and other Democrat(ic) party apostasies!
Winston Churchill famously said that nothing concentrates the mind like being shot at. Blaska’s political corollary is that electoral disaster is its own wake-up call. That’s how November’s elections shape up for Democrats. Even CNN sees a cigarette and blindfold in the progressive party’s future: “This was the week Democrats realized how bad 2022 is going to get.”
Democrats’ all-purpose excuse, bad messaging, doesn’t cut it. “We got a story to tell,” Barack Obama suggested on 04-05-22, “Just got to tell it.” Nope, it’s the story itself that grates.
Miss Forward vandalized. This is how America sees Democrats
Even David Brooks gets the punch line. (We’re a metaphor metronome today!) Brooks is the kind of establishment conservative who gets invited on PBS and thinks George H.W. Bush could have reined it in a little. Emboldened by public opinion polls, the New York Times columnist counts the ways Democrats got it wrong:
• “It is possible to over-stimulate the economy.” Quit blaming Putin! At 8.5%, our inflation is a lot higher than in Europe.
• “Law and order is not just a racist dog whistle. The first job of government is to establish order so people can feel secure,” Brooks writes.
• “Border security is not just a Republican talking point.”
• “‘People of color’ is not a thing. It contributes to a simplistic oppressor/oppressed narrative in which white Republicans are supposed to be on one side and P.O.C. are supposed to be on the other.” Thanks to identity politics, hispanics are now breaking for Republicans.
• The New Deal is over. “Year after year Democrats imagine that if they can hand people checks and benefits, they will be rewarded with votes,” Brooks writes. Watch a desperate President forgive college loans, anyway.
What have we been saying?
Prophet without honor Blaska has been preaching this since, oh, 1979 — except for a brief interlude in mid-1981 and a bad week in 2001. Now former mayor Dave Cieslewicz is carrying that message into Madison’s mainstream. Like a Stage 4 patient grasping at any cure, Capital Times editor Paul Fanlund exclaims: “Dave Cieslewicz explains how moderate Democrats can save us.”
Fanlund claims to agree with Cieslewicz “pretty much across the board.” Wouldn’t know it from reading his newspaper. Couldn’t endorse David Blaska for school board, as the former mayor did, much less allow the head groundskeeper to participate in its school board debates. Instead, the CT endorsed critical race theorist Ali Muldrow for re-election. Demanded defunding school resource police officers while excusing BLM’s harassment of parents and school board members. Writes hagiographies of social justice warriors like Brandi Grayson. Keeps mum when UW-Madison expelled a 42-ton rock after it was accused of racism. Pilloried Tommy Thompson throughout his 14 years as governor.
Cieslewicz actually embraces being called a Republican — if only of the Eisenhower stripe. (See also: “We might be winning!“)
Blaska’s Bottom Line: repeats Mayor Dave’s medical prescription for Democrats: “If you hear it on NPR, don’t say it.” To National Public Radio, we would add John Nichols, The Nation, MSNBC, Mark Pocan, Tony Evers, Satya Rhodes Conway, the UW-Madison School of Education, Alders Furman, Conklin, Figueroa-Cole …
Can Democrats win by going Republican lite?
Are they even capable of copying the Real Coke?
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
Dems are going to get slaughtered no matter what they do. Part of it is terrible policies like “defund the police” but most of it is a fiscal reckoning that Trump perpetuated as well. Now that we have an unavoidable recession looming Republicans have won the game of musical chairs.
Re: “People of Color”, we hear people say things like “Finally someone that looks like me is (on the Supreme court, named CEO, starring in a movie, etc.)” They must think all POCs look alike! Hell Kamala’s skin tone is closer to Joe’s than it is to Ketanji Brown Jackson.
And I think Biden’s forgiving of student loans, whatever form that will take, is going to backfire severely. The working class will never forgive the Dems for that giveaway.
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The Gotch swears that Lefty sits around in their tie-dye clad, birkenstock shod, patchouli oil wafting existences, thinks up the stupidest, common sense bereft thing they can, then runs it up the Flagpole (Rainbow/Mexican/AntiFa/Palestinian/etc.) du Jour.
They’ll always reach far beyond where logic and critical/clear thinking turn back; they can’t help themselves.
Never Interfere With an Enemy While He’s in the Process of Destroying Himself loosely attributed to N. Bonaparte
The Gotch
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Fanlund is a ‘moderate?’ That would be news to me, and certainly Google, if you look at 95% of his past writing. His columns drip with hatred and contempt for anyone not sharing his radical views. The hard-left is finally beginning to panic, and they will say and do anything to frantically revise their recent history of thoughts and deeds.
