Sunday morning and plenty of favorable signs: sunny skies; cool breeze; birds chirping; strong coffee and time for a leisurely scan of the day’s news.
    FISA articles? Not today. Campaign update? Nah, tomorrow is soon enough. Instead, a broader spectrum of  topics and possibly an injection of humor.
    Carl Hiaasen’s column in The Miami Herald, for example; surely he who brought us characters like the bouncer who put a roach in his yogurt so he could sue; and the former governor living in the Everglades who subsists on road kill; and the yahoo winners of the state lottery who scheme to deprive the cashier at the 7/11 from her third party winner ticket – well, surely his column will be good for an edgy laugh?
    Alas, not today. Hiaasen is angry -- the Decider has decided, through his puppets at EPA and the courts, that it’s A-OK to discharge and pump huge volumes of tainted water through the Everglades. Too grim to think about, triggering bad memories of Coconut Grove canals  in 2000, awash in filth for days (a sewage treatment plant break) as innocent manatees swam in and out of bacteria-laden waters. Silly of us, really, to think that we could protect these gentle mammals if only we could impose fines high enough to convince motorboat maniacs to raise their propellers and observe low speeds at low tide.
    Moving right along.  In the Times, Maureen Dowd fails to amuse, again, by offering one more of her insipid Francophile odes to brittle sophistication. Never mind. Frank Rich delivers excellent analysis, as always. And Tom Friedman should be good, because he usually has something not only of real interest, but also of some optimism  to say about the environment and green possibilities… But not today -- Tom is pointing out that The Decider is not only unwilling to endorse an extension of tax credits for alternate energy source development but, instead, promises to veto it.
    What about the hope of expanding and modernizing the railroads? Didn’t I see a headline somewhere that seemed to signal good news? Yes, on Kos, in a blog from yesterday entitled “Travelers Shift to Rail as Cost of Fuel Rises,” written by Ms. Laura… But wait, what’s this amidst the encouraging news of increased ridership and revenue?
“Last year Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, and others won overwhelming Senate approval for a bill that would offer the states 80 cents for every 20 cents they spend on new intercity passenger rail service, the same as the match offered for highway projects. The House passed a bill with the same provision by a veto-proof margin earlier this month. The bill will soon go to a conference committee, but the White House is threatening to veto it because it wants the passenger rail system to be turned over to private operators.”
    The Decider is at it again, stopping viable rail development in its tracks (pardon the pun) by insisting on privatization.
    I give up and head back to TPM. And there, front and center, is news of the blockade The Decider is trying to initiate against Iran, undoubtedly as the first step toward another peremptory, and ill-conceived military action…. 
    How naïve I’ve been. For quite some time,  I’ve thought The Decider’s malevolent influence was more or less at an end -- that he was frittering away his remaining time in office by spending way too many tax dollars going back and forth to Crawford, and boondoggling, internationally.
Why can’t The Decider be like The Scarlet Pimpernel?  So that we, too, could say:
    “They seek him here; they seek him there;
    Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
    Is he in Heaven? Or is he in Hell?
    That elusive Scarlet Pimpernel.”