Video of the protests below the fold if you like.
I say the word “man” too much and I swear too much. I will be working on both in the future.
Even last Saturday I was taking photos and video and moving on quickly, not really trying to say too much in front of anyone. I still was getting a few cockeyed looks and was a bit surprised. Ann Althouse in her last few posts on the subject is reporting that some are losing their grip a bit down there. Worth reading her blog if you have a few moments. I have a feeling that it is only a matter of time before there is hardcore violence either in or around the capitol.
My crowd estimate of “5 to 10 thousand” in this video is very very wrong, that number isn’t even close.
This was some sort of accident. I figured out later that I was actually in the middle of a group of Madison city workers that were parading through the center of the capitol and that is why I got into the capitol building so easily.
Same deal as the last video – I was still in the procession of city workers and I zipped right through the epicenter of the protest. They would organize certain groups outside and then that particular group would parade through the center of the rotunda.
I think the look on the woman’s face when she sees me filming the garbage and used signs piled up on the war memorial says it all.
Garbage, and the trashing of the capitol. Again, I think I am in the wrong place as the hallway was cleared for another parade.
Cross posted at LITGM.
Into the Belly of the Beast, and returned alive to tell the tale.
What a squalid mess these people are.
“This is what democracy looks like.”
No. This is.
It’s called voting.
Dan, I never imagined you with glasses!
I can’t stand people who bring their children to political demonstration. That’s disgusting.
That reminds me of my Soviet childhood and the way we were brainwashed, from kindergarten to high school. Oh, and speaking of brainwashing – the chanting in your video reminded me of “polit.protest” we were told to stage when I was …probably in 5th or 6th grade, “in support of Chilean workers against Pinochet” (hello, Chicago Boys, indeed) – and that was in Tatarstan, central Russia – purely symbolical, of course, since no Spanish-speaking person ever appeared there, not on my memory.
But hearing that chant, I magically remembered memorized by rot: “El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!”
Shudder.
I bring glad tidings.
The Ohio State Senate has just passed Senate Bill 5, which is in some ways a lot harder on unions than Wisconsin’s Budget Repair Bill. It passed despite thousands of union goons demonstrating outside the Ohio Capitol. The next step is the Ohio State House, where the Republicans have a 59-40 majority. And I have checked; the Ohio State Constitution/House Rules makes the House quorum 50% + 1. The Democrats cannot run away and freeze things. The last hope of the public employee unions is getting a referendum on the ballot and winning that. They probably can get the signatures, especially since Democrats are good at inventing fictional people for signatures and voter registration. Whether they can threaten enough voters to win is open to question.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/03/02/02-senate-yank-seitz.html?sid=101
This puts pressure on the public employee unions in Wisconsin, and on your Fleebaggers. One problem with bussing in hordes of out of state thugs, is that you can’t do it to a bunch of states simultaneously. They don’t have enough Moonbats to do it!
Subotai Bahadur
Thanks for that drawing Lex, I like it very much.
Tatyana – it is always interesting when you get to see either a commenter or a blogger that you have never seen. Funny how impressions can be made just from a persons writing. I have been surprised many times over the years when I finally see a picture of a person that I interact with online.
S.B. – I hope you don’t mind me abbreviating your name – not out of disrespect, I just get tired of scrolling up eleventy times to get your name spelled right. Good news on Ohio. Walker up here is pretty dug in. He has never wavered once, at least in public. Looks like we are going to win this one, but the fat lady hasn’t sung yet. I am a working stiff so haven’t had time to get to the square or even watch the news lately so I don’t know if the protests have lost steam yet. This has got to be getting expensive for the unions if they are still bussing in people and paying people to act mad down there.
Dan,
No problem with that abbreviation. Although I will note that it is spelled just like it sounds ….. as an Anglicized version … of an Islamicized version … of a Mongol name and title. There is a long story as to how that became my nom d’ blog.
I am curiously awaiting some specific developments.
1) Have any layoff notices actually gone out yet, since the BRB is still stalled due to Democrat desertion of their jobs?
2) The return of one or more Fleebaggers, and what happens then.
3) And I am not sanguine about things staying calmed down. Under the Mutual Aid call by your DOA’s Capitol Police; Dane County S.O. furnished much of the manpower around the Capitol. Yesterday, declaring that he would not act as the Legislature’s “Palace Guard”; the Dane County Sheriff pulled all his people if news reports are correct. Dane County and Madison City government being “Moscow-on-the-Mendota”, and given what I have heard of Madison City government’s efforts to kill or stall the BRB; my suspicious mind turns to a deliberate attempt to weaken security in collusion with the unions in preparation for something nasty.
And, if Walker wins; the only things that the Democrats/Public Employee Unions have left to use are either some sort of unconstitutional Federal intervention to roll things back, or some form of terrorism. Neither are beyond them.
Subotai Bahadur
S.B. : this from WisEye today:
“Senate Republicans move on two fronts Thurday to pressure missing 14 Dems. They pass a resolution declaring the Dems ‘in contempt’ of Senate if they don’t return to Capitol by 4 p.m. today. After that, Repubs say, any law officer who sees a Dem senator in Wisconsin can bring that senator to Madison. Repubs also set for Friday debate resolutions finding all 14 Dems $100 per day for being ‘absent without leave.'”
It is at least something to start getting these senators back in session.