Camelot's End

A Backward Glance

 



Like I'm sure many of you, I've grown weary of the tsunami of verbiage about Scott Brown's victory in the race to replace Ted Kennedy. Sheesh, Brown hasn't even been sworn in yet! Can we give the guy a chance to serve at least one minute in office before we declare him the national savior or the spawn of Satan?

However, in all the commentary about the Brown victory, too little attention has been paid to one aspect of the election - the end of the Kennedy era. No one who was raised in Massachusetts can be completely untouched by the myth of Camelot, however overly romanticized it may sometimes have been. Whenever I would go visit my relatives in Texas, people used to ask me, "Why do you people keep electing that Teddy Kennedy?" It was never easy to explain it. Teddy was in fact more to the Left than our state's electorate really is. Therefore it is not that big of a surprise that he was replaced by someone further to the Right. We tolerated Teddy's liberalism because of who he was, and the link he represented to his lost brothers.

John was the best of the three brothers, and the least liberal. His taxcut policies, which brought the nation out of a recession in the 1960's, was copied successfully by Ronald Reagan to bring the country out of a recession in the 1980's. President Obama might be wise to notice that pattern. John Kenendy was also willing to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war to thwart the socialist regime in Cuba. Robert was less the cold warrior and fiscal hawk his older brother was, but had passion and idealism to a degree that is rare in politics and that may have made him as good a president as John - but sadly we never got the chance to find out.

The youngest brother Teddy was deeply flawed, but Massachusetts voters never seriously considered the possibility of throwing him out of office, even after the incident at Chappaquiddick. Whatever he may have done to embarrass Massachusetts over the decades, he was still Johnny and Bobby's brother, and for that reason we could never bring ourselves to remove him from office, even though he was involved in a series of scandals that would have destroyed the political career of anyone with a different last name.

Now, for better or worse, whether one was a fan or a critic, the Kennedy era is over. We will never see a dynasty like that again. The times have changed, with a new era now dawning where small is beautiful, and the big government programs championed by Kennedy Democrats are falling into disrepute. Much of the Kennedy's legislative legacy, especially Teddy's, will no doubt be repealed in the coming years.

But that's almost irrelevant. If you're a son or daughter of Massachusetts and you ever felt an emotional bond to the Kennedy's, however irrational that attachment seemed at times, then you can't help but feel a certain twinge of sadness to read this final verdict yesterday by Mark Kriforian in the National Review:

So maybe the work does not go on, the cause does not endure, the hope does not live and the dream really can die.

Or maybe we're just in the process of redefining that dream in a way that's appropriate to this new revolutionary age. So as we head into the future with new leadership and new ideas based on the libertarian principles now most suited to our times, it's okay if we pause for a moment to look back at Camelot one last time, perhaps even with a tear of nostalgia in our eye.

 

Undressed for Success

Gee, I never thought of John Mayer as a sex symbol until I saw the latest Rolling Stone.



Have you noticed how almost no one gets on the cover of the Rolling Stone anymore unless they're willing to get at least half undressed? Not that I'm complaining. 

Remembering Tech

Mark Alamed has a great post about the history of Springfield's Techical High School, which was foolishly closed over 20 years ago for political reasons. My mother was a Tech graduate, and my father attended there for a time before dropping out to join the military. 

Above is a rare image of the Spring Street side of the school as it appeared around 1940. That section has been torn down, but the front part is still standing. To read Alamed's writing and see the historic photos click here.

On Garlic

Its Many Virtues

My neighbors have a garlic patch they grow every year. They love it so much that they even made this cardboard tombstone to note the garden's demise and hoped for resurrection.

I'm not a big fan of garlic, but there's no question it's good for you, as reported by Yahoo Answers:

Garlic is a natural antioxidant.

It is also antifungal, anti-viral, and a natural anti-biotic.

It's heart health traits include lowering bad cholesterol and blood pressure, aiding circulation and preventing against stroke.

