McCain-Clinton - The New Dream Ticket

With all the talk of a Dream Ticket on the Democratic side dying away, as it should, my mind got to wandering about another match made in heaven that seems to be emerging.

No, not Gore-Obama, I'm talking about John McCain and Hillary Clinton.

Blasphemy, you say?

Well, yes, but as they have been coordinating their messages lately, it almost seems like Obama is running against a McCain-Clinton ticket right now.

I know there isn't a realistic shot of a McCain-Clinton ticket here, both parties would throw the two square out on their asses. But, they seem to have no trouble unofficially cooperating to drag Barack Obama's name through the mud.

Now with McCain, the motivation is easy, Republican nominee-Democratic nominee (presumptive on both accounts**).

But why is Hillary tearing down a fellow Democrat and building up a, supposed, Republican foe?

This is one of the mysteries of the day right now, with the only clear theory being she wants to utterly destroy Obama, even if it costs Democrats the White House this fall.

With all these kind words bandied around by Clinton to McCain, it's a little hard to see her coming back in the fall and campaigning for the Democratic Party against him.

Hillary seems to be swinging more and more 'Rove-ian' with her campaign as she sinks deeper and deeper into the hole her lies, and Mark Penn, have dug underneath her.

Watch this short video, where Clinton is giving a lot of praise to McCain, and taking a lot of talking points from not only just McCain, but Bush, and even Cheney, all while criticizing a fellow Democrat. Some of the quotes are taken a bit too ambiguously for my taste, but the meaning is clear for the majority of them.





If she is elected, what changes? The mindset is the same. There might be large differences in domestic policy between a Bush administration and a HRC administration, which I would gladly welcome, but is the price of maintaining the aggressive stance of the Bush administration worth it?

There still will be a hard-line approach, and the threat of an attack on Iran looming. Obviously ditto for McCain.

Comparing the two, their seemingly high respect for each other, and how they seem to really synch up nowadays, uttering the words 'elitist' and 'out of touch' like a toddler that just learned how to say them, John McCain and Hillary Clinton don't just sound like the new Dream Ticket, they sound like Best Friends:




Also posted on Daily Kos under the name 'Red Star'

Barack Obama responds to the 'Bitter' Criticism

Barack Obama again today proved why he is going to be giving a brilliant Inauguration speech as President about 9 months from now.

He is smart, level headed, and he is honest with people. He responds to the 'elitist', 'out of touch' criticisms from the multi-millionaires with this down-to-earth speech in Steelton, PA.



For all those that worry Barack Obama is going to be stripped apart by the Republican attack machine this fall, that video should show you that he's more than ready to bob and weave and jab around it all the way to the White House.

Watch Hillary's head nearly split in two

We Should Not Boycott the Beijing Olympics

It will only hurt the athletes, no one else. It will not affect the situation in Tibet, or convince the Chinese leadership to stop what they are doing. It will only make the gap between us larger, as the Chinese will not want to lose face on the international scene. Trade and other human rights issues would end up harder to solve in the future, and for what?

It is a selfish ploy that uses athletes that train harder than all others, that have a stage once every 4 years, some only once in their life, maybe twice if they are extremely lucky.

We should not be taking away the dreams and goals of these men and women for political points.

I'm fine with the protesters right now causing havoc on the Olympic flame's route to China, because that is free and open protest, no matter how much brutality the police seem to be showing the protesters who do step up.

What did this kind of approach do in Moscow 1980? Not too much. Some would say it started the dominoes that ended the Cold War, but it wasn't, it was just a lost cycle of athletes used by their government to make a point.

If you want someone to blame, then blame the IOC for awarding the Games to China in the first place, as their human rights abuses have been well known for a long time now. We were fine with it when these Games were awarded, when China's brutality was behind closed doors, but now that it is out in the open, we want to make sure no one thinks we condone this sort of thing, at least not if its captured on film.......

The Olympics are one of the few, if not the only place where nations can actually come together in genuine good spirit and compete, without politics playing a factor.

I'm all for opening a dialogue on China's abuses, because they are very numerous and terrible, but not through the athletes, it's simply not fair.

UPDATE : Stephen Harper has declared we will not boycott the Olympic Games, for the very reason I stated here, that it would do nothing but harm the athletes. Kudos Stephen, which is something I may never say again.

Bilateral Civil Assistance Plan

There was an agreement signed on February 14, 2008, between U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, and Canadian Air Force Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, commander of Canada Command, that essentially ended Canada’s stint as a free and independent country.

It is called, as this article is entitled, the 'Bilateral Civil Assistance Plan'. What this agreement does is allow American troops to operate on Canadian soil in times of civil emergency, and vice versa. I can't think of a circumstance where the US would ask us to step in, but with the depleted numbers of their own National Guard due to the war in Iraq, maybe it is a possibility.

Either way, this kind of agreement, signed with smiles, as you can see if you like by clicking on the title, which will take you to the US Northern Command site, is dangerous in so many ways I'm thinking if I should check and see if there's a word limit on Blogger before I get really into this.

