This is the clearest indicator so far that Brown has a real chance of winning:

I received this e-mail from a Massachusetts resident and businesswoman (and I verified her identity through publicly available sources), regarding a phone call she received last night:

I got an odd call last night that presented as a survey on the Kennedy election. I was willing to participate in the survey but was left with a bad feeling when it was over. Today I am hoping to let a few people know. I saw your blog.

They identified themselves as McGrath [sic – see below] from Denver but I was unable to find anything on Google. The questions were obnoxious; for example: “would knowing that hate groups support Scott Brown change you opinion of him?”.

They did not identify what a hate group was and today I wonder if they might be referring to a group to which I belong (one never knows in this environment when the ground may shift and you are left as a member of a hate group).

I’m not sure how to proceed, so I am just putting it out there. I’m really sick of politicians doing everything except telling us who they are when they run for office.

In a follow up, the e-mailer went into more detail about the call. The caller initially asked which candidate best represented the e-mailer’s views. After the e-mailer identified Brown, the caller asked one question about Coakley (whether knowing she was “a tax and spend” liberal would change the e-mailer’s mind) and then a series of negative questions about Brown:

“After this, there were 6 or 7 questions about Scott Brown that were framed the same way: if you knew he was a supporter of the Bush tax program, if he was supported by hate groups, etc.”

The e-mailer used *69 on her phone, and the number which came up was 888-327-2771. This is a fairly notorious telemarketing/opinion surveying number.

They only do push polling like this when they are worried they’re going to lose. Liberals, this has nothing to do with whether or not anyone else ever has – the subject here is why the Democrats are doing it in Massachusetts, 11 days before the vote? Try to keep on that subject in your comments.

Anyways…

The smell of desperation is hanging in the air – and its not just that electing Brown would be a severe blow to the chances for passage of ObamaCare. The larger issue is that if Brown wins – or even comes very close – then there will be a stampede for the exits. We could expect to see a large number of retirements as well as a drying up of Democrat campaign funds – and a rise in GOP funding. In a very real sense, what happens in Massachusetts sets the stage for the rest of 2010 – a solid win by the Democrats gives them a sign that its not all bad while a loss or close win signals possible disaster.

So, given this, why haven’t you backed Brown with something solid, like money or volunteer time? No time like the present.

I know, I know – the MSM says that the unemployment rate stayed steady at 10% in December – and thus it hasn’t gotten worse. But behind the numbers is this:

53,000 construction and 27,000 manufacturing jobs were lost last month – we continue to lose out where its most important, in the wealth-creating jobs. Things are not getting better – not by a long shot. The whole “recovery” has been smoke and mirrors – bogus numbers put out by idiots and/or con artists who are trying to sucker us in to disbelieving our lying eyes. For crying out loud, a net of 10,000 retail jobs were lost in December! During December. That doesn’t happen if the economy is in any way, shape or form on the mend.

You can go ahead and believe the happy talk, if you like. I know you Democrats will because you’re worried sick about massive losses and think that the “recovery” will set things right before November. You believe this because you really think that a bankrupt nation can borrow itself back in to prosperity. Fine. Believe that. But when the “re-crash” hits, you just remember what I and others told you – and then, please, wake the heck up.

UPDATE: Another way to understand the unemployment numbers:

Then will come the second-take stories that will notice the shrinking labor force, which dropped by nearly 700,000 from November. Had it stayed stable for last month, the jobless rate would have been 10.4 percent. Had it stayed stable since August, the jobless rate would be 11 percent!

But wait, there’s more! The U-6 rate rate which combines the basic jobless rate, discouraged workers, part-timers-who-would-rather-be-full-timers climbed to 17.3 percent. And the average duration of unemployment rose to a record high 29.1 weeks.

And now the report that the BLS is underestimating the number of people actually getting unemployment compensation makes far more sense – if you’re a Democrat, better to have 10% unemployment than 11%. And if you have to lie to get the lower number, what is there in Democrat politics to make you think you shouldn’t?

UPDATE II: Why would Democrats want to lie about unemployment? Here’s why.

Powerless we are – for now; and an idea matched with truth will eventually have all the power in the world:

All 40 Republican members of the Senate sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday asking him to hold health care negotiations in “the light of day.”

“In the coming weeks, we ask for increased transparency in the process of merging the House-passed bill and the Senate-passed bill,” the letter said. “Closed door negotiations and unprecedented special provisions in exchange for votes do not meet the expectations of the American people.”

