Correction to today's post on the 23rd Middlesex special election

Apparently, Suzanne Gordon does have enough signatures to qualify for a spot on the democratic ballot.
Interested parties have requested a campaign announcement from her. Gordon could be an interesting addition to the race, no one knows her from a cord of wood but she is the wife of super lawyer Steve Early and has connections to beat the band. It is thought around town that she has some as yet undisclosed fundraising chops.
All this disadvantages Jeff Thielman somewhat, since Gordon will undoubtedly run as a liberal where Jeff was hoping to lock up the progressives early.

BTW

Happy New Year to all, in 2008 Humble Elias promises that the Chimes at Midnight will be even more vituperative, poorly edited, indifferently written and thoroughly nasty in an unsubtle way...this blog stresses continuity you understand....

:D

Handicapping the 23rd Middlesex state rep's special election

As of yesterday the democratic primary shrank enormously, school committee member Susan Lovelace dropped out as well as Suzanne Gordon, a local scholar and writer.
Allegedly both candidates lacked enough signatures to get onto the primary ballot, Gordon I can understand she is new and no one knows her, but Lovelace is a school committee fixture and ought to have enough names in her rolodex to get certified fair -n- square.
I suspect the drop-out was was fixed up quietly, but that is only a suspicion.
This immediately turns the February democratic primary into a contest between two other school committee members, Jeff Thielman and Sean Garballey along with one Andrew O'Brien a complete newcomer to the game who is otherwise unknown to Humble Elias.
So at this point, it is Thielman versus Garballey...both have asymetrical strengths; Sean is affable and the darling of the boys and girls in the back room, but he is also barely twenty two years old and has yet to graduate college. Don't underestimate his backers though, Selectperson Diane Mahon despite not living in the 23rd Middlesex house district is clearly looking to recoup some of her losses from the recent state senate fight...and Sean would appear to be the best she could do.
Thielman on the other hand, is smart, articulate and has a proven record outside public service to go along with a job reasonably well done on the school committee.
However there is lingering and misplaced bitterness attendant on his involvement in the firing of a misbehaving middle school principal. Arlington despite it's increasingly gilt-edged appearance, is still a very provincial place in some respects...which means people can be ornery about stuff. Whether Jeff Thielman likes it or not, he will be talking about this issue in the weeks to come.

Whoever wins will have a tough fight in the general election, John Worden III, the Moderator of Town Meeting will be the GOP nominee, he has many friends and few wingnut bona fides and the state republicans might invest in the race if they think he can slip past the competition in a low turn out race.
So take this fella seriously sez Humble Elias.

McCain is up in the polls...

The pundits are all in a swoon and Mitt Romney is screaming for blood and dynamite. Oy veh...the NH Primary detonates in less than ten days with both races in a untidy frenzy.
The Chris Matthews' out there, are all under the sad delusion that John McCain is somehow gonna be the Robert F. Kennedy of 2008, a savior sent out of the iron womb of the US Navy to save the GOP and the Republic in the bargain.
As if any governing party that had screwed up as badly and thoroughly as the Republicans really deserves to be saved.
Well what of it?
Most of these jerks in the punditariat make seven figure salaries, they mostly wanna save their sweet deal on taxation, they confuse their own wallets with the good of the nation.
And anyway it is instructive to note that RFK didn't win nor did the democrats back in the 1968 presidential election.
So if McCain is the Hero, the Man on Horseback, this election's RFK, what does that make Hillary?
Richard Nixon?
Well what of it?
Nixon won didn't he?
:D

Benazir Bhutto is dead...

and predictably, the cry goes up that the whole crisis will "advantage" to such US candidates for President that have "strong foreign policy credentials".
Here the punditariat is highlighting Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton and to a lesser extent, Joe Biden and perhaps Former Ambassador Bill Richardson.
So as the world spirals new troubles and woes, it is worth recalling that by and large the current crisis was either created or immeasurably worsened by a whole bunch of US decisionmakers most of whole had "strong foreign policy credentials".
Starting with the incumbent Vice President, a former Secretary of Defense, a former White House Chief of Staff and a one time congressman from Wyoming and going right thru Colin Powell a Chief of Staff of the US Army and the nation's pick as Secretary of State and Donald Rumsfeld, a Secretary of Defense with a resume as long as Larry Bird's right leg.
All men of long experience and much intelligence, all leapt off the cliff with gung-ho gusto and took this glorious republic right along with them for the plunge.
Humble Elias thinks experience is a wonderful thing, he ardently wishes Bill Richardson was polling better, but he also knows that mere experience is worthless if it is not ruled by good judgement.
After all, Abraham Lincoln had one puny term in congress to his name before he won the civil war, freed the slaves and slaved the union.
Some would call him inexperienced, but his goals were clear and his judgement flawless...I'd rather that in the oval office than any ten old laggards from out the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
There is no stature gap here, there is no deficit of experience, what is missing today in the White House is leadership and judgement.
With judgement, you get a peaceful and secure end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, without it you get to watch as Pakistan, a nuclear armed nation ruled by a faltering military junta, slides into sectarian civil war...something with malign consequences for us all.
There are those out there who would dismiss today's post as a "blame America First screed"....but then you can't blame "America" for letting Bush steal two elections in a row...nor can you blame the republic because it's President has no ideas and worse judgement. America is only an idea after all, and the republic is a institution, a set of laws and particular attitude in the end.
Saving all this starts doing some hard and fast thinking our role and priorities in this world...and then we need good decisions, and we need them quick....just don't wait for any of that from George Bush Jr.

Humble Elias noticed something the other day....

the roads outside Romney's mansion in Belmont Mass are frickin' terrible! Rutted, pitted, rilled, full of potholes and the like, it's a bouncy ride much akin to the back country in Center Barnstead New Hampshire.
And the streets are lined with McMansions and huge-ass homes!
Inexplicable.
You'd think having been Governor of the Commonwealth, Mitt could've finessed some road monies for Belmont to get those streets properly pave...but no.
The Viceroy has too busy recruiting dead-heads for the state legislature, defying snow storms in a windbreaker and denouncing his constituents in front of auslanders.
God forbid he should direct $100k in blacktop to the Town of Belmont.
Take this how you will, but to me it demonstrates Romney's amateurism and lack of grounding in the basics of politics.

Feel the Post Holiday Man-Love...

as Jeff Jacoby marks out hard for John McCain's simple virtue.
Oh now there is a iconoclastic, counter-intuitive choice...John McCain all the other columnistas must be aghast at Jeff's curious choice.
Who ever heard of a pundit swooning over John McCain?

Well practically all of them that is who...and after months and months of sifting thru useless old hacks like Fred Thompson or grinning vacuities like Mitt Romney, it would seem Jeff Jacoby has been forced to settle for John McCain as the candidate most likely to start a war with Iran soonest. He has to put up with McCain's famous temper tantrums, his ineffectual record in the senate and his apostasy on various issues, but Jeff will get his war with Iran at the very least.
Meanwhile there is time for McCain to start seriously flip flopping on the issues if he really does pull off an upset in New Hampshire.
These days that is the best a republican can hope for.

Happy Festivus....

What did we learnt his year?

Again almost nothing, this is ideological warfare here at the Chimes at Midnight not an ABC Afterschool Special.

On the other hand:

Senator John Kerry declined to run for President.
Senator Joe Lieberman kept threatening to switch to the GOP
Left Ahead the local liberal podcast debuted.
Joanie Vennochi wrote a lot of stupid things seemingly with venom in her quill pen.
Fred Thompson yawned stretched, took a nap announced for President and hasn't been heard from since.
Steve Stark said the same thing over and over and over and over...and no one at the Phoenix has caught wise yet.
Senator John Kerry did a number of fine and noble things none of which you read about in the papers.
Senator Larry Craig broke out his shotgun and wailed dire threats against anyone foolish enough to bust down the door and drag him out of the closet.
Newt Gingrich pretended to want to run for President for two laugh filled months.
Andrew Meyer, a profounding stupid and naive young man got tasered at a political event down in Florida. By all accounts, the electrical shock did not awaken the dormant portions of his brain.
Imus went down, Imus came back...Imus still subsists on human bra-ins!
And Jeff Jacoby went light on the whole "My deerest darling Kaleb" columns...maybe the lad put his foot down who knows?

Anyhow merry christmas to all...

Dear Brian McGrory....

How yuh weathering the snow? Has your hair frizzed out or anything?

In case you hadn't noticed, notorious Colorado xenophobe Representative Tom Tancredo has terminated his bid for the 2008 GOP Presidential nomination and duly endorsed Mitt Romney's candidacy for the same.

So Brian tell me, where is that nice moderate Mitt Romney, the one for whom you marked out so very very hard back in'02?
At the rate your boy Willard is going, in just two short weeks he'll be calling for the forced expulsion of everyone whose name ends in a vowel.
Well Brian, this is not one of those classic Chimes at Midnight "I tolja so" type posts...nope this is more of a friendly warning against the perils of excessive credulity.
THE NEXT TIME, some grinning CEO type marchs into your office, desperate to run for governor as a Moderate Republican, try with all yer might not to fall in a swoon at his or her feet...if you can't be skeptical then at least try to pretend.

Tancredo Outski?

So it would seem....

You can't say though, that Congressman Tancredo didn't have a big influence on the 2008 republican presidential race, six solid months of his exquisite 19th century xenophobia and nearly the entire worthless pack were screaming to lynch all illegals soonest.
If that isn't sheer persuasive power then what is???

Of course, the issue itself polls very badly outside the GOP's hardcore trogs, so when Mitt, Rudy or Mike go down in flames next November, you can apportion some of the blame to Tancredo.

The Tears of a Fraud

The Boston Globe reports that Mitt Romney allegedly wept with joy in 1978 when the Mormon Church ended it's ban on negro clergy.
Good ghod what rubbish!
Mitt was probably shedding tears of joy all right, he was ecstatic that an embarrassing obstacle to political power was removed from his path.
***
Good grief gettin'all choked up is oldest corniest routine in the playbook, Richard Nixon did it all the time back in the day in a vain attempt to seem "real" and "normal" to the voters.
According to all witnesses, it was a cringe-worthy performance in every way.
Leaders are deviants by definition, whenever someone like Romney starts pretending to have a heart, all I can say is, Watch Out!

