Electronic Writer

I like the Obama Camp’s style: Calm and collected fact checking. It is good journalism, and it will make a wonderful shift in the behavior and operation of the Executive Branch.

Here’s the Obama campaign video refutes the McCain campaign falsehoods in last Friday’s advertisement.

There is a little tiny bit of discrepancy between what Senator John McCain says about the Housing Crisis in America, and what he actually does. I am certainly not rebuking Senator McCain for being wealthy. Instead, I am remarking at his apparent lack of empathy for fellow America.

If the truth were told, I wish Senator McCain would look a bit deeper at the problems. Each and every person who has lost their home is not merely a statistic. They are people who are fighting to cover food, clothing and shelter–the most basic needs of a human–AND LOSING that battle.

Our tax money is funding a war on foreign soil at the cost of nearly a billion dollars a day. Our dollar has weakened against the world currency. Our government has paid incentives to large corporations to move their businesses (and jobs) to foreign countries, and the cost of gas has driven wholesale prices to the highest point in 27 years.

While there may have been some cases of recklessness, the cost of living in America has grown out of reach of a larger percentage of Americans (men and women were already working an average of 12+ hours a day to cover food clothing and shelter).

Jack Cafferty has written a great commentary examining the similarities between George Bush and John McCain in his piece, “Commentary: Is McCain another George W. Bush?“

Found this little interesting list at HumanEvents.com–the Top 10 McCain Campaign Contributors.

1. Merrill Lynch $230,310 (Investment/Financial)
2. Citigroup Inc. $219,551 (Investment/Financial)
3. Blank Rome LLP $189,226 (Counsellors at Law)
4. Greenberg Traurig LLP $157,487 (Law Firm)
5. AT&T Inc. $153,005 (Communications, Wireless, and Internet)
6. Goldman Sachs $139,520 (Worldwide Investment Banking)
7. Morgan Stanley $136,651 (Global Investment Firm)
8. JPMorgan Chase & Co. $129,400 (Global Financial Services)
9. Credit Suisse Group $110,725 (Global Financial Services)
10. Lehman Brothers $96,050 (Global Investment Banking)

This list is a couple of weeks old–so, some of the actual contribution numbers might have changed, but it is a VERY interesting assortment of financial backers.

Out of the Top 10 Contributors to John McCain’s campaign, 7 of the investors are from the Financial sector, two are law firms, and AT&T.

In the issue regarding the John McCain campaign denying United States Citizens their right to Freedom of Speech, I guess there are others who agree with me.

Here is the interview of the Librarian on Keith Oberman:

Bush claims executive privilege on CIA leak

(AP Article published at Yahoo)

George Bush, in a stroke of genius using the one club in his legal golf bag, has invoked Executive Privilege again.

Allegedy, someone was preparing to ask him to prove something that he might have said at some time, and before the question had gained momentum from a thought to an auditory format, Executive Privilege had been invoked–thereby circumventing the even public PHRASING of the question.

Do you remember the kid who would say, “I know you are, but what am I?” as a direct response to your verbal attacks?  That kid, seeing the success decides then and there to utilize it to every word out of your mouth–until it is no longer fun to play together.

The kid is George Bush, and the game is Democracy.

I am going to go home and have some cookies and milk . . . .

Dear Senator McCain,

If you were to become Commander-in-Chief, you are going to have to do a bit better.

Freedom of Speech is a RIGHT guaranteed to every Citizen of the United States of America by the Constitution–the Supreme Law of the Land.  I learned this in 5th Grade.

You cannot take it away from Citizens who happen to exercise it and say things that do not agree with you–even if it has done before–and right before your very eyes.

If someone were jumping off of a cliff, would you follow him?  NO.  Well, just because someone breaks the Supreme Law, do you have to follow him? (Please follow the article on the “Free-Speech Zone” in The American Conservative.)

Clearly, in the VIDEO below, your actions show that you are breaking the law and denying Citizens of the United States of America their right to Freedom of Speech, and that you are asking other Citizens and Police Officers to enforce it.  What you did to the Librarian who was holding a sign at the rally in Denver, CO was illegal.  She should have never been given a ticket and a court date for exercising her rights afforded to her as a Citizen.

Please do better, and respect the Supreme Law, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the RIGHTS of Citizens.

Thank you,

-Electronic Writer

I have been watching this ad display for this site called Human Events.  The text said, Barack Exposed–playing off of some infamous document traveling around, and the Swift-Boater-Creating-Lies mentality that Barack Obama has some secret life that NO ONE on the planet knows.

On a side note: The postulate that there is a Secret Life of Barack Obama is REALLY hilarious.  Right now, the FBI and CIA are reading every email and listening to every phone call on the planet LEGALLY because our Congress passed the Patriot Act a second time.

