My company Cruiskeen Consulting LLC is in the running to win a free exhibit booth at Netroots Nation 2013.   You can help us get there so we can spread some good old Uppity Wisconsin Progressive Goodness to the crowd at Netroots Nation, and also help us to maybe earn a little money while we're there.  We have some really cool progressive Internet projects in the works, and we'd like to go to the confrence to spread the word.

How can you help?  Go visit the voting page at http://www.netrootsnation.org/Hallcontestvoting2013/ You need to do a Facebook like for us there, and leave the post up on your Facebook page afterward.   Help us to build progressive infrastructure.  Send us to Netroots Nation.

Clearly, Scott Walker adheres to the discreditable Reaganesque notion that "government isn't the solution -- it's the problem." So give Walker and his enablers in the GOP-controlled legislature a teensy bit of credit for horrifying consistency: Through their anti-life, pro-business, anything goes, blitzkrieg approach to public policy, these political cretins are doing their level worst to make Wisconsin government a really, really, really, really, really big problem. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies.

Listening to local and national TV news the last few weeks, you'd be excused for thinking the apocalypse already has arrived. Huge amounts of air time have been devoted here in Milwaukee on local news telecasts and on network news shows reporting various shooting incidents in Wisconsin, the nation and beyond: The Las Vegas car chase / gun battle through the heart of that city that left multiple fatalities, the Oscar Pistorius shooting incident in South Africa, shootings in Milwaukee that included a running gun battle on a busy intersection involving an alleged robber and his victim, and many more.

It was wall-to-wall guns, and only a little of the coverage covered political efforts in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut, grade school murders to toughen the nation's ridiculously weak gun control laws. Still, for once, all the mayhem documented on TV news video served a purpose besides an "if it bleeds it leads" viewer ratings push.

I always thought the Fourth of July was a day to celebrate our country's democracy and all the people that have died to defend and build-up that democracy over the years. 

At last Saturday's Reagan Dinner in Milwaukee, Gov. Scott Walker offered a different view, saying, that on the Fourth of July, "We don't celebrate our dependence on the government, we celebrate our independence from the tyranny of the government."

Sometimes you have to translate political talk into plain English to understand what's really going on.

The Fitz in "Fitzwalkerstan" said recently that Republicans in Madison will refuse to consider any change in proposed state mining legislation that would put in place a net-proceeds tax on the amount of iron produced by a mining company. State Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, Senate majority leader, also told a business group that instituting an alternative tonnage tax “sends the wrong message” to the mining company.

It's election day.  A lot of the mess we are in at the moment in Wisconsin is because people have not gotten into the habit of voting. Every single time. The Supreme Court election is the only state-wide office that is up today, and it's crucial.  Of course there are also local primaries across the state, and they're just as important. The state Supreme Court has become more and more dysfunctional, and personally I think Ed Fallone is the best answer to helping the court to move forward in a meaningful way. I'm not telling you how to vote here, but anyone who has been paying attention realizes that something here has to change.  Make it happen.