First Things:

Take a look at Joanie Vennochi's lede in today's Boston Sunday Globe column:


"BE AFRAID, Democrats. Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey is not a great, natural politician, nor that inspiring a speaker. But she is good enough to become the next governor."
Notice the immediate juxtaposition of Fear + Democrats? She wants us to "be afraid" the first thing that comes to Joanie's nasty little mind is the need for democrats to cower it one of Vennochi's most beloved and oft-repeated images.
She just loves it when we are scared doesn't she?
Conversely, Joanie is less enamored of democrats when we fight back as Humble Elias has pointed out ad nauseum.
Well, I'll tell yuh, Humble Elias isn't afraid of anyone, not Spiteful Joanie nor Lieutenant Governor Healey or her freespending husband.
And if this fall the Commonwealth elects another shallow, bumbling GOP dilettante then so be it.
The matter will have to faced with stoicism.
What is scary however, is the gruesome spectacle of Joanie Vennochi bolting out of her house on a cold April Sunday Morning pathetically eager to drop the cardboard Burger King Crown of GOP Moderation on Healey's empty little noggin.
A horrific scene to be sure, but like most horror films, entirely predictable.
Kerry Healey could've come out for a Commonwealth-wide genocide lottery yesterday at the GOP Convention and Joanie would've found some way to spin it as a wise proposal to hold back the ravenous democratic controlled state legislature.

Didja ever notice

that it only took the US Senate nine months or so to produce a detailed report on Hurricane Katrina and to make eighty something specific recommendations to improve natural disaster response & recovery?
Nine months?
In senate time that is damned quick.
Yet, it has been what four years now and that senile old fool Senator Pat Roberts is no closer to a report discussing the alleged pre-war intelligence "failures" that led up to our current debacle in Iraq.
Funny how that works.
Just...plain...funny.

Isn't it funny to think

that to be nominated for President in 2008, Willard Mitt Romney will practically have to deny the notion that he'd ever been Governor of the hated pariah state of Massachusetts.
Conversely to get elected to the Corner Office, Kerry Healey will have to all but deny she'd ever been Mitt Romney's Lieutenant Governor.
Shr runs from him, he runs from the Commonwealth.
Anyone else sensing an ugly hopeless pattern here?

Thomas Frank lays some serious smackdown

on Joe Klein and his new book.
As I've said before, "Authenticity" is a sort of debased Orwellian beltway buzzward used to flatter politicians when the adjective "honest" would only evoke derisive guffaws.

Lieutenant Governor Healey is a Mealy Mouthed Yap!

In today's Boston Globe "Lt Governor Barbie" is interviewed in the Metro Section and had this to say in respect of her 2004 criticism of Senator John Kerry:

(Healey also defended Romney's frequent absence from the state and brushed aside whether she held a double standard for having demanded US Senator John F. Kerry resign his seat during the 2004 presidential campaign because he had missed scores of roll-call votes in the Senate.)

''The nature of an elected position to the Senate, or to the House, is to represent your district by voting on their behalf. And the senator at that time was missing key votes and missing the majority of votes," Healey said. ''Whereas, the nature of governor is that it is characterized by leadership and providing direction and oversight for the executive branch. And he and I, and our Cabinet members, and our commissioners and directors, together provide that stability, whether he is in the state, or whether he is traveling."

Good lord what insolent and haughty little twerp!
Back this time two years ago, Healey ran up and down the Commonwealth squealing at every whistle stop that John Kerry's Presidential Campaign was robbing the Commonwealth of needed representation in DC. Now her Governor is absent up to half the time and she has the nerve to lecture us in tone's dripping with condescension that this abesentee governor of our is a situation simply sodden with "leadership".
She has got some nerve that one, Humble Elias doubts Healey even has access to Romney's cel-phone number!
She talks pretty big for someone with no experience, no talent and no accomplishments to recommend her for the Governorship.
Ah but they breed em' up arrogant in the GOP...you have to give them that.

