The sad state of affairs at St. Mary of the Assumption in Brookline Village:
Time for the Amber Alert?
Photo credit: The Missus
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Brookline Crèche Crook: The Incriminating Photos
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Tagged Amber Alert, Brookline, crèche crook, St. Mary of the Assumption
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Geez! Someone Snatched Jesus Of Brookline Village!
There’s a crèche crook at large in the Brookline area, someone who apparently made a New Year’s resolution to steal the Baby Jesus from the Nativity scene at St. Mary of the Assumption.
That’s cold – especially since it’s the second time in five years some Messiah mugger has victimized the church.
No word yet on ransom demands.
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Tagged Baby Jesus, Brookline, crèche crook, Messiah mugger, Nativity scene, St. Mary of the Assumption
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Happy New Year!
The hardworking staff at Campaign Outsider’s Global Worldwide Headquarters thanks all of our splendid readers for their forbearance and comments this past year, and wishes you a happy and prosperous 2012.
Cheers!
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Tagged Campaign Outsider, Global Worldwide Headquarters, hardworking staff
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Let The $4 Billion Rumpus Begin! (Huntsman’s Destiny Edition)
Headline on this week’s Peggy Noonan Wall Street Journal column:
Gingrich Is Making Romney Better
Next week’s headline:
Huntsman Is Making Romney Battered
That will largely be thanks to Our Destiny, a Super PAC backing GOP presidential afterthought Jon Huntsman (R-Have You Met My Daughters?), who’s registered up to 12% in New Hampshire polls.
Our Destiny PAC bought more than $70,000 of TV airtime in New Hampshire last week, according to the New York Times, and “increased its buy significantly this week to $300,000 for a new ad that says Mr. Romney will say anything and urges voters to ‘stop the chameleon.'”
The ad:
The transcript:
They’ve risen. They’ve fallen.
‘Til two serious candidates remain.
One willing to say anything, be anything.
One who can actually do the job.
Jon Huntsman has the best economic plan.
Jobs record.
Foreign policy experience. He’ll make America strong.
One state can stop the chameleon.
Vote Jon Huntsman.
Our Destiny PAC is responsible for the content of this advertising.
And happily responsible for the consequences of this advertising.
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Tagged Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, New York Times, Newt Gingrich, Our Destiny PAC, Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal
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NYT Rips The Lid Off Romney’s Gunsels
Restore Our Future, the pro-Mitt Romney Super PAC that has spent $3 million on TV spots in Iowa during the past three weeks, should really have been named Destroy Newt’s Future.
From today’s New York Time Page One feature:
Group’s Ads Rip at Gingrich as Romney Stands Clear
DES MOINES — The attacks began three weeks ago and have not let up since: Television ad after television ad slamming Newt Gingrich for having “more baggage than the airlines,” for being fined by Congress for ethics violations, for his position on illegal immigration, even for admitting that he has made mistakes on the campaign trail.
Democrats and Republicans alike have singled out the $2.8 million-and-counting air deluge as the biggest factor in Mr. Gingrich’s precipitous drop in polls of Iowa voters and Mitt Romney’s corresponding rise, reshaping the critical first contest of the Republican primary season to Mr. Romney’s benefit.
The ads, which continue to blanket Iowa days before the caucuses here, were created and paid for by people with deep knowledge of the Romney campaign’s strategic thinking, close relationships with Mr. Romney’s most generous donors, and even research on what television viewers like and dislike most about Mr. Romney himself.
That’s the essence of GOP Super PAC Attacks: Promote the agenda of a particular candidate without technically “coordinating” with his (or her) campaign.
But, as the Times piece makes clear, that’s just splitting hairs.
Of which Mitt Romney has none. (Split hairs, that is.)
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Tagged Destroy Newt Gingrich, Iowa, Mitt Romney, New York Times, Restore Our Future, super-PAC
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Let The $4 Billion Rumpus Begin! (Soul Man Edition)
It’s Come-to-Jesus time in the Iowa airwars.
New TV spot from Leaders For Families, a pro-Rick Santorum Super PAC:
That testimonial from sanctimonious Iowa operator Bob Vander Plaats (R-$1 Million Price Tag) uses the code words “One of Us” to certify Santorum’s religious right bona fides.
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney (R-Iowant to Win Here) says he can “save the soul of America.”
That’s interesting given that Romney is quite possibly the least soulful man in America.
But why get technical about it.
