Maybe the White House Correspondent's Annual Dinner

Should be allowed to expired quietly after all. Trump is declining to attend on grounds that his prematurely thin skin makes the whole event a health risk for him, which is good grounds to rethink the whole enterprise.  If done "Well" the event opens the press corps to charges of raw sycophancy and when it goes "badly" its a tremendous generator of needless Ill Will.
Either way its a weird clumsy attempt at bonhomie....and right now ersatz bonhomie is really the Last Thing in the World We Need.

Trump as CPAC last week

otherwise known as "Burning Man for Wingnuts", The So Called President laid out a bold pro-worker populist agenda last week.  Granted its a room that'll sooner put the American Worker behind barbed wire, but all the same it was something new and different. The problem is, Trump's solution seems to revolve around radical deregulation in the workplace, so everyone's job will be more dangerous and wages will likely stagnate. How that grows the economy is anyone's guess...but then this is Trump ,"2+2=Rhode Island" in his mind.
If we wanna do right by American Working Class, how about starting with something simple? Like Raising the Minimum Wage? The Federal Minimum Wage is a paltry $7.25 a hour, if Trump really wants to "Take on the Establishment", he'll have a helluva fight with his own GOP is he wanted to put it up to say $10.00 an hour.
But thats pure fantasy, Trump doesn't want to raise the minimum wage he wants to make it harder for injured workers to sue their employers, he wants to abolish occupational safety statues....everyone is will work harder for less money and under dangerous circumstances THAT is supposed to save the American Working Class.

Thought for the Day...

Jobbers, the Dregs of Dixie, Book Worshippers, Sky Grifters, Floor Walkers as Policy Makers, Money Grubbing Corruptards that can hear a nickle drop a mile away, Utopian Onanists, A scattering of women that ought to know better, Yes Men and Yes Women, The In Over Their Heads, A Few Persons on Honor shoved into a corner....In Sum, Mitch McConnell's Senate.

MiloBrow

Limey Wingnut Freak-Provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos got dumped off of Breitbart  for making wistful nostalgic comments about Man-Boy Love.
I would pay The Howard Stern Show's Resident Phone Prankster Richard Christy a Nice Chunk of Change if he'd call Yiannopoulos' agent and see what Milo's asking price is to act as Grand Marshal in NAMBLA's Annual Pride Parade.  Tell him its going down in the KiddieLand Amusement Park in Ossipee NH....now that would be memorable audio yo!

Just remember, misogyny will be the last bitter prejudice to go when its time comes it'll go down guns blazing, believe me.

Good Luck to General McMaster

at the NSC....he is gonna need it and every ounce of props his long resume gives him. After all he has literally not one but three security risks in the room from the git-go, white power freaks Bannon & Miller and then there is the Very President that appointed them in the first place.
So yeah Good Luck General....yer gonna need it.
Personally I suspect yet another emerging faultline in the Trump Regime will be ongoing conflict between "The Loony-Tunes Sky Grifters" and the Numerous retired Generals that now dot the National Security Apparatus.
But I could be wrong....

Happy "So-Called President's Day"

(enacted because the US Congress never ever had the courage to make Abraham Lincoln's Birthday a National Holiday....shitkicker soreheads then as now)

Given the Pretty Pass We've Reached Here in the USA, there is nothing left to do but post a picture of the Late President Warren G. Harding modeling a Dress Fez.

Keep Smiling, Guffaw Freely

keep making jokes, act like the whole diresome mishaugas is the proverbial "laughing party". It may not alter our fate one whit, but making humor your response to book worshipping provocation or that fixed autistic stare favored by serious Objectivists or some giggly little fidget from the Kampus Konservative Bund...will always put you in charge of the situation even if for only a moment.

The Story So Far...

