2/22/2011

A Few Lessons Learned Regarding Wisconsin:
1. Remember: elections have consequences, as long as it's a conservative who is elected. Senate Republicans in Washington did not give a flea's fart about the consequences of the 2008 elections in blocking Barack Obama's agenda that he campaigned on and won with. And for many on the right, that was just politics. But in Wisconsin? It's merely, "Well, fuckers, you elected him. Now, he gets to do what he wants."

Except for one thing: not once in his campaign did Scott Walker mention that he was even considering getting rid of collective bargaining rights for public employees. Yeah, that little detail of his "budget-cutting plan" was left out of his campaign website, for instance. And a Nexis search of "Scott Walker" and "collective bargaining" for any time before his inauguration yields only this from June 18, 2010: Questions from a Wisconsin Democratic Party press release about Walker's plan to deal with public employee pensions: "Since this gimmick will require agreement through collective bargaining, you can't guarantee any of these savings, can you? Or are you proposing the elimination of collective bargaining and wouldn't that prompt costly lawsuits?" The Rude Pundit reads that as sarcasm, as if it's too ludicrous to consider, ha-ha.

2. Remember: "compromise" means that you ask nicely if Republicans can use a condom when they fuck you in the ass and then Republicans call you "whore," fuck you without one, and demand that you say you love their cocks. The Democratic Senators in Wisconsin, as well as the unions involved in the protests, have stated, flat-out, that they will agree to the pay cut that Walker wants. The entire debate now is over collective bargaining rights. In other words, Walker will not compromise. Period. And has threatened to start laying off workers.

You got that? Scott Walker would rather kick people out of their jobs than allow unions to be able to negotiate. As Rachel Maddow and other have pointed out, this is not about fiscal responsibility. It's about a naked power grab to gut one of the only means by which citizens have a voice.

3. Remember: if the majority Democratic Congress and the Democratic president are protested by the Tea Party, that's just patriots expressing the will of the people against a tyrannical government. However, if the majority Republican assembly in Wisconsin is protested by tens of thousands of workers, that's the slippery slope to anarchy.

4. Remember: if Republicans in the Senate abuse the rules that run their house by filbustering or putting individual holds on nearly every single bill or nomination from the House or the White House, refusing to even allow them to be considered, even if it affects the actual functioning of the nation, that's just brave men and women standing in the way of Democrats enslaving the American people. But if Democrats in Wisconsin deny the Assembly a quorum by leaving the state, that's just arrogant politicians refusing to do their jobs.

5. Remember, though: the non-public unions still have the right to go on strike, motherfuckers. You haven't taken that away yet.