Garlic also houses vitamin C, B6, selenium, magnesium, potassium, calcium and manganese and flavonoids

Garlic also contains allicin which acts as an antibiotic, and anti-fungal. Allicin degrades with higher temperature so eating garlic raw is best.

The great thing about Garlic is you'll sleep well after eating it, you'll sleep alone - but you'll sleep well.

 



Government's Point of View

Howie's List

Howie Carr has a humorous list in the Boston Herald of reasons why you should vote for Scott Brown on January 19th in the special election to replace Ted Kennedy. Here's a sampling:

Neal challenger Jay Fleitman and Scott Brown

■ You’re in a union, and you’re going to have to pay a 40 percent tax on your “Cadillac” health-care plan if Martha Coakley gets a chance to vote for Obama’s health-care rationing bill.
■ You’re still waiting for that property-tax relief that Deval Patrick promised you in 2006.
■ You’ve been rear-ended by a drunken state senator.
■ You lost your appetite for lunch one day when you observed a female state senator in a restaurant stuffing FBI cash bribes into her bra.
■ You believe that if the governor’s appointees rubberstamp a $44 million utility-rate increase, and then the next week Deval pockets $7,000 in contributions from that same power company’s executives (and spouses) at their lobbyist’s office, perhaps the attorney general should at least have a comment.
■ You watch this crime wave emanating from the State House and wonder why the attorney general can’t seem to find one single solon to arrest, when the feds have no difficulty whatsoever nailing House speaker after speaker after speaker on serious felonies....
■ Your local property-tax bill is rising almost as fast as the value of your home is dropping.
■ You wonder why Martha Coakley never apologized to Tookie Amirault.



Three Pics

My friend Micheline is visiting Paris and took this picture yesterday morning. 

How disrespectful of history for someone to put this apartment buzzer over a historic bank sign in downtown Northampton. 

The normally babbling brook near my house is frozen silent. That never happened last year.

 

Democrats Frightened

Coakley Candidacy Collapsing

Greg Saulmon took this funny picture outside the WGBY studios in Springfield where the Western Mass debate is being taped today between the candidates to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate.

 



The truth is Brown IS a Bush-style Republican, but pathetically that is actually less scary than the prospect of Martha Coakley. Meanwhile, as evidence of how far the panic over Coakley has spread, my liberal friends at MoveOn.org are sending out the alert nationwide about the increasing prospects for a Brown victory:

Dear MoveOn member,

In 11 days, we could lose progressive hero Ted Kennedy's Senate seat—and with it, any hope for passing major progressive legislation this year.

A new poll Tuesday showed Democrat Martha Coakley's lead in the special election to succeed Kennedy is at the edge of the margin of error, and the non-partisan Cook Political Report now says it's very competitive.

A Republican victory here would be a catastrophe—Democrats would lose their 60th vote in the Senate, health care could die, and the Republicans could block pretty much anything they want.

Well, of course the loss of one seat would not allow the GOP to "block pretty much anything they want." Democrats would still hold a 59 out of a hundred seat majority. But it would hopefully be enough to kill the health care takeover bill, and that alone is reason enough to back Brown with more enthusiasm than perhaps he deserves.

You tell 'em Arnie

Health care reform, which started as noble and needed legislation, has become a trough of bribes, deals and loopholes. You've heard of the bridge to nowhere. This is health care to nowhere. California's congressional delegation should either vote against this bill that is a disaster for California or get in there and fight for the same sweetheart deal Senator Nelson of Nebraska got for the Cornhusker State. He got the corn; we got the husk.

- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

 

The Next Step

A great column appeared in the Framingham paper yesterday:

New Year's Day marked the first anniversary of marijuana decriminalization in the Commonwealth. The statistics aren't in yet, and when they emerge different spins will be put on the impact of the new law. However, a glance out the window assures us that the sky hasn't fallen, despite the warnings of the 2008 initiative's shrillest critics, mostly self-serving career "public servants."

