don’t forget about Cynthia McKinney!
I finally got the internet working at my house again. Last week, stupid NPR was my only source of news. Who will it be, Hilary or Obama? Hilary or Obama? Who will stand up to McCain? Every time I turned on the radio is was either a report about how Obama attracting black voters and Hilary attracting women voters….or the latest on the Roger Clemons case, which I am oh so sick of hearing about.
Our country desperately needs to a take third party seriously. The notion that 350 million of us can be divided up into two contrasting ideologies is nothing short of crazy. I have more options when I’m shopping for peanut butter.
The republicans are a pack of criminals and the democrats are a bunch of weenies. It’s been this way for too long. They have both let us down time and time again. If “change” is really what you seek, the person who has me fired up is Cynthia McKinney of the green party. She has everything I would want in a candidate all wrapped into one. She is in touch with normal people’s lives, a strong advocate for women’s rights, not building a wall at the border (take that Ron Paul supporters!), she is the only candidate with strong connections to working class people, she wants out of Iraq, and wants to “leave the oil in the soil.” Even if she can’t win, I’m glad she’s there. And I hope to see her in some of the debates.
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February 19th, 2008 at 11:39 am
I seriously doubt that you will hear something from her in the debates. What really need to change is the media. The media will not let her take part of any debate; nor wil they let any other party take part of the debate (i.e., Labor Party). I saw how the media ran the debates before by not giving equal time to other canidates like Kucinich and Gravel. I am disgusted by what the media does and probably embaressed who will be elected. This is because we are a society that is driven by money and consumerism.
February 19th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Right, that’s part of what I’m talking about when I say, we desperately need a third party to be taken seriously. The media plays a HUGE role in who is and who is not credible as a candidate for president. They don’t call it the corporate owned media for nothing. Of course they have their own interests. When a candidate, like the one’s you mention, speak in opposition to those interests, they won’t be invited to speak about them in the media.
In my opinion, the entire voting system has been taken, stolen, co-opted. Until we get it back, until every vote is counted and every person running gets an equal opportunity, the power behind the concept of voting will continue to be diluted.
It is always so exciting when there are a lot of candidates, like there were months ago. There were a lot of people speaking some really good ideas. Little by little, it’s as if the media decided, “well, it was fun to have all these dissenting voices for a while; it really makes the political process look legit. But we need to get our priorities straight and focus on the candidates who are just as controlled by corporations as we are.” Before you know it, the only people that get any mention are Obama, Clinton, and McCain. Soon people start settling for who seems “winable.” People vote for the “less of two evils.” People put all their hopes and dreams and frustrations into one set of ideologies. If we can only get a democrat in the White House, everything will be okay!
Don’t you dare vote for who you want to win, that’s giving your vote away!
February 19th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
But if the next president is a democrat I fear heshe will only be president for four years because of the un-popular Iraq war. Really it is a “loose-loose” situation. You keep the troops there and you are unpopular, or you pull them out and the country desend into chaos on your watch. Does our next president want to let genocide to take place in Iraq like it has in Darfur, Rawanda, and Yugoslavia while they are president.
I know one thing that NEEDS to happen that make us very unpopular in the middle east and prone to terrorist attacks. We need to stop the backing of Isreal. Because we back Isreal, we are very unpopular. It won’t happen right away, but if we stop backing Isreal things will become better for us there.
I am a little concern aboot what you wrote in your responce to me. You wrote, “Don’t you dare vote for who you want to win, that’s giving your vote away!” Are you saying if I don’t vote for either a Dem. I am giving away my vote? Isn’t this what you argue…that we need a third party? I am ashamed that I didn’t get to vote in the last president election (I never registered in Indiana and it was too late to get an absentee for Michigan by the time I thought aboot it), but proud that I voted for Nater (even though he has gone off the deep end) in 2000. I voted my mine and I will look seriously at all the parties (Socialist, Labor, etc.) canidates and vote my mind. If I like Obama or Clinton’s (I am crossing my fingers that it is not her) ideas better then I will vote Dem. People need to vote for who’s ideas fits there, not for popularity…this isn’t god damn high school. I know that I don’t like McCain’s ideas (anti-Immigration, pro-life, etc.) and we need someone that isn’t the status-quo (McCain or Clinton). The thing that get me is that Clinton says that she has experience, but she has been a senator just as long as Obama. And if she thinks that being “first lady” was experience enough to be president, then I say that I play hockey just as well as any of the professionals just because I watched it on television (eventhough I don’t know how to ice skate).
February 19th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I was being sarcastic about throwing your vote away. That’s what everyone said in 2000. A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. I voted for him anyway. It was that election that demonized voting of third party members. And don’t get me started on the electoral college. That needs to be dropped immidiatly. One vote for each person no matter where in the country they live. Count them all up, together. At least that would start to look like democracy. Many leftists in Red states and many Right-o’s in Blue states simply don’t vote because they don’t think their state has a chance of swinging the other way.
February 23rd, 2008 at 11:10 am
i’m voting for obama till he takes corporate money.
February 23rd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Bob,
where did you hear Obama wasn’t taking corporate donations? I was pretty impressed with that idea so I did a little research.
I found this recent reuters article titled: Corporate presidential campaign giving surges
Here is the section that differs from your claims.
“Investment banks, commercial banks and real estate companies altogether have pumped almost $34 million into the presidential race, with democratic leaders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama getting the most money, the center said.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0451979920080204?rpc=64
Vote for him if you like what he has to say, but he does seem to take quite a bit of corporate donations.
March 18th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
kyle, you’re absolutely right and i hyperbole’d myself out of the point i was trying to make. this article aproaches it.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080318/pl_bloomberg/aomovfb7iaz8
but what i should’ve said was that the first time in my lifetime, there’s a viable candidate that i’m excited to vote for. i’m not a registered republicrat so i haven’t been able to yet. hopefully i will.
not that a third party and/or a new zealand-type voting system isn’t important. but these are things we can be rallying for all the time, not just during an election year.
i voted for nader. twice. i know all about not voting my fears and voting for my dreams. and now i regret not voting for gore and i regret the democrats couldn’t unseat bush in ‘04. and this year if clinton or mccain are elected, they’ll both be better than bush. even mccain. but it’ll just be business as usual. i don’t think it’ll be that way with obama.
as ‘progressives’ and ‘leftys’, we need to get this new fresh guy elected, not get mccain elected by voting for someone that has views much more similar to our own with no chance in hell. i’ve never felt this way since i’ve been of voting age. but i’m not afraid of changing my mind. don’t throw your vote away this time. if obama is nominated, he has to run for president. that means he has to become a product and a soundbite. i also understand that anyone that wants to be president of the united states has to be completely out of their minds. i’m okay with that. until obama proves that he’s more business as usual, i can’t help but be scared at how excited i am to vote for him.