Another billion in cuts at the State level....

and there is no end in sight, certainly the proposed stimulus package as yet doesn't mention revenue sharing with the states...which is what all the governor's want at this point.
Personally I think we ought to revisit the Governor's proposal for a broader selection of local taxes, restaurants etc...we might need this badly ere long.

I keep telling myself it can't get much worse....

And on that note I wish you all a happy new year.

Steve Stark awoke from a much needed

journalistic coma over in the Boston Phoenix and croaked that the real secret to Barack Obama's success is that he bought the 2008 election.
Ghod bless Steve Stark he is as relevant and insightful as last April's New York Times.
I mean, I think the big story all along has been Obama's fundraising prowess...of a type sufficient to destroy the campaign finance system (which was broken beyond repair anyway)...but no according to Steve we are all only finding this out now.
Steve has been a pundit on the subject of national politics for over fifteen years now and in all that time from his perch at the Boston Globe to this superfluous gig at the Phoenix I've never heard him generate a single idea that wasn't profoundly shopworn and obvious.
He is clearly positioning himself as the in house Obama skeptic just as he once was the Globe's pet Bill Clinton hater...like I said nothing new from Steve Stark.
Smug,repetitive and bereft of ideas and he gets paid for it too!

Jerry Brown flip-flops again...

In his capacity as state Attorney General he has decided to argue against California's ban on gay marriage before the Supreme Court.
This is really nothing new, I can remember with the simplest nostalgia back in 1978 then Governor Jerry Brown's overnight conversion to the anti-property tax forces when Proposition 13 passed by referendum. Subsequently, Brown took his freshly minted anti-property tax mania onto the presidential campaign trail and loaded it up with all kinds of demented rubbish including a promise to call a constitutional convention to pass a balanced budget ammendment.
The good news is, when Jerry Brown changes his mind, he doesn't do it in secret and he is zealous in his new faith.
The bad news is, Jerry Brown is something of a god-damned fool and the cause of gay marriage is in desperate need of sensible and steadfast advocates.
Still...must needs when the devil rides, so health to all his endeavors.

Is Barack Obama a nerd?

Or a geek or a dork?
That seems to be the big question this week, it is the holiday season, the cabinet is picked and other than watch the global economy collapse there is a shortage of soft news for the media to report.
This is a narrative woven out of a stray Star Trek joke that Obama made during the campaign and the fact that he once read Spider-Man comics in high school.

Thin stuff if you asked Humble Elias and you haven't.

To tell the truth, the term "nerd" has undergone a sea change since Barack and I were teenagers in the late 1970s.
THEN it was bitter pejorative usually fastened to bookish outsiders in order to reinforce a rigid and short term hierarchy in US middle and high schools.
NOW it denotes a playa n the US technology economy as well as a particularly powerful subset of consumers. The rise in "nerd culture" and "nerd economics" is supposed to herald a great change in the way the USA views intelligence and creativity...or so Time Magazine and that ilk insist.
To quote the olde misanthrope "what rubbish!"
Concentrating on this buncombe neatly sidesteps any discussion of stagnant wages in the US and our suicidal policy of national de-industrialization.
It is in fact, False consciousness and for better or worse it largely defines the current debate over the rise of "nerd culture" in the USA.
"Nerd" is a fallacious class distinction and a bizarre one in an economy largely driven by technological innovation. The larger question is how well does that economy do in terms of moving new cadres into the middle class, educating the poor and working class and spreading prosperity around in general.
the answer to that is, it doesn't do that very well at all no matter how cutting edge the new I-Phone may be.
AS for Obama, he is far too charismatic, sporty and focused to pass muster as a survivor of ye olde geekerdom circa 1979.
Moreover, reading "Spider-Man" was no great dork signifier back in the day either, one of the star basketball players at my tiny marginal parochial high school was a fervent reader of Spider-Man and didn't give a hoot in hell who knew it either.
And no his name wasn't Barack Obama either.

What did we learn this year?

As another year passes for this, the Little Blog that Cried, can Humble Elias truly say he has learned anything at all since last January?
No not much.
The flatness of the learning curve is a hallmark here at the Chimes at Midnight.
However I did observe quite over the past year including some things I wish I'd never seen at all.

Watched Mitt Romney's petulant campaign style do nothing for the voters of New Hampshire...I for one cannot wait for him to run again in 2012, like Humble Elias he never learns so he is an endless source of copy.
Watched Jeff Thielman miss the big brass ring by 400 votes in Arlington....
Sadly had to watch State Senator Jim Marzilli self destructed with dizzying speed.
Change indeed falls on us like a predator sometimes.
Observed the 4th Middlesex State Senate race from a lofty perspective of enlightened indifference....
And like everyone else stared in stupefaction as the US economy and then the global economy all struck a big-ass iceberg.
And had a ringside seat on the greatest single Presidential throw-down of my entire adult life...if 2008 wasn't a great year to blog then what was?

Yup this was a good, year, ghod help us all if 2009 tops it though.

Dear Santa Claus

All I want for Christmas is to make Jeff Jacoby's annual year end holiday list of liberal hate speech offenders.
Is that so much ask after the tumult of the past year?
I've been good, called McCain a senile old fool, branded Sarah Palin a crook and what I said about Willard Mitt Romney tain't fittin' ta be repeated.
And my opinions about rampant tax cuts and brainless deregulation...well lets not repeat ill will shall we?
C'mon Santa I deserve it I can criminalize the opposition with all the eagerness of Karl Rove...I'm ready to step up how about it?!

Whazzat you say?
it is the season of light....of forgiveness???
You miserable toy mongering Pimp!!!!
I've EARNED that denuniciation!!!!!!
Called the late David Brudnoy a hypocritical twerp and worse!!
As for Jeff Jacoby last Sunday he somehow tried to suggest that the Apollo 8 got back via the power of prayer...dude they didn't fly there on angel wings they had rocket engines built under contract to Big Government USA ya numbskull!!!

Now...where is my denuniciation!!??

In the grand scheme of things...

Is Caroline Kennedy really less qualified than was Hillary Clinton when the former first Lady first parachuted out of Air Force One and into a US Senate seat from New York?
I mean at least Ms. Kennedy has lived in New York for an awfully long time that is one up on Hillary right there.
And other than being First Lady, botching the 1993 health care bill and being well...Hillary Clinton her list of senatorial qualifications were akin to Caroline Kennedy's in every way...she had name recognition and a natural fervent constituency dats it.
Bigger a-holes have gone so much higher in American politics with so much less. If this was Massachusetts I can't say Caroline would top my list of candidates to follow Hillary Clinton into the US Senate...but then again the Bay State has more Kennedy's to choose from and they'd have to win a primary and a general election to get the job.

Local TV news is in full

"Dawn of the Dead" mode as a winter storm comes over the berkshires and down to the shore.
Meanwhile though, the blogosphere is all apeshit because some sky-grifter named Rick Warren is reading the inaugural prayer next month.
Well I'm sure Rick is real piece of work in many respects, homophobic and prone to other baroque theological excesses.
We have to remember though, Obama is a polician at the end of the day one who is seeking to build a coalition that can outlast his presidency and act as a conduit to office for other democrats.
Part of that process means reaching out to the likes of Warren who is at least willing to consider the notion that the whole of the democratic party is not the political wing of Lucifer and hades in general.
Will it work?
Probably not, I wouldn't give you two cents for any preacher whose message had to be filtered thru TV or some other unsacred electronic medium...when they ARE there it is usally out of the love of money and little else.
From Obama's perspective it is worth a try though, Warren preaches to a cohort remarkable sensitive to symbolic nuance and his nomination to this sinecure is therefore a symbol more than anything.
So let us not get hung up on the symbols.

How much money does Shaws and Stop-n-Shop

PAY Fox 25 News to act like it is the biblical apocalypse every damn time we have a snow storm in Boston?
They now do the "Dawn of the Dead" school closure crawl thru the commercials and when they cut back to the weather report we are jauntily reminded to "stock up" before the snow falls.
I mean...gimme a break here....the news anchors are all but clawing at the television cameras whimpering "SAVE US!! It is the END!!!"

Shocked shocked shocked to discover

that George Bush's SEC sat back and did nothing despite good faith warnings that alleged Wall Street kleptocrat Bernard Madoff was up to no good.

Honestly if this lot was in charge of the Titanic, that damn heap woulda never made it over the first sand bar.

Which points up the need for a real no-shit state trooper attitude at the SEC.
FDR appointed Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. to the chairmanship mostly because he knew all the diresome tricks of the Wall Street sharper's trade...someone like is desperately needed to kick ass and take names on Wall Street.
And forget about what Lou Dobbs and that whole clique will think, we just had a real accountability moment last month and they got their heads bounced off a radiator.
A hard core tone on stock fraud can't kick in soon enough sez Humble Elias.

Nothing today

save to note that the New Republic's Publisher, Marty Peretz still holds an inexplicable grievance against former US Senator George McGovern.
Geezum Crow Marty it has been over thirty years now, enoguh with the neocon jihad!
George didn't promise any more to Israel than did Marty's new fave Barack Obama...so whats da beef??

Anyway, Humble Elias thought it politic to include a link to some of McGovern's presidential campaign commercials.

The Republc hits rock bottom....

Shoes are thrown at President Bush at a conference with the Prime Minister of Iraq.
I suppose now, the Secret Service will insist everyone must enter the Presidential Presence shoeless....
And is it me or does it take the Secret Service an awfully long time to reach President Bush's side duri this incident?

