Perhaps the last sober thing Jeff Wood ever did was to leave the Republican party after the Legislature broke camp last year.
Now that we have Rep. Woods' fifth arrest for driving while thoroughly baked, "Deke Rivers" at Caffeinated Politics strikes a rich vein of good 'ol common sense - if Wood won't step aside legislators should vote for Rep. Steve Nass's motion to exclude Wood as provided in the Assembly rules:
If Wood does not resign at once, there is no other option than to support Nass and vote for the resolution. To pretend, as some Democrats are doing, that Wood needs to be convicted before expulsion can take place shows a lack of common sense, and good judgment.
Perhaps The Capital Times will reverse course. It wrote late last month that if he doesn't quit of his own accord Wood should remain in the Legislature unless voted out by his constituents in a difficult-to-schedule recall election - and that State Rep. Steve Nass was just as much of a disgrace to the State of Wisconsin.
Nass claims that Wood's missteps "impede (his) ability to serve in the Assembly without bringing great disrepute on the institution and the people of this state." Frankly, if that is the standard for removing legislators, Nass is in more trouble than Wood.
Oh, really? Why? Was Nass driving our highways hopped up on booze, pills, and cough medicine like Jeff Wood? No, it turns out that Nass, a Republican from Whitewater, is guilty of holding conservative political views. This is what disqualifies him for elective office!
Jeff Wood's defection from the Republican party and his continued caucusing with the Democrats apparently is so crucial to the fragile cause of liberalism that The Capital Times must delegitimize his attacker. The Capital Times decried Nass' "crusade against the University of Wisconsin."
Nass has crusaded against the University of Wisconsin to such an extent that former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin correctly suggested that the legislator, "probably more than anyone else in Wisconsin, is responsible for fewer classes available to students and the corresponding increases in tuition."
As if Paul Soglin is an impartial arbiter.
Yeah, the faculty and administrators are lined up at the soup kitchens. It's now cheaper to matriculate at Harvard than the local land grant school. Not! Tuition remains the second lowest in the 11-member Big Ten Conference. The UW continues to be ranked among the top large schools by U.S. News & World Report (currently tied for 39). (Read Blaska's Blog: Where's the body? from one year ago.)
Havens help us! (Land's sake!)
Well, Rep. Nass has been trying to defund the Havens Center on the Madison campus. The what? The Havens Center. It is the Progressive Dane of the already left-wing UW sociology department.
The Havens web site is currently promoting a rigorous intellectual course of study designed to prepare our best and our brightest to confront the real-world challenges of the future. The program is called "Getting Real: The Future of Hip Hop Studies at UW-Madison."
One of the presenters will be Joseph "Piko" Ewoodzie, described as a third-year graduate student in the UW Department of Sociology.
He is currently completing his master's thesis titled "The Creation of a Social Object: Hip Hop Between 1973 and 1979."
Ah, Hip Hop's classic period!
Hey, kids, join the fun! It's 7 p.m. Monday, October 26, at 1100 Grainger Hall. (Won't be there; I have to wash my hair that night.)
But wait, as the late Billy Mays would say, there's more! Coming next month: "B-Boy Ethnography: Theory, Character and the Deep Principles of Hip Hop."
Heavy, man! I mean, "Deep, B-Boy!"
Unfortunately (or not), last week's "Hip Hop Feminism" was cancelled.
The Havens Center web site offers an audio link to one Antwi Akom discussing "Hip Hop as Liberatory Praxis: Using Hip Hop to Build an Environmental Justice Movement."
Now, I like my liberatory praxis as much as the next guy. As they say, praxis makes perfick. But remember, kids: whenever the word "justice" is used, as in "economic justice" feel free to substitute the word "socialism."
Just consider this roster of studies the Havens socialists ... I mean, sociologists call "Real Utopias:"
- Institutions for Gender Egalitarianism
- Using Pensions for Social Control of Capitalist Investment
- Redesigning Redistribution
(Why do I get the feeling that we're going to be seeing these guys on the Madison Common Council in the coming years?)
