Hohenwald is the county seat of Lewis County, in a part of the state so poor and inaccessible that it was, as I understand it, not even settled until the 1890's.  The thin soil won't grow much, not even trees of any great size, and so it was one of Tennessee's last frontiers.  Nothing much is happening there, nothing much ever has happened there.  When the Tennessee Department of Transportation, that infinite cash cow and welfare system for the state's road contractors, started to build a 4-lane, divided highway between Hohenwald and Columbia in fulfillment of their self-appointed mission to connect all the state's county seats with these monstrosities, the legislature actually woke up and stopped them, because everybody could see that the expense and environmental destruction involved would be totally out of proportion with any benefit--and that was before $4/gallon gasoline.  That's how podunk Hohenwald is.

Anyway, the Sonnenschein Festival is, as I said, a curious hybrid.  The city fathers' original intent was to have a little bluegrass and gospel music and some cotton candy, bratwurst, and knicknacks, but some of the local counterculturalists got wind of the event and signed up for booths featuring solar energy, biodiesel, alternative construction methods, and the like, and suddenly there were two very different festivals going on all intermingled with each other, even though there originally seemed to be an attempt to segregate all the new ideas off in a building some distance from the main festival grounds.

The festival moved, this year, from around the courthouse to downtown Hohenwald, a difference of a block or two, but the struggling downtown merchants hoped it would generate some more business for them.  Lord knows, they need something. The few miles of four-lane that did get built heading east out of town has sprouted a roster of all the best-known names in low-end American chain stores, including a "Family Dollar" and a "Dollar General Store" going head-to-head and a Walmart Superstore that, even without its parking lot, takes up more room than all of downtown Hohenwald put together--and then there's the empty, smaller building they vacated when they built the "superstore," sitting out in front of it--good for what?  Green Walmart?  Get real!

The festival got a lot more integrated with the move. The "alternative" booths are no longer so isolated-- Green Party U.S.. Senate Candidate Chris Lugo was right next to the Kewpie dolls.  Another new feature of this year's festival was a full roster of countercultural speakers in what was referred to on the program as "The Strand Theater."  I have been an irregular visitor and shopper in Hohenwald for twenty-five years, and I couldn't recall ever seeing a theater there--imagine my surprise to find that one of the town's famed "dig stores"  (featuring cheap, cheap, cheap second-hand clothing) was now once again a theater, which apparently it had been back before television shuttered so many of the country's small movie houses.  With the cost of gas to get to the nearest multiplex now rivalling the cost of movie tickets, a local revival was taking place.

I was curious to see whether the townsfolk would turn out for the speakers, and I was gratified to see that, in significant numbers, they did.  Not massive numbers--a couple of dozen at a time, making them about half the audience--but from what I could gather, many of those who were attending are the town's movers and opinion makers, and what they appreciated and took from the talks will probably be spread all over Hohenwald.

The opening speaker was David Blume, a lively advocate for permaculture and home-brewed alcohol fuel.  He criticized the country's current ethanol binge as " bad implementation of a good idea" and stressed that smaller ethanol plants are much better at providing re-usable outputs (such as feed and fertilizer) than the massive production facilities now being built.  He emphasized that there is not one big answer to the fuel crunch so much as a lot of small, diverse answers, and got cheers and applause from the whole audience when he pointed out that, for a fraction of the cost of the Iraq war, we could have provided "food and energy for everybody in the world.  And when everybody's got enough food and enough energy, what's there to fight about?"

The next speaker was Catherine Austin Fitts, whose specialty is relocalizing economics and helping people get their money out of what she calls "the tapeworm economy."

"What good is it to go and protest the war," she asked, "when your money is invested in keeping it going?"

And she challenged bible-belt Hohenwald with, "Where would Jesus Bank?"...she can do that, she's a professing Christian.  Significantly, she will be meeting with the county commission on Monday to discuss how to make Hohenwald more financially self-sufficient.  I'm impressed.

Then there was a break for a benefit auction to help raise money for the festival and Green Living Journal, a magazine that I help edit.  I came out of that with a hundred-dollar gift certificate from "Our Nursery," a local permaculture nursery that specializes in bamboo.

The third speaker was Albert Bates, a veritable polymath from the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm.  He painted a dire picture of the mess we have gotten into, with oil in decline and CO2 on the rise, but pointed out that many small towns are taking stock of the crisis and organizing to meet it--and, once you are organized to meet this challenge, you're...well, in a much better position to meet it, and less likely to just get sucked under as it alters our society.

