In the meantime

Baby It's Cold Outside

MINNEAPOLIS, MN - A few summers ago we were traveling out west by van, which, parenthetically, is my favorite way to get from point A to point B because you don't miss all of the great stuff along the way. We left El Paso, Texas that morning and headed toward California. As we passed through Arizona and New Mexico we noticed the temperature readout in the overhead display kept going higher and higher until it said 105°.  About that time we needed to stop for gas and, well, you know, the call of nature. 

When we left El Paso, it was probably in the 70s and for the entire morning the air conditioner in the van kept it a pleasant 72° inside. When we opened the car door, it was literally as if we had stepped into an oven.  I remember making a mental note that the next time someone from the west said, "But it's a DRY heat..." I was going to slap them upside the head.

Today I am experiencing the polar (and I mean that in both senses of the word!) opposite.  When I left Atlanta this morning it was in the 40s and pleasant.  Today the high in Minneapolis is expected to be 2°.  No, that is not a typing error... two degrees above zero!

I'm sure at sometime in my distant past I experienced temperatures in this range.  I did, after all, spend the first eight years of my life in New York.  But my body has long since forgotten what that feels like and certainly wouldn't register it as anything approaching "normal."

Prior to today, the coldest I ever remember being was a couple of years ago in Lower Manhattan.  It was about 12° that morning and We were walking in the Financial district.  The wind coming in off the Hudson River put the wind chill factor in a range that would make Nanook of the North seek shelter.

That doesn't even compare to the cold that welcomed me to the land of 10,000 lakes and Jesse Ventura this morning.  One lady stepped off the plane and into the jetway and immediately said, "Holy icicles, Batman!"  We all laughed.  And the condensation from our laughs immediately froze and crumbled to the ground.   OK, I'm exaggerating. But not much.

I couldn't help but wonder if folks up here make excuses to pretend that the cold isn't really cold like the folks out west do with the "it's a dry heat" fairy tale.  What would they say?  "It's a dry cold?" "It's a warm cold?" Or perhaps, "It's a wet cold?" (followed of course with the obligatory, "don'tcha know" which is the Minnesota equivalent of "y'all.")

My reply is it is a cold cold.  A cold, cold, cold cold!  The next time a Northerner says we Southerners are wimps, I promise I will heartily agree,  The folks who live up here are made of sterner stock than I.  My hat would be off to you, but then my head would freeze.

In case you were wondering, the low here tonight is supposed to go down to -13°.  I can assure you, I will not be outdoors after the sun goes down this evening!

Bill Clinton Deals the Race Card From the Bottom of the Deck

In the interest of honesty and bias disclosure, let me begin this post with two admissions: First, I am and have been for many years a political junkie.  Second, I am not now, nor have I ever been a fan of Bill and/or Hillary Clinton.

My fascination with politics is admittedly at odds with my revulsion for politics as usual.  I suppose I am the eternal optimist, hoping against hope that things can and will change in Washington.  For most of the last two decades, we have been forced to walk into the voting booth, hold our nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.  The last truly inspiring leader we had in the White House was Ronald Reagan.

There is a lot in Barack Obama that I find Reaganesque, which is why it is ironic he caught so much flack from his fellow Democrats for identifying Reagan as a transformational President in American history.

Reagan famously said that the "eleventh commandment" was "Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of a Fellow Republican."  Watching the Democrats - most especially former President Clinton - in action recently, it is has become apparent that not only do they not embrace that eleventh commandment, but that their version of the eleventh commandment is slightly different: "Thou shalt not speak well of Ronald Reagan under any circumstances."

I have always found the Clintons to be sleazy opportunists who would say or do anything to get elected or to protect their political interests.  I really have never understood the fascination that many have with them.  It's not that Bill Clinton was an ineffective President.  In fact, the economy did well during his term in office.  But his actions brought shame on the office and his lying under oath was inexcusable.  (It is very interesting to note that in two recent cases - that of Bishop Earl Paulk in Atlanta and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick - some of the same people who made excuses for Bill Clinton's lying under oath about sex are clamoring for the proverbial book to be thrown at these two for the same offense.

