Wisconsin (along with Michigan) led the way on welfare reform. I recall there was much demagogueing and fear mongering then as well. A bit of rabelrousing was/is to be expected. Follow our lead.

All the more reason for Walker, Christie, and the others to take 'em out now...to use another euphamism that'll get us crucified on the news. Oops, there's another.

I'm a big Walker fan, and have been since last summer. (From a neighboring state, myself.) I hope and pray Walker has the strength of his convictions. He should:

1. Send in the National Guard NOW to clear the state capitol, clear the streets of Madison, and restore order.
2. Arrest every striking public employee, especially every public school teacher. Charge 'em and lock 'em up!
3. Fire every striking public employee!
4. Follow up the budget with a bill to criminalize union membership in Wisconsin by any public employee (and preferably every private employee, but perhaps that's best left til another day :) )

Also, sounds like the Governor's media folks will have some excellent footage to put up on their website. Public Employees have not right to privacy about their work, their pay, or their "sick time". The Governor would be right to let local districts dock the pay of teachers at the rally.

@ DAW - surely you're not suggesting our brave men and women of the National Guard are instruments of thuggery, are you? Is that what you're saying - that the Wisconsin National Guard are thugs? Are you sure you want to go on the record with that, DAW? or are you going to try to split the hair along the lines of supporting the troops but opposing the war they're trying to win, like a good left-winger? Here's a newsflash, my friend - you and your friends have sucked all the blood out of the turnip. Its dry.

Someone is perpetuating a falsehood. Gov Walker talked about the National Guard in the context of walk-outs by department of corrections employees. Sorry state of affairs when you have to what-if your prison guards having a blue flu.

Like many others, my jaw dropped when I read this sentence in Paul Krugman's ill-informed "Climate of Hate" column after the Tucson murders: "Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right."

I spent a brief period as a blogger for a West-Coast radio show host. The attacks on the host, myself, our guests, left me with a permanent impression of the Left side of the spectrum as the violent and threatening side. I never heard that kind of hate from the people who called in to rebut a left-side guest, or from the host himself. I left blogging for him about the time that Al Franken freaked out at a convention and nearly threatened to beat another guest with a chair. It's a disgrace that he's in office...

It occurs to me that all the hatemail the takshow host got, and other hosts, and TV pundits, and Republican politicians... well, that's hard evidence isn't it? And there's so much of it.

Why not gather all of these emails, letters, and if time, snippets of calls, into one repository/archive and call it: "Overwhelmingly on the Left." Or, perhaps we can just bundle them up and mail them to Krugman...

I'm so far out of the political media that I wouldn't know who to approach about the gathering process.

Then again, why bother? A two minute search in Democratic Underground, Indymedia's cache, Media Matters, or dailykos would turn up an archived lifetime of reading material as evidence of the sociopathic hatefulness on the left.

The point about the systemic injustice of public sector unionization has, surprisingly, been made. I think most people have awoken on this.

Most interesting is the pop-culture media's refusal to accept this. Their narrative still has it that the citizenry is the problem (teabaggers!) while the seat of virtue resides in the government class (selfless teachers!).

Remember the debates within the GOP last election about the wisdom of shunning the pop-culture media? Yeah, debate over: they are not on the side of the people. They are sycophants for the government class. Treat them as such; trust nothing they say; refuse to participate in their narrative.

@American's blessings:

Wow. Just, wow. Considering your name, I find your post all the more humorous. Using the National Guard to clear the streets? Lock up public employees for striking? This is still America, right? I didn't fall asleep in Fond du Lac and wake up in Bahrain, did I? What would the founders have to say on the subject...perhaps something along the lines of 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.' If only we had something like that enshrined in some US government document...

To classify the protests in Madison as 'lunatic' and 'thuggish' is outrageous and blatantly false, just as left-wing claims that the tea party gathering in Madison I was at last year were 'lunatic' and 'thuggish'. Like that rally last year, the protest was completely peaceful, replete with families bringing their kids out to see citizen activism in action.

The crazy left-wingers will get as much attention as the crazy right-wingers because they scream the loudest, but that does not negate the valid criticisms that public employees may have with this bill.