Tom Friedman on Imus this morning...

It is sort of a sad irony that Tom Friedman's airy avowal that his editor's indulge his every whim no matter how expensive is just the sort of double standard that may drive the Boston Globe's unions to turn down the NYT's deal next week.
For the record, as of 7:45am this morning, Friedman is blissfully unrepentant, he thinks it is great that his editors let him fly off to Haifa at the drop of a hat while the city room at the Globe is fighting to hold onto their soda machine.
Again, there is a deadly double standard at play here, but just for a moment let us consider the larger issue...which is WHY is the New York Times continuing to enable such a fatuous, credulous old hack like Tom Friedman?
The earth once trembled when he shook his pom-poms on behalf of the Iraq Invasion...he faithfully believed every lie that Colin Powell and Dick Cheney told about Saddam's nuclear weapon's program, truly Tom Friedman is cursed with what H.L.Mencken once called a "believing mind".
And if said lies issue forth in tones oracular from the pie hole of some GOP macher, Tom's mouth falls open in sheer adoration. Truly if Gingrich ever grows a pair and announces for President, Friedman will no doubt follow him from town to town in New Hampshire like a cocker spaniel.

I think, that is has just possibly been two full years since

we have seen the word "gay" show up in one of Spiteful Joanie Vennochi's columns in the Boston Globe.
And of course, "gay" reappears in Joanie's lexicon chiefly because she feels it to be a good flail to be used on President Obama.
If it wasn't for the rhetorical demands of her perpetual Middle School-ish disgust with democrats local and national, would women, minorities and the like even exist for Joanie Vennochi?
And at this point with newsprint journalism teetering on the brink of a noisy end in an economic tar pit, I have to ask...just what is the difference between Joanie Vennochi and Howie Carr?
Nothing except Howie can occasionally write about other topics, sports...the weather or the daffodils by the roadside in Wellesley.

Apparently,

the usual suspects in the US Senate are working themselves up into a lather over a remark made by Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor to the effect that courts "make policy".
That is a "troubling" point of view to the remnants of movement conservatism left in the Upper Chamber...of course you heard nary a god-damn peep out of these bangtail yaps when the Supreme Court over-rode the will of the American People and installed George Bush Jr as President in 2000.
Oh right, it is a court's responsibility to make Presidents, not policy.
Honestly, these guys need to think twice, if some remark uttered somewhere somehow is the best they can do, then a filibuster will be the end of them...believe me.

Question for the Day....

Has President Obama's Supreme Court Nominee been dismissed as a "socialist" by the wingnut sound machine yet?
It is only lunchtime though...the blast faxes and e-mail lists haven't been fully engaged yet...I figure first the screeches about socialism then will come the pontifical blasts from GOP Co-Chair Rush Limbaugh demanding a filibuster.

Anyhow congrats to Judge Sotomayor.

Can a new holiday simply be proclaimed by

an obscure blogger?
Channel Zero wants to create something called "Squalus Day" to honor members of the armed forces who died during peacetime.

Interesting notion....

Jeff Jacoby is questioning the RCC's priestly celibacy policy....

Someone might wanna tell the Vatican that one of it's most fervent enablers is having second thoughts.

Fine, all well and good there ought to be spirited but aboveboard debate from within and without the Catholic Church.

But I wonder, what would Jeff make of trangendered rabbis..that are willing to marry up all comers?

Okay that was mean...and uncalled for on a Sunday.

I feel shame...really.

Dick Cheney isn't talking out of a desire to

save the country, he is running his mouth off to keep his boney old ass out of jail.
Groveling bastards like NBC's David Gregory don't get that...they think all of Cheney's current bluster is somehow motivated by the sincere toughness of a GOP conservative. Hell Gregory was on Imus this morning and was practically peeing himself with joy over Cheney's speech yesterday.
That is pure nonsense, Cheney is smart enough to realize that closing Guantanamo's detention camp and forbidding torture opens up a paper trail that goes right back to him and him alone. Maybe Barack Obama's department of Justice won't indict a former US President...but that pious regard for the office may not extend as far as the Vice Presidency, especially a venomous old toad like Dick Cheney.
SO that is why Cheney is talking and talking and talking...he is desperate to cover up his own complicity is a tall stack of crimes.

