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As I have predicted from the start, Giuliani is done, much to NRO editor Rich Lowry’s shock and awe:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows a continuing slide for Rudy Giuliani. In the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination, it’s Mike Huckabee at 21%, John McCain and Mitt Romney at 15% each, Giuliani at 13% and Fred Thompson at 12%.

Why is Giuliani done with 13 percent when Ron Paul is more viable than ever with less than half of that? Because all Giuliani ever had going for him was his supposed electability based on his standing in the national polls. Now that’s gone too.

The Tennessee Toad is a non-starter, or if you prefer, never started, so that leaves Huckabee, Romney, Paul, and McCain. I think McCain is entirely a media creation, but we’ll have to wait until after New Hampshire to confirm that. Romney’s Mormonism renders him hopeless even if he wasn’t a confirmed liar – his little fib about his father’s march with Martin Luther King is only the latest to surface – so things should get very interesting very soon.

As he melts down, Captain Underoos has become increasingly amusing. “Admitting that he didn’t see the march with his own eyes, he said, “I ‘saw’ him in the figurative sense.”

As one wag has already commented, “it depends what the definition of ‘saw’ is.” I can’t wait to see how Hugh Hewitt attempts to explain this one away – hey, maybe Romney saw his father marching with those missing golden spectacles!

UPDATE – NRO reports that a giant fork just speared Romney too:

the Boston Globe is reporting that, in a 1978 interview, Romney claimed that he himself had also marched with Dr. King. In an email to the Globe, the campaign acknowledged that this was not true.

Just happened to notice this while reading a little Terry Pratchett over lunch:

If you are a subject in a monarchy, you are ruled by the monarch. All the time. Waking or sleeping. Whatever you – or they – happen to be doing.

It’s part of the general conditions of the situation. The queen doesn’t actually have to come around to your actual house, hog the chair and the TV remote control, and issue commands about how one is parched and would enjoy a cup of tea. It all takes place automatically, like gravity. Except that, unlike gravity, it needs someone at the top. They don’t necessarily have to do a great deal. They just have to be there. They just have to be.

It does not speak well for the intellectual level of much Christian theology that an atheist humorist has a better grasp on the concept of sovereignty than many, perhaps even most, American Christians today.

As the Evangelical Outpost points out, Whit Stilman appears to understand the way young women’s minds work:

Rick Von Slonecker is tall, rich, good looking, stupid, dishonest, conceited, a bully, liar, drunk and thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic. In short, highly attractive to women.

[Tramp is] a self-confessed chicken thief; an all around sleaze ball. What’s the function of a film of this kind? Essentially it’s a primer about love and marriage directed at very young people, imprinting on their little psyches that smooth-talking delinquents recently escaped from the local pound are a good match for nice girls in sheltered homes. When in ten years the icky human version of Tramp shows up around the house their hormones will be racing and no one will understand why.

That is fiction, of course. But there’s no shortage of evidence of this sort of behavior in the real world, as JW relates in an email about his former life as a girl’s best friend:

Your blog about “what happened to the nice guys” hilariously reminded me of my last week as a woman’s best friend. It went something like this:

Friday: Female best friend, 38 and pretty, leaves town for a wedding. Takes 28-year old unemployed loser to keep her company. He tells her he brought no money after he orders dinner. Annoyed, she pays for everything and bangs him.

Saturday: He acts like he doesn’t know her at the wedding reception, spending all his time dancing and phone number swapping with someone younger and hotter. Annoyed, she bangs him at the hotel later.

Sunday: She drops him at home and calls him a few hours later. His roommate makes fun of her for the way she serviced him in bed all weekend.

Monday: I listen to her cry about his not bringing money, ignoring her at the wedding, and cutting up about her sexually to his roommate. She just can’t find a good guy (as if any of the employed and decent men in her fan club would have ever been invited.)

Tuesday: I play cards and I’m not home when she calls (and calls).

Wednesday: I return her call and she doesn’t have time to talk because she needs to get showered before bad boy gets there to “talk” about his behavior over the weekend.

Thursday: She calls me and I tell her it burns me to listen to her non-stop whining about this asshole’s behavior, since she’ll just bang him again (and she didn’t deny that happening). She yells at me not to call him an asshole since he was there for her, which is more than she could say for me on Tuesday when I knew she was hurting. I hung up on her and have barely spoken to her since.

It is amazing how hard this woman, who never seemed to have the time before, would try to get me on the phone once I didn’t want to talk to her anymore. I was 34, and I was admittedly a little pathetic when it came to her. Got married at 35 to someone better.

The lesson is this: unless you’re a committed voyeur, don’t be a woman’s best friend if you’re attracted to her. The main secret of the successful man is simple: pay no attention to what a woman says. Most of the time, she has already forgotten whatever it was that happened to come out of her mouth while the gamma male is still performing an exegesis on the precise meaning of the text.

Spacebunny was never my “girlfriend”. We never had a talk about our “relationship” and if we had, I wouldn’t have paid attention to anything she said anyhow. Her actions sufficed to convey her opinion on the subject. Now, it may sound a little strange to cite Ludwig von Mises in connection with male-female relations, but as he writes in the first chapter of Human Action, it is only an individual’s actions that are relevant, not his words.

To express wishes and hopes and to announce planned action may be forms of action in so far as they aim in themselves at the realization of a certain purpose. But they must not be confused with the actions to which they refer. They are not identical with the actions they announce, recommend, or reject. Action is a real thing. What counts is a man’s total behavior, and not his talk about planned but not realized acts.

Is Megan McArdle related to David Frum? I am somewhat puzzled at these obvious economic illiterates attempting to criticize Ron Paul on the subject of the monetary policy:

Ron Paul’s supporters see the might of his common sense slashing through the doubletalk of the financial solons. I see a really, really smart economist responding to Ron Paul the same way you react to Cousin Mildred when she corners you after Christmas dinner to complain about the flouridation of the water supply. What Congressman Dr. Paul is saying doesn’t make any particular sense; American consumers are not particularly suffering because of the decline of the dollar, the dollar is not declining because of Fed policy, and the Federal Reserve has nothing to do with a relative scarcity of oil and food, which is what is driving the CPI increases he complains about. If we were on the gold standard, oil and food would still be getting more expensive, and people on fixed incomes would still be feeling the pinch.

So, the dollar isn’t declining because of its increasing supply… forget macro, McArdle obviously doesn’t even know Econ 101. She also seems unaware that gold has gone from 275 to 800, which is a pretty good indication that oil and food would NOT be getting anywhere nearly as expensive on a gold standard.

To put things in an international perspective, Britain’s fifth-largest mortgage bank is being propped-up to keep it from failing and Switzerland’s largest bank needed to sell 10.6 percent of its stock to Singapore and a unknown Arab investor in order to secure its capital base, which was short the CHF 23 billion it managed to lose in the US housing market in only two quarters. (Notice that this meltdown is being called the “subprime crisis” in order to avoid scaring ignorant homeowners who have no idea what it means.) It’s worth noting that the head of Switzerland’s Federal Banking Commission told NZZ am Sonntag this week that the danger to financial institutions was far from over, as “The subprime crisis could spread to other credit markets, such as in the fields of credit cards, consumer credit, car financing, student loans or commercial credit.”

Translation from the translation of the original Cherman: “It ain’t over yet.”

I’m sure none of that could possibly affect the American consumer, who can’t possibly be suffering because the official statistics indicate solid economic growth and low inflation. What does the top Swiss banker know, in comparison with brilliant economic minds like McArdle and Frum?

In case you’re not absolutely certain that she’s a clueless economic illiterate with an unhealthy interest in the dismal science, Miss McArdle goes on to post this gem:

To a first approximation, zero. Oil is priced in dollars in the international market. The falling dollar has no effect on the price of oil. And inflation is a tiny contributor to the huge increase in gasoline prices.

Right, because the Fed-increased supply of dollars has only caused its value to fall against gold, the euro, the yen and the franc, but not oil. A commenter bitch-slaps her so hard that she must have done a full Linda Blair, as he quotes the Dallas Fed: “Research shows that a 10 percent reduction in the value of the dollar against the currencies of other oil-consuming countries leads to a 7.5 percent increase in the dollar price of oil.”

