As a citizen who believes in the importance of principles, values and beliefs, as a citizen who supported, promoted, and voted for you and Matt Gonzalez and as a citizen who loves this country but even more so loves this planet, I must make one request of you.

If Barack Obama offers you a position in his cabinet, for the love of ration, logic and Matt Gonzalez’s 2012 campaign, accept it. Please.

The facts are that you, Ralph Nader, will never become President of these United States of America. It is simply not going to happen, unless we see a seismic paradigm shift in the mentality of the average citizen. Though it’s irrational, the majority blames you for President George W. Bush. I know, I know Ralph, trust me, I know. I’ve defended you against these claims countless times but the facts remain that a huge proportion of voters has cemented you as the catalyst for Bush.

There is only one way for the Independent party to progress forward, for you to reclaim your legacy and for the country to truly benefit from your diligent work and that is to suck it up and take a job with Obama. From the inside, you’ll be well positioned to guard against the tyranny of corporations and ensure that the environment and civil liberties are safeguarded. From the outside you have less of a chance of doing so. Plus, humbly accepting a position and doing a stellar job will only serve to promote the Independent Party’s platform.

Now, realistically I know you’ll likely not even receive an offer for a post inside the White House. Further, you’d probably decline it anyway. That’s OK, each man deserves to decide for himself what he should or should not do. However, please, please, please do not run for president in 2012. In Matt Gonzalez you have found a presidential candidate who is eloquent, charming, and intelligent. Let him carry the torch forward, for at this point you only serve to weigh him down.

Honestly, I’m sorry it’s come to this Ralph but it’s time for you to focus on doing what you do best, being a kick-ass U.S. private citizen and fighting the good fight. Fight for universal health care, fight for free and equal access to debates, fight for fair ballot access, fight for citizen empowerement and corporate restraint, but please be realistic and stop fighting for the presidency. Matt Gonzalez is more than capable of taking it from here. Let’s give him a chance.

Thank you for being a greater citizen than I’ll ever likely be.

Sincere regards,

Adam Pieniazek

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

That video literally forced tears of laughter to roll down my cheeks.

The Onion was really on point this year and especially down the stretch. Comedic genius.

Check out some of their other hilarious stories:

• Black Guy Asks Nation for Change
• Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress
• Bush: ‘Can I Stop Being President Now?’
• Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job

It’s funny because it’s true.

President Elect Barack Obama

Photo credit to insunlight.

Congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama!

Though I voted for Nader-Gonzalez and encouraged others to do the same, I am not disappointed by Barack Obama winning the United States Presidency. Rather I think he’s a huge upgrade over Bush, purely by being intelligent, eloquent and charismatic. He ran an impressive campaign and frankly deserved to win. America’s place in the world will be much improved via an Obama presidency. I favor Nader’s stances on the actual political issues, but politics aside Obama seems to be a capable person, heck I even endorsed him on Monday.

Riding my bike through the streets of Boston after Obama won, there were people cheering and dancing and yelling and honking their horns in celebration. There were even a group of people splashing jubilantly in a fountain. There wasn’t a mass of people like after the Sox, Celtics, or Patriots victories, but nevertheless there was a lot more people out and about past midnight on a Tuesday night in November than usual. Needless to say, the vast majority of the college students and young people of Boston voted for Barack Obama and last night and early this morning they celebrated with President Barack Obama.

Rajon Rando of the Celtics celebrated twice last night, winning a basketball game and seeing Obama win the presidency as he returned to the locker room. Overall, I’m proud of this country for making a historic vote and for participating in our democracy in historic numbers. Check out the Obama celebration scene outside the White House, where even the Secret Service were surprised and impressed by the outpouring of support. Say what you want about Obama or his politics but that’s a pretty cool scene there and one Americans can be proud of.

Congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama.

