Glenn alerts us to the efforts of some milbloggers for an entirely privately funded effort to get medical supplies into Haiti.  Now they’re trying to get a medical team into the nation’s beleaguered capital:

We are seeking more private funding to pay for the plane tickets of a doctor and his 5 assts (3 nurses, one Army reserve combat medic, and a medical asst.) We need to get them to the airport at Port au Prince, where we will pick them up, and bring them to the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) mission.  They have a well for fresh water and food provisions, though our teams are carrying in their own.

The total cost for flying in the first med team is about $11,000.  The follow-on team is being led by Dr Maurecio Consalter from Masonic Hospital. Dr Consalter has kindly secured thousands of dollars in medical supplies/medicine from his friends in the industry. All he needs are plane tickets for his crew right now.

I just made a modest contribution and encourage you to do the same.   Click on Donate.

In receiving a glossy mailer, our reporter embedded with the Sons and Daughters of Liberty in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts Bay State, discovers something about Scott Brown of which most (male) readers of this blog had long been aware:

Saturday’s mail brought a simple but eye-catching glossy color fold-over flyer with return address of the MA Republican State Committee (www.MASSGOP.org). It contains two different full-color pictures of him on inside and out. I’m unregistered with any party so I suspect this may have gone to everyone. Might I add, as a straight man, (without engendering too long a comment thread) that Brown is one seriously handsome dude? By contrast, Martha seems, well… edgy, plastic, desperate… And I can’t recall getting anything from her campaign in the mail.

On the front of Brown’s piece, in white letters, in a red box: “BOLD New Leadership For Massachusetts”

Under that, a calendar page: “January 19″ and “vote for Scott BROWN for U.S. Senator.” Two more calendar pages inside. One of the biggest obstacles for the voters he needs is not knowing when the election is. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know myself until just last weekend. Right next to that, a custom-printed box indicating my polling place — a nice, important, and not cheap touch. That’s another obstacle to voters new to the area and there are a lot of them around Boston.

On the back, three testimonies from major newspapers, and another calendar page with the election date. On the inside, the text (in *big* red caps): ”BOLD. NEW. LEADERSHIP.” Periods after each word for emphasis. Simple. Differentiating. No long speech needed.

Bold: nobody likes to identify with cowering. New: goes without saying; it’s the peoples’ seat, not a coronation. I sense Martha is just waking up to that fact and it’s too late to do much about it that’s anywhere near this professional. Leadership. It’s a lot easier to get across than any one issue. People can sense the difference (I hope).

In a conversation at church this morning, I mentioned Brown and Tuesday and the person I was talking with came alive. Her eyes lit up. At least some Brown voters are *clearly* energized. Still don’t have a read on the Coakley supporters but there are still *no* lawn signs and this town usually sprouts ’em like weeds. (more…)

Like many gay activists, Paula Brooks is none too happy with President Obama, scoring him for not keeping his promises to the gay community. Over at her blog Lezgetreal, “A Gay Girl’s View on the World,” she says that if she lived in the Bay State, “I would be telling every LGBT I know… come Tuesday… they should send Mr. Obama a loud and clear message about his dicking around with our civil rights and STAY HOME IN MASS on Election Day.”

Now, while I don’t believe our Scott Brown-supporting readers who live in the Bay State should heed her advice, I do recommend you read the whole thing.

(H/t Gateway Pundit.)

No matter what President Obama does or says tomorrow when he’s in the Bay State, he won’t be able to help his party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate once held by Daniel Webster and Charles Sumner win on Tuesday, January 19, 2010.  Oh, she might be able to hold the seat for her party, but she lost the chance to vindicate its ideas when she began her relentless negative campaign, saturating the air waves with mean-spirited and dishonest ads smearing her Republican opponent.

While Martha Coakley has attacked Scott Brown’s position on a number of issues, she has yet (as far as I can tell from my sources in the Bay State the blog/news reports I have read) to run TV ads making the positive case on why the various Democratic initiatives in Congress she supports will be good for the Bay State.  In short, she’s not running on issues, but on her partisan affiliation and that party’s antipathy to their political adversaries.

Instead of running on the Obama agenda, she’s running against a president who left office almost a year ago.  She and her special interest allies are tarring her opponent as an extremist while obsessing about their ties to a former Governor of a state clear across the country who hasn’t spoken out about this race or ever, as far a I know, even set foot in the Bay State.

