Every Thanksgiving at around noon, several Boston-area radio stations turn the airwaves over to Arlo Guthrie and his lengthy rhapsody against state harassment, Alice's Restaurant (I dare you to listen to it in its entirety). Hearing the song reminds me I am home, in New England. In keeping with the spirit of his libertarian anthem, Arlo Guthrie, yes, son of Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, has endorsed Ron Paul. "I love this guy," Arlo explained. "Dr. Paul is the only candidate I know who would have signed the Constitution of the United States had he been there." As Joel Connelly of the Seattle Post Intelligencier noted, "Rep. Ron Paul has consistently voted against Amtrak subsidies, but that hasn't kept the Libertarian Republican presidential candidate from winning endorsement from the singer who put 'The City of New Orleans' atop the charts."

Fred Thompson napped his way through a presidential campaign. Rudy Guiliani decided to punt on first down for several consecutive drives. Last June, Giuliani and Thompson were tied for the Republican lead. Now they're on the sidelines, never having won a primary or caucus between them. In a lifetime of observing politics, I can't recall any presidential runs done more horribly. Who ran the worse campaign, Sleepy Fred or Rudy the Reluctant?

Do you get the impression that journalists don't like Mitt Romney? He's moved to the right, which makes me cynical but liberal-media types vindictive. After his close loss to John McCain in Florida last night, the Associated Press titled its story "Romney Vows To Carry on With Campaign"--as if Romney were Dennis Kucinich rather than a serious contender. The article remarkably states, "The defeat marked the third time the former Massachusetts governor and the Arizona senator had gone head-to-head in a major GOP contest, with McCain winning as he had earlier in New Hampshire and South Carolina." But Romney and McCain went head-to-head in Michigan, and Romney handed McCain his head.

"In Greece, schoolmaster Plato maintained that cities will never have rest until schoolmasters become kings. All through the ages schoolmasters seem to have had the delusion that they could order society as readily as they could a classroom. But it is probably the twentieth century that will be seen in retrospect as the golden age of the schoolmaster."
--Eric Hoffer, "August 16, 1958," Working and Thinking on the Waterfront, 1969

John McCain emerged from Florida the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. The split in victories for Romney and McCain, and the slight margin of victory for both candidates, may make it seem as though the race is neck and neck. It's not. Romney's strengths include tenacity as a campaigner and an abundance of money. When the primary season allowed candidates to focus on one state, these attributes helped Romney. But next Tuesday doesn't allow for concentration on a specific state or retail politics. Delegates are up for grabs in twenty-plus states. Momentum and name recognition, two things McCain has over Romney, are king on Super Tuesday. Add the likely endorsement of Giuliani, and McCain's chances at securing the nomination seem much better than even.

The New York chapter of the National Organization for Women dubbed Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama "the ultimate betrayal" of women. For reminding everyone where the word "hysterical" derives, and reinforcing a stereotype, it is New York NOW that has betrayed women. "Senator Kennedy's endorsement of Hillary Clinton's opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard." Are there women anywhere saying, "Damn that Ted Kennedy for endorsing Barack Obama! Damn him!" This is really the most ridiculous thing anyone has said, even in private, in a while.

Rudy Giuliani trails badly in the polls going into today's Florida primary. Should he lose to John McCain and Mitt Romney, and perhaps even to Mike Huckabee, Giuliani's campaign will be over and myriad post-mortems will be offered. Certainly Giuliani's bizarre failure to campaign in the first six contests will and should be cited as a reason for the free-fall of the frontrunner. What should also be noted, but probably won't, are the left-wing positions--yes, left-wing--on abortion, immigration, gun control, and numerous other issues that Giuliani championed as mayor of New York City. America is not New York, and the Republican Party is not the Democrat Party--and certainly not that Liberal Party in New York that faithfully placed Giuliani's name on its ballot line in his three New York City mayoral runs.

ASDF, at 3-1, is the football pool winner for the conference championship games. Make three picks for the Super Bowl: 1. The team that will cover the spread; 2. Whether the point total will go "over" or "under" 54; 3. Your final score prediction. Here are my picks:

1. PATRIOTS -12 over Giants; 2. Over 54; 3. Patriots 38, Giants 16.

Make your selections and your smack talk in the comments section.

"She and John McCain are very close," Bill Clinton said of his wife. "They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history, and they're afraid they'd put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other." Bill Clinton's a shrewd operator, and his calculated praise of John McCain, as he knows, can't help the Arizona senator among Republican primary voters, who already scratch their heads at why McCain always seems to sponsor bills with people like Teddy Kennedy and Russ Feingold. Who do you think Camp Clinton doesn't want to face in November?

"George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other," Peggy Noonan writes in Friday's Wall Street Journal. "He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues." Ditto, but isn't the eighth year of a presidency a bit late to recognize this? Peggy Noonan, if you remember, took leave of her job at the Wall Street Journal to campaign for Republicans in 2004. No Child Left Behind, the prescription-drug giveaway, the Iraq mess, the amnesty bill--the most offensive items for conservatives on Bush's agenda--all were apparent in his first term. Why not oppose Bush, rather than campaign for him, when it mattered?

Alas, the truth doesn't crystalize for everyone at the same time. My disillusionment with Bush came around, say, 1999--when he announced that he would be running for president. Put another way, I never was disillusioned because I never expected much. He said that education, an area the previous party platform had promised to relegate to the states and localities, was his top federal priority and promised an enormous expansion of Medicare. Like Mike Huckabee, he generally had the right ideas on social issues but has no grounding on anything else.

For Noonan, the truth crystalized about six years later. "The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation," Noonan wrote last year. "This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me." At the time, she memorably wrote of the speech: "It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. The United States, the speech said, has put the world on notice: Good governments that are just to their people are our friends, and those that are not are, essentially, not. We know the way: democracy.... The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not."

But that wasn't Noonan in the hysteria of the Iraq invasion: "We are about to startle and reorder the world. We are going to win this thing, and in the winning of it we are going to reinspire civilized people across the globe. We're going to give the world a lift." In those heady days, George W. Bush was "President Backbone" and "The Right Man." Bush's big-government "conservatism" didn't matter according to Noonan. "Why will the base forgive Mr. Bush? Because they know it's all about the war."

Now that experience has shown the war to be a disaster rarely paralelled in the annals of American foreign policy, and Bush's popularity nears historic presidential lows, it's no longer "all about the war." The previously overlooked Bush Administration blunders now glare. But it's too late to stop No Child Left Behind, the Medicare expansion, federal funding of research on aborted fetuses, anti-First Amendment campaign finance laws, nationalization of airport security, and the other liberal causes enacted by the Bush Administration and a servile Republican Congress. It's not too late to get on the right side of history. Better late than never, I guess.

With a sputtering economy, Democrats and Republicans have come together to refund taxpayers $600 to $1200 this season. Families may get more. "I can't say that I'm totally pleased with the package, but I do know that it will help stimulate the economy. But if it does not, then there will be more to come," Nancy Pelosi explained. What wasn't she "totally pleased" about? She wanted increases in food stamps and unemployment payments. She didn't get that, but the Speaker of the House did get direct payments--which differ morally from tax refunds--to people whose income is so low that they don't pay taxes. What's the difference between a tax refund and a welfare payment? The refund is money the taxpayer earned. The welfare payment is money another citizen earned.

Among my Amazon.com reviews for Intellectual Morons are a few suspicious entries. It's not that they unduly knocked or praised my book that raised my curiosity. But that several reviewed Intellectual Morons alongside a half-dozen other works in the same week. I get paid, essentially, to read books, and I don't think I've ever read six real books in a week. These people are hobbyists (in other words, they hold down real jobs too), and in some instances are claiming to have read several dozen books in a week. J'accuse.

They get labelled "Top 1000 Reviewer" or "Top 50 Reviewer" by the book-selling behemoth. Judging by the content of their reviews, and the frequency with which they issue them, I have begun to question whether the "top" designation conveys an inverse meaning. Take N. P. Stathoulopoulos, an Amazon Top 1000 reviewer from Brooklyn, New York. The week he posted on Intellectual Morons, he reviewed nine other items including two books, a Noam Chomsky CD, and a Grand Theft Auto video game. I can't speak to the other items, but his review of Intellectual Morons reads more as a review of the dust jacket of Intellectual Morons.

Garth Risk Hallberg writes about the phenomenon of phantom reviewers on Slate.com in an article called "Who Is Grady Harp?" The title refers to a an Amazon reviewer who not only praised Hallberg's recent book on the popular online store, but "reviewed over 3,500 books, CDs, and movies for Amazon. In turn, he has attained a kind of celebrity: a No. 7 ranking; a prominent profile on the Web site; and, apparently, a following." Hallberg notes that Amazon's number one reviewer has averaged 45 book reviews a week for five years, which, he kindly notes, is "a pace that seems hard to credit, even from a professed speed-reader." This is a nice way of calling the woman a fraud, which she is. "John 'Gunny' Matlock," Hallberg points out, who "ranked No. 6 this spring, took a holiday from Amazon, according to Vick Mickunas of the Dayton Daily News, after allegations that 27 different writers had helped generate his reviews." Mr. Matlock gave Intellectual Morons five stars on Amazon, but his review leaves little evidence of actually having read my book.

