Here In Wisconsin

We have the misfortune to be represented by business man and accountant Ron Johnson who is an idiot. He advised poor and or uninsure3d women who needed contraception to use the google to find free contraception, which as this Think Progress report points out finds a bunch of either useless information or explains the high cost of getting birth control. In the course of making this stupid argument he suggested that anyone who insisted that uninsured women couldn't get contraception were making  "a straw-dog argument."

Perhaps he was trying to tell the truth. Strawdogs is, after all, a brutal investigation of violence in everyday life to say nothing of the treatment of women in the modern world.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ue1zbYIX2E&feature=related

Here In Wisconsin

Ron Johnson, who is a manufacturer, accountant, and lucky in his wife's family's business acumen, is running for US Senate in the great state of Wisconsin, home to the House on the Rock, was quizzed recently on his plan for the middle class.  He said, in part, nothing. When not saying nothing, he promoted the policies that failed for the past 30 or so years as the policies he, as an accountant and manufacturer, would put in place.  Ron Johnson follower of failed policies wants a chance to watch those policies fail yet again.

How Ron Johnson Got Rich

It seems that our manufacturer and accountant made his money the old fashioned way: marry into a company and sell stuff to your father in law.  It's the very model for job creation here in Wisconsin and the nation more generally.  The un- and underemployed will hang out around the watering holes of the rich and famous and marry their way to prosperity. Given the rather skewed nature of wealth distribution in these United States, home of the world's only and therefore largest corn palace, we may have to introduce polyandry, polygamy, and perhaps legalize bigamy.

Here in Wisconsin

How utterly crazy is Ron Johnson?  This crazy:

Asked by a panelist about the book, Johnson said "Atlas" represents the producers of the world, while "Shrugged" represents how overburdened the producers are with rules, regulations and taxes.

"It's a warning of what could happen to America," Johnson said. "When you hear people talk about a tipping point, that's what we're concerned about...We have more people who are net beneficiaries of government than are actually paying into the system. That's a very serious thing to think about."

Or:

In Defense of Punctuation

Recently a NYTimes reporter reported on the Tea Partiers' intellectual lineage.  In the course of this she quoted Ron Johnson, who is running to be the new and infinitely incompetent Senator of the this great State, who

asserted that the $20 billion escrow fund that the Obama administration forced BP to set up to pay damages from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill circumvented “the rule of law,” Hayek’s term for the unwritten code that prohibits the government from interfering with the pursuit of “personal ends and desires.”

Various Conservatives and Gliberatarians jumped to the conclusion that the reporter reporting Johnson's remarks doesn't know what the rule of law, let alone Hayek's view of it, is.  I wonder how it is they arrive at this conclusion. The false claim that the 20 billion escrow fund violates the rule of law comes from Johnson; it was he who introduced the phrase "rule of law"; we have no reason to think the next quote isn't from Johnson.  While it's true that he is a manufacturer and an accountant, his views on punishing child abusers and climate change aren't examples of a man who can think things through. Indeed, the garbled definition of the rule of law reads exactly like what someone who has never thought about the rule of law or read Hayek might end up burbling.  Johnson is, after all, a Tea Partier and their intellectual leader is Glenn Beck, a man who never lets an opportunity to misrepresent the past by garbling and misrepresenting quotations and ideas pass him by.

UPDATE:
The punctuation mark defended here, I should have been clear, is the coma.  Comas link things to previous things, like the individual expressing an idea to the idea's content.  Periods, on the other and, mark the end of sentence, after which the speaker might change.

UPDATE:
Here is Kate Zernike reporting on McCain's and Obama's response to a supreme court ruling.  She quotes Obama as praising the because it is

re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus.

She doesn't add any odd definitions here.

Here she quotes Bush to the effect that

Saddam Hussein’s trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.

Again no odd interpretation added.

I'll ask, who do you think made the error? Zernike or Johnson?  My money's on the manufacturer and accountant because, after all, only a lawyer would care about the rule of law.

UPDATE:
Here she quotes Maliwki:

Iraq will not forget those who stood with her and continue to stand with her in times of need,” he told Congress. “We have gone from mass graves and torture chambers and chemical weapons to the rule of law and human rights.

 Here she provides a quote that modifies the rule of law

'There's the rule of law, and there's the rule of law in Texas,'' said Rob Martin, a 38-year-old resident in neurosurgery who had come to watch the trial today. ''The rule of law in Texas is kind of cowboy law."

It's very hard to believe that she doesn't know what the rule of law is; and it is very easy to believe that Ron Johnson doesn't.

No Party, No Clique; Almost

Ron Johnson, running for senate in the great state of Wisconsin, a leader in the production of ducks and other fine agricultural products, once opposed a law that would have allowed abused children to sue malefactors who aided and abetted their abusers through lax or no supervision.  Why?  Because

it is extremely important to consider the economic havoc and the other victims [the Wisconsin Child Victims Act] would likely create.

See, its not like being a manufacturer and accountant made him hard-hearted, it's just that economic considerations are much more important than justice for victims of sexual and other forms of abuse. Not a bit of it.  It was rather because he

was on the Green Bay Dioceses Finance Council at the time he testified.

And they were being sued because they had aided and abetted a sexual predator. See also. So independent Conservative Ron Johnson only acts to protect child abusers when it is in serves someone or another's economic interests.  Which is very reassuring because senators are never asked to put the narrow economic interests of one or another of their contributors over the broad interests of their constituents. Are they?