Jimmy Carter gets the job done - 31 years later

Former President Jimmy Carter frees hostage

by Howie Carr
DNN - EXCLUSIVE!
Monday - Aug. 30, 2010

OK, Jimmy Carter, thanks for getting this Mattapan moonbat of ours out of North Korea.

After 30 years, you finally freed a hostage.

And a double thank-you for immediately screwing out of town. You saved me from having to lecture you: You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. For once, I didn’t have to ask a has-been pol the eternal question: How can we miss you when you won’t go away?

I’m sorry, but these occasional “humanitarian” missions of yours don’t make up for a lifetime of squalid embraces of the world’s worst tinpot dictators.

And don’t even get me started about your failed presidency, and my 17 percent mortgage that came along with it, not to mention gas lines, stagflation and America Held Hostage.

I’m not saying Carter was an unpopular president, but when he was running for re-election in 1980, he lost Massachusetts to Ronald Reagan.

I still remember Carter’s 1980 TV spots. It was nighttime at the White House. The lights were still on in the Oval Office. You were supposed to think the president was working hard. But the message most people took away was, if this is the disaster we get from 16 hours a day, maybe Mr. Peanut oughta start calling in sick.

I’m sure the knucklehead “missionary” was glad to get out of a North Korean prison. That was the good news. The bad news was, he had to spend the next 15 hours or so on a jet, listening to Jimmy Carter regale him with heartwarming anecdotes about his favorite genocidal dictators.

It’s been a sad time for Jimmy. He still misses his old pal Yasser Arafat. Then there was the late Kim Il Sung - the father of the madman who currently rules North Korea. Back in 1994, Jimmy “brokered” a deal with North Korea to keep them from getting nukes - it cost us $4 billion worth of light water reactors and $100 million worth of oil.

The kneepad press called it a “landmark nuclear disarmament pact.” Now the North Koreans have nuclear weapons. Some landmark.

Carter is, of course, a Nobel Prize winner, like his fellow useless idiots Al Gore and Barack Obama. He pressured the shah of Iran to abdicate, which gave the world the radical regime that is on the verge of joining North Korea in the “landmark nuclear disarmament pact” club.

At least this trip to the workers’ utopia has prevented him from being an “observer” of any elections this week. He “observed” Hamas’ victory in Gaza. He “observed” Hugo Chavez’s recount in Venezuela. Next stop, Alaska?

America Held Hostage: It was Nov. 4, 1979 when Iranians invaded

the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, where they held captive 52 American

hostages for 444 days. Former President Jimmy Carter's failed

attempt to free them hurt his quest on getting re-elected.

(File photo)

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Takes one to know one, Duke

Howie Carr on trash-talking, Mike Dukakis

by Howie Carr
DNN EXCLUSIVE!
Thursday, Aug. 26, 2010

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black - M. Stanley Dukakis is accusing Mitt Romney of being “a lousy governor.”

Takes one to know one, Pee Wee.

“After a year and a half,” the Duke told the State House News Service, “he just walked away from the job.”

Excuse me, is this the same guy who during the 1988 election once told reporters, “If I were a sitting governor . . .”

Uh, you were, Duke. You just forgot, you’d been out of state for so long, running for president in your tank. I mean, when you talk about terrible governors in Massachusetts, they fall into two classes. Acting governors - Jane Swift wins hands down, and elected governors - paging the Duke.

Where to begin? How about corruption? How about his appointees as high sheriff who went to federal prison - Honest John McGonigle and Chuckles Reardon? Another was fined by the State Ethics Commission. His education adviser, Gerry Indelicato, a gangster’s nephew, went to the can for corruption as president of Bridgewater State.

Dirty tricks were his specialty. You could ask Joe Biden about that. And yet the Duke whined when Al Gore mentioned that he had a furlough policy that let first-degree murderers such as Willie Horton and Jimmy Flemmi escape and commit yet more mayhem.

