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Speaker of the Assembly Mike Huebsch needs 24 Dem votes to pass the budget if it includes ANY TAX INCREASE. (i.e. any budget)

Think about this when you ponder why the budget deliberations drag on. The freshman and "no-tax ever" Republicans have delivered control of the budget into the hands of any Democrat that can give the Speaker the votes he needs to pass the budget.

What irony.

So it appears that the Senate Democrats have embarassed the Governor by proposing the largest, most over ambitious universal health proposal in the nation. They did it with no input from the Governor's office, over his staff's objections.

Because the Senators are members of his own party, the Governor has kept silent.

It is a grim and terrible silence.

Apparently, Sen. Erpenbach (the leader in all but name) has forgotten that the Governor has unparalleled veto power.


Hmmm.

BROYDRICK REVISITED:

Thank you for all the disgusting stories about Mr Broydrick that were sent to the comment section. This is certainly why "comment moderation" technology was invented.

If you'd like to add value to this uniquely lame blog (instead of sending in potentially libelous third-party accounts of questionable accuracy) please participate in our NEW GAME!!!

The game is called SPOTTED IN WISCONSIN!
In the comments you may submit a spotting of any notable figure in Wisconsin, when and where that legislative leader or nattering nabob was spotted and we'll post it.

The best 'spotter' will be dubbed Brilliant Detective of the Week! (and will also receive all the benefits associated with that illustious title!)

Go on, anyone can play.

YOU'D BE SURPRISED HOW MANY LEGISLATORS FAIL THIS:

Intelligence test!

DC Madame Has Friends in Wisconsin

We here are convinced that the calls to Bill Broydrick's cell [414 719-1399] are completely innocent.

Other, more cynical, people may have a different view.

Today Eric Petersen's client Equis had their senior Wisconsin executive indicted for corruption related to the sale of a State of Wisconsin building.

Hmmmmm.

This week Tommy Thompson decided to run for President!!!

Don't laugh.

Crazy UW Madison Lecturer

Jessica McBride at WTMJ has a story about the UW hiring some loon who believes the US Government plannned and executed 9/11. He also believes that Osama Bin Laden is dead and his occasional public statements are forgeries by the CIA, which he asserts runs Al-Queda.

Who cares? There is yet another loon in Madison, big whoop. Well this idiot is teaching about 9/11 at both Edgewood and UW Madison to freshman.

Our tax-dollars are being used to mis-educate a generation of students. He is being paid by us to slander America. That's more than stupid, its plain wrong.

There's an article at Badger Blog Alliance that compares Jim Doyle to Tony Earl.

Actually it is apparently a link to an article in the Journal.

Doyle is clearly doomed.


Or not...

FATHERS DAY

George Washington earned the title "Father of the Nation". It is interesting to learn that the Governor of Wisconsin now presides over roughly the same number of people that George Washinton did as our first President.

HERO OF THE AGE

Brian Blanchard's campaign was at the Farmers Market this morning. They were out in force.

It was not immediately apparent if the "volunteers" were still Assembly Democratic legislative staff.

You may recall that Blanchard has convicted Scott Jensen (a Republican) of felonies for the same activities that Blanchard engaged in. You may think that odd, but it is true. Blanchard used state employees to create and run his first campaign. Blanchard is a lawyer but defended his actions by saying he didn't know it was wrong.
He then indicted and convicted Scott Jensen (not a lawyer) for using state employees to campaign. Jensen defended his actions by using much the same defense as Blanchard had.

It didn't carry much weight with Blanchard. Jensen is looking at the end of his career and professional life.

This is not rank hypocrisy. No, this is enlightened, even "progressive" public service on Blanchard's part. The fact that he had even more evidence, including personal knowledge, of the same activities by Assembly Democrats must be ignored.

All hail Brian Blanchard "Hero of the Age"! Never ever whisper "hypocrite and corrupt politician" he might indict.

The first new post in a year and a month.

Wow!

Top 10 Tips for Lobbying Success


1. Schedule! Make an appointment with your Representative or Senator in advance.

2. Be flexible! Members' schedules get juggled at a moment's notice. You may meet with a Member in the chamber lobby, walk with him or her to the Capitol for a vote, or may even meet with a staff person instead.

3. Inform! Let the office know your issues when you call to make an appointment.

4. Be prepared! Know the facts of the issue and both sides of it. Be prepared to discuss the effects of policy changes on the individuals concerned.

5. Take an expert! Members are less likely to "skip" meetings with groups than individuals. Bringing a local expert, community or business leader concerned with your issue helps reinforce your position.

