Happy New Year

to all and sundry....

Well...even as the rest of us stagger thru to New Years

Politics keeps ticking away behind the scenes, case in point John Kerry, Victoria Reggie Kennedy and the DSCC have all loudly endorsed Ed Markey's bid to become a US Senator in the upcoming special senate election....assuming of course, John Kerry is confirmed as Secretary of State. Taken all together, and we can deduce that there is a concerted effort going on behind the scenes to keep the democratic senatorial primary as restricted as possible so as to give the presumptive nominee Ed Markey some momentum and maneuvering room agin' the GOP's presumptive Colonel Scott Brown. Of course this is just the sort of "concerted effort" that piss off someone somewheres and touch off a free-fer-all democratic primary... Kerry's endorsement I get, he has always been pretty free with his support (he once reached waaay down to a special state senate election in the Fourth Middlesex to gin up Ken Donnelly back in the day)...the others though, clearly smack of some strong politicking behind the scenes, likely by State Chair John Walsh. I'm sorta curious to see where Citizen Warren lands in all this, by June 2013 she could be the Senior Senator from Massachusetts, you'd think her endorsement would be a sought after thing in the above matrix. That much bears observation going forward.

Ah spoke too soon...

Looks like Congressman Ed Markey is piling in to the special senate election with both feet. I'd still like to know why he stayed out in 2010 though... And for that fact does his internal polling really reveal that his "Republican War on the Poor" meme will play in North Brookfield. Ah but I snark, I do think Ed might be enough of a yeti to keep his congressional colleagues out of the Senate Race...but then again that might not be a good thing regardless of any fears of a "bloody primary donnybrook". And if Ed does get the nomination then I'd just like to casually advise him that Scott Brown is a better debater than he seems...and if Congressman Markey starts up with his "GOP war on the poor" mantra Brown's likely response will be "My opponent has had over thirty years to solve this problem with little to show for it..." In other words Congressman Markey had better figure out how to turn a long liberal record in public life to his advantages, because trust me, it'll be the first thing turned against him in the General Election. And don't look to the Boston Globe for any help either, that lot has a vested interest in chaos on the campaign trail and nice close election....nothing more. Nonetheless, I wish the Congressman well, he is articulate able and well intentioned, but he has to transcend if he wants to win.

So Far So Little

Teddy Kennedy Jr. doesn't wanna run for the US Senate (which is good he would be a tough sell for a number of reasons) Ben Affleck doesn't wanna run either....Both these guys have high name recognition, presumed fundraising chops and short political resumes...on the other hand they have some baggage and baggage is a thing to avoid I think as the next special senate election looms. So far no one has announced or done anything except signal a vague desire to run, and yet for all that the Boston Globe more or less assumes that the democrats will offer up a newspaper-pleasin' firefight of a primary. So far I don't see it, but that can change. Mostly I'm just wondering why suddenly Ed Markey is interested in the sinecure? He bailed on it in 2010 leaving Mike Capuano to hold high the banner of the US House....must be sick of being in the minority in John Boehner's Chamber... Of course if the dems wanna hold the seat, I'd say they need someone with some fundraising chops, an interesting message who comes with a short political resume, preferably with some bona fides outside state politics. But this is but a sketch as to who fills that bill yer guess is as good as mine. But if we want a pure celebrity driven candidacy, I'd mark out hard if comedienne Sarah Silverman made the race, hell her baggage is picturesque and makes Ben Affleck's baggage look like an empty gym bag....

Michael Graham's contract at WTKK

has not been renewed and consequently Friday last was his last public broadcast. Ahem... Give me a moment here... HAR HAR!!! Excuse me I had to do that. Well just think in just twenty six weeks, once unemployment runs out poor Mike will be on WELFARE. Now that will be a Youtube moment to be sure....Michael gets enrolled among "The Takers"....

Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas, a Joyous Channukah & Felicitous Kwanzaa and a festive Festivus... *** It is a sociable time of the year, lots of family and friends and hopefully glad tidings. Nonetheless, do take a moment to take stock of yourself, give thanks, get off alone, take your shoes off, wash your feet, look at the Moon And Try To Get Close To God. And when you are done with all that, log onto the internet and read the Chimes at Midnight, because if my stats are any indications, MAN do I need the mouse clix! :D Happy Holidays, better times are coming...

Congrats to Senator Kerry

on grabbing off the Big Brass Ring at Foggy Bottom, I wish him well. (I've lost the argument, I was never IN the argument lets face it, have to man up and move on sez Humble Elias). Meanwhile, seven out of nine local congressman have awoken to see a Future US Senator in the shaving mirror... among them: Ed Markey the long serving Rep in the Seventh Congressional District, tall reasonably articulate, well entrenched in a safe district with tons of cash on hand...he'd be an immediate front runner if and when he piles in. On the other hand representing the safest democratic district since Adam means he has never had to run any kind of a real campaign in a general election, Ed tend to being a doctrinaire liberal and while that plays well at the Lexington Elks Club the message may be more problematic in North Brookfield. Finally, while I like Ed, he lacks a sense of whimsy, he grinds when he should stop smile and laugh a little, no sure how he'd play statewide. Mike Capuano: passionate, Passionate, PASSIONATE, did I mention how PASSIONATE Mike Capuano is?? He is also almost impossibly honest by all accounts out of Somerville, the Spartans love him even if they are bound in loyalty to Ed Markey and that is no small thing. However, I worry about Mike's judgement, he got schooled by Martha Coakley in that primary back in 2010, I sometimes wonder if Mike is so eager to return fire he'll shoot himself in the foot? Steve Lynch: Steve is what passes for a conservative democrat in Massachusetts Politics, by all accounts he ought to be angling to succeed Menino, but for some stupid reason he wants to run for Senator....Ghod knows why. Outside his own district he won't do much business either with moderates (who won't cotton to his chummy clubby Southie bona fides) and he certainly won't wear well among suburban liberals. But then again, let a hundred flowers bloom and all like that, the man has a right to make his case in a fair and open primary and once again Humble Elias is a lonely voice for a primary where all factions within the party and consulted & debated. But whoever gets the nomination, lets just remember that Scott Brown is no pushover he will wolverine gone mad on crystal meth to get his old job back, count on it.

Oh and Wayne LaPierre, Jefe Maximo of the NRA

thinks the Sandy Hook Massacre is all the fault of violent movies and video games... Oh my sweet Jesus, the biggest frightmonger in the USA, a man who has resolved himself into a sort of berserker amateur psychiatrist who insists that the answer to all fears, phobias and angst, is GUN OWNERSHIP....thinks that "Call to Duty III" is to blame. There is something sick, demented and typical about that...although his solution tops his diagnosis by a country mile, ARMED GUARDS at all public schools in the land... And who the hell is gonna pay for all those trained armed secuurity guards in the schoolyards of America??? Me that is who, wealthy lobbyists like Wayne LaPierre never have to bear the financial or moral consequences of their own bad ideas....count on it. "Buy Guns, Not Books" is the NRA's answer in sum. And not for nothing but at Columbine and Virginia Tech there were several armed police officers at the respective schools when the gunfire commenced, they were out of position and unable to do anything else but call for back up...which any alert unarmed person could have done... This is the problem with the NRA and GOAL and all that lot, they won't negotiate, they won't budge an inch and their answer is pure homeopathic sociology, the solution to rampant gun violence, is more guns. Don't kid yourselves one of the greatest social engineering experiments has been going on in this country for over thirty years, it comes down to this "An armed society with complete firearm saturation, IS A SAFE SOCIETY". Well trust me there are allegedly three hundred million firearms circulating out there, one for each and every American citizen or whatnot... Anyone out there feel safe?

Boehner's Boner....

"Plan B" his bid to safeguard some Bush era tax cuts couldn't even be brought to a vote in a committee before the Tea Partei's Visigoth wing put the kibosh on it. What did I tell you all not two weeks ago, President Obama hasn't got negotiating partners worth shit...and Boehner hasn't got the decisiveness of a bed of kelp. The Speaker lapsed into complete passive aggressive impotence today, announcing that it weas "up to the President and the US Senate" to come up with a plan that averts the fiscal cliff...seldom has a US Politician made his emasculation so utterly explicit. Well...lets face it, Boehner is another Newt Gingrich, basically a bully good at making life miserable for outcasts but has no real leadership skills or sense of honor for that fact. He is a weak man who can neither negotiate with the President with any success nor keep his own caucus in line...truly what good is he? So I reiterate, we are gonna need to "make the fiscal cliff work for us" as appalling as that may sound because right now, The US House is incapable of acting in a sane reasonable fashion mostly because of a tightly wound caucus-within-the-majority who one and all represent not congressional districts but their own personal wingnut fantasy worlds. And until reality smashes its way thru, they will do nothing but make stupid empty threatening noises... At the moment, it is "advantage Obama"....for now at least.