Idle Conjuration...

(File this under "Might Not Happen but it'd be FUN if it did")
If Mike Huckabee buries the field in Iowa and then John McCain engineers a last minute upset in New Hampshire...am I alone in thinking Mitt Romney will have a screeching infantile fugue on election night in Concord NH?
There is some precedent for this, Bob Dole was reduced to inarticulate snarling when Pat Buchanan beat his ass in the New Hampshire Primary back in 1996.
Mitt is clearly the repressed passive-aggressive type, a nice expensive and most of all humiliating loss up there to a hopeless doddering windbag like McCain might finally unleash the former Viceroy's pent up fury.
After all, there is nothing more embarrassing than losing to someone you'd written off in July.
Of course a lot of conjecture rides on this, the McCain resurgence in New Hampshire might be mostly be hot air from Old John's amen section on the op-ed pages...those jerks could build the slightest cooling breeze into an irresistible gale.
Nevertheless, Romney is too much the amateur to lose on this scale with grace...he'll have some sort of psychotic break, hopefully the news cameras will be there when it happens.

There is something hilarious about

Mitt Romney's increasingly irrational attempts to prove he is a bigger wowser and more truculent patriot than Mike Huckabee.

I mean...you half expect Mitt to bring a tape measure to the next debate or something...he went to pieces like this late in the game against Kennedy in 1994, let us not forget that.

But for the moment lets try and extract as much amusement as we can from Mitt's meltdown. I suggest that at Tonight's "Ask Mitt Romney Anything" event at the Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College (Manchester NH) someone ought to solicit Romney's views on evolution and the efficacy of stump water as a sovereign against warts.

Apropos of the MLB...

steroid scandal Lyndon Johnson known how to handle it.
LBJ would have gotten on the phone with Senators Mike Mansfield & Paul Douglas and told him to write the toughest anti-steroid law imaginable.
And damn the owners and the players as well, are they any more bad ass than the forces of race-reaction that opposed Johnson's civil rights program?
I think not.
LBJ would have drove the measure thru Congress like drought stricken cattle...ah but those were the days of leadership in this country.
Nowadays when someone has potent political capital they just hold onto it too long or else exclusively use it to punish their enemies or those disinclined to vote for them.
Sad...but that is the world we live in.

The game is afoot in New Hampshire...

Clinton's lead is slipping and Obama seems to have regained his footing...meanwhile Edwards and the pack are out in force desperate to take advantage of any sudden twist of fate.
Well at this point, it is worth remembering that for all his charisma Bill Clinton still lost the New Hampshire back in 1992.
Back in those days, the Commonwealth's official Presidential Man on Horseback was the late Paul Tsongas who beat Clinton like a gong in the Granite State.

Of course, Bill rose up to carry the day all the way to the White House, but it is worth remembering he was not a done deal then and his wife is not a done deal now.

Marzilli Uber Alles Part II

Well, Jim Marzilli romped to victory yesterday winning Bob Havern's fourth Middlesex State senate seat in a cold and wet special election.

The rough numbers can be found here:

Alas though, there is talk from various reliable sources that Kenny Donnelly might make another try at 4th Middlesex senate seat next year (this after he gave Marzilli a resounding endorsement on primary election night no less. Although Humble Elias has also heard that Donnelly allegedly has some 40K left in his campaign coffers and that would give him a big leg up if he ran for Marzilli's vacant seat in the House.
Other potential democratic candidates in that upcoming special election include School Committee members Jeff Thielman and Susan Lovelace as well as long time democratic party activist Tim Shannon.

Ah well...what of it? It was still Jim's night last night, whatever else you can say about him, Marzilli is a man of the future, he has a profound understanding of the issues and challenges that are a-coming.
On that basis along, absent Jim Marzilli's energy and honesty, the district made the right choice last night.

Not even the National Review can find a worthwhile conservative

in this election and so thus is forced to endorse Mitt Romney and simply pretend that Willard is a true blue conservative they way Scot Lehigh and Brian McGrory once pretended he was the moderate republican messiah.
Mitt seems to bring out the delusional in people...it is a consistent element of his storyline.

Elias Nugator Sr.

One of FDR's noble spartans, was conjuring with Barack Obama this weekend. He had a theory that perhaps a comma was missing out of his name making him Senator O'Bama our boyo so to speak.
The Son of Destiny sees Irishmen everywhere it seems.
However today he was muttering "Fill the Bill with Hill and Bill"....and so thus he shuffles the cards seeking a candidate...

Peace to his contemplations sayeth I.

Marzilli for state senate...

Serious Chimes at Midnight readers (all seven of you) will recall that Arlington state representative Jim Marzilli has been duly endorsed by this blog in the race to replace state senator Bob Havern in the Four Middlesex District.
Well, the general election is tomorrow, the weather prediction is clear and cold so lets everyone get out and vote!
Jim needs it, let us take nothing for granted and pile up a big majority for our candidate.

Meanwhile the Cangiamila campaign is sending out bizarro mailers that somehow link Jim Marzilli with the Grinch who stole Christmas....

Such class Republicans we got in the fourth Middlesex, so committed to the lofty combat of ideas.

The Winter of 1984

Ahhh that was when the last shreds of my charmless youthful naivete' died on the icy streets of Manchester New Hampshire...somewhere between Bridge Street and North Adams Road if you must know.
In those days, Humble Elias was a feckless undergraduate at one of southern New Hampshire's TOP Benedictine Roman Catholic colleges, thus he had a front row seat to the whole gaudy miserable presidential carnival.
So I've always had a somewhat jaundiced view of the whole "First in the Nation Primary" mishaugas...millions are raised out of state, thousands of volunteers are drafted and sent in...all to convince a xenophobic, surly and entirly homogenous electorate that they are a heroic breed to put The Seven Against Thebes to shame.
These days, Manchester NH is actually even seedier and more hopeless than when I was living there under the frosty aufklarung of Governor John "Fishguts" Sununu. The streets are chillingly empty at noon on a Sunday morning, "I Am Legend" could easily be filmed there sans recourse to CGI effects.
Manchester is a perpetually dying new england mill town, ruled by petty indignataries who try their wan wasted best to tart up for the presidential candidates. It's a town that actually looks older and more haunted every four years despite sporadic efforts to breath new life into it's brittle bones.
Credit Chris Dodd for having a huge walk in headquarters on Elm Street (th' main drag as my grey haired old mother would put it) which was decorously closed as of 1pm today.
I recall that Senator Lugar had just as huge a headquarters for his run in 2000, didn't do him much good though.
Mitt Romney's headquarter's was a few doors down and open as well, but only for show purposes with one lone staffer to roam the whole joint. He was nice enough to point out where some of the other playas were camped out locally. He also pointedly and primly noted that Ron Paul was "in Concord" as if to say that a candidate only matters if they are set up on Elm Street in Manchester NH.
Giuliani's headquarters on the tonier north side of town, was fairly active, I even managed to score a button off the very nice receptionist (thanks and I really do collect these baubles).
Hillary Clinton's headquarters seemed faily well hidden...I got contradictory directions from several worthies in the approved "Burt and I" fashion...ultimately I gave up the chase.
Barack Obama on the other hand is firmly dug in at what amounts to a warehouse farm off Valley Road. The office was bustling with activity, but then the candidate and OPRAH were gonna make an appearance tonight at the "Verizon Wireless Center".
What all this points to, is that Elm Street, the very center of town in the state's largest city, is no longer a player in presidential politics, the myraid of empty storefronts and languishing office spaces only underscore the unhappy truth, campaigns can really stretch a rental dollar a mere mile away in some shopping plaza near the highway.
It's a sad town too cold to be wistful really. On the other hand one thing I've noticed from my college days til today, small retailers are all uniformly honest and even kind after a fashion. I bought two slices of pizza at a local shop this afternoon for lunch and got a third one fresh and for free, the owner opined "You look hungry"...I think he even discounted me.
That is pretty much the case all over town, the numerous second hand stores have great bargains and everyone looks like they just got over a crying jag.

"Scientologists for Romney"

Now that Mitt has legitimized all other religions beside his own, don't you think he should reach out to the scientology community? I mean supposedly L. Ron Hubbard is his favorite author...it seems like a natural match.
They could show up at rallies give free screenings...and the fundraising potential...WOW!

Think about it Mitt there are worse things in the world than having the backing of Tom Cruise and Jenna Elfman.

Seriously though, friday's speech does raise the legit question as to what religions Mitt considers cult-like.
be an interesting inquiry that would make him flee the room no doubt.

You know, it occurs to me that...

IF Mitt Romney gets elected President, "ah could be inna heap o' trouble boy!"

Exhibit A: I have the geographic misfortune to live barely a mile from Mitt Romney's damn mansion in Belmont Mass...da secret service will no doubt do a data-mining sweep and score heavily on Humble Elias.
But hell a bunch of my damn neighbors will come up on that list as well, so I'll be in companionable company.
Exhibit B: This, the Little Blog that Cried, since 2003 it has proudly held to a admittedly crude and indifferently edited anti-Mitt line trust me, the SS ain't gonna like dat neither.

Yup come January 2009, this blog could be coming to you from the shores of the Baja peninsula.

That is, IF Romney wins, the nation would have to go a long ways to find a politician less trustworthy and more bereft of ideas than Willard Mitt Romney. Whether or not the Republic figures that out in time is an open question though.
***

BTW how about that speech yesterday? Pretty much a sonorous collection of focus group tested vacuities he? Mitt said nothing objectionable by the lights of a Baptist shaman, that is his idea of being a good civil libertarian. Nevertheless, Mormon or no, I wouldn't trust Mitt Romney with a plugged nickel let along my religious liberties.
Of course, staging this mishaugas at the Bush Presidential Library is a de-facto endorsement from La Famiglia Arbusto and a subtle hint that brother Jeb might yet end up on the Republican ticket as Mitt's VP.
I urge the former Florida Governor to give the sinecure careful thought, Scary Kerry Healey didn't profit much by her association with Willard.

