Huge turnout at the Racine Tea Party rally yesterday.

And James Norton took some great photographs, including this one of Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch. And this one of Paul Ryan. (I don't know... I seem to enjoy pictures of right-wingers flinging their hands in the air.)

Here's an article about that rally (which drew about 4,000 people).

Noting the national prominence of the recall election, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan said: “You know what? On Tuesday we save Wisconsin, and on Nov. 6, Wisconsin saves America.... This recall, it doesn’t make any sense ... what governor or legislator will ever take on these reforms if the recall succeeds?”

Ryan also said of Democratic recall challengers Tom Barrett, Mahlon Mitchell and John Lehman: “They’re not even offering another solution. They’re not saying how they would fix our problems a different way.”

Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch — who faces a recall election on June 5th — makes a great joke, apparently by accident..

Christian Schneider reports from a Tea Party rally in Caledonia, Wisconsin:

Kleefisch, who is facing a recall challenge on Tuesday from Madison firefighter Mahlon Mitchell, began her fiery speech by invoking David and Goliath. She likened the “big union bosses from out of state” to Goliath, accusing them of coming to Wisconsin to “pick a fight with David.” Kleefisch pointed out that in the story, David had five stones, then rattled off a number of the reforms Governor Scott Walker enacted, calling them her “stones.”

Pausing briefly, Kleefisch raised her voice, and said, “Our opponents, despite their money and their muscle, don’t have the stones!” After a few seconds of stunned laughs and cheers, she continued. “I was in the middle of a sentence,” she cautioned. “Our opponents don’t have the stones to move Wisconsin forward like you do,” she clarified.

Later, Kleefisch would tell me that her timely pause wasn’t intentional. “I was in the middle of telling a Bible story and people just started laughing. I can’t explain it,” she said.

Did Kleefisch intend/notice her own joke?
	It was totally planned.
	It was accidental but she noticed it and pretended she didn't get it.
	It was accidental and she didn't even get it when nudged to see it.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: I need to expand the permutations of the first option:

Did Kleefisch intend/notice her own joke?
	It was totally planned and she understood it all along and pretended she didn't.
	It was planned, but not by her, and she got it later but pretended she didn't.
	It was planned, but not by her, and she never got it.
	It was accidental but she noticed it and pretended she didn't get it.
	It was accidental and she didn't even get it when nudged to see it.
pollcode.com free polls

"The outcome of Wisconsin’s recall election will not just decide this state’s leanings on matters of budget, taxes and policy..."

"... and the ultimate trajectory of Gov. Scott Walker’s fast-rising political prospects. It will also send a message about a larger fight over labor in this country, and whether voters are likely to reject those who cut collective bargaining rights, as Mr. Walker did here last year...."

A slide show at the NYT about the Wisconsin recall. There's also a long article, but the key text is in the slide show captions, and it's mostly stuff you know if you haven't been avoiding news of the recall. Nice dynamic photo of Bobby Jindal, with Walker and Kleefisch at photo #6. (Kleefisch, who looks gorgeous at the left edge of the photo, is not identified in the caption.)

Pro-Walker signage.

At Saturday's Tax Day rally, as photographed by Meade:



That's actually David Blaska, by the way. (Should we be repurposing the female candidate's name like that? Doesn't it make it harder to bitch about Sly mocking Rebecca Kleefisch?)

I don't know who this is, but I like the composition:



And I like this composition and don't know who this guy is, who looks like he's in more of a relationship with me than he really is:



Meade says I backed up into him, which accounts for the composition.

By the way, lots of people came up to me and asked me if I was Ann Althouse, and I invariably confessed that I was (and am). They all said they read the blog and liked it or thanked me for it, and none of them said "Where's Meade?," which made me realize all the more that those people at those other rallies who come up to me and say "Where's Laurence?" are really creepy.

"I'd like to finish the week without Scott's dick in my ear, but until captain douche-nozzle is recalled..."

"I'll drink and stew and become more resolute in my hate directed at this prick."

A sample of the discourse over in the Isthmus forum, where Madisonians bemoan the newly signed Wisconsin law that repealed the 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act.