Congrats to Brian McGrory on his elevation

to the editorship of the Boston Globe, I like to make fun of him (mercilessly) but at the very least Morrissey Boulevard opted for a journalist to run the paper and one with solid roots in the community. In other words, they did not go with an MBA, so that at least is some good counterintuitive thinking on their part. Of course this does mean that the Globe will go on trying to fantasize a Moderate Republican Faction into existence, McGrory was a big mark for the "George Bush Jr, Bill Weld, Mitt Romney & Scott Brown are all MODERATES" meme...that much won't change. It comes as no surprise to me that right next to the announcement of McGrory's promotion on the front page of the Globe was a long loving article trying to gin up Bill Weld's chances of running for the US Senate, again. I mean clearly the Globe is just desperate for Bill to resurrect himself, jug and all. *** Well whatever, but as long as there is a vacancy on the Metro Pages of the Globe I'd like to propose MYSELF as the new columnist! I'd be good at it if only by keeping my ego in check, staying vigilant & trying to listen before forming one of my classic "sarcastic rant driven" columns. I've worked in the dino media on and off down thru the years and am familiar with all the eternal verities of the business... Granted I don't live in Boston, but these days who does? I'd be willing to move if the $$ was right. :D Well anyway if you can't hire me, I say go whole hog with Sarah Silverman, that dame can seriously stir some shit up, and she is local (well, New Hampshire local, same diff)

On a Second Reading of Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France"

Y''know he'd try to hit me with his walking stick, but I begin to suspect Mister Burke (the very founder of modern conservatism)of being a very typical deeply closeted English Machiavellian. I mean he has no problem with the republicanism of the American colonies, in part because they posed no military threat nor could they credibly affect the Balance of Power in Europe. When the Sans Culottes went marching in the streets howling for blood and dynamite, well that was a threat to British Policy now wasn't it? But being English and desperate for an appeal to History Burke sits down and composes a long detailed lugubrious justification for his own beliefs. Mostly the book seems to reek of keeping England's options wide open, all this indignant palaver about churchly expropriations was just so much eyewash really. WHERE was all this bleeding heart concern for the seized monasteries of France when England was expropriating the Catholic Church outirght all over Ireland from the Imperial High Noon of the Tudors down to the beer garden days of the House of Hanover and beyond? In some ways, England had itself already seized and redistributed hundreds of thousands of acres of prime arable real estate during the reformation...Burke's excuses for these expropriations are particularly feeble, self serving and well, Machiavellian. Burke was after all a rather stuffy reformer in England, his main complaint about the French Revolution is that reform at a certain point was no longer an elite exercise, it fell into the hands of the demagogues in the National Assembly and pfft, Edmund was overboard with nary a word. But I give him credit he was a conservative because he could conceptualize something really worthy conserving, the Protestant Monarchy, the Rotten Boroughs of Parliament, the Puritan merchant class and the ever self renewing English Aristocracy. He was the first serious English Speaking Intellectual to make a special target of contempt out of his fellow intellectuals, he loved the past and did not fear the future since he assumed that it would be pretty much a iteration of what had come before. HE loved his elites and expected them to rule because they deserved to rule anything else was anarchy...and anarchy was Bad for Britain to be sure. Burke stands in marked contrast to today's American Conservative who literally wants to move into the past and somehow seal up all access to the future in the bargain, a "retreat into stupidity" to quote Orwell. I wonder what Burke would have made of a the anarchic mutterings of a Sean Hannity?

Congrats to Senator Pat Leahy (D VT)

who has become President Pro Tempore of the US Senate in the unfortunate death of Hawaii's own Dan Inouye. It is a largely ceremonial job notable in a constitutional context for being fourth in line to the US Presidency per the 1947 Presidential Succession Act. Me personally I think it is long past due to revisit that particular statute. The problem is, succession initially passes thru the elected officers of both houses of congress...and most of the time that means the opposition, the losers in the last presidential election have a place at the table in the event of a "double vacancy" in the Executive Department. Prior to 1947, succession passed thru the Cabinet sans demure with the Secretary of State third in line and this during an era when there was no constitutional mechanism for replacing a vice presidential vacancy. Alas in 1947, Harry Truman decided the Presidency had to pass to someone who could claim some type of an electoral mandate and the GOP, then in control of congress wanted a place in the line of succession hence the current succession act. Y'know the Founding Fathers had a horror of de-legitimization and or factional chaos, originally they mandated that the runner up in the Presidential contest became VP...well that didn't last eight years as it meant the opposition decredited and all, inherited the second office in the land no matter what. They got rid of that little notion plenty quick and thus enshired in the constitution they notion that Presidential Succession should not invalidate or over-ride the outcome of the last US election. At least that was the case broqadly speaking until 1947 which implemented the current scheme which promises us needless chaos and bitterness should the unthinkable happen. I say repeal the captioned act, and restore line of succession to the Cabinet Officers starting with the Secretary of State and then the Secretary of Defense on down...with the House Speaker and the President Pro Tem coming ion dead last. I don't offer that as a rebuke to either House, I merely which to preserve in a larger sense the "will of the people" and the legitimacy of the Presidency....

It is important to remember

that but for Adam Lanza's suicide last Friday amidst all his homicidal carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary and we would likely be mired in a frenzied debate about the Death Penalty and utility of hanging the crazy. *** Ah but from the looks of things, the Son of a Bitch had to stop and reload....

My Heart Goes Out

to any parents out there that had to send a scared and bewildered child to school today.

And as of this morning

Something like eight members of the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation woke up, read this news item, shaved themselves of so closely, looked into the mirror and saw A Future Junior Senator From Massachusetts staring back at them. And one of those guys is already a US Senator! And the punchline? None of them are ready for the job! *** Well it is clear, none of Humble Elias' protestations carry much weight with Senior Senator from Massachusetts, so much for the All Powerful Liberal Media Eh?? *** So if it comes down to yet another Special Election at the very least we will have some sense of Scott Brown's playbook and tactics having run against him quite literally three times in less than three years! And if we wanna retain this seat, we need to dream on first time outside-the-box candidate with some fundraising reach and a punchy message/biography...just remember Martha Coakley the incumbent State Attorney General could not beat Scott Brown, but first time candidate Elizabeth Warren did. There is a lesson in that, Scott ran twice as a blurry family friendly ideological nullity and foundered badly when Warren started drawing up stark battle lines on pocketbook issues. That whole "Indian Thing" didn't help either, rattled on a month too long as well. So if we wanna beat him again, the first and most important step is to take him seriously! So given all that, once last hopeless time I do repeat, JOHN DON'T DO IT!

John Don't Do It...

Looks like JK is about to be offered Foggy Bottom. I am under no illusions here, nobody reads The Chimes At Midnight, nonetheless duty compels me One Last Time to assert that the loss of John Kerry's leadership as Senior Senator from Massachusetts would be a tragedy for the Commonwealth. We have lost Edward Maximus and are already on our third Junior Senator from Massachusetts, this is a time for continuity, for statesmanship, for leadership...this is a time to Stand By The Commonwealth. Don't do it John please. For Every George Catlett Marshall there is a Dean Rusk on the flipside...Remember that Senator. This state is sadly rife with cynical bastards that are slavering at the prospect of a special senatorial election do not gratify them Senator Kerry, they are undeserving of such a boon! Don't Do It John, please. Elias N.

I started out life in the "Riot Age"

and have lived long enough to see the dawn of the Age of School Massacres, from College to High School to Middle School now this horrific slaughter in Connecticut. *** I've said it before and I will say it again, if you are dissasociated and prone to violence in this country, you will find your way to a firearm far easier than you find your way to a psychiatrist. *** As for What Is To Be Done don't look at me, likely we aren't even gonna talk about gun control at this point, it is a policy that is pretty much off the table for good...even if such measures could address the sheer size of the US gun population which of course, they cannot. *** Well...if we aren't gonna debate gun control in the USA then maybe we ought to talk about allocating more money for "lunatic control", y'know more trained psychiatrists in the schools, better staff at mental hospitals with tighter security measures therein. Something to think about since gun control is so unthinkable and hence undiscussable. *** Looking forward to all the dumb things the gun worshippers will be saying this weekend and going forward, and that gabble is sad to say, the extent of the debate we will get on gun violence in the USA. *** The worst thing about this massacre in Connecticut is that was perpetrated on elementary school students, the most easily traumatized cohort by far. Except this time, they really have some to fear. Peace to the departed Succor unto the living....

A "Mistrial"

just doesn't scream "vindication" to Humble Elias. But then again this IS Massachusetts and the bar is set low for these sorts of things, hence ex State Treasurer Tim Cahill's loopy ass grin on the front page of the Globe today. Alas the charges were originally leveled by GOP gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker and so given the vague nature of the statute in question what the hell could Martha Coakley do but seek an indictment and trial? I think if we are serious about public corruption (and we all should be) better sharper laws are needed. It'll be interesting to see what lessons are learned from the Cahill Trial on Beacon Hill going forward, likely it'll be the wrong ones to be sure. Meanwhile IF a broken down has been like Bill Weld can get puffed up for upcoming senatorial/gubernatorial contests...shee-it why not Tim C. "He is tanned, rested, ready and he beat the rap!"

"Once more unto the breach dear friends..."

I sometimes am given to think that if a small child chanced to ask Scot Lehigh for the sum of two plus two, the Boston Globe columnist would immediately reply "William Weld!" Case in point today's column otherwise a clumsy leak by the former Governor to the effect that he is Baaa-ack in Massachusetts after a prolonged bender in the upper west side of NYC and available for public office if anyone is y'know interested. You can practically hear Lehigh's sigh of relief thru the newsprint. The Former Governor has still got this inexplicable hold on the imaginations of many many Boston columnists, Scot Lehigh most of all. Mind you, Lehigh is only half joking about Weld's notional return to state politics, his other half clearly earnestly wishes Bill would pile in soonest. For truly, Weld's supposed return allows his partisans on the Op-Ed page to cease contemplating the ominous future of Newsprint and pretend that is once again the golden summer of 1993 and Bill Weld is standing like Horatio at the Gates against the hordes of a democratic state legislature. It is an attitude formation that strongly suggests Orwell's fabled "retreat into Stupidity", but there you have it, the mere mention of Bill Weld's name brings it out in local opinion leaders. Never mind the fact that Weld ABANDONED this state as completely as did Mitt Romney, and for reasons even more trivial that Willard hald crazed lust for the presidency, ambition I can understand, Weld left BECAUSE HE WAS BORED! He couldn't make any purchase against Billy Bulger, his brother Whitey or for that fact John Kerry and so, stricken with ennui he resigned and flamed out in the US Senate trying to become Ambassador to Mexico.... Since then nothing but many many convivial cocktail hours a brief inept flirtation with New York Politics and then...the existential blight that attends on divorced WASPs of a certain vintage. And if Bill Weld is bored once again with the life of a Brahmin corporate lawyer will someone please tell him to write a novel or take to the variety stage or maybe start sampling some of Berkshire Mountain Distillery's corn whiskey....anything please but public office we are under no obligation to enable Bill Weld because he cannot entertain himself quietly outside the public expense.

