Saturday, December 30, 2006

Saddam Swings...

and still ends up goin' for the proverbial terminal dirt nap.

Won't change a thing though, the sectarian shoot-outs will go on unabated with our own soldiers as referees and targets.

I suppose George Bush thinks he has accomplished something at long last...some Hamlet like attempt at showing up his father.
Whether that was worth 3,000 American lives and 20,000 casualties is another matter entirely.

Friday, December 29, 2006

John Edwards in in

details can be found hyar:

Well, he needs the early start quite frankly, Senator Clinton has already piled up a huge fundraising lead whilst the Anti-Clintonistas are tossing bigger and bigger bouquets to Senator Obama.
A lot of money and numerous volunteers are in play for the candidate who can beat Hilary and win the general election...and with Edwards its all about delivering on his personal promise from '04 and showing some steam below the Mason Dixon.
Meanwhile the Wise Guys all say this puts pressure on JK to make a decision, Humble Elias has his doubts about any urgency in the Kerry Kamp. He still has a nice chunk of change socked away in his national campaign account and certain geographic advantages as far as the New Hampshire Primary is concerned.
If there are concerns they are in respect of his volunteer base and getting his ground game up and running in the vital cities and suburbs between Concord and Nashua.
Thats if Kerry piles in, I suspect he will, he's faced longer odds than this...but yuh never know.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Jerry Ford is dead

The details can be found here:

Much will be made of Ford's bid to restore dignity and honor to the US Presidency in wake of Nixon's resignation. I've always thought Ford played it for simplicity and a certain degree of populism larded up with as much transparency as a Republican President could manage.
These were all themes his successor President Carter would emphasize until the apotheosis of Reagan who restored glitzy presidential bombast to prominence.
At his best Jerry projected a comforting haze of middle class respectability and integrity, at his worst he was a bit of a freeper hatchet man even if he evidenced no talent for the role.
Still and all that, there was nothing low about Ford, like Truman he genuinely did not seek the office (He wanted to be US Speaker of the House...badly), Tip O'Neill a shrewd judge of character counted Ford as a friend and a man whose word was good.
Today, a stolid suburbanite like Ford would have a hard time getting started in politics thanks to the rapid proliferation of frantic showbiz type politicos in the style of Newt Gingrich.
Not much room at the table these days for honesty and an Eagle Scout's devotion to duty.

RIP Mr. President, say Hi to Ike and Harry for us willya?

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Dubious Ideas Department...

The armed forces are looking into recruiting foreigners with a promise of citizenship upon completion of service.

Ah...y'know, the Romans tried this, recruited German mercenaries for their legions on the Rhine, they turned around and made a Hun Emperor.
Likewise the Greek and the Italian city-states made heavy use of paid foreign troops to fight in the field...The results were to say the least indifferent.
Hell there was a time when Spartan infantry could be bought out by the highest bidder.
Nicolo Machiavelli rails against the use of paid mercenary troops in his renaissance era treatise "The Prince".
My thoughts on this are simple, citizenship and the franchise aren't conditional on military service for the native born so why should they become an incentive for our perpetually meat hungry army?
What no one wants to acknowledge here is that if the Pentagon is conjuring with such outlandish notions, then yes, we ought to admit we have a manpower crisis in the ranks.
If that is the case, then I'd just as soon confront the issue squarely and reinstate the draft so long as the levies are raised honestly with no exceptions based on wealth or connections.
At the very least this would reconnect the Middle Class to the realities of American Foreign Policy and force everyone to reconsider current priorities.

Monday, December 25, 2006

Give Jeff Jacoby credit...

at the very least he adds a great deal on unintended hilarity to the Globe's Op-Ed page.
Yesterday he took environmentalists to task as doomsayers and hysterical preachers of impending global catastrophe.
Jeff even loaded up the whole shebang with a nice juicy quote from Mencken asserting that fear is used to manipulate democratic polities.
This IS of course, the same Jeff Jacoby whose sheer bowel-loosening terror of "Islamofascism" has been a hallmark of local punditry nigh these past six years.
I mean, to read Jeff's copy you'd think the Sons of Ragnar were gonna sail up the Charles River to sack and burn downtown Waltham.
From that old coot Fidel Castro to the disheveled President of Iran, Jeff's mental landscape is crammed with gulags, progroms, suicide bombers, mushroom clouds and heavy knocks at the door come midnight.
But when the World Wildlife Fund asserts that the shriking polar ice caps are a bad thing, suddenly they are wallowing in hyperbole so sez Jeff.

Pundit heal thyself sez Humble Elias.

And otherwise, a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

Friday, December 22, 2006

Boston Progressive Talk Radio

goes for the terminal dirt nap....
AM 1200 & 1430 have both flipped over to music formats as of yesterday bringing to a close Air America Radio's presence in the Hub.
Sad...but given the horror stories I've heard about managerial ineptitude at AAR, it is to be expected.
It is a miracle that Boston Progressive Talk lasted as long as it did with it's commercials for obscure restaurants in Somerville and spots promoting the purchasing of gold.
Still for all that, AM 1430 had a great line up, the Stephanie Miller Show and Ed Schultz being the stellar stand outs on the schedule. And if Al Franken never quite mastered the medium's quirks, he did attract classy guests from David Brock to Josh Marshall, pundits who don't normally get heard on the radio at all.
If, down the line someone wanted to revisit progressive talk in Boston, I think what we need is independent ownership of the station and a stronger local angle.
That was AAR's conceptual flaw, it was a national radio franchise at a time when aggressively liberal & local voices were needed.
Or else we can start podcasting...maybe thats what we need a sort of "Blue Mass Group" for local liberal podcasts.
Just don't ask Humble Elias to organize it, he is just technically competant enough to hit "Publish Post" at the bottom of this page.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Romney Bails...

Churlish to the last, Governor Romney has declined to attend Deval Patrick's inaugural.
His reasoning is not hard to divine, with a personal approval rating anchored well below fifty percent, the Viceroy had good cause to fear booing and catcalls as he made his ceremonial exit from the State House.
Well of course, Dukakis had to hazard as much in 1991, but then he was done running for President. Whereas any jeers and catcalls aimed at Mitt could well end up on in an attack advert come the New Hampshire Primary now a mere 14 months away.

For once I'll split the difference, Mitt ought to show some class for once and execute the traditional inauguration niceties...And the rest of us should refrain from booing and calling him a feckless, amateurish, lazy-assed bum with all the decisiveness of a windsock.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Note to the Laity:

technical difficulties today prevent me from posting til' now. Hope to have this little problem fixed by tomorrow.
Meanwhile...does anyone else out there think that Mitt Romney's ardent pro-gay posturing back in 1994 will cost him bigtime come 2008?
Toleration for degenerates and fops doesn't go over well in the South Carolina Primary.

Just sayin'

Monday, December 18, 2006

Meanwhile...

Joanie Vennochi piled back onto the Deval bandwagon this weekend with a column lauding Patrick's grass-roots campaign and insisting said template would work for Barack Obama.
Well her logical isn't hard to fathom, in an effort to queer John Kerry Joanie is happy to throw some bouquets to Obama.
Geezum Crow though, but wasn't Joanie dicking on Deval just last week?
Good Grief, ideologically speaking, Joan Vennochi spins faster and harder than a merry go round on crack!
One cannot keep up, she just keeps changing and changing her mind and the Globe's readership just puts up with it.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

On the subject of gay marriage

Jeff Jacoby had this to say in today's Sunday Globe:
"America's political battles would be a lot less poisonous if more combatants would acknowledge that their opponents are not monsters or villains".
Lofty sentiments no?
Jacoby is of course ramping up the meme that pro-gay marriage libs are somehow demonizing Jeff's vast thwarted majority of simple god fearing American book worshippers.
So Jeff wants to have debate about legitimacy and comity eh?
This is interesting because legitimacy lies at the very core of the gay marriage debate.
One side asserts that it is "legitimate" for them to hold a supervisory role over the marital status of their neighbors.
The other side sez that ain't right and any appropriation of state power to enforce said supervisory role is not "legitimate".
Jeff's central thesis seems to be that the majority may impose itself in a "lawful manner" on a minority and that further they minority shouldn't cuss about it.
Cuz' that isn't "legitimate" either.
At least Jeff Jacoby is consistent, he has always maintained that the law is a function of divine revelation and that therefore straights shall over the queers on grounds of revealed religion all prettied up with laws and precedents.
Here he simply takes his argumemt thru to it's own logical conclusion and handily sets up his usual New Year's Straw Man which is the abiding menace of liberal hate speech.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

State Senate President Travaglini apologizes

After being caught making dark threats about the fate of Governor Elect Deval Patrick's pending legislative program.

Humble Elias thinks that Travie woke up Thursday morning to startling and unaccustomed revelation that the Governor Elect was a democrat about whom the Senate President knew little and who likewise owed exactly nothing to Travaglini.
So in a nervous fret Big Bob started making threats...Happens all the time in lege, doesn't mean anything will come of it, only that the power brokers are jittery.
After all, sixteen years have passed since they had to dicker with a democrat in the corner office, the old intra-party governing skills have understandably atrophied.
Besides, Travie and DiMasi have long reigned as the top dems in the state, it is hard to yield the spotlight when you've been getting it easy for years.

Frankly, I've always maintained that electing a popular democrat as governor could act as a powerful deterrent to "business as usual" on Beacon.
A democratic governor has resources real and intangible that are denied a republican chief executive. That too may be on Senate President Travaglini's mind...who can say?

Friday, December 15, 2006

Mitt Dummies Up

According to The Globe, Governor Romney has already mastered the art of declining any questions from reporters as he looks to start campaigning for President.
This has come in handy as admittedly low key questions have bubbled up over Mitt's real feelings about gay rights and the dazzling myriad of contradictory positions that describe his stance(s) on abortion.
I think the best way for him to weasel out of any accusations of opportunism and flip floppery is to simply start denying that he'd ever been Governor of Massachusetts in the first place.
That way, anything he said between January 2003 and January 2007 automatically becomes "unhistory".
Sure it's a lie, but so are the Viceroy's pretensions to leadership, character and honesty...so whats da diff?