75 percent is “tiny”, right? I’d say this girl is borderline retarded, but then, as a plastic philosopher has informed us, math is hard for girls.

Rod Dreher points out that turnabout isn’t fair play on the Republican plantation:

It’s funny, but when it looked like Rudy Giuliani, a social liberal, was going to be the nominee, we didn’t see many, if any, establishment Republican opinion leaders freaking out over what kind of danger to the future of the party and the nation he represented….I think it’s fair to say that it was assumed that Giuliani would be a sound representative of the Republican Party, and that the social and religious conservatives would do like they always do and get in line….

But lo, it turns out that the candidate who’s caught fire comes straight out of the religious/social conservative wing of the coalition, and he is unsound on issues most important to the fiscal wing. It’s not supposed to work that way. Nobody at the elite level seems to expect the economic conservatives to suck it up for the sake of party unity. What does that say about the place of social conservatives in the party all these years?

I don’t support Huckabee nor am I a Republican, but Dreher’s complaint on behalf of social conservatives is eminently justifiable. The GOP elite can’t be trusted any more than the Dem elite, mostly because they both want pretty much the same thing even if one assumes that they’re NOT one and the same. There may be a lot more social conservatives in the Republican party than there are blacks in the Democratic party, but the role both groups have played within their parties over the last five decades is essentially the same. Social conservatives and blacks are supposed to be there to be obedient and mindlessly supportive of the decisions of their betters, they’re not supposed to actually believe that they have any right to an opinion in how massa’s house is run.

I do look forward to the inventive reasoning presented by Republican establishment “conservatives” as they somehow discover reasons to vote Democrat should Mike Huckabee, or better yet, Ron Paul, win the nomination.

UPDATE – Dreher and I are not the only non-Huckabee supporters who have noticed this. Erick from Red State writes:

You know the most damnably aggravating thing about this campaign season for me? I continue to feel compelled to defend Mike Huckabee and I’m still convinced he’d hurt the party were he the nominee…. The New York-Washington Corridor of Conservative IntelligentsiaTM loves the base when it does as it is told, but let’s not actually let the Jesus Freaks run things directly. You know, we’re all suppose to listen to James Dobson, but God forbid one of his ideological kin actually takes charge.

I especially love the way he quotes Rich Lowry talking about Huckabee’s disbelief in evolution. Um, Rich, given that 55 percent of Americans don’t believe in evolution and only 13 percent believe whatever the latest scientific spin on TENS sans God happens to be, Huckabee’s position would be the electorally rational one even if he wasn’t a creationist.

Yes, Virginia, you too may have to abandon your home and all your possessions to prevent the government authorities from taking your children away for the crime of not sending them to the local government propaganda mill:

A Utah woman who was ordered by a juvenile court judge to enroll her children in public school or lose custody of them has abandoned her home, furniture and other possessions to escape the order. Denise Mafi, a nine-year veteran of homeschooling, has confirmed to WND she and her children packed up their essentials – clothes and homeschool materials – and fled Utah over the weekend, spending more than 50 hours on a bus trip to another undisclosed part of the country.

There she has obtained an empty home, and is spending the Christmas break trying to find beds for her children and herself, and after the New Year, will involve the children in a local homeschooling process. “We’re shampooing carpets right now. We have no furniture. We have no beds,” she said. “But my kids are not going to public school. They are not going where Jesus isn’t welcome.”

Her home, furniture and other possessions left behind in Utah? “I’m not going back unless the judge removes the threat of arrest,” she said. “I’ll fight for the cause but I’m not going to be a martyr.”

The case erupted for Mafi because of an apparent paperwork glitch that could very well be the fault of her local school district.

Let’s see… her papers were not in ordnung so she was forced to flee to save her children. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it. Interestingly enough, a nearly identical scenario is playing out in Germany right now, with a number of German families found in violation of a 1938 Nazi school law that is still in effect being forced to take their children and flee to Austria and Switzerland.

The postwar period of relative peace is over. Interesting times are here again. Be aware that this is just the beginning.

