Herr Burgher Walker's WI antics: an update

 The fun never ends with Der Burgher, does it?

First off, a major campaign contributor (and an in-state railroad CEO, no less - now we know why Der Burgher was reticent about high speed rail and enthusiastic about renovating the Amtrak Hiawatha line) gets charged with funneling $60K in illegal contributions through his employees at Wisconsin & Southern Railroad and ultimately pleads guilty. 

Next up, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus - a former employee of Walker ally and Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate David Prosser  -  miraculously discovered thousands of votes for Prosser that were stored on her PC but somehow not included in the initial tally from Waukesha County in the Prosser/Kloppenburg race. Nickolaus has a fishy history concerning voting irregularities, of course, but not to worry: she has no real intention of resigning, meaning that all sorts of legal Happy Fun Ball stuff can come her way in court while she's still in office. And maybe - just maybe - somebody will find the fact that Waukesha canvasser Ramona Kitzinger didn't accept the validity of the new totals after she knew of the error or its source of some significance.

Oh, and top of all this, if you're a public employee of any kind in Wisconsin, don't get sick.

He didn't do it for the right reasons

It'd be nice to think that outgoing Goose Island brewmaster Greg Hall was undertaking a biological form of editorial comment on Anheuser Busch's acquisition of GI when he did the dirty deed, but he wasn't.

Now reading

The Warlord of the Air (in its original edition, no less) by Michael Moorcock. Two down (including this), one to go. 

But politicians always tell THE ABSOLUTE TRVTH, don't they?

Not really. And especially if you're John Kyl.

Dolt.

The Late Unpleasantness, Again

"Ever since the first cannonballs fell on Fort Sumter in 1861, Southern politics has been dominated by thieves, bigots, warmongers and buffoons."

-Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt

...and guys who want to dress up like Preston Brooks for Halloween. Eric Cantor, I'm talking to you.

All kidding aside, how else do you explain recent phenomena such as the following?:

When broken down by political party, most Democrats said southern states seceded over slavery, independents were split and most Republicans said slavery was not the main reason that Confederate states left the Union.

Republicans were also most likely to say they admired the leaders of the southern states during the Civil War, with eight in 10 Republicans expressing admiration for the leaders in the South, virtually identical to the 79 percent of Republicans who admired the northern leaders during the Civil War.

In other words, the perception of modern Democrats is now what Republican perception was in 1861 and Republicans...well, you get the picture. They've been drinking Nixon's "southern strategy" snake oil for a while now, and it shows.

Only in America could alignments tied to political parties founded before the 20th century do such a bizarre 180 degree about-face like this over a 150-year-old question of identity. But this is the political landscape of  2011, so guess what? The word "bizarre" is no longer much of an anomaly. Period.