back to the race for that big, white house on Pennsylvania Avenue...what do they call it?

It looks like Ralph Nader is going to throw his rumpled, self-important hat back in the ring to run for President. The guy needs to find a nice tree, cut it down, make a center pillar and a crossbar and get someone not nail him to it. He obviously has that strain of senility that manifests itself as a Messiah complex.

His self-indulgent headline grabbing, which initially was for the common good...40 years ago when he was outing the Detroit auto industry's safety record...now drives him to sabotage national elections because he lacks the fiber to work within the system to accomplish change. In the mean time he allows real issues to go unaddressed so he can feel he still has a voice and a purpose in this world.

Lacking any real shot at winning, he wants to make sure the game is unplayable for others. Or, at least certain others.

I am one of those people who doesn't hesitate to point out that had he not insisted on this very conduct eight years ago, we might have been spared 9/11, the War in Iraq and an economy that went from record surpluses to record deficits while gas prices tripled. And President Gore might have gotten us a running start on Global Warming action, against a threat that even now may challenge the survival of modern society and the human species.

The two party system is lame, superficial and self-destructive? Yes. Most of the leaders are self-important boobs who either know they are sucking from the common teat rather than get a real job or have deluded themselves into thinking they are making real change and progress while being compromised agents of, at best, inertia.

That Ralphie boy may be about to dive in to a race where he can deny this country its first black or female President isn't lost on most people. Ralph is prepared to wave his hand-drawn banners of legitimacy and self-delusion, ensuring that the line of white, male Presidents is an unbroken one.

The attitudes of his generation is one of the last real barriers to a better society, where it isn't astonishing to find women, blacks, Hispanics, or any other historically disenfranchised group playing leadership roles and making sure that issues are addressed that need to be addressed for all Americans.

I have nothing against John McCain, I think he has served this country honorably and well and would make a decent President, certainly better than the one we are about to relegate to the pages of a groaning history. If he is the nominee of his party I will give him a listen. But to place him in office purely because he is a white male shows that the hard work of people of real historical purpose and sacrifice, like Bobby and Jack Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Susan B. Anthony still has a long way to sink in.

Paint it any way you want. Nader running for President is not progressive. I encourage those of good conscience to not donate to his campaign, to discourage him from doing this again, and from seeking to keep women and blacks in the back of the (now made overseas) bus.