a_vote_for_nader i cant be silent is a vote for social injustice and oppression of gays and lesbians, people of color, native peoples immigrants, the poor, the working class shit -- spare me the rhetoric and sound bites of how gore-is-no-better-than-bush i would be happier than anyone in the world if nader were elected president, and i worship winona. (i do.) but the simple, undeniable fact is that nader's campaign is helping BUSH LOOK: if the white house is republican-controlled for the next term, those assholes are most likely going to get to appoint one or more justices to the supreme court. if you care about HUMAN RIGHTS, that thought should make you cringe. (i'm assuming you CARE about human rights, of course. if not, ignore this.) if bush is elected president, i'm holding every single one of you nader-voters personally responsible. especially here on the west coast where the race is tight. there are much much better ways to advocate for nader's politics than to passively cast a vote, and then think "oh-i'm-so-radical- and-good-and-better-than-those- stuffy-democrats." a vote for nader is a vote for bush. 001025 ... silentbob Fuck you and everything you stand for. I'm voting for Nader because i want nader to be president, not either of the other two made-for-tv politicians. Are you saying the only option is to vote gore? thast the only hope america has? that's utter bullshit. Vote for who you want, people. vote for whoever you want. if you want to vote nader VOTE NADER! if you want to vote gore VOTE GORE! and if you want to vote for bush, by all means, just fuckin do it. 001025 ... silentbob or are you telling everyone to not vote? thats so stupid. 001025 ... silentbob Why didn't you put your name? and email address? 001025 ... Barrett Jello, Jello, Jello, Jello. All three are fucks! But,(and I hate to say this) with Busch we wll have a military, which we so desperatly need. Gore, less military. Nader? And if you think we don't need a strong military, turn on the news. Then read from the book of Revelations. I'm no Bible thump'n freak, but check it out. It's on! 001025 ... kate We have a "www.votenader.org" sign in our front window. My brother put it there. This afternoon when I came home there was a friendly (yes, it really was, no sarcasism in my words) letter from "a neighbor" telling us not to vote for nader. It seems they like him, too.. but they wanted to make sure we knew he wouldn't get elected and (especially in an important state like michigan) a vote for nader is like a vote for bush. It was all very funny, I thought. And cool. I wasn't going to vote for nader, though. Maybe you were. 001025 ... d voting for the lesser evil of two.. because one feels that a third choice isn't strong enough? you are guilty too then 001025 ... i cant be silent silent bob, that kind of angry response gets us nowhere. answer me this: do you care about fighting social inequalities and the oppression of historically- marginalized communities? do you realize that a republican in the white house will set us back 40 years in the struggle for civil rights? answer no to these, and i'll let you be. secondly: i never said don't vote. i just ask that you consider the full consequences of the vote. if you think voting for nader will put ralph in the white house then you are a little naive. but, silent b, if you tell me that you have been doing everything in your power to campaign for nader and his platform; if you tell me that you are an activist who tirelessly works to promote nader's ideals; if you tell me that you are doing much more than JUST VOTING for mr. nader... (like I am doing) THEN, mr. bob, i will respect you and your opinions. and be silent, too. 001025 ... tourist If you don't vote at all the system doesn't care.The majority of people don't.And so it is only the majority of the voting MINORITY that get any say at all.If the race wasn't so tight I would vote for a Libertarian as this action will get the attention of the major parties, they'll look and see people voting (a vote they didn't get but could have) and try to figure out what they could have done to get it.ie. what lies they should try next time. In this way a vote for a candidate that doesn't stand a snowballs chance can still effect change by tricking the major parties into changing their rhetoric.hopefully their actual policies as well. As for a strong military and all that armageddon shit, we need to quit trying to fulfill the ancient tribal myths and move toward something different. Forgive us Father for we know not what to do. At this moment mankind is gathering infomation about asteroids (NEAR Shoemaker ) sending probes toward Saturn (Cassini) returning information from Jupiter (Galileo) and more. This type of thing cannot be done without a technical civilization in place. the internet, human genome project,hydrogen powered automobiles, permenant Human settlment in space... these things are all possible because we work together. find simalarities between us not the differences. But I am straying. The race is close and I am a fatalist, but the past few years my situation has been improving and so I will vote to continue with the present structure. I won't presume to tell anyone else how to cast theirs, but I heartily urge them to do so. In the end all things work to the ultimate good. It's just in the short run that I have any vested intrest... And I've known for a long time I live in a town with military sites that put me at ground zero.I'm long past worrying over it. Peace 001025 ... tourist God I Hate Political Discussions. I Really am just passing through. 001025 ... amy you know, i really wanted to see Nader and Laduke in the debates, but i didn't get to vote on that. i was even willing to see Bush as President if it meant Nader got to debate. the election, now, means very little to me. i'll probably just vote for Gore and the green party congressman in my state. that's because i'm in a swing state. if i were in a solid Bush or Gore state, I'd vote for Nader. I encourage people in those states to do so, if you support him. 001025 ... sarpedon ... is a vote for Nader. Likewise, a vote for Browne is a vote for Browne. Guess which one I'll be voting for. 001025 ... silentbob I cant be Silent: When i answered you i just felt threatened and reacted in a hostile manner. i have not been doing everything in my power to promote nader but i have been telling everyone i see who I'm voting for, that i always feel safe voting for nader when they tell me they dont trust bush OR gore. i wanted to start some kind of Green Party office in my little town to spread awareness that there actually is life outside of the debates, but im kind of lazy. i do care about social awareness and equal treatings of people and am aware that republicans in the white house is bad, and i know that nader is not going to win any election. but i couldn't feel clean voting for either of the other too. i dont consider a vote for nader a stolen vote from gore. im sorry if you think im wrong. everyone who is going to vote for bush already has their heart set on it. if nader wasnt around i wouldnt vote at all. im voting for him because i like his positions on things. i will not feel responsible for getting bush into the white house. the reason i acted so hostile-like was how accusatory you sounded. it pissed me off good and proper. and im responding yes to your questions, so remain silent. im donig most in my power to campaign nader, both my sisters are voting nader, my parents are voting gore, a lot of my friends are voting nader. my conservative friends are voting bush, mostly cuz they are pro-life. thers not much i can say. basically, (i really dont like being an asshole, but) if you think i'm responsible for putting bush in the white house, then fuck you, i dont care what you think. im voting nader because i want nader to be president and i dont like the selections. i think most are the same. if nader wasnt there they wouldnt vote. people who want gore are voting gore. and we KNOW people who want bush are voting bush. What bothered me most (i dont want to attack you, because you actually could be one of my good friends on here and id have no idea cuz you're anonmous) was the fact that....bascially you were saying, "Dont vote for the person you want to vote for, because it wont get you anywhere. Vote for the person I want you to vote for." But i really dont want gore to be president. and if he gets in, and fucks up, i will have the right to say, "I didn't vote for him, its not my man." same with bush. i dont want bush to be president. so i'm not voting for him. To make a long story short (too late) I'm going to vote for whoever the fuck i want to, because i'll be 18 on saturday and of legal voting age. maybe that scares you. maybe that takes votes away from your president. But its MY choice. not yours. 001025 ... Barrett Happy Birthday Bobby! You're right. You believe what you want to believe, and more fuck'n power to ya! No one is right and no one is wrong. Just vote. Then you have the right to bitch. 001026 ... Al Gore I don't like the argument that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. It may be true, but my argument that I much prefer is I want to convince all of the voters to support me with enthusiasm, and where issues like the environment are concerned, I'll put my record up against anybody's. 001026 ... silentbob i love you all :) 001026 ... ryanthered I beleve that this system needs another party. not a keger but political we are forced to vote on two guys that i dont even know. 001027 ... chanaka nader is at my school today and he says "hi" and "vote for whoever the hell you want to" 001027 ... one observer a friend of mine pointed out that the vast majority of nader supporters are the priviledged people of this country. white, middle or upper class, native-english speakers, well-educated... people who are not going to be threatened by a republican-led government. see, it's sure okay for YOU to say that you'd prefer to "ease your conscience" by voting for Nader, when you're not the one who will suffer when Bush is president. reading lots of the comments above, i was shocked to see how many of you decribed your political motivations as being so goddamn self-centered. "...doesn't matter to ME." "bush becoming president doesn't really affect ME." i see that my error was assuming that you all were people who looked beyond your own lives, beyond your computer screen. sorry for jumping to conclusions. if my words offend you, you should think about why you are hurt by these implications. i mean, shit -- i don't know a single one of you personally, yet you are getting angry at some anonymous blue words... Anger is a symptom of an internal conflict. i'm