Why do people like Ralph Nader and Jane Fonda switch sides?

Greed?

Ego?

Wealth?

Cynicism?

Duplicity?

Outright hatred?


Don't they know that such turning will only lead to people questioning their validity or intentions? Or even their personal honor and integrity?

I'm confused.

So would Norm Coleman be. Once a big Dem now a big Repuke; the repukes keep him only because he's of use to them. For now. To keep turning MN from a blue state to a blood-red one. The Dems won't want him back... I hope.

"I'm confused."

I can see that. I'll try to help you.

Ralph Nader is opposed to the Bush governments domestic and foreign policies. I suppose you could make the argument that Nader has been a consistent opponent of the Bush government because of personal hatred but I think it goes far deeper than that.

Has Jane Fonda "switched sides" and become a supporter of the Bush government? I don't think so.

I sure hope you don't support those Senate Democrats who have voted for Bush's appointments and legislative agenda. That probably gets Ralph Nader and many other progressives, both inside and outside of the Democratic Party, really pissed. I know I am. How bout yourself?

Didn't you hear her on her book tour lately?

She says she is still a feminist and her politics haven't changed.

and see post 15, why is she now oh-so-lovey-dovey for * and Pickles?

Pickles did a hit and run and killed in that process! There's also a nice Oprah episode that Pickles was on, some time after 9/11 (a month or two) and was looked at incredulously after she made one of her typically dumb remarks. I don't recall the details but I've a friend who's got it on tape. But she's a psycho. Then and now.

* cheated and schmoozed (and coked) to get out of Vietnam when not running down every business handed to him, America not excepted.

I see nothing of those two that makes them even remotely nice.

Yet she thinks she'd like him and is apparently now a suck-up for Pickles. Oh joy.

Fonda is out for herself, that much seems just about certain, And somehow thinking her latest actions are going to change a lot of Vietnam vets' minds for the better. I know a couple at work; they see no reason to change their minds. Her recent actions (see post 15 for the link) made me change mine, albeit knee-jerkingly, but even so... I'm not fond of Jane anymore.

I still adore her movies, especially "9 to 5", but as a person she's flipped. Big time.

None of us DUers go around praising Pickles and saying how her approval rating should be higher! I will say she and * are perfect for each other. Both insensitive and out for themselves and destructive toward everything they touch. Jane can have them.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=3248204

Sounds like she has to me.

peace

Have you not been paying attention to anything?????? I think she's pretty clear where she stands on things.

life of me imagine why Jane would say ..she'd like bush if they were alone or whatever..the bushsits are all about scamming America out of our Democratic Principles and killing innocents for oil..so what could anyone what to be alone with him for?

I don't approve of anyone wanting to be chummy with the chimp or his stepford wife.

But don't let that stop the smear campaign against Nader and all other progressives who refused to get whipped up into a mindless and irrational frenzy of support for our great white savior, John Kerry.

:thumbsup:

How about all the money he took from the right wing in this last election? He's out for Nader, no one else, that was very clear.

zalinda

NEWSFLASH: nader is one of the biggest critics of politics as usual their is.

he wanted to partner up with the big-tent party but the elite wouldn't have him nor his constituents.

sounds like the third-way elite don't know how to play nice with others.

peace

Or was it just mindless?

The only thing Ralph consistently suppports is himself.

""Was Ralph in an irrational frenzy when he took all that repug $?"

Let's see here. John Kerry accepted over 10 million dollars in Republican money and set-up a Republicans for Kerry campaign committee.

Ralph Nader took about $100,000 in donations from Republicans who were pissed off with Bush's policies.

Now what is your point?

I sure hope you take a stand against Democratic Senators who vote with Republicans to adopt Bush's foreign and domestic policy agenda.

You don't have a problem with that? I do. And so do many other progressives including Ralph Nader.

Doesn't mean I'd support him. Only that if he's dumb enough to hand me his money I'll gladly use it. Most likely to donate to whoever is running against him.

I'm not even a fan of Ralphs (for several reasons that aren't about this thread) But if we're going to go after people lets talk about their policies...this is a distraction.

Jane is doing just fine btw. She's suffering freeper spitting attack with more dignity than anyone I know would show. She's got some age and perspective now. She knows how to be more diplomatic, but she's hardly switched sides.

incident must have really shaken her.

