Milwaukee’s Parking Meters...Not Fade Away

Technology is advancing all over downtown Milwaukee these days, stomping the old and stodgy like so much forgotten sausage. Bright blue steel undergirds the new long ramps of the Marquette Interchange 2.0, replacing the crumbling grey concrete of a more dangerous era. The outside of City Hall is covered head to foot with a cloak of scaffold, as the old bricks of the historic building are replaced with newer and, we assume, better bricks. All over town, more and more public places are under the steady gaze of silent video sentinels, watching our every move like mysterious owls, ready to sweep down the moment lines are crossed or improper proposals are made.

And, on the main and side streets of downtown, where the rubber meets the road and the commuter/visitor looks for a wayside to enable his/her temporary stay, not-so-old digital parking meters are being replaced by numbered signs. The signs – caste in a classic font, as if your car is not so much in a parking space as in a temporary address – bear no explanation of how to rent the formerly-metered space. But with a glance left or right on the adjoining sidewalk you will find a kiosk of hope; an enabling receptacle for your coins, bills or, god help us, credit cards.

This is progress, or so they say. Parking meters existed at the head of your car. If there was time left from the last parker, it said so. Upon successful insertion, the meter provided the instant gratification of time (precious time!) added in increments of 3, 6 or 15 minutes (6, 12 or 30 west of the freeway) for your hard-earned nickel, dimes and quarters, respectively. Just the tactile sensation of the light button on the side of the slot and the coin falling through brought a sense of accomplishment with the real reward of civic contribution and guaranteed ticket-free stop-time.

Trips to downtown – especially around the Courthouse, my regular haunt every morning – seem stressful enough for those who are, sadly, not as familiar as some of us with the ins-and-outs of downtown living. The precious parking spot next to the library on 9th Street secured, the Courthouse visitor can usually be found at the head of the car, searching through pockets for change (no pennies!) and discovering, like a cheap-ticket customer at Miller Park reeling at concession prices, that a quarter only gets you 15 minutes. You pay what you have, you hope, you pray.

Now the irregular visitor will have to deal with the radically-changed paradigm of mysterious number signs. What to do, what to do?

I had my first experience this week with my soon-to-be meterless world. Although usually confident at doing the Downtown Park, I pulled into my first numbered rental space like a novice – somehow, I even had trouble with what is otherwise a fairly routine parallel-park. After three tries, I was in and strangely unsteady.

The first thing I realized is that I had no idea if I had to give the City any money at all for what would be a fairly brief stay in space 1146. At a meter in the middle of the day, it was a better than 50% chance that I would be able to ride the coattails of the previous parker – who has not felt the heart-lifting feeling of "time on the meter"? No more. Even though the previous parker may have paid for two hours and left after 10 minutes, there was no way of knowing that. I approached the ATM-like pay station several spaces over and got ready for the New Way.

The box consisted of a small digital screen and a keypad. Nothing seemed to be activated. A sign on the box advised me to "touch any key to start". Decisions, decisions. I chose the 3 key, hoping for the best. Sure enough, the screen lurched to life and what I’m sure was a lovely panorama of the City appeared on the digital screen for about 5 seconds as the machine got its bearings. I couldn’t really see it, since it was hardly my eye level – the machines are meant to be accommodating, as they should be, and the height accommodated appears to be 4'6" ("Daddy, Daddy, let me do it!"). Anyway, after the unnecessary advertisement for the City (like ads running on the monitors at Target – hey, I’m here already!), I was asked for my space number. OK, easy enough for me, but I worry about those possibly forgetful people at the end of the block – do we have to take notes coming out of the car now? Is it a defense to a ticket that I got the number wrong and rented a space somewhere ten blocks away?

The space number successfully entered (I hope), the robot box has a question: do I want to add time to whatever is there already or buy fresh time? Well, how would I know? Is there time already on the damn thing (see above)? Maybe there was an answer available, but I didn’t feel like looking for it. I chose "new time" and fed the box the same quarter I would have jammed into the meter 5 minutes ago.

It recognized the coins just fine and I pushed "end" or whatever I had to do to get out of this digital transaction. "Receive receipt below", except there was no receipt forthcoming. Ooops, must be out of paper. I left having no idea whether I had accomplished anything of value at the kiosk. I tried to imagine how these probably fragile machines will do in the dead of winter. I came back in ten minutes fully expecting to see a ticket on the car.

Look, I’ve seen those guys who run around emptying the meters once a week. I know it is cheaper for the city to have those (no doubt fewer) workers have to hit only 2 machines on a block rather than 50. I’m sure the machine has some sort of wireless read-out so the ticket-writers don’t even have to squint at the meters to see if it’s expired. Efficiency in city services is a wonderful thing and I’m sure the company who pitched this to the city will be patted on the back by someone somewhere for a job well done.

But, sometimes, progress ain’t worth it. We lose something of the city’s soul when we lose the parking meter to the supposedly better angels of effectiveness and cost-saving. Would it kill us to hang on to the individual meters and all the inefficiencies that surround them for the sake of a few more jobs and a more human downtown experience? When a meter fails or doesn’t take the coins, you can kick it and hammer on it until it works (not that I’d ever do that or anything...). Kick one of the new pay stations, and you’ve just wiped out the parking memory for hundreds.

Bob Dylan famously wrote: Don’t follow leaders/Watch the parking meters. Well, too late for that. What do we do now?

Gonzo Goes to Congress

Really. How much of a dick is Alberto Gonzales?

I’m serious. There has been no one in United States history who has dared to stick a finger in the eye of members of both parties in Congress on a regular basis quite like Gonzales. His "performance" before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday was an incredible display of smug arrogance and contemptuous, carefully-designed stonewalling. Gonzales represents everything wrong with the Bush administration, all delivered behind a sly, uncaring smile and the false confidence of unilateral power that could only exist in the rarified air of the Bush/Cheney White House.

Like all the functionaries of the Imperial Bush presidency, Gonzales does not think that anyone – much less members of Congress – has any business digging into the activities of this most disastrous of administrations. Those who dare to question are considered bugs to be swatted, pests to be eradicated, obstacles to be overcome. After several appearances since the U.S. Attorney scandal erupted earlier this year, Gonzales has staked out a unique sort of useful personna for the process and for the Senators and Congressmen involved. He doesn’t care because he doesn’t have to. Oversight is for suckers. Get over it.

Hell, his very existence in the job is a giant middle-finger to the self-respecting senators on the panel (a group that does not include die-hard Bush-excusers like the reprehensible Orin Hatch). Senators of both parties decided long ago that the sooner his White House-directed running of the Justice Department ended, the better. But Bush decided to keep him there, and what are you going to do about it, bub? While every other president in the history of the republic has at least tried to appear accessible and responsive, these guys see such pre-9/11 thinking as a sign of weakness. They "get to", so they do. Next question.

In the quaint pre-Bush era, the game for executive branch officials with something to hide was to play the game of "ask the right question". Like well-trained defendants in a legal deposition, they would answer only the question asked and not volunteer anything of substance that could be used against him. But, when the going got tough, even Nixon’s (then-former) AG John Mitchell had to answer the questions put to him in the Watergate hearings that glorious, democracy-affirming summer 31 years ago. By contrast, Gonzales appears with a script and will not let silly things like good questions get him off track.

And it’s not like it's hard to put together important questions for Gonzales. A simple question like "how many U.S. attorneys were fired" in the political purge caused Gonzo to claim not to know. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the Bushies fired five more U.S. attorneys tomorrow and came to Congress with the same "what’s your problem" attitude. Far from being chagrined that his hospital-bed sandbagging of John Ashcroft was exposed, Gonzales professed pride in the outrageous behavior, lied about what surveillance program they were trying to get approved, and blamed the whole thing on the Gang of Eight senators. How bad can you be if you make John Ashcroft look good?

Gonzales pretended to listen to the questions and then gave whatever damn answer he wanted to, responsive or not. What does he care? While his manner was mild-mannered and almost polite – except for that smug half-smile on his face – the substance of his answers dripped with designed contempt for the senators and the process.

After the Nixon debacle, it became far less likely that we would end up with the same kind of psychological nutbag as president, who would be able to use his office to punish his enemies, real or imagined. Such a person may try, but he would find himself without the enablers Nixon had to carry out his nefarious designs. Now, we have a different kind of "let’s not do it again" presidency; a power-mad secret society that uses crimes and tragedies like 9/11 to declare a phony "war" so that they can claim to operate in an extra-Constitutional nether world, where they can’t be touched and can’t be bothered with checks, balances and other niceties of government that they choose to declare obsolete.

Once the Bushies hit the door, that will be the end of that. Anyone who tries to recreate this kind of poison atmosphere will be sent packing to the same political hell Gonzales and his ilk will be resigned to, starting in January, 2009.

Mark Green: Let Him Wait

Sen. John Kerry is standing up against rank cronyism and political payback by temporarily blocking soundly-thumped GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Green from being an ambassador to Tanzania. His action putting a senatorial hold on the nomination has blocked the reward-for-running action for now, but Junior Bush, whose handlers never really cared much for advice-and-consent, will just appoint him during the August recess anyway. Although the Green appointment has somehow won the support of the entire Wisconsin congressional delegation (in a typical display of Democrat-only bipartisanship), Green presided over the most negative campaign in Wisconsin history and hardly deserves to be rewarded for his down-and-dirty efforts. But Kerry’s courageous use of his senatorial privilege at least delays the Greening of Tanzania for a couple of weeks, after which Green can return to Wisconsin, with extra unearned credentials, to poison our political environment again.

