Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Today’s activities in the MA-05 race

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On the Republican side, Jim Ogonowski went nucular on the immigration issue today.  He accused Democrat Niki Tsongas of “support[ing] amnesty for illegal immigrants.”  (This is silly, of course — Tsongas favors the Kennedy/McCain/George Bush approach.  You can call it amnesty if you want.  Or you could call it ketchup.  Neither would be accurate.)  Ogo also expressed anger over the prospect of giving “benefits” to “illegal immigrants” — presumably this is in reference to the possibility that some children who are here illegally might get health care under S-CHIP, the expansion of which Tsongas supports and Ogo opposes.  Again lashing out at Tsongas, Ogo said he “just do[es]n’t think she gets” that treating sick children is “another form of amnesty” and cannot be justified in light of “the squalor we have at Walter Reed.”  We’ve already talked quite a bit about how little sense Ogo’s position on all this makes.  (Wait — what about FEMA?  Isn’t that why we can’t treat sick kids?)  Today’s statement does nothing to clear any of it up.

On the Democratic side, Niki Tsongas buried her sister today.  She resumes campaign activities tomorrow.

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  1. Your condescending attitude towards Jim Ogonowski is exactly the reason that people in the 5th Congressional district are going to vote for Jim.  Niki is running scared.

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    Jim didn’t go nuclear. He clearly articulated his position.  George Bush’s program is Amnesty, plain and simple and anybody that supports it, supports Amnesty. It is the main reason that people have left the McCain camp for instance.

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    Illegal Immigration is the number one topic in the 5th Congresional district.  If you don’t believe that, so be it but it is.  Who hates it the most are those legal immigrants that are there.

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    Back to the subject of you making fun of Jim.  Here is the quote verbatim from the Press Release:

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    Angered by news that Niki Tsongas supports giving benefits to Illegal Immigrants, a caller asked if Jim supports giving free health care for Illegal Immigrants. Jim explained that illegal immigrants are just that – illegal. Jim Ogonowski said, “I just don’t think she gets it. It’s just another form of amnesty. How can we justify giving money to illegal immigrants with the squalor we have at Walter Reed? There’s something that’s just fundamentally wrong with that.”

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    Yet you decided to quote it this way:

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    Ogo said he “just do[es]n’t think she gets” that treating sick children is “another form of amnesty” and cannot be justified in light of “the squalor we have at Walter Reed.”

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    You changed the quote in order to show that Jim is dumb and don’t speak no smart.  Keep doing it.  It plays right into Jim’s hands, not to mention intellectually dishonest.

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    Here’s the reason why Jim Ogonowski is going to be the next congressman from the 5th Congressional District.  He passes the, “who would you rather have a beer with?” test  Niki fails it miserably.  Although she does pass the “who do I want to drink Veuve Clicquot” test with flying colors.

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    October 16th at 10pm is going to be sooooo sweet.  Soooo sweet.  Keep up the good work.

    • Your condescending attitude towards Jim Ogonowski is exactly the reason that people in the 5th Congressional district are going to vote for Jim

      I picture legions of people marching to the polls thinking “there’s no way I’m going to vote the way that guy on that blog says to vote”.

      • The Tsongas campaign has towards Jim. And people in the district sense it.  Niki is going to lose and it’s not going to be pretty. 

        • Do you think people will not vote for someone because of his/her contempt for the opponent?

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          Bush had clear contempt for Gore and Kerry.  Romney has contempt for most anyone he meets.

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          Same deal in the reverse — Clinton didn’t bother much with Lazio, Galvin with Bonifaz, or Kennedy with the interchangeable nuts who take him on.

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          The fact that Niki is debating this guy shows that he’s getting more respect than most Republican “candidates” do in this state.  You’re reminiscent of this year’s Patriots — maybe saying you’re disrespected helps in the office, but we both know it’s not true.

    • That has to be the most asinine test for political office ever. People who vote based upon with which candidate they’d want to have a beer are idiots. I mean, OJ seems like a good guy to have a beer with. What’s next in dumb political tests, the “which candidate would I most want to snort lines in a men’s room with” test?

