Dear President-Elect Barack H. Obama

[PearlHowardman]

(Written just prior to Obama being elected)

 

In the Public Interest

Between Hope and Reality

by Ralph Nader

 

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 over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

 

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

 

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."

 

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

 

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."

 

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org <http://nader.org/www.atfl.org> for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"

 

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.

 

Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future-- if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."

 

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

 

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans-- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

 

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

 

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

 

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org <http://nader.org/www.votenader.org>). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.

 

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)-- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

 

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.

 

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

[Typical TBD Guy]

 

[Max Fischer]

(Written just prior to Obama being elected)

 

In the Public Interest

Between Hope and Reality

by Ralph Nader

 

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 over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

 

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

 

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."

 

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

 

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."

 

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org <http://nader.org/www.atfl.org> for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"

 

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.

 

Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future-- if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."

 

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

 

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans-- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

 

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

 

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

 

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org <http://nader.org/www.votenader.org>). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.

 

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)-- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

 

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.

 

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

 

You read all that?

[Barack Obama]

Dear Mr Nader

 

 

Sincerely

 

Barack Obama

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

Yep, Nader is an ahole.

[blzrul]

He makes me sad like McCain made me sad, because I really used to have immense respect for them both. They just sound old and bitter.

 

I wonder what names they use to post on PPP?

[Adam]

He makes me sad like McCain made me sad, because I really used to have immense respect for them both. They just sound old and bitter.

 

I wonder what names they use to post on PPP?

Why, does the truth hurt, maybe?

[blzrul]

Why, does the truth hurt, maybe?

You should ask them. I am not old or bitter. I do enjoy absurdities though.

[erynthered]

Dear Mr Nader

 

 

Sincerely

 

Barack Obama

 

Thats funny, Berry.

[PearlHowardman]

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 over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

 

So much for "change"!

[The Dean]

So much for "change"!

 

 

Really?

 

So, the new standard is: Obama must change EVERYTHING, and do it before he assumes office, or he is a failure.

 

Sweet.

 

[PearlHowardman]

Really?

 

So, the new standard is: Obama must change EVERYTHING, and do it before he assumes office, or he is a failure.

 

Sweet.

 

 

Nope!

 

Won't be too long before Obama doesn't look too much different than Bush. Politically speaking.

[The Dean]

Nope!

 

Won't be too long before Obama doesn't look too much different than Bush. Politically speaking.

 

 

That may well be true, but I doubt it.

 

Of course, in large part, it depends on what you expect, and what you count as change. Since the President has limited powers, and works within a system, those who want dramatic change are unlikely to see it. Whether Obama serves one year, or eight, the USA will still be a Republic, the rich and powerful will remain rich and powerful, huge multi-national corporations will still be influential...and people will still have problems.

 

Of course, most of us with at least half of a brain, understand more subtle change.

 

Whether or not you recognize change, or give credit to Obama or his administration, will be up to you. I don't suspect Nader will think much of many of the changes, as they won't be the changes HE is looking to make.

 

An interesting case in point is the "surge" in Iraq. McCain continually points to the surge and says "it worked". I think many would argue that point. The reason is, it all depends on what your goal was to begin with. The surge did work, if your goal was to quell violence on the ground, in Iraq. It didn't work, if your goal was to turn the post-war violence over to the Iraqis, and stop getting American soldiers killed (or finish the job in Afghanistan and find Osama bin Ladin), etc.

 

So, I suspect this Obama administration will look more different from the Bush administration, and effect more "change" than a McCain administration would have.

[erynthered]

That may well be true, but I doubt it.

 

Of course, in large part, it depends on what you expect, and what you count as change. Since the President has limited powers, and works within a system, those who want dramatic change are unlikely to see it. Whether Obama serves one year, or eight, the USA will still be a Republic, the rich and powerful will remain rich and powerful, huge multi-national corporations will still be influential...and people will still have problems.

 

Of course, most of us with at least half of a brain, understand more subtle change.

 

 

And yet thats what he ran on. But those with half a brain knew he was full of shiit. The lemming will be disappointed when they dont get their free shiit.

[The Dean]

And yet thats what he ran on. But those with half a brain knew he was full of shiit. The lemming will be disappointed when they dont get their free shiit.

