The Rolfes Review

A record number of people turned out to participate in caucuses all over Minnesota Tuesday night.

24 states, including Minnesota, held primaries and caucuses on Tuesday. This has commonly been referred to as "Super Tuesday" because of the amount of presidential delegates that are up for grabs.

The 2004 presidential caucus had 56,000 people attend democratic caucuses and around 40,000 people attended the republican caucus. The democratic caucus this year had over 220,000 people participate and over 60,000 participated for the republicans.

The presidential race became much clearer on the republican side after Tuesday, while the democratic race is still tightly contested.

As of Wednesday morning, the estimated delegates for each nominee are: Clinton 811, Obama 720 for the democrats and, McCain 616, Romney 269, and Huckabee 170 for the republicans.

Star Tribune
CNN

Posted by rolfe016 at 6:11 PM | Permalink

Millions of Chinese citizens have been stranded in train stations this week due to the worst winter weather China has faced in decades. Severe winter storms have caused several Chinese train stations to stop taking passengers leaving millions of people stuck inside the stations.

The city of Guangzhou alone has over half a million people stranded at its train station. The leader of China's communist government, Wen Jiabao, visited the Guangzhou station today in efforts to control some of the damage. Economists project over $3 million in damages already. They also estimate inflation is likely to sky rocket as a result of food and energy shortages throughout China.

Many of these citizens were on their way home to celebrate Chinese New Year next week. With a majority of these stranded being middle class citizens, the government worries this will add to the protests being done by many workers unhappy with the Chinese government. (BusinessWeek)

Posted by rolfe016 at 11:29 PM | Permalink

Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani announced today that he is dropping out of the 2008 presidential nomination race. This announcement comes a day after Giuliani finished third in the Republican primary in Florida. The former mayor had not received any primary wins prior to the announcement.

Giuliani gained national and international recognition for his efforts to help New York in the days following the September terrorist attacks in 2001. Giuliani was then the GOP front-runner in several national polls last year.

The announcement came as Giuliani said to supporters with tight smiles crowded behind him. "You don't always win, but you can always try to do it right, and you did."(MSNBC)

Posted by rolfe016 at 10:34 PM | Permalink

The Minnesota Twins star pitcher Johan Santana was traded yesterday to the New York Mets in return for four young prospects. The two time Cy Young award winner had requested that the Twins organization come to a decision on his future by the end of Tuesday.

Santana, who is 28 years old, is a two time American League All-Star and had the 7th best earned run average in the American League last year.

In exchange for Santana, the Twins will receive outfielder Carlos Gomez, 22, and righthanded pitchers Philip Humber, 25, Kevin Mulvey, 22, and Deolis Guerra, 18. Gomez is the only player in the group from the Mets that has Major League experience.

The Santana trade speculation began at the MLB winter meetings in December and has been a large part of Minnesota sports coverage ever since. "That's all we heard about all winter is [Santana] was going to be gone and traded,'' said Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson. "At first you think about it all the time. You expect it's going to happen, and when it finally does, it's like it really hasn't hit you yet.'' (Star Tribune) The Twins lineup will consist of several new faces when the season starts in late March.

Posted by rolfe016 at 6:09 PM | Permalink