Richard Alexander Hall

Archive for January, 2008

I’ve been holding off recommending this film, because ai-ai-ai, will it make a Mormon audience composed of your typical Mormon culture uncomfortable. It is ridiculous how fully Dutcher has taken on the role of The Artist Who Challenges You. If Dutcher is going around touting in his advertisements that the thing is R-rated – one of the hot-button topics in Mormon culture – I cannot see otherwise but that he has taken it upon himself to challenge culture. If that gives you brownie points among crowds that think that’s the mission of an artist (*ahem*AML-list*hem), okay. But I don’t think there’s any chart in heaven detailing how much any artist challenged culture. It’s not about that.

According to Michael Medved – who has given Dutcher some of his best reviews! – the artist as cultural or religious challenger is a mythical role that has emerged only in this last century. Medved argues that most of the artists who created our “classics” through the centuries found plenty to do – under every kind of label or adjective you could conjure: disturbed, glorious, funny, tragic – whatever- without heckling their host culture, as so many artists in our day have been taught to believe they should. It is a point given in Dutcher’s biography at his own web page that one of his teachers while in film school at BYU prophesied that the first great Mormon writer will be excommunicated. Richard, that teacher was full of crap! Without a mass of knowledge to back up my agreement with Medved, I only say that Medved’s take on artists and culture sounds to me a whole lot better than advertising your film as “The first R-Rated Mormon film!” Why don’t we just change the billboard to say “This film will shock and offend you!” What of the dopes in the narrative of this very film who claim the only way an artist will get ahead is by shocking and offending? We’re supposed to think those guys are dopes, right? They’re part of the culture that led to the lead character’s fall. So let’s not listen to them.

Now I know I’ve gone and abrasively criticized marketing. Sometime last year I abrasively criticized a marketing effort coming from Dutcher’s Main Street Movie Co. and shortly thereafter found a comment at my film blog from Dutcher’s marketing guy, abrasively criticizing my (retrospectively) amateurish concept trailer. Tit-for-tat cannon blasts among the artists in Zion. I don’t think it’s easy for artists to separate the line of personal criticism from artistic criticism. And too often we merge them – but that’s an essay for another day.

I believe Dutcher could have told the exact same story of FALLING with just slightly different directing decisions that wouldn’t ensure he turns a lot of his audience away. And his marketing of this film is way off-base. (I know, I hear the cannons blasting still.) If you don’t care about ratings (as I believe Dutcher claims not to), you don’t advertise them. If many Mormons think it wrong to ever see an R-rated film (and that thinking is in error, in my opinion), period, that’s fine for them – it is their right to risk missing out, and frankly, too many who argue against the point would seek to deny Mormons so inclined of that right, or deny them their freedom of conscience to avoid whatever they want – but the inevitable message behind “The first R-rated Mormon film!” is ironically as narrow in a different way. It actually seeks to drive the question of the appropriate to the utmost limits of tolerance – and I would argue that very approach will only produce intolerance – it isn’t going to make anyone think. Nobody thinks when they feel threatened. All they think about is either raising their fists to pummel the hell out of you or getting the hell away from the situation (Dutcher has experienced far more than his share of both, on emotional terms). Fight or Flight. It reduces us to cavemen. Where’s the love in that? Philosophical battles are one thing, but you’ve gotta know that even though there may not be a rational basis for Mormons to do so, they’re simply going to read it as an attack on their religion.

Art isn’t a culture or religion test. Life is a culture and religion test – the way we live. Art is a huge part of life (and for artists, it is literally the subsistence of their life – how they get by) – but as the Indigo Girls penned, “..there’s just no medium for life”. Life is life, art is story (where this film is concerned). And this story should be advertised for what it is – a very powerful morality tale – not for what it isn’t (G-rated).

The unfortunate irony of that advertising is that the film is, in my opinion, powerfully Mormon, but while the advertising raises a question entirely irrelevant to the film, it only invites those whose minds are closed to the question – and I have tried opening many minds to the question, and the steel trap set on that question does not respond to crow bars – it only invites them to keep the trap shut, indeed the trap may only close tighter.

I had to decide whether I think Dutcher himself or his actors went against good principle in their performances. I’ve decided I don’t think they did. The directing decisions over that question are so distracting it could not only tear down the proscenium for many (it nearly did for me, but I’d gone into the film with a lot of forethought and preparation) – it could make them want to burn down the theater. Nevertheless, to those willing to explore them, the questions are so gripping it may not matter. The context and the story, the presentation, the direction, what happens – it all very clearly paints the disturbances the film explores as just that: disturbances which are not wanted in a good life. The obvious implication is that we like good, not evil. Hallejuhah. One more film striking against evil.

This also may not be a film for the squeamish.

This film wallops the bloodthirsty with divine guilt.

Last of all, this film probes deeper into the mystery of the Atonement than any work of art I have encountered. If the story it presents is deeply disturbed, the power is in the questions the story poses of whether those disturbances could be overcome. The ending presents situations on questions of innocence and very powerful symbolic reversals – leading to Christ – which I found deeply affecting.

