Nader & Buchanan Love Fest

See? A vote for Nader does nothing but help Kerry get elected.

On some issues in the above snippet, Ralph's stretching a bit to suggest far-left / far-right synergy. But I've always felt a moral bend to leftist politics (does the epithet "do-gooders" ring a bell?), and I've never understood how Republicans can stand the level of trade/involvement we have with China.

 

I don't agree with all of it (for example, Michael Powell's FCC is overzealous in its pursuit of "decency"), but it is an interesting read indeed. I guess November will be a good indication of how much more Bush moderate conservatives are willing to take.

 

Point taken.

And the distinction they make between cable and over-the-air is simply ridiculous. Now, I understand it in theory - the airwaves are limited and belong to the public, and therefore they should be closely regulated. But in reality, FCC threw away the "in the interest of the public" card in the crapper when they decided Saturday morning cartoons and shows that were essentially infomercials for toy companies as "educational programming".

So yeah, you're right, FCC is the media industry's bitch, except when they throw temper tantrums at Janet Jackson's right breast.

 

A big fat I-told-you-so to the BS politics board. THis is what Cerville was warning about a few weeks ago. If Kerry gets elected, there will be a lot of disaffected Dems too. For instance, Kerry wants to increase troops in Iraq but the vast majority of his supporters want them home this year. A third party will have a real chance in 2008!

 

That was a very interesting read from Nader. I think that Nader is generally full of himself and way off base on some things, but he is dead on here. I've long been thinking that "true" conservatives are probably quite upset with Bush, since he has spit in the face of many of their core values.

I also think that, in some regards, libs/progressives and "true" conservatives have a lot more in common than is readily apparent. Whenever I puruse the Green party and Libertarian party websites, I'm stricken over how much they have in common, value-wise, when one would think that they are on the opposite sides of the spectrum.

 

Exactly what I was thinking, and it seems like at the same time, the RepubliCrat 2 party system seems to be morphing more and more into a large corporate cheerleader/enabler. Every election cycle I get the sense more and more that neither major party is capable of being a true people's party.

 

Take a closer look. What Nader's doing is appealing to a set of the electorate that feels disenfranchised in a manner similar to his core voting bloc, and campaigning for their vote by appealing to commonalities between the two groups. He's not looking for Buchanan as a running mate, or even subscribing to or condoning his decency-challenged views on race relations.

Shrewd, on many levels. Were he to get vocal support from a figure such as Buchanan, he'd be certain to pick up a few far-right votes, and diffuse/refute much of the "spoiler" nonsense the DLC has saddled him with. Among his core, hard-core GP types will understand this as good politics, but some of the less politically-minded as well as some of the way-the-hell-out-there-left will be peeved, using words much like bigredfutbol's.

 

Naderites make Goebbels look downright dishonest. I don't know how you folks can live with yourselves. Such worthless f-ing liars.

 

Curious, Ben... the section of my post you copied was pure conjecture / my opinion. How could that be a lie, when I didn't present anything as fact? Or are you just pissed that the Red Sox are looking up at the Yankees again?

Oh, and can one claim "Godwin" when someone mentions any high-ranking Nazi official?

 

Then how do you explain the fact that Americans do all these things, and are getting worse at all of them?

 

Sure, but he's campaigning. In this particular campaign pitch, neither you nor I were his target audience.

Oh, and read the whole interview. He cedes no ground on social issues whatsoever.

 

The big match between Zimbabwe and Upper Volta prevented me from correcting my typo in the alloted editing time.

 

You used the phrase 'spoiler nonsense" which is completely dishonest. Nader is a spoiler, determined to destroy the Democratic party even if it means hundreds of thousands die.

Yeah, I'm pissed about that too, but you'd figure I'd be used to it by now.

