So Fox and right-wing radio must love the return of this guy

-By Rob Rogers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The right's new favorite punching bag

This month the state of Minnesota elected the first Muslim to Congress when the voted to send Keith Ellison to Washington, D.C. This should be a great opportunity for our country to start looking past the stereotypes many people hold of Muslims. Instead, some on the right have questioned whether or not he is fit to serve in Congress right out of the gate.

It started when Fox "news" host, Glenn Beck, said to Ellison "prove to me that you are not working with our enemies" during an interview after Ellison won. I'm sure he would ask any milk truck driver that gets elected to Congress to prove to him he is not going to take young girls hostage and shoot them too. After all, the lunatic that did that claimed he was made at God.

Now we see the right-wing radio network has resorted to making stuff up to beat up on Ellison. Think Progress has the story here. Make sure you check out the picture of Speaker Dennis Hastert and note the lack of a bible...

Conflicted foundation

Just what would it take for J.B. Van Hollen to say he has a conflict of interest in a case? As Van Hollen gets ready to take office next month, the body of evidence gets stronger every week that he should not get involved in the state's case regarding a cranberry grower and yet he continues to insist there is no problem.

The Shepherd Express sums up the problem nicely:

Incoming state attorney general J.B. Van Hollen hasn't taken office yet, and there are already questions concerning a conflict of interest. While on the campaign trail, Republican Van Hollen promised to drop a lawsuit against a cranberry grower, a lawsuit filed by his predecessor, Democrat Peg Lautenschlager. But what Van Hollen didn't say was that he worked for the law firm that represents the defendant, the cranberry grower. Van Hollen also accepted at least $3,500 in donations from cranberry operations, including some from the wife of the grower named in the suit.

No problem even though he has taken campaign cash from the grower's family. What would be the signal that the cranberry growers are too close to Van Hollen then?

When the offices of the Department of Justice have cranberry treats instead of candy? Cranberry drinks at Van Hollen fundraisers? When Van Hollen pulls a Violet Beauregarde and blows up like a cranberry colored balloon?

And where are all those rightie bloggers on this one? A couple of months ago, it seemed the right talked nearly every single day about donations to the governor supposedly yielding results, but not one word on this? I guess some animals are more equal than others.

Even if you set the campaign donations aside, a law firm debating whether or not they should get involved in this case would take a pass because they would have a conflict of interest. Why does Van Hollen think the office of the Attorney General should have a lower set of standards than law firms?

Keep in mind this is a case where the judge said the grower was intentionally polluting the water, but it isn't a full-fledged public nuisance right now. It is developing into one though. Without state involvement in this matter, the pollution was not going to get any better because the grower didn't think he was doing anything wrong. So Van Hollen isn't fighting to dismiss a lawsuit because the grower wasn't abusing resources; he is arguing the state should look the other way while our resources are polluted.

This is the foundation Van Hollen is building his new office on and Wisconsin residents should be wary of the future.

An ease of the freeze - for Republicans

Last week's Wispolitics Report noted that Bob Delaporte has returned to work in the Capitol. Good news for him right? But isn't there a hiring freeze in place on the Assembly side of the building?

A memo dated June 7th from John Gard told Assembly Members that since the state budget reduced the amount of money available for the Assembly, he was instituting a hiring freeze until the end of the year to save money. Any exceptions to that would have to be approved by the speaker on a individual basis.

Many of us suspected that last little bit translated into Republicans can hire anyone they want and Democrats can't hire anyone. And I guess we were correct on that one. Unless Rep. Huebsch's constituents have a lot of real press emergencies pending, I'm at a loss to understand why he needed this staff person right away but everyone else has to wait until January.

New hires for the next session usually start in January after inauguration. If the Republicans had followed that rule, the freeze would be over too. But that would require some sort of fiscal restraint wouldn't it?

One big happy classroom?

The Madison School District announced today that it will not scrap the gifted and talented program at East High. You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief from many of the parents in this area. The proposal to eliminate the classes comes from a line of thinking that in order to close the achievement gap, students should be placed in "heterogeneous" classes where students of all achievement levels are grouped together in one classroom. But does this work?

Is there a body of research out there that proves putting students in classrooms like this does what people are hoping it will do? It seems counter intuitive that this would work so I'm curious if there is proof out there that this is a good solution.

It would be one thing if high schools had a small number of kids in the classroom. Teaching fifteen kids of different levels seems somewhat doable. Teaching twenty-five to thirty sounds just crazy. The kids on the high and low end would probably be neglected because it is asking way too much of a teacher.

Many of the parents in my neighborhood have told me the only reason they still send their kids to East High is because of the talented and gifted program. So will the heterogeneous classrooms really close the gap or just close it on paper because the high achieving students have fled the school so the remaining students will be closer in achievement?

Can this problem be solved this late in a child's education with a broadly applied program like this or is anything short of intensive individualized tutoring to make up lost ground a waste of time? Is this the only option we have to try to close this gap? Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater says this is part of a big plan.

Rainwater's vision would take at least two years to implement and be molded through steering committees made up of experts. He said it would include a broad "system of changes" to address the achievement gap. "Many children of color and poverty are not meeting standards," he said, adding that graduation rates are still too low for students in those categories.

I've looked at the MMSD website for the plan, but haven't found it yet. Hopefully the school district will post the plan soon and plan for a period of discussion.

