I've been obsessing about John McCain lately - but only because he's such a vile, little man. You don't have to look very hard to see through McCain's thin skin into his black heart to recognize that holding a grudge is Johnny Maverick's forte.
I mean, seriously, what else is this guy good at? Foreign policy? Hardly. Just because you were a war hero doesn't make you an expert at all things foreign policy. Unless that sole policy position is war escalation no matter the circumstance. Rachel Maddow had a great piece on this earlier in the week, showing McCain's response to foreign affairs over the years.
But McCain's biggest flaw, of a myriad of flaws is that he is a sore loser. He ran for President in 2000 and after winning the New Hampshire primary, was attacked with a George W. Bush whisper campaign about fathering an illegitimate black child. That child happened to be McCain's adopted daughter from Bangladesh. After Bush won the nomination and eventually became President, John McCain adopted a policy of revenge. What I call his Sour Grapes Doctrine.
In hindsight, what looked like McCain opposing Bush policies and voting against them for what Democrats at the time assumed were the right reasons, it was all a matter of getting back at the dweeb who beat him in the 2000 primary, especially after those vicious smear tactics.
Steve Kornacki: "...McCain’s various self-reinventions as a politician are best understood as acts of sore loser-dom. A decade ago, for instance, he took up a sudden interest in closing the gun show loophole, enacting a patients’ bill of rights, and stopping tax cuts for the wealthy. Not at all coincidentally, this came just after he’d lost a bruising campaign against George W. Bush. Bush and his team had been rough – very, very rough – on McCain, and McCain had deemed them unworthy victors. His sudden cooperation with Democrats in 2001 was his version of payback, giving the new Bush White House fits."
Of course, that all ended with 9/11 and by 2004, McCain was ignoring the swiftboating of another war hero, John Kerry, while supporting the re-election of Dubya, complete with head-on-shoulder man hugs. And apparently being presented a birthday cake while a major US city drowned is all you need to let bygones be bygones. Sorry about that bastard black baby thing... Here's a cake!
Fast forward four quick years and this time John McCain wins the Republican nomination but botches the general election while singing "Bomb Iran, "picking The Hockey Mom From Wasilla as his unfortunate running mate, suspending his campaign to sit in on a financial Wall Street crisis meeting where he promptly adds nothing by keeping his mouth shut, and referring to his opponent as "that one" in a debate.
But since he's had so much practice at grudge politics, McCain tacks to the right and decides to become a thorn in President Obama's side as he did with Bush, to the point of not just accusing US Ambassador Susan Rice of being incompetent and "not very bright" by repeating intelligence reports given to her by the CIA which happened to be vague and still pending information (intelligence reports that McCain himself probably had a copy of), but threatening to filibuster not only her possible nomination as the next Secretary of State, but ANY nomination President Obama would propose to succeed Hillary Clinton, because he wants answers on what happened in Benghazi. And he'll even miss classified briefings about what happened in Benghazi to hold a press conference to demand answers on what happened in Benghazi!
John McCain is a vindictive, curmudgeonly, sour little prick who can't get over the fact that he blew his chance. And now he's using his elected office to continue an obstructionist strategy, despite seeming more and more unhinged. If only he'd use his powers for good instead of pettiness.
ADDING... Here's Steve Kornacki's rant on The Cycle. It's worth watching if you can stomach S.E. Cupp... which is not an easy task.
“For someone who campaigned on ‘Country First’ and claims to take great pride in bipartisanship, it’s absolutely bizarre for Senator McCain to tell the American people he is going to take his ball and go home until the next election. He must be living in some parallel universe because the fact is, with very few exceptions, we’ve gotten very little cooperation from Senate Republicans in recent years.
“At a time when our economy is suffering and we’re fighting two wars, the American people need Senator McCain and his fellow Republicans to start working with us to confront the challenges facing our country—not reiterating their constant opposition to helping working families when they need it most.”
It seems the Maverick is still upset about losing the 2008 election and doesn't want to work anymore until what? He gets his way? Luckily for the country, there are 99 other Senators available to work.
This week saw the debut of a 9½ minute video tease of wingnut John Ziegler's "documentary" on Sarah Palin called Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected. Normally, I wouldn't spend much time on something like this because as hisinterviewsdisplay, Ziegler is a fucking nutjob who can't answer questions without sneering, guffawing and having an accusatory paranoid tone, answering questions with questions and comparisons of who he considers adversaries, while calling his interviewers "jokes" and telling them to go fuck themselves.
