Are pot-holes an impeachable offense?

Whilst governor Romney soars over our heads, eager to laugh it up at the expense of his allegedly beloved Commonwealth, the roads in Massachusetts continue to deteriorate. Unwary drivers run a pretty little gauntlet just before exit 52A on Route 2 westbound. Totten Pond Road in Waltham is a shuddery patched mess, Lexington Street is riddled with nasty little chugholes with a nice collection of craters sprouitn right across the street from the Star Market. Suffolk Street in Medford sports a nice collection of crevasses, the envy of Norway's Fjords.
You get the picture? Have your springs,struts, and shocks checked, no doubt Romney's numberless holes are doing a fine job keeping your local auto body shop in business.
Why would any outside investors wanna locate new business in Massachusetts given Romney's verbal disdain for the state? Moreover, one can SEE his contempt in the deplorable and wasted condition of our public roads. I say ditch Mitt, and elect someone who will spring for some damn asphalt!

Michael Medved was on the

"Eternal Word Television Network" last night, pissing and moaning because the "Passion of the Christ" was overlooked for Oscar kudos this year.
Well shit Michael, so was "Citizen Kane", ditto "Jaws". For that fact, a lot of blood soaked fear-fests get cut dead at Oscartime, the Academy is notoriously cool to horror films.
Whiny as ever, Michael insisted that the "snub" symbolized Hollywood's dislike of revealed religion or some such boilerplate twaddle like that. Medved was also up in arms about the alleged sympathetic depiction of assisted suicide in "Million Dollar Babies". He got a good ten minutes out of this topic, tinseltown's beloved "Culture of Death".
Good grief but Michael Medved is a fatuous flabby little rat! Is there any doubt he was the biggest smarmiest snitch in his High School?

Nothing else to say except he looked terrible in this appearance, pasty faced, squinty eyed, and his skin was cracked and looked like weathered papyrus. Either Michael has been easing the lonely pain of the American Conservative toady with oxycontin or else EWTN nneds to hire better lighting technicians and make up artists.
Since I am a humane polemicist, I'm going with the latter explanation at least until an indictment is unsealed.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Mitt goes Mental...

A few days ago, I speculated that Romney’s chief problem was stupidity-the sort of stupidity that chronically afflicts inexperienced amateur politicians.
Now however, having read the many many quotes from his latest out of state speeches I’m wondering if Mitt isn’t simply stark raving crazy?
Consider this ominous howler from his South Carolina oration “Every child has a RIGHT to a father and mother”.
A right? Like a constitutional right? Nowhere in the State or Federal Bill of Rights is a right to a father or mother anywhere established. What next a right to brothers, sisters, a white picket fence, and a tire swing in the backyard?
Good Ghod is this yap gonna try to outlaw divorce in the Commonwealth? Retroactively repeal trial separations etc? Force divorcees to move back in with each other? Just what the hell is this lunatic talking about???
Clearly, running for president, even thinking about running for president has deranged Mitt Romney’s wits. This is a good indication of just how tempermentally unsuited Decaf is for the pressures of the Presidency. if he can’t hold himself in check in front of a few GOP spear carriers, how will he react if there is another major terrorist attack in the USA?
He is exiting the Commonwealth practically on a weekly basis and ranting and raving in a disassociated fashion in front of any collection of wowsers he can throw together.
The man needs a psychiatrist quite frankly.

And there is his grotesque ongoing hatred of Massachusetts, now even the Globe is reporting that Decaf chuckles at these get-togethers when the local witchburners crack ugly on the Commonwealth. If Mitt Romney is so disdainful of Massachusetts and its citizenry then for Ghod’s sake let him resign his position and move to a state whose electorate has his viceregal approval!
And when he gets to this hypothetical state, the inhabitants therein are well advised to meet Willard at the airport with a nicely tailored straitjacket.

Notes to the "Values Racket"

We have just passed through a presidential campaign that heavily emphasized the notion of “values”. Indeed to hear Messr’s Bush and Kerry tell it, nigh on every policy matter is defined and shaped by one’s own personal values.
It follows then, that all contemporary political debates are merely discussions about values. This is where the GOP screws us every time. The praetorian class in America always defines a value as a stark and bilateral choice between good and evil. Since no one rationally choses to do evil in public life, (Unless of course you are Ming the Merciless) the right thinking conservative always chose to do good. Therefore both his motives are good (since they are defined by values) and his policies are good because they too are indicative of the right values.
Since there can never be a real debate between good and evil, the GOP uses the term “values” to a means to stifle discussion. Ghod forbid anyone should have a simple disagreement about politics, no, our differences must always run deep according to the conservative zeitgeist and indeed are articulations of the gulf between right and wrong. This is a perfect catastrophe since our elections are now reduced to the repeated chanting of certain focus-group tested power words.
See how they do it? The drunks, drug fiends, and pervy market worshippers of the GOP pre-rig the debate by using a definition that automatically favors them. This is how a heartfelt man of goodwill like John Kerry gets tarred with brush of indecision and vacillationb (among other things)-because the "values debate" he is forced to participate in is sham from start to finish. The very term favors conservatism by definition.
Back in the 1950’s the term “sincerity” got worked to death by the jurassic spin doctors around Eisenhower and Nixon. In our era, “”values” is rapidly becoming one of those ominous Orwellian terms whose meaning is controlled by the intentions of the user. Frankly I think the term ought to be stricken from the political lexicon, the whole reign of values has done nothing but bring down on us the iron fist of the crudest, ugliest, and greediest bastards in the country.

