Unless I have fallen for an unusually elaborate hoax, Ralph Nader is about to release a novel …
“In a high mountain redoubt above the Alenuihaha Channel, seventeen megamillionaires and billionaires sat on a wide balcony overlooking the lush green island of Maui and the far Pacific Ocean. They were alike in only three ways: they were old, very rich, and very unrepresentative of humanity, which they intended to save from itself. The man behind the gathering, the richest of them all, was Warren Buffet, who had rented the entire premises of a small luxury hotel for that January 2006 weekend… ” — Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!
“Since the Progressive Era, Ralph Nader has done more than anyone else to protect American consumers. With this utopian fantasy, he shows us how good he thinks things could be.” — Warren Beatty
“A high-spirited visionary romp melding the wisdom, humour and imagination of Ralph Nader. May it inspire action.” — Patti Smith
Also among the Seventeen Meliorists are Paul Newman, George Soros, and Sol Price. The book is 736 pages long, and will be “backed by a major promotional budget.”
Possibly funded by a previously-hidden TARP clause, to be known as the Satirists’ Full Employment Act.
Linkmeister
That’s the best the publisher could do for blurbs? An old actor and an old punk rocker?
jack neoff
What ever good Ralph did has been wiped out by his tilting at windmills. The tired old queen is Lady Mcbeth and the blood wont wash off his hands
Brachiator
I’ll wait for the movie. But only if it stars Johnny Depp and is directed by Michael Bay.
Dayv
Is that the best Nader could do for a title? I think satire works best when it isn’t so groan-inducingly earnest and obvious. Sadly, no matter how good it ends up being, I think this will only be read by those who already agree with Nader’s points.
Also, I kind of don’t expect it to be good, but I’m a cynic.
robertdsc
I’d read it if I found a copy in one of my used bookstores.
flavortext
What is this, a liberal version of “Atlas Shrugged”?
JK
OT
Check the weird cover of the new book by sicko demagogue Glenn Beck
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Arguing-with-Idiots/Glenn-Beck/e/9781416595014
JR
I saw Nader a few months ago signing books in Union Station in DC. He looked very lonely, facing the Amtrak platforms in that sad little newsstand, nobody coming to talk to him. I was tempted to go thank him for that totally awesome eight year-long Bush Administration, but I supposed he’d been thanked enough by all the passers-by who just shook their heads in sorrow and disgust when they saw him.
Mark S.
From looking inside the book, some of the other mega-millionaires include Ted Turner, George Soros, Bill Cosby, Phil Donahue, Yoko Ono, and Ross Perot.
Did Oprah get invited? Or was she not old enough?
Shalimar
If the time was January 2006, I think they have already failed considering how far downhill we have gone since then.
JR
flavortext:
When it’s time to pick a more liberal version of Rand, I nominate Neal Stephenson for the job.
Morfydd
Well, at least Stephenson has the “say interminably for 100 pages what could be said in 10” down…
freelancer
Jesus,
I take a social night, on a Monday, and the site (owner) pulls an all-nighter goes apeshit with a million posts. Normally, I wouldn’t be bitching, but there isn’t more than one thread to be had between 5-8pm CST in the last 6 months.
So, officially, here, is my stated WAHHHHHHHHHHH! [cough] WHAHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Pencil me in for a bitch session.
Yeah I know shit’s fucked up. I know peoples’ shits real emotional right now, but we got this guy “Not Sure”, and any minute now, he’s gonna have me recanting Bill Hicks’s prayer for Nuclear Holocaust for the entire planet.
*****
In the meantime, for those who crave some escapism, I still cannot believe how fucking funny and relevant the show Psych continues to be to my generation and the literate world at large.
freelancer
@Morfydd:
and by god, as soon as I’m done with the irrefutable, anti-globalization, anti-capitalist, anti-free market/free trade tome that is Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine; I feel like at that point I’ll need some literary escapism so I will begin Neal’s Snow Crash. Go me.
freelancer
@JK:
Parker:
http://www.popgeezer.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/leverage_beth-riesgraf-4_ph-michael-muller.jpg
Maggie Lawson:
http://www.celebs101.com/gallery/Maggie_Lawson/167007/Maggie_Lawson_6.jpg
Evangeline Lilly:
http://crashlanden.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/evangeline_lilly_7.jpg
Warren Terra
I have come to the conclusion that Nader is some weird life form that lacks all shame and lives by absorbing the hatred of others that he has so richly earned. Otherwise he’d go the fnck away already.
Viva BrisVegas
Isn’t a megamillionaire the same as a billionaire?
Dustin
Paul Newman? Seriously, who the fuck rags on Paul Newman?
Warren Terra
@ Viva BrisVegas, #15
No, I think a megamillionaire must be a trillionaire. You’re confusing it with a kilomillionaire, which would be a billionaire.
I suppose this makes me a multi-millimillionaire.
simonee
I can’t believe I’m going to defend Nader, but here it goes:
He is despicable at times (see: election night, 2008), but his whole premise is that there needs to be a voice to challenge the mainstream from the left and call out folks for the soshulism-for-me-capitalism-for-thee mentality. And that’s something I can agree with.
The trouble with Nader is that while his causes are noble, his tactics are completely self-defeating: he believes that censorship has hurt our political discourse, yet he singlehandedly has done more to shutdown debate and cause the censorship of 3rd party candidates. Not to mention, his hubris reaches Bush-level heights.
MikeJ
An American billion is only 1,000 million. Mega is the prefix for million, so a mega millionaire would have one million million which could be expressed as
1000 1000 million
or 1000 billion
or 1 trillion which is what the brits call 1 billion.
So yes, they would be billionaires, but not in the usual US sense of the word. Or rather that and then 1000 times more.
Of course I doubt he actually meant “megamillionaire” and it was merely the way a person who doesn’t understand numbers says “a lot”. /pedant
Andre
I’m currently reading Eon by Greg Bear. In an alternate future, Nader is a martyr in a nuclear war who inspires a large percentage of humanity (a majority at one point) to give up technological advancement and live as 20th-century capitalism intended.
Seriously.
geemoney
@Andre: Good luck with Eon. That and Benford’s Galactic Center series just didn’t do it for me. In fact, most of Benford’s stuff just doesn’t do it for me, but it comes highly recommended, so maybe it’s just me. What I am really digging is Matthew Stover’s Caine books. The second is near-impossible to find at a reasonable price, and I haven’t read the third (yet), but good night, that man can tell a story.
I am also making my way slowly through A People’s History, and it seems like every couple of pages there is something in there that should be posted on this site, since it’s relevant to what is being discussed. It makes me think that sometimes it’s just the names that change.
JGabriel
jack neoff:
My guess is that most of the people saved by Nader’s activism are still alive. I don’t think that can be wiped out no matter how many windmills he tilts at.
I really can’t get behind ridiculing Nader. Maybe it’s because I’m just barely old enough to remember the 70’s, but as irrelevant as he may have become over the last decade, Nader saved countless lives in the course of his consumer protection work, especially in his environmental and automobile safety activism.
So if Nader wants to write a satire of the rich, I say let him. I probably won’t read it, but it’s certainly better than picking on the weak, the poor, and the powerless – like P. J. O’Rourke, the GOP, and the cast of the Fox News Channel do.
.
JGabriel
simonee:
Heh, I know how you feel.
.
harlana pepper
Can we just accept Nader for the good stuff he’s done, realizing he is a flawed human being and not candidate material? Nader is an agitant, which, I guess is why he pisses people off. We need more agitants in the political sphere. Unfortunately, that causes a lot of beltway pearl-clutching and we can’t have that.
harlana pepper
@JGabriel: yup, what you said
geg6
Ralph used to do good. Ralph hasn’t done much but destruction for the last decade. Ralph should just disappear so I won’t remember the burning hate I had for him in 2000. In other news of the absurd, apparently Sean Hannity is throwing his hat in the ring for 2012. Obviously, the Manatee doesn’t think Palin, Gingrich, and Huckabee will be bringing enough of the crazy, so he’s gonna save the day.
harlana pepper
@simonee: I don’t see how Nader or his candidacy or activism ever shut out third party candidates or created censorship issues. Did I miss something?
simonee
@harlana pepper: precisely.
harlana pepper
@geg6: I’d save that burning hatred for the more deserving Bushies who engineered the election
JGabriel
geg6:
… according to World Nut Daily (Printable Version, so we won’t increase their ad revenue).
I’m pretty sure they’re not a reliable source, though it appears to be true that Hannity wouldn’t rule it out … if God asked him.
Frankly, I don’t think God will. I don’t think God loves me that much.
.
simonee
@harlana pepper: Well, I guess I was trying to say that his candidacy has turned more people off from looking at 3rd party candidates because of the fallout from the 2000 election.
I think we as a society are more likely to agree with (or not give a shit) when the media keeps 3rd party candidates from debating mainstream candidates, even though reversing that has been Nader’s crusade.
harlana pepper
@simonee: Make no mistake, the msm hates ALL third party candidates b/c they gots no $.
SiubhanDuinne
@ geemoney / 6:23 am
Who is the author of “A People’s History” and is there a subtitle? I just searched on Google and Amazon, and there are lots of books with those three words as part of the title but I couldn’t identify which you were referring to. Thanks in advance!
harlana pepper
Just look at what the msm did to Howard Dean in 2004. Dean was a moderate Dem governor at the time who happened to oppose the Iraq war. That was his great sin. Well, that and the fact that he planned to break up media monopolies (the death knell). He was eviscerated. Now we turn our eyes to him on the health care debate, looking for encouragement and hope. This “insane” man, who the WH would do well to consult on the issue.
What’s so fascinating is that the media hasn’t even noticed that everybody now wants the advice and opinions of this “crazy” person and he’s all over the talks shows, etc. I haven’t heard one talking/bobble head question the wisdom of seeking Howard Dean’s counsel.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@JK: I bet a million dollars he’s not wearing any pants.
A Mom Anon
@SiubhanDuinne:
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn is the first one that I think of.
JGabriel
SiubhanDuinne @ 35: A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn.
(Also at Google Books)
Scott
I wish some crazy publisher somewhere would publish my half-assed sci-fi fan-fiction opus. Mine has rocketships, robot bears, and a threesome with Scarlett Johansson, Megan Fox, and Jean Grey.
WereBear
If Nader had stayed a consumer advocate, maybe he could have helped during all those recalls that were so rampant during the Bush years… the spinach, peanut butter, and pet food scandals that were so devastating.
Getting into politics himself seems to have brought out his Dark Side.
Over Macho Grande? I’ll NEVER get over Macho Grande 2000!
Thunderbird
Well, at least Stephenson has the “say interminably for 100 pages what could be said in 10” down…
Yup. My neighbor recommended Cryptonomicon to me, and I think I made it about 50 pages before I quit out of frustration.
asiangrrlMN
I think (and I thought) that Nader was ill-suited for politics. After his ugliness in 2008, I just want him to go back to advocating for the consumer and to walk away from politics completely. I go not hatred for the man, but I also have no love for him, either.
Napoleon
@Scott:
Hum – your book has some interesting themes.
geemoney
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s by Howard Zinn. Reading it probably seals the deal that I am a so$hulist, but I find it’s really good for a different perspective on the history that I learned in school.
drillfork
People more responsible than Ralph Nader for the 2000 coup:
* Karl Rove, Katherine Harris and the other scum that rigged the election.
* MSM.
* Al fucking Gore. Or did you think that Joe Lie-berman as VP was a good idea? And do you remember the way Gore valiantly contested the results? Oh yeah.
