Having been talked out of a Third Presidential Run

no doubt by some timely threats from Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney is now "quietly" assisting the 2024 Summer Olympics Committee...per the Boston Globe of course. Mitt is there is ensure any promises regarding public improvements or desperately needed upgrades to the MBTA WILL NOT be carried out, in the Politics of Evasion at least, Romney is a master. Wealth goes with Hubris the way Peanut Butter goes with Jelly...none of these monied personages can conceive a better use for their money and talents save inflicting a costly global TV broadcast that lasts three weeks on the City of Boston. GOD FREAKIN' FORBID..than any of them, least of all Mitt Romney should apply their resources and abilities to some unheralded task like fixing the MBTA...Nope No Press Releases, Testimonials or Plaques in any of that mishaugas. Indeed has Mitt Romney ever once taken the #74 Bus from Belmont to Harvard Square and strap hung his way in town via the Red Line? Doubtful...so instead he applies himself to the Ultimate Public Private Boondoggle while the rest of us are stuck just outside Porter Square Station while the PA system squawks incoherently. The Rich ARE different from us, they have more money and therefore more time to devote themselves to stupid feckless projects...

Kudos to President Obama

for vetoing the Keystone Pipeline, Canadian Oil pumped thru the USA destined for Chinese Factories..and they won't even build the God Damned Farce out of good US Steel....and the upside to this mishaugas is what exactly?? I am loving this whole Jacksonian Vertical Stroke phenom in the White House, just loving it. DOn't listen to the usual A-holes if this thing was Iranian Oil they'd be calling for Air Strikes, the right money reached the right pockets, at least until Obama got out his Fountain Pen.

Columba Bush....

(Wife unto presumptive GOP Presidential Candidate & Former Governor of Florida Jeb Bush) sure loves Her Bling. She famously tried to smuggle $19,000.00 worth of freshly purchased jewelry past customs and subsequently secured a loan to purchase another $45,000.00 worth of expensive baubles later on. Oh and did I mention she didn't live with her husband for the balance of his Governorship? At this point I suppose I SHOULD get all "Maureen Dowd" on that situation (and I'll be interested to see if the NYT Columnista gets all "Maureen Dowd" about it in due course)...but lets face facts we are never gonna know the Real Deal Here, this is the Bush Family After All and their eccentricities, embarrassments and personal flaws never seem to impact the discourse. Can't say the same about their electoral rivals though, funny how that works.

Two Weeks into The "MBTA Crisis"

and the broad parameters are there for all to see: The Governor is gonna rant and rave and rhetorically target the Carmen's Union and the T's Alleged Deadheadery. The Legislature is either gonna do nothing or sit thoughtfully as a few liberals from safe seats ineffectually lobby for increasing the MBTA's budget to meet the current maintenance and upgrade shortfall. This is otherwise a CLASSIC Beacon Hill Win-Win Situation, Both side's base are well secured, so everyone can do nothing and yet claim victory. And this will go on until the Red Line Caves In and your Humble Narrator and numberless others are buried in the rubble, in which case, The Whole Stupid Fandango will Start Up All Over Again. To put it bluntly the "Come to Jesus Moment" has officially come & gone ne'er to return. And I post this, not to wallow in snarkage or blogger outrage but to note that I seriously need to find a job wherein I can walk to work...Anyone Hiring Arlington? Anyone at All??

How come there isn't a "Vice President's Day"?

Oh but even now I can hear a chorus of political scientists intoning "Because Every Day is Vice President's Day"... And truly it wouldn't be true if it wasn't a cliche', because every day is fraught with the potential for greatness when one occupies an office noted for it's mirthful superfluity, a nullity, a vacuity awesome, butt of every joke, the first in line at the overseas State Funeral, The Gavel in the US Senate, the Forgotten Office in the West Wing, The National Chamber of Commerce's Featured Speaker and the Great White Father of Counterfactuals. President Humphrey, President Agnew, President Calhoun and who can ever forget, President Curtis?? What Statesman...What Nonsense.

It is Officially Charlie Baker's Problem Now...

Bev Scott having abruptly resigned as MBTA General Manager, the ball is officially in the Governor's court as to how the MBTA's many many problems are gonna get fixed. If Baker was smart (and he is, but he is also fatally ill tempered) he'd a left Scott in place til at least next summer and if she can get a handle on things great and if not, well he tried and the blame is all hers. Its sort of interesting to me, that Baker basically blew his stack real early in this crisis...doesn't take long to get on that Last Nerve Eh? Now the damn fool has to come up with a GM that can deliver....and if for some insane reason Baker offers the job to his old running mate Richard Tisei, I advise the Former State Senator to decline on any shopworn pretext available. Since the Governor has already defined the problem as one that does not require additional expenditures exactly how much anyone can hope from the next GM is open to question. Literally the Admin's argument seems to be that the MBTA, thirty year old trains and all has somehow been OverFunded all these years! I truly feel bad for the Bain Capitol Group Veep Baker hoodwinks into taking the job all that bluster about "managerial streamlining" and "Restructuring" won't survive the first derailment on the Red Line or another prolonged snow storm. Oh well so much for a "Come to Jesus Moment" on the MBTA eh?

