Brew City Brawler

The culture of life demands death!

John McAdams, a rightwing poli sci prof at Marquette University, has an article in the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute's magazine Wisconsin Interest titled "Wisconsin should have the death penalty."

As one expects from anything connected with the WPRI, this paper is full of holes. If time allows, the Brawler will return to them. But this particular passage, purportedly refuting the argument by death penalty opponents that the state might wrongfull execute someone, sticks out:

...Death penalty opponents will argue that it doesn't matter if [the number of innocents on death row is] inflated. Any innocent people on death row, or even one innocent person executed, they airily reply, it's "too many." But most public policies have some negative consequences, and indeed often these involve the death of innocent people -- something that can't be shown to have happened with the death penalty in the modern era. Just wars kill a certain number of noncombatants. When the FDA approves a new drug, some people will quite likely be killed by arcane and infrequent reactions. The magnitude of these consequences matters. The public, in fact, seems to get this.

John: Countries -- unless they're led by George Bush -- only go to war reluctantly and with great reason because of the reason you cite. People who get killed by taking a new drug are warned they face dangerous side effects. They take the drug voluntarily.  How you can compare that situation to someone being wrongly thrown into death row I have no idea.

This does call to mind a passage from the gospels.

The disciples asked, "Teacher, shall the state administer the death penalty even if it's unknown whether it works and innocents may die?" And Jesus said, "Yea, verily, one must break some eggs if he wants to make an omelet."

Jessica gets lost on the money trail

The Brawler wonders if the movie "All the President's Men" inspired Jessica McBride to enter the salt mines of journalism. To be sure, the Brawler doubts Jessica would have seen any problem with the Nixon Administration's criminal activities. ("But he's the president! We're at war with the communists! Why not just hand over the keys to the White House to General Giap?")

But the Brawler suspects the words "Follow the money" ran through Jessica's head when she posted this item raising alarums about Doyle getting money from an unnamed "tribal leader with Abramoff ties."

She links to this story on the Wisconsin Democracy campaign blog, which tells us this:

Michael Chapman, the former chairman of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and a contributor to Governor Jim Doyle's re-election campaign, helped disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff line up a key tribal client and received more than a quarter of a million dollars for his trouble.

Chapman played a role in getting Abramoff together with members of the Agua Caliente tribe of Palm Springs, California, including arranging an introductory meeting. The tribe eventually hired Abramoff as a lobbyist and paid him and associate Michael Scanlon $10 million in fees.

Chapman reportedly received $271,000 in payments – $171,000 from Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig, and $100,000 from Scanlon's Capitol Campaign Strategies.

All right, so this guy was a greedhead who made an introduction that enabled Abramoff to rip off an Indian tribe. The Brawler concedes this was a tie. But how bad was it? What kind of plotting was he involved in?

Working harder than he suspects Jessica did, the Brawler clicked another link to the story the Wisconsin Democracy blog based its report on.

Here the Brawler learned this:

The 373-page report does not focus on Chapman, but does devote several pages to his efforts. Overall, the report says that with regard to Abramoff and Scanlon collecting tens of millions of dollars from Indian tribes, "without doubt, the depth and breadth of their misconduct was astonishing." It does not accuse Chapman of any misconduct.

Not accused of misconduct!

So Doyle received money from a guy who introduced Abramoff to a tribe but who was not accused of any misconduct. Rev up the scandal alarm!

You'll note that the Brawler -- like Jessica -- did not mention the amount that Chapman contributed. Jessica did not because it would undermine her story -- or maybe because typing at 1:16 a.m. she was too tired to think straight. But the Brawler held back the information for comic effect.

The amount Chapman doled out to Doyle was (drumroll)............. $325.

This is the latest example of why the Brawler supports public funding of campaigns. Because truly the state of pay for play in Wisconsin is terrible.

Speaking of comic effect, this is the Brawler's favorite sentence from Jessica's opus:

The only person in the guv race who received money from an Abramoff associate: Jim Doyle.

Oh, man. Jessica: Last the Brawler checked, Tom Delay was an actual associate of Abramoff. And he gave Green 100 times the amount Chapman gave Doyle. The Brawler seems to recall another Green-Abramoff connection.

Why is Jessica a journalism instructor?

You can't be Catholic & pro-death penalty

The Philippines abolishes the death penalty.

The Vatican cheers:

Papal Nuncio Fernando Filoni, the Vatican's envoy to Manila, early this week praised the Philippine government for moving to outlaw capital punishment and taking "this step toward the culture of life."

Will Mark Green take that step and oppose the advisory referendum?

Xoff took on this issue in May, after bishops Morlino and Dolan took Doyle to task over the use of embryonic stem cells in research.

UPDATE: Greetings visitors from dad29! As evidenced by David's comment below, the Brawler does admit arguments on his blog.

Dad: I honestly have no idea why you haven't been able to post a comment. Clearly David and others below have done so. If it was the email requirement that was holding you back, I've taken that down since reading your post. Because I care!

Cordially,

The Brawler

Mac Attack

The Brawler has a toddler who loves to play with blocks. Up, up, up they rise in a stack, delighting the toddler and all around. Yet the toddler does not notice that the blocks are all placed slightly at an angle. So at some point -- usually around the tenth block -- the whole edifice collapses.

Toddler Brawler's tower building reminds the Brawler of Patrick McIlheran's column writing.

And just as the Toddler Brawler's efforts are applauded, so should some of P-Mac's greatest hits of the past week.

Coming in at No. 3:

Last Sunday, the economically illiterate P-Mac takes on the estate tax, bashes actual economist Paul Krugman, says the $28 billion it raises is chicken feed and says its immoral and based on envy. He concludes:

A tax that's justified by envy still clashes with Americans' sense of who we are, fortunately. The real reason people too middle-class to pay the death tax oppose it is because when laws are shaped by resentment, there's no telling where the resentment will stop.

Here's the deal: A surefire way to increase taxes on the middle class -- or cut programs or services it's come to expect -- is to whack away at taxes such as the estate tax. To the extent members of the middle class oppose the death tax, the Brawler would suspect it's because of right wing spinners who've managed to persuade people that it'll cut into stamp collection Uncle Henry was going to leave them.

At No. 2, this hump day post from P-Mac titles "Strategic failure, strategic change."

Just as the critics warned, we now see American soldiers, M16s at the ready, having to patrol what we thought was conquered territory. Having trusted local authorities who turned out to be weak or incompetent, we find that disorder sweeps this southern territory, with the same old bloodshed returning. And so, the previous strategy having failed to ensure safety and peace for what local inhabitants remain, we find our leaders scrambling to switch tactics. The Louisiana National Guard returns to bloody New Orleans in hope of restoring order. In an unrelated story, American and allied troops fight to reassert control in southern Afghanistan after the Taliban buy off or cow Afghani leaders to whom the allies had turned over southern regions. Allied and Afghani troops killed 20 insurgents Tuesday, AP reports

Lemme see. How many car bombs are going off in New Orleans? How many members of the National Guard have been killed in New Orleans? How many government officials have been assassinated by guerillas?  And, oh yeah, is Osama bin Laden still at large because we failed to catch him in New Orleans?

The Brawler does not want to minimize the violence in New Orleans. But attempting to minimize the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan by saying "Gee, how many people get killed in American cities in a given week?" has been played by the right for years. It was bullshit the first time, it's the same now.

Afghanistan has been rife with failure. The first, of course, was not sending in enough troops in the first place because we were already jumped up on attacking Iraq.

The only similarity between Afghanistan and New Orleans is that Bush presided over both.

And the winner is:

It's a ringer!  Charlie Sykes!  For saying this about the above column:

This is why Patrick McIlheran has become one of the best conservative bloggers around.

John Jazwiec: Commie Symp

Is John Jazwiec, the dyspeptic executive who’s threatening to pull his software firm RedPrairie out of “socialistic” Wisconsin, a secret Communist?

What else to make of the fact Mikhail Gorbachev spoke at a conference last year sponsored by Red Prairie. The conference’s ominous title: “RedShift.”

From the October 2004 press release:

Former Soviet Union President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Will Address RedPrairie's Global Audience on International Leadership and Restructuring Global Priorities

RedPrairie Corporation, a global leader in supply chain technology solutions that enable business process transformation, today announced that former Soviet Union leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mikhail Gorbachev will keynote RedShift 2005, RedPrairie's eighth annual user conference and logistics industry summit at the Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Miami, Florida, April 12-15, 2005.

President Gorbachev served as the leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991 and was a central figure in ending the Cold War with the United States by signing two disarmament pacts that led to the end of Communist rule in Eastern Europe. As a result of his extraordinary achievements, President Gorbachev was the recipient of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, the Orders of Lenin, the Red Banner of Labor and the Badge of Honor.

************* 

RedPrairie Company Leader John Jazwiec says, "RedPrairie is extremely honored to host President Gorbachev at our upcoming user conference. He is considered one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century for his critical role in stabilizing international relations during an extremely volatile period. President Gorbachev's thoughts on international leadership and the restructuring global priorities are important and relevant to our audience of international business leaders who seek competitive advantage by mastering complex global markets and supply chains." 