Romney suddenly wants to spend 600 million large

on a "jobs creation program", apparently he is still getting the Boston Papers out on the hustings and is worried about persistent unemployment in his fiefdom. Preditably, the proposal is the usual mixture of conservative boilerplate: i.e. cuts in the unemployment tax, business tax incentives, a bigger billboards that SHOUT the imperial glory of the Bay State, and of course a cut in unemployment benefits-saw that one coming now didn't you?
The usual policy dreckola, the same old crap from the governor and his smirking staff of smart-alecks and know it alls. Ghod even Decaf's ideas are boring and tattered.

Just once I'd like to see the GOP deal with a pressing economic or social problem without recourse to their favorite universal panacea, the tax cut. Still and all that, the govenor is doing hsi fair share to keep us working, certainly he is keeping the curbside baggage handlers at Logan Airport busy with all his goings and goings and goings.

If only we could quietly move the state without leaving any forwarding address the next time Romney is out sucking up to the wowsers in Utah or Kentucky. Of course that would leave us with Kerry Healey's name on the letterhead, but she has to ask for a hall pass to use the little girl's room so lets not worry about her shall we?

Gravitas?

I’m beginning to think that Mitt Romney’s real problem is that he is just plain dumb. Consider, even after three full years of public life Romney cannot get the hang of the GOP’s “moderate racket” the easiest best paying sinecure in modern politics. In return for posing no threat to the internal dominance of the praetorian class in the GOP, a canny republican moderate can grab off committee chairmanships in congress and make excellent money as cable chat show talking head. Sheer dopes like Senator Lincoln Chaffee and utter laggards like Senator Arlen Specter can do the classic “moderate shuffle” in their sleep for ghod’s sake. Romney however, is perfectly hopeless, every time he opens his mouth about some burning social issue he sounds like a poor pathetic passage aggressive nerd.
In the last week alone we have discovered that Governor Romney is against gay marriage and partner benefits except where cirumstances force him to favor civil unions. Thanks to his speech in South Carolina on monday we now know that Mitt becomes a unswerving opponent of abortion whenever he crosses the state line on an outbound flight. In truth the Governor has been both for and against abortion in rapid and bewildering succession depending on whats at stake and where he is located in the continental U.S.A. Lastly his stem cell research policy, is naught but embarassingly incoherent buncombe.
A true blue GOP moderate, would excuse these equivocations and evasions as the natural consequences of charting the middle course and go back to playing the grinning toadying token without a qualm. Yet for all that, Mitt is collecting few kudos for his alleged moderation. Probably because moderation is nothing but a sham and a pose in the GOP and so therefore it harms Romney’s Presidential prospects to have too moderate an image.

On the other hand, if Mitt was a mainstream conservative he’d simpy, denounce all homosexuals, abortions, and cloned embryos and then retire to his office to await the usual plaudits from Scot Lehigh for his devotion to principle. This stance would at least get him some traction in Iowa and New Hampshire, it is a formula for impotence on Beacon Hill, but the long term benefits are easy to see.
Then why all the ifs ands and buts?? Easy, Mitt still has to get re-elected and being an inexperienced amateur politician he making the sort of mistakes that common to a county commissioner in their first term. Alas poor Willard, his compuslive need to sound off on everything gets him not credit either as squish or a neanderthal-something that must bug him assuming he is smart enough to recognize his own damn foolishness.
Frankly, the man is a amateur and it really shows at times like this. All his sinister reptilian aides and sycophants cannot do anything else with him, Romney just lacks the requisite grand political instincts. Mitt’s dad George Romney the former Governor of Michigan was dopey like this too. He ran his mouth off about Viet Nam and was out of the running for President before a single vote was cast in 1968. A more seasoned Governor, a Dukakis or a Sargent, would have stayed out of South Carolina and the seductions of out of state wowsers until they had their own ducks in a row.
Not Mitt, every time he opens his mouth his lack of gravitas becomes more and more apparent.

