Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Nothing worth doing is easy.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

This blog will pay for itself.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

The revolution will be supervised.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / On Wisconsin!

On Wisconsin!

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An important day for Wisconsin!

I say this with hope, and as a bit of a prayer – Wisconsin peeps, take back your state, and may you be the next Michigan!

The people of Wisconsin who came out in droves to vote for Janet Protasiewicz in the state Supreme Court race are happy.

The Democratic governor, Tony Evers, is happy.

And Ben Wikler is happy.

Full text from Ben Wikler:

The long, dark night of ultra-partisan gerrymandering is over, and a new day for democracy now dawns in the Badger State.

The stroke of Governor Evers’s pen today marks the end of the shameful period that began in 2011, when Republican lawmakers—bound in secrecy by nondisclosure agreements as they worked with operatives at a lobbying firm—drew legislative lines that guaranteed that even landslide election losses wouldn’t cost them their majorities. The result was one of the most egregious, extreme partisan gerrymanders in American political history.

Ever since, Republican politicians in Wisconsin have used their power to take more power away from the people of our state—restricting access to the ballot, removing authorities that voters had entrusted to statewide elected officials like the Governor and Attorney General, and smashing the freedoms of workers to organize and advocate for themselves. For thirteen years, the democracy-proof legislature has been laying siege to democracy itself.

Last April, years of tireless organizing culminated with Wisconsinites electing Justice Janet Protasiewicz in a landslide, charting a new course for our state that has led us to the new, vastly fairer maps signed into law by Gov. Evers today. In November, at long last, Wisconsin voters will have a real choice in who represents them in Madison. The majority will determine the majority.

The candidate recruitment process now goes into overdrive. And at the same time, we remain vigilant in case Republican politicians in Madison and their allies once again, through the courts or any other strategy, attempt to thwart majority rule.

Today, we made progress towards true democracy in Wisconsin—thanks to the efforts of so many grassroots activists, tireless supporters, and elected leaders. We stand ready to fight back against any attempt by Republicans to undermine the path towards democracy and accountability, and we commit to doing everything in our power to ending the Speakership of Robin Vos and paving the way towards a Democratic trifecta that can, at long last, translate the will of the people of Wisconsin into the law of the land.

It’s been a long time coming.  Big congratulations to the Wisconsin peeps and especially to anyone who worked and wrote and donated to help make a day like today possible.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

86Comments

  1. 1.

    S Cerevisiae

    Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger 🦡…

     

    on a serious note, way to go Wisconsin! Your neighbors in Minnesota watched our trajectories diverge in 2010 when we elected Dayton and you were stuck with Walker and a terrible gerrymander. Turn Wisconsin blue, a Great Lakes blue block.

  2. 2.

    Mousebumples

    I’m happy we have new maps in my state. And my cup is full of schadenfreude for the GOP. And full of thanks for the Juicers who helped postcard, and donate, and GOTV to elect Justice Janet Protesewicz.

    On Wisconsin!

  4. 4.

    mvr

    Feel pretty good about this. And about a bunch of folks here who did what they could to get people out to vote. (And grateful to Watergirl, Mousebumples, et. al. for organizing it.)

  6. 6.

    Mousebumples

    Isaac Rowlett (✡️ for 🇵🇸) (@IsaacRowlett) posted at 3:22 PM on Mon, Feb 19, 2024:
    the real winners of Wisconsin’s new maps are everyday Wisconsinites

    competitive districts & elections means politicians have to actually show up and do their jobs well if they want to keep them

    red, purple or blue, the new maps will likely improve governance across the board
    (https://x.com/IsaacRowlett/status/1759690036188987522?s=03)

  7. 7.

    Armadillo

    Will this help our odds of taking back the House? How many seats would Democrats be expected to gain under the new maps? Or are these just state maps and do not affect the federal districts?

  8. 8.

