Amazing video from last night at that Wisconsin State House. When liberals get upset at majority rule, they do what they do best...respond with riots.

To paraphrase Dennis the peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail...Come see the violence inherent in the Democratic Party!

So if you lose a vote you get to riot and take over the capitol building? Remember when the tea partiers took over the US Capitol building after the Democrats rammed ObamaCare through using the reconciliation sidestep of normal procedure? Good times, good times.

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.

One last note...something I'm seeing a lot of is the notion that Gov. Walker didn't run on the precise language in this bill so what he is doing is some how illegitimate. Rachel Maddow harped on this last night and Greg Sargent likes to play that card as well. Aside from the debatable accuracy of the statement, when did it become the rule that unless something is expressly mentioned in a campaign it's off limits when you govern? I must have missed that part in school.

Still, if that's the rule Maddow, et al want to live by, I welcome them to the fight to repeal the individual mandate in ObamaCare. See, not only did Obama not run on the idea of such a mandate he expressly ran against it.

Even the Democratic apologists at PolitiFact admit that Obama flipped on the mandate.

It's almost like liberals don't live by the standards they insist on holding others to.

Added thought: Where's the in depth coverage of how um, monochromatic, these rioters are. Again, another double standard.

Tea party rallies are far more diverse (and peaceful) than these Democratic thugs and when you think about it...MSNBC's line up.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:49 AM | Comments (313)
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The police never think it's as funny as you do.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:24 AM | Comments (171)
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You know, when the Senate passed this tonight, I did wonder: Why wait until tomorrow for the Assembly vote? Maybe there's some rule about this but I kind of doubt it.

So, via Instapundit, the unions have taken the building and apparently intend to hold it hostage.

At Hot Air, video of the chaos.

Ominous warning from Ann Althouse's husband, who's at the building, and telling people to stay away:

“ANYBODY CAN GET IN AND ANYBODY CAN BRING ANYTHING IN. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO SECURITY WHATEVER.”

They've already broken doors and windows. Next up will be the actual deaths, or burning the building down.

Michael Moore has declared "war" so, as Instapundit says, the era of "civility" is officially over, in case you were unsure.

Our peaceful protests -- consisting of, at worse, jeering and hooting officials -- were deemed terroristic threats and their actual violent hijackings of public buildings and calls for "war" are, what?

One more point borrowed from Mr. Althouse:

“Barack Obama paid for, organized, and is putting on this riot.”

Community organizer in chief.

Update: A commenter posing under a sock keeps repeating that it is not necessary that the Assembly meet and vote at the capitol, but can do so anywhere, with notice given to the others members.

I'm not sure he's right. I'm hoping to know soon.

Posted by: Ace at 06:17 PM | Comments (903)
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I'm back! Evenin' Moron Nation! How are we doing on this hump day? In all of the doom and gloom out there (thanks Monty), you might've missed this little bit.

The Sun has entered a bit of an active phase. We had a couple of big time flares the last few days and a few Coronal Mass Ejections. One of the CME's hit us today around noontime with a speed around 2000 km/s. You can track all of the fun here.

This is a particularly impressive video of a CME that thankfully was aimed away from us. Now to cheer you up, here's an article on What If The Biggest Solar Storm On Record Happened Today? It would be interesting to see what would happen if a Carrington Storm type of event happened today. Probably chaos right Kratos?

Hmmm. Speaking of things a CME can do, how about what an EMP can do? North Korea Nears Completion Of Electromagnetic Pulse Bomb. Hopefully Mr. Peace Prize is paying attention.
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Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:00 PM | Comments (393)
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This is the "more later" post that Ace was talking about, a bookend post by the same Veronique de Rugy linked in the first piece.

Read this link and weep. We are in a classic debt spiral from which there is probably no escape. The mandatory spending numbers will never go down, and debt-service will eat ruthlessly away at the remaining portion of the federal budget. (Most of the states are in the same fiscal boat.) Pretty soon, our government will exist to do two things only: send out welfare checks, and pay the vig on our mind-boggling debt.

