For weeks now all that Sykes has had to attack Abele for has been the fact that Abele seems to rack up an average of 3 parking tickets each month. He pays them, but apparently Sykes believes this is akin to a crime.

In his lust for muckraking, Sykes is howling about an old OWI ticket. It turns out that 15 years ago, which incidentally is about the same time that Sykes left his wife and children to pursue an adulterous love affair with his now-wife, Abele got behind the wheel after having a few too many drinks. I’m not going to try to excuse it, and neither is Abele, but a little context is needed here.

Abele was in his 20′s.

Clearly it wasn’t the most mature thing to do, but it wasn’t like he was a mature man well into his 30′s running off with some tart while he had a wife and children at home. That would be Sykes.

It’s a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Meanwhile, the candidate who Sykes hopes to benefit, Jeff Stone, is happy to chortle over the new found ticket. But really now — there are massive protests of 100,000 plus Wisconsinites marching at Madison to protest Governor Walker’s budget and Stone just rubber stamped the plan. Stone’s approval of the Walker plan wasn’t a bad decision 15 years ago, it was this month. There are several Republican Senators who are going to be facing recall elections within the next few months to pay for their complete and utter contempt for the middle class, but Stone doesn’t seem to care what his constituents thing. If not for a Wisconsin law that protects politicians in the first year after they are elected, Stone would be facing a recall himself.

So if we’re going to talk about credibility, let’s talk about what’s going on now, not something that happened when one of the candidates was in their 20′s.

Stone said, “I’m the only candidate for Milwaukee County executive that has voted against increasing government pensions.” But is this really true?

The problem with this question is that it is misleading. It creates a doubt in the voters mind making them think that all of the other candidates have voted FOR increasing government pensions. That’s just not true.

So why would the Journal-Sentinel encourage this sneaky deception and then rate the statement “true”?

Earlier this week we pointed out that Journal Communications is the parent company of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, WTMJ AM620 radio and WTMJ Channel 4 (television). Each of the 3 sources appears to reinforce each other. None of them will criticize one of their sibling media sources. After all, Journal Communications is a business and criticizing one, discredits all.

For years it has been obvious that WTMJ AM620 has been a shill for the Republican party. It is now becoming clear that the Journal-Sentinel is now whoring their columns out to the GOP just as their radio station has been for years.

By lobbing this softball question to Stone, and letting him manipulate the wording in order to earn a “true”, the JS has discredited themselves.

This is the case of a recent story the Journal-Sentinel ran “Ament backs Sullivan in County Exec Race”.

Our problem is not so much the substance of the story, which is simply misleading, but the way that they chose to portray the long time former County Exec. Columnist Daniel Bice starts out the column with “F. Thomas Ament, the disgraced former Milwaukee County executive”…

We rate this story “deceptive”.

A journalist cannot start out their column with the premise of a lie and expect following that lie to be given credence. Ament was not disgraced. He committed no crime. He was never charged with a crime. Ament’s first mistake, and this is the one that led to the rest of the pension scandal, was to be a democrat. Journal Communications Republican talk radio show host Charlie Sykes (WTMJ) railed non-stop against Ament in order to drum up support to recall Ament. Journal Communications reporters and editors (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) ran stories supporting their own guys (Sykes) positions and restating an accusation of a generous benefits package that could have never benefited the exec in the amounts they claimed in the first place because it would have been illegal. Journal Communications television (WTMJ Channel 4) supported the whole thing by running non-stop anti-Ament stories. Fox6 also got in on the act since Fox pretty much always oppose Democrats, leaving only 2 other mainstream television sources who jumped in on the action because it seemed like it was thing thing to do.

It was a classic case of the tail wagging the watchdog.

Now, nearly 9 years after the feeding frenzy, and millions of dollars earned by Journal Communication which unethically manufactured the frenzy, they’re taking cheap shots at Ament again.

