Ron Johnson teevee ad not "barely true"

What it is is "misleading and inaccurate."

Johnson: "Russ Feingold cut Medicare by $523 billion."

"The figure is an estimate of future savings over the next 10 years ... There is no cut in benefits that Medicare recipients will receive. Absolutely no cut in benefits."

Ron Johnson wants to repeal half a trillion dollars in savings.

Some accountant.

Scott Walker never heard of Mike Gableman

Apparently.

Or maybe he's aiming to have §12.05 found unconstitutional.

"We need to ease our litigation burden in this State."

— Scott Walker

"Divisive" Ron Johnson "a nightmare" for schools

When, during the first U.S. Senate debate in Milwaukee recently, Mr. Johnson used my name as an example of him working across ideological lines to get things done, I was more than surprised ...

Len Herricks, President of the Oshkosh Education Association

Somebody get PolitiFact on that one, willya. Ron Johnson was taken out of context. He was responding to a question about the Senate's constitutional roles of advising on and consenting to the president's executive and judicial branch nominations (seriously, he was*).

More: "I felt I was duped by him."

* Johnson also claimed he's been carrying around and studying a pocket Constitution for all of his life, even though he told the Rock River Patriots in June he'd only read it three or five times since Dick Morris urged him to run for the Senate as the token millionaire.

The Rock River Patriots couldn't believe their ears when candidate Ron Johnson informed them, "It is not an easy document to read." "It's not that long," one of the RRPs retorted. That famed encounter was the last of Ron Johnson's Tea Party appearances, incidentally.

Talk about a nightmare.

What I'd like to know is why in the name of Robert Heron Bork, when somebody who's been studying the Constitution for all of his life is asked about the United States Senate's role in judicial confirmations, he answers by rambling away about the Oshkosh school board?

(Nobody asked him about Charles Murray, although they should have.)

Wisconsin Republicans would ban this therapy

Patient has ASIA Class A spinal cord impairment

Geron Corporation (Nasdaq: GERN) today announced the enrollment of the first patient in the company's clinical trial of human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cells, GRNOPC1.

This is the first thing that Ron Johnson would put an end to.

And Scott Walker would ban it.

Compassionate conservatism lives on (for zygotes).

Hard to say why Kleefisch won't debate

"If we don't stay Christ-centered then who are we to say we should lead?" — Jews for Kleefisch PAC

The local paper manages to profile the lieutenant governor candidates without mentioning that one, Rebecca Kleefisch, refuses to debate the other, Tom Nelson. But it does leave a clue:

Nelson received a bachelor's degree from Carleton College in 1998 and a master's degree in public administration from Princeton University in 2004. He has served [on nine standing committees] in the state Assembly for six years and was the Assembly majority leader in the last session.

Kleefisch was a teevee reporter who contributed some homemade YouTubes to Charlie Sykes's blog and and worked in "marketing."

PolitiFactWisc only contacted anti-abortion outfit

Wisconsin Stem Cell Now:
An Open Letter to Marty Kaiser, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Likewise, Ann Coulter wrote a book about evolution, and her consultant was Bill Dembski, a theologian of "intelligent design."

"[A]llowing embryonic humans to be shredded up ..."

— award-winning journalist Patrick McIlheran

@PolitiFactWisc: Thanks for clearing that up

Claim: "Scott Walker says he would ban stem cell research."

PolitiFactWisc: No one disputes that Scott Walker opposes embryonic stem cell research. . . . [A] survey Walker completed for the group Pro-Life Wisconsin ... showed only that Walker opposes embryonic stem cell research, not that he wants to ban all stem cell research.

Well, Tom Barrett's teevee ad doesn't say Scott Walker wants to ban "all" stem cell research. What it says is that Scott Walker wants to "ban stem cell research," which is true. So how could it be false?

Especially if "no one disputes" it?

It may be misleading (at least, to anybody unfamiliar with the distinction between embryonic and adult stem cells) but it isn't false.

If you had three things and I took two of them away from you and you said, "He took my things!," it wouldn't do me much logical good to say, "That's false, I only took two of your things," now would it?

