Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Wednesday Quick Hits and Primary Reaction

There were quite a few interesting articles in the news today, so I thought I'd share a few of them.

-The New York Times has an article (it may require free registration) about how important your diet is to your relationship. To some degree it seems like common sense, after all, who would want to have to give up meat to date somebody, but it has some interesting thoughts anyway. I know that my wife hates raw onions and so I've pretty much had to give them up. I suppose I could eat them, but then my kisses get to be few and far between. To me kisses>onions, so it's a simple mathematical equation.

-Mike Huckabee mentions in today's Salt Lake Tribune that he hasn't alienated Mormon voters. That, of course is a matter of opinion. I think most Mormons would agree that he has alienated them - I know I feel he has. He might be able to say he hasn't tried to alienate Mormons (which is true, he's just tried to beat Romney by hammering on his quirky belief system), but he can't speak for the 4+ million people out there who feel he's alienated them.

-Take a look at the most devastating paintball gun in the history of the world. This would be awesome!

-CNN tells us why we're not having as much sex as we should be. Every last one of those makes sense to me, especially the stuff in the bedroom one. Unless you're doing the cybersex thing...then it's a different story. We've had our room be a TV free zone since we got married and it's usually a computer-free room too. Of course, there are times when my wife's getting ready for bed that I have had my laptop up and running, perhaps because I didn't consider brushing our teeth foreplay like I should have.

-After McCain's sweep yesterday of the Potomac Primary, he's almost got the nomination all but locked up. Sure, he still needs 300+ delegates to be the official nominee, but the problem that Huckabee's got is that with one more primary win, McCain will have clinched at least a brokered convention. When you add his delegates to Romney's and Paul's, there is no way that he'll go out before then. There is a small chance that Huckabee will run the table, but that chance is slimmer than he was after he finished his diet. It's getting to the point where he ought to bow out gracefully and let the Democrats slug it out for a few more months of back-and-forth while McCain gets the party around him. In a related story, Joe Lieberman has endorsed McCain for President. I still say that even though Republicans would have heart attacks around the country, a McCain/Lieberman ticket would be a thing of beauty. It wouldn't be the mess that Adams/Jefferson were because Jefferson was the loser in that competition. Is there anything that could be a better way to bring the country together after a couple of decades of divisive politics than a unified party ticket?

-Obama has won every post-Super Tuesday contest and is actually ahead of Hillary Clinton in the delegate count. I think that Clinton only has one chance of winning, and that's a brokered convention. If she can tweak things so it goes to convention without a winner and then get Michigan and Florida's votes counted, putting her over the top, that's how she'll win. The big question I have is whether that's a smart policy or not. After all, pulling a dirty trick like that to force the first major non-David Palmer black presidential candidate out of the race is something that could sow dissention for a generation or more. All the beefs that minorities have with the GOP would be nothing compared to that, especially because Obama's the front-runner among all candidates.

4 comments:

themickel said...

I feel alienated by Huck. It has more to do with the subtle gibes from before Super Tuesday, i.e. his commercial where he emphasises the importance of voting for a "Christian" candidate. Because as we all know, Mormon's aren't really Christian since we worship Beelgal the Six Headed Goat.

Barring Obama dominating from here on out, I don't see anyway the dem race avoids a complete trainwreck. If I didn't like Obama so much I would actually be looking forward to it.

Anonymous said...

Right or wrong, the majority of Christians don't see Mormons as "mainstream" to say the least and given what I've read of the BoM (a good portion of it) and what I understand to be some core beliefs of your church I can understand why. You may not worship goats (of course I know you don't), but I'm sure you know that there are some differences in theology between the LDS church and mainline Protestantism.

Personally I don't care what a candidate’s religious beliefs are. I'd vote for an atheist if he/she had the right platform. However I'm aware that I'm in the minority among Christians when it comes to that. So I guess what disappoints me most regarding this whole thing is the fact that Huckabee seems to want it both ways. He wants to appeal to the part of his constituency that's "anti-Mormon" and then take it back in a sort of “aw shucks” way. Of course that's just business as usual for most politicians. I thought Huck was a little different when this whole thing started. Good thing I’m a Democrat.

Beau Sorensen said...

I thought we worshiped the Goat God Mormo, not Beelgal.
The backhanded comments from Huck are what I haven't liked either and the implied idea he puts forward that Mormons aren't Christians. Not only does he do that, but he also tosses out "innocent comments" that are taken completely out of context to reinforce that opinion (the one I can think of straightway is his "Don't they believe Jesus and Satan are brothers?" question/comment to the NY Times) and pull down Romney. From someone who is supposed to lead the nation, that's not what we need. Based on his comments with Mormons, I would fully expect that he'd start a holy war with Islam in his first 100 days. Even W hasn't been fatwahed, so he'd be the first.
I know we're not necessarily "mainstream" in the classical, descended from the Catholic church but reformed sense. We do have some different beliefs and while they shouldn't disqualify us from the Christian label, I don't mind being given the strange beliefs label and really don't mind getting the "you're not Protestant" label, because I certainly don't consider us as such either.
I really like Obama as a person even if I don't agree with his politics. It's the same with McCain. No question about it, I'm going with my gut first in this election, and I'd love McCain vs. Obama just because I could be happy with either one representing us.

themickel said...

What, how dare you!? Beelgal the Conqueror shall smite you!

Yeah, I definitely agree we're not "Christian" in the following the Nicene Creed, honoring the traditional facets of Catholicism sense. If you define Christian as "believing in Christ", however, we are definitely that. Our theology is definitely different from the rest though.