Tuesday, November 30, 2004

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…


Monday, November 29, 2004

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!


Friday, November 26, 2004

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.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

"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.

Sunday, November 21, 2004

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…

Friday, November 19, 2004

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…

Thursday, November 18, 2004

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.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

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.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

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?

Monday, November 15, 2004

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.

Sunday, November 14, 2004

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

Saturday, November 13, 2004

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...

Friday, November 12, 2004

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.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

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.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

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.

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

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".

:)

Monday, November 08, 2004

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.

Sunday, November 07, 2004

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.

Saturday, November 06, 2004

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.
:)

Friday, November 05, 2004

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.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

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...

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

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.

Monday, November 01, 2004

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".