Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon is supposedly gonna be Trump's Secretary of State come next year. Like most of Trump's other cabinet appointments, he has never held any sort of substantive government job and other than negotiating with corrupt petrocrats and other oil companies, his foreign policy bona fides are utterly nonexistent.
In fact, all I know about Tillerson is that he de-homophobed the Boy Scouts of America (a very right and necessary thing in this Eagle Scout's Opinion)....which is grimly hilarious because if Tillerson was an Obama appointee his tenure at the BSA would be grounds for investigation at the very least.
The rotten boroughs though are living up to their Faustian Bargain with Trump so far, thus the matter merits silence for the moment.
More worrisome is Tillerson's long business relationship with Vladimir Putin and Putin's Kleptocracy. John McCain is making growling noises about this one, but thats his default about everything and the Senator from Arizona has a spotty record for arousing the US Senate over an issue of conscience.
Me?
I see Tillerson as a Big Money Rebuke to Romney and yet another untested billionaire in a cabinet ominous stuffed with tycoons and generals (which is always a bad mix IMHO)....Has Trump nominated anyone outside the Pentagon with less that 100 million in the Bank?
Monday, December 12, 2016
Friday, December 09, 2016
John Glenn is Dead
And the Senator-Astronaut is likely one of the very last "Non-Partisan Across the Board Achievement Driven" National Heroes.
Which is ironic given the fact that Astronaut Glenn in the wake of his Mercury Flight in 1962 was lavishly politically courted by President Kennedy, indeed Glenn was a reliable factotum for Bobby Kennedy in campaign 1968 and in due course Glenn was the democratic senator from Ohio.
He never lost that weird halo of ability and rectitude despite a public life given over to explicit partisanship.
I met Glenn during his doomed 1984 Presidential Campaign, he was a veritable 38 Caliber Bullet of a. Man, short and compact (Mercury Astronauts had strict height requirements in order to fit into those cramped primitive space capsules) to say the least. Let me say this though, if Jimmy Carter exuded piety, if George McGovern radiated sincerity, then John Glenn was incandescently Self Confident, he was viscerally fearless putting his fate in the hands of faith, training and the American Way Quite Literally. He made Ronald Reagan look like an indecisive self doubting wretch by comparison.
And the symbolism of his quiet death at the tail end of this doomed year of 2016 should be lost on no one, it is never ever a good a Good Thing for the rest of us when Our Heroes Start Ascending to Valhalla en masse.
Which is ironic given the fact that Astronaut Glenn in the wake of his Mercury Flight in 1962 was lavishly politically courted by President Kennedy, indeed Glenn was a reliable factotum for Bobby Kennedy in campaign 1968 and in due course Glenn was the democratic senator from Ohio.
He never lost that weird halo of ability and rectitude despite a public life given over to explicit partisanship.
I met Glenn during his doomed 1984 Presidential Campaign, he was a veritable 38 Caliber Bullet of a. Man, short and compact (Mercury Astronauts had strict height requirements in order to fit into those cramped primitive space capsules) to say the least. Let me say this though, if Jimmy Carter exuded piety, if George McGovern radiated sincerity, then John Glenn was incandescently Self Confident, he was viscerally fearless putting his fate in the hands of faith, training and the American Way Quite Literally. He made Ronald Reagan look like an indecisive self doubting wretch by comparison.
And the symbolism of his quiet death at the tail end of this doomed year of 2016 should be lost on no one, it is never ever a good a Good Thing for the rest of us when Our Heroes Start Ascending to Valhalla en masse.
Thursday, December 08, 2016
There are vague rumors in the Globe
to the effect that the Lege is considering a tax on carbonated beverages...
Thats a laugh and half, we don't tax alcohol so much as a penny so now we are gonna shift that revenue shortfall on Coke Fanciers eh?
Granted personally I regard high fructose corn syrup as a form of poison that the Feds ought to outlaw completely, but until then we are stuck with the miserable stuff. Exempting alcohol with it's myraid of tragic complications from taxation in favor of a dogged pursuit of "Sprite" is just plain silly.
