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Foo: How does Wen Ho Lee say anything about Bush? He was an issue in 1996, under Clinton.
Bar: It doesn't, but why let facts stand in the way of a little Bush-bashing?

Finally, someone who understands me! :)

I do stand corrected, though I did point out in the original post that the author of the book took previous administrations to task as well. All that is why I didn't vote for either bozo in the last elections. Go Green!

It wasn't an obvious call by any means, and I'm not surprised that people were conflicted. Trying to pick between Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum isn't fun.

You did know that you had other choices, didn't you?

Did it occur to you that since "you" don't have moral values, that might be why your guy lost? Seems your party is the most hateful around...it truly shows.

Who exactly are you talking to?

My candidate was David Cobb. Folks say a lot of things about the Green Party, but "most hateful" is one epithet I've never heard applied to it.

I'll leave the deconstruction of your assertion about my personal moral values as an exercise for the student.

He said it in a fund-raising letter. Diebold systems are incredibly easy to hack, and almost certainly helped in the voting irregularities in the 2004 election.

To top it off, a highly partisan republican, Kenneth Blackwell, managed the votes in Ohio and has been uncooperative in investigations.

This says nothing of the exit poll discrepancies...

Actually, the appointment of electors is a grant of authority from the federal governmennt (contrary to what you were probably taught in high school civics, that it all flows from state to fed) to the state *legislatures*, not to the states.

The sad part is my civics class never got that detailed. However, your point is interesting. I'm shocked that the state legislatures can do something unconstitutional according the state. I'm fairly surprised the state constitution isn't considered a matter of state law. I would have accepted the argument better if they said, that the state legislature wasn't acting on behalf of the state, but is merely the group of people the Federal Gov't appointed to make a decision on the matter. However, I'm not up on the finer points of my constitutional law. I've read it enough times to know when people are expousing nonsense on slashdot about what your constitutional rights are, but not enough to argue with you successfully (unless I miss my guess).

That was really more of a large/small state issue than a free/slave state issue.

That's a widely held misconception according to what I've read. It wasn't the small states that wanted protection from the large states. Here they discuss it in the context of racism.

As a matter of fact, it was the large states that pushed for the electoral college, not the small states as I was taught in High School.

Here is more discussion

That link points out that the electoral college was desired by the large states, not the small states.

It's a shame, I'd rather people not have to learn such hard lessons from experience of hardship that I see coming like a train down the tracks.

Yep. But at least I was able to benefit from it. I figured if Kerry won, stocks would slide short-term, but long-term they'd rebound with sound fiscal policy. If Bush won, stocks would spike sharply, then long-term they'd slip on Bush's cut-and-spend philosophy. Bush won, so I was able to take out a loan on my 401(k) (which is basically a "sell") in December just before the stock market peaked. I'll pay it off (a "buy") over the long term, as stock prices slide. Sell high, buy low, in no particular order.

Greedy bastards. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. At least there was no conflict of interest in the voting booth: I didn't vote for either one.

We're down to the wire on having any recounts affect any electoral college votes.
They all meet on December 13th to discuss and submit sealed votes.

But we're not talking about the Presidential election, not in this state at least. Washington state's gov race could go on for years, AFAIK.

Ohio, on the other hand, is another story entirely. And even if the electors pick Massa Dubya on Monday, the results must still be certified by Congress on January 6, 2005. If the Green/Libertarian recount push discovers that Ohio could have swung the other way, Congress will be forced to intervene -- and if they choose to go with the tainted results, Bush will have the distinction of having both his terms clouded by disputed election results.

I've contributed to the recount fund. I hope everyone here does as well.

This isn't just a dupe of a previous story... it's not just a dupe of the top story... it's a dup of an incredibly outrageous story that makes the radical right's Clinton Suicide scandals look almost sane.

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that the right-wingers are astroturfing the 'net with outrageous vote-rigging stories. This helps ensure that the real story of the Green/Libertarian recount in Ohio won't be taken seriously. Karl Rove is probably laughing his butt off.

Later on July 1, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Laboratory in Moultrie informed the Valdosta Police that based on the "suicide" details, no autopsy would be performed on Lemme. Unlike Florida, Georgia does not perform mandatory autopsies. A doctor, with 25 years' clinical experience, who was interviewed for this story claimed that the circumstances of Lemme's death appeared to him to be a classic "mob hit."

Once I saw that the article contained the word "suicide" in scare quotes, I realized that further skimming would be utterly useless. Sure, there are bungled investigations, but the rest of the premise seems to be based on some unnamed doctor's memory of a bad mafia movie.

Oh, well, I guess the radical left needs to invent a scandal that can match the stupidity concocted by the radical right.

At least the guy I voted for has never been accused of having anyone axed. But then, you never know what might happ$%## NO CARRIER

Wouldn't counting the actual votes be the way to tell if he got too many votes?

Yes, I'd think that would be a better method. I don't know how many people are aware since this hasn't been in the mainstream news, but they ARE having recounts in Ohio and New Hampshire.

Jack Gerbel, president of the California company, said in response to the letters that the machine was set incorrectly to store too few votes. He called the problem "a mistake of omission" on the part of a UniLect software engineer. But he said that a warning message should have appeared on the machine when it was full.

At least these guys can come out say what went wrong. Do we have any statement yet from Diebold or ES&S? Forgive me for asking, but how hard is it to count votes? This isn't the 80's anymore - hardware is cheap. I'm having a hard time figuring out why storage is apparently such an issue here. I can't remember the last time an ATM machine forgot/lost my PIN number. Powerball machines leave adequate paper trails. Come on.

Maybe the recounts in New Hampshire and Ohio will shed some light on the issue.

... Badnarik, Cobb, and Nader are gathering funding for a recount ...

Nader is to cut a $2,000 check to the NH authorities. While Cobb and Badnarik have enough to pay for the Ohio recount.

Check out David Cobb, he grew up poor (and still is), and he's not a nutjob. He is running to help PEOPLE, not big business, not some wacko religious constituency. He is left-wing and belongs to the Green Party, that turns a lot of people off. But he's the only candidate running that matches the criteria you list.

I like him, cause he wants to give us FULL health care, get us out of Iraq, and generally make life easier for the average person. Yes, he would raise taxes on the rich. I have no problem with that.

/me dons flameproof suit.

Don't forget David Cobb of the Green Party or the Libertarian entry among others.

Bush(www.georgewbush.com): 303 errors.

Kerry(www.johnkerry.com): 2 errors.

Nader(www.votenader.org): unable to validate.

Badnarik(badnarik.org): 13 errors.

Cobb(www.votecobb.org): 217 errors.

So here's how it boils down: If you want a government that continues to restrict consumer rights in favor of large corporations, vote for Bush; if you want a government that continues to restrict consumer rights in favor of Hollywood corporations, vote for Kerry. It's that simple.

Neither party

I'm sorry, you seem to be operating under the mistaken assumption that there are only two parties to pick from. Allow me to share some info with you. For convenience, let's consider only the Presidential election.

There are actually 6 candidates for President who are on enough (I believe) states ballots to have a chance to win the election. Bush and Kerry, obviously, but also:

Mike Badnarik - Libertarian

David Cobb - Green

Ralph Nader - Independent

Mike Peroutka - Constitution

In addition, Roger Calero, the candiate for the Socialist Workers Party, is on the ballots in 14 states.

Finally, there are at least four other candidates who are on the ballots in at least two states:

(from ballot-access.org):

Socialist Party (Walt Brown) is on in Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

Socialist Equality Party (Bill Van Auken) is on in Colorado, Iowa, New Jersey, Minnesota, Washington, and is in court in Ohio.

Prohibition Party (Gene Amondsen) is on in Colorado and Louisiana.

Workers World Party (John Parker) is on in Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.


More details can be found at ballot-access.org

And a list of political parties in the United States is available as well.

seems to be fiscally conservative anymore.

The Libertarian Party is.

"Could it be that in this way Nader is beholden to corporate interests? For shame, Ralph"
What proof do they have for this?! It's just a smear campaign by the Democrats.

It's just the Democrats learning from Karl Rove: attack your opponent's strength, not his weakness. Nader's whole raison d'etre is that he's not "beholden" -- so accuse him of it, and defuse his strength.

On the other hand...

Don't vote for the "better" of two evils, vote Nader in 2004! Evil is still evil and there's very little difference between the two major parties.

I say, don't vote for the "better-known" of the less-evils. If you're going to vote on the left side of the aisle, vote for the Green Party candidate -- David Cobb. We told Nader to take a hike at the Green Party convention.

Personally, I'm hoping that on November 3, we're looking at the map and smiling at the votes that Badnarik "stole" from Bush. If third parties on the left *and* the right are changing the outcome, maybe people will see that it's time the Big Two got put out to pasture.

Florida's Department of Transportation is switching from its "color coded" U.S. highway signs to the standard black-and-white signs, under pressure from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The Florida DOT argued that drivers could simply follow the color of the sign to their destination, but the FHWA said it would be forced to "withhold certain monetary funding if the state of Florida continued to use their color coded markers."

The Green party doesn't have the draw the democrats have. [...] I'd love to see Nader or Badnarik president. [...] Next election I'd like Nader to run. But I feel that voting for Nader will have as much effect as writing a letter to Bush asking him to "play nice".

Just to clarify, like they do in polls.slashdot.org:

Michael Badnarik: Libertarian Party candidate for president. http://www.badnarik.org/

David Cobb: Green Party candidate for president. http://www.votecobb.org/

Ralph Nader: Rejected by the Green Party because we want to grow the party, not just tilt at windmills. Independent candidate for president, though he did exhume enough of the Reform Party to get on the Florida ballot under their name. http://www.votenader.org/

Of the three, Cobb is the only one (as far as I know) who has the guts to publicly state that Bush must go at any cost, even if it takes away from Cobb's own votes. Here's a good news article from Minnesota that puts Cobb and Nader's differences in context.

Let's see, after his interesting call on the Venezuelan elections (it is legit, said Carter before all of the votes were even certified, and well before all of the interesting information about electronic voting machines programmed by a company owned by Chavez's brother were out in the open), he now wants to call the Florida elections before they happen?

If I were to focus on this paragraph, I'm sure I'd be modded "offtopic". Aw, what the heck:

I wouldn't be surprised if Chavez hired some monkeys to play with the votes. As I recall, though, Chavez was nearly ousted in a coup orchestrated by the oil companies not so long ago. The Bush administration was falling all over itself to recognize the coup plotters as the "new government"... only to be red-faced (if not red-handed) when Chavez returned to the scene.

I doubt we're aligned politically, but you seem to know a lot more about the situation than I do... care to expand on the Venezuelan vote, the attempted coup, and possibly how neither side seems be anywhere close to trustworthy?

Hmmm... that last bit sounds familiar. That's why I'm voting Green.

and also by allowing third parties to win an electoral vote with only 11% of a state

"Hurray! We've got an electoral vote. So now, what good does it do us? Oh well. I'll just nail it up on the wall behind the cash-register, as a memento"

Of other changes to the voting system that have been proposed, such as approval voting, Borda counts, etc. which would you favor to improve the viability of third parties?

You're asking a question he addressed at length on his own web page.

How do you respond to accusations from Democrats that a vote for your party is a vote for George Bush?

He supports instant runoff voting. I prefer approval voting myself, since it's a bit simpler, but almost anything would be better than plurality voting.

-jim

Interesting that Nader was trying to get on the Florida ballot as the Reform Party's candidate. Hopefully, this will remind folks that Ralph Nader is not the Green Party candidate for President in 2004!

That honor belongs to David Cobb, who is working to build the Green Party from the ground up. Contrast with Nader, who wanted to use the party's (still limited) ballot access to prove a point.

And according to Cobb's site, the Green Party has a ballot line in Florida. Unlike Nader, though, Cobb cares who wins the election:

http://www.votecobb.org/news/camden
"Cobb said he is asking people to vote for him in states like New Jersey, where polls show Kerry is ahead of Bush by 10 percentage points. In states where the race is close, he said he will understand that some liberal voters would support Kerry instead of him."

Nader's time as a candidate is over. So long, and thanks for all the fi^W safety!

Interesting that Nader was trying to get on the Florida ballot as the Reform Party's candidate. Hopefully, this will remind folks that Ralph Nader is not the Green Party candidate for President in 2004!

That honor belongs to David Cobb, who is working to build the Green Party from the ground up. Contrast with Nader, who wanted to use the party's (still limited) ballot access to prove a point.

And according to Cobb's site, the Green Party has a ballot line in Florida. Unlike Nader, though, Cobb cares who wins the election:

http://www.votecobb.org/news/camden
"Cobb said he is asking people to vote for him in states like New Jersey, where polls show Kerry is ahead of Bush by 10 percentage points. In states where the race is close, he said he will understand that some liberal voters would support Kerry instead of him."

Nader's time as a candidate is over. So long, and thanks for all the fi^W safety!

Interesting that Nader was trying to get on the Florida ballot as the Reform Party's candidate. Hopefully, this will remind folks that Ralph Nader is not the Green Party candidate for President in 2004!

That honor belongs to David Cobb, who is working to build the Green Party from the ground up. Contrast with Nader, who wanted to use the party's (still limited) ballot access to prove a point.

And according to Cobb's site, the Green Party has a ballot line in Florida. Unlike Nader, though, Cobb cares who wins the election:

http://www.votecobb.org/news/camden
"Cobb said he is asking people to vote for him in states like New Jersey, where polls show Kerry is ahead of Bush by 10 percentage points. In states where the race is close, he said he will understand that some liberal voters would support Kerry instead of him."

Nader's time as a candidate is over. So long, and thanks for all the fi^W safety!

How can you even begin to be a viable choice if you don't have candidates across the board in a majority of electorial races. Even if your positions are fantastic on the issues without at least a glimmer of support from the congress you are dead in the water.

Assuming that Green Party candidate David Cobb gets the same opportunity as Badnarik, I hope you ask the same question. Cobb represents the so-called "electoral" wing of the Green Party, as opposed to the "ideological" wing.

He wants to *elect* Green candidates -- starting at the school boards and building up. Nader, on the other hand, has shown no such flexibility, prefering to tilt at windmills instead of opening the little door at the bottom. He gave us name recognition -- political oxygen, if you will -- but didn't know when to step aside. So at their convention, the Greens gave him a not-so-gentle push. I think the 2004 convention will be remembered as the day the Green Party grew up.

I suspect that Cobb's answer to your question will be along the lines of "We do indeed have candidates, both on the ballot and currently serving, in races from the top of the ballot to the bottom. Watch us grow!"

For the Libertarians' sake, I hope Badnarik can give the same answer.

Nader is not on the Green Party ticket this year; he is running as an independent. The Green candidate this year is David Cobb.

Cobb is the Green Party candidate, not Ralph Nader. Nader is running as an independent.

is anyone else bother by the fact that Ralph Nader is not running on the green party platform. that their candidate is David Cobb. This has been completely ignored by the media and presents either the false impression that Nader is backed by the Greens or that the Greens have absolutely zero party loyalty. Either way I think that this should recieve some attention; parties, whether we like it or not, are treated as the dominant political institutions and to ignore party affiliation just because these candidates are not Republicans or Democrates seems absurd.
Do any (former)Greens have a justification for abandoning their party to follow Nader? I'd like to hear them.

Nader is debating Badnarik. All others are invited. C-SPAN won't be covering it.

No, it's Green Party candidate David Cobb who's debating Badnarik, and CSPAN did cover it.

Like I'm sure you supported the WWII heroes over a draft dodger in 1992 and 1996, right?
Oh you didn't? I guess that makes you a hypocrite, then.

To quote Professor "Broom" (from Hellboy): "Yes, among other things."

At least I gotta give you props for voting Green. If more people voted their conscience, we would probably be talking about how many votes Kerry might pull away from Nader, instead of the other way around.

I wish people would quit associating Nader with the Green Party... I'd like to see how many votes Kerry pulls from David Cobb this year.

One more Hellboy quote, just 'cause I love that movie.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167190/quotes
Sgt. Whitman : We're wasting our time, there's nothing on this island but sheep and rocks!
[Moments later the soldiers find a large Nazi encampment in the ruins]
Young 'Broom' : They must be here for the sheep.

The Libertarian Party is the only political party that seems to not be afraid to give straight answers... Michael Badnarik isn't afraid to answer the tough questions and give answers that aren't always "politically correct".

Neither is David Cobb, the Green Party candidate. Don't forget that Badnarik and Cobb have already faced off in the first Presidential debate -- probably the only debate this year that will honestly deal with the issues affecting America's future.

(Go ahead, mod me offtopic... I'm just doin' a little educatin'.)

Why just the Libertarian party? Why not other third parties too. Personally I couldn't vote for the Democrats or Republicans in good conscience. But I couldn't vote for the Libertarians either. Check out all the parties that you can. Don't just latch onto the first one that's "Not Republicrat". That would be as bad as being in the "Not Bush" party.

There's David Cobb the Green Party candidate, Michael Peroutka the Constitution Party candidate, Ralph Nader the Reform Party candidate (no, I'm not kidding), and as mentioned, Michael Badnarik the Libertarian Party candidate.

Those are just the four parties I've heard the most mention of. If you don't like any of them, keep looking. If you're really interested in them, there are even Socialist and Nazi parties.

If you want a quick intro to the Green and Libertarian parties, search the videos on C-Span for the Cobb/Badnarik debate. It's very informative and gives you in a nutshell what the policies of the two parties are, and helps to highlight the problems of having just two major parties.

David Cobb, the Green Party candidate, is also anti-war. As are many third parties such as the Constitution and Reform parties. If you oppose the Iraq war, there are still many options open to you. Just not the Democrats or Republicans.

Furthermore, why, when several of the "third party options" are on the ballots in all 50 states ... why are they not allowed to be in the "official" presidential debates?

Just FYI, the first Presidential debate occurred this past weekend, between the Green Party candidate David Cobb and the Libertarians' Michael Badnarik. C-Span covered it -- there's still an audio/video link from their homepage.

Not that the current duopoly will ever allow a third-party player in the debates again. But they're very handy on the local level. A friend of mine, Gary Page, ran as a Green against a shoe-in Republican, a placeholder Democrat, and a lost-in-the-clouds Libertarian. A local group (Realtors, I think) held a debate with all four. Though the Republican won, Gary's performance was so strong that the Democrats recruited him to run for Congress on their behalf this year.

Keep an eye on the grass roots... they're coming up Green.

He was so insistent that everybody who didn't vote Green was ignorant and controlled by the corporations. He used the word ignorant. Nader will save us, he said. Vote Green. Nader for President.

It's painful for me, as an occasional Green activist, when people still associate Nader with the Green ticket. He was very helpful to the party for the last two elections, primarily because of his name recognition.

But somewhere along the way (or possibly all the way along), he forgot that this isn't a Perot-style one-man show. Nader has an agenda that somewhat matches ours, but we have highly divergent ideas of how that agenda should be promulgated. He thinks it's all about the next election. We (or at least, I) believe it's all about the next generation.

The Green Party grew up this year at their national convention. It was no Repo-Demo style coronation, but a raucous exercise in true grass-roots democracy. In the end, one-time Texan David Cobb and his message of "build the party from the bottom up" won out.

I'm looking forward to the next election cycle... not the next Presidential election, but the next local election. Now that people know who we are, and we have leadership that's visibly dedicated to building the party, we can keep electing Greens to the local school board, city council, state legislature... and on up to the national level.

It's a great time to be Green!

I like Nader and his take on things - I've been a fan for a long time.

I think what's really going to hurt Nader and the Greens is that Nader isn't the Green party candidate this time. It's David Cobb. Many people don't seem to know this.

1. In "swing states," where few percentage points separate Bush and Kerry, we encourage activists to mobilize voters behind Kerry. (A frequently updated list of swing states is posted at www.swing04.com.)
2. In "safe states" (and Washington, D.C.), so overwhelmingly pro-Bush or pro-Kerry that we can be confident of who will win in November, we encourage activists to mobilize voters behind Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb.
3. In all states, we encourage activists to engage in election-year vigilance to ensure that all votes count, especially those of racial minorities -- and to advocate for instant runoff voting and other reforms so that voters in future elections can support the candidate they most believe in without risk of electing the candidate they most oppose.

"The Whole World is Watching"

Green presidential candidate David Cobb today challenged the Democrats on the eve of their national convention to join the Green Party in calling for an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

"John Kerry claims that he was deceived by the Bush administration and the U.S. intelligence community into supporting the unprovoked invasion of Iraq. Yet Senator Kerry chose to ignore reports from United Nations weapons inspectors, international outrage over the planned U.S. invasion and the millions of Americans who took to the streets opposed to the invasion.

"It is time to bring the U.S. troops home now. Their presence is opposed by a majority of Iraqis and is fueling political instability and widespread and continuing resistance. U.S. troops don't belong in Iraq any more than Dick Cheney's Halliburton does. Every day, more U.S. soldiers and more innocent Iraqi civilians are dying.

"The whole world is watching to see what the Democrats will do in Boston. They can either distinguish themselves as a true opposition party or can continue as accomplices to the agenda of the radical right-wing Republicans.

"The Green Party has consistently opposed this deadly and disastrous invasion. The Cobb-LaMarche campaign offers the voters of this country a genuine alternative and we are proud to present a foreign policy based on international cooperation, diplomacy and the protection of human rights," said Cobb.

Cobb will be making campaign appearances in Boston on July 25, 26 and 27 for forums, rallies and protests timed to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. Cobb's running mate, Pat LaMarche, will be in Boston from July 26- July 28. LaMarche will be speaking at a rally to protest the placement of a Bio-Terror Lab in the heart of Boston on Wednesday, July 28.

For more information about this rally, contact United for Justice with Peace, a Boston-area coalition of groups seeking global peace through economic and social justice, at 617.491.4857.

For more information on the Cobb-LaMarche campaign, go to http://www.votecobb.org.

Information on the Green Party can be found at http://www.gp.org.

Nader isn't the Green Party candidate this time; that's David Cobb.

I am on the web team for the Green Party candidate, David Cobb. Every member of the team is an open-source purist, and approached the project prepared to win over the others, though that turned out to be unecessary. We are currently using PostNuke on Debian, but this has proved too clunky for heavy usage by people with a wide variety of skill levels. We are currently developing a new site, which will be Plone (Zope) running on BSD.

David himself is not much of a technophile, but has the sense to use a PowerBook on the road.

You can blame Bush all you want.. but Kerry feels the same way about it.

You are exactly right. As bad as Bush is, on most core issues, there's hardly a flicker of difference between the two halves of our one-party system. That's why I'm voting for the Green Party candidate (hopefully David Cobb).

Of course, YMMV.

Why would you consider Nader a viable option? Whatever you or I may think of his politics, I haven't heard anyone try to argue that he will ever get the sort of funding required to run a competitive campaign.

Funding aside, Nader is no longer the Green Party's candidate -- so he doesn't even have our tiny bit of organizational support behind him. As a Green myself, I'm not too sad to see him go -- I'll miss his name recognition, but he never joined the party, and was widely rumored to be arrogant and aloof (as though those were unusual qualities in a politician?).

I'm going to be plugging for a Texan that we don't have to be embarrassed by: David Cobb. Not only because he's a great guy that I've actually met, but because it's critically important to keep the Green Party on the ballot in every state possible. We'll make our biggest impact in the off-year elections, as our down-ballot candidates build up a critical mass at the local and state level.

I'm not looking forward to November, when Utah will once again rubber-stamp President Bush and Senator Orrin Hatch.

I've got two words for you: Get Involved!

I am the webmaster for declared Green Party pre-candidate David Cobb. It's a Zope/Plone site running on BSD. i also run the site for Cynthia McKinney, but I haven't put much time into her site recently, and don't plan to until she gives a stronger indication that she's interested in us.

Cobb's site will be growing in the near future, as the web team expands.

And for those of you who want to post crap about Nader spoiling in 2000, first read this, this, and especially this, which contains a whole string of surprises.