Although his documentary has yet to be released, I'm venturing to guess that this is Ziegler's attempt to be Sarah Palin'sLeni Riefenstahl. In all fairness I am including the full YouTube video released by Ziegler and even though it may be hard to sit through, you really should watch to get the whole gist.
According to Ziegler, he interviewed Palin for approximately 50 minutes, which means about 20% of it is in his YouTube release. It's no surprise that Ziegler is trying to show Palin in the best possible light, and inferring that all of her faux pas were a misinterpretation by the evil liberal media and that she is always taken out of context. He even calls it "character assassination." And yet what I find so fascinating is that even though this was probably the best person to interview Palin, the statement from the Palin camp after the YouTube release was the following:
Governor Palin Says to Media, "There You Go Again" January 8, 2009, Anchorage, Alaska – Governor Sarah Palin today expressed dismay at continuing efforts in the media to take her comments out of context to create adversarial situations. Ironically, the latest media eruption concerning the governor came out of an interview she gave to a filmmaker who is creating a documentary on distortions by the national press. Gov. Palin gave the interview Monday as one of many voices contributing to the film "Media Malpractice...How Obama Got Elected," concerning the performance of the media last fall. The filmmaker posted excerpts from the interview on YouTube.com, which then led to misleading reports in the press. Particularly troubling was a post on Politico.com titled, "Palin: Media Goes Easy on Kennedy." The headline inflames the governor's quote in the transcript, in which she answered a question about media treatment of the prospect that Caroline Kennedy would be appointed to the U.S. Senate: "It's going to be interesting to see how that plays out and I think that as we watch that we will perhaps be able to prove that there is a class issue here also that was such a factor in the scrutiny of my candidacy versus, say, the scrutiny of what her candidacy may be." “I was not commenting at all on Caroline Kennedy as a prospective U.S. senator, but rather on the seemingly arbitrary ways in which news organizations determine the level and kind of scrutiny given to those who aspire to public office,” Gov. Palin said today. “In fact, I consider Ms. Kennedy qualified and experienced, and she could serve New York well.” ...
The Governor claims media bias in her Caroline Kennedy answer (5:50 mark) but if she wants to accuse someone of spinning, it was her own documentarian that put her answer into context with the question, "Did media 'class bias' cause a Sarah Palin/Caroline Kennedy double standard?" No one put these words in her mouth: "I think that as we watch that we will perhaps be able to prove that there is a class issue here also..." which infers that the evil liberal media will go/has gone easy on Kennedy as opposed to how they treated Palin.
She doesn't mention the fact that being next in line for the Presidency as the running mate of a 72 year old cancer survivor is perhaps a little different and maybe deserves more scrutiny than being appointed one of one hundred Senators, or that perhaps there was more interest in finding out who Sarah Palin was than Caroline Kennedy since it is Kennedy who's been in the public eye her entire life. But I guess that's that "context" thing. Maybe the context we're all missing will be in Ziegler's unreleased footage which he rabidly uses as a defense against critics of his own edited YouTube video.
But ultimately, this new interview and insight into Sarah Palin makes it look like she just can't bring herself to accept any responsibility for her campaign performance. Charlie Gibson played "gotcha journalism" when Palin didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was. Her initially botched Couric interview is Couric's fault because Palin couldn't answer a simple question about what she reads to keep updated on news. Her subsequent Couric interviews that proved she was much better orating a snarky speech off a teleprompter than she was thinking on her feet were the fault of the McCain campaign for insisting she continue to do one of the few interviews she was allowed to do when not sequestered from the media. She attacks the media for using "bloggers" as a source for news items, but uses said bloggers herself when claiming that Barack Obama makes it a habit of "palling around with terrorists", that he started his political career in the living room of William Ayers and casting doubts about Obama's American citizenship and religion. According to Palin, the obvious media bias against her is because she was on the Republican Party ticket (except for Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck and Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham... ad infinitum) and it would have been the exact opposite had she run as the Democratic VP choice. Although, how you choose to run in complete opposition to your own ideology is another story.
SARAH PALIN 2012
There is a tone in Democratic circles that Sarah Palin would be dangerous for her opposition if she were to run in 2012. Unhingedpundits see her and think she's the cat's meow and had it not been for Palin, McCain wouldn't have gotten the bump he did after the Republican convention, but they refuse to admit that had it not been for Palin's divisive hate speech, McCain wouldn't have nose dived* the way he did after the convention bump.
