Sipping the Kool Aid

As every non-Amish citizen of this land is probably aware, America elected Barack Hussein Obama to be its 44th Commander in Chief. Once the euphoria of Tuesday night fades to its proper place, there are still disheartening realities and never yielding facts about the world that must be dealt with.

Among them is the rather depressing fact that this development is even ground breaking and barrier decimating. After all, in a truly progressive society should not the election of a black man be viewed simply as the election of an American? The question the nation should be asking itself is why there must even be barriers?

While it is perfectly appropriate to let a generation of heroic civil rights leaders and liberals revel in the grandeur of what they have accomplished, one should even for a second believe the responsibility of this nation to truly and definitively exorcise its racial demons has been fulfilled.

Though unseen and largely silent at the moment, there are still bigots out there cursing whatever god they pray to for letting this happen. To them Barack Obama is a black man, nothing more and nothing less, therefore, he cannot be president. It is against this odious portion of the populace the wars of the last 200 years have been waged.

Now, with an electoral defeat, resounding and clear, dealt to the bigots, the armies of change must march against themselves. Well meaning and politically correct liberals are the new bigots. For those of you still reading, it is imperative that you too eliminate race from your life, recognizing the danger of complacency and contentment.

Think of Barack Obama not as the first black president but simply as the President of the United States, refusing to judge him on the minority scale but rather pitting him against every white man to have held the title. Mr. Obama deserves nothing less than this standard, derived from the simple plea of a southern preacher to judge a man not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character.

A chance like this, fleeting yet misleading, rarely comes along. Barack Obama is not an African American, he’s an American, as we all are and as we all should be. Enough with the race based admissions, enough with the race based dialogue and interactions, enough with race. The chains have been cut, now we must walk, cautiously yet decisively, through the cell door, open almost imperceptibly for less than an instant as the light floods in from afar.

Vman (Someone who’s getting his polemicist on)

Andrew’s Visual Guide to the 2nd Presidential Debate (or) A Guide to the Debate for People Who Like Pictures

Andrew’s take on the debate with many editorial comments.

By then end of this debate I think McCain’s head will literally dig into shoulders, deep into his chest.

Either McCain is extremely old or he is a robot.  The common and repetitive responses make me think robot, but his movements, all rickety and stiff, makes me think old.  Although both can apply.

Whenever Obama is speaking, McCain will not sit down.  I don’t think this is an action of disrespect as my friends have said, I think he might need some Preparation H.  Or he could be a robot, because robots are historically non-sitters.

Blogging The Second Presidential Debate, or, Who Can Dodge Critical Questions the Most?

Adam Drucker’s paraphrase of the debate.  No (or very few) editorials added.

Question 1:  How will you save my pension?

Obama:  Economic bailout.

McCain:  Energy independence.

Who answered the question?  Neither.

Discussion:  Who will you appoint to replace Henry Paulson?

McCain:  Not Warren Buffet, because he likes Obama.  I like Meg Whitman (Former President and CEO of eBay).)

Obama:  Warren Buffet.

Who answered the question?  Both.

Question 2:  How do we help those having a bad time now?

McCain:  Fuck Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac for screwing our economy.

Obama:  You caused their failure.

Who answered the question?  Neither.

Discussion:  Will the economy get worse before it gets better?

Obama:  Not if we fix it with policies.

McCain:  “Maybe?”

Who answered the question:  Obama.

Question 3:  How can we trust either of you if your parties both failed?

Obama:  “Nobody is completely innocent”, but it’s George Bush’s fault, and McCain supports Bush.

McCain:  I am a maverick.  Obama wants to spend all of our money forever. Energy independence.

Who answered the question:  Both.

Discussion:  LIST IN ORDER your priorities among health care, energy, and entitlement (social security/medicare) reform?

McCain:  All of them.

Obama:  We have to prioritize:  Energy -> today, priority number 1.  Health care -> priority number 2.  Education -> priority number 3.  McCain wants to cut rich people and company’s taxes by hundreds of billion of dollars.

Who answered the question:  OBAMA OMGOMGOMG HE ACTUALLY LISTENED AND ANSWERED THE QUESTION EXACTLY AS INTENDED.

Question 4:  What sacrifices will you ask every American to make to fix our economy?

McCain:  To understand that we are going to eliminate programs, including in defence (?!), including really good projects (?!?!).  Spending should be frozen except for defence (?!?!?!).  Everything is important in the world, even health care, though.

