Speaker Boehner is conjuring

with another fruitless gaudy lawsuit against the White House with respect to the President's executive order's on immigration. Which is pretty much as close to an unequivocal confession from the House Leadership that they have neither the votes nor the desire to pass a bill superceding said executive orders. Instead they go for the useless showy gesture that will keep them in good with their baseline voters. Well, it goes without saying at this point that we cannot expect Leadership from John Boehner regarding immigration in any way this pretty much proves it. On the other hand there might be some legit discussion if not outright lawmaking on the issue if the current house majority wasn't a vengeful pack of ideological anarchs elected from utterly dubious rotten boroughs. That problem, the issue of redistricting has taken a toxic turn that now seriously influences policy in a bad way. I mean think about it, if your "fifty percent plus one" is pretty much the Tea Party how much incentive is that to negotiate with respect to immigration reform? Keeping that sweet fifty one percent gulled, happy and or angry is pretty much your go-to...in effect the lack of debate in congress is a larger function of corruptly draw districts that restrict electoral diversity (I know...that word...) and thus themselves are immune to healthy debate. Granted perhaps I am no one to talk, Massachusetts has a 100% congressional delegation...but they at least are willing to discuss the issue in a serious way sand recourse to stunts and posturing.

One Burning Question from this weekend's "Iowa Freedom Summit".....

Will Donald Trump ever ask Sarah Palin to compete on "The Celebrity Apprentice"? Because after this weekend that is about all that is left to the Former Alaska Governor after her berserker speech to the Faithful. You can pretty much forget about Palin running for President, she can't raise the money and besides she has a shallow attention deficit disordered personality that compels her to chase the short term payoff...Running for President requires patience and discipline two qualities Sarah lacks. Trump was making Presidential noises this weekend as well, pay him no mind, despite the "brand propaganda" he hasn't got the personal fortune necessary to run for President nor does he seem well positioned to fundraise. He has learned though from Newt Gingrich the incalculable benefits hinting at a Run for the White House as a means to gin up book sales, goose ratings and in general keep the larger mediasphere a-simmering. No...Trump and Palin are provocateurs, good at saying mean things about President Obama on Cable TV they can even get off a good wingnut trending zinger now and again, but you know neither of them are allowed in the room when serious policy is being discussed. Anyhow at this point I still say it's Jeb versus a bunch of crazies on his right, his boot on Romney's neck and Chris Christie bellowing & snorting slightly to the left. Thats where the money is gonna go thats where the fight will be.

When BiBi comes a knockin'

At the invitation of Speaker Boehner, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited to speak before both houses of the US Congress (invites like this are "Winston Churchill" rare BTW). Wisely the President and Secretary of State have declined to meet with the Israel PM under the circumstances since they were cut out of the invitation completely. Conventional wisdom indicates that the GOP lead congress is using this as an opportunity to intervene in US-Iranian nuclear negotiations with the possible goal as to make the US delegation look incapable of delivering on a deal and thus occasion the withdrawl of Iran thus ONCE AGAIN putting the region on a war footing. I take a counterintuitive view, Netanyahu is faced with a difficult reelection campaign at home (although as I've said before I think he will win in the end) and needs to keep the focus in Israel on issues relating to national security (held to be a key strength of his electorally speaking) and a speech before the US Congress is one of those unique global platforms to gin up war talk in a venue wherein his domestic opponents have no reach. The fact that Netanyahu has to foul his relations with a US President still further and stoke up war hysteria among a bunch of grim jobbers entirely elected from Rotten Boroughs is secondary to his own short term political needs, The Israeli PM can always moan "I'm soweee" after he wins. But I suspect there might be some hidden costs for Netanyahu after all this blows over....and so with kindness in my heart I advise him to recall the Sacrifice of Abraham...and if an Angel of The Lord bids Benjamin to "Stay his hand" he might wanna listen...just saying.

Ah the Keystone Pipeline...

the latest symptom of wingnut dementia...so that Canada can ship it's oil across America and overseas where it will likely end up in the PRC lowering production costs still further and thus speeding up the deindustrialization of the U.S.A. Oh and they won't even use US Steel to build the goddamned thing....anything I'm leaving out? And this is a good idea because why?? If it was Iranian oil they'd be another one of their tedious fugue states...guess it really is all about who gets paid and who gets enabled.

The President Prospers...

In part because his sworn political enemies are all to a man, twitchy weird, humorless & self destructive. Take last night's SOTU address, while the President took the rest of the nation on a soaring tour of a better tomorrow well within our grasp, the loyal opposition was searching high and low for the most lugubrious and inane spokespersons to give the "coveted response"...a job that has routinely wrecked political careers since it was thoughtlessly implemented back in the early 1980's. Piyush "Bobby" Jindal's national ambitions still have not recovered from his stint as SOTU designated responder in 2009. So if Jodi Ernst thinks her goofy quaalude evocative performance last night was gonna light up an "Ernst for Veep" boom....dream on sister, dream on. Otherwise I suspect the President domestically speaking is going to be on the defensive for the rest of his term, but this is where what I call "The Jacksonian Vertical Stroke" (ergo swift clear action in the public interest, evolved and decided upon in private reflection), comes into play. Obama has the bully pulpit and can take all sorts of decisions in hand sans recourse to Congress, Cuba, illegal immigration, last night's tax proposals & the drive for net neutrality all bear the marks of an emerging Jacksonian Agenda, one that is "with the people, against the interests". Clearly, Barack Obama wants to set the agenda for 2016, plain and simple. He is immeasurably aided in a larger sense by a GOP lead congress largely composed of corrupt grievance addicted jobbers elected from preposterously rotten boroughs. If The President really wanted to set off a serious mishaugas he ought to go down to North Carolina and start talking about serious redistricting reform...then we will see shit storm par excellence! I dunno maybe I'm a mark, but it seems like the wind is shifting out there, imperceptibly in the President's favor, despite all his challenges in DC.

The Quotable Martin Luther King...

Right about the time they turned the fire hoses on the school children in Selma Alabama, Dr. King had this to say... "Dixie has a heart all right. But it's having a little heart trouble right now." You don't see that one reprinted too often this time of year, peace to his memory.

As the NH Primary Looms on the Horizon

I need to start picking and choosing which GOP candidates I wanna see on the stump. I'm expunging Mitt Romney from the list though, at long last I can't see how he'd have anything new to say given the history he's racked up in two prior presidential campaigns. At this point 2016 is naught by a sad opportunity for Mitt to emphatically Change His Mind About the Issues....Yet Again. So...given that... I think I'd like to see Jeb Bush certainly he has an odd baffled look of injured rectitude that I'm sure will play very well to the GOP's endlessly aggrieved base. Besides I wanna assess early if he is the same sort of nasty little smear artist as was his Father & Brother. Then maybe Rick Perry...I know he is dumber than a bag of hammers but there is limitless copy in Rick Perry and I wanna see what passes for a stump speech from him. I always regretted missing him in 2012. After that...Chris Christie...mostly to see if he tracks at all towards the center if he makes it to NH and then by extension I wanna see what passes for "The GOP Center" in 2016. And if I get lucky then either one of the quivering wingnut holy men, Cruz perhaps or maybe Rand Paul. All of this is of course still speculative at this point NONE of the above may ever announce for President...Mike Bloomberg could somehow clear the boards...ya never know. But it's good to start thinking on these things early.