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Cynthia McKinney is Nominated

Saturday, July 12th

Cynthia McKinney Accepts Green Party Nomination

Cynthia McKinney won the Green Party nomination for President of the United States at the Nominating Convention in Chicago in the 1st round of voting Saturday evening.

NEWS ADVISORY: THE GREEN PARTY OF CALIFORNIA

CHICAGO – The progressive left chose its new candidate for President Saturday when former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney – now a resident of California – was tabbed as Green Party's candidate for President at the Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention here. She won on the first ballot, garnering 313 of 532 votes cast.

"This was an amazing phenomenon. The nomination of Cynthia and her vice president running mate Rosa Clemente demonstrate the growing strength of the Green Party. Let there be no doubt now who speaks for the progressive left in this country," said David Cobb, the 2004 Green Party nominee for President, who resides in Eureka, CA.

"We are getting stronger with every election and with candidates of the caliber of Cynthia and Rosa, we have leadership from constituencies we have not had in the past," Cobb added. Clemente, a hip hop activist and journalist, accepted the vice-president nomination

There was, indeed, amazing energy and excitement in the nominating convention in Chicago Symphony Hall. We were witnessing history being made and everybody in the room knew it. 2008 has been an extraordinary election in these United States. Yes, it has been, though not necessarily as the story is told by the mainstream media (MSM). Both mainstream political parties have emphatically rejected the Bush-Clinton-Bush status quo. However, evidence is piling up in an avalanche that both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are unwilling and/or unable to turn their respective political camps from driving this nation (and the world) over a cliff. As the brilliant Green Party activist, Malik Rahim, noted in his keynote address, irregardless of how the votes fall in November, and no matter what they say about us in the clueless MSM, we have "already won" by helping to jump start the international Green Movement in the united States.

Excerpt from McKinney Acceptance Speech:

And when I got to Washington, I saw that public policy is really made in a room at a table. There were real seats at the table. Well, imagine what has happened to public policymaking now. There is a real room with a window and a door, and there’s two seats at the table. The window is for us to look through, while our representatives make policy for us, so we can see what they’re doing. At the table, one seat is for the Democrats, one seat is for the Republicans. Now, we don’t know who did it, but one of them put a lock on the door and slipped a key to the corporate lobbyists who can come and go at will and whisper what they want to Democrats and Republicans, and the result is that we the people, who pay for those seats and determine who sits in them, want one thing, but because the corporate lobbyists can come and go at will, our values get overridden and our representatives give us something else. That’s how we end up with everyone saying they’re against the war and occupation, but war and occupation still gets funding. That’s how we end up with everyone saying they’re against illegal spying on innocent people, yet end up with a telecom immunity bill being signed into law. That’s how we end up with everyone saying they’re in favor of universal access to healthcare and no one supporting what the physicians, nurses and healthcare really want, and that’s a single-payer healthcare system in this country.

The Movement is key because no president, least of all a president from the one-corporate-race-obsessed-war-party-with-two names can turn things around from the top down.

Go Green!

BREAKING NEWS: Ralph Nader is In!

On Meet the Press this morning, Ralph Nader declared his candidacy.

If Ralph Nader is the nominee of the Green Party, I intend to support him 100% regardless of what slogans and hacks are being advertised and sold in million-dollar TV ads by the One-Corporate-Party-With-Two-Names.

Alex Walker
Los Angeles Greens

Ralph Nader On Meet the Press



Posted on America Online, February 24, 2008.
Ralph Nader Enters Presidential Race

WASHINGTON (Feb. 24) - Ralph Nader said Sunday he will run for president as a third-party candidate, criticizing the top White House contenders as too close to big business and pledging to repeat a bid that will "shift the power from the few to the many."

Nader, 73, said most people are disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties due to a prolonged Iraq war and a shaky economy. The consumer advocate also blamed tax and other corporate-friendly policies under the Bush administration that he said have left many lower- and middle-class people in debt.

"You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized and disrespected," he said. "You go from Iraq, to Palestine to Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bumbling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts."

"In that context, I have decided to run for president," Nader told NBC's "Meet the Press."

Nader also criticized Republican candidate John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton for failing to support full Medicare for all or cracking down on Pentagon waste and a "bloated military budget. He blamed that on corporate lobbyists and special interests, which he said dominate Washington, D.C., and pledged in his third-party campaign to accept donations only from individuals.

"The issue is do they have the moral courage, do they have the fortitude to stand up to corporate powers and get things done for the American people," Nader said. "We have to shift the power from the few to the many."

Ron Paul-Walter Williams '08 - Old "Race" Politics

Ron Paul Libertarians think they're being "clever" by hinting Mr. Paul would choose Black economist, Walter E. Williams, as his running mate. In fact, they have inadvertently "outted" themselves as captives of the idiotic old "race" politics as practices by cynical Democrats and Republicans for nearly forty years. On the Green blogs, there has been heavy arguments over a Greens-Libertarian alliance (see for example: a ron paul even a green could love). Most of the Greens, to their credit, reject the seductions of libertarianism.