I wonder if the Democrats are giving us a little taste of their 2010 strategy.  A far cry from the postpartisan kind of politics their party’s standard bearer promised in the most recent presidential campaign.

Democrats may well hold this seat, but they have lost the battle of ideas.  And in their own backyard.

From deep within blue America in a town* that reportedly voted by a margin of 9 to 1 for Barack Obama in the fall of 2008, our intrepid reporter, embedded with the freedom fighters in the Bay State [Hey, Dan, didn't they used to be called Sons of Liberty?  --Ed.] Sons (& Daughters) of Liberty, reports on a phone call he received:

Caller ID indicates 202 area code, Washington, DC. I pick up. Silence until

I say “hello”. I think they pay extra for that.

It’s ace Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, talking with a sense of urgency. He immediately goes for the jugular, noting Coakley’s comment about him being a Yankees fan. That’s worse than calling her Satan. If she’s that out of touch about something this basic to the common people of this state, he asks, how out of touch is she going to be in Washington?

He sounded upbeat and credible, in an unscripted-kind of way — like guys might talk watching a game on a Saturday afternoon, which I’m sure many are. It caught me off-guard (in a good way). I knew it was only a recording but it was *Curt Schilling* fergoodnessakes. I wanted to hear him out.

He ended the short call by asking to support “my friend Scott Brown”.

On a long walk with the dog this afternoon, I noted several Brown signs on lawns and — to my *great* surprise in this very liberal town — none for Coakley.

*For security reasons, I can’t identify the town or the precise breakdown of its presidential vote.

Today, we witnessed Barack Obama at his finest, showing what is best about this great country.

As you may know by now, he enlisted his two immediate predecessors, the more recent regularly maligned by the incumbent’s fellow partisans, to spearhead a relief fund for Haiti:

And I’m pleased that President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton have agreed to lead a major fundraising effort for relief:  the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.  On behalf of the American people, I want to thank both of you for returning to service and leading this urgent mission.

This is a model that works.  After the terrible tsunami in Asia, President Bush turned to President Clinton and the first President Bush to lead a similar fund.  That effort raised substantial resources for the victims of that disaster — money that helped save lives, deliver aid, and rebuild communities.  And that’s exactly what the people of Haiti desperately need right now. . . .

Interesting the conservative nature of this liberal president’s policy:  basing it on a model that works.  And the president is thinking long term as well:

But what these gentlemen are going to be able to do is when the news media starts seeing its attention drift to other things but there’s still enormous needs on the ground, these two gentlemen of extraordinary stature I think are going to be able to help ensure that these efforts are sustained.

By enlisting both men, one a Democrat, the other a Republican in relief efforts, President Obama is showing that Americans stand united in helping the victims of this earthquake.  Please join them in giving what you can to help a people in dire circumstances as a result of a disaster beyond their control.  In this post, I offered a list of some groups which are providing relief.

I have since learned that one of my favorite charities, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles is also raising money for Hait.

In observing the silence (with a few notable exceptions) of gay organizations and activists about the noble example set by Dick Cheney from the moment his daughter Mary came out to him, through his tenure as Vice President and continuing to this very day, we learned about the true nature of those activists.  They were less interested in changing attitudes toward gay people than promoting an image of an intolerant right-wing.

Any group (or individual) which regularly addressed gay issues and which was truly concerned about the treatment of gay people in American society would commend the conservative Vice President for the example he set, accepting his daughter as she is, welcoming her same-sex partner into their family, including her in public events as he would include his straight daughter’s husband.

To be sure, much (but not all) of the intolerance and hatred of gay people in America occurs on the right, but, as any gay individual involved in the conservative movement over the past twenty years has observed, there is an increasing openness to people like us.  First, we were just tolerated as long as we kept our private lives to ourselves, now we’re often welcomed, even when we represent a gay auxiliary or blog.

The CPAC contretemps over the inclusion of GOProud represents, in many ways, a major milestone in the history of the gay right, indeed is illustrative of the state of mainstream conservatives today.  A conservative organization seeks to include both social conservatives and gay conservatives.  The extreme social conservatives raise a ruckus.  And the conservative organization which won’t yield to their request to exclude the gay group.

If their goal were the general welfare of gay people in American today, gay groups would be singing hosannas, praising CPAC for it actions and commending GOProud for participating as a gay organization in a conservative confab.   (more…)

Our intrepid reporter from behind enemy lines offers the latest anecdote from the Bay State:

Recorded, of course. The voice is a guy, unidentified — NOT Martha herself.  And I’m sorry to sound biased here, but my first impression was that he  sounded, well… gay. It was quite a change from Mr. Manly World Series Pitcher Himself, Curt Schilling’s who called on Brown’s behalf exactly an hour before.