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Based on today's column...

Does anyone else get the impression that no-one in Deval Patrick's nascent administration is talking to Joanie Vennochi?
She frantically knits together a disparate collection of news items to suggest that not five weeks after the election, the bloom is somehow off the Patrick rose.
Honestly, you could time the appearance of the "Joanie Vennochi is disillusioned" column to the minute.
Remember this is the same Joanie Vennochi who snarled about "democrats drinking the Devalkool-aid" back in September, so despite her current air of shocked innocence don't kid yourself she was never on our side.
Having few identifiable ideological precepts (other than her hatred and envy of John Kerry) it is inevitable that she'd start snarking early at Deval Patrick. If she can't get anyone on the phone over at the Corner Office then has nothing else to write about than her own disaffection.
But then this seems to a column malaise over on Morrissey Boulevard, Scott Lehigh has been fumbling around with national and international politics to no effect since the election and Brian McGrory has become amusingly incoherent.
None of them seem to have come to grips with the change as yet.
Oh well give them time, they have new depths they can sink to, never fear.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

John Kerry does a meet-n-greet wif da Bloggers

So reporteth Seth Gitell.

Hey John old buddy?
How come Humble Elias wasn't invited? Hell I'm closest thing you have to "Waylon Smithers" on the internet...Your own wife doesn't enable you with half the ardor as this, The Little Blog That Cried.

Okay I know the answer to that...This is a blog renowned amongst it's seven or so readers for it's nastiness, vituperation, crapulous editing, indifferent spelling and lots of what Boston Magazine has called "sarcastic rant driven chatter".

On the other hand, at this point, why wouldn't you wanna piece of that??

It has to beat the lugubrious nonsense you get from the smarmy likes of Scott Lehigh.

Think about it John, I work cheap!

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

It is December...

another year walks the green mile.
All over the commonwealth, neath' the mistletoe next to those stockings hung so carefully whispers go on steadily...everyone wants to know will end up on Jeff Jacoby's annual compendium of "liberal hate speech"?
2006 was a bad year for the remains of movement conservatism and the praetorian class in general, so expect a column that is rigorously spiteful with a honking puritan tone of injured morality.
Now, knowing Jeff as a frantic if unoriginal thinker, we can expect some obscure utterance from Deval Patrick or his supporters to make the list.
Senator Kerry's botched joke may well provide Jeff''s lead, like I said, '06 was a bad year for the GOP and beating a dead horse is thought to be very good therapy in conservative circles.
Jeff may also take off after the local or national bloggers...all those message boards with all those posts are just too tempting a target. Look for "Blue Mass Group" and it's moderators to get in the cross-hairs.

Of course, it goes without saying that Kerry Healey's Orangeshirt Squadristi, Howie Carr's homophobic dementia, the Governor's gruesome hatred for the very state he leads, or Rush Limbaugh's demands for all out atomic warfare in the Middle East will all be passed over in silence.

Cuz, all that is not "hate speech" it is stern contrarians and iconoclasts tacking against the liberal wind blah blah blah...
You've heard it all before.
Anyway those are my predictions let us see how I do as a seer.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Game On...Mah Friends...

The new congress has not even settled on it's collective duff before Barack Obama has danced off to Manchester New Hampshire.
He was received like he was Germanicus returning to Rome with the second lost eagle of Varus.
Well folks this is it, the great game is once again afoot a lot of money and organization is in play to find an alternative to Senator Hillary Clinton, right now the spotlight shineth brightly on the Junior Senator from Illinois.
If we were to dissect the game play here there is much to suggest his candidacy. He is a Midwesterner, he is a back bencher in the senate but that also means he has no lengthy record to fuel attack adverts. He is also charismatic, telegenic and reasonably energetic.
The question is, can he carry the ball into the goal zone in a general election?
Well that is a question we can ask of all the candidates quite frankly. Humble Elias suspects a lot of powerlibs on and off long might gamble on an African American being no less odious to the electorate than a woman with as long an alleged rapsheet as Senator Clinton.
The conventional wisdom suggests that Obama is poison to any hopes Senator Kerry has of running again in 2008. Well yeah...Senator Obama has formidable talents...but then I can recall with the simplest nostalgia when the Smart Aleck Legion once assured us that Wesley Clark was the end of John Kerry's White House Dreams.

Game on...game on indeed

Friday, December 08, 2006

Welcome to Nixonville USA Mister President...

Bush's approval rating has dipped below thirty percent in the latest AP poll.
This is somewhere near to the mark set by Tricky Dick when he finally resigned and fled Washington just one step ahead of the constable's.
And yet for all that, Bush goes on with the ugly obstinate focus of a toddler insisting the World and the Baker Commission are wrong and he is right.
Meanwhile his old pals, the Saudis are happily raising funds for every suicide bomber in Iraq.

Yup Humble Elias has said it before, "win ugly, govern ugly" to which we can now add the codicil "lose ugly".
That is if you can call what Bush does "governance"...Mostly this entails nothing than gaseous asserting of utopian fantasies along with the unsubtle snarl of threats both personal and political.
It worked for a while, even got him re-elected (in the narrow sense of the term) but there is a big country out there that can be threatened or beguiled with fairy tales for only so long before other forces begin to assert themselves.

As I said yesterday, one is tempted to just change the channel and forget the whole catastrophe if it wasn't costing the nation in blood, tears, treasure and prestige.

Ah well, "Bush fatigue" cuts it both ways I guess.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Classic Joanie Vennochi today,

After we are done bombing Iraq into the stone age, after the GOP's preatorian class spend a merry three years calling the democrats faggots, cowards and traitors, after that maverick John McCain stood by and did nothing as those little tiny Purple Heart band aids were passed around at the '04 Republican Convention...now today we are supposed to find common ground with the very praetorian class that put took the USA right off a cliff.
Honestly, as a liberal and democrat if it wasn't costing the lives both US soldiers and innocent Iraqis and if was exacting a toll in treasure and prestige I'd be tempting to just walk away and tell the whole wretched Praetorian class to fix their own damn mishaugas.
Nothing but the worst sort of uplifting utopianisn brought this stupid adventure down on us, from the wowsers and mystics who bullied congress into approving the invasion to the thousands of starry eyed libertarian fanatics who swarmed the Green Zone after the war intent on tranforming Iraq into Ayn Rand's own earthly paradise.
Now today...we've got to find "common ground" with Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and that jewbaiting scoundrel James Baker?
Pardon me if I'm just a bit skeptical if even now, the other side is willing to negotiate in good faith.

Oh yeah...and Joanie gets off another inexplicable snark at the expense of John Kerry quote:
Kerry issued a press release that, in essence, said, "I told you so." The report, he said, "underscores what many of us have long been arguing: there is no military solution to our deep problems in Iraq": and he noted that the report calls for "a step for which I have been a strong advocate for over two years: a major diplomatic initiative bringing together others in the region."

Pride of authorship is not leadership. Who's going to lead us to the common ground?


in other words, Joani now realizes that JK was right about Iraq pretty much all along but she too spiteful to ever admit it.

As for a leader to take us to tha sacred plot, common ground?
Well all I can say is this, who wants to reach consensus with a bunch of crooks, thieves and cultists?

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

We are NotWinning the War

so sez incoming Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Praetorian-speak is a weirdly limited language when it gets away from it's usual lexicon of threats and utopian fantasies.
Gates can't admit defeat or even say the word withdrawl, but he can clumsy execute a bad linguistic fandango around the concepts.
This is akin to the cherished habit of the Japanese Army in World War II which forbade the use of the hated word "retreat" when cutting orders. Thus soldiers of Hirohito (like Bush he was once revered as the "Son of the Sun")could be ordered to "turn around and advance" or some such twaddle as that.
So it would seem that GOP establishment has sent Gates in to settle Bush and Cheney down and prep the admin for some sort of pullout.
Such are the frayed flags of praetorian triumphalism, such is empire.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Twilight of the Neocons

First Rumsfeld, now UN Ambassador John Bolton has resigned.
It has indeed been a bad fortnight for the GOP's special cadre of uplifters and revolutionaries.
Who is next?
Cheney maybe?
Imagine what sort of useless hack Bush would nominate to serve out the remainder of the Vice President's term of office...Dan Quayle, Pete Dupont, the ashes of Meldrim Thompson?
The key there is to find someone even less popular and even more inane (if possible) than Bush himself. But as the President's approval ratings continue to spiral downwards his options could boil down to Galeazzo Ciano or perhaps Isabel Peron.
Ah but these boy-os were men of destiny but two years ago, they'd had their
Diebold Certified "accountability moment" and strutted around the nation sick with pride and bloated with ill gotten power.
Now look at them, sweating like stoolies at police headquarters and desperate for a way out.
This is all gratifying to watch if the country wasn't in such desperate straits.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Give Jeff Jacoby some credit...

even as the scurvy likes of Donald Rumsfeld are looking for a exit on Iraq, Jeff is still waving his cavalry sword in the air calling for more regiments to sent to Baghdad.
Jacoby has shown a commendable lack of imagination all down the line from those heady days when Bush strutted across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln like Peron on the balcony of the Casa Rosada.
However, even as he calls for more troops, more patrols, more search-n-destroy Jacoby betrays a certain lack of steadfastness.
Now as the shades of national dissolution fall 'round Iraq, Jeff could earn some consistency points by coming out for conscription in the USA, but alas even the Globe's Laughing Young Senescence quivers before that decision.
At this point though, more troops in Iraq means dropping recruitment standards, extending tours, rounding up stray National Guardsmen, arming the cooks a whole host of dubious measures designed to stave off the inevitable draft.
"There are no more men to be had" to quote Marshal Ney (I think it was Ney at least).
Humble Elias has a simple notion, if Jacoby McCain et al think sending more troops is the answer, then they ought to explain honestly where the men are gonna come from.

Friday, December 01, 2006

I just love when

I am right....

Back on June 23rd 2006 I had this to say about the whole matter...

Kerry Healey had better watch her mouth...
She now proposes to go screaming into the streets to demonstrate her freeper bona-fides as an anti-illegal immigration zealot.
Fine, she had to tack to the right at some point, it is entirely predictable that she'd do it in respect of an issue properly vetted by the Washington DC Praetorian Class.
But...Remember this me hearties...

