All Class

Ralph Nader was already irrelevant, but this appearance, saying of Barack Obama, moments after he was elected President, "But his choice, basically, is whether he's going to be an Uncle Sam for the people of this country or an Uncle Tom for the giant corporations," just accelerates that slide. And you know, good for Shepard Smith (?) for calling him out on it.

I'm sure Nader thought he was making some clever joke, but he's so arrogant that he refuses to acknowledge why it would be controversial. And this is coming from someone who has admired Nader and even worked for him back in 2000 (yes, I'm one of them). He's really become a hollow shell of a man since then. It's sad, because we need aggressive advocates for working people and consumers who haven't been discredited, to push an Obama Administration from the left. You know, like Ralph Nader.

Town Halls

I was happy when both McCain and Obama turned down ABC's effort to hijack the proposed set of town hall meetings and weigh them down with more obtrusive and pointless distractions. However, McCain apparently didn't deny that effort because he wanted to keep control of the questions in the hands of the people, but because he wanted to keep control of the people in the audience.

"I reported at the top of this hour that the campaign had told us at fox news that the audience would be made up of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. We have now received a clarification from the campaign and I feel I should pass it along to you. The McCain Campaign distributed tickets to supporters, mayor Bloomberg, who of course is a registered republican, and other independent groups."

(Good for Shepard Smith for actually speaking up, by the way)

Not so much town halls, as fully scripted campaign events. No wonder Obama turned down the attempt to get involved in such nonsense.