In the wake of Obama's victory in Iowa, the Clinton machine went into full stealth-attack mode, and Bill was cast in the role of the attack dog.  He did his job too well.  At a campaign event this weekend, Bill Clinton was actually booed by a predominantly African American audience because of his attacks on Barack Obama.

Clinton's lowest moment came when he responded to Obama's stunning upset victory over Hillary in South Carolina on Saturday by a 2 to 1 margin.  The former President dismissed Obama's win by reminding everyone that Jesse Jackson won South Carolina but didn't ultimately win the nomination.

Now I don't believe anything that the Clintons say or do is off the cuff or unscripted.  They don't blink without a plan, a poll or focus group results.  (That includes Hillary's tears a couple of weeks ago!)  Bill knew exactly what he was saying when he compared Obama's win to Jesse Jackson's.  He was telling everyone in a subtle (yet deniable) way that Obama is the "black" candidate and therefore not truly viable or mainstream.

That statement was a blatant playing of the race card, and dealing it from the bottom of the deck to boot.  He deserves the scorn that has come his way because of it.  It was a stupid thing to say from someone known for his political instincts.  His massive ego (he sees Hillary's potential election as a referendum on his legacy) has caused those instincts to betray him to the point that he thought comparing Obama to Jackson would be an effective ploy.

Barack Obama is directly responsible for millions of new people being energized, excited and involved in the political process this year.  His candidacy has caused record turnouts in most of the primaries this year.  He has set the agenda - change - for the candidates in both parties.  He's no Jesse Jackson.  There is nothing symbolic about his candidacy.  He is electable.

There was a rare moment of honesty from a highly partisan political commentator today on CNN.  Republican and Democratic consultants were on a panel discussing Democratic infighting.  The Republican consultant said Hillary getting the nomination would be much better for his party of choice to run against, but that "Barack Obama is no doubt better for America."

One can only hope that Bill will keep it up and that more and more people will realize he and Hillary will stop at nothing and stoop to anything to get what they want.  I agree with Atlanta-based radio host Neil Boortz who says very little frightens him more than the thought of Bill Clinton back in the White House with lots of time on his hands.

What's Your Dream?

Do you have a dream?  What is it that motivates you to do what you do?

In 1867, D.L. Moody took a trip to England.  During that trip, Moody sat in a park talking with an evangelist named Henry Varley.  Varley looked at Moody and said, "The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully consecrated to Him." Those words ignited a fire in Moody's soul.  He went on to become one of the greatest evangelists and soul winners in the history of the church.

A young divinity student named Martin read the works of Mahatma Gandhi.  He was impressed by Gandhi's commitment to non-violent social change, and with the results his work wrought in colonial India.  Martin Luther King took that philosophy of non-violence and incorporated it into his deeply held Christian convictions of justice and equality.  He became the driving force behind the greatest cultural shift in the history of the United States.

In the early 1900s, motivational author Orison Swett Marden said, "All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers."

What's your dream?

This past week, we honored the legacy of Dr. King, whose words and actions embodied the aspirations of the American Civil Rights Movement.  He was already a living legend in April, 1968 when he was tragically gunned down in Memphis.  His influence only increased in death as in a very real sense he became a martyr to the cause of justice for African Americans.  The words of his final speech to striking Memphis sanitation workers became prophetic, as he said, "I may not get there with you, but we as a people will get to the promised land."  24 hours later, he was dead.

Dr. King's famous "I Have A Dream" speech is undoubtedly one of the most effective and important addresses in our nation's history.  It is unique in that it is a deeply personal statement of a very public figure.  If you read the complete text of the address, he begins by giving an overview of the problem - that the promise of freedom in the Emancipation Proclamation has not yet been realized by blacks in America.  But King sounded a positive note, saying he was confident the situation could and would be changed. He urged his listeners to not "wallow in the valley of despair" because despite the present difficulties, he still had a dream.

