Question for the day...

Has John McCain simply gone stark raving crazy?
Gas is thru the roof and the damn fool doesn't even know what we are paying at the pump.
This pundit anointed foreign policy expert is making basic geography mistakes that would get him laughed out of the fifth grade.
He can't make his mind up about taxes.
He can't seem to make up his mind about anything other than his increasingly irrational hatred of Senator Obama.
Normally, excesses like this never redound to the discredit of the GOP nominee, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Jr. were two of the most openly puerile and ignorant men to occupy the White House.
But unlike John McCain they weren't running on their military and foreign policy "expertise"...and frankly the Senator from Arizona's expertise is starting to sound like the ravings of Grampa Simpson....minus the positive proposals for change y'unnerstan'.
That is when McCain isn't lying and lying badly about Senator Obama's record apparently on the advice of the soon to be indicted Karl Rove.
He sounds desperate, and why not? To his thinking bigger uglier GOP ass-holes than he have waltzed into the Oval Office with nary a care...why is it such a trauma for Admiral McCain's fair haired boy??
Maybe McCain is depressed or something and is lashing out, I mean have you gotten a look at his vice presidential short list?
A gruesomer collection of slap happy sky grifters, toadies and stool pigeons cannot be imagined.
Maybe that has him down...

Where the world wide web stops cold...

that would be in the 4th Middlesex democratic state senate primary where both candidates have anemic and underdeveloped websites to push their campaigns.

Ken Donnelly's site has blank pages under the "news" and "issues" buttons although his biography is seemingly detailed down the individual skill awards he collected in the boy Scouts.

Jack Hurd's site includes the usual extended biography one that decorously stops short of naming all the kids on the Little League team he coaches. Other than that and a link to the voter registration site, it's a pretty cut and dried affair.

I hate to sound like a utopian internet mage, but the web has great potential for cash conscious local candidates. Donnelly at least has a donation button on his page, a handy gimmick for the web saavy firefighter in Colorado. Hurd on the other hand gets by with a postal addy for donations plus his campaign's phone number for anyone who wants to call up and chew the fat.
Both men could use an accurate and rigorously updated campaign calendar and strong
issue pages plus some campaign news, endorsements listed thatsort of palaver.
Did you know that Donnelly supports the Governor's casino bill? Did you know that Jack Hurd opposes it?
Well you wouldn't know squat from either of their sites, for that play of opinion sadly you must repair to the Chimes at Midnight.
Seriously guys, I know everyone is busy...but some info please!

Good thing he found himself a shotgun...

because otherwise Jim D. Adkisson might never have been able to register his profound disapproval of the liberal policies practiced by his local Unitarian Universalist church.

Imagine the shrieks of outrage, the howls of anger from poor hunted persecuted wingnut columnists if some geek from NARAL got themselves a Mac-10 and decided to shoot up her or his local Baptist megachurch?

Every last religiously insane enabler in this republic of ours, from Sean Hannity and Michael Savage down to our own Jeff Jacoby would bellow for stakes and torches.
Such is the degraded state of politics and political debate in our country as it staggers on to it's third century as a Republic.
Good grief what is it about these freaks when it comes to guns and god and vengeance???
The three go together like Moe Larry and Curly if you don't believe me, tune into the AM dial today, you'll hear it all in explicit detail.

Good ghod, shooting up the local Unitarian Universalist church...if it didn't end in a slaughter it'd be almost ridiculous to recount.

God help us all, god bless the victims.

