I'm on the fence with the Wisconsin thing. You know, I don't lump all progressives into one big 'evil people' category. To me, they are like any other political or social group: the most extreme of them seem to be the loudest (or get the most attention), but they don't necessarily represent the larger consensus. And it's possible to support some 'progressive' ideas (even you admit to having a few ), but not necessarily an extreme agenda.

What I see is that Walker is stating he needs changes in one law in order to accomplish a certain task. A group of people is showing him an alternate way to achieve the same goal, and he's refusing it. He wants to strip rights from a group of individuals, in order to balance his budget. The same group says, hey, we'll give you the $ you need to balance your budget AND it doesn't need to strip our rights away. To which he responds, nah I really don't want you to have those rights, I was just using the $ as an excuse.

I'm not necessarily on of those "all power to unions" folks either. I want to see a fair and equitable balance. There are folks with power and there folks without, and until you get into the super-upper realm, folks with power seem to have the strong attitude that it's OK to shit on people beneath you. And I just don't hold to that. But I'm a hand-up kind of guy, not a hand-out kind. So, I see collective bargaining as a way for those without power to have a chance, to have at least something to stand on. Rules to govern how much abuse the powerful can heap on the powerless is the only thing in the way of slavery. As the economy turned down, I saw massive abuse of employees work its way into the system. I work in a giant multinational corporation, and in here as well as friends in smaller local firms, employees got stripped of more and more. And what happens is that becomes the new 'norm', so when things get better, don't think for a minute those employers are going to give back to the employees what they took away.

On the other extreme, some unions have gotten so large and powerful, they no longer function as their intent. They become companies in their own rights, treating their 'employees' with as much indifference and abuse as the companies they supposedly fight against.

Oh I had to send this your way. No insult intended, just for what it is, it's funny and I thought you'd appreciate it.

"A public union employee, a tea party activist and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, 'Watch out for that union guy he wants a piece of your cookie.'"

Correction:
Never trust your government. Period.


LOL

Cute puggies! How are you enjoying the snow? We are gonna get blasted tonight up here.

Red Eye rules. I think Gutfeld worked in the UK for a while, which might explain why he kind of came out of nowhere. They gave him a show (Red Eye) after he was editor of Stuff magazine, and other men's health related things.

i like your flag pic for your profile

funny its such a powerful immage, i was army for years active i lived at ft carson for about half of it

I think START is primarily for nuclear ICBMs, isn't it? And in all fairness, how many weapons have we sold to foreign nations that have been used against Russia at some point? I'm not trying to be contrary, just curious about the perspective.

I see stuff like this, and of course, the general public's first response is to say to the government, "What are you going to do about this? How are you going to protect us from this threat?" And I look at the news, and see all these various threats to public safety, whether it's drugs and drug cartels, violent criminals, scam artists, tainted food, you name it and it seems the reaction is always the same one: what is government going to do to protect/prevent/prosecute? Is it any wonder that we are seeing a greater intrusion into our lives, the government is taking control over more and more aspects, aren't we basically asking them to?

Sometimes I sit back and think, "well, so what?" Promoting public welfare is in the constitution as a expectation of the government, so how much liberty do we give away to ensure our our personal happiness and safety? There has to be some, otherwise we wouldn't have a unified country. My dad lives in Mexico now, working for a giant multinational, and folks with any kind of money have to organize into small groups and build these huge walls around their homes, like 12 feet high and pay a dude 24/7 to man the gate, because they cannot rely on local law enforcement. And yes, while we have some threats to our homes, it's nothing like there. We're sitting in Starbucks in a good area of Mexico City, 3 guys with shotguns held, pistols, vests, bandoleers, come in. One stands at the door, the other two go back to the safe to take the nights deposit to the bank. This isn't some 50 year old guy with a pot belly, this is 3 fricking commandos, for Starbucks. They've got all sorts of liberty there, probably more than we do, and it seems like the more liberty people have, the more of a threat they are to their neighbors.

I don't know what that balance is, honestly.

Happy Birthday!

Having a few family members who've done the 12 step program, I can say that having another shoulder to lean on helps immensely. You are very lucky to have one, and her in you.

Thought you might find this interesting:
Obama 2011 budget proposal (graphic)

They have been pulling that break in shit for a while ...... now they just hide it. I use security cameras with night vision and motion detectors that my security companies monitor 24 hours a day ..... any asshat who tries that shit is arrested within a few minutes.