At best, Democrats might give us some window dressing on transparency – but I doubt we’ll see even that. It must be kept in mind that all Democrat rhetoric about being for the little guy; about being for clean government; about being other than ruthless, corrupt and greedy political whores is just that – so much rhetoric. They don’t care about us and don’t care about America – they only care about their own power and wealth. What they are doing behind closed doors is working things out to maximize both wealth and power for themselves – if someone manages to get some health care out of the deal,that is ok…but its not the primary concern.

Its hard to condemn a whole group of people, but the plain fact of the matter is that for decades there has been an increasing tendency to this sort of self-serving corruption and as Democrats have not been held accountable in the MSM or by rank-and-file Democrats there has been no means of checking or correcting this tendency. Only massive, crushing defeat coupled with an internal, Democrat demand for honesty will fix the problem in the Democrat party.

Meanwhile, we sit here suffering the effects of having an irresponsible and corrupt political class governing our nation. All will be set right in the end, but we’ll have some pretty bad times before then. Let this be a lesson to us to move ruthlessly against the least manifestation of corruption in politics. Policies may be good or bad, but if they are at least honestly arrived at, they won’t be nearly as bad as bad policies coupled with bad hearts.

A fascinating article over at Mish’s – the concern being that the government is lying about the number of unemployed. Boiled down, we seem to be spending money on unemployment as if there are 14 million people eligible for benefits – but the government claims only 9.6 million on the rolls. The linked article states that we spent on unemployment benefits in December of 2009 $700 million more than we spent on all other federal salaries. Something doesn’t add up here.

Our only defense against belief that fraud is being perpetrated? The concept that President Barack Obama and his Chicago-style administration simply would not pull a fast one on us.

I’m not comforted.

Interesting:

I previously posted that Martha Coakley’s campaign appeared to be overstating its financial strength by hyping its primary fundraising numbers, almost all of which was spent during the primary. Coakley has not released her post-primary fundraising numbers.

Coakley has been surprisingly quiet for someone who supposedly had tons of money. She has only recently rolled out television advertising, and in a smaller ad buy than she did during the primary.

Now news that Coakley, who has been criticized for taking vacation in the middle of the special election and creating a “diva” image, is heading to Washington, D.C. on Tuesday for a fundraiser…

As it goes on to note, Coakley is having a lobbyist-laced fundraiser in DC – and the Brown campaign should hammer on that theme. She’s clearly just a tool of the corrupt, Democrat power structure – and that power structure is now worried that her supposed walkover election isn’t any such thing.

Brown is still the under dog here – after all, this is Massachusetts. But he’s clearly running better than anyone expected and has a definite chance of winning. If you live in Massachusetts, you should be volunteering – and everyone should donate whatever they can. Go here to help out.

Win on January 19th, and ObamaCare dies that day…

Victor Davis Hanson nails it:

Unchecked hubris always incurs nemesis that leads to atê or destruction. In Obama’s case, we are witnessing such a sequence. His hope and change speeches are no more empty of substance than they ever were. But now the studied accentuation and Rev. Wright inculcated cadences are shopworn, the allusions tired and transparently the work of twenty-something speechwriters who ran out of clichés around March. The blame Bush continues, but it now is monotonous and sounds like the proverbial three-year-old’s sob.

NPR and the blogs use to ridicule Bush’s “nuclar,” but at least Bush joked about his own problematic philology. In contrast, does one believe Obama even recognizes that 300 million Americans wince when he says, “Let me be perfectly clear…” or “ Make no mistake about it” or repeats “I” or “me” or “my team” for the 30th time in his speeches?

If Obama gives yet another press conference or interview, and references himself as a nontraditional minority landmark figure who is not only a testament to our own moral progress, but also a reminder of how bad we were in the past, well, we are at the point where most will either snooze or laugh.

How quickly has President Obama become “old”. We’re alternately bored or irritated with him – its like he’s already hung around too long. The guest that wouldn’t leave.

Think of it – just 14 months ago the world was at Obama’s feet. The GOP was is disarray – he could easily have co-opted a lot of our people. Suppose he had named John McCain to be point man on health care reform? McCain would not have refused – and while the resultant bill would still have been bad (any sort of government intervention in health care is always bad news), it wouldn’t be the horror it is now. And it would have already passed, with genuine bipartisan majorities – and we GOPers would be hoping to just pick up a couple House and Senate seats this November, rather than eagerly getting ready for what might be an earth shaking political tsunami. All it would have taken is a bit of sense.

