And on the Third Day...Politics Sets In...

The Boston Herald is hyping a senatorial candidacy for Edward Maxiumus' second widow Victoria Reggie, however the Globe is talking up the alleged ambitions of former US Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III.
So it would seem the family has resoved to find themselves a candidate...and on that much may turn in the days to come.
Meanwhile despite a sure gig in the House of Representatives Ed Markey is talking more and more like a candidate. On paper Ed is formidable with a hand in all sorts of legislation from energy and transport to military policy and health care. And besides that he has been whispering the words "Ed Markey, United States Senator" to himself since the seventh grade.
Like I said, on paper, he is great, but paper isn't always the best substance out of which to forge a US Senator, there is a fidgety-ness to Ed, sometimes his sense of audience fails him and his wit will never rise to the level of Edward M. Kennedy that is for sure.
Nonetheless, he has many many friends and lots of money to spend in an off year election wherein he risks nothing to make the race.
Martha Coakley is making noises but that is to be expected the Hillary-istas in the Bay State are looking for a big score to avenge their loss in Denver last year and Martha would seem to be the their best bet to grab off a seat in the US Senate.
There are many many Spartan camped by the sides of Spy Pond in Menotomy who would dearly love to take to the field under her banner.
Mike Capuano and Steve Lynch are both supposedly interested, dunno much about Lynch but by rep, Capuano is a good man with his heart nailed to the right place. Some of these congressmen we've got have to be looking at this from the prospective of redistricting in 2010 when the Commonwealth will loose a US House seat, best to make the jump now to the US Senate before you done out of your job, or so some might think.

Ideological quicksand

the philosophical dry-rot of movement conservatism extends even down as far as Jeff Jacoby's level. Yes indeed the Sunday Globe's own laughing young senescence goes staggering out into deep mire trying to prove that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was really a wingnut with welcome bona fides for any Kampus Konservative bundist.
This is to say the least a bizarre argument to make when the loam on Edward Moore Kennedy's grave is barely a day old....Jeff's downfall is his tendency to hide in passive aggression, he thinks he is being subtle and artful, in reality it's plain cowardice.
Truly the Jeff Jacoby's of 19663 screamed with simian rage when JFK proposed a test ban treaty with the USSR a measure of obvious benefit to both nations.
The Jeff Jacoby's of 1962 brayed long and loud about state's rights when the President Kennedy as compelled to send twenty four US Marshals to Ole Miss to get James Meredith (an African American) registered for classes.
The Jeff Jacoby's of 1961 sneered at the Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress.
And in 1960 they didn't have problem one with double dealers like the Reverend Billy Graham who couldn't be bothered signing a simple plea for tolerance of Kennedy's Catholic faith and instead made himself useful at Richard Nixon's rallies.
In 1960, JFK was having his own problems getting the opposition to accept his right to exist, but of course Jeff forgets all that...doesn't he?

When Edward Maximus first ran for the US Senate

his slogan was "Kennedy: He Can Do More".

Did ever a politician pay off so relentlessly on an off-hand cliche'?

****
Hearts are heavy right now, but on Monday, I promise you politics will set in, and those dauntless campaigners, the Spartans of Menotomy will take up their assegais, crash their spears and take to the field once again.
They know they are defeated only if they give up.
And that they will not do....

Wasn't gonna do any special e-lection

polly-tix til after Edward Maxiumus' funeral rites, but this item had me guffawing loudly in the Alewife T-Station parking garage this morning.
Scary Kerry Healey wants to run for the US Senate?
Oh ghod that...is...a...riot!
I guess her husband has unfrozen her allowance so she is free to seek new humiliations at the ballot box. Her Orange-shirt squadristi must be tanned rested and ready as well.
Honestly, Scary Kerry Healey is a sidekick, a Robin, A Doctor Watson, A Lady Blackhawk even...if she is looking at a senate race then you can rest assured that Mitt Romney is giving the contest a pass. Given all the rotten things that the Former Viceroy said about Massachusetts in 2008, it seems only fair.
If was the state GOP, I'd flee the notion of her candidacy, Scary Kerry is a hex a hoodoo a star of ill-fortune, I mean forget about her husband's money..It did her no good in 2006 and it will do her no good in 2009 either. You have to go a long way in state politics to find a politician more bereft of ideas than Former Lt. Governor Kerry Healey.

