Yogi and Scott Walker, a pair of humorists

In a blink, America lost two of its well-known humorists this week. Yogi Berra died at 90.  Scott Walker gave up his presidential bid when his campaign died.

We could all laugh when  Yogi would say profound things like:  "We made too many wrong mistakes."  Or: "Nobody goes there anymore.  It's too crowded."

Or when the sleepy-eyed Walker, the Wisconsin governor, would boast: "If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world." That was his response to  a question about ISIS, his confidence swollen by his victory over public employes  unions in his state.

Side-splitting.

But he upped and quit.  That recalled an old  Yogi-ism by the baseball Hall of Famer that went: "If you don't 't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else."

Walker, a deeply religious man who was called from above to run for president , left the scene by  saying he was "called".  That could only mean...

Hilarious?

Yogi once put it this way: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

Responding to a question, Walker defended  the idea of a security fence with Canada as a "legitimate"  idea, asking:  "Why are we always talking about the southern border and building a fence there.  We don't talk about the northern border."

Yogi would say, as he once did: "Take it with a grin of salt."

Meantime, we can only wonder about Gov. Kasich's reaction when Walker jumped the ship of fools.   He and Walker, like-minded on most  things,  had coordinated their efforts to kill public employe unions. Walker even was recorded in a telephone call set up by a prankster pretending to be David Koch,  saying that he talked to Kasich "every day", adding :" John's gotta stand firm in Ohio."

Right. Nice try, but  Walker and Buddy Kasich were both scrubbed from the Kochs'   earlier A-list.

And that's not funny. As Yogi would say, and did:  "We were overwhelming underdogs."


Re-posted from Plunderbund

Add another to the GOP list of rising stars

As I continue to explore the bright Republican firmament for "rising stars",  I am happy to report still another one as identified by McClatchy newspapers  in its coverage of the big conservative shindig in Maryland,  a.k.a. Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) convention.  It is Sen.Tim Scott of South Carolina, who was appointed recently to fill the seat of Jim DeMint, who departed to head the Heritage Foundation.

Scott made it to the not-so-exclusive  Rising Star column as the party's first black senator since Reconstruction.  He thus joins other media-designated alleged upwardly mobile luminaries as Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, John Kasich and Jeb Bush's son, George Prescott Bush. (I hope I got G.P.'s name right.  There are so many Bushes demanding our attention that I get mixed up at times.)

Missing from the list is  ex-Sen. Scott Brown, who lost in November and is now a lobbyist.  A senator with an ex in front his title is immediately banished from the GOP's distinguished wish list.  Also missing is Tim Tebow, whose stardom was rising until he was flattened a few times with the New York Jets.  Now, he is afforded the backup possibility of a "window of opportunity" by the sports media inasmuch as  the team's starting quarterback is also a falling star.

You can forget Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, too. They have both worked hard at being rising stars and neither ever really  got off the ground. I'll keep you posted,

Transferring wealth into votes

BY NOW EVERYONE,  save Queen Elizabeth, who was intently preoccupied with her lavish Diamond Jubilee, has spun the  outcome of Wisconsin's  recall election.  What more can be added to the fact that Gov.  Scott Walker famously survived a  challenge that, by all post-election reports, was destined to happen anyway?  The intensity of the rivals and the failure of the recallers to execute their plan have been  elevated by the pundits and pols to having  a significant  effect on the presidential election, still five months down the road.  I wouldn't go that far.  Considering the royal investment  that the biggest gorillas poured into Walker's campaign against Tom Barrett,  it amounted to filet mignon versus Hamburger Helper. More than $30 million went to Walker; roughly a ratio of 6-1 against Barrett.

It's fair to ask why  this was so.  The princely financiers of state elections certainly are not in need of a second yacht, a fourth home,  a new pair of designer socks or a second car elevator at their homes.   And it's doubtful that a guy like Barrett could deny them of any privilege accorded to an isolated and insulated  New Age Plutocrat.  So Walker was merely a symbol, not of advancing   civilized society to a higher order  but rather to advancing their own purses for a greater cascade of non-essential income.

ITEM: During the campaign, Walker was caught on camera assuring his top contributor that he would "divide and conquer" the unions.  The sugar mommy in this case was Diane Hendricks, chairman of ABC Supply, the nation's largest wholesaler of roofing, windows and siding.  Forbes listed her worth at $2.8 billion, and her company paid zero taxes in 2010.   She has  dropped  a half-million dollars into the governor's  cash box.

Kendricks, the billionaire Koch Brothers and other right-wing mega-financiers taking full advantgage of  Supreme Court privileges of buying and selling candidates have proved that not all primates walk upright. The headline above a political column in the Los Angeles Times put it this way:  Billionaires buy recall election for Scott Walker.

A.J. Liebling, the late chronicler of colorful  Manhattan habitues for the New Yorker during the Great Depression, once wrote about  Izzy Yereshevsky, a Broadway cigar store owner and minor philosopher whose customers often bounced checks on him.  Izzy, however, reacted with godly patience, insisting these were otherwise honest folks who  weren't driven by greed but a "need for self-expression".

Think that describes today's high-rollers?  I wouldn't let them off that easily.  

Pick up the phone, Guv. Guess who's on the other end

COLUMNIST GEORGE WILL has been on an odyssey to herald the new generation of conservative governors that could pass a screen test as, say, a presidential candidate. And he is doing it with extraordinary grammar. I know of no other national pundit who would dare begin a column, as he did today, with the word "Hitherto". But that's George Will for you, ramping up the language to charm those who have no clue about the points that he's trying to make. He's lately added Govs. John Kasich and Scott Walker to his honor roll, going so far as to compare Walker to Ronald Reagan. It's a common Republican desparture point in elevating a current prospect to the Reagan legend.

There are instant benefits for guys like Kasich and Walker. As a national columnist,

Will's often inscrutable insights reach readers - at least those who still find their way to an Op-ed page - from coast to coast. With the columnist's endorsement, they might close ranks on a consensus for the next fellow in the White House. He praises Walker for being "serene in the center of this storm" as the governor sits for an interview beneath a portrait of Ronald Reagan. And later he declares being impressed by Walker's "calm comportment" in this crises.

Will's in-and-out visits to crises spots satisfy his pedantic yearnings to create a medieval America in which only the fittest survive. He's attracted to the modern version of Republican governors these days much as hungry sperm whales use echo location to find their fish.

As for Walker's crisis in attempting to dislocate public employe unions, he attempts to create the silly argument that everything in Wisconsin would be fine if those out-of-state union hacks weren't crossing borders to create havoc. As I've previously noted, his own out- of- state sponsors are the billionaire Koch brothers, whose money has been turning up quite often in political campagns. The Koch front group, Americans for Prosperity, has just bought $342,000 worth of TV and radio ads in Wisconsin asking people to "stand with Walker", while bashing unions and President Obama.

But even Walker's crusade, marked by the religious fervency of a man who is a son of a Baptist minister, can run off the highway in times like these.. A New York blogger, BuffaloBeast, tricked him into a 20-minute phone conversation in which the blogger pretended he was David Koch. During the conversation, Walker openly described his plans to crush the union.

To the credit of George Will's brief but studied assessment of the governor, Walker was serene throughout the phone call.