So Governor Romney wants to get "serious about the

chinese"?
Yowza!?
Maybe that has been his real plan all along...run for the Chairmanship of the Chinese Communist Party?
He'd make a good autocrat over there I think...puritanical in the best Marxist Leninist tradition, a lover of big industrial enterprises as befits a son of an auto executive and a man who loves power more than integrity.
Mitts a perfect fit with the Central Committee in Beijing.
Of course he'd have to get over his whole anti-abortion stance given the fact that pregnancy termination is the number means of birth control over there. However that is no big worry for Romney, he has changed his mind before and will do so again and again.

Memorial Day

This column is dedicated to all those brave and selfless conservatives out there who fell in the great battle to restrict voting rights, who toiled without recognition that church and state might be united as one in this great land of ours...and those who answered the last muster for duty when the rights of the powerful to right over their thralls cracking horsewhips all along the way were imperiled.
For all of them, standing the lonely watch in Georgetown tonight or in the bowels of the Cato Instiute or in the frontlines of the House Majority Leaders Office...
For all these soldiers brave and true...this blog gives "thanks".

Dunno Michael Gee from a ...

cord of wood, but he has a very serious even melancholy column on the subject of the late Pat Tillman tucked away in the sports pages of the Boston Herald today. Quite frankly this has to be the most sensible thing I've read in the Herald nigh these past twenty odd years.

The irony is, I wouldn't have bought the Herald today were I not in the market for a new car...and as we all know, the Herald is ever pregnant with auto adverts.

Ah Compromise!

So McCain and Lieberman brokered an agreement to take the "nuclear option" off the table in return for letting through a few praetorian judicial nominees?
Well how good gawd damned delightful to be sure.
For the moment though, Frist does looks like a desperate over-reaching putz....so thats something.
However I doubt the agreement will last through next Sunday Morning's Chat Shows, Frist has got that good for nothing pipsqueak Gary Bauer and that malevolent revolutionary James Dobson on his back screaming for blood and dynamite. McCain on the other hand hasn't got the temperment or the attention span to police such and agreement. And J Lieberman?...he means well but Joe doesn't have a clue about the cossacks he is up against. He keeps singing "its a small world after all" amidst a huge praetorian chorus of "The Internationale". As for the other twelve moderates who signed onto this thing, forget them, they will run like rats in a firestorm when the whenever the wind shifts count on it.
In particular, the GOP moderation racket doesn't go in for biting the very well heeled conservative hand that feeds and or beats it.
Nope, a week from now, we could be back where we started on the filibuster...but it is nice to see that quack Dr. Frist sweat for once.
Let us therfore recall the simple admonition of William S. Burroughs:
"Whenever you are doing business with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing!
His word don't mean shit not with the good lord telling him how to f*ck you on a deal!"

Romney signals yet another shift

in his position on abortion. He told USA Today that he differed with the national GOP on the subject and that his stance had evolved centerward since his unsuccessful senate campaign in 1994.
Its evolved all over the god damned place since then quite frankly, this is what his FIFTH consecutive opinion change on abortion? Hell and damnation I've lost count!
What he Told em' was:
"I'm in a different place than I was in 1994"
Now, never mind the fact that Mitt made another one of his oracular policy pronouncements to another national newspaper bypassing the locals entirely with viceregal disdain.
Instead lets stick to he Globe's implication that this alleged shift back to the center (or is it to the right I CAN'T TELL ANYMORE) indicates Decaf has resolved to run for re-election next year. I think this pretty confirms the notion that Willard is a hopelessly dishonest hack whose positions are at the mercy of his own relative advantage. I can guarantee you, if Romney was the Governor of Utah right now, he'd be the biggest loudest most insufferable pro-life freeper west of the Missouri River.
But is not, and so he trims away secure in the knowledge that no one of consequence will ever call him out, indeed he is oblivious to the notion that anyone is watching this sad spectacle.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

There is a kind of ugly churlishness

that periodically breaks out on the Boston Globe's Op Ed Pages. It come from having nowhere to go and nothing to do except churn out your twice-a-week and cash your check. They all suffer from it, some worse than others.
Today for example, precious column space is given over to a earnest defense of the filibuster and the rights of the minority party on Capitol Hill by Senator Kerry. Meanwhile not six inches away, Joan Vennochi can be found calling the Junior Senator from Massachusetts timid,weak, indecisive and a host of other epithets.