A Russian Spy Ship is meandering up the East Coast like the Edgartown Ferry, the Russians are shredding the INF Treaty and deploying ground launched cruise missiles in Western Russia, we have no National Security Advisor (unless you really think Steve Bannon is good to go in a pinch) and the Secretary of Defense is telling NATO to "pay up" or else the USA will "moderate" its commitment to said alliance.
This is shaping up to be the biggest foreign policy catastrophe of my lifetime short of VietNam or maybe The Cuban Missile Crisis, and we aren't done by any means,
This means that Poland and the Baltic States are now once again under the nuclear gun, this means they are going to become a de facto military flashpoint in the near future unless something to done very very quickly. And the only thing that stops me from thinking actual war will break out is a nagging suspicion that if the Russians send in Troops, Trump will just sign them all away.
This is rank appeasement but it's ultimately idiotic because we are appeasing a third tier power that is in decline by every objective measure.
So much for a reset with Moscow....Trump may well have asked the Kremlin not to retaliate for the post election sanctions and this now is their pound of flesh so to speak.
Congress is well within it's rights to lay wide open the entire story of Trump's contacts with the Russian Government, and they'd best do so quickly because given the situation in Europe we are are gonna need to know if any obligations have been laid on the President by the Kremlin prior to Election.
Yes, the situation is that serious...we are being played here, a bunch of vicious oligarchs are working us like yokel in the three card monte game.

Wow Flynn is O-U-T as NS Advisor

To our Alleged President.  Well...Congress can sweat out of him all the details and background on his discussions with the Russian Ambassador last December...IF it has the collective mind to do so.
"Was it s quid-pro-quo" for hacking the DNC email server? Is Trump under any undisclosed obligations to the Kremlin and if Flynn was a blackmail risk per acting AG Yates, then what the hell is Trump???
All fascinating things, but a constitutional crisis is literally being held at bay by the collective cowardice of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, they've amply demonstrated that where Donald Trump is concerned they've got the spin of a chocolate eclair.
All this makes me all the fonder of Sally Yates....if any of us survive til 2020 then she is definitely someone to watch.

It sure sounds like

National Security Advisor Mike Flynn promised the Russians a quick end to sanctions once Trump was sworn in, while still serving as a private citizen.
That is a felony my friends, a violation of the admittedly seldom invoked, Logan Act.
But more than that, its an act of credulous unconscionable stupidity, who promises sunsetting sanction with nothing on offer?
Someone who shouldn't be making foreign policy thats who, a situation like this is Amateur Night in Dixie entirely avoidable....and to think we aren't even one hundred days into this Trump Mishaugas.
Kelly Should Resign, on grounds of being a simpleminded dope first and foremost unless of course someone can persuade him to come clean as to whom put him up to it.
Cuz I think that is in play here....definitely.

Jay Gonzalez in Menotomy...

I had a chance yesterday to see Jay Gonzalez (so far the only democrat running for Governor in 2018) do a five minute stand up at the Arlington Democratic Caucus.  He is a wiry energetic little guy who was once Deval Patrick's Budget Chief.  Seriously I could eat beans off this guy's head.
His central thesis is right off of "column A", ergo "We Can Do Better!"  Off of column B he is imputing quietism to the current governor (which is certainly a factual account of the situation) and does his level best to manacle Charlie Baker to Donald Trump. That part is easy to do since Governor Baker's favorite move is to hide under his bed at the mere mention of Donald Trump's name....essentially if demonstrators are doing the mentioning.
Gonzalez other big theme was immigration, he is the son of immigrants and is likely gonna use that notion to bedevil Charlie Baker and by proxy Donald Trump.
Otherwise Gonzalez is peppery and energetic enough, he does not seem to have much capacity for soaring rhetoric, he might wear well in a primary given his bona fides with the departed Patrick Admin...assuming of course he can raise the money.
At the moment there is no one else in the Field, Newton Mayor Setti Warren is supposed to be looking at it as well as some others, but iven the still daunting polling data, its gonna come down to a serious fundraising gut check for a lot of these candidates which is turn probably means a somewhat restricted field.
In all its a good start for Gonzalez...at least he understands that he cannot win if he does not oppose and offer a competing vision for politics.

"So Called Judges" Strike Back!

Court of Appeals voids President Trump's travel ban from various so called Muslim Nations.

So lets hear it for an independent judiciary, at least until it gets booted up to the Extreme Court lord knows what that lot will do with it, if there is a gawd of mercy and justice in heaven above that Judge Gorsuch will not be confirmed as yet when it goes down.
I mean given the fact that its "Reactionary Christmas" every day around here, the least we can except is that John Roberts has to put in some OT cuz the Supremes are Short Staffed.

Alex Beam....

