Fred Thompson gets in...

Predictably, Fred Thompson has decided to run for President.
Why I have no idea...he is promising the same things as all the other guys "I'll be more Reagan-esque than Reagan, I'll-marry-some-harridan-named-Nancy-if-I-have-to".
I guess...that Thompson's idea is to run as a more authenticthan all the other witchburning grass-eating small gummint fanatics in the race.
Authenticity as all seven of my readers know, is one of those dangerous Orwellian terms that is supposed to obscure and confuse rather than elucidate in any way.
Well anyway, he joins a group of presidential aspirants conspicuous for their lack of ideas so he'll be in jolly company at least.
These guys have gotten tiresome and repetitive and the big show is still seven months away.

Romney proposes

to donate his salary as President to charity.
Gotta love the Former Viceroy's presumptuous willingness to spend lavishly of money he doesn't have yet.
I mean think about it, some mainstream charity gets 400 large a year, whilst the rest of us would labor under Romney's tedious stunt driven superficial style of governance for four long empty years.
Is that a bargain or what????

The Boston Globe reports

that Former Governor Romney has bought himself a thirty point lead in Iowa at the moment.
All well and good, but Zogby reports that Barack Obama would crush Romney like an eggshell in a head to head matchup.
Ah bu we are a long way from election day aren't we?

Cowpokes along the Merrimack River...

and sundry matters are taken up over at Channel Zero.

Two more for the road....

Arkansas Governor and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee thinks the shallow end of the pool isn't quite full enough. Accordingly, he has asserted that is "room for more" in the nine man republican presidential roster.
This is a not so veiled reference to Former Senator Fred Thompson and Ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich who are rumored to be piling into the race for the White House.
That'll raise the republican field to some eleven contenders (and who knows we haven't gotten final word from Chuck Hagel or the bones of the late Bourke Hickenlooper), each more mediocre and bereft of ideas than the last.
Clearly, the only response to the existential blight of the republican party is to keep throwing ever more conservatives into the fray and hope someone morphs into Achilles overnight.
Just what adding two more drearly orthodox conservative nimrods to the ballot is supposed to do for the rest of us is a mystery indeed.
Fred Thompson is supposed to bring some Reaganesque tinseltown glamor to the race on the basis of his movie and TV career. It is just too bad he looks and sounds like an old shopworn bullfrog. It is hard to imagine Fred Thompson on horseback backing up Errol Flynn in "The Santa Fe Trail".
Gingrich on the other hand is a rock star, he is movement conservatism's idea of the Nitzschean super-man.
That is to say, Speaker Newt is vain, pushy, self righteous,shrill, neurotic and a smug insufferable troll as well.
Rock star...indeed, hell the man could tour as Newt Gingrich and his all Ex-Wife Band. He is also a veritable gaffe machine sooner or later he'll shoot his pie hole off in some appalling way over some issue over which he knows exactly nothing.
As I said, don't see what either of them bring to the table. Anyway, movement conservatism is dying in this country, it has promised itself to death and spent money like a gambler with a brain tumor.
Clearly the movement has decided to expire in a crowded noisy room full of as many quack doctors as possible.

Mit sez "I'm Not Anti-Gay"

The AP reports that Mitt wants his future serfs to know that his opposition to same sex marriage shouldn't be confused with homophobia on his part.
hard to figure out just why the former Viceroy had to say this, it won't reassure gays nor will the hard core wowsers in the GOP base like it either, that crowd won't be happy til all queers in the USA are behind barbed wire.
So I guess, Romney makes these pointless statements to immunize himself against the accusation of intolerance from the liberals...why he is so concerned about our outrage I have no idea.
Or maybe his dessicated conscience is bothering him, chronic opportunists often suffer from indigestion of the soul.

Is there is some way we can deport Romney?

Or legally run him out of town on a rail?

Honestly, the leaves haven't even turned yet and he is already bashing the Commonwealth in commercials that will no doubt be beamed into Southern NH via Boston television stations.
I say it's time for the former Viceroy to put up or shut up, if he HATES Massachusetts so damn much, let him decamp for Royal Oak Michigan or Epsom Circle New Hampshire.
And if he won't go voluntarily, let us all chip in and buy him a ticket!
It is all very appalling and utterly predictable, the man has the mentality of a middle school bully.
I'm under no illusions here though, vast fortunes have been made in the barbaric lands over the Berkshires via Massachusetts-bashing, as a means to enrage the GOP base it's a sound tactic.
But it's all so damn childish...and anyway aren't we all sick of the boy man we've already got in White House?