Oh and congrats...

to our new Senior Senator from Massachusetts, John Forbes Kerry, hope that hip of his heals up quick cause' his job just got waa-ay more challenging.
***

BTW, the talk show tyrants are in a bluster over democrats "politicizing" Ted Kennedy's death, but then again these are the same yaps who proclaimed Ronald Reagan a civil God of the Radical Right when he got measured for his harp...So what is the problem eh?
Besides these ass-holes have been fundraising off of Ted Kennedy's very name for eons, the Reverend Jerry Fallwell built Liberty University on direct mail fulminations against our late Senator and all he represented.
That is why they are so incensed, their meal ticket just got confiscated.

An anecdote and a quote...

regarding the death of Senator Kennedy can be found over at Channel Zero.

Long Time Passing

A moment of silence,

Edward Maximus is Dead.

The very Heavens do shake.

***
If there is a man alive who did a better job of Standing Up for Massachusetts, for the Republic and for all those who needed a fair shake, then I'd like to meet them...and soon.
You need not walk far to see the Late Senator's reach, every handicapped ramp, the doings of special olympians in the paper, the scholarship your niece received that got her sprung out of Beauty School he had a hand in all of it and more.
All I can say is, the man left this world a better place than the way he found it all those years ago in 1962. He has been our Senator for all but three months of my entire breathing life. At least he left on a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky in Boston, better times I know are coming, dunno exactly how but they are coming.
***

Oh and kudos to the Boston Globe, looks like they scooped that dishrag the New York Times, seems as if Morrissey Boulevard still has some long claws and sharp teeth.
Oh and it looks like Joanie Vennochi and Jeff Jacoby are all getting a resignation just not the resignation they so ardently wanted.
To quote Ray Bradbury, "What yuh gonna dooo nights Mistah Teece? Whatcha gonna doooo?"

John Kerry in Somerville

This note got tossed over Humble Elias' transom yesterday:

Town Hall Forum with Senator John F. Kerry
Join Senator Kerry for an open town hall forum to discuss any and all issues facing the people of Massachusetts. The forum will cover a broad range of issues and is open to all constituents as space allows.


WHO: Senator John Kerry, Massachusetts Constituents
WHAT: Town Hall Forum
WHERE: Somerville High School Auditorium, 81 Highland Avenue
WHEN: Wednesday, Sept 2nd 7:30 - 9:00 PM

No doubt there will be a lot of discussion about the pending health care legislation....So IF that is the case we do need to make sure that the atmosphere in that venue is positive and pro-active. A lot of disgruntled wingnuts ginned up by talk radio tyrants have ben disrupting events like this, we need to seize control of the agenda at the street level with a strong turn out active, engaged and civil.

One thing I'll say about Senator Joe Lieberman...

he sure has mastered the arts of slipping quietly over the side and dog-paddling himself to political safety.
His excuse for bailing on health care reform is nigh masterful; “I’m afraid we’ve got to think about putting a lot of that off until the economy’s out of recession’’.
Normally you'd want to pass health care reform now during a recession to cover those 35 million fellow citizens who haven't a shred of coverage, but for Joe and his ilk it is political coverage they crave, thick enough so they can run and cringe behind Charles Grassley amidst thr GOP's gothic ruins.
In short, it was vintage Joe Lieberman, he even waited to announce his latest act of spinelessness until the President got to Martha's Vineyard for vacation. You can't beat a record like that you just can't.

Anytime...

