Jumping Off A Cliff

Since everyone else is talking politics this week, I might as well throw in my two cents.  As you may imagine, I'm very disappointed that my plans to install a presidential puppet regime consisting of my son and cat never really materialized. I found out when I took Ben to Bible Hour on Sunday morning that Ben is deathly afraid of large-mouth puppets so it's probably for the best that the whole puppet regime thing didn't work out.

The first national election that I could vote in was back in 2000.  At the time my criteria were pretty simple - the candidate must be anti-abortion and anti-slavery.  George Bush (or as Ben calls him Jooj Pus) seemed to fit nicely into those categories so I voted for him in 2000 and 2004.  In 2003 he signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban and hadn't repealed the 13th amendment so he met all of my standards for a good president.  Since that time, however, he has done very little that I have agreed with, and it has forced me to reconsider my voting criteria.

The 2008 race helped me narrow it down to 5 main factors:

1) Integrity - After Mitt Romney changed almost all of his positions on social issues just to run for the White House, I knew I had to add this one.

2) Basic Competence - After Sarah Palin failed to string together coherent sentences about major policy questions in her television interviews, I knew I had to add this one.

3) Humble foreign policy - I'm not a pacifist, but I think some occassional humility certainly wouldn't have hurt during the last eight years, and it didn't seem to me that McCain would have done anything to change this. Singing "Bomb Iran" to the tune of "Barbara Ann" didn't help his cause.

4) Abortion - I think there are a lot of things to like about Barack Obama (or as Ben calls him Bak O Mama) but his abortion record is attrocious.  Hopefully, he'll be too busy fixing everything else to spend time on this issue.

5) Not a hobbit - This one may unfairly eliminate Dennis Kucinich, but I just feel like this rule needs to be here. 

I voted for Huckabee in the primaries (even though he is a border-line hobbit), but since no one met all of my criteria, I didn't vote for a president in the general election.  This election season was good because it forced me to sit down and think about what really matters in a president. It also made me think about what principle or ideal Christians should be working toward when it comes to government. Some think it’s freedom, others think it’s lining up the govenment's laws with Christian values, others think it’s social justice, and others think Christians should just step away from politics altogether. I'm curious to hear what you think.

I'll get back to posting Benjamin pictures and videos next time, but thanks for reading.  Don't forget to pray for President O Mama.

Miracle Minute

Here's Ben talking it up on his 2nd birthday.

On Ben's birthday, we decided to take a cake to the nurses at the NICU at St. John Hospital where Ben spent the first month of his life. We were also fortunate to meet the doctor on duty when Ben was delivered.  He started the procedure to put in Ben's trach before the surgeon arrived and was definitely one of the people who helped save Ben's life that day.  He was absolutely amazed that Ben had made it through all of this without any long-term health problems.

While we were there, one of the nurses said that Benjamin should be in a TV commercial for the hospital called "Miracle Minute".  We would get to tell Ben's story and share how the doctors and the nurses at the NICU took care of our boy.  We're scheduled to film it on the 19th of February so please pray that we're able to give glory to God and say the right things.