Obama, or Clinton 2.0?

I got into a debate this last semester with my Ethics professor after some comments she made following the election. Here is the email that I wound up sending her when she asked for all of the articles to back up the things I was claiming, so I thought that I would share it here. It has just come to my attention that one of my close friends is apparently an Obama supporter, so we shall certainly have words when he arrives in town tomorrow.

Here are some links to news articles concerning Obama and some of his cabinet picks, specifically Rahm Emanuel.

Here's a TIMES article talking about Emanuel's appointment:
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1857215,00.html?iid=digg_share
They conveniently leave out Emanuel's terrorist ties however.

Here's an article detailing Emanuel's link to the Zionist Terrorist Organization, the Irgun, which his father is a part of.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/obamas-first-appointment-is-son-of-zionist-terrorist.html

Here's an article talking about how the entry on wikipedia talking about his terrorist father was mysteriously deleted:
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48750&hd=&size=1&l=e

Here's another article, from ABC news, showing that Emanuel was on the board of Freddie Mack when all of the sour mortgage business went down
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6201900&page=1

Not to mention that his dad's still a bit of a racist:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=75425&sectionid=3510203

Now aside from Rahm, let's look at a few things on Obama also, just for kicks. How about ho he plans to accept funds from the UN 'Population Fund' that George Bush refused back in 2002, because the Population Fund supports China's policies of coercive abortions and sterilization under it's one child policy.
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=16721

Aside from that, how about when he deviated from one of his speeches to talk about the 'civilian national defense force' that will be just as 'well funded' as the military. Maybe it's just my minor paranoia, but that sounds a lot like secret police, something most Socialist countries have done to very little success. Also, if it's to be as 'well funded' as the military, even after he cuts the DoD budget, if he adds another 'security force' that's getting the same sized budget, then that means larger amounts of Government spending, which will result in higher taxes. I thought he told people he'd be cutting taxes though...
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/obamas_civilian_national_secur.html

Then there's the fact that he, along with McCain, vigorously lobbied for the passage of the Bailout, something which the entire nation was against, but was passed anyways despite the will of the people. Altogether though, the bailout isn't going to cost us -just- 700 billion, but closer to 4 or 5 trillion now. http://www.infowars.net/articles/october2008/151008Bailout_figures.htm

Continuing on, we take a look at Obama's new oncoming energy policies, which he has said will likely "Bankrupt coal plants and cause energy prices to skyrocket". Is bankrupting coal plants and putting millions of American's out of work in a time where our unemployment rate continues to climb and our economy continues to fall really that god of an idea? Not to mention skyrocketing energy prices certainly won't help those that can barely pay the cost of energy now.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/03/obamas-energy-plan-bankupt-coal-power-plants-skyrocketing-electricity-rates/

Along those lines, Obama is very outspoken about his support of environmentalism and climate change, but his support of the subsidies for biofuels that goes to corn based ethanol suggests otherwise. Currently, ethanol made from sugar can from Brazil or from switchgrass from the American plains is proven to produce a higher ratio of energy to energy used to produce it, where as corn produces just under two units of energy for every unit of energy expended to produce it. The ratio for sugar cane on the other hand is eight to one. The subsidies funding corn based ethanol also raise the price of corn world wide, which has contributed to the 75% raise in food prices worldwide ( http://www.lvrj.com/news/29991399.html ). Currently the same bill that funds the biofuel subsidies imposes a high tariff on sugar cane, which produces more energy than corn based ethanol ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/us/politics/23ethanol.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin ).

Since the Democrats took control of the Congress and Senate back in 2005 with promises of repealing policies set forth by the Bush administration, nothing has been changed. They renewed the Patriot Act and have not reversed any of the controversial policies on wiretapping and spying on American Citizens, so why should we believe anything will be any different under Obama? Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that I am alive to witness history being made that we as a people have made it past our issues of color and voted a Black man as President, but that's where my excitement ends, because our two-party monopoly doesn't really give us many choices. When it all boils down to it, I think whoever said "Obama is Coca-Cola and McCain is Pepsi - at the end of the day you’re still drinking the same beverage." said it best.

When are we going to wake up to the fact that voting in the lesser of two evils is not a solution?

When are we going to realize that participating in a rigged system, where our vote means virtually nothing anyway because it is counted by a completely compromised and hackable voting machine, not only fails to address any of our problems, but actually compounds them because of our passive obedience in participating in the phony virtual reality presented to us as “democracy”?

