on 9/12/2001

the congress of the United States gathered on the steps of the Capitol and sang "God Bless America", a touch of class a show of defiance perhaps.
A week after Northwest @53 nearly got blown up by a Al Queda Camp Follower, the GOP had it's fundraising letter ready.
Meanwhile that aging sickly mobster, Dick Cheney has screamed cowardice and worst at the Obama White House.
Class all the way eh?
When it was Cheney's crisis it was all about resolution and national unity, when Obama inherits though, then the knives come out.
Nothing else so perfectly encapsulates the self destructive dementia of the conservative right, bereft of ideas and desperate to exploit any opportunity they think at last they can simply scream their way back into power.

Snow Storm Shopping List....

Duly Blogged over at Channel Zero.
And don't let me forget to wish my audience (all seven of you and whoever comes a porch-climbing from the Red Mass Group) a Happy New Year.

What did we learn this year...

As usual, damn near nothing.
The Chimes at Midnight stands a lonely watch at the outermost ramparts of civilization, unloved, unpaid, unbossed and largely unread. My chuief goal has been ideological warfare of a low and crude sort along with a certain amount of bloggable chaos to fill in those slow-ass Fridays.
We watched Obama assume power, some Somali piratesd got their skulls ventilated by the Delta Force, there was a beer summit, Sarah Palin wigged out and resigned,Teddy Kennedy sailed off this mortal coil, Tom Menino was somehow re-elected, John Kerry shook out his feathers a bit, Capuano and Khazei both made some new friends from out of town, Sotomayor got in and Joe Kennedy bailed out and all as a special election stalks the precincts...It was a long year, feels like a hundred quite frankly.
Oh and Senator Jim DeMint is an unmitigated ass-hole and a terrorist fellow traveller of the first rank.
That is what I learned in 2009.

Fifty years ago...

Doctor Tom Coburn would have been classified a local nutbag. A serial writers of outraged letters to the editor, a signatory on numerous petitions decrying communism, flouridation of drinking water and other shopworn causes. His waiting room would be strewn with badly mimeographed pamphlets from borderline psychotics and most of his patients would know from long experience not to bring up any topics remotely related to national, state or local politics.
But because the last fifty years in this country is all about making the residents of Crazy Street USA seem safe and respectable, Dr. Coburn sits in the US Senate howling like witch doctor with a stubbed toe at the current health care reform bill.
He is against evolution even though he can observe it in a microscope with a sample of tuberculosis on a slide, wants to execute abortion doctors (it has been rumored that he has performed a few as a young MD) and honestly thinks we have the Best Health Care System in the World.
There he sits at the table though, a player, glowering with ill disgusied hatred for his colleagues and indeed this whole democratic folderol...

D' ye mean to tell me...

that the vicious little dingbat what tried to blow up the airliner paid cash for his ticket?
Dear Ghod I work for an insurance company, someone tries to pay cash for a policy and alarm klaxons sound from Toronto to Tierra Del Fuego! Hell the President of the company breaks out his trusty blackjack and starts prowling the halls thinking at least he'll get some payback on the alleged cash loving money launderers.
AND the would be alleged killer geek was from Nigeria...Which is a whole country that is as wide open as Buddy Cianci's Providence! Hell the rumor is, Buddy has retired there to run a horrifically overpriced nursing home for unwary snowbirds from Warwick.
And to crown all WE WERE WARNED free and clear by the kid's fretful father!
All together is this what the old misanthrope would call "a grand cluster f***" no doubt about it.
Y'know, Ghod Bless America, since 1776 we are more than willing to revolve ourselves into any sort of a biffsquad necessary to master a particularly diresome situation. So it was at the crossing of the Delaware down to the passengers on Northwestern 253, US Citizens never hesitate.
What we are not good at, and have never been good at, is getting the right info into the right hands at the right time. So if we wanna prevent incidents like this in the future we are gonna need to revamp how we traffick in and prioritize all the tip offs we got leading up to the moment that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab undid his seat belt and tried to get close to Ghod by way of plastic explosives.
Thank Jebus no one was killed thus we can still use this as teachable moment and an impetus to real reform for a system that has already become bloated & unresponsive after a mere eight years.
Have at it Barack this is your moment.

The H Word

Before Jeff Jacoby gets on his high horse and starts braying sanctimoniously about Martha Coakley's "hypocritical" refusal to meet Scott Brown in one on one debate he ought to make sure that Citizen Brown hasn't done just exactly the same thing as a candidate for re-election to the State Senate.
Frankly the weapon of hypocrisy is best kept out of the hands of clumsy paid professionals like Jeff Jacoby, it should only be wielded by unbought, unbossed and unread bloggers like Humble Elias...Safer that way for all concerned.

T and Venom

A long prophesied derailment (thankfully sans injury) shuts the Red Line down good and proper tonight, and Zolok has clearly had enough of it all.
Governor Patrick?
Are you listening?

Josh Marshall seems to have

a strong handle on the HCR reform trend in Congress.

As such I have nothing to add at the moment, seems like he has called it accurately "Pass and be damned" being the dominant motif.

The state legislature has...

fled Beacon Hill in advance of the holidays leaving a pile of unfinished business atop their "in-trays" and leaving Governor Patrick to make the usual end of the quarter cuts to keep the budget in balance.
Wouldn't it be funny if the Governor planted a "sold" sign from Coldwater Bankers on the lawn of the State House with a note taped to the door that reads "Welcome back, had to keep her in the black the hard way, please convene in the utility room at the BPL, will advise via US Mail".

Whatever happened to....

the thriving Jewish community of Yemen?
They got driven out in what amounts to a pogrom.

And it is the same thing that happened to the once thriving Jewish communities in Egypt, Iraq, Iran etc etc etc.
Driven out the lot of them.
I don't usually blog about the Middle East and its many many problems, but I will duly note that we should not be surprised that a Jew should want to defend his own sovereignty at least as tenaciously as the average Pashtun, Kurd or Sunni' yeoman.

"Kill the Bill"?

Nonsense, rubbish it is playing into the hands of an otherwise beaten and discredited movement conservatism.
Attenuated though the Senate HCR bill may be, it should still be based as an acceptable and aggressive way to move the ball forward. Teddy Kennedy would vote for on that basis alone.
I know, you are all baying for Joe Lieberman's head on a pikestaff, but I could've told you a full year ago that he'd act as such given just half a chance. Alas the internal demographics of the Senate favor his obstructionism and hypocritical troublemaking.
Let us act to change that, alter those numbers and we alter the outcome on the next go-around.
And sadly thanks to Joe and the Two Weird Sisters from Maine, we will have to revisit HCR again and perhaps again and on terms less advantageous to the American people than we have on offer now.
The worst possible thing that is happening in this debate right now is the division of some progressives from the White House, tactically this is a political catastrophe, they will not have a better negotiating partner than Barack Obama in the White House again in their lifetimes.
I say pass HCR and cram it down the GOP's throats, they had power to put Peter the Great to shame for eight years and what did that yield up for the American People, NOTHING!

Apropos of nothing

but Oral Roberts is dead, which made me wonder why faith-healers cannot cure themselves of their own insanity?
Sure they can auto suggest a temporary remission in some poor schmuck's crippling arthritis, but can they heal their own megalomania?
For that fact why do they even die?
I mean can't they cure their own old age?
Make themselves immortal....
Ever seen a stack of glass eyeballs or a pile of prosthetic legs at Benny Hinn revival?
Someone?
Anyone?

Forget politics

(for a few minutes), lean back, close your eyes and dream of the glorious Peterhof in high summer along the Baltic.

Oh Great...

Brian McGrory is returning to the Metro columnist beat for the Boston Globe, just in time for the 2010 gubernatorial election.
Won-der-ful, he'll be down on his knees kissing the feet of Charlie Baker by April, proclaiming the former Weld Admin time server as the moderate GOP Messiah.
Watch for it, Brian believe in one thing fervently, that moderate republicanism must rule the world, and if a moderate republican isn't available then just pretend the reactionary crooks and weirdoes in power are steadfast and honest middle of the roaders.

Sad news from the ramparts of Boston Politics

It is my sad duty to report the death of the former President of the Boston City Council, Joseph M. "Sonny" Tierney.
I had some dealings with him back when I was a wee Justin (we have an Aunt in common)and he was helpful, kind and honest.
Money seemed to be Sonny's big issue in politics, he never seemed to be able to raise enough to break into the big time, a run for congress foundered in the democratic primary for want of cashola and his run for Mayor against then incumbent Ray Flynn was honorable and short funded.
He was however a raconteur of no small ability, when I last saw him about a year ago he looked fit as a fiddle and ready for any deed, full of stories and energy.
So the loss is a bit sudden and shocking.

My thoughts are with his family....

"He is makin' a list, and checkin' it twice..."

Jeff Jacoby started out with Tiger Wood today, segued into the allegedly death of racism in America and ended up riding his favorite battered hobby horse ergo "liberal hate speech".
Which reminds me, the end of the year loometh, and Jeff's annual compendium of liberal hate speech has yet to run.
More to the point, what do I have to say or do to get on that list???
I mean c'mon, the Blue Mass Group gets all kinds of props these days, the Left Ahead Podcast is going great guns, Lynne Lupien is officially a force to be reckoned with in Lowell...And the Chimes at Midnight?
BUPKISS I GOT!
The least anyone could do is snitch me out to Jacoby, I could use the ink...

The Lowell Sun is reporting

that former Mayor Eileen Donoghue turned down a invitation to be independent candidate for governor Tim Cahill's running mate.
Apparently she wants Martha Coakley's current job...
Well health to her candidacy and all like that, Donoghue ran a pretty good race against Nikki Tsongas for the congressional seat up there, the fundraising needed to run statewide for AG has to be a bit of a poser though.
In-ter-esting notion on Cahill's part, clearly he was thinking outside the box with a female running mate. If he was set on this idea though, what reasonable (or even unreasonable) female pol in Massachusetts would be willing to break with their party to run as his Lt. Governor designate?
Hmmmm.
All I can say is, it doesn't have to a democrat...Said designate merely needs to be a registered independent as of January 2010.
Again...Hmmmm.

