Fun Day in Chicago

I'll write more tomorrow.

But before I got to bed, I have this message for Mr. Andrew Fullen of the Chicago Ridge Dennys.

Off to the Land of Languatron

That's right, kids. No time to blog this morning, as I am heading into enemy territory. I'll be in Chicago on a consulting gig until Saturday morning. I've never been to Chicago, except in the airport. Should be fun.

What say you, Andy? Want to meet up and share a Fresca between friends? You name the Dennys, and I'll be there.

This Pierced the Post-Romney Gloom

Read this over at The Onion. It made me laugh, which is hard to do today. (Warning: Some profanity amid the satire)

Immigration: Why the GOP Is Doomed

The post-mortems are in full swing, each more depressing than the last. They range from Hugh Hewitt’s Pollyannish optimism – “Romney can still win this!” – to Michael Graham at National Review, who more aptly expresses my own sentiments as follows:

So it is over. Finished. In November, we'll be sending out our most liberal, least trustworthy candidate… to take on Hillary Clinton—perhaps not more liberal than Barack Obama, but certainly far less trustworthy.

And the worst part for the Right is that McCain will have won the nomination while ignoring, insulting and, as of this weekend, shamelessly lying about conservatives and conservatism.

You think he supported amnesty six months ago? You think he was squishy on tax cuts and judicial nominees before? Wait until he has the power to anger every conservative in America, and feel good about it.

Every day, he dreams of a world filled with happy Democrats and insulted Republicans. And he is, thanks to Florida, the presidential nominee of the Republican party.

Graham expects to spend the next nine months drinking himself silly. Right now, I would find that a very attractive option if it weren’t for those darn Mormons.

I still have no silver linings, but I do have an explanation. John McCain’s nomination is symptomatic of the irreparably fractured conservative movement.

And the issue that has created that fracture is illegal immigration.

You may not have noticed, but whenever I cite my own personal list of John McCain’s sins against conservatism – and they are legion – I fail to mention one that is at the top of all the talk show host’s lists – namely McCain/Kennedy, the so-called amnesty bill.

It’s not because I necessarily think McCain/Kennedy is a good idea. Certainly it is a politically disastrous one, pragmatically speaking. Very few people fully understand it – including me – and the thought of giving amnesty to lawbreakers is unpalatable. The bill is, however, an attempt to solve an intractable problem, one for which real conservatives don’t seem to have any solution, except “secure the borders first,” which, frankly, doesn’t address the problem at all.

Let’s start with an immutable principle: you cannot repeal the law of supply and demand.

As long as Mexico and other South American countries remain mired in crushing poverty, people will look to escape that poverty and cross over the border into the United States. “Secure the borders” all you want; they will keep coming. The demand for economic freedom is ever present, and it will not be denied. Certainly the supply is all but unlimited. Fences can be circumvented. Border guards can be eluded. Short of deploying the entire might of the American military on the border, people will continue to break into America in search of a better life.

That’s not to say that we should open our borders entirely. The “no borders” folks sound a lot like those who think we should legalize drugs. After all, both the supply and demand for dope are constant, too, so why not just give in? Because the consequences of legalization would be disastrous. Same with completely open borders. We decrease the demand by enforcing drug laws, just as we decrease demand by enforcing our borders. If we made no attempt to enforce border laws, we would be completely overrun by unskilled immigrants, and our economy would collapse under the strain.

Both in drugs and in immigration, enforcement of existing laws is necessary, but it is far from sufficient.

Continuing with the drug analogy, imagine saying “let’s not deal with people who are already addicted until we stop the drug supply first!” That would be lunacy, because current addicts are the primary reason for the continued demand. It’s all part of the same problem; you cannot separate the two.

Similarly, “securing the borders” requires some sort of accommodation for the 12 million people who are already here. They’re looking to bring over their families and friends. They’re creating a culture that feeds the demand, and they will not be entirely deterred by a great big fence.

A guest worker program makes sense, would ease the demand and help solve the problem, and it doesn’t have to be amnesty. If you doubt that, look at the precedent of the former Braceros program, instituted in 1942 for agricultural and railroad projects. Thousands would participate in the program and then return home with their earnings to Mexico. Evidence suggests that many, if not most, of illegal immigrants today would do the same.

So why don’t we do it today? Well, the problem back then was that Braceros were underbidding the unions, and Jack Kennedy decided to discontinue the program to make the Teamsters happy. And today, to conservatives, any accommodation smells like amnesty. And that’s why Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot.

Under McCain/Kennedy, all illegals would instantly be eligible for a Braceros-type guest worker program. If they wanted to be citizens, they’d have to pay $5,000 bucks and get in the back of the application line. Yet Rush and Co. scream “amnesty,” because they wouldn’t be deported en masse.

Holy living crap, folks. Deporting 12 million people is all but impossible.

OK, you may say. Then lock ‘em all up! They’re lawbreakers!

Well, we have six million beds in our jails in this country today. You’d need to triple that number to make this happen. How do you do that? Even more, why would you want to? Most of these people are willing to work, and work hard. They’re guilty of putting the welfare of their families above the law. That’s a crime, yes, but so is speeding. How we punish lawbreakers is tempered by the criminal’s intent, and the impact the crime has on society at large. If we’re going to solve this problem, we’re going to need laws that reflect the reality of the situation.

I am not saying, however, that McCain/Kennedy is the answer. It was bungled badly, particularly by Senator McCain, whose heavy-handed arrogance in ramming it down our throats with minimal debate did much to offend the GOP base. But Republican resistance to immigration reform has alienated the massive Hispanic vote, and that’s the reason McCain beat Romney among Latino voters by a ridiculously large 30-point margin.

It’s the main reason Romney lost.

I’m being squishy here, because I’m not sure what the ultimate answer is. I do know that all immigrants need to learn English. If people want to come to this country, they need to become part of the culture for their own economic survival.

The Left will have none of that. They want to open the borders, set up a Balkanized nation, and dismantle American culture. It’s atrocious, but it appeals to a large number of people, particularly in the absence of alternatives.

The Right, in turn, has no solutions. All they have is anger. They want to build a big freakin’ fence, and that’s all they’ve got. It’s not enough. It’s not going to win.

And it’s going to keep on hurting us for decades to come.

No Silver Linings in Mitt's Loss

I should have stopped caring after New Hampshire. I'm trying to stop caring now. 

John McCain is now the Republican nominee. If John McCain wins the presidency, the Republican Party is done for at least two decades. 

If the Democrat wins, conservatives may be able to reclaim the party in 2010. 

I'm voting for the Democrat, whoever they may be. I would be less disgusted with Obama, but it's definitely Hillary over McCain. 

Mitt back up to 40 at Intrade

See what I mean?

Absentees are thought to prefer Mitt by 6 points...

... and to make up 1/3 of the final vote total. 

Mitt's Intrade numbers hit bottom around 10. Now they're in the mid-thirties, whereas McCain is in the sixties, down twenty points from a few minutes ago. 

I'm revising my earlier Intrade faith. I just don't think it's a reliable predictor when a race is this fluid. 

Exit Polls do NOT include absentee ballots...

... of which there are over a million. And all polls show Romney overperforming among early voters. 

First reports said that the exits DID include absentees, which sent Mitt's Intrade numbers to the cellar.

I think Mitt on Intrade would be a pretty good buy right now. 

Weirdness in Florida

Mitt's Intrade numbers popped at 5:00, and AP reported that the exit polls showed that more than half of voters listed the economy as their number one issue, which is good for Mitt.

Then National Review posted the preliminary exits:

McCain 34.3 percent, Romney 32.6 percent, Giuliani 15.3 percent, Huckabee 12 percent.

Mitt's Intrade numbers have collapsed. 

Could be a long night. 

Mitt handily winning the first Florida exit polls

But they're not a very large sample size.

From campaignspot.nationalreview.com:

For Those Seeking The Usual Leaks...
I'm told not to expect any word of exit polls until around 5 p.m. ...

UPDATE: For extremely localized results, the Naples Daily News is publishing its exit poll results as they get them. Their numbers so far:

Republican presidential primary

Mitt Romney - 107

John McCain - 66

Rudy Giuliani - 32

Mike Huckabee - 15

Fred Thompson – 3

Ron Paul - 2

Democratic presidential primary

Hillary Clinton - 48

John Edwards - 15

Barack Obama - 15

Joe Biden - 2

On Pins and Needles in Florida

The race remains excruciatingly close in Florida, and the InTrade numbers provide no insight. Romney and McCain keep trading the lead, although McCain is up more often than not. Still, when it's this close, I doubt a 53/47 InTrade split has much predictive value. The investors, it seems, are looking for a winner, and they can't decided on anything except that Giuliani ain't it. (He's at 3.o.)