It is IMPOSSIBLE to be truly rich in Massachusetts and NOT have hired an illegal immigrant to do something somewheres for your well-heeled ass. It might've been the crew that built your pre-gubernatorial palace by the sea on the North Shore or the crew that comes along and does the yardwork once a week. Sooner or later, someone without green-card one, has done the heavy lifting for you.


Oh Ghod this is truly truly lovely, sure it is Romney and not Healey thus the full weight of the prophecy is not felt, but then again the Viceroy wants to be President and this will make a wonderful attack ad.
Yesterday, Mitt was the next big thing on the right and today???

HAW HAW!

Thursday, November 30, 2006

JK on Larry King last night...

Measured thoughtful presidential...and Kerry very properly contrasted the slight cost of his botched joke against the vast weight of the President's botched policy in Iraq.
Currently JK is talking up a sort of regional conference of all interested parties in respect of Iraq...this is a sensible even conservative notion.
Alas however the one flaw in the proposal is that it would have to be implemented by our lazy smug insecure Lame Duck of a President and or his groveling toady of a Secretary of State.
Seriously though, it's a good idea but it'll go nowhere as long as Bush is President and his schoolyard value system holds sway.
Meanwhile, Kerry did good last night, hope the message gets out.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

John Kerry will be on Larry King Live tonight @ 9pm

According to CNN.com, he'll be on after Duane "Dog" Chapman....

Again, this is nothing new for JK, he was on after "Triumph the Insult Comic Dog" on the Tonight Show, indifferent lead-ins seem to be persistent theme with him.

Oh a shout out to Tough Enough, yes they linked to Humble Elias today but I've been meaning to remind the laity that theirs is an uncommonly sensible blog worth visiting daily.
:)

Oh Dear...Oh My...

John Kerry's approval ratings are down according to the latest polling.
So much sound, so much fury, there are even certain personalities that are calling for a Primary Challenger for JK should he run again for the senate in '08.
Who is up for that? Jill Stein, Jon Bonifaz...the unquiet ashes of Monsignor Feeney?

I can recall with the simplest nostalgia December 2005 when John Kerry was running behind Al Sharpton in the New Hampshire primary polling.
Hell, the Globe once pimped polls indicating that Bill "Hollow Leg" Weld was gonna be our next Junior Senator in 1996.
And the above seems like more of the same to Humble Elias.

The origins of this disaffection are easy to see, Kerry lost in '04 after the usual campaign of brutal emasculation from the hard right in the country.
Having endured a full year of having their manhood questioned, disheartened liberals traditionally expiate their injured psyches by turning on the nominee like rats in a firestorm.
Thus they symbolically say to the nation "We aren't unmanly, we can beat down John Kerry (Or Walter Mondale or Mike Dukakis or Al Gore) with the best of them!!"
This is nothing except appropriating the oppressor's own malign emotional iconography, something we must purge from ourselves if we mean to govern and build a majority in the elections to come.

It seems to me, that botched joke aside, John Kerry did a lot of good this year from personal appearances for democratic challengers to fundraising on behalf of the same.
Lets try to remember that going forward.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Tom Reilly has apparently decided that the

best treatment for the post election blues is a nice fat lawsuit against the high and mighty.

Either that or it is one of those "If I'm goin' down I'm taking Bechtel Parsons et al Down With Me!"
:)
Anyhow glad to see the outgoing AG is feelin' better, hope he won't be such a stranger after he leaves office.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Shuffling the Deck...

And right now the Boston Phoenix thinks it's gonna be McCain versus Romney.
Interesting match up...but destiny likes to make fools of us all.
McCain is very much a politician wedded to the past, he had a historic opportunity handed to him in the year 2000 and still he was jacked up by a nasty lackwitted scion with too much money and too little talent.
I just don't see McCain as good comeback material...he'll have a hard enough time getting elected President of his own Boiling Temperment.
Guys like him have been getting hyped as the Only Inevitable all my life none of them ever make i; Nelson Rockefeller, Scoop Jackson, Gary Hart the list goes on.
There is a definite Gary Hart vibe to McCain.
Romney on the other hand is getting a lot of good press that largely a consequence of so many name Republican's goin' for the terminal dirt nap on November 7th. Little of his current bounce is a result of his own charisma or ideas. He looks like a player now but does anyone on the other side of the fence really think Mitt Romney can put together a credible and competitive national campaign?
One doubts he could deliver a single state in New England.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Post Thanksgiving Day shout out to the Blue Mass Group

I read that BMG's own David Kravitz has made it onto one of Governor Elect Patrick's fifteen policy transition teams.
Well, the state was misgoverned for some sixteen years so obviously Deval Patrick needs a lot of timely advice from various quarters.
:)
Anyway all this is good for all of us as well as BMG, those guys worked hard for Team Patrick, they deserve a place at the table.

Meanwhile no one was killed at the big ink plant blast in Danvers, I know a lot of people were displaced by the experience though. FOr what it is worth, there is no finer feeling though than to look around on Thanksgiving Day and realize thru the Grace of God there are no empty seats this year.
Meanwhile the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency has useful advice on how to make wise contributions at for the victims and even has a few links.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Idle thought for the day...

Having spent 12 million bucks of her husband's money on a losing campaign for Governor, one that made her cordially loathed all over the Commonwealth...just what d' ye suppose Kerry Healey is gonna have to do to pay all that dough back to Sean?

It's fer sure she can't raise that scratch writing monographs for Abt Associates on a part timer's schedule.
Maybe NECN is hiring...Healey could do the weather report or the lottery numbers or some damn thing.

Reform is Dead...

Having spent four years honking thru his nose at the Commonwealth about the evils of patronage, Mitt Romney sighs and sets his lackey Eric Fehrnstrom up with a good job at a good wage.

So much for Reform kids...remember that? Scott, Brian, Joanie that whole crowd couldn't get enough of that magic power word.
Look how their big pal that Weld style Moderate Republican Mitt Romney acts when he thinks no one is looking...
Oh and yes, the a-hole is out of state, in Florida that is my friends, just...the crowning touch.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Newsflash! Romney is NOT a fraud

so claims Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory.
Brian is all pleased-n-happy to see his hero Mitt Romney taking time out of his busy schedule (which consists chiefly of haranguing anti-gay marriage "activists" on the steps of the State House in a vain bid to intimidate the legislature) to restore funding for homeless shelters.
Everything is just peachy in McGrory-land.
Meanwhile Brian's unfraudulent hero has cut the budget so drastically that starting tomorrow state mental hospitals will no longer admit new patients.

I could take some cheap shots here but I won't. Let the facts stand a lonely watch at the ramparts of civilization hyar in da Commonwealth.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Three Months and Fifteen Minutes Later

Humble Elias got his fifteen minutes of fame back in September, and no one even told him til' now.
In the September 2006 issue of Boston Magazine columnist Erin Byers Murray (in the course of a piece extolling the Blue Mass Group) dismissed this blog as "sarcastic rant heavy chatter" and this blogger as "a blowhard".
A Blowhard?
Moi????
Erin sweetie, in this teenst pissin' patch Humble Elias is THE Blowhard, solo and supreme!
She did however quote one of my better anti-Jacoby japes verbatim and got the URL right so it was hardly a total beatdown.
This is a blog built on a certain amount of poorly edited invective that much I've never denied.
But Ghod why am I the last person to find these things out?
This is apparently karmic payback for not subscribing to Boston Magazine.

What this situation does illustrate though, especially in the wake of Patrick's victory this month is the rising profile of many many local political bloggers.
The pro-Patrick blogger brigade can credible claim to made a serious contribution to our victory on November 7th.
That in turn generates mainstream press interest, potentially bigger audiences and a place at the local media table.
Or so it seems to me.

We are in danger of being the "next big thing".
Well, that is inevitable though, if Patrick had lost we'd a been of occasional interest at the Boston Phoenix...but now?
Zoom!

So lets make good use of it while it lasts.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Romney's Charmless Offensive...

Governor Romney has taken to flailing at local reporters out on the campaign trail accusing them of a liberal bias.
These would be the same journalists, the Lehighs and McGrory's who ALL alibi'd for Mitt back in campaign '02 and swore His Viceregal Majesty was really a nice squishy Weldian moderate republican.
I can't help it...
HAW HAW!!
He has been stabbing me and mine in the back for four long empty years now at last Romney has around to beating on the very jackass-class who made him.

We can look forward to more mental effluvia from Mitt Romney as his campaign rolls forward...his main strategy at the moment seems to consist of little more than dicking on the Commonwealth at every opportunity.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Grace Notes from Caucus Day 2006...

I recall with the simplest nostalgia when Senator John Kerry (along with Future Governor Deval Patrick) made a brief appearance at Menotomy's democratic caucus back in February. The former presidential candidate made some rousing remarks and openly predicted that the democrats would take the Senate this year.
Now, let us make one thing clear, he was applauded and generally well-recieved (these are after all, his loyal Spartans)...but there were those in thr aud, some of them playas on the local scene who thought his prophesy rash and ill-considered.
HA!
Who is rash and ill considered NOW?

There is a pathology in the democratic party that we like to cut our defeated candidates dead. This is a form of reaction formation, having gone thru endless campaigns wherein our patriotism (and also our machismo) has been questioned, mocked and or denied, this conditioning therefore dictates we make a bitter burnt offering of the candidate as expiation for their lack of "balls, gumption-n-guts".
The punditariat love to take this line because it fosters divisions within the democratic party which in turn gives them a chance to pontificate in extremis.
So we have become the party of disposability, Kerry symbolically joins McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis and Gore in the disdain-zone.
Frankly this is nothing but playing the GOP's game for them though, it is a type of psychic terrorism that we have internalized given the way our enemies frame the argument when they win.
Well...last week WE WON.
So as a gesture of mental health...can we let say Walter Mondale and Senator Kerry out of purgatory?
Just for a start?

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Giuliani in '08?

