| [Politics]Super Tuesday has me frightened. |
[Feb. 6th, 2008|09:17 am] |
I'm not entirely certain I respect McCain anymore, as much as I want to. I respect his experience, certainly. But the following has me nowhere near as pro-McCain as I used to be:
- His cheerleading visit to Baghdad to show how "safe" it was there, wearing a bulletproof vest and surrounded by almost 100 off-camera American troops.
- His reversal of his 2003 position (anti-deficit!) against Bushs' tax cuts in 2006 -- and again, in February, voting to continue Bush's dividend and capital gains tax cuts.
- His cozying up to (the now late-) Jerry Falwell in March after declaring him an "agent of intolerance" in 2000.
- His changing position on abortion -- initially he was opposed to it except in cases of rape, incest, and where it endangered the life of the mother, then he said if he'd been governor of South Dakota, he would have signed its draconian abortion ban which lacked those exceptions.
Don't get me wrong, I do agree with him on a number of issues, but I think this idea of McCain's integrity is overblown.
I don't think that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill -- an idea way past due, because I really don't think the first amendment means that the rich ought to speak with a louder voice than the poor -- represents hypocrisy in the face of the Keating Five scandal as some have suggested, I think he was put in an uncomfortable situation and wasn't prepared for the fallout from the contributors to his campaign at the time. I think his turnaround from there was genuine: he recognized the problem, having been a victim to it himself, and has since taken steps to correct it.
I just read this, by McCain (from his 2005 Book): "Darwin helped explain nature’s laws. He did not speculate, in his published theories at least, on the origin of life. He did not exclude God, for Whom the immensity of time is but a moment, from our presence. The only undeniable challenge the theory of evolution poses to Christian beliefs is its obvious contradiction of the idea that God created the world as it is in less than a week. But our faith is certainly not so weak that it can be shaken to learn that a biblical metaphor is not literal history. Nature doesn’t threaten our faith. On the contrary, when we contemplate its beauty and mysteries we cannot quiet in our heart an insistent impulse of belief that for all its variations and inevitable change, before its creation, in a time before time, God let it be so, and, thus, its many splendors and purposes abide in His purpose."
Yeah, he's a christian, yeah, he believes in evolution, and yeah, he's got a fucking rational reconciliation of the two, (or at least as rational as you can get, to my way of thinking.)
All in all? Way better than Huckabee. The south, after yesterday, sickens the hell out of me. Carlin said it well when he said, "there's way too much religion floating around down there to be consistent with good mental health." Huckabee is patently unamerican in the truest sense of that word. We were founded as a secular government.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
"It's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."
And as for Obama: he's got a lot of people I know fired up. I, for one, hope that's a sign of him being Kennedy-esque rather than McGovern-esque.
There's more coming. If you want to not hear politics from me, let me know. If enough people do it, I'll filter it. |
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