WI appearances showcase GOP's worst people and words

Trump's looming appearance at a Fox News 'town hall' on the grounds of the airport which serves Green Bay in Brown County, WI on Thursday sets up more negative media on the heels of Trump's Tulsa trauma.

Consider that:

With 2,581 confirmed cases, Brown County ranks second among Wisconsin's 72 counties, data show, though the county is ranked fourth in population. Media no doubt have the information. 

In fact, Brown County has been a highly-publicized Covid-19 hotspot during the pandemic which Trump has so horrribly mishandled, in part because there was an outbreak at a meat-packing plant where workers must work side-by-side in confined spaces in which this virus moves and thrives.

Trump's response: a Presidential order that required all meat-packing plants to remain open regardless of case spikes and deaths among those workers nationwide.

The Green Bay outbreak was alluded to with unbelievably callous disregard by none other than Patience Roggensack, the GOP-sympathetic Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice when she was getting ready to reward similarly callously dismissive GOP legislators with a ruling that abruptly ended the state's 'Safer-at-Home' Covid-controlling gubernatorial order.

A ruling preceded by another rightwing Justice's comparison during live-streamed deliberations to the internment of Japanese-American's during World War II, so there was something of competition in the Court's reactionary majority for Biggest or Dumbest Bigot during the Covid pandemic.

* Bad enough that Roggensack made her revealing remark that led to an accusation of racism -

A Wisconsin chief justice faced backlash for blaming a county's coronavirus outbreak on meatpacking employees, not 'regular folks'

- but her 'reasoning' seemed to find a friend in GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos when he also aired his own version of 'blame-the-minorities-for-the-pandemic' in yet another Wisconsin county with a disproportionately continuing number of Covid cases.

Vos blames Racine Covid-19 victims' immigrant 'culture' for their suffering

There's an elitist and racist pattern to this victim-shaming in Wisconsin which is unacceptably awful while other 'regular folk' are working hard to combat twin pandemics of the Covid virus and systemic racism and put some substance behind the 'we're all in this together' sloganeering.

Yet this is precisely the scene of suffering into which Trump has decided to fly in on the taxpayer's dime and make another of his corrosive contributions.

Wisconsin is going to get plenty of high-profile GOP visits between now and election day because we've got pivotal electoral votes that Trump doesn't want to forfeit.

But I don't think you'll hear Democrats griping about his campaign's strategies, since every one of Trump's appearances, or Tuesday's group gross-out in Waukesha County by Walker, Pence and DeVos will motivate all manner of citizens to walk through fire and voter suppression to return decency to government and send Republicans packing.

2:45 p.m. update:

Reduced to a self-described warm-up role, Walker posts requisite suck-up rhetoric on Twitter with a photo showing speakers addressing the crowd without masks, missing an educational opportunity at an event purportedly devoted to education:

Scott Walker

@ScottWalker

·

1h

So glad to see

@Mike_Pence

again highlighting the importance of #SchoolChoice Glad to warm up the crowd for him here in Pewaukee!

Quote Tweet

Mike Pence

@Mike_Pence

· 1h

School choice is an idea whose time has come and as this movement grows, we’ll continue to fight to give every parent the right to choose where their kids go to school, regardless of zip code or income.

How doth Trump rage? Let me count (a few of) the ways.

I'm sure headline writers are as tired trying to craft new ways to describe Trump's bottomless anger

as we are reading, seeing and hearing them, including: 

Rages

Rage tweets

Flying into a self-pitying rage

Storms out

Flips out

Freaks out

Berated

Trashes

Boosts insane conspiracy theory

Routinely humiliates

Fat shames his own supporter

Is unraveling

Explodes at

Curses more publicly

Snaps at

Melts down

Unleashes fury

Was apoplectic

Fumes

Fury

Clashes

Going crazy

Viciously attacks

Savages

Was pissed

Was furious

Lashes out

Was peeved

Goes off

Was red in the face and going off the rails

Had a hissy fit

Stamps his foot

Flies off the handle

Blows a gasket

Throws a fit

Throws a temper tantrum

Is losing his mind.

Sandhill crane hunt in WI? Pay attention, & study your Aldo Leopold.

It's been a few years since former WI GOP legislator Joel Kleefisch tried unsuccessfully to create a sandhill crane hunting season so he could cook up some 'rib-eye of the sky.'

And though Kleefisch's plan misfired, and the birds remain protected - 

- the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board (NRB) will review 'crane management' at its meeting on Wednesday, and thanks to the Journal Sentinel's Paul Smith for this guidance:

To view the Wednesday NRB meeting, visit dnr.wi.gov. The meeting will be broadcast live beginning at 8:30 a.m. and a recording will be posted afterward.

Here's another suggestion:

By complete coincidence, I am reading the new edition of the legendary Wisconsin conservationist Aldo Leopold's classic work, A Sand County Almanac - 

and I'd read this well-known chapter after midnight early today, Sunday morning. Give it a few minutes before the NRB meeting.