Nobody knows anything. And I do mean nobody. 

Polls provide little or no insight. McCain is up in the RCP average by half a point, yet the outlier polls that show Romney significantly ahead aren't included. I take some comfort in the fact that there are no outlier polls that I know of showing McCain with a surprisingly big lead. The usual polling suspects - Rasmussen, Zogby, et al - significantly underestimated Romney's strength in Michigan and New Hampshire, although they may have overestimated it in Iowa. That could be the case here, too. Then again, maybe not. 

Nobody knows anything. 

Talked to a political insider who was actually in Washington for the State of the Union. He's pessimistic, thinking that the Iraq kerfuffle hurt Romney more than McCain. When I cited article after article pointing out exactly the opposite was true, he perked up. "That's the reaction, huh?" He was far more confident after talking to me. And I don't know anything. 

He doesn't have any idea what's going to happen today. 

I wonder if the people of Florida realize that what they do today will determine the course of the Republican Party for decades to come. If McCain pulls it out, then the Republicans will no longer be the intellectual home of the conservative movement.  McCain will go down to ignominious defeat against a candidate, who, unlike McCain, will be more interested in battling Republicans than Democrats. 

The thing that sticks in my craw is the reprehensible justification for a McCain vote that maintains that McCain is "the only Republican who can win in November."  This is asinine for two reasons:

1. It's not true, and

2. Winning with McCain is worse than losing. 

After the roller coaster ride that is this nominating process, who in their right mind thinks that a poll taken in January has any predictive value for November? Two months ago, Rudy Giuliani was unbeatable. Now it looks like he will have fewer delegates at the Republican Convention than Ron Paul, if he has any delegates at all. You really think polls showing McCain beating Hillary by a point or two matter at all? 

And say he does win. You then have a president who is far more interested in what the New York Times thinks of him than the Republican base, which he hates with a vitriolic passion more intense than anything the Clintons could muster. Imagine how the NYT editorial page will praise him when he nominates a David Souter lookalike to replace Justice Stevens to "reach consensus" and "maintain the ideological balance of the Supreme Court." Consider how CNN will wax rhapsodic as McCain  jacks up taxes on "the rich" in the name of "equality." Tremble in fear as Al Gore soils himself in delight over McCain's trillion-dollar global warming debacle that will bankrupt this country and solve nothing. 

In what sense, then, is a McCain victory a victory for the GOP, who will be stuck running him for reelection in 2012 whether they like it or not? The GOP that can support a John McCain is not a GOP in which I can rightfully belong. The GOP might be able to win if it nominates George Clooney, too. It's a bad scene when your candidates win and your ideas lose. 

It's all up to you, Florida. What are you going to do about it?

Nobody. Knows. Anything. 

Romney Up By 7?

That's the case according to Public Policy Polling, which conducted the poll AFTER the Crist endorsement. Neither this poll or the Datamar poll is included in the RCP average. Are they disreputable companies? This isn't a leading question. I just want to know. 

Hugh Hewitt, who, granted, is Mitt's biggest cheerleader, cites both polls along with a Zogby poll that has McCain up by 3 - also pointing out that Zogby had Michigan tied the morning of the primary, and Romney ended up winning by 9 points. Hewitt points out that the endorsement is just one piece of news cluttering up the landscape, and not necessarily the biggest. McCain's sleazy Iraq smear looks like it's backfiring, and McCain is holding a press conference with bloggers to reassure them that Samuel Alito isn't too conservative to be a Supreme Court justice. Romney's staying on offense; McCain looks desperate. 

Then again, I could be totally wrong and probably am. Go McCain!

SurveyUSA has Romney up by 1, and Rassmussen has the race tied, but has Romney leading for the first time in the national numbers. 

I voted in early voting today here in Utah. My guy McCain got exactly what he deserved with my vote. 

Mitt up by 12?

Rush Limbaugh just mentioned a Datamar poll that shows Mitt Romney up by 12 in Florida. 

This poll is not included in the RealClearPolitics average, although previous Datamar polls have been. I've never heard of Datamar, and I have no idea how legit the poll is. I'm curious, though, why no one else is talking about this. 

Mitt's InTrade numbers are below McCain's again, but not by much: 50.5 for McCain, 45.5 for Romney. Remember, in Michigan, Mitt's InTrade numbers were in the 30s up until the day of the primary. Florida is close enough that those numbers aren't especially predictive in the race between McCain and Romney. The one thing they do illustrate, however, is that Giuliani is toast. He's trading at 2.6. 

Remembering Gordon B. Hinckley

Gordon B. Hinckley has died.

Non-Mormons reading this blog will have no idea who he is or what that means, so by way of information, Gordon B. Hinckley has been the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for well over a decade, and he’s been at the center of church government for far longer than that. He has essentially been the administrative head of the church since the early ‘80s, when he was called as a “third counselor” when President Spencer W. Kimball and his other two counselors were incapacitated. After President Kimball's passing, President Ezra Taft Benson did alright for a few years, but soon he was also too infirm to carry on day-to-day duties, and it was up to President Hinckley to pick up the slack.

No single individual in my lifetime has had a greater impact on the LDS Church than Gordon B. Hinckley, and, frankly, I can’t imagine what the Church will be like without him.

That’s not to say I will be leaving the Church, or that the Church will be unable to function. As my uncle is fond of saying, “It’s the Lord’s name over the door, so let Him worry about it.” President Monson will be an able and capable president, and I doubt much, if anything, will change in terms of doctrine or policy. I will simply miss President Hinckley’s singular wit, his no-nonsense straight talk, and his willingness to open up the Church to the world at large.

I have met President Hinckley on three occasions that I can remember. One was in 1992 at a large banquet honoring outgoing Utah governor Norm Bangerter. President Hinckley was sitting at the table next to me, and if I had leaned my chair back far enough, I could have hit him from behind. (I didn’t, but I was scared the entire night that I would have if I wasn’t careful.)

As a tribute to Governor Bangerter, whoever it was that sponsored the dinner gave the outgoing Governor two Delta Airlines plane tickets to anywhere in the world. As the gift was being presented, President Hinckley leaned over to our table and said “My nightmare is getting two plane tickets to anywhere in the world.” We all laughed. Considering the man’s age and exhausting travel schedule, we knew there was more than a ring of truth to what he said.

President Hinckley came to visit the USC Ward twice while I was a student there. On one occasion, he opened up the meeting to questions from the congregation. I took the opportunity to stand up and ask, “President Hinckley, I’m 23 years old and single. Am I going straight to hell?”

He laughed, and then said, “No, but you may be taking a detour.” He followed up the quip with counsel about the importance of marriage that I can’t remember. It’s the gentle-yet-piercing sense of humor that stayed with me – it was certainly his most endearing trait.

On the other occasion at USC, President Hinckley spoke to us about the evils of Hollywood sleaze. Being a theatre major at the time, I took umbridge at his remarks, and I sat there and seethed through most of the meeting. (I’ve since realized he was absolutely right and I was a punk kid, but that’s beside the point.) After the meeting, President Hinckley took the opportunity to shake our hands, and he made the mistake of asking me what my major was.

“I’m one of those evil theatre majors you were talking about,” I smirked with a hint of hostility.

President Hinckley just chuckled and said, without missing a beat, “Well, there’s always time to repent.”

And then he moved down the line. I was spoiling for a confrontation; he disarmed me completely. He was pretty good at that.

He will be missed. We shall not see his like again.

Well, Whaddya Know!

Romney's back up in InTrade, but just barely - 53.7 for Mitt, 47 for Beavis. He's also just barely ahead in the RCP poll average. The conventional wisdom seems to be that Crist's endorsement was a death blow to Rudy, not Mitt - although if Beavis ends up getting more votes in the bargain, I don't see how that's helpful for Romney. 

It also seems that McCain's ridiculous Romney smear - that Romney wants a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, which is not demonstrably untrue - is blowing up in his face. Will it be enough? Don't know. I hate it when things are this close. 

Jeb Bush has been a behind-the-scenes Romney guy. It's time for him to step up and stop the McCain Train - one which I am firmly onboard! Go McCain! (You know where.) 

InTrade now has Romney down

He's at 40, and McCain is at 56, due, no doubt, to the endorsement of McCain by Florida's popular sitting governor. Martinez didn't move the numbers, but Governor Crist does. 

Isn't that great? Go McCain! (At least, I'd like to tell McCain where to go...)

Florida Twists and Turns

Turns out the bigwig mentioned previously decided to endorse McCain after all. Now that the endorsement is public, I can say it's U.S. Senator Mel Martinez, who could have a fairly significant impact in the Cuban-American community. Then again, Mitt's hardline immigration stance may have alienated them already. It's impossible to know how much of an effect this or any endorsement could have on the race, although I think this will be a bigger deal than the Sylvester Stallone endorsement. 

So far, the InTrade numbers are holding: 62 for Romney, 33.2 for McCain, and just 7 for Giuliani. (Huckabee is at 0.2. A great buy, if you think Huckabee could still win it all!) Not sure how, when, or if this endorsement will affect those numbers. 

Good news for my man McCain, no doubt. Dag nab it. 

Worm Man, Florida, and the New York Times

Alas, the bad news of the night is that Cornelius’ master opus, Worm Man II: Fox Man Returns, did not win the regional Reflections competition. However, Cornelius did manage to score four points in a basketball game, which constituted 40% of the total score. (His team won, 10-6.) Two of those points were free throws, which I found particularly impressive.

Some promising Romney news – talked to my Romney guy who gave me the scoop in Iowa, and he told me of some interesting doings in Florida. Apparently, a Florida bigwig was about to endorse McCain and then got cold feet when he saw how well Romney is doing. The same bigwig said that Florida historically makes up its mind fairly late, and usually goes with the candidate with the biggest ad buy, which is going to be Romney by a mile. Everyone behind the scenes has written off Giuliani altogether, and McCain is suffering from the fact that everyone likes him except Republicans. Thompson’s voters are peeling off primarily to Romney, and Huckabee is a non-factor, as he has essentially pulled out of the state and is making his appeal to Southern anti-Mormons for Super Tuesday.

If you doubt that Romney’s doing well, just check out his InTrade numbers. In Michigan, Romney didn’t pull ahead of McCain until the day of the primary. As of this writing, Romney is trading at 56, and McCain is at 35. (Giuliani is the only other candidate who’s registering – barely – with a 7.5.) This, obviously, can fluctuate considerably, but there aren’t really any opportunities left for McCain to shift the momentum in his direction. Tonight’s debate – which I did not see – was apparently a snoozer, with Romney performing well. McCain was also endorsed tonight by the New York Times, which is the political equivalent of a Stallion Cornell endorsement in kiss-of-death terms. If McCain is the NYT’s candidate, he sure ain’t the GOP’s.

A Romney victory in Florida may not sew up the nomination for him, but there's no doubt it would be a big, big deal.

Go McCain!

Oh, and Romney's Florida InTrade numbers...

... are even with or better than John McCain's, and McCain's lead in the RealClearPolitics poll average has all but vanished. 

Go McCain!

Topical Debate Thoughts

With new and exciting presidential debates on the horizon, I thought I’d interject with a non-political memory.

I was a debater back in high school, but only for my freshman year. I won the Best Freshman Debater award, and then I neglected to go to a prestigious debate institute over the summer, and, consequently, my career as a debater was all but over.

Oh, well. No big loss.

The problem was that debates became an exercise in who could speak the fastest. You only had a few minutes for each speech, so you had to cram in all the info you could by speaking at six zillion miles per hour like that guy from the old FedEx commercials.



I was a pretty good fast speaker, but I never knew much of what I was saying. I would make an assigned point and then sift through a file of index cards to read a piece of “evidence” supporting my position. The cards had been prepared by senior debaters on the team, and most of the time I had never read them before. I couldn’t tell you what was on them even after I read them. But if I could make more points in my speech than the other team could respond to in theirs, I won by default.

It all seemed so futile.

The debate topic that year was “Resolved: That the United States should significantly curtail its arms sales to foreign countries.” Every freshman debater was given a copy of a case that maintained that the US should cut off its arms sales to Taiwan. Opposing teams often opposed us with a “topicality” argument, which asserted that our Taiwan case didn’t match the assigned topic because the topic said foreign countries, plural, and since Taiwan was only one foreign country, we were breaking the rules.

Seriously. We would argue about this for hours on end. Totally pointless.

So the most delightful experience I had that year did not involve a debate in which I was a debater. I was just the assigned timekeeper, watching as varsity debaters competed in the regional tournament. An odd friend of my brother named Alan and his partner were competing on behalf of our school, against a team that obviously was more concerned about maintaining the integrity of the process than Alan was.

Alan and partner were assigned the “affirmative” position. So they ran a case that asserted that the United States ought to provide more free health clinics to its citizens. The problem was that the topic was supposed to be arms sales to foreign countries. Not to worry, though – Alan offered a clear plan for how their case would be implemented, and it included a provision that one handgun would not be sold to Canada. So it was topical after all.

Or maybe not. After the first speech, the opposing team leader stood up for the assigned period of cross examination – “cross ex” in debatespeak – and asked a very simple question.

“Alan,” he said, “would you mind telling me why you are running a case about health clinics, which wasn’t even topical last year?”

Alan responded that he was fully prepared to respond to any topicality issues they may raise.

And prepared he was. He had over 137 different topicality arguments on file. Their sheer volume made up for their total incoherence. In his rebuttal, Alan launched into his topicality defense, giving each of them a number and reading an evidence card to support them.

Argument 1: President Ronald Reagan states that topicality is not relevant to the debate process.

Then he would read the card that supported the statement. It was a direct quote from President Reagan, saying the words “It’s not.”

Then Alan moved through the list. Apparently, a lot of public figures said the words “It’s not.” Alan used each of them to support his argument, giving each a number in his barrage of irrefutably stupid facts.

Not all of the facts had evidence to back them up, though. I remember “Topicality Argument #42: Big rock” and “Topicality Argument #73: Flouride is safe.” There were other assertions that included verbose evidence cards that had nothing to do with the preceding statement. So topicality argument 89 could have included a statement like “Topicality causes cancer among rats and should be avoided at all costs,” followed up with a paragraph talking about the rising cost of car washes.

Alan lost.

This is a story without a moral. It just makes me laugh.

Fred's Out

No surprise, but surprisingly good news for Romney, particularly since Thompson didn't endorse anyone. Huckabee has pulled out of Florida, which makes Florida a three-way between Mitt, Rudy, and Beavis. 

Go Beavis!

As one who enjoys prank calls, this made me laugh...

An Angry Update

My hosting service - iPowerWeb - sucks. They tried to run an autopayment on an old credit card. When it didn't work, they instantly yanked down my site. Classy. How about sending me an email, you turds? Ever tried that?

Anyway, the site's up, as you can see. But there are still lots of bugs from the "system upgrade" iPower Web ran awhile back, and publishing this blog is more difficult than it ought to be for inexplicable reasons. It keeps taking six months to publish and then says "Your blog published with errors." Except then it's published, and I don't know what the errors are. I'd change hosting packages if I weren't so freaking lazy.

Driving back from Colorado sucked, too. Cold. Snowy. Screamy.

Mitt Romney is now leading in Florida by five points, and everyone is pretending it's all over for him. Uhhhh, why? Is it because he has more delegates and primary victories than anyone else? Is that why he should drop out and let McCain ream the Republicans? Huh? HUNH?

I came home to about two feet of snow in front of my garage. And the City of Sandy refuses to plow our cul-de-sac. Why? Is it because Mitt Romney is leading in Florida? Is this all Richard Dutcher's fault? I have no evidence, so I'm going to have to say yes. And now that I've typed Richard Dutcher's name again, he's going to visit this blog whether he wants to or not. And when he discovers I have NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT HIM, that'll be five minutes of his life that he can NEVER GET BACK.

This isn't about Dutcher, but typing his name reminded me that I saw a bad Mormon movie over the weekend, too. Mormons and Mobsters. Deeply stupid. Maybe it should have been the first Mormon R-rated movie ever instead of the Dutcher thing. It wasn't. The mobsters all had strangely clean mouths, and the Mormons were all from Stepford, Connecticut. They had a great helicopter night shot of New York City at the beginning, though, and it makes me wonder how they got that. Did they pirate it from one of the Die Hard movies?