Leave it to me to go after someone giving me a five-star review. It's not just that I've benefitted from Mr. Matlock's generous review. I've benefitted from the online culture that gave rise to it. My sales figures, from what I can gather, tend to swing disproportionately to Amazon vis-a-vis the competitors, i.e., Barnes & Noble and Borders. Certainly Amazon reviewers have been more generous than reviewers in mainline publications, who, when not ignoring my books entirely, generally can be counted on to trash them. There are worse things then a world where book reviews have become democratized. In the pre-Internet dark ages, the not-so-elite "elites" imposed political litmus tests on book reviews. It's not that they've stopped doing this. It's just that their power has been diminished. In extreme cases, a "nobody" on Amazon can have as much influence on book sales than an approved "somebody" at, say, the New York Review of Books. This is, as the phenomenon of drive-by Amazon reviews demonstrates, sometimes a bad thing.

Why would anyone post reviews of books they haven't read? Part of it seems to be the freebies, which, as the Slate piece points out, goes beyond books into electronics, movies, and other items hawked on Amazon. Publicists are willing to exchange free products for free publicity. A second, more psychologically interesting motivation involves narcissism. With tens of thousands of reviewers, there is, apparently, an ego boost by being recognized as a "Top 1000" reviewer. Some of these people, no doubt, just like books and wish to share their opinions. But many, many others like something else--cyberfame--and are willing to pass off hastily composed reactions to titles or promotional copy as book reviews.

My perspective is not only as an author, but as a book reviewer. I get review copies of books, but my intent is always to review them. There is no quid pro quo. The publisher doesn't give the product on the condition of a positive review. But there is an understanding that you will, at the least, read the book and make an effort to review it. I have received four review copies since finishing my own book, and I'm on the fourth one now. I've reviewed one. I'm currently writing a review for the second. I will likely take a pass on the third (and promote it some other way). And I'll review the fourth in March. I set, as a sort of New Year's resolution, what I thought to be a lofty goal: twelve published book reviews by year's end. For the "top" reviewers on Amazon, that's all in a day's work.

What disturbs most about the Amazon review-mania is the shift in focus from book to reviewer. In normal instances, the subject matter is the book. It's flaws, it's strengths, it's revealing facts, it's revealing errors get exposed for potential readers to see. Even if the review's reader doesn't opt to read the book reviewed, he generally learns something from merely reading the review. With the would-be cyber-celebs on Amazon, the book is secondary. Instead, the focus is themselves. Reviewers post drive-by reviews, ocassionally based on as little as Amazon's book description or the other featured reviews, for the purpose of boosting statistics: "Look at me. I've reviewed 3,500 books."

Were they rock stars they would stuff their trousers with socks. Were they book reviewers they would read the books before reviewing them.

"A nonnegotiable maxim emerges from a fixed Idea, or many fixed Ideas, often parading as 'principles,' but when these are excessively abstract they become ideology, the lethal enemy of thought."
Jeffrey Hart, The Making of the American Conservative Mind, 2005

Hugo Chavez is a tyrant. Don't tell that to U.S. liberals, who treat him the way, well, the way they've always treated left-wing tyrants. That is to say, they behave as if the tyrant is anything but. Chavez incorporated a state-run milk factory last year. He imposes price controls on milk. His draconian measures have created the problem of milk shortages. Now he threatens farmers with the expropriation of their farms should they sell their product abroad. Chavez calls the actions of farmers looking to sell at market-determined prices "treason." "I'm putting you on alert," Chavez announced. "If there's a producer that refuses to sell the product ... and sells it at a higher price abroad ... ministers, find me the proof so it can be expropriated." This is a classic case of a leftist creating a problem, milk shortages in this instance, by state action, and then calling for even more intrusive state action to "solve" the problem. This should be evidence that socialism doesn't work. Instead, it's a demonstration of how socialism works--government intervention begets more government intervention.

The Patriots and Giants square off in Super Bowl 42 (enough with the Roman numerals) in a rematch of one of the most entertaining games of the year. The NFL almost certainly would have preferred the Green Bay Packers playing in the big game--despite its David v. Goliath small-market status vis a vis New York--but the Giants outplayed the Pack. The early line opened at 14, with early money trending toward the Giants. The wildcard Giants certainly took the road less traveled, defeating Tampa, Dallas, and Green Bay on the road. Winning in sub-zero temperatures at Lambeau Field is certainly an accomplishment. Ironically, it's that Giants-Patriots game from week seventeen, in which Tom Coughlin counterintuitively played his banged-up starters, that propelled the Giants to playoff victories. By playing New England so close then, the Giants have the confidence that they can hang with the undefeated Patriots now. Are you ready for the Super Bowl? Too bad. It doesn't happen for another 13 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes, and 53 seconds from now. Good luck with your withdrawals, NFL junkies.

Which is the most conservative motto: Quebec's "Je me souviens" ("I remember") or New Hampshire's "Live Free or Die"?

Paul Watson, a founder of Greenpeace and a board member of the Sierra Club, is a nut who brags of ramming and sinking whaling ships. So when two of his crew from the Sea Shepherd group boarded a Japanese whaling ship, the whalers naturally tied them up to a mast. Watson complains that the men, who boarded the whaling ship without an invitation after hurling bottles at it, were "kidnapped." They are lucky they weren't made to walk the plank.

With virtually every consumer product tied in some way to gasoline, it didn't take an economist to figure out that an increase in inflation was on the way. Inflation rose at the highest level in seventeen years in 2007. A dollar today buys about four percent less than it could a year ago. The word "inflation" was starting to strike American ears as something akin to "cholera" or "small pox"--afflictions that affected people a long time ago, not us.

Though not discussed much, inflation affects Americans today more than it affected their ancestors. Usually, this is not because of external factors beyond our direct control, such as petroleum prices. It is because the government is committed to a policy of inflation through the Federal Reserve, an outfit established, in part, "to furnish an elastic currency." We may think inflation a bugbear of cranks and antiquarians, and of antiquarian cranks, but it's a problem more of the present than the past even though we choose to act as though it were not a problem. Perhaps, as a society, we dismiss concerns regarding inflation because our government is committed to a policy of inflation.

It wasn't always this way. Prior to the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, inflation was virtually non existent. As the excellent website MeasuringWorth.com demonstrates, a dollar from 1790 inflated less than ten cents in the century and a quarter that followed. In other words, inflation existed but not in a manner in which the average person would notice. What's happened to that dollar from 1913 to today? It's worth about a nickel now.

A policy of managed inflation should be opposed on Constitutional, ethical, and practical grounds. First, the Constitution empowered Congress, not the Fed, to coin money. It would require a Constitutional amendment, not a mere legislative act, to outsource this duty. Second, a dollar is a measure, like a weight or a length. Making today's dollar like yesterday's nickel is a bit like getting a slice of roast beef when you asked the butcher for a pound, or getting a dixie cup of beer when you asked for a pint. It's unethical to purposefully alter fixed measures, such as a pound, a foot, or, yes, even a dollar. Third, managed inflation through the Federal Reserve has resulted in a depreciation of the dollar of 95 percent in less than a century. This has been a disaster.

Unfortunately, many conservatives view conservatism as a mechanism to preserve the gains of liberalism. The income tax, Medicare, and yes, the Federal Reserve system, were all opposed by significant numbers of elected conservatives when they were first proposed. They are upheld by all but a few elected conservatives today. This is unfortunate. The norm in American history is the absence of the Fed, the IRS, and Medicare. Though the current inflation woes may have less to do with the nation's printing presses working overtime than with foreign oil pumps taking a vacation, it's still worth taking the long view: that something many Americans now dread--inflation--is the stated policy of their government.

Mitt Romney won Michigan decisively, making Republicans nationally more indecisive. There is no national frontrunner, just a series of regional candidates. This will play havoc on Super Tuesday, the day that was supposed to give the parties their nominees. With three candidates winning in the first four contests, Fred Thompson strangely getting a late bounce, and Rudy Giuliani waiting for the big states, the prospect of a party without a nominee after the primary season is real. How might a brokered convention go down? Jay Cost and Peter Baker give the 411. Perhaps even more interesting than a floor fight over the nomination is a floor fight over the nomination that involves people who opted not to run for president. If Rudy, or Mitt, or McCain can't get half of the delegates, then doesn't it say something negative about their candidacies? Why wouldn't a Newt Gingrich, a Dick Cheney, a Condi Rice, or some other 11th-hour candidate capitalize on the chaos in St. Paul?