Having written that temporarily abandoned paragraph this weekend, it was interesting to see John Nichols coming out four-square for Green's nomination in the Cap Times Monday morning. Nichols is one of the most effective and important progressive voices, not only in Wisconsin, but nationally through frequent columns in The Nation and elsewhere and his service as a too-little-used talking head on cable TV shows. I can’t remember ever disagreeing with anything he has written and I’ll assume that he has some cocktail-circuit contact or knowledge about Green personally that somehow overcomes his appalling public record. But Nichols is still wrong about this. Mark Green is an empty suit who should remain in the closet.

Mark Green’s public career has consisted of being a useful idiot for others with actual (bad) ideas. He was Felon (yet, still free) Scooter Jensen’s lapdog in the State Assembly. He was Bush and Delay’s lapdog while in Congress for eight years. And, finally, he was the willing shill for the WMC and the state GOP as the figurehead for most negative campaign for governor in Wisconsin history.

Green, according to Nichols, "got very serious when the discussion turned to issues relating to Africa". So what? If he was really serious about African issues before or coming out of law school, there were numerous areas of legal and other work that he could have gone into to put that supposed commitment to work instead of being a useful political stooge for people like Jensen and Delay. According to Nichols, Green is graciously passing up a chance to take his House seat back in ‘08. I don’t know why Nichols thinks that return to Washington is such a sure thing, but I can’t think of anyone who would pass up a cushy resume-enhancer like "ambassador" to anywhere over the much-harder work and schedule of a congressman – especially a cipher like Green, who was a do-nothing boot-licker last time he was there and would return with the GOP in the minority and a Democrat in the White House.

Amazingly, Nichols thinks Green would actually have some impact on Bush administration policies not in Tanzania, but in Darfur, Sudan. Wha? Bush has done nothing about the crisis for years and now Ambassador Green is going to charge in to save the day? Even if he wanted to (which he might) or he was capable of it (doubtful), what ambassador in the history of the top-down Bush administration has even had a significant impact on any policy, anywhere? Nichols knows better than most how the Bush administration works. Why he thinks anything would be different with Mark Green in Tanzania is beyond me.

Let’s assume that Mark Green is a wonderful guy on the subject of Africa. Fine. But the role he has played as a partisan hack should disqualify him from anything "diplomatic", much less a politically-rewarded ambassadorship. If Mark Green wants to work in the foreign service, he can get the training and pay his dues like the many other talented, dedicated people in that field.

John Nichols supporting Green’s appointment is sort of like Cal Thomas praising a Democratic president for nominating, oh, say, Howard Dean as ambassador to...anywhere. The difference is that Thomas would never do it and a progressive like Nichols would and did. Like Al Gore graciously acceding to the theft of the Florida vote in 2000, we sometimes give Republicans more credit than they deserve. In Green’s case, he has done nothing publicly to deserve the sort of bipartisan support he has received.

He’ll get his damned ambassadorship when Bush once again flaunts the will of Congress and does the recess appointment. Let him wait.

Bonds, Ruth and Aaron

I love Hank Aaron.

When I was very young and my family was living in Wauwatosa, I was convinced that he lived in the same neighborhood as my baby-sitter when he was with the Braves. I remember watching him hit 715 on a small TV in my first college dorm room. I went to Opening Day in 1975 to see his return to Milwaukee. I am glad my son will get a chance to meet him someday during one of his many dignified appearances around town. On our way into every game at Miller Park, we touch the front foot of his statue for luck.

I also will enjoy seeing Barry Bonds break his record in this week.

Bond’s has issues, to be sure, that Aaron never had. While Aaron was Mr. Clean, Bonds, for about five years there, was certainly Riding Dirty. Bonds grew up in a decidedly different baseball era, where even gifted players were made, not born. Conditioning, weights, diet, supplements – athletes are now evaluated for basic makeup almost at birth and then designed for speed, for power, for strength. Bonds was born with exceptional skills, but much of him was built and designed by experts. Aaron just sort of happened.

Aaron was likewise of a different generation than Babe Ruth. Where Ruth was often slothful, Aaron was disciplined. Ruth could sit in the dugout, eating hot dogs and smoking cigarettes. Aaron, as a Negro League veteran, had to be perfectly behaved. Ruth also played in an all-white league and therefore avoided facing some of his era’s best players.

Bonds breaking Hank’s record won’t diminish Aaron’s accomplishments any more than Aaron diminished Ruth’s. Baseball will then have three different home run kings for three different eras. Ruth will always be the king of white-era baseball. Aaron will be the king of the middle passage, when baseball integrated and became big business. Until A-Rod passes him in six or seven years, Bonds will be the king of the designed ballplayer era, where skills are still taught but bodies, for good and ill, are sculpted and built for maximum impact (and income). Bonds, like an offensive line with an average weight of 350 lbs., is the epitome of cynical manipulation. Aaron may have been our last vestige of spontaneous magic.

Ken and I are going out to the Park today, and I won’t boo him (Ken will). Bonds is a Hame-of-Famer who also would have been one of the great players in Aaron’s era, even (especially) if he left his body alone. I hope the Brewers get ahead early and then I hope he pops one, maybe two. I’ll watch history on TV from San Francisco this week, and I hope he gets his due. Bonds did it dirty and ugly. But that’s the athletic entertainment world he (and we) are living in. He shouldn’t be punished just because he gave us the artificial fireworks we demanded.

Fred Thompson To the Rescue

My favorite Fred Thompson moment is in his most recent movie gig. In Albert Brooks’ mildly-subversive movie, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, Thompson plays himself as the head of a commission that sends Brooks to India and Pakistan to find out what makes Muslims laugh. "Are you back in politics?" asks Brooks. "I thought you were acting now." Thompson slumps over the conference table and pronounces "Once you’re back in politics, you never really escape." The other flunkies on the fake "commission" chuckle in deference to the chair, as Thompson works his substantial charms on the out-of-work Brooks character, eventually convincing him to take on the effort, supposedly dreamed up by W. himself who, Thompson claims, "has a pretty darn good sense of humor". Yeah. Funny like a heart attack, or a suicide bomb in Falusia.

After years of pretending to be a tough guy, dropping F-bombs and drinking brown liquor in the movies and on TV, Thompson is bizarrely being held out as the last remaining hope of a desperate Republican party. Saddled with a dreadful president and an out-of-touch agenda that includes the continued slog in Iraq, racist immigrant bashing and anti-science denial from evolution to stem cells, the GOP is facing the stark reality of its own irrelevance, if not its pending extinction. Staring blankly at a Law and Order rerun some months ago, someone in Rove’s office got the bright idea: Why not Thompson?

No less than ten "candidates" have stepped forward to offer their services as the Republican presidential offering for 2008, resulting in a wave of indifference and yawns throughout the land. Giuliani? The self-declared Mr. 9/11 has some, er, personal issues and his positions on social issues are at odds with the nut-right base. Oh, and, by the way, some firefighters would like to talk about what he did or didn’t do on and around 9/11, if you have the time. Romney? A little anxious to please, don’t you think? His perfect hair and teeth (talk about your Breck girls) lurch ahead of his face as he enters each room, pander-ready. OK for GOPers who want to love themselves, but he will have the smell of death in ‘08 (not to mention the rancid stench of his desired doubling of the population at Guantanamo) as he tries to find those in the enraged general populace to love him while he’s wrong on every issue imaginable – at least this week. A minor player like Tommy Thompson? What do you do with someone who is only taken seriously by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel? Run him for county executive, perhaps? John McCain? Sounds familiar...who was that, again?

And so, as America struggles to build a new start after the disastrous and corrupt Bush/Cheney years, the Grand Old Party reaches into its past to find its future. Once again, a decidedly B-actor steps forward to read the script. A typical character played by Fred Thompson in one of his movies would look dourly at the proposed candidacy outline on his cherry-maple desk while clinking the ice cubes in his ever-present glass of scotch, chuckling mildly as he turns the page. Eventually, he’d take the Rove-written proposal, crumple it up and throw it into a wastebasket across the room. "That’s a three-pointer," he would say, to no one in particular, about his waste-shooting skill. "F*#k that."

But, like Ronald Reagan, the phony hero, the real Fred Thompson is not made of such strong stuff. If you want to love him, he will make himself available to be loved. In fact, if the money is right, Thompson the lobbyist will tell you anything you want to hear and lean on the rope-line to receive your hugs. Reagan, his supposed brother-in-bullshit, had his price to carry the water of the moneyed interests and I’m sure Thompson has his. Maybe he’ll just charge them at his going rate of $500 per hour. Let’s see, this president thing is a 24/7 job...365 times 4 years, paid in advance, of course...hey, he’s yours – phony red pick-up truck and all. Oh, and by the way, his sons would like to talk to you about commerce in Uzbekistan...

Although he and those around him will spend untold hours and millions of dollars trying to define him in a glowing, aw-shucks light, Thompson will not be able to hide from how he first came to national attention – as the 30-year-old chief Republican counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee during the hearings that gripped the country’s imagination 34 summers ago. While Sam Ervin and even his then-boss Howard Baker were tying to find out what the hell was going on in the cesspool otherwise known as the Nixon White House, young Fred was sneaking behind their backs, leaking all kinds of inside information about the investigation to Nixon’s henchmen. Not that it did them any good. But it says something about the desperation of the 2008 GOP that they would turn to a veteran of secret Nixonian intrigue to help them recover from these somehow even darker years of secret Bushian nonsense.

Thompson’s other "issues" are nothing compared to him plotting with Nixon to subvert the historic work of the Watergate Committee. He has the kind of issues that would be death to any Democrat, but that just cause knowing nudges in a well-connected Republican. Lymphoma in remission? Hey, has anyone seen Cheney’s medical charts lately (Treated as Secret/SCI)? Divorce and second marriage to a 24 years younger trophy wife? A mere piffle – Rudy’s got one marriage on him, not to mention the Rage of the Second Wife, and he’s in the lead. Active in the Scooter defense fund; no doubt the successful lobbyist for that particular subversion of justice? Well, the whole thing was silly and, besides, juries are for suckers. Asbestos and abortion-rights lobbyist? Hey, a guy’s gotta eat.

