SURPRISE!!

And its…
Obama and Huckabee in Iowa.. this should be interesting.

Thoughts?

And its… Obama and Huckabee in Iowa.. this should be interesting.

Thoughts?

8 thoughts on “SURPRISE!!”

  1. Wouldn’t have guessed…

    I wouldn’t have guessed that. Giuliani didn’t campaign in Iowa at all, so it’s no surprise he didn’t get the Republican nomination. But Ron Paul coming in ahead of Giuliani was very surprising to me.

    On the Democratic side, Obama beating Clinton? Never saw that coming. I’ve had a general sense of fatalism about the race, expecting Clinton to simply take it all.

    Now back to the Republicans. Huckabee is the one candidate that I didn’t want to win, at all. I have a very simple reason: he disbelieves evolution. According to this Fox News article, The former Arkansas governor said about the evolution question: “I’m not sure what in the world that has to do with being president of the United States.”

    Oh, Mike, it has everything to do with being president of the United States. Everything.

    When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy. When God changes your mind, that’s faith. When facts change your mind, that’s science.

    The single greatest virtue a politician can have, in my opinion, is the ability to change his or her mind in response to the facts. So often, other politicians will call this “flip-flopping” on an issue. For instance, Mitt Romney changed his mind on how he would handle abortion if elected. As governor of Massachusetts, he pledged to simply enforce the law, which currently made abortion legal, despite his personal reservations. He thought the climate had changed enough that a dialog on handling abortion in a way closer to his personal views would be possible as President.

    Now, I see the issue differently, but I respect the fact that he recognized that it would not have been a good time or position to pursue what he thought was right while governor of Massachusetts. The climate of discussion has changed, and many states are making moves along that front… like try getting an abortion in Utah. Your only choice anymore is clinics, no major hospital in the state will touch most abortions with a twenty-foot cattle prod.

    So back to Huckabee. The problem is, evolution — both “macro” and “micro” — is an established science like plate tectonics and astronomy. Yes, there are arguments here and there about various minutiae, but the theory has held up astoundingly well over the years. It has arguably withstood the test of time better than Newtonian physics.

    Huckabee will be in a powerful position regarding allocation of resources to scientific efforts. Although I’m glad he’s stated he won’t attempt to have his religious views taught as science in classrooms, his disdain for the science underlying a huge amount of modern medical and biological advances does not bode well for those industries and government assistance in advances in these areas.

    The President controls the Office of Science and Technology Policy. If Huckabee wins the nomination, our only hope is that he might appoint someone reasonable — like Bush’s current Science Advisor, John Marburger, who’s helped cover up for Bush on a lot of Intelligent Design gaffes — who can make sure that despite Huckabee’s evolution denial, research dollars still make it to those biological sciences where evolution is the cornerstone of their approach.

    OK, so that’s why I don’t like Huckabee. His background as a minister doesn’t really bother me, but invoking Bible verses on a regular basis while stumping kind of does. On the plus side, he seems fairly genuine and can pronounce “nuclear” correctly.

    My feelings on Obama are mostly “meh”. Sure, he’s black. Yay. Other than that, his politics seem average, he doesn’t say much substantial in his speeches, and this morning when I heard the recording of “Obama! Obama! Obama!” being shouted after the vote results were in it made me think far too much of “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”. Very concerning that an individual arouses that much ardour in his followers. But, hey, if he can lead the country, great.

    So I didn’t expect this matchup. I thought it would be Hillary/Giuliani myself. But I’ve been wrong before, and I daresay I’ll be wrong many, many times before I die.

    —
    Matthew P. Barnson

    1. You Should Have Stopped After Your Reason

      Matt,

      You should have stopped explaining your distaste for Huckabee after stating it’s because he doesn’t believe in evolution. You believe in evolution and he doesn’t and therefore you’re not voting for him. Because after that I don’t follow your point. You’re writing makes the assumption that this guy has decided not to be persuaded by a logical presentation of facts.

      This guy isn’t going to listen and that’s even scarier.

      It freaks me out to think there could be a President who won’t even consider facts because they conflict with his personal belief. That’s the real issue. And this goes far beyond evolution and a faith/science debate. This goes into a disillusionment with reality kind of thing, similar to the way that Bush The Liar didn’t care that at one point barely more than one out of every five in the U.S. thought he was doing a worthy job. The house could be crumbling around Huckabee (deficits, foreign policy, etc.) and he won’t even notice because he will refuse to notice.

      And did you write that Utah hospitals are no longer performing abortions with cattle prods?

      And did you just compare Obama followers to Nazis?

      1. Not listening

        The house could be crumbling around Huckabee (deficits, foreign policy, etc.) and he won’t even notice because he will refuse to notice.

        I couldn’t have said it better. In my defense, I was having the worst day in a very long time. It seemed as if everybody I met needed to take a dump and my face was the closest outhouse.

        And did you write that Utah hospitals are no longer performing abortions with cattle prods?

        Well, I wrote “no major hospital in the state will touch most abortions with a twenty-foot cattle prod.”… which is just a bullshitty way of saying that hospitals with a single penny of federal funding in Utah can’t afford to do any abortions because their funding will be revoked. viz “Prohibition of Federal Funding for Abortions Bill 68”, Utah. I haven’t blogged about this yet, but it’s a nifty way that Utah pro-lifers have gotten around that pesky Roe v Wade ruling by the highest court in the land. It’s not an actual “ban” on abortion in Utah, but it’s a de-facto ban.

        And did you just compare Obama followers to Nazis?

        Any time I hear a huge number of people shouting the name or an oath in unison, I am viscerally reminded of Hitler’s opening remarks (the first ever televised) at the 1936 Winter Olympics. The cheers of the crowd devolved into “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”

        So I’m not comparing Obama followers to Nazis, I’m comparing any large unison-chanting crowd to another large unison-chanting crowd who happened to be Nazis 🙂

        —
        Matthew P. Barnson

        1. On leaders

          This is not necessarily in regards to Obama per se, but I have to mention that being able to get a large crowd of people to chant something, for instance your name, in unison is just one of those things that leaders are able to do. It’s called charisma, and yes, it draws on the natural human tendency to follow herd instinct.

          People are going to cheer, they are going to chant, and the chants will frequently take on a mantra-like quality. One could just as easily say that the entire stadium for the Atlanta Braves doing the “tomahawk chop” is equally comparable to Nazi Germany.

          Yes, people can be led horribly, horribly astray by bad leaders. But the answer to bad leadership is good leadership, not no leadership at all.

    1. Kucinich…

      Yeah, Kucinich failed to qualify for future debates on national TV… he’s history.

      My co-worker is devastated, but as a veteran says he’s fine with Obama due to his good record on veteran affairs.

      —
      Matthew P. Barnson

Comments are closed.