Let’s talk about welfare. Dukakis is the guy whose administration gave out fake Social Security numbers to illegal aliens so they could go on welfare. He’s the guy whose appointees OK’d the state paying for a sex-change operation for a guy from New Hampshire, then sent him off for all-expenses-paid post-op recovery . . . in Montreal.

Remember how the state was paying for fertility treatment for welfare moms so they could drop more burdens on taxpayers?

Dukakis was first elected as a “reformer,” and then he set up the biggest hackerama in state history. Billy Bulger - Whitey’s brother - was president of the state Senate. Most of Whitey’s drug dealers had hack jobs, or were out on disability from them. Nationwide searches, as they are still known. The husband of a governor’s councilor got a judgeship, the divorce lawyer of another councilor got early retirement on the bench. Billy Bulger’s coatholder was put on the bench.

But Dukakis said, “Mitt Romney’s the biggest disappointment I think I’ve ever seen.”

Taxes? How about his lead-pipe guarantee not to raise taxes? Yeah right, think Deval Patrick's property-tax cut promise.

Then he said he wanted to raise sales taxes on services - just four services. Really? A Democrat state rep started reading the list of the “four services” and 90 minutes later he wasn’t through the hundreds of new levies.

Did I mention on top of everything else Pee Wee was, as an old lady on the Common once called him, “a henpecked little wimp” - a perfect description, by his own telling one afternoon.

“I don’t know about the pillow talk at your house,” he said at a State House press conference, “but I go to sleep at night with Kitty’s advice, counsels and urgings ringing in my ears.”

By the way, this hack’s hack has been collecting a state pension since January 1991. That’s the bad news. The good news, it’s “only” $30,753.72 a year. That’s how incompetent the Duke was - he couldn’t even finagle himself a six-figure kiss in the mail like the Corrupt Midget and all the rest of his era’s fellow, uh, statesmen.

Maybe the "Duke" should take a look in the mirror
before trashing other governors. Image above shows
two former governors of Massachusetts, Mike Dukakis
and Mitt Romney

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Nice guys finnish first

Finland number one place to live?

by Bill O'Reilly
DNN Staff - EXCLUSIVE!
Monday, Aug. 23, 2010

And the winner is: Finland! According to Newsweek magazine, that is the best country on the face of the earth. Who knew? The United States is the 11th-best place to live, just behind Denmark, which, of course, is close to the promised land of Finland.

A few years ago, I visited Helsinki, Finland’s small capital city. There were saunas everywhere, and that’s a good thing when you are that close to the Arctic Circle. In fact, unless you’re a polar bear, going outside in the winter can be breathtaking. Literally.

Nevertheless, the five million-plus Finns are relatively fine. Eighty percent of students make it to college, and life expectancy is close to 80 years old. There are few poor people floating around - you’d be a block of ice in that circumstance.

Newsweek is a relatively liberal publication, and I was struck by the magazine’s choice because there is little “diversity” in Finland and the left loves diversity. Ninety-four percent of citizens are of Finnish extraction, and the rest are Swedes or Russians.

That means blacks, Asians and other ethnic groups are in short supply. In fact, about the only time Finns get to see them is on videotape.

How about religion? Well, 83 percent of Finns are Lutheran and 15 percent do not believe in God. That means if you are Catholic, Jewish or Muslim, you might be very lonely. There could never be a mosque controversy in Finland because there would be no one to go the mosque.

My time in Helsinki was pleasant but boring. I mean, how much herring can one eat? There aren’t too many attractions, but there are plenty of trees and 60,000 lakes. Of course, if you swim in the lakes, you will get hypothermia, which puts a crimp in water sports, as we all know.

Finns are generally liberal thinkers with the exception of global warming. Many ask: Why fight that? If the warming trend increases, perhaps we could get out of the house by May. It is hard to argue with that logic.