In the end, Fred Thompson is stuck in a no-win situation. If he runs, he’ll be the doomed front-man for a miserable Republican party that has itself boxed-in and wrong on so many issues, from Iraq to health care to immigration to stem cell research. Somebody has to have an "R" next to their name as the loser in the history books, so it might as well be a mediocre actor in a dumpy brown business suit. If he doesn’t run, he will be the Man Who Wouldn’t Come, someone the GOP can blame their many failures on as they lose 30 more seats in the House, 5 more in the Senate and 100 more votes in the electoral college. They’ll need someone to blame – looking in the mirror after imposing the Bush Regime on the world will just be a bit too painful.

Laments and Laurels

A weekly parody of a weekly editorial.

This Scooter Libby fellow seems to have made quite an impression on President Bush. Although he was convicted by a federal jury of lying to investigators and a federal grand jury, the President stepped up to correct a slight flaw in the judge’s sentencing structure. It seems the judge got a bit carried away with this inconvenient "following the law" business we’ve all heard so much about and threw the federal sentencing guideline book right at poor Scooter’s solar plexus. Like a soccer goalie reaching to the corner of the net, our athletic president reached high and saved the country from seeing one of its finest public servants eating bad food in drab housing for several years. The score remains: U.S.A. - 5; Injustice - 0!

Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame played Summerfest this week and rocked the Amphitheater with tales of Time, Money, Dark Sides of Moons and Bricks in Walls. We hear he also had some choice things to say about the president, Dick Cheney and some guy named Stalin. We are all in favor of artistic expression, as far as it goes. But some of Waters’ diatribes came at the expense of our suburban sensibilities and our desire to listen to meaningful songs from our past, devoid of uncomfortable meaning. Sure, the lyrics have always said "Money/It’s a crime". But now that we have some, we would rather not be flogged with the actual words of that "groovy" tune, thank you very much. The British singer also seems to have some issues with America and it role in the world. If he is giving out breaks, we wish he would give us one.

Forward-thinking members of the Milwaukee Common Council are considering covering much of the city in a blanket of security by putting video surveillance cameras on many street corners. Bravo! That which makes us feel safer certainly does. No-do-gooders will now think twice before taking their crimes out of their homes and into the streets, where we can see them. The Council should also consider putting video cameras in every home – where, after all, most crime is committed. Perhaps such a system could have two-way capability, so that the city could let its citizens know about important events and remind them of the Way of Right Thinking. Why not a separate two-way video screen installed in the corner of every living room, a watchful eye for you on the community – and of the community on you? Cranky "civil" "libertarians" may "complain" about the "invasion" of "privacy". But, remember – even though He might be Big, He’s still your Brother.

And Don’t Come Back

The Waukesha Freeman has published an outrageous attack on Milwaukee in the form of an opinion column by a former editor. Has it really gotten this bad that people in the suburbs think they can just throw bombs at the City and still expect to benefit from all the good things the City does and can bring to them?

Pete Kennedy is the apparently otherwise undistinguished former editor. Given the (lack of) quality in Kennedy's work -- at least in this example -- maybe it’s not that big a deal to be an editor at the Freeman. After all, how hard can it be to edit literary heavyweights like Mark Belling and Jessica McBride?

Anyway, Kennedy of Waukesha has decided that "Milwaukee sucks". You can tell he thinks it – the clever phrase both opens and closes his column. Proclaiming himself a former defender of the city, a battery of exaggerated bad news having nothing to do with him has led him to this dire conclusion. Let us bow our heads in reverence as the suburbanite casts his final judgment. My god, how could we have gone this far astray?

In doing so, Kennedy joins the ranks of Sykes, McBride and other adult suburban brats with a media forum to bash the City. I wonder – is this going on amidst a significant portion of the (relatively) young adult suburban population that don't have a column, a blog or a radio show? Have they really gone south on the city that some of them grew up in and most of them come into every week to drink, eat, recreate and shop, if not work? Are they really going to hole up in their subdivisions and shut out the rest of the world?

I hope not. I hope these sentiments are limited to the small-minded media dim-bulbs like Kennedy, Sykes, etc. They must know that, without Milwaukee, Waukesha is Wausau. Without Milwaukee, they’d have to go a long way to get any big-city culture – theater, music, restaurants. Hey, when is Waukesha Night at the Brewers this year? Can we expect anyone to come? Anyone at all? Does Kennedy have his playoff tickets lined up? Should we let him?

You would think, given this drastic verdict, that something horrible has happened to Pete Kennedy in the City. But, no. A family member or friend, perhaps, put in mortal danger while waiting at a stoplight? No. Hell, there must have at least have been an uncomfortable moment in the company of black teenagers on the second floor at Mayfair. No, again.

Instead, Kennedy says he has been persuaded by things he knows nothing about, but about which he has read and heard a lot. From what he has heard about various well-reported and over-hyped incidents in the City, he extrapolates like crazy. "How many people visit Milwaukee to take in a game or have dinner, only to have their cars broken into?" he asks, I’m guessing rhetorically, although it’s hard to tell. "How many people work in Milwaukee and suffer the same fate?".

Those answers are not hard to come by, if he really wants to know. A couple of clicks on the Milwaukee Police web page gets you to a fairly comprehensive crime data compilation, the last available from 2004. Let’s see: in 2004, motor vehicle thefts were down from the year before – all property crimes down an impressive 15.2%. I am in the criminal courts everyday and I haven’t seen any sort of increase in vehicle theft cases – what is he talking about? Like all wing-nuts, Kennedy believes what he wants to believe, facts be damned. He says right-wing media hound Sheriff David Clarke has advised people "not to leave anything of value at park and rides heading into Summerfest". Good advice, anyway, but at the park-and-rides? Is the problem in Milwaukee or Goerke’s Corner in Kennedy’s own Waukesha County?

Kennedy is outraged, apparently, by 46 murders in the City this year so far, about on a pace for 2004's 88 and certainly less than 122 a decade ago. "And that doesn’t count the mob beating, or the gang rape, or the break-ins or the sewage," he exclaims. Well, no. Let’s see – one mob beating, one gang rape...hardly seems like a trend to me. Problems, yes. But Milwaukee as "ground zero of the apocalypse"? "A rotten excuse for a city"? Is he more likely to be the victim of a "mob beating" "than any other place in the United States"? This is crazy talk.

Kennedy says he’s done with Milwaukee, and that’s fine. Although we appreciate the diversity that a vibrant city brings, we can probably do without another smug suburbanite in an alligator shirt talking loudly at LaFuente about how miserable we are.

But, for all his righteous lecturing to the city he knows nothing about, Kennedy and his fellow Waukesha County residents will be back. It’s a long way to get around Milwaukee to get to that beautiful Lake Michigan water. And that smug white enclave in Waukesha does need the water. And, whether they know it or not, they also need the vibrant, imperfect city that lies just to the east.

UPDATE: I was so incensed by this ridiculous column, I missed Xoff's more expert and economically-based response.

What If A Democrat Did It: The Home Version

Junior Bush had his moment to show what he’s really made of, and came through for his puppeteers in grand fashion on Monday afternoon. His hand no doubt forced by his primary handler, Dick Cheney, Bush took a break from his boat party with Putin to commute Scooter Libby’s sentence, meaning that one of the driving forces of his disastrous regime has been spared the petty indignities and bad bedding of prison life. Libby’s outright lies to a federal grand jury are as good as forgiven. The only thing left to do is the complete pardon on Bush’s way out the door and, what the heck, how about a Medal of Freedom?

Despite the latest outrage and the threat to our democracy, not to mention law and order, by the always imaginative Bushies, the timing of this could not be better for me personally. Some of you don’t know that I am at heart an entrepreneur. I have in development a board-game that should be ready in time for the holiday season. It will be called: What If A Democrat Did It? WIADDI will be a revolutionary board-game – more educational than Trivial Pursuit, more tricky than Jenga, more mysterious than Clue. There are no wrong answers in WIADDI. The only limit is your – imagination!

As you play WIADDI, you progress through four levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Expert. As a Beginner, you are presented with simple, easily-managed problems. At this level, you should be able to determine what would happen If A Democrat Did It without too much trouble. For instance, Bush selected a losing Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate and political hack who presided over the most negative campaign in Wisconsin history to an ambassadorship in Tanzania. Now – altogether – What If A Democrat Did It?!? (This phase is meant to be shouted by everyone in the room and everyone has to take a drink.) Points are given for each keyword hit, for which the moderator rings a bell. The obvious answer: Radio wingnuts (ding!) would accuse Democrats of blatant cronyism (ding!) and political payback (ding!). Three bells means a perfect score. See? It’s easy – and fun!

Higher levels present more challenging facts to really get your Cranium cranking. Let’s say a wealthy Democratic contributor and lobbyist for mining interests is put in charge of the Mine Safety Administration. The fox watching the chicken coop! Kickbacks no doubt expected! Contributor probably sleeping his way to the top! Can the head of EPA be far behind? You get the idea.

Here is a secret tip for success at all levels of WIADDI: All you have to do is think of everything that the mainstream media hasn’t done in response the Bush Outrages and assume they would do what they should have been doing all these years If A Democrat Did It. Given everything the lapdog media has failed to do in the Bush Years, you have thousands of options to choose from.

At the higher levels, the stakes get greater for the Hypothetical Democrat. Imagine a Democratic Vice President locks all his routine daily work in a man-sized safe every night, scrubs the Secret Service records of who has visited his mansion and, ultimately, declares himself a member of the legislative branch, untethered by executive branch requirements. WIADDI? Public flogging? Impeachment, surely, but that would be too good for him.

