Friday, December 30, 2016

A New Years Admonition...

We Must Be Equal to Our Times....

If we can do that, we need fear no reproach from our progeny....

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Majority Rules

Only Democracies Self Renew.
Monarchy's Fall, Tyrannies are Destroyed from Within and Without, Autocracy's Lose Their Will to Power, Charismatic Dictators become Senile....some of these malign situations can last a long long time.
But when its over its over for them all.
All save democracies only that form of government can resurrect itself.
The means are there, if the people but lay ahold of them.
We are gonna hear a lot of tyranny and strong men in power going forward, acquiesce in no tyranny and we will not be tyrannized...perhaps that comes at a cost, likely it does, but self renew of our democratic pollity begins with not with a will to power but a will to sacrifice.
In the end we are tested by evil events, never by good times and easy living...and now we are entering a testing time for democracy.
Its starts with an individual resolve to be somehow collectively worthy.
Ah but I ramble....but its dark out and I must shed what little light I can.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Donald Trump is now trying to dissolve

the charitable organization that bears his name the one he insisted was on the up and up and a model of philanthropy compared to the disgusting charity run by "Crooked Hillary".
Predictably, the NY AG won't let him do citing an ongoing investigation...
Rationality and Factuality are gonna take a helluva beating over the next four years, assuming any of us survive the next four years.
So let me assert I have no facts by which to impeach the integrity of the Trump Foundation, but the far more forgiving "Occam's Razor" suggests that he is trying to dismantle his charity to cover up the usual financial chicanery that may have dire constitutional implications.
Because at the end of the day only a fear of direct consequences would ever compel Trump to dismantle yet another one of his boodling enterprises.
But I stress I have no facts to buttress that claim only circumstancial evidence...But then fakery is Brand Trump he has in the past created an entirely bogus for-profit university so ersatz charity is entirely within his wheelhouse.
And if I to make suggestions I'd look deeply into the roles played by his children in said charity, the three of them are his Achilles Heel, count on it.

Friday, December 23, 2016

Apparently Donald Trump tweeted out

Today his intentions to initiate an arms race with Putin's Russia, country with a GDP roughly comparable to Italy....this is the same Russia whose President, Trump counts as a "friend".
Confused?
You should be, but contradiction and hypocrisy are core deliverables with "Brand Trump".
My big takeaway from off this is a clam assurance that Donald Trump isn't paying the slightest attention to any of his national security briefing (the few he is actually attending) otherwise he'd realize we are already modernizing and refurbishing our strategic forces as far of a trillion dollar thirty year upgrade program.
In other words, we've already started that arms race and likely have a huge lead.....

Ye Gods, thirty years and a trillion large....I think thats enough to deter a country whose chief exports are oil, firearms and feckless threats.
All this presupposes that Trump knows the difference between Deterrence and Dung, and that has yet to be demonstrated in a convincing way.

Thursday, December 22, 2016

If you wanna bring about Donald Trump's Downfall....

Go After His Progeny....thats his weakness, legally speaking. Deposition after deposition, lawsuit after lawsuit, grind away at Trump's Business Empire, it'll make him crazy, target Ivanka, Ivanka's Gruesome Husband, Donald Jr & Eric especially.
Maybe Trump might be insulated from all this mishaugas, but they aren't....sooner or later we can get one of them on a criminal charge and THEN it'll game on, count on it.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

John J. O'Brien

The former Commissioner of Probation for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts beat the rap on appeal in Federal Court. He was initially indicted and convicted for stuffing the Probation Department with so many deadheads that the building nearly collapsed.
You don't wheel and deal at that level without doing huge lifelong favors for members of the State Legislature which was O'Brien's favorite currency during his long oversightless tenure at the Probation Department.
This is a setback for Federal Oversight of Chicanery on Beacon Hill....yes it may be heavy handed at times and misdirected but its a necessary thing as well.
Massachusetts thanks to a state legislature dominated by democrats is unusually vulnerable to chiseling, Gubernatorial Oversight of certain departments is at best compromised and the requisite Governors sometimes too disengaged for their own damn good (exp Romney).
So the major counterbalance is an alert news media and the Office of US Attorney and now the Federal part of that prong is effectively blunted.
This good news over the short term-for chiselers that is...The chiseling class  on Beacon Hill will have a little more freedom of action going forward and a little less fear of the Federales going forward.
THAT is a bad thing, given time and given fresh outrages I can promise you all this will bite us democrats in the ass good and deep when the time comes unless there is a culture change in the Lege...and on that I am not hopeful.

Monday, December 19, 2016

Ironic....

The Russian Ambassador to Turkey is Assassinated even in the shadow of the Electoral College's Formal Presidential Balloting....cuz this is a foreign policy crisis just tailor made to Donald Trump's skillset isn't it?
I can just imagine the tweets he is prepping even as I write this....

For the record liquidating Turkey's regional presence in the Eastern Mediterranean has been a truism of Russian Foreign Policy since the dawn of the 19th Century. Despite fitful rumors of a Putin-Erdogan reapproachment both countries are backing opposing sides in the current Syrian Civil War. This incident has all the earmarks of a historic provocation that could spiral out of control into a whole new war in the region....but don't worry never fear Putin listens to Trump.
Didn't know puppeteers needed to listen to their puppets.....lets hope John Kerry has one last ace up his sleeve even if all it'll do is delay the inevitable.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

There is wild talk on line

about gaming the Electoral College via Faithless Electors to upend the 2016 Presidential Election and make Hilary Clinton President.
Its a pretty desperate project that likely won't work....it requires the cooperation of hard core GOP electors and those people are selected for loyalty and reliability, a sufficient number of them cannot be suborned given the historic context.
AT BEST the election might be thrown into the US House where I can assure you the Rotten Boroughs of Dixieland will do their duty by Donald Trump. He won't have much of a mandate left it's true, but he'll still be sworn in even if the onus will be on congress not the American Electorate.
Different path same outcome.
And anyway the Founders designed the Electoral College as a brake on popular passions and a defacto fourth branch of the US Government ALL subsequent practice with respect to Presidential Elections in the US has been to mute this role or render it completely ceremonial.
And there are sound reasons to support that practice, elections should be determined by popular ballots not a quadrennial meeting of some obscure Federal Council. Which in turn brings me to the brink of calling for the College's Aboliton, but that is another blog post indeed.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Rick Perry nominated to be Secretary of Energy...

The confirmation hearing alone will be worth it for the Big Larfs Alone.  I urge Senior Senator Warren to invoke Senatorial Privilege and gently quiz Governor Perry about basis nuclear physics or even the laws of thermodynamics.
The results will be nothing short of a new standard in hilarity, one thing all Americans can Bank On, is that Rick Perry is the Dumbest Human Being in Contemporary Public Life.
Seriously Rick Perry thinks "Manual Labor" is the President of Paraguay.
Not Kidding....
Certainly Trump appointees are definite menaces to our lives and liberties, this includes the nominal President Elect, but others....are simply excellent targets for snark and mirthmaking, Rick Perry is one of these, The Inadvertent Clown from the Lone Star State.



Monday, December 12, 2016

Tillerson to Foggy Bottom (allegedly)

Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon is supposedly gonna be Trump's Secretary of State come next year. Like most of Trump's other cabinet appointments, he has never held any sort of substantive government job and other than negotiating with corrupt petrocrats and other oil companies, his foreign policy bona fides are utterly nonexistent.
In fact, all I know about Tillerson is that he de-homophobed the Boy Scouts of America (a very right and necessary thing in this Eagle Scout's Opinion)....which is grimly hilarious because if Tillerson was an Obama appointee his tenure at the BSA would be grounds for investigation at the very least.
The rotten boroughs though are living up to their Faustian Bargain with Trump so far, thus the matter merits silence for the moment.
More worrisome is Tillerson's long business relationship with Vladimir Putin and Putin's Kleptocracy.  John McCain is making growling noises about this one, but thats his default about everything and the Senator from Arizona has a spotty record for arousing the US Senate over an issue of conscience.
Me?
I see Tillerson as a Big Money Rebuke to Romney and yet another untested billionaire in a cabinet ominous stuffed with tycoons and generals (which is always a bad mix IMHO)....Has Trump nominated anyone outside the Pentagon with less that 100 million in the Bank?

Friday, December 09, 2016

John Glenn is Dead

And the Senator-Astronaut is likely one of the very last "Non-Partisan Across the Board Achievement Driven" National Heroes.
Which is ironic given the fact that Astronaut Glenn in the wake of his Mercury Flight in 1962 was lavishly politically courted by President Kennedy, indeed Glenn was a reliable factotum for Bobby Kennedy in campaign 1968 and in due course Glenn was the democratic senator from Ohio.
He never lost that weird halo of ability and rectitude despite a public life given over to explicit partisanship.
I met Glenn during his doomed 1984 Presidential Campaign, he was a veritable 38 Caliber Bullet of a. Man, short and compact (Mercury Astronauts had strict height requirements in order to fit into those cramped primitive space capsules) to say the least. Let me say this though, if Jimmy Carter exuded piety, if George McGovern radiated sincerity, then John Glenn was incandescently Self Confident, he was viscerally fearless putting his fate in the hands of faith, training and the American Way Quite Literally. He made Ronald Reagan look like an indecisive self doubting wretch by comparison.
And the symbolism of his quiet death at the tail end of this doomed year of 2016 should be lost on no one, it is never ever a good a Good Thing for the rest of us when Our Heroes Start Ascending to Valhalla en masse.

Thursday, December 08, 2016

There are vague rumors in the Globe

to the effect that the Lege is considering a tax on carbonated beverages...

Thats a laugh and half, we don't tax alcohol so much as a penny so now we are gonna shift that revenue shortfall on Coke Fanciers eh?

Granted personally I regard high fructose corn syrup as a form of poison that the Feds ought to outlaw completely, but until then we are stuck with the miserable stuff.  Exempting alcohol with it's myraid of tragic complications from taxation in favor of a dogged pursuit of "Sprite" is just plain silly.


Wednesday, December 07, 2016

Budget Cuts

to address a revenue shortfall that may or may not happen Governor Baker has ordered up some budget cuts to all the usual suspects, healthcare, transportation and among others way down the list, suicide prevention.
Suicide Prevention Funds?
There is just something mean and wrong about that, when you consider that the Mystic Tobin Bridge is still a suicide magnet to this very day, sidewalks or no sidewalks.
Such is the mindset of "Governor Seventy Percent"....I can hear the chorus of "we could do a lot worse than Charlie Baker" a yelpin' in the background.

