WHO WOULD HAVE THUNK IT?

Surprise, surprise, surprise. We wake up this morning (those of us who hit the bag before the New Hampshire numbers really started coming in) to find out that Hillary Rodham has won the New Hampshire primary with 39 percent of the vote. That puts here about three percentage points ahead of Barack Obama and right back into the middle of an actual contest.

As I told my radio stations this morning. This is bad news for America, but absolutely great news for talk radio. The battle is still on!

News reports credit the regular suspects, die-hard Democrats and ... (Ta Da!) ... women. Political scientists have been telling us for months that the women were going to give Hillary the nomination and possibly the White House ... and it looks like they had that one right. Again --- the Founding Fathers had it right.

As I run through the blogs and articles this morning the question seems to be how in the wide, wide world of politics did the pollsters get this one so wrong? The pollsters, of course, are coming up with excuses. Let's see .....

• This is a bi-racial campaign, and they're hard to poll.
• Not only is this a bi-racial campaign, but it's a bi-sexual campaign as well, and they're even harder to poll.
• Respondents were lying.

I know ... it would be nice if we could come up with a better phrase than "bi-sexual" to cover this campaign, but if bi-racial works .. then we'll have to try to be consistent here.

My thoughts? Well, first ... what the hell do I know. I believed the polls, though I was surprised by them. One possibility is that New Hampshire voters who had told the pollsters they were going to vote for Obama got into the voting booth and started wondering if a black candidate could actually win the election. I would suggest that in those final seconds before a vote was cast the voter decided to vote for what they thought might be a more electable candidate.

Others are saying that Hillary's little crying jag on Monday made the difference. Women flocked to her when the tears started to fall. Will we see more? This video shows that Bill has decided to give it a shot. He shed tears at Hillary's win. All together now .... Awwwwwwwww.

This was an incredible political comeback, and Hillary certainly has the momentum now.

John McCain? Not going to be the nominee. Enjoy this one for a while, pal. Your opposition to freedom of speech and your support of amnesty for illegal aliens ... payback time.

ACTUAL RESULTS AND YOUR PREDICTIONS

Well, you guys did pretty well on the Republican side...but boy did you blow it predicting the Democratic results. But don't feel bad, you weren't alone. No one was predicting what happened on the Democratic side.

Democratic Results (with 96% reporting)

Hillary Clinton -----39%
John Edwards ----- 17%
Dennis Kucinich ----- 1%
Barack Obama ----- 37%
Bill Richardson ----- 5%

Republican Results (with 96% reporting)

Rudy Giuliani ----- 9%
Mike Huckabee ----- 11%
Duncan Hunter ----- 0%
John McCain ----- 37%
Ron Paul ----- 8%

Mitt Romney ----- 32%
Fred Thompson ----- 1%

And here's what you predicted:

THE AMAZING DENNIS KUCINICH

Did you hear my interview of Kucinich yesterday? Amazing, absolutely amazing. [We'll put it in this week's free Boortz Blast email newsletter for you. You can sign up here if you're not a subscriber.] Kucinich started rambling about getting rid of the Bush tax cuts and making the rich pay their fair share of taxes, so I decided it might be time to see if this 10th District Congressman from Ohio actually knew what he was talking about.

He didn't.

Kucinich has a long history in congress of trying to shift the tax burden away from low and middle income Americans onto the backs of the high-achievers. In 2003 he sponsored a law that would give a "refundable" tax credit to protect low and middle income people from having to pay Social Security or Payroll taxes. Kucinich, who is chairman of the "Progressive" (that means liberal) Caucus also proposed something he called a "tax dividend" for every man, woman and child. Well, almost every man, woman and child. He wanted to limit the dividends paid to the top 1% of income earners to only 1% of the total tax cut.

Well, there's our clue. Kucinich doesn't have any idea in the world how much of the total taxes are paid by the top one percent of income earners ... so I asked him two questions:

1. What percentage of total income is earned by the top 1% of income earners?
2. What percentage of total federal income taxes are paid by the top 1% of income earners.

The answers were astounding. Congressman Dennis Kucinich thinks that the top 1% of income earners earns about 60% of all income, and he thinks that they pay about 15% of all income taxes. The fact is that the top 1% of all income earners pull in about 18% of all income and pay 38.8% of all income taxes.