At the Expert level, the mind reels over what would happen If A Democrat Did It. The first problem at that level is a classic – the shutting down of the recount in Florida in 2000. This answer requires a thousand-page essay not about whether, but how the Republicans and the media would prevent the Democrat from taking office. What if a Democrat, after 9/11, used the tragedy as a bludgeon to grab power for himself, start a phony war in the fragile Middle East, wiretap phones without a warrant, and even hold people in a sun-baked prison, incommunicado for more than five years, complete with torture and secret renditions to countries who really know how to "get the job done"? You can almost hear the reporter outside the White House: "A delegation of Democratic congressional leaders went to the White House today to tell the President that the time has come to step down..."

At this level, it will be tempting for you to leap immediately to impeachment for such a lawless regime. But, remember, points are given for creativity. You have to let go of your disbelief about what Bush has managed to get away with. Forget also that a Democrat would never even think of pulling stunts like any of the Bush Horrors. Remember that, whoever the Democratic nominee and eventual president will be in ‘08 and ‘09, they will be run through the personal and professional wringer and held to a higher standard than the Republican, as they always are. Mountains will be made out of molehills, and, no matter who it is, you will feel icky marking the ballot for them. But, in WIADDI, you get to imagine what would happen if the Democrats really did elect a lawless dolt. The ultimate WIADDI challenge: What if it was the Democrats who nominated George W. Bush? Talk about an ass-kicking!

After the board-game takes hold, I plan to syndicate the game on the comics page, like the old There Oughta Be a Law or Sudoku, with problems ripped from the day’s headlines.

Today’s WIADDI: What if a Democratic president commuted the sentence of a key aide who was convicted of lying to investigators and a federal grand jury about his involvement in a political smear job that resulted in the outing of a CIA operative?

Answer: What, are you kidding me? Maybe we should just take bets on how long it would take an administration like that to be run out of town on a rail.

Lament & Laurels

A weekly parody of a weekly editorial.

The Washington Post had an interesting four-part series this week about the role that Vice President Cheney has played in the Bush administration. While the Vice President has taken heat from some on the left for his megalomaniacal style, paranoid secrecy, power-grabbing legal obfuscation, his role as puppet-master to Bush the sock-puppet, helping Scooter Libby out Plame and obstruct justice, shooting an old man in the face and his hypocritical proud-grandfather gay-bashing, we think he might be getting a bad rap. With the world changing after 9/11, we think Cheney may have been just the person to help President Bush guide the ship of state in uncharted waters. Or not.

Ann Coulter, the leggy agent-provocateur of the conservative movement, may want to take a step back from her tough language when discussing the sexual proclivities of a certain Democratic presidential candidate. Although she often entertains us with her colorful challenges to the political status quo, she may have crossed a line when she said on a cable show this week that John Edwards and his ailing wife, Elizabeth, hosted weekly meetings of a satanic swingers club in their palatial home. She did not make things better when – after Mrs. Edwards called the show to complain that the couple’s weekly bridge club was, at least, misunderstood – Coulter accused the Edwards of using the memory of their tragically dead son to distract the other bridge players for unfair advantage. We can only hope that Coulter would take better advantage of her still-unexplained media access in the future to poison the national political debate with, perhaps, a little less vinegar.

Alderman Michael McGee Jr. had the bail on his state criminal charges reduced and eventually posted by community supporters this week. This is good. After being transferred to federal court, it was determined that he would be held without bail. This is good. He is being held in the same place (the Milwaukee County Jail) that he was before his state bail was posted. It is hard to argue with this, as it is with the fact that he made bail on the state case. The bottom line is that he will be held, or not held, as appropriate. It seems this would go without saying, but it doesn’t, since we just said it. We wish both McGee and his prosecutors the best, and we’re sure each of them knows what that is. The wheels of justice turn, well-oiled by the citizenry that has greased the gears with the blood of patriots. We wish both sides well, except the side that is eventually proven wrong. Shame on them.

Summerfest celebrates its 40th anniversary this week with another fun-filled 11 days of music on the lakefront. Since this paper has spent an incredible amount of (multi-colored) ink and killed thousands of trees promoting it and has sponsored the event every year since it’s inception, we don’t have to tell you that we think the festival is just peachy. In fact, we have decided to mail this one in. Knowing that many of our readers doze off at about this point in this editorial every Saturday morning, we will pad the rest of this paragraph with phrases from other L&Ls...Again, the music unites us...Good things do come to those who wait...They all merit applause...Good show, [insert name of current or former Summerfest director here]...Sounds as though they deserve a plaque...And the rest, as they say, is history.

Missing the Point

This week has been pretty interesting, blog-wise. My last post was noticed, discussed and linked-to by Eugene Kane and Patrick McIlheran at the Journal Sentinel, which lead to Charlie Sykes linking to both of those. Even defrocked radio priestess Jessica McBride decided to get into the "act", putting her (barely) two cents in. Most interesting was that the exposure there led mostly anonymous people to post comments here – 93 and counting.

I engaged with the various name-calling, hostile Anonys, trying in vain to coax them into some sort of discussion about what the issues in Milwaukee might be and how they would suggest dealing with them. But, since they appear incapable of serious discussion, they were easily led into wing-nut foolishness. I was honored that they thought enough of me that they would attack me personally. I was called closed-minded, pathetic, an idiot, a socialist, a moron and a couple noticed I was – gasp! – a defense attorney (and you know what that means). They had great fun (they thought) putting words and ideas in my mouth and in my head, such as: support for income redistribution (no); I was " a marionette for the likes of Kane/McNally/McGee" (nice grouping, that – didn’t know McGee had a column); I deny there are any problems in the inner city (hardly); and, my favorite, a controlling liberal who wants the poor and minorities in "liberal prison camps". No kidding.

There were various riffs and sidetracks all week on the comments. An apparently African-American fellow named Trevin got into it with some blockhead named Seve who said he moved to Tennessee after living in Riverwest and had a few stupid things to say about black men and white women. Some ignorant souls chose use my comment section to heap more unearned abuse on Eugene Kane, threatened as they are by any unintimidated black perspective. The comments (and McIlheran and McBride) also fulfilled my prediction that, if they talked about Oshkosh at all, they would minimize and excuse the type of violence that would have them dancing all over their keyboards for weeks if it happened in Milwaukee.

In the end, the amateur wing-nuts were cornered into a declaration of Social Darwinism – only the fittest deserve to survive and we should leave the rest to their own misery. We worked so hard to get where we are (how that is or where that is necessarily unstated), how dare the poor try to use their food stamps? Whatever. My advice to them was to give it a try – pull what’s left of the safety net and see how safe your community is then. No takers on that one, so maybe they really do have a modicum of sense after all.

This all started in my last post, when I challenged the radio and blog wing-nuts for not making a big deal out of the shootings in Oshkosh as they do anytime someone jaywalks in the inner city (yeah, I know it’s worse than jaywalking, but if that’s all they had, they’d use that too). They all missed the sarcastic point – the fact is I think any sensationalist exploitation of near-tragedy is ridiculous. But, if they are going to play that game – and, boy, are they ever – violence in violence, police calls to Mayfair are the same as police calls to Bayshore and Brookfield Square (pretty much equal) and high school dust-ups go on all over the place. But, everyday, wing-nuts like Sykes, Belling, etc. scour the police blotter to find something that went wrong in the inner city the night before, so that they can continue their campaign of convincing all of us how hopeless any problems there might be.

That’s their game, and it’s easy to see through if you realize that they have really no interest in whether the inner city is safe or not. They just want to create racial tension by the self-righteous and, ultimately, racist notion that "we" have no responsibility for those who, they say (over and over and over), are too stupid and/or lame to help themselves. It is not a serious political position – it’s a ratings ploy. Listen to their (always friendly) seminar callers, saying things like "You know, I’ve had it with these people." We’ll be right back with more hate after a word from our sponsors...

Gun Play in the Outer-City: Where’s the Outrage?

The sound of gunshots shut down a local festival on Saturday. Five people have been arrested; one charged with trying to grab an officer’s gun.

Sure, you say, probably just another sad story from some ironically-titled "Jam for Peace" rap-fest at the Ampitheater or the Rave or something. And this, after the shocking aftermath of the Juneteenth celebration. What is wrong with these people? Let’s get Charlie Sykes to run another e-mail from David Clarke so we can get on with the solution to this vexing problem.

But, no. It happened at the Country USA Music Festival in Oshkosh. Violence at the whitest music event in Wisconsin in one of the many whitest parts of the state.

I have searched high and (really) low on the wing-nut blogs to find any reference to this outrageous criminal behavior. No sanctimonious clucking about values and broken homes. No call for action to Stop the Violence and save the broken community. No lashing out at Journal Sentinel columnists who are insufficiently demanding of family values, reform and tough law enforcement in their constituent community. Mike Nichols – come out, come out, wherever you are!

But, nothing. Not from Sykes, McBride, Robinson – even the often-thoughtful Esenberg. Forget the weekend – if this had happened with black people in Milwaukee on Saturday, they would have all left their Sunday picnics to wring their hands over their keyboards about the sad community in which they don’t live. All of the above had a field day over the attack on a motorist by stupid kids after the Juneteenth celebration on Thursday. That unfortunate event played right into their – yes – racist tripe about how bad things are in the City and how only Clarence Thomas wannabees like Sheriff Clarke and the newly-anointed OK-black-guy James Harris can save us, er, them.

But white gun-play outside the City? If they talk about the Oshkosh violence at all this week, the radio and blog wing-nuts will make excuses for the landowner next-door to the festival, talk about Second Amendment "rights", blame the concert promoter for not making peace with the guy before the event. It will be portrayed as an isolated incident in an otherwise law-abiding community. The only Milwaukee TV cameras pointed that way will be those looking to see if the corn really is knee-high this July 4th.