    WaterGirl

    @West of the Rockies: I’m sure they’re plotting; pretty sure they believed they owned the state forever

    “How dare those people vote for Janet Protasiewicz and think they deserve a majority on the state Supreme Court!  That court is ours!”  (what I am pretty sure they are thinking)

  10. 10.

    Mousebumples

    Speaker Robin Vos (@SpeakerVos) posted at 11:10 AM on Mon, Feb 19, 2024:
    This fall Republicans will prove that we can win on any maps because we have the better policy ideas for the State of Wisconsin. https://t.co/oRmFPZFQFL
    (https://x.com/SpeakerVos/status/1759626490327543834?s=03)

    LOL, Wisconsin Republicans don’t have policy ideas much more than the national Republicans do.

    Ben Wikler and Co., are coming for so many seats. Time to flip back to good governance. Our state motto is Forward, after all.

  12. 12.

    Mousebumples

    @Armadillo: Will this help our odds of taking back the House? How many seats would Democrats be expected to gain under the new maps? Or are these just state maps and do not affect the federal districts?

    No changes to US House maps (yet – Court challenge is pending, but unlikely to have a decision, let alone maps, in time for November).

    The challengers included State Leg districts only to try to keep the USSC from interfering. Wisconsin Constitutional challenge, so WI SC Case.

    Could have some Up Ballot effects, though. Could flip a House seat (pleeeease to vote out the insurrectionist in the SW district), and hopefully reelect Sen. Baldwin and Biden/Harris.

  13. 13.

    Jackie

    Off topic, but funnier than hell:

    A parody musical centered on Donald Trump and some of the well-known women in his life is hitting the off-Broadway stage in New York City this month, The Hill reports.

    May the movie rights soon follow!

  15. 15.

    Mousebumples

    @WaterGirl: He may not even make it to November due to MAGA recall threats for not being sufficiently Trumpy.

    Couldn’t happen to a more weasley, slimy politician.

    Re – Assembly Speakership, I think the Assembly majority is more flippable this fall. Senate majority may still take until 2026, depending on if half of all seats are up for reelection this year. (WISC initially said all, but with Governor signed maps, that may change to the usual half-elected every 2 years. Probably still to be worked out in Court.)

    And all that presumes WisDems kick ass and take names.

    Wisconsin GOP – welcome to Finding Out February.

  19. 19.

    Jackie

    A bit of Dark Biden 😂:

    “President Biden’s reelection campaign hammered former President Trump on Monday for coming in last among presidents in a new survey,” The Hill reports.

    “Trump found himself at the very bottom of the list, while Biden was ranked the 14th-best president in the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey, which was conducted from Nov. 15 to Dec. 31 by a panel of experts specializing in the American presidency.”

    From a Biden email: “Happy Presidents’ Day! … Unless You’re Donald Trump.”

  21. 21.

    Mousebumples

    @WaterGirl: He was primaried in 2022,but still won his gerrymandered seat. That was for not saying Trump won Wisconsin.

    I kinda tuned out the latest complaints against him since it’s all MAGA nonsense. But if I lived in his district, I’d probably sign the recall petition. 😅

  22. 22.

    Mousebumples

    I should be in bed. Big work meeting tomorrow. But fun to celebrate. Great to have so many of you rooting for Wisconsin and Democrats/Democracy!

  26. 26.

    Mousebumples

    @N M: huzzah!

    And with that I’m off to bed. I’ll peek back in tomorrow to see if questions need answering that no one else has grabbed… But might be closer to the end of the workday.

    Good night! 👋

  29. 29.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @WaterGirl:

    edit: I thought for sure it would include E. Jean Carroll.

    I (so very unfortunately) saw a clip of him sputtering that he did not know/never met her. Yes, that’s what he’s going with (again). It’ll work on a surprising number of people.

  31. 31.

    wjca

    @West of the Rockies: I hope Wisconsin Repubes are stewing in misery and humiliation.  They deserve to.

    Misery?  Sure.

    But no way humiliation.  Because that would require acknowledging that they brought this on themselves.  No, this must, simply must, have been the result of some evil conspiracy against them!