As an American, I always think my country is best, and truthfully, I never thought Finland was in the same league until Newsweek enlightened me. I kind of like having options in my life, and the U.S. offers plenty of those. If I want to freeze, I can sidle on up to Alaska. If I want it hot, Florida is a short plane ride away. We also have plenty of lakes here, and you can actually swim in most of them. We have two oceans, the Rocky Mountains, the desert southwest and San Francisco, which is really another planet.

But I am happy for the Finns because they don’t get much attention. And Finland is a fine place, although Newsweek is definitely overstating things. Unless I missed it, I don’t believe millions of people are sneaking across the Swedish border trying to take up residence in the paradise of Finland.

Or am I wrong?

Photo above shows the Helsinki Waterfront,
by Joel W. Rogers/CORBIS


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Quincy collects again and again

Introducing the Quincy crash tax

by Michael Graham
DNN Staff - EXCLUSIVE!
Thursday, Aug. 19. 2010

Remember “you get what you pay for?”

In Quincy, it’s “you paid for it, but you don’t get it.”

By a 9-0 margin, the Quincy City Council just passed a “crash tax,” charging taxpayers for some emergency services when they crash their cars on city streets. Need a fire truck to respond to your wreck? That’ll be $500 per hour, please. Heavy rescue equipment? That’s $600/per. A “command vehicle” so an officer can make sure you’ve got full coverage to pay all these fees? $200 an hour.

Not including the cost of the Dunkin’ Donuts run.

The City Council says they’re only going to charge in cases where drivers acted “negligently, recklessly or maliciously.” But they also admit that these fees have absolutely nothing to do with discouraging reckless driving or improving public safety. It’s all about the cash - $250,000 a year, to be precise.

As the Patriot Ledger reports, “the fire chief is counting on $250,000 in revenue from such fees to balance this year’s $17.8 million fire department budget.”

That fire chief, Joseph Barron, just got a $16,000 raise and an $18,000 back pay bonus, by the way.

I’m not saying that Chief Barron doesn’t deserve it. I’m also not saying that the 129 Quincy cops who earned 100 grand or more in 2008 - 64 percent of the entire force - didn’t earn their money, either.

What I’m saying is that when a Quincy taxpayer ponies up his average household property tax of $4,373 a year, he should expect these employees to show up with a hose and a stretcher - not an invoice and a credit card machine.

That average tax bill, by the way, has gone up more than 80 percent since 2000 - more than twice the rate of inflation. And it’s not just in Quincy. Economists at George Mason University report that overall spending at the state and local level has gone up twice as fast as the private sector nationwide in the same period.

And who’s paying for all that spending? You, of course.

According the the Bureau of Economic Analysis, state and local workers earn more in both wages and benefits than you do. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that private-sector suckers worked an average of 2,050 hours in 2008, while government payrollers worked just 1,825 - 12 percent less.

To put that in concrete terms, by the time you clock out at 6 p.m., your government counterpart has been home watching Oprah for an hour.

But if you doze off on the evening commute and cause a wreck and expect a “public service” employee to come to your aid, you’d better have your checkbook ready.

Paying for fire protection? That’s covered by your taxes. Actually getting a fire truck to show up? Sorry, pal, that costs extra.

Interestingly, Quincy’s actually a paragon of fiscal frugality compared to many other Massachusetts municipalities. Over in Milton, for example, their property taxes just went up $712 last year alone (a stat proudly touted on Quincy’s Web site).

Quincy teacher, fire and police unions agreed to a pay freeze that allowed last year’s residential property taxes to remain flat, which is great. But that’s mostly due to the drunken-sailor levels of spending they’ve stuck taxpayers with the past 10 years.

Taxpayers have had enough, and if government workers don’t get that message, they’re headed for an economic wreck of their own.

