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.