The Former Mayor of New York now bids to extend his interminable victory lap to a full seven years running by running for President.
This ought to be fun, Rudy is allegedly pro-gay rights and pro-abortion, now unless he wants to grovel and flip flop on those issues (and he might ya never know)the xian right won't cut his candidacy much slack.
In fact, given the GOP's wholesale electoral losses last week the values pimps may well wanna salve their injured egos by beating down an easily bullied NY Ethnic.
Honestly, one wonders what Rudy's approach will be to the GOP Overlords in Spartansburg...he certainly can't beat the likes of Mitt Romney at the toady game.

Running for President though, is on the surface a good gig if you are a shallow applause-junkie with too much time on your hands and no real idea of what to do with yourself. When you've got high name recognition, a big ego, a bulging rolodex and too muchy time on your hands a stab at the GOP Presidential nomination is nigh inescapable...where do you think hopeless inanities like John Connolly, Steve Forbes, Phil Gramm and Pat Robertson come from?

Well...maybe so, but there is also a certain degree of wearisome ignominity built into running for the GOP nomination. One is expected to fawn over a diverse collection of louts, wowsers, gun worshippers, book idolators and commerce communicants. These are a sad jacklegged bunch given to insecure boasts as well as persecution mania.
Given all that I saw Rudy comes to his senses and is out it by primary night in New Hampshire.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Sco Lives!

Just when I was gonna post an Obit for the Watertown Blogger (died of "ecstasy" 11-7-2006 on or about 10:45pm EST) he comes roaring back into the scene with a meticulous breaking down of voting patterns in the recent election.
Da Kid did yeoman work for Deval and the rest of the ticket, he ought to be congratulated.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Geez I almost forgot to gloat...

It was just precious and lovely to see the Junior Senator from Pennsylvania, "High Pitched Rick" Santorum go down to a crushing defeat on Tuesday.
It just was....
A mere eighteen months ago, Santorum was being pumped up as a Future President and presumed Dictator of the United States.
Nice...long...fall into humiliation and obscurity, couldn't happen to a nicer guy quite honestly.
Rick was a ferocious rightical-chic religious fanatic and ideological warrior, in his fevered brain men must be MADE to fit the plan, if they won't then out come the bicycle chains.
Ah well, rise with ideology, fall with ideology I say.
Pennsylvania apparently grew sick of Rick and his pushy sanctimonious sense of entitlement, his weird hyper-religious lifestyle and that nasty psychotic whine he'd deploy when things went good.
Truly a man made in the image of Allen Drury's "Fred Van Ackerman" has departed public life, hopefully never to return.
Good riddance Rick, don't let the door smack you in the ass on the way out.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Ohhh...My...Gawd...What am I gonna do NOW????

It just hit me, with Mitt Romney goin' over the hump and Deval Patrick's Roman Triumph at the polls, just what the hell am I supposed to write about???
Humble Elias is serious gentle readers...I got into this blogging game chiefly because The Viceroy won in 2002.
You see, I was in a "This-far-and-no-farther" type mood.
Good Lord, Mitt was half my copy and a lifeline on slow days, one could always count on his superficial stunt driven governing style and that loopy chronic onanist grin of his.
And the people he picked to run the Commonwealth, I mean they were a goldmine!!!

At the very least he is running for President though, that is something at least, damn fool thinks he actually has a record to run on.

The Owl of Minerva (To quote Hegel) flies only at dusk.
Thus with the Governor's departure we are given a brief glimpse into the essence of his political style. More and more I think of Romney as the embodiment of his predecessors worst qualities...he had Weld's detachment and greed, Cellucci's craven opportunism and Swift's bumptious ineptitude.
What he did have was a lot of money to spend and a willingness to promise nigh anything to Massachusett's independents in order to win.
Once installed in office though, a bad case of political ADD set in with the Governor lurching from auto-insurance reform to political reform of the legislature to health care reform as his signature issues. Not much was accomplished in any case but the deaths of many trees to make press releases.
The problem was and remains, at politics Romney is a hopeless amateur too impressed with easy headlines and disinclined to do the heavy lifting that makes one a success in the game.
George Washington Plunkett once opined that politics is a business like any other, you had to be trained up in it if you wanted to move up in the ranks.
With his vague Bain Capital Group resume and entirely irrelevant record at the Winter Olympics, Romney came back to the Commonwealth in 2002 sodden in the belief that politics was somehow easy.
A couple of budget fights later and few too many churlish insults thrown at the State THAT MADE HIM and Mitt is headed for the wide open spaces of the Presidential Campaign Trial.
I wish the GOP electorate the sheer joy of his icy condescending speechmaking skills.
And if any of you are reading this, don't fall for his line that he "Saved Massachusetts" from anything...the only thing this state was to Mitt Romney was a prop and a theatrical background nothing more.


Ahhh...Mitt I'll miss him...no no I won't.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

On the second day of GOPocalypse '06...

Humble Elias wishes to post a very short sweet list...

Scot Lehigh
Joan Vennochi
Jeff Jacoby
Brian McGrory
Jim Braude
Howie Carr
Jay Severin
Laura Ingraham

Are all wrong

And I and two million other citizens of the Commonwealth are right!

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Rumsfeld Out?

CNN is spreadin' that welcome rumor even as I write this...
I mean, wasn't Bush proclaiming in that horrible little snarky voice of his last week that he'd stick with Rumsfeld right thru to the end? That Rummie had a job til' January 2009?

Ahhhh...Rummie yer doin' a heckuva job.

Wonder what toadying hack Cheney will dig up to replace him?

E.F.D.

That is the question on this glorious Morning in the Commonwealth.
Who was...Early For Duval?
It is an eclectic mix of politicians, activists and happy idlers who can proudly claim they were with Patrick from hour one, the list includes everyone from State Rep. Jim Marzilli, State Senator Bob Havern, Nancy Stolberg (formerly a wheel the John Kerry's NH organization and now Duval's director of volunteers)and the Blue Mass Group among others.
This happy few, doesn't number Humble Elias in their ranks, I didn't endorse til the day before the primary...but I did endorse...Duval big guy ya listening???

Humble Elias does expect that for well or ill Patrick-Murray triumph will cast a new light on the local liberal blogging community. Already Alex Beam that grouchy contrarian in the Globe is grosuing about the grouchy contrarians who comprise the progressive bloggers of Massachusetts. That spotlight may even make it as far as this lonely outpost...but I doubt it.

Meanwhile, the gray skies of today don't bring me down one whit, we have triumphed over adversity after sixteen years in the wilderness, it is a good day to be a democrat.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Massachusetts Uber Alles

My God, this is what Bonaparte must've felt when the sun parted the clouds at Austerlitz to reveal the wreckage of four empires strewn at the feet of the Corsican.

Geez that Mitt Romney is sure greedy and shameless isn't he? He devotes fifteen minutes of airtime tonight to allegedly "introducing" the thoroughly beaten and humiliated Kerry Healey which was really an opportunity to polish his presidential stump speech.
From the looks of the crowd in the ballroom, they wanted to drag the Governor off camera and work him over with tire irons...angry and used doesn't describe those stalwart Massachusetts Republicans.

Ah but the words of Oliver Cromwell come back to me at times like this, harsh as bout of malaria and sharp as ten penny nail:

"Thou hast tarried too long for the good thee have done and in the bowels of Jesus Çhrist Our Savior thee must go! God will decide the issue between thee and us!"

All for the Glory of the Commonwealth

lets get out there and vote.

Two centuries of men and women who struggled and sacrificed on the mere dream of freedom are now counting on us to carry Massachusetts forward. From John Adams, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, William Monroe Trotter down thru John Kennedy, Paul Tsongas and Tip O'Neill. The great the forgotten the forlorn and the unbowed, for all of them them let us go forward to take matters in hand and deliver the Governance of Massachusetts over to men and women of resolution.
And one more time, let us overthrow destiny.

Election Day Endorsement Recap:

For Governor and Lt. Governor, Deval Patrick and Tim Murray.
If the Commonwealth is faced with challenges they can only be met with leadership, resolution and a commitment to an honest dialogue.
Nothing Lt. Governor Healey has said or done nigh these past four years indicates that she has anything of value to offer Massachusetts except cliches and the gift of her own mediocrity.
The Patrick-Murray team represents change, sane, reasonable and dialogue driven progressive change.
Let us have that, and let us go forward.

For Secretary of State: William Galvin. You may not like Billy personally and certainly like me you may not accord with all his political views but he is an experienced sober man of judgement.
He is opposed today by Jill Stein the 2002 Green Party nominee for Governor, Jill has been getting some traction the last few days in the local blogosphere, to me though she is a local version of Ralph Nader.
She did her level best to plunger her dagger into Shannon O'Brien's back in '02, that is a small indignity I won't soon forget.
If by some miracle Stein won, given the Green'szealous "anti-zionism" we'd be faced with a four year long battle over "Israeli Divestment" which would do nothing but stymie progress in other areas.
No, give me Galvin, he isn't perfect but he will do.
Attorney General: Martha Coakley, she has been effective as Middlesex County DA, she will bring energy and indepedence to this critical office.
Health to all our candidates today.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Hussein Sentenced to be hung...

and that, is the White House's idea of good news.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Dole, head of Republican Senate Campaign Committee took one last big swig of the koolaid on Meet the Press Yesterday when she proclaimed:
"Democrats appear to be content with losing"...the war.
Oy so this is victory on the battlefield?
These people are inept, vengeful and rampant...the DC Praetorian Class is nicely divided between outright bullies like the Vice President and the toadying enablers of bullies a'la Senator Dole.
Time for a new broom to sweep clean I say.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Michael Gee

lays out some serious smackdown on Brian McGrory.
Brian's column today, complains bitterly that Scary Kerry's GOP moderate bona fides are being mocked and overlooked by the media which is somehow giving Deval Patrick a free ride. It is an idiotic screed written by a credulous lackwit whose cherished political mythology is about to be run thru a shredder.
Credit where credit is due though, Michael Gee disposes of Brian with far more expedition than Humble Elias.
Serious Chimes at Midnight fans will recall that Mr. Gee wrote an eminently sensible column about the late Pat Tillman for the Herald shortly before his untimely dismissal.
Michael, what can I say, writing is a hard dollar in Boston, feel free to link to the Chimes here if you wanna.

