Uppity Wisconsin

And Congressional Republicans have made their priorities clear in recent weeks.

They'll vote en masse against extending unemployment benefits to help out-of-work Americans during these tough economic times.

They'll filibuster to stop a bill to to aid small businesses.

But they'll vote for more money for war.

'Nuff said.

When County Supervisor Peggy West forgot that Arizona bordered Mexico, it was national news, with Bill O'Reilly and others roasting her.

And she got a lot of attention from the Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin media, too.

So, should we brace ourselves for similar treatment of Ron Johnson, the Senate candidate who doesn't know that New York state borders the Great Lakes?

Johnson is running a commercial trying to mislead people into thinking Russ Feingold supported Great Lakes oil drilling because he voted against a 2005 Dick Cheney-inspired energy bill that included a drilling ban.

Not only did Feingold vote against it, the commercial says, but adds:

That's right. Feingold was the only Great Lakes Senator to vote no.

Acccording to The Page, Time magazine's political website, this is the lineup for Sunday's major talk shows:

This Week: Sen. McCain (from Afghanistan)

Face the Nation: Sen. Graham (from Afghanistan)

Fox News Sunday: Sen. Lieberman (from Afghanistan)

Afghanistan has three Senators?  That explains a lot.

Rasmussen Reports feels obliged to defend its honor, after it is pointed out that not only are Rasmussen polls reliably slanted Republican, but RR's chief is hanging out on a National Review cruise.

The response from a Rasmussen flak is pretty generic:

"Republican and Democratic campaigns both sometimes attack the messenger when they try to distract attention from news they don't like," Rasmussen spokeswoman Debra Falk wrote in an e-mail. "In the case of the Wisconsin Senate race, virtually every poll has shown (U.S. Sen. Russ) Feingold below 50% against every potential Republican challenger. That's a sure sign of a potentially vulnerable candidate. However, incumbents are often able to overcome a weak environment and win re-election."

Of course, what people have questioned is not the fact that Feingold is under 50%, which is not unusual, but that Rasmussen says he's even with Ron Johnson, the unknown Republican. Ms. Falk (no relation to the Dane County exec) doesn't address that.

As for the cruise, she says her boss is just one popular guy who gets invited and paid

Jim Sensenbrenner's stock portfolio has gotten a little ink lately, what with all of his shares in BP not presenting a conflict, in his mind, to him sitting on a panel investigating BP's mess in the Gulf.

There's also the annual Journal Sentinel story about the finances of the Wisconsin Congressional delegation, which says Sensenbrenner, who's worth $9.9-million but has disposed of all of his inherited stock in Kimberly Clark, his grandaddy's company.

Missing was the annual measure that's always been the most intriguing one: Is Sensenbrenner's stamp collection worth more than Rep. Gwen Moore's total net worth? Two years ago they were equal at about $110,000 each.

The stamp collection's value keeps going up 10 grand a year, to $130,000 now. Moore's net worth may surpass $130,000 now, but it's not clear. She reported assets worth somewhere between $19,000 and $110,000, plus a house valued at $95,000.

Quick, which half of this Ron Johnson ad is the parody?  Is he making fun of himself?

His commercial, running at saturation-plus levels across the state ($350,000 worth the first week), begins by making fun of political spots that are for good jobs and apple pie.

Then Johnson comes on the screen, talking a mile a minute, and offers his own content-free pitch: "It's time we bring America back.  The politicians won't do it but you and I can."

How refreshing.

"When you have a half-dozen people calling themselves tea party candidates, you need to get them in a room, and some of them need to be willing to drop out so the tea party candidate can win. That's one of the frustrating things about this movement: It's supposed to be something other than politics as usual, but some of these folks are only looking out for themselves, and not for the country." -- Judson Phillips, founder of the national group Tea Party Nation, in Washington Post.

Get everybody in a room and pick a candidate? Now that would be a real change from politics as usual.

More on our friends at Rasmussen Reports, which we've been saying for some time should not be regarded as anything but a Republican PR firm using its phony polling as spin: This from kos, the man himself at DailyKos, who notes that Rasmussen has done some creative, "corrective" polling reports in Connecticut and Massachusetts recently, after independent polls showed Rasmussen way off base (guess in which direction):

Remember, Rasmussen has two modes -- the narrative setting mode, which he's used to great effect this year to fuel the "Democrats are doomed" narrative, and the "get it right" mode he uses the closer we get to the actual election. Well, we're not that close to November yet, but apparently he felt threatened by having such massive outliers vis a vis other pollsters. So he rushed new polling more in line with the composite polling trendlines.

It's kind of hard to set narratives when you become a laughing stock in the political world.

Read it here.

