Letter to Grand Ayatullah Sayyid Ali Husayni Sistani

Please allow me to recommend Instant Runoff Voting for the people of Iraq. Voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If your candidate finishes last, your vote goes to your second choice, and so on. This ensures that the winner of an election gets at least half the total votes.

Your advocacy would undoubtedly increase awareness of this issue here in the U.S. Our founding fathers were visionaries, but they did leave some room for improvement!

For more information, please visit the following site:

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/faq.htm

Kerry, Bush, and Zbig

John Kerry’s fellow member on the Council on Foreign Relations, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wrote in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard" that it would take something on the scale of Pearl Harbor to get the U.S. public to support a war in the energy-rich Middle East.

Here are some quotes:

"The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor." (pg. 24-25)

"But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold." (pg. 124)

"It follows that America’s primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it." (pg. 148)

"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." (pg. 211)

In addition to Kerry and Brzezinski, other members of the Council on Foreign Relations include George Herbert Walker Bush and many of George W. Bush’s senior career bureaucrats. As Bush comes under criticism for using 9-11 in his political ads, these CFR connections deserve closer scrutiny from the mainstream media this election season.

The War

It's true I felt mixed about the war. Fighting tyranny is good but I still think the motive was oil. Considering the WMD thing was concocted, the 500 dead and 2000 wounded, I think Dean and Kucinich did a better job of anticipating the problems. To be honest, I may disagree with them on whether it's good to throw out tyrants, but I agree that the US has a bad foreign policy track record.

Not sure who to believe on this Haiti thing, whether President Aristede was forced at gunpoint by the US military. Sounds like he was pretty bad. Why couldn't the people wait to vote him out of office at the end of his term in 2005?

A dozen reasons not to vote for Kerry

He voted for the War in Iraq.
He voted for the Patriot Act.
He voted for No Child Left Behind.
He voted for NAFTA.
He voted for Most Favored Nation treatment for Communist China.
He supports ethanol, even though it takes about a gallon of ethanol to make a gallon of ethanol.
He wants a non-universal, non-singlepayer health care plan.
He takes more lobbyist money than anyone in the Senate.
He was in the Senate when Clinton had both houses of Congress and didn't get much done.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, founded by Robber Barons John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan.
He is a member of the elite secret society "Skull and Bones" along with George W. Bush.
His senior foreign policy advisor, Rand Beers, was chief counter-terrorism adviser to George W. Bush.

Your CANDIDATE may WIN, but YOU will LOSE!!!

Letter on IRV to governor and state legislators

I'm writing in favor of Instant Runoff Voting and SF 1613. It's a simple concept that makes perfect sense. Voters rank the candidates. If your candidate comes in last, your vote goes to your second choice, and so on.

In any given election, it may benefit one side or another, but the important thing over the long term is that it will encourage more public participation. Just as consumers desire more choices in their cable channels, soft drinks, and cuisines, voters' tastes continue to grow more varied and refined. IRV gives everybody a chance to express their political identity.

The framers of the constitution were great visionaries, but they did leave some room for improvement. By introducing the US to IRV, you may assure yourselves a place in history comparable to the founding fathers themselves!