I'm running behind this week...so much to discuss so little time...

Mormon youth make the front page of the Boston Globe today.

They all sound like nice kids but I wonder how many of them will be calling in sick to school on January seventh in order to go door to door in New Hampshire for Mitt Romney?

Which they can do with my blessing it is after all a national election in which Romney seeks a place. Dress warm kids, lotsa layers and cover those ears sez the old misanthrope.

Of course things were a lot different a mere six years ago.

"A man's religion is his own business" so I foolishly opined in 2002 as Mitt Romney ran for governor.
Imagine my chagrin on election day as my little bed room suburb was flooded with dozens of out of state Mormon volunteers happy and hell bent on putting their bishop in office.

Nowadays I say, a candidate's religion IS the public's business whenever he or she intend to use revealed religion as a guide to public policy.
Then all bets are off.

Romney's speech today won't change any of this, whatever he says, the reality is he must still convince the wowsers he can be trusted despite his religion to give them their own personal eschaton.
JFK told the ministers, 'My faith is no threat to you, the separation of church and state will be strong if I win'.
Romney is telling us 'Forget I'm a Mormon, I'll do whatever you ask once I win...'
See the difference?

So Iran's nuclear bomb program halted four years ago?

That is interesting....

So how long before Marty Peretz and Charles Krauthammer start screaming that the United States Central Intelligence Agency is rife with tea drinking poufy anti-semites?

Nice to see Mitt Romney finally taking some heat from...

The Boston Globe. It is nothing compared to the four month long search and destroy mission that got dropped on John Kerry in the lead up to the 2004 New Hampshire primary...but it is still nice to see.

BTW is it me or is Mitt Romney starting to panic? This cockammamy speech to the legions of wowserdom promising to remain their bitch even when they mutter that he is a cultist betrays some tell-tale flopsweat to Humble Elias. I mean the dumb twit can't even fire illegal immigrants without a do-over!

Ahhh but Willard is hardly a seasoned professional is he? Romney's electoral score is a paltry "one and one" and the guy has never been under serious sustained attack at all in his political career to date. The shots he took running for senate and governor were frickin' pity-pats compared to the potential shit storm he is sailing into now.

Question for the day...

Why IS Howie Carr such a fag-basher?
I bought Elias Nugator Sr. the Sunday Herald this weekend so he could ponder BC's loss in more detail. Carr's sunday column was for the most part an exercise in rhetorical masturbation at the possible repeal of the state income tax...then Howie started ranting and raving about gay marriage before lurching back to his main thesis.
Which gave me to think just why does Howie hate gays so?
He isn't a particularly religious man, that I know he rarely discusses matters of faith in his column...so that can't be it.
Was he buggered by the quarterback at that exclusive private school he attended?
Again doubtful, he is an unappetizing specimen and can't have improved much with age.
So what is it?
Is it his radio audience, either he makes like a fag-basher or loses all to Jay Severin?
Which is a cynical explanation but lacking any other data seems to be the most likely.
He works in an industry with it's share of gays, I wonder if anyone has ever taken time to ask him what his beef is?

Grenade Soup?

A charming yuletide vignette can at the Channel Zero Blog.

According to the Boston Globe, Mitt Romney is about to...

speak on the subject of "Religious liberty".
This is a wondrous opportunity to watch a craven flip-flop executed in public all by Mitt Romney who a mere month ago said he didn't need to clarify his faith or affirm his reliance on religious tolerance in any damn speech.
Ahh but that was before th' Reverend Mike Huckabee started coming up in the polls, evidently the wowsers of Iowa would rather lose with one of their own than rely on a Mormon's good faith.
The problem for Romney is simple and damning,he has been fawning over these people for two long years, he has promised endless special rights and powers for the religious right at the expense of women, gay and all the usual out groups.
All he asked in return is that they ignore his religion and vote for him...and in the end Huckabee still nips at his heels!
Mitt has edged out pretty far onto that wingnut branch, it's gonna be hard to edge back especially when he has nothing much to show for it.
As for Mitt's new found love of religious tolerance, I wouldn't put much stock in it if I was a GOP primary voter. Religious freedom can't exist without the separation of church and state, Romney cannot embrace the former without affirming the latter...which is just exactly what the religious right doesn't want to hear.
So look for a very Orwellian speech from Romney, something that sounds like he is all for religious tolerance while at the same time reiterating that he is still running as a lackey of xian wingnut politics no matter how much they may disdain his Mormon faith.
Frankly at this point, Romney's only viable option may be to announce he is converting to a Charismatic Church and start shaking behind the podium in an ecstasy of divine communion.
But trust me, whatever he does say, it won't be anything akin to JFK's famous speech to the ministers in Dallas....in fact it will be quite the opposite.

Unpaid, Unbossed and Unloved...

Deep in the tangled thicket of a Blue Mass Group comment string, US senatorial candidate Ed O'Reilly offers up the offhand comment that "some" of the pro-Kerry bloggers out there are "paid".
Ed's precise quote goes this-a-way:
John Kerry's bloggers (some paid and some perhaps not) want to go back 35 years. I do not.
Let me blog unequivocally, the Chimes at Midnight is on no-one's payroll....Humble Elias is definitely in the "perhaps not" category.

I mean do you think anyone out there is really crazy or desperate enough to pay me to write this shit?

Paying the Little Blog that Cried for it's daily ration of "sarcastic rant driven chatter" (per Boston Magazine)would be grounds for a serious independent audit thats all I can say.

Last night's GOP debate...

Romney accuses Guiliani of coddling illegal immigrants, Rudy shot back that Romney hired Guatemalan illegals to clip his hedges in Belmont Mass.
Meanwhile...Fred Thompson, groaned, rolled over and before he fell asleep grunted something about Mike Huckabee being a tax and spend lib-er-al.
McCain picked on Ron Paul in a vain attempt to generate what pro-wrestlers call "cheap heat".

The rest of this useless rabble manfully pawed the ground and looked distinctly peeved to have wasted their own time and money on what is a losing game.
Yes indeed folks, the game is afoot it is now a mere biblical forty days til the balloon goes up in NH and none of these a-holes feels the least bit secure in their positions.
Which is fine by me, the lot of them are evenly divided by dangerously utopian mystics and craven power-worshippers.

My question is, is there a point beyond which these guys become too right-wing for the electorate? Cause' it seems to me that we are fast approaching that point where the debates all resemble an ill-tempered freeper circle-jerk with all and sundry promising to nuke Iran and turn America into an armed camp in a vain attempt to expell Raoul the poolman and Rosita the maid.
A strict Rovian analysis indicates that there is no such thing as being "too right wing"...however I wonder. This is a grim humorless lot over time that can't wear well with the American people.

The New Hampshire Primary is now exactly forty-one days away...

thanks to the NH Secretary of State's insistence that theirs must be the earliest in the nation at all costs short of the penitentiary.
There is something nigh tragic and ironic about such a famously xenophobic state struggling to hold fast to a political event that is an automatic magnet for outsiders and out of state ne'er do wells.
I can recall delivering lawn signs up there once for a certain candidate close to my heart and being treated to an expletive laden tirade by a passer-by focusing mostly on my home address and my parent's marital status.
Afterwards I thought to myself "If homeboy didn't want me up here doin' all my best for Candidate X, then he needs to start a petition to give up NH's first in the nation primary...that'll keep the furriners' out fer sure!"
Hell it work's great here in the Commonwealth, I think the last two presidential primary candidates who actively campaigned here was George Wallace and Jimmy Carter.
Well what of it, New Hampshire will NEVER give up its first in the nation primary, if they have to they will schedule it the day after the inaugural.
Of course, the democrats and the republicans would love to move the sinecure to some other bigger state, but NH has the weight of tradition, many many monomaniacal pols and certain out of state interests on her side.
The primary itself is a joke, the electorate is so jaded as to be contemptuous of the candidates and the process. Moreover, New Hampshire is one of the least diverse states in the Union, Midway Island has more ethnic and economic diversity.
But on the primary roles, like a TV sitcom in it's 12th season with sign on the horizon of the inevitable cancellation.

Strange defense of Don Imus on the Op-ed page of the Globe

courtesy one Lauren Stiller Rikleen, senior partner at Bowditch and Dewey.
Her argument boils down to this, 'sure Imus is a rat, but he is still a good interviewer and his competition are all so much worse (the inevitable dog eared Ann Coulter citation is dragged out) so what is the problem?'
The problem is, he is an old vengeful screwhead in a medium of old vengeful screwheads so exactly what he adds to the mix is unknown to me.
And if Ann Coulter is so nasty per Ms. Rikleen, what about all those times Imus gave lavish air-time to that drunken shrew Laura Ingraham?
Sure Don let certain select democrats on the show, a rarity in today's talk radio but he forces them to run a nasty gauntlet more often or not. They hardly get the free ride that is reserved for an old book-worshipping laggard like Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
Ms. Rikleen thinks Imus should be welcomed back because somehow it's a victory for the first amendment...well as far as I can see, the first amendment seems to exist these days to benefit the Imus class and no one else. How any of that benefits Humble Elias is beyond me.
Well...that having been said, the I-Man does serve as a useful means to keep Howie Carr out of morning drive time, other than that he is perfectly superfluous in every way.

Another day late and another dollar short....

A mere twenty four hours after Jeff Jacoby blithely proclaimed all the "good news" from Iraq the Iraqis celebrated the occasion by shooting the eleven relatives of a Baghdad journalist.

If I didn't know better, I'd say the sonsabitches read the Boston Globe.

