Gridlock on Rye: March 2008

Monday, March 31, 2008

Saddened by Obama's Disqualification in 2008

I realize many of you are or will be greatly saddened by Barack Obama's sudden disqualification from the Democratic Primary contest and the 2008 election, so I will tread lightly here.

It is true that I have not been a supporter of Barack Obama (I did not like any of the three candidates.) That said, I too was very surprised at the way that Barack Obama was disqualified after his stunningly poor showing in Altoona Pennsylvania this weekend.

Not too many people are aware of the Intelligence requirements that Presidents must pass in order to qualify for the level of intelligence clearance that is required to run the Oval Office and take charge of the US Nuclear arsenal. As a former member of the intelligence community, I was aware of these requirements.

That said, I had no idea that Obama would fail so completely.

I needed to understand how anyone could have such a poor showing on what seems like an arbitrary test, so I did some digging and put together some information that puts this into more context both for my own enlightenment and it might possibly help you as well.

Mobile post sent by brettbum using Utterz.

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Friday, March 28, 2008

Islamophobia

Below is my response inspired by a comment by an Utterz user on the topic of Islamophobia.

farouqtaj,

I considered a new aspect of this issue when I read your article(http://www.utterz.com/…Mw/utt.php http://tinyurl.com/2pm8w6 ). Many Muslim's do dislike the way their religion has been hijacked by extremists.

I personally think that all religions are susceptible to being used in ways that go against the beliefs of the people behind the religion.

The problem and the potential for abused seems to be directly related to the political power of religious leaders. The more those leaders gain power on their own or gain power for their religion, the more likely that they will become corrupt or be corrupted by others.

Plus, when a religion gains political power, then it is only all too natural for factions to develop that want to control that power and in some respects the religion too.

This power tied to religion problem has a long long history in almost every religion around the world.

We see it here in the United States manifest in a President that makes his decisions based on his own religious ideologies first and the rule of law second. I see a similar problem with Barack Obama as well, who is arguably the most religious Presidential candidate int he race today. (McCain and Clinton didn't really find religion until the Republican party made it so popular about 8 years back.)

I suspect that the world will never be able to live together as long as religions are enabled to develop political power or legal power.

The power of secularism is that it does enable multiple faiths to live together under a common law. This can translate into peace mixed with religious freedom to practice and believe what you like.

Unfortunately, around the world there are too many countries that are governed by leaders that ignore their own laws first and rely on religious beliefs to govern countries that have many citizens of many different beliefs and religions.

The Muslim religion has been in recent history (last 30 years)more susceptible to this corruption of religion through political power which has resulted in the focus by the media on terrorists that mix their practices with their preaching and preaching with their practices as long as it suits their power goals.

Other countries around the world such as the Dutch see this manifest weakness in all religions and they are fighting to save their countries and freedom and the rule of law.

This could just as easily have manifested (again) in Christianity. It was not so long ago that christian religions were burning people at the stake and subjecting much of the western world to religious laws and religiously empowered kings and emperors. The west revolted and took down the king, the figure heads and blamed royalty, but in many ways people (often christians themselves) failed to recognize the role that their own belief structure (religion as a group as opposed to a belief) played a role in their subjugation to a king in the first place. (Ironically this took place at a time in history when the Middle East, Asia and the Far East were making tremendous progress in civilization and science. But unfortunately, as the West awoke from its religiously empowered slavery system, much of the middle east and parts of Asia have started to fallen into this trap.

Again people both inside and outside of the religions involved are getting confused by the discussions over the belief system itself and the power structure used in the form of religion to subjugate and control the people with those beliefs.

I would suggest that many of the people of the world that appear at times to have Islamophobia are not actually fearful of the people that believe in Islam, but of the people that are attempting to control, manipulate and control people that believe in Islam. This is very similar to the christianphobia developing where people fear George Bush because of his control over people that believe in christianity.

Here in the US, I am seeing some progress. There are many people that believe in christianity that are starting to realize that the movement of the 'religious right' is not inherently a christian movement, but a movement that is often used to subjugate and control christians and use their collective power to do what ever the people on top like (such as GW or Dick Cheney) who often times play lip service to Christians while utterly failing to do things that a person that really believed in christianity would do.

ex. Guantanmo, Abu Grahib, warrantless wiretapping, kidnapping people around the world and torturing them and worse.

There are times when I wish that GW had remained a cheerleader or been more successful and taken up a career in something different. Imagine if he had been sent to massage therapy schools instead of Yale.

