David Blaska
This little fellow, a male goldfinch, has been trying to gain entrance into Stately Blaska Manor for the last several days. Can you blame him? Silly goldfinch, the Stately Manor is for thoughtful people -- and our liberal/progressive acquaintances. (For they are ...)
Groundskeepers at the Experimental Work Farm have attracted orioles for the first time; they love a dab of grape jelly. Hummingbirds, hairy woodpeckers, cedar waxwings, cardinals, raucous blue jays, chickadees, robins (Wormboys #1 and #2), nuthatches, and purple finches provide local color. Delicate house wrens are hard workers and have much to say, their throats reverberating with the effort. Cooing mourning doves, mewing catbirds, tufted titmice, and trilling red-winged blackbirds supply much of the sound track.
If only a bluebird would find happiness in our bluebird house. (Not blue birdhouse.)
Various flora helps attract this flying fauna. A spreading crabapple, a mulberry tree, raspberries in season, and an array of bird feeders and water features are attractions. Woodpeckers have rehabbed the tridentine trunk of a decapitated and deceased (not diseased) willow tree into a veritable avian apartment building. Leo the cat is forced to watch from indoors.
Just wish the many hawks circling over Orchard Ridge would take more of our surplus bunnies and chipmunks. No sound of the neighborhood screech owl this summer, either. Open house at nice empty tree trunk, Mr. Owl.
Nostalgia for the good old Days of Rage
Oh, what could have been. The Left is "demoralized and demobilized" in the wake of the Legislature's passage of a budget that, finally, cures the chronic structural deficit and signals to a competitive world that Wisconsin will not hector, harass or hinder job-making employers.
As Tommy G. Thompson (a true conservative) always says, the best social program is a job.
Lamenting the "pathetic" (his word) turnout on the Capitol Square late last week as the Left's Lost Cause met its Appomattox, Progressive magazine editor Matt Rothschild acknowledges his strategy of making Wisconsin "ungovernable" is but a fantasy.
(The state AFL-CIO) never had a mass strategy, was surprised by the mass uprising, and was even a little afraid of it. The leadership never called for boycotts, never called for a general strike or any workplace actions whatsoever, never called for civil disobedience. [The Progressive: Wisconsin demoralized, demobilized]
That is what democracy looks like to the Left, apparently. Ironic, then, that the Progressive declaims that:
This breed of Republicans in the legislature and the governor's mansion is ruthless and lawless beyond anything we've ever seen before in this state. -- TheProgressive: What's next?
You condone civil disobedience but Republicans are the lawbreakers? Exactly what law did they break, Matt?
Siege of Capitol ends with a whimper, not a bang
The indefatigable Brian Schimming has one of the great quotes in last week's Wisconsin State Journal. Of the missing unionized teachers at the underwhelming rally last Tuesday:
"Apparently, when they are working, they have time to come down here, but when they're not working, they don't have time," he said. "I guess the lawn doesn't get cut by itself."
As Packer announcer Wayne Larivee would say, There Is Your Dagger! Brother James Wigderson says zombies and hula hoops not a substitute for fiscal sanity.
So when I see Democratic activists pretending to be zombies, or banging pots and pans in the rotunda, or marching in circles around the Capitol with signs comparing Walker to Hitler, or even trying to sneak through bathroom windows into the Capitol hoping to disrupt the Legislature, I'm reminded that it was their childishness that prevented them from being responsible while they were in power. Why should we expect them to be responsible now? The adults are finally in charge in Madison ...
Blog roll call
The unique Syte Reitz does a nice round-up of the end of Walkerville, now gone with the wind (and the vuvuzelas).
I missed this. But Patrick McIlheran, the exhilarating (and lone) voice of conservatism on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has left to join the staff of U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson in Washington D.C. Might have thought his blog site would so advise; was wondering why he hadn't posted in a week.
Steve Prestegard's The Presteblog has worked its way up my list of daily reads. Appreciate the new clean format. Plenty of musical memories, too.
Are they really worried about money?
Love it when libs pretend to be worried about the cost of government. They are sharing an incredibly myopic story from the Baraboo outlet of Capital Newspapers Inc. The storyline is that State Sen. Luther Olsen is no conservative because of a "fake Democrat" running against the anger management class dropout, Rep. Fred "I feel like smacking her around" Clark. That forces a primary, thus doubling the cost of the recall election in this senate district. (Two elections instead of one = double the cost. You do the math.)
If our liberal acquaintances (for they ARE ...) were really worried about cost, then why have the recall at all? I'm sorry, progressives, but we conservatives just won't cooperate with your attempts to undo the November elections.
(Un)Social (In)Security
Fighting Ed endorses a scheme to raise Social Security taxes on workers who earn over $106,800 a year, thus transforming SS into something it was never intended to be: an income redistribution plan instead of a forced savings plan. That's the appropriately "Radical" Progressive solution because, Fighting Ed notes, 34 percent of Americans have saved nothing for retirement. We get it, Ed. Tell Americans to keep slumbering; the social safety net will catch them as long as we keep punishing achievers. Foolish on us who did save.
Hey, kids! We're making progress! At least the Left acknowledges that there is a problem and that Something Must Be Done.
Let the show trials begin!
Whenever things got bad in the old Soviet Union, Old Joe would convene another party purge to place the blame elsewhere. Today's Left is playing the same blame game. John Nichols in The Nation convenes the political purity star chamber to purge moderate Democrats: "Feingold to Net Roots Nation: Call Out Corporate Democrats."
The cultural rot continues
Charlies Sykes asks this question: what great cause did Madison's naked bike protest advance? No, I don't know, either.
At last year's Gay Pride event in San Francisco, naked men were slathered in petroleum as some kind of statement about the BP oil spill. The "statement" said more about the participants' self-indulgent, Anthony Weiner-level narcissism than about any cause. Which could be said for some of the participants in the late, non-peaceful Siege of the Capitol. And just one arrest out of the naked bike ride? Clever attorneys throughout Madison are readying their defense of the next two-bit bikepath flasher (not bike pathflasher).
Speaking of which, did you notice a major airline booted a passenger who was looking like a fool with his pants on the ground? His enabling mother whines, "He's a good kid trying to make it, and he's going through a lot. And then this happens."
Mother, lose the passive voice. It didn't "happen." The lad done dood it, active voice. You did toilet train him, no?
Today's encomium
"Blaska offers an alternative take on current events and drives the lock-step Madison left wild. It's a freakin' two-fer. Keep it up Dave." -- Ned Flanders 4-18-11.
Blaska's Blog is the gold(finch) standard!
