Meanwhile...

AG Tom Reilly at the last possible moment picks Boston State Rep Marie St. Fleur as his proposed running mate.
I can't see how this does much other than bring an able Haitian American Pol into the process and possibly cut into Deval Patrick's alleged base.
But after the fruitless negotiations with Chris Gabrieli this weekend, the whole thing looks rushed and a little embarrassing.
As I said before, if Reilly had been able to entice Ralph Martin or Wayne Budd to jump the fence, that might've resonated with the Commonwealth's unenrolled voters come the fall. As it is, being a Boston State Rep, St. Fleur doesn't bring much in the way of independent appeal to the notional ticket.
But we shall see, who knows she might be a barn-burner out in Leominster and Bellingham?

Otherwise, Humble Elias thinks the electoral laws ought to be revised to allow nominees to pick Lt. Governor candidates in the fashion of national candidates. Picks like St. Fleur and Chris Gabrieli in 2002 are potentially meaningless if the electorate swings another way in the all important primary.
Either that or simply abolish the office of Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth, New Hampshire gets by quite well without one that I can see.
Something like this would give future Governor's pause if they wanted to resign for frivolous reasons (as did Weld and Cellucci)and the Secretary of State was a member of the opposition party.

It is strangely comforting to note that

there is a blogger out there incomparably more angry and vengeful than even Humble Elias.

And if there is a God of Mercy, Justice and Schaedenfreude up there in Heaven, then this Senator really IS Rick Santorum.

Let us take a moment to step back from the mounting chaos

around us and remember that today is after all, "National Gorilla Suit Day" and that at long last, the people behind "Channel Zero" have in fact, snapped.

Senator Kerry Speaks

to the heart of the Alito Nomination.

We can't choose the ground and we can't always name our generals, but here is the fight what are you gonna do about it?

Gabrieli Out?

Chris Gabrieli has withdrawn from talks with Tom Reilly over becoming the AG's candidate for Lieutenant Governor.

YIPES!?
What happened here? It sounded like a done deal on Friday, I wonder what prompted Gabrieli to say no?
This couldn't come at a worse time for Reilly, the democratic caucuses are in a week, and you know Reilly was looking for a boost from the announcement of a ticket.
Now he has fruitlessly incurred the wrath of everyone else in the Lt. Governor's race.
Time seems to have run out for Reilly in terms of generating a new running mate though, (A letter to the State Party Chair must be on file by tomorrow for anyone who wants to run state wide)...but if Tom was really looking to shake up the race he oughta give Ben Affleck a call.
Humble Elias is serious here, he is young, personable, stinkin' rich, excellent name recognition...true he has no experience but neither did Romney when he parachuted in back in 2002.
Think about it Tom, you wanna light up the caucuses this Saturday, Ben may be your only hope.

Spiteful Joanie is at it again...

Apparently, if we are to decypher today's column, John Kerry is both castrato and panderer all at the same time for merely trying to keep a liberty hating replicant off the Supreme Court.

Christ what is this bint's problem??

How many years has she been churning out that godawful column and we still have no idea as to Joanie's values and beliefs other than her knee jerk hatred of both our Senators. For all we know she wants ardently to replace Senators Kerry and Kennedy with re-runs of "Sex in the City" and "MASH" or some damn thing.
The woman has a disordered fussbudgety approach to politcs, last week we were being too rough on the GOP, this week we are somehow being too rough, too quixotic and too dickless all at the same time.
Filibustering Judge Alito is somehow the worst thing us liberals could do....shit la she routinely calls us all sissies and cowards, you could say she has remorselessly baited Massachusetts Liberals into this confrontation over Alito!

Hell, that line of logic is no crazier than the hokum Vennochi writes on a biweekly basis.

Lord I wish she would just drive out to Walden Pond and get herself baptised full immersion style, she could come up blubbering "Praise Jesus" and finally come out of the conservative closet.
Something anything but this endless ubiquitous nonsense Vennochi spouts.
Ah forget it, Joanie is nothing but a puerile pundit racketeer, she makes noise not sense, she has not the values God gave a Montreal table dancer.


But she shore nuff' hates John Kerry doesn't she?
However the current crisis isn't about Senator Kerry. The REAL question is: "Will Judge Alito serve any interests other than those of the praetorian class that has nourished him since Day One?"
The answer to that is: "no".

