Joshua Davis

Website: http://jdavis.info

Bio:

Warner Supports Predatory Credit Card Lenders

Here is my letter I wrote to Mark Warner on his vote against introducing legislation to cap the maximum interest rate credit card companies can charge on balances to fifteen percent. Thank you Jim Webb for voting on the side of ordinary Virginians.

Senator Mark Warner

I am very disappointed to see that you voted against S.Amdt. 1062 to S.Amdt. 1058 to H.R. 627, introducing a maximum interest rate for credit cards. Many of the credit card companies are behaving like loan sharks, preying on people who cannot afford such high rates. These high interest rates harm the economy in the long run because money that could go to small business, manufacturing industries, and even basic needs like food, is instead filling up the coffers of the largest financial institutions in America. When I voted for you and Barack Obama last November it was to see change, including the end of corporate dominance over issues that affect Americans on a daily basis. Sincerely, Joshua Davis

The Sunday Evening Post

Is Right Wing Religious Conservatism Dead?
This Sunday’s Washington Post wonders if the Christian right is dead. According to the article there is a disgruntlement over how many comprises evangelicals have had to make for the Republican party.

While the evangelical movement certainly is not dead, they are most likely going to soon realize that religous beliefs should not be dictated by the government. Besides being an impossible campaign to fight (despite decades of opposing civil rights on religious grounds, blacks are now able to marry whites despite “God intending this not be so.”), their campaigns to prevent gay marriage, abortion, and Islam from “destroying America,” will be a lost battle. They’ve realized that the best way to counter social change is not government mandates, but rather telling people their “truth” in much the same way that Jesus preached to those who wanted to listen, but refrained from getting government involved in religion.

Please Mr. President, Keep the RIAA Away
President Obama, you vowed to keep the powerful special interests and lobbyists of Washington at bay. So why are you filling your administration with RIAA insiders? These insiders appear to be influencing policy as the Department of Justice recently announced $150,000 for each pirated track. Thankfully the copyright czar position remains vacant, so hopefully there can be an appointee to balance out the big media interest

No More Blue States and Red States
My family is far from rich, and most of the time we’re defiantly not poor either. But we do have to scrape by sometimes. Apparently former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee thinks otherwise. He says us in Northern Virginia don’t have to worry about next months paycheck. There goes the Republicans with their red state blue state politics. Huckabee is out there trying to get folks in the more southern areas of Virginia to see us Northern Virginians as rich elitists who vote Democratic, and thus by being associated with “rich” people the Democrats are only for the rich.

In fact the opposite is true. Republicans are the party for the wealthy, it was under their watch that people like Madoff were able to rip investors off, and companies like Citigroup and Countrywide were allowed to prey on the poor and minorities. Huckabee, and Republicans should be talking about the real issues. They should admit they made mistakes during their years in power, and vow to make corrective actions so those mistakes are not made again.

The Sunday Evening Post: Pens and Paper Edition

No Lights Out in My Neighboorhood

I just cheated on something that was completely voluntary. As I write this using pen and paper during Earth Hour, when my lights are supposed to be out, my work is fully illuminated. This isn’t because my Republican neighbors are staging some sort of protest, but rather because the federal agency behind my house doesn’t want to turn it’s lights off. At 8:30 on a Saturday evening I’m sure security guards are the only ones working at the building. Which makes me think,why does their entire parking lot need to be brightly illuminated at such hours when no one will be working anyways? Global warming can only be solved if we, organizations, and governments start with small changes like turning out the lights when we don’t need them. And that is what Earth Hour was all about, challenging us to think about ways we can help reduce human induced climate change.

Do It For the Kids!

Many people start exploring their sexuality in their teens. While our parent’s generation may have started learning about who they were in meat space, our generation is expressing ourselves through cyberspace. The problem here arises when prudish prosecutors decide to go after teens and charge them with felonies for “creating and distributing child porn.” This definitely shouldn’t be encouraged because these photos, even if just intented for a boyfriend or girlfriend, will soon make their way to a site were pedophiles congregate. But in the meantime these kids need help learning to express their sexuality in ways that protect themselves. We talked a little about this in last weeks Sunday Evening Post, but this week comes news that the ACLU is helping teen girls by defeding them against prosecuturs trying to get them charged as felons and put on sex offenders lists.

Cross posted on my personal blog.

The Sunday Evening Post: Censorship Edition

Internet Censorship Comes to the Western World

The Internet Is such a powerful tool for exposing those who do wrong, and everyone from the suburban mother to the Chinese government realizes that. Australia also seems to know that and is preparing a blacklist that that blocks a government accountability website, WikiLeaks. The reason for the block is that WikiLeaks exposes government website censorship lists, which in turn list out sites containing illegal porn. There is absolutely no reason to block WikiLeaks if their web filters work correctly, just because there’s a list somewhere of banned websites doesn’t give anyone inside Australia a magic key to get past their filter.

GOP Wants Execs to Keep Multimillion Bonuses

There’s been a huge firestorm over the million dollars bonuses executives and others associated with AIG have received. The Republicans have been steady lambasting Democrats, especially Chris Dodd, in an attempt to make them look like corporate cronies. But when it came to doing something about the reckless bonuses the majority of House Republicans voted to let AIG executives keep over $200 million of taxpayers money.

Obama Administration Really Understands Energy

Six people in the Obama administration don’t drive cars. Presumably they have the funds to acquire a vehicle but have decided that since DC has so many other great ways to get around (Metro, bicycle, walking, and even the dreaded bus) they don’t want a polluting and fattening automobile. It’s great to see that some of the people making energy policy decisions like Carol Browner, the Energy and Environment Czarina and Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy understand that automobiles are a huge part of the global warming problem. Hat tip, CommuterPageBlog.

LaHood Is The Wrong Choice

What was Obama thinking when he picked Ray LaHood as transportation secretary? This man is one of the least qualified to head a department with such an integral role in reducing global warming. Barack Obama has already been under criticism for his roads heavy stimulus package, but the appointment of this man shows the government agency for transportation will be looking towards 1950s solutions to fix the transportation crisis.

Obama recognizes that transportation planning is directly related to global warming and other pollution, so why would he put a man in office that seems to lack such understanding? LaHood has received over 100,000 dollars in donations from energy and automobile interests, such as the Petroleum Marketers Association. A search on Wikipedia has no political experience on any subcommittees related to transit. It is as if Obama has said “Nobody cares about the DOT so lets give the GOP a bone.”

However LaHood has sponsored some legislation that at least shows a minimal effort to look at alternative forms of transit. He cosponsored a bill to recognize the importance of bicycling for health and recreation but it fails to acknowledge a link to cleaner air, plus that’s about the only positive transportation bill he’s sponsored in the past two congresses. However those are outweighed as he also cosponsored a bill supporting using forests for bio fuel, investing in liquid coal (which has been found to be the biggest global warming contributor), and lastly he voted for June 30th to be “National Corvette Day.”

One of the main reasons I was so excited about an Obama administration was that I felt he would change America from an auto-dependent country to one that rivaled Europe in terms of alternatives. While certaintly better than what Bush adminstration has done for alternative transit, this vision is hardly visionary.

100,000 Strong For Obama

Last night I was at the Obama rally in Mananas where 100,000 people showed up to see Barack Obama at his last campaign stop. This morning I was voting, and this afternoon I was volunteering.

The volunteering was perhaps the most interesting part, for one both the Republican and Democratic volunteers were all talking and laughing together (I wonder if the McCain people were actually paid). However the election officers let is slide when Republicans campaigned closer than 40 feet to the polls, but when a Democrat got to close it was back to the 40 foot rule.

Two Thirds of Americans Live in Constitution Free Zone

If you live in a metro area close to an international border like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, or Miami you now live in a constitution free zone. That’s at least what the ACLU says in a new map released which hopes to raise awareness of a little known law passed by congress after 9/11 that allows the Department of Homeland Security to set up immigration checkpoints within 100 miles of a border, and that includes the oceans.

In the meantime Homeland Security has set up at least 33 checkpoints deep inside the United States. They have at least two cited two incidents in which a San Diego music professor with an all American name, Craig Johnson, and a San Diego retiree who with his wife, were stopped by the authorities on a road east of San Diego, at least 15 miles from the U.S. border. In other instances people using purely domestic ferries in Oregon were searched by border patrol agents.

This is clearly a violation of the fourth amendment because the border exception was meant to only protect borders, it never was meant to allow two thirds of Americans to be covered in a zone where at any moment federal border agents could demand to search your vehicle and see your passport.

Virginia Bans Partisan Clothing

There have been emails circulating recently that warn supporters of Barack Obama not to wear anything related to him to the polls on election day because they will be turned away. Well Virginia has clarified this and the State Board of Elections has banned “Clothing, hats, buttons or other paraphernalia that directly advocates the election or defeat of a specific candidate or issue.”

Just to play it safe no matter where you vote, don’t wear any clothing that might lead to being banned.

What do you think of this, is this a violation of free speech or is it better to make sure voters are not influenced by peer pressure?

[poll id="20"]

Chevron Realizes Transit is Good For the Earth

I’ve talked before about the energy and auto industry pretending to be green, but in the end all they encourage consumers to do is nice (and undeniably important) things like recycling and stream cleanups, while they keep pushing their environmentally harmful products like cars. In some instances they even bash using cleaner alternatives like buses.

Well there’s one company that seems to finally understand being clean is more than just buying a low energy light bulb. The company I wish to salute is Chevron, for their ad which simply says “I will leave the car at home more.”

Since I often bash said companies for being anti-transit and anti-urban I thought it would be good to point out one that seems to support alternatives.

Thirteen Cars and Seven Houses?

It looks like John McCain has been caught in another lie, he has previously said he only owns American built cars, but government records show he owns thirteen cars, and two of them are foreign made, one is a Honda, the other is a Volkswagen.

In addition to the foreign made cars, McCain has a lot of gas guzzlers including a 2007 half-ton Ford pickup truck, a 2008 Jeep Wrangler, and a 2001 GMC SUV.

How many cars do the Obama’s own? Just one, a Ford Escape Hybrid. They also own only one house, yet for some reason they still call Obama the elisist and McCain the workingmans man.

Not Change

McCain is not change, and neither is his wing man, Pallin. Obama is the change candidate, he is the candidate that used the change platform. Since the Republican convention it seems the Same Old Party has been trying to adopt change as it’s new name, with little challenge from Obama (swift boats anyone?). However Barack Obama is now visibly hitting back in an email he sent to supporters this afternoon:

[McCain's] new ad uses what news organizations are calling “naked lies” to reinvent two politicians whose records embody the same culture of corruption and far-right policies we’ve seen from the Bush administration.

The biggest whopper in the ad (that’s still being repeated day after day by McCain and Palin on the campaign trail) is that Governor Palin stopped the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” — in fact, she supported it, and even hired a lobbyist in Washington to get more pork-barrel projects like it.

If the McCain-Palin campaign wants to have a debate about who is prepared to bring the change we need, we’re more than ready.

More than this not being change, the McCain story has been floundering on their experience equals judgment claims too. It seems they can’t use judgment to come up with their own campaign motto’s (the best judgment would be actually joining the progressive platform, not just using it’s campaign language).

McCain Attacks Obama for not Picking Clinton

I shouldn’t be surprise that the straight talk express has jumped the tracks again… but for some reason I am. John McCain has decided to stop talking about the issues and bring up the Obama VP issue. That’s fine if he wants to critique Joe Biden’s stance on issues, but he’s attacking the VP choice of a person who isn’t even selected as the VP:

Republican John McCain launched a new ad Sunday claiming rival Barack Obama passed over Hillary Rodham Clinton as his running mate for “speaking the truth” about his liabilities.

The ad, called “Passed Over,” features a clip of Clinton and repeats criticisms the New York senator made during the Democratic primaries over Obama’s alleged lack of specifics on issues, negative campaign tactics and his relationship with Antoin Rezko, a former Obama fundraiser convicted in June on corruption charges.

I’m sure the campaign made two ads in preparation for his announcement. One of them is the one we’re talking about right now. The other would be seeking to disenfranchise the Democratic yet Hillary haters while at the same time mobilizing the anti-Hillary Repulblicans.

Is this what American politics has come to, when one party won’t run on it’s own failing platform, but instead chooses to divide another party?

And finally I’d like to say to all the Hillary Clinton supporters, please do vote for Obama, he is way better than McCain who wants to ban pretty much everything (abortion, privacy, safe food, good veterans care and more) except for guns. And if you can’t bring yourself to vote for someone who supports what you believe in, please at least vote for someone who supports what both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama stand for.

Remember, ThinkYouth will be covering the 2008 Democratic National Convention live from Denver next week.

Conservatives Stoop To New Lows With Obamageddon

The celebrity ads where bad enough, now Republicans want to claim Barack Obama is the Antichrist. In an email from the conservative Townhall.com they reinforce the hidden message in McCain’s “Messiah” ad:

Big media is swooning over him like love-sick teenagers. People are acting as if he’s the greatest celebrity on Earth or even some sort of cult leader — the “Obamamessiah.”

The Carpetbagger Report and other progressive blogs talked about this connection a week ago:

The McCain campaign may be playing on evangelical fears of, believe it or not, the Antichrist. The argument made the rounds a few days ago, and was elevated to a national issue by Time’s Amy Sullivan yesterday, who noted that the ad’s suggestion of Obama as the Antichrist might actually make the Willie Horton ads “seem benign” by comparison.

Now I don’t know which is worse, the juvenile insults or that conservatives would actively bend our scriptures to deceive the public about a very important subject. Revelation, the book of the Bible that talks about Armageddon warns against adding and taking from this message. If they really believe that Obama is the Antichrist they need to come out and say it, otherwise evangelicals need to stop playing games with religion.

But why would conservatives even go down this path? It’s because McCain is not a presidential candidate that advertises his religion on the billboards. So to compensate they must throw lies out, accusing him of being a Muslim, the Antichrist, et cetera, to make McCain seem more Christan.

This shows that the conservative evangelicals establishment puts their politics (low taxes, “fortress America,” discrimination…) over their faith.

Is Bush to Blame for the Georgian War?

For the past several days there’s been heavy fighting in Georgia, particularly in the break away region of South Ossietia. But could Bush administration policies be to blame for the quick escalation in tensions that lead to all out war?

In 2002 special forces trained Georgian troops to fight in the Chechnya region, as part of his war on terror. Georgian forces received further training prior to the 2003 US violation of the “territorial integrity” of Iraq. The government has also received over $150 million in US aid for security purposes, and that’s on top of nearly $300 million for “effective governance.”

But why would Bush care so much about this tiny eastern European country? For one a major oil pipeline that skips both Russia and Iran runs through this country, supplying oil from the black sea to western countries. Secondly this conflict stems from the cold war, and feelings over the sphere of influence.

McCain meanwhile used the same strong arm tactics that sparked the conflict in the first place. He called for Russia to be removed from the G8, and said that Russia should immediately halt it’s military operations, while mentioning nothing of Georgia halting it’s action. While Russia should defiantly be condemned for jumping into another nations internal conflicts, it should be noted that the Georgian president activated his shiny new American trained army to begin fighting rebels in the province of South Ossetia.

Barack Obama meanwhile called on restraint from both sides, while also siding with an American ally. He made this statement, “I reiterate my call for Russia to stop its bombing campaign, to stop flights of Russian aircraft in Georgian airspace, and to withdraw its ground forces from Georgia.”

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