Homer J. Fong wins the NFL Playoffs Pool with a 6-2 record. Home teams are in caps. All picks are against the spread. In addition to picking the team that will beat the spread, pick if the game will go "over" or "under" the designated total. Here are my picks:

PATRIOTS -14 over Chargers, UNDER 47
PACKERS -7 over Giants, UNDER 41

Make your selections in the comments section.

Without a dog in the fight, I'm rooting for a good slugfest. One needn't a vested interest in a contest to appreciate good competition. Spectators can merely enjoy the spectacle.

Should John McCain win tonight in Michigan, it's basically over. Mitt Romney drops out or becomes irrelevant. Rudy Giuliani, who banks on the support of people believing in his electibility, will see his supporters flock to McCain. Huckabee, without the half dozen candidates splitting the remainder of the vote, retains his evangelical support--but his piece of the pie shrinks relative to the competition (John McCain). The frontrunner will subsume the votes he had split with his since departed competitors. Republicans are frontrunners. They are the boring party. Someone who looks like he will win, will win. That's what John McCain will have going for him. He will be hard to stop.

So, if you are a political junkie, and want to witness history--a brokered convention in an era when early primaries are supposed to make such possibilities impossibilities--hope for a Mitt Romney win in Michigan tonight. What a chain of events it could set off. In South Carolina, voters will see it's still a race and perhaps vote for Mike Huckabee. In Florida, where Rudy Giuliani still leads in polls, the New Yorker could finally get his campaign on track. Mitt Romney would have reason to stick around through Super Tuesday.

And what a Super Tuesday it will be should no frontrunner emerge from Michigan. Twenty-one states will vote in GOP primaries or caucuses on February 5. Giuliani-friendly states such as New York and California will vote. The Romney home states of Massachusetts and Utah will cast ballots, as will McCain's Arizona. Five "Bible Belt" states could boost Huckabee. Without a national candidate, candidates will post victories in the regions on which they concentrate, throwing a monkey wrench in the process--so obviously designed to pick a candidate early on--that threatens to elongate the nominating season until early September, when the Republicans nominate a candidate. What's usually a formality could be anything but this year. With several candidates without incentive to drop out, each receiving boosts in varying parts of the country, delegates could give no candidate a majority.

This is the stuff of political dreams. Alas, dreams usually don't come true.

The old fusionist coalition of traditional values and supply-side economics that delivered the Reagan presidency is falling apart. "Supply-side economics had a good run, but continual tax cuts can no longer be the centerpiece of Republican economic policy," advises New York Times conservative David Brooks. "The demographics have changed. The U.S. is an aging society. We have made expensive promises to our seniors. We can’t keep those promises at the current tax levels, let alone at reduced ones." Goldwater-Reagan conservatives can finally, and ironically, empathize with the Rockefeller Republicans who felt politically homeless in the wake of the Goldwaterization of the GOP. The Republican Party, on so many different levels, is changing again--and not for the better.

Leftist billionaire George Soros bankrolled a study for the medical journal The Lancet that claimed that 650,000 people have been killed in the Iraq war, a number several times larger than other estimates of Iraqi war dead. The Lancet never bothered to tell its readers of Soros's involvement in paying for the study. Les Roberts, the antiwar professor who ran the project, told the Times of London: "In retrospect, it was probably unwise to have taken money that could have looked like it would result in a political slant. I am adamant this could not have affected the outcome of the research." What if Richard Mellon Scaife, rather than George Soros, funded a Lancet study on Iraqi war dead? Would the Lancet accept the research, or deem it tainted from the outset? Would Roberts still maintain that the money could not have affected the outcome of the study?

Should you or the government decide the temperature in your own home? Should you or the government decide whether you will be an organ donor or not? Liberals in California and the UK want to give government the power--what else is new?--to raise the thermostat and take your kidneys, liver, eyeballs, etc.

Why is Fahrenheit 9/11 considered a film, with all of the protections of the First Amendment, but Hillary: The Movie is considered a political advertisement, with all of the restrictions imposed by McCain-Feingold? A panel of federal judges seems poised to rule that the anti-Hillary Clinton motion picture violates the nation's campaign finance laws. McCain-Feingold, the illegal "legal" assault on the First Amendment used to impede this film, was not only supported by all of the major Democratic candidates, but by Republicans Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, and, of course, John McCain. As Jonah Goldberg puts it in his new book Liberal Fascism, "Free speech, too, is under relentless assault where it matters most--around elections--and it is being sanctified where it matters least, around strippers' poles and on terrorist Web sites."