Okay, it seems like “NASA scientists” is the ultimate weasel phrase (or pair of weasel words). This phrase was used twice by commenters at this College Republican’s blog at Western Michigan University (I joined the fray). (no Firefox, “commenters” is a word, and in my book it’s better than “commentators”, which just feels.. too inflated.)

Now this report comes to my attention about newspapers in the UK wielding the phrase also without any attribution. By the way, that report is fairly funny. And cool – the image is pretty dang cool. And so is the entire panorama. And eerie. That’s an alien world! The surface of another planet!

The next time I find myself in any argument about anything, I’m going to begin a rebuttal by citing “NASA scientists”. NASA scientists say it’s possible golden plates could have resided anywhere in North America in the Nineteenth Century. According to NASA scientists, recycling your own poop in your vegetable garden is bad for you. NASA scientists say South Park is often hilarious..

I strongly recommend seeing this film (and here is the official web site for it). I saw it at the LDS film festival last night. It is playing again in the Grand Theater at the Scera Center in Orem (Utah), on Saturday night at 9:45 (why they don’t have a better show time for this singularly great film I don’t know).

It is a documentary that follows the lives of several drug addicts in Utah Valley (a.k.a. “Happy Valley”) seeking recovery, and some families who have lost children to drug overdoses. It explores the harrowing reality of the prevalence of drug abuse in Utah Valley.

What transpires in the life of one family in the documentary, similarly to events reported in NEW YORK DOLL (which is also strongly recommended), is so breathtakingly perfect (and I will get your expectations up) that if it was a narrative film it would be dismissed by America’s deeply cynical culture as contrived and unrealistic. As Susan Jeffers said, “We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic.” May this film give the world pause to reconsider that fallacy.

This film has sold out screenings everywhere it shows, and proceeds from the film go to aid addicts seeking rehabilitation, which can be very expensive for drug addiction. Those two marvelous points aside, the very potent spiritual substance communicated by the film is, in my opinion, a serious blow against evil.

I’m wondering about the environment the film seems to invite of broadcasted honesty. Before the film, two completely unaqcuainted men seated behind me audibly shared how sober they were, who in their family was hooked, and who died – now on that last, I wouldn’t hesitate to share. Death by overdose is a public warning and anything less dishonors the death. But if these men felt safe with each other, should they broadcast their secrets audibly through a theatre? If the full disclosure of the interviewees in the film inspires, the whole audience would do this. Let’s be wise. If a few “fall guys” wake the rest of us up, let’s keep our secrets in helpful circles and not parade them.

So, you fellows behind me broadcasting your addictions – as interesting as it makes you, if I would favorably compare you to any celebrity or artist, I’m not going to pay you great notice until you’re dead.

I didn’t ask the film maker afterward, but wanted to ask what his plans are for exposing the many other kinds of addiction that run rampantly through Utah Valley, some of which find love and acceptance easier to come by, and some of which don’t.

One thing in the film disturbed me a lot. Prescription pill abuse is twice as common in Utah Valley as the national average, and is often deadlier than illegal drugs. And a Police Officer interviewed in the film reported a large group of teenagers he had been with, apparently all of them members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints (LDS or “Mormon”), who in discussing such use (abuse) among themselves, said “It’s not against the Word of Wisdom. It’s just a pill. It’s nothing.” (For clarification, the Word of Wisdom is an LDS doctrine regarding careful use of good foods and avoidance of bad foods and abusive substances.) Okay, kids. A careful (and recommended!) read of the Bible renders a picture of Jesus which baffled and enraged the powers of his day by using his head; by dodging rules where they could not apply, in favor of principle. We need rules, but the Lord broadly spoke of all situations where we need to use our heads when He stated in Doctrine and Covenants that “..it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.” Use your heads, kids. Do you need the Lord or anyone else to tell you this crap is ruining your body, your self-control, your spirituality, and your life, and that that is bad? You’re smarter than that.

I like to think that awareness of addiction among Mormons is spreading. A few weeks ago at my chapel, they had a joint men’s/women’s meeting with someone from LDS Social Services about the topic, and what leaders are doing and can do about it. Only one thing disappointed me: in introduction he said that while he is sure many here know someone who needs this information, nobody here is in these kinds of situations. No, sir. First, you can’t know that, and second it may be falsely flattering, and a disservice to truth and culture. A strongly repeated point in the documentary HAPPY VALLEY is the entrenched denial aspect of the valley’s culture.

The safest guess is that every ward in every stake in the church has addicts, many of whom have not yet even recognized or confessed to themselves or anyone that they are out of control, and if or when sad circumstance arrives them at that point of total desperation, they may have no idea how to get help or that it is even available. Hopefully on the point that help is available they would be comforted, if our pretension that people in their situation are very rare doesn’t open them to Satan’s lie that their case is so rare, and so extreme, and so terrible, and that they are so far down the scale of hopeless that there is no hope. Please assume that wherever you go, there are people in the congregation who need help.

Dear Richard,

I will give this film a shot. It may surprise you to hear me speaking of going to this film as taking a risk, and you deserve the respect of hearing why I do.

[Spoiler]I know your distaste for the idea of rejecting any film because of content. And even though the trailer (and I’m guessing the story) clearly is exploring the idea that the woman at the audition loses her innocence by auditioning nude (and loss of innocence in that way is a pretty compelling and possibly never addressed theme in film), I don’t know that the idea sits well with me, of having an actress nude in a film – even when there is nothing whatever tantalizing about it, in fact it’s properly unsettling in the context – but on a level to me it may feel too far, that a woman was topless on set (and, well, jeepers, from the shot it seems the other actor was leering at her, whether that’s acting or not). One thing I loved about STATES OF GRACE was it portrayed nothing at all when it came to one character’s worse mistake, and it was more powerful for it – it made the audience think “Wait, did what I’m thinking happened just happen?”

But because I trust you I’ve given it thought. There are upright, religious artists at my work who lead faithful lives of service to their church and family who frequently attend nude figure drawing sessions to improve their skill. I’m probably not made for that but I’ve come to think it could be just as innocent as nudity in a doctor’s exam – it’s for learning and improvement, there is no part of it that’s unseemly. I’m open to but uncertain about the idea whether the same principle can apply to nudity in films, and it looks like your film may be a testing ground in my exploration of the idea.

But for heaven’s sake, even if I love FALLING, have you given up on THE PROPHET? I never imagined THE PROPHET might challenge the cultural assumptions of Mormons, other than presenting the full breadth of the origins of Mormonism, which contains some facts that some folks prefer to keep buried as “irrelevant” history. Now I’m wondering if it isn’t written in ways that would make one of your most loyal fans wonder if he should go to the theater

Oh, wait, you said it doesn’t seem it will be your privilege to carry on in the Mormon Cinema movement. Well that happens to work out okay anyway, because THE PROPHET isn’t Mormonism’s story. It’s the world’s story

And as a fellow son of Adam under whatever common or uncommon ground we share, and as a most loyal and insistent fan, I am here to say that if you have given up on THE PROPHET, I have not, and if I have anything to do with it, you won’t either in the end.[/spoiler]

Featuring this ringed green alien gas giant planet (of the previous entry). Short script in .pdf format (link), by me.

The green, ringed planet I rendered and posted last here had problems. Light didn’t shine through the rings as in photos of Saturn. After a lot of web searching I finally figured I’d search for tutorials on glass in 3D Studio Max, and was led to a solution – a translucency shader material instead of a blinn material, rendered with “radiosity”. The planet now also has striped shadows on the surface from the varying opacity of stripes in the rings – which you also see in photographs of Saturn. I added some orbiting gaseous moons. Here are new renders of the planet. One of these has fake “false color” like some NASA photos of planets I can send you very large versions (1680 x 1050) on request. Feel free to use this for any personal use; credit me me in any public use.

I can send you very large versions of these (1680×1050) on request. Some of these are from renders where I’d forgotten to make the planet oblong, and I stretched them in photoshop – a gas giant stretches from its own sheer centrifugal force produced by its enormous mass. The high “radiosity” render with an angle and lighting resembling this speechlessly gorgeous photograph of Saturn uses a lighting calculation setup I haven’t yet figured out how to get properly working; otherwise these might all have much subtler and alternately brighter lighting.

I also made a mouse-pad from one of these renders at my Zazzle online store (I’ll probably add more options for mousepads, and posters of this too). And I made a quick and dirty animation simulating a flyby. Emphasis on quick; this is a fun sketch. Here’s a link to it (I gave up trying to get them to embed in my blog page).

http://www.blog.openhatch.net/video/01_planet_b_flyby__rah_320x240.mov

There are other cool things you see with Saturn I’m still not doing. Future wish list for this planet: atmospheric light refraction/color shift when light travels through the atmosphere for a long length (as along the surface towards the night side of the planet). There are gorgeous pictures of Saturn with bright blue in the north atmosphere from this effect, doubly gorgeous because this bright blue is under striped shadows of the rings. I also want a bright corona atmosphere effect from light bending around the edge of the planet if you view it from the shadow side with the sun directly behind the planet – and a vast light corona refracted from dust far out beyond the rings, as seen from the same angle – both of these effects are seen in one picture of Saturn. I want to figure out how to get this radiosity lighting in Max working with translucency shaders and/or materials the way I want. I also may want to add dimensionality to the rings – they are just flat (which you see as they momentarily vanish in that animation). And.. some custom textured moons (I only added the ones in one of these pictures as an afterthought – wish they’d been there before). And.. an animation simulating tilt and rotation of the planet along with orbiting very distant twin dying giant suns.

But I’m happy with this for.. a while

[Update: if you wandered here by clicking my trackback at MichelleMalkin.com, IMO this post may work for igniting one of the gaseous issues emanating from NYT's fat penumbra, but you may wish to read my post favoring Romney and opposing McCain and Huckabee (link).]

Three blogs I’m seeing relay and question a story in the New York Times: Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, The Autopsy – it’s probably all over the place.

My comment: [spoiler]this is a subtle variation of the “He’s too perfect to be real” criticism. We rail politicians because they are flawed, and then when one who lacks those flaws comes along, we rail on them anyway. Whatever.

The irony is that the allegation that Romney is disingenuous is itself disingenuous. Shouldn’t a candidate identify what he has that folks want? The assumption is that if someone says what wants to be heard they must have made it up just for the sake of being well-received. There’s as much basis for that as there is for believing they genuinely held the position before advertising it. Between the two choices is a path of either cynical negative bias or basic trust in the goodness of other people. Without any hard proof for either as valid, why not risk or put faith in the better option?

And the allegation of flip-flopping is just as cynically illogical and unfounded [as I went into on my post now linked at the top of this entry].[/spoiler]

CALLER: When a man of your wealth — yes, your wealth — no matter what happens, you can afford it. What about guys like me out there? I’ve had years where I’ve made big six figure and years that I haven’t, and all in all me and my wife are fairly financially stable, but do you know how expensive life is, or how much it costs to pay for health care, and why…?

[spoiler]RUSH: Yes, I damn well do because I do pay for it myself!

CALLER: Well, exactly.

RUSH: Let me tell you something.

CALLER: But when I talk about your wealth —

RUSH: No, no, no. Let me tell you something about this wealth business. I’ve been broke twice in my life. When I was 31 years old, I was making $17,000 a year. I have been fired I forgot how many times. Seven times! So I’ve been there. This constant refrain that I’m “out of touch,” is just bogus. That’s another thing that really bugs me: this movement within the Republican Party to claim that the middle class is in great suffering and pain. I understand if you own a house, and your value of your equity in your house is plummeting, that you’re worried, and I understand that totally. What you need to hear is the truth of why it happened, so that you can make plans in the future. These are cycles, and everybody in every country and every society goes through them, and ours are not nearly as bad as people around the rest of the world are. I know health care is expensive. That’s why I’m focused not on making it more expensive, but on making it cheaper, and how you do that? You do it with conservatism! I’m by no means out of touch on this. If the health care industry were priced like every other industry is on the patient’s ability to pay, then we’d fix the problem, and that’s the direction we have to head in.

But if we’re going to keep this notion that everybody’s entitled to have whatever they want medically paid for by their neighbors, then we are finished. We are finished as a country; we are finished as a society. You can talk about my wealth, but let me tell you something, sir. I don’t depend on anybody else for anything, and it was one of my objectives when I grew up. I didn’t want to be obligated. I didn’t want to be dependent. I didn’t want to owe anybody. I don’t buy into insurance plans because it’s a hassle! Now, I know a lot of people don’t have that freedom. I used to not have that freedom, either. But I do now because I worked for it — and if I can do it, a lot more people can do it than think they can, and that’s conservatism again. People are much better than they know. They have much more potential than they know. But when you’ve got a Democrat Party and a movement telling them they suck, telling them they can’t get anywhere because the deck is stacked against them and the people stacking the deck are Republicans and so forth, then you are diminishing the country; you’re diminishing the future, and you’re destroying people’s lives.

……

The health care problem in this country is getting worse, while people are voting on for people who are making it worse because they hear these people saying, “I’m going to fix it.” Well, the people in charge of fixing it have no interest in it getting fixed, because if it gets fixed, you don’t need them. You can rely on yourself. This health care debate is one of the most infuriating things I witness every day, because I get so sick and tired of people buying hook, line, and sinker a lie. “I’m going to get everybody covered. I’m going to make sure everybody gets health insurance in this country. We’re going to make sure it’s not just the rich.” It doesn’t happen, does it? When you have government telling private industry how to operate, this is exactly what you get, and it’s going to happen in energy. It’s already happening in a number of other industries, too. It’s happening in the auto industry…

—-

Given that, and with Romney winning Michigan (yay!) largely due to connections to the state and his track record for reviving faltering industry, and his promise to revive Michigan’s faltering auto industry – I gotta ask what Romney plans to do to revive the auto industry in Michigan. He favors privatization of health care and insurance – not making health care a government responsibility, which in my opinion, and in agreeing with this transcript here, is the only realistic and positive approach.. how do you encourage a private commercial sector like the auto industry without subsidizing? I’m going to look into that..

[/spoiler]

Spotted at NRO’s Corner

[Update 02/12/08: An essay by Orson Scott Card may have changed my mind about immigration.  Things I say in this entry about that I now think are probably erroneous or worse.]

There are various/ reasons I support Mitt Romney’s run for the Presidency.

[Update: I have moved paragraphs of fading relevance - since they concern /candidates who are either fading or have dropped out of the race - to the end of this entry. I've also added a bit more against McCain and for Romney.]

First I’ll say why I don’t support McCain. McCain’s campaign finance reform bill had loop-holes in it which, as had been predicted by many critics, opened the way for parties to receive far and away more exorbitant financing to a degree where private interests can virtually pocket a party. Thanks to McCain’s bill, private radically liberal institutions have been able to gain great control over the Democratic party (so, by the way, unless you intend on casting a surrogate vote for George Soros, don’t vote for Hillary Clinton). (I confess not knowing whether the measure has had a similar corroding effect on the Republican Party). McCain’s position on cutting taxes is to cut them after cutting back government, which is like asking a drunkard to cut back on whiskey after he has stopped drinking. No fat government gets lean before giving money back to citizens (and citizens who retain more of their money produce more money and taxes besides). McCain’s amnesty position on immigration is a threat to the right of sovereign rule of law. When a foreign national is made a citizen – or not even made a citizen – without paying the price, we import a citizen who gives nothing back for the price of import (and the price of import is paid against our will, besides). The protections and benefits of citizenship come with a price – freedom is not free. When freedom is given without a price, freedom is bound, and in this case, bound to the exports, apathy, and eventual controls of other nations. We want immigrants, but we want them to pay the price for American citizenship.

Now I’ll attack some of the attacks against Romney. His conservative social stances are erroneously slammed as flip-flopping by folks who seem to think that the only motivation any politician could have to change his mind is a buckle to peer pressure and not any genuine change of thought. This hard-line cynical criticism has the benefit of being both unprovable and seemingly reasonable. It is only logical if we assume from the outset that we should simply trust one group over another without even perusing the logic of what either has to say. Dismissing one man’s word simply because another man alleges he is lying is not a logical basis of ascertaining whether the man is telling the truth, but that is precisely what every liberal writer and speaker I have encountered does in regards to Romney. Yo. Truth test, folks. It may make a convincing smear, but we aren’t out to form our judgments around the most convincing smear. We like logic. I hope. Logic usually places more trust in the experience and belief of a person witnessing it – not in the witness of their enemy. Both these points are driven across much more strongly than I have put it by Ann Coulter, in this article which I recommend a read of. Coulter also raises the critical point that the Republican candidate the generally liberal MSM fawns over is precisely the candidate we should reject, and explores other fallacies behind the “flip-flopper” allegation against Romney. Amen to that. And is the MSM favoring McCain? Read this contrast of AP reporting of McCain vs. Romney. It’s jaw-dropping. Also recommended: this rallying cry for Romney from NRO’s Mark R. Levin, which among other things very clearly reports the facts of McCain’s very un-presidential contempt and personal verbal assaults on Romney. Romney has never attacked a political opponent’s person, only their position, which is perfectly fair and right to do – it is a contest of record and philosophy. McCain’s attacks make a hypocritical attempt to draw hatred against Romney as among the very wealthy classes – among whom reside McCain himself. No president would lead America well by encouraging class contempt (and by pretending he is not something which he is – rich). Also, McCain blatantly lies about his record and statements on several issues. Here’s a loosely abridged excerpt of Levin on it (click “show” to read it):

[spoiler]McCain is an intemperate, stubborn individual.. I could see his personal contempt for Mitt Romney roiling under the surface.. why? Because Romney ran campaign ads that challenged McCain’s record? Is this the first campaign in which an opponent has run ads questioning another candidate’s record? That’s par for the course. To the best of my knowledge, Romney’s ads have not been personal.. the same cannot be said of McCain’s comments about Romney.

Last night McCain.. resorted to a barrage of personal assaults on Romney that reflect more on the man making them than the target of the attacks. McCain now has a habit of describing Romney as a “manager for profit” and someone who has “laid-off” people, implying that Romney is both unpatriotic and uncaring. Moreover, he complains that Romney is using his “millions” or “fortune” to underwrite his campaign. This is a crass appeal to class warfare. McCain is extremely wealthy through marriage. Romney has never denigrated McCain for his wealth or the manner in which he acquired it. Evidently Romney’s character doesn’t lend him to cross certain boundaries of decorum and decency, but McCain’s does. And what of managing for profit? When did free enterprise become evil? This is liberal pablum [or trite, meaningless platitude] which, once again, could have been uttered by Hillary Clinton.

And there is the open secret of McCain losing control of his temper and behaving in a highly inappropriate fashion with prominent Republicans, including Thad Cochran, John Cornyn, Strom Thurmond, Donald Rumsfeld, Bradley Smith, and a list of others. Does anyone honestly believe that the Clintons or the Democrat party would give McCain a pass on this kind of behavior?

.. how can anyone explain [McCain's] abrupt about-face on two of his signature issues: immigration and tax cuts? .. [he] led the battle not once but twice against the border-security-first approach to illegal immigration.. He disparaged the motives of the millions of people who objected to his legislation. He fought all amendments that would limit the general amnesty provisions of the bill. This controversy raged for weeks. Only now he says he’s gotten the message. Yet, when asked last night if he would sign the [same bill] as president, he dissembles, arguing that it’s a hypothetical question. Last Sunday on Meet the Press, he said he would sign the bill. [Me: is that straight talk? One week he say's he's "gotten the message" against his bill, the next he says he'd sign it, the next he waffles on the question? No way. He's clearly either hiding or undecided on his real position, or else he woudln't change it every week]. There’s nothing straight about this talk. Now, I understand that politicians tap dance during the course of a campaign, but this was a defining moment for McCain. And another defining moment was his very public opposition to the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. He was the media’s favorite Republican in opposition to Bush. [My note: mainstream media is by and large liberal. Maybe that's common knowledge, but..] At the time his primary reason for opposing the cuts was because they favored the rich (and, by the way, they did not). Now he says he opposed them because they weren’t accompanied by spending cuts. That’s simply not correct.