Antwi is one busy Akom. He also offers "Eco-Apartheid or Educational Equity: Building Green and Orange Pathways out of Poverty."
Does all this sound to you like the UW is being hobbled by "fewer classes available to students?" Hey, the UW can afford to keep Paul Soglin on the payroll. They helped Louis Butler land on his feet after the voters took him off the state supreme court (second time). Some day, one hopes, they will find room for a conservative.
Here is a question for the Havens Center for the Study of Social Structure and Social Change: Why do you assume that "change" is always desirable?
In the meantime, when - not if - Jeff Wood leaves the Assembly he shouldn't worry. Paul Soglin will help him get work at the UW. Perhaps in the Havens Center for the Study of Hopped up Hippies.
Here's your homework assignment
Apparently there is a hip hop "artist" named "Dorrough." He has a song (if that is the word) out called Walk That Walk. Here are some of the lyrics (what's with the ass-terisks?) Your homework assignment is to ferret out the environmental justice and the gender equity for your liberatory praxis from these lyrics obtained through the on-line hip hop lyrics web site:
Take her out to eat before I take her to the bed
And give that Uhh Uhh and I don't need no meds
All I need is her, thirty minutes, and a rubber
Ni**a like me you'll find nan other
Straight beast mode, three times, one hour
Give it to her, in the kitchen, bedroom, or the shower
Lil talk, I got, what she need
Head board, knockin up against her knees,
Knees Hit her from the back, so I can grab her by the waist
Flip her over then Youuuuu all on her face
Sounds like a job for Bounty. Hope the Havens Center has plenty.
Platinum subscriber bonus material
- The City of Madison Neighborhood Indicators web site is nifty. I have been comparing my neighborhood with others. Was surprised that the median household income Orchard Ridge, $67,881, bested the Vilas neighborhood's $55,019. But their homes average $422,868 in value compared to our $233,968. Hmm!
- Is it looking more and more like Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett will not run for governor? Hey, you got to really want it and if Tom Barrett at this stage in his life had really the fire in his belly he would not be playing Hamlet. Gov. Jim E. is taking applications. If your name is not Lawton, you could be eligible for his $2 million war chest, appropriately laundered, starched and dried, of course.
- 7 Months After Stimulus 49 of 50 States Have Lost Jobs. Wisconsin has lost 61,000 since the stimulus was created.
- How good is it looking for Republican Scott Walker of Milwaukee? [Manitowoc Times Herald: Economy, jobs focus of Walker's campaign] Now comes news that Wisconsin, the District of Columbia and two other states had the biggest job losses percentage-wise in September, according to a Labor Department report.
- A top Senate Republican took to the Senate floor Wednesday morning to suggest that the Obama White House is plotting a political strategy similar to that of ex-President Richard Nixon and may be on the verge of preparing its own "enemies list." U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander claimed that the incipient White House "enemies" campaign extends even to Congress. [Roll Call: 10-21-2009]
- Can't argue with this logic: Because (the tavern) R Place is the focus of nightlife for people of color, (the proprietor) says, "if you've got a beef with someone who's black, it's the place to go to try to get a shot at them." - The barkeeper after five shootings so far this year at a Park Street bar. [The Capital Times: Owner Says Black Bars in Impossible Situation] (Not to mention, the neighbors who have bullet holes in their walls!)
- Former liberal Fox News contributor Marc Lamont Hill claimed Tuesday that the two other cable news networks he used to contribute to, CNN and MSNBC, are far more to the left than Fox News is to the right.
- MSNBC's Rachel Maddow apologized Monday for claiming that Rush Limbaugh said Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin should receive the Medal of Honor. "I was in error when we reported that he had." Just think of the enormity of such a claim! And liberals accuse Limbaugh of character assassination?!!!!