The substance of Bice’s story is that Ament wrote a check to candidate and former State Senator Jim Sullivan. Sullivan, who was Ament’s State Senator, and before that Ament’s Alderman, gave Sullivan $200. Sullivan is facing philanthropist Chris Abele who is already running television ads and can afford to drop a million dollars of his own money into the campaign if he chooses, and State Representative Jeff Stone who has the benefit of a virtually non-stop pro-Stone radio station promoting his campaign. And who owns that radio station? You guessed it — Journal Communication’s very own WTMJ.

So the big story here, and Journal Communications would prefer it not be laid out this simply, is that Sullivan took a $200 campaign donation from a former County Exec who served the people of Milwaukee County for over 30 years. Meanwhile, Journal Communications, whose radio station will be providing what would otherwise cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in free advertising, is supporting another candidate with their donation of free air time.

While the story about Sullivan is a stretch, the premise of the story and the portrayal of Ament is certainly deceptive.

Really now, wouldn’t you think that everyone would have something better to do than complain about MMSD? I mean, I get it — there is sewage dumping that happens a few times a year in order to reduce the possibility of sewage backups into peoples basements. That dumping goes into Lake Michigan and it’s understandable that people are upset, but rather than complain all the time, what solutions do they bring to the table?

None.

While the MMSD board has greatly reduced dumping to levels even lower than its neighboring Chicago, even folks from Chicago have pointed to MMSD and threatened lawsuits due to the dumping. What has Chicago done to solve their problem? They divert their waste into the Mississippi River rather than dumping into Lake Michigan. Let’s face it — neither is a good solution but with the massive reduction of incidents, why the continued gripe without solutions.

I’d really like to hear what their solutions are because all that’s coming out of the inappropriately named conservatives these days is venomous rhetoric and no solutions.

Limbaugh said that Bin Laden’s recent comments “sounds like this could easily be [said by] Russ Feingold, the Senator from Wisconsin.”

Limbaugh clearly doesn’t understand the differences between Wisconsin’s squeaky clean maverick senator and a cave dwelling, mass-murdering terrorist. But it’s not the first time that Limbaugh has used inflammatory rhetoric to incite his audience and it won’t be the last.

Comparisons have been made to GOP Presidents who made speeches to schoolchildren, but what the wild reaction made me think of is my own reaction to the news that then-President Reagan had been shot. I was liberal even then, and it would have been hard to find an action or opinion of Reagan’s with which I agreed. But I was upset by the shooting and would have been horrified if he had died: he was, after all, the President of the United States.

But the immediate conspiracy theories — and the willingness of conservative parents to keep their kids out of school rather than risk their being exposed to ideas they (the parents) disagree with — are the final proof that conservatives will never accept Obama as a legitimate President. (That doesn’t mean they’re all “Birthers” — that’s just one concrete way of delegitimizing Obama.) I don’t think it’s just about race, though it would be hard to deny that’s a contributing factor. For whatever reason, they reject him: he’s not their President, and I dare say a fair number of them would celebrate if he were assassinated. I realize that’s a terrible thing to say, but scan the righty blogs and I think you’ll agree.

While both have made their living wagging fingers at others, neither can be accused of discretion. While Sykes picked an opera singer to hook up with while still being married to now Appeals Judge Diane Sykes, McBride was smitten by power. McBride, who has lectured on journalistic ethics while teaching classes at UW-Milwaukee, chose Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn who she was writing a story on.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter Dan Bice, who broke the story of the affair, cites this little nugget of correspondence between the two — “Warm, no not warm, hot memories of beautiful moments … I feel younger today than I did last night.”

It’s time to light a few candles and cue up the Barry White.

McBride’s editor at Milwaukee Magazine is Bruce Murphy who has taken some journalistic liberties of his own over the past few years. According to Bice’s story, Murphy seems to care little that McBride was carrying on a tryst with the Chief while she was writing the story “the Cop who can’t stop.”

McBride is married to former Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher and while Bucher no longer wields the power of the law, Flynn does. How does that affect McBride?

“I feel younger today than I did last night.”

Apparently, power really is an aphrodisiac.

