Andrew Warner

From a Ralph Nader interview transcribed at the Cincinnati Beacon:

RALPH NADER: Well, that factor, one, and whether we can get enough petitioners to get on the streets to overcome the likely harassing lawsuits and attrition by the Democratic Party in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio. But, basically, you can’t run a campaign like this unless you get a lot of young people who are contacting you all over the country and who want a new politics in America and who want to develop the skills for future campaigns in their own right. That’s really what we’re looking for now.

As someone who only has faith in politics because of Ralph Naders, I'm begging Nader to run again in '08. Good news for him, I'm a young person in Ohio who is willing to collect signatures for him.

There's always a group of people frustrated enough with American politics to throw their weight behind an alternative candidate – ESPECIALLY if Democrats back a candidate like H. Clinton. Who knows if Obama's any better?

A Nader candidacy is enough reason to wake up and believe again.

Labels: Democrats, National Politics

Posted by Andrew Warner at 9:06 PM | Permalink

The southerner who is as famous for his grin and tan as he is for the creation of a second America, John Edwards, is set to announce his candidacy.

Edwards, who represented North Carolina in the Senate for six years, plans to make the campaign announcement late this month from the New Orleans neighborhood hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina last year and slow to recover from the storm.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to pre-empt Edwards' announcement.

As Edwards enters the crowded field, the Lower Ninth Ward provides a stark backdrop to highlight his signature issue _ that economic inequality means that the country is divided into "two Americas."

The guy has been making his way around the country since the end of his unsuccessful campaign for Vice-President fighting for minimum wage raises and looking for an end to poverty – that included a trip to the Burnet Woods Gazebo to campaign for Ohio's Issue 2.

Barack Obama is said to have the rock-star aura in his corner, but the way the old Cincinnati Democratic crowd fawned over a refreshed John Edwards a few months ago indicates he might have a bit of the same mojo working for him.

Poverty is as important an issue as any and it's good that there's now a candidate in the race who is going to make that the centerpiece of his campaign. Combine Edwards with Dennis Kucinich, whose main issue is ending the war in Iraq, and Democrats almost have a whole candidate this time around.

Labels: Cincinnati, Democrats, National Politics, Social Justice

Posted by Andrew Warner at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments

I remember a time when Rock Star Video games was in Senator Clinton's crosshairs for promoting violent video games like the infamous Grand Theft Auto. You'll still see reports of Clinton and Lieberman's crusade against video games trickling into the news to this very day.

I'm just curious when they are going to get on their soap box about the controversial Left Behind series – a video game where believers are taught to slay non-believers in the form of fictional rock stars and Muslims.

Even Wal-Mart is catching a little heat for peddling this exercise in discrimation:

Liberal and progressive Christian groups say a new computer game in which players must either convert or kill non-Christians is the wrong gift to give this holiday season and that Wal-Mart, a major video game retailer, should yank it off its shelves.

But it's okay, the game doesn't teach try to teach the practice of killing non-believers. You lose a few "spirit points" if you decide to take down non-believers instead of putting them on to the Bible:

Left Behind Games' president, Jeffrey Frichner, says the game actually is pacifist because players lose "spirit points" every time they gun down nonbelievers rather than convert them. They can earn spirit points again by having their character pray.

"You are fighting a defensive battle in the game," Frichner, whose previous company produced Bible software, said of combatting the Antichrist. "You are a sort of a freedom fighter."

Whatever happened to the days of indiscriminately killing people for their car, recklessly driving it around town, and then using it to bang prositutes in the back seat?

Those extreme Christians had to go and make deranged video games personal and divisive. Let's see if Ms. Clinton will risk some Christian votes and call foul on the apocalypse training game.

Labels: Democrats, National Politics, religion

Posted by Andrew Warner at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments

It's a shame McKinney ever hit that police officer at Capitol Hill. Not because it's wrong to hit police officers or because I support the cops, but because of the way she became a squeamish, detestable liar on national TV afterwards. Wolf Blitzer had his way with her (in a journalistic sense of course) and some hot blonde on CNN embarrassed her pretty bad too.

And who can forget her famous "deflect everything to the lawyer strategy"? She somehow managed to take a complicated issue like racial profiling and shove everyone on the other side of the argument – after all, I don't remember too many people thinking fondly of McKinney after her Capitol Hill scuffle.

But now that she has filed articles of impeachment against Bush, I'm sad to see the cops got the best of her. She seems to be the only Democrat with the moxie to truly challenge the Republicans failed strategies of war and torture.

Looking at one of the last write-ups she'll get, it's clear we're losing an important voice in Congress.

She has hosted numerous panels on Sept. 11 conspiracy theories and suggested that Bush had prior knowledge of the terrorist attacks but kept quiet about it to allow friends to profit from the aftermath. She introduced legislation to establish a permanent collection of rapper Tupac Shakur's recordings at the National Archives and calling for a federal investigation into his killing.

A congressperson with respect for Tupac is what this country needs – no sarcasm. If only Pelosi had the stones of McKinney, this country might have a shot at turning things around.

I've heard McKinney's name circling around the rumor mill as a presidential candidate for the Green Party in 2008 – though that's most likely just a rumor.

Labels: Democrats, Impeachment, National Politics

Posted by Andrew Warner at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments