Weld for Something Part II

Oh geez, Bill Weld gives one little press conference down in New York hinting at new ambitions and not forty eight hour later Scot Lehigh is practically pissing himself with raw happiness. Oh yes, Scot can't wait for his hero the slovenly drunken bizarrely detached Bill Weld to bust a move in New York.

It is to be expected, William Weld has always had a strange mesmeric hold over Boston Columnists...the mere mention of his name causes everyone from Lehigh to Howie Carr to fall into a strange sentimental trance.
It is not hard to see why, with his mixture of liberal social views, leavened with a fetish for low taxes, Weld is the perfect embodiment of the columnist ideology. Truly Weld is the perfect candidate for a generation of op-ed hacks who crave both personal license and fiscal puritanism.
I of course, am having second thoughts about the whole mishaugas. I'm wondering if Weld is really serious about running for Governor/Senator in the Empire State? He has no money and few real props with New York voters...he is literally one moderate too many in a state GOP divided between George Pataki and Rudy Guiliani. I think Big Bill is biding himself up for some appointive federal sinecure, maybe that ambassadorship that eluded him in 1997.
Think about it, the current congress is a complete White House thrall-dom in every way, but their term potentially runs out in January 2007. So now is the time to make a pre-emptive move in New York Politics in order to induce Guiliani/Pataki to call in a favor from La Famiglia Arbusto and get Weld the Embassy in Jamaica or Trinidad-Tobago- really any place where the rum is cheap and his ex-wife is far away.
That is what I suspect is going on here, Bill wants a cushy Federal gig and is willing to make ambitious noises to get it.

Injustice Sunday or Fristian Moral Life...

There are those out there assert the Senate Majority Leader's current assault on the Senate's admittedly retrograde filibuster rules to be a form of appalling religious fanaticism. If the democrats jawbone Cotton Matherish judicial nominees it must come of a party-wide disdain for religious feeling and therefore the filibuster must go in order to safeguard the people of God.
Or so Senator Frist's logic runs.
Indeed the Majority Leader rants on and on and leaves us all with the impression that next to Satan himself, the filibuster looms large as a 200 year old obstacle to religious life in America.
However, you have to admit, Frist and his minions would just as soon use the filibuster to block "leftist" nominees if the tables where turned such is the depth of their commitment to craven opportunistic practices.

So clearly, whatever the current controversy is about, religion isn't a part of it.
Why then would a grown adult man carry in such a brazenly hypocritical fashion?

I think Frist is under some pressure from the White House to get these yaps confirmed by fair means or foul. Being a man of Presidential ambitions himself and knowing the scope and power of Bush's fiat, Senator Frist has seized upon the christian motif as a cover for this blatant usurpation of power.
So this is all an exercise in low royalism from out the Bush White House I say. Remember,the way you achieve power ever after affects the way one uses power. Look at Richard III, he offed his own nephews in order to seize power and shortly became a tyrant in extremis, the blood of his own instantly corrupting Richard's kingly prospects. Bush have seized power via judicial decree in 2000 has since then come to rely on a certain obnoxious pushiness to get what he wants whenever the going gets tough.
Look at the way GWB's trusted courtiers on the Hill imitate him...Tom Delay packs the Ethics Committee with lackey and fundraising vassals, Senator Cornyn drones through threats at the judiciary and Bill Frist screams for the power to suppress the Senate's minority party once and for all.
All very medieval and brutal and all coming from the top down.
These are ruthless corrupt men in every way, like the Dukes and Earls who clustered around the Duke of Gloucester or the lackeys who once coddled Kaiser Wilhelm.
They have known no rebuke these last five years and can be relied upon to do even worse in the months and years to go. Naught but power in the old fashioned James Monroe-Federalist Papers sense of the term will constrain them.

Sick
Demented
Typical

Senator Kennedy...

that axiom of local and national politics now has his own website. I'm linking to it out of loyalty to the man and his cause, forget the standard CaM rules of reciprocity.