Ghastly, Puerile, Cheap and Vengeful....

that is pretty much the endgame that looms for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich whose crooked antics have held an entire nation enthralled for over a week now.
The whole thing reminds of the decline and fall of Earl K. Long, the late Governor of Louisiana, who in 1959 howled at the state legislature that "n*ggers is human-beings!" and was locked up in an insane asylum for his broadmindedness.
He ran unsuccessfully for re-election on a promise of better beef in the county poor houses and the slogan "I ain't crazy".
Well...today's situation would resemble Earl's days of madness except the Blagojevich affair is sordid and stripped of any wit or humor.
Which is pretty much the problem with the political class today they are all strivers, graspers or vengeful little geeks. Everyone these days wants to either get paid or dish out some payback and kicking an opponent when they are down is the most sublime pleasure known to these worthies.
At least Earl Long had fun, might light of his troubles and held his head up high...Blagojevich is more typical of our humorless era he simply digs himself in for the usual revengefest pity-party...disgraceful really.
Now if Rod announced for re-election on a slogan off "I sold it for YOU!" then we'd have something.

Whatever happened to Ann Coulter?

Once the cheeky darling of Time Magazine?
Has anyone heard from her at all in the past 18 months?
Wasn't she gonna eat us all once?
Stomp on our house, burn down our used hybrid lots with her atomic breath?
Last we had heard her jaw had been broken and wired shut.
But honestly folks, that is just the punchline, no one heard squat from her at all thru-out campaign 2008.
I mean you'd a thought she would've been all over Obama like a anorexic harpie but no.
Coulter may have simply peaked, there are only finite number of kampus konservative bunds that can be shaken down for mad phat speaking fees before the market is maxxed out.
And even wingnuts will tire of her falangist middle school queen bee act...especially as she grows older and has to complete with younger fembot models like Sarah Palin.
My own personal theory is, some sorta health problem...the woman proudly smoked, you do the math.

Speaking of health problems how many of you out there would pay good money to see Laura Ingraham enrolled in Dr. Drew Pinsky's "Celebrity Rehab" show on VH1???
I know I would, just plunk her down between to Gary Busey and Jeff Conaway and watch the ratings soar.

Wow....

Looks like Barack Obama got out of Illinois just in time....
Well now we know why he was in such an all-fired hurry to move up to the White House....to get some distance between himself and the usual corruptards.
I guess the legislature will amend the law and call for a special election to fill Obama's seat now in an effort to prevent the Governor from appointing Ghod knows who to the sinecure.
Although I think almost everyone is a litte sick of electioneering etc....still it can't be helped.

The US Army's fabled First Infantry Division

the dreaded "Big Red One" now has it's own brand of clothes lincensed thru Sears.
Veterans are rightly up in arms abourt this bizarre commercialization of a frontline infantry division...I just wanna add that all this schlock is clearly made in China. Said so on a khaki green tag I saw at Sears in Burlington last night.
Well....China WAS one of our allies in WWII...that takes the sting out right?
Right?

"Romney in 2012"

The Globe claims Mitt wants another shot at the Big Brass Ring.
Cold, greedy, selfish, narcissistic, bereft of ideas and animated by a passionate misogyny....Willard Mitt Romney is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Sarah Palin had best "put every gun to them" as Wellington might say.

One of the hardest routines in the Presidential Playbook

is winding down an unpopular war.
Nixon for example for all his cunning made a hash of exiting Viet Nam thanks to his morbid greivances and petty power mongering all of which undercut any attempt to build bipartisan consensus behind a new policy in Southeast Asia.
Obama at least understands that nothing can be done in Iraq without consensus here at home. Part of building consensus means bringing in a national security team with a diverse range of opinion. then it's up to the President to set policy and see matters thru. The main thing here is, Obama knows he cannot prosper in office with the war going on and on, he needs a dignified exit, that is at the core of his mandate. Hilary Clinton and General Jones can read election returns pretty well, they wouldn't have signed on if they didn't know in broad terms what the new policy would be.
Besides, Democratic national security teams tend towards caution and have an outward conservative cast...a legacy of McCarthyism even in the 21st century.

If congress doesn't want to

bail out the big three auto-makers then how about a real bail out for the rest of us??
By that I bluntly mean, nationalized, single payer health care.
Oh yes...I know, the AMA would go all "Goldfinger" on us, heist an Krangjovian nuclear warhead and threaten Washington with nuclear devastation if the privileges and perks of doctors are compromised by cheap universal healthcare.
"Socialized medicine" they would howl...but hell we've had reactionary socialism going on in this country for twenty eight years on and off, in which tax policy, business and investment regulations all favor one class...the rich.
Now the rich need a bailout, so fine give it to them, by removing them and their corporations from the health care business. Trillions would be saved in the private sector from the git-go, everyone's bottom line from metal shops in Route 1A in Rowley to General Motors would benefit.
How much would it cost to start...700 billion? Wall Street can tap Federal funds for the same any time it likes...but use that money to give the people a REAL tangible benefit one that'll act as a stimulus as well and the Hannity's of this country cream like stuck pigs.
I say sell it as an economic stimulus, anyone against is it is a diresome pessemistic malaise-lover.
Think about it, I can't think of anything else that would have as universal an effect.
YEah it'll cost money but we are gonna have to spend like drunken sailors anyway let us get VALUE on the dollar sez Humble Elias.

Did you ever notice...

that whenever Joanie Vennochi gets bored, whenever the Commonwealth ceases to amuse or divert, when the trogs and trolls go quiet and there are no "names" to conjure with...that she starts reflexively clawing away at John Kerry like an old unloved house cat?
The world teeters on the brink of a new Dark Age and all Spiteful Joanie can think to do is snarl in disappointment that JK isn't leaving Massachusetts for Foggy Bottom thus denying her the loutish spectacle of a special election for the US Senate.
Decadent...that is what Joanie is, she has passed thru an election for the ages all she can do is yawn, sneer at John Kerry can yearn for some new political brawl to stimulate her jaded sensibilities.

Sick
Demented
Typical....

Chambliss pulls out a squeaker victory in Georgia...

a slight ten point margin will keep him phat with lobbyist dough for six more years. Humble Elias thinks this a good thing regardless of that filibuster proof majority everyone was talking about. If things get hinky we can always invoke the "nuclear option" that the GOP so helpfully provided back in the days when they were in charge of the Senate.
Anyway....I think the US Senate would be a wan wasted place without one paranoid anti-veteran pseudo McCarthyite to Claghorn up the joint.
So congrats to Senator Chambliss.
Now if only someone would give Max Cleland a good job at a good wage...something high profile....has Veteran Affairs been filled yet?
At the very least an ambassadorship ought to be tendered...someplace unburdensome and sunny preferably.

The Dow drops 680 points on definite word...

reaching Wall Street that the US economy had been in recession for a year now. Maybe this is too much snarkage but is Wall Street the last stop on the Pony Express or something?
Recession has been all around us in word and deed for well over a year and only now does Wall Street find out???
Billions of dollars spent on news feeds, the internet, Lou Freakin' Dobbs, MSNBC and all the rest and Wall Street takes a full year to figure out there is a recession going on outside that big plate glass window.
Good lord and we are bailing these yaps out to the tune of 700 billion USD....appalling.
These people are hopeless, they strut around like Olympians when times are good and turn whining coward at the first contrary puff of wind. Ultimately that is my real problem with the business class in the USA they hopelessly unheroic and blind to their own revolting hypocrisy.
And thanks to the Randian hallucinations of Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan the rest of us, have to pick up the rubble from the apocalypse they have made.
Lovely...thanks guys, stalwart patriots all.

Fair warning to Sarah Palin

if she thinks Willard Mitt Romney will be a pushover in the GOP's 2012 presidential nominating race then she'd better reconsider her thesis top to bottom.
If you don't believe Humble Elias then Just ask Jane "Jingle Money" Swift, Shannon O'Brien and "Scary" Kerry Healey. Democrats and Republicans alike and all women Mitt trampled on his way to grabbing off whatever big brass ring took his fancy in that election year.
Romney is a cold blustery opportunist of no fixed conditions but he has a malign misogynistic ability to abort the careers of female politicians both the inept and the able alike. One might say it is his only demonstrated political talent at all.
Oh well, Sarah will find out when she gets to the inevitable debate at Saint Anselm College where Willard will no doubt spend ninety minutes of air time talking to her like she was a retarded five year old.
And that mah frenz will only be the beginning.

Chris Matthews for the US Senate?

Sounds like a nightmare scenario, but apparently the MSNBC's talker is staffing up to run against Arlen Spector in Pennsylvania.

Good Ghod with Obama in the White House the literal and figurative value of being a US Senator goes up a good twnety percentage points, at a critical moment like that who needs another motor-mouthed charlatan like Chris on Capitol Hill?
What is worse he could pull it off, money and celebrity can take you far in this life sad to say...even if you are a blustery jackwad. Moreover, Spector is pushing 80 with his best service to the Republic far behind him and a growing reputation as the Senate's loudest toothless lion as well...a very volatile mix in Humble Elias' opinion.
Need I remind my readers that Chris Matthews'was once the Iraq war's most cringe-worthy cheer-leader...when Bush stepped onto the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln Matthew's groveling took on a scary homo-erotic tone. Of course now following the polls the way a Wonderland Greyhound follows the electric rabbit Matthews' is all agin' the war...but Pennsylvania democrats ought yo be warned, Chris is utterly inconstant.
And then there is his on-air style, Super Tuesday poll coverage in particular, by 9:30pm Chris infallibly runs out of sensible things to say and starts yammering incoherently while his guests suppress their giggles right there on camera.
Who needs that action is the US Senate...hell they finally gave old Ted Stevens the heave-ho...time to class up the joint sez I.
The man is a clown, voluable cheap and spineless...if Humble Elias lived in Pennsylvania he's sooner vote for Italo Balbo or Bishop Sheen.