We're losing sovereignty, straight up. I don't know about the rest of you, but watching the US operate on the world stage for the last 8 years doesn't instill too much trust in them not abusing this agreement and taking it in ways it was never originally intended (see, Original UN Iraq Resolution)

Who defines this 'emergency'?

Say for example, the Canadian Prime Minister is assassinated, everything is in chaos, we have no clear number 2 because of a ridiculously outdated political system, the US steps in to 'lend assistance' during the crisis. Bingo Bango, we've got a 'friend' who won't get the hell out of our country.

The US has plenty of fingers in plenty of friendly pies, and it will be over my dead body before those fingers are in ours. I know we have been bought out piece by piece by US companies, our culture is dominated by that from the South of us, and our current government panders to the Bush administration like an underachieving child to an overbearing father, but US troops, in our streets, 'keeping the peace' is more than I could handle.

That is just one of many different scenarios that would be made out to be justifiable in such a circumstance, as any logical and realistic person knows the US would love to have our resources and space for their own uses. We have always resisted them at every turn from complete and utter domination, but this agreement sets all that back dramatically.

We have laws in place to preserve 'Canadianism', culturally, requiring so much Canadian content on our radio and airwaves, but is that really enough?

The most troubling aspect of this entire agreement, leaving out everything mentioned, is that it was never even brought up in the House of Commons, let alone debated and passed by a plurality of elected members. The same goes for the US Congress. Not a whiff of this passed through there either. And it was not released to the press, and was actually suppressed by the Canadian government from coming to light.

This is a major treaty, changing the way we define our borders and how we allow other nations to operate within them. This fundamentally alters Canadian sovereignty forever. And no one knows it even happened.

I will be lobbying my Member of Parliament, Bill Siksay of the NDP, to at least raise this issue in the House, and have the Prime Minister and the Conservative government answer for their actions and their secrecy. I recommend you do the same if you at all care about maintaining Canada as a free and independent nation. Links to each party, where you can find your MP, and for US readers, your Member of Congress, are located on the right side. We need to raise this issue now, because it seems like our governments are completely unwilling to.

Find Your Member of Parliament

Find your Member of Congress

Compare and Contrast

I was just reading another article about Barack Obama's 'problems' regarding controversial (To say the least) sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. What I've been thinking and waiting for ever since this story broke, was when the story of John McCain's controversial pastor John Hagee was going to be blasted all over the airwaves.

And then........nothing...

Nothing about how Hagee called the Catholic Church 'The Great Whore', who called Hurricane Katrina 'The judgment of God against New Orleans', who said the Catholic Church collaborated with Hitler during WWII to exterminate the Jews, or who said the Qua'ran stipulates the murder of Jews and Christians.

Are these on par with "Goddamn America!" and 9/11 as "Chickens coming home to roost", I'd say so. In fact, I'd say it far surpasses the statements of Rev. Jeremiah Right.

Unless you've got your blindness-inducing patriotic glasses on, I think most can agree with all the death and destruction the US has wrought upon the world, 9/11, however it actually played out (INSIDE JOB!) it was certainly chickens coming home to roost. It was deserved, and frankly, the US deserved 10x more.

I'll never wish death on another human, not even Bush, Cheney and company, and I do not condone the thousands of deaths on that day, but the simple and plain fact of the matter is that the US populace had it coming.

Place Hagee and Wright side-by-side. At the very least, they must be placed in the same category. At the most, Hagee should be decried as a acidic hate monger for his statements about Jews, Muslims, Catholics, and almost every other definable group that he feels doesn't meet up to his moral standards.

Wright, on the other hand, is also horribly offensive, widening racial divides instead of healing them. But his words were born from a generation of fire hoses, civil rights marches and battles for equality. Wright was shaped by this, and it shines through in his passionate sermons now.

Hagee has nothing like this to define or somewhat justify his views, actions and words. He is simply a bitter, hateful man.

And yet, who gets plastered over the news hourly, gets debated, slandered and insulted, called un-American and racist? Wright, and by extension, to an extent, Barack Obama.

Who gets the attention or blame for Hagee? Certainly not Hagee, as he pulled in over a million dollars last year, making him one of the highest paid evangelists out there. And it sure as hell isn't John McCain, who is getting the freest and easiest ride I think I can remember from any political candidate, while Obama gets killed at every turn for the slightest miscue.

Things like John McCain confusing (or not even understanding) the different Sunni and Shia branches of Islam and trying to connect Sunni al Qaeda with Shia Iran goes completely under the radar, unnoticed. But Obama not using the proper word to denounce the un-sought endorsement of Louis Farrakhan dominates a debate for a good 20 minutes.

To go even further, McCain not only didn't denounce Hagee, as Obama was nearly pressured to do to Wright before he gave the speech of a generation on race relations, he sought after and graciously accepted the endorsement, even going so far as to say, "I’m very proud to have Pastor Hagee’s support."

Can you imagine the firestorm if Obama had said that about Farrakhan, or even about Wright, whom he said he disagrees with, but loves like a family member? If he had of done so, I think we all know without a doubt that Barack Obama would not be competing for the Democratic Presidential nomination, he would be sitting at home in Illinois.

The media has never been, never will be, and honestly is not expected to be fair and impartial. That is a perfect worldview in an imperfect world. What they are expected to do, is at least give some semblance of neutrality and integrity, and report issues, statements and controversies somewhat equally. Hell, I'd even take a 90-10 split right now.

I do think it is going to get much harder on McCain, as he is still in his honeymoon period as the nominee, and Hillary and Barack are still cutting each other apart bit-by-bit. Once Hillary can finally put her ego to bed, we can move on with Obama-McCain, and hopefully something, anything will be brought up about Hagee, his not understanding Sunni v Shia Islam, breaking campaign finance laws that he helped to craft, following in lockstep with the disastrous policies of George Bush. and so so many other things...and lest we forget the Keating 5.

Compare and Contrast Hagee v Wright, and the media coverage and slant of McCain v Obama, and tell me who you think is getting the fair treatment so far in this cycle...

Straddling the Fence on Smoking

I live in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and I am a smoker. I also work in the city, in an office, with tight little old-style streets outside.

The reason I'm sharing this is not so that all several of you that have clicked through my thoughts on here can come and shower me with praise. I mean, that would be great, but I'm not expecting anything. The reason is because on March 31, 2008, Vancouver essentially became a city where smoking in public is no longer allowed.

They haven't made smoking illegal, or anything like that, far too much tax revenue is derived from cigarettes to make them completely unavailable. This is a point I'll come back to, because it's central to the whole idea of what we're talking about here.

The new law put in place stipulates that the following are now illegal, and I'm quoting right from the Government of BC's website here :

- Smoking in all indoor public spaces and work places, with exemptions made for the ceremonial use of tobacco by Aboriginal people;
- Smoking within three meters (15 Feet) of public and workplace doorways, open windows or air intakes;
- Tobacco sales in public buildings including: hospitals and health facilities, universities and colleges, athletic and recreational facilities, and provincial government buildings; and
- Display and promotion of tobacco products in all places where tobacco is sold that are accessible to youth under 19.
- Unless prohibited by municipal regulations, smoking will still be allowed on the outdoor patios of restaurants and bars, as long as that patio area is not substantially enclosed.

In Canada, between 63 and 79 per cent of the price of cigarettes is tax (CBC). The government, both provincial and federal, collect huge tax revenues from smokers, and yet make it nearly impossible for them to use the product they are collecting for.

Such blatant and opportunistic hypocrisy would almost be laughable, if it didn't negatively impact so many people's lives in such a way. I’m all for not displaying cigarettes, not selling them in government buildings, and not having smoking rooms inside bars and clubs, but a 15 foot restriction is simply unworkable and ridiculous.

I have always prided myself on being a polite smoker, someone who has this habit, but doesn't annoy others with it. Someone who blows smoke away from whomever I happen to be with, whether they are a smoker or not. Not smoking around kids, especially babies, and not smoking inside. This is the kind of behavior we need to be focusing on.

I in no way want to make smoking out to be safe or friendly. It is horribly addictive, harmful, and secondhand smoke is most certainly very damaging. I do want to point out though that it is a choice that we smokers in the world make, and it is perfectly legal, and available every ten feet, in every little shop.

It's like offering out something in one hand, then trying to swat the person away with the other hand when they try and take it.

The Government of BC and the Government of Canada need to get real on this issue, and stop playing both sides of the fence by looking tough on tobacco and smokers, while the entire time collecting millions from us. It's all political, just like everything else, but this goes a little bit far in my opinion.

We haven't even started to look into other substances also taxed to the gills that are very harmful, such as alcohol. The costs of medical care for those affected by their cigarette addiction is certainly higher than that of alcohol abusers, but nonetheless, it is the same idea. The government sells, promotes and taxes a very harmful substance, and then tells people they shouldn't really be buying it or using it in the first place.

If say, smoking was outlawed tomorrow, a huge black market would spring up, and there wouldn't probably be too much of a noticeable shift in supply. It would just be much harder to acquire, and harder to use, and would drive smoking rates down dramatically. Obviously this isn't going to happen, but it's about the only way that Gordon Campbell, Stephen Harper and their respective parties pass the hypocrisy test.

We've seen the effects of prohibition before, with alcohol, and obviously it's not a viable, real solution, but all I'm asking is for the ruling parties to stop acting so righteous about the whole issue as 80% of the price I just paid for my daily pack is bulging out of their coffers.

Now, excuse me, I have to go and stand in the middle of the street to have a smoke, as in this part of town, it’s about the only place that's 15 feet from a door, window or vent.

I certainly feel like I'm safer and society is better off by having millions do the same, don’t you?