Does that matter to Joan Vennochi?
Nope she too busy getting even in some inexplicable fashion with Kennedy, Kerry and the liberals.

And Joanie Vennochi is supposed to be protecting our rights?

Dick
Demented
Typical

Do you want a filibuster?

Then get crackin' with the e-mails

Of course, Judge Alito is qualified, qualified enough in the subtle judicial art of taking away what few rights we have left and reducing the many to peonage to be ruled over by the favored few, the Praetorian Class.

And their President is an ugly overgrown brat with a few too many dismal bullies for friends. His current 36% approval rating reflects this in extremis, Bush desperately needs a good hiding.
So give it too him, what are you waiting for?

Kerry calls for a filibuster

agin' Judge Alito's nomination to the Extreme Court.

This is of course, being met with hoots of derision from self destructive and self loathing on-line liberals who alas, have been laying for the Senator since his defeat in 2004.
We can't always chose our gground or the time or the generals in charge, but here is the fight, what are you all gonna do about it?

Humble Elias rarely does this but here is the damn petition, sign it, tell your friends force some of the damn action you've been braying for since December 2001!!!

Chris Gabrieli for Lieutenant Governor??

AG Tom Reilly is dickering with party stalwart Chris Gabrieli??

What a bold and hopelessly unimaginative choice.
This would be the same Chris Gabrieli who lost to Capuano in 1998 and who went down to defeat with the noble O'Brien in 2002?
Unlike most other liberals, Humble Elias generally doesn't cut a pol dead after they lose...this is a self destructive tendency that is the bane of progressive politics IMHO.
But Gabrieli? Granted he can self finance which in this case is a good thing, but its not like his money got him into congress or helped Shannon O'Brien over the finsih line.
And he is another activist, a'la Silbert, Goldberg, Kelley et al...maybe he has more money but he is an activist therefore more of the same nevertheless.
Just what does he bring to the process?
He is an earnest man and wooden speaker and he has money and a lackluster electoral record.
I'd be thoroughly impressed if Reilly got his old pals Wayne Budd or Ralph Martin to jump the fence, that would definitely turn some heads...yeah it'd be a law heavy enforcement ticket but hey Batman and Robin ran town wide in Gotham City and won big.

The Globe also reports that Tim Murray the current Mayor of Worcester is pretty cheesed off about Reilly's ticket building, Humble Elias idly wonders if this will force him into an alliance with Patrick?

"The Writer is a US Senator from Massachusetts"

or so the Globe classified Senator Kerry's ringing defense of Mike Capuano in aletter to the editor in today's edition. I can't give y'all a link cause' th' cheap ass muthas on Morrissey Blvd have it blocked with a sign up page.

Well anyway, good for John I say, he ought to write in more, and if he started calling Brainless Brian McGrory a heinous hack so much the better.
:)

Senator George Allen,

normally an entirely nondescript cheap and puerile Senator, rose to new heights of gaseous bombast on the "Imus in the Morning" program today.
Pompously he intoned, "The United States and Israel does not negotiate with terrorists" in response to Hamas victory in the Palestinian Parliamentary elections.
And yet we just released five or so Iraqi women from prison over there, and this of course has nothing to do with Jill Carroll's kidnapping and the kidnapper's demand for a general release of all Iraqi Women now in prison.
No, we aren't negotiating with terrorists in Iraq, no not at all Senator Allen.

Ah but then, the only thing that shocks a GOP Senator these days is a vexing and unexpected collision with reality.

Oh yeah, keep your eye on this dipshit as well, the word on the street is Allen wants to run for President badly and wishes to run up a big sure win in Virginia this year to efface the memory of his all out support for Jim Kilgore in last year's gubernatorial debacle.

An Echo not a Choice...

