Friday, October 13, 2006

Spice Boys whistled for unnecessary roughness

Jay Bullock -- on this blog he's known as The Founder -- says on his folkbum blog that Sensenbrenner, who starts out with huge advantages of wealth and incumbency in his reelection campaign against Bryan Kennedy, has one more advantage. It's the Spice Boys, who are piling on at every opportunity.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest

Sometimes family matters have to be attended to and as much as I wanted to attend the 5th Congressional District debate last night, my wife's birthday came first.

Having missed this and being keenly interested in the proceedings, first thing this morning I tore open the Metro section of the Journal to find coverage of the event.

Nada

Well, maybe they saw fit to put it in the front section.

Zilch.

My guess is the shrinking space in the news hole dictated passing on the second debate in two days between Bryan, F. Jim and the Green candidate.

That's too bad, because the second debate in Fox Point is 180 degrees from the first one in Brookfield and makes for a different dynamic. Plus the first one took place in the afternoon and the second one in the evening.

My thought is that the second one would make for much more dynamic coverage with more impassioned reactions from this more liberal audience. This leads to the speculation if the Journal even thinks this race warrants coverage at all and has succumbed to the conventional wisdom -- or their version of it, despite that Bryan is in reach of the seat. Folkbum (http://folkbum.blogspot.com/2006/10/wi-05-f-jims-running-scared-with.html) has a great take on this.

Look at the situation. The horse race rules compel the news media to act like the GOP could catch up to the Democrats in the grab for Congress, even though the odds looks very bad for the Republicans. Check out Paul Krugman's column in todays NY Times.

But the Journal slogs along, discounting all possibilities that we do have a race going on in the 5th. Can't hearten the Democrats, can we.

Too bad. Newspapers should challenge the conventional wisdom, which leads me to wonder if the Journal will endorse one of the most unrepresentative of all of the Representatives in Congress for re-election.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Sensenbrenner and the NRA

Sensenbrenner and his colleagues ought to be ashamed for rushing to protect rogue gun dealers at the expense of public safety.
-- An editorial on Sensenbrenner's shameless sellout to the gun nuts.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Two public forums this week

I didn't say debate, because I can't tell for certain whether these are debates, forums, or just back-to-back speeches, but Big Jim Sensenbrenner and Bryan Kennedy will at least be in the same room twice in the next two days, probably for the only times during the entire campaign.

Both events are open to the public.

On Wednesday, Oct. 11, they'll take part in a forum at the Brookfield Public Safety Building, 2100 N. Calhoun Rd., from 10 to 11;30 a.m. It's sponsored by the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans.

On Thursday, Oct. 12, they will participate in a forum sponsored by the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations at Congregation Shalom, 7630 N. Santa Monica Blvd.,Fox Point, at 7 p.m.