Thursday, October 14, 2004

What is Nader Thinking?

With the decision of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court to bar Ralph Nader from the ballot in Pennsylvania, Nader's campaign for President has moved from the comical to the pathetic.

Supported by Republicans who hope that Nader will allow Bush to "win" with a bare plurality of the vote (or perhaps not even that), Nader employed a less-than-ethical group of people to collect signatures to put his name on the Pennsylvania ballot. The court reviewed each of the 51,273 signatures submitted, and found 32,455 of them (63.3%) to be invalid because of forgeries, fictitious addresses, and other reasons.

The court characterized the signature gathering process as "the most deceitful and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated upon this court," and stated that the conduct of Nader and his running-mate "shocks the conscience of the Court."

(The full opinion can be found at http://www.aopc.org/OpPosting/CWealth/out/568MD04_10-13-04.pdf)

It's one thing to engage in a futile campaign for President. It's another thing to accept the aid of the Republicans and become their pawn. But to become a party to fraud and corruption of the ballot process itself?

Has Nader no shame whatsoever?

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Kerry's Threat

One of the bizarre claims by many right-wing Republicans is that Kerry as President could endanger or damage the country.

But what could he possibly do?

Could he:

1. Invade another country and get the US enmeshed in a war costing billions of dollars and thousands of American lives?

2. Ignore threats of a terrorist attack, resulting billions of dollars in damage and thousands of deaths?

3. Run up an enormous federal deficit through a combination of tax breaks for the wealthy and unchecked federal spending?

4. Increase the size of the federal government while both (a) reducing environmental controls and other regulations of businesses intended to protect the public and (b) increasing the intrusion of the government into state and local governments and the private lives of citizens?

Of course, George Bush has done all of those things already.

So the biggest threat posed by Kerry is that he *might* do the same things in the next four years that Bush *has* been doing in the last four.

That's some threat.

Kerry's Threat

One of the bizarre claims by many right-wing Republicans is that Kerry as President could endanger or damage the country.

But what could he possibly do?

Could he:

1. Invade another country and get the US enmeshed in a war costing billions of dollars and thousands of American lives?

2. Ignore threats of a terrorist attack, resulting billions of dollars in damage and thousands of deaths?

3. Run up an enormous federal deficit through a combination of tax breaks for the wealthy and unchecked federal spending?

4. Increase the size of the federal government while both (a) reducing environmental controls and other regulations of businesses intended to protect the public and (b) increasing the intrusion of the government into state and local governments and the private lives of citizens?

Of course, George Bush has done all of those things already.

So the biggest threat posed by Kerry is that he *might* do the same things in the next four years that Bush *has* been doing in the last four.

That's some threat.