 

 

The proof will be in the pudding, although I suspect a knee-jerk right wing wacko, like yourself, will say the pudding is foul, before it is made. And,.don't forget McCain (inexplicably) was also promising "change". Was he full of s#it, as well?

 

How about this, I expect the changes Obama and the Dems will make, will be of a size and scope of those made my Reagan. Within the structure of our system, that is fairly big change.

 

Time for a basic civics lesson: In our system, change is evolutionary. Those who are going to find fault if the changes aren't revolutionary, are attacking a straw man. I know McCain and Palin suggested that the election of Obama would be the end of the world as we know it, but they were exaggerating in an attempt to win an election. I don't think Barack ever mentioned a revolution, or suggested that the USA would change so dramatically that nobody will recognize what country it is.

[/dev/null]

And,.don't forget McCain (inexplicably) was also promising "change". Was he full of s#it, as well?

 

They both were chock full of Stojan

 

So what's your point?

[erynthered]

The proof will be in the pudding, although I suspect a knee-jerk right wing wacko, like yourself, will say the pudding is foul, before it is made. And,.don't forget McCain (inexplicably) was also promising "change". Was he full of s#it, as well?

 

How about this, I expect the changes Obama and the Dems will make, will be of a size and scope of those made my Reagan. Within the structure of our system, that is fairly big change.

 

Time for a basic civics lesson: In our system, change is evolutionary. Those who are going to find fault if the changes aren't revolutionary, are attacking a straw man. I know McCain and Palin suggested that the election of Obama would be the end of the world as we know it, but they were exaggerating in an attempt to win an election. I don't think Barack ever mentioned a revolution, or suggested that the USA would change so dramatically that nobody will recognize what country it is.

 

Showing your ignorance is what you really wanted to do isn't it. More visits here would have told you about who I voted for and who I didn't vote for. And who I am. But, Lets not let that get in the way of a good liberal kool aid drinking rant.

 

Lets recap retard. Or at least catch you up on this right wig wacko you've accused me of being:

 

I voted for Bill Nelson

Gay rights

I'd like see stem cell research

I was with the Dems on the Terry schivio issue.

I believe in womans right to choose.

 

All this I've stated here numorus times. Assshat

 

Thats just A FEW moron. When you know what the !@#$ you're talking about, come on back.

 

 

 

(Bills losses make me cranky too, BTW)

[The Dean]

Showing your ignorance is what you really wanted to do isn't it. More visits here would have told you about who I voted for and who I didn't vote for. And who I am. But, Lets not let that get in the way of a good liberal kool aid drinking rant.

 

Lets recap retard. Or at least catch you up on this right wig wacko you've accused me of being:

 

I voted for Bill Nelson

Gay rights

I'd like see stem cell research

I was with the Dems on the Terry schivio issue.

I believe in womans right to choose.

 

All this I've stated here numorus times. Assshat

 

Thats just A FEW moron. When you know what the !@#$ you're talking about, come on back.

 

 

 

(Bills losses make me cranky too, BTW)

 

 

So, Numb-nuts, are you suggesting I should have worded my statement like this?

 

"I suspect a knee-jerk right wing wacko, like Wacka , will say the pudding is foul, before it is made."

 

Your are correct, I don't spend much time here, as listening to morons discuss issues beyond their IQ* is rather troublesome. Plus the insulting tone, these douchebags use, is off-putting.

 

So, since you claim to be an independent thinker, and not a knee-jerk conservative, I will look forward to you making some zingers (on the main Wall and OTW) that are directed at a conservative, or a republican, in the future.

 

* Note that the use of IQ here is simply for demonstration/rhetorical purposes. I do not believe IQ is a good measurement of intelligence.

[/dev/null]

will say the pudding is foul, before it is made."

 

If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?

You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

All above said, Nader is still a hypocritical trust fund baby, treating his employees like shiip. He doesn't know squat about the environment, but had the audacity to accuse Gore of not being an environmentalist. Common cause produces some great statistics, but Nader is an ego maniacal has been, never was -- going the way of Jesse Jackson, so there! Bills loses combined with Sabres playing like crap make me cranky too.

 

P.S. I am not sure I would believe anything this deranges blow hard would say at this point unless he was giving Wacka head and then I might believe it he blurted out..."but it is soooo small."