To their great credit, 65 percent of our fellow citizens saw through the old bromides and found the courage to declare that we gain nothing by wrecking people's lives for small amounts of pot, and we can't afford to waste scarce law enforcement resources that ought to be focused on real, predatory, crime.


Time Flies

Wow, the first week of the decade has gone by already! I didn't go to the big shindig in downtown Northampton last week. "Amateur Night" as we alkies like to call New Year's Eve, is something I'm not into anymore as a non-drinker, but fortunately Jim Neill was there to video all the drunken madness in the streets. 

Through the Window

A topless and armless mannequin in the window of Zanna, an Amherst dress shop.

In Northampton, the Ninja Turtles are still popular in the city of their birth. 

Oh no! The Democrat's anti-business policies claim another victim. 

I hope that what this Buddah in a Hamp window says is true for us all. 

Today's Video

This bit of weirdness about stalking and violence was filmed entirely in the UMass Library. 

Brown Surging

Coakley Fading Fast

 



In a stunning development in the race to fill the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy, the Republican nominee State Senator Scott Brown has surged within nine percentage points of the scandal plagued Democrat nominee Martha Coakley. It's been the conventional wisdom that whoever won the Democrat nomination in last month's primary would win in a walk. Yet now it appears that the contest is turning into a real horserace and that the Democrats will have to fight to hold onto the seat. Making it that much more challenging, Sen. Brown also received the endorsement yesterday of Boston Red Sox deity Curt Schilling:

Curt Schilling, the former Boston Red Sox pitcher who had toyed with running for the Senate in Massachusetts, has endorsed Republican state Sen. Scott Brown. Schilling made the announcement on his blog Monday, calling Brown “exactly what this state and this country needs right now.”

“He’s for smaller government, stopping the concentration of power in one political party, a strong military and vigorous homeland defense, as well as — and probably most appropriate and meaningful right now — giving all Americans health care, but not by creating a new government insurance program,” Schilling wrote. “This state can literally change the nation in one day,” he added. “Think about that, and then go vote for Scott Brown and make it happen.”

Of course the candidate in the race that is the most right on the most issues is Libertarian Joe Kennedy, who gets only two percent in the polls. However, considering how important this race is, and how much misery we can be spared if the Democrats lose their 60th vote in the Senate, it may well be time for the anti-Coakley forces to swallow their differences and unite behind Brown. At the very least, some people can make themselves useful by following this advice offered by a poster on the Boston Herald website:

"Could all those who hurt this country by blindly voting for Ted Kennedy for 50 years please stay home on election day? You've done enough damage."

Inauguration Day

Yesterday a mostly motley crew of politicians were sworn in at cities and towns all over the Valley. That incluldes Springfield, as shown in this Angelo Puppolo photo. 

 



Inauguration ceremonies always bring out a big crowd in Springfield, as seen in this Bruce Adams photo. 

Here's a gang of Springfield politicians as captured by Adams. Believe it or not, there are actually a few good apples among the rotten bunch, but Springfield still has to come to terms with its corrupt past before it can move on into the future. 

The real political war in Springfield is being fought between lies and truth: So far, lies are winning by leaps and bounds; and that's the truth.

Baby It's Cold Outside

Every morning I enjoy the transcendent beauty of the woodland way into downtown Northampton.

 



The shame is it's so damn cold even dogs are wearing boots!

It makes you wanna hide out in the cozy confines of the Haymarket.

In Westfield they have a Santa House on the rotary. That's my sister Bev waving in front of it. With the holidays over, Santa has split the scene. 

May as well go across the street to the Westfield Tavern and admire John Bonavita's Christmas decorations while they're still up. 

Music Flashback

When I was still too young to legally hold a job I worked "under the table" at Nora's Variety on Boston Road in Pine Point, sorting the newspapers before school at 5:30 in the morning and tieing up the returns. I remember being almost hypnotized when I saw David Cassidy posing nude on the cover of Rolling Stone. It made me wonder why none of the pictures of pretty girls on the covers of the other magazines had the same effect on me.
 

