I was pondering all this while standing outside this morning waiting for my dogs to poop, and a few other questions popped into my head about what kinds of people we are or aren't ready to elect president in this country. And as is so often the case with me, things took a rapid turn from the sublime to the ridiculous -- as you will see from the list of questions below. Readers, I want you to ask yourselves:
Would you be willing to vote for a given candidate for president if . . .
Feel free to expound upon any of these in the comments.
30 comments:
Now this is interesting! I am surprised that voters rejected a foot fetish, but were all about a playmate as First Lady. I voted "Maybe/Not Sure" because I really don't care about certain things people have done in their past, but I don't want Anna Benson representing my country at State Dinners.
Shouldn't it really be he/she had a mustache?
word verification = "fossy"
Jazz Hands!
Foot fetish people are freaks. In the vast majority of cases, that is just the tip of their weirdness iceberg.
i'm an independent mostly (more democrat) but the response to the atheist question disturbs me. 57% of people said they would vote for someone if they were atheist. something about that just peeves me off. im a uga student, a native Georgian, a Southern boy born and raised (and generations before me) and a lifelong presbyterian, but a president as an atheist?
the sole reason i didn't like romney was because he was mormon and not christian. other than that he was pretty ok.
I can only assume that the 40% or so who would vote for a hated rival's starting QB are not part of the college football fan venn diagram of this blog's audience.
Watson: at the risk of unleashing a new kind of comment thread-war, what's wrong with atheists? At least you know they'll pick up the phone on the first couple of rings in the morning of whichever Sabbath day they aren't observing.
The only reason I voted "not sure" for an atheist president is that I'd prefer an agnostic one. I think it's more intellectually honest than a religious or atheist one.
Let's try to start working some more Elin pics into your posts, kthx.
whhooo - you should have a warning before you post such a gorgeous picture of RCG on your blog!!!
ACG, could you explain your comment in more detail?
I understand exactly why you would want and agnostic president as opposed to an ateist one, but I don't understand how it's more "intellectually honest."
I can't spell. And that picture of Tim Tebow just made me taste bile in my mouth.
There's another question.... would you vote for a president if he/she were homeschooled?
Had lots of maybe/not sure(s) in mine, but mostly because the approach I took was Is this [insert hypothetical here] a reason to choose a candidate or a deal killer? There were more deal killers than reasons to vote for, but most of all, the questions were irrelevant.
And, agnostics are not "more intellectually honest". They are intellectual 'fraidy cats who have chosen not to decide. Humans are hard-wired to believe in a deity, and as evidence of that observe that there is no human culture on the face of the planet that does not have as part of its culture a belief system in a deity(ies). If you are afraid to work out for yourself, unable to work it out for yourself, too lazy to work it out for yourself, well, then fine, but please don't try to spin it as being intellectually honest. It's anything but that.
"President Tebow" {shudder...vomit}
Some of those things, like having a playmate wife, should be a requirement for all future presidents.
I was pretty much in the majority on all of these except the college graduate question. Would I vote for somebody who had not graduated from college. Hell yes. Why not? After all it is Ivy Leaguers and Rhodes scholars who have gotten us to where we are today.
Color me unimpressed.
As far as a fetish is concerned hell, a fetish is a fetish and everybody has at least one.
maybe as much as i would like to categorize myself as progressive in my views, perhaps i am just old fashioned when it comes to the religion question. I feel that it won't be long before we do have a candidate that is atheist.
Then again, maybe 8 years ago I would have never voted for an african-american candidate but I did this year. So, who knows dc trojan, maybe my ideals will change with the times.
Oh, and Doug. I have been an avid reader of yours for the past year or so and saw your comment on Dawgsports about the GDay 08 tailgate. Are plans currently in motion for this because I would be more than willing to participate.
Agnosticism is the only intellectually honest choice because it's the only one that acknowledges that belief in a higher power and belief that there isn't a higher power are both groundless. There's no evidence for either side, just beliefs, and people can believe anything. At least agnostics can say, "Hey, maybe so, maybe not; there's really no way of telling."
And I say this is a devoted Catholic.
As clarification of hmmmm's post, the reference to the photo of RCG was to the gentleman with the mustache who resembles Doug's and Ann's father.
ACG, I see where you're coming from, but I would suggest that one might call agnosticism more empirically honest on that basis.
Whether or not it's intellectually honest depends on whether the presence or absence of a divine power is used as the basis of other secondary views that a person may have. If someone is an agnostic but justifies some other opinion on a faith basis, then there's a logical gap.
I don't understand agnosticism myself because it seems to me from there's a difference between acknowledging the limits of empiricism (can't prove it one way or the other) and the nature of faith, which I'd argue is a binary opposition: you either believe or you don't. But then I've rarely conflicted about falling into the "don't" category, so what would I know about agnosticism as a belief?
Umm, so, Ann, are you a devoted Catholic agnostic, or intellectually dishonest? Is your belief groundless? To me, those are incompatible positions. I am not hostile to agnostics, but as an intellectual matter saying that you can't prove it either way is the rough equivalent of saying, "Ow!Thinking about this hurts my head!", and is not something to be especially admired, and definitely not something you would want in a person in a decision making capacity such as President.
I'm a little bit of both, anonymous. I'm a Catholic who believes in a higher power whilst acknowledging that I have no justification for that belief whatsoever outside of a solid gut feeling. Under any other circumstances, that would probably be enough to label me nuts, but because it's within the structure of an accepted belief system, I have to think of other ways to get labeled nuts.
Sorry, I don't believe in agnostics. The position is nonsensical. Either you believe or you do not believe - it is a binary solution set. Atheists lack a belief in god/ess/es - they do not generally have a positive belief in the non-existence of the same. Religionists generally have a belief in some god/ess/es.
"Agnostics", however, claim they don't know what they believe. If you doubt this, try to find an honest agnostic as ask them if they believe in Odiz, Ra, Isis, Quezacoatl, or any of thousands of other god/ess/es that humans have worshipped over the centuries.
Oops. I inadvertently left out a sentence in that last paragraph.
It should read as follows:
"Agnostics", howeever, claim they don't know what they believe. They are lying - they do, in fact, know what they believe - they just don't want to admit it. If you doubt this ...
I claim to be a lapsed agnostic, that is I've forgotten what it is I don't care about.
I voted no on the foot fetish, not because I think that is a terrible thing, but because I think confessing to show really poor judgement.
Good judgement is critical in a President.
JT in SC
I voted "maybe" on all those; because, in the end, does any of that really matter? To me, it doesn't. If I believe a certain person is completely capable of running the country, and their views on the issues are aligned with mine, I will vote for them.
That all said, I'm surprised there was no question asking if one would vote for someone if they were queer (GLBT).
Is that where Ann got her moustache?
So Mrs Sen Looks Dead Fred Thompson's wife, Jeri is a Hooters Girl? ???
I, too, was surprised to discover such a bias against non-college grads (2nd only to people who think that the moon landings were faked). What Yale grad could possibly listen to a GWB speech and feel proud about its reflection on the ol' alma mater?
I also felt cheated that the moustache question was gender-specific, but that's just the Mediterranean side of me I suppose.
Wow, C'mon people... there's NO WAY we actually went to the Moon back then! Do the research, or better yet, just think about it for 2 seconds. Not a chance.
And the Dawg D still pwns Teblow. Factor in his freshman year vs us, and the fact Stafford gift wrapped that pick 6 for their pts total... it's a wrap. *honk honk*
40 years ago, with combined CSM and LM guidance computer memory totaling only 10.3% [152kb] of a common 1.4MB [1474.56kb] floppy disk, NASA claims to have traveled 60,000% as far as any other manned spacecraft has gone before or since. Basically a household calculator (or discount watch) took 27 men [Apollo 8 to 17] to the moon and back, with the help of slide rules - accounting for fuel consumption, angle of approach, lunar landing, rate of descent, and so on. Yet at a distance of under 300 miles from Earth, we have lost the lives of 14 Shuttle astronauts who never left Earth orbit. In 9 trips there were no incidents involving small meteors. Yes, Space is a big place - but no injuries or damage except Apollo 13's apparent self-inflicted wound? Van Allen made it clear in his 1958-59 report that travelers to the moon would need go around the belts, approaching the moon by first traveling from space above the the north or south poles.
Hell just research the Van Allen belts in general, and some of the f'd up stuff that our astronauts have endured just coming close to them more recently... the whole thing is comical. And this is what Americans have the biggest problem with? LOL, typical I guess seeing what the majority seems to feel about stem cell research, gay marriage, etc.
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