The RNC finally says "No"

to a stupid idea....first time I've seen that in like fifteen years now.

I can't believe it, The RNC's Buffoon in Chief,Michael Steele actually talked the GOP out of trying to re-name the democratic party "the Democrat Socialist Party".
Up until now, rhetorically speaking all Steele has done is taken headers down grand staircases and ugone crashing into wedding cakes with his almighty clumsiness.

Well...all this charitability won't stop Humble Elias from calling sundry republicans Falangists or comparing them to General Gonzalo Quiepo de Llano.

I say Chairman Steele is due for a comeback but only if he can hold onto his right to charge his shoe-shines to the petty cash fund.

My faith in him is undimmed, if there is a Ghod of Mercy and Justice in Heaven above then Michael Steele will be recruiting congressional & gubernatorial candidate for the GOP in 2010.

All I can say is,

I earnestly hope that the Governor vetoes the sales tax increase that the state legislature has foisted on the Commonwealth.
The State Senate has said no to transport reform, no to an ethics overhaul and no to any sort of revenue enhancements that will dent the wallets of the WTKK morning line - up.
Time to say "no" clearly Governor Patrick, this far and no farther.
The sales tax is entirely regressive in character falling the heaviest on people like me who make under 35,000.00 a year. It is entirely insane to promulgate such a tax with the justification that it means less cuts for programs that help the poor and indigent.
What is needed is a graduated income tax, other states prosper with it, we need it soonest.
That and a local option rooms and meals tax, here we lag behind other states that give more revenue potential to localities.
I understand very well that they have a veto proof majority, but this is a gut check moment, time to say what you mean and mean what you say. Yes it will lead to a summer of ugly headlines and gleeful snarkage from Joanie Vennochi (assuming she still has a job come July 4th) but better to wade thru it all now than in 2010. The Massachusetts state legislature is alike an similar body in America in that they are addicted to easy answers like hiking the sales tax but it is the job of the Governor to say no to bad ideas.
Say No Governor....thass all Humble Elias can say.

Question for the Day:

"Is Dennis Miller still a wingnut wannabee?"

last I heard he was marking out hard for the neocons and the Bush-Cheney brand of "moral clarity".

Or has he quietly slipped over the side of that burning lifeboat and tried to swim for it?

If we waterboarded him for a hour would he change up?

This is what Professor Mary Beth Glendon

walked out on at Notre Dame yesterday....
A plea for civility and a rigorous debate.

So given the content of President Obama's speech may we infer that Professor Glendon (and her cheerleading squad seemingly headed by the Globe's laughing young senescence, Jeff Jacoby) has no interest in a civil tone or a reasoned debate?
It wouldn't surprise me, most anti-abortion zealots are interesting in conquering power and bossing people around, not in sissy stuff like debates. They have a Mongol diplomat's view of negotiation; "we are strong you must obey, we need not listen to those we think weak".
Curious notion from a GOP cohort that has been bitterly and thoroughly repudiated at the ballot box.
Meanwhile, every time Obama speaks, he makes friends. He seems sufficiently wise to the fact the center isn't a position it's a electoral cohort that is created by politicians. In this case, the President is laying claim to the center but also nudging it leftward by increments. He did not abandon his own views he merely asserted the primacy of civil and reasoned debate, the other side abandons the center thus when they impotently cry for conquest and domination.
No Obama didn't cram it down anyones throat yesterday in his speech but his civilized and earnest tone probably won him new supporters. Speeches like that don't do much for PAC's and the beltway crowd, but they do build up a President's coalition...and that mah frenz is a good thing.

"What did Nancy Pelosi Know, and When Did She Know It?"

I got one answer to this mishaugas, who the f*ck cares?
The then minority leader of the US House doesn't decide on a policy of torture for "enemy combatants", no that one was handed down by our then failed oilman president and his megalomaniacal vice president.
If this nation is dishonored, it's proud tradition human rights advocacy stained, and our global standing diminished well it is Bush and Cheney's god-damned fault, Nancy Pelosi had nothing to do with it.
Oh the enablers, sleazy rightical chic scumbags like Laura Ingraham are wallowing in this fake controversy, all to obscure the mounting culpability of their beloved President and his brutal little fixer of a VP.
One thing characterizes La Famiglia Arbusto, they are never called to account for their crimes...but Bush Jr believes in a book-worshipper's heaven so if there is JUSTICE in the Celestrial Firmament he will face those he ordered tortured at the Pearly Gates.

It isn't done "Quietly" if it is on the Front Page of the Boston Globe

The Globe rehashes old news today, reminding it's readers that Governor Patrick makes a point to attend the funerals of servicemen killed in Iraq/Afghanistan.
This has been reported before both by the Globe and by local TV news so the story hardly seems new in any way. Nevertheless it does make an odd book-end to yesterday's bizarre front page assertion that the Governor was not spending enough time on the job, except when he is attending soldier's funerals, hosting policy forums or checking up on conditions in Peru, Florida, Mendon or Sunderland.
Dukakis, even when he was riding high, came in for this kind of schizophrenic treatment all the time...one day they love him the next they loath him. The Globe has always been ambivalent about it's weighty liberal bona fides...never more so than when a democrat is governor for some odd reason.
Well...I say the Globe forget all this useless palaver about where the Governor spends his long weekends and concentrate on the pension issue. If Morrissey Boulevard wants to go down fighting AND hold the executive and legislature's fee to the fire...I say the foot-toasting begins with pensions.

The Death-Scream for Purity....

Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe's laughing young senescence, soon to be back selling used cars in Norwood...takes time out of his busy schedule to slag Colin Powell.
Whenever conservatives run out of ideas they start insisting that they have plenty of ideas they just need to be imposed on the GOP more firmly and with the zeal of an amok puritan.
Hence Jeff's attempt to read Powell out of the ranks of conservatism...an army the former Secretary of State was never a member of to begin with. Just because he served under conservatives doesn't make Powell a conservative, certainly not the sort of book-worshipping, witchburning, selfish, intellectually bankrupt, hypocritical, political autistic that constitutes movement conservatism today.
Ah but Jeff doesn't get that...purity and zeal is the name of the game over on the other side that is when they are not whining like whipped curs of course.

This line in particular is especially hilarious:
Though he owes every lofty position he has held - national security adviser, four-star general, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, secretary of state - to GOP presidents, Republicans perpetually appear to rub him the wrong way: especially the conservatives who constitute the party's base.
There are never any moderates in the GOP's base ever notice that? Of course not they have all defected to the democrats after being nigh deafened by Jeff and his ilk's screams for loyalty and purity.
One of the lasting legacies of the Bush-Rove years is the GOP's war on party moderates, the constant need to attack and destroy unbelievers to fall upon the nearest at hand usually their own mushy middle of the roaders.
Which is why the GOP is at a 21% identification level nationally, numbers that are only slightly better than Henry Wallace's Progressive Party or that of the Spanish Falange.

More and more I've come to the conclusion that

Former Vice President Dick "The Faceblaster" Cheney's closest literary antecedent is none other that Comrade Napoleon, Orwell's power hungry pig from that deathless modern fable, "Animal Farm".
Whenever Dick speaks these days it is in a charming neanderthal grunt that asserts "We iz strong, da strong should rule...we must become more strong...bullies are brave cuz they are strong..." yaddah yaddah yaddah.
Hence his recent tie-up with Rush Limbaugh,I mean he'd never chose a beaten man like Colin Powell would he? Doesn't make sense from the neolithic bone-cave perspective of the Former VP.
Rush at least is the sort of fat sickly leviathan that pre-hominids like Dick Cheney regard as a Titan made flesh.
James Carville speaks of forty years of democratic dominance in Washington DC, this strikes me as a fantasy...but it could happen all we'd need is for Cheney to remain healthy and talkative and for Michael Steele to recruit the candidates...the rest of it will be akin to watching Bonnie Prince Charlie's Highlanders gettung cut down by the Redcoats at Culloden.