Both Joanie Vennochi AND Jeff Jacoby can be found united in their disdain for a particular idea, then you know it to be a notion with some common sensical qualities.
Here I speak of Edward Maximus' wistful request that to fill his seat with an interim US Senator until one could be elected by the citizens, this is presumably to ensure the democrats keep their majority thru the upcoming healthcare reform debate.
So far as I can see neither the legislature nor the Governor seemed disposed to revive the current law...But shrill and opportunistic to the last it hasn't prevented two of the Sunday Globe's finest to bray for Senator Kennedy's resignation.
Well, all I can say is, Senator Kennedy isn't Sarah Palin or Bill Weld, however if the Great and General Court won't act on his recommendation so be it, our Senior Senator has been dealt tougher hands in his life.
Jacoby's demand for Kennedy's resignation is understandable, he wants that seat for one of his own, it is the tantrum logic of the campus conservative bundist, but at least it comes from some belief system. however baroque and arcane and discredited.
Joanie on the other hand is the same old sourpuss she has always been, she depends on liberal democrats to safeguard the Bill of Rights and her own personal right to choose but she'll be damned if she will ever let an iota of gratitude issue from her key board. She doesn't have beliefs, she has resentments.

Thought for the day....

Lee Harvey Oswald certainly wasn't shy about exercising his Second Amendment rights at a Presidential appearance in Dallas Texas on November the 22nd 1963....Was he?

This is the Insanity Summer

From wet and cold to hot and humid and thru out the American Right has gone from discontent to disassociation in extremis.
Consider the evidence:

Armed men prowling the President's public appearances, when has this happened in the past hundred and fifty years save when the Rough Riders sought to hook up with their President Teddy Roosevelt when he toured the west?
"Birthers" insisting that Barack Obama isn't a native born citizen and thus seek to invalidate the 2008 election.
"Deathers" who claim that the healthcare bill under consideration would legalize aggressive euthanasia of the elderly or "unfit" infants or little baby puppies or some damn thing.
Congressional health care forums crammed with retirees who are soused to the gills with social security checks and medicare screaming about "big gummint" and "socialized medicine".
Oh and the sad sick spectacle of Barney Frank being scolded to his face for supporting this "Nazi Policy".

One thing unites all this, a deficit of ideas in the current debate, so when the right runs out of creative thoughts, it is Katey Bar the Door they start screaming and inviting the paranoid delusions.
Two years ago, the Praetorian Class bestrode this republic like a colossus, sodden with power, drunk on victory they openly proclaimed their intention to establish a one-party state in the USA.
Now look at them, beaten and humiliated their every cherished notion mocked and despised...But they still cling to that one party state bullshit don't they?
How else to account for this Insanity Summer of ours?

Death of a "Gut Patriot"

Bob "The Prince of Darkness" Novak, has gone for the terminal dirt nap down in Washington DC.
Pat Buchanan (surprisingly alive and well as of this writing) just got off the Imus in the morning show where he manfully attempted to paint Novak normally an embittered angry little prick as a simpleminded god-fearing patriot, Cincinnatus in a pinstripe suit as it were.
In truth, Bob was a very common historic type, a former democrat who went conservative and then spent the remainder of his life punishing the liberals for being well...liberals. Washington is saturated with seething little ass-holes like this no matter which party is in power. Sadly, DC has been enabling this sort of behavior for over two centuries, win at any cost, don't betray - obliterate your friends and when in doubt wrap yourself in the flag like it was a mourning shroud.
Frankly Novak was building up all his life to outing CIA agent Valerie Plame anything to get back at people and institutions that had done him no material harm at all.

The answer to a hungry hungry bloggers prayer

Former Senator Rick "High Pitched Rich" Santorum is thinking about running for President in 2012.

If there is a Ghod of Mercy and Justice and Hilarity in Heaven above, then puh-leez make it so!
I couldn't be happier if Ming the Merciless opened a Presidential Campaign Headquarters in Council Bluffs.