Romney hates Massachusetts (in South Carolina at least)

Under the “other skills” section of his resume, do you suppose Mitt Romney lists “brazen toady”?
His speech to the Spartanburg County SC GOP was incomparably worse than anyone could imagine, full of groveling and shameless ass-licking of the lowest variety.
He also took the Commonwealth to task for legalizing gay marriage and embryo cloning for use in stem cell research. My Ghod, if he has such a low opinion of the Bay State then why in hell is he so desperate to be re-elected as governor???
We suffer from a pathological lack of pride in Massachusetts, and the toadying self loathing likes of Willard Mitt Romney is the inevitable result. We think the state legislature is full of crooks, the judiciary is full of kooks, and so therefore why SHOULDN’T the governorship belong to an inept and greedy amateur?
From the looks of his speech monday, Decaf is quite literally running against the Commonwealth itself next year. The Viceroy is always at his best when he is being insufferably haughty and derisive, his hatred of Massachusetts and his compulsive need to brown nose out of state wowsers could not be clearer. Of course, his audience ate it up, indeed there nothing more entertaining for republicans that are drunk on triumphalism to watch a grown man grovel like a well whipped dog.
Rick Betram, the local GOP chair made an ugly comment about the cost of the Big Dig and Mitt sat there like a house broken poodle saying just exactly nothing. Beltram also offered to help Mitt turn Massachusetts into a Red State...insults and bitchy remarks being somehow the first step.
Geez, I wonder how much of my tax dollars have been flushed away on agricultural subsidies for marginal farmers in South Carolina? Probably billions now over my forty year life span to date. Not to mention the gujillions in federal taxpayer dollars that S.C. has grabbed off for roads and highways.
And still Mitt sat there, laughing no doubt at every insult flung at the Commonwealth, he allegedly represents. Well, I’m sure monday’s appearance went off without a hitch, but if the GOP is looking for a hero in 2008, then they’d better pass Mitt over. The man is utterly spineless in every way.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

On the discipline of kids:

"Children are like TV sets. When they start acting weird, whack them across the eyes with a big rubber basketball shoe".

Hunter S. Thompson, April 21st 1986

Hunter Thompson R.I.P.

Word came late last night from out Woody Creek Colorado, that journalist Hunter S. Thompson, authoring of "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972" had taken his own life at age sixty seven.
If Thompson had a literary heritage it included the likes of H.L. Mencken and Ambrose Bierce all fiercely opinionated men known for their satiric writing. Satire of course, is the roughest literary trade, the life expectancy of the skilled practioner is always unmercifully short. The Emperor Nero considered the tortured death screams of Roman satirists to be a form of sweet music to his educated ear. The Japanese used to shove satirists into the cockpits of Kamikaze planes at the drop of a hat. Ripe corn grows over the graves of satirists in Siberia.
Melancholy is therefore the occupational hazard of the breed. Ambrose Bierce having burned down the USA and Hearst newspaper chain, mounted a donkey and road off into the Mexican hills never to return, Mencken laid around Baltimore as a stroke victim for six years wishing for death. Truly and sadly, Dr. Thompson lived up to the expectations of his illustrious lineage.
Humble Elias remembers with the simplest nostalgia, Thompson's mid-1980's column for the San Francisco Examiner, one essay on child rearing "The Pro-Flogging View" remains particularly fresh even after all these years.
He will be missed.

Missionary Mitt

Speaks to the GOP in South Carolina tomorrow. Glib, indecisive, yet servile, Romney ought to be a hit. Hell he bribed enough of the locals with campaign contributions that has to count for something! Yeah he ought to be a hit, but Humble Elias has his doubts.
After all, does anyone in the conservacracy really think Romney can deliver his home state in a head to head match up with a competent democrat? Let alone delivering any big electoral states in the Northeast? And if he can’t do that, why nominate him?
There are more safely conservative candidates from more advantageous regions in the offing, what does Romney really offer? Today’s GOP electoral map regards the east as enemy territory, how are the Norquists and Roves of the GOP supposed to fire up the base with a Bay State wanker like Mitt at the top of the ticket?
Nonetheless, it’ll be a grand effusion from the Man from Utah, Romney will paint himself a lone bulwark against the crazed radicals of the state legislature. This is of course, something he has NEVER been, the house and senate had his number practically from the git-go, they govern the Commonwealth with little seeming recourse to Romney. Moreover He hasn’t done damn thing in three long barren years of office despite loud press releases touting auto insurance reform, universal health care, and tax cuts to name but a few of his empty promises. However the wowsers of South Carolina don’t know from nuthin’ when it comes to his record…so Mitt is safe for the moment.
Still and all that, Mitt Romney will be a tough sell down south when the time comes his four separate positions on abortion have to back to haunt him at some point. Let us not forget his stem cell research policy is an utterly indecipherable straddle. Frankly, his only hope on that count is that the normally science adverse GOP simply avoid the topic entirely.

