The Boston Globe reports that Governor Romney has finally gotten around to inviting Speaker DiMasi and Senate President Travaglini over for dinner. having pilloried these men not one month ago as corrupt exemplars of Beacon Hill insiderdom, Decaf now with tender solicitude passes them the fresh baked toll house cookies. Oh to be a fly on the wall at that little get together!!!
It would seem that after two long years Mitt Romney has finally awoken to the unquiet fact that he really IS the Governor of Massachusetts. So if he wants his vague and ephemeral “reform agenda” to get it’s day in the Great and General Court he must now suck up to those he’d happily lynch but for the majesty of the law and the quietus of the suburban masses.
Humble Elias expects Bob and Salvatore to make a great show of their good manners and classic Beacon Hill bonhomie. Let us not forget though, these are men used to dealing with back stabbing phonies like Mitt Romney with admirable dispatch. They do it every day in the state legislature. Nevertheless, Sal and Bob will be the soul of conviviality throughout the evening and in all such evenings to come. However, in the dead of night with no reporters around they will still nail Mitt’s reform agenda into a pine box, tie it to a wooden raft, soak it all down with kerosene, and give the whole thing a proper Viking Funeral in the Charles River.
Still, don’t you wish that Sal DiMasi would put his feet up on the Romney hassock, sigh, grin and announce “Nice dump y’ got here Governor...”
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Joe For King?
Senator Susan Collins, a reliable Capitol Hill layabout and stalwart GOP moderate has been talking up Joe Lieberman for Homeland Security Secretary in the wake of Bernard Kerik's mysterious political implosion. On the surface this is a semi-sensible proposal, Lieberman did write the legislation that brought DHS to life. However if he was to get the sinecure he'd become the Colin Powell figure of Bush's second term. An amiable impotent and trivial Loafer in Karl Rove's own version of a reality show. Otherwise Lieberman would become a handy weapon for the likes of Sean Hannity to pillory the democrats and amount to little else over the next four long cold years.
And anyway, why give up a cushy gig like junior Senator from Connecticut? Besides, you just know the moment a dirty bomb went off in Times Square on New Years Eve or a incendiary device went off high in an LA skyscraper, Joe Lieberman would go from pet of the right to its favorite scapegoat. The fact that he is democrat would be all the more delicious to the rightical chic radio tyrants out there. Humble Elias advises, "Joe Don't do it, they are laying for you boy".
Anyway...you just know Romney is on the phone to Kerry, Rove, Bush Senior, really ANYONE willing to risk take his resume in past the Secret Service. Mitt is above all a perfectly spineless puritan, a perfect potential DHS Secretary in these chilly post Kerikian times we do inhabit.
:)
On the other hand...DHS would make Lieberman, a democrat, what sixteen in succession to the US Presidency.
Long odds indeed.
However in this pre-apocalyptic era, much can be done with enough lawyers, money and ambition. Hell its the way Bush got in there back in 2000.
:)
And anyway, why give up a cushy gig like junior Senator from Connecticut? Besides, you just know the moment a dirty bomb went off in Times Square on New Years Eve or a incendiary device went off high in an LA skyscraper, Joe Lieberman would go from pet of the right to its favorite scapegoat. The fact that he is democrat would be all the more delicious to the rightical chic radio tyrants out there. Humble Elias advises, "Joe Don't do it, they are laying for you boy".
Anyway...you just know Romney is on the phone to Kerry, Rove, Bush Senior, really ANYONE willing to risk take his resume in past the Secret Service. Mitt is above all a perfectly spineless puritan, a perfect potential DHS Secretary in these chilly post Kerikian times we do inhabit.
:)
On the other hand...DHS would make Lieberman, a democrat, what sixteen in succession to the US Presidency.
Long odds indeed.
However in this pre-apocalyptic era, much can be done with enough lawyers, money and ambition. Hell its the way Bush got in there back in 2000.
:)
Monday, December 13, 2004
A Mighty Draft?
Colonel David Hackworth was on the “O'Franken Factor” today openly predicting the imposition of a military draft by the middle of next summer. Normally Hackworth is a bit of a scenery chewer, but he did note that enlistment quotas may be down as much as fifty percent by the end of 2004. This apparently has an immediate effect on the combat readiness of front line troops in Iraq over the short term.
