Bloodthirsty Liberal

It’s over a million [bleep]-eating grins all over the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

That corpse in the lower right is John Kerry, re-earning his nickname “liveshot”.

Republican Scott Brown took over the seat of the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy on Thursday, vowing to be an independent voice in a bitterly divided Senate.

Brown was sworn-in by Vice President Joe Biden Thursday at a Capitol Hill ceremony a week earlier than he originally planned, and just in time to plunge into a partisan fight over President Barack Obama’s choice of a union attorney for a top labor job.
Brown’s arrival in the Senate ends the Democrats’ supermajority and gives the GOP 41 votes they can use to block President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Depending on how Democrats set the Senate’s calendar, Brown’s first vote could be against the confirmation of Craig Becker, a lawyer for the Service Employees International Union, to a seat on the National Labor Relations Board, the federal panel that referees private sector labor-management disputes.

Camelot has come and gone.

As one radio caller put it, “Scotty finally beamed Kirk up.”

I heard with my own ears Scott Brown say as recently as two days ago that he could wait until February 11th to be sworn in as senator, but it appears he’s changed his mind:

Republican Scott Brown called on the governor of Massachusetts to certify the results of his upset Senate win by Thursday morning, allowing him to be sworn in earlier than his target date next week because, he says, there are votes he doesn’t want to miss.

Congressional sources tell FOX News that Brown could be sworn in as early as tomorrow.

The demand reversed Brown’s earlier declaration that he did not want to be sworn in until Feb. 11, a grace period he said he needed to hire a staff and prepare for his new responsibilities. It also followed criticism from conservative radio hosts and newspaper columnists about what one dubbed a “three-week victory lap.”

With respect to Scott, that’s what it has become (turns out, the line belongs to Howie Carr). He’s received gentlemen’s agreements that the Senate won’t pull a fast one in the interim, but Harry Reid’s no gentleman. He had the election won before 10 PM on January 19th—why the hell are we still waiting?

While Paul Kirk votes to raise the debt ceiling? If Brown were in the seat, Kirk’s yes would be Brown’s no, and they wouldn’t have 60 votes. Excuse me, but I still think $1.9 trillion is real money.

In other words, it’s about freakin’ time.

In the words of Howie Carr (again):

Hey Sen. Paul Kirk - screw!

You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here, here being the U.S. Senate.

It’s been 15 days now since a Republican won the special election in Massachusetts, and Kirk is still squatting in Ted Kennedy’s office.

Hey Paul Kirk - how can we miss you if you won’t go away?

What’s it going to take to pry this guy out of office, the Jaws of Life?

…

Let me be blunt - the sooner Scott is sworn in, the worse the moonbats will feel, and that will make my day.

It’s so heartwarming to pick up the moonbats’ favorite broadsheet and see yourself - and 1.1 million other Brown voters - described as “thugs” and “goons.”

In other words, the initial buzz over sticking it right up the noses of the Democratic machine is wearing off, and we need another hit.

If Kirk had any scruples, he’d have at least recused himself from all further voting. But he was hand-picked by the Kennedys to fill what was then still their seat, so you can guess what that meant.

Scott Brown will be sitting in the People’s Seat tomorrow. Rejoice!

While President Obama decides what to do about the economy, I have some free (the word itself is and aphrodisiac to socialists) advice: do nothing, nada, niente, rien, nichts.

Look what happens when you get a bright idea in your head to raise revenue?

Massachusetts shoppers are fleeing the state’s rising sales tax in droves and shopping in New Hampshire. Fueled by necessity - and in some cases anger - customers said they were heading over the border to save money and score deals. Cars with Massachusetts license plates clogged the roads and lots across Salem. And through the early evening yesterday, the Mall at Rockingham Park in Salem and Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua - both just a few miles over the border - reported spikes in traffic over last year, according to Laurel Sibert, a spokeswoman for Simon Malls, which runs both shopping centers.

“The New Hampshire malls have definitely benefited from the sales tax increase in Massachusetts,’’ Sibert said.