Meanwhile, in an earlier PolitiFactWisc entry, the PolitiFactWisc team seeks to evaluate Ron Johnson's claim that "Russ Feingold cut Medicare by $523 billion." After determining that "the health care law does not take $500 billion out of the current Medicare budget" and that "[t]here are no cuts to guaranteed Medicare benefits," the PolitiFactTeam nevertheless rates Johnson's claim, "Barely True."*

Ron Johnson says something false about Russ Feingold: It's true. Tom Barrett says something true about Scott Walker: It's false. Got it.

* How come there's no "Barely False" category?

eta: Plaisted, also.

Ich könnte ein Anwärter gewesen

Anstatt ein Penner.

Scheiße.

Ron Johnson inducted to Penology Hall of Fame

Ron Johnson (far right) is the first to realize a substantial savings in labor costs through state-subsidized rehabilitative programs while simultaneously posturing as a self-made Randian free marketeer.

The candidate Ron Johnson denounces liberals as "hunger[ing] for power over people" and shouts that it's his "job to make sure the liberals don't succeed." Yet can there be a more progressive liberal social policy preference than to replace the primordial, Mosaic urge toward punishment and retribution with the rehabilitative model?

And it sure comes in handy, doesn't it, when the apparatus of state picks up the tab for your workers' health care insurance premiums.

One thing seems clear, Johnson has figured out how to play both ends of the game to his own favor and has thus far gained a considerable amount of support among those who refuse to see his hypocrisy.

WPRI condemned Ron Johnson's labor practices

The WPRI is a nonpartisan [*spit take*] think tank

Flash back — April 10, 2009:

Wisconsin Policy Research Institute senior fellow Christian Schneider reviews draft legislation circulating in the Wisconsin State Assembly. He's inflamed by what he discovers: It seems an employer tax credit was proposed by Assembly Democrats for small businesses which hire certain otherwise disadvantaged individuals, including ex-felons. This outrage, announces the seniorly fellow, is simply "social engineering" under cover of exploiting the economic recession.

Flash forward — October 8, 2010:

Johnson's campaign would not say how many inmates his companies employ. State records, obtained by the AP through a State open records request, indicate the companies have participated in the work release program since 1998.

Ron Johnson's companies offer private health insurance to the regular employees at the Oshkosh factories. But Melissa Roberts, an executive assistant with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, said the companies don't have to cover the inmate workers. "The benefit [the subsidy?] is that they don't have to pay health benefits," she said.

$10K times nine inmates times twelve years equals $1.08M.

Government health care, Ron Johnson has often shouted, is the "greatest assault on [his] personal Freedoms in [his] lifetime."

But today the WPRI sure hearts it some Ron Johnson.

In a strictly nonpartisan sense, of course.

Earlier — Ron Johnson: Communist China is where it's at

But apart from the aqueducts and the roads

Washington Journal, via Adam Serwer.

Russ Feingold's next teevee ad?

No. Don't even think about it.

Whatever happened to the good old days when the Minnesota Vikings went on to become State Supreme Court justices and things like that.

By the way you can watch tonight's candidate debate on WVCY, the "wholesome, Christian alternative." That's definitely the one for me.

It comes on right after Kent Hovind's wholesome lying.

A copyright primer for hypocrites

For all the same local conservative wing-nuts accusing Senator Russ Feingold of "running an illegal ad" and who on practically a daily basis copy and paste large swaths of text from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel into their blog posts,* consider the following:

Everything on or used in connection with our Websites, including but not limited to text, images, graphics, logos, audio and video content, software (collectively, "Content") ... is owned by us and/or our affiliates, subsidiaries, licensors or suppliers. This means that you cannot use the Content without our permission.

You may only use the Content online for purposes of visiting and using our websites,** and only for your personal, non-commercial use. This means that you may not download any of our Content, give copies to your friends, display the Content publicly, or charge anything for it.

That appears no less unequivocal than the NFL's celebrated warning.

So how exactly are you any different from Russ Feingold?

* A compelling argument has been made that these are exempt from Article I's "useful Arts" and therefore beyond the ambit of Congress.

** a.k.a., "extensive political blogging."

Thoughts of Chairman Priebus

If you can call them that:

Feingold had mentioned that he thought that it would be good if we captured Obama in the battlefield ... It's disgusting ... It's offensive to the people of Wisconsin. I hope [Feingold] has an explanation as to why he thinks Obama ought not to be executed ... My guess is [Ron Johnson] would believe Obama should be executed and he oughta be treated as a war criminal.

— WISGOP Chairman Reince Priebus

It's hard for a Republican to keep those two apart, I understand.