That was my reaction when syndicated talk radio host (on AM620 WTMJ ) Michael Savage decided to play a "Dead Kennedys" song when he announced that Ted Kennedy had been diagnosed with brain cancer.

As a person who has lost a close relative to brain cancer I can tell you it's nothing to be joked about. Brain cancer is a ruthless cancer that destroys a persons motor functions and robs them of the ability to speak. There was nothing funny about seeing my uncle Don rot away from the inside. He was a vibrant man who in his youth was athletic and very active. There was nothing funny about seeing him shuffle about and it wasn't hilarious to see lose his ability to speak or to see him drooling in the latter stages of his cancer.

It's been over ten years since I lost my uncle Don and now Senator Ted Kennedy will likely face that same decline. Perhaps Savage doesn't understand the ravages of this disease. Savage was not funny, he was just cruel.

While Cody has democratic voters in his sights, her newest opponent, Dan Wycklendt is happy to snarf up Republican votes. With DeBruin staking out a position in the center, there are likely to be few reasons for voters to support her. After all, with virtually no chance of grabbing votes from Republican voters with Wycklendt in the race, DeBruin now has to scramble to pull votes away from Cody. Without voters who typically vote for Democrats, DeBruin may not even make it out of the primary. DeBruin is going to have to do a pretty creative dance if she is to buffalo constituents into thinking she has been a hands-on Supervisor, especially considering the fact that she has had a chance to make changes, but has instead chosen to treat the job as a part-time gig funded by the taxpayer. Cody, on the other hand, pledges to be a hands-on Supervisor.

The interesting thing is that the district voters trend Democratic by a margin of two to one so it is a longshot that Wycklendt could win a general. That being said, he will likely have a lock on one third of the voters, assuring him of making it through the primary (if he puts in the work). He would have to position himself as a moderate to certain wards in the district if he would hope to make it though the general. That leaves Cody and DeBruin to fight it out for a majority of the two thirds of the primary voters who would find Wycklendt’s Republican philosophies contrary to their own.

Conventional wisdom would have thought DeBruin, once an avowed Democrat, would have a lock on that two thirds.

Not so.

DeBruin has embraced many of the ideals of Republican operative and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker. She has sided with Walker on many issues which run contrary to the philosophy of a majority of her district. DeBruin also dumped her membership in the Democratic Party when Walker’s Republican revolution shook Milwaukee County. Knowing that the political will of the populace is sometimes cyclical and knowing that she may face an opponent in her upcoming election, DeBruin rejoined the party in 2007 — a move that smacks of political desperation. Had she not turned her back on the Democratic party when she believed it might be advantageous for her, she would not seem so self-serving.

Cody has been a member of the Democratic party for years.

Recently, Republican talk radio show host Mark Belling announced that DeBruin was not running. She called into the show to proclaim that she was, in fact, running and she added that her opponent, Dan Cody is running against her because she is “too supportive of Scott Walker”.

It’s worthwhile here to note that Walker’s base is in the suburbs while the majority of the district DeBruin represents is in the city of Milwaukee which has suffered a tremendous loss of services under the Walker regime. By tying herself to Republican Walker on a talk show with a Republican advocate, DeBruin told her primarily Democratic district that they were not her priority.

On his radio show, Belling went on to ask what opponent she was referring to. DeBruin responds, “Dan Cody — he’s being endorsed by AFSCME…” which was an attempt to take a slap at unions which DeBruin must have figured would win her points from Belling listeners. There’s a problem with that — not all of Belling’s listeners are Republicans who hate unions. Belling may bash unions and it may make some of the Republicans on Belling’s show happy to hear her take a shot at unions, but DeBruin fails to understand that with today’s technology, everyone can hear what she had to say if they happen to get ahold of a recording of the show.

CLICK HERE TO HEAR DEBRUIN IMPLODE ON THE RADIO.

