The WI GAB – Blowing Their Nose With the WI Constitution

According to the Wisconsin State Constitution, Article III, to be qualified to vote in the State of Wisconsin you must be a U.S. citizen, and a resident of the state.

Article III

Electors. SECTION 1. Every United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district in this state is a qualified elector of that district.

How, I wonder, is does the state of Wisconsin’s election law go about validating U.S. Citizenship of voters, as per the plain and clear intent and reading of Article III Section 1?

Well, it doesn’t, not even a little.

In fact, it doesn’t even try to.

Hovde Should Not Care About the Convention Endorsement

Last weekend the Wisconsin GOP held its convention in Green Bay.

One of the biggest prizes going into the get together was the party endorsement for the US Senate race in 2012.  The four candidates (Eric Hovde, Tommy Thompson, Mark Neumann, and Scott Fitzgerald) all tried their very best to stack the convention with delegates who would vote for them for the endorsement.

(Full disclosure:  I was asked to attend as a delegate on behalf of Eric Hovde, but had to decline due to previous commitments.)

Hovde received the fewest votes in the first round, and was knocked out of the running.  Tommy Thompson was knocked out in the second round.  In the end, no one got to the 60% threshold required to win the endorsement.  No one really lost, and no one really won.

Some pundits have claimed that the first round loss for Hovde was a bad sign, an embarrassment, or a sign that he has little chance in the primaries.  I think this analysis is wrong, and actually misses a bigger point.

Scott Walker is (Still) Winning in Madison

With apologies to William Shakespeare, allow me summarize the recall effort in Wisconsin:

The Recall’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Polls are coming out from even Democrat sources indicating that Scott Walker has at least a 5 point lead on the best possible Democrat challenger, Tom Barrett.

This, after 14 months of non-stop rallies, protests, boycotts, accusations, allegations, lies, threats and intimidation and millions and millions of dollars.

As the kids today say:  EPIC.  FAIL.

Sorry Simcha – Wrong Joseph, Wrong Jesus

Simcha Jacobovici is not an archeologist, he is a film maker.  He does call himself “The Naked Archeologist” however, and has a series of television shows on the History and Discovery channels by the same name.  In them he is an “Indiana Jones” type of explorer, and often takes positions contrary to the established opinion of the archeology intelligentsia.  I must admit to really enjoying his work, and his unorthodox approach to archeology.

His most recent film making effort entitled “The Resurrection Tomb Mystery” aired earlier this week on the Discovery Channel.  In it he, along with scholar James Tabor, explore a sealed tomb in suburban Jerusalem they believe contains ossuaries (bone boxes) of first century Christians.  They surmise that the tomb may in fact be that of Joseph of Arimathea, the man who according to the New Testament gave his tomb to Jesus Christ after the crucifixion.

Dem’s Suit on Fake Candidates Shows Electoral Weakness

The Democrat Party of Wisconsin has had a surrogate file a complaint with the GAB seeking to have candidates removed from the Democrat primary ballots for the state senate recall elections.  Given the radical nature of the GAB, they might get the ruling they want, but it is unlikely.

I think the bigger picture is being overlooked by some conservatives.  Conservatives have rightly concluded that this is an effort by Democrats to move the state senate general recall elections forward to the same date as the governor recall primary.  In plain english, they want to have the senate recalls to happen when Democrat voter turnout will be highest due to the Falk/Barret race.

Certainly this is a transparent effort to make a win in a senate recall more possible, but it also betrays a deeper truth.  Democrats may just have concluded that they are going to lose all 4 senate recall races under normal election circumstances.

Wisconsin – Always on The Cutting Edge of Politics

Most people in the US probably couldn’t tell you where Wisconsin is.  All they may know is that is someplace north of Chicago and that it has a few cities with major league sports teams.  Wisconsin is the definition of “fly over country”, and most people here like it that way.

Wisconsin’s anonymity however does not extend to the world of politics, and it has been this way for a long, long time.  It seems that Wisconsin is the place that movements that eventually sweep the nation are born.  Wisconsin is the “leading indicator” of the political world.

Single Payer Healthcare – Been There, Done That

The left is committed to the concept of a single payer health care delivery model similar to those in Europe.  “Committed” is actually not a strong enough term – religiously obsessed is probably more accurate.

Their devotion to this concept is as deep as the Pope’s devotion to the Catholic Church…maybe even more so.  Everything in their world revolves around the effort to enact this system in the US under the direct control of the federal government.

They claim that this system is the ONLY solution to the economic issues in the health care sector.  They further claim that we haven’t tried it yet, and no one can know that it will not work as they describe.

They are either lying or ignorant beyond imagining.  We have “tried” single payer health care models in numerous ways, large and small, and they are all less effective in every measure than the private market model in place in (most) of the US today.

Ron Johnson’s Team of Servant Leaders

Ron Johnson has developed a reputation as one of the most “unconventional” politicians in the US Senate….possibly in all of Washington D.C.  He had the nerve to break a major unwritten rule and ran for a GOP Senate leadership position during his first year as a Senator.

Freshmen in the Senate are supposed to be quiet, vote with the leadership, and otherwise not make waves.   Johnson refuses to follow those old rules of politics, probably because he isn’t actually a politician, he’s a businessman.  In business, when you are hired to do a job, you actually do it.  You don’t sit quietly at your desk for a year or two until you “earn your stripes”.

Johnson’s unconventional approach to politics is not reserved to himself, or his conduct on the Hill.  He has assembled a team of what I like to refer to as “servant leaders” to comprise his staff in D.C. and in Wisconsin.

The Ugly Assault on the “Beautiful Man”

James T. Harris is a conservative radio talk show host.  He is also a professional speaker.  Before that, he was a teacher.

Mr. Harris is also a ”Beautiful Man” and an “American of African descent”, as he likes to say.

That makes James T. Harris dangerous to a great many people, and right now the Trayvon Martin case in FL is demonstrating it.

What exactly is it that makes James T. Harris so scary to some people?  I think the answer lies in the typical motives for almost everything political – money and power.

After Obamacare – What the GOP Should Do Next

Assuming reports assuming that the decision of the US Supreme Court regarding Obamacare will result in the entire legislation being struck down are accurate, the question becomes “Now what?”.

The decision will probably be delivered in the summer of 2012, before the presidential elections, and while the GOP is still in control of the US House.

I believe the GOP will have a limited and important opportunity to frame the discussion on the issue of health care.  Up to now, the left has set the parameters of the debate, which of course benefitted their policy and political desires.

When the decision comes, the GOP should immediately start to solicit input from people outside the political sphere, with expertise in the health care sector of the economy, and this time actually listen.