Nader and Gonzalez speak to the people

Journalist Bonnie Faulkner hosts Guns and Butter on KPFA and may be one of the last practitioners of journalism in so-called 'alternative' media. Last Wednesday [click here for KPFA's archived broadcast] Faulkner used her hour of airtime to do what others chose not to do, remind America that the presidential race isn't just a race between Democrats and Republicans.

She did that by featuring speeches by Matt Gonzalez and Ralph Nader from the previous weekend. It truly was an exclusive and that says a great deal about the state of 'alternative' media.



Nader-Gonzalez is the independent presidential ticket (the one 'independent' media forgot) headed by Ralph Nader with Matt Gonzalez as his running mate. Matt spoke first and here are the bulk of his remarks.



Matt Gonzalez: It was very interesting to see that the weekly newspaper sort of put an ad about our appearance and they wrote something like, "Maybe Ralph will apologize for the last eight years?" And, you know, I thought -- I thought it was amusing sort-of, but then I started getting angry about it and i thought to myself, "Well wait a second, who should be apologizing? Who's voted for this war? Who voted for the Patriot Act? Who supports all these appropriations? Who supports the FISA bill?" I mean at some point there has to be responsibility taken for these positions. And this idea that it all belongs at the feet of Ralph Nader is just so absurd that it's insulting to our intelligence.

The war in Iraq is probably one of the ugliest things we've ever engaged in. Nancy Pelosi told us, 'Elect me the Speaker [of the House of Representatives] and I'll get you out of the war.' Well I want you to know when she was not the speaker we put $116 billion into the war. She became the Speaker January of 2007, that amount went up by $50 billion. $50 billion more. From $116 to $165. This year, it went up to $189 -- so another $20 billion on top of that. What's wrong with our country?

What's wrong with our opposition party that they can -- with a straight face -- tell you that the problem with this country is that candidates who hold views different than the ones that they hold are somehow not allowed to engage in the democratic process and not allowed to get out there and try to get our ideas out?

Ralph Nader and I are fighting to end the war in Iraq. We want single-payer health care. We want to reform the Taft-Hartley law that has really taken the strength out of labor -- that's essentially outlawed general strikes, jurisdictional strikes, secondary boycotts, all kinds of things the labor movement can't do anymore.

Now when I think about what was the problem in 2000 I'm just awestruck that so little has been done to cure the problem that we have in this democracy. Two things happened. We let somebody get announced and declared the president of the United States who got less votes than one of the other candidates. And we let someone be declared the winner who didn't even have the majority of the vote. Now we're all intelligent people, we can figure out how we would fix this problem: We would mandate that the winner would have to get over 50% of the vote. That would be that. How complicated is that?

How is it that all the brain power in the Democratic and Republican Parties can't figure that out?

Well first off for the Democrats, let me say this: "You like to invoke the name Ralph Nader but you never invoke the name Ross Perot who won 19% of the vote and 'elected' Bill Clinton president in 1992 with 43% or less of the vote. Clinton got less percentage of the vote than our current president did in 2000. But you never hear about."

So the first thing I want to say is the antiquated line, you know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. There is a reason why these political parties don't want to change the system. It's not because they don't know how. It's that if they were to change the system, the political spectrum would widen. What's possible in this country would widen. And they would whether have arbitrary outcomes and be in power roughly half the time than to fix the problem and really change American democracy. So if they're not willing to change the problem then aren't we rewarding them when we attack Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez and all the other candidates out there that are trying to talk about the real issues?

Now it's astounding to me that Barack Obama likes to say 'Well . . .' -- for his explanation why he can't do the things that need to be done and take the positions that he should take, he likes to say -- 'super heroes don't get elected in politics.' Well, you know, there are no super heroes in the Canadian legislature that passed health care for their citizens. The [US] legislatures that vote against the Patriot Act are not super heroes. They're human beings like we are who believe in due process and equal protection and want a citizenry that isn't at the whim of governmental invasion of privacy. That's -- that's -- it's fundamental.

There's a whole group of people out there that are trying to make apologies for the Democratic nominee, saying, 'Well he's only moving to the right now that he's secured the nomination.' It's not true. It's not true. Barack Obama supported the Republican Class Action Reform Law. This was something that David Sirota wrote for The Nation -- and many of their columnists made fun of -- they said 'This is a big business bonanza.' John Kerry voted against it, Hillary Clinton voted against it.

The Democratic nominee has always supported limiting pain and suffering damages and medical malpractice cases -- favoring the wealthy in effect, those with good jobs over those with poor ones. He's opposed getting any kind of royalties from the mining of public lands -- the hard rock minerals on public lands. He voted for the Energy Policy Act in 2005 -- a vote that [John] McCain even opposed in 2005 Mobil Exxon, as we all know, has record profits now of over $40 billion a year. In 2005 they had record profits of over $35 billion a year and one of the Chicago newspapers -- in response to Obama's vote for this thing -- pointed out that it was an odd time to be dishing out oil-welfare. You know? Because we were giving tax breaks and subsidies in greater amounts than we were investing money in alternative energy.

This is a candidate that opposes gay marriage.

He has come out in response to progressives saying 'What are you doing -- what are you talking about with this faith-based initiative stuff?' And you know what he does? He scoffs at progressives and says, 'You have not been listening to me.' Well listen, we are listening to you now. We have listened to you with your FISA vote, with your 'change' on off-shore drilling, with your condemnation of a Supreme Court opinion related to the death penalty and you don't deserve our vote. You're not going to get it.

And if you give these candidates your vote, you're guaranteeing that the system stays in place. You're guaranteeing that they can just say one thing to you and change their mind afterwards.

