Chimes at Midnight

• Is it me or does anyone else out there think

  that CNN's John King would literally die of fright if he was so much as accosted by a five year old wingnut and accused of being a member of the "liberal media elite"?
  I'm not sure frightened people make the best journalists, and King has a hunted look in his' [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 8:48am EST
  

• Alan Khazei?

  Got the Boston Globe's endorsement in next month's senatorial primary???
  
  Well that one came as a shock lemme tellya.
  Truly Alan's years of cajoling various powerful entities into giving him money for charitable purposes must make him the best interviewee in the world.
  Either that or his campaign [...]
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  Posted: November 29, 2009, 7:44pm EST
  

• Maybe I am all stupid like...

  but could someone out there, who is "in position" so to speak, please ask Steve Pagliuca just how many jobs he generated here in Massachusetts as a managing partner in the Bain Capital Group?
  If he wants to talk about his job creation wizardry fine, but I'd like to know' [...]
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  Posted: November 27, 2009, 8:40am EST
  

• Last week the rumor was...

  That former CNN pundit-xenophobe Lou Dobbs wanted to run for the US Senate in New Jersey. This week the rumor is that Dobbs wants to cut to the chase and run for President in 2012.
  This particular paragraph is an outright scream:
  Dobbs, a controversial and outspoken critic of [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 8:50am EST
  

• Tisei?

  Well now, that is an in-ter-esting choice as a Lt. Gubernatorial candidate on the Charlie Baker ticket.
  I don't know if any of you have heard this before, but State Senator Richard Tisei is gay!
  Keep it on the QT willya?
  We don't want Willard to find out he [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 8:49am EST
  

• Roughly

  nine hundred billion USD has been spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This weekend the US Senate started debated extensive health care reform in the US that would theoretically extend medical coverage to all Americans.
  The cost over ten years of said senate healthcare reform package, roughly eight [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 1:07pm EST
  

• Strange as it may seem...

  Joanie Vennochi actually thinks there is a condition of moral equivalence between Sarah Palin and Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton.
  To quote the old misanthrope, "what rubbish!"
  Sarah Palin is a liar and an oafish demagogue, Hilary Clinton is lied about and the favorite topic of demagogues, especially [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 6:55pm EST
  

• Apropos of nothing but

  some unscrupulous entertainment conglomerate could make a fortune selling a interactive video game built around a violent coup d' tat aimed at the current administration. Deeply dispossessed wingnuts would pay Big Bucks for something like this in the holiday season.
  Just sayin' thass all. [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 10:38pm EST
  

• The Massachusetts Shuffle

  Let me if'm ah kin get this straight:
  Tim Cahill has doused himself with high grade kerosene and is looking to get shot out of a cannon and into the governor's office as an independent next year.
  This means the Treasurer's office is wide open next year cue Steve Grossman' [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 1:10pm EST
  

• Scot Lehigh takes opens up on Congressman Capuano

  compares him to Robert Penn Warren's populist/authoritarian "Willy Stark" character from "All the King's Men".
  Honestly, where was all this concern about fake populism when Scot's hero Mitt Romney was demagoguing it up on the campaign trail in 2006? Back when the Viceroy went into the South End and [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 8:52am EST
  

• Note to Mary Matalin

  (after having watched her on Larry King tonight fruitlessly defendng Sarah Palin), For Ghod's Sake woman, Give Up the Botox! Your poor face has all the plasticity of a block of New Hampshire granite. The only emotions you can convey these days is a sort of weird smug unctuousness, Stop [...]
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  Posted: November 16, 2009, 11:02pm EST
  

• Lou Dobbs for President?

  Time Magazine among others wonders if the fomer CNN yakker is considering a run for the White House.
  The early line is, Lou would run as an independent and avoid the GOP primaries entirely.
  Well, it is all speculation, personally, Humble Elias thinks Dobbs wouldn't get much traction' [...]
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  Posted: November 16, 2009, 1:08pm EST
  

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

  He has started something called "Conservative Tours" apparently as a means to shake down frightened wingnuts who'd normally never travel to such socialist hell-holes as Normandy or the Brandenberg Gate.
  Chase has even finagled Howie Carr to come along on a trip to "Imperial Rome" where no doubt the' [...]
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  Posted: November 15, 2009, 7:23pm EST
  

• Women working for the RNC may no longer

  obtain abortions under their health insurance plan or so decreed Michael Steele today.
  My Ghod, in addition to being an ineptoid and a buffoon we can also add "petty fogging bitch" to Michael Steele's list of accomplishments.
  This is grimly hilarious, will Chairman Steele be pawing through men's wallets [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 1:03pm EST
  

• So far...advantage Pagliuca...