Candidate Ed O'Reilly wants fourteen hours of debates

in the lead up to the democratic senatorial primary this fall.
The details of his preposterous proposal can be found here.
I'm not sure the presidential debates since their revival in 1976 have as yet wracked up fourteen hours of congressionally regulated air time.
And O'Reilly wants to make joint appearances on Jon Keller the Jim Braude Show and presumably "Smallville" as well.
Frankly I think this is a bad move on O'Reilly's part, a mere one hour devoted to his nasty little constipated chipmunk face, bulging into the camera and screeching on and on and on and on about the 'Daplatformofdadem'cratikpahhtee" will induce large segments of the population to flee over the Canadian border.
Maybe that is O'Reilly's plan to win the nomination, temporarily depopulate the Commonwealth....
No I think if debates happen they ought to run five days in sequence on WRKO during afternoon drive time...say during Howie Carr's slot. No moderation save for rigourous time-keeping...get a good hockey referee to handle this part. Both candidates should have unlimited cross-examination time only if Ed O'Reilly can demonstrate that he has mastered the use of the "indoor voice".

Whenever Jeff Jacoby

tries to play the sunny Reaganistic optimist...whenever he opens that smug pie hole of his to warble "Everything is comin' up roses" then it is inevitably time to go on home, board up the windows, buy a six month suppy of K-rations and crouch behind sandbags in the basement clutching a tire iron.
A bare two days ago, he and Phil Gramm (Senator McCain's ex-economic advisor) came to the conclusion that the current recession was brought on by an excess of gloom and doom editorials from da liberal media.
THAT is why you are paying $4 a gallon for Saudi gasoline...it is Paul Krugman's damn fault.
Mean while down in Taunton Massachusetts outrages such as this are going on.

Honestly, Jeff is intellectually exhausted in every way, nothing else explains such delusional rubbish.

Ye Ghods now Pawlenty...

McCain is desperate for attention it seems, yesterday it was Romney today it's Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty who is catching all the buzz.
I don't think this is a very smart move from Citizen McCain, the Veep noises haven't actually swept Obama off the front page and if he is dumb enough to actually name someone now the clouds of obscurity will then descend on his campaign like the thunderstorm that rolled over Menotomy this morning.
Meanwhile, all I hear about Pawlenty is that he is as dull as dishwater, a sort of Bobby Jindal sans all the religious hogwash. Whether or not Pawlenty can deliver Minnesota or even his home town remains a mystery.

Romney for Veep?

McCain is making those noises again....

Frankly nominating a VP now seems like a desperate measure indeed...something designed solely to keep Obama's foreign progress off the front pages.
I can recall a proposed GOP gambit from a few months ago to exploit the late republican convention this year by not announcing the VP designate until the middle of the democratic convention.
So much for that idea I guess.
Anyway, Romney is a bad choice all around, the very factors that made him a poor Presidential contender do not appreciable increase his value as a VP candidate.
But apparently McCain has already forgotten Mitt's bizarre Huey Long act in Michigan in which he promised destitute auto workers new factories and higher paychecks without laying a finger on our NAFTA obligations.
The man has poses not policies.
And then there is his serial flip-floppery all in respect of hard core GOP issues as well.
Hated taxes and raised every feel he could lay his cold clammy hands upon...
Cozzled up to the gay vote to get elected and then kicked them all to curb when he caught Potomac fever.
And lets not go into his abortion contortions...
All in all Willard was a fraudulent moderate and worse conservative.

One is hard pressed to recall a governor who made less of an impression on the Commonwealth.
But apparently McCain and the GOP like their Vice Presidential candidates servile and insincere...but honestly other than his money and a chilly condescending stump style Willard brings nothing to the ticket. He can't deliver Massachusetts and the republicans don't need him to carry Utah, the notion that Mitt will play big in Michigan is perfectly laughable in every way.
The punditariat claim that Romney has some serious domestic policy props, but as someone who suffered thru Romney's standard stump speech in NH I can safely say that any teachable can groan thru those talking points sans trouble.
But if Willard is nominated it will be yet another example of John McCain's poor judgement...the public will be heartily sick of Romney by Labor Day, count on it.

The Acela needs a friend...

