Scott Walker proposes expanding the school voucher program beyond Milwaukee and Racine...

... to 9 new districts, including — gasp! — Madison.

Here's what Walker said last night in his budget speech:

For communities where some schools fail to meet expectations, we include an expansion of the parental choice program in this budget. Since wealthy families have a choice because they can pay to send their children to a private school, we give low income and middle class families an opportunity to also choose a viable alternative for their sons and daughters.

Interestingly, some communities have both high-performing schools, as well as some that fail to meet expectations. Green Bay is a good example. Keller Elementary in Green Bay is a school where more than 70 percent of students are economically disadvantaged, yet Keller Elementary exceeds expectations. In this budget, schools like this will be eligible for a performance reward. At the same time, in that same district, there are other schools that fail to meet expectations. Other districts like Madison, Beloit, Sheboygan, and West Allis/West Milwaukee have similar situations.

People in Madison like to think we have fabulous public schools, so it's rough seeing Madison grouped with those other places. And of course, people in Madison tend to loathe Governor Walker. Obviously, the liberal viewpoint is that if there's a problem with the public schools, more money should be given to those public schools, not diverted into private schools. Here's the discussion in the forum over at the Isthmus, where liberal Madisonians tend to talk amongst themselves (and where Meade injects a bit of the kind of diversity they don't celebrate). I love the way the separation-of-church-and-state topic is playing out. First:

Does it bother you that taxpayer money will be spent for sectarian religious instruction?

Someone else:

If my kid went to a school with overcrowded classrooms and wasn't getting the attention he or she needed for whatever reason, I wouldn't hesitate sending him to a Catholic school if I could for free. Would you? Would you put up with a crappy classroom just because you didn't want your kid to take a half-hour of Bible study each day? I don't know many parents who would in a similar situation....

A third person (boldface added):

I don't think anybody's really upset about vouchers to send kids to Catholic schools. The Catholic schools can't take many more kids, but they are run by local parishes and nuns with good intentions and without a profit motive. It's not foremost a constitutional issue but a quality one. We're upset about a bunch of profit-motive business types setting up private schools to make money for themselves by providing services that work poorly and exploit public funding the same way the University of Phoenix does with adult students. Why anybody thinks replacing so-called overpaid teachers with overpaid executives is an improvement beats me. And that's exactly what we'll get if we don't guard against it at every turn.

The lefties really hate business! Meade provides the comic pushback. Quoting "bunch of profit-motive business types":

But enough about the teachers' unions. School choice is coming to Madison. Choice is good.

"I successfully edited Wikipedia!"

Meade exclaims. It's his first time. It was over there in the page on The Gettysburg Address (which I linked to earlier today, as perhaps you noticed). His edit is in the third paragraph, which, before his edit, read:

Beginning with the now-iconic phrase "Four score and seven years ago," referring to the Declaration of Independence during the American Revolution in 1776, Lincoln examined the founding principles of the United States in the context of the Civil War, and memorialized the sacrifices of those who gave their lives at Gettysburg and extolled virtues for the listeners (and the nation) to ensure the survival of America's representative democracy, that the "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Meade took out the "the" before that last quote. Have you ever noticed that there's no "the" before "government" (even as there is a "the" before each of the 3 "people"s)?

... we here highly resolve... that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Do you see what a big difference a "the" would make in that sentence? Meade had gotten into a back-and-forth over at the Isthmus forum (a site dominated by typical Madisonians, i.e., left/liberals).

The topic was the 2d amendment and, more generally, what rights are. Responding to TheBookPolice who'd asserted that rights are "100% about the government telling people what they can and can't do," Meade said:

Thank you but you have that exactly backwards, TheBookPolice. Check your high school Civics textbook. The amendments in the Bill of Rights are all about protecting the people from the power of the government. I know that concept can be a little difficult for Liberals and Progressives to grasp, seeing as how they begin with a fundamental utopian assumption in government we trust. But government - even a democracy - can become corrupt, coercive, authoritarian, and tyrannical. So if you look at the text of, say, the 2nd amendment, you'll see that it is addressing the government, not the people. The people's right shall not be infringed. Infringed by the people? No, of course not. The right shall not be infringed by the government. Take a closer look at the entire "Bill of Rights" and I think you will see that the first ten amendments to the constitution are completely about restricting government from infringing the people's rights.