  Since Monday's abortion dust up, I'd have to say the bigger winner has been Steve Pagliuca, only because he has the money to exploit the ideological rift between AG Coakley and Congressman Capuano.
  You might think that...if Pagliuca's adverts weren't all whiny in tone and full of desperate promises of [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 8:53am EST
  

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

  as Congressman Capuano essentially backtracks and asserts he too would vote against the health care bill if it contained abortion restrictions.
  So essentially, Mike Capuano was for the House Bill before he was against it?
  Geez Martha Coakley had but to stand her ground for a twenty four hour [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 8:52am EST
  

• Y'know if Martha Coakley wants to "decry"

  the loathsome use of pregnancy as a "pre-existing condition" in the current health reform bill, well more power to her.
  It is an open primary for an open seat and everyone has to set terms with respect to the current health care debate
  After all, not one month ago, [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 1:00pm EST
  

• Publicity seeking bullies...

  The Westboro Baptist Church (The Rev. Phelps' falangist concern of notorious repute) has taken to protesting out of Sasha and Malia Obama's elementary school.
  
  Class all the way, These people would copulate with chickens as a protest against homosexuality if it mean getting above the fold in the [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 1:15pm EST
  

• Steve Pagliuca can run those damn TV adverts

  until he is blue-in-the-face, but he will never convince me he is anything more than a Democrat Of Convenience (DOC).
  And that smug self-righteous insistance that he won't take PAC money, that is a laugh riot, Pagliuca was a macher at Bain Capital which is Political Action Committee unto itself' [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 1:02pm EST
  

• "Presidential Leadership is...

  Party Leadership" or so Woodrow Wilson once opined.
  And to the extent that President Obama has been setting goals, writing the party's mission statement, acting as the democrat's key spokesman and driving the agenda, then it is clear that as far as health care reform is concerned, he" [...]
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  Posted: November 08, 2009, 7:08pm EST
  

• No one can quite downplay right wing extremism quite like

  the Associated Press.
  They artfully left out the arrests outside Nancy Pelosi's office, the signs equating health care reform with the Nazi Holocaust and the general tone of violence and intimidation that permeated said "protest".
  The problem with the AP is, that they look on this kind of' [...]
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  Posted: November 06, 2009, 8:56am EST
  

• Sad news...

  Storyteller and Harvard Square fixture, Brother Blue has died at the age of eighty-eight. [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 1:50pm EST
  

• So the army sez that 75% of recruitable US youth

  are not fit for induction into the armed forces? Drugs, education and obesity issues being the core problems?
  So when will the Pentagon declare high fructose corn syrup a threat to national security??
  Well, I snark but really a stat like this ought to spark some hearings in congress, git [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 8:54am EST
  

• So much for that whole quaint notion that

  Maine is full of witty Marshall Dodge type caricatures who just want to be left alone. Given enough money and enough of "Fear Factor" politics they will happily police the marriages of their neighbors with a gay abandon. [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 8:54am EST
  

• Congrats to Mayor Menino on his re-election last night

  the numbers were outside my predictions, but not by much in the weary wicked end.
  The pundits and pols may hate and fear Tom Menino, but the electorate has yet been given no good reason to break their compact with him. You can complain until you are blue in [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 8:45am EST
  

• A dinosaur spotted on the streets of Boston yesterday

  a big ole sound truck was heard extolling the virtues of citizen Michael Flaherty, candidate for Mayor in today's city election.
  No TV commercials at all, but Mike Flaherty and Sam Yoon have a sound truck, a campaign gimmick that went the way of the snap brim fedora over fifty' [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 8:54am EST
  

• Apropos of nothing

  but when Joanie Vennochi writes the venom from her pen fairly scars the desktop at which she works.
  When she calls in to the Jeff Santos show on WWZN Am 1510 though, Joanie is as decorously dull as dishwater, no middle school snarkage, no bitterness no nothing.
  As a radio [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 1:09pm EST
  

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

  I'm predicting Menino 55%, Flaherty 45%.
  If it rains and the Mayor's celebrated machine is on their game then the spread wil be much wider.
  Ideologically not much separates either man, the argument is over managerial ability, temperament and unresolved problems impacting the city.
  There, in almost every category [...]
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  Posted: November 01, 2009, 6:05pm EST