So as of yesterday, Kerry Healey is on record as fairly pantin' to have Christy Mihos run against her in the GOP Gubernatorial Primary.
HA!
This raises an interesting question,(assuming of course, the Lt. Governor and the dregs of the state GOP are on the up and up about Mihos)just how is a primary contest between two alleged socially/liberal fiscally conservative goo-goos gonna play out?
Who will LeHigh, Vennochi, McGrory et al mark out for? Hell, there isn't a dime's worth of ideological difference between either candidate.
Style-wise it is an even murkier picture, Healey is a hopelessly inane hack with a rich and shameless husband, Mihos made millions selling old milk for $3.99 a gallon.
I wonder if Kerry will run to the right this year? Start babbling in screechy aggrieved tones that stem cells are made from ground up babies mixed with dead angels or something like that.
Or maybe Mihos will stump the state in a Sam Brown Belt and a Blackshirt calling for the liberal castor oil and truncheon agin' the Legislature.
They will have to do something drastic to sharpen their differences, does Mihos propose to run against the very Romney Admin he put into place? How does Healey engage with someone who is her ideological doppelganger in every way?
Frankly, it'd be more fun for me but twice as dangerous for the Commonwealth if Mihos ran as an independent.
So that, is Humble Elias' dilemma this morning.


Sick
Demented
Typical

Capitulation or....?

The Boston Globe carries an intriguing story in today's Metro-Region section to the effect that Lt. Governor Kerry-Healey has been trying to bargain with Boss Christy Mihos promising him a slot on the primary ballot if he drops his independent candidacy for Governor.
My ghod we are afflicted with a particulary shameless and piratical crew at the top aren't we?
So suddenly Kerry Healey is just dyin' wif love for Big Tent Republicanism? She wants to make sure Mihos voice is heard??!!!!
What bullshit pure and simple.
Where was all this milk of human kindness back in 2002? As I recall, both Kerry Healey and Christy Mihos had a hand in forcibly shoving an incumbent Republican Governor, Jane "Jingle Money" Swift right off the primary ballot with NO salt tears wept over her "voice being heard".
Mihos has made a threat that Kerry Healey and the dregs of the local GOP establishment cannot counteract pure and simple.
All this "We want him in the party" nonsense is naught but a surrender to the mere threat of force majeur.
The Globe, ever helpful to the spectre of "moderate republicanism", runs this whole appalling story on the last page of the metro section all but guaranteeing that no-one will see it other than the Chimes at Midnight, Sco and the Blue Mass Group.
:)
Of course, this could be a trick to get Mihos to give up his independent bid, nothing in the above article seems to bind Kerry Healey to giving Mihos access to the GOP Primary. She could easily weasel out of the pledge and blame the betrayal on democrats, gays or the liberal media. She is that craven no doubt about it.

Too bad Jingle Money didn't figure this out about the Romney crew earlier, I bet they'd a backed off and let her run in the primary if she'd a threatened to resign and make Bill Galvin Acting Governor.
Oh well, the road not taken and all like that.

Those Signs Hyping "Emily's Reason's Why Not"

really are ubiquitous on the Red Line.

And what is this reference to the "Bad Poets Society"?
:)

Welded to Destiny...

The current issue of New York Magazine thru one Stephen Rodrick profiles former Massachusetts Governor William Weld at the outset of his quixotic campaign for the Governorship of New York.
Due mention is made of Big Bill's eccentric stump style, the drinks that never leave his hand, the tendency to spout classical gibberish and his remarriage to a second rate novelist.
However for all his hauteur and blind self confidence Bill sounds thoroughly lost from where Humble Elias is sitting.
Truly the man belongs to a bygone age, one composed of blow jobs, policy incrementalism, terror amidst crackhouses and "welfare reform".
Bill Weld is a symbol, the leading edge of the baby boomer's slide into irrelevance, impotence and dotage.
Honestly there is not a better harbinger of approaching senescence than the urge to re-live some fanciful youthful triumph.
Weld is the sort of easygoing ne'er do well loafer who could only prosper under the hardwon prosperity even protection of a Bill Clinton.
His is a politics of short agendas, long weekends and flippant answers and as such Weld is utterly at sea in today's world of big issues, ideological warfare, terrorism and terror tacticians.
They say Weld is running on his prosecutorial bona fides and his zeal to jail miscreants...and yet this "passion" for justice laid not one finger on the Bill Bulger back in the day of the Massachusetts' Senate President's morbid ascendancy.
And anyway, how can Bill Weld run as a "statesman' when he has done nothing since 1996 except cut, run and get loaded?
Supposedly, Bill Weld wept when he lost to John Kerry back in 1996.
Maybe he did, but he wasn't crying because he'd lost his chance to do big things in DC, no he shed tears because he'd missed out on joining the last Great Gentleman's Club wherein drunken gasbaggery is no particular sin.

