A lingering question...

Mr. Jeff Jacoby's column in yesterday's Boston Globe contains the following quote:
"Alfred A. Knopf published Nicholson Baker's "Checkpoint," a novel in which two Bush-haters talk about assassinating the president. "I'm going to kill that bastard," one character rages."

Humble Elias hasn't read the above book, my question is, has Jeff?

One idly wonders if the Globe's Laughing Young Senescence has quite understood the author's theme.

On liberal hate speech...

Jeff Jacoby has opened up his file folder entitled “Hate Speech” and for the umpty-teenth time found naught but liberals and their ilk within. Of course to fatten the list to column length he does have to quote curious dingbats like Cameron Diaz a girl whose mensa credentials seem to be gathering dust in the dead letter office.
Nevertheless and son of a gun, who’d a thunk it? The Globe must keep our Laughing Young Senescence busy, otherwise he’d surely be able to find one or two token instances of rightical chic hyperbole. Well what of it? Our white Jacobyn had a demanding schedule this year - he can’t be expected to keep up.
If it is hate speech Jeff was really after, he would need go no farther than the post apocalyptic wasteland that is the Yahoo.com news message boards. Three clicks and some reactionary somewheres is openly threatening death, genocide, and lobotomy from the safe fastness of cyber anonymity. Even as Humble Elias writes this, someone on one of those boards is openly demandind that all liberals be rounded up and put behind barbed wire.
Jeff could also give a listen to the Stephanie Miller Show on AM 1430 wherein callers with quaint drawls call up and airily fantasize about “bulldozing” Northeastern liberals into the sea. Humble Elias gives that caller a chrome plated “no prize” for evoking a classic anti-Israeli metaphor popular in Nasser’s Egypt back in the day.
Humble Elias will forego mentioning the citizenry of a certain nearby state who felt completely free to call his candidate for high office an “ass hole” among other choice epithets. And then there was that hand scrawled sign at a roadside visibility, the one that asserted “Bin Laden endorses Kerry”...rollicking high spirits from the GOP nothing more, nothing to concern Jeff Jacoby certainly.
Lets face facts though, Jeff doesn’t give two hoots in hell about hate speech, no true Jacobyn does. No, Jeff wants to seize the vacant throne of David Brudnoy and become the Hub’s all purpose principled conservative talking head. Sweetheart book deals, a comfy radio sinecure, ones film preferences fawned over, its an attractive gig for a man with mouths to feed.
Of course to do that he has to somehow come off as an independent free thinker of some type. Alas with freeper drivel like this pouring off his word processor the process of Brudnoyization will be tough sledding. Jeff wants to be seen as independent, but he doesn’t wanna sacrifice his addiction to rightical chic talking points. And anyway, when is Jeff gonna ever exit campaign mode? Does he have a single opinion that hasn’t been vetted for maximum conservative blast effect?
Still and all that what WILL Jeff do when we liberals are hunted to extinction? He'll run out of copy inside a month, without us to flail he has nothing at all.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Reality floods in...

Anyone else get the impression that La Famiglia Arbusto is faintly annoyed with the tsunami catastrophe in Asia? Bush refuses to leave Crawford Texas on behalf of the worst natural disaster in post war Asian history, he offers a paltry fifteen million disaster aid and gets all pissy when people call him out on it.
Petulant little bastard isn't he?
I think Bush spent fifteen million alone on voter suppression in Ohio and Florida just this year alone.
And not fer' nothing but you'd think for reasons of realpolitik alone La Famiglia Arbusto would go in for a big loud splashy relief effort. Its a painless way to recoup the world's goodwill so recently and wastefully squandered.
Nope not this crew, those are facts and the facts just make their bloated heads hurt it seems.
Herein are the operational limitations on a faith based Presidency...sometimes the truth just doesn't come to Gorver Norquist's meetings.

The year in review...

Frankly it has been a year of catastrophic set backs for humble Elias. He is still out of work, certain blood kinfolk have entered immortality, and the national political situation is bleak and unpromising.
Still and all, we had fun on this blog.

Ripped up Romney to a fare-thee-well....his cynicism, his craveness, his naivete' all fodder for the Chimes at Midnight.
Correctly called the late Kerry surge in the NH primary, a phenom largely boosted by his own fanatical volunteer base.
Threw a lot of barbs at Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, although the comparisons to Allen Drury's fictional Fred Van Ackerman are going exactly nowhere. (not that your humble narrator cares)
Mused continually over whether we are faced with ideologues or voluptuaries.
Dicked on Schwarzenegger as well....may as well get used to it, he will be around for a while.
Oh and lets not forget Fox News' bid to create its own ersatz version of the democratic party.
Oh and dumped on Fineman, Matthews, LeHigh, McGrory, Jacoby, Ingraham, etc etc etc...flakes, propagandists, and freaks all.
And Caleb Jacoby, lets not forget that poor rhetorical prop of a child...
Good willin' and the creek don't rise, we will do it all again next year.

It is sad to see...

Senator John McCain enter such a naive' dotage. the poor blithering fool thinks he can be elected President in 2008. The Rovian delusion, that the GOP can recreate the nation as a de facto one party state, shows no sign of abating among the republicans. Indeed the whole mishaugas is about to be embraced by an younger, livier, and even more brutal political generation, the Rick Santorums and Mitt Romneys who all think their time has come. Poor McCain, among these worthies, he comes off as a Methodist Missionary trying to teach the Marquis of Queenberry's rules to a drunken flight of Hell's Angels.
McCain has been run through the wood-chipper before and will be run through it again ere' the La Famiglia Arbusto is done. Hell, by 2008 the technique of ideological vituperation will very far advanced indeed. No doubt there is some "Swift Boat Veterans" type bunch laying for McCain even now. The man is decent and honorable, if he'd been nominated in 2000 Humble Elias has no doubt he could've carried forty states and run very well in Massachusetts. However McCain is not an advocate of smashing the two party system and so will be ground down into the mud come january 2008. It can be no other way.
Nope, America is running out of last chances it seems. The GOP could've embraced a worthier brand of conservatism in 2000 under McCain's leadership,just as the nation could've chosen a secular democratic revival with John Kerry in 2004. Both are lofty notions very much in keeping with Americn traditon and both crushed by the Rovian utopian fixation on rolling the nation back to 1899 lock, stock, and barrel.
Sadly, McCain's time is past, the battle is not over what direction conservatism will take, that has already been decided by the Delays, Frists, Santorums, Bushs, and Norquists of the world. No, the battle now is for the very survival of democracy in America. One wishes John McCain understood that, but time has passed him by and that is no sin in the final analysis.

The ghost Pundit...

History teaches us that the great and the neurotic who wish to be great are sometimes tormented by the shades of that which they most fear. Leon Trotsky was said to have glimpsed Mexican mariachi singers on the edge of the vast proletarian crowds in Russia. Richard Nixon was allegedly tormented by the shade of Robert F. Kennedy who would mock the President’s necktie every morning of the trickster’s misbegotten administration.
And so it is with that laughing young senescence, Jeff Jacoby whose column today cites Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy as the sort of fighting liberals who whose devotion to terrorist preemption was real and palpable. It is ALWAYS a sign of impending intellectual bankruptcy when the righties drag out bygone libs to shore up their policy catastrophes. Its a form of rhetorical thumb sucking the rightical chic indulge whenever the wind starts blowing high through the halls of the Georgetown Think Tanks.
It is also a battered cliché used by GOP activistas to try and peel off a few more “disaffected” democrats whose allegiance might be up for auction. Citing FDR, Truman, and Kennedy is a bit of a dodge though. Faced with disaster in Iraq, Jacoby trots out the victorious liberal warlords and associates today’s failed policy with yesterday’s triumphs. You will notice Jeff passed over that other fighting liberal Lyndon Johnson in silence. In this fashion Jeff bleated ineffectually, “last chance to board the Baghdad Victory Special”-this would be a poorly armored vehicle sadly vulnerable to rocket propelled grenades. Jeff may be running out of ideas, but that doesn’t stop him from campaigning and maneuvering endlessly for some new phantom advantage.
The irony here is, the Jeff Jacoby’s of 1936, 1950 and 1962 HATED Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy. FDR was branded as a sick demented dictator, Truman was called a boorish drunk, Kennedy was a spineless commie dupe.
if Jacoby had been a writer in an of those epochs, rest assured he’d a unloaded on the above mentioned presidents with all the brutality he once reserved for John Kerry and Bill Clinton. Alas though, with the Iraqi resistance shelling the Green Zone and blowing up our chow halls, Jeff needs all the imaginary friends he can dream up for this seemingly unending shitstorm.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

I can't think of anything more

depressing for a wounded soldier than to be "comforted" by the glacial likes of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. But yet off he goes to Iraq to pat the heads of the injuried and wish them many happy returns of the day. Better he should stay at his desk tonight and solve the "up armor" problem...alas no, there are symbolic visits to make and TV cameras to appease.

So on that wistful patriotic note Humble Elias wishes all his readers and especially those in uniform and those in harm's way a merry christmas.

