Fuck This Guy: WI Governor Scott Walker

     
Hello and welcome to “Fuck This Guy” a new series that we at Ink & Bourbon are please to bring you. This will update weekly, unless we really feel the need to post more often, which seems likely.

For our inaugural entry, I have selected Tea Party darling and possible GOP Presidential candidate, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.

Walker was elected in 2010 as part of the Tea Party wave. He won on promises to focus on jobs and fighting Big Government.

Now, fair enough. I totally understand why people would be in favor of smaller, less intrusive government that focused on improving their economic well being.

Let’s see how he’s doing:

On smaller, less intrusive government:

Well, he did return 36 million in federal grants to set up health care exchanges, so I...guess that’s getting government out of our business.

Oh, but then he signed a law to force women seeking abortions (which are legal, by the way) to submit to a trans-vaginal ultrasound.

So, we keep federal money out of your business, but we can shove a probe up your business. That’s less intrusive.

Oh, yeah, and all those Tea Party tin foil hat aficionados who worry about government Jackbooted Thugs but love them some Walker:

Classy. Arresting a Marine Corps vet and trampling his flag, violating rights to free speech and assembly, and trying to seize a camera from a bystander. If this happened in Washington at a Tea Party rally, every Republican in America would be howling for Obama’s impeachment. But this is ok.

Alright, so maybe he has to unleash the stormtroopers to counter those Union thug sympathizers like teachers and firefighters, and we can’t let women decide what gets shoved up their ladyparts, that would be madness. But he’s been good for the economy, right?

Oh.

But the remaining jobs are better, right?


What? Wages falling at twice the national average?

Ok, ok, that must be left over from the days where Union thug artificially inflated wages. Now that the huge burden of living wages and health and safety regulation have been lifted, businesses must be flocking to the state, and the economic boom will lift all boats. Yea, Reaganomics!


Oh, what the fuck? I mean what the fucking fuck?

So, small government means no cash for health care, but they can still arrest you for protesting and desecrate the flag. It’s ok to violate the First Amendment so long as you stay away from the Second, and nonconsentual twat-wanding is not intrusive government overreach, but safeguarding our most vulnerable citizens.

So, fuck this guy. Fuck everybody who voted for him

Dancing on Graves for Fun and Profit

Do not speak ill of the dead, we’re told.

Why not?

The dead are beyond the reach of my slings and arrows. More dangerous, to my mind is the whitewashing of misdeeds done by the recently deceased.

I will agree that Westboro Baptist style celebration at the death of young men and women taken too soon is offensive to the grieving family. It is insensitive and hateful.

But if a person dies in the fullness of time, and that person’s acts were harmful to many, I don’t see why a little fist pump is so bad a thing. If an old, miserable dick dies, I think it’s fine to be happy that the world is a bit less dickish.

Margaret Thatcher began her reign of evil by abolishing free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven. Turning back Vietnamese refugees, because of “concerns” about the number of Asian immigrants, demolishing labor unions, privatizing services, making the first cuts to the NHS, and the utter tone deaf awfulness of her response to the crisis in Northern Ireland all show a callus disregard of basic human dignity and needs of anyone not wealthy and English.

I won’t shed a tear at the end of a life, when countless thousands of more innocent lives were destroyed or made harder by policies she championed.       

To show my UK friends that it’s not a matter of national identity, I assure everyone I’m shining my tap shoes for dancing on the graves of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney as well.

So I will happily accept criticism of my comments and attitude, while echoing the sentiments of Labor MP George Galloway who tweeted “Tramp the dirt down.”       

Playing with the Third Rail.

The biggest single problem with guns in this country is that we are unable to have a conversation about them that doesn’t degenerate into bumper stickers.

Now, I’ll say up front, I like guns. I like the feel as the weapon settles in the hand, I like the noise and the push of recoil and the smell of burnt power which authors call cordite but which isn’t. I like the catharsis of watching targets fall and the zen like concentration of lying prone with a support sling wrapped around your arm, plotting shots in a range book as you methodically make adjustments to bring your rounds onto a target five hundred yards away.

I understand that people have lawful, legitimate reasons to own guns, and I think that guns run deep in our culture. I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest banning them all, and it’s not like making meth illegal made it all go away.

But I think, on the other hand, we have to admit that guns are dangerous. They’re designed to be dangerous, at least to stuff downrange. And they’re dangerous to friends, family and neighbors of any careless, sloppy or just plain dumb operator.

Now, people argue that more people are killed with cars or baseball bats or bad sushi every year than with guns. This is true.

It’s also true that we regulate the shit out of motor vehicles, sports equipment and food. And unless you are being completely disingenuous, you have to admit that nobody has ever walked into a shopping mall with a hammer and racked up a double digit body count.

Any and all regulation is by definition an infringement on freedom. But we routinely accept large amounts of it because it makes sense. You expect your electrician to be licensed so your house doesn’t burn down. You expect your daycare to do background checks on the people who watch your kids.

I don’t think any of us feels that letting a legally blind man with a DUI and a seizure disorder drive an overweight tractor trailer with defective brakes over the speed limit without any sleep is just letting him exercise his freedom.