The coming Queer War

Mass Marrier is free to correct me here, but gay marriage has been outlawed in almost every state where it has gone before the electorate as a ballot referendum. The climax of this process having gone down in California, normally a bastion of gay rights where the infamous Proposition Eight passed with fifty two percent of the vote earlier this month.
To humble Elias gay rights, specifically in the form of same sex marriage has become the last great civil and social rights issue to confront this great republic. Therfore this malign anti-SSM referenda much resemble the "Dred Scott decision" being executed in miniature all over the country.
Abraham Lincoln in his rising days railed against the notion of putting the civil rights of others up to a vote as the very leading edge of despotism. Apparently in the 21st century we don't listen much to the old Rail-Splitter, well what the hell, they didn't listen to him til it was too damn late back then either.
I have in the past naively noted that the public acceptance of SSM would take a generation or more and that the Commonwealth's SSM marriage statute might not be "easily exported" beyond the Berkshires. However our opponents take a different view and fundraise and organize of the basis of making second class citizenship a reality all over the nation. This is a fight that has been forced upon us.
It is also a fight we dare not lose is anyone is to retail their own personal rights.
Sheer demographics are on our side, the younger the voter the more pro-SSM they skew, the problem is these cohorts have to be ideologically acticvated and then organized..they need leadership in other words. the dirty secret to the same sex marriage controversy is that it is a classic "Abe Simpson" issue, bitterly hated by men above the age of fifty and while that cohort has money to spend and is better positioned to vote...time is not on their side so to speak.
The courts waver on SSM's behalf, we need to start putting pressure on the legislatures both state and national in order to secure basc right of marriage for all...and that means organizing and voting.
The other side knows what it wants and couldn't care less whose rights are negated in order to achieve their end.
There is no safety for anyone save in electoral numbers, judges read election returns quite well and always have...state legislators tremble on election day.
This is the Queer War like it or not the fight is here and Humble Elias hopes we win it...

Idle non-sequitor thought on this fine holiday...

Imagine the "pop" that President Obama will get if and when he makes a state visit to Africa...

It'll be like when JFK got to Ireland except on a continental basis.

Anyway happy thanksgiving.

Gates staying on as Defense Secretary?

that is disheartening news to say the least. Although on Iraq policy (where clean hands are in short supply) I can see the wisdom of some measure of bipartisanship. However the choice does put some pressure on the President - Elect to stand by his timetable for withdrawl both within and without the US Government. The national security team he has whomped together, presumably with Hillary Clinton at State, General Jones at the NSC and now Gates bound over in the Pentagon is a collection of "yes votes" on Iraqi regime change. It is up to President Obama to hold everyone's feet to the fire.
My thinking is sorta simplistic, I'd rather everyone answer to the liberal, THAT remains the core change in substance and style...I'd rather control the whole of the executive department than the Department of Labor.

Keeping Gates on DOES perpetuate the myth of GOP invulnerability on security issues, the need for the "mommy party" to hide behind the "daddy party" and his vodka bottles, sandbags, bad securities, ill-cleaned guns and revered family bible issued out of a vending machine in 1964. All that schlock got repudiated three weeks ago I thought?

The "OTHER" Chimes at Midnight

screens at the Harvard Film Archive this Saturday night at 7pm. It hasn't been seen in Boston in years and is a notable Orson Welles film that remains unavailable on legit DVD, so Humble Elias sez go see it!.

Saw Steve Forbes of all people on CNN yesterday....

My Ghod but there is a guy with the courage of his restrictions. Faced with global financial catastrophe he just kept running his mouth on and on about more deregulation and further tax cuts all in a dense obscure way that not even a trained economist like Robert Reich could fathom.
Reich and Forbes were brought on to make sense out of the current crisis and while Steve simply delivered a three week old campaign commercial Reich actually addressed the decline of purchasing power in the American middle class induced by stagnant incomes. Forbes just stared into the camera with that creepy unblinking stare of his looking purely befuddled that the incoming admin would dare contemplate any other policy save the standard GOP practice of redistributing money from the working poor and middle class to the rich. Steve also had nothing good to say about the current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson which is strange given the mindless similarity of their economic policies.
Reich however made plain sense, demand has to be stimulated, a piddly tax cut won't do much over the short term so bid to address income inequalities has to be at the heart of our current policy.
It was good to see Former Labor Secretary Reich back on the job, as for Steve Forbes I'm sure the rest of Wolf Blitzer's rolodex was hiding under their desks. So the billionaire profligate gets props just for going on the air in my book.

Eight months ago...

Mitt Romney promised the recession-wracked workers of Michigan he'd reopen the automobile factories practically at gunpoint if need be. Last he excoriated Detroit as a "dinosaur" and denounced any bail-out bill aimed at preserving the auto-industry.
Suddenly, three million more unemploed don't both him none, it's like scruples or internal consistency, poof gone mean's NOTHING to Willard.
Rightly for once, Joanie Vennochi called him out on it....but then this is nothing more than the last of her divorce from Mitt, she once ardently believed that 2008 was gonna be the year of Romney's ride to glory.

Anyone else, who contradicted himself so blatantly and idiotically, would be headed to the electoral scrap heap...but I guess we've all gotten use to this kind of callow behavior from Mitt.

It seems that

John Kerry is being passed over for the Secretary of State's sinecure in favor of Hillary Clinton.
He does however have a lock on the Senate Foreign Relations Chair.
Well if there is any lingeribng disappointment in the Kerry camp they can be consoled by the sure notion that John Kerry will more than likely still hold the foreign relations gavel long after Hillary Clinton has gone back to White Plains.
And to me, Foreign Relations is the better gig.

Oh and...

The Bad Poets Society is baaaa-ack. In the lead up to the show on Friday they have been spotlighting "Presidential free-verse".

The President Elect is such a...

lawyer....first cabinet office he fills is the Attorney General.
Typical....
Well I suppose vetting Bill Clinton's post presidential finances, partnerships, fundraising and whatnot could take the rest of the month and the President Elect had to get some names out there.

At this writing the rumor is

that Joe Lieberman will hang onto his committee chairmanship under the democratic senate majority, regardless of his occasionally ugly apostasy on behalf of GOP nominee John McCain.
I don't really think that Lieberman should be ejected from the caucus, but handing the homeland security committee over to someone else does seem like a reasonably proportional response.
If Lieberman switches parties he'll still end up sans his chairmanship and likely lose his seat in 2012 so what's the problem?
If it's one thing I've learned in forty six years is that Senate democrats are renowned for their powers of forgiveness.
Sometimes the forgiveness can be a little hasty and undeserved though...not for nothing though but the man was almost nominated for VP by the GOP that alone should give Harry Reid pause regardless of all the smack Joe talked on the campaign trail.

Jeff Jacoby has crawled out of the rubble...

dusted himself off and sent a big sloppy sentimental and truculent valentine to none other than Sarah Palin.
Somehow a pork-devouring Alaskan secessionist is supposed to deliver the GOP out of it's current dilemma.
Most of these movement columnistas tend to see themselves as neo Augustan scholars, it's the whole "William F. Buckley" style pioneered by the late Connecticut Tory and brought to poserish perfection by George Will.
So it's sort of ironic that all these lordly intellectuals are pimping for Sarah a mildly crooked vulgarian with a soviet style to her class resentment.
But then, we had ourselves an "accountability moment" a bare two weeks ago and these are in the unintended results...defeat brings out the charlatans and the wizards...everyone promising the big medicine that'll restore the GOP to glory sans hard work or sacrifice.
Good luck with that one Jeff....

Question for the Day....

Will America ever elect a combat veteran of the Viet Nam war President?

Or is there some tacit unspoken ban in place to bar honored veterans of our only lost war to date from the highest office in the land?

Consider this, John Kerry USN Officer, with two or is it three Purple Hearts out of Viet Nam....doesn't win in 2004.
Now John McCain another USN Office with a chestfull of medals again doesn't win in 2008.

Teddy Roosevelt a veteran of the Spanish American War made it to the White House, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower both saw action in World War One, JFK and Jerry Ford both served with honor in World War Two and LBJ and Nixon enlisted as soon as possible for the same war....the list goes on and then STOPS at the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
Now that I mention it, have any combat veterans of Korea made it into the Oval Office?

Is there something going on here d'ye suppose, like maybe that the American people don't want to be reminded at the very least about Viet Nam even after all these years?

Item!

He just won a biii-ig re-election victory, he is making lots of useful new friends on the job and yet for all that the word on the street is, he'll STILL be challenged in the primary come 2010.
Seems like certain cohorts wanted to take a breather this time around...concentrate on other things. However soon enough their attention will return to matters close at hand.

If I were him, I'd keep my cel-phone charged and just keep knockin' on doors.

The Panopticon....

Joanie Vennochi gets up on her high horse about hypocrisy on Beacon Hill vis a vis the Wilkerson affair versus the Marzilli disaster. Truly the woman loves her double standards doesn't she?
All I can add is, that if well executed video footage of Jim Marzilli chasing prim soccer moms thru the streets of Lowell was available...he'd be gone by now.
Conversely if no video was available of State Senator Wilkerson stuffing her blouse with lucre...well the sting of the whole thing would be muted.
It's the visuals that make this all so immediate and so humiliating for all involved.
Well whatever...Joanie gets to wax righeous...ah-gain.

Someone needs to take Sarah Palin aside and quietly

tell her that she and McCain LOST the election a week ago...thats why all the shouty people in Phoenix were crying and the TV cameras were pointed at the GOP ticket that night.
Honestly the woman has given more press interviews in the week after the election than she did during the entire campaign.
Maybe young Bristol could have a word with her moms, break the news gently as it were, seems like the poor kid has some experience in that department.

Good Ghod what am I supposed to write about NOW????

Alleged Corruption in the state legislature? Geez that is an original idea....nobody else workin' that side of the street.
The Mass Pike? ("It's bin done bee-fore" to quote the late George Harrison)
Watch the "Carebear's Countdown" while I figure this out...

