Sitting in the waiting room at Tire World gives a fellow some time to think, especially if the fellow neglected to bring his reading glasses along with him. Here's what was on my mind.
Today marks the sixty-eighth anniversary of the D-Day landings in France. Most of the veterans are deceased by now, and many of the rest are infirm in one way or another. A kid of eighteen in 1944, and almost all the soldiers that day were older than eighteen, would be eighty-six by now.
Most people will pass the day without a thought for what happened back then. A few will recall what they saw on Saving Private Ryan, but that'll be about it. But if those men hadn't gone ashore that day, the world would be much different now. Hitler would still have lost to the Red Army, but the USSR might have dominated all Europe in the aftermath.
The governor of Wisconsin beat back an attempt to fire him last night, to the delight of Republicans and other right wingers around the country. The election was presented as a referendum on the governor's attempt to hamstring the public employees' unions there.
As blog readers know, I worked for the National Park Service for many years, but in only one park where I worked was there a union, and it represented only maintenance employees who cared to join. The union was not allowed to negotiate salaries, only working conditions. Most of that had to do with establishing a schedule for when the outdoor employees could come back to the yard, a sliding schedule of temperature and humidity.
The Wisconsin unions will still have some clout, negotiating teacher contracts and preventing abuses and fighting terminations, but even that might be too much for the Wisconsin voters. Wisconsin always seemed a little schizophrenic to me. The same state that elected progressives "Battling Bob" LaFollett and Russ Feingold also sent Joe McCarthy to the Senate.
In the aftermath of yesterday's election, Sarah Palin is quoted as saying that "Barack Obama's goose is cooked." I wouldn't argue the point that when a president's party loses an election anywhere that president is weakened somewhat. What burns me is the intemperate nature of the remark. It's an election year and some hyperbole is warranted, but Ms. Palin almost seems gleeful. Disapproving of a president is grounds for trying to elect someone else, it's true. That's the essence of democracy. To enjoy a president's discomfiture is the triumph of partisanship over patriotism.
Oddly enough, the same electorate that voted to keep Governor Walker said in exit polls that they prefer the president over Mr. Romney and by about the same margin. So, go figure.
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