Monday, December 05, 2016

I'll say this for Donald Trump

he sure knows how to press Mitt Romney's buttons. A week after their reconciliation dinner rife with rumors of the former viceroy's imminet appointment to Foggy Bottom and the Real Estate Tycoon strokes his chins and murmurs he wants to "expand the pool of applicants from Secretary of State.
True to form even as the Big Job soars away from him, Mitt Romney keeps on kissing up to Trump even as Bob Corker, John Bolton and John Huntsman (of all people) suddenly merit attention.
I suspect Trump is simply torturing Romney before a final humiliation (like tweeting out John Bolton's appointment at 3am)....Mitt is just too craven to understand this new fact of life.
Looking at the current list from my perspective, I'd say the best of a bad lot might be Huntsman who at least had some foreign policy experience (albeit as an Obama Appointee) and has been off the grid for nigh on four years.
On the other hand I suspect Huntsman is on there just to twist the knife a little bit in Romney I doubt the guy is any sort of a finalist.
  Corker is a senatorial berserker and Bolton openly thirsts for nuclear war soonest. So given all that and Team Trump's penchant for Bad Decisionmaking it'll likely be Secretary of State Bolton and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock can advance to thirty seconds to midnight.
You'd think Romney would get this and salvage the dregs of his dignity, but no. Mitt is far too deferential to power to ever speak the truth of any of it.

Sunday, December 04, 2016

If you wanna see the Boston Globe in Deep Denial

about Mitt Romney's craven cave in to Team Trump (all in a bid to be Secretary of State of all things) check out of today's front page article by Matt Visor.
The Globe is just desperate to project the mantle of healing comforting moderation on Mitt Romney, the former viceroy walks back his Anti Trump vituperation and Morrissey Blvd starts sighing about his "commitment to public service".
Moderate republicanism is as Dead as Adam but The Globe keeps trying to resuscitate what amounts to a Museum Class Mummy.  They give a craven schemer like Mitt  Romney a second third and even fourth chance...and all because they can't come to terms with the contemporary GOP's ever rightward zombie lurch.

Well Mitt Romney has come to turns with said zombie lurch, by capitulating to it in public.
Never mind the fact that the former viceroy is likely being played by Team Trump in a rather crude vengeful manner as well. Meanwhile the Globe goes on fantasizing if Romney scores for Foggy Bottom then its a victory for moderate republicanism, if he is not appointed then its because he is again too saintly a moderate for Trump's Cabinet.
Really what color is the sky in the world of the Boston Globe?

Thursday, December 01, 2016

Hillary Clinton is on track....

to have won the last election popular vote by about 2.5 million votes as a high a "mandate" as was claimed by George Bush Jr in 2004. And yet Trump, thanks to the splendidly inane Newtonian Mechanics of the Electoral College is the one selecting Cabinet Secretaries.
Okay granted, the Founding Fathers created the Electoral College as a bulwark against "popular passions" which was in part defined in the Federal Papers as the somewhat more spurious notion that large states would somehow "bully" small ones at the polls.
BTW just as a digression was there a better example of malign "popular passions" in this election than the belligerent wave that swept Trump to glory in the Electoral College?
Clearly the Goddamned Thing does not work as designed.
All Constitutions (if well written) are inherently biased in favor of legitimacy, legality and the Perpetuation of said Constitution. Legitimacy here is the question because you cannot have two contradictory "legitimate" outcomes of one "winner take all" election.
And yet we do.
The response (from the Trump Campaign's Screech Monkeys) is that the Electorial College's election is the Only One That Matters....and yes on paper that is the case.
But let me ask all seven of my readers this, why then do we have popular presidential elections at all?
The tactical setback from 2016 is that we've got Trump as President and our odds of survival either as a democracy or even physical person is at best a tick over fifty fifty.
But the constitutional issue here is even more disquieting the popular vote is suddenly rendered meaningless...which to my mind is the first step to getting rid of it in all but name only....
Think about that please.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

full year into Charlie Baker's Management Revolution at the MBTA

and a mere two days of rain turn the Red Line into a torpid mess highlighted by "switching problems", endless stoppages, idiotically crashing doors and slooooow trips when moving at all.
And thats just rain....just wait til the snow hits.
"Mister Seventy Percent"had better hope for another dry cold winter he can blame Deval Patrick but once for the MBTA's poor weather performance but the Next Time Its On His Bony Ass Fer Shurs.
I'll be his political team get hourly weather updates...."winter is coming" indeed.

Monday, November 28, 2016

Castro is Dead....

color me unmoved.

The thing I always thought fascinating about Castro is that he was at the end of the day Marxism-Leninism's closest approximation of a "Hipster Revolutionary". Fidel had a rep and a elan' entirely at odds with the usual Soviet Mendicants from the Cold War, the Ulbrichts the Gomulkas etc.  Castro like all true hipsters knew the deadliest sin was being boring and or predictable...and lets face it, in the USA he had the nigh perfect opponent, something he could endlessly harp on to burnish his "David v Goliath" marxist mythology.
All of that beautifully obscured Cuba's status as a Soviet Client a veritable Carribean "Ruble Pit". Billions in Soviet Investment was flushed away on the entirely debatable notion that an island economy with a limited industrial base and a finite agricultural sector could somehow transform painlessly into a modern social economy.
That and the fact that Castro deftly weaponized "refugee expulsions" back in 1980 via the infamous Mariel Boat Lift (sp) remain his two greatest contributions to world politics.

If I was Cuba though, I'd double down on the "Single Payer Health" plan and market it in the USA as a form of "Medevac Tourism". Once Trump is inaugurated we are likely gonna have all sorts of health care problems in the USA (assuming we aren't all blown sky high)...Cuba could make a lot of money filling in those entirely avoidable gaps.

Friday, November 25, 2016

I realize that

"Hitler got in" on a plurality, bluff & street violence, as did Mussolini before him. I dismiss no tyrannical bluster from Donald Trump believe me...nonetheless there is something utterly shameful about having the cheap and vulgar likes of The Donald as a U.S. Despot.  Its like being ruled by the cast of "Up With People" or Joe E. Ross at his most prurient.....

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Since Donald Trump apparently thinks

He can run the Executive Department of the Federal Government sans contact with the working press....I guess that means he won't be bedeviling the networks with press conferences. So the White House beat is about to become a weird backwater....but there is work for those people all the same believe me.
Since First Lady (or third who is counting?) Melania is staying in Manhattan, I'd advise the White House Press Corps to keep a sharp eye on who goes in and out of the Executive Mansion. Trump is a notorious tomcat with few inhibitions when his current wife isn't around so sharp eyed reporters can potentially build up a reasonable dossier of Presidential Mistresses pretty quickly.
Anyway it'll be a change from reporting on those dumbass pidgin english tweets of his, which is at this point Trump's whole media plan for his Admin.


Monday, November 21, 2016

Melania Stays Behind....

Apparently Nominal First Lady Elect Melania Trump (AKA "Threezacharm") is staying behind with her son Barron in NYC while Donald acts as President come January.
Allegedly this is to prevent any disruption in the ten year old Barron Trump's school year, fair enough on that part I guess, other Presidents though thought nothing of replanting their kinder in DC's numerous toney private schuls.
The reasons for this decision seem simple enough to me, Donald Trump is the first US President whose wealth and lack of taste are in such close allignment that the White House literally holds no "Snob Appeal" to him and his family (or families to be precise).
He'd clearly prefer to run the country from that ghastly gilt gold monstrocity "The Trump Tower" in upper Manhattan.  Hell I suspect he may well attempt to be a "Commuting President" a distraction & affectation that likely has Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell & Chuck Schumer salivating in unison.
BTW who the hell names their youngest child "Barron Trump" anyway? Its a plain invitation to utter ruin later in life, the kid's monicker sounds like one of Frederick The Great's less competent courtiers.


Friday, November 18, 2016

Late Word Is....

Now Mitt Romney is being floated as Trump's Secretary of State. Granted Romney has stature in the GOP but his foreign policy ideas are at best hackneyed rubbish, of course compared to Trump (who apparently thinks NATO is somehow "rigged" against us) Mitt is veritable Metternich.
Its just a sad and predictable indictment of Romney's too flexible character that he is entertaining this idea and thus consigning himself to the indignity of taking order from Eric, Donald Jr or likely Ivanka Trump or else desperately trying to talk Their Father out of starting World War Three on some    Grim pretext in a bunker somewhere.
Hey Mitt.....just let the offer pass, its a bad job for a bad man and that never ends well. For once I'm trying to talk you out of it for your family's sake and maybe the sake of your own soul.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Mister Seventy Percent

aka Governor Charlie Baker had a really really bad year this year, not enough to blunt his drive for reelection by any means but by any objective standards things did not go well at all.
Pot got legalized, charter schools stayed capped, all his attempts to Duck Trump availed him nothing when Trump won the election. Now Baker is in the worst of places, a GOP President with no inclination to do Massachusetts any favors.
And in the face of all this all Charlie can do is bleat ineffectually about judging Trump not on the apoetheosis of Falangists like Steve Bannon but on "The Totality of His Appointments".
Sounds like Le Marshal Petain throwing in the towel to meeeee....

And yet, Charlie's reelection prospects couldn't be better the local economy keeps chugging along (at least until Trump does something stupid which won't be long believe me) and most democrats seem wearily resigned to him if not in his corner outright.
I myself know a few democrats of some profile are pretty fulsome with praise for Baker, they can be counted on to sit on their hands oh so quietly come 2018.
Baker might get "primaried" by Trump's local legionaries but I doubt it, to date the Tea Partei has been All Hat and No Cattle in the Commonwealth....no I am thinking just possibly a lot of Baker's prospects going forward may depends on what sort of wary accomodation he can make with the Trump Admin....that situation requires close observation to be sure.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Its as much a question of

"How long Trump Lasts" as it is "How long will We Last"?

Because boy howdy the man doesn't have much good to say about our alliances and too much goodwill for some of our competitors...that may not be a formula for success on the foreign policy front.


Monday, November 14, 2016

Riot & Chaos & Unrest.....Oh My!