Piyush Bobbby Jindal with that hangdog Bob Denver face of his, Mad Sarah Palin, Willard Mitt Romney groaning thru his spreadsheets, the cowardly lion Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee that kinder gentler Claghorn and at long last the Fred Van Ackerman-esque Rick Santorum nasty little whiny voice and all.
A madder tea party cannot be imagined, for a line up like this, a veritable Amway Convention in Hell, I'd move to New Hampshire. Just the notion alone of this gathering of robots and sky-grifters debating one another at say, Saint Anselm College, moves me to convulsions of mirth.
Run Rick Run, thass all I kin say!!

It is no coincidence to me that

that the "public option" teeters on the brink of annihilation in the current health insurance debate at the same time armed men are stalking the crowds at various health care forums around the country.
Now these armed men are not fools, they know full well there is no public safety danger to their persons at these events, why the one's headlining the President of the United States are some of the most secure public gatherings in the world.
No, this is an armed minority intent on intimidation and possibly worse things as well, plain and simple.
I've been to Mitt Romney events up in New Hampshire and saw no armed progressives stomping around fingering their six shooters.
But oh wait...Romney isn't our first African American President is he?
Imagine the shit-storm that would've blown off the op-ed pages of America if the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King's legions showed up at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 packing shotguns and huntint rifles?
We've had one hundred and forty-four years of nominal domestic peace in this country wheere few have felt the need to come on down to the big dee-bate armed for bear.
Two weeks of discussion on health care and suddenly everyone on the right is in fully red-alert mode?
The problem isn't healthcare, the problem is one of intimidation, and if we let them get away with it, worse things will come on their heels count on it.

In case you were wondering....

per Mike Barnicle (the Ambassador from Caucasiastan) on the Imus show today, the "Gates Affair" over in Cambridge "Is as much about class as it is about race".
Which is akin to saying that the weather outside is as much about the humidity as it is the heat.
Oh don't worry, Mike hasn't gone neutral on us, he snarked gamely about Dr. Gates' PBS bona fides and yet said nothing about Sgt. Crowley's particular class signifiers. Barnicle is after all a local color type columnist which means he is a cop-worshipper of a mindlessly reliable type.
HE also observed that 25% of those in the room at those congressional healthcare forums were crazed wingnuts the rest were "scared of losing what they have".
Fair enough, but what has Mike done to allay those fears or at least put the facts down on the table?
Nothing to be sure...Much as he may decry fear mongering it is the innate emotionalism of his audience that keeps this weepy old fraud in the business.

Mexican medical tourism

this article on Yahoo notes that something akin to a million Americans a year seek medical assistance in Mexico. What said article fails to mention is that Mexico has a public-option universal health care plan more or less on the public-private model currently proposed by President Obama.
Mexico has lapped us by a country mile simply by detaching healthcare from the workplace, you get it down there because you need it not because you have a job at the right company.
Funny how everyone at those congressional health care forums was screaming themselves hoarse about "socialized medicine" while their fellow citizens go sneaking off over the borders to Canada and Mexico and ghod knows where else to fill up on prescriptions or get a dental filling.
And THIS is Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney's idea of the perfect medical care system...the export of need??

Irony....

This article on Yahoo (which tries to gin up "populist rage"about health care reform) quotes a retiree who is fearful and angry about a government takeover of healthcare.

"They did it for prayer, they did it for abortion, and they're not going to do it for our health care," the 70-year-old nurse from Philipsburg, Pa., said Wednesday as she and her husband Robert, 74, a retired coal miner, waited in a long, snaking line for Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter's town hall meeting."

This woman and her husband are already collecting social security a HUGE government program and medicare, perscription drug benefit and all. Certainly Mrs. Snyder didn't go to that meeting to harangue poor Arlen Specter into abolishing either program and we can sure every social security check she and her husband collect are faithfully cashed.
So clearly it isn't about healthcare, it is about being angry, and these are people who have been angry about something since 1964, not much will appease them all you can do is let them vent and move on.

Condolences to the Kennedy Family

on the death of Eunice Kennedy that tireless crusader for the rights of the mentally handicapped, those who did good in this life are always missed most intensely.
Otherwise the lady's life was a monument to just how much you can accomplish if you won't have anything to do with running for public office.