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“Fanlund is a ‘moderate?’”
You referring to Paulie ”many rich people keep a Faustian bargain with the GOP” Fanlund?
Get this: the 2022 assessment on his posh digs on Bayfield Terrace is > $725 large.
Get this 2.0: His assessment didn’t go up one thin dime from 2018 to 2019; can anyone out there say the same?
Get this 3.0: The ~ 4600 sf shack FMV is well over 25 % higher, and don’t forget the 800 sf in ground pool.
Paulie’s like a penny, two-faced and worthless, and has some real nerve railing about the well-heeled, which describes 95% of his slobberings; a real Man Of The Common People, he!
The Gotch
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Thanks, Gotch -Good snag of the Piffle’s home. The roofline kinda reflects his personal appearance: many flat parts attached to many other flat parts.
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Credit where credit’s due, it’s really a fabulous property and meticulously built, on a beautiful lot, and in a quietly elegant, century oak-lined neighborhood.
The Gotch used to run through it regularly back in the day, and coveted its allure in passing; after the last knee surgery, he doesn’t go that far…with an eye toward being able to get back.
The only knock is it happens to be inhabited by a wildly hypocritical, terminally offended, career Lefty.
The Gotch
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Always knew Chrome Dome Paulie was a nearsighted, shallow-minded ideologue that thinks progressive s—t doesn’t stink, but now it’s clear that he’s also a flaming hypocrite. His blabbering columns all read the same, which proves that he and his ilk have no ideas.
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DG, RL, et al, repeat after me: the death of Progressivism.
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WOW, hudda thunk that progressivism would pay so well? 3400+ square feet of living space. Two and a half car garage. Two full baths and two half baths. Four bedrooms. Two fire places. Must be nice to be rich!
Does he get out and mow his own lawn? Blow the snow off his own driveway? Do they clean their own home or do they have a cleaning service?
This man is so far removed from the average person that he is oblivious to the day to day problems and issues the common man faces.
I find it interesting that while he and many others did not decry the vandalism, looting and burning of businesses in Madison and in Wisconsin during the George Floyd riots.
Perhaps it is because he had the privilege of watching all of this take place while up on high in his spacious abode in Hill Farms neighborhood.
He like many other lefties is far removed from the every day problems that most of us face. Do you think that he and the likes of Tony Evers or Joe Biden has ever lived in poverty? Do you think that any of the progressive elites have ever known what it is like to frame in a wall, haul stone up a hill, roof a house, plow a field, pick rocks, clean toilets, etc…..
He, like many other liberal elites is a HYPOCRITE!
Oh, and I know that the newly created ministry, (board), of disinformation could take note of what I have just wrote and label me as some sort of domestic terrorist, but I really don’t care anymore.
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“WOW, hudda thunk that progressivism would pay so well?”
Lefty grifts pay extremely well to people that wouldn’t stand the chance of a snowball in hell of making it the Real World, where as Dr. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters puts it so eloquently, “they expect results.”
Surely you’ve been thoroughly enjoying the very public DEFENESTRATION-n-TRIGGERING disembowelment of bLack LIES Matter.
The Gotch
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Gotch,
You hit the nail on the head.
That in addition to all the money the black lives matter co-founder Patrice Cullors spent on swanky houses and apartments all over the country.
https://nypost.com/2021/04/10/inside-blm-co-founder-patrisse-khan-cullors-real-estate-buying-binge/
Perhaps Paul could be a real journalist and take the time to write about that grift.
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‘Every Great Cause Begins As A Movement, Becomes A Business, And Eventually Degenerates Into A Racket.’ E. Hoffer
bLack LIES Matter blew right past the first two (2) steps at warp speed and quickly settled into Grift Stage.
It gets worse.
BLM’s Millions Unaccounted For After Leaders Quietly Jump Ship
The rats are scurrying away from the floundering vessel, their t!ts are in the proverbial ringer, and they’re (heh!) going to find out just how colorblind the IRS is!
The Gotch
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Pingback: Tom Nelson is no centrist! | Blaska Policy Werkes
The same thing is happening with the new Citizen Review Board in Cedar Rapids, IA. (That’s 150 southwest of Madison.) The BLM cajoled the City Council to implement a “majority POC” police oversight board. In the first year, the board has not reviewed any complaints against the police.
Oh, but you may have heard our our mass shooting that left 2 dead and 10 injured in a downtown nightclub.
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