6. Be on time! And, be willing to wait. Delayed appointments can be very beneficial if they give you time to get to know the Member's staff. Keep in mind that meeting with staff can be as productive as seeing the Member personally.

7. Pick a spokesperson! When visiting as a group, one person should start the meeting and be the spokesperson. Before the meeting, decide the key points that should be covered, and who will raise which points.

8. Be positive, friendly and brief! Stick to the issues, facts and don't outstay your welcome. Congressional offices are friendly places, but they are also places of intensive activity.

9. Get a reaction! Ask for favorable consideration of your position, thus seeking the Member's opinion.

10. SEND A THANK YOU! When you get home, write a “thank you” to your Member of Congress and any staff with whom you may have met, and ask them to keep in touch with you on your issues.

From the NY Times:
February 6, 2005

New to Capitol Hill? 10 Tips to Avoid Ruin
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON
THE start of every presidential term brings to Washington eager new cabinet officers and members of Congress who take the wrong elevators, get lost in the hallways and pop off to reporters. But such faux pas - Senator Ken Salazar, a freshman Democrat from Colorado, says he has not yet found the Senate dining room and is eating ham sandwiches in the public cafeteria - are hardly the worst of it.

As everyone knows, Washington is shadowed by the specters of grand scandals past: Richard M. Nixon and Watergate, Oliver North and Iran-Contra, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. More recently Bernard B. Kerik, President Bush's short-lived nominee for homeland security secretary, jettisoned himself for his troubles with a nanny and then turned out to have a Manhattan love nest, a serious no-no in Washington. Unlike New York, the nation's capital has always had a Puritan streak and remains a curious mix of raging ambition and Midwestern values.

So now that the president's State of the Union address has signaled the official start of the year, here are 10 rules, culled from those who have learned the hard way, for avoiding social, political and legal disaster in Washington.

1. Don't get up in the middle of dinner and announce that you have to run off to do "Larry King Live."

Well-mannered Washingtonians tell hostesses that they will drop by before or after their appearances on nightly programs like Mr. King's. "You should tell your hostess ahead of time," said Sally Quinn, the Washington writer and hostess who is married to Benjamin C. Bradlee, former executive editor of The Washington Post, and the author of a book on entertaining. Otherwise, Ms. Quinn said, there will be a gaping hole at the dinner table. (Mr. King's interview show is on CNN at 9 p.m.) For dinner on big occasions like election night, guests can graze in the shows' green rooms, the lavishly catered holding areas that have evolved into the new Washington dinner parties.

2. Don't use the expression "Do you know who I am?"

The answer from the young woman looking for your lost ticket at the charity dinner check-in table may well be an embarrassing no. Also, the question is generally not effective, unless your goal is frightening her. "It doesn't make your ticket appear more quickly," said Carolyn Peachey, a longtime Washington event planner who has heard the expression for decades.

The only time Ms. Peachey has given a dispensation for the expression's use was last fall, when the music mogul Quincy Jones was prevented from entering a reception at the State Department. A plate in his head from brain surgery had set off the metal detector, Ms. Peachey said, and 20 minutes of talking to the guards made no difference. "Do you know who I am?" Mr. Jones finally asked. The guard replied yes, Ms. Peachey said, but insisted there was nothing to be done. Mr. Jones eventually got in through intervention from higher-ups.

3. Don't withhold information from your lawyer.

Former White House counsels, lawyers for white-collar criminals, and the city's highly paid damage controllers all agree: This is the premier mistake that otherwise intelligent people make in Washington. Cover-ups are often worse than the problems themselves.

"What inevitably happens is that the facts dribble out, compounding the story, because reporters are not going to give up until they beat the competition and dig up something new," said Lanny J. Davis, a Washington lawyer brought in for White House damage control during the Clinton scandals and the author of "Truth to Tell: Tell it Early, Tell it All, Tell it Yourself."

Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel for Ronald Reagan, who vetted the current President Bush's cabinet nominees during the 2000 transition, heartily agrees. Nominees have to be prepared, he said, honestly to answer the awful questions posed by White House lawyers: Have you ever had an affair? Or used drugs? A yes to either of those questions, Mr. Fielding added, was not necessarily a problem.

"There's a difference between somebody having an affair years ago, before their first marriage broke up, and someone having an affair with someone he supervised," he said. As for drugs, "occasional drug use in college would not be a disqualifier."

4. Don't change your hairstyle too often.

"There is zero tolerance for coif inconsistency," said Mary Matalin, a longtime adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and a former television talk show host who is, at the moment, a brunette. Over the years she has been blonde, light brown or, as she put it, "hijacked by hyper-highlights ranging from dull orange to bright white." In short, Ms. Matalin said, "You have to pick a color and stick with a color."

