Bloomberg can't run for President

if he can't even get the boroughs of New York adequately plowed after a blizzard.
And all protestations to the contrary, Bloomie would luv to run for President on some 3rd partei "Love me, I'm a moderate" ticket, sort of a Ross Perot thingie sans the insanity.
Its for sure, Bloomie can't make any headway in the GOP primaries (he might though, strike some sparks in New Hampshire), and the democratic nomination is officially closed off so a independent candidacy is his only option.
Fer sher he can pay for such a kamikaze gig...but bad news from Fun City tends to undercut that "busy effective technocrat" image. It was the same with John Lindsay, by the time he ran for President (as a democrat no less) the acculmulation of public sector strikes, tumult in the public schools and unplowed streets in NYC made him look like the luckless mayor of an ungovernable urban mess.
Take heed Mayor Bloomberg....Take heed.

Sick Day II

Tawk amongst yerselves and listen to some patriotic musik.

Sick Day....

But any republican who shows up for this costume gala deserves whatever contempt they come in for.

Abraham Lincoln died for the Union indivisible so that 150 year later a bunch of SC republicans can get tarted up in confederate drag and celebrate "secesh".

appalling.
Hell any democrat in that room is deserving of the same scorn as well, Humble Elias don't discriminate.

Ruby Tuesday...

Power is never abolished in a well run republic.
It only moves back and forth from institutions of greater or less accountability.
We used to get by with certain classes of public servant who would have a great deal of power with at best minimal accountability.
Teaching used to be the happy hope of every Bus Driver in the USA with a smart saavy daughter, it was the proletariat's idea of a "leg up in society".
Nowadays a classroom teacher is little more than the pedagogical thrall of the State Legistlature, administering, correcting and collating standardized tests. Those tests in turn govern the teachers salary prospects for the most part and strongly influence their reputation the community. Power therefore has passed out of the hands of the teacher and into the state legistlature and whatever jacked up corporate malefactors they've hired to write th damn test.
Now it used to be in the US of A, that Judges, had a wide range of discretion with respect to sentencing criminals or presiding over civil cases. As such, a Judgeship, was a thing to be treasured, sought after by any attorney with grey hair and no offactory issues.
Nowadays, a Judge is little more than a costumed clerk thanks to mandatory sentencing laws and guidelines and whatnot. The whole weight of "getting tough on crime" has fallen heavily on the Judiciary classes and inadvertently strengthened the hand of prosecutors everywhere who had serious hard time threats to impose on the accused should they go to trial.
Take this case up in Moultonborough NH, some poor schnook gets into a verbal dust up with a trepasser and because he is armed, he gets the maximum sentence on a  "felony criminal threatening".
Clearly the Judge didn't have much play here otherwise he'd a just down as his ancestors did and dressed Ward Bird down for scaring the leaf peepers.
Mind you, Humble Elias is on Mr. Bird's side here for the most part (I have a naive belief in the ethical efficacy of Boy Scout volunteers)...But he he tried to but heads with laws designed to suppress urban crime and ended up in the slams.
Personally, I think Governor Lynch ought to read the AG's paperwork real carefully and pardon the poor bastard...Maybe everyone can learn lesson here about how power migrates in a democacy, regardless of the palaver about guns and DA's with a "feminist agenda".

Snow day thought

If Barack Obama is a socialist, then fer shurr Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich are Falangists, which I broadly define as money worshipping louts with pronounced tendency to cloak their greed and brutality in weepy sectarian nonsense.
They don't even rise to the cowardly level of Mussolini's blackshirts to say nothing of Hitler's Nazis.
Ah but Falangist hardly trips off the tongue the way "Nazi" does, which is why the whole Hitler thing gets throw around indiscriminately, it is all "portability" doncha know.

Governor Deval Patrick has at least a sense of irony....

His Excellency has appealed for "common sense" in the face on the oncoming blizzard.
It is akin to calling for virginity in a bawdy house.
He faces long odds on that one given the way Newspanic Seven and Fox 25 ramp up the anxiety to nuclear attack levels with the least puff of wind off the ocean.
***
Well, at the very least take the task of snow shoveling seriously, remember, it is what killed former Boston Globe Columnist David Nyhan....so pace yourselves.

The local Tea Partei

is all incensed because Former State Senator Scott Brown voted for the DADT repeal and the START treaty.
Now I thought the Tea Partei was all about fiscal discipline and getting da gummint offa da backs of the little pee-pul...What do gays serving openly in the armed forces or an arms control treaty with Russia have to do with any of that?
I dunno, its up to the TP to explain it...Otherwise it seems clear to me that Scott simply peddled his ass to the highest bidder in a sordid fashion like a good thrall of Wall Street.
I do think it comical that the local TP wants to gin up a primary challenge to Brown.
 Good friggin' luck with that project if the democrats of Massachusetts couldn't thwart him in January then I doubt the thin ranks of the radical right in the Bay State can overthrow him in the 2012 GOP primary.
The man has six million in the bank and remains at the moment the most popular pol in the state.
Besides, read the above link carefully, not a single hypothetical candidate is mentioned...I can only imagine the failed candidate for State Rep or former Animal Control Officer for Hull that they'd have to put on the ballot in a  doomed bid to punish Brown.
In short, long odds mah frenz, but the TP is welcome to give it try all the same.

Drew Faust etc etc etc...

The Supreme Potentate at Big Red, is officially my new heroine. She says what she means and means what she says.
For a public figure in Massachusetts, that is a sterling and rare quality indeed.
***
As for the congressional redistricting derby, my money is on Barney Frank retiring in 2012 and his patch getting carved up all nice and surgical. John Olver and Richard Neal have both announced they are running in 2012 as well as most of the other members of the delegation, and yet so far Frank has remained conspicuously silent.
My money is on him, sad to say the man added a lot of intellectual heft but seventy is seventy.
Hell, I could be wrong who know how this will all play out? Maybe Barney will take a final apocalyptic flyer against Brown in 2012, ghod wouldn't you love to be in on those debates??
Still...the loss of a seat does rankle, here we are leading the nation in job creation and providing thousands of jobs for New Hampshire State Residents and simply because our population isn't growing as fast as Texas, we lose out.

Having spent last spring and last summer

tirelessly polishing the boots of Wall Street, and then spending all of last autumn campaigning for vengeful Falangists, Former State Senator Scott Brown takes time out of his busy fundraising schedule give two days over to statesmanship.
He has collected all the bribes a free congress can offer Big Finance and with his own pockets bulging with the money and good will of ruthless bankers, he can do one or two small favors for the peonage in his domain with respect to the START treaty.
Sick
Demented
Typical...
***
Now if I was running against Scott Brown I'd do a lot of talking about Wall Street and it's de facto ownership of our Junior Senator. The money Scott has collected from out of state financials, the favors he has done for less than savory bankers etc etc....A lot of good hard hitting campaign commercials can be extracted from the record Scott has piled up this summer alone.
This would not be the deciding factor, it is gonna take a candidate with some powers of persuasion armed with a program that is worthy of persuasion.
And yeah it's gonna take money, and luck and brains as well.
Any takers out there?

Kudos to

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman for putting his shoulder to the wheel on the DADT repeal this weekend. This was easily an issue on which he could have covered himself with protective freeper goo and made useless noises on the Chris Matthews Show, but from the git-go Joe showed gumption, moxie and good old American stick-to-itiveness.
Granted I've said some provocative things about Senator Lieberman in the past (and will likely do so in the future) but here he stood up for whats right and saw the matter thru to the end.
For that fact the much maligned Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid deserves all sorts of plaudits for sticking his neck out far on behalf of a divisive social issue...he too has guts.
And as far as I'm concerned, given the senate GOP's predilection for automatic filobusters, I don't care if Harry Reid keeps this senate in session til midnight New Year's Eve if thats what it takes to ratify the START treaty...these freeper mooks shoulda thought about that when they were shutting down everything in sight last summer.

For the record, John J. O'Brien

the Commissioner of Probation, is on paid leave with fully invested pension benefits pending an investigation by the Justice Department and the State Attorney General that he routinely peddled out good paying jobs to constituents of well connected member of the Great and General Court.
The Governor hasn't even the authority to place O'Brien on unpaid leave, no, the Commissioner answers even now to the State Supreme Court, an arrangement thick with patronage possibilities with little chance for any real oversight.
It took the combined wisdom of both house of the state legislature and the sheer political courage of then  Governor Paul Cellucci to come up with a system this catastrophically bad.
And it is gonna take some real hard thinking up and down the line to get any meaningful reform imposed on the probation department and the courts as well.
Can we at least give the Governor the authority to suspend O'Brien sans pay? I mean c'mon....This is starting to make the state look ridiculous.
Maybe if the Boston Globe gets a look at some of those lists that O'Brien kept of favors done for various reps and state senators, a few names in the paper might light a fire under Beacon Hill's ass.
Might...but don't count on it.

He was for it two weeks ago

Against it last week....Now Former State Senator Scott Brown is for repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell".