There is one thing all conservatives love to do

and that is to flail away at Jimmy Carter like they are Errol Flynn or something.
Jeff Jacoby, is of course, no exception.
The reason for this is simple, at the moment there isn't a single issue on the front burner in Washington that advantages movement conservatism from the war in Iraq to illegal immigrants...it's all bad news.
So when former President Carter calls out the current admin what better time to wallow in late 1970's nostalgia, a period that today's conservatives regard with hilarious revision as their own version of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain combined. To hear the likes of Jeff Jacoby tell it, Russian troops were poised to wade ashore at Revere Beach on the morning that Reagan was sworn in.
They need to remember it this way, Conservatives have "comic book memories" they only remember the explosions, the glittering triumphs, the pompous Allen Drury style dialogue and the shattering defeats. They duly forget things like the Egypt-Israeli peace treaty, diplomatic recognition of China (a huge setback for the USSR) or the coalition to aid the Afghan rebels.
Carter has a problematic legacy...but in time it'll be vastly preferred to the one that Bush Jr. is leaving behind.

McGuirk is out before he is even on...

WRKO has abruptly dropped plans to give former Don Imus producer Bernard McGuirk on an on air try out as Tom Finneran's drive time stooge.
Well this is good news, McGuirk is a feeble foul mouthed wretch who has been making money off of bigoted commentary for years now...let him languish in New York I say.
Alas, now we get the inevitable backlash. That whining, keening, scream of rage that assserts that somehow Bernard McGuirk's RIGHTShave been pre-empted, that the US constitution contains a special right guaranteeing Bernard McGuirk's unrestricted access to morning drive time radio.

Senator Mel Martinez...

President Bush's nominee as RNC Chair was on CNN yesterday, looking and sounding like a beaten man in every way.
He half heartedly defended AG Alberto Gonzalez, sighed and marked out for the pending immigration bill and actually decribed the current escalation in Iraq as creating the appearance of victory.
These are tired intellectually bankrupt people over on the other side, they've spend the country into penury, treated their base like serfs and gone off a cliff so many times for Bush Jr that they are all slap-happy in extremis.
And going forward, the news will only get worse for them, count on it.

Bad column writing...

inevitably begins with a refusal to face the facts.
Such is the case today with Jeff Jacoby in the Globe who makes a lame argument that conflates GOP libertarian Presidential candidate Ron Paul's isolationism somehow with the "mainstream" of thinking within democratic Presidential contenders.
This is yet another attempt by Jeff to form a bucket brigade on the Titanic that is the President's war policy...in fact you have to expect this sort of thing.
The facts are, the President's policy in Iraq is opposed by some sixty percent of the American Electorate, barring divine intervention, this increment will only go higher as we spiral towards January of 2009. Moreover the President's personal approval rating is stalled at some twenty-nine percent, Nixonville to put it bluntly.
Jeff has yet to address this blunt truth in any of his columns, the American people have given up on him and the war party.
They do not crave surrender, they do want new and different policies.
Therefore to desire a graceful exit from Iraq does not imply a cowardly desire to quit the so called war on terror. The American people get this, the current democrats running for President are struggling with this notion and ironically both Representative Ron Paul and his critic Jeff Jacoby don't understand this one whit.

However given time, luck and common sense, the democrats will sort it all out....they will have to.

Bernard McGuirk is a comin' to Boston...

the Boston Globe reports that Don Imus former producer-flunkey is coming to Boston to audition as Tom Finneran's co-host on WRKO.
Geez, RKO must be desperate if they are dragging in such a notorious New Yorker to prop up the Former House Speaker's morning yakfest.
Let Humble Elias speak bluntly and nastily, McGuirk is an brutal little thug with what my mother would call "a cheap mouth" and a grating New York accent. For that reason along I don't think he will last long if WRKO hires him....if they do, I don't think Finneran will last long as it's McGuirk's inflammatory nonsense that got Don Imus sh*tcanned.

Wolfowitz Outski

Paul Wolfowitz, one of the smug architects of our current crisis in Iraq has resigned as head of the World Bank because his girlfriend was caught stealing office supplies...or something tawdry like that.
Well let the resignations begin I say...with any luck the Torturer's Apprentice, AG Alberto Gonzalez will be nest...then Dick Cheney as the main course.
***
I know, it is all sheer fantasy, but the President should have problems, personnel problems to start with.

The GOP Presidential Primary Debate this week on Fox

News this week presented the electorate with the edifying spectacle of nine (or is it eleven ?) grown adult men chasing all manner of sensible ideas around the stage, beating the same to death and then symbolically throwing the corpse at the feet of the republican base whilst panting with canine glee.
If this callow and hopeless farce repeats itself over the next several months, and it will have no doubt, it is inevitable that some shrewd opportunist will climb into the presidential race as an independent.
Could be Chuck Hegel or Mayor Bloomberg (BTW pretty dumb of Giuliani not to secure his successor's endorsement eh?)....but someone will ride on horseback posing as a maverick outsider undoubtably accompanied by squeals of glee from the usual chronic hero worshippers like Chris Matthews and Joe Klein.
So...watch for it is all I can say.

