Thought at Lunchtime

Governor Charlie Baker is always getting his head shaved or having icewater dumped over his head as a "challenge" on behalf of some safe charitable enterprise a cure for cancer or Lour Gehrig's disease etc.
I wonder would he shave his head to get the Green Line to Run on Time?  What would he get dumped over his head to Fix the Red Line? A Bucket of Compost? A Keg of Nails?
Maybe some ball-bearings....
Maybe we need to reframe the transportation debate in those terms....one the Governor can understand.
:)

Well at least North Korea released the U.S. hostages

So that is something in advance of the much anticipated Trump-Kim Summit, kudos to everyone in the US Government who kept their eyes on that ball.

That having been said, North Korea is an expert taker of hostages for solemn reasons of state as well as purely frivolous motivations.  They can replenish their stock easily they likely have an entire bureau within their government dedicated to this very activity.  Releasing the three hostages sends a nice cheery message of fake accomodation without tipping their hand as to what "denuclearization" of the Korean Peninsula really means.

So IF that is the card we still can't see, then we should anticipate hard terms come the summit, frankly without some private or public declaration of whats on offer at what cost  then a summit isn't justifed, terms need to haggled out among diplomats, assuming terms can even be reached.

I still maintain NK is putting a puppet show at this summit. They'll demand all sorts of unacceptable terms that will be incompatible with solemn treaty obligations to Seoul and Tokyo (among) and watch gleefully as Trump stomps away befuddled and seething.

There is a certain sentiment out there, that posits that North Korea is going to somehow surrender at this Summit, nothing of the sort is gonna occur, Surrender is worth Komrade Kim's Sinecure, if not his very life, he'll bargain, stonewall and drive Trump to flee back to Air Force One, he has no other choice.

That having been said, I hope I am wrong...but for that to be the case, sanity would need to become a welcome global pathogen and those are doubtful prospects indeed.

 

Bob Massie in Menotomy...

Gubernatorial Aspirant, Bob Massie came thru town last night trying to infect local democrats with his own particular strain of viral progressive zeal. The man is a passionate bantam gamecock with a pompadour of Kennedyesque dimensions, garrulous, persuasive, hyper informed about his treasured issues (clean energy-civil rights-healthcare-transportation, get ready for all of that in this exact sequence).  I don't know how well his energy will play on TV and I've no idea if he can persuade a convention center full of delegates, but he is running as the local "Bernie Sanders" variant and that going to get him onto the primary ballot no question.
Of course I think recasting Gonzalez v. Massie as "Bernie versus Hillary part 2" is misbegotten fasle consciousness, parties campaign as much as their nominees in the name of a platform, and we ought to present ourselves as willing to confront certain intractable problems fairly & honestly.
I THINK, Massie understands that, or maybe I hope he does, he seems convinced by the simple truism that a better life a decade hence is forged from decisions and sacrifices made right now.
At least on the subject of public transportation he understands the MBTA isn't gonna improve withour dedicated revenues, that at least is a good start as far as this commuter is concerned.
It is alleged that Massie has a bit of a temper in private, well...so did Lyndon Johnson and LBJ remains the Gold Standard for Progressive Legislation in my lifetime, so maybe a bad disposition is a good thing IF pointed in the right direction...
Massie has an odd resume, a sickly childhood, an ordained minister who attended Harvard Business School and a lifetime of advocacy and activism on behalf of the general category of "Social Justice", but he has never held public office, indeed his last appearance on the campaign trail was 1994 as Mark Roosevelt's ill fated Lt Gubernatorial running mate.  In fact as democrats on primary day we could well strut into the polling booth and vote in a ticket with absolutely no prior experience in public life whatsoever.  Thats a lot to consider, on the other hand, democrats who are seen as "outsiders" with no "priors" on Beacon Hill tend to prosper in the General Election (expl. Deval Patrick).
I think if he is the nominee Massie will do his level best to bug the hell out of Charlie Baker, he seems to get that the Governor is a sort of passive aggressive libertarian when he isn't hiding from the day's challenges or cutting ribbons.
Dunno is Massie can win if nominated, but thats almost beside the point in the current state political climate he seems to understand he'll have to make a fight of it.

