As a former Governor of Virginia and former head of the Republican National Committee, Jim Gilmore certainly has the experience and connections to make a credible President. His positions are reasonably vague so that he does not stand out from the crowded field, but he does not disqualify himself either.
I can endorse Gilmore For President.
I got a “please pass it on” email that actually looked useful. Being generally unwilling to pass emails on, and considering that most of my email contacts would already have a copy from the person who sent it to me, I thought I would post a condensed version of the information here. I have verified the numbers at the bottom of the post. These are suggestions to protect yourself from fraud and identity theft in case your wallet or credit cards are lost or stolen.
If your wallet is ever stolen:
I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit.
By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves’ purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.
Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact if your wallet, etc., has been stolen:
One thing that I thought about was that having a photocopy of all your credit cards (front and back) would be a little bit like keeping post-it notes with all your passwords. I think that credit card companies should send a fraud card that you could keep and even copy which would look like your regular card, except that it would be changed.
They could include a bogus name on the card (since you know your real name) which would have the same structure as your real name – John Doe or John B Doe. If they wanted to include a magnetic strip on the back it could be encoded to indicate that the card was fraudulent. They could include exactly as much of your real card number and expiration date as they would want if you are reporting a stolen card – the rest of the numbers would be bogus. Even if that was the full card number, the card would not have the correct name so thieves would not be able to use it. The back of the card could include the phone number to report fraud rather than the phone number for account maintenance (assuming they are different). They could also include a falsified CVV2 number – that would be on the front of American Express cards and the back of other cards. I imagine it would look similar to the card below.
UPDATE: As suggested in the comments – make sure to call your bank right away if you have checks or a debit card stolen.
This took less than 10 seconds to decide. In fact, I never left the first page of the campaign site. John Bowles openly identifies with the values of the KKK. Endorsement is out of the question.
As I looked at Steve Adams I got thinking about some of the first things that a president has to do when they are elected. They have to choose a large number of people to fill high offices including cabinet positions. One of the things I have never addressed with some of the small, idealistic, independent campaigns is that many of these idealists, no matter how serious they are, would have no chance of picking a cabinet of people they knew anything about. They might be able to pick one or two somewhat qualified people, but otherwise they would have to rely on people they knew nothing about or else people who were utterly unqualified for this kind of responsibility. In either case they would be hampered in the confirmation process which would still go through the Senate (which would undoubtedly be controlled by established politicians). Though I trust myself implicitly, I would have to admit that I could not expect to succeed at that first process which every President must undertake. That is one of the major, almost universal, problems with these independent, unknown candidates.
There is a general explanation leading to why I cannot endorse Steve Adams specifically.
We have reduced the number of rules for our children to four. We think that the kids should be able to remember four rules and we are confident that anytime they break a rule we can identify which one they are having problems with. The four rules are:
As we have been trying to focus on those four rules I have been thinking that the rules to live a happy life are probably simpler than we often expect. I would not be surprised to learn that the Lord really has a very few (meaning less than 10) basic rules for us which should govern our actions. Christ suggested only two – love God and love our neighbors – which correspond very nicely with the first two rules that we are teaching our girls. . .
I have begun to think about what attributes a good candidate should have. It started with the thought which has long prevented me from seriously considering running for public office, which is that I am not flashy. People do not pick me out of a crowd for any reason unless they know me. That made me wonder how I would try to appeal to people if I were running for office. The answer seems blindingly obvious now, I would let people get to know me, and try to get to know them. That would mean meeting with people in small groups where we could interact personally.
At first I thought this would rule out a large campaign. While those campaigns are known for the advertisements and flyers and speeches to crowds of thousands, I think that a candidate with a good organization could focus his time on meeting individuals while his organization took care of the advertisements and arranging the speeches to large audiences. In fact I think that the candidate would be better able to inspire the kind of grassroots campaign that everyone talks about if they focus their energy on inspiring individuals by letting people get to know them and feel connected and committed to them.
The more I think about it, I realize that the people that make the worst officials (in my experience) are those who lose touch with the people they are supposed to represent. In some cases they never really knew and understood their constituencies in the first place.
Does anyone want to add their thoughts on the subject?
Townhall is not a place I have linked to before because much of what I see there is more partisan than I would care to pass along. Surprisingly today there are two articles there that give me hope that there are still active Republicans who stand for something besides being not Democrats (there are also Democrats who are more than not Republican, but I discovered that a while back).
In the first column, the author rejects the most famous sound bite of the second Republican Presidential debate where the media latched on to the sound bite from Rudy Giuliani and allowed him to twist the words of Ron Paul about terrorism and 9/11 to the detriment of this less popular candidate. Ron Paul gave an insightful answer about the situation we are in but the media covered the sound bite response. Typical.
In the second column, the author reminds us what the Republican party used to be known for and what they claim to represent. By the time I was done with that I wanted to ask the current Republican party which is worse for our economy and our future generations – a spend and don’t tax leadership or a tax and spend leadership? The answer should be obvious. We need to be talking less about funding welfare and saving social security and more about helping people get off of welfare and helping them not be dependent on social security. More importantly we should be doing things to reduce the perceived need for such programs.
So my point is, it’s no wonder that things aren’t looking good for the GOP right now – their words (especially historically) and their actions are inconsistent. That is bound to inhibit people from trusting them even if they like their rhetoric. When people don’t trust them they are less likely to make an effort to vote for them.
Tommy Thompson is an understated candidate. He does not enjoy the camera presence that would be very beneficial to his campaign but he seems to be a very capable leader and has a record of making things happen. He has a long record of political service in various capacities which would give him some beneficial perspective on the office he is seeking. I was tempted to give him extra credit for being the Secretary of Health and Human Services because of the insight that would give him on the issue of healthcare, but I realized my mistake. No president should be elected based on one issue or a narrow agenda. Besides, that would be a disservice to all of Governor Thompson’s other accomplishments.
I endorse Tommy Thompson because he is not a single issue candidate.
Tom Tancredo is best known (where he is known) for his position on immigration. That led me to expect very little from him as a candidate. I was pleasantly surprised to find a candidate who seems to have a very down-to-earth perspective. From my perspective he would be a capable president who would tackle the issues in a straightforward manner. I would expect him to work with others while standing for his principles.
I am happy to endorse Tom Tancredo for President.
UPDATE 5/21/2007: Based on further information resulting from comments below, I have concluded that I cannot endorse Tom Tancredo. I am not convinced that he is committed to many of the positions that he claims to hold – with the exception of his position on immigration. I fear that he is doing nothing more in this presidential run than muddying the waters of the Republican primary.
One of the problems that I have been thinking about with the growth taking place in Utah County is the balance that we need to strike between addressing the current needs and preparing for future needs, all with current resources. I am a vocal proponent of getting good transit here now and in the future, but how do you justify running light rail out to Cedar Fort when there are so few people living in Cedar Valley right now. Thankfully I was introduced to DMU’s which narrow the gap between no transit and transit that can’t be justified without large populations. DMU’s are being considered as a way to connect people outside the most populous areas of the Wasatch Front to the Frontrunner system that is being built to serve the main population bases north and south of Salt Lake City.
Essentially a DMU (diesel multiple-unit) is a single-unit self propelled vehicle that runs on rails. If the rails are compatible with light rail or commuter rail systems (and I’d like to find out if this is the case) they could be used as an introductory transit option in areas where the population is not yet dense enough to support the larger systems – especially in areas like the north and west parts of Utah County where we know that the population will become large enough to support a transit system like Salt Lake County already has. They can also be used to connect the further outlying areas with the main transit systems that serve the larger population centers.