obama and clinton quick to attack a real liberal

Maybe if the Democrats ran a real liberal Nader wouldn’t have to run as a 3rd Party candidate.
Some interesting quotes from CNN’s article:
 
“He thought that there was no difference between Al Gore and George Bush and, eight years later, I think people realize that Ralph did not know what he was talking about,” – Obama
 
Maybe if Gore came out of his coma a few years earlier and ran on a strong campaign he would have won regardless. And if you look at Gore’s history, Nader did know what he was talking about.
 
Noting that he ran on the Green Party ticket that year, Clinton said Nader “prevented Al Gore from being the ‘greenest’ president we could have had.”
 
No, that would be the Republican Party for tampering with the elections, the Supreme Court for appointing Bush president, Gore for not contesting the votes, and the Democratic Party for forgetting its roots.
 
Obama also criticized Nader earlier this weekend. “My sense is that Mr. Nader is somebody who, if you don’t listen and adopt all of his policies, thinks you’re not substantive,” he told reporters when asked about Nader’s possible candidacy… “He seems to have a pretty high opinion of his own work.”
 
So do a lot of people and for good reason.
 
Obama said Nader “is a singular figure in American politics and has done as much as just about anyone for consumers.”
 
Really? Just as much as anyone? Does Obama know who Ralph Nader is?
 
“I don’t mean to diminish that,” he said. “There’s a sense now that if someone’s not hewing to the Ralph Nader agenda, he says they’re lacking in some way.”
 
Well, the people who usually don’t hew to Nader are individuals and corporations who care only about the bottom line. So yes, they are lacking in some way. Should we include you in this group?
 
 
Ralph Nader enters presidential race

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Ralph Nader is entering the presidential race as an independent, he announced Sunday, saying it is time for a “Jeffersonian revolution.”

“In the last few years, big money and the closing down of Washington against citizen groups prevent us from trying to improve our country. And I want everybody to have the right and opportunity to improve their country,” he told reporters after an appearance announcing his candidacy on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Asked why he should be president, the longtime consumer advocate said, “Because I got things done.” He cited a 40-year record, which he said includes saving “millions of lives,” bringing about stricter protection for food and water and fighting corporate control over Washington.

Nader’s decision, which did not come as a surprise to political watchers, marks his fourth straight White House bid — fifth if his 1992 write-in campaign is included.

The two contenders for the Democratic nomination were quick to pounce.

“He thought that there was no difference between Al Gore and George Bush and, eight years later, I think people realize that Ralph did not know what he was talking about,” Sen. Barack Obama said a town hall meeting Sunday. ..[if gte vml 1]> ..[endif]–>..[if !vml]–>Video..[endif]–>Watch Nader describe whom the Democrats should be “going after” »

Calling Nader’s move “very unfortunate,” Sen. Hillary Clinton told reporters, “I remember when he ran before. It didn’t turn out very well for anybody — especially our country.”

“This time I hope it doesn’t hurt anyone. I can’t think of anybody that would vote for Sen. McCain who would vote for Ralph Nader,” she said.

Nader was criticized by some Democrats in 2000 for allegedly pulling away support from Democrat Al Gore and helping George Bush win the White House.

Noting that he ran on the Green Party ticket that year, Clinton said Nader “prevented Al Gore from being the ‘greenest’ president we could have had.”

Nader has long rejected his portrayal as a spoiler in the presidential race. In his NBC interview Sunday, he cited the Republican Party’s economic policies, the Iraq war, and other issues, saying, “If the Democrats can’t landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form.”

But Clinton said, “Obviously, it is not helpful to whoever our Democratic nominee is. But, you know, it is a free country.”

Nader said political consultants “have really messed up Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

Long-shot GOP contender Mike Huckabee said Nader’s entry would probably help his party.

“I think it always would probably pull votes away from the Democrats and not the Republicans, so naturally, Republicans would welcome his entry into the race,” Huckabee said Sunday on CNN.

“A Jeffersonian revolution is needed in this country,” he said.

Nader told NBC that great changes in u.s.>u.s.> history have come “through little parties that never won any national election.”

“Dissent is the mother of ascent,” he said. “And in that context I’ve decided to run for president.”

Nader, who turns 74 this week, complained about the “paralysis of the government,” which he said is under the control of corporate executives and lobbyists.

Obama also criticized Nader earlier this weekend. “My sense is that Mr. Nader is somebody who, if you don’t listen and adopt all of his policies, thinks you’re not substantive,” he told reporters when asked about Nader’s possible candidacy.

“He seems to have a pretty high opinion of his own work.”

“I don’t mean to diminish that,” he said. “There’s a sense now that if someone’s not hewing to the Ralph Nader agenda, he says they’re lacking in some way.”

Responding to those remarks, Nader called Obama “a person of substance” and “the first liberal evangelist in a long time” who “has run a good tactical campaign.” But he accused Obama of censoring “his better instincts” on divisive issues.

Nader encouraged people to look at his campaign Web site, votenader.org, which he said discusses issues important to Americans that Obama and Sen. John McCain “are not addressing.”

Link.

would you like mad cow with that burger?

Doesn’t matter. There’s a good chance you’re getting it anyway thanks to common practices at factory farms and the blind eye of the USDA.
 
USDA Refuses to Recall “Comingled” Meat That Contains Beef from Westland Plant Downer Cows
By Mike Adams
February 22 2008

(NaturalNews) Following the unprecedented recall of 143 million pounds of beef that was potentially contaminated with mad cow disease, the USDA has decided that it’s okay for children and consumer to eat that beef as long as it is comingled with beef from other cows. This startling decision appeared in a USDA memo reported in the Wall Street Journal, which stated:

“If a processor or grinder has records demonstrating that products were produced using less than 100% of recalled Westland meat for the meat component, then there is no need…to retrieve that ‘commingled’ product.”

This statement from the USDA reveals that the agency believes the recalled beef is so dangerous that nobody should eat it, but it’s safe enough to eat alongside beef from other cows. This is a curious — if not downright laughable — stance to take on public safety. If the meat is potentially contaminated with mad cow disease (which is the whole reason why it was recalled in the first place), then mixing mad cow disease-contaminated meat with non-contaminated meat does not reduce the potential danger of the “commingled” meat in any way whatsoever.

USDA nonsense and the betrayal of the public
How does adding another cow’s meat to the downer cow’s meat make the downer cow’s meat any safer? It doesn’t, of course, but the USDA isn’t really interested in consumer safety. That’s why they’ve issued this statement that means a meat packing company can use 99% of its beef from mad cow disease “downer” cows, and 1% of its beef from healthy cows, and it’s all declared “safe” by the USDA with no need to recall the beef!

Now you can see why I consider the USDA to be such a joke. Much like the FDA, the USDA is primarily focused on protecting the profits of the industry it claims to regulate. What’s important to the USDA is promoting beef, not protecting the public, and that’s exactly why you also see these intentional delays in the USDA issuing beef recalls. These delays are specifically designed to limit the financial losses associated with beef recalls by making sure most of the meat is already eaten by consumers before the recall is issued.

It’s yet another campaign of extreme incompetence — or perhaps fraud — by the USDA, an organization that believes too much in promoting milk and beef products that it has insisted for decades that all Americans eat more beef and drink more milk. That’s the whole point behind the USDA’s laughable food guide pyramid — a marketing document designed to fatten up the population by telling consumers to eat and drink more animal products, regardless of the health consequences. Read Food Politics by Marion Nestle to get the full story on the fraud behind the USDA’s food guide pyramid.

Better yet, download my free Honest Food Guide (www.honestfoodguide.org) – a replacement for the USDA’s ridiculous food guide pyramid. The Honest Food Guide has been downloaded over one million times, and it tells the truth about foods that enhance health vs. foods that destroy health. Beef, milk and other animal products are in the “destroys health” category, and that’s even when they aren’t contaminated!

America faces the facts on animal cruelty and the criminal beef industry
What’s especially notable in all this talk about beef slaughterhouses (which was only made possible by the Humane Society’s secret video, by the way) is that for the first time, Americans are having to face up to the fact that they’re eating meat that is cruelly extracted from the bodies of cows using torturous, criminal processes that expose these cows to excruciating pain.

For as long as I can remember, Americans have simply pretented to not know where their meat really came from. They would buy and eat meat products under the hallucination that somehow all this meat was extracted from cows without any sort of harm or pain. They were kidding themselves, of course, but through clever beef marketing and slaughterhouse secrecy, the industry was able to hide the truth about its criminal activities for many decades.

But now, all of a sudden the discussion about cruelty to cows and slaughterhouse practices is front page news. All of a sudden Americans are being forced to look in the mirror and realize what kind of industry they’re supporting. Of course, many consumers just blame the slaughterhouse. “It’s THEIR fault!” they say, as if their own purchasing of that very same beef had nothing to do with it. The disconnect works like this: “The slaughtering of cows is BAD, and it’s THEIR fault, but the eating of the beef we buy is just fine, no problem!” In this way, consumers fail to connect their own purchasing demand with the cruel treatment of cows in factory farms and slaughterhouses across America and around the world.

When it comes to food, Americans don’t really want to know where it comes from. They’d rather not think about or talk about it. They hold their noses when they swallow, and they talk about comedy TV, or politics or sports… anything to take their minds off the truth hidden in the steak they’re swallowing for dinner. Nobody dares acknowledge the truth about what they’re eating: Angry flesh torn from the bodies of screaming, suffering cows who are exploited and killed by profit-hungry slaughterhouse owners who care nothing about other living creatures.

The beef industry exemplifies everything that’s wrong with America today: Extreme greed, the exploitation of living beings for profit, a shocking lack of compassion, non-stop pollution, environmental destruction and the complete disregard of consumer safety.

Watch the video about factory farming and animal cruelty:

If you eat red meat from factory-farmed cows, you are part of the problem. You are directly supporting the destruction of the environment and the torture and killing of cows. If you eat meat from factory-farmed cows, you are willfully participating in a system of extreme evil that operates without ethics and without any concern for living creatures or the natural environment.

There is no such thing as “cruelty-free” meat. All meat is taken from the carcass of an animal that once breathed, lived, observed and experienced. When you consider your dietary choices, think carefully about what practices you wish to promote and what businesses you wish to see succeed.

The best way to end cruelty to cows is to stop buying beef. Eat no more red meat. That includes meat from cows and pigs. If you must eat animal meat, consider switching to chickens and fish. There is still cruelty in those industries, no doubt, but the experiences of fish are much lower in intelligence than those of a cow, which is an intelligent mammal.

Better yet, eat quinoa, which is a complete protein containing all eight essential amino acids. Or supplement your protein from free-range eggs, spirulina or broccoli juice. You can get all the protein you need from plants by juicing them and drinking the juice. (Cooking destroys about half the protein content of plants, so eat them raw to get your protein.) There is absolutely no requirement for meat in the human diet. Consumers only eat meat because they were trained to do so by their parents. In the long run, that practice is entirely unsustainable, and the future of humanity depends on switching to a primarily plant-based diet.

Remember: Boycott red meat and you’ll help end cruelty to cows. It’s as simple as this: If consumers stop buying red meat, slaughterhouses will stop killing cows!

Be part of the solution. End cruelty to cows. Stop eating red meat (and save yourself from mad cow disease at the same time).

Link.

no time to impeach the despicable duo?

Hmmm… What’s more important to investigate: A) The President and Vice President of the United States violating the Constitution, killing millions of people in a unjustified war, and tampering with elections or B) baseball players using growth horomones and steroids?
 
Cheney Impeachment: Courageous, But Not Surprising
Elizabeth Holtzman
Posted February 22, 2008 | 04:34 PM (EST)

For the first time since the Bush administration took office, three members of the House Judiciary Committee, Robert Wexler (D-FL), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), are calling for hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Richard Cheney.

Their position, while courageous, is not surprising. What is surprising is that it took this long for members of Congress to invoke impeachment, and that even now, they do so against enormous political resistance and cyncial indifference from the media.

No serious student of the Constitution would question that sufficient grounds exist to impeach both President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The Constitution provides that an Executive who puts himself above the law and abuses the powers of his office may be impeached, a point confirmed in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, for abuses such as illegal wiretapping.

There is little serious debate about whether Bush administration actions — wiretapping without court approval (violating the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act), authorizing and facilitating mistreatment of detainees (violating US treaties and criminal laws), starting the Iraq war on a basis of lies, exaggerations and misstatements (an abuse of power) — meet the constitutional standard.

So why hasn’t a majority of Congress supported it? Twenty members co-sponsored Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s resolution calling for the impeachment of Cheney, but bucked their leadership to do so. Democratic leaders took impeachment “off the table,” apparently fearing it could hurt their chances in 2008.

Does the leadership defend the administration, contend that its actions are unimpeachable, or argue they don’t rise to the level of abuse for which Nixon was impeached? Remarkably, no. They publicly say there is no time, and that impeachment proceedings would distract the Congress from other work and divide the country.

These arguments are laughable compared to the imperative to uphold the constitution. And even on their own terms, they are specious. Let’s take them one at a time:

Insufficient Time
In the case of Nixon, the House officially instructed the Judiciary Committee to act in early February, 1974; the Committee finished voting on Articles of Impeachment on July 29, less than six months later. No presidential impeachment proceeding had taken place for almost 100 years, so the Committee had to start from scratch, analyzing the constitution and developing procedures for the impeachment inquiry. Now the relevant legal spade work is done and a road map for proper impeachment proceedings exists, Congress could probably conduct them even faster than in 1974.

Distracting Congress
During Watergate, the House Judiciary Committee conducted the impeachment inquiry. It didn’t deter the rest of the House and the entire Senate from getting their work done, even with a war on. Even the Judiciary Committee also worked on other matters during impeachment, just as the Senate did during its trial of President Clinton.

Dividing the Country
Nixon’s impeachment united the American people. The process was bi-partisan, demonstrating this wasn’t just a Democratic ploy to undo an election. The fairness of the process, the seriousness of purpose, the substantial evidence all gave the public a strong sense that justice had been done. This reinvigorated the shared value that the rule of law and preservation of democracy are more important than any president or party.

Currently, this value is expressing itself in grass roots impeachment movements across America. The Vermont Senate, several state Democratic parties and many municipal governments have adopted resolutions supporting impeachment — more state legislatures would have acted except for pressure not to from Democrats in Washington. Multiple polls show a majority of Americans supporting the impeachment of Cheney (a November 13 American Research Group poll says 70% of Americans believe Vice President Cheney abused his office), and slightly less then a majority supporting the impeachment of Bush.

The Democratic leadership tactic of stonewalling this widespread public sentiment is itself divisive, leading at least half the country to frustration, disaffection and shaken faith in our democracy. Only a sober, serious airing of evidence in hearings would heal the split.

When Nixon’s impeachment process began, he had recently been re-elected with one of the largest landslides in history. No one made the calculation about whether impeachment was a political winner for Congress. Public opinion simply forced Congress’s hand after Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. After the House Judiciary conducted impartial hearings and voted on impeachment, Congress’s approval soared. Republicans were swamped in the November 1974 elections.

Whether or not they bring electoral rewards in 2008, impeachment proceedings are the right thing to do. Regardless of outcome, they will help to curb the serious abuses of this administration, and send a strong message to future administration: the Constitution means what it says — no president or vice president is above the law.

Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman served on the House Judiciary Committee during Nixon’s impeachment. She co-authored the 1973 special prosecutor statute, and co-wrote (with Cynthia L. Cooper) the 2006 book, The Impeachment of George W. Bush.

Link.

bush’s reason for not intervening in darfur

“Outside forces tend to divide people up”. Of course, this doesn’t apply if the country is sitting on top of oil fields.
 
Bush: ‘Outside forces tend to divide people up.’

Yesterday, President Bush defended his decision not to send U.S. troops into the Darfur genocide, saying he learned lessons from the genocide in Rwanda. Ignorant of the comparison to Iraq, Bush said foreign troops would only be divisive and “unbelievably counterproductive”:

BUSH: A clear lesson I learned in the museum was that outside forces that tend to divide people up inside their country are unbelievably counterproductive. In other words, people came from other countries – I guess you’d call them colonialists – and they pitted one group of people against another.

Watch it:

 
Atrios noted the irony, adding, “The museum was the Rwandan genocide museum.”

Link.

the religious right is looking after us…

by making “In God We Trust” more prominent on the one dollar coin. Phew. I was worried about that. Sure our economy is in the toilet, our (p)resident is breaking the Constitution left and right, and millions don’t have adequate health care (or any at all) but at least now “God” won’t smite us for not recognizing him/her/it on our money.
 
 
Our congress takes care of the IMPORTANT stuff
February 3, 2008 6:47 PM, by PZ Myers

We’re in a war, we’re looking at a looming mortgage crisis, and I can tell you that our educational system is getting flushed down the tubes, and what does our brave congress do? Why, it decides to make the words “In God We Trust” bigger on our coins.

Responding to complaints from the Religious Right, Congress has passed legislation mandating that the phrase “In God We Trust” be moved from the edge to the back or front of the new presidential dollar coins.

President George W. Bush signed the measure into law Dec. 26. It was tucked into a $555 billion domestic spending bill after having been pushed by U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). Brownback and other Religious Right conservatives have been complaining about the new coins since the series started last year.

Oh, yeah. That’s a solution. Maybe God will like us better if put his name in bigger print on our money.

They’re all demented fuckwits.

Link.

who owns your elected official?

Find out at Open Secrets.