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Obama's Money Cartel

Pam Martens exposes the slimy underside of the campaign for "hope" and "change". Obama says lobbyists "haven't funded my campaign". A lie, Martens writes in this explosive issue of CounterPunch. Five top contributors to Obama are registered lobbyists and he fronts for the most vicious players on Wall Street. Read how he helped pass the law for which Big Business had been scheming for a decade. PLUS Alexander Cockburn on the adventures of an Indian sociologist in Chicago's Projects. PLUS an eyewitness report from Jack Brown on how Egyptians greeted the people of Gaza. PLUS the truth about John McCain: "war hero" and "maverick" or mean-spirited fraud? Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great holiday presents.

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Today's Stories

February 26, 2008

Debbie Nathan
Confessions of a Gitmo Guard

February 25, 2008

Roger Morris
A Death in Damascus

Anthony DiMaggio
Military Bases, the Media and the Democrats

Ralph Nader
Why I'm Running

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Broils

Paul Craig Roberts
Kosovo and the Empire Crazies

Peter Morici
Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms

Dave Lindorff
General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That Minot Nuke Incident

Saul Landau /
Farrah Hassen

Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film

Heather Gray
James Orange, Civil Rights Legend

Robert Weitzel
Accomodating Torture

John Halle
Kucinich Goes Down

Website of the Day
Do the Trunk Monkey!


February 23 / 4, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama and Global Trade

Wajahat Ali
Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon on the 9/11 Commission

Ralph Nader
Neutering the FDA

Jürgen Vsych
"What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?"

Fidel Castro
Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo

David Macaray
Unions Under Assault

Jeremy Scahill
The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence

David Krieger
Stanley Sheinbaum
Caging the Cold War Monster

Ron Jacobs
Building for the Future

Michael Garrity
The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies

Brian McKenna
Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down

Missy Beattie
Over the Hill with John McCain

Fred Gardner
American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly)

Boris Kagarlitsky
The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement

Mike Ferner
Kick That Barrel

Dan Bacher
On the Trail with the Border Angels

Christopher Ketcham
Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread

Poets' Basement
Davies and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Obama Mariachi

 

February 22, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Bonfire of Capital

Jason Hribal
Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Arresting Musharraf

Joshua Frank
That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child

Dave Lindorff
Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for Her!

Liliana Segura
When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion

Robert Fantina
Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen?

Yifat Susskind
The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women

Norm Kent
Pushing 60 with Pot

Website of the Day
Bush Gets Down in Liberia

February 21, 2008

Saul Landau
Fidel Steps Aside

Elizabeth Schulte
Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed

Helen Redmond
Health Care as a Human Right

Benjamin Dangl
Undermining Bolivia

Michael Levitin
Kosovo's Dilemma

Liam Leonard
Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle

Patrick Irelan
Land and Food in Venezuela

Linn Cohen-Cole
Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto

Michael Simmons
Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music

CounterPunch News Service
A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs

Website of the Day
Cop Abuse in Shreveport

 

February 20, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies and Spies

Paul Krassner
My Brief Encounter with Fidel Castro

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Pakistani Elections

Farzana Versey
The Great Dictator: Musharraf, Peace and the Autumn of the Patriarch

Allan Nairn
Dying for a Second Round: Israel's New Plan to Attack Lebanon

John V. Whitbeck
If Kosovo, Why Not Palestine?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
A Balcony Seat to Our Own Balkanization?

Steve Eckardt
Cuba Sans Fidel: No News is Big News

Lee Sustar
Union-Busting at Freightliner

Mike Ferner
How Sick of It are You?

Website of the Day
The US Military Index

 

February 19, 2008

Uri Avnery
Blood and Champagne

Paul Craig Roberts
Paying Insurgents Not to Fight

Gary Leupp
The Independence of Kosovo

Fidel Castro
The Moment Has Come

David Macaray
Management's Dirty Little Secret

Reza Fiyouzat
Buck the Circus! The Left and the Elections

Valerie Morse
The New Zealand Terror Raids: Land of the Long White Lie

Walter Brasch
Bush on Safari

Website of the Day
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

 

February 18, 2008

Wajahat Ali
Free Pakistan: an Interview with Imran Khan

Diana Johnstone
NATO's Kosovo Colony

Paul Craig Roberts
What Do We Stand For?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo: "We're Making This Up as We Go Along"

Debbie Nathan
Bernie Ward's Sex Tapes

Anthony DiMaggio
Following the Money Trail: the Democratic Party and the Business of Elections

Bill Simpich
Ten Years Ago, People Power Stopped Clinton in Iraq

Eva Liddell
A Short History of Super-Delegates: Hope, Yes! But Pay in Cash

Christopher Brauchli
The President Who Couldn't Keep His Word: Short-Changing Veterans

Stephen Soldz
Wikileaks is Under Attack!

Johann Rossouw
The Ouster of Thabo Mbeki: South Africa and the Costs of Neoliberalism

Website of the Day
Sick of It Day!

 

February 16 / 17, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Terrorists Still at Ground Zero, 7 World Trade Tower, Lower Manhattan

Ralph Nader
We the Corporations ...

David Macaray
The Big Buy Out: Did GM Drive Another Nail in Labor's Coffin?

William J. Peace
Wheelchair Dumping

Ron Jacobs
War on the Psyche: Shellshock and Redemption

Diane Christian
War Corrupts

Alan Maass
Oil, Blood and Greed: Taking Upton Sinclair to the Big Screen (and Beyond)

Ramzy Baroud
Iraq and the US Elections

Michael Donnelly
Genitalia First! Old Guard Feminists Play the XX Card

Cpt. Paul Watson
The Art of Finding Whalers

James L. Secor
China Diary: Spring Festival and New Year 2008

Eve Bachrach
Bush Returns to Africa

Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez's Anti-Imperialist Army

Stephen Gowans
Steven Spielberg, Faux-Humanitarian

Missy Beattie
To Vote or Not to Vote?

David Michael Green
Warming Slowly to Obama

Wajahat Ali
Attack of the Info-tainment Circus

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Willson, Mickey Z., Orloski and Reuther

Website of the Day
Yellowstone's Bison Need Your Help--NOW!

 

 

February 15, 2008

George Szamuely
The Absurdity of "Independent" Kosovo

Patrick Cockburn
Ground-Truthing the Surge: Is the US Really Bringing Stability to Baghdad?

Wajahat Ali
Pakistan is Burning: an Interview with Steve Coll on the Taliban, Bin Laden and the Bush Administration

Mike Whitney
Henry Paulsen's Wild Ride on the Economic Hindenberg

Alan Farago
God and the Democrats

Chris Genovali
Alberta's Black Gold Rush

Jacob Hornberger
Courting Injustice: Scalia on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Snoops Always Ring Twice: Bush's Protect America Bill Bull

Website of the Day
Live From the Land of Hopes and Dreams

 

 

February 14, 2008

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Palestine in the Mind of America

Mike Whitney
Swan Song for NATO

Clancy Sigal
Strike Notes from a Screenwriter

George Wuerthner
A Bloody Sham: the Yellowstone Bison Slaughter

Peter Morici
Is Bernanke Headed for the Exit?

John Ross
Drug War Mayhem Boils Over from Border to Border

Allan Nairn
Mafia Rules in the Middle East: If You're Big Enough, You Can Whack Anyone

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon's Warmongers

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The New Tractatus: Where Wittgenstein Meets Feinstein

Donna Volatile
Be Careful What You Vote For, You Just Might Get It

Seth Sandronsky
The Student Squeeze: Fighting California's Tuition Hikes

Website of the Day
Conventions: the Land Around Us

 

February 13, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet John McCain: Mr. Big Stick in Latin America

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: Warren Buffett on the Goal Line

Christina Kasica
King's Dream Foreclosed: the Subprime Crisis in Black America

Vicente Navarro
How to Read the U.S. Primaries

Hall Greenland
Australia's Finest Hour

Lee Sustar
Strange Stimulation: Too Little for Those Who Need It Most

David Macaray
The Writers' Strike Finally Ends

Roderick Frazier Nash
Celebrating Wilderness

Patrick Irelan
Hugo Chávez and High Anxiety at the NYT

Anthony Papa
Mean Mister Mukasey: AG Tries to Block Crack Cocaine Releases

Carl Finamore
Another Parade Passes Me By: Don't Let Your Movement be Coopted by Politicians

Website of the Day
John He Is

 

February 12, 2008

Frank J. Menetrez
The Case Against Alan Dershowitz

Paul Craig Roberts
War Without End

Dr. Trudy Bond
The Elephant at Gitmo: Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Six: Why Charge Them Now? What About the Torture?

Col. Dan Smith
The Psychology of Killing: Close In or Far Away?

Ronnie Cummins
Globalization: Standing at the End of the Road

Ralph Nader
Open the Government

John V. Walsh
Antiwarriors, Divided and Conquered

Dave Lindorff
Obama and Progressive Change: Let's Hope the Movement Transforms the Candidate

Michael Donnelly
Who's Pimping Whom? The Clintons' Selective No Talk Rules

Ron Jacobs
La Lucha Continua: Castro's "Life"

Ben Tripp
Beggars Collide

Website of the Day
Springsteen and Youngstown

 

February 11, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Lessons for Obama: When is a Delegate Not a Delegate?

Wajahat Ali
A Discussion with Walt and Mearsheimer on the Israel Lobby

Ray McGovern
Waterboarding for God and Country

Allan Nairn
The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta

Uri Avnery
An End Foreseen?

Chris Floyd
American Psycho: the Meaning of Mitt Romney's Exit Speech

Martha Rosenberg
School Lessons in a Lunchbox: Lunchmeat from Tortured Cows

Stephen Fleischman
The Bonnie and Clyde of American Politics

Marc Lamont Hill
Not My Brand of Hope

Liliana Segura
Obama and Torture: the Sounds of Silence and Equivocation

Peter Morici
Challenges for the New President

Christopher Brauchli
A Drug Rant from a Former Taker

Website of the Day
Annie vs. the Blue Angels

 

February 8 / 10, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Does the GOP Have Aces Up Its Sleeves?

Patrick Cockburn
Will Moqtada al-Sadr's Truce Hold?

Mike Whitney
The Great Bust of '08

Anthony DiMaggio
How the Press Covers Waterboarding

Andy Worthington
The Guántanamo Trials: Where are the Terrorists?

Linn Cohen-Cole
Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto?

Firmin DeBrabander
Notes from the Foreclosure Front: Suing Your Way to Solvency

Cpt. Paul Watson
The Other Whaling Industry: How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering and Deaths of the Great Whales

Kenneth S. Pope
Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association

Jacob G. Hornberger
American Soldiers Will Pay the Price for Bush's Torture Policy

Robert Bryce
Beyond Group Think on Climate Change: If More CO2 is Bad ... Then What?

P. Sainath
The Last of the Buccaneer Editors

Allan Nairn
Give Me Back My Land

Fred Gardner /
Pebbles Trippet

"The District Attorney of Shasta County Doesn't Know the Law!"

Andrew Wimmer
Growing Up Catholic: Ignorance is Death

Robert Fantina
America's Disgrace: the Case of Omar Khadr

David Michael Green
Partycide in Six Easy Steps: Watch the Democrats Destroy Themselves

Kevin Zeese
Is Dennis Kucinich Being McKinney'd?

Peter Morici
Wall Street Gives Bernacke a Vote of No Confidence

Chris Driscoll
Could Nader be the Come-Back Kid of 2008?