Hackworth posits that either we must introduce conscription or “declare victory and get out” otherwise the manpower issues in Iraq will become unmanageable. Perhaps Bush’s plan is to start troop pullouts after the Iraqi elections scheduled in January. If so he is leaving behind a god awful mess and a nation and region in chaos. However as Chimes at Midnight tirelessly points, out thats been his M.O. for years going back to his days as a drunken shyster oilman.
On the other hand Bush may decide to expend his political capital and bring back the draft. Letting other people die for him is also one of his signature moves going back to his days as a sadistic upperclassman at Yale. Of course congress has not yet passed the required legislation, but that is no great hurdle given the GOP majorities in both houses.
So at this point the only thing left for Humble Elias to point out is, that a mere seventeen percent of the “youth vote” bothered to cast ballots this year. This was after what must have been fifty million dollars spent on adverts and celebrity endorsements to motivate young people to vote. What is worse is, it was all for NOTHING. Exactly seventeen percent of that same youth cohort voted in the year 2000. So if it comes to a draft, some eighty seven percent of those sent off to war will have never voted at all on the great issues facing the republic. This is an increment roughly compatible with the millions of non voters drafted in World War Two when the voting age was a stingy twenty one!
In the lecture hall tomorrow, look on both sides of you...and imagine that person in khaki fatigues. Sorry kids, you had your chance, it looks like its gonna be your last chance as well.
Hackworth posits that either we must introduce conscription or “declare victory and get out” otherwise the manpower issues in Iraq will become unmanageable. Perhaps Bush’s plan is to start troop pullouts after the Iraqi elections scheduled in January. If so he is leaving behind a god awful mess and a nation and region in chaos. However as Chimes at Midnight tirelessly points, out thats been his M.O. for years going back to his days as a drunken shyster oilman.
On the other hand Bush may decide to expend his political capital and bring back the draft. Letting other people die for him is also one of his signature moves going back to his days as a sadistic upperclassman at Yale. Of course congress has not yet passed the required legislation, but that is no great hurdle given the GOP majorities in both houses.
So at this point the only thing left for Humble Elias to point out is, that a mere seventeen percent of the “youth vote” bothered to cast ballots this year. This was after what must have been fifty million dollars spent on adverts and celebrity endorsements to motivate young people to vote. What is worse is, it was all for NOTHING. Exactly seventeen percent of that same youth cohort voted in the year 2000. So if it comes to a draft, some eighty seven percent of those sent off to war will have never voted at all on the great issues facing the republic. This is an increment roughly compatible with the millions of non voters drafted in World War Two when the voting age was a stingy twenty one!
In the lecture hall tomorrow, look on both sides of you...and imagine that person in khaki fatigues. Sorry kids, you had your chance, it looks like its gonna be your last chance as well.
Sunday, December 12, 2004
GeekWB...
The President, fresh from his month old electoral “triumph” has announced that the Social Security system is in “crisis” and must be radically reformed forthwith.
Then again this is the same President who once claimed that Saddam Hussein had every weapon of mass destruction in the catalogue up to and including the proverbial nucleonic planet buster.
But then lying has always been Bush’s M.O....he lied on a daily basis and bilked ghod knows how many investors in his many failed oil ventures back in the day. He lied to his wife about his own drinking and he lied and squirmed to get out of the Viet Nam War. The great lesson of George Bush’s misbegotten life is that “mendacity pays”.
Thus the President was lying then, and he is lying now. Nothing that has occurred to date has convinced him that lying is naught but his own personal trump card in any contentious policy debate. So if anything, given the content of his character, his lies will only become more blatant and outrageous. No one restrains Bush and he’ll go on in this rampant fashion until either he is out of office or the nation disintegrates.
In the mean time we will all be either impoverished or imprisoned, all to satisfy the howling winds of ideology that sound between his ears.
Humble Elias asks....”why”?
Why is the President such an unmitigated asshole?
Why is this son of wealth and privilege so obsessed with destroying fanciful elites? Why is this alleged conservative so fixated on destroying cherished and noble institutions? We have to disgard the notion that the President is some identifiable species of American conservative. He is not, his public spending habits alone are enough to get him drummed out of the movement. Moreover he is an ideologue consumed with a singular hatred of past practice. Peter Vireck once opined that the irony of American conservatism is that lacking a hereditary aristocratic tradition, US conservatives are left to conserve the gains made by liberal civilization. Bush has apparently decided to invert that notion by creating a new class of peasantry who'll pay the entire costs of the government (while deriving no benefits at all) and a new aristocracy to rule over them...brutes, fraud, and charlatans all. This is Bush's ideology circa 2004...it is medieval in scope and as usual breathtakingly simple.