Welcome Julie Teer

Mitt Romney's new press secretary, a veteran of the Bush N.H. Primary campaign and yet another veiled indicator that Decaf is goin' over the hump next year.
Point08 has a different view seeing her as shi-ite GOP operative hired to sow discontent in the democratic gubernatorial field.
Well...maybe. You have to admit, politically she is two-fer, an experienced mouthpiece and someone who knows the fastest way to the Town Hall in Barnstead Parade.
I have a different view, Julie Teer may be an expert in wreaking havoc in the democratic primary, but it sure didn't affect the ultimate outcome in N.H. did it?
John Kerry carried the state, hell the local dems woke up and elected themselves a governor in the process.
We ought to be on the lookout for her knavish tricks, and lets have a few of our own this time, but never forget she couldn't deliver the goods when the bell rang.

Dear President Truman:

How is the weather up there in Heaven? I hope you aren't teasing JFK and LBJ too much, they done their damnedest in their own particular ways I guess. For that fact, lay off MacArthur too...he had his virtues, it IS paradise after all, time to let go old animosities.
Oh Harry, it is safe to come out now I think, every feckless inconstant bastard in the nation loves you. Remember when you left office in January 1953 with a thirty percent approval rating? Remember when McCarthy called you a commie dupe and the GOP muttered about impeachment when you fired MacArthur? What about All those god-awful things H.L. Mencken and Westbrook Pegler said about you?
All fogiven and forgotten now.
Quite a change I'll say.
The neocons all love you...the Anne Coulters etc...you are the surreal-right's favorite metaphor for a lost species of democratic ballsiness. That come from behind victory in 1948 helps burnish that scrappy bantam fighter image that the Jeff Jacoby's of this improvident age love to abuse.
Alas that hard fought campaign has become an appalling cliche' in our imperial era, if a democrat loses nationally it is automatically for want of a Truman-style bare-knuckled aggressiveness...when the GOP loses its always because of some temporarily ideological excess.
Frankly Harry I'd stay in heaven if I were you, the columnists and alleged thinkers these days are dumber, more naive' and more corruptible than the newsaurians of your Presidency. Hell westbrook Pegler is pretty much an abashed schoolboy next to the likes of David Horowitz.
Its not a pretty picture I assure you...all these rightical chic yaps who profess to love you so mch are the biggest ass-holes imaginable (Pardon my French Captain its been a long war)if they were around in 1948 they'd be bribing the veterans of your artillery company to slander your name in public. Thats the sort of scum we are dealing with here.
The great game of politics has become a squalid battle between image consultants, lobbyists and professional ward-heelers...sad undemocratc and ultimately boring.
Stay up there Harry....keep playing the piano and forget all those old rivalries!
It ain't worth it believe me.

Sincerely
Elias J. Nugator

P.S. say hi to Bess for me.

Written in honor of the sixtieth anniversary of Harry S. Truman's elevation to the Presidency.

Weld for...Whatever...

CNN is all a-twitter because former Massachusetts Governor William Weld has apparently started talks with the NY GOP in regards to running either for the Senate or Governor next year.
Well...that is curious.
When last we heard from Bill Weld he was divorced, living on the upper west side of Manhattan and allegedly working on a whole "drunk-before-noon" vibe. Clearly Weld has cleaned himself up sufficiently to dust off his bona fides and seek out some new political adventure.
I thought being Governor of Massachusetts was Bill's mid life crisis, maybe I'm wrong though.
Alas his notional candidacy for Governor merely reinforces my argument that state gubernatorial politics are undergoing a relentless process of nationalization. Massachusetts imports Mitt, now New York is dragging Bill into their particular political morass. None of this is a good thing IMHO as it breaks down the bonds of localism but the trend can't be stopped.
On the other hand, if Bill runs for the US Senate, he'd be taking on Hilary Clinton, whose husband once nominated him for the Ambassadorship to Mexico. That might complicates thing when it comes time to conciliate the grass-eaters, die hards, and shi-ite wing of the local GOP.
Of course, it just seems weird and desperate that in the vasty reaches of the Empire State no better candidate can be found-or is that just me?
I wonder how Weld's liberal stances on gay rights,abortion, and witch-burning will play in the hinterlands around Buffalo?
And where is Rudy Guiliani's fine Italian hand in all this? Is Weld being groomed to seek whatever office Rudy declines? Is that the plan?
Seems pretty paltry to me...
And if Rudy is in for 2006, how does having two pro gay rights, pro abortion moderates at the top of the ticket play in Peetskill?
Or maybe Bill is the fall guy...Rudy doesn't wanna take a chance on booking a loss prior to the big game in 2004 and Weld is the patsy.