"Cancer is the Answer"

According to President Bush who is using the current ruinous spike in gas prices as an opportunity yo roll back regional EPA fuel emissions standards.
This is somehow gonna send regular unleaded crashing back to sixty cents a gallon soonest.
What the President is really saying here is "Let them eat tumors".
After all there is little else he can do, his policy is "Drill, Invade and toss choice cuts out of the public treasury to his monied supporters and sundry praetorians."
The "public good" cannot be allowed to intrude upon such a program.
Meanwhile the usual lackeys of a dying domestic energy extraction industry are reeling to their feet all over DC demanding we drill in Thomas Jefferson's head on Mount Rushmore in a doomed bid to lower the price.
John Kerry is right, we cannot drill our way out of this, baring a miracle, there just isn't enough oil to be pumped out here in North America. No we are gonna have to invent our way out of it, discover new fuels, conserve what we have and do the hard work of changing our sources of energy to something that isn't controlled by Mullahs and the likes of Colonel Khadafi.
Until then, everything is naught but the usual demagogic piffle.

John Kerry was just on the Ed Schultz Show

and he was banging the pots hard for a windfall profits tax on big oil.
In the past week everyone from Harry Reid to Arlen Specter has come out in favor of this particular option.
Given the way gas prices just keep goin' up look for High Pitched Rick Santorum to come out loud against the Petroleum Barony within another week or so.
Meanwhile this is an issue we own, one that covers a broad spectrum of support and everyone from Bob Casey to Bernie Sanders can get behind it.
Of course, the President will never sign such a measure, it would be treason against the oil companies that elected and sustain him. But as we segue into the fall it is a marvelous device to highlight strong populist differences between us and the GOP.

Since it is such a strong dose of medicine for the powerful and unaccountable, look for the Scot Lehighs and Joe Kleins within the punditariat to denounce the measure soonest.
Which is PROOF of the idea's excellence in my humble opinion.

Oh and a quick shout out to...

"The Blue Mass Group" (See the links section) who were the subjects of a profile in yesterday's Sunday Globe Metro-Regional section.
Of course, they'd never dare profile Hunble Elias, cuz I'm too REAL for them!
:)
Again, congrats to Blue Mass Group and everyone else who made the sidebar as well, nicely done.

La Famiglia Arbusto

has this wretched knack for making a high minded virtue of necessity. As is the case today when AOL's news summary blares "President Rejects Mass Deportation of Illegal Aliens".
Like he deserves credit for it or something.
The only thing I can discern from today's news is that Bush has lined up with the cheap labor faction of the GOP against the ethnic cleansers...or he is alligned with them this week...where he will be on the issue a week from now no one can say.

Scumbag Sunday

In an article describing John Kerry's speech at Fanueil Hall today, the Boston Sunday Globe quotes the following from the Republican National Committee:

"A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee also took issue with Kerry's remarks. ''While we have never questioned Democrats' patriotism, we do question John Kerry's motives, considering his eagerness to engage in political theatrics as he ponders a presidential run," said Tracey Schmitt."

The ugliness and arrogance of the GOP cannot be believed.
They "NEVER" questioned the patriotism of Senator Kerry in campaign 2004?
The HELL they didn't!!!
What were those little band-aids emblazoned with the Purple Heart that were all the rage at the GOP convention, party favors???
And the "Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth"?
High minded men all.
My friends, there is no scum quite like dishonest scum.
The GOP relentlessly questioned John Kerry's manhood, patriotism, his war wounds ANYTHING these bastards could lay their filthy mitts on.
And, given the thin-ness of their victory in 2004, they are ROTTEN GLAD they did so.
So for Tracey Schmitt to say they "never" questioned John Kerry's patriotism is either the delusional plaint of a bad conscience or yet another lie.
Take your pic.
I am not here play for sympathy or to play the victim. The hell with that...the red warning lights are flashing all over America bigger problems loom all around us.
But I do wanna go on record warning Ken Mehlman his corrupt crew that those god damned band-aids will be avenged and perhaps sooner than they think.

If Tom Reilly is down for the count...

then why is the Service Employees International Union endorsing him for Governor?
They seem to think this thing is still in play.

