Ralph Nader live in Freedom Plaza, DC: Thursday 5:15pm eastern

[jtrockville]

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/9386097

[Zoeisright]

1. FU, Nader.

That asshole is just one of the reasons we're in this mess.

[Pirate Smile]

4. +1

[the other one]

9. -1

[TheWraith]

12. Amen to that.

Nader going to OWS is like Henry Dawes touring a Native American settlement.

[libinnyandia]

15. Nader and his negative legacy

You may find this hard to take, but I agree with you about Mr. Nader's role in what has happened to this country. I posted yesterday what you consider the worst posting this year. I do not take anything personally what I see posted on DU and I am glad you and I agree on something. Mr. Nader will not be one of the leaders who will lead us out of this mess.

[Luminous Animal]

23. Too bad for the naysayers but Nader was invited to speak by the October2011 occupation.

He's been a participant and a speaker a couple of times.

[trueblue2007]

36. nader stinks. IT IS BECAUSE OF HIM THAT BUSH BECAME PRESIDENT

SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME on you nader

[Better Believe It]

40. Right. The Supreme Court, George W. Bush and Joe Leiberman had nothing to do with it.

Talk about a whitewash!

[TheWraith]

45. Without Nader, there would have been no court challenge.

That's one thing the Nader defense team can't spin away no matter how they want to shift the blame. All other things aside, without Nader in the picture, Gore would have won Florida, and Bush would have been back in Texas before Thanksgiving.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. Oh Jesus H. Christ. When will he just f disappear? He can't miss a free publicity moment, can he?

The man is an idiot.

[Motown_Johnny]

3. begging for attention again it seems

I wonder if he ever found someone to mount a primary challenge to our current President





Oh, wait.... no I don't.

[libinnyandia]

5. So Sad.

I wish we had other people to spread the messages that need to be sent to the 99ers out there to get them to understand what need to be done. So many people are turned off by people like him and Michaelel Moore. They may still have some good ideas but aren't the right messengers.

[Skidmore]

6. We don't need a demagogue, just regular people there, and there are

millions of us who can speak out.

[Tarheel_Dem]

7. Long past his relevance.

:eyes:

[sabrina 1]

30. Apparently OWS disagrees with that.

[Tarheel_Dem]

35. You have a link to that poll yet? Your memory tends to be very selective.

So forgive me if I don't take your word for the time of day, let alone anything else. :hi:

[kenfrequed]

51. Polls equal relevence then eh?

I suppose his decades of activism for justice, public safety, consumer protection, corporate transparency, and political access by the people are irrelevent then.

Nice view of history you got there.

Ralph has been right on all of the issues nearly a hundred percent of the time. But I suppose OWS should have invited Evan Bayh to speak to them instead.

[TheWraith]

8. I hope they pie the motherfucker.

His shilling for Bush gave us this last fucking decade of deregulation and tax cuts for the ultrawealthy.

[sabrina 1]

31. They invited him, so I doubt that is going to happen. Clearly

that small contingency of 'nader blamers' is not among the OWS movement, which is a good thing.

[Fumesucker]

10. If Nader wasn't essentially correct we wouldn't be seeing OWS or anything like it..

OWS is a reaction to the fact that the political establishment in general has sold out to the 1%.

[Xithras]

25. Exactly. History has proven Nader right on just about everything.

Gore lost his own home state. People need to quit blaming Nader for the fact that Gore ran a shitty campaign on a shitty platform. When you run as a right-center Democrat, don't get pissed off when the left stays home or votes for someone else.

[bahrbearian]

28. Nader and the Hippies were right.

[bigtree]

11. real windy in that park this time of year

without a crowd

[jtrockville]

16. How can you tell? The camera is pointed at the speaker, not the crowd.

There are typically ~50-75 people occupying Freedom Plaza. But more than 1500 nurses (plus some folks from the AFL-CIO) were there today for the Financial Transaction Tax march.

[the other one]

13. Calling for MONEY OUT of Elecctions. What an asshole.

Kill the messenger!!!



:sarcasm:

[sabrina 1]

14. He was right. And most people know it, which is why he

is there.

Rec'd to zero.

[TheWraith]

17. How about killing the messenger for being a lying sack of shit?

A shill who says something accurate doesn't suddenly become gospel. He's still a shill who's singlehandedly responsible for the overwhelming majority of what's gone wrong the last ten years--everything you can trace to the Bush administration, in fact.

[sabrina 1]

19. The criminals on the SC, the Citizen's United money that

helped turn the tide on Clarence Thomas and put him on the SC in time to swing an election, are responsible for the beginning of what led to the situation we are now in.

The Democrats who voted for Bush didn't help either.

Ralph Nader was right. He is still right, and all the efforts to place the blame on him by what is now a very small minority of the population since the public is more awake now than it has ever been, simply look silly.

[Luminous Animal]

26. And 11 Democrats voted to confirm Clarence Thomas's nomination.

[bahrbearian]

29. Which shows Nader was right.

[SomethingFishy]

24. Ralph Nader is responsible for the overwhelming majority

of what went wrong in the last ten years?

You need to get out more.

