Evidence that some Canadians are soft, judgemental pansies

Here.

(Headline softened after realizing I've known a few Canadian born individuals who aren't)

Is it just me...

...or has the online world of politics gotten nuttier than a squirrel turd in the last couple of months?

An observation from the past couple of weeks

The number of my friends on the right whose skin I've gotten under in the past few weeks is a good indicatorto me of how fractured the right is currently. I haven't even come close to deciding who I think is the best of this very imperfect class of presidential candidates, yet I've managed to irritate more than a few people who have strong feelings about some candidates. I have to say, as an undecided, it makes this field look even less attractive than it already looked. If disunity and hard feelings last into the general election, I think it becomes reasonable to wonder whether this party needs to be out of the presidency for four years in order to get its act together. I know the negatives involved with a Democratic presidency, but I've also watched this party get weaker and weaker the past 8 years. As the opposition, the right will be faced with the prospect of getting its act together or dying.

Our Nomination Process: A Plus, A Minus

On the one hand, I love that our presidential nomination process is settled incrementally on a state by state basis. It puts the candidates through a much more rigorous test and forces them to address more issues head on in the states than a national primary day would.

On the other hand, the current process puts so much weight on early, less than representative states that the entire nomination process becomes a race of perception. In that race of perception, it can become impossible for a candidate to win a state they otherwise would have because it is perceived that they are going nowhere.

The New Republic Does What the Right Fails to Do

Namely, expose Ron Paul. I've been disappointed that so many swallow the bait of Paul positions that make sense while ignoring some repugnant Paul characteristics. It'll be interesting to see how many maintain their attachment and how many wisely back away from him.

Rumors of the Obama Campaign's Demise are Greatly Exagerated

Tonight's Clinton Comeback is stunning. I'll admit that I was one of those who thought Obama had delivered a knockout blow against her in Iowa. Based on her and Bill's actions in New Hampshire, I can't help but believe that they thought so as well. But those contrarian, cantankerous citizens of New Hampshire gave new life to the Clinton campaign tonight with a big victory over Obama. The storyline has already developed that this the end of the Big Mo' for Big O'. I wouldn't get to excited about that storyline. Obama's appeal to quote-unquote 'independents' will make his path a little rockier because of closed primaries, but I am convinced that we'll see the Democratic nomination see-saw back and forth between the two of them. I don't think Obama's momentum is gone, but it will be blunted in some states.

As for the Republicans. If you don't already have plans to go to the convention in St. Paul, make 'em now. This could be a once or twice in a lifetime convention. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see one mess of a brokered convention, and I suspect a name we all dismissed long ago is counting on just that.

I was wrong

New Hampshire, at least, is a sucker for Clinton crocodile tears.

Crib Notes

If you haven't been a reader of this blog from the beginning, then you are probably unfamiliar with my 'Crib Notes' feature, so I'd like to briefly re-introduce it. When I don't have the time to write several in depth posts on topics that are on my mind, I like to do one of these brief posts with quick hitters on those topics. Below are some of the things that are on my mind today.

-Fog lead to a 100 car pile up on I-90 in my area on Sunday. Some make the point that it wasn't the fog but the people who were driving too fast for conditions that led to the accident. I agree that those who were driving to fast played a big part. Let's not let the other bad drivers off the hook, however. I drove in fog that was worse the previous night in Madison. The biggest concern I had was less the speeders and more the people who slammed on their breaks hard whenever the drove into thicker fog. Drivers like that are usually let off the hook because they are deemed cautious, but their habit of abruptly slowing rather than gradually slowing are what triggers messes like this.

-A few readers wonder who I support for the Republican presidential nomination. Truth be told, I haven't made up my mind yet, and when I do I'm not sure I'm going to stump for them via this blog until the general election. I can say one thing. The first test I put a candidate through in my mind, before I get to any ideology, is, "is there a better than average likelihood that this person could be a good president?" Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, McCain, and Duncan Hunter have passed that test in my mind. Paul and Huckabee have not, and neither will get my vote under any circumstances.

