Thursday, June 30, 2005

Flunking the Governorship

so sez the Boston Herald of all things, which yesterday gave Mitt Romney "poor marks" in many areas of gubernatorial performance.
Could be that Pat Purcell (or whoever is in charge over in One Herald Square, I can/t keep track, I am a blogger after all!)is simply tracking back to the center for campaign 2006.
Be that as it may, Mitt is politically moribund, and even the Herald knows it now.
The roots of Romney's stagnation aren't hard to see, he is a dilettante and an amateur politician of the first rank. HE may have the skills to get elected or simply the money to do so, but the art of governance eludes him.
The venerable Tammany Hall Sachem George Washington Plunkett once opined that politics was "a business like any other. You have to be trained up for it if you want to be a success".
That is Romney in a nutshell, he is an amateur, an unskilled politician all of which might make him a success, but it'll be in spite of his amateurism and not because of it.
Plunkett had another relevant aphorism "reformers is only morning glories" in other words, windy promises of reform are made with very little long term follow through due to the deficit of political acumen on the part of the alleged reformers.
Again, look at the Herald's gubernatorial "report card" not much there in terms of real accomplishment despite many many proud bumptious threats and pronouncements.
And believe me, things aren't gonna change much between now and election day 2006.

Romney still gets a good press, Scot Lehigh still sighs at the mere mention of his name and shills hard for Mitt's alleged "sharp political instincts".
Yeah but instincts without accomplishments very often degenerate into mere opportunism, and that seems increasingly Mitt's main strength as a politician.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

The Kelo Decision and Jeff Jacoby...

Jeff was livid on Sunday over the SC's Kelo Decision which granted broad powers of eminent domain to the municipalities.
And indeed, it is probably too great a grant of power to the localities (traditionally the most easily corrupted level of governance).
So yeah...Jeff thinks home seizures are bad.
Of course, he has nothing to say about bank foreclosures now does he?
When the City forcibly buys your house, dats a bad thing, when the Middlesex Bank and Trust seizes the house because your wife's brain tumor bankrupted the family, well...c'est la vie sayeth that Laughing Young Senescence.
This is the core of the current conservative dilemma, in a contest between ideology and justice or simple compassion versus agenda....agenda wins all the time.

Sick
Demented
Typical

Thanks to Blogger.com's unrequested and

unscheduled "upgrade" my blog now looks like it has been formated by a retarded chimpanzee.
Thanks guys, you like to-tally promote dialogue y'know...

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Its all Joseph Nye and Howard Zinn's fault...

or so Senator Rick "High Pitched Rich" Santorum reasons over at Catholics On-line.
Therein, the Junior Senator from Pennsylvania states in respect of the clerical sex abuse scandal in the Boston Dioceses:
It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning "private" moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.

Now I could point out that sadly, clerical sex abuse is a world wide phenom, something that has happened in rural New Hampshire as well as Tampa Florida and points beyond. I could do that...yadda yadda yadda.
But what would be the point?
Rick won't listen, a profound truculent ignorance lies at the core of his ideology....how else could he ever satisfy modern conservatism's first commandment "thou shalt blame the liberals in all cases no matter what"?

No, his line of reasoning interests me because it is so decadent and eloquent of declinism. Essentially, what Senator Santorum is proposing that when a religious leader indulges in forbidden carnality with children...it is society's fault!
This is the sort of naive' elitist reasoning that we haven't heard since the palmier days of New York Mayor John Lindsay.
By blaming American society, Santorum takes the heat off his beloved catholic clergy and like Abbie Hoffman or a young Jane Fonda can now condemn the very culture that has nurtured and protected him all his natural life.
If this line of reasoning didn't work for the Weathermen and the SDS in 1969, why then should it be credible for today's rightical chic agitators?
Rick has never known an hour's worth of oppression in his entire miserable life, certainly none that he couldn't call a cab to escape if he so desired. These wowsers have long forgotten that they live in the free-est nation on earth for religious believers. No Santorum et al want to force us all to live in something they think is better than freedom, that being theocracy. Hence their entirey preposterous but also dangerous sense of greivance.
They are mad, not because society is so decadent, but because it hasn't surrendered to them yet.

