On Wisconsin Badger Football and Republican Destruction of American Society

Madison, Wisconsin—First, in the minds of American citizens should be an active plan to oppose the Republican project to demolish anything, anything, working to nourish the life of people.

At the national, state and municipal level, what Republicans are seeking is the slow-motion destruction of humanizing institutions of American society, and the creation of a massive prison state for disfavored communities.

This cannot happen overnight, it happens little-by-little.

Secondly, bet heavily on the Wisconsin Badgers straight-up against Ohio State; five points are a gift. Update: Badgers lose 27-21.

Republicans Target Americans

Republicans target American people - Daniel Acker/Bloomberg,
via Getty Images. (From Aronoff, In These Times)

Most Americans remain blissfully ignorant of the Republican Party project.

The Republicans do not want democracy, human rights, civil liberties, social justice, safe drinking water, clean air, senior care, education, nor healthcare. One can on listing all the humane benefits of a civilization that so troubles Republicans.

Yet, the American corporate media will not offer much help in reporting the anti-people, white party as the anti-people, white party. This accurate reporting goes against the contemporary journalistic conventions of balance, and neutrality to facts of public policy. (Never has there more reason to jettison this ludicrous and nihilistic posture.)

Kate Aronoff at In These Times lays bare the facts of Republicans in her The GOP Is Trying to Kill You - With Donald Trump at the helm, Republicans are readying to unleash holy hell through public policies.

[Y]es, politics have been deadly for some time. But the Republicans—with Donald Trump at the helm—are about to start playing the most dangerous game en masse. The 17 people Trump has tapped for his Cabinet or for posts with Cabinet rank are, together, more wealthy than the poorest 43 million American households combined. If the U.S. government has ever been poised to look like The Purge series’ ruling New Founding Fathers of America, it’s now. And if you don’t have the benefit of being in this country’s top income brackets, the leadership wants you dead.

These are the stakes. The urgency of the moment beckons.

We’re going to the ice-cream factory! There will be a terrific, new health-care plan there
(Chait, New York Magazine)

Republican Voter Obstruction Looms as Wisc Voting Begins Sept 23

Voting Is Legit, Voter Obstruction Is Not

Updated - Wisconsin Republicans have engineered a broad voter suppression campaign as general election voting begins some four weeks from today.

Republicans use the broad authority given to Republican-named Chief Election Inspectors and municipal bureaucrats populating smaller municipal offices, (with armed assistance from municipal police), as brown shirts in the war against voting.

There has been a silent coup the last five years at the point of voting for most people as election laws have been changed to favor Republicans. Few object.

It's fair to suggest inadequate personality types populating Republican-named, white poll-worker rosters and smaller municipal bureaucracies seek positions in which to say 'no,' acting with hostility against black and brown voters with the familiar mix of awkward and antagonistic posturing racists manifest.

Sad and pathetic people, but a fair hypothesis for the hostility voters encounter at the polling place.

Against this explanation are the Republican-enacted election laws fighting non-Republicans' franchise.

It bears noting that absent a voting rights body with the resources to station observers chronicling voter obstruction efforts at the some 3,500 polling places in Wisconsin, voters capriciously denied their right to vote will be people from whom the public will not hear. Point is presenting social scientific evidence of intentional and broad suppression efforts requires a labor-intensive enterprise beyond the means of most. Ask the plaintiffs' attorneys in the federal voting rights cases, One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen and Frank v. Walker.

Margaret Krome has a piece in the Capital Times on the unAmerican effort to impede voting, now joined by Donald Trump.

... Trump has never let facts stop him from promoting a message that advances his interests. 'We have to call up law enforcement, and we have to have the sheriffs, and the police chiefs, and everybody watching,' he has been saying. 'Because if we get cheated out of this election, if we get cheated out of a win in Pennsylvania.' So he asks supporters to help 'stop Crooked Hillary from rigging this election' by becoming election observers. ...

To many, this looks more like a strategy of minority voter intimidation and possibly a face-saving explanation if he loses, but one that could obstruct constitutional transfer of power if Clinton wins. Both are destructive and dangerous intentions, utterly unworthy of any candidate for any office or for any political party to condone. But it’s obvious that the candidate of the finite and diminishing pool of angry white male voters is actually counting on suppressing minority and other non-Trump voter turnout to navigate his ever more perilous path to winning in November.

What’s more, it’s not just Trump’s approach but builds on longstanding Republican strategy. In the 1970s, the Republican National Committee hired off-duty police officers to question voters at minority polling places. Legal action forced this to end, but the dwindling base of white voters continued to alarm Republican leaders. How frustrated they were when the 2012 elections reinforced their concern! And how appalling that their response was not to adjust their platform or outreach strategies to broaden their tent, but rather to develop new strategies to suppress minority votes nationwide. 

