For obvi­ous rea­sons, I’m a lit­tle intrigued by the game “Tag” going on among the 53 remain­ing Democ­rats left in the United States Sen­ate as they pick their new Chair­man of the Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­to­r­ial Cam­paign Com­mit­tee or DSCC.

See, last week — just like the Repub­li­cans and their col­leagues in the House — they elected their lead­er­ship on Tues­day.  But they kept one posi­tion empty:  Chair­man of the DSCC.

When Sen­ate Democ­rats held their lead­er­ship elec­tions Tues­day morn­ing, one spot was left vacant.

There is still no chair of the Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­to­r­ial Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, and it appears the rea­son is that Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid hasn’t con­vinced any­one to take the job yet.

There are cur­rently 23 Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tors up for re-election in 2012; and I’m unsure if that fig­ure includes the two Inde­pen­dent Sen­a­tors (Sanders of Ver­mont and Lieber­man of Con­necti­cut) who cau­cus with them…possibly mak­ing the task of DSCC Chair­man (or Woman) one in which they have to defend a whop­ping 25 Sen­ate seats; many of which are in swing states or tra­di­tional Repub­li­can states like Mon­tana, North Dakota, and Nebraska.

Spec­u­la­tion has been ram­pant about who will take, or even want the job.  His­tor­i­cally, the posi­tion is never given to a recently elected Fresh­man Demo­c­rat, so that leaves out the Chris Coons of the world.  Also, the rule is often “Unless you’re “Super-Safe,” and you’re up for re-election, you can’t head the DSCC,” so that takes away large chunks of the cau­cus from the position.

Ini­tially, hopes were high on New York’s Chuck Schumer re-taking the lead­er­ship of the DSCC.  It was, after all, a famil­iar role he held to much suc­cess in 2006 and 2008, but he declined.  Appar­ently, the famed fund raiser and can­di­date recruiter isn’t much of a defender of seats.

Then they went to John Kerry.  He declined.

After him, Minnesota’s Al Franken.  He too declined.

All eyes then went to the newly re-elected Junior Sen­a­tor from Col­orado, Mike Ben­nett.  Ben­nett had just sur­vived a fight in a swing state, had good fund rais­ing, and known for his ties to the national groups.  He too is said on mul­ti­ple occa­sions to not want the job.

So why is this happened?

Well, look at the fig­ure.  23 or so Sen­ate seats is an impos­si­bly high num­ber of seats to defend.  Democ­rats did have a great 2006 after all, and now the chicken of that wave is com­ing home to roost.  So by just sheer num­bers alone, that is going to make resources tough to spread around if they have to do so.

Then there’s “The Other Prob­lem You Can’t Talk About,” when it comes to fund-raising for the 2012 cycle.

2012 is a Pres­i­den­tial year, which auto­mat­i­cally means all money in lib­eral pol­i­tics will be flow­ing to the re-elect efforts of Pres­i­dent Obama and the Demo­c­ra­tic National Com­mit­tee, not to the House and Sen­ate com­mit­tees.  Mean­ing, that an already tough time fund rais­ing is going to get tougher.  Their time to shine in the sun is dur­ing the mid-terms after all.

So who gets the job in the end?  Word is the White House and Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­tic Lead­er­ship may go in one of two directions:

1) Get the safest Demo­c­rat in the 2012 cycle to chair. In this case, that would be Rhode Island’s Shel­don White­house, who would face nom­i­nal GOP oppo­si­tion for re-election.

2) Washington’s Patty Mur­ray. The var­i­ous tip sheets say both the White House and Harry Reid are pulling a full-court press on the recently re-elected senior Sen­a­tor from Wash­ing­ton.  She too is said to not be pleased with what a stint as DSCC Chair would detail this time.  (She was ran the place in 2001–2003 when the GOP gained the Sen­ate Major­ity out­right with a 51–49 mar­gin after Democ­rats recap­tured it with the Jef­fords defec­tion in mid-2001.)

So what’s going to hap­pen?  Well, don’t expect a deci­sion on the issue by Thanksgiving.

Or Christ­mas for that mat­ter by the look of things…

Half the fun of Hugo Chavez is watch­ing the slow, degen­er­a­tive trip to com­plete and utter mad­ness within his mind as he clings to power in Venezuela.

Rarely does a year go by where the dic­ta­tor and Castro-wannabe claims either a rival or the CIA is plot­ting his demise.  If only the CIA was in the killing busi­ness; espe­cially in the Obama Administration!

Well, this year’s “threat” is from a man who Chavez pretty much ran off a year ago, and who has been in exile in Amer­ica ever since.

Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez accused a fugi­tive TV tycoon of being involved in a $100 mil­lion reward offer for his assassination.

Idol­ized by sup­port­ers among Venezuela’s poor but loathed by many in the busi­ness class, for­mer sol­dier Chávez, 56, has fre­quently alleged plans to kill him dur­ing his more than 11 years at the helm of the South Amer­i­can oil-producer.

“As I under­stand it from very trust­wor­thy infor­ma­tion, they say they have $100 mil­lion to give the per­son who kills me,” Chávez said, talk­ing of his polit­i­cal foes in general.

He accused the fugi­tive boss of pro-opposition TV sta­tion Globo­vi­sion, Guillermo Zuloaga, of being one of those behind the plan. Zuloaga fled to the United States ear­lier this year after being charged with fraud over his car dealership.

“He’s one of them and he’s the owner of a sta­tion that is trans­mit­ting right now in Venezuela,” Chávez said in com­ments to reporters at a “social­ist” fair in Cara­cas to offer cheap food and Christ­mas presents.

“He’s going around con­spir­ing against the gov­ern­ment, and they’re all col­lect­ing money to pay the per­son who kills me,” Chávez said, urg­ing action against Zuloaga.

He did not give any more details of the alleged plot.

Read­ers of Orwell’s “Ani­mal Farm” no doubt would see the sim­i­lar­i­ties here.

…is Ron Johnson’s “57!”

Con­grats to Brad, Curt, Wes, and the rest of the guys at On Mes­sage, who accord­ing to Chris Cil­lizza of the Wash­ing­ton Post cre­ated the best polit­i­cal ad of the 2010 Cam­paign cycle.

As we wrote at the time of its release, the ad, which was pro­duced by On Mes­sage Media, stood out from the pack for the sim­plic­ity of its visu­als and message.

The image of a white­board on screen imme­di­ately drew the eye and the facts on it — there are 57 Sen­a­tors who are lawyers while there is a dearth of busi­ness peo­ple like John­son — was easy to digest and pitch per­fect for this elec­tion cycle.

Ditto Johnson’s clos­est argu­ment in the ad: “I know how to bal­ance a bud­get and I do know how to cre­ate jobs. Now that’s some­thing we can really use.”

So effec­tive was the ad that by the end of the cam­paign — and with polling show­ing John­son com­fort­ably ahead — Fein­gold made a last-ditch ad attempt­ing to under­mine the power of the white­board. It didn’t work.

I’ll have more in on my cam­paign expe­ri­ence in a exten­sive one-on-one inter­view with myself (He was the only one who requested…) that I will do even­tu­ally on the blog.  But I hon­estly thought we had won the cam­paign when Fein­gold rolled out his “White­board” ad.

Sim­ply put, when your oppo­nent has to co-opt some­thing your cam­paign has suc­cess­fully made your own for over a month, you know you have them by the balls.  Also, how did the long-time Fein­gold cam­paign staffers not real­ize they were doing with us and the white­board what Bob Kas­ten had to do with them and Elvis?

Oh, wait.  This was in Black Earth?

That’s in Dane County!

Remem­ber folks; Dane County is sup­pos­edly where all the sane peo­ple in Wis­con­sin are. (Right John Nichols?)

I don’t see it hap­pen­ing given the make up of the Demo­c­ra­tic Cau­cus, but the idea isn’t too insane on its mer­its.

Kind is a mod­er­ate Demo­c­rat who could be appeal­ing to cen­trist vot­ers.  He’s young (47) and more telegenic when com­pared to other chal­lengers to Pelosi, but he’s been in Wash­ing­ton DC long enough (First elected in 1996) to have built enough of a poten­tial vot­ing bloc if he were to do it.

Prob­lem with that line of think­ing is; he’s not going to do it.  He also becomes too rich a tar­get for the new Repub­li­can State Leg­is­la­ture which could redis­trict him out in a fight with Tammy Bald­win by cre­at­ing a new and insanely designed say, “Hybrid La Crosse-Madison Con­gres­sional seat” if he were to run and some­how win.

A retir­ing Demo­c­rat sug­gested on Mon­day that Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) or Ron Kind (D-Wis.) would make good chal­lengers to out­go­ing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) said that Hoyer, the out­go­ing House major­ity leader, or Kind (who he termed the “sin­gle best choice”) would make good chal­lengers to Pelosi, who is seek­ing to con­tinue to lead Democ­rats by run­ning for the posi­tion of minor­ity leader in the next Congress.

“You know, I think actu­ally Steny would be a good choice. I think Ron Kind would be the sin­gle best choice I could make,” Baird said on MSNBC. “That prob­a­bly jinxes it with the Speaker, but I think Ron Kind is that kind of per­son — a very bright, very artic­u­late cen­trist who lis­tens to all sides, takes pol­icy very seri­ously, and could speak to both sides.”

A hand­ful of cen­trist Democ­rats have said that they would not vote to reelect Pelosi as leader of their party in the House. But only one can­di­date, Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), has floated the pos­si­bil­ity of a chal­lenge to Pelosi, and Shuler’s acknowl­edged that he’s unlikely to beat the out­go­ing Speaker.

Hoyer is seen as an emis­sary to House cen­trists, who were his base of sup­port when he ran against Pelosi for the posi­tion of Demo­c­ra­tic leader ear­lier this decade. A key Repub­li­can, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), said on Mon­day that he’s the GOP’s point of con­tact within the Demo­c­ra­tic leadership.

But after Pelosi bro­kered a deal late last week to make House Major­ity Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) her No. 3, a move that makes Hoyer with­out chal­lenge for the second-ranking job in the next Con­gress, it would be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a sit­u­a­tion where the Mary­land Demo­c­rat would turn around and chal­lenge Pelosi.

A Demo­c­rat who’s return­ing for his eighth term in the House, Kind is seen as a more cen­trist law­maker, though he’s not listed as a mem­ber of the Blue Dog Coali­tion (as Shuler is). Kind is a vice chair­man of the New Demo­c­rat Coali­tion, but hasn’t shown any incli­na­tion to chal­lenge Pelosi.

Kind has a record of also pulling off much more bipar­ti­san leg­is­la­tion.  He worked with Paul Ryan on an Ag Bill alter­na­tive in 2007-08 which was far bet­ter for America’s pock­et­book and Wisconsin’s farm­ers than the one which became law; and he’s also one of the few sane Democ­rats when it comes to inter­na­tional trade.

That last item will prob­a­bly dis­qual­ify him with national union leaders.

You can watch the video men­tioned in the story here:

Fas­ci­nat­ing.

Clas­sic video game Tetris may be capa­ble of pro­vid­ing a ser­vice beyond enter­tain­ing the gam­ing masses. Accord­ing to a new study out of Oxford Uni­ver­sity, play­ing Tetris a few hours after trauma expo­sure can help pre­vent flash­backs, which are typ­i­cally a symp­tom of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The study, pub­lished in the jour­nal PLoS ONE, is based on two exper­i­ments. In the first exper­i­ment, 60 par­tic­i­pants watched a film con­tain­ing scenes of injury and death. After a 30-minute struc­tured break, 20 par­tic­i­pants played Tetris, while another 20 played quiz video game Pub Quiz. The remain­ing sub­jects did noth­ing. Those who played Tetris had fewer flash­backs of the trau­matic film than any of the oth­ers did. Inci­den­tally, those who played Pub Quiz had the most flash­backs out of any of the groups.

The sec­ond exper­i­ment extended the break period from half an hour to four hours — even then, Tetris play­ers expe­ri­enced fewer flash­backs than the other research sub­jects did.

Accord­ing to the researchers, chronic trauma flash­backs are usu­ally made up of sen­sory, visual images. Par­tic­i­pat­ing in visu­ally ori­ented tasks — such as play­ing a puzzle-like game along the lines of Tetris — will inter­fere with other visual mem­o­ries and help reduce flash­backs. By con­trast, per­form­ing ver­bal tasks after a trau­matic event — like play­ing a quiz game — com­pete more with the part of the brain that helps peo­ple make sense of what they’ve experienced.

As the researchers point out in their report, these ver­bal tasks “may serve to increase (rather than reduce) later trauma flashbacks.”

The study has elicited pos­i­tive reac­tions from Tetris’s cre­ator Alexey Pajit­nov, as well as staff at Blue Planet Soft­ware — the com­pany that man­ages the exclu­sive licens­ing rights to the game. David Kwock, the company’s gen­eral man­ager, says the researchers’ find­ings also sup­port the feed­back he’s heard from Tetris play­ers over the years.

“A great num­ber of our users tell us that they play Tetris to relax,” he says. “In fact, in Japan, they play it at the end of the day — women specif­i­cally — before they go to bed, or in the bath­room. That’s why we have water­proof [gam­ing devices] in Japan.”

Okay…a lit­tle TMI there about Japan.

I was going to have some inspi­ra­tional pic­ture, but I’m suf­fer­ing some sort of server error right now and can’t seem to upload pho­tos to the blog.

So, let me just say thank you to all those who have, are, and will serve this coun­try and its mil­i­tary.  You are the rea­son we are as free as we are.

So, in clos­ing two things:

1)  Way to go Ryan Braun.

Mil­wau­kee Brew­ers slug­ger and Wis­con­sin restau­ran­teur Ryan Braun came up with a neat way to honor U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel on Vet­er­ans Day.

He’s going to feed them.

Ryan Braun’s Tav­ern and Grill in the resort vil­lage of Lake Geneva, Wis., is offer­ing a free lunch or din­ner entrée to cur­rent and for­mer sol­diers. Braun said he and the staff had been brain­storm­ing a way to give back.

From Braun’s heart (and wal­let) to their stomachs.

Braun’s moti­va­tion is per­sonal: His best friend since third grade is a Navy Seal.

2) Happy 30th to Kurt and his twin.

Enjoy the day guys.  You two reach­ing this mile­stone offi­cially makes every­one who’s ever known you feel old.

Those who have been long read­ers of this blog know that I urged a two-election detente between Wis­con­sin lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives over the re-election fights of State Supreme Court Jus­tices Shirley Abra­ham­son (Chief Jus­tice) and David Prosser (The Senior-Most Con­ser­v­a­tive Asso­ciate Justice).

My think­ing is that let’s be hon­est with our­selves; these two legal minds are the pil­lars of their respec­tive ide­o­log­i­cal legal cir­cles — Shirley on the Left, Prosser on the Right — and they’ve both been around long enough to high­light a bipar­ti­san “Who’s Who” and  it’s going to show by who Prosser gets to back him.  Thus, it would make chal­leng­ing either to the State’s High­est Court some­thing akin to a mil­i­tary sui­cide mission.

Already, Prosser’s got for­mer Gov­er­nors Thomp­son (Repub­li­can) and Lucey (Demo­c­rat) as his cam­paign co-chairs, and his campaign’s trea­surer is the wife of for­mer Gov­er­nor McCal­lum. This is like when Abra­ham­son came out with a list of her sup­port­ers ear­lier this year, and it was chalked full of big-name, tra­di­tional Republican-backing busi­ness leaders.

Noth­ing about my stance regard­ing the pro­posed detente has changed.

Move along, every­one.  There’s noth­ing to see here, let alone fight over.

(And I say this all as a Prosser sup­porter mind you.)

State Supreme Court Jus­tice David Prosser announced his re-election bid Wednesday.

Prosser’s cam­paign will be co-chaired by for­mer Gov. Tommy G. Thomp­son, a Repub­li­can, and for­mer Gov. Patrick J. Lucey, a Democrat.

Thomp­son appointed Prosser to the court in 1998. He was elected to a full term with­out oppo­si­tion in 2001 and is now run­ning for another 10-year term.

Before he joined the court, Prosser was an Assem­bly speaker and Out­agamie County dis­trict attor­ney. Prosser, 67, was elected to the Assem­bly as a Republican.

Also run­ning for Supreme Court are Marla Stephens, an offi­cial with the state pub­lic defender’s office, and Joel Win­nig, a Madi­son lawyer.

Mil­wau­kee County Cir­cuit Judge David Borowski has said he is con­sid­er­ing a run.

The pri­mary is Feb. 15, and the gen­eral elec­tion is April 5.

Prosser will win, eas­ily.  Thanks for play­ing for Sec­ond Place gang.

Cor­rec­tion:  Noticed this later on in the day after I posted it just never had the chance to cor­rect it until this morn­ing.  The senior most Asso­ciate Jus­tice on the Wis­con­sin State Supreme Court is lib­eral Ann Walsh Bradley, who was first elected in 1995.  Prosser — who is the senior most con­ser­v­a­tive Asso­ciate Jus­tice on the court — was appointed by Gov­er­nor Tommy Thomp­son to the court in 1998 as the arti­cle above states.

The next Supreme Court elec­tion after Prosser’s will be in 2013, when con­ser­v­a­tive Peggy Roggen­sack is up for re-election.

See what hap­pens when I post with­out con­sult­ing my Blue Book first?

At least I didn’t pull a “Louns­bury” which is when you com­pletely rewrite the post after being pointed out how you were wrong by a reader or by the facts on the ground.

As is tra­di­tion, through Kurt, the Annual Birth­day Mes­sage of the Marine Corps Com­man­dant and Sergeant Major.

The lib­eral eco­nomic mind at work…

Okay, so killing a train project no one wanted in the State of Wis­con­sin — BAD

Chang­ing a report inside the White House to force an off-shore drilling mora­to­rium which could end up killing 32,000 jobs in the Gulf Region where they want to drill for oil and nat­ural gas — GOOD

The White House rewrote cru­cial sec­tions of an Inte­rior Depart­ment report to sug­gest an inde­pen­dent group of sci­en­tists and engi­neers sup­ported a six-month ban on off­shore oil drilling, the Inte­rior inspec­tor gen­eral says in a new report.

In the wee hours of the morn­ing of May 27, a staff mem­ber to White House energy adviser Carol Browner sent two edited ver­sions of the depart­ment report’s exec­u­tive sum­mary back to Inte­rior. The lan­guage had been changed to insin­u­ate the seven-member panel of out­side experts – who reviewed a draft of var­i­ous safety rec­om­men­da­tions – endorsed the mora­to­rium, accord­ing to the IG report obtained by POLITICO.

“The White House edit of the orig­i­nal DOI draft exec­u­tive sum­mary led to the impli­ca­tion that the mora­to­rium rec­om­men­da­tion had been peer-reviewed by the experts,” the IG report states, with­out judg­ment on whether the change was inten­tional attempt to mis­lead the public.

The six-month ban on off­shore drilling installed in the wake of the Gulf of Mex­ico oil spill became a major polit­i­cal issue over the sum­mer, as Gulf State law­mak­ers and indus­try groups charged the White House with unfairly threat­en­ing thou­sands of jobs. House Repub­li­cans have said they plan on inves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the mora­to­rium when they take power next year.

Rep. Bill Cas­sidy (R-La.) and sev­eral other Gulf State mem­bers of Con­gress asked the Inte­rior IG to inves­ti­gate the mora­to­rium and the peer review claim.

“The inspec­tor general’s find­ing that the blanket-drilling mora­to­rium was dri­ven by a pol­i­tics and not by sci­ence is bit­ter news for fam­i­lies who, because of it, lost their jobs, sav­ings, and way of life,” Cas­sidy said Tues­day. “Can­di­date Obama promised that he would guided by sci­ence, not ide­ol­ogy. If that were true, at least 12,000 jobs and 1.8 bil­lion dol­lars of eco­nomic activ­ity would have been saved on the Gulf Coast.”

The Inte­rior Depart­ment per­son­ally and pub­licly apol­o­gized to the panel mem­bers in June for the insin­u­a­tion they pub­licly sup­ported the drilling moratorium.

Dur­ing my HUD days, I had to read a few IG reports.  So, I can under­stand the “edit” argu­ment the White House is making…to an extent.  But how, dur­ing the lev­els and lev­els of review — even inside the IG’s office — no one spoke up and said, “Hey, I have an issue with this change.” is sim­ply amazing.

By let­ting that change go unchal­lenged, the White House inten­tion­ally turned the Inte­rior Department’s IG report from being an inves­tiga­tive doc­u­ment to a polit­i­cal one.