In a comment on Green Commons, Colby Peterson played the "Walter Williams card":

This is Ron Paul's view on racism, just because he doesn't support
affirmative action and privilege programs doesn't make him a racist...

You can disagree with him politically, but you cannot say he's not for an
equitable society or for equal opportunity. This is just a different method to
the same ends. Were you even aware that Ron Paul is considering an
Black man (Walter E. Williams) as his running mate?

Wow! Hold the presses!

Ron Paul is considering a Black man!

Here's the problem: I have followed Walter E. Williams career for many years and the man is a total rightwing nutcase.

You don't have to take my word for it. Point your browser to the conservative web site, Jewish World Review, and you'll find all Williams' recent writings lovingly archived. Here of some samples of recent wisdom from Dr. Willams, a Black man:

Rules of Engagement, May 2, 2007

The March 23 Iranian capture of 15 British Royal Navy sailors should raise a number of questions. The sailors were part of the crew of HMS Cornwall, a state-of-the-art frigate bristling with high-tech surveillance devices and advanced weaponry. The sailors, dispatched in small boats, were boarding and inspecting merchant vessels in Iraqi waters for contraband...

The West's survival requires that we wake up and recognize the true character of the enemy we face. We are involved in a clash with a culture that has little regard for the Western values that hold the sanctity of human life dear. Terrorists specifically target civilian populations. It makes no difference to them whether their victims are babies, women or children. In fighting the war on terrorism, the West goes to considerable lengths, often risking the lives of our troops, to avoid civilian casualties. The West has the means, but not the will, to utterly destroy terrorists and countries that give them sanction. I hate to think of what the terrorists might do to give us the
will.

The Temperamental Minimum Wage, May 9, 2007

The first fundamental law of demand postulates that the lower the price of something, the more will be demanded, and the higher the price, the less will be
demanded. To my knowledge, there are no known exceptions to the law of demand.
That was until last fall when 650 economists, including several Nobel Laureates,
signed a letter calling for an increase in the minimum wage...

Creating Effective Incentives, May 22, 2007

What should our response be if terrorists set off a nuclear explosion, or some other weapon of mass destruction, in one of our cities?...

Holding the country responsible would mean that in response to an attack we'd totally destroy their military bases, power plants, communication facilities and, if necessary, totally destroy their major cities. You say, "Williams, that's unthinkable!" Yes, while unpleasant, it is thinkable. That's precisely how 50 years of peace were maintained between the Western powers and the former Soviet Union. . .

Compassion Versus Reality, June 6, 2007

Dr. Thomas Sowell, a distinguished economist and longtime friend and colleague, recently wrote a series of columns under the title "A War of Words." He pointed out that liberals succeed in duping the public because they are so clever with words that they give the appearance of compassion. Liberals talk about the need for "affordable" housing and health care. They tarnish their enemies with terms such as "price-gouging" and "corporate greed." Uninformed and unthinking Americans fall easy prey to this demagoguery...

So, this is a guy the antiwar movement is supposed to rally around? This is the "proof" that Ron Paul is for an "equitable society" and "equal opportunity."

The Idiocy of Old "Race" Politics

For nearly forty years both Democrats and Republicans have played this cynical game: pointing to their favorite handpicked token Negro or Hispanic and saying: "See! I love Clarence Thomas (or Ron Brown, or Henry Cisneros, or Condolezza Rice, or Alberto Gonzalez), therefore, I'm a nice guy!" This is a politics practiced by people who never seriously cared about civil rights issues in the first place. This is a politics practiced by people who think "minority" voters are stupid and "White" voters are more stupid.

For thirty years rightwing Republicans have trotted out the likes of Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams to say reactionary stuff that most mainstream Republican politicians would never dare say, themselves. And then, to add insult to injury, these conservatives get self-righteous about how their token "minorities" were picked "on merit." Thus, in this instance we are actually supposed to believe that Walter Williams is the man Ron Paul thnks is the "most qualified" person to run for vice-president of the United States.

That's crap! In the final analysis it doesn't matter what a person's color or ethnicity is. In the final analysis what matters is their character and what they stand for. If Ron Paul is considering Walter Williams, that's a big point against Ron Paul.

This week, Ron Paul made an appearance before a bunch of Google employees in Northern California.

Googlers Applaud GOP Presidential Candidate Ron Paul
San Jose Mercury News, July 14, 2007

He said he does not support network neutrality... nor does he support tech-friendly immigration reforms... And he doesn't believe in federal student government loans, which a huge majority of the audience, by a show of hands, had used to make it through college... he thinks fears of global warming are "overblown." And then he raised the question of why American business should be subject to more regulation if so much pollution is coming from China.

"I don't agree with him on everything, especially immigration," said Google employee Vijay Boyapati, an Indian immigrant who gained citizenship last year...