Demonstrations against President-Elect Trump have broken out all over the nation. But thats to be expected, he gamed the electoral college and lost the popular vote on top of a record amount of ominous devisive rhetoric in campaign 2016.
Its a wonder quite frankly MORE people are not protesting quite frankly, Trump has (in the words of the late Lenny Bruce) "A real Talent for Making Himself Hated".
Be that as it may I'm skeptical about the utility of protests even on a mass level they tend to be inefficient enterprises as a rule and the eternal last recourse of people who feel dealt out by the system.
And I'm certainly not in accord with any violence sporadic or otherwise attendent on said protests no matter how violent Trump's rhetoric has been or may be. Once people start breaking the law then it becomes a public safety issue ALWAYS the grievance is completely forgotten instantly.
That having been said, at the end of the day said demonstrators owe The President Elect all the Loyalty and Regard that the Tea Partei gave Barack Obama back in the spring of 2009.
I recall with the simplest nostalgia when the Tea Partei Road Show set down on Boston Common, gruesome sentiments all around....no they weren't violent but they were dellegitimizers and illegitimists to a fault. The fact that they didn't burn down the State House does not qualify any of them for a Good Conduct Medal in My Books.
"Win Ugly Govern Ugly" is the new byword and if people want to protest this diresome turn of events I won't stop them. Just stay lawful...if not be prepared for some hard knocks indeed.

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Thought for the Day:

If Donald Trump can win a US Election then so can Oprah Winfrey....
Or Garrison Keillor
Or Al Franken for Ghod's Sake....

Just remember lowering the bar lowers it for everyone yo...

Friday, November 11, 2016

Congrats to Governor Maggie Hassan

for pulling out a squeaker win in the senatorial race in NH and unseating the GOP's "girl of destiny" on Tuesday.
My Ghod that was what passed for a brutal fight in NH those commercials....awful. Oh well, at least I won't have to listen to Kelly Ayotte's nasty insinuating little voice anymore there is solace in that at least.
Close elections are a hallmark in NH which really is a picture definition of swing state, hell Gerald Ford prevailed in the 1976 NH Primary by what...1300 votes after a recount?
They cut em' close in da Granite State.
This means the entire congressional delegation is female in NH so that glass ceiling is busted up good as well, solace there as well.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

On The Other Hand....

Question Two went down to resounding defeat with an audible ka-boom! It seems that Charlie Baker's supposedly unbeatable seventy percent approval rating proved no match for a determined ground game from committed cohorts. Hell the damn thing gat no heat even in Brockton and Lowell....
This is a sobering outcome for Team Baker 2016 hasn't been a good year for them at all, Donald Trump now rules their party (and his famously vindictive management style), they couldn't put over Q2 despite putting Charlie's face right on it and pot got legalized.
That mah frenz is a hat trick of setback.
As liberals and democrats of all stripes we ought to look at those ballot question returns and perhaps we can dimly perceive a way forward in 2018. Mind you I guarantee Baker is looking over those numbers digit searching for strengths and weaknesses, its how Patrick beat him after all in 2010.
Obviously 2018 depends on finding a candidate (we might need one that can self finance just sayin'), ginnin' up some issues and staying united even as we forge a coalition.
What we don't want is a repeat of 1994 (Weld v Roosevelt( where we half hearted drifted into a race divided and detached....Baker Must Be Challenged Every Step of the Way, Win or Lose!
That is my mantra going forward.


Wednesday, November 09, 2016

Well...that could have gone better....

Clearly there is a hidden "swing vote" in what hertofore were rock solid industrial midwestern democratic bastions. From what I can read, Trump simply extracted more votes from precincts that Romney took comfortably in 2012.
And likely, certainly cohorts underperformed for the democrats, that much seems certain.
There were also "atmospheric problems", I think the Comey letter took the campaign off its stride for a couple of vital days last week and may have critically obscured emerging problems in Wisconsin, Michigan & Pennsylvania.
I won't rule out a heavy whiff of electoral sexism as well.
The polling seems to be the critical failure this year, smartphone tech saturating the culture I wonder if the traditional models are now irremedially compromised and if they are, then what will replace them?
Maybe they cannot be replaced.
I've mentioned before four critical myths that buttress movement conservatism (The Myth of Christian Politics, The Myth of Rugged Individualism, The Myth of Small Government and the Myth of Grievance)....this was definitely a "Myth of Grievance" election wherein a lot of aging white people opted for Revenge at All Costs.
And they got it, and I wish them all the Joy of It.
Given that its a divided nation with little hope of "unity" over the short term or the sort of unity that Christ Matthews or Andy Hiller constantly preach.
The punchline is, Clinton won the popular vote by a 200K margin....this is the second time this has happened in sixteen years and it isn't a good basis for establishing legitimacy at all.
As for Trump he led a divided party to power by a thin margin....The GOP's looming chaos would be amusing to watch but alas they've won and their troubles will soon be All of Ours.



Tuesday, November 08, 2016

Election Day....

and we are faced with a far too stark a choice between falangism and sanity.  Whatever else happens today I know I will spend a considerable amount of time going forward studying this particular race in detail....it has been a singular and largely disturbing phenomenon.

Thats assuming that Trump loses and I don't end up in a labor camp sited in the Northeast Kingdom.
We've come to an election where our lives depend on the outcome...All I can do is place myself in the Ranks of the Immortal Spartans (those Indominable Democrats of Menotomy) and Do My Duty Unto the Last.

I urge you to vote, and I bluntly urge you to vote for Hillary Clinton for President, Our Rights, Fortunes and Sacred Honor depend on her clearing the board tonight!

Monday, November 07, 2016

I am A No Vote on Question Two

Why we need numberless new charter schools over which the localities have no control is a mystery to me. The Commonwealth already ranks near the top of the USA in overall student performance, granted there are shortfalls in various communities but the answer isn't something advantageous to only 5% of the captioned students.
If the Legislature is hell bent on creating a unaccountable two track European Style education system let them do it in full view of the electorate and let them finance this boondoggle out of general revenues and not create yet another unfunded educational mandate to burden the municipalities.
Even if all this was no so, I'd still oppose Question Two the damn thing reeks of educational utopianism a classic one size fits all supersolution thats bound to have nasty unintended consequences down the road.
I say....Vote No on Question Two.

Hrummpp!

Sunday, November 06, 2016

Colin Van Ostern

probably looks too young to be NH's Next Governor, nonetheless he has some intriguing ideals as we head into election day
Foremost among them a Manchester to Boston rail link this is a won-der-ful idea in all respects, The Queen City is down to two main industries the New Hampshire Primary and waiting for the New Hampshire Primary...a rail link would spur some development and arrest the municipality's population outflow.
I'm not saying this is an across the board answer, new jobs new industries and some hardheaded reinvention are in order, Manchester has yet to escape it's rep as a perpetually dying Mill Town, but its a practical first step in every way.
The other thing I like about Colin Van Ostern, is that while he was a Boy Scout, he clearly did not make Eagle, nonetheless he still runs pictures of himself in uniform and seems content with whatever benefit he extracted from the experience.
Normally with politicians you only hear about it if they were a scoutmaster or if they cracked Eagle....this indicates a becoming modesty on Van Ostern's part.

Those two factors alone recommend him to me even if he wasn't a yoghurt company executive in his day job....(I'm fifty four I eat a lot of yoghurt so Sue Me!)

:)

Friday, November 04, 2016

Soon Enough There Will Be Nothing Left But Duty....

Duty is easy and a boastful thing when we have the Wind At Our Backs though....it is a frightening and disheartening burden when matters are in doubt.
I need not repair to any site or blog on the internet to know our cause is sore beset, my instinct tells me this most clearly.
Future generations though are counting on us, not to recriminate or lose faith or break ranks they depend on us even as they do not even know it yet.
It is at the end of the day glorious and fit to even Have A Duty to Execute in Trying Circumstances, the world is full of people who wish long after the fact that they'd done more when great issues were in play.
My Spirits are Light, Let the Sonsabitches Come!
And so, at a time like this let us warm our spirits with a dose of "medicine" from Winston Churchill,
" But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

Time For All of You To Find Your Finest Hour.

Thursday, November 03, 2016

Well lets be frank...

The Polls are Tight.

But the antidote to that is simple if somewhat hard to take, boost GOTV and stay calm....the campaigns themselves will be fully engaged and loud past endurance right up to next Tuesday over that we have No Control.
But....turnout that is something we can all commit too that is "the key deliverable" as they say in business and if turnout wasn't key, why are Trump and the GOP so relentlessly committed to suppressing it?
One of the things that should not have surprised me (but it did all the same) is the willingness of highly marginalized GOP cohorts to "come home" to the GOP despite their sheer revulsion for their own nominee.
The bitter proxy fight over turnout has two axes for th GOP its definitely via it's deafening cacophony to remind the base that Hillary is the Dark One even as it supposedly drives down democratic turnout.  So as such we must stay focussed on running our numbers up....that is best guarantor in a volatile close fought election. Everyone to the polls!

Tuesday, November 01, 2016

Thought for the Day

The United States Constitution is not a toy subject to an excess of manhandling. It can however be broken with enough effort, and if it is, then I assure you there is no Daddy around to fix it or a Mommy who'll take pity and buy you A New One.
Think about that as we segue towards election day.....

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Charlie Piles In...

Governor Baker finally put some skin in the game this week appearing in a "Yes on Question Two" TV Commercial, charter schools are pretty much his sole Big Political Project this year.  It'd be precious and lovely if Q2 went down to defeat, it's faddish education policy (which is always a bad thing) and a No Vote might put a little dent in Mister Seventy Percent's shiny chrome ass.
Alas though, the Globe endorsed "Yes on Question Two" today, but then Morrissey Boulevard has never been immune to the lure of trendy utopian educational schemes. Last time I checked, Q2 was trending towards No these developments might move the needle in the opposite direction.
By the way those "No On Question Four" commercials are uniformly appalling and reprehensible a new low in Massachusetts Politics and that is saying something. I'm no great fan of pot smoking but we've been locking up potheads with extreme prejudice for decades and none of it has damaged marijuana's appeal in the slightest. Maybe a regulatory approach is the answer....and if we pick up a few sin tax shekels in the process so much the better.
And while we are on the subject, why is Donald Trump buying adverts in the Boston Market? He has a better chance of carrying The Tenth Circle of Hell at this point, the short answer seems to indicate he wants some penetration in New Hampshire...but then again he is down ten points there the last time anyone checked.  Maybe he is hoping for a slender loss something he can spin into a recount lawsuit but Occam's Razor suggests sheer spite might be the real reason at the end of the day.
Kelly Ayotte who has been on or off the Trump bandwagon all year long must be tearing her hair out about this play by the GOP nominee.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

As I predicted

Bill Weld has thrown in the towel on his fling with the Libertarian Party obliquely urging his constituents not to vote for someone on the basis of their entertainment value. A Dig at Trump yes, but pretty much a epitaph for the appalling ignorant and maladriot Libertarian Presidential Nominee Gary Johnson.
Basically Johnson is a dumber less belligerent version of Donald Trump if such a thing can be imagined.
Weld's downfall is that he is a Boomer's Boomer at the end of the day, he lets his whims and his easily bored nature make critical decisions for him. Its why he ran for the US Senate, Left the Governorship and ran for Veep as a Libertarian. These were all bad decisions and they were taken for very frivolous reasons every time.
His natural constituents are his fellow boomers people who deeply covet Weld's vices....and at the end of the day his vices have undone Bill Weld yet again.  Except now he doesn't even have a party platform anymore he's deserted the GOP the Libertarians are a spent electoral force....but beware his whims all the same he might become a democrat. THAT is good reason alone to keep the door locked and barred!!

