No one can quite downplay right wing extremism quite like
the Associated Press.
They artfully left out the arrests outside Nancy Pelosi's office, the signs equating health care reform with the Nazi Holocaust and the general tone of violence and intimidation that permeated said "protest".
The problem with the AP is, that they look on this kind of insanity as the normal play of the "loyal opposition" which is nothing but a big "get out of jail free" card to some very dangerous elements.
And I do love the spectacle of seventy-ish retirees recipients of medicare railing against "Obamacare", truly my tax dollars at work keeping them healthy and erect.
- posted by Elias @ 6:56 AM

 
Sad news...
Storyteller and Harvard Square fixture, Brother Blue has died at the age of eighty-eight.
- posted by Elias @ 11:50 AM

 
So the army sez that 75% of recruitable US youth
are not fit for induction into the armed forces? Drugs, education and obesity issues being the core problems?
So when will the Pentagon declare high fructose corn syrup a threat to national security??
Well, I snark but really a stat like this ought to spark some hearings in congress, git some generals to testify...start that debate sez I. Because frankly Humble Elias can live in a world where high fructose corn syrup is outlawed as a food additive...Won't hardly change things at all.
- posted by Elias @ 6:54 AM

 
So much for that whole quaint notion that
Maine is full of witty Marshall Dodge type caricatures who just want to be left alone. Given enough money and enough of "Fear Factor" politics they will happily police the marriages of their neighbors with a gay abandon.
- posted by Elias @ 6:54 AM

 
Congrats to Mayor Menino on his re-election last night
the numbers were outside my predictions, but not by much in the weary wicked end.
The pundits and pols may hate and fear Tom Menino, but the electorate has yet been given no good reason to break their compact with him. You can complain until you are blue in the face about Menino's thin skin, autocratic style and lack of vision but those are the very things that 57% of last night's voters could care less about.
They want an urban mechanic and don't care if he is sixty six years old and bereft of ideas, period end of story.
Michael Flaherty ran an honorable campaign and made every good effort to innovate right up until the polls closed, he did not disgrace himself he did not punch below the belt. Dunno what the future holds for him, but there will at least be no recriminations for Citizen Flaherty from this campaign.
My only questions are, will the Mayor make an endorsement in the special election for Ted Kennedy's seat and will he support the guberatorial ticket in 2010?
Humble Elias suspects the answer to both those questions is a resounding "No".
- posted by Elias @ 6:45 AM

 
A dinosaur spotted on the streets of Boston yesterday
a big ole sound truck was heard extolling the virtues of citizen Michael Flaherty, candidate for Mayor in today's city election.
No TV commercials at all, but Mike Flaherty and Sam Yoon have a sound truck, a campaign gimmick that went the way of the snap brim fedora over fifty years ago.
Still ya gotta give the guy credit, it is like sending up your last flare when the supplies run out.
I figure we will be out of the trenches by 9:30pm tonight, but then again crazy things happen on sunny election days.
Also on rainy ones as well.
- posted by Elias @ 6:54 AM

 
Apropos of nothing
but when Joanie Vennochi writes the venom from her pen fairly scars the desktop at which she works.
When she calls in to the Jeff Santos show on WWZN Am 1510 though, Joanie is as decorously dull as dishwater, no middle school snarkage, no bitterness no nothing.
As a radio call-in guest, Joanie Vennochi ranks but poorly compared to say the sentimental rubbish routinely spouted by Mike Barnicle over on the Imus show.
Who knew that inside Joanie Vennochi prowled the placid soul of a Joe Lieberman?
- posted by Elias @ 11:09 AM