The Coulter Affair

"Time" Mangazine listed Ann Coulter in its annual "100 Most Influencial Carbon Based Life Forms" listing with the usual truckling coverage. Everyone thinks this is a new journalistic low for the storied newsweekly. Eric Alterman seems especially incensed...
I don't get it myself, "Time" was always and insufferably haughty little rag that made its bones pimping for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 and was rotten proud of its seedy GOP partisanship under the aegis of then owner-publisher Henry Luce. Advocacy journalism wasn't invented by the late Hunter Thompson it has its origins in Time's perpetually condescending treatment of Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson. Look up some of the old issues if you don't believe me.

Giving Ann Coulter props seems like SOP at "Time"...she is just the sort of "contrarian" they've been marking out hard for since the days of Wendell Willkie.

Now does interest me is just what Coulter's publicist had to promise Time-Warner-AOL in order to land a spot on said list? At the moment Ann is famously between jobs and makes her money via 30K speaking engagements. Her writing is childish and spiteful and suggestive of a seventh grade slam-book. So she is a tough sell on talent.
Moreover, that cresting wave of perpetual conservative outrage isn't gonna last forever, Ann has to get dug somewhere soon or risk becoming the next Wally George. No doubt her desk is cluttered with writing samples, resumes, sample radio shows done on Ipod, video samplers the whole wretched refuse of political punditry. So this "Time" controversy is a godsend for Coulter, it'll get the phone ringing, and whole knows maybe Fox News will finally come through with a regular gig.

The straight dope on these types of features is that they are bullshit designed to boost circulation and stroke advertisers all at the same time. There is no objective criteria governing inclusion...listings are pimped like new girls from Georgia without a second thought. Ann's inclusion with all her "jokes" about killing Bill Clinton and blowing up the New York Times, is pretty much a setpiece bid for controversy.
And what the hell, it worked.

Another view of Scot Lehigh

can be found here
Scroll down to the April 19th post for the whole story. CaM comes in for some onblique criticism but thats hardly the point.

Oy...Ratzinger

So much for my subtle and cunning Italians eh?
As a great man once opined at another dim dark cross roads of history "Well that could have gone better".
I can't say I find much hope in the new Pope. Benedict the Sixteenth is seventy eight years old and made his bones as an inflexible doctrinaire of the R.C.C. it is useless to expect anything in the way of change or even mercy from the man. The Former Karlo Ratzinger is harsh down east Johnnycake, hard to swallow, tough on the stomach and will not leave save under dire compulsion.
So of course, CNN of course cannot get enough of the man! Ever a whore for power, they love the myth of tuff guyz remaking da world. The simpering bints who report the news thereon did their reporting last night with pompous liturgical music moaning in the background.
Truly Karlo is naught but the sort of Pope to gratify the base vengeful urges of the Pat Buchanans and William Donovans out there. Angry and disassociated in a American Church that is rapidly yielding to senescence, all these loud mouths can do is think up new ways to blame and persecute the few liberals fool enough still attend the weekly liturgy. The are great blamers of American Decadence, quite literally their argument is; the priest shortage is all part and parcel of the salacious plotlines on the WB's teenybopper soap operas! To them, the papacy is but a means to bedevil the likes of John Kerry, whose 08' ambitions if any took a hard knock yestersday. Not a word from the Throne of Saint Peter about George Bush's queer little thing for the electric chair or Ray Flynn nigh pagan communion with Pabst Blue Ribbon.