Even worse than denying his own record, McCain is flatly lying about Romney’s position on Iraq. As has been discussed for nearly a week now, Romney did not support a specific date to withdraw our forces from Iraq. The evidence is irrefutable. And it’s also irrefutable that McCain is abusing the English language (Romney’s statements) the way Bill Clinton did in front of a grand jury. The problem is that once called on it by everyone from the New York Times to me, he obstinately refuses to admit the truth. So, last night, he lied about it again. This isn’t open to interpretation. But it does give us a window into who he is. [Me: he's someone capable of flat lying!]

Of course, it’s one thing to overlook one or two issues where a candidate seeking the Republican nomination as a conservative might depart from conservative orthodoxy. But in McCain’s case, adherence is the exception to the rule — McCain-Feingold (restrictions on political speech), McCain-Kennedy (amnesty for illegal aliens), McCain-Kennedy-Edwards (trial lawyers’ bill of rights), McCain-Lieberman (global warming legislation), Gang of 14 (obstructing change to the filibuster rule for judicial nominations), the Bush tax cuts, and so forth. This is a record any liberal Democrat would proudly run on. Are we to overlook this record when selecting a Republican nominee to carry our message in the general election?

But what about his national security record? It’s a mixed bag. McCain is rightly credited with being an early voice for changing tactics in Iraq. He was a vocal supporter of the surge, even when many were not. But he does not have a record of being a vocal advocate for defense spending when Bill Clinton was slashing it. And he has been on the wrong side of the debate on homeland security. He supports closing Guantanamo Bay, which would result in granting an array of constitutional protections to al-Qaeda detainees, and limiting legitimate interrogation techniques that have, in fact, saved American lives. Combined with his (past) de-emphasis on border-security, I think it’s fair to say that McCain’s positions are more in line with the ACLU than most conservatives.

Why recite this record? Well, if conservatives don’t act now to stop McCain, he will become the Republican nominee and he will lose the general election. He is simply flawed on too many levels. He is a Republican Hillary Clinton in many ways. Many McCain supporters insist he is the only Republican who can beat Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama. And they point to certain polls. The polls are meaningless this far from November. Six months ago, the polls had Rudy winning the Republican nomination. In October 1980, the polls had Jimmy Carter defeating Ronald Reagan. This is no more than spin.[/spoiler]

Romney has the right idea on the separation of church and state with encouragement of religion in general in the public square. (If you missed it or would like reminding, read the transcript of his speech on the topic over at NPR.) He has a very good track record in fiscal reform – he turned both the bankrupt Salt Lake City Olympics and the government of Massechusets around to great surplusses – and reason of hope to reign in our massively burgeoned government. He has the practical approach to foreign policy required to secure our nation by stamping out militant extremism abroad. Romney is the real deal and I choose to trust the position he states he has on various social issues. I am impressed, actually, when a man is capable of changing his mind and saying why he did so. It assures me that he thinks for himself and does not just blindly follow or rigidly adhere to any dogma without thought. Lastly, Romney’s position on immigration is naturalization, not amnesty, and naturalization bears a price for citizenship. Citizens obtained through amnesty draw on the resources of a nation without paying the same price as other citizens. But naturalized citizens do pay the price, and in turn contribute to the society they join.

If your mind is made up not to support Huckabee, you may not need to read these next paragraphs, which blast Huckabee’s utterly despicable tactics and frightening thinking. If you want to read them, click “show”.

[spoiler][Update 02/04/08: I saw this email reporting yet another Huckabee hypocrisy:

Earlier in the day Huckabee attacked Romney for "voter suppression" by telling Hannity and Colmes last Thursday that a vote for Huckabee is really a vote for McCain.

Romney responded, "First a couple of rules in politics. One, no whining. And Number 2, you get them to vote for you. And so I want them not to vote for Mike Huckabee and not to vote for John McCain and to vote for me. … That's not voter suppression. That's known as politics," Romney said. "I want people to vote, but I want them to vote for me."

But wait, it ain't over yet!

Later in the day Huckabee released a videotape recorded at a campaign stop in Macon, Ga., over the weekend that urged his supporters to get to the polls. In the video, Huckabee "joked" that "if there's somebody you know who's not going to vote for us, don't let them out of their house."

"You let the air out of their tires and keep them from getting out. Tell them the primary's been moved to March But don't let them near a voting booth until after Tuesday."

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/251/story/239505.html

Poor, dear, Governor Huckabee: you joke might almost elicit a snicker if we didn't know that "voter suppression" has been on your mind lately.