The Ward Churchill Affair

Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder has been quoted as stating in regards to the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center; “if there is a better, more effective way, to or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty on the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it”.
No doubt about it, Ward Churchill, professor of ethnic studies, is a grotesque yammering yap. There is something akin to senility that creeps over some people when they achieve academic tenure, they think themselves invulnerable and therefore spew out the most appalling things without let or hindrance.
Humble Elias can assure his gentle readers that he heard plenty of similar nonsense when he was both an undergraduate and graduate student, Churchill’s bluster pales into insignificance on at least one occasion long long ago. Predictably, the Hannity’s and O’Reilly’s have got their potatoes in a uproar calling on UC Boulder to fire Churchill with all due expedition.
Its hard to defend someone so heedless of consequences, so we will simply confine ourselves to defense of free speech even on behalf of yaps.
Let us remember though, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell didn’t lose their jobs when they said “America had it coming” on 9-12-2001. For that fact Mitt Romney sis still gainfully employed despite publicly listing terrorism and gay marriage as two grave threats to the United States. All grotesque demagogic bilge, but only Churchill seems to be in any danger of suffering the consequences for his palaver.
Are we then to have a speech code enforced by the diresome likes of O”Reilly and Laura Ingraham? If Churchill is beyond the pale, then so are Pat, Jerry, and Mitt. Alas America is a land where grotesque blowhards run amok twenty-four seven, it seems too late in the process to start making exceptions now. Not that any of that logic means a heck uh durn to Hannity etc, they see an opportunity and they’ll take it free speech or no free speech.

Ave Caesar Morituri Te Salutant

Ave Caesar Morituri Te Salutant

The Boston Globe reports that The New Praetorian Class gathered in open session down in DC yesterday to hear Karl Rove promise them all a future bright with pride, passion, patriotism, and power.
The usual suspects gathered at the Ronald Reagan Building to hear the likes of Kayne Robinson of the NRA denounce “Snobs from Boston who are contemptuous of Sioux City”. Liberal media (broadly defined as an news agency not owned by Richard Mellon Scaife or Rupert Murdoch) was condemned and the democratic party’s fall (along with the end of the two party system in the US) was prophesied.
Classical political theory describes modern democracy as eternal competition between various elite groups whose range of action is constrained by the strong rule of law. These elites are reasonably porous to the talented and sufficiently servile. Moreover in the US at least, the rule of law and the federalist system constrain elite competition preventing any one group from achieving an unwonted supremacy.
Then came Karl Rove who apparently got dissed by some long hairs at an impressionable age and has spent every waking hour since then scheming to make the GOP the one true Vanguard Party of the USA. And what the hell he may succeed. For he has acted as midwife to a New Praetorian Class in this country, composed of rich sociopaths, radio demagogues, corrupt “journalists”, intellectual servitors, religious hysterics, and niche issue fanatics. All of whom are banking on a very radical future for us all.
It truly does not matter that Karl’s goals seem crazy to any sensible person, he couldn’t care less what common sense dictates. These are feeling people, ruled by their emotions much as the Abbie Hoffman’s Yippies were ruled by impulse and passions. And their main emotion right now is one of ugly triumphalism and a revolutionary sense of grievance against the last one hundred years of progress in the USA. There are those who say they’ll never achieve their agenda, that it is crazy and will self destruct. The fact of the matter is, the New Praetorian Class thinks otherwise and is banking on creating what amounts to a one-party that matters style banana republic by 2016.
The question then becomes, can we simply trust that history will stop them or that a “sensible” republican like John McCain will somehow gain control of the New Praetorian Class? History IS a great punisher or hubris but that schedule is perfectlyt inscrutable. As for hoping for some great white moderate to ride in and save the day, keep in mind the praetorians have been jacking up moderates for years, they control the GOP’s nomination process and will no doubt back an even more extreme candidate for President when the time comes.
Humble Elias gives them credit though, they are perfectly upfront about the mayhem they advocate.
Now what?
Knowledge of their intentions we have? Now it is a question of what actions are going to be taken?

Congress is meshugga...

It goes without saying that the United States House of Representatives is controlled by corrupt ideologues. It is a nest of thieves and wowsers, fat, stupid, mean, and prideful.
They are sneaking around trying to sell off the social security system to their well heeled backers on grounds that this is a blow for "small government" and an "ownership society" (a very Orwellian term no?). Yet at the same time these same zealous small government advocates in congress are criminalizing free speech by raising fines on broadcast obscenity to unprecedented heights.
So, government may shrink in one area but will grow twice as intrusive in yet another. In short they are saving the nation from both solvency and nipples. Sadly this has been the contradictory ideology of the GOP for many years now, few within it's ranks seem to sense its inherent hypocrisy. You can get away with this kind of double standard when you have a messianic sense of destiny, no shame, and most importantly power.
Thanks to this kind of thinking, the bankrupt starving retirees of 2035 need not fear a glimpse of Janet Jackson's withered wooden teat.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

A short idyll from Lyndon Baines Johnson

"Ah jus' wish we had as good a chance for rain down home as yew have here. We have been cakin' our old cows all summer, and we are almost out of pears down there".

