Tell me we're all hallucinating. Otherwise, how do you explain the feeling that the entire world has been turned upside down and that we all are really living in the monkey house?
Where to begin?
State Senate Republicans, trying to tighten the screws on their absent Democratic colleagues (if that word still applies), take another pound of flesh every day.
The GOP have impounded their paychecks, cut off their copy machine privileges, taken control of the Dems' staff, fined them $100 a day, and now have ordered them arrested, presumably to be brought back in irons and put into stocks or publicly flogged on the Capitol Square. The head of a statwide police organization calls the arrest order "insanely wrong."
Well, maybe the flogging won't be public. Maybe it will be in the Senate chambers, with guards at the Capitol doors to keep everyone but GOP legislators, lobbyists, and donors at bay. Sort of like Walker's budget speech.
Meanwhile, Wallker has decided he's above the law and can ignore a court order to let the public back into the Capitol. The Capitol is open, his administration says. No matter that it's about as open as East Germany was before the Berlin Wall fell. In fact, it may have been easier to get into the eastern sector than to get in to see your state legislator. Unfortunately, I am barely exaggerating.
We have legislators moving their offices outside to meet with constituents who can't get into the Capitol. We see David Obey, a 42-year member of Congress and former Wisconsin legislator, standing in line for an hour waiting to be frisked before he can enter. We see lawmakers climbing in through the windows. We see firefighters on an emergency call turned away.
And now we have an "expert" who testifies it might cost $7.5-million to clean up the Capitol marble after those nasty protesters put tape on the walls. Seven and a half million? Excuse me, but I think that may be a little inflated -- unless it's one of Walker's no-bid contracts with one of his fat cat contributors.
What is the end game here? Every day you think it can't possibly get any worse. And every day it gets worse.
Walker and the GOP legislators, working in concert, seem determined to bring down the Democrats and ram their bills through by any means necessary. They seem oblivious to the fact that they are losing the battle of public opinion in a big way. Even Republican pollsters now say the public is on the side of the workers, not Walker, in his union-busting efforts.
It is hard to know who has Walker's ear. But it is even harder to believe that he is operating single-mindedly on his own. Whoever it is that has acccess -- perhaps the lovely and long-suffering Tonette Walker? -- can suggest that it's time he end his alliance with the Mad Hatter and try to save what's left of his dignity.
If he doesn't wake up and smell reality, this is going to be a very long four years --or even one year, if he persists in this lunacy and is recalled.
It doesn't have to be that way. Walker can still save the situation, but he is probably the only one who can. And hanging on to that hope is clutching a frail reed indeed.