In a Few Hours

The President amidst a storm of verbal gloating and impotent threats, will likely pull out of the "Iran Nuclear Deal", to the nigh masturbatory delight of GOP chickenhawks who long for a nice big war with Iran.
They may well get their wish, I remain pretty cynical and stoical on this dire prospect.
This is all animated by a childish vengeful desire to "repeal the Obama Admin" no matter what the cost in blood & treasure, and that demonic spirit has entered into a marriage of convenience with the "Regime Change is the Key to the Middle East" crowd.
Remember those guys? Cheney and Rumsfeld and all those sky grifters? They they CLAIMED deposing Saddam Hussein would "Remake the Middle East", and by ghod it did...turned the region into a four cornered killing zone presided over by Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia & Iran all sending troops and proxies to fight over the political and geographic corpses of a half dozen Arab Dictatorships.
If you think that killing zone can be fixed by taking out one of those four corners (i.e. Iran) you are crazy.
The same people are making policy today, pending National Security Advisor Bolton & SecState Pompeo are all chickenhawk veterans of the Regime Change Wars..and I say again, as prophesy, so far they've been lucky, sooner or later their luck will run out and when it does, all of us are gonna suffer for it.
So believe me, when it comes to Iran, nukes are almost a secondary consideration, pretext for enacting a weird utopian agenda that sheer power can somehow supplant diplomacy forever and ever sans consequence.
Well, okay folks, welcome to Utopia.

John Kerry is trying...

To hold the Iran Nuclear Agreement Together in the face of the President's May 12th deadline, he's been lobbying in DC and likely outreaching to the other signatories.
Likely this is yield nothing save being called a traitor in a tweetstorm, but by JK's standards its a duty  & an obligation to prevent said agreement's dissolution and as we all know the Former Secretary of State is a creature of duty.
And if as I suspect this is all about getting into a hot war with Iran, just remember the current crop of Chickenhawks in DC have gotten lucky in one respect these last twenty years, they've managed to keep the manpower costs of their volitional war "containable". No one has questioned the volume of casualties or the tactics or the strategy.  Sooner or later they will blunder into some conflict that cannot be managed without demanding serious sacrifices from the US Electorate in order to achieve their Utopian Fantasies. So when that "debate commences" and it'll be pretty vituperative believe me, try to remember how remorselessly a good idea got set aside to satisfy some cowardly punk's idea of "getting tough" with the world.

I want to thank Governor Baker

whose stewardship of the MBTA made me a mere forty five minutes late for dinner last night thanks to cascading delays on the Green & Red Line.
I use the term "Green Line" loosely, I never boarded a trolley, I was compelled by some mysterious clusterf**k to walk from Arlington State to the inert expanses of Park Street where the entire Red Line was in lock down.
Apparently, (I never knew this) if you pull the emergency brake on a train car (allegedly due to a sick passenger) THE ENTIRE LINE IMMEDIATELY SHUTS DOWN...Everything north south east west, stops!!
And so we sat, at least the AC was on I was grateful for small favors, although my Aunt Tillie was buried in a roomier coffin believe me.
Transportationwise I think Baker is down to the sad pathetic idea that the MBTA needs to held together only til after election night 2018 and then let the deluge hit, maybe he can spin it into a privatization scheme, but politically that might be too big a job for Charlie.
No, my new theory is, Charlie doesn't give a rat's ass....his seventy percent is secure, no one holds him accountable so "Vive' Le Roi"....

Just remember....

(And I admit today's screed is nothing paricularly original) that back in the 1980's the answer to "the crack epidemic" in urban areas was to up-arm the police and straitjacket the courts with punitive mandatory minimum sentencing etc etc.
Nancy Reagan's "War on Drugs" was pretty much a very real war on Drug Users, "Police, Gun & Harsh Conditions in Jail" was the answer to crack cocaine.
These days we have an opioid crisis and the cry goes up for treatment, mercy, better trained cops....more institutional patience & compassion in short.
Whats the difference?
White kids were overdosing on heroin in the suburbs, and that is ALWAYS a cohort that must be saved from itself by the gentlest means possible.
Those black kids gunned down in ghetto crossfires back in the 1990? C'est le' Guerre....C'est Le Vie.
So as I said, nothing original today, just remember the hypocritical underpinnings of the current "drug debate" when Charlie Baker hits your town this summer spewing the milk of human kindness for all those unfortunate dope addicts out there in Acton & Wellesley.