Snow Is Falling in Massachusetts

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FITCHBURG, Mass.
They’re expecting as many as 10 inches of snow by Monday morning. Excuse the long interruption of blogging. Technical difficulties and travel hassles — we went down to Boston today — conspired to prevent online action. This morning I reported on the working-class Catholic reaction to the Senate campaign:

St. Anthony of Padua Church has traditionally served an Italian blue-collar congregation and the politicial views of those in the pews at 8 a.m. mass may not be indicative of all Catholics in Massachusetts. With that disclaimer, however, Martha Coakley may be on the verge of the most brutal Catholic backlash since the Inquisition.
The Democratic attorney general’s adamant support of late-term abortion obviously puts her at odds with faithful Catholics, but many of those attending morning mass — including lifelong Democrats — were harshly critical of Coakley in other ways. Her round-the-clock negative ad blitz against Republican Scott Brown was repeatedly mentioned as “awful” and “horrible.”…

Read the rest at The American Spectator. I’m now on deadline for Monday’s Spectator. Will have photos, videos, etc., once deadline is cleared.

If Coakley’s Lost Taylor Marsh . . .

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. . . that’s pretty much “game over”:

If this is what is being sent out by Democrats in Massachusetts . . . She’s finished, whether she wins or not.

(Hat-tip: Legal Insurrection.) Taylor Marsh may not be the most extreme moonbat on the planet, but she’s hard-core liberal, and when even she is disgusted by Martha Coakley’s last-minute desperation tactics . . . well, let’s face it, this is going to be a tall order, even for St. Barack of Chicago.

The jaw-dropping god-awfulness of Coakley’s campaign is something you’ll be telling your grandchildren about. She may be the first candidate in two decades with less charisma than Michael Dukakis. I’m hogging the best quotes in my notebook for the next American Spectator column, but there are lots of Democrats  in Massachusetts who agree with Taylor Marsh that Coakley has scraped right through the bottom of the barrel, straight into the sewer. At least one of those disgusted Democrats was interviewed Saturday night in Middleboro by Da Tech Guy.

There’s a Politico story about the “enthusiasm gap” in Massachusetts and Da Tech Guy and I saw that Saturday in Middleboro. As I wrote at the Hot Air Greenroom, the minute we pulled up in Everett Square my reaction was, “Holy crap!”

It was already dark, which made it impossible to get a photo that showed the full size of the crowd, but it was at least 500 people. Listen to the cheers in this video clip:

See the rest at the Greenroom, where I’ve also posted photos of the Middleboro event. Among the linkers are The Lonely Conservative and American Glob.

BTW, we were offline for more than three hours Saturday evening due to a server overload. The folks at Silver Logic (our eco-friendly Web hosting provider) are saying we need to buy more bandwidth, which means . . . ah, IYKWIMAITYD.

How bad is the financial crunch? Without your contributions, we may have to skip Rule 5 Sunday this week. And that would be wrong.

Massachusetts Senate: When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Vote Brown

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FITCHBURG, Mass. — Red Mass Group, Gateway Pundit and Legal Insurrection now pick up on the SEIU “Purple for Brown” phenomenon I spotted last night in Worcester. Weasel Zippers has MSNBC’s Ed Schultz boasting he’d cheat to elect Martha Coakley. Meanwhile, I’m updating for The American Spectator:

Seeing the Senate campaign from ground level is weird, in that you see and hear things — TV ads, mailers, local news coverage, the comments of voters — that aren’t visible from outside the election battle zone. So you’re watching selected microcosms of the campaign that don’t necessarily match the Big Picture the national pundits are commenting on.
Example: The phone just rang here at my friend’s house where I’m staying. It was a pre-recorded “robocall” from Republican Scott Brown’s daughter, Ayla, saying that Democrat Martha Coakley has “crossed the line” with her latest “disgusting and malicious” attacks. This state’s phones are being flooded with robocalls, and you have to wonder what the effect will be. . . .

Read the whole thing. Right now, Da Tech Guy is at confession (he’s a hard-core Catholic), and when he gets back, we’re heading out to Middleboro, Mass., for a Scott Brown bus tour event.

Thanks to all the readers who are contributing to the Shoe Leather Fund to help pay for this trip. Every $5 or $10 helps.

Are Democrats Planning to Steal the Massacusetts Election for Coakley?

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Only if they have to, but at last night’s Coakley rally, Da Tech Guy overheard some union official assure a Democrat, “Don’t worry, the cavalry’s coming.”  Was that perhaps a reference to the SEIU “Purple Army” that Michelle Malkin is warning about?