Reading through the speech again today, I was struck by the personal passion of the man, and how his dream was the singular focus of his efforts, the passion that motivated and drove him. I was compelled to ask myself, 'what is your dream?'  What is it that fuels my passion?  What motivates me to do what I do?  And perhaps more importantly, are the things that I am doing helping to accomplish my dreams?  Am I, to paraphrase Thoreau, moving confidently in the direction of my dreams?

On a recent Sunday at my home church, we heard the story of Marlon's dream.  In our community there is no park where special needs children can play.  Several years before, Marlon became aware of the need, and he thought it would be nice if there was such a place in town, but that's as far as it went.  Then God brought a special needs child into Marlon's family, and what had been a nice idea suddenly became a dream, a passion, and a call to action.  To date, Marlon's efforts have resulted in close to one million dollars being raised to build the park.  Very soon his dream will become a reality, and a huge blessing for special needs children and their families in our area.

It is still true today: God does great things through people who dream big dreams. He wants to use you and me to impact our world, to right wrongs, to bring about great change, to bring people into His Kingdom.  But first, we must allow Him to instill in us a dream that sets our souls on fire.

What's your dream?

The Ghosts of Birmingham

BIRMINGHAM, AL — My father grew up not far from here in the town of Gadsden, and he attended the University of Alabama in nearby Tuscaloosa.  I have vague memories of visiting this town as a boy, just as I have equally vague memories of family discussions about the civil rights movement.  For all practical purposes, my time here this week was my first real trip to Birmingham.

I was fortunate to grow up in a home that was as color blind as you could be in the south.  By the time I went to school, integration was the order of the day, and while there might have been tension and conflict in the adult world, there was none among the students.  From first grade through college, I always had friends who were of a different race than I.

To this day I find it hard to fathom the kind of hate that caused this town to be called "Bombingham" in the 1950s and 60s.  Driving past the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Friday morning, I felt a lump in my throat thinking of the little girls who died there at the hands of a Ku Klux Klan bomber in 1963.  They were attending Sunday School when they died.  Their only crime was being black.

Driving through the 4th Street Historic District, you are struck with how determined, motivated people can make the best of a terrible situation.  At the turn of the last century, black businesses thrived alongside white ones in downtown Birmingham.  But with the coming of Jim Crow laws in the early 1900s, black owned businesses were forced out and concentrated into a "black district" around 4th Street west of downtown.  Today, that area continues to thrive with ethnic shops and businesses.

Birmingham today bears little resemblance to the place that was ground zero in the struggle for civil rights in America.  In many ways, the town that was the scene of so much conflict is the poster child for all that has been accomplished.  Birmingham's mayor, Larry Langford, is an African-American who grew up in the city's Loverman Village public housing.  Mayor Langford was a teenager during the days of the civil rights movement. 

Everywhere we went in the city, including the historically black areas of town we saw people of all races going about their daily lives side by side.  Folks in this town now reach across ethic lines to build bridges. Dawson Memorial Baptist Church in the Homewood section of town is handing out copies of the Gospel of John in Spanish at the end of the services this Sunday to encourage the members to share the gospel with their Hispanic neighbors.  A Hispanic Choir was rehearsing when we were there on Friday.  Black, white and Latino people worked out side by side in the church's impressive Fitness Center, built as an outreach to the community.

Birmingham is a great place to live, work and raise a family today no matter what the color of your skin is.  As you drive through the city, you can't help but be reminded that many people literally gave their lives to make Birmingham, and the rest of our country, what it is today. 

That number includes four little girls who were brutally murdered while attending church over on Sixteenth Street just a little over 40 years ago. 

