Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Wisconsin Bloggers: Individually and Collectively Inept, Inattentive, Incompetent

With one of the greatest blogging stories sitting right under their collective noses, Wisconsin bloggers sat on their collective behinds and allowed the mainstream media, the CBS Evening news with Katie Couric, to scoop them on the biggest stories of the departing year, the Shawano -SIST story of international intrigue:

Alleged Murder-For-Hire Rattles Small Town:Placid Midwest Town Turned Upside Down By Alleged Hit List And Secretive Group

All a reaction to news of an alleged hit list and claims by a so-called hit man, now telling his story for the first time.

"And I said, 'you want me to kill 60 people? You want me to kill the whole town of Shawano?" said Canadian businessman Bob Cameron.

Keteyian asked: "They were hiring you as a hit man?"

"Yes, they were," Cameron said.

"You're talking about the mayor, the city administrator, the city treasurer, the city attorney, the police chief, judges, investigators, fire commissioners," Keteyian asked.

"Uh huh," Cameron assented

Cameron says in late October he received $175,000 in wire transfers from people known to be part of a secretive group long run out of a house near Shawano called SIST.

Its is a story that could never be fabricated. The cast of characters are from the next great movie, a combined effort of the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino.

The mayor (Kathy Bates) tops the list of sixty potential local victims. The Canadian hitman (Martin Short) was trying to do no more than collect some unpaid bills from the local cult when asked to wipe out half the town. The cult leader (Samuel L. Jackson in a reprise of his role of Jules in Pulp Fiction) is responsible for the investment of over $15 million in local real estate.

The real estate holdings fail and the county treasurer (Johnny Depp) is now foreclosing. The sheriff (Ben Stiller) and his deputy (Owen Wilson) manage to keep the town on edge as they tail two SIST members (Mike -Wayne-Meyers and Dana -Garth- Carvey), who prowl the city streets with a camcorder filming anyone they suspect is in cahoots with the town leaders.

SIST spokesman and attorney (Johnny Depp or should that be Robert Downey Jr.?) manages to bring some semblance of reality to the entire story claiming this was all a misunderstanding.

Sanity is maintained. The FBI agent (Brad Pitt) brings calm and peace to Shawano.(Pronounced Shawn-o as in Shauno of the Dead).

All this going on in plain view. Badger bloggers are writing about Republican committee assignments in the legislature, the performing arts, and Lake Michigan.

Phooey.

                

November Elections 2008: The Morning After

I woke up this morning glad to have done the radio show on WTDY last night with Sly and Bill McCoshen, a Wisconsin Republican who will, hopefully, have a lot to say about the future of his party, but disappointed that I did not attend the parties where so many of my friends celebrated last night.

I was surprised at my own emotional response to the election of Barack Obama. I was more filled with wonderment about what the next four years will bring rather than joy over his election.  Perhaps it was the projections that he was going to win that took the edge off the victory.

In any case, for the first time in my lifetime, and that includes the election of JFK in 1960, or my years as mayor when Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were elected, I am truly excited about the future and the unknown possibilities for our nation and the world. The economy and the wars will prevent any immediate social change, but it is coming.

The engagement of so many young people of so many different colors in this election holds more hope for the future. Voting is the first level of civic engagement. With persistence and hard work, hopefully they will stay engaged by running for office themselves, getting involved in their children's' education, and voting in subsequent local and state elections.

