Saturday, September 17, 2022

Scott Walker sez prayer works!


So here goes!

Meet the man with the bald spot who stumbled badly in his quest for the presidency

 
Exhibit A in presidential futility
HeadlineNew York Times, 9/17/2022

Jamelle Bouie's op-ed concludes with this observation:
And looking back at the last decade or so of Republican presidential contests, it would not be the first time that a vaunted conservative fighter fell flat on his face when he finally took a swing at prime time.

Wisconsin 2022 elections: Who's running in the 14th Assembly district?

 

The GOP gerrymandered 14th Assembly is designed with Exact-O precision.  And with disregard for the state requirements of compactness and community of interest.


Keva appears to be flying under the radar.

Robyn succeeded in turning the 14th District from red to blue.

Source:  Ballotpedia


Other "Who's Running" posts:
1st Assembly.  (8/10/2022 update)
2nd Assembly.  (8/24/2022)
3rd Assembly.  (9/26/2022)
4th Assembly.  (6/14/2022)
5th Assembly.  (8/11/2022 update)
6th Assembly.  (8/28/2022)
13th Assembly.  (8/16/2022)
31st Assembly.  (6/15/2022)
32nd Assembly.  (6/16/2022)
45th Assembly.  (6/18/2022)
46th Assembly.  (8/25/2022)
52nd Assembly.  (6/19/2022)
59th Assembly.  (6/19/2022)
60th Assembly.  (6/21/2022)
61st Assembly  (6/21/2022)
68th Assembly.  (8/11/2022 update)
71st Assembly.  (6/23/2022)
73rd Assembly.  (6/28/2022)
74th Assembly.  (6/29/2022)
79th Assembly.  (7/13/2022)
80th Assembly.  (7/14/2022)
81st Assembly.  (7/15/2022)
84th Assembly.  (7/16/2022)
87th Assembly.  (7/18/2022)
92nd Assembly.  (7/19/2022)
96th Assembly.  (7/25/2022)

5th Senate.  (7/26/2022)
7th Senate.  (7/28/2022)
9th Senate.  (7/30/2022)
19th Senate.  (7/31/2022)
29th Senate.  (8/10/2022 update)

Running unopposed.  (8/23/2022)

Douglas Rudolph (1929-2022) Warren High School class of 1948

 
1948 Dragon yearbook

Source
:  Peterson Blick Funeral Home

Douglas's high-school activities:
Baseball (2); Art Club (4)

1967 Warren City Directory
1983 Warren City Directory 
  •  

The popularity of Douglas as a baby name is graphed here.  Let's take a look at Darla.



Darla spent 51 years on the baby names chart, most of them in the top half.  Her best years occurred during a very brief run in the top 200 from 1962 to 1964.  She peaked at #165 in 1963.

Other class of '48 graduates (40):
2022

2021
Richard Betts.  (10/31)
James Stearns.  (10/4)
Wyllis Mead, (8/16)

2020
James Suppa.  (12/23)

2019
Helen Yarzabek.  (11/7)
Betty Fitzgerald Bearfield.  (10/29)
Georgia Ann Valentine Kargle.  (7/26)
Shirlie Jean Kauffman.  (5/22)
Joanne Swanson Massa.  (2/23)

2018
Joanne Chester.  (11/13)
Betty Burke Dickinson.  (9/1)
Stephen Cosmano.  (8/29)
Beulah Fox Boll.  (3/16)

2017
Phyllis Miller Maze. (12/27)
Dorothy Anderson Turner.  (9/27)
Margaret Mathyer Conroy.  (4/26)

2016
Ruth Figliuzzi.  (11/5)
Donna Mack Schuler.  (3/19)

2015
Carol Jean Niver Hampson.  (10/22)
Frank Marlett.  (9/13)
John Giltinan.  (7/6)
Lela Nichols Akeley.  (6/24) 

2014
Ella Atwell Blum.  (12/24) 
Betty Carlson Johnson.  (10/26)
H. Kent Peterson.  (10/1)
Kenneth Lundahl.  (9/21)

2013 
Carl Leave.  (12/26)

GET ME REWRITE: Donald Trump goes full looney tunes

 

HeadlineABC News, 9/16/2022
After winking at QAnon for years, Donald Trump is overtly embracing the baseless conspiracy theory, even as the number of frightening real-world events linked to it grows. 
On Tuesday, using his Truth Social platform, the Republican former president reposted an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming." In QAnon lore, the “storm” refers to Trump's final victory, when supposedly he will regain power and his opponents will be tried, and potentially executed, on live television. 
As Trump contemplates another run for the presidency and has become increasingly assertive in the Republican primary process during the midterm elections, his actions show that far from distancing himself from the political fringe, he is welcoming it.