But I say Sarah Palin in 2012? Bring it on. The conventional wisdom with the few remaining rational members of the Republican Party are that they have to rebrand and re-evaluate their message. They have to become a party of inclusion as the times have changed and their base becomes smaller because let's face it, whitey ain't gonna be the majority for much longer. But if the hard right wing conservatives prop up Palin for a 2012 run, and for some strange reason the Palin 2012 talk won't go away, it will only serve to further fracture a hobbled Republican party and render them irrelevant.
No matter who the face of the 2012 GOP candidate is, the fact is that 45% of the population will vote for them. They could have put up a pet rock against Barack Obama in November and they still would have gotten 40% of the vote. But there are a few voters out there who actually care about the issues, and reaching them is the pivotal point in any election cycle. Politicians like Tim Pawlenty understand this. Politicians like Sarah Palin do not.
Judging by Palin's answers in this little video snippet provided by a conservative ally, I have to say that it doesn't strike me as if she learned anything from her '08 run and is in denial about her shortcomings. If this continues, she'll think that she doesn't need to learn anything or try new tactics - why try to learn something if you think you're always right and think you've always been wronged? She may have pulled something over on small town Wasillans with her rambling, incoherent sentences as long as there's a wink attached to the end of them, but if it didn't work for the nation in '08, I seriously doubt it'll be a hit in 2012.
* McCain's "fundamentals of the economy are still strong" gaffe didn't help, but Palin wasn't 100% free of culpability either.
While much has been made of the Kennedy and Couric comments, there was a troubling remark, largely overlooked, that Palin made about Barack Obama that was a flat-out, blatant lie--a typically Palinesque twisting of the truth intending, once again, to turn her into a victim and to make Obama & Co., along with the media, appear to be hypocrites.
Here is Palin's latest Big Lie:
"When I heard Barack Obama state in one of his interviews on national television that his wife was off limits, meaning, family's off limits-- you know, 'Attack me, I'm the public official, come after me, I can handle it and we'll duke it out if need be, but family's off limits'-- I naively believed, OK, they respected that in him and his demand for that to be adhered, naively believing that must apply to all of us, right? But it didn't apply."
While Obama did say that he found attacks on his wife "unacceptable," he also very boldly and emphatically stated that Palin's family was also off limits when asked a question about Bristol Palin's pregnancy:
"I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits, and people's children are especially off limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as governor, or her potential performance as a VP. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories."
He wasn't protecting simply his own family with that assertion, he was also protecting Palin's. And Palin lacks the basic grace, integrity and human decency to acknowledge Obama's gesture. And then she twists the truth to make Obama seem selfish and the media unfair.
And what about her claim that Obama's wishes were "respected" about his own family? The right-wing press went after Michelle Obama relentlessly and so, too, did the McCain campaign. None other than Cindy McCain went after Michelle for comments she made about finally being proud of her country:
"I don't know why she said what she said. Everyone has their own experience. I don't know why she said what she said, all I know is that I have always been proud of my country."
That seemed a little off-base coming from someone born with a silver-spoon in her mouth and who not only served as her husband's connection to the Keating Five Scandal, but then later stole drugs from her own nonprofit organization to sustain her drug habit. But make that charge she did.
And the right continued to attack her through the campaign--from Michelle Malkin to Ann Coulter. Anyone who claims otherwise is wallowing in duplicity.
So here again, Palin utterly distorts reality, fails to acknowledge Obama's gesture, doesn't acknowledge what her running mate's wife said about Michelle Obama, and turns herself, yet again, into a political victim. Where is Ann Coulter calling Palin on her self-victimization? The silence is deafening.
A Washington lobbyist on Tuesday sued The New York Times for publishing an article that she says suggests she once had a romantic relationship with 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
The lawsuit, filed by lawyers for Vicki Iseman in a Richmond, Virginia, federal court, seeks $27 million in damages.
It claims that Iseman, a lobbyist at the firm Alcalde & Fay, was defamed by the Feb. 21 article and that she suffered damage to her reputation as well as to her emotional and mental health.
