Jesse Ventura: US should abolish inherently corrupt political parties

By David Edwards and Ron Brynaert
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

A dozen years after shocking the nation with an upset win as an Independent candidate in the 1998 Minnesota gubernatorial election, former wrestler Jesse Ventura doesn't support third parties anymore.

"Win if you can, lose if you must, but ALWAYS cheat," Jesse "The Body" Ventura infamously said in his days as a wrestling villain, but Tuesday night he blasted such Machiavellian philosophies.

Ventura told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he wouldn't vote for his former employer Linda McMahon in her bid to become Senator even if he could "[b]ecause i don't vote for Democrats or Republicans. If she ran as an independent, she could possibly get my endorsement. But I refuse."

Ventura added, "I no longer support the third party movement."

"Why not?" the ABC interviewer asked.

Ventura elaborated, "I believe the system is so corrupt, the two parties have corrupted it so bad, that any thirty party, in which to be successful, will likewise have to corrupt itself. If you already have a two-headed monster, why would you need three?"

The answer is "to abolish parties," Ventura added. "Do not put a name of a party below the person's name on the ballot. It's too easy to say, I'm a Republican. And you walk in: Republican, Republican, Republican. You're voting the party, not the person. And that's the way it's all set up."

Ventura also appeared on CNN Tuesday night, telling Larry King (video at this link) why he enjoys hosting his Conspiracy Theory show, "I love to attack our government."

Two weeks ago, USA Today spoke to Ventura about why he thought "there can't be any change."

"Notice I lump them together," he says. "I don't distinguish between the two because it's very much like pro wrestling. You (give) interviews on TV like you hate each other, to draw crowds and attention and make money. But behind closed doors, you'll go out to dinner with each other. Well, the Democrats and Republicans are the same way. They're not adversaries; they just make believe they are to the American public."

In fact, Ventura, who ran as an independent and a member of the Reform Party, says he's no longer even into that. "I do not support the third party movement anymore," he says. "I now advocate the abolishment of all political parties. We've allowed the parties to take over the government."

An article for The Hill published Wednesday notes, "A majority of likely voters think a viable third party would be good for American politics, according to a new poll of likely voters in 10 key open House districts."

Fifty-four percent of respondents in The Hill 2010 Midterm Election Poll said they’d like an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans.

That number rose to 67 percent for self-identified independents. But even a plurality in the established parties — 49 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of Republicans — said they’d like another choice.

“That’s probably the strongest number I’ve seen in a poll of people in America saying that they're interested in a third party,” said pollster Mark Penn.

ABC host: Ventura's most 'out there' theory is US was warned about 9/11

At his ABC News blog, Stephanopoulos notes, "Ventura was on to tout the second season of his show Conspiracy Theory, and he weighed in with some of his theories."

Most out there? That the U.S. government was in on the 9-11 plot. 

“Most people attack me because I question 9/11 now and…when people attack me I always go ‘What have you studied about it other than what the government has told you and sound bite news has told you,’” he said.

“My theory is that we certainly knew it was going to happen and we did nothing to stop it,” Ventura said.

"How can you say that?" the ABC host then asked, even though the former Minnesota governor hadn't directly accused the Bush administration of complicity, but Ventura's response was left out of his blog account.

Easy. Take a look at evidence. The NSA was predicting it as early as may. Condoleezza Rice stood there in August and said, "How did we know they were going to hijack planes and run them into buildings?" The August memo said, "Hijack planes and run them into buildings."

The August of 2001 memo (PDF link), which wasn't declassified until 2004, does warn about Qaeda threats to hijack planes.

Before it was declassified, the New York Times reported, "President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday."

The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was ''historical'' in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders. 

Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks have asked the White House to make the Aug. 6 briefing memorandum public. The A.P. account of it was attributed to ''several people who have seen the memo.'' The White House has said that nothing in it pointed specifically to the kind of attacks that actually took place a month later. 

The Congressional report last year, citing efforts by Al Qaeda operatives beginning in 1997 to attack American soil, said that operatives appeared to have a support structure in the United States and that intelligence officials had ''uncorroborated information'' that Mr. bin Laden ''wanted to hijack airplanes'' to gain the release of imprisoned extremists. It also said that intelligence officials received information in May 2001, three months earlier, that indicated ''a group of bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the United States with explosives.''

However, another document did indeed include such a warning.

In its interactive 9/11 "terror clues" graphic, CBS News noted, "US intelligence learns that a 'group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosive-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center,' according to a report released by congressional investigators Sept. 18, 2002. The information was passed on to the Federal Aviation Administration and FBI, which took little action on it. The group may now be linked to bin Laden, the report says."

This video is from ABC's Good Morning America, broadcast Oct. 13, 2010.