Prairie Miller
Black August: Bringing George Jackson's Life to the Screen

Poets Basement
Davies and Buknatski

 

February 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Why Baghdad Will Explode Again

Bill Christison
Potholes Bigger Than Ever for Palestinians

David Anderson
NBC's "To Entrap" a Predator: Perverting Justice for the Sake of Ratings

Ron Jacobs
Innocent Flesh: Recruiting Kids to Kill

Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez's Coca: It's the Real Thing

Jane Rockefeller
The Moral Economy of an Anti-Poverty Foundation

Andy Worthington
On Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden

Dave Zirin
Instep Intifada

Saul Landau
The "Honestest" Candidate Since Lincoln

Susie Day
Our Blob in the White House

Website of the Day
George Carlin on Voting

 

February 6, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Super Tuesday's Vote for Chaos

Ben Rosenfeld
Informant Games: The Disturbing GreenScare Case of Briana Waters

Vijay Prashad
An Intellectual Hustler Lays It All Out

Joe Bageant
Nine Billion Little Feet on the Highway of the Damned

Michael Donnelly
What White Women Do In Private Voting Booths

Allan Nairn
Does the US Need a Civilizing Mayan Invasion?

Kathryn Gray
Wilderness on Edge: The Fate of Donner Summit

Ray McGovern
Powell's UN Fiasco

Sheldon Richman
The Whining Empire

Paul Cantor / Roger Sparks
A Presidential Aptitude Examination

John Chuckman
Political Bits and Pieces

Website of the Day
Save the Albatross

February 5, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Chaos in America's Vast Security Budget

Tariq Ali
Why I Will Not Participate in the Turin Book Fair

Stephen Soldz
The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq: Did Rumsfeld Authorize War Crimes?

Chris Floyd
Strange Fruit: America's Gulag and the Good War

William S. Lind
Saddam's Secret War Strategy: Die and Win

Martha Rosenberg
Live From the Killing Floor

Heather Gray
Conversations with Georgia Voters

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Obama, Bhagwandas and the Battle for a Secular Politics

David Macaray
Unions Need to Stop Being So Nice

Eliza Ernshire
Making Music and Laughing Till the Tears Run

Brenda Norrell
Hated Nation

Website of the Day
The Things I Used to Do

 

 

February 4, 2008

Marc Levy
Winter in America

Patrick Cockburn
The Bird Market Bombings

Saree Makdisi
Strangling Gaza

Uri Avnery
From Stalingrad to Winograd

Alan Farago
Let's Get Bambi! Someone is Slaughtering Florida's Key Deer

Ben Tripp
Spare Change: the Whine of the Progressive Voter

Paul Wolf
Civil Wars North and South

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Were the 9/11 Tapes Destroyed?

Joshua Frank
MoveOn's Obama Endorsement: Why There's No Hope for Change

John Halle
Whither Progressive Democrats?

Website of the Day
How to Cheat in School

 

February 2 / 3, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hot Democratic Properties

Pam Martens
Bankers Gone Bonkers: Global Finance and the Insanity Defense

Ralph Nader
The Great Clinton-Obama Debate: Questions They Weren't Asked

John Ross
Hilaria vs. "El Moreno"

Wajahat Ali
Hillary, Obama and the Clash of Civilizations: an Interview with Imam Zaid Shakir

Robert Fantina
A Colony by Any Other Name: Iraq as Stepchild of the American Empire

B. R. Gowani
Not All Veils and Guns

James L. Secor
China in Winter: On the Western Edge of the Great Snow

John V. Walsh
The Invisible Green Primary

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Barack's Bubble, Bubba's Trouble

Dave Zirin
Who Stole the Super Bowl's Soul?

Jeremy Scahill
Blackwater and Blood

Fidel Castro
Reflections on Lula

Joe Allen
Tet Reconsidered: the Turning Point in the Vietnam War

Stephen Lendman
Life in Occupied Gaza

Patrick Irelan
What Happened to the Streetcars?

Andrej Grubacic
Ziga Vodovnik
Caligula's Horse: the USA, New Europe and Kosovo

Josh Karpoff
Dead Soldiers and the Antiwar Movement

Ron Jacobs
Carl Oglesby's War

Paul Krassner
Tom Waits Meets Super-Joel

Website of the Weekend
Company Woman: Hillary and Wal-Mart

 

February 1, 2008

Ray McGovern
The Iniquities and Inequalities of War

Diane Farsetta
The Wild Career of James "Dow 36,000" Glassman

Patrick Cockburn
The Most Dangerous Country in the World for Journalists

Tariq Ali
Et Tu, New York Times?