In today's Sunday Globe

Jeff jacoby takes advantage of the cruel lull in Britney Spears' outrages to proclaim that Iraq has finally turned a corner on the road to becoming a freeper utopia.
Oh he hedges his bets and declines to reiterate his dreadfully naive "these are heady days for those of us in the war party" nonsense...nonetheless an entirely false sense of relief permeates today's column.
But don't you worry, Jeff's smug self assurance is as ephemeral as any flickering fuse in Tikrit.
I mean, so what if Bush invaded Iraq seemingly to give passive aggressive nerds like Jeff Jacoby fodder for their own internal war epic?
Well...it is costing lives for no reason other than to give a president with a twenty nine percent approval rating a feeling of manly accomplishment.
We ought not to forget that.
The fact of the matter is, Jeff and his wingnut pals can call Iraq a triumph all they want just as Daily Kos and Eric Alterman can offer up cogent reasons to call it a failure.
But what no one can do is generate a sane reason to stay.
Frankly, given cost in American lives and the fast failing US Dollar, the only reason to prolong the agony is because the fantasist wing of the GOP needs a another war, this time against Iran.
Very franky, at some point, the current situation will no longer be able to support serial fantasization as policy. What happens when we reach that point I do not know...but the current policy is not sustainable.

"Heady days for the war party" indeed.

I finally figured out what the hell is wrong with Scot Lehigh

he didn't watch enough television when he was a pup!
This is no joke folks, without thorough exposure to TV's first anti-hero, Doctor Zachary Smith a kid grows up with a dangerously simplistic view of humanity.

Lord no wonder Scot fell for Romney's bullshit...it's like he had no defenses at all!

Moreover, without "Batman" a child can grow to adulthood shorn of any sense of satire or appreciation of parody.

When was the last time you laughed at anything Scot Lehigh wrote? I mean, think about that.

And what of "Gilligan's Island" the supreme and eternal childhood re-run? A priceless archive of dog-eared vaudeville turns, all apparently overlooked by young Lehigh who was no doubt reading "Commentary" sans a shred of insight or pleasure.

I mean, no wonder he is such a pompous stiff in the public prints.

Frankly to me, the lack of a sense of humor, as evidenced by today's earnest laugh-like essay on the perils of television is in itself a dangerous form of mental torpidity.

Dangerous...

Frankly Scot's only hope is to start watching "Star Trek" re-runs...or maybe "The Fugitive"...dat one had class as well.

Health to Senator Kerry's efforts to slap down

T. Boone Pickens' and his "Swift Boat" menagerie of lies.

Pickens is exactly the sort of ass-hole who needs a good public smack-down, couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Oh and Kerry's alleged primary opponent Ed O'Reilly had this say:

"It goes to his credibility," said Ed O'Reilly, a Gloucester lawyer mounting a challenge to Kerry in the Democratic primary. "It needs to be cleared up."

Geez Ed, would it kill you to brand the whole thing as a pack of lies? I mean, would it?

Apropos of nothing

But then-President Kennedy looks a lot older than his years in these previously unseen photos by Richard Avedon.
Of course the poor man was on a host of medications for his back problems, allergies and other ailments.
Still and all that, he still went out sailing in all kinds of weather...couldn't been feelin' that poorly.

I still can't believe that he stepped out on Jackie...I mean day-um she had two kids and looks good in these pics.

Maybe I'm getting old and stupid like...

but this Mike Huckabee strikes me as being more than a little ludicrous .... and a little bit fascistic.

Anyway a true martial arts movie fan can tell you that Chuck Norris is the biggest fraud on Ghod's green earth, he has been dining out on the basis of getting his ass kicked by Bruce Lee for more than three decades. What Huckabee sees in the sheep-like Norris, is a mystery.

Mitt Romney thinks that...

since he beat Shannon O'Brien in 2002 he is just the man to triumph over Hillary in 2008. Or some of his aides and henchman tell today's Globe.
Wee-ell I dunno about that, Mitt has always staggered around under the weight of his swelled head, prideful and amateurish he expects the future play out just like the past.
That is not a strength it is a weakness.
Of course nowhere in that article is the timely help gubernatorial debate moderator Tim Russert rendered the Romney campaign at all mentioned. Phat Tim smirked grandly and treated candidate O'Brien like a half-amusing teachable for some ninety minutes of congressionally licensed airtime. Far from debating Romney, O'Brien had to fend off attacks on two fronts, the results as they say are a foregone conclusion.

No one wants to discuss any of that do they?

If Mitt Romney has a strength, it's not solely his ability to beat down female rivals and underlings, it lies in his ability yo beguile stupid credulous pundits like Tim Russert and Brian McGrory. Getting those guys on his side is a big advantage in any contest...and believe me the same lot will fall for Mitt's line of rubbish in 2008.

Figure out how to bust that combination up, and you will go a long way towards bearing Romney in any contest.

Belated Veterans Day sketch starring Elias Nugator Sr.

Late of General Bradley's picked combat engineers, recipient of the Purple Heart and a warm folksy form letter of thanks from Harry S. Truman.

At dinner I thanked him for his service to the Republic, he smiles modestly and rejoins "You are welcome..you know anytime you need it just ask!"

Candidacies...

Arlington school committeeman Jeff Thielman, a rock in local democratic politics is thinking about running for state representative should Jim Marzilli move up to the state senate in next month's special election.
He joins a lengthening list of quietly ambitious Arlingtonians who are all jockeying for position if there is a vacancy.
Ken Donnelly who finished a relatively strong second in the primary on Tuesday is said to be very interested in running, indeed his ringing endorsement of Marzilli Tuesday night at the Sons of Italy (Hell Donnelly got to the victory party before Humble Elias!!)was seen by many as a virtual announcement for the seat.
Meanwhile school committeeman Sean Garballey would allegedly love to run for state rep, but his age (twenty two) and his strong support for Donnelly may well put the kibosh on that notion. You have to wonder, the tenure for some of these positions runs as long as twenty years, it's been seventeen years since both positions were open, can Sean or anyone else wait that long for a shot at the big(ger) time?
I know Jeff Thielman, he is genial and incorruptible, brainy and tireless, if he gets in he will run hard for the job. That having been said, it's been a controversial year for the Arlington school committee so Jeff's chances are at best fifty fifty. Still the campaign is young, it depends on Jim winning next month and then we have to see if DiMasi calls a special election or not. Conceivably, the seat could remain vacant til next November.

It occurs to me...

that after four full years of blogging, that the Chimes at Midnight is already an antique. It is largely text driven, it links only on a basis of reciprocity (with some exceptions),there is no commments section and the archives drop down and down again to the ten circle of hell.
Meanwhile the Blue Mass Group have built an on-line forum with strong communitarian overtones, Marry in Massachusetts is experimenting with podcasting and everyone seems to be doin' video.
All this goes on as Humble Elias tries dimly to figure out how to archive old posts by the year.
There is no point to any of this save to note that at some point even an antique becomes utterly irrelevant and it then it is time to move on to fresh outrages.

Just sayin'.

The Bonfire of the Regulars...

The winners and losers from yesterday's 4th Middlesex special election are a diverse lot.
Burlington representative Charles Murphy made more than a few friends south of his hometown, however his chief henchmen in Arlington, former selectman Charlie Lyons proved incapable of delivering on his alleged promise of a thousand votes. The whole Murphy vesus Marzilli thing pretty much got blown out of the water last night, Murphy lack of a ground game outside Burlington pretty much sealed his fate in a fight between Jim's liberals and Ken's firemen.

Kenneth Donnelly despite his poor debate performance and unpolished style was able to project a great deal of strength at the precinct level in Arlington, normally the preserve of last night's winner, state representative Jim Marzilli. He did this by pitching every off duty police officer & firefighter into the fray and collecting big donations from out of state unions. Notably, Donnelly made it a point to drop by the Arlington Sons of Italy last night and loudly proclaimed his endorsement of Marzilli raising the distinct possibility that the former fire-fighter might get into the state rep's race if Marzilli wins special election in December. This was a serious topic of conversation last night at the Sons of Italy. Another Donnelly candidacy though depends on how much money he has left over from this campaign (a good state rep's challenge in Arlington costs upwards to $55,000 last time I checked)and whether or not his public sector union base has the stomach for an another special election in Arlington.
Donnelly might do better next fall if Marzilli wins next month and Speaker DiMasi then declines to call a special election. That way, Donnelly can rebuild his finances, rest his "volunteers", and concentrate on electing Marzilli thus to prove his bona-fides to the liberal base in Arlington. This might also be the best way for Donnelly's key backers; selectperson Diane Mahon and George Laite to recoup their losses, if they can't retain a state senate seat maybe they can do some business in the general court.
Meanwhile, last time I checked, Woburn rep Pat Natale has not conceded the election to Marzilli...but that was as of 11pm last night, he might have come to his senses since then. Hard to say what benefits Pat derived from this campaign otherwise, he made wild accusations and made a desperate last minute bid for anti-illegal immigrant pop which did him just exactly no good at all. There was talk a month ago that Natale wanted to use this campaign to test the waters for a statewide run, based on what I saw, Pat should rethink this notion in detail.

Overall, Marzilli won because there was a split and a bad one in his local opposition, normally 30 to 40% of the Arlington vote is against him, but with Murphy & Donnelly contending for the same cadres this left Jim free to run his numbers up in the progressive precincts in Lexington and Arlington. The name of the game last night was voter-ID and Marzilli won it.

Anyway congratulations to Jim, he worked hard, he reaped the benefit.
Now on to the general election.

Marzilli uber alles!

With a plurality of 39% of the vote, Arlington representative Jim Marzilli now won the democratic nomination for the 4th Middlesex special election. He carried Arlington with a staggering 62% of the vote and Lexington with a plainlu\y miraculous 72% of the vote.
Clearly, Lexington native Bob Peters' withdrawl from the race may well have delivered the day to Marzilli.
This combined lead overwhelmed state representative Charles Murphy and Ken Donnelly with Woburn rep Pat Natale running a dismal fourth.
Thr real story is the surprising performance of Kenneth Donnelly who made this a real horse race with 25% of the vote running second in all five communities in the district. Clearly the police and the firefighter's unions can still rock the house in a tight race. Moreover this was Donnelly's strategy all along, place a hard second and let the big fish carry their home towns...we it worked he still didn't win!
This is all the more astonishing giving Donnelly's underwhelming pulpit style and poor debate performance.

