Obama is the clear Democratic winner in Iowa, with between 37 and 38 percent of the vote. Clinton and Edwards are in a dogfight for second, with just under 30 percent apiece. No one else got any significant support. Dodd, who earned a whopping 0% and one delegate to the state convention, and Joementum Biden (1%) are dropping out, according to CNN. You gotta think that Richardson (2%) will probably follow suit.

Obama is speaking now: “Thank you, Iowa. You know, they said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But on this January night, on this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do.

“You have done what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days. You have done what America can do in this new year, 2008. In lines that stretched around school and churches, in small towns and in big cities, you came together as Democrats, Republicans and independents, to stand up and say that we are one nation, we are one people, and our time for change has come!

“You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that’s consumed Washington, to end the political strategy that’s been all about division and instead make it about addition, to build a political coalition that stretched through red states and blue states, because that’s how we’ll win in November, and that’s how we’ll finally beat the challenges that we face as a nation.

“We are choosing hope over fear. We are choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America.”

I gotta admit, I’m getting goose bumps listening to him. He’s good. I feel like I’m watching something historic here.

The only bad news for Obama is that Edwards is still very much in the race, so this doesn’t immediately boil down to Barack vs. Hillary, as he would prefer. But I think Obama’s momentum is going to become an unstoppable freight train pretty quickly. If John Kerry — John Kerry — could seize the momentum of an Iowa win and translate it into an out-of-nowhere nationwide victory, Obama should have no problem doing the same. I bet he wraps up the nomination on Super Duper Tuesday, February 5.

UPDATE: Obama just finished talking. I haven’t watched him on the stump much, but: wow. Like I said, he came across really, really well. Inspiring, even. He’s got a little bit of the old-style black preacher in his voice, but without the divisiveness of Jackson, Sharpton, et al. in his message.

By the way, only 3 percent of the voters in Iowa were black. CNN analyst Roland Martin says “Iowa has never elected an African-American to anything.” So this is huge for Obama.

P.S. David Gergen says Obama’s victory speech was one of his best ever. “There were echoes of Martin Luther King of that speech.” I thought the same thing.

UPDATE 2: I just e-mailed my parents the following:

Did you watch Obama’s speech? I just caught it, having just woke up from a nap about 15 minutes before he spoke. I thought it was amazing. I’m a pretty cynical man, senator — well, no, “cynical” isn’t the right word, but I’m a political junkie, not easily swept off my feet by rhetoric — but Obama was giving me goose bumps. I really felt like I was watching something historic, which is exactly the feeling he was trying to instill. Everything about the speech was perfect. Really a transcendent political moment.

Barring a major stumble in the next month, I think Obama’s momentum very quickly becomes unstoppable — if Kerry, with his limited political skills, could catapult to victory from early momentum, Obama certainly can — and both Hillary and Edwards drop out of the race after an Obama near-sweep on Super Duper Tuesday. And unless McCain wins the GOP nomination, Obama becomes the first black president with relative ease. McCain is the only one who can make it a race (and possibly only if homeland security/foreign policy issues rear their ugly head due to “facts on the ground” between now and November).

P.S. If Huckabee wins the nomination (heaven help us), Obama wins in a Reagan-like landslide.

– Barack Obama will win the Iowa Democratic caucuses, CNN projects.

– CNN projects Mike Huckabee will win the Republican Iowa caucuses.

Dude, seriously. This would be uber-suhweet.

Here’s the sketchy drawings. Don’t know if it’s remotely real, but if it is, it’d be really cool.

The MacBook/iMac docking station?

I don’t know how much TV coverage of the Iowa caucuses I’ll have time to watch tonight, never mind how much I’ll be able to blog about them. Maybe quite a bit, maybe very little; it really depends on Loyette’s and Becky’s schedules, which are nigh impossible to predict in advance. Anyway, just in case I don’t end up blogging much at all, I figured I’d post an Iowa thread now, so y’all can comment on any news that may break.

In the mean time, what are your predictions? My money’s on Obama winning a squeaky-close three-way race that really decides nothing, and Huckabee edging Romney with McCain third. But I haven’t been following events closely for the last few days (obviously), so take those predictions with several large grains of salt.

