Rex Tillerson Out at Foggy Bottom...?

The latest rumor is that the White House wants Tillerson Outski before the end of the year. That is a blow because the current Secretary of State was my own personal "Presidential Designate" my own personal "Legitimist Constitutional Coup" scenario. :)

He is at least, A Brother Eagle Scout and seems oriented towards making decisions based on facts and expected outcomes not fantasies & grievance.  Oh well, the guy was always on short time since that "F**King Moron" remark....

These Days

the news moves in a stately continuum from North Korean missile tests, horrific mass shootings in the USA to the seemingly daily raids upon our sacred rights. One one happens its just a signal for the next week we could set our watches by it all, if any of use still wore watches.

So in this season of Peace & Joy I remind everyone that Rights are Inalienable, Sovereign States can seek peace without dishonorable and a bullet can drill thru us all, the great and the obscure. 

Allegedly...

Charlie Baker is on his way to acculmulating thirty million dollars to grease the skids on his way to re-election next year. That has to be record breaking pile of funny money, "dark contributions", ransom from the Republican Governor's Conference and sundry malevolent cash providers.
Meanwhile a trio of democratic gubernatorial aspirants go door to door rattling their tin cup and eating canned pasta for dinner.
In short we are well on our way to a dismal replay of 1994, except this time not word one will be heard about the State's Third Rate Bond Status or all the useless giddy libertarian fanatics Charlie has foisted on the Department of Education or current wave of scandal at the State Police.
Nope...everything is great and the democrats will raise taxes unless you reelect Blockhead Charlie to keep an eye on them...
Yup thats what we are faced with, UNLESS and UNTIL the democratic base gets angry and gets organized....Charlie is the worst sort of passive aggressive trimmer, he has no vision & no discernable leadership in a GOP dominated by a political tumor called Donald Trump.
If things get serious in this country and they might...all Baker is gonna do is make polite noises and hide under his desk.
I don't care about his seventy percent approval rating, all the more reason to fight him to the finish, its seventy percent in face of passive aggressive libertarian shenanigans, dark money and a charmless managerial ineptitude, that can't last!

Dunno if I repeat myself but...

Standards & Poor did DOWNGRADE the Commonwealth's bond rating to third tier AA status on grounds of a lack of rainy day fundage.  This was back in June, an event greeted with sacerdotal silence by both the Budget Nerds at the Boston Globe and our Charmless Blockheaded Governor Charlie Baker. Yup the same Charlie Baker, y'know that supermanager numbers cruncher who had a long internship at the Pioneer Institute before being Groomed for Greatness by Saint Bill Weld.
Well what of it? Quite literally, never has Charlie Baker had higher approval ratings and fewer accomplishments, and yes a bond rating downgrade has to rank as an "accomplishment" from this Governor.

"The Old Army Game"

Its the oldest trick in the coup plotter's handbook...assuming you aren't intention on outright assassination, you isolate the regime and it's aging uncertain Leader, and permit crowds of demonstrators to make the Leader's lack of popularity clear. Lacking mass support & without military backing the Leader is compelled to resign and seek asylum in some foreign country.
This is more or less how Achmed Sukarno was deposed in Indonesia back in 1966, its the basic model for ridding the Philippines of Ferdinand Marcos and its likely going down just like that right now in Zimbabwe. It tends to be the model for dealing with aging mentally uncertain leaders who've overstayed their welcome and need a little shove to move them along to a nice quiet exile in Riyadh or Peking or wherever.
Per BBC.com, Robert Mugabe is indignantly insisting he will remain in power despite a noon Monday deadline for his resignation, he may be negotiating to secure just much of his loot he'll be allowed to take with him in exile, or the damn fool might be stubborn enough to fight on.  If I was him, I'd be looking at a suite in that Trump Hotel allegedly built with drug money in Panama...

If you wake up one sunny morning...

brush your teeth, flip on the TV and there you find The Army Chief of Staff, flag bedecked, in full Field Marshal Drag calming monologuing as to his Hopes, Dreams and Feelings for The Nation, then I can assure, there has been a coup d'etat and a new regime is at hand.
Such is the case this morning in Zimbabwe, the armed forces have risen and placed aging ailing Robert Mugabe under house arrest. Like Sukarno in Indonesia they'll likely let him flee into decorous exile once the dust settles in The Capital. After all what can the Field Marshals, Generals & Sundry Colonels fear from an 93 year old man and his yappy ambitious wife?
Good suburban white liberal that I am, I see this as no solution for scandal and massacre plagued Zimbabwe, the Boys in the Back Room just didn't want a old old man founding a Dynasty in Sub Saharan Africa thats all, the bad stuff that has dessicated that nation will likely go on.
And it's sad because there is much intellectual & economic potential in Zimbabwe, the literacy rate is a bracing 90% but as is so often the case the wrong people with bad intentions as well are in charge and will be for the foreseeable future.