5. Don't plan to announce your new nominee before a proper vetting.

This applies more to presidents than to ordinary folk, but it is an important corollary of Rule No. 3. C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel for the first President Bush, said that he was under constant pressure from the president and his staff rapidly to investigate the background of cabinet nominees so that Mr. Bush could fill jobs.

"I was pounded, relentlessly, when I was counsel," Mr. Gray said. He recalled that in 1988, when President-elect Bush insisted on quickly announcing Carla A. Hills as the United States trade representative, Ms. Hills and Mr. Gray agreed that Ms. Hills's husband, Rod, would have to resign from a steel company board to avoid any conflict of interest with his wife's new job. The problem was that Mr. Hills was on a plane until 4 p.m., and the president wanted Ms. Hills announced at 2 p.m. But she refused to say publicly that her husband would resign from the steel board without asking him first.

So Mr. Gray called the Federal Aviation Administration and got in touch with the commercial plane's pilot, who summoned Mr. Hills to the cockpit, where Mr. Hills gave his O.K. "I think it violated all kinds of F.A.A. rules," Mr. Gray said. "The point of the story is that these are very difficult issues, and you can't back down."

6. Don't wear a beaded Armani to a Friday night dinner in Cleveland Park.

The clean lines of Armani are highly desirable in Washington, and the first lady's white cashmere Oscar de la Renta wowed the town on Inaugural day. But even in a city as formal as the capital, be careful not to overdress. Andrea Mitchell, the NBC correspondent who is married to Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said she was reminded of that recently when she wore a black silk Armani pantsuit with a beaded top to dinner one Friday in Cleveland Park, an affluent, liberal enclave of faded Volvos in the city's northwest quadrant. Every other woman, she said, was in slacks and turtlenecks.

What to do? "Laugh it off and realize that in Washington what you say and what you know is more important than what you wear," Ms. Mitchell said.

7. Don't think it is your job to educate reporters.

"You just bite your tongue on certain topics," said Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican strategist and the manager of Christie Whitman's successful campaign for governor of New Jersey in 1993. Mr. Rollins did not follow his own advice later that year, when he infamously boasted to reporters at a breakfast in Washington that Ms. Whitman's campaign had paid African-American ministers and Democratic workers $500,000 in "walking-around money" to suppress the black vote.

This statement, immediately recanted, prompted a federal investigation, which found nothing illegal. But Mr. Rollins's words had brought the political establishment down on his head and tainted Ms. Whitman's victory.

8. Don't believe your own spin.

"I was guilty of that," said Mr. Davis, the Clinton defender. Mr. Davis said he first spun out the argument that there was nothing wrong with political donors attending coffees at the Clinton White House because no money was actually collected there. "I tried to believe it, because I was technically correct," Mr. Davis said. "But people were expected to give money before or after the event."

9. Don't forget who your friends are.

"The biggest mistake that people make is that they base their friendships on who is in power and who is not," Ms. Quinn said. "This is short-sighted, because very few people in Washington stay in power for a length of time. In the same vein, people will count people out once they lose power. This is always a huge mistake, because people are never out unless they're in the ground with a stake in the heart."

10. Don't forget where you came from, and that integrity matters.

"People think the values here will be different than the ones they left at home, and they're not," said Robert S. Strauss, a Washington sage who is the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a longtime Bush family friend. "It's the same damn thing that you have in Dallas or Los Angeles or Houston. People value loyalty here as much or more as they do anywhere else."

If all else fails, Mr. Fielding has the surefire way to avoid social, political and legal ruin in Washington.

"Move to Kansas," he said.

War is less dangerous than ducks.

During the First World War, ducks killed more people than bullets, bombs, mines and tanks combined. Ducks have weak immune systems and carry viruses that can infect humans. They were responsible for the outbreak of Spanish flu that killed 25 million people in 1918, more than died from military causes in the whole of WWI.

VOTE FRAUD MILWAUKEE

Friends in Milwaukee tell me that presidential voter fraud has already begun. The ACT/MoveOn/ACORN/Union team-up is bearing real fruit. Vans and buses pull up all day unloading "voters" at City Hall. The voters stand in line, register, and vote absentee. The line is usually about a half an hour long.

Interestingly the vans have Illinois liscense plates.

Prognostication:

There will never be a news story on this, or an investigation by D.A. McCann. It wouldn't be prudent.

x

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Where are we with the Presidential election?

Check these sites out: Electoral-vote.com
Tripias.com
RealClear Politics