And...once again Spiteful Joanie Vennochi

proclaims the early downfall of the Patrick Administration. This is either the second or the third time she has done this since Deval Patrick was inaugurated. At her present rate, she will write at least ten more like this one before Patrick leaves office...factoring in a second term of course. Lordy by then, even Sal DiMasi's posse will be sick of her bile and they need her!

Y'know...Humble Elias could jump ugly on Joanie, brand her a spiteful shallow venomous hack, but today just for a moment, larger questions loom in the mist.
Like what is Joanie's obsession with mere Beacon Hill personalities? Sal Versus Deval, Obama versus Clinton versus McCain, Kerry against the World, it's a very WWE Smackdown world according to Ms. Vennochi. When was the last time she discussed or debated or even mentioned a policy in any other context other than the persons fighting over said proposal?
She has a serious jones for mere personalities doesn't she? I mean that is great and all if you are writing for "People" or whatnot, but these are serious times and they are gonna get a lot more serious real quick...too serious for Joan Vennochi's "Queen Bee of Lunchroom" act.

Just sayin'....

Steve Stark asserts the following in this week's Boston Phoenix;

"No candidate in the modern era has ever been elected president with a voting record that could be identified as his party’s most liberal or conservative, yet the National Journal found Obama to be the most liberal senator this past year after computing his Senate voting record."

And yet I recall with the simplest nostalgia that National Journal a mere four years ago "computed" that John Kerry's record made HIM The Most Liberal Member of the US Senate.
Now given the fact that Barack Obama was elected in'06, the Junior Senator from Illinois would have to come out for the forced collectivization of agriculture or making Mao's Birthday a National Day of Thanks in order to surge to the top of the "most liberal list" in just twenty four short months.
Either that or Joh Kerry accepted the GOP nuclear Jesus as his personal savior whilst windsurfing on Nantucket Sound...but we'd heard something about that we are bloggers after all.
It is either that or the National Journal is a haughty little rag whose methodology is all about affixing the "liberal blood libel" onto a candidate every four years.

It just speaks volumes about Steve Stark's cliche ridden mentality that he would regurgitate this sort of bumcombe sans reflection.

Cable TV Note

Wolf Blitzer routinely refers to Senator Barack Obama as..."Obama".
His title nor his first name are almost never used, or at least there were no where to to be heard this morning on Blitzer's CNN campaign round up.

Just sayin'...

One thing is for certain...

We do not live in a country that is repelled by nauseating examples of public self abasement.
How else to explain the public's indifference and even passive toleration for the entirely unwholesome spectacle of Mitt Romney campaigning with, and groveling before Senator John McCain.
Not six weeks ago, Willard was calling McCain a corruptard and an old hack and a liberal and and and...it all runs together in my mind, but it was a desperate and nasty performance from the former Massachusetts Governor one that ought to give the GOP pause.
The only upside to this is the possibility that Romney might get into a very public and childish shoving match with Senator Joe Lieberman over just who gets to march right behind McCain with an appropriately canine look of adoration on his face.

So yeah, Mitt wants to be veep...but honestly if McCain's staff is dumb enough to believe the line of bullshit asserting Romney can carry Michigan (Massachusetts is left right out of the power point presentation I'm sure) then they and the GOP deserve their fate...thass all I can say.

Mitt is a cheap puerile man, malleable, unheroic, the more the public sees him the they less they like that was the case all thru the primary season. In fact Romney's election eve two minute campaign commercial up in NH sealed his fate as particularly insincere charlatan.

Our chances of victory will materially improve if McCain selects Mitt.

Spiteful Joanie is back doing what she does best....

calling the democrats liars and thus implying that ho-hum we could do worse than McCain.
This is the oldest trick in the book, say nothing about McCain and fret much about Obama and Clinton...it's a very useful and destructive pose for someone like Joanie.

