Not even five days ago, Rasmussen called the Brown-Warren senate race deadlocked at 48% a piece, with only four percent undecided.
Today the Boston Sunday Globe says Citizen Warren is up a bare 5% over Former State Senator Brown but with eighteen percent undecided in this race.
(BTW the above link is to David Bernstein's blog who riffs a bit on the numbers, I can't link back to the Globe due to the pay wall, Bernstein recounts the stats accurately though).
I don't think the senate race has reached such a fever pitch that both sides are essentially tied at over forty five percent each....on the other hand eighteen percent undecided is a statistic better suited to a down ticket office like Register of Probate or Public Exploder.
My over all sense of the race is that it is tight, volatile that a lot of independents are still dithering and that as a consequence a lot of attention will be paid to the debates as a framing device.
I also suspect the broad consequences of the Globe's polling will validate both candidate's campaign strategies insofar as they both need maximum party unity in order to go a-hunting for stray suburban independents.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Thursday, September 27, 2012
John Silber R.I.P.
There the Former President of BU is at the Gates of Paradise, haranguing Saint Peter over the slack operation he is running.
While on Earth though, Silber ran up quite a rhetorical tab, as President of Boston University he routinely lectured incoming freshmen girls on dress, deportment and the mysteries of femininity. Thats when he wasn't harassing recalcitrant professors, paying himself a Fenway Major League Baseball Salary, hired Billy Bulger to a lecturer's gig, tripling BU's endowment, enrollment & tuition in general disporting himself like a Prussian Drill Instructor gone ever so mad on Emanuel Kant.
In sort he was a columnist's dream, a mean spirited eminently quotable windbag who no more confess ignorance of a subject than he'd back down on the efficacy of cold showers and the lash.
Silber was destined to run for governor and in a last bit of cosmic irony, as a democrat as well in that far off year of 1990 with it's curious"angry white males".
To call the man a gaffe machine would be utter understatement he insulted everyone, Cambodians, Puerto Ricans, welfare recipients, he called his GOP opponent "An orange haired WASP"and then in final transport of fury opened verbal fire on Natalie Jacobson in a TV interview and thus met his Waterloo.
He also dragged down a few good democrats that year, notably George Keverian the democratic candidate for State Treasurer and his owning running mate Marjorie Clapprood whose promising statewide political career came to an abrupt end on election night 1990.
There is little to remember of the man, he was angry, self righteous and given to bullying...but curiously despite his tendency to alienate core democratic constituency he stuck by the party to the end. One can only imagine the long term damage he could have done to the GOP if he had switched over, but know perhaps Silber's most memorable virtue was loyalty.
While on Earth though, Silber ran up quite a rhetorical tab, as President of Boston University he routinely lectured incoming freshmen girls on dress, deportment and the mysteries of femininity. Thats when he wasn't harassing recalcitrant professors, paying himself a Fenway Major League Baseball Salary, hired Billy Bulger to a lecturer's gig, tripling BU's endowment, enrollment & tuition in general disporting himself like a Prussian Drill Instructor gone ever so mad on Emanuel Kant.
In sort he was a columnist's dream, a mean spirited eminently quotable windbag who no more confess ignorance of a subject than he'd back down on the efficacy of cold showers and the lash.
Silber was destined to run for governor and in a last bit of cosmic irony, as a democrat as well in that far off year of 1990 with it's curious"angry white males".
To call the man a gaffe machine would be utter understatement he insulted everyone, Cambodians, Puerto Ricans, welfare recipients, he called his GOP opponent "An orange haired WASP"and then in final transport of fury opened verbal fire on Natalie Jacobson in a TV interview and thus met his Waterloo.
He also dragged down a few good democrats that year, notably George Keverian the democratic candidate for State Treasurer and his owning running mate Marjorie Clapprood whose promising statewide political career came to an abrupt end on election night 1990.
There is little to remember of the man, he was angry, self righteous and given to bullying...but curiously despite his tendency to alienate core democratic constituency he stuck by the party to the end. One can only imagine the long term damage he could have done to the GOP if he had switched over, but know perhaps Silber's most memorable virtue was loyalty.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
When Jeff Jacoby eructates a howler
it is one for the ages...consider this quote from today's Globe:
"Barack Obama has been the most polarizing and divisive president in modern times."