Speaking of salt grains, give any pre-caucus “entrance polls” the grain-of-salt treatment as well. The arcane caucus rules, particularly on the Democratic side, mean that it’s a very chancy proposition trying to predict the outcome of such close, multi-candidate races based on polls, even polls taken mere minutes before the voting. We really just have to wait and see what the actual votes say.

Brian Dupuis, a.k.a. DUP, who won the first annual Irish Trojan Bowl Pick ‘em Contest in 2005-06, can clinch the third annual contest tonight if Virginia Tech beats Kansas in the Orange Bowl.

If Kansas wins, Dupuis will be eliminated, and the contest will become a two-person race between Seth C. and Trisha Neudorff. Neudorff would win if Ohio State beats LSU in the title game and either Ball State or Bowling Green (or both) win the International or GMAC bowls, respectively. If LSU wins, or if both Rutgers and Tulsa win, Seth C. would win the contest.

Current standings here and after the jump.

(more…)

Man, I miss South Bend. Not.

Actually, we got a little snow here on New Year’s Day. When I went out to retrieve the car seat from the Camry so that it could warm up in our hospital room overnight, there were some legit snowflakes falling. No accumulation, though. But it’s been cold as all get-out, at least by southern standards: 22 degrees right now, up from a low of 12. Our heater is working overtime trying to keep things warm enough for little Loyette (who, incidentally, is swaddled and sleeping in my lap as I type this, and looking totally adorable, I might add… aww).

With less than 6 minutes remaining the Mountaineers of West Virginia are dominating the Oklahoma Sooners 48 - 28.  A win would not only be a huge upset (for instance only 17 of the 90 entrants in the bowl pool picked WVU and over 84% of the voters in the ESPN Bowl Mania challange picked the Sooners, with an average confidence of 24.5 out of 32) but the first win of the bowl season for a team playing with an interim coach.  Oklahoma is looking at another loss in the Arizona desert, although not nearly as exciting as last years to Boise State.  And its been a messy game too, 21 penalties so far and 225 penalty yards between the two teams, a dubious Fiesta Bowl record.

Oh and one more thing, the next time someone complains about USC only playing one song I’m going to tell them to watch an Oklahoma game, that stupid Sooner ditty is ridiculous.

UPDATE:

Final score 48-28 WVU, congrats to the Mountaineers.  If West Virginia is smart they’ll hire interim coach  Bill Stewart right after the game.  He got this team to play for him when no one else believed in them.

We’ve had some excellent, very competitive BCS bowls so far.

I mean, this Fiesta Bowl is practically a nailbiter, with West Virginia struggling to hold on to a 20 point lead over Oklahoma.

48-28, WVU with 9 minutes to go in the game.

Sheesh.

Quick question for the Mac folk out there.  For those of you who use Safari, are you noticing it crashing a lot recently?

I’m wondering if I’ve managed to bollocks something up on my own, or if it’s just an issue from Apple’s side.

We’re home from the hospital. All is well.

A few quick observations from the first 52 hours of fatherhood:

• Has it really only been that long? I never would have thought it was possible for one’s life to change so completely in just 52 hours.

• Anyone who ponders the question “Does ‘love at first sight’ really exist?” has clearly never had a baby. Of course it exists.

• Singing to your baby is one of life’s underappreciated joys. (By the way, Brennan on the Moor is a great diaper-changing song.)

• It’s amazing how quickly you come to think of two-plus hours of consecutive slumber as a “decent night’s sleep,” and anything over three hours as downright luxurious.

• Speaking of which: everyone who knows me knows that I tend to procrastinate, dawdle and waste time. However, suddenly I find myself overwhelmingly concerned with efficiency. That’s not to say I’m actually efficient yet, but I’m always thinking about how to be efficient. If you want to get any sleep at all, there is simply no time to waste: you’ve got to plan out everything you do, and make sure you’re doing things in an order that makes sense. You’re also acutely aware that anything you do with your waking hours is taking time away from potential sleep. So, for example, activities like writing blog posts, responding to e-mails or watching bowl games must either be accepted as taking priority over sleep (a concept that has a way of very quickly reshuffling your priorities), be done simultaneously with other necessary activities, or be squeezed into brief pockets of “in-between time” that are too short for a worthwhile nap. (And really, is there any such thing?)

