Pa Rock's Ramble has a great op ed on Wisconsin:

[PinkTiger]

Madison, Wisconsin - the New Cairo!
by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Thousands upon thousands of ordinary people are toppling dictators and fascist leaders across the Middle East in a democratic pageant that is very reminiscent of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block in the 1980's. And while Republicans in America are always quick to bloviate over the fall of communism, a feat they somehow credit to Reagan, they are much less eager to embrace this new round of democratic turbulence.

Republicans, you see, just can't get too comfortable with the notion of poor folks putting their wealthy oligarch masters on the run.

It's no secret that the conservative element of the Republican Party, an element that sadly includes most of the party, hates unions. Their philosophical ancestors, the 19th century robber barrons, fought the rise of unions, fair wages, and even public schooling (which they saw as a sneaky way to drain the labor pool of child factory workers), and they regard today's struggling unions as an unnecessary evil that FDR foisted upon American business.

Wisconsin has the rotten luck to have a new Republican governor coupled with a Republican majority in the state legislature. Wisconsin has a fairly liberal history, and even when it elected Repbulicans in the past, they weren't the ignorant kind. Robert M. "Fighting Bob" LaFollette leaps to mind - now there was a Republican (later a Progressive) of whom we all could be proud!

More at:
http://pa-rocks-ramble.blogspot.com/2011/02/madison-wisconsin-new-cairo.html