The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan recently posted this message on his Twitter account: "I used to give up food, like beer or ice cream, for #Lent. But this year, I decided to give up something different." He then elaborated on the matter in a video, saying, "I used to give up food things, I used to give up, you know, beer, or ice cream or pop. Typically what I do is don't pick those things back up. Ice cream and beer I still have a little bit, but I've given up so many things over the years, food-wise, that I decided to witch my Lenten vows to character deficiencies, or problems I've had." He then specified by saying he was giving up anxiety and impatience this year. Upon hearing this, Lindsay Holmes of the Huffington Post  criticized Speaker Ryan: "The more people conflate mental health terms with colloquialisms, the more alienated individuals with mental illness will feel. Do you know how many of those 40 million Americans wish they could jus...

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, with his 0% support according to the polls, has decided to end his run to become the next president. He's apparently done this in order to help one of 13 other Republican candidates defeat Donald Trump to become the party's nominee. When asked, Walker elaborated further on the matter by saying this: "While I'm incredibly disappointed with how my campaign fared and wish I was still in the race, with a chance to become the next president, I'm excited to help one of my Republican brothers or sisters defeat Donald Trump to become the party's nominee. Trump is polling at what, 25-30%, with Carson and Fiorina about 10-15 points behind him? I mean, I know my own family didn't even support me as the party's nominee, but I have to have some supporters out there somewhere, right? Even if it's just 1 or 2 votes, I really think I could help Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, or someone else defeat Donald Trump. Let's just do ...

It's quite ironic that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is running to become president in 2017 yet seems to be unwilling to answer questions about the future. Yes, 2017 is in the future. When speaking with ABC News and being asked how he'd respond to the Syrian refugee situation if he were the president, Walker responded with this: "I'm not president today and I can't be president today. Everybody wants to talk about hypotheticals; there is no such thing as a hypothetical." I'm sorry to disappoint Mr. Walker, but these questions kind of come with the territory of running for the highest office in the land. Yes, he'll be asked about previous comments he's made, his voting record, bills he's passed and vetoed, how he differs from the 432 other GOP candidates, and perhaps a few times when he's been caught flip-flopping. However, like all the other candidates, he's going to be asked about what he'd do if he became president - you k...

For some reason, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has been rising in the polls of possible GOP presidential candidates for the 2016 election. However, one has to wonder if that momentum will swing in the other direction after a comment he made at the Conservative Political Action Conference yesterday. When being asked about how he'd handle the terrorist group ISIS, Walker responded with this: "If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the globe." Yes, taking on 100,000 peaceful progressive protesters is the same thing as taking on the terrorist group ISIS... After receiving immediate backlash for his absurd comparison, Walker responded by saying this: "You all will misconstrue things the way you see fit, but I think it's pretty clear, that's the closest thing I have in terms of handling a difficult situation, not that there's any parallel between the two." Either Scott Walker is an idiot or he thinks the rest of us are ...

Wisconsin enacted a law in 2009 which gave employees, especially women, more power to challenge pay discrimination to the state courts. With the law in place, gender pay gap in the state improved from 36th to 24th in the country (approximately $0.78 to the $1.00 that men made). In 2012, however, Republican Governor Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled state legislature decided to repeal this law. Now with Governor Walker in a tight race with Democratic challenger Mary Burke, whom has been attacking him on this very repeal, Walker has decided to respond via Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, where she says the following in an ad: "That's why I find it so insulting that Mary Burke would say that we're trying to make it harder for women to earn equal pay. Under Scott Walker, workplace discrimination will always be illegal, for any reason. Mary Burke wants to create more opportunities to sue. We want to create more opportunities for women to succeed." Wh...