Spiteful Joanie gets her Groove Back....

Didn't take long for Joanie to recover from the election...nothing like calling John Kerry a liar to put the steam back in a girl's step.
Remember Joanie has some ground to make up, she once predicted 2008 would be Mitt Romney's year of glory.
Well, let us credit Joanie with some internal honesty, at least she isn't one of these op-ed pimps who all for John Kerry's notional move to Foggy Bottom...their interest is in a nice bloody democratic special primary...it's either that or go back to covering the school committee at this point.
Nope...Joanie has a venomous integrity, and a point after a fashion...that maybe it's a bad idea for Kerry to take the Secretary of State's job if offered.
Besides, the Secretary of State's sinecure is akin to being America's most experienced headwaiter, one is faultlessly dressed, brisk, efficient, polite and soon forgotten. No more than three or four US Secretaries of State have amounted to anything since World War II.
Just say NO John...that is all Humble Elias can advise.

The epic of Defeat...

Has there ever been a politician so thoroughly repudiated as is Joe Lieberman?
His entire world-view has been discredited and he wasn't even a candidate for office this year.
THAT has to hurt.
Lieberman came of age in US politics in an age of conservative ascendancy. Like many others he thought that negotiation and concession were the keys to survival for the democratic party...indeed liberalism itself could not prosper without strong outside moderation.
Implicit within this notion is the believe that America was a center-right polity and as such, the GOP's electoral dominance would never ever end.
Thus triangulation, acccomodation and negotiation were the democrats only hope.
It was a policy that worked well for Bill Clinton in most instances during his two terms in office mostly because he himself proved a shrewd negotiator with a instinct for the weaknesses of congressional republicans.
However it was also a policy rooted in the belief that no democrat would ever achieve a amjority in a US Presidential contest thus reinforcing the need for accomodation in the executive department as well as congress.
Then came 1994 and the GOP took over the democrats last great redoubt, the House of Representatives, if anything put paid to the myth of conservative omnipotence it was that.
Joe Lieberman saw the numbers then and in 2002 and decided the future looked grim for anyone who wasn't prepared to ingratiate themselves with the crooked likes of Ted Stevens, Phil Gramm and Denny Hastert.
I mean no wonder the guy became a jobber for Fox News.
And it is these beliefs, less his foreign policy views that have brought Joe to his current dilemma...stay with the democratic caucus and lose his committee chair or flip to the GOP and STILL lose his chair and possibly his seat in the senate come 2012.
He took a flyer on following John McCain around with his head bowed in lacke-ish servility and it got him exactly nothing, not the cabinet post he craved nor the respect he once deserved and has casually disgarded.
These are all pretty bleak prospects in the opinion of Humble Elias but they a situation of Joe's own making. Unlike Bill Clinton a reputation for native political shrewdness has never attached itself to Joe Lieberman so how he survives this is difficult to say.
There are those who say that Lieberman's transgressions were no worse than the white southern bourbon democrats of yore all of whom broke with the party on a quadrennial basis....but then Russell Long and John Stennis didn't follow Richard Nixon around on the campaign trail sporting a faded lackey-ish grin either.

Those vapors are heady there Senator

Just don't inhale them is all I can advise.
After all, if Scot Lehigh is pimping the Secretary of State's office for John Kerry, then you KNOW there has to be something wrong with the idea.
All these pundits will smirk and coo "great idea" so that they can get a nice bloody special senatorial election to report...and at the end when the carnage stretches from North Adams to Dighton, they can once again sell their souls to the nearest republican in a tattered "moderate" costume.
Sad...but true.
So don't do it John, you're done wandering in the wilderness, now you have a chance to dictate terms from a position of strength within the US Senate.
Foggy Bottom is great frozen wasteland for an active mind in public life...the President calls all the policy shots now, who needs that noise.
If offered, then politely turn it down sez Humble Elias.

Sad to say Proposition #8,

a hellish measure that outlaws gay marriage passed in California last Tuesday.
Apparently endless wingnut squadristi took to the streets, Mormon "volunteers" streamed in from Utah and the usual lies were laid on thick...and what the hell it worked.
So now in the name of protecting marriage the sacred vows of some 11,000 Californians have been sundered by electoral fiat.
Conservatives are a sick and demented breed as I've noted ad nauseum down thru the years, this nonsense they spout about "small gummint" ALWAYS takes a back seat to gaining the power to mind some else's business and push the same around.
Gays are a big part of their demonology because most of them haven't matured past the sandbox and the need to incessantly bully targets that threaten their poorly internalized sexuality is a big part of childhood.
I say get a ballot measure up for 2010 that retroactively outlaws all divorces in California back to 1865...if it passes Los Angeles will be a ghost town before midnight. If they are gonna wreck the marriages of 11,000 gays the best response is to outlaw the precious divorces of numberless straights.
Maybe...if they think in the vengeful terms of Humble Elias. Otherwise some hard green-grass roots organizing has to be executed to get this measure repealed.
Otherwise Tuesday was a sad day for the cause of love....

And while we are at it....

It is the Revenge of Former Illinois Governor and two time democratic presidential candidate Adlai Ewing Stevenson as well.

Curiously, Adlai would be President Elect Obama's closest political relative, urbane suave, eloquent, hung up on Big Ideas, a liberal and an ardent exponent of personal freedom.
Sound like anyone you know???

Ah but there Stevenson parts company from the President Elect, Adlai was beaten twice and never mastered the art of organizing for victory over the long haul...Barack Obama has those qualities in abundance.

Last night at about 11pm

I parked my car across from the State House, sighed, looked at the moon and tried to get close to God.
And sure enough, up the hill marched the ghosts of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment...wounds still fresh, sabers nicked and soiled, rifles still smoking and heads held high.
This spectral regiment of honor, silently tramped past me and stopped only to salute the very golden dome and then throw the very flag itself the crispest salute I'd ever seen.
And then the march resumed and they were gone.

Even those who came before us had a good night last night.

The Star Spangled Revenge of John Forbes Kerry

Four years after a wafer thing loss in the presidential race....

And after four years of contempt derision and the obligatory wanders in the wilderness....

A bare two months after he was compelled to go flat out against an electoral gnat....

A day after he crushed the hopes of a GOP nominee who was less interested in public office and more of an aspirant to Batman's cape....

NOW John Kerry gets his revenge!

WHO put Barack Obama on the map in '04?

John Kerry

WHO encouraged Obama to run - now?

John Kerry

WHO acted as a trusted advisor and made his endorsement plain when Obama needed it most?

John Kerry

With last night's local and national victories, Kerry has redeemed his political profile and seen a firm friend elected President of the United States.
He will be in a position to do good public spirited business with the White House going forward...his agenda has got some momentum now....much of what he proposed a mere four years ago is about to become law.
Not bad for a guy written off as a too-tall stiff who likes to windsurf.
There is wild talk of Kerry becoming Secretary of State, Humble Elias urges the Senator not to inhale such heady vapors...we need his leadership here in Massachusetts and lets face it, Foggy Bottom ain't the sinecure it used to be.
Besides, as a US Senator he is best positioned to reap the political harvest of yesterday's almighty victory.
It's good to win...and if not, to be seen as a friend and benefactor of the winner.

Adlertag in Menotomy....

The abiding drawback to working the polls on election day is watching Mike Barnicle run his meat hole by the hour on MSNBC.
After a mere sixty minutes he runs out of sensible things to say and is reduced to decrying the "the 24-7 cable news culture", y'know the one that otherwise keeps the wolf far from Mike's door.

Ah but the Spartans were magnificent yesterday, they hit the phones like Napoleon's imperial guard jacked the Prussians. By noon yesterday the combined campaign had made an unpredecented sixty thousand phone calls on behalf of Barack Obama.

Bob Peters, Aimee Coolidge and the whole posse are naught but electoral field marshals...they and their spartan troops are indefatigable and undaunted in defeat or in victory. The last three elections we have cycled thru have tested and proven a voter ID-GoTV driven operation that is the wonder of Middlesex County and beyond. Moreover they deployed hundred of activists in the fertile electoral crescent of southern New Hampshire and once again helped tip the balance on election night.

They are glorious.

Meanwhile, destiny had clearly quit on the GOP and gone marching in the streets for Obama....well at least the weather was nice for overthrowing destiny...in fact the most beautiful election day I can recall.
Beats the hell out of the sleet we had in 1992 when Bill Clinton's hour struck.
Indeed, wherever I did visibility yesterday, I was greeted with heartfelt thanks from the voters.
THAT mah frenz' was a big change from years gone by where election day visibility usually occasions at least three ugly confrontations with angry voters.

Hell, the spartans went fully apeshit in extremis last night at exactly 9:30pm EST when CBS news called Ohio for Obama...howling and crashing their spears against their shields.

Let the record also show, that Menotomy, a town with a wowser-ish aversion to taverns and bars came out roaring on behalf of decriminalizing pot.

Strange days indeed sang the Liverpool bard.

Tom Brokaw meanwhile looks gaunt and a little feeble like all this change just plumb goes over his pointy little head. NBC's youth profile is otherwise head down my correspondent Luke Russert, the late Tim's son who himself looks he ought to be crushing beercans against his forehead over on the lower quad at BC.

Gee what a shame Tim Russert didn't live to see this...and how great it is to think Don Imus did!

Ah but the mandate of the American people is a powerful thing, a breaker of nations and a fool-maker of the mighty.

Speaking of the mighty, McCain tried to stay classy in his concession speech even as boos and anti-Obama cat-calls clouded the air. Frankly, McCain looked as if he couldn't wait to put some serious distance between himself and his own audience.

In the end, who knew John McCain was clue-less as to how to win a US Presidential campaign?