City of Madison strikes good compromise on Cherokee Marsh

Hats off to the city of Madison for finding a pretty decent compromise on the potential new development near Cherokee Marsh. Having some new homes built there will be an economic bonus for the northside of the city. It also might even be a net environmental gain since much of the land being targeted for development is currently used as farm fields that are probably sending some bad stuff into the marsh.

Local activists should be applauded for their efforts to protect the marsh too. The original proposal from the owner of the land would have placed too many homes in areas critical to the health of the marsh and most likely would have caused some major flooding problems.

You can find a Wisconsin State Journal article about the compromise here.

Three U.S. House races still not over

Three U.S. House races are still up in the air. Two of them - Rep. Debra Pryce's seat in Ohio and Rep. Robin Hayes in North Carolina - are headed for recounts. The other is potentially headed for a new election after electronic voting machines malfunctioned.

You can find a story about them in the Washington Post here.

Opportunity knocks

Should we start taking bets now on which Republican is going to get this job? The possibilities for fun are endless with this one.

Straight-party voting, helpful tool to politicians or voters?

Some in the Republican Party are really reaching now. They are arguing that their party's losses this November were exaggerated by straight-party option voting and they want to do away with it. So does the straight-party option change races or is it nothing more than a time saver for people at the polls? I'd say the latter.

An article in The Hill newspaper runs through a few of the Congressional races this year and looks at the margin of victory to try to determine if straight-party voting accounted for the win or not. It includes the race for the 8th CD between Steven Kagen and John Gard.

In Wisconsin, Green Bay-based Brown County cast more than one-third of the 8th District’s 275,000 votes and saw straight-Democratic voting increase from 7,300 to 14,000. Democrat Steve Kagen wrested the Republican-held open seat by about the same margin.

That stat alone doesn't dig deep enough for Wisconsin voters. Wisconsin's split ticket voters have much more impact on the race than straight-party voters. The loss of Kathleen Falk to J.B. Van Hollen for Attorney General versus the win by Dawn Marie Sass over Jack Voight for State Treasurer is proof of that.

There may have been a few extra votes for Dems, but John Gard was going to lose to Steve Kagen with or without the straight-party voting system. Someone like Dawn Marie Sass or someone running for a county clerk position probably benefits from the straight-party voting system, but none of the high-profile congressional races can be explained away by this.

The really telling stat in this article is this one:

On average, about one-third of voters use the option where it is available.

One-third is about equal to the hard-core party loyalists that will never vote for the other side. There may be slight increases and decreases once in a while like we saw this year, but the Republicans would have lost Congress even without that voting option.

If they want to think otherwise and not take a hard look at the issues they presented to the voters in this election, that's just fine by me.

You can find the rest of the article here.

A new Thanksgiving cranberry dish

This week the Wisconsin State Journal did a great service to Wisconsin voters by dishing Attorney General-elect J.B. Van Hollen's conflict of interest on the cranberry case. Then they declined to eat their own creation when they wrote an editorial today saying the state should drop the lawsuit, but Van Hollen should not be involved in the decision.

How is that even possible at this point and why did they bother digging up this story? Van Hollen ran around the state telling anyone that would listen that he intended to drop the lawsuit if elected. His opinion is so intertwined with this story that there is no real way to remove Van Hollen from the decision now.

Do you think the employees of the Department of Justice are going to rock, paper, scissor for which unlucky guy/gal has to go tell the new boss that they aren't going to listen to him right from the moment he walks in the door? Or does it seem more likely that they will just drop the lawsuit?

Maybe it doesn't matter that the Wisconsin State Journal doesn't want to dig in or that Van Hollen's spokesperson is desperately trying to spin legal mumbo jumbo to keep the public from thinking Van Hollen is trying to corrupt the legal process before he even sits down at his new desk.

The court of public opinion will probably produce the correct judgment that Van Hollen is trying to pay back his employer for putting him on the payroll while he ran for office and some of his campaign donors for their support. Contrary to what some politicos think, the court of public opinion rarely gets those verdicts wrong.

Religion and government don't mix

Yet another horrific example of why religion doesn't belong in politics.

Racine Republicans go Rovian

You have to read this story to believe it. Racine County Republican supporters of County Executive William McReynolds are calling for Supervisor Ken Hall to resign.

Ken Hall is the Racine County Supervisor that released a report detailing just how expensive McReynolds' side businesses are to Racine County taxpayers. You can find the report at this post from Progressive Majority Wisconsin.

And just like Karl Rove telling Republicans to question the patriotism of every Democrat saying President Bush's 'stay the course' strategy was flawed, McReynolds supporters in Racine County are pointing the finger at Hall because he is asking the county to look into McReynolds' business dealings.

The most absurd part of this is that the McReynolds supporters are not saying McReynolds didn't do business to benefit himself using the county's resources. They are saying he gets to play be different rules.

Halbach said Hall’s concern that McReynolds violated county work rules were unwarranted because those rules do not apply to elected officials like the county executive.

No there's a tactic the public loves. Politicians claiming they are not guilty because they get to play by rules they make up as they go along instead of the ones everyone else has to live by in their job. What are the chances the public doesn't think the ethics rules that apply to county employees should apply to McReynolds?

If you think they don't want McReynolds held to the same standard, I suggest you check the results of the 21st Senate District elections held earlier this month. The people of Racine County gave a verdict on that one and the McReynolds backers on the County Board would be wise to listen to the people more than they listen to McReynolds trying to save his own neck.