Decaf throws his hat in the ring...

all the way from the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee where no doubt he and Tagg keep a lonely vigil looking out of the cold winter swells for unwary boaters to rescue. In truth what else could Mitt do except run for re-election? having been rebuffed by the Admin in his covert quest for a cushy job in DC, nothing else will keep his lackwitted name before the New Hampshire public save running for a second term as Governor of Massachusetts.
Alas though, this is NOT what Governor Romney really wanted for Christmas. Mitt’s attempt to show horn one hundred and thirty supplicants into the state legislature has succeeded only in creating a new class of GOP mendicant for the holiday season. Insufferable when he has the upper hand and utterly laughable when he goes to the dogs, Mitt’s revolting pliability puts Plastic Man to shame.
He is by far spectacularly unsuited to the steady stream of dull details that the governorship offers. His so called leadership is a series of shrill yawlps that inevitably presage the trancelike chanting of Romney’s infallible power-word “reform-reform-reform”. His much praised businessman’s style has yielded up a personal staff that is wildly overpaid, arrogant and amusingly untalented. Meanwhile, the towns and cities of the Commonwealth are starved of state aid like greyhounds on a pre-race diet. Repetitive and tinny, whiny and spiteful, Mitt’s promises are virtual guarantees of failure and inertia. His administrative style starts at torpid and rises only reluctantly to ineptitude.
His “relationship” with the Great and General Court is actually even worse than that of his hated predecessor Jane “Jingle Money” Swift. The ex-governor noted for her fertility, could at least count on a vestige of courtliness from the male dominated House and Senate. Thus Romney has few accomplishments to his name and will likely have little to show for the next two long cold years.
The man is already bored and annoyed by his job, he knows the only game in town is gaining the President’s seal of approval for campaign 2008-in this so far Romney is failure. So quite literally because he has nothing else to do, Romney wants a second term. Empty of any real ideas and just spineless enough to take the remnants of the nation off a cliff, Mit begins his quest for the Presidency right here at home.
Still for all that, Humble Elias rates him a good fifty fifty shot to win in 2006. His roundheads and loyal spartans, the suburban independents, mortgaged to the hilt and desperate show no signs of abandoning his pepsodent smile. He can raise the money just of the basis of being the “only game in town” for the local and national GOP. Lastly, the Scot Lehighs and Brian McGrorys still love him and will do their best to paint Deceive as some sort of nice unthreatening moderate when the time comes.
Yet things aren’t quite so black for Massachusetts’ democrats. 2004 may have rendered up another defeat nationally, but the party demonstrated the ability to successfully fight on two fronts simultaneously, both in local races and in the New Hampshire Presidential race-that can’t be good news for Mitt. There will be plenty of money out there for strong running dems of that be sure. What the opposition lacks is a concise message and of course, the right candidate to put it over.
Time will tell, and Elias Nugator sez, that time begins now.

Not even Time Magazine's portraitist...

can make President Bush look good. GWB is the Haughty Little Rag's "Man of the Year" and never looked worse despite heroic efforts to make him look...well...heroic. The squinty shifty eyes, the sneer of disdain, the obnoxious demeanor, the frankly simian bearing...the man is a mess by all contemporary standards. Sadly unless history is greater hater of hubris, we are stuck with him for the next four years. What is worse, Bush hasn't even peaked in his capacity to inflict woe and want upon us all in the name of his turgid necrotic ideology.
And on that note, a Merry Christmas to you all and a happy New Year.

Apropos of exactly nothing but...

Humble Elias was at the library tonight fruitlessly searching for a particular volume on the black arts, alas the shelves were all crammed with glib, clever, books by noted conservative funnyman P.J. O'Rourke. His whole bibliography fairly sneers with disdain at the unwary library patron. Right then and there your narrator conceived a strong desire to see P.J. handcuffed, stuffed in a stave barrel,and dropped by Coast Guard helicopter into the storm tossed Flemish Cap.
THAT would brighten up the holiday hearths of many people here in the cold cold heart of Massachusetts.
Merry Christmas from Elias Nugator.
:)

The politics of Links...

Humble Elias has buckled down and added some links at the bottom of the page. Now don't worry, he hasn't gone overboard-just a few friends, colleagues, and admired journalists thats all.
Lis Riba, an uncommonly sensible woman she was also the first person to link to this page.
Romney is a Fraud, an excellent blog also an early linker.
Dimmy Karras, good writer also links to this blog. Makes him a pal in Humble Elias' book.
Cosmo Macero, don't agree with him 1000% but he is nice enough to link to the Chimes at Midnight so what the hell.
Joshua Micah Marshall DOESN'T link to the Chimes at Midnight, but he is still a good writer and worth reading every day.

Just a quick shout out,

to Dimmy Karras who has come back from his post election hiatus and upgraded his blog. Since he is one of the few who in fact links to this, "The Little Blog that Cried" Huble Elias thought the event noteworthy.
Check out his very fine postings at www.dimmykarras.blogspot.com

Taste the wrath of Saxby!

Senator Chambliss is all outraged like to discover that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has been signing the KIA letters to soldier's families with what amounts to a rubber stamp. "I think this is another area in which the Secretary has been insensitive" yelped the junior Senator for Georgia on yesterday's "Face the Nation".
Good lord what a pious scumbag! Its okay to call Senator Max Cleland a terrorist and a traitor...but cut some time off the KIA notification process and suddenly its Katie-bar-the-door?! Who is this malevolent fraud to lecture anyone on proper treatment of veterans, fallen soldiers, or their families?? As far as Humble Elias is concerned, Saxby opened the door to the abuse of veterans and their families with his mendacious and brutal campaign against Max Cleland, himself a decorated disabled veteran of Viet Nam.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Xmas under attack...

in today’s rollicking effusion, Jeff Jacoby, ace columnist for the Boston Globe announced decided that christmas that decidedly christian holiday, is under attack from secular liberals or perhaps Crazy Horse and the Lakota Sioux.
The agenda here is clear, the conservative punditariat is trying to keep Bush’s fifty one percent in a state of permanent persecution dementia via grotesque campaigns such as these.
Having run the liberals out of Washington DC (again and again and again) Jeff and the Bill O’Reillys of this world bid on running local activists right out of town-their weapon of choice, that conservative icon-Santa Claus! No margin of victory is ever enough for these vengeful clowns-especially in defense of a bloated sixty day commercial saturnalia like Christmas.
Good grief but Jeff does live in the sovereign state of Delusion doesn’t he? December has the highest annual suicide rate of the year, billions are blown on toys that do naught but enrich the owners of plastics factories in Shanghai, and by December 5th any SANE person would happily consign “Frosty the Snowman” to a microwave oven to escape the omnipresent holiday musicale. Yet this annual eruption of holiday cheer is under attack sez Jeff...well the damn fool once claimed Saddam Hussein had a positronic ray in his arsenal too!
Christmas is the most high maintenance holiday on the calendar, needy, insecure, desperate for attention and tailor made for conservative pseudo crusaders who have run low on creativity at the year’s end.
Frankly, if this is the sort of bilge we can expect, Jeff will never slip into the late Brudnoy’s sinecure as the local bigthink conservative egghead. Jacoby just doesn’t have it, intellectually he has few critical instincts, and morally he too much of a sellout. Moreover, he is weirdly naive on an indescribable level, like he really believes the nonsense Karl Rove spouts.
As Humble Elias once wrote in a long dead venue. “Christmas, the holiday with claws that catch and teeth that bite” need fear nothing, for Jeff Jacoby is up on the roof shotgun in hand, ready to defend Santa from Al Queda and the A.C.L.U.
Lets hope he doesn’t slip or anything.

A scant Thirty Pieces of Silver Later...

and Senator Zell Miller “democrat” of Georgia and proud denouncer of his colleague John Kerry, collects his payment in the form of a commentator’s sinecure at Fox News. Being way too humorless and unpleasantly angry to anchor his own show, no doubt Zell will be used as a featured talking head, i.e. a Judas Goat democrat used chiefly to sandbag the democratic party at every turn. Zell has clearly joined Fox News’ most interesting and under-reported project, namely Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to create an ersatz democratic party under his own control and populated by robots like Zell and hapless groveling losers like Susan Estrich and Alan Colmes.
This “Fox democrats” experiment is dedicated to the necessity of giving serious movement conservatives an easily beaten foe in any given fall election. One or two more fiascos like election iht 2000 and 2004, and Murdoch could credibly assert that “his democrats” represent some vast silent majority of freeper democrats who are being kept down by Teddy Kennedy or Henry Wallace or some such rubbish as that.
In this line up, Zell will clearly be the angry podium chewing pseudo populist whose rage is carefully directed at queers, liberals, and feminists etc etc etc. Murdoch may well be conjuring with getting a Miller-Estrich ticket nominated in 2008. Assuming of course that elections are still legal on Plantation USA by then.
Ah Zell, we almost made a man of him, almost. Anyone remember the aftermath of election 1992? Miller was being touted along with Lawton Chiles and a few others as the New Moderate Southern Face of the democratic party. All blown to hell by the GOP’s resurgence in 1994, in which dozens of southern moderate dems were quietly lynched in the polling booths. well Zell could read the returns, and rosily turned freeper with a loud rebel yell. H.L. Mencken has put it more succinctly, in a contest between patriotism and a politician’s job, the job wins every time.
And now all his yelling has paid off, with a guest commentator’s slot on Fox News. Sad isn’t it? He coulda been great or he coulda gotten paid...he went for the money.

Jenna gets a job...

The newspapers are reporting that Jenna Bush (one half of the dipsomaniacal Bush twins) is taking a job as fourth grade teacher in the Washington DC public school ystem. Details, as always, are pending.
This is naught but hilarious. Anyone else recall John Candy's old SCTV sketch in which he portrayed a drunken "Mr. Science" type kiddie show host-the project for the day was his patented hangover cure. All Humble Elias can say to Jenna's future pupils is "Nux Vomica Kids, don't come to class without a vial of Nux Vomica".
Still and all, The Bush twins are thoroughly graduated and inevitable gravitating towards their Father's imperial throne. Myabe Dad can keep the PRC's economic patronage of this country going strong by marrying one of these hoydens off to a Politiburo member.

Fedayeen on Morrrissey Boulevard...

Humble Elias suspects the Iraqi insurgents have penetrated the upper most editorial spaces of the Boston Globe. They spent the past few days burning mosques, bombing Baghdad's "Green Zone", and killing our guys all in demonic anticipation of this quote from Jeff Jacoby's current column; "things are looking up in Iraq". Jeff ought to call the FBI, someone is definitely undermining the facts in Iraq.
:)
It is a faith based war, less about the chimera of the "right values" and more about ardently buying into the "right fantasy". And as all good readers of the Chimes at Midnight know, Jeff is at heart a fantasist and naive' one at that. What else would animate today's column, otherwise a cataract of condescending colonial bilge?

The true Jacobyn faith burns brighter each explosion on the highway between the airport and down town Baghdad. Yup and if you think good thoughts, you can fly, bring Tinkerbell back to life, and who knows, privatize social security at a profit for all concerned.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

The Obstructionists feted'...