But if the vote doesn't happen til next week, he may change his mind again. Frankly all it would take is an angry phone call from Bill Hudak and one snarky on-air tirade from Howie Carr away to turn Scott Brown back into a fag bashing locker room freeper.

He was for it two weeks ago

Against it last week....Now Former State Senator Scott Brown is for repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell".

But if the vote doesn't happen til next week, he may change his mind again. Frankly all it would take is an angry phone call from Bill Hudak and one snarky on-air tirade from Howie Carr away to turn Scott Brown back into a fag bashing locker room freeper.

This isn't a particularly original thought but

Honest to Ghod, if you are of a paranoid and homicidal disposition, it is far easier to secure good quality firearms in this country, than it is to get adequate psychiatric help.

But, then again, lots of people, many of them with real power in the USA think that firearms are the answer to all sorts of mental afflictions.

***
My own view is, that the gun issue is a moot point and unfortunately the weapon-worshippers won that debate. The "gun population" of the USA vastly exceeds the human population by an increment that ought to guarantee eternal civic peace according to the equations of the NRA.
Given this paradigm, the sheer volume of weaponry involved any policy of legal interdiction is simply impossible.
However there is a law of unintended consequences and take what comfort you will in the realization that it just hasn't hit GOAL and the NRA between the eyes yet. Now gwan back to ordering kevlar offa Amazon.

Sarah Palin's Alaska?

How about a reality show called "Mitt Romney's Massachusetts"?
Yeah he could drive around in a rented Ford F150 pick up pretending he never really lived here even when he was Governor, he can whine and complain on camera about how the state is just too darn liberal and patriotic Americans should spend their tourist dollars elsewhere and in the final episode he can visit a local gun show where despite being a "lifelong gun owner" no one will know the former Viceroy from a cord of wood.
Just driving that pick up over the pot holes and craters in the roads of Belmont Mass will make "Ice Road Truckers" look like a slow merry-go-round....Poor Mitt's pomaded do' might just possibly get mussed up. Well whatever it'll make for exciting television no matter what.

Ya gotta hand it to Mitt Romney

Somehow out of the depths of his experience and wisdom he has evolved a proposal that if implemented would make poverty and joblessness even worse than they already are.
Yes indeed, he wants the workers, those drones he has been screwing over for decades to pay for their own unemployment benefits..The savings on which will be passed along to the super-rich in the form of ruinous tax cuts I guess.
This breathtakingly awful in it's scope, clearly the Former Viceroy is feeling the creative competition from Sarah Palin and the Tea Partei crowd.
Honestly, it takes a good background in venture capitalism, a single term as Viceroy of Massachusetts and all the neo-libertarian rubbish one mind can hold to generate a proposal this injurious to the Republic.
Well one thing is for certain, in the crazy-destructive ideas derby (a critical element in GOP Presidential politics), the Gauntlet has been thrown at Sarah Palin's feet, she is gonna have to come out for the annexation of the Danzig Corridor to top it.
Granted Palin has been getting all the buzz lately, but in a final down between between her and Romney, my money is on Willard, that guy just hates women, especially women in politics, he will do just about anything to beat her even if it means destroying the GOP...Count on it.

What does every anti-health care reform crusader in this country

have in common?

The book worshippers, the libertarian Taliban, the insurance industry lobbyists, the small gummint fanatics?

They all have a great god-damned health care plan.
All of them, a blue ribbon plan every one.
If they are members of congress they get their healthcare provided entirely at tax payer expense from doctors and professionals that work for the Government.
Has a single freshman congressman opted out of the House of Representative's healthcare package?
I think not, but feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
My point is, simple and stark, health care reform has become laden with class conflict issues, rich versus the poor. This is a harsh formulation and a  frightening thing to the American Punditariat which is why you rarely hear the phrase during the ongoing health care "debate".
And right now, as far as I can see, the overclass is as usual winning the conflict hands down, the own the lobbyists, the insurance companies, the cable talking heads, the judges and they own hundreds of congressmen including our own pin up boy, Former State Senator Scott Brown.
THIS is what former President Bush meant when he promulgated the vision of an "ownership society" all those years ago, rich versus poor, money versus righteous with money winning every time.

Aaahhhhh...

the ripe fruits of an alert activist judiciary, ya can't beat it.

They make Presidents by fiat, they tell us that we are free to die of cancer sans medical care, sentence the despoilers of the Middle Class to community service, they fill our prisons with hopeless addicts and then complain ponderously that they are overworked.
With a record like that, I don't wonder.
***
I have to say I'm a little pessimistic about the prospects of Health Care Reform, I suspect billions will be wagered on it's downfall. Forget about the cries for a "do over" and a single payer plan amiable to Bernie Sanders, dat ain't happening, forget what you read on Americablog.
No, if the current plan goes down we may as well abolish the stars on Old Glory and replace them with a dollar sign, think of it as a grand uncloseting.

It was "The People's Seat" in January

but as of last summer, it became Wall Street's Seat lock, stock and barrel o' moolah.
Yes indeed, as demonstrated on the front page of today's Boston Sunday Globe, Scott Brown's vote on Financial Reform was up for sale last summer and was bought for the relatively low low price of $140,000.00.
Is it me, or is Scott Brown underpricing himself?
I mean, $140K will barely buy you a plot of buildable land in Florida Massachusetts. For a drama Queen with high opinion of himself, Scott sure does like short money doesn't he?
Frankly if Scott is gonna be the painted whore of Wall Street the least he could do is hold out for the Big Money...Otherwise his cheap act just makes the Commonwealth look bad.

Well, sure enough

despite some pleasing bluster last week to the effect that he'd vote to end the Pentagon's useless and malevolent "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, Former State Senator Scott Brown voted yesterday with the majority to derail any repeal of said noxious policy.
The problem with Scott Brown is simple and stark, he serves two masters, one of them is Senate Minority Leader McConnell and the other is the thousands of bloodthirsty and barbaric wowsers who financed Brown's senate campaign last January.
Between these two monoliths there is simply no room for anything that might do the citizenry of the Commonwealth any damn good.
And there the matter reposeth until Brown leaves office, don't look for him to evolve, he has no incentive what with being the most Popular Politician in Massachusetts, those high approval numbers are exactly what fuels his blunt refusal to do right by gays or anyone else for that matter.
***
What is to be done?
One route to gin up some loudmouth democrat who'll say all the properly blustery things and lay the snarkages on deep come debate time, and you can all sit there gape mouthed come election night 2012 when Brown is re-elected without turning a hair.
The other path is to start making your case on an issue by issue basis and take no precinct for granted as the campaign grinds along. Scott Brown would love 2012 to be about "values", which are defined here as meaningless comforting imagery designed to re-elect conservative republicans. If we want to win we need 2012 to be about the issues, where we differ with Brown and what we will do differently.
Take the latter approach, and you will at least give Scott the real fight he so richly deserves.
Think on it.

Now this is just plain

interesting in extremis.

And a hopeful sign that the USA can maintain it's lead in aerospace technologies as well. Always a good thing in a recession when jobs are at a premium.
Yeah I know, it isn't like these Dragon space capsules are gonna get churned out on an assembly line but any innovation in a storm can have a salubrious effect on the economy if it gets played right.
Low Earth orbit is largely an industrial zone anyway, why shouldn't  certain mundane aspects of manned spaceflight become a purely commercial question?
Frankly this concept seems like a much better bet than that unfunded Potemkin Village the Bush Admin dreamed up called the Orion space capsule.

***
I suppose I should take a moment to discuss the pending tax bill in Washington, it isn't a particularly good measure, but it is an order of magnitude better than any bill that John McCain would have signed. The damn thing is worth the unemployment measures alone since that money gets spent almost immediately and in such a way as to prevent people from descending into outright poverty. Incensed congressional democrats ought not to accuse the President of the sorts of hated compromises they themselves have been making for years.

Passages...

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of the 2004 democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards has lost her battle with terminal breast cancer.

***
If there was ever a woman of constant sorrows in American Public Life, it was, sad to say, Elizabeth Edwards. She lost her oldest son to a car accident, her famous & ambitious husband turned out to be a bounder and a cad and ultimately cancer laid her low.
But through out it all she remained reasonably upbeat and focused on participating in the health care debate.
She was, a very common type in the US, a political spouse made of finer more ineffable stuff than her partner.
Frankly she required little polish from what I could see Elizabeth Edwards could have taken a very successful flyer in the New Hampshire Primary if the timing was right.
Some people though aren't consumed with ambition.

Still as we grieve and review the lifes of the mighty and the departed it is worth remembering that sometimes we grant too much credit to the famous for facing up to life challenges that they'd have to meet fame or no fame.

Keep that in mind when to get to the part in Sarah Palin's memoirs when she draws on the inspired example of Helen Keller to overcome the embarassment of Levi Johnston's Playgirl spread.

According to

Scott Brown, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Sarah Palin...
THIS isn't happening.

