No More Incumbents Blog

Tim Russert essentially had a ‘2 Fer’ a 2 Fer one Presidential Candidate special this Sunday preceding the Iowa Caucus on January 3rd.

Edwards, Hillary and Obama are essentially in a statistical dead heat in the polls on December 30th in Iowa.

Obama is confident that if he gets his folks turned out to the caucus, then he will place well. (So mother nature could really mess with this election!)

On Pakistan, Obama feels that the January 8th, elections need legitimacy and that may require a slight but not indefinite delay. Possibly, this should be the call of the opposition. He also feels that the judiciary (the former judiciary that was dismissed and replaced) should be reinstated. We want allies that believe in the rule of law.

By going into Iraq we (the United States) got distracted from what we should have been watching and doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Are you really ready to run for President after 1 year in the Senate? Barack’s response is that NOW is the right time to do something as opposed to sit back and wait. In essence his argument is that he is more qualified than his opponents even though he has less experience. Honestly, it sounds like double talk to me.

Barack says that he will not allow lobbyists to work in his white house and that his white house staff will not be able to lobby agencies you used to work for on behalf of a lobby. He qualified the remark that if someone lobbyed 10 years ago then maybe they could work in his White House. Note. the Senate now (tomorrow) has rules in place that require Senators to wait 2 years before they can leave office and go be a lobbyist (like Trent Lott that left before the 2 year rule went into effect). This fix on the revolving door problem seems like it could improve things in Washington today in my opinion.

Barack states that there are no surprises in my background, if they were there the Clinton Campaign would have found it and exposed it.

Do you think the stories about your drug use and other issues have caused a problem for your campaign? Obama - I’m putting my faith in the people of Iowa. People want something new, they want something different.

Russert - one of your ads say that your health plan will cover everyone, but your plan does not include a mandate to cover people and therefore it will not cover everyone.

Obama - the real problem is that people can not afford health care, and if we make it affordable then people will buy it. Now that sounds like a load of crap to me and here is why. If I have any money left over on any given month, it goes to pay down my debt. I hold myself up as a typical American with a wife and 3 kids, living in a modest house making a total salary under $100k per year. We have health care through my wife’s job as a teacher, but I do not see any plan where we are going to step away from that plan and buy health care outside of a company.

Back when we had jobs that did not provide health care, we made so much less that it was absurd to think that there might be a price where buying health care would be affordable. In this regards, I believe that Obama and Edwards, who have similar health care plans have severe flaws in their plans that will make them non-starters not only for people, but for politicians and the health care industry. Sure health care costs are too high, but making the fee affordable is not the solution.

This type of thing just does not seem tenable, offering up a solution that counts on disposable income for a group of people that do not have disposable income.

I came across a charitable program that in my opinion seems to fail in the same general way.  The group brings in revenue when people donate car, which can then be sold to pay for videos given to children.  The thing about this is that people with cars that might be donated, typically do not have disposable income enough to consider just giving away a car.

I’m watching Mike Huckabee with Tim Russert on Meet the Press and its Sunday night on December 30th. I’m watching the show with the sound on mute using my TV’s closed captioning service so that I do not wake the family.  Below I paraphrase liberally the views that Mike Huckabee is expressing.  I’m basically trying to get a feel for each of the candidates and this is what I heard and interpreted from Huckabee’s interview. 

Do not rely on my account, please feel free to watch the actual show or episode or get the transcripts.  My purpose is to try and read between the lines of Huckabee’s words and sentiments so that I can determine where he stacks up with the other candidates.

His opening responses are basically rebuttals of attack ads made by Mitt Romney. All of the rebuttals may help for people that have seen the attack ads, but they mean nothing to me.

Mike Huckabee - The number one job of the president is to do anything necessary to protect our country. “I will do anything that is necessary.”

That kind of talk is definitely a step towards fascism and I disagree with it entirely.

Mike Huckabee does not like the fact that George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld ignored the experts on what to do in Iraq and the country suffered for it. Then he also said that he does not like the mentality pushed out by President Bush where a line in the sand is drawn and Bush sets people up to be entirely with Bush or entirely against him and most of the country and most of the world can not choose the absolute of always being with Bush.