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      If I voted based on who I wanted to drink beer with, I’d write in Sam Adams CEO Jim Koch and Jerry Remy for every election. Well, there might be something to that – I did write-in Theo Epstein for president in November of ’04.

        • More people voted for Gore than Bush.  Florida was essentially a tie, but the nation wasn’t.

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          And tblade, I’m not about to go into a men’s room with any Republican Congressmen, just say that…

        • …God forbid people put effort into analyzing the substance of a candidate’s campaign rather than same criteria college fraternities use for admission. Wait, wasn’t Bush a drunken, coke-snorting frat boy back in the day?

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          You know what, I think I’ll have a beer with the person I want to have a beer with and elect to national office the person who ran the chess club and won the math olympics.

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          I mean, Bush said this recently:

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          QUESTION: Do you think there’s a risk of a recession? How do you rate that?

          BUSH: You know, you need to talk to economists. I think I got a B in Econ 101. I got an A, however, in keeping taxes low and being fiscally responsible with the people’s money.

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          (It was reported he actually got a C, the same grade I got in Macro at NU.)

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          Nice. Laugh out loud ridiculous. And he has an MBA from Harvard and he refuses to engage the press on basic questions about the economy. I think we need to stop electing the candidate who we’d have a beer with and start electing the candidate who showed up to economics class.

          • You may not like it, but that’s what happens. 

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            As far as economics classes go, in my Micro Class at UML a student actually stopped a lecture to ask why the professor kept referring to a straight line as a curve.  That person passed and showed up to all the economics classes. No it wasn’t me.

    • You changed the quote in order to show that Jim is dumb and don’t speak no smart.  Keep doing it.  It plays right into Jim’s hands, not to mention intellectually dishonest.

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      Huh?  “don’t speak no smart”?  EaBo, wtf are you smoking?

      • by putting the [es] in don’t you inferred that the press release said “he don’t.”  which is wrong.  It may have been subconscious David but it was there.  You could have quoted exactly by using the “I don’t” that was in the press release.  But you didn’t.  You and your fellow progressives have been denigrating Ogonowski’s intelligence for the past month.  I’ve finally had enough and will continue to call you on it.

        • EaBo, that is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.  Because of the sentence I was writing, I changed “don’t” (which he said because he said “I don’t”) to “doesn’t” (because I was using his quote in the third person).  It’s absolutely standard procedure in legal writing to change tenses in this way when you’re using a different pronoun or whatever, and it’s completely acceptable.  I have submitted numerous documents to state and federal courts using exactly this technique, and so have legions of other litigators.  But apparently it’s not good enough for EaBo.  PUH-LEEEEEZ.  “Call me” on this all you want.  You only make yourself look silly.

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          If you’re all sensitive about something like this, you’re the one who’s running scared. 

  2. I am Cross-posting from RMG

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    Much has been made by our friends on the left regarding Jim Ogonowski’s opposition to the current SCHIP renewal bill.  As Jim has stated, the current bill expands the program to cover children not currently eligible, and that currently have private health insurance. 

    President Bush has asked the Congress to expand the program by over 5 billion dollars.  The Democrats in Congress, rather than extending this program, want to play politics.  They are hoping for a veto of their massive expansion of SCHIP, which is unwarranted as it gives incentives for those who are currently covered by private plans to move to government paid insurance plans.  The President explains this in his weekly radio address, which you can hear via YouTube to the left.  The President outlined his support for SCHIP and why he believes the current bill is flawed.

    I strongly supported SCHIP as a governor, and have strongly supported it as President. My 2008 budget proposed to increase SCHIP funding by $5 billion over five years, a 20 percent increase over current funding.

    Instead of working with my Administration to enact this funding increase for children’s health, Democrats in Congress have decided to pass a bill they know will be vetoed. One of their leaders has even said such a veto would be a “political victory.” As if this weren’t irresponsible enough, Congress is waiting until the SCHIP program is just about to expire before passing a final bill. In other words, Members of Congress are risking health coverage for poor children purely to make a political point.