"We have used up five hundred million years worth of stored energy in just the last hundred and fifty years,"Albert said, "and the binge is almost over," adding a William Burroughs line about "Hairless Apes in the Gasoline Crack of History." On the positive side, he pointed to brain research that shows that optimism chemically primes our frontal cortexes to be better at problem solving than pessimism does, and quoted economist David Fleming to the effect that "localism is at the limits of practical possibilities--but the decisive argument is that there is no alternative."

It seems that the movers and shakers in Hohenwald are starting to see that, which I find very reassuring.  After Albert, I had absorbed about all the talk I could handle, and I was hungry, so I went outside and strolled the midway, passing over the bratwurst, the barbeque, and the deep-fried snickers bars, until I found an  old friend cooking health-food pizza in a solar oven he had built himself.  I had to wait for the biracial lesbian couple ahead of me to get done fixing up their kids with pizza, but just the idea of a biracial lesbian couple with kids in ol' whitebread Hohenwald was delightful.  The heat was brutal and the crowd was thin, but I could feel a change in the air.  Out there in the hinterlands, they're starting to get it.  Me, I'm hiring my friend to build us a solar oven.  It's time.

music: Greg Brown, "Our Little Town"

The party is, however, beginning to make itself felt.  Chris Lugo, who is once again the party's candidate for US Senate, reported that the two months he spent as the only person seeking the Democratic nomination finally shamed the Democrats into running somebody against Lamar Alexander, who has been all but endorsed by our so-called Democratic governor.  It's a bad news/good news situation for Chris--while he'll be in competition with a Democrat, candidate Bob Tuke is calling for a slow, "phased withdrawal" from Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, leaving Chris as the "get out now/settle by non-military means" candidate.  The rising tide of frustration with the war and the Democrats' failure to end it, plus the fact that this is Chris's second run, will hopefully improve his showing.

The party nominated TSU political science professor John Miglietta to run against 5th District Congressman Jim Cooper.  John has a tremendous advantage over just about anybody else the Green Party could run, because he is not now, and never has been, a hippie, unlike most of the rest of the party.  If most of us got anywhere close to mounting a serious challenge to the two-party system, the Demopublicans would have no trouble finding dancing skeletons in our closets, which they would use to fan the flames of voter hysteria, and, if necessary, have us arrested or at least publicly humiliated for daring to think for ourselves.  But John, bless his heart, is just as square as they come, and he still sees things our way.  That means a lot to me. For him, it means he could go all the way to the top.

One of my old hippie teachers used to talk about the importance of acceptance of our ethos by "honest squares."  This is actually quite scientific; if the hippie/Green world view can be arrived at by someone through a process completely independent of the counterculture, that amounts to independent validation of the results of the decades long "thought experiment," to borrow a phrase from Einstein, that was originally launched by the late and much lamented trio of Dr. Hoffman, Dr. Leary, and Aldous Huxley.  Well, this doesn't have much to do with our current race for political office and against time, and will probably embaras the hell out of many Greens, but I just had to go and open my big mouth, now, didn't I?  Well, I'm not responsible for the fact that the Green Party's lineage goes back through the North American Bioregional Congress to the Haight-Ashbury Diggers to the San Francisco Mime Troupe.  I just think we should be proud of it, that's all.

Back to the subject at hand!  We also selected delegates to the party's national convention, and determined who they should vote for--five out of eight are committed to Cynthia McKinney, with Kent Mesplay, Kat Swift, and "uncommitted" each getting a delegate.  I have a hard time getting excited about Green Party Presidential candidates.  In my view, it's just a publicity stunt unless we've got a shot at getting a majority in Congress.  We're a grassroots organization, know what I mean?

Anyway, Cynthia is black, she's a woman, and she hasn't sold out.  I wish her well.

Speaking of grass roots,  I wish I had a whole lot more candidate news for you.  I wish we had a crew of people running for the state legislature, where many races are uncontested, but we are awfully thin in the ranks.  However, we do have a plan afoot that could change that.

The plan is our Ballot Access Lawsuit.  The Demoplublicans have written the rules for getting on the Tennessee ballot in such a way that it is virtually impossible for any other parties to get their party name printed on the ballot.  The only problem is, that's unconstitutional, according to a court in Ohio, where the laws were about as tortuous and monopolistic as they are here.  The Tennessee legislature could have changed that, but, being made up of Demopublicans and Republicrats, they had more important things to do, like allow mountaintop removal in Tennessee.  So, we are having  to sue in Federal court to overturn Tennessee's laws.  Since it's the same Federal Court that overturned Ohio's laws, we think we have a reasonable chance for success.