And even our debt, formerly considered a safe haven by nearly everyone in the world, ain't what it used to be. This is why our borrowing costs are going up...way up. Pull quote:

The major entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — other “mandatory” spending, national defense, and interest on the debt make up more than 80 percent of federal spending.

If you prefer your DOOM video-style: I've got you covered.

We cannot tax our way out of this hole. We cannot grow our way out economically. We cannot use demographics to work our way out over time (in fact, we're barely maintaining a replacement rate of reproduction as it is, and most of that reproducing is among the least productive of our citizenry).

We cannot vote the problem away. The only solution that would really work -- draconian cuts to entitlement programs and a serious effort to pay down the national debt -- would require a level of austerity that few Americans have the stomach for. This means that a political solution to this problem is also pretty much impossible. There is no political solution to this dilemma because neither the citizens nor the politicians are willing to do what is necessary. (Nor is it simply a Democrat/GOP divide. As we have all seen in the Social Security threads I and others have posted, even many conservatives bristle when faced with cuts to their own programs.)

Example: all liberals, and even many conservatives, quail at the harshness of the so-called "Ryan Roadmap", and insist that it's not "politically doable". Well, guess what? The Ryan roadmap is the best attempt by a politician I've seen so far at solving this problem -- and it barely scratches the surface. Even if every single one of its reforms were adopted right now, it probably would take decades for us to get back on an even fiscal keel. And I don't think we have that kind of time.

We lost this battle when the debate stopped being about whether the government should provide a gigantic welfare state, and began to be about how we would fund it.

Remember this, if you remember nothing else: it will never be any easier or cheaper to fix this problem than it is right now. The longer we wait, the more catastrophic the outcome will be. If we will not impose discipline on ourselves, the market will do it for us.
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Posted by: Monty at 05:02 PM | Comments (232)
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Update: The modified bill, with collective bargaining privileges rescinded for government workers, passed 18-1.

Protesters are now surrounding the capitol building again, honking horns and yelling, and, ominously, "pushing back against police."

...

So Much For The New Civil Tone: Readers tell me Chris Matthews just called this a "Cambodian style invasion."

Since we're not pretending to be mindful of tone anymore, maybe someone should pull Chris Matthews into a van and beat the shit out of him for an hour.

With truth, I mean.

I am sick of this bullshit where we have to walk on eggshells while they incite union thugs -- not known historically for an inviolable ethic against violence -- to hurt people.

General Strike? Unions talking about a general strike in Wisconsin, that is, every union worker strikes.

...

Is this just a threat or are they serious? I hope they're serious, and not just for reasons of policy: When an issue is hurting you, take it off the table as expeditiously as possible. And often the best way to do that is just pass the bill and assume people will forgive you -- it is easier to beg forgiveness than to secure permission.

Once in a great while, that backfires, as is the case with ObamaCare. But ObamaCare hurts voters individually. Taking away union privileges from some government workers hurts those workers themselves (maybe), but for everyone else it's an abstract issue about a third party. Most people don't give a shit about such things. They may have an opinion on it, but then, I have an opinion on a lot of things I don't give a shit about.

I have an opinion on who the cutest actress on Sex and the City is. But I am not very invested in this opinion.

The easiest way over this hurdle is through it.

In a surprise move late Wednesday, Senate Republicans voted to move forward with the governor's controversial budget repair bill, sending the measure into a conference committee scheduled for later in the day.

Republican leaders would only say the Senate bill differed from the Assembly bill and indicated it was possible lawmakers could strip fiscal elements from the proposal and pass only the measures dealing with collective bargaining.

Such a move would allow Republicans to pass the governor's bill without the 20 Senate members needed to vote on fiscal matters. Currently 14 Democratic senators remain in Illinois, hiding out in an effort to deny the quorum and stall the vote.

The article notes this would be a "major reversal" on Walker's part, as he previously, stupidly maintained that both parts of the bill were "fiscal" in nature and hence required the 3/5ths quorum.