The Boston Globe reports that Governor Romney has finally gotten around to inviting Speaker DiMasi and Senate President Travaglini over for dinner. having pilloried these men not one month ago as corrupt exemplars of Beacon Hill insiderdom, Decaf now with tender solicitude passes them the fresh baked toll house cookies. Oh to be a fly on the wall at that little get together!!!
It would seem that after two long years Mitt Romney has finally awoken to the unquiet fact that he really IS the Governor of Massachusetts. So if he wants his vague and ephemeral “reform agenda” to get it’s day in the Great and General Court he must now suck up to those he’d happily lynch but for the majesty of the law and the quietus of the suburban masses.
Humble Elias expects Bob and Salvatore to make a great show of their good manners and classic Beacon Hill bonhomie. Let us not forget though, these are men used to dealing with back stabbing phonies like Mitt Romney with admirable dispatch. They do it every day in the state legislature. Nevertheless, Sal and Bob will be the soul of conviviality throughout the evening and in all such evenings to come. However, in the dead of night with no reporters around they will still nail Mitt’s reform agenda into a pine box, tie it to a wooden raft, soak it all down with kerosene, and give the whole thing a proper Viking Funeral in the Charles River.
Still, don’t you wish that Sal DiMasi would put his feet up on the Romney hassock, sigh, grin and announce “Nice dump y’ got here Governor...”

Joe For King?

Senator Susan Collins, a reliable Capitol Hill layabout and stalwart GOP moderate has been talking up Joe Lieberman for Homeland Security Secretary in the wake of Bernard Kerik's mysterious political implosion. On the surface this is a semi-sensible proposal, Lieberman did write the legislation that brought DHS to life. However if he was to get the sinecure he'd become the Colin Powell figure of Bush's second term. An amiable impotent and trivial Loafer in Karl Rove's own version of a reality show. Otherwise Lieberman would become a handy weapon for the likes of Sean Hannity to pillory the democrats and amount to little else over the next four long cold years.
And anyway, why give up a cushy gig like junior Senator from Connecticut? Besides, you just know the moment a dirty bomb went off in Times Square on New Years Eve or a incendiary device went off high in an LA skyscraper, Joe Lieberman would go from pet of the right to its favorite scapegoat. The fact that he is democrat would be all the more delicious to the rightical chic radio tyrants out there. Humble Elias advises, "Joe Don't do it, they are laying for you boy".
Anyway...you just know Romney is on the phone to Kerry, Rove, Bush Senior, really ANYONE willing to risk take his resume in past the Secret Service. Mitt is above all a perfectly spineless puritan, a perfect potential DHS Secretary in these chilly post Kerikian times we do inhabit.

:)
On the other hand...DHS would make Lieberman, a democrat, what sixteen in succession to the US Presidency.
Long odds indeed.
However in this pre-apocalyptic era, much can be done with enough lawyers, money and ambition. Hell its the way Bush got in there back in 2000.
:)

A Mighty Draft?

Colonel David Hackworth was on the “O'Franken Factor” today openly predicting the imposition of a military draft by the middle of next summer. Normally Hackworth is a bit of a scenery chewer, but he did note that enlistment quotas may be down as much as fifty percent by the end of 2004. This apparently has an immediate effect on the combat readiness of front line troops in Iraq over the short term.
Hackworth posits that either we must introduce conscription or “declare victory and get out” otherwise the manpower issues in Iraq will become unmanageable. Perhaps Bush’s plan is to start troop pullouts after the Iraqi elections scheduled in January. If so he is leaving behind a god awful mess and a nation and region in chaos. However as Chimes at Midnight tirelessly points, out thats been his M.O. for years going back to his days as a drunken shyster oilman.
On the other hand Bush may decide to expend his political capital and bring back the draft. Letting other people die for him is also one of his signature moves going back to his days as a sadistic upperclassman at Yale. Of course congress has not yet passed the required legislation, but that is no great hurdle given the GOP majorities in both houses.
So at this point the only thing left for Humble Elias to point out is, that a mere seventeen percent of the “youth vote” bothered to cast ballots this year. This was after what must have been fifty million dollars spent on adverts and celebrity endorsements to motivate young people to vote. What is worse is, it was all for NOTHING. Exactly seventeen percent of that same youth cohort voted in the year 2000. So if it comes to a draft, some eighty seven percent of those sent off to war will have never voted at all on the great issues facing the republic. This is an increment roughly compatible with the millions of non voters drafted in World War Two when the voting age was a stingy twenty one!
In the lecture hall tomorrow, look on both sides of you...and imagine that person in khaki fatigues. Sorry kids, you had your chance, it looks like its gonna be your last chance as well.

GeekWB...

The President, fresh from his month old electoral “triumph” has announced that the Social Security system is in “crisis” and must be radically reformed forthwith.
Then again this is the same President who once claimed that Saddam Hussein had every weapon of mass destruction in the catalogue up to and including the proverbial nucleonic planet buster.
But then lying has always been Bush’s M.O....he lied on a daily basis and bilked ghod knows how many investors in his many failed oil ventures back in the day. He lied to his wife about his own drinking and he lied and squirmed to get out of the Viet Nam War. The great lesson of George Bush’s misbegotten life is that “mendacity pays”.
Thus the President was lying then, and he is lying now. Nothing that has occurred to date has convinced him that lying is naught but his own personal trump card in any contentious policy debate. So if anything, given the content of his character, his lies will only become more blatant and outrageous. No one restrains Bush and he’ll go on in this rampant fashion until either he is out of office or the nation disintegrates.
In the mean time we will all be either impoverished or imprisoned, all to satisfy the howling winds of ideology that sound between his ears.
Humble Elias asks....”why”?
Why is the President such an unmitigated asshole?
Why is this son of wealth and privilege so obsessed with destroying fanciful elites? Why is this alleged conservative so fixated on destroying cherished and noble institutions? We have to disgard the notion that the President is some identifiable species of American conservative. He is not, his public spending habits alone are enough to get him drummed out of the movement. Moreover he is an ideologue consumed with a singular hatred of past practice. Peter Vireck once opined that the irony of American conservatism is that lacking a hereditary aristocratic tradition, US conservatives are left to conserve the gains made by liberal civilization. Bush has apparently decided to invert that notion by creating a new class of peasantry who'll pay the entire costs of the government (while deriving no benefits at all) and a new aristocracy to rule over them...brutes, fraud, and charlatans all. This is Bush's ideology circa 2004...it is medieval in scope and as usual breathtakingly simple.

The guy is clearly hell bent for revenge on all those swells-n-toffs who kidded him in prep school, at Yale, and at Harvard Business School. What other explanation is there for his “destroy it all policy?” Clearly hell hath no fury like a geek scorned.

Because that is what Bush really is, a geek. Poorly socialized, proud, insecure, and weird he has all the classic symptoms of geekiness sans the critical intelligence. He also has a geek's persecution mania and concurrent self satisfaction. Like his geek brethren he is also obsessed wih empire building..."dungeons and dragons" on a global scale.
Truly, whatever was done to him, we will all have to pay for.

A question for a rainy Saturday...

Just how many countries has William Safire advocated invading and or attacking down through the years?
He started as a columnist for the New York Times in what 1973? So its probaly up around a dozen or so...but that is a guess.
Does anyone out there have a good count?

If so drop me a note at eliasnugator@yahoo.com

"Amend for Arnie"

This political button has been sprouting like an aggressive weed all over silicon valley in sunny California. It happily refers to the movement to amend article two of the U.S. Constitution that forbids the foreign born to hold the Presidency. Presumably with that little detail disposed of, Arnold can seize power nice as you please and in a legit election too.
As Humble Elias has said before, this is a time for bad ideas to rise up and ride in America. However its always been like that in California going back to the strange days of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson all the way down to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. If there is a charlatan or a fraud on the make, count on California to give them a home. And so it is for “Amend for Arena”.
The Golden State is a strange shoddy place, it is full of atomized lonely people...nobody knows anyone else in a intimate fashion. Back east, loneliness and alienation are a badge of shame, but in California the atomized are fulsome glad handers and devotees of the latest fraud. There is no embarrassment over being shallow and thus the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger prospers. Nothing less than a wispy film and TV image can hold their depleted attention spans.
This is a serious case of demeaning caesarism at work here...no other man in US history has put for tha movement to amend the constitution to satisfy his own ambitions...and yet Arnold soldiers on and like any sweetly smelling bad idea has attracted able and unlikely supporters notably our own Senior Senator, Edward Moore Kennedy. Maybe it really is time to eject California from the Federal Union. Let Schwarzenegger rule as a rump President of a pacific Duchy. He'll be happy, the homunculi he represents will be happy, and the other forty nine will well clear of it.

The Two Howards...

There seems to be two different versions of Howard Fineman out there on the radio talk show circuit. One is a blustering contemptuous freeper who calls into the “Imus in the Morning Program” and heaps scorn on Al Gore and Hilary Rodham Clinton. The other is a calm moderate soul who drops dimes on the demagogic likes of Senator Rick “High Pitched Rich” Santorum on the Al Franken Show.
Which is the real Howard Fineman? Who the hell knows...maybe they both are real. The name of the game in celebrity journalism is exposure anytime any where as long as you are clothed and your host is not on a sexual predator registry. If you’ve been at the game as long as Howard, then it is inevitable that one would shift political colors from show to show. So he less a case of “Jekyll and Hyde” and more an example of Woody Allen’s comical omnimorph “Leonard Zelig”.
If Howard has a political core, and that is debatable, then Humble Elias posits he is a sort of sentimental moderate republican...a character being rapidly run to extinction along with the classic American liberal.
Moderate republicans come in two classifications these days, the racketeers like Mitt Romney who see opportunities in the pose of moderation and ineffectual yaps like Colin Powell who are still believe the tooth fairy and the two party system.
Fineman falls into the later category. He still thinks there is moderate ground to be won and he refuses the evidence of his eyes when the likes of Karl Rove start planning for a century of movement conservative ascendancy.

Or maybe not...who knows? Howard is a slippery character adept at telling his hosts and employers what they want to hear.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Scot Lehigh is appalled...

that local radio talk show tyrant Jay Severin was a notable headtable VIP at a Romney fundraiser last Friday night. Jay apparently was called upon to introduce Decaf to the usual pack of wealthy dilettantes and overloaded ne'er do wells.