The Decline and Fall of WTKK 96.9 FM Wingnut Spew....

Whoah... The Herald is trafficking in rumors that WTKK FM Talk (famously local platform for Falangist yakkers like Michael Graham) is gonna undergo a format change to...music. Apparently that golden 18 thru 24 demographic isn't enticed by bitter old lags screeching "Benghazi" into the microphones all day long...I mean like who knew?? Oh Ghod I may need to hire Harvard Stadium in which to guffaw...You mean Michael Graham will have to go out and get a real job? He might even end up ON WELFARE!!!! Disgraceful! Oh and poor bloated Howie Carr frittering away his ironclad contract at WRKO, if this rumor is true he will NEVER achieve his dream of being the morning man on WTKK... I shouldn't make fun of Howie, he is so bloated and sickly looking that TPTB at WTKK probably didn't think the columnist a good actuarial bet and took a second look at Justin Bieber's muzik as a consequence... Good lord supplanted by robo-dj's playing synthe-pop songs, its like a Phillip K. Dick novel over at WTKK except no one is gonna drop the H-bomb and thus put wingnut radio out of it's existential misery.

"A Broad General View of Things..."

The Supreme Court is gonna take up the issue of same sex marriage? Whoo boy...batten down the hatches kids this is gonna be a good one. There are two Supreme Courts at war here, the nice broadminded five to four line up that validated HCR about a year ago...or the assholes who foisted President Bush Jr on us. Which court will show up? Who can say? All I do know is that there are just enough vengeful wingnut ideological warriors on the Supreme Court, people just desperate to punch some liberal or liberal cause in the nose, to give me a distinct sense of unease. Ah but that is the mocking dilemma for a nice white suburban liberal like myself, I don't recognize the right of the legislature to restrict freedom of marriage nor do I trust the highest court in the land to interpret the constitution in a "fair and balanced" fashion. Like I said, batten down the hatches....

Sick Day

I'm sick of blogging in other words, will need to take a day here...

The Fiscal Cliff...

A lot of palaver is out there right now about a historic deal between the White House and Congress with respect to higher taxes and public spending. Otherwise a whole bunch of pior mandated spending cuts will be triggered on the New Year that'll slow the recovery to a crawl...and this is hardly a galloping recovery so far. I have no doubt there will be a deal, the real question is, can Speaker John Boehner carry his own caucus? Experience teaches us that it may not be possible for Boehner to do so, he talks tough to the White House when the cameras are rolling, but shows no aptitude for getting Tea Partei freaks to toe the line or even keep their word. This is largely a function of nationwide wholsale GOP social engineering in the form of relentless US House gerrymandering that have created a core cadre of political fantasylands that pundits naively call "safe seats". These aree places artfully drawn to the advantage of older angrier voters who elecct very angry hypocritical men to office whow have no mandate other than to reject the current resident of the White House. So compromise under such conditions seems like a pretty dicy proposition. Nonetheless I do think a compromise will be negotiated probably at the last minute and rejected by Boehner's House at the last minute as well. I think the President is doing a masterful job to holding the GOP's feet to the fire, I also think a good chunk of the opposition would see their legs burned off at the knees before they dickered with Barack Obama. Sorry but as liberals and or bloggers or ideological warriors like Humble Elias I think our chief duty right now is to confront sequestration and turn it to the nation's advantage... As to how to do that, waaal you should find a smarter blogger than Humble Elias....

Jim DeMint is leaving the US Senate

For a cush job at the Heritage Foundation. I guess he figures on collecting some easy ass conservtive welfare before running for President in 2016 as a "fresh new Washington Outsider". No doubt he will ring some Tea Party style to that August Think Tank...which can be summarized as "who you hate is important". So at last if DeMint makes the 2016 race and if he get nominated, we will at last see free and clear the final show down between demography and reactionary demagoguery....THAT at least will be interesting to watch.

Carmen Ortiz for Governor?

Geez Governor Patrick sure knows how to stir shit up don't he?? He dropped the US Attorney's name as a gubernatorial candidate at a state house conference with the House Speaker and the Senate President....aaaand PRESTO instant candidate! Gotta break this down from Deval Patrick's perspective....if he was gonna design an insurgent outsider as a democratic candidate one with some marquee potential to hold together the Patrick-Obama coalition (the one that just decked Scott Brown), one who had never run statewide (important advantage in a gubernatorial race in this State) and someone from outside local democratic politics...well he'd be probably come up with Carmen Ortiz. Oh course this not good news for Lt. Governor Murray whose current political woes can be overcome, but it requires Harry Truman's guts and little of Dick Nixon's deviousness...I have my doubts that Tim Murray can punch above his weight in this division. There are some solid caveats here though, is Ortiz even interested in making the race? Can she fundraise? Does she have the rhetorical component to present her views in a cogent and compelling fashion? Is theere still a glass ceiling in GUBERNATORIAL politics and is the stat ready for another female aspirant for the corner office? What sort of a platform would Ortiz run on? Questions abound off of this notion which is just want Patrick probably wants this afternoon, get a lot of people talking incite a few columnistas...get dopes like me to post shit on the internet. It never fails, hell I'll go for it every time it's either this or I slag Jim DeMint as a shitkicker Roundhead. Tomorrow? I denounce Jim DeMint of course. :D

Liz needs $400K....

Apparently all those volunteers worked up a seriously appetite workin' da precincts for our new Junior Senator Elect last month, Citizen Warren owes food vendors four hundred thousand clams. Yipes! Thats a lot of dough to a US Senator who can't just shake down Wall Street to cover the overage... I knew I shouldn't have deleted that email last night...I just figured it was a list of her post election appearances, who knew she needed to fundraise?

Nerve Gas...

So now the Supreme Opthamalocrat of Syria proposes to win his Civil War by dropping nerve gas on the rebels?? THAT is this D-Bag's big plan? To pull a Saddam while the whole world watches? I can't think of anything that would bring down NATO intervention quicker, and in that lies the downfall of the House of Assad for sure. At the very least it means a No Fly Zone since the Regime is conjuring with air dropped nerve gas weapons. Good Lord does this dope even listen? Bin Laden was laughing right up until the SEALS ventilated his skull and Khadaffi thought he could defy the world until NATOs fighter jets started screaming over head. Granted it is a regional tradition for regimes to slaughter their way to a majority...but nerve gas is a weapon of mass destruction, its a game changer...and one that rarely works in favor of those in power in the Middle East. I have a suspicion though, maybe it is nothing more than a malign hope, that all this nerve gas palaver is a way to bid up on Assad's exit from Syrian..."Free passage to Moscow and access to my Swiss Bank Accounts or I start nerve gassing the polity!" Given that violent threats are themselves a hallmark of serious diplomacy...this could be a sort of exit strategy, albeit a nasty and possibly genocidal strategy to be sure.

Mike Bloomberg, the Mayor of NYC...

for some perverse reason, wants Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to run for Mayor as his anointed successor in 2013. Apparently this was serious enough to warrant a polite decline from the Secretary of State in a recent phone conversation. This is just plain wacky.... On the other hand were Mayor Menino to step down in 2013, I do think Bill Clinton would make a dandy candidate for Mayor of Boston....tanned, rested, ready and in fine voice as well. I can't imagine a better candidate to transcend the factions that abound in Boston Politics....

I don't do this too often

but "Christopher" over at the Blue Mass Group seems to think we need not fear a revival in Scott Brown's political fortunes. Granted this is all speculative, Senator Kerry has neither confirmed no denied any offer of a cabinet post which or may not come his way...and the 2014 Gubernatorial palaver stands in suspension til this issue is resolved as well. Nonetheless I do think we dismiss Brown at our peril, he is only other republican (other than Romney) who has successfully run statewide in the past ten years. He has a good strong fundraising base, he is young energetic and in the end he is all the state GOP has at this point. At the very least Scott Brown has proven he can thread the needle in a special election, he seems to have less success in a general election environment which is one of the reasons why I wish to deny him his favored gambit and force him to wait either on a contested GOP gubernatorial primary or a wide open shot at the senate. Scott Brown doesn't regard his loss last month as final, so we should not either, attitude is destiny mah frenz.

The War on Christmas has Commenced...

Anyone who publicly plays Frank Sinatra's version of the standard Christmas Carols obviously hates Christmas on a very basic level. Frank was an able vocalist, but his version of musical holiday cheer is vaguely suggetive of a hostage tape. Sinatra sings "Jingle Bells" like he has a pistol put to his head. Remember that whenever Fox News starts up with its annual "War of Christmas" nonsense, the holiday has been in some ways under attack for years by the very people trying to celebrate it.

There is talk in DC of

"arming the Syrian Rebels" as a means to effect the ouster of the Supreme Opthamalocrat in Damascus. I can't think of a worse idea, it was bad when Mitt Romney proposed it back in October, and if anything it is worse one now. We cannot arm a bunch of irregular Arab militias who share a border of Israel and expect any good to come of the transaction. It was one thing to arm the Libyan fighters and establish a no-fly zone, that was a completely different geostrategic situation, Libya doesn't abut Israel and or the West Bank/Gaza. The furthest I'd be prepared to go in Syrian is to establish a no-fly zone under NATO auspices. Turkey is a NATO member and shares a border with Syrian we have to keep this a NATO centered operation. I am no friend of Assad and his corrupt murderous crew...but owing to proximity to Israel and the potential involvement of Turkey in this whole mess, we must needs proceed with caution. Just one more thought, does John Kerry really wanna wade into this mess? A veritable American Metternich would find the current situation daunting. Just sayin' thass all.