Or they could go with the Rovian tactic of trying to blame Hall for McReynolds' ethical lapses. Of course they may want to ask the Republicans in DC cleaning out their offices over the next month how that strategy worked for them before they decide.

-By Rob Rogers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Interesting question for Van Hollen team

Crawford's take has some interesting questions for the Van Hollen Team. I don't know much about the laws in this area, but perhaps someone else out there does and can help. You can find them here.

Kreibich thinks he sucks

This article about Rep. Rob Kreibich's loss with nearly $100,000 in the bank is hilarious. It has this beauty of a quote:

"As an incumbent, if you can't hold your Assembly seat spending $50,000, you don't deserve to be in office," Kreibich said...

So Kreibich thinks he sucks and clearly his district thinks he sucks too or they wouldn't have voted for someone else.

The article is good for a laugh since Kreibich is desperately trying to convince himself and others that he wouldn't do anything different. He even exaggerates the Dem voting average to make it look like there is no way he could win. His district averages about 53%, not the 55% he tries to sell in the article.

He says he is saving the money in his account for a future race and throughout the article makes it sound like he never intended to spend the money he raised for his assembly race on that election. I'm guessing a lot of donors might get a little upset at being duped about why they were writing a check to Kreibich's campaign.

Does Kreibich really believe that he couldn't have won that race if he had spent the rest of his funds? I doubt it. He lost by less than 200 votes. And really, what kind of a Democracy does he think we have if $100,000 can't by 200 votes?

It was the economy stupid

Part of the reason Republicans lost is that they have absolutely no idea just how much working families are struggling. Every time a pundit tried to bring up the struggle of the working man or woman, the Republicans would say something along the lines of the Dow is at a record high so the economy is doing great.

If they had taken the time to look beyond their buddies on Wall Street, they would have seen articles like this one from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that says demand at food pantries is way up and the cupboards are bare.

Please take some time during your holiday shopping to add some extra food in your cart and drop it off at a local food pantry.

A new level of Republican fiscal irresponsibility

This story from the AP is outrageous. The Republicans running Congress right now have decided that they are going to leave their budget mess behind for the Democrats to clean up next year rather than finish the appropriations bills now that they should have done before the elections.

It's of course part of the plan for the Republicans to take back control in two years.

The bulging workload that a Republican-led Congress was supposed to complete this year but is instead punting to 2007 promises to consume time and energy that Democrats had hoped to devote to their own agenda upon taking control of Congress in January for the first time in a dozen years.

And I do hope the doctors remember this little move too:

Now, with the agenda shrinking, a session that will be the last for 45 retiring or defeated House members and senators should be wrapped up by Dec. 8.

That could work against efforts to forestall a cut in physicians' Medicare payments. Under a formula dating back to 1997, Medicare payments to doctors for office visits will drop an average 5 percent on Jan. 1 — unless Congress steps in. Keeping them the same for another year would be expensive, about $10.8 billion, and chances are mixed at best for the doctors' lobby.

Hat tip: Talking Points Memo

-By Ann Telnaes via Slate.com

House seat could be decided by Congress

In what could be a smaller version of the Supreme Court decision to pick a president, the U.S. House of Representatives could end up picking which candidate won Katherine Harris' old seat.

I hope the Dems don't end up picking the winner. Rather, I'd like to see them use this to create a verifiable election result for electronic voting and force the companies to open up those machines.

You can find the story here at TPM Cafe.

The right is just wrong on the state budget

Charlie Sykes was in a lather this morning on his talk show about the state budget. He kept saying Governor Doyle lied and the press bought it. He even had Rep. Mark Green call in to give the sour grapes analysis. Then he produced what he said was the 'smoking gun' to prove the media committed malpractice.

What was his proof? This letter to the editor that George Mitchell sent to newspapers, but the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel didn't run it. No wonder the right thinks there is liberal bias in the news. They believe every time their own words aren't used it's a scandal.

Sykes' blog post title about it is so over the top it makes it sound like someone was killed - What Did They Know And When Did They Know It?

Here's what they did know and it was true - the budget for this cycle was balanced. The "deficit" they are talking about is future commitments for the state. And as Doyle pointed out in one of the debates, it would be irresponsible for the state not to have long-term plans for budgeting on some items. That doesn't mean we have to pay for them this minute.

Former Governors Thompson and McCallum didn't pay for the things in the budget cycles they were in, but Governor Doyle is expected to pay for things in the future. Yeah, that's fair.

Mitchell uses a family budget analogy to try to drive home his point, but his analogy is a little off. He likens the structural deficit to annual spending a family does beyond their annual income and uses credit cards or savings to pay for it. But a family spending too much money on a vacation and putting it on their credit card is not what the structural deficit is for the state.

The better comparison would be the balance on a car loan for the family vehicle. The family does owe that money, but it doesn't have to pay it all tomorrow. To get to the really big number being thrown around for the structural deficit, you'd also have to add in things the family will spend money on such as food and utilities during the next year.

The Doyle team did not lie or try to hide the structural deficit for next year either. Mitchell's own letter says that Doyle's budget director told everyone that there will be a structural deficit.

Is the budget perfect yet, no. It probably never will be either no matter what party is writing it. But the press didn't give Governor Doyle a pass on this issue. The press gave Governor Doyle the credit he deserves for getting the state going in the right direction again after years of mismanagement by Thompson and McCallum.