Kenya, Yemen ... what's the difference.

RoJo "money bomb" raises 0.00453% of expenses

Good thing he's rich and is palling around with career politicians.

Justice Scalia upholds health care reform bill

But DE Senate candidate still opposed to "individual man date"

[In Gonzalez v.] Raich, the Supreme Court sustained Congress's power to impose obligations on individuals who claimed not to participate in interstate commerce, because those obligations were components of broad schemes regulating interstate commerce.

Translation: Just because you claim not to participate in interstate commerce doesn't mean that you don't, according to Scalia/Raich.

Thomas More Law Center v. Obama (.pdf; 20 pgs.)

Did professor of law just accuse Feingold of theft?

It's less than clear but he's left few options:

"It really is hard to see this as an honest mistake. Ad agencies and campaigns are lousy with lawyers and no lawyer or agency in business for more than a week and a half would have failed to recognize this issue."

It was a boneheaded mistake, is what it was, not a dishonest one. Some mavericky type decided to play the enormous spread against the National Football League's taking umbrage at the Feingold campaign's use of the three-second clip.

If the professor of law is right that no marginally conscious attorney would have failed to recognize the issue and copyright and fair use concerns were indeed considered, then the decision wasn't a matter of "Let's steal it," it was "Let's see if the NFL fails to object."

Copyright protections are not inviolate and as a matter of fact (and law) the Constitution directs Congress to regulate their limitations.

Esenberg is correct, at least, in that nobody should have seen that deliriously hopeful prophecy as anything other than a caffeine-inspired phantasm. And the chances subsequently that the Feingold campaign would battle the NFL's cease and desist letter — the appearance of which likewise should have been factored into the calculus from the outset as a 100% proven statistical inevitability — are Nil, for a whole host of obvious political and financial reasons.

And why not: They wore ersatz Bears uniforms

What gets me is why the Feingold campaign mandarins, after procuring and assembling a film crew and a troupe of football actors on the Nicolet High School gridiron, didn't deck a couple of them out in faux Minnesota Vikings garb and reenact Randy Moss's infamous this-is-me-showing-you-my-bum scene. There's likely not a single Wisconsinite who wouldn't both recognize and be amused by it.

They could have even mimicked the voiceover: "That's disgusting!"

Then the campaign wouldn't have been forced to edit the offending sequence, and rerun an ad* that just looks ridiculous, especially in light of the recent uproar. I reckon the best thing Feingold can do at this point is to stop running it, bury the thing, and forget about it.

Charlie Sykes's criticism of Russ Feingold's use of NFL footage in his ad is [not] partisan hyperbole.

Yeah right.

* By the way, speaking of being lousy with lawyers, it isn't celebration per se that draws a flag, it's "prolonged, excessive, or premeditated celebration," the rule thanks to Mark Gastineau and the Fun Bunch.

@PolitiFactWisc had best blow that sucker out of the water.

eta: Predictably, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's lemming-like right-wing calumnist Patrick McIlheran has crawled on board with Prof. Esenberg's intimations of lawbreaking aforethought:

[Feingold] got nailed within hours by the NFL for an ad that illicitly used footage and commentary that he didn't have permission to use.

You don't need permission to put to certain prescribed uses copyrighted material in lots of instances, and it doesn't make a difference how many times the NFL repeats its familiar admonition.

The league's protective rights would be every bit as enforceable without the announcement. It just so happens that this particular league is notoriously vigilant over its intellectual property domain and it can afford the required small army of silk-stockinged combatants.

The Feingold camp can't, which is why it was such a dumb move.

Of all people to chide Feingold over this episode, the last should be a newspaperman who apparently spends much of his time copying and pasting copyrighted material onto the virtual pages of the Journal-Sentinel without the copyright holders' "express written permission."

That "illicit" stuff is no more or less protected than is the NFL's.

Lou Dobbs scared all the illegals away

Anchor babies fail to keep pace

The non-citizen population of the United States is growing smaller. The percentage of non-citizens among the voting-age population has decreased from 8.6% in 2006 to 8.3% in 2010.

Pollster dot com.

Related: Dobbs' WOPs.

Like we license poetry and stuff

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

In one radio ad on the issue of the right to bear arms, the Feingold campaign included a Johnson comment that made it appear he supported some form of gun licensing.