She's had so many knocks in her life and keeps coming back, she should be nicknamed not "Hanoi Jane", but "Cool Hand Lucy". It reminds me a bit of Hunter S Thompson's words: "...where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs".

And what must have made her trials so much more painful was that her vicissitudes would always have been so public. And if they weren't she'd make them public, because that's where she comes from, a show-business background. It's also the reaction of good honest people, when they feel guilt, however misplaced; ironically, because in their heart they know they're not guilty, and they hope good people can sense the truth in there somewhere.

In her life with Vadim, it was the very low self-esteem she's suffered fromm all her life. And in Vietnam, she was guilty of immaturity and foolishness, not great malice, still less, treason. For that you need to look higher up the food chain.

I've always strongly suspected that her posturing re Vietnam - which of course, anyway, shrinks into insignificance beside the scarcely imaginable obscenity of the war, itself, and its shadowy mongers - might well have been a reaction to the satirical, although indirect references to the father she worshipped, in Joseph Heller's great anti-war book, Catch 22.

If callow and inchoate political integrity were the unforgivable crime the right have designated it, in relation to her, because of her Vietnam posturing, even the best politicians - few and far between though they be - would never have had the opportunity to grow in the job, and what would you all have been left with...? Yes..., you've guessed it, ".... a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway, where thieves and pimps run free...".

In the immortal words of you Americans, "You go, girl!" (though, preferably, not into the bosom of the Republican party).

wanted "Kerry" to win. Those who supported Nader, wanted "Bush" to win.

In fact Bush and Nader SHARED donors. But the selective blindness and twisting of facts is not suprising. Nader himself goes through many mental gyrations in order to justify enabling Bush.

"According to Federal Election Committee records, five major donors who have given $13,500 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to air its attack ads on John Kerry’s military service have also given Nader $7,500.Specifically, Travis Anderson (NJ), Brian Pilcher (CA) and Donald Burns (FL), are three of Nader’s largest donors and each has given him $2,000 (the maximum allowable contribution), while also contributing to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Charles Eckert (CA) and Oliver Grace (NY) have also given to both Nader’s PAC and the swift boat PAC."

Lest I remind you that this man Nader said on the record that he prefered Bush to Gore? You call that progressive? I don't.

Not all, obviously, but most.

weTHEpeople and that hasn't changed cept now Dems are deserving of much of the same criticism though the thought policy of "my party right-or-wrong" will have none of that.

peace

Now he only does it every 4 years, then disappears.

He's a hypocrite.

http://www.realchange.org/nader.htm

Anyone who enables Bush doesn't give a flying shit about "we the people."

As you may know, unlike the major party candidates, Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo didn't accept any big corporate bucks and corporate PAC money for their election campaign last year.

And if any California Democratic Party politicians had charged , as some out-of-state Democrats did in 2004, that Peter Camejo was a tool of the Republican Party and corporate America, they would be sent to the funny farm!

Camejo ran a safe state campaign which indicates that he cares about fellow human beings. Also he takes the "global responsibility" portion of the GP platform seriously unlike RN.

Nader cares about Nader and get's a rise out of the power he has to f with the entire world. He and Bush share that quality, they just chose a different language to advance their agenda.

that's it

went out of their way to find reports that Nader, with his businesses, doesn't do what he preaches, had been bought by the repukes, and a whole slew of issues.

Maybe I believed those posts too readily.

(though I had and still maintaing the those scapegoating Nader that election 2000 was far more than Nader, who was probably the smallest and most irrelevant part of it.)

"Maybe I believed those posts too readily."

Don't feel bad. Your hardly the only one.

It would have been wise and responsible for you and so many other DU'ers to have read the responses of Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo to the long list of slanders directed at them.

Those who manufactured the political line that Nader/Camejo somehow became right-wing financed tools of big business and Republicans had no facts to back up that outrageous claim. They just expected most would swallow such charges without verification.

he's said and done to know what kind of person he is. It's not about slandering anyone, it's a matter of seeing beyond his empty rhetoric.

"The Democrats are going to have to lose more elections. They didn't get the message last time." ~ Ralph Nader

I wonder if those kids in Iraq "got the message" or those new people in poverty "got the message" or children who each owe about 40k on the federal deficit "got the message" or those breathing more poluted air "got the message" or those kids who've lost educational funding" got the message" or those many people who are now out of work "got the message" or those people in the twin towers on 911 "got the message" ...

Seems to me it's Nader supporters who need to "get the message" cause this "Democrat" gets it loud and clear.

learn who he was and accept the fact that his rhetoric and his actions do not mesh. I used to like Nader as well, then I woke up. ;)

:hi:

You'll probably find that most people show signs of not completely being on a side. There are like 6 billion of us on earth.

But for 6 billion people, somebody's been too busy for no good reason. :wow:

Nobody is so one-sided or so simple in their approach. Apart from those in public office right now, but who said anybody's perfect? :D

peace

Peace.

i thought is was flame bait.

now, i will read your links to see the proof that Fonda and Nader are now reTHUGlicans... if there is none i will consider this flame bait or mis-information based on ignorant assumptions.

:hi:

peace

:popcorn:

:hide:

Unless it was all a dream sequence when DUers hacked at Nader and forgot about the Fonda post (see #15 for a link).

I'm glad my thread wasn't summarily locked or deleted; with discussion allowing me to respond - though I should have been smart enough to put in some more links as proof in the first place, I'll grant you that! :crazy:

flame-bait

at least your honest :toast:

peace

At least there's documentation they have done so. Especially Biden.

. . . that Jane Fonda's trip to Hanoi was a serious error in judgement on her part and did more to hurt the anti-war movement then help it.

But having said that, I've never held any bad feelings for her over it because I have no doubt her intentions were good- at least she tried to do something to help end our involvement in Vietnam. She was young, naive, and basically did the wrong thing for the right reasons and it's not something I ever held against her.

I'm much more disturbed concerning her comment about Bush- surely she is aware Bush knowingly lied to get us into the Iraq mess and has used the military to drop bombs and napalm on innocent men, women and children in a country that did nothing to us and posed no tangible threat to our security. He has also approved the use of depleted uranium to help kill and poison both "insurgents", innocent civilians. and our own soldiers.

Maybe Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and Hitler could be "informally appealing" too, but certainly no sane person aware of what monsters they were would refer to them as "impressive" or say how much they would "like them" if they were "alone with them". Either Fonda is willfully ignorant of the atrocities Bush has committed or else she's willing to flatter the little sociopath in order to sell a few more books or movie tickets. Sad either way. .


As far a Nader goes; it was wrong for Kerry, Edwards, Clinton, etc. to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq and to vote for the "Patriot Act" and "No Child Left Behind" etc. and Nader had every right as a citizen to call them on it.

I do recall reading about Nader owning stock and profiting from some of the very corporations he publicly vilified and then being less then impressed with his explanation of it. . .but while it strikes me as hypocritical, I have seen no evidence he stopped criticizing any corporation he invested in or stopped pushing for regulations that would hurt their profits but help the general public. Same thing with him accepting limited donations from Republican groups- while it struck me as suspicious I never saw any evidence that it caused Nader to alter or change his rhetoric or positions, so I can't say it was wrong.

Overall I think he's been amazingly consistent in standing up and fighting for what he believes in over the past 40-odd years. I don't agree with him on some key points as far as what he would do if elected president so I've never voted for him, but I have to say I was pretty uncomfortable with the way some Democratic leaders blamed him for the 2000 debacle in Florida and then practically "forbid" him to run in the last election - I will never forget how during the 2000 campaign Nader petitioned to be part of the debates and was denied; and then during the second debate in St. Louis he showed up as an invited guest of PBS to provide commentary for them he was apprehended by security and told to leave the premises or he'd be arrested and the Gore camp had no more problem with that then the Bushies did so if his rhetoric was harsher towards Dems in 2004 then it had been in the past he had his reasons.

And of course Nader did not cost Gore the election in Florida- while I have strong suspicions of vote fraud in the last election, I know for a fact Al Gore won both popular vote nation-wide and the state of Florida and thus the electoral college but had the presidency stolen from him when the Supreme Court unethically intervened and refused the legal recount, wrongly handing the election to Bush. Nader had nothing to do with it and blaming him was dumb and inaccurate.

creeping elitism