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Not Nader. These Clowns. (Original Post) Octafish Jul 2014 OP
Their true identities..... CherokeeDem Jul 2014 #1
Even the guilty can have a conscience. Octafish Jul 2014 #2
I lived in Miami during the recount... CherokeeDem Jul 2014 #3
The great DUer blm was friends with friends in Palm Beach County... Octafish Jul 2014 #7
A non regret regret....kinda like a non apology apology that conservatives are so good at. SammyWinstonJack Jul 2014 #36
Once she was comfortably retired. Change has come Jul 2014 #15
that's why i worked hard for Gore, i Knew the SC is a big issue but some people claimed JI7 Jul 2014 #4
That stuck with me, too. Octafish Jul 2014 #8
not really, things like that are rarely ever done, it was about winning the Presidency JI7 Jul 2014 #11
I think Brooks Brothers GOP Riot 'plausibly swayed' Corporate McPravda... Octafish Jul 2014 #14
Look at that group. They were fixin' to steal FL, Nader or no Nader. CrispyQ Jul 2014 #27
Professional Workers -- To Create a Wrong Impression, Rightly Octafish Jul 2014 #31
Agreed. Mc Mike Jul 2014 #5
The guy really loved coffee. Octafish Jul 2014 #10
That guy sure could 'reinvent' himself. Mc Mike Jul 2014 #33
4-Shoor. ''I take mine with mescaline.'' -- President Richard M. Nixon Octafish Jul 2014 #40
Yeah. I'm interested in the article. Mc Mike Jul 2014 #42
I'd say it was all six of them Skittles Jul 2014 #6
True. The numbers don't lie. Octafish Jul 2014 #12
we still have those rights theoretically questionseverything Jul 2014 #39
Make that seven. You forgot Katherine Harris. Jim Lane Jul 2014 #25
Nader set up the conditions whereby the GOP sent in the clowns. eom MohRokTah Jul 2014 #9
So you don't think he had a right to be on the ballot? Octafish Jul 2014 #13
Why do people defending Nader always raise this straw man? Jim Lane Jul 2014 #16
So why say 'Fuck Nader!' when SCOTUS is to blame? Octafish Jul 2014 #18
Revolutionary concept: In a complex situation, there may be more than one person to blame Jim Lane Jul 2014 #24
You are right. Your analogy isn't perfect. Octafish Jul 2014 #26
You say that Nader had nothing to do with the Supreme Court decision. Jim Lane Jul 2014 #28
When I first started posting on DU, I blamed Nader because of the votes he garnered. Octafish Jul 2014 #30
You legtimize Bush with that nonsense. morningfog Jul 2014 #21
and that it was stolen, G_j Jul 2014 #29
Kicked and recommended! Enthusiast Jul 2014 #17
What has Nader ever done? Octafish Jul 2014 #20
Fuck Nader and his defenders... SidDithers Jul 2014 #19
Ah, you have evolved your position a little. Now "defenders" are included. morningfog Jul 2014 #22
How profound. Octafish Jul 2014 #23
The emphasis on the Nader subplot is used to distract from those who hold culpability Bluenorthwest Jul 2014 #32
Thank you, Bluenorthwest. Octafish Jul 2014 #46
DURec leftstreet Jul 2014 #34
Kick and Rec, but... zappaman Jul 2014 #35
K&R JEB Jul 2014 #37
And fuck the SC, Harris, Brooks Bros. rioters, and pretty much half the people in Florida. JEB Jul 2014 #38
Joe Lieberman, the Senator from ENRON, let Bush, Kenny Boy and Rigged Energy Markets off Scott-free Octafish Jul 2014 #43
Enron was just a hint of what was coming. Pretty much totally Enronized now. JEB Jul 2014 #45
This message was self-deleted by its author Corruption Inc Jul 2014 #41
Let's ask John Roberts, if only he were sentient he could tell us about HIS ROLE... Octafish Jul 2014 #44