Oh well. He was wrong. Whoops.

Democrats are trying to say that this proves the bill has nothing to do with the budget. That's asinine. A lot of bills do in fact indirectly effect revenues and spending but unless they do so directly they're not "fiscal" in nature.

For example: Forbidding drilling in the Gulf will reduce government revenue (less in taxes) and will increase government spending (more unemployed in Gulf area needing unemployment insurance). But that doesn't make an oil moratorium bill "fiscal" in nature.

Fiscal bills are about revenues and spending, directly, changing tax rates and spending levels. A bill does not become a "fiscal" one simply because some changes it makes will have some macroeconomic effects.

Update: It's A Fluid Situation. Via NRO, thanks to Miss 80sBaby:

UPDATE: Here is what weÂ’re hearing. ItÂ’s a fluid situation, but the conference committee will now meet at 7pm EST and we think they are going to pull the collective bargaining stuff from the budget-repair bill and pass it in both houses, which they can do without the Democrats. If the Democrats do yield and turn up, theyÂ’ll pass the full budget-repair bill in the senate, and it would go to the governorÂ’s desk.

You know what else is fluid?

Pudding.

Update: All this talk of 7pm -- I thought they meant tomorrow.

In fact, this move could come tonight at 7pm. In one hour. (It's 6pm in Wisconsin.)

Update: Out of Committee?

The Conference committee has been passed in the committee and it goes to the Senate floor for passing. Tomorrow the Assembly will convene to pass the new bill.

Per live radio of WISN Mark Belling radio show.

Assuming the changes made are the ones we've been expecting, a Senate vote can be had shortly.

Thanks to Janir.

Update: "Fish the Impaler" tells me Fox radio reports the fleebaggers are coming back to Madison. Update: FoxNews (TV) now reporting that as well.

Update: A reader says it's been voted out of conference 18-1 and is now going to the Assembly.

Above, I erred, in saying they were in committee, a sub-unit of the full senate. In fact they're in conference, banging out changes to make it ready for passage in the Assembly.

If this is true, the deal is already done.

Threat? Janir writes that a local radio guy speculates --

Belling opines that this may not be signed by Gov. Walker and this is a way threaten the 14 missing senators to get back to work or he will sign it. I hope he does sign it, get the collective bargaining restrictions and other union excesses reigned in.

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Posted by: Ace at 02:16 PM | Comments (970)
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Thanks to rdbrewer in the sidebar (funny "You've totally redeemed yourself" video, too). O'Keefe says he has more video, and he's pulling the old ACORN rope-a-dope where he induces them to make certain claims in their defense, which he will then disprove with more damning evidence.

"We’re not done releasing footage,” O’Keefe told Newsmax in an exclusive interview Tuesday. “We have more investigative material that we’re going to release.

“I’m not really going to comment on it yet, but I think it will be very interesting to see what happens with this story as it develops,” he promised.

Also from rd: Obama thinks NPR needs more federal funding. Even though Schiller said they barely got anything from the government and would do better without it.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports NPR, was appropriated $420 million for fiscal year 2010. Obama wants to increase CPB's funding to $451 million in his latest budget.

That's about an 8% hike in funding. Gee, it must be wonderful to literally have all of the money you could wish for. Shit, we've got so much extra money we're spending it on silly shit, like cowboy poets and, who knows, a new Museum of Rodeo Clowning.

Oh, and here's a shock: NPR decided to right its ship by appointing a liberal Democrat fund-raiser as interim CEO.

It's awfully strange that a fair-and-balanced strictly-objective "news" organization cannot even imagine hiring executives that aren't themselves liberal Democrats.

Two words: Brit Hume. Are they claiming Brit Hume isn't professional enough for a six month caretaker stint?

But they will insist that there are no conservatives (or even independents) who are smart enough and educated enough to run NPR.

More: Vivian Schiller was forced out. It wasn't a voluntary resignation.

On the other hand, NPR pays -- by which I mean you pay -- its executives just-shy-of-a-million-dollars severances bonuses on the way out, so don't worry, failure is always rewarded in liberal-land.

