Tuesday
Jun052012
Yes, It's Really Getting This Weird in Wisconsin
Polls are showing Gov Scott Walker pulling further ahead of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in today's recall election. So how do the Democrats plan to overcome such odds? By standing outside of the Wisconsin capital building, holding a massive séance and "omming" of course (duh).
(insert seperation of church and state joke here)
Permalink | tagged Om, Recall, Scott Walker, Tom Barrett, Wisconsin, prayer
Reader Comments (78)
The Church of the Barking Moonbats.
The calm before the union storm
Ed Schultz isn't going to make it. If it's not tonight, it surely will be in November with Obama's loss you will see the first on air newsman suicide.
Ed's already out there claiming there's robocalls to people who signed the petition saying that their vote has already been counted if they signed the petition... and in typical liberal fashion claiming unnamed sources, promoting speculations & hearsay as factual evidence and just running wild with it. "It's a war on _______!!"
Gotta give him a little bit of a break though... Ed's invested so much into the union platform, I imagine a loss today would make it incredibly hard to look at yourself in the mirror and see a relevant person staring back at you. It's a rage-filled struggle for significance.
Don't worry Sgt Schultz...
you'll still be more relevant than Lawrence O'Donnell and Chris Hayes in my book.
(if that's even saying anything)
I'm following the thread over at AoSHQ in the comment thread.
Just priceless!!!
God Bless Governor Scott Walker.
The only thing worse than a bunch of lazy ass state workers whining, crying and complaining while sitting on their collective asses, is a bunch of unionized, lazy ass state workers whining, crying and complaining while sitting on their collective asses. They can all go to hell and thank God that they still get paid for not doing much of nothing. Except of course, whining, crying and complaining.
They can ALL go to hell!
lol They must be getting pretty desparete if they're putting out a false flag poll as lopsided as this one on the day of the election.
We Poll American = Illinois Manufacturer's Association.
Teachers and other civil servants making $50k a year are lazy ingrates, but CEOs making $70 MM are supahgeniuses!!!
Aren't you a civil servent TJ? If so the self hatred you have is amazing.
You mean We ASk America?
They're only a single factor in the Real Clear Politics numbers I linked to, which also includes left-leaning polls from Daily Kos and Public Policy Polling. Seeing Walker ahead by 3-5 pts in both of those polls is hardly something I'd classify as a sign of "desperation".
Try doing a google search on We Ask America wiki and see what you get.
KwAwk-
When you tell someone they have "self-hatred", you earn Down Twinkles from me.
People have a right to their opinions, and you do not get to be the decider of what is important to someone else.
I work in Illinois... so I am a little familiar with them and the Illinois Manufacturers Association. Members like Caterpillar, John Deere, Komatsu, Boeing, Cargill, Ford, etc... mixture of vendors and customers. Producers, buyers and sellers.
What I don't see is them storming Wisconsin capital buildings, busing in political activists and forcing recall elections for governors over policy issues and hissy fits.
Unions are likely being fed their second slice of harsh reality today.
"Twinkles" and #Occupy morons are a perfect match. Useless bits of wasted energy.
Yep, those eveeeel entities must be destroyed, so the union thugs can have bigger wages and benefits. Wait... I dunno, but there seems to be something wrong with that plan... can't put my finger on it...
Duff - TJ can basically can call all public employees lazy and worthless and tell them to go to hell, but I get the down trinkles for questioning whether TJ being a public employee, if he is I'm not 100% sure I'm remembering correctly, might have a little bit of self hatred?
I believe that Zoy Clem and Fornax are public employees too. Should we ask them to be first in line to give up their own pensions and benefits as being too generous?
Skinny -- All of those things that you're speaking of, busing in activists and such, is all being done by Amercans for Prosperity and the Club for growth. And I don't recall your being so inclined to decry recalling a sitting governor when it was Grey Davis who was being ousted.
Grey Davis? No, please say you're not lining up in defense of that abominable and incompetent putz.
But can we at least all give a big "Ooooommmm" shout-out to Grey Davis? Just for old times' sake.
KwAwk,
Add me to your list of people who you believe self-hate or vote against their own interests, my spouse is a government worker and my son is a teacher in a public high school for minority students.
