The Year of the Rat

Happy New Year everyone! This past weekend was Chinese New Year. For those who keep track of such things, this year is the Year of the Rat. Strangely fitting for the year of a presidential campaign.

I believe it was a very wise man who once said the following: “You’ve got to know when to hold em, / Know when to fold em’ / Know when to walk away / Know when to run.” This past week, one Republican candidate figured it was time to walk away. One other candidate is still sitting at the table counting his money - what little of it there is.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has decided to call it quits. Well, to be accurate, he decided to call it suspended. I guess it sounds less wimpy than quitting. In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (which is apparently an actual organization), Romney surprised his supporters and most of his staff by announcing that “for the good of the party”, he would pull out of the race so that the party would have time to coalesce around the front-runner and build a united front in anticipation of a difficult campaign against the Democrats in the fall. Although he had been labeled the only true conservative in the Republican race by self-proclaimed “true conservatives” like Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, Romney continually lost religious voters to Huckabee and moderates and independents to McCain, leaving him a fairly small pool of supporters to draw from. Add that to the flip-flopper label and an inability to clearly express any ideas not involving the perpetual fear of terrorism, and it’s pretty easy to understand why his campaign never got any traction. And so ended one of the most inefficient political campaigns in history. But, ever the businessman, Romney was clever enough to say he was suspending his campaign. In reality it’s no different from quitting, but there is a distinct technical difference. Suspending his campaign allows the former governor to retain control over his delegates, providing him with a certain amount of leverage against the presumptive nominee. At this point Romney has not made any public proclamation of his intentions, but it might be reasonable to assume he is giving consideration to joining the ticket in the vice presidential slot. There are plenty of reasons why he may not want that job, but there are also a couple reason why he might be interested. If a McCain/Romney ticket were to succeed in their bid for the White House, four years from now a President McCain would be older than pasteurization and may not be interested in running for a second term, leaving the reigns to the former governor. That would place him in the position of incumbent, which he may be able to handle better than that of insurgent.

However, Mike Huckabee is doing everything he possibly can to ensure that it will be his name and not Romney’s which follows McCain on the 2008 presidential bumper stickers. On Saturday night he blew away the competition in Kansas, edged McCain in Louisiana, and came within two points of the Senator in Washington State. (There is even some dispute over the Washington state loss, as the state GOP party chairman decided to call the election for McCain, even though Huckabee was only 242 votes behind with 1500 votes remaining to be counted.) He’s kind of like that drop of water lodged in your ear after you’ve been swimming. So small, yet enough of a pain to make you want to dig your ear out with a spoon to get rid of it. Huckabee wants everyone to know he must be taken seriously. So far he appears to be succeeding.

Which brings us to the one guy left in the race who is not succeeding. Could someone please explain to me why Ron Paul is still forcing himself on the political process? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for advancing the political process by introducing alternative ideas into the mix. But Paul has selected the wrong venue for his experiment. The two political parties in this country have been established far too long and are too set in their ways to be significantly changed from within. If he wants to make a point, he needs to make it from the platform of a third party and quit wasting his time syphoning 2% of the vote from candidates with a legitimate chance of winning the Republican Party nomination.

Call it a clean sweep for Barack Obama. Four states, four victories, all by convincing margins. The conventional wisdom coming into this past weekend’s contests was that although he was expected to do well - if not capture all four states, Louisiana was to be Obama’s strength due to its large African-American population. But while he did take Louisiana, he captured Nebraska and Washington - states with, let’s face it, no black people - by a far greater margin. That would seem to suggest that his support extends beyond minority populations. What that means is open to interpretation. But whatever it means, Obama appears to be on a roll. If he can keep this roll going through Maryland, Virginia and D.C. this coming Tuesday, he will present a serious challenge to Senator Clinton’s campaign of inevitability in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.

My apologies to Senator Clinton. In viewing some election coverage this weekend I noticed I have been spelling her name incorrectly up to this point. Apparently Hillary is spelled with two Ls. Who knew? Anyway, the senator is attempting to downplay Obama’s victories by chalking them up to excited and energized activists and African-Americans. According to Clinton, Obama’s wins are coming in states that Democrats have no hope of winning in the fall (like Washington and Connecticut?), but her wins are coming in states the Democrats must win in the fall. That’s an interesting assertion. If I remember correctly, both Al Gore and John Kerry took New York, Massachusetts and California in 2000 and 2004, yet still lost their respective elections. I find it difficult to believe that Democrats would fail to capture states they usually carry if the only difference was Obama’s name at the head of the ticket instead of Clinton’s. However, I do think it more likely that Democrats might capture states they DO NOT normally carry if the difference is Obama’s name at the head of the ticket instead of Clinton’s. At this point, Clinton maintains a slight lead in delegates - a lead she finds shrinking every week - but faces the ever increasing momentum of the runaway freight train that is the Obama campaign. Sensing a need for a change in strategy, she has shaken up her campaign staff and brought in some new blood. She’s had a good month of fundraising since revealing that she had been having financial difficulties, so perhaps she will put a little effort into regaining some momentum between now and the Texas and Ohio primaries.