(end)

RedPrairie indeed, Comrade Jazwiec.

Quick, someone tell McCarthy apologist dad29 that a Communist cell is operating in Waukesha!

XOff lays into this blowhard’s incoherent rant in the MJS and how the MSM – that’s Milwaukee’s Stupider Media – are jumping all over it. Even the economically illiterate Patrick McIlheran is jumping on it. The Brawler thinks the initial reporters did a decent job but thinks there is much more to this story. The Brawler wonders if the private equity guys are behind any proposed move.

Folkbum has more.

Is a Walkergram coming?

Will Milwaukee County anti-executive Scott Walker shoot his buddies at WTMJ a note explaining how the media has really given him a raw deal over the revelation that, for him, pension funding is a matter of political expediency?

After the MJS pool story, Scott sent notes to both Charlie and Jessica.

Maybe Scott will try to delineate how much extra the County will have to pay in the fund for not fully funding it last year. That would be interesting, as Charlie might say.

Weapons of Media Distortion

At 6:42 a.m. Charlie rushed to inform his readers that :

Newly released documents show that we have found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003.

Since 2003? Why haven't we heard this before? This would have shut up all the Bush critics who claimed he lied us into a war. Sure, 500 chemical munitions more than 15 years old aren't the nuclear weapons the Bush administration scared us into believing Iraq had, but they're something right? In the Fox News story Sykes links to, US Rep. Peter Hoekstra offered his theory why Bush has kept quiet:

Asked why the Bush administration, if it had known about the information since April or earlier, didn't advertise it, Hoekstra conjectured that the president has been forward-looking and concentrating on the development of a secure government in Iraq.

That's right: The administration that leaks the name of a CIA agent for political advantage wouldn't leak news about WMDs in Iraq.

Maybe there's another reason:

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

(These are the 10th & 11th grafs in the story.  Gotta love Fox! Maybe it was too early for Charlie to read this far.)

That's right, the weapons were not in useable condition. Do the Republicans want to justify the war on the finding of 500 unusable munitions? (Works out that 5 Americans have been killed for each one.)

US Sen Rick Santorum, R-Dementia, would make that argument.

"This is an incredibly — in my mind — significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false," he said.

And no doubt lying Charlie and the rest of the crew will make this point as well. Or leap into theology: The fact these degraded weapons were there surely points to the fact that usable weapons are in the country ...we'll smoke 'em out yet!

dad29's Scoop

From a Tuesday post about how a ground based missile interceptor system has been activated in the past few weeks and might be called upon to shoot down a North Korean missile:

Were it up to the Democrats, there would be no defense available against ICBM launches aimed at the US. It remains the position of the Left that, in effect, we should "lay back and enjoy it," exactly parallel to their position on concealed weapons for personal defense.

Wait, after two decades of money going down a black hole we have a functioning defense against ICBM missiles? When we don't know when they're coming? Or going from where? Or packing the odd GPS device for tracking?

Awesome!

Joe McCarthy's Ghost

The Brawler is aware dad29 was troubled by names hurled in his direction in a previous post. That's somewhat perplexing, given Dad29's admiration of the dissembling and slandering Ann Coulter and Joe McCarthy.

Yes, that Joe McCarthy. The one, who as the Onion once pointed out, was going to find a list of Communists at the bottom of a bottle.

The Brawler was going to write a lengthy explanation of why Dad29's admiration is misplaced when he says things like this:

Joe McCarthy is a hero. Yeah, he drank. Yeah, he used nasty words to describe Dean Acheson, and Felix Frankfurter, and other jackasses of their ilk.

He's still a hero.

But it's late and, man, where do you start. WIth how he tried to free SS troops who executed American soldiers? See? Where do you start?

I'll defer for now and refer to an admonition from Brad DeLong:

In my view, people should be forbidden to praise or excuse Joe McCarthy on pain of heavy fines until they have submitted a signed and notarized declaration that they have (a) reflected upon the careers of Dean Acheson and George Marshall, (b) acknowledged that the World Communist Conspiracy had no greater or more effective foes in the aftermath of World War II than Dean Acheson, George Marshall, and their boss Harry Truman, and (c) read Joe McCarthy's Senate speech of June 14, 1951:

Here's the start of that speech:

How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this Government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.

Who constitutes the highest circles of this conspiracy? About that we cannot be sure. We are convinced that Dean Acheson, who steadfastly serves the interests of nations other than his own, the friend of Alger Hiss, who supported him in his hour of retribution, who contributed to his defense fund, must be high on the roster. The President? He is their captive. I have wondered, as have you, why he did not dispense with so great a liability as Acheson to his own and his party's interests. It is now clear to me. In the relationship of master and man, did you ever hear of man firing master? Truman is a satisfactory front. He is only dimly aware of what is going on.