How many times in the past twenty years has

Scot Lehigh written this paragraph (which appears in his column from today's Globe):

Baker can plausibly cast himself as a socially liberal, fiscally moderate Republican in the Bill Weld mold...

as opposed to:
Romney can plausibly cast himself as a socially liberal, fiscally moderate Republican in the Bill Weld mold...

As opposed to:
Jane Swiftcan plausibly cast herself as a socially liberal, fiscally moderate Republican in the Bill Weld mold...

Paul Celluccican plausibly cast himself as a socially liberal, fiscally moderate Republican in the Bill Weld mold...

em> Bill Weldcan plausibly cast himself as a socially liberal, fiscally moderate Republican in the Bill Weld mold...

Honestly, "moderate republicanism" is nothing but a celebrity racket...columnistas like Lehigh porject their middle-of-the-road GOP fantasies onto almost any dubious passer-by and then fall to their knees in sheer worship.

I'm not quite sure but I think...

that just possibly Joanie Vennochi is pleased with Martha Coakley's nomination for the US Senate.
I can't quite penetrate the Globe Columnist's inevitable snarkage and score settled to be 100% sure though.
Well what of it? Since Denver the local Hillary Clinton faction has been on a tear looking for offices to grab off, now we are about to find out if they can force a favorable decision in a statewide general election.
Yesterday Scott "The Fag Basher" Brown fairly ran up the aisle to sign a "no new taxes" pledge apparently in the curious belief that the campaign tactics of George Bush Sr. are sure fire in the Bay State.
And so once again, for the Glory of the Commonwealth it is Game On.

Tomorrow Belongs to She...

Congrats to AG Martha Coakley who swept the boards last night and handily seized the nomination for the US Senate. Of course, Humble Elias got the numbers wrong, I figures a three to five point spread not the monster twenty point lead Coakley eventually rolled up...Ah well there is something to said for having a good reputation, many friends and a calm unruffled senatorial demeanor.
Now if, Citizen Coakley wanted to stir things up a bit she could do some campaigning up in the South End and highlighted her commitment to gender equality of all shapes-n-sizes, cuz that would seem to be a sizable gap in Scott Brown's moderate GOP street cred.
Just to muss that perfect hair of Candidate Brown's..Make all the moderate GOP marks out there think twice.

***
BTW since I was one of the few local li-ber-al type bloggers (y'know those cellar dwellers who give Howie Carr the screaming bed spins)who came out for Coakley...Shouldn't someone at least buy me a drink or something? I mean I marked out HARD for Martha Coakley, couldn't someone get a voucher and buy me a brandy?
It's cold out there, these bones of mine don't warm up too easy.

Austerlitz at High Noon....

The great Massachusetts Senatorial Steamroller Fight lumbers on and on for a cold cold day in December.
Rhetorically, the best fights were between Capuano and Pagliuca, but I'm wondering if the real election day threat isn't from Khazei. If Alan has a good day if his ground game is in "believe the hype" territory, then that can't be good news for Capuano.
Seems to me, the vote in this primary skews liberal so anyone who is turned off by Coakley/Capuano pretty much has a cozy place by the fire prepped for them by Alan Khazei.
If Alan has a good day then that makes it that much more difficult for Mike to overtake Martha.
The wild card remain Pagliuca who lacks a measurable constituency within the party at this writing. Maybe all those adverts can grab off a good chunk of the turnout...But who exactly that'll be remains a mystery.
My guess is, it'll be Coakley by no more than five percent likely three percent if the wind remains in her sails.
Capuano will run a tight second with Khazei crowding him hard and Pags running a distant fourth.
The winner is Martha Coakley who takes giant step towards upending the torpid gender politics of the Commonwealth...but there may be other successes as well tonight:
Win or lose, Mike Capuano has boostrapped himself off the Somerville School Committee and onto the Commonwealth's A-list for Liberals...in a state FULL of liberals this is no small achievement.
Alan Khazei has similarly built up a good deal of electoral goodwill and name recognition assuming he wants to go forward into a different race. On the other hand, he may come to his senses and decide that saving the world is best accomplished outside elective office.
Steve Pagliuca ...? Waaal he has got some name recognition for the money he spent, but its hard to see what constituency he can collect on given his rhetorical limitations. That having been said if he can run some good numbers tonight expect to see him around in races going forward.
Well, thems my pre-dictions, if I'm write, yay for Elias, if I'm wrong I've still got preemo copy for tomorrow.
Blogging, it's a win-win gig every day.

Oh wait I almost forgot, Go Coakley, Humble Elias is Madly for Martha!

Well I was the twenty ninth voter as of 7:27am

this morning and suffice to say, Humble Elias cast a proud ballot for Martha Coakley for the United States Senate. Her time has come, if not now then when if not her then who?

Kudos to Governor Patrick

for saying no to the Clover Club, despite all that has happened, Deval Patrick is still a change agent all of himself.
It is never too late to disregard a bad idea no matter how hallowed and traditional it may be.
If you want to get a good inventory of the usual suspects then just see who attacks the Governor because of his refusal to speak before the Clover Club...Just watch you'll get an education I assure you.

I was listening to Jeff Santos on 1510AM this morning...

and heard Alan Khazei repeatedly congratulate himself for landing the Boston Globe's endorsement in tomorrow's democratic senatorial primary.
Fair enough, clearly Alan "interviews well"...
But then Khazei went to lambaste the "conventional media" for overlooking the vast covert citizen-driven ground game his campaign was ramping up for primary day.
Hmmm...Last time I checked, the Boston Globe was the poster child for conventional dino-media, so what is Alan Khazei trying to tell us here?
***
BTW Jeff Santos claims to be a neutral party in this primary, my gut is though he is voting for either Capuano or Khazei, his whole meme on this thing since September has been "How can some honest incorruptible outsider overthrow the party hacks?"

Me? I'm sticking with Coakley, she is a pretty strong dose of change all in and of herself.

On the other hand...

Capuano could pull it off...
Pagliuca could be fading this weekend as evidenced by his inexplicable decision to brandish the Celtic's NBA championship trophy at his campaign appearances like it was the Hammer of Thor or something. If he fades enough, the conventional wisdom seems to be some of those votes might default out to Capuano. If the turn out is light enough, Mike might pull it off depending on how serious his phonebanking has been and whether or not they've got enough voter's identified to tip a low energy race.
I think Khazei is in a race for a strong third place finish whereupon he can look around for some new sinecure to contend (Alan please note upwards to three statewide offices will be up for grabs next year...Dunno if any are a good fit, just sayin'). The man has made few enemies in this special election and can reap some harvest in high name recognition in future races.
A lot of factors come into play, even the weather, right now the forecast is for clear and cool conditions on Tuesday, advantage Coakley (I think). Martha Coakley may be too cool, too cerebral, too sacerdotal for some, but she has a definite jazzed base in Massachusetts who are determined to overthrow destiny on Tuesday.
Game on, mah frenz, game on.

Should Alan Khazei really be in this race?

IF he such a wiz at running no-profits and achieving the maximum public good out of sheer volunteerism and enthusiasm, then maybe the US Senate isn't the best place for him.
US Senators have to serve long apprenticeships, the job is level about one's pristine ten point program and more about your ability to negotiate with useless old golems like Mitch McConnell. It is hard unrewarding work and it takes a decade or more to build up the seniority you need to really influence things.
Seems to me that in all that time Alan could be extending City Year's reach, improving it's financing, founding new volunteer driven enterprises...In other words doing much more good than he could ever achieve as a freshman US Senator.
Hell, he beguiled the Boston Globe's editorial board into an endorsement, imagine those social skills at work on behalf of any number of public spirited projects.
I mean Humble Elias concedes the man has talent, I'm just not sure that talent is a good fit for the United States Senate where patience, tradition and deference to the rules are the big benchmarks.
Dollars to Donuts he'd get bored & frustrated by 2016 and take a flyer in the New Hampshire Primary whereupon we are all bound up in another Bay State Presidential melodrama...Dear Ghod lets give that one a rest shall we?

I'd take Alan Beam to task for calling

AG Martha Coakley "a babe" except that Humble Elias once described Andrea Silbert (then a democratic candidate for Lt. Governor) as being "cute as a button".
As Malcolm X once huffed "The chickens have come home to roost".
However, Lynne Lupien labors under no such burden and rounds on Beam the way Ali beat down Liston.
Read it hyar:

An Endorsement:

As Ghod is my witness this senatorial campaign has come off as naught but the proverbial steamroller fight, almost everyone we expected to get in fled the scene in the middle of the night and them what got in, are flailing away at each other seemingly in slow motion.
Nonetheless, there is a palpable need for leadership in the US Senate, someone who loves Massachusetts a wee bit more and someone who brings a different set of professional and life experiences to the position of Junior Senator from Massachusetts.
Therefore with this criteria in mind, it is with great pride that the Chimes at Midnight endorses Attorney General Martha Coakley as the democratic nominee for the United States Senate.
Humble Elias has long believed that the Attorney Generalcy of Massachusetts is a superb training ground for a US Senator (or a Governor for that fact), there isn't much AG Coakley hasn't covered during her tenure in public life...Time to bring those skills down to the banks of the Potomac and see what kind of business can be done.
I offer this endorsement withour rebuke to any of her rivals for this nomination, they are all good men, if one of the other three are nominated they can count on my goodwill.
Nevertheless Ms. Coakley is a practical ambitious soul, her coolness and judgement will wear well over time and what the hell she has thrown a goodly increment of brutes & thugs in jail.
Works for me!
In truth we are voting for an apprentice to Senior Senator John Kerry, someone who can adapt to the senate's mores, someone who also bring something ineffable and new to the table, someone who will be there ten years from now reliable and true to the State of Massachusetts, that someone is Martha Coakley. I urge all and sundry to vote for her next week.