This is an astounding level of ignorance on such an important statistic. You can excuse a mother of three loading up on Happy Meals for her porky little kids at a McDonalds for not knowing this .. .but a member of the Congress? Remember .. the Clinton tax increase passed the House of Representatives by only one vote ... and Kucinich was there ... there without a clue ... there voting for a tax increase on people he thought earned 60% of all the income but were only paying 15% of all income taxes. Inexcusable.

AND THEN THERE'S RON PAUL

Ok ... now all of you left-wing anti-war moonbats and other various Ron Paul supporters can back off on all your emails asking me when I'm going to have Paul on my show.

Yesterday, while we were broadcasting from New Hampshire, we set aside two segments for a visit from Ron Paul. His campaign told Belinda he would be there. Sure enough, at the appointed hour, Ron Paul walks into radio row. He sits down to be interviewed by several radio shows, including that of my Jones Radio stablemate (and all-around good guy) Ed Schultz. Me? He walked right on by. Refused to do the interview. His campaign staff told Belinda that he wouldn't appear on my show because of some of the things I've said about him on the radio. I guess that would be my repeated assertions that I could not support Ron Paul, even though he gets many things essentially right, because he cannot be depended on to protect this country from Islamic fascism.

So .. there you go. No real loss, because Ron Paul is going absolutely nowhere in this campaign. No sense wasting any more time on him and the flakes supporting him. Yes ... I know that there are many sensible libertarians in Paul's camp. Your voices aren't being heard .. .they're being drowned out by the peace-at-any-price crowd that has hijacked Paul's campaign.

APOLOGIZING TO AHMADINEJAD

A few months back, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad came to speak at Columbia University. Fine. We let him speak. That's the American way. It was a great testament to our country's principals of freedom of speech. Because of the public outcry, Columbia President Lee Bollinger was forced to give Ahmadinejad a less than welcoming introduction. The madman then made his speech, refrained from visiting ground zero, and that was that.

Well now an academic delegation from Columbia University finds it necessary to visit Tehran and formally apologize to Ahmadinejad. Not an email. Not an official letter. No. Columbia University professors and deans of faculty feel the need to travel all the way to Iran to say "I'm sorry our president introduced you in such a way that may have offended you."

Give me a freakin' break. Apparently since the speech, President Bollinger has been widely criticized by deans and professors from the departments of history, anthropology, Middle Eastern studies, philosophy and Islamic studies. My question is, why? Why do these academics feel the need to apologize to man who runs a country that knowingly supports terrorism ... a country that just days ago threatened to suicide bomb three of our navy ships? The need to appease Islamic radicals starts right here, with these peace-at-any-price professors.

Remember, please, that Columbia is the home of one of the most "respected," if that's the correct word, journalism schools in the country. Think about that for a few moments before we move on.

EXPENSIVE HEALTH CARE

In 2006, the nation's healthcare bill was more than $2 trillion. That's an average of $7,026 for every person; a 6.7% increase in costs, which is well over the rate of inflation. Most of these costs come from just 10% of the population. These people account for over 60% of the healthcare costs.

Just what do you think is the underlying reason why these costs are increasing? More government involvement. Did you Democrat voters read that? More government involvement is leading to increased prices. I say this because the role of government in healthcare has grown - yes, even under President Bush. (Well, since every other area of government has grown under Bush, why not healthcare?) The prescription costs paid by the federal government have increased significantly, thanks to Medical drug benefits that were proposed by Bush and passed by a GOP Congress.

Health economist Jack Rodgers says that we are on a path to the government being a larger and larger payer for healthcare ... and in the long term, that means being the majority payer. Currently, federal, state and local governments already pay 47% of the nation's healthcare costs. And if we keep this up, the government's share will be more than half by 2017. If Democrats like Hillary Clinton or John Edwards or even Barack Obama get their hands on our healthcare system, government could be paying more than half of the nation's healthcare costs by 2011.

This is real, folks. Our government is already heading down a narrow Nanny-state path. If a Democrat wins in 2008, I'm afraid there will be absolutely no turning back.

PENGUIN IN THE COURTROOM

A judge in Great Britain has been reprimanded for refusing to handle a case of a Muslim woman because she wore a full veil covering her face. Ian Murray walked out of the court room when Zoobia Hussain entered wearing the veil. Murray says that the veil raised identity issues. The woman was accused of criminal damage after causing thousands of dollars of damage to a council house when her family was thrown out.

