According to Tom Keane in the Boston Globe

Jeb Bush wants to run for President..."Joyfully". Now Keane uses this to contrast Jeb's joyful aspirations with the failure Hubert Humphrey's "Politics of Joy" back in 1968...fair enough though I've always maintained Humphrey's optimism is pretty much what kept him competitive that Fall. Anyhow I'll only add with regards to Jeb that anyone as entitled, manipulative and prone to unobstructed power worship as the Former Governor of Florida has a whole lot to be joyful about... And who knows maybe he will be the First Member of the Bush Family whose smile will not chill the blood of everyone within receiving distance, ya never know.

There is a lot of palaver out there...

to the effect that Benjamin Netanyahu is about to go over the hump in the upcoming Israeli Parliamentary Elections. I for one don't believe it. Netanyahu has a Nixonian quality for survival and retention in office, if his coalition is frayed well that is normal state of Israeli politics all it really means is that his next coalition will be even more tattered and dubious than whatever he has at the moment. No...at the moment Israeli politics is a bit of an anxious void, peacenikery hasn't yielded results but war has revealed at best only a limited long term utility...into this void, Netanyahu steps every time. To knock someone like him out of office you need simple powerful ideas, a coalition to back said program up...and a credible Prime Minister Designate...I don't see any of the like on the horizon. Advantage Netanyahu...

Happy Chanukkah...

Merry Christmas and a Joyous Kwanzaa to One and All. I am gonna go out on a limb here and suggest...modestly and humbly that despite a year of woe and tumult, we have much to be thankful for as we swing into the Yuletide Season. Well anyway, Happy Holidaze to All...

A Certain Columnist in Today's Sunday Globe

asserted dreamily that Mitt Romney might win in 2016 if he ran as a "Moderate Republican". Never mind the fact that Mitt Romney if he ran would have his living guts torn out by Jeb Bush, never mind the plain fact that a person who is even mildly pro-Darwin in terms of natural selection CANNOT be nominated by the GOP any longer...no forget all that, when is someone gonna finally get up the courage to tell the Boston Globe that Moderate Republicanism has been dead for twenty years? Anyone? Anyone at all? PLEASE??? You see this is the reason why I didn't want Charlie Baker to win, it only enables the Boston Globe to go on fortifying it's debilitating institutional fantasy that moderate republicanism lives and is a power sufficient to invite bargaining in good faith. Hey listen I'm the white liberal in this fight, I'd love to live in a world where there was a place at the table for the John Volpes and Kenneth Keatings of the GOP but those days are over, Reagan, La Famiglia Arbusto & the Family Research Council KILLED moderate republicanism dead! No amount of denial, delusion and projection is ever gonna change that fact. Maybe someday on the other side of all this gruesome political excess there will be new era of bipartisanship and a flowering of moderate republicanism...but likely none of this will happen in the span of our lifetimes. I do not say that because I am somehow invested in perpetuating the current system which is corrupt and intellectually dishonest but wallowing in delusion is no adequate response in any manner shape or form. Seriously, The Boston Globe needs to wake up and instead of running some breathless "DEATH OF LIBERALISM" obit every time some democrat gets defeated out in Lower Slobovia....maybe someone down on Morrissey Blvd can push away from their desk, think and little bit a give us a genuinely thoughtful piece on the Death of Moderate Republicanism. Cuz...it is needed.

Yanqui Come Back....

I gotta say I am loving post-midterms In-Your-Face Barack Obama...he has caught on to the manifest utility of "The Jacksonian Vertical Stroke", ergo swift surprising decision that acts in the Public Interest. In this case, he extended diplomatic recognition to Cuba and confounded three generations of Wingnuts All over the Nation...Marco Rubio could hardly sputter out the word "Munich" and Jeb Bush looked like a deer in the proverbial headlights... I LOVE IT! More Mister President MORE!!! The plain necessity of extending diplomatic recognition to Cuba has been obvious for years, this improves our position thru out Latin America and even gives the Monroe Doctrine a good shot in the arm. And besides Castro's socialist plantation regime can't last forever whatever comes next in Havana I'd rather our diplomats were there to broker the process than our troops.

So Jeb wants in....