Even the boy, who is still young and stupid enough to have voted for Obambi, realizes that teacher's unions seem too interested in money and power to the detriment of educating students. There might be some hope for the boy someday.
You did this same crap during one of the past election seasons, pretending that you knew what should motivate others to vote just based on their job or economic status. I recall you used to repeat that people were voting against their own interests. That you feel you know what is best for others who comment on this site is bullshit.
You are not alone, one deluded moron even wrote an entire book about what is wrong with Kansas because he thought he knew, better than they, what is important to a whole state full of people. Other deluded morons then read the book and agreed.
I expect you will never understand that many people vote for what they believe will be the betterment of their country, not for how much they might personally benefit from the government.
You earned your down twinkles.
Duff - It's a nice sentiment but nothing TJ said had anything to do with what you wrote. His post was completely restricted to the rhelm of all public and union employees are lazy whining crying do nothings who get paid to be whining crying do nothings.
I have more respect for your wife and your son than that. I suspect that they work hard are dedicated to their jobs and even in your son's case goes above and beyond the call of duty to work with his students and does other work off of the clock such as grading papers.
Your criticism of unions is fair and valid, but it is simply the inverse of saying that corporations sometimes focus too much on bottom line profits and not on being good corporate citizens or service providers. There is good and bad to unions just as there is good and bad to corporations.
The bused in numbers heavily favor the left kwawk. I've been stumbling around that state since early April and the right is trying to combat DNC/Soros/Unions/Socialist/Big-Lib operatives the best they can, but they were most often HEAVILY outnumbered by anti-Scott Walker protesters and their "grassroots" effort. I don't need to Google it or read about it, I've been all over the state seeing it for myself. The left has been acting like spoiled children up there. It's not just independents that are being turned off by the Democrat game plan in Wisconsin... so are registered Democrats.
And nobody's "giving up" their pensions and benefits... but they are being asked to "pay in" to them. It's really not the end of the world, it's just being made out to be for political gain (which will backfire on them in the end).
I was a union member when I was a young man. I also voted conservative, and didn't like what my union was doing. So I suppose, according to KwAwk's logic, I was into "self-hatred." If so, then...
Three cheers for self-hatred!
Skinny - How exactly is anything that went on in Wisconsin any different than what the Tea Party has been doing for the past 3.5 years? Do you really believe it wasn't the Koch brothers paying to bus all those people to all those rallies?
Oh, brother.
SELF HATRED MY ASS, skwawk. More like hatred for liberal democrats who are everywhere in NC state gov't.
I had great enthusiasm for my work when I first began but they beat that out of me soon enough. If you care too much you begin to be viewed as a rather troublesome sort who just needs to chill and go with the flow. After all this is only gov't work. Stay within policy, stay within policy, stay within policy. I was only as loyal to the state as I had to be. I hated managers meetings and conferences where I had to actually hang out with democrats.
I did many things in my life skawk and only spent the last 15 with the state of NC. I am now retired. It is stupid too suggest that because I was an employee of the state for those years that I had the same work ethic and principles as so many of those lazy ass bastards I managed and couldn't fire. Though I did fire my fair share by being diligent with their performance ratings. It was a maddening, hair pulling experience every time. And this is not even to mention the talk the talk but never walk the walk idiocy of upper management.
On the other hand, the few superb employees I had, I could do nothing to reward other than to let them know how much I appreciated them. Though on rare occasions I was able to promote a one or two. Gov't's are run on politics and politically generated policies designed to keep themselves off the front page and out of court. Beyond that, they try to create and keep as many job positions as they can while the actual mission of agencies or departments suffer greatly. The policies that must be followed to interview and hire employees are so insane as to make it nearly impossible to hire good employees and just as impossible, as stated before, to fire them once hired.
Nuff said. I could go on Ad infinitum. Do I have stories... The very idea of unions being involved in taxpayer funded gov't's is ludicrous on the very face of it. They can all GO TO HELL! And some big ole DOWN TWINKLES to you skwawk. :-)
Hey, Skinnydipinacid:
Thank you very much for your activism.
When many are worried that something could go really badly, there are sometimes those who put real work into trying to turn the situation into a "finest hour".
