A note on political husbandry...

When you mate a persecution mania with a rampant sense of entitlement, you get conservative "Jackass" style stuntman, James O'Keefe, the hard right's own Paris Hilton.
How else to explain his latest prank a clumsy pass at a comely CNN anchor?
This kid has issues, and they lay him low ere' long, count on it.

Interesting profile of Charlie "Ziplips" Baker in

Today's Globe.

What boils down to though, is that as head of Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Charlie essentially threw over the entire state of Rhode Island in a bid to make his company profitable again.
He calls this "chasing efficiency".
I call it old fashioned ruthlessness.
Certainly Baker was coldly "efficient" about leaving numberless doctors, nurses and rate payers in the lurch when it suited his bottom line.
This is the sort of neo-libertarian rubbish Charlie hopes to impose on the Commonwealth as Governor.
I call it "neo-libertarian" because we all know that the likes of Charlie Baker could never survive a real disinterested libertarian style state government. I'd love to see how long Baker could hold onto his managerial genius rep without access to deadline extensions, tax breaks and easy ass state backed bond issues...
When he talks about small government, he means a government that is nigh useless to you, but still plenty useful to him the wealthy likes of him.
Remember this, libertarians will never admit it, especially the techno-autistic types who wave "Atlas Shrugged" under your nose, but money = power in their minds, as long as you have money you can get the smallest most impotent government to jump thru hoops of fire...Just like Charlie Baker did when he was head of Harvard Pilgrim.

A thought while showering

We have had more progress in this country in the past eighteen months than we got in the previous decade in it's entirety.
If that isn't enough to motivate democrats, liberals and progressives to get out into the streets in this election then what will?

A thought while showering

We have had more progress in this country in the past eighteen months than we got in the previous decade in it's entirety.
If that isn't enough to motivate democrats, liberals and progressives to get out into the streets in this election then what will?

A thought while showering

We have had more progress in this country in the past eighteen months than we got in the previous decade in it's entirety.
If that isn't enough to motivate democrats, liberals and progressives to get out into the streets in this election then what will?

If you don't think

That there is a causal link between THIS...
And
THAT...
Then you are either too dumb for help or hopelessly self deluded.

Every time, the income gap in this country between the rich and the poor widens, listen to the pious shrieks for increasing money for education, Prussian discipline in the classroom, endless standardized tests for teachers and students and a fifty two hour school day.

Frankly I'd love to give some of those beloved standardized tests to a cross section of congressmen, local pundits and school committee members, the results would be highly suggestive to say the least.
And why do we endure all this mishaugas? Because the working class in the country is vanishing and the middle class is about to become the pathetic stunted lackey of the overclass...education for a job is supposed to resolve a economy that benefits too few at the expose of far too many.
Hey I've got a solution for income disparities in this country, how about we try HIGHER WAGES?
I mean shit it worked for FDR...or are we not supposed to say that anymore?
Humble Elias is no Marxist (I no more believe in Dialectical Materialism than I believe in Noah's Ark) but you have to admit there is some serious false consciousness in play out there when it comes to education policy.

The President is talking about education today

Undoubtedly, the speech will be lively and compelling.

Frankly though, Humble Elias thinks that he ought to save his breath, the whole education set up in this country is "for the birds" as his silver haired old Irish mother would say.
These days education is purely about teaching kids to be job-seekers and job holder, consumers in a modern market economy. Not citizens of a great democracy or even voters, they are being taught to be consumers in the final analysis.
Well today they are consumers, tomorrow they will be mere commodities.
Hell today's public school pupil is taught nothing of civics and the intricacies of citizenship, there is no time for such frippery not with five or six standardized tests overwhelming the process between Middle School and the 12th grade.
Shit the metrics we are applying to teachers have elevated our state legislatures to mighty colleges of pedagogues and debased teaching to the runaround that attends on being a used car salesperson.
The problem with education in this country is simple we are using it as a sort of "cowards way out" in terms of addressing income disparity. Instead of addressing the declining purchasing power of the middle class and the vanishing ranks of the working class, we are offering their offspring a chance at a better education and thus a better job.
And of course, with nothing else on offer, all and sundry take this gold brick, indeed what else can they do?
Better education isn't the answer to stagnant wages, it is routinely pimped as being just that, by politicians of all parties and ideological persuasions.
I'm standing athwart this mishaugas and crying "HALT".
Whatever else our expectations may be about education in general, lets stop deluding ourselves that it is somehow gonna fix the real bottom line in this country.
Scholarship, educational achievement and yes a sense of citizenship are all fine things, but today's educational priorities are about none of that.
And that for real has to change, unless we all wanna become shrinkwrapped goods up on some metaphoric shelf somewhere.
Granted this is a radical view, so lets start with something simple like a mere one hour a week devoted to teaching civics in the high schools...and no Gawd-Damned state mandated TEST to measure whether the kiddies have reaching the top percentile in civic mindedness either!