This is unintentionally hilarious...it really is.
There is nothing funnier than when a neocon appeaser like Scot awakes to discover that the modern GOP depends on punks like Jay Severin for it's prosperity.
Indeed without WTKK's daily dose of blatant conservative ideological warfare blasting out every day over the public airwaves one doubts that Romne would've every seized the governorship. Doesn't Scot listen to 96.9 FM Talk?? Hasn't he heard their none-too-subtle practice of using Romney sound bites to back up their "public service" tinged bumpers??
WTKK has been sucking up to Romney for two long years now and is betting the mortgage that Mitt will be around for a long time to come AND in a position to do them favors in due course. They have made an investment in him and it will pay off come hell or high water. This is not a surprise, as corporate media consolidation proceeds apace it is logical that said companies would draw ever closer to their ideological soul-mates on the public payroll. Its a few big companies chasing a few sharp ambitious politicians in search of less regulation and more profits.
Still its a stitch and a half to read Scot's denunciation of Severin, calling him "a bigot" and a number of other things. He just REFUSES to recognize the Governor's crude opportunism here. Is a foulmouthed perv like Jay Severin a proper master of ceremonies at a fundraiser for a cartoonishly puritanical GOP governor?
CERTAINLY he is, if that Governor is a man of few principles, much ambition, and much contempt for the public good.
Scot Lehigh has been living high off the hog thanks to liberal civilization for a good long time now. However the big bill is finally coming do and lists are being draw up even as Humble Elias writes this. Alas, them phat times for liberals is over-and we are left with a craven appeaser like Scot to defend the remnants of our rights in these troubling times. Lehigh thinks he can play the game of "honest broker" in the coming clash of ideologies...this is a cruel fantasy to say the least.
When the gruesome likes of Jeb or Neil Bush are annointed with blood, handed a sceptre,and proclaimed Supreme Godhead of Plantation USA, Scot Lehigh will literally be the first yap put behind the barbed wire. All his well meaning warnings to phantom GOP moderates like Mitt Romney will be long forgotten.
Well what of it, if that terrible day ever does come, Elias Nugator will be nowhere to be found. Cause' Mr. Nugator Senior didn't raise no fools.

God Save the Commonwealth
God Save the Republic

So Tom Reilly wants to be Governor...

Good effin’ luck to him, he will need it.

On paper his is a formidable candidacy, Steve Grossman has signed up as his fundraiser and the usual suspects among local dems have already gathered around Reilly like moths to a flame. Reilly has already run statewide twice and can easily step up organizationally and thematically to the Corner Office-or so spouts the conventional wisdom.
Humble Elias though, has his doubts. The democrats haven’t elected anyone Governor from an inferior statewide office in nigh on forty years. Dukakis was a former state legislator at the time of his election in 1974 and King was the head of Massport in 1978.
Moreover, a biblical host of statewide aspirants have gone down in flames over the last fourteen years, Bellotti (another Attorney General), Harshbarger (ditto and the same) and O’Brien, herself the State Treasurer. All were judged wanting in their respective races. Clearly the electorate dominated as it is by fickle independents places a low value on experience in politics.
If nominated Reilly would be running against one Willard Mitt Romney a tragically inept buffoon whose one political strength is in casting his opponent as a exemplar of a corrupt regime on Beacon Hill. Decaf is a cheap and puerile dilettante in every way but he understands intuitively his precious darlings in the suburbs all hate,fear, and ultimately misunderstand state government...this renders them easy prey for a political hyena like Romney. So if its Reilly, then brace yourself for another defeat.
Sadly this doesn’t have to be the case, Romney has racked up a stunning record of defeat and sheer unmitigated stupidity in the past two years. Last night Channel 56 reported that the “Liberty Tunnel” had sprung not one but two leaks reducing southbound traffic to one lane and creating a mile long slowdown. Yet the only mention of our governor in today’s Globe was in the society pages which reported that his pious jests went over big at the Gridiron Club in Washington DC. You see the problem? The Big Dig is taking on water and all Willard can do is crack smarmy down on the Potomac.
James Michael Curley would’ve personally rushed to the leak and started patching it with duct tape, even a dolt like Ed King would’ve acted...but not our Mitt he keeps touring the nation in search of greener pastures. It doesn't take brains to fix the Big Dig, it does take a talent for governance, and a willingness to put the public interest ahead of Bechtel Parsons...something Willard cannot and will not do. This is a failure of leadership and it ought to be hung round Romney's neck like a toilet seat for all to see.
What the democrats need is a candidate from outside the local political milieu, someone with money, and someone who can make the case that Romney is a fraud and a dilettante and very much a part of the problem. The Attorney General or the Secretary of State no matter how bright their bona fides can’t make this case to those sweet independents. These are people who read the newspaper once a year and vote out of a mindless distrust for governance itself. They don’t see what is at stake. They aren’t stupid, they are ignorant and naive...most of their dearest clichés simply haven’t yet been sullied. Somehow we’ve got to make their suspicion and lack of trust work for us.

Jacobyns Storm the U.N. Part Two...

BTW, John Danforth, our ambassador to the U.N. has resigned after holding the sinecure for a mere six months. Word on the street is, this former Senator from Missouri was sick of getting a signed hall pass from the neocons infesting Foggy Bottom every time he wanted to use the men’s room.
:)
Or perhaps he knows something we don’t....like maybe the U.N.’s days are numbered and that as soon as Iraq is reduced to ruins Turtle Bay (to paraphrase the Mighty Goldberg) is “next”. Who can blame Danforth anyway? Nobody wants to go down with flags flying on that particular ship.
No for nothin’ though, but is ther anything in this country that modern conservatives wish to CONSERVE anymore? You name it and the GOP and it’s thinkers want to destroy it, old age pensions, affordable health care, unemployment compensation, a sound currency, the U.N. the list is endless.
All must be replaced by some utopian fantasy spun by ardent and naive uplifters like Jeff Jacoby.
One can only imagine the sort of market worshipping, bumptious international fraternal lodge the likes of Safire, Jacoby and Karl Rove would gleefully whomp together. It'd be something like the Dartmouth Review perhaps....with Dinesh D' Souza as Secretary General and Maggie Thatcher as hall monitor...yeah dats da ticket!!! The rightical chic have been rattling their playpen bars for a long time at the mere mention of the United Nations....now though they have a powerful co-religionist in our President. The dream of Robert Welch (founder of the John Birch Society) is about to come true.
Well at any rate we will soon find out and it won’t be pretty either.

Sick
Demented
Typical

The Jacobyn's storm the U.N...

In today's breathless spewage, Jeff Jacoby calls the United Nations "...a corrupt institution , one that long ago squandered what moral legitimacy it had".
It would seem that the Globe's Laughing Young Senescence is taking up the old Birch Society crusade to deport and dissolve the U.N.
Why?
Cause' full of dictatorships and tyrant coddlers...that is when it isn't wallowing in corruption, depravity, and ineptitude.
Well what of it?
The United States Congress is currently run by wowsers, charlatans, fanatics, and persons who'd happily sell out the nation for as little as hat full of one dollar bills.
Still nobody demands the dissolution of Congress...not yet at least.

Maybe Jeff is working from "the outside in".
:)

***
Still and all that this IS the old army game in all its unseemly khaki glory. Halliburton and whozis are making gujillions off no bid contracts in Iraq...so to conceal the swinish squeals of favored conglomerates on the make, Jeff and his bilge start up with the war-dance demanding Kofi Annan's wrinkled scalp.

The Vichy Network(s)

What are all the fag-bashers in America gonna do when they die and are met at the Pearly Gates not by Saint Peter, but by Truman Capote, Panama hat and all?
Case in point, the United Church of Christ runs up a commercial covertly noting their toleration for gay congregants and of course CBS and NBC RUN from said ad like rats in a firestorm. CBS even went so far as to cite the President’s advocacy of an anti-gay marriage amendment as a GOOD reason to decline broadcasting this commercial. A more grimly authoritarian rationale cannot be found outside the pages of one of the lesser works of Allen Drury.
Good lord CBS has been taken over by spineless freaks or something...twenty plus years of relentless right wing bullying has reduced the Tiffany Network to a gruesome state of truckling cowardice. You wouldn't mind so much but the advert itself is utterly harmless in every way and makes its point by relatively subtle inference. Xian fundies though, can’t bear to have their prejudices even gently chided and so they scream like spoiled brats until someone somewhere gives in to their insolent demands. So to forestall this, CBS/NBC caved and in a predictably undignified fashion. Thats all the big networks are good for these days, conceding hat-in-hand to every rightical chic jackass out there...Such is the New Day here in America.
And not for nothing though, but thousands of hours of congressionally licensed airtime every week is given over to fag bashing of the lowest and crudest sort. if you don’t believe Humble Elias, just check out Paul Crouch’s Trinity Network or the 700 Club or the syndicated protestant divines and faith healers that kill time on Boston Catholic Television. These bloated gimps prattle on for hours about healing homosexuals when they aren’t openly propagandizing for a myth called “abstinence education” and the Federal funds needed to finance such nonsense!
The day of the sycophant is apparently upon us, no fanfare and no queers need apply either.

Decaf in the Big Easy...

The Romney is a Fraud blog paints a grim picture of Mitt and his gruesome henchpeople jetting down to New Orleans last week to party with automatons like George Pataki at the Republican Governor's Conference.
Fair enough, but you just know Mitt was there to size up the competition. Pataki, Jeb Bush, Schwarzenegger...all potential rivals for the big brass ring come 2008. Give Romney some credit, the Commonwealth is running a billion dollar deficit, the central artery project is leaking, and the state civil service is so constipated it is literally defecating hacks, and yet he is still carelessly mincing around country like a Prince of the Realm.
Still and for all that, things don't look so good for Mitt, his hired candidates got pulverized this fall and the President is clearly uninterested in giving him a cabinet post. That missing DC sinecure might well be Romney's biggest political setback to date. Truly Mitt needed an early exit from the governorship in order to ingratiate himself with GWB and start the frantic process of obscuring his politically incorrect Massachusetts address. Moreover, lacking that cabinet seat, Mitt has to wonder if he has the gonads for a brutal struggle with McCain, Jeb, Pataki, Santorum,and who knows maybe Schwarzenegger in the snows of New Hampshire?
Romney's best bet might be to start toadying up to Jeb now, compliment him on his orb, sceptre, and purple robes in hopes that maybe he might catch some traction as a Vice Presidential candidate. Or he could just come back to Boston and start dealing with our problems....but who the hell wants to do a damn fool thing like that??

Sick
Demented
Typical...

A timely quote from Edward Gibbon:

"The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple and cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society, without a hope of emerging from their obscurity."

This is George W. Bush in a nutshell, Romney too for that fact. Is there any question that without the power of patrimony behind them, that Bush couldn't function as an intern at a Staples customer care desk whilst Romney might scrape by as a night manager at a Dairy Queen? Mere birth and millions of dollars in programmed ideological warfare yet keep them both aloft as Princes Among Men-nothing else. However surveying the wreckage of the last two elections, it is enough to keep them bothing going until the nation goes up in chunks.
History is always unkind to liberals...the best of intentions, votes, and the survival of the republic ultimately doesn't mean shit to the ladies on the loom behind Zeus' throne. Hubris however they love and always have going back to the days of King Oedipus. And so that is what Humble Elias is reduced to this evening, waiting on hubris to carry them all away.

