12.20

vermilion flycatcher

So do I talk about my health or the state of our nation? Which is less depressing? Let's go with my health, for two hundred, Alex.

I successfully cardioverted the day before yesterday. Might have been the third or fifth cardioversion in my life, I frankly don't remember now.

I was fully anesthetized this time, only took one kickstart and the magneto turned over. But I felt like shit afterwards, so weak, I couldn't walk ten feet or climb a foot. Have never felt so sapped in my life.

I called the doc yesterday and asked what gives? He had me come in. Turns out that my heart rate had plummeted off the heights and I was now officially in zombieland. We are adjusting the meds and planning the ablation, guess it is time. And the technology has improved drastically. Yippee!

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Now for the country. The President is in a conundrum, caught in a crucible between Senate Republicans who know what it takes to get a deal done and a GOP House membership with an outsized view of its power. Interestingly, moderate Republican House members pretty much all lost their seats in the last midterms so the people that are left tend to be much more hardcore rightwingers. So rather than a power struggle between red and blue it might be light red and dark red for the foreseeable future.

There was a deal yesterday to keep the government paid and rolling along  but the real people pulling Trump's strings said no go, that being Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter. Trump blew the whole thing up today.

I think that we will see more and more of this sort of thing from a wounded President and the republicans in Congress that will ultimately want to get itself re-elected. We are starting to see the schisms now on a daily basis, e.g. Lindsey Graham bucking the President on the Syria withdrawal. Not really sure who likes that deal besides, Trump, Putin and Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee? That is a real trio. Maybe Rand Paul, the Neville Chamberlain of our day. Certainly not James Mattis apparently. Like clockwork, the Kurds get screwed again. Like swallows to Capistrano. They threatened to let about 3500 Isis members out of jail today. We skeedadle out of Afghanistan next.

Both Senate Dems and Senate Repubs are too savvy to try to make a deal with a man who can't make a deal, with add so bad that he flips positions on a daily basis or according to whatever they are preaching on the Fox morning show that day. Let's build a wall alright. Build it around Washington D.C., don't let any of the politicians talk, tweet or utter a discouraging word, give them a time out to think about the absolutely dreadful job they have done, all of them and give the American public a week or two to enjoy their vacation and the New Years and then we can go back to whatever dread is awaiting us after the cool down. And if you have to pipe in some electronic dance music and a little molly to get them all to get along, well, so be it.