His first point was not about what good Martha would do, but a direct attack on Scott Brown. “He’d revive the failed policies of the Bush/Cheney administration which lost three million jobs”, the guy says. (I’m thinking: is he *smoking crack*? Does he even have his *calendar* right? Who’s he trying to kid? After the past year, in which many times as many jobs were lost under an all-Dem set-up, they’re still fixated monomaniacally on Bush – and *Cheney* fergoodnessakes?)

There was a lot of “blah, blah, blah” in the middle. The guy sounded like he was whining. It was *ALL* attack, until the very end, when he said Martha wouldn’t raise taxes in the U.S. Senate. I nearly burst out laughing.  Clearly, with the Cheney reference, they are just playing to the fact that he polls poorly (never mind the fact that he’s a private citizen now). I suspect they are simply trying to solidify the die-hard part of their base. This kind of call would NOT have won any independents who have had their eyes and ears open the past year. She’s playing defense… couldn’t even be bothered to record the call herself or get a celebrity to do it. Very telling…

I do need to work on confronting my friend’s prejudices. Maybe I should start leaving voicemail messages, reminding him (in my deep voice) that I’m gay.  And that soft-spoken fella who left a message for Martha was most likely, straight.

Now that my friend acknowledged his bias, we have work to do.

Over a Big Hollywood, they have a birthday thread for the Republican most beloved by gay men, Ethel Merman.  She would have been 102 today.

And it all began 97 years ago at the Astoria Republican Club where this diva with iron lungs, who never had a Broadway flop, sang for the first time in public.  (Seems there’s a lot of iron in our right-wing divas!)

There’s no diva like this diva:

(more…)

And it seems the Democrats are having trouble grasping what is happening in their backyard.  Must be par for the course in this postpartisan era.  As Peggy wrote yesterday:

The people are here, and he is there. The popularity of his health-care plan is very low, at 35% support. Someone on television the other day noted it is as low as George Bush’s popularity ratings in 2008.

Yet—and this is the key part—the president does not seem to see or hear. He does not respond. He is not supple, able to hear reservations and see opposition and change tack. He has a grim determination to bull this thing through. He negotiates each day with Congress, not with the people. But the people hate Congress! Has he not noticed?

And Mrs. Coakley?  Has she not noticed that the people in Massachusetts revere their Red Sox, finding Fenway Park at almost sacred place?  And that Curt Schilling once pitched for the team, helping them win, in 2004, their first World Series in nearly a century?  He’d help them repeat the feat in 2007 when he became “only the second pitcher over the age of 40 to start and win a World Series game“.

Must have been too cold that day for the then-Attorney General of Massachusetts to attend the game.  She must have missed the standing ovation Fenway Park fans gave their beloved pitcher.

In response to Coakley’s labeling him a Yankees’ fan, Schilling quipped:

Never, and I mean never, could anyone ever make the mistake of calling me a Yankee fan. Well, check that, if you didn’t know what the hell is going on in your own state maybe you could.

(H/t Jim Geraghty.)

Perhaps the reason I welcomed Barack Obama’s surge in the Democratic primaries now nearly two years ago was that I first experienced the then-Chicago politicians as an image on TV screen without sound.  As the 2008 campaign got underway, nearly all the TV coverage I saw was when I was doing cardio at the gym.   He looked good, relaxed and in control.

If image matters in political campaigns, then Scott Brown has a long career ahead of him.   Last night, while at the gym, I watched coverage of the two “political celebrity” visits to the Bay State.  Former President Bill Clinton on behalf of Democrat Martha Coakley.  Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on behalf of Scott Brown.

The brief clip I saw of the Democrat’s appearance showed a formal Clinton praising Coakley in a nondescript (hotel?) ballroom.  The candidate herself looked stiff and formal, proud to be honored by the society blowhard at her cotillion, prim, proper and perhaps too poised.  By contrast, we saw the New York City Mayor outdoors on the streets of Boston’s North End, joining the energetic candidate moving about the crowd and shaking hands.  It was like comparing the society column to the sports page (only this sports page was like that in the Daily Prophet, the characters in the photographs moved).