We live in serious times, our rights are threatened from without and within...and Bill Weld is about as serious as Road Runner Cartoon.
Take Heed Empire State.

Osama Bin-Laden offers

America a Truce.

Indeed why shouldn't he?
Given the lackluster state of the manhunt for the Al Queda leader, Osama may have have come to the conclusion that all is forgiven.
Hell, thanks to Bin-Laden's escape from Tora Bora, the terrorist leader must think that Bush is ready to let bygones be bygones.
"We don't negotiate with terrorists" trills Scott McClellan.
True enough but we sure as shit can't catch em' either.

Reilly in Menotomy Part II

And the gay marraige did come up Tuesday night...
Tom's position on this is curious, he certified the anti-gay marriage ballot question and now asserts that the people of Massachusetts will turn it down when it comes to a vote.
He isn't really for gay marriage, but then he won't vote for the ballot question either or so I gathered.
He says "this was done by the books", but I do suspect that putting this pernicious referendum question on the 2008 is a way of getting the issue off the table in 2006.

This cuts to the core of Reilly's candidacy for Governor, he wants props for doing the right thing according to law, but the appearance is one of utter squishiness.
And squishiness is a bad thing to be hung on any democrat...jerkoffs like Romney, Mihos and Healey and wander all over the political map like a drunk in a parking lot but a democrat is held to a loftier and much more baldly hypocritical standard.

I mean, never mind the morally dubious issue of putting a question of inalienable rights on the ballot where it'll be naught but a target for out of state wowser money and corrupt power worshipping Washington Political Bosses.

Reilly may get the point of law, but does he understand the issue and its implications, all of them?

Tom Reilly in Menotomy

Wa-al th' other fella came thru town last night, and in the interests of full disclosure Humble Elias was in the room to see what the AG had on offer.

Tom Reilly is a low key guy no doubt it, he may have thrown a lot of miscreants into the slams, but he still comes on like Bob Newhart.
Like Patrick, Reilly was born poor and marginalized in Springfield Mass (here he harps on his roots beyond 495 drawing an oblique contrast to Patrick who is, in the patois of East Cambridge a "blow in")...but then a poverty stricken youth is the common characteristic of this year's democratic gubernatorial field.
He must've said "I know Massachusetts" ten times last night....for all I know it'll be his campaign slogan come next month's caucus.
If Reilly has a unified approach to the race it is his assertion that being Attorney General has given him nigh perfect preparation to be governor. If the issue is youth crime he touts his early intervention programs, if the subject is jobs then he reminds us of his stewardship as receiver at Harvard Pilgrim...he likes to draw on his AG props to frame responses.
Fair enough I guess, save for the gay marriage question he has been a good AG.
Some of his other ideas though are pretty uninspiring, he touts administrative savings as a means to acculmulate the necessary capital to extend health insurance to the uncovered citizenry.
Somehow I doubt better cheaper databases are gonna make this happen but at least he is talking about universal coverage as a way to stimulate the economy, that much makes good sense.
Reilly waxes passionate when he rolls out his indictment of the Romney admin it's failures and follies, his voice goes up and octave and the AG starts jabbing his finger in the air. He bluntly insists that only a democrat can unite the state, which is again a very good point. The whole effect recalls a 1960's TV drama's idea of a crusading prosecutor.
Alas though, Romney isn't in the race this year, a fact that Reilly seemed to regret....but much of what he says is easily transferred to Kerry Healey with few revisions.
Its not enough to indict though, better programs must be proposed better judgement demonstrated...at this point Reilly is running against the democrats legacy of four straight gubernatorial losses. Mere prosecutorial zeal against the Viceroy may not be enough.

Moreover, someone on Tom's battlestaff ought to tell him that touting charter schools in a town like Menotomy is a total non-starter. The schools already perform well in all the acrobatic tricks laid out by the legislature, in fact the whole school system is naught but one big charter school...thats why people are paying 800K for houses here.
No, in a town like ours, Charter Schools are a threat and a potential de-funder of a good thing. They may have their place in municipalities with chronic education issues but in my neck of the woods they are poison.

