JK on Larry King last night...

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

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

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

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

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

Oh Dear...Oh My...

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

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

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

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

Tom Reilly has apparently decided that the

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

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

Shuffling the Deck...

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

Post Thanksgiving Day shout out to the Blue Mass Group

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

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

Idle thought for the day...

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

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

Reform is Dead...

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

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

Newsflash! Romney is NOT a fraud

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

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

Three Months and Fifteen Minutes Later

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

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

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

So lets make good use of it while it lasts.

Romney's Charmless Offensive...

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

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

Grace Notes from Caucus Day 2006...

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

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

Giuliani in '08?

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

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

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

On to more prosaic topics....

The Alewife T Station's Parking Garage leaks like a sieve...so sez Zolok.

Sco Lives!

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

Geez I almost forgot to gloat...

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

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

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

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

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


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

On the second day of GOPocalypse '06...

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

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

Are all wrong

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

Rumsfeld Out?

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

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

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

E.F.D.

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

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

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

Massachusetts Uber Alles

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

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

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

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

All for the Glory of the Commonwealth

lets get out there and vote.

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

Election Day Endorsement Recap:

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

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

Hussein Sentenced to be hung...

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

Michael Gee

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

Bill Weld drops in...

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

Shrill and Strident wins the race...

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

Congressman John Boehner Threatens to "Kill" Senator Kerry

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

All I can say to Senator Kerry is

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