On the other hand, going after Deval Patrick and his short tenure at Ameriquest seems like pretty small beers to me.
If Romney got a pass for Bain Capital Group and Cellucci slipped by on his $750K debts, then Deval Patrick and his private sector affiliations won't make much of an impression either.
However, Gabrieli is in the race now, which I suspect necessitates that Reilly put up a pugnacious front to keep his base in line.

Crude EMK on Larry King Blogging...

Edward Maximus was on Larry King last night. Generally situations like this are not to Senator Kennedy's advantage, but he came across as modest, well informed and definite about any topic under discussion.
He decried the "politics of fear" and made an important distinction between 9-11 and the Rovian politics of 9-11.
He proclaimed himself a "Politician of Hope" and then went into his usual stem-winder on pension reform, healthcare, high gas prices and the cost of education.
It was a pretty conprehensive review of what isn't being done, what is being done and what could be done if there was a real change in the leadership of this country.
On topics like this, Kennedy is a master, no-one can touch him. Debating legislation with him is a fool's errand...he has seen it all.
And after forty years in public life he has met them all, from Nikita Khrushchev to George Wallace, knows them all by program and anecdote.

He has a new book "America Back on Track" a collection of sensible and liberal proposals for the challenges to come....hence his current ubiquity on television.
Larry King was duly respectful, didn't ask any notable howlers this time. Teddy was cogent and declined to do any fulsome legislative rambling as he has been known to do.
EMK points with pride at his no vote for intervention in Iraq, and obliquely accuseds Rumsfeld of misleading the Senate Armed Services Committee in the lead up to the war.
Kennedy also warmly invited the President to get behind the senate immigration bill...but served it up with such a smile as to make a viewer think he was savoring Bush's 32% approval rating all the time.
Senator Kennedy has heard two generations of conservative ideologues proclaim the downfall of liberalism and the rise of a single ideology state.
And yet he abides.
Ah but Edward Maximus is no sneak, he does not need a bunch of pimpy young sociopathic brats in the media to tell him he is wonderful.
The Man is a Plain Thinker.
He also hinted his esteemed colleague John Kerry wants another shot at the White House.

Senator Kennedy is a treasure unto the Commonwealth, he is of course, fully endorsed by this blog for re-election in the fall.

Friday Kultural Note:

"Opie and Anthony" are apparently returning to terrestrial radio by way of Infinity Boardcasting-CBS which means they'll be on WBCN again in place of the fast fading Howard Stern replacement David Lee Roth.
Purists will recall O&A's stint on WAAF wherein they tried to convince the Hub on that Tom Menino had suddenly died on April Fools Day 1998.
Later on, they got run off their national syndication gig with Infinity Broadcasting when they tried to convince listeners they had paid two people to copulate in a confessional at Saint Patrick's Cathedral.

I give them six months at the outmost and they'll do some damn fool thing that'll blow it all to hell once again.
It is inevitable when you aren't that funny to begin with, and are under relentless pressure to produce fresh outrages.
Meanwhile, Howard Stern must be livid, he hates Opie and Anthony no doubt he sees their selection as a personal affront from his foemer employers. The notion that they are back on free radio must give him the apoplexy.

Humble Elias has no way to check on that as he has no satellite radio and if his current bout of joblessness continues no prospect thereof either.

Massachusetts is still losing population and the matter

has finally made it above the fold in the Boston Globe.

So at the very least the matter will become part of the gubernatorial debate at one point or another. We can also look forward to the usual rightical chic shrieks for the shrinkage of "big government" on the basis of falling census rolls.
It seems pretty clear though, that four straight dilettantes and smirking viceroys in the corner office has done exactly nothing in the area of job creation. If you add to that the loss of skilled manufacturing jobs and the end of wage pressure from below, you get a healthy component in today's depopulation crisis.
My own community illustrates another toxic trend, real estate over-valuation, a town that once housed a goodly portion of civil servants and small business owners is now dotted with $800K mini-mansions. Those same civil servants and small tradesmen are now shoved into what amounts to shanty-towns above and below the New Hampshire border or elsewhere.
What Humble Elias doesn't understand is this, if the population is falling and the high tech jobs are shifting out of state, why are real estate prices still rising?
They should be less people with the scratch to buy half million dollar three bedroom colonials in Menotomy therefore prices should fall...
But so far, prices are holding steady.
I'm not an economist so I won't speculate on the phenomenon.
But it does require watching....

