To show that the Presidential election is almost in full swing in mid-June, here are a couple of notable TV ads currently running.

First, here’s a John McCain ad that emphasizes the environment and global warming:

I’m skeptical as to how effective the environment actually is as a campaign issue. Everyone considers themselves an environmentalist, but few are actually willing to vote on that basis. Furthermore, people are increasingly getting the idea that “environmentalism” equals “higher gas prices.”

But this ad is important for McCain not because he’s any kind of beaver hugger, but because the environment serves as a platform for differentiating himself from other Republicans. He’s obviously seen the polls that show the GOP doing poorly across the board, and he wants to get away from them like they’re a garage sale nose hair trimmer. (The hint here is his use of a newspaper clip image that expressly says “McCain Climate Views Clash With GOP.” You need a graduate degree in political science for this kind of insightful commentary, folks – don’t try this at home.)

Next up is a MoveOn.org anti-McCain ad:

The central talking point of this ad is almost too stupid to address, and since you’re obviously smart enough to be reading a public policy blog, you know why it’s bogus. When McCain said we were going to be in Iraq for 100 years, all he meant was that we would have a presence there. Hopefully a peaceful one. We’ve been in Germany since the end of World War II, but nobody suggests we’re at war with them. (I actually had a sister born there as a result of my father’s military duty in Germany. My mom wasn’t exactly dodging grenades during childbirth.)

In closing, a couple amusing graphics:

Monday was an epic day for golf, as two events took place that will forever change the course of golf history. In one event, a golfer was crowned champion after years of dedication and hard work, earning the praise and adulation he so richly deserves, and forever altering the way children and their parents think about the sport. In the other event, Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open. (Yawn.)

In case you haven’t yet seen highlights on ESPN, yours truly netted the lowest score in the Monona Municipal Golf Course men’s Monday night league this week. This is about as likely as John Daly being named “Sexiest Man Alive.” Sure, Tiger won one of the most exciting major tournaments in history, and sure, he gets a big trophy and millions of dollars for his efforts. But I feel I have won the coveted “trophy within.”

My golfing history is a long and sordid one. I actually played a lot as a kid, even making my high school golf team. (Thus, I can say I played “three sports” and sound as legitimate as all the guys who played football, baseball, and basketball. I played golf, baseball and basketball.) At some point after high school though, I put down the clubs for a decade. I just couldn’t handle the stress of the game and suffered a David Duval-style meltdown. Those who have played with me will tell you that my language on the course has probably earned me a full years’ worth of rosaries when I finally get around to going to confession. At one point, I threw three of my clubs up in a tree at the Mee-Kwon golf course north of Milwaukee. But that’s another story for another time.

What’s important now is that my game is starting to come around. Nobody is happier to see this than the golf courses themselves. In my golfing career, I have probably single-handedly undone most of Gaylord Nelson’s environmental achievements with the damage my golf game has wrought on Wisconsin’s sensitive habitats.

Of course, nobody’s going to confuse me for Tiger Woods just yet. But in a strange way, I think watching as much of the U.S. Open as I did actually helped me. I realized that even the best players in the world don’t hit perfect shots every time, and that helped me relax. Of course, my ample handicap helped, too – but every stroke of that was earned, given how poorly I had played in the past couple of weeks.

There’s so many people to thank for this achievement, but I would be remiss if I didn’t first credit myself for all my hard work, dedication, and willingness to starve my children so I have more money for greens fees. Imagine how hard it is on me when my starving little children come up to me, begging for bread crumbs. It just breaks my heart when I have to push them away and say “maybe next week.”

And if I may, I’d like to offer some words of encouragement to the other golfers in my league – keep practicing, and maybe one day, you will get to touch the trophy. Until then, I plan on being insufferable. (I told my wife I beat a bunch of scratch golfers, and she said I should fit right in, since I scratch myself all the time.)

With the possible exception of those who root for the Washington Generals, does any other team’s fans get their hearts broken harder and more frequently than Brewer fans?

Like the most naive Obama supporter – and that’s really saying something – I am full of hope every spring. But 2008 was going to be the year for change. HOPE: Brewers finally have it all coming together in 2008. Solid pitching. Explosive offense. CHANGE: This is the year the Brewers finally make the playoffs. Yes we can.

But every year, disasters both expected and unexpected come together to tube the season. And tonight’s game had plenty of that.

Rewind a couple hours. Brewers up 3-1. Now its 3-2. Now its tied at 3. Now we’re down 4-3 in 9th. Stomach queasy. Cubs won already today. Brewers can’t afford to fall further behind in the division. Slow dread of watching another lead slip away as what should be a great hitting Brewer team can’t score runs again. Compounding the indignity is watching Twins fans acting like they own Miller Park.

