One of Our Own, Part II

Jake, our younger son, has been reaching for the pinnacle of pain in his chosen sport of triathlon. He moves a step closer on Sunday when he attempts to complete the "ironman" version of the sport (the longest and most grueling) in Idaho. He expects to be in action for a full TWELVE hours. My guess is that he'll be wondering about the "fun" part of the event for about eleven and a half hours.

And Anna (daughter #2) is trying to squeeze all those stressful life events they talk about into a single year. Getting married, losing a job, moving to another city, getting a new job and moving AGAIN. Heck, it hasn't even been six months, though the second move hasn't happened yet. As far as I know, no baby is on the internal assembly line yet.

No one running for president is perfect, and no campaign is, either. For reasons I've already blathered on about, my feelings about Mitt Romney are mixed. I'm not anxious to see him fall on his face because, rightly or wrongly, he is now the face of Mormonism, at least to this country.
But there are things about Brother Mitt's campaign that make me want to scream, or at least raise my speaking volume. Poor Mona is doomed to be the major audience outside of this blog, which I dare not self-promote even though there's no money in it.
There's the issue of basic truthfulness. I know it's fashionable to sneer at all candidates as liars and leave it at that, but I don't think that's adequate. If it's a matter of fact, not opinion shading, and if it's something the candidate has control over, AND if it is continually used even AFTER the discovery of falsehood, then we have a problem. In fact, one of Romney's first ads features the voice of President Obama saying "If this campaign is about the economy, we lose." But what isn't mentioned is that the words were uttered in 2008, and Obama was quoting John McCain at the time. Many news organizations have pointed this out, but when asked about it directly, Romney only replied enigmatically, "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander". The ad itself? It's still being used.
Mr. Romney's press bus took a group of reporters to the former headquarters of the failed solar power equipment maker Solyndra. There, with the weed-covered site as a backdrop, he made an accusation involving payoffs for Obama friends and family which he said came form an inspector general's office. Trouble is, the accusation is untrue. It has yet to be withdrawn.
Romney supporters seem to be showing up more at events featuring Obama campaign officials to heckle the speakers. It's within the boundaries of free speech under the Constitution, but barely. Romney does not deny the involvement of his campaign in this preplanned chaos, but instead justifies it on the grounds that Democrats do it, too. Do you have an example, sir?
Then there's the matter of "the company you keep". Donald Trump's jaws keep flapping about an issue that should be long gone - the "birther" thing. Rush Limbaugh shows his loyalty by insulting women on the radio. Ted Nugent seems only about a half step removed from the wild man guitarist character that made him rich. John Bolton stokes the fires of war every day. How many of these has Romney disassociated himself from? You're correct if you said "none of them".
Here's the dilemma for the LDS faithful. Do we hold Romney to a higher standard because we know that HE knows what a higher standard should be? Or do we shrug and mutter that at least he knows "us" and won't do much that hurts "us", especially raise "our" taxes, even though he has adopted the Ryan budget , which would do exactly that for middle and lower class workers. Looking back, Mitt's best opportunity in life to have association with non-rich people came from his experience as a lay church leader. But that seems too long ago to even mention now.