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

HRC in a Granite State of Mind....

Dateline Goffstown New Hampshire.


Hillary Clinton did not do half bad attracting herself a crowd yesterday on the quad of Saint Anselm College, of course it was a beautiful day and seemingly endless waves of families with young daughters rolled up in Hybrids parked in Battalion Formation to see a Woman On The Brink of Becoming U.S. President.
Lots of mothers with daughters that was a potent motif in that crowd believe me.  Over five thousand in attendance by my rough estimate.
My Ghod Security was STRICT at this event, metal detectors and the TSA screened everyone and everything and the Hilltop was seething with Secret Service Agents in Kevlar Vests and Aviator Sunglassses.
Gone are the days when The Reverend Jesse Jackson (That Protestant Prince of Controversy) could idly wander the Campus with three Secret Service Agents in Tow & spontaneously harangue the students.
Citizen Clinton was introduced by the redoubtable Senator Elizabeth Warren who has a passionate rhetorical style and a voice that fairly throbs with indignation. Our Senior Senator has had a profitable autumn making Donald Trump's life perfectly miserable ginnin' up her own name stating out some nice political turf as well and if all and sundry get HRC elected so much the better.
It bears some watching because while HRC and EW are on the same page about corporate criminality etc, Warren is a lot more definite and detailed in her views. Again she is staking out some territory and hopes to secure herself a place at the table when and if any of this is getting read into law.  But then as we soar thru the modern liberal litany, Warren tends to be more detailed and definite in her views about a lot of issues. This is something to watch down the line, if HRC wins a chunk of her legislative probably depends on keeping EW in her coalition.
And then Citizen Clinton took the stage and crowd roared like starvelings invited to a barbeque....the Lady seems to have at last found her constituency and in NH having the battlements manned by suburban women is no small thing believe me.
Her mantra was that 2016 represents a "consequential election" and indeed it is.....but HRC's response to the challenge was to hype hype the independence and integrity of the NH downticket, Senatorial Hopeful Maggie Hassan (locked into a tight race with Kelly Ayotte) in particular came in for a very weighty load of praiseful praise.
Ditto Carol Shea-Porter (who has been elected to the US House and never yet Re-Elected)....the big competitive races in NH are in part tailor made to HRC's suddenly blatant appeal to women voters across the board.
Clearly Clinton wants very badly a "Downticket Mandate" a bigger US House Contingent (who knows maybe the democrats can pull off the hat trick and take the House Rotten Boroughs and all)....if she can take the US Senate and Roll Up a Big Turnout next month she can obliterate Trump's claims of a rigged election and demonstrate her nice long coat-tails to all and sundry. Just remember, even Obama wasn't really able to shift the balance of power in Congress much past 2010. In HRC's mind legitimacy and her own ability to govern are clearly linked to grabbing off a democratic majority somewhere on The Hill.
One of the consequences of Trump's "skeezer tapes" is that it has allowed Citizen Clinton a priceless opportunity to reintroduce herself to women and to move left on a lot of "women's issues". Saint Anselm College is a famously conservative catholic school and never has Planned Parenthood come in for such fulsome praise on that Campus...The Monks must've been hiding under their sparse beds and covering their ears with their equally sparse pillow.
Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton are not pulpit virtuosas by any stretch neither of them will make anyone forget Aimee Semple McPherson....but they have a similar style, some snark, a few digs at the opposition, a few statistics, some fulsome praise, endorsements and a Bright Future If We All But Work Together.
Its a sort of "Hubert Humphrey" approach, if delivered in a less manic fashion than the Late Vice Presiden, of the two, Warren seems to be better at it, but that is simply because she is willing to risk more in terms of specifics.
Take student debt, Warren talked about making college "free", Clinton prefers the term "affordable", now affordable gives her a lot more room to manuever when it comes time to submit legislature to congress but "free college" resonates better with the electorate and its easier to remember as well.
Meanwhile Clinton offers free public college tuition for incomes under 125k, indexing student debt to income along with restoring technical Education in the High Schools (hey Hillary PLEASE throw "Civics" in there while you are at it!)
So its all reasonably specific but its not quite "Free"...
On thother hand she does seem to want to raise the minimum wage and you set your watch by her desire to rebuilt our infrastructure with Union Labor, in these reaches of the Liberal Litany she wand Warren are very simpatico.
More and more I get a weird Truman style vibe from HRC closet moderate or not like Harry Hillary's Mind Seems Made Up on a Host of Issues "A Little Touch of Harriet in the Night" in other words. Keep in mind plenty of people dismissed Truman as a squish in the lead up to 1948 its not always indicative of indecision it comes from a desire to preserve the maximum freedom of action.
If HRC has a Big Rhetorical Moment its her invocation of "America is Great Because America is Good" but thats a sort of final rebuke to Trump and his Apocalyptic Narrative its also something straight out her Husband's Detailed Playbook.  Its not a specifically Liberal Notion its mostly promulgated to remind everyone she is a reliable negotiating partner and neither utopian nor declinist.

Friday, October 21, 2016

Ya Know....

The Bar is Set Pretty Low at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner....groaners so straight out of Amateur Night in Dixie are greeted as the Very Font of Comedy by all concerned.
Hell, Mike Dukakis KILLED at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in 1988....a man with all the mirthmaking potential of a Bag of Hammers!
So of course Yesterday, Trump STILL goes completely berserk and collects a lusty chorus of boos as he staggered thru a graceless stack of insults in the course of said event.
At this point I would be profoundly embarrassed to have a graceless lack witted oaf like Donald Trump as my Nation's Tyrant!! The guy is literally a comedy killer a mirthless psychic arsonist.
So I am taking this opportunity in this increasingly obscure reach of the internet to Loudly Endorse Hillary Clinton for President....because at the end of the day At Least She Knows How to Laugh....because humor to her is something else other than the malign goadings of psychological goblins.
Dear Ghos if you can't get thru the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner without triggering revulsion and disgust...its' time to board up shop and decamp for a cave somewhere.

SAVE THE LAUGHTER VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON IN 2016!

Thursday, October 20, 2016

"Your Two Minutes are Up"

I hate it when I am right sometimes...because as predicted last night's debate was a rock bottom experience in every way including the mere existence of Our Constitution has become an irritant to a would be demagogue.
On the other hand THAT demagogue is Donald Trump who clearly hasn't got the common sense Ghod gave a bag of hammers.
In a word a degrading spectacle, I could tell Citizen Clinton was getting visibly bored by Donald Trump's weird pidgin English and mind numbingly repetitive lexicon of threats.
I give the Lady Credit, she kept her cool for the most part as her opponent angrily dismissed those cozy constitutional notions of legitimacy & the orderly transfer of power.
Trump on the other hand fumed for ninety minutes snarled and harassed and accomplished nothing, I suspect this is what he does when he is baffled by events that run outside his control.
I struggle with the right literary metaphor for Donald Trump, the line of least resistance suggests Willie Stark or perhaps Buzz Windrip Sinclair Lewis' dictator from "It Can't Happen Here".
But last night was a veritable "primal scream" pathetically desperate to confront and affront...suggests Performance Art, less Yoko Ono and much more Andy Kaufman perhaps.
Kaufman & Trump share a similar disconnect, Andy thought he was being funny (even when he was being willfully weird and obscure) and Donald thinks last night's prolonged tirade was a species of persuasion.
Kaufman had a character he loved playing, an temperamental lounge singer "Tony Clifton" whose whole stage act would degenerate into insulting and baiting his audience with a abandon that would give Don Rickles' pause.  At this point Tony could well be a sort of grim prophecy of Donald Trump....if any of you have a better metaphor feel free to share, I for one still feel dirty from last night and need a shower.



Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Curt Schilling ain't Running for Sh*t in 2018

The LAST THING IN THE WORLD Charlie Baker wants in 2018 is some dumbass miniTrump running against Elizabeth Warren in the General Election, the very race that The Governor longs to cast as a replay of 1994 with a nice bankrupt no-name democrat as his key opponent.
Who the hell is Curt Schilling kidding anyway I promise you the necessary money will never materialize, Charlie will make sure of that!
Moreover Schilling supposedly claims he'll make the race if his wife agrees (!!!)....I guarantee Charlie Baker will pay that good woman a princessly sum in off da books funny money to kibosh the whole dealio.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

I Hope I am Wrong but

I suspect that tomorrow night's debate is gonna hit a new low for rhetorical crapulence.  I make this prediction as I am weary "agreeance" with Josh Marshall that Donald Trump's answer to all electoral adversity is to treble down on belligerence .... And tomorrow night is his last time to primally scream at Citizen Clinton in Real Time.
Because that is Donald Trump's real breakthrough, he is first NSFW candidate ever nominated by a major party.
So as such, I recommending that all parents of small children make sure they do not watch said debate, if need be, put on "The Iron Giant" or "The Incredibles" or "Frozen" in the playroom....in fact stay in the playroom and watch it with the kids..

