untitled great man

@Oeilonirique: yeah, i think maybe he was wondering who this person is who kept taking his picture when he wasn't talking yet. he's Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and u.s. presidential candidate

@vu@granby - Gilles Martineau: thanks a lot! (you meant shot "of" Nader, though, right? there's more than enough people taking shots "at" him.)

@Persian King: Appreciate your directness and willingness to discuss. It is true that Mr. Nader's parents immigrated to the US from Lebanon, I think in the 1920s. But the second part of your statement is completely false, albeit an all too common misconception.
Al Gore won the 2000 election. (See, for example, investigative journalist Greg Palast's work on this topic.) I won't get into all the other undemocratic things that happened in Florida in 2000 (like the many African Americans wrongly removed from voting lists), Katherine Harris, the Supreme Court. If you want more info on all that let me know.
Al Gore ran a horrible campaign, he couldn't even win his home state (pretty much unheard of), and don't forget that he picked Lieberman as his running mate, and polls showed his support increased when he took stances closer to Nader. People look back and somehow remember Clinton-Gore as really great, they forget about things like the over 500,000 Iraqi children who died under their sanctions or that it was under them that welfare was severely cut (who cares about the 13 million children in this country who go to bed hungry each night?).
Finally, and most importantly, Nader has never forced anyone to vote for him. Quite the opposite, many people who have wanted to vote for Nader have been (and continue to be) forced to vote for others or not vote at all because of the insane ballot access laws in this country.
It is not the responsibility of third parties and independents to shut up and stay silent with hundreds of thousands of American lives at stake.* If that is what people believe, then they've already lost their belief in democracy. Historically, third parties have been vital in pushing very important issues. Should the 19th century Liberty Party (which pushed the anti-slavery issue) have stayed silent and supported the least worst between the Whigs and Democrats? That's what people told them to do. Same goes for the parties that pushed the women's right to vote, and labor issues, the list goes on.
*And when I say hundreds of thousands of American lives at stake, regardless which corporate candidate wins, I refer to the over 3000 people who die every three weeks because of workplace related disease & trauma, the over 200,000 people in this country who die each year because of hospital and medical negligence and because of side effects of drugs and hospital-induced infections, 65,000 people according to EPA die from air pollution, tens of thousands who die since we don't have single payer universal health care. Just the tip of the iceberg.
And that doesn't even include the over a million dead in Iraq and several million displaced. By the way, the Democrats could have ended that war at least in 2006 by refusing to fund it--they chose to vote for the funding President Bush requested. They chose to reauthorize the Patriot Act too. They're in the majority again, and again they refuse to use that power in the interest of their constituents and country. But Ralph Nader, the guy who's been working for several decades at great personal sacrifice to further the interests of Americans and oppose the corporate takeover of our government and elected officials, he's to blame?

@Twelvebit: Thanks, Twelvebit! I couldn't agree more!