That was not the end of my underage working career. I later used my brother's draft card to assume his identity and get a third shift job on the weekends in a Dow Jones printing plant in Chicopee. The problem was I would forget that my name was supposed to be my brother's and wouldn't respond when people called me "Rick." All the while I was an honor student at the High School of Commerce serving on the Student Council.

Then I discovered drugs and all that changed.

Joe Kennedy for Senate?

He's on the Ballot!

 

 

More and more Democrats are becoming concerned about the moral fitness of Martha Coakley to serve in the United States Senate. They would like to vote against her, but are wishing they had an alternative to casting their vote for Republican Scott Brown. While Brown is clearly superior to Coakley in many respects, the fact is he is still a Bush Republican, and many Massachusetts Democrats just can't bring themselves to pull that lever. But now comes the happy news that Joe Kennedy has made it on the ballot! No, not the Joe Kennedy who as a congressman was once famously described by Howie Carr as "dumb as a post and mean as a snake."

 



Although initially considered a contender for his Uncle's seat, that Joe Kennedy was quickly dismissed as unelectable because of his close ties to South American dictator Hugo Chavez. Happily, there is Joe Kennedy the libertarian! Yes, his legal name is Joe Kennedy, and while that fact is worth a chuckle, there is nothing unserious about his campaign. Just look at this sampling of where he stands on the issues: 

Afghanistan - This region of the world has been at war for centuries and it is presumptuous of us to think that we are going to stop it any time soon. Moreover, the role of the American military should be to defend against attack or the imminent threat of attack, not to act as an ongoing police state on foreign soil. Democrats often claim to oppose foreign wars. But after ten months in total control of Congress and the White House, Democrats have done nothing to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If elected I would do everything I could to pass legislation to end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home.

Healthcare - Just 50 years ago low-cost health insurance was obtainable by almost every family. Doctors still made house calls, hospitals were dramatically less expensive and charity hospitals were available for those who could not afford to pay for care. Today, health care is significantly more expensive largely due to government regulation and liability insurance required to be held by our physicians. The government healthcare programs we have today are heading for bankruptcy. The same methods and people who got us into this mess can not get us out.

Drug War - Regardless of whether you are for or against the various uses of marijuana, my belief is marijuana regulation is an issue that each state can address independent of Federal intervention. The Federal Government should have no say in how each state treats the various uses of marijuana.

Now that there's a credible place for Democrats to cast their protest votes against Coakley, this race, once considered a shoo-in for the Democrats, is about to get interesting!

Parade of Progress

These public toilets called "peepods" are sweeping Europe. 

However, if they become available in the United States do you think feminists will declare them discriminatory?

God's Justice

Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Northampton is scheduled to close next year. It's a priceless historic structure, but what can it be used for except a church?

Even more unimaginable is that Springfield's Our Lady of Hope is closing. Who can imagine Hungry Hill without it?

It is hard to feel sympathy for the dramatic decline of the Catholic Church in this area, considering the terrible sex crimes the church covered up for so many years. It wasn't the child abuse scandals that drove so many to quit the church, after all, anyone who thinks pedophiles can be found only in Catholic Churches is kidding themselves. What was unforgivable was the church's lack of response and evasiveness when the abuse was discovered. When confronted with evidence of outrageous crimes, they were not outraged. That is hard to overlook.

More Snow

Yesterday morning on the dawn bus into Amherst I took this pic through the window of these clouds pregnant with snow.

When I left the Robert Frost Library around noon the snow was falling like crazy.

It's a miracle I didn't break my neck walking down this icy hill. 

Soon it turned into the dreaded "wintry mix" of snow and sleet that requires one to use an umbrella in a snowstorm. 

And of course it all froze overnight, so that this morning the streets were slick sheets of ice. 