Monday, October 17, 2016

There is wild talk out there

of post election violence and or insurrection should Citizen Clinton Clear the Boards on Election Night.
I'm skeptical quite frankly.
I don't see Donald Trump as a sufficiently motivated and ruthless revolutionary leader to attempt such a foolish thing.  I for one believe that at a lot of his alt right rhetoric is cynical dabbling on his part but in some ways that's a more dangerous path.
Moreover I suspect Trump just doesn't have the guts to see something like that through to it's natural conclusion, billionaires have "way too much to lose" when push comes to shove.
His base simply isn't organized for insurrection anyway blustery threats aside.....
Occam's Razor however suggests that Trump will simply go on inciting others to violence sometimes casually and sometimes quite deliberately just to see how far he can push things.
And yes that is a bad precedent to set in every way.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

By the Way

I just wanna humbly and politely retract all those trepidations I had about Bernie Sanders' "electability", cleared if faced with Donald Trump as the GOP Candidate the Vermont Senator would have Cleaned the Donald's Clock.
But then I suspect the democrats could have nominated Earl K. Long or the James Michael Curley and beaten Trump like a red headed stepchild....

Friday, October 14, 2016

Tons of News

All of it though mystically the same....the news cycle is stuck on a repeat loop.

Every day the GOP Candidates educates a new "Tantrump" and wallows in bellicose nonsense and self pity while the GOP just tries it best to avoid what is the world's first NSFW republican presidential contender.

Meanwhile here in Massachusetts funny money floods the airwaves on behalf of abolishing the charter school cap, whether  the ballot measure passes or not, funny money will become the New Normal in Massachusetts Politics.

And up in NH the Presidential Campaign replicates itself in miniature in what is, up to now, a tight tight race.  Boston's TV stations are making a fortune running those goddawful adverts on behalf of Trump, Ayotte and bellicose bloated Frank Giunta.....ishhh....it's no fun to be perceived as a swing state is it?

Thursday, October 13, 2016

The GOP Base is Living It's Own Nightmare

Normally the hardcore of the GOP Base is compelled to "Make a Bad Deal for Short Money" during a Presidential Election. This is how a gender/ethnic/theological exclusionist electoral cohort has to come around to vote for a more outwardly moderate candidate like George Bush Jr, John McCain or Mitt Romney.
Normally the rejectionists don't have the numbers or the money to dictate a "sugar high candidate" entirely to their satisfaction. This is nothing new, it's coalition politics and it's been par for the course since Thomas Jefferson was branding John Adams a Kulak Landlord.
But in Donald Trump the GOP Base has At Last the Very Embodiment of Their Iron Dream....Christian politics, oppressive gender norms, ethnic exclusion etc etc....the whole menu in one enormous serving.  So of course it's just hilarious that at the end of the day they've traded making a bad deal with a goo-goo squish like Mitt Romney for an even worse deal with an unelectable perv who hasn't the religious sensibility God Gave a Cotton Poodle.
And the lesson here is, to get their sacred agenda broken over the head of the republic, ideologically colonized voters will vote for almost anyone down to the aforementioned cotton poodle as long as their candidate doesn't deviate.
So literally, deviation is the only real sin, not philandering, sexual assault or borrowing mad path cashola from dubious Russian Oligarchs.
Remember that as we go forward here....

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

From a purely technical perspective....

One of the things I find so interesting about this election is the sheer situational distaste projected at both candidates.  Granted Donald Trump seems to crave "negative reinforcement" in a crude tweener kind of a way....but it's no joke to assert both nominees are viscerally disliked.
Granted a good chunk of this is pundit fodder, and there is a naturally tendency to fallaciously assume that the opinions on the Op-Ed Pages somehow embody the larger thinking of the electorate.
My point is, that unpopular candidates aren't the exception they are sort of the norm as presidential contests go. I mean look at the succession of presidential elections from 1868 thru 1912 it's a gruesome recitation of second rate men versus third rate men all in a downward race to see who could promise to do LESS as the US President.
This is when those race weren't loaded up with outright weirdos (Horace Greeley...who died of shame a few weeks after losing in 1872) or preposterously corrupt schemers (James G. Blaine I am looking at you Boyo).
In the modern era "Humphrey Versus Nixon" was a close race between two very unpopular candidates as well as "Reagan versus Carter" in 1980 (look at the polling if you don't believe me, Saint Ron was not running away with that one up to that debate)....
To me, the system with it's Newtonian checks and balances seems to mutely assume that for the most part "regression to the mean" even sometimes "regression to the mean spirited" is gonna be the norm in presidential contests.
We have a culture and a system with so many venues and means to persuasion we tend to assume (dangerously so) that those designated are automatically gonna be of a pleasant persuasive disposition.
In everyday life as in politics, this is not always the case.
This does leave us at the doorstep of the "lesser of the two evils" but I think that is just where the Framers of the US Constitution Intended Us to Be and indeed in some sense that is where our liberties are best safeguarded sometimes.

Monday, October 10, 2016

A Line Got Crossed Last Night in the Second Presidential Debate

Donald Trump basically threatened to throw Hillary Clinton in jail should he be elected President of  the United States next month.
That is a new low in US Politics, degrading a proud republic to the level of The Philippines or Nigeria..."primal scream politics" at it's worst and a boast one associates with a second rate third world tyrant.
If I could give you all one simple stark reason not to vote for Trump that'd be the one...."no tyranny in 2016".


Saturday, October 08, 2016

Another thing....

these "skeezer tapes" from Donald Trump pretty much ruin any hope of attacking Hilary Clinton by way of her marriage in the next debate.  I can only imagine the rejoinders that her team is drilling into her even as I write this doggerel.
Granted some of her "Wall Street Speeches" have come to light, but full & reliable transcripts have not yet been made available...so pretty much she has plenty of room to maneuver should that be Trump's line of attack.
Just sayin'....

Kelly Ayotte had to....

walk back comments to the effect that Donald Trump was a "Role Model" for her children in the wake of these comments from the GOP Nominee.
Ayotte just has the worst luck imaginable in politics, she marked out hard for Romney in 2012 and was largely relegated to the role of warm up act for the Former Viceroy, her dreamy dreams of a cush VP nomination on a ticket with Bush or Cruz or Rubio this year got "Trumped"....now she has a nominee who hates her, one she can't really endorse or denounce...bad karma indeed.
And yet she is up in the polls in her Senate Race, mostly due to those vicious lying commercials she deployed wherein Ayotte claims she is working hard on behalf of every junkie in the Granite State.
Ah but phony moderates always prosper don't they?

Polls are tight up there but that is an October Phenom common to every Presidential Election Year in NH...The Spartans are up there in force and ground game still counts for something in NH. So stay frosty one and all...


Wednesday, October 05, 2016

Mike Pence...

the GOP's VP Nominee this year, exuded a weary fatalistic air last night, he clearly cannot wait for Trump to Go for the Terminal Electoral Nap so he can switch sides and cozy up to the party's "restorationists" (ergo Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, The Bush Family, Mitt Romney, John McCain et al).
Pence hardly defended Trump at all last night, Kaine's prosecutorial zeal clearly overwhelmed the Indiana Governor, one would almost suspect Mike was doing this deliberately.
But then this is Mike "Dense" we are talking about here, not known for his high IQ when push comes to shove.
If I was Trump I'd keep an eye on Mike Pence he clearly has a stake in an Epic GOP Fail come November something that'll jump start his own presidential prospects in 2020.

Monday, October 03, 2016

How The Hell Does Anyone...

Lose a Capital-B Billion Dollars on a Casino Deal?

How?

The only people who ever lost money on a casino were either twitchy weird like Howard Hughes or the Toxically Inept say....Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.
Trump however lost a billion in Atlantic City on his famed Casino and rolled the loss over into what is likely a twenty one year long exemption from income taxes.
Seldom has ineptitude and hubris been so lucratively rewarded....otherwise there isn't a shred of "business acumen" in this sordid story, the right lawyers and CPOs worked overtime and BOOM the debt disintegrated and entirely to Trump's advantage.

This is not "smarts" to paraphrase, Citizen Trump...it is a logical consequence of thirty six years of wealth worship within and without the public sector in the USA. If you can hire enough attorneys you can skate past any malign consequences in this country THAT is the lesson here.
Our laws and our mores currently favor financials and financial speculation, they set few limits and  those are routinely ignored.
Maybe Donald Trump might've been held accountable IF we had real equality before the law, if the tax burden was truly fairly apportioned and if if if the system couldn't be gamed....but it can and so Trump lives to smirk another day.

There is an opportunity here for the democrats and sundry independents, but they must be bold and draw a line...debt has to mean the same thing for rich as it does for the poor is a very good start as far as I am concerned.



The New Hampshire State Legislature...

serves sans compensation save a paltry travel allowance.  And the result has been at least one former state representative supplemented his income by selling pot to his colleagues.
And he was a republican as well and it went down while he was In Office....and he had customers in the legislature's leadership!
Damn the Spirit of Free Enterprise LIVES in the Granite State!


Sunday, October 02, 2016

"Facts are Stupid Things"

or so Ronald Reagan once allegedly opined on the road to sainthood & senescence....

But for sheer overwhelming stupidity, you can't beat last week's presidential debate, and you have to likely go back to 1980 to find a pairing two more unpopular presidential candidates.
That debate has entered Reagan Mythology as a defining moment in Saint Ron's meandering Path to Power, people forget though that the polls up to the beginning of October described a tenuous lead for then President Carter. Reagan needed that debate badly to disperse however temporarily his well earned rep as a low info politician who was quick on the trigger.
Accordingly his campaign caved in to almost all President Carter's pre-debate demands all in a desperate effort to get the incumbent in the room in time to make an impact on the election. Carter for his part agreed to the debate fatally late in the campaign so when Reagan vaulted that low bar set for him that was a signal for the late-deciders to desert the democrats in epic droves.
Carter made the mistake of thinking he could tease Reagan into saying something stupid , Reagan could always do that on his own he proved however remarkably difficult to bait when push  came to shove.
Gerald Pomper's seminal election summary indicated that the subsequent GOP Landslide was no validation of conservative ideology, rather it was a desperate search for a President who could take control of events.

Back in 1980 It took about a week for that to happen, just as it has taken a week for Trump's terrible first debate performance to sink in with the electorate and wipe out all the gains he made in September.
If you are a democrat, do not rejoice in this there are more debates to come and like Reagan, the bar is set lower for Trump than it is for Clinton.
And based on what happened in 1980, voters can change their minds twice in a short period of time....with no ill effects.
Remember it is All About Leadership, focus on that and you win.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Ghod it sucks to be Hillary Clinton doesn't it?

Grilled incessantly about ev-erything...I mean just ask Donald Trump....Monday night he wilted after forty five minutes of the scrutiny that is the very air Hillary Clinton has been breathing for twenty five years.


