Dispatches from Vilnius

Tom Brady is regarded as the GOAT among quarterbacks by many sportswriters, but if this football season has shown us anything it is that Brady is purely a product of the Belichick system put in place 20 years ago that no other team has been able to replicate.  It is a system that has produced 9 Super Bowl appearances and 6 wins.  Brady often gets the credit, being the quarterback, but Belichick probably could have achieved this incredible milestone with any decent quarterback.  After all, who remembers Phil Simms ?  He guided the New York Giants to a pair of Super Bowl wins under Bill Parcells' system, which Bill Belichick was an integral part of. Belichick came to New England with Bill Parcells.  It was Parcells who turned the Patriots around, leading them to only their second Super Bowl appearance in 1997, where they lost to a resurgent Green Bay Packers led by Brett Favre.  Oddly enough, Parcells quit after that year to coach the New York Jets, t...

Mitch was all ready to get the Senate trial done before the holidays, but in classic Lucy fashion Nancy Pelosi pulled the football out from under him when she chose to delay sending the impeachment articles to the Senate.  McConnell didn't see this coming as it was something he thought only he would do. Nancy can hold off sending the articles of impeachment indefinitely, leaving Trump's fate in limbo for weeks or even months.  Lindsey Graham proclaimed that the president finds this grossly unfair . This despite Trump shutting down government for nearly a month at the start of the year, holding federal workers' pay checks in limbo. Trump's been crying from the beginning, so upset that Nancy would have the audacity to launch an impeachment inquiry despite his effort to cop a plea deal when news first broke of his perfect call.  Since then Republican lawmakers have been circling the wagons, hoping to protect their dear president.  Mitch has vowed to work ...

I can understand Phillip Wenz's concern about diluting the IBRBS' brand.  It already has to go by its abbreviation after admitting Mrs. Clauses in 2016.  Now, there is pressure to drop the RB all together and allow anyone who wants to be a Santa into its international brotherhood .  It takes years to cultivate a real beard as stout as Santa.  This is a full-time vocation, not something you can just put a yak-hair beard on at Christmastime and call yourself Santa.  Yet, there is a lot of pressure for IBRBS to expand to meet the growing ethnic interest in jolly old St. Nick. Apparently, the international brotherhood has formed a pretty strong union and can command higher engagement fees, thus resulting in more interest in its organization.  Mrs. Deanna Golden has been pushing the organization to expand its base ever since it admitted her as a Mrs. Claus.  She books a lot of their engagements, and doesn't see why beardless Santas can't join.  ...

Nancy Pelosi tried to make it a somber occasion by wearing black and urging her Democratic colleagues to not gloat over the impeachment vote, but there was no hiding the glee many felt in seeing His Trumpness reduced to the lowest point in his presidency.  He became only the third president in history to be formally impeached by the House of Representatives. The historic House vote put a damper on the Christmas theme Trump set for his Michigan rally , and he let Democrats know about, living and dead. Trump's wild rallies have become legend.  In this one a protester had to be escorted away, but not without Trump publicly shaming her on the way out.  He thought security was being too politically correct.  For whatever reason he chose to assail John Dingell, who died this past year after serving six decades in Congress.  Of course, he saved his harshest criticism for Ms. Pelosi, urging Americans to voter her "the hell out of office." It all played out as ...

I feel sorry for British voters that their two major parties are represented by the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit.  At least Scots had the SNP as an alternative, which they overwhelming voted into the British Parliament, setting up what very well could be another secession referendum next year. Boris got what he wanted, a yes vote from the English and Welsh people that Lower Britain should withdraw from the European Union.  The low countries voted Tories in by a yuge percentage.  The largest ever seen since the Thatcher years.  This finally forced Jeremy to step down from his horrible leadership of the Labor Party, which saw his party blow a golden opportunity to regain control of the Parliament. Look who's gloating!   Given how well the Brexit vote worked for him back in 2016, little wonder Trump (a.k.a Mr. Brexit) sees the snap general election as a referendum on his own administration.  He is not alone in this opinion.  Even Mayor Bloom ...

Trump is desperate to roll back the last of the Obama energy efficiency regulations.  He offered a rambling discourse on low-flow toilets and showers, claiming that these regulations often led to no water at all and that some poor persons had to flush their toilets 10-15 times just to get their turds down the trapway.  What's a conscientious conservative to do? This is a continuation of his administration's decision in September to rollback the regulations on energy efficient light bulbs .  Trump claimed "what's saved is not worth it, for the little they save."  Actually, quite a bit is saved.  One LED light bulb alone can save you more than $160 over a conventional incandescent light bulb during a span of 23 years.  Multiply that by the number of light bulbs in your house!   It's not like he or any member of his administration has quantified these decisions.  They are rolling back these regulations purely out of spite, akin to Reagan r...

It's pretty clever to reframe Hoffa's ties to the mob through Frank Sheeran.  Charles Brandt coaxed the "confession" out of The Irishman shortly before his death in 2003, and laid out corroborating evidence in his book, I Heard You Paint Houses , published the following year.  The book has been widely discarded as pulp fiction , and in turn Scorsese has taken some heat for giving weight to Sheeran's account in his epic movie, but then I saw the Netflix original as a geriatric version of Goodfellas. Scorsese relishes in not just one but several conspiracy theories from the 60s and 70s.  According to the Irishman, it was the mafia in Chicago that carried Illinois for Kennedy in 1960; the Bay of Pigs Invasion was a mafia-coordinated effort that didn't get the aerial support promised by Papa Kennedy; and the mob had Jack Kennedy rubbed out when the president no longer answered to their interests, namely getting rid of Castro and letting them have free acces...

but we still might see you in November There was a brief moment in this campaign when it seemed Kamala was set to take the Democratic nomination by storm.  She shot down Joe Biden at the second debate with a fiery retort on busing that went viral.  Unfortunately, that magic moment was lost when she was hit by a stealth attack from Tulsi Gabbard at the next debate that she was unable to rebound from. Kamala held so much potential but failed to reach a Democratic electorate that was torn between multiple candidates.  The voters Kamala probably most appealed to were already supporting Joe Biden.  The more liberal voters were split among Bernie and Liz.  The rest were toying with a multiple number of candidates, casting 2 per cent here, 3 per cent there and 1 per cent anywhere.  With no defining message, Kamala soon found herself relegated to the also-rans. Still, she should have hung out until the first wave of caucuses and primaries.  She h...