myspace message from adam entitled "My Mind Has Just Been Fucking Blown"

"An analysis of the National Election Study exit poll data by Harvard political scientist Barry Burden showed that only 9% of the people who thought Nader was the best candidate actually voted for him. If people had not voted strategically, but instead voted for their favorite candidate, Nader would have had over 30 million votes instead of 2.9 million and might have won the election"

The full Barry Burden study is on line(PDF), but it's 23 pages long, and written by a political scientist at Harvard....so it's very fucking boring. I took this from the Draft Nader Page. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Oh, and a reminder, that's 30 million votes for a guy who spent about 80 million less than the other two candidates and wasn't in the debates. Which leads to think....maybe he should have run as a Democrat.

my mind has similarly been blown ... like, to pieces.

Green on Gore ...

Harsh words from the Green Party directed at leftist Gore supporters ...

It was under the Clinton/Gore administration that Depleted Uranium weaponry was first authorized. It was under was the Clinton/Gore administration that 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi children died from the sanctions, which is still a greater death toll than the Bush administration, although the Bushies are catching up quickly.

The Clinton/Gore administration first authorized "extraordinary rendition" and signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act which has further consolidated the corporate media, which is, in my opinion the biggest risk to democracy we face today. Let us also not forget "Welfare Reform" and the "War On Drugs", both an attack on poor people. Clinton/Gore again.

Then let us not forget that Gore actually won the 2000 election and instead of standing up for those who voted for him, including the 90,000 illegally purged from the voting rolls, Al Gore told the Congressional Black Cacaus to "sit down and be quiet", as noted in the Michael Moore movie Farenheight 9-11.

The WTO protests of Seattle in 1999 were targeting the policies of the Clinton/Gore administration. This includes signing up for NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, the IMF, massive give-a-ways of public land to the Mining Industries and of large tracts of our forests to the Lumber Industries.

None of this was mentioned in his cute little film. Instead of targeting the corporate responsibility for the crisis of global warming, he tells us what "we little people" can do. Buy a Prius, change a light bulb etc, not what General Motors should be forced to do. Just us "little people" changing bulbs etc. He also obviously did not target the policies started under his vice-presidency. No talk of NAFTA or corporate globalization in his movie.

Al Gore is a well packaged, corporate friendly "environmentalist." Al Gore is a "green-washed" corporate prostitute who has been green-washed just as surely as British Petroleum or any other corporate polluter. My fullest apologies to prostitutes for comparing you to Al Gore.

Now that is really an "inconvenient truth" and I can guarantee that this is something you will never hear from the Sierra Club, Dennis Kucinich or any of the local versions of him here in Minnesota. That is another "inconvenient truth."

In other words, wake up people. Pay attention to the actions instead of the words. You are being lied to, again.

Right on Ralph!!

Make them Sweat the Big Stuff

A society reveals its values, priorities and distribution of power in the way its rulers punish deviant behavior. Here are some examples for you to ponder:

Members of Congress were in an uproar recently over a MoveOn.Org political advertisement in the New York Times titled “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” The following copy alerted readers to their belief that he may likely testify before Congress as a political General reflecting the rosy views on the Iraq war-quagmire by his commander-in-chief, George W. Bush.


How dare MoveOn.Org criticize a General in the midst of' Bush’s war of choice, growled Republicans and some Democrats as the Senators rushed to overwhelmingly vote for a resolution condemning the ad?

How dare those many Americans who criticized Civil War Generals, World War Two Generals, Korean War Generals (remember General Douglas MacArthur) and Vietnam War Generals (remember General William Westmoreland)?

This kind of criticism inside Army, inside the Congress and among the citizenry has been as American as apple pie.

How come a similar uproar has not come forth about the many female U.S. soldiers in Iraq raped or sexually harassed by male soldiers who are often their superiors? Where are the generals to crack down on these outrages? This story was documented in a long cover story in the New York Times Magazine some months ago, citing numerous sources, including the Pentagon.

Senators demanded the resignation of Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) caught in a toilet sting operation at Minneapolis airport. Senator Craig – he now says foolishly so – pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct. For doing what? As Frank Rich described the situation in the New York Times: “He didn't have sex in a public place. He didn’t expose himself. His toe tapping, hand signals and ‘wide stance’ were at most a form of flirtation.”

Conservative columnist, George Will expressed similar views.

The penalty for Senator Craig is likely termination of his Senate career but not one required by law. Just by pressure from his “pure” Senate colleagues.

Now contrast what should be required of George W. Bush by our Constitution, laws and international treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory nation.

Plunging our nation into an unconstitutional war of massive carnage and cost, and committing numerous, repeated crimes along the way, from widespread torture in violation of U.S. law and the Geneva conventions to spying on Americans without court approval (a felony), does not agitate the Senators as did the airport toilet tapping.

Added to the Bush presidency's serial and continuing crimes are his bungling and incompetence. He has enriched crooked corporations, burned tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and most seriously, deprived soldiers of sufficient body and humvee armor year after year, which has cost the lives and limbs of thousands of American GIs.

In a US court of law, such behavior would be judged criminal negligence.

Yet, there has been no demand from Congress for his impeachment, or his resignation, or even any support for Senator Russ Feingold's modest resolution of censure (S.Res. 302 and 303).

Bush's Justice Department has thrown the book at several plaintiff lawyers for paying people to be lead plaintiffs in securities fraud cases while not pursuing well over 90% of the corporate crooks who actually stole big money from investors and shareholders while paying themselves compensation beyond their dreams of avarice.

If the Department needed a bigger budget to go after this corporate crime wave, they should have requested it from Congress. The resulting fines and restitutions alone would have paid for such an enlarged law and order drive.

I am sure you can cite many examples of public hypocrisy, double standards and inverted priorities from your knowledge and experience. There are many explanations about why and how these powerbrokers and powerholders get away with such behavior.

But let us remember Abraham Lincoln’s observation about the power of “public sentiments.” We need to inform, focus and deliver a different quality and quantity of “public sentiments” directly to our allegedly public servants.

So that they start to sweat the big stuff.


This article was by Ralph Nader. Read the article on Nader.org.

If you think Nader cost Kerry and Gore the election, go to gregpalast.com and read the excerpts from his books on voter purge lists and other "true" conspiracies thanks to none other than W.

If you don't know all the things you should thank Nader for (seatbelts, food labeling, air bags, etc), then watch the documentary 'An Unreasonable Man'. And yes, it is fair ... much more than I am.