Brew City Brawler

Say no to Rep. Yes

Patrick McIlheran flacks a piece of Paul Ryan fluffery by Freddie Barnes. Barnes, incredibly, sees the Road Map to deficits as far as the eye can see (and which drives lower- and middle-income Americans into a ditch) as a winner.

If Republicans adopt the Road Map as their basic ideological blueprint, it offers them the prospect of a landslide in the midterm election this year, followed by victory in the presidential election in 2012.

This despite the fact Republicans aren't champing at the bit to join Ryan's crusade.

Nick Schweitzer, in comments, sets McIlheran straight on Ryan's lack of credibility as a fiscal messiah:

That's right... Rep. Yes!

He voted YES to the Auto Bailout!
He voted YES to TARP!
He voted YES to Medicare Part D!

He voted YES to create the very problem he now wants to "solve". Paul 
Ryan only believes in Small Government when he is writing op ed's for 
newspapers. He believes in Big Government when he votes in Washington, 
which is the only time that counts.

Say NO to Rep. Yes!

No contradiction between short-term stimulus and future deficit reduction

So says Doug Elmendorf of the CBO, an organization touted by the GOP when politically convenient.

Meanwhile, remember that Heritage Foundation report (touted by, shockingly, clueless calumnist Patrick McIlheran) claiming that the Bush tax cuts really don't have much of an impact on deficits? Believe it or not, it was "misguided and seriously misleading." But you already knew that. 

Patrick McIlheran, fan of the Bell Curve

So Patrick McIlheran is a fan of the widely denounced, and widely discredited Bell Curve. Realize nothing about the Journal Sentinel columnist should surprise, but wow.

Paging Nicholas Lemann.

Tom Daykin schools Patrick McIlheran

In a flagrant act of journalism, Journal Sentinel Tom Daykin takes a look at the myths surrounding workforce housing, the sort of affordable housing that's slated for New Berlin's failed City Center. His finding:

But there's scant evidence that such projects in other communities have caused property values to drop, or crime to increase, based on a check of public records and interviews with elected officials and neighborhood residents.

Predictably, Daykin's work triggered howls of outrage from the ignorati who see workforce housing as the second coming of the Cabrini Green towers. Daykin, who shows an admirable willingness to engage readers in comments weighed in:

Finally, the point of the story was to make clear the differences between Section 8 and Section 42 housing, and why most of Section 42 projects [note: the type of project proposed for New Berlin] draw little opposition while a few proposal draw high-profile protests. This is not an attempt to tell you what to think. It's just an attempt to provide some facts about the situation. 

One has to wonder if he had coworker Patrick McIlheran in mind when he wrote this, given Patrick strenuously tried to connect the New Berlin development to Section 8 during a bout of predictable fearmongering.

Patrick McIlheran publishes a correction!

It's been a long, long time coming (scroll to bottom of his post) and it's one that would get an actual reporter berated across the news room. But in the annals of Pat! it's actually fairly mild.

After this, the deluge?

Patrick McIlheran prays no lesbians will move into New Berlin City Center

Patrick McIlheran is willfully obtuse when it comes to looking at relations between Milwaukee and the suburbs (i.e., it's Milwaukee that's always mean to the suburbs) and the history of race and the suburbs (i.e., there was no such thing as racially motivated white flight to the suburbs, pay no mind to what John Gurda says).

So as one might expect, he has little of value to say in the whole controversy over workforce housing going into the derelict New Berlin City Center.

But let's unpack anyway!

"So who's leaping to such conclusions about New Berlin anyway?" he sprightly asks, one of the conclusions apparently being that New Berlin has its share of bigots who don't want black and brown folks interrupting their "traditional cosmopolitan living" experience. Well, there was the mayor, who suggested his town was full of bigots (before backstepping) and that's the only honest interpretation of some comments following up on various JSOnline stories. And of course the experience of anyone who's lived in Milwaukee in the past 30 years. Apart from that, nothing.