It is very nice of the President

to "gift" Mitt Romney with a free lunch in the White House today. The irony should not be lost on anyone least of all the earstwhile GOP Presidential Candidate. Sometimes these interactions don't go well, Carter got treated like a derelict when Reagan came to the White House on a pre-inaugural courtesy call in 1980, but then Reagan was not noted for his generous spirit. Ah but Harvard Law still seems to graduate some sort of gentleman/gentlewoman(so does Annapolis for that fact)...so at the very least the Former Governor of Massachusetts can count on a polite friendly reception.

And another thing Senator Kerry...

The office of Secretary of Defense is the most thankless job in the Cabinet, you get blamed for everything and all five hundred members of congress think you are their personal bitch. The SecDef is never ever remembered well no matter how good his or her intentions...controversy dogs them all to the grave and beyond. As for Foggy Bottom, c'mon now, who wants to FOLLOW Hilary Clinton into that gig?? Nuff said. Besides, why give Scott Brown a free pass into his statewide race of choice? That little issue could be a part of your legacy as well Senator Kerry. I mean forget all those columnistas who are kissing your ass now....They just want the maximum doubt and political spectacle to fill up their word count thass all. My own feeling is let us deny Scott Brown his preferred opportunity, force him to make a choice among sketchy options sez Humble Elias.

Steve Wynn

(who is Donald Trump sans the preposterous ego and dumbass politics), may want to build a casino in Everett Ma. This on the heels of one of Wynn's proposed casinos getting re-jected by the Town of Foxborough Ma. This is the sort of news that will likely get Mayor Menino OUT of that hospital room at Spaulding Rehab and back on the job soonest...he was counting on his legacy consisting of a giant hotel-casino complex to be built on the ruins of Suffolk Downs. And so it goes, locality versus developer versus bureaucracy versus ambitious politician. And out only hope of keeping casinos out, lies in just this sort of chaos...tis a thin reed to be sure, but it's all we've got. Frankly (and I conceded I'm riding a hobbyhorse here) I'd sooner see three more distilleries or oil refineries in the Commonwealth than any casinos....

New Hampshire has just finished renovating

the Governor's Executive Mansion (formally the residence of the Late Senator Styles Bridges who deeded it over to the Granite State)....Just in time for Governor Lynch to leave office. New Hampshire has an EXECUTIVE MANSION??? Talk about EXTRAVAGANCE!!! Dear Ghod what would their yeoman yankee ancestors think of such tomfool frippery??? Land Sakes! I just wanna take this opportunity to point out that the Commonwealth of Masschusetts, the alleged poster child for public profligacy, grants it's Governor's no such baronial residence even if they have to commute in to Boston all the way from North Adams as did Jane "Jingle Money" Swift back in the day. We still got some puritan gumption down hyar, unlike those decadent free spending voluptuaries up in the Granite State....lettin' th' public money burn a hole in their pockets like biblical spendthrifts... What would "Bert and I" say???

Tim Murray wants his shot

at the Governor's office in 2014, and predictably, Joanie Vennochi thinks that ambition "delusional", citing a lack of transparency with respect to Lt. Governor's driving record. Ah yes transparency, that thing that the Globe frets about endlessly when the democrats are in office, you never see or hear the word when the GOP rules the roost for some reason. Nonetheless with the McLaughlin thing, and the Burgess thing a case can be made against the Lt Governor if it wasn't for the fact that the Admin generally fires people who abide beneath the accusation of malfeasance, unlike the Romney admin who just purged out the gays with a tight little smirk. Ah but no matter, the local punditariat has made up it's mind about Murray and no amount of blogging from me at least is gonna change anyone's mind. Tim Murray could take his case over the heads of the media to the people directly Harry Truman style he is at the very least strongly associated with a successful administration in the State House...And that counts for something. Alas and alack, I just don't see Tim Murray generating those kinds of sparks...He is a decent relatively sincere fellow but I doubt he can make the necessary fight to carry the day. Nonetheless his position gives him a serious leg up on the competition within the democratic party...Soooo I dunno,not seeing him as the candidate who can beat Scott Brown or Charlie Baker, but I'd love to be proven wrong here.

Hizzoner....

Da Mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, is running the city from a hospital bed owing to variety of complaints. He has been hospitalized since October, with no discharge date promulgated as yet. *** So let me go srtaight there and suggest the Mayor's health is about to become a major political issue in the City of Boston in the lead up to the 2013 Mayoral Election. I don't think anyone wants to articulate it yet, but it is definitely the 800 lb anthropoid in the room. If Menino declines to run, that sets off a free-for-all scramble for office...if he does run the questions about his health will be right out there for all to see and hear. It is an interesting prospect for a blogger at a serious remove from Boston politics...but then I gotta work with what I got... My own thinking is, I cannot imagine Menino "going out on his stool" so to speak even if it necessitated campaigning from an ambulance stretcher. But then again, there is a point beyond which mere willpower cannot work it's dark magic. Y'know, its funny after a generation of treating state democrats as pesky supplicants, it may well be that Tom Menino's last great political accomplishment lay in the elevation of a liberal Harvard Law Professor to the US Senate....

Some 3600 or so

of our fellow citizens of the Commonwealth, have sent petitions to the White House, demanding that Massachusetts secede from the Federal Union. This of course is the tantrum du jour from the radical right in the wake of Obama's re-election this monht. Soooo there is a tiny minority of rightists, libertarians, enraged republicans, kooks, weirdos and wingnuts in Massachusetts who would somehow prefer the notational separatist reign of DEVAL Patrick over the Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama??? Talk about excising your nose to shame your face Oh but it gets worse, because clearly the rightists of Texas would prefer the likes of a grim teachable like Rick Perry as their notional national leader over Barack Hussein Obama. Shee-it if Texas was somehow able to secede with Perry in charge they'd all be the thralls of Mexico within eighteen months count on it....

Mouse Musings....

Over at "Channel Zero".... It is a little disheartening to note the sheer concentration of classic fictional characters from Superman to Nancy Drew that are essentially owned lock stock and barrel by corporations. Nobody makes money by producing anything desirable anymore, we just build th' old profile and cash in by selling out. And that is the inexorable logic imposed on us by an private sector that produces nothing in abundance save MBAs and attorneys.

Y'know...I just luv it when...

Governor Patrick tries to give Howie Carr a heart attack via policy pronouncement.  Case in point the Governor's decision to extend state tuition to the kinder of illegal immigrants...if that didn't induce a fugue in Howie's man-cave in rustic Wellesley what the hell will??

But then this is what I like about Deval Patrick, occasionally he makes a decision on the pure morality in play. A Mitt Romney would want focus group data before even considering the issue...and a call-around to his fundraising base. I know I'll miss Patrick's leadership sorely when he teleports himself to Glory....

Schadenfreude Part III

As much fun as the Boston Herald is, on the day after the democrats clear the board, nothing quite matches reading the newsweeklies and their attempts to wrap their narrow little groupthink minds around the recent presidential election.

Time  Magazine: Has this whole "Whoa Up there democrats!  You didn't quite score a landslide this time! Don't Get So Cocky or We Will Run a Caricature of You On Our Cover!" meme goin' on.
Otherwise the whole issue is given over to nostalgia for Romney's winning performance in the Denver debate....
 It is pretty funny to read when you consider that the whole Time-Life empire was founded by a god fearing GOP publicist named Henry Luce who honestly believe every republican excess was naught but boyish high jinks and every democratic over-reach A Grave Threat To The U.S. Constitution. As the Olde Misanthrope once opined "Time was always a haughty little rag"...and historically immune to it's own hypocrisy as well.
Shit as far as Humble Elias is concerned Time Magazine invented "Fair and Balanced" news coverage.

Newsweek: Is a fun read this week as well, they can't decide if the GOP is dead outright or mostly dead.
But then again this is "Newsweek" we are talking about they change sides at a speed to do justice to a Mitt Romney. Two months ago they screamed it was a lock for Obama, when the Denver debates went south they started hedging their bets and when Obama finally surged to victory they went running out into the streets banging the pots and shrieking they wuz wif da Prez all da time!

Print journalism is dying and will not likely survive the decade in any substantive way, I will mourn much of it's passing as a former freelance writer for various local publications.  But at least when Time and Newsweek finally go for the terminal dirt nap some good will come of the much ballyhoo'd "Apocalypse for the floppies".

I can remember with the simplest  nostalgia, back in the 1980's when both publications would literally flop over on their backs like bitch dogs at the mere mention of Ronald Reagan's name.   Newsweek in particular was a eight year long weekly commercial for the Reagan Admin right down to George Will's weekly toadying on the back page.  Heady stuff indeed, but now both pubs are headed for the last round up...I for one am getting my dancing shoes shined so I can execute a clumsy nasty little jig atop their cold journalistic graves.

I don't know exactly how

firing rockets into the vicinity of fabled "Dome of the Rock"(allegedly Islam's Third Holiest Site), is supposed to do the cause of Palestinian Militancy any damn good.


Just sayin' thass all....

Oh and Mitt Romney thinks "gifts"

from Barack Obama to certain constituency groups won the election for the democrats. These constituency groups being women, hispanics, blacks Asians and anyone else with Common Sense I guess.
Cause' lets face it, what can a cold aloof quasi Randian stiff like Mitt Romney doo-oo against a policy "gift" like Hope??
***
Still in his own maladroit way, the former Governor has admitted if unintentionally that the GOP has a serious demographic problem out in the precincts...
I guess he is leaving it to Paul Ryan to follow up and Jim Crow the voting booths come 2016.

If you wanna read something hilarious in today's Globe

check out Joan Vennochi's column she is LOUD in her praises for Senator John Kerry for once, but then again she wants him to make the jump to Foggy Bottom as well.
Of course with John Kerry safely tucked way in the Cabinet, Joan will then have a ringside seat on the ensuing special election in the Commonwealth thus to sell newspapers and generate column topics galore.
Well sheee-it I need blog fodder too, but I won't sacrifice John Kerry to get it.
John me heartie, Forget all this empty praise from certain columnists who were calling you a hapless loser not sixty days ago...turn down the offer no matter how tempting the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom or the Collectorship of the Port of Galveston Texas may be.
Please Senator, Stand by Massachusetts!
Don't do Scott Brown any favors, let him try to porch climb his way back on the established schedule ....

