How to Sell our National Birthright

How to Sell our National Birthright

It all began innocuously. There were announcements last autumn that Sinomach, a Chinese builder, wanted to buy land near Boise, Idaho, to build a 30,000-acre city and industrial park modeled after special economic zones (SEZ) that exist in China. We find with some investigation that state-owned Sinomach (China National Machinery Industry Corporation), established in January 1997 and active in 130 countries, is managed by the Communist Party of China (CPC). In a May 26, 2009, description by Dr. Xu Dixin, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and CPC master theoretician, as printed in Beijing Review, SEZs closely adhere to former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin’s “new economic policies” defined in the 1920s. With a bit more checking we find that the U.S. government has already set up 257 “foreign trade zones” nationwide and, would you believe, the SEZ fits exactly into that definition. Then we find with more checking that these planned SEZ sites are only a “beachhead,” as specifically stated by Governor Butch Otter and his Commerce Secretary Don Dietrich. Know that the dictionary definition of beachhead is “an area on a hostile shore occupied to secure further landing of troops and supplies.” It is now evident that Sinomach is looking at similar sites in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but it is evident that China wants to buy U.S. property and build city and industrial establishments within U.S. borders that are outside both individual state and federal controls. It also appears that governments (state and local) are complicit to ensure that this happens. The political establishment believes that the CPC is benign in intent and does so at YOUR peril. Several politicians, including former governors (Huntsman of Utah and Locke of Washington), publicly stated that “China is more capitalist than the U.S.” This is a gross lie. The CPC has an agenda to defeat America, and the approach described here just might be it. The CPC controls a large portion of U.S. debt, so they can call the shots. Remember that in 2010 China had a “current account balance” of $272 billion (the largest in the world) and the U.S. had negative $561 billion, nine times larger than any nation on the planet. This means that America sells the national birthright when a foreign, adversarial state controls such assets within our Republic. China has the means to command this outcome and projects a suspicious agenda. When I say adversarial, let me be specific. Chinese military officials constantly talk about coming conflict between China and the U.S. They now have as many attack submarines as the U.S. Their newest fighter jet (introduced a few hours before Secretary Gates retired at the end of June as a show of “in-your-face”) more than rivals the F-22 Raptor – it is larger, carries more fuel, flies higher and faster, and has better anti-detection stealth. On June 27, the Senate passed a resolution that “deplores China’s use of force” against neighbors in the South China Sea. The Chinese Foreign Minister immediately said that the resolution “did not hold water” and that the U.S. “should not interfere.” Analyses by Australia’s Lowy Institute address China’s military risk-taking behavior as raising the chances of armed conflict and that China’s “frictions with the United States are likely to persist and intensify.” It is notable that China has been practicing this art of “industrial city building” and has several cities fully constructed. Vacant towns, each capable of housing more than 1 million people with contained industrial plants, are scattered throughout the Chinese boondocks. Some existing SEZ cities are in Zhuhai, Shantou, Xaimen and Shenzhen, which has grown to 14 million people from nothing 30 years ago. A new city at Ordos and several others are totally empty. The intent is to create new industries because China has more people than jobs. Furthermore, China has already exported this concept. In Sudan, for example, Chinese financing, weapons and prison labor operate the oil industry for the local (incompetent and corrupt) government. Extend all of this and imagine a bit of downtown Communist China right there in Idaho. Delightful. While preparing this article, I contacted Idaho Senators Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, Congressmen Raul Labrador (1st) and Mike Simpson (2nd), and Governor Otter (all Republicans) and asked about their position on this subject. The most complete reply I obtained was from a press secretary: “He only knows what he reads in the newspaper.” Unbelievable! IH

Wonderful that union members get to vote.

Recertification vote up to teachers union locals, WEAC says

Like the man himself, a fraud.

The Obama Bus Fraud

The campaign tour you paid for was even more expensive than you thought.

Almost eclipsed by the PR disaster of his lavish vacation at Martha’s Vineyard was the PR debacle of President Obama’s “listening tour,” in which he blasted through small towns in a gigantic motorcade dominated by two million-dollar Canadian buses, pausing to give political speeches before hand-picked audiences. Although clearly a part of Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, this was all funded by the U.S. taxpayer, and the expense was enormous.

It turns out it might have been even more enormous than we thought, because the whole “bus tour” was a gigantic fraud. As related by Rob Port at Say Anything:

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that the buses were necessary because “The president needs to get out in the country and meet with real folks in real places.”

“A plane [the size of Air Force One] is hard to get into small communities.”

But here’s the thing: Apparently President Obama only rode the buses for a couple of miles at a time, spending the rest of the time flying from community to community in Air Force One. What’s more, the buses were flown from stop to stop as well. It’s normal practice for the President’s entire motorcade to be loaded up on cargo planes and flown from destination to destination. The buses were just a new part of that motorcade.

But why wouldn’t the presidential limousine have sufficed? Or one of the other armored vehicles that routinely travel with the President? Apparently because the President wanted the imagery of a bus. And buses are what he got.

Ben Howe at Red State marvels at the gigantic carbon footprint of this operation:

So good news America! If these reports are true, then not only do you get the pleasure of having a $1.1 million dollar bus carting the President around to “enlist” voters to fight for his reelection, but you get to marvel at the hypocrisy of an administration hell bent on destroying industries with carbon footprints too large for comfort, while they themselves are flying entire caravans of SUVs and buses in giant 747s flanked by fighter jets.

All so the president can travel a couple of miles per stop with the image that he’s on the ground with the people when in reality, he couldn’t be more detached from them, their problems, or this continually declining economy. You couldn’t ask for a better metaphor.

Let us stipulate that these reports of the bus tour should be investigated and verified thoroughly. If they hold up, this seems like a pretty big deal, and not just because of the mind-shattering hypocrisy, and the way it perfectly captures the hollow fraud of the entire Obama presidency. Both of those qualities were already in evidence when we thought Obama was actually riding those buses between the towns he visited. The extravagance of his motorcade was a metal-and-rubber incarnation of blind, big-spending Big Government stomping through communities like a rampaging dinosaur.

The cost of flying the buses, and Air Force One, between campaign stops must have beenstaggering. What can the American people do to stop this man from burning through our money? Do we really have to wait until 2013 to get his hand out of our wallets? There must be some oversight that could be invoked to reign in the most egregious and wasteful of the President’s personal expenses.

The advantages of incumbency in a campaign will always be formidable, but Obama is taking it to an absurd extreme… and taxpayers aren’t even getting results for their money, because the President is tanking in the polls.

Update: Blogger "Coldwarrior" strongly doubts the reports of aerial bus transportation, and offers some careful Google map work to disprove it:

First, just take a look at the route. It was relatively short (about 380 miles with a total drive time of under 7 hours from Cannon Falls to Alpha, IL) and the confirmed stops along the way were in some cases only 22 or so miles from each other and, it appears, the furthest distance between two stops was about 59 miles (Decorah, IA to Guttenberg, IA). I plotted on Google Maps the cities he went through, in this order: Cannon Falls, Zumbrota, Chatfield and Harmony, MN; Decorah, Guttenberg, Peosta, Maquoketa and Le Claire, IA; and Morrison, Atkinson, Galesburg, Alpha and Peoria, IL.

Here's a link to a Google Map showing all the places he visited: http://g.co/maps/4kmv

Here's the official route as it was announced: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/08/15/tune-president-obamas-town-hall-meetings-week and the itinerary for some of the events are also set forth, with the dates, locations and times.

That's about all you'd need to debunk this. I was under the impression, as you may have been, that this "bus tour" was a long, long trip deep into Iowa and then all the way across Illinois, but it wasn't. It was a trip that could have been covered in less than a day with a stop every 35 to 45 miles on average.

Because the distances between some of his stops were as few as 22 miles, and there's plenty of photos and videos showing him in all of these locations, practically it would have taken longer to get to an airport, load up, take off, land, unload, etc. than to simply just make the drive. And, as you'll see, there just aren't the kind of airfields need in that part of the country. I know. I've driven much of the route over the years.

So, secondly, even if they had wanted, despite the short distances involved, to fly the buses and/or Obama ahead to the next stop, there simply are not enough airfields in that area of the country that could handle the aircraft involved (certainly not the 747 AF1 and not the C-5A or C-17 cargo aircraft that would have been needed for the buses).

Part of the making illegals legal. Voting rights are next

Labor Dept. Signs 'Partnerships' with Foreign Gov’s to Protect Illegal Workers in U.S.