Reverend Falwell R.I.P.

The easy thing to do here would be to dance on Jerry's grave...but the usual suspects are no doubt cruising local blogs looking for tantrum fodder, so why make it easy for them?
The lugubrious thing to do would be to memorialize Falwell on lines of "we shan't see his like again"...but the truth is, the Reverend was no one special, we've had earnest even fanatical political parsons from the earliest days of the Republic.
It is an easy racket and Falwell made a mint at it, built up a top rated religious TV show and university before his untimely death yesterday.
Few people in America have ever gone broke asserting the bible's superiority to the constitution and that therefore said book must be somehow written into law.
Meanwhile I'll always remember Falwell for his smug facial rictus and unerring aim at fundamentally bizarre targets like the teletubbies.

Why is Mitt Romney talking about

polgamy all of a sudden?
It is the Mormon equivalent of "marriage equality" the very picture definition of a hot button topic.
It wasn't really an issue in 2002 when he ran for Governor, although I do recall that his ancestors were outed (so to speak) as robust polygamists a practice Romney has condemned.
Why bring it up now on the eve of a Fox News sponsored debate in South Carolina?
Romney's high command must be afraid of Rove-style attack on his religion in the SC Primary next winter and must therefore try and bury the accusation now.
I'll bet the whole Mormon-polygamy meme has come up in focus group testing as well. All of which indicates that Romney has yet to seal the deal with the religious right and it's legions.
Just thinkin' out loud...

Am I the only one who has noticed...

that Senator John McCain whistles thru his teeth?
I mean it is really notable....he sounds like Gabby Hayes trying to do birdcalls.
What this will do to McCain's rep as a vigorous presidential-type septuagenarian I cannot say....
Granted the man was tortured by communists, but at this stage in his career he ought to make a strategic investment in a class set of dentures.

The great thing about Mike Barnicle's new morning show

on 96.9 FM tawk is that one doesn't have to listen for long before Big Mike sez something unintentionally hilarious or plainly idiotic.
In fact in the time it takes to exit the Magickal Suburb of Menotomy and reach the Alewife MBTA station Mike can wallow in cheap sentimentality, josh with his on-air lackeys and take a call from some earnest slap-happy dope.
So in terms of efficient time management, it is a slam-dunk.
Today he was worried that today's younger generation won't "outdo" their forebearers in terms of quality of life.
This is pretty much a stock concern on the part of all radio tawk show tyrants...they all have their stock answers, lower taxes, forced expulsion of illegal immigrants, throw the poor in jail etc etc etc.
It is all pretty much nonsense but it fills up congressionally mandated airtime nicely.
In the case of Mike Barnicle's kids though, it is a real problem, I mean they can hardly expect to grow up to be treacly fantasist-columnists and radio talk show hosts now can they?
Oh well, guess they will just have to take their chances with the rest of us.

Cheney in Iraq

The Veep sometimes does disquietingly presidential things, like give orders to the US armed forces (over which he has NO constitutional authority) or fly off to Baghdad to no doubt harangue our generals and jawbone a foreign government.
I think Cheney should stay in Iraq and proclaim himself King or Pillar of Fire on Earth, Lamp of the Revolution, Colonel in Chief or some such thing. With that hateful sneer of his and that well known penchant for tough talk and easy recourse to torture Dick Cheney is, in many ways the very model of a Arab Dictator in the making.
Okay...dat was rough, but honestly Cheney would look quite at home in a burnoose snarling threats from the podium at the U.N.
And another thing, if everything is on the upswing in Iraq how come the Veep doesn't bring along some of the war party's biggest mouthpieces like Jeff Jacoby, Laura Ingraham or Sean Hannity? They could stroll thru the markets of old Baghdad and see for themselves all the "progress" that we are making.
Ah don't rightly understand what is stopping them since the news out of Iraq is so uniformly good these days...or so the White House sez.

"Israel needs to get tough"

proclaims Jeff Jacoby in today's column. Jeff thinks Israel has gone soft at a time when they are in deadly peril from their bumptious Arab neighbors.
We-ell maybe so....but even in their current alleged torpor, the Israelis are like the Frickin' Klingon's compared to the United States!
They are at least having a serious and honest internal debate over national security, they at least have a draft and a revenue structure equal to the challenge.
America on the other hand just sits and watches the whole mishaugas on TV! Thanks to our all-volunteer army and thrifty Chinese ownership of our vast public debt nobody has to the slightest sacrifice as our war policy spirals towards disaster in Iraq.
It has long been Humble Elias' thesis that one of the reasons this war perpetuates itself is because other than the Pentagon, the poor grunts on the ground (plus their families natch)and the admin itself; no one in the US electorate is invested personally in the conflict.
If the current policy required a top rate of 80% (which is how FDR financed WW 2) or a fairly adminstered draft, we'd be gone out of Iraq in a month...count on it.