    The proposal congressional leaders are pushing would raise taxes on working Americans and would raise spending by $35 to $50 billion. Their proposal would result in taking a program meant to help poor children and turning it into one that covers children in some households with incomes of up to $83,000 a year. And their proposal would move millions of children who now have private health insurance into government-run health care. Our goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage — not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage.

    If Congress does nothing in the next 7 days millions of children will go without coverage.  Will Niki Tsongas call on the Democratic-Congress to renew SCHIP to ensure poor children don’t lose health care?

    • how many Republicans decide to jump ship on this one, and how many decide to see what folks think about voting against kids' health care. Ogo may not have much cover on this one.  Turning this on its head — Bush as protector of kids' health care — looks more than a little desperate, BTW. “Pass something they know will be vetoed” is Bush's favorite trick, a sleight of hand that tries to make people forget that, uh, he's the one doing the vetoing. Duh. 

      Also …

      • Expansion of SCHIP would cover 4 million new kids. I'd like to see Mr. Ogonowski justify denying health coverage to those kids.
      • Yes, the eligibility reaches the middle class. You know why? Because more and more, middle class people can't afford private coverage otherwise. Health insurance, particularly for one's family, is becoming a luxury. The proof is that 8.7 million kids are currently without health insurance, and nearly half of them are between 200-399% of poverty level.
      • SCHIP *does* move kids onto private coverage — that's why the insurance cos like it, for better or worse. I couldn't possibly care less about the “crowd-out” effect on the private insurance market — if the government could do a better job, then it should do it. But in any event, it's creating a more efficient market due to pooling of risk under Medicare. And the insurers want the business.

  3. The President supports SCHIP only in an Orwellian way.  That must be why republican governor Schwartzenegger has called on Congress to expand the program by $50 billion over the next 5 years [New York Times  http://www.nytimes.c…}.  The funding the President supports would not cover the current number of children enrolled in the program. 

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    The President’s opposition is ideological.  He sees the program as displacing private health insurance, so wants to keep it to a level that would prevent displacement.  His agency rules would require children to go without insurance for a year before becoming eligible.

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    My simple word for President Bush’s “support” for SCHIP is “Fraud.”

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    What Ogonowski is doing, on the other hand, is trying to turn immigrants into the boogyman under the bed.  Anyone who thinks that illegal immigration “amnesty” is the leading issue of concern to MA-05 voters is flat wrong. No matter how much RMG wants to ignore the war, ignore veterans, ignore health care, ignore the economy, and ignore the environment, the issues can’t all be reduced to a question of “amnesty” for illegal immigrants.  Nice try.

    • Keep thinking it.  Back in 2006, statewide anti-illegal immigration was one of the strongest issues. Now I give you that Patrick won, but Healey had a likeability problem that Jim Ogonowski does not have.

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      More to the point if you look at the crosstabs from that 9/26 poll you will see that the strongest opposition to illegal immigrants came from the 128 to 495, and Central Mass categories. 

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      Jim Ogonowski is the candidate that is most like the working people of the 5th Congressional District. He shares their values.  He will win on October 16 and you will all be eating crow. 

  4. Really?  If MA-5 were polled on issues, that would be #1?  Doubt it.  Sounds more like the people Ogonowski hired are some retreads from the Healey campaign.

  5. If Ogonowski is Ogo why isn’t Tsongas referred to as Tso?  Why the different treatment, Kra? đŸ™‚ 

      • Love these regional language differences. Especially new examples (soda/pop/tonic, milkshake/frappe/cabinet, grinder/sub/spuckie/hero and some others get tiresome).

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        Too bad the Wal-Martization of America will cause them to disappear.

    • “Tso” sounds Chinese, “Ogo” sounds Japanese.

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      Irrespective of that, the Tsongas name has been around for a while in MA politics, whereas the Ogonowski name has not.

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