Petraeus...

Somewhere in Merle Miller's biography of Harry Truman ("Plain Speaking"), the Former President opines briefly on the three things (or is it five?) that inevitably bring down a statesman.
One of those things was "running around with women"...a topic that Truman was both emphatic and brief.
And so it goes with General Petraeus, power, the perception of power, the demonic fringe benefits of power and ...sycophants all united in a heady brew that undid a decorated Officer and a CIA Director and a presidential prospect.
It is an old story, and never ceases to enthrall.
I feel bad for his wife, she married into the mishaugas with eyes open and still got publicly humiliated...oh well this is why we have divorce courts.

Secesh....

A White House website is apparently being bombarded with petitions demanding secession & disunion in the wake of last week's GOP debacle.
So much for grace in defeat eh?
Well lemme tellya, secesh is a dead end, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis didn't send Abe Lincoln any petitions when they decided to hazard all on disunion.
Moreover revolutions are not ignited by sending angry emails...
No this is a symptom of serious post electoral defeatism among the opposition it is all very emotional and a little childish quite frankly.  It is akin to all those hysterical announcements that the captioned speaker would "leave the country" if Bush won in 2004...
Sad silly stuff quite frankly.
I blame the apocalyptic tone of campaign advertising it leaves a nasty psychic hangover after the election is over and done with.  Ah but thanks to Citizen's United we can look forward to more electoral hangover's like this for decades to come.

John Don't Go!!!

The Washington Post claims that The President wants to make Senator Kerry Secretary of Defense.

This is just a bad idea all around, the job isn't a good fit for Kerry personally, it makes Elizabeth Warren the Senior Senator from Massachusetts after less than a year on the job, puts Scott Brown back into play and forces the Commonwealth thru another Special Election not three years after the last one.

Senator Kerry I speak as an old obscure supporter yours, DO NOT DO IT!
Please...We need you here.
The people that are for this, are those that will most profit from political chaos in the Commonwealth, don't make that your legacy Senator, turn down the offer if the offer comes your way!

The State GOP

appears to be in a self pitying transport of despair following last week's thorough drubbing at the polls here in the Commonwealth.
They lost seats in the lege, couldn't elect Tisei or re-elect Brown, pretty much they got served across the board.
As a democrat and a blogger, I can watch that process with some grim amusement...and yet I'd give the Massachusetts GOP even odds today to capture the governorship come 2014.

Stop and think, the democrats have to gin up a candidate they aren't gonna have Deval Patrick with his charisma and record of achievement to headline the ticket.
Moreover the list of democratic gubernatorial aspirants (admittedly notional at this point) runs the gamut from the experienced and well known to the unknown-with-potential.
I would rate none of the democratic aspirants currently bruited about as particularly inspired or charismatic.
Moroever if the default regression to the mean in Massachusetts tends towards big democratic majorities it also resets pretty effortlessly to republican governors to keep an eye on the democrats.
The opposition still has some names out there who can fundraise and have run statewide both successfully and unsuccessfully...that is more than enough to get started as far as Humble Elias can see.
A lot depends on whether or not John Kerry makes the jump to Foggy Bottom, that could upend things very nicely for everyone over the short term.
Which I why I wanna go on record and beg the Senior Senator to resist any offer to become Secretary of State, for about a dozen good reasons we need him here in Massachusetts!

Stop and think for a moment...

Just exactly who wants to join the GOP these days?

I mean of the rising electoral cohorts in the USA?

Blacks, Women, Hispanics, Asians...all of them deserted Mitt Romney and went marching in the streets for Obama on Tuesday.
The results were so obvious and irrefutable that even a hopeless dub like Jane "Jingle Money" Swift admits the GOP is in a serious demographic trouble.

These days down in DC the republican's power base is down to a collection of rotten borough house districts bought and paid for with corrupt petrodollars to maintain the hopeless and helpless John Boehner as House Speaker and an vengeful gerontocracy of skygrifting Supreme Court Justices, after that....pffft they got nuthin'.

There are likely two courses of action open to our republican brethren.

One is to opening compete with the democrats for the loyalties of the rising electoral cohorts, this would likely require some modification of the GOP's core ideology and legislative program and would likely antagonize for different reasons both the big money contributors and the tea partei base that the GOP co-depends on for survival.

The other option is to "Retreat into Stupidity" (to quote George Orwell), insist nothing is wrong in terms of demographics and double down on restricting access to the ballot for anyone outside the GOP comfort zone.

Given the magnitude of the psychic, ideological and monetary costs of option #1, anyone wanna take action that option# 2 is the GOP's answer to the 2012 debacle when all is said and done?

Anyone??

Karl Rove

allegedly shook down the Overclass for three hundred million dollars in SuperPAC contributions all in a bid to unseat President Obama on Tuesday.
As of 10:18pm EST, 11-9-2012 he has just exactly nothing to show for the effort, every penny of it WASTED!!
HAW HAW!!
I've waited a long time for Karl's Komeuppance, it was well worth the wait believe me!
***
My Ghod three hundred million dollars thrown away, truly we need a new Overclass in this country the one we have right now is too credulous & self destructive by half!
***
Y'know the great political managers have a short life expectancy, the Mark Hannas, the Louis Howes, the James Carvilles have maybe two campaigns in them, and that is it!
Afterwards they can lobby, lecture, write, yak it up on TV...Or they can become fundraisers and plunge off the cliff that beckoned so saucily to Karl Rove this year...

Three hundred million think of it, you could buy a lot of pastry for that kind of long green, shee-it you could corner the domestic market with liquid assets like that.
And given the outcome this Tuesday the money would have been better spent doing just exactly that!

Schadenfreude part II

Holly Robichaud (Boston Herald Columnist), the very model of restrain and decorum in defeat.

The Fall of Mitt Romney....

Y'know, I took no pleasure in watching Willard Mitt Romney's electoral meltdown and subsequent defeat Tuesday night.
He has campaigned nigh incessantly for an unprecedented six years straight for the US Presidency and has just exactly nothing to show for it.
A wearisome exercise that helped morph a twitchy ass-kissing amateur into an uninteresting hack when the big hammer finally fell at 11:18PM EST, 11-6-2012.
In the end, Willard stopped simply being entertaining, his gaffes dried up at long last and he managed on nothing more than smarm, mendacity and sheer lust for power to make this a competitive race in the final weeks.
For a while there this summer, Mitt had all the makings of another Sarah Palin he literally said nothing sensible for four months straight, but late in the game he found his opportunity and ran with it right off a cliff.
I suppose there is something admirable in Romney's desire to go down with all flags flying or at least he wanted to make it look like all that money he collected from the overclass was going into a real fight to the finish.

In truth, this whole election heralds the Twilight of the MBAs.

Ah yes that strange business school mentality that asserts that the skills necessary to run a tuna cannery, high tech company or a great republic into the ground, are entirely transferable based on one's MBA from an A-List school.
This notion has been the absolute downfall of the US Private Sector during this current recession and it got a rude awakening on Tuesday.
You just can't treat the US Presidency as a natural corporate promotion...Romney tried it free and clear in a National Election and it did not work.
And when you partner all this up with Romney's almighty intellectual disconnect from the great issues of the day and his rhetorical limitations you get a recipe for disaster.
You could tell even as the race tightened that Mitt knew something was wrong, why else did he suddenly defect to the classic Massachusetts GOP Gubernatorial playbook in the final weeks?
Run to the center, play to the independents, deflect the oppositions ground game via commercials and try to rise above it all.

Put it another way Romney tried to address accusations that he changed his mind a lot by...changing his mind.
In the end none of it was enough, the coalition he sought to create was too narrow, too backwards, too bent on punishing others with a tendency to...vote, and for a man who trumpeted his independence, Romney was pretty clearly the complete captive of the GOP's tea partei base even if there might have been mutual contempt going back and forth on both sides.
But its over now, Romney's twelve years at the top of US Politics has come to a tedious and slightly tawdry close.
This blog started with him as Governor in 2003 at the start of his desperate run for ever high office, Humble Elias has been at a remove from Romney nigh these twenty two years but always an interested observer of his many many political personas.
He had none of Nixon's dark charm or Reagan's loopiness or the Bush Family's crime family patina...Nope in the end Romney was just a hapless too ambitious MBA who wanted to outdo his Dad in the worst possible way, and so he did.

Schadenfreude (Part I)

Howie Carr is just a delight, insolent, insufferable and arrogant when the GOP wins, he turns into a craven sniveling whiny beeyotch when they lose.
So of course, today's column is a delicious primal scream of infantile despair over Scott Brown's defeat....which included this gem:
"Despite his upbeat concession, Brown hated losing to the fake indian".
Wow read minds much Howie?
Anyway it can't be any more painful than having a fake soldier as our uniform loving Junior Senator for two long years....
***
Meanwhile over in today's Globe Jeff Jacoby is bitching and moaning about the divisive smear campaign that Obama unleashed on poor unsuspecting Mitt Romney.
Well...Gee Jeff having your patriotism and very American Birthright incessantly questioned and derided is bound to make a reelection bound US President mighty quick on the draw.
Besides where was all this bleeding heart concern over nasty campaign tactics when the "Swift Boat Liars"were burning up the news cycle in 2004?
Oh and those cute little band aids embossed with the Purple Heart that got passed around at the GOP convention...a  very crude dig at John Kerry's war injuries and all passed over by Jeff Jacoby with a prim sacerdotal silence.
Ah but this is Jeff we are talking about, he wants to blast his opponents, righteously, all he ever seems to do is set fire to himself....

Scott Brown, Premature Elation...

