Andrew’s Miracle Drug

It’s difficult to find words to describe my feelings regarding the passing of President Hinckley. The best I can offer is to thank him for his humility and humor, wit and wisdom, vision and vigor.

Community leaders of all faiths recognized that Gordon B. Hinckley was a man of God. The Church, and the world, is better off because of him.

He’ll be missed.

This is huge. Don’t let anyone else, including former President Bill Clinton, tell you otherwise. Jesse Jackson may indeed have won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988, but not like this. As Sullivan points out, Obama garnered more votes in South Carolina than McCain and Huckabee combined. That is a staggering achievement.

But Clinton’s comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson is more than a spouse trying to downplay the significance of his wife’s loss to an opponent; it is Clinton doing precisely what Obama has heretofore refused to do: make the race one of identity politics. Perhaps the Clintons really are as craven as their detractors have suggested.

In any event, South Carolina proves that Obama is a viable presidential candidate. There’s a lot of yardage between today and the end zone, but with a 28-percent victory, I have to believe that the momentum is back in Obama’s favor. I’m not the only one, either.

Know hope.

LDS church leaders requested that Utah state lawmakers show compassion in discussing illegal immigration.

I was so happy to see this story in the news. I’ve previously lamented my church leadership’s relative silence on this issue, and am both saddened and angered whenever I hear other Mormons speak derisively of “illegals.”

Christianity demands compassion for others - regardless of one’s nationality or status. But Latter-day Saints should be compassionate to the immigrant not merely because it is commanded of us, but also because many of these “strangers” are our brothers and sisters in the gospel; many of them are much like our ancestors, save for the presence of more melanin.

Key quote from the article:

Though many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, take a hard-line view of any people in the country illegally, others believe kindness fits better with the church’s beliefs about treating strangers as if they were Jesus himself. They say a compassionate stance also is less hypocritical for the church, whose early members were almost all immigrants. Today, many of Utah’s estimated 100,000 undocumented immigrants likely are LDS.

Thank you, Elder Ballard, for urging law makers to be compassionate to the undocumented immigrants in our midst. I sincerely hope and pray this exhortation will be heeded.

Well, congratulations, Rep. Chris Cannon. By voting against the SCHIP Veto override, you have denied health care coverage to some of the 300,000 uninsured Utahns that Governor Huntsman urged your state counterparts to cover.

But you’re right, I suppose, to worry that SCHIP bring us one step to having some thermometer-wielding GS-10 knocking on our doors. I mean, look at what government-administered health care has done in the military or for members of Congress. And one cannot help but wonder why Canadians and Britons have yet to revolt and slouch off the burden of socialized medicine.

Your brainless statements never fail to amaze me, Chris.

The health care reform bill appearing this legislative session will, it appears, be free of any mandates to own insurance.

The libertarian part of me is happy. But my more wonkish side wonders if a mandate-less, market-oriented health care reform package can really accomplish anything.

An effective health care reform package must include some provisions that address the rising costs of health care and insurance.

In a market-based system, one way do to this is to increase the number of insured people - especially young, healthy people who are unlikely to have major health issues. This allows an insurer to amortize costs across a large swath of people, thereby reducing premiums for the individual consumer (in theory).

Utah lawmakers have rejected this provision, though. The new bill, at least according to the Tribune, does very little to combat the rising costs of health care.

But even if the reform were to include mandated insurance, I wouldn’t be too confident of any sea change in the cost and quality of care in Utah.

Why? Because such market-reforms only extend the status quo, rather than dramatically altering the economics of health care. I’ve being reading a fascinating book Overtreated that suggests a serious reexamination of health care economics is long overdue.

If we are serious about reducing the costs of health care, the entire economic scheme of the system needs to be radically altered. As the system works now, costly invasive procedures are incentivized at the expense of far less expensive and often more effective preventative care.

Senator Obama verbalizes what I’ve been thinking all along: no other Democratic candidate can garner the crucial independent votes to win the presidency.

Though I would probably vote for Senator Clinton if she won the nomination, it would pain me to do so. And I’m a self-identifying liberal Democrat.

Every now and then, I like to lighten the mood with some ridiculous web gem. Andrew Sullivan provides today’s gem. For best results, watch in full screen with volume up to the hilt.

You’re welcome.

I’m not the only one who laments the campaign Mitt has run.

In spite of a terrible campaign though, Mitt’s chances in Michigan today look pretty good. Of course, that may be bolstered by renegade Democrats trying to make sure the weakest Republican candidate wins (which is a calculus I disagree with; I think Huckabee is the weakest general election candidate).

I still don’t think a Michigan victory is enough for Mitt to stay in the race much longer though. That puts me at odds, apparently, with 62% of Utahns, according to a brilliant new poll (for more scathing commentary on this asinine poll, see VoU and Bob Aagard.

I’ve written some about my negative feelings about Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. The genesis of those negative feelings is, I think, in the expectations I had for his candidacy. I knew that in all probability, I wouldn’t vote for him or support him, but so many people had told me what a smart, capable, and decent guy he was, I thought he might just represent the LDS Church well.

But he didn’t run as a smart, capable, or decent guy. Instead, he made himself the heir to the awful Bush era. Early on in his campaign, he began making mean-spirited (or at least “gratuitous,” in the words of Tufts University professor Jeffrey Berry) jokes about his home state, speaking of plans to “double Guantanamo,” smearing Senator Obama, and such unseemly behavior. Other than the unnecessary malice of his campaign, his campaign was mostly guilty of idiocy, vacuousness, and just being content-free.

Mitt has been derided plenty for coming off as insincere and programmed (do a google search for “Romney robot”). His pandering to the religious right seems almost half-hearted; there is a resignation in his attempt to be the right wing candidate of choice. And that is true when he’s at his worst: supporting Bush’s illegal detentions at Guantanamo or mugging for tasteless photos - something seems a little off.

So I’ve wondered: who is the real Mitt? Is there a real Mitt?

This article, appearing in the Salt Lake Tribune, restored some of Mitt’s humanity, for me. He comes across as reasonable, sincere, and caring - all traits that have been lacking in his campaign persona. The article details Romney’s time as an LDS bishop and stake president, and his willingness to hear suggestions, make exceptions to the rules, and just be there for people.

I do wish, for the LDS Church’s sake and for his sake, that campaign-persona Mitt would slouch off and die, and Church-persona Mitt was the one in front of the cameras.

Mayor Ralph Becker wasted no time acting on a campaign pledge: today he submitted a proposal to the city council to give provide domestic partner benefits to residents of Salt Lake City.

If the city council approves the proposal, the plan would allow non-married couples, specifically homosexual couples, to qualify for receiving health benefits and the like.

It’s a far cry from allowing same sex couples to wed or be united (unionized?) civilly, but it is, I think, a step in the right direction.

But I will be interested to see how the legislature reacts to this proposal, and to see how long it lasts before some big name conservatives jump on a legal effort to squash this proposal, under the imprimatur of  Amendment 3.

Kudos to Becker for this courageous and moral act.