   

Related:
Raising Unbiased Kids in a Bigoted World
Rev. John Cross, 1925 - 2007
He Had A Dream
Little Things Mean A Lot

The Treasures of the Snow

In the metro Atlanta area where I live, snow is a very rare event.  Having grown up here, I remember several times that the area was blanketed by snow and it was beautiful.  But usually we get ice storms.  In some ways, this part of the south is known for it's ice storms.  Ice can be kind of pretty as it surrounds the needles of a pine tree like a clear plastic case.  Unfortunately, ice storms are the number one killer of pine trees in the south.  The trees are not meant to support the kind of weight a thick layer of ice lays on them, so they fall or they bend over to the point they must be cut down.  Falling pine trees in turn are the number one killer of power lines, so quite often a Georgia ice storm is accompanied by a loss of power and therefore a loss of heat.

For about a week now, meteorologists have been saying there was a really good chance for 1-2 inches of snow in the metro Atlanta area on Wednesday (today).  As usually happens to us, the forecast has now been revised to say we are going to get sleet and freezing rain. 

As they used to say in the cartoons, "Curses!  Foiled again!"

I love snow.  Ironically, when we lived in Virginia Beach, we would get an average of two good snows a year.  It is beautiful.  Have you ever noticed how snow can blanket the ugliest eyesore and make it beautiful?  A ratty looking junkyard becomes a winter wonderland with just a couple of inches of snow.

You don't often think of snow when you think of the Middle East, but did you know that snow is mentioned in the Bible 23 times?  References to snow appear from Exodus to Revelation.  Many of those references contain the phrase "as white as snow."  Probably the two most famous biblical references to snow come from Isaiah 1:18 ("Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool") and Psalm 51:7 as David is praying for forgiveness for his sin with Bathsheba ("Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.")

I guess one of the reasons I love snow so much is because it reminds me that God takes the junkyard of my life - my sin, my rebellion, my disobedience - and covers it like a good snow, leaving beauty where there was ugliness and chaos.

I love the words to that old hymn that says

Lord Jesus I long to be perfectly whole
I want Thee forever to ransom my soul
Break down every idol, cast out every foe
Now wash me and I will be whiter than snow

I am heading to Mississippi this morning, but if snow was in the forecast I think I would stay here in Atlanta, partly for safety reasons, but mostly because I would hate to miss our once every ten years snow!

We still have about six more weeks of winter.  Maybe next time we'll get some snow.

UPDATE: It is now Saturday morning, (January 19) and "next time" has arrived!  The predicted storm is just now moving into Atlanta and the jury's still out on how much snow we will get here.  But, I just spent the better part of an hour sitting having blueberry muffins as we looked out over our backyard with snow gently falling, so I'm a happy camper.  BTW, the title for the above post comes from Job 38:22 (KJV): "Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?" The word in context really means "treasury" or "storehouse," but looking out this morning, "treasures" works fine for me.

My Unplanned Experiment in Internet Deprivation

On a normal day, I spend about 18 hours a day awake.  Of the 18 hours that I am awake, I am on the Internet around 15 of those hours.  It's not that I am an online version of the couch potato - it's just that's what I do for a living.  The company I work for is the largest provider of Internet media technology to the world's faith community.  I manage two Internet media properties and supervise the design and deployment of email campaigns that total 8 million sends a month (all opted-in, no spam involved, thank you very much.) Virtually everything we do is online.  Then add to that feeding my blogging habit and time spent on Ebay looking for stuff I don't need but somehow can't live without.

I am almost never without an Internet connection.  If I find myself somewhere that doesn't have a WiFi connection, or if my home Internet connection goes down, I have a broadband card that connects me to the Internet via Verizon. 

This past Friday I was working from home when I was suddenly and unexpectedly confronted with what we PC users euphemistically refer to as the "Blue Screen of Death."  In quasi-friendly text, the screen told me that Windows had shut down to prevent damage to my computer.  If I had never seen this screen before, the ominous white-on-blue text said, I should reboot my computer.  Since I had, in fact, never seen that particular screen before, I felt mildly perturbed but nevertheless hopeful as the computer restarted.  Just a few seconds later I was greeted by a sight far worse than the Blue Screen of Death: The Black Screen of Obituary.

