Free Republic

The 2016 presidential election is attracting an unusually large number of hopefuls. The Republicans will probably field more than a dozen candidates and the Democrats, as many as five. Presently, very few of these supposed contenders have a real chance of becoming president. Republicans Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz are long shots. On the Democratic side, that term applies to everyone but Hillary Rodham Clinton.. ~snip~ If you tell them in private, "You do not have a chance to be president," they will point to underdogs who won, such as Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, or front-runners who...

(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D- Ore.) has released a plan calling for “more research on the health effects of guns.” Blumenauer’s “Enough is Enough” plan looks back to how the U.S. government addressed tobacco use and automobile safety in years past and calls for a similar approach to guns. “The Surgeon General's report on tobacco was a major catalyst for the efforts to reduce tobacco use. Ralph Nader’s research captured headlines and focused public attention on automobile safety. Similarly, we need more research on the health effects of guns. We can start by improving the ability of researchers and...

Former presidential hopeful Ralph Nader sent an Election Day statement to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and several of her fellow Democrats: Quit already. “Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Steve Israel should now recognize the wisdom of baseball’s ‘three strikes and you’re out’ … step down from their posts and invite fresh leadership who can save the country from the ravages of today’s Republican party,” Mr. Nader’s statement read, The Hill reported.

Ralph Nader, a former Green Party and Independent Party presidential candidate who frequently serves as a loud critic of federal safety standards, doesn’t have much love for presumptive Democratic Party White House candidate Hillary Clinton. When asked by a writer with We Are Change what he thought of the the former Secretary of State seeking the nation’s highest office, Mr. Nader’s reply was less than enthusiastic. “Well, Hillary is a corporatist and a militarist,” Mr. Nader said, Raw Story reported. “Do we want another corporatist and militarist? She thinks Obama is too weak. He doesn’t kill enough people overseas. So...

In a Salon review Sunday of Ralph Nader’s spring 2014 book “Unstoppable,” Bill Curry, former White House counselor to President Bill Clinton, takes Democrats led by Clinton and Barack Obama to task for making their party an indentured servant of Wall Street and gifting economic populism to the right. Curry endorses Nader’s view that the present is ripe for a populist revival. Looking back to the Gilded Age, when “[p]owerful trusts were turning farmers into wage slaves and the world’s greatest democracy into just another corrupt oligarchy,” he notes that agrarian populists “busted price fixing railroads and granaries, fought for...

Ex-NBA referee Tim Donaghy recently accused the NBA of coercing referees to help the Brooklyn Nets defeat the less glamorous Toronto Raptors in their first round playoff series. This echoes previous claims by Donaghy about the NBA manipulating games. The most notorious example is Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference finals, when the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers staved off elimination by defeating the Sacramento Kings. Donaghy alleged that two referees (understood to be Dick Bavetta and Bob Delaney) fixed the game. Donaghy was convicted of betting on games so he may not seem a reliable accuser, but...

Ralph Nader on Tuesday said President Obama has committed impeachable offenses dating back to the United States' effort in 2011 to create a no-fly zone in Libya. Nader, who has previously called for Obama's impeachment, said Congress would not take up articles of impeachment at the time of the Libya mission because it has “abdicated” its responsibility in matters of war. "Libya was the most egregious violation of the Constitution by President Obama," Nader told ABC News-Yahoo News. "He attacked Libya with European nations without a declaration of war, he didn't ask Congress for an authorization of funds. He didn't...

What if Washington politics were no longer defined by partisan gridlock but instead by a cross-party alliance that forged solutions? The alliance would be unstoppable. - snip - Ralph Nader contends that such a left-right alliance is not just the stuff of imagination but is actually emerging.

As we all know, racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism are very bad and should be condemned. Not only do I condemn all of those things, I'd encourage you to share this quiz to all of your liberal friends so they can wag their fingers right in the faces of the awful people who said all of these terrible things. 1) Who said, "We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it." A) Rush Limbaugh B) Mark Levin C) Laura Ingraham D) Al Sharpton 2) Who said, "That’s just how white folks will...

There are differences of philosophy between progressives and libertarians, but we CAN agree on at least four issues upon which we can make immediate and concrete demands. Success on these demands would go a very long way toward saving the United States and prevent us from falling deeper into serfdom and slavery. We may never have a better chance than right now.

