Newsflash: Hawaii is Part of the United States

Have you ever heard of Hawaii, the birthplace of Barack Obama and home of his grandparents? It was recently admitted as the newest state in the United States......in 1959!! Give me a break. Next week, Hawaii will celebrate its 49th year as a state. John McCain was 22 years old in 1959. You'd think he would have heard the big news. Apparently not.

The new mantra in the McCain campaign, being repeated by anyone even remotely related to the candidate, is that McCain is the only patriot in this presidential race, the only candidate who truly cares about this country, the only candidate who is an American citizen. The campaign is actually trying to imply in several different ways on several different fronts that Barack Obama is technically not an American, that he has some kind of allegiance to another country and that he is just not to be trusted to come down on the side of America if some kind of skirmish were to break out.

McCain's latest ads have taken a real patriotic bent http://www.mahalo.com/John_McCain_Patriot_Ad.

If you listen to Joe Lieberman describing the attributes of his buddy, John McCain, you would think that McCain has been sitting in on every foreign policy strategy meeting with Bush, Cheney, Condi and Gates. He and McCain also imply that while McCain has his finger on the pulse of Russia's new push to become the equivalent of the old Soviet Union, Barack Obama is a nice guy, but he doesn't know squat when it comes to what's really going on in the rest of the world.

The truth is that McCain's chief advisor on the region that includes the country of Georgia is none other than lobbyist Randy Scheuneman, who until very recently was working directly with Georgian president Mikheil Saakachvili and negotiating energy deals with the strategically located country. I wonder what caused McCain to ask us to consider that we're all Georgians in spirit. Instead of sounding like he'll call out the entire cavalry to bust into Russia and take care of business if they don't back off, maybe he should tell the truth, if he even actually knows it, that Georgia actually provoked the attack by having its military enter South Ossetia, which technically is a province of Georgia, but whose citizens consider themselves part of Russia and where the Russian Army was guarding the border at the time.

The bottom line is that I wouldn't be shocked to find out that somehow McCain through his lobbyist representative actually encouraged Georgia to make a military move believing that the US would have its back. McCain's response and rhetoric over this military aggression on both sides has been way out of proportion for a presidential candidate, and I am unhappy that Barack, whose comments have conversely been appropriate for a presidential candidate and demonistrating a much better understanding of the current events on the ground, may appear to be relatively unprepared because he's not, like McCain, looking and talking like he's ready to command the troops himself and march them right into Russia to take care of business.

I am at this moment at a loss as to how to counteract the bluster and over-the-top posturing that is currently coming out of the McCain campaign, not to mention the deceptive lies that are a major part of its advertising strategy, but something must be done. John McCain and his surrogates are so very full of it, and I think the only way to contrast his lack of preparedness with Obama's skillful leadership and mastery of the issues that will actually benefit Americans, the kind of change that Americans are yearning for, is to have difficult questions put to McCain every day. Questions from Barack, questions from the media (presuming McCain will actually answer their questions if they ask him something more difficult than how are you feeling patriotic today?) and challenging every misstatement, mischaracterization and outright lie that comes out of his mouth or anybody working on his behalf.

Let's get to it! In the meantime, go visit our newest state, Hawaii. Get there before the word gets out that it's kind of tropical and very pretty.