An interesting article in Time magazine, about whether or not Mitt Romney can be elected President. It’s in question because he’s a Mormon. I find it interesting, anyway, because I’m a member of a religious minority, being Buddhist and all. Although, come to think of it, I was confirmed Lutheran, so I guess I’m a Lutheran-Buddhist.

Anyway, the article talks about the complications for a Mormon to become President. The LDS Church is officially non-partisan and has never endorsed a candidate, or so they say, but I think that officially ALL churches have to say that; they’re not allowed to endorse, or else they risk losing their non-profit status and hence contributions to the church would no longer be tax-deductable.

One thing that I did find interesting is that I’ve always thought that the Morms were pretty right-wing. Well, they ARE pretty right-wing as a general rule, but Senate Minority Leader (and soon to be Majority Leader) Harry Reid is a Mormon, so they do have some Democrats as well.

I personally don’t think that a popular Mormon would have trouble getting elected President, at least in general. I think that it presents some challenges, but I think it could be done. But I do think that a Mormon (or any other non-mainstream faith) would have trouble getting through the Republican primaries, and I don’t think Romney will win the Republican nomination.

The Republicans are just too run by the religious right conservative wing these days. It’s kind of like when the Democrats had their own ideological purity tests and someone practically had to be a left-handed black lesbian to gain a nomination. Okay, it was never quite THAT bad, but the point is that the R’s have too many people who might freak out at the notion of what is considered by many evangelical types as a cult having a member as President.

Myself, I don’t think that the Mormons are a cult… today. Back when they started, maybe, but definitely not today. And I think they’re “Christians”, in the sense that they follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. I’m a big-tent guy in that sense; I figure even an atheist can be a “Christian” for admiring and following Jesus’ teachings, even if the atheist thinks that there is no “God” and that Jesus was just another guy, albeit a very enlightened one.

I think that America overall has moved further and further to a position where a person’s religion doesn’t matter as much, but in the primary races it’s a big deal, at least in the Republican party, so I guess from that sense it DOES matter. And the particular religion in question matters, too.

Can a Mormon get elected President? Sure. Can a Muslim? Nope, not going to happen. How about a Buddhist? Probably not, but I bet that’d happen before a Muslim gets it.

It’s a shame- what should matter is the quality of the person’s ideas, not where and how they worship on Sundays, if they worship at all- but it doesn’t always work out that way.

You know, sometimes I think that Bush must be one heck of a clueless dude.

From “The Hill”:

President Bush has pledged to work with the new Democratic majorities in Congress, but he has already gotten off on the wrong foot with Jim Webb, whose surprise victory over Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) tipped the Senate to the Democrats.

Webb, a decorated former Marine officer, hammered Allen and Bush over the unpopular war in Iraq while wearing his son’s old combat boots on the campaign trail. It seems the president may have some lingering resentment.

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.

Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.

Now, Webb should have taken Bush’s question for what it was worth- an expression of concern for Webb’s son. But that said, I think his answer is a fair one, and since Webb has been to war while Bush was skipping out of his Air National Guard duty (said ANG slot obtained by his politically connected father) I think Webb is far more entitled to answer the question that way than Bush is to be a prick about it.

I mean, what are the odds that either of the Bush daughters are going to join the military any time soon? Or ever?

The story sums up the problem with Bush- to him, he doesn’t care whether his decision to send people to war was right or not. He does have personal concern for people (I’ve read enough about him being a fairly warm guy in person to believe that) but he doesn’t seem to be able to see the link between his crappy policy decisions and people’s suffering.

He’s just clueless when it comes to the Iraq war. He thinks it’s going to be the defining legacy of his Presidency, and in that he’s right- only instead of being spoken about admiringly, he’s going to be reviled for screwing things up so badly.

I can’t believe that this is even in discussion. It’s an article asking whether or not Iraq is in a civil war.

Frankly, the only people who think that Iraq is NOT in a civil war is the Bush Administration, and I bet that there’s a good portion of those folks who know perfect well it’s a civil war but are under orders to never admit to it.

What I find so irritating is how much the media has lost its cojones. Why not simply say “the civil war in Iraq” when everyone with any kind of brain knows perfectly well it IS a civil war?

In their effort to be “fair” and “present all sides of the issue”, the media has gotten themselves to the point where what they say doesn’t matter because of the self-censorship they apply. They don’t want to appear “biased”, and if they just flat-out called it a civil war and pointed out the idiocy of the Bush White House in denying this they’d be accused of being biased.

But in doing so, in restraining themselves from saying anything that might make them appear biased, the media has gotten to a point where they can’t say anything of substance at all. Then they wonder why they’re losing relevance or why people don’t believe in them anymore!

Some truths ARE so self-evident (to steal a phrase) that even a “biased” news source will be taken seriously. If Fox News said “these attacks are horrendous” on 9/11, I’d believe them, because it was blindingly obvious- even though a huge portion of what’s on Fox News is BS.

Here’s another example. Back in February of 2001, here in my neighborhood of Pioneer Square we had some vicious, nasty rioting and attacks happen during Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday has long been a big night out for a lot of people down here, and over the years in the 90s things got rougher and rougher.

Seattle doesn’t have, IMO, a police force that can mobilize and act like a “big city” police force; it’s small for a city this size and doesn’t have that mentality. They didn’t recognize what was happening and the night of the attacks they showed a terrible response.

At one point, a guy was beaten so badly that he was killed. Many others were hurt badly.

And what is disgusting is that many, indeed most, of the more brutal attacks were hate crimes. They were crimes with racist underpinnings and tones.

Seattle’s media punted. They didn’t tell the story; they didn’t point out the obvious (and yes, the media needs to point out even the obvious at times) and say “look, many of these attacks are racist in nature”.

You know why? Because they were situations where gangs of black guys were beating the crap out of white people.

Here’s a paragraph from an article in the Seattle Times that neatly sums up the situation to me:

Racial tension surrounding the Fat Tuesday celebration has been building since police said most suspects in the violence are black. African-American leaders have said fallout from the event stereotypes the entire black community as criminals.

I beg your pardon for being rude, but that’s utter horseshit. The media was too chicken to call it what it was- racially motivated crimes- originally, and instead let the police take the hit for appearing “racist” when they (the cops) pointed out that most of the people who were doing the beating were black.

This article, by the way, is discussing how the lead suspect in the killing that night told the police that he felt it was a “racial war”. Comments from one of the victims:

“They should all be charged with hate crimes because that’s what they did,” said Allison Wilson, 21, of Renton, who was beaten and injured that night along with her 24-year-old husband, Jesse. They said their attackers yelled slurs against whites.

“They’re racists — they attacked us because we were white,” Wilson said. “There was no other reason. We didn’t do anything to them.”

The media should have first simply said what was true- that the crimes were mostly committed by black guys and that they (the crimes) had strong racial undertones. And when the black community leaders complain that pointing this out is, in and of itself, racist, they (the leaders) should be called what they are- idiots.

It’s one thing to say that someone is a criminal because they’re of a certain race. That’d be a racist statement. But when gangs of guys of one color are running around and beating on people of another color and ONLY of another color, and they even say blatantly that it’s a racial war, there’s nothing wrong with pointing that fact out.

It hardly makes all blacks “appear to be criminals”, any more than I think that the terrorists in the IRA make all white people (or all Irish people) appear to be hate-filled terrorists.

Sometimes I wonder what has happened to our media and why they say stuff later, as though they’re only just now discovering it, when the rest of us knew it for months and months. I find myself saying “no freakin DUH, you idiot” to the TV. This latest example- that (gasp) Iraq is in a civil war- is a perfect example.

Call ‘em on it. Write a letter to an editor once in a while. They’re used to getting missives from cranky people like me, and probably even have databases to track who writes them regularly, but if they start getting a lot more notes saying “no freakin DUH, why haven’t you been calling it ‘The Iraqi Civil War’ all along you morons?” maybe they’ll clean up their act a little bit.

There’s an article in today’s Seattle Times (and many other papers, I’m sure) about how the idiosyncracies we see in email and IM conversations (like LOL or OMG) are finding their way into other forms of written communication.

The younger folks are, as they hit high school and college, occasionally dropping these terms into their papers and assignments.

Personally, I find this interesting. I think that while email is killing the traditional art of sitting down and knocking out a letter, it’s probably also serving to increase the number of people who use writing in the first place. Same thing with text-messaging via handheld devices (cell phones, PDAs, etc) and IM conversations.

So is it a good thing or a bad thing? Myself, I like it. I think it’s good because the very nature of writing, even if you’re using LOL or OMG or IMHO as abbreviations, is such that people have to THINK a little bit more about what they’re trying to say before they actually “say” it (write it).

Since the vast majority of us cannot type as quickly as we can talk or think, we have a little time to consider what we’re going to say. We also tend to shorten up our written sentences and get points across with fewer words than we might use if we were speaking out loud. (Obviously I’m an exception to that rule.)

There is definitely a lack of critical thinking skills today. I’m sure that brainy, stuck-up people have been saying the same thing for eons, but I do think that the easy access to massive amounts of information and entertainment have had a bad effect on us. Our shorter attention spans mean that we don’t set aside the time to really think our way through big, complicated issues; it’s easier to just have some talking head spout off and tell us what to think.

But if we are at all taking part in two-way communication, we have to think for ourselves, at least a little; and if it’s written, we have to think more. For this reason, I believe that the increase in written communication is good.

As far as whether or not the shorthand messages creeping into more formal written communications is good or bad… I don’t like it, I try to avoid it in my own writing, but I’m not really going to sit and pontificate that it’s a bad, horrible thing that will lead to the end of civilization, either.

Words are tools, used to transfer ideas from point A (one person’s mind/brain) to point B (the target audience’s brain, whether that is an individual person or many people). Is it wrong for someone who only knows Spanish to use Spanish words to communicate? Of course it isn’t; it’s entirely natural. From this simple example, we can see that the language or words that are used isn’t a huge deal.

We use the language we know. If we know multiple languages, we’ll pick the one that we know will most effectively communicate what it is we’re trying to say. I know a gal at work who has a child whose father (her ex) is from South America and who is fluent in both Spanish and English (as is she). When she talks with him on the phone, she’ll slide back and forth between Spanish and English, sometimes in the middle of a sentence! (I’ve heard it and it’s funny to listen to, and more than a little amazing to me, since I can barely manage in ONE language.)

She says that sometimes they’ll have a whole phone chat where he’ll speak only Spanish, and she’ll speak only English, and they understand each other perfectly well. We know, from this and from other examples, that even mixing two languages into the same conversation or communication is no big deal.

So why do some of these people have a stick up their butt about someone sliding those abbreviations into more formal communications? One of the guys in the article I linked to says that it’s because by doing so, students aren’t thinking about what they’re writing.

I think he’s full of crap; I suspect that if someone is a lousy writer who doesn’t exhibit good thinking when using IM slang, they’re going to be a lousy writer that doesn’t exhibit good thinking even if they’re using extremely formal, correct prose.

Should people use those abbreviations in formal writing? No. Is it a huge deal? No. It’s mostly a question of style. I try to write these blog entries as though I’m thinking out loud, having a one-way conversation with someone… or even almost a two-way conversation. I believe that in this style of writing things work better if I can imagine the reader (that’d be you) speaking back with me, asking me questions or whatever.

By doing so, I find it leads me to my next thought or sentence or point. I aim to write as though I’m just talking out loud; since many of the centers in our brain that process language do so whether it’s spoken or written, I think it helps. (Of course, there are parts of the brain which only do one or the other; people with certain brain injuries sometimes can’t read, or can’t speak, but they can listen, or they can write something down. The brain is a miraculous organ!)

If, on the other hand, I’m writing a more formal paper, I’ll use a less conversational style and something more… well, formal. I think it’s just more appropriate.

Therefore, I reject the folks who think that the kids using “OMG” in a written paper for school is Yet Another Sign Of The Apocalypse. I think it’s just a sign that they need to be taught and exposed to what’s appropriate and what isn’t in terms of written communication.

The problems with the thinking and writing skills themselves, on the other hand, are much different- and bigger- problems.