• I missed the gathering of the supporters of the Madison school referendum which won by a large margin, putting to rest the myth that there is some kind of secret plot by the supporters of public education to place these measures on the ballot when turnout is low.
• The Democrats took control of the Wisconsin Assembly. Marc Pocan gets a big thank you for adopting a "50 state" strategy and finding great Democratic candidates in as many Assembly districts as possible.
• Perhaps the biggest local disappointment was the apparent defeat of outstanding Trish O'Neil in the 47th District. She was the victim of one of the nastiest television advertisements this election season.
• While Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) was defanged, it is evident that extreme right-wing money and energy was shifted to outside groups like  Coalition for America's Families, the Club for Growth and All Children Matter which continues to produce WMC-style attack ads.
• In Oshkosh, Gordon Hintz was returned for a second term to the Assembly's 54th district with 66% of the vote.  Keep an eye on him. Here is a legislator who is effective, principled, and a nice guy.
• The biggest Midwest disappointment was Al Franken's apparent loss to incumbent Republican Norm Coleman in the Minnesota US Senate race. Franken would have made a great senator and Coleman is an opportunistic jerk. Coleman has some serious ethical problems in casting future votes regarding the financial bailout which he supported, since AIG put $25 million into the US Chamber of Commerce over a five year period and then the right wing business group spent a hefty sum in his support.
• Best news from the left coast: As of this posting, it appears that same sex marriage survives in Californian. Barely.  Update 2:42 UGH
• Those who checked in here last night can see from my solitary post that it is too difficult to do live radio and  blog simultaneously.
• Congratulations to the high school students who got involved in the school referendum and and all of the electoral races even though they will not vote for a few more years.
• I suppose my nice introduction of Bill McCoshen, above, will get back to the social conservatives and doom him as an influential leader in fixing the Republican Party. With moderate business leaders estranged from their party, and Democrats in control of both houses of the legislature and the Governor's office, they have no place to go. Now is the time for the Democrats to reach out and form a coalition of labor, business, and education leaders to fix and fund education from kindergarten through college in Wisconsin.

Guilty pleasure I will pass on today - No right wing Milwaukee talk radio; I have too much work to do and it will be more fun spending the spare time chatting with friends.

CNBC's Power Lunch: Chucke E. Cheese's Meets the Lunch Bunch

The economic crisis of the last few days led me to CNBC's noon hour market report discussion Power Lunch. Two people claiming to be Bill Griffeth and Sue Herea lead a lunch time discussion with five or six boisterous and obnoxious playmates.

They are rude, they interrupt one another and all they are missing are the pizza's, runny noses, music blaring at Chuck E. Cheese's and the frazzled staff from your child's day care center trying to maintain order during lunch bunch.*

Ignoring the sound advice of Sam Brown, "Never offend with style, when you can offend with substance," this crew manages to do both, very effectively.

The blather is so fast and furious there is not much time to digest their economic or political droolings, let alone make corrections, which is required in most instances.

*That thirty minute period when the kids in day care dine on jelly sandwiches and sliced carrots.

Gingrich: I Screwed Working Americans Once, I Can Do It Again

Newt Gingrich with his Contract on America was one of the principal architects of the 1999 repeal of a key depression era reform, the Glass-Stegall Act, that stabilized the United States economy and prevented unfettered speculation that could trigger economic collapse and bring ruin to hundreds of millions of families -people like Waxing America readers.

The product of his theoretical rubbish first bore fruits with the Enron and Worldcom disasters and this past week brought us the worst economic collapse in three generations.

Regardless of the outcome we must be clear about one thing. You and I and millions of hard working Americans who never had a chance to rip off bmillions, will pay.

In an instant, without increasing the tax rates, they made sure we pay.  This is going to come out of our taxes - money we already paid and money we will pay to the federal and state governments.

The loss of our hard-earned savings, the equity in our homes, and the collapse of local businesses are going to take their toll as well. 

There are some people who lost millions, hundreds of millions, and others who lost billions. Most of them made that money without creating true wealth; they created nothing of lasting value. They shuffled paper.

Now Newt Gingrich wants to lower the capital gains taxes to zero.

The man has learned nothing.

The curious thing is that he is not doing this for his own personal aggrandizement. True he enjoys the money he makes and the wealth he creates for his right wing friends.  

His real motivation is that he fashions himself as an economc theorist and wishes to be recognized for his intellectual prowess.

Not content with the destruction he created, he plows forward.

The man is a fool.

He should be tried for treason.

The Palin Teenage Pregnancy Is Off Limits but the Hypocrites Are Not

I have no quarrel with Sarah Palin, and certainly none with her pregnant seventeen year old daughter, who is having a baby out of wedlock.