[Luminous Animal]

39. People forget that there was a huge part of the population that was devasted by Welfare Reform

and NAFTA and the expansion of the prison industrial complex. For advocates of the working class and the poor, these were not small issues. When welfare reform passed, I had to call in sick to work for 3 days because I couldn't stop ranting and crying. I worked as a welfare recipient activist for over a decade... these women were already pushed around and slapped around regularly by a system set up more as a deterrence than a safety net. To see that further eroded was too much for this bleeding heart liberal.

[kenfrequed]

52. Who is he a shill for?

Really? Do you even know what the word 'shill' means?

[Luminous Animal]

18. Recced with deep admiration for Mr. Nader.

[OilemFirchen]

20. There's a rumor that someone brought doughnuts

If you see him disappear mid-sentence, don't panic.

[sabrina 1]

34. And the fact is the rumors are false. He was invited.

Because he is known to have been correct about everything he has said about our Political system. Now a majority of the people agree with him.

[madinmaryland]

21. This should go well. Popcorn, anyone??

:popcorn:

[Luminous Animal]

22. Yes, please enjoy the intellectual criticism of Ralph Nader.

By Gosh! DUers ARE the most intelligent people on the internet!

[kentuck]

27. Just ignore him..maybe he will go away?

Like you did in 2000?

[whistler162]

32. Show me the EKG!

[whistler162]

33. Show me the EKG!

[SidDithers]

37. Fuck Ralph Nader...

Oh, and:



Sid

[Luminous Animal]

38. Howard Zinn voted for him in 2008.

[white_wolf]

41. Zinn's endorsement is worth more than all of DU's hate.

[Luminous Animal]

43. He originally said he was going to vote for Obama but then changed his mind.

Here is his ringing support for Nader (and also the piece where he endorses Obama).

http://www.progressive.org/mag/zinn1008.html

I have no doubt that by far the wisest, most reliable, with the most integrity, of all recent Presidential candidates is Ralph Nader. But I think it is a waste of his political strength, a puny act, to expend it in the electoral arena, where the result can show only weakness. His power, his intelligence, lies in the mobilization of people outside the ballot box.

So, yes, I will vote for Obama, because the corrupt political system offers me no choice, but only for the moment I pull down the lever in the voting booth.

Emphasis mine, natch.

[Autumn]

42. Ralph Nader was right

K%R

[Blue_In_AK]

44. Bill Moyers doesn't share the opinion

of some here at DU regarding Mr. Nader. This is long, but well worth reading. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/occupy-wall-street_b_1071288.html?ref=yahoo&ir=Yahoo

Journalist Bill Moyers was the keynote speaker at the 40th anniversary celebration of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen. In his speech, Moyers discusses the Occupy Wall Street movement and chronicles the history of America's middle class.



I am honored to share this occasion with you. No one beyond your collegial inner circle appreciates more than I do what you have stood for over these 40 years, or is more aware of the battles you have fought, the victories you have won, and the passion for democracy that still courses through your veins. The great progressive of a century ago, Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin - a Republican, by the way - believed that "Democracy is a life; and involves constant struggle." Democracy has been your life for four decades now, and would have been even more imperiled today if you had not stayed the course.


I began my public journalism the same year you began your public advocacy, in 1971. Our paths often paralleled and sometimes crossed. Over these 40 years journalism for me has been a continuing course in adult education, and I came early on to consider the work you do as part of the curriculum - an open seminar on how government works - and for whom. Your muckraking investigations - into money and politics, corporate behavior, lobbying, regulatory oversight, public health and safety, openness in government, and consumer protection, among others - are models of accuracy and integrity. They drive home to journalists that while it is important to cover the news, it is more important to uncover the news. As one of my mentors said, "News is what people want to keep hidden; everything else is publicity." And when a student asked the journalist and historian Richard Reeves for his definition of " real news", he answered: "The news you and I need to keep our freedoms." You keep reminding us how crucial that news is to democracy. And when the watchdogs of the press have fallen silent, your vigilant growls have told us something's up.


So I'm here as both citizen and journalist to thank you for all you have done, to salute you for keeping the faith, and to implore you to fight on during the crisis of hope that now grips our country. The great American experience in creating a different future together - this "voluntary union for the common good" - has been flummoxed by a growing sense of political impotence - what the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has described as a mass resignation of people who believe "the dogma of democracy" on a superficial public level but who no longer believe it privately. There has been, he says, a decline in what people think they have a political right to aspire to - a decline of individual self-respect on the part of millions of Americans.

<snip>

[libinnyandia]

47. Nader and Public Citizen

The last time I received a mailing from Public Citizen, didnt see nay reference to Mr. Nader on the letter.

[maddezmom]

48. I don't think Nader has been involved officially with the group since the 80's

he started it but not part of the day to day anymore.

[libinnyandia]

50. Nader founded it,

but being associated with Nader is negative now.

[OnyxCollie]

46. Correction to a post I made on a different thread.

George Soros : Tea Baggers : : Jane Hamsher Ralph Nader : Obama's most ardent supporters

[WI_DEM]

49. I wonder how much money the GOP will pay him this time around?

[tabasco]

53. Fuck you, Ralphie.

People like Nader are part of the problem.