It's unbelievably frustrating to be surrounded by all these brain dead tools, and sit back and watch the slimy SOB dismantle our state. I hope I'm still around when one of these Republican puppets win and people forget all about the bad black man and realize they have been taken for a huge ride.
Back in 2005, television satirist Stephen Colbert, longtime host of the "The Colbert Report" who this year will replace David Letterman on NBC, created the quirky word "truthiness."
Truthiness, according to Wikipedia, characterizes a "truth" that a person making an argument or assertion claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or simply because it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination or facts. It especially applies to politicians running for office, of course.
Truthiness was one of the first words that popped into my head while watching clips of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's performance at the so-called Iowa Freedom Summit, hosted last weekend by the Hawkeye State's tea party favorite, Rep. Steve King. (King's the guy who famously said of student immigrants that "for every one who is a valedictorian, there's another hundred out there, they weigh 130 pounds and with calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.")
Walker dazzled King and the Iowa Republicans in the audience with tales of how protesters threatened his and his family's lives during the uprising over the union-crushing Act 10 in 2011. He told of how his wife chided him for paying too much for a sweater at Kohl's department store when he should have waited for a sale and money-saving coupons.
While ignoring the $2.2 billion deficit in the next state budget, he told how he has single-handedly turned Wisconsin's economy around, created jobs and cut taxes through good old-fashioned sound management and going "big and bold."
The highly partisan audience, of course, soaked it up, believing every word. Judging from some of the gushy stories I read, so did a lot of the national reporters on hand for the Iowa show, which featured a flock of potential candidates for the Republican presidential nomination.
But they don't know, as we do here in Wisconsin, just how loose our governor is with the facts. He gained a reputation during his first term in the governor's chair for consistently flunking Politifact tests when his stories and claims were checked for accuracy. One group offered a $500 reward to find the people who allegedly made death threats, but no one has ever come forth. The CEO of the train manufacturer Talgo said the governor does not keep his word, essentially calling him a liar, while former Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold was more diplomatic, saying, "He has a very bad relationship with the truth."
Walker's a student, though, of that long-held axiom that if you tell a big lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
That's exemplified by his constant repetition that he inherited a broken budget, balanced it and put the state on sound footing. He, of course, did nothing of the sort. Under his leadership over the last four years, Wisconsin's recovery lags the nation's, and the state now faces about as big a budget deficit as it did when he took office.
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