President Johnson, September 25th 1964
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma.

PS the Romney is a Fraud blog goes apesh*t on Decaf's alleged stem cell research policy today. Check it out, the whole thing is finally untangled.

Apropos of just exactly nothing...

but despite being preposterously inbred, the British Royal family is also appallingly long-tailed. Guess that mad genetic cocktail that makes up their Elite DNA piles on the vapidity and other inherited woes but comes with a lifetime warranty as compensation. Elizabeth II is what seventy eight years old, she can go on for at least another decade sans slacking off one bit.
Her mother lived to a one hundred and two and allegedly had a tipple of gin every night before bedtime without failure.
If this keeps up, Prince Charles, (PoW, the Prince of Wales) may well grab off the throne well into his own dotage.

Predictable...

Joan Vennochi excoriates AG Tom Reilly for “flip-flopping” on the issue of gay marriage. Tom was agin’ it now he is tolerant of the notion if the lege and the people are fine with it blah blah blah. You get the picture, there is a gay vote in the Commonwealth and Tom would rather not lose it en masse to Patrick, Galvin, or Ben Affleck especially if the primary gets feisty.
If there is one cherished myth that the modern punditariat simply adores, it is the legendary indecisive liberal. Every single democratic presidential candidate from Franklin D. Roosevelt on down to the present day has been accused of being indecisive and weak.
That likewise goes for democratic gubernatorial candidates in the Bay State. Tom changed his mind and the mysteriously embittered Ms. Vennochi pounced-you could’ve set your watch to it. Let us not forget though, that never once has Ms. Vennochi taken time out to untangle Governor Romney’s hopelessly incoherent stem cell research policy. This would be a collection of subrational bromides and asinine assumptions designed more to please Lynchburg Virginia and not Bellingham Massachusetts. You’d think Joan might linger over this in her quest for irresolute statewide politicians.
For that fact, she might also recall that Decaf has had some four different positions on abortion over a short four year period running the gamut from No to Yes and two other heretofore unknown points in between. Well, this IS Mitt Romney we are talking about, he DOES have this inexplicable power over the op-ediots of the Boston Globe.
Humble Elias suspects Romney could run his own mother through a wood-chipper and still garner kudos from Morrissey Boulevard for lying down his own mulch.
Tom Reilly on the other hand could start turning water into wine with a wave of his hand and would be bitterly denounced for promoting public drunkeness by the whole Vennochi-Lehigh crowd.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Has Don Imus had any...

plastic surgery done?
And if he has, will he be be suing his croakers for malpractice? The I-Man suddenly has a waxy yellowish pallor on MSNBC this morning. His turkey wattles have been visibly scrunched down into his lime green turtleneck giving his whole apperance a ghastly undead ambiance.
Mike Wallace was on his show this morning, dispiritedly flogging his interview with alleged steroid gobbler Jose Canseco. Despite the story being a legit scoop for "60 Minutes" Mike sounds like an old beaten man in every way. He knows the whole "Network News" thing is on the high road to annihilation. His rivals are all bloggers and ideologues of all stripes with little objectivity to their credit. Moreover, Mike's legit successors are the timid wretched likes of Brian Williams.
Humble Elias thinks Mike Wallace can hear the opening bars of the "Gotterdammerung" quite clearly.

This year marks the...

Centenary of that ideologist unto the sophomores, Ayn Rand. Like all great pseudo-theoreticians of the 20th century, Rand had no discernible sense of humor and a monomaniacal sense of personal destiny. Really honestly, she was MADE for the American market in that respect. An embittered refugee from Lenin’s USSR, Rand was the first true “counter-marxist” creating a creed she thought was sufficiently potent to supplant sub-rational marxism-leninism.
What she came up with was called “objectivism” a mish-mash of atheism, market-worship, greed, and quaint 19th century Wagnerian elitism. Thanks to it’s religious skepticism and elitist pretensions, objectivism is just bohemian enough to attract a large following among the autistic and software engineers. Otherwise its a standard counter-marxist cult whose insistant atheism parallels Leninism in some respects.
Objectivists are inexplicably haughty in a EST-like fashion. They think they are “on to something” the serfs just don’t get. Their chronic posturing reaches such an absurd degree one wonders why they bother with politics and political theory at all?
Greed, oligarchy, the secular veneration of the late Ayn Rand, and atheism just isn’t a program destined for mass popularity in America when you think about it. Very little of their ideology contains any discernible public good at all. Somehow shrinking government down to the size of a postage stamp and handing power to a tiny cadre of super intelligent individualists is somehow supposed improve the lives of the masses in some vague indefinite fashion. Clearly for all their revolt against modernity, objectivism is still paradoxically stuck on Jeremy Bentham’s great-good-for-the-greatest-number doctrine.
However, their hyper-libertarian ethos does contain a strong element of personal self transformation. Hard core objectivists regularly write long toadying articles about how that one book by Ms. Rand changed their whole world view at age fourteen. Allegedly, just reading one of Ayn’s unbelievably turgid novels (“Atlas Shrugged” “The Fountainhead”) is enough to turn your life around much akin to being smacked in the face by Jesus’ own personal shovel. They ought to reconfigure the whole mishaugas as a personal self help dogma. Communism and Fascism both required a political context in which to function, but Rand’s objectivism is little more than a humorless self improvement program a’la Dale Carnegie.

