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I didn't vote for Nader, I voted for Gore, but with tremendous reluctance, because I believed a lot of what Nader was saying about Corporate Rule. NAFTA was signed into law by Clinton, not by a Republican. Clinton broke his campaign promise to insure labor and environmental protections in NAFTA. He signed it without any such protections. Because of that, NAFTA resulted in the stark impoverishment that we see in Mexico and other poor countries today (the reason for the increase in immigration), and the wholesale destruction of third world countries' environment in the greedy grab of natural resources. NAFTA also laid the groundwork for the outsourcing of millions and millions of U.S. jobs, as the Corporatists seek to destroy all decent wages and labor protections.
Democrats did this. Not Republicans.
NAFTA is paradigm of the Democratic Party's collusion with the Corporate Rulers. There is also the WTO--a giveaway of American sovereignty, and trade polices that have absolutely devastated third world countries everywhere. (The huge Leftist uprising in Latin America now is all about NAFTA and the WTO.) Given this history, it is no surprise what happened next: Dem Party leaders' collusion with a fascist coup.
And here is some of the evidence of this collusion and corruption of our party leadership:
SILENCE. UTTER SILENCE as Bushite corporations took over our election system with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, and virtually no audit/recount controls, in the Tom Delay/Bob Ney/Christopher Dodd-engineered, new, electronic election theft system. Not only that, virtually ALL Dem Senators in the Anthrax Congress voted FOR this end-of-democracy legislation (the "Help America Vote For Bush Act" of 2002), with only two exceptions (and you'll be surprised at who they are--Hillary Clinton!* and Charles Schumer).
COLLUSION on the invasion of Iraq. HALF of the Dem Senators voted to give George Bush war powers (in essence, violating the Constitution which restricts war declarations to Congress). They lie about it now, and say they were lied to, or didn't mean blanket war powers. All bullshit. THESE DEM LEADERS WANTED A MIDEAST WAR AS MUCH AS THE BUSH JUNTA DID. And look at their votes since! Billions and billions and billions of unaccountable dollars to Donald Rumsfeld. During the '04 campaign, Kerry didn't oppose the war--which was opposed at that point by nearly 60% of the American people. He wanted to do a MORE EFFICIENT war. That's what he said (in essence). He also said nothing--NOTHING!--about the immorality and illegality of torturing prisoners. People voted for him because Bush was worse. (Notably, 125 Dem Senators and House members voted AGAINST the Iraq War resolution--a great leap forward from 1964 and the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, when only 2 in the entire Congress voted against LBJ's horrible war on Vietnam. Still, the Dem leadership was gungho on the Iraq War, and has only been PLAY-ACTING at being against it now!)
COLLUSION NOW, on the widening Mideast war--kneejerk support of Israeli war crimes**, after 3 years of basically supporting AMERICAN war crimes. That's our Democrats--or the main leadership anyway.
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Ralph Nader KNEW. He knew what Corporate wusses they are! And he had every right--and even a duty--to run for president and SAY SO. He was Paul Revere!
Those who say HE lost the election for Gore are not looking at this situation realistically. The SUPREME COURT gave the election to Bush, even though Gore WON. And they would have done that--and Bushites would have stolen that election--NO MATTER WHAT RALPH NADER DID. If Nader had NOT been on the ballot in some states, they would have just STOLEN MORE VOTES. They are thugs now, and they were thugs then! Thieves! Criminals! They would have done ANYTHING to win.
They've stolen TWO elections since then--the first in '02, with the first Diebold systems (for instance, in Georgia, where Dem Max Cleland had a 10% lead going in, and SHOULD HAVE WON that Senate seat). And they just wholesale stole '04, with Diebold/ES&S systems by then all over the country. And Bush lost the '04 election so bad, they had to engage in open, blatant violations of the Voting Rights Act in Ohio, to SUPPLEMENT the electronic theft (which occurred all over the country--as they manufactured Bush's popular majority and tweaked a couple of close battleground states to set up Bush's Electoral College win).
This later history INFORMS the earlier history. It is wrong thinking--and results in bad strategy--to blame it on Nader. You could just as well say that if the goddamned Democrats had LISTENED to Nader--and to other anti-corporate voices--the Dems WOULD HAVE WON '00 by a landslide. It was the Dem leaders' own damn fault that they didn't! (And I think Al Gore knows that now--he has finally separated from the Clinton/DLC faction, and come into his own as a thinker and leader.)
We REALLY ARE seeing a Republicrat Party running the country now--all of it illegitimately (s)elected by Diebold/ES&S, two far righwing, Bushite corporations that are now "tabulating" ALL OF OUR VOTES with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code! They (s)elect the Democrats who can win primaries (corporatists, warmongers). They (s)elect a MAJORITY in Congress that is clearly operating against the wishes and interests of the majority of the American people. They are completely ignoring the polls (70% opposition to Bushism!), and their letterboxes and all protests. They DON'T CARE! They are no longer beholden to US.
Nader was RIGHT! And if he had had mystical foresight, he could have told us just what the CORPORATIST Supreme Court would do, just what the war profiteering corporate news monopolies would do (--SUPPRESS the story that Gore WON), and just what the Democratic Party leadership would do after 9/11 (cave in to the Bush junta on ALL POINTS--on war powers, on civil rights, on torture, on no bid contracts for Halliburton, on the Diebold/ES&S election theft system, and on many fascist economic policies).
It's not Nader's fault that the Democratic leaders are bought and paid for Corporatists and war supporters. All he could do was cry the alarm, and his piddling little portion of the vote made no difference. The thugs and fascists were determined upon a coup. The Dems were already so compromised they couldn't stop it, and many didn't even want to.
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*(I'm still mystified by this Hillary Clinton vote against HAVA. I don't know what to make of it. It is NOT consistent with her other votes and policies. Possibly it's a New York thing--a lot of resistance there to the Diebold/ES&S takeover. If anyone can enlighten me about this--H's reasons for voting against HAVA (and her position now on fraudulent electronic voting systems)--I'd be grateful. I was dead set against her until I reviewed HAVA's history and discovered her lonely (with Schumer) opposition to this election theft coup. It opened a small crack in my anti-Hillary belief system. Interestingly, I have held the position that Hillary WILL BE Diebolded into office in '08--that she has already made a deal with the Dark Lords (who want HER and the Dems to take all the flak (civil unrest, etc.) when Bush war/economic policy hits the fan--and that we had better get used to it, and figure out how to pressure Hillary on ELECTION REFORM. I'd calculated that she has to, at least, pay lip service to good government policy--such as TRANSPARENT elections--and that we might save our democracy that way. THEN I found out about her vote against HAVA! After I had said this, and had presented this strategy. Kind of weird. In any case, I DO think that we--the Left, the representatives of the majority of Americans--are going to have to deal with fraudulent (s)elections for some time to come. Do we split off from the Dems? I don't think that would be wise. Germany 1933 is too scary a precedent. (Fracturing of the center/left paved the way for Hitler's rise. I.e., G. Bush may not be the worst that the fascist cabal intends to inflict us with.)
**(It's my theory that Israel's current war is Plan B of the NeoCon/PNAC agenda. With 70% of the American people against the Iraq War/Occupation (and a recent poll showing EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT opposition to U.S. participation in a wider Mideast war), and Europe, Russia and China all balking both at Iraq and at a wider war, the Bush junta went to Plan B: get Israel to do it. And Israel's crazy leadership was more than willing. This way, the Bush junta can slide the U.S. into it sideways--through some Gulf of Tonkin type incident, or as occupiers. The goal is mainly invasion of Syria and Iran, and U.S. domination of the entire Middle East. But the U.S. at this point = the Bush Cartel. And the Bush Cartel has only one motivator: MONEY! So they will hang Israel out to dry without a thought--if their buds, the Saudi sultans and the bin Ladens, want them to. That's really who is running U.S. foreign policy. Israel has made a "pact with the Devil" in joining up with the Bush junta fascists.)
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