This week he whacked Sullivan for biking to work despite the fact that it was national bike to work week. Sullivan, whose office is in Madison, lives in Wauwatosa — 80 miles away. In his GOP rhetoric, Sykes proclaimed, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘the senator spent the majority of the day on a leisurely ride and since most of the day was gone when he arrived, he did very little in the office’.

Apparently physical exercise (which we don’t do enough of in America), showing yourself to be a role model, and doing your part to reduce greenhouse gases is a big waste of time too for Sykes. No, we should all sit on our couches, get fat and then roll into our exhaust spewing SUV’s regardless of the near-epidemic problem of childhood asthma. Clean air? Who needs it!

But if one of Sykes’ problems with Sullivan is that the Senator may have put in a short day, where is his criticism of President George W. Bush who has taken more vacations than any other President? Could it be that Sykes is only concerned with work ethic if he thinks he can get a “gotcha” on a Democrat? Why is it that Sykes doesn’t criticize Bush’s work ethic?

It’s not a bad thing that a public figure took the initiative to bike to work. It’s not a bad thing that, through his own physical effort and fighting through the pain of a long bike ride, he proved himself a role model for both adults and kids. And no, it’s not a bad thing that, for at least one day, a little less car exhaust was sent billowing into the air.

Talk show host Jessica McBride of AM 620 WTMJ, which is owned by Journal Communications, thinks it’s funny that 4 year old Jasmine Owens was murdered with a bullet to the head in a drive by shooting. Well hardee-har-har Ms. McBride. You have a sense of humor that only a serial killer could love.

What kind of sick, perverted and twisted mind finds this kind of mockery even remotely humorous? I’m sure little Jasmine’s parents aren’t amused by McBride’s heartless and cruel jabs which she meant to be funny.

McBride’s offensive comments were part of a podcast which she attached to a blog entry of hers. Not surprisingly, McBride has since removed not only the lead in text of the story but the audio as well. That podcast is now lost to the world.

Here was the lead in story:

TUESDAY, May 15, 2007, 11:32 p.m.
LISTEN TO MY DEBATE TONIGHT WITH EUGENE KANE

Listen here. (this was linked to the podcast she has since removed)

This is part of a new segment I launched tonight called LEFT SIDE OF THE MOON.

I am a bit sick of hearing conservatives only invite prominent conservative guests on their programs – the usual suspects. How fun it would be, I thought, to debate a prominent liberal every now and then. The number one reason for the segment is to ask liberals the questions the media don’t/won’t ask them and to see if they can defend their positions under challenge.

Left Side of the Moon is a segment I created with my producer, Robert. It will run only on Tuesdays and Fridays. Not every Tuesday and Friday. I will alert you, through this blog, in advance, to the days it will run.

My first invitee was Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane.

This is not NPR. It is not going to be a “conversation.” We are not going to play guitar and hold hands and roast marshmallows in the studio. It’s a debate. I believe that, most of the time, the conservative viewpoint is stronger than the liberal one logically and ethically. Can the liberal viewpoint withstand the challenge?

On the days when my liberal guest refuses to come on, I may just open the phone lines to any old liberal for a half hour or so. I find them vastly entertaining a lot of the time.

But Kane wasn’t on the show. as James Rowen of the blog The Political Environment points out, “McBride says the idea behind the kind of interview she wanted to do with Kane is to hammer a liberal on the air”.

Well let’s analyze what McBride wanted to do. She clearly found it “vastly entertaining” to superimpose a chicken squawking where Eugene Kane would have responded to her. Rowen, who listened to the podcast said “it seems as if you going to hear another juvenile but relatively harmless political radio rip…except that McBride uses those comedic sound effects for ‘Kane’s’ answer to a question about the recent, horrific Jasmine Owens murder”.

Oh yeah, now there’s some humor for you. That’s real comedic. I’m sure McBride’s mother must be real proud of having raised a daughter who would find humor in the murder of a 4 year old child.

