What’s Good for Becky’s Bad for Bucky

Let’s talk turkey.  Or at least about one.  The recall against Scott Walker has been going steadily well the last two weeks.  The minimum number of signatures needed to trigger a recall election is 540,208, but to play it safe we are aiming closer to the 600,000-700,000 range, as the GOP establishment will undoubtedly challenge the reams and reams of petitions.  But this is only half the story, for we are not trying to recall Walker alone, but also his running mate, Rebecca Kleefisch, the Lieutenant Governor.  The Attorney General of Wisconsin, J.B. Van Hollen, decided that there had to be two separate petitions for the offices — even though both were elected together on the same ballot.  So that in reality puts the total amount of signatures well past the million mark — let’s say 1,400,000 — and still we have only 60 days to collect them.  That’s about 23,000 signatures per day, a pretty daunting hurdle to by any measure.  While collecting signatures and explaining that there’s a separate one for Kleefisch, I have had dozens of folks ask me quite innocently, “Who even is she?” or “What does she even do?”  To which my only grasped straw of a response has been, “Wear way too much makeup.”  A catty quip, and probably beneath me, but so be it.  But it has made me ask myself, Who is this show-and-tell shill for Sephora — what’s her story? what are her qualifications? and, what for the love of all things holy is up with her hair?  Here is what I have disinterred.

 

United Citizens Against Citizens United

Need a new mantra?  How about “The Day When $$$$ Equals Speech”?

I caught word this morning that the good people at The Center for Media and Democracy are calling for an online day of action today and so wanted to spread the message in hopes of others doing likewise.  The cause in question concerns the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court last year that not only codifies gobs of filthy lucre as being the equivalent of free speech, and thus protected under the First Amendment, but allows corporations (and yes, unions*) to conceal both the amounts they spend on elections AND where that money is coming from.  Keep reading and kindly click on a couple links if you’ve wondered any of the following:

~  How the hell a yahoo know-nothing nobody the likes of Ron Johnson could oust the venerable Russ Feingold from office;

~ How Republicans swept the halls in 2010, particularly in state legislatures and governors’ mansions;

~ How the no-dialogue ideologues of the so-called Tea Party, despite their fringe freak show, have accomplished as much as they have since January 20, 2009;

~ How anonymous, no-limit contributions and ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) have so adroitly gutted the democratic process;

~ How over $30 million was spent on the eight recall elections in Wisconsin in only the last four months (compared to the $3.75 million that was the sum of all the State Legislature races in 2010!); or

~ How this gargantuan harangue will play itself in next year’s presidential election (think lots of drunk, angry elephants in a cutesy boutique china shop).

 

Don’t Mess With Taxes

No, that’s not a dyslexic typo.  But as for lapses of logic, spelling gaffes, general bouts of stupidity, and Palin-esque aposiopeses, please read on…

The tea party (TP) “spatriots” came to town today — on yellow school buses no less — and were met overwhelmingly by a counter-protest pro-union contingent which effectively drowned out their “drown it in a bathtub” Grover Norquist message.  But rather than tell, I’ll show: