Free Republic

Give Ed Schultz credit for something: on his MSNBC show this evening, he hosted an amusing smackdown between Barney Frank and Ralph Nader, perhaps the two most morose public men in America. For once, Barney was attacked from the left. The gist of Ralph's rebuke was that Frank hasn't gone far enough in regulating the financial industry. Frank was finally so provoked that he claimed/admitted that when it comes to regulation, Democrats are "trying on every front to increase the role of government." View video here.

Ralph Nader has been many things: lawyer, consumer-rights bulldog, political activist and perennial third-party presidential candidate. He has now added a new title to his business card: fiction writer. His latest book, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, is a 700-page populist fantasy in which a small group of billionaires and media moguls — led by Warren Buffett and including Ted Turner, George Soros, Bill Cosby, Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue — pool their massive resources to reform the U.S. With the help of a $15 billion war chest and a p.r. campaign starring a talking parrot, the group successfully...

Over at at “progressive” news site CommonDreams.Org, the lead story today was a call-to-arms by anti-capitalist activist Ralph Nader in which the perennial third-party presidential candidate tried to motivate “single-payer” health care advocates by lying to them: The guess here is that Obama will sign anything which squirms through a cowardly Congress that cannot give to the American people in 2009 the health care system Congress stopped President Harry Truman from establishing in 1950. It is up to the people of our country to “make him do it” whether this year or next. A mere one million immediate calls to...

Dr. Howard Dean’s fans come out for the big Democratic summer shindig As Tom Andrews, the director of the leading national antiwar coalition, began his speech at the Maine Democrats’ big outdoor summer shindig in Falmouth, John Baldacci signaled his bodyguard/driver to move the large, dark SUV up the driveway. The vehicle soon hid in the trees, its engine quietly humming. At first, the governor seemed to be paying attention as Andrews, the former First District congressman, launched into rousing tales of how the country, under President George W. Bush, had gone "from peace and prosperity to war and recession."...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers rarely shine a positive spotlight on lobbyists, much less publicly toast them and rave about their style on Capitol Hill. But they did just that on Tuesday night for consumer advocate Joan Claybrook, who retired earlier this year as the head of the watchdog group Public Citizen. The organization held a dinner event in honor of her 27-year leadership. Claybrook has become known as one of Washington's most relentless consumer-interest lobbyists. Her work has influenced rules on auto safety standards, congressional ethics, campaign finance and more. Among the lawmakers who praised Claybrook's efforts were House Speaker...

Yesterday morning, eight doctors, lawyers and other activists stood up to Senator Max Baucus. And the private health insurance industry. And the corporate liberals in Congress. The eight activists demanded that single payer - everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital - be put on the table. And as a result they were arrested. And charged with a so-called "disruption of Congress." The Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, Politico, Democracy Now and National Public Radio all carried stories about the protest. C-Span carried it live. And it was widely disseminated on the Internet. Baucus crafted a hearing...

November 3, 2008 Open letter to Senator Barack Obama Dear Senator Obama: In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo. Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy...

Title: Nader Schools Palin! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02zpXmFEUaY&feature=related WOULD LOVE TO SEE THAT COWARD RALPH NADER SAY THIS TO THE REAL GOV. PALIN! Then we would see who the one getting schooled is, I betcha.

Bob Barr Implodes: Two weeks ago the Libertarian nominee pulled out of a press conference Ron Paul had called with the four leading third-party candidates (Barr, Baldwin, Nader, McKinney) to highlight their common ground. Barr decided to hold a press conference of his own down the hall. He also sent Paul a snide note — transmitted to Barr's e-mail list as well — suggesting that Paul ought to replace the hapless Wayne Allyn Root as Barr's running mate. This ploy could hardly have been more ham-handed: If Barr wanted to appear generous, he should have offered Paul, obviously by far...

Who says Ralph Nader doesn't have a sense of humor? Here is a video of Nader in a Hamlet like discourse with Cardozo the Parrot about why his presidential campaign isn't getting much media coverage this year. Well, I can tell Ralph why he isn't getting media coverage. Because the MSM fears he will take votes away from Obama this year and don't want a repeat of 2000 where many blamed Nader for siphoning enough votes away from Al Gore in Florida to cause him to lose the election. However, let us read Ralph Nader in his own words as...

In 1985, Barack Obama traveled halfway across the country to take a job that he didn't fully understand. But, while he knew little about his new vocation--community organizer--it still had a romantic ring, at least to his 24-year-old ears. With his old classmates from Columbia, he had talked frequently about political change. Now, he was moving to Chicago to put that talk into action. His 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, recounts his idealistic effusions: "Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots. That's what I'll do. I'll organize black folks....