• When you’re growing up, you think your parents are total dorks for getting all emotional about the milestones in your life, particularly the ones that involve greater separation between you and them. Then you have a baby, and you completely understand where they were coming from; in fact, you suddenly don’t understand how they could possibly have handled it so well. The concept of this little one deciding, seventeen years hence, to move across the country for college, is completely incomprehensible. A father-daughter dance at her wedding someday? Don’t even get me started. Nope. She’ll be my little girl forever, I decided.

• Some concepts sink in more easily than others, even when they seem synonymous. The fact that she’s my daughter — that Becky and I created this life — has already pretty much sunk in. I look into her eyes and I get it: she’s mine. But at a totally different level, the fact that I’m her father still baffles me. I look at pictures of myself holding her, looking into those eyes, and I think: Holy s**t! I’m a dad?!? When did that happen?? Somewhere deep down, I think I still had this mental picture of myself as a dorky teenager who brings his camcorder everywhere and writes a newspaper on his home computer. My senior quote in high school was from John Mellencamp: “Hold onto sixteen as long as you can.” Finally, however, I can’t. I’m really, really not a kid anymore. I’m a dad. Me — a dad. Wow.

P.S. By the way… the blogged baby pictures won’t be coming as fast and furious henceforth as they have in the past few days. I’m sorry if that disappoints people; I know baby pictures are adorable and everybody wants to see them. But we want to avoid having every detail of Loyette’s entire childhood play out in real time, in living color, on the Internet. So while there will be occasional baby-picture posts, there won’t be nearly as many as you might think. Just so you know.

Loyette and I are watching the Rose Bowl in the hospital (well, she's asleep, but she's sitting on my lap while I watch it, anyway), and so far, we like what we see: the Trojans lead 21-3 at halftime.

UPDATE: USC 49, Illinois 17, final. w00t!

Meanwhile, Georgia and Hawaii are underway in the Sugar Bowl. Thom Brennaman and Charles Davis — the same announcing team that called last year’s Boise State win in the Fiesta Bowl and this year’s Appalachian State upset of Michigan — are calling the game. I sense an upset!

UPDATE 2: Or not. Georgia 24, Hawaii 3 at halftime.

UPDATE 3: Nope, definitely not. Georgia 41, Hawaii 10, final.

Remember how everyone wanted to see USC vs. Georgia instead of putting them in separate bowls? Tonight pretty well demonstrated why, no? It’s not the Rose Bowl’s fault that a Trojans-Bulldogs matchup didn’t happen, but man, it would have been pretty awesome. The BCS sucks.

Congrats Brendan & BECKY
Love barbara, weston, marissa, keith, the Buffalo Sabres and 75 thousand of your closest friends!

Oh yeah…
1-1 were going to overtime!

Although I suddenly find college football considerably less interesting than staring dumbfoundedly into my daughter’s eyes, nevertheless a bunch of bowl games are happening today. And things are going well so far for the hometown team, as Tennessee leads Wisconsin 21-7 near the end of the first half.

Later, of course, it’ll be USC vs. Illinois in the Rose Bowl and Georgia vs. Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl. Loyette says, “Fight on Trojans, and Go Warriors!” Okay, actually, Loyette just sort of let out a sleepy squeak, but that’s how I interpret her sentiments. :)

Also about to begin: the Sabres-Penguins outdoor hockey game, with 73,000 crazed Buffalonians packing the Bills’ iced-over football stadium. Kevin at Bfloblog calls it “the biggest sporting event to occur in the City of Buffalo in my lifetime.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, Becky and Loyette are both napping at the moment, and I’m going to try and do the same. I haven’t gotten much sleep in the last 36 hours (something I know will be quite common for the next several weeks/months/decades), and I gotta rest up before the Rose Bowl!

A new year, a new baby, the miracle of new life, and a new chapter in our lives. Never has the turning of the calendar’s page meant so much to us. What an amazing day.

From our family to yours, have a very Happy New Year!!

UPDATE: Welcome, InstaPundit readers! My earlier post announcing the birth of our New Year’s Eve baby, with pictures, is here.