I love how

Denny Hastert borrowed the Late James Michael Curley's old stunt of showing up for the Sentencing Hearing in a wheelchair.
What the hell it worked the child lusting bastard got a paltry five months in the clink thereafter the young boys of Chicago will have to listen closely behind them for the soft squeak of a wheelchair....assuming Hastert still needs it of course.
Because Denny Hastert is what you get when you repress and govern your sexuality by repressing and dominating others....
And yet I recall plenty of Republicans smirking at me and promising as soon as they were done removing Bill Clinton and Al Gore from office, Denny would be our next President.....
Be that as it may, Hastert is to be congratulated, the First US Speaker of the House to Graduate to the Sex Offenders Registry.

Cruz-Fiorina in 2016?

Tactically speaking this is a profoundly stupid move on Senator Ted Cruz's part....points up the fact that most of the Elite GOP haven't Got Clue One as to How to Manage a Brokered Convention (assuming they actually do have one, and I have my doubts).
YOU NEVER lock up the Vice Presidency before going into a contested convention, Ronald Reagan pulled that stunt in 1976 and it back fired spectacularly.  If your only hope is to force a decision on the second or third ballots then you need that glittering bauble called the Vice Presidency to beguile strategic if weak-minded GOP Elites.
Its exactly how John Nance Garner got on the ticket in 1932 as well as numberless others. Cruz may literally have partnered with Fiorina simply because she pisses off Trump and makes for decorous fake diversity optics, she is a public relations choice at best and bad choice otherwise since it closes off negotiations at the convention from the git-go.
At this point I'm back believing that it'll be Trump on the First Ballot when the dust settles...because if this is the best his opponents have to offer, the Developer is in Phat City fer sherrr.

Word on the street is...

That Governor Baker isn't stirring himself at all to put up any GOP candidates to challenge our all democratic congressional delegation in the general election this fall.
For us democrats that is good news in a short term tactical sense, as it allows fundraising and experienced Massachusetts activists and volunteers to "roam freely" and gravitate around the national race or captioned congressional races outside The Commonwealth.
Its also a confession that the state's GOP "bench" is awfully threadbare and the requisite number of credible candidates couldn't have been ginned up.
However in a strategic sense over the long term it sort of indicates that whoever the democrats run against Baker in 2018, it won't be someone out of our congressional delegation. That free ride this year and Charle's 2000% approval ratings will be motivation enough to sit on their hands en masse I suspect.
So as we go forward into the upcoming National Campaign lets keep in mind we are gonna need to mount a solid challenge to Baker in 2018, win or lose, I for one do not want a repeat of 1994's Roosevelt-Weld Debacle.
Just remember, after 1994 Weld took it into his Pride Swollen Head that he could knock off John Kerry in the 1996 Senate Race, and believe me kids, Ed Markey I'm sure recalls that one vividly, as should we all.

Cruz and Kasich are allegedly teaming up

against Donald Trump, dividing up the remaining primaries in a vain effort to prevent a first ballot victory for Donald Trump at the RNC this summer.
Too little too late and if I was John Kasich, I wouldn't believe God's Truth out of Ted Cruz's nasty little mouth.
A mouth ago this MIGHT have worked, might, the problem is, that Trump has consistently performed within his polling projections regardless of his verbal outrages, in the face of that, "coordination" among his rivals would at least prolong the season which is the best anyone in the GOP could hope for given the situation.
But coming now, forget it.
Trump is exploiting nigh Marxian contradictions that have festered within and without the GOP since it's Empire Days under Saint Ronald Reagan. I think a "brokered convention" is simply another advantage Trump situations, his opponents have been consistently under organized ideologically divided, religiously colonized and out hustled at every turn.
And anyway who is gonna "broker" that convention? Jeb Bush? Paul Ryan? Mitch McConnell? A vast cross section of ineptoids and cowards who have been nursed and preserved inside the "Conservative Echo Chamber" since they were children, they simply don't have the skills or the intestinal fortitude to prevail against a Donald Trump.
No...I expect some fireworks and then Trump will be nominated these guys are like the late French General Maurice Gamelin they keep promising a great counter offensive and nothing ever happens...and it won't happen at the RNC this summer believe me not with these jobbers in charge.

