Sally Yates in 2020!

Can someone find the ex acting AG a nice safe seat in the US Congress?? She only needs to warm it for one term (hey good enough for Abe Lincoln yo) before she starts a-tramping the snows of NH...
I liked this Dame She Has Moxie! She questioned the constitutionality of Trump's freaky immigrant ban and got fired hours later, in these perilous thats a Badge of Honor and. Key Qualification for High Office!
Remember you heard it here firstest!!

With respect to everything that happened this weekend

And ALOT happened this weekend, try to fix in your heads that no matter how loud and truculent, "Crazy Never Lasts". It can sustain itself to toxic and genocidal degrees but it cannot survive over the intermediate term.'
In other words it cannot be "The New Normal" because sooner or later rationality comes in and lays out all comers.  We are in some ways compromised by popular culture which inculcates us with the notion that madness is a sort of unbeatable super power, but in fact pathology is a disability, sooner or later that fact will win out.
It may be a painful victory or a painless one, but it will happen.

Apparently

Scientists at Harvard have managed to create a metallic version of hydrogen (lightest and most common of the elements) which if viable at ambient temps holds out the promise of a real revolution in semiconductor technology.
I know I make terrible fun of Harvard (and of BU & BC by way of full disclosure) but this is freakin' amazing news across the board and proof positive that scientific progress is our only way forward in respect of solving any one of a number of current problems.
So given all the benign applications I am just sitting here waiting for the Trump Regime to figure out some way to Put A Stop On All This Nonsense....

Current estimates are

That Trump's Wall of Shame that is supposed to secure the southern border of the USA from Martians, Jesuits and SqueeGeeMen...will cost the US TaxPayer 25 billion dollars. Shit it cost less to put Neil & Buzz on the Goddamn Moon!

Ah but this is money and sometimes you can't put a dollar cost on sheer malevolent delusion.

***
Meanwhile I'm guessing the ACA will be gone by July 4th of this year, irregardless of the maundering qualms of the John McCains in the US Senate.  So given that, what is next?
What Is To Be Done"
Me?
If ACA goes down then screw it I'm coming out banging the pots for a British Style Single Payer Healthcare System its the only fair and sustainable solution. I mean we tried letting the free market run healthcare and it was ab abject 200 year long failure, we tried the public-private option...I say we Go For the Gold.
I think a temp with 100k in school debt and a degree in accounting deserves at least a healthcare system as good as what keeps Mitch McConnell's Black Little Heart Beating.

And while we are on the subject of the loss of buying power among the US Working CLass lets admit if all those "tombstone" factories are gonna reopen at Trump's fiat they'll assuredly be monuments to automation, non unionized and "administered" by a staff of technicians.  The living way wrought out of an assembly line is as gone as the Spectre of Big Labor or Military Dirigibles. One thing we can do is scrap the entire welfare and unemployment system and replace it with a simple minimum basic

Someone needs to send a Doctor up to the Corner Office

Of the State House, based on last night's State of the State Speech, Charlie Baker has a bad case of Aphasia.

He cannot for the life of him pronounce the Proper Noun "Trump" to say nothing of the phrases "Charter Schools" or "Legalized Marijuana", all words & phrases that symbolize significant setbacks for "Governor Fifty Nine Percent".

So maybe we should send a good psychiatrist...

That speech was otherwise hilarious in that Baker tried suddenly to pose as the best pal ever of public schools having spent millions last Fall in phunny money to trying sell off the classrooms of the state to McDonalds.

For that fact, is Charlie ever gonna follow up on his promise to enact campaign finance reform in this state? Likely not since it would give the Lege an opening (if they were so inclined and that be an iffy thing) to close off the wellsprings of that out of state phunny money...so in sum More Aphasia from the Governor.

BTW I read the speech I didn't see it broadcast It must've been gangbusters live because as text its the dreariest collection of bullet points punctuated by robotic shout outs to various special guests in the aud. An AI audio program could've read it.....

Let the record show that when the Women's March

Hit Boston Common Saturday, Our Illustrious Governor metaphorically hid under his desk by decamping to the Mass Municipal Association's Comfab in South Boston an obligation whose importance rivals cutting a ribbon at the Boat Show.

So far as I can tell (feel free to contradict) His Excellency declined to send any official representation to said March at all.  

The problem here is one of leadership, its no longer adequate for a Governor of Massachusetts to demonstrate he or she can "ride herd" on the Legislature, its a question of Who is Gonna Stand Up to Donald Trump?

It sure as shit isn't Charlie Baker who has engaged three shifts of contractors to rebuild the bridges he loudly burned to Team Trump back in July.

Craven....Utterly Craven.

Oh and there is poll out there indicating that Baker's popularity is still higher than Elizabeth Warren's but there is a streak of false consciousness there in that Baker's overall score has dropped to fifty nine percent from a stratsospheric score of seventy percent. And trust me, he is not taking a header into the 2018 Senatorial Race he'd have to start over fundraising with no obvious successor to slot into the Governor's contest...besides those desks in the US Senate are TINY a big feckless galoot like Charlie Baker would never fit under one of them.

Meanwhile in Moscow

Donal Trump's real constituents are in the process of decriminalizing wife beating & child abuse. Apparently Putin wants to make it legal okey dokey to beat one's wife with fists and or inflict a prolonged spanking on a helpless child.
As Orwell has pointed out authoritarians are always truly hypocritical when it comes to moral issues, they are almost always perverts or some type or another with a pronounced preference for reinforcing ugly patriarchical mores.
Pretty shameless I know but keep in mind, you can't "shame the shameless" you have to beat them in open political combat. They have a kind of "moral autism" that prevents them from feeling any guilt about their own unpleasant opinions and actions....they cannot be taught they must be overcome.
Such is the case in Moscow and on the Potomac....