Kenya

It had looked like thing might be improving in Kenya with mediation by the US, Senator Obama, and the African Union, but now things have worsened again:

The political mood darkened again in Kenya on Tuesday, with opposition leaders cooling to the idea of negotiations with the government after the president unilaterally made major cabinet appointments, a move that set off riots across the country almost immediately.
 
Bonfires burned in Kisumu on Lake Victoria, ethnic clashes erupted in the slums around Nairobi, the capital, and protesters began to mass in the port city of Mombasa.

By appointing much of the cabinet, Kibaki has shown that he is not ready to share power and this might lead to more widespread violence.

US Health

Via Kevin Drum, a new report that looks at how countries did with preventable deaths (here’s the full report) finds that the US is last among 19 industrialised countries:

We compared trends in deaths considered amenable to health care before age seventy-five between 1997–98 and 2002–03 in the United States and in eighteen other industrialized countries. Such deaths account, on average, for 23 percent of total mortality under age seventy-five among males and 32 percent among females. The decline in amenable mortality in all countries averaged 16 percent over this period. The United States was an outlier, with a decline of only 4 percent. If the United States could reduce amenable mortality to the average rate achieved in the three top-performing countries, there would have been 101,000 fewer deaths per year by the end of the study period.

There are, of course, possible problems with any one statistic indicator, but coming in last and improving less does make one think that there are problems with healthcare in the US (France did the best).

Primaries

Now that the first primary is out of the way, I will probably start to look at the election a bit more.

Today I looked at the exit polls from NH and, as usual, found some weird bits:

• Clinton did better than Obama and Edwards for voters who were worse off (were not college graduates, made less than $50,000, do not work full time, are falling behind financially–I don’t think of Clinton as the candidate for the poor, but obviously others do).
• the breakdown for political philosophy is almost exactly the same for the top three (except for somewhat conservative where some other candidates get a substantial percent). I think Clinton is more conservative than Obama or Edwards, but she did about as well with ‘very liberal’ voters as ‘moderate’ ones.
• Clinton did best among voters who want to withdraw troops from Iraq as soon as possible. Huh? Isn’t she the one who is the most cautious in taking out troops? Perhaps some people think she is most likely to be able to do it quickly?

I don’t bother with the Republicans (ok, I probably will at some point).

My first choice was probably Dodd, but he’s out so I’m not sure who I’ll vote for yet. I have a feeling a couple more candidates will fall off before MA votes on February 5. The top three are fairly similar in many issues, so I’ll have to really look to see who I prefer. I may punt and vote for Kucinich if he’s still around.

In other news, it seems that some people are talking about Clinton crying (if you can’t find about 100 other places, you’re not looking very hard). This is another stupid media story (she cried in the sense that Ed Muskie did in 1972–ie, not really), but it ended up helping Clinton. All the stupid little stories about her (she doesn’t show laugh, she has a weird laugh, she doesn’t show emotion, she cried, she wears pink, she wears pantsuits, ….) might have annoyed some voters so much that they voted for her because of it. Did this stop these type of stories? Of course not:

This is pretty rich. Last night, Matthews said: “I give her a lot of personal credit; I will never underestimate Hillary Clinton again.”

But by this morning Matthews had already forgotten his newfound respect for her. He said: “The reason she’s a U.S. Senator, the reason she’s a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That’s how she got to be Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn’t win it on the merits…”

What an idiot Matthews is. It does almost make me want to vote for her.

Iran and Iran

There are two stories in the NY Times today (both, sort of, via Kevin Drum) that together give a weird picture of Iran.

The first is arguing that President Ahmadinejad is losing support from Ayatollah Khamenei and the reason is the release of the NIE on Iran which reduced the pressure on Iran (making an attack on Iran less likely). This meant that the focus could be shifted to economics and Iran is having problems there. This implies that the threatening tone of the Bush administration was counterproductive, Iran wanted to show unity in the face of the threat and so ignored problems that would have hurt the hard liners.

The second story is about the buzzing of US ships by Iranian speedboats (which the Revolutionary Guard in Iran claims is a fake story–I don’t trust the Bush administration, but I trust the RG less). This doesn’t seem to be consistent until you look again at this LA Times story which notes that power is spread out through a large section of people in Iran. Khamenei might not be for confrontation any more, but others very well might be and they will act even if Khamenei tells them not to (Eric Martin looks at this).

Together it makes for both a positive and worrisome picture: the major powers in Iran are now more willing to play down anti-US sentiments, but other groups might try to force a confrontation to get more power. We’ll see what happens.