The Sunshine Empire

I was just watching Reliable Sources on CNN and the discussion centered around attention-needy child Ralph Nader.  The discussion featured Biggus Rickus’s personal lord and savior Jonah Goldberg, and Goldberg insisted that some of the allure of Barack Obama is white guilt.  Now I think that too much in this Presidential election those who are not for the Illinois Senator do not want to argue the positions like Iraq, the economy, the housing and credit crunch, torture, but more about how creepy they find it that the country is excited about a Democrat and not a Republican.  Those who worship at the alter of Reagan Jesus talk derisively about the cult-like aura of the Obama campaign.  But unlike criticisms on the economy and Iraq, the accusation of white guilt is almost rhetorical.  The person that hurls it does so not expecting any retort that will convince them otherwise.

I am a caucasion and I am a supporter of Senator Obama, and why is it difficult to believe that I am not doing so out of some kind of guilt?  I did not grow up during the Civil War, Jim Crow, or the civil rights movement.  Living in the south I have experienced rank amounts of racism.  After Obama visited our area, local news site firstcoastnews.com was filled with reader comments that seemed right out of 1956 Selma Alabama, yet I don’t think any of this entitles the member of a certain race to the Oval Office.  It’s almost insulting that someone would think you so incapable of making a decision on the next President on the basis of the issues, as they themselves are avoiding those very issues.  Goldberg hedged and said that it was at least fair for it to enter the realm of discussion, but why can’t the actual issues enter the conversation as well.

Watching the roundtable later on The Week,  Hugh Hewitt stated that the country was starting to see Obama flip-flop on issues of campaign financing and debate scheduling, ignoring the more egregious McCain flip-flops on taxes, torture, and immigration.  Yet those issues are so rarely discussed in the “liberal” media.  As I have said before, it is the right that seems to be focusing on crazy black preachers, people saying whitey, liberal white guilt, and not the policy positions in taxation, Iraq, and international diplomacy and terrorism that I and many share with Senator Obama.  They lose overwhelmingly when they bring up these issues after the last seven and a half years, and they are more comfortable voting against a black man if they think he’s acutally the racist one.

3:27 PM me: amazing how diplomacy worked with North Korea

  too bad we can’t do that anywhere else

 Biggus: Indeed.

3:28 PM me: and Bush should get credit for that for the record. I’m into equal time. You saw how I cracked Obama in my post last night

  “Gutless”

 Biggus: I’m sure if we would only enter into five party talks involving a ginormous and influential power with Iran we could totally make this nuclear thing go away.

 me: Russia

3:29 PM China

 Biggus: You think Russia and China have pull with Iran?

 me: both have vested interests in Iran

  Russia does

  China only because they buy their oil

3:30 PM Biggus: Yeah, I don’t really see it as the same thing as a looming neighbor.

  Who, let’s face it, is the only reason you’re still in power in North Korea.

3:31 PM me: But I think Iran and America have more reasons to talk than we did with that little wormy fucker in Pyongyang

3:32 PM I just wanted to type Pyongyang and I actually spelled it right the first time

 Biggus: Perhaps. I just think it unlikely that Ahmadinejad will give over.

  Impressive, by the way.

 me: Ahmadinejad is not in power in Iran

 Biggus: Fine, the mullahs.

 me: as you have often pointed out

 Biggus: Either way.

3:33 PM me:

Khameneihas show the ability to throw MA under the bus

  That’s what I’m calling Ahmadinejad from now on because I don’t want to type it

  MA

 Biggus: How about “The Mad Iranian”.

  It sounds kind of fun.

3:37 PM me: He’s like Chavez, the more tenuous his position, the more he starts the “America sucks” thing because it gets a cheap cheer. It’s like saying, “Saddam sucks” here from 1993-2004

3:38 PM you and I have been through this and I know you disagree, but I think we’d accomplish more by just leaving the fuckers alone

 Biggus: But unlike Chavez he doesn’t have to dismantle a somewhat democratic society, since it hasn’t been one, like, ever.

3:39 PM me: I think the youth would eventually win out. Like 65% of Iran is like under 30

 Biggus: Actually, to an extent I do agree. I just don’t think that leaving them alone includes allowing them to build a nuclear facility.

3:42 PM me: then what?

3:43 PM they bomb Israel once they have a bomb (and a delivery system and miniaturization)?

 Biggus: A bomb would theoretically be sufficient.

 me: They would be willing to destroy the third holiest site in Islam?

3:45 PM Biggus: I was thinking more along the lines of Tel Aviv.

3:52 PM me: They’re not that far away from one another

 Biggus: Far enough that a nuke won’t destroy them both.

3:53 PM me: I think Kim was battier than MA and he sat on his nukes

  They want these things as deterrent from being invaded by us

 Biggus: Oh, the religious nut is always the nuttier nut.

3:54 PM Iran is the macedamia to North Koreas peanut.

 me: What I said earlier aside, if we invaded I could see MA bombing Tel Aviv

  Not a cashew?

 Biggus: I just made my first ever nut metaphor.

3:55 PM Nah, I’m reserving cashews for the next, slightly less nutty middle eastern state.

  Though I think peanuts are not technically nuts.

In conservative circles the elder statesmen have all been predicting that George W. Bush will find some way to bomb Iran before the end of his term.  Norman Podhoretz and Bill Kristol seem to be absolutely gleeful, but the buzz has been that Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert has been pushing very hard to get Bush to attack Tehran.  Now those who feel that the effort in Iraq and the drumbeat for Iran is an effort to protect Israel are sometimes painted as anti semitic.  Now this site is for the protection of Israel as they are the one true democracy in the region, but should we fight all of their wars for them?  They seemed pretty effective in kicking everyone’s asses that have tried to attack them.  But how much of this current push is the tail wagging the dog with Olmert?

When Bill Clinton would launch military endevours, the Republicans always insisted that it was purely to distract from his domestic peccadilloes.  Olmert is very unpopular in Israel and he is barely holding onto his job as Defense Minister Ehud Barak has been demanding his resignation.  If Barak was to become Prime Minister again, and Senator Obama were to win the Presidency, you could see an Ehud Barak, Barack Obama summit.  Many even in Israel believe that Olmert’s peace efforts and his insistence that the U.S. fight a war for them is simply a diversion from his ongoing corruption investigation that means his reign will come to an end soon.  I just feel that the neocons should put away the Astroglide and realize the political realty of the situation.  If Bush launches an attack against Iran after the November election he will find himself ceremonially impeached.  He lacks the power to declare war under the constitution and the Democratic congress will not give him a blank check like the Republicans did in 2003 (the Democrats laid down like the bitches they were for the record.)

Conservatives have undergone a slow shift on the amount of importance they attribute to following the letter of the law, or understanding the realities of a particular unique situation.  In the 1990’s they impeached a popular President on the basis of lying to a grand jury about a personal situation that had no bearing on his job as chief executive of the Executive Branch.  They said that the law was the law and any breaking of it was to be punished no matter the mitigating circumstances.

Yet when the specter of terrorism on the Homeland appeared in late 2001, the President went to telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T and demanded that they break the law.  Both the aforementioned broke the law, but companies like Quest rightly said no to the request to violate the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.  Now some can argue that it was needed to protect the Homeland during a time of unprecedented perilous peril, but the innocent has no need of immunity and what they did was break the law.  Political passions take a back seat to the steadily eroding civil liberties in this coutry.  Now many Senators have stood up to this and are still planning to, such as Russ Fiengold and Chris Dodd.  Yet some inexplicably have decided to throw in the towel, like presumptive Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama.  Now many around the net have already pilloried the Senator for a flip-flop worth paying attention to, but I felt the need to go on record due to the praise that we have given the Senator in the past.  The move was gutless pure and simple.  The press will continue to focus on a bogus flip-flop with the public financing dust up, and keep ignoring Senator McCain’s even more politically egregious flops like on Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy and the religious right.

With some many policy differences, this is a rare political agreement between Senators McCain and Obama in this campaign.

Plans have been finalized for our second annual Sunshine Empire Pacific Conference as part of the larger RogerCon West 2008.  We along with Biggus Rickus and Jolemite will converge on Portland Oregon during the August 15th through August 18th weekend.  This will also mark the first full RogerCon to take place away from the East Coast.  We’ll have total coverage and we look forward to what promises to be a great West Coast weekend.

Watching This Week’s political round table and I am just amazed at how poor a job the “liberal media” is doing. The last handful of election cycles have had Republicans banking on mountains more cash then Democrats but now that the mountain is on the blue side of the aisle the issue of fairness has reared it’s head. On a questionnaire more than a year ago Senator Obama indicated that he would want to take public financing for the general election if the Republican nominee did. Much like President Bush and most candidates now regardless of party, Barack Obama opted out of the public financing for the primary season and has raised an obscene amount of cash which helped him win the most competitive Democratic primary since 1972. Senator McCain opted out of the system at the beginning of the primaries, then found he was losing badly so opted back in. He then used the hope of public financing to secure a $5 million loan, then promptly opted back out of the system even though the Chairman of the Federal Elections Commission stated he could not.  For Washington glory you do what you have to do.

Now once Obama was assured of the nomination he indicated that he would opt into the public system if McCain would refuse and regulate the use of 527 Swift Boat bullshit groups that McCain’s own landmark campaign finance legislation was meant to regulate, and McCain refused. McCain essentially told Obama that he would refuse to abide by rules that he himself had put into legislation. For that reason Obama decided to legally opt out of that system and suddenly it’s Obama that’s the flip-flopper in this race. Senator McCain was against offshore drilling just weeks ago until him and his fancy-boy Charlie Crist flip-flopped. Senator McCain was against the Bush tax cuts for the top 1% of wage earners when the country had a $155 billion budget surplus because we just didn’t have the money, and has flip-flopped into supporting them being made perminant now that we have a $300 billion deficit. Senator McCain called Jerry Fallwel and “agent of intolerence,” but then flip-flopped and was washing the man’s feat before he passed away, yet it is Senator Obama that is “ruining his brand” in the words of Bush staffer Matthew Dowd with a “flip-flop.” I’m starting to worry that liberals might have lost control of the media.

The political round table on This Week misses the point that the average American voter probably thinks that American Presidential campaigns are sponsered by Ford and Nike. They themselves even point out correctly that Senator Obama outspent Hillary Clinton almost three-to-one in places like Pennsylvania and still lost big time. So money is not the cure-all. Yet as we have said before, the money indicates where the passion is this election cycle and the fact is if McCain was raking it in at the level that Obama is you are a fool if you think he would do something different than what Barack is doing.

Senator Obama has come to The Sunshine Empire and happened to stage his press event adjacent to the offices of TSE’s chief political adviser.  Our chief political adviser met with Senator Obama and we thank both Senators in the Presidential election for making The Sunshine Empire a priority in the campaign.

Presumptive Democratic Party Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama of Illinois speaks on the banks of the St. Johns River.

Only the true Chili Peppers fan is aware of the brilliance of One Hot Minute.  This song is 1995 for me.