Lighten up a little....

Our friend Tbogg is in rare form this morning and his site is a good way to lighten up ...





first, he publishes this picture




With the caption:

GOOD LUCK SENATORS EDWARDS, OBAMA AND CLINTON

roflmao

Then he goes into some "random" news items...the funniest of which is this:

Congratulations to Burger King for their Whopper Freakout commercials which may also serve as public service spots raising everyones self esteem by portraying Whopper aficionados as the kind of people who make eugenics if not desirable , at least worth looking into. No wonder the Islamofalafelists think we're ripe for the picking.

and, of course, making fun of Billo is ALWAYS in fashion:

Bill O'Reilly tries to talk to Barrack Obama and makes a fool out of himself. Bill-O has been around long enough to know that the easiest way to get candidates attention would have been to yell, " Motherfucker, I want an interview!".

There's much more so click on the link and enjoy!

Get on the train...........

Thanks to NJdodge, here's a nice picture of the "Obama Train" coming down the track...as referenced by the incomparable Jane Hamser at firedoglake blog.

Jane takes off on Clinton pollster, Mark Penn in this post and notes that the guy not only has "ethics" problems, but has been and continues to be WRONG on almost every bit of info that he provides to Hillary. Jane thinks the guy should be thrown under the bus....or maybe the train eh?

some snippets:

Positive spin is one thing, but if he's no better pollster than that, I can well imagine that big donors to the Clinton campaign are shaken up. Is that what his own internal polling was telling him? Was he bullshitting the Clintons the same way he was bullshitting the public?

The Clinton campaign needs to retool and they need to do it quickly. Dumping Penn would eject an enormous negative from her campaign. Penn is a notorious union buster who had the amorality and piss-poor judgment to go to work for Blackwater in the midst of her campaign, fer chrissakes. Did he tell her to vote for Kyl-Lieberman too? "No big deal?"

Did they not see this train coming?

Post Iowa....and on to New Hampshire...

On our side, there was much to be happy about in Iowa last Thursday night...

among those things:

An incredible victory speech by Obama....I've heard it referred to by some of our locals as well as hosts and hostesses on NPR as "Kennedyesque". I watched part of it on Youtube and thought it was pretty good, but I still don't see what all the fuss was about.....

Which brings up another thing for us to be happy about. Obama seems to have captured the nation's imagination and there seems to be (as LoLo refers to it) and Obama "fever" going on at the moment. That means that there is some fire ....some enthusiasism in the Democratic Party and especially among the young which accounted for a goodly portion of Obama's support in Iowa.

And another thing to be happy about....Democrats out caucused the Republicans in Iowa at a rate of 2-1. There is much more enthusiasm among Democrats for their candidates than there is among Republicans for their candidates.

And yet, another thing to be happy about.....The total votes for all three leading Democratic candidates in Iowa were INDIVIDUALLY higher than the number of votes for the winning Republican....

And finally....HUCKABEE WON! His victory is driving the mainstream Republican party nuts....here's a few snippets of what his fellow Republicans are saying about him....

from NRO'S "The Corner":

Mike Huckabee's stunning victory in Thursday's Iowa caucuses does more
than change the GOP nomination race. With a platform explicitly grounded in
his Christian faith and a populist economic message, Mr. Huckabee offers the
Republican Party a new political narrative, light years removed from the
limited government principles governing the GOP in the Reagan and
post-Reagan era. This pro-faith, pro-government message may sound strange to
American ears — but it is a staple of conservative political parties on the
European continent. Mr. Huckabee, in other words, essentially gives
Republicans a choice: Does the GOP want to become a Christian Democratic
party? To answer that question, Republicans should look carefully at
Christian Democracy to see if it is a model worth emulating.

In other words....Republicans are doing a whole lot of soul-searching

By the way...Thanks to LoLo for being the perfect Hostess for yesterday's Executive Committee Meeting....

If any of the exec committee members want to become "team bloggers" please post a comment below.

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please, please...let them choose Huck!

Timothy Egan (bio on page) at the New York Times had the guts to say what most Republican main-streamers are actually thinking....Huckabee isn't "one of them" .

But it's even better than that....Huckabee's constituency is the very group the Repubs have been using and ignoring for years....read the whole thing but here are a few choice snippets:

Class war is forbidden in the Republican playbook. But Huckabee, despite an inept last week of campaigning, has forced the Republican party to face the Wal-Mart shoppers that they have long taken advantage of. He’s here. He’s Gomer. And he’s not going away.

snip

Huckabee revels in the class war. He’s Two-Buck Huck, and darn proud of it. He likes nothing better than playing the Hick from Hope. He and his wife lived in a trailer for a while, he points out. His son killed a dog one summer, “a mangy dog” at that, as Huckabee explained to the befuddled national press corps. He said he used to eat squirrels, cooking them up in his popcorn popper. Ewwwwhhh!

snip

“For my family, summer was never a verb,” he says. Take that, Mitt Romney and your perfect family, costumed in Ralph Lauren casual wear down by the shore. And this: “Wall Street types are afraid to death of a guy like me.” You mean, a guy who lost 110 pounds and cooks squirrels in his popcorn popper?

snip

It’s okay to have faux rubes, a la Bush senior and his pork rinds, or George W. and his Midland malapropisms. But when something that looks like the real thing comes along, the Republican royalists get apoplectic. They were appalled at the recent YouTube debate because it looked like a parody of one faction of their party – complete with Bible-waving wackos, trigger-happy gun nuts and Confederate-flag enthusiasts.