Note to the Laity:

There will be a Chimes at Midnight endorsement in the democratic senatorial primary tomorrow.

Humble Elias welcomes all frantic last minute attempts at persuasion, anything though that does not include appropriate gratuities will be duly read & discarded.

Mike Huckabee is as giddy as a

professional sky grifter can be, and it doesn't surprise me that some of the pardons he signed off on as Governor of Arkansas were of a questionable nature.
I mean, four cops get killed in a diner by someone set free by Mike Huckabee, that my friends is bad craziness in extremis.
That having been said, I think this deplorable incident will in the main, put a deep chill on any application of execute clemency or the power of pardons at the state or national level.
Between the political cost of Willy Horton and the terrible human cost of Maurice Clemmon's rampage what Governor or President is gonna take a chance on anyone's extenuating circumstances or personal reformation?
Clearly Mike Huckabee made a catastrophic mistake here, but neither he nor anyone else has a gubernatorial power of precognition, and when stuff like this happens the additional victims are those truly deserving of clemency who will now be denied it out of sheer fear of the consequences.

Haymakers...

are what politicians who can taste equally victory defeat habitually throw when the closing week of the campaign arrives.
Such is the case today with Congressman Capuano who has staked all on convincing the democratic primary that AG Martha Coakley is a Cheneyite & a Falangist.
The accusation itself, that Coakley secretly loves the Patriot Act seems more than slightly desperate to Humble Elias.
Tactics like this only seem to work in Republican Primaries, where angry candidates are a dime a dozen amidst an angry base and where populism is an easily faked pose.
I can cherrfully forego the catharsis of punching some wingnut in the nose if it means carrying the day on other battlefields.
Humble Elias thinks that Congressman Capuano seems to be good at starting fights, but can he finish them on terms advantageous to the electorate?

Is it me or does anyone else out there think

that CNN's John King would literally die of fright if he was so much as accosted by a five year old wingnut and accused of being a member of the "liberal media elite"?
I'm not sure frightened people make the best journalists, and King has a hunted look in his eyes these days, Richard Lugar he allows to drone on, Jack Reed however gets closely questioned every step of the way.
That sort of approach keeps the denunciatory petitions far-far away in John King's world.

Alan Khazei?

Got the Boston Globe's endorsement in next month's senatorial primary???

Well that one came as a shock lemme tellya.
Truly Alan's years of cajoling various powerful entities into giving him money for charitable purposes must make him the best interviewee in the world.
Either that or his campaign manager offered the Globe's editorial board free hookers or something.
Still the core thesis of the above endorsement holds true, Teddy Kennedy's particular leadership skills are not gonna be successfully grafted onto his successor whomever that might be. They were very much " of their time" so to speak.
So yeah, a new vision and new set of skills will have to be cultivated, that much I get.
But Khazei?
I grant you the man is idealistic (if not a trifle shrill), but he has yet to distinguish himself in this campaign as a Barack Obama style visionary. Moreover these are deep waters in which Alan swims, the nature of political longevity in the Commonwealth is such that some real long shots are routinely injected into very high level campaigns.
I am the only person out there who thinks Alan would make an interesting dark horse candidate for the US House?
But the Senate?
As I said deep waters, we live in an era of instant candidacies and easy fundraising on line, but that doesn't confer reliability, legitimacy and gravitas on a candidate.
Frankly the blunt reality of this special election is, we are electing someone who is gonna become John Kerry's apprentice in the US Senate everyone's passion, experience and vision will have to adapt to that eventuality methinks.
That being the case, I just don't see how Khazei adapts and prospers.
But I could be wrong.

Maybe I am all stupid like...

but could someone out there, who is "in position" so to speak, please ask Steve Pagliuca just how many jobs he generated here in Massachusetts as a managing partner in the Bain Capital Group?
If he wants to talk about his job creation wizardry fine, but I'd like to know just how many paychecks he has rained down on the Commonwealth?
***
Other than that and his promise to vote for any healthcare bill no matter how wrongminded and harmful seems to be all I know about the guy to date.
Stephen Pagliuca's chief qualification for office: wealth.
Unless someone can tell me otherwise...that is what I'm getting yea so far.
***
Oh and will someone again "in position" please tell Congressman Capuano to unhunch his shoulders in those commercials of his? He looks like everyone's nightmare High School gym teacher glowering away at you...Mike fuhcrissakes relax willya?

Last week the rumor was...

That former CNN pundit-xenophobe Lou Dobbs wanted to run for the US Senate in New Jersey. This week the rumor is that Dobbs wants to cut to the chase and run for President in 2012.
This particular paragraph is an outright scream:
Dobbs, a controversial and outspoken critic of the nation’s immigration policy, said he is reaching out to Latino groups in attempt to bridge differences and identify public policy solutions.
This is akin to the cat "reaching out" to the mice or perhaps Nelson Muntz initiating "innovative nerd-bully dialogue."
I dunno, it seems to Humble Elias that in the end Dobbs will be as serious a presidential candidate as was Pat Buchanan, ergo someone more interested in getting his name in the papers and gathering material for a book.
I might be wrong but none of these A-list celebrity journalists seem really hungry for power, fame and money yes, but power is boring, a nice book tour with plenty of stops on the TV talk shows seems much more fun to them.

Tisei?

Well now, that is an in-ter-esting choice as a Lt. Gubernatorial candidate on the Charlie Baker ticket.
I don't know if any of you have heard this before, but State Senator Richard Tisei is gay!
Keep it on the QT willya?
We don't want Willard to find out he might(dare I say it?) Quit The State!
As for the Baker-Tisei ticket it is something of a validation for the sort of safe space that has been created with respect to gays within Massachusetts.
This is a big turn around from the days when Jingle Money Swift and her Lt Gubernatorial candidate Pat Guerriero were run out of politics on grounds of being a woman teamed with a gay man.
Will and Grace indeed.
On the other hand if Richard Tisei was a Republican in South Carolina he'd be locked into a closet somewheres under armed guard, and forget about a seat in the state senate let alone being Lt. Governor.
On that basis alone, I suspect Baker will have some trouble raising out of state money with a ticket that includes someone so anathema to the wowser legionaries out beyond the Berkshires.
Then again, I suspect money won't be Baker's problem in 2010.
The only other notion I have is that a GOP state senator likely would not hazard the loss of his seat, both personally and to the Republican Party unless he felt pretty certain that they were gonna win the corner office next year.
So lets start focusing on disabusing them of that notion shall we?

Roughly

nine hundred billion USD has been spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This weekend the US Senate started debated extensive health care reform in the US that would theoretically extend medical coverage to all Americans.
The cost over ten years of said senate healthcare reform package, roughly eight hundred billion dollars.
And predictablythe same voices that squealed "AYE" for every penny sent off to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan are now howling that the health care reform package under debate is a "budget buster".
Someone shoulda thought of that before voting in favor of bringing the receieved wisdom of the August American Enterprise Institute to the Sh'ia and the Sunni tribesmen of Baghdad.
Still, the antis scream on about that money being necessary t'was for National Security, they bleat.
Well so is affordable health care who the hell wants to be the best defended man in a long line leading into the Emergency Room anyway?

Strange as it may seem...

Joanie Vennochi actually thinks there is a condition of moral equivalence between Sarah Palin and Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton.
To quote the old misanthrope, "what rubbish!"
Sarah Palin is a liar and an oafish demagogue, Hilary Clinton is lied about and the favorite topic of demagogues, especially the radio talk show variety, there would seem to be a bi-ig difference there.
Sarah Palin quit on being Governor of Alaska to cash in on conservative echo chamber circuit...Hilary Clinton left the US Senate to shape US Foreign Policy at the topmost level.
The list goes on, but it is akin to crushing a gnat with a jackhammer.
Well what of it?
Neither politician will ever be fairly assessed until we get past the syllabus of victimization so prevalent among today's punditariat.
Of course you could wait til the blue skies overhead crumbled before Joanie Vennochi ever gave up the casual victim-speak snarkage.

Apropos of nothing but

some unscrupulous entertainment conglomerate could make a fortune selling a interactive video game built around a violent coup d' tat aimed at the current administration. Deeply dispossessed wingnuts would pay Big Bucks for something like this in the holiday season.
Just sayin' thass all.

