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False equivalency jumps the shark

Republicans — greatly aided by some in the mainstream media — have feasted in recent years on the “false equivalency” gambit. The most basic and infamous such example is the often-used phrase, “Well,...

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REPORTING THE OREGON MILITIA TAKEOVER -- a "that was then, this is now" epiphany

When I was a newspaper reporter in 1975, I joined a fleet of other journalists who spent about a month covering a fairly spectacular event in northern Wisconsin, one that gained so much national press...

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PAUL RYAN AND THE G.O.P. PUNCH & JUDY SHOW ON CONTROLLING GUN VIOLENCE IN...

Everyone should take a few minutes and watch the video of President Obama's news conference yesterday announcing the executive orders he's issuing in the wake of daily mass gun violence in this nation....

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Across USA, water clocks running faster as private firms swoop in on a...

The Children's Museum in Indianapolis boasts North America's biggest water clock, a tower that uses colored water to mark the passage of time. While a remarkable and elegant device, It's also an...

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UNDER THE DOMES: Trouble at a Milwaukee landmark

Wisconsin Republican lawmakers and perhaps the Democratic county executive seem hell-bent on dismantling not only Milwaukee County's parkland "necklace," but also upon breaking up the three jewels of...

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"Spotlight," pedophile priests, and Wisconsin's own cone of silence

I was pleasantly surprised when the 2016 Best Picture Oscar went to "Spotlight." As a veteran journalist, I thoroughly enjoyed the understated verisimilitude of the film. As a former movie critic, I...

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Here's why Scott Walker attacks U. of Wisconsin, yet ignores in-state...

Political observers lately have attached the phrase “politics of resentment” to the swath of rank-and-file, working-class Americans upset with increasing economic inequality, and governance that...

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THE DAILY KLEPTOCRACY -- we could write about it every day and not keep up

Keep your hand on your purse or wallet. Official kleptocracy continues as greed overwhelms American democracy. The three new examples that follow might remind my fellow Wisconsin residents of the case...

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THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WHORE

In light of news reports revealing the massive, worldwide extent to which wealthy elites including politicians use offshore tax havens to hide their wealth and tax liability, www.salon.com/...  here's...

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Dear Republicans: On right-to-work schemes, try "taking" a deep breath.

A new Wisconsin judicial ruling demonstrates once again that Republicans are outraged about so-called "takings" of private property only when such takings do not benefit, um, Republicans. Groping...

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LET'S (REPUBLICANS ONLY!) CUT TO THE CHASE. EVERYONE ELSE STAY IN LINE.

I am often reminded of an old Saturday NIght Live skit making fun of the short but fantabulously baroque reign of House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the late 1990s, riffing on the Republican “Contract of...

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Monster truckers in state of Denali

What the heck is it with monster-grille "pick-up" trucks these days? Trucks like the GM Denali, the grille of which looks like it's a meat grinder for a tyrannosaurus. No hitchhiker is getting picked...

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FLINT-CONSCIOUS WISCONSIN DNR PUTS BAND-AID ON LEADED WATER PIPES, CALLS IT A...

You can bet that, given the awful lead-poisoning situation in Flint, Michigan, public policy makers around the nation are looking over their shoulders and wondering what they're going to do about...

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Responding to UW faculty's no-confidence vote, Wisconsin Gov. Walker again...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is pooh-poohing this week's unanimous, all-but-unprecedented no-confidence vote by University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee faculty​, labeling it a "fuss." What? A "fuss"? Does...

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THE BLUR: public and/or private bond issues and the above-your-head economy...

Financiers, economists and lawmakers fret over the so-called underground economy and how it distorts and harms markets, but what the rest of us should be fretting about is what might be called the...

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WE NEED SCIENCE AND EFFECTIVE REGULATION -- BECAUSE, BY ITS NATURE, THE...

“It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.”               -- Alfred North WhiteheadProfessor Whitehead, a noted,...

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Trump's rig-atoni rhetoric is orange, but only half-baked ... and it's going...

Donald Trump inadvertently is doing Republicans a back-handed favor, one that is no doubt in private causing them great grief. Those would be the same Republicans who in a group of key states have...

