"You are a drama queen," said the cop to the man he'd just thrown to floor.

Or... what just happened here?



"Wisconsin Capitol Police have been arresting people in the Capitol for singing their grievances against the Scott Walker Administration without a permit for the last two weeks. [On August 5] during one of the multiple arrests, Officer Michael J. Syphard grabbed videographer Arthur Kohl-Riggs and threw him to the ground without any kind of warning or request to move."

What happened in that video?
	The cop justifiably moved an intrusive man aside and the man took a drama-queen dive.
	The cop brutalized a man who was exercising his rights as a citizen.
	The cop was abrupt and the man chose to go all the way down to express his objection to being moved.
	2 men with different agendas intersected in an unfortunate way, but neither did anything bad.
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Click the tag Arthur Kohl-Riggs to see his previous appearances on this blog. [ADDED: 2 videos from March 23, 2011 show Kohl-Riggs moving in on Meade at a protest. Kohl-Riggs's intrusive, get-in-your-face method can be seen in the first video, as he seems to be trying to scare Meade.]

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"I'm sorry, did Elbow just call the Solidarity Singers 'the gray-haired retirees and public workers that gather for the daily event.'??"

"Hahahaha! I mean, he is absolutely right but none of the SS would admit to the fact that they are just bored like-minded liberals scared to death that finances matter. One might think that Detroit would put some sense into this crew of 'gray-haired retirees' but I won't hold my breath. Carry on! Just get a freaking permit."


Comment on a Madison newspaper article by Steven Elbow titled "Singalong show-down imminent at Capitol?"

SS = Solidarity Singers, an anti-Scott Walker group that dates back to the big protests of 2011.

I've explained these people to you before, e.g., here, and there was a singalong showdown back in 2011 that I covered here. I've also been hit with a vuvuzela by a singalong participant, and I've seen these people switch from singing old union songs to paranoid chanting for a boycott against the company whose workers were installing a sprinkler system and making it harder for them to get their singing done.

Take a wild guess whether I'm in the mood to scurry down to the square right now to cover the "show-down." I am old, but I'm not that old.

UPDATE: The singalongs took place.

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"Is this really the message we want to send to the rest of the world? That this is Wisconsin? A place where people can’t come and express themselves in their state capitol? That’s bologna."

So said state senator Bob Jauch, about the arrest of 22 of the "Solidarity Singers," for singing in the Wisconsin Capitol building without a permit. This singing has been a regular event since the big protests in 2011. The arrests followed a singalong that defied the police chief's message — posted on a sign — "I have determined that your group does not have the required permits. I am declaring this an unlawful event. Please either move outside or disperse immediately. If you do not, each participant is subject to arrest."

By the way, I think it's funny to write "That’s bologna." Normally, one sees the spelling "baloney," when the reference is to humbug/nonsense. My authority is the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary, which gives the alternative "boloney."

1928   Sat. Evening Post 28 Nov. 21   Gee, that's a long shot. Boloney! That's not the ball—it's the divot.
1935   Discovery Dec. 378/2   He even suggests that much of modern psychiatry is ‘hooey’ and ‘baloney’.
1935   E. Weekley Something about Words 64   Boloney must surely be for Bologna sausage (whence also the English polony, dating from the 18th century), influenced perhaps by the contemptuous sense associated with the German wurst.

"Bologna" is the spelling for the sausage, which is notable for its large size. Here are the OED's historical examples:

1596   T. Nashe Haue with you to Saffron-Walden sig. R2,   As big as a Bolognian sawcedge.
1833   ‘M. Dods’ Cook & Housewife's Man. (ed. 5) iii. i. 267 (note) ,   Real Bologna sausages labour under the imputation of being made of asses' flesh.
1850   Knickerbocker XXXV. 23   Relishing ‘Bolognas’, will he plead that a jelly-eyed roaster is disgusting?
1916   C. Sandburg Chicago Poems 24   The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna.

First, I love the spelling "sawcedge." Second, dago shovelman?

The dago shovelman sits by the railroad track
Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna.
     A train whirls by, and men and women at tables
     Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils,
     Eat steaks running with brown gravy,
     Strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee.
The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna,
Washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy,
And goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day's work
Keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils
Shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases
Standing slender on the tables in the dining cars.

I love the way Sandberg empathizes with the worker, all the while calling him a "dago."

"Dago" is in the OED, in case you're wondering. It's defined as "A name originally given in the south-western section of the United States to a man of Spanish parentage; now extended to include Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian people in general, or as a disparaging term for any foreigner." The word is a corruption of the proper name Diego. Some historical examples:

[1723   Bumstead in New-Eng. Historical & Geneal. Reg. (1861) XV. 199   The negro Dago hanged for fiering Mr Powell's house.]
1832   E. C. Wines Two Years in Navy (1833) I. vi. 145   These Dagos [of Minorca], as they are pleasantly called by our people, were always a great pest...
1904   T. Roosevelt Let. 2 Sept. in H. F. Pringle T. Roosevelt (1931) 294   It will show these Dagos that they will have to behave decently....
1909 H. G. Wells Tono-Bungay iii. iv. 406 'E's a foreigner... That's what E is—a Dago!

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"They don't have a candidate, but Democrats increasingly have a message for the 2014 gubernatorial race..."

"... Wisconsin is falling behind Minnesota, and it's Scott Walker's fault."

Just minutes after learning of better economic news in Minnesota than Wisconsin in 2012, progressives took to their keyboards and began blaming "extremist" policies enacted in our state in the last two years, in prose so purple it could have been on a Vikings football jersey.

There is one big problem with this argument: Wisconsin has been falling behind Minnesota for a long, long time....

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