Romney squeaks out victory in Iowa (Reuters)

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) ? Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney squeaked out a victory in Iowa's first-in-the-nation nominating contest on Tuesday as little-known rival Rick Santorum rode lingering conservative unease to a surprise second-place finish.

Romney edged out Santorum by only eight votes, winning by 30,015 to 30,007, the state Republican Party announced.

As the Republicans headed for their next contest in Romney stronghold New Hampshire, the result solidified his frontrunner status in the battle to pick a challenger to President Barack Obama in November's election.

At the same time, it underscored Romney's inability so far to secure the trust of his party's conservative wing and consolidate support ahead of what is likely to be the most expensive presidential election campaign in history.

Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator who until recently has been little more than an afterthought in the race, was the latest candidate to benefit from Romney's weakness, which has allowed a succession of rivals to challenge him.

"Game on!" Santorum declared to cheering supporters as votes trickled in after the agonizingly close contest. "People have asked me how I've done this," he said. "I survived the challenges so far by the daily grace that comes from God."

Santorum and Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who has relentlessly attacked Obama for his "failed presidency" and touted his experience as a businessman, each took 25 percent of the vote. Ron Paul, a Texas congressman, came in third place with 21 percent of the vote.

After the bruising contest, at least one candidate, Texas Governor Rick Perry, indicated his presidential bid may be over.

"I've decided to return to Texas, assess the results of tonight's caucus, determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race," Perry said after a disappointing fifth place finish.

With deep reserves of cash and a strong campaign infrastructure, Romney will emerge from Iowa in a stronger position than his rivals.

A favorite of the party's business wing, Romney holds a commanding lead in next Tuesday's New Hampshire primary and has the resources to compete in bigger states like Florida at the end of the month. A Republican official said Senator John McCain, the party's 2008 nominee, will endorse Romney on Wednesday.

"This has been a great victory for him," Romney said of Santorum. "We also feel it's been a great victory for us."

Romney fares better than other Republican candidates in head-to-head matchups against Obama, but he has been unable to crack 25 percent in national opinion polls of Republicans. His share of the vote on Tuesday matched the 25 percent he won in 2008 in a disappointing second-place finish.

Santorum vaulted from the back of the pack to emerge as the latest conservative favorite in a race marked by volatility. Campaigning in all Iowa's 99 counties, he emphasized his home-schooled children and opposition to gay marriage in a bid to win the state's large bloc of Christian conservatives.

Santorum staked his campaign on a strong showing in Iowa but with little cash and a bare-bones campaign operation he could have difficulty competing in other states.

Santorum so far has avoided the scrutiny that has derailed other candidates. Though he touts his ability to sell conservative ideas to Democrats and independents, Pennsylvania voters threw him out of office by an 18-point margin in 2006.

Rivals have begun to comb through his legislative record to paint him as a free-spending budget-buster.

Iowa is better known for narrowing the field than picking the eventual nominee. Conventional wisdom holds that there are three tickets out of the state, though McCain was able to overcome a fourth-place finish in 2008 conventional wisdom holds that

Paul's unorthodox views, including supporting a return to the gold standard and an end to a U.S. overseas military presence, have won him a passionate following among voters who feel deeply alienated from more mainstream candidates. He will have an uphill climb translating that into wider support among Republicans.

"Protecting your personal rights and your economic rights are what the government's supposed to do, they're not supposed to run our lives or spend our money," he told supporters.

Most of the candidates have topped opinion polls at some point and many voters said they were undecided even as the caucuses got under way.

Voters gathered in schools, churches and other venues around on a cold evening in the midwestern state, listening to supporters tout the various candidates before casting their ballots. Democrats and independents were allowed to participate as long as they re-registered as Republicans at the site.

Outside groups associated with candidates, known as "Super PACs," took advantage of loosened campaign-finance rules to flood the Iowa airwaves with negative advertising.

Former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich saw his support dwindle under a barrage of attack advertisements, many from a Super PAC run by Romney allies. He finished in fourth place.