Thats a laugh and half, we don't tax alcohol so much as a penny so now we are gonna shift that revenue shortfall on Coke Fanciers eh?
Granted personally I regard high fructose corn syrup as a form of poison that the Feds ought to outlaw completely, but until then we are stuck with the miserable stuff. Exempting alcohol with it's myraid of tragic complications from taxation in favor of a dogged pursuit of "Sprite" is just plain silly.
Wednesday, December 07, 2016
Budget Cuts
to address a revenue shortfall that may or may not happen Governor Baker has ordered up some budget cuts to all the usual suspects, healthcare, transportation and among others way down the list, suicide prevention.
Suicide Prevention Funds?
There is just something mean and wrong about that, when you consider that the Mystic Tobin Bridge is still a suicide magnet to this very day, sidewalks or no sidewalks.
Such is the mindset of "Governor Seventy Percent"....I can hear the chorus of "we could do a lot worse than Charlie Baker" a yelpin' in the background.
Suicide Prevention Funds?
There is just something mean and wrong about that, when you consider that the Mystic Tobin Bridge is still a suicide magnet to this very day, sidewalks or no sidewalks.
Such is the mindset of "Governor Seventy Percent"....I can hear the chorus of "we could do a lot worse than Charlie Baker" a yelpin' in the background.
Monday, December 05, 2016
I'll say this for Donald Trump
he sure knows how to press Mitt Romney's buttons. A week after their reconciliation dinner rife with rumors of the former viceroy's imminet appointment to Foggy Bottom and the Real Estate Tycoon strokes his chins and murmurs he wants to "expand the pool of applicants from Secretary of State.
True to form even as the Big Job soars away from him, Mitt Romney keeps on kissing up to Trump even as Bob Corker, John Bolton and John Huntsman (of all people) suddenly merit attention.
I suspect Trump is simply torturing Romney before a final humiliation (like tweeting out John Bolton's appointment at 3am)....Mitt is just too craven to understand this new fact of life.
Looking at the current list from my perspective, I'd say the best of a bad lot might be Huntsman who at least had some foreign policy experience (albeit as an Obama Appointee) and has been off the grid for nigh on four years.
On the other hand I suspect Huntsman is on there just to twist the knife a little bit in Romney I doubt the guy is any sort of a finalist.
Corker is a senatorial berserker and Bolton openly thirsts for nuclear war soonest. So given all that and Team Trump's penchant for Bad Decisionmaking it'll likely be Secretary of State Bolton and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock can advance to thirty seconds to midnight.
You'd think Romney would get this and salvage the dregs of his dignity, but no. Mitt is far too deferential to power to ever speak the truth of any of it.
True to form even as the Big Job soars away from him, Mitt Romney keeps on kissing up to Trump even as Bob Corker, John Bolton and John Huntsman (of all people) suddenly merit attention.
I suspect Trump is simply torturing Romney before a final humiliation (like tweeting out John Bolton's appointment at 3am)....Mitt is just too craven to understand this new fact of life.
Looking at the current list from my perspective, I'd say the best of a bad lot might be Huntsman who at least had some foreign policy experience (albeit as an Obama Appointee) and has been off the grid for nigh on four years.
On the other hand I suspect Huntsman is on there just to twist the knife a little bit in Romney I doubt the guy is any sort of a finalist.
Corker is a senatorial berserker and Bolton openly thirsts for nuclear war soonest. So given all that and Team Trump's penchant for Bad Decisionmaking it'll likely be Secretary of State Bolton and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock can advance to thirty seconds to midnight.
You'd think Romney would get this and salvage the dregs of his dignity, but no. Mitt is far too deferential to power to ever speak the truth of any of it.
Sunday, December 04, 2016
If you wanna see the Boston Globe in Deep Denial
about Mitt Romney's craven cave in to Team Trump (all in a bid to be Secretary of State of all things) check out of today's front page article by Matt Visor.
The Globe is just desperate to project the mantle of healing comforting moderation on Mitt Romney, the former viceroy walks back his Anti Trump vituperation and Morrissey Blvd starts sighing about his "commitment to public service".