Friday, September 16, 2022

Ken Starr's legacy as president of Baylor University

 
Headline and accomplishmentsNew York Times, 9/13/2022

GET ME REWRITE: How a Spreader of Voter Fraud Conspiracy Theories Became a Star of the Trump Big Lie Clown Show


Headline:  New York Times, 9/14/2022
While volunteering at her local polls in the Houston area two years earlier, she claimed, she witnessed voter fraud so rampant that it made her heart stop. People cast ballots without proof of registration or eligibility, she said. Corrupt election judges marked votes for their preferred candidates on the ballots of unwitting citizens, she added. 
Local authorities found no evidence of the election tampering she described, but Ms. Engelbrecht was undeterred. “Once you see something like that, you can’t forget it,” the suburban Texas mom turned election-fraud warrior told the audience of 2,000. “You certainly can’t abide by it.” 
Ms. Engelbrecht was ahead of her time. Many people point to the 2020 presidential election as the beginning of a misleading belief that widespread voter fraud exists. But more than a decade before Donald J. Trump popularized those claims, Ms. Engelbrecht had started planting seeds of doubt over the electoral process, becoming one of the earliest and most enthusiastic spreaders of ballot conspiracy theories.
Catherine also appeared as the star of Day 575 of GOP election hysteria.

Meet Catherine Engelbrecht
 head of True the vote clown show
New York Times, 5/29/2022
Ms. Engelbrecht, the founder of True the Vote, a group that has spent years warning of the dangers of voter fraud, has criticized the earlier narratives of the 2020 election as unhelpful. “What they were putting out there was a lot of misinformation that just wasn’t true,” she said in a recent interview. “People want to believe the conspiracies in some ways.” Their film, she maintains, offers a more-serious theory. Image Catherine Engelbrecht, center, founder and president of True the Vote. 
Yet a close look at the documentary shows that it, too, is based on arguments that fall apart under scrutiny. 
The film, directed by the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, is based in part on an erroneous premise: that getting paid to deliver other people’s ballots is illegal not just in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia where True the Vote centered its research and where third-party delivery of ballots is not allowed in most cases, but in every state.
 

Wishing won't make it so: Presenting the one-man clown show of GOP strategist Matt Gorman

 
HeadlineJezebel, 9/11/2022
“I don’t think it’s an issue in [this election] at all,” GOP strategist Matt Gorman said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday morning. “I mean, talk to Republicans every day who see these internal polls. It is not in the top four of issues.” 
Two women on the panel immediately fact-checked him on that assertion. “As someone who’s been out on the campaign trail—even if you ask a voter about health care or the state of democracy, abortion comes up 90 percent of the time,” said PBS anchor Yamiche Alcindor. “I think to say it’s not an issue is very interesting to hear.” 
“I hope Matt keeps saying that everywhere he goes, that abortion really isn’t an issue in this election,” former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) chimed in. “I think it is exactly what infuriates women, when they hear that.”
Related posts:
MAN OH MAN! Meet the anti-abortionists of the South Carolina state legislature.  (9/11/2022)
Reproductive rights? Fuggedaboudit! What else would you expect from these Wisconsin GOP Gomers?
(8/27/2022)
Thank you Tennessee, Idaho and Texas for pulling the 'trigger' for Democrats in 2022 elections.
(8/23/2022)
Here's the instant legacy of the Value Them Both anti-abortion ideologues.  (8/23/2022)
Republicans say they "value them both". Watch what they do, not what they say. (Indiana edition)(8/6/2022

Emelie Andersen Rossman (1925-2022) Warren High School class of 1944

 
1944 Dragon yearbook


Jeanne's high-school activities:

A Capella Choir (2); Carnival (3); Girls; Club (3.,4); Latin Club (3)

 

1967 Warren City Directory  

1983 Warren City Directory  
  • Andersen Leonhart C retired h110 Grant Street
  • Rossman Calvin C (Emilie D) shipping clerk GTE Sylvania h477 Pleasant Drive

Emilie bounced around quite a bit during her time on the baby names chart, most of it on the lower half.  She peaked at #444 in 2001 but then quickly fell out of favor and dropped off the chart after 2016.




