In The End, Romney Bailed.

He huffed and snarked, drank some coca-cola but in the end, Jeb eased him out, before Romney could ever get in...Advantage Bush so sez me. While everyone else was wingnutting it up in Iowa Last Weekend, Bush was showing Romney the Color Glossy Photographs, the uncompromised account books, the lists of die hard Romney Donors who'd sold their souls to the Bush Family in 1987....and what the hell Mitt chickened out. About the only shred of dignity left to Romney is his current reluctance to endorse anyone and Jeb will fetch that Pound of Flesh from Mitt when the time is ripe, count on it. So maybe this really is Mitt Romney's political epitaph...(although with him ya never know)....and if I had to Sum Mitt Up in a single sentence as he leaves The Great Game, that he was start to finish a rather unskilled political amateur with no great respect for the Political Process. Romney was a wealthy flash-in-the-pan who thought up until today, that Politics was somehow Easy, so easy in fact he never need bother to learn the fundamentals of the Great Game. His speeches? Charmless chiding bromides designed to manipulate his base nothing more, his program & proposals always vague easily denied and even more easily ignored. Mitt literally though, no one was looking, no one was cataloguing his promises his failures, his lies and his distortions. HE STILL THINKS THAT WAY...and it has ended his political career, at least for now. I won't miss him chiefly because I suspect he may yet try and foist the Summer Olympics on Boston as a last vicious revenge on a State that Turned It's Back on Him Long Ago. Anyway...its either that or Mitt will end up Jeb's Reserve Bootblack in the West Wing, that is of course, IF Jeb Wins...;)

In Case You Missed It Yesterday...

ISIS swore they would behead President Obama in the White House. This conclusively proves the President has in fact snuffed enough terrorists to earn the undying emnity of militant Islam's worst actors. All the same it is not yet enough to earn the slightest toleration let alone legitimacy for The President from the Tea Partei. Ah but ISIS the Tea Partei have similar opinions at the end of the day....they differ in their actions though. :D

Speaker Boehner is conjuring

with another fruitless gaudy lawsuit against the White House with respect to the President's executive order's on immigration. Which is pretty much as close to an unequivocal confession from the House Leadership that they have neither the votes nor the desire to pass a bill superceding said executive orders. Instead they go for the useless showy gesture that will keep them in good with their baseline voters. Well, it goes without saying at this point that we cannot expect Leadership from John Boehner regarding immigration in any way this pretty much proves it. On the other hand there might be some legit discussion if not outright lawmaking on the issue if the current house majority wasn't a vengeful pack of ideological anarchs elected from utterly dubious rotten boroughs. That problem, the issue of redistricting has taken a toxic turn that now seriously influences policy in a bad way. I mean think about it, if your "fifty percent plus one" is pretty much the Tea Party how much incentive is that to negotiate with respect to immigration reform? Keeping that sweet fifty one percent gulled, happy and or angry is pretty much your go-to...in effect the lack of debate in congress is a larger function of corruptly draw districts that restrict electoral diversity (I know...that word...) and thus themselves are immune to healthy debate. Granted perhaps I am no one to talk, Massachusetts has a 100% congressional delegation...but they at least are willing to discuss the issue in a serious way sand recourse to stunts and posturing.

One Burning Question from this weekend's "Iowa Freedom Summit".....

Will Donald Trump ever ask Sarah Palin to compete on "The Celebrity Apprentice"? Because after this weekend that is about all that is left to the Former Alaska Governor after her berserker speech to the Faithful. You can pretty much forget about Palin running for President, she can't raise the money and besides she has a shallow attention deficit disordered personality that compels her to chase the short term payoff...Running for President requires patience and discipline two qualities Sarah lacks. Trump was making Presidential noises this weekend as well, pay him no mind, despite the "brand propaganda" he hasn't got the personal fortune necessary to run for President nor does he seem well positioned to fundraise. He has learned though from Newt Gingrich the incalculable benefits hinting at a Run for the White House as a means to gin up book sales, goose ratings and in general keep the larger mediasphere a-simmering. No...Trump and Palin are provocateurs, good at saying mean things about President Obama on Cable TV they can even get off a good wingnut trending zinger now and again, but you know neither of them are allowed in the room when serious policy is being discussed. Anyhow at this point I still say it's Jeb versus a bunch of crazies on his right, his boot on Romney's neck and Chris Christie bellowing & snorting slightly to the left. Thats where the money is gonna go thats where the fight will be.

