A Month Ago....

I thought Donald Trump was a craze and summertime flash in the pan, but numberless gaffes later and a surge in the polls that defies all conventional wisdom and I'm prepared to admit I was wrong. I think Trump is here to stay, and if I had to hazard another dumbass guess I'm thinking he will not (at least over the intermediate term) opt to run on a third party platform. At this point, he has fifteen other GOP candidates stumbling around in his wake like toadying also-rans on "The Apprentice", bolting the partei would unacceptably concentrate his opposition and sacrifice vital political leverage over GOP Leadership. But then this is Donald Trump and he likes to present himself as a blustery Iconoclast. I'm also shocked at how poorly Jeb Bush has done so far, I thought at one point The Donald would end up simply holding Jeb's Stirrup as the Former Florida Governor rode of the body the cheap acts to Glory.... But right now, like the Other Sixteen Bush is staggering around Iowa and NH like a zombie deperately trying to explain himself all the while being mocked by Trump as a stupid indecisive jobber. So much for the Bush Machine and it's killer oppo research and it's career busting attack adverts huh? I think Karl Rove and Lee Atwater together couldn't suss out a line of attack against a phenom like Trump.... But then destroying Trump at this point means the GOP has to admit that for the past sixteen years they've fed their base belligerent paranoid fantasies and now that base enraged past reason is now gonna impose it's will...on Them. I doubt they have the political will even to discuss such a disturbing notion, but until they do, it's Trump's race to lose. The man is not gonna gaffe his way out the race, his base within the primary electorate simply does not care they want Vengeance and Trump is Merely Their Instrument.

I have to give Vester Lee Flanagan a great deal of demonic credit,

the late murderer seemingly crafted The Perfect Homicide in terms of beguiling and ensnaring social media and the news industry in general. That part of the whole plan was well thought out indeed, as a grotesque manipulator of our collective desire to watch revolting willful acts, Flanagan ranks right up there with ISIS in his murderous stagecraft. Ah but even vengeful ex television personalities cannot escape the Law of Unintended Consequences because by Sunday this will be all about a Black Gay Man's garish will to slaughter....the wellsprings of his so called rage will be passed over to say nothing of how a genuine raving lunatic can get access to firearms sans the slightest demure in this country. In other words the gaudy identity politics of it all will get Center Stage...the fact that we are booking off gruesome massacres like this on a nigh biweekly basis will be passed over in Silence! Count on it. I don't know what to tell my admittedly tiny readership save to note that we are well past the point of no return with the sheer saturation of guns in this country....and if the tendency to deliberately target unarmed cohorts continues unabated then we will rapidly come down to a question of sheer personal survival. And trust me on this "Every citizen for his or her own self" IS NOT an environment where democracy may long survive....

Apropos of Nothing....

But Ex Hero and former Red Sox Hurler Curt Schilling apparently own a huge collection of "WW II Memorabilia" including a number of SS Uniforms. I promise you, he has tried them on, check for the high polished jackboots it is a dead giveaway.....

I have to be "For Something"....

(I mean other than cheap pleasing whiskey) and I find I am For Extending the Green Line to Union Square Somerville...yes the cry goes up in opposition to "Yupification", but thats a process that has already begun in and around Union Square and naught can be done to stop it. Moreover those hills are a vast barracks and nursery studded with young families who might just make Somerville their permanent address if they have access to better Mass Transit in and out of Boston. Alas this is Charlie Baker we are talking about and with the revelation today that the project is entailing cost over runs it seems likely that the Governor will do has he has done in the past and "Declare Defeat and Get Out". That has pretty much been his Mass Transit MO all year and one doubts he will change his tune now....which is a goddamned shame because Somerville is vastly overcrowded and is but barely tapped by the Red Line, a better more robust rail option ought to be available to the citizenry.

The Pokemon Massacre (that wasn't...)