Obama:  Governmental level:  Development of clean coal technology.  Personal level:  Buy hybrids, etc.  You should contribute.  We all have to renew America.

Who answered the question:  Both.

Discussion:  Everyone is drunk; how do we break our drunken habits of spending too much?

Obama:  It starts with Washington; stop having a debt.  We have to make more money.  Earmarks are 18 billion dollars, but McCain’s tax cuts are hundreds of billions.  It’s tough to tell a teacher to “tighten her belt” when the government doesn’t do the same.

McCain:  Small businesses are sweet.  They’ll get fucked by Obama’s tax increases.  That will reduce jobs.  In other words, never raise taxes; instead, cut taxes for each dependant.  Also, give tax rebates for health care.

Obama:  Can I respond?

Brokaw:  No.

Who answered the question:  Obama and Brokaw.

Question 5:  Would you give congress a specific date to fix health care and social security in the next two years?

Obama:  We have to do it quickly, maybe not in the next two years, but WAIT A MINUTE LET ME TALK ABOUT TAXES “I want to provide a tax cut for 95% of Americans.”  “Only a few percent of small businesses make more than $250,000 per year.”  Also, 50% tax credit for health care for all businesses.  McCain wants to give a $300 billion tax cut to businesses and CEO’s.  The average Fortune 500 CEO will get an extra $700,000 in tax cuts.  Social security will be stable for all Americans.

McCain:  I’ll answer the question (cackle).  “It’s not that hard to fix social security” (?!?!?!).  Cross the aisles.  Obama has never crossed the aisle EVER.  Medicare:  have the smartest people in America come together to make ideas.  Fuck congress, get the people to fix it.  ALSO OBAMA WANTS TO INCREASE YOUR TAXES.

Who answered the question:  Both…but barely.

Question 6:  What will you do in the next two years to create environmental change and jobs.

McCain:  I disagreed with Bush on this one!  How do we fix it?  Nuclear power.  “I was on Navy ships that had nuclear power plants.”  We can make alternative energy technology, etc.  We can export this technology, too.

Obama:  We can create 500 million jobs with this technology.  “But we’re gonna have to make an investment” on the part of the government.  I like nuclear power too, as one part.  We agree that politicians in Washington haven’t done anything for the last 30 years…but he’s been there for 25 of them.  During that time he voted against alternative energy technologies 23 times.

Who answered the question:  Both.

Discussion:  Should we fund a Manhattan-like project or a hundred thousand garages around America to create new alternative energy technologies?

McCain:  Government, until it works, and then the private sector.  AND THEN I VOTED AGAINST THE ALTERNATIVE ENERGY BILL BECAUSE OF EARMARKS FOR BIG OIL.  OFFSHORE DRILLING IS SWEET.  NUCLEAR POWER IS SWEET TOO AND OBAMA SUPPORTED IT (?!).

Who answered the question:  They never asked Obama?  But McCain didn’t answer it either, because he said both.

Question 7:  Should health care be treated as a commodity?

Obama:  We have to do something about the health care crisis.  If you have health care already, then you can keep your plan.  We will try to lower your premiums.  McCain’s gonna tax those benefits, and take away power from the states.  This will destroy the health care system itself.

McCain:  This is a really hard question.  Let’s do a lot of things, like walk in clinics and shit.  But here’s a big difference:  Obama is talking about the government; I want to give a tax cut to the families (not from the government?).  Hair transplants won’t be covered, “I might need one of those myself ” (no laughs).

Who answered the question:  Neither.  THEY NEITHER REFERENCED WHAT A COMMODITY WAS.  The question was supposed to be “should everyone get the same health care coverage without differentiation?”, but ended up being “should everyone have health care?”

Discussion:  Is health care in America a privelege, a right, or a responsibility?

McCain:  A responsibility.  But government mandates make me wary.  How much is Obama going to fine people for not getting health care?

Obama:  A right for every American.  My mom died of cancer because the health care providers thought it may be a pre-existing condition.  There’s no mandate in my plan, because you can keep your own insurance.  Children have to have health care, but they’re cheap anyway.  McCain voted against SCHIP.  He wants deregulation, and that sucks for America.

McCain:  How much will the fine be?  (Completely douchey comment)

Who answered the question:  Both.

Question 8:  How will our economy affect our ability to be peacemakers in the world?