Well what can I say...?
Joanie is a bad writer, when was the last time she was for something or someone? For that fact it is plainly demented in a week when candidate McCain can't tell Suuni from Shia or has started backpedaling on the cigarette tax to start selectively questioning Senators Clinton and Obama's veracity.
But then this is Joanie we are talking about, she has a weird election year compulsion to sow doubt and buyer's remorse among democrats and independents. That is really all she is good for.

Which raises the question when is the Globe gonna get a real fighting liberal on it's editorial page? The current route is either boring or else marks for the myth of moderate republicanism.

The bad news is...

we have to endure the ongoing slanging match between Obama and Clinton in the long slow slog thru the Pennsylvania Primary, which ain't til next month.
Unless someone somewhere, comes to their senses...but don't take any bets on that gentle readers.
But the good news is, we get to watch John McCain sell out his every bed-rock principle and at chump change prices all in a vain hope this will make him President.
A gaudier more appalling spectacle cannot be imagined unless Alice Cooper starts giving showmanship tips to Marilyn Manson.

The past goes a little greyer

Neil Aspinall is dead.
Neil did pretty well for a fella who reputedly was best pals with Pete Best the Beatles'original drummer and also enjoyed a relationship of some alleged intimacy with Pete's mother.

Meanwhile can anyone please explain to me why I can't find "She's a Woman" on any of the Beatles' stateside CD? Or am I overlooking something simple....?

I think I've gotten closer to figuring out

Joanie Vennochi's major malfunction...she hates being wrong.
A duller more predictable vice cannot be imagined but then this is the Boston Globe she works for.
Case in point, Joan made an appearance on a NECN chat show in 2007 in which she openly predicted Mitt Romney would be the GOP nominee and be elected president in 2008!
Well, time has crushed that notion flat hasn't it?
Nevertheless Joanie is undeterred, here she shills at length behalf of a Romney Vice Presidential candidacy.
This is a proposal that is not hard to dismantle; Romney can't deliver his home state, the GOP already has the Mormon's sewn up, Mitt might be the darling of the conservatives but he is a disposable idol in extremis any one of a number of other guys will be acceptable to that faction and lastly Romney is a overflowing cataract of anti-McCain soundbites...he called Darlin' John every name in the book from October thru February most of it makes for excellent campaign fodder, for the democrats that is.
I think the problem with Joanie is, she is unduly and inexplicably impressed with Mitt Romney's political acumen, somehow his gubernatorial win in 2002 has taken on strange mythic dimensions in Vennochi's airless little mind. Never mind he spent four years getting jacked by every second rate ward healer in the state, to Joanie the man is a colossus.

The Senior Senator from Valhalla

There is something about John McCain that brings out the latent homosexual in America's punditariat.

But hell, that is nothing new to my gentle readers (all seven of you)...Russert, Matthews, Blitzer all have a seriously repressed relationship with the GOP's presumptive nominee.

Humble Elias has a radical notion that deserves some consideration; Let us resolve to hold Senator McCain's war service to the exact same standard that got applied to John Kerry's Viet Nam record in campaign '04.
Remember those words, the Exact Same Standard.

Mind you I don't propose to lie about the man a'la the "Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth" but I'm not gonna let McCain hoist himself onto a pedestal without a fight.

It will be interesting to see if the Great War Hero ends up selecting a notorious draft doger like Newt Gingrich or worse Mitt Romney as his running mate this fall. Given the conspicuous lack of combat service in the leadership cadres of the GOP , so few of these guys were willing to honor McCain's service by replacing him in the ranks whilst he languished in a Hanoi prison camp.
That is where we will get him...his opportunism it is as good a start as any.

So tell us Speaker DiMasi...

What is the plan to handle this little problem?