MEANWHILE: In the comments section of last night's post "The Democrats' War on Women," a couple commenters engage in sexist wordplay about Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (who, like Walker, faces recall). A commenter referred to "Walker and his 'minions'" and chickenlittle quipped "What about all the filly minions like Kleefisch? Do you want to filet them too?" and leslyn said "How do you filet a filly??" This portrayal of a woman as meat called to mind the infamous Hustler magazine cover (showing a woman's body fed through a meat grinder). I said:

"How do you filet a filly??"

Said, about Rebecca Kleefisch, by a female commenter who probably regards herself as a feminist. That image is one of sexual violence.

You compare an adult woman to a juvenile animal. You refer to slicing into her dead (animal) body, prepping her for cooking.

But the woman you revile is conservative, so maybe you didn't notice.

If you think you are a feminist, you are a fake one, really a lefty or a Democrat, and your partisan politics comes first.

Go stand over there will Bill Clinton.

Leslyn defended herself this way:

Oh for goodness sake, Althouse, "how do you filet a filly" was A PLAY ON WORDS on CHICKENLITTLE'S comment. Which you'd have recognized were you not humorless.

And get off the "feminist" rant already. To use a METAPHOR, you jump both sides of the fence.

My response:

I saw the joke. That is was a joke is irrelevant to my point.

Would you like me to Google "sexist jokes" for you?

Try making racist jokes out in public and see how far "it was humor" gets you.

Picture a filleted young horse. Picture a woman in a similar condition. Picture a particular named woman in that condition.

Now, is that funny?

Remember when Rush Limbaugh portrayed Sandra Fluke as a prostitute and said we should have sex tapes of her on the internet?

How funny was that?

Now... go on with your explanations about why you are really not a hypocrite.

Alternatively, concede. It might be the better option.

Being a feminist is hard. You have to be consistent. Take the challenge.

Sarah Palin weighs in on the Scott Walker recall election.

At her Facebook page:

I look at the far Left’s assault on Wisconsin and I say, “Are you kidding?” As an outsider (albeit an admitted Green Bay fan with family roots in Chippewa Falls), I join millions of Americans watching the political shenanigans in Wisconsin. I am torn between just chuckling at these radical liberal yahoos trying to oust an intelligent administration that is fulfilling its promises, or raising a fist in disgust at people sitting on their thumbs while Governor Walker and Lt. Governor Kleefisch get thrown to the wolves....

In the Wisconsin rotunda, high school students chant "We're with Walker" and drown out the anti-Walker "Solidarity Singers."

I missed this one. It happened last Thursday. I guess I'm not covering the "Wisconsin protests" story with sufficient vigilance! Blah! It never ends. Anyway, tons of teenagers were in Madison for the big high school basketball tournament. They came from all over the state, drastically tipping the political balance. As Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op reports it (and I'm getting to this belatedly, via Prof. Jacobson, via Instapundit):

On Thursday March 15, 2012 the afternoon Solidarity Sing Along was taken over by a large group of supporters from Lutheran High School in Sheboygan...

Shouts of “LHS” and “Stand with Walker” thundered through the rotunda and was met with wide approval from the LHS supporters. One student entered the circle to mock and taunt the singers with dance moves.

Taunting with dance moves! There's video, but it doesn't include the dance-taunt, which I can only imagine. What would it be, some basketball-madness-Walker-loving hula?



Ha ha. I love the way Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op — with its ability to detect dance mockery — fails to notice the students singing along with "Solidarity Forever" and making it horribly off key. Maybe the Co-op thinks the Solidarity Singers are always that badly out of tune. That's so sad for the folks who so diligently gather day after day to sing with their clenched fists thrust aloft.

The Solidarity Sing Along remained calm and peaceful throughout the ordeal and eventually moved outside to continue singing while the rotunda erupted in approval.

That's written as if the singers have a prior claim on the public space. It's speaking as if the singers were giving a planned performance to an assembled audience that wants to listen. For example, when Sarah Palin spoke at the Capitol last April, there was an assembled crowd eager to hear her, and the anti-Walker protesters did everything they could to boo and shout and frustrate everybody who wanted to hear:



At 4:40, my edited video, shows, among those who are actively booing, John Nichols — of The Nation and author of "Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street" — and John “Sly” Sylvester. (Sly is the radio host who has "outrageously accused GOP lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch of performing 'fellatio on all the talk-show hosts in Milwaukee' and sneered that she had 'pulled a train.'")