I do have a quarrel with the right wing hypocrites. I am talking about the self-congratulatory commentators who never get pregnant themselves, have access to all of the condoms they can unroll, and impose their twisted morality upon the rest of society.

The twisted morality is not their position on unwed teenage girls having babies. I join with them in urging young women not to conceive, without passing moral judgment on their behavior.

I also support sex education, making birth control available to sexually active teens, and full counseling to young woman about all of the choices available to them should they become pregnant.

The hypocrisy lies in the treatment of Sarah Palin as some great moral crusader in supporting her daughter's choice to have a baby and silence on her child raising skills.

There is total silence and not the usual condemnation of the grandmother-to-be we normally hear from the radio and television commentators from Milwaukee to Houston and San Diego to New York City.

The bitter attacks on the mothers is gone. These men are creeps.

Palin Admits She Is Unqualified to be Vice President

All it took was one television interview and Sarah Palin acknowledged she is unqualified to be vice president of the United States.

The interview with ABC's Charles Gibson, In ABC Interview, Palin Seen As Struggling With Foreign Policy, needed go no further than a discussion of nuclear deterrence, the Bush polices on pre-emption, all common information for a college junior with a basic political science course in foreign affairs.

These matters were far too difficult for Palin, who believes that insightful foreign policy is gazing across the Bering Straits on a clear day and viewing Russia from Alaska's most remote islands.

In defense of Palin, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post noted, The ABCs of Sarah Palin

Even Palin's critics should admit that, in terms of demeanor, she handled herself well for someone who three years ago was worried about the books in the Wasilla library...

I am sorry Howard, but that is not the standard for measuring a Vice President, unless you want to discuss the inappropriateness of her meddling in book selection and her threats of censorship in her rampage through city hall as she intimidated half a dozen employees who she either fired or threatened to fire.

Obama Needs An Honest Karl Rove

The Obama campaign needs an honest Karl Rove. After twelve months of campaigning, virtually all of the voters who make decisions based on the issues have made up their minds. The television networks can always find one more household to showcase that is undecided, but they are the rare exception, not the rule.

It is time to come out swinging at the McCain-Palin ticket, tough and hard hitting. Obama-Biden does not need intellectually soothing advertisements that point out that McCain is a Bush clone. That is history and the undecideds are not going to cast their ballots based on the past - they are looking to the future.

The competency, or more accurately the incompetency of both McCain and Palin is the relevant issue. It can be raised in the context of past behaviors and positions, but it has to scare the hell out of the voters that both McCain and Palin will have the country in shambles within the first six months, if they ever take office.

The attack has to be dripping with sarcasm, nasty to the bone. Just make sure that unlike the Republican-swiftboating-Karl Rove-clone productions, the message is honest and not an ad hominem attack.

The Obama campaign needs to focus not just on any undecideds, but on those who will respond to the message that McCain-Palin is not only incompetent, but dangerous.

Obama needs to lock in an additional 5% of the voters. That is the playing field for the next two months. It troubles me as much as the next bleeding heart liberal that my candidate has to be so negative in campaigning.

There is too much at stake - world peace, ending the billions of dollars sucked up by war, oil profiteers, and mercenaries, the appointments to the Supreme Court, and our liberty and safety in a world threatened by terrorists.

The Democrats need an honest Karl Rove to make this happen.

Obama-Biden Had Better Wake Up and Get Out the Heavy Artillery

Perhaps there is a grand strategy on the part of the Obama-Biden management team to tell the truth about Sarah Palin. If there is I hope it works because the present efforts to expose McCain and Sarah Palin are not working.

The simple fact that Palin has a unfavorable rating of 27%, Palin's Popularity Rises is clear evidence that the message is not getting through:

The first-term Alaska governor's favorability rating is also higher than the veteran Delaware senator's -- Palin's is 57 percent favorable, 27 percent unfavorable, while Biden's is 51 percent favorable, 28 percent unfavorable.

Palin's rating has improved since the Republican convention last week; it was 38 percent favorable, 21 percent unfavorable just after she was introduced.