Maybe it will soon be time to stop beating this horse, but let's make sure it's really dead first.

(Johnson's correct first name is Ron, not Rob. The typo has been corrected.)

(Cross-posted from my blog, Kaufman's Gull.)

According to a fawning column by Washington Post columnist George Will, Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Ron Johnson, president of plastics manufacturer Pacur of Oshkosh, WI, is a student of writer Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged, a book that has become a "Tea Party" manifesto of sorts.

You could, if you'd like, read all thousand or so pages of Rand's novel, but the moral of the story can be summed up as follows: unregulated capitalism is the most rational, moral way of life.

Rand's brand of morality does not allow for any merciful, religious feeling toward your fellow man or fellow creature; in fact, I think it fair to describe her philosophy as anti-Christian if by "Christian" we mean acting upon the love of one's neighbor, or as Christ puts it in the Sermon on the Mount: "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."

Several Republican candidates for Congress in Wisconsin, including fair-haired boy Sean Duffy, have nearly identical language on their campaign websites about where they stand on issues. Asked about the "coincidence" by the Journal Sentinel one candidate apologized and took down the language.

Duffy and the others say they wrote it themselves.

If you had 1,000 GOP candidates with 1,000 typewriters and infinite amounts of time, would all of them produce a Shakespeare play, or just one? Or would they all produce the same play?

Just asking.

Sign at the National Rifle Assn. convention in Charlotte, where NRA members say they don't mind the restrictions.

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort (WAVE) reports:

Supporters of the open carry movement claim that we'll all be safer if more people carry guns in public.  Really?  Let's take a look at just who will be "defending" us...

Public Gun Carrier #1 - Jesus Gonzalez - Mr.

A couple of items this week from WisPolitics, the online political website and newsletter whose subscribers are mostly State Capitol insiders, political players and lobbyists, make it appear the WisPol crew has been breathing too much of the rarified Capitol air. For example:

Even with Tommy Thompson out of the race, some Republicans continue to believe Russ Feingold is vulnerable, pointing to some soft poll numbers and the fact he’s already up on TV.

When did it become a sign of vulnerability to have enough money to be able to go on television in May, while your GOP opponents are still unknown, to build up your own positives? As for vulnerability, the Cook Political Report Rates Feingold's seat a Safe Democratic seat, and Larry Sabato at The Center for Politics rates it a safe Democratic seat. Both are non-partisan, independent operators.

Then there's this, on State Rep. Thomas Nelson's plan to run for lieutanant governor:

Nelson continues to have his detractors in the Assembly Dem caucus, some of whom are happy to see him on his way out of their lives. Some insist it’s the petty complaining of people who don’t matter, but others say it’s much deeper than that with some in the caucus power structure still unhappy with Nelson over his refusal to publicly back Speaker Mike Sheridan during the payday lobbyist controversy along with other grievances.

Only in the Capitol could be it be considered a negative to be the one guy who had enough principle and courage to swim against the tide and refuse to endorse the Speaker's dalliance with a payday loan lobbyist. That's hardly a negative with the voters.

Makes you wonder whether the Dems learned anything from the last round of scandals that took out leaders in both parties.  That was in 2002, and the most unpopular Democrat among Capitol staffers and insiders was another Dem who wouldn't be quiet about the scandal in his own party.  His name was Jim Doyle, and in November that year the voters elected him governor.

 The Congressional resolution honoring Earth Day founder Sen. Gaylord Nelson,(pictured) noted in a post here last week, almost was killed by a right-wing Senator who blocked action until he got some of the language sanitized.

 Here's what the original said:

Whereas Gaylord Nelson sponsored legislation to ban phosphates in household detergents and to ban the use of Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), and he worked tirelessly to ensure clean water and clean air for all Americans;

Whereas in addition to his environmental leadership, Gaylord Nelson fought for civil rights, enlisted for the War on Poverty, challenged drug companies and tire manufacturers to protect consumers, and stood up to Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee to defend and protect civil liberties;

To satisfy Coburn, the language about civil liberties, McCarthy, the war on poverty,and consumer protection was eliminated.

I find it somewhat amusing in that it is a paragraph I wrote and suggested to Rep.

Those Rasmussen Wisconsin polls just keep on coming, so often that it's hard to believe Rasmussen does it out of the goodness of their heart.

Some Democrats are tempted to tout the latest from Rasmussen, only because it looks better for Dems than Rassmussen's previous polls. It shows Feingold ahead in the Senate race and Barrett tied in the governor's race.

We've been saying for years there's something suspect about the Rasmussen numbers, which always seem to have the Republicans doing better than you'd expect.  Like that famous tower, they lean a little to the right.