Obamania hits Granite State

The junior senator from Illinois has jumped out to a lead of 10 percentage points over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.

Fox News wimps afraid of Ron Paul

Roger Ailes, the dude who runs Fox News, is a big buddy of Rudy Giuliani, which explains this.

Oh, by the way...

The new political wisdom says that Mike Huckabee's victory in Iowa, which scares the bejesus out of establishment Republicans, is a big boost to John McCain's candidacy (see the previous post).

But consider this: Obamania is likely to attract a lot of independent voters to the Democratic primary election in New Hampshire next Tuesday. Those are independent voters who won't be available to McCain to help him gain new traction on the Republican side.

If Huckabee wins in New Hampshire, he's going to be hard to stop, no matter the fervent wishes of his party's elders.

Now what?

In the wake of Iowa's stunning results, the 2008 presidential race suddenly turns a corner and heads down a path so strange that John McCain, with only a fourth-place finish Thursday night, is now seen as a much stronger contender for the Republican nomination.

How weird is that?

BooMan says Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney are finished and predicts that Barack Obama will defeat McCain in November.

The Politicker explains why Mike Huckabee's victory is good news for McCain.

Arianna Huffington wonders if the outbreak of Obamania might be just a fleeting thing.

The Rockford Rascal says it won't be fleeting and offers this bit of eloquence as evidence:

Obama wins!

Well, I got the winners in both parties wrong.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney was much weaker than I had expected. And among the Democrats, I had figured that John Edwards had a better ground game than Barack Obama and that Hillary Clinton was fading.

With some precincts still to report, it looks like Clinton will finish third, a psychological disaster for her campaign.

Clinton has enough money, organization and popular support to soldier on, but if she finishes third tonight, she is badly wounded. Edwards, in second place, has dodged a proverbial bullet.

Huckabee wins Iowa!

I predicted that Romney would win on the Republican side. I was wrong -- and I love it.

Mike Huckabee wins by a wide margin, and Democrats everywhere have cause to lick their chops.

The Republican establishment, on the other hand, will experience a pronounced worsening of its Huckabee panic.

How does Chris Matthews keep his job?

Tweety, as they call him, is billed by MSNBC as a man of keen political insights. The record to the contrary is voluminous and now includes this ridiculous entry.

UPDATE: Here's a video montage of Matthews making the curious case that John McCain will be a "hero" and a comer if he gets 18 percent in tonight's caucuses while Hillary Clinton will suffer humiliating "rejection" if she gets 32 percent on the Democratic side.

Iowa predictions

From around the blogosphere (leftward and rightward alike), educated guesses on the outcomes of the Iowa presidential caucuses can be found here and here and here and here. Check out the comments on those sites, as well.

My own predictions, published three days ago, are here. (I'd be glad to be proven wrong on my picks for winners in both parties. If Obama and Huckabee win, I'll be more than delighted.)

Frederick of Hollywood ready to quit

Fred Thompson, whose bid for the Republican presidential nomination was doomed from the start, is going to pack it in if he doesn't do well in Iowa tonight, which is a foregone conclusion.

I still can't figure out why anybody thought this guy had a chance. Sure, he's a Hollywood actor, but his on-screen charms, such as they are, haven't transferred well to the political arena. He comes off as a grumpy sort, not the kind of person America wants in the White House. Beyond that problem, he's also been an inept campaigner.

It'll be interesting to see where Rep. Don Manzullo, our congressman here in RascalLand, shifts his allegiance once Freddy is out of the race.

UPDATE: Kos has more on Thompson's imminent departure from the race.

What if Edwards wins Iowa?

If John Edwards finishes first in Thursday night's Democratic presidential caucuses in Iowa (which I predicted here a few days ago), the race for the nomination might last a lot longer than would otherwise be the case.

BooMan analyzes the situation here.

POSTSCRIPT: I have to admit that I've lost a little of the confidence I had in my prediction that Edwards will win in Iowa. My radar is picking up on a last-minute rush toward Barack Obama. But I'll stick with my Edwards pick.

This is beyond bad

The Rudy Giuliani camp has taken complete leave of its senses with this commercial, which only dramatizes the emptiness of Rudy's baseless posturing as a tough guy who knows how to protect us from the boogeyman.