A dawn wind stirs on the great marsh. With almost imperceptible slowness it rolls a bank of fog across the wide morass like the white ghost of a glacier the mists advance, riding over phalanxes of tamarack, sliding across bog meadows heavy with dew. A single silence hangs from horizon to horizon.

Out of some far recess of the sky, a tinkling of little bells falls soft upon the listening land. Then again silence. Now comes a baying of some sweet-throated hound, soon the clamor of a responding back. Then a far clear blast of hunting horns, out of the sky into the fog.

High horns, low horns, silence, and finally a pandemonium of trumpets, rattles, croaks, and cries that almost shakes the bog with its nearness, but without yet disclosing whence it comes. At last a glint of sun reveals the approach of a great echelon of birds.

On the motionless wing, they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh....

Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values yet uncaptured by language. The quality of cranes lies, I think, in this higher gamut, yet beyond the reach of words.

Two more things:

Hasn't Trump done enough to wildlife, including birds? 

Didn't Walker do his own share of thoughtless, pandering damage, when even his agency's own bloody rules were ignored by the 'regulators?'

Great Trump data can showcase his Tulsa triumph

It makes perfect sense for Trump to rally his re-election supporters Saturday in Tulsa: 



For example, while Trump's routine lying of late is up slightly, he's still just under 24 per day, so hasn't entered the lie-every-hour territory some sociopaths actually fear entering  - unless you deduct the hours he's sleeping off a rage tweeting attack and then the math doesn't look so rosy.

Other numbers for Trump also rate bragging rights:

* Covid-19 deaths reported on his watch a few months after he said they would disappear like magic are still under 119,000, though that number is likely to go higher before Trump takes the stage in Tulsa. And for at least another year into Biden's early Presidential months, but until then Trump can fall back on 'Hillary's 30,000 emails!,' and, problem solved.

* And it's been forever, like three days, since any top aide's tell-all book about Trump has led the news. Though Trump's niece is said to be readying her tell-all book about Trump family "trauma, neglect and abuse." So nasty.

* Finally, it's been a lifetime - ten days - since any Trump offspring was found to have billed the taxpayers more than $75,000 for personal security while killing exotic animals halfway across the globe. Burisma Benghazi, buddy. 

So clearly Trump has a lot to celebrate in Tulsa Saturday - and soon upstate in our own Wisconsin - so let Republicans revel in those numbers, dismiss fake polls and political writers and tear off that wimpy mask, Bucky: MegaMagaDon deserves his due.

Continuing WI smog sits where Walker won loosened air quality standards

Wisconsin's smog alert is back for a third recent day, so people with breathing problems and other cardio-vascular issues should definitely limit their outdoor activities.

Also - don't forget Walker's relentless war on cleaner air.

And please don't forget his final favor from Trump's EPA that loosened air quality standards in the Lakeshore/Foxconn zone.


Big win for smog and Walker, as the Chicago Tribune put it.

The Trump administration on Tuesday exempted most of southeast Wisconsin from the latest federal limits on lung-damaging smog pollution, delivering a political victory to Gov. Scott Walker as he makes a new Foxconn Technology Group factory the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.

By dramatically reducing the size of the areas required to crack down on smog, Trump EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt overruled the agency's career staff, a move that will save Foxconn from having to make expensive improvements as it builds a sprawling new electronics plant in Racine County, just north of the Illinois border in an area with some of the state's dirtiest air.

And in a sad and sick irony, while none of the promised flat-screen big-screen TVs have yet to be made as we close in on the third anniversary of the multi-billion Foxconn boondoggle, ventilator-production to assist with breathing difficulties is on the horizon.

Advisory for Ozone (Orange)

Start Time:	12:00PM CT Friday, June 19, 2020
End Time:	11:00PM CT Friday, June 19, 2020
Counties:	Brown, Calumet, Dodge, Door, Fond du Lac, Jefferson, Kenosha, Kewaunee, Manitowoc, Milwaukee, Outagamie, Ozaukee, Racine, Sheboygan, Walworth, Washington, Waukesha, Winnebago

---

AIR QUALITY INDEX CHART

Air Quality Index (AQI) Values	Levels of Health Concern	Colors
When the AQI is in this range:	...air quality conditions are:	...as symbolized by this color:
0 to 50	Good	Green
51 to 100	Moderate	Yellow
101 to 150	Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups	Orange
151 to 200	Unhealthy	Red
201 to 300	Very Unhealthy	Purple
301 to 500	Hazardous	Maroon

For More Information:

• Detailed Alert Status Information
• Air Quality Index
• Do a little, save a lot!
• Local DNR air management program contacts

Wisconsin's Current Air Quality

Tiffany opens Congressional service with a going-nowhere bill

Newly-minted WI GOP Congressman Tom Tiffany 


has already stumbled out of the starting blocks with a first bill that would force any school district which does not reopen in the fall to lose funding.