The guy is clearly hell bent for revenge on all those swells-n-toffs who kidded him in prep school, at Yale, and at Harvard Business School. What other explanation is there for his “destroy it all policy?” Clearly hell hath no fury like a geek scorned.
Because that is what Bush really is, a geek. Poorly socialized, proud, insecure, and weird he has all the classic symptoms of geekiness sans the critical intelligence. He also has a geek's persecution mania and concurrent self satisfaction. Like his geek brethren he is also obsessed wih empire building..."dungeons and dragons" on a global scale.
Truly, whatever was done to him, we will all have to pay for.
Then again this is the same President who once claimed that Saddam Hussein had every weapon of mass destruction in the catalogue up to and including the proverbial nucleonic planet buster.
But then lying has always been Bush’s M.O....he lied on a daily basis and bilked ghod knows how many investors in his many failed oil ventures back in the day. He lied to his wife about his own drinking and he lied and squirmed to get out of the Viet Nam War. The great lesson of George Bush’s misbegotten life is that “mendacity pays”.
Thus the President was lying then, and he is lying now. Nothing that has occurred to date has convinced him that lying is naught but his own personal trump card in any contentious policy debate. So if anything, given the content of his character, his lies will only become more blatant and outrageous. No one restrains Bush and he’ll go on in this rampant fashion until either he is out of office or the nation disintegrates.
In the mean time we will all be either impoverished or imprisoned, all to satisfy the howling winds of ideology that sound between his ears.
Humble Elias asks....”why”?
Why is the President such an unmitigated asshole?
Why is this son of wealth and privilege so obsessed with destroying fanciful elites? Why is this alleged conservative so fixated on destroying cherished and noble institutions? We have to disgard the notion that the President is some identifiable species of American conservative. He is not, his public spending habits alone are enough to get him drummed out of the movement. Moreover he is an ideologue consumed with a singular hatred of past practice. Peter Vireck once opined that the irony of American conservatism is that lacking a hereditary aristocratic tradition, US conservatives are left to conserve the gains made by liberal civilization. Bush has apparently decided to invert that notion by creating a new class of peasantry who'll pay the entire costs of the government (while deriving no benefits at all) and a new aristocracy to rule over them...brutes, fraud, and charlatans all. This is Bush's ideology circa 2004...it is medieval in scope and as usual breathtakingly simple.
The guy is clearly hell bent for revenge on all those swells-n-toffs who kidded him in prep school, at Yale, and at Harvard Business School. What other explanation is there for his “destroy it all policy?” Clearly hell hath no fury like a geek scorned.
Because that is what Bush really is, a geek. Poorly socialized, proud, insecure, and weird he has all the classic symptoms of geekiness sans the critical intelligence. He also has a geek's persecution mania and concurrent self satisfaction. Like his geek brethren he is also obsessed wih empire building..."dungeons and dragons" on a global scale.
Truly, whatever was done to him, we will all have to pay for.
Saturday, December 11, 2004
A question for a rainy Saturday...
Just how many countries has William Safire advocated invading and or attacking down through the years?
He started as a columnist for the New York Times in what 1973? So its probaly up around a dozen or so...but that is a guess.
Does anyone out there have a good count?
If so drop me a note at eliasnugator@yahoo.com
He started as a columnist for the New York Times in what 1973? So its probaly up around a dozen or so...but that is a guess.
Does anyone out there have a good count?
If so drop me a note at eliasnugator@yahoo.com
Friday, December 10, 2004
"Amend for Arnie"
This political button has been sprouting like an aggressive weed all over silicon valley in sunny California. It happily refers to the movement to amend article two of the U.S. Constitution that forbids the foreign born to hold the Presidency. Presumably with that little detail disposed of, Arnold can seize power nice as you please and in a legit election too.
As Humble Elias has said before, this is a time for bad ideas to rise up and ride in America. However its always been like that in California going back to the strange days of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson all the way down to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. If there is a charlatan or a fraud on the make, count on California to give them a home. And so it is for “Amend for Arena”.