Fatous and inane as always, devotes a whole column to comparing Donald Trump & the former Mayor, Governor & Jailbird James Michael Curley.
THAT is a insult to the memory of the Late Mayor....and trust me that man was On The Take 24-7!
Curley was a crook don't get me wrong he deserved the two jail terms he racked up, but his heart was riveted to the right place or so I like to think.
I'd a never voted for him believe me, and I'm a Spartan and a democrat comfortable in the party's last ditch...But when he was Governor (and a hot mess he was as Governor's go) and Northampton was flooded along with a big chunk of the Pioneer Valley, he never hesitated.
No that was not "Curley Country" to be sure, Northampton was Calvin Coolidge's hometown, but all the same Curley rolled up, called out the National Guard, ordered in the State Police, drafted convicts to pile up sandbags, established refugee camps (!!!) and personally handed out food and blankets.
And if it was somehow Donald Trump in Curley's place circa 1937....The Donald would have bought up the town to build a golf course and sent the residents packing at bayonet point.
And no he'd a never paid his contractors either....

Kudos to the New England Patriots for

A nice day's pay for seasonally unemployed Duck Boat Drivers.

The Victory Parade in Boston is allegedly schedded for tomorrow at 11am, in the teeth of an oncoming snowstorm, but lets face it that is the price of doing business in Boston. My Ghod Gronkowski will likely be clowning around from Government Center to the Shoulders of Orion.
I'm not much for football (supposedly the violentest thing going but they sure do stand around a lot talking, they could serve pastries and tea out there with all the palaver going on) but what the hell, it makes others happy who am I to judge?
I was sufficiently intrigued by the late rally to actually read Dan Shaughnessy's front pager on Today's Globe. THAT proved a hilarious exercise in futility for sheer abstract verbiage & dense superlatives I may has well have been reading Hegel in the Original German.
Ah but I suspect that Pro Ball is peaking the USA, not sure but all the concussion politics is gonna start eating away at it's mainstream cred....it'll be a slow fall though believe me.

Interesting article courtesy the AP

in respect of Team Trump's Ubiquitous Foreign Policy Ideas.  This however is the relevant quote:
"According to one U.S. official, national security aides have sought information about Polish incursions in Belarus, an eyebrow-raising request because little evidence of such activities appears to exist. Poland is among the Eastern European nations worried about Trump's friendlier tone on Russia."
Let me ask this, the above idea is utterly fantastical so... "Who put it in Donald Trump's  Head?"
Because its obvious US Intelligence isn't the source, someone had to gin Trump up about it....its exactly the sort of nonsense pseudo provocation Putin would dream up to justify action against Poland.
So I ask you is Trump preparing to sell out Warsaw to the Russians?  The why of it is almost immaterial given the immensity of the proposed betrayal...it almost doesn't matter if he still owes them money, if they are paying him a huge stipend or if Putin has got negatives...whatever the reason we may be drifting into a defect alliance with Russia at a time when they hunger to redraw their western border.
And THAT my friends is why the doomsday clock keeps get reset closer to midnight....

Somewhere out there in the vast reaches of America

I swear the GOP has a vending machine that requires a purely nominal sum to eject some dreamboat wingnut Supreme Court Nominee who reliably loves God more than the Constitution, Couldn't care less about the Bill of Rights Save the Secular Sacrament that is the Second Amendment, with a boundless passion for Punishment, Entitlement and Patriarchy.
They invitable grin beautifully before the cameras have decorous hairdos, spouses and children and will sit on that court far into their dotage and eagerly ruin ever right you were foolish to believe was inalienable.
Such is Neil Gorsuch, bland rigid photogenic, entirely reconciled to succeeding to a seat on the court stolen from Judge Garland....He can't wait to bore us to death and put us all behind barbed wire.

Of Donald Trump's Many Many Ever Increasing Sins...

perhaps the only one that viscerally bugs me, is his craven hypocrisy about religion.

By that I mean, the man is a complete agnostic if not an outright atheist....No one that wealthy and that prideful has any real Love of God in Him or Her....sheee-it my next door neighbor's Cotton Poodle has a far more intimate and humble acquaintance with The Lord of Hosts than does Trump.
As evidenced by Today's Barbaric Performance I doubt the Man Even Knows How to Pray, it was like watching a Viking Berserker Trying to Go to Confession....
But he keeps on lying in really transparent and obvious ways about his alleged Love of God and his supporters completely enable this tedious farce, thus proving that the GOP Base is perfectly willing to   engage with a Russian Puppet, an Agnostic and a Thrice Wed Reprobate if it means all that their liberal taunting will somehow get read into policy.