Bottom of the ninth. Two outs. Russell the Muscle Branyan comes in to pinch hit. It’s the scenario you fantasize about as a kid ever since you take your first cut in a t-ball game. Tape-measure blast. Home run. Crowd goes wild. Tie game. Extra innings.

After escaping in the top half of the frame, its now the bottom of the tenth. Prince Fielder connects to center and deep. His follow-through is a high, one-handed flourish that you’ve seen dozens of times. Will this game-winning homer be the turning point of the season? Will this homer rank with now-third base coach Dale Sveum’s Easter Sunday 1987 walk-off dinger that still gives me goose bumps just talking about it? Get up, get up, get…one #@%*ing inch away from outta here.

Prince “Veggies” Fielder missed the glorious game-winning home run by a McNugget. I will go to my grave convinced that a shake of Baco’s on the salad he ate for lunch today would have given him the extra protein oomph needed to get that ball over the fence. This was the chance to win it and I don’t need to belabor what happens next.

In a patented move, Yost sticks with a tiring reliever too long and the Brewers are now down two runs. (Upon further review, this is unfair. Yost barely had anyone left in the bullpen and he couldn’t know how long he’d need to stretch it in a tied game.) Anyway, whatever. Twins tack on a few more and win 9-4.

All I want is to live to see one Brewers World Series victory – but I’d be almost as thrilled with a back-in-on-the-last-day-and-then-get-swept wild card bid. The Packers could never win another game, but I’ll always have Super Bowl XXXI. 1996 might as well have been last week the way I remember that season. Will there ever be such a season for the Crew?

Brewers, you’re breaking my heart. Watching you is not good for my health. I have officially sworn you off until 1 pm tomorrow.

So I figure if my position as “citizen journalist” means anything, I should be willing to experience things to which no man would ever willingly subject himself, then report on it. Which is why on Friday night I agreed to watch “27 Dresses” with my wife. Almost as if I was embedding myself with the female gender, like a war correspondent.

First of all, the Brewers were getting hammered, so it’s not like I was giving up a lot. Plus, you could do a lot worse than watching Katherine Heigl for an hour and a half. And as busy as she is cleaning up after me and the kids, my wife doesn’t get a whole lot of chances to do “girly” stuff. So I agreed to suck it up and go along – which I kind of had to do, since I picked the last movie, “I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With.”

The first thing you need to know about this movie is that it’s pure science fiction. It’s one of these flicks where Katherine Heigl somehow manages to get into her 30s without having a single meaningful relationship – which is preposterous, because Kate is other-worldy hot. This movie makes “Kung Fu Panda” look like a Ken Burns documentary.

It’s also one of these movies where everyone is either a newspaper columnist about love issues (seriously, there have to be maybe three of these people in America), or works at a high-powered ad agency. And for effect, they throw in that it’s an “eco-friendly” ad agency, at that. Barf. At one point, Heigl’s character’s sister really hits rock bottom and has to go get a job designing hand bags. It’s absolutely true.

Anyway, eventually she falls for some marriage columnist, who – gasp! – actually has some misgivings about marriage. Of course, this guy doesn’t make a single humorous or insightful comment throughout the entire movie – yet, somehow, he is the guy that this woman finally falls in love with. That’s what’s frustrating about movies in general – people don’t really talk the way they do in real life. Think about it – those are the times when you laugh the most. When you’re with friends discussing things that come completely out of the blue. But, sadly, your regular conversations don’t serve the purpose of moving the plot along. Anyway, all this guy has going for him is that he’s (I guess) good looking, although he has a weird haircut that clearly is meant to draw attention away from his big ears.

So Heigl’s character’s sister falls in love with Heigl’s boss by pretending she’s a vegetarian and into the outdoors and animals and stuff. But Heigl is secretly in love with her boss (the columnist comes later), so she sets out to ruin her sister’s engagement by telling her boss the truth about her sister. So at the rehearsal dinner, to “out” her sister, she shows a slide show that shows a picture of her sister eating ribs and being afraid of a dog that it appears is attacking her. Naturally, despite being engaged for what seems like months, the boss immediately calls the engagement off, given the horror of seeing an old picture of his future wife eating meat. I can only imagine what my wife would have said if she had seen me attacking the pan of Rice Krispie treats she made this week.

The rest of the movie is pretty irrelevant. Trust me, you know where the whole thing is going 5 minutes in. Heigl’s acting is somewhat hit or miss, but I was actually surprised in some spots where she was kind of funny. (Oh, and did I mention she was hot?)

