The nice thing about Ron Paul's candidacy for the Presidency

is that he reminds us that young people can be just as paranoid and dogmatic as their elders.
Ya gotta love Ron Paul there is a certain sweet cluelessness to his libertarian fanaticism...he honestly believes with blissful naivete' that if we sell off the social security fund to Goldman-Sachs we will all fly to work in free market rocket ships.
No pain, no fuss, no new overclass to rule us like kings.
And it is very funny, the way small children believe that dinosaurs still exist somewhere on a lost island somewhere.
For the rest of us though, what Ron is really proposing is to resolve the consequences of neocon extremism with a healing dose of libertarian extremism.
So there is, at least to Humble Elias a homeopathic quality to Ron Paul's low taxes, small gummint political program.

Humble Elias is opposed to

any war of volition against Iran.
Why?
Well for one thing, George Bush Jr. could screw up a two car funeral, he has made a hash of Iraq (once promised as the very Jewel in American Conservatism's Crown)and Afghanistan...adding Iran to the list is too big a dose of stupid pills for any well constituted republic.
And don't expect John McCain or Rudy Guiliani to come riding in on horseback to save the GOP's bacon, their core ideas do not vary from those of the President. If you liked George, you are gonna love Rudy, taxes will be low, deficits will be high and the blood will flow like cheap red wine.

One thing is for certain...

the current of GOP presidential aspirants are all but united in their desire to start a war with Iran ASAP.
Here at least they are in complete agreement with the President they often pretend to revile.
Mitt Romney in particular seems positively frantic to start bombing Iran...anything to look like a real tough and studly man on horseback I guess.
Seems to me, that if all these guys wanna strut around rattling their sabers then someone ought to start asking them blunt questions about whether or not they are gonna militarize the US economy or reintroduce the draft as part of their plan to crush Iran once and for all.
Their responses would be, to say the least, illuminating.

Middlesex Fourth State Senate special election update:

Today Humble Elias has learned that Arlington Representative James Marzilli is an opponent of casino gambling who has characterized the Governor's plan to introduce big time gaming to the Commonwealth as a "mistake".
That is pretty big, after all, Jim was the quintessential EFD ("Early For Duval") back when Patrick was twenty full points down in the polls. Let us hope no-one takes any of it personally, today's opponent is tomorrow's ally etc etc etc.
Meanwhile I'm idly curious as to where the rest of the field is with respect to this issue, Humble Elias will attempt in future posts to track down everyone's stance on casino gambling. At the very least all this palaver about casino gamblingcould ignite a broader debate about revenues and priorities, which is a good thing, IF it happens.

Gingrich sez "Gimme thirty million and I'll run for President!"

An appeal so unpleasantly mercenary that it is almost admirable in its simplicity.
I don't know about his commitment to his so called "ideas", but as an example of sheer political shysterism this is pretty impressive.
Frankly the lateness of the political hour indicates that this is naught but manipulative nonsense from the Former Speaker. The venerable New Hampshire Primary detonates in what...four months?!!? Thirty million large or not, Newt Gingrich can't go all-up in that space of time in Iowa and the Granite State, it is impossible especially for such an ubiquitous political personality.
No this is nothing but a canny attention getting device, if he is serious then he has been once again double-dosing on crazy pills.

Massachusetts sucks, the GOP sucks

now eat your peas and Vote for Romney sez the Former Viceroy in a new advertisement.

Yup cuz that is the GOP's problem, they didn't raise the deficit fast enough or bash illegal immigrants with enough fervor (these would be the same illegal immigrants who once clipped the hedges at the Villa d' Romney in Belmont Mass).
Honestly, Romney is full of hot air and as fragile as a balloon, one good jab with a needle and he'll go blatting all over the room.
Just get one of those poor Costa Ricans who used to mow his lawn to appear in an commercial...Mitt will fall over in a swoon I promise you.

4th Middlesex State Senate special election update:

The democratic candidates so far are:
Representative James Marzilli (Arlington)
Kenneth Donnelly (Arlington)
Representative Charles Murphy (Burlington)
Representative Patrick DiNatale (Woburn)
Virginia Mooney (Burlington)
Bob Peters (Lexington)

So the field has thinned out a bit since last we discussed this upcoming election, the deadline though to submit nomination papers is in early October so there is till room if increasingly theoretical for another democratic aspirant to parachute in.

This is a big field though and it's a 100,000 person senate constituency so everyone has their work cut out for them.
My suspicion though is, there may be some "bone hunters" in the above roster. "Bone hunting" is a venerable tradition in local and national politics going back to the glory days of Tammany Hall. One either fields a roster of candidates or gets into a race oneself in order to get a job or a cash offer off of the deal, usually in return for getting out of the race prompto.
"Bone hunting" is a phenom quite obviously that attends on elections to paying positions and it has hardly gone out of style even today. I know of at least one candidate for the state legislature who was allegedly offered some $5,000 cash to bail on the race by a rival.
The offer was supposedly turned down, why I do not know.
On the other hand, they may all be in it for the policy of legislatin' at the senate level, who knows, the thing about bone-hunting is, it's a process that shuns the light of day.