Otherwise the only use one has for her long obtuse novels is as a brickbat to toss at your little sister when she takes to filching your comics.

Happy Birthday Ms. Rand. Too bad the cigarettes got you, too bad you couldn’t credit the surgeon general’s report as anything else but bureaucratic snoopery of the worst kind.

Ross Terrill: A Political Strife...

Yowza, who knew that Ross Terrill was a freeper?
Or that all the world’s problems are caused by irresolute liberals?
Or that (John) “Kerry has not approved a major projection of American military power abroad since Vietnam”?
(Note to the Globe’s Ombudsman, didn’t Senator Kerry formally “approve” the Iraq War Resolution? Do those guys even CHECK woozy screeds like this anymore? )
Yipes, until now, Humble Elias just knew Terrill through his biographies of Mao and his wife Jiang Jing. Clearly though, his inner freeper though has come through roaring on today’s op-ed page of the Boston Globe. For such an erudite man, though it is a crude cliché ridden exercise in rightical chic polemics-hardly worthy of even the famously undiscriminating Dartmouth Review.
Back in the 1970’s former Treasury Secretary William Simon set out to create a counter-Marxist political culture in the USA via think tanks, subsidies, political action groups etc. Hence counter-Marxist politics have over time become the norm on the so called “new right”. These are people who hated communism so much they became shrill conspiratorial ideologues of the worst type. Mr. Terrill is well within this tradition with howlers like this “Not so to a left whose eyes bulge with self-entitlement and whose pale hand is estranged from physical labor.”
“Estranged from physical labor” Good God Lavrenty P. Beria couldn’t have put it better! Either the whole of the American Right has gone Bolshevik, or else studying the Chinese Communist Party has unhinged Ross Terrill’s wits such that he is now writing like a grey bearded Stalinist.
Stylistically, there is not much that separates Stalin’s Comintern with Grover Norquist’s Wednesday Group. The old time communist and today’s freeper shares one goal, the destruction of liberalism as the prerequisite to a glittering vista of total power. Given the degraded nature of modern US conservatism with it’s big intrusive government, record deficits, and arrogant sense of entitlement, nothing much holds the ideology together save their relentless hunt for reactionary Kulaks…er…liberals.

Sick
Demented
Typical!

The Governor's Line...

Can anyone out there make sense of Mitt Romney’s latest stem cell research policy? Apparently we can use fertility clinic leavings, but cloning human embryos for research purposes is a Bozo no-no. They are both the same sources of genetic material, but one is somehow more morally objectionable in the Viceregal eyes.
Nuanced? Incoherent? Or simply pandering to the awesome power of our of state wowsers? You be the judge...Humble Elias can’t figure this out.
Clearly Decaf is still listlessly tacking to the right in anticipation of his presidential apotheosis in 2008. Nonetheless it is a complicated policy to be sold to a famously uncomplicated GOP base. And how is all this mishaugas gonna play in Massachusetts-or does anyone even care anymore in the Governor’s office?
You’d think he’d clam up about rightical chic hot button issues after the drubbing a year’s worth of fag bashing got him at the polls last November. Alas this is Romney we are talking about. Being a amateur politician he must always be crusading and denouncing and firing....God forbid he should merely govern.
Undoubtedly his fearsome staff has got all kinds of polling that justifies his latest revisions and nuances...what else can explain this pallid and unsustainable policy?

Condi's condemnation...