And sometimes a great and lasting friendship begins with some tough love.
Senator Kerry's chagrin is entirely understandable, the train though a sweet ride in many respects makes pokey progress to NYC and that is due to our dilapidated rail and tunnel system.
The billion dollar appropriation JK proposes is a drop in the bucket compared to what is really needed in terms of physical improvements and more importantly public education on the potential of rail travel.
But it is a good start.
Reliable high speed rail travel answers a host of vexing problems, enviromental, political and otherwise...I hope Senator Kerry speaks out more on this topic, we need to take control of the current economic/energy "crisis" and use it to start building up an transport infrastructure that really works in the public's interest.

Ed, We hardly knew ye....

Rumor has it the dog days of summer have not been kind of the senatorial candidacy of Gloucester's own Ed O'Reilly. Th' boyz in the back room maintain that money is tight and O'Reilly has thus been compelled to close campaign offices in Watertown and in Western Massachusetts.
His main campaign office is now located in the same space as his lawyer's practice...something that may not be permitted under Massachusetts law, but hey must needs when the devil rides and all like that.
Well this just goes to prove, that you can throw a tantrum long enough and loud enough to get on the primary ballot, brown-nose Howie Carr and even make yourself the pawn of angry Hillary Clinton supporters...but none of that will get you within twenty percentage points of John Kerry.

An Immodest Proposal:

Governor Patrick should give serious thought to naming a Middle School after Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi.
No other writer in this Commonwealth so perfectly exemplifies the middle school ethos and style with respect to their writing.
Take today's column for example, Joanie asserts with a very straight face indeed that like...Barack Obama is like sooooo-ooo in luv with himself...it's soooo like obvious!
You see?
Pure middle school, oh she dresses it up with a warning against Obama's alleged vanity but honestly, it's a complaint line worthy of the Queen Bee Table at the Ottoson Junior High School here in (Romantic) Menotomy.
By the way, the last presidential candidate from either party who was entirely without vanity was Adlai Stevenson, political junkies will recall his dire fate twice defeated for the US Presidency and relegated to the status of third most popular after-dinner speaker in the USA.
So vanity even a lot of it, seems a prerequisite for job...hell Ronald Reagan used to regularly march at the head of a band that would toot out "Hail to the Chief" morning noon and night and this was when he was still Governor of California.
Anyway..." Joan Vennochi Junior High School"...sounds good don't it?

Final thoughts while showering...

Honestly, neither democratic candidate in the 4th Middlesex state senate primary has any deep liberal or progressive bona fides.
That having been said, Ken Donnelly's campaign will literally double the carbon footprint of Arlington Massachusetts with their protestations that their candidate is indeed an Allard Lowenstein incarnate.
The reality is, Ken Donnelly lifelong battle for "social and economic rights" was mostly fought on behalf of public sector unions and their dependents. Now those people need lobbyists to protect their interests on Beacon Hill that I concede, but that doesn't indicate that Donnelly has ever done much for the the declasse' likes of Humble Elias.
As for Jack Hurd, he is a proud townie, a consensus builder and a happy denizen of Arlington Town Hall which is, all in all, poor soil for an idealistic liberal to take root.
Ken Donnelly has lived two blocks from Humble Elias for over thirty five years and yet in all that time I heard nothing of his allegedly true blue progressive politics til he rose up out of obscurity to run for the state senate.
And Jack Hurd, I've known and gotten along well with the man for eighteen years, and until two months ago knew nothing of his pro-life,pro SSM and anti-death penalty stances.
Both men need to win and to do so they need Jim Marzilli's homeless liberals to seal the deal. And that my friends is the irony driving this race, that a disgraced, degraded and possibly jail-bound progressive icon is the ideological pace-setter in the 4th Middlesex.

All this does not make either man anathema, it does however behoove local liberals to question both men closely and listen intently. Ultimately, mere ideology may not be the deciding factor in this race. Money will certainly play a part but also personality, experience and other ephemeral qualities may come to the fore.
Watch and listen that is all the advice I can give my fellow liberals.

