hit in Congress as senators continued to step away from including a public option in their plan. A Journal Sentinel columnist, Republican WMC board member John Torinus, has advocated against effective health care reform in the pages of the newspaper for years.
• Gov. Jim Doyle proposed a new plan to fund regional transit in the Milwaukee area. The Journal Sentinel editorial board has consistently offered lukewarm support for rational regional transit plans, while allowing right-wing former copy editor Patrick McIlheran to write three columns a week spouting wing-nut talking-points against it. The newspaper therefore will later claim credit if the proposal is adopted and if it is defeated.
• The Milwaukee Brewers announced today that rookie Casey McGhee will be starting at third base in place of veteran Craig Counsel. Journal Sentinel reporter Tom Haudricourt suggested in a column last week that the Brewers should spend the September of their lost season playing the young guys to see what they can do.

And so on. Really, why not make every story in the paper about the wonderfullness of the Journal Sentinel? Real news generated by real societal currents is so tedious. The message is the messenger, however battered, wilting and irrelevant. The Lords of State Street will apparently be convinced of their own genius up to and through the last day of publication.

Will the last failed editor pretending to save the Journal Sentinel please turn out the lights.

"You Lie," He Lied

My model for legislative/executive interaction is the British Parliment's question time. There, the Prime Minister has to appear before the House of Commons once a week to face questions put to him or her by a politely unruly chamber of lawmakers. It is frequently great entertainment as the politicians get into it on matters greats and small, often obscure to us. And it looks like something is getting done, understandings are reached, concensus formed, not from opposite ends of an avenue, but in the same room.

I especially like the harrahs, harumphs, hoots and other noises emanating from the gallery as the Prime Minister tries to explain himself to supporters and opponents. Tony Blair was particularly good at this sort of thing, his impish grin and snappy comebacks as he jumped up and down from his chair making great theater as the reactions yea and nay echoed through the chamber. I always thought this kind of weekly grilling by the loyal opposition should be mandatory here. Tightly-scripted clueless boobs like Ronald Reagan and Junior Bush would have been exposed for the frauds that they were in about ten minutes.

But there are limits to the reactions of the opposition during question time, and I'm sure none of them have to be enumerated for the proper English to follow the appropriate protocol. The low dull roar of even the most adamant disapproval is not anything close to a boo or hiss. Any clown shouting out "You lie!" at the Prime Minister would be dragged out by his own party members, stripped of his credentials and kicked out of office.

The American experience with Congress in joint session with the President is much less interactive and spontaneous. The main method of expressing approval or disapproval is standing and applauding or sitting on your hands. It has the effect of a lopsided wave at a baseball game where those in the diamond seats refuse to participate. There is also a smattering of sighs, chuckling and booing, the appearance of which produces even louder noises by those admonishing the noisemakers. Generally, a President of whatever persuasion is allowed to come in, do his thing, and get out so the lawmakers can start adopting, mangling or murdering his proposals the following day.

Enter the now-infamous back-bencher from South Carolina, Rep. Joe Wilson. My favorite explanation offered for his historically-unprecedented behavior is that he was too surprised by Obama's speech because a text was not handed out to Congress beforehand. You can see him now, blood boiling and redneck reddening, as he sat in his seat while the President unexpectedly (who does he think he is?) challenged the deliberate campaign of disinformation fomented by the GOP. "No death panels! No coverage for illegal immigrants!" says the illegitimate upstart. Wilson's face flushes red, a trickle of venom streaks down his chin, his body shakes.... "You lie!" He faces forward but feels the eyes in the back of his head -- where is everyone? Why isn't anyone else jumping up and cheering my clever retort? Why is everyone else willing to let that guy get away with it?? His collegues slink down in their chairs. Wilson - they think - what a dick.

"That guy". I mentioned in my last post that "that guy" is the way President Obama is referred to on right-wing radio more than in any other way. It is a way to diminish, to delegitimize the President. Joe Wilson shouted out against the President because he doesn't think he is or should be the president. To the white congressman from South Carolina, he is just another n-word, cutting across his lawn and ruining his day. Like most Republicans, he does not respect the democratic process and does not accept the fact that Barack Obama is President of the United States. Wilson didn't see anything wrong with shouting at the President in Congress because, to him, he's not the President.