Bill Weld drops in...

Former Governor Bill Weld sobered up and found his way to Pennsylvania Station thus to campaign for Scary Kerry Healey yesterday in a listless last minute attempt to prop the Lt. Governor's prospects on Tuesday.
If you follow the link, you'll find a terrible photo of the former Governor who looks purple from a prolonged bout of sobriety or some damn thing.
The irony here is multi-leveled, Weld fled the state in 1997 out of shame and boredom, now he returns after trying to run for Governor of New York to salvage the electoral wreck of Sean Healey's undertalented wife.
Meanwhile, Bishop Romney has ankled the joint and is campaigning out of state for GOP Gubernatorial candidates with presumably better prospects than Healey
Honestly, the whole damn campaign has degenerated into a bad burlesque...Scary Kerry is ducking one escapee Republican and is desperately whistestopping with the state's most famous GOP ex-pat.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Shrill and Strident wins the race...

If returning to her sneering self righteous know-it-all ways marks a victory for Scary Kerry Healey, then yes, she did well in last night's debate.
Alas however, its the sort of my-sh*t-doesn't-stink attitude that a chronic frontrunner like Ronald Reagan normally affects when the race has run beyond hope of recovery for the opposition.
When you are down by double digits it's just a weird and inexplicable pose.
Didn't seem like she landed any haymakers on Deval Patrick, everyone else acted like they were thoroughly tired of her act...even Christy Mihos shrugged and asked her to step aside.
Now the matter is in the hands of the voters.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Congressman John Boehner Threatens to "Kill" Senator Kerry

The Globe reports that a gleeful Congressman Boehner has threatened:
If Kerry doesn't apologize, we're going to beat him to death until he does," said House majority leader John A. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, on Fox News
Ahh...Congressman, if you "beat" Senator Kerry to "death" then how can he apologize having been forcibly adjourned to the Throne of Our Savior?
I mean, it is a stupid threat, but a threat nonetheless, I do feel that it ought to be at the very least referred to the Justice Department or the Secret Service for a follow up.

All I can say to Senator Kerry is

Don't apologize, don't back down!
Has George apologized for lying about the WMD?
Has he even said he was sorry for serving the troops a prop turkey on Thanksgiving?
Has Rumsfeld apologized for bungling the war planning, ignoring the insurgency, and stinting the troops on the necessities like body armor?
Has Cheney apologized for permitting Halliburton to get it's ugly snout so deep in the Iraqi trough that they are snorting up splinters?
Hell NO!
Humble Elias doesn't see why Senator Kerry should apologies for telling the truth on the whole sick corrupt cabal in the White House.
These bastards have made a cottage industry out of distorting any remarks made by our Junior Senator and then screaming them long and loud from one end of America to the other.
They are ably assisted in this matter by their usual latahs in the media, jerks like Scot Lehigh who'll soon be writing those awful tsk-tsk columns in the Globe asserting the whole controversy is JK's fault due to his own mismanagement...blah blah blah!
Well, F@ck that noise!
The issue is the war, our troops have been caught in the middle of a Sunni-Shia' civil war whilst the punditariat breathlessly reports on JK"s reaction to the GOP's latest manufactured "crisis".
Un-bel-ievable.
The only thing this thing teaches me is that the national news media continues to fall for the GOP line every time, indeed it is increasingly clean that they are AFRAID to report the story any other way!
So John....if by some miracle you are reading this the Little Blog that Cried, DON'T GIVE IN! In fact, Pour it on!!!
These jerks are most unmanly bastards imaginable, they screech for apologies like a bunch of middle school queen bees.
Treat them with contempt it is only as much as they deserve.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Scary Kerry Healey's idea of making nice

is a TV commercial depicting a lone jogger mentally recapitulating a long series of talk-radio style distortions in respect of Deval Patrick's record.
Adlai Stevenson tried something like this in 1952, it was a last minute ad blitz called "I've switched, to Stevenson".
Apparently the whole thing was dreamed up by an advertising agency noted for it's soft sell cigarette commercials.
Of course, it didn't work.
Ike sandbagged Stevenson, but then Adlai was an honroable man who campaigned on the power of his ideas and his own prairie passion in defeat he had dignity.
Healey on the other hand has been wallowing in the gutter so long she looks like the Lost Miner of Hazard Kentucky. This last minute jogger commercial is the same old stalker ad nonsense dressed up in a track suit.
One thing that Scary Kerry has demonstrated time and again, is that she has no dignity, no ideas and precious little honor left.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Mitt and Jeb?

The Herald is pimping speculation that Mitt Romney wants to run with Florida Governor Jeb Bush as his VP candidate in '08. They've got a anonymous quote in there asserting that Jeb is about to endorse Mitt.
Which would make it a historic Mormon-Catholic ticket...something new and perhaps too new for the GOP.
All of that presupposes that Mitt can in fact win the nomination or that Jeb Bush won't survey the GOP notional electoral wreckage next week and decide that he is the only "name" politician left who can save the partei.
If Romney wasn't such a weasely amateur in politics he might realize that Jeb is first and foremost a Bush, a family that has made a primitive fetish out of treacherous self interest.
La Famiglia Arbusto must look at Mitt Romney's earnestness and just laugh, he is exactly the sort of jerk they've been running thru electoral wood-chippers since the salad days of Texas John Connolly.
Otherwise, Jeb just casts too big a shadow for Romney to take him on as VP, the Viceroy likes nice quiet yes men or yes women on the order of Kerry Healey.

Friday, October 27, 2006

Supermitt to the Rescue?

The Viceroy seems to have awakened from his strange torpor, grunted, rolled over and hit the hustings on behalf of his embattled undertalented Lieutenant Governor "Scary" Kerry Healey.
He has been quoted as saying the following:
[Kerry Healey's]"campaign for governor is the most important governor's race in the country to me."
He said the same thing about the Florida Governor's race last week in his capacity as Chairman of the Republican Governor's Association.
And who knows what Romney means by important anyway, he has strange oracular tendencies, maybe he means it's important to him that Deval Patrick carry the day?
I think Scary Kerry is about to discover that Mitt Romney is no good working on anyone else's behalf. Being an entirely amateur do-it-yourself politician of pronounced superficial tendencies, Mitt is at his "best" only when he is serving his own interests.
Well wait til' the rest of the country finds that out I say.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Wall Street throws cold water on the rumored

purchase of the Boston Globe by GOP sex fiend Jack Welch.
Or so the Boston Globe reports....
Allegedly, the Ambassador from Caucasiastan Mike Barnicle is in on this deal somewheres, the notion of him making a comeback on Morrissey Boulevard though is grimly hiliarious.
Frankly if the Globe was sold to Welch and his gang the only long range winner would be the notional seller The New York Times. Between Welch's GOP bona fides and Barnicle's wild flights of sentimental invention, I can see a lot of readers throwing their hands up in disgust and subscribing to the Times.
Moreso, if the Times decided to publish even an attenuated Boston edition....if I was Jack Welch, I'd get it in writing...the Great Grey Lady can play for keeps don'cha know.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Joanie Vennochi...

still marking out hard for the phantom moderate Republican GOP gubernatorial messiah....
This quote in particular is suggestive:
Massachusetts voters never got a chance to meet a smart, articulate, socially moderate, fiscally conservative candidate for governor -- a female version of the Bill Weld who ran for governor in 1990. Instead, when they think of Healey, they now think of a woman devoid of humor or grace
I give Joanie credit, sixteen years of stagnation and stunt driven gubernatorial politics and she is STILL marking out like an aging Hulkamaniac for a moderate Republican to save us all.
She has the courage of her restrictions, lets give Joanie that.

Debate Tonight

There is no doubt in my mind that Scary Kerry Healey will renew her demands for a one on one debate with Deval Patrick. She will probably get quite nasty on the subject and question his manhood...after all she has already called our candidate every name in the book and drafted an Orangeshirt Legion to press her case.
I urge the Patrick campaign not to fall for any of this nonsense.
Kerry Healey agreed to the "all up" format back in April when she and her apologists in the media thought this campaign was gonna be a cakewalk. If the format now does not show her to advantage, well...tough shit. Scary Kerry has had six long empty months to do something else other than cry havoc and murder most foul...trust me "Lieutenant Governor Barbie" isn't gonna come up with any thought provoking proposals between now and this notional debate.
And to put it more blunty she doesn't deserve the consideration, Kerry Healey has run for Governor this fall like a rat in a firestorm, she has lowered the tone of public discourse in Massachusetts to an appalling degree. Thanks to Scary Kerry we can look forward to new outrages in the campaigns to come.
If Healey wants a mulligan, tell her to take up golf!

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Scary Kerry Healey upbraids the Orange-shirts

or so the Boston Globe reports.
Well...Mussolini had to "scold" his Blackshirt Squadristi too when they got out of hand. Reputedly Il Duce was royally cheesed off when the boys went and snuffed Giacomo Matteotti without filling out a permission slip.
Honestly is there a dumber hosebag in state politics right now than Kerry Healey? These are her big ideas for state government, a bad burlesque on squadristi tactics?

The Globe is also reporting that Healey is now airing a nice sweet pleasant advertisement that does not accuse Duval Patrick of rapine and or dancing with Lucifer at the full moon.
Oh..gee...Brian McGrory must be relieved.

Monday, October 23, 2006

The Globe has been dogging Romney's heels over

his bid to appropriate Mormon based fundraising and organization muscle for 2008.
Politicizing various religious sects is an old GOP game, there are many many churches out there that are naught but fundraising flags of convenience and or pagan cabals dedicated to the veneration of George W. Bush.
In fact, this is an old gambit for the Viceroy, anyone else out there recall the endless squads of happy smiling out of state Mormon "volunteers" that swarmed the polling places on election day 2002?
Virtually none of these activists had the right to vote in Massachusetts nor any discernable business before the Commonwealth, but nonetheless there they were happily waving signs for their Bishop.
All Romney is doing here is expanding that policy and ginning up the fundraising dimension, he has already discovered that putting his organization on a strictly sectarian basis won't harm his prospects in any way.
My only question is, will those volunteers (who contribute their time and enthusiasm in much the same spirit as the Red Chinese volunteers who once intervened in Korea)be out there for Kerry Healey this year?