Gosh all fish hooks how do you suppose that ever happened???
The Globe has to work hard in this town, if they have to, they'll trip a man first before they kick him when he is down.

Ghod what bunch of dreary unreadable pro-praetorian neocon hacks! There isn't a single columnist of the first rank to be found anywhere in the paper. I wouldn't mind it so much but none of them have anything to say to people like me We are as a group so completely taken for granted that we can be treated with all the disdain the Globe usually reseves for John Kerry.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

New Colleagues...

"Left in Lowell" and "The Eisenthal Report" have both seen fit to start linking to this "The Little Blog that Cried".
All seven of my readers are cheerfully encouraged to check out said blogs they are so far as I can tell sensible in every way.

'When it comes to gay marriage...

call me anything but don't call me hateful' or so the logic runs in Jeff Jacoby's current column in the Boston Sunday Globe.
Cuz...cuz...cuz...if we do Jeff will just take his laptop and go home thank you very very much.
It seems to me that Jeff is less interested in the rules of debate and more intent on delineating the entirely superfluous circumstances under which he will (inevitably) abandon rational discussion in a huff.
Mind you, so far, no one has called Jeff hateful or a hater.
At least no one of any consequence in what otherwise seems to be a very sheltered op-ed existence.
You can call Jeff Jacoby, naive, churlish, pompous,vain, shallow, arrogant, gruesomely sentimental craven and or blustery....but not hateful.
Jeff's staunch desire to avoid the hateful tag is a tad ironic given the fact he was practically celebrating his hatred of PLO Chairman Arafat when that clown went for his terminal dirt nap.
So as always and in the end, it is mere matter of who gets hated and as long as the likes of Jeff Jacoby gets to draw up those lists everything will be fine.

Jeff acts like its the worst thing in the world to be called hateful.

I suppose that can sting, but I wonder how long he'd last if people routinely called him a traitor and a coward?

Hell I don't even know why Jeff wants to set terms anyway...we hardly have anything resembling rational debate or argument in this country anymore. Everything is poll driven, agenda controlled and dominated by the mad desire to get, retain and expand power.
With deception built into the process we've become a nation of spin doctors and propagandists. How something as fragile as mere debate about gay marriage or whatever can be engineered under the circumstances I do not know.

The Quotable Senator Santorum...

On the subject of the so called "nuclear option and his democratic opposition: they being "the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, 'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine.' This is no more the rule of the senate than it was the rule of the senate before not to filibuster."

Nasty little bugger isn't he?
Fred van Ackerman couldn't have said it better.
Someone had better do something at the polls next year in Pennsylvania or this ardent young demagogue is apt to become U.S. President for Life or some damn thing.

The Problem with the Op Ed Page of the Boston Globe is...

they are all a bunch of petrified namby-pamby suburbanites who think there are worse things than being governed by a inane yap like Mitt Romney.
The Vennochis et al all live in terror of some nameless democrat from somewheres easing into power and blowing their whole moderate republican delusion to hell.
Look at Scot Lehigh, full of faux bonhomie his best advice to Tom Reilly and Duval Patrick is to somehow become more Romney-esque.
This is the best Scot can do after sixteen years of dilletantes, amateurs, craven second raters, frauds and viceroys.
The absolute gubernatorial bankruptcy of the Globe's punditariat couldn't be more absolute...these people speak to no one and for no one but their own pride swollen selves.
But oh you wait, if Willard bails on us this fall they will all hem and haw and babble about ideals and suchlike and come out banging the pots for Charlie Baker or some other corporate tailor's dummy. He'll be sold as the moderate republican alternate to sixteen empty years of GOP mis-rule in the Bay State most of it perpetrated by avowed moderates.
I just can't wait...
I just can't