A new study by the World Health Organization and the Iraqi government estimates the Iraqi civilian death count since the start of the war at 151,000. Sectarian violence and terrorist bombings certainly account for a huge chunk of this. But it's worth noting that this sort of chaos was not the norm in Iraq (although the organized violence of Saddam Hussein was) prior to George W. Bush's war of choice to root out non-existent weapons of mass destruction, retaliate against Iraq for its non-existent connection to 9/11, and establish a non-existent democracy in Iraq.

What's wrong with Rudy McRomney? Pictures answer the question better than my words could. Here's Mitt Romney at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser. Here's Rudy Giuliani, flanked by several of the usual suspects, speaking at a Handgun Control press conference. Here's John McCain touting the de rigueur anti-corporate, anti-free-market conspiracy theory. Put the three together, add some of Mike Huckabee's "compassionate conservatism," and you almost get Hillary Clinton.

With 6-2 records, Wayne Sash, ASDF, and myself are the champions of the Wildcard Weekend Pool. All picks are against the spread. Home teams are in caps. In addition to picking the team that beats the spread, you must pick whether the point total will go "over" or "under" the designated number. Here are my selections:

Seahawks +8 over PACKERS, under 41.5
PATRIOTS -13 Jaguars, over 49
COLTS -8.5 over Chargers, under 46.5
Giants +7.5 over COWBOYS, over 47

Make your picks in the comments section.

The New Hampshire exit polls are fascinating. Peruse them here and here. A few points jumped out. There is a Hillary/Obama gender gap. Hillary Clinton, for instance, won 47 percent of the woman vote but just 30 percent of the man vote. Did Miller Lite's Men of the Square Table make a man rule about voting against Hillary? A disproportionate share of the 18-24 vote went to Barack Obama (61 percent) and Ron Paul (19 percent). About a third of Republican voters are regular churchgoers. Less than a fifth of Democrat voters are regular churchgoers. Should Republicans lose in November, they can at least take consolation in the fact that more than eighty percent of their opponents will burn forever in hell (I'm just keeding! I'm just keeding!). McCain, who at times has out-hawked the Bush administration on Iraq, won the antiwar vote overwhelmingly among GOP voters. Similarly, on the Democratic side, voters who want to "withdraw as soon as possible" from Iraq, opted for Hillary Clinton, a candidate who won't even support pulling out the troops from Iraq in the next presidential term. Just a quarter of Democrats in New Hampshire are married with children. Almost two-thirds of New Hampshire Republicans approve of the war in Iraq.

* John McCain is 2008's co-comeback kid. His campaign, largely as the result of the immigration issue, was coming off the rails last summer. Now he's won the all-important New Hampshire primary and delivered a presidential victory speech.

* Hillary Clinton, winning all along in New Hampshire, stumbled in the aftermath of Iowa. Just as her political obituaries were being written, Clinton received an adrenaline shot in the form of a victory in New Hampshire. Obama would have been hard to stop. Now Hillary will be the one hard to stop. She stole the big mo' from Obama. Can he ever steal it back?

* Reports of the first black president were greatly exaggerated. Every four years, naive observers tell us that youth will make the difference. Barack Obama's young supporters told pollsters that they would vote for him. They did, but not in such numbers necessary to make those poll numbers stand up for the final poll.

* Even Bay Stater Paul Tsongas won in New Hampshire. Mitt Romney, despite outspending the competition, couldn't win his neighboring state. To know him isn't to love him.

* On the one hand, Ron Paul overcame some eleventh-hour, bush league politics by his media opponents to win a respectable share of the vote. On the other hand, New Hampshire was made for him and he still couldn't place. Maverick campaigns--Buchanan '92, McCarthy '68, Hart '84--have traditionally found a friendly environment in the Granite State.

* Fred Thompson garnered an anemic one percent in New Hampshire. Should he drop out before the South Carolina primary--where he still retains double-digit support in some polls--and endorse McCain, he could finally become a player in the 2008 election.

* Huckabee won Iowa. Romney won Wyoming. McCain won New Hampshire. Rudy Giuliani figures to capture a few of the most populous states. It could be a long time, perhaps as late as September 4th in St. Paul, before we know for sure who the Republican nominee will be. Political junkies can dream, can't we?

