Thread: Nader announces run for president

Nader announces run for president
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
Sun Feb 24, 4:07 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Ralph Nader on Sunday announced a fresh bid for the White House, criticizing the top contenders as too close to big business and dismissing the possibility that his third-party candidacy could tip the election to Republicans.

The longtime consumer advocate is still loathed by many Democrats who accuse him of costing Al Gore the 2000 election.

Nader said most people are disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties due to a prolonged Iraq war and a shaky economy. He also blamed tax and other corporate-friendly policies under the Bush administration that he said have left many lower- and middle-class people in debt.

"You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized, disrespected," he said. "You go from Iraq, to Palestine/Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts."

Nader, who turns 74 later this week, announced his candidacy on NBC's "Meet the Press."

In a later interview with The Associated Press, he rejected the notion of himself as a spoiler candidate, saying the electorate will not vote for a "pro-war John McCain." He also predicted his campaign would do better than in 2004, when he won just 0.3 percent of the vote as an independent.

"This time we're ready for them," said Nader of the Democratic Party lawsuits that kept him off the ballot in some states.

Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton quickly sought to portray Nader's announcement as having little impact.

"Obviously, it's not helpful to whomever our Democratic nominee is. But it's a free country," said Clinton, who called Nader's announcement a "passing fancy."

Obama dismissed Nader as a perennial presidential campaigner. "He thought that there was no difference between Al Gore and George Bush and eight years later I think people realize that Ralph did not know what he was talking about," Obama added.

Republican Mike Huckabee welcomed Nader into the race.

"I think it always would probably pull votes away from the Democrats, not the Republicans," the former Arkansas governor said on CNN.

Nader said Obama's and Clinton's lukewarm response was not surprising given that both political parties typically treat third-party candidates as "second-class citizens." Nader said he will decide in the coming days whether to run as an independent, Green Party candidate or in some other third party.

Pointing a finger at Republicans, he described McCain as a candidate for "perpetual war" and said he welcomed the support of Republican conservatives "who don't like the war in Iraq, who don't like taxpayer dollars wasted, and who don't like the Patriot Act and who treasure their rights of privacy."

"If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up," Nader added.

Associated Press writers Beth Fouhy in Providence, R.I., and David Espo in Lorain, Ohio, contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080224/...ZaK3k1Cbms0NUE

On the Net: Ralph Nader presidential campaign: http://www.votenader.org

Why Ralph Nader is running
Hint: says Obama is "supporting the Israeli destruction of the tiny section called Gaza."
By Mark Kilmer Posted in 2008

http://www.redstate.com/stories/elec...der_is_running

Ralph Nader told Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press this morning that he is running for President. Russert was visibly upset, pleasing with Nader that he might give the election to John McCain just as he had done for George Bush in 2000:

Gore would've been president and not George Bush. You, Ralph Nader are responsible for what has happened the last seven years.

Surely Nader does not want that. Nader tells us that he believes that large corporations have taken over our government, but could this be a code for something else. Why isn't Nader supporting presumptive Dem nominee Barack Obama over John McCain, whom he sees as a continuation of the "criminal, recidivistic regime of George Bush and Dick Cheney"?

Let's let Ralph speak for himself:

Read On…

Nader tells us that he finds Obama to be a "person of substance," which surprises those of us who have watched Barry on the campaign trail: change, change, hope, unity, hope, change. But Ralph believes that Obama is campaigning this way because he has "censored" his "better instincts."

Why?

Nader, from page 2 of the MTP transcript:

I give you the example, the Palestinian-Israeli issue, which is a real off the table issue for the candidates. So don't touch that, even though it's central to our security and to, to the situation in the Middle East. He was pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois before he ran for the state Senate, during he ran--during the state Senate. Now he's, he's supporting the Israeli destruction of the tiny section called Gaza with a million and a half people. He doesn't have any sympathy for a civilian death ratio of about 300-to-1; 300 Palestinians to one Israeli. He's not taking a leadership position in supporting the Israeli peace movement, which represents former Cabinet ministers, people in the Knesset, former generals, former security officials, in addition to mayors and leading intellectuals. One would think he would at least say, "Let's have a hearing for the Israeli peace movement in the Congress," so we don't just have a monotone support of the Israeli government's attitude toward the Palestinians and their illegal occupation of Palestine.