My sons are better at Guitar Hero III than I am. And they're f%*#ing six years old. (I want to swear, but this is not an R-rated blog. The MPAA can bite me.)

I'm going to bed.

Up yours.

Update

I've deleted the aforementioned post, comments and all, with reference to Richard Dutcher. I wanted to leave it up, because I thought it was pretty cool to have Dutcher comment on my blog, and I'm deeply, deeply shallow. But after some thought, I realized it's pretty uncharitable for me to bash a guy I don't know - unless it's a presidential candidate. So if Dutcher runs for president, he's fair game. Except I'd probably vote for him over McCain or Huckabee.

Carry on.

Quick flashes...

Arrived in Colorado safely, despite screaming children and icy roads.

McCain's InTrade numbers are at 89; Huck is at 11. Looks like my endorsement will not be enough to keep Beavis down in South Carolina.

Richard Dutcher read my blog - welcome, sir! - posted a comment, and was offended, primarily by one of the anonymous comments to my preceding post. For the record, I do not know and have never met Mr. Dutcher, and I'm always surprised - and even a little embarrassed - when something like this happens to remind me that I don't write this blog in a vacuum. (I once wrote about a high school classmate who is now a convicted murderer and was somewhat surprised when I received an e-mail from said classmate almost immediately thereafter. It seems people are capable of Googling their own names. Who would have thought?)

Upon rereading it, I realize that my previous post was snarkier than it should have been and used Mr. Dutcher solely as an object lesson to illustrate a principle: i.e. artistic talent does not exempt anyone from church service. I wrote this without ample consideration for Mr. Dutcher as a person. I am in no position to judge Mr. Dutcher's character, and I apologize for treating him like an abstraction rather than a human being. I wish him and his family well.

In my own defense, I have bowel issues.

That is all for today.

P.S. My comment about the convicted murderer was not supposed to be a reflection on Richard Dutcher. Richard Dutcher, to the best of my knowledge, is not a murderer, convicted or otherwise. In fact, all indications are that he's a law-abiding citizen with a cool beard. He may or may not have some infractions on his driving record, but that's between him and his insurance provider.

Romney Needs a Huckabee Win in SC

That may sound stupid, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night. In fact, I'm writing this from the hotel lobby in Grand Junction, Colorado, as the Cornells travel to Colorado Springs for Mrs. Cornell's nephew's missionary farewell. I won't be able to blog much today, I'm betting, but I'll be following the SC results as closely as circumstances allow.

Romney is not going to win South Carolina. He's going to win Nevada, where more delegates are at stake, and he'll do so handily, but nobody seems to care. So he has to hope for the least objectionable outcome in SC to complete in Florida. The best outcome for him, other than an upset Romney victory, would be an upset Thompson victory. The Rush Limbaughs of the world are hoping for that, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards. Thompson is behind Romney in most of the polls, stuck in either third or fourth place. He's behind McCain and Huckabee by double digits. If he wins, he kills of any McCain or Huck momentum. If he loses, he's even more finished than he already is.

So the best outcome, going into the Florida winner-take-all primary on the 28th, would be a decisive Huckabee win in SC, which could be written off as the result of more pandering to religious loons. It would stifle McCain's momentum and give Romney a fighting chance for Florida, which most polls show as a four-way tie. A huge McCain victory in SC would give him a pretty good surge going forward, which is not what Romney needs at the moment.

Huckabee, this morning, has pulled ahead of McCain in the InTrade number, but just barely. They're both hovering around 50 dollars a share. A close finish would be better than a decisive McCain win, but the Huckster winning in a walk would probably be better.

That's why I, with my touch of death, am for McCain again in SC. Go Beavis!

Mitt After Michigan

Behold another atrocious video, this one made in honor of what should be Mitt's new theme song...



So my brother-in-law calls me last night . He was in town from LA, and he wanted to gloat over Mitt's victory. We headed over to my brother's house, where we watched all the pundits explain what it all means and saw several of them rip their hair out as their beloved McCain - my candidate in Michigan, by the way - went down in flames. By 9 points! That's huge! Way beyond expectations. Mitt won in every conceivable category. He even beat Huckabee - who is now one of my two candidates in South Carolina - among evangelical voters. That's huge. Yes, Mitt was a favorite son here, but he was a favorite son in New Hampshire, too. McCain trounced Bush in Michigan in 2000. For Romney to reverse that, and do so decisively, is no small feat. This is a big victory for him. There's no real way to downplay that, and it's a lot of fun watching some pundits try.

My barometer of conservative success on major election nights is the comfort level of the major pundits. I remember in 2004, George Stephanopoulos looked like the cat who'd swallowed the canary as the exit polls predicted a solid Kerry win. Then, as the night wore on and Bush pummeled the Frenchman, Stephanopoulos became cranky and irritable, like, well, a Frenchman. The best, though, was Dan Rather, who looked like he was about to cry. When Rather's unhappy, it's good news for the country. It's too bad Rather's been sent to the glue factory. It would have been fun to watch him sputter and attempt to blunt the Mittmentum from last night.

Yet the conventional wisdom now is that this is a momentum-less election. Mitt's victory keeps him in the race, yes, but it doesn't mean anything. Three elections; three winners. La de da de da. After New Hampshire, McCain was unstoppable; now, after Michigan, Mitt's just lucky.

Bollocks.

The one constant in this cycle has been how deeply wrong the Conventional Wisdom has been up until now. People tout general election polls as if they mean anything at this stage, and insist McCain is still the front runner. Remember when Huckabee was the front runner in those very same polls? That is so two weeks ago. How about Giuliani, who barely eked out a fifth place finish, just ahead of "uncommitted?" Wasn't he inevitable once? He's now losing to Ron Freakin' Paul.

I have no idea what happens next. The good news is that neither does anyone else. I can tell you this much, though - the Conventional Wisdom is wrong. If it's not, then this would be the first time. I don't put too much stock in the Conventional Stupidity, and neither should you.

Go Mitt! (I'm backing McCain, remember. Or maybe Huckabee. I'm for sure backing the Democrat in the general election. Even if it's McCain.)

And Now, the Gloating...

I'm over at my brother's house - we don't have Fox News at my place - and just gloating like mad over Romney's decisive win.

More tomorrow...

Romney is Winning...

... in the first round of exit polls. 

From National Review...

"I'm surprised no one else has put this up yet. I'm hearing the first round of exit polls have Romney 35, McCain 29, Huckabee 15, Ron Paul 10, Giuliani 4. This doesn't count absentee ballots.

If this holds, the networks will be able to announce shortly after 9 p.m. eastern time..."

Polling shows Mitt has a 3-1 advantage among absentees. 

ABC News on the radio talked about how "exit polls suggest far fewer independents voted in the 2008 primary than voted in 2000, when McCain won Michigan."

Mitt's back from the dead, baby!

(Oh, yeah. Go McCain.) 

McCain's InTrade numbers...

... are plummeting. 

Now at 32 dollars a share. Down from 48.9 just a few minutes ago.

Hopeful Signs of Mittmentum in Michigan

I'm trying not to get my hopes up - I've come out in favor of McCain, after all, in the expectation that my endorsement will be the touch of death - but the stars seem to be aligning for Mitt in Michigan. 

Here's the rundown:

1) It's snowing all over Michigan. 

That's probably the main reason turnout is low, which historically means that the party faithful will be the only ones going to the polls. Mitt's lead among actual Republicans is somewhere around 2-1. Mitt also has a 3-1 advantage in absentee ballots that have already been cast. My guy McCain - he's going to win it all! - has to get independents and Democrats to cross over, because respectable Republicans rightly loathe him. It seems like fewer of them are willing to trudge out in the snow to vote for Beavis the Maverick, who, despite the fact that he is pure evil, will pull it out in the end! You watch! (From a safe distance.)  

2) The RealClearPolitics poll average has Mitt up by 2.7. 

RealClearPolitics is the only place to go for polling data, because they publish every poll and then average them, which usually provides a pretty accurate picture of the final result, except where Hillary and Barack are involved. Mitt was down 5 points in the RCP average on Election Day in New Hampshire, and that was the final vote differential at the finish line. 

3) Most importantly, InTrade is selling Romney shares at 61 and McCain shares at 48.9. 

