Dispatches from Vilnius

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the polls, along come John Kasich and John Hickenlooper to tell us the two-party system is fucked .  If I didn't know better, I would say we have another case of false equivalence being established before the upcoming midterms.  Kasich along with other ranking Republicans know they are in deep trouble unless they can find some way to drag the Democratic Party down with them, so John enlists a Democratic governor to reinforce his message. I have no idea why Hickenlooper is playing along with Kasich, unless they really do plan to make a run at the White House together in 2020 as Independents, similar to Gary Johnson and Bill Weld in 2016, although they were both disgruntled former Republican governors.  It isn't in the Colorado governor's interests otherwise, as right now the Democratic Party is looking pretty good. It is the Republican Party that is reeling at the moment, having suffered an inordinate number of speci...

Or the not-so-"stable genius" Things got off to a rough start when a story was recirculated that put Donald's English language skills at a fourth-grade level, and got worse when a panel of political scientists ranked him the worst president of all time with a score of 12.34 after his first year in office.  CNN and other news outlets were quick to toss these findings into question but there is little to support Orrin Hatch's argument that he is the best president ever. One only has to listen to his jumbled speeches to hear that Trump has a very poor grasp of English, but Harry Truman barely managed a sixth-grade level on the Flesch-Kincaid chart  and yet the same political science poll ranked him in the Presidential Top 10.  Why is Trump such a bad president in so many scholars' minds? It's not just that his intellectual level is so low, but his emotional level is that of a bully who has repeated the fourth grade for the fourth time.  This is a man...

Those words are hollow following the seventh school shooting of 2018, and by far the deadliest .  But, rather than have a debate on gun control, conservative pundits are busy pointing out a flawed story by an advocacy group called Everytown for Gun Safety that cited 18 school shootings so far this year.  Like it really matters whether there were 7 or 18.  One is too many. We have received the response we expected from the NRA-sponsored Republican Party .  The gun  rights advocacy group spent $30 million alone on Donald Trump in 2016 and has bankrolled just about every Republican in Congress.  They're the ones who got Republicans to let the federal assault weapons ban expire in 2004 after retaking Congress once again.  Since then the proliferation of assault weapons has skyrocketed with the AR-15 by far the most popular weapon on the market.  There are over 5 million in circulation and no doubt there will be another stampede at Walmart and ...

In this age of social media it seems no action goes unnoticed.  Take for instance Shaun White dragging the American flag on the ground after winning the gold medal in the halfpipe.  Social media immediately slammed Shaun for this faux pas .  It didn't matter that he apologized afterward, the American flag brigade was relentless in its online shaming, even going so far as to call him a "traitor." Meanwhile Chloe Kim found how a meaningless tweet can become part of a new lexicon after she won the women's halfpipe in stunning fashion.  Social media went gaga for her "hangry" remark and soon everyone was running with it, including the Today show, which had churros especially made for her visit to the set at PyeongChang.  Hoda and Savannah must have mentioned "hangry" a dozen times during the short span of the interview .  Maybe Chloe will get a churro named after her like Shaun White had his nickname, " The Flying Tomato ," put on a h...

Singing the song of One Korea It didn't take long for the American media to push back on Sister Kim.  Seems a lot of folks are very unhappy with the reception Kim Yo Jong got in PyeongChang, and are now reminding us of the brutality of the North Korean regime and how we shouldn't be appeasing its tyrannic leader.  All well in good except for the inconvenient fact we support tyrants all over the world and don't seem to bat an eyelash at their atrocious human rights records, so why should we get so angry with Rocket Man? I think this is largely due to the fact Kim Jong Un outsmarted the United States, which sadly isn't very hard to do in the Age of Trump.  Kim seems to be much more aware of the wave of feminism sweeping the planet and very cleverly sent his sister to represent him in South Korea.  The cheerleaders were a nice touch as well.  According to the agreement reached between the IOC, South Korea and the United States, Trump was expected to...

Or Big Trouble in Brotopia You can almost hear Tammy Wynette singing Stand By Your Man as Kellyanne Conway tries to defend Rob Porter from his ex-wives, both of whom have accused him of sexual abuse.  Jennie Willougby, one of those ex-wives, wrote this essay for Time.  Interesting that Hope Hicks, who is purportedly dating Porter, has been mum on the subject.  Just the same, Conway is once again trying to provide cover for a White House that resembles Trump's infamous "locker room." I'm more inclined to believe Jennie than I am Kellyanne.  After all, she lived with the man and probably has a much better idea who he is than does Conway.  For Trump's mouthpiece this is all part of a smear campaign against the president, taking down those around him.  For his part, Trump also defended Porter, although he apparently wasn't too happy Hope hadn't given him a head's up on the breaking story, as one of Rob's ex-girlfriends had alerted her to th...

It's clear that Kim Yo-Jong has won the diplomatic battle in PyeongChang, making Mike Pence look like a relic of the Cold War, as he refused to even cast a gaze at her during the Opening Ceremony as she sat right behind him.  It's quite a coming out party for the sister of Kim Jong-Un, as she appears to have charmed everyone with her appearance at the Olympic Games, if not our dour Vice-President. Trump really missed an opportunity not sending Ivanka to the Games.  She would have more nimbly walked the political tightrope than the stick-in-the-mud representing his government at the Games.  Not only was Pence outclassed by Kim's sister, but he also tried to shrug off the snub he got from gay Olympian Adam Rippon by saying he never extended an invitation  to meet the figure skater despite evidence to the contrary.  Ivanka would have found a way to have smoothed things over, not Mike, who remained surly to the end and is now flying back to Washington,...

You'd think a guy who has five Super Bowl rings wouldn't be so hard on himself after a loss, but Tom Brady was downright morose after the Eagles pulled off their first Super Bowl victory.  I suppose he wanted to cap off a great season in which he won MVP for the third time, but it was not to be.  The "journeyman" Nick Foles beat him at his own game, driving his Eagles the length of the field for the winning touchdown late in the fourth quarter. The shame of it is that for all his accomplishments Tom Brady doesn't get the respect he thinks he deserves.  Three years ago he had to suffer through the ignominy of " Deflategate ."  Not even a victory over Seattle in Super Bowl XLIX was able to wipe away the criticism over his under-inflated footballs.  He appealed the charges against him, only to serve a four-game suspension at the start of the 2016 season. Then came the "MAGA" cap incident , where Brady was caught with a Trump campaign hat...

Or my kingdom for a wall After a year of vacillation with several Republican senators openly criticizing the president, and even pondering his removal, Congressional Republicans now appear to have made their bed with him.  They clapped like a bunch of sycophants at each and everything he said in his State of the Union address.  Even when he called on Congress to give him more authority over federal departments, they all clapped, oblivious to the fact that his main aim is to "cleanse" the FBI .  To hear Paul Ryan, such an idea is not out of the question.  Congress already gave the president the authority to "cleanse" the VA, which he highlighted in his speech. The White House and its conservative mouthpieces are convinced there is a deep state in the federal government aimed at bringing him down.  This is why he wants to "100% release" the Nunes memo , an artlessly contrived memo designed to discredit the FBI and in turn the current investigation i...