Movie Review - Deck The Halls

This is a decent enough family movie (it's rated PG). Matthew Broderick is willing to spend the movie looking like a fool for laughs, so good for him. Danny Devito is pretty good, too, as is that girl from Arrested Development (she's very funny, and she needs to weasel her way into some Jud Apatow movies). Kal Penn has an uncredited cameo.

In addition, there is some older talent. Don't worry, the twins that play Devito's daughters were born in 1984:

Also, they were in that Acuvue commercial for contact lenses that correct astigmatism.

In summary, this movie kind of cliche at times but still moderately entertaining.

Mitt Romney's problem

I think Fred Barnes nails it in The Weekly Standard.

Iowa Republican caucuses recap

Now that THAT'S out of the way, here are my thoughts on the vote last night.

Huckabee obviously got the boost he needed to stay alive. However, Iowa has a strange electorate that isn't easily extrapolated to other states. It can't really be called liberal or conservative (it voted for Gore in 2000 and Bush in 2004). There is a large share of Evangelical conservatives, which is obviously where he got his support. However, the Republican party's strongholds are (basically) southern and western states. Southern Evangelicals don't fall for Huck's goofy populism on economic issues or his pansified foreign policy stances. They are much more rounded conservatives. I have a hard time believing that he can win in the south (and with South Carolina coming shortly, I imagine he'll falter there). In addition, voters in western states are small-government types, so he would fall flat there. Thankfully, he doesn't have much chance of winning the nomination. Let's not forget that Pat Robertson, of all people, finished second in Iowa in 1988. That's right: PAT ROBERTSON. That's why I don't put too much stock in Iowa's results.

Mitt Romney finished second. It's disappointing to him since he put so much effort into Iowa, but it's still a nice finish. He should do well in New Hampshire on Tuesday, and he's still got the strongest national operation. He'll be around and still have a good shot at winning the nomination.

Fred finished third, just ahead of McCain. Fred got in late and didn't exactly blitz the state with advertising. In addition, the media has pooped all over him from the start of his campaign, so this is a pretty good finish. He should win South Carolina, as the more people see of him, the more they like him. Plus, South Carolina will absolutely appreciate his type of well-rounded conservatism.

McCain's finish is pretty nice given that he didn't spend much time there, and he will do well in New Hampshire. Luckily, New Hampshire's almost (and maybe more so) as goofy as Iowa. They love "mavericks" or whatever, and they went for McCain big in 2000 against Bush. Let's also not forget that the mainstream media wets themselves over him, so that's a nice advantage. However, I just can't believe that Republicans are big enough masochists to nominate a man who has made a career out of beating them up. At least that's my hope.

Rudy finished 6th, but he spent almost no time or effort there. He's been running a national campaign on big, serious issues. The more I hear from him on issues like national security and the size of government, the more I like him. His immigration views are still pretty bad, though. His gambit of blowing off everything until February 5 (when there are a bunch of big states he could do very well in) may pay off. We'll see.

Oh yeah, Ron Paul finished 5th. No chance, though.

Huckabee's win last night

I am pretty tired, so I was going to save this until tomorrow morning. However, reading Quin Hillyer's post on the American Spectator Blog got me fired up again. The topic? Mike Huckabee.

Hillyer was a reporter in Arkansas during Huck's years as governor, so he has followed him for a long time (you can tell he's worked up by the lack of self-editing):

The steady drip-drip-drip of small untruths and ethical shenanigans and the like during my time covering Huck in Arkansas turned me from a Huck admirer to (obviously) a critic. THe man lies the way Bill CLinton does, with great facility and no conscience about it. That's why I say the man is NOT authentic, that he fakes sincerity and authenticity quite well. It's all an act. As is his"nice guy" schtick. Why do you think he hired Ed Rollins? So he can play good cop to Rollins' bad cop, and blame Rollins for all the shivs his campaign sticks into his opponents. And as Mitt Romney found out when Huck did the Mormons/Jesus/Satan routine for the New York Times, Huck knows how to use a shiv. As badly as the big media (rightly) criticized Huck for those comments, they worked remarkably well to drive up Evangelical fears about Mormonism -- just as Huck intended.

Here's the thing that really gets me about Huckabee: his supporters in Iowa (Evangelical Christians) love him because they see him as honestly giving voice to their concerns. Hillyer has shown in a previous article that he's actually pretty dishonest and unethical, and he doesn't have much of a political center. Yes, he was a Baptist preacher, and apparently he knows how to play Evangelicals like a fiddle.

I have heard and read that his support comes from Evangelicals who feel like they have been taken advantage of by the Republican party. While they reliably vote Republican, those in power then ignore their concerns, or so the narative goes. Now comes Huckabee, and he promises to take care of their concerns on social issues.

(This is actually a gigantic load of crap, though. What issues important to social conservatives have Congress and our born-again Evangelical president not helped them on? Can they name one? If anything, us fiscal conservatives have gotten continually kicked in the teeth on spending.)