The Massachusetts Shuffle

Let me if'm ah kin get this straight:
Tim Cahill has doused himself with high grade kerosene and is looking to get shot out of a cannon and into the governor's office as an independent next year.
This means the Treasurer's office is wide open next year cue Steve Grossman who seems to have developed a definite taste for campaigning. Meanwhile un-named others are looking hard at this one and we haven't yet heard from the GOP on this one either, especially since it is a statewide office they have one before on a promise to keep the dems honest.
State Auditor Joe DeNucci has finally decided to jam on his old fishing cap and make for the nearest quiet dockside. The duffers in Southie seem to have a good thing goin' on down at the end of Drydock Avenue Joe, look into it, them boys recall your glory days at the olde Boston Garden. This is another office the GOP could possibly grab off if they could find someone sane, personable with some fundraising potential...Remember it is all about keeping an eye on the dems not screeching about Obama's birth certificate.
But then is the Massachustts GOP Ah'm tawkin' about.
Meanwhile which of the current senatorial democratic candidates d'ye think will parachute into either race? I'm thinking Pagliuca might be an interesting fit for Auditor or Treasurer (that is if we really want another inconstant Bain Capital alum in office).
Meanwhile IF Martha Coakley clears the board next month and IF she wins in January that means the AG's office will be filled by a vote of the State House of Representatives (Hooooo boy...this'll be good).
As of right now, Speaker DeLeo has signaled his disinterest in the sinecure (wise move on his part, the Attorney Generalship of the Commonwealth is a fast and reliable way to make career ending enemies)which means any number of House members could be in play right out to Sean Garballey or Charlie Murphy (do either of them have law degrees? Does it really matter in the enclosed Pellucidar-esque world of Beacon Hill??).
Of course, that precludes that the fix isn't already in for Secretary of State Billy Galvin (does he have a law degree? Has he ever served a writ, again this is Pellucidar who cares???). Which Means that IF Martha Coakley storms the redoubt and IF Martha Coakley wins in January and IF Billy Galvin is sent to the AG's office by the lege THEN the Secretary of State's office becomes vacant which can then only be filled in the interim by a vote of the State House of Representatives, who exactly is angling for this gig I cannot say. last I heard Cam Kerry was interested in the job but one doubts he has boots on the ground up on Beacon Hill. Still, if it was gonna be him, it'd dang near prove to the nation that all long last the Tall Guy was the new Boss of Bosses in the Commonwealth.
Oh and by the way, we have a closely matched Gubernatorial contest next year too, just in case all this other mishaugas gets fatiguing.
My point is, in the next six months two of the five statewide constitutional offices could change hands and possibly the rest shortly thereafter.
So much for tenure of office eh?

Scot Lehigh takes opens up on Congressman Capuano

compares him to Robert Penn Warren's populist/authoritarian "Willy Stark" character from "All the King's Men".
Honestly, where was all this concern about fake populism when Scot's hero Mitt Romney was demagoguing it up on the campaign trail in 2006? Back when the Viceroy went into the South End and swore up and down he just luv-ved gays will all his heart? When Willard blustered about the cost and safety of the Big Dig and left it all for the AG to sort out?
Of all the neocon rubbish Scot has generated down thru the years, today's column stands out as a triumph of lowbrow hatchet work. He tried to do the same thing to Joe Kennedy this summer and now he proposes to cut up Capuano...sick demented and typical.
At the very least Mike Capuano is speaking up on behalf of the poor and middle class, the traditional losers in any recession....two groups about which Scot and Mitt could not care less.

Note to Mary Matalin

(after having watched her on Larry King tonight fruitlessly defendng Sarah Palin), For Ghod's Sake woman, Give Up the Botox! Your poor face has all the plasticity of a block of New Hampshire granite. The only emotions you can convey these days is a sort of weird smug unctuousness, Stop the Madness!!!!

Lou Dobbs for President?

Time Magazine among others wonders if the fomer CNN yakker is considering a run for the White House.
The early line is, Lou would run as an independent and avoid the GOP primaries entirely.
Well, it is all speculation, personally, Humble Elias thinks Dobbs wouldn't get much traction out in the electorate with his ubiquitous political views buttressed by his ghastly xenophobia.
But the punditariat will fall for it hook line and sinker, they luu-uv center right independent candidacies and or third party uprisings of any kind. They are nice impotent fodder for slow news days during election years, and the fact that Dobbs is a former pundit himself is just the crowning touch.
So take this (whether Dobbs runs for office or not) as a good representative example of the sheer decadent narcissism that routine infects the topmost layers of the punditariat.

Ken Chase has too much time on his hands...

He has started something called "Conservative Tours" apparently as a means to shake down frightened wingnuts who'd normally never travel to such socialist hell-holes as Normandy or the Brandenberg Gate.
Chase has even finagled Howie Carr to come along on a trip to "Imperial Rome" where no doubt the famously homophobic Howie got off on tales of the allegedly homosexuality of such emperors as Nero, Galba, and that world conquering flamer, Trajan...Fodder for over ten minutes of sarcasm and locker room bravado on the radio.
I say take Howie to Normandy maybe the fag bashing bastard can figure out which tombstones mark the graves of gay men who died in service to their country so he can pee on them or something.

Women working for the RNC may no longer

obtain abortions under their health insurance plan or so decreed Michael Steele today.
My Ghod, in addition to being an ineptoid and a buffoon we can also add "petty fogging bitch" to Michael Steele's list of accomplishments.
This is grimly hilarious, will Chairman Steele be pawing through men's wallets to seize any condoms therein hidden? Will the RNC's health plan drop it's viagra coverage?
And what about witchcraft? Shouldn't the whole building be exorcised as a precaution?

Honestly, I can't do the quote justice but H.L. Mencken once famously observed that nothing is more injurious to morals than a consistent attempt to live up to them.

So far...advantage Pagliuca...

Since Monday's abortion dust up, I'd have to say the bigger winner has been Steve Pagliuca, only because he has the money to exploit the ideological rift between AG Coakley and Congressman Capuano.
You might think that...if Pagliuca's adverts weren't all whiny in tone and full of desperate promises of free hookers to anyone who'll vote for him.
If Pagliuca had any great talent for the game he could turn this thing into a nice tight three way race, but of course he doesn't and all he can think to do is run more commercials.
On the other hand...
Humble Elias doesn't think that his flip flop on the health reform bill is a game ender for Congressman Capuano but he has got to step away from the microphone, stop think and consider his remarks carefully ging forward.
The man just thinks he can explain his way out of trouble.
Hubert Humphrey suffered from the same problem and it helped cost him the US Presidency.
At any rate the stakes are high going into any future debate and that at least is bloggable chaos Humble Elias can take to the bank.

This mah frenz is whut we call a "flip flop"

as Congressman Capuano essentially backtracks and asserts he too would vote against the health care bill if it contained abortion restrictions.
So essentially, Mike Capuano was for the House Bill before he was against it?
Geez Martha Coakley had but to stand her ground for a twenty four hour news cycle before Mike Capuano caved in? Poor evocation of his "I'm an insider with heart, I get the process in DC" meme. If people don't understand your tactics they will !start to question your ethics...Just sayin'folks.
The other guys are all sayin' "no-no-no" but Mike is saying "no but then maybe yes" in a grudging tone, frankly Humble Elias thinks just maybe the whole damn lot of them feel into the AG's rhetorical trap.
Well, it oughta make any upcoming debates real interesting...Just who do I have to caress to get a ringside seat at one of these brawls anyway?

Y'know if Martha Coakley wants to "decry"

the loathsome use of pregnancy as a "pre-existing condition" in the current health reform bill, well more power to her.
It is an open primary for an open seat and everyone has to set terms with respect to the current health care debate
After all, not one month ago, I heard Mike Capuano insist at a Meet-n-Greet in Romantic Menotomy that if the health care bill didn't have a public option he wouldn't vote for it.
I mean, all he was doing was setting terms as AG Coakley has done...what is the problem?
Well, plenty, to hear Congressman Capuano tell it on the Jeff Santos Show this morning the AG is selling out healthcare like it was the Munich conference or something.
Humble Elias thinks Congressman Mike needs to dial it down a bit, he is never less persuasive than when he blusters.
That having been said, I do think everyone's terms regarding healthcare reform ought to be freely debated in an appropriate venue...but Humble Elias can do without the opportunistic palaver.
Frankly, if Pagliuca (Bain Capitol's own would be whipper of Wall Street), Alan Khazei and Capuano all haul off on Coakley, then just maybe the rest of the field may be falling into a rhetorical trap set by the AG.
Just thinkin' out loud.
Anyhow let us commence with the bloggable chaos.

Publicity seeking bullies...

The Westboro Baptist Church (The Rev. Phelps' falangist concern of notorious repute) has taken to protesting out of Sasha and Malia Obama's elementary school.

Class all the way, These people would copulate with chickens as a protest against homosexuality if it mean getting above the fold in the next day's newspaper.

Steve Pagliuca can run those damn TV adverts

until he is blue-in-the-face, but he will never convince me he is anything more than a Democrat Of Convenience (DOC).
And that smug self-righteous insistance that he won't take PAC money, that is a laugh riot, Pagliuca was a macher at Bain Capital which is Political Action Committee unto itself in all things but name. As far as Humble Elias is concerned, Pagliuca made his money the olde fashioned way, by loaning it to other rich white crackers just like his pal, Willard Mitt Romney.
So the whole notion that now, he Steve Pagliuca is gonna chase his former clients on Wall Street thru the US Capitol cracking a bull whip over their heads is patently ludicrous.

"Presidential Leadership is...

Party Leadership" or so Woodrow Wilson once opined.
And to the extent that President Obama has been setting goals, writing the party's mission statement, acting as the democrat's key spokesman and driving the agenda, then it is clear that as far as health care reform is concerned, he has internalized Wilson's notions about presidential leadership.
Lets hope it all yields fruits, we've spent ten times as much on freeing a bunch of Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, we won't spend any of the same tax dollars to get medical coverage for our own citizens?
***
BTW I caught Mary Matalin on CNN today, snarky but dispirited would summarize how she looks and sounded, sorely needs health care to fail either by not coming to a vote or from a catastrophic implementation. She was a wan hunched over figure with a clenched jaw reminiscent of a Connecticut shoreline accent.
In a word, Matalin has become a declinist, a far cry from her start as a peppy and insufferable cheerleader for the GOP and Reaganism in particular. Which gives Humble Elias to think that the poles of the GOP run between the teabagger falangists on one had and the declinists on the other, and not a sensible proposal to had on any topic between either of them.

No one can quite downplay right wing extremism quite like

the Associated Press.
They artfully left out the arrests outside Nancy Pelosi's office, the signs equating health care reform with the Nazi Holocaust and the general tone of violence and intimidation that permeated said "protest".
The problem with the AP is, that they look on this kind of insanity as the normal play of the "loyal opposition" which is nothing but a big "get out of jail free" card to some very dangerous elements.
And I do love the spectacle of seventy-ish retirees recipients of medicare railing against "Obamacare", truly my tax dollars at work keeping them healthy and erect.

