Third Party & Independents Archives

What do you think the odds are that he’ll do something dropping out of the race before the general election?

He could campaign vigorously before the election, making the liberal points that no one else will make, but then withdraw before any votes are cast. He wouldn’t even have to endorse the Democratic Nominee… a simple “my supporters know the stakes of this election, and will decide their vote accordingly” would suffice. This approach may not be politically “possible”, and it certainly would take courage, but you’d win my gratitude for life.

… I’m almost at a loss to understand his decision. If he truly values his platform, how can he sentence it to death with another 4 years of Bush?

“If Mr. Nader causes a Democratic Party loss, he will have cemented the idea in Democrat’s minds that as a Party, they can ignore Nader’s issues only at their own peril. If the Democrat’s lose while taking corporate bribes, Nader will have served as a wakeup call to the Democratic Leadership that as a party, they must take their legitimacy, funding, and issues from the voters, not from the corporations. And if the Democrats lose due to Nader’s run, the Democrats will have no hope in the future without designing their campaigns toward both mainstream Americans and the bulk of the Green’s in this land. “

Absolutely!

I would expand that class of disaffected Americans to include many Independents like myself, many socially liberal fiscally moderate Libertarians, a lot of Natural Law people. In 2000 a lot of folks could not see the difference between the two parties and many of those same Americans are no less baffled by the fun house mirror image of Republicans that the Democrats offer us today.

When the Democrats address the issues they will win the votes.

Run Ralph, Run. At the very least, He tellsit like it is.

Nader for President

From the Nader FAQ page:

If the goal is to defeat Bush, why not just support the Democratic Party’s nominee?
It’s really not clear that the Democratic Party can defeat George W. Bush all by itself. “Electability” is neither an agenda nor a mandate. A two-front approach may be needed and let’s look at why:

The Democratic Party is part of the problem.

* They voted for or failed to stop the Iraq war resolution turning Bush into a wartime president.

* They voted for or failed to stop the Patriot Act.

* They voted for or failed to stop John Ashcroft.

* They voted for or failed to stop Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy.

* They voted for or failed to stop the Medicare fiasco.

* They lost the 2002 midterm elections, contrary to historical tradition.

* In 1983, the Democrats controlled 23 more state legislatures than the Republicans; today the Republicans control five more than the Democrats.

* In 1983, there were 18 more Democratic governors than Republican ones; Now there are three more. New York, Massachusetts, Kentucky, California, Florida and Texas are all Republican controlled.

* More young adults today identify themselves as Republicans than 20 years ago, while fewer identify themselves as Democrats.

At what point do you stop relying on a party to be an opposition party and start asking what else needs to be done to put some spine into Washington politics?

Nader’s issues page

http://www.votenader.org/issues/index.php

The Democrats could undercut him here but I am surethat they will just say no instead.

David,
I often wonder where the presiding opinion among democrats and liberals comes from regarding the negative issues facing our nation.

“In the late 1960’s we had millions of malnourished children in America - we still have today.”

Really… I submit to you that this is a grandiosely incorrect statement. Sure there are hungry kids in the U.S. but you spin the statement as though a measureable percentage of children in any community are starving like the pot-bellied children of Kenya.

In both the military and civilian life I have visited every state save Maine and Vermont. In all my United States travels, most of which were by bus and foot, I noticed the exact opposite. Our kids today are fat. Sickeningly fat. You see them, in the back seat of daddy’s car or SUV with an ice cream sandwich and a baseball cap, with their chubby cheeks gorging out from beneath their little eyes. They stuff their faces with processed food and soda, and then sit in front of the TV on ritalin and watch jackass.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like the idea of Ralph Nader running. I’ll never forget his statement: “the lesser of two evils is still evil…” But you cannot run a country and alienate all forms of corporate business. The problem is, aside from the fact that he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning, he is TOO GREEN. His eyes are green for god’s sake.

Most people, I think, feel a pull towards his position because it is fundamentally sinple and honest and anti-complicated. But his little green pendulum is so far swung to one side that he alienates people the way a lost Christian is alienated when he decides to go to church again for the first time in years and gets grilled on whether or not he has been “Born again.”

Needless to say, I probably will not vote because I am convinced our country has already toppled over the brink of hope, and is now in a free-fall into moral destruction, civil unrest and pain. No one running is worth voting for, no one is devoid of secret agendas, and no one has the best interests of the “MAJORITY” at heart. It’s all special interest this, minority that, lobby this, legislate that, as we all look around and wonder why everything is getting worse. I’m soory to say I have a young child that I have to try and shield from the pure evil that has infested this country, and the sad thing is… I will probably fail. Like 99% of kids today she will grow up with hollywoods values thinking that marriage is just a piece of paper, lust=love, words mean nothing, loyalty is a swear word, and f$@% is an adjective, verb, adverb, noun, preposition, or intransitive verb; interchangeably.

The Kerry forum banned me today after I asserted that all the Democrats need to do to WIN the Nader voters is to go to learn, respect and address his issues. I also posted a link to the issues page for people to have something specific to address.

The Democrats have revalidated why I have put together the web page.

Jo Schmo, you may submit that it is false. But first take your erroneous interpretation out of the quote. The word used was malnutrition - not Starvation. Object to what is said, not what you reinvent it to have said according to your words and understanding.

I made the assertion. It is based on reports readily available such as http://www.fit4free.org/hunger.htm.

According to this site

In 1999, a year marked by good economic news, 31 million Americans were food insecure, meaning they were either hungry or unsure of where their next meal would come from. Of these Americans, 12 million were children. The Hunger Site began on June 1, 1999.

If you wish to contest my claim, provide evidence to the contrary. What is disingenuous is imply another’s falsehood just because you choose to be too indolent to go verify the information yourself.

Nader on hunger in America.

Nader issues page

“Wants to end poverty in the United States

As the wealthiest country in the world, with high productivity per capita, a country that produces an abundance of capital, credit, technology and food, we can end poverty. Yet, according to the Bureau of the Census poverty and hunger for children and adults is increasing rather than decreasing – 34.6 million Americans lived in deep poverty, 12.1% of the U.S. population. Many millions of Americans live in what is called “near poverty” by the Labor Department. We must make ending poverty a priority and weave that goal into a network of policies – truly progressive taxation, end huge corporate subsidies and military budget waste, jobs, equal pay for women, child-care, living wages for all workers and restoring the critical social safety net. “

…unsure of where their next meal would come from…

Jees, we have that every night. Debate to whether we have time to cook or just grab something on the go.

(Disclaimer: No, I’m not making fun of the homeless, the hungry, or the plighted. I grew up with my mom getting food from the local church for a few months until she could make enough money. Yes it sounds insensitive, but I just wanted to make a point of these vague, somewhat pointless stats.)

If Mr. Nader causes a Democratic Party loss, he will have cemented the idea in Democrat’s minds that as a Party, they can ignore Nader’s issues only at their own peril. If the Democrat’s lose while taking corporate bribes, Nader will have served as a wakeup call to the Democratic Leadership that as a party, they must take their legitimacy, funding, and issues from the voters, not from the corporations. And if the Democrats lose due to Nader’s run, the Democrats will have no hope in the future without designing their campaigns toward both mainstream Americans and the bulk of the Green’s in this land.

Look, my idea of advancing liberal politics is not throwing the election to a man whose ability to listen to the liberal positions ranks somewhat below that of your nearest wall.

Bush is a compassionate dogmatist, a man whose instinct is to spare everybody from the horrible effects of listening to him when somebody else isn’t feeding him his lines. He is so emphatically on message his image has formed spontaneously on all White House stationary, from which it must be bleached to avoid the carcinogenic effects of The Smirk on the Washington D.C. population.

Seriously speaking, The Bush Presidency is one of those occasions when the phrase “be careful what you wish for…” takes on especially frightening reality. Here we have a Republican president who is reliably proving just how disasterous a thing it is for a politician to fulfill his campaign promises. We say we want that, but the truth is, most of the time, we want these people to forget their extemporaneous promises, and they said they would do, and actually deal with the real problems of government, which often highlight the poor sense and intelligence behind many of the politician’s pet programs.

Point is, Bush will not consider alternatives. He’s not got the intellectual experience to feel safe or be safe deviating from the political dogma. He will simply follow his programming, do what other people tell him he should do, and that means that Green Party policy will be both the last thing on people’s minds, and the last thing anybody will want on their minds.

If Nader or the Green Party spoil again this year, liberalization will be a lost cause, at least from your angle. If the split election and Florida repeat this time, and Nader and his people pull this patronizing caper off, it will create an almost visceral sense of betrayal among the members of the democratic party. It will be bad enough that Nader and his people spoil the campaign, but it make it unbearable for them to subsequently tell us it’s our fault for not being liberal enough.

Instead, your people should be willing to side with those who hold their best interests at heart, and not side against them in their time of need. I get the sense that people genuinely want a more liberal Democratic Party, if only from bitter experience of what being lower grade republican substitutes feels like.

(Can’t imagine it’s much better than the experience of being Processed American Cheese Food. Yech).

Nows the time to ask, what can we do to help? If you want democracy and voter turn out, go out there and practice what you preach. Get your organization behind an effort to get people registered to vote, and to get voters to turn out for the elections. Don’t make it a party issue. just tell them whatever party they vote for, they should at least vote. It’ll put your people out in front with the voters, and it will benefit both parties of the Liberal persuasion by encouraging voter turnout.

You want a visceral sense of betrayal? How about subversion of the Voter Rights Act for thirty-four years by people like Kerry and still the Democrats demand the electoral loyalty of the oppressed?

Betrayal? How about refusing to address the terrorist financing aspect of the Drug War? Before the congress closed off legal sources of terrorist funding the Drug Enforcement Administration asserted that 39% of the terrorist groups and armies in the world were funded thanks to the $500 billion a year world wide black market created by the Drug War policy. Now, since most legal sources are closed off more terrorists are relying more on supplying the “silent jihad”, pumping drugs into veils of western children as vengeance for our sending them music videos and sex. One Khandahar operation alone is reported to net bin Laden $ 25 million last year. The FARC in Colombia field a seventeen thousand man army. The Hamas sell drugs into Europe and return with explosives to strap to their children.

Betrayed? Its TREASON. John Kerry’s support for the Drug War is giving aid and comfort to bin laden and other terrorists.

There are alternatives but John Kerry has consistently just said no.

On your first question, would you be so kind as to give me some context for your accusations? As a rational minded person, I can’t just agree with you because you’re so insistent on your point.

As for drugs, Pat, there is no guarantee that legalizing them will cut demand, or cut the prices. I mean, have you considered that the prices are where they are because a market of addicts are willing pay almost any price to get access to their fix? Have you considered that its not merely the forbidden nature of the drugs that make them attractive, but the pleasure inducing, habit forming effects of them?

If we are to deal with the drug problem properly, we must keep drugs illegal, but treat the addicts for their addiction. Though moral failings can contribute to this problem, they are secondary to the medical problem that is addiction. Treat addiction, and you’ve taken care of the coerced demand the condition imposes.

?er Rights Act and the, then soon to be enacted, Twenty-sixth Amendment were passed under duress of massive social unrest. The Wallace right in the Democrats and the Nixon Republicans were, together, under siege for generations of Jim Crow policies that the VRA and the 26st imposed partial solutions for.

The Drug War was, as H.R. Haldeman relates in his diaries, “[President Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

I lived through those times and I even remember the TV press conference with Nixon announcing the formation of the DEA in 1972(?). He was surrounded by laughing CIA agents and officials who were being shifted to the DEA. They were all gleeful at being rid of the CIA constitutional mandate against domestic operations. This at a time when over-throwing democracy was the stock in trade of the CIA. The Drug war was created to mitigate the empowering effects of the VRA and the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. At that it is a major success.

A young William Rehnquist, who got his bones in the Republican Party harassing minority voters in Arizona in the 1950’s, was the White House attorney who was assigned to pass on the constitutionality of the originating laws of the Drug War. He was soon after put onto the Supreme Court where he has since passed judgement on the constitutionality of the myriad drug laws that have been spawned from his original handiwork. Rehnquist, a racist, passes judgement on the Jim Crow laws that he helped to create.

Go to the electoral analysis sites that I reference on the John Kerry…Drug Warrior and you will see how more than half of the four million criminal disenfranchisements in America are drug related. And about how, as Jesse Jackson put it at the Shadow Convention in 2000; “85% of all rural arrests are white. 75% of all urban arrest are white. But 75% of those in jail are black or brown.”

The Drug War was never created to mitigate addiction or its negative impacts. That is why there were fewer than four hundred thousand addicts in America in 1970 and there are almost five million today.

The Drug War prohibition policy is no different from the Volstead Act. The negative social and economic impacts of the Drug War are the same only worse, due to the increased cash flow, than the criminal empires and increased violence that the alcohol prohibition introduced to America.

You write: “As for drugs, Pat, there is no guarantee that legalizing them will cut demand, or cut the prices.I mean, have you considered that the prices are where they are because a market of addicts are willing pay almost any price to get access to their fix?”

I have never said “legalization”. I talk about democratically constituted regulatory systems.

Not only have I considered these things but some of the best economic and public health minds in America and the world have also considered the economics involved.

The price is a function of the black market. the black market is a function of the Drug War policy. Cutting the price is not the objective. Getting the market out of the hands of gangsters and terrorists with a competitively priced regulated market is the objective.

You need to learn some things about the economics of prohibition policies. And you need to learn about the genetics and the economics of addiction under prohibition.

Drug policy reform is not touting the utopian promises of the Drug Warriors but rather responsible harm reduction from the anarchy that the Drug war imposes today.

In fact there are numerous promises of lower addiction rates through regulation.

You write: “Have you considered that its not merely the forbidden nature of the drugs that make them attractive, but the pleasure inducing, habit forming effects of them?”

First, you need to come to grips with the fact that modern science has learned in the past ten years that addiction is a genetically based disease.

Try this reading. Then consider that we are using $ 50 billion a year on police and prisons to mitigate a disease. Police and prisons are not doctors and hospitals.

Toronto Star article; “Study Links Genetics And Addiction”
March 26, 1999

“Just as certain genes make some people more prone to heart disease, cancer or Alzheimer’s disease, scientists now believe that other genes may make them more susceptible to becoming addicted to heroin, marijuana or other compounds that affect the brain’s natural reward system.”
————————————————————————————————————
LA Times Op/Ed; “Addiction May Be in the Genes”
Nov 4, 2000

“Why would a talented and successful actor like Robert Downey Jr.  repeatedly risk his career for the sake of a drug-induced high? For many addicts like Downey, the answer may lie not in their upbringing or the company they keep, but in their genetic makeup.
And for drug users whose DNA plays a role in their habit, clinicians need to turn their attention to new treatment options that address the genetics of addiction.”
————————————————————————————————————
New York Times article;
“Genetic Studies Promise A Path To Better Treatment Of Addictions”

“Once thought of as weak-willed people who lacked the moral strength to just say no to drugs, addicts are now viewed as victims of genes that make them susceptible to the powerful pull of mind-altering substances.”

More articles that support my contentions are posted on: Drug War policy books reports and articles

The economics of interdiction in a nutshell.

When police succeed in a major interdiction in a community several economic ripples fan out over the community. The ideal is that the interdiction will increase prices and force addicts to forsake their addictions. Addiction, the poly-drug nature of the market and the simple fact that no community in America has more than 6% of the treatment beds needs to address the demand conspire to subvert the hoped for results of the successful interdiction.

Addicts who sell drugs to supply their habit do two things. 1. They increase their prices. 2. They seek out and even create new customers to keep their cash flow constant. # 2 of course means more addicts on the streets with every successful interdiction.

Addicts who use crime or prostitution to support their addiction simply pass the price increase on to their crime victims. More crime and disease is the real result. This economic mechanism is scientifically proven out by the report: Drug Enforcement and Crime: Recent Evidence From New York State
November, 2003
by Edward M. Shepard, and Paul Blackley
Economics Department, LeMoyne College,
Syracuse, New York 13214-1399

www.reconsider.org/drug_enforcement_and_crime.htm
www.RECONSIDER.org

“The findings that conflict most strongly with the traditional law enforcement view involve the manufacture, sale, and possession of “harder” drugs separate from marijuana. Increases in per capita arrests for the manufacture and sale of “hard drugs” are accompanied by higher reported rates for all types of violent and property crime assessed above. Increased arrests for possession are associated with the primarily economic crimes of robbery, burglary and larceny.”

Among the increased crimes is selling drugs. Young addicts seeking out peers to help them keep their addicted supply constant with the interdiction imposed local price increase.

As to regulation keeping drugs out of the hands of kids better than the anarchy of the Drug War here is a quote from Glen Hanson, acting director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a federal agency, in a Boston Globe article of 21 Aug 2002. http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1551/a10.html?1318

“Since access to beer and cigarettes is restricted at the retail stage, Hanson said, youths have significant hurdles to obtaining them.”

As far as marijuana is concerned, there is not any control there,” he said.  “If you want it, you can get it.  That is not good news.”

Regulation of the narco market is just good conservative economics. Conservatives tell us that regulation stifles profitable markets. This is basicly true. the anarchy of the black market for drugs proves this nicely. There is absolutely no regulation to the narco black market and the black market thrives and grows.

It thrives and grows for bin Laden too thanks to the anarchy imposed on the world by the Drug War prohibition economic policy.

Hey David, when I made a cynical remark a few says ago about Arab-American Nader sabotaging Jewish-American Kerry with his candidacy, you gave me a holier than thou sermon about me being ignorant and you pittied me. Look at this picture
www.allahpundit.com
Nader dressed as a suicide bomber ready to blow up kerry. Now who had the foresight? You or me?

Ricky;

It takes a particularly disgusting mindset to think 1. that suicide bombers are in any way a joke and 2. that a Photoshop hack job composite is worth critical comment in a political discussion.

First of all, one has to consider the proportion of rural population to the Urban. Taken that way, the statistics Jesse Jackson quotes on jails, while true, are a product of the difference in overall population.

As for genes and addiction, the media just loves to prattle on about how there is a gene for this or that, just stopping short of saying “there’s a gene for wearing your shorts too low”

Genes don’t get that specific. The position of every cell in your body is not pre-coded, but rather chemically suggested by pre-existing processes. The structures of the brain are no different. Genetics interact with environment to create what we see in a person’s neurology, with results that can vary widely within the confines of human neurophysiology.

The Nuances of development come from an interaction between genes and environment. If we make drugs more available, do we help those people with genetic propensities? No. We saturate the environment with the very stuff they can’t handle. Additionally, Genetic propensities only make addiction easier, or more problematic. They are not the sole biological determinants of the system. The drugs act on neurochemicals and receptors we all have, and since the system adjusts to sustained, intense imbalances, anybody can become addicted, given the right doses and conditions.

And finally, the brain’s complex enough that figuring out what the “safe” way is of taking these kinds of drugs is problematic at best. You don’t fully understand what kind of system you’re really messing with. Even the doctors have to take a wait and see attitude with people’s reactions to drugs. So, to me, the idea of self-medicating for recreational purposes strikes me as foolish. It’s like getting your kicks by running across a busy freeway. Sooner or later, the odds are no longer on your side.

Pat Rogers,
The problem is it’s one of the most popular sites on the net. That of Arab American Nader blowing up Jewish American Kerry will be part of the political discussion. This is just the beginning. Right wingers will use it to their advantage. Just like they used the Hanoi Jane picture. You cannot wish this issue away. You are not a child anymore. It’s out there. Deal with it.

(Ricky: You just implied quite directly that Pat was responding like a child. That is flame baiting and violates our guideline of Critique the MESSAGE NOT the Messenger. Please observe our policy while engaging in debate on our site. Thanks. WatchBlog Manager)

Ricky, that photo turned out on International TV to be a complete fabrication. The photographer has the negative to prove that photo of Kerry never had Jane sitting near him, nor in the picture at all for that matter.

WatchBlog’s purpose is to inform. Not to play bulletin board to every prankster and fraudulent political affiliate who wants to make headlines on nothing more than a rumor.

Some discretion and skepticism is healthy during an election cycle.

Stephen:

Your denunciation of the Jackson quote is baseless sophistry. Over burdened rationalization with no reasoned statistical validity. A feint to ignore the facts. Also the Jackson quote was simply one small component of a larger argument that you completely avoided. In the process you offered no rationale for subverting American democracy. You simply ignore the issue.

Nobel economist and Hoover Institution Fellow Milton Friedman wrote about the subversion of minority communities and negative economic impacts of the Drug War in his 1998 New York Times Op/Ed; “There’s No Justice in the War on Drugs” He enumerates seven problems caused by your preferred policy.

1 The use of informers and the immense sums of money at stake inevitably generate corruption — as they did during Prohibition. 

2 Filling the prisons. 

3 Disproportionate imprisonment of blacks. 

4 Destruction of inner cities.  Drug prohibition is one of the most important factors that have combined to reduce our inner cities to their present state. 

5 Compounding the harm to users.  Prohibition makes drugs exorbitantly expensive and highly uncertain in quality.  A user must associate with criminals to get the drugs, and many are driven to become criminals themselves to finance the habit. 

6 Undertreatment of chronic pain. 

7 Harming foreign countries.  Our drug policy has led to thousands of deaths and enormous loss of wealth in countries like Colombia, Peru and Mexico, and has undermined the stability of their governments. 

I did not talk about media conjecture in talking about the genetics of addiction but rather I posted scientists discussing the current state of the knowledge base. Your entire genetic statement is your conjecture. Well nuanced but no more than your conjecture. It is a one size fits all analysis of a disease condition that is as individual as we each happen to be.

It is true that the genetic aspects of addiction are different for each person. Like eye or hair color. Threatening people with a disease with mandatory minimums of anal rape tough love to coerce and intimidate them from their self medication is frankly uncivilized. A zero tolerance mentality is just short of narco-eugenics.

Drugs will never be more available than they are today. Putting the majority of the market into the hands of regulated professionals can only constrict the market due to the fact that instead of addicted dealers on street corners buying from terrorists and then selling to American children there will be doctors, pharmacists and licensed professionals who will put their regulated responsibility to their community and their license above the quick sale to children or the irresponsible in the community.

In Europe they ahve had success in maintaining addicts until beds become available and the adicts are ready to stop. In the process the addicts commit to stopping their criminal behavior. Including selling drugs. This reduces the number of people looking for new customers to entice and it reduces addiction levels in the communities where it is practiced. It is breaking the economic cycle of addiction.

Addicts who can get a prescription filled legally in exchange for forgoing a life of crime no longer pass on their drug costs to innocent crime victims.

Regardless of how foolish an individuals personal behavior is, as long as that person is not harming others, it makes no sense to force that person into a market that finances bin Laden and empowers addict dealers to sell to children.

According to the Congressional Research Service’s Oct. 2002 report; “Drug Control: International Policy and Options”

“More than 14 million Americans buy illicit drugs and use them at least once per month, spending by most conservative estimates over $60 billion annually in a diverse and fragmented criminal market. Such drugs are to varying degrees injurious to the health, judgment, productivity and general well-being of their users. Total economic costs to U. S. society associated with drug abuse are estimated by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to be $160 billion. The addictive nature of many of these drugs, their high price, and their illegality play a role in more than half the street crime in the United States. The U. S. illicit drug market generates enormous profits that enable the growth of diversified international criminal organizations, and extend their reach into local neighborhoods, legitimate business, and even national governments. Such profits provide drug trafficking organizations with the resources to effectively evade and compete with law enforcement agencies, to penetrate legitimate economic structures, and, in some instances, to challenge the authority of national governments.”

The crime comes from the prohibition policy not the abuse. According to Nobel economist Gary S. Becker in a Business Week column one week after 9/11 titled “It’s Time To Give Up The War On Drugs”;

“Legalizing drugs is far from a panacea for all the distress caused by drugs, but it will eliminate most of the profit and corruption from the drug trade.

Ending Prohibition almost immediately cleaned up the liquor industry.”

I have simply tried to show that the prohibition itself is causing a lot of the problems. You have repeatedly avoided this. Take the underlined point in the paragraph above. The addictive nature issue can be controlled and mitigated with clinics and doctors. the high price and the illegality can be controlled with a change in the laws from prohibition to regulation. so the three factors that the Congressional Research Service says “play a role in more than half the street crime in the United States” can be changed. but you just say no.

Simply put you then prefer that we continue to have addict dealers selling to our children on our streets and buying from drug cartels associated with terrorists rather than controlling that market of 14 million Americans with democratic regulatory institutions defined by social and medical professionals using clinics and a responsible adult use regulated marketplace.

Because you can’t accept that millions of people do stupid things beyond your control we must all continue to suffer with multi millionaire terrorists having unfettered access to America’s borders and children until all of the millions of chemically dependent people around the world get patriotic and forsake their addictions.

The problems of the prohibition imposed black market are causing more than 50% of the crime in our streets and is financing world terrorism. I don’t care if people get stoned as long as they don’t impact others. Most users fit this category as opposed to your unsubstantiated “sooner or later” theory.

Why should I and my loved ones, friends and fellow Americans accept being victimized by crime, the high costs of uncontrolled disease and well financed terrorism when there are reasoned alternatives that you cannot accept? why shouldn’t I consider you directly responsible for any future terrorist events since you want to continue the dysfunctional economic system that supports terrorists while I can show ways to stop their funding and you just say no?

I will close with the final paragraph of Dr. Friedman’s New York Times Op/Ed;

“Can any policy, however high-minded, be moral if it leads to widespread corruption, imprisons so many, has so racist an effect, destroys our inner cities, wreaks havoc on misguided and vulnerable individuals and brings death and destruction to foreign countries?”

ricky;

(Comment deleted by WatchBlog Manager - Address the content if you believe something is false. Call another person on this site a lier again and you won’t have access to this site. Please observe our policy of Critique the MESSAGE not the Messenger).

Stephen:

Learn something about odds. They are the same for every toss of the coin. Odds stay the same for every event if all other factors remain equal. A person has as much change of getting run over in traffic the first time as they do the fiftieth time they play in traffic.

(Comment deleted by WatchBlog Manager - keep it civil Pat.)

G’night.

David, I meant the real Hanoi Jana and Kerry picture, not the fabricated one. Obviously the Kerry and Nader picture is fabricated. But it’s on a very popular blog. I wasn’t talkingabout its believability, but about the emotions it will bring out. Just like the movie Passion. It’s not what it says. It’s what it makes you feel. The US is importing Middle East problems.

Nader may believe that enabling conditions to worsen for the majority is a valid political tactic, if it’s the only way to get the attention of a complacent public. See notnader.com.

to my way of thinking, it is not about getting attention from a complacent public, that by its spoiled and selfish nature never really pays a lot of attention to the needs of others — especially those whom they do not know nor understand — for very long, anyway.

instead, it is actually more about *commanding* (and not merely seeking or demanding) the proper attention as well as, and even more importantly, actual justice for those needing and deserving it most and whom are of course not getting it; not simply because others are denying these to them in various ways however, but rather due to the indifference and complacency of those whose power and role it is to do not only differently, but to do far better, yet whom do not bother (and, again, not merely because of a complacent public either).

the fact is, it is all about the quality and depth of leadership, not simply about those who just follow along, no matter how complacent the followers may be to what their leaders are doing.

Nader cannot be blamed, nor faulted, for what is happening or what may happen, if the Democrats and Republicans continue on with their failed and flawed leadership.

as there exists an ever growing void in the quality of leadership where and when it is required most: people whom want as well as know they well deserve better, will need to lead by choosing and, then, voting for what and whom they believe in, not merely selecting the lessor of two evils by default.

in case it may be of interest: a pro-Nader blog, which I am the blogger of, is the Unofficial Vote4Nader Blog: http://vote4nader.blogspot.com
— just click onto my initials & it will take you there.