***
You cannot persuade, or even properly debate persons who are publicly and politically invested in willfully blindfolding themselves sticking fingers in their ears & singing "Put on a Happy Face" loudly and off key.
And if said actions are putting folding money in their campaign coffers, then it is game over as far as Humble Elias is concerned.
There may be a debate with worthwhile opponents in the offing, but with this lot it is a lost cause.

All I can say is

"RUN NEWT RUN!"

Please please please Newt, take the plunge, Humble Elias would luuu-uv to see you barnstorm the New Hampshire Primary discussing your many many ex-wives, your hog-like affection for money and your plan to establish a National Utopia via tax cuts.
All delivered in that irksome snarky blustery pseudo intellectual tone of yours, please run, all of New Hampshire is just a-waitin' fer yew.
I can't imagine anyone who will wear out his welcome quicker quite frankly.
But the debates (I envision an epic five way between Gingrich, Palin, Romney, Santorum and Huckabee all snugly tucked into straitjackets in the auditorium of the Concord Mental Hospital) will be freakin' incredible to watch.
Well, I can shake my pom-poms all I like, but the truth is, Newt is a terrible coward, he talks tough but he has had three chances to go for the gold, every time, he blusters, he hems and haws, talks smack against liberalism and multi-partei democracy but in the end he folds and departs the field.
I suspect 2012 will be more of the same, that I can see this "I gonna run for President" act is nothing but a ploy to gin up some pricey speaking engagements, nothing more.

Given a chance to vote on a tax cut this weekend

and Mitch McConnell's senatorial flea circus votes it down without fail on grounds that there is not enough sugar in the bill for the poor persecuted millionaires of America.
Y'know you can really set your watch to the GOP, they aren't even sworn into office and already they are acting power-drunk, arrogant, stupid and greedy.
The very things that laid them low in 2006 I might add...And now they wanna do more of the same in 2010.
If the definition of insanity remains doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, then the incoming US House GOP contingent ought to be fitted for their straitjackets now and avoid the rush come January.
Ah, but these knuckleheads never change, and what is worse they fall afoul of ethics violations with metronomic reliability. In that regard I give Speaker-to-be Beohner just six months before some almighty scandal fetches him off the stage, for that fact, McConnell is waa-ay overdue for his comeuppance as well.

Initial Polling Indicates that

Former State Senator Scott Brown is in a good position to achieve re-election come 2012.

He is, currently, the most popular politician in the state.

Also the one with the biggest campaign war-chest at some six million large last I heard.

The usual names and faces do not fare well against Brown in a test match up, Congressmen Markey and Capuano trail by ten and sixteen points respectively. Governor Patrick flush with his beat down of the odds last month can just about manage a seven point deficit. Vicki Kennedy does no better than Governor Patrick.
And today we read in the Globe that the Governor has disallowed any senatorial ambitions in 2012.
So...
We are in deep shit right?
Maybe not.
The above polling will no doubt activate the usual screeching magpies among the local punditariat...be prepared for that. These are writers activated by persons, personalities and the cult thereof.
But at the end of the day, Brown remains an amiable nullity, heavily beholden to the worst sort of Wall Street Buccaneers and who has amassed little record beyond a drama-queen like talent for public dithering.
I think a very strong arguements can be marshaled against Brown, but winning back the seat will cost money and will require the creation of  platform that appeals to independents and activates the democratic base...That is the meta-context, so to speak.
So instead of worrying who can run and win, democrats and liberals ought to devote some time and energy to creating an agenda, something that will make victory meaningful.
What I'm proposing here is, lets debate Brown on the issues, but first we have to make the issues mean something to the average voter.
I'm less interested in whether or not Capuano or Lynch or Pagliucci run and more interested in what they are gonna talk about...the usual rubbish or a platform that is democratic, pro-little-guy and opposed to the piracy of the interests.
Plug the above into some practical specifics and then maybe you'll have something.
Its worth a shot anyway...Shit we've already tried the other method and failed.

It does Councilor Chuck Turner's case no damn good

to cite the late Mayor James Michael Curley as a civil rights pioneer in a last desperate doomed bid to avoid expulsion from the Boston City Council.

These days people don't remember Curley's belligerant advocacy on behalf of the poor, they remember him as an assiduous padder of payrolls, a studied purchaser of asphalt and street lights at three times the estimated cost, a great connoisseur of bribes great and small and the Patron Saint of Deadheads on the Public Payroll Everywhere.
The exact quote per Boston.com states:
“The purpose was to take us down because they saw the power of communities of color rising just like the Irish power rose,’’ Turner said... “Mayor Curley would be ashamed of Michael Sullivan as an Irishman for doing this to black people.’’
Sorry Chuck, Mayor Curley Irish Power and all, liked to get paid, maybe he loved poor folks but he loved that big ass house of his in Jamaica Plain too...And he didn't do time in the Federal Slams for Civil Rights Activism, he got nailed fair and square for influence peddling.
The Heavy Handed Irony is Not Lost on Humble Elias.

State Street is doing so god-damned well that

they think now is a good time to cut 1,400 jobs nationally with 400 jobs coming out of the Commonwealth's backside.
As American companies go, the financial sector has always been unusually mercenary with it's workforce, but this is simply beyond the pale.
Honestly far too much talent and money has gone and migrated to the financial sector, capital (human and cash) that could be generating products and JOBS for real in the private sector, instead of playing these incomprehensible games.
If someone wanted to run for the US Senate in 2012 on a pledge to  cut the Gordian Knot & shift all that Wall Street money into productive enterprises, dat sumbitch might just get my vote.
Just sayin'.
When it comes to Wall Street and the Financial Sector, a little judicious radicalism is very much in order.

About ten days ago, as the crow flies

Rep. Charlie Murphy (D-Burlington) had this to say about the mounting corruption scandals at the Probation Department:


“Is there any evidence to suggest that jobs are for sale?’’

To which Humble Elias rhetorically responded (after much ranting and raving):

"Mark my words the Feds will get in on this thing sooner or later and that will not end well for anyone."

And now today, this is the headline in the Boston Globe....I guess Rep Murphy got the answer to his question.

Sometimes my powers of divination appall even me.

***
Nevertheless, there is still time to turn scandal into success, what is needed is a strong commitment to judicial reform, one that increases transparency, removes the prospect of corrupt temptations, keeps the boodlers out and makes the probation process efficient and effective.

Any takers out there?

Anyone prepared to make the counter argument on this basis??

People who have no expectation of ever holding power,

the sort of people who are happy to eschew all responsibility with a gust of derisive snarkage, inevitably write books like this.
Tedious, repetitive, sarcastic...I can't image how author David W. Hedrick missed out on the GOP nomination for congress in Washington State's Third District....Did he admit to cannibalism or Keynesian backsliding or something?
***

MIddlesex County Sheriff

Jim DiPaola apparently committed suicide up in Maine...At the time he was facing various allegations, but of course there are worse ones that are eminently survivable.
***
Peace to his ashes, comfort and succor to his loved ones.

***
Politics is a rough rough game my friends, and sometimes it drives people right off the edge, notable examples being Former Secretary of Defense James Forrestal and the Senator from Wyoming, Lester Hunt both of whom took their own lives in due course.
Frankly given the gruesome and brutal play of the game it is a wonder more elected officials don't take their own lives.
***
Well what of it, his family must be devastated, my heart goes out to them.

"These knuckleheads know We Have The Bomb...."

Right?

Like lots of bombs...More bombs than money at this point quite frankly.

***
Geez does this thing in Korea mean that Barack Obama is Harry S. Truman after all?

***
Well what of it?
 I suspect that Komrade Kim is trying to teach the otherwise anonymous mook he claims is his Son and Heir that some judicious military mayhem always keeps the crackers at a wary distance.
Still I have to laugh, the last remaining cover-to-cover Stalinist State in the Whole World is reduced to the medieval notion of primogeniture to recruit sucessors to the Office of Supreme Swank.
That and the perfect uselessness of the P.R.C. in a crisis, they seem to have less chain to yank in Pyongyang than we do.
An inauspicious omen for a supposed Superpower on the Make.

I did not...

Vote for Obama in 2008 because I thought he could single handedly immanentize the eschaton. I voted for him in order to prevent the Republic from going up in flaming chunks at the hands of a bunch of dangerously delusional utopian fanatics.
Now today that same bunch of fanatics have gotten control of the US House and have all sworn to destroy completely what they cannot govern absolutely.
And so the whole mishaugas plays itself out again, same script a few new actors.
Happy Thanksgiving...if you can keep it.