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader is again slamming Barack Obama. ABC News reports Nader says Obama will not make the kind of African-American president that he and other civil rights supporters had hoped for. "People who have fought the civil rights battle... would often talk about, 'look what would happen if we had an African-American president'... it doesn't look like it's going to be what we all thought it would be," Nadar said. Nader also says he lost respect for Obama because the senator opposed the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Nader told the Rocky Mountain News...

Ralph Nader, the former Green Party candidate and scourge of many Democrats who blame him for Al Gore's defeat in 2000, earned a place on the California ballot Saturday as the newly minted candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party. Nader won the party's presidential nomination over the spirited challenge of a socialist candidate, Gloria La Riva, in an eclectic gathering of the political left in a Sacramento hotel. The crowd at the Peace and Freedom convention was minuscule when compared to the crowds who will greet John McCain at the Republican convention at the Xcel Energy Center in St....

HARRISBURG -- Grand jurors here and in Pittsburgh cataloged what they described as a culture of corruption that allowed former state Rep. Michael Veon, current Rep. Sean Ramaley and 10 current and former Democratic staffers to divert millions of dollars in state resources, including more than $1 million in illegal pay bonuses. The jurors said Mr. Veon and the staff members conspired to arrange hefty year-end pay bonuses to House employees who worked on political campaigns over a three-year period, while Mr. Ramaley is accused of working full-time on his 2004 House campaign in Beaver County while drawing a taxpayer...

In polite liberal circles, Ralph Nader's suggestion that Barack Obama "wants to talk white" and avoid appearing like another Jesse Jackson is infra dig. Take, for example, Joan Walsh's reaction on yesterday's Hardball. Said the editor of Salon.com: "I don't think that racism is too strong a word for what he said." Added NY Times columnist Bob Herbert: "It's a lousy, reprehensible comment." But as uncomfortable as Nader's statement might make some people, could there be a kernel of truth to it? Joe Scarborough seems to think so. And even Prof. Michael Dyson—Obama fan and commentator on racial matters—seemed to...

So my home state of Pennsylvania handed Hillary Clinton a win and a reason to keep fighting to be the Democratic nominee. As I write, Terry McCauliffe is probably on CNN pleading his candidate's case, facts about her low delegate and popular vote counts be damned. But before Democratic superdelegates get too itchy to snuff the Obama campaign, they should consider the new animal that move might spawn: the Obama Republican. I know: the notion of black folks and young folks and progressive white folks abandoning the Democrats en masse if the Wife of Bill is the nominee ain't exactly...

Some 50 delegates were reportedly poised to unite behind Barack Obama if he had won by even 1 point in Texas. He lost the popular vote by 100,000 ballots, and now we learn that 100,000 Republicans voted for Hillary Clinton, probably not because of some change in party allegiance but because they thought she would be the easier candidate to beat. This kind of strategic voting often backfires (think Ralph Nader). The Texas crossovers are winners. By helping to prolong the Democratic race, they can claim credit for weakening the eventual nominee, whoever it turns out to be. Obama has...

I'm dancing on the top deck with a 71-year-old feminist and psychotherapist whom I've come to think of as the Twirler. We've spent two days attending seminars on The Nation magazine's Alaska cruise; we've talked about the Bush presidency and prison reform and single-payer health care. Now, at almost midnight, my fiercely intelligent and opinionated new friend is putting all the heady political talk behind her by bodily twirling. "If I start to get dizzy, then I twirl in the opposite direction," Charlotte tells me as the live band revs up its throbbing Motown beat. "I won't fall." "Good, please...

"People say we're being self-centered and egotistical - but in politics, everything is called egotistical," says Ralph Nader's new running mate, Matt Gonzalez."If you run for mayor, people say you're being egotistical," Gonzalez, who nearly upset Gavin Newsom in the 2003 San Francisco mayor's race, told us Friday. "If you decide you won't run for mayor, people say you're being self-centered and egotistical."Why should it be any different when you're running for vice president against the two-party system?"Such is the burden that the 42-year-old former San Francisco supervisor must bear as he teams with Nader for what could be another...

Ralph Nader is one of the few people ever born in America who deserves to wear the badge of “Great American”. His courageous life as a political activist, humanitarian, environmentalist and America’s consumer rights advocate is legendary. Ralph announced on NBC’s Meet The Press Sunday, February 24 that he was running as a third party presidential candidate in 2008. He cited that because of the protracted Iraq War, the wobbly economy, taxes, powerful lobbyists and other key issues that Americans are disenchanted with both the Republican and Democratic parties and need another voice. Instantaneously, when Ralph declared his candidacy, the...

