08 January 2008

First Votes in New Hampshire

IN DIXVILLE NOTCH, the small town with the distinction of being the first in New Hampshire to hold primary elections, the 17 registered voters out of the 74 residents cast their votes at midnight Tuesday. Reuters reported the results: Obama took seven of the ten votes cast for Democrats, with Edwards taking two and Richardson one; McCain led the Republicans with four votes, Romney received two, and Giuliani one.

07 January 2008

While I don't miss national news coverage in the States,...

...I do miss the sports coverage somewhat. Football (soccer for the non-expats) and cricket highlights don't interest me quite as much as basketball and American football, which do get occasional coverage on CNN International. But I find myself turning to Boston.com more often than not, as the coverage that I'm only really interested in is that of the phenomenal success Boston teams now enjoy. With a 2007 World Series win for the (Red) Sox, a perfect regular season for the Pat(iot)s, and a league-high win-loss record for the C(eltic)s (most recently extended by a 92-85 win over the Pistons, who handed Boston their last loss in mid-December), it's a wonderful time to have even the slightest interest in Boston teams. We'll see in the coming weeks how the the C's fare and if the Pats can pull off an undefeated postseason.

A "Hundred Years' War" (or longer) for the 21st Century

Center for American Progress devoted today's Progress Report to John McCain's comments to MoJo that it would be fine for U.S. troops to spend the next 100, 1,000, or 1,000,000 years in Iraq, suggesting that the problem in the current conflict is not U.S. presence per se, but the number of U.S. casualties. (I'm trying to imagine an Iraqi SOFA for the next 1,000,000 years.)
Such a stance neatly avoids the criticism of plans for withdrawal from Iraq that such a strategy will allow insurgents to wait for the departure of U.S. troops before unleashing more violence in the war-torn country, but it also presumes that the U.S. can eventually effect a reduction in troop casualties. With 901 U.S. troop casualties in 2007, the highest of any calendar year in the occupation so far, I cannot imagine a situational change in Iraq sufficiently dramatic and soon that would reduce troop casualties and sway public opinion, which currently supports the withdrawal of troops from Iraq within the next two years. This is to say nothing of Iraqi civilian casualties: Iraq Body Count (IBC) estimates that 22,586 to 24,159 were killed in the conflict in 2007. Perhaps McCain doesn't value Iraqis quite as much as U.S. troops; maybe he would support a revival of the Three-fifths Rule for body counts. That way, he could report that only 48,704 civilians have died since the beginning of the occupation. (For those of you with out a calculator handy, IBC estimates the actual number to be somewhere between 81,174 and 88,585.)

From Iowa to New Hampshire, Big Mo for Obama

A CNN/WMUR/UNH poll shows Barack Obama with a commanding 10-point lead over Hilary Clinton among New Hampshire voters in the day before the primary in the New England state, a significant development as the two have been locked in a dead heat for the days following the Iowa caucuses.