Today I went on a bit of a scavenger hunt in Bagram to turn in some paperwork at NAVCENT. This place is all dust and conex boxes, with a background hum of prop and jet engines, with bonus diesel generator noise at night.
Ran into a Navy Reserve Senior Chief after I’d done my business, out having a coke, a smoke, and a smile. He’d served in Iraq, too, but had just arrived in Afghanistan, and could not make comparisons. Lots of Navy Reserves here, like me. Talk turns to where you’re from and what you do. The guy is a high school principal somewhere in Arkansas. Has he been following the Formidable Ann Althouse on Wisconsin? No, but he feels Walker’s pain. It takes him three years of documentation to expunge a lousy teacher, and the bureaucratic costs are non-trivial, in addition to the time.
Here’s what these idiot Madison “protesters” — along with their intellectually bankrupt fellow travelers playing Solidarnosc on f***ing facebook as if this is just another cause celebre the world has ginned up to keep hipsters feeling “political” — are actively, vocally agitating FOR: no school choice for kids; no merit pay for teachers; seniority raises, and a first hired / last fired policy that promotes mediocrity, disinterest, and underperformance, while providing no incentive for effective teaching; forced union dues; forced political contributions to the Democrat party, made possible by a tawdry money laundering scheme that in many ways works to disenfranchise Republican voters in the union; the inability of taxpayers to have any say over local schools; and on and on and on. . . .
Go read the whole epic thing, unless you find f-bombs offensive, but the Left’s wacko reaction to the Wisconsin situation could probably make Billy Graham cuss a blue streak.
Somehow I’ve spent the past few days bogged down and sidetracked by stuff that’s kept me from staying on the Wisconsin story the way I should, and now I’ll play catch-up. Here’s video of the thug mob blitzing the Capitol after the Senate vote:
Did you notice what I noticed about that mob? Kinda young-ish, eh? Like maybe they’re not really the struggling proletariat, but actually a bunch of overprivileged University of Wisconsin students acting out their radical fantasies of what it must of been like back in The Sixties, man. As if repealing the protected status of government employees was the moral equivalent of napalming bamboo huts or something.
Whenever I see such puerile upper-middle-class punks doing their pseudo-radical protest thing, there’s this voice in my head saying, “Where’s the Ohio National Guard when we really need ’em?”
So if you lose a vote you get to riot and take over the capitol building? … It’s good that Democrats are showing themselves for what they are…thugs who resort to physical attacks when they don’t get their way.
What’s interesting is to watch lefties doing their Charlie Sheen imitation — “winning!” — in an effort to convice themselves that this crushing defeat they just suffered is actually bad for Republicans. They’ve got polls, you see, just like back in March 2010 they had polls telling them what a brilliant idea it was to shove ObamaCare through Congress, despite clear signals to the contrary like Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts. (See: “Democrats in the Deathmobile,” The American Spectator, March 19, 2010.)
Once again, we are confronted by the yawning gap between what Democrats say during election campaigns — trying to convince middle-class suburban voters how responsible and civil and moderate they are, unlike those dangerous Republican extremists — and what Democrats actually do when their special-interest agenda at stake. Please read Peter Ingemi’s Examiner column, “Two groups, two narratives.”
With Democrats still in Illinois, the state Senate abruptly voted Wednesday night to eliminate collective bargaining provisions for most public workers that have stood for decades, sending a flood of angry protesters into the Capitol.
The bill, which has drawn international attention, is to be taken up at 11 a.m. Thursday by the Assembly.
That house has already passed a nearly identical version of the wide-ranging bill, which Gov. Scott Walker introduced last month to address a budget shortfall. . . .
From Feb. 17 until Wednesday, the Senate Democrats were able to block a vote on the original version of the bill because the state constitution requires 20 senators to be present for bills that authorize spending money. Republicans control the house 19-14.
Republicans devised a plan to get around the impasse and hurriedly approved the bill late in the day after meeting for hours behind closed doors. . . .
“The Senate Democrats have had three weeks to debate this bill and were offered repeated opportunities to come home, which they refused,” Walker said in a statement. “In order to move the state forward, I applaud the Legislature’s action today to stand up to the status quo and take a step in the right direction to balance the budget and reform government.”
Some samples of the Left’s reaction, first Firedoglake:
Yeah: The bill is “anti-public employee,” rather than “anti-union shakedown” see? And the lefties — who just lost the fight — insist the fight is just beginning. And now MSNBC:
I remember when Tea Party people had peaceful, orderly rallies on the steps of state capitol buildings and liberals portrayed these events as frightening hatefests where angry mobs were incited to violence. Meanwhile, the Left runs amok inside the Wisconsin capitol, and we’re supposed to believe this is an admirable demonstration on behalf of “worker’s rights.”
The volatility surrounding the collective-bargaining debate spilled into the night Wednesday when police were called to a German Village restaurant after a group verbally accosted a gathering of Senate Republicans.
After the vote on Senate Bill 5, seven Republican senators, including President Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond, grabbed dinner at the Easy Street Cafe. As the lawmakers neared the end of their meal, a group of five to 10 union supporters angry about the passage of the bill hours before burst into the restaurant and began shouting. . . .
“It was planned,” LaRose said. “They gathered as a group and waited until they had about 10 people before they caused a disturbance.”
When the group burst into the restaurant, the woman, Monica Moran, deputy director of public affairs for SEIU District 1199, raised her hands in the air, yelled “Can I have your attention?” and then shouted “something nasty,” LaRose said. Soon after, the rest of the group of men and women joined in with a chant.
“They stormed through my dining room,” said George Stefanidis, owner of the Easy Street Cafe. “I told them they had to leave, and they wouldn’t.”