This is almost a reverse from this morning, when McCain was selling for 54 and Romney at 44. But as we get closer to the result, the smart money is on Mitt. InTrade is rarely, if ever wrong. People who put their money where their mouth is don't bet on losers. 

 4) I'm for McCain. 

My candidate always loses. So Mitt's a shoo-in. 

 

The Romney Bride

Crudely done, but a funny diversion as I sit on pins and needles awaiting the outcome of the Michigan primary...

Mitt Romney Is Doomed

I first started investing in the Stock Market in April 2000, right before the NASDAQ lost well over half its value. I figured the Utah Jazz were a shoo-in for the NBA Championship in 1998. I thought that Bob Dole was going to be President of the United States.

Mitt Romney is doomed.

I have the capacity to ruin any enterprise with my endorsement. Mitt's doom is due in no small part to my own confident post that Mitt would handily win Iowa and New Hampshire and ride the momentum all the way to the White House.

No doubt about it - Mitt is doomed.

There are encouraging signs out of Mittmentum in Michigan. Two polls released this weekend have Mitt up by either 8 or 5 points. Yet McCain is up by 1 or 2 or even 7 in other polls, and InTrade, where people buy "shares" in their candidates based on their expectations of victory, has McCain trading at 53 and Romney trading at 40 as of this writing. That means that people who actually put their money where their mouth is are betting on McCain to win. These are better numbers than Romney got in Iowa or New Hampshire at this point - Romney was trading in the 20s in both cases, while Huckabee and McCain were each in the 60s and 70s - but InTrade is very rarely wrong, and McCain will likely get a boost from the weenie independents who keep trying to shove the closet Dem down Republican throats.

Mark my words - Mitt is history. McCain will be the Republican nominee.

If Mitt were to win Michigan, he'd be a solid favorite to win Nevada two days later, which might provide solid momentum for him on Super Duper Tuesday. He's probably a goner in South Carolina, but if he denies McCain or Huckabee a victory prior to SC, he's still ahead of the pack. I don't know if Mitt needs to win Michigan the way some self-satisfied pundits insist, but I do know that a MI win will be a whole lot better than another Mitt silver medal. That's why I'm doing everything I can to ensure that my touch of death once again ensures that the candidate I support goes down to a humiliating, ignominious defeat.

I'm a McCain guy now.

I'm confident that a McCain/Huckabee ticket will arise from the ashes of the Republican Party and sweep to victory in November, thereby ensuring that conservatives will wander in the wilderness for decades to come.

Romney is doomed.

Go see Juno!

I used to see just about every movie ever released. I especially saw the "Oscar-worthy" ones, so I could look like an artiste with my fellow drama geeks. Now I have five children, and I no longer have the patience to watch movies I don't really like just so I can say I saw them. When a movie comes out that attracts a lot of attention because it's "important" or "groundbreaking," I usually give it a miss. Mrs. Cornell, however, had heard great things about Juno, and on her recommendation, we went and saw it last night.

I cannot remember a funnier movie, especially one that's as morally centered and moving as this one was.

Every single line in this thing brought the house down. It was hard to hear because the audience was laughing so hard. There probably are funnier movies, but every laugh in this picture was character-driven. When the thing kicks into gear in the second act, you're startled by how moving it is, because you've been so busy busting a gut that you don't realize how much you've come to care about these people. And, for the first time in a long time, I was watching a movie where I couldn't predict what was going to happen and was both surprised and satisfied with an ending I hadn't foreseen.

The truly remarkable thing about the movie is that it's an innately moral story, yet the telling of the story is undeniably crude. The premise focuses on a teenage pregnancy, and lots of characters do the wrong thing at the wrong time, and there's plenty of salty language and questionable situations. What's so wonderful, though, is that those people who do the wrong thing suffer the appropriate consequences, and the movie manages to depict immoral behavior without glorifying it. It's never preachy, yet underneath all the wisecracks is a solidly pro-life picture that reaffirms all the values that Hollywood despises. You have to marvel at how this one flew under the radar out into the theatres.

Ellen Page, who plays the title character, gives the performance of a lifetime. She's apparently only 20, but she plays 16, even though she looks 12. A more authentic teenager I have not seen on a movie screen. She has to breeze through amazingly witty and complex dialogue and still sound like a dopey kid, and she makes it look easy. JK Simmons, as her father, is the gold standard for how to play a frazzled movie dad. The other stand out, surprisingly, is Jason Bateman, playing the adoptive father of Juno's baby. This guy has come an awfully long way from his Teen Wolf Too days. (Personal trivia: He's also married to Amanda Anka, singer Paul Anka's daughter. She was in USC's BFA Theatre program with me the year before I went on a mission! Golly, Google makes a small world even smaller!)

I digress. Go see Juno. That is all.

I Love My Wife

So last night, I stay up finishing the Space:1999 DVD down in the basement, and I get to bed some time between 11:30 and midnight. This morning, Mrs. Cornell asks, "Did you have fun playing Guitar Hero III last night?" To which I responded, "I didn't play Guitar Hero III last night," which was true. "Then what were you doing?" she asked. "Blogging," I said, which was also true.

But not the whole truth. (I had hoped to sneak the whole Space:1999 thing past her without incident.)

Then, today, as I'm driving from Salt Lake City to Logan, she calls me on my cell phone and says, "Hey! Guess what! I read your blog!"

Busted.

My wife doesn't usually read blogs unless I make her. But she wanted to see what I could have possibly written that kept me up so late. It's a pity she won't read this, because then she won't see what I'm about write - about how she's so remarkably beautiful, and every day with her as more glorious than the day before. Ah, well. If only she knew how I worship the very ground she walks on.

(Smooth, no?)

Another debate tonight - didn't see it, but word is that Fred eviscerated Huckabee and came off triumphant. Nobody noting much about Romney and McCain, though, which is too bad. Romney needs to shine, and/or McCain needs to stumble. I have no predictions going forward. I just know whatever happens will probably be bad.

The best news of the night is that the Daily Kos, the ultimate left wing blog, is recruiting Democrats to cross parties in Michigan and vote for Romney to keep him in the race. Pathetic. And I'm OK with it. That's even more pathetic.

One person who's definitely not pathetic is my wife. She's such an amazing person - beauty, brains, the whole enchilada. Gosh, I'm lucky to have married her.

She has to stay married to me, anyway. I'm the only one who can get the printer to work.

Space:1999

(No politics today. I don't know anything you don't already know, and neither does anyone else.)

Netflix is a wonderful thing. We watched the whole first season of Heroes without having to buy anything, and I decided to take advantage of a hole in my queue to rent the first disc of Space:1999.

In case you don't remember, back on September 13, 1999, the moon was ripped from the earth's orbit by a serious of nuclear explosions caused by magnetic radiation igniting atomic waste. At least, that was the premise of this 1975 TV series, which was extremely optimistic about technological advances that would take place within the subsequent 22 years - and extremely sloppy applying basic scientific principles to their dystopian vision of the future .

I've always been a geek, but there are gaps in my geekdom that I hope Netflix can fill. Every geek needs to memorize Monty Python and the Holy Grail and know the words to "Fish Heads" by Barnes and Barnes. (Fish Heads are never seen drinking cappuccino in Italian restaurants with Oriental women... yeah!) I qualify on both fronts, but I'm pretty sure familiarity with Space:1999 is a geeky prerequisite that I overlooked.

I do have vague memories of seeing the series in its first run. My next door neighbor was into it, and I caught a few snippets here and there from the second season, the one with the hot shapeshifter chick with sideburns, pictured at left.

Why did she have sideburns? I find them off-putting.

One Christmas, I got a toy Eagle, which is the Space:1999 spaceship. And my mom bought a Space:1999 ray gun but refused to give it to me when I stumbled upon it hidden in plain sight on the top shelf of her closet, when it was clearly supposed to be a Santa surprise. (My parents were never good at hiding Christmas presents.) When I didn't get it for Christmas, Mom told me maybe it would be a New Year's gift. I'd never gotten a New year's gift. I still haven't. Maybe she'll give it to me at my retirement party.

Anyway...

I had a lot of fun watching the first three episodes, despite the fact that they're really not very good. The science and philosophy is ponderously silly, but everyone's taking themselves so seriously that you have to give them credit for trying. It's no use recounting how thoroughly implausible the whole thing is - comic books have better science. No, the moon couldn't be blasted from orbit and then wind up zooming past planet after planet - it would take thousands of years for them to get anywhere at all, and the likelihood of them ending up anywhere interesting is infinitesimal.