When talking to the uber-conservative NewsMax TV on Wednesday, Wisconsin Senator and man voted creepiest potential Boy Scout leader - Ron Johnson - said the following with regard to Affordable Care Act premium increases in the state: "I'm driving around Wisconsin, I'm talking to business owners and I'm talking to health care providers and insurance agents as well and they're seeing that same kind of range [of premium increases for 2015], anywhere from 16 to 60 percent. Kind of with an average of around 30 percent here just anecdotally in Wisconsin." Bob Uecker, would you care to give your two cents regarding Senator Johnson's numbers? "Just a bit outside." Thanks. The fact of the matter is, according to the numbers reported by the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (OCI) last month, healthcare premiums will increase by an average of 3% in 2015, and two insurers are actually reporting decreases for the coming year. Medica ...

In Wisconsin's sixth congressional district Republican primary yesterday, State Senator Glenn Grothman narrowly won and will square off against Winnebago County Executive Mark Harris in the coming midterm election to replace retiring Representative Tom Petri. Allow me to introduce everyone to State Senator Grothman. Here are a few of his quotes and my commentary after each one: - "You could argue that money is more important for men." Clearly what the state senator meant to say was, "You could argue that money is more important for men than for dodo birds." Okay, so that's probably not true. The statement did make him sound like a dodo, however. - "[The wage gap can be blamed on] women's decision to prioritize childrearing over their careers." Those darn women whom work and have babies all by themselves, while men have nothing to do with those very babies! One has to wonder what Grothman would say if men were the ones getting pregnant...

Dylan Grall - a 23-year old man from Janesville, Wisconsin - was recently arrested for battery, with a hate-crime enhancer, because he reportedly yelled at two Hebrew-speaking men to speak English, and struck both of them, before later telling police he thought they were speaking Spanish. Not only does it appear that Mr. Grall is a racist, but it also seems like his prime source for reading material are coloring and pop-up books. Here now is a list of crimes Grall will likely commit in the future: - Assault a Latino-American, later saying, "I thought he was an Asian person guy!" - Shoot a Buddhist, saying, "I thought he was a Museum - you know, an evil A-rab!" - Sexually harass a woman, saying, "I thought she was a dude!" Even though Mr. Grall yelled at a couple of Hebrew-speaking men to speak English, I have a hunch he wouldn't score very high if he were given an English test right about now... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/27/hate...

Former Green Bay Packers safety LeRoy Butler was scheduled to give an anti-bullying presentation at a church in Wisconsin this summer, but it appears as if his speech has been canceled, which Butler explained in a series of tweets. These tweets stated the following: "Wow, I was schedule to speak at a church in WI, and a member said that the pastor wants to cancel my event, I said ok why? Then I was told, because I said congrats to Jason Collins on twitter, I said really? we have a contract, he said check the moral cause. FYI the fee was 8500$, then I was told if i removed the tweet, and apologize and ask god forgiveness, I can have the event, I said no." A bit later, he tweeted this: "I found out what happened, I guess some parents went to the church and complained about my tweet for support of Jason Collins, so sad." Allegedly, when Butler went to the pastor to try and resolve the situation by saying, "We agree to disagree," the pastor responded w...

Former Republican vice presidential candidate and lover of an Ayn Rand blow-up doll - Paul Ryan - made quite the comment on our healthcare system today. Here, I'll let him explain things himself. Paul, take it away... "We believe that this law is going to collapse under its own weight... This to us is something that we're not going to give up on, because we're not going to give up on destroying the health care system for the American people. We want to prevent this law, which we really do believe will do great damage to families and the health care system in America." This is merely the foreshadowing of Ryan's 2016 presidential campaign, which will be called, "Vague Details of Destruction," where Mr. Detailed himself will lay about specifics in a vague manner as only he can. These vague details of destruction will include the following sure-fire winning quotes from Mr. Ryan: - "We're not going to give up on destroying the health care s...

As I've made mention at other points in my blog, I was born and raised in Nebraska. As I've also said, the only sport Nebraska really has is Cornhusker football. During football season, 84.2% of the state treat Nebraska football like a religion. Every Saturday during the season, I see between 5 and 20 Facebook statuses pertaining to Nebraska football. Keeping that in mind, I've found it to be utterly hilarious what what Nebraska Facebook friends have focused they're attention on since their team lost the Big Ten title game to Wisconsin. Early in the 3rd quarter, Nebraska scored a quick touchdown, which was called back because of an unnecessary roughness penalty on wide receiver Kenny Britt. Via replay, it appeared as if Britt didn't make helmet-to-helmet contact, but the hit was so vicious, that it left the Wisconsin player down for a couple minutes. This is what Nebraska fans have focused their attention on in the world of Facebook. While I feel the penalty was v...