Protection from Republican efforts attacking voting rights is not going to happen from election inspectors. This writer, and sworn election inspector, can tell you that communications sticking up for the rights of voters are met with hostility and retaliation, at best. The voter must be vigilant toward her own liberties and the liberties of fellows.

This is voting in Wisconsin today. Watch this space for proposed specific solutions.

Republicans Call for Failure

"[Y]ou might have expected the debacle of George W. Bush’s presidency ... to inspire some reconsideration of W-type policies. What we’ve seen instead is a doubling down, a determination to take whatever didn’t work from 2001 to 2008 and do it again, in a more extreme form," writes Paul Krugman this morning, (New York Times).

Republicans are a wrecking ball, self-consciously, and the small swath of Americans voting in Republican primaries and caucuses love it, thirty-five days out from the Iowa caucuses.

Paul Ryan wants his dream shot at dismantling Medicare and Social Security, and any candidate running for the Democratic Party nomination should commit to protecting and expanding these programs from Republican destruction.

The next U.S.-led global economic crisis that will occur, should Republicans enact their radical economic and social policies, shows a Party resembling a nihilistic cult more than anything else.

GOP Freak Show Is On, Ignorance and Corruption Lead

Wisconsin has joined the list of states prohibiting the use of the terms, climate change and global warming, in a government Board on state land management (Ivey, Capital Times).

This is a crazy policy, and is representative of the grotesque and diverse freak show coming everywhere Republicans rule in government.

The religious right's continuing attack on gay Americans is SOP for the GOP. (Ford, ThinkProgress and Jenkins, ThinkProgress)

The success of ObamaCare in helping lower income Americans can gain healthcare is a crime for Republicans. (Krugman, NYT)

Then there is the Republicans' most despised phenomenon in American life—even more than gays, blacks, women and the science behind climate change—Medicare and Social Security.

Medicare and Social Security are still pronounced as "unsustainable" by Paul Ryan and the GOP that has been trying kill these programs for decades. (Schaaf, Racine Journal-Times) (Krugman, NYT)

Ryan and the Republicans will be saying this until the day they retire on taxpayer-financed pensions.

Crazy policy on behalf on the Koch brothers and other special interests.

To beat the plutocrats, all progressive Democrats have to do is come out not only in defense of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security but propose expanding these earned social insurance plans for all Americans.

The idea has been around for years but only a handful of politicians and writers are pushing the idea. (Krugman, NYT)

Republicans hate the idea that blacks and other minorities get something, get anything despite a lifetime of work.

If Republicans were honest, gays, blacks, Latinos would just go (self-deport or die) and leave America for whites.

If voters ask Hillary Clinton her position on expanding Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the terms of the 2016 presidential campaign will be set and the sensible center can slaughter the freak show.

Scott Walker Presidential Talk Is Cover for Crimes Shown in Black-in-White

As Scott Walker's allies try to shine up a Scott Walker presidential bid, (Bice, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) the late-December release of emails from Walker's 2010 campaign for governor shows Walker at the center of a criminal scheme of using public office as a secret personal campaign headquarters. (Capper, Cognitive Dissonance)

When Walker refused last year on Fox News to answer the question if he ever used the secret and illegal email system, Wisconsin political writer, Capper, points out today that emails made public show not only used it, "not only knew about it all, he was directing it!"

Walker hopes Republican justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court whose campaigns were funded by $Millions by the same groups who funded Walker's campaigns will cover up his crimes under investigation by a second bipartisan John Doe probe in which Walker has already been shown to be at the center of another apparent criminal scheme.

These are two massive criminal conspiracies and Walker is counting on corrupt Republican judges and legislative allies to defend and distract by portraying Walker as a serious candidate for president when most of Wisconsin knows he's a both a policy lightweight and a crook.

One problem Walker faces now is that the Constitutional officers investigating Walker's schemes in John Doe II represent what attorneys refer to as the Sovereign: The government in all its power, glory and might.

"The prosecutor wields all of the power and might of the government as the Sovereign and enjoys all of the immunity that protects the Sovereign," notes one jurist.

Walkergate is the state of Wisconsin v. Scott Walker, the Koch brothers and all of the moneyed interests behind Walker.

Walker and his political allies have attacked the John Doe II probe from all angles.

But Walker's attorneys know well there has been no concealment or distortion of evidence, and any allegation of misconduct by the John Doe probes is baseless.

So, Walker just wants the John Doe probe to go away, or at least have the public look at something else.

The truth is Scott Walker is a not-yet-charged criminal perpetrator; his allies are working to portray him as a victim.