So Brian Williams is suspected from NBC News for Six Months?

Apparently people are exercised about that fable the news anchor about coming under RPG attack while serving as a war correspondent in Iraq circa 2002. It is sort of understandable though, given the fact that sheer mendacity and delusion were served up as the pretexts for said war (in sworn testimony before the US Congress no less by Members of the President's Cabinet) Williams must of thought one little tall tale amidst so many could sneak by... But....historically, journalists are held to a higher standards than politicians and in the context of the times we live in, maybe thats a good thing. So believe me, I'm not inclined to defend Brian Williams although in a Platonic Universe controlled by Justice then SOMEONE might have held Ex President Bush accountable for those phantom weapons of mass destruction that he swore up and down Saddam Hussein was stockpiling.

Anyone else just marking time until...

Maureen Dowd publishes her "The Brian Williams Controversy Has All The Elements of a Greek Tragedy" column?

John Miller....

has a mostly laudatory article in the current National Review rediscovering the novel "Advise and Consent" by Allen Drury. I have to be one of the few bleedin' hearts out there who in fact read all six novels in the series, each more shrill and despairing than the last. Ah but poor Allen was a declinist at the end of the day, he really believed that the USSR which could not get a cosmonaut on the moon had a arsenal composed of weather control machines and deathrays. I've always had a perverse respect for Drury, like Gore Vidal (another shrill natterin' nabob of negativism) he Wrote Big Novels About Big Topics set in Washington DC, it must have killed him that despite a Pulitzer Prize he was slowly pushed off the shelves by the semi literate likes of Tom Clancy. Which is Miller's key point (lookit me! I'm actually agreeing with a National Review correspondent...), that most novels set in the DC Milieu are thrillers very disposable and rooted in the moment, journalistic in a word. Drury however wanted to wrestle with the big issues, even if he thought the Big Issues included Soviet Laser Cannons concealed on their allegedly innocent fishing trawlers. Otherwise I'd like to commend The National Review for it's sacerdotal silence on the subject of Drury's alleged homosexuality you could almost call it "respectful" if it wasn't 2015 after all.

If the MBTA can't handle

"hosting a blizzaard" then how the hell are they supposed to handle hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics? Especially when Governor Baker apparently plans to cut the MBTA's budget by 400 million or so to close the current budge deficit. If we weren't awash in a Lunar Tide of snow storm porn on the TV, the optics behind that proposed budget cut, MIGHT look a little hinky to peeps.

The Red Line has more or less ground to a halt...

Something that was more or less predicted to me by a now departed State Senator some sixteen years ago. An aging fleet married to aging management practices that attend on an aging fleet and little money to fix the Big Problems...its a wonder any trains at all ran on Tuesday. The fact of the matter is, In A Crisis, terrorism, hurricane, snowstorm the MBTA almost always rises to the occasion no matter what it takes, the passengers are getting home. The next day...the short term focus dissipates and the original pathologies take hold...and then you may as well hire an oxcart you will make better time on your commute. Now...I'm not gonna bang the pots here and demand more taxes or fling blame at the leg or prior administrations...for once I'm gonna call for a "Come to Jesus Moment" at the State House that will in good faith revise the spending priorities for the MBTA, assign new monies, reform management practices and in general do what should have been done a decade ago. This isn't me wanting to make the MBTA a political football, IMHO it has been a political football since the outset of the Big Dig, and the results are plain at least to me as a daily Red Line Passenger. Public Transportation is one of those "core deliverables" (to lapse in Romneyspeak) that strongly condition the economic health of Boston, and an economically growing Boston is in general Good for the Commonwealth as a Whole. So lets dispense with the provincial mindset within and without the legislature and start making sensible decisions, delay just means bigger pain later on.

So Senator Rand Paul and Governor Chris Christie...

Both think childhood disease vaccinations are a sketchy iffy thing that wise parents might wish to defer or perhaps even forego. Paul is alleged to be a Medical Doctor and thus ought to be immune to this sort of rubbish while Christie until last weekend was supposedly be some sort of reality based GOP moderate...both clearly drinking the weirdo Koolaid with Lip Smacking Relish. Senator Paul even allegedly stated that childhood vaccinations were creating a native population of non carnivorous zombies...again the man is an M.D. I could (as you all know) could jump ugly on both of them for expressing a selective primitivism about a demonstrable medical-scientific fact, but instead I think I'll urge the US Media to ask Messr's Paul & Christie IF their damn kids are up to date with their vaccinations...even though I think I know the answer to be a resolute "Yes". And if the answer is "Yes" then they both need to shut up soonest, otherwise they really are too stupid for help.