Fine. They can vote for whoever they want. However, they need to consider the broader implications of nominating him. The Republican coalition has been held together by 3 types of conservatives: social, fiscal, and national security. Huckabee is ONLY a social conservative, and he's liberal on the other two main parts.

Let's take a step back to 2007, though, and remember what many social conservatives and pundits were saying. If Rudy Giuliani, who is personally pro-choice and pro-gay rights, among other things, was nominated, Republicans would risk the social conservative base staying home and thus losing the election. They needed to at least nominate a consensus candidate, such as Mitt Romney (no matter what you think of him, his platform was of broad-based conservatism) for the sake of the party. This despite Rudy's pledge to nominate originalist judges to the federal courts, which is easily the most important thing he could do for social conservatives' cause.

So Evangelicals are a bunch of babies that will stay home unless one of their guys gets nominated, but us fiscal and national security conservatives have to sit back and vote for a pro-life Jimmy Carter-type in the general election in Huckabee? This is a direct assault by social conservatives on fiscal and national security ones, as they clearly don't give a crap about what we think. Go ahead, idiots, nominate Huckabee. Then watch him suffer a Goldwater-style loss as we sit home because you didn't care about us.

My message to any Evangelicals who read this (and I have no illusions that any will) is that you need to think twice before you continue voting for this guy. It's the quickest path to having activist judges on the Supreme Court put there by a Democrat.

Iowa Democratic caucuses recap

For what it's worth, here's what I think about the Democratic caucuses from last night.

I don't have a lot of original ideas about what happened, but basically Obama was able to break through Hillary's sense of inevitability. A few months ago, Hillary was planning on running a national campaign and barely doing anything in Iowa, as her lead everywhere was huge. Then she realized that she could put Obama away by campaigning hard in Iowa and beating him soundly.

Well THAT didn't work out. The main problem, I think, is that people don't like Hillary. By that, I mean she is an unpleasant person. The more people see of her, the less they like her. That's kind of amazing, since she's been very well-known since 1992, but her retail campaigning skills are so bad that it turns people off.

What's more, Iowa (as I'll explain more in my Republican summary) is a quirky state. Obama and his message fits in very well there. Will it continue? I don't know. Hillary still has the best organization nationally, along with tons of money. However, with her sense of inevitability broken, it just may cascade for Obama, carrying him to the nomination.

I haven't written about Edwards because if he can't win Iowa, he won't win anywhere else, either. He's done.

Another anti-Iowa rant

This from Vodkapundit. Lots of good comments, too.

Excellent e-mail posted on The Corner

By Kathryn Jean Lopez:

I know, this is how politics in America works, it's all Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, all the time. But look at the ideological variety on the GOP side, and tell me that if we listen only to the winners coming out of those three states, how can they POSSIBLY produce a consensus candidate for 2008?

The simple fact is, they can't, and I increasingly fear, they won't. I for one know that, as conservative as I am, I couldn't possibly vote for Huckabee in November, and John RINO McCain would require seriously gritted teeth to vote for after all the insults he's hurled our way.

Just because bat-crazy Iowa loves its Huck and looney-tunes New Hampshire loves to vote for mavericks, this means I'm going to lose any chance at all to support Fred, Mitt, or Rudy in a mere month's time? And this is accepted as normal and sane why??

I agree, and I hope these other three hang in there in time for other states to come. I'm not terribly worried about Thompson, though, since I think he'll do very well in South Carolina. They have a very different type of evangelical Republican than is in Iowa, and Fred fits right in with them. I'll have MUCH more later today, though, in my analysis of Iowa and the state of the race for both parties.

I'll be taking a break from 11 to 2 to listen to Rush Limbaugh's take on it, too.

Fox News is killing me

First, Mike Huckabee was on Fox and Friends getting his ass kissed. Rush Limbaugh has been hammering him lately for not being a conservative (and Rush is right), and Huckabee says he'd love to talk to Rush but can't get a hold of him. Yeah right! Rush would put him on his show for an hour if he wanted to be on, but he doesn't want to take the beating.

Now John McCain is getting the same treatment and flat-out lying about his record on taxes.

The worst part is the way the entire network craps all over Fred Thompson on a consistent basis. Right-wing network, indeed.

My theory is that anyone anyone who wants to crack down on illegal immigration gets hammered, and they kiss ass of any Republican who's for amnesty. It's been that way ever since they showed themselves to be for the Senate amnesty bill last summer. So if anyone out there thinks Fox is some bastion of conservatism, think again. It's just not as liberal as CNN or, God forbid, MSNBC. I anticipate more on this as the morning goes on.

UPDATE: Oh jeepers, now Jesse Jackson (ugh) is on. He just said that MLK was qualified to be Secretary of State. That's beyond silly.