Not for nothing but didn't Jeff say the exact same thing about Bill Clinton? How did Obama supplant Clinton in this Jacobyean category anyway...did The President forcibly relocating the Kulaks when I wasn't looking or something?
For that fact, Jeff said the exact same thing about John Kerry and Al Gore...They can't ALL be The Most Polarizing and Divisive democrat ever, some sort of qualitative heirarchy has to impose itself on the situation.
All snarkage aside, the reason Jeff can write that is because so few republicans crossed the aisles to support the President's program nigh these last few years.
Why?
It is not because said program was so radical, indeed parts of it were the very antithesis of radicalism, no the GOP refused to parlay mostly so they could accuse the President of being "Polarizing and Divisive"during this election cycle.
Thus we come to Jeff's column today...huffy indignant,condescending and yet boring....one thing is for certain for readability and wit no one will ever mistake Jeff Jacoby for H.L. Mencken or evenWestbrook Pegler for that matter.
"Barack Obama has been the most polarizing and divisive president in modern times."
Not for nothing but didn't Jeff say the exact same thing about Bill Clinton? How did Obama supplant Clinton in this Jacobyean category anyway...did The President forcibly relocating the Kulaks when I wasn't looking or something?
For that fact, Jeff said the exact same thing about John Kerry and Al Gore...They can't ALL be The Most Polarizing and Divisive democrat ever, some sort of qualitative heirarchy has to impose itself on the situation.
All snarkage aside, the reason Jeff can write that is because so few republicans crossed the aisles to support the President's program nigh these last few years.
Why?
It is not because said program was so radical, indeed parts of it were the very antithesis of radicalism, no the GOP refused to parlay mostly so they could accuse the President of being "Polarizing and Divisive"during this election cycle.
Thus we come to Jeff's column today...huffy indignant,condescending and yet boring....one thing is for certain for readability and wit no one will ever mistake Jeff Jacoby for H.L. Mencken or evenWestbrook Pegler for that matter.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Y'know why
Scott Brown is so pathologically obsessed with Citizen Warren's alleged Indian heritage?
Because the gawd damned fool has driving his wife & daughter's show horses around for so long, the Former State Senator thinks he is a Cowboy.
And we all know the metaphor emnity between cowboys and indians....of course to be playing at cowboys and indians into adulthood and public life as well is a miserable spectacle indeed.
Because the gawd damned fool has driving his wife & daughter's show horses around for so long, the Former State Senator thinks he is a Cowboy.
And we all know the metaphor emnity between cowboys and indians....of course to be playing at cowboys and indians into adulthood and public life as well is a miserable spectacle indeed.
Monday, September 24, 2012
When the Mitt Hits the Fan...
To add to the former viceroy's woes, apparently his polling lags even among NASCAR fans.
I can scarcely credit the results of what is admittedly an on-line poll...unless one postulates the President has had enough terrorists shot and bombed enough dictators to satisfy even the most belligerent of gearheads.
Otherwise this poll likely stands as a good indicator of Mitt Romney "Unlike-ability Factor", a sort of bizarre anti-charisma that repels even the most hardcore republican cadres.
I can scarcely credit the results of what is admittedly an on-line poll...unless one postulates the President has had enough terrorists shot and bombed enough dictators to satisfy even the most belligerent of gearheads.
Otherwise this poll likely stands as a good indicator of Mitt Romney "Unlike-ability Factor", a sort of bizarre anti-charisma that repels even the most hardcore republican cadres.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Jeff Jacoby makes a attempt
to cast a "Carter-esque"patina over President Obama's foreign policy in today's Sunday Globe.
Aiyeee, it must be the end of September in a Presidential election year, because Former President Carter is coming in for his usual straw man drubbing.
Jeff's point is pretty shallow &hypocritical even for him, the rioting in the Middle East MUST be all President Obama fault cuz he is a weak leader etc etc etc.
Jeff is a neocon, and neocons despite a transparent veneer of bipartisanship are heavy traffickers in the needs of movement conservatism at the moment.
