Monday, August 2, 2010

Hot Rod A-Rod Throws A Rod

Ah yes, what would life be like without Aaron Rodriguez, self-purported journalist and blogger at The Hispanic Conservative, giving me easy posts to write on a busy night?

Anyway, my friend, Anna Landmark, writing at One Wisconsin Now, notes how suspicious it is that Walker was announcing the cause of the tragic incident at O'Donnell Park lat month:

Even though the investigation into why the concrete slab fell from the O'Donnell garage, killing a teenager, isn't complete, and lawsuits may be pending, Scott Walker has declared what happened and who is to blame: the slab wasn't hung properly.

As far as I know Walker doesn't have an engineering degree (nor even any degree at all), he isn't leading the investigation, and he has a very good reason for sloughing any responsibility for this off of his shoulders as quickly as possible.

To declare in advance of the completion of the investigation screams of political posturing and a total and callous disregard of the severity of the situation.

Some commenter from Germantown took umbrage at Anna pointing out the fact that Walker is a Marquette drop out. The commenter goes on to say that despite the fact that Walker is over a year from graduation, Marquette should just give him his degree. Apparently, Walker's followers feel that this "his time" for that as well. Of course, they feel that it is "his time" to be governor, even though he is not qualified to be either a college graduate or governor. Talk about an entitlement attitude...

This is where our friend Aaron goes and puts his foot in his mouth. As you read his comment, remember, the post is about the tragedy at O'Donnell Park:

Honorary degree? Wouldn't that be something.

I think Walker's "lack of a degree" provides a perfect narrative of how degrees are essentially useless certificates in today's world.

Here we have a guy who has done a good job with the county (national gold medal parks, strengthened the county's bond rating, record breaking international airport, and so on), thus showing that one doesn't need a degree to make a success of one's life.
Yeah. I would have thought that someone who purports themselves to be a professional journalist would have a little more sense, not to mention tact, than to brag about how wonderful the parks are in a story about a park structure that killed a boy and maimed a woman. I mean, it's bad enough that Walker was making this into a political story from day one, Aaron didn't need to further prove that Walker and his supporters are only interested in the gubernatorial race, and not the public welfare.

And it would be wrong of me not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in deferred maintenance in all of the parks.

To add to his shamelessness, Aaron then brings up a couple of other of Walker's talking points which have already been proven to be falsehoods.

One of these falsehoods is the "strengthened bond rating." While that is technically true, what Walker and his acolyte don't mention is that came at the expense of the capital funds, which Walker raided to give himself cover on the budgets. Of course, those capital funds were supposed to go to thinks like inspecting and maintaining the infrastructure, including O'Donnell Park. It also doesn't mention that mammoth structural deficit that Walker has built up.

A-rod also throws a rod when he mentions the "record breaking airport." It is only doing as well as it is due to the millions of dollars of stimulus dollars thrown into it. But even with all of this money, Walker tried his darnedest to screw that up by laying off airport maintenance workers, even though he didn't save tax payers one red cent by doing so. Of course, Walker's political grandstanding of laying off those workers helped create a situation where another young man was injured by a part of the airport falling on his head.

Mmm. A guy who purports himself to be a journalist, but cannot even handle simple honesty or tact. I wonder if he knows Patrick McIlheran.

2 comments:

  1. Evertime I read a pro-Walker blog, it's like reading Pravda. Totally devoid of reality, and carefully word-smithed propaganda derived out of some parallel universe of their own making. It doesn't matter if you are a liberal or conservative. If you really want to believe something, even if it's not true, you will end up believing it. I don't respect Scott Walker because he isn't accurately representing his record. Now that he's under attack, he's been working pretty hard to obfuscate it. Tom Barrett might be pretty liberal, but at least he's honest about it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chris, I don't know if you got to my blog or not...so i'm going to take the opportunity to just blurt out my point. This is an emotional point as opposed to anything particularly objective, to be warned.
    MY FATHER witnessed Jared Kellner being killed. MY DAD, who lost his teenaged son to a violent death. When he told me what had happened, the man was sobbing. Two words to SW, and you know what they are. It just keeps adding up for me, politically AND personally. This, my SECOND personal brush with Walker. I beseech the absent gods you're right about 9/14.

    ReplyDelete