I'll make one last point before wrapping up this short diatribe on why I am not overly thrilled with Obama's election. On the point of the second amendment, the people's fears of further crackdown on their right to bear arms is not entirely unfounded. Ontheissues.org, a website that was dedicated to clarifying where each candidate stood on the issues, gives a very detailed breakdown of where Obama stands on the second amendment ( http://www.ontheissues.org/domestic/Barack_Obama_Gun_Control.htm ). In Illinois, he supported the sale and possession of not only assault weapons, but all weapons period. It was also his position in his home state that retired police officers are the only ones who should be allowed to carry concealed weapons. In an investigative piece written by Howard Nemerov ( http://www.amazon.com/Four-Hundred-Years-Gun-Control/dp/0981738222/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212634673&sr=1-1 ) he presents a great deal of data which shows that recent disarmament of civilians in England and Australia has failed to make those countries any safer than they were before. He poses a very good question, after four hundred years of anti-gun legislation, why has nothing changed?

I look forward to your thoughts on the information presented here and openly welcome any rebuttal of the information in this email. Again, I am -not- steadfastly opposed tot he President Elect, I think a few things he has planned may be good, but overall I do not think he is worthy of the messianic complex that has been placed on him. ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081348/Can-black-Jesus-escape-assassins-bullet.html ; http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/toby_harnden/blog/2008/11/03/barack_obama_described_as_prophet_moses_by_bishop )




Tune in next time, for the Revolution will not be televised.

-The Kirk
Email me!

Rev. Wright and the Kansas City Shuffle

Lately the backing of Democratic hopeful Barrack Obama by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright has been a major focus in the media. Rev.Wright used to be Obama's pastor back in the day, and apparently he has been saying some things that are really easy to spin out of proportion in order to give Obama a black eye. According to Fox News (a station which needs to lose the whole 'Fair and Balanced' moniker) and other media outlets, Wright gave a speech in which he talked about former Ambassador to Iraq, Edward Peck, in an interview he did with Fox News shortly after September 11th. He quoted Peck, who in turn was quoting Malcolm X, when he said that 'America's chickens are coming home to roost', implying that our foreign policy was coming back to bite us in the ass.

He went on in his sermon to talk about how America was founded on violence and genocide, something that Martin Luther King had actually said a ways back before he was assassinated, but you didn't hear a lot of noise then. He uses examples of how we took the country from the Indians through terror and violence (which we did), how we took Africans away from their tribes and homeland and enslaved them in fear (which we did), and how our bombing in other countries has killed countless hundreds of thousands of civilians (which it has). The media was able to do a good job at spinning his sermon out of context, but they missed the part at the end where he preached about the importance of family and the need for social transformation. Then at the end he told the congregation he loved them, and had them tell eather other they loved one another. This guy sounds awful!

In one part of his sermon where he spoke about social transformation, he said:

"Maybe we need to declare war on AIDS. In five minutes the Congress found $40 billion to rebuild New York and the families that died in sudden death, do you think we can find the money to make medicine available for people who are dying a slow death? Maybe we need to declare war on the nation’s healthcare system that leaves the nation’s poor with no health coverage? Maybe we need to declare war on the mishandled educational system and provide quality education for everybody, every citizen, based on their ability to learn, not their ability to pay. This is a time for social transformation."

I don't know about you guys, but that sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Imagine what we could do if we pulled our military back and simply protected ourselves, and threw hundreds of billions of dollars at fixing our infrastructure and improving our education system, instead of paying contractors to do a substandard job and allow them to overcharge for it. In any case, a lot of the controversy was over someone who stated that the Reverend had said "God Damn America" in his sermon, but if you go back and look at the sermon, he never said anything close to it.

But what about Pastor John Hagee or Reverend Rod Parsely? Has anyone heard of these two men? I doubt that you have, because their sermons don't talk about the struggle of the African American, or America's broken foreign policy. Instead, they preach about how "God created hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its homosexual sins".

Here are a few gems from wholesome Rod Parsely:

• Islam is an Anti-Christ religion that intends through violence to conquer the world.
• America was founded in part with the intention to see this false religion (Islam) destroyed.
• Muhammad received revelations from 'demon spirits'.
• Planned parenthood is a racist nazi organization.
  

How's about John Hagee? Let's see:

• We need to start a first strike nuclear war against Iran along with Israel in order to start armageddon.
• Believes the head of the European Union is the Antichrist.
• Believes those that cannot/will not work, or are just plain poor, that you should starve.
• "Death is better than compromise. Forsake your family, and follow me." Sounds a little like radical Islam to me.
• The State Department has disobeyed God by trying to diplomatically end the fighting around Israel and that God will allow the terrorists to kill us because of this.

