The ongoing foolishness of (mo)Ron Johnson

After a nice afternoon at AtwoodFest, I got home to unwind and watch the Brewers game, only to be interrupted by some right-wing PAC running an ad which has already been rated as a "pants on fire" lie by the right-wing leaning "Politifact" at the Journal-Sentinel. I don't know who these militarists are trying to reach with this bullshit, but it's not anyone who lives above ground.

That ad also led MSNBC's Chris Hayes to run this segment (h/t to Democurmudgeon for having this clip), which includes a guest appearance by Ruth Conniff of the Progressive, to go over the foolishness of the Senator this PAC is trying to prop up, Wisconsin's own (mo)Ron Johnson. They start by going into one of (mo)Ron's recent embarrasments, where he dictated a ridiculous theory to U.S. Secretary of Energy and nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz about a scenario that seems to have come out of a sci-fi magazine. And then Conniff reminds us of (mo)Ron's other greatest hits.



And let's not forget one of my favorites, in the middle of BENGHAZI hearings in January 2013, the (mo)Ron Senator admitted he hadn't done his homework as he tried to interrogate then-incoming Defense Secretary John Kerry

Johnson: Okay. Will you work with me then, on an ongoing basis, so we can get that behind us, so we can find out what actually happened, and then we can move beyond that? I mean, can you just make that commitment to me?

Kerry: Well I think, Senator, in all fairness, we do know what happened. I think it is very clear — were you at the briefing with the tapes?

Johnson: No.

Kerry: Well, there was a briefing with tapes, which we all saw — those of us who went to it — which made it crystal clear. We sat for several hours with our intel folks, who described to us precisely what we were seeing. We saw all of the events unfold. We had a very complete and detailed description.

Oh, but Sen. Johnson KNOWS what happened.....because he was told the "truth" by the same neocons/Israelites at the Restoration PAC (who I'm sure have no financial or political interest AT ALL). I think one of the best responses to this week's absurdities of (mo)Ron Johnson was expressed by State Sen. Lena Taylor of Milwaukee, who responded to Johnson's statement on Icki McKenna's show that liberals think Milwaukee children are "idiot inner-city kids" who don't deserve better opportunities.

As a product of the Milwaukee Public School System, I find Senator Ron Johnson’s comments unfitting of the office of a United States Senator. I currently live in the same Milwaukee neighborhood in which I was raised and represent many of the great and hard-working families and children of MPS. These students need the same support, opportunities and respect afforded suburban districts by many of our elected officials. They need legislators that will fight to keep funding in their schools and quality teachers in their classrooms. Instead, these children are treated as political pawns. Senator Johnson needs to take ownership of his words. Hiding behind what he called sarcasm, Johnson pawned off his views on liberals and Democrats. In the more than a decade I’ve represented Milwaukee, I’ve never heard a fellow Democrat call inner-city school children idiots. However, I have heard the word used often to describe some politicians and their actions. - State Sen. Lena Taylor

Then again, (mo)Ron Johnson and the dwindling handful of losers who still support this guy are the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and arrives at erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the perverse situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.

God, we need Russ back in the worst way.