I see nothing from Walker about Tic Tac Trump tonight

[Update] Paul Ryan has weighed in on Donald Trump's bragging about assaulting women. Reince Priebus has weighed in. Mitt Romney has weighed in. Mitch McConnell has weighed in. The entire political culture has weighed in.

But, so far, not the Wisconsin Governor who had endorsed Trump despite a year of insults and falsehoods, who has endorsed him for President and was going to appear on stage with Trump in Elkhorn Saturday.

Update - - I'd missed by 18 minutes Scott Walker's five-word tweet. Glad to correct the record, weak as are Walker's words which do not suggest a non-endorsement.

	Scott Walker  @ScottWalker
Inexcusable. Trump's comments are inexcusable. 9:18 PM - 7 Oct 2016

Today is the first day of the GOP's 2020 race

Donald Trump, Groper-in-Chief, Tic-Tac connoisseur and political Dead Man Walking, and his #2 Mike Pence are out, along with Scott Walker, as both embraced Trump while people like John Kasich said "no."

The GOP can write off the rest of the campaign and regroup for 2020.

Update: Trump booted from Elkhorn event

Goodbye, Trump - - but really, why hold the Elkhorn event on Satuday, since the only question to stand-in Mike Pence, and Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, et al will be, "Where is your presidential nominee and why are you still backing him?"

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Donald Trump will no longer be attending a joint event in Wisconsin set for Saturday afternoon in light of his past sexually explicit comments that surfaced Friday.

“I am sickened by what I heard today. Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified. I hope Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests. In the meantime, he is no longer attending tomorrow’s event in Wisconsin," Ryan said in a statement.

WI GOP's big men can check out cool guy Trump Saturday

Now we know why Roger Ailes is so comfy around Donald Trump. They're both so smooth with women. Pointers, fellas? Anyone? Paul "Great Timing" Ryan?

WI GOP hits bottom as leaders become lackeys

The Republican Party was born in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854 and gave the country President Abraham Lincoln, and even, of late, an occasional moderate.

On Saturday, and just a two-hour drive from Ripon in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, the state's party leadership will openly and enthusiastically flush away its legacy and credibility when it gathers on stage to endorse for President the unstable racist, misogynist and tax avoider Donald Trump.

Wisconsin's perpetually-self-promoting Gov. Scott Walker will be there, having already swirled a five-figure Trump donation into the dark money mix which fueled Walker's 2012 recall win, so Walker brings no contradiction or surprising ethical let-down to his party's Elkhorn party.

Walker's presence in the Walworth County setting will be more an affirmation than a disappointment, as he will no doubt reprise for an adoring crowd his teen years' burger-flipping in nearby Delavan and hope his by-now-stale story will trick the crowd into forgetting his signature and broken job-creating promise, let alone his less-than-one-percent pre-primary polling in Iowa last year that took him off the national stage, buried his home-state approval ratings and helped vault Trump to GOP alpha status.

Ditto for the do-nothing Tea Party first-term US Senator Ron Johnson, so threatened with the dreaded one-and-done label that he's comically promising not to seek a third term. 

If there is a False Humility Society, Johnson just flat out won its Self-Parody or Lifetime Achievement Award.

Also attending this gathering of all-star opportunists is US Congressman Paul Ryan, thus proving that hanging on to his House of Representatives Speakership where the righty-fringe wack job and satirically-named Freedom Caucus keeps him a willing hostage is more important than maintaining his carefully-crafted-and coiffed smarted-guy-in-the-room reputation, his party's credibility and its 162-year legacy.

All this to inflict a shallow, egomaniacal and dangerously unprepared reality TV show host on the US military, the Federal budgeting process which Ryan had heretofore treated as sacred territory, and also on the US body politic which Trump has demeaned and degraded for more than a year as systematically and self-interestedly as he maneuvered around federal open housing law and the US tax code.

And which of these climate-change deniers and environmental obstructionists will be the first to ask for thoughts and prayers for the hurricane saturated US Southeast?

Such is the shameful state of affairs in formerly-progressive Wisconsin as its leaders become lackeys in support of greater power sought for partisan self-interest and bought with  special-interest millions.

Ron Johnson blends desperation, false humility

Probable one-term done-nothing GOP US Senator pre-declines third term. A grateful Wisconsin electorate can abide with no term #2, too.