I heard the words fly from the man's mouth like so much drunken spittle this morning, and I dropped a pencil. This was on purpose on my part, to be sure, but I was stunned by the rhetoric. In the 21st Century?

Russert, of course, ignored that and skipped back to something less embarrassing:

But would you prefer, as an American citizen, to have Barack Obama or John McCain as president?

That wasn't the point for Ralph Nader, who finds both candidates too be controlled by that infamous cabal of bankers, big corporations, media elites, etc. You know, the "Israeli lobby."

Hey, Barry did speak to AIPAC in March of 2007 [transcript].

The U.S. and our partners have put before Hamas three very simple conditions to end this isolation: recognize Israel’s right to exist; renounce the use of violence; and abide by past agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Of course, this was in the same speech in which he called for the "isolation of Hamas and other extremists who are committed to Israel’s destruction."

I'm not familiar with Obama's alleged anti-Semitic ravings from before he ran for office in Illinois, but Nader says that they're there.

Although this is from The New Republic (Feb 4) and thus might or might not be true, here is the claim of a Gregory Levey, writing for them: http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2007...ext_as_pr.html

Each time I have asked a spokesperson from AIPAC, the influential pro-Israel lobbying group, about the organization's opinion of Obama, they have stressed that they are satisfied with Obama's positions on the Middle East. When I asked again recently, Jennifer Cannata, an AIPAC spokesperson, would once again only say, "Like all the leading presidential candidates, the senator has a strong record on issues of importance to the pro-Israel community."

Levey cites an anonymous "AIPAC official" as saying that the organization is "uncomfortable" with Obama's willingness to speak to Israel's enemies.

So we're left with Ralph Nader running for President because Barack Obama does not oppose Israel with enough zest and with AIPAC being "uncomfortable" with Barry's would-be friendliness with Israel's enemies. This means, of course, that Nader is a confused.

It's not surprising. If he takes votes from the Democrat, it would be a fine thing, but I'd hate to imagine what he might call his party.

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[ADDENDUM: In a comment affixed to the Sunday Show Review, cordpt offers us this sample of the "old Barry" on Israel, from The Arabist: Obama's flip-flops. http://arabist.net/archives/2004/11/...as-flip-flops/ ]

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[ADDENDUM NO. 2]: On her tour bus, Hillary had this to say about Nader's just-announced candidacy: http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news..._nader_co.html

"This time I hope it doesn’t hurt anyone,'' she said, acknowledging that Democrats pay a higher price for Nader's candidacy than Republicans do. "I can’t think of anybody that would vote for Sen. McCain who would vote for Ralph Nader.''

Yeah, I imagine the anti-Semites would cling to Obama.

I voted a write in because I honestly dont know who I will vote for I dont know anything about Nader other than this is like his 4th time to run I think. I wont vote McCain and I wont vote Obama.........and I dont see Clinton beating Obama at this point

How the Corporations Broke Ralph Nader and America, Too
By Chris Hedges - April 8, 2010

Ralph Nader's descent from being one of the most respect-ed and powerful men in the country to being a pariah illustrates the totality of the corporate coup. Nader's marginalization was not accidental. It was orchestrated to thwart the legislation that Nader and his allies—who once consisted of many in the Democratic Party—enacted to prevent corporate abuse, fraud and control. He was target-ed to be destroyed. And by the time he was shut out of the political process with the election of Ronald Reagan, the government was in the hands of corporations. Nader's fate mirrors our own. "The press discovered citizen investigators around the mid-1960s," Nader told me when we spoke a few days ago. "I was one of them. I would go down with the press releases, the findings, the story suggestions and the internal documents and give it to a variety of reporters. I would go to Congress and generate hearings. Oftentimes I would be the lead witness. What was interesting was the novelty; the press gravitates to novelty. They achieved great things. There was collaboration. We provided the newsworthy material. They covered it. The legislation passed. Regula-tions were issued. Lives were saved. Other civic movements began to flower."

