Maggie's Farm

Fun with Martha Coakley attack ads from Iowahawk via Doug Ross. I agree that the satire is marginally distinguishable from reality, but that's how reality can sometimes defeat the power of satire. A brief sample:

Narrator: "Did Scott Brown really murder his first wife in a fit of rage?"

PAN TO KNIFE LAYING IN A POOL OF BLOOD ON A KITCHEN FLOOR

Narrator: "Could you cast a vote for an accused murderer, child sex addict and batterer of the elderly?"

PAN TO SMILING COAKLEY IN COLOR

Narrator: "Say no to alleged criminal behavior: it's time for Martha Coakley."

Quite related: The Globe attacks Brown today: apparently Brown condones violence. Pathetic.

"One of life's greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn't good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world."

Jewish proverb

I still think the Dem could win this election in a squeaker. The machine is powerful and fully engaged, and will be driving thousands of Dems from nursing homes to the polls - and I know that all of my beloved but misguided MA relatives will be voting D (and would be even if the candidate were a child molester or a mass murderer. It's just a habit which makes them feel virtuous).

So, as if our MA readers needed a reminder, take a few minutes and vote today. This is one of those elections where every vote matters. In my view, the mere fact that Brown has a real chance is astonishing.

Bear in mind that Coakley Believes Democrat's GOTV Efforts Will Ensure Win.

Last November, at the central market in Valencia, opera singers disguised as shopkeepers were selling produce at the various stalls there. Verdi's Il Travatore starts playing over the loudspeakers & they burst into song. None of the shoppers has a clue what's going on.

 

Of all of the entertaining and/or interesting radio shows we enjoy (when we have time to hear them), there is one which I think comes closest to the Maggie's Farm sensibility - The John Batchelor Show.

Around here, it comes on late at night on WABC. It's more intelligent and informative than anything on the boob tube. If you don't know it, give him a try.

Very cool bumper music too.

From Steyn, to whom we linked yesterday in our post on the MA Senate race:

As Michael Barone observed, "the educated class" was dazzled by style, the knuckledragging morons are talking about substance. They grasp that another year of 2,000-page, trillion-dollar government-growing bills offers America only the certainty of decline. Just before the Senate's health care vote, Obama, the silver-tongued orator, declared that we were "on the precipice" of historic reform. Indeed. On Tuesday, we'll find out whether even Massachusetts is willing to follow him off the cliff.

Our employees in DC indeed seem disconnected from the majority of the folks they represent. From Noonan's Slug the Obama Story 'Disconnect':

In a time when the people of Massachusetts have real concerns about their ability to make a living, stuff like the Schumer letter is just more evidence of a party's disconnect.

Politics is about policy. It's not about who's emotional and who cries or makes you cry. It's not about big political parties and the victories they need in order to rule. It's not about going on some ideological toot, which is what the health-care bill is, hoping the people will someday see and appreciate your higher wisdom.

In a way, Mr. Obama's disconnection is a sign of the times... If the president wants to lead toward something better, he should try listening. If you can't connect through the words you speak, at least you can do it through your ability to hear. 

Why the liberal Cape Cod Times endorses Scott Brown, at Powerline, and why a small newspaper's opinion matters. (Nothing to do with Coakley's inconceivable flub that Curt Schilling is a Yankee fan.)

I think the O's frantic last-minute visit to MA today will help Brown, but we understand that the purpose is not to persuade, but to get out the unenthusiastic Dem vote.

Related: America needs one brave Dem

Related: Coakley counting on union muscle to win. No doubt. Did you ever hear of "union brains" applied to an election?

Related: Hundreds turn out to greet Brown in Kennedy territory - Hyannis.

Related from Auster, who refuses to get his hopes up (me neither, but I lie to myself all the time):

The special Massachusetts election will be over on the night of January 19. Meaning that, if Brown wins, the signature measure of Obama's stunningly radical presidency will have been effectively killed exactly one year after Obama's inauguration. But, nope, I'm not investing any hopes in the prospect of Brown's winning. No sirree Bob.

 Related from Steyn (the whole thing is hilarious):

America's preparing to celebrate the first anniversary of Good King Barack the Hopeychanger's reign by electing a Republican?

In Massachusetts?