Well, Former State Senator Scott Brown's two year long victory lap ended abruptly last night as democrat Elizabeth Warren (hereafter known as the Little Professor from Oklahoma) wound up & decked his bony ass.
Scott will have hopefully have made some lucrative contacts and dug up some good lobbying gigs to supplement his muscular National Guard pension, cuz the gravy train grinds to a halt in two short months.
Scottie we hardly knew ye....
Ghod Howie Carr must be having a fugue right now....
***
Well what can I say, Brown "went negative" over the whole indian ancestry issue and kept it up even as the whole argument got embarrassing and lame.
Worse all the good will he built up with independent women last summer got vaporized by the end of September, the man looked and sounded like the worst sort of entitled bully.
His base though must have loved it, certainly the hapless lout who screamed at my Warren for Senate" sign,  "Liar Liar Pants on Fire" was heavily invested in that narrative.
And there is a lesson there, one thing Brown was good at was getting borderline Falangists to vote, contribute and work for him even as he posed as a sort of Indian-loathing Northeastern Moderate Republican.  But yez gotta dance with them what brung yuh and so their issues in some way became his issues and off a cliff he drove in  campaign SUV.
It didn't help much that he amassed no record of note his two year Senatorial Career nor did it do him much good to virtually put himself up for public auction every time some issue of transcendent significance came before the US Senate.
Still, his political career is hardly over, his wife is still comely, with Tisei's defeat down on the South Shore last night he becomes the highest ranking GOP officeholder with worthwhile name recognition & a definite constituency as well. And he has good fundraising ability as well...will it be Governor or Senator?  That depends on these rumors of John Kerry's move to Foggy Bottom (something I devoutly hope does NOT happen)...but then again a serious Charlie Baker v. Scott Brown gubernatorial primary could be a fun damage fest to be sure.
Like Dr. Fu Manchu, likely we will hear from Scott Again.
Meanwhile congrats to the Little Professor from Oklahoma, she done blew a hole thru the glass ceiling in state politics, what Healey, Coakley, Swift & O'Brien could not do, Warren pulled off with aplomb.
This is a good thing for both democrats and republicans an important needless and sexist barrier has at last been breeched.

Barack Obama doubles down on the USA...

The test of a great political organization and the coalition it seeks to assemble, is not made in flush times when landslide victories are on offer, it is rather coming thru come hell or high water in a tight race.
And that is what the President did last night, he forged a coalition, built a machine to them all to the polls and ran Mitt Romney right off the board.

Its a classic case, much akin to the democratic victories in 1948, 1960 & even 1976.

So kudos to the President, he never ever flinched, hell his "those not skinning may hold a leg" philosophy even developed good stout coat-tails down ticket, that coalition of his likely elected four democratic senators last night...Including our new Junior Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren.

But it was Obama's night, he proclaimed, he attacked, he had boundless faith in his organization & coalition, he never backed down on his own record and what the hell, he won.
Object lesson for the democrats of 2016....

A Final Thought:

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

Winston Churchill - June 18, 1940

To which Humble Elias adds that the men who got us into this fix, who profited from the subsequent tumult, who were themselves bailed out of their follies at public expense, must not be rewarded for their    ineptitude and greed with the highest office in the land.

And so for the Glory of the Commonwealth, for the deliverance of the very Republic itself, get out there and Vote For Obama!

Oh and Bill Weld caught the Amtrak Redeye from NYC

and endorsed Scott Brown down in Quincy Market yesterday.
No doubt afterwards he snuck off to the "Bell in Hand" sat at the end of the bar moodily drank Chivas Regal, played "Under My Thumb" over and over on the Jukebox and stared off into space muttering to himself.

KIDDING
KIDDING
KIDDING!

I KID BECAUSE I LOVE
I LOVE...TO KID!

:D

Oops almost forgot....

To endorse Barack Obama for reelection as President of these United States.
He has in truth ravenous opponents, but the one thing that will not stand is the accusation that he lacks leadership.
Indeed as Churchill observed of Lincoln's critics "They did not know leadership when they saw it".
And so it is with Obama, he has soldiered thru his first term with remarkable aplomb and purpose a calmer abler man simply cannot be found.
Mitt Romney by contrast is not man made for challenging times, his foreign policy is naught but to make threats and hope no one calls him on it, his domestic policy is designed to insulate and protect the overclass, all other can go hang.
Nope it's Obama first last and always.
***
Oh and while I am at it, I heartily endorse democrat Elizabeth Warren for the US Senate, she will work 24-7 in the interests of the plain people of the Commonwealth and that is good enough for me. Scott Brown?  After he is done checking his polls, reviewing his pension options he MIGHT do right by Massachusetts, but it'll be largely by accident to be sure.
No Warren is our best bet to restore some leadership to the Junior Senator's slot from Massachusetts.
And while we are at it, lets elect democrat Dave Rogers to the 24th Middlesex House District tomorrow, he has some wit, an interesting resume and a willingness to work hard. His opponents self proclaimed chief qualifications seem to be "Belmont Residence"....Rogers at least is prepared to look at the district's needs as a whole...and as usual that is good enough for Humble Elias.
And in the end this is all I can do, that and resolve myself tomorrow morning into the ranks of the immortal Spartans of Menotomy and make my Last Stand for Commonwealth & Republic.
So...for all of us lets win this one so that a hundred years from now, the democrats of 2112 can say "this was their finest hour"!

There is nothing more grimly hilarious than to watch

Scott Brown's current round of campaign commercials and realizing that after months of playing cowboys and indians he is suddenly and at the last minute retreating to the center and even moving leftward.
"Vote the Man Not the Party" is a good slogan however and might move some voters into his column come Tuesday, of course it is awfully late in the game to morph into a Rockefeller Republican if'n yew ask me.
On the other hand, blustering about your independent bona fides in the final forty eight before election day is a tried and true GOP tactic in Massachusetts, versions of it finished in the money for Weld, Cellucci & Romney so take heed is all I can say.

Oh and Scott is still flashing pics of his own self in full National Guard Colonel Drag...Class All the Way Scott, Class All the Way.

Final argument...

True to his churlish streak unto the last, Mitt Romney is now claiming that re-electing Obama will compel congressional republicans to renew their policy of obstruction & gridlock and bring chaos down on Washington DC.
"President Romney" will of course somehow smooth over those troubled waters...

Sounds like blackmail huh? Elect me or the GOP House caucus will wreck the country, it's a argument straight out of Allen Drury...
But like all of Romney's more feverish notions it is built on the dubious premise that Mitt somehow has a mysterious pimp hand over the barbarian wing of the GOP.
Quite the opposite in fact, it is they that have the whip hand over Romney, he has done nothing but suck up to them for two whole years, made any number of patently insane promises (expl. Abolish/Defund FEMA), Romney has been dealing with Massachusetts democrats all his life he has no concept of the vengeful extremism within and without the congressional GOP.
My thought is, Mitt will collapse like a house of cards at the first puff of wind from the right, that lot have been pushing Romney around for years, and there is no indication they would stop if he became President.
Frankly if you want some measure of bipartisanship Obama is a much better bet....because the best bipartisan politicians are the one who can say "No" and mean it.
Romney can't say "No" not to his own, and they know it.

Congressman Ed Markey

is holding an emergency meeting tomorrow at 11am at Arlington Town Hall  in respect  of climate change and the impact thereof on the Northeast.
Kevin Knobloch, of the Union of Concerned Scientists will be there, so this is hardly gonna be a campaign rally.
I give Congressman Markey high marks for at least trying to initiate a discussion about climate change even in the aftermath of an avowed superstorm and in the final three days of a Presidential campaign, the man's heart is in the right place.
But I'd feel a whole lot better about the long term prospects of the climate change debate if similar meetings were being held in Miami Florida, Charleston SC and Norfolk VA.

At the very least we have to start thinking about counter measures in the North East Corridor, and that of course, means money.

Wanna meet Howard Dean?

He will be making an appearance today down at the Arlington-Lexington combined democratic headquarters 46 Massachusetts Avenue Lexington from about 12:45 pm to 1:45 pm.

He will be no doubt gently haranguing the Spartans for one last final & supreme bid for victory...

Christie in 2016...

Amid tragedy and disaster sometimes the best political course is simultaneously the honorable thing to do, ergo hunkering down and doing your job as best you can.
Barack Obama knows this which is why he can rise to the occasion during a natural disaster by keeping calm, engaging with the public and buckling down to the matter at hand.
Bumptious NJ Governor Chris Christie seems to have learned the same lesson in the wake of Hurricane Sandy attack no one, praise hard work and the job at hand.
Much as it seems mercenary, in this hurricane is opportunity to intro onself to the nation as a bipartisan rebuilder of broken townships.
Thus...Christie becomes a prospect for the GOP nomination in 2016 (assuming of course, the GOP still has the stomach for a Governor from the Northeast)....
Of course Romney must lose on Tuesday for Christie to prosper in the next go round' if Mitt wins likely Christie will miss his chance at the Big Brass Ring.
Fate will decide that part of the scenario, over the long term we should be watchful and see if he starts hitting the gym and dieting Mike Huckabee style...it'll be a sure tip off that Christie has ambitions beyond Trenton.
Fat is like a bald head in modern presidential politics, a drawback in other words. The last well fed Presidential candidate in this century was Adlai Stevenson (the former Illinois Governor liked his meals to be sure) and the last President with a paunch was Herbert Hoover...I mean you do the math on that one.

If we aren't going to have any discussion about the

physical consequences of climate change in this presidential campaign (and we are not believe me, Mitt Romney alone is a statesman who unconvinced of global warming and the efficacy of FEMA), then we must have a discussion about how best to prepare the East Coast of the USA for the results of "extreme weather".
By this I mean protocols for the sharing of resources between states post-weather event, appropriations for evacuation housing, improvements in evacuation routes, strengthening upgrades to the electrical grid and long term studies as to the contours of the Atlantic coastline in fifty and one hundred years.
OR we could just have that climate change conversation now before events force hasty decisions of us later.
***
Not for nothing but the Romney Campaign mus t be writhing with impatience and tsuris, Hurricane Sandy has pushed their sh*t out to the ten minute mark on the evening news, a veritable exile in the final week before a national election.
Anyway, skip over to Yahoo.com they've got a well displayed button thereon to make Red Cross contributions, money is the great solvent of trouble, money buys food shelter and warmth in a trice....remember that going forward.

