Category Archives: Political Commentary

Change!

Obama and Coakley can’t fill a 3000-person hall in Boston. I guess the magic is gone.

Meanwhile, it’s standing-room only at the Brown rallies.

[Sunday evening update]

The latest Cross-Target poll is out, taken this afternoon, while Obama was rallying the troops (what few he could get to attend). It has Brown up by over ten points among likelies, with a 4% margin.

To me, the tale is here:

2. And do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Scott Brown? If favorable press 1. If unfavorable press 2. If you are undecided press 3.

1. Favorable 60.3%
2. Unfavorable 31.9%
3. Undecided 7.8%

3. And what about Martha Coakley? Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Martha Coakley? If favorable press 1. If unfavorable press 2. If you’re undecided press 3.

1. Favorable 39.7%
2. Unfavorable 54.2%
3. Undecided 6.1%

The Donkeys will use this as an excuse, saying that they just had a terrible candidate. I think that the turnout at the president’s rally today belies that. They were stupid enough to think that, because it was Massachusetts, and Teddy’s seat, that they could nominate a ham sandwich and win. She certainly thought so, since she quit campaigning after she won the primary.

They completely misread the mood of not just the nation, but of the state. If they try to ram this crap sandwich down our throats now, the retribution in the fall will be apocalyptic for them. Of course, at this point, even their efforts will be pretty devastating to them, as they were in 1994. And also of course, when it happens, they’ll say (and even insanely delude themselves into believing) that it wasn’t because they tried to socialize medicine, in defiance of all the polls, but rather because they failed. Because, you know, they’re never wrong.

Scott Brown Attack Ads

Iowahawk is running a contest.

VOICE OVER
Just how brown is Republican Scott “Brown”? Here’s what the Republican says:

SCOTT BROWN CLIP
I’m Scott Brown.

V/O
But the pictures tell a different story. In fact, Republican Scott Brown is not brown at all. He’s 100% lily white. And 100% Republican. if Republican Scott “Brown” is willing to lie about that, what else is he willing to lie about?

Republican liar Scott “Brown.” Wrong on color, and wrong for Massachusetts. And Republican.

Especially Republican.

[Update a few minutes later]

I like this one from comments:

WIFE: They say Scott Brown wants to end poor people’s medical care.

HUSBAND: I hear he wants to steal Ted Kennedy’s corpse and drop it from a plane onto school children.

WIFE: The same school children he wants to run naked through a bonfire as they worship Azathoth.

HUSBAND: The same giant demon that will appear on the state flag after Brown moves the capitol to Dunwich.

V.O.: Scott Brown: Good for the Great Old Ones; Bad for Massachusetts.

Plus, he’s a Republican.

In Case You Didn’t Have Enough Reasons

…to want to see Coakley lose, consider the evil travesty of misjustice she was responsible for in the Amirault case.

Attorney General Martha Coakley—who had proven so dedicated a representative of the system that had brought the Amirault family to ruin, and who had fought so relentlessly to preserve their case—has recently expressed her view of this episode. Questioned about the Amiraults in the course of her current race for the U.S. Senate, she told reporters of her firm belief that the evidence against the Amiraults was “formidable” and that she was entirely convinced “those children were abused at day care center by the three defendants.”

What does this say about her candidacy? (Ms. Coakley declined to be interviewed.) If the current attorney general of Massachusetts actually believes, as no serious citizen does, the preposterous charges that caused the Amiraults to be thrown into prison—the butcher knife rape with no blood, the public tree-tying episode, the mutilated squirrel and the rest—that is powerful testimony to the mind and capacities of this aspirant to a Senate seat. It is little short of wonderful to hear now of Ms. Coakley’s concern for the rights of terror suspects at Guantanamo—her urgent call for the protection of the right to the presumption of innocence.

If the sound of ghostly laughter is heard in Massachusetts these days as this campaign rolls on, with Martha Coakley self-portrayed as the guardian of justice and civil liberties, there is good reason.

Rabinowitz’ Pulitzer was well deserved.

Will Massachusetts Be Copenhagen?

The president is going to campaign for Coakley on Sunday.

This seems like a huge gamble to me. He couldn’t help Deeds or Corzine, and it seems like his going to save health care is going to just make things worse, because that’s a large part of her problem. Brown has made it the issue of the race, and if Obama can’t pull this out, he’ll be politically impotent going into November. Of course, he put himself into this box by promising Dems that he’d support them in exchange for coralling their votes, so maybe he has no choice.

To quote Rush Limbaugh, I hope he fails.

Who Are The Environment Correspondents?

Apparently, the people who have been reporting on climate change are as incestuous (and even more incompetent) as the people studying it. Color me unshocked. They’re likely economic ignorami as well.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Well, here’s one reporter who’s strayed from the reservation. A “saturated greenhouse” theory? If true, this would be huge. There are good reasons to wean ourselves from fossile fuels (if done in an economically sane manner), but climate change wouldn’t be one of them.

[Late morning update]

“AGW? I refute it thus.”

If there’s anyone left you know who STILL believes in Anthropogenic Global Warming, you might want to show them this chart.

It’s pretty striking.

“We Cheated”

“…and he still beat us.”

I’m reasonably confident that they’re cheating now, too. Let’s hope he beats them again.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The rats are abandoning the Coakley ship. And they still don’t understand what’s happening:

…some Democrats, eager to distance Obama from any electoral failure, are beginning to compare Coakley to Creigh Deeds, the losing Democratic candidate in the Virginia governor’s race last year. Deeds ran such a lackluster campaign, Democrats say, that his defeat could be solely attributed to his own shortcomings, and should not be seen as a referendum on President Obama’s policies or those of the national Democratic party.

The same sort of thinking is emerging in Massachusetts. “This is a Creigh Deeds situation,” the Democrat says. “I don’t think it says that the Obama agenda is a problem. I think it says, 1) that she’s a terrible candidate, 2) that she ran a terrible campaign, 3) that the climate is difficult but she should have been able to overcome it, and 4) that Democrats beware — you better run good campaigns, or you’re going to lose.”

Of course, they’re confusing nebulous support for the president among the general population with the views of likely and passionate voters. I’ll bet that exit polls on Tuesday won’t show anything close to sixty percent for the president.

Jen Rubin explains:

In September, Coakley was ahead in the polls by 30 points.

Since then, however, something has fundamentally changed. Since September, the country has witnessed the visible battle over ObamaCare — late-night votes, Cash for Cloture deals, and a bill that offends a wide array of groups. Democrats have never looked up or paused to consider the public’s views on the matter. They tell us they will “sell it” to us later. That arrogant defiance of public opinion and the unseemly legislative process that produced a grossly unpopular bill have fueled a resurgence of anger and determination among conservatives and even usually apathetic independents. They now are anxious to send a message to Washington: stop ignoring the voters. We saw it in New Jersey and Virginia. Now we learn that even Massachusetts may not be immune.

The Democrats’ agenda, specifically a hugely unpopular health-care bill, has unified and energized not the proponents of big government but the opposition, which now is itching for the chance to exact revenge. We’ll see on Tuesday if that wave of resentment is so powerful as to extend even to a state so Blue that a little over a year ago, Obama carried it by more than 25 points.

I hope that the Dems continue to delude themselves, even after what now looks like a loss in the Bay State. It will make the tsunami in November all the more powerful.

[Update a while later]

Some amusing thoughts on “climate change”:

The Democratic party is panicking like brothel patrons with the cops at the door. They’re dropping shock troops of muckety-mucks, hacks, spinners, and door-knockers into Boston like Rangers into Normandy.

Meanwhile, the liberal press establishment is in near-total denial. Yes, the race is getting a lot of attention, but Coakley’s problems are being chalked up to the fact that she is a bad campaigner and this is a bad “climate” for the Democrats.

They use “climate” to suggest that things are bad for Democrats for reasons beyond their control (ironically, they don’t talk about the climate that way when it comes to global warming). Orange growers in Florida can’t be blamed for a bad crop if the climate won’t cooperate, and Democrats can’t be held accountable for their crop failure now. It’s the economy! It’s the obstructionism of the Republicans and that satanic whatchamacallit, the filibuster. Jupiter is aligned with Mars, NutraSweet has poisoned the water supply, Lost has been on hiatus too long, Mongo likes candy: It’s the climate, you see, the horrible, horrible climate! Democrats didn’t do anything wrong!

Except they did.

The Democrats’ “bad climate” is a direct result of how they’ve governed. The populist backlash is fueled by a sense that Democrats are acting on their preferred agenda and by their own rules. From the shenanigans of the people who write our tax code and collect our taxes to special deals and secret arrangements for big businesses and legislators who play ball, the Democrats have abandoned transparency in favor of transparent arrogance.

Coakley is a creature of this climate. She hasn’t been running for “Ted Kennedy’s seat,” she’s been strolling to it like someone who knows it’s been reserved for her and all she needs to do is swing by the will-call window to pick it up.

I think that the climate is going to get a lot worse for them before it gets better. Especially if they ram this crap sandwich down the nation’s throat.

And So It Begins

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is suing the EPA over Climaquiddick:

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has filed a petition to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. to overturn the EPA’s recent greenhouse gas “endangerment” ruling.

The ruling states that gases believed to cause global warming pose a human health risk and is the first step toward their regulation by the EPA under the Clean Air Act. The NCBA and other producer groups fear the ruling could lead to lawsuits and new restrictions on the nation’s livestock industries.

…The cattle group points to Climategate, in which critics allege that e-mails stolen from Great Britain’s University of East Anglia show bias and manipulation of data by scientists on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The fact that the EPA relied on some of the IPCC’s data to make its finding makes the ruling questionable, Thies said.

Discovery should be quite enlightening. I expect this will go all the way to SCOTUS.