Hello Out There

Well....figured that is was about time I created my maiden entry for this blog. For those of you wondering whom the heck I am, you can check out another of my blogs here.
As many of you may know, Mr. Nader recently ended one heckuva roller coaster ride out here in Oregon. After months of collecting signatures, getting harassed, and fighting court cases, Ralphy Boy (as I like to call him) recently got booted from Oregon's presidential ballot. For me this was a great disappointment. Not because I am huge supporter of Nader's (although I did vote for him in the last election), but because I am a HUGE CRITIC of our current "two party" system. It is my personal opinion that our political system has been hijacked by the two major parties. It seems to me that the Republicans and Democrats are more concerned with protecting their own little political fiefdoms than they are with actually governing this country. This is why strong "third party" candidates, such as Mr. Nader, find it so difficult to gain ballot access and why the major parties (the Demos this time, but with Perot it was the Repubs) fight so hard to keep them off of the ballot. The biggest threat to the currently entrenched powers is for the voters to actually have a choice when voting...well more of a choice than corrupt major party candidate vs. corrupt other major party candidate.
Well, hopefully this first little entry gives you an idea of who I am, and what my thoughts are on the current state of affairs of our political system. I encourage you to check out the link above and read some of my comments on the other blog that I write. I hope to be a frequent and prolific addition to the Vote4Nader (unofficial of course ;-) blog.
Blog On.

The Fat Lady Has Just Sang:
Well...shortly after writing this entry I was checking the internet for my 3:30 (west coast time) sweep of the news when I saw this article....unfortunately it looks like Ralph's long and bitter battle to get on the Oregon ballot is official over.
Here is the text of the blog entry that I wrote for my OregonLive.com blog.

Well....guess I was wrong. I had previously stated that I didn't think that the United States Supreme Court would hear the petition brought by supporters of Ralph Nader prior to the election. However, according to this article, the Supreme Court refused to block the printing of Oregon's election ballots (they are being printed without Mr. Nader's name making an appearance). This was the last stop for Nader's Oregon campaign. The only silver lining in this dark cloud for Nader supporters is that Justice Stephen Breyer supported the stay. Unfortunately the other justices did not. So, unless that crooning rotund figure is Justice Scalia belting out his own version of the John Lennon classic "Imagine" the fat lady has sung on the Nader campaign here in Oregon.
Imagine all the people....with no one to vote for.