When you see news like this, you really can't help but want to get involved. 119% voter turnout in liberal Madison? The people of Wisconsin should come screaming, inside and outside of the capital for an investigation into possible voter fraud, even if Walker wins (as exit polls are starting to predict).
Of course, if it involves looking into and attempting to put a stop to potential voter fraud (like Florida is trying to do), you can rest assured the DoJ will come running in and try to put a stop to it lickity-split.
lol @ the Koch brothers.
So what if they were kwawk?
"But, but, the Koch brothers"... Even though many others payed to help support Scott Walker after Unions and many leftist groups were already up there trying to outspend, out-hustle and outmaneuver them with lies and propaganda (even dragging their students in and putting their responsibilities on the back burner to highlight just how low they were willing to go to satisfy what was best for them and not for anybody else). That of COURSE was going to lead numerous groups to start throwing donation of their own into the ring to fight back. What else were you expecting to happen?
Democrats / Unions started this...
the supporters of Scott Walker are simply trying to finish it once and for all.
It honestly sounds like the left thinks that simply slapping the Koch brothers name on this (or anything for that matter) will somehow diminish the simple facts of the issue. Wisconsin Democrats are trying to recall a man simply because they don't like the decision he made (not to mention PROMISED to make throughout his election) so they took the low-down, dirty route of calling for a recall. It was wrong, made them look nuts for abusing such an act and the more people that contributed to the movement fueled by hate (not passion) as a political maneuver, the more it began to affect the party... not only at the state level, but at the national level as well.
And to think... it's only going to get nuttier come November. Who needs popcorn?
Skinny -- We're just learning to play the game the same way you guys do. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard from wingnuts how every initiative on the left was funded by George Soros, I'd be living pretty high on the hog. The notion that a small group of billionaires are funding a lot of the right wing so called grass roots activities and think tanks in this country isn't really in dispute. If you're still not clear about this try typing Cato Institute into Google and see what you find.
Actually Scott Walker started this. The public employee unions in Wisconsin had already agreed to wage concessions prior to Scott Walker and Republicans jamming through legislation to strip them of their collective bargaining rights. This wasn't about balancing a budget this was about attacking the unions. It's an attack on the middle class by a bunch of right wing billionaires who won't be happy until they pretty much control all of the wealth in this country, and you're on the front lines helping them my friend.
There is nothing dirty about the recall election, it is simply following the laws as written.
Wisconsin Republicans wanted to make necessary changes...
.... Unions however wanted to turn this into a war.
And yes, there is something dirty (not to mention morally wrong) about abusing a law meant to protect the people under the rule of government for ones own benefit. It blew up in their face, plain and simple... and now that We Ask America poll seems to be looking more and more accurate as a result.
Allahpundit at Hotair has unleashed the famous humpbot. Can it be true? Or has Lyndon Johnson's party saved some ballot boxes for later?
Any state that allows same day voter registration is not serious about the integrity of the vote.
With 54 percent of the vote counted, Walker leads by 17 percent, at 58% to 41%.
Skinny - Wisconsin Republicans pretty much have legislated the public unions out of business. If that isn't declaring war I don't know what is.. It hasn't blown up in their faces, and at least they went down swinging in the face of overwhelming odds. Walker outspent Barrett by a factor of 10:1 and only won by 2 points.
The WeAskAmerica poll wasn't even in the ballpark. If things hold up as they are expected to it missed the mark by a full 10 percentage points. It missed the mark by 600%. It was either methodically incompetent or a blatant attempt to suppress voter turnout by trying to convince people the race wasn't as close as it was.
What exactly is the business of public sector unions?
Who says 2% victory? Is that from the KOS kids or something?
With 84% of the vote counted the lead is 9%.
Mach- The business of public sector unions is to use union dues collected, and in Wisconsin, excess profits from Union-owned health insurance companies overcharging, to campaign for more union-friendly pols who will vote the unions more money so the unions can give more money back to the pols. Sweet deal, unless you are a taxpayer.
MSNBC spin... the big winner tonight was... Barack Obama
Best quote was from Maddow (the male replica of Chris Hayes) who said:
Really? I]seem to be pulling it off with little effort.
The business of unions is collective bargaining for wages and working conditions and enforcement of those agreements.
Seriously, you guys talk a lot about jealousy, but you're about as jealous as you can get of people who work for the public sector. What should these people work for free?