Cultural Notes Idle & Trivial

"Spiderman III" is reviewed here....Humble Elias is accord with the above linked views and would only add that Peter Parker's much ballyhoo'd "spider sense" didn't so much as peep when a meteor landed not ten yards from him in Central Park.

Mike Barnicle revealed on his morning radio show yesterday that out in tony Acton he still sleeps in boxer shorts and a tee-shirt...the national uniform of Caucasiastan, Mike's mythic homeland.

Sarkosy uber alles...

A high cold wind is blowing thru Wingnutville USA, nobody answers their letters and all they can get on TV is Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama's smiling faces. So the election of a two fisted rightist in France is about the only good news that US conservatives have gotten since November of 2006.
No doubt the Hannitys and Savages and Ingrahams will all be mindlessly chortling on the radio this afternoon.
In truth there isn't much here to rejoice about, Sarkosy isn't so stupid as to send the Foreign Legion to Iraq and his much ballyhoo'd desire to improve relations between France and the US sounds much like De Gaulle's old policy to act as an independent go-between.
And anyway, President Sarkosy is gonna have his hands full just trying to get the French to work a thirty seven and a half hour work week.
But like I said, it's a lowering sky in Wingnutville so any port in a storm.

Sowell sighs for a coup...

Thomas Sowell thinks the country might one day become so corrupt that a military coup will be our only salvation.
Well Tom old bean, I dunno, once the officers get into politics at the point of a gun they usually stay.
Sure a lot of leftists get snuffed when someone like Pinochet seizes power, but don't forget it was a decorously conservative Argentinian President that Colonel Juan Peron overthrew in 1943.
In other words, big guy, be careful what you wish for, plenty of people out there would love to see Bush led out of the White House in handcuff escorted by a compnay of MPs.

The U.S. Olympic Groveling Team...

was presented to the public last night in open sycophancy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
Predictably, power lackey Rudy Giuliani, upon whose head rests the Nation hope for the gold, made the strongest impression with this artful dodge on the proposed repeal of Roe versus Wade:

"OK to repeal?" Matthews asked.

"It would be OK to repeal," Giuliani said. "It would be OK also if a strict constructionist judge viewed it as precedent, and I think a judge has to make that decision."

This is America's Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, the "Okay Kid", a roaring lion in New York in favor of gay marriage and abortion but a bootlicking toady out on the Presidential campaign circuit.
Since he has had his political spine removed, I wonder if we can get him to flip flop on evolution and law of gravity as well?
What d'ye suppose Chris Matthews (last night's moderator incidentally) makes of his latest man-crush now? He still has time to flip over to Fred Thompson or Marshal Graziani if Rudy turns to complete jelly.

Mitt Romney angles for the Endorsement of John Travolta and Tom Cruise

as he told Fox News that his favorite novel was L. Ron Hubbard's decidedly weird sci fi-$cientology opus "Battlefield Earth".
Honestly, Mitt needs to fire some of the dumb-ass spin doctor's he has retained to humanize his image.
Clearly his staff thought "Battlefield Earth" was some easy popular space opera on the order of E.E. "Doc" Smith's old "Lensmen" series....something that will take the shine off the public perception that Romney is naught but a chilly, rich, Mormon Bishop who can execute a backflip in seconds flat.
None of these yaps had any idea that "Battlefield Earth" is in fact a core document in the whole $cientology cult.
That points to some bad hires on Romney's part.
When JFK's brain trust had to come up a favorite novel to burnish JFK's populist bona fides they were smart enough to go with Ian Fleming's "From Russia with Love".
The difference here with respect to outcomes, is glaringly obvious mah frenz.

According to Jeff Jacoby in Today's Globe...

the state has a perfect right to regulate consensual sex acts in the priavacy of one's home owing to the fearful possibility that incest could otherwise be legalized by activist courts.
Jeff then goes on praise former Senator Rich "High Pitched Rich" Santorum for his lonely iconoclastic stance against man-man,man-beast and man-lampost style sex.

Okay...work with me here for a moment...

If the state does have the authority and even the urgent necessity to regulate consensual sex acts in the home, does it not then follow that the government should also control the particular consequences of such acts?
For straight edge hetrosexuals this would mean that the state could also regulate how many children you have, what their genders shall be or take a much broader interest in how they are taught than has been the case up until now?
Hell, they could even introduce childbirth licensing....just like at the DMV.
To me...the one notion follows the other as night follows day.
Otherwise what it seems that Jeff is proposing is that sex regulation ought to be introduced over disliked minorities on behalf of an ultra-conservative minority of US voters. That is how I am reading today's column in the Globe.