Blue Mass Group

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This post exists solely to provide a space for comments that don’t fit into other threads.  The only rule is that you must make it creative and interesting.  So no hackneyed stumping for one of the Dem candidates or attacking others.  Please.  That gets old.  If you want another space for that, create a new diary.

And of course, the usual rules of the road still apply.

So go to it!  Be creative!  Muse on the geopolitical implications of delays at Logan.  Write a song about Mitt Romney’s hair.  Explain the etymology of the pronunciation of Worcester.  It’s wide open.  Go!!

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  1. In the Heart of the Sea, the story about the Nantucket Whaling Ship Essex. 21 sailors started out, 7 survived. Surviors canibalized their boat mates.

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    Herman Melville immortalized the Essex as the Pequod in Moby Dick. You may recall, the Essex was sunk by a rogue Sperm whale not unlike the Pequod…

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    Ok, what comparisons can we draw between Moby Dick, The Essex and the various campaigns in MA?

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    Will the Big Dig Whale sink Mit Romney’s chances for president?

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    Will canibalism kill the democratic candidates so Healey wins?

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    Stay cool…

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    Mark

  2. that make good summer reading, I really liked Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell.  I’ve liked her other essay collections too.  She is such a good writer – funny, well-informed, and surprisingly touching at times.

  3. A do-nothing Gov once sought Prez
    Cons thought Mitt too lib so he sez:
    I posed as a suit
    But deep down I’m a Ute
    I’ll annul HRC; she’s a lez

  4. when the door swung open it hit me like a cold slap of hard fist on a hot Saturday night.  The rainbow coalition symbol on the Fendi purse told me she was a Democrat.  The smile on her face told me that getting screwed by a conservative might not be so bad this time…

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    –Mickey Spillane, dead today at age 87.

  5. The comments so far are hot, much like the weather today.  But unlike the weather today, I like this kind of hot.  Rock on, BMG crew.  Let’s keep going!

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    And in the interest of doing so, let me mention that Last week, after months and months, MA finally allowed over-the-counter sale of syringes as the legislature overrode Romney’s veto.  Let’s see if Kerry I’m-a-criminologist-but-I-won’t-support-this-commonsense-measure-that-DA’s-and-police-chiefs-support Healey makes an issue of it.

  6. I’ve seen three polls in the past month on the governors race here. But when it comes to the Lamont/Lieberman race — a much hotter set of campaigns — the public polling seems few and far between. Am I just missing the polls?

    • Rasumussen has a good backlog of polls.

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      Strange that this oen is so hyped, yet Akaka-Case is still barely polled.

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      Dailykos is a good source too, as he is rather obsessed with this race.

    • available on the Lamont-Lieberman race.  The polls published have been internal, and, at this point are very old.  Kos has nothing in the way of polling, either. 

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      I’ve spoken with some folks in CT about this, but they are playing it very close to the vest.  We may just have to wait and see. 

  7. is a book rec.  the author/book got a lot of exposure a few years back when it was published, and it might help folks make some sense of what’s happening in the current escalating apocalyptic-feeling crisis in the Middle East (as reading the book did for me).

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    from Political booknotes
    http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_4_34/ai_85107359

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    Revenge: A Story of Hope. . – Political booknotes: vengeance is mined – book review Washington Monthly

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    “IN THE WINTER OF 1986, LAURA Blumenfeld’s father was shot and lightly wounded by a Palestinian militant as he strolled through the labyrinthine alleyways of Jerusalem’s old city. The attempted killing was a random attack–the gunman was part of a terrorist cell that set out to kill U.S. and British tourists in the aftermath of the U.S. bombing of Libya–but Washington Post reporter Blumenfeld took it personally. A decade later, during a “honeymoon year” spent in Jerusalem with her husband, a New York City prosecutor, Blumenfeld embarked on an all-consuming hunt for her father’s would-be killer. As Blumenfeld writes early in her quest: “I was inhabited by a grandiose thought: My father’s injury should not go unanswered.”

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    Blumenfeld’s search for the assailant is the core narrative behind Revenge: A Story of Hope, but the detective story is only one part of this meandering, intermittently fascinating book….

