Brew City Brawler

Patrick McIlheran, cafeteria catholic crybaby

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Patrick McIlheran is a seriously dishonest person.

To wit his latest column, in which he attacks Marquette University theologian Bryan Massingale for urging Scott Walker to back off on his effort to eviscerate public employee workers' rights. To be fiscally responsible and fair.

Three paragraphs in, Patrick whines:

An aside: Any conservative pundit who’s outed himself as Catholic will have run into this tactic before. Routinely, you’re condemned by some on the left* as betraying Catholicism for not being reflexively pro-union. It’s cheap, it’s low and it's good practice for spotting specious arguments.

Huh.

Actually, Patrick's aside is what's low and specious. Archbishop Listecki, and in turn the US Council of Bishops, have come out clearly against Scott Walker's effort to bust public employee unions in Wisconsin. Patrick's refusal to engage with this speaks volumes.

His choice to instead assign pro-union positions to liberal priests when it's squarely in the mainstream is even positively breathtaking in its dishonesty. 

You want specious. Try this. "[Massingale] says religious leaders have supported unions in the past -- true, true -- in their genuine struggles against oppression," McIlheran says.

I suppose by the past he means Pope John Paul II, who was explicitly pro-union.

Of course, this intellectual dishonesty is not unusual for Patrick McIlheran, who preaches an agenda that's directly contrary to the church's vision of economic justice. And then there was his whole ignoring the church's opposition to the Iraq War he cheerleaded, happily assailing the "surrender left" all the while.

For Patrick McIlheran, Catholicism seems to be summed up by standing up for homophobia and blastocysts, and insisting the church shouldn't pay up in court despite decades of covering up for pedophile priests. 

Hey Patrick, if you're going to attack Notre Dame for letting Obama speak at commencement, expect to be called out for betraying Catholicism when you do. Own your hypocrisy!

Wah wah wah.

See also: Scott Walker tells Archbishop Listecki to fuck off.

 

 

Patrick McIlheran hails Walker's "earlier triumph"

Suggesting that Walker's overreach and subsequent political meltdown is the "current triumph."

What earlier triumph is Patrick McIlheran referring to? No, not the non-job-creating tax cuts he pushed through in order to engineer a financial "crisis' that could only be solved by dissolving the collective bargaining rights of teachers. He's referring to Walker's opposition to the train.

Why does he bring up that triumph that so stirred teabagger souls? Because the governor of Florida has rejected some of the money that was shifted from Wisconsin.

McIlheran, who's comically inept when he's not merely stumblingly deceptive, fails to note that a veto-proof majority of the Florida Senate wants the money there. And the rest of the state is scrambling to figure out how to keep it there.

Are all men who were Reagan-worshipping teens or twentysomethings intellectual, moral and emotional cripples or are Scott Walker and Patrick McIlheran outliers?

 

Note to Patrick McIlheran: The Hoan Bridge is not a "vital transport link"

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "right wing guy" Patrick McIlheran has never met a train he's liked. But his heart just melts for the Hoan Bridge, and he believes it must be kept aloft at all expense so that south suburban commuters can save five minutes on their drive. He has another paean, albeit brief, to it today, in which he calls it a "vital transport link," which is frigging hilarious. Somehow the south suburbs managed to survive, and their residents commute, before the Hoan was connected to the Lake Parkway in 1998, let alone before it was opened to traffic. 

The Hoan Bridge is not a vital transport link. It shortens the commute of a relatively small number of people in the metro area by a few minutes. That's all it does.

Billions for the Hoan Bridge, nothing for trains

Patrick McIlheran, the comically inept conservative columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is exultant over the death of the train connection to Madison. Which makes sense, given Madison has been recognized as a brainy place, and McIlheran has a well-documented disdain for brainy people.

McIlheran wraps his opposition in a mantle of fiscal rectitude, which is, of course,  laughable given he has vigorously supported the US fighting two wars without paying for them. And he would probably favor a war with Iran, just to make it three.

Because if he were a conservative on things transport related, you think he would have supported a position on the Hoan Bridge that would have been respectful of the public coffers. Particularly given that most Wisconsinites don't use that particular stretch of road. Shoot, most Milwaukeeans don't.

