[SfN] awful DI article(s); we need letter writers

[Jim Buell]

Would someone like to take the lead on writing one or more letters to the 
DI? They failed to cover the 10/10 rally at all (likewise the 
News-Gazette), and the piece on candidates in today's issue was 
particularly appalling re Nader: "Ralph Nader has visited New Mexico 
several times because it is one of the few states where he is officially on 
the ballot." (duh, 43 with a ballot line + 3 write-in is 'few' out of how 
many? see map at http://www.votenader.com/getinvolved.html).

Might be good to point out to the DI folks that over 100 C-U folks 
including our busload went up to the rally and are heavily involved in 
grassroots Nader campaigning right here - to lump Nader in with the ho-hum 
campus reaction to bushgore is damn near inexcusable.

Another issue worth bringing up in letters to the editor to both the DI and 
N-G this week - the pseudo-debates. Here's a good start, from the Nader 
campaign press office this morning.

Jim B.

(we're much in need of one or more media coordinators for the Prairie 
Greens campaign awareness office, by the way - any volunteers to lend a 
hand with press releases, letter campaigns, etc.?)

-----------
Nader 2000
Press Release
OCTOBER 12, 2000
CONTACT: Jake Lewis or Tom Adkins
(202) 265-4000
NON-DEBATE AMONG CANDIDATES MAKES PUBLIC BEG FOR THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATES
Moderator: “Is there any difference?”
Gore: “I haven’t heard a big difference right in the last few
exchanges
”
Bush: “Well, I think it’s hard to tell.” *
WASHINGTON, DC. Oct. 12 ­ The code phrase for the second Presidential
debate was “I agree.”

Twelve times during the debate George W. Bush and Albert Gore used a
variant of the phrase “I agree with you”, and 28 more times they used
other words to let the national television audience know they were in
agreement on everything from foreign policy to trigger locks to the need
for gas drilling in pristine areas of Alaska.
With that many “agreements,” was it a debate? Bush obviously worried
about that, mentioning during their agreement on a hands-off approach to
the genocide in Rwanda that “it seems like we’re having a great love
fest right now.”

Do we need three national debates to learn the obvious ­that there are
few differences and numerous areas of agreement between Gore and Bush?
To save valuable air-time in the third debate in St. Louis, Gore and
Bush could simply stipulate their agreements in advance and use ten
minutes to outline the minutia on which they actually disagree. Then
they could let the other candidates have their say.
Of tonight’s debate, Green party candidate Ralph Nader opined, “This
misnamed debate was an interminable tedium of platitudinous dittos,
garnished by relentless evasions and marinated in cowardly escapes from
challenging the entrenched corporate interests.”

###