Uppity Wisconsin

Gov. Jim Doyle and Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton are both out of the state, which makes the AP, on a slow news day, wonder who's in charge. 

In 2010, do we think Joe Biden is acting president every time Barack Obama crosses the border?  Let's get real.

AP thinks maybe Secretary of State Doug LaFollette is in charge.  If he is, this will reassure you:

“I’m here and will be around all weekend,” La Follette said Friday afternoon. “It’s interesting, I wonder if I need to give my phone number to someone? But my home phone number is in the phone book, if anyone needs me.”

Where is Alexander Haig when we need him? Still dead, apparently.

Sen. Russ Feingold and maybe, could-be, might-be challenger Tommy Thompson traded jabs again Friday, which seems to perplex Tommy and some of the political media covering the race. Wis Politics says:

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold said Friday that potential GOP opponent Tommy Thompson has "become part and parcel of the corporate lobbying system," while the former guv shot back that Dem attacks on his list of clients indicate they “really must be afraid.”

... Some observers have questioned why Feingold is choosing to focus in on Thompson when the former guv hasn’t announced he’s in the race yet. Following his speech to supporters in Madison, Feingold said in an interview that he's honing in on Thompson "because he can't have it both ways.

Tommy is used to getting a free ride from the media, who report his every move. He thinks he should get daily stories that undermine Feingold's campaign -- and those of the two Republicans already in the race -- without anyone criticizing or questioning him. That ain't how it works.

Maybe Tommy doesnt know that because he's never really taken a punch in a campaign, and thinks his opponent should act like a punching bag and never hit back.

What Feingold and the Dems are doing is serving notice to Tommy that if he does get in, he is in for the race of his life -- one that he just might be afraid of.

Latest sign that Tommy may be backing off, or that Bill McCoshen, his head cheerleader, has been too far out in front of the boss:

Neither Scott Walker nor anyone from his staff contacted rail equipment manufacturer Talgo to ask them to consider the Super Steel facility before the company made its decision,Talgo executive Ferran Canals told committee members.-- Journal Sentinel.

Illusory Tenant has more.

UPDATE: That embarrassing sentence has disappeared from the story.

and we're not any safer.

From Rethink Afghanistan:

Report the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as an example of waste, fraud and abuse on Recovery.gov today. Simply scroll down to the field marked “What” and paste this message into the text box:

"I'd like to report the waste of trillions of dollars of our national wealth on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that don't make us safe. It's fraud to portray these as wars that increase our security, and it's abusive of U.S. troops and local civilians to drag these wars out any longer. End the wars so we can have real economic recovery."

Rasmussen Reports, which has been peddling some very suspect numbers about Wisconsin political races in recent months, has a new Wisconsin poll (paid for by who knows whom.)

What's been remarkable about Rasmussen polls is the high name recognition of two Republican Senate candidates that no one has heard of in real life -- not to mention the fact that it shows Tommy Thompson, who's not even running, beating Russ Feingold.

The pollsters tried to defend themselves, but their latest set of numbers takes a new tack.

The two Repubs, David Westlake and Terrence Wall, both are less well known now than they were a month ago, they say. But their favorable-unfavorable numbers are still greatly inflated.

Now, Rassmussen says those numbers don't count:

Feingold is viewed very favorably by 34% of Wisconsin voters and very unfavorably by 31%. Twenty-one percent (21%) view Thompson very favorably, while 17% view him very unfavorably.

Fewer than 10% of Wisconsin voters share strong opinions of either of the two announced GOP candidates. Thirty-three percent (33%) have no opinion of Wall, while 40% feel the same about Westlake.

At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with a strong opinion more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Weasel words.

By the way, Rasmussen says the Thompson-Feingold matchup is a dead heat, 47-45. It seems like just last week that Wisconsin's Phony Research Institute released a poll showing Tommy up by 12.

So Tom Barrett is officially the underdog in the race for governor, according to some pointy-headed professor in Virginia (as George Wallace would say), who must know something people in Wisconsin don't know. Maybe he's been reading those phony right-wing polls,, which even claim Mark Neumann would beat Barrett. Anyway, this guy says the statehouse race is leaning Republican.

There is nothing like being the underdog, as a lot of basketball players will tell you this week.

Kind of makes you want to give the underdog a boost, doesn't it?

 UPDATE: Equally unreliable Rasssmussen poll says Feingold and Thompson in a dead heat for US Senate. WPRI had Tommy up 12%.

Wisconsin's Pretend Research Institute (WPRI), the right-wing propaganda machine, is trying to defend itself against recent bad publicity suggesting its polls -- or the way it reports results -- are slanted to fit their world view: WPRI Poll Tracks Consistently with National Polls:

Today, NBC and the Wall Street Journal released a poll that details public opinion regarding the health care bill before Congress, the public’s views of the direction of the country, and other national issues. The NBC/WSJ poll tracks very closely with the WPRI poll we released late last week. To wit:

•In the WSJ/NBC poll, 48% of the public opposed the health care bill currently before Congress, while 36% labeled it “a good idea.” In the WPRI poll, 37% favored the plan and 55% opposed it.

