Stunning Poll

A short time ago, I posted about word coming from the Clinton campaign that insiders were very worried about Hillary losing in New Hampshire. I mentioned that their internal polling must be hideous, indeed. Apparently, hideous isn't nearly a strong enough word. Disastrous would be more apt, according to USA Today:

Sen. Barack Obama has opened up a 13 percentage point lead over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the battle for votes in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll conducted in the state from Friday through this afternoon. The results were just released.

On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain is 4 percentage points ahead of Mitt Romney.

The surveys of 776 New Hampshire residents who are "likely" to vote in the Republican primary and 778 New Hampshire residents who are "likely" to vote in the Democratic primary were all completed after the news from Thursday's Iowa caucuses had been reported.

Obama is at 41% to Clinton's 28%. She's in trouble. The Clinton campaign juggernaut is careening down the ditch throwing slushy rooster tails into the cold New Hampshire air.

UPDATE: And why Mark Penn should have his resume out: Where is the bounce? That would be the thing ricocheting over your head, Mark.

Well, It’s Not A Marvelous Night For A Moondance

The Moondance Diner, that is. Once a famous New York eatery located close to the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, the diner had been truck all the way across the country to Wyoming. Where the snowfall crushed it.

GREEN RIVER, Wyo. (1010 WINS)  — The Moondance Diner made it safely through a 2,100-mile trek west from New York City last summer, but the roof of the famed eatery was damaged by snow during the bitter Wyoming winter.

The diner's owners Cheryl and Vince Pierce said they'll continue renovating the space after parts of the roof and walls were damaged Thursday, the Casper Star-Tribune reported. The couple hopes to open the restaurant later this year in LaBarge, a town of about 500 at the base of the Rocky Mountains, where the diner now sits.

Well, at least they are going to try to restore it. Preferably with reinforced structural elements. The diner was rescued from a developer's wrecking ball earlier this year. They are building luxury condos on the former site in Manhattan. The weather hadn't helped that process, either:

A die-hard group of about 20 former patrons and fans waited through a long night of preparations to bid farewell to the
74-year-old Manhattan eatery, said Michael Perlman, a Queens preservationist and diner aficionado. They blew kisses and took photographs as the Moondance began a 2,100-mile trip to LaBarge, Wyo., he said, describing the moment as bittersweet.

“I am really grateful that it has a secure home in Wyoming,'' Perlman said, “but we're sort of sad that a New York City icon is abandoning us.''

After a developer bought the Moondance's site for luxury housing, Vincent Pierce and his wife, Cheryl, saved the doomed diner by buying it for $7,500. He said he expected the trek through nine states to take about a week, with the route depending on where the 14-foot-high load can pass under bridges along the way.

Pierce and his father-in-law, Kent Profit, will share the driving. Profit owns the truck, and the flatbed trailer was borrowed from a company in Wyoming.

The diner's departure came after a three-day bureaucratic snarl over city permits and a torrential rainstorm that briefly delayed the project.

I personally love those old-style rail car style diners that were so common in New York back in the day - Upstate had a lot of them, too. There was one in Oswego, New York that used to serve the best ham and cheese omelet I ever had.

Welcome To Cape Codger

Demographics and some bad local planning have combined to suddenly turn the population of Cape Cod much older than the rest of the country. Well, sort of. The median age is increasing much faster there than in the nation as a whole - and they have only themselves to blame for the situation.

Since 1990, the median age on the scenic arm jutting out from the mainland has risen about seven years, from around 39 to just under 46. Nationwide, the median age of 36.4 rose about half as much during the same time, according to Peter Francese, director of demographic forecasts at the New England Economic Partnership.

If the trend continues, this region faces crushing costs for health care of the aging, and fewer workers for an already stretched pool of employees.

Some Cape Codders also fear their historic, hardworking communities will become exclusive places for the wealthy, similar to nearby Nantucket.

"I don't think you can call any community healthy that can't support all generations of a family," said Maggie Geist of The Association to Preserve Cape Cod. "The Cape is well past that point."

About a quarter of Cape residents are over 65, compared to about 13 percent nationwide.

Another telling statistic shows the Cape had 5,000 more deaths than births from 2000 to 2006, the sixth-highest percentage loss in the nation. That puts the Cape ahead of retiree-laden Florida's Pinellas, Volusia and Pasco counties.

Part of the problem stems from the Cape's shorelines and landscapes that draw visitors and inspire famous residents such as the Kennedys. President John F. Kennedy once said: "I always go to Hyannisport to be revived, to know again the power of the sea, and the Master who rules over it, and all of us."

The Cape capitalized on that natural beauty in the 1980s by building up tourism to replace the flagging fishing and farming industries, and some of the tourists were smart enough to buy second homes.

Now those visitors are retired and moving in. From 1980 to today, the population boomed from 148,000 to 225,000.

"It's kind of the unintended consequences of a robust tourism economy," said Wendy Northcross, executive director of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce.

Many Cape towns, concerned about preserving their character and natural resources, reacted with policies aimed at curbing development.

But that had the effect of pushing prices too high for younger families with children. From 2000 to 2006, about 10,000 people aged 35-44 and their children left the Cape, Francese said.

The writer of the piece spins the whole thing as a pending health care crisis and demographic disaster. But the towns there really brought this down on themselves. The restrictions on home building have made McMansions the order of the day and there is little undeveloped or unprotected space left on the cape. That has resulted in the weird demographics. The implication is that the government is going to have to step in to solve the crisis.

The governments are the ones who caused it for heaven's sake.

Happy Birthday To Me

I should probably pay more attention to things like this - as Jim Lynch does. Today is the Crabitat's second anniversary. Yes, I know that for some of you it seems like much, much longer. But yes, Blue Crab Boulevard turned two today. Thanks to everyone who stops by to visit my little slice of the blogosphere. Thanks for all the tips and encouragement. Thanks for helping make all this worthwhile.

I thought it appropriate to set the flaming penguins out.

Wheels Coming Off Clinton Campaign?

The Politico appears to believe that is precisely what is happening. According to their report, based on interviews with Clinton insiders, Hillary Clinton appears to be heading for defeat in New Hampshire and South Carolina - and the campaign has zero clue as to how to stop Obama's momentum. But they have also decided not to unleash their negative campaign just yet. They're scared to death it would backfire.

“You can’t launch a negative ad and expect that it’s going to be effective over a three-day period,” said a Democratic strategist familiar with the campaign’s thinking. “And the blowback could be significant.”

On Sunday, the Clinton team was out instead with a new game plan, sharpening points she made in Saturday night’s debate and trying to undermine Obama without going nuclear.

“Rhetoric vs. Results, Talk vs. Action,” is the new formula.

As Clinton campaigned through the snow in a Manchester neighborhood Sunday morning, her aides on the ground in New Hampshire insisted that they’re optimistic. They pointed out that New Hampshire’s traditionally high turnout leaves Obama less room to bring new voters to the polls than he had in Iowa.

“In New Hampshire, it’s a little bit easier to predict turnout” than in Iowa, said Nick Clemons, Clinton’s state director here. “I’m very confident we’ve modeled correctly.”

But Clinton advisers also fear the New Hampshire strategy is a stop-gap measure, with a harsher approach likely if she loses New Hampshire. Conversations with campaign officials make it clear they feel besieged, and unsure how to sap Obama’s momentum.

In Iowa, Clinton aides have said she drew levels of support that might have been enough to win in an ordinary year, but she was swamped in the stunning turnout produced by Obama’s popularity among young voters. While taking pains to insist in public that New Hampshire’s turnout model is very different from Iowa’s, Clinton’s aides say privately that they still fear a similar wave on Tuesday.

“It’s still possible to win or take a close second in New Hampshire, but if the turnout even begins to mirror what happened in Iowa, all bets are off,” said a Clinton adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The adviser added that the campaign has come to accept another reality of the early process, which is that African-American voters are convinced that Obama is viable and shifting rapidly in his direction.

“We’re going to lose South Carolina,” he said.