Ralph Nader's choice of San Francisco lawyer and activist Matt Gonzalez as his running mate isn't likely to propel the consumer advocate to victory in his fifth presidential campaign since 1992. But it offers Gonzalez - a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who narrowly lost his 2003 bid to be the first Green Party mayor of a major U.S. city - a platform to try to influence the debate in the presidential race. It's a role with some risks. Although the 42-year-old Gonzalez is a hero to the Bay Area left, many local progressives - including...

While reading this Daily KOs KOmmie THREAD titled, "Ralph Nader Makes Me Mad," I kept hearing the Max Cady LAUGH echoing in my head. KOmmie anger and frustration that Ralph Nader might once again act as a spoiler and steal the election away from the Democrats just makes me laugh. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I just knew the leftwing types would have this attitude the instant I heard on Sunday that Ralph was running this year. This makes me hope the election will be close just so the Democrats will go BERSERK blaming Nader for their loss again. Oh, and if Hillary...

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...

If Ralph Nader will always have a place in Republicans' hearts for his yeoman work in Florida in 2000, Democrats and the MSM don't look so kindly nowadays on the hard-left crusader. Consider this comment from CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider [file photo] on this morning's Late Edition, commenting on Nader's announcement on today's Meet the Press that he was again running for president. JOHN KING: Is there a niche for Ralph Nader that could actually have an impact on the race? BILL SCHNEIDER: It's a disappearing niche. In 2000 when he ran, he got about 2.8 million votes....

Calling Washington, D.C., "corporate-occupied territory," consumer advocate Ralph Nader launched his fifth campaign for the presidency Sunday. "I'm running for president," said Nader in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press." Nader downplayed the impact he might have on the ultimate outcome of the race, saying "if Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form."

Ralph Nader's exploratory committee just emailed his list: that he'll be on Meet the Press Sunday. Wonder what he's gong to talk about. From the email: As you know, we've been exploring the possibilities in recent weeks. And here's one question that keeps coming up: What's been pulled off the table by the corporatized political machines in this momentous election year? Answer: Cutting the huge, bloated and wasteful military budget, adopting a single payer Canadian-style national health insurance system, impeaching Bush/Cheney, opposing nuclear power - among many others. Who will pick up these issues and put them back on the...

I have a feeling that this year is going to be much different than most election years. I think this year, there will be a few more candidates than just the Democrats and the Republicans. And I’m not talking a third party, but a fourth, fifth and possibly sixth.

Critics have long believed environmentalists were planning global domination. The problem with making a credible case against such an ambitious plan was simple: no environmental leader had published one. Yet conflicts over global warming, world trade, multinational corporations, population control, sustainable futures, and transnational government left little doubt that environmentalists in fact shared the unspoken aim of wielding supreme power over a green future. But there was no proof. For years, critics, lacking hard evidence, were reduced to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle of suspicious environmentalist actions - funding from huge charitable trusts, ties to the broader "progressive" community, and...

We're old enough to remember when Naderite groups like Public Citizen were embarrassed by their ties to trial lawyers. No more. This week in Washington, the famous "consumer" group, which has long resisted efforts to identify the sources of its funding, is rolling out the red carpet for America's plaintiff attorneys. Attendees of the Consumer Rights Litigation Conference are cordially invited to Saturday night's cocktail reception at Public Citizen headquarters, which a conference brochure describes as "an elegant old Dupont Circle Victorian mansion . . . generously loaned to us for this special event." No word yet on what the...

Rep. Ron Paul, the maverick Texas Republican who is running as an anti-war libertarian in the Republican primary, has come charging out of nowhere to become the leading fundraiser in the brief history of the Internet. Yesterday, his campaign reported a one-day take around $3.8 million, with an average donation of $98. In one respect, Paul deserves his success. He is a far more articulate and coherent critic of administration policy in Iraq than any candidate on the Democratic side, speaking as he does the frank and plain language of the isolationist. “The fundamental question remains,” he said in 2004,...

This weekend, I attended and spoke at the Second Amendment Foundation’s annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, which was held at a convention center in northern Kentucky, a few miles away from Cincinnati. What I saw and heard there changed my mind about the viability of Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy; Paul is going to far outperform the expectations laid out for him. First, for some background: twenty years ago, the Second Amendment Foundation (the second-largest pro-Second Amendment group in the U.S.) began sponsoring an annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, in conjunction with other pro-gun groups, including the NRA. For a full...