What is a billion between friends?

So if the Boston Phoenix is to be believed, the Commonwealth faces a shortfall of some one billion large in the coming fiscal year. Que Lastima! And on Mitt Romney’s watch no less! Where is his celebrated business and management acumen now?
That Humble Elias cannot say, but for the past year Governor Romney has been happily prancing around the country fag bashing, wandering Massachusetts trying to get a bunch of vacuous sycophants elected to the legislature, and that was when he wasn’t chatting up the peasants in Epsom Circle N.H. or licking George Bush’s shoes. THAT is where he has been, even as his private satrapy has been slipping oh so slowly into the red.
Now we are a billion short with few options other than cuts or poisonous tax increases. Chimes at Midnight sez, let Romney make his cuts and be damned. He hasn’t paid attention for over a year, so why reward him for his pathological inability to exit campaign mode? The Great and General Court ought to wash their hands of the whole mess and let Decaf explain to his beloved suburban independents why Grampa and his two purple hearts were turned out of the veteran’s home in South Hadley.
As democrats we ought to continue to avoid the T-word and resign ourselves to making as much capital out of Mitt’s hapless attempts to govern as possible. Maybe then, Mitt will get the message.
Or not.
It is interesting to see that Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has turned in his resignation today, effective February 1sst. This gives Mitt a mere ninety days to convince Bush to take him on and weasel out his pledge to serve out his term made not two weeks ago.

Sick
Demented
Typical…

Lets abolish the Electoral College...

We need an issue something loud, simple, and reform minded. We need something that will cut the gordian knot of electoral paralysis in the US. We need something that a farm distric t candidate can bray about at full bawl as well as any city nominee. Finally, we need something reform minded that will take a symbolic step towards reviving national unity in an age of red versus blue states. Let us destroy the electoral college once and for all and elect our presidents via direct national plurality. Whomsoever gets the most votes wins-period.

The electoral college is practically a colonial relic, it inhibits turnout, it distorts presidential campaigning, and its retention means effectively two out of the three branches of government are perpetuated by means other than direct election. It is also a profoundly undemocratic institution in every way. Your vote only counts up to fifty one percent of a particular statewide vote.
Lets get rid of it. The only useful purpose it serves is to make the political addition easy for the preening likes of NBC’s Brian Williams.
If Humble Elias was advising the DNC, he’d recommend the abolition of the ancient and dishonorable EC as a neat electoral reform measure that congressional candidates could run on in 2006. If the GOP is so hell bent on forcing the states to vote on fag bashing and flag burning amendments, lets at least force a debate on a sane practical measure that will actually democratize the national vote.
Lets get rid of it!

Wealth is Health...

So Decaf has suddenly awoken to the lack of medical insurance among a good many of our friends and neightbors? Good for him, at last Romney has realized that healthcare is a right and not a commodity. Now as for the rest of us, we can but pray that this issue goes the way of the Governor's proposal for auto insurance reform and our leak proof central artery project.
Really, who is Romney trying to kid?
He has spent all this year tacking as far to the right as he dares both here and in the other forty nine states on behalf of his pal and master President Bush. What does he have to show for it...exactly nothing.
Now suddenly he is just dying with concern for the poor uninsured peasantry of his remote viceroyalty. This bleeding heart sob stuff comes a mere two weeks after the voters served him notice that his personal popularity inhabits defined and perhaps frightening limits. Yet there he is out campaigning anew for some new cloud of gaseous political bombast. Clearly the Governor is still in campaign mode and will stay in it until the first Wednesday in November 2006. He needs an issue and having maxed out fag bashing, he now proposes some limp mildewed health care "reforms" in order to re-establish his fast fading moderate credentials.
The problem with amateur pols like Romney is that they think campaigning is governing, because that is quite literally all they know about politics. And because they NEVER exit campaign mode reasoned debate becomes impossible as the dilletante-statesman in question cannot stop searching for relative political advantage-EVER! Humble Elias therefore has to respectfully disagree with Senator Kennedy when he calls for full and honest debate of the Governor's proposal, debate with Romney is pointless he can't be trusted to negotiate in good faith...not with the glittering vistas of the Potomac River corrupting his every thought.
And anyway...lets face it. Universal coverage is impossible in the Commonwealth without public monies being allocated and spent. Neither Mitt nor the legislature are going to authorize the kind of outlays that will be necessary not in our current fiscal condition. So the discussion is pointless, unless of course we all somehow enjoy watching Mitt pretend to be all caring and sensitive.

"You won't have Dan Rather to kick around anymore..."

So the news summaries read, dauntless Dan has thrown in his lapel mike and is retiring at what the advanced age of 73? Who will the wingnut bloggers dump on now? That vacuous baritone Peter Jennings? Sadly the days of the "Frankly Unctuous" type super anchors are behind us. The rightical chic punditariat will have to make due beating up utterly trivial likes of Brian Williams. This is a serious problem...who is the next generation of GOp zealots and uplifters to practive sharpening their claws upon?
Heavan only knows upon whom their wrath will fall next.
Humble Elias does wonder though, now that Dan is on the bum again does this mean he and Imus will finally kiss and make up? The I-Man does love these tattered old newsmen, Bon Schieffer and the like. Of course Don did call Dan "an agenda driven maniac" once on the public airwaves not six months ago.
Its gonna get awfully loneyl down there in Texas next spring...a call in to Imus might be just the tonic to ease an abrupt retirement.

Jacoby on the uses of hatred...

There are some topics that Jeff Jacoby ought to avoid. One of them is how “well” the war in Iraq is going, these columns are inevitably preceded by some horrific massacre or singular outrage in that far off land.
The other topic is the concept of “hate”, something he can't seem to define in a coherent way. Not two weeks ago, Jeff gloated over the President’s election as a “victory over Bush hatred”. He was smug, glib, and obnoxious about it having spent the last year or so accusing Senator John Kerry of every crime in the book short of economic wrecking and menshevism.
So today, Jeff expanded on his concept of hatred noting that it was okay for him to hate the late Chairman Arafat because the Book of Ecclesiastes gives him personal permission to do so. Put it another way, according to Jeff Jacoby in a world of Arafats Bush hatred is just plain wrong.
It ought to be noted at this point that America is a commercial culture. It stresses aphorism, quotations, precepts, fables, and slogans as the fastest way to persuasion. This is a process of editing, revision, or excision; it is profoundly anti-thought in some ways. In today’s column Jeff is indulging a very commercial reading of the old testament in order to reinforce a strongly held contemporary belief.
Going to the bible to get permission to hate seems pretty weird…but then this is Jeff Jacoby we are talking about. The man aspires to be Theologian in Chief, Grand Rabbi, Pope, and Head of the Synod all under one swollen hat. Of course, left unsaid is the question as to why one needs the bible to wish damnation on someone? Either the person in question feels unconsciously guilty and needs biblical justification to excuse their harsh thoughts or else their whole theology comes down to vast and personal heavenly gulag system.
The vast primordial ooze that constitutes Jeff’s mind will admit little else.

Sick
Demented
Typical…

Romney's hole is leaking...

And by God someone is gonna pay.

The Big Dig is springing leaks and it is not even officially finished yet. At this rate, I wonder who will show up for the grand opening…assuming it’s the central artery tunnel that is inaugurated and not a fourteen billion dollar salt water swimming pool.
Currently, the smart money is on former governors Jane “Jingle Money” Swift, Argeo Paul Cellucci tand Turnpike Chair Matt Amorello as the respective fall guys and girl in this mess. Gosh right now I’ll bet Argeo is wishing that Bush had made him Ambassador the Sudan or Middle Earth anywhere far from Beacon Hill.
The smart money though, is on Jingle Money collecting the blame. Unlike Cellucci she has no powerful patrons in Washington nor any substantive connections. Throwing her to the lions would be the line of least resistance for the primly misogynistic Romney Administration. Janie could well end up in the dock…if the Big Leak starts to take on serious water the matter could quickly jump ugly on a national level. You have to admit though, Jingle Money is looking like a pretty hapless and pathetic target the way Mitt gets to kicking her around every two years.
Seriously though, just what does Mitt Romney have to offer as the Big Leak fills up with sea water like the RMS Lusitania?
Palpably nothing, Decaf’s “Dairy Queen” managerial style has him bleating for a technocrat to take over the Artery Tunnel like he was replacing a dopy teenaged fry-chef or something. Moreover, those kind souls at the Romney is a Fraud blog (Www.romneyisafraud.blogspot.com) have suggested a sinister motive on Mitt’s part; it seems this jihad against Jingle Money and Matt Amorello might conceal a prior relationship between Romney and Bechtel Corp going back to his stint on the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake. Thus Amorello and Janie’s pink little scalps are being served up to distract us from Bechtel’s larger transgressions.
This being Massachusetts, I doubt none of these speculations.
Sick
Demented
Typical…

Safire retires...

The news is all a-quiver with the announcement that Bill Safire, the New York Times resident conservative columnist is at long last retiring come January. What, he finally ran out of lies and hyperbole at the tender age of seventy-something??
Humble Elias is not one of those smiling dishrag liberals who thinks Big Bill is great opponent and a wunnerful word-smith. Nope Bill was always a arrogrant pompous irresponsible jerk-off of the highest order. Much as Muhammad Ali stole his bumptious persona from wrestler Gorgeous George, Safire derived his smarmy self congratulatory writing style seemingly from Stan Lee's Soapbox in Marvel Comics.
Glib and frequently wrong, a list of the nations that Big Bill advocated invading and conquering would make long and interesting reading. But ah...in so many ways it is Bill's world now...fear, debt, and lies all Safirean mainstays rule the day. What else are we to expect? The man got his "win at any cost" ethos from his old boss Richard Nixon...and spent years refining it in the public prints until at last the perfect inheritor came along George Bush Jr. a lout simple and crazy enough even to destroy a great nation.
Nothing else to do but retire quite frankly.
Still for all that there is one thing Safire never achieved he never quite drove a democrat out of the White House. Not that he didn't try...year after year he kept trying to puff Bert Lance, Billy Carter, Vince Foster, and Whitewater up into impeachable offenses. His monomania on the subject no matter which democrat held office must been an inspiration for the Rick Santorums and Tom Delays out there in the Heartland. Bill threw many a tantrum in those years and movement conservatism learned quickly how to placate him-or else. How can anyone forget the forty eight hour fugue Safire indulged in the public prints to get Ken Starr to withdraw his resignation in 1996?
in the end, Safire was a dangerous demagogue and power mad dickheaded columnist straight out of the pages of Allen Drury. Except Mr. Drury's villains were all eggheads and liberals...

