Good-for-nothing Sen. Ron Johnson's awful-terrible-no-good week... (VIDEO)

Wisconsin, you should be embarrassed.  Not at him, but yourselves for allowing this clown anywhere near a major legislature, State or Federal.

First, Hillary smacked him around:



And then John Kerry followed up today:

The continuing saga of Mitt Romney's (lack of) Tax Returns (VIDEO)

Why should we be entitled to less information about Mitt Romney than Mitt Romney requires of Paul Ryan?

Probably because we don't count for very much in his eyes.

The new AARP Voter Guide is out with facts you need on Medicare. (VIDEO)

The Democrats may now have a candidate to run against Scott Walker in a recall (maybe)...

And he's a good one, should he choose to do it:

Former longtime Congressman Dave Obey (D-WI) is joining the call among Democrats to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2012. He would also consider running as a candidate himself in such a recall -- but would prefer to see candidacies by either Sen. Herb Kohl, who is retiring in 2012, or Milwaukee Mayor and unsuccessful 2010 Democratic nominee Tom Barrett.

However, Obey also said that when he has talked to the other two men about running for governor, they politely told him to stop "pestering" them about it.

Obey told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board that "there is so much anger out there" against Walker, predicting that Democrats would successfully collect enough signatures for the effort. (The Dems need to collect over 540,000 signatures, plus a significant buffer that campaigns routinely collect in order to protect against signatures being disqualified over one imperfection or another.)

Happiest words of the day: Scott Walker has lawyered up...

This is from another Steve Benen story, and it brings joy to my heart:

About a dozen law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, raided the home of a former top aide to Gov. Scott Walker on Wednesday as part of a growing investigation into whether county employees did political work while at their jobs.

...

There’s also this tidbit of news.

There was no comment Wednesday from Governor Walker, who has retained legal counsel, although he claims not to have been personally contacted by federal agents.

Now, there may be nothing to this, but when a sitting governor retains outside counsel as part of a growing corruption investigation, and FBI agents are paying visits to his former top aides, it would appear Scott Walker has a bit of a problem.

It’s worth emphasizing that the allegations, according to local media accounts, are focused on potential misdeeds committed before Walker became governor — the accusations focus on whether county staffers did political work for Walker when they were supposed to be doing official work for the public — but the controversy can still do some real damage.

Walker, best known for picking a huge fight over stripping state workers of their collective bargaining rights, is already unpopular in his home state, and the threat of a recall election still looms on the horizon. It makes this story something to keep an eye on.

Oh, so NOW Kasich wants to negotiate... (VIDEO)

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From Steve Benen:

Kasich said the offer to revisit the law he recently signed has nothing to do with “a fear we are going to lose.”

The laughter was audible throughout Ohio. I mean, really. Why else would the governor suddenly discover a willingness to change a law he championed?

It’s almost amusing — Kasich wants to negotiate with state employees after gutting their collective bargaining rights, because he knows his constituents are likely to side with workers over him.

A progressive coalition, We Are Ohio, dismissed talk of a deal, but said Republicans can avoid the November referendum by repealing the anti-worker measure.

Randi Rhodes' interview with John Nichols after the Wisconsin Election (AUDIO)

UPDATE 10:57am, Pacific: Important point to remember, and it come about eight minutes into the interview. Dale Schultz is a Republican Moderate who voted against the Union-stripping bill. He is a pro-Labor Republican, and still has his seat.  (We did not even attempt to recall him.  Why?  He did the right thing.)  He has taken pains to kick the holy @#$^ out of Walker whenever he gets the chance.

So the upshot of it is, on Labor issues, the Democrats now have the majority in the Wisconsin State House.

I know what I said, and I stand by most of it (particularly the part about if people had bothered to show up in 2010)...but hearing this made me feel a whole lot better about the state of play in Wisconsin. This was a victory. Mea culpa!

More perspective from Rick Ungar on Wisconsin...

Rick Ungar lays out the good news and the (mostly) bad (by a slight margin) news:

The loss was both hard and significant on a number of levels.