 

I can't believe you Nader supporters would support someone who says,

. . . . Okay he didn't really say those things. here is what he did say,

Isolationists and other bigots speaks the language of bigotry when they say “our values are deeply offensive to them”, that the “Kurds, Sunnis and Shi’ites are must be split apart to get along”, that we need to “protect our unemployed from outside competition” and that we need to “make sure everyone has ‘fair-labor’ standards” and keep the rest out.

For those of you for isolationism or for Nader, be very careful that you understand that Buchanan and Nader are not very far apart in their kind of thinking.

 

Yup. That bit on tightening the borders concerned me. I hope the press grills him on that over the next couple of months. Living on the Mexican border for a decade, I found Operation Gatekeeper eerily reminiscent of the Berlin Wall. They even look similar. Shameful. The economies of both San Diego and Tijuana would stand to gain significantly if that border was as open as the one between Germany and France.

For the rest, I guess I'm not seeing your point, AM. We do have alot of unemployed software workers in this country, who must compete for jobs with H1-B types. Granted they have a significant advantage when competing head-to-head, but it's competition nonetheless. And that does reduce the number of smart people in H1-B's home countries. However, Mr. Nader rather sloppily failed to mention that India doesn't seem to be suffering too badly as a result. Sloppy arguing, yes. Bigoted, not in my opinion.

As for the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, I don't get the connection between autonomy and Apartheid. Maybe you could explain this better. Are you envisioning three seperate East Timors, where those in the minority are subject to persecution. It'll probably happen even without a limited-autonomy arrangement.

As for "Our values offend them", the ones he was referring to certainly do. The same way that the systematic subjugation of women offends me, and I wouldn't want it here. I don't get the bigotry.

 

Yes we do have those people as unemployed. The trick is not to protect our jobs but figure out how to innovate, use our open culture to be better than the world. If you know software, you know there is very little creativity in building websites. Most sites are canned. (BigSoccer site excepted of course . . . . . ) You can go to small job sites and get bids for websites from around the world, especially those countries where H1B workers come from. A typical five page website has gone from a $1K job to a $250 job since the bubble burst. So what were high paying jobs ten years ago are not now good jobs. Keeping H1B's out wouldn't change anything, except let workers think they don't have to stay a step ahead. So closed borders only hurt workers in the long run. When these guys were making 100K a year, they told us all how innovative they were and how dumb steelworkers were. I'd like to see those programmer guys get more innovative in making new work.

Nader's premise seemed to be that they can't get along and should each have their own country. This was the idea of aparthied also. We as a race need to learn to get along with one another and I'm sure we can do it. Iraq doesn't have to break up. Just today the Shiites and the Kurds agreed on a more federal form of government. Good for them.

True. I was using is as an example of how to use a synonym to change the meaning of a sentence. Nader's premise was that our culture is deeply offensive to them. Well, okay. So what? Do we stop doing our thing? No. Do they stop interacting with us? No. So what does he want to do other than identify with their anger and explain why we should isolate ourselves from them (because they want it too?)? That isolationism, that segregationism is the same as apartheidism and is a form of bigotry.

 

I'm all for innovation, and I have seen how the economy has transformed itself under the lash of losing most of the manufacturing sector. But, H1-B is a proactive device, designed to invite folks with skillsets that are lacking in this country to ply their trade here.

Absolutely, 100% good for them. Do you want to lay odds on how long this bonhommerie lasts?

Also -- Apartheid was not about seperate, autonomous states. It was about protecting the priviledged status of a minority that felt it was divinely-ordered as superior.

I see where you're coming from, but...

What he's talking about is the cultural hegemony that the US plays in the world, and that folks in countries whose social mores are significantly different from our own take offense to the perception that our culture is being forced upon them, and this is one reason that folks in these countries may be angry with us as a state.

To be perfectly honest, the more I read Nader's arguments and attempt to defend them, the more I see his positions and beliefs as horribly out of date, and full of sweeping generalizations. This concerns me a great deal on a personal level, because I had planned on voting for him. Oh well... maybe I'll just write in Medea Benjamin like I wanted to in the first place