Perry showcases his lack of smarts

Another night, another network, another mediocre and unimpressive debate performance from Rick Perry.

ORLANDO – The first line of Rick Perry’s campaign obituary may have been drafted Thursday night: He got in too late.

It’s not quite time for his camp to panic but in his third debate in a month – nearly as many as he’s done in the entire decade he’s served as Texas governor – Perry demonstrated why so few presidential candidates who parachute into the race mid-campaign win the nomination.

Perry gave a foreign policy answer that offered no indication he’s thought about how to respond to threats against America, twice bobbled attacks on Mitt Romney’s well-documented departures from conservative orthodoxy, called immigration hard-liners heartless and, in what was otherwise his best answer of the evening, stretched the truth in the course of delivering a well-rehearsed line about why he mandated pre-teen girls to be vaccinated against HPV.

Then again, considering Perry's propensity to joke about his lack of smarts, should anyone be surprised that Perry is incapable of hanging with guys like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich?

In some ways Perry is the perfect candidate for the know-nothing component of the political right - a guy of average to below-average intelligence who thinks it's funny he was a bad student and in most instances prefers blind faith to reason.

America, however, deserves better.

Darling, Grothman call for Taylor's removal from JFC

I can't believe it's taken this long for anyone to say this out loud.

Co-chair Alberta Darling said Wednesday morning that Dem Sen. Lena Taylor should be removed from the Joint Finance Committee, calling her behavior in meetings disrespectful.

Darling, R-River Hills, was on conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes' program to talk about protester tactics in Madison. She said the disrespect shown by protesters has spilled over to Taylor, D-Milwaukee.

"She doesn't feel like she has to respect the voice and the opinions of the chair," Darling said. "She can call people liars. This level of disrespect for the process, disrespect for rules of law and disrespect for the process of doing legislation for the people of Wisconsin is a concern."

The thing about Lena Taylor is that she's not dumb - although she's not nearly as smart or amazing as she thinks she is.  She's always had the potential to be a good legislator.  But so often, she chooses instead to be the second coming of Gwen Moore; the loud, boorish, black woman who thinks if she just talks loudly enough, somehow she's effectively representing her constituents.

A little more Barbara Jordan and a little less Sheila Jackson Lee wouldn't hurt Taylor's cause.

McCotter out

Truthfully, I kinda forgot he was running.

Michigan Rep. Thad McCotter, whose long-shot campaign for the GOP presidential nomination never gained attention or traction — and only 35 votes at the Ames Straw Poll, despite his presence there — ended his campaign on Thursday and endorsed Mitt Romney, his New Hampshire campaign spokesman confirmed Thursday.

A tax isn't a tax if the poors pay it.

So sayeth Paul Ryan.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said on Sunday that House Republicans would oppose President Barack Obama's payroll tax cuts for both employers and employees, arguing that the policy had already failed to provide a sufficient boost to the economy. "It hasn't worked," Ryan said, suggesting the current temporary tax cut should be allowed to expire, which will amount to a 50 percent tax hike on workers making less than $106,000 per year.

He also said he opposes the president's proposal to require millionaires to pay the same tax rate as the middle class, known as the Buffett plan. "Class warfare might make for good politics, but it makes for rotten economics," Ryan said...

Ryan, while backing a payroll tax hike, nevertheless said that tax hikes cannot be part of the deficit-cutting proposal that the super committee comes up with. As part of his explanation, Ryan made it clear that he sees no difference between raising taxes proactively and allowing tax breaks to expire. "You already have a $1.5 trillion tax increase coming in 2013," he said, referring to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts that were extended by President Obama for two years. Ryan's reference to the expiration as an "increase" gives greater weight to his willingness to let tax cuts for the middle class expire.

In case you didn't follow...

Letting temporary income tax cuts lapse that primarily benefit the wealthy, that's a "tax increase" and "class warfare."

Letting temporary payroll tax cuts lapse that primarily benefit the poor, that's just getting rid of a policy that "hasn't worked."

I think the Democrats do a lot of stupid things, but seriously - this is the guy the GOP wants me to listen to on economic issues?