I don't see what the problem is with

having Stephen Colbert testify before congress, in character.
First off, compared to the usual ass hats brought in to make sworn testimony before congress he was a model of simplicity and candor, these would be the same committee rooms where once everyone from Joe McCarthy to John Ehrlichtman used to routinely lie and bluster.
Shee-it, Al Hodge (who used to play Captain Video on the Dumont network in the 1950's) gave testimony before a congressional committee on violence in children's television. Allegedly the committee counsel referred to him as "Captain" in a semi respectful tone.
As long as the Senators don't break character and start braying for an exclusive diet of baby-eating I don't see why witnesses should break character...

A single thought on a Saturday Night...

It is Charlie Baker's simple contention that the current administration on Beacon Hill is rife with ineptitude and corruption which stands in sick sad contrast to his tenure as Secretary of Whatever under Bill Weld when the cost of the Big Dig only went up 200% in four years.
That is his argument in a nutshell.

Every Time Charlie "Ziplips" Baker...

stalls in the polls, he starts freeping out like Scott Brown and bashing immigrants. Ziplips really thinks he can scream up some mob that'll descend on the polls vote him into office and then go back to their ratty appartments and pay his exorbitant health insurance premiums in respectful silence.

"Hey it worked for Brown" thinks Baker.

Except there is a bleating me-too quality to Baker's screams for blood and dynamite, they don't convince there as something his campaign team have told him to do in order to win. Otherwise he'd have no clue how to win, clearly he thought this was gonna be a lot easier hence the tinny tone to his Augustan blasts.

Shit if you click on the above link you'll note that Baker's anti-immigrant squeaks come in dead last in a long piece on Scott Brown's recent criticism of Harvard University.

If this was Scary Kerry Healey she'd a been running thru the streets howling like a mad dog.

A feeble performance, Tom Tancredo would sing it like Meatloaf if given the chance....Baker, his heart isn't in it.

Accusing...

a Boston pundit of being a hypocrite is a little like accusing a vulture of carrion eating, graphic yet tedious & obvious.

And then we come to Joanie Vennochi's column today, in which she details with lip smacking relish all the political situations the democrats cannot exploit because a revolution is coming and there are "new rules".
Well, fair enough, she writes the same sumbitch every two years and usually at the end of September, it's her own special "democrats be scaaa-red" column as predictable as an unloved season.
However today's column does contain this...gruesome little gem:
Old rule: If there are questions about your role as police sergeant in a case involving a subordinate who strip searched a teenage girl, you probably can’t win a congressional primary.

"New rule: You can, if your opponent is former state Treasurer Joe Malone, and there are questions about how he handled the office as subordinates stripped the state treasury of millions. State Representative Jeff Perry is proof of that. His Democratic rival, Norfolk District Attorney Bill Keating, will be making a mistake if he believes that blight on Perry’s record is enough on its own to beat him in November."
With all due respect Joanie that isn't the point, what this incident reveals is Jeff Perry's instinct in a crisis, and that is lie, evade and cover up for a buddy no matter how wrong that buddy may be.
Whether or not Bill Keating can make political hay of this is secondary, somewhere in the Commonwealth a young woman is walking around with first hand knowledge of Jeff Perry's bumptious lack of judgement. If Joanie Vennochi cannot see a moral context to the situation regardless of it's political consequences or lack thereof, then I'd say that there something desperately wrong with Joanie's sense of right and wrong.
When it was Senator Marzilli running amok in downtown Lowell like a lusty he-ape chasing soccer moms, Joanie was full of righteous fury...but when Jeff Perry turns his back on a teenaged girl in need...suddenly Joanie's fall silent.
I hack on the local punditariat quite often but there is something about this one that really gets my goat, it goes to the core of what I think is wrong with the Joanie Vennochis, the Brian McGrorys and Scot Lehighs of this world.
The obtuse snarkery, the singular focus on purely political effects, obsession with personalities,the tendency to assume the permanency of conservative backlash politics, the lack of a moral context.
I could go on, and I have and will going forward.