-As for those candidates that past that first test, what I am left to grapple with is what I'm willing to give on in order to get other characteristics that I want in a president.

-Hillary Clinton's crocodile tears today were, in my opinion, very calculated and intentional. They'll also backfire on her.

-I think I'm the last person in the world to get a Razr, so that fad is obviously over. To all you trend setters with Razrs, time to get a new phone.

-With Wisconsinites in shorts as temperatures rise into the un-January like 50's, it is clear that global warming is back with a vengeance after taking a month long vacation in Bermuda. Grab your ankles.

Huckabee the anti-Reagan?

GOP Bloggers has a post up right now titled "Is Huckabee Destroying The Reagan Coalition?" The post brings up some points that are of great significance right now. I do think there is something there. While Giuliani is at least trying to make nice with social conservatives, Huckabee seems to take pleasure in lobbing fire bombs at fiscal and national defense conservatives. In doing so, I can envision a scenario where he peels a portion of the Reagan Democrats off of the conservative Republican party for at least two presidential cycles.

Christmas is only the beginning

Am I the only one that has found that Christmas gifts lead to an all new list of things you need to buy for them? Before Christmas, I had people pulling their hair out because I didn't really need or want anything. Now I need another Christmas.

Male monkeys buy sex with grooming

Interesting.

Male macaque monkeys pay for sex by grooming females, according to a recent study that suggests the primates may treat sex as a commodity.

"In primate societies, grooming is the underlying fabric of it all," Dr. Michael Gumert, a primatologist at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said in a telephone interview Saturday.

"It's a sign of friendship and family, and it's also something that can be exchanged for sexual services," Gumert said.

I only have one question. How is this different than a husband agreeing to clean the house?

Oh, and I have one comment, too. It is kind of amusing to see the story presented as a free market of monkey love.

Thankful to be in Wisconsin

I might be the most person most thankful to be in Wisconsin of anyone in this state. You see, the last time California had weather this bad, I was there. It was the most miserable business trip of my life. It was a 9 or 10 day trip, and the weather was so bad that I didn't see a southern California mountain until day 5 or 6. Mudslides and flooding made the SoCal driving even worse and led to appointment cancellation after appointment cancellation. To make matters worse, when I flew back into Chicago, my car was buried in 10 inches of snow, it was about ten below zero, and I was lucky to get my car to turn over. Right now, I feel for my cousin who lives out there, but I'm happier than hell to be here.

Carter vs. Carter

Iowa a presidential nomination does not make. For S&Gs, let's pretend for a moment that Obama and Huckabee become the nominees of their respective parties. It will be as though we will be choosing between two variants of Jimmy Carter. I made the case for Obama as Carter in July. With Huckabee the parallels are even more significant. Are the American people really ready to make that mistake again?

I still view Iowa as an aberration on the Republican side of things. The corn state seems to have a fetish for the Carter types. Unfortunately, the results leave me extremely wary. What if, after another era of trials and tribulations for this nation, we make the mistake of electing another Jimmy Carter, another person who is totally unqualified for the presidency?

Headlines

Sometimes all you need is the headline:

Deer molester back behind bars

Has conservatism really neglected Evangelicals?

I've done a lot of reading lately on the presidential race. One thing that I've read several times is that Evangelicals are tired of being neglected in the conservative Republican party, and that is part of the reason for the rise of Huckabee. The problem with this line of thought is that I haven't actually seen an Evangelical use it-only pundits. Because of that, I'm not really sure about its validity. After all, what the hell do people consider George W. Bush to be, an agnostic? Bush is the most religious president since Jimmy Carter. I hardly think that Evangelicals can complain after 8 years of the "compassionate" conservatism of George W. Bush. Just because Bush was terrible at pushing through domestic agenda doesn't mean that the Republican party has used and abused the Evangelicals of the religious right. If that is the case, maybe they should sit this election out and remember what a Democrat presidency is like for the next four years.

Romney scandal on the horizon?

Maybe. In an almost stream of consciousness sort of way, Right Wing News breaks the story.