One of the most notorious recent things that Obama said that just is astounding relates NAFTA. First off, he's campaigning in the primary and he's saying to everybody, he says 'I don't think NAFTA has been good for Americans and I never have." Well it turns out that an AP writer goes back and look at his -- a guy named Calvin Woodward -- goes back and looks at his Senate campaign in 2004 and guess what? At the time Obama said the US should pursue more deals such as NAFTA and argued that his opponent's calls for tariffs would spark a trade war. Okay? So now he's against NAFTA, okay? He's in a tight race with Hillary Clinton, he's against NAFTA now, maybe he's figured out that NAFTA has created a scenario where we have displaced millions of Mexican workers, caused the migration to the north because we're subsidizing corn, for instance, dumping it in Mexican markets and ruining their agricultural system. What would you do in that situation? So now he tells -- he's in a fight with Clinton over who's against NAFTA more. He wins the nomination in effect and he gets interviewed by a writer for Fortune magazine, June 18th, Nina Easton, Washington editor, asking him, 'What about NAFTA, you said you would invoke the six month clause to unilaterally get out of it?' He says, 'Well, you know, sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified."

So he went from calling it devastating and a big mistake to it's just rhetoric. And that's what we're supposed to buy into?

We're supposed to buy into political rhetoric because we're not allowed to have better candidates? We're not allowed to have candidates that are saying, "Come on, we can have a better country. We can change this around"?

The Democrats . .. You know, if voting for complacency and capitulation and appeasement worked, I would advocate it. It's not working. It's just not working. And notice they tell us 'If we can just have this, we'll win. If we can just have this next thing, we'll change everything.'

I love how these US Senators run around and say, "Well if I were president the home mortgage crisis wouldn't have happened and the oil prices wouldn't be what they are." You've been in the United States Senate, what the hell have you been doing there? Why do we have to elect -- give you a promotion, when you're asleep on the job. Right?

Now you counter that, you counter that with Ralph Nader's history of achieving legislative accomplishments as an outsider. How does his record match up against Senator McCain's and Senator Obama's? Right? I mean Freedom of Information Act, Clean Air, Clean Water, all the automotive work, all the consumer protection work. a lifetime of trying to wake up the American public to stand up and fight back and not to take this anymore. Right?

Imagine what it is to go into a progressive town and have a progressive publication say "Maybe they'll apologize for the last eight years?" It's really gross. It's not the way to treat Americans participating in a democracy trying to tell people, 'Come on, let's try to fix this.'

I want to just close by making reference to the historical examples I think are important to keep in mind. There were candidates in the past that people said, "Don't vote for them. You're throwing your vote away if you vote for them. You know people like Eugene Debbs who ran for president a number of times and, you know, he thought we should have the forty-hour work week, you know? He thought women should be allowed to vote. Imagine that? The radical concept that women were 'advanced enough' intellectually and 'mature enough' that they could vote. This was actually a discussion in our society and it was Eugene Debbs that was saying "Yes." And maybe he got 6% of the vote, the best he ever did was 6%. So if you had lived in that time and somebody had said, "Don't vote for Eugene Debbs, you're throwing your vote away" -- what would you have said to them? Now with this historical lens to look back?

How do we break through things? And you go even further back, you go to the Liberty Party of the 1840s James Birney advocating abolition of slavery. He can get 1% of the vote. You're throwing your vote away if you vote for him apparently. Well I don't believe that and I hope that you don't.

I think it takes a lot of courage to be someone like Ralph Nader who is being attacked for standing up in a democracy and trying to articulate views that the other candidates are essentially throwing away, rejecting, you know? And I think we are at that historical moment are we going to vote for what we believe in or are we just going to keep buying into rhetoric about "hope" and "change" that it's already been proven to us is false? Thank you.



Ralph's speech followed and here is some of what he had to say:



The two-party system -- a 220-year-old political prison, winner take all, electoral college, duopoly -- basically says to voters: "You got two choices. You stay home and not vote. Or, if you want your vote to mean something, and you want to be with the winner, you vote for one of the two major party candidates. Otherwise, you are wasting your vote."

And you hear Matt [Gonzalez] say, "Were those voters in the 19th century who spun off from the Whigs and the Democrats and didn't try to spin the difference between these two parties on slavery waste their vote?" Aren't we glad that enough voters voted for the Liberty Party at least to put it on the political map in 1840 and the Woman's Suffrage Party, the Populist Party, the Labor Party, the Greenback Party. All these parties and then Norman Thomas' Socialist Party, Progressive Party will follow it. Eugene Debbs. What did they propose?

A-ha. The blasphemy of their days is the common place of our days. They proposed direct election of senators, 40-hour week, progressive income tax, Social Security, Medicare. They proposed labor standards. They proposed regulation of big business.

So we have three kind of voters in this country.

One, the hereditary voters who will vote Republican and Democrat no matter who the nominee is because their grandparents did. That's a big chunk. [NYC] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg, when he was thinking of running for [presidential] office, I had a telephone conversation with him -- actually, just before he was going to announce that he wasn't, on that day. And he said "I've done surveys and polls all over the country. Here's my conclusion. 15% of the Republicans will vote for the Republican nominee if the Republican nominee was Leon Trotsky. And 15% of the Democrats would vote for the Democratic nominee if the nominee was Ayn Rand." That was a way of saying, if he threw his hat in the ring, he starts with a 30% handicap. Maybe he's underestimating it? But that's one, the hereditary voter.

The second is the tactical voter. The tactical voter says, "Let's be realistic. We don't care about how bad the Democratic Party is in terms of our supporting it as long as we know the Republican Party is worse. That's the tactical vote. "Be realistic." The tactical voters is one who spends three years moaning and groaning about the Democratic Party.

They didn't roll back any of President Bush's legislation when they took over in 2007! Not one. Not even the disallowing Uncle Sam to negotiate for volume discounts with the drug companies when the Drug Benefit Act -- a bonanza worth tens of billions of dollars to the drug companies -- was enacted. They didn't roll back anything. They keep funding the war. Their leader -- presumptive nominee -- wants more soldiers in Afghanistan. He doesn't have an exit strategy.

They don't do anything about strengthening the corporate criminal crime laws. John Conyers has a single-payer bill, HR 676, 85 members of the House have signed on but he can't get one Democratic Senator to introduce it in the Senate. Not one. Not Obama, not Clinton and not those two great, new progressive senators Bernie Sanders and Senator Brown. Sherrod Brown from Ohio. Those are the great hopes of the progressive wing.

