Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election Tuesday gave Democrats (well, liberals/progressives—the election is supposedly non-partisan) a one-vote majority as it faces deliberations over the state’s abortion ban, its gerrymandered legislative districts and the voting rules for the 2024 presidential election. Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s defeated former state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly and ended 15 years of conservative control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Kelly’s concession speech made Richard Nixon look gracious. Ethics Dunce, Unethical Quote, Incompetent UN-elected official—Kelly qualifies for several EA designations, none of them positive. His speech alone shows that the voters made the right choice. Who wants a judge with such atrocious judgment?
What a jerk.
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Pointer: valkygrrl
Ethics Alarms 
Yes, Daniel Kelly is a jerk.
I couldn’t vote for either one of the Judges running for our State Supreme Court.
A note of defense of Dan Kelly, Janet Protasiewicz’s smear campaign against Dan Kelly was full of outright lies and Protasiewicz actually parroted some of those known lies, making her a liar. On the other hand, those that were supporting Dan Kelly engaged in their own unethical smear campaign against Janet Protasiewicz, there were lots of ads full of misrepresentations the one claim about Protasiewicz that wasn’t a misrepresentation was her activism in favor of abortion, she is quite proud of that activism.
Here is a screen shot I took from Dan Kelly’s campaign site…
P.S. Their debate was revealing…
In my opinion Janet Protasiewicz should recuse herself from any case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court that has anything to do with abortion; if she doesn’t recuse herself, I’ll support her recall.
I watched this last night live and it was cringe-inducing, I couldn’t believe my ears; it played right into Lefty’s hands.
As Steve pointed out, Kelly has/had a point, but FF‘sS, time-n-place, and a concession speech was decidedly neither!
I respectfully disagree. The left has forever benefited from our asymmetrical political warfare environment: they know that the GOP and its supporters are too civil and too much of true believers in rule of law to reciprocate the Dems dirty tactics. I think we’re way past the point of needing to use the same tactics and fight with the same willingness to play dirty. It may even be too late but we are definitely ain’t going to win playing fair. I know way may lose some decent people, but the hell with it. If they are too stupid to appreciate what’s at stake then that’s on them. I’d rather have few people regret not seeing that then having many more regretting not doing it to try to save the Republic.
Ron-in-Chicago,
You’re welcome to your opinion; however, it sounds to me like you’d rationalize just about any kind of reciprocal behavior against the political left using the golden rationalization, the Sicilian ethics and the ends justifies the means as your core rationalization principles.
Now if I’ve misunderstood your intent I’ll certainly apologize; but, is what you wrote really the kind of message that you think the political right should be spreading? Maybe, just maybe, the message should be that the critically thinking, rationally thinking, logically thinking, common sense majority that seems to be cowering to the woke and relatively silent should stand up and loudly speak out with the kind of true conviction that started this great nation.
Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death!
The republic is gone. The US now meets all the criteria of a totalitarian state. It would take a Revolution to get it back, and I doubt that is a viable option. Red states should start secession if they want any hope of escaping what is coming. I doubt they will do that.
Null Pointer wrote, “The US now meets all the criteria of a totalitarian state.”
I know where you’re coming from but I’m not so sure that that statement is accurate, I don’t think we’re “a totalitarian state” yet, but we’re certainly heading down that slippery slope.
If what we are seeing in our colleges is predictive (in my opinion it is very predictive) of our future leaders 10-15 years from now, our society, culture and form of government is in serious trouble as I have talked about over and over again on my blog. A brainwashed cult of hive-minded irrational social justice woke warriors is on the rise and all we have to do is pay reasonable attention to how the puzzle patterns fit together.
Remember back in 2008 when Obama called “progressive” activists to action during his Presidential campaign, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”. The political left wants to fundamentally change the USA at its very core and the political left has been actively undermining everything that makes the USA what it is ever since that speech in 2008. These people have shown us by their rhetoric and actions that they hate the USA.
Yes they literally hate (feel intense or passionate dislike for) the USA. They hate that the 1st Amendment applies to everyone, they hate ethical journalism, they hate the concept of innocent until proven guilty, they hate the justice system and anyone or anything that supports it, they hate civility, they hate the police, they hate anyone that opposes their ideology, they hate a Constitution that dares to allow others to oppose their ideology, they hate that our basic freedoms and Liberty allow some people to make more money than others, they hate that those they oppose have any rights, they project a belief in rights for me but not for thee, they hate the fact that equal opportunity doesn’t equate to equal outcomes, they hate our system of education, they hate that all our history (both good and bad) make us what we are today, they hatethe status quo, they hate, Hate, HATE. They are completely consumed by their hate and their hate has eaten their objectivity, critical thinking and common sense and it’s a malignant cancer eating away at our entire way of life.
The modern political left hates and fears anyone that thinks different from them, that’s what cultish hive-minded propaganda does to hive minded people that have been conditioned for a long time to be extremely biased against those they disagree with. If you’re consumed with hate, it’s likely that you’re going to project that hate on others and when hate drives you, you ignore things like ethics, morality, common sense, critical thinking, logic and your psyche caves in to fear. All this leads to irrational and hysterical thinking and fear which in turn produces absurdity in the world around them. The absurdity of the left’s hate is evident all across the USA.
What is totalitarianism? It is a form of government in which the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate all aspects of public and private life.