Stirling Newberry sez

we should blog on non-political topics sometimes. This is a burden to humble Elias as Suffolk Downs is closed for the season and the local boxing circuit as gone quiet as well.

However, let me post a link to a blog that has discussed a topic near and dear to my heart. Old teevee shows and their occasional right and necessary revivals.

A Screed on Sunday...

According to Jeff Jacoby in Sunday’s Globe, we are losing population in this state thanks entirely to the mere presence of the unquiet shade of Mike Dukakis and the looming prominence of Senator John Forbes Kerry.

This is Jeff at most mindless and wretched, ever willing to shill for corrupt and dying ideologies.
Careful there Jeff, dreckola like this will never get you enrolled in the pantheon of Big Think conservatives.

However, he has a point, Massachusetts is losing population, the fault though doesn’t lie with Jeff’s phantom bugaboo liberal statism, it is to say the least a complicated problem...too complicated for a Boston Globe column quite frankly.
For one thing, the Commonwealth has been ruthlessly de-industrialized nigh these past fifty years, wages and benefits have fled the state along with thousands of manufacturing jobs of all types. The mills that once dotted the Merrimac River are now drowsing in the heat down in Mexico.
We have been, to put it bluntly, looted by the false promise of lower wages and compliant workers elsewhere.
As a consequence of this, workers no longer make the sort of preemo wages to keep up with the cost of living. Faced with flattening wages, they shove off to Brockton or more likely utter hovels on South Policy Street in Salem N.H. (and blithely vote in democrat John Lynch for Governor of N.H. so their experience of Massachusetts’ liberalism couldn’t be all bad!).
Concurrent with the deindustrialization of Massachusetts has been its economic colonization. Most of the locally owned big employers have been bought up by out of state interests, thus money that once circulated the Commonwealth’s economy now inexorably flows out of state ne’er to return.
Which brings us to the Housing Bubble fueled by the High Tech bubble which in turn means a house in Menotomy that once sold for $25K in 1958 was was fit domicile for a mid level postal worker is now on the market for 800K.
Those wondrous high tech jobs don’t create much in the way of wage pressure from below...just ersatz stock options and the like.
So where do those postal workers & other wage earners live these days? In de facto shanties, condos or saltboxes in Brockton etc.
We’ve got systemic economic problems in Massachusetts that go beyond the rightical chic punditariat’s mental stagnation. Much of it starts with the cost of housing a problem few want to confront.
If we have a political problem it lies in the perpetuation of inept, craven, viceregal and amateurish GOP Governors with whom the forces of Progressivism and Good Common Sense must constantly negotiate.
Given all that it is a wonder things aren’t ten times worse.
Yesterday I posited the fall campaignwas going to revolve around health care and crime, let me add “home ownership” or something along those lines to that mix. Discussion of that issue will of itself automatically put the population decline on the agenda.

At all costs we must not allow the fall campaign to devolve into a pot banging session for some fiscally useless socially paralyzed ass-hole like Christy Mihos.
We must confront the problems of the hour, that is the only way in.

Guest Blogger: Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.

If he had lived he'd a been a blogger no doubt. A mind that supple is just bound to express itself in new and interesting ways. Others will laud Dr. King's considerable spiritual gifts today, let the Chimes at Midnight take a moment to celebrate Dr. King's protean intellect.


"If you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren't fit to live. You may be thirty-eight years old, as I happen to be, and one day some great principle, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great issue, some great cause. And you refused to do it because you want to live longer. You're afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you're afraid that somebody will stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house.
So you refuse to take the stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at thirty-eight as you would be at ninety."

The Boston Sunday Globe has a big feature article

today noting that gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick is having some trouble reeling in the support of African American ministers due to his acceptance of gay marriage.
Frankly, the Globe does love to run with these scare stories about the "black vote"...if its not this then its articles predicting that all of Blue Hill Avenue is about to enlist under the banner of Grover Norquist.

