Friday, April 30, 2010

So much for "Drill Baby Drill" eh?

The consequences of such a short sighted policy are now washing ashore in Louisiana.

If nothing else the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico validates Senator John Kerry's oft repeated adage that we cannot drill our way out of dependence on foreign oil, we must invent our way out.
I can recall with the simplest nostalgia that was a much derided notion in campaign 2004, now hour by hour it looks like dire prophesy.
Good thing he has a climate change bill warming up in the bull pen sez Humble Elias.
 And if anything this god-awful environmental disaster strongly underscores Governor Deval Patrick's unswerving devotion to the Cape Wind Farm Project.
Don't get me wrong, this is bad news all around, but lets use the moment to rethink some of our notions about carbon heavy energy in general and the intersection between green energy and jobs in particular.

Thought for the Day...

IF... we are gonna round up illegal immigrants and deport them en' masse a'la Arizona, who not include the phat cats who hire their asses among the exiles as well?
The addiction to below-minimum wage domestic help and pool cleaners would be cured overnight thru out the southwest and beyond.
Money creates this problem, lack of it in the countries they start in, and an abundance of it chasing cheap labor here in the USA...Solve that conundrum and we are home free.
But because it is again a money problem likely it will never be solved, too many people worship $ in this country to part with their inexpensive day laborers.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Congrats to Governor Patrick

for saying what he meant and meaning what he said with regards to the Cape Wind Farm.

Humble Elias is looking forward to some truly delightful political demagoguery from His Excellency's two main opponents for the Governorship, Charlie "Ziplips" Baker and State Treasurer Tim Cahill this summer.
I can see the commercials now, Charlie Baker in bermuda shorts and black patent leather loafer trudging down the beach in Falmouth droning "These beaches belong to all of us not a bunch of environmental fanatics with their socialistic crackpot notions about green energy".
Good Ghod just what is their problem with cheaper green energy built by Massachusetts workers?
***
That having been said, I am also looking forward to the inevitable challenge to the Cape Wind Farm on the basis of some threat to an endangered species, no doubt there are ten wingnut lawyers down on the Cape even as I write this, combing the Fish and Wildlife Service's relevant statutes for some teensy fish or bug that can queer the deal for good.
These would be the same wingnut lawyers who normally scream "Drill Baby Drill!" in their sleep much to the chagrin of their loved ones.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Is Charlie "Ziplips" Baker actually panicking?

By rights, he ought to be ten points up in the polls and cruising to a historic landslide victory.
Instead current polling indicates the GOP presumptive nominee lags behind independent candidate Tim Cahill thus necessitating that the Republican Governor's Association buy a round of Anti-Tim teevee adverts.
And Baker has summarily fired his campaign manager and hired some other falangist to repair his battered fortunes.
Shee-it, all Tim has done to date is stayed sober for his press conferences and signed up a reasonably credible candidate for Lt. Governor, and on this paltry provocation Baker has gone crying havoc and let slip th' dogs of war.
Sounds like panic to Humble Elias...but then Ziplips had a bad convention other than smacking down Crazy Christy Mihos and knifing Richard Tisei in the back, Baker didn't accomplish much.
I dunno folks, this could be the battle of the ages this fall...the whole thing gets more entertaining by the hour.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Arizona's authoritarian anti- illegal immigration statute stays on the books

at least until some nice white family is rousted by the rollers and shipped off to the hoosegow for "lack of documentation" (which is now a crime in Arizona)...Then watch the lawsuits blossom and burst!
Huey Long passed a bunch of laws of this type in Louisiana, they were systematically over-ruled by the courts or quietly set aside by the State Legislature when the Kingfisher was measured for his harp and wings.
Honestly I walked around Andropov's Soviet Union for two whole weeks and was never one asked to render up my papers to the local Federales, and I was a class enemy of the USSR!
This is in essence a bad law, too blunt a weapon, too vague an application, it punishes groups for the crimes of individuals, that is always a dangerous thing.
Arizona's Governor Jan Brewer ought to be ashamed for signing off on it....That is if there is incumbent Republican left in the USA that is capable of shame.
Sooner or later it will be ineptly applied and the mishaugas will end up in a Federal Courtroom somewheres, count on it.

