Lugar we hardly knew ye...

Richard Lugar just got tea-partei'd in his bid to be renominated to the US Senate on the GOP ticket.
A lot of copy has been and will generated about the ineffable decline of the Moderate Middle in the US Senate.
This is ironic, because Lugar himself was pretty much an orthodox Indiana conservative with a foreign policy focus...his word though, was good.
And that in turn ran afoul of modern post 2008 conservatism's obsession with childish rejectionism that and his age (eighty yipes!) and Lugar was run out of town on a rail, sad end for a guy who started out with serious wingnut bona fides as "Richard Nixon's Favorite Mayor".
But...lets face it, the "moderate middle" (the very Erewhon of Brian McGrory's imagination) is naught but a place of negotiation between actors (ideological and otherwise) who are willing to negotiate.
If one side simply rejects...well that is it, game over.
I've said it before, "moderation is sick because conservatism is sick", right now the tea partei fever has burned so hot out there that the afflicted are mad to destroy anyone even remotely associated with Barack Obama.
And so down goes Lugar., who did what? Shake the President's hand once? Give his word and keep it?
Awful mortal sins for today's tea partei.

Ah but wait for it, the inevitable columns crowning Scott Brown that boodling chiseling pension grubbing hack, the new Moderate Messiah on Horseback...wait for it, a laff riot in the making.

Foxborough has apparently elected

a Board of Selectmen that is opposed to Steve Wynn's plan to open a resort casino in that community.
Maybe that is the way to go?
I mean fight it out locally precinct by precinct, all efforts to create a statewide anti casino coalition have ended in failure.
It is easier to get people focused on the costs and downside of casino gambling when one of the damn things is going up in your town...or so Humble Elias suspects.

Socialists win the French Presidency...

And turn out the incumbent M. Sarkozy in the process.

So...since Francois Hollande, the French President - Elect is a Socialist after all, how long before The Fox News Ranters and the Usual Suspects in the US House of Representatives start demanding that the USA break off all Diplomatic Relations with France, otherwise known as a brother democracy and fellow dues paying member of NATO?

I can just hear Michele Bachmann screaming for the USA to withdraw from NATO unilaterally....

Word on the street is,

that State Senator Will Brownsberger (Whose 24th Middlesex House Seat is up for grabs) is remaining studiously neutral in the coming primary fight for the moment.
This makes sense, an up and comer from Belmont, a School Committee Maacher from Arlington and one of his old interns are all piling into the democratic primary and cut off date to pull papers has not yet wrung down.
Good time to dummy up smile and eructate pleasantries sez Humble Elias.
Now as for the abutting Reps and State Senators, Sean Garballey and Ken Donnelly, who can say? Those two are Arlington centric pols, assuming no other candidate from Arlington they'd be free to make endorsements...Assuming of course no prior commitments and the like.
Damn I like a good primary fight, hours of blogging fun.

Sue Sheffler piles in

in the redrawn 24th Middlesex House District, Arlington's own Sue Sheffler formerly a maacher on the School Committee has pulled papers to run for the seat.
The district has been redrawn to include Arlington Precinct's 8, 10 & 12 all known for heavy democratic turnout. So presumably, Sheffler starts with a strong geographic base within the district. She also benefits from a field that seems divided (something like two democrats from Belmont are vying for the sinecure alone with two republicans and a likely independent candidacy with more out in the wings shooting their cuffs and adjusting their ties). The math here is simple, make some inroads somewhere outside your base voting every last woman and child on primary night and squeak thru with a plurality.
There are other modalities at play, money coming immediately to mind, it still costs 50 to 60 thousand dollars to make a credible State Rep's race, from what I can see that sort of long green seems like a big step up for almost the entire field.
Meanwhile the Ron Paul faction of the GOP (who just scored a tactical victory over Romney having packed the Massachusetts RNC delegation with their own true believers) are allegedly looking around for a race to contest.
Belmont is not like Arlington it's GOP Committee is a little more active and will likely try and make this a competitive race in the general election.
Primary fights like this revolve around organizational strength, debate performance, a constant drumbeat of mailings, endorsements (State Senator Will Brownsberger's among others) and plain luck.
Well it is a new district and I'm glad to see one of the Spartans has stepped up to the plate, if we don't get out there and electioneer a bit, the Arlington part of the electoral map could get taken for granted...and we would not want that, would we?
:D

Over in Today's Boston Globe

Columnista Brian McGrory has been railing against the excessive executive compensation packages prevalent at Libery Mutual Insurance Company.
All well and good, as far as Humble Elias is concerned, however it is worth noting that shame and humiliation and sarcasm are all the favorite weapons of the Punditariat and they are blunted edged weapons at that.
Over and above Liberty Mutual's fleet of luxury corporate jets, the fact is, for the past forty years in this country we have inexorably created an economic situation that favors financial speculation and a "service economy" at the expense of technological innovation and productive job creation.
Trillions of dollars flow to Wall Street because that is where the biggest payoffs are to be found in junk bonds, buyouts, mortgage backed securities and all that rubbish, none of that money sets one lathe in motion or puts one paycheck in a worker's hands.
This is a policy issue, our laws and regulations favor financial investment and not innovation and job creation. And until our values (cuz we all luv job creation, even Mitt Romney) are reflected in our laws, Brian McGrory will be snarking about the Neronian Excesses of Liberty  Mutual's corporate officers until the flaming end of time itself.

Richard Grenell...

An openly gay man ostentatiously appointed National Security Spokesman for the Romney Campaign, has resigned his position allegedly under pressure from the usual suspects, after a scant two weeks on the job.
Well...Did anyone expect a different outcome here?
Mitt Romney cannot effect outreach to gun worshippers without making a horse's ass of himself,   a symbolic gesture towards the gay community executed by the Former Viceroy, can but end in a mushroom cloud.
Let me ask a simple question, in his whole truncated amateurish political career, who the hell has Mitt Romney ever stood up for?
Other than himself?
The answer to that is no one.
So when it comes time to do a gut check on behalf of even a fellow republican with all sorts of useful bona fides with La Famiglia Arbusto, Romney is utterly ineffective.  When wingnuts howl, Romney goes to pieces in a effort to placate them, every time. It not not a pretty process to watch....though it does have some John Waters-esque comedy value.