Now, that does not mean I will vote for him (tip of the hat to Stephen Colbert for this idea). Quite on the contrary, I will be voting for Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez. However, I realize that all my readers do not live in a state like Massachusetts where one of the mainstream candidates will win in a landslide. I also realize that some of my readers will steadfastly support either a Democrat or Republican only.

I fully support third parties and their battle to gain equal rights but if you live in a battleground state and are only deciding between Barack Obama and John McCain (for instance, if you live in Oklahoma where write-in candidates are not allowed and only Obama and McCain are listed on the ballot) then I highly urge you to vote for Barack Obama. There is a simple reason behind this endorsement, and it is not based on any tax system, religion, race, or any political affiliation. Rather, you should vote for Barack Obama because he is eloquent, charismatic, and well liked by the global community. This country is literally teetering on a precipice and one candidate can keep us on the cliff while the other wants to push us off it.

We can elect John McCain and in essence give a big fat middle finger to the rest of the world. Now some of you might say, “Exactly! That’s why I’m voting for John McCain.” Well, the simple truth is we are not number one right now. Every last bastion of American pride has shown huge, undeniable faults over the past eight years. From election errors to military difficulties to the recent financial fallout, America is not viewed as a super power by many individuals and countries in the global community. Electing John McCain will announce to the world that we do not care what they think, at which point they may very well ostracize us, or worse.

On the other hand, we can elect Barack Obama as our President and regain some much needed credibility and respect in the international community. Further Obama will use his charisma and eloquence to regain the international community’s trust and friendship. The truth is we live in a global society and we as a country need to be viewed in a positive and friendly manner. We simply are not strong enough to be arrogant right now.

In a truly democratic system, Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader and other parties would have been allowed full and equal access to the debates and ballots and given a fair shot at being elected president. Alas, our system is not such and for many people their only choice is between Obama or McCain. If you find yourself in such a situation, please put your country first and elect Barack Obama.

Before I conclude this post, I must emphatically urge my readers to vote for a third party, however if you will not or cannot then please vote for Barack Obama. I however will be proudly casting my ballot for Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez and highly encourage you to do so as well, especially if you’re in a landslide state.

I’m glad that a debate will occur, as I was actually thinking of withdrawing my vote for Nader if he was not able to debate someone, my thinking being that if you can’t get a debate going, how could you ever manage a country? Now, I know this debate is not organized by Mr. Nader and that he has a campaign to run but in my opinion the best thing for Ron Paul and Ralph Nader would have been to spend some of those megabucks raised by money bombs and fundraising on getting a new debate going counter to the mainstream, corporate owned debates.

Hopefully Cynthia McKinney is able to show up at the debates tonight too, though Bob Barr has stated numerous times he will not attend due to a prior engagement at Georgia Tech. Honestly, if I was in charge of the Barr event at GT, I’d cancel it and encourage him to attend the debate, but perhaps that’s why I’m not running a campaign…

In either case, tune in tonight to C-SPAN or head on over to Restore the Republic Radio for a live web stream of the event.

So far Ralph Nader, Chuck Baldwin and Cynthia McKinney have confirmed their attendance. Bob Barr is stating he has a scheduling conflict, though the even organizers are stating he wants to only debate Ralph Nader. In either case, Barr is running a very odd campaign, first ditching uber-popular Ron Paul and now refusing to participate in a debate with his fellow third party candidates.

Right now there are actually two debates scheduled, on being an online debate this Sunday from 7pm to 9pm while the other is a physical debate starting at 8pm. Seeing as how the physical debate is being televised by CSPAN and moderated by Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman it seems the online only debate organized by Trevor Lyman will fall to the wayside, especially seeing as how only Cynthia McKinney has confirmed she’d participate.

In either case, three of the four candidates will be at the physical debate, hosted by The Free and Equal Elections Coalition and the Columbia Political Union. So confused yet by the varying debates and times and places? Well so are the candidates who are now waffling about whether they will or will not attend, even though three of them confirmed their attendance a few days ago. In either case, the debate is scheduled and set up and now it’s up to the candidates to show up. For the sake of progress for our democracy, let’s hope they do show up. Send e-mails to your candidates encouraging them to show up! Even Barack Obama and John McCain are invited, let’s have one debate between all six candidates!

