If the Havens Center will put AlfonZo Rachel on the faculty - hell, I'll join its master's program!
Here is Zo on what it means to be a conservative Republican:
"I'm a conservative Republican because I'm proud of this country. If you want the best chance to realize your dream this is the place to come to. I don't think we're better than everyone else. This is America. We ARE everybody else."
But the real treat is his hip hop video in south L.A. When my man AlfonZo is not wearing a Brioni suit in some scenes he's wearing a Reagan T-shirt. See if you can spot the cameo by our own Tammy Baldwin! (Thanks to brother Charlie Sykes for turning me on to the Zo-man.) Some excerpts from the lyrics, best as I could transcribe them:
Fools get their news from Olber-man
I ain't the one who riding Uncle Sam
I ain't never got a job from a poor man.
So when liberals robbin' hood from the rich
Kind of condescendin' on your own you can't standTell the Rever-and (flash picture of Jesse Jackson)
I don't give a damn
I don't wanna be one of those Al Shaprton shakdown shysters
It's your mentality that's keeping brothers on the street
Because you're the real victimizers.
Bookmark AlfonZo Rachel's ZoNation.
Babs Lawton, we hardly knew ye
A shocker. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is reporting that Barbara Lawton will NOT run for governor!
She is supposed to have told her supporters via e-mail today:
For very personal reasons, I will not pursue the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010.
Now the parlor game will be to fathom what these "very personal reasons" are. Health? Some business hanky panky? A skeleton in a closet yet unrevealed? Or did the Obama-man dial her direct to clear the way for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett? Obama is not above meddling in state politics, witness his effort to derail New York's accidental governor, the unpopular David Patterson.
The Garvey-Nichols-Chavez wing of the party is back to square one to come up with its own candidate. Someone with an unapologetic higher tax message. Nichols, it's your turn! If Bill Buckley could run for mayor of New York. (Q: What will be the first thing you will do if you win? A: Demand a recount!)
Meanwhile, Scott Walker is already running against Tom Barrett. This is getting interesting!
Keep government's hands off my Medicare
David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute is going to be a regular on CNN's web site. In his first column he more than earns his salary. Some excerpts:
The town hallers were angry, but they were not crazy, and they were not stupid. They knew perfectly well that Medicare is provided by the government. They also knew that their government is proposing to change Medicare in ways they do not like.
The president will use the money squeezed from Medicare to extend some form of coverage to the 35 million to 40 million people estimated to lack health insurance. And who are these people?
About one-quarter of them are foreign-born. Over the opposition of some 80 percent of the American people, your government allowed millions of poor newcomers to enter the country, many of them illegally. (Over the past 10 years, half of all immigrants to the United States have arrived illegally.)
Medicare was … social insurance. Obama's public option will be the second kind of program: income transfer. [CNN: Town hallers angry at Democrats' health care plan for right reasons]
Tell it, brother Donohue
No, not Phil Donohue. I'm talking Tom Donohue, president of the US. Chamber of commerce. Yeah, his organization is under attack from the Obama White House just as Wisconsin's branch was under attack from "Havana" Paul Soglin and his ilk. Here is Tom Donohue back at you, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:
"You think we are going to blink because a couple of people are out shooting at us? Tell 'em to put their damn helmets on."
On the union card check:
"So we got into this deal, spent some money - by the way, good manners, high integrity, very aggressive - and it's stuck against the wall right now. Some people are walking around about a compromise. There ain't gonna be a compromise. There's not the votes for that thing." [Wall Street Journal: Business Fights Back]
Now there's some calcium for Madison's business community! "Put yer damn helmets on" is right!
Platinum Subscriber Bonus Material
- My brother Richard, a big supporter of Barack Obama, lives on Bush Street in San Francisco. So, naturally...
- Steve Walters, the best reporter in Wisconsin, has left the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and now works for the on-line WisPolitics/WisOpinion empire.
He reports that the Legislature is toying with public campaign financing using the $1 checkoff on our state income tax forms. The problem is, only 4.5 percent of all taxpayers are checking it off. So now the authors of the "Impartial Justice Act" (there's some Orwell for you!) are considering an "opt out" or "reverse checkoff" system.
In other words, all taxpayers would by default donate $1, unless they took an affirmative act -- checked the "no" box themselves -- to stop it.
No one knows how an "opt out" or "reverse checkoff" system would work -- or, perhaps more importantly, how much taxpayer anger it would generate. [WisOpinion: New taxpayer tune: taxpayer, can you spare a $1?] - Americans seem to be cooling toward global warming. Just 57 percent think there is solid evidence the world is getting warmer, down 20 points in just three years, a new poll says.
- I will speak no ill of the dead. Clarence Kailin, dead at age 95, "fought fascism in Spain, fought bigotry at home and nearly all of his 95 years were devoted to economic justice," Ed Garvey tells us. Didn't I tell you that "economic justice" was code for socialism? Clarence Kailin did fight against fascism in Spain but he fought FOR communism. "Hey, hey, Clarence K., how many priests did you kill today?
Yes, Clarence was a card-carrying, self-confessed member of the CPUSA. Does that make Stalin a hero because he fought Hitler? In Madison, probably. - Ed Garvey's idea of "reform" always seems to require more taxes. We should have public financing for state Supreme Court races. But, as Rick Esenberg explains in a forthcoming piece in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, public financing schemes are not likely to work because independent money will swamp the publicly funded candidates (just as it has swamped the privately financed campaign of the candidates under our present system). I've made that point before.
- Soupy Sales is dead. Just to see his rubbery face made you smile. He accomplished the seemingly irreconcilable feat of being ineffably silly yet hipster cool at the same time. He was a jazz artist improvising free association comedy. An absurdist before Pee Wee Herman. God I feel old.
- These are the things we're supposed to do to slow down Alzheimer's Disease but I forget what they are. Click here to start.