I don't figure he wins over even one voter with this spot; quite the opposite, I expect.

Here's a fun glimpse inside politics

The Washington Post has an entertaining piece on grizzled political pro Ed Rollins and his adventures inside the Mike Huckabee campaign.

A conservative politely deconstructs Romney

David Brooks of The New York Times praises Mitt Romney, then buries him.

Sympathy for the Devil

Mike Huckabee plays bass guitar in a rock band, an avocation clearly at moral odds with the teachings of Dr. Bill Gothard, a godly man who founded the Institute in Basic Life Principles.

Among the many publications circulated by Gothard's ministry is something called "Ten Scriptural Reasons Why the Rock Beat is Evil in Any Form."

Of course, Gothard's not the first or only Christian to denounce rock music as devilish. But he's also a big-time supporter of Mike Huckabee's presidential candidacy. So, there's an inconsistency here. Some might even call it hypocrisy.

Justin Jeffre has written this letter to Gothard, asking him to prevail upon Huckabee to renounce his favor for satanic music.

If gambling weren't sinful, I'd bet that Gothard won't say anything to Huckabee about this matter. He seems to lack the courage to speak truth to power.

Wall Street Journal: Democrats pumped

The paper says Republicans are relatively dispirited.

Here are the results of the Iowa caucuses

Remember where you heard it first.

Democratic order of finish:

1. John Edwards


2. Barack Obama


3. Hillary Clinton


4. Joe Biden


5. Chris Dodd

Republican order of finish:

1. Mitt Romney


2. Mike Huckabee


3. John McCain


4. Ron Paul


5. Fred Thompson

Is Huckabee toast?

Ron Fournier suggests that the former Arkansas governor has pulled one stunt too many.

UPDATE: There's more on Huckleberry's screw-up here.

Notable deaths in 2007

These are some of the people (and two horses) whose deaths this year occasioned at least a passing thought on my part (in no particular order):

• Molly Ivins



• Benazir Bhutto



• Jon Lundin



• Barbaro



• Ian Richardson



• Kurt Vonnegut



• Fr. Robert Drinan



• Lorne "Gump" Worsley



• Eleanor McGovern



• Dan Fogelberg



• Norman Mailer



• Anna Nicole Smith



• Donnie Brooks



• Jack Lang



• Charlotte Reid



• E. Howard Hunt



• Denny Doherty



• Art Buchwald



• Lew Burdette



• Hank Bauer



• Ron Carey



• Richard S. Prather



• Benny Parsons



• Carlo Ponti



• Frankie Laine



• Del Reeves



• Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.



• Bobby Rosengarden



• Henson Cargill



• Ed Bailey



• Calvert DeForest (Larry "Bud" Melman)



• Luther Ingram



• Charles Harrelson



• Henry Hyde



• Bowie Kuhn



• Betty Hutton



• Ernie Ladd



• John Vukovich



• Ernest Gallo



• John Drury



• Boris Yeltsin



• Bill Hartack



• Milo Radulovich



• Dick Wilson



• Joe Nuxhall



• Ronnie Burns



• Clem Labine



• Tom Poston



• Gordon Scott



• Tommy Newsom



• Jack Valenti



• Bobby "Boris" Pickett



• David Halberstam



• Ike Turner



• Donald Stephens



• Kitty Carlisle Hart



• Don Ho



• Roscoe Lee Browne



• Dakota Staton



• Johnny Hart



• Barry Nelson



• Oscar Peterson



• Stan Daniels



• Darryl Stingley



• Eddie Robinson



• Gretchen Wyler



• Michael Kidd



• Charles Nelson Reilly



• Jerry Falwell



• Ken Hendricks



• Yolanda King



• Alex Agase



• Wally Schirra



• Liz Claiborne



• Rod Beck



• Guy Vander Jagt



• Bob Evans



• Kurt Waldheim



• Don Herbert



• Mala Powers



• Clete Boyer



• Jim Clark



• Bill France Jr.



• Steve Gilliard



• Michelangelo Antonioni



• Ingmar Bergman



• Bill Walsh



• Tom Snyder



• Tammy Faye Messner



• Lady Bird Johnson



• Rod Lauren



• Boots Randolph



• Beverly Sills



• Jack Linkletter



• Gay Brewer



• Richard Jewell



• Chuck Comiskey



• Leona Helmsley



• Michael Deaver



• Phil Rizzuto



• Merv Griffin



• Lee Hazlewood



• Ed Brown



• Tommy Makem



• Alice Ghostley



• Robert Goulet



• Max McGee



• Evel Knievel



• Joey Bishop



• Deborah Kerr



• John Henry



• Laraine Day



• Hank Thompson



• Paul Tibbets



• Terry Armour

If you've seen one Muslim, you've seen 'em all

That's the opinion of one of Rudy Giuliani's campaigners in New Hampshire.

Ah, but the fellow's intolerance seems to be a bit much for the poohbahs in Rudy's camp.

Ron Paul isn't buying "theory" of evolution

Is this guy an idiot or what? And he's a doctor??

The dumbest poll ever

The headline in USA Today reads: "Bush tops 'most admired' poll."

But that isn't exactly what the story says. The poll actually shows that President Bush and former President Bill Clinton are statistically tied as the most admired men. (Bush is the choice of 10 percent of respondents, and Clinton gets 8 percent. The poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, so Bush and Clinton are tied.)

Of course, the whole exercise is stupid. Sitting U.S. presidents, no matter how low their overall approval ratings, almost always come out at or near the top in these "most admired" polls. With nine out of every 10 respondents choosing somebody other than the so-called winner, the effort is rightly regarded as a waste of time.

And what are we to make of Hillary Clinton garnering six times as many votes as Laura Bush for the title of most admired woman? We should make nothing of it -- or of anything else having to do with this ridiculous poll.

Wither U.S.-Pakistan relationship?

Here's a worthy little overview of the U.S.-Pakistan situation in the aftermath of today's assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Surprise! Rudy invokes 9/11 in his latest ad

For good measure, he throws in some World War II:

Bhutto slaying boost to Rudy and Hillary?

That's what Joe Scarborough said this morning on MSNBC:

Bob Kerrey would be Hillary's running mate?

This guy says the Medal of Honor recipient will be Hillary's choice for the veep spot if she wins the Democratic nomination.

But I'm not betting it that way. I think Kerrey is too much of a loose cannon, and I can't imagine that Hillary's advisers wouldn't recognize that, too.

Ron Paul is a freaking bigot

For a long time, I've thought that Ron Paul, the cranky libertarian who's running for the Republican presidential nomination, is a little kooky and attracts a lot of people who are more than just a little kooky.

But Paul is worse than that, I've recently learned. He's a racist.

Onward, Christian Soldiers!

This is pretty scary.

Happy Christmas (War is Over)

A Christmas miracle

On this Christmas Day, of all days, I have come across a video that has convinced me, finally, that my belief in evolution has been wrong all along.

It only took a jar of peanut butter to make the truth clear to me:

A Christmas fruitcake filled with politics

Hercubush vs. Ragheadia

Festivus for the rest of us!

Uh-oh! Bushes shun the C-word

This is an outrage. Just when Fox News and us other guardians of the purity of Christmas had the secularists on the run, our own president betrays us.

George W. Bush, on behalf of his wife and his own self, has sent a message to the men and women of the U.S. military in which he wishes them "a joyful holiday season." Joyful holiday season! But there's no mention of Christmas or the true meaning of the holiday.

If you don't believe me, check it out here on the White House Web site.

It's a wonder he didn't mention Rudolph or Santa or some other phony icon of the season.

Well, this kind of thing won't happen when Mike Huckabee's president. No, sir.

GOP elite gripped by Huckabee panic

Here's another report on the hysteria among Republican establishment types over the unsettling thought that theocrat Mike Huckabee might win the party's presidential nomination.

Go, Mike, go! Give 'em heck (if you'll excuse my French).

Bogus list

Here's a list of the top 10 news stories of 2007, according to the Associated Press.

You'll notice that there's no mention of the launch of The Rockford Rascal last Jan. 27.

What's up with that?

Cigna -- A Business of Caring

A good boiling of your blood on a Friday night before Christmas is just what the doctor ordered.

Administer the boiling here.

Which Democratic candidate is most electable? Hillary, Obama or Edwards?

This poll says it's Obama.

In a hypothetical matchup against Obama, the weakest of the five leading Republican candidates are Romney (minus 18 percentage points) and Thompson (minus 16 percentage points.

The strongest GOPers against Obama are McCain (minus four percentage points) and Huckabee (minus five percentage points).

Against Hillary, three Republicans -- McCain, Giuliani and Huckabee -- are leading by small margins.

Against Edwards, Giuliani and McCain are leading, but only by smidgens.

Huckabee will win GOP nomination?

That's what this guy says.

I'm not so sure. I think Romney still has a decent chance.

McCain? His prospects are exceedingly slim. He's a long, long, long shot.

Giuliani? Thompson? No way for either of them. They're toast.

Ron Paul? C'mon. Get serious.

UPDATE: Bob Novak, the Prince of Darkness, writes of infighting on the Religious Right over Huckabee's candidacy.

Limbaugh et al spread lie about General Giap

For more than a decade now, the pseudo-patriots among us have been peddling a false quotation from a non-existent book said to have been written by former North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.

The bogus claim is that Giap said America lost the Vietnam War because of its biased domestic media.

The quotation has been thoroughly debunked, but that hasn't stopped Rush Limbaugh from trotting it out again as recently as earlier this month, which will only give it new life among the booboisie.

POSTSCRIPT: This matter reminds me of the fake Lincoln quotation used earlier this year by right-wingers all across the fruited plain to impugn the patriotism of those in Congress who dared to dissent against our glorious war in Iraq.

"The Watergate of our times"?

This guy says the flap over the torture tapes will become the biggest political scandal since Watergate.

I'm not so sure, but the guy makes an interesting case.

Rudy's fading fast

Too bad.

It would have been great fun to see the Democratic presidential nominee do battle with Rudy Giuliani in the general election campaign.

It also would have been entertaining to see how the right-wingers in the Republican Party cope with the spectacle of having a thrice-married, pro-choice, pro-gay rights guy as their standard-bearer.

But it's not to be. Rudy is sinking like a stone and will be out of the race before Valentine's Day.

Meanwhile, let's all hope that Mike Huckabee wins the GOP nomination. That, too, would be big fun.

Right-winger beats himself up, blames libs

This is too funny.

A right-wing student at Princeton University suffers various injuries in what he says was an attack on him by leftists who had previously threatened him and other campus conservatives.

Fox News and countless wingnut bloggers jump on the story and soil themselves over the injustice of it all.

Then, it turns out that the so-called victim had made up the whole thing and inflicted his own injuries.

Fox News, meanwhile, moves on to some other cause celebre that might stir up the forces of decency and Americanism.

Wait 'til Fox News hears about this!

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, says he isn't buying some of the incidentals that have been attached to the story of the birth of Jesus.

Williams is a little skeptical, for example, regarding the legend of the three wise men, and he doubts that there was snow in Bethlehem at the time of the nativity. And he says, as do most scholars, that Jesus wasn't likely born in December.

The Anglican archbishop isn't saying there was no nativity. But, in rejecting some of the details in the greeting-card version of the event, Williams makes himself the target of derision from the kind of Christians who hate for real history and real scholarship on the matter to disturb their notions of Christmas.

It seems not to occur to the traditionalists that many of their Christmas fantasies have no basis in scripture. There's nothing in the Bible, for instance, about the wise men numbering three.

Creationists' fecal roster

Landover Baptist.net, a satirical "religious" site, has this list of the kind of people creationists have cause to regard with suspicion or disdain because of their views on evolution.

It's funny (and scary).

Still more Huckabee panic

Marc Ambinder assesses the latest in what he calls "the conservative counter-revolution" against religious rightist Mike Huckabee.

This sure is fun to watch, for reasons I previously noted here.

Meeting of the...the....uh...the minds, I guess

Two of our intellectual giants, Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck, discuss Time magazine's choice of Vladimir Putin for its person of the year.

Your so-called liberal media (cont.)