Andrew Breitbart was there that day too:

As I took to the stage, the shouting from those trying to disrupt the Tea Party intensified. Inarticulate shouting becomes their last weapon as their policies crumble.

Also shouted down that day — a 14-year-old girl: "One of the chants during her speech is 'Go home! Go home! Go home!'"

At the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op blog post, there's some good discussion in the comments. Someone called Sam says:

Why do you think it’s alright for the protesters to give their opinion, but not alright for any other opinion to be given? I didn’t hear any mocking or taunting, only the two chants.

Tyler says:

It is SUCH a crime to celebrate a victory from the first time LHS has ever been at state. We had a right to be there just as much as the singers were. How do you think some of us feel when we try to live our lives and are being pestered by “Recall Walker” activists? You can’t walk down the block in Madison without being talked to by someone. We weren’t there to be political or anything, we were there to celebrate our team. The singers just happened to be there at the same time.

Josh says:

We were taunting and harrassing? I was called a facist, told my savior was a homosexual, and called ignorant and stupid, all within like, 15 minutes. And we were harrassing and taunting? By saying LHS, and showing our support for our governor? Really?

RanDomino replies:

Who put them up to it?

Also, Jesus was gay, and fuck Scott Walker.

Kay says:

Let me just tell you that the people from LHS were invited there and indeed got a permit to be there. They never said anything wrong. They just said “stand with walker” and “LHS” to celebrate their basketball team on their state victory. I never heard ANYTHING bad thing come out of one of their mouths. They also did nothing to harass any of the protesters. It’s funny because Scott Walker did more for everyone than the protesters are nagging about. Please get some jobs. It’s not going to do anything for you guys if you stand in the middle of the Capitol building singing songs. And also, if you aren’t happy about our governor or the way we run our state, please leave. We don’t need any more hate in this world.

God bless you all!

And God bless Sheboygan Lutheran High School, which won the state championship, with a brilliant 3-pointer by Sam Dekker, who's coming to the University of Wisconsin, where he is already one of our very favorite individuals!

Back to the Co-op comments. James says:

I love how these protesters flatter themselves by thinking that the students were there to cheer or taunt them, when really the students and LHS crowd had no idea the solidarity singers were going to be there. And if these singers can sing their opinion, it is certainly fair that other people can come to the capitol and voice their support for our governor as well.

Tell me about it. Last time I ventured among the protesters, I was taunted and harassed, as I walked, ostensibly alone. I was asked where my husband was and "Who's going to save you when you get attacked?" And a year ago, of course, I received notice that the city of Madison was "OCCUPIED" by people who "have the numbers" and have "revoked" my "city of Madison privileges":

Did you really think this could go on forever? That you could sit on the steps of our house, walk the streets of our city, lie about us to strangers, tell gun-toting rednecks from out of state and the Northwoods how depraved and deserving of punishment we are all while maintaining plausible deniability for any of the consequences that your actions might cause?

I was told "WE WILL FUCK YOU UP" by people who were going to come to my home to harass me, and given a list of shops and restaurants where these people supposedly worked, and I was no longer permitted to go:

We will Walker you straight out of the place whenever you show up. We are at every coffee shop on State, open to close, all the time. We will hang up wanted posters of you everywhere you like to go. We will picket on public property as close to your house as we can every day. We will harrass the ever loving shit out of you all the time. Campus is OCCUPIED. State street is OCCUPIED. The Square is OCCUPIED. Vilas, Schenk's Corners, Atwood, Willy Street – Occupied, Occupied, Occupied, Occupied. Did you really think it was all about the Capitol? Fuck the Capitol, we are the CITY.

But folks from the Northwoods and elsewhere in the state were in town last week. It was all about basketball and wholesome fun in the capital city, where everyone in the state belongs. Especially Sam Dekker — whatever his politics. From what I've seen, the University of Wisconsin is a huge place, full of people who care more about sports than politics. So don't hesitate to come here, sports fans, Walker fans, and everybody else. We need you! We need more air in this musty old cocoon.

"Lessons From Wisconsin: What happens when you take on the public sector unions and win? You get a better state."

An interview with Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, who's impressively articulate. I was watching this video with Meade, and he said: "That's the next Governor of Wisconsin."