So farewell Bill...enjoy retirement...there will never be another like you and if there is then God Help the Republic.

Slaves of Texas, part II

Closemouthed Condi, the Sphinx of the Potomac is now nominated to succeed Powell at the State Department.
This trivial spineless courtier is now charged with purging Foggy Bottom of its "Reality Based" civil servants and replace them with politically correct fantasists of the Busheviki mode. Well...its not like this surprises anyone...the President's court was so loyal and devoted in his first term its just natural he'd wanna export those personalities out into the Cabinet. Condi Rice has no credibility aboard and remarkably few ideas...but she is a king hell sycophant to beat the band.
And that is the main qualification for office in Plantation USA circa 2004.
Anyone else recall that ridiculous picture of Dr. Rice in a flight helmet on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln? Grinning like a mongoloid she was...Humble Elias may just make that his screen saver.

Item!

What former chairman of the State Democratic Committee has been seen all around a certain congressional district whose representative is being touted as a gubernatorial prospect?
He is both "seeing and being seen" at the moment...word is our boy has plenty of snap left in his garters and is just itching to get back into politics.
All well and good but when will he say it with an exploratory committee?

Powell Departeth..or The Slaves of Texas...

Having accomplished nothing moderately as Secretary of State, Colin Powell turned in his resignation today and exits governance with the phantom banner of GOP moderation at high mast.
He couldn't stop Cheney, Wolfowicz, and Rumsfeld from usurping his portfolio, he couldn't stop Bush from invading Iraq, and he couldn't help lying like a dog in the heat in front of the U.N. But he sure did look great at all those international conferences as the U.S. duly fussing about the Kyoto Accords and the SALT 1 treaty.
Truly Colin Powell is a lawn ornament of a man.
Useless and dignified to the last, proud, moderate, and impotent, Powell leaves the Cabinet with his political bona fides intact. The Secretary of State is probably bidding up his compensation package from the Heritage Foundation even as Humble Elias writes this.
Having avoided conflict with the utopian wing of movement conservatism Powell can now cash in on the "GOP moderate racket. These would be the Warren Rudmans and the Lincoln Chaffees of the chat show circuit...serious thoughtful, unthreatening and utterly irelevant...Colin Powell craves this easy-assed sinecure.

Secretary Powell can also look forward to many more appearances on "Meet the Press" as a Foreign Policy oracle. So don't worry, he won't miss that canine-like look of devotion that Tim Russert throw him whenever the General sits down to talk.

Meanwhile, what Galleazzo Ciano type character, what blustering dickhead will Bush dredge up to "reform the State Department"? Chimes at Midnight thinks Bush needs someone young and easily intimidated-he is tired of his dad's pals looking over his shoulder. How about Senator Rick "High Pitched Rich" Santorum? He is a nice functional sociopath in every way, a vertiable Fred Van Ackerman of the new right. As Secretary of State he'd have those pansies at Foggy Bottom behind barbed wire before sun down. Moreover, Santorum worships GWB in a crude paganistic fashion which is qualification number one among the Busheviki.

A quote from an AOL news summary:

"SACRAMENTO (Nov. 14) - A new Silicon Valley-based organization will begin running statewide advertisements backing a constitutional amendment that would let Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other foreign-born citizens run for president.

"You cannot choose the land of your birth. You can choose the land you love," Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones says in the cable television ads, scheduled to start running on Monday.

She is a Bay area mutual fund manager and major Schwarzenegger campaign donor who is helping pay for the ads. She also created a companion Web site, www.amendforarnold.com."
***

Let Humble Elias ask a simple question; WHEN in the whole history history of the Republic have we ever been cajoled to amend the U.S. Constitution in order to gratify the ambition of one single solitary man?

Is this a good thing?

No of course not.
The Statue of Liberty sez "Give me your poor and your tired...etc etc etc." It does not go on to assert "And in return we will turn over power to the first wealthy steroidal princeling we can find!"

It comes as no surprise that the above organization is based in Silicon Valley. Where else in America can money, naivete', and raw political autism get together in a hellish menage a trois?

Humble Elias is ever a realist, more than likely this god-awful proposal will pass, it is in so many ways a time for Bad Ideas to mount up and ride here in America.


Sick
Demented
Typical

its also ironic when...

Governor Mitt Romney that grinning Dilettante starts bleating feebly about the need to hire bigger and better experts to solve some appalling problem.
Case in point; today Decaf called for the resignation of Turnpike Authority Chairman Matthew Amorello following revelations that the Big Dig is leaking like the RMS Titanic.
Kolob wants an "experienced" engineer to take over the sinecure....Humble Elias knows the feeling, we could use an experienced statesman taking over as governor too.
:)
Well...somebody has to take the hit for this botched example of GOP civil engineering and Matthew Amorello was the only credible scapegoat Romney could come up with on the short flight back from Washington DC.

And not fer nuthin' but, didn't Jane "Jingle Money" Swift appoint Amorello to the Turnpike Authority specifically because he was a State Senator and might be able to keep the legislature on board as Bechtel milked the Commonwealth like a sick cow?

Suddenly, Amorello is part of that corrupt Beacon Hill Milieu that Mitt wants to replace with computers or standardized tests or some god-damned thing.

So Romney is off on another one of his increasingly irrational personal jihads. All premised on the the entirely lunatic notion that the removal of just one more high profile timeserver will somehow usher in the reign of the Godly in the Commonwealth.
Mitt went after Finneran and Bulger in this obsessive fashion and now he down to chasing a perfectly colorless GOP hack like Amorello.

Thus Romney cries out like Job for an expert to save us all...yes indeed an expert who will roll over for Bechtel's shoddy workmanship in a prim businesslike technocratic fashion.

The problem doesn't lie in persons it comes out of a lack of vigilance incurred from having four governors in succession in ten years. Nobody has been watching the store because Weld, Cellucci, Swift, and Romney have all been either angling for re-election at any cost or looking around desperately for a new job.


One thing is for sure, Mitt isn't giving up his perpetual campaign mode...at this point its the only thing he has left.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

It is ironic to note...

That on the very day that Arafat’s unquiet corpse is shoved neath’ the proverbial clover that the President took time out from getting his ass licked to announce his conversion to Palestinian Nationalism.
Yup….GWB is gonna “ex-pend ca-pit-al” to see to it the Palestinians get their very own state. And believe you and me if anyone can act as midwife to another gruesome middle eastern dictatorship it is George “Mission Accomplished” Bush.
Given the President’s record of do-it-yourself nation building in Iraq Humble Elias advise both the Israelis and Palestinians to come to an agreement soonest. If they think the West Bank is a powder keg now, wait til’ Dick Cheney and Karl Rove start moving the markers around the map.

Kolob Speaks!

Governor Romney, down in Washington today, removed his lips from George Bush's bony ass just long enough to signal two things:

a.) That he is NOT gonna take a job in DC as was rumored both here and elsewhere. Translation: GWB tore up Mitt's resume right in front of Decaf's astonished face. After all George has his laurel crown and second term, what does he need from a grinning chronic masturbator like Mitt Romney?
Poor Decaf...wasn't last week supposed to be a big win for him too? How is he gonna get anointed as Bush's heir apparent if he doesn't score for a phony baloney job close to the Imperial Throne?? Why the Governor might have to run for re-election in 2006 and take his chances with the electorate!
Is this any way to run an empire?

b.) The Governor also expressed a hilarious degree of shock and dismay at the reports that the Big Dig is leaking like a depth charged U-Boat. Fourteen years of steady business like republican management, fourteen billion dollars, and the patronage of a GOPolitically current construction firm has yielded up what is best described as a "semi waterproof" tunnel. Mitt ought to have known better than to trust those greedy bastards at Bechtel...I mean didn't he secure election on the notion that "it takes one to know one"?

Honestly, Massachusetts is fast becoming one of the worst run states in the Union...a gruesome race we are currently running with Texas and ironically enough Ohio.
Can't imagine how Mitt is gonna deal with all this...maybe he can put the blame on Whitey Bulger or John Kerry's huge local turn out last week.
Whatever it is, it will be an interesting and suggestive excuse.

But at the end of the day...

The guys who really lost out on Phat Tuesday are the Viet Nam veterans. I mean, think about it. McCain, Gore, and Kerry all went and served with varying degrees of distinction only to suffer all kinds of accusations on the campaign trail from lunacy to cowardice. As a nation we have cut these guys dead again and that is a god damned shame.
Truly it seems that the only vets whose “service” will ever be honored from that era are the George Bushs and Bill Clintons. Apparently it is okay to play fast and loose with your draft status in a deeply unpopular war….and that little factoid seems to cut beautifully across party lines.
Sadly the number one prerequisite to running for President in 2008 (assuming indeed we even have quaint folk rituals like elections by then) will be a decorous lack of service in Viet Nam.
Power may well skip an entire generation in American life as a result of this.
Some folks out there may read that and think that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s hour has struck. Alas, Hillary is all the Viet Nam war symbolism rolled up into one figure for vast increments of U.S. voters. She is too divisive a politician no matter how pure her intentions. What is maddening is that most of her divisiveness is imposed from without. That having been said does anyone out there think she can get a fair hearing in the South Carolina Primary?
Anyway she is gonna have her hands full fending off the usual freeper shitstorm come 2006 wherein billions will be spent to prevent her re-election. Humble Elias is guessing her alleged appetite for higher office will be dulled somewhat when all is said and done.
Besides, nepotism is a sign of an aging confused republic…we ought to turn our backs on it soonest.
So we need someone new. We also need a revolution in public values but there is little hope for either item as of 4:24pm EST 11-10-04.

Unintended hilarity from the Yahoo News Summary....

The following headline can be seen there today:

"Governor Jeb Bush not eying presidential run".

Apparently Jeb has discovered that his brother has no intention of leaving office in 2009 as scheduled. I mean why do all that fundraising if Brother George is gonna assume a laurel crown and sceptre?

