The first domino is down: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wins the first stage of the vote to strip public-sector unions of the ability to negotiate benefits. I think it should have covered everything. Public-sector employees should not be allowed to unionize. When they strike, they strike against us—the people who pay them are taxpayers, not big corporate honchos. Nope. Who are the real corporate honchos? Those would be the union bosses, every last one of them pulling six-figure salaries. You know how much every single one of my jobs has paid into a pension fund for me? Zero. I’ve never had a pension offered. Oh, wait. If I had made it past part-time flexi at the Post Office, I’d have had a pension. Are we seeing a pattern here? Of course we are, but that’s because the readers of this blog probably aren’t too keen on public-sector unions, either.
By the way, the headline to the AP story is priceless: “Wis. Assembly passes bill taking away union rights.” ZOMG! They’re taking away our rights!!1
Hey, look! Hamas’ rulers never moderated: The news media is now perfectly comfortable in noticing that Hamas is an Islamist group that is crushing the secular life out of Gaza. Funny, that’s not what it was like when they first took over. All that talk about how they’d be forced to moderate once they had to deal with the day-to-day issues of trash pickup and the like… who’da thunk it? Why, who could have foreseen that this would happen? Gee, another dictatorship in the making. Why, if only someone had said something years ago. Oh. Wait. I did.
Seriously? Who the hell cares? Please note that I will not link to, discuss, nor read about the upcoming nuptials across the pond. I think the entire concept of monarchy, no matter how limited, is pathetic and about as anti-American as you can get. Why is that family rich? Because they used their armies to take money from other people over the centuries, and then forced them to pay taxes to support their heirs in perpetuity. I don’t believe any royal family is much better than modern dictators when you get down to the core of their fortunes. The difference is their victims died centuries ago, and Ghaddafy’s are dying today. So yeah, celebrate another wedding of wealthy inbred thieves? Pass.
I never understood that optimistic “once they have to collect the garbage they’ll moderate” line. It seems counter-inutitive. In fact, stirring up hatred and rejectionism is a good way of deflecting attention from such things as too casual garbage collection and so forth. It’s not as if the idea of using Israel to draw attention away from a regime’s shortcomings is a novel idea in the Arab world.