The Billiken's Bluff

Calling all doctors, all medicine men, voodoo doctors, all the king's horses and all the king's men, every , brain surgeon and oncologists, all loop holes and legal impasses, and if all else fails call on a cryogenic deep freeze!!!









The smell of fresh tar smeared on a roof on an unnaturally warm day in December.




Which is to say something smelled funny on Wednesday and it has legs, staying power, permeating the entire block.





Lance the boil, dig deeper.

Let's do the math. 50 states. 51 Democratic Senators, 49 Republican Senators. 28 Republican Governors, 22 Democratic Governors. 13 States that have both a Democratic Senator and a Republican Governor.



Yes, I took the time to compile this information into excel, but it was worth it to sooth suspicion. When I heard this story I assumed there would be far fewer states that fit the criteria of having both a Dem. Senator and a Rep. Governor, the only doomsday scenario that could potentially wrest control of the Senate from the Blue States. If the odds were stacked against this scenario then there would be implications that Senator Johnson's stroke may have had other hands involved than those of the Almighty. Instead the odds of a Dem. Senator being from same state as Rep. Governor are about 1 in 4. Your average NFL parlay football odds, i.e., you'll probably lose but it's not impossible.




But there are other metrics, other limiting factors that make Tim Johnson not the most likely candidate to be felled by a stroke or rather arteriovenous malformation (AVM). History of congenital conditions. His age, only 59. This isn't a conspiracy, probably, but someone should ask these questions, crunch these numbers. The media, positioning themselves in the spineless center per the usual, can't, won't, is too afraid to explore what everyone is thinking, if only in passing. I discussed this in September.

This seems like a storyline lifted right out of Hollywood. I think something like this happened in The Net, starring Sandra Bullock and Dennis Miller.



And if Senator Tim Johnson dies the deciding vote on all legislation would be cast by VP Dick Cheney. That sounds impossibly impossible. And yet we were close to that becoming a reality this week and may still be.

And also testing the US's medical might is the push to keep The Blind Sheikh alive.

ABC is reporting that notorious al-Qaeda spiritual leader Omar Abdel-Rahman -- who's been cited as an inspiration by Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders -- may be near death. The 68-year-old Abdel-Rahman, convicted in 1996 of conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks, The FBI fears that Abdel-Rahman's death could trigger retaliatory attacks on American targets by al-Qaeda:

The FBI bulletin reminded authorities that the sheikh had previously called for reprisal attacks in the case of his death in prison. And Rahman has said:

"My Brothers. If they kill me, which they will certainly do - hold my funeral and send my corpse to my family, but do not let my blood be shed in vain. Rather, extract the most violent revenge, and remember your brother who spoke the truth and died for the will of God. The Mujahid Sheikh Omar Abdel al Rahman. In the name of God the kind and merciful."

This might have had a little more urgency, panic, and mania had I written it on Wednesday or Thursday but I faced a few impasses of my own.

Happy Holidays.