Seth takes a look at the so-called bias on budget reporting here and Jay looks deeper into the budget costs that feed into the structural deficit here.

Workers get union, workers win big

A deal was just announced for the striking janitors in Houston. They have been on strike for about a month. It's a big victory and shows the power of standing together to demand better treatment from employers. SEIU organized the 5300 janitors just last year.

Under today's agreement, the SEIU janitors will get a 50.5 percent pay raise over the two-year contract. On January 1, pay will increase to $6.25 an hour, a 21 percent increase over current wage of $5.15 an hour. That will go up to $7.25 an hour on January 1, 2008, and $7.75 on January 1, 2009.

The deal also gets crazy things like vacation and health care coverage for the workers. It's like they think they are entitled to be treated like human beings or something.

Hopefully this victory will translate into more successful union drives around the country. No one that works full-time should be at the poverty level or without health care coverage.

You can find the rest of the article from the Houston Chronicle here.

Consider this a done deal

A press release by CRG Walworth says they have enough signatures to put a measure reducing the size of the County Board from 25 to 11 next April. Given the success of these measures in other counties this month, the Walworth County Board members should start making plans for more than half of them no longer having seats. Walworth County is about as Republican as they come and should have no trouble passing this one.

Question is of course, with the county being so Republicans, and with Republican supposedly being the part of smaller government, why didn't the board do this themselves a long time ago?

New White House rule: No sex ever

Under the 'you just can't make this stuff' category...From Think Progress:

The new HHS appointee for family planning authored this (PDF) power-point on how too much sex causes brain damage. He believes that even married couples should not use contraception. If you want to know where theo-conservatism goes next, the war on contraception is clearly a major priority; and Keroack is the kind of guy the Christianists want controlling your sex life.

Unfortunately, this guy does not have to be confirmed by the Senate.

It's almost like the Republican woke up after election day and decided that since all the Democrats to town will not touch them with a ten-foot pole, let's try to make sure no else is having sex either.

Like I said right after this election that showed more women than men voting, stay engaged ladies. There is so much more to do.

U.S. businesses need national health care to compete

Charlie Sykes had a blog posting last week that is incomplete and leaves people wit the wrong idea about what the biggest problem facing American auto companies. He put up a chart from Forbes that shows some of the costs American auto companies must deal with to produce a car. His post is trying to give the impression that the unions are the reason reason American car companies can't compete. He even highlights the costs of providing health care to retirees.

Yes, how dare all those people think they can have health care coverage.

Sykes' post should have called for the only solution to this problem - a national health care system. Without it, our companies will continue to be at an incredible disadvantage in the global economic fight.

General Motors and other companies have been trying to get the government to address this problem to help them compete with car companies in other nations that do not have to pay for health care costs. In 2004:

...the automaker, known for its innovative approach to health care, spent $5.2 billion to cover 1.1 million retirees, employees and their families. Prescription drugs cost GM $1.9 billion...

and lately almost year brings another double-digit increase. The auto workers didn't make the health care costs go up, but they are being blamed for the problem by people like Sykes.

The rising cost of health care really pushes up the price of American made vehicles. Take GM's cost estimate:

But the figure that prompted Wagoner to raise his voice is $1,500. That is the amount of money added to the price of every single vehicle to cover health care, a cost that his foreign competitors do not bear.

American companies cannot continue under this failing health care system and expect to stay competitive. G. Richard Wagner of GM agrees:

"The cost of health care in the U.S. is making American businesses extremely uncompetitive versus our global counterparts," he said. "In the U.S., health care costs have been rising at double-digit rates for many years. In 2003, they were about 15 percent of GDP, at least 30 percent higher than the next-most-expensive country."

It's time for our country to start the debate necessary to radically change our health care system. Hopefully the new crop of Democrats on their way to Washington, D.C. will start that debate sooner rather than later.

You can find the rest of the Washington Post article that the above quotes came from here.

For the true addicts

For those that simply cannot get enough speculation on elections, The Fix over at the Washington Post is looking toward the 2008 elections for the Senate. Things look promising for my side, but so much can change now that the Dems have to lead.

A cursory evaluation of the 2008 Senate playing field shows Democrats seemingly well-positioned to build on their 51-seat majority. Of the 33 seats up for reelection, just 12 are held by Democrats. And of those 12, only two Democratic incumbents received less than 54 percent of the vote in 2002 -- Sens. Tim Johnson (S.D.) and Mary Landrieu (La.). Johnson took 50 percent in his victory over John Thune (who went on to beat Tom Daschle two years later), while Landrieu won a December runoff against Republican Suzie Haik Terrell with 52 percent of the vote.

Republicans must defend 22 seats and have more obvious vulnerabilities. At first glance, just three GOP senators -- Norm Coleman (Minn.), John Sununu (N.H.) and Wayne Allard (Colo.) -- look vulnerable, as each won in 2002 with less than 54 percent of the vote. But the complicating factor for Republicans is that there are a number of rumored retirements that may come before 2008, creating more open-seat opportunities for Democrats. GOP incumbents on the retirement watch list include Allard, as well as Thad Cochran (Miss.), Pete Domenici (N.M.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.), Jim Inhofe (Okla.) and John Warner (Va.).

You can find the rest here.