Other members of the class of '44 (30):
2022

2021
Kenneth Berdine.  (4/28)

Theodore Wozneak.  (11/25)

Scott Walker's Foxconn fantasy vs. current reality

 
HeadlineMilwaukee Journal Sentinel, 9/16/2022
There have been high profile announcements promising production of flat screen televisions, coffee kiosks and electric vehicles. None have come to fruition. And the company has not provided any media tours or updates. 
One person, who has spent the last 90 days working at Foxconn, said workers at one building in the massive complex are assembling motherboards — a crucial part of computer hardware — for Google and Amazon. 
The worker's comments — and a video he made — provide a rare insight into the puzzling and secretive operations at the massive Racine County facility touted by former President Donald Trump as the "eighth wonder of the world."

Other Foxconn posts:
2022
Foxconn groundbreaking four years later ranks as Wisconsin's #1 con job. (6/29/2022)
In an exercise in futility, UW-Madison College of Engineering hires former Foxconn Alan Yeung.  (4/6/2022)
Foxconn: It's the worst thing that happened to Wisconsin when Scott Walker was governor.  (4/1/2022)
In an exercise in futility, former Foxconn exec blames Tony Evers for Scott Walker's barefaced political opportunism.  (3/19/2022)

2021
Foxconn goes to Lordstown.  (11/14/2021)
GET ME REWRITE: Yes, Foxconn's $100 milion pledge to UW-Madison was nothing more than a cynical election ploy by Scott Walker.  (8/11/2021)
The mysteries of Foxconn (season 2).  (5/12/2021)
The collapse of Donald Trump's '8th Wonder of the World'.  (4/20/2021)

2020
Apparently, that's not what Scott Walker heard.  (12/19/2020)
Just wondering what else in this Foxconn op-ed is off the mark.  (11/17/2020)
GET ME REWRITE: Two gullible guys from Racine County still believe anything Foxconn tells them.  (10/23/2020)

Keeping tabs on Foxconn Place in
Eau Claire
Green Bay
Madison
Milwaukee
Racine

GET ME REWRITE: GOP show its true colors, sez it's 'inappropriate' to encourage people to vote

 

HeadlineWisconsin State Journal, 9/15/2022
When Jason Calvi, a political reporter for WITI-TV (FOX6), asked Johnson about possible criticism that could follow the publicly supported GOTV efforts, Johnson replied "There's certainly a role for local government to play" in encouraging residents to get to the polls. [emphasis added]
Republicans are still raising concerns. They are calling it "Zuckerbucks 2.0," a reference to how more than 200 Wisconsin communities cumulatively (and legally) accepted millions of dollars in grants to support election efforts prior to the 2020 presidential election from the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life. CTCL was funded by hundreds of millions of dollars from Priscilla Chan and her husband, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

 

Original 9/15/2022 post, "GOP freaks out over Get Out the Vote efforts, goes all in for voter supression", starts here.

HeadlineAljazeera, 5/3/2022

Black people voting?  Heaven forbid!

Headline:  News10, 9/14/2022

A new privately funded get-out-the-vote initiative in Wisconsin’s largest and most Democratic city has the support of Milwaukee’s mayor, but Republicans say it’s an attempt by Democrats to improperly bolster turnout in the narrowly divided battleground state. 
The controversy over the Milwaukee Votes 2022 initiative echoes concerns raised by Republicans in 2020 when a Mark Zuckerberg-funded group distributed millions of dollars in grants to support local elections offices in Wisconsin and throughout the country as COVID-19 complicated the presidential election.

Leading the charge:  Janel Brandtjen. 


Thursday, September 15, 2022

GET ME REWRITE: Tighty Whities at WILL keep up their campaign of voter suppression

 
Headline:  Wisconsin State Journal, 9/15/2022  
Photos:  The WILL Team

Judge shopping:
A Waukesha County judge should declare that a federal voter registration form is illegal in Wisconsin because it omits questions and disclaimers required by state law, according to a lawsuit a conservative group filed Thursday against the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 
The so-called National Voter Mail Registration Form breaks state law by not asking applicants whether they have felony convictions and doesn't state that falsifying information on it is a felony, according to the lawsuit.

1/27/2022 update, "There they go again:  WILL team always eager to promote voter suppression and white privilege", starts here.