In a few hours....

power passes into the hands of the American people and I rise from this keyboard and enter the humble ranks of the Immortal Spartans, the dreaded democrats of Arlington occasionally beat but always defiant unto the last.
It is an honor to serve with such as these....for a host of democrats and causes have they marched and marched down thru the years. On election days I still see faces that I campaigned with for Joseph P. Kennedy in 1986....guys who go back to the Glory Days with Speaker O'Neill.
That however, is ALL I can do, I lack the time talent money and luck to play with politics at a bigger level...the sign holding and doorknockers is about all I can manage.
Lets hope that tomorrow it is enough.
Whatever happens though duty will be satisfied to the "last full measure of devotion" to quote Lincoln.
So for the Glory of the Republic, for the sake of the Commonwealth and it's dignity, get out there tomorrow and Pitch into them HARD!!

In regards to Question Three

I'm inclined to vote against the proposed ban on dog racing.
If the pups are in anywhere near the same shape as the horse racing in this state, then both activities are on the high road to extinction anyway. Humble Elias spent last Wednesday at Suffolk Downs and roughly estimates not fifty people were present to bet on the scheduled races. The closed circuit feed from out of state tracks seemed to be doing marginally better business all around but in all the track is wan inglorious place these days.
On he other hand, if we outlaw dog racing can horse racing be far behind?
And if we go for the two-fer won't that inadvertently fuel demands for all out casino gambling in the Commonwealth?
And if that is the case will the same coalitions be out there to oppose casino gambling on the grounds of humanitarian concern for the welfare of gambling addicts?
I think not we could do right by puppies and horses and end up putting humanity in a bind.

J'es sayin'.....

Question #8 in California....

if passed will retroactively outlaw gay marriage in that state.

The measure's "base" is composed of people who would happily criminalize abortion, contraception and make it nigh impossible to get a divorce with any celerity IF they could.

But they can't so they pursue the next best thing which is gleefully dissolving the marriages of such neighbors as merit their biddy-ish disapproval.

Ever notice how wingnuts invariably take out their frustrations with American society on gays?

Which is ironic, those who want to strengthen marriage (at gunpoint if need be) commence their jihad by busting up the marriages of 11,000 of their fellow citizens.

I can't discount the ugly possibility that there is a cohort out there that is just desperate to take someone else's rights away...really anyone...their own lives are harsh and empty paid for with debt and shot thru with threats from the pulpit...nothing left to do BUT disenfranchise someone else.

Viewing "The View"

Yesterday the chat show's hosts all dressed up as various US President's and then proceeded to grill a numerologist and a psychic about the upcoming US election.

It was akin to a scene cut from "Brazil" to say the least.

Geez I almost forgot

The Chimes at Midnight proudly endorses John Kerry for another term in the US Senate.

Churchill once made a famous observation about Abraham Lincoln's critics "They did not know leadership when they saw it".

That would seem to be the case with Kerry, he is often derided for his attention to his national profile but then again he is down in Washington serving with Ted Kennedy the ultimate national profile Senator, so I'm not sure what the mishaugas is about in the end.
From the environment to the war, from public transportation to nurturing small businesses John Kerry has been in there hammering away. He may not be a 100%-er but the ninety percent he does have runs deep and hard. This current campaign though vexing, has forced the Junior Senator to get out there, spread some money around, meet the folks and remind all and sundry of his many good works on behalf of the Commonwealth.
going forward that may be a good thing.
The republic is faced with a crisis, and it may shortly deteriorate into a question of survival, we should not dispense with John Kerry's proven leadership under these circumstances.
Moreover a historic change in leadership is about to happen, for all those challenges with and without the state I choose John Kerry next Tuesday, I hope all of you will do likewise.

No doubt about it...

Governor Sarah Palin is white trash with a chip on her shoulder the size of an aircraft carrier.
That alone is no bar to higher office, I mean look at Bill Clinton, the white trashiest president we have had in a century.
But Palin's lack of class goes waa-ay past mere gruesomeness and straight to treachery.
I mean, the campaign isn't even over yet and already she is talking about running for President in 2012!
Way to back the main guy up to the last ditch there, Sarah.
There have been timid or inept VP nominees, but Palin is a rare example of a stone cold traitor to the ticket.
For her to go up, she needs for McCain to go down.
Palin has calcualted that she needs to lay the groundwork now for a run in 2012.
A more skilled less self aggrandizing politician would artfully conceal this calculation til after the election. Sargent Shriver and Dan Quayle (neither of whom would be confused with an A-List statesman) could execute this sort of subterfuge with great ease.
Not Sarah Palin though, two months in the Vice Presidential limelight has always degraded her judgement to an appalling degree. A Nixonian egomania has revealed itself...too bad she doesn't have a tenth of Tricky Dick's native shrewdness...on second thought maybe that is a good thing in and of itself going forward.

Oh I almost forgot

To endorse Senator Barack Obama for President and Senator Joe Biden for Vice President next Tuesday!

There are many reasons to vote for Barack Obama he is charming, affable, eloquent and his election would probably break the power of a deeply corrupt and intellectually bankrupt brand of movement conservative that has been ruining the nation by increments for a generation.
All that is good, but the main reason to vote for Obama is stark and simple, he proposes new policies to address the crisis at hand and McCain does not. Moreover given his erratic behavior these past three months there is little to suggest that the piffle and eyewash McCain has proposed would ever get passed should the Senator from Arizona actually win.
Does anyone out there at this point really think John McCain can govern at all?

Obama however can move the nation beyond deadlock, he can reaffirm the oldest truism of all that politics matter and that policies can change our lives for the better. Everything he has done since the nominate shows he is a politician of the finest vintage...he "gets it". Senator Obama understands the character of your victory influences how you govern...he proposes to win honestly and therefore he must govern honestly. It is a simple notion but great nations are delivered thus...do not forget this.
From the beginning I asserted that the democrats no matter who won were taking a helluva chance...but history has surged right past those qualms and now presents us with a real opportunity.
We have nowhere left to go in these United States except forward, and forward means Obama.

Note to Citizen Beatty

the next time some woolly witted campus conservative group puts a petition in front of you to legalize concealed weapons on the quad....just fold it up neatly put it in your pocket and tell them you'll give it "deep and abiding thought".
We already let them drive cars which are UNconcealed weapons with a serious capacity for devastation...now Beatty wants to arm college students?

Good Ghod what a difference a generation makes eh? Back in 1969 such a proposal would have made John Mitchell and Richard Nixon go berserk....concealed weapons on anti war protesters? What would Nixon's beloved police and hardhats say???
Doesn't help that Beatty is running as peacenik this year claiming he'd a voted against the Iraq...just an average ordinary peace loving GOP security expert and his legions of armed college students.
Makes perfect sense to me.

Nothing....

(Still on vacation)

All I did today was go to the gym, eat some lunch, run some errands and listen to the soundtrack to the Charlton Heston masterpiece "The Omega Man".

A sample of which can be heard hyar.

As I've said before, forget all this "reform" palaver, we are down to the simple question of survival now...whether the American Experiment Endures or Dissipates....hence today's musical selection.

"WHAT!????"

(blogging whilst still officially on vacation! CURSE the free use of the hotel business center!)
Bill Frickin' Weld endorsed Obama????

Geezus Chrysler who is next? Frontier Fremont, Nancy Reagan, Ron Zeigler, Alf Landon???
Spiro Agnew is dead right? So he is out...but I mean everyone else seems to be in play over there!

I'm still waiting for Bill Goldberg to come out for the Senator from Illinois, that is when you will know the missiles are flying.

Honestly though, you are defined in politics in some sense by the loyalty you inspire when the rubber hits the road.
McCain does have his die hards but this steady steady steady drum beat of hard corps GOP stalwarts deserting him for Obama says something about what the political class really thinks about the GOP nominee.
In fact it speaks volume in the opinion of Humble Elias.

Note to the Laity

Humble Elias is going on a short vacation he expects to resume blogging after the weekend assuming no palpable public outrage disturbs his rest.
However, if it all goes to smash, and I don't come back, try to remember I was once an Eagle....

It costs the RNC $155,000.00

bucks to date to dress up Governor Sarah Palin like Joe the Plumber's idea of Madonna?
Yeesh.
Doesn't take long for the so-called conservative populists to cultivate expensive tastes and start swanning about like they were born to rule does it?
On the other hand, clearly Governor Palin has drained the RNC's costume budget,Senator McCain was on the Nightly News yesterday and had on an old plaid shirt and no necktie he looked threadbare and mangy to say the least.
He was grumbling and snorting about "reform" the rest of us have officially thrown that rubbish overboard...right now the name of the game is "survival".

Hey, I wonder if Governor Palin will be able to keep the clothes if they lose the election?
I muse of things like this just as I wonder if I'll have a job in a year,dispassionately with a twinge of bitter irony.
McCain was up in NH this week, promising to take a "meat ax" to the federal budget...if New Hampshire had a cool million for every Claghorn sumbitch who went crashing thru the snow-drifts bawling for low taxes and cutting the federal budget they could repeal the property tax entirely.
But hey at least Governor Palin looked presentable in $500 kicks.

Jeff Beatty...

former Delta Force Commando, CIA Agent and Associate Member of the Justice League of America as well as a candidate for US Senate hyar in Massachusetts has a petition calling for the defeat of his opponent Senator John Kerry.
In the Annals of dumb campaign stunts this is right up there with pretty much every witless gimmick trotted out by John McCain this year. It is certainly as senseless as selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Some 370 worthies have signed said petition, which has a mealy mouthed adolescent slam-book quality to it if you read all the accompanying palaver that is.
Oh and in case you haven't heard (I'm not even sure Jeff's fellow republicans have heard for that fact) Beatty is running as a placard waving peacenik this year chiding John Kerry for his vote authorizing action against Iraq in terms gratifying to the outer fringes of the Democratic Underground.com.
Waaall I swan....seems to me with such lavishly detailed military and national security bona fides you wouldn't have to look too deeply into Jeff's past to find the usual freeperish bellicosity. Trust me on that he is wearing kevlar under that tie-dyed tee-shirt.