Had the election been influenced by a low voter turnout – something that typically bodes ill for Democrats – that would have been put a different face on the story.

But the turnout was spectacular. And, based on the results, Republicans were every bit as energized as Democrats.

GOP supporters had the backs of their sitting Senators, coming to the polls in big numbers to deliver the message that they too are as engaged and energized in the battle taking place in Wisconsin as the progressives and that is precisely what should have those who oppose the conservative agenda – in Wisconsin and throughout the nation – shaking in their boots.

The GOP was not just sending the message that they too know how to show up at the polls. They had a deeper message to send, one that was addressed to the unions. It was a message that came through loud and clear.

We’re (the voters) just not that into you.

The unions poured some $20 million dollars in the Wisconsin effort. For their money, they improved their minority in the State Senate by two votes but failed to come away with the majority required to put the breaks on Governor Scott Walker’s agenda.

That’s a lot of cash to spend for the return achieved.

While the other side also poured serious cash into the state, organizations like Club For Growth can, at the least, come away from the battle knowing that their agenda has not been stymied and, for as long as Governor Walker sits in the state house, they remain free and unfettered in their efforts to move their mission forward while pushing the state of Wisconsin – and the country – backward.

Now, the Wisconsin Democrats are left to determine their plans for the future, particularly with respect to the proposed recall effort against Governor Scott Walker.

The good news is that last night’s battles were fought on enemy territory while a statewide recall will bring the Democratic faithful throughout the state into play.

The bad news is that we’ve now learned that those who support the Walker agenda – and we’d best acknowledge that there are far more of them than Badger State Democrats might have wanted to realize- will not be sitting idly by when it comes to supporting an agenda of wiping out collective bargaining rights, cutting education and healthcare to the bone and disenfranchising those who are more likely to cast their vote for Democrats.

In the end, besides my issue that this was necessary in the first place, there was a level of complacency among the Wisconsin Unions/Democrats, in thinking that their cause was so just that everyone would naturally gravitate to them.

Well, that didn't happen, and if you assume that in 2012, for either a Scott Walker recall or a Barack Obama re-elect, we're in trouble.

Of course, it would have helped Wisconsin if y'all had bothered to show up in 2010...

No two ways about it.  Wisconsin?  You let me down.  You let the bastards win, and take away your Collective Bargaining rights.  Of course, if you have bothered to show up in 2010, all of this wouldn't have been necessary, so frankly...you have only yourselves to blame.

For the record, this is not Wednesday morning Quarterbacking, this is nothing I haven't said before.

So consider this a warning for 2012.  If you think you're going to be able to hold your nose and wind up with a Democrat in the White House, you're kidding yourself.  As you saw from this Recall battle, the opposition is well funded, and now given cover by the Supreme Court.

That's not to say that Scott Walker shouldn't be scared as well.  Those were primarily red districts that went for Obama in 2008, and the ones you won last night you barely held onto.  They were also rural.  Once bigger cities like Madison get involved, your ass could be smoked...

...but that's only if you show up.

In the meantime, I find it interesting how much the Wisconsin story isn't getting covered in the press today.  Not only is there not a lot of hand-wringing or nazel gazing, there's just not much of anything...period.  Andrew Sullivan didn't mention it.  Neither did Ezra Klein.  I'm just waiting for the first Professional Lefter to come out and blame the White House for "not doing enough"...when it was y'alls fault in the first place.

Josh Marshall provided this in response to a reader today, and I thought it beared repeating.

There are different ways to see what happened last night. Legislative recalls are extremely, extremely uncommon in the United States. Winning two of them last night was a big victory. Both senators won in 2010 and in the big Obama year of 2008. And the Democrats came very close to knocking off two more. Still, let's be honest: they wanted to steal away the GOP's unitary hold on the state government. And they didn't. They came up short. And there's a lot of very real and merited disappointment over that.