In August, state officials increased the Massachusetts sales tax to 6.25 percent from 5 percent as a way to help fill holes in the state budget.

With what result?

A survey of the 3,100 retail business members of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts (RAM) concluded that 2009 holiday retail sales declined this season 2.6% over the same period in 2008. The decline was significantly less than the 7% decline that occurred in 2008, but more than the 1% decline in 2007. The 2.6% decline marks the 3rd straight year holiday sales have decreased in Massachusetts according to the RAM survey.

…

A 25% sales tax increase in Massachusetts passed into law last August may have made a competitive problem even worse for local stores competing with New Hampshire and the Internet. A poll released today by the Boston Globe showed that 36% of the respondents indicated either having shopped out of state or spent less due to the 2009 sales tax increase.

In fact, the Commonwealth’s Department of Revenue sales tax collection reports for August through November have reflected retail sales drops versus prior year each month since the tax took effect in August, with double digits drops in both August and September.

…

“Massachusetts continues to be a challenging place for retailers to operate,” said Hurst. “In addition to a sluggish economy, our members are dealing with double digit health insurance premium increases and a very difficult regulatory environment.”

Yeah, but that’s business… you know, commerce. Eww. Who want to get their hands dirty with that?

You think we’re stupid? Who wouldn’t drive to New Hampshire to save a bundle on their purchases? (Well, I wouldn’t, but I’m lazy.) As we reported a few months ago, this guy would:

A Westport lawmaker who voted to hike the state sales and alcohol taxes was spotted brazenly piling booze in his car - adorned with his State House license plate - in the parking lot of a tax-free New Hampshire liquor store, the Herald has learned.

Michael J. Rodrigues’ blue Ford Crown Victoria, emblazoned with his “House 29” Massachusetts license plate, was parked outside a Granite State liquor store on Interstate-95 South over the weekend, according to a witness who provided pictures to the Herald.

The witness, who requested anonymity, claimed he approached Rodrigues, noted his State House plate, and asked if he was on personal or official business. Rodrigues, who was loading booze into his car, snapped “mind your own business,” the witness said.

This guy is Scott Brown’s colleague. and he is much, much, much more typical than Scott of our local fauna.

Oh, you flatterer, you!

We the people of the United States owe Scott Brown’s supporters a huge debt of gratitude. They didn’t merely elect a senator. They ripped the façade off the Obama presidency.

Just as Dorothy and Toto exposed the ordinary man behind the curtain in “The Wizard of Oz,” the voters in Massachusetts revealed that, in this White House, there is no there there.

It’s all smoke and mirrors, bells and whistles, held together with glib talk, Chicago politics and an audacious sense of entitlement.

At the center is a young and talented celebrity whose worldview, we now know, is an incoherent jumble of poses and big-government instincts. His self-aggrandizing ambition exceeds his ability by so much that he is making a mess of everything he touches.

He never advances a practical idea. Every proposal overreaches and comes wrapped in ideology and a claim of moral superiority. He doesn’t listen to anybody who doesn’t agree with him.

…

They warned us he wasn’t ready.

Yes, we’re stuck with him, but we’re no longer stuck with his suffocating conformity. The second Boston Tea Party opened the door to new ideas and new people of both parties.

…

Massachusetts changed everything. America’s spirit of independence has been emancipated and the cult of Obama-ism is finished.

Aw heck, it weren’t nothin’. You’d a-done the same fer us. … Wouldn’t ya? ’sides, it’s the least we coulda done after decades of Kennedy, Kerry, Frank, and the rest of them lowdown sidewinders (or do I mean varmints?).

We’re just not used to such celebrity. We feel like an entire state, a commonwealth, of Sully Sullenbergers.

Scott Brown was shielded somewhat on the issue of health care reform by pointing out that he supported our state plan, MassHealth, passed under and signed by a Republican governor (and Brown mentor), Mitt Romney.