"Don't Inhale Liz"

The Boston Globe tried to gin up a "Warren for Veep" boomlet on the Front Page no less yesterday.
If you look at the prospect objectively, Warren is too much of a ideological soul mate to suit Bernie Sanders and she brings no geographical balance to the ticket. Her sole contribution there is a gender redress that presumably might quiet resentful PUMAs....and that wouldn't be a sure thing since Warren famously declined to Endorse Hillary Clinton last fall.
On the other hand "Clinton-Warren in 2016" is all kinds of radical estrogen overdrive with tincture of ideological outreach to Sanderistas and the self same lack of geographical balance that "Sanders-Warren" would have to overcome.
So..."Warren for Veep" is probably a bad idea for the democrats, but as a means to stir up controversy and sell newspapers, it's a slam dunk as far as the Globe is concerned.
So I earnestly encourage our Senior Senator to ignore all this journalistic buffoonery and steer clear of the National Ticket. We need you here in Massachusetts.

From the Looks of Today's Boston Globe

The Baker Admin has finally googled Joan Vennochi's landline, her column today is a defense of the Governor's curious silence on the Lege's pending Transgender Rights Bill.
Baker's silence may have it's strategic qualities but it also concurrently fuels the bill's adversaries to make sure it gets nicely buried, deals Charlies out of negotiations while preserving The Governor's funny-money revenue streams from the National GOP.
And boy howdy by all accounts the Governor Luvs his GOP Funny Money....he's been rai$ing all sorts of mad phat cashola to purge the State Committee among other tasks, it stands to reason he'd wanna decline cheesing off monied movement conservatives as long as possible.
And as I said before if this was corrupt doings with the DPW's retirement fund Charlie Baker would be howling like a Stuck Hairdresser...but then again so would the Op Ed Page of the Boston Globe don't kid yerself.

There is a scramble in the State GOP to colonize

the 42 person state RNC delegation with anti Trump representatives, despite the fact that The Donald won the Massachusetts Primary.
The theory is, that if Trump can be denied a victory on the first ballot the delegates are free to "Vote their Consciences" thereafter (and yes that is a thought to Chill The Blood). So the game is on to seed a potential second or third ballot with uninstructed or covertly instructed loyalists.
This is where Charlie Baker is lodged between a rock and hard place, he likely has the resources and money to completely colonize the Massachusetts RNC delegation with anyone he likes.....but the two front runners Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz are both All Kinds of Awful so all he'd be doing is evading the frying pan to embrace the fire.
Hence his current ambivalence to attend the RNC next summer....
My thinking is, "embrace the chaos" colonize the delegation completely with reps loyal to Baker on the second ballot and offer himself as a Dark Horse Candidate for President. At the very least it'll sharpen his bargaining position because right now everyone seems desperate to induce the sheer berserker joy of a "brokered convention".
Normally I'm skeptical of that trope (it pops up every four years it gets columnist thru the winter it seems), but it might go down this year....might.
And if that is the scenario then half measures won't do and Baker's only safety may lie in "Charlie in 2016"....
Otherwise he just ends up being a patsy for Ted Cruz or someone else Trump buffaloed on the Road to Armageddon.....

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said this weekend

that the Jewish State was never going to give the Golan Heights back....
I mean not for nothing who are they gonna give it back to, The Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce?
Because Syria seems to be hell bent to fall as fast as they can into an endless civil war on the Lebanese Model.
No one with whom anyone can negotiate, no one can deliver on promises therefore no one with whom Israel may talk...for now at least.
 Ah but Netanyahu has a Nixonian capacity for the Obvious, its one of the things that got him reelected after all.

Charlie Baker Boo'd

at a LGBT event...apparently a transgender rights bill is meandering thru the legislature and local activists want the Governor to sign it very badly.
Well lets remember though that the damn thing hasn't hit Baker's in-tray yet and I do think booing and catcalling might register one's disapproval but it can be awfully bad optics with definite potential for a backlash.
On the other hand, Baker's whole "no comment on pending legislation" sounds very equivocal, at best it seems to deal him out of any negotiating stance at all with the lege over said bill and at worst it undermines the Governor's rep for being a "friendly squish" to the LGBT community.
So I can see why the activists were worked up, if this was the MBTA or any erring public sector union I can promise you the Governor would be loud and out front on all of it.

