The circus museum in Baraboo was closed this week due to the flooding. The clowns were let loose in the world of politics as we begin this week’s search for the Idiot Politician of the Week.
This week I promise an all-badger state connection, unfortunately. Despite the record rainfall and flooding disasters, some politicians still couldn’t wait to be idiots.
This week we go right to the top. President Bush must have run out of people willing to stand still for photo ops with him. He’s giving former UW-Madison Chancellor Donna Shalala the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She probably agreed because any camera shot with the president is likely to go right over her head.
Let’s speculate why she won the award.
1. Revitalized the Badger football program
2. Created unconstitutional student speech codes that created a climate of fear on the UW-Madison campus.
3. Also created PC speech codes for faculty that took a decade to get rid of.
4. Created a program of admissions at UW Madison whose sole purpose was to determine racial winners and losers.
5. As a cabinet member to President Bill Clinton, spoke publicly defending the president against charges that he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton would later be impeached for perjury after he lied under oath.
6. Allowed a thug atmosphere at the University of Miami’s athletic department.
7. She was Health and Human Services Secretary when the Clintons attempted to nationalize health care.
Shouldn’t someone who wins the Presidential Medal of Freedom at least have a passing acquaintance with attempts to broaden the reach of freedom rather than have a record of trying to restrict the freedom of others?
Like other totalitarian wannabes, I understand Shalala attempted to get a life-size statue built of herself in Miami, but the university couldn’t find an adequate sculptor with experience working in miniature.
The Democrats are gathered in Stevens Point this weekend and they are struggling with a delegate who refuses to become an Obamaton, preferring Senator John McCain since Senator Clinton is no longer available as a choice. Of course, in a convention of Obama supporters, the independent thinker is the IQ Queen. And who can blame the apostate delegate for not supporting her party’s nominee when he can’t even make an appearance at their state convention?
Which makes us wonder, who is the more incompetent? The Obama campaign team that schedules him for the Fox Valley on Friday but not Stevens Point on Saturday, or hapless state party chairman Joe Wineke who cannot convince Obama’s schedulers to make the minor change?
Tough to decide, tough to decide. I guess our key decision depends on the keynote speaker, Governor Jim Doyle. Will Wineke greet the governor with, “Nice tan, Governor. Did you get that on the golf course?” I’d deliver the award in person, but the roads keep flooding out between here and the Point. Perhaps one of the attending lobbyists would be so kind to drop off the governor’s Idiot Politician of the Week Award the next chance they have on the driving range?
And is it true the governor uses state contracts for scorecards?
