Thousands fill the Capitol rotunda in Madison, Wis.

[Bruce Dazzling]

[eyeno]

How do you think this fake Koch/Walker thing will be played out on mainstream news? Or will it? I do not have mainstream news. I have it, but my ability to physically access it is limited. I can only get over to it a few minutes at a time.

[justdrew]

yeah, I've been saying (mostly to myself) that he's a disgrace to the name. too bad.

[JackRiddler]

.

Come on people, focus -- this Buffalo Beast hoax on Walker is a beautiful moment, and a coup we should all aspire to. It's not just what "Koch" got Walker to say, to admit, and to applaud. It's the sheer fact that on hearing it was Koch, the governor immediately made 20 minutes of his time free to give a very chatty report on his activities, and in the end it was the hoaxer who told him he's gotta go.

And "Koch" didn't have to deceptively edit, or dress up like a pimp in the b-roll.

From http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-l ... onfir.html

Posted at 11:34 AM ET, 02/23/2011

Governor Walker's office confirms prank Koch call

By Greg Sargent

The Internet is burning up with the news that Governor Scott Walker may have been pranked by a caller claiming to be David Koch, and a spokesman for the Governor, Cullen Werwie, emails a statement confirming the call is legit:

The Governor takes many calls everyday. Throughout this call the Governor maintained his appreciation for and commitment to civil discourse. He continued to say that the budget repair bill is about the budget. The phone call shows that the Governor says the same thing in private as he does in public and the lengths that others will go to disrupt the civil debate Wisconsin is having.

More on this in a sec, but for now, suffice it to say that this will reinforce perceptions that Walker is in way over his head.

UPDATE, 11:41 a.m.: A few items of note from the call:

* Walker doesn't bat an eye when Koch describes the opposition as "Democrat bastards."

* Walker reveals that he and other Republicans are looking at whether they can charge an "ethics code violation if not an outright felony" if unions are paying for food or lodging for any of the Dem state senators.

* Walker says he's sending out notices next week to some five or six thousand state workers letting them know that they are "at risk" of layoffs.

"Beautiful, beautiful," the Koch impersonator replies. "You gotta crush that union."

More soon...

UPDATE, 11:54 a.m.: In a key detail, Walker reveals that he is, in effect, laying a trap for Wisconsin Dems. He says he is mulling inviting the Senate and Assembly Dem and GOP leaders to sit down and talk, but only if all the missing Senate Dems return to work.

Then, tellingly, he reveals that the real game plan here is that if they do return, Republicans might be able to use a procedural move to move forward with their proposal.

"If they're actually in session for that day and they take a recess, this 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they'd have a quorum because they started out that way," he says. "If you heard that I was going to talk to them that would be the only reason why."

Then the fake Koch says this: "Bring a baseball bat. That's what I'd do."

Walker doesn't bat an eye, and responds: "I have one in my office, you'd be happy with that. I've got a slugger with my name on it."

12:09 p.m.: Another key exchange:

FAKE KOCH: What we were thinking about the crowds was, planting some troublemakers.

WALKER: We thought about that. My only gut reaction to that would be, right now, the lawmakers I talk to have just completely had it with them. The public is not really fond of this.The teachers union did some polling and focus groups...

It's unclear what Walker means when he says he "thought" about planting some troublemakers, but it seems fair to ask him for clarification.

UPDATE, 12:27 p.m.: One last fun tidbit: Walker appears to agree when "Koch" calls David Axelrod a "son of a bitch." Walker tells an anecdote in which he was having dinner with Jim Sensebrenner, and at a nearby table he saw Mika Brzezinski and Greta VanSusteren having dinner with David Axelrod. Then this exchange occured:

WALKER: I introduced myself.

FAKE KOCH: That son of a bitch.

WALKER: Yeah, no kidding, right?

UPDATE, 12:41 p.m.: Another great exchange:

FAKE KOCH: Well, I'll tell ya what, Scott. Once you crush these bastards, I'll fly ya out to Cali and really show you a good time.

WALKER: Alright. That would be outstanding. Thanks for all the support and helping us move the cause forward.

[justdrew]

creative, interesting guys are not always left-wing.

isn't there anyone you admire whose politics remain the opposite, or the near-opposite, of your own?

maybe George S. Patton. maybe Dali ?

the exception that proves the rule?

why thanks

[norton ash]

Just so you know, there's a rumour going around that the first rock-snobs to post Scott Walker videos in this thread might be targeted as victims in a gang initiation. The Not-Gonna-Do-It Brotherhood, they're everywhere.

[Nordic]

It would be hard for them to ignore the hoax call but they could (and probably will) play it down.

I find the MSM to be quite vomit-inducing but I just went by CNN a couple of times, about an hour ago, and Walker was giving a speech. Droning on and on. CNN seemed to be giving him all the headtime he could ever want.