CherokeeDem

(3,709 posts)
1. Their true identities.....
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 06:49 PM
Jul 2014

I think I despise Sandra Day O'Conner the most... way too late she said she regretted her vote. Too freaking late for the thousands who died in Bush's name.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
2. Even the guilty can have a conscience.
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 06:56 PM
Jul 2014
After Casting Key Fifth Vote For Bush, Justice O’Connor Now Regrets Bush v. Gore

By Ian Millhiser
ThinkProgress.org, April 29, 2013 at 9:00 am

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the conservative retired justice who provided the fifth vote to install George W. Bush as president, is now having second thoughts about that decision:

Looking back, O’Connor said, she isn’t sure the high court should have taken [Bush v. Gore].

“It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue,” O’Connor said during a talk Friday with the Tribune editorial board. “Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye.’”

The case, she said, “stirred up the public” and “gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation.”

“Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision,” she said. “It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn’t done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day.“


If nothing else, Bush v. Gore demonstrates how justices who are determined to reach a certain result are capable of bending both the law and their own prior jurisprudence in order to achieve it. In Bush, the five conservative justices held, in the words of Harvard’s Larry Tribe, that “equal protection of the laws required giving no protection of the laws to the thousands of still uncounted ballots.”

CONTINUED...

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/04/29/1931821/after-casting-key-fifth-vote-for-bush-justice-oconnor-now-regrets-bush-v-gore/

Perhaps Hell is hotter than Scottsdale in August.

CherokeeDem

(3,709 posts)
3. I lived in Miami during the recount...
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 07:45 PM
Jul 2014

Right in the thick of things... I was chair of a coordinated campaign office for Gore and a member of the DEC... I can tell you without a single doubt in my mind, the votes for Gore were not counted. It was a sham. To hear this woman admit second thoughts about her vote, angers me still.

Thanks for posting the article, I haven't read this in a long time.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
7. The great DUer blm was friends with friends in Palm Beach County...
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 08:50 PM
Jul 2014

blm reminded me the other day of Adnan Khashoggi's connection to the "Democratic" supervisor of elections for Palm Beach County who OK'd the ultra confusing butterfly ballot and others from October Surprise to BCCI to Arming Iraq to Iran-Contra to...Florida...



Did Adnan Khashoggi Throw the Election to Dubya?

Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, Dec. 4, 2000, at 2:56 PM PT

On Dec. 1, the "Washington Wire" column in the Wall Street Journal published this gratifyingly noir item about the postelection drama in Florida:

"Madame Butterfly" Theresa LePore wasn't always an embattled Palm Beach ballots chief. In the 1980s, she moonlighted as a flight attendant on private planes owned by Saudi weapons dealer Adnan Khashoggi, a middleman in Reagan administration arms sales to Iran.

Connoisseurs of Khashoggi-centric conspiracy theories should have little difficulty using this information to finger Khashoggi as the mastermind of the plot to deny Al Gore the presidency. Khashoggi has close ties, from Iran-Contra and elsewhere, to the Republicans, and vaguely defined ties to Dubya's father. (In a 1990 court case, Khashoggi's phone records revealed that Khashoggi had spoken at least twice with George Bush's vice-presidential office during 1985 and 1986.) LePore worked for Khashoggi during the 1980s, when, according to her official biography, she was chief deputy supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County, a job she held until 1996, when she was elected supervisor of elections. Ergo, LePore has been working as a Khashoggi asset to elect the son of Khashoggi's old comrade-in-arms, George Bush!