Scott Brown has consistently said he hopes for a fair election. “I have faith in the system,” Brown said yesterday at his rally in the North End.

The possibility of Democratic vote-rigging is like the rumors of a Lindsay Lohan sex tape — you can’t describe it until you see it. But as we were driving to a late dinner last night at the Border Grille & Bar in Leominster, I pointed out that there is no authority to hold Democrats accountable for their cheating.

“Who’s going to prosecute them? The state attorney general? And if you appeal to the feds — yeah, I’m sure Eric Holder will get to the bottom of it.”

And then there’s the poll-mongering. Jim Geraghty has a post about the leaked internal polls. You can obsess about poll numbers all you want, but at this stage of the game, polls are also like the Lindsay Lohan sex tape — interesting to look at, but not really very satisfying.

Polls are not a prediction, but a snapshot of voter sentiment at a particular moment. Talking about polls three days before a big election is like Texas fans talking trash before the BCS championship game. In football, the pre-game predictions don’t mean anything once they kick off and start playing. And in elections, what counts in the end is whether those “likely voters” actually vote.

Exit question: Is this “the end of change as we know it”?

For Massachusetts, Journalism Reinforcement Arrives

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by Smitty

That was Stacy’s FMJRA title. I had suggested something noticeably more pretentious: “From Massachusetts, Journalism Re-emerges, Agamemnon-esque”. Then again, I registered “The McCain Mutiny” as a title for the blog, just in case we couldn’t spring TheOtherMcCain from PuffDaddy.com in time for our rollout a fortnight and a lifetime Continue reading For Massachusetts, Journalism Reinforcement Arrives →

Valley of the Shadow

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My friend JSF at Valley of the Shadow blog hosted me during my recent California expedition, and now he’s having a tip-jar fundraising drive. If you’ve hit my tip jar, you really ought to do something for my friend.

UPDATE: If NBC can pay Conan O’Brien $30 million to leave the “Tonight Show,” the least you can do is hit JSF’s tip jar.

UPDATE II: Oh, you can go look at Miranda Kerr in his underwear, but you can’t give $10 to a conservative blogger? And Gisele Bundchen gives $1.5 million to Haiti — but not one dime for Valley of the Shadow?

 That’s OK. We know who our friends are.

Some Things You Really
Have to See to Believe

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Yes, believe it or not, an SEIU member supporting Scott Brown — read her story at The American Spectator. Here’s another photo of the Brown supporters who turned up outside the Martha Coakley event at Worcester Polytechnic Institute tonight:

Will update shortly with videos from tonight’s speech by Bill Clinton, but I just had to show you this first.

UPDATE: This video was shot by Daniel Ingemi of Fitchburg, Mass.:

Speaking of Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), Clinton says, “I could tell you stories about him . . . Some of which would cost him re-election.”

UPDATE II: BTW, a reporter for National Review‘s Bay State Report blog captured a photo of me on the streets of the North End today.

UPDATE III: Clinton spoke lied for 20 minutes and then Martha Coakley followed suit. Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Examiner reports:

Rudy Giuliani and Scott Brown Hit the North End

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My brief report at the American Spectator blog includes this:

A crowd of several hundred supporters turned out to greet Brown and Giuliani, who were followed by a large press contingent as they visited a nearby fire station and walked three blocks to Caffe Vittoria, a landmark eatery in a community famed for its Italian restaurants.
“I love campaigning here because, frankly, they feed me,” Giuliani joked at the rally.

Read the whole thing. I’ll update soon with video and photos. Be sure to visit Da Tech Guy, who has more more on our North End visit. Since Da Tech Guy is Sicilian, he speaks the language. We stopped in a little cafe in the North End to grab a cup of coffee and he insisted I should also have a cannoli.

“But I’ve got to go cover the candidate,” I protested.

“Leave the candidate, bring the cannoli,” he said.

UPDATE: Videos from the rally, beginning with the arrival of Brown, Giuliani and a vast herd of media:

Next, we arrive in front of the Paul Revere monument. Brown jokes about the media herd which nearly trampled a golden retriever en route to the park:

Now, Brown speaks about bringing common sense to Washington and Martha Coakley’s negative ad campaign:

Giuliani speaks about the election as a way to “send a signal” about how to deal with terrorism:

Reporters interview Giuliani after the rally:

My interview with a Marine veteran who is supporting Scott Brown:

As he says, “This will be the Scott heard ’round the world.” Right now, I’ve got to run over to Worcester Polytechnic Institute where Bill Clinton will be campaigning for Martha Coakley.