Barbara Anderson RIP...

The famous anti-tax activist has gone to that Last Press Conference In The Sky, Barbara Anderson is dead.
Say what you like about her, but she was in her Imperial High Noon, The Activist's Activist.  In other words infuriating insolent inflammatory & implacable....with a fixation on low taxes that bordered on the pathological.
But lets face fact, zeal works. Its just that no one wants to do business with a zealot, unless you are a hungry journalist that is....
Barbara's secret was that in the end "She Was All About The Money", your tax money that is, for whatever reason it was appropriated her automatic response was said cash was better off in your pocket.
Thats a tremendous populist appeal but a sketchy theory of governance, of course like almost all activists Barbara didn't have to worry about governance her main venue was in the end, all about "Belief" and her touching faith in the universal efficacy of Proposition 2 1/2 made William Jennings Bryan's belief in Free Silver look like decadent apostasy.
Off the subject of taxation I'm told she was a very intelligent and broadminded person, in death she remains the "gold standard" quite literally for bottom up activism, anyone seeking real change in this state had best start examining Ms. Anderson's techniques....she was "good at her trade" to be sure.

The existential implosion of the GOP

commenced waa-ay back in 1998 when the usual wingnut activists actually told themselves that they could impeach both Bill Clinton and Al Gore & overturn two election results in a row. Seriously the plan was to make an alleged child molester, the House Speaker Denny Hastert President!
Now Hastert is facing a Judge with his vileness exposed....thank ghod we dodged that bullet eh?
But that self destructive fully lived on the GOP thru the Florida Recount, "Mission Accomplished", the Unitary theory of Governance, Sarah Palin and now Donald Trump.
Its the same thing though, a berserker desire to lay hands on one's opponent at the expense of the Nation's wellbeing, its quite frankly anger-addiction....and it is ruining our differently winged opponents.

Call Charlie Baker What You Like

But please for the Love of Ghod STOP calling him a reformer.
He lost that Boston Globe bequeathed crown when he started raising money off the books to purge State GOP Committee and then got a sweetheart ruling allowing him to collect donations from the RNC sans any transparency.
Reformers DO NOT grub for opaque $$....they are supposed to refuse such ill gotten donations...aren't they?
I don't give a rat's ass about Baker's two hundred percent approval rating when you are adamant about concealing the source of campaign funds from the public, then by definition you are "Up To No Good" to quote my ninety three year old mother.
Trust me sooner of later money is gonna be Charlie Baker's Downfall.

Vladimir Putin, the Politburo of the PRC, Various Terrorist Factions and Jackie Chan

ALL seem to love the Yankee Dollar per the "Panama Papers", thanks to a secret series of trust funds stashed in Panama a nation that thriftily allows the US Dollar to circulate unmolested thru cash registers and bank accounts.
This the same Vladimir Putin, PRC and sundry terrorist factions that are about to Take Over the Universe per Fox News.
Hell there is a capital outflight problem in the PRC the leadership has had to clamp down (on everyone else except themselves) on the desperate desire to convert the local currency into good old American Dollars....
I dunno but stuff like this worrisome from a anti-money-laundering and or terrorist financing perspective...but it also weirdly rebuts the Trumpian Declinist Thesis we are getting in this campaign cycle.
If we are making such bad trade and finance decisions why are all these jobbers so desperate to rack up the US Dollar?

To my point yesterday...

the other pole to Bernie Sanders' current surge is his unrelenting focus on breaking up The Big Banks, that has potent resonance across the board even with nominal republicans.
A bit of background is required here, American psychology is weighed towards a profound animus towards anyone who is perceived as "Getting Away With It". We easily reconcile with Big Business, Private Initiative, the Myths and Realities of Rugged Individualism, but if you abuse power to game the system the citizenry generally turns on you plenty quick.
The abiding exception is anyone perceived as an "UnderDog" then the view of the abuse of power gets more nuanced at least in terms of mass psychology.
The Banks and Investment Houses are pretty much seen as "Having Gotten Away with Murder", the Middle class has been defrauded and personal savings have vanished...and the plain people, clearly blame the Moneylenders.
The constitutionality of what Sanders' proposes can be debated but once again he has skillfully seized a powerful issue that almost everyone else has fearfully ignored.
People don't like it when the powerful skip out on consequences, Bernie gets that.
As democrats going forward I think we ignore the larger issues of student debt and financial malfeasance at our peril. To built a coalition this fall we are gonna need to make some bold and practical proposals and push them hard come the fall.
You can debate Sanders proposals but but they are extracted of issues that have been ignored up until now.

On Wisconsin

Y'Know...I like Bernie Sanders on his best days he does burn with the zeal of an Old Testament Prophet and his lack of religious convictions is weirdly refreshing to me.

But boy howdy listening to his victory speech last night was a real downer, no one it seems wants to have less fun "Immentenizing the Eschaton" than the Senator from Vermont.

That is also a cash costly revolution he wants to bring to Washington as well...but....I view it as "Right Question Wrong Answer" we can all change our answers going forward politics is not the SAT's after all.

No...Bernie's popularity is not hard to trace, he promises one of the most debt ridden cohorts in the US immediate measurable releases, buy that I mean our native class of debtor college graduates.

I don't blame them one bit for voting for Bernie he at least has proposed a simple (if expensive) solution to post collegiate debt, make higher education free.

This is an issue that has festered unresolved for twenty five years in the USA sans resolution, is it any wonder the campuses are on fire for the guy? Say what you like about today's millenials but they can read those emails from the bank displaying how deep they are in the whole on graduation day? If I owed fifty thousand to some damn bank for my sheepskin and had no job on tap I'd be banging the pots for Sanders as well.

Unworkable solution always beats no solution at all....it also nicely fills the silence.

We've turned higher education into a loan driven industry (like the auto industry in some ways), said education is designed to find kids jobs which places the graduates at the acute mercy of the US Economy on Graduation Day....wrongly educated (for work instead of enlightened citizenship) and saddled with debt....its a wonder they aren't voting for Raul Castro quite frankly.

So lets think on this a bit.

Maybe as democrats we've got to confront this problem in the DNC platform this year...and yes we will need to be bold but common sensical as well.

Think on it please.....

I'm not a fan of charter schools

I'd tolerate them though if the funding mechanism didn't amount to robbing the localities and the teacher's unions weren't being bypassed in a sneaky way.
They also skim off the cream and leave the chronic problem pupils firmly mired in the local public schools.
Not that anyone cares about that....
Of course with all the false costless redistributionist consciousness he can muster, Governor Baker just luvs charter schools.
I'm really not sure public money should bankroll an elite educational experience quite frankly. But then, our whole theory of education is catastrophically misguided in my humble opinion, we educate for acquisition of a job and not for citizenship, the concept of excellence is completely rooted in commercial applications.
Why?
Because we've come to believe a "good education" is the best way to costlessly redistribute incomes. Hence the charter school fallacy which promises a leg up on that income gain and thus we arrive at a packed Bernie Sanders for President Rally in which 18,000 college students (who are in dept up to their hats) are screaming for free tuition.
I don't blame them one bit for marking out hard for Sanders, I would too if I was twenty three and in hock....but it's an entirely flawed premise in education that has lead us all to the pretty pass and someone somewhere has to climb up onto a pile of standardized tests and cry HALT!!!

Thought for the Day...

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."

Adlai E. Stevenson

Its sort of Ironic to consider

that Donald Trump might reach his Waterloo in Wisconsin, once held to be The Most Radical State in the Federal Union by the late lamented Sinclair Lewis. Once the proud home of the La Follette Family (a bloodline that for relentless progressivism made the Kennedys look like a bunch of Falangists) and peppery democrats from William Proxmire to Gaylord Nelson, Wisconsin proudly gave more votes to Eugene McCarthy than to Nixon, Humphrey and Bobby Kennedy combined in the 1968 Presidential Primary.
And still it went for Nixon by a plurality that fall.
:)
Nowadays Wisconsin is misgoverned stylishly by union busting libertarian fanatic Scott Walker and this is where the irony inverts because the best hope of "Trumping Trump" in said Primary is none other that that semi demented Texas Squadristi Senator Ted Cruz.
Irony Atop Irony Folks that all I can say.....