Sad news...

Storyteller and Harvard Square fixture, Brother Blue has died at the age of eighty-eight.

So the army sez that 75% of recruitable US youth

are not fit for induction into the armed forces? Drugs, education and obesity issues being the core problems?
So when will the Pentagon declare high fructose corn syrup a threat to national security??
Well, I snark but really a stat like this ought to spark some hearings in congress, git some generals to testify...start that debate sez I. Because frankly Humble Elias can live in a world where high fructose corn syrup is outlawed as a food additive...Won't hardly change things at all.

So much for that whole quaint notion that

Maine is full of witty Marshall Dodge type caricatures who just want to be left alone. Given enough money and enough of "Fear Factor" politics they will happily police the marriages of their neighbors with a gay abandon.

Congrats to Mayor Menino on his re-election last night

the numbers were outside my predictions, but not by much in the weary wicked end.
The pundits and pols may hate and fear Tom Menino, but the electorate has yet been given no good reason to break their compact with him. You can complain until you are blue in the face about Menino's thin skin, autocratic style and lack of vision but those are the very things that 57% of last night's voters could care less about.
They want an urban mechanic and don't care if he is sixty six years old and bereft of ideas, period end of story.
Michael Flaherty ran an honorable campaign and made every good effort to innovate right up until the polls closed, he did not disgrace himself he did not punch below the belt. Dunno what the future holds for him, but there will at least be no recriminations for Citizen Flaherty from this campaign.
My only questions are, will the Mayor make an endorsement in the special election for Ted Kennedy's seat and will he support the guberatorial ticket in 2010?
Humble Elias suspects the answer to both those questions is a resounding "No".

A dinosaur spotted on the streets of Boston yesterday

a big ole sound truck was heard extolling the virtues of citizen Michael Flaherty, candidate for Mayor in today's city election.
No TV commercials at all, but Mike Flaherty and Sam Yoon have a sound truck, a campaign gimmick that went the way of the snap brim fedora over fifty years ago.
Still ya gotta give the guy credit, it is like sending up your last flare when the supplies run out.
I figure we will be out of the trenches by 9:30pm tonight, but then again crazy things happen on sunny election days.
Also on rainy ones as well.

Apropos of nothing

but when Joanie Vennochi writes the venom from her pen fairly scars the desktop at which she works.
When she calls in to the Jeff Santos show on WWZN Am 1510 though, Joanie is as decorously dull as dishwater, no middle school snarkage, no bitterness no nothing.
As a radio call-in guest, Joanie Vennochi ranks but poorly compared to say the sentimental rubbish routinely spouted by Mike Barnicle over on the Imus show.
Who knew that inside Joanie Vennochi prowled the placid soul of a Joe Lieberman?

Pursuant to Tuesday's Mayoral contest in Boston...

I'm predicting Menino 55%, Flaherty 45%.
If it rains and the Mayor's celebrated machine is on their game then the spread wil be much wider.
Ideologically not much separates either man, the argument is over managerial ability, temperament and unresolved problems impacting the city.
There, in almost every category save temperament, Menino holds the advantage, but I will say this for Flaherty like Adlai Stevenson he has run an honest and honorable campaign, he has not demeaned himself nor disgusted the city grasping for power, the man is but in his forties and may run well in other races down the line.
The same can be said for Sam Yoon, both he and Flaherty are men of the future whose times haven't caught up with them...Yet.
Meanwhile assuming victory Tuesday night, one has to wonder what role Mayor Menino's machine will play in next year's gubernatorial contest? Menino famously feuded with Scot Harshbarger in 1998 and helped deliver the corner office to Penniless Paul Cellucci, will he play the same role for the democrats in 2010?

Walking with the King...

"Left Ahead" the Commonwealth's premiere progressive podcast moved heaven and earth to get me on the cyber airwaves today...I guess because my droning monotone is just the utmost ultimate. Personally, Mike Ball's summary over the MP3 link makes waa-ay more sense than the nonsense I was spouting.

What I learned from the democratic senatorial primary debate...

That Alan Khazei's dad was a doctor and his mom a nurse and he is of Iranian extraction. That and he has apparently thinks he is up on stage with three uncaught crooks...Honestly, has he sworn an oath on the Altar of Reform Sacred to campaing in an even more shrill and humorless mode than Ralph Nader?

That Steve Pagliuca has a plan to stimulate job growth in the Commonwealth, likely it consists of paying ten million dollar signing bonuses. Steve claims that he was "inspired" to enter public service by the late Edward M. Kennedy, all that idealistic inspiration didn't stop him from voting for Romney in 1994 though.

That...Amazingly enough, Congressman Capuano debated badly. It has been a article of faith for me all along that Mike could seriously tear things up in a legit debate, Here though he sounded fussy and little defensive. Maybe the format which was little more than a joint press conference referee'd by a weirdly inarticulate Peter Meade, didn't favor Capuano's strengths.

That Martha Coakley could drone on tonelessly with the best of them? Humble Elias has met the AG enough to know she is quite personable in person, here she just exuded a monotonal grey fog.

Oh and one note to our democratic aspirants for Senator Kennedy's seat...Don't mention the late bank robber Willy Sutton in the context of US tax polcy, it is just asking for trouble.

(Another) Note to the Laity

Scheduling issues prevent Humble Elias from calling in to the Left Ahead podcast today, we will try to get this straightened out for another try later this week.
Meanwhile DO listen in to today's podcast, John Connolly, the Chair of the Boston City Council's Education Committee is making an appearance so it ought to be an interesting and suggestive show.

Nothin' left but Left Ahead....

Humble Elias will take his dignity in hand and be calling into the very fine "Left Ahead" podcast tomorrow at 2pm.
Because clearly, the blogosphere can't get enough of my tuneless droning baritone.
And as a note to the laity let me add that Humble Elias IS on vacation this week, he has already hit Suffolk Downs and plans to loaf up on Hampton Beach tomorrow so postings herein will be erratic for a few days.

No one ever went bankrupt in the Boston Market

by not stoking the fires of regional self loathing.
Take Sam Allis column in today's Globe in which he all but blames the Civil War on "effete 19th Limousine Liberals from Boston".
It seems a "Secret Six" of disgruntled wealthy anti slavery men bankrolled John Brown's attempted coup at Harper's Ferry in 1859...And well Sam has decided that little know cabal somehow is representative of the liberal spirit in Boston circa 2009.
There is much to deride in Allis' column today, the complete silence about the polarizing effects of the Dred Scot decision and the Fugitive Slave Act both of which gave the liberals of 1859 good reason for outright paranoia.
In fact if you think politics is fractured and driven by partisan hatred today, then please take a long look at 1859 again it is a portrait of a republic teetering on the brink of revolution and or dissolution.
Truly John Brown would've a found a way to killing even if six wealthy dingbats hadn't given him $5000.00 He ran up a nice bloody record in the Kansas territory sans any palmy fundraisers. In the end though, Brown was hung for the crime of attempting insurrection on a small scale in 1859, the slave-holders of Dixie would implement nearly the same model of rebellion on a regional basis not two years later. Truly, all Brown really did was hold the bridle that Robert E. Lee might ascend the saddle and ride off to some magnolia scented Ragnarok in the hills of olde Virginny.
Ah but Sam Allis reads history in a Agnewian manner, "effete liberals" are bad and cowardly and take advantage of other men's extremism before running away from the consequences.
Well, all I can say is, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and his troops didn't run away from any consequences, and trust me on the topic of slavery they were further to left than any of the so called "Secret Six".

Like Napoleon Returning from Elba

so too does the Bad Poets Society return unto Harvard Square tomorrow night.

Congrats to Senator Kerry

his timely intervention has bought us some much needed time to craft a sensible Afghan policy.
Humble Elias doesn't expect a run-off election to achieve miracles, but anything that increases the legitimacy of the government in Kabul is a good thing in general and a specific benefit I would hope for the US armed forces currently fighting in Afghanistan.
If this is the sort of work we can expect from a Senior Senator who is chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, then I say th' Tall Guy can forget about being Secretary of State. Long after Hillary Clinton has booked two successors into Foggy Bottom, Kerry can still be making a difference in foreign policy...Think on that John.
J'es sayin'.

For what it is worth...

With respect to last night's mayoral debate, Tom Menino sounds terrible over the radio, incoherent, slurs his words, drops the definite article at random with a harassed tone as well.
Flaherty threw some good haymakers but from what I heard over NPR landed no solid knock-out.
To be honest, is there much ideological difference between Tom and Mike? Both are democrats, likely pro-choice, pro gay rights, an ardent lover of Boston's sacred and inviolate neighborhoods, humble promoters of education and both never saw a bridge whose ribbon they wouldn't cut with the utmost glee.
Frankly the debate in this race isn't about philosophy it is about management, who will run a more efficient operation down at City Hall.
If there was any heat last night (aside from sniping at the Mayor about the e-mail controversy) it was mostly generated by competing claims to executive ability.
As long as that is the substance of the debate, then it is all advantage Menino, his rep as an "urban mechanic par excellence" remains unsullied.
***
Predictably though, Joan Vennochi watched the whole thing with mounting bitterness and surprisingly pronounced a pox on both their houses.

WOW! Where did that come from?? Like Mad Random!