Some of you may recall that I was wondering aloud about the unlikely possibility that Giuliani would be out of the picture by the convention a few months ago, and that was completely without seeing the Huckaboom coming in any way, shape or form:

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows the former New York City mayor now tied nationally with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 20% among Republicans nationally, just slightly ahead of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 17% and Arizona Sen. John McCain at 14%.

The significant thing is that Giuliani has lost 47 percent of his support before the votes start getting counted. He may well lose another half of what’s left before Iowa Republicans cast their ballots since his only serious appeal was that he was supposed to be the frontrunner.

Thompson’s all but out already. South Carolina should do for McCain again and Giuliani will probably drop out after Super Tuesday shows that he’s got no real national appeal. The only remaining questions are if Huckabee can win big enough to knock Romney out after Iowa and New Hampshire and what sort of curve Ron Paul’s expected overperformance will have on everything I wrote previously.

Krauthammer is half-sensible, but Kristol is reliably terrible. Ponnuru would be an excellent replacement and would give TIME an genuine conservative columnist for a change:

Two conservative Time magazine columnists are on their way out the door: Neither William Kristol nor longtime contributor Charles Krauthammer will be on contract with the magazine starting next month. Mr. Krauthammer confirmed the news to Off the Record, and a spokeswoman for Time said Mr. Kristol’s contract would not be renewed.

And according to two sources familiar with the discussions, Time is in negotiations with National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru to sign him to a contributor contract. Mr. Ponnuru, who in 2006 published The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life, has written twice for the magazine over the past month.

I quite like Ponnuru’s writing, and I hope this works out nicely for him.

The Objectivist and Pagan Santas are pretty good too:

Who’s that coming down the chimney? Nobody — that’s ridiculous. Atheist Santa shows up in a gray Toyota Corolla and knocks on your door. Once you let him in and he has cookies and milk — come on, even atheists love cookies and milk — he will explain to your child that Santa may love all the children of the world, but he has never submitted his claims of flying reindeer and magical present delivery to James Randi, who would gladly pay a million dollars if presented with irrefutable proof of his wild claims. However, as a gesture of goodwill, Atheist Santa will leave your child with a set of wooden periodic-table blocks and a scale model of archaeopteryx.

It’s funny, but let me anticipate PZ Myers and Brent Rasmussen by pointing out that it’s a totally unfair characterization of atheists, who not only love cookies and milk but also have morals and ethics and love their children, (or would, anyhow, if they ever happened to find a woman willing to civil-union them who didn’t later prefer an abortion to giving up her career in applied Women’s Studies), and even celebrate Winterval with various traditions including but not limited to the pagan customs later shamelessly stolen by evil Christians. Because Atheist Santa would never drive a gray Toyota Carolla, he’d drive an old gray diesel Volvo with a pine-scented air freshener.

One down, one to go for the Lizard Queen’s hit squad:

The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that Rielle Hunter, a woman linked to Edwards in a cheating scandal earlier this year, is more than six months pregnant – and she’s told a close confidante that Edwards is the father of her baby! The ENQUIRER’s political bombshell comes just weeks after Edwards emphatically denied having an affair with Rielle, who formerly worked on his campaign and told another close pal that she was romantically involved with the married ex-Senator….

In The ENQUIRER’s Oct. 22 issue, we revealed that Edwards, 54, was involved in a mistress scandal and the shocking allegations – if proven true – could devastate the Democratic hopeful’s campaign. At the time, we withheld Rielle’s name, but reported that an insider told The ENQUIRER that she claimed that she began the affair some 18 months earlier. She talked about her relationship in phone calls and e-mails. After our story was published, several political bloggers correctly identified “the other woman” as Rielle, a self-described filmmaker whose company was hired by a pro-Edwards group called One American Committee and paid $114,000 to produce videos for Edwards’ campaign.

The key to understanding the way the system works is realizing that most of the approved candidates are inherently broken. It’s like traffic laws, you’re supposed to be in violation of something at all times so there’s always an excuse to pull you over. Since all the major candidates have an Achilles heel, they can be removed from the process at any time should they start to believe in their own press or if a lesser candidate accidentally turn out to be more popular with the electorate than the anointed one.