Sick
Demented
Typical

Its hard to work up the slightest bit of sympathy

for Newsweek over the whole Koran flushing story. Admittedly White House Press Secretary Scot McClellan is carrying on like these alleged riots in Afghanistan are the Reichstag Fire or something. But any sane sensible Washington newsperson has to know by now that La Famiglia Arbusto has a famously adversarial relationship with the press and will exploit any misreported story for their own personal aggrandizement.
Isikoff, Fineman and that whole crowd at Newsweek don't get that. They think its still 1998 and they can print whatever they want sans reproach...they don't realize the easygoing days of Bill Clinton are over for good. Big Bush is Watching Them.
Today they are faced with an Admin that really hates the press and will actively work to undermine even those journalists who are nominally on Bush's side.
Why?
Because beating down Newsweek sends a message to world, "look what do to our friends, you are next!"
For Bush et al, the press can never be too cowed or too frightened.
These poor naive fools...

The Bonfire of the Inanities

Peter Canellos' Column in Today's Globe makes the utterly asinine argument that Jeff Gannon's exposure as a rightical chic sycophant is somehow morally equivalent to the Swift Boat Veterans jacking up John Kerry.

Moreover he accuses the "blogosphere" of harping on the issue past all endurance. Canellos is bumptiously content with the White Houses protestations of innocence in this matter.
Peter thinks the whole thing is overblown - he is of course wrong.
The blogosphere is all over this story for better or worse precisely because the Peter Canellos' of this world don't do their jobs, don't do the checking and don't ask the hard questions.
Since they've abrogated their responsiblity, the whole thing has landed by default in the laps of incendiaries and amateurs such as myself.

The whole of the Federal Executive Department is seemingly flummoxed as to how a professional ass licker with no credentials got daily access to the White House press room and beyond.
Given the rise of toady culture in the Capitol the whole thing sounds like a story to me!

Sick
Demented
Typical...

The very nice people at...

The Blue Mass Group have seen fit to link to this, "The Little Blog that Cried". Thus Humble Elias has invoked the rule of reciprocity and given them a proper link back.
The site seems plenty sensible all decent citizens should give them a click.

Deval Patrick in Menotomy

The Gubernatorial candidate came through my chesty little suburb last week and tested out his stump speech on the local democrats and spartans.
Generally it went over well, he is a able charismatic man in many ways, with that weird "Clinton style" sincerity goin' on.
Whether or not the "Politics of Hope" (a referent from the Imperial high Noon of Bill Clinton with roots going back to Hubert Humphrey) has any chance here in the Commonwealth is another thing entirely.
Still and all that Patrick is talking about tangible stuff, jobs-with a good dose of Massachusetts nationalism thrown in, public education, health care, civic engagement etc etc etc.
And wonder of wonder he brought up the Governor's mania for increasing fees, geez you'd think Patrick reall wanted to win or something!
He does a very good compare and contrast act....reminds me a lot of one of the better talk show hosts.
Patrick clearly thinks a lot and can present his ideas in a concise compelling fashion, but like Romney Patrick is a bit of blanks slate with few local props. These days however that can be an advantage.
The book at this point makes Patrick - an earnest death penalty opponent and something of a liberal, the easier opponent for Mitt, that is assuming Decaf is even in the race. I dunno, I have a feeling Patrick's sincerity might come across strong on TV...and Mitt is a crashing bore once he starts talking...that could be a pretty tight contest.
The crowd clearly liked what it was hearing, but then there is as yet a bit of a void in the democratic ranks so at the moment everyone is getting a fair hearing.
Heard some grumblings on the way out about Patrick's stint as a corporation lawyer, but thats to be expected with this crowd.

Russert on Imus today...

Took the car in today and listened to the first few minutes of Tim Russert's call in to the show....I shoulda stuck with Howard Stern quite frankly.
Good Ghod but Phat Tim is STILL hawking "Big Russ-n-Me" that treacly tome that was thought safely exiled to "Buck a Book" last summer. Nope no such luck,there was Tim gettin' all weepy and sentimental over the imminent paperback release of the book!
Just like he got all catch-in-yer-throat proud last spring when the damn thing came out in hardcover.
Just like he will get all weepy and serious when he releases "Big Russ's Barbeque Secrets".
There is nothing more phony and nauseating that the spectacle of Tim Russert trying play it sentimental-nothing.
To hear him tell it, "Big Russ" finally hugged "Little Tim" last summer after he read the book.
Awwwwww.....Geez these NBC yaps just love the whole man-hugs thing don't they? Tom Brokaw seemingly toured the nation recounting weepy tales of sons hugging fathers on the occasion of the publication of "The Greatest Generation".
and so it is with Fat Tim, servile to those in power, insufferable to those without...but yet he has the greatest darn daddy in the whole wide world!