A thought just occurred to me...

Wolf Blitzer spent about seven minutes of congressionally licensed airtime on Sunday morning chuckling heartily over Sarah Palin's guest appearance on Saturday Night Live. His panel of Washington DC pundits all made similar jovial noises. Nowhere in all this hail-fellow-well-met rubbish did ANYONE observe that Governor Palin has the time to appearance on a TV sketch comedy and yet she has never called a simple press conference since being nominated for Vice President at the Saint Paul GOP convention.
She will do "SNL" but ghod forbid she should go on "Meet the Press".
The fact that Blitzer and his useless collection of windbags couldn't recall this remarkable factoid is a damning indictment of the state of television journalism today...and we get those damning indictments now almost every time we switch on the TV.

Wow....

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has endorsed Senator Obama for President...geez.
"Th' woods are burning boys" to quote Arthur Miller.
Who is next?

Bill Goldberg?

Joanie Vennochi notes in her surliest tones today...

that Sarah Palin drew a boisterous audience of one thousand up in New Hampshire this week.
This being spiteful Joanie though, she declined to note that Senator Barack Obama spoke at an outdoor rally in Missouri with 100,000 audience members the previous day.

So a thousand...not so much.

There was a time when New Hampshire was a wingnut powerhouse home to some of the gaudiest reactionary superstars in the nation. Theatrical weirdos like Meldrim Thompson the Bruce Springsteen of conservative politics, John Sununu a man who made Karl Rove look like Fred Rogers and of course William Loeb the late publisher of the Manchester Union Leader a daily with a defiantly Falangist outlook...the sort of newspaper that only Roberto Farinacci could love.

Now today...nothing...Palin should have ingathered ten times as many...a thousand simply doesn't impress frankly it seems like pity-numbers if you asked me.

Well what can I say? The sun that dawned on Barry Goldwater and shone down on Ronald Reagan down in Malibu, now dimly sets in the west as Sarah Palin stands over a freshly shot moose on the Alaskan tundra.

Oh now don't get me wrong, win or lose Sarah will be with us for a long time to come, the final inheritors are always a tawdry angry and inescapable lot..."cheated" in their opinion of glory right at the moment of supreme triumph.

Economic catastrophe has unwound those four mutually reinforcing myths that make movement conservatism so strong in the USA, the rugged individualists have been exposed as greedy imbeciles and the small gummint' crowd have finally been fatally compromised by their own lies.
This leaves angry greviance ridden social conservatives in a dangerously exposed position...their baroque theology will seem like malevolent dithering now in the face of an international economic crisis.
Don't laugh, this is the very situation that once confronted the Anti-Saloon League in 1932 and brought a swift end to prohibition in the bargain.
So yes one way or another, Sarah and her myth of christian politics will inherit but it may well be dust and ashes in her mouth, that is if a scandal doesn't finally drag her back into obscurity and that could still be the case as of this writing.
Her big challenge if the GOP loses if whether or not she can fetch the Christian Dominionist remnants and fundraise on that basis, if she can then she will be something akin to a force in national politics going forward. After all few politicians have starved or suffered in this country for preaching sectional hatred...if she can't fundraise off those cohorts than she is headed for Ferraro-ville on a express train.

Right now though, she has the good fortune to be faced with the uptight and priggish Mitt Romney as her chief rival for national leadership a contest that would vaguely resemble a sluggish robot versus Bugs Bunny.
Day by day though, it is getting tougher to be a conservative almost everything they believe is being systematically beaten down by the facts. In that respect, Governor Palin is about to inherit a wasteland.

Max Cleland is coming to town....

Alas I'm out of town that weekend, but the former senator will be campaign with JK thither and yon all that day. Schlep over the Blue Mass Group for the details.
There is a lot of thoughtless talk about Kerry's senate seat opening up soon IF Obama carries the day next month...I'm inclined to discount such talk. However, Max Cleland is tanned, rested and ready I think he'd make a dandy Secretary of Veteran's Affairs.
Since John Kerry was an early mark for Barack Obama maybe he could put the word out when the time is ripe...assuming of course Max wanted the gig.
Just sayin'.

Puppies and Kittens and Horsies

all seem to have a firm friend in Senator John Kerry.
If you don't believe me then below is an excerpt from a press release from the Senator's office extolling his 100% rating from the Humane Society.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 16, 2008


KERRY SCORES 100% ON HUMANE SOCIETY HUMANE SCORECARD


BOSTON – Senator John Kerry today received a score of 100% on the Humane Society’s Humane Scorecard on animal protection issues during the 110th Congress. His score was based on his opposition to horse slaughter, animal fighting, downed animal slaughter and his work to prohibit the use in research of dogs and cats obtained from unknown sources – including stolen family pets.

100% is no small feat for today's US Senator on the go, most of his colleagues are great and eloquent apologists for the virtues of dogs and horses...senatorial bombast in praise of our four legged friends could fill a country library.
So the competition is pretty intense, I think JK had to save Bambi's mom or do some heroic footwork during a circus fire to get that last notch in his belt.

Anyway...congrats to Senator Kerry, Lassie is glad to see you've got her back.

Some Joe to Go

For John McCain it all came down to pandering to a plumber from Ohio last night. Indeed by ten o'clock he was practically promising Joe Wurzelbacher the Danzig Corridor and free hookers for life...all in a sad tawdry bid to connect with the plain pee-pull.
Frankly McCain is never more pathetic than when he panders, as Matt Taibbi has noted the Arizona Senator is a shitty liar and when he grovels...well it ain't pretty.
Moreover, he is old and mangy looking, every one of these debates has shown McCain to remarkable disadvantage...who knew he whistled thru his teeth like Paul Harvey?
The clincher is, that Joe Wurzelbacher the above mentioned plumber made some pro-McCain noises after the debate but pointed declined to endorse the GOP nominee or even tell us who he was voting for.
Yipes all that pandering for nothing.
To me that indicates Mister Wurzelbacher perhaps plans to cut loose and vote for Bob Barr but that is naught but a guess.
Otherwise it was an excruciating debate to watch ninety minutes of airtime devoted to John McCain's ineffectual attempts to claw down Barack Obama...when attack politics go right it is appalling, when they are done poorly or impotently it is plainly embarrassing to watch.
Last night McCain pretty much humiliated himself, he complained about Obama "running against George Bush" but then again why is an old angry codger like McCain in this race but to avenge his loss to Bush in 2000?

Thru-out this campaign McCain has tried to make himself over into Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Bruce Wayne and now finally Earl K. Long in full rant mode....none of it has worked, thank ghod let us hope it stays that way.

Barnicle on Imus Today

Ahhh the Ambassador from Caucasiastan, he NEVER fails me, sentimental vain full of vulgar and patently false self worship...the man is my meat I tells yuh.

Today he actually had the gall to complain about the news media's trivialization of politics and the proliferation of gotcha adverts and the like. This was right before he threw out a few proposed "gotcha" one liners for McCain to use in the debate tonight.
Rigorous internal logic was never Mike's strong suit.
Anyway Barnicle complaining about the trivialization of politics is akin to an aging whore decrying short skirts....this is the guy who has relentlessly reduced every major question of public policy to a level of mawkish sentimentality that would not be out of place on a CW soap opera.
If Mike wants to do something about the trivialization of politics then he ought to stop writing and cease all media appearances, THAT would be a big start on raising journalistic standards right there.

Stay Frosty....cuz....

the word on the street is things are tight in New Hampshire. The polling is good but the GOTV phone outreach suggests a closer race.
It is worth recalling that despite running a campaign that has veered from foolishness to screeching dementia Senator McCain still has a reservoir of goodwill among the New Hampshire electorate, they've launched him twice towards the White House in 2000 and 2004...so complacency is not an option.
Moreover Senator Kerry prevailed in the Granite State by 9,000 votes and only after a heroic effort to ID his vote and get them to the polls.
So leave your dancing shoes under the bed, call anyone you know in New Hampshire and sing Obama's praise, this is NOT over yet and we could very easily lose the whole thing.

Levi Johnson assured the Republic yesterday

that his pending nuptials to Governor Sarah Palin's thoroughly saved and knocked up daughter Bristol is a PLANNED shot-gun wedding and not one of those crazy UNPLANNED hillbilly shotgun wedding like you see on TV.

So while young Levi mulls over place settings for the reception at the VFW Hall, let this whole mishaugas stand as a tombstone to the notion that there is security in ignorance.

Humble Elias is starting to feel distinctly sorry for young Bristol, pregnant and about to be hustled off into a sure-misfire teenaged marriage I don't think the rest of the country will catch up to me until the inevitable divorce.

He is down in the polls and everything thinks he is a

dough-faced jerk, but it would seem when western civilization reached the final extremity last week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown dug down deep and pushed for the outright purchase of bank assets to meet the crisis.
Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman has the whole story in the above link including all the heavy duty economic stuff that neither I nor Sarah Palin nor John McCain fully understand.

Let this stand as mute testimony to the vast leadership gap that exists between the Bush White House and the rest of the thinking, breathing and suffering world...to think we had to wait on LONDON to generate a worthwhile idea!