Photo indicates Quincy city councilors voting on
crash tax legislation for revenue purposes.
(DNN Staff photo)

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Scandals can't sting shameless

Democrats stand tall when committing acts of crime

by Michael Graham
DNN Staff- EXCLUSIVE!
Monday, Aug. 16, 2010

“No, I am not resigning! No, no, no, not at all. That’s a strong no.”

So said Fall River City Councilor Brian Bigelow after allegedly trying to push through his own (ahem) stimulus package on an undercover cop. And you know something? He’s right. Why should he resign?

So what if he was caught in a prostitution sting on the streets of Fall River? His case just goes to prove that when it comes to Massachusetts Democrats, you can’t keep a good man down.

Uh, let me rephrase that . . .

There was a time when a politician, busted allegedly cruising for hookers in the seedier parts of town late on a Saturday night, would have quietly resigned and gone into hiding. A few years later there’d be a news story buried in the back pages about him being hired for some obscure, middle-management government job. There he’d stay with his head down, padding his pension and biding his time.

That was in the B.C. political era. As in “Before Clinton.”

Set aside the “meaning of ‘is’ is” loopholes and lawyering. The part of the Clinton saga that always fascinated me was how the guy found the guts to show up for work every day after getting caught with an intern under the Oval Office desk. Forget Ken Starr and messy dresses - why didn’t Bill Clinton resign out of sheer shame?

If I’d been caught playing human humidor with a college-aged kid, I would have been too embarrassed to keep my job at the Dollar Store, much less as Leader of the Free World.

But today, the idea of a n’er-do-well Democrat resigning merely for getting caught seems odd - even quaint.

Rep. Charlie Rangel? He’s 80, ethically-challenged and he ain’t goin’ nowhere. First he claimed God told him “you don’t have to take a plea” with the House ethics committee. Then he claimed the GOP wouldn’t let him cut a deal. But the one thing nobody has suggested is that Rangel would be so embarrassed by the tax evasion /rent control/donation scam scandals that he’d just go away. Not a chance.

The same for Rep. Maxine Waters. According to the House ethics committee, Waters’ husband had $250,000 in OneUnited stock when she used her power to promote the bank’s bailout. But resign over it?

Democrats just don’t do that. Not in Washington or Massachusetts.

Dianne Wilkerson, Jim Marzilli, Anthony Galluccio, Sal DiMasi - we all knew what they had done long before they finally, grudgingly, left office. They didn’t slink away in shame. They were dragged kicking and screaming from the public trough.

More interesting is how little pressure there has been from Democrats for these elected officials to resign.

Remember when police arrested Taunton City Councilor Daniel Barbour for “lewd and lascivious behavior”? He allegedly solicited a cop in a sex sting. He was still a city councilor when, with the help of his defense attorney, Rep. James Fagan, he got a judge to let him off the hook. Barbour will likely run for re-election.

I don’t know if Councilor Bigelow has called Fagan’s law office yet, but surely he’s learned how low Democrats set the bar for their elected office holders. Just ride it out, hope for a friendly judge and count on your fellow Democrats to keep their mouths shut.

Joseph Welch once famously asked Sen. Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

My question today is: Does anyone?

Rep. Charles Rangel told the House last Tuesday
that he’s not resigning despite 13 charges of
wrongdoing and demanded the ethics committee
to not leave him "swinging in the wind."
(DNN Staff photo)

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Matt Amorello ready for his close-up in 'Animal Senate'

The life and times of once-mighty, Matt Amorello

by Howie Carr
DNN Staff - EXCLUSIVE!
Thursday, Aug. 12, 2010

Fat Matt Amorello apparently forgot the timeless advice Dean Wormer imparted to Flounder in the old movie “Animal House.”

“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

Please, try not to let this latest arrest destroy your faith in the sobriety of the Massachusetts state Senate. After all, until Saturday morning around 2 in Haverhill, it had been 23 days since an ex-solon had found himself behind bars for drunkenness.

When you’re busted for OUI, you’re supposed to cop to where you had your last drink. For these crapulous senators, they’re going to have to add another question: What was the last toothpaste that you used?