Look like Jeb Bush is gonna run for President in 2016, all signs point to it including that irritating look of baffled self righteousness her perfected as Governor of Florida. This is gonna be a biiiiig reality check for Mitt Romney and to a lesser extent Chris Christie. Romney in particular has been floating little trial balloons all year long via his various paid toadies...but Jeb piling in means La Famiglia Arbusto is gonna call in every one of Romney's markers from 2008 AND 2012....by the time they are done with him he'll leave that room with his suit in tatters and his pockets turned out. I think we can pretty much stick a fork in Brand Romney at long last. Mitt might make an interesting Vice Presidential prospect for Bush...(he'll never actually get selected, the Bush Family isn't that stupid), or Secretary of Transportation or maybe Mitt will end up a bootblack in Jeb's notional West Wing. Some of the other GOP prospective candidates have to weight the Bush family's notorious fundraising prowess and just possibly move their own timetables up...assuming they have the guts to take Jeb on and I suspect more than a few won't jump in when push comes to shove. I urge my readers NOT to buy into any columnista fantasists who gaseously assert that the Tea Partei Base will come out hard against Jeb Bush when the time comes, they may well make some noises or back another candidate, but La Famiglia Arbusto has been manipulating conservatives with consummate ease for decades now. There have been a few bumps on the way notably Pat COUGH Buchanan in 1992....but the tea partei will be properly leashed when the time comes for Jeb's apotheosis never fear. Anyone who does run against Jeb is strictly warned to forget about attacking him on character issues or the like, The Bushes are one and all gymnasts when it comes to dodging allegations and then using said charges as an excuse to unleash all sorts of attacks on their opponents. This is another move they have down to a science believe me. No...you have to engage them on the level of ideology, which because the are so transparently selfish is inevitably their weakest link. But even there, they are slippery...with Jeb like his brother you have to go after concrete things in a simple stark way, remind auds incessantly that the Bush Brothers have caused more problems than they can ever hope to solve in ten presidential terms. Keep it simple keep it real in other words.

Kudos to the US Senate

For confirming Dr. Murthy as US Surgeon General, after only a wait of One Full Year...This is Democracy in Action!! The Good Doctor enters his office just in time for the Ebola Outbreak to Kill Us All, oh wait...that was the "October Apocalypse" per Fox News....never mind. *** Mitch McConnell is no doubt fuming because the confirmation can about due to some botched procedural shenanigans from Senator Ted Cruz....allegedly that sort of thing will come to an end come next January....allegedly. *** Frankly if was Mitch McConnell (a pompous humorless senatorial gasbag who makes Hiram Johnson look like Richard Pryor) I'd watch my back...lotsa GOP radicals in the US Senate with very safe seats who luv to play to the base and they'll do it at his expense...

Serious question for all seven of my readers...

Doesn't Former Governor Bill Weld rate a pension from the Commonwealth of some type? Feel franchise to respond factually in the now open Comments Field. If Weld doesn't get a pension then maybe the State Legislature should intervene because Bill has come back to Massachusetts with empty pockets and time on his hands & has registered as a LOBBYIST on Beacon Hill! What he drank up all his money on the Upper West Side of Manhattan...or did Susan Roosevelt rook him good in the dee-vorce? What ever it is, there is something distinctly gamey about a Former Governor of the Commonwealth Lobbying the Commonwealth on behalf of any private entity. Bad enough ex state legislators do, you can make an argument though it's mostly what they did when they were in office anyway... But a Former Governor is supposed to uphold certain standards yo'. Ah but this is Bill Weld we are talking about, a famous enabler of the Bulger Crime Family and the Beloved Favorite of Boston Globe Columnists near and far. If Bill Weld announced for Public Exploder in Cambridge Ma, Morrissey Blvd would shudder, endorse his boney ass and flop over on it's stomach within twenty four hours. The man's Svengali like hold on the imaginations of certain local journalists is as firm as ever despite all those gin martinis.

So if Jeb Bush runs for President in 2016...

The American Bishops will all Get On His Case about his Loud & Profane Advocacy of the Death Penalty...right? Or does the RCC's "Respect For Life" meme really end in the parking lot of Planned Parenthood? I mean Jeb IS a Catholic after all, a convert seemingly aware of all the ins and out of Catholic Doctrine, you would thing the Bishop's might have a problem with the Former Governor of Florida's stance on capital punishment. Well we all know the answer to that one, pigs will fly before the Bishops mete out to Jeb ONE TENTH of the ration of shit they served up to John Kerry in 2004. Still...I'd like to see it...just for the spectacle of Jeb's self righteous mealy mouthed excuses....

The IOC...

has officially upgraded surfing and skateboarding to the level of Olympiad Sports come the 2024 Olympics, which by coincidence is the very Olympics Boston is so foolishly bidding on. Now...Skateboarding I can see...there is a dandy skatepark over by Lexington High School with plenty of room for teevee cameras and bleachers for the aud. But Surfing? Where the hell are they gonna catch the appropriate waveage CARSON BEACH? That will be a long wait for any board worthy swells believe me. Serious surfers laugh at the boomers on the East Coast, I myself have rarely seen any surfers at all in all my beach travels of fifty two years save at Hampton Beach NH and that was in October. Add these potential indignities to the lengthening list of reasons why the Olympics should pass on Boston. B

Torture Reportage...