But let’s take this one a step further. Let’s look at what McBride’s typical subject is. She complains about liberals. Liberals, liberals, liberals. They’re horrible people if you were to believe McBride. Now mind you, this was the same McBride who was complaining about Michael McGee Sr. of WNOV because of his tasteless and cruel comments related to the death of talk show host Charlie Sykes’ mother. McBride mistakenly calls McGee a liberal when in fact he’s just a reckless and sorry excuse for a human being. It made sense to question if McGee Sr. should be allowed to stay on the air. WNOV did the right thing by removing McGee Sr. Journal Communications should do the right thing by removing McBride.

The day after McBride took her futile attempt at comedy, she published another blog which called the death of Owens “an outrage” but it’s really too little, too late. McBride has shown a clear lack of respect for both little Jasmine and her parents. Rather than just come out and apologize she took the opportunity to once again go off on liberals. She could have just apologized for her insensitive comments and let it go at that. Instead she decided to bundle her comments in with another diatribe.

Now the question remains, will Journal Communications show as much journalistic integrity as WNOV and send McBride packing?

UPDATE: McBride was fired later today.

This is a perfect display of the typical seething hatred I get from Republicans.

Now mind you, I’m not running for anything and in all likelihood I never will again. There’s no reason to choose now to get pissed off at Jim McGuigan but fliers were printed off and distributed to my neighbors. So I’m thinking to myself, what could have inspired this?

I guess I can blame a few things. First I run a pretty popular blog. A lot of people have heard of it and it shows up pretty high on the search engines. For instance, when you type “Charlie Sykes” into Google, it comes up with an unflattering story I wrote a few years ago. But let this be a lesson to folks — these people are lunatics. They can’t separate politics from their everyday life.

So I’m left guessing who the hatemonger is. It could be a Republican I’ve exposed for one thing or another. It could be one of the resident lunatics calls Brown Deer home (Bruce Thomas aka Bruce Slutsky comes to mind). It could be one of the CRG organizers. It could be someone who has read the Sykes story and feels that it’s necessary to inspire some sort of new activism to chase me out of Brown Deer which wouldn’t be all together unlikely since I’ve gotten a HUGE amount of hate e-mail since the death of Sykes’ mother (note: I wasn’t even in the country when it happened).

Well I’m not moving so they can leaflet away all they want. In fact, I wouldn’t be upset if this sort of GOP tactic got a little publicity.

Now that we’ve been proven right, what will be the effect of McGee’s win? The answer is simple — he will be emboldened to continue his poor behavior which is unbefitting of a public official.

To understand why the black community said no, you have to understand the racial politics in Milwaukee. It is very difficult for a white person to win in a majority black district and even though McGee’s opponents were people of color, there was no secret about who was pushing the recall — white suburban republicans.

Ignorance and fear fueled the successful GOP inspired 2002 recalls in white suburbia in Milwaukee County. Attempts to bring the poison to the central city failed and now that the recalls have been proven to have been under false pretenses (even Milwaukee’s GOP County Executive, Scott Walker, indicated in his state of the county address this year that the county board had been lied to), people of color aren’t in any mood to embrace the knee jerk activism from pro-recall GOP activists like Orville Seymour or Chris Kliesmet.

To add fuel to suspicion, Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG) held a pro-recall rally at the same south side establishment (Serb Hall) that they launched the other pro-GOP recalls. GOP talk radio show host Charlie Sykes used his show to lambaste McGee. Since Sykes often uses his show to take dishonest and unfair cheap shots at high profile people of color on his high wattage station, it was clear to McGee’s constituents that Sykes was once again not representing their interests. Add to the fact that Sykes wrongly and immorally lied about McGee and got caught doing it, accusing the Alderman of making anti-semitic comments when he made no such statements, fueled suspicion.

Take a look though at McGee’s record and you’ll find that he’s had a horrible record which defies responsibility. Should McGee have been recalled? No. Normal election times are the best time to replace irresponsible public officials. Should he be removed next April? Absolutely. His actions have been an embarrassment for his constituents.