So I don’t have any grading system, but whatever it is, this movie gets two of them.

And as long as I’m on movies, here are my grades for some I’ve seen recently:

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With – B plus. A cute, funny movie that’s almost like a chick flick for fat guys in their ’30s.

The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford – A. Really slow moving, and certainly not for everyone. But I loved how it unfolded, and the last third is really thought-provoking. And I didn’t even know Brad Pitt was in it until I started watching it.

Michael Clayton – B minus. Entertaining, but a goofy lefty anti-big business fantasy. Certainly the cops wouldn’t be smart enough to figure it out when all the attorneys working on a case relating to this chemical company start dying. I’m still waiting for the big Hollywood movie where some poor woman gets breast cancer, then gets the treatment she needs and beats it because of the insurance benefits provided by her employer. I imagine that happens ten thousand times more often than the scenario in this movie, where some chemical kills over 200 people. (Incidentally, if a company made a chemical that killed two people, it would go under. If someone found a rat head in a Wendy’s frosty, they’d have to spend millions of dollars to stay afloat – much less killing hundreds of people.)

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead – B minus. Begins with a completely superfluous sex scene with Marisa Tomei, who is naked through the entire movie. That’s worth a whole letter grade. But there are three major movie cliches in this film that must be addressed:

1. In movies, whenever someone pours themself a drink, it’s always scotch, straight up. You never see someone mix their whiskey or scotch with anything. How many people do you actually know that drink this way?

2. In movies, whenever someone is watching television, they are always watching something that no reasonable human would watch. They’re always watching Looney Tunes or some kung fu movie or something.

3. In movies, when someone points a gun at someone else, the victim always either gives a long speech, or says “just go ahead and do it.” As if, somehow, they have spent their lives perfecting the speech they’re going to give when someone finally sticks a gun in their face. Needless to say, if someone pointed a gun at me, they would hear a lot of crying and pleading for my life. I would not go out like a man. If they shot me, they’d have to shoot a whimpering, sad little man.

Lars and the Real Girl: B. This one really divides people – but I tend to be on the more favorable side. Plus, any movie that brings mustaches back is welcome in my book.

One of the more outstanding commercials I’ve seen:

It’s just like HDTV! Only in real life!

Teacher Banned for Classroom Strip

supply teacher was asked to leave a secondary school after removing his shirt in front of a class of 13 and 14-year-old pupils, education authority officials said today.

The incident at Sudbury Upper School in Sudbury, Suffolk, in April was filmed by a pupil on a mobile phone and footage broadcast on internet website YouTube.

Education authority Suffolk County Council said the man was asked to leave the school and the agency which supplied him informed.

“It is not the case that children were put at any risk,” said a council spokesman. “But the school felt his behaviour inappropriate.”

In the 40-second YouTube footage the teacher is seen to remove his shirt and point to his left bicep – as girls and boys giggle and scream – before getting dressed again.

George W. Bush honors former UW Chancellor and Clinton cabinet secretary Donna Shalala with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Some are not pleased:

Of all the educators in the country to choose from, including those who have suffered under the type of politically correct regimes that Shalala has built up and overseen, the choice of Donna Shalala to receive our nation’s highest civilian award is beyond puzzling; it is obscene.

Shalala was architect of the infamous speech code at Wisconsin which, before it was declared unconstitutional in 1991, was among the most draconian in the nation. She also crafted the “Madison Plan” at UW, through which she mandated quotas for hiring minority professors, doubling the number of minority undergraduates, passed an ethnic studies requirement, and opened a multicultural center.

So radical was her tenure at UW, so opposed to liberty were her mandates, that in January, 1993 Evans & Novak used her appointment as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Health and Human Services to question where Clinton, ostensibly a “New Democrat,” planned on taking the country.

See more feedback in Michelle Malkin’s comments section.

My new magazine article is up over at the Wisconsin Interest site. It talks about Wisconsin’s history of being friendly to third party candidates, mostly within the context of the Ed Thompson campaign for governor in 2002. But I talked to a lot of people who gave me some really entertaining examples of some nutty candidates who have run in Wisconsin.

If I may be immodest for a brief moment, I think it’s the best thing I’ve written. If not, at least it was enjoyable – and makes a good point, I think.

Anyway, you can read it here.

The new Wisconsin Interest magazine is out today. It includes my article called “Wisconsin’s Third Party Animals,” which looks at some of the stranger third party candidates who have run in Wisconsin – and one who almost won, Ed Thompson. Although Thompson didn’t win his race for governor in 2002, his candidacy certainly affected the race dramatically.  It is a wildly entertaining story, though.

