Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

I’ll tell you what’s “contemptable”

By

Our friend EaBo has his knickers all in a twist over an image in Martha Coakley’s new ad and my reaction thereto.  He says “the left is contemptable.”

First, Rob, it’s “contemptible.”  Listen to your browser’s spell-checker.

Second, I’ll tell you what’s contemptible.  How about openly questioning the patriotism of Martha Coakley.  And yes, that’s exactly what Scott Brown did when he said on national TV that “instead of being a patriot she’s being a lawyer.”  (At about 1:30.)  Listen to that again — “instead of being a patriot.”  There’s no way to interpret that other than that Scott Brown thinks Martha Coakley is not a patriot.  Not a patriot — because Coakley believes in the American justice system.  Because she believes in Article III of the U.S. Constitution that Brown claims to care so much about.

Contemptible?  Yeah, I’d say so.

It’s especially galling to hear crap like that from Scott Brown, who has been twiddling his thumbs in the state legislature for the last ten years or so accomplishing — what, exactly?  One scours his own campaign website in vain for any evidence that his years in the legislature have amounted to much of anything (other than his assiduous collection of a pay boost as “assistant deputy associate minority whip” or whatever his title is, along with generous per diems for the arduous commute from Wrentham).  Meanwhile, for the last three decades, Martha Coakley has been “being a lawyer” as she put actual criminals behind bars.  She has already done more to keep Scott Brown, Rob Eno, and the rest of them safe than Scott Brown ever will.  

And yet, Brown has the nerve to question her patriotism.  That, friends, is contemptible.

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. That the idea that using nazi imagery is worthy of “hahahah nice” is NOT contemptible?

    <

    p>Whether or not it does use it is moot, because you endorsed the idea of it regardless of its actual presence.  You seem to have a pretty good list here of contemptible things, but high-fiving nazi imagery either fell by the wayside in your thinking, or you just think it’s “nice”.  Which is it?

    • The Dems are baiting you into denouncing said imagery. That way you be forced to admit the teabaggers were a-holes for the stunts they pulled over the summer.

      <

      p>The high level Dem operatives have alraedy moved past winning this race. They are setting the GOPers up for some solid body blows going into 2010.

      <

      p>Consider Brown a “test case.”

    • Scott Brown is the one who has his military uniform plastered all over his website in direct violation of Department of Defense rules about mixing the military and politics.

      <

      p>What other uniforms are being discussed.

      <

      p>Incidentally, has Scott Brown actually ever served in Iraq or Afghanistan? Has he ever been there? Just curious.  

    • The act of giving a high five, which I did not ready anywhere is David’s comments is pushing nazi imagery.  Joe, you Republicans will stop at nothing.  It’s contemptible.

      <

      p>

  2. First the government declares that terrorists have no rights in America.

    <

    p>Second the government declares that it alone decides what makes a terrorists.

    <

    p>Third the citizens wondered what happened to their rights.

    <

    p>Scott Brown et al are working harder to establish a police state than anybody pushing gun control, but the gun nuts would never understand that.

    • I haven’t had time to post this in its own diary, and I haven’t wanted to distract us from the Senate race, but I do call your attention to this piece in this morning’s Globe.

      <

      p>It seems that the Boston Police are now arresting people who have the audacity to use their cellphones to record police brutality (emphasis mine):

      Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager’s mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording.

      Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.

      “One of the officers asked me whether my phone had audio recording capabilities,” Glik, 33, said recently of the incident, which took place in October 2007. Glik acknowledged that it did, and then, he said, “my phone was seized, and I was arrested.”

      The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance.

      <

      p>In the city of Boston, “the government” has been “the Democrats” for a very long time. It was a Democratic Mayor and City Council who imposed ridiculously draconian “security measures” for the Democratic National Convention.

      <

      p>I agree with you that Scott Brown specifically and the GOP in general is horrifyingly and aggressively working to continue the police state established by George Bush and Dick Cheney using the excuse of 9/11.

      <

      p>Sadly, encouragement for this revolting idea is not limited to Republicans.

      • Police state?  Yikes.  It’s OK to take off the tin foil hat now.  Bush and Cheney are gone.

  3. Of course, he’s a lawyer himself, but in his case, as you note, that evidently mostly means being clever about working the system to his own financial benefit through his caucus bonus, the legislature’s equivalent of social promotion, and his per diem for the Wrentham commute. His own experience is all he has to go on, which explains why thinks lawyers aren’t patriots.

    <

    p>News flash Scott: John Adams, who most people take for a patriot, was a lawyer.

    <

    p>As to Rob, he is riding the teabagger wave fueled by an I-don’t-recognize-my-country anger. The country he does recognize is one in which women are prevented from getting abortions, taxes are imposed most heavily on the poor and middle class, the government decides who is guilty, and anyone who doesn’t like it can STFU (Scott Brown’s language, not mine) on pain of torture. That’s such a sorry philosophy it is beneath contempt.

    • I don’t think “dizzy with rage” is accurate.  As the saying goes, Brown may be an idiot, but he’s no fool.  đŸ˜‰

      <

      p>Rather, I think Brown is ecstatic over the frenzy into which his campaign has sent the teabaggers.  He never expected to be within 20 points in this race; this was originally a setup for a statewide run at a different office.  Now, thanks to teabag-mania (and some helpful complacency from our side, it must be said), he’s closer than he ever thought he’d be.  So he’s happy to play the role the teabaggers demand, even though I have my doubts about how much of it he actually believes.  After all, what has he got to lose?

      • Any and all sense of credibility.

        <

        p>The tea-baggers are going nuts over him because he’d be the 41st Republican in the Senate. If he goes along with their nuttery for the cash now, he may find later on, in a different race, when the baggers no longer care so much, that his image is irrevocably tarnished.