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RE: BLACK POVERTY, SEN. RON JOHNSON CAN'T SEE THE URBAN FOREST FOR THE TREES

Running for re-election while slyly urging voters to “fire” his Democratic opponent, non-office holder Russ Feingold, Sen. Ron Johnson also has been making big noise in Milwaukee's black neighborhoods,...

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ON HEALTH CARE, SEN. RON JOHNSON'S LYING DOUBLES AND EVEN TRIPLES IN SLEAZY...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) says on his web site that he is a manufacturer -- yes, he is, of lies and misrepresentations. In one heavily run TV campaign ad (see screen-grab, above), the Johnson...

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From my Half-Joking File: IT MIGHT GET TO THE POINT WHERE TRUMP COMES TO TAKE...

On the anniversary of Nazi Germany's Kristallnacht -- a massive, two-day raid on Jews in 1938, America's boastful new breed of proto-fascists (call them orange shirts, since orange is the new brown)...

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RHETORICALLY GUN-TOTIN' WISCONSIN CONSERVATIVES ALREADY SHOOTING THEMSELVES...

Via my local newspaper today, a sheaf of unintentionally amusing yet morose and dark reports from conservative Republican Wisconsin. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:1. The paper's analysis...

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THE POTEMKIN PRESIDENCY

Now that our new president quickly is going rogue,  we're going to need a short, handy phrase to describe the new regime. "Trump administration" won't do because it's ambiguous. the administration...

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A Prize Every Time

I suggest a more precise metaphor describing the Present-dent of the Diss-United States and his sweeping campaign allusions to "so much winning." He's a carnival barkster promising, "A prize every...

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MANAFORT DESTINY

When they don't have a winning hand, poker players often resort to bluffing their way through the betting. But the bluff, as any good card player knows, has to be believable to have any chance of...

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Overlooked evidence: White House's shifting sands on immigration ban rationale

SHIFTING SANDS: THE IMMIGRATION ORDER IS MOOTOverlooked in the continuing saga of our Present-dent’s messed-up executive order banning immigration from selected Muslim-majority countries: One of his...

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WHAT WE REALLY NEED IS INDEPENDENCE FROM CRAPPY POLITICS -- LIKE OUR COLONIAL...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's deferred action on a sensible, reformed federal immigration system that's fair and thoughtful was exposed nationally over the weekend, but if you were a casual viewer of...

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THE "STRAWBERRY BUSINESS" REDUX: PRESIDENT SCOOP IMITATES ART

Every time someone brings up the amusing "two scoops" standard pertaining to this nation's preznit, I flash right back to 1954 and "The Caine Mutiny," the excellent film version of Herman Wouk's great...

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GUNS & CARS: Cybernetic devices increasingly disrupt democracy, alter...

Cybernetics is the rather young and interdisciplinary science of communication and control theory. It is concerned especially with the comparative study of so-called automatic control systems, such as...

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EXTREMELY SITUATIONAL REPUBLICANS (Part MDCCCXLII)

Former FBI Director James Comey: Hillary Clinton’s email use was "extremely careless."GOP: "Lock her up!"Justice Department: House Republicans’ vote to release to the public the Devin Nunes memo,...

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TRUMP'S FIRST AND LAST STATE OF THE UNIOM -- I dozed through, so may recall...

Mr. Speaker Baby-Face, Mr. Vice President Get Me a Coke now because this shithole lectern doesn't have anything suckable, members of Congress if they are Republicans maybe not counting you, Mitch, my...

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Movement conservatism again mangles meaning of campus speech: Anything goes...

You can't engage in legally defined hate speech without consequence. But now if you're a Wisconsin college professor you can by name decry fellow employees in your institution who try to tamp down hate...

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A Wisconsin example: Midterms weren't a "blue wave"? Only because of GOP...

Now that the midterm election dust is settling, allow me to kick up a fuss just one more time.Here in Wisconsin, good things happened for Democrats. Every statewide constitutional office (governor,...

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G.O.P. AND RUSSIA IN 2016: ARM IN ARM AGAINST AFRICAN AMERICAN VOTERS

Earlier this week, DailyKos staffer Mark Sumner posted on a new report to the U.S. Senate regarding Russian cyberhacking of the 2016 election. In his piece, Sumner recounts how as part of its...

