At least I've gotten some yuks out of it. For example, check out this caption, from the linked CNN page:
Read that caption aloud. Roll it around on your tongue a bit. Savor the exotic bouquet of the complex layers of paradox and oxymoron... Mm-mmm!.
This post is an affront to the first amendment.
ReplyDeleteI just wish the unions would stop screwing up the traffic in downtown Madison...those of us that have jobs, that we actually have to go to, like to shop nearby...but I'm not going anywhere near the Square. You can smell that place all the way down University Ave!
ReplyDeletehttp://gunscoffee.blogspot.com/2011/03/peace.html
ReplyDeleteSeveral Republican Senators have received legitimate death threats. I only hope it serves to get CCW pushed through faster.
I don't know, I think there was plenty of speech allowed up in WI for the last three weeks or so.
ReplyDeleteToo bad so sad that the fine Senator did not have the "chance" to be involved in that display... Oh whoops, He did...
Savor indeed!
I think we've had a splendid demonstraion of "democracy" these past few weeks. Once again the Founders wisdom has been proven; the spectacle of "mob rule" has illustrated the efficacy of the Constitution once more. The Federal government is obligated to defend the rule of law; "...the Guarantee Clause, not only confers on the federal government the power to ensure republican government in the states, but imposes an affirmative obligation to do so." (excerpt courtesy of the WSJ's Best of the Web Today).
ReplyDeleteGetting pretty "interesting" out there; will we have a Constitutional Republic or descend into a "mobocracy" like so much of the world?
You know those kids who throw themselves on the floor in the cereal aisle, kicking and pounding the tiles and screaming "It's not fair! I hate you!"
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when those kids don't get a spanking.
Joanna with the win.
ReplyDeleteI never gave anyone at CNN the credit for having more than two functioning synapses that allowed them to do any more than steal oxygen.
ReplyDeleteThe morons in the WI capitol are even further proof of the saying: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."
Gmac
Participatory Democracy requires participating; i.e. showing up for the vote.
ReplyDeleteJoanna, you just made my Quote of the Day.
ReplyDeleteAw, thanks Jake! Verr kind, verr kind a you.
ReplyDeletePicture the mob chanting "This is what democracy looks like."
ReplyDeleteThe brutish, vulgar democracy of five street thugs and a little old lady in a dark alley voting on appropriations.
God defend the Republic.
gvi
I believe he mis-spoke. I'm reasonably certain he meant to say "this is an affront to social democracy".
ReplyDelete"Gentlemen! No voting in the democracy room!"
ReplyDelete"There are no paradoxes. Check your premises."
ReplyDeleteSo, where is Homeland Security in the midst of this terrorist assault on the Wisconsin legislature?
ReplyDeleteI mean, using terror and intimidation in the pursuit of political goals - that is terrorism, right?
At the least, it is proving to everyone's satisfaction that the Unions are in it for the money, not assuring the best qualified people actually go to work and do what an employee might be expected to do, sans collective bargaining representation.
I hope the state is videotaping every one of those bozos carrying the Union banner - and stacking up a big batch of 'sorry' letters the next time the union times file for unemployment. Like, next week, as their employers all fold for lack of ability to do business.
Joanna Verum narro est a valde rectum quod savior nostri populus
ReplyDelete"At the least, it is proving to everyone's satisfaction that the Unions are in it for the money"
ReplyDeletethe government may be a different case, at least in theory as opposed to practice, but private sector employers are assuredly also in it for the money as well.
given the numerous documented cases of private sector collaborative price fixing for employee salaries or "gentlemen's hiring agreements", I see no reason Joe Sixpack and his fellow workers should not have a similar capability, even if I question whether the government should be able to keep employers from simply firing them all.
I think the best practical situation for most workers is employment with a company inherently respectful enough of their workers and scared enough of potentially credible threats of unionization that things skim along smoothly without anyone having to introduce another layer of bureaucracy into working life.
but the level of paternalism and busybodyness that employers like Henry Ford practiced in his early years as Smog-King of Detroit should be enough for any wookie-suiter to remember that sometimes industry titans can degenerate into either feudal thugs or a privately operated, government-reinforced nanny state.
Unions may have undoubtedly gotten fat, lazy, stupid, and irrelevant as time went on, and they always had issues with being just as thuggish as the Pinkerton-hiring capital kings they opposed (usually substituting ties or subordination to whatever contemporary Mafia instead of hiring their own private leg-breaker army), but they didn't just appear for no reason at all.
maybe my pelt is fraying a bit here and losing it's luxurious sheen, but I'm glad that I only have to put up with working indignities like piss tests and not company pay for the company store or a pervasive system of local company snitches reporting on what I do in my private time that isn't a public embarrassment to the company or affecting my work output but does grind the gears of a busybody boss.
that said, for the folks employed by government unions, the math here is pretty simple. Government can only exist in the long run from a equivalent intake of taxes it gets from private workers and industry to it's expenditures, and private workers and industry aren't getting their salaries/profits raised or their benefits increased.
whether or not the government unions should continue to exist, you can't squeeze blood from a stone, and they need to face the reality of pay cuts/freezes and decreased benefits. Or they will undoubtedly need to go.