Athenae, On Wisconsin

Having Elections is so Mean

Pity the poor electorate:

Walker has already launched a TV ad blitz and continues to raise campaign cash.

Republicans scored a win in the courts when a judge ruled Thursday that election officials must take “affirmative steps” to more aggressively vet recall signatures.

On Friday, the Government Accountability Board announced the statewide recall could cost $9 million or more in local, county and state election expenses.

Rep. Robin Vos (R-Rochester), a Walker supporter who requested the estimates, said in a statement: “The real results of the statewide recall election will be a financial drain on our local governments and an emotional drain on our electorate. The recalls are not healthy for our state.”

I have news for this jackass. Wisconsin is not for pussies. IT SNOWS SEVEN MONTHS OUT OF THE YEAR UP THERE. And I don’t mean like there’s a dusting on the ground and everybody cancels school to make half a snowman. I meanyou’d better stock up on canned goods, we ain’t leaving the house today, try to tunnel through the alley to Grandma’s to see if her power is still on, the neighbors lost their dog in a three-foot drift and by the way where’s your littlebrother snows.

And after it snows? It gets to be a level of cold a college professor of mine used to refer to as “butt-fuckin’.” Have you ever had your eyelashes freeze together? Leave a glass of water on the windowsill by the bed and have to break the ice to drink it the next day? Have to get out of bed and start a fire and then get back into bed until the fire warms the house up enough to leave the nest? If you haven’t put on a THIRD sweater at noon, you’re not allowed to talk about cold, is what I’m saying.

I mean, the main food groups of my native people are things that can be stored in the shed or the root cellar for months at a time without fear of spoilage. Certain parts of the state, you’d better be able to kill or catch or grow your own food because the pizza places sure as shit don’t deliver. Want to go visit your neighbors? Strap on the cross-country skis and pull on the snowsuit and march across the frozen lake.

So now comes this pampered suburban dick who is ever so concerned that the constant reminder of people who are poor and screwed will upset everybody. Why, people will just be unable to get out of bed, if they have to hear mean ads describing exactly how Republicans wrecked the economy and tried to blame the goddamn janitors for it.

Because that’s what’s going to upset a state full of people who for more than a decade went out and cheered for a football team that lost every game by four touchdowns.

A.

7 thoughts on “Having Elections is so Mean”

  1. Oh, this is just more working the refs.
    They hope.
    With even the slimmest bit of luck, maybe a couple of someones are going to decide that li’l Scotty isn’t worth an extra five years in jail, and the Kochsucker is going to be up to his eyeballs in criminal charges, and civil suits once discovery is under way.
    And then the recall–and all the Repug whining–is going to be pretty much moot.

  2. Is it snowing up in Wisconsin this year? Here in Minnesota it’s been warm and dry. Very springlike. Very nice, but … frightening.

  3. Yes, I’m sure Scotty was drug, kicking and screaming and wailing about the cost of satanic recall elections, when he won his last position through one.
    He’s got the tea party poopheads and the extremely low information voters on his side. But that’s about it. Hell, the local Repub party chairs are sending frantic LTEs to all the rural weeklies that are such blatent astroturf, local republican stalwarts are making jokes about them. I think he’ll get soem reluctant tribal support from life long Repubs, but he’s even losing the right leaning libertarians. They may agree with him, but they think he’s stupid.

  4. Gee Mr. Vos, what about the “financial drain on our local governments and an emotional drain on our electorate” caused by your puppet master “balancing” the state budget on the backs of local governments, you sanctimonious prick.
    Tom, we are having an exceptionally mild winter in Wis and it’s a bloody good thing too. Had we the snow like we did last winter travel in many communities would be nigh impossible as local budgets are strained to the extreme by loss of state funding and in many places plowing would be kept to a bare minimum.
    But that’s OK, the important thing is that Scotty can talk up his state budget, never mind that county and local governments are struggling with empty coffers and cuts in services.

  6. I’d feel a lot better if the courts were used for justice and conformance to the law (including procedural matters)rather than to jury rig false barriers.
    Kind of like the old saying of the drunk using the light post more for support than illumination.

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