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.