Liberty and Justice for All!

Back in March I discussed how the terrorism card has been played far too many times and that eventually it would backfire. I also questioned when the American public would stop being scared by Bush’s comments on terror threats and start realizing that Bush’s policy on terrorism has failed to make us safer.

Now an adviser in John McCain’s camp stated that a terrorist attack would help McCain’s campaign. McCain backed away from the statement (likely because he didn’t want to look like he actually wanted a terrorist attack to happen). However, this line of thinking falls follows the thinking of the previous post.

If a terrorist attack happened, it would not be a sign that we are still unsafe so we need to elect the Republican to keep us safe. It would be a sign that the Republican policy on keeping us safe has failed us and we need to change our way of thinking.

Now, I am not going to speculate on how the American public would actually vote if we got attacked by terrorists again. However, if the American public is foolish enough to believe that electing McCain (who follows Bush’s failed ideas on keeping us safe from terrorism)  after a terrorist attack will make us safer then God help us all.

Cross posted at Obama for President.

John McCain, proving that he is losing touch with reality, came out against the supreme court ruling that even suspected terrorists have the right to question their incarceration by saying:

I think it’s one of the worst decisions in history, … It opens up a whole new chapter and interpretation of our constitution.

So let me get this straight. The conservative court actually upholds the right of all people to habeas corpus and McCain questions it as being one of the worst decisions in history?

Let us look at a couple of BAD SCOTUS decisions, shall we?

Plessy v Ferguson: You know, the whole “separate but equal” ruling that gives people a warm fuzzy feeling (I think it is nausea) inside? I wonder where McCain stacks the recent decision against Plessy.

Dred Scott: Back before our country was enlightened enough to realize that black people are people too, we had the Dred Scott verdict. Scott was not allowed to challenge his status in federal court. Where does McCain rank this in his list?

Another disturbing part of this article was the comment by fellow Republican and freedom hater Lindsey Graham who stated:

Americans are going to be shocked to find that that mastermind of 9-11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now has the same legal standing as an American citizen.

What Graham doesn’t understand is that as a country we should strive to be better than those who would attack us. Nobody here is going to say that Khalid is a good man. However, even the most vile of murderers deserve a fair trial and a day in court. It shouldn’t matter if the person is a citizen or not. We should strive for greatness and part of what makes us a great nation is the fairness of our court system. The ruling today returns a small portion of the fairness that had been stripped. To know that McCain would turn back the clock and rule that non-citizens are not worthy of equal access to our court system just proves he is not suitable to be our next President.

This will also be posted at my Obama for President blog.

Bobby Jindal has said that being Governor of Louisiana is the job he wants. However, he is talking like someone who actively is seeking out the vice presidency.

Jindal says Obama speaks well, but hasn’t delivered

That is a change, or a flip flop as you will, from his previous statement to Wolf Blitzer:

We want all the candidates to pay attention to Louisiana, especially our recovery needs. I think it’s a great thing. John Edwards came and announced his candidacy here, and got out of the race here. Major candidates have traveled here multiple times. We want both parties to pay attention to Louisiana. You know, the recovery needs will go well into the next administration.

Sounds like someone had a change of heart. Does Jindal no longer want both parties to pay attention to Louisiana?

On a related note, Sound Politics believes that Jindal should be first on the short list.

I have been trying to figure out the exact problem the Democrats are having this election. It shouldn’t be that hard. You have a Republican presidential candidate who is going to follow in the footsteps of President Bush if elected. Well, I figured it out.

This election should have been a referendum on the Bush Administration and those Republicans who continue to blindly follow Bush’s failed policies. However, it has become a referendum on “making history” and how we should do it (by either electing a black man or a woman to be our president).

This is not just a recipe for failure in the 2008 general election. This also loses sight of the main point of fighting for civil rights. We are not supposed to be supporting people because they are a woman or belonging to a minority group. We are supposed to try and treat all people equally regardless of their gender or ethnicity. As Dr. King said, judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

And yes, I completely  understand and accept the argument that a black person is likely to think that a black president would understand the needs of the black community (just as a woman might think that a woman president would understand the needs of women). That is all well and good for the individual. However, for the party as a whole, we need to get off of the idea that electing our candidate will make history. We need to get back to the idea that if John “Bush Wannabe” McCain gets elected, that our rights and civil liberties will BE history.

Methinks Jindal doth protest too much. There was no “explicit talk” at the ranch over Jindal for V-P. Of course, that doesn’t mean that topics of conversation that are relevant to the choice of V-P where avoided. Jindal may “have the job [he] want[s]“, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t open to looking for an even better one.

Like it or not, his name continues to be one of the names that is being touted for McCain’s vice president. The endorsement of Jindal for V-P by the Washington Times does little to silence the hype over “the next Ronald Reagan” (or Dan Quayle). You can read my response to the W-T on their site or on Oysters.

Clancy doesn’t believe Jindal will make the cut. Yellowblog, Adrastos, and Oyster agree. Jindal may very well be using this hype to gain himself a keynote speech at the GOP convention which he could then use to propel himself to the national scene after 4-8 years as Governor. The Jindal hype may also be a smokescreen that allows McCain to look at other candidates without scrutiny.

I cannot say that Jindal ran for Governor just so he would be picked as a V-P choice (like he ran for Congress in 2006 just so he could turn around and run for Governor). However, the scent of power has been released and Jindal will grasp for it sooner than later. Why? Because Jindal cannot afford for too much time to pass by. The more time he spends as Governor, the more people see that he is all talk and no action. Better for him to act now while the majority of the people are still fooled.

For fun, you can play the MSNBC “veepstakes” home game.