Okay, I have no problem with someone who believes they have been publicly defamed to sue. But what the fuck took so long? Why is this suit coming TEN MONTHS after the article? If I remember correctly, no one, NO ONE, could find this woman as she apparently went into hiding after the article was published. We couldn't even find a fucking current photo of her and still can't. All we got was this.
And now she's deciding to sue for $27 million?! I'm sorry, but if there was a time to do this, it was February 22, 2008 - the day after the article came out - a sign that she wasn't going to take this shit and was going to vigorously defend herself. Instead, she did her best impression of Greta Garbo*. If she had nothing to hide, why go into hiding? And I'm not going to accept the argument that it would have been a distraction from the presidential race. I'll dismiss that faster than you can say Rev. Wright. That's a bullshit excuse.
There ought to be a statute of limitations on stupidity.
* - Rumor has it that John McCain dated Greta Garbo in high school.
The Obama campaign and Howard Dean's 50 state strategy has remade the electoral map. Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada were Bush wins in 2004 that have now gone blue. As of this writing, we're still awaiting races that are too close to call in Indiana, North Carolina and Missouri. Montana and Alaska are the remaining two states that haven't projected a winner but should remain red.
Chris Shays has lost his Congressional election which now means that there are no Republican Congressmen representing any of New England. None.
UPDATE (1:40am):The new map. (Gray = still too close or too early to call as of 1:40am)
UPDATE (1:45am):Rumor has it that Obama is choosing Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff and Emmanuel has accepted! That's it for me - I have to get up for work in four hours. I'll continue tomorrow. Goodnight! I think tomorrow is going to be a good day.
UPDATE (6:11am):INDIANA GOES BLUE!
Neither North Carolina nor Missouri have been called.
The reason these numbers are important is because in 2004, Bush won in NC 54%-46% and MO 53%-46%. Another amazing turnaround is that Indiana is now blue where Bush won in 2004 60%-39%.
Kansas City, MO - Six polling locations received the wrong precinct books, therefore poll workers don't have the names of the voters who should be casting their ballots in those locations. Officials are now woring to get the books to their proper locations.
12:15pm - Richmond, VA - Exremely long lines. Polls opened at 6am and there were lines forming at 3:30am!!! Electronic voting problems in different counties not showing either the Presidential or Senate races. It's also raining in Virginia and somehow, the ballots are getting wet and jamming as they are put through the machines.
1:55pm - VIRGINIA - The Northumberland County Board of Elections has announced a programming error will prevent voters today from voting a straight ticket for one party. Mary Thew, director of the Northumberland County Board of Elections, told The News-Item that a problem was discovered early in the vote process.
I'll update this list as I hear of the problems. If you hear anything, let me know.
This is the time. There has arguably never been a more important election in the past hundred years in the history of our nation, quite possibly even since our country was founded. I know that may sound over the top or melodramatic, but think about it. Think about how we find ourselves as a nation at this moment in our history.
We find ourselves in the middle of waging two wars that has spread thin our once mighty military to the breaking point. One side looks to end the war in a logical, careful fashion and bring our men and women in uniform home, while the other side would have us continue the war indefinitely; a war built on a false premise through deception and faulty intelligence against a country that never attacked us.
We find ourselves falling prey to health insurance companies whose premiums have increased at twice the rate of inflation in just the last year alone. Over 47 million Americans (and rising) go without health insurance in the only industrialized nation that doesn't cover all of it's citizens, yet pays six times more per capita than any of its peers - the U.S. now spends more on health care than it does on food.
We find ourselves still addicted to oil. Our track marks will not fade away so long as we need 25% of the earth's oil production but only provide 3% of it ourselves. We are a nation that develops solar panels and ships them overseas to other countries. One side wants to find alternative sources of energy to reduce and eventually eliminate our dependence on foreign sources while he other side thinks that increased oil production in the U.S. will ween us off of our need for the dealers cloaked in the suits of Big Oil.