Now, with that out of the way, was it fun to watch?

Well, yes and no. My biggest problem was the pacing - everything is glacially slow, and then suddenly there's a herky-jerky burst of action, and then we're back to this sort of stilted, formal weirdness. Martin Landau manages to create a character out of the cardboard dialogue he's given, but I'm pretty sure that his co-star - and ex-wife - Barbara Bain is made out of cardboard. She has one reaction shot - a blank, vaguely-concerned glazed stare - that I'm pretty sure they just shot once and reused 200 times throughout the series.

The one thing that actually holds up surprisingly well is the elaborate (for 1975) special effects. The use of real models as opposed to CGI makes things look surprisingly realistic, except when they move. Then the spaceships look like big, clunky puppets on a string.

The plots seem to be taken from scripts that have been eaten through by moths. They strain at gnats as they explain the mind-numbing minutiae of their junk science, but then they swallow camels with plot lurches that come out of nowhere. In the second episode, Barbara Bain's husband returns from the dead in the middle of deep space, and nobody seems particularly surprised. (She doesn't, anyway. She greets the news with a blank, vaguely-concerned glazed stare.) He then warns them not to go the planet they've miraculously stumbled upon, which they do anyway, so everyone dies and the moon blows up.

Except Barbara feels bad, so her husband, who died again a few minutes earlier, shows up, tells her he's made of anti-matter because of some scientific awkwardness, and then he reverses time or something and everyone comes back, except now they know better than to do what they just did, even though they only technically sort of still did it.

It makes no sense.

But the third episode makes even less sense, and it's delightful. It seems the moon is heading into a "black sun," and they decide to put up a tiny little force field over their base, which constitutes about 1/4000th of the entire lunar surface, and they expect this to keep them safe even though they previously explained that the "black sun" will crush the entire moon, so how this will protect them isn't all that clear.

In the meantime, six people are sent off on an Eagle to "make sure the human race continues in space" just in case the dinky force field is unsuccessful. One of those chosen to escape disaster is Barbara Bain, who is nigh unto menopausal, which means she will have to breed quickly if the species is to survive. When she discovers she's to be Eve to one of the three Adams, she accepts her fate with a blank, vaguely-concerned glazed stare.

As the moon draws closer to the black hole, Martin Landau and his sidekick with mutton chops, pictured left, who is not the previously mentioned hot sideburned chick pictured above, discuss the nature of God, or "cosmic intelligence." Then, when they get into the black hole, they lose their physical opacity and can see through themselves, which they find "interesting." They proceed to age about 2,000 years, when, as pruny geezers, they discover they can read each other's thoughts and learn that "each star is a cell in the brain of the universe." They then chat with God, who is female, and she tells them she thinks only once every thousand years, which, realistically, explains a lot. Then they find out they've made it through to the other side of the universe, and everything is back to normal, and the Eagle returns with a blank, vaguely-concerned blankly-staring Barbara Bain, even though the Eagle had been heading in the opposite direction.

I loved this one. It was a poor man's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Like that movie, this episode confused weirdness with profundity, but it actually made more sense than 2001 did. And it took place two years earlier, so there.

I doubt I'll rent anymore Space:1999 discs. I think I got the gist of it. I'm a full-fledged geek now.

Democracy Doesn't Work

"When will people learn? Democracy doesn't work!"
- Homer J. Simpson

That bit of unconventional wisdom is the only thing that makes sense after a horrendous New Hampshire Primary.

There was no earthly way Hillary could have won tonight. And she won. I don't even get my schadenfreude. And I've got to keep myself from throwing something every time I hear that harridan screech like a banshee.

McCain is the new standard bearer for the Republican Party, because New Hampshire-ites ignored the fact that he's not a Republican. And the minimal size of his victory probably means no real bounce going forward. Or not. Who the hell knows? Somebody has to win the Republican nomination. Right now, Mitt has the most delegates, and nobody cares. Huckabee, the Great Christian Hope, came in a distant third, essentially erasing the Iowa momentum he never really had to begin with.

Fred Thompson, the only other conservative in the race, was crushed like a bug with only 1% of the vote. Dennis Freakin' Kucinich got more votes than Fred Thompson.

I refuse to predict what happens going forward. I've gone over several scenarios, and each is as unlikely as the next. Nobody - and I mean NOBODY - anticipated what happened today. Nobody knows anything. In my mind, this is to primaries what Florida 2000 was to the General Election. We're in uncharted waters. Here there be monsters. And they look like John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Mike Huckabee.

Just for tonight, I wish I weren't a Mormon, because now would be a good time to get really, really drunk.

Bigotry, Scientology, and Testicles

In 1997 and 1998, the Utah Jazz broke my heart when they couldn’t close the deal against Michael Jordan and win the NBA Championship. Since then, I’ve come to expect absolutely nothing from the Jazz, and they haven’t disappointed me.

I’m trying to do the same thing re: New Hampshire today and let Mitt go, but I’m not entirely successful. (Even if he gets the nomination, which is doubtful at this point, he loses to Barack in November, so why get my hopes up?) I do think McCain wins, but I don’t think it’s fatal to Romney. Iowa was such a huge shocker because the margin was so large, whereas he’s going to get close in New Hampshire, and his campaign seems to be managing expectations in order to stay in the race after a NH loss, which means Mitt may have a few tricks up his sleeve going forward.

But I don’t want to just talk horserace politics, because that bores my sister. No, I want to get into religion, which bores everybody else. And then, to wake everybody up, I’ll talk about testicles at the end of the post.

I got an email from my formerly-evangelical-now-Catholic friend about his still-evangelical-non-Catholic wife’s parents, who stated their unwillingness to vote for Romney because he’s a Mormon. My friend and his wife are, to their everlasting credit, both big Mitt fans, and she laid into her parents about why Huckabee is, in fact, Satan’s brother. (I’m pretty sure she didn’t use that terminology, but the facts are what they are.) It got me thinking about this whole notion of religious bigotry, and whether or not I’m just as bad as the Huckabites are. And I concluded that I’m not, but I shouldn’t give away the end of the story without explaining myself first.

Plentiful articles about a new book re: Tom Cruise and his Scientology ties are making waves, and I asked myself whether or not I could be persuaded to vote for a Scientologist. Truthfully, I can’t think of a circumstance in which I could.

Much hay can be made about the maniacal galactic emperor Xenu who flew millions of DC-10 airplanes through the vastness of space to strap aliens to Hawaiian volcanoes and blow them up with hydrogen bombs billions of years ago. This is what Scientology teaches, and, to me, it’s just plain nuts. But plenty of people have taken Mormon doctrines and Scientologized them – or, more accurately, Battlestar Galacticized them – to sound just as nuts. Kolobians who live in glass galaxies shouldn’t throw stones.

Yet my opposition to a Scientologist for president is not based on the weirdness of their doctrine. I could imagine voting for a Hindu president, despite the fact that I find reincarnation to be ridiculous and think the only thing separating the silliness of the Hindu god Vishnu from the harebrained galactic emperor Xenu is a few thousand years of tradition. Antiquity has a way of making goofy ideas more plausible. The doctrines of traditional Christianity can be made to sound ludicrous, too, but, as the New York Times put it recently in a lucid discussion of Mormonism, “Events in the distant past, we tend to think, occurred in sacred, mythic time. Not so revelations received during the presidencies of James Monroe or Andrew Jackson.”


So why is Hinduism not a dealbreaker and Scientology is? For me, it’s not really about what Scientologists believe. It’s about what Scientologists do. Scientologists sue people a lot, often solely for purposes of harassment. They go out of their way to estrange people from friends and families who are “difficult.” Their leaders build Hussein-ish palaces to themselves by means of applying crushing financial burdens to rank-and-file Scientologists.

Put simply, Scientologists tend to be jerks.

Hindus, on the other hand, are, from my limited experience, mainly decent people. I suppose Scientologists can be decent, too – I like John Travolta more than I like Tom Cruise, for instance – but the doctrines of the Church of Scientology tend to discourage decency and encourage jerkiness. Is it possible that a decent Scientologist would emerge that I could support? Well, I suppose, but his church affiliation would lead me to believe they’re a jerk until proven otherwise.