The New York Times receives well-deserved criticism for its peculiar news judgments.

Huckabee says "Paul is dead!"

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, in response to criticisms that his latest TV ad uses a subliminal religious message, said Tuesday:

"I will confess this: If you play the spot backwards it says, 'Paul is dead. Paul is dead.'"

The reference is to a rumor of 38 years ago that then-Beatle Paul McCartney had died and been replaced by a look-a-like. Peddlers of the rumor insisted that subliminal clues to Paul's demise were included on certain Beatles recordings, some of them discernible only by playing the records backwards.

The Huckabee ad has attracted darts even from Bill Donahue, a self-appointed guardian of Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular against what he sees as bigotry.

POSTSCRIPT: According to some sources -- this one, for example -- the "Paul is dead" rumor was started in Oct., 1969, by the Northern Star, the campus paper at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, just down the road from world headquarters of The Rockford Rascal.

More on the breakup of the Republican coalition

Some of the stuff I had here and here in recent days is touched upon in this newer wrapup from Kos, but it also has other stuff on the matter.

Take the time. It's the most important political story of the winter so far. The race for the Republican presidential nomination could well spark a civil war in party ranks, and that could significantly effect the national political scene for years.

The Party of Lincoln, as some people call it, is about to go through another one of its historic changes.

Mitt weeps at thought of his sons in war, which hasn't actually happened, thank God

Although Mitt Romney's been a backer of George W. Bush's war in Iraq all along, none of his five sons has ever bothered to join in the fighting. As Mitt has previously noted, the boys are serving their country in their own way -- by working on dad's presidential campaign.

But that doesn't mean that Mitt can't get all weepy at the thought of one of his sons coming back from Iraq in a flag-draped casket. Just yesterday, he recalled having endured such thoughts and emotions.

He's a great American, that Mitt Romney. The man's been through so much. I can hardly bear to write about it.

A political ad that says it's not a political ad

Focus on Iowa caucuses

Tony Snow bravely tells God: I've got your back

The former White House mouthpiece boldly tells it like it is with respect to Satan's latest offensive.

The price of freedom

Blogs and other Web sites that don't screen or censor the comments they receive from among the great unwashed run the risk of publishing truly offensive remarks.

It happens on leftist and rightist sites alike.

Today, it happened on some leftish sites in reaction to news of a small chemical fire at the building in New York that houses Fox News.

The Huckabee Fault Line

As I mentioned here the other day, some prominent conservative pundits are alarmed at Mike Huckabee's sudden move to the front of the Republican presidential pack. This pack of notable right-wing commentators continues to grow in size and vehemence.

The upshot of this trend is that the Republican coalition faces a clear and present danger of falling apart. For decades now, the party's foreign-policy conservatives, corporate conservatives and libertarian-types have been willing to play patty-cake with the more rabid specimens among the social and religious conservatives, just to keep them in the tent -- so long as none of their wackier legislative schemes became national policy. But the Huckabee surge has gained sufficient momentum that it now requires a stern blowback from the GOP's comparative sophisticates.

This creates a political fault line that could take years to heal. It's not likely that Huckabee will get the nomination, and his defeat might well prompt his theocratic supporters to wax bitter against the other Republicans who actively opposed him. Folks on the Religious Right might finally realize that they've been played for suckers. And if Huckabee somehow wins the nomination, the party's elite will abandon him. Either way, the GOP could become badly splintered.

UPDATE: Arianna Huffington offers this assessment of the situation.

UPDATE II: Cynthia Tucker has this.

Dan Fogelberg, R.I.P.

Brave new world

Some lab dudes are on the verge of creating new life forms from artificial DNA, which I think is way, way cool.

Yeah, it's going to raise some ethical questions, but it's useless of moralists to say we shouldn't go there.

The inescapable, incontrovertible reality is that we are going there -- because we can go there, no matter who doesn't like it.