The words now on my formerly colorful screen basically told me that the machine could not start because it could not locate system.cmd.  In other words, "Dude, where's my hard drive?"  At that moment I knew that barring a miracle I was now the proud owner of a ridiculously expensive paperweight.  I could hear Dr. McCoy saying to Captain Kirk, "It's dead, Jim."  Or John Cleese in my head declaring "THIS IS AN EX-PC...IT HAS CEASED TO BE! 

Being the eternal optimist, I spent the next six hours trying to prove that it had not ceased to be, but was just pining for the fjords.  (Apologies to those who haven't the foggiest idea what I am talking about. The Python-impaired can click here for an explanation, or here to see what I am talking about.) Alas, six hours later I was forced to admit that I was not going to have a laptop until sometime on Monday.

Granted, there were two other laptops and two desktop PCs in my house, and an aged Mac running OS 7.  But none of those machines had the programs I needed on them, so I had to face the fact that I was going to have a non-productive weekend ahead of me.

Now this post is not to preach about the wonders of a technology fast (see previous post on that subject) or to give you a lesson in getting offline and reconnecting with real life.  Truth be told it is really just a wordy explanation/excuse for why I haven't posted since the middle of last week! 

But, for what it is worth, my "unproductive" weekend included taking my wife to dinner and a movie, reading, and knocking out several long time residents of my honey-do list.  It was, actually, kinda nice.  OK, it was very nice.

After spending most of today working with our IT folks on the resurrection of my laptop (which involved a complete return to the dreaded "factory settings"), I am now about 75% back into the land of the connected.  I was never without email access courtesy of my "Crackberry," and thankfully I didn't lose any data in the debacle. It could have been a lot worse if numerous documents, including the scope docs for our new media property launch and revisions to existing properties, had been lost.

All in all, I find myself feeling like my Calvinist friends do after they fall down the stairs: "Boy, I'm glad that's over with..."

Note to my aforementioned Calvinist friends: It's a joke.  Really. I found it, um... Irresistible.

Note to those who didn't get the joke: Click here for an explanation, or at least a definition.

Honoring A Life Well Lived

This past Sunday, my family and I traveled to Cleveland, Georgia to attend a service that was part anniversary, part recognition and all celebration.  It was a service at Union Grove Congregational Holiness Church to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first sermon preached by a beloved and legendary Georgia mountain preacher, Rev. Asa Dorsey.

Now in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that Asa is my father-in-law, so I am hopelessly prejudiced on this subject.  But Sunday morning I was in good company - in a church packed with folks who feel the same way I do about this man.

The first time I ever heard Asa Dorsey preach was at a revival service in Gainesville in the fall of 1975.  I had recently started dating his youngest daughter, so to be honest, I attended the service to hear Fonda sing, not to hear Asa preach (if you have ever heard my wife sing you will understand that perfectly!)  But that night I was mesmerized by Asa's preaching and especially by his staggering ability to quote whole chapters of the Bible word for word, even pausing at the commas!

His preaching career began on Sunday, January 1, 1933 at a home Bible Study in Clarksville, Georgia.  Asa was 17 years old and had been wrestling with a call to the ministry.  The Bible Study leader announced that a brand new gospel preacher would be bringing the message that day.  Asa remembers looking around to see who he was talking about when he heard himself being introduced.  He was stunned. The first thing he did was ask them to join him in prayer.  As he knelt to pray, Asa sensed God saying to him, "The decision you make now will affect the rest of your life." His decision made, he stood and spoke from Romans 8 on the subject of freedom in Christ.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

Over the next seven-plus decades, Asa would preach at thousands of Sunday morning services and hundreds of revivals and tent meetings all over the South.  He also officiated at over 1,700 funeral services. People in the community who never darkened the door of Asa's church, or sometimes any other church, would ask him to speak at the service for their loved ones.