Monday, April 26, 2010

An Earnest Liberal's Prayer....

Dear Lord,

Puh-leeze inspire Junior Senator Scott Brown to speak out in vigorous opposition to immigration reform and Senator Kerry's environmental bill. His ill-informed bluster is our best hope for the passage of sane and humane measures here in the USA.
Amen

PS
Could you do also do something about all the recent Drive In Movie Theater closures? We've lost the Tri-Town out in Leominster inspire someone to build a big-ass outdoor screen willya?
Thanks
***

A kidding aside Humble Elias thinks the more Scott Talks the Less He Knows about whatever issue is at hand.
He has yet to make the slightest bit of sense about HCR or Financial Reform, we can expect much the same when it comes to immigration or the environment.
I mean good lord Brown did fifteen minutes on "Face the Nation" with that old lackey of the Bush Family Bob Schiefer and said not one sensible thing the whole time.
Honestly Brown is a godsend, they keep sending him out there to please the freepers and he consistently makes a thumping ass of himself.
What could be better?
Only that he apparently took campaign contributions from Goldman-Sachs...Because they really thought a chowderhead like Scott could deliver the goods!
HA!

Friday, April 23, 2010

Scottie sez "No" to 2012

running for President that is.

Well, dozens of guys have issued similar statements in the lead up to the New Hampshire Primary, it doesn't mean anything, just that they wanna cool down the press speculation.
Keep in mind, New Hampshire is vastly more congenial territory than Massachusetts when it comes to Brown's peculiar vision of a Utopia of low taxes and high premiums, for profit health care and giant banks run amok.
Given the record he will amass by 2012, what else can he do but take a flyer in the New Hampshire Primary?

The sheer literary scope of the Green Line...

Is neatly summarized over at Channel Zero.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Kwiet Riot...

Howie Carr got himself suspended from WRKO for a whole punishing week, such are the dangers of boredom heaped atop a thwarted sense of malice.

The worst thing that can befall a great public conduit-of-outrage is to have one's cherished antagonists turn into ghosts.
Take Howie Carr for example, once he was our local answer to H.L. Mencken, the Bulger Brothers his very Scopes Trial, the Late Edward Maximus his own personal Warren Harding.
Like Mencken though, he gone from gadfly, critic and provocateur to freeper golem & baiter of faggots, and why?
His favorite targets have all decamped for the Land of the Spirits.
Teddy Kennedy?
Playing gin rummy with the Archangels.
Hilary Clinton?
Vanished into the depths of Foggy Bottom, Washington DC's equivalent of Maple White Land.
George Keverian?
Measured for his harp and his pristine white wings.
Michael Stanley Dukakis?
He walks thru Allston Brighton like Kwai Chang Caine walked the Earth doing good that no one deigns to notice.
The list goes on and on, but you get my meaning.
No wonder Howie wants off of WRKO, his only hope is a change of venue to WTKK or Fox News or really anything at this point, the times have just rushed past the man.
This is the fate that befell Mencken as well, in five years from 1928 to 1934 he went from cherished iconoclast to embittered freeper. When people's expectations of politics change, watch out even the best of us will be left behind.
"What you gonna doo-oo with your nights now, Mister Teece?"
Or so Ray Bradbury summarized a similar situation long ago.

Object lessons for us all sez Humble Elias.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Oh thank ghod for a moment there

I was worried that Scot Lehigh would not proclaim Charlie "Ziplips" Baker the moderate repuiblican messiah.
Ah but Scot is as predictable as an unloved season, it is April and a middle aged pundits thoughts turn to political man-love, complete with mash-notes:

At the 1990 GOP state convention, socially liberal Bill Weld, who was booed, jeered at, and even called a “baby-killer,’’ was handily beaten for the party endorsement by conservative Steve Pierce. On Saturday, Weld’s political son, Charlie Baker, who supports abortion rights and gay marriage and has a gay running mate, won an astounding 89 percent of the convention vote, denying Mihos a spot on the fall primary ballot.
"Weld's political son, Charlie Baker" that is key phrase loaded with the pundit-speak code words, even today twenty years later, Bill Weld dissolution and irresolution and all, casts a magic spell on local columnistas.
They all wish they could be as whimsical as He, it is a boomer thing Humble Elias doesn't quite get it.
Of course, Scot blithely overlooks Baker's cave-in to the fagbasher right on the issue of the Transgender Civil Rights Bill co-sponsored by his own candidate for Lieutenant Governor.
no never mind, to Scot Lehigh, Charlie is a Man on Horseback forget his love of high premiums low taxes, his no-show on the Big Dig and his craven roughshod ride over the rights transgendered citizens...Charlie is Da Man.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Nice work Ziplips...

Charlie Baker has had his idea of a "good weekend" he kept Crazy Christy Mihos off the GOP Primary Ballot, nobody brought up his mania for tax cuts or his appetite for health insurance premium increases, he even took time out to clumsily knife his candidate for Lt. Governor in the back with regards to the pending Transgender Rights Bill.
Class all the way Charlie, the first hint of a snarl from the fagbashers and you fall to your knees weeping and pleading for mercy. Weren't you for TG civil rights once? A few more weeks of this and the state's teabaggers will make a blustering praetorian out of Charlie Baker yet.  Admittedly he is unpromising material but look at Joe Lieberman and Mitt Romney they learned how to make Kowtow, Ziplips can make the grade given enough time.
No wonder he has fallen to third place.

Well, not two weeks ago I did predict the possibility of this becoming a Tim v. Deval type race, Charlie is a goober and a stiff, he may have money but his political instincts are amateurish at best. At least when Tim starting freeping it up he sounds convincing at it. Baker on the other hand hasn't got the charisma ghod gave an Easter Island monolith.
The debates at least, ought to be interesting.

Monday, April 19, 2010

The Senator from Liberty Mutual...

If "Face the Nation" host Bob Schiefer wants to get Mass Mutual's slant on the pending financial reform bill in Washington, then he should book CEO Roger W. Crandall for an appearance, forget about the toadying middleman in this case, Senator Scott Brown.
Once again, Scott has embraced an issue without troubling his well coiffed mind with any reading of the pending legislation. His argument on Face the Nation was in essence "Roger W. Crandall sez the financial reform bill is bad, he wouldn't lie to me therefore I shall filibuster the bill!"
Otherwise this was  stupid, craven performance, a few more like it and the financial reform bill will probably land on the President's desk completely unmolested.

If the other side wants to win this one, then they ought to muzzle Senator Brown, the more he talks the less they seem to accomplish.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Crazy Christy we hardly knew ye...

Well...lemme tell yuh....
Six months of fundraising issues...
Repeated lawsuits to secure payment for goods and services provided by vendors...
A revolving door on the office of one's campaign manager...
Lingering tax issues...
A doomed effort to run for governor as an independent in 2006...
Other than his profligate fundraising jacking up Christy Mihos seems to have been the second thing that Charlie Baker has done right all this year. the fall campaign for all intents and purposes began yesterday afternoon, "game on and all like dat".
Nonetheless I have never abandoned the belief that Baker couldn't have been overtaken in a primary contest, he isn't running that good a campaign quite frankly. He is to put it succinctly, stiff, dull, untried and very model of a modern GOP insider, ample fodder for a populist challenger with sufficient ruthlessness.
Ah but that challenger wasn't gonna be Crazy Christy, despite a last minute run to the teabagger right, I'm hard pressed to think of a politician who blundered more consistently in the course of their campaign unless of course it was AG Coakley in her US Senate bid back in January.
Baker simply made fewer mistakes than Mihos and so he is now the de-facto GOP nominee period end of story.
Still, the line up the GOP has fielded for the statewide offices is at best unimpressive and there is definitely an undercurrent of "discomfort" with nominating the famously out and proud State Senator Richard Tisei for Lt. Governor on the part of some at the convention.
So there are cracks in that almighty GOP resolve, whether they play a role in the fall campaign is another question entirely.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

State Representative Garballey

voted "No" on the casino bill that cleared the House yesterday.
So I guess he remembered where he came from after all.
Click here for a PDF of who voted yes and who voted no.