Well once again the Commonwealth has tried to do what the Federal Government refuses to do and close the health care gap.
And as usual the systemic costs are piling up like bat guano.
It is axiomatic for me at least the individual states are poorly positioned and capitalized to take on the ongoing health care gap in the USA.
But then what can anyone do? This situation has been forced on us and the other forty nine by the inability of anyone in Washington to break the deadlock.
The Presidency has been in the hands of stupid selfish witlings and congress is splendidly inert when it isn't wallowing in HMO lobbyist money like pigs on a farm.
The result is, stalemate.
I for one am getting damn sick and tired of being told, of what cannot be done...anyone else sick of stalemate?

Well...Sal DiMasi doesn't want casinos...

He doesn't want them in the worst possible way. And what the hell got his wish, fair enough casinos are a bad idea classic sort money low cost "problem appeasement".

But...if the Great-n-General Court isn't gonna dee-bate casinos, then are they any more inclined to debate the state's fiscal policy at all?
Humble Elias thinks that the current casino vote is sadly symptomatic of Beacon Hill's approach avoidance complex when it comes to discussing new sources of state revenues.
It would be nice if Speaker DiMasi would enlighten us as to what his plan is to make up our looming budget shortfalls, he could start with a practical plan to reign in the Commonwealth's health care costs.

And believe me we can't hide our heads in the sand on that one, some say the clock is ticking away.

Humble Elias' White Haired Old Mum

can recall with the simplest nostalgia that her two brothers regularly trekked over the BU bridge to Brookline in order to avoid their local Parish Priest's weekly fulminations on behalf of Generalissimo Franco and his simple Luftwaffe-backed piety.
Elias Nugator Senior can recall that Boston Common regularly featured the soapbox antisemitism of Monsignor Feeney; Boston College's most notorious clerical fascist.
I myself used to while the way the hours out in the pews while some half senile madman raved about abortion and lesbians and feminists and....

My point is, if you are regular church goer in America, you've probably heard some pretty hair-raising nonsense from out the gob of your official religious celebrant. So it comes as no surprise to me that Citizen Obama has had to listen to some bad craziness in his church...quite frankly so have we all. It's an axiom with Humble Elias that the only class in America more rhetorically rampant than the punditariat is the clergy...and the clergy has been like that since Washington took the Oath of Office.

But of course, in Jeff Jacoby's mind, Barack Obama is somehow responsible in a character deficient way for the opinions of another man.
Well I dunno, McCain got a pass on Hagee, so I'd think that Obama would get a pass on Wright.
But then again this is America and we do have an enduring love affair with the double standard.

An idle thought...

some busy robot at the IRS sent me a note the other day insisting I was about to get a "Stimulus check" from the US Government.
After yesterday's market drop, I'm wondering if I can get that money in Euros?

I suppose not but there is something sad and sick about the normally torpid US Treasury department rushing to bail out Bear-Stearns from bankruptcy, no one has heard a peep from any of these solons for over eight years now on the subject of anything benefiting anyone making less than $200K a year. Ah but today liquidity is the cry from the Government's homeopathic economists, when surely it was the flinging of that liquidity at every bum loan in the country that sent Bear-Stearns off the cliff to begin with.
I'm beginning to wonder if the country is really worth saving? With thoughtless profligate bailouts like this driving the process maybe it's just better all around for McCain to go to the EU in 2009 or 2010 hat in hand to get the best deal he can for the American People.
Ah but that is indeed self destructive thinking.

Yesterday...the Boston Sunday Globe's Chief Warlord

One Jeffrey Jacoby screamed that the war was as good as one, as soon as the GOP mops up the opposition over here all will be well.

Now today this bit of cheer sneaks out of Iraq, alone and unloved.

Again I ask? Do these insurgents in Iraq read the Globe or something? Because every time Jeff tries on the Triumphal regalia and gets his chariot polished some gawd-awful thing like this goes down.
Damned creepy if you asked me.

BTW Whenever conservatives start quoting General Patton or the character that Francis Ford Coppolla wrote for the movie, it is usually time to send the lot to bed...it's a tip off everyone is getting tired and cranky.

Tom Ridge for Veep?

