"Don't Inhale Liz"

The Boston Globe tried to gin up a "Warren for Veep" boomlet on the Front Page no less yesterday.
If you look at the prospect objectively, Warren is too much of a ideological soul mate to suit Bernie Sanders and she brings no geographical balance to the ticket. Her sole contribution there is a gender redress that presumably might quiet resentful PUMAs....and that wouldn't be a sure thing since Warren famously declined to Endorse Hillary Clinton last fall.
On the other hand "Clinton-Warren in 2016" is all kinds of radical estrogen overdrive with tincture of ideological outreach to Sanderistas and the self same lack of geographical balance that "Sanders-Warren" would have to overcome.
So..."Warren for Veep" is probably a bad idea for the democrats, but as a means to stir up controversy and sell newspapers, it's a slam dunk as far as the Globe is concerned.
So I earnestly encourage our Senior Senator to ignore all this journalistic buffoonery and steer clear of the National Ticket. We need you here in Massachusetts.

From the Looks of Today's Boston Globe

The Baker Admin has finally googled Joan Vennochi's landline, her column today is a defense of the Governor's curious silence on the Lege's pending Transgender Rights Bill.
Baker's silence may have it's strategic qualities but it also concurrently fuels the bill's adversaries to make sure it gets nicely buried, deals Charlies out of negotiations while preserving The Governor's funny-money revenue streams from the National GOP.
And boy howdy by all accounts the Governor Luvs his GOP Funny Money....he's been rai$ing all sorts of mad phat cashola to purge the State Committee among other tasks, it stands to reason he'd wanna decline cheesing off monied movement conservatives as long as possible.
And as I said before if this was corrupt doings with the DPW's retirement fund Charlie Baker would be howling like a Stuck Hairdresser...but then again so would the Op Ed Page of the Boston Globe don't kid yerself.

There is a scramble in the State GOP to colonize

the 42 person state RNC delegation with anti Trump representatives, despite the fact that The Donald won the Massachusetts Primary.
The theory is, that if Trump can be denied a victory on the first ballot the delegates are free to "Vote their Consciences" thereafter (and yes that is a thought to Chill The Blood). So the game is on to seed a potential second or third ballot with uninstructed or covertly instructed loyalists.
This is where Charlie Baker is lodged between a rock and hard place, he likely has the resources and money to completely colonize the Massachusetts RNC delegation with anyone he likes.....but the two front runners Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz are both All Kinds of Awful so all he'd be doing is evading the frying pan to embrace the fire.
Hence his current ambivalence to attend the RNC next summer....
My thinking is, "embrace the chaos" colonize the delegation completely with reps loyal to Baker on the second ballot and offer himself as a Dark Horse Candidate for President. At the very least it'll sharpen his bargaining position because right now everyone seems desperate to induce the sheer berserker joy of a "brokered convention".
Normally I'm skeptical of that trope (it pops up every four years it gets columnist thru the winter it seems), but it might go down this year....might.
And if that is the scenario then half measures won't do and Baker's only safety may lie in "Charlie in 2016"....
Otherwise he just ends up being a patsy for Ted Cruz or someone else Trump buffaloed on the Road to Armageddon.....

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said this weekend

that the Jewish State was never going to give the Golan Heights back....
I mean not for nothing who are they gonna give it back to, The Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce?
Because Syria seems to be hell bent to fall as fast as they can into an endless civil war on the Lebanese Model.
No one with whom anyone can negotiate, no one can deliver on promises therefore no one with whom Israel may talk...for now at least.
 Ah but Netanyahu has a Nixonian capacity for the Obvious, its one of the things that got him reelected after all.

Charlie Baker Boo'd

at a LGBT event...apparently a transgender rights bill is meandering thru the legislature and local activists want the Governor to sign it very badly.
Well lets remember though that the damn thing hasn't hit Baker's in-tray yet and I do think booing and catcalling might register one's disapproval but it can be awfully bad optics with definite potential for a backlash.
On the other hand, Baker's whole "no comment on pending legislation" sounds very equivocal, at best it seems to deal him out of any negotiating stance at all with the lege over said bill and at worst it undermines the Governor's rep for being a "friendly squish" to the LGBT community.
So I can see why the activists were worked up, if this was the MBTA or any erring public sector union I can promise you the Governor would be loud and out front on all of it.

Barbara Anderson RIP...

The famous anti-tax activist has gone to that Last Press Conference In The Sky, Barbara Anderson is dead.
Say what you like about her, but she was in her Imperial High Noon, The Activist's Activist.  In other words infuriating insolent inflammatory & implacable....with a fixation on low taxes that bordered on the pathological.
But lets face fact, zeal works. Its just that no one wants to do business with a zealot, unless you are a hungry journalist that is....
Barbara's secret was that in the end "She Was All About The Money", your tax money that is, for whatever reason it was appropriated her automatic response was said cash was better off in your pocket.
Thats a tremendous populist appeal but a sketchy theory of governance, of course like almost all activists Barbara didn't have to worry about governance her main venue was in the end, all about "Belief" and her touching faith in the universal efficacy of Proposition 2 1/2 made William Jennings Bryan's belief in Free Silver look like decadent apostasy.
Off the subject of taxation I'm told she was a very intelligent and broadminded person, in death she remains the "gold standard" quite literally for bottom up activism, anyone seeking real change in this state had best start examining Ms. Anderson's techniques....she was "good at her trade" to be sure.

The existential implosion of the GOP

commenced waa-ay back in 1998 when the usual wingnut activists actually told themselves that they could impeach both Bill Clinton and Al Gore & overturn two election results in a row. Seriously the plan was to make an alleged child molester, the House Speaker Denny Hastert President!
Now Hastert is facing a Judge with his vileness exposed....thank ghod we dodged that bullet eh?
But that self destructive fully lived on the GOP thru the Florida Recount, "Mission Accomplished", the Unitary theory of Governance, Sarah Palin and now Donald Trump.
Its the same thing though, a berserker desire to lay hands on one's opponent at the expense of the Nation's wellbeing, its quite frankly anger-addiction....and it is ruining our differently winged opponents.