Hey, Scott Brown, keep your shirt on -- unless you're thinking of . . .

by Ken

"It's the middle of winter," writes Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi ("Don't dismiss Scott Brown's chance in N.H."). "Scott Brown has his shirt off, and it can only mean one thing. He’s running for US Senate in New Hampshire."

That’s the way the political press read the picture of a bare-chested Brown taking part in the Granite State’s 15th annual Penguin Plunge. Whether Brown was showing off his body or just avoiding the embarrassment of wearing his team’s official T-shirt -- "Buckley’s Frozen Seamen" -- his shirtless-ness during a charity plunge to benefit the Special Olympics was seen as a signal of intent to run against Democrat Jeanne Shaheen.

The former senator from Massachusetts, who recently sold his Wrentham home and moved full-time to New Hampshire, has yet to announce his plans. But Democrats are nervous, and they should be.

Shaheen is vulnerable; a recent poll showed her tied with Brown at 44 percent. To ward him off, a pro-environmental group is launching a $220,000 ad buy, Politico reported. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is raising money for Shaheen and warning Brown that her colleague will be hard to beat.

A recent tweet of Brown-generated gibberish triggered snide recollections of Brown’s "Bqhatevwr" tweet from a year ago, and photos from his law school modeling days are being resurrected, to undercut his credibility.

Chortle away. If Brown gets into the race, it’s a big political story with potentially serious consequences for Democrats anxious to retain control of the US Senate.

Now, of course, Scott B, the candidate from Cosmo, has to worry about his little problem with the use made by Newsmax of the e-mail list he rented them: sending out an article called "5 Signs You'll Get Alzheimer's Disease."

Joan V seems to think the NH race will be a referendum on Obamacare, where Senator Shaheen has vulnerability and No-Shirt Scott can claim to have committed to voting "no" when he beat Martha Coakley for Sen. Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. Maybe No-Shirt Scott will have an easier time running in more conservative NH than he did trying to fend off now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren in his old home state. And maybe No-Shirt's old nemesis Senator Warrren, campaigning alongside Senator Shaheen, can tip the women's vote the senator's way.

I don't know about this stuff. Who am I, Politico? "The Fix"? I just want to offer Scott one thought: Keep your damned shirt on! Honestly, have you looked at those latest shirtless pix? Hmm, how to put this? You're not as young as you used to be. In fact, the No-Shirt Scott of 2014 rather puts me in mind of -- well, another frequently shirtless pol.

YOU DON'T SUPPOSE NO-SHIRT SCOTT'S
REALLY SETTING HIS SIGHTS ELSEWHERE?

Like maybe a state, um, even more conservative politically than New Hampshire?

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

SOCHI HOTEL GUESTS COMPLAIN ABOUT
TOPLESS PORTRAITS OF PUTIN IN ROOMS

POSTED BY ANDY BOROWITZ



SOCHI (The Borowitz Report)—With the Olympics underway, hundreds of visitors to Sochi are complaining that they checked into expensive hotel rooms only to find them decorated with seminude portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The portraits, showing Mr. Putin shirtless and riding a variety of mammals, adorn the walls of virtually every hotel room constructed especially for the Olympics and were created at a cost of over two million dollars, Olympic officials said.

Tracy Klugian, who travelled from Ohio with his wife to attend the Sochi Games, said that he was appalled to find his hotel room dominated by a gigantic portrait of a shirtless Putin riding what appears to be a bear.

Said Mr. Klugian, “I did not travel thousands of miles just to be grossed out.”

For his part, President Putin has been dismissive of the complaints, today calling the hotel guests “babies who cry.”

“These people who are complaining about what is on their walls should be grateful,” he said. “At least they got one of the hotel rooms with walls.”

I don't know if there's a Russian version of Politico or "The Fix" (sometimes I think Politico and "The Fix" are the Russian versions of Politico and "The Fix"), but they'd know the pols who are positioning themselves to pounce if and when No-Short Volodya either steps aside or dies. (And he does have to do one or the other eventually, doesn't he?) Why, Senator Warren might even kick in a few rubles for his campaign.


AT ONE POINT WE REALLY DO HAVE TO DRAW
THE LINE ON THIS EPIDEMIC OF SHIRTLESSNESS

I've been meaning to comment on the signal sent the other day the master of "The Fix," Chris Cillizza, to NJ Gov. Kris KrispyKreme in a post called "How Chris Christie is screwing this up." Chris explains that until now he's "generally thought that Chris Christie has handled himself well" during the Bridgegate dust-up. And he continued to think so most of the way through the memo entitled "5 things You Should Know About the Bombshell That's Not a Bombshell" issued by Team Christie over the weekend. Where DC Chris jumped off the bandwagon of NJ Kris was the elaborate sliming of poor David Wildstein.

"In David Wildstein's past, people and newspaper accounts have described him as 'tumultuous' and someone who 'made moves that were not productive.' " As evidence, the memo notes that Wildstein sued over a local school board election when he was 16, was publicly accused of deceptive behavior by his high school social studies teacher and, worst of all, "was an anonymous blogger known as Wally Edge." (I mean, blogs are bad enough. But an anonymous one? There is a special circle of hell for those people.)

First of all, high school? Seriously? I mean, this is what I looked like in high school — and if the things I did then were used as evidence of the relative worth of my current character, let's just say I wouldn't be too happy. Second, if Christie thought these high school foibles were so disqualifying, why did he bring Wildstein into his administration — as director of interstate capital projects (um, what?) at the Port Authority. If Christie knew Wildstein was such a bad guy dating all the way back to high school — Christie said of the two mens' shared high school experience: "You know, I was the class president and athlete. I don't know what David was doing during that period of time" — it seems implausible that he would have considered him for a well-paying job within his own administration.

Take one big step backward. Why, regardless of the reasons, is Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey and a serious candidate for president in two years, picking on what one of his appointees did in high school? And that question becomes even more perplexing when you consider that Christie is trying to beat back the idea that he is a bully and fostered that sort of bullying mentality in his administration.

Look, we get why Christie put this memo out. He wanted to slam the Times for making a big deal out of something he and his team don't believe is that big a deal. And he wants to make sure his friends and allies as well as the media and the donor community know that Wildstein is desperately looking for a way out of his role in Bridge-gate. But there's a far better way to do that. How about releasing a statement that says "David Wildstein is making allegations about me and my administration that are simply not true. He is doing so to save himself — simple and plain." Instead, Christie put out a memo savaging Wildstein for things that happened three decades ago and, to be frank, don't even seem like all that big of a deal.

It reeks of some combination of panic and vendetta-settling — neither of which do Christie any good in getting out of his current morass.

Well, of course I expect Governor KrispyKreme to lie and slime wherever there's an opening for lying or sliming. It's who he is. The part that got my attention, though, was where the governor strolls down Memory Lane and recalls that while this strange young Wildstein person was behaving like a total nutbag, he himself "was the class president and athlete."

OMG, are we now to witness NJ Fats transforming himself into (gasp) an athlete? I say that Homeland Security needs to issue an alert for all law-enforcement officials -- federal, state, and local -- to keep their eyes rivete on the Fatman, and if he so much goes for a button on his shirt, to open fire and put the beast down. A shirtless Krispyman would mean we're all in hell and there's no getting out.

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