TheBookPolice dragged in the Gettysburg Address:

Abraham Lincoln described the government of the United States as being "of the people, for the people, and by the people." Sounds to me like we're all in this together. You on the other hand seem to treat the government as a panther stalking the outskirts of your jungle village, waiting for the opportunity to snatch a wandering child unawares.

Tell me: who makes up the government you fear so much?

And Meade came up with this "the" point, which I'd never thought about before:

That's just it, Police -- I don't fear the government at all. Thanks to the constitution. And thanks, in particular, to the first ten amendments.

Now take a closer look at the text of the Lincoln speech you alluded to. Notice: he does not put the article, "the" before "government" and yet he uses it each of the three times he repeats "people".

Let that sink in for a minute.

Lincoln was not talking about preserving the entity that is The Government, that might overstep its bounds and oppress us.  He was talking about preserving government by the people, that is, preserving democracy. Or that's how it's sunk in for me.

"So Meade, in your marriage, which one of you is the whore?"

A question asked in the webpages of Isthmus by Madison politico Stu Levitan.

Non-Madisonians may not know the name, but: "Stu Levitan has been a mainstay of Madison media and government for thirty-five years, a leader in both politics and the press since 1975. In addition to Books and Beats, Stu hosts Access: City Hall on the Madison City Channel and serves as chair of the Madison Community Development Authority and on the Madison Landmarks Commission. Since 1987, he has been a mediator/arbitrator for the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission."

Scroll up at the first link for the context, which is a discussion, initiated by Levitan, about the discovery that Madison sports heroine Suzy Favor Hamilton has been working as a call girl.

"The Brewers can't be saved" — wrote the Isthmus sportswriter on August 23d.

Jason Joyce wrote: "Deep into August, the Milwaukee Brewers are 10 games under .500 and 18 games out of first place in the National League Central." Etc. etc.

Meade began dogging him in the comments on August 24th:

I wonder if any St. Louis fans, exactly one year ago today, when the Cardinals were 10 1/2 games from winning a wild card, were writing articles titled "The Cards can't be saved."

The days have passed, and the comments thread over there has grown to 12 comments — all save one from Meade. The only one that isn't, on September 12th, says:

There is of course the fact that they added an extra wildcard this year. Without that where would the Brewers still very slim hopes stand? They'd have been eliminated already.

Which was a reason to maintain more baseball-style hope, not less, but they have to put it in a pessimistic way. (This is Madison, Wisconsin, and you know liberals are pessimists.) The Meade comments continue. The newest one is:

WCGB: 1.5

Six games over .500

L10: 9-1

STRK:W6

Paraprosdokian.

"I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long."

That's a Mitch Hedburg joke, and an example of paraprosdokian, "a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part." It's usually done for comic effect, but not always and not in the example that got me reading about paraprosdokian, "He ain't heavy, he's my brother."

"He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother," is the title of a song, which you probably know from the Hollies' 1969 recording. (The phrase itself seems to go back much further, perhaps to 1884.) I looked up "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother" because I couldn't remember who recorded it. (I was thinking The Moody Blues, for some reason.) And the subject came up because, over at the Isthmus forum, they're talking about what's happened to the notorious Wisconsin protester Segway Jeremy. There were reports that he was on his deathbed, and then some confusing contradictions, and somebody linked to this inane montage — "nice tribute" — which uses "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother" as the audio track.

It's mostly lefties over there in The Forum, though Meade likes to prod them with questions and jokes (which they either don't get or pretend not to get). Meade is skeptical of the beatification of Jeremy.

Trying to figure out what Moody Blues song I had confused with "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother," Meade came up with "Legend of a Mind" — which most people probably think is titled "Timothy Leary's Dead," that being the familiar lyric. Timothy Leary was not dead at the time, but there seems to be some LSD-influenced connection between getting high and being dead, as noted in this morning's post about The Beatles' "She Said She Said."

And now Meade's done a "Legend of a Mind" parody about the mystery of Segway Jeremy.

"Now that Tampa is out of harm's way, mostly from Isaac, I'm alarmed to see what might happen in New Orleans."

