In short, although I never normally link the two, I have been covering the protests here in Madison for The Zombie Rights Campaign, our charity/grassrootsy organizing group, and putting regular updates on the blog using a special tag. You can see all those posts by going to this link.

I have also taken tons of pictures and you can see the whole collection on Flickr here. Video has gone on the ZRC youtube channel here.

Unfortunately I just don’t have the time to keep up both blog fronts and handle these protests at the moment. I’m running ragged just trying to keep up.

Just days before an election that could decide the fate of a planned high-speed rail line, state and federal administrators quietly signed a deal to commit the state to spending all $810 million of the federal stimulus cash allocated to the Milwaukee-to-Madison route, transportation officials confirmed Monday.

The unannounced weekend agreement frees outgoing Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration to sign contracts for much if not all of the work. That could hamstring efforts by Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans to kill the project and spend the money on something else if they take control of the governor’s office and either or both chambers of the state Legislature and Congress on Tuesday.

Hahahahahahahaha…. oh man this is priceless.

Basically, the situation is this: under the Stimulus bill, Wisconsin was to (finally) get a direct passenger rail line connecting Madison to Milwaukee, and from there to Amtrak in general. Bizarrely, the state capital is not connected at the moment.

However, Barrett’s tanking his campaign, and Walker is running on a platform of blocking the railroad, thinking that he can somehow take the federal money and spend it on roads (which he can’t actually do, but he’s an idiot).

So Doyle decided not to leave things in the hands of his old political rival – and simultaneously arrange a secret deal that, if exposed, could be really bad news for the Barrett campaign, which has been trying to distance itself from Doyle.

Word got leaked to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (somehow) and, well… the rest is history.

*snicker*

See, now, this is politics I can respect. Governor Doyle wanted this rail line, and by the dark gods, he’s going to get it.

Poor Scott Walker is so upset he’s calling the waaambulance:

Walker, the GOP candidate for governor, blasted the deal, saying, “This is just raw political power at its worst. This is why the Doyle administration is corrupt and unwilling to listen to taxpayers.”

If Wisconsin taxpayers are so stupid they want to turn down an 800 million dollar bag of money, they deserve to be ignored on this one. It’s a giant sack of cash for something we should have gotten years ago. It’s fantastic economic stimulus in a terrible economy – and Scott Walker wants to risk it all so he can get a tiny fraction back (most likely) to pave potholes.

He’s a moron.

Of course, this does make Barrett look not just inconsequential (and out of the loop) but, in fact, like Doyle’s bitch, an image he’s desperately been trying to avoid:

Barrett was campaigning Monday and did not return a call seeking comment. His spokesman, Phil Walzak, said the mayor was unaware of the agreement but would expect that all such deals follow proper procedures.

…

News of this deal is likely to hurt the Barrett campaign, according to Sumana Chattopadhyay, an assistant professor at Marquette University who has been tracking the impact of advertising and the debates on voter preferences.

“That is a constraint, and it sort of ties Barrett to Doyle, somewhat closer,” Chattopadhyay said. “That is something that might sway people to say, ‘We don’t want a third Doyle term’ here.”

By contrast, Charles Franklin, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the development reinforces the image of Doyle as someone forcing an unwanted rail line on the state, but is not likely to add many votes for Walker or Barrett.

I wonder if people have forgotten that Doyle and Barrett used to be political rivals:

After the 2000 census determined that Wisconsin would lose a congressional seat, redistricting combined Barrett’s district with fellow Democrat Jerry Kleczka’s 4th district. Rather than run in a primary against his colleague, Barrett decided to run for governor in 2002. In a heated Democratic primary, Barrett came in a close second to then-Attorney General Jim Doyle, who went on to win the general election, with Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk coming in third.

If this is score-setting then it’s a piece of pure Machiavellian genius. If not, it’s just fantastic policy.

I salute you, Governor Doyle, you magnificent bastard. I salute you.

After all, it’s presumed he’s liberal, and if you’re a liberal, you must like Russ, right? He’s a stalwart individualist, a socially liberal, fiscally conservative, one of a kind Senator and we should be happy to have him out there working for liberal interests.

Well… no. Because, see, I actually *am* a liberal, and Russ is an opportunistic turncoat who likes to mouth the platitudes and then vote against our interests whenever it actually counts.

Here’s Senator Feingold’s schtick: he paints himself in all things as a Principled Iconoclast by casting meaningless protest votes, some of which he arranges himself, when it won’t make any difference to the outcome. Then, when important votes come up, where he could adhere to his putative principles, he quietly flips and gets in line.

