Politics
I managed to sleep in bed all night and not get up to look at the election returns (which would have kept me awake) but I'm just a bit too involved in all this. I've spent 2 hours on wikipedia reading bios of all these folks that we might have for a choice of President. I recommend it.
John Mc Cain has a very checkered past. His 5 years as a prisoner of war tamed him just a bit. I think the driving thing in his life is to live up to his father and grandfather despite his personality. His father was the commander of forces in the Pacific during the time McCain served in Vietnam.
Being the son of the commander probably got him through his youth, and while serving as a POW they would released him ahead of the other prisoners because of his father. He refused. I applaud him for that. It was the first really noble thing he did in his life.
He's just not at all perfect. He's had multiple affairs which he admits to and has learned from. He probably got where he is because of the McCain name and his second wife's family. But then his wife did a really noble thing and adopted one of Mother Teresa's orphans. People are such a mixture of good and bad.
Mitt Romney on the other hand has a perfect record of moral rectitude. He's a descendent of Parley P. Pratt, excelled at Stanford, BYU and Harvard, served a mission, and served as Bishop and Stake Pres. He's done miracles in managing money.
Actually, there is nothing to criticize except some versions of his record in Massachusetts. And there is a quote about some worker in the midwest that was disgruntled about a layoff when he took over a company. That's it. (He's just not newsworthy enough!)
But the biggest surprise was Mike Huckabee. Did you know that his wife's maiden name is McCain????? And, he attended Southwestern Baptist in Ft. Worth, TX - the exact same school that our local anti-Mormon Baptist preacher went to???? He dropped out. I wonder why?
He has lots of good points except for the above.
Barak Obama has a smoking addiction and still chomps on Nicorette to overcome it. He lived in Hawaii and Jakarta Indonesia as a child. He was raised by white grandparents. He plays basketball and poker. He's not perfect, but he inspires people. He will be part of the political landscape for years to come. (I secretly admire him a lot.)
Haven't read about Hillary yet. That will be interesting!!
John Mc Cain has a very checkered past. His 5 years as a prisoner of war tamed him just a bit. I think the driving thing in his life is to live up to his father and grandfather despite his personality. His father was the commander of forces in the Pacific during the time McCain served in Vietnam.
Being the son of the commander probably got him through his youth, and while serving as a POW they would released him ahead of the other prisoners because of his father. He refused. I applaud him for that. It was the first really noble thing he did in his life.
He's just not at all perfect. He's had multiple affairs which he admits to and has learned from. He probably got where he is because of the McCain name and his second wife's family. But then his wife did a really noble thing and adopted one of Mother Teresa's orphans. People are such a mixture of good and bad.
Mitt Romney on the other hand has a perfect record of moral rectitude. He's a descendent of Parley P. Pratt, excelled at Stanford, BYU and Harvard, served a mission, and served as Bishop and Stake Pres. He's done miracles in managing money.
Actually, there is nothing to criticize except some versions of his record in Massachusetts. And there is a quote about some worker in the midwest that was disgruntled about a layoff when he took over a company. That's it. (He's just not newsworthy enough!)
But the biggest surprise was Mike Huckabee. Did you know that his wife's maiden name is McCain????? And, he attended Southwestern Baptist in Ft. Worth, TX - the exact same school that our local anti-Mormon Baptist preacher went to???? He dropped out. I wonder why?
He has lots of good points except for the above.
Barak Obama has a smoking addiction and still chomps on Nicorette to overcome it. He lived in Hawaii and Jakarta Indonesia as a child. He was raised by white grandparents. He plays basketball and poker. He's not perfect, but he inspires people. He will be part of the political landscape for years to come. (I secretly admire him a lot.)
Haven't read about Hillary yet. That will be interesting!!
posted by Mom and Dad at 7:26 AM
2 Comments:
More to my blog...
OK, tonight at at party I spoke to my friend Pat from Arizona who is very politically active and knows John McCain personally. She says that yes, he has a temper, that he has physical disabilies, and that you probably won't agree with him on everything. But, he IS a man of his word, almost to a fault. So, if he says he will do something, he will. I guess now we need to listen to what he says.