Rush Limbaugh WASHINGTON – He's been the target of Fairness Doctrine advocates. He's been the target of aggressive prosecutors. He's been targeted by Customs officials. And now Rush Limbaugh, the king of radio talk-show hosts, is being targeted by activist Ralph Nader who is asking the Federal Communications Commission to investigate claims General Motors "payola" is influencing him to say nice things about the U.S. automaker.

In a letter to the FCC, Ralph Nader, the world's most visible consumer advocate, has requested an investigation into the advertising practices of General Motors with regard to several radio personalities. The letter from Nader was prompted by an Automotive News article entitled, "Puff Piece. Rush Limbaugh is one of the radio personalities GM is working with to talk up its vehicles" (sub. req.). The article goes on to detail how the General has supplied DJs, broadcasters and Limbaugh with test vehicles, private meetings and VIP tours of GM facilities. Nader contests that this type of promotion may be against...

When the Democrats enlarged their tent to include leftist activists, Ralph Nader was left in the cold. At a green party convention in Reading, Pa., on July 14, Ralph Nader provoked admirers and detractors alike when he declared that he is once again "considering" a run for the presidency. This would be the 73-year-old activist's fourth third-party race. For a decade now and counting, Nader has presented himself as the outsider's outsider, as the reformer's conscience and as a sturdy crusader against a corrupt party system -- meaning, in effect, against Democrats, from whom he siphons votes (a fact amply...

Consumer advocate and 2000/2004 presidential candidate Ralph Nader has not ruled out another run in 2008, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Thursday it’s too early for him to make a decision. The man who many blame as spoiling the election for Al Gore in 2000 also said a potential third party candidacy by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would not affect his decision to run. Earlier this week, Bloomberg, a lifelong Democrat until he ran for mayor in 2001, dropped his affiliation with the GOP — a move that increased speculation he is considering an independent presidential bid. Nader also...

Fred Thompson isn't the only 'Law and Order' character eyeing the 2008 presidential campaign. Inside Sam Waterston’s efforts to help promote a third-party ticket. The actor Sam Waterston, who plays the hard-hitting assistant D.A. in “Law and Order,” has a confession to make. “I’m a moderate,” he declared in a speech at the National Press Club. “You’re looking at a bird rarely seen in Washington, even in springtime.” Waterston was in town to promote Unity ’08, an Internet scheme to launch a third-party ticket, made up of a Republican and a Democrat, to run together against the two major party...

What did Moore base his career on? Does Moore have any genuine credentials? If so, what are they? Did he begin many years ago back in the 1980’s by riding the coat tails and using the ideas, work and identity of concerned Flint autoworker activists? Mike Moore was never a blue-collar activist and it is up for debate if he was even a Flint talking head. He was really not much more then an observer in Flint who made a cheap movie. For Moore to have alluded or suggested otherwise, or that he was the lone Flint Don Quixote raising...

Public Citizen sued the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) today on behalf of a highway safety organization to compel the agency to release information about a controversial program to allow Mexico-domiciled trucks on all U.S. highways. The nonprofit group Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with FMCSA in October 2006 for information about activities surrounding any program to evaluate Mexico-domiciled motor carriers that would be permitted to operate beyond the Mexico-United States border zone. No details about the methodology for evaluating this "project" or its criteria have been revealed, yet public...

Moore's "Roger" movie was about himself. It was a self-promoting film exploiting America's workers plight. It was designed to make money, build a career and garner acclimation and name recognition for Moore…. which it did. But at what price? In reality, Moore's film genuinely hurt workers, their families and our communities because he made a vulgar joke of America's workers very serious dilemma while sidetracking and gliding over the critical issues. Moore was not a blue-collar worker, he did not understand and he obviously had a different agenda. Since then auto workers jobs as well as other middle class jobs...

He's just published a touching memoir about his childhood, dedicated to his parents and siblings. Meanwhile a new documentary, opening in the Bay Area on Friday, strives to remind us of the good his consumer advocacy has done for the world.But suggest that his image is undergoing a makeover and Ralph Nader will look you straight in the eye and deny it."I don't need rehabilitation," he said.His voice is deep and gruff. If Nader were being cast as voice talent for a movie involving talking forest creatures, he'd play the bear -- the serious one, not the fun one raiding...

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader hinted Thursday that he would enter the presidential race in next year if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes the Democratic Party's nominee. "Flatters, panders, coasting, front-runner, looking for a coronation ... She has no political fortitude,” Nader said of Clinton during a radio appearance when he was asked to describe the former First Lady. "She's just another bad version of (former President) Bill Clinton,” he told KGO radio. Nader, whose Green Party candidacy for president in 2000 was blamed for helping put George Bush in the White House by siphoning votes from Vice President Al Gore,...