Tuesday, September 27, 2016

We can but hope....

That last night's presidential debate represents Donald Trump's Waterloo....Citizen Clinton passed thru the usual cataract of vituperation unscathed, giving as good as she got....hell around the 10:15pm she started smiling like the whole damn thing was somehow gun as Trump ranted and raved like Captain Queeg.

It was a demented performance and more worrisome an utterly barbaric one.

AND THAT is my big takeaway from last night, that Donald Trump is literally campaigning to be PostApocalyptic King of the Rubble....in other words his every word and phrase last night came from a firm belief that "Might is Right".
That...is the core doctrine of barbarians from Genghis Khan to Pol Pot, and the fact that it could be the very core of anyone's Presidential Campaign is a good sign that the cause of civilization is in deep  trouble in the USA.
If Abraham Lincoln asserted that the Union cannot endure "Half Slave and Half Free" so too it may not endure if it is "Half Barbaric and Half Civilized".
That Citizen Clinton comported herself with brains, wit and ability last night is a given, but the overall cause of Civilization took a bad hit last night.....so did decency, civility, restraint and all the like.
I enter the middle of my fifth decade on Earth worried that there are fellow citizens out there, so mad with fear and setback that they are prepared to secede from common sense itself....And. Trump I fear is the leading edge of a much worse phenomenon going forward.

Does Donald Trump still expect

the endorsement of "dozens" of "Generals and Admirals" after last night's dismal demented debate performance?  I'm sure The Donald is "Good to Go" with his Landsman Captain Queeg but other than that.....



Monday, September 26, 2016

According to current polling

Charlie Baker remains The Most Popular Governor In The Known Galaxy with something akin to a seventy percent approval rating despite a year given over to dodging Donald Trump, unsuccessfully selling off the State House Lawn and hyping Charter Schools.
It's a pretty underwhelming record of achievement to be sure, but combined with Charlie's Coolidgean gift for silence it's put him top o' th' pops.
But boy howdy he still loves Patronage Doesn't He? He appointed his driver one James McGinn the head of the State's Environmental Police Force.
Geez what is it about these republicans and their drivers they must really bond as they go from town to town haranguing the masses or whatever it is Charlie does when he is out and about. Remember Joe Lawless he was Cellucci's driver and he landed an infamously Cush gig at Massport back in the day, seems like a pattern is emerging here. I mean, just drive for the winning candidate and you can pick your spot so it seems.
We can't proof the whole of the bureaucracy from ambitious chauffeurs , but maybe we can make that job a civil service position or something. Assign drivers to the candidates who can't lobby for soft touch jobs or something....

Friday, September 23, 2016

Thoughts While Waiting for My Computer to Boot Up

Lee Harvey Oswald shot the President of the USA and a Dallas Cop during his half assed getaway....and still he got Taken Alive.

James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King and lived to die in bed, in prison.

Sirhan Sirhan shot RFK in a crowded kitchen, in the presence of the LAPD, and got taken alive.

Squeaky Frome tried to shoot President Gerald Ford, and was captured arrested tried and shipped off to a Nut House.

Ditto Sarah Jane Moore.

And John Hinkley.

All of these people were armed and dangerous with very serious crimes to answer for, nobody pulled them over in traffic and saw something they didn't like....but they all lived to sit before a Judge and Jury.

But then

Almost all of them were white....I mean that's the big takeaway as we go thru another spasm of Police African-American Shootings.  Just sayin'.....I mean look at the big picture here.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Kudos to Senator Warren

or taking Wells Fargo CEO Stumpf to the woodshed over that bank's abominable practice of forcing unwanted accounts and policies on unsuspecting clients.
This is outright economic piracy more akin to the financial practices of a Somali Warlord than anything a well run democracy should tolerate.
Yet without concerted congressional action we can expect more of these scandals, right down to the denunciations before congress, and then the miscreants duly retire with their golden parachutes & defy the world.
Too Big to Fail doesn't Mean Too Big to Bust Up.
A touch of the congressional vertical stroke is needed here, but until there is a majority in congress working on behalf of the average person we can look forward to more and more of this outright thievery.
So before we can clean out the banks, we need to clean out Dixie's Rotten Boroughs....GOP Bustin' then TrustBusting....

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Just remember at the end of the day, The Ayatollah Khomeini voted for Ronald Reagan

because he was hell bent on humbling Jimmy Carter and wished to derail the peace process in the Middle East. So he delayed the release of the hostages, gave Reagan some undeserved hero cred on Inauguration Day 1980 and hoped for the sort of chaos that all incendiaries dream of, every night.
So in the current bombing campaign, ISIS is clearly "voting with their bombs" for Donald Trump.....because true incendiaries always can spot one another a mile away it seems.
So lets not fall into the rhetorical trap of defending a fraught status quo...and we need to make the argument (however fine) that there is a clear and preferable difference between the current danger and  Trump's promise of Virile Anarchy.
And whatever else don't let the bastards see ya sweat.

Monday, September 19, 2016

So despite all those investigators and detectives

that Donald Trump put on the "Obama Birther Case" back in 2011, Donald Trump finally had to come clean and admit the President is Indeed a US Citizen. He also claimed in an outright lie recorded in public that said slur was originally propagated by Hillary Clinton.
Ah well so it goes....

My question to all you die hard grievance ridden movement conservatives out there, Do ANY of you feel betrayed by The Donald's Sudden Change of Heart?
Any of you at all?
Because your silence just makes the lie even more embarrassing and shameful....if any of the cited participants were capable of shame that is.....

Fox News....

gave serial sexual harasser, Roger Ailes a forty million dollar "golden parachute" before gently ushering him out the door.
The irony here is, Fox News is a notoriously conservative news outlet that remains a premiere platform for family values mongers and the like.
Now, I may be All Stupid Like....(to quote Alexei Sayle) but I think, chasing leggy on air talent around your desk like you are Jim Backus in a bad 1950's sitcom, is probably NOT embodying "traditional family values".
And yet, Ailes went on disporting himself in this lewd manner for years so we are told, until a few on air personalities finally took their complaints public.
So clearly one can create and administer a "Family Values News Platform" without any need to live up to said value structure.
Because it seems to be philosophy 101 that its a zero-sum game when it comes to family values versus philandering...you cannot embrace both concepts sans intellectual dishonesty and immediate cognitive dissonance.
Or can you?
Both stances frankly reinforce patriarchy and gender exclusion....philandering is the operational result of such attitudes, "family values" their totemization.
You can do this only by paying a high tax to the virtue mongering notions of family values, but horny conservatives like Roger Ailes are clearly willing to pay up.
So as long as patriarchy is reinforced and celebrated which is nothing but a nostalgic gender power relationship, both concepts can be "administratively reconciled" even if they are mutually exclusive on paper.
Well in the end this is about power where great power is concentrated there ought to be the maximum feasible transparency. Forty Million Large though, does a beautiful job of obscuring the above cited contradictions & practical compromises.



Monday, September 12, 2016

Ohhh Hillary is Sick....

she's got pee-new-moanyah.....
I just love the tidal wave of treble guessing that attends a minor incident like this, I mean shee-it from an actuarial perspective she is in the catbird seat pneumonia or no pneumonia, women outlive men by a country mile and occasion lower life insurance premiums in almost every case.
She should get Trump's Doctor to check her vitals, cuz according to that guy The Donald can leap tall buildings in a single bound....

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Last Week....

Jeff Jacoby insisted that overpopulation was a good thing, this week he swings his rhetorical baseball bat at the head of the head of that pesky popular franchise.
His argument low engagement voters shouldn't vote,  declining to vote is a defacto endorsement of the status quo so by staying home, non-voters are somehow being...patriotic.
This is in the face of strong polling that indicate a great deal of dissatisfaction with the status quo along gender, age and SES lines....per Jeff Jacoby though I guess none of this is fixed by...voting.

Well as a theory this does some merit (regardless of my criticism), but in practice low turnout and mass electoral disaffection routinely helps conservatives hang on to power in the face of the toxic effects of their policies....so in the end this is another one of Jeff's sneaky passive aggressive arguments for the fast decaying wingnut eschaton.

***
Speaking of conservatives...how the HELL does Mitt Romney's bootblack Eric Fehnstrom get a cush gig doing election commentary on the Globe's Editorial Page?? I don't see John E. Walsh getting any counterpoint space....
The Globe has this endless false consciousness liberal guilt trip, they feel obligated to give up space for outright GOP political hacks masquerading as pundits.
Its bad journalism....worse in an election year.....but then this is the Boston Globe institutionally its got a liberal outlook but operationally they haven't got a single liberal columnist worth two cents on the market.
If they really want a conservative voice then ditch that wingnut jobber Fehnstrom and hire someone with real journalistic cred, at least then standards would go up...but then this is the Globe and all us readers can do is sigh and go "tut tut..."

Thursday, September 08, 2016

Your Humble Blogger

(seemingly the last of the Single Combat Political Bloggers) was voter# 5 in his precinct this morning, and he hardly made an early start of it either.
So its gonna be a low turnout primary, which is a shame because either we have good nominees in need of support or else we need to take a second look at some office holders.
In the Governor's Council, a Superfluous Institution is home to an entirely Superfluous Personality,

Marilyn M. Petitto Devaney - District 3, is well worth dismissing from office, someone needs to tell her that lobbying local democrats doesn't start with passing out poorly xeroxed copies of Howie Carr's column.  I voted for Bill Humphrey which was mostly a vote against twitchy weirdness.

On the other hand I voted for Middlesex County's Incumbent Sheriff, Peter Koutoujian (sp), he seems able well informed and realistic I don't know why he rates a primary challenge so far he has done a good job and remains "a comer" as my white haired mother would say.

Buuuut lets face it, low turnouts favor incumbents so I'm hardly able to predict that my vote today is prophesy in the making.

Monday, September 05, 2016

Happy Labor Day....

You are working longer hours for less pay and retirement is many more years away than it was for your parents.
And Labor Unions are as dead as the Dodo Bird....and the middle class is being systematically robbed to maintain the topmost earners who themselves accumulate wealth without actually creating any of it. But hey... this is all about the Dignity of Labor Right?
Right???
Because Labor can have all the dignity in the universe as long as it settles for pennies on the dollar....frankly I've had enough of mere dignity pay me the money.