Her words were very comforting.
She also said he's been beat up for years by the Arizona Mormons, who are often John Birchers.
This comment is actually from a friend (Larry) that we invited to read our blog! But he commented via email. We are pasting it in.
About Politics: (feel free to post this - or a synopsis - on your blog if you want)
I was glad that Mitt got out of the race when he did. I just don't think America is going to vote for any Republican this year, and the poor Republican turnout for the primaries is proof of that pessimism. If George the First didn't get re-elected after his first term, it's because Americans first applaud, and then punish, military victory (note that they also voted for 'the other party' as soon as they could after WWII ended under Truman, and then they voted for 'the other party' as soon as possible after Vietnam ended under Nixon).
As it is, Mitt is seen as the only guy in the race who had a good shot, but sacrificed what he personally wanted for the good of the party. Huckabee looks like the opposite right now. I'm pretty sure that we're going to hear a lot of "Why, oh WHY, didn't we stay with Mitt Romney? Who CARES if he's a Mormon!"
Then in 2012, when Mitt is going up - for the first time, not as a prior loser to the same guy - against either Hillary or Barak as the incumbent, he's got a really good chance of winning - because I've noticed that Mitt (even more than Hillary) knows how to take a page from Reagan's book and talk SPECIFICS without exceeding his audience's capacity. Bush does that too, more than most, but his positions are so unpopular that it doesn't take him very far (personally I respect GW for that).
And then there's the little matter of the Unspent War Chest (does anyone know how candidates are expected to give back all that money after they concede an election?) - We hear that their funds are running low & they're using their own cash, but then they get a bunch more money after every successful Primary, so don't the more successful candidates (read Mitt & Hillary) end up with unspent funds at the end of the day? That's a good head start the next time around.
I'm expecting a contest between McCain & Obama this year, and McCain doesn't stand a chance. Barak Obama is simply far brighter than John McCain - and he's a great role model (a Black Man who makes it to the top on Merit alone) to boot! - can you imagine a debate between the two of them? McCain doesn't even know how to spell the word 'Business'. Presidents with Military Experience are historically pretty good at 'running an ongoing war' - without starting a new one - but Americans have put in their 6-years-plus-war, and they don't want to have to face the fact that, these days, wars never really end, so that's not going to help McCain much.
The Democrats would've had to put Hillary forward if Romney had been the candidate, but that's not in their best interests overall, because this November fully one-third of American voters would vote for SATAN before they'd vote for Hillary. Heck! They'll go out & vote against her if she's the Democratic nominee, while they won't vote at all if it's anyone else! I think Edwards is holding back his Support until the end, and he'll make sure Obama is the candidate. Then Hillary will walk away with the biggest War Chest of all! The Clintons can be found wherever there's money (and people say they're Socialist, bah!).
No matter who wins, it won't make any difference in the end, because Republicans aren't really going to end Illegal Immigration (no one really wants everything we buy to get suddenly more expensive) and Democrats aren't really going to pull too many troops out of the Middle East (no one really wants the price of gasoline to surge ever upward with a sacrifice of the European economy). Republicans will try to funnel the still-less-than-full-wage-earning-citizens through the gates of the Great Wall, and the Democrats will try to get our troops to fight under a NATO flag like in Afghanistan - but nothing will really change.
Americans don't really want a change, unless the economy goes sour - and the stimulus package that passed the Senate on Friday is almost certain to contain the current recession (I'm reading Alan Greenspan's book The Age of Turbulence right now - and this recession is a perfect repeat of one during Ford's term, and this stimulus package is an exact duplicate of the one that worked so well then. The extra pork didn't stop it from working then, and it won't stop it from working now).
Of course we don't like war, but - just as neither the police nor the crooks are ever going to have such a victory that the other side quits - we're going to have troops fighting (but never winning) the War on Terror. However, the struggle between the two armies allows common citizens to enjoy a reasonable measure of civilized life that's worth fighting for. It's probably the best scenario for our Pre-Millennial World.
Larry Lewis
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