McCain:  We are awesome, and we can prevent genocide and terrorism by doing it.  My record shows I have always been right, and Obama has always been wrong.

Obama:  We should not have invaded Iraq, and al-Qaeda is still around.  McCain failed horribly, said we’d be out of Iraq quickly, and has made many wrong judgements.  It has hurt our budget.  We have spent almost $700 billion dollars, and it may cost up to a trillion.  We need the money in America, not in Iraq.  McCain says we can do stuff, but how do we pay for it?  We can’t go into Darfur because we don’t have the resources right now, but when I get into office we can.

Who answered the question:  Obama (he at least mentioned money).

Discussion:  When will we use American forces to intervene in humanitarian crises?

Obama:  If we could have intervened in the Holocaust or Rwanda we should have.  Genocide and ethnic cleansing solvency should be part of our interests; however, we can’t “be everywhere all the time”.  We have to work with our allies.

McCain:  We would have been in a wider war if we didn’t do the troop surge; I will make America win in Iraq.  GENERAL PETRAEUSIS SWEET.  We have to prevent genocide, but it also must be beneficial to their situation.  In Somalia, we had to withdraw in humiliation.  I love Ronald Reagan.  NEVER AGAIN unless we’d make it worse.

Who answered the question:  Both.

Question 9:  Should the United States respect Pakistani soverignty and not persue al-Qaeda, or should we ignore their borders and get our enemies?

Obama:  We shouldn’t have gone into Iraq.  That caused al-Qaeda to screw up Afghanistan.  So let’s reverse course from Iraq and send the troops to Afghanistan.  Let’s encourage democracy in Pakistan, send more non-military aid there, and insist that they attack terrorism.  If we can get bin Laden, then we should get him, if Pakistan can’t or won’t.

McCain:  I love Teddy Roosevelt: “Walk soft-er, talk softly….”  Obama’s gonna piss off Pakistan.  Trust me.  We should not have allowed Taliban and al-Qaeda to come back into Pakistan.  We have to get their support.  GENERAL PETRAEUS IS SWEET.  We have to work with them… but talk softly and carry a big stick.

Obama:  I want a follow-up.

Brokaw & McCain:  Alright.

Obama:  I never wanted to fight Pakistan, if they’re unwilling to fight bin Laden, then we should.  “That HAS to be our policy, because they are threatening to kill more Americans.”  He sang “Bomb, bomb Iran.”  He wanted to destroy North Korea.  We hadn’t even finished Afghanistan, and he said “Next stop, Baghdad.”  We should not have supported Musharraf.

McCain:  Not true.  I supported those efforts, “and I have opposed those that I didn’t think so.”  I was joking with an old friend about Iran.  OBAMA JUST SAID HE’D ATTACK PAKISTAN.

Who answered the question:  Both…eventually.

Question 10:  How do we fix Afghanistan?

Obama:  Make the Iraqi government take more responsibility, withdraw Iraqi troops responsibly, and put more troops in Afghanistan.  Karzai must be more responsive to the Afghan people.

McCain:  I STILL FUCKING LOVE GENERAL PETRAEUS.  Obama is right about increasing the size of the Army, and must still have the same strategy of a troop surge cross-applied to Afghanistan from Iraq.  OH MY GOD GENERAL PETRAEUS IS SWEET.

Who answered the question:  Both.

Question 11:  How do we apply pressure to Russia on humanitarian issues without causing another Cold War?

McCain:  We won’t have another Cold War, but when I looked into Putin’s eyes, I saw three letters:  KGB (What.  The.  Fuck.)  We have to show moral support for Georgia and Ukraine.  We have to have international pressures on Russia to change their behavior.

Obama:  We can’t just provide moralsupport, because we have to do that with every former Soviet satellite.  We also have to provide them with financial support to rebuild Georgia’s economy, and anticipate such problems.  In April, I said that the situation in Georgia was unsustainable.  We have to stop being reactive.  Also, energy.

Who answered the question:  Both.

Discussion:  YES OR NO is Russia under Putin an evil empire?

Obama:  I think that it’s a really big problem.

McCain:  “Maybe.”  We have to understand that there are really big problems, etc. etc.

Who answered the question:  Neither.

Question 12:  I was in the military; If Iran attacks Israel, will you deploy troops yourself or wait for the UNSC?