Monday, June 27, 2005

Lyndon Baines Johnson invented the Internet...

yup its true, I heard it on NPR yesterday.

:)
As part of a discussion from their "On the Media" program a clip was played of LBJ's speech on the occasion of the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting circa 1967. At one point, LBJ started ruminated on sources of education and knowledge that would "go beyond mere broadcasting". He then began idly speculating about vast electronic knowledge banks that would simultaneously hook up scholars, doctors and students all over the nation.

Gawd-damn...its only taken us forty years to catch up with one of Lyndon's idle conjurations.
Ah...but LBJ was an artist at heart...other had canvas, marble, film or words....Lyndon had that most malleable and yet most frustrating of substances to work with....legislation.

Friday, June 24, 2005

New Link...

Blog for Boston has seen fit to link to this, the little blog that cried. They seem eminently sensible, go check them out.
Meanwhile, the Federales must be closing in on this Jack Abramoff character, cuz' Tom Delay (a genial countrified character who never saw a bribe he didn't like)has exhumed the living corpse of the flag burning amendment and sent it lurching through the halls of congress in an attempt to panic all and sundry.
So clearly indictments must be pending.

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Piece and Feedom

So let me get the straight, the much ballyhooed Romney health care Plan essentially boils down to forcibly enrolling the uninsured in HMO's which then clears the way for the State Government to start charging a fee for using the local Emergency Room without insurance.
So really, isn't this yet another one of Mitt's user fee increases? The ones he uses in lieu of a sensible program of taxation?
Who else but Mitt Romney would dare dream up what amounts to a coin operated hospital emergency room.
I'll bet his vicregal majesty is all proud of himself too.

Yeah supposedly everyone will get coverage, but its the usual private and public sector hash which means at the end of the day everyone will be at the dual mercy of grasping HMO accountants & the Cheap-ass Mofos who currently run congress.
Christ no wonder Charlie Baker wants to run for Governor, as a HMO CEO he must realize thars gold in them thar hills!
Okay, I exaggerate but still....

Still, I detect yet another failure in Romney's at best amateur class political sense here. No doubt he believes a big health care bill will burnish his flimsy policy credentials when it comes time to go all out in the 2008 NH Presidential Primary. This is a mistake in Humble Elias opinion, the inhabitants of Barnstead and South Policy Road cordially couldn't care less if every third citizen of the Commonwealth was infected with Typhus. A health care fix here means nothing to New Hampshire, they conflate all government innovation with socialism & high taxes...Mitt's health care proposal as a campaign gimmick, will go over like the proverbial lead balloon, count on it.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

On Bolton

after a two hour meeting at the White House, Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist abruptly changed his mind and decided to bring John Bolton Nomination as UN Ambassador before the whole Senate.
Nothing so perfectly illustrates the courtier culture than permeate's today's congress.
And no one so ably embodies the current adolescent political zeitgeist quite like John Bolton. Angry, insufferable, prone to scuttling back to his desk in a vile pout plotting revenge whenever he encounters the slightest debate or opposition, John Bolton would be the heart's joy to rightical chic teenaged boys everywhere.
It comes as no surprise then, he has been nominated to the UN sinecure by a perfect middle aged Brat of a President, himself prone to tantrums and one who'd blow us all to kingdom come if his mommy would let him play with matches.
The praetorian class likes to boast of its inherent maturity, but then consider the teenaged fugues they indulge whenever anyone crosses them.
Grown ups indeed.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Eleanor Mondale has...

cancer, to read some of the heartfelt sentimental outpourings to the former VP's daughter go to the above link and click on "discuss".

Yeah I know, pretty gruesome.
Nothing but the worst sort of anger and contempt eh?
And that shit goes on all the time on the allegedly family friendly Yahoo.com.

We live in barbaric times in some ways.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Saturday, June 18, 2005

Destroying the GOP, one state at a time...

On the occasion of Governor Romney’s second fundraising trip to California in a year, The Boston Globe quotes Orange County GOP Chair Scott Baugh with this howler:
“he (Romney) has agreed to help us rebuild our party infrastructure in Orange County”.
Ah Scott...baby there are some one hundred and seventeen good-n-true Republican candidates for State Legislature who may well end up wards of the Commonwealth or digging ditches in Lowell because they believed Mitt Romney’s lavish promises to build the GOP’s local infrastructure.
Broken and shattered by an indifferent assault by the otherwise distracted local Democrats in 2004, these lost conservative souls wander the landscape in a daze sometimes writing letters to the editor or more often are found on park benches weeping piteously.
If you and the Golden State’s Republican Party are serious about accepting Mitt’s expert party-building advice then Governor Schwartzenegger may as well start reading scripts again thats all I can say.
Well of course, don’t kid yourself, nobody out there wants Mitt’s help even if he had any to offer. No this is a fundraising trip wherein the local GOP wheels can hear the Governor of Massachusetts jump ugly on his home state like the punk that he is. Arnie’s approval ratings are down so the local conservacracy has to do something to take their mind off things - and viola’ just in time comes this servile self loathing clown from Boston who’ll crawl before them for chump change...what could be more gratifying in these perilous times?

Friday, June 17, 2005

Mitt changes his mind...again

Having scuttled around the South End in 2002 and told the gays therein that he was not their enemy, having sorta kinda been for civil unions as recently as last winter, Governor Mitt Romney swallows manfully and comes out against gay marriage, civil unions and faggotry in general.
Oh that leash they've got him on stretches far doesn't it? All the way down to Spartanburg NC and beyond. Smarts don't it Mitt when you MASTERS in the Bible Belt start yanking on it!
What a sad confused equivocal spectacle Romney makes, a high school girl in a shoe store has more decisiveness.
Meanwhile the usual malevolent out of state organizations with their money and their hapless local pawns are gearing up to make damn sure gay marriage- the ultimate hot button topic for the enrage white underclass stays at the top of charts in campaign 2006.
That is all this is about, James Dobson couldn't care less if gays get married in the Commonwealth so long as he can use the issue to inflame his base in Missouri and Alabama etc etc.
In coming out for this sickening amendment, Mitt shows himself at last to be a puppet governor in every way.
Nauseating isn't it?
Well what can I say?
Mitt is now the slave of wowserdom, and the wowsers hate us because of our freedom.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

The Dread Line...

there are time when to the Red Line from Alewife Station to South Station is to expose oneself to (in the words of the immortal Ambrose Bierce) "the perils of senility".
Such was the case yesterday when it took Humble Elias some two full hours to get from Alewife to Northern Ave below South Station. This was all thanks to an unfortunate medical emergency at Charles Street (Hope yer feelin' better whoever you are) compounded by the inevitable "switching problem" at Park Street.
Last week it was a switching problem in Harvard Square...the damns things seem to crawl around free & untroubled.
I find that at least once at week one's inbound or outbound commute is blown to hell either by slow trains with balky doors, the aforementioned switching issues or some other unforeseen misery. That is all without factoring in the whole mishaugas with the buses. For example last week, the No 62 & 84 Bus out of Alewife both seemed plagued during their late eafternoon runs with appalling transmission problems that made getting up the Route 2 Access Road an adventure in serene torpidity.
That is ten train-bus combos at week with a build in ten percent failure....pretty bad news for Dan Grabauskas the MBTA's new Chairman.
Of course...one of my sources tells me, the Red Line hasn't had a serious maintenance upgrade for nigh on ten years now. It is sorely overdue but it is overshadowed by all our "other" front burner transport issues. Maybe Grabauskas can get some money out of his former Boss Mitt Romney. I doubt he can but he can try.
Meanwhile with all the delays and slow downs, Humble Elias is getting a lot of reading done.