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    [Blumenfield interviews many, including] Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu about collective and personal vengeance. … [she goes on to write] “So much of life’s turmoil comes from individuals or groups trying to settle a score. For years, from my perch at the Post, I had written about some dramatic examples … Now I wanted to break it down and study it. I wanted to master revenge.”

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    and on a poignant and current note, a good friend who I do a lot of local community work with shared the below with me just the other day. I found it comforting and quite inspiring

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    Ann, …I went into an email from a woman activist in
    Palestine and she talks about being grateful to be
    there at this time and includes her favorite Buddhist
    saying which is:

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    …”strive to have joyful participation in the sorrows
    of this world”……

  9. I read Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart, which I thought was outstanding.  He also wrote The Russian Debutant’s Handbook, another rollicking fun ride if you’re interested in a laugh.  Shteyngart’s prose just crackles.  He’s worth reading just for the sheer pleasure of those incredible sentences; he brings new life to the adjectival abyss.

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    I’m currently reading Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos:  Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. His previous work, The Elegant Universe, was immensely popular.  Kids carried dog-eared copies of that around school all year.

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    Lastly, I’m re-reading Chris Hedges’ War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.  Some of you may recall that Hedges was the NYT war correspondent for many years.  This text is one of three that I’ll be teaching in a Peace Studies class next year offered as a senior English elective. 

      • Howard Zinn’s The Power of Nonviolence:  Writings by Advocates of Peace and Michael True’s An Energy Field More Intense Than War:  The Nonviolent Tradition and American Literature.  We’ll also be viewing Eugene Jarecki’s documentary film Why We Fight.

  10. Since this is an open and more or less random thread, I have a query about legislative matter that is trivial in the grand scheme of things but which is both irking and mystifying me.  Today, I got a letter informing me that I would no longer be eligible to be sent my–much enjoyed–Beer of the Month shipments because I live in our great commonwealth where, apparently, a new law has just gone into effect barring the importing of beer across state lines.  First thought:  Damn, this is the kind of thing that turns people into libertarians.  Second thought:  I wonder if anyone on BMG knows when this bill was passed, who pushed it, for what ostensibly pressing public purposes, etc.  Just want to know who’s responsible for diminishing my quality of life and how said reduction is supposed to be bettering the well being of the Commonwealth. 
    P.S.  One can still receieve shipments of wine; we citizens apparently only need protection from illegal immigration by beers…

    • Do you have any more info?  If it’s really barring shipments of beer across state lines, it’s hard for me to imagine that it’s constitutional.  States usually aren’t allowed to discriminate against commerce from other states.

      • David there has been some sort of disturbing mind meld lately because I thought the same thing.  Or is this the dormant commerce clause?  Either way I, like a few people have mentioned, thought this was about wine sales and not beer sales.

      • I followed up my letter from the Microwbrewed Beer of the Month people with a phone call this morning.  As I’d feared, the rep on the phone was not very informed or informative about our laws.  All he could tell me was that they’d just been notified by our state that they could no longer ship beer here (they’re in CA), but that they could still ship wine, so I could either get a refund or switch to wine.  Given the lack of concrete information, given the constitutional skepticism voiced by people on this site, and given my inability to google anything remotely resembling said law, it seems possible that the characterization I passed on yesterday is misleading, a corporation’s self-serving simplification of some more complex regulatory dispute.  Stilll, for what it’s worth, the text of the letter I received yesterday from C&H clubs USA, Inc. begins, “We regret to inform you that Massachusetts has recently banned the importation of beer across state lines…”

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        I’ll miss my microbrew deliveries.  And I’d sure like to nail down whether or not we’ve really passed such a law. 

    • There was a court case that struck down a ban on mail-order wine but I hadn’t heard anything about beer.

      • I don’t know the details, but I do know that when I tried to ship a case from Washington, I was told, by the Washington Vineyand, that because of the size of the Washington Vineyard, they were unable to ship into Massachusetts.

  11. found wandering through Beverly-Townsend can tell us more about this libation frustration

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    perhaps the beast was subsisting on imported beer from its indiginous far-away land

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    and when the import was banned the poor beast was let loose on the land

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