Separation of church and state only when politically convenient

Now Obama's NLRB tells a church school it's not religious enough

By: Ken Klukowski

It's not enough for President Obama's National Labor Relations Board to target the Boeing plant in South Carolina. Now the NLRB thinks it can tell a church school when it's not religious enough.

Most people have heard by now of NLRB's unprecedented decree that Boeing Co. cannot build a new airline production facility in South Carolina.

But Obama's NLRB is also claiming the authority to dictate labor policies and order union elections at Catholic universities if they are not religious enough.

St. Xavier University was founded in 1846, the oldest Catholic school in Illinois. Its corporate member is a Catholic body with the "powers for the governance of" St. Xavier, that "links the University to the [Catholic] Church and makes it an officially recognized member of the Church."

St. Xavier's Board of Trustees must have at least four nuns from the order that founded the school, and, according to its bylaws, its governing body must "ensure [St. Xavier] continues its educational and religious mission."

After quoting these sources and many others, NLRB's regional director concluded in true Orwellian fashion that "the evidence establishes" that St. Xavier is "a secular educational institution or university."

To support this astounding conclusion flying in the face of the facts (not to mention common sense), NLRB claimed a 1979 Supreme Court affirms this authority.

Yet that case -- NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago -- actually says the complete opposite of what Obama's NLRB claims.

In an instance of deja vu, the Supreme Court in Catholic Bishop considered a challenge to an NLRB order asserting authority over lay teachers at Illinois Catholic high schools. (Sound familiar?)

NLRB claimed that it had no authority over a church but that it possessed power over church-related bodies that are not purely religious, such as schools. The court considered whether the National Labor Relations Act granted NLRB such power.

Noting the religious mission of Catholic schools, the Supreme Court declared, "Good intentions by government ... can surely no more avoid entanglement with the religious mission of a school" than legislation the court previously struck down as unconstitutional violations of religious liberty.

Turning to the facts of that case, the court reasoned, "The church-teacher relationship in a church-operated school differs from the employment relationship in a public ... school. There is no escape from conflicts flowing from [NLRB's] exercise of jurisdiction over teachers in church-operated schools and the consequent serious First Amendment questions that would follow."

The court then noted that nothing in the law's language suggested NLRB has power over any church-affiliated organizations. The court invoked one of the most basic principles of American law, that a federal statute "ought not to be construed to violate the Constitution if any other possible construction remains available."

Accordingly, the court held that federal law did not give NLRB the power it was claiming, so the court need not consider whether to strike down that provision. Instead, it held NLRB lacked any legal jurisdiction to judge the schools' religiosity, and vacated NLRB's order.

Far from authorizing NLRB's action against St. Xavier, the ruling does the opposite of affirming the government has no such power over church schools. NLRB's contrary assertion is a frightening power grab that must be taken to court.

So economic and social conservatives now have a common problem. Obama's NLRB is being wielded as an instrument of unfettered federal power. Congress and the courts must act to end this imperial overreach.

Time to hold the UN's feet to the fire of civilized western valuers

White House to Oppose House Bill to Hold UN Accountable

Today, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen unveiled her United Nations reform bill that will put the world body on notice it will pay a steep price if it continues to thumb its nose at the United States on vital issues. The bill will cut off U.S. funding of any UN agency that treats the Palestinians as an independent state prior to the resolution of the Middle East conflict as well as ending the flow of American largesse to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the UN’s Human Rights Council (HRC).

But while Ros-Lehtinen’s bill is likely to pass the House, it will face a rough time in the Senate due to opposition from the White House. An administration source told Politico: “This draft legislation is dated, tired, and frankly unresponsive to the positive role being played by the UN.” This raises the question: is President Obama willing to head into a re-election contest flying the flag of the UN?

The White House claims Republican critics of the UN are ignoring the positive role the institution has played in Afghanistan and Libya. It argues that American influence at the world body is maximized when the U.S. is fully engaged and paying the 22 percent of the UN’s budget that flows from Washington. But Obama’s “don’t worry, be happy” approach to the UN has done nothing to convince its members to stop trying to kill the peace process by voting to recognize an independent Palestinian state without first requiring it to make peace with Israel. Nor has the administration used its supposedly weighty influence at Turtle Bay to transform UNRWA or the Human Rights Council, both of which exist primarily in order to perpetuate the Arab war against Israel. Despite progress on some fronts, the UN and its affiliate agencies remain a cesspool of anti-Semitism and bias against Israel as the upcoming Durban III UN conference (which, to its credit, the administration plans to boycott) proves yet again.