Mike Plaisted summed it up well when he wrote:

So when Sykes pulled out an audio clip of McGee Jr. saying something about gay activists and “the Jude cops” (the ones who beat up Frank Jude) being behind his recall, he got the usual “yeah, you’re right Charlie”s from his assembled enablers. But, anxious to believe the worst about McGee, Sykes took his race-baiting a bit too far this time, claiming that McGee said it was “jew cops” who were out to get him. Proudly proclaiming his phony “gotcha”, Sykes spent a good ten minutes trying to get everyone on the panel to agree with his pretended outrage. It wasn’t hard, although the only African-American on the panel, Michael Holt, refused to play along, politely defending McGee while his in-control host used his hard-found lie to continue his rant.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Tim Cuprisin also covered the story:

Cuprisin wrote:

HE SAID WHAT? Ald. Michael McGee frequently says outrageous and inflammatory things. But his comments weren’t nearly as outrageous as Charlie Sykes claimed Wednesday on his annual “Insight 2007″ broadcast on WTMJ-AM (620).

Playing a tape of a McGee news conference about recall efforts against him, Sykes claimed that the alderman was blaming “Jew cops” for being part of the attempts to remove him from office.

What McGee actually said was “Jude cops,” referring to police accused of beating Frank Jude Jr. in 2004.

WTMJ general manager Jon Schweitzer admitted that Sykes had screwed up.

“We are aware that a mistake was made, and Charlie intends on dealing with this on his show tomorrow,” Schweitzer said Wednesday.

One of the members of Sykes’ morning discussion, public relations executive Jeff Fleming, of the Zizzo Group, said he hadn’t heard the original comments by McGee, and couldn’t quite make out the words in the audio that Sykes played Wednesday morning.

“I can understand how Michael McGee’s comments could be understood as anti-Semitic. But in hindsight, it would have made more sense for him to have made comments about the Jude cops.

Here at Watchdog Milwaukee we’ve been critical of Sykes for his double speak and hypocrisy, but to confuse the well publicized case of bad cops beating Frank Jude Jr. with antisemitism defies any possibility that this was an honest mistake. Sykes knows about McGee’s activism in his “Justice for Jude” campaign just as anyone in the Milwaukee media market knows about the case. Everyone also knows that McGee has been one of the ones screaming for the cops to be fired. Quirkiness and sometimes reckless behavior aside, McGee didn’t deserve this sort of slander.

Wagner is critical of the Milwaukee County District Attorney, John Chisholm, for his opposition to the NRA backed conceal carry legislation. This is the same Jeff Wagner who spent hours advocating for the re-election of Sheriff, and faux-democrat, David Clarke Jr who, according to Holt, has written Governor Doyle requesting him to veto conceal carry legislation.

This from Holt:

Jeff:

I think that your criticism of D. A Chisholm for prosecuting Andres Vargas is disingenuous and inconsistent.

First you supported John Chisholm for D.A. while knowing that he was against “concealed carry”. It is not surprising that he is following that view. I don’t personally agree with him and made that known during the sheriff’s campaign.

Second you are inconsistent in your criticism in that David Clarke has long been against “concealed carry” and has written Governor Doyle asking him to veto the “concealed carry” legislation in the past. Why have you not also criticized David Clarke?

What do they call that when it is okay for one person to do something , but not for the other? Is that hypocritical?

Clearly she's still smarting from her husband, Paul Bucher, getting smoked in the Republican primary against JB Van Hollen.  Her sour grapes are clearly ripe.  Van Hollen went on to win the general and McBride admits to voting for him in the general, more out of Republican loyalty it seems than because she liked him.

She goes on to attack Van Hollen for saying he probably won't be able to fix the crime backlog in the next 20 months.  Truth be told, Van Hollen does deserve criticism since he attacked former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager for the same backlog he's no saying that he can't get a handle on.  But McBride takes it a step further noting that:

When Tommy Thompson faced a "monstrously" destructive welfare system, he didn't run to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and whine that it probably couldn't be fixed, so don't blame him in 20 months if nothing changed. He came up with an innovative plan to fix it.