"Made it appear"? That's exactly what Ron Johnson said, that he favored licensing firearms "like we license cars and stuff."

Then Ron Johnson was forced to do some acrobatic plastics manufacturing after he was told what a politically idiotic thing it was to say out loud. As he has done on several other occasions since.

Johnson campaign fearful of revealing candidate's whereabouts

We'll see him tomorrow night, backpedaling around.

Disinterested burgher or Romish emissary?

RoJo's written testimony bears his finance council credentials

Deacon Tim Reilly, Director of Administration for the Diocese of Green Bay reiterated that [Republican candidate for Senate Ron] Johnson was not speaking specifically on behalf of the church. "He was speaking on his own behalf, as a concerned citizen, that this [proposed legislation] would adversely affect the Catholic School System and the Boys and Girls Club and the YMCA and other non-profits without government protection."

(Don't forget Johnson drew specific attention to churches as well.)

That beggars belief, according to experts and clergymen.

Johnson Testified To Protect Church From Sex Abuse Lawsuits

Not a popular position these days, is it.

WKOW's Tony Galli finds it too hard to resist

Henkelmann was attending a three-day conference sponsored by the Department of Justice to bone up on the approach to prosecuting elder abuse and other, specialized crimes.

DA porn surfs on State dime

Funny he didn't mention the Palm Garden Ballroom.

Guy at Packer game summarizes entire election

Are you sure he wasn't the professor of political science?

I think the issues that Russ Feingold has to argue about are more complicated, and he has to do so with a lot of substance. I think Ron Johnson's positions — and his Party's positions — lend themselves much more to very quick soundbites.

Guy at Packer game (6:58)

Mitt Romney to march with Scott Walker

Although possibly not on the same day or in the same city.

Mitt Romney is the father of socialized medicine in America.

Kleefisch dereligionized, undebatable

"Arrogance ... total disregard for the voters of Wisconsin."

The Walker camp has quickly taken over Kleefisch's scheduling and media relations. Even the "issues" page on Kleefisch's campaign website now links to Walker's website instead of her original content, which incorporated more religious flavoring in her pro-life and marriage-protection stances.

Lt. gov. candidate refuses to debate

"Can we marry dogs? This is ridiculous." — Rebecca Kleefisch

Walker referred calls to media relations specialist Rich in retail.

The Library of Congress, recent acquisitions

"Sarah spent all morning working on a Face book post."

— Todd Palin

Two people you do not gamble on copyright with

Bob Dylan and NFL Productions LLC. Selah.

(Feingold's agency could have just as easily reenacted the Randy Moss incident. In fact, it would have made the subject ad more amusing.)

Strict constructionists in the news

Risibly shameless hypocrite watch:

Tea Party-backed Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller (R) thinks federal unemployment insurance is constitutionally questionable. But it turns out that his wife benefited from it in the early part of the decade — after she left a job working for him.

Yes, but in this case the Republican's "principles" apply better to you. Are there seriously still people left who haven't figured that out yet?

O'Donnell, Angle, Miller, Johnson ... quite the impressive field.

'I'm going to Washington DC to make sure all these government perqs I've enjoyed ... to make sure they're not available to anybody else.'

Public Service Alert — Have you seen this missing fellow?

Illustration: Thomas Fuchs.

Now Ronald Reagan, he knew how to pick 'em

Miserable Meeses
It could not sound more Atlanta if you made it up

Republicans in the Senate have no more excuses for blocking federal judges who are not out nights doing hillbilly heroin with strippers.

Still ... you have got to admit that's pretty badass for 67: guns in the trunk, the whole nine yards (however, judges — especially sentencing judges — should err on the side of declining from such indulgences).

Ron Johnson misrepresents a WPRI poll

But the ensuing double negative can't improve things

There's an awful lot of baloney-slicing in this account (bottom line: Ron Johnson is full of it) but one amusing tidbit stands out:

[UW poli sci prof Ken] Goldstein, who ran the WPRI poll cited in the Johnson ad, said the campaign's language did not accurately summarize the question he posed. He noted the wide disagreement among policy experts over whether the Democrats' legislation was a "government takeover."*

Yeah, you don't want to mess with Goldstein and the WPRI's polls; they're a little touchy since their school voucher "fiasco" got busted.

In fairness, Ron Johnson's only been following politics since May when Dick Morris told him to on Fox News, so he wouldn't have known.