Howie Carr...

"descends" to the level of local bloggerdom.
No, he hasn't started blogging or tweeting (so far as I've heard) no, he is serving as official host for the Plymouth County GOP's unity breakfast.
Which is the sort of freelance do-whatever-feels-good behavior one associated with unpaid moonbat bloggering typing away in Mom's basement.
I thought with all due naivete' that Howie was a journalist, subject to journalistic ethics due to his status as a paid professional of the news industry.
Guess not, he is really a Radio Talk Show Host and thus can do any god-damned thing he wants, Boston Herald be damned.
The Herald is finished as a newspaper anyway, they've enslaved themselves to Howie's celebrity, when that thread parts it'll be blustery fishwrap nothing more.
Well all I can say is, Howie has been enabled and protected by his fellow local pundits for many many years now, the consequences of this policy are plain, a complete destruction of journalistic ethics, its far to late to hold him accountable for his Heliogabalus class excesses.
The rules are dead, they'll been dead a good long time, forget about objectivity, let us face that much squarely.
Still at the very least, we ought to reshuffle the definitions here, he ought to be rebranded as "Howie Carr, shill for the GOP" not "Howie Carr local columnist".
And while we are at it, since Howie is a radio celebrity now, can we get a peak at his divorce court records, as we would if he was say...Ashton Kutcher?
All I wanna know is, did Howie get the big screen TV, the rest of you vultures can gather what wisdom that you can from said transcripts.

Y'know...

John Silber used to routinely lose his temper on the campaign trail long ago...and it did him no good in the end.
That was back in 1990 when all the talk was about faux populist outrage and "angry white males" and puring Washington DC of incumbents etc etc etc.
Sound familiar?
Charlie Baker wants to ride that tidal rage to glory...except Silber really was a hothead whereas Charlie is a boring opportunistic twit who thinks yelling is eloquence and snarling imprecations is the same as sublimely communing with his audience.
We will see how that works out, the antecedents are not promising.
***
Meanwhile, check this out, John Cleese predicted the rise of Glenn Beck and the Tea Partei back in 1969!

Down then Up...

The latest poll from Suffolk/Channel Seven says the Governor is still in the leader with the usual caveats and provisos about his low overall approval rating yaddah yaddah yaddah.
This news item, somehow by the Grace of Ghod Almighty made it onto the last page of the Metro Section of the Boston Globe.
Last I checked Rasmussen rated the Ma Gubernatorial contest a toss up, which in totality means that we are again in that volatile electoral land where anything can happen and if it does it'll make the bottom of page thirty in the Boston Globe.
But what the hell, compared to where we were six short months ago this is nigh miraculous.
From this point on, the whole thing becomes a slugfest, Baker's money and heavy media campaign (admittedly a winning strategy for the state GOP in four previous contests) hobbled by his amateur rankings, bouts of temper and cheap anesthesia style of rhetoric.
For Governor Patrick, it is his commitment to a strong ground game with as big as turnout of his base as can be executed and buttressed by what they hope will be his strong debate performances. This is strongly countered by wretched economy and Patrick's stewardship thereof, as a consequence the independents are in play as they were back in January with the special senatorial election.

As for Tim Cahill, he has plenty of money to spend outreaching to his base on the South Shore, the funny thing is his message seems to be he'll do with enthusiasm what Governor Patrick has done only with reluctance...so he is still running as a democrat in some ways. Tim's main problem is entirely systemic, third party candidates make lots of noise but don't win. Which is why in some respects Cahill is running as sort of "petitioning democrat" a'la Joe Lieberman sucking up support from disaffected voters who'd otherwise sit this one out or likely defect to Baker. Cahill's only hope of winning is to bootstrap himself up twelve points in the polls and hope for a late and very tight election night...Maybe he could with with 33.5 % of the vote, but those numbers aren't there as of today.

So everyone has a job to do as Humble Elias sees it...Game On and all like dat.

Cartwheels...

It occurs to me, that if, Charlie Baker is somehow able to rouse his dozing audiences and march them to the polls and win this election...the two happiest people in the Commonwealth won't be Charlie and his wife, it'll be Theresa Murray and Robert DeLeo.
Shit they will be turning cartwheels in their offices, on the quiet of course.
No more fights with Deval Patrick...no more pesky agendas in the public interest.
This of course assumes that the State GOP isn't able to cramp their style in the legislature, otherwise figure Murray and DeLeo will have Ziplips shoulders pinned to the floor by next fall. Two good budget fights with the lege and Charlie will be updating his resume and timorously asking the Obama admin about vacant ambassadorships.
Count on it, this mook has even less leadership to offer than Scary Kerry Healey...And forget about his promises, they are the same ones Weld, Cellucci, Swift and Romney made not a one has ever been implemented.
It will be the same with Baker...He is Mitt Romney on the fifth xerox nothing more.