U.S. House election update

If you are wondering what has happened in all of the seats that were considered too close to call last week, you can go TPM Cafe's summary here. Also note, since that was written, Republican Heather Wilson has been declared the winner in the New Mexico seat by 879 votes. Patricia Madrid, the Democratic candidate, had not decided whether or not she will seek a recount.

Support striking workers

If you can, take some time tomorrow to support striking USW Members at Goodyear.

Here are the details:

Join striking USW members from Goodyear Tire and Rubber as they take their fight against corporate greed to Goodyear dealers in the Milwaukee area.

Strikers and their supporters will be leafleting several Goodyear dealers to alert consumers to the fight to preserve retirement and health care benefits for Goodyear workers, and for all working families in the US .

Meet in the parking lot east of the Milwaukee USW office:

Saturday November 18th
12 pm to 2 pm
1126 S 70th Street
West Allis

Cars will convey from there to selected Goodyear dealers for informational leafleting.

For more information, contact Doug Drake at ddrake@usw.org

Thanks for your support !!
District 2, United Steelworkers

Assembly recounts

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel All Politics Watch Blog has a summary of the timeline for the three assembly recounts.

Madison - Three narrowly won Assembly races will be recounted.

Canvassers in southwestern Wisconsin began a recount this morning requested by Democrat Gail Frie, who lost to by 430 votes to Rep. Lee Nerison (R-Westby), according to unofficial totals. Assembly Speaker-elect Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem) said that clerks discovered an extra 100 votes for the Democrat after the election, prompting the candidate's request for a recount.

The two other recounts, which will begin Monday, are by narrower margins. Republicans hope to reclaim two of the eight seats they lost in the Nov. 7 Democratic sweep. Unofficial counts said Rep. Judy Krawczyk (R-Green Bay) lost by 78 votes and Rep. Debi Towns (R-Janesville) lost by nine votes.

If the recounts do not reverse any results, Republicans will control the Assembly 52-47 for the session that begins in January.

The recount in the Krawcyzk race is expected to take less than a day, but the other two could take longer because they include rural areas where votes must be recounted by hand, said Kyle Richmond, a spokesman for the state Elections Board.

Notice the line about the 100 votes that were found after the election for one of the candidates. This is why we elect folks in November and don't swear them in until January. There are mistakes and time should be allowed to get accurate vote counts before everyone starts yelling for folks to concede. Making sure we get an accurate count is an important part of our democracy.

Get over yourselves

Some people need to find reality again after the November elections. From the New York Times:

Liberal bloggers say they are not receiving the credit they deserve and are chafing at how what they call the mainstream media has showered too much credit on Emanuel and his senate counterpart, Charles E. Schumer of New York, for the sweep.

Emanuel and Schumer. You know, the head of the teams that raised the money and oversaw campaigns across the country. Yeah, the bloggers did as much as these two did to help bring the majority to the Democrats.

Spoken like a bunch of people that have never worked on a single campaign.

Frank Lasee announces his bid for the 8th CD (more or less)

This press release about the Iraq occupation by Rep. Frank 'a gun in every classroom' Lasee is a good indication that he is looking at running for the 8th Congressional District against Steve Kagen in 2008.

Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part...

UPDATE: Rep. Frank Lasee was spotted in the rotunda yesterday. He was on one knee in front of the veterans memorial with his hand on his chin and some photographer was furiously snapping shots at him. Yeah, that guy is up to something. Maybe he's working on a Match.com entry.

-By Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune via Slate.com

The extreme dream team

The right half of the blogosphere has been debating whether or not the Republicans lost the election because they were not conservative enough. In Wisconsin we may get to see that debate play out in dramatic fashion after seeing the leadership elections in the senate.

The Wisconsin State Senate elected three extremists to run their caucus - Senator Scott Fitzgerald will be the Minority Leader, Senator Joe Leibham the Assistant Republican Leader and Senator Glenn Grothman will be the Republican Caucus Chair. I guess Attila the Hun wasn't available.

These three men will likely pull their caucus pretty far to the right. That means we will get to see if a more "conservative" message will attract enough voters to bring the Republicans the majority in two years.

I'm betting on no.

Conservative these days seems to mean the government should get to stamp its approval on your lifestyle, your doctor appointments, your schools, your local government spending and your religion. Fitzgerald, Leibham and Grothman are all followers of the pretty strict social litmus tests the so-called conservatives have put in for the Republican Party so I'd be surprised if their leadership didn't follow the path we've seen at the national level that help end Republican rule in DC in just twelve years.

Letting these three guys set the message and recruit candidates for the next round of elections could help the Democrats win the elections before they even start. What are the chances these three are going to recruit any socially moderate candidates or push any issues that are not designed to divide people into groups?

Maybe they'll look back to the winning formula former leaders like Mary Panzer brought to the caucus for guidance. Love her or hate her, Panzer was smart enough to do things like recruit Senator Sheila Harsdorf to run against former Senator Alice Clausing instead of a really conservative male. Running a slightly moderate woman was the key to winning that race and Panzer knew it.

Seems unlikely that a leadership team that includes the guy who ran against Panzer because she wasn't conservative enough is going to following her formula. And really, that's just fine with my side.

Not one Dem incumbent defeated

It's official. The Republicans failed to beat a single Democratic incumbent Senator, Representative or Governor last week. The counting has ended in the two close races against incumbent Democratic Representatives in Georgia and the Democrats have come out ahead.