Update: At Hot Air -- PBS admits they got stung too, and declined comment about whether they're worried about the tapes coming out.

Their spin is that they broke off communications when they decided they couldn't verify the would-be Islamist donors were who they said they were. But we'll see how much pandering they were willing to do -- like agreeing that the Jews control the newspapers -- in trying to grab up on some Mohammadan Coin.

Posted by: Ace at 02:05 PM | Comments (64)
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Earlier it seemed as if Qadaffy was on his way out -- circumstances had unfolded so quickly the regime was being panicked out of power. It would have taken just a little bit more to push the situation towards a speedy resolution -- which is in virtually everyone's interests, minus Qadaffy and his sons and his various mercenaries.

But the regime has now regrouped, and is fighting back, possibly effectively. What could have been a Bum's Rush out of power may now settle into a long civil war and/or two two different states at war.

This has direct impact on America, because as long as this goes on, oil supply is threatened, and we all pay an Instability Tax at the pump. A big one.

And now he's going directly after the pipes.

If he can't have it, no one will. I have to ask: Would he try this shit with Bush? Or Hillary, for that matter?

Weakness breeds contempt. Obama is the weakest president in memory -- even Jimmy Carter was willing to approve a dangerous-as-hell helicopter commando raid to get our hostages out of Iran.

Obama, meanwhile, golfs.

Colonel Gaddafi's forces today blasted an oil terminal to smithereens as Libya's bloody civil war entered its blackest day.

Rebels retaliated by firing back with rockets as a fireball exploded from one of the oil tanks and the sky above the Es Sider terminal, in the east of the country, filled with hideous smoke.

A witness said one of the smoke plumes was the biggest he had seen in the conflict so far.

The fresh onslaught came as Gaddafi deployed tanks and snipers to 'shoot anything that moves'.

Forces loyal to the Libyan dictator poured into the city of Zawiyah in a desperate bid to oust the hardcore band of protesters and army defectors who have taken control.

Witnesses said dead bodies were lying in the ruins of many buildings destroyed in air raids earlier in the week and there was no one in the streets of the centre of the city of 290,000.

'We can see the tanks. The tanks are everywhere,' one rebel fighter said by telephone.

Eye witnesses said that the city had been almost flattened after a 13-and-a-half hour barrage from rockets, tanks and war planes

The hellish scenes unfolded as senior officials in the U.S. spoke of their fears that the country had reached a painful stalemate.

Click on the link to see daylight skies blackened with oil smoke.

Gadaffy's strategy seems to be an economic siege -- take away the rebels' money (in the form of oil), and in a half year or year they'll be starved out of the fight.

I can't help but think there is a fairly low-cost, high-impact option available -- one even the Arab League is calling for.

Gadaffy's advantage is that he has the typical equipment a tyrant has -- tanks, big artillery guns, jets. Without these -- which are frankly the softest targets in the world for airpower to take out -- he has what the rebels have, which is a bunch of guys with guns.

It seems to me the battle is turning in his favor. I sure wish we had a president intellectually curious enough to ask if that is in America's best interests.

No Fly Zone or No Jet Zone? We don't need a no-fly zone, by the way. A no-fly zone is difficult to enforce. You have to have planes up all the time (which could in fact be shot down).

There is a much easier method of denying an enemy use of the skies. And that's not enforcing a no fly zone, but enforcing a no jets, period, zone.

We have ordnance specifically designed to take out airports and all aircraft parked within them. And if we're all out of those, we can ask the French if they'll sell us some of theirs.

It's a bomb with thousands of small sub-munitions which scatter and bounce about upon impact, spreading out over a large area, and then blowing up in small explosions.

These explosions are not huge but aircraft are the flimsiest, softest weapons platforms in war. You don't need to score a direct hit on them with a large, penetrating munition to take them out of the fight.

Aircraft are on the ground 90% of the time. The easiest way to create a no-fly zone is to blow planes up where the sit, helplessly, on the tarmac.