When the President sez

"all options are on the table" with respect to Iran, isn't he waving a checkered flag in front of every two bit crackpot neocon pseudo-intellectual from within and without this Admin to rush home and start their tactical nuclear target lists?
In the wake of Seymour Hersh's revelations on tactical nuclear options being considered for use in Iran, what else could be the result of such a bumptious statement from the President?
He is keeping Rumsfeld and he is perfectly willing to countenance tactical nuclear warfare in the Middle East, nuff said.
Normally, nuclear threats like this are either policy gaffes (as was the case with Truman in the late fall of 1950) or else they are complex attempts to get one's opponent to the negotiating table.
Of course, in order for The Bomb to play a part in diplomacy, a careful diplomatic framework has to be both erected & simulataneously concealed as the threat of nuclear weapons is less important than the relative advantages one can derive from the threat.
Alas we must face facts, this sort of arcane thinking isn't Bush's strong suit.
When Harry Truman mis-spoke himself and implied that the US was considering the use of nuclear weapons in Korea, British PM Clement Atlee flew across the Atlantic for consultations, the newspapers debated the wisdom of renewed nuclear warfare...a debate was had over the issue even as the fighting dragged on Korea.
Last week Bush openly hinted at the use of nuclear weapons against Iran and was greeted with...silence.
Did Tony Blair fly to DC in a a lather?
Did the White House issue a retraction?
Did Chris Matthews break into a sweat?
No nothing...we've become fatally accustomed to the President's bluster and habitual threats.
Meanwhile, a host of snarky self righteous ideologues from within and without the DoD are holed up in their offices like teenaged nerds giggling morbidly and playing the nuclear equivalent of "Battleship" with maps of Iran.

Such is the state of civilization
as of 2:20pm EST

So Time Magazine has listed our own Teddy Kennedy one the Senate's most effective members?

No offense to Edward Moore Maximus, but yippee ki-yi-aay!
I mean this IS the oldest routine in Time's thick cliche-book going back to the days when Henry Luce pimped out his publishing empire on behalf of Tom Dewey.
It is entirely vapid lists like this that give Time it's entirely undeserved reputation for nonpartisanship.
They throw two liberal democrats, two conservative republicans and a some hopeless milksop some tasty bones and go right back to groveling before the thrones of the mighty.
Anyway, Time never celebrates the just nor the wise nor the righteous...they do worship power with an evangelical fervor....and have done so with vulgar unselfconsciousness since the nineteen twenties.
Teddy Kennedy is seen as being powerful, so therefore Time Magazine feels it can genuflect towards him.
I mean forget justice, progress, right or wrong, forget the eternal debate in this country...Teddy and McCain are big men and must be lauded for their magnitude...nothing else.

Sick
Demented
Typical....

(But hey congrats to Senator Kennedy, they ought to fear him, he knows what they are all about after all)

Uncommon Sense or Lisa Guisbond for Governor

The Boston Globe reports today that with the sole exception of AG Tom Reilly, every single announced candidate for Governor sends their offspring to pricey private schools. Thus with no demonstrable faith in public schools (save Reilly) all and sundry are nevertheless just pantin' with a desire to make public education policy.
Fair enough, truck drivers and call center operators don't run for governor, leastways not these days.
Now, take it from Humble Elias, himself the monstrous product of too many parochial schools, opting out of public education ought not to be a bar to office.
If we did, half the Commonwealth would be disenfranchised.
However, opting out is a mere matter of money at it's core, lets not obscure that.
Moreover there is a widening gab between the wealthy who set policy and who may dispense with it when it suits them and the peonage who must abide by said policy.
Brookline mother Lisa Guisbond is quoted quite eloquently in the above article:

The fact that four out of the five candidates send their kids to private schools is a reflection of trends in our society -- the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots," said Lisa Guisbond...
''I really don't believe that some of these policies are creating an atmosphere that they would want their kids to be learning in," ... ''Private schools don't revolve around preparing kids for standardized testing and teaching them to regurgitate facts. They teach them problem-solving and nurture their creativity and teach them art and music, but for some reason, [Beacon Hill] policies are forcing all that out of public schools."