It is appalling to note that Komrade Kim, Supreme Socialist Autocrat of North Korea, is a dyed in the wool member of the "reality based community". What else can explain his perfectly timed of the announcement that North Korea has got the atom bomb? Closemouthed Condi, the U.S. Courtier of State just got done hurling her defiance at Iran and it's alleged nuclear weapons program when Kim that bandy legged bastard shook out his feathers and let out the primal nuclear scream heard round' the world.
Whenever North Korea starts getting its isotopes in a bunch, a strange bumptious senility steals over the Bush Admin. They go from strutting Global State Trooper to a querulous harassed clerk bleating about six power agreements and "consultations". The transformation is both instructive, comical, and frightening.
Kim has the bomb and as usual will play hardball with everyone in sight to keep his shithouse up and running. So far he has done an admirable job of using the alleged warheads to blackmail the world for food and other necessities of life. If he is smart, smart like Castro say, that is all he will do.
Selling one of those sonsabitches to the Young Fanatic (or whoever) is a one way ticket to global catastrophe. Given our low troop levels in South Korea, Kim has to realize any US war plan must include the use of tactical nuclear weapons to forestall an attack by his armies. Still and all that, true pimps are disinclined to cut off the easy money by burning down their own brothels. That much is in our favor-for the moment.
So our best hope on the Korean Peninsula seems to be that we are dealing with a gangster. One that is both rational and corrupt.

The Night of the Long Plow Blades...

Whenever the going gets tough, a nervous “Captain Queeg” like quality infects Mitt Romney’s so called leadership. Faced with an accident that injured three students due to an unplowed sidewalk, Mitt fired the Secretary of Conservation and Recreation, Katherine Abbott. Yesterday the Herald discovered that the Governor shook down DCR for 45Gs to pay for a New England Patriots rally. Now the Globe has found out that Katherine Abbott allegedly refused to hire one of Mitt’s many defeated state legislature candidates, one Mary Connaughton. Did she incur Romney’s redoubtable wrath? Who knows? We do know that Pam DiBona, DCR’s chief of staff has been fired as of yesterday.
Can you hear the rattle of the two steel ball-bearings in Decaf’s sweaty shaky palm?
Of course the other hilarious aspect to this capering grotesque, is the notion that Abbott allegedly incurred The Viceregal displeasure by being on a retreat after the latest blizzard. Hell, all Katherine did was follow the dilettantish example set by her boss-whats the problem? Apparently, under the Romney-rules fleeing the state on the slightest pretext is an exclusive gubernatorial right.
And another thing, you can bet the next time the wreckage of “Team Reform 2004” comes around with a job application the appointed pay-triots in the bureaucracy will sit up and take notice! Such is the example set by our chilly puritanical reform minded so called Governor. Wasn’t he elected to put a stop to nonsense like this? Look at the lousy example Romney sets, firing cabinet members whose funds he has pilfered and trying to load up said department with some whiny loser. Talk about creating a culture of entitlement!
Really honestly the value of the governorship of the Commonwealth is degrading daily thanks to Mitt Romney.
He can’t do anything right his amateurism reeks like a dead mackerel. The State Legislature sets all priorities and can pretty much dispatch most of the Massachusett’s important business sans recourse ot the corner office. Meanwhile, Romney fusses, fumes, and seems to be good only for firing HIS FELLOW REPUBLICANS! Frankly the governorship has been systemically reduced to naught but a geographically serendipitous platform from which to seek the presidency.

Sick
Demented
Typical

Item...

He is old, he is hated, he is feared...and he is running for re-election next year.
Dats da word on the street as of Friday night.
It comes as no surprise, he knows no other job and as long as his wits stay keen why leave?

Condi "speaks"...

Closemouthed Condi, the Sphinx of the Potomac, is now touring Europe assuring our allies that invading Iran is not “on the agenda at this point”. Love that passive-aggressive qualifier, “at this point” so quintessentially Condi in all her gruff impotence. Given the Secretary of State’s inability to head off a bad idea and her general air of utter craven spinelessness, London and Paris are well advised to take her pronouncements with a grain of salt.
What else can anyone do? This Administration routinely lies about its intentions with a sneering brazenness. Quite literally if they are saying “we have no plans to invade” you can assume they’ve already penciled in Rick Santorum as Caliph of Tehran.
Think of it, an empire built on the specious notion that democracy can literally impregnate a region, all enacted by a crew of embittered illiberal intellectuals-unheroic and unforgiving, yet animated but a messianic sense of destiny. And ghod help us, Condi is their willing tool, mouthpiece, henchwoman.

Is it too late to move to the Baja?

Meanwhile...

the Globe's op-ed page has entered the awful midwinter doldrums. Scot Lehigh fruitlessly attempts to draw his hero Mitt Romney and Senator Kerry into a fight. Jeff Jacoby recycles his old "Bush-hatred-is-a-ba-ad-thing" rap for the umpteenth time in the past five years.
Humble Elias has his doubts, the Bible rails against "bearing false witness" and suchlike, but it doesn't have much to say good or bad about hating and hatred. Nowhere in the ten commandments does it say "thou shalt not hate"...let alone "thou shalt love with all your heart the delights of Jeff Jacoby's paltry life".
On the other hand, the Bible does explicitly decry pagan idolatry and the worship of false Gods. Guven the veneration poured over the President by his followers, is it any wonder that old-timey true believers out there should denounce and defy his curiously un-christian cult of personality?
What is worse Jeff? Bush hatred or Bush idolatry?