Why can't Charlie Baker control his temper?

Is it because running for Governor isn't the cakewalk that Mitt Romney claimed it was?

Too many questions about where our Federal Highway funds went?

Or maybe like Captain Queeg, Charlie can't deal with the stress.

Whatever it is, that makes him so tantrum-prone I'm fine with it, as long as he keeps emitting howlers like this:



Baker added that voters he meets “are angry and they’re disappointed and they’re dismayed, and sometimes, I suppose, in my comments and in my manner, I reflect that. But I think that is, frankly, the tenor of the times for a lot of people.’’

In other words if the bored and distracted audiences at those snoozefests Charlie calls campaign appearances came out for witchcraft trials and book burning the GOP candidate would start screaming for matches and paraffin oil.
So if we wanna make Charlie blow his stack in a really entertaining way, I say the approach the matter from a new angle, start by asking him all innocently what he was doing all when he missed all those Board of Selectmen meetings in Swampscott...

Dr. Jekyll and Mister Half-Hearted Hyde...

The freeperization of Charlie Baker continues in fits and starts.


This time, Charlie wants to clamp down on legal immigrants to Massachusetts, show them a hard time and by extension stir up Scott Brown's tea partei constituency. Or so that would seem to be the plan, on paper it looks good, none of the 300,000 or so legal immigrants he is targeting can defend themselves in the ballot box so its a slam dunk from a political perspective.
Still, this is Charlie Baker we are talking about, when a twerp like Scot Lehigh snarked about candidate's support for ultra-whacko Bill Hudak, Citizen Baker hemmed hawed and more or less evaded to the point of lying before scampering out the door.
Its the same deal here, he doesn't want to put these people behind barbed wire, just mess with them enough during the election season so he can win.

I strongly doubt this cocktail party xenophobia is one of Baker's cherished long held beliefs, it smacks very much of the sort of evasive opportunism that has been a hallmark of Mitt Romney's political career.
Indeed, the Former Viceroy seems to have infected many GOP maachers in Massachusetts with his trademark flip-floppery. Scott Brown has changed his mind about healthcare, financial reform and ghod knows what else in the past nine months while Baker oscillates nervously between outright Falangism and the sort of limp dishrag moderate republicanism that would endear him chiefly to the Brian McGrorys and David Broders of this world.
That to me, is the most interesting aspect of this gubernatorial race, when will Charlie Baker make up his mind as to his own values?

Mothers of the Tenth Congressional District...

"Would you want your teenage daughter to be arrested by Jeff Perry?"

Humble Elias is just sayin'...
The Local GOP loves to sing arias in praise of "personal responsibility" but when Perry had to tell one of his subordinates to knock it off he suddenly mysteriously developed aphasia and a weird paralysis of judgement.
These are not the qualities one looks for in a US Congressperson, especially when there are so many diresome temptations prowling the halls of Congress these days.

Style Note:

Whenever democrats speak out, all Jeff Jacoby hears is either craven appeasement or else incitement to suppress the 1st amendment rights of embattled and persecuted American Conservative.
Today though, he pulls off a two-fer, accusing President Obama of both suppressing conservative speech and groveling before terrorism.
That might be nice choice cuts of red meat for the Tea Partei out there, but Jeff will never inherit the vacant throne of David Brudnoy if he keeps up with the mindless whiny freeperism.

Cuba is about to lay off one million civil service deadheads??

Geezus Christ!
If I was Obama I'd put the Florida strait on Red Alert and send in a hefty destroyer squadron, every last one of the sonsabitches will be paddling for Key West by Sunday Noon!!!

On the other hand, if there was another Mariel Boatlift...Well that would put the GOP into a helluva bind this fall...After all historically they hate, Mexican Migrant Labor...but luuv in a very sick perverted way the The Industrious Cuban Exile and Political Refugee from Communism.
Or that is how they campaign down in Miami....I think it would be fun for Michael Steele to explain to the Republic how the Republicans hate Esteban but love Pedro and his still dripping water wings.