Other articles include:

Bad Justice: Don’t Blame Voters For the Ugly Election For the High Court - Charles J. Sykes

The New WEAC- George Lightbourn

Political Speculators Looking Into the Crystal Ball - Jeff Mayers

New MPS Teachers Speak Out on Their Training- Mark Schug and Scott Niederjohn

Lowering the Bar: How Wisconsin’s Biggest Organization for Lawyers is Ruining Their Public Image - Deb Jordahl

Finding Funds for Expanding Milwaukee’s Convention Center and Bradley Center - Mark L. Kass

If I haven’t been posting a lot lately, it’s because I’ve been spending a lot of time with my kids teaching them valuable life lessons:

A friend told me about this, and I honestly didn’t believe him.

Last week in Janesville, Jim Doyle stood at the podium before hundreds of General Motors workers who had just found out that the plant will be closing in 2010. The pain in the room was evident, as the workers flanking Doyle onstage openly wore their disgust on their faces.

Doyle began his speech expressing outrage at General Motors, and threatening “revenge” against the company. He continually praised the workers, who had done nothing to deserve their fate. (We’ll set aside, for a moment, the fact that Doyle’s plan to raise gas taxes by 7 cents per gallon could have hastened the demise of the plant.) Then, to fully ameliorate the pain being felt in the room, he pulled out a quote from one of our great philosophers: Rapper Jay-Z.

In an attempt to say the workers had been “flicked aside,” Doyle tried to use The Jigga Man’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” as an excuse to make the now-famous gesture. He immediately tried to catch himself, understanding what an absurd statement he just made. But this is why I fear public speaking so much – I’m afraid I’m going to say something this stupid in front of an open mike. And in doing so, Doyle may have inadvertently set race relations in Wisconsin back 30 years.  Father Michael Pfleger’s references to black culture were actually more comfortable than this.

To see the video, click here and fast forward to the 25 minute mark. I’d pull the clip off and put it on YouTube to make it instantly viewable, but WisconsinEye’s warnings have sufficiently spooked me into thinking they’re going to sue me for a hundred million dollars if I do so. (Then they’ll team up with INTERPOL to come get the backup copies of my DVDs.)

If one asks how in the hell Doyle knows that Jay-Z song, remember that Barack Obama used the same gesture to respond to attacks by Hillary Clinton. Except there were two stark differences: Obama actually used it in the correct context, and Obama looked like a smooth mother doing it. (Shut yo mouth!)

Since the readership of this blog likely doesn’t even know who Jay-Z is, here’s the video for “Dirt Off Your Shoulder.” Warning – there’s explicit language, but it’s necessary, as it exposes how ridiculous it was for Doyle to use it in such a somber context.

And here’s a video of Obama’s “Dirt off Your Shoulder” reference that’s good for a chuckle:

Over at the main WPRI site, I have posted my treatise on what Wisconsin Republicans can do to turn the party around.  The blueprint for political success was written by someone that may surprise the GOP.

Read it here.

When I submit my application for 2008 Parent of the Year, this story will be at the top:

On Friday morning, I walked into my 4 1/2 year old daughter’s room to wake her lazy bones up for school. I started to shake her gently until she opened her eyes, rubbed them with the back of her hand, and said:

“Daddy, Ben Sheets is pitching today.”

When you’re a male and your first child is a girl, there is always an unspoken worry that you might miss out on the days of bonding with your hypothetical son over sports. Of course, girls can enjoy sports too, but you always know the father-daughter sports dynamic is going to be different. Even in the toughest days of my relationship with my dad, we could always talk about the Brewers or Packers. The most quality time I ever spent with him was in our front yard, playing catch. (One time, we were tossing around a Ben Oglivie ground rule double I had caught, and it went in the sewer.) To this day, when I call him, that’s primarily the focus of our talks, and likely will be until the day one of us dies. (Ironically, my death will most likely be caused by the Packers or Brewers.)

But, as it turns out, my daughter is way more into sports than I was as a 4 year old. Most of this is because of her day care.

At some point, a parent has to realize that your kids are going to learn things at school of which you may not approve. That’s the balance you strike when you pay someone to take your kids off your hands for a few days a week. (It has often been said that one of the great joys of parenting is spending time away from your children.)

As it turns out, one of my daughter’s day care teachers is a HUGE Packers/Brewers/Badgers fan. (Rumor has it there’s also a pro basketball team in Wisconsin, but I haven’t been able to find any evidence of it on the internet.) And this teacher is passing on her love of all things Wisconsin sports to my daughter and all the other kids in her class. Some days they even have “wear your Brewer gear to school” day. (My girl proudly wears her Prince Fielder t-shirt, as she still has questions about Ryan Braun’s ability to hit the change-up.)