It looks like McBride didn't do her homework.  Welfare reform in Wisconsin was actually authored by former State Assembly Representative Shirley Krug (D-Milwaukee).  Krug called it "Wisconsin Works".  Former Governor Thompson just took Krug's idea, stripped out all of the social safety nets and called it "W-2".  (Note the clever way he made Wisconsin Works into W-2 and called it his own.)

When Scott Walker assumed the office of Milwaukee County Executive, and found a "monstrous" budget deficit and pension system facing him, and realized it was even worse than was previously known, he didn't run to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and whine that it probably couldn't be fixed … He came up with innovative solutions to deal with it (like restructuring the courts).

Once again, McBride didn't do her homework.  Walker did slash funding in the courts, but did so in such a way that would deny County residents their constitutional rights of due process.  It was the County Board who fixed that hole in Walker's budget.  Also, Walker balanced the budget at the expense of the parks, the disabled, those needing public transportation, and even public safety.  Since Van Hollen essentially just has purview over items in his department, it means that if he slashes his budget the public will be less safe because essential services will not be handled.

But McBride's blunder doesn't stop there.  The innovations that have happened in County government have come from the county board.  The irony here is that Walker advocated a dramatic downsizing of the county board.  If Walker truly opposed waste in county government he would advocate for the elimination of his own job as most Wisconsin counties get along just fine without the expense of a county executive and all of the staff that have to be hired to support the position.  But don't expect that since Walker has never held a private sector position in his life unless you count his brief stint working for the Red Cross — a job he is rumored to have gotten as a political patronage job back when Libby Dole (now a Senator and wife to former Presidential candidate Bob Dole) was running the agency.  It would be tough for Walker, a college drop out, to find a job in the private sector when most business leaders neither trust him, nor have confidence in him.

“We'll see whether being Lee Holloway's water boy pays off for Ryan,” Sykes wrote.

I recall Ryan McCue was one of a group of 10 supervisors who went after Chairman Lee Holloway during the witch hunt last year. Now that McCue is taking a stand against the county budget proposal submitted by the neo-con Scott Walker, McCue is a bad guy?

The conservative Sykes adds, “McCue ran as a reformer, but has become a poster child for politicians who go native.”  Hmmm … McCue went “native” to fight against his own kind? After reading Sykes’ description of a white politician taking a stand against Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker as going “native” I thought to myself, “what an odd word."  At first, I thought Sykes was using the term “native” in the manner the characters in the movie, Gangs of New York (2002) used the term.  The movie is based on Herbert Asbury’s nonfiction book, The Gangs of New York — originally published in the late 1920s.  The book highlights 19th-century New York awash with crime, corruption, and poverty.  The movie takes place in 1846 as waves of Irish immigrants poured into a New York neighborhood called the Five Points.  Of course, opposition to these new immigrants caused citizens of British and Dutch heritage and who were born in the United States to begin openly displaying resentment toward the new arrivals.  William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis), called so for his deadly mastery with a knife, organized the "Natives" (those of British and Dutch heritage born in the United States) into a gang to take on the Irish immigrants; the immigrants organized a gang of their own, "The Dead Rabbits."

Then I spoke to a number of county board members, I got a sense from them that this term was sinister, and another example of subliminal racism.

But to be sure, I asked Sykes to explain his use of this word. To his credit, he responded. First he said that that I was misinformed to believe that his use of the word “native” was racist.

“… It has nothing to do with race. It means that a politician has forgotten where he came from and begins to think of himself as one of the "insiders…" said Sykes.

Then why not use the word “insider?”

Sykes goes on to say that he uses the word “frequently to describe politicians who side with special interests or government bureacracies."

I guess Charlie is trying to coin a word here.

Frankly, this term to describe an embedded politician makes no sense at all.  What makes sense is that the word “native” is being used by Sykes to point out to his listening audience those white politicians who are siding with the people of color on the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, while not agreeing with Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker’s recent budget veto.  Charlie ended his response to my questions with, “That is what the phrase means. But, feel free to detect racism, as you usually do.”

