Under the Fedora, Polls Narcissism and Trivia

It is nearly New Years day but more importantly for me, it’s nearing New years eve, not only the seventh day of Christmas but the day of my annual open house with a ton of cleaning and cooking to do, so this Under the Fedora will be shorter than normal.

The soap opera As the Polls turn has made yet another turn as Rick Santorum has started to see his numbers move upward. Unlike the previous candidates who have peeked earlier he seems to have picked the perfect time to start to move up. If this move had been a week earlier then it would have built expectations and the game is all about meeting expectations early when it comes to attracting donors.

I may have said this before but it’s worth repeating we keep hearing two different takes on Ron Paul, either an Iowa victory is Armageddon:

or it means nothing:

I’m really sick of people saying either, The whole point of having elections is to find out what the voters think, and for good or for ill if Paul or Romney or whoever wins Iowa it means the majority of voters who bothered to register an official opinion preferred that candidate over others.

And that applies in NH too. Romney should win it in a walk but even if he wins it by a nose it is still superior to not winning.

Nobody ever got a trip to Disney world after a superbowl for exceeding expectations.

(and here is a piece of Superbowl trivia: Who is the only player ever to win Superbowl MVP while playing for the losing team? Answer below or on google if you want to cheat)

And as for Armageddon Remember when the election of Obama meant a new permanent Democratic majority?

Nothing is more fleeting that conventional wisdom

I was at CPAC when Ann Coulter told us that if we nominate Romney it means Obama’s re-election, she believed that right up until the day she didn’t. Now apparently if we nominate Santorum not only do Republicans lose this election but we lose them forever using California as an example:

Massive legal and illegal immigration has already so changed the California electorate that no Republican can be elected statewide anymore. Not so long ago, this was a state that produced great Republican governors and senators like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, S.I. Hayakawa and Pete Wilson.

If even Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, two bright, attractive, successful female business executives — one pro-life and one pro-choice — can’t win a statewide election in California spending millions of their own dollars in the middle of the 2010 Republican sweep, it’s buenas noches, muchachos.

Ann misses two important points here:

First as Stacy McCain who is currently in Iowa covering the race in person while breaking speed limit laws with reckless abandon reports Rick Santorum’s vote against e-verify was as part of the McCain Amnesty bill: He managed to score this interview with Santorum on the subject

Why would Ann Coulter criticize me for voting against the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill? I mean, Ann, should I have voted for amnesty? Should I have voted for comprehensive immigration reform? Because if that’s what you’re saying, then, doesn’t sound like you’re the real conservative here.

And secondly, as I recall neither Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman ran as full blown conservatives. Perhaps if they would have the results might have been different.

Incidentally although we would love a tip jar hit here, consider hitting Stacy McCain Tip jar, his trip to Iowa is funded by you the reader and his visit to NH next will be too.

Stacy also mentions that Rachel Uchitel (who apparently is famous for something or other) is pregnant and the TMZ headline is ….odd

Rachel Uchitel The Sex of My Fetus Is …

Have you every heard anyone in their lives refer to a baby they don’t plan on aborting as “their fetus”? These days the secular left has two sacraments, abortion is one.

The other is Gay Marriage and in Illinois we’ve discovered that it’s trumps everything, even the adoption of kids.

Roman Catholic bishops in Illinois have shuttered most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in the state rather than comply with a new requirement that says they must consider same-sex couples as potential foster-care and adoptive parents if they want to receive state money. The charities have served for more than 40 years as a major link in the state’s social service network for poor and neglected children.

It’s a win for narcissism , the rule’s backers get to feel better about themselves and get to demonize the church as well, and if a few kids don’t get adopted, well that’s too bad.

Forgetting that the church has been placing children since before the time of Columbus, let alone the time of the US, I’ll let Matthew Kelly acquaint you with some history.

Raise your hand if your parents are nobility, if your parents are king queens dukes earls and duchesses there wouldn’t be a single educated person here today if it wasn’t for the Catholic church because prior to the Church’s introduction of education for the masses people like you and I were never educated

If you are reading this post, thank the Catholic Church.

On a related note Mark Steyn (via the Anchoress) talks about the demographic consequences of a state without religion:

The problem with the advanced West is not that it’s broke but that it’s old and barren. Which explains why it’s broke. Take Greece, which has now become the most convenient shorthand for sovereign insolvency — “America’s heading for the same fate as Greece if we don’t change course,” etc. So Greece has a spending problem, a revenue problem, something along those lines, right? At a superficial level, yes. But the underlying issue is more primal: It has one of the lowest fertility rates on the planet. In Greece, 100 grandparents have 42 grandchildren — i.e., the family tree is upside down. In a social-democratic state where workers in “hazardous” professions (such as, er, hairdressing) retire at 50, there aren’t enough young people around to pay for your three-decade retirement. And there are unlikely ever to be again.

When life isn’t valued and when children aren’t valued, but I wouldn’t worry if I was mark or Richard Fernandez who also writes on the subject this week. As the Islamic population that hasn’t abandoned their faith moves into Europe with birth rates far beyond yours, European villages won’t be empty, they will simply be Muslim.

That will of course involve some sacrifices for women as in England:

Figures from the Metropolitan Police show that in the 12 months to April 2011 there were 443 incidents reported as cases of honour violence or forced marriage in London alone – more than double that in 2007-8.

And elections like in Egypt

The parliamentary elections are fraudulent. I am not saying this because I lost- I lost fair and square- but because it’s the truth. The fraud happened on the hands of the election workers and the Judges. People in my campaign were offered Ballot boxes, employees and judges in polling stations were instructing people who to vote for and giving unstamped ballots to Christians in polling stations where they are heavily present to invalidate their votes, and the Egyptian bloc has about half a ton of correct ballots- ones that showed people voting for them- found being thrown in the streets in Heliopolis, Ghamra, Shubra, Zaitoun, Alexandria, Suez and many other districts. The amount of reports of fraud and legal injunctions submitted against these elections are enough to bring it all down and have it done all over again. Hell, a simple request for a vote recount would be enough to expose the fraud, since the ballots were thrown in the street.

And for free speech right here

WordPress Takes Down “Bare Naked Islam” Blog After Threats From CAIR

but hey the future belongs to those who show up.

I’d write something about the first week of the basketball season, but I don’t want to put you to sleep. This week in Football will keep you going. That’s one of the few things that football has over baseball, there are usually at least 4 or 5 games with playoff implication on the final day of the season.

TRIVIA ANSWER: Chuck Howley of the Dallas Cowboys who won the award in Superbowl V while his team lost to the Baltimore Colts 16-13.

BTW does it irritate you as much as me when sports casters say a team has “nothing to play for” When you are being paid at minimum $100k plus a year to help your team win I’d say every game you have something to play for.

A little TV? My wife was watching NCIS LA yesterday on demand, The episode’s plot revolved around the stealing of an EMP device that was going to be set off. The first thing you noticed when the suspects were listed was one was a Somali who would not shake hands with a woman. The moment I saw that scene I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the guy would not be him. Sure enough the potential terror attack was over student loans and the inability to get a job.

There is a reason why I don’t watch many current series, give me I love Lucy any day:

This has been a grumpy Under the fedora, but I’ve got a lot to do, may the New Year be a happy one for you and all of yours..