And, of course, Wilson was lying about Obama lying about providing health care insurance for the undocumented. You can't get much more clear than the title of H.R. 3200, Sec 246: NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS. Perhaps Wilson is so dense, he doesn't even know that (unfortunately) the undocumented won't be covered, that there would be no death panels, no rationing, no "government-run" health care (again, unfortunately), no socialism.

More likely, he knew exactly what the truth was and was overcome with emotion because Obama was exposing the lie, right there in his face. [UPDATE: Indeed, it appears Wilson is a health insurance industry stooge.] Because, without the lies, the Republicans have nothing. Their "plan" (copies of which some of them waved around at the speech) is a joke. It is basically a weak restatement of the status quo, calling for limits on malpractice lawsuit (both Drs. Death and Dismemberment have a friend in the GOP); allowing the creation of nationwide health insurance behemoths and monopolies (sure worked swell for the banks, didn't it?); requiring more publishing of the cost of procedures (let's see, should I go with the $5,000 fix for my broken leg or the $4,999 special at St. Mary's? Hmmm...); and some worthless tax credits (for those who don't have the money to front now, what good is a tax credit later?).

If I were Obama, I would have run through the GOP proposals, exposed them to the national audience, and knocked them down one-by-one. Then you would have really seen Joe Wilson's head explode.

WISN Newsman Compares Obama to Child Molester

I’ve written before about the practice of right-wing radio station WISN letting one of their news readers, Nick Reed, fill in when its third-rate wing-nuts Jay Weber and Vicki McKenna are not available to push the usual poison bullshit on their morning shows. I guess, along with the destruction of the news-and-information industry by firings and attrition, we have to accept that many of those left are conflicted political whores who are willing to sell out their reporter credentials for a couple of hours of overheated GOP talking-point dissemination. To paraphrase Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine the Operator, they don’t care, they don’t have to – they’re Clear Channel.

This morning, Reed was cheerily wearing his wing-nut hat while "discussing" President Obama’s talk with school children around the country on what was for most the first day of school. What is it about this president, the temporarily not-newsman wondered aloud, that makes people so distrustful of him that he can’t even make a speech to school children without parents getting concerned?

This is like Al Capone walking into the garage on St. Valentine’s Day and wondering, hey, what’s with all the dead bodies? Reed and his fellow radio clowns know very well why anyone thought twice about Obama in the schools – they created the false hysteria in the first place. As soon as the White House announced the planned speech, the national and local wing-nut choir was screeching in perfect harmony about socialist indoctrination, how Mao Tse Tung and Kim Jong-Il did/do the same thing, how no president has ever tried to broadcast to school children (that lie is what they said the first day). Mainstream radio’s dutiful listeners responded in predictable, sheep-like fashion, a screechy minority putting pressure on school districts to not dare put "that guy" (the right-wing’s favorite way to refer to and diminish the president) on their school monitors, or, keeping their kids out of school for the day, no doubt part of their campaign to make sure their kids stay stupid for another generation.

But, in Reed’s imaginary world, hysterical reactions and staged stunts like disrupted town-hall meetings happen spontaneously, in a vacuum, without any help from the 24/7 right-wing campaign to delegitimize President Obama. Feigning surprise and concern about something he very much encouraged and played a very small part in creating, the newsman in the wing-nut tin-foil hat "reported" as follows (in full context, which is more than he will ever do for you):

"This administration has created such a massive distrust amongst the American people that just the idea of the president giving a speech to kids sends a significant portion of the American population into a tizzy. Now, a lot of liberals like to point out the fact, you know, well, Reagan did it and Bush did it, and there wasn’t a huge uproar about it. Well, that ought to tell you – that’s not really an argument in your favor, or in Obama’s favor. What that shows is that Americans, while they may not have necessarily cared for some Reagan, and some not caring for Bush, they didn’t have this fervent distrust that they just, did not even want their children, without them being – It’s almost like having your friends go on a field trip with a convicted child molester, is how people are acting about this. And I’m not arguing that people shouldn’t have acted this way about it, but you have to admit that the liberals are right when they point out, well, Americans didn’t act this way about Reagan and Bush when they did it. Well, what’s that tell you? I mean, that ought to make you wonder."

