Ralph is really showing his age.......

[a kennedy]

Ralph Nader, Fiction Writer By Tim Morrison

Ralph Nader has been many things: lawyer, consumer-rights bulldog, political activist, and perennial third-party Presidential candidate. He's 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 America. With the help of a $15 billion war chest and a P.R. campaign starring a talking parrot, the group successfully unionizes Walmart, ends corporate influence on Congress, makes Warren Beatty the Governor of California and legalizes industrial hemp. TIME talked to Nader about the origins of his book, its celebrity characters and America's real-life political battles.

You say in your Author's Note that this book is not a novel, but it's not nonfiction. So what is it?
In the literary world, it's either called a work of speculation — "What if something happened?" "What if somebody did this?" — or a practical utopia. We haven't had many practical utopias. Russell Jacoby, a professor out in California, wrote a book called The End of Utopia in 1999, which argues the idea of imagining better futures has diminished, as we wallow more and more in our desperate state of societal and governmental decay. So I tried to revive the genre, so to speak.

Was that your goal in writing the book? To create a practical utopia?
No. As you go through year after year, as many civic advocates do, being overwhelmed by the corporate lobbies and their allies in government, you say to yourself, 'If we only had more media, if we only had more money, if we only had more field organizers, if we only had better ideas and strategies.' That's what produced the book. What if we had a collection of super-rich elderly retired people who are very dismayed at the state of their beloved country, and what if they got together and really poured money in. What would happen? And what would happen is a major power collision with corporate goliaths and their government allies.

and this part: What's your take on Obama so far?
Weak. Waffling, wavering, ambiguous and overwhelmingly concessionary.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1925576,00.html

[scheming daemons]

1. Yeah, yeah, Ralph... we get it... Obama's just like Bush... blah blah fucking blah....

That argument ("Gore and Bush are tweedledum and tweedledee") convinced enough morons to vote for you in 2000... giving us George Bush.


Go fuck yourself, Ralph.

[a kennedy]

2. I used to have a ton of respect for Mr. Nader......now, not so much.

[Booster]

4. Same here.

[Better Believe It]

6. I have more respect than ever for Ralph Nader. Do you hate him as much as Wall Street banksters?

[noiretextatique]

9. Nader is consistent

he criticized the DLC and republicons (who are pretty inditinguishable from each other).

[noiretextatique]

8. hold that thought

unitl health care legislation is signed. if it's a giveway to the insurance industry...

[monmouth]

10. Poor Obama. He's not a pushy arrogant pr%#k like Nader. Too sad....n/t

[immoderate]

3. The Billionaire's Anti-Corporate League of America

Look for it on the Cartoon Channel.


--imm

[CanSocDem]

5. So are you. (eom)

[noiretextatique]

7. he forgot Oprah eom

[stuball111]

11. Nader has some good stuff... but...

He should keep his nose out of politics. Two things I hate about him, he killed the Corvair, and he made it so I have to drop the motor out of my VW westy bus instead of being able to pull it straight out like I can on my Splitty! Dumb jerkoff!

[hfojvt]

12. not sure how he is showing his age

but his book seems kinda Randian, that we need the Atlases to prop up the world.

I suppose there is a certain amount of truth to that, since us little people are so powerless as individuals and there need to be some leader to co-ordinate things.

I love the utopian books, but I am not sure why Nader needed 700 pages. Looking Backward, In His Steps, Lost Horizon, Herland, and Walden 2 are all much shorter books, less than 250 pages. I am not sure if many people are gonna take on 700 pages, but then again, there are still too many reading Atlas Shrugged.

[RaleighNCDUer]

13. I see it as anti-randian, from this description.

There are plenty of people ready to work for a just society, but going up against GM and WalMart and the entire MIC, which have BILLIONS at their command, how do we do it short of revolution? If, OTOH, we have billions available as a resource with which to fight their billions, it just levels the playing field. It is not about the rich lefty LEADERSHIP, but about the resources they can bring to the fight.

At least, that's my take on it.

[Echo In Light]

14. "overwhelmingly concessionary?" I'm sure Ralph is being polite n/t

[still_one]

15. Ralph who? /nt

[Better Believe It]

18. Ralph Nader .... the dude who isn't a whore for Wall Street

[still_one]

19. He isn't? With all his mutal funds I suppose /nt

[Better Believe It]

21. Are the millions of us who have 401K's also whores of Wall Street?

By the war .... care to present us with all of the details of Nader's vast holdings in mutual funds?

Ya think he was also dealing in derivatives?

LOL

[still_one]

24. As far as I am concerned he pushed enought people over in 2000 to give us bush

and for that reason alone, to me he will remain a useless irrelevent person

You see I believe there is a difference between republicans and Democrats

[Echo In Light]

23. +1

[butterfly77]

16. I listened to him earlier on Thom Hartmann's show and..

I started thinking some of the same things. He seemed to me to be talking about things I have heard a while back as he began talking about Buffett,Soros and others...

It sounded like he is like some of these rightwingers who are just catching up to what has really been going on in this country.

[Echo In Light]

17. Nader isn't a RWer. Politically/ideologically, he's where more Dems SHOULD be

... if most of em weren't beholden to defending and expanding corporate rule over the backs of The People.

[NoUsername]

22. And that is exactly what is wrong with Nader.

He needs to get with the program and side with the corporations and banksters. Anything less is unacceptable and completely un-American. Yet another reason why he is entirely unelectable and nobody should listen to anything he has ever said and/or will say in the future. </sarcasm>

[bobbolink]

20. Conflating Nader with the RW....

:rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl:

:wtf:

:rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl:

[Romulox]

25. Nothing makes people hate you like being right. nt

[Greyhound]

26. That's true. n/t

[Fumesucker]

27. "Being right too soon is socially unacceptable" -Heinlein..