Well I'd say Rep. Garballey deserves some congratulations, he stuck by his stated campaign position right to the end.

What I saw of the Tea Partei....

Beautiful day yesterday to get out on Boston Common and watch wingnuts wallow in triumphalism.
Truly, these are H.L. Mencken's proverbial "believing minds" they believed in George Bush Jr's commitment to "small government" and they believe in Barack Obama's status as a diabolical communist as well.
Mostly white, mostly lower middle class, middle aged, suburban, a good chunk of ringers from out of state, cowboy hats, a couple of grim aryan sophomores from BC, in all it was aa very raucous pity party thrown by McCain voters.
Twenty thousand attendees were predicted by some hammerhead, I think they were lucky to get four and as I said, a good chunk of them came from out of state.
Sarah Palin came and went long before I got there, but still even at 12:40pm EST the roster of speakers and boosters ranted on and on about God, Family and Country, the MC (a rare African American) claimed that Barack Obama got voted in due to his "pigmentation" while tchotches hawkers sold buttons that said "I'd Rather Be Waterboarding".
Class all the way folks, class all the way.
I'd be interesting to see if Crazy Christy Mihos and Tim Cahill (Conspicuous attendees at yesterday's rally) really agree with the notion that Obama got in due to his complexion...Make a good query at their next press conference sez Humble Elias.
I blame Ronald Reagan for the current alienation on the hard right, he preached an "inclusive gospel" that said in effect "C'mon along, as long as you bash liberals yer welcome with us". A generation later having bankrupted themselves politically, financially and spiritually the Tea Partei is left with liberal bashing as it's last best ideological bulwark.
Other than that pigmentation remark I saw no racially motivated placards nor was their any gay baiting in evidence, although one need not speculate as to the crowd's real feelings about gay marriage given all the windy homages paid to "traditional marriage" up on podium.
I don't think the Tea Partei phenom is an incipient fascist movement, preachers of violence just don't go far in US Politics and most of the people are poor storm trooper fodder from what I could see. Old weary and bit shopworn leavened with a few autistic sounding undergrads are hardly the type to start street fighting any time soon.
No, this is the rejectionist thirty precent that has been around since the inception of the Republic they were the Know Nothings, the Nativists the Liberty Lobby, the Share the Wealth Clubbers, The American Legion....In short they have always been with us, Palin or no Palin.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

This is freakin' hilarious...

You just knew, that Jeff Jacoby had to come runnin' to the defense of the Tea Partei in his column today...
Y'know that vast gathering of inconstant deficit hawks that are congregating on Boston Common today. We heard not a peep from them when blocks of US currency went missing in Iraq, but let President Obama spent one silver dollar on health care reform and they shriek like stuck pigs.
Anyhow, the Globe's own Laughing Young Senescence had this howler to share with us:
"Head over to the Boston Common this morning, however, and you will find neither fascists nor Klansmen, but a sea of sincere and energized citizens worried about the direction in which their country is headed and alarmed by the Obama administration’s vast aggrandizement of government power."
Well gee Jeff is this is nothing but a vast love-in of "civic engagement" why would the likes of Richard Tisei, Charlie Baker and Scott Brown all stay away from the "Tea Partei Express?
Do you honestly think Richard Tisei could walk thru that crowd and be treated civilly?
Would Sarah Palin really want to share the podium with an out-and-proud gay Republican?
Just sayin'...
And anyway Jeff who the hell are you to whine about the "Obama Administration's vast aggrandizement of government power",? You were FINE with the PATRIOT act, with wireless wiretapping of US Citizens, with Guantanamo Bay all of it quite frankly. Hell til' now you've been a faithful cheerleader for the "Vast Aggrandizement of Government Power" whats the problem??
***
The Tea Partei is the myth of grievance on the march nothing more and as usual Jeff Jacoby (despite his sporadic attempts to chart a course as a serious public intellectual) can do nothing but squeal with glee even as the haters and baiters go marching by.
Sad really.
Nope it is hilarious.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Last week...