Yeah, that'll help kids learn.

Of course, the Democratically-controlled US House of Representatives would not be passing's such a dumb, blunt instrument, and if Tiffany survives re-election in the fall he'll probably have to get used to being a full-time member of the GOP minority with little to do except complaining, issuing news releases and holding fund-raisers.

It won't be like the good old days when Tiffany served in the GOP-run state legislature and was able to get Scott Walker on the phone and, presto, climate science defunded.

Pollution alert added to Covid airborne risk in much of WI

Just the sort of news about the presence in WI of dangerous ozone 


we don't need, and it's the second time in the last few days:

Advisory for Ozone (Orange)

Start Time:	2:00PM CT Thursday, June 18, 2020
End Time:	11:00PM CT Thursday, June 18, 2020
Counties:	Brown, Calumet, Columbia, Dane, Dodge, Door, Fond du Lac, Jefferson, Kenosha, Kewaunee, Manitowoc, Milwaukee, Outagamie, Ozaukee, Racine, Rock, Sheboygan, Walworth, Washington, Waukesha, Winnebago

---

AIR QUALITY INDEX CHART

Air Quality Index (AQI) Values	Levels of Health Concern	Colors
When the AQI is in this range:	...air quality conditions are:	...as symbolized by this color:
0 to 50	Good	Green
51 to 100	Moderate	Yellow
101 to 150	Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups	Orange
151 to 200	Unhealthy	Red
201 to 300	Very Unhealthy	Purple
301 to 500	Hazardous	Maroon

For More Information:

• Detailed Alert Status Information
• Air Quality Index
• Do a little, save a lot!
• Local DNR air management program contacts

Wisconsin's Current Air Quality

---

Covid reveals power imbalances at WI power tools firm

Depending on my energy level, I yell at the TV, fast-forward or mute it when those insultingly sanctimonious buy-our-stuff/'we're all in this tougher' ads pop up.

Because if corporations (or 'people,' as Mitt Romney called them a few years ago), were routinely equally in it with everyone when it comes to worker safety, workforce diversity, product integrity and ethical management, we'd have had a more equitable and healthy culture that was better prepared to navigate Covid-19 crises.

Today's showcase illustration of these fundamental flaws and imbalances begins with a Covid-19-related business decision in our own SE Wisconsin backyard - 

- and ironically, it speaks to the intentionally skewed distribution of power in a power-generating equipment leader:

Briggs & Stratton skips $6.7 million interest payment, awards $5 million to executives

In a statement, spokesman Rick Carpenter said: "Within this COVID environment and as part of a series of actions to increase our financial flexibility, we elected to take the advantage of the contractual 30-day grace period with respect to the interest payment owed to our Note holders.... 

Finally, the retention awards, within this COVID environment, are to ensure that the company retains the commitment, experience and expertise as a group to help align the company in these tough economic times." 

Wednesday, Briggs shares closed at $1.86. Over the last 52 weeks, the shares have traded in a range of between $1.50 and $10.51. 

And this reporting comes just days after a separate Briggs & Stratton story about 'this Covid environment' and 'tough economic times.' 

A Briggs & Stratton employee who pushed for more coronavirus restrictions in the workplace died from the virus

Mike Jackson, a 45-year-old father of eight, collapsed in late May while on the assembly line of his job at Briggs & Stratton. 

Days later, he died of the coronavirus.  

Walker's tweeted, twisted banality hitting new bottom

"We have more in common that most people think."

Seriously, what does Walker have in common with people marching for justice, and scrambling for work, health care, good schools and respect from police, judges and lawmakers?

And how does Walker' Tweeted piety square with his having tried to scare upscale suburbanites with a deafening, recall-election centered dog-whistle about Milwaukee - where he’d served nearly nine years as the publicly-paid but clearly disinterested and disconnected county executive - and how is America still the "shining beacon on the hill that people are drawn to..."when Walker's champion Donald Trump has caged seized children at the southern border and separated them from their parents looking for a better life?

The same 'President' who has blocked asylum-seekers and other immigrants who do have a lot in common with earlier generations of Americans - a reality overlooked by the defeated ex-Wisconsin governor and champion of divide-and-conquer politics whose hollow messages contradict his words, actions and party's inhumane agendas.

And, by the way, 'travel the country' as Walker suggests - and his Twitter feed shows him at the airport today, so there he goes again -  is hardly an option for millions of Americans who do not share Walker's cushy paid speaking gigs, upscale cruising opportunities and related political work funded by wealthy right-wing organizations who are busy organizing for the Walker-Trump goal of a  more reactionary country to serve and strengthen a whiter electorate and corporate America:

Scott Walker

@ScottWalker

·

Jun 15

...Travel the country. You will be surprised to see that we have more in common than most people think. Sure, we have our challenges but America is still an amazing place and the shining beacon on the hill that people are drawn to from around the world!
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