* That particular "wide disagreement" strikes me more as one between objective observers and hysterical propagandists.

For an example of the latter, look no further than WPRI's own "senior fellow" Christian Schneider, who recently claimed proposed health care reforms were "a complete federal government takeover of health care," and featuring "the government dictating to individuals what doctors they can see and what procedures they can get."

All of those would be false even if he was talking about Canada.

The WPRI "senior fellow," by the way, was delivering those hysterical propagandas on behalf of none other than Ron Johnson. On behalf of the so-called "nonpartisan" WPRI. Then fluffered by Charlie Sykes.**

So there are good reasons to fix that outfit with a jaundiced eye.

** The AM yeller's editorial contribution was a picture of a toilet, in predictable accordance with his coprophilia/coprophobia themes.

Better you than me

"None of us are perfect."

Now this is just embarrassing.

Since when was sociopathic projection a viable campaign strategy.

"I know me. Me is a friend of me. And you, my dear, are no me."

Why Ron Johnson is not a libertarian

Because he is incoherent and anti-intellectual, it says here.

That's news?

Related: Multimillionaire accountant assumes "embroiled Wisconsinites" have nothing better to do with 1050 dollars

Another polling trend for Ron Johnson to ignore

Reinstate preexisting condition provisions, pledges glibertarian

The percentage of voters who favor repeal of the [federal health care] bill is down seven points from last week and is the lowest level measured since March. — Rasmussen Reports

Ron Johnson's pie-in-the-sky fantasy of repealing health care reform is his numero uno signature campaign issue. But as any observer could have foreseen at the time, the effects of the oft-repeated phony Republican "death panel" fearmongering continue to wear off.

And shame on that insidious lamestream librul media, for working against honest grass roots Tea Party concerns, whoops, I mean for more widely disseminating their ridiculous assertions without cease.

Earlier: Ron Johnson, 100% proven certainly Man of Physics

Van Hollen did do something, paper insists

AG didn't do nothing, assures Journal-Sentinel fact checking team

I thought Democratic candidate for attorney general Scott Hassett was a bit over the top in the manner he went after incumbent Republican AG J.B. Van Hollen in the "sexting DA" affair too but Jeez, can't you let a guy indulge in a little hyperbole now and then? How about Van Hollen didn't do any of the things that Scott Hassett would have done as attorney general? I'm reasonably sure that was Scott Hassett's point.

And the PolitiFactWisc team performs a little editorial chicanery of its own. What Hassett's statement reads is this: "Even more troubling [than Kratz's antics] are reports that JB Van Hollen knew about this case for nearly a year and did nothing about it." But the PolitFactWisc version truncates that to, "JB Van Hollen knew about this case for nearly a year and did nothing about it." So it was "reports" that Van Hollen did nothing which Hassett was referencing.

Was Hassett being cute by throwing in "reports" and then directing his ire toward the alleged inaction revealed by those "reports"? Of course he was being cute, yet it is — and was meant to be — one step removed from making his own factual allegation against Van Hollen.

But it's no more cute than the PolitiFactWisc crew deliberately excising that germane consideration from Hassett's statement.

PolitiFactWisc's reiteration of the sexting DA's ongoing imbroglio's timeline is useful but it sure seems like a lot of trouble to go through to "check a fact" that wasn't really being presented as one, especially when you need to manipulate the claim you purport to be checking.

Photo: AG Van Hollen models an ostentatious concealed carry outfit.

Sharron Angle wants Tea candidate off ballot

More righteous candidate is committed to democratic principles
The conversation reveals Sharron Angle almost desperate ...

Angle represents a breed of non-politician "citizen legislators" bent on removing the career politicians from office, or so we are told. One way to do that, apparently, is strong-arming fellow citizens into staying away from participating in their representative democracy.

Liberals tried to convince Ralph Nader to step aside from the 2000 presidential ballot on the grounds he would siphon off Al Gore votes,* but I don't recall Al Gore himself making the direct appeal to Nader.

Speaking of conservatives obstructing democracy, here's Scott Walker back in the day doing his damnedest to keep David Duke off the 1992 Republican presidential primary ballot in Wisconsin:

Walker couldn't have done a very convincing job, because all of the dozen or so telephone calls moderator Joe Smith fields are in favor of Duke's being free to exercise his democratic rights, regardless of what the callers think of Duke's views.

