Dispatches from Vilnius

Trump can add the longest government shutdown to his resume.  He achieved it over the weekend with Congress not in session.  It isn't like the Democrats didn't try to reopen government.  The House passed a temporary spending bill last week that even had a few Republican signatures, but Mitch "The Turtle" McConnell rebuffed the bill in the Senate.  While the base of the party continues to stand behind Trump, his support in Congress is crumbling.  Even Lindsey Graham now says Trump should reopen government .  So, where does this leave Trump? Given his obstinance we can be sure that Trump will pad his record by a few days just to make sure he leaves this as a lasting legacy.  He brought in border sheriffs wearing ten-gallon hats from to his cabinet meeting Friday to bolster his claim that America needs this wall, but Congress had gone home early, no longer amused by his grandstanding. He has pulled back his threats to declare a national emergency, given he

As our dear president digs an ever deeper hole for himself, he seems determined to drag the Republican Party down with him.  Trump already has Lindsey Antebellum in the hole, urging him to dig deeper, all the way to China if he has to, all because Republicans completely sold the conservative base on the necessity of a border wall that has no practical use whatsoever. This was made abundantly clear on the Orange King's trip down to Texas, where he was briefed by border officials on the number of ways drug dealers and illegal immigrants have of circumventing the wall -- everything from tunnels to drones.  Unless, there are some pretty deep foundations and some way to shoot down drones this wall will do little to stop drug and human trafficking through the border. Trump never saw the wall as anything more than a hook to lure supporters into his campaign tent.  I think he was genuinely surprised by how well it worked, and thought nothing more of it until the midterms rolled

In the great tradition of welfare queens, conservative pundits tried to make a Dancing Queen out of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez only to watch it blow up in their faces.  Some conservative blogger managed to dig up a video of young Alexandria dancing on a roof top with some of her Boston University friends, and thought the world would like to know what a flaky new representative we have in Congress.  Only problem was that no one saw any harm in it, and those who did take exception to the video came up with some of the most lurid responses, which only made themselves look like perverts.  Alexandria didn't even need to fire back but she did anyway with a video of herself dancing in front of her new office on Capitol Hill. A deep hidden fear has emerged in all this loathing of the freshman representative.  It isn't so much that she is an avowed "democratic socialist" (gasp) but that she is bright and funny and good looking.  It wasn't that long ago that the Repu