Both the Juneteenth and the country music festival had this in common: Both were overwhelmingly positive and peaceful. Both were marred by unfortunate violent events by bad actors. The vast majority of those attending both events were law-abiding and meant nobody any harm.

But, there is a double-standard for the agenda-driven wing-nuts, who will pretend to get hysterical about violence in one place and ignore even worse violence (there were no guns fired in the Juneteenth incident) in another. Remember Mayfair? Last I heard, there were just as many police calls to Bayshore and Brookfield Square. But that doesn’t fit in their small box, so, never mind.

The fact is that much more of society is broken-down besides Milwaukee’s Inner City. Jobs have been lost, the health care system is broken and rural frustration is as real as any other kind. As long as we fall into the phony Us v. Them mentality of the right-wing crisis-mongers, nothing will be solved. But they’re not looking for solutions. The wing-nuts thrive by division. They could care less about what is really going on in the Inner City. It is just something they drive by. Talk about your "drive-by" media...

Right-Wingers Hanging on a Limb

I stand accused by some of my comment-ers of being too optimistic about the chances for a complete Democratic super-thumping – including the presidency this time – in 2008. Believe me, I have a lot of dark respect for the mechanizations of Karl Rove, who, as we speak, is working hard to finalize the deal on what’s left of Mitt Romney’s soul so he can get cracking on the next chapter of his historic run of morphing laughable empty suits into allegedly presidential timber.

But this year, the GOP message managers are having to dig so deep into the pit of right-wing-fringe quackery just to get a pulse, I don’t think there is any way they can come back with a mainstream message that would satisfy a majority that is openly rolling their eyes at stale Republican tactics. If the theme song for 2004 was (or should have been) the Who’s "Won’t Get Fooled Again", the song for ‘08 (if it wasn't so obscure) may well be "Clown Strike" by Elvis Costello: "Even a clown knows when to strike."

As usual, the GOP message is driven by talking-points sent out to pathetic lackeys on wing-nut radio and their thin-shadow blogger-buddies. The message having been driven like a spike into the heads of the wrongly-faithful, the pitiful bunch of Republicans running for president can only sign on to the warped agenda and hang on for dear life. Here are some of the "winning" issues the GOP has chosen to highlight in the twilight of its relevance and existence:

• WAR: Even Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda whackjobs don’t hold a candle to the wing-nuts in their lust for more blood to be spilled by American soldiers. If it takes 5 – heck, 10 or ("like Korea") 50 – more years of death, mutilation and tears to justify the deadly bad judgement of Junior Bush, they’ll do it – or, rather, they’ll have you do it for them. While anyone with any sense turned against the worst foreign policy blunder in American history years ago, the wing-nuts want our sitting-duck soldiers to be there longer; at risk for no good reason. Adding intellectual insult to haven’t-you-had-enough injury, the same people who brought you the Iraq fiasco are now beating the drums to invade – or, at least, bomb the hell out of – Iran.
  The GOP candidates are all on this one-wheeled bandwagon to some degree or other. John McCain is busy putting the final nails in his political coffin by declaring himself ready to be "the last man standing" for the failed Iraq mission, whatever it is. Draft-dodger Rudy Giuliani is also not shy about putting more young lives at risk. Nominee-to-Be Romney at least has an issue he hasn’t had the chance to flip-flop on, cheerily announcing that the population of the institution that is the symbol of our international pariah-ness – Guantanamo – should be "doubled". No kidding, he really said it should be doubled. With opponents like these, who needs supporters?
• IMMIGRATION: About a year ago, it dawned on the GOP message-designers that they had to throw a hail-mary pass to get traction with their deep, back-woods base. So they got senior TV/radio wing-nut Sean Hannity to celebrate and publicize the "Minutemen", a bunch of racist thugs in SUVs who were conducting a private campaign to chase and harass poor border-crossers in the Southwest. This led to the declaration of a "crisis" in immigration. Apparently, there were just too many brown-skinned, foreign-languaged people showing up for work all across America. The trumped-up "crisis", not coincidentally, led to the first increase in years for membership in the Klu Klux Klan and other "organizations" who know how to make the most of xenophobic hysteria.
  Again, the GOP candidates have heard the siren sound of their nut-base and, instead of volunteering for the next Habitat for Humanity project, will be out there with the suddenly-enriched private contractors (check for Minutemen to make the most of their opportunities here), building giant double-fences to keep Them out. Meanwhile on the northern border, Canadians will continue to come and go with impunity, their white skin shining in the sun of continued opportunity.
• STEM CELLS: Opposition to stem cell research is the new measure of how whack a politician is. Thousands of frozen embryos are tossed out every year, as the couples who save their possible futures in a jar conceive on their own, change plans or simply move on. Some of those embryos headed for the dumpster can be used to search for possible cures for various ailments and conditions. But, from the people who bought you the Terry Schivo tragedy, we have irrational opposition to such research.
  Again, the bunch of minor figures calling themselves Republican presidential candidates genuflect at the altar of the right-to-"life" crowd (their version of life, not yours, thank you), facts and common sense be damned. They do an elaborate dance and pretend that there are alternatives (like the recent diversion about getting usable cells from the skin of mice, or something like that), but its all just pandering. Cue up Monty Python musical number from The Meaning of Life: "Every sperm is sacred/Every sperm is good..."
• NO-TAX PLEDGE: Here in Wisconsin, we have a bunch of Republican and a Democrat or two who have signed on to a "no new tax" pledge circulated by helpful GOP blogger Owen Robinson and driven by the usual talk-radio mouthpieces. The result is now chaos in the statehouse, where reasonable compromises made during the usual state budget process have been thrown out the window by the GOP-controlled Assembly. Never mind that no one has come forward with an alternative way to fund state programs without the fee and tax increases proposed by Gov. Doyle and massaged by both Dems and Reps on the Joint Finance Committee. The Sin of Tax has been committed and the pure will force the hand of government to righteousness, or so the line goes. Today’s hardliners will be tomorrow’s tail-between-leggers, declaring victory over minor concessions and living on to poison some other debate some other day.

Again, it’s hard to see how the national or state GOP escapes responsibility for any of this radical fringe posturing. Will U.S. voters really vote in a president who has pledged to continue the disaster in Iraq? Will they really return a party to power that is committed to preventing valuable stem cell research and one that beats up on the immigrants we know to be a valuable resource to our national economy? Will they really support lawmakers who make ridiculous no-tax pledges, tying the hands of the government to do important things, like provide health care for those without insurance?

I think people have had it with the lies, the posturing and, ultimately, the goals of the Republican party. They have shown themselves to be indifferent to what matters and incompetent in providing basic services without corruption. I’ve never had much use for them, but now most of America is so done with Bush and anyone who looks like him. Read any poll you want – the country has not only decided to turn the page – they are looking people reading from a different book.

Bush Goes To Albania

In the darkest days of his presidency, Richard Nixon escaped to foreign countries. As the noose tightened around his political neck, he felt much more comfortable in the company of Leonid Brezhnev than with anyone in his own government; happier reveling in the contrived public celebrations of the dutiful Soviet citizenry than daring to darken his own American streets.

It is much more of a stretch for Junior Bush to come up with a friendly foreign place. Say what you will about Nixon (and I will if you don’t), he knew the difference between diplomatic delicacy and the kind of dangerous ham-fisted international brinkmanship practiced by Bush and his team. Even with a superior doomsday nuclear arsenal pointed at the Soviets, Nixon knew not to make too much of it. He didn’t bluster; he negotiated as best he could with a more dangerous "enemy" than al-Qaeda will ever be. The result was an uneasy but effective detente and, more importantly, a place for Nixon to hide when he needed a warm-welcome pick-me-up.

If Junior has any thought of ditching to "friendly" countries as he winds up his disastrous tour as president, the pickings will be slim indeed. Sure, he could always find a cozy desert tent in Saudi Arabia, as long as he and the unpopular king don’t try to walk around in public. If he wants a friendly reception in Old Europe, he better haul ass over to Britain before Blair hits the road. All told, there are many more counties in this pissed-off world that would just as soon arrest George Bush as invite him to dinner.

But, according to press reports, our Boy President seems to have bought a friend in Albania. A charter member of the Coalition of the Shilling, Albania cleaned its drab streets, brought out red-white-and-blue bunting and even put out a commemorative stamp of Junior’s face, certainly a first-and-only for the soon-to-be trash-bin-of-history embarrassment. "Bush is the president of the world. He is like a king to me," gushed a confused 18 year-old Albanian, no doubt reading Cheney's press releases and trying a bit hard to please. Bush complied with the near-child’s lofty view of himself, proclaiming that his support for the independence of Kosovo (an important issue because that country has a majority of ethnic Albanians) in terms familiar to Americans who have had to tolerate his unearned arrogance for over 6 years: "The question is whether there's going to be endless dialogue on a subject we've already made up our mind on," proclaimed Bush, making me want to take the other side immediately. What’s all this mindless chatter? So it is written, so let it be done.

It’s hard to see why Albania would want to become (even more of) an international laughingstock by joining the George Bush Fan Club (membership: one). They have a goal of joining the European Union – yeah, like that’s gonna happen now. Apparently, the post-Cold War Albanians got close to the U.S. after Bill Clinton intervened in Serbia. Nobody told them, I suppose, that Bush is the Anti-Clinton, both by design and by destroying everything that Clinton – and the 41 presidents before him – built up over the years in international respect and influence.

Prime Minister Sali Berisha said Bush was Albania's "greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times." Wow. Doesn’t say much for Albania, does it? Maybe they should start inviting some Hollywood stars over – you know, liven the place up a bit.

But, hey, even bad presidents need a place to get away once in a while. Albanians can look forward to seeing a lot of Bush in 2008 since he won’t be needed around here much – he certainly will not be campaigning for GOP candidates, who would just as soon make his ticket to Albania one-way.