I do not believe that Mr. Truman is a conscious party to the great conspiracy, although it is being conducted in his name. I believe that if Mr. Truman bad the ability to associate good Americans around him, be would have behaved as a good American in this most dire of all our crises.

It is when we return to an examination of General Marshall's record since the spring of 1942 that we approach an explanation of the carefully planned retreat from victory, Let us again review the Marshall record, as I have disclosed it from all the sources available and all of them friendly. This grim and solitary man it was who, early in World War II, determined to put his impress upon our global strategy, political and military.

No doubt dad29 will point out how Joe's been misunderstood, that for decades his greatness has been covered up by the liberal media. (Like Barone, for instance). But when he points to "history" produced by the likes of the factually challenged Coulter, I'm not swayed that we've been bamboozled on this point.

And no doubt he will say how FDR and HST abandoned East Europe and China to the Commies. (Though don't know if he would add that Churchill had essentially ceded a chunk of Eastern Europe to Stalin in '44). The great Yalta betrayal. Yadayadayada. To which I would say if he thinks the U.S. public would have tolerated going to war against the Soviet Union after World War II to rescue Eastern Europe -- or force a case that depended on a credible threat of force of arms -- I think he's mistaken. Ditto the notion that the US public would have accepted an invasion of China to support Chiang Kai-Shek.

The US public was up in arms about how slowly soldiers were being demobbed after the War.

I don't think there was any namecalling here, was there? Also, dad, if you're reading: no one's blocking you from making a comment.

Framing Jessica

Jessica likes to talk about how the media puts "frames" on stories that shape the way people view the news. Jessica provides a textbook example of how frames work in her latest argument to remain in Iraq until...well, that's not very clear. Whenever the job is done. Whenever that is. Certainly for the remainder of the Bush presidency, when, as is his MO, he will leave the mess for someone else to pick up.

But I digress. These words in a Jessica post on Tuesday are addressed to Russ Feingold:

Do you still want us to run with our tails between our legs and look for al-Qaida elsewhere?

How would that not be a defeat?

How would that not embolden al-Qaida?You murder our soldiers, so we pull back like we did in Somalia, and look for you elsewhere? How does that make sense? That was the Clinton doctrine. IT DID NOT WORK.

Yes, these sentences weigh heavy with foolishness. But they have a purpose. That is advancing the idea that not only are Democrats today the party of cutting and running, but cutting and running is congenital to Democrats. That's what they do. (Never mind that Nixon got us out of Vietnam -- and what was blood & guts Rove doing then?)

We noted before how Jessica conspicuously avoids mentioning how Reagan pulled out of Beirut after the Marine barracks bombing -- even though this episode (10 years before Somalia) gave bin Laden the idea that the US was a paper tiger (paraphrase of his words). Why? One might say, with justification, that cutting and running was the Reagan doctrine.

But that's only one piece of Jessica's "framing." Here's another.

The withdrawal from Somalia is cited as an example of the cowardly doctrine of Bill Clinton (who -- not to excuse any mistakes made in Somalia under his watch -- inherited the Somalia intervention from George Bush). When, in point of fact, Republicans were howling for withdrawal as well after the events described in Black Hawk Down! (House Repubs had opposed a measure in May 1993 authorizing a 12-month renewable extension of the U.S. version and put forth a 6-month proposal that was defeated.)

After the Rangers were slaughtered and dragged through the streets, 65 House Republicans sent Clinton a letter demanding an end to US presence in Somalia.

Check out these displays of emboldening al Qaeda:

"The people who are dragging American bodies don't look very hungry to the people of Texas ...Support for the president in the country and Congress is dying rather rapidly." -- Phil Gramm

"We can't be the policeman for the world."  -- Strom Thurmond

There's more where that came from. But Jessica fails to note that Republicans called for pulling out after warlord Aidid killed American soldiers and dragged them through the street. Presumably because that undermines the Democrats as the party of cutting and running.

And, while we're at it, Jessica fails to bring up an example of the "Clinton Doctrine" that might reflect positively on the former president.

The Administration delivered the appropriate number of boots to keep the peace in the former Yugoslavia. Based on that experience, Pentagon planners leading up to the Iraq war estimated the US would need in excess of 300,000 troops to maintain the peace after Sadaam fell. Rumsfeld -- and therefore Bush -- blithely deemed that unnecessary.

Perhaps Bush and Rumsfeld should have given Clinton more credit.