Bush & Green ride the elevator, we get the shaft

George W. Bush takes some time out from "solving" global warming to visit Milwaukee today and reward loyal soldier Mark Green, who's voted with Bush 93% of the time, even when it's been against the interest of the people of Wisconsin.

If Green is the loyal soldier, it's the people of Wisconsin who deserve a Purple Heart for all the wounds the Bush-Green alliance has inflicted on them.

Green has voted for Bush budgets that took the country from its biggest surpluses to trillion-dollar deficits, to finance tax cuts for the richest 1% and underwrite the Iraq war. Green is one of the war's biggest cheerleaders, and formed the Victory in Iraq caucus in the House. He's voted for $8-billion in tax breaks for Big Oil, to give away $139-billion to drug companies, and to cut programs that help seniors, veterans, college students, and farmers. Green's priorities are all out of whack.

Besides a $1,000 per head, $10,000 per table fundraiser for Green, which will give the special interests and party faithful one more chance to write fat checks, Bush also will visit Allen Edmonds shoe factory in Port Washington.

There are probably three reasons Bush is visiting Allen Edmonds and its CEO, John Stollenwerk.

One is to justify having the taxpayers pick up all or at least part of the trip to Milwaukee, which clearly is a political trip.

Another would be to tout Allen Edmonds as a success story as the Wisconsin company competes and thrives in a global economy.

That, of course, runs exactly contrary to the message being delivered on a daily basis by Mark Green and the Republicans, who insist that Wisconsin's business climate is so terrible no one can compete here. If you listen to Green and Co., you'd expect Allen Edmonds and Bush to announce today that the company is moving to Mississippi or Mexico.

And the third reason would be to provide some photo opportunities that do not involve Mark Green standing too close to Bush, whose numbers among all but the GOP base are still terrible.

Bush apparently has passed on the invitation from Cory Liebmann at One Wisconsin Now:

Rather than meet with another group of high rolling fat cats and special interest reps, maybe the President should go low key. I would like to officially invite him to skip the payback session for Mark Green and meet me for dinner at Ma Fischer’s on Milwaukee’s East Side. I’ll pay. He could sit down with a few average working folks and get in touch with what they are going through. Then to round out an insightful evening, I’d spring for two tickets to Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” It’s still showing at the Oriental Theatre, only a short walk away. It seems to me that this would be far more productive than the business as usual that they have on the agenda for tomorrow’s visit.

Liebmann probably didn't realize Bush is already solving the global warming problem.