        <

        p>Kinda like Mitt Romney. When you pander to the nuts, everybody else will think you’re nuts.

      • He has a pretty face, but his positions speak for themselves:

        <

        p>

      • anti-choice.

        • <

        p>

      • pro-Bush economic policies, especially tax cuts for the richest.

        • <

        p>

      • anti-rule of law and pro-torture.

        • <

        p>He has had to conceal these positions carefully to get as far as he has in Massachusetts, helped along enormously by a credulous local media.

        <

        p>His claim that he “supports Roe v. Wade” is a perfect example. He doesn’t really support Roe, as anyone who has read the decision would know, because he wants to limit late-term abortions, which Roe permits. No one ever called him on it until now, however.

        <

        p>I’ll give you dizzy with ecstasy too, though.

        <

        p>At least we agree he is dizzy.

        • How so?  By asserting the president’s right to apply illegal combatant status to the Christmas Bomber.  Bob, the president actually has that right so it’s not “anti-rule of law.”  Your confusing it with a policy choice doesn’t make Brown’s position “anti-rule of law.”

          <

          p>Anti-choice means being against late term abortions?  The majority of American approve of choice in the first trimester but not DNX-style late-term abortions.  How does that make Brown “anti-choice”?  He was clear about that in the debate.  How is it hidden?  How could he hide his legislative record?

          <

          p>The fact that Brown is neck-and-neck, win or lose, with Coakley when she should be up by 30 points suggests to me even the Massachusetts electorate are rejecting Obama’s moonbat economic policies, including Obamacare.  EVEN IN MASSACHUSETTS, Bob.  

          <

          p>What does portend for the mid-terms?

  4. …Even during his Dirk Diggler phase:

    In those days he was a 22-year-old law student at Boston College who was cramming for finals just days before stripping down for our photographer.

    “Here at Cosmo we’ve had bachelors go on to be actors, models, and reality show stars, so we’re thrilled that one has gone on to become a politician,” says Kate White, Cosmo’s editor in chief. Obviously we know how to pick ’em. This particular bachelor has always had political ambitions and even admitted to being “a bit of a patriot” when we interviewed him.

    Patriotism — the last refuge of a soft porn model?

  5. …pretty contemptible, as are pretty much all politicians.

    <

    p>All this contempt aside, in my opinion Scott is still the lesser of the two evils.

  7. It’s fine to say that someone is a Nazi and point out Nazi policies that person supports, but to use subliminal messages in an ad is contemptible, as is to approve of the use.

  8. I have a hard time believing that if this election is about the issues, Scott Brown can win. We’re never going to convince a Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck listener to vote for Martha Coakley, so we should ignore those people and focus on the average voter.

    <

    p>I have a hard time believing that the average Massachusetts voter:

    <

    p>* Believes that the US should torture its enemies.

    <

    p>* Believes that the Bush-era tax cuts were good for this country’s economy.

    <

    p>* Is rabidly opposed to gay marriage, and wants a constitutional amendment to eliminate it.

    <

    p>* Can even tell us what “winning” in Afghanistan even means, and is prepared to spend billions towards this ambiguous notion.

    <

    p>* Believes that our current health care system is just fine, including denial of coverage and premiums that rise annually at 2-5 times inflation.

    <

    p>* Believes that global warming is a hoax.

    <

    p>* Believes that corporations are taxed too heavily, and should have their taxes lowered.

    <

    p>Yet those are all things that Scott Brown explicitly believes and will fight for in Congress. People need to know this.

    <

    p>The voters need to know more about Scott Brown’s positions, and less about his gaffes or indiscretions.  

  9. are more than a stretch.  So Limbaugh has his arm raised, rather loosely.  So what.  No one viewing the ad on television knows what the ad is called.  Much ado about nothing.

    <

    p>That the quality of so-called patriotism, however, is raised yet again is another issue entirely.   The un-“patriotic” liberal is a favorite bogeyman of the right, designed to invoke images of neutered men cowering in the corners of their basements, while the infidels run amok, raping wives, children, grandma, and the family dog.  As a glittering generality, patriotism is the perfect weapon for the hawkish right given the heavy (and somewhat lazy) investment our society has put in symbols invoking the romance of the nation’s founding.   Patriotism, in the hands of a citizenry easily gratified by pomp and ceremony, has never been able to make the critical leap necessary to sufficiently and accurately tie the nation’s founding principles to the lives of everyday Americans.  Consequently, it is a word that is animated by emotion, falling   far short of anything remotely capable of conveying any truth or appreciation of our national identity.

    <

    p>The right’s continued misuse of the term bears testimony to the arrested adolescence of our nation’s development.  We have never had a conversation as a society that examines the meaning of the word but have, instead, remained content with a hunch and a gut reaction.   Only when prodded does the voter or average citizen ever seriously analyze the word patriotism in a context divorced from flags, uniforms, and guns.   When individuals actually examine their thinking on the meaning of patriotism, there often can be real personal growth and progress in  moving the word towards a concept that is meaningful, true, and moral on a larger level.

    <

    p>Some progress, I think, was made in this direction during Obama’s campaign.  Many voters recoiled at the peculiar brand of “patriotism” peddled by right-wing pundits and talking heads.  I have no reason to believe that the voters of Massachusetts are any more likely to believe that Martha Coakley is unpatriotic in this sense any more than they were willing to believe similarly about Barack Obama.  Those who wield the term as a bludgeon are more likely to harm themselves and their credibility  more than they are ever actually inflict political damage on a candidate.

  10. We need to allow Rob “EaBo Clipper” Eno to write himself into irrelevance just like Hub Politics did. Remember Hub Politics? Of course you don’t because they wrote themselves into ultra-fringe mode well before it was the “in” thing to do in the Republican Party.    

Archives