Chatterbox doesn't actually believe this, of course. But the Journal's tidbit does provide an occasion to play one of Chatterbox's favorite games, "Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi," in which the shadowy international arms merchant is connected to every scandal of the past 40 years and some that occurred even earlier. (It helps that Khashoggi is a "connector," to borrow a term from Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point. Click here for Gladwell's explanation of how connectors rule the universe, and click here to read Chatterbox's favorable review of The Tipping Point in the Washington Monthly. See also Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball's classic 1987 New Republic article, "The Swami of Iranamok," which describes the connector role played by Khashoggi's spiritual adviser, Shri Chandra Swamiji Maharaj.) "Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi" is a slightly misleading name for this parlor game because in Khashoggi's case, it's rarely more than one or two degrees. Allow Chatterbox to demonstrate:

Iran-Contra. Khashoggi brought Manucher Ghorbanifar, Iranian arms buyer, into contact with the arms-selling Israelis. Khashoggi himself provided crucial bridge loans and lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million in the whole affair.

Imelda Marcos' Shoe Collection. In 1990, Khashoggi was tried, and acquitted, on charges that he helped the Marcoses conceal ownership of four buildings in New York.

Wedtech. Remember e.bob wallach, the crony of Ed Meese who, maddeningly, spelled his name in lowercase letters? wallach was an adviser to Wedtech Corp., a now-defunct Bronx-based minority contractor to the Pentagon. In that capacity, he tried to get Khashoggi onto Wedtech's board. Khashoggi never joined Wedtech's board. wallach was eventually convicted of defrauding Wedtech.

BCCI. The most complicated bank scandal in human history. Khashoggi had a big account with BCCI's Monte Carlo branch.

CONTINUED...Six-Parter...every sentence pure gold...

https://web.archive.org/web/20030604153939/http://slate.msn.com/id/1006609/



What a, em, coincidence.

JI7

(89,176 posts)
4. that's why i worked hard for Gore, i Knew the SC is a big issue but some people claimed
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 07:46 PM
Jul 2014

Bush was not that bad by saying he was just the same as Gore.

that was really fucked up.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
8. That stuck with me, too.
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 08:54 PM
Jul 2014

Yet, Gore took the high ground and accepted what the clowns ruled. Where was President Clinton and the Department of Justice? Perhaps if they'd spoken up before the fascist Rehnquist and his fellow fascists, things would be different.

JI7

(89,176 posts)
11. not really, things like that are rarely ever done, it was about winning the Presidency
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 09:01 PM
Jul 2014

some of us thought the issue of SC justice appointments was a huge difference that mattered in who became Pres.

but others did not think so.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
14. I think Brooks Brothers GOP Riot 'plausibly swayed' Corporate McPravda...
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 09:41 PM
Jul 2014

...and then America "could see" the recount as a "Florida" story, where the locals were outraged Washington would step in.

Bush's Conspiracy to Riot



Miami 'Riot' Squad: Where Are They Now?

CrispyQ

(36,226 posts)
27. Look at that group. They were fixin' to steal FL, Nader or no Nader.
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 09:03 AM
Jul 2014

The ballot mess, Kathrine Harris & the voter purge. Also, remember bush's overly-confident statement on the plane that they were going to win this thing?

Nader may have made it easier & FL gave them a place to focus on, but after eight years of amazing prosperity, the BFEE was going to install one of their own, so the looting could begin. Gore was not going to be president. Ever.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
31. Professional Workers -- To Create a Wrong Impression, Rightly
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 09:27 AM
Jul 2014

Like the Kuwait ambassador's daughter who testified to Congress she was a nurse at a Kuwaiti City hospital who saw the Iraqi soldiers take babies from their incubators and leave them on the cold, hard floor so they could steal the incubators for Baghdad.



"If I wanted to lie, or if we wanted to lie, if we wanted to exaggerate, I wouldn't use my daughter to do so. I could easily buy other people to do it." -- Kuwait Ambassador

http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

Now we are reminded it wasn't the Supreme Court -- let alone the supine Congress and Executive -- that are to blame for the Supreme Court's decisions. The fault, they say, lies with Ralph Nader.