No doubt Buchanan, Donovan and Ray Flynn will be all over the sunday morning chat shows...Tim Russert will look all reverent and solemn and go on blabbing about "our" sacramental church. Why shouldn't they? Hell there side has one another singular victory, from Moscow to Washington DC to Vatican City, Enraged and Demented Conservatism Marches on and on and on.

White Smoke O'er Rome...

Apparently a Pope has been elected. He or Her exact identity is unknown at the moment...check out CNN for the entirely fatuous on line "Vatican Smoke Cam".
I still say it'll be an Italian, those boys have been fixing it up for fifteen hundred years, and they've still got plenty of snap left in their garters.
The sooner this new guy shows himself the faster Ray Flynn will be off the air with his dopey refrain "Da Hully Fadda Ah Pope" (Pronounced "Pup"....so please get on with the show guys!

A Putsch in Caucasiastan

Mike Barnicle nobly throws himself over the side in order to be spared the humiliation of being laid off.
If he was a REAL blue collar tribune he'd a known you always wait for the Boss to lay you off so you can qualify for unemployment!
Ah but Mike is ever the populist contrarian, a lavish lover of people, an ineptoid when it comes to persons.
I'll miss him, but this whole sad fling with the Herald does reveal there is no room for a second act - certainly not when there is no new material in it.
Well, lets look at the bright side, this will give Mike more time to call up the Imus in the Morning Program to cry on the I-Man's sagging old shoulder and squawk "President Bush is just a really great guy I-I just LIKE HIM thats all!"

More Bad News

The Romney is a Fraud Blog is going on permanent hiatus starting today. Apparently they think Mitt is finished with the Commonwealth next year...I only wish I had their confidence. Hell who am I kidding? I need the click throughs! Cosmo Macero has his hands full at the Herald, Dimmy Karras has left Boston and blogs mostly on sports topics these days, Lis Riba has cut us dead...YIPES! What will the "Little Blog that Cried" do-ooo!?
Let me at least pay tribute to RiaF, it was a wonderful read, a scandal to the Admin, and a beacon of hope to people like me who think we can do better than a loafer and shyster like Mitt Romney.
Ben will be missed.

My Deerest Kaleb...

How I swell with pride when you lecture your little playground friends on the perils of judicial activism and the court ordered murder of Terri Schiavo. I wax incandescent - as only a father can - when we snuggle up to read the “National Review for Kids” together. I fairly kvelled at your boyish precocity when you told the mailman what you really think of stagnant public sector unions!
Yes my darling beloved boy....as long as you keep up the adorable scamp act, I’ll be milking your childhood for class column fodder for years to come!
your father thanks you!
***
At long last, Jeff Jacoby serves up another one of his treacly & unreadable “My Dearest Caleb” columns in today’s Sunday Globe. For those of you just tuning in, the House Reactionary at the Globe likes to occasionally turn over precious op-ed space to alleged adorable antics of his five year old son. Apparently though, the lad has been acting up lately, possibly due to the fact that Jeff and the missus went and adopted another kid last year.
Hell, that is one way to reach a proper minyon I suppose

Nonetheless, Caleb is still a holy little terror, and so rather than simply whacking the tyke across the forehead with the business end of a shovel (as Elias J. Nugator Sr. used to do with me) Jeff writes a column about it.
Someone at Morrissey Blvd, preferably someone with kids, out to tell Jeff that an indulgent and bemused column, no matter how sentimental in scope, is not a reliable disciplinary device.