]

I will comment on Mike Huckabee’s press stunt, wherein he assembled the press and claimed that, while he had made a negative ad about Mitt Romney (and to be clear, the ad was a smear of Mitt Romney, and not any logical disagreement with Romney’s philosophies or positions – this is the classically ill-reasoned Ad Hominem attack, as the Romans call it), he had, he claimed, changed his mind just then and decided not to air the ad, but he also then claimed he would prove that he had indeed made the ad, but was opting to take the high road and not air it – and he then showed the very ad to all the assembled press. It was as transparently inevitable as it was pathetic that the press would publicize the stunt and rebroadcast Huckabee’s ad. Mike Huckabee could not sincerely hope otherwise; or if he could have, he is far too naive to hold the highest office of the most powerful nation on earth. Either way, the consequences of his actions are that he has left a smearing ad (which smeared Romney’s integrity without any basis of sound reasoning or fact) open to a press arguably rabid to smugly bandy about the dirtiest dirt they can dig up on anything (otherwise they’d have dismissed Huckabee and his ad out of hand) – and, case in point, the ad Huckabee made was and is very dirty and disingenuous – the same as Huckabee’s presenting such dirt to an open press can only be seen unless, to repeat what has been said – unless he is far too naive to warrant serious support of candidacy for President. And if Huckabee is not naive in that way, he is in another: as his campaign asks for support, his behavior asks the Citizens of the United States to tolerate dirty politics.

The most sickening part is that Huckabee feigns his hands are clean of dirty talk. But here the term needs clarifying. Attacking the political position, record, and reasoning of a candidate is not dirty. That’s expected. This is debate. Who has the best ideas? But attacking the very character of another, irrelevant and apart from any bearing on political ideas and record – this is dirty. And this is what Huckabee has consistently done, and which Romney has not done. Romney has not geared any arguments and attacks at people themselves – none of this back-handed religion and character slamming etc. – all of Romney’s arguments against other candidates are appropriately geared at their political positions and histories. Please notice how little the press has distinguished between the two. Arguing with a person’s ideas and choices is not a personal attack; but the press frequently has glibly described it so, misrepresenting Romney’s attacks as personal. Examine anything Romney says in competition with other candidates. He is never back-handed or personal, on the contrary he disagrees respectfully with policy, record, and position. But Mike Huckabee has attacked character and one of the greater substances of character – religion – backhandedly, feigning innocent curiosity, questions. Well, first, who cares about theological questions – Presidential candidates should only care about policy questions in debate. But Huckabee feigned such off-limits religious curiosity regardless (that it is off-limits he doesn’t feign – it’s fair territory in his book of attacks disguised as curiosity). He cannot be given the benefit of doubting that he knows what he talks about. He posed a question framed in Mormon teaching of two opposing supernatural beings as brothers. As a minister he is of course well-versed in how his own and other religions differ. His abuse of that knowledge is to illustrate religious differences – which again, emphatically, are by definition irrelevant and ill-applied to a political campaign.

The question Huckabee posed plays to a cultural position which assumes certain negative questions and answers without words. The execution is fairly brisk and seemingly easy-going, but the underlying reasoning is brute and not in line with any claim of Christian behavior. The assumption his question conjures is this: If a godly being and an ungodly being are brothers, doesn’t that lower the status of the divine by association? After all, the divine has no association with the not divine. Therefore, the ill logic goes, anyone who would associate such a divine holy with a not divine unholy must have a view which degrades the divine or sees the divine as lower, they must not set their sights as high on spiritual matters: they must have a really wrong idea of what is really what with religion; they may even be fools, religiously, or may have been fooled. This is juvenile thinking, folks. If one of two brothers is a criminal who goes to jail, while the other brother is a noble, upright citizen who abides the law, devotes his life to charity, and does good to those around him, is the good brother, by position as brother of the imprisoned brother, therefore less a person, less in virtue, lower in position, less in goodness, or in spiritual terms, less holy? Is one person accountable for the choices of another? The only way one person can be responsible for another’s actions is if he has control over what the other chooses. We are accountable only for what we have control over. One’s own goodness only diminishes when one fails to control himself; so one’s own goodness could only diminish on account of a brother if one had control over a brother. Nobody has control over another; each chooses his own path: but while everybody chooses for themselves the path to follow, Huckabee’s rhetoric assumes it isn’t so: one is less good when one has failed to control another. There are places for control – parents preventing children from harming themselves, for example, or police men preventing one person from harming another, or if the notion isn’t lost on you as it seems lost on so many all-cases pacifists – armies preventing dictators from executing genocide – but on the whole man controls only himself and chooses right or wrong only for himself – not for others. A man can bring good into the lives others by persuading or encouraging others to do good (and good example is the best way to persuade). But it is a very interesting – more harrowing – observation that the cultural assumptions which Mike Huckabee plays his cards from wrest their operations from a presumed right of undue control, from a position where one brother should forcibly cause another to follow a path of virtue.