Petulant, insincere, bored,

and obnoxious (tingedalso with a slight hint of incoherence)...boy love him or hate him George Bush Jr. is just a spellbinding speechmaker isn't he?
:)
Last night's state of the union came across like all the others, full of bromides, mendacity, distortions, poll-tested buncombe...and all delivered in a sneering tone that suggests an overindulged elementary school bully who has grown weary of his own lies.
And that, rhetorically speaking, is a good day for our own boy emperor.

The State of the Union etc...

The President is reading his State of the Union Address to both Houses of Congress tonight. Pity the poor reps and senators who must listen to this cheap, cruel, puerile man as he stumbles through a lifeless text written at a fifth grade level. Dumbing down starts at the top don’cha know.
Meanwhile, we read with the utmost hilarity that the RNC has inserted a fawning courtier into the White House Press Corpse whose job it is to ask abjectly groveling questions of the Commander in Chief. Jeff Gannon is the White House correspondent for “TalonNews.com” an affiliate of GOPUSA.com, itself a web site dedicated to ideological warfare (a’la the Chimes at Midnight). In a briefing that deals in the opposition of senate democrats to Bush’s social security privatization scheme, Jeff’s job is to ask “How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?” Even more blatant howlers are on the record if anyone would care to look them up.
Has there ever been a President so dependent on flatters, courtiers, and outright worshippers to function? Why is it that Bush needs to pack every room and institution he interacts with be it the CIA or the White House Press Association with grinning toadying henchmen? Sycophancy cheapens discourse and corrodes excellence in the Aristotelean sense of the term.
Yet somehow like some declining Hapsbourg Emperor Bush-an alleged grown adult man, can’t seem to accomplish anything without his Imperial Court and servile lackeys. It is a disgusting spectacle for anyone raised in the austere tradition of our flattery hating founding fathers.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Planks for 06'

You can’t beat somebody with nobody so the old saying goes. Similarly, you can’t beat something with nothing. By that, Humble Elias means a program is necessary to beat Mitt Romney next year. All well and good to compare Deval Patrick, Joe Kennedy, Tom Reilly, or Billy “The Prince of Darkness” Galvin on the charismatron. Nonetheless, whoever is nominated is gonna need a platform, preferably elegant, terse, and most of all easy to remember.
Therefore the Chimes at Midnight offers up a few notable planks for the delectation of candidates, conventions, primary and general election voters:

1.) Jobs: Since the start of the last recession, Massachusetts has lost two hundred thousand jobs to the vagaries of an uncertain market. Moreover, Fleet Bank, Gillette, indeed anything worthwhile and local has been bought out, downsized, and shipped out to the wild blue yonder. “bought out and shipped out: welcome to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts” so the bumper sticker should read. Any democrat with brain one has to talk about jobs and Decaf’s butterfingered inability to hold onto any of them. Lets not forget Mitt’s answer to all this is to cut unemployment benefits thus driving down the purchasing power of underclass even further. The Commonwealth cannot compete with Thailand and Mexico, to do so is itself deflationary suicide. No, the answer for better or worse is growth, so the dems must seize hold of this simple concept.

2.) Pot holes: Humble Elias is not kidding around, the roads in Massachusetts are utterly deplorable. The only thing we seem to be producing at a rapid clip are deep axle busting furrows in the streets. At our current rate we will all be driving to the polling places in 2006 on blown shock absorbers and then hobbling into the voting booths with our broken ankles. This may seem like a provincial and even silly issue, but Mitt’s suburban independents love commuting to work by car, and its a very bumpy ride they are taking of late. Potholes, artfully underscore the lavish undeliverable promises Romney has made in so many other areas anyone remember his vow to reform auto insurance, child health care, or his missionary scheme to rehabilitate ignorant parents? A pattern of unfulfilled promises has begun to emerge with Romney, those pot holes though, give the lie to his entirely fraudulent “reform agenda”.

3.) Continuity of Governance: Romney’s weak point is his vanity and crude ambition, he wants very badly to be President and will happily sell out the Commonwealth in the attempt. A wise democrat will vow loudly and early on to seek no “higher” office whilst serving as Governor and to refuse all entreaties to do likewise and the same. Always and everywhere the notion must be reinforced that the voters can’t trust Mitt, that given a choice between their interests and the White House, Romney will surrender to his ambition every time. A smart democrat might go far on a promise to give Massachusetts a “rest” from Presidential politics.