One Day Before The Operation

Not as dramatic as Three Days Before The Shooting, but tomorrow at dawn I'll see whether my African-American female doctor can restore the sight in my left eye. She has the most amazing hands I've ever felt--she'll probably coax the sight back. And her sidekick is Chinese. I imagine my brother-in-law would run screaming down the street seeing both of the doctors. He's still afraid Obama is going to take his guns and he is furious at illegal immigrants but couldn't answer me when I asked him if they were deported, who would do his lawn on Marco Island. The pre-op exam at Johns Hopkins was spooky-another Doctor, who I believe was a Gypsy, rattled off how many times I had malaria, amoebic dysentary, and proclaimed my cardiac event two years ago a massive case of heart burn. That's before I started talking. Maybe the CIA is doing something useful like keeping tabs on my medical history since she could not have gotten it from any recent doctor of mine. Actually I'm confident the Great Dr. Scott will pull it off.

If America does decline in my lifetime, we might start the date of the decline with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, a thoroughly shabby affair with everyone behaving badly. I can't imagine someone spending nine years researching this episode but Ken Gormley did and has offered up about 800 pages in The Death of American Virtue: Clinton Versus Starr (Crown, 2010). All the seedy details are here with some of the tragic aftermath for players like Webb Hubbell and Jim McDougall. I urge no one be sucked into reading this tome because it gets addictive just like the real saga itself and you could spend your time more constructively thinking about the paintings of Agnes Martin.

After the impeachment, the timeline would go something like this: the 2000 Presidential elections and the Brooks Brother riots in Miami to stop the vote counting; 9/11; and the multi-year wind-up to the Iraq War; Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans, and the vaporising of the global economy in 2008. Rush Limbaugh ridiculed Obama for calling this the lost decade. For Rush and Drudge and the right-wing echo chamber it was boom times, but for our country it was a time, as George Will wrote today, our luck ran out.

CPAC, the conservative political action committee, starts its meetings today with a unique co-sponsor--the John Birch Society. I guess now Bill Buckley is dead conservatives can feel free again to swim among the conspiracy theories. The meeting started off with Marco Rubio, conservative candidate for the Republican Senate primary in Florida, attacking Obama for using teleprompters ,while he used one himself. South Carolina's neo-confederate Senator Jim DeMint barely could contain himself when Rubio spoke.

There are wonderful workshops like "We need a Catholic teaparty." and " Nullification when we are faced with tyranny." Ken Blackwell, the Attorney-General in Ohio during the 1984 presidential elections, lamented "anti-Christian pogroms in the United States". Richard Viguerie slapped down the Mount Vernon Declaration of yesterday as "pablum". And for younger conservatives there are game rooms where you can punch Harry Reid and take target practice against Nancy Pelosi. They expect that celebrities like Joe the Plumber might surprise the younger folks during their games.

Yesterday, the Washington Post printed Justice Scalia's response to a screenwriter trying to work up a teabagging script, which would lead to nullification and secession. Scalia politely answered that he could be of no help on this issue since the Civil War ended the issue for the Supreme Court once and for all.

A South Carolina Republican has introduced a bill in that state's legislature to refuse any payments in dollars in the state. Rather the only currency would be gold and silver coins. Of course, this is all unconstitutional but when have conservatives cared about the constitution.

The Senate Republicans have been meeting with lobbyists to tell them they are even trying to kill a stripped down Jobs Bill because Harry Reid decided the larger one had too many tax breaks for the wealthy, corporations and those with large estates. Lobbyists expressed anger that their work had been in vain.

Brarack Obama finally had to create a Deficit Commission by executive order because the original Senate Republicans who sponsored the original bill had voted against it. His first nominees were former Republican Alan Simpson and Clinton administration official Erskine Bowles. Simpson sniped that if his party had been interested in deficits they could have vetoed something when they held the Presidency for eight years and Congress for six. Alan Simpson always had a great sense of humor. When challenged about a past youthful indiscretion in an election, he responded," I said I had experience. Some of it is good and others bad."

If you want a mind-boogling read, go into Andrew Sullivan's the Daily Dish and scroll down to Marc Thiessen's explanation to a Catholic news service how torture is in line with Catholic teachings and the theory of Just War. No one ever expects the Spanish Iniquisition! But even the Catholic Church has changed its tune since then. Apparently, Thiessen forgot.

Liz Cheney, the daughter of Darth Vader, now says that Clinton's trial of the first Twin Tower bombers in New York City subsequently caused 9/11.

Meanwhile, the Black Man continues to clean up with the capture of several of the top military leaders of the Taliban and more executions of Al Qaeda leaders by drones.

The Republicans continue in high dungeon with a concerted attack on the first anniversary of the stimlus package. As I've written before, the stimulus package was not big enough but was the only one possible given the politics of the time. Republicans, while bragging on stimulus projects in their own districts, claim the stimulus actually caused job loss. In fact, it saved or created 2 million jobs and will end up preserving 2.5 million jobs according to the Congressional Budget Office. But apparently the constant attacks are paying off. The Tea Baggers are now holding rallies that the stimulus actually caused the Recession. The Republicans are banking on people forgetting their own, pivotal role in creating what would have been the next Great Depression. Maybe with enough lying, they will convince the voters.

Meanwhile in the great Commonwealth of Virginia, our new Republican Governor has decided to gut educational programs for k-12 and eliminate mental health programs--started after the VTech killings--all for the purpose of saving the slight lowering of the car tax two years ago. No other purpose. Virginia will also be the first state to challenge in court the EPA's authority to monitor carbon emissions. Why? Because they can.

The great deconstruction continues. Tim Pawlenty, the Governor of Minneapolis and a born-again creationist, wants to project his national image by completely gutting the state's welfare and educational system. The local papers in Minnesota have warned voters that the very high standard of life in the state would be permanently damaged by these actions. Minnesota has always bragged about their enlightened policies to health care, education and mental illness. All of this built up over generations would be completely destroyed for one man's national ambitions.

The new Republican governor of New Jersey, Karl Rove's buddy, aims to make the state a model for the South. Without any consideration of alternatives, he has taken an ax to the state's budget with a special emphasis on eliminating education.

Finally, congratulations to Rachel Maddow for being named the Commencement speaker at Smith College. The announcement was greeted by shrieks of joy by the Senior class. Rachel Maddow is one of the few fresh faces in our media that provides sound and thoughtful analysis with a sense of humor. She deserves all good things.