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Nice to see that even after three years of

duplicity, carnage and brutality, that Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby is still willing to drink the Administration's special Iraq Policy flavored Kool Aid.
Heartening, the lifeboat is burning and Jeff still refuses to "cut and run".
Hell, he has even gently taken to task conservatives like Jonah Goldberg for their emerging qualms about the whole Iraq adventure.
Soon enough, Jeff will be entirely alone in that lifeboat, the flames will start licking dangerously at his shoes, but still he sit ever steadfast, drawing up a long list of alleged liberal hate speech for 2006.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Don Imus endorses Kerry Healey for Governor

in the course of a conversation with the one and only blusterly Ambassador from Caucasiastan, you know him you love him, Mike Barnicle.
Ahhhh...Mike, gotta love him, his half shouted half sobbed sentimental twaddle is what launched Humble Elias on the uncharted seas of bloggerdom.
The man has lost none of his incoherent shamelessness despite having burned down both the metropolitan dailies in Boston over the course of a career that is thick with invention and fancy.
And for that, I am humble and grateful.
Barnicle is apparently supporting Patrick though as usual he offered no defense against the many ugly imprecations Imus hurled at our candidate for Governor.
No instead, Mike merely sighed and noted that he is sending his son to Georgetown and that the now disgraced Congressman FOley once ogled the boy.
Yeah...right...sure Mike, and Patricia Smith was right there as a witness.
But don't worry, the Barnicle offspring is all man and a baseball player at the University...must keep those caucasiastan bona fides fresh don'cha know.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Zogby sez

that Deval Patrick is ahead.
By a wide margin...well polls are almost as treacherous as politicians, this is no time to slack off even the slightest...c'mon how badly do you wanna see "Lt. Governor Barbie" that listless rubbery mediocrity stammer thru a concession speech?

The Romney-Healey indulges a little electoral blackmail

by moving to abolish all Mass Turnpike Tolls west of Route 128 on June 30th 2007.
In other words, "vote for Healey and maybe we will get rid of the toll booths next year assuming we don't take the Commonwealth off an economic cliff between now and then."
It is to say the least a pretty transparent ploy all from a cabal that has done naught but soak the public via a plethora of sneaky-ass fees nigh these past four years.
Why not give back some of that 750 million large The Viceroy and his gang shook down from hunters, fishermen, gun & auto owners etc etc etc etc...?
Well they can't give any of that dough back, they are gonna need it to cover the 100 million dollar shortfall engendered by closing the tollbooths.
Honestly, these people will happily create a depopulated wasteland of Massachusetts, as long as they can rule over the rubble.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

The Churlish Life...

The late Congressman Studd's life partner will not be able to collect any death benefits thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act.
Oh...thank God... I was worried there for a moment that this glittering prosperous civilization of ours was organized on something akin to christian charity.
Can't have that now can we?
I'm sure Howie Carr and Mitt Romney must be stifflin' gleeful giggles this morning.
Well...no fuh nuthin' but think of all the wowsers, crooks, charlatans, closet falangists, pimps and whores who in fact DO qualify for a congressional pension and or death benefits.
But Dean Hara...cuz' he was a man married to man, he is anathema?

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

One other question about Brian McGrory...

The Healey campaign latest commercial extensively quotes McGrory's criticism of Deval Patrick in respect of the LaGuer case. Does this constitute an endorsement by McGrory of Kerry Healey?
It sure looks that way.
And if so, remember Humble Elias predicted it.

There is no other word to describe Brian McGrory....

the man is charmelessly naive.
Today he devotes precious column space to a hypothetically broadminded and tolerant speech that his hero Mitt Romney should have given on Sunday at the Tremont Temple Baptist Church.
You would think that after four years and four different positions on abortion along with the Governor's superficial stunt driven style of governance, Mitt's undisguised loathing for the Commonwealth and the systematic looting of the average voter via various fees that Brian McGrory would somehow finally get it.
Mitt Romney is a selfish disdainful man who'd no more tell off the savage hordes of social conservatism than he'd deny the divine origin of Joseph Smith and the golden plates.
Brian just doesn't get that Romney will happily call for the mass deportation of all gays if it means a runaway triumph in the South Carolina Primary. The Governor won't actually deliver on that promise (Mitt is far to opportunistic to go that far) but he'll damn well say anything of the lowest crudest and most repellant variety to win.
Naivete' is sort of cute in charming in young children and the like, but it is an appalling quality in a supposedly hard boiled state house based columnist.

Humble Elias doesn't even get angry anymore when pundits like Brian McGrory toady up to hopeless second rate yaps like Mitt Romney, I just get disgusted that is all.

Monday, October 16, 2006

"Only a Boarder in Romney's New Order"...

Have you ever noticed that when some movement conservative hack wants to really wallow in hysteria, they usually do it in a religious pulpit with two golden spotlights on the Cross of Jesus dead center behind them?
Such was the case with the Viceroy yesterday who took time out of his allegedly busy schedule to harangue the troops at the Tremont Street Temple on the evils of secularism, gay marriage and indeed rationality.
At one point Mitt piously bleated:
"Every child deserves a mother and a father."
He has said this before, now what Humble Elias wants to know is, will Mitt be running for President on a dissolve-all-divorces platform?
If every child DESERVES a mother AND a father then clearly the feds will have to intervene and clean up all these failed marriages.
And start raising the dead or else begin drafting new fathers and mothers to replace the untimely deceased.

Otherwise, this was all part of "Justice Sunday" a nation-wide transparently partisan appropriation of churchs all over America for the purposes of keeping the GOP in power now and forever amen.
Churches these days don't seem to make any effort to disguise their naked partisan power base do they?
Can't see as that is something the founding father's would approve of.
Nope...not at all.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

For a guy who allegedly hates the United Nations

Jeff Jacoby sure is quick to praise the World Health Organization's decision to loosen some restrictions on the use of DDT.
I mean, this is the same W.H.O. that keeps trying to put the conquest of disease on a socialized basis and continually promotes a non-biblical notion of contraception.
Ahhhh but Jeff has become a stodgy old liberal in his dotage, his obnoxious smirk has degenerated into a churning sea of kindly wattles and jiggly jowls.
Well W.H.O. knows, maybe Jeff will start looking kindly on the teaching of natural selection in the public schools....maybe he'll concede public schools right to exist.

Friday, October 13, 2006

Big Patrick-Murray Rally this Sunday on Boston Common

Everyone is hereby encouraged to attend.
That would be this Sunday, October 15, on the Boston Common (at the bandstand near Tremont St.) at 2:30PM.
I think what we want here is for the local news media to report on the sheer daunting size of the crowd that will come to see the Patrick-Murray ticket.
Remember, size matters.

Brian McGrory's Nice Girl

Ah good old Brian, since Mike Barnicle left the scene he has been my very meat, couldn't have the Chimes at Midnight without him.
Today he comes that close to endorsing Kerry Healey at the last minute though he opts to toss her a few fresh bouquets and leave it at that.
According to Brian, the angry scolding image we have of Kerry Healey runs at odds with her actual nature as a nice sweet suburban preppie with an eye for the occasional snazzy convertible.
Awww...ain't dat sweet, Brian's trying to sweeten up Healey's image.
The tone of the piece seems to be "Gee if only Kerry Healey would act nicer, I could buy into her tangled image as a moderate Republican and openly join her fan club."
This is no less than hilarious that dour miserable woman who seems to be threatening the Commonwealth with all manner of dire consequences if we dare vote for her opponent is pretty much the real Kerry Healey.
Based on what Humble Elias has heard from various interested acquaintances, Lt. Governor Healey brings a rather disdainful sarcastic attitude to her much ballyhooed meetings with local elected officials. That "Your my hero Christy" sneer of hers is well known to school committee members and mayors from Peru to Bourne.
Clearly, the Lieutenant Governor has picked up a few of Romney's nasty viceregal habits.
The choice seems clear, more stunt driven governance animated by a nasty disdainful spirit, or a vitally needed change in priorities...something that may avert the Commonwealth's side into economic impotence and political limbo.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Mark Warner drops out of the '08 Presidential Sweeps

the details can be found hyar:
Well...what happened? The guy was shit hot six months ago and angling hard for the "Moderate Southern Democract" slot in the New Hampshire Primary.
I suppose this is good news for John Kerry and Senator Clinton, but does anyone out there believe his "I wanna spend more time with my family" routine?
Hell, Bill Clinton got in back in '92 just get out of the house!

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Good Lord Mitt just can't wait to flee Massachusetts

can't he?
His statement in the above link noting that it would've been "smarter" to stay in Michigan if he'd contemplated running for President just drips with contempt for Massachusetts and the now trademark Romney-esque egomania.
The man spent six million large of his own ill-gotten money to become governor of a state he treats with open disdain.
My Ghod why do we put up with it?
Honestly, truth squads from Massachusetts should dog his every step up in New Hampshire during the 2008 Primary season. He has not given us anything resembling respect or good governance in his one term in office so Humble Elias doesn't see why we shoulf give the Viceroy a moment's peace.

It must be an election year...

because Senator John McCain is squealing his freeper bona-fides like a stuck pig.

Honestly, what ISN'T Bill Clinton's fault for these a-holes?
John McCain would blame his migraines on Bill Clinton...no doubt if he stubs his senatorial toe on the way to the bathroom in the morning McCain curses Bill Clinton all the way to the mirror.
His wife must have learned to block it all out long ago.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Apocalypse Delayed (Maybe...)

Jane's Defense Weekly reports that North Korea's recent nuclear test might have been a one-kiloton dud.
If this is true, then there is still time for a diplomatic solution to the problem. North Korea has lost some de-facto face with this damp squib of a nuclear blast, this gives us a chance to fill the void with timely proposal or two.
Allowing North Korea to build & deploy nuler weapons is a blow to US prestige and set back to the reliability of our security gurantees in the region.
To do nothing but squawk threats (which is what our current policy towards North Korea amounts to) is to invite other regional actors to dicker with Peking or Pyongyang on their own.
That isn't good for us believe me.
Alas at this point, it would take a Kissinger or a Marshall to whomp together a regional non-proliferation policy and the necessary domestic and international coalition to give it teeth.
All we have to work with is that hopeless toady Condoleeza Rice...so lets not get our hopes up shall we?