This made me LOL:

So, no, New Berlin isn’t exactly Snobville. It’s got people who seem legitimately ticked off over congestion and parking issues. The workforce housing is “really not the problem,” said Laura Karvala, head of the impromptu Concerned Citizens of New Berlin, when I tried getting her to say it was all about poor people. She wouldn’t -- because, I suspect, for her it isn't.

“It’s the quantity of people moving through here,” she said of the nearby National Ave. and Coffee Road intersection, right by her subdivision. The plan got changed, she said, in a way that adds much more traffic, and it got changed in what she saw as a sneaky way.

OK, let me get this straight: You want galleries, you want restaurants, you want shops. DOn't you think that would involve some fucking traffic? Seriously, think this stuff through. Not everyone is as gullible or as eager to believe you as Patrick McIlheran.

Also amusing is that Patrick McIlheran puts this development, which again is aimed at blue-collar folks, in the same category as Cabrini Green. No fearmongering there. (Did the Brawler ever tell you about the time he waltzed, unharmed, through Cabrini Green at night? It's true?)

Patrick McIlheran finds a good lesbian

Judging by his writing, Patrick McIlheran has deep, long-running issues about lesbians. Today he identified the kind of lesbian he does not have an issue with: ones that don't have sex!

McIlheran a bad Catholic on Gaza

Patrick McIlheran is a full-throated defender of the IDF's killing of nine civilians, including one American citizen, as they sought to transport clothes and used toys to Gaza.

The Vatican takes a different position.

With "heavy heart" and " great trepidation " Benedict XVI, spoke of Gaza at the general audience to express his condolences for the "victims of these painful events that concern all who care about peace in the region".  He said "violence does not solve disputes, but increases their tragic consequences and generates more violence" and appealed "to those who have political responsibilities locally and internationally to incessantly seek right solutions through dialogue, so as to ensure the populations of better living conditions, harmony and serenity. "  

Sounds like the Pope is condoning terrorism.

Perhaps Patrick McIlheran can prove lesbians were aboard.

One wonders what McIlheran makes of the Vatican comparing Gaza to a concentration camp?

Patrick McIlheran: suspect, evil and stupid

There's much to unpack in Patrick McIlheran's piece predictably defending Israel's stupid actions the past week -- which include killing an American citizen in the Gaza Flotilla attack.

But let's just focus on the first line where McIlheran refers to "quick-shooting "peace activists." it's an interesting formulation, suggesting that they provoked the incident by firing on the IDF, which wasn't the case. Moreover eyewitness testimony ( which may or may not be borne out to be accurate) suggest the IDF was packing more than paint guns and firing live ammo as they invaded the ship.

But why let misrepresenting facts stand in the way of a hamfisted quip?

When will lesbians stop tormenting Patrick McIlheran?

Poor Patrick McIlheran! Everywhere he looks there are lesbians, lesbians and more lesbians trying to dominate him and make him submit to their lesbian agenda!

I mean, you have Tammy Baldwin using language breeders use in announcing that she and her partner had split.

But that was just the tip of the lesbian iceberg. I mean, you had Jodi O'Brien raising dangerous ideas about gender and the Catholic Church, which was a bit too much for Patrick McIlheran. The same Patrick McIlheran who was an ardent supporter of the Iraq War that the Vatican condemned. But gay marriage doesn't kill thousands of innocents, the Iraq war and its ensuing chaos has, so that places Patrick in a position to throw stones, don't you know.

But it goes even farther back. For Pete's sake, Patrick had to deal with Jennifer Morales announcing her lesbian relationship (and good ol Shark and Shepherd lent him a helping hand). What choice has Patrick McIlheran had but to be obsessed with lesbians.

This passage from McIlheran's column was particularly moving:

Or suppose Baldwin were a single woman of more usual affections who had been seeing a man but that the affair was over. Would this get a press release? No.

 Reading this one wonders how polite Patrick is to the wife -- the third wife -- of his friend Charlie Sykes. Does he believe their  partnership is undermining the sacrament of marriage? (Off topic, it was entertaining to hear Charlie joke about the Gore separation on-air today. Gotta love the perspective of a thrice-divorced family values guy.)