Don't Vote!

Caution: "strong" language, watch at your own risk.

Yay Nader!

We lost Kucinich, but Nader's coming to the rescue:

MR. RUSSERT: Will you run for president as an independent in 2008?

MR. NADER: Let me put it in context, to make it a little more palatable to people who have closed minds. Twenty-four percent of the American people are satisfied with the state of the country, according to Gallup. That's about the lowest ranking ever. Sixty-one percent think both major parties are failing. And, according to Frank Luntz's poll, a Republican, 80 percent would consider voting for a independent this year. Now, you take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut, shut out, marginalized, disrespected and you go from Iraq to Palestine/Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts, getting a decent energy bill through, and you have to ask yourself, as a citizen, should we elaborate the issues that the two are not talking about? And the--all, all the candidates--McCain, Obama and Clinton--are against single payer Health insurance, full Medicare for all. I'm for it, as well as millions of Americans and 59 percent of physicians in a forthcoming poll this April. People don't like Pentagon waste, a bloated military budget, all the reports in the press and in the GAO reports. A wasteful defense is a weak defense. It takes away taxpayer money that can go to the necessities of the American people. That's off the table to Obama and Clinton and McCain.

The issue of labor law reform, repealing the notorious Taft-Hartley Act that keeps workers who are now more defenseless than ever against corporate globalization from organizing to defend their interests. Cracking down on corporate crime. The media--the mainstream media repeatedly indicating how trillions of dollars have been drained and fleeced and looted from millions of workers and investors who don't have many rights these days, and pensioners. You know, when you see the paralysis of the government, when you see Washington, D.C., be corporate-occupied territory, every department agency controlled by overwhelming presence of corporate lobbyists, corporate executives in high government positions, turning the government against its own people, you--one feels an obligation, Tim, to try to open the doorways, to try to get better ballot access, to respect dissent in America in the terms of third parties and, and independent candidates; to recognize historically that great is sues have come in our history against slavery and women rights to vote and worker and farmer progressives, through little parties that never ran--won any national election. Dissent is the mother of ascent. And in that context, I have decided to run for president.
MR. RUSSERT: How would you feel, however, if Ralph Nader's presence on the ballot tilted Florida or Ohio to John McCain and McCain became president, and Barack Obama, the first African-American who had been nominated by the Democratic Party--this is hypothetical--did not become a president and people turned to you and said, "Nader, you've done it again"?

MR. NADER: Not a chance. If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form. You think the American people are going to vote for a pro-war John McCain who almost gives an indication that he's the candidate of perpetual war, perpetual intervention overseas? You think they're going to vote for a Republican like McCain, who allies himself with the criminal, recidivistic regime of George Bush and Dick Cheney, the most multipliable impeachable presidency in American history? Many leading members of the bar, including the former head of the American Bar Association, Michael Greco, absolutely dismayed over the violations of the Constitution, our federal laws, the criminal, illegal war in Iraq and the occupation? There's no way. That's why we have to take this opportunity to have a much broader debate on the issues that relate to the American people, as, as, as a fellow in Long Island said recently, M . Sloane, he said, "These parties aren't speaking to me. They're not speaking to my problems, to my family's problems."

Full Meet the Press Transcript: Counter Punch

Get Involved: Nader for President 2008

Katrina Comparisons Are a Different Class of Wrong

You knew it had to happen.

The moment firefighters began to get an edge on the fires, pundits, bloggers and other gasbags couldn't wait to proclaim San Diego's superiority over New Orleans in government response to disaster.

A writer on the conservative Red State website said the difference, of course, was firm Republican leadership in San Diego.

"New Orleans, on the other hand," said the writer, "was a city on the federal dole dominated by Democrats, racial politics, and the legacy of Huey Long's populist-socialist dreams."

Everybody got that?

Republicans are better at evacuations than Democrats. This seems to be particularly true when the Republicans in question can flee down the highway in Yukons while Democrats wait for buses trapped under water.
. . .
"It's phenomenally better," Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said of the difference in federal response, "because we have been planning and preparing and training together for the last 2 1/2 years."

There you go.

You'd think San Diego's staunch defenders would be thanking New Orleans for making these improvements possible, rather than all but calling the recovering bayou city a jungle filled with savages who got what they deserved.

But we have different classes of people.

Full story: LA Times

Highest Ranking Pro-[Apartheid] Israel PAC Fund Recipients

(Hat tip to CAIR: I love their daily news briefs compilation!)

US House of Representatives: 2006 Cycle

1. Kirk, Mark (R-IL) : $76, 564
2. Ellsworth, Brad (D-IN) : $48, 750
3. Hoyer, Steny (D-MD) : $44,500

US House of Represenatives: Career

1. Berkley, Shelly (D-NV) : $246, 205
2. Frost, Martin (D-TX) : $190, 014
3. Engel, Eliot (D-NY) : $179,918

US Senate: 2006 Cycle

1. Lieberman, Joseph (D-CT) : $127,093
2. Nelson, Bill (R-FL) : $89,861
3. Kyl, Jon (R-AZ) : $87,000
   

US Senate: Career

1. Levin, Carl (D-MI) : $658,887
2. Harkin, Tom (D-IA) : $520,950
3. Specter, Arlen (R-PA) : $489,973

Source: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

We wonder why the US is unable to faciliate peace in the Middle East - I think it might have something to do wtih the fact that American politicians are selling their souls to Apartheid advocates.

Thank you Cindy Sheehan. Thank you for reminding me why I've always hesitated when it came to voting Democrat.

I was frightened out of ever voting for a third party, or an independent candidate, but voting out of fear is one of the things that bestowed us with the Bush crime mob and may give us the Republican, if not in party affiliation, Hillary Clinton.

I was a lifelong Democrat only because the choices were limited. The Democrats are the party of slavery and were the party that started every war in the 20th century, except the other Bush debacle. The Federal Reserve, permanent federal income taxes, not one but two World Wars, Japanese concentration camps, and not one but two atom bombs dropped on the innocent citizens of Japan -- all brought to us via the Democrats.

Read on at: SF Chronicle

Get it on . . .

. . . in the voting booth!

The Ingredients: Council on American Islamic Relations, Muslim American Society, the Leftie in me, my experiences as a Union organizer, my experience as a higher education advocate, those annoying campaign phone calls AND http://theballot.org/2006/ca.

The Product:
People
Governor: Peter Camejo (Green)
Lietenant Governor: Tom McClintock (Republican, I know can you believe it?)
Secretary of State: Debra Bowen (Democrat)
Controller: John Chiang (Democrat)
Treasurer: Bill Lockyer (Democrat)
Attorney General: Michael Wyman (Green)
Insurance Commissioner: Lary Cafiero (Green)
Member State Board of Equalization: Judy Chu (Democrat)
United States Senator: Marsha Feinland (Peace and Freedom)
United States Representative: Jim Brandt (Democrat)
Member of the State Assembly: Betty Karnette (Democrat)
State Measures
1A: NO
1B: NO
1C: YES
1D: YES
1E: YES
83: NO
84: YES
85: NO
86: YES
87: YES
88: NO
89: YES
90: NO

Make sure to get your sticker after voting? :-)