Howie Carr thread Week of Jan. 8, 2012

Howie thread for the week starting off with his Sunday Boston Herald column, "C’mon Sean, stop JoJoJo’s ‘coronation’" Can Sean Bielat (R) stop Joe Kennedy III from getting Barney Frank's seat? Read on!

Sunday column ping

C’mon Sean, stop JoJoJo’s ‘coronation’
By Howie Carr | Sunday, January 8, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo
Photo by Nancy Lane

Sean Bielat, won’t you please come home?

The Kennedys are back. It’s only been one blessed year with none of them in Congress, and now the plague is about to return. Joseph P. Kennedy III, also known as JoJoJo, is being “urged” to run.

Mother o’ Gawd, how can we miss them when they won’t go away?

JoJoJo is one of Joe Kennedy’s twin sons. For point of reference, he’s the twin who wasn’t set on fire by his father with illegal fireworks on the Fourth of July during one of those traditional Kennedy family weekends on the Cape. It was the dark-haired boy, Matt, who had to go to the ER.

Despite the local Republicans’ assertions to the contrary, this election is already shaping up as a “coronation.” Unless Bielat returns to jump into the fray, there aren’t any serious non-Kennedy candidates in what may be the most Republican-leaning district in the state.

Any real challenger on the Democrat side has to come out of Brookline or Newton. Setti Warren, the mayor of Newton, could have been a contender. Even the Kennedys would have had to think twice about taking on a minority, non-carpetbagging elected official.

But Setti took his shot for the Senate against Granny Warren, and failed spectacularly. Say goodnight, Setti.

Then there’s Michael Ross, the Boston city councilor? Please. Ross doesn’t even live in the district, not that he has to, but would this lightweight really give up his cushy $87,500 job and the parking space downtown that goes with it?

Debbie Goldberg of Brookline, the unsuccessful 2006 candidate for lieutenant governor, was interested. But now the supermarket heiress has backed away — how do you think she feels these days, knowing she couldn’t even take out the babbling pajama-clad Crash Murray, the laughingstock of state politics?

Then there was state Sen. Cynthia Creem. But she’s 67, a divorce lawyer. Think Judge Judy. In Fall River they may watch Judge Judy, but they won’t vote for her, not against a Kennedy.

In the past, whenever Kennedys have parachuted into congressional districts, one or two indigenous hacks have always risen up to give them a run for their inherited money. In 1986, when Daddy Joe moved to Brighton from Marshfield, it was a dodgy state senator named Bachrach. Now, the cupboard is bare.

Wonder how Barney Frank feels. Turns out he was merely a placeholder for the Kennedys, a modern-day Ben Smith. But then, so was Tip O’Neill, as it turned out. On the plus side, JoJoJo doesn’t appear quite as dim as the run-of-the-mill modern Kennedy. He can walk and chew gum at the same time, unlike, say, Uncle Max.

Believe it or not, JoJoJo doesn’t drink. And he did go to Harvard.

The Kennedys have to win this one, or it really is all over. They’ll pull out all the stops. Health permitting, Hugo Chavez will be stumping for JoJoJo in Fall River in the fall.

Sean Bielat would be an underdog, but at least he’s been through the ringer before. Come back, Sean. The good news is, this time you won’t have to worry about being stalked by Barney Frank’s pot-bellied partner, Dude, taking pictures of you wherever you go.

Do us all a favor, Sean. Go for it.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1394142

Tue column ping. Howie’s flagship WRKO 680 has NH Primary coverage tonight 7-11 pm

Hurry Murray thinks this is kid stuff
By Howie Carr | Tuesday, January 10, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo
Photo by Patrick Whittemore

Shame on you, Lt. Gov. Murray, blaming the crash on your 5-year-old daughter.

Yes, you did manage to resist throwing her under the bus until your fourth or fifth version of your rendezvous with destiny, but Sunday night you finally broke down.

There was nobody else left to blame.

What a stand-up guy. It’s bad enough to be a rat, it’s worse to rat out your own kid. And worst of all is that absolutely nobody believes this story any more than they believed any of the earlier ones. Lights, camera, action. Take 4, er, 5:

“Around 2 or 3 in the morning,” you or your new flack wrote, “I awoke when our 5-year-old daughter crawled into bed with us. From that point on, I was unable to get back to sleep.”