Now why don't they introduce it? Senator Sanders who has come out against impeachment vigorously along with Senator Brown -- "It's exactly what Karl Rove wants us to do -- is to initiate impeachment." 'So he can turn the 26% of the people who support Bush against us!' Is that what he really means?

I'm putting that word in his mouth. I mean this is the lowest popular president in modern times and Cheney's at 16% which is almost happen-stance, you know. Harry Truman proposed universal health care. 1945. Sent it to Congress 1950. What are we talking about here? Isn't it about time that we join the community of nations? Taiwan has universal health care. Every western country has universal health care. A country we give four billion dollars a year to, Israel, has universal health care. Maybe they should have a foreign aid program? Reverse it back to us?

Now what does it mean when you don't have health insurance? What is means is that 18,000 Americans die every year according to the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, that's six 9-11s every year. The Urban Institute just came out with an estimate: 22,000. That means hundreds of, hundreds of thousands of people get sick, stay sick, don't have their injuries treated cause they can't afford health insurance. Why doesn't that get us angry?

Because the people who can do something about it, who can have their calls returned, have health insurance. How many people here do not have health insurance? That's pretty impressive. How many are under twenty-five? See, that's what people out of school are now facing. Trying to find affordable health insurance, or health insurance of any kind, affordable housing, trying to deal with rapacious student loan companies like Sallie Mae with all their fine print and their gouging interest rates, wondering whether their jobs are going to be outsourced abroad because anything with software, architect, engineer, accounting, computer, all that can be outsourced. Law -- a lot of law jobs now are starting to be outsourced. Even media jobs are starting to be outsourced. I'm still looking for CEO jobs to be outsourced. I think there are some very good bi-lingual Chinese executives, brilliant skills, who for 10 percent of the pay would take care at General Motors and Exxon and Pfizer. After all, they're outsourcing their own employees jobs to keep up with the global competition. Well . . . let's start at the top. Huh?

So the tactical voter is a complicit voter -- wittingly or unwittingly -- because the moment you go you're so terrified of the worst party you go to the next worst party -- on a huge number of issues, a huge number of corporate power issues. Then you're saying to the least worst nominee -- Obama, for example -- that your vote can be taken for granted because you are so terrified of the Republicans that you will not make any demands on Obama in the area of women's rights and abolishing poverty and consumer protection and environment and tax changes and the wars and all the rest of it. And labor reforms and repeal of Taft-Hartley. So you don't make any demands. Don't, don't disturb them! I mean, they gotta' be elected!

They've got a strategy for election. They sure have. Mondale. Dukakis. Kerry. Gore -- who won but it was taken from him, but it was a lot closer than it should be. Clinton who had Bob Dole as his opponent, who would campaign in Missouri and look at his watch and say, "I think I got to go to the airport so I can get home." Washington, DC. He really wasn't that serious. It is not a winning strategy. It is a losing strategy. Clinton, as Matt just said, benefitted greatly from those 19 million votes [referring to the 19 million who voted for H. Ross Perot, the third-party candidate].

Then there's the third class of voter. The third class of voter reflects what Eugene V. Debbs once said. He said, "Better to vote for someone you believe in and lose than someone you don't believe in and win." What did he mean by that?

He meant if you vote for someone you don't believe in and win that someone is going to betray you, that someone is not going to look back on what your support is supposed to mean. And the Democrats have betrayed this country in ways that some chroniclers will fill many books in the coming future.

So the important thing here is to measure these parties by what the American people need, want, deserve, are entitled to. That's way overdue. Those are the yardsticks.

The Democrats could have stopped Bush on the war. They had the votes to block almost everything he did. You know the Senate can, when you've got over 40 seats you can almost block anything. Ask the Republicans.



Ralph will be speaking in Canada tomorrow night (seven p.m at the Design Exchange on 234 Bay Street in Toronto -- admission is free but donations are welcome and An Unreasonable Man will be shown.). For now, you can be thankful -- whether you're supporting Nader or not -- that Bonnie Faulkner respected the listener and democracy enough to continue to bring viewpoints otherwise ignored to her audience. You can stream her broadcast of the speeches in full, at no charge, by clicking here.

War resistance then

There is no draft today and it really doesn't need to be a talking point in terms of today's war resisters. It is a subject of an advertisement taken out in The National Guardian in the spring of 1967 and we are sharing that advertisement here. We do so not to trip back into nostalgia or to have Tom Hayden tell us more 'horror stories' of how 'invasive' his draft physical was. We do it because you need to grasp what the peace movement was already doing in 1967 (approximately eight years before the US finally left Vietnam) to grasp what is and is not being done today. The ad was taken out by The Vancouver Committee to Aid American War Objectors.



AID DRAFT RESISTANCE

During the past two years several thousand Americans have evaded the draft by coming to Canada. Many more who would have evaded the draft in this way are now in the army because they didn't have accurate information about how to get legal status in Canada. Anti-war groups in the U.S. have up to now done very little to distribute information about immigration to Canada. We find that deplorable because:



1. Those who oppose this war should not only be trying to change the policies of the American government, but should also do whatever possible to obstruct the prosecution of the war. We hold that large-scale draft evasion is at least a minor obstruction.



2. Anti-war groups have a special responsibility to young men whom they have convinced that the war in Vietnam is unjust. While we encourage and expect these young men to refuse military service, we must at the same time assist by providing them with information on all ways of avoiding induction into the army. Every act of non-compliance with the military should be welcomed as an obstruction of the war effort. . . .



Anyone consider emigration or renunciation of American citizenship should have up-to-date information and advice appropriate to his own situation. Countries which have similar laws return lawbreakers to the authorities for punishment. Canada does not have a draft and American draft offenses are no bar to Canadian citizenship. However, in most cases men who flee the draft can never expect to return to the United States without facing immediate induction or prosecution.



This was an advertisement, a public service announcement and we're not concerned about "fair use" since the point of the ad was to get the word out. The point of including it is to give you a gauge by which to start judging today's movement (or, too often, 'movement'). We searched to see if it was available online (our copy comes from C.I.'s journals in real-time and the penciled date looks like "April" something). We don't find it. It should be available online. You can find a pamphlet from The Vancouver Committee to Aid American War Objectors here. Though Toronto usually gets the lion share of attention in look-backs today, Vancouver was very active and also included The American Deserters Committee in Vancouver.

The sorry John Edwards spectacle

[This piece is written by Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Betty, Kat, Mike, Cedric, Ruth, Marcia and Wally. ]





John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him did not make it any easier for me to hear when he told me what he had done. But he did tell me. And we began a long and painful process in 2006, a process oddly made somewhat easier with my diagnosis in March of 2007. This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well. Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private. The pain of the long journey since 2006 was about to be renewed.





That's part of Elizabeth Edwards statement on John Edwards recently revealed affair. (For some reason, AP has the full comments but doesn't attribute them to a source.) Those late to the story and needing audio can click here for NPR. In terms of Elizabeth's statement, what a load of crap. Not only is she not trained in DNA forensics, she also doesn't have the DNA from the alleged child to prove one way or the other. What she may have is that her husband says he's not the father.





(Note the "may," Rebecca cautioned us to use qualifiers. She, Ava, C.I. and Elaine knew about this affair last summer. Rebecca says there is still a great deal to come out if any news organization decides to dig and not just repeat.)



When we first learned John Edwards was publicly confirming the affair Friday, our thoughts went immediately to his wife. As most know, Elizabeth Edwards is diagnosed with cancer. That does make us sympathetic. There's also the fact that we happen to like Elizabeth Edwards. The latter became a reason why we'd probably have to weigh in because we're not the site that just hands out lolly pops. There was a chance that Ava and C.I. would cover the topic in this week's TV commentary; however, they are not interested in sex scandals so we weren't surprised when it didn't make it into their final commentary.



We like Elizabeth Edwards, we are sympathetic to her illness. That doesn't mean you can get away with hogwash. AP's already covering her for this morning, wording it as she doesn't think that her husband has fathered a child with another woman. That's not what she wrote. She wrote that he hadn't. And those of us who majored in journalism (Dona, Jim, Jess and Ty) and those of us who didn't are all sick of this damn trick where someone issues a public statement on something and then says, "Leave me alone!"



Want to be left alone? It takes two words: "No comment." You make a public statement, you're asking for the attention -- intentionally or not.



It also helps to get your facts straight and while Elizabeth maintains that her diagnosis was later, John Edwards told Nightline that her cancer was in remission when the affair began. Could it be both? It probably is both. Like her husband, Elizabeth is an attorney and darn well knew what impression she was creating when she stated the affair began before her March 2007 diagnosis. Reality is she had already been diagnosed with cancer. Reality was the last known word was it was in remission. Reality on cancer is it treated, not cured.



We first learned about John Edwards admission at USA Today which also carried his self-serving statement that sought to promote his interview that night on ABC ("I have given a complete interview on this matter and having done so, will have nothing more to say.") He really climbed on the cross for that one: "If you want to beat me up feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare and will now work with everything I have to help my family and others who need my help." As Goldie Hawn says to Walter Matthau in Cactus Flower, "Julian, please, you're starting to make it sound like bragging."



An affair can be a private matter. Not when you make it a public one by turning it into a media event. John Edwards did that repeatedly long before The National Enquirer caught him in the hotel and he tried to hide out in the bathroom. Having finally decided to come clean, he turns it into another media event -- with accompanying his and her press releases.



No, you can't do that and declare it a private event. You can't invite journalism in the door and then say, "But you have to stay in the entry, you can't come into the living room."



That keeps happening. And it needs to stop.



It's bad for journalism but it's also bad for the public. A politician -- as demonstrated over and over -- thinks they can make a brief admission of guilt (in part or in full) and then declare, "It's a private matter." After which, no one's supposed to ask about -- like you're never supposed to ask Jodie Foster about her sex life or she'll walk out of the interview.



Non-journalists don't dictate what a journalist can or cannot do. It's perfectly fine for a journalist to decide they won't ask a question, that they consider it off-limits. A person issuing a public statement and then declaring it's off-limits and a private matter is something else completely. Politicians are using that quick confession as if it's a non-disclosure statement journalists agreed to sign when it's nothing of the kind.



John Edwards issued his public statement in text form to the media. Then he rushed off to Nightline to give a self-serving interview where he refused to answer Bob Woodruff's question about whether or not he held Rielle Hunter's baby (the baby alleged to be his). He would only say that he couldn't make out the photo The National Enquirer had of him holding a baby. You've agreed to sit down with the media and talk -- on camera -- about your affair, you damn well better talk.



An affair isn't the end of the world. Had Elizabeth Edwards taken Hillary Clinton's approach (it's no one else's damn business), that would be one thing. But she didn't. She wrote up a statement and shared bits (like she KNEW it wasn't John's baby) and then wanted to draw the veil. If it's no one else's damn business, it's no one else's damn business. But don't invite someone in and then think you can make demands after.



The Los Angeles Times is said to be all over this story. Funny, because last month when The National Enquirer ran a story (John's long visit that prompted him, when caught, to run and hide in the hotel's bathroom) the paper issued an edict that none of its reporters were to mention the topic.



Should the paper have issued that edict? That's something to debate. But the Edwards have both decided to go public and, having made that decision, they really can't outline the parameters of what the press can and cannot do.



Other than the tawdry spectacle of two adults deciding to make their private lives public, there are political issues.



John Edwards wants America to believe that this was his only time cheating. If true (if), that would mean that while running for president, he decided the perfect thing to do was to cheat on his wife. Cheating on your spouse or partner isn't uncommon and it's not the end of the world. But it is curious that, according to Edwards, after a lifetime of monogamy, he decided while running for president to have an affair.



To say it was stupid is putting it mildly.



There is also the issue that Elizabeth Edwards got tremendous sympathy (and publicity) when she discussed her cancer. And John Edwards got a bit of a boost from that. He's running for president and everyone's sympathetic to how difficult that must be while his wife has cancer. As the story is being told publicly, while he was campaigning for president (in 2006) he began an affair with another woman. In early 2007, he learned that Elizabeth was no longer in remission. In his statement he claims he made his peace with his family. How was that, John? Did you announce you had an affair and then, as you're doing with the press, declare that, having announced it, you'd said all you planned to?



It's really hard to believe that the marriage could take the toil of an affair, the admission of an affair, the cancer going out of remission and a presidential run all at the same time.



But that's what Edwards wants everyone to believe. Appearing on Nightline, sporting a new do that we can't figure out if it's a homage to friars to monks, Edwards made the usual ass of himself declaring that he was on camera because, "I have to be the man, to take responsibility."



He has to be "the man" in his marriage. The very fact that he feels he has to work at being "the man" when he is, in fact, a man is rather troubling. Add to that the fact that John Edwards has some pretty f**ked up ideas about what a man is. Prior to making his Democratic presidential endorsement, he appeared on MSNBC and got himself caught in a trap of his own making when using the masculine to describe a president. He denied then that he had just endorsed Barack; however, if it wasn't a slip, it goes straight to the fact that he's got some pretty f**ked up ideas of masculinity.



With the admission of cancer, he and Elizabeth opened a new door into a presidential wanna-be's life. It gave him an authenticity that would have been lacking had they also elected to share with the American people that John Edwards had cheated. On Nightline, he declared, "My Lord and my wife have forgiven me. I'm moving on." But what about the American people you wooed so vigorously for over three years in your non-stop campaign?



There is that endorsement, the one The Washington Post saw as a "boost" for Barack. How many would have seen it as a "boost" back in May if they'd known John Edwards had cheated on his wife? It's doubtful that even the Obama-mania news media would have shoved every other story to the side (including Hillary's massive primary win the day before) if admitted Edwards had been the admitted adulterer he is now. In fact, we doubt Barack would have publicized it, let alone attempted to turn it into a media event. (What is it about Barack and all those Crazy White People around him?) Hillary had just had a landslide the night before in West Virginia and there was LIAR John Edwards, side by side with Barack, declaring, "We are here tonight because the Democratic voters have made their choice and so have I." For those who have forgotten, that endorsement was judged to carry such 'moral authority' that the networks carried it live. The contest was not over and there was John Edwards trying to shut it down. He also declared that "we must come together as Democrats" and one has to wonder if that's a line he used on Elizabeth after confessing his affair?



A question that both husband and wife need to be asked is what they intended to say if John got the nomination or even made it into the White House? Ava and C.I. heard it in DC from a male senator in August who, in the course of a conversation, attempted to get them to donate to Barack's campaign. (We know that from Kat who was also present.) He assumed, wrongly, that they were Edwards supporters and that was all that was standing between them and Barack. So he shared that it wasn't just whispers, it was true (and other details).



So since this had already moved to DC talk, the Edwards must have discussed it then if not sooner. What was the plan, if John got the nomination, on how they would explain the affair? If John got the presidency, how would they explain it?



By the end of July 2007, the press was largely done with John Edwards and they, no doubt, were hearing the gossip as well. One has to wonder why no one suggested a Super Delegate take John Edwards into a room for a 'talk'? What would the campaign have been like without Edwards in it? Possibly Barack would have gotten all those voters and could say today that he won the nomination. (He didn't win it. Neither he nor Hillary received enough pledged delegates to win it.) Possibly Hillary could have won the voters? Had the news of the affair broken after the MSNBC debate where Barack and John tag-teamed Hillary, what effect would that have had? Maybe Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, Chris Dodd or Mike Gravel might have actually gotten some traction in the race and gone on to win the nomination?



Most of the time, that talk is just could-have-been and not worth addressing. However, the Democratic Party and its organs (like The Nation) have repeatedly sold the 2008 election as their election to win and as a historic one in terms of the future of the country. Having declared that so much was on the line with this election, those same outlets should be pondering what Edwards campaigning did or did not do the primaries? Instead, Peter Rothberg (The Nation) rushes out with a don't-you-dare-talk-about-this post.



Again, had the approach been that it was no one else's damn business, that would have been the end of the story. But the Edwards turned it into a media event last Friday. And it's also a political event. In January, Ava and C.I. took Barack to task for trying to weasel out of Anderson Cooper's debate question about Loving v. Virginia where a couple sued the state of Virginia to overturn laws barring interracial marriage. Cooper wanted to know where Barack stood on same-sex marriage and brought Loving v. Virginia into the question. Barack played dumb and pretended to 'honor' that decision while insisting that marriage should be up to churches (Loving v. Virginia did not involve any church). Ava and C.I. also noted, "John Edwards also embarrassed himself in that debate noting he was against 'gay marriage' and 'I do not' support it leading us to shout back at the screen, ''Gee, John, we weren't aware you were being inundated with proposals!" In that debate, Edwards would be asked, via videotape (by a man who it turned out was in the audience) how his using religion to oppose same-sex marriage was any different than others who'd used religion as an excuse to practice other bigotry? Edwards opposed same-sex marriage and (at least publicly) tried to hide behind his Bible. The same Edwards that we now know wasn't too concerned with said Bible when he saw Rielle Hunter.



Last time we checked, the Bible said nothing about same-sex marriage but it was pretty damn clear on fidelity. Edwards was willing to deny some Americans the right to marry and to hide behind his 'Biblical interpretation' to do so but he wasn't too concerned about what the Bible said when he was cheating on his wife. It is political.



There's also the issue of Rielle. She's not made any public accusation, she's neither a plantiff nor a witness in any scheduled court case (and she's stated she's not going to put her child through a DNA test -- and, no doubt, the circus that would result from that). So why are the Edwards lawyering up on her? That is how this is playing out. Elizabeth may have every reason in the world to be mad at Rielle but, thing is, Rielle didn't pledge fidelity to Elizabeth in front of a church and God.



But Rielle is repeatedly rendered the 'bad' one in this. As an unmarried person, she's certainly free to sleep with whomever she wants. If infidelity is the issue, take it up with John Edwards who broke his vow. Instead, she's the one being dragged through the mud. We tend to agree with Jay McInerney's comments to The New York Daily News, "To say that he slept with her but he wasn't in love with her - that's not very chivalrous. He's trying to distance himself from her. I don't feel my questions have been answered with regard to Edwards. It was a half-assed confession."

--------------

Illustrations are Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "The Endorsement" (May 18, 2008) and Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "When Front Runners Attack" (November 4, 2007).

Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Marcia of SICKOFITRADLZ and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.



"I Hate The War" -- The most requested highlight by readers of this site. Wally is on the road with Ava, C.I., Rebecca and Kat (Rebecca goes off the road for this week and rejoins them for three weeks next week) tells us the backstory: War resisters have actually been news of late garnering attention from Real Media (while Panhandle Media remained largely silent as usual) so C.I.'s been juggling different things from the snapshot. While speaking to a group of service members last week about war resisters, C.I. was asked, "Whatever happened to Ehren Watada?" Nothing has happened to Ehren and he remains in limbo. C.I. decided then that Ehren would be the Thursday night entry and the focus of it.



"Testing out The Obama Playbook" -- Betty's latest. And you almost didn't get a chapter. All last week, Betty was getting ticked off by various things in the news and surveying all of us on how we thought it would go over if her site did a blog post and not a chapter this week? We all told her that we thought everyone would be supportive. Elaine pointed out that they would also be understanding because traditionally Thomas Friedman (in real life) takes a vacation around this time each year and Betty usually stops for a few weeks. (In the early days of her site, chapters were a response and corrective to his latest columns.) This was planned as a 'straight' post without Betinna. She was discussing it with Kat and C.I. on Friday when they pointed out that she could take her main point -- if she wanted to -- and very easily end up with a Betinna chapter. Betty says, "Don't expect that this week. If the nonsense gets me as angry again, I probably won't have anything to offer other than a straight post."



"Garlic Pasta in the Kitchen" -- Trina's offering a pasta recipe, selections of Nader and Gonzalez' recent speeches and also going over a basic for her site. We'll repeat it here to help her out. Her site's focus is on helping the people who need help. It's a Bully Boy economy and people are suffering. You may think your multi-hour prep recipe (containing 16 ingredients) for lasanga is to die for but not only does it consume more time than most have available, your ingredients are out of the price range of most working class Americans.



"Yeah, talking John Edwards" -- Mike's post. If you don't know, John Edwards confessed last week to cheating on his wife. Ava and C.I. toyed with including the topic in this week's commentary. They don't care for sex scandals and only considered including it because they were covering public affairs programming and Edwards was on Friday's Nightline. They didn't get around to including it and they say it didn't end up fitting. (They have a very long commentary this week that you'll love.) We're considering doing a feature of some sort on it this edition but, if we do, Ava and C.I. will not be participating in that (due to not being interested in discussing sex scandals) and, for the same reason that Rebecca and Elaine won't be participating, they know more than is currently being discussed. If we don't get around to the topic, Mike addressed it here. (And did so very well.)



"ralph nader, robin morgan" -- Rebecca's discussing Robin Morgan, feminism and using your voice. Be sure to read this.



"Go away, Tom Hayden, far, far away" -- Yes, please. We're all in agreement with Kat. Not related to Kat's post but she brought this up, we're currently debating including a "shut up" remark in a piece. It works for the piece but Elaine and C.I. both do not believe in "shut up" as a phrase or a philosophy. How it relates to Kat's piece is that writing this herself made it more powerful than what we probably could have done here. (And that's not picking on Elaine and C.I. or anyone else. Just noting one of the issues being discussed as pieces are being edited while we write this.)



"There's not an election in Canada this November" -- Thank you, Marcia, for saying what really needed to be said. The Cult of Barack is frightening enough in the US but Canadians are way too involved in the US election and way too uninformed (at least the loudest voices). We're guessing it provides a distraction from addressing the abuses of their own government.



"Barack needs his beauty rest" & "THIS JUST IN! BARACK'S BEAUTY REST!" -- Cedric & Wally's joint-post on the man who has taken three vacations since January.



"Talking post" -- Ruth talks about the Wednesday evening posts. The Wednesday evening posts?



"st.elmo's fire and heathers," "Jumping Jack Flash," "Pee Wee's Big Adventure," "Private Benjamin," "Michelle Pfeiffer" "The Godfather III, Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" -- Rebecca, Mike, Marcia, Ruth, Elaine and Kat weigh in on 80s movies. This proved very popular with the community. They were done for two reasons. 1) Burn out and wanting to do something fun. 2) The chance that talking about something non-political might catch a few drive-bys who otherwise don't even know Ralph Nader is running for president. We had a lot of fun writing and reading these and we're aware that a large number want something similar this Wednesday. We're trying to figure out how to go about doing that? Stay with movies? If so, stay with the 80s? (Ty points out that Larissa had a complaint: No one mentioned one John Hughes film from the 80s.) We'll figure it out between now and Wednesday and are happy that so many enjoyed the movie posts.



"Heather McRobie reveals her stupidity" -- C.I. and Betty loved this post so much that they really advocated for it to be reposted here in full. (We all loved Elaine's post.) Were time a luxury and not an enemy, it would be. For now, be sure to read it.



Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels" -- Isaiah's comic from last Sunday that was SO POPULAR, he's actually too nervous to draw one currently. We're not joking. He hopes to have something drawn by Sunday night. Like Ava and C.I., Isaiah actually runs from mass adulation. This is the most popular comic he's done this year in terms of immediate reponse. Be sure to check it out.



"Liz Phair" & "Isaiah, Liz Phair" -- Kat and Elaine discuss an article about Liz Phair. Kat zooms in on the facts of the article, Elaine explains why Liz faltered with the public to begin with.



"Ralph Nader and how Joan Baez lost me as a fan" -- Ruth address 'the late' Joan Baez.



"Next up, Greek tragedies!" & "THIS JUST IN! THE AMERICAN FARCE!" -- Cedric and Wally cover the nonsense that passes for politics in America.



"E-mail from someone disillusioned and awakened" -- Marcia responds to an e-mail.

Truest statement of the week

The Senator would never have been able to launch a successful presidential race if he did not already have buy-in from very rich, very powerful people. Not only did he have to secure their support in order to run, he must continue securing it in order to win. That is why he will never investigate the Bush administration's well documented criminal activity. The rule of law doesn't apply to presidents, to their cabinet members, to members of Congress or to criminal corporations. Obama's backers would be most unhappy if they thought their guy was going to get into office and start calling powerful people to account on any issue. All of which means that Barack Obama will never investigate any of the crimes committed in the Bush administration.



-- Margaret Kimberley, "Obama Pardons Bush" (Black Agenda Report).

Truest statement of the week II

"Obama draws an adoring crowd of 200,000 in Berlin. He pulls ahead in national polls. Meanwhile, McCain, who has run a near-disastrous campaign, inches up in key swing states? Go figure. I say, give Obama the guitar he so richly deserves and make him a rock star. Give McCain a war to run somewhere. And let voters redo the primaries so they can nominate two more mainstream candidates. Anyone who says the election is over and Obama is the victor reminds me of the Obama partisans drumming Sen. Hillary Clinton out of the race and turning off millions of potential Democratic supporters in the process. They do their candidate a much greater service if they duct-tape their mouths."



-- To The Contrary's Bonnie Erbe in "The Barack Obama-John McCain Race Is Too Close to Call" (US News & World Reports).

A note to our readers

Hey --
Another Sunday. We're posting a bit late, even for us. Working on this edition were Dallas and the following:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
and Marcia SICKOFITRDLZ.

For a change, we were all together last week -- though Ava, C.I., Jess, Wally, Dona and Mike went to DC on Thursday. I (Jim) think we all had a lot of fun. Ty forgot an e-mail he wanted to include. ToolRules97 e-mailed to express surprise that C.I. didn't cover a Congressional hearing on Thursday about sexual assault in the military. C.I. responds, "We checked a week ago and that hearing was going to be a joke, we were told. We decided to go in on Thursday for the hearing on food safety and again checked to make sure there wasn't any point in also catching some of the hearing ToolRules refers to. We were told it would be a joke. I haven't read any coverage of it -- did anyone cover it -- but I've heard it was a joke with a refusal to testify. Ava and I covered the food safety hearing for Polly's Brew. It's not my job to cover every hearing and there was one more interesting going on that got very little attention." So that's your reply ToolRules97. Back to the together. We were all together and many had to leave today. At a little before 4:00 a.m. this morning, Dona and C.I. called a halt to the edition. They noted people needed to get sleep before they left. We'd finished everything but hadn't worked on typing anything. The agreement was we'd come back and here type. Due to the fact that it took longer than we'd planned to do that, we began posting out of order because Ty was in the e-mails and seeing people assuming we weren't posting. Due to that, things tended to go up as soon as they were typed. (We'll correct typos by Tuesday night.) (Typos we catch.) Ava and C.I. (the fastest typists of the bunch) finished typing up their piece early but we held that to post last since it was so many wait for. As Ty said, "Diana Ross closes a concert, she doesn't come on the middle of a bunch of other acts!" Which, I guess, makes me the announcer telling you that Ava and C.I. have left the building?

Here's what we got:

Truest statement of the week -- Margaret Kimberly.

Truest statement of the week II -- Bonnie Erbe.

Editorial: Open Up The Debates -- This was the last thing we wrote (in long hand) and wasn't our planned editorial. Jess and Elaine said this could be the editorial. We reworked it quickly to make it read like one. The illustration is of Barack, Ralph and McCain's sites. Why no Cynthia McKinney or Bob Barr? Can you really even make out Barack in the photo? Three was pushing it.

TV: Reality, Power and 'Reality' -- Ava and C.I.'s masterpiece. When we heard that, we couldn't believe it. (I read it out loud to everyone at 1:15 this morning.) It's got it all and, here's the thing, they didn't think they had a commentary this week. KPFA was almost dealt with by C.I. Thursday night but Ava and C.I. decided they better hold that because they didn't think they had anything to comment on. 'Reality' TV fans will be glad to see that Ava and C.I. have tackled another 'reality' program. I'm asking them what they've done on reality right now and they say The Simple Life, The Princes of Malibu and that we all did a piece on The Apprentice. They believe that's it. (And I'll put in the links for those three by Tuesday night.) The first two -- the ones they wrote by themselves -- remain hugely popular. We think this one will as well. (Ava and C.I. disagree and C.I. asks that we note that "all of us" together last week includes Dallas. [Added by Jim: I've put the links for the three reality shows in and I think Ava and C.I. wrote The Apprentice review as well. If they didn't, they wrote the bulk of it. It reads like them. To explain, we started this site a month before that review. Everything was a group process in terms of writing here. But Ava and C.I. came up with the best lines. I did not -- speaking just for me -- even appreciate it and would be thinking, "Yeah, yeah, can we focus?" Ava and C.I. would back the other up and say, "That has to go on." Often it was humor and a feminist point all-in-one and back then it just sailed over my head. They fought for their bits to go into these things and it was only due to the reaction from readers to the parts Ava and C.I. contributed that got me to realize they were doing something special and also had me urging them to do the TV commentaries solo. There is way too much Ava and C.I. in The Apprentice commentary for it to be group writing. Before the switch took place, Ava and C.I. had to fight for every line and were lucky to convince me that much was worth going in. So this may be where the switch took place and Ava and C.I. took over writing the TV commentaries solo. I could ask them but they'd say, "We don't remember." I could ask them to read it and they'd say, "Jim, you know we don't read it once it's posted." I could give them a few lines and it would probably jog their memory but that's about it. ]

Nader '08: Health care and dining -- This is our Ralph Nader article. We wish it were longer and planned for it to be but we did this right before we did what became the editorial and Dona was pointing to the clock throughout. We shoved back (for the third week) a feature we're hoping to do next week as well as a technology piece I was hoping we'd have time for. By the way, last Monday, The New York Times got it wrong on CDs, vinyl and cassettes. Repeatedly. They lied and said Walkman's took off in 1979 (among other lies). 1979 was a bad year for music sales. The Walkman took off in the early eighties. Cassette sales weren't even surpassing vinyl until the early eighties.

The Death of Panhandle Media -- I was reading over C.I.'s shoulder Saturday morning and ten paragraphs in this are from that with us reworking them. I really did like it. I didn't, however, try to claim it for Third. I tried to claim something else and C.I. had to think about that (and wanted it offered to Isaiah first) so the morning entries were held. When they were posted later, Dona was looking at the second entry and saying, "We could expand this at Third." C.I. pulled the ten paragraphs and that was the basis for this article.

Captain Caveman Barack -- This came about from a one-liner C.I. had Saturday morning. That's what I asked to be pulled and tried to claim for Third. I thought we could superimpose Barack's face on an illustration of Captain Caveman. C.I. said we could have it for a story but the idea of an illustration needed to be offered to Isaiah first since he is the community cartoonist. He loved the idea. We thank him for letting us repost his cartoon in this feature.

Workin' it for Sister Baracka -- A small number felt this topic was covered at community sites last week (it was covered) and that it didn't need to be addressed here. Rebecca and C.I. pointed out that doing it as a feature article would allow us to link to three organizations ( The Denver Group, PUMA and Just Say No Deal) which sold us on it.

Roundtable -- This is a very basic roundtable. We had two topics we wanted to explore in this (our topics, not from e-mails) but it had gone on long enough. I believe the bulk of the topics -- if not all -- come from e-mails.

Highlights -- Mike, Kat, Rebecca, Betty, Ruth, Marcia, Cedric, Wally and Elaine wrote this and selected all highlgihts unless otherwise noted. To note something here, because it does bother Elaine, she wrote something last week and made it clear that she and I have no problems between us. We do not. In fact the only 'friction' when I read it was my telling her that she didn't need to include the sentences in parenthesis saying we didn't have a problem. We don't. People repeatedly jump to the conclusion that we do. That bothers Elaine so I will include it in the note and say yet again, "Elaine and I get along famously."

That's it. See you next week.

-- Jim, Dona, Jess, Ava and C.I.

Editorial: Open Up The Debates

Journalism is the first draft of history. Or, in AP's case, the first draft of revisionary history. Douglass K. Daneil's "Obama backs away from McCain's debate challenge" notes that presumed Democratic nominee Barack Obama was praising ("great idea!") presumed Republican John McCain's offer of "a series of pre-convention debates" last May and has now backed out (caved) on that -- but Daniel then goes on to rewrite history: "Obama's reversal on town hall debates is part of a play-it-safe strategy he's adopted since claiming the nomination and grabbing a lead in national polls." No Barack adopted that 'strategy' (aka hide) after he bombed in the ABC debate with Hillary Clinton back in April. That's when he decreed no more debates and really started running scared.



John McCormick (Chicago Tribune) quoted Brian Roger of the McCain campaign stating,
"It's disappointing that Sen. Obama has refused [our] offer to do joint town hall meetings. We understand it might be beneath a worldwide celebrity of Barack Obama's magnitude to appear at town hall meetings alongside John McCain and directly answer questions from the American people."



But it's not a two person race. Where are Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and Bob Barr? Like McCain, they were left out in the cold when it was 'decided' what would happen. Barack decreed and the world follows the Christ-child?



Ralph Nader continues to hold at 6% in the polling and, yesterday, picked up another state he'll be on the ballot in: California.



We support opening up the debates due to our respect for democracy. Members of The Cult of St. Barack should actually be supporting opening the debates as well.



1) Barack is lousy with questions but especially lousy with the first question. The more people on that stage, the less likely he'll get the first question at least half the time.



2) Barack is lousy one on one. Partly due to the first question aspect. His better performances in Democratic primary debates were when the stage was crowded. When he's being pitted against just one candidate, his flaws are even more obvious.



3) A two-person debate means Barack will have to respond more. When that happens he falls into his "uh . . . uh . . . uh" pattern and looks as bad as the current White House occupant.



For the above reasons alone, The Cult of Barack should insist that their Messiah be joined on stage by Barr, McKinney and Nader. Equally true is that with Nader and McKinney onstage, it will be harder for McCain to insist that Barack's 'radical'.



We don't find Ralph "cranky" but a lot of The Cult loves to use that word to describe him. Great. Put him on stage and make Barack look better by comparison. The Cult likes to label Cynthia a "nut." Again, we disagree but if that's what you believe, put her up on stage and make Barack look better.



There will only be three presidential debates and America deserves to know who is running. They deserve to hear from the candidates about where they stand and what they'd do. A democracy requires an informed citizenry. If you believe in democracy, open up the debates. If you're a Barack groupie, you don't have to believe in democracy to call for the debates to be open, you just have to grasp that Barack did better in the Democratic debates when he was on stage with many candidates and not just one.



Barack can't bone up for a debate with one person. That's been proven repeatedly. His grasp of the facts is too thin and he's not tested any positions beyond bumper sticker appeal. A two-person debate necessitates less questions for each candidate and shorter answers. That's the format Barack performs better in.



There will be one vice presidential debate. We argue it should be opened as well. We make that argument for democracy as well. But those who object to an open society (a real one, not a Soros funded one) should grasp that anyone on stage with Rosa Clemente is going to look a hell of a lot better. When Clemente starts going on about how the US needs to withdraw soldiers from Iran, not only will she provide much unintended laughter, she'll elevate the stature of everyone on the stage with her. Imagine how, just when the laughter dies down, the other candidates can stir it back up by doing a slow double take.



A truly open debate is good for democracy and it also benefits Barack, the corporatist centerist who has run a centrist campaign and really needs to grab those swing voters. No better way to prove he's in the middle than by having Nader and McKinney onstage next to him.