This is the sort of blog post I know I will live to regret...but kudos to the Senate Intelligence Committee for releasing today's six hundred page report on the use of torture in the US lead "war on terror". Probably this will prove an intolerable provocation world wide....but a functioning democracy intent on perpetuating itself must be rigorously honest with respect to it's actions and policies. Said torture report falls squarely within the necessity for democratic honesty and transparency. Nine tenths of the ills of this republic stem from the desperate need to maintain secrecy over fallacious and self destructive projects and initiatives...I agree with Senator Feinstein when she asserts the release of the torture report will make it more difficult for the US Government to take this malevolent shortcut in the future. Likely all this High Mindedness will come back to haunt me, (or it would if anyone read any of this mishaugas). Then again, there are people in this country who cannot be reconciled with the Government's power of taxation who themselves have not problem one with the the Government's power to torture....

"Marky Mark" wants a Pardon...

Mark Wahlberg, actor, rapper, model, upstanding citizen these days at least, wants a Pardon from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for an assault conviction he ran up back in 1988 when he was sixteen years old. Was Marky Mark a lurid nasty vicious little droogie when he was a wee Justin? Hell Yeah. Has he cleaned up his act since then become a model citizen an exemplary father & a good person? By all accounts yes. Should be be Pardoned? Hell No. Look, the Power to Issue Pardons is designed to correct injustice...it ought to be applied therefore sparingly & judiciously. In certain cases to advance the cause of justice it can be used as an inducement to testimony to secure convictions against criminal highbinders.....but no one in their right minds sees The Pardon as way for a reformed miscreant To Feel Good About Themselves. And anyway Mark was violent racially colonized little bastard once, (he has outgrown these follies so I read), Eric Garner and Michael Brown's alleged crimes were small beers by comparison and they paid with their lives. Mark Wahlberg needs to chalk it up to experience and consider himself lucky.

Right on Schedule....

Jeb Bush is making polite passive aggressive noises about running for President in 2016. I'd urge all interested persons to pay attention to what he says and does and doesn't say over the short term because I have an idea he is gonna run. Most normal people regard cynicism and crass manipulation as terrible character flaws but in La Famiglia Arbusto, they have been enhanced to the level of martial arts. How else to explain the Family's continued fascination for GOP primary voters? Jeb of course is virtually an exemplar of those cynical martial arts, that baffled look of injured innocence whenever someone calls him to account for his actions, his craven willingness to sell out for short money to religious fanatics...his own spiritual malleability and the families own special brand of electoral brutality. What has always driven me crazy about the Bush's is that they all realize just how cynical they appear, they ought as a consequence know better, but alas they do not. Shamelessness too they have raised to the level of a martial art. So to any liberals, democrats and or interested persons out there, I have but this to say Beware Jeb Bush...he was always known to be smarter than his dumbass brother Junior...and junior managed to win.

One nice byproduct of the whole

unfolding "Bill Cosby Scandal" (Who knew those words would ever be put together eh?) is that we won't have to read any more placards on Facebook and elsewhere headlining alleged quotes from Dr. Cosby bitterly hectoring young black men about their english, their habits of dress or their supposed preference for fortified wine. Passive aggressive white race mongers used to love to quote, misquote or otherwise invent quotes from Cosby ad nauseum about the barbarities of Ghetto Culture. How much of this feckless rightical chic moralizing can really be attributed to Cosby is entirely conjectural (remember the quotees all think Barack Obama is a devote Muslim Marxist Xenomorph), but what the hell its come to an end and I for one could not be happier.

Oh Thank Ghod

Deval Patrick told "Meet the Press" he does NOT want to run for President in 2016....we certainly do not need to add to the roster of Massachusetts' politicians who unsuccessfully ran for President. Supposedly he was silent on his prospects for 2020...but then again in 2020 Ed Markey's seat in the US Senate opens up...and Ed isn't getting any younger. Just sayin'. Of course if I was Deval Patrick I'd up and move to New Hampshire just to flummox the Massachusetts Presidential Hoodoo, just don't run for public office up there, the Granite State Electorate is whimsically xenophobic, just as Scott Brown... But if I had to put money maybe he is interested in the US Senate he has many loyalists and a reliable statewide organization. Of course for all we know, Markey will run for reelection in which pffft!