Hurricane Sandy

was a category one storm with the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in the Atlanticand dimensions to do justice to a disaster movie.
Just what the hell are we to do when it is a category five with these dimensions churning up the Northeast Corridor?
What are we gonna do?
Flee to Montreal?

So Scott Brown chickened out of tonight's debate

On account of the hurricane?

The kids are goin' to school in Menotomy...the DPW is out in force, everyone is workin' hard on it.
What the hell is Scott Brown gonna do tonight?  Clear debris with his super-breath? Fuse downed power lines with his heat-vision?

The storm of politics

Some differences cut to the core of a respective presidential candidate.

Yesterday,  Mitt Romney took time out of his busy campaign schedule to call up the governors of the states in Hurricane Sandy's storm path to offer sympathy.
Except of course, true to form, he only called the republican governors.
Vintage Romney, cold unfeeling and selfish to the last.

President Obama on the other hand, held conference calls with all the affected state governors and it it looks like he followed up with personal calls to each and every governor involved.
Hell, Chris Christie praised the President's performance at a press conference yesterday, a virtual campaign commercial unto itself live on CNN.
Indeed, vintage Obama in every way.

Back during the GOP Primaries

Candidate Mitt Romney wanted to close down FEMA, pass its responsibilities back to the states if not completely privatize disaster relief.

Of course that was in June 2011, plenty of time for Willard and Eric Fehnstrom to shake the old etch-a-sketch and turn Mitt into FEMA bestest friend evah.
Like I said before many many times, Romney is not indecisive, vacuous yes but never equivocal. He is always for something until the balance of payoffs changes, then he changes his position and becomes for something else with equal vehemence.
Accusations of hypocrisy are then deflected as the cantings of the biased liberal media....and he usually gets away with it as well.
Sickening but breathtakingly functional as well.

Per the Boston Globe Mitt Romney has been stumping Ohio

extolling his bipartisan ability to "get along with democrats" based on his brief tenure as Governor of democrat-heavy Massachusetts.
Well, as I recall Mitt's idea of "Getting Along With Democrats"consisted on passive aggression, artful hiding under the bed, a little bit of ineffectual bluster and that familiar Romney smarm.
He spent very little time in the state so his "bipartisanship" neither offended or helped much for that matter.
But it is his "bipartisan ability" to get along with republicans that everyone should scrutinize in great detail.
The man has never had to deal with republicans who had any sort of power over him and his agenda, there is no telling how "President" Romney would react to a determined pushback from the back benches of the House GOP Caucus?
Mitt's most likely reaction though will be one of craven surrender or evasion or passive aggression....or something.
He'll think of something, just wanting to be President badly makes him a decisive statesman...doesn't 
it??
Still Mitt has made literally thousands of promises to the conservative right, he can do that pretty freely because he does not feel himself obligated to follow thru owing to his rhetorical disconnect from the issues which I have covered off in previous (and interminable) posts.
But what happens when others, in the House GOP Caucus and elsewhere people with independent bases of power, start holding him responsible?
I think he'll melt away into rhetorical abstraction...like the Wicked Witch the Wizard of Oz.
I could be wrong, but then again that would be the best case scenario...

The Governor of Maryland has called out the National Guard

to deal with the project damages inflicted by Hurricane Sandy.

Does this mean that Colonel Scott Brown (AKA the Junior Senator from Massachusetts and Wall Street's own Great White Hope) will be "Called to the Colors"and have to take up his action station manning the pumps in the basement of the Calvert County Court House??

LWV Candidate's Night, 10-24-2012, Dateline the Chenery Middle School Belmont Ma

Honest to Ghod, if I hear independent candidate for state rep (24th Middlesex) Jim Gammill utter "fiscal viability" one more I'm gonna start hitting myself over the head with a two by four to drown him out.

Ah yes, the LWV held a ballot-question and candidate's forum over in Belmont Wednesday night, it was sparsely attended and the questions from the aud were uninspired given the number of contested races this year.

Other than that there isn't a lot to report from the 24th Middlesex State Rep's race, everyone wants transparency, a bigger bang for the buck in public transportation they want development halted in the Belmont Uplands and on the Mugar Property.
As far as the later two issues are concerned there is no great disagreement between Republican Tomi Olson, Independent James Gammill and Democrat Dave Rogers even as to the means.
No if there were differences between the candidates, it was mostly on the dispirited and dissipated issue of who is the outsider?
By that I mean in nigh every other sentence Citizens Gammill & Olson belabored their years and years of Belmont Residency and eons of service to that Holy Township.
It was all a bit much I mean is the right address their soul difference with Rogers (a resident of North Cambridge)?
So it would seem...I understand the need for a dose of "Belmont Nationalism", it is to be expected, but Gammill & Olson are about as subtle as a sledgehammer when wielding that issue.
Hell Olson was so taken with her local bona fides she completely blanked on her own closing statement   and could even recall the usual GOP boilerplate about stimulating small businesses.
Like I said dispiriting...Rogers got off a good parting line about "Its not about where you are from it is about where you stand"....it was about the only memorable thing said all night.
Nonetheless I am warming to Rogers he is a good listener, has a certain amount of wit and a feisty look in his eye.
Still the word on the street is, this is a fight between Gammill and Olson to secure a strong second place finish, if possible deny Rogers a majority in the process and set the state for a "do over" in 2014.
Even 50% would be considered a setback in the current climate.
Allegedly, Gammill has $30k on hand to bombard Belmont voters will mailers between now and election day, a second place finish would set him up nicely for 2014 either as a dissident democrat or an independent.
Otherwise the man has no presence to speak of, outside Belmont, so all of this speaks to a vast effort to galvanize the disgruntled cohorts within that town.
Will it work likely not given turnout this year but it could well set the stage for another series of contested primaries and elections two years hence.
Well...clearly this is how they play the game in Belmont, it seems so petty but thar yuh go.

Anyone interested in the 24th Middlesex House race...

is advised to get over the Chenery Middle School 95 Washington Street in Belmont tonight for the League of Women Voters candidates & ballot questions forum @ 7:30pm.

This may prove as good an anecdotal indicator of the relative strength of the three captioned candidates...lacking any reliable polling of course.

I would also point out on a purely anecdotal level of course, I am seeing more and more Gammill lawn signs up and down Common Street in Belmont.
Gammill of course is the well heeled independent in the race, the one unafraid to traffic in his Carter Admin bona fides...

Just sayin' thass all....

Yes I am on vacation...

but I still found time to call into the Left Ahead Podcast to wallow in "sarcastic rant driven chatter" for thirty five minutes.
Check it out, because my debased baritone is really just what this election cycle needs...

Note to the Laity

Humble Elias is on vacation this week and will be updating This, The Little Blog That Cried, whimsically and sporadically until next week.
Unless of course Mitt Romney starts babbling at the debate tonight about his attempts to "intervene" with Lindsay Lohan via the Vulcan Mind Meld.
I will be all over that sh*t never fear.

George S. McGovern, R.I.P.

War is a tremendous crucible of leadership.

Something like five US President's served in the ranks during World War II,  some of them even with distinction.
That was George McGovern's war, he was a bomber pilot who flew thirty five missions over the heavily defended Ploesti oil fields in Romania, he got the Distinguished Flying Cross for his troubles and had the prairie thrift to return his aircraft more or less intact.
From that war McGovern extracted a lot of life lessons, in the fragility of human affairs, a fateful sense of consequence and sure knowledge of what constituted a meaningless war having fought a must-win conflict to the finish.
All that and the poor bastard never learned how to win a national election against Richard Milhous Nixon.
***
Ah but McGovern was incorruptible, he came out against the Viet Nam War when it was still risky, he ran for President when he was polling below Sam Yorty, he never said anything he didn't mean or could ever regret...And sadly in America those are the guys who get beaten every time.
***
Y'know I voted for McGovern, yes indeedy, in the Massachusetts Primary in 1984, the Former Senator was by then running as a deficit hawk and something of an infrastructure populist.  It was an odd mix but McGovern made it work.  I recall with some nostalgia a campaign rally at the Palace Theater in Manchester NH headlined by Arlo Guthrie.
The candidate looked like he was having the time of his life...
I took it into my head that since 1984 wasn't going to be a good year for democrats, why not nominate
McGovern at the very least he will engage then President Reagan on the level of pure ideology and the American People will have a full debate on the issues with no apologies.
Well of course, the electorate would have none of my idea...If McGovern had a problem in politics it wasn't his hard core liberalism, he was that on so many issues he was right from the start...and those are  the statesmen that accrue only honor, not necessarily power.

One thing I like about David Bernstein...

Is that he will answer a hypothetical question.

In this case, on his self proclaimed "Ask Me Anything Day" I asked that IF Scott Brown lost next month, mightn't his wife, Gail Huff consider a political career?

He counted the concept intriguing but noted aligning her with the right race might prove dicey.

Well it was a sort of blue-sky query anyway, if she is so willing to alibi for her husband and directly criticize Citizen Warren in all those commercials, seems like she is already "in politics" whether Ms. Huff likes it or not.

Anyway as I've said before, either we are quit of Scott Brown in this election cycle or we never will be until his pride swollen head carries him off to some wintery Waterloo in the snows of the New Hampshire Primary...

Colonel Scott Brown

that fearless part time lawyer  in the Maryland National Guard, that hero with over thirty billable hours in a combat zone....sends me a glossy mailer extolling his pro-choice bona fides every week.
Why I do not know, you'd think I'd be the one democrat in the state he'd a written off by now.

