Faith-Based Presidency Part 2

The Republican presidential debate last night had NBC anchorman Brian Williams asked all the candidates "whether or not the invasion of Iraq was worth the loss of lives and treasure?"

Born-again Christian Mike Huckabee answered that it was worth it, and "that Iraq probably did have weapons of mass destruction" giving as an example that "if you haven't found all the easter eggs, doesn't mean that the eggs haven't been planted."

Only the guy that doesn't believe in evolution and ignores the geological evidence that proves the earth is older than 6,000 years old, would be the lone guy to believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of the even five years of occupation where our guys have looked in every nook and cranny of Mesopotamia and couldn't find them. Only Huckabee could believe that despite all evidence proving otherwise that either our Armed Services are incompetent (which I do not believe) or Saddam Hussein is the world's greatest illusionist. Its same sort of conservative idiocy that thinks John Kerry didn't deserve any medals while he was serving in Vietnam (possibly because Republicans believed the Nixon Pentagon handed them out like candy) that can see things that aren't there . Idioacracy that has put Bush into the Whitehouse, that allows fairytale believing idiots to control the GOP, and is central to Mike Huckabee's presidential run; needs to be stomped out.

Competency within our government depends on a strong attachment to reality. I obviously would never vote for Huckabee, or Bush or any other looney right wing-nut, but I am mature enough to realize that not every candidate I vote for will win so the important thing is that the loyal opposition should be at least be fact-based. If have people in charge that are faith-based that could care less about the results of their policy (infrastructure failings in New Orleans and Minneapolis, invading a foreign country because of a gut feeling, trickle-down economics while believing greed is good) we will all suffer under their rule as we have seen with current Bush administration.

Nevada Polls

Electoral-Vote.com has listed some public polls that shows Saturday's Nevada Caucus much closer 3-way race than I would have imagined. Given that the Casino workers union endorsed Barack Obama, and the second most powerful union in the state the teachers union endorsed Hillary; it is a little surprising that Edwards is within the margin of error of winning the state in the Research 2000 poll and Edwards is plausible to win in reality if we take the pollsters' track record (ie NH polls) into account. Obviously we will have to see what happens this Saturday.Just a point of order about political reporting premature electoral obituaries: Chris Mathews the weekend before NH's primary asked 12 of his regular contributing pundits and unanimously agreed that Barack had the nomination in his back pocket.

There should be serious discussion within the fourth estate that
we will see a brokered national convention. As long as Edwards gets 15% in most states and Clinton and Obama continue to fight it out splitting up most of the Feb 5th state the delegate count will never reach a majority.

Brokered Convention

We could see the first televised brokered convention one maybe even both national parties this summer. With the GOP so scatter-shot four or even five candidates that are plausible to be nominees (plausible= Giuliani; Huckabee; Romney; McCain, and much less plausible Thompson). On the Democratic side Obama and Hillary are unlikely more than 45% of the delegates except in their respective home states. A brokered convention is probably what Edwards is banking on, because when Denver rolls around and head-to-head match ups are the only thing the political press can write about Edwards will certainly look better than Hillary, and Hillary will probably start slinging mud at Obama to take the shine off him. Saving grace for Hillary and Obama are that some states have winner-take-all primaries, I couldn't find a list of them on the net , but thenattering-nay-bobs of negativity (aka the media) will get around to talking about it by Febuary 5th.

Likelyhood of a Bloomberg Campaign

Over the holidays I spoke with family and friends living and working in the beltway and they seemed to have a surprising consensus that if Hillary is the nominee, then Bloomberg will not run for president. They seem to believe that because Mayor Mike's personal friendship with the junior senator he will hold back his national ambitions and desire to rollback hyper-partisanship that is occurring in DC, but if a less polarizing candidate like Obama or Edwards he will jump in. It is my opinion that Bloomberg is probably going to jump in the race no matter who the nominees of the parties are.