You can see this pattern over and over and over again.

Here are some handy and recent examples:

–Russ Feingold loves his public image as a staunch defender of civil liberties. If he was, though, why did he vote to confirm Elena Kagan, a virtual cipher whose only well known legal positions are in favor of expaning Executive power?

Answer: Because it was a close vote. Kagan was only confirmed 63-37.

–Russ Feingold loves to cast himself as a fiscal conservative, a careful steward of the public funds. So why did he vote to reconfirm Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairman, after his grotesque failure to protect the economy, leading to the massive bailouts of the big banks?

Answer: Because the Administration wanted him reconfirmed.

–If Russ Feingold is big on fiscal conservatism, why did he vote in favor of the Obamacare health debacle (twice) which will see health care costs continue to soar year after year? For that matter, why did he vote for a bill that uses the force of government to seize private assets and hand them over to big corporations with no real guarantee on their providing any service at all, let alone a quality one?

Answer: Because it was a *very* close vote, and if he had stood up for, say, the majority of Americans who wanted a public option or some, heck, any method to contain costs instead of opening up their veins to the health insurance cartels, they might have gotten it.

–Why did civil liberties loving Russ Feingold vote for the above bill when it dramatically restricts the right to choose and makes women into second class citizens with regard to their health care?

Answer: Because President Obama needed a victory. Aren’t you following along?

‘But’, your hypothetical inquistor might ask, ‘what about all the good things he’s voted for?’ Well… yes, Feingold is good at finding ways to cast meaningless votes that are good for PR. Sometimes he even invents the opportunities himself.

For example, here’s Feingold voting against the up-to-100 billion dollar bailout of the IMF. That was a real act of courage and risk to the Administration’s agenda all right – it passed 91-5.

(The way the bill worked was the Administration extended a massive, 108 billion dollar line of credit to the IMF and then said the risk was so low that they only had to set aside 5 billion to cover our chances. Witness Media Matters tap-dance on that one)

Sometimes, however, symbolic but meaningless votes don’t just present themselves to Russ, so he has to invent them. Here’s the vote on Feingold’s proposed amendment to an appopriations bill, aimed at forcing the Administration to actually come up with plan to get out of Afghanistan.

It failed spectacularly, 18-80.

But, but, Feingold voted to end the war!

*rolls eyes*

Feingold himself is outright proud of his symbolic actions that have no real world impact whatsoever. Check this out, from his campaign website:

I opposed many Bush Administration policies that ignored the Constitution and the rule of law. In September 2008, I held a hearing to urge the next President to make restoring the rule of law a top priority. In early 2009, I issued a 100-day Report Card to assess the progress made by the Obama administration on this front.

Ooh yes, how’d that work out for you?

The ‘report card’ is a laugh riot – in order to avoid having to condemn very much, most of the grades are ‘Incompletes’. Bonus: he claims that Obama ended US torture by the military and let the Red Cross see all our prisoners.

You know, except for the black site we still operate at Bagram, where torture and a lack of accountability have gone on even during the Obama Administration. Highlights of the torture Feingold says Obama stopped (but really didn’t) include:

The detainees reported being forced into nudity and humiliated upon arrival, malnourishment resulting from inadequate and foul-smelling food, sensory deprivation and sleep deprivation resulting from cold temperatures and inadequate bedding. They reported being blindfolded and shackled when leaving their cells and losing complete track of the time and date. The International Committee of the Red Cross was also reportedly denied access to the detainees and the secret facility.

Yessir, that’s some great accountability Feingold provided us.

And then there’s Feingold’s signature, deficit cutting set of Big Ideas to reduce ‘wasteful government spending’.

What would those be? Perhaps, say, targeting the half trillion dollars a year the Pentagon gets?

Well… no. Short of cutting a few useless military programs, Russ is fine with that.

He does want to cut NASA funds though, and end a radio broadcast to Cuba. That’s something, right?

This is the story of Russ Feingold in a nutshell: big, symbol rich talk, but very small ideas, and conveniently they never get in the way of him voting against his supposed principles. Reconfirm Bernanke? Sure. Put Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court? Why not. Force the IRS to funnel taxpayer dollars via a backdoor tax to Wellpoint? Yep!

But man, if you need someone to stand up and rail against something that is a shoe-in like the IMF bailout attached to a war supplemental, or alternately, to push an idea that has no chance to pass? Russ will be right there in the limelight.

Unless he loses tomorrow, here in Wisconsin. Personally, I don’t care much one way or the other; his opponent’s an insufferable twit who sounds like he’s a few (dozen) IQ points short of a MENSA meeting.