Monday, June 13, 2005

Future Cover Stories in the National Review

"Why Not Jeb?"
Just wait for it a bit, we are not there yet, maybe in the fall thats when the pro-Jeb mutterings will start.
The GOP presidential primary style is essentially narrative-driven, tell the right story that both amplifies and explains youself and you've got a huge leg up on the competition.
Right now, there is still a sorting out process going on, everyone is getting a what passes for a fair hearing over on the other side.
In fact at the moment, our own Mit Romney is the flavor du jour tangled abortion views and all.
Soon enough Dr. Frist the National Cat Torturer will get his turn, then High Pitched Rick Santorum and so on through the list. And yet every time their names come up so to will a litany of their weaknesses as candidates, Romney's a squish and he comes from a state the GOP need not win, Santorum comes from another doubtful state, Frist has the proper sun belt bona fides but he is a DC insider yaddah yadda yadda on and on.....until suddenly Jeb Bush's name gets magically thrown in the ring.
He is a catholic southern governor of impeccable authoritarian views, his crazed actions during the Schiavo case will no doubt make him seem heroic to the bomb throwers and he rules a state that the GOP must win in 2008.
And so it goes, La Famiglia Arbusto are all experts in this kind of manipulation, suddenly being the royal brother of the incumbent is small beers next to the liabilities of the competition.
That'll be the story with Jeb, count on it.
These bastards are masters at the art of at once embodying the worst extremism of the GOP and yet somehow making their opponents look like church burners and wierdos.
So look for it this October I'd say, along will some campaign trips on behalf of the usual harassed GOP imcumbents.
Nothing in NH mind you or Iowa...but he'll be out there never fear.

Sick
Demented
Typical

Friday, June 10, 2005

2006...Not the Year of the Woman

Reading the front page of the Globe these days is naught but an act of sheer divination unseen since the glory days of the boozy oracle at Delphi. Now it is reported that somehow Lt Governor Kerry Healey has extracted a pledge of support from his vicereal majesty Mitt Romney in next year's GOP gubernatorial primary. That is IF Mitt declines re-election and decamps for New Hampshire.
All I have to say is... Ms. Healey must have pictures of young Tagg Romney dancing on the bar at the Turnpike Bowl-a-drome or something. Normally female pols are for stabbing-in-back according to the rules of Romneyism, anyone else recall his pledge not to run against Acting Governor Jane "Jingle Money" Swift?

So far so good for the otherwise trivial and inept Lieutenant Governor but I wouldn't put it past Mitt to be in secret negotiations with Charlie Baker, Christy Mihos or perhaps Dennis Hopper to run for Guv.
Sadly I have to say politics will run to a new level of putrefaction next year, what with this dimwitted yap from Beverly on the hustings and the Governor smirking to himself & happily wallowing in his own crapulence. Meanwhile over the border in New York nigh on billions will be spent to write fini to Hilary Clinton's political career.
Its gonna be a bad year for women...hell it was my local GOP that allegedly dubbed Kerry Healey "Swift-lite" in the summer of 2002.
Trust me on this, if you hated the rhetoric in 2002 & 2004 wait til next year when yet another GOP amateur & dilletante will be foisted on us as the last best hope to save the Commonwealth from...what?
Men and women of resolution and goodwill?
Able Policies & wise governance?

Sick
Demented
Typical

Thursday, June 09, 2005

A quick Denunciation

Channel Zero has lost it.
McBride MUST beat Tyson on Saturday! This is a moral imperative in extremis!!!
Mike Tyson for sheer haunted cringeworthy wretchedness makes Sonny Liston look like Ingmar Johannson. We must be quit of him for our sakes and for Mike's...he will never heal as long as he is Boxing's Most Appalling & Profitable Freakshow.
McBride must win, he is boxing's last damn hope!!!
Arrrgh.

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

John Kerry got indifferent marks @ Yale

or so the Front Page of the Globe trumpeteth today. Waaa-al I dunno, Kerry seems to have read a few books and done some thinking since graduation, Bush on the other hand scowls petulantly and cannot use the word "dissemble" correctly in a sentence - a challenge that my eleven year old niece would sneer at.
Nevertheless, look for McGrory, Lehigh, Vennochi, Jacoby & McNamara to all get the boot in on this like good little yaps in the days to come. They all have fond memories of kicking JK when he was down in the fall of 2003 and probably wanna wallow in nostalgia now that we are entering the op-ed slow season.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Monday, June 06, 2005

Michael Gee

whose column on Pat Tillman I praised about a week ago, has been pink slipped over at the Herald.
Geez I hope it wasn't anything I said...
Anyhow I wish Michael well in all his future endeavors.

New Links...

Blah3 & Left Center Left are now linking to this, th' Little Blog What Cried...I urge all seven of my readers to check these fine and emininently sensible blogs out...