But he’ll have to pay for that vote, that stance, at some point, because we all are:

The state plan has become a millstone for Mr. Romney, yet he has refused to disavow it. Had he campaigned with Mr. Brown he’d have undoubtedly been asked about it, and undoubtedly given an answer as unsatisfying as those to date.

Mr. Romney has at times put forward selective data suggesting the program’s costs aren’t exploding. At other times he has complained his state hasn’t done enough to control costs. By October of last year he was arguing on CNN that “We . . . didn’t have any pretense we would somehow be able to change health-care costs in Massachusetts.” This, despite promising in 2006 that under his plan “the costs of health care will be reduced.”

Through it all, Mr. Romney has never backed away from his individual mandate, which requires people to buy insurance or pay a fine. Yet Republicans and independents despise the mandate, with many believing it is downright unconstitutional.

Mr. Romney’s subsidized coverage is meanwhile doing what entitlements do: crowding out private insurers, compounding the cost explosion, walking the state toward rationing. So long as the former governor clings to these central points of his health plan, he’s on the wrong side of free-market policy and public opinion.

I think Brown knows this. He used the MassHealth plan as a shield, not as something he embraced. He even allowed that it had flaws that need fixing (as any one of these articles from the Boston Gob archives attests to).

I’m beginning to think (actually long past beginning) that Rush is correct (again) that Republicans should want nothing to do with health care reform—at least not on anything like these terms. It is the proverbial lipsticked pig.

We have bloated a relatively small problem (those uninsured not out of choice) into a 2,000+ page bill rewriting all aspects of how medicine is practiced and insurance is operated—and fundamentally altered (for the far, far worse) the role of the citizen and his or her government. To say nothing of the profoundly Venezuelan manner in which the bill was “written” in Congress (with apologies to Venezuelans).

The Massachusetts state budget is hobbled—nay, crippled—by this infernal law, which has made many hospitals, doctors, and patients miserable. Other than that, it’s been a huge success.

President Obama says Scott Brown, c’est moi

The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.

And now Governor Deval Patrick identifies with a truck-driving, racist, homophobic, tea-bagger (according to Keith Olbermann):

“I think there’s some familiar experiences,” Patrick said. “It was against the odds, the political insiders said it can’t happen, and it was about inviting people, many of whom feel disenfranchised, to reconnect.”

Ha! What a hoot! How is it “against the odds” that a liberal Democrat (black) man defeated a drab Republican (woman)? Ask his campaign manager, David Axelrod, if he thought it “can’t happen”.

Even John Kerry is sounding more Brown than Blue:

People want me to be part of the process and part of the solution,” Brown told reporters during a visit with Republican Senator John McCain.

Kerry, the senior senator from Massachusetts, said he favors “seating Brown as expeditiously as possible.”

All of a sudden, they can’t stand close enough to Scott—but he has other company in mind:

Blatantly, unashamedly (like an Illinois Democrat) stolen from Michael Graham’s blog [though reader Judi sent it too]:

Also stolen from Michael’s site, this listener comment:

Rebecca: My sister has a new bumper sticker to commemorate the Brown victory: “Massachusetts: if America were a body we’d be its b***s.”

I think she means “boils”, as in the painful eruption we have caused; or perhaps “biles”, as in the bitter, angry aftertaste we have left in the mouths of the Angry Left.

President Obama, showing that insight and acumen that got him into the White House before he was out of political diapers:

[H]ere’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country.

The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.

People are angry, and they’re frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.

To be precise, it’s the last nine years, by now, sir—unless you think President Bush was aces up to January 20, 2002.

But I wonder if that’s just some sort of Tourette’s tic, an OCD habit he can’t kick. How are the years 2001 to 2009 relevant to Scott Brown’s victory? Did President Bush cut a campaign video for Coakley? Did he do robo-calls? Did he come up and campaign personally for Coakley, and ridicule Brown’s truck?

Obama’s right that he and Brown benefitted from the same phenomenon, but it goes both directions, like the tide. All those glorious castles and creatures finely sculpted out of sand have but a few hours life before they are wiped from the landscape. Same goes with popularity and legislation.