Such is the Kingdom of Heaven
On the Congressionally Licensed Airwaves
And Elsewhere
5-11-05
7:30am EST
God Save the Republic
God Save the Commonwealth

Rev. Thomas J. Reese...

the painfully middle-of-the-road Jesuit Editor of "America" magazine has been deposed from his sinecure by "da hully fadda ah pope".
This is nothing but a strong dose of castor oil from the Vatican for America's liberal catholics...the message being "look what we are doing to the moderates...you my fine boyos are NEXT!"
Well what can I say, its a world of vengeance these days for the transnational conservative aristocracy...and getting more vengeful all the time.
The Reverend Richard John Neuhaus, Editor of the ultra rightist catholic journal "First Things" could hardly restrain his spiteful triumphalism when quoted in the Globe today:
''A lot of people were unhappy with America, including people in Rome," said the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things, a New York-based journal on religion. He said he knew many Catholics, including bishops, who were unhappy with Reese's stewardship of America, which, he said, ''had kind of a carping attitude toward the pontificate of John Paul II."

''Just as you don't expect Planned Parenthood to give a platform to the prolife position, there's no reason why a Catholic journal should provide a platform for positions that are clearly contrary to those of the church, and that was an editorial error that caused Tom a lot of trouble," Neuhaus said.

And so it goes.
Clearly though, Morrissey Boulevard has taken the Papal Admonition to report catholic related news with dignity to heart, nowhere in the above article does anyone mention "First Things" habit of musing dreamily about a conservative "Revolution" in America.
Apparently the free-est nation on earth for religions and religious people, a nation that let the sorry likes of both Jim Jones and Monsignor Feeney preach and organize unmolested, isn't free enough for the morbid likes of the Reverend Neuhaus.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Item!

He is a champion...riding high these days and bound over to go even higher. You know him you love him as an athlete he is the proverbial Man of Destiny.
he is also a red state republican and has been lately musing about running for public office.
He wants to inspire people....ah but what will the GOP base make of him when they discover our hero really really enjoys the company of men?
:)

Pyongyang Idyll...

If Komrade Kim wanted to test his own nuclear warhead, this weekend would be the time to do it. The Chinese have supposedly decively rebuffed U.S. efforts to impose an oil embargo on North Korea. If anything ever gave Kim taccit permission to test it is that little factum. Meanwhile Bush squabbles in Moscow with Putin over who exactly won World War II and the bombs keep detonating all over Iraq.
If Kim Jong Il wanted to "make a statement" this week would be perfect for inflicting the maxiumum psychological damage on West.
Ah but does he want to do that? One can never tell when we discuss the Maximum Autocrat of the Hermit Kingdom.
The PRC's attitude in regards to North Koreas nukes continues to puzzle and infuriate, they deplore Kim's acquisition of nukes, and turn all reasonable measures to force the issue. Humble Elias has long suspected that Beijing has made its piece with the notion of a nuclear armed Pyongyang if it grants the P.R.C little regional freedom of action.
At the very least it may make for a useful diversion from the tense situation with The Republic of China on Taiwan.
And so the pott boils on and on, alas though, time is not on our in this matter.

R.I.P. Col. Hackworth

The obit can be found here.

Purists will recall the Colonel's prediction that the draft would have to be revived as soon as this summer owing to the Army and Marine Corp's inability to meet manpower goals.
We haven't heard much in the way of draft talk of late, but you never know with this gang in DC...and the Army and the Marines haven't met their manpower goals for the first quarter of this year.
So fare thee well, Colonel, you've gone to that lat muster.
May it be well for you.

Dunno which is worse...

that George Bush Jr is fighting the war on terror or that Tom Brokaw is covering it.