The McCain "surge" (if that's what it is)

Roy Edroso over at Alicublog has an interesting take on the sudden signs of a pulse in John McCain's presidential candidacy, which has won endorsements from the Des Moines Register, the Boston Globe and Democratic (?) Sen. Joe Lieberman:

"Joe Lieberman's expected endorsement of John McCain offers a great opportunity that the Republican Party may be too fractured to avail. McCain is the least absurd of the current pro-war GOP contenders. There are many things I don't like about him, but he was saying from the beginning that the war would require far more effort and cost than the Administration was letting on. And unlike most of his fellow GOP contenders, he doesn't consider torture a fun way to rouse the yahoos.

"In a better world this would have made McCain a more formidable candidate long since, but the Jesus people and many hardcore rightwing operatives actively despise him. These folks are negligible in a general election, but hard to get past in the primaries. The Lieberman endorsement is a great way to signal to relatively sane pro-war voters that McCain might their best bet. But in the current environment, who knows how many of them exist?"

God, this is awful!

The clever folks at the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee have come up with their own version of the "Twelve Days of Christmas."

(Caution: Don't watch this for at least an hour after eating. Oh, and it might be better to just follow the text and not actually listen.)

Creature attacks space shuttle on launch pad

Actually, a spider crawled onto the lens of a NASA video recorder at Cape Canaveral.

Des Moines paper endorses McCain, Clinton

The Register's arguments in both the Democratic and Republican races are far from persuasive (but let's concede that choosing from among the GOP candidates had to be painful and difficult).

Your corporate news media

This is a waste of time and effort

Some well-meaning folks are trying to organize a presidential debate on matters of science.

How naive of them. Do they honestly expect that Republican candidates would be willing to talk about science? Come on. Even the comparatively enlightened among the GOP hopefuls are barely distinguishable from flat-earthers.

The Republican Party, thanks to the Bush administration, has cast itself as the most anti-science crowd this side of the people you see on the street muttering to themselves about the how the space program is a fraud.

Ah, good old Alan Keyes

Those of us in Illinois -- and especially here in Rockford -- have a perspective on Alan Keyes that the rest of America can scarcely appreciate.

Keyes was our Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate back in '04. He was recruited by Rockford State Sen. Dave Syverson, among others, when the winner of the GOP primary had to drop out in a sex scandal.

Keyes didn't even live in Illinois, but the Republican poohbahs seemed to figure that their own articulate black guy could fare well against Barack Obama, so they got him to move here from Maryland.

The result was a disaster. Keyes said his candidacy was "God's will," and opined that Jesus Christ wouldn't vote for Obama. He referred to Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter as "a selfish hedonist" and otherwise condemned homosexuals as evil.

Keyes quickly became a statewide joke and ended up with only 27 percent of the vote.

But lately, if you haven't noticed, Keyes has imposed himself on the hapless field of Republican presidential hopefuls in the 2008 race. His presence, not surprisingly, has been greeted disdainfully by conservative pundits who once regarded him with more fondness.

Roy Edroso surveys the situation here.

Dems pass GOP in money from soldiers, clergy

This is counterintuitive, isn't it?

Why does Fox News hate Jesus?

Just asking. Here's why.

Bush defies generals on torture ban

President Bush likes to say that he sides with the nation's military brass in the face of criticism from those lily-livered Democrats in Congress.

The truth, of course, is something else.

The House has passed a measure banning the torture of terrorism suspects by CIA interrogators. It mirrors a ban already in effect in the U.S. Army. Bush is vowing to veto the measure if it's approved by the Senate.

Ah, but what have we here? Why, it's a letter from no less than 30 retired generals and admirals urging congressional Democrats to hang tough on the torture ban in the face of the president's opposition.

So much for Bush's fealty to the brass.

Right-wing scribe fears GOP "Huckacide"

Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative magazine National Review, sees a disaster for the Republicans if the party nominates Mike Huckabee for president.

Of course, there'd also be a disaster for the GOP if the nod goes to Rudy Giuliani, who would drive away evangelicals by the droves.

These are not happy times for Republicans.

"Nah! That's a bunch of hooey!"

Pope Benedict XVI, famous the world over for his infallibility, has declared that concerns over global warming amount to undue alarmism.

Apparently, the pontiff's underlying point is that Earth never will become hotter than hell.

UPDATE: Hold on! This guy says the pope's position on global warming has been misrepresented. If so, The Rascal begs Benedict's forgiveness.