Ghod help us but...

this has been a soft cushy recession for the super rich.
And thanks to the recent election of a vast horde of witchburners and book worshippers to the US House, it is likely gonna become an even easier recession.
Unfortunately, the incoming congress has a believe in the universal efficacy of huge tax cuts on the rich that is only rivaled by their belief in the sovereign power of moonlit stump water to cure warts.
When it comes to public finance we can look forward to a lot of grotesque magical thinking for at least the next two years.
These are politicians who think that the government ought to fear "the people" as long as they retain their first amendment rights. Of course the ranks of the super-rich laugh at the armed and debt ridden lower classes for as long as their ire is aimed at the NEA and Barack Obama they can look forward to sunny skies now and forever.
It would do us all some good if the overclass went to bed just a bit worried...but trust me, with this congress that ain't gonn happen.

With all due respect...

But is Charlie Murphy Out of his God Damned Mind???

The whole front page of the Globe is given over to perfectly actionable stories of corruption and malfeasance at the Probation Department and all Rep Murphy can say is:
“Is there any evidence to suggest that jobs are for sale?’’
Hey Charlie is yer not sure then  Tommy freakin' Petrolati can allegedly show you the cancelled checks and who they came from and where they worked as well!
What kills me is that Murphy has the gall to say (on the record) “We’re not going to make rash judgments.’’
You've had better than six full months to form all sorts of judgments, rash, measured and ridiculous and the whole of the state legislature has done absolutely nothing.
Quite frankly right now, some rashness would be a welcome thing!
Mark my words the Feds will get in on this thing sooner or later and that will not end well for anyone.

The Probation Department Hammer Drops...

at long last...

Two things have to happen here:

The guilty, democrat, republican, incumbent or whatever need to be hauled into a courtroom soonest. The public rightfully may not have faith in the Probation Department so they must have faith in the strength of the judicial corrective.
That is the "vertical stroke" from above.

The other thing that must happen is that a strong independent movement for reform of the probation department must rise up from below....again soonest.
Otherwise these mooks we got in the state legislature will hide beneath their desks and will only come out for a role call vote on casino gambling.
For that fact the past legislative year is full of extensive debate and action on the issue of gaming in the Commonwealth, but you could grow old pouring over the official record for any mention of the scandal in the Probation Department on the floor of either the House or the Senate.
Well all that has to change starting now.

NBC News has gone to China and

predictably gotten caught up in the PRC's drive to create more and more college graduates. Back in the 1950's there was a similar concern about an "engineering gap" with the USSR. Of course all those hydroelectric engineers did the Soviets no good when push came to shove and it was time to land some mook on the moon and bring him back safely.

There is a sturdy myth among both liberals and conservatives that an active middle class intelligensia (which the PRC's education policy is promoting) is somehow a threat to totalitarian political systems. Nothing could be further from the truth, most dictatorships cut their teeth on keeping intellectuals, weak, divided, terrorized and resolutely co-opted.
The number of successful revolutions peaceful or violent led by intellectuals are very few and far inbetween...And the best example of that would be the Bolsheviks in Russia so take it all with a grain of salt sez Humble Elias.
Mostly the recent college grads in China seem to swarm over the landscape looking for jobs equal to their education. Pretty much like the college grads we see around town here in Boston quite frankly. In China almost none of them seem to be plotting and scheming against the regime, they may not like the Politburo, but they are reconciled to it.
Mind you the active participation of middle class intellectuals is vital for the safety and survival of democracy but a large cohort thereof is no great threat to a reasonably organized dictatorship.
My point is, don't look for change as we understand the term in the PRC anytime soon, the army is united, the working class is quiet, no one is starving and the collegians are all out polishing their resumes.

Just for the record....

(Vis a vis the President's new children's book and the inevitable pseudo controversy ) It is very likely, based on the testimony of the surviving Indian combatants that Sitting Bull was not present on the battlefield at the Little Big Horn.
So calling the Indian Leader Custer's "murderer" is pure hyperbole.

Granted old Sitting Bull was spoiling for a fight and ginnin' up every brave for a show-down within earshot...but did he personally send Colonel Custer for the terminal dirt nap?
No.
And anyway what is all this megillah about?
Sitting Bull's total personal body-count of US Soldiers is miniscule next to the piles of corpses wracked up by that drawling kindly saint on horseback General Robert E. Lee.
There are statues to that man who broke his sworn oath to defend the US Constitution all over the place.
Shit half the newly minted congressmooks in the US House probably regard Lee that traitor, as a hero.

So whats da beef I ask you?

Y'know it is fascinating...

the way today's conservative's (especially the bumptious patriotic types) are willing to pay exactly nothing to ensure the survival and success of liberty.
Shee-it, the next congress has just been crammed with raving blinky dingbats who will go to the mats to preserve deficit-bursting tax cuts.  Apparently nobody on the US Right wants to man up and pay for Bush's wars with dignity.
Hell the Boston Herald Columnists and Tawk Show Hosts of this world won't even sit still for a police style pat down at the airport a month or so after an attempt to place time bombs aboard US bound cargo jets.
Oh but watch how these pampered twits will roar if terrorism rears it's head again on US soil, you can forget about rallying around the flag with this lot, they'll be bellowing for impeachment and mob rule count on it.
And these people call themselves patriots, first and foremost, good ghod!

Granted he is kidding

when Former State Senator Scott Brown sez he is about to hit the re-election hustings with his olde pal Curt Schilling...Nonetheless Brown might wanna think about actually accomplishing something in Washington DC before taking to the stump and Claghorning the Commonwealth once again.
Doesn't have to be a bill that actually benefits the State it can just as easily be a really first class constituent affairs office.
Something...anything.
Otherwise I think it is funny to hear Scott Brown deride the politics of fluff in our nation's capitol when he himself is a sort of VH.1 reality show candidate right down to his suspiciously well cast family and trademark "Average Guy" costumery.
***
Well what of it?
 The Big Game is already afoot there is no denying it.
It bears mentioning that as Scott Brown's victory in January handed Governor Patrick a detailed blueprint on how to win two weeks ago, so too as Patrick's victory served Brown with notice that his position is none too secure with statistics to back it all up as well.
Humble Elias will be curious to see if Scott Brown can "learn again what he first taught" come 2012.

A crude thought experiment...

Lets assume somewhere in Massachusetts there is a Veteran's Affairs Hospital with a Long Term Care geriatric unit.
And on that floor is a "family room" for private visits from loved ones, and in that family room there is a television set.
Now that television set is an old color picture tube model that doesn't work because it never got a digital converter. It still works fine, but no signal due to the recent upgrade thus said TV is useless in it's present state.
What do you suppose is gonna get that TV set fixed or replaced faster?
Filling out a request with attending paperwork and routing thru the Hospital Administration & on up to relevant senior bureaucrats in Washington DC?
OR
Persuading your local congressperson to attach an "earmark" in some pending financial legislation specifically allocating funds to upgrade all the television sets in that Long Term Care Ward and putting them on articulated arms attached to the beds so the elderly vets can watch The Game in their own comfy racks?
I'm thinking, that just possibly the earmark is gonna get the job done quicker.
But that is only a guess...
***
Unfortunately, the carbon footprint of Washington DC is about double from politicians ranting and raving about earmarks. These are the same politicians who were bought and paid for by giant corporations in the last election, sure they are willing to give up earmarks...It is the sort of faux reform that makes pundits piss themselves with happiness. Meanwhile thanks to the Supreme Court all these mooks in Congress have finally got access to the really big money...Who needs earmarks when there are millions waiting out there from Big Oil and Big Mining and Telecom Industries and the Healthcare Giants?
It truly is a Brand New Day for America.

If I had to guess

these stats seem to indicate the possibility of deal at the national level, we get to keep our landmark health care legislation, they get to keep their utterly ill-gotten and undeserved tax cuts.
And our esteemed and honorable progeny get the bill for all of it.
Whether or not said notional deal is one worth taking from the standpoint of either the democrats or the republicans is another debate entirely.
I merely present my thoughts sans adorement.

One man's political pork is another man's

desperately needed meal.
Yes indeed, the GOP wants to ban "earmarks" out of the budget making process as a deficit cutting measure and as a boost in public ethics.
I could almost get behind a notion like this, except this is the national GOP we are talking about, what they lose in showy Federally funded "earmarks" they gain in lobbyist payola or outright corporate monies funneled directly to their campaign coffers.
Trust me, ranting and raving about earmarks is nothing but misdirection, thanks to the Supreme Court billions can now flow unfettered into the campaign process sans oversight or transparency, we don't hear anything from Boehner or McConnell about that little issue now do we?
Ultimately, if the GOP is "getting rid" of earmarks it is only because they've figured out a far more opaque and conservative friendly way to grab off Federal monies...Count on it.

If Joanie Vennochi has an ideology

it is a vaguely spiteful species of "grrrl power", insofar as it applies to the gender hypocrisy of white male liberals.
But lo, in today's column she validates Mike Capuano's back down on Nancy Pelosi on grounds that the House Speaker is a "polarizing presence".
Well SHIT, so was Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and anyone else who wants to DO anything in a democracy. The ranks of the merely non-polarizing begin and end with the likes of Warren Harding and William B. McKinley!
Reading Joanie's column is nothing sort of painful, she routinely contradicts herself on what seems to be purely whimsical grounds. Mostly Joanie just loves it when liberals fall out and if that means she has to throw a sistah under the bus to ramp up the action, so be it.
Sick
Demented
Typical...