McCain:  Thanks for your service to this country thank you thank you thank you.  Iran is a threat to the stability to the Middle East because of nuclear weapons.  They want to wipe Israel off of the map.  Obama wants to sit down with them without precondition.  We have to bind with our allies and impose strict sanctions, and I think that a League of Democracies would work.  MENTIONS THE HOLOCAUST.

Obama:  I honor your service.  We can not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.  We will never take military options off the table, and we can’t allow veto power to subjugate our views.  We have to make those kinds of choices with our allies, though, so we have to work more effectively on sanctions and reduce energy consumption and stop Iran from getting refined gasoline.  We have to tell them about the consequences for and against negative actions.  PRESIDENT BUSH WAS AN IDIOT.

Who answered the question:  Neither.

Question 13:  What don’t you know and how will you learn it?

Obama:  Joke about my wife criticizing me.  I came from modest means.  The help of scholarships and my grandmother got me here.  Everyone needs more money and health care.  We have to change everything in America for the better.

McCain:  What’s going to happen both at home and abroad.  There are new and different challenges coming from countries that we don’t even know where on the map they are.  My mother raised my family.  I know what it’s like to have to fight for hope.  I know what it’s like to have friends that help you.  I believe in America.

Who answered the question:  McCain.

Journal from the Underground

I suppose that the full effects and consequences of my transition to this new phase of life have yet to hit me. I have heard thunder but I have yet to witness the lightning. Knowing that my life is fully expected to diverge from its current vector yet foreseeing only a straight path ahead has left me stranded at an odd precipice, neither teenager nor adult; neither high school senior nor college freshmen, simply just me. I have discovered only that one’s environment is merely ornamental, leading to everything being seemingly different yet actually the same.

The rituals of campus life, the drinking, the beach volley ball games, the socializing and the tanning, constantly surround me yet I brush past them exactly as I had in the years past, a curious observer but never a subject. Perhaps that is precisely why this prompt evoked such a mystified response from me. As I began to consider how the first week has been, I could not help but feel that it was exactly like the weeks past.

The routines and staples of student life are the same as they ever have been and will remain the same with no regard to how I feel about them. Eat, sleep, shower, study, go to class, participate, write, edit, submit, I am trapped in the confines of those words as I have been for the last 4 or so years and will be for 8 or so years in the future. My concerns are as trivial as they have ever been, chief among them being what brand of cup noodles reigns supreme.

The transition from high school to college, for me at least, has been a matter of inertia. I have taken one look around and with an odd mix of comfort and resignation, realized that I must simply do what I have always been doing. There will gradually be less and less parental authority to answer to but the lines drawn long ago are still straight, time marches on. I am no different; nothing has changed, it just looks like it has. In response to the last portion of your prompt, if I was a diner food I would be apple pie since I am all American.

-Vman (Someone who wants to be gone, now)

Notes on a Scandal

Perhaps the most logical explanation for the selection of first term Alaskan governor Sarah Palin as Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain’s running mate is yielded by his preferred game of chance, Craps. After all, nearly all political observers can agree that choosing Mrs. Palin, after Mr.McCain was informed he could not choose a pro choice candidate, is at the very least a gamble.

Making her way from television sportscasting to PTA council presidency and then eventually, the Alaskan governor’s mansion for approximately two years, Mrs. Palin, a self described “hockey mom”, has continually cast herself as a tough female “maverick”, an unlikely conservative fighter for “the people” against the corrupt “elites” entrenched in power, willing to buck even her party to do what is right. Mrs. Palin points to her ethics reforms and largely symbolic actions such as selling the Governor’s jet on Ebay, firing the chef at the Governor’s mansion and lowering her own salary when mayor of Wasilla, Alaska as evidence of the tough, principled fiscal conservatism that Mr. McCain prides himself on.

At the Republican National Convention, Mrs. Palin also brought up her decision to refuse an abortion and carry her fifth child, Trig to term, despite learning that he would be born with down syndrome as further evidence of her conservative credentials. Although this narrative has energized a previously wary conservative base that is critical in John McCain’s efforts to win against his opponent, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois in November it has also proven to be ample fodder for newspapers and liberal bloggers eager to vet and scrutinize Mrs. Palin.

