Who Let The Dogs Out?

The Facebook group that prays for Obama's death reached 1 million "friends".

The RNC is accusing Obama of not considering any black nominees for the Supreme Court. This has already gone viral. I guess Judge Sears doesn't qualify as black. She's actually a friend of Clarence Thomas so maybe that disqualifies her.

Kris Kobach, the man who drafted the Arizona anti-immigrant law, is running for Secretary of State in Kansas. An old protege of John Ashcroft, who came out and backed the law,Kobach has secured a contract from the state of Arizona to train police in how to recognize illegal immigrants. He also put in the bill that citizens can sue Arizona if the law isn't enforced. His front group is already set up to act as attorneys for the citizens. The C in Conservative stands for cash.

Republicans are going nuts over the law. Even Johnny Reb, Bob McDonnell, the Governor of Virginia, has condemned it. Former Governor Ridge has condemned it. Karl Rove has condemned it because he knows that his 40-year Reich depended on the Ladino vote. Bob Barr has condemned it for its violations of civil liberties. Barry Goldwater's biographer, Lee Edwards over at Heritage claims Barry would have condemned it. Jeb Bush has dropped everything to race up to Washington to lobby for immigration reform. The GOP sees the fastest growing minority in America escaping from their grasp.

A sign of this was Drudge started the morning with a big photo spread of millions of demonstrators and claiming Hispanics would be marking May 1 in 70 cities. Within an hour everything disappeared concerning the Hispanic marches. Los Angeles is reporting they expect the march there to far exceed the 2007 march when they were demanding immigration reform. I'm hoping they are a rousing success and have demonstrators who are carrying arms in the open. That would make the white open carry geezers have a heart attack. Let's see what kind of coverage they get from Fox--same as teabaggers?

The GOP quickly morphed into Flip Wilson and "The Devil Made Me Do it" excuse. John McCain led the pact with Sarah Palin not far behind saying that it was the fault of the Obama Administration and Congress not to enforce the laws that made Arizona to adopt the statute. When pressed on when is the right time to pass immigration reform, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner said it couldn't be done this year. Lindsey Graham, once a supporter of comprehensive reform, claims it can't be done until 2012.

President Obama in Iowa told a townhall meeting what his basic outline is for immigration reform and said that it had to be done with Republican support. He also thought the will wasn't there in Congress. However, today Senator Harry Reid and Charles Schumer indicated they would move forward, even without Republican support.

ARIZONA ICE TEA wants everyone to know they have nothing to do with the state of Arizona. The CEO of the New York-based company claims they are being slaughtered by the Arizona boycott. So buy one of their Arnold Palmers--half lemonade, half ice tea--to rectify the problem.

The Mayor of Phoenix is suing the state because he says the city can not afford to lose another $300 million like they did during the whole flap over Martin Luther King Day. In 2008, Arizona took in $18.5 billion in tourist dollars and even a drop in a percentage of this will severely hurt the state. Mexican tourists contribute a few billion of this.

Texas Republican Debbie Riddle is introducing an identical law in Texas. Tennessee Republicans are doing the same with a birther bill thrown in. Oklahoma legislators said they will not because their 2007 anti-immigrant law cost the state $1.8 billion in revenues.

Shakira and Linda Ronstadt are showing up for a concert in Arizona and Shakira promises to make statements against the law while there. But remember Jan Brewer says she was chosen by God to lead Arizona during this trying time.

A Texas congressman said that Barack Obama was a judgement of God on the United States. So, I guess that means Mike Huckabee is right,"America is a miracle of God's." So Obama must be the blessing. Abraham Lincoln once commented that he didn't worry about whether God was on his side but whether he was on God's side.

Am I good or not? Ben Nelson did admit today he talked to Berkshire Hathaway about their views on the financial reform bill's regulation of derivatives and they said they were against. Ben was just protecting the $6 million I reported yesterday. Kudos to Ezra Klein, who reported what I said in-house here yesterday--the Republicans caved on filibustering the bill because Mitch McConnell wanted to go to the Kentucky Derby and didn't want late night voting to interrupt his plans. And, if you know the Senate, you know that's true. You have to have a real sense of priorities.