Its a little like John Ashcroft's rumored resignation as AG.
Why wouldn't he leave?
Ashcroft has trashed the constitution beyond hope of repair and may now retire to "Shrieking Anachronism" Missouri to resume hymn singing in peace.
:)
Of course, Jeb could still become a Prince-successor a'la one of the Bonapartes, unless of course GWB opts to do like the Emperor Galba and "adopt" some sociopathic himbo like Rick Santorum as his "son and imperial heir".

:)

Whither Mitt?

Has our flirtation with the Kolobian Viceroy entered its imperial twilight already?

His apologists will assert that Romney is with us through 2006 come heck or whatever, but the signs and auspices arent’ good….Mitt may be packing his bags already.
The question is, just HOW will Governor Romney evade his promise to serve out his gubernatorial term? He publicly pledged as much back in campaign 2002.
However there are glittering vistas a-beckoning now on the banks of the Potomac and with a hundred odd “Team Reform” mendicants clogging up his waiting room why wouldn’t Romney go? And then there is the final fate of that stern Granite State Reformer Craig Benson to consider….
Lets face it Romney has been an expensive flop as Governor. His dilettantish governing style has yielded up exactly nothing in the way of accomplishments. As a politician Mitt is so equivocal and inept he couldn’t even make a go of it in the GOP’s “moderate racket”…a profitable and easy sinecure for torpid marks from Lincoln Chaffee to Arlen Specter. (SP) Suddenly Jane “Jingle Money” Swift is starting to look mighty stateswoman-like by comparison…at least she pretended to govern in the public interest.
My guess is, Mitt wants out so he can spend the next four years making everyone forget he was ever Governor of Massachusetts…an unpopular pariah state a’la Israel these days. Frankly his sole hope in the New Hampshire primary at this point is to run on a “eject Massachusetts from the Federal Union” platform. That might get him through to the South Carolina primary before Jeb Bush’s whiteshirts finally beat his ass down once and for all.
Given that I have no doubt that Romney is angling for the Homeland Security portfolio. This is naught but a cruel joke though, a smarmy venture capitalist with no talent for state governance is now somehow supposed to take over the domestic security of the entire nation. Time to start stocking up on k-rations I think. He may not get the job though, in which case Romney may well settle for anything he can get up to and including the Ambassadorship to Argentina.
To do all this, all he must do is break a solemn promise...which is easy enough as Mitt hasn’t delivered on a single one of his campaign promises and he never will.
What is one more or one less to him at this point?
I say let him go.
To paraphrase Oliver Cromwell….he hath tarried too long for the good he hath done and in the bowels of Jesus Christ our savior he must go…god will decide the issue betwixt him and us.

The Politics of Gloating….

There seems to be a lot of gloating going on these days, from Alex Beam’s jolly article in the Boston Globe detailing the perils of emigrating to Canada to Jeff Jacoby’s prim announcement that Phat Tuesday was a victory over something called “Bush hatred”. We have also seen strange headlines on the Yahoo.com news summary celebrating the efficacy of electroshock for the treatment of “depression”. In all, today’s winners make their victory sweeter by flinging outrages upon the defeated.
Losers whine, winners gloat. Both seek to derive some type of emotional gratification from their respective condition. Laughing at one’s victims or those one has beaten in a legitimate contest has a long storied history. The late Lakota Sioux made gloating into a musical art form and happily practiced it over the corpses of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry.
There is something insecure about serious gloating though. Like the victors need to continually convince themselves of something. To my mind it is a signifier of inner timidity or anxiety.
It is significant to recall that Britons openly gloated over Germany’s defeat in 1918. Anyone else out there remember Lloyd George’s hysterical promise to “hang the Kaiser”? A scant fifteen years later though, after a far more difficult and costly victory over Germany, there was precious little gloating to be found in the Churchill’s England. Having mortgaged the empire and the wealth of the nation to hold onto their liberties, there was little else to feel in England except relief and a good portion of foreboding.
Gloating then seems to be a profoundly ahistorical passion. Hard case gloaters live in the moment, they have no sense that their current situation can change for the worst. As for the contemporary situation, the GOP’s tends to overcelebrate its own victories…thinking a few parting cracks over the heads of the dems will keep smooth their own path to glory. It is a fool’s indulgence the passion of the soone to be humbled…for indeed history has made jesters and tattered ones at that of us all.

History does not repeat itself, if it did, then God help us all.

And the sad part is...

that "Kerry in '04" marks the end of any hope that the Commonwealth might play and equal role in national affairs for at least a generation or longer.
The stats speak for themselves...since 1980 we've sent four candidates up to New Hampshire, Kennedy, Dukakis, Tsongas, and Kerry...two got the nod the other two were weeded out in the primaries...all of them lost though.
it is sad to think we live in a second class state but we do....it is worse because all we've really done wrong is to assume that our candidates deserve a fair hearing of their ideas...just like Texas or Wyoming.
Sadly this is not the case, Massachusetts is now as ever a pariah in the Federal Union, proud, alone, and disparaged.
Regionalism, factionalism, and bigoted parochialism are all powerful symbols in any close presidential race. Massachusetts just can't overcome that. Chimes at Midnight urges all earnest well meaning local pols to put aside their White House dreams for good.
They hate us, they just do.

Moreover Kerry's defeat will naught but exacerbate the local tendency to self loathing. One had hopes that between JK and the Red Sox that the Commonwealth might've turned a corner in it's self esteem...sadly this was not to be. I feel bad for Kerry no doubt the same shitstorm that broke over Dukakis when he lost is now headed for Junior Senator. One thing about frustrated liberals, they are not shy about turning on their own.
Nonetheless, there are still important contributions to be made by this Commonwealth, keeping Romney out of the White House being post election project #1 IMHO. I mean, for all you folks out there in the "values community" keep in mind, candidate Romney had three different positions on abortion in just one year's span. If he runs in 2008, he'll add a fourth to that list without fail.

Hey, if John can't have it I don't think Mitt should have it either.
:)

Y'know if someone ought to

whomp together a pro-stem cell research ballot initiative in Massachusetts like they just passed in California.
We couldn't pony up the three billion California allocated but i'm sure a nice chunk of change could be found for the research. I mean we are lousy with hospitals and laboratories in this state...who are we to eat California's dust?
This would be a nice thing to have on the ballot for 2006...something to drag folks to the polls and drive up our numbers in the next Governor's race.
Think about it...

Ah mismanagement...

the irony is, Ohio is one of the most grossly misgoverned state's in the union thanks entirely to it's movement conservative leadership. The roads are in disrepair, jobs have fled the state like extras from Godzilla, and urban poverty is at an all time high. These are the malign consequences of sixteen years of activist conservative social experimentation...one of Bill Safire's so called "little laboratories of democracy".
And yet the answer to all these GOP catastrophes is even more mindlessly conservative governance and at the topmost level too.
Ah well....c'est la guerre.

I think New Hampshire is trying to tell us something...

Normally I have little good to say about the Granite State of mind. Their most famous cottage industry, the dreaded New Hampshire primary is naught but a corrupt quadrennial cash cow. Where else but in NH are the voters are coddled and spoiled to an absurd degree for six long months-all broadcast in living color? New Hampshire remains the only state in the union where I got a beer bottle thrown at my head for carrying the wrong political sign in the fall of 1984. So there is some history there sad to say.
However, the locals do seem to prize personal honesty in their elected leaders. This is apparently why Craig Benson former CEO Romney-esque whiz kid technocrat got voted out of office on Tuesday. The man was a stiff, a hackocrat, and a boodler...a friend of the boyz in the back room. I have to admire Craig's speed as he managed in just two short years to flood the state bureaucracy with a regiment of gimps, loafers and laggards. Just for once, New Hampshire decided they'd had enough of "reform" and sent the whole overpaid undertalented rabble flying.
Good for them....the electorate up there has shown uncommon class and discernment.
So we can only hope that Governor Romney will take heed and reflect on the sorry fate of his corporate doppelganger to the north.
Alas this IS The Kolobian Viceroy we are talking about, no doubt, even as I write this, he is desperately trying to shoe-horn the "Magnificent One Hundred and Thirty One" onto the payroll at the Department of Revenue.
Sick
Demented
Typical...

On the other hand...

It wasn’t quite Romney’s Waterloo last night…it was more akin to his “Battle of Leipzig”.
Napoleonic purists will recall that at Leipzig the allies finally demonstrated their ability to best Bonaparte in open combat thus foreshadowing the downfall of the First Empire.
One hundred and thirty odd candidates for the Great and General Court and three million large…and it was like watching the Imperial Guard mount the fabled slopes at La Haye Saint…useless tragic and inevitable. Good grief if this is how he wastes his own money imagine what tomfoolery he indulges with our tax dollars!
Kolob recruited a mighty host of chimps, wimps, gimps, and weirdos and LOST three more seats in the state legislature!
Oh I heard him last night, bravely purring away that this was naught but the offshoot of the Kerry tide in the Bay State. Stuff and nonsense sez Elias, most of those target legislators were campaigning with one hand tied behind their backs; if they weren’t up in NH moving heaven and earth for the national ticket they were off in Ohio doing their all. Romney has yet to see any of these targeted democrats get truly serious and focused on re-election.
Decaf was hinting around that the “next time” they’d do better…there ain’t gonna be a next time because this year’s beat down will scare off anyone with a lick of common sense.
What is worse, Mitt has earned the undying enmity of that much maligned bunch, the democratic majority on Beacon Hill. For years our GOP governors had a “gentleman’s agreement” with the House and Senate, no party building in return for fair consideration of the gubernatorial program. Since these were conservative men in the lege, it was a good arrangement-for them. Romney capriciously busted up that little deal and got no results in the bargain.
Now, I yield to no one when it comes to criticizing our leadership in the state legislature, with one or two exceptions they are a vain, greedy, indolent, sneaky bunch. However they are one and all great believers in the protocols of raw vengeance. I think Mitt is about to find out just how vengeful the democrats can be…it is not gonna be pretty.
Any believing republican in Massachusetts has to be asking themselves one question right now “just whose side is Mitt Romney on”?
He whomped together this polyglot army of candidates, seemingly at the behest of Ed Gillespie (who wanted to tie down our legislators in the Presidential campaign) and proceeded to waste big money and good will to accomplish exactly nothing! The state GOP is three million dollars lighter and shorter by three seats in the legislature. He could’ve chosen his races more carefully, he could’ve run less divisive campaigns, he could’ve done a lot of stuff instead he went right off a cliff singing all the way.
If I were a republican I’d be wondering about the Governor’s basic political saavy or the lack thereof. Supposedly, Kerry’s defeat opens up possibilities in DC for Decaf…far from the scene of his many many mistakes. Is this the kind of judgement we can expect from the next Secretary of Homeland Security?
I do fear for the nation my friends.
Moreover, does anyone out there truly think that Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey can carry the day in 2006 for the increasingly impotent state GOP? I suppose they will hold auditions for some new chump, DA Sullivan or perhaps Boss Christy Mihos will come out from hiding but these are pretty much a bunch of unknowns and second raters. I think the Governor has put the state GOP on the low road to disintegration, they’ve got no bench and no prospects in coming up in the minors.

