New Hampshire debate on ABC

It has been a couple of days since the New Hampsire debate on ABC, so this should have been posted earlier, but I gave it a couple of days to digest. Also, I had a conversation about it yesterday with some family memebers that made me think of some additional points to ponder.

One thing that struck me as odd was the demeanor of the candidates during the debate. They were not harsh or mean to each other outside of the normal jesting and wisecracks, except for the way they treated Ron Paul. All of the other candidates, except for maybe John McCain seemed to gang up on Ron Paul and treat his comments as stupid and absurd. His views are a little different from the others, but why do they gang up on him? What purpose or agenda do they have that they will band together and repress him and his views?

During the debate each of the candidates, except for Ron Paul backed President Bush's continued "Troop surges" in Iraq. Mitt Romney made a comment about Iraq and the ongoing war. Allow me to summarize in my own words: He said that we were attacked on 9/11/01, and that we needed to stand up for ourselves and fight back. It made me wonder why? Is it right that we are so proud of ourselves and our nation that we need to retaliate? It makes it sound as if our collective ego is pointing the direction we should be going. I am not in any way meaning to sound unpatriotic. I am a patriot. I support the United States Consitution in the original intent of the founding fathers. It is also my duty as a patriot to question my leaders which I believe includes my prospective leaders. Back to our ego. When did we become so proud that we put retaliation first on our list of tasks? The attack of 9/11happened, and it was a horrible time. Why did we not resolve to retaliate by closing down our borders so these people could not longer get into our country and try to implement the same type of terror? Why did we not resolve to protect America where we can the best, on our native soil?

Yesterday we were at a family gathering (my wife's family) and my father-in-law said he watched the New Hampsire debate. He was aiming his comments at me because he knows that I am becoming more involved in politics and government ongoings. He said that the candidates were calling Mitt Romney the "King of Change," and other such names. Now don't get me wrong, I really like my father-in-law. He is a really great guy, and this is not a personal charge on him--I am using this as an illustration. He said that he wants someone in office who will be wanting to change. Someone who won't be affraid to change or think of a different direction, or way to do things. I told him that they were talking about Romney's flip-flopping, and how he would change his stance from one day to the next. As soon as I opened my mouth he stopped listening. I don't know why. I think it may be because he is LDS, and Romney is LDS. Don't get me wrong, I'm LDS as well, I'm not anti-LDS in any way, but I've seen that people will vote for a candidate without being truly educated on what they stand for.

I just had a conversation with a coworker about this. I'm further convinced that this country is on it's way down the tubes. He reinforced the thought that people will vote for a candidate because Ron Paul won't win, so he'll vote for Romney because he is the next best thing. Even though Romney has standings that he doesn't agree with.

God bless America.

CNN Bias during Iowa Caucus

I watched the Iowa Caucus on CNN on January 3. I normally don't watch CNN because I believe they are biased, but I chose CNN because they were giving good explanations, as well as showing pretty good coverage of the local events. It got rather annoying that they would switch to coverage of local events, and the host would say "Let's listen in," at times when nobody was speaking or saying anything noteworthy.

One thing in particular that struck me as interesting during the night was their pie charts showing the standings of each candidate. I'm speaking of the large pie charts that they showed on the screen, and not of the little charts rotating at the bottom of the screen.

Throughout the night the Republican chart showed Huckabee with 35-38%, Romney with around 25%, McCain & Thompson with 13% each, then left a large empty space on the pie chart.

The Democratic chart on the other hand showed Obama with around 38%, Edwards and Clinton with around 29-33% each, and Richardson with 2%, leaving a very small section of the pie chart empty.

Why did they pretty much fill the Democratic chart, but not the Republican chart? Paul had 9-10% throughout the night, and Giuliani had 3%, yet they were both left out of the Republican chart. Why leave them out when they had more than Democratic follower Richardson who had only 2% but was included?

I will admit I've gotten to like Paul, and have to question their motives. I'm sure they would have included Giuliani, but then they would have to explain why they left Paul off, so they just left them both off.

Images borrowed from Matt Stooks