I don't know if Joel Osteen's Palacial

"Lakewood Church" nestled in the inland sea former known as Houston Texas is a fit and viable shelter for flood victims...I will grant that much.
I Do Know However, that Osteen is supposedly worth some fifty six million dollars and is further alleged to live in a mansion worth some ten million USD. Fifty Six Million USD and all from preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ...or some variant thereof.  I am gonna make the blunt assessment that if you are down on your knees on your respective Sabbath, doesn't matter if its Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim...and the guy up at the pulpit is a MULTIMILLIONAIRE then you need to get out of that congregation PRONTO.  My next door neighbor's cotton poodle has more love of God in her than the wealth worshipping likes of Joel Osteen.  Time and again we are confronted by an ancient truth, we can never rely on mere wealth to do the right thing in a crisis, they are almost always centered solely on preserving & protecting their own privileges and power....and the rest of us can go swim for it...quite literally.

It goes without saying

That I'll vote for any democratic sonofabitch on the books if he or she proposes sane preparations to blunt the effects of climate change in the Commonwealth's Coastal Areas.  We've got to start prepping for rising sea levels, asset preservation, a whole new weather disaster preparedness regime and all like that.  And yes that means regional outreach etc....climate change is, for the moment an issue where the Feds will be the Last Entity to Take Notice, which mean the states and individuals have to start getting ready now and the hell with whatever happy horseshit the President is eructating.

Historically the Federal Government

was literally the very last entity in the USA to get hip to the menace of slavery...and only when the US Capitol was all but under the guns of secessionist soldiers.  So too is the case with climate change, until and if the Feds catch on it'll be the duty of the states and individuals to either explain or prepare....states with any kind of coastal exposure at all, need to figure the problem out quickest I think based on how events in Texas are unfolding.

First and Foremost...

Everyone in Texas, please stay safe....right now the sole emphasis is rescuing the imperiled and safeguarding the public during the floods, wind and blackout conditions.

But...down the line, there is going to be a discussion about why Houston wasn't evacuated given the magnitude of the storm predictions.  Fair enough, but that's likely gonna devolve into a partisan slanging match given time. My question is, what city in the USA has credible mass evacuation plans on the books with the necessary funds & resources allocated for a weather driven eventuality?

My guess is...none.  Just the jurisdiction issues alone have to be nightmarish, where does Texas put two million internal refugees?  These are questions were haven't considered in detail since the mid 1950's but all those nuclear civil defense preparations fell by the wayside simply because the Bombs Never Fell on our cities.  Now we've got "once a century" weather events hammering our coastal cities two and three times a decade we may need to revisit civil defense as a public policy...and when I say we I mean us'n here in Massachusetts, sooner or later some category four blockbuster is gonna tear us up and we're gonna want to have done some planning and prep believe me.

Charlie Baker has walked past likely a dozen

Better qualified candidates and instead appointed one Luis Ramirez as MBTA General Manager, who prior CEO gig "Global Power Equipment Corp" hovers on the brink of bankruptcy due to wildly innacurate SEC filings....
A known "bankruptor" in charge of a lumbering public agency with chronic revenue, physical & administrative challenges...smells like passive aggressive privatization to meeee!
***
I doubt Baker is going to campaign for privatization of the MBTA or anything so controversial next year, he just wants the right people in place against the inevitable day when the T finally has a catastrophic meltdown and he can make that privatize-it-all argument as a quick simple cure-all. Its pretty cynical from Charlie Baker but then the Governor is a profoundly cynical man as only someone who is chronically enabled thru his public career can be. It also goes without saying that we can expect none of the desperately needed investments in the T's physical plant to go thru any time soon and again I stress the only thing that can change this is an alliance between the ridership and the captioned Unions...but I doubt that'll ever happen at this point.

On the other hand...

Let us always remember that Robert E. Lee is also one of the few "Epic & Historic" Losers that President Trump has felt obligated to defend in public. Now I could snark on about Lee's status as a slaveholder and a honor bloated state's rights warrior...but I prefer to recall Marse Robert as the alleged military genius who got his Ass Kicked at Gettyburg by what amounted to a Military Temp who'd been on the job for 48 hours.
Ah but there are few statues out there to the military Genius of General George Gordon Meade USA maybe because he had the ill fortune to be fighting on behalf of a winning cause.

The Problem with Afghanistan is...

we went in all those years ago in pursuit of a rational-realist agenda that mostly revolved around "Getting Bin Laden" and smashing up his enablers in the Taliban.  Well, we blew the Taliban to hell (as much as we could find anyway) and sent Bin Laden to sleep with the fishes but all these years later we are still tied down in Afghanistan out of very real fears that a departure will only bring back the same old crowd of barbaric wowsers to power.
Somewhere along the line we crossed over the "fact-value nexus' and made ourselves responsible for delivering The Afghans from the clutches of a new class of oppressors....some of this comes from guilt some of it from overweaning ambition. But all the same it's gotten tangled together to create a perfect storm of procrastination, it's NEVER the right time to exit Afghanistan from a policy perspective.
The Kabul Government is never gonna be strong enough, or have enough popular support to perpetuate itself, four thousand more troops and who knows how many money grubbing contractors can't really change that.
We could stay thirty more years in Afghanistan and never get the right conditions to terminate that war, maybe we should start planning a right and proper "declare victory and get out" exit.
I hate to pull a "Stephen Kinzer" like this, but this comes from a sure knowledge that the manpower and resources dedicated to Afghanitan are gonna be needed elsewhere sooner or later....