On a ticket with McCain, that is the latest rumor so I hear.
Of course, someone might want to ask the famously catholic former governor of Pennsylvania what he thinks of McCain's newest admirer Pastor John Hagee and his celebrated anti-Romanist harangues?
Or do well put those questions to anyone within the sacred protective nimbus of the Senator-Hero from Arizona?
****

Here is a thought for the day: If John McCain's record was subjected to the same degree of systematic distortion and falsication as was John Kerry's in '04, there would be a civil war in the country...instigated by the "outraged" likes of Tim Russert.

Lehigh mocks the notion of Romney for Veep

the details can be found here:

And yet I remember with the simplest nostalgia the summer of 2005 when armed with nothing more than a few press releases from Eric Fehrnstrom, Scot tried manfully to convince us that Governor Romney was really a kindly well meaning GOP moderate.

Well what can I tell yoo, hell hath no fury like a moderate scorned.

Meanwhile, anyone else seen those pics of Senator Joe Lieberman trailing behind McCain like a trained poodle?
That hopeless fawning grin of his bespeaks a hidden and entirely sad belief that somehow somewhere McCain will nominate Joe for Veep.
I kinda hope it happens, the oaths of fealty, submission and recantation that the Republican National Convention would extract from Lieberman would be plainly hilarious to behold. It would be on a par with Lev Kamenev's claim during the Moscow trials that he had planned to assassinate the Stalin and the Politbureau with plague infested mice.
And then, twenty four hours later, IF the DNC had any guts they could seriously unleash hell on the guy.

Remember Joe, the DNC has it all on videotape...

When the only state house player willing to talk to Joanie Vennochi is Sal DiMasi...

you end up with columns like this;

In one sense, the "battle" over casino gambling is a very serious political contest indeed with abiding consequences for the entire Commonwealth. But to read Joanie Vennochi it is a chance to pop open a Pabst Blue Ribbon and watch as Patrick and DiMasi oil themselves up and start grappling for the World Wrestling Championship.
"Shallow reportage" in other words....but what the hell, it is what sells after all.
So let me just idly note that I think the current contest is to DiMasi's advantage, Sean Garballey is being sworn in as a new member of the House today and he can be considered a strong "no" vote on any casino gambling proposal. The Globe additionally reports that a good ten or so state reps have switched their votes to "no" in the last week or so. There would seem to be some momentum in the House for a strong "no" vote.
So yes, the pressure is on.
the problem is, that while Sean Garballey and others are agin' casino gambling, (and rightly so in the opinion of Humble Elias)they also want a bigger slice of local aid. Garballey campaigned heavily on the promise of retrieving the 30 million lost to Arlington in the past eight years or so.
Fine...but where the hell is all that cashola supposed to come from?
If we wanna be squawking magpie style thinkers like Joanie Vennochi, then yes we need to see the current casino gambling controversy as nothing but a Test of Strength between the Governor and the Speaker.
On the other hand, this debate win or lose, ought to be nothing but an opening act to a larger more realistic more fact-driven discussion about revenues, resources, public interests and goals here in Massachusetts.
If we want to raise MCAS scores ten percent across the board in our high schools, where is the money gonna come from for the extra classes and tutoring?
If we want to offer scholarships to every straight-A student that graduates High School again, where does the revenue come from?
Let us not even go into the state of our roads and bridges and the shocking condition of public transportation in the Commonwealth.
But if all we get out of the current situation is a WINNER and a LOSER, then we are all being shortchanged, flummoxed and bamboozled.
Don't fall for it says Humble Elias, demand something more from all the above listed participants.

Rombot 2.0 for Veep?

Surely, John McCain can do better than Mitt Romney as a vice presidential possibility?

Not six weeks ago, the Former Massachusetts Viceroy was calling McCain every name in the book, now he toadies and truckles like a Hapsburg courtier...these are not the proper qualities of a man to be positioned a heartbeat away from the US Presidency.

Anyhow, if it's a lackey from Massachusetts that McCain is after, he could do immeasurably worse than former Governor Jane "Jingle Money" Swift. At least th' Lady Jane stuck with McCain when he was scheduled at the bottom of the bill after the trained monkeys. Serious loyalty such as this ought to be rewarded.
It is either her or Ron Paul because twitchy little hysterics need representation too or failing that, Mike Huckabee, who is perfect for the job if for no other reason than his thorough knowledge of anti-witch charms and incantations.

Bad Ideas always travel the furthest...

Such is the case with all the "Dream Team" palaver, ergo a Hillary-Barack ticket, a truly bizarre notion now being aired from the ever desperate Clinton campaign.
Obama is right to mock the notion, it really is nothing but a ploy that will assist Senator Clinton seizure of a nomination she patently has not earned.
But it is an idea tailor made for a perpetually tired and cranky punditariat who wanna cut straight to the McCain victory party...so no doubt we will hear more of it in the weeks and months to come.

A few more weeks of the current vexing political chaos...

and who knows, the cry may yet go up for a dark horse candidate to lead the democrats from out the wilderness....

Kerry in '08 anyone?

Why not? His only hurdle would be demonstrating that he has a taste for vengeance on a cosmic scale...after that the pickings are easy.

Hell I will bet th' Tall Guy is looking better and better to any number of smark alecks who derided him not twelve months ago.
Just to on the safe side, I'm sending my grenadier's uniform out to be dry-cleaned and having my assegai professionally sharpened.

Just sayin'.

Meanwhile Hillary Clinton has decided to celebrate the resurrection of her campaign by throwing bouquets at John McCain. By insisting that only she and McCain have the necessary national security bona fides to lead this nation Senator Clinton effectively hedges her electoral bets by ensuring herself a place on the short list of GOP Vice Presidential possibilities.

According to Steve Stark in this week's Boston Phoenix...

it is game over for campaign '08, and yes John McCain won.

Good Ghod you just know Steve has wanted to write that column since January first. There is no cliche so loved by today's columnists than the whole "democrats in disarray" meme, once they write it their frontal lobes can shut down for good thus they can sit back, relax and let history wash over them like a burst sewer pipe.
Ah but this time, the shifting fortunes of democratic politics have defied Herr Stark's powers of prediction
, hence we don't get the "all Hope is Lost" column til now.
So if it is really game over, then will the Phoenix simply stop running Steve Stark's column?
No we would never get that lucky.

Which means we will have to read THIS particular column of his some twenty eight more times between now and the first Tuesday in November.
And to think, on each and every iteration, Steve gets paid as well, it fairly boggles the mind.
Honest to Ghod, if tomorrow congress passed a law outlawing the use of cliches by the punditariat, Steve Stark would be the first to dry up and blow away.
The man is a tedious and inane batherskite, the "Jack Van Impe" of local editorialists addicted to announcing impending doom in tones stentorian.
Ah but what of it, don't they all have do this at one time or another? Actually, Steve's worst sin is a simple one, he is a very bad writer. Pompous, boring, repetitive and addicted to predicting the past, that is the Steve Stark style in precis' form.
Writing is like currency policy, bad copy drives out good copy. How else to explain the persistent literary hangover that is Steve Stark?

Good for Foley's down in NYC

They've banned "Danny Boy" for the entire month of March in a desperate if doomed attempt to elevate the tone of Saint Patrick's Day.

Too bad there are no bars the Commonwealth with similar increment of courage.

Unfortunately if that ever happened the State Legislature would probably pass a law forcing ALL saloon's to pay "Danny Boy" all day in continuous loop on March 15th.

Now if they would only ban those dumb-ass green plastic bowlers and any singing on the part of elected officials. That would be cool.

I wonder how much money the brewery's spend to pimp the raw vulgar festival of false consciousness that is Saint Patrick's day as we know it?
I'll bet quite a bit but it pays I'm sure.