Sunday, June 05, 2005

Jeff Jacoby claims in today’s column that Teddy Kennedy won in 1994 by slaggin’ Mitt Romney’s religion.
Or rather, Jeff simply highlights that notion without comment having culled it from Mitt’s now satiric profile in the National Review.
This is of course, sheer nonsense.
As I recall, Teddy and Joe Kennedy’s halfhearted swipes at Bishop Romney’s Mormonism engendered no small amount of criticism as the campaign unfolded.
Alas, and there I was telling people a man’s religion was of no consequence in a political campaign.
No, Teddy abandoned that sterile line of attack and crushed Romney in debate by emphasizing his own record of public service, liberal achievement and his own unique insight into governance.
Oh course it helps to have a consistent lifelong ideology as well; that being a firm belief in the necessity for “transmission belts” from out the underclass & into the middle class. Sometimes that transmission belt requires federal funding, and always it must be a transparent prone untainted by sectarianism. He is man on the side of those in the making first and foremost.
That’s what Teddy believes, that is what he talked about and that is why he won.
Mitt Romney meanwhile, skulked off to Utah in a pout and when it can time to rush back and run for Governor brazenly recruited who knows how many out of state Mormons to man the polls on election day.
So much for my own nice suburban liberal notions of keeping religion out of the campaign eh?
Ah but Jeff forgets all this doesn't he?
Today's conservative likes to re-write the past with Orwellian abandon, either to feed the movement's insatiable sense of greivance or else to tart themselves up as lonely iconoclastic heroes.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Friday, June 03, 2005

What happened when a Spin Doctor

accidentally tells the unvarnished truth?
He immediately issues a cringing & apologetic press release.
Such is the case today with Mitt's political advisor Michael Murphy who blabbed like an amateur to the National Review " He's been a pro-life Mormon who has been faking it as a pro-choice Friendly".
And of course, like credulous fools, the Globe has run this shocking revelation right on the front page.
Hell, Mitt has been faking it for years...Joan Vennochi and the Globe's Front Page are only now waking up to this??
Well, Mitt's program here is pretty simple, suck up to the National Review (increasing a power debased publication composed by fantasists, fanatics & the aggrieved wealthy) and thus perhaps entice a few big ticket DC Praetorians to his candidacy.
There is something contradictory about all this though, on the one hand Mitt wants credit for adhering to his 2002 promise not to revise the Commonwealth's abortion laws, yet at the same time he wants to signal the wowsers he'll hang the abortion doctors as soon as he is elected President.
Whether or not the conservocracy sees this as a meandering equivocal policy remains to be seen.

Sick
Demented
Typical

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Laura Bush for President

Lynne Cheney was half talking up Laura Bush for President in 2008 on Larry King the other night. No doubt the punditariat is dismissing this as a joke, but they do so at their peril. Laura is just the sort of soft feminine caricature who could get elected in this country and as a puppet for La Famiglia Arbusto and their perpetual thirst for power she is a slam dunk.
There is ample precedent to support such a faux candidacy; anyone out there remember Lurleen Wallace wife of George Wallace who was elected Governor of Alabama in 1966? Lurleen with her demure wifely ways and love of fishing was no more qualified to be President than is Laura, which made her a prize patsy in George's game to dominate Alabama and then the world.
If she hadn't died of cancer George might've put her up for President as well who knows?

She could even run on a ticket with brother in law Jeb the Governor or Florida thus giving a nice sick decadent slant to the whole shameful enterprise.
Watch for it I tells yuh.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Joanie Vennochi wakes up

and is shocked shocked shocked to discover Mitt Romney has been equivocating on the issue of abortion rights!
Oh her column in yesterday's Globe was a masterpiece of invective! She correctly divined Mitt's position on abortion is governed by his geographic co-ordinates...and that simply infuriated poor Joanie.
She even quoted his 2000 letter to the editor in Salt Lake in which the future governor called himself "pro life".
My question is...where was all this outrage back in campaign 2002? Back then, none of these hopelessly naive yaps on the Globe's Op Ed page could be bothered to delve into Romney's tangled abortion views...oh no they were all to busy jumping ugly on Shannon O'Brien for joking about her tattoos!
Now of course its too late and Joanie naive and venomous at the same time is left to flap her wrists in vexation via the public prints.

Sick
Demented
Typical...