The Golden State is a strange shoddy place, it is full of atomized lonely people...nobody knows anyone else in a intimate fashion. Back east, loneliness and alienation are a badge of shame, but in California the atomized are fulsome glad handers and devotees of the latest fraud. There is no embarrassment over being shallow and thus the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger prospers. Nothing less than a wispy film and TV image can hold their depleted attention spans.
This is a serious case of demeaning caesarism at work here...no other man in US history has put for tha movement to amend the constitution to satisfy his own ambitions...and yet Arnold soldiers on and like any sweetly smelling bad idea has attracted able and unlikely supporters notably our own Senior Senator, Edward Moore Kennedy. Maybe it really is time to eject California from the Federal Union. Let Schwarzenegger rule as a rump President of a pacific Duchy. He'll be happy, the homunculi he represents will be happy, and the other forty nine will well clear of it.
As Humble Elias has said before, this is a time for bad ideas to rise up and ride in America. However its always been like that in California going back to the strange days of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson all the way down to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. If there is a charlatan or a fraud on the make, count on California to give them a home. And so it is for “Amend for Arena”.
The Golden State is a strange shoddy place, it is full of atomized lonely people...nobody knows anyone else in a intimate fashion. Back east, loneliness and alienation are a badge of shame, but in California the atomized are fulsome glad handers and devotees of the latest fraud. There is no embarrassment over being shallow and thus the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger prospers. Nothing less than a wispy film and TV image can hold their depleted attention spans.
This is a serious case of demeaning caesarism at work here...no other man in US history has put for tha movement to amend the constitution to satisfy his own ambitions...and yet Arnold soldiers on and like any sweetly smelling bad idea has attracted able and unlikely supporters notably our own Senior Senator, Edward Moore Kennedy. Maybe it really is time to eject California from the Federal Union. Let Schwarzenegger rule as a rump President of a pacific Duchy. He'll be happy, the homunculi he represents will be happy, and the other forty nine will well clear of it.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
The Two Howards...
There seems to be two different versions of Howard Fineman out there on the radio talk show circuit. One is a blustering contemptuous freeper who calls into the “Imus in the Morning Program” and heaps scorn on Al Gore and Hilary Rodham Clinton. The other is a calm moderate soul who drops dimes on the demagogic likes of Senator Rick “High Pitched Rich” Santorum on the Al Franken Show.
Which is the real Howard Fineman? Who the hell knows...maybe they both are real. The name of the game in celebrity journalism is exposure anytime any where as long as you are clothed and your host is not on a sexual predator registry. If you’ve been at the game as long as Howard, then it is inevitable that one would shift political colors from show to show. So he less a case of “Jekyll and Hyde” and more an example of Woody Allen’s comical omnimorph “Leonard Zelig”.
If Howard has a political core, and that is debatable, then Humble Elias posits he is a sort of sentimental moderate republican...a character being rapidly run to extinction along with the classic American liberal.
Moderate republicans come in two classifications these days, the racketeers like Mitt Romney who see opportunities in the pose of moderation and ineffectual yaps like Colin Powell who are still believe the tooth fairy and the two party system.
Fineman falls into the later category. He still thinks there is moderate ground to be won and he refuses the evidence of his eyes when the likes of Karl Rove start planning for a century of movement conservative ascendancy.
Or maybe not...who knows? Howard is a slippery character adept at telling his hosts and employers what they want to hear.
Sick
Demented
Typical...
Which is the real Howard Fineman? Who the hell knows...maybe they both are real. The name of the game in celebrity journalism is exposure anytime any where as long as you are clothed and your host is not on a sexual predator registry. If you’ve been at the game as long as Howard, then it is inevitable that one would shift political colors from show to show. So he less a case of “Jekyll and Hyde” and more an example of Woody Allen’s comical omnimorph “Leonard Zelig”.
If Howard has a political core, and that is debatable, then Humble Elias posits he is a sort of sentimental moderate republican...a character being rapidly run to extinction along with the classic American liberal.
Moderate republicans come in two classifications these days, the racketeers like Mitt Romney who see opportunities in the pose of moderation and ineffectual yaps like Colin Powell who are still believe the tooth fairy and the two party system.
Fineman falls into the later category. He still thinks there is moderate ground to be won and he refuses the evidence of his eyes when the likes of Karl Rove start planning for a century of movement conservative ascendancy.
Or maybe not...who knows? Howard is a slippery character adept at telling his hosts and employers what they want to hear.
Sick
Demented
Typical...
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