The guy even LOOKS stupid. Which the hoax call proved he is.

[Plutonia]

Indiana Dep. AG Loses Job After Advocating 'Live Ammunition' For WI Protesters

An Indiana Deputy Attorney General "is no longer employed" by the Attorney General's Office, after he tweeted for "live ammunition" to be used on protesters in Wisconsin, the office announced in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

The deputy AG, Jeff Cox, wrote his comments in response to tweets from a Mother Jones editor named Adam Weinstein.

"[A]gainst thugs physically threatening legally-elected state legislators & governor? You're damn right I advocate deadly force," Cox wrote, to defend his call for live ammunition. (You can see screen grabs of Cox's tweets here.)

cont..

Him ^^^^

[justdrew]

Just so you know, there's a rumour going around that the first rock-snobs to post Scott Walker videos in this thread might be targeted as victims in a gang initiation. The Not-Gonna-Do-It Brotherhood, they're everywhere.

awww, I resisted but Bruce's provocation was too much

[seemslikeadream]

In Brief: Scott Walker Is America's Asshole:
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's eyes have the glazed over look of a man who just jacked off to a Facebook album of your niece's fifth birthday party. Actually, that's not accurate because that assumes that Walker would try to hide his proclivities. Indeed, Walker seems more like the kind of guy who'd walk into that party with a Koch Industries dildo in his ass and tell everyone to watch while he yanked it to the musical chairs songs. God help the little girl who is in the last chair. For what else do you say about a governor whose official website has a press release titled "Walker Calls Democrat Legislators Back Into State." You got that? Not "Democratic," but the politicized, insulting "Democrat" as adjective. It's like getting a note from your boss on company stationery that calls you a "cocksucker."

In his pathetic "fireside chat" last night, Walker lied again and again to the people of his state. Not only did he not acknowledge that unions have agreed to the increases in contributions to benefit (because, if he did so, he'd have to say that the "bargaining" part of collective bargaining actually works), not only did he not mention the budget cuts he got in January, but he blamed the continuing uprising on "more and more protesters [who] come in from Nevada, Chicago and elsewhere." Why the fuck would he mention Nevada? To invoke Harry Reid? And Chicago? Well, that place is just filthy with Obama. What Walker is doing is degrading the real and actual thousands upon thousands of Wisconsinites who are marching and chanting and attempting to save their rights that they've had for half a century.

But, seriously, dude? If you're gonna start blaming outside agitators, are you gonna hire African mercenaries to fire on the crowds?

The nicest touch, though, was when Walker said he was going to start laying off state workers by the thousands if Democratic senators don't come back and let the Assembly rubber stamp his destruction of unions. "Failure to act on this budget repair bill means (at least) 15 hundred state employees will be laid off before the end of June," he threatened. "If there is no agreement by July 1st, another 5-6 thousand state workers -- as well as 5-6 thousand local government employees would be also laid off. But, there is a way to avoid these layoffs and other cuts. The 14 State Senators who are staying outside of Wisconsin as we speak can come home and do their job." He may as well have said that he's gonna start tossing the bodies of his hostages out of the state house.

// posted by Rude One @ 10:08 AMShareThis
2/22/2011
A Few Lessons Learned Regarding Wisconsin:
1. Remember: elections have consequences, as long as it's a conservative who is elected. Senate Republicans in Washington did not give a flea's fart about the consequences of the 2008 elections in blocking Barack Obama's agenda that he campaigned on and won with. And for many on the right, that was just politics. But in Wisconsin? It's merely, "Well, fuckers, you elected him. Now, he gets to do what he wants."

Except for one thing: not once in his campaign did Scott Walker mention that he was even considering getting rid of collective bargaining rights for public employees. Yeah, that little detail of his "budget-cutting plan" was left out of his campaign website, for instance. And a Nexis search of "Scott Walker" and "collective bargaining" for any time before his inauguration yields only this from June 18, 2010: Questions from a Wisconsin Democratic Party press release about Walker's plan to deal with public employee pensions: "Since this gimmick will require agreement through collective bargaining, you can't guarantee any of these savings, can you? Or are you proposing the elimination of collective bargaining and wouldn't that prompt costly lawsuits?" The Rude Pundit reads that as sarcasm, as if it's too ludicrous to consider, ha-ha.

2. Remember: "compromise" means that you ask nicely if Republicans can use a condom when they fuck you in the ass and then Republicans call you "whore," fuck you without one, and demand that you say you love their cocks. The Democratic Senators in Wisconsin, as well as the unions involved in the protests, have stated, flat-out, that they will agree to the pay cut that Walker wants. The entire debate now is over collective bargaining rights. In other words, Walker will not compromise. Period. And has threatened to start laying off workers.