Naturally, I approve of this. In fact, if my daughter learns to love the Brewers and Packers in place of learning math or science, I might be okay with that. Love of sports will last her a lifetime. She’s got plenty of time to learn to read. In fact, if I can push off her being able to read this blog for an extra couple years, that might be a good deal.

But consider the flip side of this whole sports indoctrination process. What if I was a Cub fan and my daughter was being taught to be a Brewer fan at school? What if I was living in Chicago and the day care teachers were holding “wear your Brian Urlacher jersey to school” day? (I don’t have to worry about offending Cubs or Bears fans, as they are unlikely to be able to read this post.) I seriously might complain to the school. I think an immediate parent/teacher conference would be in order.

This might be sacrilege to say, but I think I would actually be more offended if my daughter was being taught to be a Viking fan than if her school was inculcating her with Hinduism or something. At some point, my kids are going to be going to Madison public schools and be subjected to preposterously liberal classrooms. I can handle that – but I couldn’t possibly handle my child wearing a Fukudome jersey. Never. Ever. Never.

In the meantime, I am psyched about taking her to her first Brewer game. I believe my first one was in 1980, against the Yankees. I also went to the game in 1982 when Rickey Henderson tied the all-time steals record against the Brew Crew. Hopefully, when she walks into Miller Park, she won’t have to wait until she’s married with kids to witness a playoff berth.

If you go to enough conservative events, eventually you’re going to hear the “S” word bandied about. Inevitably, someone will warn of the impending doom if the “socialist” Democrats take over. While I’m certainly sympathetic to the cause, I generally to bristle at these attempts to tie modern Democrats to the murderous regimes of Lenin and Stalin. Nancy Pelosi’s reconstructed visage may break my HDTV, but I’m guessing she’s not going to steal and murder my children.

In any event, if any state has a history of being friendly to socialism, it is Wisconsin. Milwaukee famously elected three Socialist mayors in the first half of the 20th Century – a feat unique to large American cities. The State Senate and Assembly often housed members of the Socialist Party in the ’20s and ’30s – in some years, there were more Socialists than Democrats. Yet while they were socialist in name, rarely did they govern as Socialists in practice. (Much of this is detailed in Robert Booth Fowler’s excellent new book “Wisconsin Votes.”)

It’s even more interesting when one examines the modern Democratic agenda and its roots within the Socialist movement of the early 1900′s. For instance, look at many of the current Democratic talking points: We have to tax excessive oil profits. We have to tax hospital profits. Insurance companies are charging us too much, so we should have government take over health care and tax business to pay for it.

If these sound familiar, it’s because these attempts to “tax the profiteers” have been around for the entirety of Wisconsin’s history. And predominantly from the Socialist Party.

Check out this campaign flier from Socialist Party candidate for U.S. Senate Candidate Victor L. Berger, in which he vows to “Tax the Profiteers.” (Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Online Collection)

Again, this doesn’t mean modern Democrats and the vile European Socialist Regimes are married to one another. But at the very least, they are pen pals.

SIDE NOTE: Berger, who was one of the founding members of the Socialist Party in Wisconsin, had a phenomenal public career. From his Historical Society biography:

Berger was elected the first Socialist member of Congress and served from 1911 to 1913. He was reelected in 1918 and 1919. Congress excluded his seat on grounds of sedition, a charge for which he was sentenced to a 20-year prison term. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed this decision in 1921. He was allowed to take his seat when reelected in 1922.

So I was in the public library today. (Yes, they still allow me to check books out there, even though this column put me on the Dewey Decimal Mafia hit list.) As I approached the checkout desk (wearing a disguise*), I noticed a sign that said the library was “going green” by not printing out receipts if the patron requests it. So I proudly announced my environmentalism by declaring that I didn’t want a receipt. Coincidentally, the book I was checking out was “The Story of My Boyhood and Youth” by John Muir, which meant the universe was briefly completely in order.

I have long thought that receipts are the great environmental issue of our era. I was at Panera the other day getting a single sandwich, and they printed out three receipts, two of which I got to keep. Go buy a CD at Best Buy (as if anyone does that anymore). Do I really need a three foot long receipt? And no, I don’t want to go to your damn website and fill out your damn online questionnaire and get a dollar off my next purchase. Basically, I just want something that proves that I bought the CD there, and lets me return it for store credit after I burn it to my hard drive. Can I get an Amen?

Hopefully, my anti-receipt position has bought me enough carbon credits to continue swearing at the people who bike to work in front of me. Next up, I will take on the excessive use of bagging small items.

*My disguise was frowning excessively.