Link: Clarence Thomas was a Black Panther

Evidently Scott Walker has been a career politician since birth. And of course the anti-career politician Ron Johnson hates career politicians so much that he gave Scott Walker ten thousand dollars.

And these are the "principled" candidates.

* Turned out it was actually Pat Buchanan.

Christine O'Donnell makes Rand Paul look normal

Re-tooled strategery: Go easy on the crazy
In fact, he did not mention the Tea Party at all

"If someone is constantly telling you you're wrong and the guy you're supporting is nuts, you get angry," said the Republican chairman.

But what if he is nuts? Getting angry won't mitigate his diagnosis.

Feingold in a dead heat

McClatchy/Marist, Oct. 1, 2010 (.pdf)

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Don Walker blew it here: his 52% to 45% figures are taken from the responses of likely voters, whose sample size was 506 respondents with a margin of error of +/-4.5%.

Too small, and too wide.

Among registered voters (Sample = 806, MOE +/-3.5%) it's Ron Johnson 45%, Russ Feingold 43%, with 11% undecided. Expect to hear little triumphalism from the Ron Johnson faithful over this poll.

Yet do expect from Ron Johnson a lot more ahistorical teevee ads, comically incoherent "principles," and feverish backpedaling.

Read the label

Buy American food, Neil said.

Some people don't mind being called socialists

Socialists, for example.

That's an Americans For Prosperity production and it's actually pretty entertaining. (Especially at the end, where the A's 4 Pee have to explain to their intended audience what the soundtrack was.)

Good thing Obama didn't appoint a judge

[Elena Kagan's] former job as Obama's solicitor general already has forced her to take herself out of 24 of the 51 cases the United States Supreme Court has so far agreed to hear.

That's approaching an obstruction of justice.

Don't you oppress Patrick McIlheran, Mr. Matthews

At Milwaukee Farm Aid, jam-band leader extols healthy diet

(Award-winning Journal-Sentinel calumnist McIlheran is a frequent author of reactionary screeds against being told what not to eat.)

Wisconsin legal question of the day

Does the fact that adult employees of a resort viewed a tape of alleged lewd and lascivious behavior "for fun" preclude a finding that that behavior "assault[ed] the sensibilities of unwilling adults"?

Related: Governor Jim Doyle steps in.

Doyle's father, incidentally, wrote the federal decision quoted above.

Wisconsin district attorneys in the news

In this ad from Julie Lassa, the Wisconsin legislator who is seeking the Congressional seat soon to be vacated by the venerable David Obey, Lassa enlists Ashland County assistant district attorney Dan Goglin to offer his views of Sean Duffy, former Ashland County district attorney and MTV reality star and Lassa's Republican opponent:

ADA Dan Goglin: Sean holds himself out as being a successful prosecutor . . . We did not see him often. His campaign was taking him away from the job all the time. Witnesses and victims would have to wait in the hallway for him to come to work. The quality of services that were provided to the citizens of this county suffered.

"Sean Duffy was a no show," a voiceover concludes.

Watch it here (h/t Zach Dubbya).

Duffy was endorsed by another peripatetic politician, Sarah Palin.

Duffy was appointed district attorney of Ashland County by former Republican governor Scott McCallum. Duffy's predecessor was the notorious Michael Gableman, who McCallum appointed a judge in Burnett County. Three justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court contend that Gableman still has an open ethics case pending against him containing allegations that he willfully lied in his own campaign teevee ad when he was running for the Supreme Court in 2008.

Other Wisconsin district attorneys in the news here and here.*

* From the Department of Material That Writes Itself, that DoJ convention's sessions were held in the Palm Garden Ballroom.

[This headline deleted for appropriate decorum]*

Who couldn't see this coming (raise both your hands please):

Footage captured at the Osthoff Resort in Elkhart Lake last year shows the Wood County district attorney masturbating** while viewing pornography in a public area, an employee fired for reporting the conduct said in an interview Friday.

Obviously it was not simply a video of a guy sitting motionless in front of a computer that the resort staff was watching "for fun."

Note to self: Don't ever sit in the chairs in the business center at the Osthoff. Used to be all we worried about under the tables was chewed gum.

— goodfellahenry

Public hygiene wasn't my first thought, but Henry raises a fair point.

* A considerably less decorous treatment is available here.
** Hamline alum, for those who take account of such things.***
*** Yes I'm looking at you, Recess Supervisor.