(This is not the same clip I saw on CNN, but some of the imagery looks familiar.  Thanks to GatewayPundit for posting it.) (more…)

While I spent the day waiting for the jury summons that never came (had jury duty but was not called to serve on a jury), our intrepid reporter working behind enemy lines (as he puts it) in the Bay State worked tirelessly on his clandestine report on the special Senate election.  This correspondent, an erstwhile (again in his words) “hard-over leftie” reports from the hinterlands (well, they’re pretty hinter to to those of us in sunny, er, overcast today, Southern California):

Dateline: Friday, January 15, 2010, ~4:00PM. An extremely liberal town in Massachusetts (went 9:1 Kerry:Bush in 2004 and close to 10:1 Obama:McCain in 2008),

Your reporter was, um… indisposed. (He works from home.) The phone rang. He elected not to answer. He’s glad he didn’t. He suspects few others did either, as this was during work hours. Seems like a silly strategy to get out the vote for Martha, calling at that hour… unless… Hmm…

Unless Martha’s prime constituents are unemployed (more and more likely) or on welfare (ditto) or illegal aliens (less likely here, but possible), or dead (hey, it worked for Daley), or working some cushy academic job where they get to take Fridays off ’cause they’ve got tenure.

Later, picking up the message, your reporter hears a deep male voice that sounds familiar. First thought: Scott Brown again!

No, that’s not right. He’s already in mid-sentence on the machine, sounding terribly, terribly earnest (which, though it rhymes — a little — with “honest”, does not connote same necessarily): “Very important FIGHT. Blah, blah, blah. Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat… blah, blah, blah… Need your support… FIGHT for healthcare… blah, blah, blah… in Washington I’m FIGHTING for… blah, blah, blah… FIGHTING… blah, blah, blah… clean energy… FIGHT… blah, blah, blah.”

Funny, I thought this was the party that didn’t like fighting so much. And it seemed to be all about HIM. If I didn’t already know the candidate’s name, I’d have had to guess.

Your reporter deleted the message before it was over. It was not going down well with his pre-dinner glass of Merlot.

How rude. It’s Friday night. Who does he think he is? The PRESIDENT?

Our inside the Bay State correspondent, a friend of mine who has migrated to the right in recent years, offers this report from the (frozen*) ground in the Bay State:

I’ve gotten auto-dial calls from both candidates in the last few days. I hung up on “Martha”, but the thing that kept me listening to “Scott” was that, at the outset of the call, “he” said my name!! Obviously it’s automated, but it was SLICK and he must have paid a pretty penny for that extra bit of database integration.

Well, without that moneybomb (to which our readers contributed), he may not have had that pretty penny.

Our correspondent promises more reporting as his schedule allows, but as a working guy with a family, he may not be able to report in as often as he would like and our readers would want.

————

*You know, the kind that Martha Coakley doesn’t like to touch, especially when it’s near stadiums beloved by her constituents.

OH, THAT’S A NEW ONE. BLAME THE COMPUTERS! White House budget director blames old computers for ineffective government. Funny, it seems the government was a lot more effective fifty or sixty years ago, when it hardly had any computers at all, but better people in charge . . . .

Glenn Reynolds, January 2010

And one of the things that I’m trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame. And I think Geithner is doing an outstanding job. I think that we have a big mess on our hands. It’s not going to be solved immediately, but it is going to get solved. And the key thing is for everybody just to stay focused on doing the job instead of trying to figure out who you can pass blame on to.

Barack Obama, March 2009

(Emphasis added.)

Guess Mr Orszag didn’t get the memo.

Well, old patterns are hard to break.

With her almost daily gaffes, from bristling at going out in the cold to opposing Catholics working in emergency rooms, Martha Coakley seems like the political candidate with two left feet.  Michelle has called her campaign “listless, hapless“.  She famously took a vacation over the holidays even as they fell less than a month before the election.

Now, some might say that Scott Brown wouldn’t be doing as well against a candidate who was better prepared.  And they might be right.  But, given the national mood, a more aggressive and energetic Democratic candidate may have alerted those upset with the things going on in Washington and on Beacon Hill to the upcoming election.  Hence, Coakley’s strategy was sensible, given the state’s demographics and the power of its Democratic machine (and special interest allies) to generate turnout on Election Day.  Unfortunately (for the Democrats), Brown’s textbook campaign roused those upset with the status quo and eager for change in our nation’s capital.

(Memo to GOP:  on January 20, no matter what the result, get someone to do write-up on this campaign, have Brown campaign staffers brief top officials from RNC, NRSC, NRCC and pass this information on to people in states with lackluster GOP operations.)