But it's wrong to see political energy and resources as finite and something to be marshaled. It's not a zero sum game. This kind of effort doesn't take away from something else. It adds to it. It builds organizational muscle. In fact, it's like muscle. You build it by exercising it. I don't lose part of my allotment of muscle by doing some bench presses. I build it up. And the exercise itself demonstrates that a political movement can bite back.

In the recent budget and debt battle I saw numerous readers write in to say, Hey, how'd this Norquist guy get all this power? Or, Why is it that every time they can get every last member of their caucus to toe the line? Yes, Norquist's got tons of cash from various moneyed interests. But his power is based on working this issue for literally decades in out of the way races across the country. Again, building muscle through the exercise of muscle. How do Republicans enforce such crazy amounts of party discipline? Because they have a record of primarying people. And over time people get that message. So yes, the Dems and the unions in Wisconsin came up short. But two Republican senators already lost their jobs over this. And people will remember that.

Politics ain't bean bag and it also ain't easy. It takes time. It would be a mistake to see this as a distraction, a big mistake.

Wisconsin is voting...and looking goooood!

From the Wisconsin Politics Blog (first caught by TPM):

In the 10th SD in western Wisconsin, River Falls City Clerk Lu Ann Hecht said today’s numbers could be as high as the 2008 Presidential election.

The city issued 1,003 absentee ballots, twice as many as a regular election. The municipality is home to both GOP Sen. Sheila Harsdorf and Dem challenger Shelly Moore.

“We expect the turnout to remain steady throughout the day,” Hecht said. Hudson City Clerk Nancy Korson said voter turnout in Hudson, also part of the 10th, would likely not reach the levels of a presidential election. 

But they were comparable to the spring Supreme Court election, with over 500 absentee ballots received. 

In Baraboo, Deputy Clerk Donna Munz said turnout was much higher than normal. She also said she'd received voter complaints over people at some polling places contacting them as they went into the polling places. At one, about nine people were outside and some voters said they were angry that they felt intimidated.

“We have received angry calls from voters regarding how persistent the people outside the polling places are,” Munz said. In the 8th SD, one of the top races with GOP Sen. Alberta Darling and Dem Rep. Sandy Pasch, Whitefish Bay officials reported a steady stream during the morning, but said it was too early to say how turnout would end up in Pasch’s hometown.

In River Hills, where Darling lives, Village Clerk Barb Goeckner reported steady turnout through the morning. By 9:45 a.m., about 200 of the municipality’s 1,300 registered voters had cast ballots. “It’s just been steady,” she said. “It’s not been a mad rush. We don’t have any lines, but it’s definitely been a steady turnout so far.”

I bold the good and the bad, so GO BADGERS!!!

If there's a reason that Russ Feingold will never be Governor or Senator from Wisconsin...

...it's stuff like this:

The progressive icon eviscerated his former colleagues in an e-mail for his advocacy group Progressive United on Tuesday, accusing two prominent Democrats of enabling "corruption" by opposing new transparency measures on political donations.

"This culture of corporate influence and corruption is precisely what we as Progressives United want to change," he wrote. "So we've decided to take on those legislators who are unwilling to stand up to corporate power, and we're naming names."

The names included House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO). In addition, the email targeted Sens. Mitch McConnell, (R-KY), Rob Portman (R-OH), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and Rep. Darrell Issa, (R-CA).

Feingold accused the group of backing "corporate interests in Congress" by opposing an executive order under discussion in the White House that would require government contractors to reveal their political donations.

Let's be honest. He's right. He usually is, but he has a habit of being insufferable about it. (And this is a prime example of that).

Feingold's never been in love with the sound of his own voice (as most Senators are), but he is in love with his personal self-righteousness, and has no problem rubbing people's noses in it.

Yeah, I was born and raised in Steny Hoyer's District. Know all about him. Claire McCaskill is doing her level best to self-destruct in the Missouri Senate Race (and I could care less if she wins).

Still, do us all a favor Russ...don't write the Republican's Campaign Ads FOR THEM!!!

Look, at the end of the day, Russ is going to want his fellow Senators out there campaigning for him, sending out Emails raising money for him. Sniping at one's colleagues doesn't seem to be a good way to get that done.