Harvey’s Bristol Gleam? Michelob Ultra Brite?

And Fat Matt’s still only 52 years old - three long years away from being able to apply for even a relative pittance of a state pension. It was a couple of years ago that a heartless judge ordered the former $223,000-a-year boss of the Big Dig to get a job.

What was it his lovely wife Charlotte said back in late 2008 about her estranged husband’s public-sector work ethic: “(He) has made minimal efforts, if any, to find gainful employment.”

Charlotte, a retired Massport hackette, had run up $132,000 on a credit card. They were $17,000 behind on the mortgage.

When he ran the Turnpike, Fat Matt insisted on being called “Mr. Chairman.” He had framed photographs of himself on every wall in his posh digs at 10 Park. He paid a young coatholder from Worcester $80,000 a year to go downstairs every afternoon and get him a large frozen chocolate yogurt.

Times have certainly changed since 1990. That was when Fat Matt was first elected to the Senate after running a sticker primary campaign to get on the ballot as a Republican “reformer.”

At the Pike he put on maybe 80 pounds, grew a goatee and three chins, and became such a shameless hack that the Democratic Legislature was willing to go to the mat with Gov. Mitt Romney to keep him on as boss of the Turnpike to do their bidding. By that point, Fat Matt had no other career options. Bet now he wishes he’d passed the bar exam, not to mention whatever bar he was drinking at Friday night.

But Fat Matt’s luck ran out a long time ago. In 2008 he had his house in Wenham listed for $675,000. The bank foreclosed on it this year. And so he was swerving around Haverhill in the wee small hours of the morning, apparently playing demolition derby near, of all places, a Dairy Queen.

There’s a lesson here. To paraphrase Willie and Waylon, Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be state senators.

It was in 2006 of the fatal Big Dig tunnel collapse
that killed a woman, which led then-Gov. Mitt Romney to
demand the firing of then-Pike Chief Matt Amorello. The
photo above shows both individuals touring the horrific site.
(File photo)



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Proposed Ground Zero mosque in bad faith

World Trade Center site should Rest In Peace

by Michael Graham
DNN Staff - EXCLUSIVE!
Monday, Aug. 8, 2010

No, Robert Gibbs, it is not a “local issue.”

Muslim terrorists didn’t murder office workers at the World Trade Center to protest New York City’s rent control policy any more than the Times Square bomber was motivated by Manhattan’s lack of parking.

These Islamist killers are waging war on America - on all of us as a nation.

Which makes Ground Zero our national cemetery for the Terror War, and the planned mosque near that site a national insult.

Unfortunately President Barack Obama - who’s had so much to say in the past about “local” issues like Cambridge cops and Cleveland basketball stars -proved Sarah Palin’s point by saying nothing about the mosque at Ground Zero.

I wonder what Dr. Frederick Rimmele III of Marblehead would say about it. He was on United Flight 175. Rimmele was just 32.

Will anyone speak for him or his widow, Kim? Or for the more than 200 Massachusetts victims of the 9/11 attack and their families?

Not liberal pols. Rep. Michael Capuano refuses to condemn the planned mosque, saying it’s a “complex issue.” Gov. Deval Patrick dismisses the debate as a “kerfuffle.” In fact, Patrick believes the Americans who suffered this Islam-inspired attack have a duty to solve Islam’s ongoing problem.

“The sooner we separate the peaceful teaching of Islam from the behavior of terrorists, the better for all of us,” Patrick said.

Governor, we Americans didn’t mix Islam and terror. So why is this our job?

But when it comes to PC-provoked insanity, the award goes to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Not only does Bloomberg support building the mosque, he says that if we don’t build it the terrorists win. “To cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists,” Bloomberg said.

Right. I’m sure that not building a mosque on the site of the worst Islam-inspired terror attack in America - so far - would have the Taliban dancing in the streets. Followed immediately by a ritual stoning of any women seen dancing in public.

