Disappointed

I've been trying to write a post for a few hours now. And, I guess, this is the best I'm going to be able to manage. It's not so much writer's block, as writer's blase. I mean, really, what's the point?

Anyway, the 2006 elections are coming up and I wanted to find out who's running against Kohl. I'll be blunt: I don't like Kohl; I think he's a putz. Now, just to clarify, this is different than a schmuck. He's not bad, in the sense that he hasn't done anything terrible, but he doesn't do much good either (thus, his winning isn't as horrid an idea as if Doyle were to win, Doyle being a schmuck). So, Kohl is a putz. He's a rich putz at that, which is why keeps winning elections -- he can fund his campaign himself.

This should explain why I found this article so distasteful:

Yes, there will be a Republican candidate on the November ballot. There also will be a Green Party candidate and an independent. And there's even a Democratic primary, with Ben Masel, a well-known Madison marijuana activist, challenging Kohl in September.

But, for all practical purposes, Kohl won re-election when the mainstream Republican Party failed to come up with a strong candidate to run against him.

Now, I realize that "media bias" is a controversial issue. And, usually it is a debate as to whether or not there is an equal balance between liberal and conservative bias. I'm going to by-pass that debate. My concern is with the way the major newspapers in Wisconsin prop up candidates.

I've witnessed this through out my eight-year stay in this state. I haven't always paid much attention. I haven't always cared. Sometimes they prop up Republicans; sometimes they prop up Democrats. But, they always seem to be propping up somebody. And frankly, I'm getting a little tired of having to glean information from Minnesota and Illinois newspapers to get some honest to goodness reporting!

I mean, c'mon, how hard is it to just tell it like it is. When you can only find bad news about a certain local candidate in out-of-state papers, then there's a problem. I've encountered this too many times to count now, and I'm sick of it. Again, it's not a Republican vs. Democrat thing. They play both sides of it. However, the minor parties are always side-lined, which is getting rather despicable.

One of the important things that must be revealed in this mess is that the two largest papers, Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times, are both run pretty much identically, because they're both owned by the same people. Now, the only newspaper who stands a chance of competing with them is
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which plays the same damn game. For all I know they may be owned by the same people even though they're not run off the same internet site. Even my home-town paper, The Janesville Gazette, gets into the fray, which seems a mite-bit ridiculous in comparison. But hell, why not?

Anyway, back to Kohl. Here's a bit of why I don't like him:

He's pro-illegal immigration. This site, which is currently targeting Kohl, can be used to easily see the immigration votes of other candidates as well. Check it out.

He wouldn't even tell Project Vote Smart what his views are. That kind of pisses me off. But, as you can see here, people concerned about the budget don't like him, businesses don't like him, gun owners don't like him, and he sucks at national security and trade.

And, there's other stuff, too. But I'm not inclined to hunt for it, which is what it takes to find the dirt on this man. It's there, it's just tedious and I'm grumpy.