I hope you all are enjoying your New Year’s holiday. Let’s hope that 2012 is wonderful year full of happiness and success. So let’s get started on that with the first open thread of the New Year.
Ever hear of a murmuration? Well, you’ve heard of a murder of crows, right? A murmuration is a grouping of Starlings, and as this video shows, their movements are almost otherworldly. It looks like special effects.
Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.
Nate Silver has an awesome interactive infotastic Iowa Almanac for 2012.
Now that Santorum is surging ahead in Iowa, possibly even winning the race outright, Steve Benen wonders what does it all mean for Mitt Romney:
By all appearances, the former governor is feeling very confident about his chances in Iowa, and he clearly goes into Tuesday as the apparent frontrunner, but even his support comes with caveats. Remember, Romney dropped the pretense weeks ago about whether he’s competing to win in Iowa, and he’s now invested considerable amounts of time, money, and energy to come out on top. And yet, even after Romney has made these efforts in Iowa, and become the clear frontrunner at the national level, he still can’t break his 24% ceiling, and his support is effectively at the same level as it was in October.
A loss by Romney in Iowa now would be devastating. He can’t brush it aside by saying he did not compete there. And the fact that additional face time and retail politics in Iowa by Romney improved his standing not at all (and in fact may have hurt him) will be a story line. But that storyline might be washed away by a dominating win in New Hampshire, which polls right now say he is headed for. And it seems unlikely a Santorum win would translate to much momentum for the radical theocrat in the libertarian Granite State. But a Paul win in Iowa might. So if Santorum wins in Iowa, Romney has his NH buffer. If Paul wins, he might not.