"Facts are Stupid Things"

Or so Ronald Reagan once grumbled in far more palmier times.
Given that movement conservatism is an interlocking series of mutually reinforcing myths, denying the facts in a given situation takes up a great deal of time for the average mossback.
Take for example that economic sky-grifter Alan Greenspan...on the basis of a too youthful reading of "Atlas Shrugged" he decided in his capacity as Federal Reserve Board Chairman that the patently unintelligible derivatives market could "self regulate" sans any federal oversight at all.
The catastrophic consequences of this woolly witted nonsense can be seen on the front pages of newspapers all over the world...and we still have not hit economic rock bottom.
All because a bad work of science fiction written by a humorless russian ex-pat told him that regulation was socialism, socialism is banditry and banditry is bad.
You cannot argue with a mind that believes such rubbish, the mere fact that we are about to pass thru a what looks like another great depression makes no impression on simmering dogmatists such as these.
The rest of us though, live in a world where delusions if forged into policy have great and terrible consequences. So whatever happens next month, let us try to start over with a healthier respect for the facts, and forget about the right feelings or gut instincts or what exactly would John Galt do.
Humble Elias has a suspicion, and it is a dark one, he barely gives it voice...that hour by hour this election isn't even in the main about the clash of ideologies...forget about ACORN and abortion or Bristol's baby...the basic question in this campaign is coming down to national survival for the American Experiment.

Palin' Around...

Well... we now know why Sarah Palin ran for Governor of Alaska in the first place, she needed the power and prestige of the office to persecute and impoverish her ex-brother in law, a state trooper of unknown worth.
Give those hillbilly avatars the Hatfields and the McCoy's credit they went at it honestly, with rifles and clubs...Sarah Palin does her feudin' in a slick citified way citing unsubstantiated threats and getting her loutish husband to lobby her own staff like a proper passive aggressive GOP fembot.
In all, sickening.
Serious blogarchs will recall that I Humble Elias predicted rough sledding down the road for Ms. Palin during my now legendary appearance on the "Left Ahead"podcast back on September 9th.
"She is as dirty as a barnyard pig" quoteth myself.
But even I could never ever have foreseen such a stunning and petty application of corruption...fire the public safety commissioner to get back at your sister's ex-husband?
Great Krypton, the Hapsbergs in the dim twilight of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire couldn't be more selfish and stupid!
Yet for all her misuse of power, I don't want her off the GOP ticket, her shrill semi-fascistic rallies are sending thousands of voters over into the democratic column and she has single handedy regenerated political humor in these doomstruck times...now THAT my friends IS a positive contribution.
Besides Mitt Romney would never be this much fun...trust me on that.

Who knew John McCain could be so graceless....

as to nod his head and enable with a smile as one of his audience members goes into a frothing fugue state?
The country is falling into ruins before our eyes and all these poor fools can do is rant and rave about socialism and some old dickhead from out the Weather Underground.

To think I've lived to see such things in America.

If the Treasury is now buying a majority stake in our

moribund US banks...then aren't we in effect socializing the banking system without recourse to the dreaded "S Word"? That at least was the lead story in today's New York Times, left unsaid was whether or not these are investment banks or commercial banks....not that there is much difference these days after those champion de-regulators Phil Gramm and John McCain got done with em'.
My point is, lending is paralyzed, the government is buying bank stock left and right sans much initial effect (the dow dropped another five hundred points today) at some point the medicine takes hold or else BIG enterprises with large payrolls go out of business for lack of access to credit.
So that next January the incoming President will be presented with a stagnant recession wracked economy and a finance sector that has been nationalized in a sneaky mealy-mouthed Texas bareque sort of a way.
And at that point, we are gonna need some very clear and concise thinking in the White House, ATOP that fabled change in direction.

Elegant contempt...

Senator John Kerry has agreed to two hour long debates with his republican opponent Jeff Beatty...below is an excerpt from the requisite press release:

BOSTON – Senator John Kerry’s campaign announced today that his opponent’s campaign has agreed to John Kerry’s proposal of two hour-long debates – one television debate and one radio debate.
The televised debate will take place on New England Cable News and the radio debate will be hosted by WTKK radio’s Jim Braude and Margery Eagan. Specific dates and details are still being finalized.

Talk about kicking dirt on Ed O'Reilly one last time...I mean two hours compared to the half hour Kerry committed to with his primary rival...you do the math. Still and all that I'm glad everyone is taking the process seriously, because the times get more serious every day it seems.
The Dow is still plunging with no end in sight, the bail out, last week's solution hasn't restored an iota of confidance from bankers or investors...we have yet to hit bottom and I fear when we do it will be hard.
So hell yeah bring on the debates.

Debate Blogging or "This one here!"

It does not help John McCain's cause one whit to refer to his senate colleague with such a dehumanized term, maybe that shit sounded all tuff and studly at Annapolis, but at the town hall tonight old man McCain came off as weird and frantic and desperate to accord no basic human respect to his esteem opponent.
Straight talk indeed.
John McCain had a great opportunity tonight and he came off like a nasty old ass-hole the sort of old golem that is the bane of nice neighborhoods all over America.

Erraticum

If seccessionist politician Sarah Palin and old man McCain are gonna question Senator Obama's patriotism (like we didn't see that one coming!) then I don't have any problem with the democrats questioning John McCain's sanity.
He IS a crazy grouchy old coot after all...and serious blunt force impact trauma to the head is a strong predictor of cognitive issues later on in life...the VA won't admit it but it is much discussed in medical circles.

What the hell, McCain's grandsire Barry Goldwater said every crazy thing that popped into his head and the dems rightly called him out on it on a daily basis back in the 1964...which WAS a campaign we won by a country mile.

Starting a new job tomorrow so my blogging may become

intermittent and whimsical while I suss out the new gig.

However to recap:
Sarah Palin sez Barack Obama "pals around" with terrorists...as opposed to that borderline national socialist Alaskan secessionist front she and her husband supported with their money and their goodwill, no those were all true blue Americans every one.
Y'know it only just occurred to me but if I was a Russian intelligence officer and I was looking to stir some shit up in Alaska I'd be sending money to that secessionist outfit too...

Follow the money Tovarisch.

Jeff Jacoby screams for Question One today in the Globe, apparently his answer to the global financial crisis is to throw gasoline on the fire and see if that settles things. Conservative civilization is coming to an end and apparently Jeff wants to drag us all down with it, at least here in Massachusetts.


So tell me, if the bailout doesn't work...what then? Nationalize the banks completely? What instruments do we have left to meet the crisis?
And if it came to the feds taking over the banking industry...who do you want writing that legislation....A self confessed economic dunce like John McCain or Barack Obama, someone with an interest in getting value on the dollar?

"Golly Gee Missus Palin!"

For a while last night, before she succumbed to an attack of the droning talking points, GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin peppered her discourse with whiskered old cliches like "Darn Right" and "Doggone it" in a desperate bid to seem "folksy".
Hubert Humphrey used to talk this way freely ejaculating "heavens to betsy" right up until the day he died.
Let the record show the deliberately countrified palaver didn't help Humphrey over the hump in 1968.
Orwell teaches us that cliche'd language is employed largely as a means to obscure the speaker's real intentions or feelings.
I think old Hubert blathered on in that manner because he wanted to obscure his fairly rock solid academic bona fides as a professor of political science.
As for Palin...who knows? Maybe she doesn't want anyone to know about her fervent commitment to witchburning or the curative properties of moonlit stump water?
***
Honestly, I'm convinced that Sarah Palin is the hockey mom all the other mom's declined to favor with any eye contact at all.
You can just tell, one look and she'd start blabbing about her he-man husband or the innate super-humanity of her kids or some spurious crackpot cause all of her own.
We ALL know the type...pushy and self absorbed.

As for tonight's VP debate...

don't look for much in the way of fireworks. If both campaigns are on their game they've instructed their Vice Presidential nominees to keep it simple, boring and try to sound intelligent.
For Palin that means trying to shed the dingbat image she has gaffe'd her way into nigh these past three weeks.
For Biden that means staying terse and short-winded and avoiding his tendency to Hubert Humphrey-eque blathering.
Biden should stay focused on McCain...Palin might make a play to recapture her "lovable freeper next door" bona fides. That will be the extent of the conflict...but then again the whole thing could go up in chunks.

If I had to guess though, the rumors that Palin has been falling down at debate prep all week long are just that...Roveian spin to lower expectations to the bottom of a coal mine level.

Quick question...

When did Joanie Vennochi become such a steely eyed critic of the Big Dig?
Cuz I can't recall her having much to say about any of it til...now.

Of course I could be wrong...but the Big Dig is the sort of public-private screw up that wouldn't trouble Joanie in the least...after all she can't really credibly blame John Kerry for any of it's excesses.

But I suppose in the midst of a national, state and local fiscal catastrophe Joanie finds it politic to lay off the gossip girl bushwah and try and recast herself as a policy wonk.

Good luck with that Joanie.

Meanwhile....

Back in the Commonwealth....

Jeff Beatty is running for John Kerry's seat in the US Senate on the basis of his qualifications to join the Justice League of America.
Be that as it may, the reference to the "Beattymobile" induces nauight but pleasant nostalgia for Adam West behind the wheel of the "Batmobile"...other than that Jeff doesn't have much goin' on.
Whenever these GOP guys start citing their counter-terrorism bona fides head for the cellar and start piling up the sandbags. It is a sure sign they've gone short on name recognition, money and the common sense ghod gave a Jersey cow.

Now Beatty does have a purple heart though, that is pretty significant I guess...but then so does Elias Nugator senior and that alone is hardly a free pass to higher office, just as John Kerry about it.
For that fact, anyone care to ask Citizen Beatty about those teensy little band-aids emblazoned with the purple heart that were passed out back in the '04 GOP convention...what he thought of them if anything?
Maybe someone should jog his memory at his next rally and bring a box.

Oh and while we are waiting...

Senator Bernie Sanders made a great speech on the senate floor not three weeks ago in which he outlined in cogent detail the origins of the current financial crisis...it makes for very interesting reading to say the least.

