Man MKE's blog

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Ridiculous) took a step over the line today, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made him pay the price. Courtesy of ThinkProgress.org, the exchange between them at the hearings on the Benghazi terrorist attack that killed a US ambassador and others. Remember, Republicans are trying to make this incident (not anywhere near the worst in terms of attacks on US diplomats over the years) into some kind of statement on President Obama's foreign policy. ThinkProgress reports:

As usual, Mis-governor Scott Walker and his Republican colleagues in the legislature are listening to businesses and other special interests, while excluding average working men and women, children, seniors, the disabled and other Wisconsin residents who have shouldered most of the burden of the national economic crisis. A crisis which, as an increasing proportion of the electorate seems to realize, was caused by many of the very people and groups who are whispering sweet nothings in Walker's ear. 

It took 66 days for the US House of Representatives to get around to appropriating a fraction of the relief dollars needed to help homeowners and businesses get back on their feet after Superstorm Sandy swept the East Coast. The House finally acted today after backtracking Speaker John Boehner reversed his decision to ignore the measure in the wake of widespread criticism, including from some GOP congressmen. The US Senate acted much earlier.

Wisconsin's uber-conservative junior US senator surprisingly hit one out of the park today on behalf of progressives and activists. In an opinion column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Ron Johnson wrote:

The United States has a long history of corruption, mismanagement and appeasement of regimes that are determined to develop weapons of mass destruction, limit freedom and commit genocide. These are indisputable facts.

Wow! I didn't know the guy had it in him. But, obviously, past and continuing US abuse of international war conventions, its use during the last Bush administration of torture like water-boarding, its tremendously huge and destabilizing nuclear arsenal and continuing moves to curb the freedom of Americans to vote, to assemble, to speak freely and more. These are indisputable facts, all right!

The S.S. Badger saga has been covered here in the past. Briefly, the 60-year-old car ferry that runs between Manitowoc and Ludington, Michigian has a storied history but also a dirty one. It runs on coal and it's dumped thousands of tons of toxic coal ash in Lake Michigan over the years.

Scott Walker knows no bottom politically, and once again he's messing with Wisconsin's election process in an effort to make it easier for guys like him to win election. Walker says he'd like to get rid of same-day voter registration in the state. He says that would help beleaguered election officers who are absolutely swamped with too much work -- a lie, but hey, that's our governor.

Still flogging away, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Dan Bice can't seem to write enough about whether Rep. Tammy Baldwin has been sufficiently engaged in honoring 9/11 victims. Yes, it's true: The newspaper appears to think the biggest issue in Wisconsin's US Senate campaign is whether Baldwin voted yes -- or voted at all -- on each and every such resolution introduced in the House, irrespective of whether she was present. Oh, and Baldwin needs to be completely precise about this pressing issue any time she's asked, remembering how many of the ten or so such instances in which ....