Police Support the Public Unions in Wisconsin

Wisconsin police raid are part of the government union intimidation tactics against supporters of a measure to reign in public-employee benefits.

This isn't from WND or the Enquirer.  The National Review is conservative but not exactly a bunch of screaming radicals with AR-15s.

Cindy Archer, one of the lead architects of Wisconsin’s Act 10 — also called the “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill,” it limited public-employee benefits and altered collective-bargaining rules for public-employee unions — was jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking. The entire house — the windows and walls — was shaking.

She looked outside to see up to a dozen police officers, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram.

There are several other anecdotes in the report.  None of the people treated this way were criminals.  This was part of the second "John Doe" investigation launched by Milwaukee Democrat District Attorney John Chisholm that targeted conservatives and conservative groups.  Chisholm was given carte blanche by rubber-stamp judge Barbara Kukla to conduct investigations while keeping the target's identity secret. 

Because of Wisconsin's "John Doe" law, the individuals so terrorized by Chisholm and his police state gang were not allowed to speak about their ordeal to anyone, including a lawyer.  Stalin would be proud. 

You need to go to the link and read the whole thing, while you wonder why this hasn't been extensively reported upon in the nightly news (/sarcasm). 

Why did Chisholm go after people for simply exercising their First Amendment rights to advocate for political reform?  Well, in addition to the fact that Chisholm is a lawyer and Democrat:

As a former prosecutor told journalist Stuart Taylor, Chisholm’s wife was a teachers’-union shop steward who was distraught over Act 10’s union reforms. He said Chisholm “felt it was his personal duty” to stop them.

Yep, nothing like using your official position to help further enrich your shop-steward wife.  I would like to know, too, how much these bogus, politically-motivated "investigations" cost Wisconsin tax-payers.  Chisholm should be on the hook for every dime. 

This makes me sick.

Like It's A Bad Thing

The NY Times goes on about Scott Walker having the backing of anti-union conservative groups. 

I'm not sure how the Slimes is about excerpting so I'll just offer the link.

Of course, what Walker as governor went after was not the UAW or United Mineworkers or the Teamsters -- private sector unions. 

Let me reveal my bias right up front.  I have no use for unions of any kind.  Maybe I would feel differently if I had ever worked in a coal mine, but my perspective is that unions collectivize productivity.  Instead of each person being recognized and compensated for his or her own work and accomplishments, the union, as a whole, benefits from the efforts of the hardest working, most diligent and productive members.  Slackers are protected, to a degree, from the consequences of laziness and incompetence.

That's one thing in the private sector where it is labor versus management.  Companies that operate for profit seek to maximize the difference between revenue and costs.  Sometimes they do this at the expense of the health and safety of workers.  I am personally acquainted with someone who is currently suffering because of an on-the-job injury.  He is a member of the union, but the union, which happily accepted his dues for twenty years, has done nothing to help support him.  You can make a case for unions in the private sector.  I don't necessarily buy it, but I understand it.

I do not see the case for public employees.  Police, firefighters, and teachers are usually the ones who get discussed.  What about all the lazy, incompetent slackers at the DMV or the gestapo-wannabes at Child Protective Services or the corrupt bozos that administer Medicaid or work at the lottery commission or the Highway Department?  They are the majority of government workers, and they can be unionized. 

These folks are not fighting Ford or GM.  They are not being oppressed by DuPont, U.S. Steel, Exxon, Walmart, or some other big, rich corporation.  To a public sector employee, "the man" is the taxpayer.  Their wages, pensions, and benefits come out of our pockets, and, unlike the case when we buy a new truck, what we usually get for our money is grief, aggravation, and the opportunity to give up more money. 

But the real problem is that public-sector unions can only grow if government grows. 

If you ever wonder why the unions and all the progressives went after Walker with pitchforks and torches, that is your answer.  Walker's approach, which is quite sane and reasonable, is the only way we are ever going to rein in the expansion of government at all levels.  Unions are the head of the snake.  If we could bust public-sector unions, we would have a much better chance of making government smaller and less of a drain on our resources, more streamlined and more effective and efficient.

Scott Walker is not my first choice for president in 2016, but he would not be a bad choice, and he is in my top three right now. 

De-bunking the Hiatus De-bunking

The best thing to do is just read what Motl at The Reference Frame has to say. 


Skeptics have been beating the alarmists over the head with the fact that there has been no warming on a global scale for almost twenty years.  Alarmist have fought back recently with a single study out from NOAA using a "revised" dataset. 

It can be a little hard to follow, but to summarize at the risk of over-simplification, NOAA research cherry-picked sources that showed higher trends in temperature change.  For example -- no, we're not making this up -- marine engine intakes:

You may talk about many trends – those in the ocean and above the land; and you may measure them in various ways, satellites, weather stations, weather balloons, buoys, or engine intake of marine vessels ;-).

No possibility of that data having any contamination, is there?  I'm surprised the weatherman doesn't report the temperature at his car's engine air intake.  That's the number we need to know for the day.

That might be legitimate if one compared it strictly to historic temperatures obtained from the same sources.  That's not exactly what was done.  Motl explains:

However, the shock is that the warming trend extracted from the marine vessels was copied to the buoys time series. It means that an increasing linear function was simply added to the buoys' time series for the temperature – to make them more "well-behaved". Surprisingly for them ;-), once they added an increasing function to the temperature as a function of time, the slope (warming trend) extracted via the linear regression has increased! This surprising mathematical result must be the holy 884th sign of global warming that everyone was looking for!

You see what's going on. The warming trend indicated by the buoys – a project that was specifically designed by scientists to measure the temperature of the ocean – was completely erased by Karl et al. The time series was detrended and the trend was replaced by another trend extracted from a different source, one that wasn't meant to measure temperatures scientifically. Great.

(Link in original)

TRF includes a link to Climate Etc. that we keep in the sidebar.  You can read Dr. Curry's analysis here. 

As one of the commenters says, NOAA is hardly an objective source since it is an agency funded by the government which desperately wants global warming to be taking place. 

This is not science.  This is propaganda on the order of the old Soviet Union's embrace of Lysenkoism:  On August 7, 1948, the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced that from that point on Lysenkoism would be taught as "the only correct theory". Soviet scientists were forced to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko's research.^[4] Criticism of Lysenko was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist".  

Some people are saying that climate change "deniers" -- such as myself -- should be imprisoned or otherwise punished.  Statists never change, and they never come up with anything new aside from their jargon, slogans, and catchphrases. 

Geller Targeted Again

Police have confirmed that Pam Geller was the initial target of a man who attacked Boston police with a knife.

A quote from the link:

Geller — a combative personality known for provoking Muslims by campaigning against a mosque near the World Trade Center site in New York, sponsoring inflammatory advertisements and organizing Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas — wasn't surprised that she may have been a target.

Provoking Muslims -- that's it.  The problem is not homicidal Islamic crazies, it's Geller's instigation and our antiquated free speech rights.  From John Nolte's piece:

Keep in mind that Geller is guilty of nothing more than engaging in the good, old-fashioned art of American satire — something the media does not even consider news when conservatives or Christians are viciously targeted. Geller and her group created political cartoons. That is all they did. They are guilty of nothing more than what we see on the editorial pages of every newspaper in America every day.

Also keep in mind, that Geller’s protests are no different than what Martin Luther King engaged in at Selma. At great risk to themselves, both used intentional provocation to fight for their (and our) God-given rights against savages.

Geller didn’t choose the form of protest against her oppressors any more than King did.

CNN would never ask a rape activist if she is provoking a rape and relishes the idea of being hunted by a rapist.

I'm not so sure about that last sentence.  I can easily imagine CNN doing that to a conservative Christian woman. 

The media has an agenda.  They will out-and-out lie if they think they can get away with it (Dan Rather's fake-but-accurate documents from 2004).  More often they will edit, twist, and distort to create the narrative they are pushing and to discredit and disqualify any critics. 

Free speech is a hill worth dying on.  If we do not start pushing back and asserting our rights to tell the truth, to satire and ridicule when appropriate, we will lose those rights.  I think it takes a lot of courage to do what Geller has done, and I believe it is the right thing to do.

The Reality Divide

The most disturbing division in this country is not black and white, blue and red, or even, as I often assert, urban and rural.  It is reality versus unreality.  Reality is not what I think or what I feel.

We all know about Bruce Jenner, the former Olympic Decathlon winner, who is part of a "reality" television show. His most recent picture on the cover of a magazine is both sad and revolting.  I feel sorry for a man whose view of reality has become so skewed and warped.  I am revolted by the demand that I "applaud his courage".  Are we also supposed to applaud the actions of another reality star, Josh Duggar, who molested his younger sisters when he was fourteen?  I'm not hearing many calls for that.  Given that Duggar himself could be considered a child at the time, one would normally not hold him to the same standards as an adult in terms of judgment.  Bruce Jenner is around 66 years old.  I think we have to question both his judgment and his sanity.

Of course, if I had been paying any attention, I would have already questioned his sanity for marrying into the Kardashian family.

Bruce Jenner is not "Caitlyn" -- I don't care that his Wikipedia has been changed.  He is not a woman, and he never will be.  This is what I mean by a reality divide.  Some people seem to think you can change something by calling it something different.  You can call your Rottweiler "Fluffy", but he can't climb trees.

Now we have the Trans-abled, which is to say that there are crazy people who want to mutilate and cripple themselves.  We can call them trans-abled, but crazy works just as well for me.  There is something wrong with people who cut their arms off because they "feel" as though the limb should not be there.  There is something wrong with a man who "feels" like he's a woman, or a woman who "feels" she is a man despite her genetic and physical endowment.

