On the other hand...

IF the Kremlin wants to reduce this proud country to abject vassalage, then they are going to have to recruit better more effective stooges than Donald Trump Jr.  In a family of entitled dumbasses he stands out as utterly incapable of tying his own shoes without a team of lawyers and forensic accountants to walk him thru the process.
But...he took the Russian Bait Last Summer and seems proud of his actions and baffled by the outcry, entitled dumbass indeed.  In a larger sense if we conceptualize Russia as having returned to its ages old role as "Europe's reserve army of reaction" (to quote Karl Marx), then it follows that the reactionary class (ergo "the rich") are being targeted for recruitment by Putin's Regime. But they have a long way to go in creating a subversive cohort within the overclass if they are starting with the useless likes of Donald Trump who is useless as an asset and just stupid enough to get his father thrown out of office....

This is the face of a Russian Asset

He isn't some twitchy grad student, some scruffy would be revolutionary...nope he is an heir to a great fortune and as privileged and entitled as a man can be in the USA circa 2017. Likely his whole family including his Father are Russian Assets, they went hat in hand to Moscow for help in taking over the USA and clearly got it. The fact that the Russians helped the Trump's out is almost but not quite secondary to the disgraceful spectacle of soliciting help from a foreign power in a US Presidential Election.  We are on a collision course with Destiny in this Country, and We Must be Equal to Our Times.

Yesterday in the pages of the Boston Sunday Globe

Columnist Jeff Jacoby threw his hands up in the air and blamed ALL of Donald Trump's morbid excesses on the bad example set by..."Bill Clinton".
Normally this is where I jump ugly on Jeff, the Globe's resident conservative and the Local Punditariat's own laughing Young Senescence but today I'm gonna try and break it all down factually.
This column succinctly illustrates the hopeless inability of movement conservatism to organize itself as any sort of opposition to Donald Trump. Let me be clear they hate and fear his feckless pseudo populism, they justly fear his connections to Vladimir Putin and they all have first hand experience with his ineptitude and untrustworthiness....they know but won't admit sooner or later all this will bring down some terrifying crisis on the USA from within or without or likely both.
BUT as long as Trump holds the pen that'll potentially sign into law the privatization of social security, toxic tax cuts and a repeal of ObamaCare, they'll go on making a bad bargain with a bad and unreliable US President. To oppose him, means sacrificing either control of congress or the White House, their unwillingness to put either asset in play is a simple and eloquent confession of intellectual corruption i.e. "Placing ideology ahead and above The Nation".
Now, Jeff Jacoby knows this, insofar as Donald Trump is concerned he is not particularly intellectually corrupt, but he cannot confront these forces in any meaningful way, so in and the Orwellian sense of the term he retreats into complete stupidity there to sit until the storm passes or else sweeps him and his away.
Therefore given all this, waiting the GOP to "do something" is fruitless, if the issue is to be forced it must be done by others, no help can be expected  from "principled conservatives" like Jeff Jacoby.

Bipartisanship on Beacon Hill...

Consists of de facto collusion between the legislature and the governor to stiff the private sector lawyers who contract with the Commonwealth to advocate for the poor & indigent. THAT particular line item's budget ran out last month and with no new budget passed & signed, the program goeth unfunded.  This is a smoke and mirrors attempt to ease the pain of balancing the budget before years end, and it stinks as it amounts to a plethora of well heeled well connected attorney's in the legislature  decline payment for services rendered to the lawyers who still actually practice law on behalf of the vulnerable.
Like I said, it stinks.

The Federal Parliament in Germany has concluded a

"review" that indicates that there is no "legal" barrier to prevent Berlin from negociating for "alternate nuclear umbrella" under. Dual Key Control System.
This is per today's New York Times, I'd provide a link but we all know that can't be breached unless $$ is in play.
The whispers about an independent nuclear deterrent for the EU started in Poland last year concurrent with the still mysterious deployment of brand new cruise missiles in Eastern Russia by our old friend, Vladimir Putin.
The proposal is still mightily controversial, likely at the moment a majority would oppose it in Germany...but elections are looming therein and the debate and consquent agenda can change with the speed of a Donald Trump Tweet.
And there is something Teutonically thorough, about checking to see if it's "legal" to subcontract with Paris for a new independent nuclear deterrent for the EU.
I take this as a general indication that institutional confidence in Donald Trump in Europe is already quite low and likely to go lower, and if it starts rubbing up against the sanctity of our strategic guarantees to NATO then heaven help us all.
Meanwhile the President is meeting Vladimir Putin tomorrow solo, Trump's aides are likely in a lather about what he'll say to the Russian Leader or what obligations he'll undertake. Thats a worry and real one, but I'm more concerned with what Putin is looking to get out of that meeting, does he want his consulates & diplomatic retreats reopened in the USA or is he looking to leverage Trump to further destabilize NATO?
I'll bet Macron & Merkel would like to know that themselves....

Happy Independence Day...

 Here is a thought, lets "Declare Independence" from bloated consequence immune entitlement....

The President's Latest Tweet is plainly nauseating...

(he is depicting wresting "CNN" to the ground this derived from ye Olde WWE Footage) copped as it was from anonymous racist on line tirader.  The truth of the matter is, the President has been threatening CNN in the most diresome terms for a good two years no with entirely ineffectual results and there is something plainly ridiculous about a grown ass man using footage of Vince McMahon jobbing himself out to Trump to illustrate his "triumph" over cable news.
In a fair fight, Vince McMahon would wipe the floor with Trump....and that is my only take away here that the President is belligerent, ineffectual and mentally twelve years old.