Christine O'Donnell: Satori in Farmington

O’DONNELL: I would have become a Hare Krishna but I didn’t want to become a vegetarian. And that is honestly the reason why — because I’m Italian, I love meatballs.

MAHER: Boy, are you spiritual.

Via Think Progress.

Ron Johnson reveals first order of business

Fire a couple hundred Wisconsin scientists

Funding for research on embryonic stem cells, Ron Johnson added, "would be top on the list for cuts."*

Because the UW Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine Center's research is not both certain and 100% proven, I don't need to go any further.

Said Ron Johnson, visionary Man of Science.

And it's bad for business.

Read that article about clinical trials on spinal cord injuries conducted by a free market pharmaceutical company using a therapy developed from discoveries made at the University of Wisconsin, keeping in mind that the candidate Ron Johnson concurrently inveighs against health care reform, on the grounds it interferes with the research and development of cutting edge techniques and procedures.

That interference is the "greatest assault on [his] Freedom in [his] lifetime," candidate Johnson has regularly been known to declare.

Out on the trail, Ron Johnson often tells the story of his daughter's successful recovery from heart surgery, and cites those very grounds. So why would Ron Johnson promise to prevent these sufferers of severe spinal cord injuries from enjoying a similar opportunity?

Not only that but actually have it "be top on the list for cuts"?

* This is the very last sentence in a 20-paragraph AP report.

Ron Johnson, a lactose tolerant free marketeer

Strident Randian of recent yore is today's emphatic New Dealer

"I realize that the farm economy doesn't necessarily follow free market — doesn't work all that well because you’ve got a bumper crop and prices really drop," said Ron Johnson "So I certainly support safety net, risk management [government] programs and I think most Americans agree with that as well."

Has RoJo enunciated any principle that didn't turn out to be a sham?

'The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 is my foundational book.'

Ron Johnson's sexual abuse persons or entities

Via the UW Badger Herald:

Johnson said in a statement complete transparency is the only way to deal with sexual abuses in the church, and any "person or entity" that withholds information should be prosecuted.

That's something of an about-face from his prior testimony:

But I believe it is a valid question to ask whether the employer of a perpetrator should also be severely damaged, possibly destroyed, in our legitimate desire for justice.

"Big pots of money" — his words — are what he is concerned with.

Not to throw a wet blanket on Nate Silver

He's orders of magnitude smarter than me.

But don't forget that just this past May, his projection model forecast a British Parliament comprised of 204 Labour seats and 103 Liberal Democrat seats. In fact Labour won 258 seats and the Lib Dems, 57.

That's an awfully wide miss.

NRA to license guns like they do with cars and stuff

Item: NRA endorses Ron Johnson

Laughable.

It obviously wasn't for either his understanding of the Second Amendment or the abject dishonesty of his presentations, when Ron Johnson can say things like this with an apparently straight face:

Now in the McDonald case they [the U.S. Supreme Court] ruled that that individual right applies to the States. This is a pretty clear difference between myself and Senator Feingold.

No, this is pretty clearly the nadir of double-speaking absurdity.

It bears repeating — again — that Senator Feingold signed on to a Friend of the Court brief in McDonald, in support of the proposition that that individual right applies to the States. The friends prevailed. So the pretty clear difference between Ron Johnson and Senator Feingold is that had it not been for Senator Feingold and others on the record, Ron Johnson wouldn't even have a McDonald to praise.

Meanwhile Ron Johnson is on the YouTubes saying he only decided to read the Constitution after visiting with the oracle, Dick Morris. To say nothing of the candidate's pontificating — incorrectly — on two vital decisions of the Supreme Court he's evidently not read at all.*

And the NRA falls for all of this incoherent pandering. Sad.

* Ron Johnson's Second Amendment fantasies.

Strict obstructionists

Obama tries to shake out his judicial nominees:*

As a former Senator, I have the greatest respect for the Senate's role in providing advice and consent on judicial nominations. If there is a genuine concern about the qualifications of judicial nominees, that is a debate I welcome. But the consistent refusal to move promptly to have that debate, or to confirm even those nominees with broad, bipartisan support, does a disservice to the greatest traditions of this body and the American people it serves.

It's hard to read "the Honorable Jeff Sessions" without gagging.

* Not that it will do the slightest bit of good.