Well, you'd be wrong. When the idea of tearing down the Hoan Bridge and replacing it with a smaller bridge -- which would open the surrounding area to development worth billions -- McIlheran opposed it. Why? It would add a few minutes on to the commute of some people coming in to work from the south suburbs! Even though the cost of a smaller bridge ($220 million) would cost less than redecking the current one ($240 million) and much less than the additional cost to be incurred when the whole thing needs to be redone in 2050 (estimated at $800 million, but surely more). McIlheran's reaction to that? "The real money on the Hoan isn't until the 2050 anyway."

Paying for a train that will connect Milwaukee and Madison -- robbery! Spending more than $1 billion to save commuters a few minutes -- and forgoing lakefront development -- when less expensive options are available? Right on! Truly, a conservative position. 

Stay classy, Patrick McIlheran

Patrick McIlheran writes many dumb things. He also writes more than his fair share of petty ones, for instance this piece celebrating a slam by everyone's favorite asshole congressman, Jim Sensenbrenner, against Jim Doyle. This, by the same Patrick McIlheran who sniveled "One More Whack" when someone booed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney -- the dynamic duo who lies us into a war -- while watching the inauguration at Uihlein Hall. Nothing like a cheap shot artist with an overdeveloped sense of resentment, though that's par for the course in the land of right wing shills.

 

Patrick McIlheran, Charlie Sykes ditto boy

It happens fairly often that Patrick McIlheran will just recycle some point made on the Charlie Sykes show. But this one followed up something like 90 minutes after Sykes made the "point" on the radio. So, does Patrick recycle inanities from Sykes or do they just get them from the same source?

How dumb is Patrick McIlheran?

Trying to create a strawman of class resentment, Patrick McIlheran writes this: 

  yes, I know, hedge funds weren’t at all the problem in the crash, but they just sound sinister, so populism wants them to suffer

Now, it's not necessarily germane to his central (weak and ill-considered) point but it's just dumb. No, hedge funds were not the cause of the crash, but to deny they played a role is just, frankly, dumb.

Patrick McIlheran has a problem with Adam Smith

In his Sunday column, Patrick McIlheran raised a puerile question:

“By what right do progressives think they can decide who's got too much money? Where do they get off thinking they can remedially confiscate it?”

Folkbum answered it, smartly, but Patrick McIlheran continued to whinge on about immoral "looting" of the rich and whatnot.

Thing is, Adam Smith, the original observer and theorist of capitalism, quite early on said that progressive taxation made sense:

“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.” 

Now, Patrick McIlheran may cry and moan that progressive taxation is immoral (a position in which he will find himself quite lonely) or economically deleterious (a position he would find extremely difficult to defend). But there are ample reasons for why progressives support progressive taxation -- shoot, Teddy Roosevelt supported progressive taxation. It's up to him to seriously engage with those positions. But it is far easier to moan about "looting."

Patrick McIlheran: No legitimacy for you, gays!

Shorter Patrick McIlheran:

If gays are allowed to marry, then homophobes will respect marriage less. Ha ha gays!

Separately, it's worth noting that Charlie Sykes, whose three marriages have (in Patrick's words) helped reduce "the expectation that marriage is permanent," singularly failed in his effort to whip his flock into a froth on this topic.

Teabaggers aren't racists, they just think blacks are shiftless

Bell Curve aficionado Patrick McIlheran's howl of outrage over the NAACP's call to "repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties" has reasonably been denounced as the "worst piece of journalism I have ever read."

Patrick declares:

Similarly, the “taxed enough already” movement is neither made up of racists nor driven by racism nor to any measurable extent embracing racism.

One might have some sympathy for McIlheran's position were it not for the fact that a nontrivial number of teabagger leaders (h/t Balloon Juice) and personalities can't stop themselves from making racist remarks -- just ask Fred "watermelon seeds" Dooley.

Or that surveys have found that teabaggers are, to quote Bruce Bartlett, "largely unsympathetic to African Americans."

But not all! For me, a highlight of the Milwaukee tea party was the interaction between an an African American guy handing out  bumper stickers and a female teabagger. "Are you really a black conservative?" she asked. He replied in the affirmative. She said "good for you" and commented on how rare a specimen he was. Unsympathetic or just condescending? Or just totally color blind?

That said, perhaps we should be thankful that McIlheran stops short of equating liberals with Maoists, especially given he's previously put them on a continuum with the Nazis.