As Ros-Lehtinen stated in an op-ed published on Sunday in the Miami Herald, there is a well-established precedent for the practice of withholding America’s UN dues. In 1989, a previous attempt by the Palestinians to gain UN recognition was spiked by a threat from the first Bush administration that such a vote would result in the end of American funding for the world body.

The House effort to mandate reform of the UN on a variety of issues is motivated by a fundamental principle that ought to be a matter of bipartisan consensus: the United States should only fund those institutions and causes that reflect American values and interests. UNRWA, which has been infiltrated by Hamas and whose purpose is to keep Palestinian refugees in place rather than to resettle them, is a classic example of a UN institution receiving American money that contradicts that principle. The Human Rights Council, which devotes most of its energy to excoriating democratic Israel while ignoring genuine abuses elsewhere, is another.

The Ros-Lehtinen bill is long overdue and deserves the support of pro-Israel Democrats. Just as they did back in May when they demonstrated their opposition to Obama’s attempt to pressure Israel to accept the 1967 lines as the starting point for negotiations, Democrats need to put the White House on notice they have no intention of facing the voters next year as defenders of a corrupt United Nations.

What does it take to be fired? Eric Holder should also go.

ATF head removed by DOJ after 'Fast and Furious' controversy By Jordy Yager The head of the ATF has been removed after months of speculation about his role in a botched gun-tracking operation that could have contributed to the death of a Border Patrol agent. The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Tuesday that acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Kenneth Melson was being replaced. Melson is being transferred to the Office of Legal Policy, where he will be a senior adviser. U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Todd Jones will take over as acting ATF director, according to the Department of Justice. Melson had been in Congress’s crosshairs for the majority of this year as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) investigated the ATF’s botched gun-tracking operation, dubbed Fast and Furious. The operation oversaw the sale of thousands of firearms to known and suspected straw purchasers for Mexican drug cartels. Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called for Melson’s resignation in June; two weeks later he backed away from those demands when Melson came to Capitol Hill on the July 4 holiday with his own personal lawyer to conduct a transcribed interview with Issa and Grassley’s staff. Still, the reassignment represents the first major investigative victory for Issa, who said he would continue to probe Justice and its botched gun tracking operation. “While the reckless disregard for safety that took place in Operation Fast and Furious certainly merits changes within the Department of Justice, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee will continue its investigation to ensure that blame isn’t offloaded on just a few individuals for a matter that involved much higher levels of the Justice Department,” said Issa in a statement. “There are still many questions to be answered about what happened in Operation Fast and Furious and who else bears responsibility, but these changes are warranted and offer an opportunity for the Justice Department to explain the role other officials and offices played in the infamous efforts to allow weapons to flow to Mexican drug cartels.” Attorney General Eric Holder heralded the promotion of Jones, saying he will provide the ATF with the necessary leadership to strengthen the agency. “As a seasoned prosecutor and former military judge advocate, U.S. Attorney Jones is a demonstrated leader who brings a wealth of experience to this position,” Holder said. “I have great confidence that he will be a strong and steady influence guiding ATF in fulfilling its mission of combating violent crime by enforcing federal criminal laws and regulations in the firearms and explosives industries.” The Fast and Furious operation came under congressional scrutiny after whistleblowers within the ATF brought it to Grassley’s attention. ATF agents said they were told to monitor the sale of thousands of guns in the Southwest region with the hope of tracking them back to Mexican drug cartels and dismantling their trafficking networks. But agents were often told to abandon surveillance of the weapons, allowing them — and the straw buyers — to disappear, according to testimony from numerous agents before the House. The only remaining hope for agents to track the guns was if other agencies found them at a murder scene or during a drug raid and they could compare the serial numbers on the found guns with the recorded numbers on the guns sold during the operation. Officials linked two weapons found at the Arizona murder scene last December of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry — according to testimony, they are terrified that some of the thousands of guns still at large will be used to kill more innocent people. Melson has never been implicitly indicated as approving the tactic of letting the guns “walk,” but Issa has argued that as the head of the agency, he should have been aware of the operation. The DOJ inspector general is conducting its own investigation of the operation. Both Holder and President Obama have declined to comment in any detail about Fast and Furious until that is completed.