For once I am in general agreement with

Brian McGrory insofar as Congressman Capuano's remarks about Speaker Nancy Pelosi are concerned.
But..this bit, towards the end of today's column in the Globe is unintentionally hilarious:
In Massachusetts, this is not a good moment for our politicians, even though every incumbent for statewide and federal office just won. Barney Frank was a bad parody of himself on election night. Governor Patrick lacked the good graces to acknowledge his opponents by name in his victory speech. And Democrats are struggling to muster a credible candidate to run against Scott Brown in 2012.
Shit Brian if these are my only problems, I'll take it any day of the week.
Good grief, does anyone else get the feeling that Brian is deeply disappointed he didn't get to write Governor Patrick and Representative Frank's political obits last week?
Hence the above mealy-mouthed exercise?
All Brian does is wait around for some conservative backlash to take out some liberals so he can moan "I tolja so, next time vote fer a nice moderate republican like Mitt Romney!" in the public prints for the next two years.
Last week he didn't get his backlash so he doesn't know what to write about for the next two years, poor man he is to be pitied.

Note to Mike Capuano

Hubris may be a bad thing congressman, but so is Spite. Taking off on Nancy Pelosi after a setback in the midterms is (in the words of the late Captain James Hook of Eton) "bad form".
I dunno...Mike has all the attributes of a great man, energy, conviction, passion even daring what he lacks is Judgement. He got schooled by Martha Coakley and likely he will be schooled by Nancy Pelosi when the time comes.
And if Mike really wants to run for the US Senate in 2012 he could have thought of a better way to introduce himself to the voters, especially independent women voters (who were large in Deval Patrick's margin of victory last week).
Like I said, judgement...judgement is destiny folks.

A note on Barney Frank

The usual suspects are all aghast at the venom Congressman Barney Frank lobbed at the Boston Herald and the GOP in general during his victory speech last week.
Y'know Barney is a pretty saavy guy, he can probably tell you to the penny how much money has been raised on the Conservative World Domination circuit by invoking his name and his "radical pro-homosexual agenda" nigh these past twenty years.
For that fact likely he has never forgotten Congressman Dick Armey's "Barney Fag" expletive back in 1995, or the squads of Tea partei Members who howled "homo" at him the halls of the US Congress.
And then there is the Boston Herald and it's columnists who live and die by the equation "Homosexual = Corrupt".
Moreover, his worst and most intractable opponents are all convinced (based on their experiences in High School) that gays are prey and thus are enraged when Congressman Frank fights fire with fire.
So if Barney wants to bust a few heads rhetorically speaking, I'm fine with it, the man is seventy and has seen enough of life not to expect gentle treatment from the GOP's sky grifters and reactionary utopians.

I love it when

the Boston Herald starts lifting ideas from Humble Elias.

Hell I've been talking Scott Brown up as a daahk horse candidate for President in 2012 for a while now, nice to see One Herald Square catch up.
BTW who is this Joe Battenfeld character anyway? The article itself is interesting and suggestive (if laced with freeperish bromides) but is it a legal obligation for everyone in the op-ed game at the Herald to write like Howee Cahhhh right down to short zinger at the end?
Just sayin' thass all.
Well be that as it may, I love how the local freeps are all throwing over Romney sans the slightest remorse and hitching their wagon to Scott Brown. That has just got to hurt to the fomer Viceroy...or it would if he gave two hoots in hell about what anyone thought of Willard Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.
Shee-it now I'm starting to write like Howee Cahhhhhh...
Of course, there is one very funny metaphor here, if Scott Brown took a flyer in GOP Presidential politics in 2012 he'd be doing it for the virtually the same reasons Romney did in 2008, "I can't get re-elected in the Bay State, HELLO Presidential campaign headquarters in Concord!"
Still, I'd be intensely interested to see how Brown was polling in New Hampshire, he need not top the list, merely outdo Mitt Romney for the ball to get rolling.
Color me interested...

A last shout out

Once again to the deathless Spartans of Menotomy, I think they actually ramped up their game compared to 2006 & 2008. Certainly they felt that they had something to prove based on Former State Senator Scott Brown's success last January. So out they went holding signs, making phone calls (LOTS of phone calls), knocking on doors (LOTS of doors) , compiling and executing endless lists and task upon task.
And what the hell, it worked.
Granted they had a candidate at the top of the ticket that did not make a single mistake thru out the entire campaign, one who was also blessed with superlative skills at retail politics. But it all of that only works when it is appended to a thorough ground game. The Spartans (and ten thousand other election day volunteers) brought that in spades.
They are amazing pure and simple.
And while I am at it, I take back all the misgivings I had about state democratic chair John Walsh, the man is a veritable "Patton of the Precincts", he read the numbers generated by the special election in January and Deval Patrick reaped the harvest of it all.

Can someone explain to

Humble Elias how Keith Olbermann's political contributions merit his suspension from MSNBC while Howie Carr can blithely host the Plymouth County Republican Unity Breakfast without so much as a by-your-leave?
Am I missing something here?
Okay so Olbermann spent money on candidates that were part and parcel of his reportage (which is on the face of is a breach of ethics) but then Howie Carr books himself as the featured talent at GOP events that ought to be fair game to him as journalism.
So I guess the main diff is, Howie is just more adept at breaching journalistic ethics sans reproof...Or else the powers that be either don't care or are suitably intimidated.

So the democrats lost control of the US House?

To a bunch of raving Tea Partei Crazies? Well...thats bad news, as bad as the news is for the democrats it may turn out to be infinitely worse for John Boehner and the establishment GOP. My thesis here is simple, The GOP cannot survive half Tea Partei and half Free, a house divided against itself cannot stand to quote the First (and best) republican.
Remember this when the back bench in the House votes to abolish the law of gravity and tries to annex the planet Mars via congressional Bill of Attainder.
Meanwhile corrupt power-hungry political insider and Tea Partei activist Dick Armey is quoted as saying the following in the Boston Globe today: “The defining influence electorally in America is we are tired of big-shot insiders taking care of themselves and one another,’’
Nigh perfect hilarity...This would be the same Dick Armey who had his snout so deep in the public trough he was snorting up splinters for his entire career as a boodler and a congressman. Whatever else, this congress will furnish Humble Elias with reams of material going forward.

Idle Conjuration

Just how does one go about "losing Margery Eagan's respect"?
I mean she goes into this drama-queen "disallusioned democrat" act on average twice a week in the pages of the Boston Herald in the lead up to an election.
Tellingly, it when she "gives up on the excesses of a fellow democrat" that she always makes the front page, in a smaller font than Howie Carr's teaser of course.
Today she is "shocked, shocked shocked" to discover Congressman Barney Frank took some pot shots at the Boston Herald in his speech Tuesday night.
I guess she finds it terrifying that a democrat should talk back to a republican or their fellow travelers in the exact same tone of derision that they've come in for these years gone by.
She has done it like twice in the past two weeks fuh ghod's sake.
I am the only person who notices this routine at all?
Anyway...What do I have to do to disallusion poor Margery?
Idly curious.

Idle Conjuration

Just how does one go about "losing Margery Eagan's respect"?
I mean she goes into this drama-queen "disallusioned democrat" act on average twice a week in the pages of the Boston Herald in the lead up to an election.
Tellingly, it when she "gives up on the excesses of a fellow democrat" that she always makes the front page, in a smaller font than Howie Carr's teaser of course.
Today she is "shocked, shocked shocked" to discover Congressman Barney Frank took some pot shots at the Boston Herald in his speech Tuesday night.
I guess she finds it terrifying that a democrat should talk back to a republican or their fellow travelers in the exact same tone of derision that they've come in for these years gone by.
She has done it like twice in the past two weeks fuh ghod's sake.
I am the only person who notices this routine at all?
Anyway...What do I have to do to disallusion poor Margery?
Idly curious.

Passages...

His numbers are still strong, but in an ineffable way, the wind has definitely gone out of Former State Senator Scott Brown's sails.

Maybe it was all that campaigning his did for the GOP congressional candidates in Massachusetts, a matched set of insolent misfits toplined by Jeff Perry (a notorious enabler of child fondling policemen) and Bill Hudak (an insufferable weirdo with a lawn sign fixation). These were one and all, the sort of political freaks guaranteed to give independents the bed spins.
John Kerry couldn't make Shannon O'Brien Governor or Martha Coakley Senator, but then again, Scott Brown couldn't do nuthin' for nobody, especially Charlie Baker.

Food for thought I'd say.

Truly, whatever it is, the victory laps are over.

And Brown returns to a US Senate controlled by democrats, maybe he can gin up his "Scott Brown Republican" cred a bit, but given the partisan divide in DC, we can't expect him to accomplish much except more preening and posing and that is already getting old.
A bunch of crazies and book burners are posed to hit the US House and already Scott is looking like a beaten man and yesterday's news.