Nader was singled out for destruction, as Henriette Mantel and Stephen Skrovan point out in their engaging documentary movie on Nader, (http://www.anunreasonableman.com/) "An Unreasonable Man." General Motors had him followed in an attempt to blackmail him. It sent an attractive woman to his neighborhood Safeway supermarket in a bid to meet him while he was shopping and then seduce him; the attempt failed, and GM, when exposed, had to issue a public apology.

But far from ending their effort to destroy Nader, corporations unleashed a much more sophisticated and well-funded attack. In 1971, the corporate lawyer and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote an eight-page memo http://old.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=22 titled "Attack on American Free Enterprise System," in which he named Nader as the chief nemesis of corporations. It became the blueprint for corporate resurgence. Powell's memo led to the establishment of the Business Roundtable, which amassed enough money and power to direct government policy and mold public opinion. The Powell memo outlined ways corporations could shut out those who, in "the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals," were hostile to corporate interests. Powell called for the establishment of lavishly funded think tanks and conservative institutes to churn out ideological tracts that attacked government regulation and environmental protection. His memo led to the successful effort to place corporate-friendly academics and economists in universities and on the airwaves, as well as drive out those in the public sphere who questioned the rise of unchecked corporate power and deregulation. It saw the establishment of organizations to monitor and pressure the media to report favorably on issues that furthered corporate interests. And it led to the building of legal organizations to promote corporate interests in the courts and appointment of sympathetic judges to the bench.

"It was off to the races," Nader said. "You could hardly keep count of the number of right-wing corporate-funded think tanks. These think tanks specialized, especially against the tort system. We struggled through the Nixon and early Ford years, when inflation was a big issue. Nixon did things that horrified conservatives. He signed into law OSHA, the Environmental Protection Agency and air and water pollution acts because he was afraid of the people from the rumble that came out of the 1960s. He was the last Republican president to be afraid of liberals."

The corporations carefully studied and emulated the tactics of the consumer advocate they wanted to destroy. "Ralph Nader came along and did serious journalism; that is what his early stuff was, such as 'Unsafe at Any Speed,' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed" the investigative journalist David Cay Johnston told me. "The big books they [Nader and associates] put out were serious, first-rate journalism. Corporate America was terrified by this. They went to school on Nader. They said, 'We see how you do this.' You gather material, you get people who are articulate, you hone how you present this and the corporations copy-catted him with one big difference—they had no regard for the truth. Nader may have had a consumer ideology, but he was not trying to sell you a product. He is trying to tell the truth as best as he can determine it. It does not mean it is the truth. It means it is the truth as best as he and his people can determine the truth. And he told you where he was coming from."

The Congress, between 1966 and 1973, passed 25 pieces of consumer legislation, nearly all of which Nader had a hand in authoring. The auto and highway safety laws, the meat and poultry inspection laws, the oil pipeline safety laws, the product safety laws, the update on flammable fabric laws, the air pollution control act, the water pollution control act, the EPA, OSHA and the Environmental Council in the White House transformed the political landscape. Nader by 1973 was named the fourth most influential person in the country after Richard Nixon, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren and the labor leader George Meany. "Then something very interesting happened," Nader said. "The pressure of these meetings by the corporations like General Motors, the oil companies and the drug companies with the editorial people, and probably with the publishers, coincided with the emergence of the most destructive force to the citizen movement—Abe Rosenthal, the editor of The New York Times. Rosenthal was a right-winger from Canada who hated communism, came here and hated progressivism. The Times was not doing that well at the time. Rosenthal was commissioned to expand his suburban sections, which required a lot of advertising. He was very receptive to the entreaties of corporations, and he did not like me. I would give material to Jack Morris in the Washington bureau and it would not get in the paper."