"Head's up, all you central Gulf Coasters!" says MadisonMan, in the comments on the Crist thread, and Meade points me to this map, showing the predicted storm path as of 11 EDT:



First, MadisonMan's syntax makes me see a joke I don't think he intended. "Now that Tampa is out of harm's way, mostly from Isaac..." Didn't he only mean to say "Now that Tampa is mostly out of harm's way from Isaac"? Or did he mean to say that Tampa is still in harm's way? The major harm aimed its way was Isaac, and that's now going elsewhere, but Tampa is nevertheless in the path of the approaching the GOP convention.

But, anyway, let's move on to those people who have thought it was acceptable and funny to joke about God taking aim at the Republican convention. For example, at the Isthmus forum, which I linked to in the Crist thread, a commenter using the pseudonym Henry Vilas said "I wonder if Pat Robinson will claim that God is sending a hurricane to Tampa in order to punish the GOP."

Notice that Vilas is himself thinking of the hurricane as God's punishment, but he dredges up "Robinson"[sic-- it's Robertson] to put the vile observation into the mouth of someone who is not a liberal. But liberals were not refraining from joking about God's wrath aimed at the GOP. Remember that Dana Milbank's column.

Of course, the liberals are only joking about God. God is a joke. Robertson was (presumably) genuinely wondering about the things a God he believes in might do to punish sinful human beings. I don't know which is worse, but if you care about sin — or good and evil — you should give priority to the things you do, not to whether other people are offending God (and how God is assessing and reacting to these various offenses). If a hurricane is coming, that's a serious matter, and real people are in danger. That's not great material for your political jokes, even though it just seems so delicious that a hurricane is was pointed at the GOP convention.

And, I know, I'm violating my own principle in saying that you should look to your own sins. So let me slink away and contemplate my own offenses against The Creator.

Democrats lose their majority in the Wisconsin senate!

After the Democrats just edged out the Republicans by winning one closely fought seat in last month's recall elections:

State Sen. Tim Cullen, D-Janesville, said Tuesday he plans to leave the Democratic caucus and may become an independent....

Cullen, who was among the 14 Democratic senators who left the state during the historic protests at the Capitol in 2011 but had sought compromise with GOP governor Scott Walker on collective bargaining, said he was insulted by not being named chairman of any Senate committees after the Democrats regain control of that chamber.

There are many paths to power. When one is cut off, another opens up.

Meade said: "They're all such sore losers!"

ADDED: This is being discussed over at the Isthmus forum (where Meade participates). I was interested in this remark by jjoyce:

Cullen has a right to be angry. He could have tubed the whole 14 thing easily. Some reports say he wanted to.

Now, "the whole 14 thing" refers to the Great Fleebagging of 2011. But "tubed"? I had to look it up in the Urban Dictionary. "Tube" is a mean way to say "vagina." Interestingly, "tubed" means "fucked." (I think it's interesting because sex slang doesn't normally put the vagina in the aggressively active role.) So Cullen... he coulda been a fleebag fucker.

Post-recall progressive regrets: We should have escalated the protests instead of ceding our ground to the Democratic Party.

Here's Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive, writing in Isthmus:

[T]he movement -- a real giant grassroots movement, which flooded the Capitol Square with more than 100,000 people.... began to disintegrate the moment the leaders (and who were they, exactly?) decided to pour everything into the Democratic Party channels rather than explore the full potential of the power that was latent but present in the streets back in February and March of 2011....

It was a mistake, Rothschild says, to retreat into the recall effort instead of fighting Governor Walker "with mass civil disobedience." Think of the "creative strategies" that were not tried:

The Teamsters with their 18 wheelers, whose support was so emboldening, could have driven down Interstate 90 and 94 at 45 mph all day long for a week's time to demonstrate that workers in Wisconsin weren't going to take this lying down.

Okay, let's be creative! Let's imagine what would have happened, if Teamsters with their 18 wheelers had driven down down Interstate 90 and 94 at 45 mph all day long for a week. Rothschild — he's so creative! — seems to imagine that the public would become enraged at Scott Walker and demand political change. That's the progressive fever dream.

I would have thought that the recall election was a reality slap in the face for progressives. But no, they plunge more deeply into a self-marginalizing fantasy, from which they cannot speak to ordinary people.

But I do agree with Rothschild about one thing: The Democratic Party appropriated the passion and idealism of the protesters and turned it into a hackish pursuit of partisan power. They sucked the life out of it, and the protesters should feel abused.