I could go on and on, but after almost two years of debating and campaigning, you've probably heard it all. If you haven't, then you haven't been paying attention. If you come to this site on a regular basis, then you know where I stand on the issues and who I'm planning to vote for, but I'll leave you with some some poetic words written by the Rude One because if the issues don't grab you, maybe this will:
What we're witnessing this election season is the ultimate triumph of American assholism: don't you fuckin' tell us we can't change things. Maybe the end result of selfishness is self-empowerment, the belief that, yeah, goddamnit, we are important enough to transform this shit. Because this ain't about McCain, this ain't about Obama. It's about us. That's what Obama has tapped into, and that's what we have responded to. Barack Obama hasn't asked us to transcend our asshole ways. He's asked us to use them, to turn the tools of egotistical expression into weapons, to act like righteous motherfuckers to those who have power. Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground and the SDS were fuckin' jerks. The civil rights marchers were rude and impolite to the status quo. Now is the time, this final confluence of events, that has allowed us to be able to say, "How dare you have done this to us. How fucking dare you." It's why for so, so many people race doesn't matter. It's why even the South and West are in play this year. Even an asshole can do what's right. No policy talk here. No comparisons with McCain. Let's keep this clear: By making Barack Obama president, we return to a simple American idea, one that the Founders embraced when they were such jack-offs to the British: this land is our land, my land, your land. But it ain't fuckin' their land.
With two days to go, only 8 percent of likely voters are uncommitted – either they have not yet chosen a candidate, or their minds could still change. Nearly all of these uncommitted voters say they plan to vote. Today’s uncommitted voters are mostly white, and more than half are age 45 or older. Just over half are men, and most live in the Midwest and South. Half describe themselves as moderate, and many are not partisan - four in 10 are independents.
In that case I've come to the conclusion that "today's uncommitted voter" is also a fucking moron who couldn't decide if he should have Cocoa Puffs™ or Fruit Loops™ for breakfast. And they go through that hard decision every single day. "Today's uncommitted voter" spends 20 minutes wondering what pair of jeans he's going to wear, the blue pair or the blue pair, even though both pair are the same exact fucking type of jeans. "Today's uncommitted voter" calls himself "independent" because he can't decide on a political party. And judging by the description that "today's uncommitted voters" are white Midwestern/Southerners over the age of 45, I've also come to the conclusion that they are also closet racists who can't stand John McCain but can't bear the thought of voting for Barack Obama because he's a black man. And the only reason that they are still in the closet about their racism is becausethey can't decide if they should come out.
No ifs, ands or buts about it - if after listening to two years of campaigning, you are still "uncommitted" between
A) a creepy, old guy who brings nothing to the table except that he thinks he is deserving of the highest office in the land because of his status as a POW and who's first real presidential decision was to choose as his running mate a trailer trash whore from Alaska who can't put a sentence together without sounding like a sing-song Romper Room host reject to be one frail heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the world, or -
B) an, intelligent, thoughtful man who knows and understands the problems that we face in this country because he was not born into privilege and can bring people of all stripes together because of his overwhelming message of hope and unity and his ability to extract the best from every single one of us in order to reclaim our position of respect in the world -
- then you probably should sit this one out and let the grown ups decide what's best for the nation. I know that voting is a right, but I also think that it is a privilege, a privilege that shouldn't be taken lightly, and for someone to say they are still "uncommitted" at this point, they must either lying, apathetic, or completely uninformed, misinformed or both and therefore clueless.
So do us all a favor, Mr. and Mrs. Uncommitted, and stay home. Watch the election results from the comfort of your own home as you fret over the decision between ordering pizza or Chinese. Sit there with your mouth agape as the kungpao chicken or pepperoni slice hangs from your lips pondering the next four years with the first African American in the White House. And then sit back and think about how you watched history... instead of participating in it.
I received this e-mail from a friend and thought I'd submit it here. It's one of those e-mails that gets circulated around so I don't know who the originator was - I apologize in advance - but I am not taking credit for it.
We all know that racism has played a part in this campaign from the very beginning (I'm not about to start naming specific instances... maybe that's for another post) but picturing the campaign scenario had Obama's and McCain's situations been reversed, the outcome would be completely different. I've thought about this in passing on occasion, but having it written out and really thinking about it, even caught me by surprise. I'm sure you'll feel the same way.
Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Palin
What if the presidential candidates exchanged race? Think about it... Would the country's collective point of view be different?
Ponder the following:
What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?
What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was divorced?
What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after she was severely disfigured in a car accident?
What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?
What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain had graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
What if Obama couldn't read from a teleprompter?
What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes?
What if Obama was the one who was known to displaypublicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management problem?
What if Michelle Obama's family had made their money from beer distribution?
What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?
You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are? This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.