The scam and the scammer

Perry Vs. Gore

Junk Science: The governor of a state under assault by the EPA takes on the patron saint of climate change over whether "warmers" or "deniers" benefit financially from the debate. Meanwhile, the nation loses.

Is Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry a racist? According to the increasingly bombastic Al "expletive deleted" Gore, who was interviewed by Climate Reality Project collaborator Alex Bogusky on Ustream last Friday, Perry's global warming skepticism qualifies him as one.

Gore related how his "generation watched Bull Connor turning the hose on civil rights demonstrators" and that it was when racists could not answer the question of why blacks were inferior "with integrity" that "the change really started."

We shall overcome climate skeptics as well, he believes. "We have to win the conversation on climate," Gore said, just as the conversation on race was won.

After Gore equated climate change skepticism with racism, Bogusky prompted Gore: "Gov. Perry suggests that scientists have gotten together to foil the American public, or the global public." In fact, what Perry told an audience in New Hampshire was that our climate has been "changing ever since the earth was formed" due to largely natural forces and that "there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects."

Perry was Gore's Texas campaign manager in 1988, a fact that many purists say should disqualify him for the GOP nomination. Back then, Perry was a Democrat and Gore was a relatively conservative Democrat who had not yet invented the Internet or beheld an Earth hanging in the balance.

Perry has seen the error of his ways. Gore has not.

"This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, to attack their integrity, and to slander them with a lie that they are making up the science in order to make money," Gore said in the online interview. Of course, Gore hasn't shied away from accusing skeptics of being financed by coal and oil companies.

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We and others have documented the manipulated and edited data used by Britain's Climate Research Unit to "hide the decline" in global temperature, and fraudulent assessments by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with conclusions based on single-source anecdotes from obscure journals. They all have been well-funded.

No one has made more money from climate change hype than Gore. According to the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper, just one of the "green" companies in which Gore has invested has received over half a billion dollars in subsidies from the Energy Department.

Financial disclosure documents released before the 2000 election put the Gore family's net worth at $1 million to $2 million. A mere decade later, estimates are that he is worth $100 million. He's been touted in the press as one day becoming the first "carbon billionaire."

According to the Science & Public Policy Institute, the U.S. government has spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, education campaigns, foreign aid and tax breaks.

Compare that with, say, Exxon-Mobil Corp., which is repeatedly attacked for paying a grand total of $23 million to skeptics.

According to the World Bank, the value of carbon trading doubled from $63 billion in 2007 to $126 billion in 2008. Big money has been and can be made by conning governments into formulating policies based on fraudulently hyped climate hysteria.

Monday's endorsement of Perry by Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., should come as no surprise. Inhofe recognizes that what Perry calls "anti-carbon programs" are scams based on fraudulent science and that Perry is right.

While many like Gore have profited handsomely, these policies cost the nation dearly in terms of jobs and economic growth.

This deserves to be an issue in 2012.

Who are the 39%?

Poll: Obamacare support at all time low

The threat posed by Islamists

Report: Egyptian forces raid Jihad cells in Sinai

Minister Matan Vilnai says Israel received warning that a cell comprised of more than 10 terrorists may carry out attack on Eid al-Fitr as some 1,500 Egyptian troops reportedly mount large-scale operation in Sinai against Jihad operatives

More educational theory crap

30-YEAR-OLD TEACHING METHODS DEBUNKED

The left at it again...

WIS. PROTESTER PREDICTS CLASS WARFARE: ‘ALL YOU F**KING TEA PARTY BAGGERS GET READY’

When does it become silly? I think this is it.

A closer look at the Porsche seven-speed manual shift pattern

Another government failure...no help for sea otters off California's coast

Sea otter relocation program a failure, may end

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer

Federal wildlife regulators admitted Wednesday that a "no-otter zone" established in Southern California 24 years ago was a failure and proposed scrapping the experimental program to establish a sea otter colony on a remote island off Santa Barbara.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will take comments for 60 days before making a final decision on whether to end the so-called southern sea otter translocation program. The program, which has long been considered a mistake by otter lovers, "is not meeting its objectives for restoring the species," the agency said in a news release.