You got that? Scott Walker would rather kick people out of their jobs than allow unions to be able to negotiate. As Rachel Maddow and other have pointed out, this is not about fiscal responsibility. It's about a naked power grab to gut one of the only means by which citizens have a voice.

3. Remember: if the majority Democratic Congress and the Democratic president are protested by the Tea Party, that's just patriots expressing the will of the people against a tyrannical government. However, if the majority Republican assembly in Wisconsin is protested by tens of thousands of workers, that's the slippery slope to anarchy.

4. Remember: if Republicans in the Senate abuse the rules that run their house by filbustering or putting individual holds on nearly every single bill or nomination from the House or the White House, refusing to even allow them to be considered, even if it affects the actual functioning of the nation, that's just brave men and women standing in the way of Democrats enslaving the American people. But if Democrats in Wisconsin deny the Assembly a quorum by leaving the state, that's just arrogant politicians refusing to do their jobs.

5. Remember, though: the non-public unions still have the right to go on strike, motherfuckers. You haven't taken that away yet.

// posted by Rude One @ 11:21 AMShareThis
2/21/2011
Abraham Lincoln Would Fuck Up Your Conservative Economic Ideology:
Just a quick one before taking a personal day: three quotes from the greatest great great president who's not Ronald Reagan (duh), since everyone's a-pondering what our forefathers and mothers might think of the Wisconsin uprising. These are from Abraham Lincoln, noted quorum-stopper and occasional Republican (whenever the GOP needs his corpse, they dig it up and make it dance, but otherwise, they just let him rot):

1. "I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world." - From a speech on March 5, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, regarding a shoemaker's strike (which, believe it or not, involved 20,000 shoemakers who were not, apparently, elves).

2. "Inasmuch as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labor has produced them. But it has so happened, in all ages of the world, that some have labored, and others have without labor enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government." - From his notes about tariff policy, scribbled down on December 1, 1847.

3. "Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits." - From his 1861 State of the Union address, decrying "the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government."

Hey, patriots, on this Presidents' Day, suck on those stovepipe hats.

[Stephen Morgan]

"planting some trouble-makers", which is to say the use of agents provocateurs, is SOP. I'd be surprised if they didn't, and I'm not surprised they happily laugh about it in private.

[Nordic]

fair enough. where politics are concerned, it's often cognitive dissonance to entertain the two opposing worldviews.

re: jim goad, i've always found him far funnier than the sort of people who tend to denounce him.

that's enough for me.

I would love to entertain two opposing worldviews.

I used to do that with my rightwing father. It was actually really interesting while it lasted.

But you can't do that with today's right wingers. They don't have an "opposing world view", they have heads full of lies.

And you can't even tell them the lies stuffing their head are lies. Because they're fucking BRAINWASHED.

I just got into one today, on a FB thread. Some guy supporting Walker. The guy is, like I said (I wasn't joking) functionally delusional.

[nathan28]

From the "I've Got That 'I Can't Believe I Dated You' Feeling But I Guess Things Were Different In The '90s" File:

Jim Goad goes anti-union

Answer Me! was awesome. I liked the Redneck Manifesto. But between hating on SHARP and hating on unions, Goad is now officially irrelevant and full of shit. Also I feel really fucking old, like I should go listen to Mazzy Star and think about all the good times I let pass me by. Or go rescue more cats from the pound.

Jim goad was always a racist woman beating piece of human filth. Someday some SHARP's just might finish him off if we're all lucky. then draw some shitty black and white pictures of the gore and title it, "ok. did you like my answer"

BTW - I have an original compilation book of A.M.

right wing hate machine, that's all he ever was.

I know, I know, but I have a soft spot for the '90s subculture provocation stuff. Didn't someone blame a Capitol Hill shooting on Answer Me? Anyway I think he was more reactionary populist, and that article is actual fascist (in the sense of "fascism", not name-calling) bullshit by some dude who had street cred for being an asshole what, like twenty years ago now? So now all I'm really waiting for is for Boyd Rice to put out an "essay" titled "But There Really Still Is A Jewish Question".

But I agree with your solution.

[freemason9]

i have to admit that i am surprised at walker's lack of intelligence,

given that he managed to win the governorship

[Nordic]

i have to admit that i am surprised at walker's lack of intelligence,

given that he managed to win the governorship

Yeah well, look at Sarah Palin. Michelle Bachman. Tons of them, really sub-average people.

Useful tools that way I suppose. And they connect with the "common man" whatever that means.

I realized today that a lot of right wingers anger is directed at, well, smart people. This is why they hate the teacher's unions so much. Right? Because they hate teachers! You know, from their childhood!

So they identify with dumbasses who tell them what they want to hear, as long as it means the smart kids are up to no good and are really morally bankrupt and out to get them.