We need to reinstate the separation of church and state in the United States both to protect the country from an over throw from within, but also to protect religious freedom and more importantly to enable the potential for the US to live peacefully with the other countries of the world.

Mobile post sent by brettbum using Utterz.

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Does Riding on Marine One Qualify You to Be President?

Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20001003122428/
www1.whitehouse.gov/media/jpg/hrcfamily.jpg {{PD-USGov}}

This week Hillary Clinton managed to embellish herself into a scandal that detracted the media's attention from Barack Obama's growing problem with his pastor.

Hillary commented on her trip to the former Yugoslavia.

The country that we invaded after the civil war was mostly over as opposed to Iraq the country that we invaded prior to instigating a civil war.

She stated that when she traveled there she had to be careful due to the danger of sniper fire in the area that she arrived. Then many news reports unveiled video of her landing with Chelsea and Sinbad walking around shaking hands and receiving flowers from little children.

It was hardly a very dangerous environment and definitely did not live up to the hype of her embellishments. That said, many media pundits are not claiming that she was well qualified anyway as a former First Lady and that she did not need to embellish her ceremonial activities.

I would agree that embellishing did not help, however, I would suggest that her work as First Lady (by itself) did not qualify her to be President. Yes, it did give her the ability to meet people from around the world and that is definitely valuable, but many other activities as First Lady did not help her. She needs to separate out the ceremonial experience a bit and focus on the substantive work behind the scenes.

Its not like she was in charge of the popcorn machines in the White House theater. She did fulfill a valid function as well as many criticized duties that were out of the scope of an un-elected or un-hired official at the White House. I personally believe that she would have been positioned politically much better if Bill had actually given her a real job based on her qualifications at the time, but he was a centrist President and not one for actually progressing the country forward when it came to sexual equality.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Removing Gridlock from Logos

I recently had a chance to test drive a logo building service that also offers a business card tool. The service is from LogoYes.com and their logo design service is relatively simple. I should mention that you can build your own logo offline or even hire someone to build one, but if you do not have a logo (as is the case for many political bloggers) their site and service can help you build one start to finish in just a couple minutes using some of their stock footage.

Here's an example of a business card that I created (using a fake company name and address since I wanted to publish a copy online).

Thursday, March 20, 2008

State Department Confirms Cover Up of Obama Security Breech for 2 Months

Officials at the State Department confirmed that they did not report information about Security Breeches relating to Barack Obama's passport and file containing consular reports to Condoleezza Rice and Barack Obama for over 2 months.

Three separate security breeches enabled contractors to access information on Barack Obama without permission in the last three months. The first attack occurred by State Department contractors on January 9th. The second took place on February 21st. Neither of those security breeches were reported by supervisors at the State Department to Condoleezza Rice nor Barack Obama.

In fact reports did not reach Rice until after a 3rd attack took place by a third contractor on March 14th. Criminal investigations are now being considered by the Justice Department unofficially even though the State Department itself has not yet called for an investigation. The State Department states that it will perform a review of break downs in protocol and management.

The break down in protocol, management and security is yet another black eye on the Bush Administration that has had an extremely poor track record at protecting information of high profile Americans, CIA agents and in fact has actively spied on average Americans. More controls seem to be in place to protect exercise equipment at the State Department gym than on sensitive information.

Breaking News - Obama Security Breeched at State Department | No More Incumbents Blog

Monday, March 17, 2008

Obama Now Trying to Appear as the Opposite of 'Black Enough'

Barack Obama opened Pandora's Box last year when he ventured into a race . . . race trying to court African American voters, who wanted to know if Obama was black enough. Pandora's Box generated huge African American support for him, which has almost won him the Democratic nomination, but now appears to be threatening his ability to win the actual White House.

Juan Williams of ABC News commented on Good Morning Today in a way that suggest that Barack Obama is now trying to call on his white heritage and distance himself away from his African American pastor and church after comments made over the years by his pastor were heavily exposed on television and YouTube.

"This has caught him up in the middle of a very racial dispute," ... "One that seems to separate black and white and suggested that [Obama] came into that community wanting to be identified with the black community, at a time when he was questioned as to whether or not he was authentically black. Now, he's trying to distance himself from that very church and say he didn't know things that he obviously had to know." ABC News: Obama in Cross Hairs For Pastor Remarks

Obama has tried to present himself as a solution to people of all walks of life, but the rhetoric of his primary supporter and mentor have proven to be anything but open to people of all walks of life. This could point to poll results that showed Hispanic voters unease at voting for Barack Obama. It could also explain the flow of white voters to Barack Obama when he appeared to be someone that could get the job done and heal the country and then the rip tide of white voters away from Barack Obama when it was revealed that he was mired in the slime of corrupt Chicago politics via his $250 million back Rezko that helped him to by his family dream home and when his Pastor started preaching denunciations of Hillary Clinton on Christmas claiming that she was not an acceptable Democratic candidate because she had never been called the same racial epithets that Barack Obama may have.

Ironically, Hillary Clinton has probably been called every other name in the book by her detractors. I don't think anyone in the Hillary camp has tried to claim that Barack Obama isn't fit to be President because he hasn't been called a female dog.

I realize that the Democratic Party was labeled early on with the Jackass and that Andrew Jackson wore the label proudly as jackasses were symbols of hardworking Americans back in his day, but it seems ludicrous that Obama's Pastor, who is famously intellectual, could really believe that a person can not feel the pain and lead the country if they have not been called every name in the book. A presidential candidate need not be vetted by sitting down and being lambasted with bad words, curses and worse in order to qualify for the job. We are not trying to choose a candidate like a person walking through an ala carte food line picking up a candidate here, and poring some curses over them there and sprinkling some verbal abuse there and complimenting the abuse with some veiled racism side orders or hate crime threat innuendo muffins there.

This is not the way politics of raised expectations work. If a candidate or campaign wants to increase expectations and truly bring hope they don't filter voters through a directbuy process to choose a candidate with beliefs at rock bottom prices lowered by a lifetime of verbal assaults. The candidate must emphasize the positive and what can be done. They must raise the bar higher and not rely on surrogates to chop the bar lower or even allow surrogates to smack the bar to the ground preventing opponents from passing through.

It therefore seems only too probably that Obama's preacher purposefully wanted to use Barack Obama's 50% African heritage to win him some votes. There are a lot of very good reasons why African Americans could choose to support Barack Obama but supporting him simply on the basis that he's been called a name that I will not put into print but his Pastor will use in front of the congregation on Christmas and send video out to the world to watch is exactly what Obama charge the Clinton campaign with in December. Obama's Pastor was engaging in race baiting and its a despicable practice no matter which campaign deploys it.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Obama Going through his Own Howard Dean Moment

Not too many people can forget Howard Dean self destructing on the campaign trail. We might now be experiencing a new phenomena, the Barack Obama moment. Barack Obama has made it almost to the point where he has won the delegates to be the Democratic nomination without being vetted for having a crazy bigoted pastor.

Well that all crashed this week as Barack Obama initially attempted to duck and weave, but ultimately had to fire his own minister from his campaign. Barack Obama himself challenged us to understand that 'Words do Matter.' He never expected when he said that (about perceived attacks from the Clinton campaign) that his words would come back to haunt him and force him to fire his own minister for these words.

Barack Obama didn't need to be Swift Boated by the Republicans, he was swift boated by his own pastor and church. His pastor's remarks by the way were made on Christmas.

So I end this article with the question, "Where was Barack's Judgement when he hired his pastor to work on his own campaign?"

He may have had the judgement to gamble successfully on the Iraq resolution before he had any power, but he doesn't seem to have had good judgement when it came to some of the people close to him including his pastor. It would appear that Barack Obama's judgement can be just as flawed as our current President who is also known to consult with bigoted pastors and preachers. The thing is that Barack's perceived judgement was the thing that supposedly qualified him for office. When that judgement is proven to be flawed, Barack has nothing left. No experience and now no judgement what's left to run on?

Barack Obama would like to argue that he (Barack) is not guilty by association with Wright, but Wright has played a fundamental role in Barack's life personally, politically and even influenced Barack's famous book.

Days like this make me wish I had focused more on tech blogging subjects instead of politics. If this weren't so important, I'd almost rather talk about an unlocked phone or something rather than have to get down in the dirt with bigots and racists.

Technorati tags: Barack Obama guilty by association, Obama Judgement flawed over Wright, Religion and Politics and Bigotry, America doesn't need another religious fundamentalist in the White House

Obama Fires His Minister

After a full day of the news playing video of Barack Obama's personal and campaign minister shouting "God Damn America" from the pulpit, Barack Obama first said that the comments were just words, then he stated that he repudiated the words of an old man like an old uncle, and then he must have decided that the words were either bad or that they were bad for politics and he fired Reverend Jeremiah Wright from his campaign.

For political purposes it was not a moment too soon as more video was surfacing this time, Barack's Minister was attacking Hillary Clinton for being white.

YouTube - Barack Obama's mentor Hillary aint never been called a .....

Controversial minister off Obama's campaign - CNN.com

Things just got a lot more serious for the Barack Obama campaign. As a candidate one of Obama's fundamental flaws has just been exposed. He had a hate monger, paranoid and possible racist influence him and his campaign and now he's been forced to recognize this and fire the person.

Democrats may fear losing Barack Obama at this point. Many Democrats embraced the concept that he was the golden child, but this is not going to play well during the general election with most Americans. This will not win over independents and it will turn off many Democratic voters even that do not want another religious zealot in the White House. Barack might have a better chance at selling HDMI splitters at Circuit City if he has many more skeletons in the closet like this one.

Obama Defends His Church and Pastor 'God Damn America' Sermon

Barack Obama's mentor, pastor and member of his campaign's religious advisory council could be pushing Barack Obama off the deep end.

YouTube - Obama Spiritual Mentor: God Damn America

Obama has attended his church for over 20 years, was married by Jeremiah Wright and even credits the pastor for the title of one of his books. Yet Obama was slow to denounce Wrights support for Louis Farakhan. He has also been very slow to denounce sermons like those featured in this ABC News report where Wright calls for the God (to) Damn America and says that African Americans should not sing God Bless America but instead God Damn America.

Obama's response

I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial.

Wright is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with.

From my perspective, if I had an old uncle that said things like that I'd be able to say that I have a bigot for an uncle and I sure wouldn't seek religious guidance from the person. Besides you can't choose your family, but you can choose your pastor and your church. Obama may have made the right choice on the Iraq War resolution, but he seems to have fallen far short in choosing a church and a pastor every Sunday these last twenty years.

I wouldn't trust this guy to sell me a used Jobox on Ebay let alone guide me, my campaign or my children for that matter.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Celebration in the Clinton House Last Night

Last night the Clintons were almost definitely celebrating Hillary's win in Texas, Ohio and the big state of Rhode Island. Hillary came back from the brink of disaster swinging her arms in circles to restore her balance like a toddler about to fall of a slide. She may not have the momentum to win the final election, but she did live to fight another day.

Here are some of the new realities:

Barack Obama has serious issues exposed (leadership, foreign policy, managing top insiders, & Rezko)
Hillary has big problems as well (Income Taxes and $5 million personal loans spell trouble)
They both have issues closing the deal.

Both parties might even end up with a candidate that could have been coronated last winter, who then almost self destructed only to return into the fray. You might almost wonder if all of this 'come back kid' stuff was scripted.

Noticeably absent from the news cycles lately was Bill Clinton. Maybe the Hillary campaign became a little pragmatic and hired in one of those election consultants that do not know anything about poll results but instead wear thigh high boots to work.

All that said, Chairman Bernanke may end up trumping Democrats. He's now starting to hint at a plan whereby banks would reduce the amount owed on mortgages. If Treasury Secretary Paulson and George Bush sign on to this and the government successfully goes out and reduces mortgages across America by $10k - $100k a house, you are going to see a lot of Americans that might have a change of heart about the current POTUS.

Give people the ability to save their house and light up the real estate boom again. Those are big words. It might not spark speculation and investment properties in areas like Wilmington real estate in North Carolina, but if it saves Ohio and San Francisco watch out.

Television Evangelism- Huckabee's Next Career?

Coming out of the latest Super Tuesday, Mike Huckabee's Presidential campaign is over. It seems unlikely that John McCain will pick him as a Vice President, and that then pushes many of us to speculate about his future.

He doesn't strike me as the type that will retire to Florida and join a wine club and start playing golf every day. If I had to guess, I would say that he is going to return to his roots in evangelism. I would not be surprised at all to see him become a television evangelist or possibly create a subset of the Republican Party to pull Christian Conservatives back to their Christian roots.

Don't get me wrong, I do not see that as a positive thing. Christians have allowed themselves to be led astray by the Bush Administration. They have some hard lessons to learn about politicians that pander. I suspect that one result could be a fraction of the Republican Party. If John McCain becomes President, I could definitely see a schism coming down the road.

Gridlock on Rye