The Story So Far...

After last week's democratic debate on MSNBC, I can only come to the conclusion that Senators Kamala Harris & Cory Booker are hanging in there to burnish their Vice Presidential Prospects. Both are passionate, articulate, can swing a mean soundbite and even so they are both dead in the water, in the patois of Frank Dell, "They aren't mo-oving bay-bee!" Right now their last best hope of Overthrowing Destiny Lies in a Joe Biden Nomination for President. Harris would make a formidable  Veep for Biden, classy yet tough, Pence wouldn't last long in debate with her believe me.  Booker on the other hand is a Veep for Mystic Symmetry, Biden made it to Veep with an African American Heading the Ticket, now he returns the favor by nominated another poised articulate passionate African American Man as his Veep.
Meanwhile Buttigeig is moving up in the polls out in Iowa, but then all polished articulate outsiders with a Kennedy-esque ability to project a comforting establishment glow have their Day in the Sun in the democratic presidential sweeps. And lets face it, Buttigeig has an Obama-like capacity to incarnate himself as the very  prospect of change, it obscures his essentially centrist pragmatic outlook nicely.  At the moment though, the polling indicates he is pulling support pretty much from Biden which does sent up an interesting confrontation down the line...maybe.
Biden meanwhile lumbers along, abandoned seemingly by everyone save the voters who consistently seem to regard him as the preferred grizzled gunslinger hired to clean out the high binders & bandits currently infesting the Republic.

These are pretty much the front runners at this point, Bloomberg seems poised to spend 37 million dollars of his own money on TV adverts in Iowa and NH, but then this is stark necessity, time has gotten so short its impossible to shake enough hands or eat enough spaghetti to make a fast surge up in the polls.
As for the other late entry, our own Deval Patrick, who apparently if the Boston Globe is to be believed thinks he can turn the South Carolina Primary into a Game Changer...I just don't see it happening, the era of the late coup in the democratic primaries is long over. Its a sort of narcotic myth indulged by the punditariat, like brokered conventions and sudden third party bids.  No right now the field with the inside track seems to be Sanders, Warren, Biden & at the moment, Buttigeig...that fourth outlier spot could change, who knows Yang might catch fire but time is getting short for everyone front runner and dark horse.
But, if I was to speculate, if its Biden it'll have to be someone who excites the base as well as someone younger, that superficially favors either Harris or Booker. I also think Biden may himself feel constrained to choose a woman as a gesture toward the forces of change in the democratic party.
On the other hand, he seems to get along famously with Warren...regardless of their health care policy differences.
Sanders is more of an interesting poser, he is so very self contained politically, I'm not sure what would be his idea of a Veep that would promote party unity? Certainly I think he'd be under some similar constraints to pick someone younger. Who knows, maybe Beto O'Rourke?
Elizabeth Warren likely needs someone that speaks "foreign policy gravitas", A General Perhaps...is Wesley Clark still listening to pitches?
And lastly Buttigeig the change agent incarnate, he faces the longest odds and who knows if his bounce will still be there next week, but with him, the Veepstakes are simple, he needs an African American, Harris or Booker again, even Patrick would do nicely in a pinch.
Granted the race is in flux, but recall please not too much flux, sooner or later someone racks up a plurality that looks pretty formidable, then we are off to the races.

Apparently, according to Stephen Kinzer in the Boston Globe Today...

we are All guilty of impeachable offenses, we permitted congress to let go of its war making powers and so somehow we are all implicated in literally millions of war crimes.
That is literally his argument today, and you know what, I applaud him, at least he followed all of his ideas thru to their logical conclusion and then tied them all together in an unfathomable granny knot.
Of course none of it has any practical value, if everyone is guilty, then no one is, because there is no real or metaphoric possibility of Justice.  How can criminals act as judges, juries, prosecutors or defense counsel?
Now me? I say justice is the redress of wrongdoing and the punishment of wrongdoers.  A free people  who live by the rule of law are best able to honor and uphold justice.  Kinzer has a theory of injustice its vast and well thought out, but it'll never redress any wrongdoing nor penalize any wrong doer.
I think he knows that, which is why I suspect Stephen secretly wishes Trump every success, since it'll destroy the USA's skein of overseas alliances and what...bring about a new eschaton of grievance where This Republic will stand Indicted For All Its Crimes At Long Last...or else a sweet wind will blow down from the mountains and make all right again...some damn thing.