The Moron Season is upon us...

with several long news-light weeks before the Pennsylvania primary, the news media has already gone ape-shit with all sorts of speculation and rumor. As of today the usual suspects are pimpin' hard for a Hillary-Barack ticket (note the sequence mah frenz). I can't say either configuration brings strength to the ticket and the people pushing this seem to have no great interest in electing a democrat to the White House this fall.
No this is a bad idea, Hillary needs someone outside the beltway with some props in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado (dropping Blue-trending Virginia into the swag-bag will be Senator Clinton's problem).
Barack needs, if you can believe it, some who can do much the same, pull together our emerging strength in the South West and hopefully imspire Senator Clinton's followers to stick with the ticket...a little seasoning wouldn't hurt either.
Whatever happens, this is no dream ticket...the people pushing the dream ticket do not have our best interests in mind.

Besides if yer gonna mark out hard for a crazy idea, then why not a real dark horse candidate?
Like maybe, ohhhh I dunno AL GORE!
Gore has "been there, done that", he is agin the war and his many many policy pronouncements look like prophecy these days. He is tanned rested and ready, and hopefully hungry for revenge.

Either Senators Clinton or Obama make the perfect VP for him.

If this crazy.
Yes.
But trust Humble Elias you will hear and read ineffably crazier ideas in the weeks to come.

Every time the punditariat screams

that Hillary Clinton needs to get out of the Presidential Race, she gets off her stool and boxes a good round.
This points out the catastrophic weakness in having the presidential contest and the political debate (two very different things) remorselessly referee'd but the same class of jaded and corrupt news media freaks.
That has to come to an end and soon my friends...because we might-might-might be heading into another Al Smith-William Gibbs McAdoo lash up and reporting that kind of affair accurately and fairly is beyond the capacities of today's punditariat.

It is important to remember...

that John McCain is an honorable man, he suffered in extremis on behalf of the Republic in North Viet Nam's prison camps.

That was the best part of Senator McCain.

The WORST part of John McCain goes whoring after the endorsement of bigoted sky-grifters like Pastor John Hagee who rules his congregation with an iron fist and promises that they all will soon have infidels to flog.

And then there is McCain's love hate relationship with the medieval practice of waterboarding, used to hate it, now he seems to think it is dandy.

And then there are the Bush tax cuts, which McCain once decried and has now embraced like a drunk who has found Jesus.

And let us not forget a campaign staff loaded up to the max with lobbyists, influence peddlers and groveling pecksniffs...all on behalf of a candidate who claims to wanna toss the lobbyists into the Potomac.

And what about McCain's in and out and then in again approach to taking federal matching funds? Can't he just man up and make up his damn mind??

Yup...the best part of John McCain and it may still be languishing in Southeast Asia.

Joan Vennochi has apparently discovered that

Michelle Obama is an African American, an attorney and is married to the Junior Senator from Illinois, one Barack H. Obama.

What Joanie will do with this knowledge in the weeks and months to come should give any sensible citizen the screeching bed spins.

Cold war nostalgia

Jeff Jacoby takes time out of his busy schedule to revisit the glory days of movement conservatism by railing against the New York Philharmonic's visit to North Korea.
He notes (rightly) that the audience for the concert was filled with Comrade Kim's lackeys and sundry partei hacks, not much there in the way of public outreach I'd say.
On the other hand, if Comrade Kim wanted to reach out to the west then a sort of harmless cultural event might be as good a start as any. The USA reapproachment with the PRC commenced with nothing more than a visit of the US Table Tennis Team to China.
No doubt the Jeff Jacoby's of 1970 howled about this sellout to Comrade Mao and his cut-throat band of slave drivers.
Dunno if any of this means that Comrade Kim is about to see reason, given his record to date I doubt it, but then again bigger more malevolent dopes than he have come to terms with us.
Of course where was all this outrage when Pinochet was torturing college co-eds and the Argentinian Junta was executing citizens seemingly at random?
Where indeed.