Year: 2008

Iowa Caucuses

Jon Ponder

5:17 p.m.: On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann reported that “entrance polls” show stronger support for Clinton and Obama than other Democratic candidates, while there is stronger support for Romney and Huckabee among GOP voters. Olbermann cautioned that these numbers are very soft because of the dynamics of caucusing.

Another indicator from MSNBC: Many Democratic caucus sites are filled above capacity. It’s purely anecdotal but at a site where only 86 people caucused in 2004, well over 200 people have shown up tonight.

5:40 p.m.: First numbers released put Edwards and Huckabee in the lead.

5:54 p.m.: Latest Dems: Edwards 34 percent, Clinton 33 percent, Obama 33 percent.

5:58 p.m.: Latest GOP: Thompson in third — Huckabee 36 percent, Romney 23 percent, Thompson 14 percent.

6:00 p.m.: MSNBC calls GOP vote for Huckabee.

6:10 p.m.: MSNBC: 60 percent of GOP voters tonight self-identified as born-again or evangelical.

6:15 p.m.: With 56 percent in, delegate counts: Obama 35 percent, Edwards 33 percent and Clinton 31 percent, via MSNBC. Chris Matthews insists this is a “huge” defeat for Clinton.

6:26 p.m.: MSNBC calls the Democratic caucus vote for Obama — Edwards second, Clinton third.

6:43 p.m.: MSNBC: Obama 37 percent, Edwards 30 percent, Clinton 30 percent. Tom Brokaw is on. Olbermann: Pat Robertson won Iowa in 1988.

Prediction: Clinton and McCain Will Be Winners in Iowa Tonight

Jon Ponder

I have no fear of being wrong about prognosticating so will boldly go where others won’t and make predictions about the outcome of the Iowa caucuses tonight.

After Feb. 6, it’s hard to see any other result than two two-person races: Romney vs. Giuliani and Clinton vs. Obama

Republicans

The easiest one is perhaps the strangest: McCain will win the expectations game by coming in third behind Huckabee and Romney. (And after the dumbass mistakes Huckabee has made in the last few days, it wouldn’t surprise me if Romney came in first, despite recent polling otherwise.)

After spending so little time and money in Iowa, if McCain comes in third, he’ll almost certainly go on to win in New Hampshire next week, too. But after that, it looks pretty grim. He might do okay in South Carolina but he has no money to compete against Romney and especially Giuliani, who has also spent little or nothing in Iowa or New Hampshire.

Even if McCain wins in New Hampshire and Huckabee wins South Carolina, it probably won’t matter much in the long term because they’ll both lose in Florida and then the big states on Feb. 5. Starting Feb. 6, there will be a two-man race between Romney and Giuliani. Way too early to predict the outcome of that battle, but Giuliani has the support of the White House, Fox News and rightwing talk radio.

Democrats

Among Democrats, whoever comes in third is in trouble but among the top three, Clinton has the best chance of recovery. It’ll put her behind in New Hampshire — but, who knows, she could come in second and call herself the new “Comeback Kid,” as Bill did after Paul Tsongas bested him there in 1992 — but she will have California and New York, just to name two, in the bag on Feb. 5.

Polling caucus voters is wiggy, at best. Obama has been surging lately but my sense is, Iowa Democrats will take the perceived safest bet tonight and go with Clinton.

It’s true that the media has already turned on her big time. But this is nothing new, really. Despite the rightwing’s fantasy that the liberal media helps Democratic politicians, the Clintons have been despised by the Beltway Cool Kids — the very same folks who kissed George Bush’s ass for so long — from the outset of their national political careers.

If Obama wins tonight, he’ll get a tremendous boost from the momentousness of the fact that an African-American has won the first round in a U.S. election. He may even win in New Hampshire. But he will likely stall in South Carolina (sorry, Oprah) as well as in Florida.

If Obama comes in third tonight, he is still sitting on a pile of money and could still rally over the next few months but it will be an uphill climb.

If Edwards comes in third, he’s done. (Sorry, Trish.) He’s nowhere in New Hampshire, trailing in his native state of South Carolina and has nothing in the bank for Feb. 5. Unfortunately, if he wins tonight, very little, if anything, changes in this equation.

After Feb. 6, the Democratic race will narrow to Clinton and Obama. He has a chance but it is slim, at best.

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For the record, if he’s still in the race, I plan on voting for Joe Biden in the California primary on Feb. 5.

