BTW Kudos to State Senator Donnelly

for voting NO on that anti-Paddy-n-Bridget Bill last week, he has done the Fourth Middlesex proud.
Of course, the Fourth Middlesex has to be one of the safest seats in the Commonwealth, but it is gonna be a funny year politically and a strong stance has to be taken on this crazy immigrant bashing rubbish come what may.
Because of course it is an election year, which is the only time we condescend to police the lives of Paddy and Bridget and Raul and Rosita...
And as far as this Republic is concerned we set up an artificial class of despised rightless persons at  the peril of all our liberties so sez Humble Elias.

All Good Presidents have their

"Bay of Pigs" moment, and yesterday President Obama had his....

It it never a bad thing to discover that there are people around you that are heavily invested in lying to the President at all costs.
I don't blame the people of the gulf coast for being angry about this, Hurricane Katrina alone is too much suffering for one life time and now they have this doomsday oil slick to endure.  Those BP sonsabitches better get this damn thing capped thass all I can say.
Meanwhile the rest of us can take this as a "teachable moment" with respect to the kind of energy we wish to produce and consume going forward.

Cahill and Baker take a dive in the polls

and so predictably, they come out banging the pots for a pogrom of illegal immigrants, more police powers and crackdowns on...someone somewheres.
This I don't get, most of the "illegal immigrants" in this area are Irish students who have elected to stay on when their visas expired. Who is work as movers now?  Or roofers? Who is gonna put up the wallpaper??
Charlie Baker doesn't want to deport white people to that hillbilly wasteland Nashua New Hampshire does he???
Frankly the whole stupid farce resembles that old Looney Tunes cartoon wherein Yosemite Sam is running for Mayor of some awful pudunk town on a platform promising rabbit genocide.
Bugs Bunny won't have it and so you can imagine the rest.
I dunno did we ever hear anything out of Charlie Baker about illegal immigration before now? Clearly he got some hysterical phone call from the Republican Governor's Association insisting that illegal immigrants were "polling well" and this callow rubbish is the direct result.
As for Tim Cahill, I doubt he could even spell "illegal immigrant" correctly before today.

Go Figure...

Israel may have a larger nuclear arsenal than Great Britain.

I mean 225 warheads?
Assuming Israel has been running their Dimona nuclear complex flat out since 1969 they could have well stockpiled more warheads than the UK by now.
Funny...

Go Figure...

Israel may have a larger nuclear arsenal than Great Britain.

Sen. Brown sez he wants to "keep an open mind" about

repealing DADT in the US Military.

Never before has an "open mind" been invoked in defense of a close minded repressive and unfair measure...BC's law school sure does graduate some subtle minds to be sure.
Right now Brownie is a no vote, mostly on grounds that his compromise last week on financial regulation means he must find a red meat wingnut issue to champion this week to quiet his tantrum-prone teabagger base.
So of course, Brownie being Brownie, he throws a few more homos onto the bonfire in hope that will stem the tide of book-burners that're defriending him on Facebook.
Still and all that, he is a remarkable pussyfooter isn't he?
Who knew?
By inclination he clearly wants to say no, the man was no friend to his gay constituents as a state senator, but of course he wants to say no in a nice safe way. The man is caught between two mutually exclusive realities, the clear preferences of his constituency (DADT spells MUD in Massachusetts) and then there is the wider fundraising world of Teabag USA Brown must satisfy and beyond that he has to stay on Mitch McConnell's good side...Disheartening prospects for Justice over the short run sez Humble Elias.
Doesn't seem like he will pull that off, just sayin'.

Senate President Murray is right about one thing,

the current scandal in the Probation Department is about "Separation of Powers".
Said department has become Separated from any Power of oversight and good public management.
As for Speaker DeLeo, he is swimming in deep waters, if I was him I'd recuse myself from any discussion of the matter, rent a fishing shack in Provincetown and hope for an oil slick in Nantucket Sound.
Again I hate to harp on a old metaphor, but Murray and DeLeo will gladly jump thru hoops of fire when gaming and casino gambling is under discussion, but when a sickening patronage scandal detonates in the Probation Department suddenly they wanna go slow, throw the car into neutral, block off the wheels even.
I say pass the Governor's gawd-damned bill to move the Probation Department over to the Executive Department and be done with it, there is plenty of oversight to found therein.

All well and good to have a

Governor who has been trying to clean up the mess at the Probations Department all along, nonetheless his proposed legislation has languished untouched and unreported in the Great-n-General Court since January 2010.
This is in spite of critical reports from the State Auditor's office, much discussion in the press, and now this Spotlight series in the Globe and still the legislature doesn't act.
Oh but watch em' jump thru hoops of fire if you are a lobbyist for casino gambling, all that pernicious shit gets reported out of committee at lightspeed plus.
My recommendation is that the lege get of their fat asses and get the Governor's bill passed on the quick, but then Humble Elias has little pull with that crowd.
Meanwhile kudos to the Boston Globe for a expose' on government malfeasance that lives up to the hype and covers all the details in sequence. Despite all, the Globe is still a paper of substance, they don't howl and snark like the Herald they just get the job done regardless.

It must be a mid term election,

because once again, the GOP resolves itself into a committee of vigilance and xenophobia and is bound and determined to run every illegal immigrant it can out of the country.
Until the election is over and they need the pool skimmed and dinner cooked that is. Arizona's current draconian anti-hedge-clipper/pool skimmer/au pair laws being only the latest example of movement conservatism's biannual flirtation with calculated xenophobia.