Green Goes to Africa

UPDATE BELOW

Those held breathless since November can now finally exhale upon news of the near-term political future of last year’s GOP gubernatorial wanna-be/won’t-be. Yes, your prayers have been answered: Mark Green is going to Africa.

No deed or perceived sacrifice goes unrewarded in the Republican circle of cronyistic backrubs and post-political payoffs. After all, Republicans are always whining about how much they sacrifice by going into government "service", since they could always make more money raping-and-pillaging in the private sector. After he played the part of President back in the ‘80s, Ronald Reagan and his "Mommy" were paid for his efforts by the "gift" of a $3 million ranch from unnamed wealthy contributors. No doubt Junior Bush will get his after he hits the road – and not a moment too soon – in 2009. Adjusting for inflation, well, I hear the Neverland Ranch is available.

But Junior was a failure, you say. And how. But, despite the revisionist bullshit of recent years by those who know better, Reagan wasn’t much better. You always get the sense of pre-arrangement in these matters. "A deal is a deal," my contracts professor would say. "You pays your money and you takes your chances."

For the, er, lesser lights of the Republican would-be Revolution, the reward sometimes depends on availability and, more important, who is (still) in power. Back in the glory days, the Bushies slipped long-time Wisconsin GOP party chair Rich Gruber into a cushy ambassadorship. Now, with their power in shambles and time running out, they looked around for some way to reward that Green guy who ran that lousy campaign in Wisconsin – thumped convincingly, even with all that help they gave him by going after poor Georgia Thompson – and found the need for Green’s small talents in Tanzania.

It’s hard to tell what Green brings to the project, if there is such a thing, in the small, no doubt needy African country. Sure, he spent time in Africa while a young sprout as a teacher in Kenya with a noble project out of Harvard. Perhaps he can help Bush bring his false dream of abstinence to the fight against AIDS. If there are criminal elements in the government or on the streets, he could surely help relate, having worked hand-in-glove with remarkably-still-free convicted felon Scooter Jensen while in the statehouse and with Tom Delay and Mark Foley after being sent up to the big leagues. If memory serves, he even had an aide close to Jack Abramoff – this is a guy who knows how to get things done, the law be damned.

But ambassadorships to politically-irrelevant countries are the last vestige of an ancient spoils system, a harmless resume-padding device for those who have run for office, contributed or happened be old college frat buddies of presidents – accidental, appointed or otherwise. I doubt Green will spend much of his brief tenure in-country, fixing visa problems by day, beach-walking by night (with security detail, I assume). You wouldn’t want something like this to get in the way of his rain-making legal work or what I assume will be a continued period of post-election whining about that $468,000 he eventually agreed he couldn’t spend on his would-have-failed-anyway campaign. It’s a dead issue, but it’s all he’s got.

UPDATE: The Journal Sentinel weighs in on Green's political payoff this morning as a note in the insipid "Laurels and Laments" section that it runs on its Saturday editorial page (Usual sample: "We saw this week that the traffic lights on Wisconsin Ave. were adjusted to allow a better flow from east to west. This is the kind of bold action that makes our city a great place in which to live.") Apparently, the perk does not merit a whole editiorial of its own. However, Green gets a few props he hardly deserves: "He is generally possessed of uncommon good sense and has superb people skills," claims the J-S.

Oh, really? "Uncommon good sense"? You mean like trying to transfer his complete federal campaign fund, knowing it was against state law, filing a frivilous lawsuit just to cover his ass and ultimately agreeing that the Elections Board got it right, and then still whining about it? You mean like that? You mean like opposing stem cell research? Like proposing a move of the entire state Department of Workforce Development to Milwaukee? Like being Junior Bush's lapdog while he was in Congress? Uncommon, maybe? But uncommon good sense? Quite the opposite.

"Superb people skills"? "Green walked away from reporters pressing him for details on just how he thinks he would fix the state budget deficit." Yep, Mr. Common Man, alright. Superb skill with his buddies like Felon Scooter Jensen, Mark Foley or Tom Delay, maybe. For what that's worth.

Remembering the Unnecessary Dead -- Again

Memorial Day in 2003 came a mere three months after disastrous invasion of Iraq. I wrote then on my old blog about the destroyed lives of the soldiers recklessly sent into harm's way by Junior Bush and his various enablers. Back then, the deaths were relatively few and more traditionally battle-related, as opposed to the continuing crisis, where our troops -- when they are not walking targets for those still avenging the violation of Iraq's sovereignty -- are getting caught in the crossfire of a civil war.

Here is a re-print of my May 26, 2003 post:

Every Memorial Day, I think about the Unnecessary Dead. This year, more than ever, it is important to remember those who have been put in harm’s way by vapid politicians in unworthy and undefined causes, in the pursuit of only power and wealth. The number in the Iraq invasion is 162 (and counting – more deaths today). And, this Memorial Day, I am celebrating the life and family of one of the first to die in this most-recent stupid war – Kendall David Waters-Bey of Baltimore, Maryland.

Kendall, an African-American and a Muslim, died in a helicopter accident on the first day of the invasion. It’s the kind of accident that happens when fragile equipment meets desert wind and sand. Acceptable collateral deaths, no doubt, by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and G.W. Bush.

Not so to Kendall’s father, Michael Waters-Bey. Holding a picture of his son for TV cameras at the time of his son’s Unnecessary Death, he said: "I want President Bush to get a good look at this, really good look here. This is the only son I had, only son." Asked what he say to Bush, the boy president, if he had the (unlikely) chance, he said: "This was not your son or daughter. That chair he sat in at Thanksgiving will be empty forever."

Kendall’s sisters were even more clear: "It's sad that this war is going on and that we have to lose so many people over nothing...This war is all about oil and money. But he [Bush] has already got oil and money. It's about greed. ... He ought to send his daughters over there to fight. See how long they'd last over there."

Whoa. Those of you reading this for the first time – over two months after these statements were lightly and, mostly, only locally reported – now can understand why you might have missed it. The justifiable rage of the Waters-Bey family and their poignant comments were completely ignored by the mainstream media, which opted for the more predictable, banal and (most-importantly) war-supporting "he died doing what he wanted to do" comments of the more traditional, er, white families.

You wonder what happened later to the Waters-Bey family. I think I remember Bush staging a photo-op with the families of the Unnecessary Dead. Didn’t exactly notice whether the Waters-Beys were in front of the line. Or invited at all.

So here is to the memory those American soldiers who died in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq and all the dirty little secret and not-so-secret wars before and since. No one supports the troops more than those who try to stop the Unnecessary Deaths.

Of Dependence, Entitlement and Victimhood

One of the favorite tirades of wing-nuts is about the supposedly terrible cycle of dependence and entitlement by those various imagined elements of society who exist only to soak up Our Money. Whether it’s food stamps or health care or even (in the case of immigrants) education, according to the wing-nuts, there is no end to poor people living large at the public trough. Give a desperate person cooking oil and tortillas and, tomorrow, they will want...beans to put in the tortillas! Those who consider themselves adversely affected by societal injustice are said to be playing the "victim card".

But, take something from the right-wing that they consider their birthright, and there is no contest as to who is best able to loudly wail and gnash teeth. It is the wing-nut, by a country mile.

Right-wingers portray themselves as self-reliant, self-made, entrepreneurial, tough, worldly-wise and straight-shootin’. But, take away just one of their precious AM radio spots, and they will squeal like stuffed pigs headed to the bacon factory. They are exposed as guilty of the sin of dependence. They feel deprived of their entitlement to the non-Brewer evenings on TMJ. What will be done to make up for the loss of McBride? Who will make us whole for this violation of our precious local wing-nut slot?

Since McBride was bounced from the TMJ family like a ground-rule double, the wing-nut radio hogs and blogs have been in full bleat in defense of their beloved Jessica. They bemoan the increased scrutiny of what is said on the public airwaves, as if they can’t possibly be held responsible for what they say. Mark Belling was bellyaching this week about lefties trying to monitor all the wing-nuts on the radio, looking for the same sort of "gotcha" moment that "got" McBride. The premise seems to be that they are "entitled" to this free air-time for the GOP agenda – why can’t they just be left alone to poison the electorate in peace? Anyone daring to listen to what they actually say is playing a trick on them and on you.

It is interesting how hurt the wing-nuts big and small seem to be about this otherwise minor loss. The blowhard bullies have had sand kicked in their eyes and they are running home to tell their mommies. They rightly identify the problem (for them) of having one less local wing-nut on the radio. That means local elections and issues will just be a little less twisted and a little more (gasp!) fair. There will be fewer repetitions of lies about Doyle, Dems in the legislature, local alderman, school funding referendums, etc. There will be one less radio show playing scurrilous anti-Doyle Club for Growth and WMC ads for free five times, and then talking about how wonderful they are. Belling and Sykes will have to pump it up just to keep the negative hit numbers up.

No doubt about it, the GOP message machine is dependent on their radio stalwarts to anchor their daily campaigns of talking-point misinformation. Just this little hit of losing the McBride block of time has them feeling and acting fragile, like maybe their stranglehold on the AM airwaves won’t last forever. Maybe washed-up dips like Dennis Miller are the future – you know, a little nicer, relatively harmless (I said "relatively"), in-one-ear-and-out-the-other stuff, rather than the believe-or-die screechings of Hannity or Savage. Besides, I bet the Miller show is a lot cheaper than keeping the studio in McBride’s house so she doesn’t have to trouble herself with trips to the East Side (a neat little tidbit from Joel McNally’s column). And, if there is one thing radio executives appreciate, it’s cheap programing. What else could possibly explain Jay Weber?