My most poignant memory of Asa is not of him standing in the pulpit preaching to hundreds of people, it is of him on his knees praying for my son.  When Chris was seven weeks old he had to have neurosurgery.  Asa and Annie Kate drove to Virginia to be with us for his surgery.  That morning before we left for the hospital, we all knelt around his crib.  I cannot recall one word Asa said as he led us in prayer that morning, but never before or since have I felt the power and the presence of God as clearly.

On Sunday morning, historian and journalist Larry Fricks, author of a book on Asa's life entitled The Greatest of These, shared some stories about the impact of Asa's life and ministry on North Georgia, including some that didn't make it into the book. 

Asa, now 92 years old, spoke to the congregation for about ten minutes.  Speaking about the funerals he performed, Asa quoted a line from Shakespeare dealing with the weight of your words as it relates to the weight of grief.  He said he always kept that in mind and tried to bring comfort to the family with words that were lighter, not heavier than the grief they were bearing.  He spoke fondly of the three terms he served as pastor of Union Grove Church, the first one beginning in 1934 when he was only 18 years old.  And he quoted in it's entirety the passage of scripture in Romans that he preached from that Sunday in 1933.

We live in a day where many pastors move all over the country as they climb up the ministry equivalent of the corporate ladder, with each church being larger and more influential than the last.  It is very rare for someone to spend his entire ministry in the same geographic area.  It is even rarer for that ministry career to span the better part of eight decades.  Sunday morning the people of Cleveland, Georgia had a chance to recognize the investment of a life, to honor the man for his dedication and integrity, and to give thanks to the One who called him to serve them seventy-five years earlier.

As he closed his remarks Sunday, Asa compared our lives to a stage.  We enter in the same way through a door called birth, and we all exit the same way through a door called death.  The time in between is lived out on the stage called life. He noted that he was closer than ever to that second door.  "Beyond that door," Asa said, "is everything that I have preached about for the last 75 years... and it's looking better all the time!"

Related: Happy 92nd Asa Dorsey

Note:  Larry Fricks is one of the subjects of a new book written by Meredith Vieira's husband Richard Cohen entitled "Strong At the Broken Places."  Larry, who lives with Bipolar Disorder, travels all over the country as a resource and an advocate for those living with mental illness. The book was profiled on NBC's Today Show this week.  (Click here to view the Today Show segment profiling Larry Fricks.)

Did I Do That???

On November 9, 1965, a young boy was walking down the street in Brooklyn with a stick in his hand.  At exactly 5:27, he took the stick and struck a utility pole.  When he did so, all of the lights on the street went out.  The terrified boy dropped the stick and started running home.  As he ran, he noticed all of the lights were out for the entire five block trip home.  When he got home, his parents were listening to the radio.  The news reader said that power was out in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Ontario, Canada!

Finally, after four hours of agony, the guilt-stricken child tearfully confessed to his parents that he was the cause of the power outage because he hit a light pole with a stick.  Holding back laughter, his parents hugged him and assured him that it was a coincidence that the lights went out when he hit the pole.  The culprit was actually a relay at Niagara's Sir Adam Beck station in Ontario that was set too low.  A small power surge in Lewiston, NY tripped the relay, which began a domino effect tripping relays at power plants all along the Eastern Seaboard.

There's something oddly endearing about a little boy thinking he could make parts of eight states lose power with a stick.  That kind of thinking is not so endearing, however, when it comes from adults with a highly exaggerated sense of their own power and importance.

In the aftermath of Thursday's Iowa Caucus victories by Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama, my inbox was full of press releases from groups claiming their efforts were responsible for the poor showing by Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.  About half of these claims were made by pro-life groups who felt they were single-handedly responsible for Guiliani's defeat in Iowa.

For example, here's a statement issued by Randall Terry, former head of Operation Rescue and currently head of a group called The Society for Truth and Justice.  The statement was titled "Giuliani Trounced Because of Abortion: New Hampshire, Florida Next." 

