While Republican Gov. Scott Walker refuses to even acknowledge those individuals or groups who protest his public appearances across Wisconsin, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Walker’s Democratic opponent in the June 5 recall election, clearly has no problem engaging all Wisconsinites, even those who don’t support him or share his political ideology.
While Scott Walker has worked hard to “divide and conquer” Wisconsinites in order to suit his own extreme political agenda (or to please his billionaire campaign donors) Tom Barrett wants to bring Wisconsin back together to find real solutions – not smoke and mirrors – to fix Wisconsin’s problems and move the state FORWARD.
Is there anyone in that picture with a “Stand with Walker” sign that’s YOUNGER than (58-year-old) Tom? Doesn’t look like it.
Its nice to see that Barrett knows that the Walker supporters are no threat or danger to him and he knows they are safe to approach, something Scott Walker would not be able to do with the union people. There is only one question to ask Tom Barrett and how he answers will decide if he is working for all the people or only a few, Tom, do you support Act 10? The only answer that is acceptable is yes.
So you’re saying that Walker is afraid to approach The People? He’s only comfortable when surrounded by syncophants and slavishly subservient thralls? You’re saying he’s afraid of teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters and police officers?
Wow… That’s quite a “hero” you’ve got there, Dante. Very Nixonian.
Dante, I know you really want the whole “union thugs” thing to be true, but if your assertion were really the case, why weren’t there more arrests during the protests in Madison last year? After all, with such large gatherings of your so-called “union thugs” one would expect mass arrests for violent, thuggish behavior.
Dante, I’ll let you be the first one to post the photo of Walker engaging with oppo supporters. I’m not holding my breath. What you can admit, and I’m sure you’re a big enough man, is that it’s politically shrewd to engage all constituents. You may shake a thousand hands and only get a few votes from it, but it’s votes that the other guy ain’t getting. And it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than huge media buys that only appeal to your base.
Dante, there you go again with your divisive falsifications…
“even if the sound of it is something quite atrocious,
if you say it loud enough you’ll always sound precocious…”
Wake up and LOOK and you will see you who truly is ferocious…
“Um diddle diddle Um diddle Ay
Um diddle diddle Um diddle Ay”
I would challenge you to face the brutal truth. Union supporters are not the ones who have been spewing reprehensible hate mongering. I would challenge you to stand before a mirror and recite your own words used to describe public employees and union supporters – Liars, Whiners and all the other invectives you spout. Look at yourself in the mirror and recite these words over and over and over again, then you may finally realize how irrationally vicious your position really is. Perhaps you will at last recognize the insidious indoctrination from which you so obviously suffer.
If you ever do wise up you will find that Act 10 is an abomination, the denudation of the fundamental safeguards which ensure liberty and democracy for ALL working people in this state. Your continual demonizations and your support for dismantling labor are anti-american and unpatriotic. Those are the attitudes to be feared.
It isn’t pleasant admitting that you’ve been duped, but Dante, you’ve been duped. If you truly believe gnarled distortions like the one you’ve expressed here, then may you have mercy. You are deserving of all my pity and condolence. And you have it. I bestow upon you all my sympathies.
This used to be quite common in politics. I miss the open debates about policy and the direction of the country. Too often nowaadays it boils down to name-calling and hysteria.
You can thank the ever-rightward lurching and intolerant Teapublican Party for that, Nomad.
Richard Mourdock, the Teapublican Senatorial candidate said it best when he said that, as far as he is concerned, bi-partisanship means Democrats accepting the Republican position on a given issue
Bi-partisanship is gone from the Teapublican lexicon. So is tolerance for Republican candidates, positions and policies that vary in even the slightest degree from the new and radical Teapublican orthodoxy. Ask Bob Bennett and Richard Lugar. They’ll tell you.
The Teapublican Party finds itself at the end of the efficacy of “The Southern Strategy”, and I think this new orthodoxy, as well as it efforts to limit the ability to vote on the part of constituencies which it sees as likely to vote for Democrats, are artifacts of a political party seeing “the dying of the light”, and desperately flailing about in an effort to maintain relevance and power.
The Teapublican Party will have to moderate and embrace true bi-partisanship, or it will rightly take its place in the dustbins of history alongside the Whigs and the Know Nothings.
On point again, Zuma. Mourdock’s interpretation bipartisanship merely confirms what GOP lawmakers have already clearly demonstrated but haven’t openly admitted – at least to the general public. They did outline their entire strategy to their acolytes early in 2011.