Am I to understand...

that Mitch McConnell is refusing to cut my taxes by even a penny until a lavish tax cut is given away to Wall Street whose very lives and fortunes were bailed out not two years ago by the public exchequer?
And he expects to justify this shameless act of economic hoggery exactly how???
Never mind, he is Mitch McConnell, the Last of Praetorians, he need not explain his selfishness and blatant hypocrisy to anyone.
***
Meanwhile get out and vote today, Steve Grossman and Suzanne Bump both good peeps who will do the Commonwealth right.

Oh and I'm

voting for Suzanne Bump tomorrow in the Democratic Primary for State Auditor. I wouldn't vote for Guy Glodis if you put a loaded pistol to my head. There is hardly a person of note in state politics on both sides of the aisle that he hasn't needlessly alienated with his crude lowbrow personality...and that isn't counting their wives or spouses.
The man has wracked up a lamentable record for howlers and plain verbal gruesomeness, moreover nothing in his record to date indicates he has the independence and strength of character to be an effective state auditor.
In fact I'll broadly speculate that if he is somehow nominated and elected, he'll be standing before a judge in handcuffs before two years are out. The State Auditor and the State Treasurer have one thing in common, you have to beware of your friends, I don't think Glodis would know how to say no to his olde pals when push came to shove.

Y'know I've voted for a few, dopes, mooks, sky grifters and maddenly trimmers in my time

but Tom Keane is Out Of His Ever Luvin' Kug if he thinks that I'll ever vote for Congressman Stephen Lynch in the hopes that he can sandbag Former State Senator Scott Brown in 2012.
Shit, to me that is just another good reason to vote for D'Alessandro...
I strongly doubt Stephen could make his case in Cambridge or in the vasty reaches of Middlesex County beyond on the basis of his bona fides as a grumpy DINO and his triumph over La Famiglia Bulger in South Boston.
And anyway, Lynch is for all the same things as Brown!!! Shit right now, with the wind blowing from the west steadily, Brown might actually be to the left of Lynch on the subject of reproductive choice.
Given all this, on what issues would Lynch make such a notional race?
Nothing that wouldn't lead to a catastrophic defeat as far as Humble Elias is concerned.
That is, if I really thought Lynch was willing to give up a comfy seat in the House for a doomed flyer in a fractious Democratic senatorial primary.
The arguments made in the above link are so irrational and provocative I'm almost convinced that it is really a sort of get-out-the-vote gambit on Primary Day. Given the byzantine nature of congressional politics in South Boston, on whose behalf this gambit has been played I could not say.

An Endorsement

For the State Treasurer's nomination in the Democratic Primary on Tuesday, the Chimes at Midnight happily endorses Citizen Steve Grossman.
The man's many accomplishments as a bona fide successful businessman, a former chairman of the State Democratic Committee and a tireless advocate for transparency in state government make him the natural choice on Tuesday.
Plus Humble Elias recalls with the simplest nostalgia that Grossman did not take himself too seriously when he ran for Governor in 2002,  the candidate once regaled a democratic breakfast in Lexington with a parody of "The Farmer and Cowman should be friends".
He sings reasonably well as long as he stays off the high notes, if that isn't a qualification for State Treasurer then what the hell is???
Steve Murphy on the other hand is running like a busted freeper, those campaign commercials of his are straight out of the Tea Partei playbook, fear mongering downers in other words.

An old lesson learned once again...

And that is, how much of our civil and perhaps international peace depends on the vanity and whimsy of the lonely fanatic.

Mind you, this mook has a perfect right under the First Amendment to set a torch to any damn literature he chooses...Just as any radical gimp can put a match to the U.S. flag.
In fact, Humble Elias is just waiting with barely suppressed glee for the moment (today...tonight it can't be long I assure you) when flag burning gets dragged into the current debate.
The Supreme Court has for better or worse said it is all protected speech.
Who am I to defy the Highest Court in the Land?
Besides we make a mockery of our rights if we do not exercise them the way the Late Steve Reeves' used to exercise his considerable musculature.
So if burning stuff is the latest trend in Expressing Outrage, then I think I'd still like to dump out a pallet load of "Atlas Shrugged" editions onto the quad at say...the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, soak em' down withe kerosene and strike a match.
I shall then stand by and carefully count how many undergraduate objectivists come streaming out of the dorms and class rooms to beat out the offending flames with their very bodies.
That will be an instructive scene to be sure...

Who the hell does Ziplips think he is Kidding???

