On this week’s podcast, we picked our favorite singers and reviewed the new album from Woods, “At Echo Lake.”
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For reference purposes, here’s “Shimmer” by Throwing Muses:
A few weeknights ago, I was sitting comfortably at home, enjoying some commercials for the A-Team movie, which were occasionally interrupted by some NBA playoff basketball. The phone rang, and I do what I normally do – swear for 30 seconds, then I got off the couch to answer it. (It is never for me.)
At the other end of the line was a pleasant young Indian woman telling me she was conducting a poll. For some reason, I’m on a giant master polling list, because I get calls like these at least once a week. I asked her who commissioned the poll, and she said if she told me, she’d have to cancel the call, as it would bias the results.
Seeing as how our group does polling for a living, I decided to go through with it, to see if I could guess who was conducting the poll. Plus, whenever I answer a telephone poll, I feel like I’m doing my civic duty. Like I should receive some sort of cash award. (Now that I mention it, public, you owe me $13.24 for my time. An invoice is on the way.)
But here’s the thing about polls – often times, complicated issues are boiled down to “yes” or “no” answers – and I feel an obligation to give an answer, so I might be a little more… shall we say… forthcoming in my answers. It’s for science, right?
For example, one of the questions in this poll was, “Do you support or oppose gay marriage?” This is an issue on which I’m genuinely conflicted. I don’t buy that gay and lesbian couples getting married affects my own marriage in any way. (In fact, the 6 month-long NBA playoffs has done far more damage to my marriage than “the gays” ever will. If Kobe Bryant married another man, I might have to get divorced on the spot.)
But this wasn’t the only question I was supposed to boil down into a one word answer. Imagine getting a question like, “do you support deporting all the illegal immigrants in America?” Obviously, it’s a complicated issue. And answering either “yes” or “no” can’t possibly reflect any complicated underlying issues.
About halfway in, I was asked some questions about my congressional representative, Tammy Baldwin. “Do you think Tammy Baldwin spends too much time on gay and lesbian issues?” was one of them. “Do you think Tammy Baldwin has done enough to keep and create jobs in America?” was another.
It was at this point that I realized it was Baldwin’s campaign that was conducting the poll. (And don’t think the irony was lost on me that a woman on a headset in India, hired by the Tammy Baldwin campaign, was asking me if Baldwin has done enough to keep jobs in America.)
Conservative candidates don’t waste valuable poll questions asking about gay and lesbian issues – generally, because they’re not really a vote mover. (In 2006, the constitutional amendment passed 60-40, but Republicans were trounced in elections all across Wisconsin.) It’s only a liberal fantasy that conservative voters sit around their house, wringing their hands about the gay conspiracy taking over the world. We’re actually too busy going to work and watching Glenn Beck.
But then it occurred to me – here I was, trying to be a stand-up citizen and give one-word answers to all these complicated questions, and now Tammy Baldwin has all my answers at the tip of her fingers. I was trying to be as honest as possible, but clearly some of my answers to the questions as they were asked would need further explanation to be publicly palatable.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, I wanted to enter a life of crime – and run for Congress. (This will not happen, incidentally, as I plan to marry Kobe Bryant and move to the Bahamas.) Now Baldwin has all my simple answers to her questions – asked the way her campaign wanted to ask them – which she could use to make me look like an idiot. (More so than I normally do myself.)
This is an awesome strategy future campaigns should use. Once you get yourself elected, pick out who your most likely challengers will be in your next election. Then do some phony poll that only calls those people, and get them on the record with “yes” and “no” answers on some controversial issues. You’ll probably find that they’ll give you more honest answers, as they feel like they’re doing their civic duty. Then, when they run, you can hammer them with their own positions. As Gill the Fish says in Finding Nemo, IT’S FOOLPROOF.
(Incidentally, if your campaign does use this strategy, you are violating my intellectual property. I accept payment in Jamba Juice.)
This week’s podcast is a MEGA GRAB BAG (and not in the Al Gore sense.) We discuss what exactly “lesbian music” is, and review music from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Brandi Carlile, Wilson Kilmer, Joe Jackson, Tokyo Police Club, Hutch and Kathy, The Jam, and Echo & the Bunnymen.
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If you see a bead of sweat forming on Russ Feingold’s brow these days, don’t blame the late June Wisconsin humidity. It’s far more likely that his flop sweat is the result of early summer poll results trickling in.
Yesterday, Rasmussen issued a poll showing Feingold in a statistical dead heat with challenger Ron Johnson, with Feingold ahead by a slim 46% to 45% margin. It is stunning that an 18-year incumbent would be virtually dead even with a newcomer who has been in the race for about sixty seconds. But Johnson, a businessman from Oshkosh, is clearly riding a wave of discontent with Feingold and Congress.
Yet even with the polls telling us what we already know, Feingold has been signaling his desperation with a number of odd public statements over the past few days. He continues to take some puzzling shots at Johnson, indicating that he knows he’s in serious danger of losing his job.
For instance, at a candidate debate between Johnson and GOP primary opponent Dave Westlake yesterday, the issue of the BP oil spill came up. According to Wispolitics.com, Johnson said he believed “BP must be held accountable,” although he had questions about the manner in which their $20 billion victim’s fund was created and would be distributed by President Obama. Hardly groundbreaking stuff.