Elections Commission issued guidance in early 2020 to allow election clerks to make use of them. WILL and some Republicans have alleged the lack of statutory language makes the use of the boxes illegal. Proponents of drop boxes have said local election clerks should have discretion over their use and have targeted GOP efforts to limit or ban the boxes as an attempt to suppress votes. 
The boxes were widely used in 2020 as an alternative for voters worried that, with the crush of absentee ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic and potential delays in mail delivery, their ballots might not make it back before Election Day. At least 34 states used or planned to use ballot drop boxes in the 2020 election and about 16% of voters nationwide in the 2016 general election made use of the boxes, according to the Elections Commission. [emphasis added]

6/29/2021 update starts here.
The lawsuit, filed Monday by Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on behalf of Richard Teigen, of Hartland, and Richard Thom, of Menomonee Falls, challenges the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s guidance to election clerks last year on the use of ballot drop boxes leading up to the 2020 election.



Other WILL posts:When Rick Esenberg tells the 4 lapdogs on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to roll over, they earn themselves a doggy bone.  (6/12/2021) Tighty Whities at WILL are overdue with a reckoning with whiteness.  (1/13/2021)

Sunday, September 11, 2022

The Dinesh D'Souza Clown Show crashes and burns

 

HeadlineWisconsin Public Radio, 9/8/2022
The book does not appear to suffer from an obvious production error which might explain the delay; a misaligned photo, incorrect page numbers or blank pages. 
The book does, however, regurgitate the content of the film "2,000 Mules" including misleading claims, which have been thoroughly debunked by fact-checkers and critics across the political spectrum. Former Attorney General Bill Barr called the film's underlying premise "indefensible." 
Despite those flaws, "2,000 Mules" has emerged as a leading theory for supporters of Trump's baseless claim that he actually won the 2020 election. For Trump and some of his most diehard fans - among them candidates for public office - the project has served as "proof" of the stolen election.
 

6/14/2022 update, "Let's welcome Dinesh D'Souza' "2000 Mules" to the list of box office flops", starts here.

Source:  Box Office Mojo

Related reading:

Business Insider, 6/13/2022
"The cellphone data is singularly unimpressive," Barr added. "Basically, if you take 2 million cellphones and figure out where they are physically in a big city like Atlanta or wherever, by definition, you're going to find many hundreds of them that have passed by and spent time in the vicinity these boxes. And the premise that if you go by five boxes or whatever it was, that that's a mule, is indefensible."


5/20/2022 update, "Meet Trump sycophant and professional liar Dinesh D'Souza", starts here.

Box office talliesBox Office Mojo
HeadlineBenzinga, 5/16/2022
D’Souza has made a career out of right-wing video production and publishing. He pleaded guilty to a campaign donation fraud charge in 2014 and was issued a pardon by Trump in 2018. 
Not unlike the film’s claims of election fraud, D’Souza’s declaration that it has been “successful in its political and cultural influence” appears to have a tenuous acquaintance with reality.  [emphasis added; a polite way of saying he's a fucking liar]
There is no independent audit of Salem’s claim of a $10 million gross for “2000 Miles” — and if it is, this might be the best-kept secret in the motion picture industry.

Related reading:
New York Times, 5/29/2022
The film, directed by the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, is based in part on an erroneous premise: that getting paid to deliver other people’s ballots is illegal not just in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia where True the Vote centered its research and where third-party delivery of ballots is not allowed in most cases, but in every state. 
What’s more, the film claims, but never shows in its footage, that individual “mules” stuffed drop box after drop box. (Mr. Phillips said such footage exists, but Mr. D’Souza said it wasn’t included because “it’s not easy to tell from the images themselves that it is the same person.”) Those claims are purportedly backed up by tracking cellphone data, but the film’s methods of analysis have been pilloried in numerous fact-checks. (True the Vote declined to offer tangible proof — Mr. Phillips calls his methodology a “trade secret.”) 
 

4/11/2022 update, "Truth Social:  Oh, Dinesh, scooby-doo, got it wrong again, Dinesh, scooby-do", starts here.



 Headlines:


Original 3/2/2022 post, "Dinesh D'Souza has something clownish to say about Donald Trump's Truth Social', starts here.

Sources:  YouTube, (red box added)
Trump's Truth Social bomb, Vox, 3/1/2022 (red box added)

MAN OH MAN! Meet the anti-abortionists of the South Carolina state legislature

 


HeadlineNew York Times, 9/9/2022
Learn more about these Gomers here.
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, who backed a more complete ban without exceptions for rape or incest, could not overcome resistance from within his own party. “We don’t have the votes, and I hate that I have to admit that,” said Mr. Massey, who instead shifted to a more modest goal of further restrictions. 
Three Republican women spoke against the total ban and in favor of exceptions for rape and incest, arguing that it was wrong to compel young victims of sexual violence to give birth.

The GOP has Shane, no shame.