We can take comfort that in the past week her unfavorable rating climber from 21% to 27%, but face it - among mere mortals any politician who smiles at the camera is destined for at least a  35% unfavorable rating.

Palin is vehemently anti-choice. She is tied into the good-old-boy pork barrel lottery.  Look at her support for the Bridge-To-Nowhere, which she only opposed when she realized it was dead on arrival and made her look foolish. That combined with her ongoing support of policies that have brought economic ruin to millions of families ought to push her into the negative 40 range.

Meantime Obama-Biden plug along with two accurate but milquetoast ads noting the link between McCain and George W. Bush and questioning the so-called 'maverick' status of McCain and Palin.

They need to re-work those ads Republican style. That means male voices used for horror films and female voices dripping with sarcasm. The Republicans know how to run these ads - when the viewer has digested the sixty seconds there is no question that the attacked Presidential candidate is unfit to lead.

The beauty of all this is that the Democrats, unlike the Republicans, need only tell the truth:

McCain got us into Iraq.

McCain spent us into bankruptcy, chaos and inflation.

McCain-Palin support fiscal poilices to fleece the middle class.

McCain-Palin are anti-choice.

McCain-Palin are good old boys connected as much as George Bush to oil interests.

McCain-Palin "leadership" amounts to earmarks in the billions, endless wars, and loss of liberty.

Free Advice to the Obama Campaign

It is about this time that everyone weighs in with advice to the Obama campaign as to how to stop the McCain-Palin momentum and get the Democratic ticket back on track.

When undecided or moderate voters finally make up their minds, they select the candidate for an executive office based on competency, not ideology.

When the Republicans launched their "But is he ready to lead?" series of ads, they did a great job driving home that point to the political center.

They continue to do so while the Democrats respond with ideology.

Every hour that I watched television this past week I saw the same two TV ads. From the Republicans, it was "Ready to lead?" from the Democrats it was a comparison of McCain and the disgraced President Bush.

The latter ad plays to the Democratic faithful, to the committed, to an ideological base. The Democrats and the Obama campaign have not laid a glove on McCain and Palin on the competency issue.

Time is running out.

The McCain-Bush link is a great message. All the Democrats need to do is to hold McCain responsible as the architect of the disasters of the past eight years. It is not sufficent to say he supported Bush. Make him responsible for Iraq, Katrina, the mortgage crisis, and the collapse of the New York Yankees. He was there; he could have prevented the outcomes. He is incompetent.

As for Palin, there needs to be a concerted  campaign, short but pointed, to simply remind the public that this is the most right-wing fanatic to run on either party's presidential ticket since World War II.

She makes Barry Goldwater look like a moderate Democrat.

Negative Convention Coverage

As I reviewed the stories coming out of Denver I was struck by the cynical nature of the headlines about the Democratic Convention. Here is a sampling:

Edgy Dems await Clinton - Already defeated and now confused, delegates supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton pleaded Tuesday to know ...

Clinton Backers Confused - lead for same story as above

A convention comeuppance for Bill Clinton ...Bill Clinton was supposed to beam at the side of his wife at the Democratic convention as she was crowned their party's presidential nominee. Instead, he will have reason to wince ...

Tough crowd for Obama: Women Feel Robbed -Barack Obama faces no greater challenge this week than to unite disappointed women Democrats behind his candidacy...

Angry Clinton supporters toast McCain roast Obama...But the 54-year-old Democrat joined several other Hillary Clinton supporters, along with volunteers and officials from John McCain's campaign, at a Happy Hour for Hillary. The event, sponsored by the Republican National Committee ...

These were not the only headlines to show up in the past five hours, but they are representative of a significant number of stories from an assortment of news services ranging from AP to CNN.

There are plenty of positive and neutral headlines such as Previewing her speech, Clinton urges supporters to back Obama and Clinton's Night in Denver, but not the speech She Wanted to Give

It will be interesting to see if the Republican Convention gets similar coverage.

Frankly, I do not think the Democrats have much to complain about it since the problems are real, but they will have an axe to grind if similar Republican sores are not exposed in Minneapolis.