[Diana in Wisconsin]

"The mayor is basically a cardboard cutout with an I Love LA sticker."

You may not believe this, but I ENVY you! The Mayor of Madison, WI (Dave Cieslewicz) is a leftie, but Madison is small by comparison (200,000) and he IS doing LOTS of damage. The liberal media here just fawns over him. Heck! He's (POLITICALLY CORRECT) "Person of the Year!" He wants to make Madison into a clone of Seattle, Washington. Do us a favor, Dave. Just move there!

[AmishDude]

I was in Madison a few weeks ago. I loved the fact that there were big "W"s everywhere. Including on the Kohl Center. I went running around town. You can run down one street and after the intersection would be an absolute mess of litter from a drunken party the night before. I'd never seen it so bad before and I'd been in many many college towns.

Madison's problem isn't the college students, it's the hangers-on. The people who never leave. Maybe they get a string of useless Master's degrees, maybe they just own an organic sandwich shop. They are the ones that make Madison (and Boulder and Ithaca) the wholesale pit of idiocy it is.

The reason they stay is partially the college environment, but it's also the pretty geography and the lack of opportunities (except for Milwaukee) in other urban areas of the state. The fact that Madison is the seat of state government doesn't help either.