BTW...

according to a new study we could well be underestimating the number of opioid addicts out there. Meanwhile Charlie Baker still has TV commercials out there running on a quarter hourly basis touting progress in the "opioid crisis".  Oh yet again its late October in a gubernatorial race in Massachusetts and the incumbent drifts thru the heavens like a untethered blimp, murmuring the occasional sleepy cliche' and pretending all is well.
Oh and National Grid/Columbia Gas have already punted the deadline to get the heat back on in Andover/Lawrence.  That one made the Metro Section of the Globe today...I only remark on this in passing because outside my window a nice cold wet Nor'easter is raging on.  But the Baker/Polito campaign blimp wallows along, untroubled.
And lets not forget that collection of democratic mayors who have eagerly endorsed Lumpy's reelection bid right there on camera for all to see...blimp-tenders every one of them.  I like Rivera up in Lawrence but I won't weep any salt tears if someone primaries him and all of his fellow-travelers at the next election...assuming we still have elections.

Lumpy is a die hard republican in the sense that he'll never ever regret his complacent performance in office, the rest of us though, the ones that can afford to live in the Commonwealth, will rue the day believe me.

No Pipe Bomb Sent to Me as Yet...

which is a poor result for some fifteen years of "sarcastic rant driven chatter" (per Boston Magazine)...

But as usual, I digress, I don't think this is any longer about "the decline of civility", its officially now about the Survival of Constitutional Governance, I'll take a great deal of incivility if I can guarantee the survival of the latter.
That being the case we have to consider the possibility of escalation, from below or above if
mid term election results are not favorable to our opponents. We must also be prepared for escalation even if said results are in their favor.
I am not saying the country is falling apart, or civil war looms, I am saying right now, the other guys are a lot further down the road to division and ruin than we are, shouting at Ted Cruz in a restaurant is hardly Maquis Tactics in the face of pipe bombs.

"A house divided against itself, cannot stand...I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. "

Abraham Lincoln, 1858

If Martin O'Malley really wants to run for President in 2020

assuming we still have elections or a country by then, He could do no worse than by promising to Stand By The U.S. Constitution and also End the Malign Practice of Phishing Phone Calls aka "Voice Phishing" or "Vishing".  No Joke Mah Frenz, My Ninety Five Year Old Mother still gets at least two of these vicious shakedown calls a day from ViOP Boiler Rooms the world over.  Thank Ghod almighty she has all her marbles and knows enough to hang up...but the calls are intrusive, abusive and seemingly aimed to defraud the Elderly of the USA en masse.
Lets Protect Our Elections from Foreign Interference certainly, but lets put a stop to "Vishing" as well...the two notions seem to dovetail together in my mind.
Dropping the Qualification Age for Medicare is ... Great don't get me wrong, but ending for good these maddeningly phone calls from Far Off Lands will yield a tremendous electoral windfall for the Democrats.

Elizabeth, Martin, Joe, Seth....ya listening?

Unless I Miss My Guess...

Citizen Warren is running for President in 2020.  I can tell because her current bumper sticker just reads "Senator Elizabeth Warren" and declines pointedly to cite the aspirational office in question.
Unless of course someone can talk her out of it or else Mass General Hospital comes up with a vaccination against "Potomac Fever".
I think the Senior Senator faces long odds, to put it succinctly, she has to bust thru not one, but two Glass Ceilings, the one that keeps females out of the Oval Office and the one that keeps anyone from Massachusetts from getting elected President.
On the other hand she may well be telling herself that busting thru glass ceilings is her "brand" whats two more to her...
Those ceilings are awful thick Senator, think about it, you could easily end up being blamed for Trump's second term....

Sunday Night Tirade...

"I knew your Daddy, Camille Gravel, and he was a fine man. But you are trying to make yourself a big man, and you're nothing but a little pissant."

Earl K. Long, 1960.

BTW here is a nice collection of Lumpy's worst moments in Last Week's Debate...that dead-fish-stare of his...yikes.  Baker is a lot of things, but he is not a leader as I understand the term, he certainly isn't a leader to rise to a crisis in any way.  The State Police have become a chiseling laughing stock and all Baker and his handpicked Commander seem to do is read about it in the Boston Globe.

Just imagine Lumpy as The Prime Minister of England during the Battle of Britain..."These bombs are really unfortunate, but we have allocated eight billion dollars to cart away the rubble..."

Lumpy Pretty Much Made a Blathering Fool of Himself in Last Night's Debate...

He could not answer a straight question from Jay Gonzalez as to whether or not he would be voting for Geoffrey Diehl for the US Senate this Fall. Baker hemmed and hawed and looked like a dope on live TV...I'll bet he gets that "deer in the headlights" look a lot off camera in private.
In fact, Lumpy only held out until the post forum press conference before caving in completely  by promising to vote for Diehl the very gruesome antithesis of Baker's alleged republican moderation. Before the awesome irresistible might of Citizen Diehl and the TrumpHordes Lumpy lasted about as long as a wet paper bag.
The reason for this pathetic indecision & craven surrender is simple, no one ever asked Baker if his alleged republican moderation was relevant in the age of Trump or if it could moderate any type of policy under discussion? Indeed how could it be when he plans to vote for an ideological thug like Geoffrey Diehl? You'd think he'd have some sort of answer prepared, but no, Lumpy has had it took easy for too long, he was flatly unprepared.

Sick, Demented, Typical...

Supposedly....

This trashy sycophantic masterpiece is hanging in Donald Trump's Oval Office, if you look closely though,  Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge and Warren G. Harding are all in the background looking faintly disgusted.  Earning the disdain of Warren G. Harding is no small achievement, that man was a memorably cheap slob in extremis.  Trump is impossibly slender in this painting...smirking hatefully as usual, no wonder he loves it.