ADDED: About that Teamsters on I-90/I-94 protest: I love the way lefties totally forget about global warming and carbon footprints whenever anything distracts them

"I adore all the news agencies declaring #wirecall being too close to call. DUH! Did we expect anything else?!? #madvote" — a typical entry...

... on the Isthmus "live-blog" that came at 8:31p.m. last night. Isthmus is our local "alternative" newspaper, and the readership over there pervasively left-liberal — Madison style (which is to say they are people steeped in the cloying belief that they are the good people, the people who care about people... and loathe anything tinged with conservatism).

Isthmus had one of those "CoverItLive" gadgets embedded, and it picked up a steady stream, including lots of stuff redirected from Twitter, with more than one post per minute. The polls had closed at 8, at which point the news media had declared — based on exit polling — that it was too close to call. But at 9 pm, all the news media called it for Walker. Between 8:31 and 9:00, the actual vote was coming in, and we were seeing — in stark contrast to the exit poll — that Walker was getting 15 or 16 percentage points ahead of Barrett. So let's dip into the Isthmus feed and see how the confrontation with reality played out. I'm excerpting from the copious flow:

fivethirtyeight: Exit polls show a tie, but Walker's numbers look pretty decent so far in rural Wisconsin. Dems will need huge Milwaukee/Madison turnout. [via Twitter]

8:32...

isthmustdplive: RT @DrosWSJ: Early results are starting to trickle in. Time for everyone to speculate about vote trends that aren't there. #wivote #wirecall [via Twitter]

8:34....

teddynykiel: Large crowd growing in front of the Capitol chanting "People united will never be defeated." #madvote #WIrecall [via Twitter]

8:35...

andymoorewpt: "2 months ago if someone told me it was going to be a coin flip tonight, I wouldn't have believed them." ~Sen. Jon Erpenbach [via Twitter]

8:43...

jjoyce: RT @deborahziff: Fox News getting harrassed on square. "Hey FOX News, we hate you get outta here!" someone just yelled. #wirecall http: ... [via Twitter]

8:46...

WORTnews: On-air analysis: early returns are mostly rural areas, can't really start reading trends till more than 40% of results are in. #wirecall [via Twitter]

8:50...

sgirard9: The room quieted when Rachel Maddow called it for Walker. But many say it's too early to call #wirecall #madvote [via Twitter]

8:52...

MissPronouncer: Crowd cheers at results on big screen. Boo when they see Rep. Barca and fmr Sen Feingold interviewed at Barrett camp. #WiRecall [via Twitter]

8:53...

WORTnews: We have no idea how NBC came up with their projection of Walker winning #wirecall [via Twitter]

8:54...

andymoorewpt: Steam escaping here with Barrett.Room growing quiet. [via Twitter]

8:55...

News3David: There is a 'no way, we don't believe it' mood in conversations I'm overhearing right now at Barrett camp. #wirecall [via Twitter]...

8:59...

WKOW: CNN Projects Walker to Win Historic Recall Election. [via Twitter]

9:00...

news3jessica: Crowd chanting Hey hey goodbye song at Walker HQ #WIrecall [via Twitter]

9:00....

andymoorewpt: Surreal here with Barrett. Half the room laughing, partying, oblivious to other half watching TV with Walker projected winner. [via Twitter]

9:00...

millbot: Somewhat more subdued rendition of "Solidarity Forever" being sung on the square. #wirecall [via Twitter]

9:02...

IsthmusTDP: RT @zschultzWPT: Republican faithful try to start "this is what democracy looks like" chant. It didn't catch on. #wirecall [via Twitter]

9:05...

News3David: .@itsandychoi reporting live right now that there is a growing crowd on Madison's Capitol Square, some chanting 'Our House'. #wirecall [via Twitter]

9:06...

News3David: RT @jamiedupree: Madison Ward 41 goes 2,081 votes for Barrett to 95 votes for Walker [via Twitter]

9:08...

millbot: Well, it sure will be fun when the governor gets indicted, won't it? #wirecall [via Twitter]

9:10...

teddynykiel: Overheard one wide-eyed woman worried bc MSNBC called the race for Walker. She was contemplating going home. #madvote [via Twitter]

9:11...

deanrobbins: Rachel Maddow thinks this isn't a bad night for Obama, says he'll still easily take Wisconsin. #madvote [via Twitter]

9:14...

