Dudes! (Shout out to Wisconsin) By: Mark W Adams

I do mind, the Dude minds.
This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man.

Yeah, it's been a while.  Glad to see you're still alive too.  I said (well, tweeted actually) "I'm out" if the Bush welfare program for millionaires continued, and it did, and I am ... or at least was ... out.  Can't get fired up defending the status quo that is masquerading as change.  Wasn't surprised, only mildly disappointed that the corporate kleptocracy continues it's hold, but encouraged that there still is some backbone to what used to be considered middle-class values and now is labeled liberal/progressive/leftist.

What can I say? I'm a Dude.  Not in a guy way, a Dude way:

A dude is an individual, typically male, particularly somebody
well dressed or who has never lived outside a big city. The female
equivalent, which is used less often, is "dudette" or "dudess". However,
"dude" has evolved to become more unisex to encompass all genders,^[3] and this was true even in the 1950s.^[4]

So yeah. Chicks can be Dudes.  They do it better sometimes. Think of it as an honorific, like when a female Midshipman graduates from Annapolis.  They still salute her and call her "sir."

Mind you, there are dudes that give other Dudes a bad name.  Surfer/Stoner dudes with generally no clue usually achieve full Dude-dom when enlightenment hits and they awaken from their slumber.  (It's in all the movies, that's why we love Dudes.  They ain't as stupid as they'd like to be. They even manage to save the universe while finding their ride, man.) It's Dude Time in America, or at least Madison, Wisconsin.

No, Wisconsin ain't Egypt - and the Midwest ain't the Middle East.  But after these pricks are done union-busting and ruling by decree in Madison, they're going to set their sights on Ohio.  And I think we might as well get ready.

WSJ: For a second straight day, thousands of Wisconsin public employees converged on the state capitol in Madison to protest Gov. Scott Walker's plan to close the state's projected $3.6 billion budget shortfall by increasing the cost of their pensions and health benefits and taking away their collective bargaining rights.

If they get away with this there in Wisconsin, they'll try it everywhere. For the honor of becoming a public employee you are no longer merely a public servant, but now are a public serf.

Now we don't dream of letting the military go on strike, of putting benefits, pay, sick leave and work hours up to a vote of the soldiers. Vital security stuff, right.  So their theory is that should also go for safety services like fire fighters and police.  Essential services shouldn't be allowed to even collectively bargain so goes the slippery slope -- just ask the Air Traffic Controllers who were the very first target of the ongoing Reagan Revolution.

Aren't all government services, "vital" in one way or another?  Where does one draw the line?  Newsflash: All Politics is about drawing lines.  All laws are subject to that imaginary line where a "reasonable man" believes the whole thing could fall off a cliff - and doesn't think we should cross that barrier.

"We're at a point of crisis," Mr. Walker told reporters.

You bet your sweet ass we are, Governor.  There are rules to this game, physical laws of the universe that the Wingnuts have forgotten along the way.  Rule one is don't piss off the vast apathetic hoards enough to put down their remote controls and put on their marching shoes.  The only thing that keeps the wall street types in enough caviar, cash and campaign donations to buy capital buildings throughout the land is the overwhelming numbers of people that simply don't give a crap.

As long as there's a couple of layers of flim-flam between "what they do" and"how does it affect me," these guy can get away with murder.  Sometimes literally. (Illegal wars, rendition and torture anyone?)

The bait-n-switch game continues indefinitely as long as there's an ample scoop of deniability.  But when they rub it in our faces, actually start doing the things proposed on their bumper-sticker slogans and focus group tested sound-bytes - those simpleton fixes for complicated policy considerations masked as  middle-class panaceas funded by the Fortune 500 (who didn't get that way by looking out for the little guy) - the sleepers will awaken. 

"Oh no, really. All those things that are good for Big Oil, Big Telecom, and Halliburton are good for you too." We've always knew that was crap, just like we all know TV wrestling is fake, faith healers and magicians stage their "miracles" with smoke, mirrors and plants in the audience, and that snake oil claiming to make you bigger and last longer really is oil of snake. 

Dudes will be dudes, and will look the other way when it suits them. Sometimes they get caught looking the wrong way, cuz dudes can be, and often are distracted. But they know what they want. Simple creatures with simple desires.

Sure, there's always going to be that 20% of the idiot-cracy that buys into the crap, where belief is stronger than any factually based argument.  There will always be birthers and flat-earthers, those rubes born every minute who paid full price for Sarah Palin's second book.  But just because they got motivated enough to take advantage of an exhausted, laurel-resting majority that just wanted to get back to not caring anymore and win some power back in an off-year election marred by low-turnout and hyperventilating wackos, that doesn't mean they can get away with screwing us over. 

We all had teachers we liked. If we didn't, we're stupid dumbfucks who can't get enough of Limbaugh and Beck, which explains a lot.  You don't screw with teachers, or the guys who collect the trash, fill the potholes, build the bridges, keep our water clean and our street safe.  You don't do that, even if you think unions aren't just a collection of working men and women, but some evil cabal sent from Stalin's grave.  You don't do that without pissing enough of us off to start marching and protesting and ... voting.

So, to all you dudes out there who never erased me from your RSS feeds, or still pick this thing up via Twitter and the dreaded Facebook.  What Up?  Where do we sign up?  When do we stand up?

Who do we follow?