I don't think that Newt Gingrich ever

really wanted to to run for President. He had a nice easy life as a paid consultant at Fox News, steady money as an after dinner speaker and all the wives he could afford. Rubert Murdoch forced Newt's ass into the GOP clown-car, hoping to add some intellectual heft to the debate.
So of course Newt is running badly his heart isn't in this one, he'd much rather be writing bad counterfactual sci fi novels, flapping his yap on "Meet the Press" and sleeping til 10am on Saturdays.
It just speaks volumes about the sheer dopiness & credulity of his campaign staff that they have just now awoken to Newt Gingrich's craven opportunism and resigned en masse.
I strongly doubt that Gingrich will last out the year, he is in free fall politically almost everything he has said or done since announcing has alienated some major constituency in the GOP. All that sez to me is "Newt wants OUT!"
Of course there is something grimly hilarious about Newt's campaign staff ditching him like he was one of Gingrich's ex-wives...For Rick "Secesh" Perry, current Governor of Texas. Everytime the cry goes up for a "Serious Conservative" to get into the Presidential race, some falangist lunatic takes that as his or her cue to announce for the White House... and so we move from Gingrich to Perry and ultimately I guess Colonel Khadafi.
If Gingrich isn't doing all this deliberately, then you have to wonder just how someone as slap happy and inept as he ever got elected Speaker of the US House, just two heartbeats away from the Presidency...On the other hand, don't answer that question.

Senator John Kerry shot me a blast e-mail last night

requesting donations for the Red Cross Chapters of Western Massachusetts in the wake of last week's wave of tornadoes.
So here it is.
I won't conceal from my audience (such as it is) that this is a lightly trafficked blog, but if everyone who "dropped by" today contributed ten bucks, that would be about an even thousand raised at the end of the day.
Yeah like I said, "lightly trafficked", be that as it may, a thousand bucks is small money to most of you, but to people blown to hell by wild weather it buys blankets, diapers, food all the necessities.
So c'mon ten bucks, it hardly buys anything anymore, a movie ticket, seems like a worthwhile contribution in the aggregate...Besides have you seen those photos from Monson, next time it could be us!

In a blow to Holocaust Deniers everywhere

more evidence came to light implying that just possibly Adolf Hitler was a Jew-Hater of long vintage.

Since we are losing a congressional seat...

Maybe the delegation should draw straws and the "Odd Congressperson Out" could take a flyer in the democratic senatorial primary next year?
I mean all this peeps are loaded with campaign cash, rolodexes crammed with names and with some public sympathy having been laid off in the recession.
It could work.
Imagine John Olver, the Junior United States Senator from Massachusetts, Howie Carr would have a fugue to say the least.
***

Okay so it is a childish notion, but it might get the DNC offa our back and at the very least get some of this big feet we got to p*ss or get off the pot.

The Late Bruce Lee...

a man who came within an ace of being Nietzche's super-man in mind and body, was adamant about avoiding all processed sugar and baked goods in his diet.
I think, the Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives would be well advised to impose the same regimen on himself with respect of lobbyists.
I mean look what they did for Sal DiMasi, the big schnook imbibed too heavily and the rollers ended up jacking him.
But of course, the problem is larger than mere individuals, the Speakership of the Massachusetts House over the past 20 years has become a virtual counter-governorship with it's own sources of patronage, powers of appointment and all of it cloaked in obscurity.
Til now at least.
DiMasi is the third House Speaker in a row to come under indictment, it seems pretty clear that we are gonna see more and more trials like his until there is serious and abiding reform in the State House of Representatives. Too much money cloaked in too much secrecy and to the benefit of too few insiders is not sustainable over the long term.
So yes let the guilty be punished, but there is a larger context here that has to be addressed, the House Speaker's role must change, evolve or at least grow transparent.

The Sixth of June, Part II

This is also the forty third anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's untimely death back in 1968.

Some will want to remember him as a sneak and a sort of American Cromwell. Others will hopefully recall his battles on behalf of America's poor, his devotion to the cause of civil rights and the ultimate sacrifice of his very life in a bid to end the Viet Nam War.

However, tragedy rules us like a tyrant if we do not let a little whimsy in now and again.
So let me take time today to recall that per Adam West's memoirs "Back to the Batcave" that then Senator Robert F. Kennedy lobbied the producers of the old Batman TV show for a ccameo appearance thereon as an otherwise un-named US Attorney General.
Mere scheduling prevented this whimsical marvel from happening, which is a helluva shame really.

The Sixth of June,

D-Day, for all our veterans out there a hearty round of thanks and quiet moment of reflection for those who rendered up their very lives in service to the Colors.

As my white haired old irish mother once observed "There are people who just love symbols and then there are people who are willing to die for their country. Usually these are two different kinds of people."