"Undecided and unhurried"

or so that was the general feeling Humble Elias extracted from last night's 4th Middlesex State Senate forum sponsored by the redoutable spartans down at the Arlington Town Democratic Committee.
It wuz Hurd versus Donnelly, da statutes of da Commonwealth were tossed back and forth like medicine balls, no pledge was left unhurled, no question unanswered, no holds barred, it was democrats in full cry.
However truth be told, there is very little ideological distance between the two men, the are both pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, for increased education funding at the local level, they both want more money for special ed etc etc etc....youi've heard it all before.
The only issue on which they serious differ is interestingly enough, casino gambling. Jack Hurd opposes the Governor's recent proposal and would be open to a ballot initiative with respect to gaming in the Commonwealth. Ken Donnelly backs the Governor's proposal with a gusty blast about the need for the legislature to show "courage" and pass the bill.
That struck me as a bit of needless preening on Ken Donnelly's part...a jarring note to say the least.

Given the lack of policy differences between the two candidates one has the suspicion that the electorate will decide the nomination on other criteria, experience, sincerity and maybe even ghod help us...charisma.
There Ken Donnelly, despite some improvements in his pulpit style still falls short, he clearly reads boilerplate remarks off of index cards and has a tendency to fall into "outdoor voice" bluster especially when he gets onto his new favorite topic "social and economic rights".
Where Ken Donnelly does seem to have some props is in the area of higher education and he has boned up on the new state's healthcare law, the new polish clearly shows.

However, I'm almost tempted to score this forum in Jack Hurd's favor, he has a sort of low key charm that contrasts well with Donnelly's tendency to bluster.
Moreover in a district that is gentrifying if unevenly Hurd's core assertion that local aid i.e. state monies is pretty much the whole ball game in terms of the real expectations of the electorate. Whether or not any of that registers well with any of Jim Marzilli's now homeless liberals remains to be seen.
However both men have their limitations, Ken is clearly comfortable with a limited palate of issues (mercifully he managed to avoid the topic of pensions last night) while Jack, though a man of decency still seems to be punching above his weight in this race. It is hard to see either man making his mark in the senate in the manner of say, Bob Havern.
But the summer is long and they have time to make their case, Humble Elias is still listening.

4th Middlesex senate campaign forum tonight

Wednesday, July 16, 2008
7:00 to 8:30 p.m.
Community Room, Lower Level
Robbins Library
700 Massachusetts Ave in the teeming frantic roustabout heart of Romantic Arlington Massachusetts.

Because YOU demanded it!! The state senate primary that makes ALL the other state senate primaries looking like a town meeting whizzing match!!

Hurd versus Donnelly!
Old regulars versus new regulars!
Townies versus...townies from out of town!
A FORUM for the ages!!
Also on the card, the monthly meeting of the Arlington Town Democratic Committee...nobody versus nothin' there, but it all can't be all mayhem all the time, even in Arlington.
Anyhow, Humble Elias will be there, both candidates are owed at the very least a serious and respect vetting.

Meanwhile, on a semi-serious note, what is the diff between a "debate" and a "forum"?
So far as I can see, the forum follows all the usual debate rules with time limits on responses etc...I think it is simply a rhetoric gimmick, by calling it a "forum" the local dems can give the League of Women Voters the slip.

Anyhow...nuff said, true believers!

ITEM!

He is young...

A rising man in the state democratic party...

The regulars, the buzzcuts and the little old ladies all love him to pieces...

And even the current crisis in the district redounds to his credit...

But

In the town's looming signature political fight, the one that will determine the course of politics for the next decade, the one where careers will be broken and made...in that looming two man fight...our boy makes no endorsement and has no candidate.
Well, the reasons for that are obvious and yet elegant, both the aspirants for office backed our boy to the hilt in his race not so long ago. To endorse one is to alienate the other and both have long lists and longer memories.
Moreover, both men are in their fifties, they may NOT necessarily stay in office for the typical fifteen years or more leaving our boy with the tantalizing possibility of another goose up the ladder and all before he is forty years old no less.

Heady stuff if he can keep his head on straight.

