Tom Friedman is back from the Middle East

hung up his pith helmet and skeedaddled to Washington DC to appear on Meet the Press the notorious abode of reputed journalist Phat Tim Russert.
Apparently, from the little I caught of it, Tom was unsucessful in convincing the Supreme Opthamalocrat of Syria to invest in free WiFi for Damascus and its suburbs...nor could he get in to see the President of Iran to discuss the potential of hybrid cars.
But on Friedman babbled, I didn't hear his standard "We'll know in six months" meme, but no doubt it cropped up somewhere in his monologue.
Frankly I zoned out, Tom Friedman has a swaety breathless look about him these days, like he knows something went wrong, but can't quite figure what that something is.

Russert on the other hand, just peered at Friedman like a cobra on anti-depressants...of its one skill Tim has mastered it is the art of looking at guests intently.

How much do you think we'd have to raise

in order to simply bribe George Bush Jr. into leaving office?
Granted this blog has gone back and forth with respect to the "revolutionaries versus voluptuaries" argument, however given the frightful state of global and national politics at the moment it might be worth finding out if GWB has his price after all.
I'm assuming he wouldn't leave for anything less than a billion up front cash, but that could be raised by a national fundraiser. Raising the "presidential payola" might take a few months...but the money could be had I assure you.
More daunting though, are the post GWB leadership prospects faced by the nation. Paying off Bush like a pimp with negatives will only leave us with Deadeye Dick Cheney in the White House, and after him, Fat soft Denny Hastert, "Brainless" Ted Stevens, Condi Rice....you get the picture from the subnormal to the ridiculous.
Of course, we could offer them all a one time cash pay out of 20 billion dollars apportioned in staggered increments with the proviso that C. Everett Coop or some other semi-sane soul be appointed to a appropriate position in the succession.
Twenty billion US dollars is cheap compared with the trillions Iraq, the price of gas and Bush's tax cuts are costing us all.
It is twenty billion now but what with inflation, the cost of doing business with the White House is bound to go up.
So I say act now, hell I'm in for twenty bucks...who is with me?

Amorello Outski...

can't imagine what sort of glad-handing toadying jerkwad Romney will dredge up to replace the now resigned Matt Amorello. Recent Turnpike Chairmen have run a glorious gamut from arrogant to ignorant to simply servile.
How the Viceroy is gonna top all that is a mystery.
Is Zack "Dinoboy" Spilman available? Granted haunting Shannon O'Brien campaign events in a dinosaur costume & grunting incohernetly about jobs is no great training for the Turnpike Authority but the kid is young, insufferable & insolent which are key Romney governing virtues.

A couple of thoughts while taking the Silver Line Tunnel to Boston Marine Industrial Park...

"Did Modern Continental dig this tunnel?"
"Did Bechtel Parsons oversee the project?"
"Is there any way to look any of this up?"
"This sumbitch sure is bumpy enough that doesn't do mycuch for anyone's confidence. I mean who wants to be twenty feet below the channel in a tunnel graded no better than a dirt road in Winn Parish Louisiana?"

Viceregal Disdain

Governor Romney, having closed down half of the Big Dig, having sailed thru what seems like a press conference per day and made numerous on camera "inspections" of the imperiled tunnels, is now resting from his labors and spending the weekend in Iowa at various GOP events.
No doubt, if we all listen closely, we will learn just what Mitt really thinks of his soon to be former constituents in the Commonwealth.

Da Globe sez....

Mortgage foreclosures are up 66% over the past year.
Home sales are down and yet prices remain high....now Ah'm not whut yew would call an educated blogger, but the situation seems unsustainable over time.

Je's sayin'....

Tom Friedman has resurfaced

in the Middle East, according to Pompous Tim Russert the New York Times Columnista is trying to get into Damascus to cover the current Israeli incursion into Lebanon.

Ohhhhh....joy...Friedman is on the beat in the desert heat, start buying gold kids that is all I can say.

