"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Mar 2, 2011

Blame

I feel like being earnest, tonight. Not in the angry, inchoate manner which characterizes my regular and ill-informed snark.

More passively.  Perhaps even quietly contemplative, following the admirable example of Mr. Boyd.

My barber (an ex-cop who hated being a cop, but didn't have enough cousins on the fire department) argued with me over Wisconsin. He thinks Wisconsin's Walker is doing the right thing over there because over here he knows cops in Londonderry, New Hampshire who retired at $125k pensions, because NH's relevant code tabulates the three highest years, not an average across a career.

He's got a point about small town patronage shenanigans in affluent bedroom communities, and we did manage to agree that the job itself attracts sadists, but that has nothing to do with busting unions, or Wisconsin.

So, passively, as a mute reply on my part -

On the turning away:

 

Us and Them:

4 comments:

Randal Graves said...

Sure, chicanery goes on, always has, always will, but hell, I'll live with a little chicanery if stuff like "losing" 8 billion in Iraq and paper money manipulator bailouts happen with a wee bit less frequency.

Us and Them, *almost* a staple of classic rock radio. Playing it only earns a sternly worded letter from Clear Channel overlords. Heh.

K. Ron Silkwood said...

How long will the disenfranchised and the dispossessed tolerate the death from a thousand cuts? Will they ever look up and down rather than right and left? Will a tire iron or a deer rifle ever replace a cardboard sign?

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Cheers.

MADISON—The head of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association slammed Senate Republicans today after they ordered the detention of 14
Democratic Senators staying in Illinois “with or without force.”

“Politics aside, encouraging the forcible detention of duly elected lawmakers because they won’t allow you to dictate with a free hand is an unreasonable abuse of police power,” said WPPA Executive Director Jim Palmer. “Due to the
fact that Wisconsin officers lack any jurisdiction across state lines, does Senator Fitzgerald intend to establish a ‘lawmaker border patrol?

The thought of using law enforcement officers to exercise force in order to achieve a political objective is insanely wrong and Wisconsin sorely needs reasonable solutions and not
potentially dangerous political theatrics.”


For more amusement, see the BigGoobermint post by "Publius" and read the comments.
~

Jack Crow said...

Randal,

It's hard for me to be comfortable with a 48 year old sergeant sucking down $125k in retirement, but I get your larger point. Hell, if it bankrupts a town...

K,

I don't know. People are generally more tolerant of their masters then the historic record ought to allow.