Jeff Jacoby is never more

hopelessly inane than when he tries to lecture others about the sacred rites of American Patriotism.
In yesterdays's Sunday Globe column Jeff very selectively took General Wesley Clark to task for his assertion that John McCain's POW captivity was no great qualification for high office. Oh Jeff has a list of democrats who have insensitively attacked John McCain's service record out of political opportunism.
The Globe's Laughing Young Senescence actually has the gall to ask the following rhetorical question:
"Do Democrats only honor a military record when their nominee happens to be a veteran?"
No Jeff, the Democrats have a good memory when it comes to GOP perfidy on military records. We can recall with the simplest nostalgia the Swift Boat Liars and those little tiny band-aids emblazoned with the Purple Heart that were handed out at the 2004 GOP convention as a cute little jibe at Senator Kerry's war record.
Oh such a jolly joke that was, I wonder if Jeff ever used them to treat young Caleb's summertime "owies"?
Truth is, if General Clark and Senator Rockefeller wanna throw some sharp elbows into McCain's face, well so be it. Far worse things were flung at John Kerry's war record a mere four years ago...where was Jeff Jacoby's outrage then???

Pique...

The fact that Joanie Vennochi wants State Senator Jim Marzilli to resign is all by itself almost a good reason to keep him in office til the end of his term.
After all, even Massachusetts State Senators are guilty until proven innocent...oh wait that is other way around...right?

Meanwhile back on Beacon Hill that tranquil island of simple probity, politicians are cheating on their wives, taking chump change bribes from the usual hoodlums and scoring big as boodling lobbyists when they return to the "private sector".

But Jim must go, he has offended the sensibilities of a notoriously high minded bunch.

I don't know if Marzilli should stay or go, I'm just glad he got caught before something really awful happened...

Otherwise it seems strange to me that the people that want him OFF the public payroll have not problem with paying double on his room and board in Walpole.

The story so far

Iran is testing crude liquid fueled Medium Range Ballistic Missiles....

Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac have gone hat in hand to the feds for a bail-out...

The Dow is plunging like a toy submarine...

John McCain economic advisors are even dumber than he if that can be believed....

The north polar icecap is about to disappear...

The Taliban are staging a comeback in Afghanistan...

And USA foreign policy ranks somewhere down near the fund to set up a Memorial to the Veterans of the East German Stasi.

Yup nothing left for it but watch a video of Alexei Sayle impersonating Mussolini....

Oh now...

THIS is good news....

And come Sunday we can watch as the Globe's Jeff Jacoby goes into one of his patented war-whooper frenzies, screaming for infantry and air strikes from the safe fastness of his cubicle on Morrissey Boulevard.
William Safire used to have fugue episodes like this in the public prints all the time..I can recall with the simplest nostalgia that Apache war-cries directed at North Korea sustained much of his bibliography back in 1993.

I guess Jeff has given up on being David Brudnoy and has settled instead with being William Safire....war paint and all.

George McGovern is right...

McCain's war record is no great predictor of presidential aptitude...but then neither was the Former Senator from South Dakota's own sterling example as a heroic bomber pilot in World War II.

People tend to dismiss McGovern, but he was right about Nixon and he was also right about Reagan and he is right on target about John McCain.

Webb is out...

declines consideration as Obama's VP nominee.

I wonder what that means...maybe Senator O has already got his short list narrowed down?
Usually a politician with a normal quota of ambition turns nothing down unless he has a good intimation that he hasn't made the top five cut. Webb would be a formidable nominee but he is a short-timer in the US Senate (Only got elected in 2006)perhaps the campaign is looking for more experience...or maybe they are polling so well in Virginia they don't need local on the ticket.
I suspect what this means is (IF it means anything) is that Senator Obama's high command is looking for an older tested democrat who can deliver his home state and won't upset the apple cart in Ohio or Florida.
This is more to the advantage of Bill Richardson, Dick Gephardt or John Edwards and less to Ted Strickland or Kathleen Sibelius.

