it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
- from "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare

After all the debates and political ads and discussions and talking heads pontificating, the first shot across the bow of the political flotilla was fired last night. The Iowa caucus ushered in the beginning of the primaries for the 2012 election. Despite threats by some firebaggers dissatisfied lefties, President Barack Obama won the Democratic caucus. You wouldn't know there was a Democratic caucus, since 100% of the attention was on the Republican caucus results.

The Santorum jokes were flying fast and furious on Twitter as he kept "surging from behind" into a "three-way" with Romney and Ron Paul. Eventually, Romney came out on top as Santorum squeezed into a tight number two position.

Okay, I'll stop.
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83 comments (Latest Comment: 01/05/2012 02:41:08 by TriSec)

By now you have probably heard that the Commonwealth of Virginia has 2 of the current GOP candidates on its Primary Ballot. 2 out of 7.

Virginia's ballot access laws are among the toughest state ballot laws in the country. For statewide office, a candidate is required to collect 10 thousand signatures including 400 signatures from each of the states 11 congressional districts. Only Mitt Romeny and Ron Paul succeeded in getting on the ballot. Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich both filed petitions but were rejected for not meeting the requirements listed above.
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23 comments (Latest Comment: 01/02/2012 23:41:35 by Raine)

Something new happened this week...I was accused of being a "weird liberal news snob" for my love of, and reliance upon, the BBC World Service as my primary news source. We did have a lively debate that day, but the matter remains unresolved. What remains though, is the piss-poor quality of most American media outlets, but indeed that's a blog for another day.
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17 comments (Latest Comment: 01/01/2012 09:18:08 by Scoopster)

    I've been watching a lot of the news shows over the past few days while the Christmas season rotates around me. While the Christmas movies have taken over most of the prime time hours, has anyone noticed something else? All of the 'talking heads' are discussing the politics of Iowa and the caucus coming up, along with the 'surge' of the Republican candidates and the fall of the same.

    Gotta ask: what about the rest of the world? The political games of US are not the beginning and end of the news. How about the power change in N. Korea? The earthquake in New Zealand? The protest marches in Moscow? Or follow-ups on things in the US, like the tornadoes, the floods, the drought in Texas?

   I've seen 30 second coverage 'sound bites' on North Korea. While we might not have reporters there, shouldn't we have a little more coverage, maybe even S. Korea's reaction? We have reporters in Moscow. Have you seen any coverage of the 30,000 people that marched over election results? How about New Zealand? There's a series of earthquakes and it gets 30 seconds before we're back to Newt and Rick and their ups and downs.
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62 comments (Latest Comment: 12/29/2011 23:58:59 by Raine)

Good Morning.

Today is our 3,733rd day in Afghanistan.

We'll start this morning as we always do; with the latest casualty figures from our ongoing war, courtesy of Antiwar.com:

US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 1,857
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 973

Despite focusing exclusively on Iraq last week, we're back to using the larger Cost of War figure this week, and we find that passing through:

$ 1, 285, 988, 575, 000 .00
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45 comments (Latest Comment: 12/27/2011 22:16:38 by Mondobubba)