Dispatches from Vilnius

It seems like the Heritage Foundation is taking its pointers from the Kremlin as they look to consolidate power in the executive branch.  Our Constitution is a little older than that of Russia, but no reason that the ultra-conservative advisors in Trump's administration can't find a way to undercut it.  One means is impoundment, whereby the White House exercises what amounts to a line-item veto on Congressional appropriations by impounding allocated funds.  The last president who tried to use this authority ran into a brick wall , but with a compliant Republican Congress and Supreme Court who knows this time around? I still can't wrap my head around how Trump won the election after three successive electoral defeats from 2018 to 2022.  He lost the House in 2018, then the Senate and the White House in 2020, and his party was barely able to retake the House in 2022 after what many thought would be a "red wave" that would see the Republicans regaining control of both...

We were warned back in 2016.  Has it finally come to pass.   A Princeton computer science professor showed how easy it was to hack a voting machine and urged Congress to secure voting.  Less than two months later, Trump had won a surprise victory and there were deep concerns of Russian hacking.  This led then Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch an investigation, much to President Trump's chagrin.  In Sessions' mind he was trying to assuage all the anxiety that surrounded an election in which Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million.  The rest as they say is history.  Or is it? What's interesting to me is that Trump had virtually no coattails, similar to 2016.  Republicans would have won these contested races with or without him, as Democratic senators were doomed in West Virginia and Montana and had only an outside chance in Ohio.  If there was any senator who benefited from Trump's "surprise" victory it is Dave McCormick.  He...

Like many, I didn't see that coming.  I'm sure someone will make a sculpture of this image in the months to come.   The CNN election news crew seemed disappointed when Kamala ran out of opportunities to make up the difference in Pennsylvania.  John King kept showing all the large blue dots that indicated areas that still hadn't been fully counted, but one by one the dots shriveled up and she hardly made a dent in Trump's lead.  All that was left was for Van Jones to deliver his eulogy in the early morning hours, just like he did in 2016. I guess greed and anger trump hope and joy. That's the message that has been heard around the world.  One Guardian columnist offered a snarky if accurate take on Trump 2.0 .  Yep, those who think they will gain favor in his administration are forgetting what happened to the last one. Objectively, we know what will occur given Trump's "dysfunctional relationship with power." Many thought we had learned our lesson from t...

If this Iowa poll holds true, the MAGA cult is in for a long night.  It could signal a tectonic shift in the electorate that sees many states falling Kamala's way on election evening, not just the battleground states.  It's easy to see why this could happen, as Trump has taken to climbing into garbage trucks and simulating blow jobs on microphones in the waning days of the campaign.  Oh, and threatening firing squads for political opponents.  There are no guardrails left, especially when he shows up in a safety vest to political rallies. This SNL segment sums up the campaign in a nutshell, replete with a cameo by Kamala Harris staring back at her doppelganger in the mirror.  This is her moment and Donald Dump literally paved the way for her by becoming so detached from reality that he now seems to be living inside a hall of mirrors . It's not just Iowa.  Many states are turning Kamala's way in the closing week. They were probably there from the moment she...