Day-um now THAT is eloquence!!!
Dunno nothin' about this chick, she could be a falangist or a Trotskyite for all Humble Elias knows, but she makes ruthless sense notheless.
Shakespeare's false idol "commodity" truly rules the learning process, an exquisite brand is available for those with the money, a cheaper brand built on testing and vocational training is all that can be had for the lower classes.
And forget about Jeffersonian meritocracy, we train kids for jobs as telemarketeers and money shufflers, not for the grand life of a citizen.
Thats the failure of education all over this nation.
Lisa Guisbond ought to run for Governor, she has already got an uncommonly logical train of thought.
Plainspokeness such as this is desperately needed in the current gubernatorial contest.

The Hidden Hand that Picks Your Pocket

ABC News reports that the CEO of Exxon is retiring with a 400 million dollar golden parachute on top of yearly compensation that reached 51 million dollars annually in 2005.
By the debased standards of multinational corporations, he earned it, slickly exploiting a volatile global energy market and making Exxon the most profitable company in the history of capitalism to the tune of 36 billion fat ones a year.

These are the people who must be praying each day, hard, long and down on their knees for Bush to drop a few tactical nukes on Iran.
The day after the mushroom clouds blossom and burst, they can all cash in and move their asses to preemo desert property on the Sea of Tranquility.
Meanwhile the rest of us will have to teams of oxen to pull our Hummers along.

Like Humble Elias has said before, its a very serviceable, pretty civilization we've built....whether it can survive Bush, Halliburton, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Exxon and all the rest is another story.

An Easter Moment or Two in the One True holy and Apostolic Church of Rome...

Yup Easter in Menotomy, and God's People (Certified by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith at the Vatican) are still dressing for the most part like they are going to de-weed the garden after Mass.
Still and all that, I did espy one young couple who blissfully dressed up their one year old daughter in a huge classic Easter hat with the price tag hanging off the back liken unto Minnie Pearl.
if that ain't an Easter blessing then what the hell is?

Commonwealth Cultural Note:

the Globe reports that bronze commemorative plaques are being stolen all over town. Apparently the price of bronze is up so junkies have been lifting the memorials and selling them to scrap metal dealers and rare metals brokers.
It is pretty damn low to be stealing a memorial to a dead child or a war veterans plaque ...but what kind of a lowlife sleaze actually buys said item from some twitching shuddering wreck???
Trust me, the meth addicts and crackheads of Metro Boston do not have access to smelters and the like.

Sick and sad.

We've got a drug problem in this state and the usual hot air from out the corner office and Washington DC isn't helping any.

The Missing Man Game

Seymour Hersh's article in this week's New Yorker notes that the Bush Administration's plan for an attack on Iran has already been discussed with several GOP Members of congress "And at least one democrat".
As is always the case with articles like this, exact names are not forthcoming.
I wonder if that sole democrat might just be a certain senator from a New England State that shares a border with New York?
He being just exactly the very man the Bush Administration needs to sell operations like this.
Someone with experience backing up Bush to an increasingly sycophantic degree.
I just wonder who that person could be??
Hmmmmmmm...
***
The article itself discusses air strike possibilities at length, right up to and including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Hersh reports little in the way of plans to deploy the infantry, therefore I'm guessing this notional attack on Iran is a sort of "super Osiraq" massive air strike scenario.
But I could be wrong.
From the sounds of things, Bush has already made up his mind for war and needs but a pretext and a calendar date. We will find out about his use of nukes when our geiger counters go off or something.
How much you wanna bet that Bush has October 28th 2006 already circled in red on his desk planner?
Another October Surprise this time with mushroom clouds and oil hitting $110 per barrel.
And then there is the spike in terrorism that we are so well prepared for in this country.
Y'know what folks, we've had a nice run, it has been a great civilization, especially the last hundred years or so. But if we cannot manage problems like this without the leadership of louts like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld then maybe we deserve whatever apocalypse we get.

