I'm Calling It Folks...

Clearly The Senior Senator from Massachusetts neither heeds nor reads this..."The Little Blog That Cried".
We begged her not to run for President, but nevertheless she persisted on that one as well.
The only good news here is that likely she'll empty the local fundraising pool completely inside a few months and dissuade Representatives Moulton & Kennedy from any wan hope of piling into the presidential primaries.
Deval Patrick at least, has already come to his senses.
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My only advise to Senator Warren is to keep her language plain, coherent and even a bit salty, focus relentlessly on the economic inequality, constantly stress that want respects neither gender nor color.  Get ready for a shit ton of Indian war-whoops and attacks from that angle (some of which will come from Native Americans count on it), but you've stated your case on that matter so classify it as a distraction and stay focused on income inequality and the decline of the Middle Class...frankly that is your only hope.

"Live Free or Die...Just Don't Try...To Get High"

NH Governor Chris Sununu has engaged the $ervices of one Kevin Sabet who fronts something called "Smart Approaches to Marijuana" to lobby the Granite State against legalizing marijuana.  There is a bill pending in the NH State Legislature and the regional trend is towards decriminalization and or outright legalization...so there is a lot on the line for Sununu, whose mind is stuck in the mid 1980's "just say no" era.
I myself just find it plainly hilarious whenever The Granite State cannot live up to it's utopian libertarian fantasies which seems to happen with mirthful regularity these days.
This is the same New Hampshire that practically promotes driving while intoxicated by putting their Massive State Liquor Stores next to all major highways leading into and out of the State itself.
The fact that yet another member of Sununu Family (the perpetually stale poster boys for Torpid Dynastic Entitlement) is in on this "campaign" is itself just the Crowning Touch. Clan Sununu has had but one idea in fifty years; make State Government as Small and as Burdensome as Possible.
I just wanna know how much Sabet is raking in to keep pot illegal, untaxed and unregulated in New Hampshire??  I'll bet its a bundle, and I wonder where that money is coming from?  Tax dollars I'm sure..."The Government is Best that Governs the Worst".

Careful Donald...

Don't boast in front of the  the troops about phantom pay raises , that never works out well, you can send them to die in some hell hole on a whim, but don't pay them in promises.

The Emperor Nero's successor, aged indolent Galba tried to shortchange the frontier troops and the praetorians and he ended up diced up like hamburger by his own bodyguards...pay heed (like that is ever gonna happen...)

Merry Christmas...

The Stock Market is collapsing....and all the President can do is emit irrational tweets and belch hollow threats.  Given that he is seemingly alone in the White House with no competent authority around him to curb his worst impulses...I say it all becomes Steve Mnuchin's fault by Thursday. I am not sure the Treasury Secretary will last until New Years, its always someone else's fault in Trump's fevered mind.
Like the late ReichsMarshal Hermann Goering, Trump excels at setting "Reichstag Fires", unlike the Late Luftwaffe Chief, Trump also excels at getting caught red handed amidst his own pyromania. Normally when an Authoritarian indulges this much destructive chaos, its in order to consolidate power in due course, but fundamentally, Trump is a low mentality pyromaniac, he is too dull witted and easily distracted to take advantage of his destructive impulses...
For which we can breath a tiny sigh of relief...for now.

Its not that I thought all that much of James Mattis

he was a reactionary on his best day and likely no great fan on gender equality among numerous other things.
But he wasn't crazy...and more importantly he wasn't the compliant alleged pawn of a hostile foreign power.
And on no more than those two negatives alone, General Mattis' departure from the Pentagon has all the trappings of impulsive blustery Kaiser Wilhelm II dismissing Otto von Bismarck from the German Chancellery...

Seth Moulton comes to his Senses..

And announces he is not going to challenge Ed Markey for the Senate Nomination in 2020.