Meanwhile ten stalwart democrats in the Massachusetts congressional delegation have just entered minority status with reasonably full campaign coffers and nice fresh voter and volunteer lists. The only question here is, who among them will take the plunge?
Capuano and Lynch are both talking about it...For the others its a three way argument between tenure of office, the indignities of minority status versus the perils and glories of taking a flyer in the democratic senatorial primary.
Governor Patrick did not surge past Brown's special election turn out, but he certainly flipped a lot of independents and dragged every last democrat he could lay hands on to the polls in a GOTV effort executed with Prussian efficiency.
The numbers are some comfort to Brown, the metaphor is not, because in a year when the GOP was ascendant nationally, when the state GOP was on the march from the top down, the state democrats were able to force a favorable decision under immensely unfavorable odds.
And where was Scott Brown in all this? down on the Cape, alibi-ing for Jeff Perry while the winds blew ever colder all around him.
If I was Scott Brown I'd husband that six million large he has in the bank he is gonna need it.

If you wanna read something a little sad

and unintentionally hilarious, check out Howie Carr's hate filled diatribe in Today's Herald. Or you can save a few quarters and get it as fish wrap free in the Haymarket tomorrow morning, I leave it up to you.
Anyhow, when I say "hate filled" I don't mean in the earthy-crunchy "Whole Foods Market-can't distinguish between a difference in opinion and loathing" context, I mean angry old bitter and well humorless.
No shit Howie has lost it, he is soo-ooo angry, like H.L. Mencken's obituary caricature of William Jennings Bryan in Dayton Tennessee, desperate to sink his teeth into someone anyone...ranting and raving his way into the grave.

 Ghod how he hates Obama and Patrick and Nancy Pelosi etc etc...and without a shred of humor or wit or self consciousness at all.
Howie really thinks he is this poor pitiful helpless white man, trapped in his McMansion in Wellesley besieged by Hispanic community organizers, environmental affairs inspectors, the malevolent Stalinist bureaucracy that is OSHA and women's rights advocates.
There is a definite "Captain Queeg on the witness stand" quality to today's column, read it if you don't believe me.
Well...whatever else, in the opinion industry (where I toil in the lowest of strata) there is a definite tendency, given time to believing your own bullshit. And when that happens it is time to board up shop and make for Fort Myers Beach and the occasional movie review for the local shopper.
Trust me, Howie won't be having that sort of revelation anytime soon, he'll just get angrier and more paranoid and less readable as time rolls on.
How many GOP fundraisers did he host this political season? One, two?
The man made a bonfire of his journalistic ethics and still he didn't see Governor Patrick humbled....No wonder he is ready for his straitjacket.

In the weary wicked end...

Charlie Baker may well have gone over the hump because no one on his campaign staff dared to enter his office and tell him that for a lot of reasons, he was the underdog in this race...and it is disaster electoral to be ignorant of that fact.
Governor Patrick on the other hand, strangely bouyed by Scott Brown's victory in January took nothing for granted, spoke of his accomplishments, campaigned incessantly, remained calm and optimistic from the git-go.
Baker?
We seem to know less about him today than when he announced for Governor save that the former Harvard Pilgrim CEO seems to have a very short fuse.
Like Romney, Baker was an amateur in a professional's game, unlike Romney he had no artifice to conceal this crucial weakness and thus went raving and ranting  (mostly about welfare) to his Waterloo.
Apparently the Swampscott Board of Selectmen is no great school for Statesmanshood.
It doesn't help at all that Baker was up against the best retail campaigner this Commonwealth has seen since the Empire Days of Edward Maximus, our Late Senior Senator.
And the three way race certainly kept the political waters appropriately muddied thru the summer and Early Fall, hell at one point Tim Cahill on name recognition alone was polling second to Patrick. That should have set off alarm klaxons in Fortress Baker with respect to Charlie's perception among the voters, instead they got the RGA to buy some nasty adverts and kept staggering alone freeping it up before sparse audiences.
Over and above all that, four factors did Charlie Baker in;
He never opened up a real lead in a single solitary poll all year long, you'd never know it from the way he campaigned though.
A incumbent Governor of Massachusetts has not been denied re-election in a general election since Frank Sargent in 1974.
Relying on voter fury to mask your defficiencies as a campaigner and debater, is a formula for self destruction, just as George Wallace and George McGovern it didn't work for either of them when the Big Job was on the line.
Nobody could figure out just what Charlie Stood For, everything he tasked Governor Patrick with, were measures he himself signed off on back when he was Bill Weld's favorite swank. Was he a freeper? He happily camped it up for the Child Molester's Friend, Jeff Perry and Bill Hudak both scions of the Tea Partei.
Was he a moderate? Sure he nominated the out-n-proud Richard Tisei and then seemingly forgot about the guy.
Maybe he was a pure opportunist like Romney, but sort of awful at it?

The man should have been ten points up last spring given the state of economy alone, forget about Governor Patrick's early mistakes...But no Baker acted this was gonna be a cakewalk and got schooled well and thoroughly.
For all that Patrick campaigned like he was five points down all year long, calm, reasoned but focused...And in the end, like his closest Political Ancestor Harry Truman, the Governor carried the day despite the odds.
Deval Patrick.
Get used to that name, he is the main factor in state politics until 2014.

Adlertag in the Commonwealth (or HST = DP)

Two years into a world wide economic recession...


Eleven months after a senatorial special election that ended in disaster for the Democrats of Massachusetts...


In a state where he was polling badly against whooping cough and the Potato blight...


And against a national tide that was dead set against the democratic party...


Deval Patrick, that liberal, has smashed his way thru re-election.
As far as I am concerned the Governor is the very incarnation of Harry S. Truman rated a "gone gosling" in January of 1948 and yet he finished Uber Alles come November.

Say what you like about Patrick, but he kept his head when everyone else was running for the fallout shelters....and victory has been his reward.

Tomorrow I'll try and break it down, but for tonight, let us savor the only thing rarer than a landside and that is an upset...

Whatever else happens today,

remember you are the inheritors of a proud political tradition in the world's oldest and most successful democracy, lets try to live up to that win lose or draw.
As for Massachusetts, lets tuck into them one more time and apply Abraham Lincoln's fabled "last full measure of devotion".
What we do today, what we achieve, it is all for Glory of the Commonwealth!

***
Oh and vote no on Question #5 in Arlington, it is a veiled anti-Israel measure snuck onto the ballot by a bunch of freebooters in Somerville Ma who are desperate for some traction in their publicity campaign.
:D

Y'know...

the last twenty four hours before the polls open reveals a lot about a person when they are running for Governor all out.
Governor Deval Patrick handed out candy to his neighbor's children, praised everyone's costume and deftly parried all last minute accusations from the GOP.
Charlie Baker on the other hand went crashing around the state in a murderous fury snarling about welfare and deficits and illegal immigration and the martians that live under his porch (okay that last one is a joke, but seriously the man is in an Ed Muskie-like fugue state).
Something of Baker's real character is being remorselessly exposed to the voters as this mishaugas plays itself out on the eve of the election. His sense of entitlement and his sheer fury that anyone would dare question said manorial right to high public office.
So on Baker goes ranting and raving like Spiro Agnew...Whether it works or not is up to others, starting at 7am tomorrow morning.

***
And while I am here let me just take a moment to endorse Suzanne Bump for State Auditor she has a long tail and good resume from within and without state government but she is still young enough to infuse the office with enthusiasm and energy. Two thing sorely lacking of late under Joe DeNucci, an able man who has let some vigor slip of late.

Another Endorsement:

For State Treasurer, Steve Grossman in Tuesday's general election.


Why?

Because for once, the able candidate, the one with political experience, wealth built of hard work in the private sector and a brainy record of fiscal accomplishment within and without government, is also the most likable candidate.
The man who once sang (semi-badly) "The Farmer and the Cowman should be friends" at a gubernatorial meet-n-greet breakfast in Lexington, has my vote.
Steve is a friendly folksy guy, he is no barn-burner behind the podium, but he wears well, seems honest and has a Ned Flanders-ish neighborliness sans the prissiness.
As always I must admonish the candidate for State Treasurer, beware your friends! That goes for both parties by the way, when you are AG you make enemies, serious ones that can block your advancement, but when you are treasurer you have to keep an eye on your bosom buddies. They are the ones who are vulnerable to temptation.
Be careful who you hire thass all I'm saying.

