links for 2010-01-14

A new poll in Boston:

“It’s a Brown-out,” said Paleologos, director of Suffolk’s Political Research Center. “It’s a massive change in the political landscape.”

The poll shows Brown, a state senator from Wrentham, besting Coakley, the state’s attorney general, by 50 percent to 46 percent, the first major survey to show Brown in the lead. Unenrolled long-shot Joseph L. Kennedy, an information technology executive with no relation to the famous family, gets 3 percent of the vote. Only 1 percent of voters were undecided.

Even if you're a Democrat, somewhere deep down you know that Martha Coakley wasn't what your party needed at this stage in the political cycle – a grim hack career pol embarrassingly stupid

The communications director for California Republican Senate candidate Chuck DeVore tweeted on Thursday that America, the world and even charity organizations should immediately leave the island once immediate and limited recovery is done.

"[T]he best thing the int'l community can do is tend the wounded, bury the dead, and then LEAVE. That includes all UN and charity," wrote Josh Trevino.

This seems a bit blunt, even for the most non-interventionist of Republican candidates (DeVore is a Tea Party favorite). But it also is a reflection of Americans' widespread skepticism about the prospects of building a functioning and stable Haitian society.
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A crass statement that will bite DeVore in the ass.

Back when he was taken seriously as a politician, John Edwards used to talk about there being two Americas. Well it turns out, that's a good description of life under President Obama. If you're part of one America, you have to pay a tax if you receive generous health benefits. But if you're part of the other America that has contributed handily to Democratic campaigns and has access to the White House, you can receive those same benefits without paying a tax.

A former chief United Nations weapons inspector is accused of contacting what he thought was a 15-year-old girl in an Internet chat room, engaging in a sexual conversation and showing himself masturbating on a Web camera.

Scott Ritter of Delmar, N.Y., who served as chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-98 and who was an outspoken critic of the second Bush administration in the run-up to the war in Iraq, is accused of contacting what turned out to be a Barrett Township police officer posing undercover as a teen girl.
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What a creep.

Democratic desperation and other compelling evidence strongly suggest that Democrats may well lose the late Senator Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat in Tuesday’s special election. Because of this, we are moving our rating of the race from Narrow Advantage for the Incumbent Party to Toss-Up.

Whatever the shortcomings of the Coakley campaign (and they certainly exist), this race has become about change, President Obama and Democratic control of all of the levers of power in Washington, D.C. Brown has “won” the “free media” over the past few days, and if he continues to do so, he will win the election.

The Ventura County Democratic Party is planning to disrupt a major candidate forum hosted by a Republican women's group on Friday that will feature gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner and senatorial candidate Carly Fiorina, as well as a bevy of hopefuls for lower offices.

Interestingly, it's the Democrats who derided self-generated local Tea Party protests as "Astroturf," so I wonder what they call it when their party carefully organizes a demonstration down to the details of the appropriate size of the protest signs to use and what to write on them. (They are unknowingly instructing their members to incorrectly spell the name of Afghanistan veteran Jeff Gorell–at least grant him the respect of getting his name right if you're going to disparage him.)
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Flap will be there and hopefully be able to interview Carly Fiorina and Steve Poizner

Hindsight's 20-20, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now thinks he and leading Democrats, at the behest of the White House, flushed months down the toilet courting Sen. Olympia Snowe's (R-ME) support for health care reform.

"As I look back it was a waste of time dealing with [Snowe]," Reid is quoted as saying about the White House in a forthcoming New York Times Magazine piece, "because she had no intention of ever working anything out."

That's a harsh but understandable assessment. The White House was banking on Snowe's support for months, both as a means of securing conservative Democrats' support for the bill, and as a failsafe, in case Reid came up short on votes in the Democratic caucus..
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Trying to provide political cover for your fellow Democrats comes at a price, Dingy Harry.