Huckabee’s rhetoric plays to audiences who have given up the right to think or act for themselves. Want a democracy? Huckabee’s thinking is kin to dictatorial theocracy. Read it through again. Huckabee’s religious attacks implicitly would have it A-OK to support him on the basis of his religion – or else he wouldn’t think it okay to attack the religion of others. Their religion bad, his religion good. Elect the baptist, goes the underlying logic, while the facade is far too clever to be so crudely un-American. His position is not American. It is in fact a threat to the very idea of American, where anyone is game for citizenship so far as they adhere to the rule of law and the Constitution. Huckabee poses questions of religion above the Constitution in the public square. There remains no place for the public square when rhetoric insists only on meeting at the square on the basis of religion – not on the basis of law. I repeat, Huckabee’s thinking is akin to dictatorial theocracy. Do you want that kind of thinking in a President?

I didn’t think so. Say it with your vote.[/spoiler]

These next expired paragraphs rail against Giuliani and speculate on Thompson, neither any longer relevant to the race. Again, click “show” if you want to read them.

[spoiler]Giuliani loses my vote under one phrase: “Pro-Choice”. The millions of slaughtered unborn in this country never had a choice, folks. Reagan said it best. The only people arguing for the “right” to “abort” were not aborted. Let us speak plainly. There are circumstances (rape, incest, a mother’s life in danger) where terminating the life of an unborn may be necessary. The vast majority of the time there is no such reason for terminating an unborn infant. Far more often, “Pro-Choice” is a euphemism placing the dignity and value of one person – a mother – over another – a child. Well, children haven’t really been given a lot of choices and rights through the centuries. Maybe after the billionth pre-birth slaughter in our nation, the kids will get used to it. We kept lil’ Billy. He was a keeper. Too bad his sister wasn’t.

How did Republicans win a ban on “partial-birth abortion”? By asking about the rights of the extraordinarily brave few infants who, despite the best efforts of a doctor to kill them, survive and come out of the womb, alive. Why, having attempted to kill the infant and failing to do so in the womb, can we not take the life of the infant when he is out of the womb? Why is not the “right” to “abortion” the right to an effective abortion?

Because life does not start out of the womb.

The logic has not yet been taken to the full measure it goes to; which is the reversal of Roe vs. Wade. The victor of Roe vs. Wade has since changed her mind and said the decision was altogether wrong. How many “Pro-Choice” folks site this fact? How many anti-religion folks wrest their speculations against Christianity by such fictionally apocryphal means as presented in THE DA VINCI code? How much more are they willing to champion any ex-Christian who comes along and joins their crowd? But do “Pro-Choice” folks champion the messenger who used to be in their crowd and has turned against them? Nope. It’s not even about messengers or means, it’s all about ends.

Nobody knows when a forming human soul becomes human. It is the moral responsibility of man to define and protect life as broadly as he reasonably can.

I think I could probably support Thompson. I don’t believe however that his campaign has enough steam to topple other candidates.[/spoiler]

(as they moderate comments)

This was my comment responding to a comment in this CNN article.

[spoiler]—-
Regarding several comments:

“..those whose skins are not white and fair may detect the odor of racism in the quotation.”

Wouldn’t Mary, as a 0 century AD Jew in the region of Jerusalem, likely have a light complexion? But whatever her skin color may have been, and that aside, to suppose any observation of skin color of any person in itself necessarily negatively contrasts with others is absurd. If two people in a room have different skin colors, and someone points out that they have different skin colors, is that by itself racist? Does mere observation of differences between people constitute slander in itself? To say so has to outright invent a whole lot of bad context that doesn’t even exist in singular, harmless statements.

And regarding this:

“..Of course, Mormonism came of age during a very racist time in American history and it is reflected in the books that Mormon leaders concocted back then. The Old Testament has some very creepy stuff in it too, but let’s not start quoting chapter and verse.”

Why not quote chapter and verse? You have commented on the supposed racism which you yourself inject into a particular verse. This is the equivalent of Huckabee’s saying that he won’t say something but then saying it. And it isn’t said only about mormon scripture – but also a book that wider Christianity supports – the Bible.

Also, “concocted” is a statement of opinion given as fact. A person who believes Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon would not use the word “concocted”, they might say “translated” To say “concocted” is to say he made it up, pulled stuff together to form it, or made it from nothing. It would be more direct and open to say, assuming it is even relevant to a political discussion, to say something more direct like “By the way, Joseph Smith didn’t translate anything. He made it all up.” Frankly, the rather inderect yet plain use of the word “concocted” smacks of an attitude that assumes everyone thinks Joseph Smith made it up, or that this is the only rational, right, or reasonable point of view. I hope you would be aware that this implicit assumption casually overlooks a differing point of view which millions of people hold, which frankly smacks of a whole lot of disrespect. Implicitly asserting that something is “just so”, and against the religious views of others, is disrespectful of their right to hold that view. And that strong assumed bias is very ironic, considering these next statements:

“Romney himself benefits because of the sympathy he is now getting as the victim of bigotry, so supporters of Romney may be behind it (and perhaps not known to Romney himself).”

We would assume that someone asserting that others are a victim of bigotry or strong bias would make diligent effort to free their own points of view from disrespectful assumptions, or bigotry or strong bias. But even while bigotry is pointed out elsewhere it exists in the words of the one doing the pointing. Worse, it speculates that the source of the victimization is the victims themselves. Please draw up proof. Otherwise, drop the insulting speculation.[/spoiler]