It started in the comments at last week’s post on fourth quarter GDP.

It has now migrated to Moderate Mainstream’s place.

It should shake you up about the foundations of the current economy, and what might happen if the real estate situation doesn’t turn itself around. It shouldn’t have come to this, but it’s all flown under everyone’s radar for the past several years.

So go there, and consider pitching in.

From Beverly, Massachusetts:

February 4, 2008
BEVERLY – A full scholarship to a $34,000-a-year private college for a waiter? Now that’s a tip.

Two years ago, Marvin Burchall was working the lunch shift at a luxury beachside hotel in his native Bermuda when he waited on an administrator from Endicott College, just north of Boston. To him, Lynn Bak was just another customer, another tourist visiting the island getaway. But Burchall’s service was impeccable, and his attentiveness and amiable manner caught Bak’s eye.

Bak, who coordinates Endicott’s School of International Education in Bermuda and stays at the Elbow Beach Bermuda resort every three weeks or so, gradually got to know Burchall, a 23-year-old who had dropped out of college during his sophomore year to work at the hotel.

The better she knew him, the more she was struck by his poise and potential, and she eventually recommended him to Endicott president Richard Wylie as an excellent candidate for Endicott. In October, Wylie wound up sitting in Burchall’s section while in Bermuda for a graduation ceremony and was similarly impressed. In short order, Endicott offered Burchall a full, four-year scholarship, room and board included, which he eagerly accepted on the spot.

“How could I say no?” Burchall said of the highly unusual offer on his first day of classes last week at Endicott, where he plans to study hotel management. “I knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for me. I knew I had to take this and run.”

Burchall, an outgoing, well-met sort, said he is deeply grateful for the college’s belief in him and said he continues to be stunned by the random chain of events that changed the course of his life. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

Random ramblings …..

Mitt Romney, the talkers propping him up, and a large swath of Old Media all received a serious and richly deserved comeuppance last night. Mike Huckabee is correct when he says it’s a two-person race, and he’s the second.

Nobody will give credit where credit is due for this, so I will — Gregg Jackson, John Haskins, the Mass Resistance folks, and others associated with them had a significant role in both helping Huckabee and hurting Romney. They reached out to their like-minded brethren throughout the country. I won’t tell you how, but they did it, and it worked. I’d like to think what has been posted here also had a bit of an effect.

$100 million doesn’t go as far as it used to, Mr. Romney.

Understand something about the Democrats: They are MORE divided than the GOP. In most states, delegates are chosen by the vote tally in small areas. So you would expect a close race to split the delegates 50-50, which has generally happened, and a popular-vote blowout to lead to the winning candidate taking all, or almost all, of the state’s delegates. That is indeed what mostly happened on the GOP side (examples: CA, GA, IL).

But on the Dem side, look at the biggest blowouts: AL (Obama +15), GA (Obama +35), IL (Obama +31), MA (Clinton +15), NY (Clinton +17), and OK (Clinton +24). In each of these states, the loser got a stunning number of delegates. This shows that there are clearly deep divides in the party. I would suggest that they are between black (Obama) vs. white (Clinton), urban (Obama) vs. suburban/rural (Clinton), and perhaps hard-core activists and Kossacks (Obama) vs. traditional rank and file (Clinton). The most visible example of the divide, never mind the delegates, is how Obama made up a 20-plus point deficit in Missouri when the votes from heavily black St. Louis County rolled in. The most obvious example of the delegate skew is Obama taking 87 of 204 New York delegates in the process of losing the popular vote by 17 points.

It looks like Ohio will matter on the Dem side, perhaps not on the GOP side.

In a USA Today e-mail last night, concerning Truman’s home state of Missouri:

Oops:

In USAT’s “defense”: I have never, ever seen a race turn around like this. Clinton had a 22-point lead after well over half the vote was counted, and was easily up by 50,000 votes at one point. In the final 10% or so of Missouri’s counting, Obama must have been taking 90%-plus of the vote. The answer, as NixGuy pointed out last night, was that St. Louis County votes came in last.

On the GOP side, it wasn’t nearly as radical, but McCain also overcame a pretty big deficit, in this case to Mike Huckabee, to pull out the Show-Me State. St. Louis County also provided the comeback margin.

Cross-posted, with some revisions, at NewsBusters.org.