Breaking the Law

So, the Republican governor of Wisconsin and his Republican cronies broke a law to ram through an unpopular bill last night. I just have to ask myself, what is gained by this? It will not be a victory for the Republican party because the bill will be overturned in court, the governor will be recalled as soon as possible, and a wave of outrage will pull Republicans from their seats in elections wherever they hold them in the state.

The whole point of ending collective bargaining for the unions who did not support the newly elected governor (police and firefighters are exempt) was supposedly to save money for the state. The teachers and other public employee unions agreed to cuts in pay and benefits, however, they did not want their right to collective bargain taken away.

The changes made last night cut the collective bargaining rights, they did not touch financial cuts at all. so much for the tenuous premise that the bill was illegally passed on the basis of cutting the state budget deficit.

Now, Republicans might have saved themselves by compromising on the collective bargaining rights, gotten the finance cuts they stated they desperately needed, (but we know that wasn't the point of this) but now they've engendered volatile hate against their party that is not going to go away for DECADES. Long-term planning not their strong suit.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/03/10/wisconsin.budget/index.html?hpt=T1
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/03/10/134415101/shock-vote-wisconsin-senate-approves-controversial-anti-union-bill

Stupid Hearings is Stupid

You might have heard of congressional hearings (in the US) on radicalisation of Isalm. As an American, I'm not afraid of Islamic radicals as much as much larger religious groups, who engage in terrorist acts on a daily basis, killing doctors, bombing clinics, etc. etc.

Hearings on radicalization of all kinds would have suited us, just pointing a finger at the Islamic minority smacks of the McCarthy Red-scare. Look over here, so you won't pay attention to what else is going on.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41958327/ns/us_news-security/

Spammity Spam Spam

And not the good kind in a can.


LJ's IP is listed in the Spamhaus Blocking List because LJ is allowing Russian pharma spammers to abuse their service. Spamhaus is one of the most respected anti spam organizations in the world, and being listed there means they've ignored spammers on their network for quite a while and virtually no large ISP/email host wants their mail until they start acting like responsible Internet citizens.

http://www.spamhaus.org/Sbl/listings.lasso?isp=livejournal.com is the listing.

thanks lavvyan for link.

Word and Image (Reprise)

 

Better to be a crystal
and be broken
Than to be a tile
on the rooftop
Japanese Proverb

What is your favorite saying?

One that has always been apt to me is 'that's the pot calling the kettle black.'