Monday, October 09, 2006

"BOOM!"

Goes North Korea who stages a grand entrance into the exclusive Nuclear Club complete with 12 kiloton mushroom cloud.
Good God Bush and his cabal have had six long years to develop a policy to avoid this day and yet North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons arrived with the assurance of an unloved season.
Meanwhile Don Rumsfeld and that whole crowd are in a onanistic frenzy to invade Iran because they might develop nuclear weapons down the line.
Ah but North Korea doesn't have oil and does abut the PRC...The whole thing is so complicated for the President's third cowboy mentality, Iran is intellectually easier to digest so Tehran is next.
Meanwhile the far eastern chessboard has been neatly overturned...wingnuts and hardliners are no doubt muttering about Japan's need to take charge of her own defense. Bad nuclear karma has a way of rippling across borders in strange and unpredictable ways.
And still the Navy sails for Iran...

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Jeff Jacoby has a good one today

Like the rest of us, he is sore amazed at the Amish of Pennsylvania's willingness to forgive the perpetrator of last week's school massacre.
He then rattles on that the good example set by the plain people of Lancaster County PA doesn't necessarily exempt him from loathing and hating the murderer in this case.
Well, fair enough, the Amish set very rarified standards for themselves the rest of us are prone to wishing after a very rough brand of justice in these instances.
Y'know come to think of it, hate is a big theme in Jeff Jacoby's writing, ever notice that?
He is usually either exempting himself or others from the accusation of hatefulness, giving himself permission to hate or else compiling long intricate lists of hateful liberals to be excoriated. No doubt should Deval Patrick win this December, Jeff will find some pretext for our nominee for Governor to top that annual list.
Clearly it's topic to which Jacoby has given much thought of a disordered nature. The worst of Jeff Jacoby's writing is essentially smugly pontifical in nature, the right facts, the right emotions the right actions yield god's will in the form of the right outcome. Do it is just weird to read his latest sermon on "when it's okay to hate" as justified by Jeff Jacoby Esq.

Friday, October 06, 2006

American Athens...

now links to this, the Little Blog that Cried.
Welcome welcome, everyone should go there sensible things are therein written.

Denny Hastert is stayin' on...

at least for now.
In an ugly strategic sense, this is very good news indeed.
It means that Speaker Hastert otherwise a fat crook who allegedly coddles pederasts, will become the poster boy for the GOP nigh these next four weeks.
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy as far as Humble Elias is concerned, isn't this the guy who preached ad nauseum to the nation about the primacy of personal responsibility?
Why doesn't he take a lesson from his own corpulent self and quit?
Nope no way, too much money and power on the line I guess.
Hastert's defiant decision to stay is another indication that the GOP's all powerful national machine has shot it's bolt. Normally in a scandal like this, Denny would've resigned days ago, hell the handover of power from Bob Livingston to Hastert back in 1999 was accomplished within hours.
The Roves and Norquists who do the strategic planning for the GOP seem to be way off their game this week.
Like I said, couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

"Denny....

yer doin' a heckuva job..."
Bush calls Hastert teacher coach...father?
Considering the undercurrent of animosity and jealousy between Bush 1 and Bush 2, that is an interesting and suggestive statement on the part of the President.

The October Surprise....

That a GOP dominated U.S. Congress coddles accused pedophiles...
That Speaker Hastert may be forced to resign in disgrace for not putting the kibosh on Representative Foley's nasty boy-crazy ways...
That the House Republican Campaign Committee is desperately trying to lay it's hands on Foley's two million dollar campaign war chest.

Yup this isn't quite the media firestorm that Karl Rove and Grover Norquist were hoping to brew up this month is it?

My prediction is, Hastert will resign, possibly before Saturday the way things are going.
The House GOP will then flail around for a full week spouting blood like a harpooned whale and desperately searching for a meme that'll get them out from under.

So let us make hay while the sun shines my friends.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Congress does not need to appropriate money to build an

anti immigrant wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
No...Instead Congress needs quite desperately to build a wall complete with barbed wire and armed guards between Capitol Hill and the congressional pages dormitory.
Shee-it these GOP yaps in Congress can't keep a bunch of teenaged boys safe from the predations of the Chairman of the Exploited Children's Caucus...So how the hell are they supposed to keep America secure from terrorism?
And another thing...As Chair of the Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children how much child porn d'ye thing Representative Mark Foley got his hands on as "evidence" nigh these past eight years?
And Speaker Hastert that corpulent comfortable crook that scold of Presidential extra-marital affairs, covered it all up and kept collecting on those big fundraisers.

Dear Ghod in heaven Humble Elias is really having second thoughts about a nice quite cottage on the shores of the Baja.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Senator Chris Dodd was on Wolf Blitzer's show yesterday

with Senator Lugar, mostly the talked about the Mark Foley Affair in the House (with Lugar looking uncommonly pale and uncomfortable). Senator Dodd also revealed he was giving close scrutiny to the possibility of running for President in 2008.
Hmmmm...Dodd is a good man, but I don't think he has the stature for the office...a few too many parties with Ted Kennedy are rumored. Then again what is the real meaning of stature when the Office of the President is occupied by a crooked sanctimonious numbskull like George Bush?
I think a lot of people in the US Senate are turning over the idea in their heads right now, conditional of course on how well the democrats do in November. If the party takes over the Senate a lot of guys will wanna hang around and make hay of their committee and sub committee chairmanships.
If however the dems can't seal the deal, look for a flood of congressmen and senators to descend about Iowa and New Hampshire come January 2007.

And then...the game will be afoot, again.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

63%...57%?

Whatever the numbers are, the Globe reports a double digit lead for Deval Patrick today.
Well...thats nice, but lets not forget Shannon O'Brien once had a twelve point lead over Mitt Romney. The democratic gubernatorial ticket is not going to achieve victory without a lot of hard work from the top to the bottom.
In particular, I wonder if those polls are accurately reporting Christy Mihos strength, I suspect he has got more than 10% currently in his pocket. And his Crazy Christy's numbers aren't accurate, then everyone's polling position is in doubt.

Friday, September 29, 2006

Predictably...

Globe columnist Brian McGrory has searched and searched and found Deval Patrick wanting.
It is not surprising, Humble Elias would in fact be shocked if McGrory or any of his moderate republican brethren on Morrissey Blvd started banging the pots for Patrick.
This raises however the question of just who Brian et al will be backing (if anyone) in this election?
Joanie Vennochi is a no brainer, she is all about swift and shallow running emotion, so look for her to come out for Healey at the first mild criticism of the Lt. Governor from Citizen Patrick. Joanie will get all indignant and cry for sisterhood united...it'll be hilarious to read believe me.
Scot Lehigh...is making ponderous measured and the usual objective noises now...but give him a few weeks to find the right moderate GOP strawman (or woman) to back. I'm gonna go out on a limb and predict Lehigh will mark out for Crazy Christy...but that is a bit of mirthful speculation on my part.
Coming back to Brian McGrory, he fell for Romney's bullshit completely in 2002, so why shouldn't he fall for Kerry Healey's nonsense in 2006?

You see how it works with these people? "May the best moderate republican doofus win" or to put it more crudely, "we need a GOP camp follower to fix the problems created by sixteen years of republican dilettante rule."
Whether Deval wins or not, don't look for that cherished myth to fade away as far as the local punditariat is concerned.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

I finally saw Crazy Christy's "controversial" animated TV advert last night...

I liked it, from a stylistic perspective of course, reminded Humble Elias of Bill Plympton's hand-drawn cartoons.
I suspect Mihos might realize a bounce in his polls between this ad and his aggressive debate performance. However to "seal the deal" in any other possible debates he seriously needs to stop shouting and use his "indoor voice".
For the moment though, he is eating into Healey's numbers and over the short term that is a good thing. If Mihos really starts to surge though, he'll start poaching on our cohorts and that might just might make this a tight three way race.
But a lot of factors have to break his way for that to happen.
New England has elected three independent governors in the last thirty years...so don't fool yourselves it could happen here.
Nonetheless, this is the twenty first century it is nigh impossible to govern without the support of a mass political party. A lot of noise can be made and some things accomplished but without an organized base and an experienced cadre of political appointees the so-called "independent" governor usually founders.
Christy Mihos as Governor would end up being a louder more ineffectual version of Romney, count on it.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Oh geez....MORE good news...

The god-damn Sumner is now crumbling away.
The conventional wisdom dictates, that this sort of situation plays to the advantages of the GOP with their lofty claims to managerial supercompetance.
Humble Elias wonder though, does anyone out there really trust a pipsqueak like Kerry Healey to tough out a heartbreaker like that?
What exactly has she done nigh these past four years to suggest that she has any managerial ability at all?
So far as I can see, her sole contribution to Big Dig oversight has been to make sure with her own lily white hands that the Viceroy has his orange safety vest on straight.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Citizen Jasper White?

The gubernatorial debate last night took a question from an "ordinary citizen" of the Commonwealth, a chef named Jasper White.
Is this the same Jasper White who rented office space to the Romney-Healey campaign in 2002? And kept a huge "Romney Healey in 2002" sign glowering over Route 2 for months the election?
Or do I have my facts wrong?
If so then trust Fox25 News and the Boston Herald to pick out GOP footsoldier out of a Commonwealth of some six million.

Monday, September 25, 2006

The Mermaid who would be Governor...

Apropos of tonight's gubernatorial debate on Fox25, who knew Kerry Healey was such a fervent pal of commercial fishermen in Massachusetts?
I'm sure she is regular dock rat down in Gloucester and New Bedford, recites "Rollicky Bill, the Sailor" from memory and gets so darned choked up whenever they play "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" on the radio.
Yup...an old salt is our Lieutenant Governor.
Which is ironic because to look at her, you'd think she got seasick watching "Waterworld" on widescreen...but nope, per her debate performance tonight she is officially a old timey sailor of the ocean deep.