When BiBi comes a knockin'

At the invitation of Speaker Boehner, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited to speak before both houses of the US Congress (invites like this are "Winston Churchill" rare BTW). Wisely the President and Secretary of State have declined to meet with the Israel PM under the circumstances since they were cut out of the invitation completely. Conventional wisdom indicates that the GOP lead congress is using this as an opportunity to intervene in US-Iranian nuclear negotiations with the possible goal as to make the US delegation look incapable of delivering on a deal and thus occasion the withdrawl of Iran thus ONCE AGAIN putting the region on a war footing. I take a counterintuitive view, Netanyahu is faced with a difficult reelection campaign at home (although as I've said before I think he will win in the end) and needs to keep the focus in Israel on issues relating to national security (held to be a key strength of his electorally speaking) and a speech before the US Congress is one of those unique global platforms to gin up war talk in a venue wherein his domestic opponents have no reach. The fact that Netanyahu has to foul his relations with a US President still further and stoke up war hysteria among a bunch of grim jobbers entirely elected from Rotten Boroughs is secondary to his own short term political needs, The Israeli PM can always moan "I'm soweee" after he wins. But I suspect there might be some hidden costs for Netanyahu after all this blows over....and so with kindness in my heart I advise him to recall the Sacrifice of Abraham...and if an Angel of The Lord bids Benjamin to "Stay his hand" he might wanna listen...just saying.

Ah the Keystone Pipeline...

the latest symptom of wingnut dementia...so that Canada can ship it's oil across America and overseas where it will likely end up in the PRC lowering production costs still further and thus speeding up the deindustrialization of the U.S.A. Oh and they won't even use US Steel to build the goddamned thing....anything I'm leaving out? And this is a good idea because why?? If it was Iranian oil they'd be another one of their tedious fugue states...guess it really is all about who gets paid and who gets enabled.

The President Prospers...

In part because his sworn political enemies are all to a man, twitchy weird, humorless & self destructive. Take last night's SOTU address, while the President took the rest of the nation on a soaring tour of a better tomorrow well within our grasp, the loyal opposition was searching high and low for the most lugubrious and inane spokespersons to give the "coveted response"...a job that has routinely wrecked political careers since it was thoughtlessly implemented back in the early 1980's. Piyush "Bobby" Jindal's national ambitions still have not recovered from his stint as SOTU designated responder in 2009. So if Jodi Ernst thinks her goofy quaalude evocative performance last night was gonna light up an "Ernst for Veep" boom....dream on sister, dream on. Otherwise I suspect the President domestically speaking is going to be on the defensive for the rest of his term, but this is where what I call "The Jacksonian Vertical Stroke" (ergo swift clear action in the public interest, evolved and decided upon in private reflection), comes into play. Obama has the bully pulpit and can take all sorts of decisions in hand sans recourse to Congress, Cuba, illegal immigration, last night's tax proposals & the drive for net neutrality all bear the marks of an emerging Jacksonian Agenda, one that is "with the people, against the interests". Clearly, Barack Obama wants to set the agenda for 2016, plain and simple. He is immeasurably aided in a larger sense by a GOP lead congress largely composed of corrupt grievance addicted jobbers elected from preposterously rotten boroughs. If The President really wanted to set off a serious mishaugas he ought to go down to North Carolina and start talking about serious redistricting reform...then we will see shit storm par excellence! I dunno maybe I'm a mark, but it seems like the wind is shifting out there, imperceptibly in the President's favor, despite all his challenges in DC.

The Quotable Martin Luther King...