Rosenthal, who banned social critics such as Noam Chomsky from being quoted in the paper and met frequently for lunch with conservative icon William F. Buckley, demanded that no story built around Nader's research could be published unless there was a corporate response. Corporations, informed of Rosenthal's dictate, refused to comment on Nader's research. This tactic meant the stories were never published. The authority of the Times set the agenda for national news coverage. Once Nader disappeared from the Times, other major papers and the networks did not feel compelled to report on his investigations. It was harder and harder to be heard.

"There was, before we were silenced, a brief, golden age of journalism," Nader lamented. "We worked with the press to expose corporate abuse on behalf of the public. We saved lives. This is what journalism should be about; it should be about making the world a better and safer place for our families and our children, but then it ended and we were shut out."

"We were thrown on the defensive, and once we were on the defensive it was difficult to recover," Nader said. "The break came in 1979 when they deregulated natural gas. Our last national stand was for the Consumer Protection Agency. We put everything we had on that. We would pass it during the 1970s in the House on one year, then the Senate during the next session, then the House later on. It ping-ponged. Each time we would lose ground. We lost it because Carter, although he campaigned on it, did not lift a finger compared to what he did to deregulate natural gas. We lost it by 20 votes in the House, although we had a two-thirds majority in the Senate waiting for it. That was the real beginning of the decline. Then Reagan was elected. We tried to be the watchdog. We put out investigative reports. They would not be covered."

"The press in the 1980s would say 'why should we cover you?'" Nader went on. "'Who is your base in Congress?' I used to be known as someone who could trigger a congressional hearing pretty fast in the House and Senate. They started looking towards the neoliberals and neocons and the deregulation mania. We put out two reports on the benefits of regulation and they too disappeared. They did not get covered at all. This was about the same the time that [former U.S. Rep.] Tony Coelho taught the Democrats, starting in 1979 when he was head of the House Campaign Finance Committee, to start raising big-time money from corporate interests. And they did. It had a magical influence. It is the best example I have of the impact of money. The more money they raised the less interested they were in any of these popular issues. They made more money when they screwed up the tax system. There were a few little gains here and there; we got the Freedom of Information law through in 1974. And even in the 1980s we would get some things done, GSA, buying air bag-equipped cars, the drive for standardized air bags. We would defeat some things here and there, block a tax loophole and defeat a deregulatory move. We were successful in staunching some of the deregulatory efforts." Nader, locked out of the legislative process, decided to send a message to the Democrats. He went to New Hampshire and Massachusetts during the 1992 primaries and ran as "none of the above."

In 1996 he allowed the Green Party to put his name on the ballot before running hard in 2000 in an effort that spooked the Democratic Party. The Democrats, fearful of his grass-roots campaign, blamed him for the election of George W. Bush, an absurdity that found fertile ground among those who had abandoned rational inquiry for the thought-terminating clichés of television.

Nader's status as a pariah corresponded with an unchecked assault by corporations on the working class. The long-term unemployment rate, which in reality is close to 20 percent, the millions of foreclosures, the crippling personal debts that plague households, the personal bankruptcies, Wall Street's looting of the U.S. Treasury, the evaporation of savings and retirement accounts and the crumbling of the country's vital infrastructure are taking place as billions in taxpayer subsidies, obscene profits, bonuses and compensation are enjoyed by the corporate overlords. We will soon be forced to buy the defective products of the government-subsidized drug and health insurance companies, which will remain free to raise co-payments and premiums, especially if policyholders get seriously ill. The oil, gas, coal and nuclear power companies have made a mockery of Barack Obama's promises to promote clean, renewal energy. And we are rapidly becoming a third-world country, cannibalized by corporations, with two-thirds of the population facing financial difficulty and poverty.

The system is broken. And the consumer advocate who represented the best of our democracy was broken with it.

As Nader pointed out after he published "Unsafe at Any Speed" in 1965, it took nine months to federally regulate the auto industry for safety and fuel efficiency. Two years after the collapse of Bear Stearns there is still no financial reform. The large hedge funds and banks are using billions in taxpayer subsidies to once again engage in the speculative games that triggered the first financial crisis and will almost certainly trigger a second. The corporate press, which abets our vast historical amnesia, does nothing to remind us how we got here. It speaks in the hollow and empty slogans handed to it by public relations firms, its corporate paymasters and the sound-bite society.