Nonetheless, tonight is Jim Marzilli's night, finally a man with a good brain and a good heart has risen to the occasion.

Humble Elias couldn't be happier.

Governor Patrick endorses Jim Marzilli in the 4th Middlesex special election:

(Below a cut and paste of the Governor's endorsement)





Dear Friends,

On Tuesday, November 13th, there is an election for State Senate in
your district, the 4th Middlesex, and it's important that you learn
about the candidates and vote.

Change begins at the grassroots level, and your local leaders,
including your State Senator, are the people who will make a direct
impact on so many of the services that you and your family depend
upon.

In this important race, I'm hoping you will join me in supporting Jim
Marzilli, who was an important partner to me in my own campaign and
has helped to guide my decision making as Governor. Jim supports all
four parts of the Municipal Partnership Act. He is a leading advocate
for renewable energy as a way to increase our available clean energy
supply, reduce pollution, curtail our dependence on foreign oil and
spur economic growth.

You can learn more about Jim at his website, or for information about
where you vote, visit the Secretary of State's site here. If you are
interested in supporting his campaign, consider volunteering this
weekend, contributing, or convincing your neighbors to do the same.

As we just learned once again here in Boston, unfortunately, voter
turnout is historically low in many local elections, and our local
leaders are often elected by only a handful of votes.

This makes your participation and your vote even more valuable.
Regardless of who you support, the most important thing is to take the
time to learn about the candidates and cast your vote.

I know just how busy daily life can become, but don't leave politics
solely to politicians. Please take a couple of minutes out of your
busy schedule on Tuesday, November 13th and vote for Jim.

Sincerely,
Deval L. Patrick

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro...

or so the Late Hunter S. Thompson once opined.
Such might be the case today for Woburn's state rep Pat Natale whose last act of defiance in the 4th Middlesex special election was to release a glossy mailer that features a figure resembling his wife holding her nose and grimacing at thought of dirty politics.
On the other side is a somewhat defensive letter from Joyce Natale extolling Pat's virtues that runs over some half hearted stabs at two of his current rivals for the senate nomination. The big issue that Pat has suddenly glommed onto is his opposition to giving in-state tuition to the offspring of illegal immigrants...must keep Raoul and Lucia out of UMass Boston's night school after all.
Dirty politics indeed....
In all it's a desperate, shrill & gaudy exercise in last ditchery on the part of someone who ought to know better.

In the 4th Middlesex Special Election

for the vacant seat of State Senator Bob Havern, the Chimes at Midnight would like to endorse State Representative James Marzilli .
This is not a slur on the capacities of the current democratic field, Charles Murphy is an able man, Pat Natale is energetic and in the right race Ken Donnelly would be an interesting candidate.
But in Jim Marzilli the man, his issues and the moment have all come together with rare harmony. This election, sound and fury aside is about the advocacy of certain rising issues, the intersection between energy needs and the enviroment, housing costs, tax relief for our senior citizens; all areas that Jim has staked out over the last seventeen years in House of Representatives. Jim Marzilli has done all this and more on behalf of Arlington, he ought to have a chance to do likewise for the whole district.

Note to the Laity...

There will be a Chimes at Midnight endorsement in the 4th Middlesex special state senate election tomorrow.

Meanwhile...the infamous "Bad Poets Society" has once again surfaced, this time in Harvard Square.

A TV Commercial????

Per the Blue Mass Group, state representative Charles Murphy has actually laid down a pile of cash for a television commercial in the 4th Middlesex special state senate election!

Anyone else tried something like this for a state senate election in Massachusetts before?
Seems like a desperate move to me, but I could be wrong.
Moreover the advert itself is a little indistinct, it mentions the state senate once and in passing during the voice over and doesn't not cite the actual district at all.
Therefore a casual or underinformed viewer could easily infer that Murphy is running against John Kerry!

Allegedly, said commercial will start running in Arlington and Lexington this weekend...

Meanwhile, Ken Donnelly's phonebank has called my house twice in the last twenty four hours pestering Elias Nugator Sr. (himself a retired state worker and nominally a union member) about the upcoming primary. None of it has changed his mind, he is for Marzilli.

The Boston Globe endorses Jim Marzilli for state senate...

the whole text can be found here:

Well this is certainly a leg up for Rep. Marzilli, up until now the Globe hardly seemed to pay attention to the 4th Middlesex state senate race.
There is one endorsement though, that seems to have gone a-beggin'...that would be the coveted imprimatur of the seat's former incumbent, Robert Havern. Bob has remained decorously and strangely silent through-out this campaign. Humble Elias can understand even if he doesn't quite approve of Jay Kaufman's studied neutrality in this contest, after all no matter who wins Jay might have to work with anywhere from two to three embittered colleagues. But Bob has officially quit the game and can throw his support to pretty much anyone. To date though, he has not...this is not to say he hasn't made some moves behind the scenes allegedlyhe told Arlington Selectperson Diane Mahon to steer clear of the special election...did he have a candidate in mind at that time? Did anyone talk him out of an endorsement?
Who can say?

Dick Cheney apparently told Congressman Armey

in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002 that:

"We have great information. They’re going to welcome us. It’ll be like the American Army going through the streets of Paris. They’re sitting there ready to form a new government. The people will be so happy with their freedoms that we’ll probably back ourselves out of there within a month or two.”

If nothing else this warrants calling for Cheney's resignation, either the man is a malevolent liar or too stupid to handle the job, whatever the explanation "he hath tarried too long for the good he hath done and so he must go"...to quote Oliver Cromwell.

"Lets you and him fight"

So opined Joanie Vennochi in today's Globe who is just pantin' for a morning drive time radio chat show matchup between Howie Carr on WTKK and Former House Speaker Tom Finneran, two men she has somehow mistaken for a pair of ideological titans.
If there is a notion that more perfectly illustrates the intellectual torpor of the Globe's op-ed page, then I'd like to see it.
Finneran is a nice pleasant monotonal conservative democrat with a deserved rep for backroom hardball.
Howie Carr on the other hand is a genial sociopathic demogogue who'd probably be Finneran's friend if Tom wasn't a democrat and all.
Building up this rivalry is like booking an aged Muhammed Ali in the ring with UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson...in sort it's a bizarre mismatch that only a columnist rife with false consciousness could love.
How exactly any of this serves the cause of diversity on the radio is beyond me.
Joanie however thinks this is a great and ultimate debate waiting to happen.
I wouldn't listen to either man if you put a gun to my head, ideologically they are peas in a pod, they diverge only in their personal style.
Humble Elias couldn't care less if Howie Carr gets back on the air in Boston ever again, it's not like their aren't ten more like him desperate for his slot. Hell, Howie is nothing but a tired old media freak whose career path is the secret envy of every local columnist.
And Tom FInneran is a sharp fanged bore in extremis...the idea that the two of them on opposing radio stations have anything to teach the rest of us is laughable.

There is a debate coming up in the 4th Middlesex special state senate election:

4th Middlesex Special Senate Election
Environmental Candidate Forum
Tuesday, November 6 , 7-8 pm
Lexington Depot, 3 Depot Square, Lexington

Global warming, gas prices, deteriorating parks, toxic pollution - come
learn more about the candidates for the 4th Middlesex Senate Seat
(Arlington, Billerica, Burlington, Lexington, and Woburn) and their
environmental positions. All candidates are confirmed (Donnelly,
Marzilli, Murphy, Natale). This race, which inludes Arlington, Billerica,
Lexington, and Woburn is to fill the seat of former Sen. Robert Havern. Sponsored
by Clean Water Action and the Mass Climate Action Network. Event is free
and open to the public. For more information, (617) 338-8131 ext 211 or
bostoncwa@cleanwater.org

Senator Clinton's supporters are critical of...

the unctuous patronizing treatment meted out to their candidate by NBC's own Tim Russert at the last democratic presidential debate.
However this is nothing new from Tim, he and Mitt Romney basically ganged up on democratic gubernatorial nominee Shannon O'Brien at the last debate before the 2002 election.
Tim has always been a lackey for the GOP, his definition of "journalist objectivity" nothing more than the eternal quest to humiliate and degrade liberal candidates. It is just that when that candidate is female, we get the extra benefit of Tim's misogyny.
And that smile of his? Merely the smug leer of a wingnut pimp who thinks he has penetrated a bastion of liberalism.

Size is Destiny Part 2

A pic of the big-ass Charlie Murphy for State Senate sign mounted on Summer Street in Arlington, can be seen here:

***
In other news a reliable source tells Humble Elias that Bob Peters has endorsed Jim Marzilli in the upcoming 4th Middlesex State Senate special election.
As yet no word yet from his townsman, State Representative Jay Kaufman.

I'll bet that if

the Senate Judiciary Committee routinely used waterboarding to vet nominees to the Justice Department then Michael Mukasey would come out loudly against all kinds of torture practices involving simulated drowning.
Hell, I think the Senate Judiciary Committee ought to think about this...a few scary dunkings and all these judicial nominees will sing like canaries about their dubious investments and crazy "professional" associations. It will vastly speed up up the process at the very least.

Young Man, Old Thoughts...

Andrew Meyer whose antics at a John Kerry speech at U-Florida got his ass tasered and a honored spot on Youtube, managed to avoid charges so the AP reports.
As some who has had to suffer thru a lot of disruptions at politics events down thru the years, I can't muster up a lot of sympathy for Mister Meyer. His letter of "apology" to the police and the school struck me as a sury mealy mouthed exercise that was no doubt extracted with great effort from Meyer by the family lawyer.
It is notable in the above article that nowhere does he apologize to Senator Kerry for his outburst.
No..what interests me is that Meyer goes further to decry and bemoan the current political polarization in the country...he opines:

"All of this is false division. We are one people, and once people can forget their differences, we can all start to focus on the issues that truly matter,"

My Ghod how stupid to they take em' at the University of Florida??