Talkin' about Lena Taylor

LL: Is there even an industry in Lena Taylor's district that is capable of being boycotted?

RS: Is Wisconsin Shares fraud an industry?

LL: You should cut and paste those last two lines into a blog post.

Liar, liar, pants on fire

So on Friday, Cindy Archer says she's not a part of the ongoing John Doe investigation regarding caucus scandal-like activity in Scott Walker's county executive office.

And today, the FBI raided her house.

Madison - About a dozen law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, visited the home of a former top aide to Gov. Scott Walker on Wednesday.

The home on Dunning St. on Madison's east side is listed in property records as belonging to Cynthia A. Archer, who was until recently deputy administration secretary to the Republican governor.

"We're doing a law enforcement action," one of the FBI agents told a reporter.

He didn't identify himself or provide further comment but confirmed that he and three others were with the FBI and that sheriff's deputies were also involved.

The raid on Archer's home coincides with a growing John Doe investigation in Milwaukee County, started last year after the disclosure that another Walker staffer at the county had posted political commentary on websites while on her job in the county executive's office. Archer said in an email Friday to the Journal Sentinel that she was "not involved in any way in the John Doe investigation."

This sort of reminds me when Brian Burke and members of his staff were taken down for illegal campaign activity leading up to the 2002 election. Burke's office was just around the corner from ours. Anyway, lots of denials from the Burke office leading up to a workday when, mysteriously, all the Burke staff were out. A strange occurrence, since he was the Co-Chair of JFC at the time and had like half a dozen staffers. What are the odds they'd all be gone on a non-holiday?

Turns out that was the day the investigators showed up to help themselves to the office.

I don't think there's any question of wrongdoing here. I think in the end, the only questions will be who was doing it, how much was being done, and how far up the food chain did people know it was happening.

Thus far, the Walker administration is handling Cindy Archer with all the skill and finesse they showed off in dealing with Brian Deschane. Does someone in Walker's camp actually think moving Archer from a $124k a year job at DOA to an almost-$100k job at DCF is the equivalent of wiping the fingerprints off the doorknob?

Given how things are trending, maybe they should've transferred her to DOC instead.

Out of the old, into the new

Reid Ribble's on the move.

U.S. Rep. Reid Ribble has left his House district.

The freshman congressman recently moved out of the apartment he had been renting in the 8th Congressional District and returned to the home he owns in Sherwood, several miles outside the district's boundary.

But his district is being redrawn so it will include his current residence beginning in 2013.

"The Ribbles have owned the (Sherwood) home since the 1990s," confirmed spokesman Ashley Olson. "It's currently where they live."

Who the hell cares? There's no residency requirement to serve in Congress outside of living in the same state that you're representing. Not only in Ribble not breaking any rules, he's not even bending them.

WEDC picks over the remains

Nothing says effective economic development like meeting with companies after they file for bankruptcy.

A day after one of central Wisconsin's largest employers filed for Chapter 11 protection, company leaders are working with local and state lawmakers to set up a meeting to discuss the situation.

Miamisburg, Ohio-based NewPage Corp., which employs about 1,700 people at its paper mills in Wisconsin Rapids, Biron and Stevens Point, had been a topic of discussion in Madison weeks before the company announced Wednesday's Chapter 11 filing, said state Sen. Julie Lassa, D-Stevens Point.

"I talked to (Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.) CEO (Paul) Jadin right away, and he had already been reaching out to company officials," said Lassa, whom Gov. Scott Walker appointed to the board of the public-private agency that replaced the state Department of Commerce...

"We really can't do a whole heck of a lot right now until we've found out what they need," said state Rep. Scott Krug, R-Wisconsin Rapids.

Wine and wickets?

What, are the polo ponies on vacation?

If you want to score points with Gov. Scott Walker and his wife, Tonette, but aren't sure how, here's the answer:

Wine and wickets.

On Sept. 22, the governor and first lady will hold a private reception and croquet tournament at the governor's mansion from 5 to 7 p.m. to raise money to help rehab the Maple Bluff facility.

Attendees can donate anywhere from $50 to $1,000 to the mansion's nonprofit foundation. Those who drop a grand get a "private reception, private tour, recognition on the invitation, signage and acknowledgment at the event, and admission and (croquet) tournament entry for two."

