Not to be unnecessarily controversial, but I believe that Venezuelan owned "Citgo" now provides low cost heating to many low income Americans.

(The preceding was not a paid advertisement).

Okay, you speak of "working from the ground up, electing Green and Peace and Freedom leaders at the local and state level, a goal that is... "achieveable", and "effective." I like the sentiment, and I can see you are a thoughtful, intelligent guy, but here we have a fundamental difference of opinion on the facts. I live in New York, and I have had my eye on state politics for a while. In 2006 Senator Clinton ran for reelection. A New York City guy named Jonathan Tasini challenged her. He is a really progressive, really smart guy, backed by some prominent people, got 40,000 signatures to put his name on the ballot, and begged her to debate him. He especially wanted to talk about some controversial issues, like the Iraq War, and Hillary's support of Israel in the Lebanon War, her failure to vote against cluster bombs in civilian areas, etc. He was especially poised to debate her unabashed support of the Israeli government, since he is Jewish and grew up in Israel. The New York Times, Newsday, Albany Times Union, League of Women Voters, etc. all demanded that she debate him. Her people kept putting him off, saying "we'll just see how the campaign develops." Time Warner finally said that they wouldn't sponser a debate, because he hadn't raised enough money. (Mind you, they had sponsered a similar debate with a candidate who had not shown as much support, either in polling data or in his petitions, because the candidate had raised a certain sum of money, mostly in LARGE CONTRIBUTIONS. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm unlikely to throw money at a candidate anyway; I prefer to leaflet/knock on doors, etc. The two times I have contributed (just $200 each time) only came after I knew their entire platform and had seen them debate. So here we have a system with a corporation arbitrarily determining who can get media coverage for a debate, which is important, because 1.media conglomeration has continued unabated since the Clinton years, and the public should have some say in these decisions, since we license these guys to operate 2. Time Warner had contributed to the Clinton campaign, and 3. The media outlets have something obvious to gain from the opposing candidates raising more and more money in order to compete each election cycle. Every time the bar is lifted, more paid advertisements are guaranteed. (By the way, the League of Women Voters likewise offered to sponser a debate, and that offer was ignored). At the same time that Tasini and his supporters were experiencing this, working night and day to get the word out about their candidate, and begging for debates to no avail, her campaign, which already had millions of dollars at their disposal, were receiving checks like from Barack Obama's Hopefund, for thousands of dollars. If you have ever worked on a campaign, you know how slowly donations trickle in, especially without media coverage. Why exactly would Obama find it necessary to give Hillary thousands of dollars of "hope", especially considering that she already had, like 50 times the funds of her opponent? Did he do a lot of research first, determining that she was truly the best candidate? What prayer do grassroots candidates have competing against entrenched incumbents, if the incumbents only need to rely on the hopes of their "friends"? Not to condescend to you, but you do know that these Pacs are essentially corporate bribe clubs, that the corporations don't donate to Obama's Pac for altruitstic purposes? And B. Obama has steadily doled out money to corporate candidates OVER grassroots candidates. And he's not the only one. I believe most Congressmen have their own individual Pac. And they all know that they need to support all of their fellow party members up for reelection, regardless of whether these are the best candidates. And their friends will throw the money right back at them. That's how the financing rules work. The whole Mr. Smith goes to Washington is an absolute impossibility today, unless Mr. Smith happens to be independently wealthy. I actually am not sure that Mr. Obama's candidacy would be better than McCain's in this respect, because he really is not addressing the underlying problem, for fear, I believe, of alienating his colleagues. In some respects it would be far worse, because people have the misperception that he is a progressive, rendering the real progressive movement somewhat impotent to fight for real change.

