Pierce writes: "Right now, if nothing else changes, it looks very much like Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, is going to keep his job."
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks at the National Rifle Association convention in St. Louis, 04/13/12. (photo: AP)
Scott Walker for President?
17 May 12
ight now, if nothing else changes, it looks very much like Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, is going to keep his job. If that's the case, and assuming he doesn't go down in the ongoing John Doe investigation in Milwaukee, I predict that he will have an "exploratory committee" set up in Iowa within the month, and he will suddenly discover a deeply held desire to spend a lot of time in places like Nashua and Manchester. Make no mistake: If he hangs on, he will be the biggest star in the Republican party. Chris Christie yells at all the right people, but has he ever faced down the existential threat that schoolteachers and snowplow drivers brought to bear on Walker? Marco Rubio? Has he withstood the wrath of organized janitors and professors of the humanities? If Walker wins in June, it wouldn't take very much effort at all for Fox News and for the vast universe of conservative sugar-daddies and their organization to decide that Walker should be the odds-on choice for 2016.
Dear Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: That heinous future actually could happen if you don't get out of the Green Room and get the DNC off the stick here. I'm still not kidding. If the Democrats blow this one, and if it's proven that the DNC could have helped in any way and didn't, you should be fired before the sun goes down. In 1990, the DNC declined to help fully a congressional candidate named David Worley in Georgia. The Worley people were begging for money, for organizers, for a lifeline of any kind. Very little was forthcoming. Worley lost to Newt Gingrich by 978 votes. How would the subsequent 10 years have been different if Gingrich's political career had ended ignominiously in 1990? That's the kind of chance that you seem to be allowing to go a'glimmering in Wisconsin. Let Walker win, and Democrats not yet born will curse your name.
I am less than optimistic about Tom Barrett's chances because he's getting outspent about 20-1, and because the numbers stubbornly refuse to move. This should be a base-vs.-base election, but it's being played, at least by the Democrats, as yet another unicorn-hunt after "independent voters." Barrett keeps talking about the "civil war" that Walker incited in Wisconsin. But that's not the argument. There should have been a "civil war" over what Walker was trying to do. There wouldn't even be a recall without what Barrett calls "the civil war." The "civil war" was entirely appropriate. Sometimes, in politics, there are issues worth screaming about. I'm no expert, but the end of collective bargaining during an era of flat-lining wages would seem to be one of those. By citing the "civil war" as the reason for voting for him, and without, I believe, intending to do so, Barrett makes all those people standing in the cold last January marginally complicit in what he says as the problem the recall was meant to solve. But the problem with Scott Walker was not that he inspired an outburst of incivility. It's that he tried to screw the workers of the state of Wisconsin, and that he got more than halfway there, and that he apparently intends to go the rest of the way if he manages to survive the recall. It's not idle speculation to say that a lot more is riding on this than who gets to be governor of Wisconsin. This is the first real fight of the 2016 presidential election.
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We may never get our "voting" rights back!
Consider that over the past forty or more years of computerization every organization on the planet from military, to banks to government to corporations have been spending tens of BILLIONS A YEAR on network security and IT WILL NEVER BE SECURE.
So now we have a private company, refusing any look at their software which is Windows The Seive based channeling 80+% of the votes in America.
None of the above is exaggeration...
She presses for NOTHING that has teeth and tiptoes around any controversy except that which her handlers allow...
...hmmmm, upon reflection, that description seems to fit the vast majority of the present Democrat electeds.
Sickening...
"Even Wisconsinites" may vote for Democrats, but they also gave us Joe McCarthy and hate preacher Gerald L. K. Smith (who actually ran for president). So it shouldn't be too great a surprise if they fail to turn out a sitting governor, evn if he is a bullying jackass.
Kids perform "antics". The GOP behavior since Barack Obama has been in office is morally reprehensible. And the population isn't rising up because they're too busy with "Dancing With The Stars" and video games. They barely know Barack Obama, and certainly don't know what's going on politically at the national level, much less what's going on in Wisconsin.
I don't understand why the DNC hasn't pitched in after all the work that the people of Wisconsin have done. Scott Walker has access to as much money as he wants thanks to the Citizens United ruling. I believe Wisconsin is a place for Democrats nationally to make a stand since it's the poster child for the GOP overreach that's going on in every state that they control. A recall win by Walker would only validate and encourage this ALEC/Koch-taugh t style of vicious, destructive politics.
The mainstream media can share a lot of the blame for their lack of coverage of many big issues. They're as afraid of the GOP bullies as the Dems seem to be. I'm not asking for slanted coverage. Just tell the story and let us draw our own conclusions!
Maybe that is why so many journalist act like elections are just exiting "horse race" and it is fun to see who wins, rather than the deadly serious attempts at averting the disaster, a republican win would be.
Going back to the Bush years,.... which is what the republicans want to do..... would be too horrible to think of, for those of us, who care about the future of our children, and the country.
As we all (should have) learned during the past four years, this is the one true "change we can believe in."
That said, I suspect the real issue here is the strength of organized labor. Walker's recall would resurrect the appeal of union membership to workers who -- thanks to years of Ayn Rand brainwashing -- are too ignorant to understand the need for solidarity.
But Obama, beholden as he is to Wall Street, is as anti-union as any Republican: note particularly how he killed Employee Free Choice.
That's why he and his DNC (obviously) want Walker to win.
Which raises three questions:
Will the Democrats -- terrified as they are of Occupy and other manifestations of our reawakening social conscience -- allow their party to become an effective instrument of change?