What’s the next excuse? The dog ate my accelerator. The check is in the mail.

You have to appreciate Crash’s chutzpah, striking out the “false rumors and wild speculation.”

Listen, Hurry Murray, if you’d come clean that first day, way back at the beginning of November, there wouldn’t be any false rumors and wild speculation.

Now your career is, like the Crown Vic itself, totaled. When Crash’s Epistle to the Worcesterites hit my inbox Sunday night, one of the first things I noticed was this howler: “During the ride I did not meet anyone or make any phone calls, texts or emails.”

Of course not. This is why you haven’t released the phone records yet, because they exonerate you. Sort of like the black box.

How about this one? “Throughout this matter, I have asked for no special treatment.”

Really? How often does a regular citizen have a major league, 108 mph accident, and then demand a Breathalyzer? By the way, who administered that Breathalyzer? Was it by any chance one of the same troopers who was with you during your daring rescue of some locals a few weeks earlier? If I ever get jammed up, which I don’t plan to, I hope I’ll be allowed to pick my own statie too.

I’d like to know how many other Breathalyzer tests the state police administered in 2011 to motorists who demanded them.

But it all pales in comparison to what you did to your daughter. Crash, I bet you were the talk of every kindergarten statewide yesterday. All the kids agreed, their dad would never do that to them.

I remember back when the feds were bugging Mafia boss Gerry Angiulo’s Doghouse. His son, Jason, had just been called before a grand jury. Gerry was pondering the eternal question, who would have to take the fall?

“We’ve had guys go to Leavenworth for their kids,” Angiulo told his brothers. “There’ll be none of that here.”

Or at Tim Murray’s house, apparently.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1394664

Fri column ping

The writing’s on the wall for Tim Murray
By Howie Carr | Friday, January 13, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo
Photo by Matthew West

Do you think Lt. Gov. Tim “Hurry” Murray will blame his 5-year-old daughter for these embarrassing photographs too?

Not even Crash is that shameless, at least I don’t think he is. So somebody at the State House needs to be fired first thing this morning for putting him near these signs at the New Bedford branch office of the Registry of Motor Vehicles yesterday.

If this doesn’t put him in a “firing mood,” as another lieutenant governor once said, nothing ever will.

The only way these photos could be worse for the little fella is if Herald photographer Matthew West had gotten him under a sign that said: “If you get in a jam, don’t be wearing your jammies.”

These pictures are so humiliating it’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for him. Almost.

Let’s just hope Hurry wasn’t out again this morning on dawn patrol in his new Crown Vic, hunting for a Herald. He might have driven off the road again when he saw what his own staff did to him yesterday down in Bristol County.

Given his recent experiences in the demolition derby, who in the Corner Office thought it was a good idea to send him out to a Registry office for the unveiling of a new license plate in the first place? Even if he had to renew his own driver’s license in person, you would think they’d have hustled him in through a back door of some far-flung outpost of the Registry hackerama.

My favorite sign: “Have Trouble Remembering?”

Of course he has trouble remembering. He forgot that he fell asleep at the wheel. He forgot that he didn’t slide on black ice. He forgot that he floored the Crown Vic. He forgot that he wasn’t going “around” the speed limit, that he was traveling at 108 mph.

Now Hurry Murray says he wasn’t texting or calling anybody on his cell phone as the Crown Vic achieved liftoff. How do we know he’s not having trouble remembering again?

Asked by the Herald whether his cellphone records would be released, Tim replied, “The governor’s chief legal counsel is handling that and I will let them respond.”

Deval’s lawyers will have the same response the state police did. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

What a nightmare Tiny Tim’s life has become. He avoids the State House these days like the plague, except for Wednesdays when he has to come in to chair the meetings of the Governor’s Council. But now the media stalk him wherever he goes, and he’s so clueless he doesn’t even realize this is the most embarrassing photo taken of a local pol since Mike Dukakis took a ride in a tank.

Look at that empty stare of his in the pictures. It says, “Below average.”

It also says, “I have won my last election.”
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1395514

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