Ralph Nada will announce his candidacy on NotBe Seen's Meat the Press with Tim Russert on Sunday morning. How poignant, how perfectly placed. Of course, it is only the first of many opportunities that he will be gifted by the "US mainstream news media." Look, it's simple, really -- Ralph Nada has not lost his mind, he has lost his soul. But that's a problem for his family and friends. Our problem is the damage that will be done by the "vast reich-wing conspiracy," using the shell of his life as a vessel, with the complicity of the "US mainstream news media." What will he say? Oh, he will attack Kerry on the war resolution, and although Sen. John Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) was wrong, Nada will not be right and it does not matter now anyway, he will attack Kerry on "special interests," carrying forward the deceits already concocted by the RNC and, sadly, perpetated by Howard Dean. He will attempt to put a different spin on his statement that there was no difference between voting Bush and Gore. He will continue to deny his responsibility by saying Gore ran an inept campaign. None of it matters. Here is what matters...There is no justification whatsoever for what Nada is doing. There should be no mercy shown Nada, no respect, no quarter...Michael Moore and Al Franken need to shadow Nada and isolate him, trailing him through progressive venue in this country, BUT most importantly, the Al ("Truth shall rise again) Gore that arrived in Tennessee two weeks ago must take him on directly in Internet attack ads...And here is what Moore, Franken and Gore should say...A) Ralph Nada, who campaigned in Fraudida in the final days of the race, got 100,000 votes in that state. In the official count, which is erroneous, Gore "lost" by a few hundred votes. Indeed, despite the tens of thousands of votes that were "discarded" state-wide, with even only half of those who voted for Nada, Al Gore would have overcome the fix in Fraudida. Likewise, in New Hampshire, Nada's vote was significantly greater than Bush's margin of victory. If either state had gone the other way, Gore's ascendancy would not have been vulnerable to the post-election fiasco and the judicially engineered coup it led to. Not to mention the time and resources that Gore had to draw away from Tennessee, Missouri, etc. and dedicate to counteract Nada in states like Wisconsin, Washington and Oregon, which should have been solidly blue. B) Nada insisted, demagogicaly, that there was no difference between voting for Bush or voting for Gore. Well, all you have to do is search on "Nada" in the LNS database and you will find many painfully compelling reasons aggregated there, BUT here are the top nine: 1) We would not be in the Iraq quagmire with 500+ dead US soldiers today if Gore was President, 2) We would not have a $500+ billion federal budget deficit and a $7 trillion national debt today if Gore was President, 3)We would not have withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords and instead the US would be leading a world-wide effort to deal with the challenges of Global Warming, 4) Pickering and Pryor would not be powerful Federal judges, 5) the Environmental Protection Agency would not have been subverted to provide cover for corporate polluters if Al Gore was President, 6) our international relationships, along with our prestige and influence, particularly, within the Western Alliance, the G-8 and the UN Security Council would not have savaged if Al Gore was President, 7) the Israeli/Palestinian peace process would not have been utterly destroyed, 8) there would be millions of less jobless Americans, because we would have had an economic downturn NOT a recession (do not ignore, as the propapunditgandists do, the economic impact of the phoney "energy crisis" in California, perpetrated by Bush cabal cronies and permitted by Bush-controlled FERC) and 9) yes, my friends, 9/11 might not have happened...Tragically, of course, this list contains only some of the dread highlights of the indictment against Nada and anyone niave enough to fall for this ultimate dirty trick...
Associated Press: Bypassing angry Senate Democrats, President Bush (news - web sites) installed Alabama Attorney General William Pryor as a U.S. appeals court judge on Friday in his second "recess appointment" of a controversial nominee in five weeks. Pryor's federal appointment has been vigorously opposed by Democratic senators who have objected to his past comments and writings on abortion and homosexuality. Bush praised Pryor as a "leading American lawyer" and said he had been pushed past the Senate's normal confirmation process because of "unprecedented obstructionist tactics" against Pryor and five other nominees.
Save the US Constitution, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
Bush Installs Judge, Bypassing Senate
Fri Feb 20, 6:29 PM ET Add Politics - AP to My Yahoo!
By JEFFREY MCMURRAY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Bypassing angry Senate Democrats, President Bush (news - web sites) installed Alabama Attorney General William Pryor as a U.S. appeals court judge on Friday in his second "recess appointment" of a controversial nominee in five weeks. Pryor's federal appointment has been vigorously opposed by Democratic senators who have objected to his past comments and writings on abortion and homosexuality. Bush praised Pryor as a "leading American lawyer" and said he had been pushed past the Senate's normal confirmation process because of "unprecedented obstructionist tactics" against Pryor and five other nominees.
The president said of the Democratic blockers: "Their tactics are inconsistent with the Senate's constitutional responsibility and are hurting our judicial system."
Pryor was immediately sworn in in Alabama by another 11th Circuit judge.
The Constitution gives the president authority to install nominees in office when Congress is not in session. Both houses were out this week for the Presidents Day holiday. But the appointments are good only until the end of the next session of Congress, in this case the end of 2005.
Last month, Bush used a similar appointment to promote Mississippi federal judge Charles Pickering to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news - web sites).
Bush said Pryor's "impressive record demonstrates his devotion to the rule of law and to treating all people equally under the law."
However, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee (news - web sites), said none of Bush's nominees is more controversial than Pryor.
"Actions like this show the American people that this White House will stop at nothing to try to turn the independent federal judiciary into an arm of the Republican Party," Leahy said.
Democratic presidential contender John Edwards (news - web sites) said Pryor "has a long record of vigorous efforts to deny Americans' basic rights under our laws."
"This is one more example of why we need a new president," said Edwards, D-N.C., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said the appointment was "a constitutional response to an unconstitutional filibuster."
"I've always heard that when you have nothing else to say, you call people names," Cornyn said. "That's apparently what Democrats are now resorting to, just name calling. Bill Pryor is a very qualified, highly professional nominee who has a proven track record of enforcing the law, rather than his own personal agenda."
Bush picked Pryor last April for a seat on the 11th Circuit that covers Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Abortion rights advocates immediately mounted a campaign against the nominee, citing his criticism of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade (news - web sites) decision that said women had a constitutional right to terminate pregnancy.
Pryor also came under fire for filing a Supreme Court brief in a Texas sodomy case comparing homosexual acts to "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia."
Republicans have been unsuccessful in five attempts, the last one in November, at breaking through the parliamentary blockade that Democrats erected against Pryor's nomination.
Pryor, 41, is a founder of the Republican Attorneys General Association, which raises money for GOP attorneys general.
Besides Pickering and Pryor, Democrats also have used filibusters to block Bush's appeals court nominations of Judge Priscilla Owen, Hispanic lawyer Miguel Estrada and judges Carolyn Kuhl and Janice Rogers Brown. Estrada withdrew his nomination in September.
While Pryor didn't speak to reporters Friday, Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, a close friend and Pryor's predecessor as Alabama's attorney general, said he had talked to him on the phone and found him to be "very comfortable with the situation."
Many Alabama Republicans remain angry at Pryor for leading the charge to oust the state's chief justice, Roy Moore, for refusing to abide by federal court orders requiring him to move a Ten Commandments monument from his courthouse.
Supporters hope almost two years on the federal appeals court will prove to Democrats that Pryor, as they say he showed in the Ten Commandments case, is willing to look at more than one side of an issue.
___
Associated Press reporter Phillip Rawls in Montgomery, Ala., contributed to this story.
Posted by richard at February 21, 2004 08:20 PM