MSpicuzzaWSJ: Sen Jon Erpenbach says people in Milwaukee & Racine are still voting, adds that it is going to be a long night. [via Twitter]

9:14...

deanrobbins: Sarah Palin gloating on Fox News. Ick. #madvote [via Twitter]

9:17...

itsandychoi: Gathering by Lady Forward. Police say about 1,000 out protesting by square. #wirecall

9:18...

JackCraver: I discovered this in Waunakee last month: There are OBAMA/WALKER voters. They exist: http://bit.ly/Lp6xsZ [via Twitter]

9:21...

What do you say to the woman who consciously loathes Scott Walker, but has sexual dreams about him?

Well, the Isthmus advice columnist "Tell All" told her:

Clip out the sexiest Tom Barrett photos you can find in newspapers or campaign literature. Scatter them around your house, and save the best one for the bedroom. Look at it every night before you go to sleep. With any luck, your subconscious will do the rest by supplying you with a more suitable sexual partner in your dreams.

And then Meade stopped by the comments. Noting first her line "I should mention that I'm happily married, with an attractive husband," Meade said:

Man, talk about damning with faint praise! Dear Violated: First of all you have not been violated. You have been the violaTOR... of your marriage, of your husband's due respect, and of your own fantasies.



Photos of Tom Barrett? Tell All needs to turn in his newspaper-advice-columnist badge. And the last thing you need is to waste your time with a psychotherapist.

What you need to do is to practice sweet surrender to your husband so that, with any luck, he will discover his manhood and learn that what his wife and most heterosexual women want more than anything is to be sexually dominated by a man who will stand up and be strong, decisive, and confident.

Try this, Violated: Everyday, tell your husband that you approve of him, that you love everything about him, and that he has your open consent and carte blanche in your sexual relationship. Together, just the two of you, over and over again, watch scenes like this one from the movie Casablanca where Ilsa tells Rick that he will have to do the thinking for both of them.

Good luck, Violated. Try to give up thinking of yourself as a victim and remember, if things don't work out in your private love life, you will always have Scott Walker.

Background reading: a column from "Tell All" from April 4, 2009, titled "Should UW law prof Ann Althouse marry her commenter Meade?"

ADDED: Instapundit says: "MEH. CHICKS DIG THE BAD BOYS... In her measly little world, he’s the ultimate bad boy." Exactly.

"What do you think? I've resisted all the birther stuff for the last four years."

"But this looks like something else - something in the zone of Elizabeth Warren checking the box for Native American followed by unchecking the box."

Meade starts a conversation over at Isthmus (where they basically loathe him).

ADDED: The people over there in the Isthmus forum don't understand that Meade is quoting a brochure from Obama's literary agent. They think he's just bringing up the old "birther" controversy. The dumbness is deep.

"As his guy Scott Walker might say, while the rest of us were in church on Sunday, that's what Meade was up to."

The forum administrator over at Isthmus — "jjoyce" — starts a thread called "Meade being Meade," which (so far) mostly appears to be an attempt to defend the Isthmus's last-blogger-standing, Citizen Dave (who was once Madison's Mayor Dave (Cieslewicz)), who strains to crank out enough prose to suffice as the only blogger left . (They kicked out the brilliant but conservative David Blaska after a couple liberal bloggers left.)

Meade tends to comment — often as the only commenter — on Mayor Citizen Dave's blog — e.g., here — and Dave never responds. I guess he needs to crank out the next blog post so that whole blogging thing can appear to continue to be something that keeps happening at Isthmus, but as a result, you've got these belabored columns blog posts about some damned thing like Mayor Citizen Dave losing his luggage and then there'll be one comment, and it's Meade. Like Meade is the last word on everything Dave ever says.

Why doesn't anyone over there — e.g. Dave or Dave's presumably at least slightly numerous readers — pick up the thread? Why does the conversation go nowhere? Even jjoyce won't go there. He's got to start a separate thread in the forum to discuss the Problem of Meade. It's like Dave's is the lunch table no one will sit at.

"Turns out Allen West misspoke. He said Communist Party when he meant Congressional Progressive Caucus.'

"But really, what's the difference?" Oh, no! Meade is winding them up over at the Isthmus forum...

I have here in my hand a list of 78 card-carrying members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus....

Have you heard about the Online Underground-high-speed Railroad System or OURS and the Fugitive Non-Human Commodity Act?