The current Israel strike against Hezbollah must be a godsend to Friedman, it obscures ever so slightly the unfolding US debacle in Iraq, an adventure that Tom pimped for with childish glee back in '03.
Of course, Friedman has a theory, doesn't he always? A very earnest notion that if somehow Syria and Iran's de facto alliance can be busted up Hezbollah will whither on the vine.
Tom insists they are not natural allies citing Syria's secularism versus Iran's Islamic wowserism.
Waaallllll....ahhhh swan....Humble Elias isn't what you would call an "educated man" but ah do know that the USA has been trying to separate the Arabs from their poverty and ethnocentrism for fifty years now on and off. We haven't much to show for the effort and one doubts that we will have any luck getting Syria and Iran to quit on one another.
Hatred of Israel for the moment, is a great unifier of the fractious Arabs, every Imam and ambitious Infantry Colonel knows this...windy proclaimations from that seer Tom Friedman notwithstanding.

Sooo...

The Globe's own haughty little Language Cop Jeff Jacoby thinks the term "chickenhawk" is a slur on the patriotism of such worthies as Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, George Bush Jr. Tom Delay and of course, Abraham Lincoln.
You know what he is right.
But if "chickenhawk" is a bozo-no-no, then surely distributing teensy little band aids emblazoned with the Purple Heart at the 2004 GOP Convention is some sort of ominous transgression isn't it?
ISN'T IT??????
Humble Elias doesn't recall word one out of Jeff Jacoby back in September 2004 when the GOP's best and brightest SAILED past questioning John Kerry's patriotism in favor of simply calling the Junior Senator from Massachusetts a coward and traitor.
No pecksniffery then about slurs and excess, no heartfelt pleas for civility and comity... no not from Jeff Jacoby.

So yeah Jeff Jacoby is a chickenhawk...a blustering sandbox Caesar who'd loudly defecate himself if he ever heard a shot fired in anger.
Is that above sentence a slur?
Yes...deal with it the game officially stopped being about the niceties in September 2004.

Bandwagon Brian McGrory

climbs back into the Mitt Romney Special without so much as a by-your-leave. You wouldn't mind so much, but him, Vennochi and Lehigh (who'll be licking Mitt's Hush Puppies before the weekend's out I assure you) are groveling at the Viceroy's feet on the basis of a few press conferences and some pro-forma photo-ops featuring Kerry Healey standing offside to the Governor mutely gazing at His Excellency with bovine adoration.
Other than that we aren't talking about any great managerial breakthroughs with the current Governor, nor will we given the fact that no matter what it becomes someone else's problem in just seven short months.

But these guys are all easily swayed by superficially dramatic things like press conferences etc...being shameless as well, all their carping begruding criticism of our absent and inept governor is now forgotten as they writhe on the floor in a compulsive bid to ingratiate.

"Gone Fishin"...

Be back tomorrow, however if it all goes to smash and I don't come back, try to remember that Humble Elias was once an Eagle.

It sure doesn't take much effort from Mitt Romney

to get Joanie Vennochi back on the bandwagon does it?
A few press conferences wherein the Viceroy pronounces the word "epoxy" correctly, a stroll thru the tunnels in an orange vest suitably televised and Joanie sighs and starts purring "Ahhh leadership" right on cue.
Now normally, at this point in the typical Chimes at Midnight post, Humble Elias starts snarking about Joanie Vennochi's venom heavy rudderless writing style or jumping ugly on Romney's grating opportunism.
No...instead I'm just gonna repeat that the National Transportation Safety Board ought to be brought in to investigate the circumstances of the accident with the power to refer matters to the Attorney General if so warranted AND the safety audit of the Big Dig should be handed over to an independent engineer or board thereof.
Those holes are already dug, the paramount issues right now are to make sure the project is SAFE and that the public has confidence in the ongoing investigation.
Everything else pales by comparison...to do any less to create another useless political football that will bedevil the electorate of the Commonwealth from now until the flaming end of time itself.

I sometimes think

That Jeff Jacoby's real problem is that his father took away his Ken Doll and Peter Pan costume at too impressionable an age. If psychotherapist Terrence Real is to be believed abusees frequently appropriate the psychic pain and aggression instinct of their tormenters in adulthood.
How else to explain today's column wherein Jeff rants on and on blaming the Big Dig's faults and cost over-runs on virtually every single democrat of note both alive and dead in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?