  34. 34.

    Another Scott

    Some people won’t learn. Some are refusing to learn and it will not end well for them.

    Imani Gandy (Orca’s Version) ⚓️
    @AngryBlackLady

    Let this be a lesson. You don’t want to start with me. I advise you not to do it. I was minding my own goddamn business and now we’re going into day five of these shenanigans

    11:20 PM · Feb 19, 2024

    Full story is here (nitter thread)

    tl;dr – MAGA racist homophobic transphobic white lady realtor in Texas didn’t like one of ABL’s posts so complained to a bar association in Colorado and tried to get her disbarred. Big mistake. And MAGA lady only had to say “I’m sorry” for ABL to stop, but wouldn’t…

    ABL is a hero in so many ways.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  38. 38.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @XeckyGilchrist: ​
      Don’t start that shit. This is a good day for Wisconsin. A lot of people put in a lot of time, money, and effort to make it happen, so could we please just not with the counterfactuals? Thank you.

  39. 39.

    StringOnAStick

    I wrote at least 200 postcards in support of Judge Janet’s election, so I’m feeling a bit of personal gratification about the new maps.  Time to do more postcards!

  43. 43.

    groveboy

    Great news. I live in NW Wisconsin big time Trump country here. Just wish we were more like our Minnesota neighbors.

  45. 45.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Omnes Omnibus: could we please just not with the counterfactuals? Thank you.​

     Amen. As I once read somewhere, it’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

  49. 49.

    hitchhiker

    Recently I heard the odious Charlie Sykes talking about how excited the Rs were when they realized they could grab ALL the power in WI, and how they told themselves they had to do it because they COULD do it, and how it all made sense at the time, and who could blame them, anyway? They could just take anything they wanted because this was going to be their one chance.

    Party’s over, thugs.

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    And where, pray tell, is July’s Republican convention to be held less than five months hence?

    Milwaukee.

    Irony never sleeps.

  52. 52.

    BlueGuitarist

    Huzzah!

    I’ve started looking at the maps for overlapping winnable districts – super swing districts!
    You can see the Wisconsin maps, with demographic and partisan voting history at Dave’s Redistricting App:
    https://davesredistricting.org/maps#state::WI
    While writing postcards last spring, i looked for but didn’t data analysis re: out-of-state postmarks; just saw this anecdote in an article about about the special election to replace George Santos, quoting a town Democratic club leader:

    “It was really energizing to see how the rest of the country cared about this race. Usually in the past we’ve been the ones writing postcards to people in Georgia or Wisconsin,” in get-out-the vote campaigns on behalf of Democrats. “To be receiving these postcards from people across the country, who cared about us and about Democrats, was incredibly energizing and mobilizing.”
    article:
    https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/suozzi-pilip-3rd-district-special-election-pje8nj55

    keep on keeping on!

  53. 53.

    glc

    @Another Scott: I can’t load that page and didn’t find anything more than your summary, except “this has been going on for five days” whatever that means. (Maybe that page has gotten too popular now.)

  54. 54.

    H.E.Wolf

    @BlueGuitarist: While writing postcards last spring, i looked for but didn’t [find] data analysis re: out-of-state postmarks​

     I suspect there’s not a “one and only” answer to that question, especially with so many different groups – all with different approaches – writing postcards. And of course the recipients are going to have individual reactions that may vary widely.

    I just keep on doing the work, at my diligent snail’s pace, and trusting that the “fun, friendly postcards” approach (per the organization I write with) will hypothetically please more people than the postmark hypothetically displeases. :)

    Some of the benefit is for me, too: taking a small, concrete action is good for my morale!

  55. 55.

    Danielx

    Rotator cuff surgery today, and glad to have that done. Left arm in  sling, but can use left hand to limited extent.

  58. 58.