I say Jeff should buy a shovel....the kid will thank him, someday.
:)

Deval Patrick gets in...

and true to form The Globe's Scot Lehigh can't seem to say anything sensible about it. Take this howler from today's column for example:
Patrick does make a pretty good first impression. The danger for him, however, is that he ends up as this year's Robert Reich, for here's an instructive rule in politics: Be skeptical about candidates who, without any real electoral experience, parachute into tricky political terrain to try for the top job.

You have to admit, the use of the term "parachute" is outright laughable in this context since Lehigh's boy Mitt Romney practically hijacked an airliner to get back to Boston once Mihos did his infamous poll back in 2002. Scot then goes on to cap it all with this howler:
For starters, he'll need to display a recognition that though the fiscal crisis is over, the state still faces lean times, which means that program growth will have to come in moderate steps, not liberal leaps. He'll have to avoid being co-opted or cowed by the party's constituency groups. He'll need to demonstrate that he's politically adept enough to work with State House Democrats, but that he has the backbone to stand up to them as well. He'll have to show that he understands how important standards like the MCAS are to improving education.

In other words, Lehigh is advising Deval Patrick to look act and sound just like that ace parachutist from Utah, Mitt Romney. That would be the same Governor who is the the author & proud producer of the Commonwealth's current state of psychic humiliation and public stagnation. Poor Scot he just can't give up that weird gooey blathering moderate republican ideology that infests practically the columnistas on Morrissey Blvd.
Good lord the whole Boston Globe editorial page is naught but a clown act these days, fit to entertain my nieces and nephews but utterly trivial in every other respect.
Well since no one else will advise Patrick, permit Humble Elias the offer a few words of warning...Scot Lehigh is a yap as his his whole crowd, treat him and the rest with genial disdain, If necessary build some populist props by railing against out of touch opinion leaders in Herald Square and Morrissey Blvd. What you do DON'T read the op-ed page, those dope couldn't poor piss out a boot if the instructions were printed on the side!
Good luck Deval you will need it.

Romney's Hundred Flower's Campaign...

Decaf is now officially holding out an olive branch to the legislature or so say the Metro Pages of the Boston Globe. Apparently he has been making nicey-nice with the State Senate over the upcoming health care bill and has even broadcast some radio advert extolling the merits of "bipartisanship".
It all sounds a bit mental to me though.
I mean this IS the Mitt Romney who tried and failed to purge the State Legislature last fall and the same guy who has been slagging the Commonwealth in front of any collection of out of state wowsers that'll have him. Hell not three weeks ago Mitt was running radio adverts denouncing the stem cell bill in terms gratifying to any witch doctor. Moreover,it is a well known fact that no one in the lege can get through to Romney or his staff on a time urgent basis...bills languish, negotiations whither and the Commonwealth lurches on while Mitt loafs and daydreams of the stench off the Potomac.
Now suddenly like Mao Zedong he wants to smoke a heaping peace pipe with the opposition? Whacky...but then I'm beginning to think the sheer ahem strain of being governor has driven Romney quietly mad. More and more his Admin resembles one of those embattled third world Juntas trapped in the Presidential Palace and clouding the air with weird radio broadcasts and lavish promises.

Of course if Mitt was trying to work up a justification for declining to run for re-election an olive branch however faux or pro forma would have to be part of the narrative. What it says is "see I TRIED to work with those guys but they are too radical....waaaahhh!"
Or maybe he has snapped who knows?

Thought for the Day:

Did you ever notice that the worst market worshipping-libertarian hotbed-hi tech companies inevitably have the worst security departments? By this I mean that it's a Kafkesque nightmare in extremis to get a properly working ID badge or worse get one replaced? Apparently, there are, in contravention of libertarian dialectics some things the free market cannot liberate.
I worked for one of these god-awful outfits for years and the sheer suffering required to get a functioning badge is not to be believed. Then they got acquired by a big name playa in the industry and suddenly the badging process became economical and timely.
Dunno what made me think of that today...