You want to use incandescent lightbulbs? Sorry, not allowed. Not energy efficent. You like your gas stove? Too bad! Those cause asthma! You don’t agree with gay marriage and don’t want to bake cakes that celebrate it? Well, no more business for you! The state will sue you over and over again until you get back in line. Lets take a look at some of the other characteristics of a totalitarian state.
The totalitarian state pursues some special goal, such as industrialization or conquest, to the exclusion of all others. All resources are directed toward its attainment, regardless of the cost. Whatever might further the goal is supported; whatever might foil the goal is rejected.
Does the war against climate change ring a bell here? ESG anyone? The fight against fossil fuels? Destroying the entire economy and spending trillions of dollars the US doesn’t have on Green New Deals? Moving on….
This obsession spawns an ideology that explains everything in terms of the goal, rationalizing all obstacles that may arise and all forces that may contend with the state. The resulting popular support permits the state the widest latitude of action of any form of government. Any dissent is branded evil, and internal political differences are not permitted.
The US government and its media minions would never brand all the opponents of the state as racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, climate denying, antivaxxing, xenophobic, mouthbreathing knuckle draggers, would it? Oh wait… But there are other things. Lets see.
As pluralism and individualism diminish, most of the people embrace the totalitarian state’s ideology. The infinite diversity among individuals blurs, replaced by a mass conformity (or at least acquiescence) to the beliefs and behavior sanctioned by the state.
Well all those people talking about mass hypnosis are just conspiracy theorists. Nothing to see here. Moving on.
Large-scale organized violence becomes permissible and sometimes necessary under totalitarian rule, justified by the overriding commitment to the state ideology and pursuit of the state’s goal.
Its not like BLM and Antifa got to burn cities to the ground with impunity, is it?
Because pursuit of the goal is the only ideological foundation for the totalitarian state, achievement of the goal can never be acknowledged.
No amount of energy efficiency seems to make climate change better. No amount of societal change ever seems to diminish the racism or sexism or homophobia. Nothing ever gets better. It only gets more and more systemic and hidden and micro. Must keep up the fight!
In a totalitarian state, the police operate outside the constraints of laws and regulations, and their actions are purposefully unpredictable.
Its not like some rioters are better than others. They all get locked up in jail without bond for multiple years while the government witholds evidence that would acquit them. No one pays millions of dollars to some rioters while murdering others and getting off scott free. Oh, wait….
Often, totalitarian states and other autocracies attempt to borrow legitimacy by adopting the language of the constitutions of nonautocratic regimes or by establishing similar institutions. It is a common practice, for example, in many modern totalitarian states to establish institutions—parliaments or assemblies, elections and parties, courts and legal codes—that differ little in appearance from the institutional structures of constitutional democracies. Similarly, the language of totalitarian constitutions is often couched in terms of the doctrines of popular rule or democracy. The difference is that in totalitarian regimes neither the institutions nor the constitutional provisions act as effective checks on the power of the single centre: they are essentially facades for the exercise of power through hierarchical procedures that subject all the officials of the state to the commands of the ruling individual or group.
There has absolutely been no pearl clutching about our democracy while changing all the laws around voting and making demands to eliminate the constitution and the bill of rights one amendment at a time.
Totalitarian states use state power to impose an official ideology on its citizens. Nonconformity of opinion, as already noted, is treated as the equivalent of resistance or opposition to the government, and the state police or secret police, along with other institutions of compulsion, are used to enforce the orthodoxy of the proclaimed doctrines of the state.
No one has been declaring parents protesting school boards terrorists have they? No one has been arresting political opposition on flimsy excuses, right? No one has been collecting information on American citizens without warrants, demanding phone records and location data on the down low from corporations? No one has been ordering social media companies to ban certain viewpoints and requesting that any dissent be reported to the FBI?
The use of police, spies, to enforce the will of state. Check.
State control of the economy. Check.
Use of schools and youth groups to spread ideology to children. Check.
Government control of the media. Check.
Total control of the military. Check.
Total control over means of communication. Check.
Police control with the use of terror as a control tactic. Check.
Organized violence. Check.
Normalcy bias is powerful.
I did write that “we’re certainly heading down that slippery slope” towards a totalitarian state and thanks for providing so many great examples that support what I wrote. 😉
If we aren’t already there, then we have already tumbled down the slippery slope and are nanoseconds from hitting the totalitarianism tripwire in an uncontrolled fall at 90 miles an hour. It’s the early stages, but I think we are already there. I don’t see any major organized efforts going on to stop it. With nothing to stop it the descent seems inevitable either way.
We actually still have a Constitution, a Supreme Court of the United States, Supreme Courts in each state, and the rule of law that if all used effectively can drag us out of falling completely into the abyss of totalitarianism but there must be and actual effort to use those tools to accomplish the task before we will see any results.
Our courts appear to be the last barrier to prevent a complete shift to a totalitarianism state, that is the last barrier short of using bullets and violence.
Note: what I wrote above is directly related to our future courts…
If we allow these brainwashed cult of hive-minded irrational social justice woke warriors to gain control our courts, then the rule of law and the Constitution will be done. This is the point that you can make the an accurate claim that we are ruled by a totalitarianism state.
We can’t allow our last barrier to totalitarianism to be destroyed by these irrational people!
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