Wisconsin statehouse

The Senate voted to split off the public employee union part of the budget repair bill, and passed that part. Ignore the comments, but read Althouse. Her husband Meade has been reporting on events at her site for days. As of about 8 the statehouse was full of protesters, some of whom barred some of the doors.

So far it is plenty noisy and angry, but from the sound of it (I picked up a nearly live feed) I'd rather be stuck there than in a (for example) Greek riot. But of course there's a sampling bias--parts of a crowd where you don't feel comfortable filming might be considerably less polite.

I said to several people over the past few days that I thought the politicians were in better communication than the media knew; and the paper reported this morning that I was right. Chalk one up for having read history and watched goings-on for decades...

It'd be nice if people had paid a little more attention to the "what do you replace it with" question. Who knows, it might even have defused some anger.