This mook claims he saved Harvard PIlgrim Healthcare from the fiery furnace of bankruptcy without any state monies.
Talk about parsing a sentence in the Grand Clintonian Style, shit we issued TAX FREE BONDS backed by the Full Faith and Credit of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to the tune of 80 million large to save Baker's damn Health Insurance Company, his Golden Parachute, His Reputation and Yes, his bony ass from economic annihilation!
I don't give a hoot in hell what the Boston Globe thinks, the Full Faith and Credit of Massachusetts IS money as far as Moody's and Humble Elias is concerned!
Oh Baker is a fine one to go one whining about taxes, he has had his nasty fingers in my pockets for years digging for every nickel, dime and penny and he can grab, sure Charlie hates taxation but he never met a health insurance premium increase he didn't like!
BTW kudos to Governor Patrick for keeping the state's bond rating at a robust AAA despite the chiseling of self righteous mendicants like Charlie Baker.

Book Burning?

We are reduced to book burning in this country?

Well...if this is latest trend, then Humble Elias has no choice but to pile in on the next big thing, accordingly does anyone mind if I burn a huge-ass stack of Atlas Shrugged paperbacks?
I mean, almost every environmental disaster, act of economic piracy or plain old display of snarky ass-hole-ism in this country has at it's roots some poor geek reading Ayn Rand at waa-ay too impressionable age.
I say burn em'all, The Fountainhead too, send a message to all sophomores and future venture capitalists out there.

I saw Tim Cahill's new TV advert over the weekend

I'll gloss over his distortions about Governor Patrick's record and simply note that someone on his media squad needs to tell him to blink a little bit more, the Treasurer looks like he has been put in a deep trance by the Great Mesmero.
Meanwhile, Howie Carr has been jokingly offering Tim a cash bribe to bail out of the race for Governor as he is gumming up Charlie "Ziplips" Baker's chances for the Big Brass Ring.
Why Howie is marking out hard for the slightly inane Charlie Baker I do not know, he has to realize that the Legislative Leadership are fairly salivating at the thought of "Governor Baker". Charlie more and more exposes himself as a weak, inexperienced and indecisive man, the sort of Chief Executive that is naught but prey to the House Speaker and Senate President.
Cellucci was like that, good at getting elected and played relentlessly by whatver boodling mooks were running the Legislature at the time, Baker will likely be more of the same.
Why Howie would want someone that hopelessly equivocal as Governor I do not know, except that maybe he hopes he can push Baker around as well.
That may be a great situation for Howie and his bete noirs in the Legislature, I can't see how any of it benefits the rest of us though.

Charlie "Ziplips" Baker's new commercial

is all feel-good rubbish in which he promises to cut all taxes and somehow increase local aid to stratospheric levels.  It might work, the US Chamber of Commerce is running pretty much the same line of bullshit on Paul Hodes up in New Hampshire...so their thesis is reasonable sound.
However just a note to the State Republican Committee, if you are gonna be running these adverts ten an hour til election day, don't shoot Charlie in profile, his chin looks deflated, and his nose looks skinny and those beady little eyes of his...I'd hire an actor as Baker's stand in (that is legal right?) and do something about that flat nasal voice of his...it's irritating, hire one of WBUR's announcers to dub Charlie's lines (that is legal as well right?).
Look the man routinely speaks to empty halls all over the Commonwealth, you mooks have to get these commercials right or lose the whole dealio.
Just sayin'.

Cousin Seamus hasn't got the brains ghod gave

a bag of hammers, but he once opined that the best way to "handle" all parties in the Middle East, was to "keep em' talkin'".
By that he meant, endless High Profile Envoys Bearing New Proposals, wear them down with endless verbiage and conferences and appeals.
For once, Seamus has a point, what the hell else is gonna work in the region, it isn't like there is a military solution to any of this mishaugas, if there was it'd a happened by now.
I say send Joe Biden, dat guy can talk some shit...Either he will get us peace or the whole thing will go up in chunks, which is the same old same old by now.

OMG! LOL! ROTFLMAO!

Senator Orrin Hatch has come out banging th' pots in favor of the alleged "Ground Zero Mosque" down in NYC...Apparently he feels it is a pure question of Freedom of Religion as protected by the US Constitution.
As indeed it is...but then again this is Orrin Hatch we are talking about his wattles may quiver with indignation now, but wait awhile, by noontime he will flip flop, frankly all it will take is one threatening phone call from Grover Norquist.
So for once I'm in agreement with Orrin, til twelve noon today at least.