So why is it so unthinkable to suggest that maybe a criminal background check is warranted before we let a person buy an AK-47? Why is it un-American to question your lawful purpose in buying a 100 round drum magazine for your assault rifle. Do you even need an assault rifle? Do you plan to suppress the deer so your hunting buddy can get to hand grenade range?

So I think it time–actually far beyond time– that we start treating firearms like really dangerous stuff like motor vehicles or dairy products and put some sensible regulations in place.

What? He asked.

My four year old son was asking me about primary and secondary colors.

Him: Daddy, what do you get when you mix red and blue?
Me: Purple.
Him: How about blue and yellow?
Me: green.
Him: What do you get when you mix green and orange?
Me: Centuries of sectarian violence.

Now, tell me if I'm missing something

But as far as I can see, the only reason to oppose gay marriage is that you are an asshole.

Nothing about letting other people have the same rights as you takes away anything from your marriage. It matters to them because it will allow couples a handful of important legal rights in very stressful situations.

If I am brought to the hospital in a coma, and my wife tells the doctor to treat me aggressively, or to let me go peacefully, they will listen to her. My girlfriend of twenty years will get no respect at the ER.

Especially if she shows up while my wife is there, deciding whether to pull the plug.

For sick partners, end of life decisions, child custody, inheritance, all those things that occur when we really don't need added stress, the married person is pretty much covered, the life partner, regardless of how long they've been together, or how committed they are, is not.

So, why not extend that  courtesy to a long term partner, who wants to commit to someone?

It's not about hurting the "sacred" nature of marriage. Liz Taylor, Larry King, and Britney Spears have already made a mockery of that, and nobody's trying to take marriage away from celebrities.  It's not about religion. No really, it's not.  The Catholic Church won't marry gays, but neither will it marry two Jews or Muslims, or even Protestants, but we aren't trying to take marriage away from heathens.  It's not about producing children, since we don't try to take marriage away from infertile couples, or couples who just don't want kids.

So, the only thing that I can come up with is that you think gays are icky, and don't want to give them rights.  We go down that road and we'll have to let broads vote and darkies drink out of the same fountains.

Now, if anybody has a real, constitutionally defensible reason we should treat homosexuals like second class citizens, please let me know, because right now, I'm just gonna run with the theory that you're an asshole.

40 Hours? I though you said you work full time.

When I was growing up, my dad worked one full time job.  He had one degree. We had a three bedroom ranch house, two cars, and went on vacations. We lived pretty well. My mom didn’t work until all three kids were in school.  We all had extra activities like art lessons, riding lessons karate, dance, whatever.

I am pretty much right at the median household income in America.  I work 64 hours in an average week. And not at a minimum wage, unskilled job, but as a paramedic and an orthopaedic technologist.  I have two degrees.  We live in a two bedroom ranch house in the same town I grew up in. We drive a ten year old car and a thirteen year old car. We have one child who has activities.

Everyone I work with on the ambulance has a second job. A mere 48 hours at a skilled, demanding, professional job requiring multiple licenses, continuing education and constant recertification doesn’t put us at a median household income.

When attempting to quantify the progress the middle class has made in the last thirty years, the best value I can think of is “fuck all.”

We shouldn't be shocked

An American soldier snapped and killed some Afghan civillians.

This is terrible. Inexcusable. There's no justifying this action.

But, although the man who pulled the trigger must be held responsible-- and it looks like he will be-- the military should look at how they failed.  One thing I learned in the Corps is that when one of your people fails, it's your fault.  You, as his superior, should have seen the signs, should have tried harder, done better.

This as yet unnamed soldier had done four combat tours between Iraq and Afghanistan.  He had suffered a head trauma. He was returned to active duty in a combat zone. None of that excuses what he did, but should we be surprised?

We've been at war for over a decade. A nasty, ugly sort of war without clear objectives. A war where enemies dressed in the uniforms of our Afghan Army allies attack and kill coalition troops. Where the enemy fighters vanish into the population. The lines between soldier and civilian, enemy and friend, are blurred.

We've been fighting too long, with too few troops on the ground.  People have been rotated back into the line of fire time and time again.  It's only a matter of time before somebody goes off the rails. We've seen it before, and we probably will again if we fail to take a hard look at our procedures.

In this kind of war, we rely on the locals to help us identify the enemy. To spot the booby traps. To support the new civilian government. A year of careful positive work winning hearts and minds can be erased by one atrocity.

We, as electors of the people who send out troops into harms way, have to understand and accept that you can't fight a war on the cheap, and that actions and strategies have consequences.  We need to demand that our leaders do a better job, or admit that it's not working and cut our losses.

War is one of those things that should be done right or not at all.

This week on "Ask A Clergyman:"

Dear Catholic Bishops,

OK, what the fuck?  Why the contraception hate? You do realize that 98% of American Catholics use some form of contraception, right?

Apart from the fact that you really should be barred from discussing morality at all after your multigenerational coverup of child abuse, what could possibly be wrong with contraception? 

I can say, quite comfortably, that I have had all the kids I want in this life. I can also say that I certainly haven't had all the sex I want.  In fact, if I had to list modern advances I would keep after the collapse of civilization, contraception would come pretty high on the list. Probably right after safe drinking water.

And, let's be honest (which I realize goes against your training) but what do you hate more, abortion or contraception?  Because safe, cheap, educated access to the second dramatically reduces the need for the first.