Should they work for sub-standard wages and benefits for their country and esprit de corps like the military?
The pre-packaged excuses by dems were out fast n' furious tonight. Koch Brothers. Citizens United. Tea Baggers. Democrats reek of weakness.
I'm not jealous of Unions at all kwawk, I just know they're greedy and corrupt.
The time for when there was a need for Unions has come and gone.
The wages and working conditions of government employees is a matter of public policy to be determined by the public's elected representatives. Government employees have no more right to determine what public policy should be than any other voter.
Word out of the White House this morning is that Obama was discovered hiding under his bed, sobbing softly as he clutched his Karl Marx Cabbage Patch doll.
Skinny - Not sure what to tell you. Congrats? The truth is we'll never be able to experience long term robust growth in the economy until workers once again are able to share in the spoils of productivity growth. The only way in human history that that has ever happened is through Unions or Government.
This country doesn't need 300 Million entrepreneurs.
Mach - Government workers are selling their labor to the government. They have every right to negotiate for the best price just like anyone else. We don't vote on how much the government will pay for each snow plow do we?
As individuals, yes. They do not have the right to force the government to deal with them collectively.
KwAwk, can you see the contradiction there?
Red - There is no contradiction there. While some of the activities of entrepreneurs and workers are similar the two paths are not the same.
Mach - Dealing with it's labor force collectively is a good thing for government. It cuts down on potential corruption and the appearance of corruption as it takes out of the hands of politicians the setting of wages of individuals. Neither Republicans nor Democrats can come into office and give raises and bonuses to only the people that voted for them.
It also helps facilitate budgeting as you know how much each position will be paid years in advance regardless of who occupies the position.
I have really enjoyed the KwAwk-a-dile tears over this recall election.
lol Duff, if anybody has been shedding tears here it's been Skinny.
Oh my dear, those mean ole unions are so unfair and mean to poor wittle Scotty Walker! They went and bussed people around! No fair no fair!
If there's been any crying on my part... it's been tears of joy.
Oh wait, no... that was the BLT sub w/ extra onions.
Either way, it was a good day.
"What should these people work for free?"
Should so many get paid for doing little to nothing. How many ways should management have to justify it's attempts to get someone to show up for work on time, show up for work at all or actually do some work then they get there. Took me five years to fire a maintenance mechanic who over stayed his vacation by a week and never called in, was always's late for work, constantly slept on the job and drove a truck into his supervisor (only bumped him, didn't actually run over him - still). And so much more. ...
And this in a state that is not unionized.
Unions MY ASS!
kwawk, I think what's a more accurate assessment of the entire fiasco is that the Unions are used to being the ones outspending/outmaneuvering those smaller than them and getting what they want with such tactics. When many Americans (not just the Koch brothers) saw what was going on in Wisconsin and donated money money to help combat the powerful thugs, they flipped the tables and gave the unions a taste of their own medicine. Now they're out there trying to save face by putting forth desperate excuses (in unison b.t.w., so good boy) like "we were outspent", or "this is actually a good thing for Obama" and "it's all because of the Koch Brothers and those selfish, racist, hate-filled Tea Partiers".
The egg is already on the face... the left can either wipe it off or wait for somebody to come along with more eggs. It's really their choice. They however choose to stick around, flap their arms and beg for more by screaming "bring out the hens". After getting pelted some more they'll start blaming the evil egg industry. Just more of the same.
Collective bargaining for public employees is a recipe for fiscal disaster. Far too much coziness between union treasuries and politicians who vote to fatten said treasuries.
God Bless GOVERNOR Scott Walker and all of those voters who supported him -TWICE!
Skinny - This was not an issue where people like the Koch brothers decided to level the playing field, this was the wealthiest Americans coming in and outspending the opposition 8:1. The unions in no way shape or form have the resources to stand toe to toe with corporate interests on a dollar to dollar level.
TJ - You're litany of complaints would fit well in the concerns of mid-level managers everywhere in large bureaucratic organizations whether they be in the private sector, public sector or in charitable organizations. Big organizations are by nature beaureacratic ridgid and slow to move.
Red - Funny thing is that you don't have the same complaint about private sector coziness between the treasuries of defense contractors and politicians inclined to fatten those treasuries.