Mainstream Media: "Swine flu less dangerous than hoped"

MSM--It was true, the story was tanking. But then, so were all of America's once great newspapers, they were falling like flies. Polls showed that roughly 30% of America's population likes to panic for the hell of it--we know this--while another unknown percentage could be typed in the "Shelly Winters" bracket--they have to be slapped back into reason, thanking us for it later.

Then there's Ted Nugent and Chuck Norris, two men totally immune to any appeals to reason.

Swine flu is going to amount to nothing. The CDC and the Obama administration have been correct in not taking too many chances and trying to be ready. Vice President Joe Biden's comments about enclosed spaces was stupid.

The DHS is still irrelevant and burdensome, so it's not going away anytime soon. Neither are people who will panic at the drop of a hat. Some people get off on freaking out, running around yelling, "OH SHIT!!" The rest of us do not. Please try to listen to the rest of us some time.

The Nader Campaign on Senator Joe Biden (more-to-come)

August 26, 2008 www.votenader.org www.officialnaderstore.com

Drop $39 now on Nader/Gonzalez. Why? To protest Obama's choice of the Senator from MasterCard for VP. That would be Senator Biden. (By donating $39 now to the Nader Media Fund, you'll be helping us report more on Mr. Plastic in the days to come, but for starters, check out this account of how Biden fronted for the credit card companies in Congress.) Why drop $39 now? As a protest against the VP candidate from MasterCard. Because $39 is key rip off number for the credit card industry. Let's say you miss your credit card payment by one day. What does the credit card company do? Exactly. They sock you with a $39 late fee. And now, if Obama/Biden win the election, MasterCard and Visa will have a lock on the White House. And who will stand up to the credit card industry and tell them -- no more rip off late fees? Obama/Biden? McCain? No. And -- No. Only Nader/Gonzalez will stand up to the avaricious credit card corporations. Who trap their consumers with -- 29 percent interest rates. $39 late fees. Over limit fees. Double cycle billing. Disappearing grace periods. $15 phone payment charges. And every other possible way to rip you off. To keep you in hock. Forever and ever. So, step up to the plate. And drop $39 on Nader/Gonzalez now. You'll be protesting the corporate Democrats' descent into credit card hell. And supporting the only campaign that has the independence and guts to stand up to the industry and say -- enough! Protest now. Better late than never. Onward to November. The Nader Team

Obama chooses longtime Sen. Joe Biden

Springfield, Illinois--It's great to be wrong about this choice! Senator Obama has made a much better decision than I thought he was capable of--he's no slouch, and an intelligent man. I do believe he's going to win thanks to this decision. While Biden voted to approve the use of force in Iraq, he was one of the first in the Senate who did so to admit it was a big mistake.

Biden isn't perfect--not by a long-shot--but he's better than most of the other possible choices that Obama could have made. Choosing Hillary Clinton would have been a bad idea of variety of reasons.

Namely, that the Clinton campaign was willing to do anything to defame candidate Obama to win. You cannot trust someone like that as a running mate under any conditions, and it's likely that Mrs. Clinton would have done a lot of back-stabbing.

Considering the new and expanded power of the office of the vice president under Dick Cheney, the damage could have been incredible to an Obama presidency, a potential death-blow (that we wouldn't know the details of for years). The wounds between both camps are hardly healed, but they might be with the voters.

For myself, the real tests will come in the first month of an Obama presidency. Some of the "fixing" is going to require going after the former members of the Bush II administration. I don't expect that there will be any significant or fundamental changes in their economy, their government (not really ours), the damage done to our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and our illegal presence in the Middle East.

The GOP is not solely responsible for all of this. The Democratic Party and their incumbents in Congress own a great share of the blame for standing down on their responsibility to rein-in a lawless presidency--the most lawless in our history, bar none. These precedents cannot be allowed to stand and their reversal must be part-and-parcel of a genuinely progressive agenda.

Now, the GOP is making all kinds of predictable comments on the Biden nomination that aren't going to float with any but the most ignorant authoritarian, but there are similar threads in the speeches of Obama and Biden that are sometimes troubling. How much they invest in these themes will be borne-out in their policies. But: it's good to be wrong sometimes. Senator Joe Biden voted against the revision of FISA and the telecom immunity provisions. The best part of all of this will be watching Biden beat on the GOP's incumbents. They've earned it, and-then-some.