In what the tin-eared plonkers of the Democrat machine still insist on calling "Ted Kennedy's seat"?

Our dear pal Sippican is moving from the MA seashore to central Maine on the mighty Androscoggin River.

If there is good grouse country nearby, I will be a visitor.

Rumford, to be specific (pop 6000). Whether he has a reason or not I have no idea. Rumford is an interesting old lumber mill town, with turn of the century mill company housing developments which would be of interest to any student of the history of town planning.

Photo is the Sipp family's new house. I like it. It's not a house - it's a home.

But does it get broadband?

Giotto's Wedding Feast at Cana, a 1304 fresco in Padua.

John 2:1-11

2:1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

2:2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

2:3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine."

2:4 And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come."

2:5 His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."

2:6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.

2:7 Jesus said to them, "Fill the jars with water." And they filled them up to the brim.

2:8 He said to them, "Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward." So they took it.

2:9 When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom

2:10 and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now."

2:11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Something America needs more of: good shoeshine stands. This one is in Grand Central Station, NY - a train station which hosts several shoeshine stands of various styles. Those guys do a better job than you could ever do yourself, and a good, solid, comfortable pair of shoes is like a good old friend. Gotta care for them.

I am told that high quality leather shoes, well-cared for and never worn two days in a row (the 2 lbs. of foot sweat per day is a problem for leather's endurance), should last 40 years or more. I own about three pairs of 20+ year-old dress shoes which are just entering their prime years.

Scott Brown for Senator! Wasn't the O in CT a month ago to raise money for Dodd? Worked out well. Obama to Massachusetts to deliver the coup the grace?

Related: Martha Coakley says Devout Catholics 'Probably shouldn't work in the emergency room'. What a moron. How about Moslems?

Eureka! I am a Conservative (and I never realized it). Don't feel badly - it happened to many of us over the years.

Climate change! More China provinces plan power rationing -report

Heather: Chicago’s Real Crime Story - Why decades of community organizing haven’t stemmed the city’s youth violence

Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache...
The sun was coming from the outside.

That scrawny cry--It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

It takes a minimum of three legs to build a stool, and a minimum of three logs to build a good fire.

A BD daughter recently learned this basic Boy Scout fact after failing to start holiday fires. It requires a tent of wood to hold in enough heat to produce and ignite the heated gasses which create the rapid oxidation we call a flame. The flame is the burning gasses. The complex and mysterious chemistry of ignition is the key to flame.

The gasses, of course, are hydrocarbons. Wood is nothing but unripened oil or pre-coal. I explained to her (she does not seem to have a chemistry brain yet) that slow oxidation is called "rotting,"  slightly quicker oxygenation is called "smoldering," quick oxidation is called "fire," and extremely quick oxidation is called "explosion."  

Medium controlled oxidation is called "life," and why we exhale CO2 (hydrocarbons + oxygen = mostly CO2 + H20 + heat/energy), and why we are above room temperature most of the time. It's an exothermic chemical reaction. We animals are masterfully designed to control and harness these chemistries in our bodies.

The people of Haiti are difficult to help now, but they have always been difficult to help.

If you want to do something now, we recommend World Vision.

Part of an extraordinary long quote from A Woman in Berlin in a piece at Never Yet Melted:

...I long ago lost my childhood piety, so that God and the Beyond have become mere symbols and abstractions. Should I believe in progress? Yes, to biggger and better bombs. The happiness of the greater number? Yes, for Petka and his ilk. An idyll in a quiet corner? Sure, for people who comb the fringes of their rugs. Possessions, contentment?

I have to keep from laughing, homeless urban nomad that I am. Love? Lies trampled on the ground. And were it ever to rise again I would always be anxious, could never find true refuge, would never again dare hope for permanence.

Perhaps art, toiling away in the service of form? Yes, for those who have the calling, but I don’t. I’m just an ordinary laborer, I have to be satisfied with that. All I can do is touch my small circle and be a good friend. What’s left is just to wait for the end. Still the dark and amazing adventure of life is beckoning. I’ll stick around, out of curiosity and because I enjoy breathing and stretching my healthy limbs.

Ain't Talkin', from Modern Times. The dark, depressive lyrics here.

If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.

Anon, via Theo

Park Avenue, Midtown, tonight. Plenty of lights on in those bankers' offices.