This particular howler stands out amidst the torrent of covert displaced aggression:

"The Big Dig is indeed a monument to (Tip) O'Neill. It captures perfectly the costly big-government sloppiness for which he was the poster child."

Way to go Jeff...Dumping your acculmulated mental effluvia on the grave of a man twelve years dead. Humble Elias would not call this notion "progress" in the clinical sense of the term but it must have been a good short term quieter of the screeching beasts in Jacoby's head.
On a more prosaic level, nowhere in today's column does Jeff touch on the shoddy management provided by Bechtel Parsons nor the wretched execution by Modern Continental Construction nor the laughable "oversight" of the Big Dig provided by Governors Weld, Cellucci, Swift and now Romney.
Ah but jumping ugly on them wouldn't mute the howling in Jeff's bruised and bleeding psyche wouldn't it?

Mickey Spillane has gone for the proverbial terminal dirt nap

extinguished, expired and expunged from this mortal coil.
Channel Zero sez it all so eloquently.

The Duke speaks up

The Boston Globe briefly interviewed former Governor Dukakis today who noted that while Governor Romney has pursued his four year vendetta against Turnpike Authority Chief Matt Amorello, the roads and bridges of the Commonwealth have been falling to pieces thus undercutting The Viceroy's alleged commitment to highway safety.
What an entirely sane and sensible observation!
Good gawd but Mike still has it, he is seventy years old and still has a few good campaigns left in him!
It is not politically correct to say nice things about the Duke these days but there you have it...every pot-hole from here to North Adams is a little monument to Romney's superficial stunt oriented governing style.
To which Humble Elias will only add, that the roads in Belmont, Romney's nominal home town are among the worst in Middlesex County. Some of them invite comparison to the cratered wasteland that is the Sea of Serenity on the Moon.

I may be all stupid-like but

I thought invading Iraq was supposed to put Syria and Iran on notice that their sponsorship of terrorist outfits like Hezbollah wouldn't be tolerated?

Humble Elias can recall with the simplest nostalgia the golden days of 2003 when the smug likes of Doug Feith were gaseously asserting that deposing Saddam would lead to a whole new democratic ball game in the Middle East.

Of course, IF Humble Elias was still in the whole "security studies" field (and he is long out it to be sure) he'd be wondering if the Israelis were about to modify those bunker busting BLU-109 munitions they bought from us for delivery via their Jericho II-B MRBM system? Jerusalem does have a modified version of the Jericho missile system capable of boosting a satellite into orbit...so maybe they've got something that can handle the alleged 2000 lb payload after that it is a question of an accurate guidance system.
Because the whole thing is about missiles, Teheran's client Hezbollah has short range rockets it has launched into Northern Israel so what better way to indulge proportional retaliation than to launch a missile strike at Iran's nuclear sites?
Allegedly, to attack those sites via bombers, the IDF would have to overfly US held Iraq and there is no guarantee yet what Washington's response would be to that eventuality.
So Humble Elias is guessing it could be a missile cannonade directed at Iran.
Of course, such an attack would probably not knocke out Iran's nuclear weapons research & development, but it might set their schedule back nad bid to send Teheran "a message".

System Error

So the Great and General Court has handed over the the repair and reconstruction of the I-90 connector to Governor Romney.
This is a bad move in Humble Elias' opinion and no doubt motivated by Sal-n-Trav's lingering belief in the myth of the Romney's managerial omnipotence.
To me, you don't hand over corporate America's $14 billion failure to one of Corporate America's most servile and abject apologists.
For once, I think Brian McGrory is right, get the Lege and the Governor out of it entirely. Put the National Transportation & Safety Board in charge of the accident investigation with powers of subpoena and referral to the AG's office and find an HONEST engineer with some organizing ability to oversee the safety audit and repairs.

New Hampshire Idle...