On these two points I agree with Mike Huckabee’s statement, but this also seems to provide a bit of a conflict with his statement that he would do anything necessary to protect the United States from another attack on our cities.

In talking about Mitt Romney, “If you are not honest about getting the job, then we can not trust you to be honest if you get the job.”

Mike Huckabee feels that “…homosexuality is an aberrant, unatural and sinful lifestyle.” This was quoted after talking about past comments where Huckabee linked homosexuality with pedophelia and sadomasochism. He qualified the statement by stating that he views these behaviors to be sins and that all people are sinners. Now, that bothers me on several levels. First, it bothers me that he is discussing what goes on in a persons bedroom from his own christian moral background. Let him keep his own lifestyle in control and not worry about the lifestyle of others. Second, it bothers me because it sounds eerily reminiscent of so many other recent Republican leaders that have talked negatively about homosexuals, only to be later themselves called out AS homosexuals. When he says that homosexual behavior is a sin and then in the same sentence says that we christians are all sinners, it sounds as if he is using an ‘inclusive’ we to at a minimum include himself as a homosexual sinner and then by extrapolation (his political forked tongue getting in the way her) he is calling all Christians Homosexual Sinners. The bottom line here is that this Presidential Candidate is talking like a preacher and not talking like a President. As he tries to merge church and state in his own mouth, the words are coming out with contradiction after contradiction and that surely spells a future problem. After all, in his own words (about Mitt Romney) he says that if you can not trust a person to tell the truth as they seek the office, you surely can not trust them to tell the truth once they hold the office. The office by the way that Huckabee would do anything (no holds barred) to protect.

Lastly, when Tim Russert asked if it would be a miracle if Huckabee won in Iowa, he jokingly stated that it would be a miracle. In October Huckabee had told Russert that he would win in Iowa and now he thinks it would be a miracle as he is being out spent 20 to 1(in Huckabee’s repeated words - Sounds like someone has funding issues).

After returning from the holidays, I was able to catch up with a Tivo’d version of Meet the Press.  Tim Russert interviewed Ron Paul and after the interview, I realized that Ron Paul did actually seem like a decent candidate for President despite his Libertarian - Republican views.  Ron Paul gave up on the Republican Party and ran for President as a Libertarian in 1988.  He then came back to the party as a Representative and picked up where he left off.

Ron Paul has raised a very impressive amount of money and it actually seems to be based on his ideas and practical sounding solutions.  He seems to be attracting money from people normally viewed as independents or moderates and he seems to be crossing many lines of sex, race and economic levels.

Here were some of the views that I gleamed from the interview:

• The US should not go to war unless the Congress Declares War.

• That’s how it is in the Constitution

• Includes Germany, Japan and South Korea
• Also includes base in Saudi Arabia, which was one of the reasons why Al Qaeda attacked the US.

• Regulations should only exist at the State level.

• Ex. The British Government purchased all slaves from slave owners and then released them.

• Now, by his argument that would seem to include ending the practice of say separate restrooms for whites and blacks, which sounds ludicrous to me on the surface.  I suspect that there may however be a flaw in the legislation that was the result of some compromise and that it is this flaw that Paul is referring to as opposed to the result that the law achieved despite any existing flaws.

If you have missed the political blog, Who Hijacked Our Country, no is your chance to read a great article (with some biting and slightly foul language) talking about how Republicans are currently in a civil war with each other.  The Republican base is fractured and the religious right is taking shots from all sides.

I have written about this in the past, especially talking about how Bush has paid lip service to the Religious Right, while single handedly proving that all of their principles when executed by a Moron achieve results that only a true devil could love.

How Christian of Them

This article talks about how the same fine people that trashed Senator John Kerry’s War Hero status with $4 million are now attacking Mike Huckabee for Mitt Romney.  So instead of Republicans attacking Democrats, Republicans are attacking Republicans.  What’s funnier is that Christian Conservative Republicans are attacking Christian Conservative Republicans with a flat garden hose.

OK, its not really a flat garden hose, but the attack is landing with a flat thud.