Times like this...

I reflect on the life and times of the late lamented Senator Paul E. Tsongas.
Poor Paul, I'm perversely glad he didn't live to see how bitterly divided the nation has become.
I remember with the simplest nostalgia working on his Presidential campaign back in 1992.
Ah Paul Tsongas, he was smart, humble, and honest...three deadly strikes against you in the grand presidential reckoning.
***
I'd train in to headquarters downtown and perform menial intellectual tasks in the campaign's issue's office.
Nothing important really...but it was reasonably necessary work.
However when the big hammer came down and it all went to smash, I couldn't help feeling guilty that I hadn't done more.
Like I hadn't gone door to door for him in Manchester or donated money or organized a phone bank.
So I had regrets you see.
At the time I consoled myself that Paul might again run state wide for office...there were rumors of a gubernatorial run.
Sadly a revival of his cancer took him from us and I was never able to make good on that pledge.
However...with everything that happened yesterday both good and bad (mostly bad I know) I don't have those same regrets with Kerry.
Cause' by Ghod I did work hard for him back when he was twenty five points down in the polls last December and running behind Al Sharpton.
I regret nothing, I did my duty to the uttermost to the last ballot to the last voter.
Other men are responsible for the shameful state of the nation, let the record show that.
Let them be judged for their vanity, dishonesty, and ineptitude.
In time things will turn our way again, much though, will have to be endured until then.
Thank You Senator Kerry, you have made me proud of being a Massachusetts Democrat...which is in my books to be liken unto a King among men.

Alterman speaks for me...

On Eric Alterman's blog Altercation the following entirely sane quote can be found:

"This cannot continue. We need a democratic revival to temper the current religious revival. A sound defeat of George W. Bush at the polls (barring a judicial coup d’etat ) is not enough. We need a reinvigoration of passion, honesty, and élan into our public sphere. We need openness, confidence, and patience."

Indeed Eric we are in desperate need of a little Jacksonian truculence to counter the current junta, composed as it is of preachers and screechers, the dumb, the proud, and the mean.
I wish John Kerry well tomorrow, if there is justice, luck, or a pure spirit of vengeance in Heaven Above then he will win. If he loses so be it, this blog and millions of like minded citizens will simply go on piling the up the bodies on the battlements. We have no other choice, failure is not an option.
Nevertheless, if Kerry does win, it will be a sweet thing indeed. in my life I doubt I will ever again ride a candidate from out the Commonwealth through the primaries to the nomination and thence to the White House.

So for God's sake let us go forward tomorrow no matter what the cost...and if all else fails let us resolve to"die on our feet".

Put every gun to them sir...

Last week that laughing young senescence, Jeff Jacoby, put forth the entirely Trotskyite notion that George Bush is a “revolutionary candidate”. With one critical difference, instead of Lev Bronstein’s concept of permanent global revolution, Bush favors permanent global military pre-emption. This is of course, entirely true…Bush IS a revolutionary candidate and that also the big problem with him. He may start all sorts of pleasing wars abroad, but he is also hell bent on resurrecting the dear dead days of William B. McKinley.
As far as Jeff Jacoby was concerned, this made John Kerry the candidate of “reaction” espousing a foreign policy based on bourgeois facts and precedents. For now in our newspeak political lexicon “reaction” is somehow equated with that heretical “reality based community” that the President so ardently disparages.
Poor Jeff…he barks he snarls and makes all sorts of threatening yawlps…but he’ll never scare anyone no matter how much noise he makes.
I can’t quite figure out why…he is completely in tune with the GOP’s reactionary-socialist economic program and a proud screamer of poor mouth platitudes on the cultural front. When he isn’t whining about taxes he is crying out for his own conservative victimhood. This is pretty much the same bilge as all the rightical chic columnistas out there…but for some reason it just doesn’t come off when Jeff does it.
He is lacking somewhere…like a celebrated high school science nerd who tries on a leather jacket and tries to come on like James Dean.
He has tried calling John Kerry a reactionary kulak, a foulmouthed guttersnipe, a elitist and yesterday Jeff was reduced to calling him “indecisive”.
Whenever one of these conservative junkers starts up with that “indecisive” crap you can be sure that they’ve run out of invective since they’ve been dumping that epithet on every democrat in the running since Alton B. Parker.

I think Jeff needs to go on a long vacation soonest. He looks silly in that leather bomber jacket waving the red flag of revolution.

Homage to Catatonia...

A strange lassitude has stolen over the Commonwealth.
The houses are all lit up in garish purple and noxious blue...there isn't a silent television within a hundred miles.
Outside the Earth's shadow has swallowed the moon turning that marvel in the dark blood red.
It would seem no one has seen this save humble Elias.
Meanwhile we might be just may be in the last hour of the fabled Curse of the Bambino...at the moment the score is Saint Louis squat, Red Sox three.
In an hour this town may well go up like Mount Saint Helens.
In an hour the moon will stop bleeding.
It is also an hour upon which to reflect that even the most ancient injustices come to judgement.
Health to the Sox.

News Flash...

Yahoo News sez Arnold Schwarzenegger will be campaigning with George Bush in Ohio.
What a laff riot!
Finally the citizenry of Ohio can get to see Arnie's god awful orange pancake make up in an intimate setting. They may even catch a glimpse of his plastic surgery scars if the Governor' stylist does a rushed job.
Anything to look like a vigorous man of forty.
Oh what a spectacle Ohio has on it's doorstep...
Up and down the valley he will trudge grunting those taunts he made famous in the movies in that cartoonish accent of his.
I have one question though, shouldn't the screenwriters who WROTE those taunts at least ask for residuals since Arnie is improperly transfering copywritten material to another medium?
I mean you have to admit, Arnie doesn't have a lot of original material to work with...

Quote for the day....

"Never was the world worldlier,never was it emptier of love and goodness...Everything, modern art and science included, prepares us for the coming barbarism. Everything on Earth will be decided by the crudest and most evil powers, by the selfishness of grasping men and military dictators."

Friedrich Nietzsche, "Thoughts Out of Season" 1873.

Just wanna say...

that I was wrong about the Boston Police Patrolman's Association. They endorsed John Kerry for President this week citing his record of crimefighting.
So I was wrong, I (and many others) had in our heads that the B.P.P.A. was picketing the DNC to specifically embarrass Kerry's candidacy. However this quid-pro-quo has proven me wrong, Kerry respected the picket line and was well served in return.
What can I say? The B.P.P.A. has carried water for the GOP in the past...but not this time.
Thanks guys....and here is hopin'.

Now we know....

why our troops in Iraq only get one meal a day (the rest they have to pay for), must scrounge for ammunition, must purchase their own kevlar, and strip dead insurgents of their AK-47s....cause' our fearelessly truculent President told the Reverend Pat Robertson there would be "no casualties" in the Iraq invasion.
Iraq Viceroy General Sanchez has put the whole logistical catastrophe down on paper. Did Bush listen? he did not, apparently all George listens to these days are those wondrous wafting voices that promise him limitless victory soonest sans worry or woe.
Bush is strong on defense? The HELL he is! What kind of a warlord doesn't allocate enough arms, ammunition, and troops for his own misbegotten fantasy of invasion??
The whole mess reminds me of Mussolini sending flower of Italian manhood off to a winter attack on Greece wearing cardboard lined boots and armed with dilapidated pre-world war one rifles. Which is not to compare Bush with Il Duce, don't infer that...Mussolini had a better sense of style and was by all accounts a better pilot and linguist than our famously incurious President.
:)
Well, we have one advantage over the wartime Italians, we can call it quits with our Leader sans recourse to mob rule.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

The scumbag's marathon...

Geez that Joan Vennochi sure is a nasty old bint isn’t she?
In her column today she scorns the Kerry campaign for taking “the low road” in the last debate by bringing up Mary Cheney’s lesbianism.
Ostensibly this was dressed up as polemic against the use of gutter tactics on the campaign trail, in fact though this was yet another screed aimed at her bete noir, Senator John Forbes Kerry.
Ah but Joan’s righteous anger knows no bounds…please consider this furious gem;
“Go ahead liberals, start howling; What is worse you say, refusing to admit you were wrong to invade Iraq or refusing to admit you were wrong to invade the Cheney family’s privacy?”

Jesus Christ, Joanie doesn’t hate the abased state of presidential campaigning, she hates it when democrats and liberals fight back. This confuses her, Joan is used to liberals as easy prey for the conservative ascendancy. Thus in desperation Joanie conflates our fatal misadventure in Iraq with Mary Cheney’s privacy…I mean didn’t Dick out her in the 200 debate with Lieberman?
Never mind, when liberals fight back that somehow is a sign of bad faith in Vennochiworld.
Picture this, a prize fight ring in which George Bush has climbed in armed with a sawed off shotgun and a brace of pistols, his opponent the Junior Senator from Massachusetts face him armed with his trusty six shooter.
Meanwhile right there at ringside is Joan Vennochi screaming “Kerry is cheating!”

Ghod forget about liberals howling, Vennochi has clearly entered a very sick and scary fugue state as election draweth near.


Poor Joanie, she can’t wait to write John Kerry’s political obituary, and the candidate keeps disappointing her. This causes her intense psychic pain as the only way she can get her ticket punched as a op-ed solon in Boston to tear someone down.
You just know she, McGrory, and Lehigh all have updated “the death of liberalism, the end of the Kerry crusade” eulogies on their hard-drives since last December.
One of the many good reasons to vote for Kerry is to prove these proud bastards wrong and rub their noses in it for a change.
So think on that gentle readers.