Update #2: Another source of mine, which is not with the Huckabee campaign or the same campaign as my previous source, told me that they are hearing that the story is going to be that Romney was behind the "anti-Mormon" push polling that got so much attention in Iowa.

Intriguingly, these allegations were made previously and the Romney campaign strongly denied that they had anything to do with the polling.

Anything is possible in politics, and sometimes stories unexpectedly find a way to develop legs. My gut tells me that this one won't, though.

Really, Iowa?

I'm not going to speak for Democrats, so this is about Mike Huckabee and, more importantly, Iowa. Iowa has done a marvelous job tonight of proving why the rest of the nation has been getting so incensed about the influence that state has over presidential politics. Really, Iowa? Mike Huckabee? I'm still undecided in this race, but I just don't get the appeal of Mike Huckabee, and I probably never will. He may appeal to a certain slice of Protestants (not this Lutheran), but he is in no way ready for prime time. I'm fairly certain that the remainder of the primaries and caucuses will show that the rest of America doesn't understand why Huckabee appealed to Iowa, either.

On the topic of late night TV

Last night I watched The Tonight Show and Late Night with Conan O'Brien because I was curious how they'd do without their writers. Both looked very uncomfortable, but I thought Leno was okay while O'Brien was just plain bad. I found that more than a little disappointing because I'm a big Conan fan and I've been looking forward to the day he takes over the Tonight Show. I'll be interested to see how both progress without their writers. Already tonight it looks like Leno is more comfortable and his monologue was actually funny-something I rarely thought of his with-writers monologues. If Conan cannot up his game without writers, I might rethink who I'd rather see host the Tonight Show.

The Check That Bought Alaska

This is pretty cool. Today that check could pay A-Rod for a quarter of a baseball season.

The hidden racist history of the Democratic Party

Bruce Bartlett has a new book coming out called "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past." Last week at Opinion Journal he culled a number of quotes from the book to show that Democrats have displayed antipathy towards minorities since the party's founding. I bring this up because it is of much interest to me. I don't think that his examples prove that Democrats have cornered the market on racism over this country's history-quite the contrary in fact. I'm fairly certain that a similar list could be made about Republicans. I do think that Bartlett's piece is important, though, because Democrats have done a masterful job of propagandizing and painting themselves the party of the little guy, the poor, and minorities when they are no such thing. In fact, the original Democrat, the man who they based this off of, Andrew Jackson, was perhaps the most strident enemy of American Indians of any president. Unfortunately, all too many people swallow the marketing of political parties hook, line, and sinker. This is more true right now on the left because the Democrats have won the battle of 'hero of the little guy,' something that is very appealing to Americans.

Up to my last year of college, I bought into the Democratic party's marketing and PR. It wasn't until I wrote a 30 page paper on the spear fishing issue in Wisconsin that it became apparent to me that maybe the Democrats' mirage wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I expected nice black and white lines between the two parties, and Tommy Thompson certainly fit what I expected from Republicans. Democrat Dave Obey, however, did not. Going through my research, I learned that Democrat Dave was no friend of the Chippewa that were fighting for their treaty rights in his district. That's what snapped me to attention. That's what got me questioning all of the political assumptions that I had to that point in my life.

During that period of my life, I developed a personal working theory on politics. Party politics is how things get done in this country, like it or not. Therefore, if you actually want to be part of the process, you'll get farther as part of a party. So you select the party that aligns most closely with your personal philosophies and values. For me, that was the conservative portion of the Republican party, hands down. That does not mean that the party is your friend, nor does it mean that everyone in the party is going to agree with you because you identify with it. This is especially true for minorities. Minorities throw their lot in with the Democrats, and for that the Democratic party neglects them and takes their votes for granted. They would be much better off if they asked the individual candidates questions that help them determine if that individual will represent their interests best. If they did, they'd find that a straight Democratic ticket is rarely in their best interests. Why? Because the Democratic party is not the utopia of multiculturalism, diversity, and tolerance that it so effectively portrays itself to be.