Here you go bloggers, your twice monthly serving of the inside scoop on all things Somerville. But to read Newstalk in its entirety, you will have to do it the old fashioned way — walk out into the real world, pick up a newspaper with your bare hands and open it up. But until then, boys and girls, here’s a little taste just to keep you satisfied.

Newstalk for Wednesday December 7th 2005

Merry Christmas & Happy Hanukkah to everyone from us here at The Somerville News.  We sincerely hope everyone gets what they want for the holidays.  We are grateful to all the residents of Somerville for our blessings this past year.  Becoming a weekly newspaper was our goal for 2005 and we achieved that goal.  We have more plans for 2006 that will be very creative for a local newspaper that will, quite frankly, make us the only viable all-local newspaper.  We‚Äôve got a lot of improvements to implement and new goals to reach here – and we‚Äôre moving ahead full steam.  A lot of feedback from people in the community has been very helpful to us and we think it‚Äôs great that Somerville has two newspapers that have, at times, different points of view and different types of stories.

It was kind of interesting recently watching some national news on CNN and Fox – both networks mentioned that our own Congressman Mike Capuano was one of only 6 Congressmen that were present but didn‚Äôt vote on the resolution to pull the troops out of Iraq.  The way the networks told it, he was present but refused to vote.  Those of us who know Mike‚Äôs reputation of telling it like it is can‚Äôt believe that – they must have gotten our Congressman mixed up with someone else.

Wow ‚Äì who would have thought – the entire State Representative race comes down to two neighbors from the same street.  One, most of Somerville has not heard of (unless you count campaign workers only) and the other most of Somerville associates with the Progressives.  So it comes down to only two candidates slugging it out – or will they?  We‚Äôre guessing that this just might be the quietest campaign in recent times, even more so than the recent city elections.  Both candidates appeared before the so-called ‚ÄúProgressives‚Äù and not much of a surprise to everyone, the PDS endorsed their own Matriarch Denise.  We were totally thrown off with that endorsement.  One has to wonder why Liz Moroney even bothered to attend and give them credibility.

One of the contributors to Newstalk recently heard of a board in the city called the “Climate Commission” we were not shocked, but we want to know what does it do besides maybe monitor the climate here in Somerville?

A few months ago we mentioned that someone in the Mayors Office was on the way out and it looks like it has come true – Mark Horan has decided to move on and he has been replaced.  We wouldn‚Äôt be surprised if he wasn‚Äôt the only one leaving ‚Äì we have heard that a Department Head might also be on the way out.

The Christmas Party for The Somerville News is next Monday evening at El Gaupo‚Äôs in Ball Square, all the friends of the News are welcome to drop in and say hello and share in some holiday cheer.  Monday December 12th from 7PM until 11PM.

Rumor all over the city is that Tony LaFuente won a $100K in a scratch ticket but he won‚Äôt confirm it to anyone.  We didn‚Äôt call him, but we certainly heard from a lot of people who made some comments regarding his recent win. Just looking on our own weblog, we see different people making observations about it.  Personally, we think it‚Äôs great he won ‚Äì we‚Äôre happy when anyone from Somerville wins something.  We did also hear through the grapevine that he was going to save it for a political campaign in the next two years.  Some say money goes to money.