If so, you've been reading the Isthmus forum discussion that began with Jason Joyce asking what Rick Santorum could have meant by the "grave moral wrong" of birth control. Kenneth Burns responded with the conventional snark: "It's that every sperm is sacred." Meade said:

How do you define "birth control", Jason? Does abortion qualify as birth control? How about late-term abortion? (You can google "late term abortion" and watch a video of one if you don't know what that is.)

That was inflammatory and distracting, but it highlighted the limit built into the term "contraception" that's missing from "birth control."

Attacks on Meade follow, including some weird sexism. Somebody calls him "Lawrence Elizabeth Meade." That commenter drags me in — even though I've never commented at Isthmus: "What's Mrs. Althouse's medical history on the subject?" (Note the sexism of using "Mrs." on a woman who has kept her maiden name.)

It's really hard to get people to focus on the question, which demands that people who don't agree with Santorum put themselves inside his head and understand how he experiences the idea that birth control is gravely wrong. It's especially hard when you introduce the actual policy question of whether people who believe it's a grave moral wrong should pay into an insurance fund that reimburses people who use it. Does the involvement in moral wrong carry over to that indirect connection to it? I would have said no, but Meade made the analogy to slavery:

Suppose Congress, in 1850, passed a law mandating every American citizen purchase group insurance to cover the loss of cargo ships. Including slave ships. Would you have been down with that?

Of course, people rankled at the analogy to slavery. Meade invited people to point out the flaws in the analogy, which they hadn't done, and said, "it's actually a very good analogy""

In fact, working with my slavery analogy, here is a hypothetical that might help. Jason with his struggle to understand why some people consider some acts to be "grave moral wrongs" while others do not:

Let's say that sometime in the future, northern states pass laws removing all restrictions on abortion while southern states strictly limit legal abortion to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. Technological innovations and advances have made it possible to save the lives of aborted fetuses - 20 weeks and older - and to bring them to term.

There develops a covert system of collecting the aborted fetuses from the northern states' clinics and safely transporting them to the south where pro-life activists in southern states then incubate, "birth", and raise those children to then have pro-life values. The network becomes known as the Online Underground-high-speed Railroad System or OURS. Pro-life activists who covertly rescue the fetuses from northern clinics become known as COWs, short for "Catchers Of the Wry".

It turns out that, in northern states, the biological parents of the fetuses learn of OURS and object to what they consider to be an infringement on their constitutional property rights and they want their property/progeny returned. With their political power, the northern states pass through Congress, as part of what is known as the Compromise of 2050, an act requiring the southern states to return the aborted (now) free-born children, declaring that all rescued fetuses be brought back to their masters... I mean, parents... I mean, pro-choice proprietary DNA-owning provider owners.

The act is called the Fugitive Non-Human Commodity Act.

Which side are you on? The North? Or the South?

"Back in business — Blaska!"

Announces Meade, telling Isthmus readers to bookmark the new blog, but it's Isthmus, so Meade's immediately smacked down by one commenter who assures everyone that Meade "will be dropping [Blaska's] opinions on [the Isthmus forum] like they are science at every opportunity, so I don't feel the need to bookmark his page." And then everyone switches to talking about some other blogger on the same site, and she's apparently a complete idiot.

Blaska was the conservative blogger at Isthmus not too long ago. But Isthmus lost a couple of its liberal bloggers left — Jack Craver (remember when he trashed me?) and Emily Mills (remember when she trashed me?) — and if they'd kept Blaska, there'd only have been one liberal (Citizen Dave) to offset the one conservative, and that wouldn't make sense in a Madison, Wisconsin "alternative" newspaper now, would it?

"Even if he has the proportions of a porn star..."

"... no intellectual woman with an ounce of self-respect would flop around in the mud with an imbecile like Meade."

The people over in the Isthmus forum are trying to understand Meade.

ADDED: That's from page 5 of a thread that begins with the question why the forum — called "Daily Page" forum or "TDPF" — doesn't seem to have any participants who are "non-white." By page 3, there's some bizarre race-baiting about intelligence, in which — you figure out why — it is demanded that Meade admit he is less intelligent than Barack Obama.

