Wormtongue is at it again.

The February wind bites the back of your neck like a feral beast scrounging on the carcass and bones of caught prey.  Upturning the collar of your jacket or the throwing on of your scarf only makes you all the more aware of the acute burning on your cheeks.  As sure as noon follows morning and midnight follows dusk, as sure as the motivated legion of protesters in Madison are to stay committed to a cause battling a totalitarian regime, as sure as the sun rising each day...

...so too is Cullen Werwie prone to talk out of his arse.

AP file photo of Cullen Werwie addressing Wisconsin citizens.

On Wisconsin, part one.

This week, Catalan at Heart presents 'On Wisconsin', a multi-part look at the budgetary imbroglio Wisconsin finds itself in.  By tracing the who, the how, the why and everything between, we will offer a seemingly tangential, always empirical and ultimately definitive look on the crisis.  With snark.

As far as Wisconsin political theatre goes, the drama from fourteen Senate Democrats refusing a call to quorum and escaping to Illinois to avoid a sure-to-lose vote on Governor Scott Walker's "budget repair bill" is without precedent.  While the resulting schism is not starved for analogues to earlier affairs -- race relations, the original turmoil over unions, Bush/Kerry, Laverne and Shirley ending -- the connectedness of today's society has artificially amplified the fervor to a new critical mass.

While feasible to have avoided or compartmentalized earlier affairs, one click of the mouse or opening of a vibrating phone or button press of a remote control assaults one with instant news and faster commentary.  With tweets and status alerts and wall postings now the stuff of nightmares, a relentless force hunting and chasing regardless of the speed undertaken to get away or the tactics performed to elude its clutches.

On progress, continued.

The Godwalker, from Thursday:

I'll always be willing to cooperate and communicate with the Democrats, but that has to happen at the state Capitol in Madison.

Today, by means of a voice vote, Senate Republicans summarily prevented any potential amendments to The Godwalker's bill from even being introduced, let alone voted on.  The same Senate Republicans who take their marching orders from The Godwalker.  It is with melancholy one observes 'always' apparently means 'one day' to The Godwalker.

On... progress?

Here's the thing: The Godwalker's bill was always going to pass the state Assembly.  After a grueling 61-hours of debate that started Tuesday afternoon, the bill's passing just after 1 a.m. on Friday morning was an inescapable eventuality.  With an Assembly of 60 Republicans, 38 Democrats and a lone Independent, not even a U.S. Army Psy-Ops team could have swung the vote enough to prevent its passing.  While the vote was 51-17, four Republicans broke party ranks, siding with each Democrat who voted.  Siding with each Democrat who voted, it is noted, because 28 total lawmakers did not.

28 didn't vote?  On a state bill that dominated national airwaves and the blogosphere much of the week?  What happened?

On contempt for our intelligence.

The Godwalker's been unequivocally talking shit again making public statements today:

I'd do almost anything to avoid laying people off.  We need to avoid those layoffs for the good of those workers.

You see, The Godwalker is more than willing--and one might dare say benevolent--to do anything to avoid layoffs except for the small, "modest" matter of excising the collective bargaining language from the bill that's a self-admitted part of a nationwide plan to marginalize unions.  He'd do anything but accept the concessions he's asked for from the unions for the good of the unions.  After proposing a bill which removes collective bargaining and reduces benefits for those workers, The Godwalker wants to avoid these layoffs for the good of those workers.  That makes sense.

On outright disinformation.

The Godwalker's spokesman, Cullen Werwie, through a statement on that whole switchboard snafu:

Throughout this call the Governor maintained his appreciation for and commitment to civil discourse. The phone call shows that the governor says the same thing in private as he does in public and the lengths that others will go to disrupt the civil debate Wisconsin is having.

Let's go to the transcript:

One man, two chats.

Last night, Governor Walker had what he himself a "fireside chat".  With Checkers on his lap, his wife Martha enkindling the dried wood in the fireplace and polio making sweet love to his central nervous system, The Godwalker honestly addressed Wisconsin citizens with a charisma not seen since Kennedy.  Within two minutes of speaking, virgin women listening across the state found themselves of child, the conception not an immaculate miracle but a run-of-the-mill act by a Republican governor staying the course on a wildly popular, will-of-the-people measure.

His voice smoothed the rough edge of the minority populus with the grace of Nancy Reagan and the passion of one thousand suns.  The fiends, those duplicitous fiends, those evil liberals and public-union supporters, were vanquished like a Tolkein villain.  No elf weaponry needed, no sons of Kings needed to coerce an army of dead, no rotund midgets with thick and foul hair needed to swing an axe.  No, words were the means to the end.