*

Update: Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t mind being wrong about these prognostications yesterday because I got the main two points wrong. Obama won with 38 percent, Edwards came in second with 30 percent and Clinton came in third with 29 percent. Huckabee won substantially over Romney, whom the pundits are already calling last night’s “big loser.” But the biggest surprise for me was that “Fixin’ to Get Ready” Fred Thompson tied for third with John McCain. There was talk yesterday that Thompson would drop out after Iowa and throw his support to McCain. Don’t be surprised if Fred’s handlers — particularly his wife Jeri and their BFF Mary Matalin — convince him to postponed that move until after the South Carolina primary later this month.

Rudy Rolls Out Terror Ad – a Disgusting Attempt to Enflame Fear Among GOP Sheeple

Jon Ponder

Are you scared yet?

If you are a liberal, a Democrat or a sensible moderate independent, this ad probably won’t scare you. Good for you for being able to see through Rudolph Giuliani’s cravenly manipulative attempt to terrify dim-witted folks into voting for him.

But even if you are a wise consumer of this sort of propaganda, this ad should scare you nonetheless — because it probably will be effective in scaring the votes out of the terror-addicted Republican base, who have been softened up by the terror politics of Bush and Rove since September 2001, and are now fully converted into what may be America’s first generation of cowards — rivaling in the inverse the Greatest Generation that fought World War II.

Republican pols like Bush and Giuliani depend on the fact that when people are terrified they don’t think rationally. Like drug pushers in the bad old days, the neocon-nationalist wing of the GOP has fed Wal-Mart shoppers,” “security moms,” “NASCAR dads” and their other key voter demos a steady diet of fear and now millions of them are completely hooked on terror.

The more consumed they are by fear, the less they notice that the same politicians who routinely scare the bejeebus out of them are simultaneously sending their jobs overseas, forking over billions of their tax dollars to giant corporations and fomenting the decline of democracy in favor of Mexican-style oligarchy and even fascism.

It worked in 2004, and there is no reason to believe it won’t work in 2008.

So… Are you scared yet?

At the End of the Day, Throw Me Under the Bus

Buck Banks

Since 1975, Lake Superior State University has published a list of misused and overused words and phrases, nominated by people like us who have an intimate and meaningful relationship with the English language — we use it to communicate.

The list began this year by returning truthiness — coined by Stephen Colbert — to the list of approved words. Seems there just is no substitute for it in the lingua franca.

Here’s this year’s list. For explanations about why they nominated them from those who nominated the words, go here.

Perfect storm
Webinar
Waterboarding
Organic
Wordsmith/wordsmithing
Author/authored
Post 9/11
Surge
Give back
Blank is the new blank or X is the new Y
Black Friday
Back in the day
Random
Sweet
Decimate
Emotional
Pop
It is what it is
Under the bus

To which we would add:

At the end of the day — meant to be a kind of summation, but mainly used as a place-holder when someone has nothing better or more intelligent to say
Drill down — used in marketing speak to mean to get down to the nugget of whatever it is that’s currently under consideration
Blogoshpere — just a stupid-sounding word
Social media — is there any other kind?
Web 2.0 or anything 2.0 — duh
Lassitude — a perfectly fine word that no one uses

Do you have some words or phrases that just grate on your ear like fingernails on a blackboard? Let us know. Leave a comment.

The Place Where Bad Gifts Go

Buck Banks

bad giftsHaving just wrapped up the gift-wrap season, it is perhaps an appropriate time to reflect on the practice of giving and getting matter. Even more appropriate, however, would be to visit the Bad Gift Emporium.

There you will find a gallery of really terrible gifts, from the poor schmuck whose parents brought him hotel amenities from their trip to the Bahamas, to the guy whose neighbor gave him a jar of homemade pickled hot dogs. The gifts portrayed at the Emporium run the gamut, from the thoughtless to the tasteless to the clueless.

Many of them are available for trade or purchase, depending on the degree of attachment the owner feels for the stuff. And you can submit your own crappy gifts, though we suspect that nothing you got for Xmas compares with the guy whose Uncle Tim gave him a jar of pickled turkey gizzards.

Enjoy!

Huckabee Delayed Disaster Aid Over Objection to Insurance Term ‘Act of God’

Jon Ponder

On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Gov. Mike Huckabee, the ordained Baptist preacher, claimed his record in office proves that he has not allowed his religion to influence the way he governs:

“Acts of God” had a long history in English maritime law and was standard language in many insurance policies.