The Boston Herald reported yesterday, that in the wake of Milena Del Valle's tragic death in in the I-90 Connector Tunnel, Mitt Romney interrupted his vacation just long enough for a shrill & hysterical press conference before jetting back to the Granite State.
You now see just what Governor Romeny really thinks of the whole matter...fodder for fear-mongering and posturing nothing more. A crisis sufficiently trivial that it can be left to his staff to sort out with "Lt. Governor Barbie" to act as an acceptable and decorous cut out at the press briefings.
There are a lot of reasons to be suspicious of the Governor's so called leadership, but the one in the spotlight right now is his sheer superficial amateurishness.
Faced with a problem with legislative, public safety, emotional and financial facets to it, Mitt sighs, shrugs and tries desperately to play the hero in demanding Matt Amorello's resignation.
Only an amateur like Mitt would try to desperately to posture and preen in such a simplistic fashion at a time like this.
According to Scot Lehigh and Brian McGrory, Romney is a private sector managerial wizard in extremis, frankly I don't see it. The man is an amateur and bumptious one at that, he made his pile playing with other people's money at Bain Capital Group this is not a background tailor-made for the development of crisis management skills.
Sadly, I think we are in for worse outrages than this...Mitt is on short time and wants only to grasp the short term opportunity so he can start campaigning for President full time in 2007. If after that, the whole damn thing goes up in smoke, well that is just tough tittie for Massachusetts.

Sick
Demented
Typical

David Brooks on Imus Today...

And lordy what a whiny snickering twerp he is.

But give David credit he is loyal to the convolutions and knots that constitute the current freeper line.
Today he offered up the extraordinary notion that Senators Kerry & Clinton's promise to support the victor in the current Connecticut democratic senatorial primary (you remember, Lieberman v. Lamont) represents a quiet cave in to political thuggery in the democratic base.
David Brooks really is an opportunistic and cynical little bitch isn't he? If John McCain had bolted the GOP in 2000 to run as a third party presidential candidate no doubt Brook's irritating soprano would soar high and loud over the rightical chic chorus of disapproval.
For that fact, go back and check...I guarantee David Brooks was freeping out hard about Ross Perot's independent candidacy back in 1992.
Somehow now, it is the duty of all "big tent" democrats to back Joe Lieberman's notional vanity third party run should it come to that in Connecticut.
Awk...typical freeper punditariat manipulative drivel...you could program a computer to write this stuff it is so predictable.
However I have to say, I'm glad I've been elevated to rank of "thug" in the estimation of Mr. David Brooks; conservative pundit and columnist.
For the past six years I've been called a faggot and an appeaser by rightical chic elements in American society. "Thug" seems to indicate the freepers are starting to look over their shoulders a bit.
And the term also has a bit of outlaw chic to it...can't deny that.

Elias Nugator, Thug
Think I'll have that business card printed up one of these days.

So now the Big Dig has an official Body Count...

thank you so bloody much Bechtel Parsons, that was surely $14 billion dollars very well spent wasn't it?
True to form though, Governor Romney, faced with a fatal cave-in in one of the Big Dig's tunnels came rocketing back from his vacation straight to the front of the TV cameras where he indulged a shrill and scary performance sowing raw panic among the commuting population of Boston.
he looked particularly appalling last night on FOx25 news with his hair askew and the sweat rolling down his face with that screechy little voice of his.
Ish...ugh.
The facts alone are scary stuff, nevertheless here comes the Viceroy rantin & raving about unsafe tunnels and screaming for Matt Amorello's head.
This is a tragedy pure and simple, Humble Elias' heart goes out to the family of Milena Del Valle...this shouldn't have happened.
Alas though, this disaster casts a harsh light on the sheer amateurishness of Romney's leadership style. For all his feckless bluster, Mitt somehow really thinks that ousting Amorello is gonna fix everything up for good.
Why?
No doubt the Viceroy will dig up some hapless toadying hack for the job and that person will flail around for a few months or years until some other god-awful catastrophe and then the whole stupid farce will repeat itself under the aegis of another Governor.
Mitt will be campaigning in Epsom Cirle New Hampshire by then and probably pleased with the "business-like" manner that he handled the whole crisis.
Obscured by this tragedy is a very real indictment of corporate America, the very womb out of which Mitt Romney sprang to the Governorship.
If you can't trust Bechtel Parsons to dig a big hole in the ground and take some god-damned pride in the job then there is something seriously WRONG with the way we do business in the USA.
Nope, that is all over in America, nowadays we are nothing but a huge money laundering operation for turning Chinese Yuan into US Dollars. Workmanship, pride, and a sense of SHAME when things go wrong are not part of the MBA Curriculum and it's certainly nothing that would make you a big wheel at the Bain Capital Group.