The State Attorney General, being a committed Demopublican, doesn't want to let the Green Party on the ballot, and so he is doing everything he can to drag this case out past this year's election, just as the state's election officials are doing everything they can to stall legislation that will replace the state's touchscreen voting machines with equipment that will produce a verifiable, recountable paper trail.  Put that together with the fact that the US has more people in prison than any other country in the world, a quarter of the world's known prison population, in fact, and you can get downright cynical about what a wonderful, free country this is.

Well, anyway, the Ballot Access lawsuit will put our party name on every ballot in the state, even if the newspapers won't give us the time of day.  That could just be the little match that starts the big fire.  Maybe that's a lot to hope for, but the future of the human race is at stake.  "Once more unto the breach, good friends....."

You know, it really burns me up that Barak Obama takes time to watch "The Wire," a TV show about the drug war, but won't make time to meet Ralph Nader. That's your mind on television, Barak, and frankly I think it displays remarkably poor judgement--not that Hillary's is any better.

Both remaining Democratic Party candidates are from la-la land, dedicated to perpetuating the American Dream--which is called "The American Dream" because you have to be asleep to believe it. Neither Barak nor Hillary is speaking to the real issues--the unrestrained imperialism that has made America the pariah of the world, the unquestioned lifestyle that takes enough food to feed a person for a year and turns it into one tank of so-called "biofuel" for an SUV, the collapsed economy that is diminishing possibilities for reform faster than you can say "economic stimulus," the criminal administration that, judged by the standards that were set by a previous US government at Nuremburg in 1946, should be sent to the gallows by the dozens.

Now, I need to point out here that I don't think the death penalty is appropriate for anyone. I have spent enough time in jail to know that a lifetime behind bars is a far crueller punishment that the release of death. And by the way, I got that from less than a week in the slammer. But, I digress....

Ralph may or may not run as the Green Party candidate this time. Not everyone in the GP was impressed by our fling with him in 2000, and I can understand why. The simplest way to put it is that he is used to being in charge, and the GP likes to run by consensus. He also has a much higher profile than anybody else the Greens could run, which annoys some Greens and appeals to others.

My own opinion about third-party presidential runs is that they are an expensive exercise in futility unless the party in question is already dominant in several states and has representatives and senators at the national level, but that they are also necessary for the integrity of the third parties involved. So, from my view, the Greens ought to run Ralph Nader while we can. At 74, we're not gonna have him to kick around much longer. Sorry, Cynthia McKinney--you're black, you're female, you're outspoken, but you got time to wait.

At the state level, former Green Party US Senate candidate Chris Lugo, who has spent two months as the only person seeking the Democratic nomination to run against slick, popular fascist Lamar Alexander this year, has been written out of the Dims' script.  Mike Padgett, a Clinton/Democratic Leadership Council hack, and Bob Tuke, an Obammoid, are staging a Tweedledee/Tweedledumber battle for the right to (probably) lose to Alexander, who has been endorsed by numerous so-called Democrats. Gov. Bredesen has even gone so far as to discourage people from running against Lamar. Ain't democracy wonderful?

Lugo has been frozen out of candidate forums and media exposure, and even told to "go to Hell" by some DP members. That's what you get in this country when your slogan is "Vote for Peace," apparently. Chris is still considering his options. I think he should do his best to stay in the Democratic race, but that's an expensive row to hoe and I'm in no position to help him. Padgett and Tuke have hired bigtime PR firms and are in the process of raising millions, which you can bet ain't coming in $25 chunks from Joe Voter. It's about the money, folks, not about who's right. But you knew that.

music: Aretha Franklin, "Respect"

In this video, Mr Lugo opines on the issue of health-care:---

But, I digress....in U.S. House races, Katie Culver and Robert Smith also received better percentages than our statewide candidates, Katie with 1800 votes and Robert with 1,000—if Howard and Chris had done as well as either of them, they would have won about 18,000 votes, still not enough to change the election or even get our party name on the ballot, but I think it would have left them feeling more satisfied. I'm surprised they didn't do better, especially Howard, since it was obvious Phil Bredesen was going to win in a walk. Howard campaigned intensively among those who have been dumped by Bredesen's Tenncare purge. He should have done better.