Law enforcement has intercepted two ne'er do wells on their their way to allegedly shooting up a big Pokemon Tourney at the Hynes this weekend. Well...let me reiterate a point amidst the nervous riduculousness and that is as long as the Psychiatrists at the NRA are asserting that stockpiling firearms is an acceptable treatment for anxiety, neurosis and even schizophrenia....then we will see more incidents like this and far more successfully executed as well. Just saying folks....we are saturated with two things in America, firearms and nut bags...its a wonder this doesn't happen three times a day seven days a week.

Looking forward to that pending

Jeff Jacoby column where he expunges the last of his pride and explains to his readership why "Anchor Babies" are a bad wrong evil phenomenon.

President Erdogan in Turkey

has lost his majority in parliament and will likely have to call new elections this fall amidst the usual "mounting violence". I don't like or trust the man, but I think we write his political obituary at our peril, he seems to have that "Netanyahu/Cameron quality" in that he embodies the best of all the bad alternatives. He wants a theocratic society in Turkey of all places, like that has worked so well anywhere in the religion....

Rick Perry has stopped paying certain staffers....

Which is a sure sign that he is on his last legs and will be bowing out soon. Winning in a seventeen candidate field requires money or volunteers (preferably both) and Rick has neither at this point. I'm guessing the pressure is on to arrange a decent exit around Labor Day...and then it will be "game on" to secure his endorsement. Thats where Governor Perry's worth will go up however temporarily, he is too stupid to be a credible VP prospect (which is anomaly in today's GOP believe me) otherwise. I wonder what his "asking price is"? Otherwise the fact that Rick is low on $ means the GOP fundraising matrix is shifting, clearly capital is trying to find a credible "Anti-Trump" and that means more going to fewer potential candidates, seeing some fundraising numbers right about now would be interesting indeed.

Just A Humble Shout Out to...

Former President Jimmy Carter who is sad to say, beset with pancreatic cancer. He was the very first democrat I voted for circa 1980, a proud defiance I have never yet taken back. And whatever else, all those other Ex US Presidents all sit there in their studies wondering HOW they can ever do as much Post Potomac Good as Jimmy Carter. Well thats easy, make lavish use of your time stay committed and stay focused.... Carter stuck his neck out for Civil Rights back when he was a farmer in Plains Georgia, he stuck his neck out for Peace at Camp David in 1978...the Jeff Jacoby's of this world can call him every name in the book but Jimmy Carter? He had guts they can't take that away from him. Well it is Carter versus Cancer now, Guts is what he is gonna need. I wish him well....

"I Believe Nan Britton!"

Apparently, DNA tests have proven that Warren Harding, 29th President of the United States did indeed father an illegitimate daughter by his longtime slightly spectrumy groupie Nan Britton circa 1919. Britton was the very first "wronged mistress" to go public when the nominal hush money that Harding was paying her dried up after his 1923 death, Nan published "The President's Daughter" a lurid tasty account of her affair with Harding and the darling daughter consequent thereof. Warren Harding was a schlub but he was a weirdly sympathetic schlub, a chiseler, an corruptard, a tomcat and smiling well meaning ineptoid there was always a sort of "Sir John Falstaff" quality to him...you just knew the hammer was gonna reduce Harding's fat ass to paste sooner or later it just a question of where and when. Even FDR (who knew Harding socially back in the day) had some empathy for the 29th President, he knew Harding meant well by his own dim fumbling lights in the weary wicked end. What makes me guffaw is that after almost ninety nine years the Harding Heirs are still fighting a desperate rearguard action to save his reputation first from Nan Britton's now verified accusations and then the publication of Harding's many many puerile love letters written to all sorts of women thru his public life. If I was Harding Heir...I think I'd just cut my losses and change my name....there is just no polishing up that Turnip no matter how much elbow grease you apply. Peace All The Same to the Late President's Ashes and his Heirs.....

In Today's Globe....

Jeff Jacoby gaseously celebrates Piyush "Bobby" Jindal's assimilationist rhetoric on the campaign trail. Apparently Jeff is impressed by Bobby's disdain for "hyphenated Americans". Nowhere in said column does Jacoby mention that Jindal is allegedly a convert to christianity having thru over his early life Hinduism for the Incense of the R.C.C. Well fair enough "A Man's Religion Is His Own Business" that goes back to George Washington and ought to be our true north even today. That having been said I just wonder what Jeff's reaction would be IF his beloved eldest son Kaleb came home one day an announced he wanted to "Assimilate" and was now taking Catholic Catechism instruction for Monsignor McFeeley?