Let me first state that there is no such thing as a "false division" in politics, not these days.
Deadly serious things are under debate every day in this country between the right and the left all of them directly affecting holy young fools like Andrew Meyer who does NOT seem to realize his may be the first generation in the country to have less freedom than their predecessors.
And yet young Meyer prattles on about forgetting our differences and "focusing on the things that really matter" like he was Chris Matthews or some other empty headed cable babbler.
Young Andrew, I DO apologize, it isn't your fault that you were born into an era of discord and partisanship. But let me warn you, a new age of bipartisanship won't dawn in your lifetime.
Moreover, people like me can't "forget our differences" with opponents who are casually fantasizing about an end to the two party system and democracy as we know it.
If you don't believe me, then let me cordially invite to pull a similar stunt at a Dick Cheney appearance, you'll be lucky enough to survive and wake up in a cage at Guantanamo Bay.
THEN maybe you'll rethink all this nonsense about "forgetting our differences".

Paul Krugman....

makes a lot of sense today.

I would only had that the iron law of unintended consequences is a much favored thing when it comes to US neo-conservatives and their proposed middle east policy.

By that I mean, that a botched war in Iraq was enough to destroy George Bush Jr, but if these guys botch a war with Iran (and they will), the resulting oil shock will be more than enough to destroy the GOP once and for all.

I hope I'm wrong about this, only because I'd rather not pay $10 a gallon at the pump or go back to Dick Nixon's odd-even day gas rationing system.

"Size is Destiny"

opined my late Uncle Peewee, an opinion obviously shared by the Murphy for Senate Campaign who have gotten themselves a huge-ass sign on Summer Street extolling their candidate's merits.
Exactly why Murphy continues to expend vital resources on Arlington, home turf of his main rival state rep Jim Marzilli remains a mystery. You'd think Murphy would skip all the effort and concentrate on grabbing off Billerica and doing some business in Woburn. Then again, some long time local opponents of rep. Marzilli are backing him so possibly all this hoopla in Arlington is for their benefit.

Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo...

way down in the polls and desperate for attention like a needy five year old wants to wager his presidential candidacy on a World Series victory by the Colorado Rockies. If they lose he drops out of the race.
He wants former Massachusetts Viceroy Mitt Romney to make a likewise wager on the Red Sox.

Geeee...yuh think Mitt will take any of that action?

The HELL he will, not when he still has tens of millions of dollars out of his son's inheritance to burn thru.

Such is the equivalent of the "silly season" in the realm of presidential politics, soon enough it all turns deadly serious.

Anyhow, Humble Elias is going on a brief vacation, I'll be back soon, til then, tawk amongst yerselves.

Overheard in the Living Room of Elias Nugator Sr.

(Age 86 recipient of two Purple Hearts and a politely worded thank-you note from Harry S. Truman).

"Th' Colorado Rockies...they got black shirts...black shirts, My Ghod their a buncha BLACKSHIRTS!! God-damned Fascist Squadristi I knew try fer a comeback someday!!"

At this point in the conversation he bids me to "Tell Senator Kennedy" as the old man is under the charming misapprehension that Edward Maximus and I are somehow best pals.
I do nothing to dissuade, 86 is 86 and he could just as easily insist I call General Omar Bradley with the news, so one must be grateful for small things.

Handicapping the 4th Middlesex state senate special election...

(Hey if Steve Stark can do this, then so can Humble Elias, the only difference is, I won't write the same thing time after time!)

Anyhow, I gathered these impressions from last night's Arlington Town Democratic Çommittee candidate's debate, a interesting and suggestive affair despite the lack of any mix-em'-up.

Kenneth Donnelly: The retired Lexington firefighter is a relative newcomer to politics in the district, and it shows, he seems nervous and needs to dial down a bit and use his "indoor voice" for gatherings such as this. He repeats endlessly his plan to offer 40% of all state revenue as local aid to bail out the cities and towns once and for all. He plans to gin-up that 40% via casino gambling. He is on less solid ground when he gets off this topic, softball queries about global warming seem to slip right past him sans a swing. He must have said "I agree with Pat" three times over the course of a ninety minute debate.

State Representative Charles Murphy (Burlington): Polished, urbane, even occasionally witty, Murphy is big shiny Irishman whose style is very familiar to me as a longtime follower of State politics. With a Dick Cavett-like earnest-ness He compulsively dropped the names of local supporters of his candidacy all through-out the night trying to build up his image as the best Burlington-based friend Arlington has ever had. For all that I doubt Murphy could find Arlington on a map prior to Bob Havern's resignation some two months ago, if he gets elected to the seat, one doubts he will ever trouble himself with the town ever again save to hand out a few baubles to his friends.

State Representative Patrick Natale (Woburn): Earnest, geeky, new to the game but for all that a bit of a waffler on issues like casino gambling and reproductive rights among others. He made heavy use of qualifiers last night to string out his positions on the issues. He seemed likable enough but it is clear he is swimming in very deep waters with a very short resume.

Representative James Marzilli (Arlington) Marzilli is the policy grind of the bunch, he was a well thought out policy in mind from local aid for law enforcement down to what wildflowers to plant on the lane dividers on Mystic Street. He has some notable accomplishments that directly and positively impact the communities he seeks to represent in the state senate, he needs to keep harping on them relentlessly. Like Murphy he is polished, urbane and witty, but then the state legislature is tremendous education in the art of presentation.

Overall, this is a Murphy versus Marzilli fight, with Pat Natale doing some business in Woburn and Donnelly attempting to play the spoiler in Arlington where the heavy democratic turn out tends to overwhelm the district. Why Donnelly is even in this race is a mystery, as a candidate he seems better suited to blitzkreig an open state rep's seat (which might be happening if Marzilli is nominated & wins the special election), but as a senate candidate he comes out of nowhere and has lot of ground to cover in a very short space of time.
I think Natale will fade in the stretch if he keeps coming on like a likable waffler as he did last night, although he will do well in Woburn on election day depending on the breaks.
As for Charles Murphy, he is coming on like a big shiny Irish pol with his Marine Corps bona fides and nice pleasant rictus. As evidenced last night he has plenty of Burlington based volunteers, but then again that is his problem, Burlington turn out wise doesn't have the footprint of other communities in the district. For Murphy to prevail he has to turn out every last democrat, donkey and dog in Burlington and play big in Billerica and Lexington and then come in a hard second somewhere else. That seems like a tall order, smile or no smile.
For Jim Marzilli the story is somewhat the same, turn out Arlington in big numbers, carry Lexington and pick off what you can in Billerica and in the sundry bastions of your opponents. His game plan is complicated by Donnelly's candidacy (much backed by local pols who are longtime Marzilli opponents) and by Murphy's showy bid to grab off a piece of the action in Arlington. That having been said, in seventeen years as Arlington's state rep, Marzilli has beaten back four strong primary challenges and at least two strongly contested general elections (in democrat heavy Massachusetts this constitutes a nigh Napoleonic talent for the big fight)...so his ground game will be strong and competitive.

Chimes at Midnight Guide to Casino Gambling in the 4th Middlesex special state senate election:

(Per tonight's Arlington Town Democratic Committee debate)

Representative Patrick DiNatale: Leans towards the Governor's plan with many qualifiers on a wait-n-see attitude.

Representative Charles Murphy: Pro casino gambling.

Representative James Marzilli: Anti casino gambling.

Kenneth Donnelly: Pro casino gambling.

When I hear from the presumptive GOP nominee for the above office, I'll let y'all know.

Last Night...during the GOP presidential debate,

a transport of raw "Hillary-hatred" swept over Arkansas Governor The Reverend Mike Huckabee who asserted that if Senator Clinton won the presidency a wave of awful things would befall the USA culminating in the drop in the morale of the armed forces.
I'm sure it wasn't the most idiotic thing said at last night's debate, but certainly it ranked in the top three. After all, what does a sickly back country parson who never served in the US armed forces know about the troop's morale or lack thereof?
One thing that unites the current GOP field, is a sickening sense of political entitlement, the above statement being one such example. Maybe at the next debate the whole crazy crew could wear imperial diadems & carry scepters...

There is a lot I could blog about today...

Jeff Jacoby is huffin' & puffin' in the Sunday Globe trying to assemble a big scary straw man out of the "religious left" so he can saber it down and pose as the hero of heroes.
Up above him Joanie Vennochi frets that Mitt Romney needs to be honest about his religion and come out for the separation of church-n-state like a good little pseudo moderate. I would remind Ms. Vennochi that Romney can't be honest about his religion because his primary audience (the religious right) is fundamentally dishonest about it's own ultimate goal to set up a sort of Cromwellian pseudo-biblical paradise right here in America.
Or...
I could riff on Steve Stark's latest column in the Phoenix trying to puff up a potential third party rival to notional nominee Rudy Giuliani out of the current GOP slate. Being Steve Stark, he lands on Ron Paul with the first throw of the dice...Humble Elias though, doubts the loyalty of Mitt Romney, I mean of the lot, he is the most blatantly intellectually corrupt and opportunistic.
Besides that, there is no rock solid guarantee Rudy will be nominated, with the usual crooks do him some dirt whats to stop him from running as an independent candidate for President?
No...there is a lot of fodder there...but I've no great passion for any of it.
So instead I think I post this non-sequitor from the late Adlai Ewing Stevenson:

"An independent is someone who wans to take the politics out of politics"

D'ye know what I dislike about Mitt Romney...?

He hasn't got a shred of pride.
Consider this ringing endorsement of Romney's presidential candidacy from Bob Jones III High Priest at Bob Jones University:
"What is the alternative, Hillary's lack of religion or an erroneous religion?"

Hardly the fevered embrace Boston once gave Larry Bird now is it?

For that fact, what do Romney's fellow worshippers think of Bob Jones and his haughty notions of their "erroneous" religion?

What kills me is, you just know that Bishop Romney had to grovel like a scumbag to get even that lordly disdainful endorsement, nothing so perfectly illustrates the incipient Bonapartism of the religious right or Mitt Romney's gruesome lack of self respect.
But this is a chronic vice of the hard right in the USA, "reaction formation", they cream their hatred at the likes of Mike Dukakis and John Kerry and are happily willing to question their sanity, manhood and patriotism all in one go. Yet the mere frown from James Dobson and these same presidential worthies all defecate themselves with squeals of terror.
Sick
Demented
Typical

Good God Katie Bar the Door!!