Commenting on the election, Switzer said, “I think the main thing is we don't have an extensive enough network to get the word out about our candidates. ... We have to become more vocal advocates for who (we are) and what we want, pass the word and expand our networks. But, with (electronic voting machines) who knows what the vote tally really was? Our votes are counted in secret in an electronic box we are supposed to have unwavering faith in. “

The biggest kinda-Green vote getter in the state was Ginny Welsch, who won about 3600 votes in Nashville, where conservative Democrat Jim Cooper had no problem retaining his seat. Ginny explored running as an out-and-out Green but backed away when she discovered how much antipathy the label can ignite among ignorant, reactive Democrats, who are, after all, a major voting bloc that any serious candidate somehow needs to cultivate.

I talked with Jon Davidson, who was disappointed in his showing—a friend of his in the state legislature told him that just having his name on the ballot in an otherwise uncontested race should get him about a third of the votes. Jon tested this by spending “only about $100” and not doing any campaigning beyond putting up a website and getting a 45-minute interview from the Tennessean—which, alas, only appeared on their website. Neither Senate candidate Chris Lugo nor gubernatorial candidate Howard Switzer got even that much of a nod from Nashville's newspaper of record.

Jon noted that his district, according to who votes in the primaries, is about 90% Democratic—he thinks a lot of people just voted the straight Democratic ticket—but he found it gratifying that, in the neighborhood he used to live in, he got 40% of the vote. “And I got 38% of the absentee vote,” he added--”but I don't know if that was from my friends in the touring music community or from pissed-off Republican soldiers in Iraq.” Jon also noted that turnout in his district was no higher than it had been for the 2002 midterm elections, in spite of all the publicity about how crucial this election was going to be. Nationwide, the turnout was a disappointing 40%.

Some of the best news for Tennesseans was Steve Cohen's easy win over Harold Ford's cousin and a Republican for the U.S. House seat from Memphis. Steve has long been the most sensible person in the Tennessee Senate, and he will be sorely missed there, but I look forward to his influence at the national level.

Someone he won't be seeing in Washington is Richard Pombo, head of the House Environmental Resources Committee, a California representative who went down to defeat. Pombo's name had become synonymous with putting human greed ahead of the welfare of the planet. He has been replaced by wind turbine entrepreneur Jerry McNerney. Thank you, California.

Tammy Duckworth lost to a Republican. In case you don't remember, the National Democratic Party literally moved her in from out of state to compete in a race where Christine Cegalis, a fairly radical anti-war candidate was already in place, because they didn't think Ms. Cegalis could win. Maybe she wouldn't have won, but neither did Ms. Duckworth. Did Rahm Emmanuel and the Democratic Campaign Committee learn anything from that? Somehow I doubt it.

And I'm not that upset about Harold Ford losing here in Tennessee. Unlike Ford, Bob Corker is honest enough to admit he's a Republican. We didn't need to advance the career of a so-called Democrat who wanted to privatize Social Security, who supported anti-environmentalists like Richard Pombo, and who voted for the Patriot Act and the Torture-is-not-torture (Military Commisions) Act. Hint to Harold: try taking Jesse Jackson for a role model instead of Colin Powell.

In general, as I look over national Green Party results, I see the same thing we find in Tennessee: the more local the race, the better the Green Party did. And, while I love tilting at windmills as much as the next old hippie, I think the lesson is clear: we need to follow our own philosophy and act as locally as we can. We need to be working on school boards, zoning boards, county commissions, and the like—we could see our long-term strategy as moving up to winning mayoral races and then state legislature positions. That's the route individual politicians take, and I think there's a reason for it: you have to prove your worth at a lower level of responsibility before people will trust you with a higher one. It's slow, it's not glamorous, and time is short; but I think it's the path we have to follow. It's all about taking care of the details.

That seems to be how the rest of the party sees it.

In a “campaign wrapup letter,” Chris Lugo said:

“Although my ultimate goal would be campaign finance reform,

in the meantime, the practical reality is that progressive candidates in Tennessee

are going to need to do fundraising to get their message out.  Even though we are

going to continue to lose in Tennessee for some time to come, we won't even

register in the eyes of most Tennesseans until we start doing some serious fundraising.

