In the 70’s and 80’s all I knew about Wisconsen was that wonderfull Swiss Colony and their great catalogs.
Never thought in 2023 that Catalogs would be replaced by attempted coups.
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How many of the people who moved to Arizona in the past 20 years were actually climate refugee, white, evangelical Lutherans Republicans from Wisconsin? I could name about 100 of them in my past knowledge from growing up and living in Wisconsin.
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Someone from MN once asked me what people in New York think of folks in the midwest. Telling her that we call it the flyover was absolutely necessary.
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Tommy Thompson was the guy at the back door that opened it all up to the Republicans to take over. By the way, Tommy was a drunk and an idiot. He used to tell my older brother, a bartender and a bouncer who had to throw him out on his heels many times in the days he was bragging about someday being a Wisconsin legislative leader, and maybe even a governor. And maybe he has burned out of from the bottle, is still an idiot, as you just saw. Just remember, Wisconsin grew Joseph McCarthy, who was elected Senator from Wisconsin in 1947. The far-right John Birch Society has a long history in Wisconsin and still maintains a headquarters in Appleton. This right wing nightmare has been in place in Wisconsin since the 1940s. I knew many families who had very talented members blacklisted as Communist supporters. A few of whom gave me piano lessons as a kid. It is very personal to me.
I worked in voter registration in Wisconsin for years, and then became a poll worker and worked my way up to being an election official with 4 wards under my responsibility until 2010, when Wisconsin passed Voter ID requirements. I left the state in 2012 – my last election was the April Primary in 2012. I was absolutely crushed by the increasing fascism that I knew and experienced as a kid in Wisconsin, that had returned.
I live in a sane state, with sane leadership, albeit not particularly brilliant. At least we have vote by mail, and are virtually solid Democratic Party government.
I miss the excitement and rigor of our representative democracy elections. And I wish Wisconsin well, and energy to bring back the Progressive leadership that I knew growing up there.
Robert LaFollette is still tossing in his grave.
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Reminiscent of the sounds and smells of my old man’s experiments in cheese cultures from our basement. To be fair, I had a few root beer fermentation disasters that looked and sounded like an A-Bomb from that same basement myself when I was about 10 years old… But at least they smelled great… Not like limberger…
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When I was a student at UW-Madison, in the 1960s, every fall at about 12-week-exam time, the Swiss Colony and Monroe Cheese companies would bus a whole lot of Madison students to make what was good then money packing orders for their Christmas sales. Knew a whole lot of people who were looking for some Christmas money, who figured there was a long time to make up their mid-semester grades before finals would come around in Early January… Some of them were lucky… a sad few buddies flunked out and ended up being sent to VietNam.
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It goes back at least as far as Reagan, and possibly Nixon.
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Let’s get some epidemiologists to opine on whether there’s a link between cheese curd-eating and fascism. I bet there is.
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Yes, and that’s why New Yorkers are so popular!
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Well then, F Scott, Fitzgerald and the rest of them.
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Feels like a temper tantrum from the WI GOP. Robin Vos was really trying to sell his plan as a compromise, but even the local papers ripped it as just another means of the GOP controlled legislature rigging the system.
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Why do I fear that the Wisconsin “Swiss zone” is a hotbed of reactionary Republicanism, support for the disgraced ex-president, and hostility towards the majority of voters in the state. Which is sad, since Switzerland itself has one of the broadest democratic system, with extensive use of initiative and referendum (with no dodgy super-majorities, though some require a majority of both votes and cantons), with proportional representation, and other modern democratic institutions. Of course, Switzlerand also has one of the most powerful populist right-wing parties in Europe, the SVP, whose leader is a past master of the politics of tribalism and fear, making our own disgraced ex-president look like the piker he is, so perhaps a reactionary, tribal trend came over in the 19th century with all those cheesemakers.
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Mitt Romney is right: the GOP no longer believes in Democracy or the Constitution.
The rules are what they say they are, right this minute, never mind 5m ago.
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I am laughing my ass off here. I guess he got his message out despite his WORDS; golly how did Wisconsin go so nuts? Charley Sykes is on MSNBC all the time saying HE BACKED THESE PEOPLE but only w/TRUMP did he realize what he had been doing.
Thanks, Charley; maybe you can write some unpleasant truthful stories about your state’s GOP?
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Trump isn’t the main reason, but his arrival bothered and scared folks.
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Folks just love to be looked down upon. And it’s a great way to secure electoral victories.
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Do their “constituents” deserve any better??? These are the people who voted these creeps into office!
Mars
Cheese
Castle
Camera
TV
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Better watch out or someone might call you an Eeyore.