Who'd a thunk it? A MASS. REPUBLICAN voting for NADER!!!
"Nader and McKinney: “Wasting” a Vote for Lincoln’s “Radical” Ideal or Why I’m Voting for Nader" by Robert Weitzel Oct 19, 2008
Editor’s Note: Axis of Logic takes the position that we will not endorse, or even publish articles in favour of, any candidate in the upcoming
I had just pressed the “donate now” button on votenader.org when my email pinged. It was a rambling missive from Neil, a self-described “Grumpy Old Son Of A Beach” who’d read an article I’d written for the American Atheist magazine. Neil argued that atheists should vote against “Oduma” and for the McCain/Palin ticket. I’ll spare you the details … just imagine Hannity and O’Reilly and Limbaugh joined at their bums flapping their gums.
I wrote a short reply thanking him for sharing his views and telling him I plan to vote for Nader...
While a Democratic president lied to escalate the war in Vietnam, a Republican president lied to take America to war in Iraq. With a few notable exceptions, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle fell into formation with their American flag lapel pins unfurled and goose-stepped down Pennsylvania Avenue in time with President Bush’s war drums.
In 2006 the midterm vote gave Democrats a clear mandate to end the war and hold the Bush administration accountable. Predictably, Democratic pols stuck their mugs in front of the cameras and talked tough for a few days and then did nothing—politics as usual … wasted votes as usual.
In 1933, the Glass-Steagall Act was intended to prevent the kind of banking shenanigans that have helped to plunge the world into worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. But legislation written by Republicans Phil Gramm and James Leach, and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton, repealed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999.
To address the current economic crisis, the best a bipartisan effort can come up with is a $700 billion-plus bailout for their Wall Street cronies and ex-colleagues, which also includes over a billion dollars stuffed into the pork barrel for themselves—but no provisions to help millions of homeowners renegotiate their mortgages, allowing them to remain in their homes and afford their monthly payments.
There is nothing like Glass-Steagall in this golden rescue plan, nothing to prevent Everyman (aka NASCAR dads and mall-maven moms) from losing another trillion in the value of their 401Ks, nothing to prevent the privatized profits and socialized risks of corporate socialism from becoming institutionalized … nothing in this plan but politics as usual....
The campaigns of Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney are not the acts of spoilers or vanity candidates. They are the acts of third party candidates struggling for the magical 15 percent that will allow them to challenge the hegemony of the Democratic and Republican parties in televised debates viewed by over 70 million voters. They are the acts of American citizens who believe it is a constitution, rather than a corporate charter, that is the governing document of our Republic.
Nader and McKinney are not naïve enough to think they’ll need to keep millions of donors’ dollars in reserve for their inaugural balls. They are campaigning for something more important than the presidency. They are campaigning to bring about systemic changes in the “politics as usual” in America. They are campaigning to redeem Abraham Lincoln’s “radical” ideal of an American “government of the people, by the people, and for [ALL] the people.”
If the “Grumpy Old Son Of A Beach” is right and voters continue wasting their votes on two corporate-vetted political parties “who will not even make a dent” in the domestic woes of “soccer moms” and “Joe the plumber”, and whose foreign policy in the “war on terror” is dictated by the American representatives of a miniscule country on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, then they should not be at all surprised to look out their window one morning to see Cliff taking Mutley for a stroll … and piles of dog poo on their lawn..