Well, it does make me wonder, but not in the way he thinks. It makes me wonder how a guy from the news department can compare any president with a child molester and come to work the next day, still employed. It makes me wonder how far wing-nuts are willing to go before the bounds of human decency are reached for the supposedly upstanding corporate citizens at Clear Channel. It makes me wonder how a supposed newsman like Nick Reed can gain press credentials to anything now that he is exposed as a name-calling, greed-sucking language-twister who has no more business being behind a microphone labeled "news" than Mark Belling or Sean Hannity. "I’m Nick Reed and here’s the news," he will say again someday soon, or maybe even this afternoon. Only the foolish will take anything he says seriously. On the other hand, the national affiliate is Fox News, so, you know, it’s all a big joke to Clear Channel anyway.

President Obama gave a great and valuable speech to school children today. He is someone who can reach them more and better than any old white guy named Bush or Reagan (who pathetically used the word "Negro" when he made a stab at chatting with children late in his failed presidency). His fatherless, diverse background makes him a valuable resource in reaching today’s kids. Because of who he is and what he stands for, he is very popular with school kids. And. no doubt, he reached many today.

The right-wing could have decided to praise or at least ignore Obama in this admirable effort. Instead, they poisoned the moment as only they can, telling lies, casting aspersions on his intentions and using it as another opportunity to delegitimize and dehumanize a president that they cannot defeat on the merits of any issue. They are a bunch of sick bastards with no morals or interest in the future of the country. They would burn it down, if they could, rather than accept any Democrat as president.

As it happens, one of those sick bastards, Nick Reed, is -- still -- a newsman at WISN.

Sensenbrenner: Free Propaganda Denied

Charlie Sykes was in his usual high smug dungeon last week about the "fact" that my very own slug Congressman, Jim Sensenbrenner, was being "censored" by a secret cabal of House Democrats on the ominously-titled "Franking Commission". As usual, professional propagandist Sykes knew better about the legitimate work of the Commission, but feigned outrage about the attempt to shut Sensenbrenner’s fat trap. He knew that the filthy rich Sensenbrenner – paradoxically, one of the biggest freeloaders in the House – was trying to get around the non-partisan rules of the franking privilege to get the poison Republican message out for free. But Sykes, the oh-so-full-of-himself smartest man on the radio, is always willing to play dumb when there is a straw man to be made.

Sykes was playing off of an embarrassingly amateurish You-Tube video by pretend-journalist Rebecca Kleefisch, which featured Sensenbrenner’s chief of staff whining about how the dastardly Commission refused to let his boss use the phrases "government-run health care", "cap and tax", "failed stimulus" and other such twisted wing-nut word-play in a communication to his constituents. Kleefisch – apparently late of Channel 12 and now a self-styled "conservative correspondent" – showed up in the studio with Sykes to discuss her precious production, in which she dutifully establishes the basics of her Big Lie, and then goes to an apparently right wing tailgate under a tent outside a Brewer game to get some willing clowns to agree with her.

It’s all a delightful fantasy set-piece for those inclined to believe Obama wants to Kill Grandma and more of the worst about Democrats. Sykes took a step beyond even the insipid video to suggest that the "censorship" was the result of the overreaching of Democratic leadership . Never mind that the Commission itself is and always has been evenly divided, with three Democrats and three Republicans. Or that the Franking Commission is designed to enforce some hitherto uncontroversial rules about the content of the FREE mailings congressmen are allowed to send out. It's simple enough: "Comments critical of policy or legislation should not be partisan, politicized or personalized." But, again, for Republicans, rules are for suckers.

When Sensenbrenner or anyone else tries to use the FREE franking privilege to spout Republican talking-points and incorporate deliberately deceptive phrases like "government-run health care" (which, unfortunately, is not nearly what Obama’s health care reform is about), someone should tell him to shut the hell up. Get out your check book and send out whatever nutty crap you want under your campaign committee or otherwise on your own goddamn dime. Stop trying to get the rest of us to pay for your bullshit. The taxpayers and various no-doubt grateful corporations are spending enough on your wealthy ass so you can take your wife on your annual vacation in Europe. Try spending your own money for a change.

Sensenbrenner is not the only Republican to pretend to chafe under the requirements of the Franking Commission. It appears to be yet another of those tiresome memes dreamed up by the GOP message machine to distract and undercut the hard work of the Democrats, who are actually trying to put the pieces of this Bush-whacked country back together

As for Sensenbrenner, I have lived in his district for four years now and haven’t heard a peep – in franked mail or otherwise – from my personal congressional embarrassment. Maybe they don’t even bother to send mail in here to Shorewood, lest we be reminded how horribly represented we really are.