Deval don't do it!!

This is Elias, Man, I was in back of the Arlington Sons of Italy when you first came to town in 2005, remember the guy that had a fugue and stormed out? You didn't turn a hair, thats when I first believed you could do it.
But running for President?
Now??
Thats Crazy...
Listen to me Governor, you've got no organization, no money and you aren't that famous from the git go...this cannot end well.
The Spartans were all signed up months and even years ago, I'm in that room every month and the only people we hear from are either Madly for Liz or Even More Madly for Bernie...who ya gonna send up to Manchester the PawSox??
This is gonna be the end of your political career, up until now you were a future VP/AG or some damned thing, but you can't say no in April and Yes in November and expect to win, that only worked for Bobby Kennedy...and there the metaphor endeth.
Don't do it, I'm begging you...The Day is Late, and the Light Grows Dim.

Hang in There President Carter,

I voted for you in 1980 and never once regretted it!  Word is the Former President is feeling poorly, I hope he pulls thru, he is a living rebuke to every money worshipping sluggard in This Republic.

Bloomberg is running for President...

this'll be a stone riot.  All the endorsements are tied up with other candidates, all the best organizers are signed away long ago, good thing there is no salary cap in Presidential Politics, because all Bloomberg has left is plentiful liquidity to waste on a late candidacy that no one yearned for at all.

Remember Senator Fred Thompson? He was a big name who got in late and went nowhere...

 All these billionaires are apparently shaking in their boots at the thought of Elizabeth Warren climbing into office and enacting even one tenth of her ambitious program.  So Michael Bloomberg drew the short-straw I guess, Ted Turner must've guffawed mightily...

Bloomberg's game plan is to run up the flag over the "Vital Center" and swear to die in it's defense. He doesn't realize though, what Sanders & Warren figured out long ago, the center is shifting leftward at least when it comes to promising stern retribution for financial malfeasance.  Nobody is booing Senator Warren's plan to tax the ultra-rich at the market rate, the debate centers on what to do with the revenue which is likely been her plan all along.  Bloomberg sooner or later is gonna look like a desperate "hostile takeover bid" nothing more, my main worry enters on preventing him from running on a third party ticket next fall possibly with Tulsi Gabbard for Veep.

Otherwise, this is the political equivalent of homeopathic medicine, the ruin brought down on us by an alleged billionaire staggering around the White House in a perpetual dangerous fugue state is somehow to be remedied by yet another billionaire candidate.

Kerry Gilpin is Outski at the State Police

cashing in her pension awfully quickly if'n you asked me, it is a sweet 180K per year by the way.  But two years of coping with the perception of widespread corruption at the State Police was enough, now some other jobber will have to keep the lid on until the public wearies of being robbed & cheated.

Don't look for leadership from anyone on this one, the Governor has a pathological fear of any distance getting between him and Law Enforcement, and the Legislature's Devotion to Public Sector Unions, is a romance worthy of De Sade.

Anyhow So Long Colonel Gilpin, you changed little, antagonized few, coped mightily and left the State Police in the same stupor of disfunction that was nigh on your first day.

Only Joe Lawless can beat a record like that...

Can the Washington National...

(the improbable victors in the World Series) please have a full scale Victory Parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC....with Tanks!???

Classic Tanks of course, like the work horse Sherman Tank from World War II

OR the French Char B-1 B the nigh invulnerable assault tank the French fielded at the Outset of World War II.  

Just those two words together "French Tank" might give Trump a stroke...