HALF FULL REPORT 08/08/08

This week we'll be talking a lot about numbers.  It's a mark of a primitive brain to be superstitious about particular ones, to believe that certain numbers are "lucky" or "unlucky."

For all their vaunted rationality, most Chinese for example have a Stone Age superstition that the number 8 brings good fortune.  So they quite purposefully are having their Olympics begin today, 08/08/08, precisely at 8:08pm Beijing time.

People with primitive beliefs are vulnerable.  If the Chicom Olympics don't live up to expectations, don't bring China the world's adoration and respect, then the Chicoms risk losing the "Mandate of Heaven" in the eyes of Chinese – the superstitious belief that fate favors them.

Watch the Games unfold over the next two weeks with that context in mind.  There's a lot more drama going on than just in the athletic contests.

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Now for fun with numbers.  Magic numbers.  The most magic number in America right now is 112.

The Democrat presidential nominating convention is August 25-28.  The number of delegate votes needed to win the nomination is 2118. According to the tabulations of  Real Clear Politics, Egobama has 1766.5 elected or "pledged" delegates, while the PIAPS has 1639.5 (half-delegates because the Florida and Michigan delegations' votes were cut in half).

These are delegates the candidates won in the primaries and for whom they are legally bound to vote in the first ballot.  Should no candidate win a majority of votes on the first ballot, these pledged delegates can vote for whomever they want.

What gives Egobama a winning majority of convention delegates is 463 "Superdelegates" who have promised to vote for him (as opposed to 257 for Clinton).  These folks are Democrat Congressmen, Senators, "Distinguished Party Leaders," and other convention invitees. 

Unlike pledged delegates, superdelegates can switch their promise to vote at any time, right up to the convention's first ballot.  Which means if 112 of Egobama's 463 decide to vote for Clinton instead, she wins.

There's more.  Note an interesting discrepancy in the RCP superdelegate tally.  A total of 823 will be voting at the convention, yet 463 (O's) and 257 (C's) add up to only 720.

Which means 103 superdelegates have yet to commit to either candidate.  All of them must be getting phone calls from both candidates on the hour.  But you can bet the Clintonistas are going after them hard-ball, enticing them with every carrot and threatening with every stick found in FBI files.  Every one of the 103 they get after 51.5 (some have half-votes) is one less of the 112 they have to peel off from O's 463 to win.

We all know how Egobama is tanking in the polls.  It's the timing that's so beautiful – just before the Olympics, when everyone stops paying any attention to politics to watch sports instead.  This, plus Egobama going off to vacation in Hawaii, locks in the poll momentum of McCain going up and O going down.

The Olympics are happening at precisely the right time.  Egobama -or maybe it should be Egobambi – has finally become the butt of late-night comics' jokes.  Pew Research reported this week that lots of folks are suffering from "Obama Fatigue." 

Then the day after the Olympics end on August 24, the Dem convention begins in Denver.  It is going to be chaos, outside with protestors of every moonbat stripe, inside with delegates at each other's throats, and everything egged on by fanatically angry pro-Clinton women calling themselves Pumas (PUMA stands for Party Unity My Ass).

No way this convention won't end ugly.  O will come out of it seriously if not mortally weakened if he gets it, with millions of Puma-type women voting for McCain.  If H "steals" it, millions of blacks will want to burn Denver to the ground and certainly won't vote for her.  And of course she is not going try to make amends by having him as her running mate.  That means (if they win in November) it's one bullet away from a black president.

August may thus turn out to be a month of marvelous chaos – embarrassingly, smog-chokingly chaotic in Beijing, throat-cutting chaotic in Denver.  It only seems appropriate that the HFR has a case of Hop-Ocalypse India Pale Ale in the fridge with which to enjoy the show.

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But if you're not a beer-drinker, how about some conservative coffee?  That's what you'll get at Dave and Jill Beckham's A Conservative Cafe in Crown Point, Indiana.  As Dave and Jill say, it's "coffee served right."

A picture of Ronald Reagan hangs on the wall, Fox News is on the TV, conservative books (Ann Coulter, Jonah Goldberg, etc.) are for sale – as are t-shirts with Uncle Sam pointing and saying "Zip it, Hippie!"  Coffee ranges from Liberal Blend – "weak decaf with no substance" – to the strongest roast, Radical Right Blend.

It's the anti-Starbucks.  "It's a change from the traditional liberal bastion coffeehouses," Beckham says. "No one is going to badmouth America in here."

This is our kind of place.  Good coffee, good food, good people.  Sounds like a good franchise opportunity.  And Dave and Jill are considering just that.  You can call them at 219-661-1700 if you'd like to set up A Conservative Café in your town.

Think how cool that would be.  How cool to make a living doing that. There's hope for our country when folks like Dave and Jill Beckham can make a business success of conservatism – and when the Liberal Messiah looks like he's about to flame out.