Globe Magazine Picks Carmen Ortiz As Bostonian Of The Year
From the Boston Globe press release:
Boston, MA, Dec. 30, 2011 – The Boston Globe Magazine announced today that it has selected US Attorney Carmen Ortiz as “Bostonian of the Year” for 2011. She will be featured in a special edition of The Sunday Globe magazine on January 1, and online at www.bostonglobe.com/magazine and boston.com. The magazine will also include profiles of several other Bostonians notable for their achievements in 2011.
Ms. Ortiz most recently made international headlines as the lead prosecutor in the infamous case of crime boss Whitey Bulger and his long-time girlfriend Catherine Greig, who will likely stand trial next year.
The Globe Magazine calls Ms. Ortiz “the fighter,” in recognition of her long history of prosecuting political corruption cases – dating all the way back to her summer job in 1980 when she interned at the US Department of Justice’s public integrity unit, working alongside future attorney general Eric Holder.
There you go.
The Boston Globe’s Slowbituaries
Every now and again an obituary of a local figure turns up in the Boston Globe sort of . . . er . . . late.
Previous case in point: Last year’s Globe two-week-late obituary of Joseph A. Sciacca Sr., father of Boston Herald editor in chief Joe Sciacca Jr.
Current case in point: Thursday’s Globe obituary of Monique Doyle Spencer.
Mrs. Spencer, a former business executive who wrote many opinion columns for the Globe and three books after her diagnosis [of metastatic breast cancer], died Nov. 26 at home in Brookline. She was 56.
Not to get technical about it, but that was over a month ago.
She was one of your own, Globeniks. What took you so long?
Let The $4 Billion Rumpus Begin! (Iowa Ad-O-Rama Edition)
And the hit jobs just keep on comin’ in the Hawkeye State’s GOP presidential slapfight.
• Rick Perry goes cartoon in his latest Iowa TV spot.
Got that? “The fox guarding the henhouse is like asking a Congressman to fix Washington. Bad idea.”
Wait – isn’t that backwards? Then again, this is Rick Perry we’re dealing with.
• Mitt Romney’s gunsels at Restore Our Future ignore the other Capitol Hill hacks and zero in on Newt Gingrich.
Make no mistake: Restore Our Future will pile-drive Gingrich right through the South Carolina primary, after which Gingrich will be Newtered.
• Meanwhile, Romney himself gets to shift into “I See an America” mode.
Got that? “When generations of immigrants looked up and saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time, one thing they knew beyond any doubt, and that is they were coming to a place where anything was possible . . .”
Even President Mitt Romney.
Yikes.
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Tagged Fox, I See an America, Iowa, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Newtered, Restore Our Future, Rick Perry, South Carolina
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Free The Philip Morris Whatever!
Good news for the last three smokers in America. Altria, the Potemkin corporation that fronts for Philip Moris, has just established a front group for itself.
Via Convenience Store Decisions:
Altria’s tobacco operating companies launched Citizens for Tobacco Rights, a Website for adult tobacco consumers who are interested in information and advocacy on tobacco-related public policy issues.
Citizens for Tobacco Rights is a group of adult smokers and dippers joining together to get active on issues they care about. The group is supported by Philip Morris USA, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. and John Middleton.
U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. and John Middleton are, of course, subsidiaries of Altria.
Citizens for Tobacco Rights, meanwhile, is a classic example of the “puffers groups” Christopher Buckley lampooned in his 1994 novel Thank You for Smoking.
From SmokersHistory:
Buckley also has fun with the tobacco industry’s tactic of using PR firms to organize “astroturf” grassroots lobbies, when Nick [Naylor, the protagonist] addresses a DC meeting of “the puffers”, a front group modeled after the National Smokers Alliance run by Burson-Marsteller: ‘They championed the rights of the oppressed smoker who couldn’t find a smoking section in a restaurant, or who had to leave his desk and go stand in the snow to have a cigarette. They targeted local politicians who favored anti-smoking ordinances, attacked the surgeon general much more viciously than the [tobacco industry] itself could, organized ‘smoke-ins’ . . . and distributed morale-boosting T-shirts and caps with pro-smoking emblems modeled on the oId Black Panther salute: upraised fists holding cigarettes. Ostensibly, these were grassroots, heartbeat-of-America (or heart-attack-of-America) citizens groups …. In actual fact, there wasn’t really anything spontaneous about the rise of these groups. They were front groups… almost entirely funded by the [tobacco industry], with the money being laundered–legally–by giving it to various middle- men who, posing as anonymous donors, passed it along to the groups as contributions. The whole operation cost next to nothing, relatively, and this way tobacco’s friends in the House and Senate could stand up and point to them as evidence of a groundswell ….
Citizens for Tobacco Rights. Life imitating art imitating life.
Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
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