Well, thats good news, but it doesn't give us much indication as to Mouton's next move politically.  If he stays in the US House he probably needs to patch things up with Speaker Designate Nancy Pelosi, who so far seems to have picked off most of his insurgent backers without having to come to terms with Moulton himself.  Moreover, he may have to fend off a primary challenge of his own in 2020, likely an ambitious female on the Ayanna Pressley who'll be the distaff embodiment of Mouton's mantra "only by challenge, shall I rise".
Or he could run for President, but literally that depends on Warren not running for President in 2020, and that seems very unlikely.
Lastly The Congressman could want to run for Governor in 2022, that however depends on Baker stepping down after two terms. If Baker does vacate the corner office it's got to look like a competitive race against Karyn Polito in the General Election.  The prime attractant under this scenario is the Bay State's lingering sexism might work in Moulton's favor in a two way match up against the Lt. Governor, said sexism is simply washed in a Polito v. Healey contest.
So may shards ashift in the kaleidoscope...

Theresa May Lives Another Day...

The British PM survives a No Confidence Vote within her own Parliamentary Caucus, she got 63% of the vote but had to promise to stand down as PM before the next election which is more or less a pledge to commit political suicide over Brexit.
I have to hand it to her, she is unparalleled in the rat-like desperate arts of political survival, time after time her bell is seemingly rung and yet May abides as PM.  This is in part because no one else wants their fingerprints on the Mess that is Brexit, if it goes to smash next March (and it will) the only thing that unites the factions in the UK is that they want it all blamed on Theresa May.
Childish I know, but this is the mentality that festers whenever a bad policy is being foisted on a resistant majority by a relentless unempowered minority.  Put it another way, Theresa May and most of her tories and a good chunk of labor as well, know Brexit is a bad idea, but no one wants to commit to the heavy political lifting necessary to overturn a referendum, something the Massachusetts State Legislature seems to do with Ease.

The Remnants of Dignity...

Not that I'm adding anything to the conversation, but the VP looked perfectly lifeless at the President's meeting with Senator Schemer & Congressperson Pelosi yesterday.  A lot of people are comparing him to the "Starring Role at a Wake" or have theorized about some sort of persistent upright coma...all of it hilarious.
I think he is overwhelmed and in shutdown mode, he is a rigid cheap less third rate politician, he knows enough to realize that the Admin is casually breaking the law, but he hasn't the character or the brains to do anything about it.  So...having no way forward or no way back he "retreats into stupidity"  (to quote Orwell) and thus sits there in the above photo in seeming suspended animation.

Congressman Mouton's Operation Valkyrie...

has pretty much ended in defeat, worse for him, there is crazy talk on the North Shore of a stiff female-centric primary challenge for him come 2020.  It seems clear that the PUMAs have their claws out for Seth Moulton, and that is a formidable faction within the State Democratic Party, one that Moulton antagonizes only at his peril.
Of course this is the season of "political conjuration" everyone is considering a primary challenge, or running for a higher office whether or not anything plays out is another matter. Right now everything is on an easy idealistic rhetorical level but soon enough cold hard facts intrude to harsh everyone's groove.
I just think its ironic, Moulton's Mantra is "only by challenge shall I rise", and now someone wants to test that, and challenge him.

JK is Out as Well...

For which I breath a sad sigh of relief.

Not that I don't think Kerry wouldn't make a Great President, he would, but then again my Dad's old hassock would make a better chief executive than Trump.  The Sun Set on The Commonwealth's Presidential Ambitions Years Ago, sadly no one got around to telling any of our politicians, from both parties!
But as long as the Boston Globe needs to fill up column space, names will be mentioned, campaigns conjured with, hopeless fantasies will be indulged, count on it.

But for those of you who cannot exist, save to live in hope of some phantom political apotheosis, I will merely note we've heard nothing definitive from Seth Moulton, Joe Kennedy or Jane "Jingle Money" Swift for that matter.

Oh Thank Ghod...