Oh, this just in. Al Gore is refusing to endorse either Democrat during the primary process. He doesn’t want to burn any bridges in his attempt to have environmental issues become an integral part the eventual nominee’s platform. It is said that wise men know when to hold their tongues.

A lawsuit has been filed by an interest group based in San Francisco to stop the indiscriminate, warrant-less searches of computers and cellular phones by Customs agents at the U.S. border. This may come as a surprise to many people (as unfortunately millions of Americans have never set foot outside their own country), but U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents have the authority to search, disassemble, remove, destroy and confiscate pretty much anything they want for pretty much any reason. If they think you’re hiding something on your person, you will be searched until they find what they are looking for, or are satisfied that you don’t have it. If they think you are hiding something in your car, they can take it apart - and they don’t have to put it back together, regardless of whether they find anything or not. These searches used to be limited to persons and physical objects. But in this post-9/11 era, border searches have been expended to include whatever may be on your hard drive, or floating around in cyberspace as well. The problem with this broad authority is that people carry private, sensitive personal and business information on their computers and cellphones. High level employees of multi-national corporations often carry trade secrets on their laptops, which may be rifled-through at anytime by any agent. And there is no guarantee that whomever is looking at your computer will forget what they’ve seen once they hand it back to you. Citing national security and the interests of the government in eliminating cross-border crime and child pornography, the administration claims the right to do whatever they damn well please whenever they deem it necessary. So this battle is likely to continue for a long time to come.

Apparently the Grammy Awards were held last night. I guess I didn’t realize people still wasted their time with awards shows anymore. But since they do I guess I should probably say something about it. Even when I watched awards shows in the past, I never liked the Grammy's. They’re a bit like the Oscars for me in that it is an entire show dedicated to an industry (a failing one at that) patting itself on the back. Jazz musician Herbie Hancock took home the coveted Album of the Year award, leaving the talented pain-in-the-ass whiner Kanye West - winner of three awards himself - visibly upset and in no mood to be interviewed after the show. British pop-tart, alcoholic and drug addict Amy Winehouse also took home five statues in addition to two performances, validating all her self-destructive habits with industry approval. A lot of people seem to think it’s cute that she’s this rebellious soul singer sticking her fingers in the eyes of the establishment. But there’s nothing rebellious about a musician drinking and snorting cocaine - they all do it. There is, however, a certain segment of the population that likes to watch famous people destroy themselves and laugh about it in line at the supermarket. Whether the name is Winehouse or Spears, as long as people continue to reward them for wasting their lives away, we’ll continue to have something to read about while waiting to pay for our bagged lettuce and frozen pizza.

Scary moments in upstate New York last night during an hockey game between the visiting Florida Panthers and the Buffalo Sabres. In a freak accidental collision with a teammate, Panthers forward Richard Zednik severed his carotid artery against the skate blade of teammate Olli Jokinen, requiring life-saving emergency surgery. Zednik is currently in stable condition at a Buffalo hospital. Mid-way through the third period Jokinen was hit hard just outside the face-off circle to the left of the Buffalo net. he went face-first to the ice, sending his skate straight up into the neck of Zednik who happened to be skating close behind him. Somehow Zednik managed to skate three-quarters of the length of the ice with blood streaming from his neck before collapsing into the arms of teammates and trainers and being taken off the ice. The game was delayed for twenty minutes while crews scraped the gruesome trail of blood from the ice and the Commissioner debated whether or not to continue the game. Once it was learned that Zednik would be okay, the powers that be decided the game would continue. There is a certain degree of irony to this story. The only other time this has happened in the NHL was also in Buffalo in 1989 when Sabres goaltender Clint Malarchuk had his jugular vein severed by a skate blade in front of his net. Bleeding profusely, Malarchuk somehow managed to leave the ice under his own power and miraculously, after receiving over 300 stitches to close the wound, he returned to practice four days later, and finished out the season in goal for the Sabres. The moral of this story is that maybe it’s time for the NHL to look at requiring some type of neck protection for their players. The Malarchuk incident led to a mandate that all goaltenders wear neck protection. The Steve Yzerman slap-shot to the eyes incident two years ago should have led to a mandate that players wear at least a visor, if not more. Maybe the Zednik incident will lead to the development of some type of sleeve or turtleneck undershirt of sorts to protect players from freak accidents like this. Hockey is a violent sport, but no one, fans nor players, want things like this to happen.