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.