Blaming Ralph Nader for the 2000 election is the height of scapegoating. But what ever makes you feel better…
drillfork
@drillfork:
Hate me for the opinion, but not the formatting. I tried to make a bulleted list with asterisks, and the whole thing blew up…
JGabriel
@drillfork:
Please don’t forget: George Bush, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Howard Baker, Ted Olson, Antonin Scalia, William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, and Sandra Day O’Connor.
.
geemoney
@drillfork: People here hate on WordPress, but I like how it keeps you on your toes. If WordPress was a DVD, these would be Easter Eggs.
JGabriel
geemoney:
But it doesn’t keep us on our toes. WordPress drags us to our knees, crying over and picking up our broken texts, apologizing to others for the ugly formatting and mangled meaning it inflicted upon our words.
It is a: SCOURGE! It must be eliminated! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE
.
JGabriel
See how it dropped my last exclamation point!
Bastard.
.
Ash Can
@geg6:
Oh, that would be wonderful. Imagine the debates. Everyone trying to out-shout and out-mean each other. Like one big teabagger townhall fest. All they’d need is a
jellomud pit.arguingwithsignposts
@JGabriel:
Actually, I’m not sure that is WordPress proper that is the cause of the problems, but some plug-ins or other coding that jacks with the formatting. Also, the edit plug-in got fux0red with a malware attack, iirc.
WordPress is a pretty decent blog platform. People around here forget the days of Blogger’s interminable shutdowns and haloscan comment problems, and moveable type’s decision to start charging for their platform. Also, how much worse WordPress was way back in the day.
gnomedad
@drillfork:
Republican skullduggery, the MSM, and Ralph Nader. Like the “fire triangle” they teach you about in grammar school. Take away any of them, no W. Sigh.
arguingwithsignposts
BTW, I forget who originally mentioned it, but whoever it was, the Text Formatting Toolbar extension for Firefox is a blessing, even though WP doesn’t apparently recognize the strikethrough tag.
arguingwithsignposts
@gnomedad:
Well, except for the 49.9 percent of Americans who voted for him.
gnomedad
@JK: @arguingwithsignposts:
I though Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and that Gore would have carried Florida, hanging chads or no, but for Nader. Am I wrong?
gnomedad
@JK:
Can we call Glenn Beck “the cross-dressing Commie” from now on?
(“@jk” in #57 was a typo. Bring back edit!)
arguingwithsignposts
Also, Bob Herbert’s column this morning about our two forgotten wars.
I mentioned this in a thread the other day about NPR where David Frum talked about our “peacetime economy.” This weekend I asked a group of students if anyone knew how many American soldiers had been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not one person knew.
arguingwithsignposts
@gnomedad:
Sorry, that was 47.87 percent of the popular vote (source). Gore got 48.38, and Nader got 2.7.
Assuming that all of the Nader voters went to Gore, he would have had a larger percentage of popular vote. But Nader didn’t win any electoral votes at all. He did pull 2 percent in Florida, which had the tied electoral vote.
While it’s true that Nader probably contributed to Gore’s loss, my point was that there was still about half of the country who voted for GWB. If they hadn’t voted for the man, we wouldn’t be in this mess either.
(disclaimer: I do not think I voted in 2000 [foggy memory], but I did vote for Bush in 2004 because I was an idiot at the time. I will rue that decision for the rest of my life. Although, voting in a heavily red southern state, if I’d voted differently, it wouldn’t have swung the state)
JGabriel
HuffPo seems quite shocked that Occidental College is offering a course in Stupidity.
I don’t why this is so surprising. Regents University offers a post-graduate degree in it.
.
arguingwithsignposts
@JGabriel:
It’s the basis for Liberty U.’s entire curriculum. Bob Jones U. too.
SiubhanDuinne
Thanks, everyone, for the :oward Zinn info. That was definitely one of the ones that came up in my search but there were also things like APH of Europe and APH of the World, and similar, by different authors. Anyhow, somehow I’ve managed to miss Zinn so I shall have a look. Thx again.