How many days until Spring? Oh wait, the first day of winter isn't even until the 21st! Good grief, it's almost enough to make you wish that global warming was real. 

Two Music Videos

Something gentle from Northampton's Calvin Coolidge Museum.

Something cool and bombastic from Rush. 

Senate Endorsements 2009

No Good Candidates

 



If the voters can stop yawning long enough, they will go to the polls on Tuesday to select two people to run for the U.S. Senate seat left open by the death last summer of Edward M. Kennedy. I don't know why anyone should give a damn about who I would vote for, but that never stops me from throwing my two cents in.

If I were voting in the Democrat Primary, I would vote for Mike Capuano.

The race is really between Capuano and Martha Coakley, the other two candidates being political unknowns who should have stayed that way. Both Capuano and Coakley are wrong on nearly all the issues, but Capuano is at least a supporter of drug law reforms. As Valley libertarian activist Terry Franklin explains, "Mike Capuano is the drug law reformer to vote for. Martha Coakley, the front runner, is the hard core Drug Warrior who would be a disaster as our representative."

If I were voting in the Republican Primary I would vote for Scott Brown.

A political unknown with no money who probably has no chance of winning, Scott is at least a solid fiscal conservative. Unfortunately he is also wrong on nearly all the social issues, but in this election it's the economy that counts. His opponent Jack E. Robinson has unfortunately in the past proven himself to be totally unelectable.

The winners will face off in the special election on January 19th.

Words For Our Times

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument is needed. Oh, had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire, it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

-Frederick Douglass

Today's Video

Very funny true life psychedelic sports story. 

Hampenings

Around Hamp

Most pumpkins have gone bad by now, but as my neighbor's porch shows the small ones seem to have longer lives. 

As another of my neighbors has discovered, when pumpkins turn rotten they can become depraved to the point of eating their own young.

This sign suggests that the children where I live are slow, but at least they have the admirable desire to smash the state. 

Posters on the railroad trestle downtown. 

I'm now so completely out of the booze scene that I didn't even know that Pop's Packy had closed!

 



Just the thought of a Hamp without Pops is quite disorienting. 

Oh wait, it only moved next door, into a newer, nicer building.

Pop's gone respectable? Combined with the loss of Augie's flophouse across the street, I guess the ol' Hamp of yesteryear really is gone. Does anyone remember when that location was a drug store?

These are the only signs I've seen so far on anyone's lawn in Northampton promoting a candidate for the special senate election to replace Ted Kennedy. 

When Kennedy died everyone predicted there would be a titanic battle for his seat as the biggest names in Massachusetts politics from both parties entered the fray. Instead the race has been a screaming bore, with four cookie-cutter Democrats running while all the GOP has put forward is an unknown state senator and a scandal prone has-been. No wonder the public seems disinterested, with the probable outcome being that we'll end up with the same bad Democrat representation we always got from Teddy, only now we'll get it from someone without Kennedy's seniority or charisma. 

Holiday Giving

Radio crazies Bax and O'Brien are doing a charity drive in Springfield, as humorously reported in this video. 

Dan Yorke and I once helped in the 1990's with one of their charity events, but I don't remember if it was the same cause. In fact, come to think of it, technically it really wasn't even the same show as it was called Jonathan and O'Brien in those days. Wonder what became of Jonathan? 

Back to the Future

 



Amherst College has a new logo (above) which is actually a return to the old logo that was in use before 1961. The latin lingo means,“Let them enlighten the lands." New or old, the logo sure is better looking than the official college tie, which only an alumnus could love. 

To read all about the history of the Amherst College logo click here.

Speaking of Amherst College, in the Robert Frost Library is this stuffed owl that was donated to the school in 1862. 

It was a different Pioneer Valley that owl flew over 147 years ago. 

Today's Video

Someone asked me why I rarely put up anything by the Springfield band Staind. Okay, even though I find their music mostly a downer, here's a cover of one of their songs by Jay Brannan.