Never would I want to use the government institutions to impose my or anybody else’s faith or to restrict…

If people want to know how I would blend these issues, the best way to look at it is how I served as a governor. I didn’t ever propose a bill that we would remove the Capitol dome of Arkansas and replace it with a steeple. You know, we didn’t do tent revivals on the grounds of the Capitol. But my faith is important to me.

While it’s true he didn’t deface the state capitol or hold tent revivals on public property, he did allow his faith to interfere with his governing in a way that could have had serious consequences.

In March 1997, after a tornado ripped through Arkadelphia killing six people and destroying over 70 businesses downtown, Gov. Huckabee held up disaster funding for weeks because he objected to the insurance industry’s term for destruction-by-tornado: “act of God”:
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Patti Davis Is Not Flattered by GOP Candidates’ Pale Imitations of Her Father

Jon Ponder

Interesting op-ed in Newsweek from Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti:

“We are being told that a competent, trustworthy president is someone who brandishes his religion like a neon sign, loads a gun and goes out hunting for beautiful winged creatures, and tries to imitate a past president (who, by the way, never shot a bird or felt the need to imitate anybody).”
— Patti Davis

On Friday’s “Today Show,” Mitt Romney again brandished my father’s name, and claimed that, just as Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, Romney can effectively govern and manage foreign policy in this horribly troubled world.

This, of course, was preceded by Romney’s televised speech about his religion and his personal faith — something my father would never have dreamed of doing because his faith was, well, personal.

Putting Reagan and religion aside, there’s another great issue consuming the 2008 campaign. Who is the more authentic, experienced hunter? Romney has claimed to be a “lifelong hunter.” Huckabee said liar, liar, pants on fire (OK, not his exact words, but close) because Romney has only ventured out twice to slaughter animals. “I think it was a major mistake,” said Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor. “It would be like me saying I’ve been a lifelong golfer because I played putt-putt when I was nine years old and I rode in a golf cart a couple of times.” Oh great, now the candidates are worried about miniature golf.

To prove his virility, Huckabee has been photographed in those ridiculous hunting clothes holding a large rifle and several dead pheasants. Lest we forget about God, Huckabee’s campaign offered up a special Christmas advertisement –complete with the now famous “floating cross” behind him — something Huckabee has said was simply a bookcase. Yes, with the books removed and lit with a golden glow that looked like the Star of Bethlehem had been summoned for duty in a political ad.

So, apparently, we are being told that a competent, trustworthy president is someone who brandishes his religion like a neon sign, loads a gun and goes out hunting for beautiful winged creatures, and tries to imitate a past president (who, by the way, never shot a bird or felt the need to imitate anybody).

Davis closes by wishing that we could “leave the ducks, the rabbits, the deer alone, and focus on a world that is aching with strife, that is weighed down by wars and conflicts, not to mention disease and hunger in vast stretches of Africa” — and by suggesting that “imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery; it’s just an indication that the imitator is going through a serious identity crisis.”

Does Huckabee Think He Was Born Heterosexual?

Jon Ponder

On Meet the Press on Sunday, Rev. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, said he doesn’t know whether people are born gay — and then equated being gay with being a murderer or rapist by saying he was not equating one with the other:

Transcript starts at 04:38:

HUCKABEE: The perfection of God is seen in a marriage in which one man, one woman live together as a couple committed to each other as life partners. Even married couples don’t do that perfectly so sin is not some act of equating people with murders or rapists.

RUSSERT: But when you say someone is aberrant or unnatural, do you believe you’re born gay or you choose to be gay?

HUCKABEE: I don’t know whether people are born that way. People who are gay say that they are born that way. But one thing I know — that the behavior one practices is a choice. We may have certain tendencies. But how we behave and how we carry out our behavior… [Changes topic.]

It would have been nice if Russert had followed up with the next logical question: If you believe sexuality is a choice, does that mean you chose to be straight?

Last year, when the late, unlamented Jerry Falwell told Russert’s colleague Chris Matthews on “Hardball” that he believed gay people chose their sexuality, Matthews shocked his detractors by lobbing back an actual hardball.

Matthews asked the old mullah, “Did you choose to be heterosexual?”

Without thinking, Falwell answered, “I did.”

A few seconds later, Matthews returned to the question, asking Falwell how old he was when he chose to be heterosexual. At that point, Falwell appeared to realize he’d been hoisted on the illogical reasoning in one of the foundational tenets of evangelical homophobia — that gay people always “choose” their sexuality but straight people never do. Falwell closed out the discussion by contradicting his earlier statement that he decided to be straight (apparently at age 13, when he started dating) with the diametrically opposite assertion that “I…I never had to decide.”

Here’s the video, transcript follows.

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