You are an absolute treasure, Ralph Nader. I just saw you on the Daily Show, and I was impressed as usual. However, my husband and I are of the opinion that you didn't consider your audience demographic enough These are young people, probably not working class people, probably unconcerned with OSHA standards and the like. I think you would do really well attracting young people by focusing on really big, controversial issues, like the Constitutional duty to impeach, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the real causes of 9-11 (which absolutely nobody wants to talk about), Obama's Hopefund Pac, (which he uses to fund corporate incumbents, at the expense of grass roots progressives), which I think is really important, but not addressed in the mainstream press, which only notices blatant violations of the law. Anyway, you are superb, I just want people to understand the necessity of your presence in this race, and I think most Daily Show watchers don't care about some of the more arcane issues. Just to reiterate, I think Obama's progressive supporters really need to be informed about the Hopefund Pac. Just to give a couple of examples: he contributed money and support to Joe Lieberman over Ned Lamont, Hillary Clinton over her grassroots challenger, Jonathan Tasini, (who had begged her over and over for a debate, to no avail). He backs all of his Democratic colleagues up for reelection. This is a well known game to keep each other in office, knowing that they will help you in return. It has absolutely nothing to do with getting the best, most progressive people in Congress, and the amount of money involved makes it exceedingly more difficult for non-wealthy candidates to run. Like Hillary and Lieberman really needed contributions from Obama's Pac? Because they didn't already have enough unearned advantage over their opponents? Please read the Harper's Article by Ken Silverstein: Barack Obama: The Making of a Washington Machine. Disturbing stuff.

Please, please, please, please post the blogs. Some of us are starving for feedback . It would really energize me to have a real back and forth exchange. Isn't there anyway you could allow us to instantly post, and then allow items to be flagged if inappropriate, like on craigslist? I have found that certain arguments are more effective than others, and would really like Democrats who are threatened by Nader's presence in the race to see our responses and have a chance to critique them. For example, Aaron posted 11 hours ago, and I am concerned that he won't keep checking to see if someone has responded. I have written a few times about a couple of different things, (such as to ask if you have any gear for sale) and have received no response at all. I absolutely adore Nader and the cause, so I'm not going away, but I'm concerned about people like Edwards or R. Paul supporters who might be curious and try to post and attempt to contact you and hear nothing and ultimately go elsewhere, never to return.

Is there any way we could speed up the postings? It would be nice to actually have some sort of discussion.

Aaron, please take a look at Mr. Clinton's foreign policy. No one at the time, even those scared of the prospects of a Bush presidency, was concerned that he was an imperialist. Most of his comments were in fact isolationist. We did know that Gore was in favor of continuing the policies that directly caused 9/11. Do you honestly need reminding who he chose as a running mate? What kind of message do you think that sent to the Arab world, who were already seething under our completely immoral (according to some administration officials, who felt obliged to resign, GENOCIDAL policies). Do you need reminding that when asked if the Iraq sanctions policy, which denied things like catheters and kidney dialysis machines to sick children, which killed upwards of 500,000 children alone, were worth it, said yes? (Before she was hounded to apologize). Can you imagine a policy that killed half a million British children, and had shown no positive results whatsoever, being characterized as "worth it?" Do I seriously need to remind you that the war could never have been waged by an educated and alert Democratic Congress. Did you happen to see Hillary Clinton's speech at the time? When she claimed that it was an "indisputable" fact that Saddam Hussein had given aid to Al Qaeda? Do I need to remind you that most Gore Democrats supported the War at the time it was waged? Do you think most Nader supporters did? If the average Democrat had actually thought about what Nader was saying, about our Israeli policies, our coddling of right wing dictatorships, the Iraqi sanctions, opinions which are shared by the bulk of the educated, civilized world, this war would never have been waged. Indeed, 9/11 would never have happened. If average Democrats had sought out non-corporate news, as Nader's base does, we would have been able effectively resisted this madness. It is your (I am speaking to Gore voters as a group) perpetual failure to heed his warnings about the need for real participatory democracy, for real opposition parties, for a vigorous, challenging, non-corporate press that created this disaster. If you Gore voters had listened a little bit, and joined us on the streets, it would not have mattered what George Bush and Company thought. Remember how little resistance there actually was? It was disproportionately made up of Nader supporters, who know so much more history, seek out so much more hard news, that it honestly leaves most of us stunned at the low level of debate we need to begin with when dealing with you. If you Gore voters had demanded just a little bit more of Al Gore, and not allowed him to completely take real progressive voters for granted, not only would he have won us over, but most terrorist threats would have long ago been eliminated. It is the average education level of our citizenry that was to blame for the 2000 election, and not just on the Republican side.