And that is just what Obama lacks – good sense. Why? Because he never had to show any grit while rising to the very top. Up to and including his election, he never failed – but, then again, up to and including his election he was never really challenged on the fundamentals. Goodness: he set himself up like Roman emperor for his acceptance speech, and no one immediately moved to kick him off the ticket! That, had it been properly framed, should have cost Obama the election. But he was allowed to coast on by on charm and good looks and good intentions…and now, he’s in office, and charm and good looks and good intentions don’t matter. He needs to be a President – but you can only command if you have learned to serve, and you can only command successfully if you’ve suffered genuine setbacks.

It is time for President Obama to understand that he has been beaten – on health care, global warming and the conduct of the war, President Obama has lost the confidence of the American people. If he can sit back and absorb this, he’ll be the better man and better President for it. Unfortunately, it looks as though hubris really has taken over – that President Obama cannot conceive of his own defeat, and thus ignores any indications that he has been. It might take a bit more defeat before Obama wakes up – and if he doesn’t ever wake up, then the next three years will be very dangerous for the United States.

UPDATE: Not a vote of confidence in Obama’s remarks today on terrorism.

Very good:

Almost 1-1/2 years since she shook up American politics with her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is set to headline another landmark political event: the first-ever Tea Party Convention next month in Nashville, Tenn.

This shows that she understands the current dynamic of American politics. Remember, recent polling has the TEA Party as more popular than either the GOP or the Democrats. People are angry and frustrated and Sarah Palin senses this.

And now she’s taking the lead of it…

Seems to becoming rather common for a lot of Democrats:

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in Arkansas shows Lincoln’s support for reelection at 38% or 39% no matter which of four potential Republican challengers she is matched against. In surveys last September and December, her support was between 39% and 41% in these match-ups.

In other words, if we nominate a ham sandwich, we could win this one.

That, of course, is an exaggeration. We can’t count on anything and we should go in to 2010 on the presumption that unemployment will come down a bit and no major mistakes will mar the Democrats 2010 efforts. We should fight from the assumption that we’re still far behind.

That said, 2010 is certainly shaping up to be a year the GOP can strongly bounce back from the defeats of 2006 and 2008. But we do need a strong message – in fact, we need a revolutionary message. We need to tell the American people, in a convincing way, that if we are honored with their support, we really will change things for the better.

A message of balanced budgets, low taxes, strong defense, indeed. But we also need to root out corruption, top to bottom – the people are furious at the way Reid has bribed his own caucus to pass a bill no one wants…and now, finally, I think the American people are really willing to see a lot of politicians go to jail. We need a clean sweep – and we can do it, if we convince the American people we’re serious.

Excellent:

President Obama’s meeting with his top national security advisers does nothing to change the fact that his fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed. We are at war with radical Islamic extremists and treating this threat as a law enforcement issue is dangerous for our nation’s security. That’s what happened in the 1990s and we saw the result on September 11, 2001. This is a war on terror not an “overseas contingency operation.” Acts of terrorism are just that, not “man caused disasters.” The system did not work. Abdulmutallab was a child of privilege radicalized and trained by organized jihadists, not an “isolated extremist” who traveled to a land of “crushing poverty.” He is an enemy of the United States, not just another criminal defendant…

…President Obama was right to change his policy and decide to send no more detainees to Yemen where they can be free to rejoin their war on America. Now he must back off his reckless plan to close Guantanamo, begin treating terrorists as wartime enemies not suspects alleged to have committed crimes, and recognize that the real nature of the terrorist threat requires a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor.

This shows a clear sighted grasp of what we’re up against and likely reflects the fact that Sarah Palin has had far more real world and executive experience than Obama has – even after Obama has been in office for nearly a year. Obama needs to wake up from the leftist delusions about why terrorists do what they do. He also needs to lay aside ivory tower concepts of how terrorists should be treated when captured. If he doesn’t change, very soon, then the cost of his policies will be paid for in blood.

We made a horrendous mistake in November of 2008 and we can only partially undo it in 2010 – for the most part, we’re stuck with our foolishness until January 20th, 2013. Let this be a lesson to those who complain that this or that GOP candidate isn’t conservative “enough” – true, always better to have a true-blue conservative, but better a RINO than a liberal Democrat. Lives are at stake, and we can’t mess around and hope to put it all back together again later.

What our Party must be:

Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people. Any organization is in actuality only the lengthened shadow of its members. A political party is a mechanical structure created to further a cause. The cause, not the mechanism, brings and holds the members together. And our cause must be to rediscover, reassert and reapply America’s spiritual heritage to our national affairs.

Then with God’s help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us. – Ronald Reagan