Saturday, January 27, 2007

Some Barack links

I know I haven't really been present lately, but things have been busy... check out the other home for details.

I'm just gonna come in here with a couple of links. First, The New York Times has an article on Barack's law-school days, detailing his rise from unknown to first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He was respected, the article says, and well-known for his ability to compromise and to not exactly let you know what his own opinions were.
Another of Mr. Obama’s techniques relied on his seemingly limitless appetite for hearing the opinions of others, no matter how redundant or extreme. That could lead to endless debates — a mouse infestation at the review office provoked a long exchange about rodent rights — as well as some uncertainty about what Mr. Obama himself thought about the issue at hand.
I don't think it's a drawback that Obama can be coy about his own opinions. Just because he can be doesn't mean that he always will be, all the time, or that he can't commit to opinions that he has.

Meanwhile, Barack has called for universal health care by 2013. No details yet, of course, but good to see that he is a part of this positive trend. I'm sure he will be able to find a way to nestle it into a dialogue-friendly approach.

Finally, while tooling around on YouTube I found this video of Barack on the Daily Show a year after his election as Senator, in November 2005. It's worth a watch--he's a funny man.

Update: Yeah, yeah, I can post the streaming video... I'm still not used to this whole thing. See below:

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Serbian returns come in

As I noted in a post a couple weeks back, Serbian parliamentary elections took place today. I'm checking out the latest announcements of the Electoral Commission and it appears that the following is taking shape:

With 62% of ballots counted,

Serbian Radical Party (SRS) [nationalists] 28.32%
Democratic Party (DS) [Tadic's party] 22.67%
Democratic Party of Serbia--New Serbia (DSS-NS) [Kostunica] 16.38%
G17+ [conservative liberals] 6.79%
Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) [Milosevic's party] 5.64%
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and coalition allies 5.33%

This is basically as the polls suggested. Vuk Draskovic's SPO is shut out with under 4%; SPS and LDP will scrape in.

DS and DSS will have to come to some sort of agreement to form the next government, along with at least one of the smaller liberal parties. Together, the Radicals and Socialists (the two hardline nationalist parties) will take about 40 percent of the seats.

UPDATE: The Economist has a piece. Point: there are three diverging views on Kosovo (the recommendations will be released at the beginning of February). The Radicals will raise hell no matter what, Kostunica is opposed and might support parallel actions toward secession by Bosnian Serbs, and Tadic and the DS would pay lip service to retaining Kosovo while seeking to maintain stability.

Two of these opinions will have to be accommodated in any new government.