An Endorsement:

For Governor in Tuesday's general election, the Chimes at Midnight proudly endorses Governor Deval Patrick for re-election.
There has been a lot of talk these past twenty years about "reform" most of it from Republicans desperate to be elected or re-elected and to the point where the word lost all meaning.
But reform clearly means something to Deval Patrick, because despite his early mis-steps he has pushed thru real change in the Commonwealth in the teeth of serious opposition on and off Beacon Hill. I like the police well enough, but when their unions go banging the pots for Tim Cahill or Charlie Baker because they are all for extortionate overtime pay, well that tells me all I need to know about where Deval Patrick's gut is.
When bullying came to the forefront, the Governor spoke up clearly and decisively, that tells me all I need to know about his moral compass and where it points.
When the gays of this state asked for nothing more than the legal status of matrimony, Deval Patrick came thru with alacrity, that tells me all I need to know about his heart.
I don't agree with him about casinos but he never been a sneak or a jerk about it, this compares admirably with the routine pussyfooting that characterizes his four predecessors.
We are faced with a worldwide economic recession, Deval Patrick isn't up there pounding the podium and promising phat times thru the simple expedient of running the poor out of the state at the point of a bayonet.
No he has remained true to himself and has refused to indulge the usual bluster, it has been so long since a Governor treated us like adults that we hardly know how to act...None of his biggest critics in the local punditariat get this at all.
For all these reasons, I am happily voting for Deval Patrick, I urge my readers (all seven of you) to do likewise.

Only in America

could  pompous harpy like GOP senate candidate (Connecticut) Linda McMahon get tuff-grrl credibility for kicking a paid employee in the crotch on live television.
This is the WWE we are talking about, a corporation not known for it's humane human services department, you do what your are told no matter how dangerous or else you get the bum's rush.
I'd love to see her try and pull something like this one someone who is not beholden to her or her oafish husband, Vince McMahon.

BTW

Congrats to AG Martha Coakley for gaining the endorsements of both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald.
Savor the moment Martha, laminate those clippings you won't see the like of them again.

Well shit it helps to have a yammering doofus for an opponent though, but I must say the AG has run a much better campaign this fall than she did for the US Senate last winter.
Not taking stuff for granted is always a good start.

Health to her efforts, then as now she has my vote.

Brian McGrory has a talent

for the obtuse, there is no other explanation for today's column which insists that Charlie Baker and Deval Patrick have learned the same lessons out on the campaign trail.
For some strange reason Brian keeps trying to combine in some Frankensteinian fashion citizens Baker and Patrick into some sort of uber-candidate that would exemplify the best of each individual donor.
This is sheer nonsense but par for the course from Brian, he runs these sorts of columns trying in a passive aggressive way to blur distinctions between democrat and republican, an intellectual exercise that always advantages the GOP.
Owing to an edge in voter registration, the democrats have more to lose in an atmosphere of studied disaffection...Brian knows this so of course he cultivates the notion that it really doesn't matter.
At least Jeff Jacoby comes out and sez he wants low taxes and slaves for civil servants, McGrory sneaks around in a dreadful wheedling fashion hinting and insinuating.
Gawd-Awful.
Anything to get that big tax cut so long as he doesn't have to rave like a freeper to get it.

N.A.W.A.C. tactics in Kentucky

Yez kin see da video hyar if'n you don't believe me.

Is it me or is this an unusually violent election using say, 1968 as a baseline?

Not hard to see why, if you listen to enough wingnut talk radio you will be inundated with persecution fantasies (by that I mean soon the poor wretched listener will be given someone to persecute once the election is won), delusions of problem solving gunplay and petty childish self justification.
Sick
Demented
Typical....
Has anyone even gone to the home of these two brutal knuckleheads bearing an arrest warrant?
Or has Kentucky been successfully intimidated by the Tea Partei and Libertarianism's street revolutionaries?

It doesn't seem like

David Cameron is going to do much in the UK other than cut the budget, cheerlead and piss on everyone's leg insisting all the while that it is a gentle rain.

Charlie Baker's Cape Cod Adventure...

You have to hand it to Charlie Baker, he is uncommonly loyal to gruesome sleazebags. Yesterday he drove all the way down to Dennis to devote exact two minutes of his precious time extolling the merits of Citizen Jeff Perry GOP candidate for Congress in the 10th district and an enthusiastic coddler of alleged child molesters.
Two whole minutes eh? Hardly a Profile in Courage if you asked me.
If you are gonna say yes, then bang the pots and scream for blood and dynamite, if you are gonna say no then do it firmly, two minutes and then blasting back over the Sagamore Bridge like a sun stroked New York tourist smells of cowardice and cupidity.
Just sayin'...

Thought for the Day...

Voting for Charlie Baker is like voting for your landlord. Not the nice man and his family that live on the third floor of your triple-decker and does all his own maintenance, no the absentee landlord.
You know that selfish whining dick who lives in a hideous McMansion in Wellesley and won't turn on the heat til November th or fix the stuck window in the bathroom no matter how often you complain.

Former State Senator Scott Brown has endorsed Jeff Perry for Congress

in the ten congressional district, and in other news, for once Humble Elias and Joanie Vennochi are in complete agreement when we ask "Would Scott Brown ever want his daughters arrested by Jeff Perry or any of his pals on the force?"
Likely not...
For that fact do you think Scott Brown would ever want to live next door to a loudmouth crank like Bill Hudak with the billboards on his lawn and daily diatribes about President Obama's bith certificate?
Just sayin'...
And if Jeff Perry and Bill Hudak ever get their way and impeach the President (ah-gain) will Scott vote to convict in the US Senate?
I'm thinking no, Scott will suddenly get called away to referee a youth hockey game in Thunder Bay, he'll weasel out of it somehow.
But if either of these useless mooks get elected Scott will have to endure all kinds of crazy talk, likely he won'ty stand up to much of it.

Dude give us some context...

Brian McGrory gets all David Broderish on us when Jim Ready gets into an unfortunate spat with GOP congressional candidate Sean Bielat.
Waalll ah swan...If Barney Frank has a sarcastic edge to him it's in part because Tea Partiers think nothing about shaking their fists and calling the long serving congressman a "homo" to his face.
This happened back in March of this year, I don't recall Brian McGrory taking any note of this loutish N.A.W.A.C. tinged event.
Big surprise there...
Which is not to say that what Jim Ready did was right, rule #1 in big time politics is never let your emotions get the better of you when the cameras are running.
But then a word to the wise is sufficient...except in Brian McGory's case I guess.

I think that Professor Anita Hill...

should apologize to Clarence Thomas' wife.

Here is Elias Nugator's recommended wording:

"I am sorry you married such a colossal dickhead, but if you'd just read my sworn testimony the whole fiasco might have been avoided..."

****
Honestly, obsessed much there Virginia, I'm sure Anita Hill rarely reflects on the whole situation anymore, but clearly it is a constant topic of conversation in your household. I only imagine what constitutes your husband's side of the story since he generally makes the Egyptian Sphinx look voluable by comparison.

Ziplips on another charm offensive...

Manfully and unsuccessfully trying to obscure his volatile and vulgar temperment.

Just give it up Baker willya?
You aren't fooling anyone you do the worst hale-fellow-well-met act since Mike Dukakis...and that really is saying something.
You are a cold cruel man with the grasping striving mentality of a rich man who wants to get richer. You got that way by overcharging the little guy on health insurance premiums and screwing over the entire state of Rhode Island.
If you are (Ghod help us) elected, you'll assume that sort of behavior brought you to glory and proceed to turn the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in a Plantation, period end of story.
But please enough with the phony sincerity act...it is purely sickening to watch.

Mothers of the Tenth Congressional District...

I reiterate, would you want your daughter to be arrested by Jeff Perry?

For that fact, state RNC Chair sex “Bill Hudak is not crazy!’’...but he sure as shit doesn't have the judgement Ghod gave a bag of hammers.
Do you really want people this dingy representing you in congress?

Rand Paul (GOP candidate for Senate in Kentucky and a future US Dictator) is

throwing a gigantic shit fit because his democratic opponent, Jack Conway has dared to question Paul's religious convictions.
Is is dirty politics?
Hell yeah!
I love it, I may need to rent out Harvard Stadium to guffaw in.
Geezus Christ, I'm not sure a single democratic nominee for President since 1984 has evaded pointed uncivil and politically motivated questions about their religious convictions.
Back in 2004, the American Bishops were panting to excommunicate John Kerry for their pals in the GOP, they were restrained in this folly but spent most of that summer and fall making all sorts of gruesome noises.
As a matter of fact I think this is the first time a GOP candidate for anything has come in for cheap religious heat, this is unprecedented quite frankly.
Hence my hilarity and incredulity.
So if Rand Paul is getting a taste of what is normally meted out to democrats, tough shit, tell this bitch to man up and take it like John Kerry.

It is Monday Morning...

So which backstabbing treacherous gimp is gonna endorse Charlie Baker this week?

I know Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold are off the block, other than that the sky is the limit.

16,000 voter show up at the Hynes

to hear the President of the United States extoll the merits of Governor Deval Patrick and to urge his re-election.
I'm not sure since the day he announced for Governor that 16,000 people to date  have heard Charlie Baker  say anything in real time.
Tells yuh something don't it?
***
Meanwhile Yvonne Abraham dithers and gibbers indecisively....You get the impression she really wishes deep down that Charlie Baker was running better, I mean a tax really means something to a Boston Globe columnist, it is the difference between her kid buying new or used textbooks at Holy Cross.
***
And over at the Herald Margery Eagan is playing the dissident liberal for the twentieth time in a row...Every god-damn election she pretends that whatever the democrats are doing this year is sooo beyond the pale that she can support them no longer. She perfected this entirely mendacious routine back when Dukakis was riding high. She'll be doing it right up to the moment she gets measured for her harp....sick demented and typical.