With respect to the big

Mayoral debate in Boston tonight, Humble Elias is hard pressed to see just how Candidate Flaherty will be able to deliver a knockout blow to Mayor Menino's re-election chances.
The bar is just set so low for Menino that short of gargling all his responses thru a mouthful of Clorox the outcome is more or less assured.
Still, there are political reasons to have second thoughts about Menino, despite some of the attractions of his somewhat quaint style of governance.
Anyone else recall how Mayor Menino turned his back on gubernatorial candidate Scott Harshbarger in 1998, kept his precinct machine home on election day and thus denied the former Attorney General the thirty thousand votes he needed to get past Penniless Paul Cellucci?
It seems His Honor the Mayor was peeved at some of the investigations AG Harshbarger had initiated in and around the City of Boston.
And we all know a peeved Mayor Menino has consequences for us all.
I do, ancient history I know, but come 2010 if a re-elected Tom Menino pulls the same stunt on Governor Patrick don't say you weren't warned.
"All politics is local" said Speaker O'Neill, which brings up "Nugator's Adendum",that "All Local Politics is Personal".
And with Tom Menino some of his personal feuds do have reprocussions for those of us who live beyond Boston.
Just sayin'...

Jeff Jacoby Hearts Referendums

today's column in the Sunday Globe is a keeper as Jeff Jacoby that laughing young senescence marks out hard for the public referendum, particularly California's brand wherein the state legislature cannot over-ride the outcome of a ballot initiative.
This makes California a sort of berserker paradise wherein werewolves are proclaimed an endangered species and silver edged weapons are taxed at 10.5 percent.
My question is this, when the state legislature screws up and the subtle bond of representation are sundered betwixt the electorate and the elected, legislators lose their jobs. The mighty are humbled and are forced to slink back into their phony baloney law practice or store front insurance brokerage.
When the public screws up and bankrupts the state via referenda fiat, what measures can be brought to bear against them?
You can't throw out the electorate and put in a new constituency....
Under one scenario there is the basic accountability of the voting booth, under the other, the voting booth is the potential path to anarchy sans recourse.
Right now in California the public has voted themselves a plethora of tax breaks along with a long list of additional and expensive mandates relating to education, the environment, public works etc etc. Less money is coming in to cover an ever expanding list of publicly mandated initiatives.
Y'see there is a reason why the founding fathers set up a representative democracy, the act of representation is a nigh ethereal thing but thanks to frequent elections there is also very real element of public accountability. Humble Elias isn't against ballot questions per se but getting them on the ballot ought to be only half a difficult as getting a bill approved by the House Ways and Means Committee.

Thought for the day

Michelle Obama must be the very last woman in her age and SES group to not have a salaried job outside the home.
I mean, if you send the Secretary of Commerce to cut the ribbon on a nice new bridge over the Missouri River, the USA is effectively paying him or her for their time.
If Michelle Obama does the honors, she get zippo.
But imagine the hoo-hah if she took a job with a DC law firm or something...Or even started writing briefs for other lawyers part time, the statutes governing conflict of interest and the praetorian class would both literally explode.
Dunno what the answer is, the First Lady of the United State has never been more necessary and yet more anarchronistic at the same time.

I have no problem with Rush Limbaugh

the wingnut radio tyrant bidding on co-ownership of the Saint Louis Rams.
He'd be in good company there must be dozens of Falangists and book worshippers among the ranks of the NFL ownership class.
However the spectacle of Rush Limbaugh the reputed drug fiend owning a professional football team sends the wrong message to a league already mired in drug scandals...steroids, painkillers and now an alleged oxycontin addict in the boardroom?
Baa-ad craziness to quote the prophet.
Just as well the deal fell through sez I, the league has enough problems.

No surprise here...

as Scot Lehigh runs amok on Congressman Capuano's ass.
Serious political observers will recall Scot also dumped a rhetorical canvas bag of lugwrenches on Joe Kennedy a few weeks ago as well.
This is a routine occurence in Scotworld, a special election looms, so Lehigh needs to shuffle democratic deck and come up wanting so he can in good conscience go off in search of a nice suburban Moderate Republican to support.
Scot can't just exit the closet and admit he hates democrats and lu-uv's moderate republicanism no he has to make a big drama out of it.
Funny.
In fact, Scot Lehigh loves moderate republicanism soooo immoderately that if no appropriate middle-of-the-road GOP lackwit presents themselves during the election the Globe columnista will just pretend the republican nominee (however given to Falangism)is a person of estimable moderation.
Other let Humble Elias briefly note the utter dearth of any real sense of humor among our local political pundits. Scot's attempts today to come up with a fast paced casual sounding denunciation of Mike Capuano will not efface the memory of Hunter S. Thompson in anyone's mind. No I suspect they have all been corrupted by Howie Carr's tendency to substitute heckling for genuine wit the lot of them are as funny as getting a dislocated shoulder reset.

Idle Thought

To think it is likely that somewhere in the USA today, Mitt Romney is fundraising on the basis of his unswerving opposition to a Federal version of the same health care reform he happily signed off on in Massachusetts.

Floon

Joanie Vennochi was on the Jeff Santos show, blowing on the fitful embers of a tight mayoral race in Boston.
Frankly, I don't see it, Menino lacks few organized enemies among the electorate in a city that prizes continuity in governance over innovation.
The only conspicuous class opposed to Menino's re-election is the local punditariat, the reasons for this are simple, they want someone new to write about, after sixteen years Mayor Menino's novelty has worn off as far as the columnistas are concerned.
Sixteen years is a long time in office though, in other cities this might be an issue, but in Boston it is still 1912 and the personal approach still rules the voting booth.

Jeff Jacoby whinges about the onerous

task of grinding out yet another column.
For once, I sympathize.
Try filling this on-line bucket up six times a week...I could cut it down to five I suppose but then I'd lose props with my fellow anti-depressant gobbling, birkenstock wearing, living in dad's basement moonbat base...and That I cannot endure!

Jeff lemme give you a little secret I learned back when I was grinding it out twice a month for an obscure and deceased publication in Somerville.
Graphics cut down your word count, useful to know if you are running out of sensible things to say or write
Pictures of pretty women (Here Jean Rogers from ye old Flash Gordon serials) always work well in this context.
And on that note....

Plumb consternated to discover that

Newt "The Cowardly Lion" Gingrich is a convert to Roman Catholicism.

I mean we will let in just aboutany famous dingbat in won't we??

You wouldn't mind so much but the R.C.C. won't marry you if you are gay or divorced or if you aren't a "good living catholic" (whatever that means) but the bishops will inexplicably wave thru to the sacristy the thrice married former Speaker of House sans demure.
Seems to be a discontinuity there, can't quite figure out where though...

There seems to be a pattern here of hyper conservative converts to catholicism, Dinesh D'Souza (sp), Laura "Hollow Leg" Ingraham and now Gingrich, all these poor theologically homeless sods are looking for certitude in the pristine white robes of the Bishop of Rome.

When Gingrich finds out that the money he renders up on Sunday gets spent on the poor sans oversight on Monday, he will be screaming for Pope Benedict's impeachment by the weekend...If we use his tenure as Speaker of the US House of Representatives as a baseline.

President Obama wins the Nobel Prize...

What next, an Oscar? An Emmy? A Cable Ace Award?

Okay all kidding aside I think maybe the Nobel Peace Prize committee maybe thought this was a good way to stick it GWB on last time...
Cheaper just to leave a burning paper bag full of dog dung on the former President's doorstep I think.

Ed Markey in Menotomy

Ed Markey is hosting a health care forum at Arlington's Town Hall Monday October 12th at 6:30pm. While Humble Elias is not expecting much in the way of fireworks let us still make sure this doesn't turn into a freeper-fest or anything.

I'm suspecting though, that the wind has gone out of those sales after the many many embarrassing outbursts seen this summer. Still, this is Massachusetts and no one ever said the local Falangists had a good sense of timing or even a clue for that matter.

A hint from the peanut gallery for Mike-n-Martha

Lets not make the opening salvo in the Great Democratic Senatorial Primary Debate all about a traditional and very effective GOP wedge issue like the Death Penalty, shall we?
The electric chair and the gas chamber have polled pretty well down thru the years here in the Commonwealth, a one point in 1997, approval for the dealth penalty stood at 65% in Massachusetts.
Dunno what the numbers are like now, but even if they favor the dems it can't be by much.

Given the ease with which crime issues are demogogue'd by the republicans, I'd avoid deliberately giving them an issue right out of the starting gate come the general election.
Otherwise we don't wanna start that phase of the process explaining and clarifying whilst the usual a-holes in the local punditariat heckle & hoot unmercifully.
I mean, I can see it comin' guys.

Just sayin' thass all...

In Boston, it is still 1912

The Mayor runs for re-election of the number of pot-holes he has filled, the wedding receptions he has attended, the wakes he has gone to, the sheer dazzling increment of voters who have met him, his assiduous status as a success merchant in the economy of favors.
It is a pre-atomic mode of re-election and it occurs to me that Boston is one of the last urban communities in the West where this quaint approach still holds sway.
New York for example succumbed to celebrity politics a decade or more ago with that famously unstable camera-hound Rudy Giuliani.
Boston however holds firm in its old timey ways, and truly is there a politician in living memory better adapted to it than Tom Menino?
He is inarticulate at best, incoherent most of the time he never forgets a favor or a slight, he has been down your street, knows your state rep and has few enemies among the electorate when it comes time to open the polls.
He has no higher aspirations for office, indeed how could he? Tom Menino couldn't win office anywhere else in the country, not because he is manifestly incompetent or malevolent, far from it, he is schlumpy, mumbles too much and looks like a green-grocer from the 1930's for all his evident virtues.
So let that stand as an indictment of the current political zeitgeist in the USA, so if Menino is re-elected next month and likely he will be it is mostly because he has mastered the political arts of the pre World War One era.

Idle political observation

Hubert Humphrey bounced back in the polls in 1968 only after he started in on Richard Nixon with commercials such as this:

Let that be an object lesson for any democrat in a tight race come next year.

