Party Political

I read another article on Yahoo about Mike Huckabee. It says, "Now that he's a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, he's being asked anew about some of the views and comments he expressed in the survey by The Associated Press."

The article goes on to compare his old views to actions that have been taken by our government, and recent things that have been said.

"When asked whether the U.S. should take any action to kill Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Huckabee replied: "The U.S. should not kill Saddam Hussein or anyone else." The U.S. military captured Saddam, an Iraqi court convicted him and he was hanged last December."

Ooh, I guess since we did it, Huckabee must have been wrong. There's no possible way that Bush's vendetta could have been ill-conceived. And perhaps Huckabee meant that we should stop Hussein without killing him. How childish.

To be clear, my point is that just because the U.S. did something someone was against, it doesn't make that person wrong. The action itself may have been wrong. Taking an action doesn't inherently justify it. It's like if Huckabee had said murder in general was wrong, and then someone killed someone. That still doesn't make it right. Like this fictional example:

"When asked whether killing one's enemy was OK in his book, Huckabee replied: "A person should not kill an enemy or anyone else." Cicero Goldthwaite kidnapped his enemy, Dr. Horace Yardsmith, and strangled him to death last December."
(Subtext: Obviously Huckabee was wrong. How else could Goldthwaite have taken an action, unless that action was inherently correct? And Huckabee said otherwise...tsk tsk tsk...)

Here's something else from Yahoo:

"Huckabee's 1992 comments on isolating AIDS patients run counter to a statement he released last month calling for increased federal funds to find a cure."

I don't know the exact statements he made, but let's compare the ideas he presented. Isolate AIDS patients, and increase funds for cure research. Those two ideas are not mutually exclusive. You can quarantine people with a disease while simultaneously researching a cure. It's not one or the other. "Run counter to" is just plain wrong. So I think Yahoo is trying to lie to us and make us believe that Huckabee is going against what he has previously said.

Most of the other stuff about Huckabee in the article didn't seem that bad. But I got the vibe that Yahoo doesn't like Huckabee and is trying to sell the public on how he's not so great. Honestly, I think he's a long shot, but the fact that Yahoo seems to be slamming him while pretending to be impartial is of interest.

It's like how "The Golden Compass" came out, and Yahoo kept printing headline after headline about how "it's so controversial," and "it's not doing well, or is it?" My guess is all the "negative press" was really a masked attempt to advertise the film, get people talking about it, and get butts in seats. I think Yahoo is using it's enormous readership to try to sway the public one way or another, and is doing so deceitfully. I must be naive for having taken so long to figure this out, but now that I am aware of it, I'm glad. At least now I can read without expecting "fair and balanced news."

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