James Dobson is quoted by

Joshua Micah Marshall as comparing the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan. This is a metaphor Marshall dismisses as insane. One wishes it were so, but James Dobson is anything but unbalanced in my humble opinion. Rather he is a fairly typical example of homo conservatus circa 2005, ergo an activist even a fanatic who is prepared to push as far as he can a hard as he can on behalf of his self blessed ideology.
In other words he is perfectly sane, Dobson no doubt feels the current political climate at last favors the public expression of the private sentiments he has been wallowing in for years.
Indeed what restrains Dobson's excesses now? Absolutely nothing, hell these guys think they've this far only by way of Gaius Caligula's fabled "immovable rigor" so expect them to say and act on even worse things as time goes on.
Some of these other clowns are utter pussyfooter though, Dobson at least talks like a proper revolutionary, denigrating and demonizing what he as yet cannot destroy or dominate. There is nothing insane about that any more than there was insanity in Leon Trotsky's white hot denunciations of the Tsar and the Provisional Government. In both cases the Xian Revolutionary and the Bolshevik smelled blood in the water and are therefore looking to set harsh terms to the debate...even if the question is only "hang em' or shoot em"?

Scot Lehigh must be livid

three years of sucking up to Mitt Romney, to the point of manfully trying to make sense of the Governor's incoherent stances on gay marriage and stem cell reserach, and the admin goes and hands off 42K in columnist payola to some hack from the Herald.
I'll bet Scot's snarls of rage can be heard up and down Morrissey Blvd.
:)
Yup Charles D. Chieppo (oh GOD I love that name...cheapo...) got sacked by the Herald for not disclosing his relationship as with the convention center, a writing gig worth 32K atop the ten grand Charles was pulling down to shill for Romney's enviromental policies.
Y'know, writing is a hard dollar, believe me...hell Humble Elias hasn't seen a check for his own scribblings in many a lean year. So I can sympathize with Chieppo's desire to cash in as big as possible.
After all who knows?
Maybe next year his column gets handed off to Laura Ingraham or some other dipsomaniac with a high Q-rating. Nonetheless, the Herald did right to discharge him. The name of the game is disclosure, without it the public is at a fatal disadvantage when reading a compromised writer's work - nice to know a that a rag like the Herald gets it.
Still and all that, the whole mishaugas simply confirms my notion that there are many many more columnists on the take out there, and for bigger sums than a paltry ten grand. And some of those columnist may be closer to home than you think.

Nothing so symbolizes the Vatican's

utter state of disconnection than the re-emergence of Bernard Cardinal Law former Cardinal Archbishop of Boston in the wake of the Pope's death. Yes, there he is, almost every night on our TVs looking blasted and haggard and explaining the whole Papal death-thing to the peonage in that silky unctuous voice of his. I don't think the climate in Rome agrees with him, but then being a passive aggressive yutz does things to man even a Prince of the R.C.C.
Its like he was never driven out of Brighton quite literally one step ahead of the lynch mob. I give Law this much, he may be shopworn within and without, but the man has sangfroid. He batted not an eyelash as the dioceses collapsed all around him-iti s something they learn at Harvard I guess.
Good grief every time Channel Five starts talking to his eminence you can hear the groans and sighs of sheer outrage all over the Commonwealth.
And the crowning indignity?
Cardinal Law, safe from the malign consequences of his endless cover-ups on behalf of pederastic priests, STILL has a vote to cast in the upcoming conclave!

Alas he is back, so the sooner the College of Cardinal's digs up some clown to be the next Pope, the sooner Cardinal Law will be off the airwaves. Unless of course, the Cardinals do something really freaklishly self destructive and elect Law Pope!
Oh won't that be a old timey jubilee? Good Lord I think this town might go up in a rhetorical mushroom cloud.

Jesuzzz Mary an' Joseph!

but the Romney is a Fraud Blog is frickin' on FIRE today!
I have nothing to add...only to note that its always somehow heartening to know that things are so much worse than I had ever realized.

Sad News...