So let's consider some other stuff like educational backgrounds:
Barack Obama: Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations. Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude
Joseph Biden: University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science. Syracuse University, College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)
John McCain: United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899
Sarah Palin: Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism
Education isn't everything, but this is about the two highest offices in the land as well as our standing in the world.
See what I mean? At least one of those caught you off guard, admit it. Six days until Election Day. Vote early and vote often.
"A controversial billboard in Orange County has a picture of the burning World Trade Center and the message, "Please Don't Vote for a Democrat." The man who paid for the ad says he's trying to help Republicans, but officials with both political parties are calling the billboard inappropriate.
...A controversial billboard in Orange County has a picture of the burning World Trade Center and the message, "Please Don't Vote for a Democrat." The man who paid for the ad says he's trying to help Republicans, but officials with both political parties are calling the billboard inappropriate."
Awesome. Mike Meehan sells his soul to the devil for $5 CDs. But of course this is what they do, invoking 9/11 to create an atmosphere of fear, sport purple band-aids to disparage a Vietnam war hero, and insist you "know how to win wars" when the only war you were involved in saw you shot down and a prisoner of war for five and a half years.
NY TIMES: WASHINGTON — Troop levels in Iraq would remain nearly the same through 2008 as at any time during five years of war, under plans presented to President Bush on Monday by the senior American commander and the top American diplomat in Iraq, senior administration and military officials said.
...it now appears likely that any decision on major reductions in American troops from Iraq will be left to the next president. That ensures that the question over what comes next will remain in the center of the presidential campaign through Election Day.
On Sunday, February 24, 2008, three days before his 74th birthday, Ralph Nader announced his presidential bid on Meet The Press. Happy birthday, Ralph. It is the fifth* time that Nader is running for President, previously running in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004.
I've rewritten this post in my head multiple times since Sunday waiting for my anger to subside else my post be a swear-filled rant probably topping most previous entries. Ralph Nader needs to go away. Just shut up and go away.
Don't misunderstand. Nader is an admirable man, with great credentials. His consumer advocacy is second to none. He's founded over four dozen non-profit organizations that are funded by most of his net worth according to the FEC disclosure report in 2000. Taking on the automobile industry on safety at a time when the car was king was stunning.
But one question must be asked: why does someone who has no chance of winning the highest office in the land, and I mean ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE, why would that person run again and again and again?
You can make a case for running once or twice. But this is Ralph Nader's fifth attempt at the Presidency. It's become a sad, sad joke. The power of his convictions has overtaken the rationale of his thinking. And call me cynical, but the only reason I think Nader is running is to fill his egotistical need to be in the spotlight and feel wanted.
Nader's fourth attempt in 2004 netted him a total of 463,653 votes, for 0.38% of the popular vote. Nader replied to this in filmed interviews by pointing out that, "Voting for a candidate of one's choice is a Constitutional right, and the Democrats who are asking me not to run are, without question, seeking to deny the Constitutional rights of voters who are, by law, otherwise free to choose to vote for me."
That's all well and good, Ralph, but the 2004 presidential election was up to that point, the most important election this country had ever seen. All you did was muddy up the waters. 0.38% of the popular vote is not viable, so why do it?
On principle, sure, you want to get your message out there. Here is what Nader's website states the issues are this time around:
- Adopt single payer national health insurance - Cut the huge, bloated, wasteful military budget - No to nuclear power, solar energy first - Aggressive crackdown on corporate crime and corporate welfare - Open up the Presidential debates - Adopt a carbon pollution tax - Reverse U.S. policy in the Middle East - Impeach Bush/Cheney - Repeal the Taft-Hartley anti-union law - Adopt a Wall Street securities speculation tax - Put an end to ballot access obstructionism - Work to end corporate personhood
Well, it all sounds great, doesn't it? Even liberal radio talk show host Mike Malloy, when speaking of Nader's candidacy, has said that this is what the Democratic Party should have been, this is what it was gearing towards 30 years ago and we have strayed. I agree with him. But I also believe we had a Ralph Nader in this election. His name was Dennis Kucinich, and he went about his candidacy in a serious way, attempting to put his name on the ballot of every state, out there stumping on the campaign trail, trying to make his voice heard long before Nader emerged from the ground looking for the sustenance of the spotlight.
If Ralph Nader was serious about actually helping third parties or independents become viable, then why is it we hear nothing from Nader for three and a half years? Then suddenly, his coffin lid opens, he rises from the ground, dusts himself off and feeds on the egomanical blood he so desperately craves. His first official run was in 1992. That's sixteen years - SIXTEEN YEARS! - that he could have been working to make a third party legitimate and a contender, instead of eye-rolling laughable.
