Look Around You -- Maths

Trust me, this is worth the 8 minutes.

Surprising?

ABC News is reporting that many members of the military prefer Clinton or Obama over McCain. It's a dumb story, filled with a few anecdotes about a few soldiers who prefer a pull-out plan. Martha Raddatz spoke to a soldier who "said he supported Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., because of his stated intention to pull out of Iraq right away."

But what really ticked me off is not that the story has little evidence to back it up, but that the headline was that these anecdotes provided "Surprising political endorsements." What's surprising about it? This plays into the media's perception that Republicans are "tough" and "want to win," while Democrats are "weak" and want to "cut and run." It's absurd.

It's especially not "surprising" given the fact that the two candidates leading in donations from members of the military are Ron Paul and Obama -- two candidates who opposed the war from the beginning and promise to end it if elected.

There's nothing "surprising" about it.

Giants, Rocky and Jayhawks

What do they all have in common? They have all been compared to Hillary Clinton's campaign by ... Clinton herself. This morning, Clinton said the come-from-behind win in the national championship was "my kind of outcome." One week ago, she said that "Rocky and I have a lot in common." And just before Super Tuesday, she likened her campaign to the Super Bowl champion New York Giants. Oh, and she loves the Cubs AND the Yankees.

Beaker

Change in PA

Kit Seelye reported on The Caucus that serious change is happening in the counties surrounding Philadelphia. From her post:

History is being made in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

The four suburban counties have long been Republican strongholds, with more Republican voters than Democratic ones. The last time there were more Democrats than Republicans seems lost in the mists of time.

But a new day is here. Voter enrollment in both Montgomery and Bucks Counties has flipped from Republican to Democratic.

The registration deadline was March 24, and tens of thousands of new registrations flooded in, from both new voters and party switchers. Elections officials have been counting them since, and posting the changes in drips and drabs.

Today, the new tally in Bucks shows 185,413 enrolled Democrats, compared with 181,941 enrolled Republicans.

In Montgomery County, the new tally shows 245,209 Democrats, compared with 238,208 Republicans.

While both counties have been voting Democratic periodically for more than a decade, the registration figures have not reflected that trend until now.

I've been one of those who believes this nasty fight within the party has been bad for the Democrats, but news like this seems to prove me wrong. I think this is more anti-Republicanism, more anti-Bush, more anti-war than anything else. But whatever it is, it's good news.

Dead hands

I guess we can take the gun from him now.

Obama way up in NC

The Wright controversy may hurt Obama in Pennsylvania, as everyone seems to suggest, but there isn't evidence it's hurting him much beyond the Keystone state. A new poll out of North Carolina shows Obama up 21 points over Clinton. North Carolina is the next major primary after Pennsylvania and it has 134 delegates. A new Rasmussen poll out of Pennsylvania has Clinton up 10.

She went there

Until today, it seemed that the Clinton strategy was to not get involved in the Jeremiah Wright issue. The campaign was tight-lipped, letting the issue play out for itself. But as the fiery sermons fade from the newscasts, Clinton has brought them right back to the forefront. In an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Clinton said, "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."

4,000

Over at HuffingtonPost, Nico Pitney put together this mosaic of the faces of 4,000 dead soldiers (there are a few duplicates because there is not always a picture released by the Pentagon.) You can see a bigger image here.

"The surge is working"

MSNBC:

Four U.S. soldiers were killed by a bomb blast in southern Baghdad late Sunday, raising the death toll for American forces since start of the war to 4,000, according to the Pentagon.

The grim milestone was reached less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion to topple former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and coincided with a spate of violence across Iraq on Sunday that left at least 61 people dead.

The attacks included rockets and mortars fired at Baghdad's U.S.-protected Green Zone and a suicide car bomb detonated at an Iraqi army post in the northern city of Mosul.