Allan Nairn
Eating Dirt for Lunch in Haiti

Rannie Amiri
Collective Punishment in Beirut

Ramzy Baroud
People Power in Gaza: They Simply Did It

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Mother of All Snowballs

Peter Morici
Recession Looms

Mumia Abu-Jamal
Witha "Brutha" Like This: Bill Clinton as White Negro

Rosemary Jackowski
27 Reasons Nader Should Run for President

Scott Campbell
Direct Action to Stop the War Re-emerges

Website of the Day
Betes et Hommes

 

January 31, 2008

Saul Landau
Return to Afghanistan

Andy Worthington
Horror at Guantánamo

Mike Whitney
Rate Cut as Dagger: America's Teetering Banking System

Jeff Ballinger
Sustainability for Dictators Initiative? Clinton Praises the "Suharto of the Steppe"

Tiffany Ten Eyck
The Saga of the Freightliner Five

William Loren Katz
Waterboarding: Torure or Mystery?

Alan Farago
Why the Republicans are in Deep Trouble

Col. Dan Smith
Oh Say Can You See the 2009 Budget?

China Hand
Slouching Toward Islamabad

Dave Lindorff
The Usual Suspects Once Again

Wadner Pierre
Fake Democracy in Haiti

Website of the Day
One Big Union

 

January 30, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
McCain vs. Clinton?

Christopher Ketcham
The Genius of the Development Industrial-Complex

Robert Weissman
America By the Numbers: The Shameful State of the Union

Neve Gordon
An Experiment in Famine

Paul Craig Roberts
Regulation or Deregulation, Which is Worse?

Joanne Mariner
How Anti-Terror Laws Threaten Free Speech

David Macaray
Labor's Only Real Weapon

Liaquat Ali Khan
Is NATO Committing Genocide in Afghanistan?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Prankster-in-Chief: Bush's Troubling Non-Verbal Communication

Dan Bacher
The Collapse of the Central Valley Salmon

Website of the Day
Onward Through the Fog

 

January 29, 2008

Franklin C. Spinney
Bush's New War Budget: the $70 Billion Hand-Off

Mike Whitney
The Great Credit Unwind of 2008

Alan Farago
Buyer Beware: Florida, the Candidates and the Latin Builders Association

Patrick Cockburn
"The Americans Bring Us Only Destruction"

Gary Leupp
"We Can't Afford to Let Them Spill the Beans:" a Sibel Edmonds Timeline

R. F. Blader
A World Without Abortion: USA v. Romania

Ahmad Faruqui
Musharraf's Post-Electoral Prospect

Fran Shor
Obama, the Kennedys and "Change We Can Believe In"

Jeremy Scahill
Secret Trials and Criminal Convictions: the Ordeal of the Blackwater Protesters

Allan Nairn
Bush's SOTU: Entitlement, Justice and the War of All Against All

Website of the Day
The Ghost of Rambo

 

January 28, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Return to Fallujah

Paul Craig Roberts
The End of American Liberty

Allan Nairn
The Breaking of the Gaza Wall

Eyad al-Sarraj / Sara Roy
Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza

Martha Rosenberg
Obit for the "Front Page" City

Corporate Crime Reporter
How They Rip Us Off

David Michael Green
Kristolizing Iraq: What a Great Freakin' War

Jennifer Van Bergen
What's Left?

Nancy Oden
Survival Tips for Hard Times

Divya Karnad
Saving India's Sea Turtles

James L. Secor
Pissed About Pistorious: Why the Olympics Needs a Gimp

Website of the Day
Yellow Journalism?

 


 

 

 

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February 26, 2008

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Modern Liberal

Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals

By MICHAEL COLBY

We live in scary times. And no one scares me more than the faux-liberals of today. They are a most intolerant mob that has become so dislodged from logic that they'd rather gaze reverently at the false packaging of hope than seriously contemplate the issues of the day. They love bandwagons and hate activism. They strive for insular popularity while trampling the populace. And, in the true spirit of fundamentalism, they loathe dissent and flog the dissenter with the kind of glee that is seemingly borrowed from Jimmy Swaggart's beating of the ungodly unbelievers.