"It is the End of the World As We Know It"

so sang Michael Stipe in far palmier times.

Times like this Humble Elias reflects on the speech Senator Hiram Johnson gave on the defeat of the soldier's bonus bill in the summer of 1932...12,000 starving veterans had the Capitol all but surrounded as congress declined to take any action to ameliorate their situation.
Johnson rose in the US Senate and said the following:

"This marks a new era in the life of our nation… The time may come when this folderol- these trappings of government - will disappear when fat old men like you and me will be lined up against a stone wall."

The waters are rising fast my friends, they will surge over the heads of a lot of proud and vain political and economic hacks...ah but what of the rest of us eh?
The American People are not such fools as imagined by pundits and Rupert Murdoch's spin-doctors. The citizenry are capable of a frightening realism when the times do warrant it.
A frightening realism ruled the election of 1860 and again in 1932 wherein the electorate imposed certain terms on it's leaders and left the details for them to work out.
I think that same frightening realism is about to start driving this election hard.

And for all our sakes I hope for once, that I am not wrong....because as I see it right now, frightening realism is about all we have left.

Negros, Leftist Activists and Jimmy Carter....

are the real secret cause of the current credit crisis or so screamed Jeff Jacoby in yesterday's Globe.
This was...hilarious, Jeff is never more mirthful than when he goes charging up to the boat deck to be the first volunteer for the Titanic's bucket brigade. Did the government's fair lending practices FORCE the financial industry to seek out those bum loans? Certainly not, a lack of regulation and a greed imperative from the usual ignorant dingbats on Wall Street brought this down on us....not that Jeff cares he is too busy rattling his buckets and howling about deadbeat minorities.
Oy.
Honestly where would true believers like Jeff be without Jimmy Carter? He is akin to David Ickes reptile men from the constellation Draco in their minds, a nice safe berzerk-o "other" upon which they can project their own gruesome fantasies.
AS for Jeff, you can tell he is panicking, the nice safe high-fructose laden Freeperworld he has known all his life is disintegrating.

Friday Night's Debate

I don't think Obama threw any knockout punches, but then again neither did McCain despite a manful flailing effort from the GOP nominee.
McCain looks terrible BTW, it seems like his TV people have given up on the youthening effects of pancake makeup and gone straight to off-white house paint to hide his wrinkles.
Otherwise he came off as quarrelsome and vindictive.
In the absence of a rhetorical "bolt from the blue" it may take a few days for McCain's bad impression to sink into the electorate, baring of course the complete disintegration of western civilization...which is still a possibility of today at 3pm.
Honestly, McCain looks, acts and sounds like an anger addicted boss who yells at his staff when they don't tell him the bad news and who is also notorious for firing anyone who dares to bring him any bad news.
If he wins, I pity the cabinet secretary who contradicts McCain in any way. Bin Laden will still be a liberty, the republic will be bankrupt but that erring cabinet secretary will be PUT in his or her place you can make sure of that.
As my old man would say "Th' guy is a grouch, pure and simple".

John McCain is a big god-damn

Drama Queen.
The market worshippers in the US House have put a potential kibosh on the bailout plan...which will no doubt induce the screaming bedspins in the market worshippers who swarm the floor of the New York Stock Exchange starting in about five minutes EST.
Meanwhile McCain dithers, pouts, postures and as of right now can't make up his battering little mind as to whether he will do the debate tonight.
At this point if he shows up he looks like a fool...if he doesn't he looks like a coward.
Frankly, what was the damn fool thinking? He has already gone on record about his economic ignorance (which any credible historian can tell you is no bar to high office in this man's republic)why fly back to DC to wallow in your own worst issue?
He must be thinking that a dramatic appearance at the debate at the last minute will somehow make him look like a Man of Destiny...instead of the maundering old chump that he is.
Herein, the polls for once, back up Humble Elias to the hilt some 90% of the American people want the debate to go forward....for that reason alone I think there will be a debate tonight.

When politicians panic...

They are Neville Chamberlain at Munich...

Or Sean O'Donovan's supporters at last night's caucus...

Or they are John McCain who drops a few points in the polls and suddenly wants to suspend the campaign so he can jet back to the comfort of the congressional womb and throw fugues in front of the cameras til' the monsters in his head pipe down.
He has been so relentless about talking up the economy his current abandonment of the campaign makes the guy look like he is having some sort of a breakdown. Which may well be the case...good ghod if he trailed by ten full points imagine the psychotic state McCain would be in?

And on the Fourth Ballot, Tara the Jungle Girl swings in to clear the boards....

Congrats to Middlesex County's NEW democratic nominee for Register of Probate, Tara DeChristofaro who hung tough tonight and carried the day at the caucus.
Kudos to Arlington's own Terri Walsh who garnered thirty votes on the first ballot and then threw her support to DeChristofaro pushing the former ADA out to an early lead which she never ceded in three subsequent ballots.
The modalities of the balloting were simple and stark, Sean O'Donovan managed to throw 117 ballots into the pot on the first go, DeChristofaro, Marie Sheehy and Walsh had almost 300 votes between them, thus victory was a mere matter of the right women "coming to Jesus" at the right time. Clearly after three failed party hacks in a row occupying th Register's office the mood in the room was to impose a radical gender switch on the sinecure. Sean O'Donovan's people put up a big fight, plying the delegates with pizza and soft drinks even spreading false and desperate rumors that Marie Sheehy had endorsed their guy...but in the end his progress in the ballots was glacial whilst DeChristofaro galloped along.
That false rumor stunt didn't make Sean O'Donovan any friends tonight, it materially contributed to DeChristofaro's lopsides 68% margin on the fourth ballot.
I think we have the right nominee in the weary wicked end, change is about the zeal to reform, it is about the right policies serving the all the people it is also about the persons who embody those values...DeChristofaro seems to be the right change at the right time.

Jeff Greenfield on Imus today...

(I drove to work as I wanna attend the caucus tonight despite having heard nothing so far from the democratic state committee about press credentials...and don't ask what I must pay to park on Drydock Avenue)

***
Ah Jeff, y'know I almost miss his pompous smug little voice, his orotund sentences and his sad now shattered dream to be the Walter Lippman of the 21st century.
He sounded like a beaten man today, he proports "not to understand" the meltdown in the financial sector and then makes a spurious claim that neither Wall Street nor Congress understood it either.
This ominous bon mot was delivered with a nervous little laugh that reassured exactly no one in the I-Man's aging embittered demographic.
Well what of it?
The waters have finally risen up to the tip of Jeff Greenfield's nose and they bid to surge over his head if this thing really starts to jump ugly. Of course he doesn't understand the sudden extinction of the US Financial Industry, the man has traded in nothing but caricatures and spin-enhanced political gossip for decades now, facts figures the fate of great nations are all beyond Jeff Greenfield.
So of course, Jeff retreats back into cartoonishness at the first opportunity, the conversation swung over to the presidential campaign and it was with relief that Jeff clambered up onto safer ground comparing Sarah Palin to "Davey Crockett" and "Norma Rae".

He even managed to mutter about "left wing hollywood writers"...you'd think it was 2002 the way Jeff was talking. But of course, it is not, the republic is in mortal danger and all he can do is traffic in cartoons...well let him enjoy that little spoonful of earth he stands on, the waters are still rising. Soon enough Jeff will be taking sidestroke lessons with the rest of us and in real time too.

Oversight?

Oversight.
Over-sight!
OVERSIGHT!!!

HELL YEAH there had better be some rigorous congressional oversight when and if this bailout bill passes!
Considering that it is the lack of regulatory oversight that is the root cause of our current financial crisis...then it seems sort of natural to wanna make some modest changes goin' forward.

When Spartans Politick...

Say what you like about Arlington, but the Town Democratic Committee managed to fill the entire slate of delegates for the upcoming Middlesex County Register of Probate nominating caucus.
Now if only they will all show up....
I hear tell Framingham, mighty Framingham, the Commerce Goddess of Route Nine, has had trouble filling up their slate.
I'm a little disappointed otherwise, from what I can tell, audience and the press will be kept off the caucus floor> This is apparently a security measure to prevent ballot-stuffing but still I'd love to roam free as I did at the state democratic convention.
Nonetheless Humble Elias will be there, opportunities like this don't come often, where else can a major party nomination be had for such a minimal effort?
Hell with twenty announced candidates the just speeches alone will take an hour or more to plow thru assuming everyone can keep to a three minute limit.

Probate Politics

Arlington activist Terry Walsh has picked up some interesting endorsements as of today as we move towards the big caucus on Wednesday to determine a democratic nominee for Middlesex Register of Probate:

Rep Sean Garballey
Rep Jay Kaufman
Ken Donnelly, Democratic Nominee for Senate, 4th Middlesex
Pat Deal, Democratic State Committee
Carol Donovan, Democratic State Committee

The question is, can Terry swing the support of her boss Martha Coakley behind her candidacy? The Attorney General would have many many friends and good set of political IOU's to cash out on the floor of the caucus if she threw down big for Terry.
That would be a big "tell" that the local Clintonistas especially the women want to start shaking up things at the grass roots level.

"He said what he meant, and meant what he said"

Kudos to Governor Patrick for moving the ball waa-way forward on police traffic details.
I can't imagine Scary Kerry Healey making so difficult a decision...let alone her four GOP predecessors.
Still and all that, I think the Governor may have bought himself some real trouble when it comes time to run for re-election in 2010. The police unions have real organizational muscle in this state and made life hell for Mike Dukakis in the last two years of his third term.
We ought to keep that in mind goin' forward.
So either Crazy Christy Mihos or Charlie Baker have found themselves a new potential constituency or else Governor Patrick will face some screaming Public Service Union based Kamikaze pilot in the primary...probably both scenarios are likely.