UPDATE 2: Reporter Carl Cameron was just on to give some analysis from Iowa, and everything he said was basically wrong. I'll cut him some slack since he pulled an all-nighter, but he's still part of Fox's unrelenting negativity toward Romney and Thompson and ass-kissing of Huckabee and McCain.

UPDATE 3: As much as I complain, I still love the network because of all the hot chicks who work there. That says nothing about the new Fox Business Network.

Home sick and important presidential endorsement

I am home sick today, so there should be a crap-load of blogging today. Let's start off with an endorsement that may help swing some votes in the Democratic primary:

Scarlett Johansson Stumps for Obama in Iowa

If she trashed it up a bit with her outfit I could be persuaded. Ok, maybe still not.

A look into Iowa and the caucuses

From an Iowa-based humorist. Since I've never been to Iowa, I assume it's all true, even this part:

Luckily, Iowa is an almost perfect miniaturized 1/100th scale model of the United States. For example, Northeastern iowa is filled with gritty and glitzy urban financial centers like Dubuque, "Iowa's New York." Iowa's Missouri River West Coast teems with hi-tech Gay entertainment centers like Sioux City ("The San Francisco of Iowa") and Council Bluffs ("The Malibu of Iowa"). With its fashionable supermodel nightclubs and machine gun-wielding drug lords, far southeastern Keokuk is our Miami Beach. And, in the center of it all, there is Des Moines, which is famous as "the Des Moines of Iowa."

Best commerical ever

Featuring George Costanza, but young, skinny, with a full head of hair, singing, and slinging McDLT's.

Special message from "Fred Thompson"

From October, here's "Fred's" vow to our country:

If you elect me as your next president, you will see this woman on TV nearly every day, jogging around the Rose Garden in tight Lycra shorts, bouncing all over the place with a figure that Americans of every stripe—from surgeons to truckers—will want to nail. Yours will be a first lady who is not only hot enough to appear in Playboy, but who might actually be willing to appear in Playboy. And if you choose me to be your next president, that is exactly what she'll do, in the November 2012 issue, guaranteeing me a second term once the public gets a good look at those truly incredible bazongas.

This one's for A-How

A blog that tracks the wrong use of the word "literally"; i. e., Dan Diedorf saying, "Peyton Manning is literally carving up the Chiefs' defense."

Religion of peace

Indeed.

Romney out?

A former Huckabee team member is saying that there are a couple of big scandals regarding Romney:

Joe writes: “Mitt Romney will never be President — I won’t be surprised if Mitt Romney wins the Iowa Caucus. I will be surprised, however, if he’s still in the race when the South Carolina primary comes around. Even if the impending scandal that has been rumored for weeks doesn’t derail his campaign (I can’t say what it is but you should hear about it before Jan. 8), his inherent dishonesty will eventually do him in.”

We'll see. Romney has been very clean his whole life, but that may be why something could sink him. It would have to be pretty big, though, given how much effort and money he's put into his campaign so far. I am skeptical.

It would be too bad, though, because it would knock out my second-favorite guy in the race. Ugh.

Yet more on McCain

This from John Hawkins regarding immigration. Here's the finale:

So, you want amnesty?

Vote for John McCain.

You want the fence, or as John McCain has publicly referred to it "the godd*mned fence" to be quietly mothballed and never be finished?

Vote for John McCain.

You want 12-20 million uneducated, non-English speaking manual workers who came into this country illegally and laughed in contempt at Americans and our laws to become citizens so that they can start collecting welfare, Social Security, and Medicare?

Vote for John McCain.

You want to be told in another 20 years that there are 20-30 more illegal aliens and that we have to make them citizens, too, because the last batch of 12-20 million illegal aliens can vote now and they're demanding that we do so?

Then vote for John McCain because what I've written above is ultimately, exactly what you will get.

These people are idiots

Had they never seen an episode of a reality TV show before? It's not like a documentary, you fools!

We were ruined by reality TV: The humiliated families who dreamed they would be stars

More on McCain

Quin Hillyer at The American Spectator has an excellent piece recapping why conservatives dislike John McCain. His overall analysis at the end is spot-on, too:

In contrast to McCain and Huckabee, the three other "major" GOP candidates -- Giuliani, Romney, and Fred Thompson -- all actually governed very much as conservatives when they had the chance. And Thompson has a record of both talking and walking the solid conservative line that is almost entirely unblemished by any heresies against the most basic of conservative issue stances. (Long-shot Duncan Hunter, meanwhile, has a quarter-century record as a conservative leader on taxes, defense, and immigration.)

Iowans in their caucuses and New Hampsherites in their primary have the first chances to winnow the Republican field. They would be doing the whole country a great disservice if they winnow one or more of the real conservatives out of the race, while boosting the chances of the two candidates who have done the most to poke the eyes of the Reaganites.

To all the Florida people I know...

...this is why I don't want to hang out in the ocean.

Who buys a car for someone besides the super-rich?

I am annoyed by these ads for the Lexus December to Remember ads they have every year. This lady agrees. Who just buys a car for someone?