Something stinks in the Corner Office at the State House...

it smells like, a spineless jellyfish left out in the sun way too long...like maybe four years too long!
Ah yes who else could it be but our own Willard Mitt Romney who is happily signing the health care bill today and line-item vetoing the fee provisions tomorrow.
Hell he was FOR the $256 per person fee last week, denied it was a tax and lauded the whole package as a fast way to insure one and all on a cost effective basis.
He even wracked up an admiring column from Newsweek's Joantan Alter....ooohhh national plaudits, sweet manna from heaven for poor power hungry governor.
Then the calls came in from Spartansburg and Hooterville...the wowsers were not pleased, the fee was a tax they cried so Mitt drew himself up to his full height, thrust out his chin and fell to his knees pleading and begging.
And the crowning insult? The Governor itemized his objections to the fee in an op-ed piece that ran in the Wall Street Journal!
A more viceregal act of disdain cannot be imagined.
Ah but now this is the problem with Mitt, something the Scot Lehigh's out there don't understand, Romney is not in the end a reliable negotiating partner. he is too beholden to out of state interests and his own carnal ambitions to ever keep his word to anyone in Massachusetts.
If there are any authentic conservatives out there reading this, take a long hard look at the type of arrogance and grandstanding that Mitt Romney mistakes for leadership. Honestly you don't want any part of this guy, you'll need to get everything in writing from day one, his word isn't worth shit not with his ambition telling him how to screw you on a deal.
(Apologies to William S. Burroughs)
Now undoubtedly the legislature will over-ride the veto giving the Governor more fodder for his childish anti-Massachusetts tirades. However thanks to his last minute stab in the back the bureaucracy will be saddled with the administration of a program the Governor has officially disowned.
And that my friends is not good public policy.
Humble Elias thinks this bill was premature, the Commonwealth needed to have a thorough debate within and without the coming guberatorial campaign on the health care issue. Romney has nothing to declare but his bad intentions on the matter, it would've been instructive for the candidates to speak out on the matter.
Too late now I guess...

Two quick Shout Outs...

Tough Enough is still blogging on the ever more important subject of John McCain's twisted path to the Presidency.
And Under the Golden Dome is proving an invaluable resource for the coming fall election...(Hey guys I got room in my links section...)

If...

the President has (as his partisans assert) the nigh royal authority to declassify information on a whim, then isn't this a powerful disincentive for the intelligence community to bring politically sensitive info to his attention? Especially info that materially influences the President's own political fortunes?
Wouldn't this imperial perogative lead to even more lying, dissembling and evasion in the lower ranks?
I mean, thank about it.
Granted President's have leaked and leaked abundantly for years...now they have legal justification for it?
Yipes...

The White House is

downplaying and disparaging Seymour Hersh's report in the current New Yorker to the effect that the USA is comtemplating the use of tactical nuclaer weapons against Iran's alleged atom bomb program.
Nuclear non-proliferation is a complicated subject, it admits deterrence theory, lots of hard science and many many unhappy political realities. It is also a depressing unsexy topic that is normally shunned by most of the punditariat.
That having been said I'll offer a few disparate notes on the topic:
It is an inherent contradiction to believe nuclear weapons can be actually used in order to restrain or suppress a particular nuclear weapons program. Their use automatically invalidates the policy goal in extremis.
That having been said nuclear weapons do have their uses however horrific from the policy standpoint. It is the threat of their use that restrains various actors...if the threat is both credible and paradoxically never acted upon. The US made very credible nuclear threats during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the USSR made similar threats against the PRC during the Sino-Soviet Border dispute in 1969.
Threats work-under carefully defined circumstances.
What I think is going on here is that the White House is initiating one of those threats in order to get some leverage over Tehran. They are using a non-Administration source and an opposition publication which only puts said threat in bold highlight.
Indeed Bush doesn't have much wiggle room here, his popularity is pegged at 35% or so...Iraq has errupted into Civil War, the GOP's congressional corruption has been exposed and he doesn't have the horses to take down Iran from a conventional combat standpoint.
Nor does sanctions hold much terror for Iran, not as long as the world thirsts for their oil.
For that fact, a nuclear threat against Iran has limited utility due to the fear of radiological contamination of their oil reserves.
But Bush has few cards to play in a situation he has beautifully bungled from day one.
I think John Kerry may have the right idea, try and drag Moscow and Peking into a coalition to restrain Iran's atom bomb program. It is certainly worth a try, but doing this will require some serious diplomatic heavy lifting....and that is not President Bush's strong suit.