Deval Patrick has let common sense prevail and has decided not to run for President in 2020.  Of course, details are still sketchy as to why he isn't running, the simple explanation may be he doesn't have the "fire in the belly" or his family is firmly opposed...or maybe the early money & infrastructure is already committed to Senior Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Of course, Congresspersons Kennedy, Moulton and Former Secretary of State Kerry are all also being  touted as candidates, so there is no shortage of "Kamikaze Democrats" from The Bay State for anyone who wants to spend eighteen months Living in Hope.  I am assuming at the end of the day, John Kerry can't raise the money or build the campaign staff to make a credible challenge. Seth Moulton is all about challenge, but it has to be a winnable challenge to be worth the candle, I don't think Kennedy has ever been serious about running for President...yet, I am sure he is being told he must prove himself in a higher office before making his move.  That leaves Elizabeth Warren, who is at least, still "thinking it over".
Keep thinking about it Senator, please!
I think Patrick made the right call, he might have been competitive in Iowa and he could have stumped the living daylights out of New Hampshire...but he'd a gotten sandbagged badly in what I like to call "The Boston Globe Primary".  Cuz That Paper despite its enduring liberal reputation, does not make it easy on local democrats to run for President.  Granted they fear perhaps rightly so, accusations of bias, but boy howdy they really beat up John Kerry back in 2004, front page above the fold news every time he dropped in the polls up in NH, among many other vexing things.  I can recall a highly placed campaign volunteer explaining to me why Kerry was in first place in Iowa in the lead up to the caucuses she said "they don't read The Boston Globe in Des Moines".
Anyhow this is a decision on Patrick's Part that costs him nothing, and who knows, he could make an interesting Vice Presidential Prospect for the right Top Nominee looking to boost turnout in Urban Areas.

In Memoriam, G.H.W.B.

"This talk of sincerity, I confess, fatigues me. If the fellow was sincere, then so was P. T. Barnum."
H.L. Mencken, 1925

Let the record show, that if my youth was ruined by Ronald Reagan, then my adulthood was brought low by his successor, George Herbert Walker Bush, who died last night at the age of ninety four.
I have a curious flaw, like many of my tribe, I cannot forget a grudge, and if there was a politician against whom I've held a grudge for a long time, it is the First President Bush.
In that respect, he made a good target, patrician-seeming, incoherent on his best days, prone to bouts of indecision, given to hiring men who deserved solitary confinement to run his campaigns, he was indeed a mixture of irritating and unpleasant contradictions.
I will say this though, politics in the USA is sodden with lackeys, fawning obsequious persons who truckle on the mighty that they might trample on all below them (expl: Jared Kushner), the irony is, they rarely achieve power.  Bush Senior, blithely defied this conventional wisdom, blowing past the accumulated corruptions of the Reagan admin (including the vast impeachable offense that was, Iran-Contra), crushing Mike Dukakis in the general election and winning the White House in 1988.
No small achievement given the Republic's ongoing skepticism about Vice Presidents.
Bush must've felt wonderful when he first sat down in the Oval Office, entitled in extremis after years of political jobbery, ass kissing and borderline criminal acts on behalf of Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford and Ronald Reagan.
Indeed if Bush was "A Giant of a Man" its only by comparison to our current roster of pathetic wowsers.
Am I the only one who remember all those scare stories that eructated from the CIA when Bush was Director back in the mid seventies to the effect that the Soviets were running out of oil and were on the brink of blitzkrieging the Middle East?
His career in public service is littered with similar malign zaniness.
The man knew the ineffable zen of running distasteful errands for his bosses sans any questions whatsoever. If you were ever wondering how the hell a brainless jobber like Dan Quayle could become VP, just look to that value structure.
To read the lavish obituary in the Globe today, a veritable Moderate Republican Solon had passed from the scene, but let me ask you, from Clarence Thomas to his broken promises about taxes, exactly what did George Bush ever moderate??
"Win Ugly, Govern Ugly" was a dictum that I put forth back in 2000 when his son seized power, I can credit Junior with far more sincerity on this point. His father thought he could "win ugly" and do as he pleased even posing as a "kinder gentler" conservative (a formulation ever bit as big a joke as Dukakis' infamous tank ride...).
And then of course it all fell apart didn't it? The economy blew up in his face, the electorate forgot about Willy Horton and shoved Bill Clinton into the White House with an audible disaffected grunt.
But...peace to his ashes.
I do feel for his family, they must endure what passes for humane condolences from Donald Trump, no one great or obscure should suffer like that....