My ghod have you ever heard such rubbish in your life?
If asphalt spreaders were on anyone's electoral radar screen, Kerry Healey would've clumped into the studio in those five inch leather boots claiming she'd fought against excessive federal regulation of aspahlat spreaders all her life from the time she was a wee barbie at Harvard.

Big Debate Tonight

Humble Elias doubts it'll be a decisive encounter between Kerry-n-Deval owing to the presence of Crazy Christy and the Green-Rainbow candidate on the stage. But I'd watch whoever FOX 25 drafts to moderate, the Fox organization is hardly one given over to journalist objectivity and it's well known Rupert Murdoch is anxious to export the rightical chic style of the cable news outfit to the local affiliates.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Kerry Healey, your friendly neighborhood ne'er do well...

Lieutenant Governor Barbie, who has never missed a meal and never made good in any position of trust and responsibility in her life, now proposes to become a rough tough crimefighter, or so her new commercials would have it.
Not fer nothing but, the crime rate has gone up in the Commonwealth nigh these last four years even as the Romney-Healey admin has stiffed cities and towns of local aid thus making it that much more difficult to hire new police officers.
As it is right now, there seems to be a heinous shooting every weekend somewhere in the state...don't really see Kerry Healey proposes much to combat the current spike in violent crime.
Mostly she seems to wanna spend money on restricting the use of cel-phones among teenagers.
If thats yer idea of being a rough tough crimefigher then there is your candidate.

Friday, September 22, 2006

One this you can say about Kerry Healey

(AKA "Lieutenant Governor Barbie")she is not gonna go quietly.
We are a mere three days into the campaign and she is already demanding Phil Johnston's resignation. By the time we get to Halloween she'll no doubt be screeching for the cancellation of the election on grounds of fairness.
Good ghod who in their right minds wants to listen to this amateur ne'er do well carrying on and on for four long years?

Friday Quote Blogging:

"I was a Liberal because everyone else was. The people chased the conservative candidate half a mile and threw him into a pond full of duckweed. People took politics seriously in those days. They used to begin to store up rotten eggs weeks before an election."
George Orwell Coming Up for Air 1939

Thursday, September 21, 2006

NECN election night coverage notes...

Jim Braude is a smarmy git in extremis. He does however a gift for doggedly trying to put words in the mouth of his interviewee. He must've spent some ten minutes of precious congressionally regulated airtime on Tuesday trying get state democratic chairman Johnston to disavow negative advertising by independent PACs.

Meanwhile, poor old Jane "Jingle Money" Swift hasn't quite burned off the weight has she? Otherwise the former acting governor is a delight and a phenomenon, she STILL alibis for Kerry Healey, who is otherwise known as the little painted hussy who helped run Jane Swift out of office.
Jane was dense and petty but she has a bovine loyalty to those who abused and betrayed her.

How about that Joe Malone huh? Seven million bucks his cronies allegedly pocketed out of the treasurer's office and still he can't afford rogaine!
Honestly, Joe looks like an aging Dick Tracy antagonist..."Hammerhead" perhaps.
Joe buddy, listen to me, just shave it all off like Warren Tolman...the whole Il Duce look never gets old!

Humble Elias gives NECN credit for trying though, in these days of total vertical and horizontal integration it's hard to find any air time for Massachusetts pols both active & inactive. For that much, we should be grateful.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Meanwhile, lets hit the ground running today...

at least in respect of fundraising. Use the handy link provided and look for the "Contribute" button on the right hand side of the page.

Patrick Uber Alles...?

Big Pat romped to victory last night carrying every county in Massachusetts and racking up nigh on 50% of the vote.
Yee-haw!
Not bad for a kid from the wrong side of the tracks in Chicago.

Meanwhile, as predictable as an unloved season, Joanie Vennochi bitterly grouses about the democrats "drinking the kool-aid" last night.
This is pretty damn ironic given the fact that Joanie, Scot Lehigh, Brian McGrory et al have been swilling down Mitt Romney's kool-aid with gusto for four years now and been yelling for more up until quite recently.
How much you wanna bet Joanie wrote today's column over a month ago? If it is one thing that comes very easy to the allegedly liberal Boston Globe's current op-ediots, it is writing those ghastly "death of liberalism" pieces.
Steve Stark used to churn them out in his sleep quite literally.
If Humble Elias had to guess, I'd say that Joanie Vennochi will go all "rawk on sister-woman" for Kerry Healey come October. She'll sudden remember that they are both women and should stand in solidarity or some such egomaniacal drivel like that.
It'll be sick and sad to see, also hilarious as well.

Neverless as the nominee said last night, it is time for a change.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Chimes at Midnight Endorsement Recap:

In today's Massachusetts democratic primary:

For Governor: Deval Patrick Believe the hype this guy can shake things up and for the better. If not now then when, if not him then who?

For Lieutenant Governor: Tim Murray An experienced politician and an able individual. moving from Mayor of Worcester to the Lt. Governor's office is a natural step for Murray. Humble Elias looks to Murray to be an authentic voice for the perpetually embattled cities and towns of the Commonwealth.

For Secretary of State: William Galvin. You may not like Billy personally and certainly like Humble Elias you may not accord with all his political views but he never ran out on the party and voted for Nader did he? This is more than Galvin's challenger Jon Bonifaz can say.
Thay we must engage in an honest dialogue with the greens and other independent progressives is a given, but that does give Jon Bonifaz leave to parachute into the democratic primary and start himself up at the top of the political food chain.
Moreoever Billy has sown himself a good corporate steward and has kept the paper ballot here in the Commonwealth. He is heartily endorsed for re-nomination.

For State Senate: 4th Middlesex: Robert Havern III Bob is faced by one Joanne Gonsalves a Bonfiaz style challenger in today's primary. Humble Elias urges all democratic voters in our district to stick by Bob Havern today, he is experienced and a work-horse not a show horse. He is also backing Patrick if that moves anyone out there.

Anyway go vote, my precinct booked 49 ballots total by 7:41am EST.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Former Massachusetts Governor Ed King has passed away

So reads Boston.com.
In earlier times I was wont to speak harshly about the former governor, most because of his switch to the GOP in 1985. However my Uncles used to run into him all the time and as a person he was good folks with no low habits.
My thoughts are with his family today.

For Governor in the Massachusetts Democratic Primary...

The Chimes at Midnight heartily endorses the candidacy of Deval Patrick.
Humble Elias comes to this decision after long reflection, as he has said to his friends many times over the last several months everyone he likes is "either dead or out of the game".
However all facetiousness aside, the state is misgoverned, mismanaged and suffers from a dearth of talent at all levels.
The great and abiding need here is for a change, the candidate who best embodies that diresome necessity is Deval Patrick. He is articulate, he is passionate, he proposes new policies to thwart our current stagnation and he wants to lead.
This is not to degrade Misters Gabrieli and Reilly they are able men, if either is nominated Humble Elias will bang the pots loudly on their behalf, but are they the change-agents we need?
This endorsement though, does come with a few helpful warnings; the fall campaign will doubtlessly go the gutter route very quickly cheered on by the usual a-holes in the local media. Citizen Patrick will have to generate some tough and honest answers to the coming attacks in the areas of taxes, "illegal immigration" and gay marriage. He cannot take anything for granted least of all the willingness of Kerry Healey's cabal to play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.

But as far as the Chimes at Midnight is concerned, I can vote for the other guys or I can vote one last time to overthrow destiny?
The choice therefore this time is simple:
Deval Patrick for Governor!

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Note to the Laity:

There will be an official "Chimes at Midnight" endorsement in the democratic gubernatorial primary tomorrow.

On the last Sunday before a

democratic gubernatorial primary that may well decide the fate of Massachusetts for years to come, Joanie Vennochi takes time out to confirm she really is a rudderless spiteful yap.
On the subject of Kerry Healey's anti-Gabrieli adverts Joanie has this to say: "Shortly before primary day, Kerry Healey launched a silly & dishonest attack ad at Chris Gabrieli..."

Silly and dishonest?
Woo hoo dig Madame Retaliation down on Morrissey Boulevard!

Good grief where was this anger and outrage when the Swift Boats Vets went gunning for John Kerry??
As I recall, Joanie spent that whole month in a delirious spin alternately squealing that Kerry was both wimp and bully.
Yipes.

What can we learn from this?
Only that Joan Vennochi is a tedious unreliable hack in extremis. Sure she is angry today but odds are whoever we nominate on Tuesday won't meet her very high and inexplicable personal standards and she'll be sniping mightily at the democrats by Halloween.
Well...she hasn't burned any bridges to Mihos yet, so maybe we will get lucky and Joanie will mark out hard for Crazy Christy.

As long as she forgets about us, the only thing worse than having Joanie against you is having Joanie on your side.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Kerry Healey parachutes into the democratic gubernatorial primary...

with a blistering attack advert against Chris Gabrieli that labels him a "tycoon" and accuses him to profiting from proposed state sponsored stem cell research.
Waaaalllllll sheee-it!
Didn't Kerry Healey marry herself a tycoon?
Didn't that same tycoon try to rook the state for a one million dollar tax credit for his own company?
Isn't the shadowy Lex Luthorish Sean Healey simply trying to BUY the governorship for his shallow insubstantial wife?
Lt. Governor Barbie sure has a lot of nerve doesn't she?
Kerry Healey may not be willing to shake Dick Cheney's dessicated hand at Logan, but she'll damn well campaign like Karl Rove won't she?
Humble Elias suspects people read this blog, maybe people with connections to other people who knows?
So I think it behooves Tom Reilly and Deval Patrick and all three democratic candidates for Lt. Governor to see this as naught but a preview of how Kerry Healey intends to run this fall...make patently psychotic accusations, run for the gutter like a rat in a firestorm and spend money lavishly.
So let me be blunt, Chris, Tom, Deval are yuh listenin'?
Whoever is nominated next week you had better damn well have a plan to counter this style of campaigning...
The worst thing you can do is to ignore it or pretend that the electorate wants to hear about the issues.
They do wanna hear about the issues, but first yer gonna have prove that you can take the fight to Kerry Healey.
Healey can be beaten and beaten soundly but she has to be taken seriously, the nominee will have to run flat outlike he is eight points down from primary night on.
Hope someone out there is listening...