tom_thinks

Nevertheless, the president's insistence that the world is safer without
Hussein is a powerful political position for one reason: It can't be disproved.
There is simply no way to rerun the past year and do a double-blind crossover
study of what would have happened if we hadn't invaded Iraq.
Are we better
off? Compared to what? Are we safer than we would have been with a long,
continuing pressure of world forces? Safer than if we'd focused on al Qaeda
instead?
For that matter, who is safer? The people Saddam Hussein
persecuted? Surely. But the 1,000 American soldiers who died? The 20,000 Iraqis?

The state PIRGs and George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management, working with the support of the Pew Charitable Trusts, are not only registering over 265,000 young people, we're getting an unprecedented number of them to the polls on election day.

The New Voters Project organizers are working on more than 160 campuses, installing permanent voter registration systems and insuring that every student is asked to vote at least twice. We are also talking to the two-thirds of America's 18-to-24 year-olds who are not on campuses, in part through partnering with over 300 organizations, ranging from church groups to unemployment agencies and companies, to help them register and mobilize their young members and employees.

As registration deadlines pass and November 2nd approaches, the New Voters Project will shift to an intensive GOTV campaign, contacting each of the young voters we have registered through a door-to-door precinct canvass, targeted phone calls, emails, and cell phone text messages, to ensure they get to the polls.

By Election Day, we will have over 3,000 staff and volunteers who will have had over one million peer-to-peer contacts with our target age group.

You can sign up to volunteer with Florida PIRG's New Voters Project by clicking here.

There's only one catch, you've got to be 18-24. So let loose the young people, I have a feeling we're gonna need them.

He was asked a simple question. Would he meet Bush`s challenge and answer yes or no to the question of whether he still would have voted to go to war in Iraq, knowing what he knows now?"I'm ready for any challenge," Kerry responded, "and I'll answer it directly. ``Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority, as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively."To many, including his Republican opponents, that sounded like he was saying that, even knowing there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Kerry still would have gone to war.But Kerry had, during the Democratic primaries, characterized himself an "anti-war candidate,"as he felt the heat from the then insurgent candidacy of Howard Dean. And again, last week in Cincinnati, he called the U.S.-led attack "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time."In the same speech, he railed against the cost of the Bush war, "$200 billion (U.S.), but they tell us we can't afford after-school programs for our children, $200 billion in Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford health care for our veterans, $200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford to keep the 100,000 police officers we put on the street."Yet, just over a year ago he was asked by NBC`s Tim Russert whether spending on the Iraq war should be reduced."No. I think we should increase it," Kerry said."By how much?" Russert asked."By whatever number of billions of dollars it takes to win," the Democrat replied.Kerry has promised to reduce troop levels in his first term, then within a year, then within six months. Yet, when Kerry marked the 1,000th U.S. death in Iraq last Tuesday — a milestone seemingly tailor-made to give his campaign some traction — he appeared to have bought into the Bush-Cheney mantra that war in Iraq was war on terror. He honoured the dead who gave their lives "on behalf of freedom in the war on terrorism.''

NEW YORK -- A Manhattan judge on Thursday ordered the immediate release of nearly 500 anti-GOP protesters, including some who had spent almost three days in jail after their arrests at demonstrations against President Bush. "These people have already been the victims of a process," state Supreme Court Justice John Cataldo told the city's top lawyer. "I can no longer accept your statement that you are trying to comply."

Cataldo then ordered the release of 470 detainees who had been in custody for anywhere from 36 to 66 hours. The decision was immediately hailed by attorneys for the demonstrators.

"They have to release them right now," said veteran civil rights attorney Norman Siegel. "The judge, to his credit, said, `Enough."'

And again, to all you protesters thanks for everything. My friend Chris has been taking some pics up at the protests, check them out here, here, and here. Also I know not everyone is as enthusiastic as all those protesters, and some of them aren't going to vote for Kerry, but take this into consideration. From Noam Chomsky:

There are differences. They have different constituencies. There are different groups of people around them. On international affairs I wouldn’t expect any major policy changes. It would probably be more like back to the Clinton years, when you have sort of the same policies, but more modulated, not so brazen and aggressive, less violent. And I would expect a kind of return to that.

On domestic issues there could be a fairly significant difference–it’s not huge–but different in its outcomes. The group around Bush are real fanatics. They’re quite open. They’re not hiding it; you can’t accuse them of that. They want to destroy the whole array of progressive achievements of the past century. They’ve already more or less gotten rid of progressive income tax. They’re trying to destroy the limited medical care system. The new pharmaceutical bill is a step towards that. They’re going after Social Security. They probably will go after schools. They do not want a small government, any more than Reagan did. They want a huge government, and massively intrusive. They hate free markets. But they want it to work for the rich. The Kerry people will do something not fantastically different, but less so. They have a different constituency to appeal to, and they are much more likely to protect some limited form of benefits for the general population.

There are other differences. The popular constituency of the Bush people, a large part of it, is the extremist fundamentalist religious sector in the country, which is huge. There is nothing like it in any other industrial country. And they have to keep throwing them red meat to keep them in line. While they’re shafting them in their economic and social policies, you’ve got to make them think you’re doing something for them. And throwing red meat to that constituency is very dangerous for the world, because it means violence and aggression, but also for the country, because it means harming civil liberties in a serious way. The Kerry people don’t have that constituency. They would like to have it, but they’re never going to appeal to it much. They have to appeal somehow to working people, women, minorities, and others, and that makes a difference.

These may not look like huge differences, but they translate into quite big effects for the lives of people. Anyone who says "I don’t care if Bush gets elected" is basically telling poor and working people in the country, "I don’t care if your lives are destroyed. I don’t care whether you are going to have a little money to help your disabled mother. I just don’t care, because from my elevated point of view I don’t see much difference between them." That’s a way of saying, "Pay no attention to me, because I don’t care about you." Apart from its being wrong, it’s a recipe for disaster if you’re hoping to ever develop a popular movement and a political alternative.

So really people, you need to vote for Kerry. I'll be the first to admit he's not my kind of guy, but he's better then what we got and voting for Nader or not voting is simply surrendering to the Bush Agenda.