There are it seems a lot of reasons not to vote for Mister Patrick that much is clear.
If it is not this then its qualms over his corporate law practice, or his height or perhaps even his race.
Yeah thats a factor here sad to say.
A lot of people are wondering if an African American can go hard statewide and win.
Of course, Edward W. Brooke did it back in 1962 & 1966 but then one suspects we've gone backwards since then.
That is what Patrick is up against....history.
My advise to the Ministers and Deaconry in question is to forget gay marriage as we are all gonna be talking about street crime and health care come this fall count on it.
Moreover, I'd just as soon not have to go through another gubernatorial campaign built around GOP demogoguery and mendacity on the subject of crime.

Whether Patrick or Reilly or (dare I say it?) Kennedy can get control of those issues is another matter entirely.

Brian Lees is Retiring...

"The Fray" has the details. Seems like yesterday I was in the lounge in Thompson Tower watching the 1988 election results and incidentally was Brian's first big win.
Dunno if the GOP will hold onto that seat or not, they are down to some six state senators on Beacon Hill.
BTW, how come "The Fray" doesn't like to the Chimes at Midnight?
Is it my unsubtle writing style? The indifferent editing? Maybe I'm not dressing to advantage?
I mean...I'm liked but I'm not well liked.

And also, a quick shout out to Lynne from "Left In Lowell" she has been feeling poorly lately...hope she is better soonest.

I heard Joe Kennedy on the radio yesterday...

the boy sounded good.

I suppose it is too damn late but if Joe jumped into the Governor's race say...now, he could bust this state wide open!

Not that I have any ill-will for Messr's Patrick & Reilly, fine men with many virtues between them...but do they get it?
For a democrat to win the governorship in Massachusetts they have to run like they are five points behind in Montana.
Take nothing for granted.
Speak confidently.
And don't let up on the opposition for a Brockton Minute.

Joe you out there?
HALP!
We need you!
We need something or else the choice will come down to a corrupt & inept Kerry Healey or Christy Mihos, a ward-healer who made his millions overcharging for past due milk!

Massachusetts can't do better than this!?

I got my grenadier's uniform dry cleaned and my assegai is still razor sharp!
Say the word big guy and this blog is yours.
:)

Mitt Romney...

may be inept, craven, blustery, indecisive and opportunistic, but he sure knows how to return a bribe to the RGA with the utmost priggish sanctimony
.
Shee-it, Mitt loves money the way a hog loves slop to paraphrase the late Great Earl K. Long.

Still and all that, I love how he promises not to give up riding in corporate jets, even if those selfsame companies have profitable business before the Commonwealth.
I mean, you can't say he doesn't have standards even if they are the wrong ones.

(Alito) thought for the day...

What d'ye think would happen if Alito sighed and told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Rove v. Wade was indeed "settled law" and he couldn't think of a good reason to overturn it?
Ya suppose Karl Rove and that aging Court Toady Andy Card would burst in with butterfly nets and a straitjacket to drag off Judge Alito?
Just how would the White House spin his abrupt "withdrawal"?
Ptomaine poisoning? Bad clams? Or maybe the old "We nominated the WRONG Sam Alito...their social security numbers differ by only one digit?!!!" routine?

Well, whatever, but remember the above thought experiment in due course, Alito won't interpret the law hell will implement an ideology.

Joan Vennochi's current column

contains the following howler:
And what about the requisite adoring wife, peeking over her husband's shoulder as he stands at the brink of the biggest job of his life? Why is that old-fashioned picture of spousal devotion considered such an important element of the nominee's presentation? The risk of wife-as-prop was demonstrated yesterday. Mrs. Alito broke down in tears and left the hearing when the going got rough. It tells nothing about Alito's judicial philosophy
Well gee Joanie do I have to spell it out for you? Judge Alito hasn't been nominated as a Supreme Court Judge for all the people, he has been appointed as the representative of a particular political philosophy that prizes a subservient demeanor from wives. Depicting Mrs. Alito as an adoring helpmate also shores up the President's battered image in Wowserdom and keeps the rightical chic punditariat quiet.
Just ask your colleague Jeff Jacoby if you aren't sure, no doubt he thinks it is a great thing and a nigh revolutionary act that Mrs. Alito dresses like a colorblind Stepford Wife.
Okay that was a cheap shot I know...but we live in cheap times Joanie, and getting cheaper all the time.
Sarcasm in particular counts for nothing in the face of institutions and ideologies that are at once all powerful and thoroughly corrupt.