Just how big is this? From CQ Politics:

Barrow's win also means the Democrats held all of their House, Senate and gubernatorial seats — including open seats where they were the incumbent party — that were up for election this year, a feat not accomplished since World War II.

You can find the rest of the article here.

Note-You'll also see there that Rep. Steny Hoyer easily won his bid to be the Majority Leader of the House.

You can say that again

"Republicans had a failed agenda. The contrast was pretty stark," she said. "They focused a lot of time on socially divisive issues, and we spent time on issues that united people. The real values are making sure families have affordable health care, not whether they have guns in every pocket or a redefinition of marriage."

--Senator Judy Robson on why the Senate Democrats won the majority

The values argument could well be changing. Even some Evangelical Christian voters abandoned the Republican's value game after numerous articles revealed the Rove team was using them and thought little of them as a group. The values argument could be very interesting to watch over the next two years.

You can find the rest of the Capital Time article that the Robson quote came from here.

And speaking of John Gard

John Gard seems to be totally clueless as to why he lost his election. The American public had just finished a complete election day rejection of the Bush Administration's tactics of trying to convince the public that it is just too dangerous to vote for Democrats when Gard busted out this (from WBAY):

Gard says he isn't shocked by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's abrupt resignation. His concern is what impact it will have on terrorism.

"The enemy is watching, and they see how people react, and they realized that if you can mess with American public opinion you can weaken their resolve, and that will allow a terrorist, our enemies, to gain strongholds where they shouldn't. That's my belief."

"I just hope with the gang that's going in there now that they remember that we are living in a dangerous world, and I just hope they are committed to standing with the troops and committed to realizing that America is not a guaranteed thing. It requires nurturing, it requires caretaking. And you got to understand, you take the fight to the enemy, you don't let them take the fight to you."

John, put down the Bush talking points and slowly back away. Really, it's time. Junk like this help swing the 8th CD into the Dem column. No one bought it and even President Bush has changed his tune dramatically in the last week.

Perhaps I shouldn't expect more from a candidate that couldn't understand the national polling showing just how unhappy the people were with President Bush. Approval ratings in the thirties for President Bush didn't scare John Gard. No sir. He brought the president into Green Bay for some good ol' boy backslapping when the AP had the president's approval ratings at his lowest level of 33 percent. Some might call that loyalty. I'd call it ostrich-like devotion.

Just a few days before the election, the Republican that won the governor's race in Florida blew off the president for fear of what it could do to his poll numbers. When Bush came to a rally for the candidate, the candidate went elsewhere.

But not John Gard. He paraded people the public disapproves of through Green Bay like a starstruck teenager and then had to wonder why he lost the race. Even Vice President Dick Cheney's approval numbers in the teens didn't scare John Gard. He brought the vice president not long after he shot a guy in the face.

And now John Gard is letting everyone know he is going to run for something else. His thank letter to his supporters included this line:

Ultimately we narrowly lost. . . this time.

and this line:

Get ready: the future is right around the corner

I can't wait to see who else is around the corner to campaign for Gard next time. Tom DeLay probably has some free time...for now. Better snatch him up quick before the word "time" means something else to DeLay.

The John Gard that ran the Joint Finance Committee was an ok guy. If that guy had run for Congress, he might have won. But the John Gard that was the Speaker of the Assembly ran for Congress and he lost. As he gears up for another election, will Gard reconnect with that little farm boy from Lena and emerge a better candidate next time? We'll see.

In the meantime, are there bets on what office Gard will run for next? He left his "John Gard for Congress" website up with just a post office box listed. Is he leaving the up for a reason? Or does he have his eye on something else?

Fun election map

The New York Times has a fun map about the elections here. Ignore the fact that it looks like lots of pregnancy tests all lined up. It's got a lot of fun facts to compare.

It shows the all the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives that swung the House to the Dems and the voting percentages from 2004 and 2006. You can also chart out things like income level and voting percentages for the presidential election.

One thing to notice - The Wisconsin 8th CD that was lost by John Gard had one of the largest swings. With the exception of the Pennsylvania 10th CD, Wisconsin's 8th CD is the bar the farthest to the right on the 2004 bar above the map. Yeah, that's right. The only seat that swung from farther on the right was a seat that had an incumbent try to choke his mistress. Nice work John Gard!

-By Nick Anderson via Slate.com

Senator Alan Lasee's letter

Here is the letter that the Senate Democrats should send back to Senator Alan Lasee after he wrote this absurd letter to them, but they are much too nice to do it.

Dear Senator Lasee:

Thank you for sending your letter full of things you would like us to do when we take over the Senate next year. We all needed a good laugh.

Your offer of help in our transition to controlling the senate is so ridiculous it seems almost cute. Why would we want help from someone who thought his job was to allow only the people that agreed with him time to speak on the floor? Perhaps you should go to the rumpus room and think about the things you have said in the past before sending off letters trying to make yourself look all statesman like. You're not fooling anyone.

Remember this from the Wisconsin State Journal on 12/29/04

Republicans in the state Senate want to impose time limits on floor debates, saying they can't let the chamber disintegrate into a "rumpus room" as plans to televise legislative proceedings statewide move forward.

Senate President Alan Lasee, R-De Pere, said he wants the Senate Organizational Committee to set time limits on a bill-by-bill basis.

