Howie Carr thread week of Oct 28, 2012

Sunday column ping

Gusts of hot air forecast for gov
By Howie Carr | Sunday, October 28, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo
Photo by Matthew Healey

Thanks to Sandy, we’ll be seeing a lot of Gov. Deval Patrick over the next few days, live from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency bunker in Framingham, all 67 inches of him.

He’ll be wearing that boss leather jacket, talking tough to the utilities like he did the other day. Some reporter asked him if the utilities will be ready for Frankenstorm, and he replied in that squeaky little voice of his, “They’d better be.”

Ooooooh, I’ll bet they were petrified. If they don’t keep the lights on next week, the utilities can count on a scorching ... invitation to his next fundraiser.

Deval’s governorship is winding down, like T.S. Eliot’s world, not with a bang but a whimper. Deval’s favorite Roman emperor? Nero, because he, too, fiddled while Rome burned.

Beyond this pending temporary return to the limelight, Deval has become Dukakis Redux. His governorship consists of little more than rounding up the usual suspects. Almost daily he is shocked to learn that there is gambling going on in the casino.

His cops raid the compounding pharmacy in Framingham ... after 23 people are dead. He sets up a “war room” to deal with the Annie Dookhan scandal at the forensic laboratory — surrender room would be more like it, as they cut loose drug dealer after drug dealer. And Deval claims it’s only going to cost the state $50 million?

What happens when the freed drug dealers start shooting civilians, or providing them with hot shots? How about all those second-generation lawsuits? Then there’s his new MBTA boss, who fled Atlanta leaving Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority in shambles, with out-of-control absenteeism and pension costs and an unsustainable economic model. Sound familiar?

“She is exactly what we need,” Deval said with a straight face.

Deval has long served as Mini-Me to Obama’s Dr. Evil. So how come he’s not a campaign surrogate anymore? During the last presidential debate in Boca, Deval spent the evening in Ashland, trying to save a moonbat rep who votes with the speaker 99.4 percent of the time. (His one vote against the speaker was to oppose any EBT reform — no wonder Deval loves the guy.)

Now Sandy’s rolling north, just in time for the first anniversary of the freak Halloween storm. We all remember what happened back then — Lt. Gov. Tim Murray achieved liftoff at 108 mph in his state-issued Crown Vic. And Deval is still stonewalling on release of embattled Murray’s cellphone records.

And next year, will Murray be a witness at any possible trials of his dear friend, Mike McLaughlin, the $360,000-a-year Chelsea Housing Authority director?

Deval can forget the U.S. Supreme Court. That sketchy background of his will kill him. Remember Ameriquest? He can likewise forget about anything that requires Senate confirmation. As Bill Weld found out, it only takes one senator to deep-six your nomination.

And anyway, does Deval want any of that stuff? Ambassadorships are for the likes of Ray Flynn and Brian Donnelly. Secretary of, say, transportation? That’s for the Andy Cards of the world.

Pre-governorship, Deval had a pretty good racket going. He learned it from his mentor, Jesse Jackson. King had a dream, Jesse had a scheme. Jesse called his Operation Push. Deval’s was Operation Grab.

Deval would go to some corporation that needed some racial cover — “steam control,” as Tom Wolfe put it. After a few months, Deval would get all huffy and then walk away with a few million and a non-disclosure agreement. Wash, rinse, repeat. It worked with Coke, it worked with Texaco, but by 2005 Deval had worn out the grift.

What’s next? One thing we know it won’t be — another $1.35 million advance for a “book” that sells 6,000 copies.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061170812

Wed column ping

No debate about it, Scott Brown made the right call
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, October 31, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Good for U.S. Sen. Scott Brown. Why should he do the Globe a favor and show up at their fakakta debate?

So he can listen yet again to Granny Warren yapping about the middle class getting “hammered,” and how Brown voted against a bill to produce “jobs” (which in this context means taxes)? How much more nonsense does he have to hear about Roe v. Wade?

Trick or treat indeed.

The headline on the Globe’s website last night was, “Organizers cancel final Mass. U.S. Senate debate.”

Correction: Scott Brown canceled the debate.

It was all going to be on the level, of course. How could it not be, when the Globe, Channel 2 and Channel 5 were in it together? Channel 2 canceled its only newscast in, what, 1992. And at Channel 5, most of the newsroom staff were rooting against Scott in 2010, even though his wife had worked at the station for 15 years.