JGabriel
gnomedad:
Nah, he’s a dead ringer for Mussolini. Intentionally.
We’ll have to call him: the Transvestite Il Duce. Or maybe “Il Tranny” for short.
.
JGabriel
arguingwithsignposts:
Exactly! Why should Oxy get grief and attention for teaching a mere course in Stupidity.
Oxy is doing a public service with this course. What with the professionalization of stupidity in the winger class (almost 35% of the US population), it seems like a course in how to recognize and deal with it should be a requirement in every school.
.
WingNutz
@JK: Wow. Projection personified. What a dipshit.
Libertini
@JGabriel: I’m with you.
Shalimar
Nader is a narcissist of the first order. For most of his career, he was the best kind of narcissist, one pursuing noble goals whose vast ego and self-confidence enabled him to achieve things no sane person would have ever managed. This even applies to a certain degree to his run in 2000. Having an alternative to the 2 corporate parties is theoretically a good thing although it doesn’t work that way in practice because in a 2 party system the 3rd candidate will mostly undermine his supporters’ 2nd choice and give the election to the other side.
By 2004, I think the criticism had pushed him over the edge to pursuing ends that solely gratified his own ego instead of serving any kind of social good. Like cooperating with Republican operatives to get himself on ballots where all he could accomplish was helping Bush. That doesn’t undermine everything he did earlier in life, but it does leave a bad image Nader now among the people who should be his biggest supporters. It’s a shame, he deserved better.
Comrade Darkness
@MikeJ: Of course I doubt he actually meant “megamillionaire” and it was merely the way a person who doesn’t understand numbers says “a lot”. /pedant
One . . . Two . . . Many . . . Lots . . . Megalots?
joes527
What? Walden Two and Atlas Shrugged weren’t enough to kill this genre?
Well, I wish Nader luck at pounding a stake through the heart of it where Skinner and Rand failed.
burnspbesq
@harlana pepper:
No no no no no, you’re not getting by with that canard.
97,488 Floridians voted for Nader for President in 2000.
As part of its exit polling, CNN asked people who self-identified as Nader voters who they would have voted for if Nader had been on the ballot. The responses broke better than six to one for Gore.
Do the arithmetic. No Nader on the ballot, and Gore wins Florida by at least 70,000 votes.
Ralph Nader is directly and personally responsible for everything that happened in this country between January 20, 2001 and January 20, 2009.
There is no colorable argument to the contrary.
ominira
@JR: A few years ago, my friend and her father were on the same flight as Nader, going into Springfield Massachusetts. As they were getting off the plane, her father recognized Nader and exclaimed before his daughter could stop him: “You! You are responsible for Gore losing. What do you have to say for yourself?” My friend was mortified. Nader hurried off without responding. Seemed like he was quite used to that reaction.
daryljfontaine
@JGabriel: I’m gonna go with “Il Douche.”
D
ricky
I am glad to know we were saved back in 2006. Thank God Ralph Nader spared my from the Pontiac Tempest my Dad taught me to drive in and the Corvair Dad bought me when I got my license. I have now lived long enough to enjoy Nader’s literary fruit.
Throwin Stones
This is open, right? Right?
US District Court orders The Fed to disclose details of its emergency loan program to financial institutions.
Wonder how this will play out?
Throwin Stones
This is open, right? Right?
US District Court orders The Fed to disclose details of its emergency loan program to financial institutions.
Wonder how this will play out? Details on bloomberg.com. C’mon blogmistress, can we step it up? :)
Brachiator
@arguingwithsignposts:
Also, Bob Herbert’s column this morning about our two forgotten wars.
There seems to be much more vigorous debate about Afghanistan in the UK press. Here, even with Obama in office, the spirit of the times seems to be that “supporting the troops” means that you can never discuss larger issues.
I’m not sure about a couple of Herbert’s assertions, including this one:
However, it is certainly worth thinking about and considering future directions in foreign policy.