And they need strips to land on. And the bombs I'm talking about blow lots of pockmarks in landing strips making them hazardous to land upon (if usable at all).

This idea that we need to enforce a no-fly zone -- it's crazy. It's another example of taking the best, most logical option off the table in the interest of some gauzy sentimentalist idea of "peace" and only discussing far more difficult and ineffectual options.

No planes = no flying. We could do this within the hour.

I keep thinking about this bizarre incentive system Obama's created: conduct terrorist campaigns against US citizens and you shall have protection and license from the US. But if you're a US ally, we'll work to put you out of office.

Posted by: Ace at 12:36 PM | Comments (258)
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Veronique De Rugy explains why this is bunk. Here's just one of her reasons:

the fact that states’ pension obligations are a small share of their budgets today is a relatively meaningless point, given the explosion in spending that’s coming now that bureaucratic baby boomers are starting to retire. As I note in my recent Reason column “The State Pension Time Bomb,” according to Joshua Rauh, professor of finance at Northwestern University, some states’ pension funds are scheduled to run out as soon as 2017. The below chart shows the ten states scheduled to run out of cash first:

[chart omitted; but Oklahoma runs out in 2017, and Indiana runs out in 2020 -- we are not talking about a distant cyberpunk future here]

Once the pension plans run out of money, the payments will have to come out of general funds, meaning taxpayersÂ’ pockets. What does that mean concretely? In her testimony before Congress last month, Norcross explained:

By 2018 Illinois will run out of plan assets which will require that the state begin contributing $11 billion annually from revenues between 2019 and 2023. Currently, the state contributes $3.5 billion annually, and has often bonded its contributions. Using less generous assumptions, this scenario is much worse. Indeed, as Dr. Rauh notes this will present a “catastrophic shock” to Illinois’ current revenue needs.

The situation is not much better in New Jersey. Dr. Rauh estimates New Jersey will require $10 billion annually out of its revenues to pay for pension benefits it has already made beginning in 2020, which represents one-third of the stateÂ’s current budget. Other plans have a longer time horizon but face even more difficult scenarios. In 2031, Ohio will require 55 percent of its projected revenues, or roughly $13.8 billion annually to pay for existing liabilities.

Fifty-five percent? ThatÂ’s quite different from the rosy 3.8 percent the McClatchy story is talking about.

I've heard similar spin from the left on Social Security -- there's no problem with Social Security, lefties say, because it's "only" going to be underfunded over the next fifteen years by (say) $2 trillion dollars. No problem, they conclude -- that just means we'll raise taxes $2 trillion dollars. What's the big fuss?

This is how they always treat these problems -- there is no crisis with the amount of money flowing out because, hey, no big deal to increase the amount of money flowing in.

Therefore, no crisis. Just expect to see taxes climb $2 trillion for this and $3 trillion for that and $10 trillion in state taxes and federal taxes used to fund states and etc.

What if we'd like to keep government spending, as a share of the economy, at the 20% rate which has proven to be effective in generating growth and innovation?

Well, no, sorry, that's not on the table. There is no crisis in any of this, but oh, by the way, middle-class Americans should be ready to start forking over 60% of their wages to pay for hyperbolically-accelerating government payouts.

Monty sent this to me, and has more thoughts on the specific claim that there is "no crisis" in state pension plans:

The meme has been running around that the pension mess in the states is really just a wingnut fiction cooked up by Jesusland agitators. In the linked piece, Veronique de Rugy skewers that fallacy by pointing out the obvious problem -- they're using aggregate, not specific numbers [that is, they are taking all states and lumping them together instead of looking at the states specifically in crisis -- ace]. It's like saying that I have five dollars but my neighbor has two million dollars, so on average, we're both millionaires.

This problem predates the 2008 crash by decades. That's why New York
now has a Pension Tier V instead of a Pension Tier I.