Formerly Really Smart Paul Ryan devolves to Trump Toady

House Speaker Paul Ryan had protected that Really Smart Guy persona when keeping Donald Trump at a distance, but embracing him Saturday in Elkhorn in a high profile, debate eve appearance with Wisconsin's discredited and unpopular dark money Gov. Scott Walker reduces Ryan to just another partisan prop - - like Ted Cruz and the rest of the Vote Your Conscience [Sic] Republican phonies.

Party over Principle and Speakership over Substance is an unprincipled way to politick, let alone govern.

Walker forcing himself into Pres. campaign coverage

Though he flamed out early in the Presidential campaign and is underwater in home state polling, WI GOP Gov. and 2020 wannabe Scott Walker is taking his own minor-league persona and asterisk-level role as vanilla Mike Pence debate preparer and inflating it  into 'Donald Trump debate guru!'

Trump could care less about what Walker, but Walker has figured out a way to turn his irrelevancy into ephemeral limelight as bright as a birthday candle:

In the run-up to the vice presidential debate, Walker helped Pence prepare by playing the part of Kaine. 

Trump, whose uneven performance at the first presidential debate last week lost him points in crucial battleground states, made it clear that debate preparation was not his first priority. 

On Thursday, Walker urged Trump to rethink his strategy.
“That would be my strong suggestion,” he said. 

 

Another reminder of political conscience deficit

As Donald Trump continues to inflict himself on the people, and many Republicans are embracing a number of alternatives to his unprincipled, reckless and downright dangerous Presidential candidacy, it's important to remember who is reckless and unprincipled enough to stand with him.

Update: Add Paul Ryan, too, as the threesome bring their ugly show to Elkhorn on Saturday.

The purge continues at Walker's DNR

Yeah, who needs a 37-year Wisconsin wildlife veteran:

[Tom] Hauge, who served as the DNR's director of wildlife for the last 25 years, was informed Sept. 19 by division administrator Sanjay Olson that he was being reassigned in early October to a district wildlife supervisor position.

The job would be a demotion for Hauge in both authority and pay.

Rather than take it, he exercised his option to retire.

Thus joining a club I wrote about in June which no one should have to join:

After two recent, high-ranking staff departures - - and a host of legal, program and policy changes in state government which have put Wisconsin air, water and land at risk since Gov. Walker's inauguration in January, 2011 - - I thought it was time to get a closer look inside the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Because Stepp knows better as she moves Walker's agency 'realignment' forward - - all part of an ideologically-driven plan by right-wing Wisconsin Republicans to prove that government doesn't work by starving it of money, staff, spirit - - and more and more - - expertise.

Sound familiar?

Walker salutes Earth Day with 57 layoffs at WI DNR

And also from this post: With his permission, I am adding comments...from Gordon Stevenson, an engineer and former senior DNR manager, who now serves Midwest Environmental Advocates as board secretary and spoke at a a May MEA water program in Milwaukee. This is from his MEA bio:

Gordon is a 26 year veteran of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. His last assignment was serving as the Chief of Runoff Management until his retirement in January of 2011. His professional expertise includes watershed-based water resource protection and control of diffuse water pollution sources. Gordon had been instrumental in development of policies and administrative codes for the State of Wisconsin involving both agricultural and urban nonpoint source water pollution. In particular, Gordon has been an architect of Wisconsin’s environmental programs that apply to Wisconsin’s extensive livestock industry. He wrote and issued the first permits for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations in Wisconsin, developed technical guidance for abatement of agricultural pollutants in both surface water and groundwater and was the voice of the Department of Natural Resources to Wisconsin’s livestock producer community.

 At the MEA water program, Stevenson said, in part:

For the majority of my career, water policy decisions were based on the strong bond between law and science, the people in charge of making those decisions had conservation and environmental protection credentials, and my colleagues and I shared the belief that Wisconsin's true and sustaining wealth is its clean water.

Much of that is now changed at DNR. Wisconsin DNR's water quality permit program has been found seriously deficient by the US Environmental Protection Agency. DNR is failing to protect downstream water from upstream pollution sources, they are allowing already impaired water bodies to get worse and they are suppressing the public's ability to challenge water quality permit decisions.

Wisconsin DNR's authority to protect Wisconsin's water resources is delegated from EPA. Under the delegation agreement, DNR is obligated to administer the federal Clean Water Act. DNR is not doing so. On behalf of 16 Wisconsin citizens, Midwest Environmental Advocates has filed a Citizens Petition for Corrective Action with the US Environmental Protection agency to correct these deficiencies. The petition seeks to restore the credible water quality protection program that we once had in this state.

We're arriving at an important crossroads in Wisconsin. We have our own version of Flint, Michigan in Kewaunee County where citizens cannot drink the water and we have our own version of the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone. A dead zone now also exists in Green Bay that runs from the City of Green Bay all the way up to Marinette.

While I am alarmed, I am also encouraged . We are pleased to report that more than 70 people like me, DNR retirees, along with other credible scientist and partners have signed on to support the Petition for Corrective Action along with our original 16 Wisconsin citizen clients. And the number of people supporting the petition is growing daily.

But in a larger sense. I am even more encouraged that so many Wisconsin citizens believe like I do: that water policy decisions should be based on the strong bond between law and science, that the people in charge of making water quality decisions should have the credentials to do so, and that Wisconsin's true and sustaining wealth is its clean water."

In WI, a dog's life can be more valuable than a human's

You will note in this stunning story about a Milwaukee man being freed from prison after 24 years years of wrongful incarceration that our backwater state caps compensation for such miscarriages of justice at $25,000 - - so this man will receive about $1,000 for every year that the state took from him.

As I have noted on this blog for years, the state will compensate a bear hunter $2,500 for a hound killed by a wolf even if the owner ran the hound off-leash through known wolf activity territory. Even if the owner is a repeat collector of such reimbursements. Even if the owner is a proven scofflaw.

Forty such hound deaths this year alone make their owners are eligible for the payments. 

Two of the more recently slaughtered hounds were Plotts, like this one picture below.

And the Wisconsin bear-hunting season has another six days to go, to be followed by more hound 'training' runs against bears right through through wolf activity areas in the Northwoods that have been seeded legally with bear bait which is also of interest to wolves.

You tell me where the justice is in all this?

Cranberries…elk…sounds like a Joel Kleefisch special

State GOP Rep. and leading Wisconsin foodie and hunter Joel Kleefisch - - having already fantasized about marinating wolves and cooking Sandhill cranes ('the rib-eye-of-the-sky' - - will no doubt see this story about the clash between cranberry growers and the elk herd reintroduction he's been championing and begin his menu preparations.

Yes, Wisconsin's Mitchell Park Domes are endangered...

The designation is important, but let's not forget that in Wisconsin, voting rights, groundwater purity, collective bargaining, livable wages, public lands, women's right to choose. safety on the highways, local government control, tax fairness, two-party governance, State Supreme Court neutrality, food stamp access, and clean air, to name but a few. are also endangered with partisan intent and the force of law - - while the Domes in Milwaukee can get off the list and saved with community will, funding shifted from the Estabrook dam fiasco, and help elsewhere:

(Photo: Mike De Sisti)

A new designation may increase the chance that the popular Mitchell Park Domes will live to see another 50 years.

WisDOT put out orange barrels to block voter ID applicants

Hacks working for New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie put orange cones in front of motorists to create confusion and congestion on a bridge, and DMV staffers in Scott Walker's similarly politicized Wisconsin Department of Transportation did the same thing to voters trapped in the state's unnecessary voter ID machinery.

Think about it. 

WisDOT routinely reroutes drivers via head-spinning lane changes and zipper merges with a J-turn or Texas U-turn thrown in to go west by first going east, then doubling back - - so why not send people seeking a voter ID all over the place while changing the process whimsically and creating the same kind of congesting, frustrating outcomes?

Is this a highway reconstruction schematic or a WisDOT guide to getting to a DMV office that is open on every third Tuesday morning for an hour - - or is Thursdays over the lunch hour? - - and which may or may not have the latest ID variation approved under Walker's imperial rule-making power?

BridgeGate and the Wisconsin voter ID fiasco were both the work of vindictive Republican partisans seeking personal and political advantage at the expense of citizens' free access to the system - - whether to highways in New Jersey or the electoral process in Wisconsin - - and both kinds of artificial detours are abuses of public resources and authority.

Walker's high court win carried steep price

Updated from 10/4] I'm not surprised that the US Supreme Court didn't take the Doe prosecutors' appeal of the Wisconsin Supreme Court's dismissal of the John Doe II probe despite some state justices campaigns' acceptance of large sums of the same dark money and campaign assistance which also helped give Walker his 2012 recall win.

Lawyers I know said the US Supreme Court takes for formal review very few of the petitions it receives, and maybe the message being sent to Wisconsin is, 'you have a remedy for the pickle you're in: it's called "elections.'

Though with legislators and an unashamedly pro-Walker State Supreme Court majority making and interpreting the rules, laws, election procedures and district boundaries, that kind of 'fix-in-yourself' dictum is a cop out.

Here's what I want to say now that the legal history of John Doe II, and John Doe I, for that matter, seems to be a closing book:

Walker and his donors and his campaign committee and his appointees and support networks all the way back to his days as Milwaukee County Executive spent a helluva lot of time and money going right up to the commonly-accepted line of traditional and legitimate campaigning, financing and organizing - - and kept crossing it, knowingly - -  whether with a secret email and fundraising system set up and staffed in a public office, or through a go-for-broke secret system of coordination among donors and so-called 'independent' third parties during the recall campaign - - and all of these politicians and staffers and funders and operatives had to be aware they could get caught, but opted for taking the chance because they believed their ends were justified regardless of the means to get there.

And, of course, knowing that if they and their cause were to hit the fan, they had stockpiled private lawyers, friendly Attorneys General, a State Supreme Court majority, and even GOP legislators waiting in the wings to redo the campaign coordination statute, and the John Doe statute, plus the elections, ethics and accountability laws, codes and machinery if need be - - to preserve, protect and defend Scott Walker and his network of one-percenters.

Who would sign everyone of those self-preserving personal and partisan 'reforms' into law, completing a deeply corrupted and perverse incineration of democracy we had known and practiced and honored in a once-progressive state.

Imagine this as the norm from now on.

That is the full, damage-done scope of the ruinous coordination that has taken place across the board here since the 2010 election and also in the across-the-line gerrymandering that has deeply, and perhaps permanently, embedded in the state a party and Governor whom Republicans revere because he is pledged to enforce a reactionary, donor-driven, anti-worker ideology that has turned the state into a low-wage, corporately-controlled, poverty-enabling backwater that has been intentionally polluted - - politically, environmentally and ethically.

In the wake of his victorious skate past the US Supreme Court, I expect an emboldened Walker to further his vindictive budgeting-by-starvation for the institutions he imagines to be liberal - - the UW system, cities and especially the Department of Natural Resources - - even though they have given the state so much identity and value and appeal - - until now.

So, yes, Walker won at the US Supreme Court, but the state, its values, people, history, and potential have all lost.

Pretty steep price, one politician's hide.

Walker coached Pence? To…the top spot on the 2020 ticket?

The talking heads' consensus after tonight's Veep debate is that Pence helped position Pence for the far-right, deeply-evangelical top spot position on the GOP 2020 ticket.

Not so much help for the perpetually flummoxed wild man Trump, but frankly devastating for Pence debate coach, failed-2015 GOP presidential candidate and 2020 presidential wannabe Scott Walker.

The more credit you want to heap on Pence, the more it's at Walker's expense.

There's only room on that ticket for one far-right evangelical, and after tonight, it ain't the leader of Wreckhavocstan. 

For Walker, it's divided, then conquered.

WI DNR, a/k/a the taxpayers, to pay for DNR nonfeasance

I'd noted from time to time that public advocacy attorneys at private expense have been picking up the public health slack sacrificed

by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources as Scott Walker withdraws his dumbed-down "chamber of commerce mentality" agency from its public health regulatory role.

So it's a good sign that the courts are beginning to recognize this unfair cost-shifting by ruling in one of these recent cases that the DNR has to pay the public advocates' legal bills:

A Dane County judge has directed the Department of Natural Resources to pay nearly $45,000 in legal fees to two conservation organizations in a case involving a large dairy farm expansion in northeastern Wisconsin. 

Dane County Circuit Judge John W. Markson ruled on Friday the DNR should pay Clean Wisconsin and Midwest Environmental Advocates $44,985 for their legal work for fighting plans by Kinnard Farms Inc. to add more than 2,000 cattle to their dairy herd in Kewaunee County.

And that sum pales in comparison to legal fees paid out over Walker's malfeasance. 

Wisconsin's subsidized blood sport yields more dead hounds

[Updated] Wisconsin bear hunters continue to throw their off-leash hounds into the chase and tree bears for easy rifle shot pickings through areas where territorial, larger and wolves by the pack- - perhaps drawn in by bear bait left by one or more of the bear hunters - - tear the the smaller dogs to pieces.

The bear hunters lobby has arranged for the state to reimburse a hounder $2,500 per killed dog, and this year's total will now exceed $100,000, as 40 hounds - - a record for one year though the deaths have occurred between March and October, DNR records show - - have been killed in 2016 and several more have been injured, DNR records show.