I began thinking in these terms when I read a post at The Corner over on National Review’s website. It was written by a guy named Mike Potemra, who I’d never heard of, but he makes a salient point:

In my decades' worth of meeting people from many different religious backgrounds, I have found that in every faith tradition-Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, what have you-there is roughly the same proportion of nice people and jerks. To this rule there is one conspicuous exception: Mormons. I have yet to meet a single Mormon who has been a jerk-and I have met many LDS believers. As someone who grew up in Rudy Giuliani's faith, and is now somewhere between Mike Huckabee's and John McCain's, I find Mitt Romney's religious background a factor that makes me more, rather than less, likely to vote for him.

That’s where my pro-Romney bigotry comes into play. Having grown up as a Mormon, I know what kind of moral fiber is necessary to serve in the Church to the capacity that Mitt has served. He has been both a bishop and a stake president, two offices of high responsibility that require full-time, unpaid volunteer efforts at tremendous personal sacrifice. It’s nearly impossible to be a bishop and a stake president and still be a jerk. (It can be done, though. But that’s another story.)

So I began my consideration of Mitt thinking he is an inherently decent guy. That may be bias, but it’s an informed bias – I know what it takes to do what Mitt has done, and it’s impressive. In contrast, my rejection of Huckabee is based partially on his populist political principles and partly because the way he’s played the religion card makes him a jerk. If Huckabee were a conservative and a God-fearing Christian without the slimy, dishonest tactics, I could vote for him without reservation.

I also should note that being a Mormon does not necessarily mean that I would vote for a person solely because we share the same faith. Mike Potemra claims never to met a Mormon jerk, which means he never met former presidential candidate Bo Gritz. (Thankfully, he’s now a former Mormon, too, so that solves that.) Here in Utah, whenever a Mormon tries to use their religion as political leverage in local races, I get disgusted. The LDS Church goes out of its way to stay politically neutral, and those who use their church membership to enhance their secular status are reprehensible. (They’re also, usually, not very good members of the church.)

I don’t think theological purity is a prerequisite for the presidency. I think decency is. It’s one of the reason I don’t fear Barack Obama as much as I fear Hillary. They’re both wild-eyed liberals, but he’s a decent man, and she’s thoroughly corrupt.

______________

In other news, my twin boys today asked what the proper word was for the two round things that hang down by their penises. We told them it was “testicles.”

My son Corbin said. “Oh. I thought they were beans.”

To which my son Cornelius added, “I call them garbanzos.”
______________

Go Mitt!

New Debate and New Thoughts

I didn't see tonight's Fox News debate, but, by all accounts, Romney nailed it. Frank Luntz's focus group unanimously agreed that Romney won, and all of them came in undecided and left Romney supporters. I want to believe that tonight was enough to quash McCain's momentum and carry Mitt to victory, but if I had to lay money on it, I'd still say McCain wins on Tuesday. How many New Hampshire-ites actually watched the debate? There's just not enough lead time to have the impact Romney needs. I think he could win New Hampshire in two weeks, but the election is in two days. I think he could have won Iowa if that election were being held on Tuesday, but Mitt can't seem to close the deal in time.

Still, this debate, coupled with Romney's Wyoming win, gives me a glimmer of hope. It shouldn't, and my wife has encouraged me to stay pessimistic, but it leaves me considering the following scenarios as the Republicans go to the polls on Tuesday in the Granite State.

1) The Mitt Second-Place Scenario

Mitt's strategy has always been win big in Iowa and New Hampshire and then ride the momentum to the nomination. With a significant defeat in Iowa, even a win in New Hampshire won't accomplish that at this point. However, if he loses to McCain with a respectable second place finish, Mitt isn't necessarily done.

He should be, because by every traditional election model, you can't lose both Iowa and New Hampshire and end up as the nominee. Except Bill Clinton did in 1992. And 2008 is a whole lot more fluid than that race was. If McCain wins New Hampshire, he picks up momentum, but is he really the front-runner? Not quite. He's still nowhere in South Carolina, where the base loathes him with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. Huckabee probably wins big there. And Giuliani is still the favorite for Florida, the first huge primary before Super Duper Tuesday on the 5th. And Mitt has a shot at Michigan no matter what happens in New Hampshire. (His chances diminish considerably if McCain blows him out, but that's another story.)

So it's quite possible that by the time we get to February 5th, McCain, Huckabee, and Giuliani each have a win or two under their belts, while Romney is a solid second in each state. And with his money and organization, he stubbornly refuses to go away. So you enter Super Tuesday with no clear front runner and only one constant in every contest - Mitt Romney. And because money and resources haven't solidified behind a clear leader, Romney is the only one, other than Giuliani, who remains competitive through all fifty states. Hopefully, Mitt will be able to close the deal and win a few of those states and slug his way to the nomination by sheer brute organizational force.

It could happen. I don't know that it's likely, though.

2) The Obama Independents Scenario

As we saw in Iowa, Obama inspired independents to come out in droves to back him. That same momentum is surging in New Hampshire, where recent polls have the Illinois senator at least ten points ahead of Mrs. Clinton. New Hampshire has an open primary, which greatly benefited McCain back in 2000 when he relied on independents to overwhelm the Republican primary and blow out George W. This year, those independents may very well choose to vote in the Democratic primary instead of the Republican one, leaving McCain to the mercy of real Republicans, who, by and large, loathe him. Then Romney wins and is the presumptive front runner going forward.

This one is doubtful, because, for some reason, New Hampshire Republicans actually like McCain, too. But it could happen.

3) The Hillary Nuclear Scenario

My brother-in-law - not the one who wrote the op-ed - called tonight and asked if I saw a way in which Hillary can come back. I said yes, but it requires Hillary to not just defeat Obama, but utterly destroy him. She's itching to do it, and she's hinting that she has the info to make it happen. It seems to involve drugs, and possibly Obama selling them. I didn't think this would have much of an impact, but my wife disagreed.

"You think America would elect a drug dealer?!" she asked incredulously. I said, well, why not, since Obama has already admitted to using drugs, including cocaine.

"There's a big, big difference between using drugs and selling them. Huge." This startled me, since my wife likes Obama more than I do and has expressed a willingness to vote for him without holding her nose. If this turns her off, it may well turn off a bunch of the electorate.

This has nothing to do with Mitt Romney, except for the fact that there isn't a Republican alive who could beat Barack Obama in the general if the election were held today. I console myself as I try to let go of my slim hopes of Mitt in the White House with the schaudenfreudic rapture of watching Hillary Clinton twist slowly in the wind as she blows aimlessly into the dustbin of history. (Egads, what a tortured metaphor!) If Mitt won the nomination and had to face Obama in November, it would be far more devastating to see him crushed in the general instead of Beavis McCain.

In November, the Republicans lose. But Clinton and McCain will be history. That's got to count for something.

Debate Thoughts

Watched the ABC debate, which, as Jim Geraghty at National Review described it, was actually the Romney Piñata Debate. Mitt got it from all sides, whether it was McCain and his snarly "You certainly are the candidate of change" jibe, or Huckabee, after Mitt said the guy was misrepresenting Romney's position, Satan's Brother shot back with "Which one?" See, Mitt's a flip-flopper. We get it. Har har har. Giuliani and Thompson both got some jabs in, too. You'd think, watching this debate with no preconceptions, that Mitt is the front-runner. He's not. He's just the guy everyone needs to get out of the way, and quickly. He's got enough money to make himself a nuisance for quite some time.

This actually presented an opportunity for Mitt that he fumbled badly. He didn't look indignant; he didn't have a sense of humor about it; he just sort of winced and whined and looked unpleasant. And he said some stupid things. "I like mandates. Mandates work." Uhhh... hello?

So, yes, Mitt remains dead in the water, but the question is ... why McCain? How in the name of Sweet Fancy Moses did this guy get conservatives to take him seriously again? He has spent the past eight years sticking his thumb in the eye of the conservative establishment with reckless glee, and suddenly he's the standard bearer? Author of McCain-Feingold, the single most egregious assault on free speech in over 200 years? One of only two Republicans who voted against the Bush tax cuts? The guy who cut his fellow Republicans off at the knees with his "Gang of 14" that allowed Demos to continue judicial filibusters? The guy touted as a big Iraq war supporter who spent the past four years whining about how Bush and Rumsfeld weren't doing anything right? New Hampshire, this guy is not just a bad Republican, he is not a Republican. He met with Tom Daschle back in 2001 to discuss switching parties. Would that he had. After all, doesn't McCain-Feingold demand truth in political advertising?