Just Sayin'

I doubt any of this will come to pass under the present admin, but we should at least start the necessary logistical and diplomatic planning....

Nice work this weekend

The anti alt right march went off well...fewer arrests than at a Patriots Victory Parade...granted the president's tweets were ignorant & churlish but that is how he reacts to things that scare him....remember that going forward.
And I suppose while we are at it that Charlie Baker will get a pass for what amounted to clapping Mayor Walsh on the back lasty week and offering him nothing more than a hearty "Good Luck".

As for Robert E. Lee

that drawing Christ-Like Man on Horseback can Cordially Kill My Fat Irish Ass.  He all but looked Abraham Lincoln in the eye and declined to command the Union Armies in 1861 in their mission to put down the Confederate Rebellion. He blubbered something about "Honor" and "Conscience" and then rode off to Richmond and the Command of the Army of Northern Virginia, CSA conveniently forgotten that long ago oath he took to "Defend the US Constitution".
Let me also point out that almost the entire Confederate Leadership DIED IN BED after the Civil War was lost for the South...with malice towards none indeed mah friends.
The fact that there are statues erected to the memory of Robert E. Goddamned Lee is nothing but proof positive that the USA is the most generous forgiving nation on Earth....frankly they can melt the lot down and sell it for scrap as far as I am concerned.
Don't give me that "Washington & Jefferson owned Slaves, Woodrow Wilson was a negrophobe etc etc " shit either. Washington started this nation and defended it against all comer whatever his flaws, Jefferson loved this country so much he trebled it's size, neither man was ever a disunionist in act or word.
As for Woodrow Wilson, his predecessors and successors were equally negrophobic....no traitors among them at all though...

Looks like the Alt Right's Rally is a GO This Saturday

On the Common, the kid who took out the permits though, sounds like a passive aggressive little dupe quite frankly.  And I reiterate that the Governor is well within his rights to call out the National Guard, one to protect the citizenry from a very obvious threat of political violence and unrest and secondly to protect a variety of monuments & statues on the Common that are accutely vulnerable to counter vandalism.
But this is Charlie Baker after all, you can wait on real leadership from him until senility makes it all a moot point.
As for Statues of Robert E. Lee...I got short shrift indeed for that whole phenom, Lee looked Lincoln in the eye back in 1861 and declined to lead the Union Armies against the confederate rebellion...the fact we didn't hang him (a commissioned officer in the US Army sworn to defend the US Constitution BTW) after the war and that we've tolerated statues to his bony ass for a hundred plus years is PROOF that this nation is built on charity & tolerance!
But then these mooks down in Virginia didn't show up to venerate Lee's alleged military genius it was to affirm symbolically solidarity with apartheid...hence the guns and violence as well, since you can't successfully segregate sans violence.
I would also point out to Mayor Walsh & Governor Baker (not that they read this dire political remnant) that the Streets of Berlin fell to the Nazis in 1930 because the Government ceased prosecuting and imprisoning NSDAP street thugs, it was a failure of law enforcement, mainstream conservatives panicked, started negotiating with Hitler and the heat came off the Brownshirts as a consequence. Thus then Berlin Gauleiter Josef Goebbels could rack up a victory that was largely due to political cowardice, until the government caved, the Nazis were making little progress in the Capital.
And if indeed, a Synagogue in Charlottesville was menaced by armed Nazis last Saturday, then I can safely save these bastards have a taste for blood now, and thus sterner measures must be taken next time...it'll save us all trouble later on believe me.

I wanna take a moment admidst the ongoing Crisis of the Republic

To congratulate CongressPerson Tsongas on her retirement from the US House...71 is old enough I think to stop and smell the roses I think, especially in these perilous times.  I recall with much fondess my "political debut" as lowly volunteer on her Late Husband's Presidential Campaign, would to God I had done ten times as much for him, win or lose.
I suspect this is a congressional race that Charlie Baker and the GOP will contest, but you can never ever tell with that guy...shifty ain't the word for him....

When in the History of the Far Right in the USA

Have the Klan and the Nazis EVER shown up for a demonstration without the intent to incite or initiate violence?
Thats the main lesson from Charlottesville...those guy show up and riots follow they are good at that sort of thing.
Allegeldy a similar "demonstration" is planned on Boston Common for the 19th, if I was Charlie Baker I'd call out the National Guard, but this is Governor Spreadsheets leadership in the face of far right provocation isn't his strong suit.
Some strong leadership now, might prevent violence later, just remember Dr. Goebbels' streetfighters made little progress in Berlin until the national and city leadership essentially fell for the Nazi Bluff and started negotiating with the NSDAP.