John McCain has come out and embraced both of these pastors and said that he is honored to have their support. So let me get this straight, the media crucifies Obama's connection to his old preacher because he talks bad about our foreign policy, but when the right wing Christian nominee's spiritual supporters go on about God sending a hurricane to punish New Orleans for being a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, or initiating a nuclear first strike on Iran for no good reason but to bring on Armageddon, we just sort of brush it under the rug and forget about it. We see Obama constantly jumping through hoops, one minute supporting Rev. Wright, the next condemning what the crazy old preacher has been saying lately. On the other hand, all McCain has to do is bring these two guys on stage as he tours the country and talk about how he's so blessed to have their backing.

It didn't go entirely unnoticed however, as one Catholic Interviewer confronted McCain about Hagee's comments, especially where he calls the Catholic church conspirators with Hitler to exterminate the Jews, is a great prostitute, and a cult. He takes the safe route and says he repudiates any antisemitic comments Hagee may have made, but that the pastor assured him that it was all taken out of context, and tells the interviewer that we should talk to Hagee about the comments, not him. Though as far as I know, no one has confronted him on the preachings of Rod Parsely. Will McCain be held accountable for these two looney tunes? Probably not.

Will Anyone Notice?

A new article on the Washington Post's blog following the presidential race just recently reported that John McCain exceeded the amount that candidates participating in the public campaign finance program can spend on their primary run.

So what does this mean? Well kids, the rundown goes like this: If a candidate is running low on funds and needs to get loans to continue their bid for the presidency, they'll often sign up for the Public Finance program, operated by the Federal Election Commission, which will then grant you free money to use for your campaign (I say free, but it's really -your- money).Part of the program then requires that you cannot spend more than $54 million on your bid for the primary.

Where does McCain fit into all of this? Last year when McCain was a virtual nobody in the early days of the republican primary race and his campaign was starved for funds, he signed up for the program. Once Super Tuesday rolled around and McCain started picking up some wins and people started actually donating to his campaign and he didn't quite need as much help from the public campaign finance program, he filed to be taken off the program so he could spend more. Unfortunately, since the FEC has four vacant spots right now they can't quite vote to grant his request, so technically he's still in the program, only now he's gone over his limit by about another $4.4 million.

Is anything going to happen to McCain? Will he be removed from the race for breaking the rules of the FEC and continuing to spend money on his campaign? Probably not, unless people like you do something about it. The democratic side of the house has started moving to file complaints over the matter, but who knows how far that will go. But what if millions of Americans began writing to the FEC demanding that the rules be enforced? What if the American people finally stood up and said "Hey! We're tired of this crap! He broke the rules, he's gotta pay!". I don't know about you folks, but I'm getting kind of tired of politicians breaking the rules and never being held accountable for it. The Revolution is coming, and it will not be televised.

Flogging Molly

Just wanted to write up a quick jaunt before hitting the hay. Went and saw Flogging Molly for the first time in so many years downtown tonight, and it was awesome as expected.

What was unexpectedly awesome were the opening bands. Normally, it's been my experience at smaller venue shows for awesome bands that aren't quite 'main stream' that the bands opening before them tend to peel the paint off the walls of the venue. Tonight was a different story altogether.

We arrived at the venue before as the first opener was going on, and as I waited in line at the merch table to get my Flogging Molly t-shirt, we heard some of their set. It sounded alright, nothing spectacular just yet, that is until I got my shirt and we went to go check them out. From the sound I could hear it was another Irish sounding folk/punk-rock band similar to Flogging Molly. What I didn't know was that it was a band from Japan. That's right, it was six or so Japanese guys on guitars/drums/tinwhistle/banjo, and a chick playing something else, think she had the accordion. I'm pretty sure their lyrics were in Japanese as well as what I could make out I couldn't quite understand, and his English between songs didn't sound very good, so I'm assuming the lyrics are Japanese. Yep, a Japanese punk band playing Irish folk punk rock songs in Japanese, something I'd have to say I never really expected to see. Their name was the Cherry Cokes, so check 'em out.

Following the Cherry Cokes was a smaller band by the name of the Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band, adequately named for its three members. They had a sound that was a mix of punk rock/blues/and folk music. One member on the drums, with the Rev's wife Breezy on the washboard/cymbal, and the Reverend on guitar/harmonica. The Reverend has a style of playing the guitar that reminds me of the movie Crossroads (no, not the Britney Spears movie, the good one), which if you haven't seen it you should go rent it right now. It was probably the best movie about the blues I'd seen till Black Snake Moan came along. To quote the Reverend "Our band don't have no bass player, cause my thumb plays bass." Coupling his thumb playing bass is the Reverend's deft use of a metal slide to make the neck of his guitar sing along with the rest of the band. I was quite impressed with their performance, enough so to break my cardinal rule of one t-shirt per show and made my way to their merch table for a t-shirt and a signed CD. I suggest checking them out immediately.

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Coming Soon: Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden

Check out the trailer for Morgan Spurlock's next documentary, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden:



In case you're not sure who Morgan Spurlock is, he's the guy that ate McDonald's three times a day for a month to prove that it will make you fat and destroy your health in "Super Size Me". Following the movie he got a deal for a TV show called "30 Days" in which he either put himself in someone's shoes for thirty days, or took someone and put them in the shoes of someone totally opposite them for thirty days. Episodes included a guy that had his job outsourced to India going to India and staying with a family that worked at a big call center, working in the call center right along with them; Morgan spending thirty days in the lockup; and a member of the Minuteman border watch group staying with a family of Mexican immigrants in California.

So far, I've liked everything I've seen from Morgan, so I'm looking forward to seeing this one when it comes out. From what I've heard they went crazy over it at Sundance, so it's got promise.

What do you think?

DoOmSdAy!!

It's called the 'Doomsday Legislation', also known by it's official title 'House Resolution 5'. It was passed on January 5th, 2005, and surprisingly has managed to stay out of the spotlight for quite some time.

If you google 'Doomsday Legislation' you'll get a number of news sites that reported on it in 2005, but most of them paint it in the light of merely being a contingency plan in the event that more than a hundred members of the house are killed in a 'terrorist attack' or some other such terrible catastrophe. It states that special elections must be held to replace the House members within 45 days of the event, which some argue should be quicker. However, this isn't the problem with the Doomsday Legislation. These articles paint the picture that the legislation is a good measure in the event of another September 11th style attack, that it would allow government to continue to run smoothly in the event a number of politicians are killed in the attack.

But there is another side to the measure that they do not like to talk about. Under the 'Doomsday Legislation', the House would not need the required 218 members present to pass legislation, but can instead pass legislation with however many show up.

“If the House should be without a quorum due to catastrophic circumstances, then . . . until there appear in the House a sufficient number of representatives to constitute a quorum among the whole number of the House, a quorum in the House shall be determined based upon the provisional number of the House; and . . . the provisional number of the House, as of the close of the call of the House . . . shall be the number of representatives responding to that call of the House.”

In layman's terms, this means that if for some reason only twelve congressmen show up when circumstances arise, including natural disaster, attack, contagion or terrorist attacks rendering representatives incapable of attending House proceedings. So say another plane is hijacked and the skies are shut down again. That would mean that if only fifty or so congress members are in Washington already, they can declare war in order to retaliate, or pass any legislation they want. Or say there's an outbreak of the bird flu or some other convenient contagion, whomever is on the hill that day can pass whatever they want regardless of number present.

Where is the countdown till we lose the last of the few Constitutional rights that they have not taken yet? Where is the outrage? Where is the call for change? Why are we still supporting Neocons such as Clinton and Romney?

The primaries are fast approaching folks. Are you registered? Do you know where to vote? Do you know if your primaries are Open or Closed? Do you know who you will vote for? We need change and we need it now more than ever before it is too late. Go here and click on your state to find out more information about the primaries.

Here are a couple of sites reporting on the 'Doomsday Legislation'. Notice the spin put on it to make it look like a necessary evil by two of the articles.

http://www.rense.com/general52/appr.htm
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/23/1082616331689.html
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/doomsday.html

In case you weren't aware...

Just in case you didn't know, here's a few things your government has done for you recently:

President Bush has signed executive orders giving him sole authority to impose martial law, and suspend habeus corpus. This gives him dictatorial power over the people without any checks or balances.

The Government can jail you for life without charges, without a trial, and without a lawyer.

Executive Order #10999 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation.

Executive Order #11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.

Executive Order #11921 Provides that the President can declare a state of emergency that is not defined, and congress cannot review the action for six months.

Senate Bill #1873 allows the government to vaccinate you with untested vaccines against your will.

The FDA says you do not have a right to know which foods have been genetically modified.

Congressman Sensenbrenner's bill (HR 1528) requires you to spy on your neighbors, including wearing a wire. Refusal would be punishable by a mandatory two year prison sentence.

And how about the wonderful freedom-protecting Patriot Act? The Patriot Act permits:

• Secret FBI and police searches of your home and office.
• Secret wiretaps on your phone, computer and/or internet activity.
• Secret investigations of your bank records, credit cards, and other financial records.
• Secret investigations of your library and book activities.
• Secret examination of your medical, travel, and business records.
• The freezing of funds and assets without prior notice or appeal.
• The creation of secret 'watch lists' that ban those named from air and other travel.

"The constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper." -George W. Bush Nov. 2005


Does this sound like the work of a Democratic Republic, run by the people and for the people? I don't think so...