NithinCoca.com

I trust Barack to make the right choice.

That being said, I’m a little scared of the chattering classes in DC.

Evan Bayh? Tim Kaine? Bleh.

Obama needs a reinforcing pick, not a Joe Lieberman esque attempt to fill-in-the-holes.

So, Barack, in my opinion, you have to do what Bill Clinton did - a reinforcing pick. And there is only truly one I can think of, so here, I am announcing my top choice for Barack Obama vice president.

Ready?

It’s a Governor. From a large square state, who’s a proven outsider and knows to win, with popularity, in a red bastion.

Figured it out?

No, it’s not Kathleen Sebelius, though I would be happy with her. I want Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana.

Schweitzer would be a superb, reinforcing pick. He represents change from out west, a down to earth, incredibly popular and effective Governor of a deep red state that could actually go for Barack. What more, he speaks Arabic and knows the middle east intimately, having lived there. He won’t overshadow Barack on foreign policy (he was agains the war from the beginning) and will be an effective Governing partner.

The big negative is his support for liquid coal, but we’ll get over that. So Obama, I hope that you are truly playing it close to heart, and that you will not listen to the chattering class and pick a true VP. Not Kaine, not Biden, not the worst of them all, Evan Bayh. Let’s aim high - and really change the Democratic party. Governor Brian Schweitzer. Our next Vice President.

I remember 9/11 well. I was 18. I was heading of to college, about to, for the first time ever, live away from home. I’d decided to move to California, halfway across the country from my hometown of Overland Park, Kansas, and on 9/11, me and my dad were halfway to California. We were in Flagstaff, Arizona, actually, on a quick stopover to visit the Grand Canyon.

That morning I turned on the TV to check ESPN. Instead, I found out the world I’d be entering college into a world completely different than the one I’d graduated high school from. The first thought on my mind as I saw the twin towers in flames - “please, let it not be Arab terrorists.”

I want you all to think for a second - on those first few days, when America was twisted inside out. I knew about the Japanese internments during World War II, of the history of slavery and subsequent Jim Crow segregation that had only ended when my dad was my age. As a brown American, not of Arab origin, but fully aware of the fact that most Americans could not tell the difference, I honestly wondered for a few days whether America would accept me anymore.

Fear gripped me.

Osama Bin Laden. He was everywhere. Terrorism had become communism of our era. My generation now had it’s JFK moment. Fear was pervasive, onmipresent. Not far from where me and my dad spent the following night, September 12th, at a hotel where the receptionist’s eyes were glued to pictures of Bin Laden on the news, Balbir Singh, a Sikh-American, was murdered in an hate crime for refusing to remove his turban.

It could very easily have been me. That was the world those days.

More below the fold

(more…)

12 1/2 months ago, I stepped foot on American soil for the first time in over a year. I wasn’t wearing a flag lapel pin, and my passport had stamps from some rather unseemly countries (Turkey, the Emirates, Malaysia, to name a few), my hair was long, and I was going to live at home. But I knew then that, even though I had just finished a trip around the world, with experiences that I’m only now starting to understand, I was starting a far grander journey.

The journey to change America.

Last night, we took a powerful first step in that direction.

I travel with a slightly different perspective than most travelers. The world is a patchwork of disparate peoples, each with their own dynamic and fascinating history - and I only wanted to tap into this great collective of knowledge. So I went, from the picturesque battlefields of Gallipoli, where the seeds were planted that led to the great ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia only a decade ago. I visited the remote kingdom of Nepal, where the rapidly changing weather patterns were wreaking havoc on subsidence crops (a precursor to the food crisis today, I now realize).

I realized what power I had - I was from America. Six years of Bush had taken it’s toll on me, but I still believed that I could make a different. I just hadn’t tried hard enough.

Change isn’t easy. And last night, we took our first step towards Change we can believe in, and for the world, an America they can look up to once again. The next step - beating John McCain.

Courtesy Firecrow at DKos.

My voice is croaky from shouting at the Kansas caucus, and trying to get the huge turnout of 1,600 people signed in and organized in a room that was prepared to hold maybe 400 people. It was, I have to say, quite the experience.

States: (bold designates a swing victory)

Barack Obama: Connecticut, Georgia, Alabama, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, North Dakota, Minnesota, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Alaska. TOTAL - 13

Hillary Clinton: Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, California. TOTAL - 8

To Be Called - New Mexico.

Looks like Obama was most of the toss-ups, but the story still remains seems be the almost perfect tie in delegates. All depends on how much ground Obama can make up in California once they stop counting absentee votes (at 25% reporting, both Edwards and Guiliani were at 10%)

Follow the results here.

Fresh from my round the world trip blog, I’ve been working on some articles for a new, hip, budget/cultural travel website. Today, I installed Joomla CMS on the back end and am proud to announce that, within a month, I will be launching a brand new, travel blog.

NithinCoca.com will remain, and become more focused, as a political blog. With the 2008 race heating up, I don’t plan on being left behind. I’m still trying to find my niche, and my growing emphasis on rhetoric will probably end up being the focus, as the television ad wars heat up this fall.

The travel site (tentatively named Coca Travel, at least until Coca-Cola sues me) will also explore politics but in the same fashion that World Trippers did. I won’t be promoting and candidates there, not talking about elections, but about the broader political issues facing this world, such as Censorship, Free Elections, Human Rights, and more.

Anyway, hope you are having a good Saturday. I’ll be watching the NFL tonight (Go Jaguars!) and tomorrow (Go Chargers!).

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

From Nithin Coca

I’ve upgraded to a new server (hosted with Thinkhost, Green web hosting), and redesigned the site, and know I can have some ads up, even! The redesign isn’t complete, and everything hasn’t yet been imported from the old site (still visibible here), but progress is going well.

Some random info

Blog software - wordpress.org

Email Host - Google Apps