Rest assured, we will treat you better than you treated us. Not because you deserve it after the way you treated us, but because we are good people.

Thanks again for your letter. We can handle it from here.

UPDATE: Seth over at the In Effect blog has a few other items from Lasee's past that are worth noting.

Long-term damage

The GOP may have to spend many years undoing the damage they did this year by trying to convince voters that the problems our country is facing stem from immigrants instead of the way the federal government was being run by the Republicans. From Talking Points Memo:

How many years did the GOP put itself back with the rising population of hispanic voters in this country by running pretty much their whole campaign on immigrant bashing?

The answer, I think, is a lot. And exit poll data suggests a big drop off for Republicans among hispanic voters. According to the CNN exit polls, the 2004 spread as 40% for Republicans, 53% for Democrats. This year it was 26% for the GOP and 73% for Democrats.

Brutally honest

Need a good laugh? The guy that won the election for Attorney general in Eau Claire County is named Rich White. Why is this funny? Some friends of mine that did doors up there said his yard signs said "Rich White Republican" and that's how the ballot probably read too.

You can find the vote tallies here. Scroll down to the District Attorney race under the statewides, congressional and statehouse races and you'll find Rich White (Rep.) ran unopposed.

Ryan and Sensenbrenner insult our troops

Two Wisconsin Republican Congressmen had statements recently that are so insulting to our troops and our nation that they should be asked a few more questions about the statements before being allowed to pretend they were on the correct side of this issue a few days after the election was over.

The president's decision to bring new leadership to the Defense Department is the right thing to do, and it's a change that's overdue.
-- U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, responding to the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The war has been mismanaged.--GOP U.S. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner.

Really? Do you think those statements might have been helpful a few months or even a year or so ago? Do you think if you and a few more Republicans would have spoken up a long time ago that we could have changed the path of the war sooner?

Just how long have these two felt like this and looked the other way while the war raged on and soldiers died so they could try to protect their party going into the election? Ryan says it's overdue so he must have been thinking this for a while but kept silent. Keeping that to himself for five minutes was too long when you are talking about people dying.

Senate Republicans unable to look in the mirror

It's generic. It's nothing to do with any of our candidates. It's all about the national tide that swept through Wisconsin that we didn't think was going to.

-- Keith Gilkes, chief operative of the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate, calling Tuesday night "a Republican bloodbath."

I certainly hope Gilkes really believes this. If he and others in charge of electing a Republican Senate here in Wisconsin believe that, my side will have a much easier time in two years maintaining the majority.

Yes, the Dems ran the table and picked up all four competitive races in the state senate. But they were not won with eight-point margins like the governor's race was on Tuesday.

The national feelings did feed into the Dem victories, but the races were a lot closer and that suggests that if Republicans had done a better job running the senate, they could have won their races. Or at least some of them. Instead, then Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz let then Speaker John Gard run the senate on the God, gays and guns platform that neglected to deal with issues that Wisconsin residents want answers on now.

Nothing to do with your candidates? By all means keep telling yourself that Mr. Gilkes. Please keep recruiting candidates like Senator Dave Zien who's absurd focus on concealed carry left him unwilling or unable to work on the issues people really care about. Please keep looking the other way while senators like Tom Reynolds become the laughing stock of the state. Please keep firing up the right-wing talk show hosts to go after people like Senator Ron Brown for not being the right kind of Republican. And please recruit candidates like William McReynolds that are the definition of a slimy politician.

It makes my life oh so much easier.

Thank a vet today

Veterans Day should be a time for everyone to thank the vets in their life for the sacrifices they made.

As I've mentioned before, I usually read the obituaries in the paper. I try to take note of the ones with the flag that designate a veteran and learn a little bit about them. We are losing the World War II generation fast and so many of them have led fascinating lives since the war. The obituaries only offer a glimpse of their life, but you can still learn a lot of them. Not surprisingly, many of them continued to give to their communities throughout their life.

Today the paper contained the obituary for Reuben L. Brandt of Reedsburg. He was 80 years old. I'm always glad to see veterans like the one in today's paper that have been blessed with a long life after their service.

If you are looking for a way to learn more about the veterans of our state, you can check out the upcoming events at the Wisconsin Veterans museum here.

UPDATE: And I thought hitting 80 was a nice long life. There are still 13 vets from WWI living and this story in the Washington Post details a little bit of the life of one that is the just shy of 106. And he is the youngest of the veterans from that war still living! Good for them.

Arrogance doesn't pay

In case anyone was wondering the answer to one of my questions in the "first random thoughts" post...

Rep. Rob Kreibich (R-Eau Claire) had $115,408.08 in the bank on his pre-election report. That report covers campaign spending through 10/23/06. Think he spent over $100,000 in the last two weeks? I'm guessing no.

Update: I guess Spivak and Bice were wondering about the answer to my question earlier this week.

The referendum effect

There has been a lot of talk about how the Republican strategy of putting the proposed amendment to ban on gay marriage and civil unions and the advisory vote on the death penalty backfired because it drove up Democratic turnout. That's true, but there is something else at work here that is very typical of our state that is being ingnored. Split-ticket voters.

Wisconsin has one of the highest percentages of split-ticket voting in the nation. Putting two Republican-themed items on the ballot in a year that turned out to be very anti-Republican let enough conservative voters split their vote in a new way. They could vote socially conservative on two issues and then punish the Republicans for their mismanagement of the government. The Republicans gave some of their swing voters a way out and they took it.