Despite the negative onslaught, "everywhere we went people were positive," Gingrich told supporters. "They really wanted to get to the truth rather than the latest 30 second distortion."

Another candidate, U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann, fared worse. The lawmaker from neighboring Minnesota has lost momentum since topping an informal tally in August. She finished in sixth place with 5 percent of the vote but vowed to press on.

Sparsely populated Iowa only yields 25 delegates of the 1,143 needed to lock up the Republican presidential nomination, and those delegates aren't actually awarded for months after Tuesday's caucuses.

About 120,000 participated in Tuesday's Republican vote, and another 25,000 participated in the Democratic caucus -- about 8 percent of the state's eligible voters.

Still, the state is likely to play an outsize role in U.S. politics through to the November 6 election.

While Republican candidates have dominated the headlines, Obama's Democrats have quietly built a massive organization to round up voters in the fall.

Obama told Iowa supporters in a video chat on Tuesday evening that he would need the same energy and enthusiasm that helped him win the caucus four years ago, vaulting him into the lead for the Democratic nomination.

"It's going to be a big battle," he said.

(Additional reporting by John Whitesides, Steve Holland and Sam Youngman in Iowa and Emily Stephenson, Lily Kuo, Caren Bohan and Alexandra Alper in Washington; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by David Storey)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120104/ts_nm/us_usa_campaign

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Apocalypse Now: Newt Considering Palin For V.P. Or Secretary of Energy

The Grifter Singularity has occurred (in theory, anyway), and it is the WORST APOCALYPSE EVER, courtesy of The Hill:

Newt Gingrich said that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would be among the candidates that he would consider when considering a potential running mate, adding that the former GOP vice presidential nominee would be an ideal candidate for Secretary of Energy.

Perfection. Imagine the delightful times they?ll have, thumbing through the Tiffany catalog while helicopter hunting squads kill off the last wolves and bears and, eventually, squirrels ? all while oil companies drop actual sacks of gold on the White House, which will be covered in Big Gulp advertisements. [The Hill]

Source: http://wonkette.com/458993/apocalypse-now-newt-considering-palin-for-v-p-or-secretary-of-energy

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One Day Out: Good Morning Iowa (ABC News)

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Review: "Enchanted Island" a clever Met concoction (AP)

NEW YORK ? Call it a pastiche. Or a Baroque fantasy in two acts. Or the best opera Handel and Vivaldi never wrote.

By any name, "The Enchanted Island," which had its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on New Year's Eve with an all-star cast, is irresistibly entertaining. It's a light-hearted romp with enough fizz to send a dozen Champagne corks popping, and its only serious drawback is that at 3 1/2 hours running time it serves up a bit too much of a good thing.

The concoction was the brainchild of Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager who wanted to expand the company's Baroque repertory in a way that would create a stir and draw in new audiences. So he reinvented a 300-year-old gimmick, the "pasticcio" in which already existing music by several composers was fitted to a new libretto and plot.

Baroque specialist William Christie was engaged to oversee the musical preparation and conduct, and writer/director Jeremy Sams crafted the libretto. It was his clever idea to combine two Shakespeare plots: The quartet of lovers from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" get shipwrecked on Prospero's island from "The Tempest"; a major outbreak of mistaken identity ensues, and it takes all manner of magic spells ? not to mention intervention by the sea god Neptune ? to straighten things out again.

To bring their creation to life on stage, the Met wisely hired Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch to design and direct the production, Kevin Pollard to do the costumes, and a company called 59 Productions to provide animation and projections. Their inspired work on Philip Glass' "Satyagraha" was on view earlier this season, and they have again done wonders, creating eye-popping magical effects with the humblest of means.

The basic set is a deliberately old-fashioned proscenium frame with Prospero's book-lined lair on the left and on the right the primeval dwelling of Sycorax, the sorceress whose magic he has usurped. (The mother of the wild Caliban, she is mentioned but does not appear in the Shakespeare play.)