Look at the way we do business in America, its a miracle the whole damn tunnel didn't cave in en masse with the sea rushing in to reclaim all.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Brian Williams on Imus in the Morning today...

If Microsoft Office had an "Anchorman" package, the whole mishaugas would probably look and sound a lot like NBC premiere newsman Brian Williams. Pleasant, avuncular, detached, baritonal & meaningless, Williams can wander in the deep verdant garden of news cliche's with the best of them.
Today he was on Imus bloviating about Iraq being on the "brink" of civil war. If we dialed back six months or a year we could easily find Bob Schieffer or Howard Fineman saying essentially the same thing. For two full years now since Secretary Rumsfeld finally recognized an "insurgency" in Iraq, that nation has been ritually described as being on the "brink" of civil war.
This trope endures because the news media wants to sound "hysterical" in it's reportage but then the whole "brink" thing also serves the Admin's purposes as it allows everyone to believe that the mess in Iraq hasn't quite become unretrievable yet.
The fact of the matter is, civil war broke out in Iraq almost as soon as Saddam's statue came down in Baghdad. It has ebbed and flowed since then, as all civil wars do and it will continue after our troops leave assuming they ever leave.
The game is afoot over there and the players are not the emerging democratic forces that fire Tom Friedman's delusions but a ragtag collection of religious fanatics and ethnic cleansers.
That is what we've stumbled into in Iraq and that'll be our legacy when we leave.
Brian Williams cannot say anything like this, being an alleged network newsman, the last thing he dares do is report the story in stark simplicity.
No his job to evade and qualify and massage things along til tomorrow night's broadcast.
And collect a huge paycheck.

Such is the Kingdom of Heaven
On the Congressionally Licensed Public Airwaves
And elsewhere
7-11-06
8:40am EST
God Save the Republic
God Save the Commonwealth

With regards to North Korea,

the sequence runs this way: they threaten to do something serious, we bluster, they do whatever the hell they want UP to a certain point, everyone wallows in shock & outrage, we then go on blustering.
And then the recycle reiterates over say a two year period...nothing irrevocable happens but everyone gets a good scare.
This time though, the score seems to be one to one...North Korea's big scary-ass rocket disintegrated after two minutes of flight but the Bush admin's dire threats to deploy our strategic defense capability came to nothing.
For the moment, it seems like Pyongyang can't build an ICBM capable of reaching Beverly Hills or Kerry Healey's mansion...but that could change over time based on how much moolah Komrade Kim wants to waste on missiles in a nation neck deep in starvelings.
The USA on the other hand, has had twenty years and three hard core conservative administrations to come up with a workable regional missile defense system.
So far billions upon billions have been spent since Reagan's day and NOTHING has yet been deployed.
If the Manhattan Project had taken this long to produce a nuclear warhead, the Japanese would be opening Geisha Houses in Salt lake City by now.
But the GOP goes on blustering, if strategic defense hasn't yet paid off in protecting America from ICBM attack is sure is a king hell gimmick for pillorying liberals and democrats.
The History Channel (which is increasing Fox News loaded up with stock footage) loves to run crude animation of 747's armed with huge phallic looking laser cannons...none of which can be found flying over the sea of Japan at the moment.
But as a rhetorical device with which to accuse democratic party of treason and cowardice, it has no equal.
We got the atom bomb in four years of concentrated effort. We got the hydrogen bomb in four more years of comparable effort. We went from nuclear subs to missile firing nuclear subs in about six years...our strategic forces transitioned from unreliable liquid fueled missiles to solid core ICBMs in something like five years.
And yet after twenty plus years of work we still can't shoot down a rattle-trap lashed up ICBM prototype that wouldn't been laughed off the lot at Peenemunde.

Just wait though, the cry will go up this very week in congress for MORE strategic defense funding...our guys are wrapping scrap metal about their hummers in Iraq for armor and all gang on Capitol Hill can think is more anti-missile funding.


Sick
Demented
Typical...