•In the WSJ/NBC poll, President Obama’s approval rating was 48%. In WPRI’s poll, Obama’s approval is 49%.

•In the WSJ/NBC poll, 33% of Americans believed the country was headed in the right direction, while 59% believed the country was on the wrong track. In the WPRI poll, those numbers are 34% and 59%, respectively.

All of that proves exactly nothing, of course. Are we to believe that the opinions of Wisconsin people are exactly the same as those across the country?

Scott Walker's blast at Tom Barrett and Jim Doyle over the award of a train contract that is bringing jobs to Milwaukee is hysterical in both senses of the word.

Walker's way-over-the-top news release, accusing Barrett and Doyle of everything short of racketeering, sounds like Walker may be hysterical, if not rabid.

It's also hysterical in the sense that it's laughable. The more you read, and the more you find out the facts, the funnier it gets.

Walker's beef is that a Spanish train company has decided to build its cars at the former A.O.

The road to filing day is littered with the wrecks of candidates who were once 80% or 90% sure to run for something, but never quite got to the starting gate.

Is the Tommy Thompson for Senate campaign about to join the would-be candidacies that never quite materialized?   There's already a whole section in that political graveyard with headstones marking Tommy's previous brushes with running that were stillborn.

In any case, a story by Politico and another in the Washington Post certainly make it sound much less certain that Tommy will take the plunge than his surrogate son, Bill McCoshen, has led people to believe.

McCoshen had Tommy 70% in earlier, but now the Post reports:

Now,Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) is "50-50" on whether or not to challenge Sen.

So it turns out Scott Walker's brown bag idea is stale, copied from a campaign in Ohio.

Two questions: (1) Do you think the sandwiches are fresh?

(2) If Walker's making his own sandwiches at home, as he claims, who's eating all of those Subway sandwiches charged to the campaign as "candidate meals?"

And I haven't read anything in the "real" media about a dustup at the Tea Bag Gabfest/American Dream event in the Dells, between the wife of GOP golden boy Sean Duffy and his primary opponent, Dan Mielke.  Even though a police call was involved, the media have reported only on the predictable speeches and nothing on the spontaneous fireworks. The two are competing for the nomination to oppose Rep. Dave Obey.

Fortunately, there are other sources of news these days:

Milwaukee News Buzz, a brand new entry from Milwaukee Magazine.

WisPolitics.com

UPDATE: The video that started the ruckus.

Remember teach-ins, which sprouted on campuses across the country in the 1960s and 1970s to discuss and educate people about issues like the Vietnam war?  Even Earth Day was planned as an environmental teach-in by founder Gaylord Nelson, but it grew well beyond that even the first year.

There will be a teach-in at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus this weekend on the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Also in Madison, and in communities across the state, events are planned this week to call for an end to the US occupation of Iraq, which begins its eighth year on Saturday, and to the war in Afghanistan, which the US began in October 2001.

Since the U.S.

Anyone see anything contradictory or perhaps ironic about an organization calling itself the Club for Growth running radio ads in Racine criticizing local Dems Sen. John Lehman and Rep. Cory Mason for their support of rail projects in southeastern Wisconsin. The ads highlight the high-speed rail line from Milwaukee to Madison and the proposed KRM commuter rail system.

The club is for growth of corporate wealth and growth of bank accounts of the wealthy, but not anything that might actually boost the region's economy. 

Afterthought: It's also for the growth of the number of right-wing Republicans in public office, of course. Or is that too obvious to mention?

Neil Shively, retired Capitol bureau chief of the old Milwaukee Sentinel, writes a "Where are they now?" piece for WisPolitics.com every now and then. Recently featured was ex-US Sen. Robert Kasten. Shively treats him kindly:

Bob Kasten is still in Washington, however -- and in New York City, and Egypt and the Middle East. And he's still a major player, though now in the field of defense contracting using lessons he learned in the Senate. Heard of Oshkosh Corp.'s bonanza with billions in defense contracts? Well, Kasten helped stimulate deals for Oshkosh with foreign nations, such as Egypt.

“My business is not so much a lobbying business. When I was in the Senate, I was chairman of the sub-committee on foreign operations, security and economics,” he said, offering the path to his business today. “We (the U.S.) give large numbers of military and economic aid … $1 billion to Egypt, for example.“So I work for U.S. businesses and try to help them sell to Egypt and other countries in the Middle East,” he said.

What does that business sound like to you?

The Associated Press pops Scott Walker's brown bag campaign, reporting on the expensive meals his campaign has paid for while he pretends to carry his lunch.

More on Walker's campaign eating habits.

One more thing: If someone lights one of Walker's brown bags on fire, leaves it on your porch and rings the doorbell, don't stomp on it. You know what it's filled with.