Citizen Charlie "Ziplips" Baker praised the Tea Partei as an example of  public spirited activism and  "civic engagement". This week however, Baker has declined to civilly engage with the Tea Partei's reigning pin-up Sarah Palin at their projected rally on Boston Common Tomorrow.
Regrets have also been tendered by a scattershot of local Republicans including most notably Scott Brown who will be busy combing his hair or tying his shoes or some damn thing per his overcrowded schedule.
Crazy Christy Mihos will be there, straitjacket and all (But that is to be expected) as well as independent guberatorial candidate Tim Cahill who'd eat compost on live television at this point if it meant twenty thousand votes in Middlesex County.
Well no matter what, tendered regrets or not, Palin's partei tomorrow promises mad phat fun good solid bloggabel chaos, Humble Elias will try and do a lunch hour recon as he works in the Back Bay.
The whole thing will be a good test of this "Kinder Gentler Tea Partei" rubbish that has been peddled down in the DC in the wake of all the post HCR death threats received by congressional democrats.

Monday, April 12, 2010

So much for Palin-Brown in 2012 eh...

The Herald reports that Senator Scott Brown's schedule has become too tangled a thing for him to make time and appear at Wednesday's Tea Partei rally with Sarah Palin.
Geez last week Brown was a conservative, this week he is running like a rat in a firestorm from movement conservatism's most committed cohorts...what gives?

He isn't scared of the GOP's loyal base is he?

Naa-aw not Scott Brown, the man is profile in courage down to his neatly pressed camo fatigues.

Say what you like about Green Partei Gubernatorial Candidatee Jill Stein

that she is a moonbat and a spoiler but at the very least her god-damn mind is firmly set against casino gambling in Massachusetts.
This is more than we can say about Democrat-Of-Convenience Grace Ross (herself a former Green Partei candidate for Governor) who told the Globe she is neither for nor against the current bill as it pits "different good forces against each other".
Grace, that is what politics is all about per Aristotle, the allocation of perpetually scarce resources...And if you really wanna be Governor yer gonna have to make hard decisions like this every day.
Just make up your damn mind and be done with it, you can't be wobbling like this out of some irrational belief your are really goinf to be nominated and then elected Governor of Massachusetts can you?
Cuz I gotta tell ya, it looks like a rocky uphill climb for you from where Humble Elias sits.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Representative Sean Garballey...

"declined to state his position" on the current casino bill that is meandering it's way thru the state legislature. Granted the usual pro-gaming suspects (cough...BOBDILEO...cough) are lobbying Arlington's State Representative hard nonetheless I would remind the Chimes at Midnight's miniscule readership that Candidate Garballey assured the voters back in 2008 that he was  reliably opposed to casino gambling in Massachusetts.
One hopes that he will stick to his guns when it gets down to crunch time.

Friday, April 09, 2010

Charlie Baker is against

higher taxes but if your insurance premiums go up 32% in one year forget about it, higher premiums are just fine by him.
And this chowderhead is running as a populist...Good Ghod!

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Citizen Baker to the Commonwealth's Independents...

"I was for state regulation of health insurance premiums, before I was against it".

Honestly, if Mihos had a bare half a mind to draw on he could beat Baker like a gong, the man is a stiff and an inept stiff at that.
Ah but Crazy Christy just can't pull it together, Baker's poor stump performance, indecision and tendency to pussyfoot is creating opportunities that Mihos just can't seem to properly exploit.
Mitt Romney is a better flip-flopper than Charlie Baker, and the Former Viceory is a rank amateur at it!
Mihos should be out there pounding the podium about Charlie's golden parachute from Harvard-Pilgrim, his deaf-n-dumb performance on the Big Dig etc etc etc.
Alas no, right now the odds are fifty fifty whether or not Mihos will even get on the GOP primary ballot he has had worse publicity than Baker and his campaign operation is mired in pure chaos.
Unless of course he was gonna bolt the party again and make this a four way race, but honestly even Humble Elias doesn't deserve a heaven sent boon like that.
I dunno call me crazy, but this fall does not look like a done deal for the GOP as far as the Governor's race is concerned.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Scott Brown is off to Asia...

