Over at Dave Cieslewicz’ place, voter Dennis Maki writes:
As long time Madison residents with 3 children who obtained superb K-12 education in Madison in the 1970s and 1980s, we are deeply saddened by the inexorable decline and current dismal state of the MMSD which has become an emperor’s clothes syndrome. I too will vote for Blaska and encourage my friends and colleagues to do likewise.
Delve into our
Saturday-Sunday, September 24 & 25, 2022
the Island Church Foundation, Inc. will hold a Sudeten German Weekend which will provide an in-depth look at the history of a people that migrated twice, first from Germany to Bohemia, and then to Wisconsin. Key settlement areas of these Sudeten German were Jefferson, Dodge and Dane counties, Wisconsin.
The Sudeten German Weekend will focus on the earliest settlement area, which is in the Town of Waterloo, Jefferson County, Wisconsin. You will learn how poor Germans from Northeast Bohemia in the modern-day Czech Republic traveled thousands of miles from their long-time homes to the New World and settled on marginal farmland. You will tour two original pioneer structures, St. Wenceslaus Church (the so-called “Island Church”) and the log home of Vincent Faultersack.
Help Max Blaska and Karla S. Bryant adapt Stephen King’s “Last Rung On the Ladder” into a video feature. Crowd fund it here and pick the perk and the amount you wish to donate from the column on the right.
Excerpts from Justice Alito’s draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Roe found that the Constitution implicitly conferred a right to obtain an abortion, but it failed to ground its decision in text, history, or precedent.
It relied on an erroneous historical narrative; it devoted great attention to and presumably relied on matters that have no bearing on the ‘meaning of the Constitution; it disregarded the fundamental difference between the precedents on which it relied and the question before the Court; it concocted an elaborate set of rules, with different restrictions for each trimester of pregnancy, but it did not explain how this veritable code could be teased out of anything in the Constitution, the history of abortion laws, prior precedent, or any other cited source; and its most important rule (that States cannot protect fetal life prior to “viability”) was never raised by any party and has never been plausibly explained.
Some of our most important constitutional decisions have overruled prior precedents. … In Brown. v. Board of Education, the Court repudiated the “separate but equal” doctrine, which had allowed States to maintain racially segregated schools and other facilities. In so doing, the Court overruled the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896), along with six other Supreme Court precedents that had applied the separate-but-equal rule.
[Roe’s] elaborate [trimester] scheme was the Court’s own brainchild. Neither party advocated the trimester framework; nor did either party or any amicus argue that “viability” should ‘mark the point at which the scope of the abortion right and a State’s regulatory authority should be substantially transformed. … This scheme resemble[d] the work of a legislature. …
Roe certainly did not succeed in ending division on the issue of abortion. On the contrary, Roe “inflamed” a national issue that has remained bitterly divisive for the past half-century. … Indeed, in this case, 26 states expressly ask us to overrule Roe and Casey and return the issue of abortion to the people and their elected representatives.
City of Madison, Wisconsin Police Incident Reports
The Babylon Bee
Manhattan Institute
MacIver Institute
Wisconsin Politics
Blaska Policy Werkes 
In today’s State Urinal, small bus rider and ASSociate editor John Nichols opines: “For Seat 4, board president Ali Janae Muldrow faces only a token write-in challenge from conservative gadfly David Blaska. Muldrow beat him by a landslide two years ago. She’ll do so by an even bigger margin this year. That’s as it should be. Muldrow is a terrific leader on the board and in the community and deserves reelection.”
If Ms.Muldrow is a terrific leader (considering the pathetic proficiency scores achieved by District students on standardized tests), one wonders what Mr. Nichols considers a marginal leader.
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Abject derision where abject derision is due; John Nichols is ASSociate editor of the Crap Times. Every time he…um…infrequently walks out of Woodman’s Liquor Store, The Gotch chuckles as he observes the stacks of that “marginal” weekly insert they can’t even give away.
Anywho, “Muldrow is a terrific leader on the board and in the community and deserves reelection”?
By what objective standard, rendered by ANYONE with an above-their-shoe-size I.Q., has she proven herself capable of a spot on MMSD?
Were she in the private sector, where Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters) accurately notes THEY EXPECT RESULTS, she’d have been bounced out so fast it’d make her head swim.
The Gotch
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FWIW she does a good job controlling the meetings and don’t discount her leadership qualities. Problem is the last thing you want is a good leader if she’s marching everyone deeper into the shithole.
Warren Buffett had similar observation:
“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”
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“she does a good job controlling the meetings”
The local grifts (FreeDUMB Inc, YG-n-B, Urban Triage, Derail The Jail, et al) have been uncharacteristically quiet, lately.
You’ve accurately observed that’s due in part to the panDEMic, as opposed to the fast-approaching DEMpanic come November.
With lackeys in place, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the loudest voices have been encouraged to stand down, or at least assume a lower profile.
Leadership qualities are deeply discounted when those you oversee are certifiably bespawling addlepates.
The Gotch
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So; yo spend a lot of time at Woodmans booze dept?
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“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job!”
It’s deja vu all over again.
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Anytime you see an article with John Nichols as an author, it’s time to stop reading (unless you’re just looking to be entertained or induce vomiting). Nichols would write puff pieces about Pol Pot if he ran as a progressive.
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Nice looking hedge you have there Dave.
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Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yQjiNfxV1o
An excellent presentation by Dr. Jordan Peterson on the fundamental difference between those on the left and conservatives when it comes to the education of our children and the education establishment.
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Free speech is a wonderful thing. But it requires us to defend it even when the speech is abhorrent. I saw Eldridge Cleaver shouted down on the UW Madison campus close to 40 years ago so it’s nothing new. Now there are cameras everywhere so it’s more obvious.
Elon Musk is now the largest shareholder of Twitter … this bodes well for free speech.
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For an unfunded write-in in liberal Madison, Dave’s 12% of the vote is pretty darn good. Congratulations.
Dave’s achievement partially mends my broken heart for not winning the Grand Prize in the prediction contest How about a prize for the Joyner/Simkin vote?
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