Adoring news photographers may picture him with a halo, but (are you sitting down) it’s not actually there. He and Harry and Nancy may tell us they know what’s good for us, but (are you sitting down?) we’d rather think for ourselves. Sorry to break it to you.

And to you too, Stephanopoulos.

Now that Massachusetts is the most racist state in the Union—its capital renamed Selma-on-Charles—I’m trying to come up with a slogan befitting our new status.

Something like, “Forget Larry Bird, We Love Robert Byrd” or “Birth of Red Sox Nation” or “If You Have Light Skin and an Optional Negro Dialect, We Still Won’t Vote for Your Sock Puppet”. Work in progress, obviously.

What’s that? You haven’t heard that the state that sends John Kerry, Barney Frank, (and others—exclusively Democrats—for decades) to Washington is now Bull Connorstan (better)?

I heard it on one of the “news” stations:

KEITH OLBERMANN: One last aspect, and this is not necessarily pretty. 1964, 1965 the greatest years of civil-rights change in this country since Emancipation and in the 1966 midterms the Republicans took 47 seats from the House from the Democrats, and most of those elections had clear racial undertones, man had overtones.

The Republicans and the Tea Partiers will tell you what happens with Scott Brown tonight whether he wins or comes close is a repudiation of Obama policies. And surely one of Obama’s policies from the viewpoint of his opponents is it’s OK to have this sea-change in American history–to have an African-American president. Is this vote to any degree just another euphemism, the way ’states rights’ was in the ’60s?

That’s right, we have a black (aka Negro) governor, an exclusively Democratic congressional delegation (as Olbermann spoke), an overwhelmingly Democratic state legislature (which just lost another Republican), we voted overwhelmingly for Oba—

Oh why bother?

We’re just guilty. Keith says we’re guilty, Chris Matthews says we’re guilty (”Boston? Boston?“), Janeane Garofalo says we’re guilty—we might as well own it. Gays took a derogatory epithet and came up with the advocacy group Queer Nation; a black music group looking to make a name for themselves (literally) called themselves Ni**az With Attitude (”A Bitch is a Bitch” is my favorite, followed closely by “She Swallowed It”).

So why can’t we be “Bigots With Big-Uns” or “Tea Pah-ty Pah-tisans”?

The Left circles its wagons (to employ a racist, genocidal metaphor) into ever smaller rings. The Massachusetts electorate, surely one of the most leftist in the country, is dead to them—even the left-most of the Massachusetts electorate feels this way!

We can’t merely disagree—we must be evil. We’re not moderate or independent, we’re the Klan.

And all the while, nobody mentions Harry Reid or Bill Clinton or Robert Byrd.

But you know what really made Keith Olbermann furious, what caused him to foam and sputter more than his usual sudsy self?

HOWARD FINEMAN: If you look at polling, all the new polls including the NBC poll and the CBS poll, Barack Obama is overwhelmingly liked personally by the American people. I think for most of the American people race is no respect a part of the equation. Maybe not in Massachusetts but maybe in some places there are codes, there are images, there are pick-up trucks. You can say there’s a racial aspect –

OLBERMANN: O-o-o-f. What were the Scott Brown ads, though? Every one of the Scott Brown ads had him in a pick-up truck.

That’s it! That’s our name: Pick-Uppity Red Necks! Thanks Keith.

French Leftists resorted to the guillotine to deal with their ideological opponents (even ideological supporters); Russian Lefties just shot (and starved) ‘em. The American Left puts them on MSNBC. It’s enough to make your blood run cold.

PS: What will Keith say when, as I’ve heard reported, Scott auctions his truck and donates the proceeds to Haitian relief? And that Scott’s daughter, Ayla, is donating proceeds from her CD sales to the Bush/Clinton Haitian relief fund? But there I go again, engaging a paranoid schizophrenic in discourse.

Damn my memory! I meant my first words this morning to be:

For the first time in my adult life, I am proud to a Massachusetts citizen!

There, done.