But I’m not going to vote for him either.

Week 15
Week 16
Week 17

I will go ahead and say that the funny gnobby ridgey vegetable in Week 15 is Celeriac, which sadly I didn’t get to eat as it went bad almost instantly (perils of organic farming), but supposedly tastes like, well, celery.

The black radishy things in Week 17 are Black Japanese (or Korean?) radishes. They’re strongish and I like them a lot.

That’s it for now. Peace, veggie lovers.

You know, the thing that allows them to create monopolies in most American cities so that you either pay whatever they ask, or just die in the street like a dog.

I agree with the bill, but I know those standard form emails don’t impress a lot of people, so I amended the one he has autogenerated to express a more personal message, and it was supposed to be sent on to my Congresswoman and two Senators.

Here’s my version:

I know you probably get a lot of these form emails, so I’m writing this part myself.

Not that I disagree with anything in the standard Leahy form email, but I think you get the background on the issue. Insurance companies are evil. Evil by design. I can’t imagine who thought, back in the dawn of time, that creating a system whose incentives drive companies to kill people for profit was a good idea. Honestly.

At the very least, we should force them to compete for the right to deny us basic lifesaving care. Perhaps that way we can cut the death toll, which currently stands at 45 thousand per year in this country.

Number of people who die in the rest of the industrialized world due to lack of health insurance? Basically zero. God bless America.

That’s why I really, truly do urge you to support the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act, S. 1681 and H.R. 3596.

If we must live our lives in a health insurance version of The Running Man, let’s at least try to keep the judges honest.

PS: Single-payer would make supporting this legislation unnecessary, as well as save the lives of 15 9/11s worth of innocent people a year. Just a thought.

I would blame some new medication I’m on from my doctor, but quite frankly, we all know I’m a slacker at heart.

Ok, so, Taste of Madison is yet another Madison festival around the Capitol, much like Art Fair on the Square, Freakfest on Halloween (which also uses State Street), and the like. (There really is a ton to do in this town.)

Taste of Madison is foodie-related, however, as local restaurants gather around the square to sell samples of their cooking to a ravenous public, all, apparently, in the name of fundraising forUnited Cerebral Palsy of Dane County

I don’t have a lot of pictures, but I did catch this one with my mother eating some beer battered, deep fried cheese curds from The Old Fashioned.

They were pretty good, though much heavier on the beer batter than the cheese.

Particular standouts this year for me were Joey’s Seafood and Grill, which had some fantastic lightly breaded halibut and this great appetizery shrimp thing called Firecracker Shrimp*, Lombardino’s, which had a terrific Italian beef sandwich with Chianti, Brat und Brau, which made the first brat I’ve ever actually liked, and Antojitos el Toril, which had the softest tortillas I’ve ever eaten to frame a very respectable chicken taco. Yum.

It was great to get out and try a bunch of places I’d had on my list to visit, all in one day. Even better that it was a fun social event for a good cause.

Though pairing it up on the same weekend that I went to Samba might have been a bad idea… oy, the gluttony.

Hmm.

I’m not sure why that required the demonic laughter. Pictures below the cut.

Unfortunately these shots didn’t come out as well as I might have hoped. I think you can still see the gorgeous striated skin coloration on these bell peppers; they really do look like someone hand painted them, then applied a clear laquer or protective coat. They remind me of the chocolates they make at David Bacco’s place here in Madison, actually, food that looks like finely crafted jewelry.

Wrong, because today is the day of the Verona Ironman event, and lo and behold, the roads were catastrophically clogged with cyclists. Inept police were on hand to ensure that people couldn’t get to their destinations or find a way out of the labyrinth, and no advance notice, of any kind, was posted along most of the route that would be occupied today by that unique species of subhuman mouthbreather known as the Aggressive Wisconsin Cyclist.

You see these people around a lot in Madison. Cyclists who ignore street signs, traffic directions, and common sense, who run stop signs, swerve in and out of lanes, insist on doing their race preparation and exercise on narrow two lane country roads instead of the innumerable bike trails all around the county, etc.

