Can't Lie -- That just makes it worse.

It's bad on every side but I wish that our side
wasn't feeding the "I am Stupid" fire.

The mess in Wisconsin keeps getting messier.  Stupid people on both sides get recorded doing and saying stupid things. The Governor gets "crank-called." A doctor hands out hundreds of notes and says that many protesters he met with seemed to "suffer from stress."

"Some people think it's a nod-and-a-wink thing, but it's not," Sanner said. "One of the biggest stresses in life is the threat of loss of income, loss of job, loss of health insurance. People have actually been getting ill from this, or they can't sleep."

Sorry, bud. When you are handing out absentee excuses en masse, you are not being a trustworthy doctor, any more than the ones who prescribed way too many painkillers for Rush Limbaugh. The protestors tell their schools they're "sick." The lack of teachers forces many schools to close. So the schools responded.

Workers were told they would need to provide a form from a medical professional for any absence after Feb. 16, according to Ken Syke, a spokesman for the school district.

Protesters in Madison who obtained medical excuse slips to cover their absences from work, and the doctors who issued them, are likely to be subjected to more intensive examinations.

Well, duh.

Look, people. Call it a personal day and go protest, or call in sick and stay home.  Don't call in "sick" and then go marching through the Capitol waving your hands and banging a drum. (Do you know how stupid that looked?) Call a strike, do it up front, in the open and without suberterfuge. If you get on TV, answer the question simply and succinctly, don't just start screaming slogans. (Do you know how stupid THAT looked?) If you really can't afford to be docked a day's pay and feel that this obviously transparent line of BS will cover you, then perhaps you'd better rethink how the public will view you because you're feeding the beast that will devour you.

At the very least, don't brag about it publicly and dare the school system to do something about it. We teachers, and those we have "helping us" need to be the voice of reason.

The questions come easily to a TV watching public and if you are publicly protesting, that who you are trying to talk to. I have heard/read variations of these and other, very important, PR and policy questions

• Should I believe you now if you claim you are being treated unfairly, or that you need a raise, or that the student-teacher ratio is too excessive? 
• Should I believe the Governor who is calm and dispassionate or the teachers who are comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini (didn't any of those teachers study history?) or comparing Wisconsin to Egypt and Tunisia (didn't any teachers have a sense of perspective?) 
• Can I trust the teacher who blatantly lies in this fashion? 
• Do I really want this kind of person to coagulate into a mob for collective bargaining or have they already become a mob? 
• Who invited Jimmy Hoffa to this party, anyway? He doesn't represent a public union and probably just wants to become nationally relevant again.

Most importantly,

• What is your word worth if this is its standard?

Quotes from journal-sentinel.