Can you hear it? The sound of Hillary Clinton's campaign in free fall. She placed in Iowa. She is down by more than ten percent in several polls of New Hampshirites. Barack Obama is absolutely destroying her in two recent South Carolina polls. Spouses share love, not necessarily personality traits. Bill Clinton was the "comeback kid" because he had energy, tenacity, and charisma. Hillary has none of the above. As I noted in an earlier post, her strength relied almost entirely on perception--that her winning the nomination was inevitable. Now that Obama has burst that bubble, Clinton must find something real--perception, though it often corresponds with reality, isn't necessarily reality--on which to attract potential voters. I am definitely going to win isn't a strong campaign pitch when your campaign doesn't look like it's going to win.

A few items make me pessimistic about the GOP's chances in the fall. Democrats not only outnumbered Republicans among Iowa caucus goers, but more viewers tuned in to Democrats than Republicans debating on ABC Saturday night. Both parties have exciting contests on their hands, but the Democrats have the exciting candidate.

After watching the media analysis of the ABC News debates, I am beginning to understand, but not agree with, the enthusiasm for Romney among some conservatives. The media despises him. He is public enemy number one among the fourth estate. Conservatives, more so than ever, seem to take their cues from the Left. When the Left hates someone, be that person George W. Bush or Mitt Romney, the Right reflexively likes him. It sounds strange, but Mitt Romney is the beneficiary of all that hatred.

A writer for the Boston Herald characterized Ron Paul supporters as "people you want to have a beer with." I got a conflicting report from a local bartender over the weekend. In December, Paul's supporters invaded his bar, wringing out their wet socks in the pub, spouting 9/11 "truther" conspiracy theories, and taking up space without buying drinks. The bartender actually felt compelled to comp drinks for several hot girls who, upon witnessing the Boston bar turn into the Star Wars bar, were ready to bolt for the door. I didn't want to believe it, but the truth is the truth (unless it's a truther's "truth"). I am a Ron Paul supporter, and hope people want to have a beer with me (or even buy me a beer). But I wonder how off-putting some of Paul's supporters, particularly ones who abuse the campaign by dragging in fringe issues not supported by the candidate, are. Can't we trade some of these people for some milquetoast McCain supporters and a few Eagle-Scouts-for-Romney to be named later?

If McCain beats Romney in Romney's backyard, the former Massachusetts's governor's campaign is in serious trouble. He alone has fought tooth-and-nail to win Iowa and New Hampshire. To loosely paraphrase Frank, if Romney can't make it here it's hard to see how he can make it anywhere. Alas, he can always rely on his various "home" states--Michigan, Utah, Massachusetts. But, like Hillary, he has a lot riding on New Hampshire. Losing won't be the death blow, but it might very well set it up.

Ron Paul is clearly in it for the long haul, but a strong finish (third?) in New Hampshire would give his campaign a boost. With the state's libertarian tradition and Free State invasion, one would think New Hampshire would be tailor made for Paul's Old Right views. Lest anyone think a presidential bid that doesn't land the presidency is a fool's errand, remember Pat Buchanan's 1992 wake-up call to conservatives that put the immigration issue on the political map. He was villified within the GOP for proposing a border fence. Now support for a border fence is obligatory among Republican presidential candidates. Sure, Barry Goldwater lost the race for the presidency in 1964. But his ideas won sixteen years later. Paul may not win the nomination, but his mere presence ensures a debate (instead of just a clash of personalities), revives forgotton ideas that were once standard, and, perhaps, launches a movement that results in candidates more committed to smaller government, a Washingtonian foreign policy, and the Constitution. In other words, if you run an ideas-based campaign, you can still win without actually winning.

Like the very public, non-secret ballot voting in Iowa, the New Hampshire tradition of Dixville Notch and Hart's Location casting midnight ballots is so cool. When those votes get cast, you know primary day--something special like the Olympics that happens only once in four years--has officially arrived.

Who are you going to vote for? Beating the Granite State to the punch, FlynnFiles offers the first-in-the-nation primary. It's open enrollment. Vote for your favored Democrat or Republican. Give props to your candidate. Go negative and diss candidates. Make your vote count in the comments section.

The NFL playoffs are here! The pool is a little different. As always, pick the team you believe will cover the spread. Then, pick weather you think the point total of the game will go "OVER" or "UNDER." Home teams are in caps. Here are my selections:

SEAHWAKS -3.5 over Redskins, OVER 40.5
STEELERS +2.5 over Jaguars, UNDER 39.5
Giants +3 over BUCS, UNDER 39.5
CHARGERS -9.5 over Titans, OVER 40

Make your selections in the comments section.