Just remember this guy here, he is an illegal immigrant. His foster parent lied like dogs in the heat to keep him far away from the Federales, do you really want to send him to the back of the line? have him pay a penalty and wait his turn when genetically engineered pterodactyls start strafing the citizenry?
Right now the way the law reads he couldn't fly over Arizona without incurring a bench warrant...Think about that.

On Hiatus, be back after the 23rd....

I dunno kids, aren't you all getting sick of reading the same old "sarcastic rant driven chatter" from Humble Elias day after day? I mean, it has been seven years after all, better written more passionate blogs and bloggers and gone Walking with the Man in the White Nightshirt in that span.
 The future belongs to on-line "communities" like the Blue Mass Groups or blogs with a solid install base in the community ("Left in Lowell" por ejemplo) or focused issue blogging as it is done over at the Marry in Massachusetts.
Despite the abundance of solid bloggable chaos I'm starting to wonder if the curtain is finally falling on the whole solo-blogger against the world meme.
There are other things I could do...Just sayin's thass all.

Ziplips can sure raise the moolah

can't he?

But that wasn't any indication that he has the common sense ghod gave a Jersey Cow.
And given his actual performance in the month of April (stabbing Richard Tisei in the back, pussyfooting the teabaggers, firing his campaign manager in a dead panic and blaming his battle-ax wifey for his former support for prop 2.5 overrides in Swampscott), I gotta say a Jersey Cow would give Baker a run for his money in the current GOP primary.
I mean other than the money and nailing Crazy Christy Mihos' coonskin to the wall Charlie doesn't have much to show for the effort does he?

Only a confluence of a

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Honest to Ghod...

Charlie Baker's handlers need to keep him away from the fourth estate, every time he gives a press conference he makes a braying jackass of himself.
Tuesday he tried to sound tough on the issue of homelessness by insisting tramps and bums had to produce identification proving they were Massachusetts' residents before receiving aid.
Then some bow-tie in his campaign reminded him "they are homeless, they don't have residences or ID or any of that rubbish".
Nitwit...
And so the inevitable craven retraction, this is like the third one Ziplips has issued in the past thirty days, first he publicly stabs Richard Tisei in the back regarding the transgender civil rights bill then he claims his wife nagged him into supporting Prop 2.5 overrides in Swampscott, now this mishaugas.
Charlie Baker is so inept he can't even pull off Spiro Agnew's old floorwalker act something that has keep all sorts of dubious teachables in the game for decades now.
I don't think Governor Patrick's swift pointed response is "playing politics with homelessness" it is however playing politics with Charlie Baker's almighty stupidity, different animal entirely.
I dunno kids, seems to me this may yet become a showdown between Cahill and Patrick, with Baker flailing for the bronze medal...A few more weeks like this and Charlie is gonna be in serious Bozo the Clown territory.

Well despite the fact that the back up water supply

was eminently potable, I still think the great 2010 water crisis is a cautious win for team Patrick. He stayed calm, the targetd communities stayed calm (for the most part) and we got thru it quickly.

***
And now at least we know that the state has a very effective crisis-communications system in place, useful to know if something even worse happens (and I devotely hope it does not).
***
Meanwhile, we wuz saved by blue collar guyz in tee shirts...congrats to our trained and experienced mechanics...Just don't let Mike Barnicle climb up yer porch or anything.

Why in Ghod's Name...

Does Jeff Jacoby persist in defending the indefensible practice of disaster related price gouging?

Shaking people down for a few more shekels at a time of panic & crisis is pretty goddamn low on the morality scale if you asked me.

But no, when the shit hammer comes down on us all, Jeff goes charging out there under the Dollar Sign Flag desperate to convince he is John Galt.
Pathetic really.
Honestly, he'll never become the next David Brudnoy if he keeps this up, he will be lucky to be stuck at the bottom of the bill with the cheap acts like R. Emmett Tyrell.
BTW whatever happened to Bob Tyrell? He looked like the next big monster back when Clinton was in office a natty combo of The Raisuli and Westbrook Pegler, now today pfft! Nothing the man couldn't get arrested if he solicited an immature donkey act.

Drinking from the tea kettle...

Well lets run down the list shall we?

The Gulf of Mexico is about to be covered with an oil slick that British Petroleum assured us would never happen offa one of their rigs.

Someone tried to blow up Times Square.

Last month it was too much water (in the form of rain) this month it is not enough potable H2O....

Oh and Calvin Borel won the Kentucky Derby...again. Truly he is the a Man on Horseback, no one has enjoyed winning more since the Empire Days of Muhammad Ali.

Well, nothing left to do but treat it all like an adventure. The summer is off to a helluva start sez Humble Elias.

Gotta Love Barbara Anderson

She is older than dirt, hasn't had a new thought in twenty years and pretty much she is relegated to the bottom of the bill with the cheap acts..but damn the lady does have the courage of her restrictions.
With the zeal of Chekist Anderson mercilessly grilled Citizen Charlie "Ziplips" Baker on his former support for Prop 2.5 overrides in Swampscott until he broke down and blamed his wife for his apostasy.
Satisfied that Citizen Baker is appropriately craven and spineless she endorsed his gubernatorial candidacy with all the smug self satisfaction one would expect from say the House of the Romanovs.
Ah but Barbara has a history of this sort of thing, she also has opportunistic side to her as well, she had the sheer effrontery to tour the  NH primary introducing Mitt Romney as an anti-tax zealot never once mentioning all the bewildering fees Mitt increased as Governor of Massachusetts.
Ditto she extracts abject groveling from Charlie Baker before endorsing him, artfully skipping over his penchant for increasing premiums at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.
In truth, Barbara Anderson reminds me of the old "Anti-Saloon League" from prohibition days when they'd happily trade votes with every drunk in the US Congress...I'm sure all those chowderheads blamed their wives too.