Very Interesting Weekend for Mitt

It was a very interesting press weekend for Mitt.  First, the NY Times wrote a very interesting (and in my opinion, fair) article on Mitt’s various responsibilities in the LDS Church over the last few decades.  Non-Mormons (and the electorate at large) has no idea that while also building and running a super-successful business, Mitt was also spending whatever “free” time he had overseeing and running multiple congregations of LDS adherents.

As I suspected, the stories in this article represent both sides – both the joy and the difficulty –  of working as an ecclesiastical leader.  The young man’s story of wise counsel setting his life on a better path is just one of thousands that likely occured during Mitt’s tenure as Bishop and Stake President.  Those are the easy ones to talk about.  One the other hand, I would advise the world to reserve judgement about Mitt’s counsel to families making difficult decisions.  Sometimes an ecclesiastical leader will feel moved to counsel two different people about the same issue two different ways.  Though Bishops are instructed not to specifically counsel couples for or against divorce as a resolution to their marital difficulties, I’ve known instances where the leader was relieved by a divorce and instances where they were saddened by a divorce.  Context makes a world of difference, and no newspaper article could ever provide the full context for any such exchange between priest and congregant.

Also, my friend McKay Coppins posted an interesting (but unsurprising) article about leaked emails from the Perry campaign’s religious advisors have reacted and plotted in regards to Mitt’s religion, and their hopes of sinking his candidacy through its marginalization.

It appears that the inseparable siamese twins, religion and politics, are just heating up for the GOP primary.

Do you think it gets worse before it gets better?

Any of my non-LDS readers have a problem with Mitt’s religion or past as a lay leader of the religion?

I’m a Member…

Yes, I’m an official member of the Colbert SuperPAC.

If you want more information about the awesome Colbert SuperPAC, I suggest you watch a few clips of the Colbert Report.

Announcing his PAC, but Viacom says he can’t have one…

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Viacom Ruins Stephen’s PAC Dream
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Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video
Archive

Stephen exploits a loophole created by the Supreme Court to create a SUPER PAC instead!

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Corp Constituency
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Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Files FEC papers…

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Colbert Super PAC – Stephen Addresses Colbert Super Nation
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Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

What is it for? It’s for the children…

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Colbert Super PAC – For the Children
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Stephen Colbert created the SuperPAC in response to SarahPAC’s abbreviated bus tour in which she spent fundraiser money to wrap a huge motorhome and take a family vacation to important historical sites (botching the founding story all along the way and being tailed by a coup of ravenous reporters).  Oh yeah, she contributed to political campaigns and candidates as well.

Basically, Stephen’s PAC is committed to raising huge sums of money from nameless donors to support an arbitrary cause.

The real cause, obviously, is to point out the absurdity of the PAC itself – that in America we can give unlimited amounts of money anonymously to engage in subversive and ethically questionable political activities in order to get people elected.  In this case, even though the Supreme Court ruled that money is speech, Stephen happens to think (as do I) that they are wrong.  (Case in point: we are all born with 1 mouth, but we are not all born with $100 in our pockets)

The PAC itself is tending to be super absurd in itself, including the introductory FORM email I got from them:

Ohh… I just love it.  Keep it up Colbert!!!

If I Were Mitt’s Political Strategist…

Many of my friends and family are Mitt supporters.  If you’ve followed my blog a long time, you’ll know I was really bullish on Mitt in ’08 as well.  I still think he would have been a better candidate in the general election than McCain.

My wife asked me the other day – if you a Romney’s strategist, what would you tell him?  And here it is…

Continue reading If I Were Mitt’s Political Strategist…

The Secret of Good Government

A while back, I watched a 60 minutes episode and was really impressed with two of the pieces.

First, the piece on John Boehner turned him from a stoic, orange, minority leading, whiner, into a real human being. I have to say, I was really impressed with his story of truly coming up from nothing and becoming 3rd in line to being the President of the US. The blubbering got a little distracting – but I can empathize with a man who wears his emotions on his sleeve. It really is impressive to see someone who worked his way through college cleaning toilets become Speaker of the House. That is the story of America: anyone can become anything with enough work and luck.

I was a little turned off by his refusal to say the word “compromise.” Leslie Stahl really tried hard to get him to say the word, and finally he basically said that his new constituents have assigned the word a negative connotation. That is the definition of the sad state of politics in our nation, it’s not popular to compromise. You have to WIN. It has to be YOUR WAY or the HIGHWAY – or just stall long enough until you can pin enough negative things on the majority party and get back into power so they can then pull the same crappy tricks on you.

But — the most surprising tidbit of good advice for politicians everywhere actually came from a later interview in the same program with Presidente Lula of Brazil. He was first elected when I was in Brazil in 2000 on my mission, and he was a wildly successful politician and president. He said something that was most memorable in this broadcast:

It’s about 5:19.

“Success of an elected official is the art of doing the obvious. It is doing what everyone knows need to be done.”

