The Wisconsin riots are being characterized by AP this morning as "unmatched in their sustained, impassioned energy...".
They're probably not "unmatched," but we can let that slide as a workaday media solecism as reporter and editor grasp for the blaring headline. It's bad journalism but routine these days.
It is the approving tone of "sustained passion" in a public policy debate that worries thinking folks. Reducing the Wisconsin budget problem is a matter of arithmetic, not heavy breathing drama.
Public employees earn adequate-to-handsome salaries and enjoy luxurious benefit packages which poor saps in the private sector never had or have lost in the age of globalization. Some one pays for their, wages, insurance, and guaranteed pensions. That some one is the unfortunate family head who is trying to feed kids and stave off the bill collector on a precarious 12-buck-an hour job which can be lost in a heartbeat.
The Wisconsin public titters are having a marvelous time at the trough, and it is the fear of losing it which is turning them into a mob of petulant children. They react precisely as six-year-old Bratty Suzie does when asked to share her Snickers with Little Brother.
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That said, the demonstrating teachers et al. look almost statesmanlike compared to their 14 Wisconsin Senate protectors who react to administrative challenge by going to the mattresses in Chicago.
Feb 19, 2011
Feb 18, 2011
McGee in the Morning
Astrology, health food, flag waving, bible thumping, Zen, nudism, nihilism — all of these are grotesque simplifications which small dreary people adopt in the hope of thereby finding The Answer, because the very concept that maybe there is no answer, never has been, never
Feb 17, 2011
Mommy Dotguv says I'm a Good Boy
I'm all CCWed up for the next five years. Very smooth and simple procedure, five minutes and $25, including running my name past NCIC. One of the pleasant things is the absence of restrictions. For instance, the mother-may-i no longer forbids carrying uncased long guns in the truck.
I was prepared to show the clerk a copy of the law requiring her to accept my DD214 in lieu of the highly comprehensive four-hour course on gun safety and responsibility. We had had the discussion earlier when she said she never heard of such a thing. This time she accepted it without a murmur.
I was prepared to show the clerk a copy of the law requiring her to accept my DD214 in lieu of the highly comprehensive four-hour course on gun safety and responsibility. We had had the discussion earlier when she said she never heard of such a thing. This time she accepted it without a murmur.
Cheerio and Adieu
A few months ago I noted the proposed sale of one of our defense outfits to furriners.
It was a complicated deal for L1 Identity Solutions. CEO Robert LaPenta proved talented over the years at farting away shareholder money, but not making any. He ran the company into the ground and had to auction it off. To generate any bids at all he found he had to split it up, despite promises to the contrary.
Part of L1 is a spook shop, a set of mercenaries under hire by American "intelligence" agencies. That sale became final yesterday, to BAE, which answers to London, the professional home of Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five.
That clears the way for peddling the rest of L1, basically the biometrics-related chunk, to Safron which is not only French but partially owned by the rulers of the Fifth Republic, a nation which has still not quite forgiven us for getting their soil all bloody in the summer of 1944.
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Oh well, the Limeys and the Frogs may not do much worse with their new spy toys and telescreens than we did.
It was a complicated deal for L1 Identity Solutions. CEO Robert LaPenta proved talented over the years at farting away shareholder money, but not making any. He ran the company into the ground and had to auction it off. To generate any bids at all he found he had to split it up, despite promises to the contrary.
Part of L1 is a spook shop, a set of mercenaries under hire by American "intelligence" agencies. That sale became final yesterday, to BAE, which answers to London, the professional home of Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five.
That clears the way for peddling the rest of L1, basically the biometrics-related chunk, to Safron which is not only French but partially owned by the rulers of the Fifth Republic, a nation which has still not quite forgiven us for getting their soil all bloody in the summer of 1944.
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Oh well, the Limeys and the Frogs may not do much worse with their new spy toys and telescreens than we did.
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