Apparently having retired as Chief Anchor at NBC News, Tom's current gig is a roving reporter thang wherein he ponders the war on terror.
What are the true thoughts of a collie-dog? Who knows and truly, who cares?

Ah what am I snarking about anyway?
Tom is a harmless old wreck, if he wants to hold up NBC for a few more million before decamping for The Isle of Mustique and a life of quiet collie-dog contemplation then so be it. The great days of the Anchormen are over...they all suffered from the same vanity that doomed the Roman Caesars. Each wanted to burnish their memory by ensuring the succession went to some feckless lout whose cruelty would make their memory look good. Thus over time Augustus was followed by the obnoxious Tiberius, Tiberius was succeeded by pyscho party boy Caligula.
So too at NBC, amiable drunk John Chancellor begat the collie dog Tom Brokaw who has in turn handed the sinecure over to that hopeless brainless twit Brian Williams. Over at CBC, Cronkhite Maximus was followed by the twitchy hapless Dan Rather and now the anchor chair is held by that aging Bush Flatterer Bob Schieffer.
And so it goes, right off a cliff.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Didn't you just know in your heart of hearts

that Mitt Romney is a chiseler?
Hell, he didn't inherit all that money by writimng a lot of checks.
Check out this front page story in today's Globe ifn' yew don't believe me.
Good lord but these people can't even throw a fundraiser without occasioning public humiliation!
And this sap wants to be President...he just doesn't have it I'm sorry. There is something cheap and low about overcharging your corporate sponsors like that...if a lobbyist can't trust some grinning reactionary onanist from Massachusetts then who can he trust???

The Wit and Wisdom of Oliver Cromwell

Lord Protector of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Butcher of Drogheda, Breaker of Kings.

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money; is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do; I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place; go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!

We can now add...

The Death Penalty to Mitt Romney’s ever lengthening list of grand un-achievables. A partial listing of which would include; auto insurance reform, smashing gay marriage, a sensible health care bill, stem cell puritanism, tax cuts (a patent absurdity in the face of Willard’s endless sneaky fee increases) oh and his phantom 30 billion dollar transportation and highway program.
Romney would like us all to view the capital punishment through the rose colored prism of his simpleminded unswerving resolution in the face of Tom Reilly’s alleged equivocation. God and Scot Lehigh willing that may just end up being the main parameters of the issue.
Of course Romney couldn’t care less if the damn thing passes, crime is low at the moment in Massachusetts the police have never been more assiduous in their duties. The prisons are full and the streets as quiet as can be hoped.
Romney however needs yet another loud frantic bamboozlement to appear as a he-man to the uncircumspect barbarians that dwelleth beyond the Berkshires. These of course, being Mitt’s future serfs and servitors. So its less about who has done a gut check on the gallows and more about the increasingly weird virtual presidential politics that have been corrupting the process here in the Commonwealth.
The irony is, I myself somewhat on the pro-death penalty side. Oh I understand its a punishment heavily freighted with race and class distinctions don’t get me wrong. I’m well aware that it has not inherent deterrent effect on anyone of a truly antisocial nature. Take Texas for example, they can pile the stiffs up like cordwood and yet the whole state is rotten with violent criminality - not much in the way of deterrence goin’ on thar ah think.
Nope...there are some people, the Charles Mansons, the Sirhan Sirhans who just need to be turned to dust soonest. It is admittedly a small number, but an exclusive collection of malevolent brutes. If the French or the Green Berets nab Bin Laden tomorrow, I say hang him. Not much in the way of punishment can be achieved by leaving Osama or anyone like him alive behind bars-better to execute and be quit of them.
Clearly any death penalty statue would need a number of safeguards built into it to satisfy some of the above drawbacks...whether or not the Legislature has the wisdom to craft such a law is another question entirely.
However its hardly an important issue to Humble Elias, doesn’t even make my top ten list...and rarely impacts my voting pattern as a result.
The state is otherwise completely divided on the issue...if there is no consensus out in the electorate why force the issue on Beacon Hill? Because Mitt Romney wants to look like a hard guy to Spartanburg South Carolina that is why.
And until the real debate commences as to how much of the Governor’s program is dictated by the fancies and cherished myths of out of state wowsers, there the matter rests.