Apparently...

Stop-n-Shop's unionized workforce is negotiating well into the 11th hour for a new contract with management. Monday night I saw a button on the apron of a pert colleen of a cashier at Stop-n-Shop that read "I don't want to Strike, But I Will If I Have To..."

I assured her I'd honor any picket line the union cared to put up real, digital or metaphoric....the Overclass sat back and turned this country into a "Service Economy" dreaming of an open shop all over the Factory Floors of Asia. So if we are going to make THAT economy more equitable, then things like service union strikes must be honored and supported, believe me if push comes to shove I'll hit Roche Brothers if I have to....but I'm with the cashiers and baggers on this one.

MBTA Fares are going up in July....

And late night service has officially gone the way of the Mastodon. So taken together, the Governor's answer to the MBTA Service Crisis is less performance for a higher price, exactly as I predicted last year.
Thanks Charlie a fee increase is a tax increase that a "fiscally conservative" GOP Governor of Massachusetts CAN ALWAYS get away with, look at Mitt Romney he raised every fee in the book sans a ripple. The Boston Globe barely noticed....
What next will the Governor bid on some third hand oxen to pull the Red Line Cars?

Nancy Reagan R.I.P.

When its time to write the late First Lady's biography she may just enter the history books as the most  creative thinker among Ronald Reagan's advisors. Granted, that ain't saying much, Messrs Deaver, Regan and Wineberger were famously sunny smiling California conservatives and as rigid as a steel girder with respect to ideology & governance.
It would never have occurred to any of them to recast Ronald Reagan in his second term as an Apostle of Peace and Reconciliation with the then USSR, that, was very much Nancy Reagan's idea.
And what the hell, it worked.
For a while there at life's outset Nancy Davis could have been a first wave feminist, she was a Smith Graduate and a working self reliant actress in Hollywood before she met "Ronnie" and became his second wife and very public spousal idolator.  By all accounts She was Betty Crocker in Public and very much Queen Elizabeth in Private....very domineering in other words. Rumor has it she reeled him in with a strategic and very old fashioned pregancy, ah but Nancy was always a master of very shopworn but effective tropes. Reagan would have always ended up a conservative but he might not have grabbed off the US Presidency without Nancy.
He certainly would never have held onto it without her, the man was clearly sliding into his dotage as early as October 1984 and who knows Nancy likely saw the terrible symptoms a lot earlier than the rest of us. She was virtually co-president in his second whatever he got done at that point it was thanks to her, soothsayers and astrologers and all. Ah but actors are a superstitious lot and Beverly Hills is given over to odd fits of cultism, in retrospect the urge to the supernatural on the part of Ron & Nancy can be at least understood.
And sad to say, the old woman goes to her grave as one of the few republicans capable of working with President Obama in a honest bipartisan basis When he freed up stem cell research Mrs Reagan came to the White House and got a Royal Reception, ah but the Obama's got what we used to call "Good Breeding".
The great irony I think of Nancy Reagan's life is that Ronnie probably married her because as a B-Movie actress (mostly) she'd never be competition for his own fitful career in the 1950's...and of course the woman ends up all but running the Free World.
:)
RIP Mrs Reagan....

A couple of pundit memes to remember as we go forward

"The Brokered Convention Column" thats gonna get a lot of play in the coming weeks at least until someone locks up the GOP nomination, which is still Trump so far as I can see. Columnists love this shit, they all wanna write big bestsellers about "Inside the 2016 GOP Convention: When the Party of Lincoln Autodestructed". Granted the GOP hasn't booked a genuinely "brokered convention" since 1952 but a misguided lust for drama informs the punditariat and so the meme marches on.

"The Third Party Bid that Throws the US Election into the US House", Columnists really get morbidly excited about this one, and while third parties have conditioned some electoral outcomes the election itself hasn't been decided in the US House for one hundred and forty years. Ah but what about 2000? Well that one should have gone to the US House until Scalia's Court got the Boot In....you can otherwise take this as a one chance in one hundred and forty, could be a factor but likely any notional third party will alter turn out not the ultimate electoral venue.

If the answer to Donald Trump's candidacy

is "Mitt Romney and a New SuperPAC" then I think it's time for the RNC to board up shop and decamp for the caves.
Romney has no credibility nationally and if mere money was gonna stop Donald Trump that 17 million that Jeb Bush reputedly spent in NH would have knocked the NY Developer back into the cheap acts by now.
No...all of this is predicated on flanking Trump on the right, but He has already a commanding and impregnable position there with a lifeline to the independents. Gaming this means cutting the field down, getting serious and building a coalition, that requires sacrifice and a ground game, right now none of that is in play so its advantage Trump no matter what the Former Viceroy has to say.

Watching Trump's Victory Speech

Chris Christie is staring at Donald Trump with the canine devotion Galleazzo Ciano once reserved for Benito Mussolini, good call there Governor Baker.
Certainly as The Donald ranted on in his signature style Christie developed a sad thousand yard stare one associates with an abused dog, a metaphoric studded leather collar and leash around his fat arrogant neck.
I'll Christie was praying to be indicted even if only to get him out of Trump's entourage....
Watching this rabble on a Super Tuesday Night is an ugly unpleasant chore in extremis, but Christie's humiliation was precious and lovely to see indeed.
My main takeaway is that that unemployment is down, but anxiety is up, democrats are enjoined to pay heed to that.  We cannot match or even countenance xenophobia as a party, but we should recognize that a good chunk of fear and loathing comes from decades of the feckless outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries. Granted "The Outsourced" are turning their wrath on the wrong parties in this fight, but thats par for the course in US Politics. We need to recognize the legitimacy of some of these emotions....cuz they come from very real fears.

I am expecting a Trump Romp tonight

Although with usual caveat that "anything can happen" (Trump has pretty much performed close to his polling numbers down the the line at least so far), a lot I think depends on whether or not Ted Cruz can "hold" Texas. If he can, then that sends a signal to Kasich and Rubio that they too can at least hope to firewall themselves as Favorite Son Candidates which is a pretty big comedown but it least it isn't a route.
Exactly how any of that stops Trump is hard to say, it just keeps the pot stirred for a few more weeks at best. Prevent Trump from being nominated at this point may come down to some serious "Florida Recount Style" political skullduggery at the convention and I suspect the maachers may not have the stomach for something that crude and blatant.