At the rear, a curtain rises for the ocean scenes ? starting with a rollicking shipwreck in which the four honeymooning lovers sing of "Days of pleasure, nights of love," (adapted from Handel's "Semele") only to see their boat capsize in a sudden storm. When Neptune makes his first appearance near the end of Act 1, he does so seated on a clam-shell throne, with mermaids dangling from ropes behind him.

The cast reads like a list of reigning stars in Baroque opera today, from countertenor David Daniels to mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, from soprano Danielle DeNiese to bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni. And let's not forget the fellow playing Neptune ? a certain 70-year-old tenor named Placido Domingo.

DiDonato tears into the role of Sycorax with abandon, rolling on the floor and waving her arms as she plots vengeance against Prospero. But her most effective scene ? and the emotional highlight of the evening ? is a tender song comforting her son, whose heart has just been broken by one of the shipwrecked women. The music is from a cantata, "Il Pianto di Maria," that was long attributed to Handel but now is credited to the Italian composer Ferrandini.

Part of what makes that scene so moving is the amazing performance by Pisaroni as Caliban. Although he sings up a storm elsewhere in the opera, here, without uttering a word but using facial expression and body movement, he indelibly conveys his character's grief, anger and finally acceptance.

Daniels has a more difficult challenge as Prospero, frankly the weakest character in Sams' generally first-rate libretto and one whose moral dilemma never quite clicks. His arias, though sung with fervor, tend to slow things down just when we want them to be fast-forwarded.

No such problem for his attendant sprite Ariel, as portrayed by DeNiese, a live wire whose extroverted show-biz personality perfectly suits the production. She deservedly stops the show with her final aria, a rapid-fire celebration of her newly gained freedom sung to music from Vivaldi's "Griselda."

As Miranda, Prospero's lovesick daughter, Lisette Oropesa displays a shining lyric soprano, and her duet ("I have dreamed you" from a Handel cantata) with the Ferdinand of countertenor Anthony Roth Costanza is sublime.

The four honeymooners are all terrific as well: tenor Paul Appleby as Demetrius, soprano Layla Claire as Helena, baritone Elliot Madore as Lysander, and especially mezzo Elizabeth DeShong as Hermia.

Domingo doesn't have much to sing, but Neptune is the perfect role for him at this late stage of his career. His mere entrance inspires a tangle of emotions ? part hilarity, part nostalgia and part awe. Despite his sometimes mangled English, he brings great authority to the part, and that familiar muscular tenor sound still rings out once or twice on sustained high notes.

The Enchanted Island" will play nine more times through Jan. 30. The matinee on Saturday, Jan. 21, will be broadcast on the radio and also shown in HD in movie theaters in the U.S. and around the world.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120101/ap_en_ce/us_opera_review_enchanted_island

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Will Chinese Baseball Make It to the American Big Leagues? (Time.com)

The field took just four months to build amid the high-rise apartment blocks on the outskirts of Changzhou, an anonymous second-tier city about 100 miles west of Shanghai in eastern China. Then, in this Chinese version of Field of Dreams, came the players, each with a nickname bestowed by their American coach, Rick Dell: V.B., or Volleyball Boy, a lanky 14-year-old from Jiangsu province whose mother was a volleyball player; Xiao (Little) Baby Ruth, the pudgy catcher and joker of the team; and Tony, who Dell says "looks like a little Italian guy" from far away.

If all goes according to plan, Xiao Baby Ruth or Tony may one day be playing for the Red Sox or Yankees in major league baseball. It may sound far-fetched, but watching these middle and high school kids make running catches in the outfield and throw fastballs upwards of 82 m.p.h., it's not totally inconceivable. The Changzhou development center, which opened in September, is MLB's second training school in China that aims to produce players who might one day have a shot at the majors or, more realistically, China's national baseball league. But finding the Yao Ming of baseball isn't the only objective. MLB is also desperate to bring back a sport that was wiped out during the Cultural Revolution and make it as popular in China today as it is in Japan and Korea. (Read about baseball dreams in the Dominican Republic.)