America's Mayor is being sent back to City Hall because of his support of abortion. Our mission is to speed up that process by continuing to expose and confront him in New Hampshire this weekend, then Florida for the rest of the month.  We will be dogging Rudy in Florida next, until his campaign is a smoldering ruin and a warning to any other pro-choice Republicans: Stay out, or face the same end.

Ummm... folks, did you happen to notice that for all practical purposes, Rudy did not run in Iowa?  His strategy from the beginning has been to bypass Iowa and New Hampshire and concentrate on the Super Tuesday states.  Giuliani is counting on garnering all of the delegates he needs to secure the Republican nomination from the later primaries.  That strategy may come back to haunt him as momentum builds for Huckabee and perhaps Romney or McCain from the early wins and he is all but absent from the political news for these next few weeks. 

Whether or not Giuliani's early primary strategy is wise or not, the fact is he all but conceded Iowa from the get-go, so the groups claiming they brought down Giuliani in Iowa is laughable.  Evangelical groups should be wary of claiming credit for the "defeat" of a candidate in a state he didn't really run in.  It makes us look as silly as the boy with the stick thinking he caused a blackout, or a rooster who thinks the sun came up because he crowed!

Giuliani's poor showing in Iowa wasn't the only result that would-be Davids with their self-imagined slingshots were eager to take credit for.  Mitt Romney finished nearly ten points behind Huckabee, and Peter LaBarbera of the Republicans for Family Values was crowing in a press release he issued on Friday:

There is a story the media missed in its reporting of Mitt Romney's humiliating loss in Iowa to the comparatively vastly under-funded Mike Huckabee: how a dogged "truth campaign" by pro- family advocates -- mostly from Romney's own state of Massachusetts -- to educate social conservatives on his liberal record on abortion and homosexuality helped seal his defeat.

Well, at least Romney actively campaigned in Iowa, but I firmly believe Romney sunk his own battleship in Iowa with negative campaigning and his obvious lack of sincerity and integrity.  In short, Mitt Romney lost to Huckabee because despite all of the money spent by Romney, when Iowa Republicans weighed the two candidates, they found Romney wanting.  Mr. LaBarbera and his peers may have helped expose some of the Romney flaws, but the Romney loss in Iowa was a do-it-yourself proposition.  (And for what it is worth, Mr. LaBarbera, what exactly does "comparatively vastly" mean???)

Thursday's biggest losers, in my opinion, are Romney and Clinton.  Romney poured over 7 million dollars into Iowa and he hinged his campaign on a big win in Iowa right out of the block.  The resounding victory by Huckabee - who spent significantly less than 1 million dollars in Iowa - is a huge blow and an embarrassment to the former Massachusetts governor.  Likewise, Hillary Clinton viewed Iowa as the first stop of her coronation tour.  She and Bill both predicted she would win in Iowa by "a pretty good margin" as late as November.  In mid-December, Clinton issued orders that no one on her staff was to predict a win in Iowa anymore.  Pundits interpreted that move as part of the "expectations" game that campaigns play, but it soon became apparent that the Clinton camp no longer believed they could win in Iowa.  On December 21, Politico.com quoted Clinton staffers as saying she could survive a second-place finish in Iowa and that the state was not do-or-die for her. They never imagined she would actually finish third.

Now, New Hampshire is indeed a do-or-die state for the Clintons. John Edwards is already saying that her poor showing in Iowa may have rendered her effectively out of the race for the White House. (Read the story from CNN here)  Already the Iowa results have ended two long-shot candidacies - that of Chris Dodd and Joe Biden.

I still maintain that voters this year are looking for a candidate who is genuine and one who can effectively lift the country out of the partisan Red State-Blue State acrimony that has characterized the last decade in American politics.  Iowa voters seemed to verify this.  It will be very interesting to see if this trend - and the momentum presently enjoyed by Obama and Huckabee - carries over into New Hampshire this coming Tuesday.

For better or worse, the game is on now and we're in for a lot of rhetoric and politics between now and the first Tuesday in November, when we will select the 44th President of the United States.

Related:
The Electorate Is On To Something 
Ich bin Ein Mormon