Feb 4th, 2010 by Taylor Armerding
Seems like I remember Joe Kennedy always starting to run his Joe4Oil ads at the beginning of the heating season – you know, in November. But this year, I hadn’t seen much of anything until late last month, when suddenly I couldn’t get away from his happy face in TV ads bringing oil from that South American philanthropist, Hugo Chavez, to grateful senior citizens. I even saw a couple of billboards in Boston.
I wondered why he was starting to run the ads in the middle of the season. I was wondering if anything had happened. And then it came to me: Scott Brown had just usurped the Kennedy family’s U.S. Senate seat.
Interesting coincidence, no?
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Feb 4th, 2010 by Taylor Armerding
I’m vowing never to say anything negative about Lawrence Mayor Willie Lantigua. Otherwise, he might never talk to me again.
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Jan 29th, 2010 by Taylor Armerding
What a miracle an election year is. House Speaker Robert DeLeo is suddenly on our side, suddenly posing as a hawk on tax increases. I’m surprised he hasn’t taken a temporary membership with Citizens for Limited Taxation. The speaker declared this week that the House budget, not due until spring, would contain no new taxes – he’s not going along with Gov. Deval Patrick‘s effort to impose the sales taxes on candy, soft drinks and smokeless tobacco. This, I guess, is supposed to make us think he is morphing into Scott Brown. Somehow, DeLeo forgot to mention the 25 percent increase in the sales tax that started last August, the new 6.25 percent tax on liquor and the “permission” for cities and towns to hit struggling residents with a local tax on meals and hotels. And, you notice he said nothing about next year’s budget, after the election is safely over.
Don’t look at what they say. Look at what they already did.
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Jan 21st, 2010 by Taylor Armerding
As others have pointed out, there’s an interesting coattail effect developing with President Barack Obama. He goes to Virginia to campaign for the Democrat and the Republican wins. He goes to New Jersey to campaign for the Democrat and the Republican wins. And he came to Massachusetts to campaign for the Democrat, and the Republican won.
So, you think we could get him to come to Massachusetts again this fall to campaign for Democratic congresspersons Niki Tsongas (Fifth District) and John Tierney (Sixth District)?
Just asking.
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Jan 14th, 2010 by Taylor Armerding
The Rev. Pat Robertson is dangerous. Not because he’s going to hurt you or anyone else. He is dangerous first because he has a megaphone – his own TV show, The 700 Club, from which he can spew the kind of judgmental venom that he did this week after the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died. Hundreds of thousands more are suffering. A minister of the Gospel ought to be moved by compassion. But Robertson, who purports to have the inside track on the unsearchable mind of God, wanted to talk about how this was divine judgment on a country that had made a “deal with the devil” for helping them kick out the French.
Haiti has many self-inflicted problems. This earthquake is not one of them. Robertson ought to be urging his followers to help relieve their suffering, not declaring that they deserve it.
He’s also dangerous because he is such a caricature of evangelical Christianity. To say that all evangelicals are like Robertson is like saying all Muslims are like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But, sadly, that is what too many people think because he is one of the most prominent evangelical voices out there – he gets national press every time he makes his offensive pronouncements.
He ought to pay much more attention to Psalm 46:10 – “Be still, and know that I am God.”
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Jan 13th, 2010 by Taylor Armerding
The silly season is becoming more entertaining every day, as we close in on the special election for the open U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts.
Democrats, led by President Obama, claim they have nothing to do with special-interest lobbyists. But a group of some of the most powerful, well-connected special-interest lobbyists held a fundraiser for Democratic candidate Martha Coakley Tuesday night in Washington. Obviously the rules change if the cause is right. Then you call them “stakeholders.”
After that fundraiser John McCormack, a reporter for the Weekly Standard, followed Coakley, trying to ask her a question about her astonishing statement that there are no more terrorists in Afghanistan. What do you suppose the mainstream press would have done if Sarah Palin had said such a thing?
But, in this case, Democratic political operative Michael Meehan shoved McCormack to the ground. And then kept trying to block him from being able to ask a question. Since then, the Dems have been spinning like a spinning top. Coakley referred to him as one of the “Scott Brown stalkers.” And Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, called it a “dirty trick” by Washington Republicans.
So, an Iraqi “journalist” throws his shoes at President Bush, in both a physical and symbolic insult, and he’s a hero. But a question to a candidate for the U.S. Senate is a dirty trick, for which a reporter should be shoved to the ground and called a “stalker.”
That’s worthy of a chapter in “Through the Looking Glass.”
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Jan 13th, 2010 by Taylor Armerding
I’m sure all of you have wondered many times what we lofty journalists mean when we talk about “Astroturf.” The boring explanation is that it is a fake “grassroots” letter-writing campaign, where some special interest group sends out a form letter to its supporters, urging them to put their name on it and then send it to their newspaper or their legislator, to make it look like there is a massive uprising of the “little people,” who all spontaneously thought about writing the exact same letter at the exact same time in protest or support of some policy or piece of legislation.
But, it’s much more entertaining to give you an example. Here’s a portion of one from the unions who are opposing the tax on so-called “Cadillac” health plans that is part of the Obamacare bill. This is how it came to us from an earnest “letter writer” from Amesbury.
“I spent ___ years working for ____ (company) as a ______(job description). Aren’t my lifelong dedication and the wages I contributed over many decades in exchange for retirement healthcare coverage worth protecting?”
I’d say, if you can’t even be bothered to fill in the blanks, the answer to your question would be, “No.
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Jan 12th, 2010 by Taylor Armerding
So, Mark McGwire “came clean.” He used steroids during the 1990s, including 1998 when he hit 70 homers. I’m sure you’re as shocked as I am to hear that. But, of course, he’s not really coming clean. That is not shocking either. He’s still tap dancing around the truth. In an interview with Bob Costas, he insisted that steroids didn’t help him hit home runs. Costas, somewhat aghast, asked if he was saying he would have hit 70 homers in a season if he’d never used steroids. McGwire immediately retreated back into his mantra that using them was the biggest mistake of his life, yada, yada, yada.
This guy should run for office. He’s already as good as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declaring that the crafting of Obamacare has been an open process. The way to “answer” a question is to say, essentially: “Hey, look over there! Nothing to see here.”
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Jan 5th, 2010 by Taylor Armerding
Looks like the mayoral inaguration of Willie Lantigua in Lawrence was the biggest, hottest, bestest in the region. I mean, who else had Gov. Deval Patrick there to swear him in? And just in case anyone had any doubts, Lantigua reminded them of his greatness. “Leadership is here. You’re looking at him,” he declared.
Kind of has the same ring as, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
I guess if confidence and self-adoration are credible currency, it ought to be a really good four years for Lawrence.
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Jan 4th, 2010 by Taylor Armerding
So, did you read today that Republican Sen. and former presidential candidate John McCain is endorsing Republican Scott Brown for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Ted Kennedy?
Big news, right? Almost as big as Democratic President Obama favoring Democrat Martha Coakley.
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