One should think twice before calling Coakley a bad politician.  She won big in the Democratic primary, capturing 47 percent of the vote in a four-way race, “easily outdistancing her closest competitor, Rep. Michael Capuano, who finished with 28 percent.”  A novice politician doesn’t do that.  It’s just she needed a different skill set in a competitive race with a Republican in an environment with people clamoring for change.

And that, I believe, explains all her gaffes on the trail this past wee.  Coakley has spent so much time working her way up in Democratic circles that she just doesn’t know how to face a challenge from a Republican.  She thought the battle was over in December when she won her party’s primary.  And she, like the media, considered next Tuesday’s election a mere formality.

Remember that guy you started dating who thought you were all sweetness and light up until the point you told him you didn’t want to date him, when you spurned even his request for “no-strings” sex?  You know, when he starts reacting in a manner that, well, is not likely to endear him to you.

It seems that guy has taken the helm of the Coakley campaign in Massachusetts.

Seeing Bay State voters considering rejecting their gal, he’s had her (campaign) go on the warpath against Scott Brown (you know the guy who looks like we imagine ourselves to look).  To be sure, the situation is not entirely parallel, but the attitude is.  Massachusetts Democrats and their special interest allies have subjected their state to a barrage of negative ads while Scott Brown has maintained the high ground, making a positive case for his candidacy. In a strange video more about himself than Martha Coakley, even the President has has joining the braying fray, calling the Republican an “opponent of change.”  Guess his New York’s resolution to promote unity doesn’t kick in until January 20.

The airwaves, according to Boston friend of Bill Kristol “are blanketed with negative ads attacking Scott Brown.
 Frankly, I think that most of them are so over the top that they are
 unlikely to be productive.”  He’s not the only one to speculate about the effectiveness of Democratic bile.   Rating the race a toss-up, Stuart Rothenburg believes the ads might backfire:

Late Democratic efforts to demonize Republican Scott Brown, to make the race into a partisan battle and to use the Kennedy name to drive Democratic voters to the polls could still work. But the advertising clutter in the race works against them, and voters often tune out late messages, which can seem desperate.

Quoting an e-mail from a Bay State friend, Jim Geraghty provides some anecdotal evidence to back up Rothenburg’s point: (more…)

Remember back in 2003, when lefties raised a ruckus on how when then-President George W. Bush flew to Iraq to celebrate Thanksgiving with the troops, he walked in carrying a fake turkey?  The media was all abuzz with this supposedly all-important hoax.

Despite all the hootin’ and the hollerin’ on the left, even the New York Times had to admit that, well, yes, um, the turkey was real:

An article last Sunday about surprises in politics referred incorrectly to the turkey carried by President Bush during his unannounced visit to American troops in Baghdad over Thanksgiving. It was real, not fake.

Note the admission was in a correction.  Wonder now how the ol’ Gray Lady (and the rest of the media) will react to some food fakery in the Obama White House.  As Michelle Malkin informs us, the Iron Chief’s “revelation about Michelle Obama’s produce is entirely in keeping with Obama Theater”:

The Jan. 3 “Iron Chef America” drew 7.6 million viewers, the highest-rated show in network history. In it, superstar chef Mario Batali teamed with Emeril Lagasse, and Bobby Flay with White House chef Cristeta Comerford to cook five dishes using the secret ingredient: produce from the White House garden.

Except for one thing: As first reported on AOL’s Politics Daily blog, the fruits and vegetables used on the show weren’t from the White House. They were stunt produce. Ringers.

At the beginning of the two-hour special, the chefs were shown picking sweet potatoes, broccoli, fennel and tomatillos from the White House garden. Then the chefs were seen walking into Kitchen Stadium, produce in hand. One problem: The show is filmed in New York City.

For some reason, I don’t think we’ll be hearing as much as by the stunt produce as we heard about the supposedly stunt turkey.

Just look at the subtle messaging of this ad. Shortly after Democrat Martha Coakley balks at the notion of shaking hands in the cold, the Scott Brown campaign puts out a spot with him campaigning in neighborhoods with snow on the ground:

People are even wearing hats and winter coats!   Surely, soon some Democrats will be complaining about his negative ads, using subtle imagery to show just how faint-hearted is his opponent.

Just look at the level to which the opposition is taking the campaign to demonize the Republican candidate for the Senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy (and Daniel Webster):

(H/t: Jim Geraghty.)