I'm guessing his numbers have plateau'd among independents (traditionally the GOP's main path to statewide office in the Commonwealth) so in expectation of a tight race he is trying to pick off undecided democrats although polling indicates Citizen Warren has a high degree of party unity behind her.
And then there are those ads Gail Huff is doing for Brown on TV, all aimed at women...So I'm  guessing that Brown thinks his margin of victory (should he win) is built around undecided women and disaffected democrats.
Will it work I don't know, this remains in my mind a very tight race  no matter what the good or bad news we extract from the polling.
Personally I've always found it a little tasteless the way Brown trots out his wife and daughters to cover his ass on reproductive issues, he has had two years to actually run up a positive record in this area and has manfully declined to do so....

Oh Gee...

Mitt Romney is in a lather about lithium battery manufacturer A123's bankruptcy...they got 5 million in stimulus funds and thus are somehow a example of the Obama admin's socialistic policy failures.
IF ONLY Bain Capital Group was in on this mishaugas, those A123  manufacturing jobs and the supporting technology would be efficiently shipped out to China safe and sound!
Romney always knew how to pick winners at Bain, he'd pick em unerringly and then ship them out to the People's Republic of China.
Twenty years as a venture capitalist, and I'm not sure Citizen Romney has set one lathe a turning or kept one factory open.
Romney is good at creating big value pay out for his partners, he doesn't know shit about job creation never has never will.

Romney & women...

Apparently the former viceroy's goal in last night's debate was to "reach out to women" .
He has to say the least a contentious relationship with that particular gender having ended the political careers of some three female aspirants to the Governorship of the Commonwealth (two of them republicans)...and then there is his unctuous patronizing 19th century attitude towards women which makes most observers wonder if Mitt Romney has ever worked for a woman or been responsible to a woman other than his late mother?
Well...I've said it before and I'll say it again Ardith Wieworka was a hardworking head of the Child Service's Office before Romney fired her in 2004 allegedly because she wanted to marry her same gender life partner.
Shown the door by the chilly crew around the then Governor,  Ms. Wieworka was allegedly told it was nothing personal but they wanted "someone more like us" doing her job.
Thus Romney commenced his seemingly eternal quest for the White House by firing someone able and passionate about their job but also someone different...and Romney plain hates The Different.
And that is Mitt's real attiude towards women in a nutshell, he is adept at eructating the right sounding sentiments & hiring decorous female aides but he has never in his life tolerated a woman "getting out of line" just as he would never tolerate a woman dictating any terms to him. I am not even gonna get into the whole abortion mishaugas since his position on the issue has already shifted twice in the past week and that moving target will undoubtedly pick up speed as we get closer to election day.Ar

The Campaign for the Twenty Fourth Middlesex in Picture....

A pop quartet serenades pedestrians on behalf of GOP candidate for State Representative Tomi Olson at Robbins Farm Park in Arlington on Saturday October 13th at about 3:30 pm EDT.
When it comes to innovative campaign gimmicks, Arlington has always been historically speaking barren territory.
The classic "lawn sign" has only recently come into general usage...if you can believe it.

On the other hand I have to wonder why Olson is devoting time to "innovative campaign tactics" in Arlington at all.  This general election is akin to the democratic primary, "A battle for the heart and soul of Belmont Ma".  Olson must conquer or die there and not scramble so much for votes in places like Precinct 12 in Arlington wherein an overwhelming democratic majority resides.
Of course it is interesting, that nowhere in her campaign advertising does Olson overtly identify herself as a republican.
Maybe she is hoping for a little confusion in the polls come election to swing some votes her way.
Well anyway...the band had some chops from what I could hear of it.

Riffing on Ayn Rand

That damn motion picture has given me "objectivism on the brain"....
More and more I am given to think that the sheer downfall of Ayn Rand can be traced back to her reflexive hatred of academics & intellectuals. The whole subtext of "Atlas Shrugged" (regardless of Dagny Taggart's quest to mate with some species of heavy machinery) reeks of anti-intellectualism and a visceral loathing for academics holding any sort of position of public trust.
Well...to be fair, Rand was never too popular with the academy (philosophers & theologians with "sophomore appeal" all have this problem) so there is an element of tit for tat at work here. And what better way to subvert academia than by creating a faith that would unite the monied sectors of the overclass and immantenize the libertarian eschaton?
And so thus a militant atheistic founds a cult...
***
Objectivists are burdened by the lack of a homeland some sovereignty they can point to as triumph of thought turned to action, they way ye Olde Comintern could always point with pride to the USSR as a model of the coming Marxist Leninist Utopia.
On the other hand, minus the small town Baptist shamanism, Texas looms more and more as a sort of Objectivist paradise.
The Governor is a constitutionally powerless loudmouth, the state is largely controlled by corporations, lawyers  and sundry shills.  Politics is completely corrupted by payola, life of the street is violent despite the frequent recourse to the gallows and the whole state is polluted to an absurd degree...but then again taxes are low and education is held in low regard by almost everyone.
Sounds like "Galt's Gulch" to me....

"Atlas Shrugged Part II" duly reviewed and blogged

Over at Channel Zero.

To which I can only add, how is it that when Objectivists (that self selected elite of would be herrenvolk) make a movie of their Messiah's own Koran it ends up being a cheap tawdry exploitation movie enacted by E-List helots?
***
Ah but Ayn Rand was never known for her irony or subtle wit, she set out to create a anti-communist theology and largely succeeded at least as far as her tiny band of cultists are concerned.
Of course the theme of the book is nothing new the Overclass goes on strike to end the predations of the ravenous looters and their underclass hirelings. As far back as 1907 Ernest Bramah described a strike by the middle and upper classes of Great Britain to oust an all powerful labor government in his book The Secret of the League. The conspirators break the power of the coal miners union and are then free and clear to set up a non-parliamentary government that keeps the trogs down and upholds  the natural rights of the aristocracy and the "producing classes".
All sounds very much like "Galt's Gulch" to me...but then Counter Marxist thought clearly predates the Russian Revolution as a matter of record.
***
Of course, Atlas Shrugged is less a novel and more a nine hundred page work of raw ideological warfare,  combat divisions of straw men are shot shelled & strafed on every page by poor persecuted financial supermen & their adoring passive aggressive superwomen.
Well what of it?
The Chimes at Midnight is nothing but raw ideological warfare, but Humble Elias at least tries to keep it short and simple.
And if he can't do that, he will always lunge for the cheap laughs.

Scott Brown collected a $10K

campaign contribution from the infamous "compounding pharmacy" at the center of a deadly meningitis outbreak.
He also signed a "bipartisan letter" to the DEA making the usual premature deregulatory noises...

I get the impression that if a $10K campaign contribution was on the line Scott Brown would happily sign a leaf that blew thru his open window, plague or no plague.

Congrats to Former State Senator Brown

For making Bird Colonel in the Maryland National Guard back in August, I hadn't heard the good news til I cracked open the Boston Globe this morning.
Must be a heady feeling, seven whole days in Afghanistan dodging mosquitos in full camies and a nice phat pension coming your way whenever the ride is over.
And all for what amounts to a part time job as a lawyer in the Judge Advocate's Division it's a sweet deal that would bring tears to the eyes of Billy Bulger himself.
To think there are veterans wandering the streets homeless with not one tenth of Colonel Brown's retirement prospects...makes yuh think don't it?
Oh to live in a Republic where the Lawyers are compensated at Four Times the Rate of the National Heroes!!

Oh and Mitt Romney's lurch to the center

re. abortion lasted exactly twenty four hours, on Tuesday he was promising not to restrict access, late yesterday he caved and started calling himself "a pro-life candidate" again.
Geez Ralph Reed sez "shit" and Mitt whimpers "What Color"?
***
However a twenty four hour turnaround time is a new record even for Romney normally he walks it back after at least a forty eight hour interval, ah well the breakneck pace of modern campaigning and all like that....
***
Still whether any of you out there are pro or anti choice, how can you trust someone who has changed his mind so many times?? And Romney cannot ever be a good President if the only people who truly trust him on the issues are those that have the whip hand over him.
Y'know like the religious right etc....

Y'know if the President wants to

load the gender gap a bit more in his own favor, he could always try to convince the Secretary of State to stay on thru the 2014 mid term elections.  Hilary Clinton has become a symbol of public strength for a lot of women voters out there, if she signaled her willingness to stay on the job for the foreseeable future, the President would reap the benefit on election day...
of course she has to announce it, gotta keep dat "Tweets from Hilary" mojo goin'...

Just sayin'...

If the Vice President wants to win the debate tonight

he would do well to take a page from Adlai Stevenson.

No not the liberal caricature of "Dr. Strangelove" fame, but the prosecutor tucked into the Russians at the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Drive your conclusions from the facts, highlight your opponent's hypocrisy, state your own goals clearly....and don't let Ryan slip off into conservative fantasyland.
It worked for Stevenson...and expectations were set pretty low for him going into the above linked Security Council Meeting....The Veep should pay some heed to the historic precedent.

Romney's "October Surprise"...

Just in time for leaf-peepin' season, The Former Viceroy has changed his mind about abortion for a sixth time and noted that as President he would not seek any new laws  "restricting access".
He must be desperate to change his profile with women voters at this point, what else accounts for this epic flip flop?
Keep in mind a scant six months ago he was loud in his intentions to defund Planned Parenthood and could not wait to appoint anti abortion witchburners to the Supreme Court.
Moreover the 2012 GOP platform opposes abortion even in case of rape....
Well keep in mind, Romney is a master of duplicitous smarm,  nowhere in the above flip flop does he rule out appointing Ralph Reed to the Supreme Court or passive aggressively defunding Planned Parenthood as part of some phony budget crisis....but he won't propose "new laws" to "restrict access"....Like hell he won't.
Romney is lying, he has been lying all thru-out his political career, the lies are the dark side of his intellectual disconnect from the great  issues of our times. If the issues are mere rhetorical abstractions to be gamed in order to garner votes for Romney (as I have argued elsewhere) then indeed why wouldn't he deliberately lie in order win an election?
It is one of the few natural things about Romney's public persona quite frankly...