Early New Hampshire Returns

Less than 15 minutes after the polls close, and they're already calling the Primary for McCain... Now McCain won New Hampshire in 2000 and lost the nomination, so it's not a huge shock, but coupling this Romney's loss in Iowa and McCain's strength in Michigan and this is bad news for Romney. Romney needs to close the gap (37/28) from where it stands now to claim any sort of "victory" out of here.

Lessons From Iowa

I realize the world has moved on to New Hampshire, but I’m just now getting to Iowa, so there. A few quick lessons we learned from Iowa.

First, the Republican side. Romney’s in trouble. Huckabee is very unlikely to win the nomination because there isn’t the same proportion of evangelicals in most of the more populous states that he needs to win to get the delegates required for the nomination. The evangelicals are the ones who gave Huckabee the win. It’s looking like Romney’s going to lose New Hampshire to McCain. If he does, this will give McCain a boost going into Michigan, which will further snowball, positively for McCain and negatively for Romney. Mitt needs to start donating to Fred Thompson’s campaign so he’ll stay in the campaign as long as possible. If Fred drops out, he is widely expected to endorse McCain; more bad news for Romney. Obviously, Mitt Romney’s not out of it yet, but I do think he’s more wounded then most people seem to. I think Giuliani’s out, but I could be wrong. His “National Campaign” strategy worked well until we got into the actual primaries. People want to go with a winner. Once the results start coming in from the early primary states where Giuliani is coming in fourth or fifth, people are going to start abandoning Giuliani, continuing his recent slide…

As for the Democrats, this is a big win for Obama. To go into a state with no appreciable black population and beat the Clinton machine is no small feat. I really think his win in Iowa will sweep him to the nomination. If he wins New Hampshire, which I think he will, Clinton is done. She won’t drop out, but she’s finished and the Clinton era is over. Honestly, there’s not much else to say about the Democrats. I really think Obama has just about sewed things up with his win in Iowa and his resultant surge.

Progress? I Think Not...

So I had another trip to Naples today... For Christmas, my wife got me a GPS unit. On the way over, it routed me pretty well although I had to ignore the polite, if somewhat insistent, lady a few times until she got things right. On the way home, I hit the "Home" button and away I went... This is a trip I've made probably close to a hundred times and could do in my sleep (I almost have a couple of times)... But the route my very intelligent GPS suggested was different. I thought I must have overlooked a quicker route home, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Long story short, I ended up getting home about an hour later than if I'd taken the route carefully selected by me while thumbing through an atlas in the 7-Eleven...

But it's OK, with Satelitte Radio, drive time is great. The BCS Championship Game was tonight, so I was looking forward to listening to the broadcast on the radio. One problem; Sirius didn't have the game... Why??? So I set off scanning the AM dial for the game. I've always loved AM at night. Briefly, I picked up 650 WSM out of Nashville, a station from Austin (traffic info was surprisingly unhelpful) and a couple of different Atlanta stations. Finally, I found a fuzzy station carrying the game. I couldn't tell what was crowd noise and what was static, but I caught most of the plays... Brent Mussburger drove me nuts, so it must have been clear enough. It's a wonder how we live with technology; an extra hour in the car and still no football game...

Pay It Forward - Starbuck's Style

As much as I might disdain Starbuck’s, pretty cool story out of Washington State. Apparently one woman bought the drink of the person behind her. This person then bought the next person’s, etc, until over 1,000 people repeated it, many of them making additional donations to a Starbuck’s charity. Very cool and one of the things I like about this time of year.

Just a couple of things, though… The Starbuck’s is so busy that a continuous string of one thousand people came in? Wow, that’s a busy little store… I feel bad for the employees. I can’t imagine serving 1,000 consecutive patrons with no break in between. How long must this have gone on? Which brings me to my next point. It ended at 6:20 in the morning. They’d already served a thousand people before 6:30? Holy crap… Assuming each person’s order took 15 seconds (an unreasonably short time estimate) that’s still 4 hours. Are there really big Starbuck’s out on the West Coast? All the ones I’ve seen are small and I can’t imagine it taking less than a minute to serve each person, meaning this would have gone on since about 2 in the afternoon yesterday. Are Starbuck’s open 24 hours a day?

Who’s the curmudgeon that ended this thing? A chain of 1,000 people must have generated quite a buzz. I’m sure people were talking about it, etc. Who’s gonna walk in, find out their drink is free, find out this has been going on for many hours, and not continue it? Surely such a person is worthy of Scrooge’s (pre-visitation) highest respect. Bah! Humbug!

Semi-related Movie Plug: If you haven’t seen Pay it Forward, please, check it out. It really is one of the most moving movies I’ve ever seen and it’s a great reminder that we can make a difference.

Hillary's Holiday Wish List

If you haven’t seen Hillary’s holiday wish list, check it out here. It’s ridiculous on a number of levels.

First, whoever wins the Republican nomination should remember this ad well. If they’re running against Hillary, just break it out and you’ll have all the reasons not to vote for her.

Second, Hillary wrapping presents? Right… Very funny. I dare say I've wrapped more presents than Senator Clinton.

Third, what’s up with the spooky “happy holidays”? It looks like a gothic type font more appropriate for Halloween than Christmas [excuse me, the “winter holiday (or non-holiday) of your choosing]. I don’t mean to nitpick, but it really doesn’t fit in with the general brightness of the ad. Just kind of strange.

Finally, all these things are her “gifts” to the American people. In other words, when she’s elected, these things will magically appear; no fight, no consequences, nothing. Just vote for Hillary and all your dreams will come true. The idea of universal healthcare should be rejected on the surface for its inefficiencies and inadequacies, but to not admit that “free” healthcare is paid for by higher taxes (Quick lesson here: If Government decides to spend money they’re not spending now, said money has to come from somewhere. Government is funded by taxes) is incredibly dishonest and pandering of the worst level. Portraying these policies as free gifts, free of consequence, is disgusting.