Allegedly

The Clowndidate Donald Trump is mulling a public pledge not to run on a third party ticket to demonstrate I guess means that he is a serious candidate for President or some damn thing. If I was RNC Chair Reince Priebus I would not believe God's Truth Out of Donald Trump's mouth. Trump has lied outrageously to his wives, his family, investors, partners, creditors and stockholders, he's declared bankruptcy and still come thru it with two billion large, he has inflicted some of the ugliest gaudiest buildings in creation on Manhattan and still called them all masterpieces. What is lying to Reince Priebus and the RNC with a record of mendacity like that?

"Roses are Red...."

"Violets are Blue I hate the democrats and the G-O-P too!" A differently winged friend of mine on Facebook posted that couplet a few hours ago. Which in turn gave me to think that his animosity is in the face of the Founding Fathers who bequeathed to him a republic that had as few political parties as were strictly necessary. Those "Old Time Men" (to quote Mister Lincoln) had nigh mutually exclusive concerns when they were writing the US Constitution fear of domestic tyranny at home, a perfect terror of international impotence and recolonization from without. So the government they forged could never be too strong for the individual nor too weak to confront a foreign foe. Read "The Federalist Papers" if you don't believe me, Hamilton et al were obsessed with the possibility of recolonization or a nation whose "commercial commitments" were unreliable. Their solution was national unity at home by way of a Federalist Constitution and a government capable of treating with foreign powers from a position of relative strength. The Bill of Rights which came in the wake of the constitutional convention was in itself an attempt to conciliate doubtful factions within and without the Constitutional Convention. So from the git go, those "Old Time Men" had to satisfy purely political concerns...but that didn't mean they had to back a system that surrendered too much power to too few well placed partisans...hence our "winner take all" state and national elections which to this day are a barrier to third, fourth and fifth parties too easily playing for power. "Liberty is to Faction as Fire is to Oxygen"....but that doesn't mean that the purely Federalist Style of Governance that we've fallen heir to, prefers a multiparty platform. Is that fully democratic? No. Is it tradition? Yes. Is there a reason for that tradition? Yes. The Founders feared partisan strife seeing it as the downfall of every single republic memorialized in their personal libraries they couldn't abolish faction but they could canalize it via one-winner elections and divided governance. In short they had to steer a middle course thru tyranny and chaos....what we have now is the end result of that choice. So...welcome to canal living one and all....

Cautions...

(Apologies to my tiny but redoubtable readership, Humble Elias has been on vacation)... Gotta love that Donald Trump, week by week, day by day he is systematically and singlehandedly transforming the GOP Presidential Sweeps into something that is literally "Not Safe For Work". Vulgar, cheap and belligerent something in short that could get you fired if you played your cards right. And of course the GOP bases loves him for his gruesome truculence, they wish they could scream in sheer rage like Trump, the man is a magnet for sheer impotent weary wingnut projection. Meanwhile as Trump sucks all the air out of the room, poor desperate would be tyrants like Mike Huckabee can't even work up the wind for a good counterscream....poetic justice sez I. Speaking of cautions, anyone catch Alex Beam's column in da Globe last week when he gaseously asserted that "When he left office Harry Truman was doing everything possible to lose the Korean War". Try as he might Alex just does not have that Menckenish gift for witty hyperbole, he just sounds nasty and vengeful every time and more that a little dim as well. I guess 180,000 US Troops, enough aircraft to blot out the sun and the subtle military skills of General Ridgway just doesn't count as enough of an effort to Alex Beam. I'd say more but let us face it, the Globe's op-ed page is pretty much a "Mediocrities Only" bomb shelter at this point. They are all down there sweating and acting nonchalant meanwhile the world they knew is being swept away one pixel at a time. NOW THAT Mah Frenz...iz Hyperbole!!!