ALSO: If you really want to go deeply into the background here, the subject of the thread "TDPF: whites only" is a play on an earlier thread "South Carolina GOP: whites only," which began "South Carolina's population is nearly 30% black. Yet in yesterday's voting, blacks made up approximately 1% of the electorate. It's remarkable how little discussion there is about this...." In that conversation, Meade tells the good liberals of the forum that they are displaying "covert racism," and much defensive posturing ensues.

"What about low IQ and Liberal beliefs? Did the study link those to anything?"

"Say, gullibility? Conformity? Susceptibility to cults of personality? Unhealthy narcissism? Vanity? Shouting down governors? Locking one's own head to gallery railings? Chanting? Drumming? Occupying? Incessant blowing of vuvuzelas? Did those questions make it into the study?"

Isthmus ousts its conservative blogger, David Blaska.

Pathetic!

Blaska's a terrific blogger, but it was obvious that the lefty readers of our left-leaning newspaper's website couldn't handle a sharp point of view humorously challenging their pat opinions.

From the link, which goes to an Isthmus discussion forum: "Firing Blaska was a candy-assed move. Isthmus is [a] rag. Own it." Ha ha. Meade wrote that.

"I don't really want to get into the sexual assault stuff at all."

"What I'm amazed by is how these alders apparently pack away the booze."

So begins a forum, over at Isthmus, about "the Solomon situation." At the factual level, this story is very intra-Madison. (A city clerk staffer accused Madison Alderman Brian Solomon of sexual assault, the D.A. declined to charge him, and there's a detail-filled police report.) I'm wary of sending you over there (to another Isthmus forum) unless you're very intra-Madison, but I'm fascinated by a few things: how Democrats close ranks around one of their own, how much these people drink together, and the hypocrisy about feminist matters. There's some good participation by Meade, pointing out how differently Democrats treated conservative Justice David Prosser last summer, when he was accused of "choking" his female colleague.

The recall Scott Walker election will cost the state $650,000 — "with potentially millions of dollars more in costs for local governments."

They don't have the signatures yet to force the election, and the question of the cost of the election has probably just about zero effect on whether anyone signs the petition:

Top Republicans say they're assuming recall organizers will get the signatures they need and are putting their energies into winning the recall election that would follow. They said Walker and Republican lawmakers solved a $3 billion budget gap over two years without relying on tax increases and shouldn't lose their offices to a "baseless partisan power-grab."

The linked article (in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) describes the signature effort, which includes a "group of about 80 volunteers... working in shifts of six to eight people to collect signatures on a series of high-traffic Madison streets that are wide enough to let a steady stream of cars pull over." They pull in an average of 400 signatures a day, we're told. My arithmetic says that "steady stream" is 1 car every 10 minutes... not counting the cars that stop but don't sign. Apparently, some pro-Walker drivers stop to waste the volunteers' time, yell at them, and even — in one case — rip up a petition. (Ripping up a petition is criminal, and the volunteers take down the license plate number and report the crime to the police.)

Meanwhile, some anti-Walkerites are worried the signature drive will fall short.

I fear the recall is going to fall short. People are not outside in public areas in cold months. People stay home, or they drive to grocery stores, theaters and shopping malls. The problem is that this is private property, controlled by generally pro-Walker business owners.

Maybe a door-to-door effort will be necessary. But that is unpleasant, hard work.

Unpleasant, hard work? Why?

The best hope, as I see it, is door-to-door. But that takes great courage, this is a volatile issue. People in smaller cities will be reluctant to rock the local boat. There are violent threats in seemingly safe public spaces, better bring some security door-to-door.

Bring some security?! Over at the link — at the Isthmus — Meade writes:

Security? What?!! You mean like you're going to show up at my door with two big bruisers standing behind you? Wait. Believe me - that will not get you invited in.

Look: just ring my doorbell politely. I'll ask you to come in. We'll sit down by the fire and I'll brew a big pot of tea. I'll bring you your nice cup of tea - Red Zinger, Sleepytime, whatever you choose - and then I'll listen very politely as you answer each and every one of my questions.

Of course, it's the Isthmus, Madison's weekly tabloid, where the assumption is that anyone not on the left is stupid, so Meade's humor goes undetected:

You can hardly expect a group of people to spend time with you, they have to keep moving. Try Dane County Social Services if you require a case worker.

Meade:

I know, I know - time is money.

*sigh*

Back in my day, we took the time to dialog with people. And share feelings. That was back when we got Clean For Gene. I know - a long long time ago.