Bear hunting ends on October 11, but 'training' runs will continue to put the hounds into harms way where the wolves live and gather.

Call it state-enabled animal cruelty, with the dogs, wolves and bears abused and victimized.

Or dog-fighting - - sometimes legal, sometimes not.

In fact, captive, caged bears on a DNR-approved site can be hoisted in the air for up to 12 hours in a 24-hour period while hounds in training are allowed to confront the cage, according to DNR rules.

Two of the more recently slaughtered hounds were Plotts, like this one picture below.


As the DNR reports today:

Hunting Dogs Killed in Iron and Sawyer Counties

Wildlife Services confirmed that wolves depredated the following hunting dogs over the weekend:

* A Plott hound killed on 10/1/16 in the Town of Winter, Sawyer County

* A Plott hound killed in a separate incident on 10/1/16 in the Town of Winter, Sawyer County

* A Redbone hound killed on 10/1/16 in the Town of Knight, Iron County

More information and a caution-area map are available on the gray wolf webpage.

Hunters are reminded to use the caution-area maps on the DNR website (dnr.wi.gov, keyword "wolf management") to help reduce conflicts during this year's bear dog training and hunting seasons.

And, by the way - - note that hunters are clearly ignoring the information which the DNR has posted about where other dogs were killed by wolves. For example:

Iron depredation location map [PDF]

No vocabulary left to describe Donald Trump

What can you say about this? 

After all his lying and displays of ridicule, immaturity, projection, degradation, phoniness and the multiple disclosures validating his menacing b.s. - - I don't have the words to adequately put this latest disqualifying revelation about his fake patriotism and false love for blue collar works into perspective.

It's a collective disgrace that a national party which first gave America President Abraham Lincoln has so hated eight years of a black male President and so fears eight more years of a female President - - in other words, America without a familiar white male face in the White House - - that the GOP would promote this fraudulent fool and stick the rest of the world with him:

Revealed: Trump ditched US workers and secretly purchased steel and aluminum for last two projects from China

Great news: the Estabrook Dam could soon be history

The end may be in sight - - and it's about dam time - - for the environmental, structural and fiscal mess known as the Estabrook Dam, the Journal Sentinel reports:

(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

A trio of top municipal officials announced plans on Monday to tear down the Estabrook Park dam and end a longstanding dispute over whether to demolish or renovate the aging structure.

The strategy calls for an end-run around the Milwaukee County Board by turning the property in Estabrook Park over to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. The district would then tear down the dam next year and restore a section of the Milwaukee River as a free-flowing stream.

The cooperative agreement was detailed by Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and Kevin Shafer, executive director of the sewerage district, who said their solution would reduce the risk of flooding and save taxpayers millions of dollars.

On PTSD, brain expert Trump backed by most-trusted adviser

Donald Trump, perhaps to erase all memory of last's week's bad tax and Miss Universe FUBARs, dissed military vets with PTSD by suggesting during a discussion service personnel suicide that some simply weren't strong.

"When people come back from war and combat, they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over, and you're strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can't handle it," Trump said to a veterans group in Northern Virginia.

Kind of a variation on his diminution of POW John McCain and his battering of the Gold Star Khan family.

This makes more sense in TrumpWorld, however when you remember that Trump is an expert on matters of the brain - - because he has "a very good brain."  

From which he gets great advice:

"But I speak to a lot of people, but my primary consultant is myself, and I have a good instinct for this stuff,” he added.

And has led to his being hailed as a "genius" - - more cerebral focusing - - by another equally-qualified expert.

Consider that loopy loop closed.

Editor's note: this post replaces something similar that simply disappeared. 

Tax 'genius' Trump, dark money Walker on same page

Donald Trump's braggadocio-laden conversion of $916 million claimed personal losses into two decades of wealth-building, and Scott Walker's secret routing of other billionaires' millions into a winning re-election campaign book-end a self-serving, self-dealing legal and financial system rigged to keep the wealthy rolling in dough and firmly in control.

How perfect is it that Trump was one of Walker's donors, and Walker is now standing with the discredited Trump - - showing both without principle except fealty to the almighty dollar.

And that it was just a few days ago that Walker wondered 'what kind of a system do we live in?' Well, question answered, in his favor.

The only way to turn it around is to defeat Trump, Walker and the rest of the electoral beneficiaries at the ballot box..

I know, I know: easier said than done.

But we don't need any more evidence.