not telling anyone how to vote. yes, obviously, it's-a-free-country-power-of-the-individual-la-la-la... i never tell people what to do. alls i'm trying to do is get you to think. "It would be foolish to expect rigorous logic to affect the votes of Nader's most ardent backers, for whom the election has become more of an existential statement than a political decision... The film director Michael Moore warns college kids that if they don't vote their Green conscience, they'll be doomed to "miserable lives, lousy jobs and shitty relationships. You'll be miserable and then your life will be over." Moore also coolly tells students not to fret about another Bush presidency because George W. "is too stupid, and the American people are too smart, to allow that to happen." That's comfortable rhetoric for a populist who lives in a Fifth Avenue penthouse, like Moore, or another who owns millions of dollars worth of tech stock, like Nader -- neither of whom will suffer much regardless of who wins the presidency. " http://www.salon.com/news/col/cona/2000/10/24/nader/index.html 001027 ... last words oh, silent bob. thinking of starting a Green Party office and telling friends that you are voting for Nader is not exactly the type of tireless activism i had in mind. congrats on turning 18, and on exercising your right to vote... I hope the rush you feel when you vote for Nader in two weeks is someday (someday) followed by the realization that casting that vote may not have had the consequences you intended it to have. whatever you do, don't confuse innocence with ignorance... 001027 ... god i'm voting for gore. 001028 ... silentbob you have had no affect on me whatsoever. you have failed in your mission to convert me to Gore-ism. sorry. you lose. bush wins. i vote for nader. 001029 ... stephen is not a vote for gore. it's a vote for nader and what he stands for. 001029 ... sliver nader is not going to win. but unlike ross perot, a vote for nader is not wasted. it is not thrown away. it matters. in this election every vote matters. the best way to help nader is to be sure your vote will *count* -- that in 2004 the green party will be eligible for federal funding. to achieve this nader needs to receive 5% of the popular vote. but -- a vote for nader is a vote for bush. *if* you are happy with that result, vote nader. you will get what you want. if ... like many people ... you, a nader supporter, would prefer a gore presidency to a bush presidency ... and if ... you live in a swing state go to www.voteexchange.org and register to swap your nader vote with a gore voter in a state gore is sure to win. think about it but whoever you are whatever your politics whomever you support and whatever you believe VOTE ON NOVEMBER 7TH AND MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD. 001029 ... guitar_freak hey last words, fuck off and back off! You don't have any right to talk about who to vote for. If I could vote I would also vote for Nader. I disagree with Bush profusely, but that doesn't mean someone doesn't have any right to vote how they choose. I would congradulate anyone who even did vote. The fact is that Nader is getting more people involved in politics. Many people who have never voted before or just don't want to have been drawn to this race because of Nader. The lack of GOOD canidates is why thousands don't vote every year. In the end whoever we wind up with president will make mistakes and they will make good chioces as well. Not everyone will agree what is good and what is not. That is why we have the Supreme Court and Congress. The checks and balances will also have faults, but everything can be corrected in the years to come. If abortion becomes illegal you can still do it, just illegally. If pot became legal, you don't have to do it. My point is that you are in charge of your own life and how you live it. So do what you think is right and vote how you think will help the greater good. 001031 ... silentbob So yeah looking back on all this... MY last words are this. GORE won in my state. i voted for nader and Gore won in my state. then there was all the confusion... and so when you think about it... every vote in florida counted. yep. and if i had voted gore...it wouldn't have made a difference. and if i had voted for bush...gore still would have one in my state. So waht do you think GORE would be doing different right now? Do you feel the attacks on afghanastan would not be happening righ tnow if gore was prez and the now-threat of bin ladens nuclear power would be different? how would the world be different if gore was presidnet? 011111 ... gore we wouldn't be the laughing stock of the UN. 011111 ... blue star I wish John McCain had won... He was the only candidate I would have even remotely trusted with this terrorism/Iraq shit. We need better fucking options. 021024 ... silentbob looking back once again. the only thought i have and continue to have is how stupid it is. i wouldn't have voted for gore. i wouldn't have. if nader hadn't have been there i would not have voted. "i cant remain silent" was only all mad because people weren't voting for the candidate he wanted. a vote for nader is a vote for nader. its not like all of naders votes are immediately put into bush's tally. how stupid. just because gore got votes taken away by a candidate i actually agreed with, that doesn't mean bush got any more votes than he WOULD have gotten. and do you really think if gore was president he would have done anything differently than bush? i wonder what would be different right now if gore was president. 021024 ... butterfly if voting could change anything it would be illigal. but vote anyway, because then they accually have to pretend to care 021024 ... silentbob "well the first thing i would do is tell people not to vote for me..." -Noam Chomsky when asked why he isn't running for president 021024 ... old white guy why? 030603 ... rubydee a vote for nader was a vote for nader....but obviously if you were a democratic voter in palm beach county or elsewhere in florida, an estimated 70,000 citizens at least, your vote counted for even less than that. heck, that many people didn't even GET to vote because their names were "inadvertantly" struck from the list. thanks, jeb! 030604 ... stork daddy well technically in california a vote for nader wasn't a vote for bush since most voters were going to vote democrat anyways and the electoral college and not the popular vote as was obvious that election determines the president. either way, i voted for some guy who used to be a physics professor. i can't even recall his name now. the rhetoric that states that no one can ever run on an independant ticket does annoy me. it's like that simpsons episode where the aliens take over and say one will run for republican and the other democrat and they they say...you have to vote for one of us...it's a two party system! sure the bull moose and green party may have done more harm than good (depending on where you stand) but maybe the problem is that they weren't independant enough, not that they were independant. too often a third party is just a watered down or liqoured up version of the party it is most closely affiliated with. our system isn't ideal, but its most valuable feature is that it has built in mechanisms of change and ways to measure the desires of the people. And when people vote for a third party candidate they are declaring their belief in change and their belief in a more direct form of representation. the people who naysay about it are one more reason it is so hard to start a succesful third or even fourth party - cynicism in the voting population or worse, apathy. i for one don't regret my vote for whatever his name was. he was the only candidate i listened to who made sense to me. 030604 ... endless desire wow stork_daddy proved you right, brian. now i see what you were saying. if people never vote for those random guys than they will forever be "those random guys" a vote for the random guys is a vote for change. congradulate the girl. she just made you make sense. . . and a whole lot better than you ever did. (:P) 030604 ... rubydee amen, stork_daddy, you said it. right on. 030605 ... god i voted for gore and hated myself (fuck the pmrc!), but i couldn't vote for bush. they still stole the damn election. fuckerz. my slogan now is "anybody but bush in '04". it ain't much, but it's the best i can allow myself to hope for. 040921 ... p2 if gore was president we wouldn't have gone into iraq 'nuff said 040921 ... silentbob A vote for nader is one less vote for kerry. Nader has the right ideas, but is just going to get nowhere. he will get enough votes that wont go for kerry and then bush will win. He came to speak at my school and they charged five dollars for students and ten for adults. a man came out and asked for gifts of thousands of dollars. he asked the audience to donate 1000 dollars. Someone stood up and said, "How much is Bush paying you to do this?" 040923 ... stork daddy seriously though, it really depends on what state you live in. 040923 ... stork daddy well unless everyone in california is going to vote for nader. that would suck. 040923 ... p2 nader's a tool and a republican tool republicans have been gathering signatures to get nader on the ballot and nader had chances to decline those signatures and even considered it until it became obvious that he needed them to get on the michigan ballot the same thing's happening in arkansas, washington, oregon, new mexico, ... "The Democrats also found five signatures of people they said are paid staff members of the state Republican Party." google: "ralph nader" "republican signatures" 040923 ... silentbob I wonder how much the republicans paid dan rather to look like an asshole on TV. to make it look like any allegations against bush are fake. no way could a good ole boy from texas be bad! 040923 ... stork daddy of course they want to split the vote. the republicans are super happy about nader. as i imagine clinton was happy about ross perot. i do feel nader has thankfully lost some of his credibility. what i can't believe is that this election is being touted as being less close than the 2000 election was. People weren't sure whether or not to vote for Bush, until they learned he was a horrible president. Then they're all for it. 040923 ... realistic optimist the lesser of two evils voting strategy leads to cutting off democracy at the knees. there IS no choice this year. as a matter of fact, nader is not even on the ballot in oregon, not that i would vote for him this year. it is truly sad that there is not a proliferation of choices. ergo, we are locked into what i am calling the: the_two_party_ruse 040924 what's it to you? who go blather from