Her lawyer explained that her client is a practicing Muslim who covers herself in public places where men are present. Her case was later dealt with by a female district judge. Hussain did lift her veil but gave evidence from behind a screen so men in the court room couldn't see her.

This is so absurd.

Mr. Murray was issued a formal reprimand for refusing to bend to the every wish of the Islamic religion. Inch by inch ...

MICHIGAN GUN LAWS

This is for all you Second Amendment protestors. Six years ago, Michigan made it much easier to get a license to carry a concealed weapon. Since then, the number of Michigan residents carrying legal concealed weapons has increased more than six-fold. The usual anti-gun rhetoric would tell us that there much be a lot of increased violence in Michigan. We're sure that every morning the police are busy picking up the bodies that are scattered about ... victims of gun-wielding citizens.

Sorry .. .the typical anti-gun rhetoric would be wrong.

According to law enforcement officials, the incidence of violent crime in Michigan since the law went into effect has been below the rate of the previous six years. In other words, there was less crime once citizens were able to arm themselves. The overall incidence of death from firearms has also gone down. The police chief says that the general consensus is that things were not as bad as they expected.

Well that's not surprising. After all, studies of concealed weapons laws show that crime rates reduce when citizens are allowed easier access to concealed weapons. What does the gun control lobby have to say about those statistics?

REDNECK SCRAP BOOK

You know, it's all fun and games until someone gets electrocuted. More in the Redneck Scrap Book.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

Check out Jamie Dupree's analysis of the New Hampshire primaries.

In case you didn't catch it, Hillary Clinton is suggesting that Al Qaeda wants Barack Obama to win the presidential election. Fact is that Al Qaeda would prefer almost any Democrat over a Republican.

Huckabee wants to end the absurdity of anchor babies ... birthright citizenship. Oh wait, here comes the flip flop.

Voter ID laws? What's the problem with asking a voter to prove who they are before they cast a vote? Who could possibly object?

Lamestream media journalists are admitting that it is hard to stay objective when covering Barack Obama ... like they were to begin with. Do these reporters carry smelling salts?

Colin Powell sang his praises for Barack Obama on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. Powell says that Obama has not projected himself to be a black candidate - he has never made the race to be about his race.

And is Hillary losing the Hollywood crowd to Barack Obama? Maybe John Edwards?

President Bush actually endorsed Turkey's bid to join the EU. He says that the Islamic nation could be a "constructive bridge" between the West and the Muslim world.

Clinton staffers seem to be getting desperate. So desperate that they are willing to call Portland, Oregon to make sure that residents are voting in the New Hampshire primary ... wait, what?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants a constitutional amendment to give him more power over state spending.

More than one million immigrants sought US citizenship last year so that they could vote in the 2008 election.

Schools in Britain are finger printing students at lunchtime to make sure that they get the meals that parents want them to eat.

The Supreme Court of Georgia is trying to decide whether or not to continue its policy of banishment, to get rid of criminals within populous areas.

The Dallas Morning News named an Illegal Immigrant as Texan of the Year 2007. Needless to say, there were some very unhappy (legal) Texans.

Four teenagers in Texas have been suspended from school for refusing to get their haircut. Their dress code also specifies that students are not to wear mismatched socks.

A Boy Scout in Maldives managed to save his president from assassination by a man in the crowd with a knife.

Americans are suffering from heart problems caused by fears of terrorism post 9/11.

A badly deformed baby was denied entry to New Zealand for surgery. Now she may be headed to Australia.

A New York town wants to ban silly string from parades because it chips away at the paint of fire trucks.

Police in South Africa say that they have caught the "dumbest criminal." The man went to the police station and said he had been held at gunpoint by a gang who had stolen his cell phone. So when police called the "stolen" cell phone ...

PETA has removed Britney Spears from their Worst Dressed list because "she might not be sanely responsible for her actions." This includes wearing fur.

Earlier this week there was some discussion of a newsletter written by Ron Paul a few years back .. a newsletter that seemed to be a bit, shall we say, harsh in racial terms. Remember, now ... The New Republic isn't what you would call right-of-center, but here's an article about Ron Paul as the Angry White Man. Just FYI.

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