Fundraising invitations went out recently to scores of Madison lobbyists, female lawmakers, neighbors of the mansion, GOP campaign contributors, leading business officials and friends of the first couple. Some 1,800 people received an invite.

Look, I get the whole idea of raising private funds to restore whatever needs to be restored at the executive residence. I don't even care that the event is going to be dominated by lobbyists. But doesn't croquet and wine on the lawn create an awfully elitist image for a guy who spent his campaign feigning populism and scrawling unintelligible messages on brown paper bags? What about ladder golf or cornhole and a fine selection of craft beers brewed in Wisconsin?

Send in the clown

Don't bother, she's here.

Two Democratic state representatives from Madison are jumping into the race for Congress now that U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin is getting into the race for U.S. Senate.

Rep. Kelda Helen Roys announced her candidacy in an email Tuesday morning, and Rep. Mark Pocan will announce his plans at a 10 a.m. news conference in front of the sign shop he owns.

Pocan has already gone live with his website, which lists a host of endorsements. Three unions, five legislators from Dane County, 12 Dane County supervisors, 10 Madison aldermen and six Madison School Board members are backing Pocan.

Roys' website does not yet include endorsements.

Roys will be pursuing the endorsements of those who like hearing her whiny, exasperated, sanctimonious little voice constantly bitch about procedure. "Mr. Speaker, come on, we just want a right to have our same three arguments repeated over and over for eleven hundred hours. Why are you gaveling me down? That's not very nice."

Yeah, she'll be effective in D.C.

Say what you want about Pocan's ideology, but he's smart, he works hard, he knows how to work across the aisle. In other words, he's a good elected official.

The only thing I can see throwing a wrench in Pocan's gears is if Jon Erpenbach and his free pass (or another suburban Democrat) were to get in the race. Erpenbach could try to win with the strange bedfellows combination of moderates, traditional Democrats, and Republicans who are sane enough to acknowledge that the primary in that race is the general. If Roys gets to 15 percent, that moves the finish line into the low 40's.

It's not an impossible scenario. Rick Phelps and Joe Wineke split 62% of the primary vote in 1998, when Baldwin edged through with just 37% of the vote. Some people are inclined to see Baldwin as an institution, but in reality she won the '98 primary by 1,600 votes. Had either Phelps or Wineke not run, the other would likely have won comfortably.

Even though the 2nd district has been redrawn subsequently (and will be redrawn yet again for next year), there's still room for someone running as a conventional Democrat to knock off someone running as a progressive, especially if the progressives are going to fragment their base. I suppose the question is whether Erpenbach is willing to focus a congressional campaign in that direction, or whether the events of the last eight months are going to send him diving headlong into the Walker-bashing progressive mud because that's what the base wants.

Napolitano suffers acute case of common sense

Where'd this come from?

Air travelers will eventually be able to keep their shoes on to pass through security, but the restrictions on carrying liquids on board are likely to remain in place for some time, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a POLITICO Playbook breakfast Tuesday.

“We are moving towards an intelligence and risk-based approach to how we screen,” Napolitano told Mike Allen during a morning forum at the Newseum. “I think one of the first things you will see over time is the ability to keep your shoes on. One of the last things you will [see] is the reduction or limitation on liquids.”

What a novel concept. An intelligence and risk-based approach? Does this mean we're going to stop treating 78-year-old grannies from Iowa and 28-year-old men traveling on Saudi passports as though they're equally likely to blow up a plane? And if so, why couldn't that have been the goal all along?

West Allis mayor denounces neo-Nazi rally

Interesting.

West Allis - Mayor Dan Devine and organizers of an anti-Nazi counter-rally criticized the neo-Nazi group that will stage a rally here Saturday, and urged opponents of the racist group to join their non-violent protest.

The National Socialist Movement is calling its action Saturday afternoon a "rally in defense of white America," and it's staging it on a public plaza right in front of West Allis City Hall.

Someone should tell them to hold their event in New Berlin. A community that hates blacks, poor people, and teachers is surely a fertile recruiting ground for groups that showcase their ignorance.