The radio is going to have to find something to do after the Democratic Landslide of 2008, when Rove finally retires and they pull the plug on talking-point support. What will Belling and Sykes do without their marching orders? I can’t imagine them having to dream up all this wing-spin on their own. You can’t get it all from the Drudge Report. Can you imagine those two actually saying something different from each other every day? Talk about the End of the World.

And, McBride – poor Jess – is bitter, you bet. Her new/old blog is filled with the omen of dark conspiracies and mournful pleading. You can hear the pain of her denied dependence; the loss of her Sacred Entitlement, the unrequited pleadings of her lost listeners. Who dares to take her down for the sake of community sanity, better ratings and cheaper programming? You are not the Victims, dear reader, She is. Who will Right the Wrong and give her back what is rightfully hers?

Alas, no one. Maybe she’ll get back on the air as a fill-in on WISN (although they already import another wing-nut woman from Madison for that purpose, and she actually might have to step foot in the studio). She will have to settle, for now, for her unfortunate J-School students (but, wait! It’s summer!). There will be no Oprah moment, no welcome back to the public eye, and no redress for her imagined victimhood.

McBride Dumped for Miller – A Horse A Piece

UPDATED BELOW

As Bill Maher said on his great HBO show last night, not all deaths are sad. Jerry Falwell, the charlatan twister of ignorant souls, croaked in his office this past week, and, although he had already done most of the damage in his long, fear-mongering career, the world is much better that he is gone. Then, this morning, comes the joyful news that TMJ has put Jessica McBride’s radio career out of its misery – or, should I say, relieved the rest of us of having to listen, even in passing, to one more talentless wing-nut.

Sometime last year, before I began this blogging thing in earnest, I was driving down the road one night, trying to listen to McBride. I was so infuriated by something or other that I called the station to get on the air to discuss whatever she was babbling about. In the time between dialing the number and the screener answering the call, I couldn’t take another minute of her incredibly nasal, whiny, unpleasant delivery, much less the substance of her "ideas". When the screener finally answered, all I could do was scream "This woman is so annoying!" Then I hung up, feeling somehow unclean for even thinking about joining Jessica’s World, if only as a sure-to-be rejected caller.

When wing-nuts proclaim that the right-wing has access to all the AM microphones in the country because of some free-market triumph over liberal ideas, I think about McBride. No one ever "competed" for McBride’s slot – someone at TMJ just decided to give it to her based on her political connections and her willingness to spurt the daily GOP talking points. Her droning monotone – when she wanted to make a point, she-would-talk-with-out-in-flec-tion-in-ov-er-ly-long-sent-en-ces-un-til-she-got-to-the-end-and-then-she-would-stop-like-she-had-just-made-the-great-est-point-in-the-world-and-all-you-had-to-do-is-let-it-soak-in..... – made for some of the most excruciating listening possible. This was not someone with undeniable talent that was begging to be heard. And, as far as intellect was concerned, she was the Queen of the Wimpy Hang-Up, abruptly disconnecting from callers who had her on the ropes, which, given her limited capacity, was often.

Even more entertaining, in a train-wreck sort of way, was her TMJ vanity blog. There, in long, rambling, often late-night postings, McBride would flesh out what passed for her "ideas". As comical as the (lack of) substance was, the woman needed an editor. With a little help, she could have been just as insipid in a much shorter period of time. I’m sure her "writing" will continue somewhere on the Web or in the wing-nut-happy Waukesha newspaper that inexplicably runs a column from her, although some of these folks do conveniently disappear once they are not getting paid to blog.

We are informed this morning that McBride’s demise was accelerated by her un-funny pretend-interview with Eugene Kane after the poor 4 year-old was shot outside of her house in the inner city this week. You can’t blame McBride too much for that one, really. Apparently, someone in the backshop at TMJ got a little too cute with the ridiculously unfunny idea that Kane would make chicken sounds if asked "tough" questions by McBride. After it aired, McBride posted something saying she was beginning a new series of conversations with lefties, starting with Kane, and included a link to the fake interview. That post has disappeared from the TMJ site, as she soon will. Radio is Stalinist that way – gone is gone, like it was never there. Last week, she was a valued member of the TMJ line-up. Now? Who was that again?

Speaking of the unfunny, McBride is being replaced by the new nationally syndicated Dennis Miller show. Is there a sadder case in the entertainment world than Dennis Miller? In the late ‘90s, Miller had a brilliant live show on HBO on Friday nights, where Maher now reigns. His monologues and riffs while showing snapshots of the famous were often very funny and insightful. He was usually lefty, sometimes not, especially on stuff like rights for criminal suspects and Bill Clinton. Then 9/11 happened, and, like the formerly gifted writer Christopher Hitchens, he fell off the Cliff of Legitimacy, into the Abyss of Kill-‘em-All. Miller turned so far to the right, he started doing Fox News and Bush fundraisers. HBO had a stand-up special with him a year or so ago and it was depressingly unfunny. He was dour and shrill, substituting unearned ridicule of anything Democrat for his former hip-reference humor. He actually explained in the middle of the show why Junior Bush – someone who would otherwise get deservedly sliced-and-diced by his former self – gets a pass from him in "this time of war". Given his past glory and what looked like a healthy skepicism about all politicians, it was pathetic.

Now, Miller has hit rock-bottom, picking up a stint as a wing-nut radio squawker. I have listened to it several times on WIND (560) in Chicago (where you can also catch an early dose of racist homophobe Michael Savage if you can’t wait until 11 p.m. on TMJ). Besides picking up some extra change sadly shilling for "gold as a great investment", SleepNumber beds and pre-fab steel buildings during the breaks, Miller does the usual national wing-nut nonsense, trumpeting the GOP talking-points of the day. He also fills space by "interviewing" guests who are "one of my best friends in the world" who happen to have written "the greatest book I ever read", like xenophobe Mark Steyn, who writes bogey-man nonsense about the mongrel-ization of Western cultures that are too accepting of all these, you know, Muslims. Miller cheerily goes along with all this, throwing in his now-tired asides about how hanging out at the UN is "like the bar scene in Star Wars", etc. He manages this in a fairly breezy, hep-cat cadence, throwing in Pink Floyd bumper music in case you forgot his generational reference points.

Like I said, sad and tragic. Now we get to listen to his crap instead of McBride’s. Six of one, half-dozen of the other. All we can hope for is lots of Brewer night games, bumping him into the nether regions of the un-listened-to, if only for a night or two.

UPDATE: The other shoe dropped this morning -- no more McBride vanity blog on the TMJ site. She never even got to say goodbye. All together now...Awwww.

Dix Six Trix Nixed

UPDATED -- SEE BELOW

These are not good days for the Grand Old Party:

• The disastrous war in Iraq has caused the unnecessary deaths of thousands of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. Because of this and the whole fiasco known as "the Bush Administration", the Republican party is facing the prospect of an electoral rout in 2008 that will make 2006 look like a shining moment of glory.
• The Attorney General has been exposed as a knowing stooge to White House schemers who have tried to purify the nationwide corps of U.S. Attorneys to include only those who will advance phony voter "fraud" and other prosecutions designed to prop up GOP talking points.
• A pathetic group of GOP presidential aspirants are falling all over each other and their own words, desperately trying to find a way to run away from Junior Bush, embrace the exaggerated ghost of Ronald Reagan and to get someone buy their empty souls so they can be the successor empty suit for the next shadow gang of manipulative handlers.
  

In days like this – well, anytime, actually – the Party of the Rich will grab any thin reed to hold on to that which might keep it from finally going completely over the Falls, crushed on the rocks of reality and not-so-instant karma. And so, from the always helpful "Justice" Department, here comes the case of the Fort Dix Six.

For all the Fear the Bushies have tried to ratchet up to drive their agenda since 9/11, and for all the violation of our privacy and civil liberties, there is remarkably little to show for prosecutions of those who would Do Us Harm. Indeed, the hapless law-stretchers at Justice have found it hard to get convictions of those few poor souls they managed to indict. See this interesting compilation of post-9/11 "terrorism" prosecutions put together by the Center for Law and Security at the NYU Law School.

Some of the most interesting highlights: "the vast majority of cases turn out to include no link to terrorism once they go to court" and there is only a "29% conviction rate for federal charges of terrorism". This despite the fact that "conviction, no matter how short the period of time or how minor the charge, is the primary goal" of the government’s efforts. The authors conclude "either that the threat is much less than we thought, or that the policies of the United States have reduced the threat of terrorism through deterrence, and, yes, through excessive vigilance." The authors give the government a little too much credit for creating any atmosphere of deterrence. With the government wasting its time chasing around wanna-bees like the Fort Dix Six, what serious evil-doer would be deterred by that activity? My guess is, if they exist anywhere in this country, they have a good laugh and go right back to work.

But that doesn’t stop the wing-nuts and other Bush enablers to glom onto the news of the Dix indictment to toss out all the regular canards, not the least of which is Fear, of course; but also "the PATRIOT act works" and "we must continue warrantless searches of phone conversations, bank records, , etc." One look at the affidavit supporting the indictment shows that, while not as lame as the guys a couple of years ago whose first request when meeting with a fake supplier was for "really good boots", these guys were a long way away from being a danger to anyone.

One thing that jumps out of the document is that absolutely none of the vaunted PATRIOT act or extra-legal snooping touted as so necessary by the Bushies and their allies were used to foil what was already a very bad plan to attack the Army base at Fort Dix with the equivalent of assorted sticks and stones. After their DVD replication service turned an amateurish tape of their shootin’-and-shoutin’ play over to the authorities (even porn afficionados know to watch out for that happening), investigators simply applied good police work to find out what they were up to and eventually arrest them. The affidavit relates lots of phone conversations, but not from warrantless wiretaps – the calls are with an informant that was able to infiltrate the group (that they allowed the infiltration is a primary sign of lameitude for any self-respecting jihadist).