The actual election isn't for another ten months. But the parties begin the process of nominating their candidates tonight--in Iowa. Don't complain, city slickers. The network news divisions, Hollywood, Washington, DC, and the publishing industry are all light years from Des Moines. Let them have this. When it comes to caucuses, Democrats have more fun--as this CNN.com article demonstrates--even though Republicans are more Caucasian. The quirky rule of eliminating candidates with less the fifteen percent of the vote, and allowing their supporters to chose another candidate, could really make the supporters of Kucinich, Gravel, Richardson, Dodd, and Biden the kingmakers in the Hawkeye state.

Mitt Romney stands to lose the most over the next five days. He was the frontrunner in Iowa until last month, and he was the frontrunner in New Hampshire until last week. Now he's getting beat by a former fat guy from Arkansas and a septuagenarian whose candidacy was pronounced dead with last year's amnesty for illegals legislation. Next to Romney, Hillary Clinton has the most to lose. The uber favorite to win the nomination, Hillary is now in the fight of her life with John Edwards and Barack Obama. Should either man beat Hillary, the veneer of invincibility and inevitability that has been fueling her support will shed. Because Fred Thompson's candidacy began with such high expectations, poor showings in the first two contests could make for a quick exit. Duncan Hunter, an excellent conservative congressman, should be gone soon too. Among the Democrats, Iowa could make quick work of Senators Dodd and Biden. By outperforming polls, and media annointed frontrunners like Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani, Ron Paul could send a message to doubters that his candidacy is for real.

Predictions? I haven't a clue, but here goes...

Democrats: 1. John Edwards 2. Barack Obama 3. Hillary Clinton
Republicans: 1. Mike Huckabee 2. Mitt Romney 3. Ron Paul

What, other than the bias exhibited so obviously by its network's debate moderators, would prompt FoxNews to exclude Ron Paul from its last debate before the New Hampshire primary? Ron Paul has out-fundraised all of his Republican rivals for the presidency in the fourth quarter of 2007. "Given that Paul has about twice as much support in New Hampshire than Thompson, he's likely to finish ahead of Giuliani in Iowa, and he's raised more money in the fourth quarter than any of them, it's hard to understand how the Republican network can justify excluding Paul," CBSNews.com's Steve Benen writes. "What's more, the state GOP has said it wants Paul on the stage, meaning that it's Fox News specifically that's decided to exclude the Texas Republican from the event." Add to this the fact that Ron Paul has been in public life for more than a quarter century elected to Congress more than ten times--he's not Alan Keyes, for Rupert's sake--and FoxNews's decision appears even more petty.

Every change in the weather is a scientific omen for the worshippers in the Church of Global Warming. Hurricane Katrina, seasonal heat waves, and even thunderstorms represent harbingers of the doomsday to come for these primitive sophisticates. So what do the congregants in the CoGW make of the season's beatings we've been taking in the northeast? Maine and New Hampshire just broke snowfall records for December. In Boston, with more than two feet of the white stuff piling up, it was the second snowiest December on record. January started with another six inches of snow where I live. Weathermen predict snow, again, today, and that the mercury will hit 3 tomorrow. Unfortunately, their predictions on climate are more reliable than those of environmentalists.

To loosely paraphrase Tip O'Neil, all weather is local. It is local to place and time. It may be warming where you live, but it's not warming here--at least right now. All weather is fluid, too. The temperature changes from season to season. It changes from century to century, too. Heck, fifty-five million years ago snakes, alligators, and other critters dwelled within the Arctic Circle. There's been some global cooling since then.

The cold and snowy days recently experienced in the northeast disprove global warming as much as the hot and humid days of August prove it. They're both anecdotal, and when we are discussing trends occuring over millenia, we might as well view annual fluctuations in the same light. CoGW congregants will admit as much in these frigid days. But wait for the mercury to flirt with the triple digits, and one day's temperature will become evidence of the next century's temperature. This is idiotic, perhaps even more idiotic than using the arctic tundra that is my city to contradict global warming. If we were experiencing a massive warming trend, we wouldn't expect to be setting records for snowfall, would we? In other words, weather extremities would be confined to the other end--the hot end--of the charts.

But it is not so, and my aching back, worn out from snow shovelling, and my cold feet, prove it. Global warming would be pretty cool right about now.