That while "discount rate/expected rate of return on investment" is another load of bullshit the state actuaries keep shoveling. They're expecting returns in the 7.5-8% range, when the "risk free" rate is really more around 4% (and even a higher-risk porfolio would be lucky to get 6% in the environment we're looking at for the next decade or so). [He means here that the actual situation is far worse even than states project, and what they project is horrifying enough, because their pension funding is invested and projected to be earning unlikely-to-ridiculous rates of return. Even assuming these low-risk investments start bringing in absurd 8% rates of return, we're still in trouble; but take the more likely situation where they bring in only 3.5%, and that means we're on the hook for all those additional trillions that investment has failed to bring to the table. -- ace.]

And griping that pension debt is only 3% of total state spending misstates the case, because it doesn't take into account that these pension funds are almost broke. (In many states, like Illinois, this is functionally already true). So any shortfall has to either be made up out of general funds, new taxation, or borrowing. In any of those scenarios, the percentage of money diverted to pension funds is money that cannot be used for anything else -- even if spending doesn't increase (ha!), the *proportion* of existing funds going to cover pensions rises. This means cuts in other services.

I would just add that if we only had the Social Security problem, or the Medicare problem, or the Medicaid problem, or the pension problem, we could probably just borrow the money and put our problem on future generations. I mean, that wouldn't be responsible, but it could be done.

But since we have all of these problems coming simultaneously, even that is out the window. Sure, I can lock up $2 trillion in new government debt to take care of Social Security, but I can't lock up another $10 trillion for Medicare -- there is a limit as to how much someone will lend you, after all. If it appears that you have no way to pay this money back (and it does appear that way), your credit limit gets cut, doesn't it?

Sure, if we had one multi-trillion dollar problem we could just borrow and put it off on the next generation. But no one's going to extend to us tens upon tens of trillions in credit when our only method of paying debt seems to be taking out new loans to pay the old debt.

And this way of looking at it -- piece by piece instead of at the whole picture -- also allows people to say stupid things like "No big whoop, we'll just increase taxes by 2 trillion for Social Security." Okay, 2 trillion dollars in raised taxes, and now, yes, with so much more of our money being taken by the government, Social Security is fixed.

Okay-- and now what do you do about Medicaid, Medicare, and pensions? Are we to just rack up a another dozen or so trillion in new taxes to handle those problems?

Of course that is the liberals' plan -- that has always been their plan.

It's about time we begin forcing them to say so, and confess that the future they wish to win consists of the middle-class paying 60% of their hard-won wages to pay for further growth of the behemoth super-state.

That's what Obama's doing -- he is doing Reagan in reverse. Whereas Reagan "starved the beast" of income to force it to slim down, Obama is force-feeding and fattening his pet the government in order to make it not merely politically acceptable to jack up tax rates to Italy-in-the-1970s levels, but absolutely required if we are to avoid default and bankruptcy and depression.

It's high time the American people were presented this plan forthrightly and had their say on it.

By the way, Monty will have more on this later, he says.

Posted by: Ace at 11:50 AM | Comments (163)
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Winning, duh!

Ogre Gunner sent this, and notes they, for once, identify the misbehaving congressman as a Democrat. Yes, but pay attention to why they're noting political affiliation in this one case:

A former aide has sued a Florida congressman -- claiming he touched her, made unwelcome sexual advances and asked her about her underwear.

The lawsuit against Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) was announced Monday by the conservative legal group, Judicial Watch, on behalf of former aide Winsome Packer. Hastings, a 74-year-old divorced father of three, vehemently denied the allegations, calling the lawsuit a political attack.

Packer, a Republican, was a staff member of the Democrat-controlled U.S. Comssission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Hastings was the chairman at the time.

They are taking special notice of the accuser's affiliation -- Republican -- in order to suggest a political interest in making a false accusation. They also note that the group filing on her behalf is conservative.

Is this relevant information? Yes it is. But it's also relevant when the parties are reversed (Democrat accuser, liberal group filing, Republican accused), but they never make a special note of the accuser's affiliation in that case.

Posted by: Ace at 10:49 AM | Comments (161)
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