These deluded fools dared to partake in paintball training in furtherance of their evil designs. Paintball training! They also jumped through quite a few hoops to just get a decent map of Fort Dix. A map! By the time they were set up by the informant to meet with a fake arms dealer that was going to finally get them some AK-47s (they were arrested instead), the whole group of them apparently only had a shotgun, a handgun and maybe a couple of rifles between them. They would be the successors to the Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight, but they didn’t have anything to shoot.

They weren’t "terrorists" – they dreamed and talked about of being terrorists. They are guilty of impure thoughts and false bravado. You can imagine them jumping out of their pizza delivery truck at the checkpoint outside Fort Dix, the guard effortlessly grabbing the guns out of their hands, slapping them in the face and literally kicking their silly asses back where they came from. No one at Fort Dix was ever in danger from these guys, much less the rest of us.

But that doesn’t stop the wing-nuts from using the wacky antics of the Dix Six to justify everything from more illegal snooping to the Iraq war to the war on illegal immigrants (3 of the 6 were illegal, or something). In the meantime, Osama bin Laden spends another summer dancing in the mountains of Pakistan, the Iraqi "parliament" is taking a couple of months off and three of our soldiers are missing.

UPDATE: In the GOP "debate" last night, Mr. 9/11, Rudy Giuliani, used the Dix Six arrests as an excuse for the Iraq war, claiming it was proof of the "if we leave there, they will follow us home" nonsense. He also used it to play the immigration card, saying the lack of "reform" means illegals can "find a big underground to hide in". Oh, that Rudy -- like Bush, he's never seen a tragedy or crime that he couldn't play for political advantage.

And then there is Jessica McBride, who claims the media is downplaying the Dix Six story because, well, they're so soft of terrorism, I guess. Most of her screed is devoted to the fact that some of them were illegal (they "went to public schools and had businesses"!) and from the the former Yugoslavia, although 23 years or so removed (never mind that the 20-somethings came here as children). She also manages to suggest that the "secret recordings" made were proof of the success of King George's warrantless program. No. The recordings were made by the informant -- if he consents to the recording (he did), no warrant is necessary -- and there is no evidence that any of the extraordinary powers claimed by Bush had anything to do with the investigation whatsoever.

So, calm down, Jessica. You never know when something might happen that really proves your "points". But I wouldn't hold my breath. The hapless Fort Dix Six sure ain't it.

You've Read It, Now Hear About It

As regular readers know, this blog is all sooo serious and political. And, yeah, it's been a couple of weeks -- I promise to get something new and topical out there in the next couple of days.

But, with a summer-like sun shining for at least one day here in Milwaukee, let's talk music.

• Radio Milwaukee continues to evolve as a breath of fresh air on the bottom of the FM dial (well, it used to be a dial -- honest!). 88.9 is delightfully ecclectic -- much more old-school and R&B than I expected. I also have learned a lot about some new stuff -- it hasn't changed my opinion much about the death of rock and roll as a social force, but I now understand there is more out there than Dave Matthews. It should be a great summer knowing that there is now a station you can lock into while driving around and also get something unexpected and enjoyable. It's only been, like, 30 years since you could say that in Milwaukee.


• If you have never been to Summerfest in Milwaukee, it is worth the trip whoever is playing. Two of my favorite acts are appearing opening night on June 28th -- Steely Dan at the Ampitheater and Milwaukee's own Violent Femmes at the Miller Oasis. I promised my boy (12) I would take him to see the Femmes for the first time, so it's a tough choice. I just hope he knows he'll be the one saving our seats all day...

I have been grabbing my guitar and playing around Madison and Milwaukee off and on for a long time. I am doing a "Mike Plaisted and Friends" night at Linneman's (1001 E. Locust in Milwaukee's Riverwest) this coming Thursday (the 17th), from about 9 to Midnight. Yes, there are political songs ("Why Does Dan Rather Want to Be My Friend", "Stupid War", "Community Standards" [Inspirational Verse: "Some people will do anything/To get themselves elected"]). So, if you are around, come on and check me out live in person.

I am also hosting and playing at the "Peace Though Music" Lennon tribute at Linneman's on the night before Memorial Day (May 27th). It is a benefit for WAVE (Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort) and the Brady Campaign.

Alright, enough self-promotion. Now back to the nitty gritty...

At the Blog Summit

If I had some fear and trepidation about the Blog Summit at Marquette this past weekend, it was amplified when I got there and figured out it was being held in a law school lecture hall. It has been some 21 years since I had the pleasure of these kind of surroundings (albeit at UW) and, somehow, you never shake the feeling of dread and sheer tedium that comes with certain environments, even if there are now electrical outlets for your laptop and wireless in the air (although not really working). Regardless, I enjoyed the program more than I thought I would, thanks to the smooth efforts of Wispolitics’ Jeff Myers, Mike Gousha, the energy in the air and the contributions of several of the panelists.

The more entertaining and enlightening panel by far was the "diversity panel", featuring Eugene Kane, Jennifer Morales and – the pleasant surprise of the day – Dasha Kelly. A writer and poet, Dasha was smart, funny and delightful. She is a great example of the kind of bright light that shouldn’t have to fight through editors and space limitations to be heard. She sort of made us political back-and-forthers look silly with our sometimes-petty gamesmanship, as she cut straight to heart of her very personal life and observations. She said she wasn’t political, saying that it was so obvious that good schools are important, what more is there to say? But that in itself is a political statement, especially when many of the right-wingers in attendance are actively trying to undermine public education. [Aside: the mention of school "choice" industry shill George Mitchell’s name during another panel properly got one of the biggest laughs of the day.]

The conundrum posed by the diversity panel was an appropriate one: What’s with all the white guys in the room? Indeed, most of those in attendance at the Summit were as white as the guys in the portraits of legal luminaries plastered all over the walls of the lecture hall. If blogging is to ever become a truly democratic revolution, more and different people need to come to the party. Morales and Kelly attributed the lack of minority and working-class participation to the fact that the poor don’t have time for this sort of relative nonsense, unless it is putting food on the table. Kane suggested African-American media outlets like the black radio stations and newspapers should develop more of a blog presence, which they should, since they have the resources and the audience that needs to get its voice heard.

I asked Eugene Kane what it felt like to be regularly called a racist by a variety of radio and blogging wing-nuts who were at the Summit. (Making my point for me after the fact, right-wing golden-boy and Sykes TV panel lackey Owen Robinson rudely accuses fellow panelist Kane of "racism" for his remarks at this very Summit.) Kane let those in attendance off the hook a little too easily, I think. If I were him, I would have called out a few. Instead, he said that kind of nonsense has rolled off his back since he began at the Journal Sentinel and he left it at that.

In the first panel, Ed Garvey successfully baited Charlie Sykes into making a fool of himself. You can see why Sykes seldom exposes himself in a public forum. After I asked Garvey and Dem consultant John Kraus what progressives could do to get the kind of megaphone the right has with their talk radio echo chamber, Sykes smugly produced "the world’s tiniest violin" for us to play – in other words, he has the talk show distributing his tripe on the 50,000-watt station and the rest of us can go stuff it. He then mentioned Air America (big laugh from the wing-nuts on that one), NPR, NBC, CBS, ABC, New York Times...you know the drill. It’s a lie and he knows it – the only thing progressive about the MSM outlets is that they are reality-based, as opposed to the wing-nut fantasy world Sykes lives in.

I made a comment before that particular question that I think bears some repeating and some thought. The question being discussed was what impact blogs have had on elections. My comment was that the lefty blogs have had little, because we are somewhat diverse and come from different perspectives and interests. The right-wing blogs, on the other hand, are always on the same talking points as wing-nut radio, be it talking about Pelosi’s scarf or Sheryl Crow’s single-square of toilet paper. My point was that the right-wing blogs provide much more political cover for the radio squawkers and their politicians than left-wing blogs do for whatever is going on on our side and therefore have more effect.

This was apparently "whining", according to GOP flack and panelist Brian Fraley. For one thing, unlike the characterization of my comment by another right-winger, I did not say it was "unfair" that the left didn’t have the same sort of vehicle (although, in terms of use of public airwaves, it is). I think it was a fair description of the relative playing fields. But, even if we had a chance, progressives would never use their message power to pound lies the way the right does. For one thing, we don’t have to – the truth is always on our side.

Anyway, nobody whines louder or more pathetically than a bunch right-wingers trying to convince you that the MSM has all this supposed liberal bias. Some of that very whining was done by Sykes himself, as he complained – no, whined – at the panel about the Journal Sentinel ignoring a non-story about some comment by Michael McGee, Jr "spontaneously" discovered by a fellow-traveler’s blog (nothing happens by accident in wing-nut-land). It seems to me McGee saying something incendiary is like Junior Bush saying something stupid – it’s just not news anymore.

As for the rest of it:

• Jessica McBride disappointed by coming in with notes and a fairly subdued attitude, except when she explained why her "blog" doesn’t have comments (supposedly libel concerns and, really, she just doesn’t want to hear it). At least she hung around most of the day, unlike Sykes who bolted after his session, lest he be exposed to more of the real world.
• What I’m sure was an excellent presentation by Madison attorney Jennifer Peterson was unfairly affected by my flashbacks to the legal classroom and the many legal education classes I have taken through the years. No matter how interesting, one case citation and I’m down for the count. I talked to the very friendly Rick Esenberg about it, and I think we are both putting in for 30 minutes of CLE credits.
• Rick and I both said we read each other’s blog, both agreed each other was wrong about everything, and continued a very nice conversation. That’s what I like about being around most lawyers – disagreeing without being disagreeable (are you listening, Owen?). The only thing I could think that might lead to fisticuffs (well, more likely, armwrestling) is Bush v. Gore. Now them’s fightin’ words!