Wow. Their internal polling must be hideous indeed. Mark Penn is mentioned by name in the article as being under fire both within the organization and from the outside as well. They say that some sort of realignment will be needed if Clinton does lose these important primaries.

Want to bet Penn "resigns" to "pursue other opportunities?"

The Gorilla His Dreams

An American tourist in Rwanda came between a silverback gorilla and the object of the ape's affections, a young woman in the tour group. The enraged gorilla took exception to that and grabbed the man and tried to drag him off into the jungle. The entire sequence was caught in a series of pictures published today in The Daily Mail.

One moment he was standing with a video camera as the magnificent creature quietly held court before a group of sightseeers. The next, he was being dragged backwards through the undergrowth to a terrifyingly uncertain fate.

Quite what provoked the normally placid silverback into stamping his authority so forcefully is uncertain.

He has long been the undisputed leader of a family of gorillas in the 39-strong Susa group that inhabits the Virunga mountain forests on the northern border of Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo, and is well used to dealing with troublemakers.

He is even quite chummy with humans, whose money and patronage helps support the planet's desperately dwindling gorilla population.

There are currently fewer than 650 individuals scattered across several hundred square miles of this region and, without help, they could vanish.

So it's clearly a jungle out there – and sometimes homo sapiens can suffer the consequences for taking liberties with our most intelligent mammalian cousins.

The clue probably came when the male started to parade intimidatingly close to the group of tourists, led by local rangers – beating his breast like a drum.

Suddenly, he charged at the crowd. Then he snatched a blue-anoraked man by one ankle and dragged him towards the trees.

Maybe the thrill of seeing gorillas in the wild had caused the tourist to forget the advice the rangers would have given before everyone set off on the trek – no flashguns… no noise… don't point… look away if they make eye contact… and melt into the ground if they charge.

It worked a treat for Sir David Attenborough – but whispering subservience patently wasn't adequate this time. One likely explanation is that the tourist – an American – got between the male gorilla and the true object of its attentions, a young female on the far side of the group.

It is not a good sign that the gorillas are now demanding tribute in the form of tourist brides. Where's Tarzan when you really need him?

Toxic “Cure”

I've mentioned the mercury present in compact fluorescent light bulbs before, but Britain has just issued an astonishing alert about the problem. They say that a room must be evacuated for at least 15 minutes if one of the bulbs breaks. There are a long list of other safety measures as well.

Energy-saving light bulbs are so dangerous that everyone must leave the room for at least 15 minutes if one falls to the floor and breaks, a Government department warned yesterday.

The startling alert came as health experts also warned that toxic mercury inside the bulbs can aggravate a range of problems including migraines and dizziness.

And a leading dermatologist said tens of thousands of people with skin complaints will find it hard to tolerate being near the bulbs as they cause conditions such as eczema to flare up.

The Department for Environment warned shards of glass from broken bulbs should not be vacuumed up but instead swept away by someone wearing rubber gloves to protect them from the bulb's mercury content.

In addition, it said care should be taken not to inhale any dust and the broken pieces should be put in a sealed plastic bag for disposal at a council dump – not a normal household bin.

None of this advice, however, is printed on the packaging the new-style bulbs are sold in. There are also worries over how the bulbs will be disposed of.

The Daily Mail made up a handy warning sheet, but screwed it up by using radiation trefoils as the warning symbols. They should have used the toxic symbol - the traditional skull and crossbones. There are additional health warnings out now that the light from the bulbs actually causes serious flareups of certain common forms of eczema.

Lovely. The "cure" is literally worse than the disease. Lighting represents a fraction - a very small fraction - of the average home's energy use. Now the governments are demanding you install toxic waste in your home.

Canned Deer

Laurel, Montana was the scene of the newest depravity of the Animal Uprising™. The animal overlords loosed their newest secret weapon there: the canned deer.

A deer got its head stuck in a coffee can Friday morning near Laurel.

Laurel Police were called to 313 Laurmac Lane just before 6 a.m. to try to help the distressed animal. Officers Jim Huertas and David Firebaugh found a "small deer with a coffee can firmly affixed to its snout," according to their report. The can covered the deer's mouth, nose and eyes.

As the officers slowly approached the deer - which could not see - the animal spooked and ran, eventually bumping into a parked car and a fence. The collisions pushed the can farther onto its face.

A spectator gave the officers a rope. While Firebaugh slowly worked the deer into a contained area, Huertas attempted to lasso it. He missed on the first go. The deer ran headlong toward Huertas, who was able to rope it on the second attempt.

The officers then managed to catch the deer nad free it from its can. As usual, the story misses the real danger here. Imagine the horror if you open a can of coffee in your kitchen, only to be assaulted by a deer leaping forth from the can! It gives a whole new meaning to "Starbucks," doesn't it?

A Danger To Democrats

A rather interesting look at Michael Bloomberg's possible entry into the Presidential race as a third party candidate by the New York Times today indicates that he might be more of a danger to the Democrats than the Republicans. And some leading Democrats are afraid of exactly that. Bloomberg, the Times notes, is not really an independent-type guy, he's really much closer to a hardcore liberal Democrat. Only further left.

Hundreds of miles from the hustings of New Hampshire lurks a possible presidential candidate who supports gay marriage, abortion rights and stricter regulation of handguns. Who doesn’t mind taxing the rich on their income or big companies on their carbon emissions. Who says that deporting illegal immigrants would destroy the nation’s economy. And who is not necessarily averse to adding more bureaucrats to the government payroll.

That politician — Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York — has spent months laying out his vision for a post-partisan approach to politics that would take the best from left and right.

Yet a close reading of the policies Mr. Bloomberg has promoted during his mayoralty suggests that Mr. Bloomberg actually has a lot in common with one party’s leading candidates — the Democrats — and not so much with the other’s. Indeed, on issues like gay marriage and gun control, Mr. Bloomberg stands well to the left of top-tier Democratic candidates like Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama……

……

He has started a national campaign for stricter rules on handguns, something even most Democrats in Washington gave up on years ago because it was too politically risky. And he has come to publicly support the right of gay couples to marry, which most Americans oppose.

“If you put him on the national Congressional spectrum,” said Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale University, “he would be in the middle — of the Democratic Party.”

In running for president, some Democratic leaders quietly worry, he would draw heavily from their own voters, making a Republican victory possible.

If you read the whole thing, you'll see that his self-proclaimed bipartisan approach really isn't anything of the sort. He is 'way over to the left on pretty much every topic. I don't see this guy as drawing any Republican support to speak of, but he could be a real problem for the Democrats if he does jump in.

Scenarios

Over at The New York Post, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann have an analysis of where the Democrat and Republican races stand at the moment that will make people think. They predict that the outcome of the Democratic contest should be decided by the time the "Super Tuesday" primaries are finished. But they have a fairly dismal take on the Republican contest. It may actually come down to a brokered convention.

Hillary cannot be knocked out even if she loses all the early primaries. Her berth in the finals is assured by her national standing, her strength among “super delegates" (Congressmen, Senators, Governors and State Party Chairmen who automatically get votes at the convention) and her financial clout. But she can and will be bloodied. Meanwhile, if Obama wins in New Hampshire, particularly if he does so by a convincing margin (which we think is likely) he will probably go on to sweep Nevada and South Carolina, the other two early primaries. His status as front runner will be solidified - and that's where his troubles will start.

Once Hillary is no longer in the dock, undergoing the scrutiny of being a front runner, Obama will have to endure the slings and arrows. Hillary will probably play the race card. Not overtly and not directly, but she will speak in code saying that Obama can't win. What that really means is that a black cannot prevail in 2008 in the United States. We, presumably, aren't ready.

But Obama will benefit from a generational surge that animated his Iowa victory. In the caucuses, he carried voters under 30 by four-to-one. In a contest that had been about transcending race and gender, the key factor on which it turned was age. Generation X saw in Obama a way to push the boomers off the stage, taking their drugs and permissive lifestyle with them. To these young voters, Obama is the future and the Clintons are the distant past.

Unfortunately, I suspect that Hillary will do exactly what Morris is predicting. Morris, of course, knows the Clintons far too well to have any illusions about what they are capable of. I'll send you over to the post to read their take on the Republican scenarios. It isn't particularly pleasant, nor do I think it is a disaster in the making, however. I think it is going to come down to who wins the Democratic nomination - and how the winner gets there. If it is Clinton and if she wins by playing a soft racism card, she will lose to whoever the Republicans field.

Arctic Storm Continues To Pound West

A desert town in Western Nevada flooded yesterday when a levee burst under the pummeling rain falling all over the area. An area that normally receives between 5 and 8 inches of rainfall annually got almost 2 inches overnight. Snowfalls in Washington, Oregon and California have reached dangerous levels, with the US Weather Service issuing warnings that trying to travel in those areas would put a person's life at risk.

Avalanche warnings were posted for the backcountry of the central Sierra Nevadas, and flash-flood warnings were in effect for many areas of Southern California, where large stretches of hillsides had been denuded by last fall's wildfires.

Remote sensors and ski areas in the high Sierra Nevada had recorded as much as 5 feet of snow since Friday morning, and the west side of the Lake Tahoe Basin had 4 to 5 feet by Friday night, the National Weather Service office in Reno said on Saturday.

As much as nine feet of snow is possible in the Sierras by Sunday. "Attempting to travel in the Sierra will put your life at risk," the weather service warned.

An 80-mile stretch of Interstate 80 from Reno to Applegate, Calif., was closed Saturday night as the fresh wave of snow moved in.

The weather was also blamed for a 17-car pileup that closed the westbound lanes of I-80 near Patrick, just east of the Reno-Sparks area, Saturday afternoon.

The National Weather Service recorded wind gusts of up to 165 mph on mountaintops northwest of Lake Tahoe on Friday.

More than 450,000 California homes and businesses were in the dark Saturday, down from more than 1.6 million the day before. It could be days before all the lights are back on, Pacific Gas & Electric officials said.

Accuweather reports that the storm has now moved into the Rocky Mountains and will be wreaking havoc there but still more bad weather will hit the West Coast, so it is not over yet. The East is seeing a warming trend at the moment, but that will end abruptly when the storm systems push into the Midwest. They are not predicting the return of the Arctic temps just yet, though. Which is nice - because the Midwest has been frigid for far too long.

Fear And Loathing In New Hampshire

Hillary Clinton backers in New Hampshire are frankly terrified at what they see as Obama's unjustified rise in the polls. No, they actually do think it is unjustified and that their candidate deserves the nomination almost as a birthright. There are some utterly astonishing quotes from supporters of Clinton in this Washington Post story.

MILFORD, N.H. — The pillars of the New Hampshire Democratic establishment had filled the front tables at the party's annual dinner Friday night, the better to applaud enthusiastically when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, their overwhelming choice for president, talked about her readiness to lead.

But when Sen. Barack Obama took the stage, hundreds of Obama supporters swarmed the front of the hall, surrounding their tables and sending people such as Beverly Hollingworth to the exits.

"I'm really worried about him," said Hollingworth, a member of the state's Executive Council and a former state senator, as she headed for the door. "Other people have been working their whole life for change, and have made good progress. This is just rhetoric."

With the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, Obama is riding a very big wave, spreading consternation and bewilderment through the ranks of Clinton supporters here struggling to make sense of what is unfolding before them.

The article describes the huge demographic shift that New Hampshire has undergone in the past few years. Some 25% of its registered voters are new since the Clinton years in the 1990s. Many of them are registered as independent. And the New Hampshire Democrats loath the newcomers:

Mary Louise Hancock, the 87-year-old grande dame of the state's Democrats, said she "resented" that independent voters were poised to influence the outcome of the Democratic primary, saying it turned the vote into a "personal-liking affair" dominated by "students and the trendies."

You know what? That one remark, if widely circulated in New Hampshire, could be enough to tip the race to Obama. That attitude is exactly what is not needed for a candidate with Clinton's high negatives. It is guaranteed to cost votes. I'm stunned that a longtime pol would even make such a remark.