Howie Carr has been playing with the whole world by

prison rules for years now, and no-one in the local punditariat has ever called him out on it.
No, even the local liberal columnistas have for the most part either enabled Howie outright or else silently passed over his increasingly gruesome tirades on the radio and in the public prints.
So of course, when a pseudononymous critic of Carr pops up on the Blue Mass Group, the Globe's own Joanie Vennochi has a problem a with Ernie Boch III's lack of a proper name.
Normally I'd snark out at Joanie's latest humorless screed, but today just once I'll merely note that the internet is essentially built one oracular call-signs, mysterious handles and odd pseudonyms. There is a difference even if it is metaphorical between someone who is anonymous and someone who is using a pseudonym. I for example use one simply because I'd always thought it cool as a writing gimmick, Ben Franklin and Ian Fleming both favored pseudonyms in their columnist days, why should Humble Elias deny himself?
The dino-media doesn't get any of this, Joan Vennochi certainly doesn't get it, in part because the internet seems outside her experience and also because an attack on Howie is somehow also an attack on Joanie, she must protect her own in the end.
Of course, if the Scot LeHigh's and Joanie Vennochi's of this world had done their jobs vis a vis Howie's Neronian excesses there would be no need for Ernie Boch III or Humble Elias for that matter.
But they shuck and jive when it comes to Howie Carr and therefore into the breach charges the bloggers for better or worse.

Capuano in Menotomy

At the home of a very very very good democrat indeed Congressman Mike Capuano held a well attended meet-n-greet. Mike was funny, well informed, passionate articulate. He is clearly running as a sort of left wing "Rocky Balboa" citing himself with his blue collar background as "the guy who wasn't supposed to win".
It is a very persuasive message when yoked to his message of health care for all, civil and human rights and a stern stewardship over issues of war and peace.
When the time comes, he will debate extremely well indeed, I expect at the least he will have Steve Pagliuca for breakfast, Martha Coakley and Alan Khazei should take note.
Steve Pagliuca's TV commercials BTW are an embarrassment to the trade, they are whiny and seem to be saying "Just tell me what to think and I will think puh-leeeez??!!"
Not an auspicious start.
Anyway, back to Capuano, he is gonna run as a boot strap walk the walk liberal and that is fine by me. If Mike has a problem it is existential and a common one to politicians on the rise; on the one hand he trumpets his effectiveness on the other hand he wants to come across as a steel ribbed Man of Principle.
Those are contradictory notions, akin to Richard Nixon's mania for a quaint 19th century dignity chained to pathological desire to drink the blood of virgin cheerleaders from Moline Ill on live TV all in a bid to rebuke his liberal critics.
Truly Mike Capuano can't run as the world's most effective incorrigible can he?
Maybe he can, worse candidates have reconciled contradictions twice as daunting...
As for Capuano's audience it was mostly composed of Menotomy's most active and irredeemable progressives, although it is interesting to note that only one elected officer of the Town Democratic Committee was in attendance. Of the local machers State Representative Will Brownsberger, Senator Ken Donnelly and Menotomy Selectperson Clarissa Rowe were the apex standouts in the aud.
What this sez is, that despite a strong profile in town, local democrats are not fully united behind their earstwhile neighbor Martha Coakley.
Anyhow the game is afoot.

Go Ernie GO!!!

Kick Howie Carr's teeth in, thass all I can say!
From the looks of Howie's column today I'd say the whole campaign to boycott his radio advertisers seems to be getting under his skin...I mean the damn thing is nothing but a autistic litany of his favorite insults and put-downs "Dukakoids, Moonbats" etc etc.
Sad, Howie was once a local colossus now look at him tangling with a blogger like a mid-carder with a blown out back.
No it isn't sad it's delicious gimme more sez Humble Elias.

"A Military Coup has been Long Overdue"

So sang Ray Davies in far palmier times, but this would also be The Bright New Idea earnestly espoused by wingnut columnist John Perry over on the conservative Newsmax site.
Y' know what?
I sympathize, when you are unpopular and out of ideas radical armed action sounds very seductive.
Hey man, I've been there.
After all on this very blog i once joked about deposing Governor Romney via judicial fiat and some mock scary videos being sent to then Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey.
The point is, Humble Elias was kidding, this poor raving dupe is serious.
Sad really.
Coming during a week when Facebook had to delete a "Should Obama be shot" poll then you have to wonder if movement conservatism (having lost everything eighteen months ago) can find any hope or long term security in moving even further to the right into the land of armed dementia?
Right now, movement conservative is sitting in a corner, muttering curses to itself, sucking it's thumb and stroking a toy pistol...This is in a word the "loyal" opposition the people President Obama is supposed to be negotiating with over health care, defense policy, treasury matters etc.
Frankly all Mr. Perry's column really tells me is that Barack Obama's summer long bid to conciliate the GOP has been a failure as across the table from him are nothing butguys in Brooks Brothers straitjackets.

Mike versus Tom round II

Well...credit Michael Flaherty with brains enough to realize that he cannot win without the goodwill and support of Sam Yoon. Running as a "team" (Flaherty for Mayor, Yoon for "Deputy Mayor") bespeaks some ability to think outside the box on the part of Citizen Flaherty. Alas they are gonna need a lot more ideas like that one if they are gonna flatten the Great Golem of City Hall, Tom Menino.
Yoon seems to be playing the good soldier this time, win or lose he will politically profit from this election down the line.

Flaherty needs to: Hammer away at Menino's age, endless tenure in office and paucity of ideas, leaven everything with a few new proposals and look energetic & upbeat in all things.
Menino needs to: Put aside his ego, remind all and sundry he came to your Aunt's wake in Charlestown last year, stay focused on his accomplishments and mastery of the details that comprise city governance.

Have at it boys, it all looks good from Robbin's Farm Park in Menotomy.

Bill Safire RIP...

Others are remembering the wry and puckish wordsmith, that de-lightful conservative contrarian who was nonetheless hell bent on avenging Richard Nixon no matter what the cost the polity.
Indeed Safire's dishonest war-hawkery lead him to become Dick Cheney's servile stenographer in the lead up to the second Iraq War and then bluster incontinently afterwards when caught out.
That is how I will remember Bill, as a liar whose lies formed a body blow from which American journalism has yet to recover.
Honestly, in thought and deed he was a Nixon man unto the last.
Peace to his ashes.

I'm with the Governor on the whole Hyatt Affair

Housekeeping is back-breaking labor set to a blistering pace at most hotels, and the "excessive" $15 an hour these women were making is a meager pittance by which to raise a family.
So hell yeah Deval Patrick was right to threaten a boycott of the Hyatt, replacing those women with $8.00 temps with no benefits constitutes the worst sort of economic piracy. You can bet Hyatt Hotels Inc (or whatever the corporate parent is called) is CRAMMED with six figure VPS whose job is it to dream up "cost saving measures". Ass-clowns like this LOVE a recession it is a golden opportunity to squeeze the paychecks and health benefits of the company's housekeepers, bus-boys and maintenance staff.
Humble Elias has an idea lets cut back on some of those six figure salaries they got up in executive country, payroll efficiency should start from the top down anyway let the ass clowns set an example for once.
As for the Governor, this was a gut-check Harry Truman moment on his part, the Joanie Vennochis and Scot Lehighs will snark but the plain people out there, the service staff at Dunkin Donuts, the charwomen or the legions of temps that swarm Boston's financial district will know one of their own.

Senator Kirk...? Meh.

He will vote the right way, oppose the inevitable filibuster and keep Edward Maximus' formidable constituent services office humming.
I'd a preferred former governor Mike Dukakis who has made an effort to court the democratic base at the town and city level and thus deserves some recognition but in the end it is a token appointment of four months, no big thing.
Still...I think nomination papers can still be handed in for any further senatorial candidates (the cut off date is October)and the Duke does look fit as a fiddle for a man of seventy-five.
Why take a four month appointment when one can enjoy a six year tenure in office, a chance to serve the Commonwealth anew, and a national platform as well?
Plus Mike Dukakis is honest and incorruptible, we need fear no chiseling from him.

Besides, think how it would piss off Howie Carr....that ALONE recommends the whole project!

And ANOTHER THING...

Mike Dukakis is akin to Teddy Kennedy in one very important respect, you couldn't bribe him to save your life. Instead of these other well-heeled types who go hunting for monied clients after public life the Duke has happily consigned himself to a modest teaching position at Northeastern where by all accounts he has acquited himself honorably.
Besides that, the Duke makes himself available to moderate candidate forums and other democratic party events at the town and city level. We've seen quite a bit of him in Menotomy, can't say the same of Paul Kirk.
Governor Patrick, if by some miracle you are reading this, FORGET what those useless dingbats in the political consultancy are telling you, go with the Duke, appoint Dukakis, even his enemies know his word is good!

The New York Times reported yesterday

that former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis is no longer in the running to serve as an Interim US Senator in Edward Maximus' bow vacant seat.
Un-named sources cited the Duke's rep for "independence" and his concurrent association with an era of "democratic defeat".
In the words of Olde Misanthrope "What rubbish!"
How can one be too independent and yet somehow symbolize defeat and rejection at the same time? Both De Gaulle and Petain in one go?
Moreover, the Duke would be serving for a short time with John Kerry as his senior senatorial colleague, Kerry had the Presidency stolen from him in '04 does that associate HIM with "democratic defeat?"
For that fact this is Teddy Kennedy's old chair we are filling, he got whipped by Jimmy Carter in 1980, does that associate the late Senior Senator with "democratic defeat?"
No mah frenz, this is more of that consultant-think that has been dragging down the party for decades now, I urge the Governor to flip off this kind of idiot-reasoning and reconsider the candidacy of former Governor Dukakis, whatever his faults may be, the Duke is an honest man in extremis, if he says he will resign by a certain date he will do it and damn the consequences. It is a short list of pols in this state whose word is that good.
Meanwhile the papers all say Paul Kirk now has the inside track, I don't know the man from a cord of wood, maybe he is honest maybe not.
Nonetheless, conscience dictates I remind my readers that Kirk was once DNC chair, back in 1988 if I am not mistaken, and we didn't win that year, doesn't that taint him with "democratic defeat"???