Open Letter to Tom Reilly (The former Attorney General of the Commonwealth)

Nice work asshole, you endorsed Charlie Baker yesterday and broke my old Irish Mother's Heart.

You may not remember her, she was an octogenarian who happily schlepped her backside via the MBTA to your gubernatorial campaign headquarters in 2006 to stuff envelopes and make phone calls LOTS OF GOD DAMNED phone calls on your behalf during the democratic primary.
Why?
Because my Dear Sainted Mother still believes in the sheer tribal efficacy of Irish Democrats in politics something none one has the heart to tell her has been dead and buried for twenty years...
Because you were an older man and her contemporary in some respects...
Because my dear sainted mother believed in your long resume in state politics...
Because her maiden name was "Reilly"....
For all those reasons and few more she came into the city from out the suburbs and went to work.
And as of last night she described your endorsement of Baker as "A knife run thru my heart".
Now as loyal sons go, I am generally opposed to the metaphoric stabbing of my Dear Sainted Mother.
Definitely opposed in point of fact.
So lets get one thing straight Tom, you and I are quits.
I don't give a good gawd damn about your reading of the facts in the Harvard-Pilgrim bailout, all I know is you are a disloyal sneak just like Paul Loscocco, one who made a fool out of my Mama.
Humble Elias realizes this is a low trafficked blog, but believe me I will devote space and resources to the defeat and or humiliation of you and your candidate.
You may not have made a powerful enemy but you have made the matter personal.
So good luck with your treachery bitch I wish you the joy of it.


Sincerely
Elias Nugator
Incensed and implacable...

"How do you create jobs?"

Thundered Linda McMahon wrestling executive and GOP candidate for the US Senate from Connecticut in a recent debate.

She answered herself by saying in effect, "when enterpreneurs take risks, jobs are created".
In other words, get the help hopped up on steroids, turn on the cameras and if that doesn't work drop them from the rafters like sacks of potatoes.
That is the sort of job-creating risk taking behavior we can expect from Senator Linda McMahon.
Yeah I know, Humble Elias is working the Owen Hart angle...shameless of me I know, after all the WWE's tribute to the late pro-wrestler garnered the show's best ratings ever.
Yeah...Linda McMahon, first GOP candidate for US Senate with a body count comparable to Hannibal Lector.

I love it when

the local punditariat are made yammering fools by events.

Case in point, Brian McGrory whose paternalistic disdain for public service unions and cautious praise for Charlie Baker's derogatory attitude thereon, runs afoul of this new item in the same Metro Section of the Boston Globe.
I guess Charlie Baker accepted the State Police Union's endorsement soooo quietly that Brian McGrory couldn't hear it on Morrissey Blvd.
Of course, this is the Massachusetts State Police we are talking about, individually they are just grand, but they are under the thumb of radical wingnut union leadership who will endorse the likes of Achille Starace every time.
A harsh argument from Humble Elias?
Yes but it is just exactly the same logic Brian brings to bear on his bete' noir the "teacher's unions".
All I know is, teaching your offspring is hard work for the pittances that're paid out for it. I mean have you see the attention spans of these rug rats? The way they dress, what the eat, it's a hopeless struggle quite frankly for the average classroom teacher. I mean it's not like some pundit in a cubicle downtown is ever gonna stuck gazing at their navels long enough to teach your inane issue anything.
Brian McGrory is a fool and he and Charlie Baker are "brothers with different mothers" as far as Humble Elias is concerned.

Bill Weld sobers up...

just long enough to host a Baker fundraiser at his "former home" in Cambridge.
I'll bet he claps Charlie on the back and calls him "Paul" during the endorsement.
***

Meanwhile, Charlie keeps channeling his inner Paladino with a blustery roar about welfare cheats and the abuse of food stamps...Problems that Bill Weld once claimed to have solved to the complete satisfaction of all radio talk show hosts.
I don't know, I'm not sure it's smart to campaign on a pledge to lay off five thousand state workers and to throw the bums off welfare during a recession.
Some of those bums used to be republicans after all...
But Charlie keeps freeping out, displaying an admirably short fuse and a set of convictions that would bring a tear to the eye of any Spanish Falangist.
And it's only Columbus Day, imagine what Baker will be screaming about by Halloween.

The only pol out there curently funnier than

Paul Loscocco, is NY GOP gubernatorial candidate, Carl Paladino.

Honest to Ghod, I think if Paladino loses he will try to seize power by challenging Cuomo to a fist fight at the inaugural.
The man is nothing sort of hilarious...he is also what I like to think of as "The Charlie Baker of the Future".
In other words, Baker will be ranting and raving like Paladino ere' long...

As usual...

amidst all our current strife and woe, Channel Zero is up to no good whatsoever.

Give them credit though, for a dose of originality.

If...

Charlie "Ziplips" Baker somehow gets elected Governor and decides to run the Commonwealth like he ran Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare then we can look forward to:

All Cabinet Officers receiving generous pay raises and bonuses. The Governor will get a mulitmillion dollar "golden parachute" regardless of the condition of the Commonwealth when he leaves office.

The whole of Massachusetts west of Worcester will be abandoned to the encroachments of New York they way Baker once cut loose Rhode Island to maintain Harvard Pilgrim's almighty bottom line.

Fees will go up and services will decline, calls to the Registry of Motor vehicles will be routed to Bangalore.

Because all that is running a state like a successful business...

Is it me...?

Or does Charlie Baker's current ad-buy on TV obliquely admit to the sin of price gouging on the part of the former Harvard Pilgrim CEO?
First off the whole mood of the advert is hysterical, a snarling ranting tone that we haven't seen since Scary Kerry Healey left the stage.
Which is, among other things a pretty good indicator as to how this allegedly cool rational CEO performs under pressure...The guy starts losing his temper.
But getting back to the TV commercial, after accusing the Governor of raising taxes on everything, a bizarre placard flashes buy insisting that if health insurance premiums went up, it is because Governor Patrick approved the hike.
Maybe he did and maybe he didn't, but Governor Patrick sure as shit didn't request those premium increases, the HMOs and sundry health insurance providers did that...Charlie Baker and his pals in other words.
So is Humble Elias wrong or is he wrong?
 It sure sounds like Charlie is copping to being a greedy price gouging sumbitch, a gombeen man with his hand in everyone's damn pocket.
But that...Is only a theory you understand.
:D

Credit Paul Loscocco with one accomplishment

he has inject some real humor of a low Vaudeville character into an otherwise deadly serious gubernatorial contest.
If Paul was one of the Three Stooges, he'd be Joe Besser, whiny childish and ineffably clumsy.
Last week Loscocco bailed on Tim Cahill in a secret midnight deal, endorsed Charlie Baker and "wouldn't rule out" accepting a post in Baker's hypothetical administration.
After a solid week of vilification (there is a limit to the rat-like behavior even Massachusetts will countenance) Loscocco swallowed manfully, bugged his eyes and announced abruptly that the real reason he bailed on Cahill was that the Treasurer was secretly conspiring with Governor Patrick's campaign to gang up on Charlie Baker!
This is right up their with the best of Bart Simpson's evasions and distortions when confronted by his dimwitted father.
Hell it rivals that scene in "1984" where Oceania suddenly shifts alliances overnight and gangs up on East Asia.
Except of course, no one is buying Loscocco's story, hence the hilarity.
As long as it's not bearing down on you, a loose cannon can be a funny thing to watch, and at the rate Loscocco is careening around state politics, I fully expect him to be seated behind President Obama at his rally for Deval Patrick this week.

Boy Charlie Baker sure is an angry sneak isn't he?

Now it looks like a considerable amount of his time and treasure was expended trying to force Cahill out of the race.
I mean this is just bad publicity all around.
Ghod Charlies must be ranting and raving at his staff like Carl Paladino gone mad on crystal meth...these wealthy CEO types always have short fuses.
This quote just jumped out at me:
"Weaver assured Meldrum and Yob later: “Paul (Loscocco) will be given/offered a substantive lifeline. Up to him to take it or not.’’

I mean wow, a quid pro quo from the state GOP who'd a thunk it???
***
All these machinations though miss the big picture, Charlie Baker given the economy alone ought to be eight points up in the polls, instead he has been boring auds all over the Commonwealth, blowing his stack over nothing in debates and displaying a "smile" that suggests an undertaker with a bad biopsy report in his back pocket. Moreover the jaded mook acts like this ought to be a cakewalk...and it isn't, hence the source of his rage.
He wouldn't need to operate like this, if he was a decent candidate with some sincerity in him, instead we get this rubbish.
Sad...
No it's hilarious really.