Bikers invading Waukesha

...and they ain't driving Harleys, either. The Waukesha Business Improvement District is looking for people to host bike riders in their homes for the Carl Zach Cycling Classic. Guess they won't all be staying at the Clarke Hotel.

From the Waukesha BID newsletter:

Host a Biker for the Carl Zach Cycling Classic
Bike racers from aroud the world will be in town for the Carl Zach Cycling Classic presented by Couri Insurance on Sunday, June 28 in historic Downtown Waukesha. If you'd like to host a racer in your home, get all the details here.

No word yet if Paul Soglin is coming.

Hey, idiots. The first rule of comedy is that cancer isn't funny.

Time for this week's Idiot Politician of the Week. Yep, we're moving it to Friday to give them a chance to repent over the weekend.

We have a few nominees this week that could win the prize almost any other week if we're weren't talking about politicians.

We start this week with international affairs, specifically former President Jimmy Carter's love affair with radical Palestinian terrorist groups. Carter is about to go on a trip to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to talk with the leaders of Hamas. Just a warning to Jimmy. These Muslim fundamentalist extremists tend to take a rather dim view of homosexuality, so don't go laying a Carter-Loves-Brezhnev on them or they might just stone you. Since we doubt you're going to avoid asking them to stop firing rockets at Israel, could you at least ask them to stop killing Palestinians that disagree with them?

Closer to home some idiocy is even criminal. Kenosha County Executive and former Sheriff Allan Kehl has chosen option "B" for living off the taxpayers for awhile - as an inmate at a federal prison near you. As former State Senator Cathy Stepp put it, "I mean really, accepting money in a bag in someone's garage?! Even drug dealers are more sophisticated than that today."

This is your brain. This is your brains on drugs. This your brain if you're a politician accepting bags of cash in your garage.

Sometimes I feel like I'm writing less of a blog than I am a sort-of political Darwin Awards segment. This week's winner comes from the "I could have been a contender until I started poking fun at cancer" category. State Representative Sheldon Wasserman must've fallen off his bicycle one too many times without a helmet to not try to stop his fellow liberals from scoring the biggest "own goal" of the November election cycle so far. Democrats are putting around the story that State Senator Alberta Darling is too ill from surviving breast cancer to mount an effective re-election campaign this year. Of course, it's not true. It's also a pretty low and slimy political stunt. I don't think Democrats would have been too happy about if the situation was reversed and it was Republicans spreading the story about Attorney General Lautenschlager two years ago.

Think about how twisted this double-standard is.
Lautenschlager (D): brave, courageous.
Darling (R) : Too ill to serve.

Wait until the women in the senate district find out that Wasserman's political allies were trying to use breast cancer as an issue in the campaign. Wait until they hear Doctor Wasserman's allies were using someone's health as an issue in the campaign.

The moment Wasserman saw the mention of Darling's health in Milwaukee Magazine he should've told his side to cool it. He claims he didn't know.

Well Sheldon, you're the Idiot Politician of the Week. If you don't know what's in the press about your own campaign, if you don't know what your own side is doing, then you're the idiot. And if you did know, then you're a slimy idiot at that.

(Send your nomination for the "Idiot Politician of the Week" to Jamesmdw@yahoo.com. The idiots will be identified every Friday.)

Soglin's ride

Pretty damn funny. But just to remind you the blog is all about me,

The former Madison mayor and summertime biking blogger raised more than a few hackles on Wednesday when he complained about his encounters with winter bicyclists following the pair of snowstorms last Saturday and Tuesday. "The bicyclists who braved the week's second storm should be taken out and shot,' he declared, genuflecting towards stereotypes about Madison hippies and other tired tropes about the town. "Spare them and the poor driver, when they skid on treacherous streets and slide under the wheels of a truck delivering fresh vegetables."

Predictably, a torrent of objections followed from commenters, though Soglin did receive one gleeful backslap from James Rowen, his former mayoral aide and onetime Madison candidate for the office, along with another chuckle from Waukesha conservative pundit James Wigderson. Most responses, though, were thoroughly negative, as bicycling supporters lambasted hizzoner for his flippant remark about shooting and his blind eye towards the dangers of driving in the snow. Negative responses came from bikers around the nation -- here, here, and here -- the general sentiment being "that kind of low-brow trash talk does nothing but dehumanize bicyclists and justify any harm that might come their way."

Soglin's an anti-cyclite. Who knew?

Unapologetic Soglin back for round II

Paul Soglin still thinks it's dumb to ride your bike in a snow storm.

It appears there is some mild disagreement about the wisdom of bicycling in a 5 inch snow storm. The comments from some indicate that more than one bicyclist fell without a helmet...

Bicyclists have responded like Ron Poll supporters to an online poll they didn't win:

Let's see here... so if a cyclist dies this winter, will Soglin be doing the "I told you so" dance? If a cyclist doesn't die, will everyone come back to the comments section to rub it in his face?

Paul Soglin is a gas guzzling fascist

Hey, I'm nicer than the people who commented on his blog.

The bicyclists who braved the week's second storm should be taken out and shot. Spare them and the poor driver, when they skid on treacherous streets and slide under the wheels of a truck delivering fresh vegetables.

I will give them a pass on the first storm. Not because it was not forecasted (it was), but because every one gets a little giddy and reckless with the season's first major storm.

As I drove by the bicyclist on University Avenue and then the one on Park Street, it became evident that Milwaukee is right. Madison, as a community, needs some guidance. Confirmation of all this was clear as I headed up Glenway and saw city crews meticulously plowing the bike path at the top of the hill.

I blame global warming.

Update! 5:04 PM The comments at Soglin's site are even more hilarious:

You know, some people ride their bicycles for a living. Maybe they should just collect unemployment money from the government rather than work. And those businesses that rely on bicycles should go out of business, too. And all the poor people who can't afford a car, who live too far away for effective bus service, they should just stay at home, get fired from their jobs, and try to live off food stamps.

Here we see the beauty of blogs. Now we can publish anything we want before we use our brains and think about it first.

Then there's this one:

Paul Soglin = (Cheney + Grandpa Simpson + Bush) - George Will = Aggressive, crotchety idiot, albeit liberal

These are the clean ones.