Thursday, September 01, 2016

The Only Takeaway I get from

from Donald Trump's visit with the President of Mexico is that the people of that Redoubtable Nation got a preview of the sort of malevolent boorishness they can expect from the GOP Candidate should he win in November.
Not even twelve hours after cooing unconvincingly with Nieto, Trump was in Arizona screaming for Blood Dynamite, Ethno-Purges and a Wall Built Up to Heaven.
So much for a pivot to moderation....
Reams of copy will be eructated by Columnistas trying to figure out what it all means, but I take Joshua Marshall's view in that Donald Trump is a stupid berserker who makes decisions associated with stupid berserkerdom. Rationality doesn't enter into it at any point, true north points directly to "DUMB & ANGRY" and thass it.
There is nothing to analyze there is no subtext or strategy here....and thats the scariest part of all this.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Paul LePage the nominal Governor of Maine

has been reduced to screeching threats into the phonemail of a democratic legislator who'd earned his considerable ire.
Y'know, in pro wrestling patois, LePage is a jobber, a dumbass sap who loses matches for short money, cuz his latest outburst in all its vulgar impotent fury was prized audio on the national news not even 72 hours later.
Yes Paul LePage's behavior is reprehensible (my white haired ninety three year old mother suspects alcohol abuse is in play here, she may be right), but he can't back up any of his threats at this point who the hell is he kidding?
Huey Long when he was the tyrant-governor of Louisiana, made threats ten times as scary but the crucial difference is the Late Kingfisher could back it all up with bayonets and more.
So LePage is, by definition an embarrassment to the State of Maine, most especially to the roughly sixty six percent of the state that did not vote for his @ss, but being obnoxious and crude is not an impeachable offense. So in turn, getting LePage to resign requires a sense of shame that his career to date indicates he does not possess...so good luck making that happen.


Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Huma Ankles The Joint...

Word comes down that Huma Abedin must put upon wife of Anthony Wiener, has finally pulled the plug on a marriage marred by sexting shenanigans on the part of her useless soon to be ex husband.
I wasn't shock that Anthony backslid on her (he has that blank baffled look common of serial marital trepassers he understands nothing), no I was shocked Huma was still married to him!  I mean the dope embarrassed her twice in front of the whole world and still she stuck by him.
I hate to say it but I blame Huma's pal, Hillary Clinton, the noted feminist is paradoxically the poster gal for "stand by yer man" rectitude....Ms Abedin probably was feeling some peer pressure.
Frankly she is better off without the dope and shoulda ditched his boney ass years ago....

Monday, August 29, 2016

Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Lethiathan

has been holding rallies in NH and in Boston over the weekend. Clearly they are on the prowl for disaffected conservative voters to grab off from Donald Trump and I wish them the joy of their prowlings.
Ever taken a look at the 2016 Libertarian Platform, the Preamble and the Statement of Principles are both vastly longer than the total verbiage given over to National Defense/Foreign Policy.  Their whole program comes down to "defending the homeland", "avoiding entangling alliances" and opposition to selective service.
Two out of three straight out of HenryWallace's 1948 Progressive Crusade...not bad...I'm curious though is Libertarian VP candidate Bill Weld aware that his party apparently plans to disband NATO once they get into office?
Or does he even care anymore?

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Jeff Jacoby...

Opined in the Globe this week that overpopulation was a good thing since a toxi birthrate meant a growing economy.
And I offer this up merely as an excellent illustration of the sort of utter rubbish a wingnut must vigorously spout in the public prints in order just to KEEP UP with the pace of intellectual decline in movement conservatism.
What next? Carbon monoxide is somehow good for you? Tobacco makes you healthy? Cancer has an upside?
To be a US Conservative these days, given the degraded nature of their political and intellectual leadership, you have to "choose delusion". Alas though, once you choose delusion you have to keep going deeper into it until you literally retreat into stupidity.
And thats the cut and dried of it here, Jeff can't handle reality so he chooses stupidity...look for more of it, this is an election year after all.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

They are getting ready to Tear Down

"Lanes and Games" (AKA "The Turnpike Bowl-A-Drom") and replace with multistory residential complexes, tidily built on stilts to resist the local flood plane. Awful news as far as Humble Elias is concerned, North Cambridge used to be a Blue Collar Redoubt in Greater Cambridge but the forces of gentrification cannot ever be denied for long.
I went to a Parochial High School in North Cambridge back in the 1970's and I can recall dire and entirely prophetic warnings that if the Red Line Extension went thru to Alewife Gentrification would arrive on the First Train.
And so it did, and haven for lower level civil servants, store owners and retirees is now to become barracks for aspirational millenials.
Sad to say nothing of the loss of one of Boston's Last Remaining Fully Functioning Bowling Alleys....another avocation that has gone the way of hula hoops, VHS rentals and penmanship.
Sad....

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

One Hundred and Twenty One Medals at the Rio Summer Olympics for the USA

so much for Declinism Eh? I guess our multicultural rainbow proud Olympic Athletes proved themselves something other than mere token SJW fan service....
Hard to make an argument that equal opportunity is a bad thing when so many persons from so many backgrounds accomplished so very very much.
But then thats the USA we will always wrestle long and hard for the golden mean between equality and achievment....and last week that paid off....Trump wants to keep em' Out, I wanna get them trained up for Tokyo in 2020...:)

Sunday, August 21, 2016

Stephen Kinzer (in today's Globe)

was discussing Daniel Ortega's attempts to nominate his wife for VP of Nicaragua in their upcoming election. Kinzer went on at length about the durable nature of dynastic politics in South America where public institutions & mores can be weak and elections often do not establish legitimacy. I'm surprised he didn't linger over Juan Peron's nomination of his wife Isabel as VP of Argentina in 1972..."Isabelita" (alleged to be a stripper and Peron's third wife) in due course became President of Argentina when Peron died in 1974. Allegedly, Isabel Peron holds the distinction of being the first woman to lawfully become President of a Nation State.
That is about her only claim to fame, Isabel unleashed the armed forces onto the streets of Argentina to battle the infamous "Montoneros", a Trotskyite guerilla movement who'd happily dickered with Peron in palmier times.  In due course on grounds of her mounting ineptitude, Isabel was deposed by a military coup in 1976 whereupon the Junta unleashed an anti communist purge of Argentina that would have done Lavrenty Beria proud.
NOW THAT is a cautionary tale about dynastic politics....And if you think I am trafficking parallels to our current election let me assure you that there was never a more bumptious wingnut populist than Isabel Peron, she was the Donald Trump of her times believe me.

We can all thank the people of Rio De Janeiro for

definitively exposing Ryan Lochte's antisocial tendencies.  Now we can take the poor boy in hand (actually he IS only thirty two years old a baby really) and treat his illness....via a curative reality show "Ryan Lochte Unleashed" or the like....

Thursday, August 18, 2016

The Massachusetts Democratic Party has come out against

taking the cap off Charter Schools via ballot question this Fall.
Ah'm agin' it too...now I realize there is a worthwhile debate to be had about the intrinsic worth of charter schools but as it stands now the local school committees and thus property owners pay for the brunt of said charter schools sans any real oversight all on behalf of some four percent of the "pupil population" of the Commonwealth.
If we take the cap off charter schools the locals become burdened by expensive exclusive schools literally leaving the special needs kids and disciplinary cases to the "regular public schools". This is to me a hateful passive aggressive formula for creating the short of elite-driven school system they have in Japan or the UK by financial fiat sans debate.
I'm willing to discuss raising the charter school cap but only if the Commonwealth comes clean and offers a financial solution that does NOT burden localities, but then this is Massachusetts so that ain't happening believe me.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

There is a sturdy meme going around out there...

to the effect that Hillary Clinton is getting "lucky" in that Donald Trump is about the only republican She could have beat this year.
Waaal, I dunno about that, I suspect that she and her redoubtable husband the ex-president were eagerly hoping to run against some premature geezer like Jeb Bush (like they don't know how to beat a Bush in a general election....) or a twitchy ideologue like Ted Cruz.
But she got Trump so be it.
Normally I jump ugly on said notion at this point in said blog post...but for once lemme opt for a tincture of empathy. A LOT of the people espousing said meme are themselves republicans who cannot vote for Donald Trump with any kind of a clear conscience. So if they are bolting the party they have to console themselves with some scenario, because lord knows voting for Hillary (even staying home or taking a libertarian ballot) is a traumatic prospect for today's republican. Keep in mind they've been demonizing and or fundraising off of her name for Twenty Five Years Now....the irony of Hillary Clinton being Senator McConnell/Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan/The Bush Family's last best hope of rescuing the GOP must be bitter indeed.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Donald Trump seems to be

playing around with the idea of a post electoral insurrection should he lose this November....granted he is using coded language in a doubly passive aggressive way, but the hint and the menace are there.
Or there would be if anyone was afraid of this fat mook.
Let me be short and blunt fantasies of insurrection didn't work for Jefferson Davis and his Benighted Crew....Losers Secede in other words and Secession is a Losing Idea.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Olympiad Advice....

I "dabble" in the Olympics lurching from the stuff that gets hyped (ergo "Women's Gymnastics") to competitions where it's easy to tell who the heck won (ergo swimming)...I run the gamut from idly curious to decorously patriotic.

But Holy God Almighty, the sports commentary on NBC is uniformly awful, bumptious, inane and plain dopey!
I think a lot of these guys are used to the professional basketball, baseball, football, hockey axis in the USA so anything off grid like Beach Volleyball or Bicycle Racing or whatnot tends to defeat them.
Which is sad because sometimes its these fringe sports than attract the true and for real "Committed and Talented Amateur" who one and all try harder because the weight of expectations is paradoxically off them as their chosen sport has a small audience.
Anyhow just turn the sound off I say, I mean if you need commentary to figure out who one a track meet then it might be time to take up knitting or solitaire.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

2ndA....

All Hillary Clinton has called for in her platform this year, is expanding background checks on firearm purchases and banning the sale of assault weapons to private individuals.
THAT....fairly incremental response to toxic national gun saturation constitutes abolishing the Second Amendment in the blustery reaches of Donald Trump's mind and as such may require violent corrective action visited on her or her judicial nominees (DT's wording is to say the least, ambiguous likely deliberately so).
Just remember thats the modalities here, backing up a lie with the threat of violence, and yes as of today we have officially hit Rock Goddamn Bottom in the USA.

Monday, August 08, 2016

Just what Kelly Ayotte wanted...