If...

Really bad op-ed writing is your thing, they you must check out Joanie Vennochi's latest column in the Boston Sunday Globe.
In it, she tries in a half hearted wat to render George Bush Jr. Lies, crimes and blunders morally equivalent with Bill Clinton's blow job.
Then she hems and haws for two paragraphs and finally dismisses the notion with an embarrassed wave of her hand.
This is a prime example of the sort of crap columnists write when they lack a moral compass, when they have dislikes and fetishes not beliefs and interests.
The nation is burning from within and without, and all Joanie can do is drag out her battered and shopworn Bill Clinton action figure for yet another session of rhetorical needlework.

Bloggers versus Pundits

What do Ellen Goodman and Jeff Jacoby both have in common?
They both devoted considerable column inches this week to slagging bloggers. They both dislike our alleged frantic emotionalism, immediacy and or poor spelling.

Oh and we and they are competing for the same audience cohort, let us not forget that.
Humble Elias sees this as good news, if they feel they must sniff at and dismiss us, we must be making an impression.
If it is a bad impression so much the better, these yaps have had years to speak the truth to power, they won't so with bad spelling and all, the sinecure falls to us.

Barrios Out?

The Boston Globe has been suggesting that State Senator Jared Barrios is about to abandon his quest to be Middlesex County DA.
Maybe it is for the best, a sort of political natural selection process seems to have occurred here, leaving Law Enforcement Professional Gerry Leone the last man standing.
Leone from what I've seen of him, appears to be a very serious guy with a long resume and much experience in the field of prosecution.
Barrios on the other hand despite his obvious charisma and many talents seemed to be in the wrong race. In elections to come one can easily see him stepping up to Secretar y of State or Lieutenant Governor.
But that depends on the breaks, at the moment the rumor is Barrios will be running for re-election thus nudging the somewhat troubled candidacy of Anthony Gallucio aside.
One hopes to hear of him again, he is after all a very earnest and sincere man.

If Tom Reilly is over and done with...

how come he has managed to raise about 370K in campaign donations in the First Quarter of this year?
An amount that is about comparable to what Deval Patrick raised...

As yet I have no dog in this fight, but it seems to me that despite some appalling political pratfalls earlier this year that Tom is still alive, well and thoroughly competitive.
4.1 million dollars can buy a fella a very fair hearing down the road when the race heats up.
Just sayin'...

The Hammer Falls

Tom Delay is abandoning congress under a mounting load of legal worries and electoral issues.
Kudos to Joshua Micah Marshall and all those who unerringly kept this dirtbag son of bitch in the crosshairs for all that time.
And so The Hammer departs, he leaves Congress in a bloody shambles, divided between outright theocrats and those ardent to revive wage slavery.
Corrupt and worthless himself, Delay was a master of foulmouthed persecution politics and that haughty tone of xian triumphalism.
Of course, total domination of congress costs money so while he was preaching the sweet gospel of the little baby Jesus Armed and Truculent he was also collecting money from every crook and lobbyist in DC.
It is tempting to dismiss Delay as a man of the past, a machine pol brought down by zeal and greed. I think he is diresome harbinger of things to come, even more corrupt theocrats are no doubt waiting in the wings, inspired by Delay's example and intoxicated at the possibilities presented by his kind of raw power worship.
Certainly nothing in the current system of checks and balances will prevent someone ten times worse than Delay from seizing power.

So...

the House and Senate are all but at war over an Immigration Bill?
Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys really.

I hope Congressman Tancredo chases Bill "JesusMan" Frist into the Senate Cloakroom with a machete.

A fight between The GOP Faction that supports racial and cultural purity versus the cabal that is desperate for cheap labor is a consummation devoutly to be wished.
The bastards deserve one another.
Frankly I haven't been this viscerally excited about a fight since Bill Goldberg challenged The Rock to a brawl determining who was dominate mesomorph of the Universe.