If I have to choose between two Democrats in '08, I'm going to vote for the one who honestly labels himself as such.

And if, heaven forbid, Huckabee wins the nomination, watch how quickly Utah becomes a blue state.

Morning After Thoughts...

I'm still pretty bummed, and I still think Mitt is finished. I also think, though, that it doesn't matter much, as Barack Obama has a one-way, waterslide ticket to the Oval Office. I think anyone Republicans could throw up would beat Hillary. (And if it's Huckabee, yes, it would involve a considerable amount of throwing up.) I don't think Mitt or anyone else can beat Obama.

That's how I console myself as I watch the Republicans piss away what little is left of the Reagan legacy.

Have a nice day.

Satan and Mike Huckabee Are Brothers

This post's title comes courtesy of my brother-in-law, who wrote this article about Mitt Romney for the San Francisco Chronicle and called tonight to commiserate over Romney's crushing defeat. 

And, make no mistake, this is a crushing defeat. After spending millions more dollars than his rivals, Romney ekes out a distant second-place finish to an underfunded, unRepublican, anti-Mormon rube. He goes into next Tuesday's battle in New Hampshire as a damaged candidate, facing a surging John McCain who has taken a decisive lead in the polls in a state where Romney was practically the sitting governor. 

Romney, I believe, is finished. 

He'll probably stay in the race for a little while longer, and he can actually stay in as long as he likes, given his inexhaustible financial resources. But there's no way he captures the national attention or regains any momentum. McCain now owns New Hampshire, and Huckabee will probably win South Carolina, and McCain will win everything else until Super Duper Tuesday, when Huckabee fades from view and McCain becomes the anti-Giuliani and coasts to the nomination. 

And then, come November, say hello to President Obama. Which is less of a stomach-turning prospect than President McCain. 

The thing that makes me ill is that this was due almost exclusively to Romney's religion. Which means that those who make decisions about my political party loathe me solely on the basis of my faith. Nothing I can do about it - there's no use in playing the victim, and, politically, I've got nowhere else to go. (What, like I'm going to be a Democrat?) But it probably means that I take a few steps back. If Republicans go down to defeat in 2008, they deserve it. They deserved it in 2006, too. I can't get behind McCain. And I would campaign for Hillary before I would vote for Mike Huckabee. 

The good news tonight is that Cornelius' masterwork Fox Man II: Worm Man Returns won the district-wide Reflections Literature Award and now goes on to compete at Regionals. So take that, Huck. Enjoy your short-lived victory. It may not have cost you a lot of money, but I'm pretty sure it cost you a piece of your soul. 

Inside the Romney Campaign in Iowa

With less than three hours before the caucus begins, I just got off the phone with a Romney campaign guy on the ground in Iowa.

The lay of the land:

The Romney campaign stopped doing their overnight tracking poll during the Christmas season and did their first poll in a couple of weeks last night. The result - which, apparently, Mitt has not seen - has Huckabee ahead, but just barely - 27 to 25, and the undecided vote is huge. The interesting thing about it is that in one of the Iowa media markets, a local talk show blowhard has been railing on the Mormons for the past three to four months, calling them a cult with ambitions to take over the world. In every other media market, Mitt is ahead by 10 points. In Mr. Blowhard's market, which is the largest in Iowa, Mitt is down by 10 points.

If Huckabee wins tonight, it's because the Mormon bashing was effective.

The Romney guy sounded optimistic, because Mitt's organization is without parallel. They refer to the Bush 2000 organization as the "gold standard" of Iowa get-out-the-vote operations. Mitt's organization, in comparison, is the "platinum standard." They have identified 51,000 committed Romney supporters - by name. If Romney can get about 30,000 of them out to caucus tonight, he wins handily. Romney has the means and the organization to make that happen. Huckabee has to rely on good luck and Evangelical passion, although, sadly, that may be enough.

Another interesting wrinkle is the fact that all of the independents will be caucusing with the Democrats to vote for Obama. That may be bad news for Romney, although it may also mean that there are fewer independents up for grabs, and Romney's superior organization makes all the difference.

I'm cautiously optimistic myself, although I also admit to some wishful thinking. If Romney loses Iowa, it's going to be almost impossible to beat McCain five days later in New Hampshire. And if McCain wins New Hampshire, he's the nominee - which is even worse than a Giuliani win.

I vote for Barack over McCain. That says something for Barack, but it says a whole lot more about the disaster McCain would be for the future of the Republican Party.

Stallion Cornell's Greatest Hits

Click here for The Ammon Song. Right-click it to download, or just click it an Quicktime or another media player should play it right in your browser.

Elsewhere in this post where you see a link highlighting a song title, do the same and take a listen and/or download. Do not try to sell these, though, as all these songs are protected by copyright.

Regular readers of this blog will find this post redundant, but my brother-in-law is enamored with the Ammon song I just recorded, and he's asked me to write a post that links to the song sooner, along with an explanation and additional song links.

So here it is.

Ammon is a song I wrote for a Book of Mormon mini read-a-thon in my ward. It's a bit bloody, but since it's a song and not a movie, it doesn't get an R-rating.

"Javelin Man" is my most famous Book of Mormon song, written for a road show back in 1990. Over the past two decades, it has been performed every year at Aspen Grove Family Camp by me and all of my pre-pubescent relatives. Last year, our ward filmed a version of the Teancum story and the song for a Stake Film Festival. I put it on YouTube and it's gotten over 9,000 views. Jenny Jordan Frogley, famed LDS singer, is on vocals - that's not her lipsynching in the video, though - and the Rockamatics provided the instrumentation.

The film is embedded here for your convenience.



I also wrote a Song About Mustard. (Here's a link to an explanation thereof.)

I wrote a musical about Peter Pan - link to explanation here - that includes the song Dead, which is, clearly, about dead things. I'm not on vocals, but it's a funny song.

That musical also has two serious songs in it - A Princess Bride and Neverland. The vocals on Neverland are hooty at first, but wait until the harmony kicks in - it's worth it.

The fourth recording from that musical is Hook of the Jolly Roger, sung by famed local (SLC) actor Scott Morgan, who passed away recently. I only knew him tangentially, but he was a good guy and a great talent, and he will be sorely missed.

The very first song I ever wrote was titled I Am A Cow, which I wrote in the bathroom of the Barnsdall Park Gallery Theatre in about two and a half minutes when I was 11 years old. For some reason, I thought "How Now, Green Cow" was really, really funny. (Because, you know, it's supposed to be "How Now, Brown Cow.")

The other song I have online is The Ballad of Stallion Cornell, which sounds somewhat like the Ammon song. Warning to parents: it also includes the word "slut," so watch out.

I've recorded other songs that I have yet to put up online, mainly because they're not very good. "The Laundry Song" lacks a cohesive third verse and the recording is terrible; "The Dog/Birdie War" has been revised but not yet rerecorded. I'm not sure if the world is ready for "Dig" or "The Pterodactyl Song" or "Cheese On Toast." But just for fun, I'll put up my own recording of Javelin Man, which has me on vocals and instruments instead of talented people. Enjoy.

The Ammon Song

Completed late this New Year's Day.

A few changes from the previously published lyrics...

1) Turns out that the whole Ammon story takes place by the Waters of Sebus, not Sidon. Except nothing good rhymes with Sebus, and "Ammon was ridin' by the Waters of Sidon" is such a fun, faux-Western lyric. So I changed it to "Ammon went ridin' past the Waters of Sidon on his way to go work for the Lamanite King," as if Ammon were passing Sidon on the way to the story actually beginning. Which could have happened, couldn't it?

I toyed with "Ammon at Sebus did his best to serve Jebus," but that's an obscure Simpsons reference that many might find disrespectful, including me. But now it's stuck in your head, too.

2) Instead of "Cause the King was intrigued with his brave servant's charms/But the dude was freaked out when he saw all those arms," I shifted the second line to "His Majesty freaked when he saw all those arms," because there was some trouble with clarity as to whether "the dude" was Ammon or the King, and, besides, "freaked" has an internal rhyme with "intrigued."

It's an MP3 file - if you right click the last word of this post, you should be able to download it, or click it and Quicktime will play it in your browser.

Enjoy.

Happy New Year

It's 26 degrees.