Sick
Demented
Typical

All You Patrick and Reilly Supporters out there...

the Lowell Sun is doing a "Question of the Day" on-line: "Who would you vote for Kerry Healey, Deval Patrick or Tom Reilly"?
Currently Deval Patrick is the lead which is I suppose a tribute to his internet strength.
So feel free to Freep it like crazy although I'm more than idly curious why Cape Cod Businessman & GOP Strongman Boss Christy Mihos was left off the above list?

Where is Peggy Noonan and her

magic dolphins when a raftload of Cuban Refugees needs them?

Apparently all of Cuban GOP Miami is up in arms about this and there are the usual rumblings about defections this fall. Pay no mind to gratifying scare stories like this though, every so often the news media gets its rocks off by predicting Cuban abandonment of the GOP and or African American defections from the Democrats.
Of course, maybe Ms. Noonan can explain how George Bush Jr could "hear" the screams from Saddam's torture chambers all the way from Baghdad and yet remains deaf to the howls of agony from out Castro's Cuba?
Neither dictator has a WMD to save his miserable life so it must be the oil or democracy or the balance of power or the virile impregnation of the region with democracy or some damn thing.


Sick
Demented
Typical...

Arnold Schwarzenegger took his son out for a spin

on his Harley Sunday and a like a clumsy oaf ran smack into a neighbor's SUV.
Normally the fifteen stitches in his upper lip would hardly qualify for a paragraph in the Globe's "Names & Faces" column....thankfully however, Wolf Blitzer and CNN are on the job to give the California Governor the ass-licking he somehow deserves!
I shit you not dear readers, Wolf devoted something akin to ten minutes of congressionally licensed television time last night to groveling and praising Arnie for his simpleminded invulnerability to harm.
It was to say the least a sickening and syrupy performance, Blitzer seems weirdly mesmerized by Arnie's cartoonish image of machismo even when he goes crashing into a car like a Keystone Kop.
But anyway, who is the real victim here?
Why none other than Patrick Schwarzenegger, the Governor's twlve year old son who had to sit ther in the Gubernatorial side-car like Father and Son were Colonel Klink & Sargeant Schultz as Dad took a header into a Ford Explorer's side panel.
The kid must be mortified...I suspect he tells everyone at Junior High his name is "Patrick Shriver".

There is nothing more disconcerting than the spectacle

of Jeff Jacoby giving himself a rhetorical enema in the public prints.
I mean, he may feel cleansed but the rest of us well....

Yesterday That Laughing Young Senescence took Jack Abramoff to task for being a unobservant Orthodox Jew what with all his corrupt and crooked activities down in Washington DC.
Wa-al shut mah mouth?
Who'd a thunk it, Jeff taking another conservative to task? For being what? A reliable modern conservative???
All Jeff's religious fol-de-rol seems pretty forced and superficial to me.
One almost suspects he is not so much mad at Abramoff for being an impious Jew (Sure-n the world is full of corrupted Hindus, Christians, Hebrews, Buddhists etc) but for getting caught in such a disasterous fashion.
After all, Abramoff has been at this for years, raising money for the Praetorian Classes' Ultimate Seizure of Power by gamey and even illegal means....yet we've heard no a peep out of Jeff.
Lawrence Novak the former state GOP's treasurer just got hauled off to the hoosegow for money laundering with a drug dealer, Jeff's silence is comforting and sacerdotal.
But then a decorous quiet has settled over the case of Novak's gold while the Abramoff scandal blew up in public with a loud "Ka-boom!".
And another thing, the Globe reported Yesterday on Abramoff's days in the College Republicans wherein he would in Patton-style haranguestelling young activists to "shoot democrats in the belly"...d'ye think this'll make Jeff's Annual Hate Speech Review next December?
No.
Not hardly, yesterday's column was damge control nothing more and nothing less...it certainly has nothing to do with Jeff's alleged religious outrage.

Sick
Demented
Typical

The Strife of Reilly...