Kevin D. Kavanaugh and Tim Russell, Operation Freedom perps, who stole $10,000s from military veterans after Scott Walker appointed his longtime friends make Walker's objective as a perpetual victim difficult for anyone outside of the Iowa GOP to buy.

Scott Walker is but a crooked hick from Wisconsin with his hand out to billionaires.

Stonewalling didn't help Scott Walker, people know Scott Walker is a crook; Walker's hoping corrupt judges will work out better.

Silence Is Betrayal as Scott Walker Continues Extremist Course

Scott Walker campaigns with felons who embezzled
from military veterans (Bice, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

In the words of Dr. King: "I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal."

The attack on the foundations of democracy led by the religious extremist Scott Walker is seen in assaulting:

• Voting rights
• Representative government through gerrymandering
• Public schools
• Clean Water
• Veterans
• Non-partisan election watchdog agency
• The Environment
• University system and the entire City of Milwaukee
• Wind and solar power
• Women's rights

have laid bare the Republican Party of Wisconsin as an unprecedented, corrupt movement seeking total power over all levers of representative government, with a dismantlement of watchdog nonpartisan agencies, a future that to ought repulse every thinking citizen of Wisconsin, including Republicans.

Until the Democratic Party and every non-GOP citizen of Wisconsin begin to acknowledge this crisis, Wisconsin is on a trajectory towards a state that will bear little resemblance to the state built up over a century.

Scott Walker believes he is tasked by God, even as he continues to take orders from billionaires to further an extremist agenda that is nothing less than a One-Party state.

Sure, Walker was only elected by one of four voters of the electorate, but those not opposing Walker and the Republicans betray our future and that of our children.

This includes outgoing Republican Wisconsin State Sen. Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center) who blasted the extremism and corruption of his own party: No time to sit back now and draw your pension.

Scott Walker is a dangerous extremist, whose own political machine installed a campaign headquarters on public property and infamously refused to answer simple questions even on a Fox News segment, and stole $10,000s from military veterans.

Silence Is Betrayal

New GOP Chair: Mascot or the Weasel

Jim Galloway writes today that "disappointed Republicans have been lining up behind J.C. Watts as an alternative to GOP national chairman Reince Preibus, who faces a re-election bid early next year. In this well-worth-watching CNN clip with Erin Burnett from last night, Watts takes on Republican detachment from the minorities it seeks to bring into the party’s ranks."

So, to front for the GOP, the nation sees Reince Preibus (enough said), and J.C. Watts.

As David Plotz memorably wrote of Watts (and Oklahoma) in 1998:

Watts is slightly less conservative than those three [Oklahoma crazies]--he halfheartedly defends affirmative action--but no less unworthy of national influence. The [former] lone black congressional Republican and a former football star, Watts offers little but a sunny temperament and bootstrapping Christian banalities. Issues stump him. Republicans studiously overlook his deficiencies because he's such good press: He delivered a major speech to the 1996 Republican National Convention and the Republican response to the 1997 State of the Union address, two plums that no other two term congressman would ever get. ... Watts is too unimpressive to be more than a mascot.

Doesn't know issues and is unimpressive. Perfect for the GOP.

If Watts gets the GOP gig, don't look for him to suddenly say: 'You know what? Blocking blacks from voting is just unAmerican.'

Total Recall Weekend and the Few Mad Republicans

Total recall weekend is winding up because of the Packer game, another rout for Wisconsin families against Scott Walker.

The required number of 540,208 signatures for the Recall has been exceeded, but it won't be announced officially as events and efforts continue through the holidays. Thousands of volunteers will continue our work for families against Scott Walker.

Amusing, from a first-person perspective: As my neighbor and I cleaned-up our turfs this morning, is the fury of the occasional Republican encountered this weekend—always a white, Republican male—over the success of the Recall movement, a sight to see.

One such Republican—angry and red-faced—who lives on Richmond Drive in Fitchburg, screamed at us this Sunday morning, "You shouldn't be here doing this. You have no right. What are your names?"

His screaming, literally, continued, as we were leaving and his wife pulled him into the house, in a scene one guesses is played out often.

"Thank you, have a nice day," we replied, and waved.

"Let's put him down as a 'no,' Don; 'hostile,'" I said as we both walked away, laughing at him, and his interpretation of Article XIII, Section 12 of the Wisconsin Constitution, the right of Wisconsin citizens to throw the lying bums out.

"Yep, the 'authoritarian Republican,'" said Don, still laughing.

But that authoritarianism, the anger that anyone would exercise the right of recall against a Republican elected official, illustrates well many of today's we-hate-rights Republicans—'You have no right!'

Yes, we do.

So, to Republicans:  If you want to recall Scott Walker: Go for it. And if you don't want to recall Walker: Don't. But this bum is history and there's is nothing you can do about it.