Senator Kennedy looked perfectly devastated in some of the news footage last night, pray for strength thats all you can do at a time like this.

No ill will for Dan Grabauskas

(yet) it isn't his fault that the MBTA was defunded and screwed up beyond hope of recognition before he ever got there. Nonetheless as someone who logged a lot of time in a state of suspended animation on the Red and Green Lines I can't say I'm sorry to see him go.
How many times a day have we heard his earnest voice intoning "Safety is our number one concern here at the T" ?
Aye, because mere timeliness is a hopeless fantasy I would always add silently.
The job was too big for him, no shame in that.
On the other hand, I do think as of today old Dan is making candidacy noises, perhaps he dreams of the Lieutenant Governor's sinecure, maybe he wants to take flyer at the big job in the corner office.
To get there, he has to recast himself as a martyr and the current controversy is a first step in that direction. My question is though, how confortable will the GOP's base be with a gay man running statewide? Grabauskas could sidestep that whole mishaugas neatly and get on Tim Cahill's ticket...no fuss no bother no primary. I doubt Dan would do it, but it's fun to think about in the dawg days of August.

Thought for the day

Ever notice how, in a recession, as soon as the democrats start talking about national health insurance of any type, the economy immediately starts bouncing back?
Funny how that works eh?

Congresswoman Nikki Tsongas

came in for some hard use at a health care forum in Chelmsford last week, she going to be in Hudson Mass tomorrow night for yet another discussion, the details can be found below:
Tuesday, August 11
Town Hall Forum with Rep. Niki Tsongas
Hudson High School, 69 Brigham Street, Hudson
Please try to arrive at 2:00!
The forum is from 5-7 p.m.
Organizers want folks to show up early so that some of the wingnut's potential intimidation tactics can be prepared for in an appropriate law abiding fashion.
My advice, bring yer cel phone camera, see if you can prove that out of state muckers are being bussed in to create chaos at these meetings.
Otherwise the whole mishaugas seems like desperation to me, if you have neither counter proposal nor a working majority in congress you fall back on screaming incoherently...seen it happen a dozen times.

If I was Jeff Jacoby

I'd come down a lot harder on the whole "birther movement" instead of taking a false position of moral equivalence as he does in today's Sunday Globe column.
Everytime one of these yaps goes into a fugue state on camera about phantom improprieties on President Obama's birth certificate it drives tens of thousands into the democratic camp.

By dragging the rightwing ever rightward they only isolate the remnants of movement conservatism completely from the center thus giving the President a priceless opportunity to co-opt moderates and independents. So please scream some more Obama's coalition will reap a rich harvest going forward count on it.
Trust me the birthers (Who are the GOP base to a "T" with their palpable air of menace) are a worse threat to the GOP than any coalition of 9-1 conspiracy crazies were to the democrats....

Lee and Ling get Sprung

two US journalists sentenced to hard labor in North Korea get snaffled out of trouble thanks to the Great Cajoler himself, Former President Bill Clinton's intervention.
Pyongyang never had a chance, Bill made his bones rolling similar styled ideologues like Newt Gingrich in DC back in the 1990s.
Meanwhile Jeff Jacoby and the rump of the war party will be livid, last weekend Jeff was baying for war with North Korea...of course two weeks ago he wanted war with Iran and next week likely Socialist Canada or perhaps Provincetown.
Remember with the war party it isn't about our honor or interests mostly it's about any war they can scream up that will momentarily still the pangs of insecurity and inadequacy.

Note to the Laity,

Humble Elias is on vacation this week, posting will be capricious and erratic.

Try not to take it personally.

All well and good Joanie...

Ms. Vennochi at the Boston Sunday Globe has taken time out of her busy schedule to chastise Charlie Baker for his fatuous "no new taxes" pledge last week.
I mean fine but didn't Humble Elias say the exact same week? And does this mean I'm only one puny week ahead of Joan Vennochi?
Must be a slow news week indeed if the Globe's columnistas are reading blogs again.

Well, nothing left to do but try and put more distance between me and they....