HyperIon
@harlana pepper: it seems to me that if you are gonna hate on someone, hate on the people who voted for Nader or hate on the people who didn’t. but the guy himself? i don’t get it.
in a democracy voters control election outcomes.
duh.
Mario
What would Nader do with healthcare?
What would Nader do with the bank bailouts?
What would Nader do with DADT and the DOMA?
What would Nader do with Yoo and torture?
Isn’t that what you are expecting (and not getting) from Obama?
Nader was and IS a good man. He talks the talk, he walks the walk. You could have done much worse (and you did) when choosing somebody to change the USA.
scott
All of you Obama voters have got some unbelievable nerve ridiculing Ralph Nader. I tried convincing my Democrat friends that Obama was all hat and no cattle, to no avail.
And what had Obama delivered so far?
-major bailouts to the financial industry, w/taxpayer $$
-an expansion of the war in Afghanistan
-a continuation of the majority of Bush’s executive power doctrines
-a massively watered-down climate change bill
-and most recently, utter capitulation to the insurance industry on health care reform (and an incredibly poor sales job to the public on why reform is critical)
But, you know, since he gives great speeches, everything is OK.
Oh, and a $4500 credit for vehicle trade-ins. So there’s that.
Jon H
@JGabriel: “I really can’t get behind ridiculing Nader. Maybe it’s because I’m just barely old enough to remember the 70’s, but as irrelevant as he may have become over the last decade, Nader saved countless lives in the course of his consumer protection work, especially in his environmental and automobile safety activism.”
Unfortunately, having long since taken down the low-hanging fruit, his organization is now pretty much going after questionable threats, and causing medicines to be removed from the market despite there being no alternatives for some people, due to rare incidence of complications. (Much rarer than, say, Tylenol.)
(Case in point, a medication for narcolepsy.)
Nader’s at the point where his do-gooding is hurting people.
Travis
@Mario: Ooh! Ooh! I know the answer. He would do what he has done for his entire public career: focus everything on some point of perfection that isn’t achievable in practice, vilify people who disagreed with his means, and then walk away when it all went to shit. Net result: he gets to think of himself as the moral hero, public policy is pretty much the same or worse afterwards. Some people are duped and remain fans, other stare in slack-mouthed horror at the narcissism and pointlessness.
In addition to the Gore/Bush business, I would add to the bill of charges that Nader is personally responsible for California’s lack of no-fault insurance. He felt it was important that everyone retain the right to sue, no matter what the cost.
Travis
@scott: The story’s not over with Obama.
You left off that he acted decisively and appropriately to head off the worst recession in many decades by getting a workable stimulus package through. Most people aren’t going to give him any credit for that, because they don’t see how big the cliff we were tiptoeing past. I think it was extremely impressive, he avoided the dangers of waiting, he negotiated a reasonable package, and he worked with the republicans.
Many people are conflating Obama’s stimulus package with the financial industry support taken by Bush and Obama. They’re separate things, entirely. The latter is much more controversial, I’ll grant, even though I still disagree with you about the need for it.
ksmiami
Ralph frikkin Nader isn’t man enough to wipe the gum off Warren Buffet’s shoes. Buffet and his wife played a HUGE role in getting planned parenthood and womens’ reproductive rights off the ground. Plus, he uses his position to be a pretty good manager and a decent contributor to the national debate. Nader is a deranged egomaniac whose inflicted damage far surpasses any good he did way back when.
Will
I recommend the title “Asshole McGee”.
Brachiator
@scott:
Well, let’s see. Obama got elected president of the United States.
On the other side, Ralph ran around for years whining that he couldn’t even get invited to presidential debates.
Yeah, we got some nerve.
b-psycho
@JK: Nice subtitle. “How to stop small minds & big government”…with him pictured directly underneath making a silly face while dressed like a standard-issue military-regime leader.
What’s next? A book called “Smutbusters: Stopping the pornification of America” with the author on the cover butt-fucking Jayden James?