per the Boston Globe, the first of many junkets to exotic foreign lands no doubt.
Fine, but when is he gonna find time to make a junket to the Bedford VA Hospital, maybe he could inspect the somewhat cramped & spartan conditions in the Long Term Care wards?
Just a thought y' unnerstan'.
***
Meanwhile the Boston Globe catches up to what the Chimes at Midnight has been saying for months now... Funny how that works eh?

Oh and no wonder all the Health Insurance Providers are backing Baker, clearly he will give then their 32% premium hikes.

***
Thought for the Day: Charlie Baker can raise all the money he likes, so far at collecting cash he is waa-ay out front, but if he has to divide his money to fend off Tim Cahill and simultaneously surge past Governor Patrick...Then the math dictates a more level financial playing field.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

We can add "Pussyfooter" to the ever lengthening list of

Citizen Charlie Baker's sins.

This quote, from the above Boston Globe story is particularly relevant:
"The tea party seems to me to be another example [of] civic engagement, which is always a good thing,’’ Baker wrote during a wide-ranging, hourlong chat with readers on Boston.com. “And most folks I know who are tea party members are terrified about deficit spending, taxing, and jobs. Me, too.’’
They are also terrified that President Obama is a closeted member of the Taliban.
And was it "civic engagement" when the Tea Partei spat at Representative Lewis and called him a "n*gger" to his face? When they howled "faggot" at Representative Frank?
And when they ,march on the Washington Mall with sidearms? Nothing nefarious about that eh Charlie?
***
Let me speculate in a hypothetical vein...IF Charlie "Ziplips" Baker was elected Governor and I, Elias Nugator started a fraternal organization called "The Butcher Boys" whose activities included wearing blacks hirts, jackboots and training on Boston Common with rifles...by Bakerian definition above, that would be mere civic engagement...right??
***
Honest to Ghod, Charlie Baker is spineless and inept, he really thinks he can persuade these people to vote for him without being tarred with their paranoia...

Monday, April 05, 2010

Boston Globe columnists are usually

about two weeks behind the zeitgeist, or in the case of Jeff Jacoby more like a full century.
However, Adrian Walker's column in today's Globe pointing to a uptick in Governor Patrick's political fortunes would seem to indicate that the Incumbent has "bottomed out" and something of a rebound is in the making.
But as I said, this news is some fourteen days old, already the Governor has loped further along facing down Howie Carr on his own radio show and disallowing hikes in Health Insurance Premiums.
The latter puts Cahill and Baker both in a quandrary, they can't say the current plan doesn't control costs nor can they safely pledge to do likewise and the same and keep their bona fides with big money backers in the insurance industry.
As for doing the Howie Carr Show, that gains Patrick no votes among the Shock Jock's base, but he also has many casual listeners whose minds are not yet made up and can be persuaded by the Governor's willingness to go mano a mano with one of his most vocal critics.
You can bet Charlie Baker and Tim Cahill won't be doing the Jeff Santos' Show (unless they have and I wasn't listening...feel free to correct me) as a consequence.
Advantage, Patrick.
All I can say is, "Give em' Hell Deval!"

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Allegedly

Scott Brown spent some time up in Lexington on Monday night, filling sandbags for the National Guard.
That must be a helluva GPS gimmick in his All American Truck, normally Scott Brown couldn't find Lexington (or any other liberal leaning community in Middlesex County) to save his life.
Mark those sandbags well, they are likely the only good Scott Brown will be doing for communities like Lexington for the foreseeable future.
Of course, he could just ditch the TV news cameras, return to DC and see if there was any stimulus money available to get the Commonwealth's many many aging and substandard dams and spillways fixed...But that is too big a job for Scott, best to just fill up sandbags and leave it at that.
Given his performance on HCR, I'm looking forward to all the roads and bridges money that'll shortly be flooding the state thanks to our Junior Senator.