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PUTIN' ON THE 'RUMP: Making opportunity out of the possibility the preznit...

[Caution: satire ahead. Or is it satire?]The preznit insists on his useless, multi-billion-dollar border wall that Mexico will not pay to build because you and I would, instead. Democrats are fighting...

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TRUMP DISRUPTS SUCCESSFUL 55-YEAR OLD ANTI-POVERTY PROGRAM. AND FOR ME IT’S...

Donald Trump has accomplished many things -- sleazy, backwards things that are dismantling much of the functioning U.S. framework for a just and equal society. A new, seemingly small but vital casualty...

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Return with us now, as the Supreme Court effectively revises the 3/5ths...

In Thursday’s horrible Supreme Court decision, conservative justices basically opted the federal government out of  constitutional issues involving legislative gerrymandering. And in doing that, they...

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"Mister Preznit, your next scheduled contact is the International Space...

A few months from now, if the trend continues, we might be reading news dispatches that go something like this:President Trump today urged all member countries of the United Nations to investigate the...

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MR. STEWART GOES TO WISCONSIN: "IRRESISTIBLE" IS, WELL, IRRESISTIBLE. A FILM...

July 4 was slow, hot, and rather unscheduled, so upon impulse I changed the feel by going to a matinee movie in a real movie theater, for the first time since early spring. While most screens remain...

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WHATEVER ELSE HAPPENS, THE TRUMP SEQUENCE ENDS WITH ONE WORD: OBLIVION.

Republicans could and did game the system during Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, marginalizing and even neutralizing the Constitution's impeachment clause. They voted with one exception to let the...

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OF CABBAGES AND KINGS: Trump's a pirate, Republicans don't notice or don't care.

We've all heard some Americans talk about being lifelong conservatives from conservative towns, many of them rural. These represent a small but significant plurality of citizens who say they’ve always...

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THE BORGIA STICK

It is now reasonable to regard the modern Republican Party as the Borgia Party, after the 15th century Italian family. The difference is that the Borgias were perhaps unfairly maligned, at least in...

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TRUMP WITHHOLDING LOGIC FROM "ANARCHIST JURISDICTIONS" -- EXCEPT FOR...

You might have noticed the Preznit's hugely selective approach to cities where demonstrations have included isolated violence. He has declared Portland, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Seattle...

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Opening a new battlefront on Joe Manchin's home turf

I just posted the message below on Sen. Joe Manchin's official website (see link after message). Feel free to log in there yourself and let Machination Manchin know what a counterproductive, useless...

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KYLE IN WONDERGUNLAND

Just a scared teenager with a military-style assault rifle, a boy who came to Kenosha to do the right thing. That is all, at least if you buy what Kyle Rittenhouse's defense lawyers are selling. Nope,...

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DoJo RoJo defends his miserable Senate record by projecting onto Wisconsin...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) has been running a heavy flight of campaign ads across state TV channels in the past week or so, blaming Democrats and President Biden for high gas prices, deficit...

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Poll: 68 percent of Republican voters disapprove of GOP lawmakers supporting...

I’ll let this 3/28/22 report from Wisconsin’s alternative Up North News cover this issue. It’s a bit of hope. This poll’s results do not, of course, mean all those or even many of those Republican...

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Asking GOP re Texas shootings

𝗪𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗿𝗼-𝗴𝘂𝗻 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝘀𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗱 𝟳.𝟲𝟮 𝗺𝗺 𝗼𝗿 .𝟯𝟴 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗿? 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗼𝗿 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝗺𝗶-𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆?

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TV: The medium is the message, the massage, and the metaphor for social...

The defamation lawsuits against Fox News have put a huge "told you so" on a trend in American society accelerating since at least the 1930s when that era's radio became a major outlet for religious...

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THE ANTI-CRT FANATICS GO SOFT -- WELL, SORT OF.

They're at it again although they never really stopped. As the 2024 national election campaigns gear up, Republican Party schemers and their right-wing friends are doubling down on their phony claims...

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REAL LIFE, A.I."TERMINATOR" SCENARIOS OVERLOOK THE NEED FOR MORE, NOT LESS...

Anti-progress techno-righties are certain that electric cars are going to wreck our society rather than make it environmentally more sustainable, because of various factors including the huge power...

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