A mosque at Ground Zero would be viewed in the caves around Kandahar as a great victory for al-Qaeda and its cause. It would also be a testament to the gutless cowardice of our political class.

From Obama to Patrick, they lack the courage to say what every decent person knows: A mosque at Ground Zero would be a disgrace, and our enemies would mock us for allowing it.

The most apt analogy I’ve heard came from a 9/11 family member who said it was like building a Japanese cultural center overlooking the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor.

You don’t have to hate Japan or its culture to know that this would be a bad idea. And you don’t have to object to the building of all mosques to be nauseated by the idea of one at Ground Zero.

A spokesperson for the mosque told Fox News yesterday that the Ground Zero facility - “where people of all faiths can come and pray” - would be part of the “pushback against extremism” by moderate Muslims.

Why is this burden being placed on the 9/11 families and their sacred ground? If you really want to confront the extremism, why not build a multidenominational cultural center for Muslims, Christians and Jews in Mecca? Or Tehran? Or Gaza?

Let me know how that works out, will you?

A protester, Linda Rivera holds up a sign in opposition

to the proposed mosque at 45-47 Park Place during

a meeting of the Landmark Preservation Commission

to vote on giving the building landmark status.

(DNN Staff - photo)

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It's time to fold on slots, Deval Patrick

Gov. Patrick says 'nay' to casinos for now

by Howie Carr
DNN Staff - EXCLUSIVE!
Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010

Since when is Deval Patrick against set-asides and preferences for certain privileged classes of people?

Hey, Deval, your moonbat pals put all these dog trainers out of work with their stupid vote on the 2008 referendum question. The people at Raynham have been deprived, through no fault of their own, of equal opportunity. This is about fairness. Think of this bill as affirmative action...

We want our slots, dammit.

This is a jobs bill, Governor - not just for the unions, but for crime reporters. Always remember the three rules about life at the State House. Nothing on the level. Everything is a deal. No deal too small.

There seems to be a lot of confusion out there, starting with the number of tracks. There are three of them left, now that Suffolk and Wonderland are merged, or whatever. And Suffolk wants a casino.

So are the hacks really going through all these hoops for George Carney of Raynham? And Gary Piantowski, the titan of trotters?

Let’s face it - this legislation is not about revenue, which will be minimal, or economic development, which will be even more miniscule.

No, there’s something else going on here, and I would guess that anyone who’s not directly involved in the sneaky stuff really wants to know what it is - am I right, Sal DiMasi?

For instance, I’m somewhat skeptical that Senate President Terry Murray can’t flip two votes in the Senate so that the Legislature can override the governor’s veto. The day will never come in Massachusetts when you can’t buy two solons on the cheap.

I understand why Murray wants to keep this piece of, uh, legislation at arm’s length. But I can’t figure out Deval’s game. Is he really worried that if he signs off on slots that the moonbats will defect en masse to Jill Stein? I guess when you can’t crack that big 38 percent ceiling in the polls, you can’t afford to lose even a few trustafarians Nov. 2.

He can’t make the gambling-is-bad argument. To say you’re for casinos but against racinos is like saying you’re for Scotch but against gin.

But you know the Legislature will be coming back to fix this. The pinky-ring thugs of Big Labor were knuckling Deval, and now they’ll be arm-twisting the solons. The trades have gotten so bloated for so long on Big Deal money they can’t believe those halcyon days are never coming back. They aren’t, but the pipedream of a big casino payday lives on.

Don’t kill the job, Deval. Theirs, or mine - covering future corruption trials in federal court.

Do the right thing, Governor. Give ‘em their slots and then let the chips, as it were, fall where they may. And you - I’ll see you around the courthouse, Deval.

Gov. Patrick, above, shows facial anger after
a reporter asked him why he chose to kill thousand
of Bay State jobs by vetoing the casino bill.



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