Dan Kennedy is leaving the Boston Phoenix to devote more time to his Professor gig at Northeastern. The details can be found here

I'm gonna miss Media Log, it was a sensible read every week. And I'll miss Dan as well, the few time I e-mailed him he was polite and interesting. Hope he keeps blogging but I'm not counting on it.

Noises Off...

If Phil Johnston wasn't trying to tempt Joe Kennedy into the 2006 Governor's race why was he giving the former congressman an award last night at the Annual Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner?
If Joe Kennedy wasn't at least thinking about running, then why did he accept said award?
Is Phil trying to "thin out" the gubernatorial roster next year with a Kennedy candidacy...the proverbial 700 lb gorilla?
Everyone is up to something here, if Kennedy gets in then at least Phil has a candidate with immense fundraising potential, one who will squeeze the herd and at the very least keep Galvin out of the race.
On the other hand what does Kennedy want? A clear shot meaning no Romney in the race?
Joe can afford to bide his time, of the lot he can get in the latest and still sweep the primary.
The question is, does he want it?
Everything hinges on this.
All over the Commonwealth there are grenadier's uniforms lying in closets waiting only for the war drums from out Hyannisport to be dragged out in all their gaudy glory.
The uniforms wait, we wait, and Joe? He merely contemplates his giant computerized map of Massachusetts in gleeful silence-again.

Jacoby today...

offers up a grudgingly fair minded column on the supremacy of the law in the Schiavo case. Although he does succumb to the freeper-ish temptation to refer to it as a “court order death”. Indeed...isn’t every death sentence handed down in the Texas Utopia a “court ordered death”?
Well whatever, Jeff’s attitude towards the law seems to roughly parallel the line taken by this blog...I wonder if he is a reader?
Cause I use the click throughs - especially now.

Of course, others on the right have not been quite so high minded. It is worth noting that Jeff has maintained an admirable and decorous silence as Congressman Delay screamed threats at the judiciary from the steps of the Capitol and the talk show yaps howled murder and worse on the public airwaves.
Jeff is sort of naive when it comes to rightical chic outrages. He sees Jeb Bush’s calling off the state police bid to reattach Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube as due deference to the law. I see it as a ominous sign of the sheer absolutism that habitually infects La Famiglia Arbusto. The fact that Jeb was even considering such a move is a sure sign of the law’s imperiled state, you can bet the next Terry Schiavo case will end differently based on what we saw last week.
Moreover none of these excesses will make Jacoby’s annual “hate speech round up” come December 2005. Conscience or not, absolving conservatives is something Jacoby does with a great deal of child-like gusto.

Whither Willard?

Just maybe...just...maybe this week...on the QT amidst the deaths of the mighty and the miserable, Willard Mitt Romney might have reached his Waterloo.
Despite a bunch of big scary radio commercials the state legislature blithely wrote and passed it’s own stem cell bill and by veto proof majorities. All the King’s Horse’s and all the King’s Men (or in this case Scot Lehigh and Joan Vennochi) couldn’t pump up Mitt as a player on this issue. Hell, Romney’s been hissing and flapping his arms about stem cells for the past two months and has achieved just exactly nothing, indeed his political position has been visibly eroded.
Willard could’ve come to the table and negotiated in good faith, but alas he did nothing but make threats and sarcastic remarks about the issue and mostly in front of allegedly respectful out-of-state wowsers. Clearly the leadership in the lege read all this and made their plans accordingly. What do they have to fear? I think DiMasi and Travaglini both have Willard’s number, he lacks the patience to govern and thus they flourish when it comes to issues like biotechnology and whatnot. The public is unresponsive to any demagogic appeals on stem cells and Mitt himself has no reach into their home precincts and wards.
Romney wring as much drama out of his veto as possible, but given the Pope’s death and all, the whole thing may get buried. In the end, Romney will look hapless and helpless, which of course is the PERFECT image for a future GOP candidate for President.
If Romney's political career comes to a premature end next year it may have its seeds in the vote that went down this week.

Hapless and Helpless...remember that.