Predictably, Joan Vennochi & Eileen McNamara have come down hard on AG Tom Reilly for making a phone call on behalf of some bereaved parents. All he asked was that the local DA not release the autopsy report to the press out of respect for the bereft.
Well, to hear Joanie and Eileen tell it, you'd think that Tom had just worked over Nancy Reagan with the business end of a shovel.
Mind, you this wasn't a smart thing for Reilly to do, especially in a governor's race that is supposed to highlight his law and order props....but its not like he held up a liquor store or anything. It is rather, the sort of lapse the vengeful geeks on the Boston Globe's editorial page eill try to build up into a catastrophic character flaw. One So Terrible that it will "force" them to reconsider Christy Mihos or Achille Starace or whoever.
Which only underscores the vital necessity for any sensible gubernatorial minded democrat to avoid listening to Joanie, Scot, Brian and Eileen at all costs.
In the words of the late William S. Burroughs, They have nothing to offer but their bad intentions.

Morbid Rumors...

a day old but none to pleasant at anyrate.

Convening the "Wise Men"

is always a bad sign.
Lyndon Johnson didn't meet with the democratic party's idea of Old Money until his administration was well into the "hunker-down-like-a-jackass-in-a-hailstorm" phase.
It is the same with Bush, he convenes a gathering of former Secretaries of Defense and State to discuss Iraq policy as the bodies and grisly bits pile up ever higher.
Shit, Bush talks like a winner but acts like a bankrupt mooch, is there any question that if the Iraq adventure was going well that Bush would cut these guys dead with a unpleasant little snicker?
No he is in trouble and out of ideas, hence the gathering of Messrs Haig, Schultz, Perry, Schlesinger & McNamara et al to help the President think.
Frankly, I'd think twice about bringing Bob McNamara back into the White House on any pretext. Even at age 89, the former Secretary of Defense has plenty on the ball...if he so chose, he could easily spirit the President, the Veep & the Whole Cabinet off to Saint Elizabeth's in straitjackets and then settle down in the Oval Office to get the Government back on track.

NBC News is apparently investigating whether or

not the NSA wiretapping program extended as far as bugging CNN Reporter Christine Amanpour and or other reporters.
In an interview with the New York Times'James Risen Andrea Mitchell asks the following:

Mitchell: Do you have any information about reporters being swept up in this net?

Risen: No, I don't. It's not clear to me. That's one of the questions we'll have to look into the future. Were there abuses of this program or not? I don't know the answer to that

Mitchell: You don't have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?

Risen: No, no I hadn't heard that.

Subsequent to the above posting, the MSNBC website scrubbed the this exchange off their transcript...this according to Americablog.
Apparently NBC IS investgating the possibility that the NSA was bugging US Journalists, the investigation isn't complete hence the excision.

Dunno what it all means, but a mere two weeks ago I opined that we'd soon find out that the President was wiretapping Senator Kerry and his campaign staff. We seem to a bit closer to that revelation after a mere fourteen or so days.
Amanpour is married to Jamie Rubin himself a former Clinton Administration Official and a Foreign Policy adviser to Wesley Clark and John Kerry....and reasonable tap on her communications would have to include material germane to his political activities last year.
Think about that.
Long and hard.

This blogger has the right idea...

draft the kampus freepers....

Hell I've advocating much the same for months now.

The Boston Herald and USA Today print

the "good news"...(12 Miners found alive), whilst the Boston Globe simply goes for the truth.
Shit, the Herald's street edition even uses the same picture as the Globe to tell a completely erroneous story.
I criticize the Globe a lot, but there are times when they do their job and do it well.

Peace to the ashes of those miners.

Morrissey Boulevard even found space to remind readers of the Bush Admin's predictable attempts to gut mine safety regulations...hell you could set your watch to the reliable corruption of this gang in the White House.

Mitt has been quietly signing...

Special Justice of the Peace Applications for those who wish to officiate at gay weddings.
Que' Lastima!
The Governor's inglorious mouthpiece Eric Fehstrom huffed that Romney is "only" obeying the law.
Ah....that may be so in the liberty lovin' environs of the Commonwealth, but out in Wowserdom fealty to the law is conflated with church arson and child stealing. Whatever it is that Spartansburg S.C. wants in a President, they don't want some wanker who will enforce laws they themselves hate and loathe.
No my friends, they want a glorious Presidential outlaw someone who will send in the Fear Patrol to save the next Terri Schiavo statute or no statute.
This mealy mouth nonsense about enforcing the law won't go down well among the grass-eaters in the GOP primaries.
You'd think Mitt would get that by now, but alas, being clueless about politics he does not.