A little nobless oblige, s’il vous plaît!
This is supposed to be the year of the outsider. Maine Democrats ditched the oyster farmer for a logger. Rebecca Cooke is the short-order waitress (and high-paid political consultant) running against Derrick Van Orden in western Wisconsin. A.O.C. was a bartender. The formula is to fake authenticity in order to reclaim the blue collar vote they lost to Trump.
We remember when Democrats were agog for JFK, born to unfathomable wealth. His father manipulated the stock market and screwed Hollywood actresses. Jack chased skirt, too, while married to the beautiful debutante Jacqueline Bouvier. For chrissake, the dame spoke French!
Presidential biographer James Traub records that John Adams, who was President while the French Directorate was working the guillotine, feared what he himself called “the mob.” “The people, he wrote, can be as tyrannical as any king.” And stupid, as Proud Boys on the right and Freedom Inc. on the political left keep proving.
Democrats are running on affordability. How do they intend to achieve that? By promising More Free Stuff! Free child care, free parental leave, free health care, free graduate school, guaranteed incomes, and government-run grocery stores. Judging by the record $40 Trillion federal deficit, the economy has already run out of other peoples’ money.
We defend Trump when warranted. When he said Monday 10-05-26 “They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles; let them take out San Diego. It’s a very small price to pay,” the “small price” the President was talking about was gas at the pump versus what could happen to our cities if we did not stop Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The nation suffers from his imprecise logorrhea.
Proud to have as a guest at Stately Blaska Manor retired State Sen. Fred Risser, the longest-serving state legislator in history, not just Wisconsin but nationally. First elected to the office in 1956 when Joe McCarthy and Republicans ruled Wisconsin politics, Fred served 64 years. The Risser Justice Building is named after him and his father, also a legislator when La Follette progressives identified with the Republican party. Fred and co-author Doug Moe visited for our book club selection of his autobiography Forward for the People. Blaska and Jonathan Barry are the only Republicans in the book club, founded by Peter Anderson and the late Bill Kraus.
Fred is 99 years of age and sharp as a tack. Was standing next to the senator and Mark Pocan in the governor’s conference room when Scott Walker detailed his Act 10 fifteen years ago. The two Democrats were aghast. Forward for the People recounts the Senate Democrats’ infamous and ultimately futile exile to Rockford IL to derail a vote. Smoking ban? That’s just one of Fred Risser’s bills.
The book depicts the quirky habits that made Risser a memorable and beloved politician: biking his age in miles every birthday and never taking the elevator in his sixty-four years at the Wisconsin State Capitol. — Wisconsin Historical Society
Do progressives not understand how courts work? They work on evidence and on law, not on popular passions! “Kayak-tivists” in Maine are harassing Chief Justice John Roberts at his island vacation home on flotillas of kayaks and other small boats toting signs denouncing court decisions. A local newspaper columnist recommended that people give the Chief the finger and refuse him service in town.
“With rising threats and increased protests, the chief justice is now ringed by security personnel, even [on an island] in Maine,” the NY Times recounts. The Times reports that federal law prohibits picketing outside judges’ homes after the attempt on Justice Kavanaugh.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Always thought Madison should enact an ordinance prohibiting picketing in residentially zoned neighborhoods. Doing so, as Freedom Inc. did most recently against Mayor Satya, is intimidating and unfair to other family members. Harassment is not free speech.
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