In addition to this, common sense of the believers of this theory has simply washed completely out of their heads.  Do you think you can be in Congress and participate in the decision making process of the United States of America without a BACKGROUND CHECK?

Apparently, a group of Americans are spreading hate-based lies about Barack Obama because they believe they have some information that the government has overlooked.  Sounds a lot like a zombie-like character defamation orchestrated by Karl Rove and implemented by Rush Limbaugh by his ditto-heads.

Okay, digression over.

So, I finally went for a visit to this Human Events website, and discovered that they are a collection of ultra-conservative articles.  So, their advertising sucks, but maybe something valuable lives on that website.

This is truly sad.

Yesterday, I read an article that described the violence that President Robert Mugabe used to intimidate opposition party leaders, members, and their families.  It was horrific.

The details, as clinically presented as they were, were BEYOND my worst imagination of what human beings can do to other humans.  My personal response moved immediately past rage and disgust.  I am actually shocked that people can live with themselves–that the attackers and mindless followers of Mugabe would commit such atrocities to preserve the “power” of the leader that rules them with fear, as well.

I suppose smaller versions of that happen in places that are closer than we might think.

The article in the NY Times today describes the opposition party’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, announcement that he was withdrawing from the election.  He had won by all accounts in the last election (including Mugabe’s), but Mugabe chose not to recognize it and his thugs set about to do their work–kill more than 86 high-level opposition party officials, main and brutally, violently beat more than 10,000 members of the opposition party, burn more than 20,000 residences and displace nearly 200,000 from their homes.

At a rally today, with only 5 days remaining until the vote, Tsvangirai decided that the price was too high.  He was unwilling to ask the party’s supporters to go to the polls on Friday “when that vote will cost them their lives.” (NY Times)

My ruminations turn to our own country.  For two elections in a row, there have been dubious results.  One was descided by the judicial branch, and the second was decided by a few Americans who were already loyal to the winner under a shroud of secrecy and armed guards.

Prior to the 2004 election, our own FBI went to the homes of dissenters to “question” Americans from demonstrating at the Republican National Convention (NY Times Article, CommonDreams.org Article, ACLU Article).  Although some of those FBI agents articulated that the request for them to do so was unconstitutional, but they did so anyways.

How much further is the political landscape in Zimbabwe from the political landscape from the United States  today?

I am truly glad that there are still some freedoms here, and that those enforcing it are thinking (and love our country).  If you love your freedom, in November of 2008, please VOTE.

• NY Times Article: Zimbabwe Opposition Leader Pulls Out of Runoff
• NY Times Article: Assassins in Zimbabwe Aim at the Grass Roots (WARNING: This is a clinically presented, but extremely GRAPHIC article.  The details are horrific.)

Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler is a military lawyer for a detainee at Guantanamo Bay.

In the NY Times article, “An Unlikely Antagonist in the Detainees’ Corner,” by written by William Glaberson (published June 19, 2008), Kuebler articulates, from an insider’s perspective, my worst fears about the Military Tribunal system created by the Bush Administration.

The Bush administration’s war crimes system “is designed to get criminal convictions” with “no real evidence,” Commander Kuebler says. Or he lets fly that military prosecutors “launder evidence derived from torture.”

Ugh.

When I first read about the creation of the war crimes system (military tribunal) by the Bush Administration, I understood the goal immediatly–to create more legal grey area. If you take foreigners (or even American Citizens) and remove them from their country, and put them on soil governed by America but not in America, you have problematized some legal foundations. Some laws clearly do not apply.

In a foreign country, you would be subject to the laws of that country. On American soil, your actions would be subject to American Civil Law. However, Guantanamo Bay is NOT on American soil, and what happens there is NOT subject to the laws of Cuba. It is, legally problematic on many levels

• Justices Reject Gitmo Tribunals (USA Today)
• Bush’s Military Tribunals Violate the Law
• Tribunal System, Newly Righted, Stumbles Again (NY Times)

On a side note: Foreign laws apply to you in a foreign country UNLESS you are an American private contractor working in Iraq. They signed statements binding them to NOT be held accountable to laws of Iraq, and they are not on American soil, so they cannot be held accountable to American laws. Basically, the American private contactors in Iraq are living above and beyond the laws of ANY country. See HERE, and HERE and HERE and HERE for the consequences of such a policy–or, at least examples of some people who discovered ways to manipulate that gray area.

Lt. Cmdr. Kuebler has acknowledged the fundamental flaws of this system and rather than simply defending his client, he has attacked the flawed system.

Lt. Cmdr. Kuebler, thank you for making America a better place. You are a constitutional hero (and already in the Wikipedia).

You can read the entire NY Times article here.