Mc Mike

(9,107 posts)
5. Agreed.
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 08:22 PM
Jul 2014

Reminds me of when Nixon was trying to rehab his image in the '80's, and kept doing photo ops with clowns.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
10. The guy really loved coffee.
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 08:58 PM
Jul 2014


From the rightish rightists at Politico:

1968 — The “New Nixon”: This was a journalist’s phrase, but Nixon’s team encouraged it as it sought to reintroduce one of the most familiar — and most controversial — figures in American politics. The new Nixon was supposedly more seasoned, more philosophical, less angry and less combative. Voters bought it in 1968 — and would soon learn to their dismay that the new Nixon was much the same as the old.

PS: Long time, no vid Mc Mike! Good to read ya!

Mc Mike

(9,107 posts)
33. That guy sure could 'reinvent' himself.
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 11:26 AM
Jul 2014

With a little help from Ailes and compliant corp media.

You could tell he was very anti-drug use, from his close personal friendship with Rebozo.

It's always good to read your o.p.s, Octa. I've been trying (unsucessfully) to argue some sense into some cons, over the other site. Better info over here.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
40. 4-Shoor. ''I take mine with mescaline.'' -- President Richard M. Nixon
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 02:22 PM
Jul 2014


So much fuel melted under the reactors that I'd forgotten the clowns with the evil stares. LOL.



The Mob's President: Richard Nixon's Secret Ties to the Mafia

Don Fulsom
CrimeMagazine.com, February 5, 2006

EXCERPT...

Many Nixon biographers say Richard Danner, a former FBI agent gone bad, introduced Nixon to Rebozo in 1951. Danner was the city manager of Miami Beach when it was controlled by the Mob. Danner eventually became a top aide to Nixon’s financial angel, eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. And, years later, during the final act of the Watergate scandal, Danner delivered a $100,000 under-the–table donation from Hughes to President Nixon.

Nixon and Rebozo hit it off almost immediately. Their mutual friend, Sen. George Smathers of Florida, once said: “I don’t want to say that Bebe’s level of liking Nixon increased as Nixon’s (political) position increased, but it had a lot to do with it.”

The two men were almost inseparable from then on. Rebozo was there to lend moral as well as financial support to his idol through Nixon’s many political ups and downs. He was there in Florida in 1952 when Nixon celebrated his election to the vice presidency; Rebozo was in Los Angeles in 1960 when Nixon got word that Sen. John Kennedy had edged him out for the presidency; he comforted Nixon after his 1962 defeat for California governor; and Rebozo and Nixon drank and sunbathed together in Key Biscayne after Nixon’s political dreams came true and he won the 1968 presidential election. During Nixon’s White House years, rough estimates show Rebozo was at Nixon’s side one out of every 10 days.

Known as “Uncle Bebe” to Nixon’s two children, Trisha and Julie, Rebozo frequently bought the girls – and Nixon’s wife Pat – expensive gifts. He purchased a house in the suburbs for Julie after she married David Eisenhower. The Saturday Evening Post, in a March 1987 article, put the price at $137,000.

Rebozo came in and out of the White House as he pleased, without being logged in by the Secret Service. Though he had no government job, Rebozo had his own private office and phone number in the executive mansion. When he travelled on Air Force One, which was frequently, Bebe donned a blue flight jacket bearing the Presidential Seal and his name. (Nixon’s own flight jacket was inscribed “The President” – as though no one would recognize that fact by just looking at him.)

Rebozo’s organized crime connections were solid. For one, he had both legal and financial ties with “Big Al” Polizzi, a Cleveland gangster and drug kingpin. Rebozo built an elaborate shopping center in Miami, to be leased to members of the rightwing Cuban exile community, and he let out the contracting bid to Big Al, a convicted black marketer described by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics as “one of the most influential members of the underworld in the United States.”

Nixon and Rebozo bought Florida lots on upscale Key Biscayne, getting bargain rates from Donald Berg, a Mafia-connected Rebozo business partner. The Secret Service eventually advised Nixon to stop associating with Berg. The lender for one of Nixon’s properties was Arthur Desser, who consorted with both Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa and mobster Meyer Lansky.

Nixon and Rebozo were friends of James Crosby, the chairman of a firm repeatedly linked to top mobsters, and Rebozo’s Key Biscayne Bank was a suspected pipeline for Mob money skimmed from Crosby’s casino in the Bahamas. By the 1960s, FBI agents keeping track of the Mafia had identified Nixon’s Cuban-American pal as a “non-member associate of organized crime figures.”

Former Mafia consigliere Bill Bonanno, the son of legendary New York godfather Joe Bonanno, asserts that Nixon “would never have gotten anywhere” without his old Mob allegiances. And he reports that — through Rebozo — Nixon “did business for years with people in (Florida Mafia boss Santos) Trafficante’s Family, profiting from real estate deals, arranging for casino licensing, covert funding for anti-Castro activities, and so forth.”

If friendships enabled Nixon to craft links with the Mafia, so did hatred. Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa hated John and Robert Kennedy as much as Nixon did. Robert Kennedy had been trying to put Hoffa in jail since 1956, when RFK was staff counsel for a Senate probe into the Mob’s influence on the labor movement. In a 1960 book, Robert Kennedy said, “No group better fits the prototype of the old Al Capone syndicate than Jimmy Hoffa and some of his lieutenants.”

Because he shared a common enemy with Nixon, Hoffa and his two million-member union backed Vice President Nixon against Sen. John Kennedy in the 1960 election, and did so with more than just a get-out-the-vote campaign. Edward Partin, a Louisiana Teamster official and later government informant, revealed that Hoffa met with New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello to secretly fund the Nixon campaign. Partin told Mob expert Dan Moldea: “I was right there, listening to the conversation. Marcello had a suitcase filled with $500,000 cash which was going to Nixon ... (Another $500,000 contribution) was coming from Mob boys in New Jersey and Florida.” Hoffa himself served as Nixon’s bagman.

CONTINUED (now, for-pay, but a few more graphs can be read gratis)...

http://www.crimemagazine.com/mobs-president-richard-nixons-secret-ties-mafia





Careful with the cons. They like to burn up good people's time.

PS: Let me know if you need the complete article. If it's no longer on the Waybac, my old 'puter should have copy.


Mc Mike

(9,107 posts)
42. Yeah. I'm interested in the article.
Thu Jul 3, 2014, 02:58 AM
Jul 2014

Chotiner was the first thing I thought when I saw 'Nixon Mob' as the subject. Born in my hometown, had a little car trouble during Watergate.

I believe Nixon knew Rebozo during his wartime OPA work, years before '51, when Rebozo got the sweet-heart rubber recycling deal. Probably Nixon suddenly going into the Navy was part of a cover up of scandals relating to that.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
12. True. The numbers don't lie.
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 09:05 PM
Jul 2014

If all of Nader's votes were to have gone to Gore, there'd have been no need to call in the clowns.

The thing is, Nader had a right to run.

And We the People had a right for the votes to be counted.

"Had," in post-Constitutional America, being the operative verb.

Things have changed so much, We the People once had a right not to be killed by the government of the United States without due process or trial and we don't even have to be abroad.

questionseverything

(9,631 posts)
39. we still have those rights theoretically
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 01:00 PM
Jul 2014

there have been no amendments to the Constitution that take away the right to a "mean vote" count (accurate count) or the right of due process....yes bad un Constitutional laws are on the books and yes the SC has made bad decisions but technically we still have those rights,WE THE PEOPLE just haven't found a way to secure them yet

ironically Germany has been a leader in fixing one problem.... and we should follow them


http://www.opednews.com/articles/Germany-bans-computerized-by-Paul-Lehto-090303-583.html


The twin requirements, of constitutional magnitude, of no "specialized technical knowledge" being required for citizens, combined with the constitutional requirement of a publicly observed count as a practical matter make secret vote counting on computers impossible as the primary means of counting. Nor will a paper trail suffice, said the Court, according to reports about the ruling from European media linked below.