I disagree with you regarding the Tea Party moderating their position. That will not happen. They will continue to move harder to the right. In Washington what we will see is intensification of hostage politics in an effort to shrink the physical size of government until it is too impotent and too ineffective to govern at all. Right wing think tanks clearly identify the strategy of intractable gridlock as a favorable one because it instills mistrust in government from all sides of the aisle. That is exactly the sentiment they want blazing through the electorate. And that means true bipartisanship will not be on their agenda. Ever.
The GOP old guard might attempt to assert some leadership by keeping the Tea Party element in line, but I doubt it. If there is to be any reformation of the GOP at all, by that I mean the moderates rejecting the Tea Party element, it might lead to a Constitution Party split with Tea Party Radicals (TPR) leaving the GOP altogether. But I don’t see that happening because the GOP has the established infrastructure – TPR would lose their political edge. No, I think they will subsume the GOP.
Genuine, good faith bipartisanship is pretty much dead in America from this point on. But then again, this is an opportunity to examine the implications of bipartisanship. It is a time for all to ask – what are you willing to give up? Because that’s what bipartisanship means – giving up something that one values. What do you value more – that which you are willing to give up (social security perhaps? civil rights? The EPA? ) or compromise? That’s truly what we will be facing this year and for many years to come. Was the Missouri Compromise a good idea because it was a bipartisan solution? Where do the lines of compromise end and appeasement begin?
No Zach I don’t see the hard working men and women as thugs but just misguided souls who allow themselves to be controlled and are afraid to freely express their own feelings for fear of retaliation
You obviously don’t know many actual living, breathing public employees then.
Dante, I am a public employee.
I am not a thug.
I am a lifelong Wisconsinite, for more than sixty years now. After a twenty-year career in the private sector, I decided to go back to school to get advanced degrees to be able to go back to my alma mater, a state campus here, to give back to Wisconsin what it had given me: a good education for a good start.
I now have taught thousands of Wisconsinites. I work hard to do so. I went into debt to do so. I am glad that I do so.
But not until a year ago did I feel despised by Wisconsinites like you for doing so. Not until a year ago did I feel hated for giving back to my Wisconsin, giving up a lot to do so. Not until a year ago did I fear retaliation from the governor, because he and his ilk did try to retaliate against a colleague of mine for expressing not his feelings but the facts — and they failed to get him, because he had done everything legally, while Walker and his ilk did not.
But they made his life a mess, so I still fear retaliation from Walker, because he has nothing to fear from fools like you. Yep, Dante, I now fear you. Not because you are smart, but because you are a fool, and you are destroying my Wisconsin with your foolishness.
And that is why I am working hard to take back Wisconsin from fools like you — before I leave and take my life savings and my skills with me to a better place that has not been destroyed by fools. Have fun paying the increase in taxes that you will have to pay to make up for the loss of my income and the incomes of almost 50,000 who already have left Wisconsin in the last year, for fear of further destruction from fools like you.
50,000? That explains why this states IQ has jumped high in the past year. All I have to say to you MIGOSH is don’t let the Illinois tollgates hit you in the ass on the way out of my state. I wish I could say you and the other 50,000 will be missed but oops……looks like no one really cares they left.
http://bloggingblue.com/2012/05/09/the-64000-question/#comment-97847
This just in!
Video of Dante “defending” Wisconsin from “union thugs” and “outsiders” intent on supporting the “entitlement recalls”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4“.
“The stupid, it burns.”
Dante, have you nothing more than hateful malevolence coursing through your veins? Decency and Dignity call upon you for an apology to Migosh and to the 50,000 fellow citizens you so indelicately malign. Wisconsin isn’t YOUR state. That you think that no one but those who share your views should live in OUR state is very telling, indeed. It indicates a frightening level of intolerance. It is you who are fearsome, Dante Iscariot, forsaker of your fellow American. Uh, yeah, you know that sign that reads Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here? Don’t let it flail your backside when it slams behind you.
Thank you.
I tried to just tell it straight, so I left out this:
I love Wisconsin, and it breaks my heart to have to think of leaving it, but it is leaving me no choice — as my area of public employees has had no raises in five years and only hits to our take-home pay, and as I near retirement. So it looks like my retirement will require me to leave to live more affordably elsewhere.
And that breaks my heart, because — again — I love Wisconsin, where my family goes back generations. But now others are going in my family, too, so all we will have left is tombstones of those in the past.
But enough for emotion. Now I will get back to the facts, and I missed this one:
DANTE IS THE THUG. Thugs are sociopaths who care nothing for others in pain. They like to inflict pain. And that is what he revels in doing, and that makes him THE THUG, and all of the others like him.
Barrett has shown bravery, crossing the line to meet people opposed to him, stepping in to try and stop a violent assault.
Walker has shown…?