Did The Oscars Forget Something?

This year’s biggest flop of the award show season goes to the 92nd Oscars. Last year the cavalcade of snooty Hollywood celebrities drew a viewing audience of 29.6 million.  This year’s viewing audience sucked hind tit with 6 million fewer people watching.

The annual spectacle of snobs in their gowns and tuxedos and “ethically harvested gold and sustainable diamonds” always features a montage of notable deaths in the film industry over the past year.

The “In Memoriam” segment this year failed to pay tribute to actor Luke Perry best known for his role in Beverly Hills 90210 and a cameo role in one of the year’s Best Picture contenders Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.

It also failed to pay homage to a young man, Cameron Boyce, known for his roles in the Disney franchise Descendants.  He was 20 years old.

The most unfortunate oversight of the evening however, according to comedian Dennis Miller, was when they left Joe Biden’s campaign out of the segment.

Biden has already conceded he will lose the New Hampshire Primary and a new Quinnipiac University poll released Monday shows his support among black voters is cratering.  He enjoyed 49% support before his disastrous fourth-place showing in Iowa.  His support has suffered a loss of 22 points dropping to 27% percent.  Joe is done.  Stick a fork in him.  His highly touted firewall in South Carolina looks more like a brick wall with an X marking the spot where he should beat his head against it.

After an uninspiring ten months of “Hey, remember me?  I was Barack’s Vice President” schtick, he doesn’t have what it takes to win the nomination.  Bless his heart.

Biden Fading Fast

The Democrats’ obsession with defeating Donald Trump and voters’ sense of personal connection to Uncle Joe was supposed to be enough to propel him to the nomination at their July convention in Milwaukee.

Leaked poll numbers from what would have been the final Des Moines Register Iowa Poll showed Biden in fourth place with 13 percent.

“None of us thought we were at 13 percent,” an unnamed source said. “We can’t be in fourth place. That just cannot be right.”

But it was right. And it confirmed what rival campaigns had whispered for months—Biden wasn’t inspiring Iowa voters and his support was barely an inch deep.

Someone, I can’t remember who, quipped on Twitter that Joe’s Iowa results were his best performance after three tries; he dropped out in 1988 and he came in fifth in 2008. At this rate, he might even be a winner in Iowa around the year 2056 when he’s 113 years old or 114 by the time the votes are finally counted.

Biden doesn’t have a message for New Hampshire voters. “If he doesn’t do well in New Hampshire, the media will think that’s the end, because it’s always been the end,” said Ed Rendell, the former Pennsylvania governor.

Biden’s last chance, in my opinion, comes tonight during the Democratic Presidential Debate at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH.

He disappeared from the campaign trail Thursday high-tailing it back to his home in Delaware to prep for the debate.

A Sanders campaign adviser noted, “…if he’s [Biden] third or fourth in Iowa and third or fourth in New Hampshire, no one has ever, ever won the nomination coming out that weak in both those states. And then we go into Nevada and win the first three early states. Then what’s his argument? Sure, he’ll win South Carolina. But it’s the Saturday before Super Tuesday so it doesn’t impact things as much. Then you’ll see how weak he is. And he has no money.”

Cap’n Bill And The Mailman’s Son Want To “Save America”

The effete aristocrat who loves opera, Greek philosophy and battles President Trump in his magazine The Weekly Standard, on CNN and MSNBC and his quirky Twitter account has come up with a stratagem to save America.

During the 2016 primary season he watched in abject horror as one GOP candidate after the other (Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and John Kasich) surrendered to the man he called “loathsome”, “a con man”, “a charlatan and a demagogue”.

Trump didn’t just steamroll the Republican field he made a mockery of the cherished conservative ideals Kristol has spent more than 30 years touting.

Each year The Weekly Standard embarks on an annual cruise for which its subscribers pay several thousand dollars for a cabin on the ship and a chance to spend time with its founder Cap’n Bill Kristol.

During the 2017 cruise, Kristol’s sardonic sense of the gallows began to anger his readers. His unrelenting drumbeat of criticism for the Trump Administration grew pointless and his readers told him so every chance they got.

To Trump, Kristol IS the rigged system he’s fighting against, the personification of an elite establishment overdue for a rude awakening.

Kristol has a reputation for predictions gone wrong. In 2002, he said military action in Iraq “would start a chain reaction in the Arab world that would be very healthy.” He insisted the Bush tax cuts would ease the deficit, rather than exploding it. In 2008, he predicted Obama would not win a single presidential primary; in 2011, that Rudy Giuliani would run for President; and, in 2015, that Joe Biden would. On different occasions late in the Obama era, Kristol declared that Jennifer Granholm, the former Michigan governor, was about to be picked as a Supreme Court Justice and likely to wind up on a national ticket as Obama’s Vice-President.