A brief resolution for July...

before we select a moderator for any two or three way gubernatorial debate this fall, let us all privately agree NOT to invite Tim Russert back for a repeat performance this time.
I'm really serious about this, Shannon O'Brien got asked nothing but the usual leading questions from Phat Tim back in 2002, we can expect more of the same this time be our nominee Chris, Tom, Deval or the unquiet shade of Adlai Stevenson.
Now, I don't think Russert wil quiet be able to manage the hopeless look of adolescent worship he reserved for candidate Romney, but Tim can do us some damage and will if he gets the chance.
Phil Johnston ought to insist that any panel empowered to moderate a gubernatorial debate ought to be composd exclusively of local journalists.

Remember that gentle readers, NO TIM in '06!!!!

Just a thought....

The C.I.A. has quietly shut down it's Osama Bin Laden task force, the one charged with getting the 9-11 mastermind "dead or alive".

Assuming that OBL is still alive with that $20M price on his head, I say we should put the US House of Representatives GOP caucus on the Al Qaeda Leader's trail. Those portly smilin GOP congressmen can hear a dollar drop over a mile away, perfect capability for huntin' a known terrorist.
Besides with Jack Abramoff in jail conservatives in congress need new sources of revenue...if they catch Bin Laden that bounty will buy a lot of television adverts this fall calling their opponents faggots and cross dressers.
Denny Hastert's corrupt crew in the house love money as a hog loves slop, I don't see why this shouldn't be put in the service of US National Security?

Mike Barnicle on Imus in the Morning today...

(Oh the subtle joys of unemployment, I can watch Imus' MSNBC simulcast over breakfast)
The columnist was in a funk today...could hardly rouse himself to blather on about how "likable" the president is despite his inept and corrupt policies.
Barnicle also talked about about the situation in North Korea predicting "not much" would happen over there. Given Mike's record with prognostication we can no doubt expect the entire region to go up in flaming irradiated chunks by the end of next week.
Barnicle then went on to take the inevitable Imus bait and started mocking Ned Lamont's senatorial candidacy down in Connecticut. He made some boilerplate remarks about the "liberal coastal enviroment" in New England in the fashion of Andrew Sullivan.
Imus and Mike then gave some props to Lieberman for sticking to his pro-war principles despite the war's manifest unpopularity...these were to say the least strangely muted props for two such unabashed toadies and suck ups.
Ah but you see, Imus in his own confused fashion and Mike Barnicle are both more or less against the war. So lauding Lieberman for his stubborn belief system is about all either of them can do.
Of course, back in the spring of 2003, Imus had a completely different view of the war, he was heaping praise on President Bush for his costumed flight deck appearance on the U.S.S. Lincoln in terms thick with displaced homoerotic sentiment.
As for Mike I don't recall seeing him on the anti-war picket lines back then or right now.
In fact I'm not sure Mike understands the war outside of a very limited telenovela context in which "ordinary people" are victimized by a strange unfathomable called "policy".
It is all very deliberately ignorant manipulative and shallow....in short typical Barnicle.
Ah but lets face it, with all his scandals and strange sentimental fetishes, Mike has degenerated into a sort of sentimental bloviator...his opinions can be discounted without worry or woe.
***
But all in all it was a remarkably dispirited performance from Mike Barnicle usually a reliably truculent self hating liberal. Oh he tried to gin up some of his patented sleeveless tee shirt populist outrage noting that we are focused on gas prices and gay marriage and not on "kids dyin' in Iraq" but there was no energy behind his rap whatsoever.

Such is the Kingdom of Heaven
On the Congressionally Licensed Public Airwaves
Here and Elsewhere
7-06-06, 8:31am EST
God Save the Republic
God Save the Commonwealth

Ken Lay R.I.P.

Janeane Garofalo joked on Air America Radio today that Kenny Boy faked his own death and his started life anew in some forged identity...which is naught but the plot of a Richard Condon novel but then these are Condon-esque times we are living in.

What I wanna know is, will George Bush Jr. read the eulogy? Or even attend the funeral of one of his most relentless and corrupt supporters?

There a grim irony here, Ken Lay the despoiler of California and author of the rolling balckouts that brought Arnold Schwarzenegger to power, dies on the day crude oil hits $75 a barrel.