As a result, the conclusion is accurate: "electronic voting machines banned in Germany."




Courts, as is usual, don't make peremptory advisory rulings on cases not before them, but the principles strongly affirmed by Germany's highest court, I emphasize, make it impossible that a computerized count (always a secret count, or else one requiring "specialized technical knowledge" to interpret) can never be valid under the law of any REAL democracy.




Apparently, the former Nazi Germany has learned the lessons of democracy's requirements for complete visibility of vote counts. Private votes, PUBLIC Counts.

 

Jim Lane

(11,175 posts)
25. Make that seven. You forgot Katherine Harris.
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 08:45 AM
Jul 2014

It's eight if you count the butterfly ballot woman. I'm not sure about counting her, because even without her they might have been able to steal Florida. If any one of Harris or Nader or SCOTUS had acted differently, however, then Gore would have become President.

 

Jim Lane

(11,175 posts)
16. Why do people defending Nader always raise this straw man?
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 03:05 AM
Jul 2014

For the record, I have never seen a single post on DU contending that Nader did not have a right to run. This "issue" is raised solely by pro-Nader posters.

What I believe:
1. Nader had a right to decide to run in the general election.
2. Nader had a right to decide to run in the Democratic primaries instead of in the general election.
3. Nader had a right to decide not to run at all.

We can criticize Nader's choice about which right to exercise and yet not be contending that he didn't have that right at all.

It's like criticizing George W. Bush's decision to sign a bill that gave huge tax cuts, especially for the rich. As President, he was within his rights to decide to sign the bill (and, of course, before that, to push hard for it). That doesn't stop us from saying he made the wrong choice.

This particular foolish confusion is never, as far as I can remember, trotted out in any context other than defending Nader's choice. On all other subjects, people understand the distinction.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
18. So why say 'Fuck Nader!' when SCOTUS is to blame?
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 07:52 AM
Jul 2014

Nader didn't appoint any of them, let alone vote with them.

 

Jim Lane

(11,175 posts)
24. Revolutionary concept: In a complex situation, there may be more than one person to blame
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 08:33 AM
Jul 2014

Much of this post is cribbed from another post of mine in yet another Nader thread.

One can condemn the Supreme Court decision (as I do) and yet believe that Katherine Harris's illegal voter purge also affected the outcome. One can condemn both SCOTUS and Harris and yet also believe that the butterfly ballot affected the outcome.

Nader made his mark in tort law. An elementary principle of tort law is that an event can have more than one proximate cause.

Let me tell you about a real-life case I worked on. The landlord of an apartment building negligently failed to repair a broken front-door lock. As a result, a nonresident intruder improperly gained entry to the building and sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl who lived in the building. As is customary in such cases, the actual perpetrator had no money, so, on behalf of the girl, we sued the landlord.

You might ask, "Why say 'Fuck the landlord' when the intruder is to blame?"

Fortunately, the law in New York, where this happened, is not that dimwitted. Yes, the intruder was to blame (and the good news is that he was captured and did some time). Nevertheless, the landlord was also to blame, even though all he did was to create the conditions under which the intruder was able to do harm.

In case you miss the analogy, the intruder/sexual perpetrator stands in for the Supreme Court, Katherine Harris, and everyone else you want to implicate in stealing the election. The landlord, who did not commit a crime but without whose bad decision the perpetrator would not have been able to commit the crime, stands in for Nader.

The other good news is that, on behalf of the assault victim, we obtained a substantial sum of money from the landlord. Call our anger misdirected if you will. I think it was the right result.

(I know the analogy isn't perfect. The landlord had a legal duty to repair the lock. Nader did not have a legal duty to refrain from running. My point is that I can still condemn him for a bad decision, and that my doing so does not constitute an exoneration of SCOTUS, any more than your condemnation of SCOTUS constitutes an exoneration of Harris.)