Kristol badly wants a Republican to primary President Trump in 2020. The smarmy “conservative” has been traveling to Iowa and New Hampshire in search of that someone.

In New Hampshire this past Wednesday, Kristol, speaking to an audience at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics said two-term Ohio Gov. John Kasich would be "the most obvious candidate" to primary Trump though the governor’s personality and moderate politics have turned off leaders in Kristol’s orbit. No shit, Sherlock.

Very interesting, lively and wide-ranging conversation over dinner here in Columbus with @JohnKasich. What topics did we cover and what conclusions did we draw?
Silentium est aurum. pic.twitter.com/C3rAcmWPCm

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 3, 2018

Kristol acknowledged that he could be wrong about the state of the Republican Party—that it’s possible Republicans won’t be convinced they made a mistake and will re-nominate Trump.

This states perfectly what the never-Trumpers on the right refuse to grasp. https://t.co/kdA0PJ1DT6

— Brit Hume (@brithume) May 25, 2018

I dunno. I may not be who you have in mind (I always said that if I were in some swing state and the election came down to me, I'd have probably voted Trump). But I completely understand why some principled conservatives wouldn't. This is one possible line of reasoning. pic.twitter.com/Ko816mPK5m

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) May 25, 2018

There's also the more relevant Q: Who gives a rat's ass about how people voted almost 2 years ago? We have one president now. Even if you think Hillary would be a thousand times worse, that doesn't absolve Trump of anything. And yet it's "But Hillary!" all over the place.

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) May 25, 2018

Well, you could have said “who gives a rat’s ass in your first response,” instead of going all Solzhenitzyn on us. After all, David’s tweet was about voting.

— Brit Hume (@brithume) May 25, 2018

Don’tcha just love the manner in which Brit Hume humiliates the RINOs?  Yeah. Me too. 

New Hampshire Primary: Rubio Announces “Obama Knows Exactly What He’s Doing”

Marco Rubio’s supporters pushed, shoved and wrestled demonstrators dressed as robots outside a polling place in Manchester, NH on Tuesday.  The demonstrators were mocking his robotic rhetoric in last Saturday’s GOP Presidential Debate from Saint Anselm College.

During the debate, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie eviscerated him for repeating the same canned talking points four times.  Rubio insisted for days afterwards that the confrontation had not wounded his campaign.

A somber Rubio blamed himself for his pathetic fifth place finish confessing, “I’m disappointed with tonight, but I want you to understand something.  Our disappointment tonight is not on you.  It’s on me.  I did not do well on Saturday night, so listen to this.  That will never happen again.  That will never happen again.”

Marco Rerun in 5th! How many more times will Repeat-io Bots tell us "Rubio's the most electable Republican?" #NHPrimary

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) February 10, 2016

Exclusive footage of #MarcoRubio learning the results of the #NHPrimary pic.twitter.com/4aizEh9Clw

— Kragar (@Kragar_LGF) February 10, 2016

New Hampshire Primary: Simpering Fat Man To Weigh Future Of His Presidential Campaign

The Associated Press is reporting that Governor Chris Christie will be heading back to New Jersey to “take a deep breath” after finishing a distant sixth place in tonight’s New Hampshire primary. 

His dismal finish disqualifies him to participate in Saturday’s GOP debate in Greenville, South Carolina which will be carried by CBS.

I bet he could use a hug from The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer right about now.

Christie's miscalculation, from which he could never recover, was running *against* the GOP to get a big reelection margin which....

— The Scandalous DJT (@AceofSpadesHQ) February 10, 2016

I hope Christie gets a fruit basket from Kennebunkport.

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) February 10, 2016

UPDATE 2-10-16:  At 11:26 AM The Washington Times reported that NJ Governor Chris Christie would be issuing a statement later this afternoon suspending his presidential campaign. 

New Hampshire Primary: The Mailman’s Son Comes In Second

When Ohio governor John Kasich entered the already crowded GOP race for president he tried to distinguish himself as a “regular guy” citing ad nauseum his roots as a blue-collar son of a mailman who carried and delivered mail to families in McKees Rock just outside of Pittsburgh.

The voters of New Hampshire handed Donald Trump a victory just as polls had predicted for weeks but they also cast their votes for Kasich giving him a victory over rivals Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio.

John Kasich's father was a mailman. REMEMBER THAT.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 17, 2015

New Hampshire Results Starting to Trickle In

UPDATED RESULTS:

Preliminaries------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep in mind that these results are extremely preliminary as reported by Fox News with only 1% reporting.  The numbers, however, are correct.  So far, so good, on the Democrat numbers.

The Republican numbers are being re-analyzed, since they show John Kasich at 24%, and that's assumed to be a technical error.

UPDATE:  Frank Luntz's focus group is warming up.