Donald Trump's all too surly endorsement in the General Election. The embattled GOP Senator from NH can practically hear the stampede of female voters to Maggie Hassan....
I think Ayotte would sooner have the endorsement of the Zika Virus....
Of course supposedly Trump was mocking John McCain, Kelly Ayotte & Paul Ryan at campign stops til this weekend when he executed a weird surly about-face and suddenly endorsed the above incumbents.
Josh Marshall is wondering exactly who had the whip hand over Trump to force him to recant like that, me I think Kelly Ayotte is thanking her lucky stars Trump endorsed her on the weekend, during the Olympics, which gives her time to get out from under that most unwelcome endorsement....

Saturday, August 06, 2016

Senator Kelly Ayotte is allegedly

down a full ten points in New Hampshire mostly on the toxic downticket effect of Donald Trump...
Kelly's response is classic a quadrennial love for seniors, law enforcement and veterans...all of it more than a little forced and artificial.
Kelly's been in the majority for her entire term of office and yet New Hampshire still lacks a VA Hospital despite being a steady contributor to the ranks of combat veterans, for all manner of services vet must literally take a bus to Jamaica Plain.
If I was Kelly Ayotte I'd be campaigning 24 - 7 for such a facility but no....she's been too busy polishing Mitt Romney's black Oxford's to move the ball forward.
Numbers as cited above are likely what is fueling the GOP's current panic attack about their nominee...its one thing to nominate a thin skinned narcissist for President, but if he starts ending people's phony-baloney jobs then it's Katey-Bar-The Door!

Tuesday, August 02, 2016

Y'know

a regular feature of GOP National Conventions down thru the years has been the appearance at the podium of some grieving police widow who was more or less willing to back up republican law-n-order bona fides by sandbagging the democrats....usually by name.
And the CONSISTENT response of said democrats, be it Mike Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry....has always been "I support the police, they have difficult jobs, I share your pain".
The Khan Family stick it to The Donald at the DNC (over constitutional issues no less) and Citizen Trump squeals like a stuck german pig.
Nothing so easily illustrates Trump's unfitness for The Big Job...his skin is literally paper thin, his instinct whenever the criticism hits home is to lash back without recourse or reflection....you want that sad childish mentality with it's short little finger on the button?

(posting will be sporadic this week, even I must go on vacation sometimes)

Friday, July 29, 2016

I generally thought well

of Citizen Clinton's speech last night, the bar however was set high and she has never been natural spellbinder behind the podium. Given that, she really had no choice but to delve into specfics and describe in detail her platform casting herself as a dogged doer of great things.
If I have any other reaction to her acceptance speech is that Bernie Sanders' influence has been profound this year quite literally in both parties, the democrats are promising to tax rate at the normal rate and Trump blustered about protecting the poor...(those people he'd been otherwise evicting and exploiting up to that point).
Thats pretty deep penetration for one candidate, that much Sanders can take away with some pride.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

The Owl of Minerva Flies at Dusk...

Its a truism with me that Great Age of Political Oratory is Behind Us. The power to persuade a nation as to a course or action or a particular policy has largely atrophied in the Age of the Soundbyte (where a great deal of rhetoric would be dismissed as mere heckling back in the day). Fifty years ago great speeches made whole careers, a happy talent for rhetoric was considered a key qualification for public office.
Now?
Not so much.
So its a little ironic that two of the best pulpit speechiers left in the game are both democrats and either former or incumbent US Presidents. I refer of course to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
They have contrasting styles to be sure...
With Bill Clinton it is all about creating a vast coherent energy field of pure intimacy "come here sit by me and I will tell thee a story" that is The Former President's most reliable schtick. The peculiar nature of his communion with his audiences literally inculcates the belief that he speaks to you and you alone.
If Clinton was a vocalist he'd be Elvis Presley softly resolutely crooning "Kentucky Rain" or perhaps in a more dramatic vein "Suspicious Minds".
President Obama on the other hand is an Apostle of Expansiveness and Optimism, speech last night to the DNC was a virtual blockbuster sequel to his 2004 Keynote in Boston.  Literally, Obama beckons his listeners to come to the Top of the Hill With Him and Behold The Vast and Glorious Vistas Before Us.  If Obama was himself a vocalist he'd be Louis Armstrong singing "Wonderful World", low and with boundless infectious confidence.
Now Trump on the other hand is very much a product of our degraded rhetorical times, a heckler whose syntax occasionally resembles pidgin english, his core go-to is always to incite in as few words as possible.
But lets also remember that talent for invective, so comforting to the perpetually aggrieved is what got him the GOP nomination so we dismiss it at our peril.
And I muse on in this fashion merely to point out the particular scope of the challenge for Hillary Clinton and her Acceptance Speech Tonight. She has to connect the dots on all the cliches and soundbytes, reassure, inspire but also reach even lower to commune with the audience & electorate within and without the convention center.
It is a reintroductory moment, programmed literally for making what is hoped to be an excellent second impression, it should not be squandered by any means.
Lastly the challenge for Secretary Clinton tonight is unusually acute because at least in the Democratic Party at this moment, the rhetorical bar is set high, good luck to her sez I.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Bernie Sanders ...

Showed class and a sense of drama last night when he moved to make Clinton's nomination unanimous....he set a good example, nothing more can be asked.
Its important to remember though that back in 2008 Hillary Clinton was in the same situation as Bernie Sanders, she'd come up short in the delegate count she'd been cut dead by the superdelegates and she had plenty of supporters howling for a kamikaze finale to the Denver Convention.
But Secretary Clinton is an olde pro at politics, rgardless of her PUMA base ("Party Unity My Ass") she understands to get "party unity" you must set the example and give party unity. She backed the the Obama-Biden ticket to the hilt which to me is a strong indicator of the overall high quality of her character.
Lets remember that there was a lot of lingering bitterness against Obama with a lot of dark talk of "losing the women's vote", Sarah Palin's nomination for Veep on the GOP ticket can be directly traced back to said disaffection.
But all the same then Senator Clinton rose to the occasion with aplomb, as did Bernie Sanders last night...they both have set a good example going forward they are to be applauded.

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

For the Record

Come What May, I am voting this November for the Woman Who Gives the N.R.A. the Screaming Bedspins.

Meanwhile Joanie Vennochi in a bracing return to form in Today's Globe snarks away at Hillary Clinton's lack of candor and forthrightness with respect to her email server and other alleged "scandals".
Then again this is Joan Vennochi, she more or less wrote the same column about John Kerry in 2004 chiding him for not coming clean about his war record when the Swift Boat Vets were tearing up the airwaves.
I saw Senator Warren's speech at the DNC last night, talk about another "bracing return to form" that woman has to pulpit skills to be sure!  I suspect catcalls aside, that speech did Warren's many presidential boosters a world of good keeping their hopes alive. Our Senior Senator seems to have found an opponent worth of her razor sharp rhetorical skills, Secretary Clinton would be well advised to send Warren into doubtful districts she makes a powerful mind-changing case against Donald Trump.
As for Me,All I can say is, Do What Ya Gotta Do Just Don't Inhale Liz!

Monday, July 25, 2016

As for the Emails kerfluffle

it feels like inside baseball stuff to me, likely given the embarrassment occasioned Wasserman-Schultz's resignation is justified but I would not be surprised if Clinton & Sanders were already in accord as to the DNC chair's ouster prior to this alleged scandal.
Secretary Clinton got the Veep She Wanted last week, so it stands to reason that Senator Sanders could get the DNC Chair he wants this week.
That sound like a deal?
Granted this makes party unity more difficult but unity is ALWAYS difficult for democrats, we need to distinguish between building a winning coalition within and without and fruitless outreach to determined recalcitrants.
Ultimately we should remember the DNC doesn't control the nomination, that is still the exclusive domain of "King Primary", they don't control enough of any process to change the outcomes out in the fifty separate primaries or caucuses.
Okay...anyone wanna vent feel free the comments section is...open.

Kaine for Veep

Not my first choice for the job but I think he will wear well going forward.  I wasn't too keen on Joe Biden eight years ago, but he rose to the occasion with aplomb so what do I know?
The whole vice presidential selection process has undergone a sea change since I was a wee liberal in short pants, a casual process of nigh elimination put Tom Eagleton on the ticket in 1972 which all put sent the party off a cliff in 1972. These days the vice presidential prospects seem to be vetted much more intensely than the persons that are at the top of the ticket, after that strict polling considerations hold sway to say nothing of the intangibles (helpful glibness, compatibility, lack of sustained body odor etc etc).
But it still comes down to one thing, can they deliver their home state, Kaine seems admirably suited to do that very thing. But then even that is a crapshoot, Spiro Agnew couldn't in 1968 and Sarah Palin could in 2008.


Friday, July 22, 2016

Ya know I think

as far as his speech last night is concerned, Trump might've been backed into a corner ideologically speaking.
I mean consider his profligate lifestyle and many ideological diversions prevents him from running as a conservative even if movement conservatives were disposed to permit him to do so, and they are not.
His sexism, racism and thuggish nationalism prevents him from rebranding himself as any sort of moderate or heaven forfend, a liberal.
So really, Trump's only political option last night was to go "The Full Huey Long" and pose as some sort of vague revolutionary here to smash the elites and bring in the reign of the dispossessed in a way that won't alienate the vested interests.
And carrying that off demands an apocalyptic view of the Times We Do Live In, a veritable promise of a "Walking Dead" scenario if he himself is not elected.
Well...maybe this is all scary (and please remember fearmongers are seldom brave themselves) but gloom and doom doesn't often win elections as Saint Ronald Reagan so often pointed out.
I urge all and sundry not to underestimate Donald Trump at the same time he is still a candidate prone to saying and doing profoundly stupid and disastrous things....his remarks about NATO yesterday being a profoundly dangerous case in point.
We must therefore brace ourselves to our posts and our places this fall...its gonna be an ugly campaign but in some ways also enlightening, one we must win I hasten to add.

Roger Ailes Outski at Fox News

Adorned all the way with multiple allegations of sexual harassment from the many many leggy blondes said channel hires to read the news and keep aging choleric white men tuning in.
This is nothing sort of hilarious given the fact that Ailes is morbidly obese & older than dirt you fuse that with a malignant and politicized form of entitled misogyny and viola' instant scandal.
Frankly I shocked the whole thing didn't break sooner.
Allegedly his "Golden Parachute" supposedly amounts to 40 million USD which these days is nothing but a huge confession of guilt as far as I am concerned.
Good riddance, no idea if Fox News will remain a GOP mouthpiece, and in fact couldn't care less either way.