Biden Piles in (for a third time...)

Its Joe Biden's third bid for the US Presidency, after having run nationwide for VP twice...thats a shit ton of experience that neatly obscures the historic fact that politicians that's this dogged rarely achieve the office they seek...
But watch that word, rarely it is a strict qualifier indeed.
Given the spate of bad publicity he's run up these last few weeks I do think, that if Joe Biden is nominated (which is hardly set in stone no matter how strong his fundraising), its a lead pipe cinch he has to take the hoodoo off by nominated a woman for Veep.
The Good News is, The Democrats are Lousy with Qualified Women.
The Bad News is, Most of Those Qualified Women Know It and thats why they themselves are Running for President.
Anyway forecasting is impossible at this stage of the game with twenty candidates so far, its less a party primary and more like a Kentucky Derby Cavalry Charge, with more candidates getting in, even as I write this...
So, I will make this pledge, I refuse to do the work of a Russian Spambot, and cite anyone as inherently unacceptable, at this point I'd vote for Juan Peron if it meant Ousting Trump next year. My job isn't foisting my views on the Primary/Convention/General Election, no my job is saving The Constitution and the Republic...and God Damn the Russian Spambot Primary too....

Weld Announces, Romney Denounces...

"Senator" Romney, announced he was "sickened" by the blatant "dishonesty" & disregard for the law detailed in the Mueller Report, and then of course, being Mitt Romney did exactly nothing to end the lawbreaking.
He can do that, not because he comes from a very safe republican set, but because he is ineffably Mitt  Romney, he will speak out sometimes and then do nothing. He once groveled unsuccessfully to be Trump's Secretary of State, just remember that, if the going gets hot, he'll grovel again, count on it.
Mit contradicts himself like this because he holds the electorate in contempt, he thinks they don't pay attention to his contradictions, but in fact they do, in case anyone is wondering why Romney was never elected President.
Truly the thinnest loneliest book in all of the Library of Congress is "The Political Courage of Mitt Romney".
Meanwhile Bill Weld has awoken from his latest bender to discover his lance has been freshly painted and he has somehow announced for president, yet another Windmill looms in the morning mists it seems. Weld is making brave noises about raising six million large to compete in Iowa and New Hampshire, that sounds like very wishful thinking on his part. If this is the scope of Trump's GOP opposition then he need fear nothing, for now.
On the other hand, Weld did beat Trump's 1990 Beta Prototype, John Silber in a fair and open contest, so he does have some experience defusing blustery extremists, there is that. That was twenty nine years ago though, Weld is seventy three years old and has been off the grid effectively for decades, I cannot begin to imagine how his fundraising will go, likely badly and quickly.
What all this comes down to is, there is a myth out there, that there is substantive GOP opposition to Trump, there is not, that party may not be entirely united behind Trump but they are thoroughly cowed, which is bad news because short of an electoral earthquake it'll take coordinated action by both parties to rid us of this outlaw administration.

For the First Time in My Life...

I actually Feel Sorry for a Cathedral...

Stop & Shop goes on strike...

Let me assert publicly that I am in complete solidarity the five locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union that're currently striking for better benefits at Stop & Shop.
Stocking aisles, working a cash register is a hard dollar yo, people live off that money and the corporate in question ought not to nickel and dime their workers.

"Polls are Open in Israel"

"Vote Early and Vote Often!"

:)

I kid, but I stick by my prediction that Netanyahu will win in a squeaker, the coalition he assembles will be a marvelously rickety contraption and the opposition will simply lie in wait for the indictments.
Because, the indictments are indeed coming...

So I guess...

per his column in Today's Globe, that Stephen Kinzer has indeed read all 300+ pages of the Mueller Report, a feat that not even the President of the United States has yet attempted.  Cuz...according to Stephen, the Mueller report does indeed completely and irrevocably exonerate Citizen Trump from any hint of collusion with Russia back in campaign 2016.
And Stephen being a scholar and a journalist would never ever take Attorney General Barr's crass exculpatory letter to congress at face value...he'd read the Mueller Report for verification...wouldn't he??
So if...Stephen does indeed have a copy of the Mueller Report, and he would have to, in order to issue such a blatant groveling Ukase as he did today, then could he at least have the decency to leak the Goddamn Thing??
Because I for one, want to know what sort of shitty lashed up telecom Team Trump was using back then, because something was preventing them from calling the FBI every time a Russian Security Asset came knocking on their doors promising assistance against Citizen Clinton.  Hopefully, that much, is in the Mueller Report.

The Brute Life in Belmont.

Politics is an ugly business, take it from me.

Never moreso than in placid antebellum, upper class ,poorly paved Belmont Ma, where Tim Flood, a  guy I couldn't pull out of a police line up is coming in for all kinds of harassment because he is running for Town Selectman.
Never mind the fact that the Board of Selectmen, is a thankless drudgery, I've never yet met a local pol that wasn't visibly relieved when they left that particular office no matter what the circumstances of said departure.  So these Falangist Tactics over in Belmont are especially galling, so much viciousness over an office that pays nothing with limited power and much responsibility....
I've said it a thousand times there is something about local politics that makes people crazy, I could run against Dave Rogers on a communist ticket promising the forced collectivization of agriculture in Arlington and not make the lifelong enemies I'd make if I so much as announced for the school committee....
I've been blogging on and off since 2003, I've seen blogging rise fall, evolve and vanish, and in all that time I never thought I'd write these words "Hey Belmont, Knock Off the Rough Stuff Willya??"