For tomorrow, Mitt Romney makes a speech "taking aim at single motherhood!"!
I advise all single mother's out there to gather up your kids and quietly decamp for the Baja, whatever Mitt has in mind for you, it will not be pretty.
Who knows, perhaps the Former Viceroy plans to introduce husband-conscription? After all what else can we deduce from howlers like this:
"Boy, if you could have more married couples in the inner city, wouldn't it be a huge plus for our kids?"
Yeah Mitt sure, that would be great, so would safer streets, better schools, affordable friggin' healthcare, JOBS...a host of things YOU wouldn't deliver on if your cold empty little life depended on it.
Truly, Romney is never more Viceregal or a better intellectual colonialist than when he starts discussing these big systemic social problems. His main theses are utterly predictable, either make the problems cost the treasury less or else decently obscure them so that they do not tire the souls of the overclass.
So it is no accident that Mitt is making this speech before the usual book-worshipping wowser grandees do expect a warm fuzzy patina of paternal imperialism through-out..truly Mitt and his future masters all know what is best for us all.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Ogo a No-Go...

(I've been waiting all year to write that headline...HUMOR ME!)
Well, Ogonowski went down to defeat up in the Mass 05 special election, however he managed to close within six points which a substantial inroad on the big majorities run up by Marty Meehan down thru the years.
A few days ago, Ogo looked like a gone gosling, now though I suspect that the state GOP might extract from this six point margin of defeat the erroneous notion that a policy of blustery xenophobia is the path back to power.
To me a good chunk of his defeat came of out Ogonowski's hamfisted treated of the SCHIP issue, something beautifully framed by the democrats for once. If I was a GOP Rep in a swing district, I'd be very mindful of the implications of being on the wrong side of sick children sans coverage.
Whether or not Ogonowski survives to run again in a different race a'la Joe Malone and Mitt Romney, remains to be seen. My guess is no, Ogo was a bit of a berserker who ran an amateurish campaign, against a smooth customer like Nikki Tsongas he was destined to lose.
So congrats to Nikki Tsongas, first female congressperson from out Massachusetts since the glory days of Margaret Heckler.
This is an especially sweet victory for Humble Elias who once toiled in the headquarters of "Tsongas for President" campaign.
We lost that year, but there is a mysterious tide to human events to paraphrase FDR and things thought lost come back to us sometimes as different equally sweet victories.

Romney is still spending like a deadbeat tout in a $1,000 claims horse race

and he is still locked in a tight fight in Iowa and New Hampshire.
I wonder how much longer before Tagg Romney and his brothers figure out that every SUV rental, every spaghetti supper, every newspaper advert, every mini bus rented to transport voters to the polls...is quite literally coming out of their inheritance??
It took Steve Forbes' kids two election cycles to figure out the old man was tossing their legacy away into the hungry maw of the early primaries sans avail...Romney's offpsring though, don't impress me as being all that bright. The thought that their mad phat ticket to ride is being relentlessly degraded by their chilly charmless dad's ambition probably hasn't beaten it's way into their noggins yet.
But it will never fear...even the rich and terminally dumb must sooner or later take counsel with their interests.
Meanwhile all I can say is, SPEND MITT SPEND!

Murphy's Law

Burlington state rep Charles Murphy is anxious to grab off a few votes in the magickal suburb of Arlington during this, the fourth Middlesex special state senate election.
So anxious in fact, in his current mailer he makes it very clear he wants to work "to ensure the historic Jefferson Russell House remains a historic treasure of Arlington".
There is one problem with that promise, there is no "Jefferson Russell House" in Arlington.
None
Zilch
Nada Senor.
Rep. Murphy must no doubt have in mind the "Jason Russell House", which contains a very fine museum devoted to part played by Arlington (then called Menotomy) in the Revolutionary War. For the record, Humble Elias can discern no great threats to this "historic treasure" that would require the intervention of the Massachusetts state senate...but it's nice to have friends in high places I guess.
If former Arlington selectman Charlie Lyons really wants to help his pal Murphy out, he can start by QA-ing all the Arlington centered mailings for howlers like the above noted item.

That by the way also points to another intriguing and seldom commented upon aspect of this race, the apparent division of the democratic "regulars" in Arlington.
Charlie Lyons, once a wheel on the Board of Selectman has lined up with Burlington representative Charles Murphy. On the other hand the current wheel on the Arlington board, Diane Mahon and senator Havern's longtime familiar spirit George Laite have lined up behind the novice candidacy of ex-firefighter Kenneth Donnelly.
It will be interesting to see how much business Lyons, Laite & Mahon can drum up for the candidates.
Splits like this in the party are bad things generally, but this does leave the liberals, progressives and independents to be potentially scooped up by Jim Marzilli...and there are a lot of those in Arlington.
Whether or not that can swing the primary Jim's way remains to be seen.

The quiet from out Lexington Mass. (and other news)

One of the most intriguing aspects of the Ma 04 state senate special election has been the attitude and posture of Lexington state representative Jay Kaufman...or more precisely, his lack of any attitude and posture in respect of the contest to succeed Robert Havern.
A lot of factors could be at play here, Kaufman was known to be interesting in making the race earlier this fall despite his lack of residency in the district, Lexington's own candidate Bob Peters has only recently withdrawl from the race then there is the fact that Jay serves in the state house with three of the four announced democratic candidates for Havern's now vacated seat. And two of those guys (DiNatale and Murphy) are quickly building up some props out there as pugilists...seems like keeping a low profile might a good idea when punches are being thrown.
Still and all that, Jay Kaufman and Arlington's Representative Jim Marzilli are known to be allies within and without the statehouse...seems strange that Jay would keep silent in a unique race like this...normally he is the most opinionated of men.
Just sayin' thats all.
***
In other news, former Arlington selectman Charlie Lyons has ringingly endorsed Burlington Rep Charles Murphy in the coming primary. It is thought that Lyon's big rolodex might give Murphy some traction in Arlington, but then the word on the street is, that Charlie's core constituency is aging and no one has seem him around town since his DUI conviction back in the day....so the endorsement might be a bit of a wash despite Charlie's prominent photo in Murphy's latest mailer.

A Big Chimes at Midnight Congratulations goes out to

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore for collecting a Nobel Peace Prize yesterday for his enviromentalist crusading.
For once it is downright pleasurable to think of the screeching shit-fits the radio talk show wingnuts must be throwing...right about...now.

For once, Al is having the last laugh...

Hell this will certainly hearten the disparate collection of democrats and progressives that are trying to tempt him to run for President in'08.
Don't think Gore will do it as it is all part of that "last laugh" vibe don'cha know.

Grace Notes from Outer Space:

Peggy Whitson has flown off to the International Space Station and take command, the first woman so honored in the history of the ISS.
My how things have changed in the exploration of space, I can recall with the simplest nostalgia that Svetlana Savitskaya, the second woman in space, reached the Soviet's Salyut Space Station allegedly only to be handed a frilly apron by Cosmonaut Ledbedev.
Now...Commander Whitson gets to hand out the aprons...to whomever she damn well pleases.
The Russian launch crew marked the moment by handing her a little bull whip to keep the dopes in line when she assumed command upstairs.

Symbolism indeed.

Ummm...

According to this, liberal radio talk show host Ed Schultz has tied with Bill O'Reilly in audience size...so how come Ed isn't on in Boston?
To listen to almost any Boston radio talk show or live& local or national, is basically to listen to the same thing day after day...Where does Michael Graham differ with say Howie Carr on any substantive point anyway?
Yet someone with at least as big a radio audience as Bill O'Reilly remains unheard in this alleged land of democrats and liberals...seems strange.
For that fact, when is CNN or MSNBC gonna give Ed his own simulcast show?
(Answer: When hell freezes over)

4th Middlesex state senate special election....

There is a rumor out there to the effect that Bob Peters will be bowing out of the race very soon. Bob was running as a progressive thus a potential split in the liberal base has been avoided for the moment. This is good news for the arlington-based Marzilli campaign as their message and ground game are expected to do well in Lexington.
For what it is worth, Humble Elias thinks Bob is doing the right thing, this is going to be a tough, tight fight and progressives and liberals will need all the unity they can get.

Whenever

someone runs amok with a firearm and racks up a nice appalling body-count, the gun worshippers inevitably insist that "if only someone else in that situation was armed & trained in the use of firearms, the massacre might never have happened".
Yet in Wisconsin, All Deputy Sheriff Tyler Peterson's training accomplished was to make him a better more efficient mass murderer.
So of course, for the gun-worshipper's logic to work in this case, fourteen year old girls would have to be packin' heat for a sleepover.

Anyone else get the picture here?

Jingle Money Rises from the Dead...

The Boston Sunday Globe breathlessly reports on the front page, that former Governor Jane "Jingle Money" Swift is quietly refurbishing her political network at looks to new races, like maybe another try at congress should John Olver retire.
Well...fine, except this is old news in Western Mass, I can recall reading news stories in the Berkshire Eagle on Jane's cautious efforts to get back into the game as far back as August 2003!
All this indicates is that it takes a full FOUR YEARS for a good story to make it's way out of North Adams out to Morrissey Boulevard.
However, Jane is a spent force in state politics I think...she may want vindication but the time for that was in 2002 when she was beset upon by Crazy Christy Mihos and Mitt Romney. Instead she tearfully surrendered without a fight and handed the state over to an absentee landlord with strange delusions of grandeur. The lady doesn't have much in the way of a fighting record to share with the voters in that district.

Romney is wooing evangelical voters

so reports the Boston Globe. Six months of dedicated cringing and groveling has achieved naught but the enlightened indifference of Dr. James Dobson Dean of the Book Worshipper's political wing. To Romney whose ambition is heavly freighted with low expectations of himself, this trumpeted as a huge victory, proof of his "momentum".
It'd be instructive though to note just what Romney did for the evangelicals of Massachusetts back when he was Governor...which was just exactly nothing from where Humble Elias sits.
And if they are fool enough to vote for him next year, then that is what they will get in abundance, nothing....just between you me and the fencepost.