Right about the time they turned the fire hoses on the school children in Selma Alabama, Dr. King had this to say... "Dixie has a heart all right. But it's having a little heart trouble right now." You don't see that one reprinted too often this time of year, peace to his memory.

As the NH Primary Looms on the Horizon

I need to start picking and choosing which GOP candidates I wanna see on the stump. I'm expunging Mitt Romney from the list though, at long last I can't see how he'd have anything new to say given the history he's racked up in two prior presidential campaigns. At this point 2016 is naught by a sad opportunity for Mitt to emphatically Change His Mind About the Issues....Yet Again. So...given that... I think I'd like to see Jeb Bush certainly he has an odd baffled look of injured rectitude that I'm sure will play very well to the GOP's endlessly aggrieved base. Besides I wanna assess early if he is the same sort of nasty little smear artist as was his Father & Brother. Then maybe Rick Perry...I know he is dumber than a bag of hammers but there is limitless copy in Rick Perry and I wanna see what passes for a stump speech from him. I always regretted missing him in 2012. After that...Chris Christie...mostly to see if he tracks at all towards the center if he makes it to NH and then by extension I wanna see what passes for "The GOP Center" in 2016. And if I get lucky then either one of the quivering wingnut holy men, Cruz perhaps or maybe Rand Paul. All of this is of course still speculative at this point NONE of the above may ever announce for President...Mike Bloomberg could somehow clear the boards...ya never know. But it's good to start thinking on these things early.

Still Charlie

Massacre is a thing prepared morally, spiritually & mentally far in advance of the crime. The fact that the perpetrators justify their slaughter because of some intolerable verbal or written incitement, is merely sordid spectacle of murderers trying to turn their own victims into accomplices. Misery loves company so does murder. This is only as much as George Orwell teaches us....

The Only People...

Who are truly excited about Mitt Romney running for President in 2016are serious devotees of high end political sadism. I promise you, when the time comes, Jeb Bush will tear out Mitt Romney's living guts and use them, to grease the treads of La Famiglia Arbusto's Tanks. It will be an ugly scene edifying only to those who enjoy their Dirty Politics Straight Up. The Bush Family has been strategically nice to Mitt Romney in two election cycles now they are gonna call those markers in, and if Mitt declines to Pay the Vig, Jeb will unleash the very furies out of hell on the Former Massachusetts Governor. Honestly, people like Mitt Romney (nice clueless media unsaavy tepid technocrats) have been PIE to the Bush Family for Twenty Four Years Now. Remember Steve Forbes, Bob Dole, John McCain...? All politicians of varying talents and all mounted heads on the Bush Family's Walls. All this proves to me that in RomneyWorld there is no one in that organization that dares enters The Bishop's Sanctuary and tell him the Sun Has Set on His Ambitions.

I guess We Are All Charlie Now....

as events unfold with the speed of a massacre in Paris and beyond. Of course it ought to be remarked in passing that "Charlie Hebdo" was a scurrilous publication by all accounts but the First Amendment exists to protect not the Gods but the Goddamned Grotesques...and never more have those grotesques needed succor, protection and justice. In a larger context though, a lot of copy will be devoted in the coming days attributing this whole god-awful situation in Paris to the lack of freedom and economic opportunity in the "Muslim World". That is true up to a point but it is also a fairly pat example of reflexive western Utilitarian Thinking. Poverty and Oppression are powerful things but to get so many young persons to enthusiastically embrace mayhem and their own consequent annihilation speaks of some powerful wellsprings of auto suggestion in the Middle East. Indeed auto suggestion so powerful and invasive that no contradictory thoughts or impulses rational or not may penetrate. Increasingly I come to the conclusion that there is a sub-rational context to the region's politics and it is so very powerful that our Western Utilitarian Balance of Power style Metrics are completely useless. And that....has powerful policy implications as the USA pursues yet another round of peace negotiations within the region.

Good Luck Chuck...