But Feingold’s attack machine pounced, almost as if they wrote Feingold’s statement before the debate even took place: “The fact that both Republican candidates came out in opposition to holding BP accountable for the worst environmental disaster in our country’s history shows just how addicted the GOP is to big oil special interests and how out of touch they are with Wisconsin.”
Of course, this is a demonstrable lie, which Feingold knows won’t be followed up on by any reporter in Wisconsin. Apparently, Feingold knows that he can’t win points against Johnson by debating what he actually says, so he just has to make things up.
Even more puzzling was Feingold’s next attack. On Tuesday night of this week, Johnson attended some meetings in Washington, D.C., including a meet and greet with lobbyists. Again, Feingold’s attack dogs went on offense:
“By going out to Washington, D.C., to meet with lobbyists and special interests Ron Johnson makes it pretty clear whose side he’s on.”
Ironically, just a few days ago, Feingold criticized Johnson for being a millionaire. Wouldn’t that mean that Johnson isn’t beholden to special interest money? Apparently, according to Feingold, Johnson is “corrupted” either by his own money or other peoples’ money, depending on what week it is.
Furthermore, it only took about three mouse clicks to find this list of political action committee contributions Feingold has accepted during his time in the Senate. The total tally of special interest contributions collected by Feingold: 1,096 lobbyist contributions totaling $1,868,908. This from the self-professed King of Campaign Finance Reform. Seems to be working out well for him.
Among Feingold’s contributors:
And on and on it goes – 1,096 contributions and $1.8 million long. And yet, according to Feingold, it is Ron Johnson, who’s been back in Oshkosh building his business from scratch, who is beholden to lobbyists. (Of course, Feingold will never be asked what the Democratic Women of Santa Barbara County have to do with creating jobs in Wisconsin.)
Even more ridiculous is this press release from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which ends with this paragraph:
The Bellwether Group raised money for Congressman Tom Feeney, who lost his seat after he became engulfed in the largest Washington D.C. lobbying scandal in history. Feeney accepted a Scottish golf trip from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and was named one of the most corrupt members of Congress four times by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Got that? It’s not the Senator who’s spent 18 years in Washington that’s connected to Jack Abramoff – it’s the guy who’s never had anything to do with the corrupt political machine in D.C. for the entirety of his life. This is like saying that since Prince Fielder plays in Milwaukee, he must eat people like Jeffrey Dahmer.
You have to wonder if they have a giant flow chart on the wall at the Democratic Party – the “Six Degrees of Jack Abramoff” chart. If somehow, you fall within five degrees, then suddenly you’re corrupt. It appears asking the Dem Party to have at least a fifth grade level of sophistication is asking too much.
Of course, there aren’t any media members who will ever point out how desperate Feingold actually is. Saint Russ the Maverick will continue to get a free pass until election day. In fact, for this reason, a candidate against Feingold almost necessarily has to be a millionaire, in order to counteract all the positive press Feingold will get throughout the campaign.
This is perhaps the greatest irony in all these mistruths spun by Feingold – he champions restricting political speech because of all the damage it supposedly does to democracy; yet it’s the blatant lies told by candidates themselves that do the most to coarsen the public’s perception of their elected officials. Obviously, he knows he can’t win on his own likeability – he has to tear down a good man to sneak past the finish line. Somehow, I don’t think we’ll see a new law regulating that.
On this week’s podcast, we discuss the Summerfest lineup and how disappointing it is that cats and dogs can get along, and we review the new albums from Tame Impala and Nada Surf. In response to our question about who the most famous person from Perth, Australia is, the answer is Heath Ledger.
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Here’s Tame Impala’s “Solitude is Bliss:”
Last month, I became a regular contributor to the Isthmus, which is an independent newspaper here in Madison. (Here’s the Wikipedia entry on what a “newspaper” is.) It has opened up an entirely new audience to my writing; namely, people waiting for their food at Noodles & Company.
This month’s column takes a look at how the Wisconsin Legislature is likely to get a lot younger next year – and what the consequences of that demographic shift might be:
In November 2008, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI), my employer, conducted a poll that gauged the legislative priorities of Wisconsin’s citizens by age.
One finding concerned the issue addressed by Rep. Fields. According to the WPRI poll, younger respondents were more likely to support the Milwaukee Choice Program. Among respondents 18 to 44 years old, 52% supported the program, while 43% opposed it. Among respondents 45 or older, the numbers virtually flipped — 41% in favor, 52% against. The strongest support — 62% — came from those 25 to 34.
Younger respondents prioritized education more than their older counterparts. Of those between 18 and 44 years old, 18.4% listed education as their most pressing issue, more than double the 8.7% of respondents 45 or older.
On the other hand, as expected, older respondents prioritized health care much higher than younger respondents. Among respondents over 45, 30.2% picked health care as their top legislative priority, compared to only 14.9% of those under 45.
Younger people (again, those under 45) were also less likely to emphasize tax reform as a priority (11.4% to 16.6%), but more likely to stress the economy and jobs (31.6% to 24.6%).
Read the whole thing here.
On this week’s MEGA GRAB BAG podcast, we play selected songs from bands we’re currently listening to, and wonder why all beer doesn’t come with twist off caps. Bands mentioned include The Daredevil Christopher Wright, Laura Marling, Male Bonding, Phosphorescent, Curtis Mayfield, Band of Horses, and Roy Orbison.
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This week, we preview the upcoming music festival schedule and review the new album “Treats” from Sleigh Bells.
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Here’s the song “Kids” from Sleigh Bells. Turn the bass up: