No third party allowed

[Sal Atticum]

I really hope this is satire.

Letter: Mike Butler, East Grand Forks: Make the best of a bad (election) situation
Herald staff report
Published Sunday, September 28, 2008
Make the best of a bad (election) situation

EAST GRAND FORKS — It’s finally the playoff run to the real Super Bowl, “Election Day ‘0VIII!”

How fun: Democrats. Arctic; Republicans, Antarctic. Polar opposites like never before, they couldn’t be further apart and still be on the same planet. What a game.

To minor party voters, I ask: “If you’re lost in the woods and you scream for help with your third-party vote, will anybody hear you?” Nope. It’s at best a single-digit percentage point, buried and forgotten in the official vote tally of insignificant history. You may as well vote for Puff Puff, your neighbor’s dead cat because it isn’t coming to your rescue, either.

I am by no means trying to crush your dreams forever. But this year? The championship is Donkeys vs. Elephants. So, please consider this.

I ask you — all confused independents; even the wishy-washy split ballot voters, to — oh, heck, I beg you at this time, for God’s sake, pick a side and run with it. Not by some candidate’s personality trait you’ve perceived such as “I think they love their children more” but by the two parties’ policies.

Create a checklist of, say, nine issues that you care about, and the party that gets at least five gets your vote. Straight down the ballot, right down to dog catcher (if party affiliated).

If that’s too boring, here’s the cheat sheet. Let’s imagine the IRS actually gives taxpayers two unique choices on how to spend their federal tax. Say you’re stuck for $6,117. The agency’s choices for you are (A): Give it in food stamps to a single, stay-at-home mother of four in rural Tennessee who refuses to work or even accept free schooling. Or (B): Buy a third spare fuel injector kit for a U.S. Army Abrams M1 Armored Tank in Fort Knox, Ky., that will sit on a shelf and collect dust. You have no other choices.

If you choose (A), vote Democratic. If you choose (B), vote Republican. Because these two choices will always be the core examples of their bottom line priorities . . . till death do you part.

But if this is unacceptable, then please vote Bob Barr.

Mike Butler

This one is better:

Letter: Kristine Mattis, Grand Forks: Let third-party candidates debate
Herald staff report
Published Sunday, September 28, 2008
GRAND FORKS — We do not live in a democracy. On Friday night, many Americans tuned in to the first of the televised presidential debates to either cheer on their candidate of choice or possibly decide which candidate to choose. The problem is that we did not see all of the candidates running for president in the debates.

In fact, even though there is supposed to be a law of “equal time” for all candidates in terms of the amount of attention they get from the media, most Americans are not even aware of the other candidates running for president who do not occupy the Republican or Democratic tickets.

It behooves the American public to know about those running on third-party tickets in 2008 because many of these candidates have the interest of the people in mind far more so than the two major party nominees.

Independent candidate Ralph Nader is a lawyer and citizen advocate who is responsible for most of the consumer and public protection legislation passed in the past 30 years. Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney served two terms representing Georgia in the House of Representatives and was commissioner of the Citizen’s Committee on Sept. 11. Libertarian candidate Bob Barr was a federal prosecutor and also served four terms as a congressman from Georgia.

America’s Independent Party candidate Alan Keyes was an ambassador to the United Nations and worked in the U.S. Foreign Service. In terms of qualifications, these candidates’ certainly exceed those of vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

How can we say that we live in a democracy when the media all but completely ignore these presidential nominees, when the nominees are unable to participate in debates — and moreover, when we are implicitly and explicitly told by the media that we cannot vote for any of these people?

It feels as if American society is just one big high school. Superficiality reigns. The majority is bullied by the (rich) popular crowd. It is as if we are voting for prom king and queen, and all of the people in the cool clique are urging us to vote for their friends — the only people in the running. Meanwhile, most of us feel alienated, out-of-touch, annoyed and disgusted with the popular crowd. We don’t even want to go to the prom!

We need to make the presidential race more like a community potluck and less like an extravagant social event for the rich.

We herald our country as the greatest democracy in the world, but rarely do we offer proof of this position. Bolivia elected its first indigenous president in 2005, Evo Morales, who spent years as a community organizer despite never being able to finish high school. Paraguay elected a Roman Catholic priest and peasant activist as president in April. There is democracy in action.

In 1998, Jesse Ventura ran as a third-party candidate for governor of Minnesota. He came into the debates with only 10 percent of the vote. After he was able to debate . . . well, you know the rest.

All of the presidential and vice presidential candidates should be allowed to participate in the upcoming debates, and we, the American people, should vote for whomever we feel best represents our interests. That would be so, if we indeed lived in a democracy.

Kristine Mattis

http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=87789&section=Opinion

[pmp6nl]

Are democrats and republicans really that different?  I know there are differences but there are also similarities.  Of course you also have the whole liberal and conservative thing... and who said you cant be both depending on the issue?