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.

Boy imagine...

the shit-fit Joanie Vennochi will throw about this news item?
Can't wait to see how she blames it all on that wimpy bully, John Forbes Kerry.
***
Y'know I do feel the police over-reacted, but as someone who has seen a lot of scary or cringe-worthy situations at candidate Q&A sessions I can understand how it all spiraled out of control.

For some reason the chance to get face to face with a politician positively brings out the worst in people....j'es saying.

The Arlington Town Democratic Committee

is having a meeting tonight at 7:30pm in the public safety building.
With Bob Havern's senate seat gone vacant and two local residents (including state rep James Marzilli) vying for the sinecure in a still fluid field along with the possibility of a state rep's special election down the line...well it promises to be an interesting and suggestive meeting.

Oh and did I mention the hu-uge controversy on the school committee?
It is SO PREEMO!!!

Too bad Humble Elias can't comment, the Chimes at Midnight's writ stops at the door of Arlington's Town Hall after all.
:)

Nothing today kids...

Sick day.

Three Casinos????

The Globe reports that Governor Patrick will come out for authorizing up to three casinos in the Commonwealth. One would be a disaster, three will be a catastrophe. I urge the Governor to reconsider this decision and I call upon the state legislature to reject any expansion of casino gambling in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
If this goes down, we will all live to regret it.

Mike Huckabee was on MSNBC last night

and my ghod he looked awful! No necktie, you could see his white tee shirt at the collar of his rumbled shirt and he was definitely unshaven...must be a real real casual church he presides over thats all I can say. Keith Olbermann played it straight in the interview, he should've asked Huckabee "Sooo this is how you dress for MSNBC eh? Bet you'd class up for that bimbo Katie Couric".
Frankly I'd pay money to hear Keith Olbermann say something like that.
I'm concentrating on how Huckabee looked because what he said was so trite and unmemorable. Huckabee has been "critical" of the President in that nuanced rhetorical GOP way, but he offers no substantive change in priorities or governing style. He certainly can't think of a single reason to pull US Troops out of Iraq for all his alleged criticism.

BTW

Dimmy Karras, who was one of the first serious local bloggers to link to this, "The Little Blog that Cried" has got himself a new blogging space. It looks spiffy...check it out.

A Little Touch of Harry in the Night...

Senator Reid has vowed to oppose Ted Olson if he is nominated for Attorney General.
Hoo Hah!
Bet that'll have Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly up in arms.
Well I say good for Harry, the President needs to feel the the hot wash of a few bean-balls past his jowls...maybe he'll finally wake up and start acting like a man and not some freeperish fantasy figure.
Ah but this is Bush we are talking about, craven, blustery and serenely stupid...he thinks it's still the spring of 2005 and he is the Czar of the All the United States.

Them days is over folks.

Ted Olson: the New Face of Bipartisanship

Late word comes to us that Ted Olson Former US Solicitor General and one of the power hungry jerks who put "Bush v. Gore" over on the Supreme Court, is one of the front runners to succeed Alberto Gonzales to the Attorney Generalship.
Good Ghod big surprise there, lets replace one asshole with an even bigger asshole.
Ted is a nasty customer in every respect, conservatives have a special right to rule and all that claptrap. He is in every way a surly churlish sort of nominee if he gets the sinecure, proof positive that George Bush doesn't know how to conciliate with congress or anyone else for that matter.
If he is nominated, I urge all democrats and patriotic persons in congress to vote early and vote no.
The only way to deal with fanatic hyper-partisans is to reject and to deny, time and time again we have learned it is impossible to negotiate with them in good faith.

Moveon.org ran at advert questioning General Petreaus' independence & integrity

and Duke University Professor of Political Science (and a former White House Staffer) Peter D. Feaver is all indignant about what he call's Moveon's "McCarthy Moment".

This particular passage though, had me in stitches:
It is a deliberate attack on the senior Army commander, in a major daily newspaper, with the intention of destroying as much of his credibility as possible so that his military advice could be more easily rejected by antiwar members of Congress.

Oh gee...a Senior Army Commander is under political attack...gosh that is a shame. I have to ask though, where was Prof. Feaver's righteous indignation when the so called Swift Boat Veterans questioned Senator John Kerry's integrity & patriotism?
Did the good Professor ever denounce those god-damned little band-aids emblazoned with the Purple Heart that were gleefully passed out at the 2004 GOP Convention?
Where was the outrage then professor?
If Petraeus is getting roasted over an open fire today it's because George Bush and Dick Cheney relentlessly politicized the occupation of Iraq and played a demagogue's game on terrorism in campaign 2004. If in turn Moveon.org feels a need to play hardball well...c'est le guerre, someone should have called the President to account for his many many "McCarthy Moments" a long damn time ago.

CNN hits rock bottom

according to Channel Zero at least.

I only wish I knew who this Nelly Furtado is...

Osama Bin Laden thinks American should groove with Allah

and calls for mass American conversion to Islam...well that what he is thinking about some six years after the 9-11 attacks on the USA.
Well he has so much time on his hands running around free and all!

Waaalll...I dunno, we got all the religion we can handle in the USA, from nine or so versions of Ghod Almighty to a hundred or some pagan-styles of object worship.
Frankly we believe too much in this country and think too little.
So of course, Bin Laden's call for an Islamic USA is red meat for dingbats like Mitt Romney who took time out yesterday to deride the notion of mass conversion to the Muslim faith.
That of course, comes from a man who knows full well how hopeless some types of evangelism can be, didn't Mitt spend two years walking the streets of Paris, dodging the US draft and trying to turn on the French to Joseph Smith the Latter Day Saints?

Middlesex Fourth State Senate special election update:

Word on the street is, Diane Mahon who was sounding a lot like a candidate a mere two weeks ago isn't gonna get into this race. However, Humble Elias must stress, we've heard nothing from Ms. Mahon herself. The logic runs that former firefighter Ken Donnelly who has some traction among public sector unions wouldn't be running if Diane Mahon was a candidate since they'd be splitting a key constituency. Overall we are eight weeks from the primary and the field is still shifting around...and no one has heard anything out of the GOP either.

Ever noticed?

That about a week before Deval Patrick makes a decision really any decision, Joanie Vennochi start snarling that he is being indecisive? All because the Governor simply isn't on Ms. Vennochi's Prussian type schedule?
She sure loves that meme doesn't she? Has Joanie ever identified a Massachusetts'
democrat as decisive in any way?
It is the same deal this week, the Governor is in the lead up to an announcement on casino gambling and of course, the suspense indicates indecision according to Joanie.
I think this is the third time since Patrick won the election that Joanie has trotted out this talking point.
Gettin' kinda repetitive if you asked me...can't she dream up some new put downs?

Thompson is in...finally.

Fred Thompson makes it official by skipping a debate and making an appearance on the Tonight Show starring that useless bootlicker Jay Leno.
I'm not quite sure what if anything Fred Thompson brings to the GOP presidential primary contest.
He had a perfectly forgettable record in the US Senate.
He may be a Hollywood actor, but he has a face like a mangy old shoe.
He offers little at variance with the other yaps in the race...he never saw a tax cut he didn't like, he is critical of President Bush but can't think of reason one to get out of Iraq, he hates liberals, and Thompson thinks the AEI is divinely inspired.
Not much there to work with.
He also had this to say:
"Our basic rights come from God and not from government,"
Doesn't that pretty much say it all?
If our rights come from God, it follows in that the Godly (in the sheer Cromwellian sense of the term) ought to be given special powers & privileges to "protect" those rights.
Or so the reasoning goes on the other side of the fence.

Niki Uber Alles?

Niki Tsongas managed to win by five percentage points in the democratic primary in the fifth congressional district special election. Seems to me, that Eileen Donoghue (the runner up) might've pulled off an upset but for low turn out and a crowded democratic primary.
Wel...ole' Napoleon O'Malley was right, Donoghue (who carried Lowell) was the best positioned to challenge Tsongas. Meanwhile it sounds like GOP nominee Jim Ogonowski is gonna try to run as a freeper of some type with all sorts of bluster about immigration.
How well any of that will stick to Tsongas remains to be seen.

More Announcements in the 4th Middlesex senate race

Ken Donnelly a Lexington firefighter is piling in as well as Lexington's Housing Authority Commissioner, Bob Peters, who is also a wheel in the local democratic committee.

So we have two Lexington democrats in the race now...the field is getting crowded, Pat DiNatale and Joanne Gonsalves both from Woburn, Charles Murphy of Burlington and Arlington selectperson Diane Mahon are all in this thing as well as state rep Jim Marzilli.
And the Lowell Sun claims Arlington selectperson Jack Hurd is thinking about getting in as well.
This is a consequence of the special election format, most of these people are state reps and town elected officials, the scheduling of the race does not impact the retention of their own offices thus everyone wants to jump in and take a flyer. Even if they lose, they gain in name recognition and fatter rolodex to be deployed down the line in other contests.
Frankly though, this is turning into a cavalry charge type election...lotsa lotsa men and women on horseback all talking at once.

Meanwhile, the Arlington Town Democratic Committee meets this week...that ought to be an interesting session indeed.

Are there any Republicans getting into this thing at all?
Drop me a line...

His usefulness to movement conservatism at an end...

Senator Craig throws in the towel and will resign on September 30th, presumably to be replaced by a less freaky freeper although the odds don't favor it.
Honestly though, what is this guy guilty of? An embarrassing misdemeanor and worst of all, getting caught. Until last week, the RNC was perfectly fine with the Craig and let him run amok in a giddy lame way for decades...but when he was exposed he had to go and go quickly for the good of the senatorial party, to satiate the GOP's book-worshippers and to reinforce the myth & majesty of sexual repression.
Evidently, the closet is a very very necessary and sacred thing over in those sacred precincts surrounding the great temple of US Conservatism. Remember the closet protects the "privacy" of the closetee at the cost of their fundamental dignity, but it also reinforces certain vital myths & fabrications of interested parties outside the closet.
So they got rid of Senator Craig...by threatening a Senate Ethics Investigation that would have undoubtedly exposed many details of his deeply closeted life to the public and being presumably repressed, Craig took the hint and resigned.
Score one for the power of the closet, even in the twenty-first century.

Meanwhile...
The Idaho Senator's lame alleged sexual misadventure though, still somehow rebounds to the discredit of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or so Jeff Jacoby argues this morning.
Boy...bad enough that the Commonwealth enjoys a low popularity rating beyond the Berkshires but even among our own we are a proud lonely and much denounced state.
I think the state democratic party should trademark & copyright the phrase "Massachusetts Liberal", so that every AM Dial talk shout tyrant will be compelled to pay royalties every time they really wannna spew their hatred at the Commonwealth.
It is never gonna end, we may as well make some money off of it.