Mike Huckabee

To quote my man Leonard Pierce, "Now, I'm not a fan of Mitt Romney, but I still can't believe he's gotten called a 'heretic' by a sizeable proportion of the Republican constituency. PEOPLE HE IS NOT RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY"

Yeah, but he raised a real nice family.

Will this MetaFilter-esque style of posting catch on?

isn't huckabee the one who said they should quarantine all aids patients back in '91?

Yes.

i think i liked him better
as a bloater, because he
kinda had that puffy UNION
BOSS look, even tho, I know
he hates the UNIONS.

fuck this.
I am voting for BLOOMBERG.

...that his plans to reverse "the Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality" involves basically building a taller, more secure bunker, extremely amping up our war efforts around the globe, and adopting a standoffish position with regards to Iran, China and Russia.

Oh, but that's right, he's different because he'll be doing all of this while standing next to the bunker with open, loving Christian arms.

He is, indeed, the Peacemaker.

Sometimes I hope that too. After all, as a registered independent in the great state of NC I could vote in either primary and I used to vote for the nuttiest Republican each time. But then I think: what if the bastard actually wins. I don't think I could take a President Mike Huckabee.

Well, I know who I'm voting for

I still think that guy is the lesser of all the evils. His platform is basically that he wants to stop the war and destroy the American economy by switching back to the gold standard. Both of which I can get behind. The fact that he believes in Flying Spaghetti Monsters and doesn't want the womenfolk aborting their feti is neither here nor there if a candidate feels as though the federal government should be all but completely crippled. So basically if California wants to enact a law saying all feti must be disposed of, I think Dr. Ron is the least likely to send the National Guard to block the entrances of Planned Parenthoods. Same goes for say, if a local school board wants to only use science texts saying the human race was created by an alien named Elohim...

Ron Paul wants to define life as starting at conception, build a fence along the US-Mexico border, prevent the Supreme Court from hearing cases on the Establishment Clause or the right to privacy, permitting the return of sodomy laws and the like (a bill which he has repeatedly re-introduced), pull out of the UN, disband NATO, end birthright citizenship, deny federal funding to any organisation which "which presents male or female homosexuality as an acceptable alternative life style or which suggest that it can be an acceptable life style" along with destroying public education and social security,, and abolish the Federal Reserve in order to put America back on the gold standard. He was also the sole vote against divesting US federal government investments in corporations doing business with the genocidal government of the Sudan.

Oh, and he believes that the Left is waging a war on religion and Christmas, he's against gay marriage, is against the popular vote, opposes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, wants the estate tax repealed, is STILL making racist remarks, believes that the Panama Canal should be the property of the United States, and believes in New World Order conspiracy theories, not to mention his belief that the International Baccalaureate program is UN mind control..

Not to mention that 80% of the "hate the federal government" crowd are really just pissed about black people getting social services.

I can't even begin to form a coherent thought at the moment, much less a coherent defense to the implication that I'm full of shit and don't think about the rights of those who are not of my assumed privileged status. Suffice to say that I often think of the well being of others as I goose step down the street kicking puppies.

I was under the impression that Miranda was serious, but I only read one paragraph of her linked piece.

See, one's ability to actually deny a bajillion-times proven theory means that they have the total inability to reason. In general. About anything.

...might hold weight if he was an inventor or something, but, he's not. He's running for an executive/public speaking position.

Also, it's safer to say you believe in god because you cannot be proven wrong. It's impossible to say there is a god, but, in theory, it's also impossible to say that there isn't. It's a belief.

Denying evolution matters because it is the denial of a proven theory, see. There's black and white evidence supporting it regardless of whether it's perfectly mapped out or not. Isn't this the point at which "belief" stops and outright denial begins? For a person to be running for any public office while denying major, common realities only throws into question what else they would cast aside to fit their antiquated mindsets.

A belief in god is also the lesser of the two evils because the concept of god can mean different things to different people. And I'm not going to sit here and assume how Bible "teachings" are specifically interwoven into these people's lives. I probably don't want to know.

But I have to vote for someone, so it's best I don't.

That said, if there were ever a Chinese atheist lesbian running for president I would probably vote for her on principle.

I am sure that when it is proven that god does not exist, there will be a few semi-reasonable stragglers who will deny the evidence for the first hundred years or so after science tests and retests the theory.

Bush has said that "the jury is still out" on evolution and has said that intelligent design should be taught in schools. But presidents don't make those kinds of decisions, thankfully. And if a big government guy like Bush can't reverse scientific progress, someone who wants as little to do with US Dept of Ed as possible and to repeal No Child Left Behind isn't going to have much better luck. Especially since his views are so out of step with any mainstream politicians that absolutely nothing would get done during his hypothetical presidency. Which is exactly why I think he would be a great president.

I have never voted for a republican or a democrat and probably never will. My voting strategy is to randomly choose candidates from parties that I have never heard mentioned in the media, usually Socialist Workers Party candidates.

Miranda, my support for this guy is somewhat tongue in cheek, however I do think it would be great to do away with federal income tax. Not because I'm an evil white man, but because we've been spending hundreds of billions of dollars to kill thousands of people for years. And the rest of the money seems to be used to light business men's Cuban cigars. Most social programs could be administered much more efficiently by state and local government, who would be able to administer any cradle to grave programs they wanted if their taxpayers would chip in what is now going to Washington to build bombs and pay off interest on the national debt and other well intentioned but incredibly wasteful programs. I still can't refute or comment on the littany of allegations you lay out. I'm sure a lot of them are reprehensible. And I bet some of them I don't have a problem with. But the point is academic. And I'm not.

Not because I'm an evil white man, but because we've been spending hundreds of billions of dollars to kill thousands of people for years.

If you think abolishing the income tax will keep money out of the hands of the military, then you're a fucking idiot.

Most social programs could be administered much more efficiently by state and local government, who would be able to administer any cradle to grave programs they wanted if their taxpayers would chip in what is now going to Washington to build bombs and pay off interest on the national debt and other well intentioned but incredibly wasteful programs.

They could not be administered as cost effectively by the states, and most states would, as they historically have done, either cut programs outright or tailor them to benefit only certain segments of their population.

Here's one example of how the federal government does a bang up job addressing 1 issue in particular. When my wife's father died and she got a little life insurance money, we decided it might make financial sense to stop shelling out 70% of our income each month to a landlord who had a very hard time keeping our apartment heated and our plumbing functioning. Thought it might be a good idea to buy into a co-op. But affordable housing is hard to come by, so we checked out what kind of government plans might help us out. Fortunately, there are lots of HUD co-ops in the city. The great things about these places is that the federal government has decided only verifiably low income purchasers can live there. Of course, they don't say how much you can charge for these places. So there are lots of decrepit 1 bedroom tenements available at just slightly below market prices between 400K and 500K. That's $1,000 per square foot. Of course a couple can only make $35K combined annually to qualify to get into one of these places. So who does this federally administered program help? People with 400 or 500 grand in their trust funds and a barista bohemian lifestyle. Obviously those are the intended benificiaries of affordable housing. I fail to see how the federal government is more in touch with the needs of or more efficient at addressing the needs of a community than the state or local government.

At least you guys have a bunch of candidates to argue about.
There's nothing to argue about over here. There simply isn't anyone to vote for. They're all as bad as each other.

People can debate and argue all they want, but it's still the media and the money that decides who's going to be nominated. FOX News decided not to let Ron Paul debate, despite a very respectable 10% showing in Iowa. W'assup wit dat?

D'oh! That's what I get for only reading week old newspapers...

Still he was excluded before he was included so my hypothetical outrage remains intact.

Ron Paul's Michigan Campaign Coordinator

Oh shut up.

You make a convincing argument.

Hillary Clinton on Mahatma Gandhi: "He ran a gas station down in St. Louis."

Even WORSE!!!

Jesse Jackson Jr., Obama campaign national co-chairmen let's murder plot against Hillary slip. Liberal media confused into silence! "The natural reminder here is O.J. [Simpson]—how does an African-American candidate attack a white woman?"

I know, you're right. I'm pretty fascinated with your whole election though. It's like a three-ring circus, with global consequences.

I'm not sure I will even vote this time around over here. If our foreign secretary was the leader of the Labour party, he might get my vote. His actions have been less reprehensible than the others. But he's not the leader, so fuck it.

"I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."

He compared his entry into politics to "getting inside the dragon's belly," adding, "There's not one thing we can do in those marbled halls and domed capitols that can equal what's done when Jesus touches the lives of a sinner."

cite yer source

KIDS WHO KILL

Why, here's a candidate we can all get behind! He's "down" with the "vocab" of today's urban youth!

Mr. Romney, the Republican candidate from Massachusetts by way of Michigan and Utah who enjoys a milkshake at the end of a long day, stopped by a staging area for a Martin Luther King Birthday parade here. In his dress shirt and tie, and with his unwavering smile, he walked over and posed for photographs with a group of black youngsters. Putting his arm around a teenage girl, he waved to the cameras and offered, “Who let the dogs out?” He added a tepid “woof woof.”

Later, Mr. Romney admired a child’s gold necklace and said, “Oh, you’ve got some bling-bling here."

Well, Kucinich dropped out, and that's a damn shame. Although now I feel less worse about my support of Ron Paul.

Straight from the Plain Dealer.

Ben and I are locked in a mutualistic death spiral. Maybe we can convince the ghost of Steve Gerber to haunt Mike Huckabee. I am willing to bet that Gerber hated Boston though.