So it is Mike versus Tom

and then it'll be Tom and then maybe...who knows? Tom all over again.
Hate to say it kids but short of the Sons of Ragnar sacking the City of Boston on election day, this mayoral contest is a foregone conclusion, it will be Menino Uber Alles all over again.
At this point our best hope is for a spirited and open debate of all the issues because the outcome seems pretty certain.
I hate to write it like that, but facts are facts, Menino has a huge organization, he can project power into wards and precincts and he has 900,000.00 to spend.
Sure, Menino sounds like a recovering stroke victim with an addiction to cliches, but that doesn't matter in Boston, flowers at wakes, wedding greetings, a little help with a zoning problem, reverence for neighbors and neighborhoods those are the decisive factors in the Hub even today.
Michael Flaherty sounds like a well informed man with a strong desire to run an honest administration but he is about to join a very long list of mayoral also-rans in the Shining City on a Hill.

My Prediction:

that it will be Flaherty versus Menino starting tomorrow, I don't think Hizzoner will get 50% of the vote today, but don't take that to the bank.
Sam Yoon is running an interesting campaign, if I lived in Boston I might vote for him, but his election day battle plan depends on rousing thousands of new voters and ushering them into the polling stations. This is a dubious proposition at best, in Boston at the ward and precinct level the old politics rules the roost, the cohorts that marched for Barack Obama in 2008 are not necessarily passionately engaged with the question of who gets to be Mayor.
Therefore the decisive constituencies will be the buzzcuts, their wives and such minority groups as are organized for a city wide political fight.
Given that, I think it'll be Flaherty versus Menino with Menino clearing the boards come November unless some gale from out the shoals of scandal hits the Mayor.
Of course, a good old fashioned upset tomorrow does feed my need for "bloggable chaos", so here is to chaos!
:D

Brief thought on the current healthcare debate

The one thing that is not being discussed, indeed everyone avoids this core aspect like the plague, is the essential class based character of the problem.
Oddly enough, that stalwart pragmatist, Mike Dukakis gets close to the class aspect of the issue whenever he goes on the Jeff Santos Show to discuss health care but other than that pfft!
You'd think the government was proposing to hand out new white wall tires to everyone the way the debate has been framed.
Of course this is the USA and we like to believe that class divisions don't really exist here, even if the data suggests otherwise. So it is natural if somewhat irrational to frame the debate without a class context.
This hamstrings advocates for health care reform unduly sez Humble Elias.
Frankly we'd do better to simply assert freely that that thirty million of our fellow citizens are either bankrupt from the current health care system or else too poor to buy effective insurance, healthcare is an anti-povery measure and ought to be framed as such explicitly.

Assuming WWE President Linda McMahon

really does get the GOP nomination in 2010 then all Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd has to do to beat her is sponsor a new round of hearings in congress investigating steroid abuse among professional athletes. Promise new laws, discuss the evil health effects of steroid drug abuse, condemn the steady undermining of the games integrity that sorta thing.
If he could get a few former pro-wrestlers to discuss on camera the widespread abuse of performance enhancing drugs & sundry narcotics in the locker room, so much the better.
Linda McMahon has made her fortune by turning a blind eye to rampant drug abuse among the wrestling talent she has know about it for years and done nothing about it at all. It is akin to the GOP nominating a pimp or a drug lord for the US Senate plain and simple.

He voted for Romney in 1994??

In my best Major Hockstedter voice I bellow "Who IS this maaa-an??!!!"

Honestly I can't say Pagliuca is off to a good start with his Senate race, nobody knows him from a cord of wood outside of the basketball court and he has been giving Romney money and even voting for dat mook. I mean hey did he really think Willard would be a better Senator than Edward Maxiumus?

Seems to me Stephen has some explaining to do.

The usual dingbats in the punditariat are all a-swoon about Pagliuca's money but access divine cashola has yet to boost Chris Gabrieli to statewide public office...Think about that for a moment.

Rep. Joe Wilson "Rebuked"

by the US House of Representatives, well it is the least they can do sez Humble Elias.
Otherwise money-hungry congressmen will be tempted to pull similar or even worse stunts the next time the President speaks on Capitol Hill in hopes of reaping a big cash windfall has Congressman Wilson has done.
Frankly they ought to censure the guy, he has made congress look ridiculous which all too easy these days and made it profitable as well, bad mojo all around.

My Ghod!

Doesn't anyone WANT to be a United States Senator from Massachusetts anymore??

Now Steve Lynch has bailed on the project, a few frowns from the AFL-CIO and he tears up his nomination papers sans demure.

I'm beginning to think that Hillary Clinton's rear guard in this state has a lot more pull than was originally estimated, a bunch of serious machers have dropped this race like poorly rate sitcom, so I wonder if serious fundraising pressure wasn't brought to bear on some of these guys. Seems to me very significant that the only ones left of note on the democratic side are Martha Coakley, the Jock Itch guy who owns the Celtics who can self finance and Mike Capuano, who'd charge the Battleship Yamato in a rowboat with a slingshot if it suited his fancy.
I suspect in, short, arm twisting behind the scenes to the advantage of Coakley.
At the rate we are going, Humble Elias will have to get into this race, I mean for no other reason than to raise high the flags of old timey Bay State Lunatic Ambition. This is a seat in the US Senate, you DON'T get an open shot at this sinecure more than once in a generation in Massachusetts!
Good Ghod I NEED some bloggable chaos here guys, don't let me down!

Congressman Tierney sez "no"

to running for Edward Maximus' seat.
Didn't even know he was thinking about it qquite frankly.
Anyone else out there wanna decline to make the race?
Congressman Olver?
Average Joe Malone?
Whitey Bulger?
Ben Affleck?

Meanwhile who is this mook Stephen Pagliuca and other than money and a stake in the Celtics what is his claim to office?

Three and some change?

I thought this was gonna be a bigger democratic primary so far the heavy hitters are Steve Lynch, Mike Capuano and AG Martha Coakley plus Alan Khazei and some other small fry.
No Ed Markey no Barney Frank no Joe Kennedy, I thought for sure this was gonna be all out donnybrook among the gods, with four or so congressmen waging relentless battle with those huge warchests of theirs.
Nope, it took Teddy Kennedy's untimely demise to remind Ed Markey, Barney Frank and Marty Meehan that there is "no place like home", or at least the US House of Representatives or whatever cinchy gig they've grabbed onto.
Meanwhile the state GOP fares no better, State Senator Scott Brown has announced for the seat but he faces long odds in terms of public recognition and fundraising...and Jacky Robinson is supposedly taking out paper with some other ne'er do wells to climb in as well.
Is it me or wasn't this supposed to be a bigger louder show-down? I mean open US Senate seats are a once in a generation thing in this state, you'd think more people would be tempted.

Sorry Jeff...

If a fetus has a "right to life" then it also has a "right to affordable health care".
You can't be a bleeding heart about the fetus and a social Darwinist about the resultant child or adult.
And your precious free market has had forty years now to cover thirty five million uninsured Americans, time to let someone else have a crack at the problem.

Jock Itch Part 2

Couldn't Curt Schilling run as a "Petitioning Republican" in the special election? Technically he is registered as an independent in the Commonwealth and cannot run as a Republican, but as a "petitioner" he could promise to caucus the GOP once elected and switch in as soon as the law allows.
This is exactly the horseshit that got Joe Lieberman re-elected, so why wouldn't it work for Schilling?
That is IF he is serious about running, so far the only people truly excited about his notional candidacy is the usual sportsfascists on the AM dial, one hardly hears a peep of "Run Curt Run" from any other quarter.
Nope seems to me he is self stroking his ego nothing more, if he does get in I think he'll go great guns for about three weeks and then the meagerness of his ideas and his lack of any political skill will start to stalk him. Like Sarah Palin, Schilling will be a sugar high most likely. I mean imagine what a two way debate would look like, the first question about monetary policy and the man will fold up like a cheap suit.
Meanwhile, the Annual Andy Card boomlet has flared and died in exactly five days, you can set your watch it quite frankly.
Oh and Congressman Markey has made the entirely sensible decision to decline the senatorial special election, he has amassed too much clout in the House since 1976 to hazard on a return to freshman status in the Upper House. Sometimes wisdom takes years to ferment in one's soul, I am glad Markey finally figured things out for himself he made a statesman like choice.

If Representative Joe Wilson is so darn apologetic

over his outburst ("You Lie!" he screamed at the Chief Executive) at the President Wednesday night, then why doesn't he call a moratorium on his congressional fundraising?
It seems he has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from joyful birthers and other vengeful book worshippers in the wake of his ill tempered fugue on national television.
You'd think if he was truly sorry he'd send such tainted money back....
Well, the reality is, Rep. Wilson isn't the slightest bit apologetic about any of it, his amends reads like the sorrowful note to the principal after a kid gets caught roughing up a smaller boy in Elementary School. No, Wilson is plumb happy, he has harvested wingnut props, money and some national camera time plus the goodwill of the GOP's prefecture, Rush Limbaugh et al.
Given all that we can look forward to the whole GOP congressional delegation wallowing in even more degraded antics during future speeches.
All this merely reinforces what I wrote yesterday, Obama, Pelosi & Reid have no reliable negotiating partners in the matter of health care, not with the good lawd of tawk radio telling the republicans how to f*ck us on a deal.
No if the matter is to go forward it must be moved by democrats and independents, the GOP has decided to wallow in it's praetorian anger, I ssay leave em' behind.