"If you organize 1 percent of the people in this country along progressive lines you can turn the country around, as long as you give them infrastructure," Nader said. "They represent a large percentage of the population. Take all the conservatives who work in Wal-Mart: How many would be against a living wage? Take all the conservatives who have pre-existing conditions: How many would be for single-payer not-for-profit health insurance? When you get down to the concrete, when you have an active movement that is visible and media-savvy, when you have a community, a lot of people will join. And lots more will support it. The problem is that most liberals are estranged from the working class. They largely have the good jobs. They are not hurting."

"The real tragedy is that citizens' movements should not have to rely on the commercial media, and public television and radio are disgraceful — if anything they are worse," Nader said. "In 30-some years [Bill] Moyers has had me on [only] twice. We can't rely on the public media. We do what we can with Amy [Goodman] on "Democracy Now!" and Pacifica stations. When I go to local areas I get very good press, TV and newspapers, but that doesn't have the impact, even locally. The national press has enormous impact on the issues. It is not pleasant having to say this. You don't want to telegraph that you have been blacked out, but on the other hand you can't keep it quiet. The right wing has won through intimidation."



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Poll Results: Who do you see yourself voting for as of now ?

Nader - 2 ( 16.67% )
Clinton - 3 ( 25.00% )
Obama - 2 ( 16.67% )
McCain - 3 ( 25.00% )
None of the Above/Staying Home - 1 ( 8.33% )
Write In Candidate ( please share ... ) - 1 ( 8.33% )

Multiple Choice Poll. 02/24/08 Voters: 12.

The Democrat's Mea Culpas
By John A. Murphy - Countercurrents.org April 19, 2010

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power."

-Patrick Henry: delivered to the Virginia Convention in 1775

The number of articles written by contrite Obama supporters that have appeared over the last year is almost uncountable. Forgiveness, however, requires not only that penitents renounce their sins but that they make a sincere resolve not to sin in the same way again. Democrats will never make such a resolve. Regardless of the number of whining articles by "progressive" Democrats, Rahm Emanuel Obama's political twin, who called liberal activists "retarded" [1], knows very well that Democrats, especially the self-styled "progressives" will never vote for anyone other than a Democrat. Regardless of Obama's atrocities, the Democrats will line up behind him in 2012[2].

There can be no absolution for the Obaminable Democrats; they can be no more forgiven for supporting Obama than they can be forgiven for supporting John Kerry or William Clinton. Clinton, you will recall, was the president who killed a million innocent Iraqi men, women and children with bombs and sanctions while domestically destroying the women's movement with "welfare reform" and American jobs with "free trade agreements.

These are the people who followed the inane philosophy of ABB ("Anyone is Better than Bush")! Imagine believing that Kerry would be better than Bush even though he promised that he would out-Bush Bush by sending 40,000 more troops to Iraq and declaring that, if he had been in charge, he would have burned Falluja to the ground[3]. A few days later Bush granted his wish killing mostly women and children! Even the ever hawkish William Safire (d.2009) columnist for the New York Times, was positively gloating after the September, 2004 Kerry-Bush presidential debate: "As the Democratic Whoopee Brigade hailed Senator John Kerry’s edge in debating technique, nobody noticed his reign policy sea change. On both military tactics and grand strategy, the newest conservative announced doctrines more hawkish than President George W. Bush."[4]

Meantime, during this ABB farce, Michael Moore and Bill Maher assumed the typical Democrat position: kneeling and begging. No, they were not begging for the scraps from the corporate table, the traditional Democrat plea. This time they even more grievously disgraced themselves by begging the antiwar candidate, Ralph Nader, not to interfere with John Kerry's plans to slaughter, more efficiently and effectively, the people in Iraq while continuing to out-source American jobs with so-called "free trade" agreements. These are the very same kind of bottom feeder who would have begged the Liberty Party to stop its opposition to slavery and let the lesser of two proslavery parties make things a little better for the slaves. These latter-day court jesters demonstrated that they lack even the dim flicker of sentience needed to qualify them as imbeciles. The Democrats are beyond redemption; they are to be condemned not forgiven. Their priority was to elect Kerry, not oppose the war.