Kathleen Falk also fell victim to Wisconsin's need to split their vote. How else to explain how Dawn Marie Sass got elected but Falk did not? When the many split ticket voters in our state found themselves in the voting booth looking down the line and wanting to vote Dem over and over again, they needed a balance. And they found it by voting for a Republican for Attorney General and voting for the social issues on the back. The Attorney General race was the easiest choice to vary on because, right or wrong, the law and order theme is more associted with Republicans.

While many find it odd that Van Hollen is the only one to survive the Democratic wave, I think it's more likely that he won because of the Democratic wave. In a typical year, when voters weren't so upset at the legislative section of government and they could have varied their votes further down the ticket, Van Hollen would have come up short.

Let's hope the Republicans have learned their lesson on referendums. Playing games with the electorate is no way to modify the constitution of our state.

Dem wave brings diversity to the U.S. House leadership

An article in the NY Times yesterday had a run down of the outgoing committee chairman versus the incoming committee chairman in the U.S. House of Representatives. There are a lot of differences between the two groups, but one could have lasting effects that could dramatically benefit our country in the long run.

The new likely chairman list includes four African-American men. Rep. Charles Rangel will lead the powerful Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Alcee Hastings will lead the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson will lead the Homeland Security Committee and Rep. John Conyers will lead the Judiciary Committee. The previous list had none. Does it matter? I think it does.

It means our country will see these men on television more often now. The nation will see black men in positions of power and prestige instead of the negative way they are often portrayed on television.

And hopefully that will have a lasting effect on our nation.

Recount

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is calling on both Jack Voight and Kathleen Falk to officially throw in the towel today. Why is there such urgency? No one is hurt by waiting for the official canvass to come in. There are errors that do turn up. Like this example from Wispolitics:

But La Crosse County Clerk Marion Naegle said her office found a mistake yesterday that flipped the results. Instead of 20,374 no votes and 20,358 yes votes that were initially reported, the final numbers were 21,172 no votes and 21,324 yes votes.

Naegle said the Town of Campbell had incorrectly tallied its votes, causing the discrepancy.

Elections are run by humans that sometimes make mistakes. That is especially so when they have had a really long day like election day. So why not wait for the official results? J.B. Van Hollen and Dawn Marie Sass can go ahead with their planning to be in office. That's their right. But how is the planning harmed by Voight and Falk waiting to see the official results?

No place to turn

Do you think the Republicans are as gung ho on paperless voting systems now that Senator Allen's (R-VA) concession gives control of the U.S. Senate to the Democrats? They more or less couldn't even do recount since many of the voting machines there do not have a paper trail. From the New York Times:

"A recount with these machines essentially involves an election official hitting the reprint button and then saying, 'Oh, the results are the same that we already printed - all fine here'. This tells us nothing about whether we have the correct tally. Garbage in, garbage out." -Avi Rubin, electronic-voting expert.

It will be interesting to see how many converts the Virginia race creates in the Republican party.

By John Deering of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette via Slate.com

First random thoughts

I'm pretty tired so this post will be very random. But going to bed late and happy on election night is a much better than late and deflated.

Thank goodness we will still have Doyle. He may actually get to do more than block shots from the Republicans now that the senate went our way.

Very happy for my friends in the state senate. Few believed that they could do it, but I always knew they could.

Hats off to my friends in the Assembly for getting the important work done early of recruiting quality candidates in every race they could win. It paid off big. I'm sure lots of people thought my five seat pick up prediction was shear madness. Who would have thought I was low balling it?

Do we really have a state treasurer that handed out matchbooks with the phrase "Get off your ass and vote for Sass?" during one election? I guess so. Hilarious.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel gets their wish of Doyle constantly needled by J.B. Van Hollen for the next four years. Thanks WMC. Dem groups left Falk hanging out their by herself and now they have Van Hollen as a reward. Super. Bright side, the Repubs are probably stuck with Van Hollen as a candidate for governor.

Women win big! We have the first female Speaker of the House. Women can correctly claim that they delivered Doyle. There are new women heading to D.C. And the near total ban on abortion went down in South Dakota. Keep flexing those muscles ladies. There is so much more to do.

If any Dem leaning groups besides labor had spent some money on the assembly in Wisconsin the Dems could have taken over. Really. There are a number of races that were decided by less than one percent and incumbents went down that few thought were in trouble.

My favorite one is Rep. Kreibich. Not only did Senator Zien's mailer trying to confuse people about his challenger Kreitlow not work in Zien's race, apparently Kreibich should have been working on his own. How much money do you think Kreibich and Rep. Freese have in the bank today?

And now who jumps into the race for Speaker with Rep. Huebsch? His election is no longer a done deal after last night.

How many shredders do you think are running in the White House right now in anticipation of Democrat subpoena power?

I hate that a more conservative state, Arizona, beat a gay marriage amendment but we couldn't do it here. The youth of Wisconsin will have to start changing that starting today.

And speaking of gay rights, what do you think Congressman Green's kids will think of his gay bashing mailer when they are older and have gay friends. I think dad will have a tough time explaining that one.

The death penalty referendum won, but not by as much as I thought it would. That gives me hope. Plus, Senator Lasee's bill that he would have pushed hard if the Republicans retained controlled is never going to see the light of day now. And that's a good thing for our state.

Oh it's a happy day for sure.