I'm glad to see that Rudy Giuliani is coming in for

some of the clerical criticism that once dogged Candidate John Kerry circa 2004.

Gotta hand it to the R.C.C., they traffic with none of this "big tent" rubbish they unload on any catholic who departs from the pro-life line regardless of their party registration.

John Hancock CEO Dominic D'Alessandro

in a guest editorial in the Boston Globe comes out swinging for moving up the Massachusetts Presidential Primary to a more competitive date.
Fair enough, this was pretty much a market driven argument to "up-brand" our presidential primary and aggressively pursue a more advantageous calendar position in the schedule.
However, Mr. D'Alessandro fails to note a powerful indirect influence Massachusetts has over the New Hampshire primary being as we are an important source of campaign volunteers for both parties.
Hell, it was Bay State volunteers that kept John Kerry competitive back in the bleak December of 2003...so he can't argue that we play no role, it is just that our primary doesn't count for much.
The problem here is, out of fifty states, is always it necessary that there be one single and only first primary? New Hampshire has had the sinecure for over fifty years now and the whole mishaugas has degenerated into a peculiar local cottage industry. If we really wanted to make the primary process fair and democratic we ought change over to a system of five sequenced regional primaries or else randomly choose the first five or so primaries and leave the rest of the present schedule in place.
The present system is in need of reform owing to the front end clustering of primaries that over advantage early money & momentum at the expense of making a reasoned choice by the electorate.

Oh this is a riot...

Richard Viguerie is still hyping the notion of an ultra conservative third party challenge in '08 as a response to a Giuliani nomination.
Viguerie is the biggest and most predictable drama queen in the GOP, he goes into the same conniptions every election cycle ominously promising a third party if the GOP sways even slightly from conservative orthodoxy. The reality is, conservatives control the GOP nomination, there hasn't been a notable conservative based third party since George Wallace's rebel yell style American Independent Party in 1968. This is why Giuliani keeps surrendering his allegedly moderate GOP principles on a weekly basis, he knows movement conservatives control the GOP nomination and they must be placated. If he gets the nomination he may well go in for full immersion baptism in Goose Creek...he'll come up from the waters blubbering "Praise the Lord and cancel all abortions!" count on it.
As for Viguerie, he is a hack and blowhard...nothing will come of his threats.

Meanwhile...

Channel Zero celebrates the day by indulging in outright comic fabrication.

Happy Sputnik Day...

today's marks the fiftieth anniversary of the launching of the first artificial earth satellite, Sputnik 1.
As this was a Russian achievement, America went suitably apeshit with cold war paranoia, convinced that we'd just lost the containment game in the ninth inning and that Soviet hydrogen bombs were about to rain down us like autumn acorns.
Only time proved the groundlessness of those fears...so remember that the next time Mike Huckabee or John McCain start ranting and raving about the monumental nature of the terrorist threat.

Newt Gingrich is outski...

the AP etc is reporting he will NOT be running for President in 2008.
Beeeg-a surprise there eh? Did anyone else really think he was somehow gonna raise 30 million large in one month with which to storm the New Hampshire primary?
Good grief but who was he kidding with that one? Does Gingrich know how hard it is to rise 300,000 in one month let alone 30 million??
Of course he does, Newt was once Speaker of the House...which is why the whole thing was nonsense from hour one.
Oh but Gingrich had a good two week run with the usual David Broder types swooning at the thought of this " intellectual in politics", flooding the Granite State with erudite DVDs and five hour policy speeches.

In truth, Newt has always been a shrill little prick, a smug boomer perpetually desperate for attention...he has been doing this bizarre "I'm ALMOST gonna run for President" act since 1999, he just did it a little better this time, the usual smug boomer pundits fell for it like hayseeds at at medicine show.
Otherwise, Gingrich is proof positive that for the past twenty five years the US Punditariat has been slowly lowering the bar such that a fatuous garrulous sophomore like Newt can be annointed "a scholar in politics" on the basis of having read "The Prince" and "Future Shock" both in the same semester.
Well he is out of presidential contention and the race is the better for it, the GOP has enough frauds running for the White House as it is.

Romney's numbers are down in New Hampshire...

and of course, his lackeys are spinning it like tops gone mad on crystal meth.
"We PLANNED it this way!" or so they chorus, this is very bloody groan of some teenaged lout who tried to jump his mountain bike over some milk crates and ended up going thru the windshield of a parked car.
Boy lemme tell yuh, this is an object lesson in the limitations of money & media driven politics; a big six million dollar ad-buy in New Hampshire only goes so far for a candidate renowned for his inexperience, craven disposition and opportunism.
What is amazing to me is that Romney has actually sunk to a position in the polls that John McCain is suddenly competitive...hell a mere three month's ago I was laying odds that the mercurial Arizon hothead would be out of the game by Labor Day.
Shows yuh what Humble Elias knows.

The nice thing about Ron Paul's candidacy for the Presidency

is that he reminds us that young people can be just as paranoid and dogmatic as their elders.
Ya gotta love Ron Paul there is a certain sweet cluelessness to his libertarian fanaticism...he honestly believes with blissful naivete' that if we sell off the social security fund to Goldman-Sachs we will all fly to work in free market rocket ships.
No pain, no fuss, no new overclass to rule us like kings.
And it is very funny, the way small children believe that dinosaurs still exist somewhere on a lost island somewhere.
For the rest of us though, what Ron is really proposing is to resolve the consequences of neocon extremism with a healing dose of libertarian extremism.
So there is, at least to Humble Elias a homeopathic quality to Ron Paul's low taxes, small gummint political program.

Humble Elias is opposed to

any war of volition against Iran.
Why?
Well for one thing, George Bush Jr. could screw up a two car funeral, he has made a hash of Iraq (once promised as the very Jewel in American Conservatism's Crown)and Afghanistan...adding Iran to the list is too big a dose of stupid pills for any well constituted republic.
And don't expect John McCain or Rudy Guiliani to come riding in on horseback to save the GOP's bacon, their core ideas do not vary from those of the President. If you liked George, you are gonna love Rudy, taxes will be low, deficits will be high and the blood will flow like cheap red wine.

One thing is for certain...

the current of GOP presidential aspirants are all but united in their desire to start a war with Iran ASAP.
Here at least they are in complete agreement with the President they often pretend to revile.
Mitt Romney in particular seems positively frantic to start bombing Iran...anything to look like a real tough and studly man on horseback I guess.
Seems to me, that if all these guys wanna strut around rattling their sabers then someone ought to start asking them blunt questions about whether or not they are gonna militarize the US economy or reintroduce the draft as part of their plan to crush Iran once and for all.
Their responses would be, to say the least, illuminating.

Middlesex Fourth State Senate special election update:

Today Humble Elias has learned that Arlington Representative James Marzilli is an opponent of casino gambling who has characterized the Governor's plan to introduce big time gaming to the Commonwealth as a "mistake".
That is pretty big, after all, Jim was the quintessential EFD ("Early For Duval") back when Patrick was twenty full points down in the polls. Let us hope no-one takes any of it personally, today's opponent is tomorrow's ally etc etc etc.
Meanwhile I'm idly curious as to where the rest of the field is with respect to this issue, Humble Elias will attempt in future posts to track down everyone's stance on casino gambling. At the very least all this palaver about casino gamblingcould ignite a broader debate about revenues and priorities, which is a good thing, IF it happens.

Gingrich sez "Gimme thirty million and I'll run for President!"

An appeal so unpleasantly mercenary that it is almost admirable in its simplicity.
I don't know about his commitment to his so called "ideas", but as an example of sheer political shysterism this is pretty impressive.
Frankly the lateness of the political hour indicates that this is naught but manipulative nonsense from the Former Speaker. The venerable New Hampshire Primary detonates in what...four months?!!? Thirty million large or not, Newt Gingrich can't go all-up in that space of time in Iowa and the Granite State, it is impossible especially for such an ubiquitous political personality.
No this is nothing but a canny attention getting device, if he is serious then he has been once again double-dosing on crazy pills.

Massachusetts sucks, the GOP sucks

now eat your peas and Vote for Romney sez the Former Viceroy in a new advertisement.

Yup cuz that is the GOP's problem, they didn't raise the deficit fast enough or bash illegal immigrants with enough fervor (these would be the same illegal immigrants who once clipped the hedges at the Villa d' Romney in Belmont Mass).
Honestly, Romney is full of hot air and as fragile as a balloon, one good jab with a needle and he'll go blatting all over the room.
Just get one of those poor Costa Ricans who used to mow his lawn to appear in an commercial...Mitt will fall over in a swoon I promise you.

4th Middlesex State Senate special election update:

The democratic candidates so far are:
Representative James Marzilli (Arlington)
Kenneth Donnelly (Arlington)
Representative Charles Murphy (Burlington)
Representative Patrick DiNatale (Woburn)
Virginia Mooney (Burlington)
Bob Peters (Lexington)

So the field has thinned out a bit since last we discussed this upcoming election, the deadline though to submit nomination papers is in early October so there is till room if increasingly theoretical for another democratic aspirant to parachute in.

This is a big field though and it's a 100,000 person senate constituency so everyone has their work cut out for them.
My suspicion though is, there may be some "bone hunters" in the above roster. "Bone hunting" is a venerable tradition in local and national politics going back to the glory days of Tammany Hall. One either fields a roster of candidates or gets into a race oneself in order to get a job or a cash offer off of the deal, usually in return for getting out of the race prompto.
"Bone hunting" is a phenom quite obviously that attends on elections to paying positions and it has hardly gone out of style even today. I know of at least one candidate for the state legislature who was allegedly offered some $5,000 cash to bail on the race by a rival.
The offer was supposedly turned down, why I do not know.
On the other hand, they may all be in it for the policy of legislatin' at the senate level, who knows, the thing about bone-hunting is, it's a process that shuns the light of day.