Another Democrat Wants To Take on Foxx

Looks like there'll be a primary for Democrats wanting the privilege to run against Congresswoman Virginia Foxx this fall. Former Iredell County Commissioner Diane Hamby says she's planning to run.

Roy Carter has already been active as a candidate for months now.

The primary will be May 6th.

Things We Wouldn't Know Without the MSM

The Mainstream Media, bless their hearts. Without their ever-vigilant eye, we wouldn't even know that...

1. John McCain's fourth-place finish in Iowa, behind the semi-comatose Fred Thompson, was actually THE BIG SLING-SHOT WIN THAT WILL PROPEL HIM TO VICTORY IN NEW HAMPSHIRE AND THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION!!! Jamison Foser does the analysis and names names, Chris Frickin Matthews very prominently at the head of the queue.

2. Evangelicals were counted at the Republican caucuses in Iowa but not at the Democratic caucuses, because, hey! Republicans OWN evangelicals, right?

3. The MSM has decided and proclaimed Huckabee a "populist," when his "fair tax" scheme would be somewhere to the right of Ronald Reagan's economic policies, shifting even more of the tax burden onto lower-wage earners who have to spend a greater percentage of their incomes on the necessities of life.

"The Things He Did"

Lance Sigmon, newest Republican candidate for the NC-10 Congressional seat currently held by Patrick McHenry, has got an itch he clearly intends to scratch and in public. From coverage of yesterday's declaration of candidacy by Mr. Sigmon:

"I am not happy with the representation we are getting from Mr. McHenry. And if people knew he did things ... they might find he is not the person they think he is."

We call this Sleaze Interruptus. "If people knew he did WHAT things"? Would any of them involve a Dyson vacuum and talc?

Oh, this NC-10 Republican primary is gonna be dirtier than Vernon Robinson's accusing Virginia Foxx of being a nympho-lesbo-killer-abortionist in Aught-Four.

ADDED: Oops ... here's the newspaper source for the quote above.

Reshuffling the Deck

We've been out of pocket since early this morning, so we're way behind in the Iowa spin, but at least two things picked up from various network gasbags last night hang in our minds:

1. Obama out-polled Hillary among women over-all but especially among younger women.

2. The youth vote jumped up like a goosed cat. One in five Iowa caucus-goers was under age 30 -- about twice as many as typically vote in early presidential nomination events. (Over-all turnout in Iowa swelled to 239,000, nearly double the record of 124,000 just four years ago.)

3. I'm feeling John Edwards' pain today. I'm NOT feeling Ms. Inevitability's pain.

4. Kudos to Biden and Dodd for being gentlemen of substance, for adding their voices to the early debates, and for bowing out gracefully.

5. What's Bill Richardson thinking? They ain't gonna be no surge.

6. If a black man can win lily-white Iowa ... we got us a race here!

7. The Republican side just gets more delightfully entertaining by the day! We got us TWO races here!

Early Reports from Iowa

Apparently, there's record turn-out for the Democratic caucuses (not so much for the Republicans), and it's "chaotic." Get 600 Democrats in a room and start counting heads and see how quickly you turn to straight Vodka! But that's okay. You hang in there, Iowa! We'd love to be a part of that chaotic democracy in action!

With only 26% of precincts reporting, it's a dead heat for the Big Three Dems, and the Repubs are being totally predictable too, with Huckabee and Romney vying for the lead.

The Case of the Curious Shrinking Candidate

In a season when you're likely to read a lot of very strange wisdom on any given day, John Mercurio's observation about how Hillary Clinton closed out her Iowa campaign deserves some sort of prize for Weird Observation of the Day:

Clinton has done something curious, but strategically wise, in the closing days: She's virtually disappeared. Fully aware that her support climbs when she lowers her profile, Clinton has worked hard to make sure she's not the main story.

Well, here's an idea: Following this logic, if Hillary totally disappeared for, like, four months -- went to the beach on Antigua, say -- wouldn't that be, like, guaranteeing her nomination?

Risky perhaps, but, hey! we're up for it!

Little Patty McHenry's Primary Opponent

Meet Lance Sigmon, Air Force JAG officer who'll be challenging Patrick McHenry in the NC-10 Congressional Republican primary on May 6th.

Did you say Lance? Like in "open an incision, lance a boil"?

The boil in question, incumbent Congressman Patrick McHenry, will have to be spending some of that million dollars he's amassed to fight off this primary challenger, and if he can fight off that challenger (not a foregone conclusion, by any means), he'll still be facing this other ex-military challenger in November. All in all, 2008 is shaping up as a rough row for McHenry to hoe.

Curious ... that Lance Sigmon's web site does not contain the word 'Republican' anywhere, though reading through his issues will give you a good case of that dependable conservative Republican vertigo. Lotsa God, lotsa lowering of taxes, lotsa missionary positioning with one woman and one man in Holy Matrimony.

And thereby, naturally, comes the subtle attack on McHenry, plus these carefully chosen words on Sigmon's homepage: "There is no room for unethical behavior or advancement of self-interests." Oh snap!

God-o-Meter

Belief Net has a fun new feature, the "God-o-Meter," which attempts to keep track of who's Jehovah's BFF among presidential contenders THIS WEEK. It should come as no surprise that Mike Huckabee among the Republicans rings the God-o-Meter bell loudest today and wins himself a Jesus Carnival Kewpie doll, maybe particularly for deciding to follow that still, small voice that whispered in his ear that trashing Mitt Romney as fundamentally dishonest was just NOT the Christian thing to do ("but first," saith Saint Huckabee, "let me show you this terrible ad that I'm NOT going to show you," pushing his halo back with a relaxed slouch that reflects his corn-fed all-American likeability).

Meanwhile, on the Devil's Own End of Belief Net's God-o-Meter we're delighted to find both Ron Paul (who recently predicted that fascism would arrive in America carrying a cross) and Fred I-Don't-Attend-Church-Regularly Thompson, the last best hope of non-Pauleroid conservatives and role model for lecherous old men everywhere.

Closest-to-God on the Democratic side may surprise you but shouldn't, since you KNOW how focused on Allah those madrassahs tend to be!

Hard Workers

When I was ten on the High Plains of West Texas, I declared jihad on red ants.

I ransacked my father's toolshed and came up with a can of naphtha and almost a full half-gallon of oil-based white exterior paint. These I wanted to mix together before pouring them into the portal of a red ant den near the southwest corner of the vegetable garden. I found the galvanized bucket my father used to feed the chickens and poured the paint, followed by the naphtha, into it and mixed it together with a foot-long screwdriver I extracted from his toolbox. I poured my concoction on the ants, which killed some of them. It was plain to see.

Encouraged, and with my blood up, I got into my brother's stash of colognes and after-shave lotions and used them all to further dilute the white paint, which was quickly coagulating on the hard dirt around the red ant den. Then I decided to call in the air force and firebomb the den, tossing large lit kitchen matches onto my chemical and paint stew. The whole mess erupted with flames the color of mint, including the discarded bucket and screwdriver, both white with naphtha-ized paint, and before I knew it the whole prairie was burning. The wall of flames were moving with a fluid skip toward the chicken house when I ran inside for help.

The next morning I was still confined to my quarters when I overheard my parents at the breakfast table. "Well, at least he's a hard worker," my mother said, and chuckled. My mother was the most Christian woman I've ever known, and she seriously practiced the rule that it was her duty to say something nice about everyone.

Which is the only explanation we can come up with for the Jefferson Post's editorial yesterday saying that, well, Madam Virginia Foxx is, sum total, a hard worker.