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
26. You are right. Your analogy isn't perfect.
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 08:57 AM
Jul 2014

Blaming Nader helps prevent people from seeing Nader had nothing do with the Supreme Court's decision.

 

Jim Lane

(11,175 posts)
28. You say that Nader had nothing to do with the Supreme Court decision.
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 09:07 AM
Jul 2014

Let me ask you about the point that I care most about: Do you believe that Nader had nothing to do with Bush becoming President?

Please note that I'm not asking you if Nader had a right to run or if Bush v. Gore was wrongly decided or if Gore might have become President had he picked a different running mate. I personally believe all three of those points (while admitting that the third benefits from 20-20 hindsight and even at that is iffy). Of course, I would read with interest anything you say on those three points, but I'm really interested in a narrower question: Do you believe that Nader had nothing to do with Bush becoming President?

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
30. When I first started posting on DU, I blamed Nader because of the votes he garnered.
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 09:22 AM
Jul 2014

Several DUers explained to me that things were more complicated. For instance, what Timothy Noah reported:



"Madame Butterfly" Theresa LePore wasn't always an embattled Palm Beach ballots chief. In the 1980s, she moonlighted as a flight attendant on private planes owned by Saudi weapons dealer Adnan Khashoggi, a middleman in Reagan administration arms sales to Iran.

SOURCE: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2000/12/did_adnan_khashoggi_throw_the_election_to_dubya.html



It's no parlor game, either. "Money trumps peace" thinking led to the death of my friend's brother in Iraq.

Like the DUer said, back then: "You don't steal elections to do good things."
 

morningfog

(18,115 posts)
21. You legtimize Bush with that nonsense.
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 08:04 AM
Jul 2014

The election was either: (1) stolen; or (2) legitimate.

If the former, Nader is irrelevant. If the latter, the Supreme Court decision was irrelevant and Bush won.

But, we know Gore rightfully won the popular vote and electoral vote. Nader spoiled nothing. The election was stolen.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
20. What has Nader ever done?
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 08:01 AM
Jul 2014

Ask Bill Moyers:

...Let’s recall the context: Big Business was being forced to clean up its act. It was bad enough to corporate interests that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had sustained its momentum through Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson. Suddenly this young lawyer named Ralph Nader arrived on the scene, arousing consumers with articles, speeches, and above all, an expose of the automobile industry, Unsafe at Any Speed. Young activists flocked to work with him on health, environmental, and economic concerns. Congress was moved to act. Even Republicans signed on. In l970 President Richard Nixon put his signature on the National Environmental Policy Act and named a White House Council to promote environmental quality. A few months later millions of Americans turned out for Earth Day. Nixon then agreed to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Congress acted swiftly to pass tough new amendments to the Clean Air Act and the EPA announced the first air pollution standards. There were new regulations directed at lead paint and pesticides. Corporations were no longer getting away with murder.

CONTINUED...

http://www.citizenvox.org/2011/11/01/bill-moyers-public-citizen-40th-anniversary-gala-occupy-wall-street-citizens-united-democracy-we-the-people/

 

Bluenorthwest

(45,319 posts)
32. The emphasis on the Nader subplot is used to distract from those who hold culpability
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 10:45 AM
Jul 2014

That theft was a big pile of wrong, so there is plenty of blame to go around and I don't mind Ralph getting a mention along with the rest at all. However to blame him alone is a device of agenda.
My personal ire goes to SCOTUS, Bush, and the hapless saps of the US Senate's Democratic delegation, all of whom refused to stand with the Black Caucus in the House to allow the recount to continue. Joe Biden would not stand with them. Hillary Clinton would not. They voted for war with great ease but they would not stand with the Black Caucus, who was attempting to stand for America. That day, they were the remnant of democracy, the only bit of our government still trying to be of, by and for the people. And not one of those Senators would join them.
Some of those Senators who sat it out and said forget counting the votes now want to stand to be President themselves. Some do not want that day remembered at all. Other potential candidates were Republicans who voted for all of the Presidents that stacked the court with dogma. Today, they say 'I am shocked at the result of my votes for anti choice bigots' but that just means they make some very shortsighted and dimwitted decisions.
So they want to blame Nader, who was never anymore than a footnote to anyone but Ralph and the DU Ralphaholics. The only time I hear mention of Nader for the last 5 years is here on DU, when folks hoist him up to distract from the great crimes and betrayals of election 2000. He has zero current importance, while many who made the decision not to count the votes are currently very much in the news......

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
46. Thank you, Bluenorthwest.
Thu Jul 3, 2014, 02:33 PM
Jul 2014

All that Ralph Nader has done is the work of Democracy -- from consumer protection and product safety to clean elections and democratic government.

Project VOTE SMART details his positions and budget priorities.

Those who bother to open up the link will see that Nader puts the People ahead of profit, peace and prosperity ahead of "money trumps peace," and has a personal characteristic called "Integrity."

Truth be told, Nader sounds more like a Democrat than most who call themselves that.

 

JEB

(4,748 posts)
38. And fuck the SC, Harris, Brooks Bros. rioters, and pretty much half the people in Florida.
Wed Jul 2, 2014, 12:39 PM
Jul 2014

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
43. Joe Lieberman, the Senator from ENRON, let Bush, Kenny Boy and Rigged Energy Markets off Scott-free
Thu Jul 3, 2014, 12:40 PM
Jul 2014
Lieberman in Enronland

It has come to this: The investigation of Enron as a political scandal appears for now to depend on Senator Joseph Lieberman, an Enron Democrat who bagged Enron campaign contributions and who worked hard to block accounting reforms. Lieberman's committee agreed to issue subpoenas seeking information that could shed light on Enron contacts with the White House, but the question is, How hard is he willing to push?

CONTINUED...

The guy carried a lot of water for the BFEE. Big Time.

Response to Octafish (Original post)

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
44. Let's ask John Roberts, if only he were sentient he could tell us about HIS ROLE...
Thu Jul 3, 2014, 12:43 PM
Jul 2014
Roberts had larger 2000 recount role The role of U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts in the 2000 election aftermath in Florida was larger than has been reported.

Roberts helped prepare the Supreme Court case.

By MARC CAPUTO
Miami Herald
July 28, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts played a broader behind-the-scenes role for the Republican camp in the aftermath of the 2000 election than previously reported — as legal consultant, lawsuit editor and prep coach for arguments before the nation’s highest court, according to the man who drafted him for the job.

Ted Cruz, a domestic policy advisor for President Bush and who is now Texas’ solicitor general, said Roberts was one of the first names he thought of while he and another attorney drafted the Republican legal dream team of litigation ’’lions’’ and ’’800-pound gorillas,’’ which ultimately consisted of 400 attorneys in Florida.

Until now, Gov. Jeb Bush and others involved in the election dispute could recall almost nothing of Roberts’ role, except for a half-hour meeting the governor had with Roberts. Cruz said Roberts was in Tallahassee helping the Bush camp for ’’a week to 10 days,’’ and that his help was important, though Cruz said it is difficult to remember specifics five years after the sleep-depriving frenetic pace of the 2000 recount.

SNIP...

’’He’s one of the best brief writers in the country. Just like a good journalist or a novelist, he can write with clarity, concisely and can paint a picture with words,’’ said Cruz. Roberts, a constitutional-law expert in a top Washington law firm at the time, is now a federal appeals court judge in D.C. Roberts was a no-brainer for the recount effort: His win-loss record at the U.S. Supreme Court was one of the most impressive. And, like Cruz, he was a member of a tight-knit circle of former clerks for the court’s chief justice, William Rehnquist — a group jokingly referred to as ``the cabal.’’
SNIP...

Republicans such as Jeb Bush, though, say they’ve "moved on.’"

CONTINUED...

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7228
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