Oh yeah, hell hath no fury hot enough for the fool who holds a mirror up to the nonsense of modern liberalism. Just ask Ralph Nader.

Nader, as we all know by now, committed the horror of horrors in the eyes of the liberal fundamentalists Sunday by announcing--gasp!--that he's exercising his Constitutional rights by throwing his hat in the ring of presidential politics. But, given the reaction from the rather slovenly liberal not-so-intelligencia, you'd think that he announced that he wants to suspend the Constitution and, instead, fly planes into tall buildings.

My goodness, imagine if all this liberal bluster was saved for things like taking it to the streets and stopping the war, or demanding universal health care, or cracking down on the subprime criminals on Wall Street, or impeaching the president who has brought us all of these not-so-nice policies. But that would require real action. And the fundamentalist liberals don't have time for action--just rhetoric, blame and all the Obama Kool-Aid they can fill their confused kidneys with. It's easier that way.

Remember, it's these same liberal fundamentalists who have time after time denigrated the anti-war crowd for "going too far," much as they've also wagged their blogging fingers at those who dared to demand real solutions to health care, tax injustice, workers' rights, the Bush debacle (impeachment) and energy policy.

Sadly, it's a symptom of the fundamentalist liberals that is becoming all too familiar: They don't believe their own rhetoric. How else can you explain their rabid condemnation of Bush AND the condemnation of the impeachment movement? Or their understandable yelps against the current health care crisis but their seeming acceptance of the nonsensical "solution" being rhetorically weaved by Obama/Clinton? Or their preaching of tolerance but their vile invectives toward a man's right to speak and/or seek office? If Nader's right to seek office can be so easily ridiculed, where will they stop? Sorry, but that's not the liberalism I studied.

Worse, my perusal of the myopic blogging universe has revealed that most liberal commenters blasting Nader's announcement have almost completely ignored the issues that Nader has cited in announcing his candidacy. Remember, Nader made it clear that he wasn't going to run if someone like Edwards was going to be the Democratic nominee because he saw eye-to-eye with Edwards on things like health care, reining in corporate control of our democracy, stopping the war immediately and demanding workers' rights now--not tomorrow after all the jobs have been effectively shipped to China. But the good liberal fundamentalists didn't choose the substance of Edwards, instead choosing either the "hope" of Obama or the same old shit of Clinton. And so Nader moved to fill a rather large void in the issue spectrum.

Nader did NOT say on Sunday that there was "no difference" between the Democrats and the Republicans, as many liberals are trying to say he said. Instead, he said there was a difference, just as there is a difference between the Obama/Clinton positions and his positions. And then he went on to articulate those differences, just as he's done on his website (www.votenader.org).

It's sadly comical to me to see the fundie liberals bash Nader while he's calling for universal health care but give Obama a pass for leaving more than 15 million Americans uninsured in his so-called solution. Or bash Nader for his role in "causing" the Iraq war but giving Clinton--and a majority of her Dem colleagues -- a pass for actually voting for it. Or blaming Nader for the entirety of the Bush years while refusing to acknowledge the real blame that rests at the feet of the fundamentalist Dems who have done little but play along for eight years--remember, it was only ONE Dem (Feingold) who opposed the Patriot Act.

For the Dems, the solution to the Nader candidacy is not to call for a repugnant and chilling rebuke of his Constitutional rights but to strengthen their own issue resolve so that the Nader option wouldn't be necessary. But they're refusing to do so, instead zeroing in on a candidate--Obama--who is mostly hype and hope and very, very little substance or resume. It's Obama--not Nader--who is in bed with the nuclear industry and its lobbyists. It's Obama--not Nader--who won't say a peep about reining in Wall Street. It's Obama--not Nader--who won't promote universal health care. It's Obama--not Nader--who won't even mention the Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. And it's Obama--not Nader--who doesn't have a track record for standing up and speaking up even when it's not very popular to do so.

Earth to the liberal fundies: Skip the Kool-Aid, try the reality sandwich.

And thanks for offering a necessary option, Ralph.

Michael Colby is the editor of Broadsides.org and can be contacted via mcolby@broadsides.org.

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