I just read this article on CNN about the Smiley Face Killers and it really hit close to home. Evidently, about 40 college men have been killed and their bodies have been thrown into rivers or lakes to make it look like they drowned. The men have all been good students, popular, and athletic. This really sounds like a lot of my friends in my fraternity. The fraternity house sits right in front of the canal in Indianapolis (it’s literally the back yard) and, although beautiful, it now has me worried about my fraternity brothers getting drugged and then drowned. The killings have primarily been in the Midwest. It doesn’t get much more Midwest than Indianapolis. It’s scary.

Today is the Michigan Primary. I’m very curious to see how Mitt Romney does. His father was the governor of Michigan, so if he doesn’t do well here, it will definitely hurt him. Stay tuned for updates when they become available.

The Iowa caucuses were last night. Here’s my take on it.

Barack Obama won the Democratic Caucus by about 8 points. He was in a virtual three-way tie with Clinton and Edwards going into the caucus, so it was interesting to see who would come out on top. I’m a bit surprised that his lead was as large as eight points, but even more surprised that Edwards finished second, beating out Hillary by one point. Hillary had 29 compared to Edwards’s 30. Edwards has the strongest chance to win in the general election, so it is good to see him in the top two so early.

Mike Huckabee, with 34 points, came out on top on the Republican side. He is the former minister/governor of Arkansas who wants to completely get rid of the income tax and switch completely to a spending tax. Finishing second was Mitt Romney who claimed 25 points. Thompson and McCain each claimed 13, although Thompson had about 280 more votes than McCain. Rounding out the top five was Ron Paul.

You may be asking, “What happened to Giuliani?” The answer is simple. He did not campaign in Iowa because he knew it was a lost cause. He is too liberal of a Republican to do well in the conservative race, so he spent the night elsewhere (in Michigan, I believe).

So what’s next? The calendar shows New Hampshire on January 8, where it will be exciting to see the outcome of Clinton/Edwards/Obama round 2. The other race to watch is Romney vs. McCain, who are the Republican frontrunners. However, Iowa begs the questiion, can Huckabee come out strong again?

For years, the Indianapolis area has been represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by Julia Carson. Many Indianapolis area people were unhappy with her, but somehow she kept getting elected. It was announced that she passed away on Saturday morning. She’s been working for Indiana since the early 70s. Although I didn’t support her as a politician, she definitely served the Hoosier state for many years. Many will miss her.

On Monday night, a student at Miami University student was found in his room at his fraternity house. He had died earlier that day, but they still don’t know the cause of death. His name was Cliff Alexander, and he was a Sigma Nu. That’s the fraternity that I belong to, so it got me thinking.

From what I can tell, Cliff was an awesome guy. When he was in high school, he organized a program where students could get backpacks and school supplies for free if they couldn’t afford to buy them. As a member of Sigma Nu, he was the Lt. Commander, which is the Vice President. He was expected to be elected Commander (President) of the chapter on Monday night. When he didn’t appear at the chapter meeting, they went looking for him.

A year ago, I was the Commander of my chapter. I can’t imagine what it is like for their Commander. He is having to lead during this horrible tragedy that is coinciding with the close of the semester. Moreover, he is having to lead when he just lost a great friend who was his right-hand-man. My thoughts are with Cliff’s family, friends, and fraternity brothers.

I thought that this article from CNN online was interesting:

More than 40 years after the late singer Johnny Cash was arrested in Starkville, residents of the east Mississippi town plan a festival in his honor that will include a ceremonial pardoning for the “Man in Black.”

There are different versions of what happened the night of May 11, 1965, in Starkville.

One told by Cash himself in his autobiography is that he was arrested by police while walking from his motel to a grocery store after attending a party at a fraternity house on the Mississippi State campus.

Another version is that Cash was arrested while picking flowers in someone’s yard.

Cash admitted in his book, “I was screaming, cussing and kicking at the cell door all night long until I finally broke my big toe. At 8 a.m. the next morning they let me out when they knew I was sober.”

Cash wrote a song about the ordeal calling it, “Starkville City Jail,” and later performed it for the inmates at San Quentin Prison.

My mom has been upset the past few days because a friend of hers is losing her house due to foreclosure. They refinanced and took one of those mortgages that had a variable interest rate. When the rates went up, she and her husband couldn’t afford the payment. Foreclosure has always been an embarrassing thing. Foreclosure meant that you had mismanaged your money or had a tragedy in your house. Now it is becoming so common that no one thinks much of it. They blame the banks. I do think that the banks made it too easy to refinance and not warn people of how high the payment could be if the interest rates went up. It looked so good. Some consumers were given loans over the value of their home, up to 120% of its appraised value. This trend peaked around September 2005 and it’s full impact wasn’t felt in the market until two years later, when low introductory rates were readjusted and people’s monthly payment became so large that there was no way they could pay.

Now that this is happening to people, they are searching for help. There are not many sites on the Internet that offer help. GotTrouble.com has answers. GotTrouble has so much information on Foreclosures that many people are finding that their anxiety level goes down, as they are able to understand how the foreclosure process works and what to expect. This website helps the homeowner learn how to deal with the lender and how the laws in their state read.

If you know someone who will be facing foreclosure, let GotTrouble help him or her.

That is really a bad deal that [tag]Fisher Price[/tag] had to recall all those toys because they were manufactured with lead paint. Maybe this is a wake up call to the US to stop buying everything from China. I was saddened to learn that one of the men in charge at Fisher Price committed suicide. Nothing is as bad as that.

I just saw where [tag]Billy Graham[/tag]’s wife, [tag]Ruth[/tag], has died. That is sad. I know that he will really miss her. It is hard to see pillars of society grow older.

[tag]Ruth Bell[/tag] was born in Qingjiang, China where her parents were missionaries. I found that to be interesting. She and her husband were [tag]missionaries[/tag] all over the world.

There was a bad storm on Tuesday night. It damaged Notre Dame’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart. I love storms, especially when they are full of thunder and lightning, but I don’t like it when they do a lot of damage. A few years ago a tornado went through my town and ruined people’s homes and businesses. Luckily, it was on the other side of town so our house wasn’t hurt, but it was scary to think of how fragile our daily lives are.

Do you like storms?