If I say I "feel" like I want to kill myself, most sane people will suggest that I seek counseling and perhaps medication.  People who "feel" depressed are not told that they are heroic.  They are offered help to deal with their problem until they return to a better, more normal state of mind.

I'm not suggesting that we persecute or prosecute people for feeling weird or acting weird so long as they do harm to no one else.  I am suggesting that it might be a good idea to stop lying to them, to tell them the truth, to refuse to agree to their twisted view of reality.

Sometimes young children will don superhero costumes and get the idea that this gives them the power of flight or invincibility.  As adults, we do our best to help them understand the difference between fantasy and reality.  I'm all for encouraging children to exercise their imaginations.  When I was growing up, some of my best friends were imaginary.  However, normal, sane, healthy people learn to distinguish between the imaginary and the real, between our fantasies of how things might be and how things really are, between daydreams and rational, reality-based hopes and plans.

Calling Islam "the religion of peace" does not end the conflict in the Middle East.  Saying that the Islamic State is not Islamic doesn't turn them into Methodists.  The problem is everywhere. 

We can no longer come to an agreement on some of the most obvious and basic issues because those of us on the side of reality are not allowed to state the obvious lest we offend, "trigger", or "micro-aggress" the deluded.

Wealth and prosperity and technology have been allowing a lot of us to get by without facing up to the truth.  Truth will triumph.  Reality will get its due.  Too many of us refuse steadfastly to put aside our lies and delusions; therefore, these illusions will be forcibly stripped away --  perhaps by war, by oppression, by famine, by financial collapse, the collapse of society in general, or something else.  It will happen because that is the nature of reality.   

5.11 Rush24 Backpack

I asked for help in choosing a new container for the stuff I have to take with me when I go places.  A backpack made the most sense.  Swissgear makes a nice, unobstrusive backpack about the right size with a dedicated space for a laptop as well as other electronic gear.  There was plenty of room for a few clothes and hygiene essentials.  I don't think it's a bad choice, but the suggestion of something more tactical-looking did appeal to me.

Midway had the 5.11 Rush24 backpack available.  It's has about the same dimensions as the Swissgear pack I had examined at Sam's — roughly 20 inches high, about 14" wide and, depending out how much stuff you have in it, 8" to 10" deep.

In the case of the 5.11 pack, rather than a laptop pocket, there is a pocket designed to hold a hydration pack.  My Dell laptop fits it just fine.  The 5.11 has pockets inside of pockets — a plethora of pouches and zippered subdivisions.  I like this, but loading it is a work in progress.  I'm still moving things, pulling things out and putting things in.  Right now I have it loaded with a couple of changes of underwear and socks, athletic shorts and a t-shirt or two.  I have my regular Dopp kit with deordorant, a small bottle of Irish Spring, toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, floss, razor, etc.  I have a charger and cable for my phone/camera/tablet.  In the front section I have pens, pencils, notebooks, thumbdrive, and my work ID badge.  In a zippered section of the main compartment, I have a spare power cord for my laptop and a good old ethernet cable (since that's the only way to connect to the LAN when I'm actually on-site at the office). 

Additionally, I have zipties, glue, tape, a couple of protein bars, an emergency blanket, some first-aid stuff, hand sanitizer, a roll of toilet paper, a few ibuprofen, some B-12 sublingual tablets,  and generic No-Doz.    For tools, I have an off-brand multitool, a spare folding knife, a fixed-blade Glock Field Knife, LED headlamp, a lighter or two, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. 

To be ready to pull out, I would slide in my laptop, put a water bottle or my 16-ounce Stanley thermos, or both, in the side pockets, throw a handgun, a Bible and maybe another book or two in the main compartment.  That would get me through a couple of days with no problem.  I still have room for a spare pair of jeans, a couple more shirts, and maybe a pair of running shoes if I wanted to stay somewhere three or four days. 

The bag itself is covered with Molle straps so it would be easy to add on more pouches and equipment. Everything seems solidly attached and neatly sewn.  The backpack straps have releases which are helpful in getting the bag actually on my old, stiff shoulders.  The grip on top is supposed to be good for 2000 pounds, and that's what's I'll grab first 90% of the time.

This goes right in the front seat of the truck or the floorboard -- front or back without any problem.  Being a "water-resistant" backpack, I could wear it when I'm on my bike, or, since it isn't overly large, I think my ROK straps would hold it quite securely on the pillion.

I appreciate the input, and this seems as though it's going to work pretty well.  The features and the size are just about perfect for what I wanted -- about the same room for travel gear as the old duffel bag plus laptop space and protection.

Nobody But Jerry Miculek

Seriously, I'd stove-pipe one or more at some point.  No such problems for the Master.

(h/t IMAO)

If these haven't already showed up in a movie, they have to soon.