a great week for democrats

the democrats have just had a wonderful convention full of great speeches, including speeches by barack and michelle obama, hillary and bill clinton, ted kennedy, al gore, and many other democratic leaders. the so-called internal divisions of the party turned out to be nothing but media hype, as all the leading democrats united behind the common cause of electing barack obama president, with hillary clinton leading the call for unity. personally, i can say that while my emotions during the primaries and caucuses this year got heated and at times i felt hatred towards hillary clinton, i can now honestly say that i like her again, just like i did when i first voted for her as my senator in the year 2000. and i support barack obama more strongly than ever before, although i do not have any money at my disposal to donate, given my personal financial crisis. perhaps i will be able to volunteer my time on his behalf in some way, although i work evenings on monday thru friday and that is the prime volunteering time for political campaigns. i was amazed to find john mccain nominate a young, inexperienced ultra-right-wing-extremist creationist nra member who supported pat buchanan in the 2000 election and happens to be female. john mccain was using experience as his trump card to attack barack obama, and now it seems mccain will be putting someone with zero foreign policy experience a cardiac arrest away from the presidency. this is especially concerning given the fact that john mccain is very old and has had cancer in the past which could return at any moment. not that i trust john mccain’s judgment at all... i distrust him completely. but his vice-presidential pick is an ultra-right-wing radical whose radicalism is disguised by her being a nice, friendly woman. however, she has basically the same views as ann coulter, another woman about the same age who is a lot more forthcoming about her ludicrous half-baked ultra-right-wing opinions. so while barack obama has surrounded himself with experts and people with plenty of experience, john mccain has surrounded himself with brainwashed idealogues with no clue what they are doing. mccain has attacked obama for being a so-called celebrity, comparing him to britney spears and paris hilton. it seems like john mccain is not taking this election seriously at all, and thinks that everything is one big joke. he sure isn’t talking about any of the issues, except for drilling for oil; every time mccain speaks he seems to be on an offshore oil platform, since he loves hanging out on them so much. obviously mccain is closely tied to the oil industry just like bush and cheney, both former oil executives. but mccain seems to be badly mismanaging his campaign. if you remember a year ago, john mccain was doing terribly with his campaign, and fired everyone, and was very low in the polls against fellow republicans. he won his party’s nomination not because of his campaign workers, but in spite of their incompetence, through the power of his name recognition (he is the real celebrity, let’s be honest here), his “maverick” image, his “war hero” status as a former p.o.w., and the fact that all his republican opponents were quite unimpressive and unelectable. mitt romney, the mormon, was not trusted by the religious right, and had flip-flopped on many issues. mike huckabee, the fundamentalist preacher, went off-script too much and was not trusted by the wealthy business wing of the republican party. rudy giuliani, the centrist who cheated on his wife and divorced and remarried a lot, had zero appeal to the religious right, and his campaign strategy of only campaigning in florida turned out to be the worst campaign strategy any major presidential candidate has ever had in united states history. fred thompson, the hollywood actor, was so boring he put everyone to sleep. and ron paul, the libertarian, frightened all the republicans with his opposition to the iraq war and his pledges to legalize victimless crimes. in the end, john mccain was the only candidate that was palatable to the republican party as a whole, and his life story helped him out, as well as polls that showed he would do much better than any of the other republicans in matchups against hillary clinton, barack obama, or john edwards. so john mccain did not really have to try that hard to get the nomination; all his opponents basically self-destructed without him having to do anything. and since then he has proven himself to be utterly hapless unless the media are all cheerleading for him like they have done for years. john mccain only met alaska governor sarah palin once before deciding to have her as his vice presidential nominee. i doubt he even took part in the selection process, although given the completely insane result, he probably did make the final decision himself. joe biden, on the other hand, was clearly the most qualified candidate among everyone barack obama was considering, and that includes hillary clinton. let us say for instance that barack obama is elected president and, heaven forbid, some neo-nazi type who hates black people manages to assassinate him; thanks to the sound judgment of barack obama, joe biden, a man with many years of experience and great expertise in both foreign and domestic policy, who knows very well how to work with congress, will be the new president. and in the much more preferable scenario in which barack obama himself is president for 8 years, he would have a very experienced and loyal sidekick in joe biden. joe biden has led the foreign relations committee in the senate the whole time barack obama was in the senate, and barack obama was in that committee the whole time too, and they know each other quite well from working together there. it is nothing like john mccain picking sarah palin, who he only met once before deciding to pick her. this reckless and foolhardy behavior of john mccain shows he does not have the judgment or temperament to be commander-in-chief, as he is prone to making rash and stupid decisions without consulting people who know better. john mccain graduated 5th from the bottom of his class and had countless demerits in the navy, and he decided to leave the navy to pursue a career in politics because everyone including him knew that he was not officer material, unlike his father and grandfather. and we can see john mccain’s respect for women in the fact that he called his current wife a “cunt” in front of reporters, and how he cheated on and then divorced his first wife after coming home from vietnam and finding out she was permanently injured in a car accident. and of course both wives were beauty queens, and the second one was also incredibly wealthy, so he married her for the money. now john mccain thinks that by nominating an anti-abortion right-wing former beauty queen who is young and inexperienced as his running mate, he can get the supporters of the pro-abortion left-wing former first lady and senator from new york, hillary rodham clinton. he thinks that women are that stupid, that emotional, that naive, to just vote for whoever picks a female running-mate, without looking at who is qualified and where the candidates stand on the issues. i have news for john mccain: most women are not idiotic former beauty queens like the women he hangs out with, and most women will support barack obama. this desparate ploy by him will not work at all, and in fact it will completely backfire and be the downfall of his misguided and misbegotten campaign for a job that no republican deserves at a time like this when the republicans have almost completely ruined our once great nation. and the democrats have done a spectacular job all week driving home the message that bush = mccain = very bad. we will continue to drive this message home, because it is the truth, and people need to know it. and we will succeed, mccain will lose, and obama will win. i am not the only person who thinks mccain is out of his mind with this crazy vice presidential pick: even some cnn pundits agree. john mccain is obviously desperate and willing to try anything to win, and not thinking clearly. let us hope, for the sake of our country, and indeed the world, that john mccain continues to have trouble thinking clearly, and manages to lose just as badly as he lost in the year 2000. i do not think that we need to worry too much about this though, as obama is now almost guaranteed victory in november.

in prague

i went to vienna, austria a while back (with plane stops in detroit, michigan and amsterdam, netherlands on the way) and i was in vienna for over a week but now i am in prague, czech republic (got here 2 days ago) and will be going back to vienna later today and then in a few days we (parents & i) will go to budapest, hugary for 3 days and then back to vienna. i will be home in 10 days or something like that. anyway, the C.O.N.S.P.I.R.A.C.Y. has been keeping me off all of their internets, but i found an internet at the hotel here in prague that is free for all the customers to use. the big CON can’t keep me offline! i am a 1337 h@x0r! i can haz internets? anyway, the main point of the big trip to vienna is to visit my sister and her husband and baby and dog, and they will be accompanying us to budapest (but they did not come to prague with us). in less than 2 weeks i will be back in amerika (i think that is how the german-speaking people all spell it). i do not know much of what has been going on lately, although this bosnian serb leader radavan karadic or whatever he is called seems to have been taken to prison and is being put on trial, and it is less than 100 days until barack obama defeats john mccain in the general election back in the states. the czech republic has a weird slavic language which means it is nothing like english, and hungary has a weird finno-ugric language which is even less like english. german is a germanic language just like english, and the romance languages like french, spanish, italian, portuguese, romanian, and latin are all kind of like english too. i am lucky my mom knows hungarian. and almost everyone in the czech republic knows english, or maybe just all the people involved in the tourism industry in prague. my parents both know german and so does my sister and her husband. i only know english and some spanish. ich nicht sprache deutch. so austria is kinda hard for me since my parents talk in german all the time to all the “good germans” known as austrians (who had absolutely nothing to do with the nazis and their fellow austrians like adolf hitler and adolf eichmann) and i don’t get to talk much english with the locals there. at least in the czech republic i am on an almost equal footing with my parents, except my mom has some small advantage, since czech has some words in common with hungarian for some odd reason. anyway, the big CON is back to forcibly remove me from accessing their precious internets. the precioussss! smigel wantsssss it! praise “bob”! “bob” bless america, my home sweet home. now i am off to visit a giant castle in prague up on top of a very high hill on the other side of the river (the west side, cuz ya know it’s the best side). then back on a train to vienna this afternoon around 5 pm (it is around 11:30 am here). prague is like the biggest tourist trap in the world. at the restaraunt last night there were pretzels sitting on all the tables that looked free, but each one cost the equivalent of 3 american dollars (or 2 euros). they try to trick you into thinking their money is worthless, but the czech kronen is worth 1/15 of a dollar or 1/25 of a euro, so you have to do the math to figure out the prices in this strange tourist trap called prague (the only major city in europe that was never destroyed by war).