They stuff themselves with money, and they stuff themselves some more, then they die.
But we go on paying....that is the sheer beauty of our American Way of Rugged Individualism.

Kultur Note for the 5th of July 2006,

Even as Humble Elias struggles with a pesky hangover induced by a wee too much room temperature vodka, he is tormented by one unanswerable question:
"Who in God's name is buying tickets to see Imus in the Morning sidekick Rob Bartlett'standup act?"
Sorry kids, the man is about as funny as a Texas pistol whipping...his impressions are perfectly awful and his "spontaneous quips" occasion a sort of hopeless shivery dread one reserves for zombie acts like William Hung.
Unless of course, Bartlett is holding out on Imus (which wouldn't surprise me) and uses his a-list material exclusively when he is on tour.
Which raises the chilling question as to what sort of vituperative freeper nonsense Rob Bartlett considers "A-List" material anyway?

Joe-verconfidence?

Yesterday Senator Joe Lieberman announced that he will run as an independent in the fall election if he loses to Ned Lamont in the Connecticut democratic senatorial primary. He made some the usual comforting noises that if elected as an independent, he'd vote with the democratic caucus...which is something of a veiled threat at his colleagues to stay out of Connecticut this fall.
Alas poor Joe, look how the mighty have fallen.
Where was this kind of drive and heedless ambition in November of 2000 when the issue was in doubt during the Florida recount?
Well, of course, back then Lieberman had already secured simultaneous re-election to the US Senate so his position was at least secure.
Humble Elias has tried to steer clear of the whole Blogs v. Lieberman thing, he has friends who are big admirers of the Connecticut Senator and besides the whole mishaugas is an out of state intramural issue in extremis.
However....did Robert Reich run as an independent in 2002? Did Patricia McGovern run as a third party candidate in 1998? Did Paul Tsongas heed the pleas from without his campaign to run as Ross Perot's VP in 1992?
The answer to all that is...no.
These are all democrats who put the needs of the citizenry ahead of their own ambition and personal pride.
Lieberman's rival Ned Lamont has already stated he'll support the ticket no matter who is nominated...Joe on the other hand has mumbled some cliche's about a higher loyalty and started collecting signatures to get on the November ballot.
More importantly, who can say Joe won't switch party's after the election is won? We have but his word on the matter and we've already seen how intense is his dedication to his own ambition. How reliable will that pledge be if the GOP retains control of the senate and can start making beguiling offers?
I mean, think about that.

Treason Notes...

Three years have passed and still the White House can't figure out who snitched out Valerie Plame's CIA cover to Robert Novak. Yet when the New York Times divulges the well known afact that the NSA is pouring over foreign business transactions in an effort to track down Bin Laden the whole of the Praetorian Class rises as one screaming treason and calling for a rope and lamp-post.

They can howl and scream all they want, but they are all a low wretched pampered spoiled bunch...no amount of scapegoating and straw-men will ever change that.

Keep Diggin'

The Boston Sunday Globe has reported that the Massachusetts State Police uses a facilities company notorious for hiring illegal aliens to clean various barracks. This would be National Facilities Services of Boylston whose President one Charles T. jasiak has been a lavish contributor to BOTH the Romney and Healey campaigns.
So quite literally Kerry Healey's current anti-immigrant jihad has been bought with sweat of illegal aliens....how d'ye like that action?
To the Globe, the Herald, the Phoenix, the State Democratic Committee et al, all Humble Elias can say is...keep digging!
As I've noted before, one cannot be rich in Massachusetts without benefiting in some way from low wage illegal immigrant labor.
Even as I write this, someone, so to speak, with a bum green card is mowing the lawn at the Healey Mansion or they are cleaning Reed Hillman's new pool....count on it.
I can smell the stench of hypocrisy all the way from the top of the hill here in Menotomy...there is bad faith somewhere, I can feel it.

Just to prove

that this, the Little Blog that Cried, is NOT solely about calling the Governor of Massachusetts a chronic onanist, her is a real link to a review of "Superman Returns" that neatly parallels Humble Elias own reactions to the film.

Now turn off your computer and Go Outside for Ghod's Sake...its a nice day out there.