"We've learned a lot during the course of the translocation program, and as a result have fundamentally changed our recovery strategy," said Ren Lohoefener, the regional director of the wildlife service's Pacific Southwest Region. "Our experience strongly suggests that the best course of action is to allow sea otters to expand naturally into Southern California waters."

The announcement was met with the online equivalent of whoops and fist pumps by conservation groups.

"Today is a good day for California sea otters," Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Sea Otter, the Humane Society of the United States and the Monterey Bay Aquarium wrote in a joint statement. "We support an end to the ineffective and harmful translocation program and 'no-otter' management zone."

The decision was a long time in coming. Federal officials admitted as far back as 2005 that their efforts to restore California's ravaged sea otter population by relocating the furry creatures to San Nicolas Island was a failure.

Between 1987 and 1991, 140 otters were captured and placed on San Nicolas, the southernmost of the Channel Islands, but most of them immediately vanished. Around 40 otters remain there today.

The southern sea otter, or Enhydra lutris nereis, has a voracious appetite and particularly likes sea urchins. The otters are the smallest marine mammals in U.S. waters, and their use of tools to break open their food makes them unique.

Thousands of otters once roamed the waters from Alaska's Prince William Sound to Baja California. Unfortunately for them, their soft, thick fur was considered a luxury starting in the late 1700s, and fur hunters killed them by the thousands. By the beginning of the Gold Rush, sea otters were nearly extinct and their pelts were worth more than gold.

They were believed extinct until the 1930s when a small population of about 50 was discovered near Big Sur. The animals have been listed since 1977 as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The San Nicolas plan was proposed in a 1982 Fish and Wildlife Service report called the Southern Sea Otter Recovery Plan. It said a large oil spill could kill all the remaining sea otters and proposed creating a reserve population that could ensure survival of the species in the event of a catastrophe.

Lobbying by sea urchin harvesters and offshore oil interests, however, resulted in a compromise establishing a "no-otter zone" from Point Conception, 40 miles north of Santa Barbara, to the Mexican border, including all of the Channel Islands except San Nicolas.

Most of the otters that were moved died or swam back to the places they were taken from, sometimes hundreds of miles away. Fish and Wildlife patrols captured some of the strays but largely gave up the practice after it became clear it was not going to work.

"What has been happening up until now is that we have essentially cordoned off an area in the water with an imaginary line," said Jim Curland, a marine program associate for Defenders of Wildlife. "This will remove that barrier."

Labor Day or May Day?

Wausau, Wis. Labor Day Parade Sponsor to Republican Pols: You're Not Welcome

Wausau bars GOP from Labor Day parade

Community parades often feature local politicians waving to the crowds, but this year's annual Labor Day parade in Wausau may be short a few elected officials.

That's because the head of the group that sponsors the Wausau Labor Day Parade, the Marathon County Central Labor Council, is telling Republican lawmakers from the area that they're not welcome Sept. 5.

"Usually they've been in the parade, but it seems like they only want to stand with us one day a year, and the other 364 days they don't really care," said Randy Radtke, president of the council.

The council is made up of about 30 local unions from the Marathon County area.

In a statement, Radtke added that the parade is intended to celebrate working men and women and what the labor movement has given them: weekends, a 40-hour workweek, child labor protection and a safe working environment.

"It should come as no surprise that organizers choose not to invite elected officials who have openly attacked worker's rights or stood idly by while their political party fought to strip public workers of their right to collectively bargain," Radtke said.

What seems foolish about this is that the sponsors could have achieved their goal by doing nothing. Because of safety concerns, it seems likely that many GOP pols would have backed out anyway.

After all, memories of death threats (ignored by the broadcast media, of course), other threats, shoving, being chased down and trapped by hecklers, and other items detailed by Brent Bozell six months ago during the ultimately successful attempt to pass Governor Scott Walker's budget repair and collective bargaining reform bill are surely fresh in every state GOP legislator's mind. Even if you were personally up for the risk, why would you expose your spouse, children, or extended family to the potential ugliness?

A related unbylined Associated Press item, which is currently (and appropriately, in my view, as there's only one such situation) being carried as a local story, is here.

It will be interesting in the coming week before the holiday to see if this becomes a Badger State trend, and how much media attention outside of Wisconsin it gets if it does.