This may be difficult, given that America's favorite pastime is still relatively unknown in China, with only about 4 million players, compared with the estimated 300 million who play basketball. But MLB officials are optimistic, largely because of the success of the sport across Asia, particularly in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Baseball has a long history in China too. The game was introduced to the country over a century ago by Chinese students returning home from Yale University. Mao Zedong banned it during the Cultural Revolution -- unlike his beloved basketball -- but it re-emerged after his death, eventually leading to the formation of the professional China Baseball League in 2002. In recent years, China has also made steady progress on the international stage, getting a hugely gratifying -- and high-profile -- victory over rival Taiwan at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Jim Small, the Tokyo-based vice president of MLB Asia, believes baseball is well suited to Chinese culture. An official once told him that, were he around, Confucius himself might be a fan. "There's a lot of Confucian ideas in the game of baseball. It's the only real team sport where there's no clock. It's about sacrifice. It's one of the few times where you actually sacrifice yourself for the better of the team," Small says. China also takes immense pride in excelling in sports it's not supposed to. Remember Li Na's victory at the French Open? "Ten years ago, people thought you're not going to have Chinese sprinters or Chinese swimmers, and now they're the best of the world in those (sports), so why not baseball?" Small says. (See the 10 worst MLB stars.)

Still, MLB officials admit it will take time to increase the visibility of a sport as nuanced as baseball. The long-term strategy has been a grassroots approach. MLB has introduced baseball to 120 elementary schools in five cities through a program called Play Ball!, with an annual nationwide tournament for the best schools in the spring. It also started a traveling baseball theme park that toured 20 cities this year, attracting some 2.5 million visitors. And a Mandarin-language version of This Week in Baseball, a weekly MLB-highlights show in the U.S., is now broadcast on eight regional Chinese networks.

But bolstering the sport's popularity may ultimately depend upon producing a Chinese star, says Leon Xie, managing director of MLB China. "It's called the Yao Ming effect," he says. "You get your superstar, then you get your fan base, and then that will get us closer to our ultimate goal -- to get baseball back to the country." This is why the MLB training center in Changzhou and another in nearby Wuxi, which was set up in 2009, are so important.

When MLB opened its Wuxi center, it recruited players locally and had to start with the basics. "The first time most kids had been on a baseball field was the first day we had practice," says Dell, who was head baseball coach at the College of New Jersey for 27 years before moving to China to oversee the development program. Two years later, officials were able to travel the country to scout talent for the Changzhou center, recruiting youngsters from as far away as Qinghai province in the west, where the game is popular among Tibetans, to Guangdong province in the south and Beijing in the north. "There are independent pockets of baseball that are popping up ... that are being initiated by interested individuals who might be Korean or Chinese Americans or Americans," Dell says. "What we've started to do is connect the dots."

The progress in Changzhou has been quick -- and the players' enthusiasm is palpable. After class on a recent weekday, the 20 boys in the program hit the field wearing bright blue and red jerseys, black Nike cleats and caps from different MLB teams for their weekly in-house game. The red team strikes first, scoring two runs on an overthrown ball to first, but the blue team rallies in its final at bat. After one batter safely reaches base -- prompting his teammate to yell "Safe!" in English -- Bama, a 14-year-old Tibetan player from Qinghai, steps to the plate. He cracks the ball to the outfield and sprints to first as his teammates go nuts in the dugout. The comeback is short-lived, though. The light is fading, and Dell calls the game.

Bama, whose nickname sounds like his Tibetan name, Huadan Banma, says afterward that he started playing only three years ago and that his dream is to one day make it to MLB like his idol, Alex Rodriguez. "If I can succeed, I want to earn lots of money that I can use to help others," he says quietly. But even if there aren't any future major leaguers on the field today, Dell says, baseball is making inroads. "We've done things slowly and deliberately," he says. "We wanted to do real things. What you see here is a real thing."

See the top 10 sports moments of 2011.

See TIME's baseball covers.

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/time/20111231/wl_time/08599210160900

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Happy New Year! (Poliblogger)

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FastCompany: We spent a lot of time this year in China, documenting transition, transformation, and innovation http://t.co/nFpnl2Vy

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