I wish our politicians would subscribe to this statement a bit more. Rather than being power brokers, money grubbers, yarn spinners, and issue chameleons, why can’t we just get together and do the obvious stuff. We can solve fiscal problems by cutting spending and raising taxes. We can become more energy independent by drilling for oil here at home AND investing heavily in researching alternative fuels. Etc etc etc. Our solutions are in front of us, and we just need someone to be more comfortable with doing the obvious rather than who is up and who is down, who won last and what you can get for your vote.

Is an opinion “patriotic”?

I kind of got into it with a complete stranger on Facebook.  I guess I just need to get rid of all my Utah facebook friends, so I don’t get sucked into political discussions online – but this one is a little more generic, so I’ll throw it out here for the 3 of you who actually read my blog…

To give you background, in Utah, an old lady is running a negative ad against Jim Matheson (the democrat incumbent) and for the challenger republican (Morgan Philpot).  One of my Facebook friends works actively for his campaign, so it was no surprise when she posted the ad.  The ad itself isn’t disturbing or anything; it’s your run-of-the-mill negative ad, casting Matheson as a Pelosi cronie.  No big deal.  Let me emphasize, this isn’t about one candidate over another, I could care less who wins the election.

Here’s my issue… the title/subtitle of the ad: “Personal Patriotism” and “Random Acts of Patriotism”

Here is the exchange I had…

Now, here’s my question… Am I way off base here?

Does having a personal political opinion and buying up scobs of air time to express it count as a real “act of patriotism”?  Especially when you’re only using your first name which isn’t the same first name you actually go by in real life?

I didn’t even learn a stinking thing from her ad, not about Morgan Philpot anyways. What a waste.  Negative campaigning is the norm in politics today, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still tasteless.  If these guys don’t have enough virtues to get elected on their own merits, then I don’t want them in office anyways.

Acceptable Discrimination

I noticed something at our first OBGYN visit.  This particular OBGYN’s office was called “Associated Women’s Healthcare”.  After going, though, it should be called “Healthcare Administered by Associated Women.”

We arrived and all of the front desk people were women.  We went back and both nurses we saw were women.  The phlebotomist was a woman.  The sonographer was a woman.  The billing and insurance person was a woman.  Last but not least, the doctor was a woman.  There wasn’t a single man in the entire office, except the fathers-to-be.

There were women of all sizes, shapes, ethnicity, and background, but there was not a single man to be found.

I hesitate to believe that there just wasn’t a single qualified male doctor, nurse, phlebotomist, sonographer, or administrative assistant out there…

So why is it OK for this office to clearly discriminate against men in their hiring practices?

One of my favorite programs is NPR’s Planet Money.  They have a twice weekly podcast as well as a blog they keep up.  They regularly do stories for one of my other favorite programs, This American Life.  They have this incredible way of making economics relevant and interesting to people who aren’t economists.  It’s an incredible feat.

Here’s the deal though… just check out the names:

  • Adam Davidson, Correspondent
  • David Kestenbaum, Correspondent
  • Chana Joffe-Walt. Correspondent
  • Jacob Goldstein, Correspondent
  • Alex Blumberg, Contributing Editor

This is a list of some of the most Jewish names I’ve ever encountered. Now, certainly they have scores of staffers and interns who don’t have Jewish heritage, but it appears you have to have a very pronounced Jewish heritage to be an on-air personality for this show.

Look, I don’t have anything against women or Jews. I’m just saying, can you really so blatantly get away with stacking the cards with one class of individual without incurring the wrath of the government? Or do those anti-discrimination laws only apply to workplaces that are white, upper-middle-class, and male-dominated?

Just wondering…

Government Spending

When my father in law was here last, we had a good conversation about government spending.  A few days after, as I drove home from school, I threw on one of the recent NPR Planet Money Podcasts which told me that they were now going to devote a lot of time and attention in future podcasts to the topic of government spending, and would be looking to listeners to come up with ways to cut the federal budget.

Continue reading Government Spending

Beckapalooza

Salon.com had a good article today giving a full background of tomorrow’s Glenn Beck event for those of us who are too cheap to buy cable and who haven’t been following the unfolding of the event planning.

This article just reinforces my wife’s feelings about Beck – Beck is a brand, and he does whatever he can to build his brand.  Love him or hate him, he’s a genius at self-marketing.  It’ll be interesting to see how ‘apolitical’ this rally (errr fundraiser) is…

I saw some other articles, though, from folks wanting to make hay out of the fact that he’s co-opting the National Mall on the anniversary of the MLK rally.  I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, other than the fact that those who might make a pilgrimage to the national park (yes, the Mall is a national park) will find hoards of people, giant screens, and a lot of loud conservative propaganda — not exactly the reflective environment that one would want to honor King and the legacy of the civil rights movement.

But hey – it’s a new day – and it’s as good a day as any other for a little free speech in Washington.

Have fun out there , MIL and FIL.  If nothing else, you should have plenty of good ‘people watching’ to do.