In other words, the Republican party has been "playing" these folks for years and now, there's "one of them" who is dangerously close to taking the nomination and they ARE NOT HAPPY!

Read the whole article...its fun...

Republicans acting like.....Republicans

I thought this blog entry from The Washington Monthly was somehow terribly appropriate.





First read these snippets (or whole post if you'd like)





"About mid-way through the ad, during a litany of accusations against Mitt Romney, Huckabee criticizes his rival with this data point: "No executions."



Apparently, Huckabee -- you know, the evangelical, pro-life Republican -- is going after Romney for not having executed any Americans during his gubernatorial tenure.



I realize Republican politics are far more crass than norms should allow, but it's disconcerting to think "You didn't kill anyone" has suddenly become a criticism in conservative circles."

Ummmm...do you think that Huck really doesn't know that Massachusetts doesn't have a death penalty?

Guest editorialist Steve Benen (blog,bio) is just as amazed as I am that it has become so blatant for Republicans to criticize one another for not killing enough people....but if you think that just Huckabee reached the lowest a Republican candidate could go...well, think again.....





Steve points out on his blog that Romney, in a desperate race to justify the millions spent on his own campaign, reaches back to that old, Republican standby, the Lewinsky Scandal, to mine for more votes of the Republican Faithful.





snip





Romney:
“We’ll try and represent ourselves and our nation well also to our kids because I think, I think kids watch the White House and there have been failures in the past in the White House — if you go back to the Clinton years and recognize that — that I think had an enormous impact on the culture of our country,” Romney said. “And we’ll do our very best, our whole family will to — well, if we can’t be perfect, we’ll do our best to uphold and to be a good example for the kinds of values I think people expect from our leaders.”


Steve:



Wow, that sure is dumb.



The Lewinsky scandal had an “enormous impact” undermining American culture? Seriously?





The silliness goes on and on and on..........in Iowa

Happy New Year

Hope everyone enjoyed their New Year Eve celebration in what ever way they chose to celebrate it....and we hope you were safe also...

I remember the "golden days" of the Johnny Carson Show when Ed McMahon would do his heavy drinker schtick...he referred to New Year's Eve as "amateur night". That of course referred to the fact that people who do not normally imbibe or over-imbibe in alcohol find it somehow necessary to go out on New Year's Eve, get drunk, make total idiots of themselves, and possibly spoil the evening (early..oftentimes well before Midnight) for themselves, their dates and anybody who happens to be unfortunate enough to be close to them. People who can't handle alcohol......shouldn't even try.

For that reason, I much prefer to stay home on New Year's Eve....watch a movie, enjoy a good, special home-cooked meal, put the old year in some kind of perspective and prepare myself mentally for the challenges that I will face in the year to come.

This year will be a bit different....it's another Presidential Election year and we have another chance to rid ourselves of the Neocon regime in Washington....unless we "blow-it" again....

I'm none too happy about the field of potential Democratic nominees....neither am I thrilled that the national media and the pundocracy that other bloggers have nick-named "the villagers", (that is , those pundits who are inside-the-beltway, establishment who believe they and they alone know what's "best for middle-America) are once again trying to tell us who our nominee should be.

It's our decision, dammit...

A New Year's Message from Russ

Dear Wisconsin Progressive,

I hope that everyone had a safe and happy holiday season. While I will continue to stand up for the values we share, the New Year brings with it increased opportunity to get our country moving in the right direction.

And while we must fight hard this year to take back the State Assembly, increase our seats in the State Senate, get veto-proof majorities in Congress, and elect a Democrat to the White House in November, there is an election in April that deserves our attention.

If last year’s volatile State Supreme Court race was any glimpse of things to come, outside special interests will do everything they can to unseat Justice Louis Butler.

Justice Butler is a highly regarded legal scholar who attended Lawrence University in Appleton and law school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For the last 11 years, he has served with distinction as a faculty member of the National Judicial College, where he teaches criminal law to judges from across the country and around the world. Justice Butler has spent the last 15 years as a judge, building a record we can all be proud of as he’s worked to make our state stronger and safer.

There are so many important issues that the Wisconsin Supreme Court rules on every year, and the Justices that serve on the Court make decisions that can have a dramatic influence on our state for generations to come. We need leaders like Justice Butler to continue to bring his values, experience and independence to the highest court in Wisconsin.

I’m going to fight to keep him on the State Supreme Court and I hope you will join me. For more information, or to join our effort to support Justice Butler, please contact Butler Campaign Coordinator Peter Knudson at peter@louisbutler.com or (414) 755-2067.

With high hopes,

Russ