Thirteen Cars and Seven Houses?

It looks like John McCain has been caught in another lie, he has previously said he only owns American built cars, but government records show he owns thirteen cars, and two of them are foreign made, one is a Honda, the other is a Volkswagen.

In addition to the foreign made cars, McCain has a lot of gas guzzlers including a 2007 half-ton Ford pickup truck, a 2008 Jeep Wrangler, and a 2001 GMC SUV.

How many cars do the Obama’s own? Just one, a Ford Escape Hybrid. They also own only one house, yet for some reason they still call Obama the elisist and McCain the workingmans man.

I Demand She Apologize

I wonder how many people join me in being shocked and outraged by the comments Sandra Bernhard made about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin? In a routine Bernhard issued a gang rape threat that in and of itself is wrong but then included outrageous and racially motivated stereotypical rants. For instance the Hollywood star said and I quote, “gang-raped by my big black brothers” should she enter Manhattan as expected this week for the opening of the UN General Assembly. The statement a direct relation to the large crime in New York’s urban downtown and used race to make it that much worst and also Alaska’s ranking as the state with the largest number (per capita) of force rape complaints in the nation.

In poll after poll we are starting to see that Barack Obama, America’s first black nominee of a major political party, faces an uphill battle even amongst democrats strictly because of his race. These people aren’t refusing to vote for Obama because of his stance on the issues or what he wants to do for America but because he is black. It is comments like these that make that battle harder to achieve. So what should be done?

1) Sandra Bernhard should issue an immediate apology not only to the governor of Alaska but all African American men who already face racism everyday for people who think her “jokes” are actual reality. To use the image of the big black urban brothers ganging up on the small, slender, pretty, white girl from a small town plays directly into those unfounded fears that set so many blacks behind.

2) Barack Obama should condemn and return any money she has raised or given to his campaign. For the most part the Obama campaign has made a practice of being a clean and on the issue campaign. It is attacks like these that damage that change armor we all hope that the junior senator from Illinois will bring to Washington. Time after time his campaign has fired or distanced themselves from supporters who cross the line. This is one of those times.

Tha-Kid JK

tha-kid@revkitchen.com

Barack Obama, President

For months I have been mulling a Bob Barr endorsement. But after some consideration, I will reluctantly support Barack Obama.

In the first months of the primaries, I supported libertarian Ron Paul, since I am a libertarian. If Ron Paul would have won the Republican nomination, I am confident he would win in a landslide. But once it was inevitable that Paul had lost the nomination after loses in Iowa and New Hampshire he did fairly well in Nevada and won in Louisiana - people will tell you McCain won it, but Paul did - I endorsed Bill Richardson.

Shortly after that Richardson dropped out, and I endorsed the last good candidate left in the race, Hillary Clinton. I felt Hillary had the executive experience, and that Senator Obama’s only executive experience was on the board of Chicago’s Annenberg challenge, which is not presidential.

Obama was a state Senator, only active in the US Senate for 146 days, whoever supported him in the primaries (nearly 18 million voters) must have been high on something! But Hillary Clinton (a little over 18 million votes) had the experience to be president. But once Joe Biden was picked, I knew Barack Obama was walking away from just saying “change” and “hope” to focusing on the issues like Hillary Clinton.

Bob Barr seems like a good candidate with seven percent of responders in today’s Rasmussen tracking poll choosing someone besides Obama or McCain. But he still seems like a waste of a vote.

And so I reluctantly support Senator Barack Obama for president.

Not Change

McCain is not change, and neither is his wing man, Pallin. Obama is the change candidate, he is the candidate that used the change platform. Since the Republican convention it seems the Same Old Party has been trying to adopt change as it’s new name, with little challenge from Obama (swift boats anyone?). However Barack Obama is now visibly hitting back in an email he sent to supporters this afternoon:

[McCain's] new ad uses what news organizations are calling “naked lies” to reinvent two politicians whose records embody the same culture of corruption and far-right policies we’ve seen from the Bush administration.

The biggest whopper in the ad (that’s still being repeated day after day by McCain and Palin on the campaign trail) is that Governor Palin stopped the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” — in fact, she supported it, and even hired a lobbyist in Washington to get more pork-barrel projects like it.

If the McCain-Palin campaign wants to have a debate about who is prepared to bring the change we need, we’re more than ready.

More than this not being change, the McCain story has been floundering on their experience equals judgment claims too. It seems they can’t use judgment to come up with their own campaign motto’s (the best judgment would be actually joining the progressive platform, not just using it’s campaign language).

On the Issues: Why Obama Was Right and John McCain Was Wrong on the Surge

In January of 2007 John McCain wrote an editorial about the need for a surge of American troops in Iraq. He wrote, “During my visit to Iraq last month, it was clear that security is the precondition for political progress and economic development.” He went on to say, “Until the government and its coalition allies can protect the population, the Iraqi people will increasingly turn to extr-governmental forces, especially Sunni and Shiite militias, for protection. Only when the government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force will its authority have meaning, and only when its authority has meaning can political activity have the results we seek.” It has been more than a year since that surge and in a safer more secure Iraq we are still seeing a government not up to the challenge.

At the same time that John McCain was moving closer to President Bush on the war in Iraq Barack Obama was laying out the case why the surge wouldn’t work. In his floor statement he said this, “The fact is that we have tried this road before. In the end, no amount of American forces can solve the political differences that lie at the heart of somebody else’s civil war.”

So who was right and who was wrong? The GAO who conducted a report on the surge in September that hasn’t much changed said that Iraq had “failed to meet all but nine of the security goals Congress had set as part of a list of 18 benchmarks of progress.” Two of these goals had been the elimination of havens for militia forces and the deployment of three Iraqi military brigades that would be there to assist the U.S. in the security plan that was created for Baghdad. Two other benchmarks that had been described as one being economic and the other political the GAO rated as partially met. Speaking of political goals this same report said that only one of the eight goals in that arena had been met, and even today the Iraqi Parliament has missed deadline after deadline to set a date for new national elections that are pass due.

So if the true meaning our purpose of the surge in Iraq was just to secure the nation than John McCain is right. However he is being less than honest when he suggests that to be so. His own comments saying, “During my visit to Iraq last month, it was clear that security is the precondition for political progress and economic development,” prove this to be the case.

Tha-Kid JK

tha-kid@revkitchen.com

PTA President is not Vice-Presidential Material

Senator McCain celebrated his birthday by picking a hockey mom turned governor as his running mate. It was an interesting day to make the pick because,  it was also the senator’s birthday. John McCain turned 72 on Friday, this means, if elected, he would be the oldest president in our nations history.

The Governor talks with a slightly squeaky voice. She wears glasses and fashions a hair style that give the appearance of a cold and rigid attitude.

Palin listed her less than impressive resume:

Kids Basketball Coach

“Hokey Mom”

PTA President

City Council of Wasila

Mayor of Wasilla Alaska (town of 5470) This is the same town that she said she cut government spending….one has to ask how much spending there really in such a small town…

Governor of Alaska (Alaska is the same size as Charleston, South Carolina)

She said in her speech that she rejected the Alaskan, “Bridge to Nowhere.” This was an interesting statement, because the legislation was drafted by Alaska senator and John McCain loyalist, Ted Stevens.

When I heard of the decision, I thought:”This must be the only woman that would run with John McCain.” After all this is the same John McCain that voted against the Violence Against Women Act. The same John McCain that has supported anti-choice legislation time after time after time again. This is the same John McCain that did not support an equal pay/equal wage bill, just last April.

This woman is not qualified to be vice-president. John McCain’s age makes this pick questionable and even dangerous. In a world where the United States is liable to numerous national security threats, I don’t believe this “Hokey Mom” would be fit to serve as commander in chief, in the event of something happening to John McCain. A McCain/Palin White House would be a recipe for disaster and America cannot afford another one of those.

Stop acting like we won! And vote the right way.

I was not pleased with the Democratic convention last week, when all the big Democrats were acting like we won this election and there is no need to attack John McCain’s negative personal record. I could tell you, during next weeks Republican national convention, the Republicans won’t be talking about how  Barack Obama is a great patriotic American, and how he is only wrong on the issues! We have to stop playing Mr. Nice Guy and attack McCain for running a campaign based on his POW record. We need to swift boat him!