When asked by Tim Russert about the possibility of preventing a Democratic victory in 2008, Nader responded, "Not a chance. If the Democrats can’t landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, and emerge in a different form."
On that, Nader and I can agree. But you have to ask yourself: if this is what Ralph Nader truly believes, then why bother entering the race?
UPDATE: Correction- This is Nader's third official run for the presidency. According to Wikipedia - In 1992, Nader stood in as a write-in for "none of the above" in both the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic and Republican Primaries. In 1996, Nader was drafted as a candidate for President of the United States on the Green Party ticket during the 1996 presidential election. He was not formally nominated by the Green Party USA, which was, at the time, the largest national Green group; instead he was nominated independently by various state Green parties (in some areas, he appeared on the ballot as an independent).
Please! Stop! I'm ... laughing too hard...can't... breath... HAHAHAHA!!!!!
President Bush predicted Monday that voters will replace him with a Republican president who will "keep up the fight" in Iraq. "I'm confident we'll hold the White House in 2008," Bush told donors at the Republican Governors Association annual dinner, which raised a record $10.6 million for GOP gubernatorial candidates.
"And I don't want the next Republican president to be lonely," Bush said. "And that is why we got to take the House, retake the Senate, and make sure our states are governed by Republican governors."
...."When I say I'm confident, I am so because I understand the mentality of the American people," Bush said. "And I understand the mentality of our candidates. And there's no question in my mind, with your help, 2008 is going to be a great year."
It certainly will be a great year... but for different reasons than Curious George thinks.
Washington Post: The first Democratic-led Congress in a dozen years limped out of Washington last night with a lengthy list of accomplishments, from the first increase in fuel-efficiency standards in a generation to the first minimum-wage hike in a decade.
But Democrats' failure to address the central issues that swept them to power left even the most partisan of them dissatisfied and Congress mired at a historic low in public esteem.
First it was Fox News Channel's 1/2 Hour News Hour, and now this. Another pathetic attempt and proof positive that Republicans have no sense of humor (and no talent either).
SYDNEY, Australia - Conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffered a humiliating defeat Saturday at the hands of the left-leaning opposition, whose leader has promised to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdraw Australia's combat troops from Iraq.
Labor Party head Kevin Rudd's pledges on global warming and Iraq move Australia sharply away from policies that had made Howard one of President Bush's staunchest allies.
Rudd has named global warming as his top priority, and his signing of the Kyoto Protocol will leave the U.S. as the only industrialized country not to have joined it.
Bush loses another suck up. I still feel my spidey senses tingling for November, if and when Bush tries to pull a Musharraf in the guise of national security.
Democratic candidate and real maverick Mike Gravel was interviewed by TruthDig.org about his role in the debates, the election process and how he'll win the election: by telling the American people the truth.
GRAVEL: Truth for America is that we think that we’re so much better than anyone else in the world, and we’re not. We’re no better than anybody else in the world. The truth is, we squander our wealth on the military-industrial complex for a defense that is totally inadequate. The truth is that 30 percent of our children do not graduate from high school. The truth is that one-fifth of the nation is functionally illiterate and in Washington, D.C., it’s 36 percent. I could go on. The truth is, there’s only two industrialized nations in the world that do not have healthcare for all their people. One is the United States, and the other is South Africa.
The hyenas are starting to attack each other. Not that I've devoted my life to politics to consider myself an historian, but I can't remember in recent history the Republicans going at each other like this. I had a feeling that Romney, McCain and Giuliani was a strange group for the GOP to be touting as their front-runners, and now my suspicions seem to be coming to fruition.
At a Republican dinner in Iowa this month, [former Virginia Gov. Jim] Gilmore took on his party's front-runners collectively, saying, "Rudy McRomney is not a conservative."
The top-tier Republican candidates are all suspect to solid conservatives, who fear they are losing their hard-won influence in the Republican Party.
"[We are] very concerned as to whether or not as a conservative movement we will be, in fact, the driving political force in the '08 election cycle," said another GOP presidential hopeful, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
When it comes to Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment -- "Thou shalt not speak ill of thy fellow Republicans" -- GOP presidential candidates seem to be losing their religion.
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