xoff's blog

Who's in charge here?

xoff — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:36:00 +0000

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.

Tommy, media can't tell the difference between 'really afraid' and 'Bring it on'

xoff — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:04:59 +0000

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:

The former Wisconsin governor and Health and Human Services secretary said he plans to discuss a potential run for office with his family during an Easter vacation, but also would need to make sure his businesses could operate without him.
“I’m not looking at an exploratory committee,” he said. “I’m looking to hear what people are saying.”

McCoshen has been telling people to expect an exploratory committee, maybe by the end of March.

Tommy wants to know what people are saying. It's pretty clear what Feingold's been saying: "Bring it on."

Quote, unquote

xoff — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:21:59 +0000

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.

March 19 marks seven years of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq: Thousands dead, $747B spent. . .

xoff — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:23:26 +0000

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 retrenches, says numbers don't count, Tommy not ahead

xoff — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:19:09 +0000

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. Gee, it was last week? Imagine that. I rest my case.

Barrett the underdog?

xoff — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:08:45 +0000

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?

Wisconsin's Pretend Research Institute tries to resuscitate its reputation

xoff — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:59:36 +0000

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? If that's the case, there's no need to do any more state polling; we can just rely on Gallup or NBC and the WSJ (probably not the Washington Post, which WPRI no doubt regards like Pravda.) Did Barack Obama get the same percentage of votes in Wisconsin as he did nationally? Don't think so.

This little bit of misdirection, penned by Christian Schneider, the blogging artist formerly known as Dennis York, does nothing to reassure anyone that WPRI's amazingly positive numbers for Republicans Tommy Thompson and Scott Walker are accurate. Nor does it excuse the fact that WPRI tailored its news release on one of its polls to make support for school choice look stronger than it actually is.

Nice try, though.

Walker's over-the-top attack on Barrett, Doyle is a real train wreck

xoff — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:06:08 +0000

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. Smith yard instead of at Super Steel, a Milwaukee firm owned by one of Walker's sugar daddies, Fred Luber, a major donor who was his finance co-chair when he ran for governor in 2006.

Walker fulminates about Doyle giving the Spanish company, Talgo, a no-bid contract, about Barrett using tax money to offer incentives for the company to come to Milwaukee, and on and on.

A couple of thoughts:

First, Barrett is the mayor of Milwaukee, and his job is to try to bring jobs and economic development to the city. Walker and Luber Walker complain about

Barrett’s use of taxpayer funds from the office of Milwaukee City Development to unfairly compete against Super Steel as well as proposed sites in Appleton, Janesville, and Racine in an apparent effort to boost his image in the race for Governor.

Or in an apparent effort to do his job. City development funds are intended to bring jobs to Milwaukee, not Appleton or Janesville or Racine. If you're governor, that's a different story. Wonder how many jobs Walker has brought to Racine or Janesville, since he has brought precious few to Milwaukee County in the last 8 years.

Walker says Super Steel got dissed in the process, but Barrett actually signed an appeal to Talgo asking the company to use the Super Steel facility.

Walker also blasts Doyle for using a no-bid contract with Talgo for the trains, but that has been the law since 1997, when it was changed to exempt passenger rail purchases from the state’s competitive bidding rules.

Let's see, was Jim Doyle the governor in 1997? No, it was a guy named Tommy Thompson, who probably hoped he could give some contracts to Fred Luber, a major Thompson fundraiser and donor.

There's more, but it seems like overkill.

How desperate is the Walker campaign -- and how inept?

UPDATE: Walker voted for the no-bid law he's railing against, One Wisconsin Now reports.

Tommy backing off from Senate race?

xoff — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:26:32 +0000

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. Russ Feingold (D) this fall and will almost certainly make a decision before the May 20 state party convention, according to a source familiar with his thinking.
"He has been in public service his entire life," said the source of Thompson's thought process on the race. "This is not something you take lightly."

Meanwhile, Politico says:

Thompson’s official spokesman at his Washington-based law firm again pushed back at any assumption that the former Health and Human Services secretary had come to a decision. “He hasn’t even made up his mind,” said Jason Denby of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. “I think he is right in the middle right now, trying to decide.”

Meanwhile, Politico notes, Sen. Russ Feingold's campaign is treating Tommy like a candidate, firing shots his way that give him a taste of what the rough-and-tumble of a campaign would be like, portraying him as a fat cat DC lobbyist who's on the wrong side.

Denby said that while Thompson continues to weigh his options, he is not interested in responding to the grenades being tossed in his direction.
“He respects Sen. Feingold, and he doesn’t want to get into a partisan battle. He’s really just trying to talk it through with his family,” said Denby.

When last we heard from Tommy's wife, in Madison Magazine, she was not enthused:

When I mention recent rumors of a very partisan political race—Tommy Thompson vs. Russ Feingold in the upcoming U.S. Senate election—Sue Ann is candid.
“I try to stay out of it. Does it bother me when people ask questions? No. I can’t tell them things I don’t know. I always encourage people to do things but with Tom, it’s always no. I always discourage it; you can’t go back, you need to look ahead,” she shrugs, smiling. “My philosophy is quit while you’re ahead.”

Who's eating Walker's lunch?

xoff — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:05:08 +0000

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?"