The Democrats did not get a chance to whine about a Kerry presidency as they do about the Obama presidency. They did not even get a chance to continue maligning Ralph Nader for Kerry's defeat. Now, since Barack Obama, the mocha messiah of the Democrats, has assumed the imperial mantle of George Bush, that dreadful sound can be heard once again rising up from the Democrats. Oh, the mind numbing din of whining Democrats!

Whether they thought Obama would end the wars instead of escalating them or stop the torture instead of outsourcing it to Jordan and Saudi Arabia or prosecute the torturers instead of giving them a pass or encourage the Congress to pass single-payer healthcare instead of cutting backroom deals with big Pharma and providing corporate welfare for the insurance companies or bail out homeowners instead of bankers, Democrats from Dave Lindorff to David Swanson can be heard wailing about the betrayal of Barack Obama who now gives every indication that he is more monstrous than George Bush.

To be sure, Bush was a war criminal who invaded Iraq to fulfill the mission of the Project for New American Century (PNAC) which was to secure a US-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. That strategy was identical to the Democratic Party's think tank the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). [5] Bush also invaded Afghanistan to secure a land area for a liquid natural gas pipeline. Obama plans to continue the occupation of Iraq, has escalated the war on Afghanistan (reinforcing the lies of the Bush administration) and rained down three times as many unmanned drones on Pakistan in one year than Bush did in his last three. Obama has also opened military hostilities against Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines. Obama recently proclaimed that he has the right to murder American citizens on the mere suspicion that they might be terrorists. This leaves us all vulnerable to murder at Obama's whim. Those of us on the "watch list" must now say an extra prayer each night that our spouses and children are not slaughtered when Obama's drone hits home. No wonder the Teabaggers are afraid of government and Obama in particular!

It must not be overlooked that Obama also plans to use Colombian insurgents to commit "false positive" border incidents blaming Venezuela as a pretext for a retaliatory attack, supported, of course, by Washington as a way to target and perhaps remove Hugo Chavez. He continues destabilization tactics for regime change in Iran and may, preemptively without cause, attack that nation's nuclear facilities. He supports the worst of Israeli war crimes and oppression against Palestinians and keeps alive the long dead "terrorist organization" called Al Qaeda in order to suppress civil liberties at home, maintain the pretense of a flourishing economy through defense spending and ultimately secure corporate money for his reelection.



DEMOCRAT TALKING HEADS



To be fair, not all the Democrats are whining. Listening to "liberal" talk radio the Democratic Party talking heads can be heard spinning every one of Obama's atrocities into an inspired strategy of golden fabric. According to the Democratic Party's counterparts of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, Obama is a "master chess player" and all of his monstrous brutalities merely appear to be brutal. When the mist clears however, according to "big Ed" Schultz, Thom Hartmann, Bill Press and the other skull splitting defenders of Barack Obama AKA "Barry the Bomber", we will see that a brighter day has dawned; that the atrocities committed against all the nations Obama is devastating and the American working people he is crushing are simply pawn sacrifices made by the master gamesman and in the end we will all be thankful to "Barry the Beneficent".



In case anyone is wondering about the "change" promised by Obama, fear not. Democrat talking head Rachel Maddow explained to us earlier this week that Obama's nuclear summit was the promised change! As it turned out, "change did not mean that everybody suddenly had a job or that the banking crisis was suddenly fixed or that our wars magically ended. But change, in part, has meant a return to diplomacy" [6]. Of course Israel, the greatest threat to world peace next to the United States, refused to participate and Iran was not even invited. Like all of the Democratic Party talking heads Maddow fails to mention the ever present threat from the Obama administration's "diplomacy" when dealing with other nations: "all options remain on the table". This is not a very diplomatic way to tell the world "you will do it our way or you will face the possibility of a US invasion or at the very least a carpeting of cluster bombs, white phosphorus and unmanned drone missiles. This bogus nuclear summit is simply more advertising hype and does not represent any significant change from the second Bush administration.

