BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'

Subject: RE: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 03:00 PM

Tell you what Don. I have no problem accepting "the fact" that either Bush or Kerry will win the election.

I also agree that no one here is going to change their votes based upon what they read in this thread, because everyone is pretty entrenched in their positions.

But I'd like this thread to change the Kerry v. anybody nature of the threads here. I'm looking beyond November, to February 1st, when the reality of the Kerry presidency begins to sink in.

Can we try it from that angle? And if you are willing to give it a shot to change the same old same old Mudcat Kerry v. Nader or Kerry v. Greens or Kerry v. Bush, let's just assume Kerry has won, and we are now living under President John Kerry.

But before you post anything, please read just one of the articles I link to above:

'Monkeywrench Hope'

I ask you to read that interview with Jeffrey St. Clair, because in that interview, he talks about the very issues we will be debating here in Mudcat next February 1st if John Kerry wins.

Then, let's have a discussion.

Sound fair enough? Let's change the dynamic here. Let's make it interesting, instead of rehashing. Let's imagine, dream, and ask 'what if', and see where it takes our thinking.

Subject: RE: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 02:48 PM

As far as I can tell, you are the same GUEST who has started eleventy-umpteen threads on essentially this same subject, arguing the same arguments, and heaping contempt on anyone who doesn't buy what you're selling. You're not going to win anybody over by accusing those who don't agree with you of being nothing but a bunch of brainwashed zombies. Some of us know exactly what we are doing.

On the off chance that, by some incredible fluke, Ralph Nader or David Cobb were elected, neither of them would be able to do much of anything because they would be opposed by a Congress currently disposed to obstruct any implementation of progressive ideas. Dennis Kucinich (who I voted for in my neighborhood caucus, knowing full well that he wouldn't win the nomination, but wanting to make a statement) would have the same problem.

American government is much like a supertanker. It is not a nimble vessel. It responds very slowly to any attempts to change its direction, and such changes, to avoid disaster, must be made gradually. Kerry may be a centrist, but that's a helluva lot better than being right wing. He would, at least, crank the wheel over to port a bit instead of continuing to swing it over to starboard.

You can't just change the president, you have to change the Congress as well. With Nader, Cobb, or even Kucinich at the helm, Congress would simply cut the engines and we'd be adrift, in grave danger of running aground.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 01:42 PM

No, not confrontational peedeecee. But definitely being immediately confronted and challenged by robomatic, Thomas the Rhymer, and now you.

So, again, I ask: why are all of you so afraid to follow the links and read the information, and then come back to the thread to discuss things?

Or is it that the three of you want Bush out because of your hatred for him, and you just don't care if that means the right wing corporate capitalist agenda will win by putting a different corporate capitalist face (Kerry) in the White House to pursue the same agenda that Bush is pushing?

Subject: RE: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: GUEST,peedeecee
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 01:21 PM

Darn, this looked like an interesting topic. Unfortunately, the Guest who started it is pugnacious and confrontational -- I think. It's hard to know if it's all the same poster or different ones. Anyway, not worth reading this.

Subject: RE: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 01:21 PM

Could you expound a bit further for us, Thomas the Rhymer? Or did you inadvertently believe this to be another Anybody Bush Bushers Bashing of Nader thread?

What do you think is irritating about the Greens and progressives? Who are you accusing of being divisive? And why are you trying to reduce those two legitimate concerns to "Talk Radio Trystitichics" (sic) :)

Subject: RE: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 12:50 PM

Irritant. Devisive. Talk Radio Trystishics.

Subject: RE: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 12:42 PM

It doesn't matter if I'm one and the same, robomatic. What matters is the content of the posts.

Why are you so afraid, robomatic? Of me/anon posting? Of hearing reading opinions and views that don't mesh with your own? Of working through the legitimate, necessary conflicts to do the impossible, insane task of devoting one's life to creating a better world?

You are so contemptuous, so ready to dismiss it all in a single post. You apparently don't know what you are missing by not going the easy route by swallowing the predigested, formulaic "arguments" of conventional wisdom, perhaps?

The rest of you can chime in any time, now!

Subject: RE: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 12:26 PM

Nameless, how can I tell if you are the original poster or one in three different posters. Anyhow, I won't detain you farther and you actually had no answer to my rather friendly comments other than to get personal.
BAck to the Subject:

In this election (2004) if the green party can't keep itself together, i question whether it's worth the mouse click to find out more.

Incidentally, on a show last night a pollster claimed that if you take Nader out of the mix, it's better for Bush. You can add that to you subject matter, eh, nameless one?

Subject: RE: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 12:10 PM

How sad that you can't see beyond the name plate, robomatic. This isn't about a bunch of letters typed into the From line to make you feel secure. It's about what is in the body of the message. Which I'm pretty sure will make you feel frightened and insecure as hell.

Which is precisely why you might want to actually follow the links and read for yourself (rather than demand I give you neat summaries here) what the brouhaha is all about.

Subject: RE: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 11:57 AM

GUEST, I believe you have to do more than simply sign on as GUEST to start a thread how else can you differentiate yourself. It ain't rocket science to get yourself a moniker or simply sign in as some individual, you could be clever like, green1 or youthful like greenie, or judgemental, like greenrules.

Anyway, get urself a name.

Also, there are 2 green parties? explain how something so marginal can also be so fractional?

why should anyone care?

Subject: RE: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 11:54 AM

OK, apparently I'm all alone in here! Well, if I'm going to talk to myself about the progressive debate on political strategies for the Greens/third party/indie candidates front, I better include the link I gave over in the letter to Kerry supporters thread, because it is the most important thing ANYONE who considers themselves progressives, should read:

"Monkeywrench Hope An Interview with Jeffrey St. Clair"

Jeffrey is an environmental activist and co-author with Alexander Cockburn of a new collection of essays on this subject titled "A Dime's Worth of Difference". Here is the blurb on the book:

Every four years as the presidential elections approach, a distress beacon goes out to progressive-minded people warning them about the imment take-over of the country by Republican ultras intent on yoking the nation under a fascist regime. Every four years, the Democratic Party offers itself as the only bulwork against the jackboots. Every four years, this argument becomes more and more labored; the differences between the two parties more and more difficult to detect.

"There ain't a dime's worth of difference between them." That's how the great Waylon Jennings described the two parties back in the early 1980s. There may be even less today. Across a range of issues, from civil rights and the drug war to job-slashing trade pacts and health care, the Democrats and Republicans have coalesced into an frightful harmony.

In this sharply written volume, the editors and writers of CounterPunch, the radical newsletter and hugely popular website, reveal how each party is fattened by the same roster of corporate contributors; each party connives to gerrymander congressional districts so that as few seats as possible are up for contention; each party bows to the desires of defense contractors and media conglomerates; each party endorses an economic scheme that shifts money from the poor to the super-rich; each party warehouses the poor by the millions in a vast prison system, one of the few booming sectors of the new economy.

Even the imperial wars of the last 20 years have been a joint venture with Republicans backing Clinton's laptop bombing campaigns and Democrats cheerleading Bush's bloody forays into Afghanistan and Iraq. These days the parties are divided mainly by pretense, phony policy debates on oil drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge (as most of the rest of the continent is given away to the oil companies) or restrictions on late-term abortions (when abortion clinics have been extinguished from 85 percent of the counties in America). The Democratic Party is the graveyard of social change movements.

Yes, the rot is deep, but there is a resistance, a movement to break free from the shackles of this political duopoly, which has its roots in the civil rights uprising of Fanny Lou Hamer, the anti-war campaign of Eugene McCarthy, Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition and the independent campaigns of Ralph Nader. A Dime's Worth of Difference charts the history of these rebellions and the Democrat Party's attempts to coopt them or crush them out entirely.

Political redemption won't be found in the voting machine or at political conventions, but in peopless movements organizing together in the workplace or on the streets, in communities, at weapons plants or on the frontlines of the Pacific rainforests. There's work to be done. Let's do it.

Powerful essays by

Alexander Cockburn
Jeffrey St. Clair
Brandy Baker
Robin Blackburn
Sean Donahue
Michael Donnelly
Joshua Frank
Kevin Alexander Gray
Gabriel Kolko
Greg Moses
Steve Perry
Vijay Prashad
Jeff Taylor
JoAnn Wypijewski

Subject: RE: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 11:21 AM

Sorry, I also wanted to give a link to this article from CounterPunch, which illustrates so well the Democratic Party's corrupt the Greens strategy.

It is the drive to appease the Democrats that was behind the nomination of David Cobb.

Yet, I am voting for David Cobb. Why? To strengthen the Green Party in my state, and because I think as a candidate he reflects my interests and the nation's interest as well as the Nader/Camejo ticket. Nader isn't as committed to party building, which is something I do support, and why I supported the Nader/La Duke 2000 campaign. Neither Nader nor La Duke were committed to the Green Party in 2000, and I knew that too. So I'm glad to see Nader wasn't renominated by the Green Party this year.

But I am pushing my local Green Party leadership to work a whole lot harder to move the national party leadership away from this ludicrous "appease the Democrats" strategy discussed in the article I link to above.

Subject: BS: Can We Do Better than 'Anybody But Bush'
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Aug 04 - 10:47 AM

In answser to the Nerd "Who is David Cobb" challenge, this is the thread to discuss the Green/third party/indie candidate alternatives to the "Anybody But Bush" Democratic party line.

It isn't an open letter to anybody.

Here is an interesting link to a 2001 Green Party article about the well orchestrated campaign by Democrats to put the Green/third party/indie candidates out of business, which quotes David Cobb:

Greens Reject Republican Money

Here is the official Cobb/LaMarch '04 website.

Here
is an article written by Cobb about his 2004 campaign strategy for the party (before he was nominated).

Here is the link to the official Green Party website. That is, the Green Party of the United States.

Just to confuse you, here is the official Greens/Green Party USA website.

Yes Virginia, there ARE two Green Parties in the US.

And here is a quickie Wikipedia article explaining the difference between the two parties.

That should give you something to get started with, Nerd. I truly hope you give them all some thoughtful consideration.