10 Reasons I’m Voting for Ralph Nader & Matt Gonzalez

1. Universal Health Care.

The argument over whether socialism is good or bad does not matter. Our government has already decided it will act as a socialist entity with Medicare, Social Security, bank bailouts and endless other infiltrations into the free market. To not provide universal health care is to openly admit we do not care about the well being of our citizens. This strategy must come to an end. As one of the richest countries in the world, we cannot afford to not provide our citizens guaranteed access to health care.

2. End to all wars.

The money to pay for universal health care and other infrastructure and development projects, within the U.S.A., will come from the savings of bringing every soldier home. Currently, more than half of every discretionary dollar spent by the U.S. government goes to military funding. Simply put, we are spending too much money killing people and not enough helping them.

3. End to corporate personhood.

I have railed against corporate personhood before and truly believe it is one of the reasons we are seeing the manufactured economics crises today. Many people do not realize that corporations are legally viewed as people, just the same as you and me. Corporations twisted the law freeing slaves to force corporate personhood and it’s time we end this disgrace. Corporations are not people.

4. Impeach Bush and Cheney.

Impeachment is simply an analysis of whether the President and Vice-president committed crimes. So far, our politicians will not even debate whether we should debate if crimes were committed, eventhough Bush and Cheney openly and flagrantly admit to committing multiple crimes against our citizens, government and world.

5. National Initiative.

Perhaps the greatest of the Nader – Gonzalez plaform, the National Initiative would allow regular American citizens to petition and demand change from the government easily and reliably. A strong democracy is one where citizens may easily redress the government when it creates laws to benefit the few and harm the many.

6. Energy Policy.

Hands down the best energy policy of any presidential candidate. The Nader platform looks forward to the future to realize that we must act now to invest in and install clean, efficicent renewable forms of energy such as wind and solar power. Doing so will create new manufacturing jobs and break our need for dirty and expensive forms of energy such as nuclear, coal and oil.

7. Fair Tax.

Are you sick of hearing about corporate loop holes that allow big businesses to pay no taxes while half your paycheck goes to Uncle Sam? Me too. Ralph Nader realizes how broken our tax system has become and offers the fair tax which would close corporate loopholes and begin taxing negative things we do not want, such as pollution, to discourage the negative and encourage people to work and earn money.

Makes a lot more sense than our current system.

8. Ballot Access.

Currently each state in the union has their own ballot access laws, creating a stressful and chaotic scene where it is often a battle in and of itself for viable candidates to gain access to the ballot. Nader-Gonzalez propose one standard for all the states to ensure all candidates have fair access to the ballot, thus providing citizens with greater choice and creating greater competition amongst candidates, thus helping our democracy for everyone.

9. Open the debates.

Currently, we allow a private corporation to host debates between two political parties and allow this private corporation to ban other viable candidates from the debate. We cannot say we live in a democracy when we prevent candidates from having a seat at the table.

10. Federal Budget.

The Nader-Gonzalez campaign describes it perfectly:

The United States needs a redirected federal budget that adequately funds crucial priorities like infrastructure, transit and other public works, schools, clinics, libraries, forests, parks, sustainable energy and pollution controls. The budget should move away from the deeply documented and criticized (by the US General Accounting Office, retired Admirals and Generals and others) wasteful, redundant “military industrial complex” as President Eisenhower called it, as well as corporate welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy that expand the divide between the luxuries of the rich and the necessities of the poor and middle class.

Yes, rebuild America!

These are my reason for voting for Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez in the 2008 presidential elections. The points I’ve outlined above are the ten of most important points to the future sustainability of this country and are clearly above and beyond any platform stance of any other presidential candidate. Simply put, the Nader-Gonzalez platform is not only good but also correct.

Do yourself and your country a favor and vote for Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalelez in 2008.