Politics in Massachusetts is funny

It is arguable that Boston Mayor Tom Menino hasn't had a new idea in over a decade, city services lumber along and the crime rate spikes and drops and spikes and drops...and yet for all that he has a twenty five point lead over his nearest rival in this year's mayoral election.
Meanwhile Governor Deval Patrick who bristles with good ideas from pension reform to consolidation of transportation bureaus is at best a fifty fifty shot for re-election next year.
Of course I've long maintained being Mayor of Boston even a would-be five term wonder like Tom just doesn't engender the scrutiny a that gets applied to a sitting Governor. Some of this is tribalism, some it is is just a bad local custom in action....the rest of it is plain inexplicable.
The contrast though couldn't be starker, Menino has risen from unintelligible to simply boring, Patrick is a master rhetorician, crisp and precise in all his public pronouncements.
Yet Tom is coasting to victory while Deval must look over his shoulder and apply the whip.
The crowning irony is that Menino's current rivals Sam Yoon and Michael Flaherty do seem to have some interesting ideas or at least contrasting notions as to how Boston functions as a community...whereas Governor Patrick's potential opponents (Harvard Pilgrim CEO Charlie Baker and State Treasurer Tim Cahill) will be hard pressed when the time comes to explain to the public just what the hell they can do differently.

on Hiatus next week

Going to NYC for some R &R...might update if i see something worthwhile. However if it all goes to smash and i don't come back, try to remember I was an Eagle.

Checked the mail yesterday and

still no Pulitzer.

Ah but Monday is another day and I am still young by the standards of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.


Now...if the only way I could collect on that award was still on a podium quietly and suffer thru a speech by Former President Bush or worse...Mitt Romney hell I'd do it.
I'd even make polite noises afterwards.
Why?
In my time I've had to works productively next to outright falangists, people weirder than Mitt Romney in every way, one learns to cope.
Jeff Jacoby though, the Globe's Laughing Young Senescence, holds a different view.
He applauds Harvard Professor Mary Glendon's decision to decline an award from Notre Dame as it would entail listening politely to President Obama's commencement address.
Churlish and stupid sez I, it isn't about Obama's views on abortion (which Professor Glendon abhors) it all about making a big self indulgent scene on behalf of one's ideology.
This sort of crude narcissism, Jacoby calls "courage".
Frankly all I can say to Professor Glendon is, wayward sister go in peace.
Movement conservatism abounds with theatrical rubbish like this, GOP stalwarts are never more unconvincing when they start swanning about in this fashion. It is idiot dram queen antics like this that got them smacked down hard last fall, anyone else recall Senator McCain's silly melodramatic campaign suspension when the bailout bill came to a vote?
This whole sad situation only rebounds to President Obama's credit...as always he is sane cool and unfazed while every one of his opponents goes cavorting in the limelight like druken Nibelungs.
As for Jeff Jacoby, he is never more laughable than when he pimps out for the Vatican's Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, you'd think he was a 20 year usher at Saint Muldoons or something.

I love it when big blustery wingnuts turn

chickensh*t....nothing more amusing, it even beats the Kentucky Derby for sheer entertainment value.
Case in point, WTKK-FM has "suspended" chat show tyrant Jay Severin for making inflammatory remarks about Mexicans in the wake of the current swine flu crisis.
You could just see the suits at WTKK diving under their desks in terror, you see they want their audiences (who are bombarded with wingnut bombast 24-7) agitated but still willing to buy Fritos Corn Chips at Christy's...not stoked to mob violence...bad for the sponsor's bottom line doncha know?
Frankly the whole ghasty comedy is entirely situational, Jay has in fact been talking like this for years and no one gave a hoot in hell til the swine flu came along and suddenly everyone has nightmares straight out of Steven King's "The Stand".
Let Humble Elias be simple and blunt, it isn't about the damn flu, we will survive that. No it is about WTKK's willingness to profit by Jay Severin's continual need to verbally persecute out-groups that cannot fight back given the nature of his show. So until the debate is at least about having a debate then...there is no debate.