How did "Drill, Baby,Drill" turn out? Actually, quite fantastic, the first such off-coast well has been producing 5,000 barrels a day. The only problem is that it's all leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. This has prompted Governor Crist to reverse his position on off-shore drilling; the President to call the governors of all states near the spill and declaring the Administration might put the whole policy on hold.

You know the Right has gone coco-loco when Glenn Beck criticized President George W. Bush for being a "progressive". He also complained about Arizona being criticized for adopting Nazi-like laws, saying this diminished the crimes of Hitler. It seems to me he does that already by likening President Obama to Hitler.

The financial reform debate is actually just heating up. Goldman Sachs and the banks have unloaded millions to be funnelled through some of the front organizations that handled the healthcare reform debate. So, watch for the teabaggers to get their marching orders soon. Frank Luntz' interim memo is to aim at wavering Democrats by saying the bill is bad for them. We'll wait for the second memo when the debate gets in the open.

There are two things in my mind that one should watch--the regulations of derivatives and the consumer protection agency. There will be a full-court press to water these provisions down. And root for Senator Bernie Sanders' amendment to cap credit card rates at 15% like credit unions. As he pointed out three American banks issue two-thirds of all credit cards.

It's nice to see the head of the AFL-CIO Richard Trumpka out and about. Today's he's marching on Wall Street. But Trumpka has been the most visible AFL-CIO chief since Lane Kirkland and George Meany. It's good to see their public presence.

Barack Obama fled the capital to visit with the white folks in Iowa. After rhubarb pie (my favorite) and coffee, he held a townhall meeting to a thunderous reception. During the long presentation, he flagged the next political debate in the country. He warned the audience that we will be forced to make tough decisions in the months and years ahead. He emphasized that people who want government to do things must be aware of what these activities cost. He pointed out that his three year freeze on discretionary spending and some other measures he's taken will pay for everything during his first term, including the stimulus package. But he warned that the structural deficit he inherited will take years to address. He pointed out why the belief you can cut foreign aid simply doesn't touch a drop of our deficit. He emphasized that the deficit was composed of equal parts Social Security, Medicare and the Defense Budget.

Barney Frank is convening his own study on the deficit and explicitly aiming at the Defense Budget. The problem with the military/ terrorism budget is that it has doubled since 1998 and is considerably higher than during the Cold War when we had conventional enemies. Barney Frank is bragging his group is bipartisan but this means he has included the CATO Institute, which proposes cutting defense in half. At least, it's not the House Republican Plan to privatize social security and Medicare.

Doubts have arisen about the Deficit Commission appointed by President Obama because it is composed of Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats and not progressives. Erskine Bowles, a former Clinton official, said the Commission would be going after social security and Medicare like gangbusters. With the exception of Andy Stern, I don't see anyone including military expenditures in the mix. And that would be dreadfully wrong.

The great state of Oklahoma--where the wind...--is being sued for its mandatory sonogram anti-abortion bill by physicians. For the past year, women's rights have taken a beating in the U.S. of A. where dozens of states have been inching to restricting access to abortion and contraceptives. That's why I thought the Iranian police chief who said he would arrest women with suntans might have been from Arizona. Florida just passed yesterday by three votes a bill that would force women, even those raped, to watch an ultrasound of the fetus before agreeing to any abortion procedure. The feminist should mount up for one last ride--against the American Taliban.

But Oklahoma, home of Dr and Senator Tom Coburn, who opposed the healthcare bill, seems to have set the record for budget shortfall this year. As a result, they have dropped to 49 in healthcare--just one step ahead of Haley Barbour.

Tom Tancredo finally discovered the truth. Obama is deliberately hiding his birth certificate to drive conservatives nuts and make them look like they're crazy to the public.

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.