    Rusty

    I’m jealous.   New Hampshire is heavily gerrymandered and the Republicans appointed to the NH Supreme Court decided there is nothing wrong with the situation.  There doesn’t seem to be any way out, and they are well on the way to destroying our public school systems.   Our only hope is to take the governorship, and maybe the house because with 400+ representatives in a state of only 1.3M, it’s harder to gerrymandering that closely.  The senate and executive committee are essentially permanent losses.

  66. 66.

    Sebastian

    For those who’ve been following the Elon Musk Adrian Dittmann saga, it was a Ballon-Juice jackal (yours truly!) who shivved Elon and kicked off the Social Media brouhaha.

    It wasn’t intentional, just another throwaway post like so many before but this one went viral and now being linked by The Verge and possibly others.

    https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/19/24077300/is-adrian-dittmann-actually-elon-musk

     

    Either way, as a long time Elon fighter, I am happy about this.

  69. 69.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Sebastian: ​
     Good work, Sebastian! The ideal outcome is Elno launched into space in a Tesla with no plan for a return trip to Earth.

  71. 71.

    Yutsano

    I’m so chuffed for youse Cheeseheads! Hopefully this starts the reversal of 13 years of stagnant policy and destructive rhetoric.

    ON WISCONSIN!!!

  72. 72.

    Sebastian

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Thank you! Currently he is decomposing. In order to “disprove” that he and Adrian are the same person, Adrian called for a Twitter Spaces and Elon (naturally!) agreed.

    On this live podcast they sounded the same but claimed to be different people, but somehow when one of them spoke, there was an echo (forgot to turn off the speaker after muting the mic!). Even Maye Musk came on and said she can’t tell them apart and someone said that there are claims they look alike.

    roflmao

    This story is not going away.

  75. 75.

    piratedan

    @Sebastian: he has a legacy going back as far as the Iraq war where he would create accounts on blogs as “random” users and defend himself with the usual sea lion tactics that he’s known for.  Back in the day it was like turning on the bat signal to drop his name in a post.

  76. 76.

    Sebastian

    @piratedan:

    Oh, I know he was had alerts for his name (like the Bernistas. Iirc we here at BJ started using a codename for Bernie because of that). But because I wasn’t here when that with GG happened I always thought he showed up under his real name!

  77. 77.

    Shalimar

    @Sebastian: There can’t be many people in the world with that South African accent and exact tone that Elon has.  He isn’t even making much effort to disguise himself.  How did none of his advisors have the guts to tell him calling in to shows and giving another name was a really stupid idea?

  78. 78.

    Sebastian

    @Shalimar:

    I am a member of the TSLAQ Discord where a few former employees hang out and one of them, Christina Balan (she designed critical parts of the Model S powertrain), sat in countless meetings with him.

    She confirmed it’s him. His forced laugh, idioms and phrases, everything is a match.

    To answer your question: drugs for one and he called into an Alex Jones show and was recognized (duh!) and then he went down a bizarre road trying to prove they are two different people

  80. 80.

    WaterGirl

    @Rusty: So frustrating!

    It looks to me like Wisconsin took this approach when they were in that situation.

    “How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.”

    Go for the governorship.  Go hard for every state Supreme Court seat that opens up.

    Go hard for every House seat.

    Oh, and get yourselves a great state organizer like Ben Wikler!

  82. 82.

    wjca

    @NotMax: May be just me but I think including any president who is still in office among the rankings is a dubious exercise.

    In general, in the vast majority of cases, yes.  But by half way thru his term TIFG had pretty well locked down two things: That he had displaced Buchanan as the worst president, and That he had displaced Harding as the most corrupt.

  84. 84.

    Paul in KY

    @piratedan: Back in my RABT days, we had this guy (with initials ‘MM’) that obviously had software to check for his name being invoked. We used to refer to him as ‘He who must not be named’.

  85. 85.

    glc

    @Another Scott: Not much luck. Couldn’t get enough to load, and I wondered if “Tweets and Replies” would be more informative than “Tweets”  but it wouldn’t let me switch.

    But I did see a Johncole complimenting her on the outcome. I have a feeling I may yet catch another echo.

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