Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Gov. Walker provides three "facepalm" moments of fail for the day

Embarrassing stories highlight Walker's ineptitude, low value for voters

Millennial translator: Facepalm = a hand gesture used to indicate extreme disappointment.

Our governor isn’t unfamiliar with embarrassing situations, but today must have been a tough one for him. Three stories are worth noting, providing a hat-trick of disappointment in Scott Walker within a 24-hour period of time. Two of them are religious in nature, while the third has to do with a slipping health care ranking.


  • Appearing in the Cap Times and immediately going viral nationally after that, Walker apparently had some difficulty crossing into cultural boundaries he rarely finds himself entering.

    From the Cap Times (emphasis in bold added):
    In an undated letter unearthed by the liberal group One Wisconsin Now during the August release of documents from the first of two John Doe investigations related to the governor, Walker responded to a letter from Milwaukee attorney and chairman of the Wisconsin Center District Franklyn Gimbel.

    Walker told Gimbel his office would be happy to display a menorah celebrating “The Eight Days of Chanukah” at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, and asked Gimbel to have a representative from Lubavitch of Wisconsin contact Walker’s secretary, Dorothy Moore, to set it up.

    The letter is signed, “Thank you again and Molotov.”
  • Walker probably meant to write “mazel tov” in his closing statement, a Jewish congratulatory phrase, rather than “Molotov.”
  • As if that wasn’t bad enough, another revelation from One Wisconsin Now shows that Walker is involving himself in a “pay to pray” campaign event.

    Tickets are available to attend Walker’s inauguration party, which is open to the public. Proceeds from the tickets pay out to the Republican Party of Wisconsin, essentially making the event a campaign fundraiser.

    Included in the event is a prayer breakfast, where supporters can pay $25 to pray with the governor. Because if there’s one thing that Jesus stood for, it was political opportunism and public prayer (wait, not so much).

  • Finally, Wisconsin’s national health ranking slipped in 2014, going from 20th in the nation to 23rd. This comes after Walker decided not to opt into the Medicaid expansion for BadgerCare, which booted tens of thousands of families off of the state-run insurance program.

    That fact likely contributed to our worsening rank:
    Wisconsin’s challenges are the still high prevalence of binge drinking, a high incidence of infectious disease and low per capita public health funding.
    Walker couldn’t do much about our drinking culture, but his audacious moves to deny helping thousands of families out with low-cost medical care is ruining the health of our state. The Journal Sentinel points out, for example, that the number of cases of pertussis (a bacterial disease that brings on violent coughing) “has increased by more than 10 times in the last two years.”

Three fails reported on in one day. Still think re-electing Gov. Walker was a good idea? Imagine what he’ll do as president.

No comments:

Post a Comment