Chris Matthews for the US Senate?

Sounds like a nightmare scenario, but apparently the MSNBC's talker is staffing up to run against Arlen Spector in Pennsylvania.

Good Ghod with Obama in the White House the literal and figurative value of being a US Senator goes up a good twnety percentage points, at a critical moment like that who needs another motor-mouthed charlatan like Chris on Capitol Hill?
What is worse he could pull it off, money and celebrity can take you far in this life sad to say...even if you are a blustery jackwad. Moreover, Spector is pushing 80 with his best service to the Republic far behind him and a growing reputation as the Senate's loudest toothless lion as well...a very volatile mix in Humble Elias' opinion.
Need I remind my readers that Chris Matthews'was once the Iraq war's most cringe-worthy cheer-leader...when Bush stepped onto the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln Matthew's groveling took on a scary homo-erotic tone. Of course now following the polls the way a Wonderland Greyhound follows the electric rabbit Matthews' is all agin' the war...but Pennsylvania democrats ought yo be warned, Chris is utterly inconstant.
And then there is his on-air style, Super Tuesday poll coverage in particular, by 9:30pm Chris infallibly runs out of sensible things to say and starts yammering incoherently while his guests suppress their giggles right there on camera.
Who needs that action is the US Senate...hell they finally gave old Ted Stevens the heave-ho...time to class up the joint sez I.
The man is a clown, voluable cheap and spineless...if Humble Elias lived in Pennsylvania he's sooner vote for Italo Balbo or Bishop Sheen.

The coming Queer War

Mass Marrier is free to correct me here, but gay marriage has been outlawed in almost every state where it has gone before the electorate as a ballot referendum. The climax of this process having gone down in California, normally a bastion of gay rights where the infamous Proposition Eight passed with fifty two percent of the vote earlier this month.
To humble Elias gay rights, specifically in the form of same sex marriage has become the last great civil and social rights issue to confront this great republic. Therfore this malign anti-SSM referenda much resemble the "Dred Scott decision" being executed in miniature all over the country.
Abraham Lincoln in his rising days railed against the notion of putting the civil rights of others up to a vote as the very leading edge of despotism. Apparently in the 21st century we don't listen much to the old Rail-Splitter, well what the hell, they didn't listen to him til it was too damn late back then either.
I have in the past naively noted that the public acceptance of SSM would take a generation or more and that the Commonwealth's SSM marriage statute might not be "easily exported" beyond the Berkshires. However our opponents take a different view and fundraise and organize of the basis of making second class citizenship a reality all over the nation. This is a fight that has been forced upon us.
It is also a fight we dare not lose is anyone is to retail their own personal rights.
Sheer demographics are on our side, the younger the voter the more pro-SSM they skew, the problem is these cohorts have to be ideologically acticvated and then organized..they need leadership in other words. the dirty secret to the same sex marriage controversy is that it is a classic "Abe Simpson" issue, bitterly hated by men above the age of fifty and while that cohort has money to spend and is better positioned to vote...time is not on their side so to speak.
The courts waver on SSM's behalf, we need to start putting pressure on the legislatures both state and national in order to secure basc right of marriage for all...and that means organizing and voting.
The other side knows what it wants and couldn't care less whose rights are negated in order to achieve their end.
There is no safety for anyone save in electoral numbers, judges read election returns quite well and always have...state legislators tremble on election day.
This is the Queer War like it or not the fight is here and Humble Elias hopes we win it...

Idle non-sequitor thought on this fine holiday...

Imagine the "pop" that President Obama will get if and when he makes a state visit to Africa...

It'll be like when JFK got to Ireland except on a continental basis.

Anyway happy thanksgiving.

Gates staying on as Defense Secretary?

that is disheartening news to say the least. Although on Iraq policy (where clean hands are in short supply) I can see the wisdom of some measure of bipartisanship. However the choice does put some pressure on the President - Elect to stand by his timetable for withdrawl both within and without the US Government. The national security team he has whomped together, presumably with Hillary Clinton at State, General Jones at the NSC and now Gates bound over in the Pentagon is a collection of "yes votes" on Iraqi regime change. It is up to President Obama to hold everyone's feet to the fire.
My thinking is sorta simplistic, I'd rather everyone answer to the liberal, THAT remains the core change in substance and style...I'd rather control the whole of the executive department than the Department of Labor.

Keeping Gates on DOES perpetuate the myth of GOP invulnerability on security issues, the need for the "mommy party" to hide behind the "daddy party" and his vodka bottles, sandbags, bad securities, ill-cleaned guns and revered family bible issued out of a vending machine in 1964. All that schlock got repudiated three weeks ago I thought?

The "OTHER" Chimes at Midnight

screens at the Harvard Film Archive this Saturday night at 7pm. It hasn't been seen in Boston in years and is a notable Orson Welles film that remains unavailable on legit DVD, so Humble Elias sez go see it!.

Saw Steve Forbes of all people on CNN yesterday....

My Ghod but there is a guy with the courage of his restrictions. Faced with global financial catastrophe he just kept running his mouth on and on about more deregulation and further tax cuts all in a dense obscure way that not even a trained economist like Robert Reich could fathom.
Reich and Forbes were brought on to make sense out of the current crisis and while Steve simply delivered a three week old campaign commercial Reich actually addressed the decline of purchasing power in the American middle class induced by stagnant incomes. Forbes just stared into the camera with that creepy unblinking stare of his looking purely befuddled that the incoming admin would dare contemplate any other policy save the standard GOP practice of redistributing money from the working poor and middle class to the rich. Steve also had nothing good to say about the current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson which is strange given the mindless similarity of their economic policies.
Reich however made plain sense, demand has to be stimulated, a piddly tax cut won't do much over the short term so bid to address income inequalities has to be at the heart of our current policy.
It was good to see Former Labor Secretary Reich back on the job, as for Steve Forbes I'm sure the rest of Wolf Blitzer's rolodex was hiding under their desks. So the billionaire profligate gets props just for going on the air in my book.

Eight months ago...

Mitt Romney promised the recession-wracked workers of Michigan he'd reopen the automobile factories practically at gunpoint if need be. Last he excoriated Detroit as a "dinosaur" and denounced any bail-out bill aimed at preserving the auto-industry.
Suddenly, three million more unemploed don't both him none, it's like scruples or internal consistency, poof gone mean's NOTHING to Willard.
Rightly for once, Joanie Vennochi called him out on it....but then this is nothing more than the last of her divorce from Mitt, she once ardently believed that 2008 was gonna be the year of Romney's ride to glory.

Anyone else, who contradicted himself so blatantly and idiotically, would be headed to the electoral scrap heap...but I guess we've all gotten use to this kind of callow behavior from Mitt.