Hi Garry,

<<A good case in point tonight Ron, was Soledad O'Brian

She's doing a duo with CNN's main pollster, can't think of his name, and he's talking about the number of Republicans and Democrats who during the exit polls told his teams that it was the economy they were most interested in.

So good ol' Soledad, who has a brain about the size of a cashew, says, "But what about race! Let's look at race!">>

Isn't she the worst? If her brain is a cashew, I'd still say that's oversized for her particular intellectual ability. On second thought, it's pretty hard to decide who's the worst, there's so much competition. Still, she is a good example of what's wrong with the media, since she's such a clear distillation of their current "thinking." In a slightly more rational world, anyone who had her as an employee would be horribly embarrassed, but I think the media moguls we have now are somewhere beyond being embarrassed (or ashamed).

--Ron

<<"The great thing about that photo leading this article is that from an anthropological standpoint, the country will eventually become non-melanin specific as races inter-marry and reproduce to the point where there is just "us."

I'm sorry I won't live to see that day because all this racial bullshit has been continuing to drag our country down since its inception.">>

I think there's a possibility that you will see the day you hope for. I think it would already be here but for all the dishonest incompetence in the media, and true racists in politics not being hounded out of office by the media, instead of sucking up (or on) them.

In a way, I hope Hillary wins (the presidency), not only because I think she's the best candidate, but because it would be such a smashing defeat of the media, and could help end the careers of so many jerks, like Matthews, Russert and their little constellation of also-rans, or at least, end their credibility quite effectively.

--Ron

<<I think the Iraqi poster said it better than I could have.

Game. Set. Match.>>

Actually, no. It doesn't answer a single thing I've said.

<<No one deserves more blame than Al Gore and his corporate pigeons for Bush's presidency. If you wanted those Nader votes, you should have gone out and earned them. And that's the lesson of 2000 if you have a progressive agenda. You want to win, you have to fight.>>

Do you always blame the victim? He did earn his votes. He had an honest, sensible campaign. He actually won the election. The reporters in the media hated him for no rational reason whatsoever, they bear a lot of the blame for Bush being in the White House, in some ways, the media bears more responsibility than the Nader voters. The supreme court bears even more guilt. People who voted for Bush are also guilty. Still, the reason Nader voters get a lot of blame is because if they actually believed in what they say they do, they should have voted for Gore, and if they had, we wouldn't be where we are today. They believed the total crap that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between Gore and Bush (that was an obvious lie then, and even more obvious now, yet many Nader voters STILL think there's little difference, or at least won't own up to it). Anyway, I don't believe any substantial percentage of Nader voters wanted bush as their second choice (and I don't believe that they all would have stayed home if they couldn't vote for Nader), so if Nader had not run, the election wouldn't have had the opportunity to be put in the hands of a criminal supreme court. That's why progressives are so angry with the Nader voters, their (Nader voters) total foolishness did an unbelievable amount of damage, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Remember, any Statewide recount (the most likely scenario that the Florida judge in charge of deciding about the recount before Scalia acted criminally), Gore would have won.

--Ron

I can see voting for a 3rd-party candidate that won't win...IF...either of the other candidates would be OK as president. In the 2000 election, that was not the case, despite the media and Nader and other morons lying or obfuscating that there wasn't a "dime's worth of difference" between Gore & Bush. It was obviously not true then, and thousands of dead people today prove it completely today, not to mention our destroyed economy, even more damaged environment, rotten supreme court and lower courts, and on and on. I'm amazed at the number of people here who seem to think that Gore ran a bad campaign, when in fact he ran a decent campaign, and still won, despite continuous trashing all over the media, especially damaging trashing by so-called liberals (think Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Bob Herbert at the NYT, think Tweety Matthews and "Timmeh" Russert, Brian Williams, etc., on TV). Think of the egregious "reporting" by Ceci Connolly, Kit Seelye, etc., a virtual avalanche of dishonest hype and despite all of that, Gore won! Yet people still persist in helping the media not face its role in destroying the country by saying Gore ran a bad campaign. He ran a competent campaign and should be in office today. Many people don't take the task of voting seriously enough to know what a candidate says, or think logically, so yes, the American voter shares a large part of the blame for two terms of Bush. There's still something like 30% of the electorate that thinks Bush has been a good or great president. That portion of the populace is either dumb as a rock, extremely dishonest, or likely, both.

So despite Kaleun's passionate but wrong-headed support of Nader, it was a mental and moral failure to vote for Nader in 2000 (yes, it was a bigger mental and moral failure to vote for Bush). Everyone makes mistakes, and while I wouldn't trust the judgment of someone who voted for Nader as they've shown poor judgment, I don't think they're as culpable as actual Bush voters, but only slightly less than a "dime's worth of difference."

Too many people think they should vote as if this were a perfect world, and they end up making the world worse. Use reality as your guide, and you won't be fooled by pied-pipers leading you off a cliff. Reality is that in 2000, a vote for Nader was a vote for Bush, you knew that when you voted for him, and all the rationalizations to the contrary won't change a thing. If you allowed faith in to think you were doing something good by voting "against the establishment" or whatever your vote was about, then you have a chance to slightly correct your error or compound it, compound it by supporting Nader this election, or correct it by not doing so. That's your choice, no other one is available.

--Ron

<<You see -- many of you (still!) fail to grasp the fundamental problems with Gore and Kerry and Obama or Clinton. If we wanted to vote for those people, we would. If those candidates truly spoke to our interests, they'd have our support. Nader never took a vote away from Gore because none of us wanted to vote for Gore to begin with. If anything, it's as Nader said several years ago, Gore took votes away from Nader.>>

And the tooth fairy will fix your teeth, too.