Let me enter a brief if predictable note of dissent as Charlie Baker is sworn in as Governor. My expectations are low to non existent, Charlie lacks charisma, he was elected by hundreds of thousands of ticket splitters which give him little hold over the legislature, his moderate GOP bona fides were largely the creation of fantasists at the Boston Globe & his public admin record was wracked up twenty years ago in very different times. I have a dread feeling in my gut he will bungle and bungle badly the current budget shortfall into some unimaginable catastrophe...nearly every Governor in living memory has had to deal with one, but trust me, Charlie will Make A Hash of It.

To Date all I known about

Charlie Baker's inaugural is that it is costing 200K less than Deval Patrick's....and that a vast junta of private entities with potential business before the Commonwealth are footing the bill....but then again that was 200k less as of last weekend and who knows what invoices have been cut since Sunday? My only other take away from the transition is the plethora of democrats who have been hired in gaudy showy capacities by the incoming governor. You'd think Baker would find it hard to get democrats to cross over, but in truth its easier for the majority to bargain with minority when jobs are on the line, the minority party can never find enough qualified candidates whilst the majority always abounds with thwarted ambitious would be administrators. Moreover disaffected democrats are as a common as dirt in Massachusetts just ask anyone who has ever run a "Unified Campaign Field Office" every so often some disheveled twitchy specimen will scuttle in and proclaim in ringing tones their die-hard opposition to the candidacies of Mark Roosevelt, Scott Harshbarger or Shannon O'Brien...usually because the nominee refuses to come out against Lunar Annexation or granting squirrels the right to vote. Its the same with all these Baker appointees...except they are getting paid for it.

R.I.P. Ed Brooke...

January that Killing Month, meanders on beckoning the Mighty to their Rest. *** It ought to be noted up front, that Ed Brooke was for a good long while, the most successful GOP Politician in Massachusetts until Bill Weld staggered onto the scene. Ed Brooke is also a little more ironically the last Attorney General of the Commonwealth who bootstrapped his way to higher office. Apparently he figured out how to do That Job Without Creating any enemies, a trick he clearly declined to teach to his successors as the state's top law person. Ed Brooke's abrupt departure from the US Senate (engineered in part by primary challenge from yappy local wingnut Avi Nelson and more sadly Brooke's own messy divorce) in 1978 ushered in twelve long fallow years for the Party of Lincoln in the Bay State. Ah but the times were turning on Ed Brooke even then, he was literally an endangered species in the GOP, a Bleeding Heart Liberal....he spent two terms in the US Senate fruitlessly trying to pull the republicans back to the center when they all longed to strap on fake cavalry sabers and riding off behind Ronald Reagan. I think if he'd a survived the general election in 1978 the GOP would have broken his heart....or maybe Edward Maximus might've induced him to flip over to the democrats (Ed always was famously independent and bipartisan in his politics)...who knows? In sum, Ed Brooke was a Man of Honor, he consciously wanted to Live Up to the Status of the First African American Elected to the US Senate in the 20th Century and what the hell, His Word Was Good. I can pay him no higher tribute.

January is the Season

for passages from off this Breathing Earth it seems. Case in point former Governor of New York Mario Cuomo who died yesterday. Cuomo was once one of those Apex Predators in the Democratic Party whose name was constantly bandied about as a potential Presidential Candidate for something akin to three election cycles. It was a tight little fraternity for a while there and included such luminaries as Senator Sam Nunn, Senator Dale Bumpers and Governor Cuomo. None of them ever took the bait, although with his gift for eloquence, tendency to public rumination & proverbial thin skin there was something weirdly "watchable" whenever Cuomo wrestled with the decision to run even if he came up with the same answer time after time. In life Mario Cuomo was a Jeffersonian, in good times he was for "The Man and The Dollar" (to quote Abraham Lincoln) but if those things came into conflict then he was for The Man, First and Foremost. So its a little ironic that a recession wracked discontented New York Electorate finally gave Cuomo the heave-ho in 1994 ending an eloquent, brilliant and somewhat enigmatic career in politics. I actually shook hands with him briefly on West 57th Street in Manhattan some ten years ago, he was game but a little preoccupied looking, ah but that is how it goes with the smart ones they are always thinking Big Thoughts.