THE INCOMPETENT MACHIAVELLIAN



Machiavelli refused to be deflected by utopian dreams or romantic hopes and by questions of right and wrong or good and bad. He rejected the entire concept of moral philosophy. He is often considered to be the father of modern political realism, or what has been called "realpolitik". It is one of the most seductive ideas of our time. The constant cry of the Democratic Party is: "be realistic... you're living in the real world... it's good to have idealistic visions of a better world, but you're living in the real world,
> so be practical." Every time Ralph Nader tried to get Democrats to stand on their hind legs, party leaders quickly reminded them that they must be "practical" that they must be "realistic". Like Machiavelli, the Democratic Party is not concerned with right and wrong or good and evil. It has rejected all moral philosophy by accepting the Machiavellian concept that "the ends justify the means".



How many times have the ideas and positions of Ralph Nader been demeaned as foolish idealism impractical in a world where one must "win elections"? > Realism is seductive because once it has been accepted as a reasonable notion that actions should be based on "practical" reality people are too often led to accept, without questioning, someone else's vision of what reality is. It is a crucial fact of independent thinking, typical of Ralph Nader, to be skeptical of someone else's description of reality. Democrats never question the "reality" presented to them by the Democratic Party. For this reason the Democrats present an even more dangerous and violent threat than the tea party movement which it has engendered and which it continues to empower by its own lack of moral clarity.



The Democratic Party's talking heads from the most articulate and erudite to the more brutish philistine serve the same purpose as the Republican Party talking heads. Their job is to secure the election of Democrats not to present an objective evaluation of their performance and recommend the appropriate action. Far from playing the role of chess master, Obama is an incompetent Machiavellian. Virtually nothing Obama and his representatives in the liberal media (the talk show hosts previously mentioned) have told us about this health care reform bill is true. [7] The entire thrust of the legislation was to prevent campaign contributions from big Pharma and healthcare insurance companies from flowing into Republican coffers. By euphemistically calling this piece of corporate welfare "health care reform" Obama has sacrificed the needs of the American public in order to achieve his reelection and that of the Democratic Congress. For Obama, the ends justified the means. No moral philosopher in Eastern or Western civilization condones such a philosophy. Only Niccolo Machiavelli advanced such a thesis.



Usually, those who try to get away with "the ends justifying the means" at least have some noble end in mind. The reelection of the Democrats is anything but noble and the means was a purely cynical act on the part of the Democratic Party. Even a Machiavellian however would be embarrassed at the incompetent execution of Obama's loutish strategy. A good Machiavellian would certainly have planned for the possible unintended consequences of such a strategy and hence have prevented their occurrence. A competent Machiavellian would have started his administration by ensuring that the Senate changed the filibuster rule from 41 to 49 votes. This rule only requires a simple majority vote in order to be changed. It is a Senate rule, not a law. Moreover, the incompetent Obama administration, while achieving its ends created such blowback from the ridiculous right that the United States is now as close to collapsing into a fascist regime as it has ever been in its history.



The attitudes of the people in the tea party movement are completely justified. Not only has there not been any increase in the standard of living over the last 30 years while productivity has increased by over 78%, real incomes of working Americans have actually declined. While Reagan, the Bushes and Clinton are to blame for the adoption of "neoliberal economics" the Obama administration with its continuing support of the banking industry was the straw that broke the political camel's back.



Obama, more than any Republican, is linked to the bankers. They supported him over McCain. When Obama started to criticize the bankers, in true Machiavellian fashion, he did an about-face proclaiming: "I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free market system."[8] Of course Obama is completely in error. Americans actually do begrudge the $17 million bonus awarded to Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and the $9 million issued to Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs. No one should be surprised that Goldman Sachs contributed $1 million to Obama's presidential campaign [9].



Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans like to talk about class warfare but that is precisely what the incompetent, Machiavellian, cynical Obama administration has engendered. Unemployment is reaching near depression levels while Obama's banking buddies bathe in bonuses beyond imagination and people are not happy about it. The job growth statistics quoted by the Democrat talking heads are mostly in non-tradable services area such as janitors, retail sales persons, waiters and waitresses, orderlies and attendants. These minimum wage paying jobs were created by corporations which have outsourced good paying American jobs in engineering, manufacturing and information technology [10]. Such outsourcing continues under the "free trade" supporting Obama administration. Ironically, the highly trained workers in those well compensated fields are now used to account for the "new jobs" being created by the Obama administration. Such a clever way has the Obama administration devised for job creation; turning well paid information technology specialists into low paid retail clerks!



The working class has been marginalized as the costs of our economic collapse are socialized and profits are privatized. Frustration and outright rage is the natural and expected response to the callous Obama administration. Instead of getting answers from the left however, they receive political placebos along with the puerile pabulum fed to them by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.



Chris Hedges warns us of "the Weimarization of the American working class" [11]. Just as demagogues in post-World War I Germany were able to play upon the despair of the working class, the same type of forces are now in place in the United States. He suggests that even though the tea party movement itself may be tiny, it is a well-funded and well-organized group. Properly managed, Hedges suggests "this tiny group can count on the sympathy and support of perhaps as many as 100 million evangelicals". It would only take a crisis to catapult the leaders of this movement into power.



Naomi Klein in her work "The Shock Doctrine" [12] spells out precisely how such a crisis could produce a disastrous political, social and economic revolution. Another terrorist attack would be all that is necessary. Such an attack is not just probable but inevitable. The resulting fascist order would face no resistance. At a time when violent resistance from the left might be required, the left has been disorganized and distracted by the Democratic Party. As the left smokes Obama's wacky tobacci and sings "Kum By Ya", the forces which would destroy civil society as we know it are singing "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition".



There is good reason to be afraid. We must not however confuse fear with cowardice. In the final analysis we either stand up for our convictions or we stand for nothing. The continued voting for the lesser evil has not, nor cannot save this country; it can only hasten a total collapse. Those who are too afraid to voice their conscience and make it felt politically, by any means, are already slaves; they simply have not yet heard the rattling of their chains.

References

[1] Rahm Apologizes for Privately Calling Liberal Activists "Retarded"

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpu...-retarded.html
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[2] Rahm Emanuel: Don't Worry About the Left
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/1...t/tab/article/
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[3]Kerry, the Hawk; Justin Raimondo, October 07, 2004
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2...erry-the-hawk/
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[4] Here he comes: The New Neo-Con! http://muslimsfornadercamejo.blogspo...3_archive.html

[5] Stay and Win in Iraq; Will Marshall January 8, 2004
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?...ntentID=252289
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[6] The Rachel Maddow Show, April 12, 2010 MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36460299...l_maddow_show/
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[7] Fact Sheet: The Truth About the Health Care Bill Jane Hamsher Friday March 19, 2010

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/201...lth-care-bill/
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[8] Obama Doesn't 'Begrudge' Bonuses for Blankfein, Dimon Julianna Goldman and Ian Katz

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...kktzkAlA&pos=1
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[9] Open secrets: top contributors to Obama
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/co...&cid=n00009638
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[10] Paul Craig Roberts, How the Economy Was Lost;
(California: AK Press, 2010), 20-21
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[11] Chris Hedges, American Fascists (The Christian Right and the War on America); (New York: Free Press, 2006) 266
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[12] Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, the rise of Disaster Capitalism; (New York: Metropolitan Books; Henry Holt & Co. 2007) 309

John Murphy was the independent candidate for House of Representatives in the 16th Congressional District of Pennsylvania in 2006 and 2008. He is a retired management consultant and is one of the founding members of the Pennsylvanian Ballot Access Coalition where he represents the independent candidacy of Ralph Nader.

Let's all give a big "HELL YEAH" for a big Black Lab named Spud

"HELL YEAH"

Spud N '12

Tonight on the back of a truck with Tennessee plates was a bumper sticker......Bush/Cheney 2012....

I am more interested in going FORWARD not going back ...