So of course out comes the Carter metaphor right on schedule...and just as suddenly the US Backed Fall of Colonel Khadaffi and the impending fall of the Supreme Opthamalocrat in Syria have become in the neocon mindset equivalent to the Fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979.
But then again I can recall with the simplest nostalgia back in 1998 or so when Colonel Khadaffi was being ginned up as a threat to National Security by the neocon right who in turn flung the charge of appeasement at then President Bill Clinton.
I don't think you have go far back into the neocon archives to find all sorts of blusterly editorials demanding the deposition of Col, Khadaffi, President Assad of Syria and Saddam Hussein as rogue regional actors that are threatening the peace.
So of course fourteen years later, Khadaffi is dead, Bin Laden is dead, Assad's ne'er do well son totters and Saddam is worm chow and yet somehow Jeff Jacoby can summon the mental gymnastics to call that appeasement and failure.
It is a special sort of neocon mental gymnastics, as politicians are in the greatest danger when they listen to neoconservatives and faithfully go about engineering the downfall of Khadaffi, Assad etc etc etc.
We are deep into the murky territory of partisan cognitive dissonance when a US President who openly connived at the fall of Colonel Moamar Khadaffi can be called an appeaser by anyone left alone a partisan commentator.
Part of our problem in the region today is because the US more of less uncritically accepted neoconservative assumptions about certain regional actors from the git-go, admittedly this cuts across party lines in the USA pretty evenly.
And meanwhile those selfsame neocons have completely quit on their premises circa 1998 all in bid to tear down President Obama.
Well what can you expect in an election year? Hypocrisy front and center.
Me?
I would love to meet a neocon that could ever admit publicly or privately that they had made a mistake....
Aiyeee, it must be the end of September in a Presidential election year, because Former President Carter is coming in for his usual straw man drubbing.
Jeff's point is pretty shallow &hypocritical even for him, the rioting in the Middle East MUST be all President Obama fault cuz he is a weak leader etc etc etc.
Jeff is a neocon, and neocons despite a transparent veneer of bipartisanship are heavy traffickers in the needs of movement conservatism at the moment.
So of course out comes the Carter metaphor right on schedule...and just as suddenly the US Backed Fall of Colonel Khadaffi and the impending fall of the Supreme Opthamalocrat in Syria have become in the neocon mindset equivalent to the Fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979.
But then again I can recall with the simplest nostalgia back in 1998 or so when Colonel Khadaffi was being ginned up as a threat to National Security by the neocon right who in turn flung the charge of appeasement at then President Bill Clinton.
I don't think you have go far back into the neocon archives to find all sorts of blusterly editorials demanding the deposition of Col, Khadaffi, President Assad of Syria and Saddam Hussein as rogue regional actors that are threatening the peace.
So of course fourteen years later, Khadaffi is dead, Bin Laden is dead, Assad's ne'er do well son totters and Saddam is worm chow and yet somehow Jeff Jacoby can summon the mental gymnastics to call that appeasement and failure.
It is a special sort of neocon mental gymnastics, as politicians are in the greatest danger when they listen to neoconservatives and faithfully go about engineering the downfall of Khadaffi, Assad etc etc etc.
We are deep into the murky territory of partisan cognitive dissonance when a US President who openly connived at the fall of Colonel Moamar Khadaffi can be called an appeaser by anyone left alone a partisan commentator.
Part of our problem in the region today is because the US more of less uncritically accepted neoconservative assumptions about certain regional actors from the git-go, admittedly this cuts across party lines in the USA pretty evenly.
And meanwhile those selfsame neocons have completely quit on their premises circa 1998 all in bid to tear down President Obama.
Well what can you expect in an election year? Hypocrisy front and center.
Me?
I would love to meet a neocon that could ever admit publicly or privately that they had made a mistake....
Friday, September 21, 2012
I also thnk that...
Mitt Romney is one gaffe away from a serious political death spiral of Goldwateresque proportions...he isn't there yet, but he is close believe me. Mind you, he can still win, but it will take Harry S. Trumans heart and Richard Nixons will to power...so does Romney have any of that???
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