How Channel 7 ever fell in with such bad company remains a mystery.

Just to prove it was on the up-and-up, the moonbat media arranged to bring in a moderator from CNN, or as John Sununu calls it, “The Groupie Channel.” It’s the same network where Soledad O’Brien got caught reading on air last summer from Democratic talking points.

John King, the ratings-challenged would-be moderator, recently lost his show. Do you know how low your ratings have to be to get canceled by The Groupie Channel?

They have to be lower than Piers Morgan’s.

Scott and the Fake Indian have already had three debates on TV. Anyone who watched the first two could recite the attacks and the comebacks in the third one before the candidates even had a chance to open their mouths.

So Scott Brown was behind 7 points in Paleologos’ poll yesterday.

Paleologos has had a good year, no question about it. But the blog Legal Insurrection raised a good point last night.

If Scott really thought he was down 7, wouldn’t he be the one clamoring for a debate? And if Granny truly believed she was up 7, why would she want to risk blowing it in a final debate?

You know, like John Silber in 1990 and Shannon O’Brien in 2002.

Maybe, gulp, the Globe poll was right for once, and Scott is ahead by a deuce.

Of course, Brown could have used the debate to try to reframe the election. As in, who is this carpetbagging Fake Indian who can raise $40 million? And the answer, as we all know, is that she will be a rubber stamp in the Senate for the dreadful Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer.

In one of the debates, she said she could work with Dick Lugar, the defeated GOP senator from Indiana. Guess what, Granny? Lugar voted with the Republican leadership 86 percent of the time, compared with Scott’s 54 percent.

Sure, he could have tried to make that point. But guess what? Afterward, everyone in the “consortium” would have said he was mean.

The only thing missing from Brown’s statement last night was the old line, which he could have aimed directly at the consortium. “If you stop lying about me, I’ll stop telling the truth about you.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061171487

Fri column ping

Illegal or bust? Easy shot missed
By Howie Carr | Friday, November 2, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
All the final Senate TV ads are in the can, so it’s too late for U.S. Sen. Scott Brown to “hammer” the fake Indian anymore on illegal immigration.

Too bad, because if there’s one issue the incumbent is indisputably with the majority on, it’s the scourge of illegal aliens.

Like maybe 85 percent of the state, Brown wants to stop handouts to illegal aliens. Granny Warren, not so much.

Brown mentions it in a new TV ad, but the problem is that it’s only a mention. In case you haven’t noticed, these days every state is a “border state.” Why do you think the Legislature is terrified of approving in-state tuition for illegal aliens? Because it’s politically toxic.

As you know, in-state tuition means free tuition, because if they’re illegal, they can’t be working legally, so they’re probably not reporting any income. And don’t tell me the illegals have to have been “raised” here either. The Massachusetts version of the Nightmare Act said they had to be graduates of a Bay State high school “or the equivalent thereof.” That means, every illegal everywhere would have been eligible.

“I just think that’s right,” Granny said last year of the Dream Act. “I just think this one is both morally right and economically right.”

Granny apparently agrees with Marsha Coakley: “Technically, it is not illegal to be illegal in Massachusetts.”

Then there’s the Secure Communities Act, which is designed to speed up deportations of criminals. Warren doesn’t like it because “people feel like they can’t go to the police”?

What kind of people? Illegal aliens. Who shouldn’t be in the United States to begin with.

The fake Indian’s got another problem with the Secure Communities Act — “it doesn’t focus on violent offenders,” she said in April.

Violent offenders? Bernie Madoff wasn’t a violent offender, and he surely hurt a lot of people, didn’t he? Unskilled, unable to speak English, carrying previously eradicated contagious diseases, driving drunk without licenses, flooding the welfare rolls, the emergency rooms and the prisons — even the illegals who aren’t “violent” tend to become burdens on society.

As for all you union guys, I’d suggest you read up on the works of Harvard professor George Borjas. Forget what your local’s pinky-ring thugs tell you, read his online piece, “Immigrants In, Wages Down.” Black voters — Borjas also has some interesting stats about what illegal immigration has been doing to unemployment rates in the inner city. It’s not pretty.

All this would have made a great 30- or 60-second TV spot. But it’s not too late to let your neighbors know whose side Granny is really on.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061171857

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