What a Minute...

A scant ten months ago at the third presidential debate, didn't Donald Trump groan into the camera "Our Nuclear....It's the Worst!!"  What happened to our strategic forces since then to give the president the confidence to promise North Korea "Fire and Fury"?
:)

All snark aside the modalities behind this crisis are relatively simple, Kim wants keep his Plantation Overseer Hold on North Korea, he saw what happened to East Germany when the Socialist Bloc lost interest in the Cold War and wishes to avoid the same fate...chiefly because Komrade Kim is such sketchy little freak he's have few flight & asylum options. To do that he needs nukes, "nukes keep out troops" is his mantra. Its not lost on him that Israel's minimal nuclear arsenal has an outsized affect deterring Arab Agression against the Jewish State in Middle East.
The USA on the other hand, is desperately trying to shore up a nuclear non proliferation regime in the region sans much help from Moscow or Peking, NK's acquisition of nukes compromises our whole "active forward defense" posture in Asia & creates fear among our own alliance structure...it may even contribute to a pro Peking swing among said allies...who can say? Then again our president is an amateur who may think playing nuclear chicken with a vastly underestimated "pipsqueak Asian Despot" pushes Robert Mueller off the front pages which may well be Trump's sole goal here.
Well as Adlai Stevenson once observed "We are about to discover if this magnificent civilization of ours can create the statesmen necessary to prevent it from being blown sky-high".

"Fire & Fury"

The history of bombastic empty threats is a rich one.  Mussolini was an absolute master of the art, he referred to the Mediterranean as "Our Sea", threated to invade islands already under Italian Control & his territorial demands at the armistice talks with France in 1940 are as funny as any work by P.G. Wodehouse.
Achmed Sukarno (once the top swank in Indonesia in the 1960's) wanted to rename the Indian Ocean "The Indonesian Ocean" as soon as his poverty wracked nation Got The Bomb of Course.
The late Gamal Nasser used to threaten to push Israel "into the sea" on a daily and sometimes hourly basis, The Late Colonel Ghadaffi used to howl imprecations at the US Seventh Fleet....its all very bloodcurdly and usually impotent.
Because these are threats that are uttered largely for domestic consumption or to rhetorically deter certain international threats, they are the recourse of international actors with limited resources.  Komrade Kim v.3 in Pyongyang makes all sorts of crazy threats to forestall the very real possibility of a US Backed Invasion while spending scarce resources to a crude nuclear deterrent he thinks will somehow keep the wolf from his door.
Thats the main reason he is building those nukes to keep us out, he can't really do much more with them at all given North Korea's small size and stagnant economy.
In other words to quote my late father "threats are the lexicon of weaklings", and its worth noticing that Asia's top threatener, Komrade Kim hasn't yet made good on a single one of his voluminous of international carnage.  Thus for Donald Trump to get down to Kim's Level and counter threaten all sorts of merciless mayhem, it isn't so much a sharp rebuke as a confession of a similar degree of weakness.
But remember, the weak make bad decisions on the fly so all this palaver of mine can go up in smoke pretty instantly.

I am gonna break with orthodoxy and

Take Senior Senator Elizabeth Warren at her word when she says she is NOT running for President in 2020?
Indeed why should she? She has a safe seat (that she should not of course, take for granted), she is a noted fundraiser, she has a line of the Senate Leadership and should the democrats take congress next year she is poised to Do Big Things.
Why give all that up for an uncertain flyer in a volatile race?
Besides we could all be radioactive ash drifting the stratosphere by then, I mean anyone out there checked twitter this morning??
All morbid humor aside, Potomac Fever is being ritually transmitted by the Boston Globe these days, they were ginnin' up Seth Moulton in 2020 earlier this summer and last week it was Deval Patrick's turn, you watch they'll be talking up a primary challenge to Trump by Mitt Romney ere long.
Well I'm glad Senator Warren has stood thwart this process and howled "STOP!" Massachusetts has a few too many unsuccessful presidential candidates on the books, why add another?

I think its hilarious

that down in DC Jeff Sessions and Mean Ole' Boss Donald Trump are trying to enact a sort of Anti-First Amendment Fatwa against "leakers", meanwhile someone up at the Manchester NH VA Facility had the fortitude to drop a dime on the dilapidated conditions therein to the Boston Globe! And thank ghod too...because the Globe went big with that article and now the DVA is taking "stern measures" to fix the situations. NOTHING would have happened unless someone spoke up..."leaked" in other words.
Ironic...but at least the combat veterans of NH will get the care they deserve.

Congress has Adjourned without Accomplishing Anything

save squabbling with the Administration. Normally I'd be "up in arms" about this Do Nothing Congress of Ours (dominated by aging corrupt GOP time servers) but their actual agenda is pretty much alt right torture porn, so for once we are likely dodging ourselves a bullet.  For however long it lasts anyway....my guess is, Trump will take out his frustrations on the debt ceiling...watch that process closely y'all.