JUST THINKIN': During the Bush administration almost every nightly news broadcast kept a running total of the number of U.S. and NATO casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With the advent of the Obama administration, that running total has mysteriously disappeared. How many Americans know that six U.S. soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on March 4 of this year? Or that

Before Tuesday's crash, there had been 149 NATO fatalities in Afghanistan this year, 119 of them US soldiers, according to the independent icasualties website.

The annual total peaked in 2010, when 711 NATO troops died.

Little people only count when there's a Republican administration.