Or motivation.

WI Rep. Joel Kleefisch finally nails it

I've pointed out the damage done, but truer words were never spoken:

"We know a bunch of middle aged white guys from the suburbs are not going to solve Milwaukee's problems," acknowledge Kleefisch. 

And to rephrase it:

A bunch of white guys and women from the suburbs have to appreciate what Milwaukee contributes to the suburbs and the rest of the state.

 

US Supreme Court will not hear WI Doe appeal

I'd hoped for a different outcome.

Dark money is tough to beat and very few of such petitions are taken by the Court. So it goes...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear Wisconsin's John Doe case investigating coordination between Gov. Scott Walker's recall campaign and conservative groups that supported him.

As I wrote yesterday:

It's a long-shot, as the US Supreme Court takes few of such petitions, but taking the case could more broadly explain why Fitzwalkerstan/Havocwreackostan/the chamber of commerce state managed to win elections in a bought-and-sold Wisconsin. 

For Walker and his donors, October could be a losing month

[Updated from Sunday] I won't rewrite T.S. Eliot and suggest that October is the cruelest month - - though there is something of a wasteland quality to what Scott Walker and his donors have wrought here, whether you prefer Fitzwalkerstan or Havocwreakostan or his "chamber of commerce mentality" government or another of the labels that regrettably describe our formerly progressive state - - but I will say that October could bring less a surprise to Walker than something of an unwinding which could loom large the next time he's on the ballot.

*  For one thing, he's managed to get crosswise with a Federal judge whom his lawyers and minions had given assurances that the Voter ID law and other blatantly partisan and obstructive goals was going to be implemented in Wisconsin according to rules, law, fairness and transparency.

Though there was a long history to the contrary.

Anyway, Team Walker's lawyers and handlers now have to prove to the judge, and pronto, that they are not violating the court's directives.  

As they have done before, they could sacrifice some underlings. And eat a fine as they did in the federal redistricting case, knowing, like the crack-backing lineman or head-hunting defensive back that the penalty was worth the damage done.

*  Then there is the arrival in the second week of October to the offices of the afore-refenced 'chamber of commerce mentality'-managed Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources of investigators from the US Environmental Protection Agency.

This significant trip to a state agency has its roots in the Walker administration's intentional disregard since 2011 of its responsibilities to residents under the US Clean Water Act - - details here.

And it was righteously provoked by aggrieved state Wisconsinites and their public interest lawyers doing for the people what the state under Walker deliberately and ideologically has refused to do - - all the while starving the DNR into weakness and irrelevancy.

I am hoping for the release of records and findings by the EPA that will further educate people about what has been denied and diverted by Walker's DNR or the benefit of special interests that would turn public land and water and wells and shorelines, and other natural treasures into manure-factories, dune-demolishing and native artifact-crushing golf courses for the wealthy and other profit centers for Walker's partisan, self-interested donors.

*  Then there is possibility that the US Supreme Court will agree to hear the case brought by John Doe prosecutors that their investigation into the GOP's dark money machine in Wisconsin was improperly cut short by a State Supreme Court majority that had taken millions of that same dark money.

If you haven't read The Guardian's document-driven report on the issue, take the time now.

It's a long-shot, as the US Supreme Court takes few of such petitions, but taking the case could more broadly explain why Fitzwalkerstan/Havocwreackostan/the chamber of commerce state managed to win elections in a bought-and-sold Wisconsin.

Monday Update: The US Supreme Court declined to take the case.

So stay tuned. October's just begun.

Q. for Vos: When was Walker genuous, exactly?

It seems to be a Robin Vos kind of day, now complete with awesome self-parody:

Vos: 'Disingenuous' for Walker to request alternative transportation plan from lawmakers

Vos, a WI GOP governor wannabe, embraces toxic Trump

While relatively-leveled-headed GOP leaders and traditionally Republican editorial boards nationally are treating the toxic Donald Trump deservedly like a pariah - - well, that is, except for self-serving Trump toadies like Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, Ron Johnson and other hopelessly paralyzed Wisconsin partisans - - State Assembly Speaker and potential gubernatorial candidate-some-day Robin Vos goes out of his way to embrace the late-night twittering misogynist:

Vos 'Proud' To Back Trump, Says He'll Help Assembly Republicans

Right. Never mind whom Trump insults, slanders, threatens or mocks, or which taxes he evades or chooses not to disclose. 

With Vos... 
...it's all about strategy and potential partisan gain, shaky as they are.