They drive me insane. Insane! These pretentious jock assholes think that their hobby is more important than the work, recreation and transportation of everyone else on the road, and they let you know it at every opportunity. There is a very large bike/pedestrian trail, complete with a dedicated pedestrian/bike bridge that was constructed at a cost of over a million dollars, not five minutes from our home here in Fitchburg. This is a *good thing*. There is nothing wrong with people getting some outdoor exercise. I’m not talking about kids out for a fun day in the sun, or average, functional human beings trying to stay in shape and see the Great Outdoors while respecting traffic laws and taking advantage of public works. No sir. I’m talking about the self-involved assclowns who parade around in the middle of the damn street at 15 mph in their spandex racing gear, complete with advertising logos, so they can feel like Lance Armstrong with an extra testicle. Those are the jerkoffs I’m talking about here, when I say ‘cyclist’. (‘Douchebag’ might be catchier)

But tell me, why do these cyclists then ignore our copious trails, our sidewalks, our bike lanes, and instead ride down narrow yet busy roads at a third of the speed limit, completely snarling traffic? Why do they endanger their (admittedly worthless) lives, and the safety and wellbeing of everyone around them, including pedestrians, who of course don’t receive a tenth the road work money or attention of their well-heeled, spandex clad, elitist bike hobby rivals?

It’s another form of class warfare, plain and simple. You see these schmucks doing this every day of the week, any hour of they day, so they clearly don’t have to worry about work responsibilities. Racing bikes don’t come cheap, and all that tacky racing gear must set them back a pretty penny. They never have packages or backpacks, so they’re not going to or from school/shopping/a job, either. This is just Rich White Cocksuckers, showing off how much money and spare time they have. They do this to remind everyone else in society that they’re the ones in charge. It’s revolting.

Yet it persists, and the county does nothing but accommodate them. I find it deeply vexing that, in a town with no rail and no useable mass transit, we always find the money for more bike lanes (that these clowns won’t use), more trails (that they’ll avoid) and now, yes, even shiny new bridges that they can skip riding across if they so choose. Decent human beings use all those facilities, but they might also use buses, or a light rail, and we never build those. Whatever excuse the government has for supporting cycling in Wisconsin, whether it be health, recreation, quality of life, don’t kid yourself. They’re doing it to reward their rich political patrons, because if a person has the money to drop on a 5k racing cycle, that they can parade down busy streets at 10 am on a Monday morning, guess what?

They have the money for campaign contributions too.

And so today, without warning or notification of any kind to the lower classes, who might have to use the roads to go to work, to shop for groceries, to get about their everyday lives before starting another week of actual work for a living, the entire southwest side of Madison was turned into a gigantic clusterfuck, to accomodate those members of the ruling class who felt the need to take in some scenery, get a bit of fresh air, and prove to themselves how perfect, beautiful and athletic they really are.

What follow is an open letter I wrote to the Verona Chamber of Commerce about today’s events, slightly censored for personal information.

I am writing to inform you how extremely furious I am about the ridiculously poor management of the Ironman event today in and around Verona. **** works at **** in Verona and had to go into work today to complete an important assignment, and got stuck in Ironman related traffic snarls for over an hour and a half. She saw roads blocked off with parked cars, intersections jammed with cyclists for 40 minutes at a time, and the local police completely and utterly unable to control the event. At no point was the route marked or direction given on how to avoid it. We were in the Verona area, specifically around **** just last night, and there were ABSOLUTELY NO SIGNS INDICATING THIS EVENT WAS ABOUT TO OCCUR.

I appreciate that people want to have their little hobbies and sports activities. All well and good. But might I remind you that these are public streets and important roads, and that a de facto major closure of said roads demands that motorists be notified in advance? Some people have to work for a living, yes, even on the weekend, and it is completely unfair that they are held hostage so that others can have a ‘fun’ day out monopolizing public thoroughfares and resources. My wife barely managed to make it back from work, and was unable to complete her assignment, as that would mean making another trip through this hellish debacle, and quite frankly we’re not up for that today.

Thanks much for ruining our day,

John J Sears

PS: If this is an improper contact address for this matter please feel free to forward it to the proper person or persons. I arrived at this site from a listing on the http://www.ironmanwisconsin.com/ webpage.

Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight
Week Nine
Week Ten
Week Eleven
Week Twelve

Enticed by ads on the liberal radio, we drove out of town in June and then again in July to visit Kopke’s and purchase some plants. We had issues with the first set, which I (foolishly) chalked up to bad fertilizer, and got another set, quite a few of which they just gave us for free as they were about to close for the year.

I should have been more suspicious.

Of the plants we purchased at, or received from Kopke’s, easily 90% died within two weeks. The plants in question or perhaps the soil we purchased from them seems to have been infested with gnats, and now we can’t get them out of our apartment. The few plants that lived were stunted, and even they are fading now.

On the other hand, a few plants I purchased on clearance at Wal-Mart, of all places, are doing beautifully. Go figure.

So as it turns out, buying local can be a real mistake, and Kopke’s Greenhouse is a complete disaster area. Stay very far away.