One weird thing did strike me as odd from the meeting. Former EBay CEO Meg Whitman, champion of allowing fraud to occur on Ebay, was also at the weekend meeting. Interesting lot McCain hangs out with. Mike Brunker of MSNBC has a great series of articleson the fraud that occurred at EBay under Meg’s watch.

The threat of terrorist attacks has been used by this administration to justify its actions and to win their 2004 election with fear. Now that McCain is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party, is it any surprise that a new terrorist threat has been revealed?

[Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, chief of the U.S. Northern Command] did, however, repeat his assertion — which he first made in July — that he believes there are al-Qaida cells or sympathizers within the United States.

President Bush, in a speech Thursday, also said the United States remained under threat from terrorists.

Bush will continue to discuss the terrorist threats that face our country to try and scare us. McCain will use the same scare tactics to try and convince people to vote for him. However, while they try and scare us, they reveal the fact that the threat still exists despite their actions. So what I want to know is this. When will the American public stop thinking “oh no, the terrorists are going to get us if we elect a Democrat” and start thinking “wow, this Republican Administration is incapable of eliminating the terrorist threat and perhaps we need to elect a Democrat to try something different”.

Albert Einstein stated that to repeat the same thing over and over again and expect different results is the definition of insanity. Believing that Republicans can eliminate the terrorist threat after 7 years of failure is also insanity.

About a month ago I asked why they can’t produce a “meaningful poll”. To me, national polls do not tell the picture since we elect our president based on the electoral college. An example is a poll done by SurveyUSA showing Hillary having a better nationwide result than Obama over McCain.

Well, thanks to oyster, we now have meaningful polls taken in the presidential race. These polls are done on a state by state basis and, while not perfect, show a snapshot of how the country is leaning.

According to the newest SurveyUSA poll, Barack Obama beats John McCain with an electoral vote count of 280-258. Hillary Clinton beats John McCain with an electoral vote count of 276-262. What is even more impressive is that they take into account the way that some states split electoral college votes.

Hillary does what she needs to do in this poll and wins all three “swing states” (OH/PA/FL)  and also wins AK/WV but loses WA/OR/MI. Obama loses PA, FL, and NJ! However, Obama wins by swinging VA/NV/CO/ND/IA into the blue corner. Both candidats pick up NM.

The polls do not reflect the possible theory that Obama would be able to pick up southern states because of a Republican disinterst in McCain and a large minority turnout. Obama loses the deep south and barely wins VA. Of course, Hillary also loses most of the south as well.

But the bottom line is that at the moment, dispite the nationwide poll showing Hillary as having the advantage, Obama is actually polling better in the electoral college and I feel much better about the possibility of an Obama nomination.

Ah yes, it has been reported that good old Ralph Naderis doing his best to hand our nation over to the Republican “Corporatists” that he claims to despise, yet again.

 As reported by Oyster and seen on Meet the Press, Nader says that if Democrats cannot win this in a landslide, it is their own fault and not his. Ralph could not be more wrong, and his ego is blinding him to the truth… or is it?

Seems to me that his taking votes away from Democrats and helping Republicans win helps him to keep his “complain about the Corporatist” title, which only serves to feed his undying ego. If the Corporatists go away, so does the “need” for anti-corporatists like Nader. By keeping them in power, Nader gets to stay in the spotlight, regardless of the harm it does the rest of the country.

Barack Obama made some good statements about Nader. Basically pointing out that Nader is the kind of person (that I have complained about) who cuts of his nose to spite his face because the leading Liberal candidate is not “perfect” in his eyes.

“Mr. Nader is somebody who if [you] don’t listen and adopt all of his policies, [he] thinks you’re not substantive. He seems to have a pretty high opinion of his own work,” Obama said. “Historically, he is a singular figure in American politics and has done as much as just about anybody on behalf of consumers, so in many ways, he is a heroic figure and I don’t mean to diminish him, but I do think there’s a sense now that, you know, if somebody’s not hewing to the Ralph Nader agenda then you must be lacking in some way.”  

I have been complaining about voters like that for a long time. And to all those “my candidate has to be the perfect liberal” voters on the far left who live in swing states that vote for Nader again and cause our nation to fall into the hands of John “100 years” McCain, we will be blaming you. Your cutting off your collective noses to spite your faces will harm us all. And the excuse that the Democrats have no reason to lose this race is absurd. I will be voting for the Democratic candidate, as will many others like me. So it is not us that are throwing the shoes in the works, it is you. It will be your fault. So just think about the risk of a McCain presidency before you go pulling a lever for Ralph Nader.

I will repeat: Any liberal who votes for Nader in this election, especially in swing states, will be to blame if their quixotic quest for the perfect liberal candidate leads our country to “for more years” of the same old same old in the oval office.

One more time, just so it sinks in to anyone even considering voting for Nader in this election. Any liberal who votes for Nader in this election, especially in swing states, will be to blame if their quixotic quest for the perfect liberal candidate leads our country to “for more years” of the same old same old in the oval office.

Get it?

A) A majority of the active Republican party are not religious right winged evangelicals.

B) Enough of the active Republican part are religious right winged nutjobs that McCain will still need their vote to win.

Just sayin

Rush “pill poppin” Limbaugh stated that McCain should pick Bobby Jindal as his choice for VP.

Jindal’s response?

In a written statement to KSLA News 12, Governor Bobby Jindal’s press secretary Melissa Sellers says, “The Governor is very flattered, but obviously he has a lot of work to do here in Louisiana and that is his only focus. Our state has a great chance to make big changes and that is all he is thinking about.”

I wonder if McCain actually asks him to do it if he will respond with “I’ll pray on it“.

Update: In response to a question by Wolf Blitzer on whether Jindal would accept the nomination if offered by McCain, Jindal said “He’s not going to ask me“. Nice way to fake humility while leaving the possibility for him to say yes wide open.