Stefanidis said he called 911 when the protesters refused to leave. LaRose said there was pushing and shoving with the restaurant staff. . . .
When Ohio’s state Senate voted 17-16 Wednesday to approve S.B. 5, Frank LaRose became a target in the latest battle over government-employee unions. Not that LaRose is a stranger to battles — the 31-year-old is a former Army sergeant and decorated Iraq War veteran. But the fight over S.B. 5, which would limit the power of public-sector unions in Ohio, gave the freshman Republican state senator a baptism by fire into the world of political combat. After he voted in favor of the bill, once of the fiercest salvos was fired in a message posted Wednesday on LaRose’s Facebook page.
“Funny thing about cops, they hold a grudge,” said the message from Mike Piotrowski. That caught the eye of a group of College Republicans from the University of Akron who had supported LaRose in last year’s election, which the GOP candidate won by a decisive 57%-43% margin. The students quickly discovered that Piotrowski is a lawyer for the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police, and complained that his message could be seen as a threat toward LaRose. Piotrowski denied intending to threaten the senator, but in a reply to one of the students, the lawyer snarled: “You don’t know what you are talking about. When Republicans talk about ‘Union Thugs’ they may as well be calling people the n-word.”
This was the latest provocation in the increasingly bitter confrontation between public-sector unions and Republican state officials. . . .
“Acknowledging that our state faces an unprecedented fiscal crisis, I stood on principal yesterday and voted for Senate Bill 5. This bill helps restore balance to the public employee collective bargaining process, while also protecting the rights of our state’s hardworking public service employees.
I opposed the initial version of the bill based on fundamental objections I had with a few of its provisions. By standing steadfast on what I believed to be fair, I was able to work with my colleagues to protect the essential right of employees to collectively bargain. I also successfully led the effort to remove language that could subject strikers to imprisonment. With these important changes to the bill, I was able to reach a middle ground and address what I saw as flaws in the initial legislation.
A robust debate is crucial to the process of crafting public policy. I sincerely value and respect the position of those who oppose my vote. It is however intolerable and unproductive to resort to mean-spirited personal attacks and senseless threats. Those who engage in such behavior degrade the necessary public discourse and demean their own cause as well. The citizens of our state deserve better. Let’s work through these tough issues together and maintain civility in the process.
The people of our community sent me to Columbus to stand up for them and make tough decisions based on what’s in the best interest of all Ohioans. I agonized over this decision and ultimately cast my vote based solely on what I believe is right. My vote was not, and never will be, motivated by political considerations or outside pressure. Anyone who says otherwise does not know me or understand my unwavering commitment to serving the citizens of our community. I am duty bound to do what’s best for Ohio, even when it may be unpopular. We must work together to bring prosperity back to the Buckeye State.”
“Funny thing about cops, they hold grudges,” Piotroski wrote on LaRose’s page.
After being criticized by LaRose’s supporters — including College Republican activists Joe Manno, Nick Willcox and John Eakin — Piotrowski tried to walk back his comment, while simultaneously lashing out at Republicans.
“You don’t know what you are talking about,” Piotrowski wrote in a reply to Willcox. “When Republicans talk about ‘Union Thugs’ they may as well be calling people the n-word.”
Sources in Ohio say they expect LaRose to make a statement about the incident later today.
UPDATE: Linked by Dan Collins at Piece of Work in Progress. Some background from my Ohio sources: LaRose is a former sergeant in the Army Green Berets, an Iraq War veteran and “just the nicest guy in the world.” He worked closely with College Republicans at Akron University during his 2010 campaign against Democrat Frank Comunale for an open seat in District 27. LaRose won in a 57-43% landslide and perhaps this campaign ad will give you a hint why:
LaRose is obviously a very appealing young face, perhaps a rising star in the Ohio GOP, which came back strongly in last year’s midterm elections after back-to-back drubbings in the 2006 and 2008 cycles.
UPDATE III: “Why I Left Ohio.” I’m still waiting on a statement from Sen. LaRose, and have requested a statement from the Ohio FOP.
UPDATE IV: Linked by The Lonely Conservative — thanks! — and by American Power, which provides this video of angry union activists creating a disturbance in the Ohio state capitol building after the Senate voted Wednesday:
You may recall that, when the Egyptian revolution first popped into the news, Glenn Beck caught a lot of grief for saying that the American Left was in league with Islamists to destabilize the Middle East. What Beck said — or perhaps the way he said it — seemed a bit kookier than that, but the essence of his accusation is not really new: David Horowitz’s 2006 book, Unholy Alliance, makes basically the same argument.
Well, guess what? Glenn Beck isn’t the only one worried about the American Left supporting terrorists. There’s also the U.S. Justice Department:
It’s not every day that an American labor union gets investigated for possible ties to two of the world’s most lethal terrorist organizations. But Chicago’s Service Employees International Union Local 73 isn’t an everyday union. Last September 24, FBI agents raided residences in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan of more than a dozen radical activists in an effort to connect them to the Hamas (Gaza and the West Bank) and FARC (Colombia) guerrilla movements. Two of the occupants were SEIU Local 73 chief steward and executive board member Joe Iosbaker and former local board member-steward Tom Burke. . . .
Federal officials are trying to determine whether they and a dozen other subpoenaed activists, mainly in Chicago and Minneapolis, have provided financial or other material support for armed revolutionary movements. “The warrants are seeking evidence in support of an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism,” remarked Steve Warfield, spokesman for the FBI’s Minneapolis field office.
Read the rest of that. And here’s video from those crazy kooky conspiracy theorists at Fox NewsDemocracy Now:
