Let's Review

In the three wks. of the new yr., three Republican electoral processes: Two elections & a caucus held in a state w/ an estimated 3,000,000 & change, 95%+ honky population that holds caucuses as early as possible every leap yr. to scam a few million dollars from campaign war chests & reporters' corporate expense accounts. (Obligatory yada.) Iowa's caucuses are the first step in a Byzantine procedure which renders them electorally meaningless:

Delegates from the precinct caucuses go on to the county conventions, which choose delegates to the district conventions, which in turn selects delegates to the Iowa State Convention. Thus, it is the Republican Iowa State Convention, not the precinct caucuses, which selects the ultimate delegates from Iowa to the Republican National Convention. All delegates are officially unbound from the results of the precinct caucus, although media organizations either estimate delegate numbers by estimating county convention results or simply divide them proportionally.

And remember that the parties themselves, not the State of Iowa, conduct these caucuses. So Romney's eight-vote caucus "victory" was later discovered to be a Santorun "victory" by 34 votes, & records from eight precincts had been "lost" & couldn't be found or used. Bear that in mind the next time a Republican drags out the voter fraud horse & starts beating it. (This is encouraging; chatter about not paying any attention to Iowa is already up, & these are the solidest reasons to do so yet.)

(Recapping that was so Iowa-dull we lost our train of thought ... Hang on, it's coming back. Something about Florida. That's it. But we're getting ahead of ourself.)

Once past the fraud & the essential tie (Which will nonetheless be remembered as a Romney "win," at least as long as anything is remembered now.) of Iowa, on to New Hampshire (Pop. 1,300,000+not much, & not quite as white as Iowa.) where Willard Mitt won but not by as much as he should have, considering his summer vacation house is right there in the Granite State; this round's first runner-up was Dr. Ron Paul, not surprising in the "Live Free or Die" state.

Then South Carolina (Unofficial motto "Too small to be a republic, too large to be an asylum.") where Gingrich somewhat unsurprisingly parlayed his debateforum performances/red meat toss exhibitions prior to the election to victory in the state that could be said to have invented red meat politics.

The point being that despite all the yammering, few delegates have been selected from these three backwaters & the first primary in a large & not so homogeneously populated state (Granted, we saw a headline somewhere claiming that Florida is South Carolina w/ Cuban-Americans. No question there be loons.) is still 10 days off, meaning everything typed & blathered to this point has been even more meaningless & futile than the ordinary hideous emptiness of human existence. Is it time to start paying attention? We ask because we've marginally better things to do than pay attention if none of the horse race crap from this wk.'s go-round is going to make any difference.

(We slave over a hot keyboard for hrs. writing a pseudo think piece & that's the best ending we can come up w/? Back to photos.)