Moderate republicanism is as Dead as Adam but The Globe keeps trying to resuscitate what amounts to a Museum Class Mummy. They give a craven schemer like Mitt Romney a second third and even fourth chance...and all because they can't come to terms with the contemporary GOP's ever rightward zombie lurch.
Well Mitt Romney has come to turns with said zombie lurch, by capitulating to it in public.
Never mind the fact that the former viceroy is likely being played by Team Trump in a rather crude vengeful manner as well. Meanwhile the Globe goes on fantasizing if Romney scores for Foggy Bottom then its a victory for moderate republicanism, if he is not appointed then its because he is again too saintly a moderate for Trump's Cabinet.
Really what color is the sky in the world of the Boston Globe?
The Globe is just desperate to project the mantle of healing comforting moderation on Mitt Romney, the former viceroy walks back his Anti Trump vituperation and Morrissey Blvd starts sighing about his "commitment to public service".
Moderate republicanism is as Dead as Adam but The Globe keeps trying to resuscitate what amounts to a Museum Class Mummy. They give a craven schemer like Mitt Romney a second third and even fourth chance...and all because they can't come to terms with the contemporary GOP's ever rightward zombie lurch.
Well Mitt Romney has come to turns with said zombie lurch, by capitulating to it in public.
Never mind the fact that the former viceroy is likely being played by Team Trump in a rather crude vengeful manner as well. Meanwhile the Globe goes on fantasizing if Romney scores for Foggy Bottom then its a victory for moderate republicanism, if he is not appointed then its because he is again too saintly a moderate for Trump's Cabinet.
Really what color is the sky in the world of the Boston Globe?
Thursday, December 01, 2016
Hillary Clinton is on track....
to have won the last election popular vote by about 2.5 million votes as a high a "mandate" as was claimed by George Bush Jr in 2004. And yet Trump, thanks to the splendidly inane Newtonian Mechanics of the Electoral College is the one selecting Cabinet Secretaries.
Okay granted, the Founding Fathers created the Electoral College as a bulwark against "popular passions" which was in part defined in the Federal Papers as the somewhat more spurious notion that large states would somehow "bully" small ones at the polls.
BTW just as a digression was there a better example of malign "popular passions" in this election than the belligerent wave that swept Trump to glory in the Electoral College?
Clearly the Goddamned Thing does not work as designed.
All Constitutions (if well written) are inherently biased in favor of legitimacy, legality and the Perpetuation of said Constitution. Legitimacy here is the question because you cannot have two contradictory "legitimate" outcomes of one "winner take all" election.
And yet we do.
The response (from the Trump Campaign's Screech Monkeys) is that the Electorial College's election is the Only One That Matters....and yes on paper that is the case.
But let me ask all seven of my readers this, why then do we have popular presidential elections at all?
The tactical setback from 2016 is that we've got Trump as President and our odds of survival either as a democracy or even physical person is at best a tick over fifty fifty.
But the constitutional issue here is even more disquieting the popular vote is suddenly rendered meaningless...which to my mind is the first step to getting rid of it in all but name only....
Think about that please.
Okay granted, the Founding Fathers created the Electoral College as a bulwark against "popular passions" which was in part defined in the Federal Papers as the somewhat more spurious notion that large states would somehow "bully" small ones at the polls.
BTW just as a digression was there a better example of malign "popular passions" in this election than the belligerent wave that swept Trump to glory in the Electoral College?
Clearly the Goddamned Thing does not work as designed.
All Constitutions (if well written) are inherently biased in favor of legitimacy, legality and the Perpetuation of said Constitution. Legitimacy here is the question because you cannot have two contradictory "legitimate" outcomes of one "winner take all" election.
And yet we do.
The response (from the Trump Campaign's Screech Monkeys) is that the Electorial College's election is the Only One That Matters....and yes on paper that is the case.
But let me ask all seven of my readers this, why then do we have popular presidential elections at all?
The tactical setback from 2016 is that we've got Trump as President and our odds of survival either as a democracy or even physical person is at best a tick over fifty fifty.
But the constitutional issue here is even more disquieting the popular vote is suddenly rendered meaningless...which to my mind is the first step to getting rid of it in all but name only....
Think about that please.
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