Well, thank you Charlie, I think I will point out the racist notions this word conjures up.  I stated to Sykes that many of his listeners deny racist thoughts came to them when he used the word “native.”  Indeed, I went on to say, many whites, that is, except those in prison and members of white supremecist groups outside of prison who openly call for racial war, seldom admit in public that they are racist.

Sykes continued by stating, “I use the term frequently…” That McCue was elected into office because of the pension scandal.  I asked, “frequently, meaning recently?  Did you use this term during the pension scandal?  Please point me to the articles/references you made about 'going native' or 'native' during that period.  If I am misinformed, then I ask that you correct my inferences.”

I’m still waiting for a response. I won’t hold my breath.

###

Guest Contributing Writer Robert Miranda, the author of this piece, is an award winning columnist. 

That describes talk radio show host Charlie Sykes. He’s a pig — an adulterous scumbag who preaches morality with the help of the radio station he works for, AM620WTMJ. He shuts down people who disagree with him and promotes candidates and ideas that he agrees with. He is brutal, vicious and uses his show to spread vitriolic rants that are little more than ads for the Republican party and their candidates.

To understand why Sykes grates on me you have to understand my personality. Honor, integrity and fidelity are key to who I am. There is no greater promise that a man can make to a woman than that promise to love, honor and cherish her for the rest of her days — till death do you part. I understand that differences can occur and marriages can crumble, but there really isn’t an excuse for violating the marital oath through infidelity.

Sexuality and physical drives are something that we as humans all deal with. But what separates us from the animals is our ability to hold our drives in check. Sykes doesn’t understand that.

Sykes chose to put his sexual drives above the needs of his past wives and his children. His relationship with his second wife, Diane Sykes (now a federal Judge), fell apart after Charlie decided that he wanted to spend more time with his soon-to-be third wife, opera singer Janet Riordan (alias Liz Woodhouse) who at the time Sykes simply called a “family friend”. Sadly, not only did Charlie leave his wife Diane for another woman, but he left their two sons, leaving the obvious question — what kind of man cheats on his wife knowing full well that his actions will result in his children growing up without their father in the house?

Then there’s the whole issue of Riordan. They used to have a name for women like that. Come to think of it, they still do.

It boggles the mind how so many people still listen to Sykes. His shows slogan is “standing up for what’s right”. Irony is not lost on this man. Decency, and apparently marital fidelity, is.

But the radio talkers moral short comings don’t end there. A few years ago I called the thin skinned Sykes on the carpet for helping to destroy Northridge by fanning the flames of racial fears. The fact is that he did and when he denies it he is lying. Now it may be true that the words of racial hatred didn’t come directly from his lips, but Sykes carefully screens his callers to assure that they agree with him and he rarely lets someone who disagrees with him on the air.

In 2004 I called in to the studio during his show to refute some of the outright lies he was spreading about me. His call screener asked me, “are you ready to come on the air and apologize for being a liar”? Since I hadn’t lied I responded that I was calling to set the record straight. He said he was going to check with Charlie who said on the air “go peddle it somewhere else”. Like a hit and run drunk driver, Charlie Sykes isn’t willing to deal with the consequences and despite his claim that he’s “standing up for what’s right”, Sykes ducks and hides when callers want to challenge his distortions.

That’s cowardice. That’s Charlie Sykes.

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Hot Links and Direct Sources:

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, July 19, 2000
Sykes weds “other woman”, Janet Riordan
Even before her real name was first reported by Inside TV & Radio back in 1997, there had been rumors about Charlie’s relationship with Riordan. Charlie was married at the time to his second wife, judge Diane Sykes… Charlie’s name was first officially linked with Riordan in Whitefish Bay police records from August 1996, when they were ticketed for shooting off fireworks at Big Bay Park 45 minutes after the park closed. Police said they were alone on the beach at the time.

http://watchdogmilwaukee.com/blog/jim/2006/charlie-sykes-adulterer-coward-vindictive-republican-shill/