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.