After his role in destroying Al Gore’s chance to win the 2000 election, consumer activist and all-around maverick Ralph Nader would seem to have lost his credibility as a presidential candidate... But Ralph may have new life if he runs again in 2008...

Business Week Concedes Globalism Is A Problem by Phyllis Schlafly, December 13, 2006 Economists, academicians and financial consultants for years have been preaching that globalism is the wave of the future and that anyone who wants to survive in business must ride its surfboard or drown. All of a sudden, Business Week is having second thoughts. This voice of business now says that the United States is no longer the captain of our fate because "globalization has overwhelmed Washington's ability to control the economy." As recently as ten years ago, the United States could set its course for economic...

Consumer activist Ralph Nader, not ruling out a fourth run for president himself, said Tuesday that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was already running for the White House and could face Sen. John McCain in the 2008 election. "If she is a candidate in the Democratic primary with three other white men, she is going to win the primary," Nader said during a campaign stop in Albany in which he endorsed Clinton's Green Party challenger, Howie Hawkins, in this year's New York Senate race. "Then, it's down to her versus McCain." Nader, the Green Party's presidential candidate in 2000, said he...

Liberal Air America radio host Mike Malloy had his show abruptly “terminated” on Wednesday, allegedly for financial reasons. The network is failing but there could be another factor behind the Malloy debacle. There is still fallout from Malloy’s recent decision to turn over two-and-a-half hours of his three hour show to a former associate of ex-con Lyndon LaRouche, a perennial candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination who campaigns against what he views as British and Zionist control of the U.S. political system. The LaRouche organization is frequently labeled as a cult. The former high-level LaRouche associate, Webster Griffin Tarpley, was...

Ralph Nader endlessly boasts how he has dedicated his life to eradicating corporate and government fraud. Well, now the Winsted native and consumer advocate has himself been found to have engaged in fraud in trying to win a spot on the Pennsylvania ballot for the 2004 presidential election. Mr. Nader and his erstwhile running mate, one-time Marxist Peter Miguel Camejo, committed "the most deceitful and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated upon this court," the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. For that, the Nader team must reimburse a group of Pennsylvania voters the more than $80,000 they spent challenging the validity of...

by Mark Finkelstein August 24, 2006 - 22:56 Don't laugh. If Lenora Fulani could flirt with Pat Buchanan in 2000, why not a Buchanan-Matthews ticket in 2008? After all, the pair share a powerful unifying distaste for neo-cons. On this evening's Hardball, Matthews pleaded with Buchanan to take back the Republican party from neo-conservatives. Matthews: "Pat, when are the traditional conservatives in this country who believe in less government, less role in the world, like yourself, though you might be more extreme than some, George Will, Bill Buckley, when are you guys going to retake your party from the neo-conservatives...

The widespread destruction of a defenseless Lebanon—its civilians, its life-sustaining public services, its environment—is a grim and indelible testament to your consummate cruelty and ignorance. Nearly two weeks ago when your tardy Secretary of State met with the Israeli Prime Minister, the message she carried was summarized in a large headline across page one of an Israeli newspaper, “TAKE YOUR TIME.” Yes, take your time, says George W. Bush, pulverizing fleeing refugees in cars full of families, bombing apartment buildings, hospitals and the poor huddled in large south Beirut slums. Take your time, says George W. Bush, in destroying bridges,...

The widespread destruction of a defenseless Lebanon-its civilians, its life-sustaining public services, its environment - is a grim and indelible testament to your consummate cruelty and ignorance. Nearly two weeks ago when your tardy Secretary of State met with the Israeli Prime Minister, the message she carried was summarized in a large headline across page one of an Israeli newspaper, "TAKE YOUR TIME." Yes, take your time, says George W. Bush, pulverizing fleeing refugees in cars full of families, bombing apartment buildings, hospitals and the poor huddled in large South Beirut slums. Take your time, says George W. Bush, in...

While the U.S. Senate debated and rejected Democratic proposals for how and when troops should be pulled out of Iraq, three documentaries on the run-up to the invasion of the oil-rich country were aired on television. The titles of the programs provide us with clues to the motivations, rationales and the processes used to reach the conclusion that Iraq was involved in the attack on the World Trade Center, that it possessed weapons of mass destruction and that it was about to attack the United States again. CNN aired its surprisingly strong documentary "Dead Wrong" during the early part of...