For example, Mrs. Palin’s politically shrewd attempts to claim the feminist, trailblazing mantle of former candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, Hillary Clinton, speaking of the “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling” and railing against sexism in the media, are contradicted by her own previous statements labeling Mrs. Clinton’s charges of the very same sexism in the media “whine” at a Newsweek panel. When Mrs. Palin speaks of both her and John McCain’s extensive records fighting wasteful “pork barrel spending”, she ignores her initial support of the “The Bridge to Nowhere”, a 250 million dollar bridge servicing approximately fifty people that has been used by Mr. McCain himself as the foremost example of wasteful government spending. Mrs. Palin, in her first term as mayor of Wasilla, even began the practice of flying to Washington D.C. to lobby for spending, collecting earmarks to the tune of $27 million dollars for a town with a population of little over 9000 people. Despite running on a promise of reforming ethics and taking on the corrupt Republican party establishment of Alaska, Mrs. Palin herself is embroiled in an ethics investigation as to whether or not she improperly attempted to use her position as governor to get her state trooper ex brother in law, Mike Wooten, fired after a heated divorce with Mrs. Palin’s sister.

Her conservative values might prove to be somewhat extreme for the moderate voters the McCain campaign is eyeing since Mrs. Palin, a firm believer in the teaching of creationism in public schools, attempted to ban certain books she found obscene from the Wasilla town library, firing the librarian when she refused to comply with Mrs. Palin’s demands. In addition, Mrs. Palin, who received her passport only a year ago, has little to no foreign policy experience, undercutting Mr. McCain’s attacks on Mr.Obama’s readiness to be commander in chief. The McCain campaign counters that Mrs. Palin’s expertise lies in energy policy but Mrs. Palin has offered little but the refrain “drill, drill drill-all the way.” Mrs. Palin is firmly anti gay marriage and opposes affirmative action.

Mrs. Palin’s family has also morphed into a political controversy recently amid discoveries that her 17 year old daughter Bristol was pregnant and her husband Todd is a former member of an Alaskan secessionist movement whose motto is “Alaska first, Alaska always.” Mrs. Palin, herself, attended the Alaskan Independence Party’s 1994 convention and wished them good luck at their 2006 convention.  Others note that it appears that Mrs. Palin’s repeated insistence on abstinence only sex education has seemed to fail. Others, such as The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, have pointed out the cognitive dissonance required in the Palins asking for privacy to make a choice about Bristol’s pregnancy and Mrs. Palin’s stance on abortion, which denies that choice to all families, even in cases of rape or incest. Conservatives are furiously attempting to tout Mrs. Palin’s maverick image and have co-opted Mr. Obama’s message of change.

Ultimately, it appears that Sarah Palin is above all, a rash and impetuous choice for Vice President  considering that she is less than a heartbeat away from becoming the nation’s first female President if the 72 year old cancer survivor at the top of the ticket happens to be elected. Mr. McCain’s chief adviser Steve Schmidt was caught with an open mic suggesting that choosing Mrs.Palin was simply a political gambit, many would agree.

-Vman (Someone who was scared by her RNC speech)

The Death of Me as I Knew Him

On July 22, 2008, Facebook provided the conduit for a slew of birthday wishes, adorned with capitalized letters, exclamation points and all sorts of embellishments meant to convey the excitement and the “kewl”-ness of it all. Sadly it appears that, once again, I am a man apart as the dawning of those fateful numbers, 18, brings with it not the requisite sense of elation but rather a general everlasting elegy. Something irreplaceable, not just the luxury, greatly appreciated, of being charged as a minor, but rather that comfort in the vagueness and blissful uncertainty, derived from seemingly endless distance and dreams, of one’s future as an adult on this accursed third rock from the sun.

It is a familiar mental safety net for many a teenager, the never quite explicitly defined belief that after many a day, one will arrive at some magical place that requires you to give up nothing yet recieve all. The clause “When I grow up” is often used to introduce the intellectual children of this belief:

When I grow up I’ll be able to major in something I love and make a lot of money doing it too. Then I’ll find someone smart, cute and funny and then maybe we’ll have kids who barely cry and always love us. And we’ll still be young, we won’t turn into our parents. We’ll have so much fun, and we’ll be awesome parents too, never yelling at our kids just always playing with them and having fun. And death, that doesn’t really have to happen, at least not for a long long time. Whatever, fuck it, there are a lot of medical advances and stuff; aids and cancer will definitely be cured. God, life is going to be great. Sure there are some bad spots, there have to be, but everything is definitely going to work out. I’ll definitely be remembered for something great, I might even make it into the history books.  I mean I don’t know exactly what I want to do or where I want to go to college or what I want to major in but that’s so far away. I can figure it out later right?

Well, it appears that despite my best efforts, later has lacerated me while my back was turned. I became a grown up in a process that did not ask my consent; no forms were signed, no pledges given to accept responsibility for my actions, think practically and make good decisions. Simply with the tearing of one more page off of my calendar and the arrival of some day that people tell me I popped out of some woman’s birth canal on, I am stripped of all that I was before July 22.

I am a grown up, I am one of what previously was the enemy. I am off to a sensible college and then probably a ripe for networking law school, all to engage in a sensible profession that will make me financially secure and a well respected productive member of society. I’ve begun to even use terms such as networking and financially secure, words that the younger me would have scoffed disgustedly at.

All I can say, in a voice trembling with the notes of incredulity inspired by newly emerging specters of adulthood, is that we were promised, in the words of Roxy Music’s Brian Ferry, More than This. Of course, I cannot tell you exactly what that is and neither could any previous iteration of me. The difference being, however, that evidence that would excoriate and expunge his foolish dreams had yet to pierce, in a frighteningly quick and precise manner, the fabric of his imaginary future.

It is my sincerest wish, one that will indubitably exist as long as there is breath in my bones, that I could somehow protect what was once me from the harsh burns of those dawning numbers. I suppose this paves the way for my first and likely most important lesson learned as an adult, wishes do not, under any circumstances, come true and as such are better to left to stupid teenagers. Consider the idiot dead and sorely missed.

Vman ( Someone who is definitely going to abuse his newly gained right to buy tobacco products in the state of Maryland )

Who Knows?

Fiction:

What are relationships? An extension of the usual kindness? It appears that the best attempts of man, the most enlightened stabs at definition, have all rested and laid down their arms at the sacred halls of love. But even love, a definition must be had. There are two components to it are they not? First there’s the emotional, the hallowed part of it, that nobody is really allowed to touch. For fear that they desecrate something they’re not even sure may exist. It’s the same thing that happens in political elections and such. The outrage over the “bitter” remarks only occurred because Obama was infringing upon a sacred cow in the political sense. The good old days. The ones that nobody is allowed to discuss except in glowing terms. Apparently there was a time somewhere in the early 20th century that every one who wanted to could earn a living wage and send his or her children off to achieve something greater could and was even helped by the perfectly functioning government. Well, it is not my place to burst anyone’s bubble, but Billy Joel would not have had so many things to sing about in “We Didn’t Start the Fire” if the world really wasn’t burning all along. Vietnam and the reasons behind the first wave of feminism are both things that ruined the good old days that nobody wishes to speak of.

My Inner Phaedrus

The text of my email to my English teacher which he chose to read in class and shoot down:

I chose not to pay attention in Math class and instead chose to ramble in my notebook, here is what follows, I believe it is relevant to a discussion we had on the first day of the semester:

The dreaded phrase

It is March of 2008, the second half of our last year of high school, and people are passing something dangerous around the school. This hazardous item is neither drug, alcohol, nor is it answers to the final exams. It is the one, universal, and addictive combination of terms that everyone is guilty of using: students, teachers, parents, and administration alike. This treacherous evil is actually a phrase: second semester senior. This phrase commonly describes a student in their fourth year of high school, going through a time of laziness as college approaches and high school makes its way out of their lives. But few understand the true evilness of this term, and I am being serious.

If he can, why can’t I? (or) Why Adam Drucker is wrong

Simply put, Adam Drucker is wrong as usual. Let’s see why:

“Let’s say that, if elected, he would solve the world, in general. Well, this is why even if he was the best candidate ever, he would be horrible to vote for: 2000. In the year 2000, Ralph Nader took a small percentage of the votes in many different states, totalling about 2.5% of the popular vote. Not only does this show that, even WITH the backing of the Green Party, which he may not align himself with (IE, the 2004 election), but more importantly, his involvement was the REASON that Bush is the President of the United States right now.”

If you’re seriously suggesting that Ralph Nader would somehow cause Obama to lose to an old white man, then I think you have no idea how the real world works. If his candidacy causes Hillary Clinton to lose, so much the better. Besides, this still doesn’t show why he isn’t a good candidate, because if he won he wouldn’t be a spoiler anymore (and according to you we can assume he “solves the world”).