I was recently talking to a progressive, and asked him who he is voting for, and he said ‘McCain’.  I asked why, and he said ‘ Well, Obama will win New York anyways, so lets give the underdog some respect’. The Obama camp must talk to these crazy voters!!!!

Obama’s speech last night…

Apparently over 84,000 people were at Invesco Field last night, and about 38 million people watched the speech on television.

I definitely thought it was a good speech, just not amazing. There weren’t really any great one-liners to stick in your head following the speech. It wasn’t like his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. When comparing the two speeches, even Obama himself said that, “there’s a special moment there that we can’t recapture.”

What are your thoughts about the speech? Was it really Obama at his best?

Hillary nominates Obama at the DNC

When it looked certain that Barack Obama was going to be nominated President of the United States, the state of New Mexico yielded to the state of Illinois who had passed earlier in the roll-call vote. Illinois, knowing that Obama was close to being put over the top, then yielded the floor to the state of New York. In a surprise twist, Hillary Clinton came out, suspended the roll-call vote, and ended the process.

The crowd went wild, people in the audience were in tears, and Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

The Argument for The Argument for Bob Barr

With all the media coverage of Obama and McCain, it can be easy to forget there are other candidates for president this year. Perennial Democratic candidate saboteur Ralph Nader comes to mind, but this year the republicans may have to deal with their own Nader. Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate for president, has been stealing away McCain’s supporters.

A recent Zogby poll says that 55% of voters think Barr should be included in the presidential debates. The Obama campaign needs to help make this a reality. Not only would it make Obama look good if he publicly works to get Barr into the debates, it would help Obama gain more ground against McCain as McCain supporters switch to Barr. And of course, if McCain fought against letting Barr into the debates, it would make him look terrible. Regardless of prefer you like Barr’s message or Obama’s, you want Barr in the debates. Read more

McCain Attacks Obama for not Picking Clinton

I shouldn’t be surprise that the straight talk express has jumped the tracks again… but for some reason I am. John McCain has decided to stop talking about the issues and bring up the Obama VP issue. That’s fine if he wants to critique Joe Biden’s stance on issues, but he’s attacking the VP choice of a person who isn’t even selected as the VP:

Republican John McCain launched a new ad Sunday claiming rival Barack Obama passed over Hillary Rodham Clinton as his running mate for “speaking the truth” about his liabilities.

The ad, called “Passed Over,” features a clip of Clinton and repeats criticisms the New York senator made during the Democratic primaries over Obama’s alleged lack of specifics on issues, negative campaign tactics and his relationship with Antoin Rezko, a former Obama fundraiser convicted in June on corruption charges.

I’m sure the campaign made two ads in preparation for his announcement. One of them is the one we’re talking about right now. The other would be seeking to disenfranchise the Democratic yet Hillary haters while at the same time mobilizing the anti-Hillary Repulblicans.

Is this what American politics has come to, when one party won’t run on it’s own failing platform, but instead chooses to divide another party?

And finally I’d like to say to all the Hillary Clinton supporters, please do vote for Obama, he is way better than McCain who wants to ban pretty much everything (abortion, privacy, safe food, good veterans care and more) except for guns. And if you can’t bring yourself to vote for someone who supports what you believe in, please at least vote for someone who supports what both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama stand for.

Remember, ThinkYouth will be covering the 2008 Democratic National Convention live from Denver next week.

Back in 2004……

So I went to the bookstore and bought Jerome Corsi’s book “The Obama Nation”. After reading some of it I came to this conclusion: it was misleading, but believable. The reason why I named this post “Back in 2004…” is because the same thing will happen. Like in 2004, Corsi wrote a misleading but believable book about John Kerry, and Kerry gave a very minimal response. Obama has minimally responded and will probably not do the thing he should do, put out millions of dollars worth of ads slamming Corsi so the American people should know what a lie the “Obama Nation” is. By the looks of this book, it looks like Corsi wrote this book in 2 weeks, because it is just a ‘copy paste’ of a bunch of right wing blogs. As a commenter on BN.COM said “this book is an assault on our intelligence” because Corsi so many times uses himself as the source! Media Matters for America proved many of the dates that Corsi mentioned, could not have been true since Obama was someplace else.

Since the Obama campaign will not fight this, I believe it is up to the people that don’t want to see John McCain become president. Yesterday the New York Times reported on a website called syasme.tv.

Here is a segment from the article.

“The business plan works like this: Saysme.tv offers a service over the Internet that streamlines the submission process for homemade television advertising and offers cheap slices of cable-TV time — perhaps as little as $6 for a 25-second spot, assuming you are O.K. with appearing on CNN Headline News sometime next week in parts of Charlotte, N.C., in the wee hours.

The hope is to get commissions from the legions of small-time commentators, political bloggers and local advertisers, who may have as strong opinions as T. Boone Pickens on renewable energy, but do not have his millions to bombard the public with them. Instead, the dream goes, there would be millions of individual commentators placing ads a few at time, market by market, either by uploading their own ads YouTube style or choosing from those already hosted at the site. Let the buckshot bombardment begin.” (End Quote)

If Obama supporters all over the country made sure Corsi’s lies were retaliated with their own ads. We may win this election. We do not want to be back in 2004.

Conservatives Stoop To New Lows With Obamageddon

The celebrity ads where bad enough, now Republicans want to claim Barack Obama is the Antichrist. In an email from the conservative Townhall.com they reinforce the hidden message in McCain’s “Messiah” ad:

Big media is swooning over him like love-sick teenagers. People are acting as if he’s the greatest celebrity on Earth or even some sort of cult leader — the “Obamamessiah.”

The Carpetbagger Report and other progressive blogs talked about this connection a week ago:

The McCain campaign may be playing on evangelical fears of, believe it or not, the Antichrist. The argument made the rounds a few days ago, and was elevated to a national issue by Time’s Amy Sullivan yesterday, who noted that the ad’s suggestion of Obama as the Antichrist might actually make the Willie Horton ads “seem benign” by comparison.

Now I don’t know which is worse, the juvenile insults or that conservatives would actively bend our scriptures to deceive the public about a very important subject. Revelation, the book of the Bible that talks about Armageddon warns against adding and taking from this message. If they really believe that Obama is the Antichrist they need to come out and say it, otherwise evangelicals need to stop playing games with religion.

But why would conservatives even go down this path? It’s because McCain is not a presidential candidate that advertises his religion on the billboards. So to compensate they must throw lies out, accusing him of being a Muslim, the Antichrist, et cetera, to make McCain seem more Christan.

This shows that the conservative evangelicals establishment puts their politics (low taxes, “fortress America,” discrimination…) over their faith.

Is Bush to Blame for the Georgian War?

For the past several days there’s been heavy fighting in Georgia, particularly in the break away region of South Ossietia. But could Bush administration policies be to blame for the quick escalation in tensions that lead to all out war?

In 2002 special forces trained Georgian troops to fight in the Chechnya region, as part of his war on terror. Georgian forces received further training prior to the 2003 US violation of the “territorial integrity” of Iraq. The government has also received over $150 million in US aid for security purposes, and that’s on top of nearly $300 million for “effective governance.”

But why would Bush care so much about this tiny eastern European country? For one a major oil pipeline that skips both Russia and Iran runs through this country, supplying oil from the black sea to western countries. Secondly this conflict stems from the cold war, and feelings over the sphere of influence.

McCain meanwhile used the same strong arm tactics that sparked the conflict in the first place. He called for Russia to be removed from the G8, and said that Russia should immediately halt it’s military operations, while mentioning nothing of Georgia halting it’s action. While Russia should defiantly be condemned for jumping into another nations internal conflicts, it should be noted that the Georgian president activated his shiny new American trained army to begin fighting rebels in the province of South Ossetia.

Barack Obama meanwhile called on restraint from both sides, while also siding with an American ally. He made this statement, “I reiterate my call for Russia to stop its bombing campaign, to stop flights of Russian aircraft in Georgian airspace, and to withdraw its ground forces from Georgia.”

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