Regarding running Greens locally versus statewide, I think we need to continue to do

both.  In Knoxville (we) are running Greens locally and even though they are losing,

they are continuing to build, having received thirty five percent in one recent Knoxville

 election. I think running candidates for statewide office is very important though, because

that puts (our) voice into the election, which is ground (zero) for the body politic.  There

 is no time when people are more concerned about politics or what is happening in the

 country than during an election, and that is exactly when we need to make sure that we

are being included.”And, as I already said, Statehouse candidate Jon Davidson got 40% of the vote in a

neighborhood where he was known personally without doing any campaigning at all.

So that's what we as Greens will be working on:  networking, fundraising, and local,

 local issues.

The Democrats got themselves elected as part of a national spasm of revulsion.

 They have no coherent plan, and all too many of them have no clue either.

John Conyers, who waxed so eloquently about the sins of the Republican administration,

 now joins Nancy Pelosi in saying “impeachment is off the table.”

 Perhaps this is just a diplomatic move.  Perhaps impeachment will be on the table again

 in the Spring, if the White House sticks to its guns and starts stonewalling Congressional

 attempts at oversight.  But if the Dems stick to form and get all namby-pamby, I believe

the country will neither forgive them nor return to the Republican fold.  Winston Churchill

remarked that “America will always do the right thing, but not until they've tried everything

else.”  The Republicans haven't worked; the Democrats won't work.

There is a Green dawn glowing on the horizon.

(and I don't know why this bottom part got all funny looking!)

music: Leonard Cohen, “Democracy”

Chris Lugo, running as a Green candidate for the Senate seat that Harold Ford, Jr., hopes to win, has faced the same kind of accusations. And, in spite of the fact that the Governor's race appears to be a shoo-in for Bredesen, Green Party gubernatorial candidate Howard Switzer also finds himself regularly shunned by people who should be his constituency.

This reminds me of something that's happened to not a few police officers down through the years, when they have attempted to stop an act of domestic violence—let's be blunt, a guy beating up his wife—and had BOTH parties attack him for trying to break them up. Liberals afraid of a right winger replacing Jim Cooper? Hey, the guy's apparently already a member of the Heritage Foundation. How much more right wing could an out-front Republican be? Jim Cooper has been called a “Bush Democrat” due to his support for the Central American Free Trade Agreement, Bush's so-called bankruptcy- and tort reform bills, his unquestioning support for the war on Iraq, and his vote for the bill that denied First-Amendment protections to the internet. He gets good marks from the League of Conservation Voters, but the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) gives him only a 30% approval rating on abortion issues.

Harold Ford, Jr. largely echoes Cooper's positions, including his lukewarm NARAL ratings and his flag-waving support of the war that's destroying America's future, but because he is black it is the liberal thing to do to support his candidacy. I don't know if that's reverse racism; it might be perverse racism. Ford is so close to Bush that when the resident visited Memphis trying to drum up support for his attempt to rip off Social Security, he gave Childe Harold a hundred tickets to distribute so there would be some supportive black faces in the room—and Ford did his master's bidding.

Candidates like Cooper and Ford, who call themselves Democrats but don't really take a strong egalitarian-populist stand, do not inspire confidence in the electoral process. They inspire cynicism, because they make a sham out of the idea of choice in American politics. Harold and Jim are abusing their constituencies. At election time they woo us with promises of benefits for us and protection from Republican boogeymen, but once we empower them, those benefits never show up and they become the boogeymen. Like abused women, we tolerate this....until enough of us have had enough and we leave. I've left, as best as I can. It will take a lot more of us getting fed up to really make a change. Won't you slip away with me?

Bob Marley and the Wailers--”Top Rankin'”

Howard Switzer, a resident of rural Linden, Tennessee, is the gubernatorial candidate. He is an architect by profession and one of the founders of the state's Green Party. His wife, Katey Culver, a permaculture designer and also a founder of the Green Party, is running for the U.S. House against Marsha Blackheart—I mean Blackburn—in the Seventh District. Marcia Blackburn is famously from Brentwood, one of the richest zipcodes in the USA, but Brentwood was gerrymandered into the seventh district. It's only connected with the rest of the predominantly rural, low-income southwestern Tennessee district by a narrow corridor, which also juts up to include Clarksville, a military town and Republican bastion. I guess our Tennessee solons brought in some consultants from Texas to do the last redistricting. Don't want them poor folks electin' someone who'll actually represent 'em. No. Good luck, Katey—may you surprise us all, especially Marsha.