Make no mistake about it

I firmly believe that despite being outed as a pederast and an abusive freak of the first rank, it is still Roy Moore's race to lose in Alabama next month.  The reasons for this are complex but a good summary would note that "The Myth of Grievance" is currently ascendent in Movement Conservatism.  If we conceptualize movement conservatism as a system of pseudo religious thought designed to impede the internalization of facts, then we are led to the conclusion that it is essentially mythological in content.
As I've said on and off for years, movement conservatism is anti factual and built around four study mutually reinforcing myths "The Myth of Small Government", "The Myth of Rugged Individualism", The Myth of Christian Politics" & lastly "The Myth of Grievance".
Right now, down in Alabama "The Myth of Grievance" is so very powerful in that electorate that it will happily and insolently countenance the election of a child molester to the US Senate as a seemingly last desperate rebuke against the elite phantoms that seemingly plague them.
To delve any deeper into this issue requires far more "social psychology" than I can muster but following that idea to it's logical conclusion is that the problem in Alabama isn't with the elites (they all seem horrified by Moore as well they should be) it's the voters that are literally engaging in a self destructive "failure of followership".
There are people out there, who are demanding the use of nuclear weapons to destroy their straw men...literally.
On the other hand, Jones may well win next month, if so we can at least rest assured that for the moment a bottom floor to US Politics has temporarily been established.
I'm not holding my breath, I would also advise Senator McConnell to discontinue the Capital Page Program and replace those kids with volunteer retirees, preferable ex-police officers.

Cardinal O'Malley

Has apparently changed his mind and will now permit the gathering of anti-abortion ballot initiative signatures on Church Property.
Nice to see that the His Eminence feels the pederasty scandal & the closures are far enough back in the rear view mirror to warrant a return to the diocese's perpetual war on women's rights.
On the other hand I wonder if the law of unintended consequences might be in play here? In other words does O'Malley really want to find out how ambivalent his flock may well be about the issue of abortion? I can envision a lot of arguments in the vestibule, "envelopes witheld" hard looks out in the pews.
Just sayin'...the days of silent complicity seem like they are over in the R.C.C...

"Left in Lowell"

is back!!  Perhaps "Single Combat Blogging" isn't Dead After All!!

Mitt Romney sez that

Alabama GOP Senate Candidate, Judge Roy Moore is "unfit for office" in the wake of serious allegations that Moore had a sick perverted thing for young girls.
"Unfit for office" huh.....I'll bet Judge Moore is quakin' in cowboy boots now.
Poor Mitt he is such a misguided earnest Straw Man, he probably thinks maybe he can get the Alabama Senate Nomination....with enough lawyers he can claim Alabama residence since before the Asteroid Snuffed the Dinosaurs.
But I grow lyrical, there is something ineffectual and pathetic about Mitt these days, he knows the GOP has pretty much left him behind he keep pretending all the same he is some sort of Partei Elder.
Sad....
As for the rest of them, the Ryans & McConnells are all a-quiver with outrage, but thats just conservative cognitive dissonance at work, par for the course in an election. The reality is, Mitch McConnell and his misbegotten crew can very easily work with Roy Moore should he win, hell "Freak Management" is basically the GOP Brand these days.
This is why I advise the teenaged girls of the District of Columbia to arm themselves with mace or brass knuckles or something..Uncle Roy is indeed On The Loose!

Wow the democrats ran the board last night in Virginia and elsewhere...

Ralph Northam wone by 200K and a nine point margin carrying a shit ton of local races as well, including a Trans Woman getting herself neatly elect to the Lege in the bargain. Trump wants to throw em' out of the army, The Olde Dominion sends the same to the House of Delegates, delicious irony.
Well Ed Gillespie (who ran a nasty Trumpish campaing full Confederate Worship and insinuations of pederasty no less) just found out that "Only Donald Trump can Go Crazy and Survive" its not a good option for down ticket GOP aspirants.
And I'm not even sure "crazy" is still workable approach for President Trump he made the usual robocalls & tweets, sent in the usual surrogates and got beat like a gong.
Of course, this being Trump he churlishly suggested that Ed. Gillespie "didn't embrace him hard enough"....a pathetic demonstration of a sad self worshipping walled off little mind at work.
Well I would say, we have bottomed out and perhaps may be on the rebound at last...

Quentin Palfrey in Menotomy....

Quentin Palfrey, Democratic Candidate for the Lieutenant Governor's nomination, came to town last night, young, energetic & long winded.
Seriously, Quentin Palfrey is proof positive that you can be passionate about a range of issues (poverty and diresome warnings about Donald Trump being his top two apparently) and still be a crashing bore.
No joke, this guy spoke for ten minutes before an enthusiastic bouncy audience of democrats and turned the whole affair into a Synod of the Walking Dead in record time...the light of reason flickered out in seemingly dozens of eyes.....
Alas Quentin is yet another ambitious mediocrity/activist who might with some seasoning over the course of a decade make a credible candidate for State Rep somewhere out where the McMansions Grow.  But this is Massachusetts, Land of the Safe Seat so like so many others Quentin has taken his obscurity in hand and parachuted into the democratic primary for Lt Governor.
Jimmy Tingle will massacre this guy, assuming the comedian is serious about running for the nomination, and if Tingle is not serious about running for Lieutenant Governor then I must urge the State Democratic Convention to entertain motions for a draft because Quentin Palfrey can no more get elected statewide than the USS Wasp can pass thru the eye of a needle.
Some of his politics are agreeable but the man exudes a charmless ineffectuality, exactly the sort of clueless liberal noob who the GOP will beat like a red headed stepchild next fall.
Quite frankly the man makes Evelyn Murphy look like Aretha Frenklin....
I am though, as a registered democratic heartily sick and tired of ambitious & obscure activists parachuting in the Lt Governor's race promising the progressive eschaton & "a grass roots campaign"....most of these elite jobbers wouldn't know a real grass roots campaign if it took a ten pound chunk out of their bony behinds.
I'd sooner vote for the first mook thru the door who promised "mendacity via social media & free hootch" because Ghod knows the Lt Governor's race is NOT attracting much in the way of experienced talent!  Stop and think the job has a ceremonial aspect but it also a conduit from the municipalities to State Government it has also been a source of outreach to the Feds, so it has potential but right now its largely desired by people candidates trying to bootstrap themselves out of Town Meeting.  Where are the Mayor's here? Brockton, Lowell, Springfield, Pittsfield, ANY of those people are better qualified than Quentin Palfrey.  Native Ability seems hell bent on sitting out this particular race, we are gonna have trouble enough next year ejecting Charlie Baker with a seeming trainee mediocrity as our nominee for Lt Governor.

Notes to This Week's Massacre

we cannot any longer assert that "its too soon after a mass shooting" to discuss gun control, indeed this heinous shootings are occuring on a weekly basis these days. The flowers from last weeks wakes & funerals have hardly begun to wither before fresh blood is shed.  The whole situation vaguely suggests the early 1970's weekly round of domestic airliner hijackings, the Feds dithered and the airlines refused to enact sensible security measures prior to embarkation for years while air piracy became a very regular & normal occurrence.  So too are we dithering about practical gun control measures (at least stop the private sales of the damn AR-15!)...and we'll dither as long as we are willing to put with the current wave of gun violence, or until the NRA runs out of money.
That however is the positive aspect of this horrific situation, maybe its the weather in Boston today, because I begin to wonder if we aren't witnessing the American Dream's final death spiral in barbarism...but then, the weather is pretty gloomy out there.

Somwhere out there in the USA

someone is flooding the obscure Malden Ward Three School Committee race with a shit ton of charter school funny money.  Allegedly about 11K in "out of state funny money" the very currency seemingly prized by our allegedly honest and transparent Governor Charlie "Potatoes" Baker.
Clearly the loud voice of the Commonwealth in last years referendum affirming the current cap on Charter Schools doesn't mean shit to some of these sneaky educational privatizers out beyond the Berkshires.
Those election results will require close observation tomorrow night, dark out of state money is Charlie Baker's particular electoral innovation and a bad one it is as well.  The current campaign finance system resemblances a sort of anarcho-capitialist austistic fantasy, no much can be done for the moment about it nationally, but here in Massachusetts we can at least demand "time urgent transparency' when it comes to the afforementioned dark money.  The Lege should stop looking the other way and start looking into closing off this diresome loophole.

The Current Tax Bill being written

By the US House is nothing but a redistribution of the wealth of so called "Blue States" to "Red States". It will also fall hardest on Colleges, Universities and certain middle class cohorts as well, it is a veritable "bill of attainder".
And so far, this unexcusable whole theft excites no reaction at all from our Sphix Like Governor, Charle "Silence is Golden-Golden GOLDEN!" Baker.  You'd think the prospect of certain middle class cohorts being forced to pay for the utopian fantasies of Speaker Ryan & The President...might prod Charlie to some criticism...to say nothing of playing a leadership role.
But No...
Nothing....if this is the soothing syrup of Moderate Republicanism of the Saintly Bill Weld type then please gimme the Power Politics of James Michael Curley. Massachusetts is about to be robbed blind so I do hope someone somewhere starts tagging the Governor with these very real & practical issues. Theft should be resisted, you'd a "moderate republican" would get that....

If I was a young graduate student in political science today,

(and at age 55, I am not) I might not be necessarily pitching my advisor "coercive persuasion" as a thesis topic, but I'd sure as shit being reading up on said subject.  I'd at least want a sense of what it isn't and a path to maybe a definition that'd fit the strictures of poli sci.
Apropos to yesterday's attack in NYC it continually fascinates me that outfits like ISIS have got some kind of profiling model (however crude) that hooks in recruits and allows a terrorist organization to program and train a homicidal asset entirely remotely.  Maybe there is something I'm not getting here, but that seems pretty unprecedented and flies in the face of Jacques Ellul's fairly rigid definitions of propaganda and thought control. Somehow ISIS doesn't need to control the state apparatus or the flow of information to a recruit in order to create a zealous soldier....
What am I not getting here?