Hell it is all soothsayer blather in extremis we will know next month.

Fallout...

Senator Kerry attacked John McCain's judgementover the weekend, or rather the lack thereof.
Unless you are a political reporter for the Boston Globe the origins of this sudden enmity isn't hard to discern. Whereas in 2004, McCain was a lone peeping voice in the GOP calling the Swift Boat liars to task, these days the Senator for Arizona pursues these bastards with the ardor of a shopworn whore who is down by two Johns on a Saturday Night.
Ah but McCain has presidential rabies bad doesn't he? Snapping out at all sides he lusts to trample on and sundry to get up the steps of the White House.
His mentor Barry Goldwater suffered from the same malady in 1964, he was the most miserable SOB imaginable on the stump, but after he got pasted at the polls he gradually turned back into a normal human being.
Lets hope for the same with McCain because right now, the Senator from Arizona is nigh insufferable in a pathetic transparent way as well.

Crude Oil Hits $146 a Barrel

And the Saudis merely murmur polite condolences.
It occurs to me, that you are gonna wanna be a Saudi Oil Princeling on the day the US Air Force starts bombing Iran. The biggest ideological competitor you have in the region will be tied down with US Forces AND crude oil will hit $200 a barrel....hell can I buy stock in this adventure?? It is sure freakin' fire.
Just pay me my dividends in euros that is all I ask.
Hell and damnation we ought to declare tomorrow DEpendence Day, dependence on foriegn oil, dependence on foreign stockpiling of our bonds and dependence on foreign technology to stretch a $4 gallon of gas twenty extra miles!
My Ghod if Thomas Jefferson could see us now, riddled with superstition and political pietism...it is enough to make the Baja seem tranquil and attractive.

Happy Fourth of July, The Republic hasn't hit a rock bottom this hard since 1932....

The Commonwealth Department of Internal Contradictions...

The state GOP weary of reading "Romney for Veep" press releases has descended into personal visciousness with a "marzilliwatch.com" blog. Said item is a baldfaced attempt to guilt trip Senate President Murray into expelling Senator Marzilli from that body or else compelling his resignation.
Apparently, they are calculating how much gasoline per gallon one could purchase with Senator Marzilli's current salary.
Pretty tasteless given the situation...
However I have to question their logic...given the vehemence of their anger towards Marzilli why is the state GOP so anxious to force him off the public payroll and into the state prison system wherein the Department of Corrections will then pay for his room and board?
Given how badly they want to destroy him, it looks like they want to exchange his $75K a year salary for $100K in incarceration costs.
And this is the alleged party of public thrift...

Imagine ...

the pious little shitfit the DC Punditariat would throw if the democrats started handing out little band-aids at the Denver Convention depicting an US Navy A-4 Skyhawk in full crash and burn mode?
Hell we got a preview of it yesterday when General Clark questioned whether getting shot down over Hanoi was really a core presidential qualification.
And of course, the usual ass-holes rose up in righteous dudgeon screaming for tar and feathers.
Y'know, screw the columnists, General Clark is right, some nasty privileged doofus with an Admiral for a father may become a POW & a hero but that doesn't make him a nice man or even a man honest enough to be president.
For that fact, can Chris Matthews please explain to the rest of us peasants just how John McCain who graduated at the bottom of his class at Annapolis in 1958 got into flight school at all? And NO there was no war at the time so don't tell me there was a huge demand for pilots!
This is just another example of our quadrennial hypocrisy in which GOP slaves and spin doctors are allowed unlimited freedom of action while good democrats are left to apologise for wanting to live in a REAL democracy.
My thinking is simple and brutal, I think it is perfectly all right to question John McCain's patriotism and even his sanity for that fact. Mike Dukakis came in for the same treatment, so did Al Gore and Senator Kerry. If we do not smash down their candidate in the same fashion the GOP will never have any incentive to give up these despicable tactics...pure and simple.

Sick
Demented
Typical