Or will they continue to serve their Wall Street masters by deliberately losing the Wisconsin recall?
And what does that tell us about the national election itself?
But -- fool that I am -- I set aside my doubts about Obama, reasoning if he kept only three of his many promises -- public-option/s ingle-payer health care; Employee Free Choice; restoration of our constitutional rights -- I would regard my vote as fulfilled.
But this alleged Democrat for whom I cast my ballot turned out to be a Republican instead.
Since then I have come to realize the true nature of the problem.
It is not our political parties. Behind their smokescreens of rhetoric, they are indistinguishab ly fascist -- note their unanimous votes on NDAA and all other such impositions of tyranny.
Instead the problem is capitalism -- infinite greed elevated to maximum virtue -- and capitalist governance: absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent, total subjugation for all the rest of us.
Thus are we disenfranchised , enslaved, exterminated.
Now in despair I drift ever closer to wholehearted embrace of the one option that seems to offer understanding, discipline and at least a genuine possibility for liberation: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
Here is my question: Where is the AFL-CIO? Where is Richard Trumka and the vaunted Executive Council, most of whom are busy kissing his a_ _? Where are the Change to Win honchos? Hoffa? Where are you?
Too many of today's labor "leaders" snuck in through a side door. They never got their hands dirty during their ascendancy to the top. Now they spend more supping in the Senate dining room than they do out representing their memberships. Shame! Shame on those pie cards...those centrist pie cards. As a 71 year old retired worker I'm telling them that not a one of them could have carried a water can for real workers.
Sell outs who should be shunned by progressives... OR...taken over as we MUST do with the money greased DNC.
No matter what Debbie, Obama, Sanders, others on the left don't do -- Allowing Dems to run our government is 100% better than the GOP/TP (which is owned by big $$ from "nobody knows") -
With all that money controlling our government, cops, prisons, war complex (etc) -- my democracy (and constitutional rights) are going away - fast= in free fall.
Never ever vote TP/GOP - while we still have the vote. The newest minority that should vote out TP/GOP are women!!!!!!
http://laborcartoonzone.blogspot.com/
Left of Center Independent Political Cartoons
I think anyone who is here understands that this Wisconsin election is THE election of this election cycle. If it is won the elections in the fall will be immensely easier.
If the DNC doesn't come thru with some real money before the end of the week. Debbie Wasserman Shultz should be fired before the convention. FIRED with malice.
Walker is the pure embodiment of what is wrong with the Republican party. Driven by ideology alone ignoring the true ramifications of their Policies. Producing fewer jobs, a constricting economy that ultimately will hurt the wealthy as much or more than the poor. All I can figure out is the Republican Oligarchy wants power - all else be hanged. And there is the reason why you have donated to Walker - because you want to feel like a winner - that you have power. Don't kid yourself the republicans will eat their own young much less a trivial contributor such as yourself. Feed yourself to your self centered self serving ideology and surrender all hope beyond this point. As for myself - Onward Wisconsin throw off the tyranny that has come to visit our country. Be the tip of the spear - we remain the supportive and dedicated shaft.
The only ones benefiting from a republican win will be the one percent.
Taxpayers should:
o pay for all election expenses;
o welcome all comers who qualify;
o forbid candidates to use outside money;
o limit outside advertising content and timing relative to election;
o set the debate schedule;
o set the debate topics - candidates should be ready for any topic;
o appoint independent committees for reapportionment in each state; and...
o shorten the election cycle.
What we're witnessing now are elections that would not be allowed in some 3rd world countries (2000, 2004). Money has allowed the inmates to run the asylum - and Wisconsin is a prime example of that!
Our next presidential race starts the minute the president steps into the White House. it is totally crazy.
It will take much more than Wasserman Shultz and the DNC... but they absolutely must help in every way possible.
(How I miss Howard Dean right now. He wouldn't let this slide. In fact,his group,Democracy For America,is one of many working very hard in Wisconsin as we speak.) Donate to DFA Wisconsin and your money will be put to good use.
Those of you that think there is really any difference between The Republicans and The Democrats have not been paying attention.
But then again this has been being said for several years now but as usual the so called middle class has been lulled to sleep in the comfort of there middle class homes out in the suburbs'.
Go home and go back to sleep . . . . Washington DC did a disconnect from the so called "Middle Class" a long time ago.
money and power = drug of choice.
Why is it that all the real passion seems to come from the right? Yes, I understand that conservatives are generally more political and more partisan but if progressives and liberals don't take a thumb out of their collective butt, they will have to accept living in a nationalist, conservative (fascist?) country some day soon.
First of all, the Wall Street Journal is a Murdoch owned publication. Does anybody think his poison hasn't reached the staff there too? Secondly, they always put a little disclaimer at the end that they could be off by 5 to 7 percent.
The people of Wisconsin have a tough battle to be sure but if the unions and the lame DNC can somehow join forces and speak to the people instead of putting out fires created by unsupported allegations they can win this election.
I live on the opposite coast and am donating to Wisconsin Democrats this morning. I too am a union man and although I have been on both sides of the union fence, I believe in my heart that unions are ABSOLUTELY necessary and will promote them whenever I can.
This Koch Brothers puppet MUST not keep his position as governor.
ANYTIME and particularly in WI. I,m about to write a blast to Debbie WS; I
know she is concentrating on electing Dem women, but this should be a special
item on her agenda. We simply cannot let Walker win; I plan to phonebank to get out the vote against him.
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