Chris Lugo, of Nashville, was nominated to run for Bill Frist's Senate seat, which Bill, thank goodness, is vacating. Chris is in the cleaning and recycling business, and also runs the Tennessee Independent Media Center, a web-based alternative newspaper for those of us here in the midsouth. Full disclosure: a lot of my writing on local issues gets printed at the TNIMC website, and I volunteer my editing talents there also. Chris has a website for his Senate run, featuring his platform, which I think could pretty well serve as the platform for everyone on the ticket.

Robert Smith is the party's candidate in the first district, which is in the far east of the state. He is a Vietnam veteran and a founding member of an ecovillage near Greenville, and a Native American off the Seneca tribe.

In the two green-tinged local races, Martin Pleasant is running for county commissioner in Knoxville, a race that is technically non partisan, and Jonathan Davidson, who has not sought the endorsement of the Green Party although he is affiliated with it, is seeking a Nashville-area house seat. There's still almost a month to go until the deadline for filing (April 6), so more candidates may be in the wings. Stay tuned. I'm considering it—but I'd have to give up this radio show to do it. Why don't you? Just go on down to your county electoral commission and get a petition, and find 25 of your friends to sign it, and you, too, can have your name on the ballot in November. There will be another chance for Green Party endorsement at the state party convention in May. I'll be happy to help you any way I can.

That's the good news. Now for the bad news.

First of all, you won't know by looking at the ballot that any of these folks are running on the Green Party ticket. Due to the way the Democans and Republicrats have fixed the ballot laws in this state, a party has to win more than five percent of the vote in a statewide election WITHOUT its party tag on the ballot, in order to have its party tag on the ballot, or present a petition with the equivalent number of signatures on it, which comes to about 37,000. High hurdles....

Now, for more bad news. The Democrats are working to keep the Greens off all ballots, completely. H.R 4694 ("Let the People Decide Clean Campaign Act") would grant full public funding to nominees of parties (i.e., Democans and Republicrats) that had averaged 25% of the vote for House races in a given district in the last two elections. All others (i.e., third party and independent candidates) would be required to submit petitions signed by 10% of the last vote cast for partial funding, and 20% for full funding.

Furthermore, candidates who don't qualify for funding would be barred from spending any privately raised money on their campaigns. Ten to twenty percent of the last vote cast—that's 35-70,000 signatures in the average congressional district. Just getting that many signatures, even with copious volunteer help, would require serious fundraising. This bill effectively cuts small third parties out of the U.S. electoral process in the name of campaign finance reform. We're not the problem, but we're getting fixed—like a dog gets fixed. Well, isn't that nice?

Whatsamatter with you, you need more than two choices? How unAmerican! This is not something coming from the Republifacists, mind you. This is coming from people even a cynical Green like me is inclined to think of as the good guys. Barney Frank and Henry Waxman are two sponsors of this bill.

Barney Frank!!?? Greenbashed by the gays!! Barney, how could you!! And Henry Waxman!!??

Here's the skinny: several of the other sponsors of this bill faced Green competition suggesting that their sponsorship is retaliatory. They will be facing Green competition again this year, I'm sure. Get used to it, people.

Commenting on this, D.C. Statehood Green Party activist T.E. Smith said, "The Democrats behind this bill have as little regard for democracy and open elections as Republicans who have used altered district lines and other methods to fix elections. Hiding this stratagem in a bill for public financing of campaigns makes it doubly shameful."

"An obvious motivation behind HR 4694 is panic over a Green insurgency. Voters have realized that the Democratic Party has given President Bush and the GOP a pass on various abuses of power and radical actions, such as the invasion of Iraq and the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito, which most Democrats declined to filibuster. The time is ripe for a non-corporate independent third party, and many Democrats are worried," added Mr. Smith.

Well, the good news about this bad news is that it is coming from the Democrats, and the Republicans aren't likely to let it get very far. They like left-wing splinter parties that take votes from Democrats, y'know? So, the Republicans are good for something. Of course, if we were a serious threat to them, they'd sic Karl Rove on us without a second thought...one of these days, folks, one of these days.

music: Terry Allen, “Big Ol' White Boys”

Comments

Chris Lugo's new website is located at http://www.chris4senate.com/
Posted by webmaster on 04/07/2006 01:40:19 PM

and Robert Smith's blog can be found here: http://1bigtree.tripod.com/robertnsmith_greens/
Posted by brothermartin on 04/07/2006 04:27:36 PM