With President Obama receiving a rather large post-convention bounce at the polls and the Romney/Ryan team talking themselves in so many circles that it's been reported that the two sober men failed a sobriety test, the November election is looking more and more like an uphill fight for the Republican ticket. In recent days, it's been reported that the Romney team has pulled its ads from the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Paul Ryan's home state of Wisconsin. They'll instead focus their attention on the following states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia. There are mixed reports on what the team plans on doing about Ohio. It appears as if, while they're still running ads in the Buckeye state, they've pulled them from a very large portion of the state. In other words, it appears as if the Romney team is conceding Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and may not be far removed from conceding Ohio as well. This spells ...

Mitt Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, has walked himself into a bit of trouble in the past week. Actually, it'd be more literally accurate to say that he's talked himself into some trouble. Following Ryan's speech at the Republican National Convention, a Fox News columnist even referred to it as "a mountain of cow dung". She also questioned if Ryan was trying to set the record for most lies told in a single political speech. One of the fibs Mr. Ryan told was with regard to a Janesville, Wisconsin GM plant closing. In his speech, he said the following: "My home state voted for President Obama.  When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.  A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you...this plant will be here for another hundred ...

I just read an article about how June has already been an awful month for the Democratic Party and well, it basically laid claim that Armageddon was soon around the corner for the Democrats. Why? Three things: 1) The May jobs' report, 2) The Wisconsin results and 3) May fundraising. Has it been a good start for the Democrats this month? No. But are people overreacting? Yes. The May jobs' report was a big disappointment, without question, but let's put things into perspective. If a similar jobs report had come out at the end of Bush's tenure or the start of Obama's (or even middle of it), it would have received glowing reviews. Due to it (and the previous month's report), it appears as if job growth has definitely slowed, however, it was still a net positive, which makes it, what, 12 straight months with such results? I'm too lazy to fact-check right at this moment, but I think I'm close to accurate with that number. Again, it was very disappointing, ho...

So, Scott Walker won the recall vote for Governor of Wisconsin two nights ago. Was this a surprising result? Judging by polls - no. Democrats are making it seem as if there was a voter-fraud conspiracy. Who really knows one way or another about that? Republicans are making it seem as if this is a foreshadowing of the November presidential election. That's an even further cry from the truth. Among people who voted on Tuesday in the state, Obama had a solid +11 advantage over Romney. How does that bode well for Romney in the state? Also, Democrats won back control of the state senate. Of course, those two bits of news aren't receiving the headlines. The headlines are all about Scott Walker being re-elected. That's understandable, I suppose, but the surrounding stories about his re-election are ridiculous. If among Tuesday's voters, Romney held a significant lead (or any lead) over President Obama, Republicans may be right in saying that the vote was foreshadowing November...

Having been born, raised, and resided there for 26 years, I tend to pay close attention to Nebraska football. There aren't any pro teams in the cornfield state. There may be an arena football team, college basketball, etc., but if you ask 100 random people in the state what one sport/team they pay closest attention to, I imagine 99 will say the Nebraska Cornhuskers' football team. Going into last night's primetime game against Wisconsin at Camp Randall Stadium, the Huskers were 4-0 and ranked 8th in the country. The Badgers greeted the Huskers into Big Ten play with a 48-17 thrashing of the Cornhuskers. After getting out to a 14-7 lead, Nebraska was outscored 41-3 the rest of the way through. Now, I don't think Nebraska could have won this game. However, I don't understand their strategy and play-calling. They abandoned their strength, the ground game, WAY too early. That is what vaulted them to a 14-7 lead. But, after Wisconsin scored a touchdown and had an ext...