Oh...and Rick Ungar took a shot at the Professional Left, too...

In case you couldn't tell already, I loved this article by Rick Ungar.

Remember, this man not only writes for Forbes Magazine (not exactly a Liberal bastion), lives in SoCal (okay, that is a Liberal Bastion...outside of Orange County and parts of Northridge), but used to run Marvel Entertainment:

It is not the conservative attacks that concern me. I’m far more focused on the progressives who are already expressing their disappointment over Obama’s failure to re-introduce the public option as a way of cutting health care costs or believe the President was just too darn rational in his proposals – thus leaving what they believe to be too little negotiating room for the battles to come.

This from an article entitled “Obama’s Speech Another Meaningless Line In the Sand” by Justin Krebs, co-founder and director of Living Liberally, a progressive non-profit.

We liberals are finally learning what conservatives have said all along: Ignore the President’s pretty speeches and judge him by his actions.

Of course, liberals and conservatives are judging from two very different directions. While criticism from the Right sees him as a socialist-leaning bleeding-heart, we on the Left wish he were what the Tea Party accuses him of. Instead, we see a President that continues to adopt conservative frames, extend Republican wars (and start one of his own), and buy into the advice of a coterie of Wall Street executives. The proud progressive we wanted to elect never put single-payer healthcare on the table, hasn’t fought for meaningful mortgage reform and didn’t draw a line in the sand when it came to allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire.

Well, he did draw a line in the sand… but seems to think of it as his starting line for compromise, which is how the Bush-era give-away to our wealthiest citizens continued while Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House.

What progressives like Mr. Krebs consistently forget is that Obama has another virtue in addition to character – he knows how to add.

The President can manage to work out that, if he is to get anything done, he has to get a vote through the House of Representatives where the vote totals are stacked against him.

So, you ask, why didn’t he get his way when the Democrats controlled both houses in Congress?

Because the President can also add to 60- the number of votes he needs to accomplish anything in the Senate where the filibuster results in minority rule. All it takes is 41 ‘nays’ and the best-laid progressive plans go down the drain.

If you recall, there was a point in time when the President had 58 Democratic votes plus 2 independents in the Senate, giving him the appearance of being ‘filibuster-proof.”

However, he also had a few Blue Dog Democrats who knew that a vote with Obama was a nail in the coffin containing their own political futures. Which do you imagine was always destined to win out? Obama’s progressive plans or a Senator’s career?

The president has only one way to get something done– go directly to the people in the hope that they will have the good sense to support his rational approach and ask them to push their elected representatives to do the same. I think we can all agree that “rational” is not something the President can expect in Congress without outside pressure from the voters.

Yesterday, Barack Obama took his arguments directly to the people. Now, let’s see if the Congressional Republicans and progressives alike care to listen to the result.

By the way, Living Liberally...THANKS FOR SHOWING UP IN NOVEMBER, you really @#$^ing helped.

Not only did the President rip into Paul Ryan...he did it to his face...

From Rick Ungar:

What did it for me in Obama’s plan to get the nation’s finances in order was that the President took his stand against the GOP effort to take away the soul of this nation while staring directly into the eyes of Rep. Paul Ryan- the architect of the document that would remake this country in the mold of third world nations where there are rich people and poor people with nobody in the middle.

Unlike the taunts, personal insults and barbs that Ryan and his companions lob at the president on a daily basis from the safety of a television studio, Obama took the route that requires character.

He did it to Ryan’s face.

The President invited the Wisconsin congressman, and a few of his congressional confederates, to attend the speech, placed them right up front and proceeded to call these people out for the hegemony they would visit on millions of Americans to benefit their wealthy political patrons with a trillion more in tax cuts.

Character.

Randi Rhodes: The Paul Ryan Medicare Ad (AUDIO)

Thanks, Duffy! (He's the voice in the ad):

Rachel Maddow sez "People who take Paul Ryan seriously, shouldn't be taken seriously..." (VIDEO)

Seriously, stop with the Smoochy-Smoochy.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Yeah, sure. She blew it on the GITMO story, but she's right here.

A sentence you're going to LOVE reading if you support Unions...

You know there's a Judicial Election in Wisconsin for the State Supreme Court, right?

You know that one of Scott Walker's buddies has been running (and has been in biiig trouble recently for some comments he made).

So what sentence would you like to read if you're hoping for Walker to get his @#$ kicked today?

Howzabout?:

"We're expecting the equivalent of a regular presidential election," Horvath said in regards to the Madison polling place. "Seventy-five to eighty percent is what we are guessing."

(Political) Eaaaaaarrrrrrthhquake.

Roll The Union On! (VIDEO)

A message from Jon Erpenbach (D-WI). What's Next...

Rachel Maddow asks "What's next? Hire Dog The Bounty Hunter to go get them wayward Democrats?"

Apparently...

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Now I'm going after MoveOn? What the hell kind of Friday is this?

I got this Email from MoveOn (a solicitation for funds, of course) that read:

Dear MoveOn member,

Republican politicians in Wisconsin have gone mad with power.

Yesterday, the state Senate president issued arrest warrants for the brave Democratic state senators who left Wisconsin to stop the attacks on workers. And Republicans have locked down the Capitol building, even denying access to firefighters responding to an emergency call.

Here's my problem. There's nothing factually wrong with the opening of that letter. The hyperbole might hook you if you...you know...haven't been paying attention to what's going on in Wisconsin. And let's be honest, Liberals have been paying attention.

Yeah, the State Senate is calling for the Democrats arrest, and something was voted on to that effect.

But here's a couple things MoveOn left out, because reminding you of these facts don't make for good fundraising.

One, the Senate unanimously voted on a resolution to arrest the fleeing Democrats. A resolution is not a law. It does not have the power of law. Only a Law is a Law. A resolution is a way for a Legislative body to say, in effect, we really, really, really feel strongly about this...but can't do nuthin' about it.

For the State Senate to pass a law, there needs to be a quorum...also known as minimum number of Senators in attendance. If you recall, that's kinda the reason the Democrats went on the run in the first place.

Two, the head of the Wisconin Police Union isn't so sure such a law (if it were passed) would be Constitutional:

"It's unclear to me on what constitutional authority Senate Republicans think law enforcement officers can take state lawmakers who have not committed a crime into custody," James Palmer, the head of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, told me by phone moments ago.

The GOP proposal would not allow for the arrest of the missing Dems, but would allow for lawmakers to be taken into custody by the Senate sergeant-at-arms if they don't return to the capitol by today at 4 p.m.

"I don't see how a sergeant-at-arms would have that authority," said Palmer, whose union represents all municipal police officers. "I don't see how any individual, law enforcement or otherwise, has the authority to detain another individual if there's no probable cause to suggest that he committed any crime."

Palmer's union endorsed Governor Walker's opponent in the gubernatorial election. But one local paper, the Wisconsin State Journal, also raised the possibility today that the move may be unconstiutional.

So good luck with that, State Senate!

Three. You can look at what happened with the Firefighters being denied access to the State Capitol as totalitarian overreach, or you can look at it as I look at it...as a lawsuit waiting to happen.

If Scott Walker is hell bent on keeping protestors out of the State Capitol (something already in violation of court order and the State Constitution), he better pray that no one gets seriously hurt during his hamfisted rule. If someone, a Legislator say, has a heart attack in the Capitol, and is denied care by Walker's edict, then Walker, and the State are going to get sued for an amount of money that's going to make their current budget shortfall look like chicken-feed in comparison.

That may be why a Judge told Walker to back off and open up the Capitol this morning.

Also, having Police roughing up a Democratic Assemblyman going into the Capitol to get his clothes doesn't help your look.

Listen, I respect MoveOn and what they do, but we don't need bull@#$% hyperbole. Leave that to the teabaggers. Facts are plenty for Liberals/Progressives.

All they had to do was write an email, saying basically. Look, we're trying to get some of the State Senators recalled, and we need your financial help to do it (something they eventually got around to saying)