As if there are any more reasons to show that Ron Paul should not be the GOP Presidential candidate, there is this bit from 2008 in which Paul endorses four(!) candidates for President, including the Marxist whack-job Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. How unhinged to you have to be, intellectually, to endorse not only four people, but four whom also hold diametrically opposing views on the role of government. This alone shows that Ron Paul is not a serious thinker. In fact it shows him to be a reactionary flame thrower, willing to completely abandon principles when he doesn't get...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog New York Times and Ralph Nader criticize Obama for illegally seizing private property and violating disclosure laws The New York Times and Ralph Nader have recently criticized President Obama for illegally seizing assets from shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and for illegally avoiding disclosing this information from shareholders.The fifth amendment requires that compensation be given for such seizures, but Obama did not do this.Federal disclosure laws require that shareholders be informed of this information immediately, but Obama waited more than three years to tell them.Neither of these actions by Obama surprises me one bit....

In his new book, Ralph Nader calls for the end of “unconstitutional wars and unchecked militarism” — and lays blame on President Barack Obama for going beyond even George W. Bush. Nader writes in “Unstoppable” that Obama “has extended the Bush doctrine by declaring his unilateral right, as secret prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner, to destroy anybody, anywhere in the world, including American citizens, suspected to be engaged in alleged terrorist activities, all this vaguely and loosely defined as anti-U.S. security.” He continues, “Inspired by the military actions of the Clinton administration, the Obama and Bush teams made a seamless...

full title...LETTER: Ralph Nader questions Obama administration’s ‘legal authority’ to shut out Fannie and Freddie shareholders from future profits....Political activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader is questioning the “legal authority” of the Obama administration’s secret decision to prevent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders from obtaining any future earnings in the government sponsored enterprises (GSE). Nader slammed the administration’s actions in a letter he sent to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, which was obtained by The Daily Caller. The administration’s decision to shut out shareholders means that the mortgage-lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which received a $189.5...

A recent conversation with a veteran of GOP presidential campaigns raised this question: Which, if any, of the recent battleground states are likely to become more Republican by 2016? The consensus: very few. That reality highlights one problem Republicans face as they seek to regain the White House after six years under President Obama. Lots of factors affect elections: the quality of the candidates, the state of the economy, the effectiveness of the campaigns. But in a country whose demographics continue to change, Republicans will begin this campaign with one significant disadvantage. Over the past three decades, the political leanings...

Now it can be told. Emphasis on “now”:Precisely. ObamaCare will stumble along for the rest of the year, with a new wave of public irritation to come once small businesses start dumping employees onto the exchanges en masse, but the prospects for repeal will remain dim even if the GOP takes back the Senate. The numbers in Congress just aren’t there to beat an Obama veto, and by 2017 so many millions will have been assimilated into the program that some critical mass of GOP centrists will end up taking a “mend it, don’t end it” approach. Only an adverse-selection...

In the early 1980s, transit officials in Washington couldn't figure out why traffic on the Beltway would grind to a near halt every day around the exact same time. The usual explanations didn't fit. Then it was discovered that a single driver was to blame. Every day on his drive to work, this commuter would plant himself in the left lane and set his cruise control to 55 mph, the posted speed limit, forcing those behind him to merge right, and you can imagine the effects. To his credit, this driver came forward in a letter to the editor of...

It’s no surprise that Ralph Nader isn’t a fan of former President George W. Bush. After all, the longtime activist ran against him in both 2000 and 2004. But Nader’s even less a fan of President Barack Obama, if only because he thinks Obama was capable of so much more. On issues related to the military and foreign policy, Obama’s worse than Bush, “in the sense that he’s more aggressive, more illegal worldwide,” Nader told POLITICO, going so far as to call Obama a “war criminal.” “He’s gone beyond George W. Bush in drones, for example. He thinks the world...

During the 2008 campaign, presidential candidate Barack Obama made a pledge to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 per hour by 2011. Promises like this one inspired a generation of young voters, excited long-neglected progressive voters and gave hope to millions of his supporters across the country. President Obama ran a campaign of soaring rhetoric and uplifting ideas. Amidst two unpopular wars, a rapidly deteriorating financial crisis and the wildly unpopular presidency of George W. Bush, Americans were desperate for a change. He was viewed as a “transformational” candidate, a president who would turn the page on the stagnant politics...

Ralph Nader: 'Cowering' Democrats face defeat