Ron Paul comes to address a very tech-savvy audience in Silicon Valley in liberal Northern California and insults half the people in his audience to their faces (Please note how nevertheless the corporate "Murky News" headline about the "Free Market" Ron Paul is friendlier than anything it would print about an antiwar "Lefty" like Dennis Kucinich).

A Liberal Democrat - Green - Libertarian alliance around Ron Paul? I don't thnk so.

L.A. Times-Another Silly Obama Article

Sunday’s Los Angeles Times had, yet another, silly article about Sen. Barack Obama:

Obama Classmates Saw a Smile, But No Racial Turmoil
by Richard A. Serrano
Los Angeles Times, Sunday, March 11, 2007

This time it was about Obama's "angst" as a kid at Punahou School, an elite prep school in Hawaii. The kicker says: “Hawaii classmates recall him as a happy kid who fit in. They say they had no idea of the racial tension inside.”

They say that today Sen. Obama is “trying to show that he understands the indignities of racism and the economic troubles that many believe continue to flow from the legacy of slavery.”

Excuse me? What’s that reference to “economic troubles that flow”?

How about “economic troubles that flow” from gross inequality, discrimination, bad schools, deindustrialization, outsourcing to countries with ridiculously low wages, crony capitalism, and a generally f**ked-up corrupt Republican-dominated Establishment?

The election is a year and a half away and this African-American is already sick and tired of MSM bull**** about Obama’s “blackness.”

Debra Dickerson made a big media splash with a flippant article titled "Colorblind"posted on Salon.

. . .

Obama isn't black.

"Black," in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves. Voluntary immigrants of African descent (even those descended from West Indian slaves) are just that, voluntary immigrants of African descent with markedly different outlooks on the role of race in their lives and in politics. At a minimum, it can't be assumed that a Nigerian cabdriver and a third-generation Harlemite have more in common than the fact a cop won't bother to make the distinction. They're both "black" as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the Harlemite, for better or worse, is politically and culturally black, as we use the term. . .

We know a great deal about black people. We know next to nothing about immigrants of African descent (woe be unto blacks when the latter groups find their voice and start saying all kinds of things we don't want said). That rank-and-file black voters might not bother to make this distinction as long as Obama acts black and does us proud makes them no less complicit in this shell game we're playing because everybody wins.
. . .

I lived through the 1960s civil rights revolution. Some of us have been saying all along that the U.S. “Establishment” is not now and never has been “liberal.” What do I mean by “Establishment?” I mean the little men who run big business, big government, big labor, big universities, and the big media.

Moreover, when it comes to civil rights issues, the U.S. Establishment is racist. What do I mean by “racist?” I mean these overrated, overpaid creeps believe that 19th Century superstitious nonsense that humanity is divided into so-called Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid “races” and these “races” are always at war with each other so that in a diverse country like the United States one “race” must necessarily have supremacy over the others.

Hence, the preoccupation with Obama’s “race.”

Here are snippets from the Times piece:

Obama Classmates Saw a Smile, But No Racial Turmoil
by Richard A. Serrano
Los Angeles Times, Sunday, March 11, 2007

HONOLULU — As a second-stringer for the Punahou high school basketball squad, Barack Obama would fire up his teammates with renditions from the R&B group Earth, Wind & Fire. In yearbooks, he signed his name with a flourishing O, for Obama, which he topped with an Afro. In a world of 1970s rock 'n' roll, he was known for a love of jazz.

To his classmates, the skinny kid with a modest Afro had comfortably taken his place in the ethnic rainbow of Punahou, an elite prep school.

. . .

"We had chapel sessions on the Bahai faith, Islam, Judaism, and all forms of Christianity," said Bernice G. Bowers, a classmate. "The message was that diversity made for a richer community."

Dressed like other boys in the required collared shirts and khaki pants, Obama was one of a small number of blacks, but the student body included large numbers of kids with Chinese, Japanese, Samoan and native Hawaiian ancestry, as well as many whites.

"We didn't think about his blackness," said Mark Hebing, who went to school with Obama for eight years.

As a candidate, Obama is also trying to show that he understands the indignities of racism and the economic troubles that many believe continue to flow from the legacy of slavery.

Punahou was where Obama first awakened to these issues, and to the complexities of being black in America. In his bestselling memoir, "Dreams From My Father," he writes that during his time at the school — from fifth grade through his high school graduation in 1979 — he felt the first stirrings of anger toward whites. He says he also delved into black nationalism.

. . .

Obama says that as he found his way in the world, he learned there were limits to the desirability of advertising his race.

"People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves," he writes in "Dreams." "They were more than satisfied; they were relieved — such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time."

Certainly Obama's classmates had little sense of what he says was going on beneath the surface.

"His reflections about the race issue surprised all of us," said Kellie Furushima, who knew him well. "He gave no indication of feeling uncomfortable in school, and I never witnessed or heard anyone being unkind to him.

. . .

Obama lived with his grandparents in an apartment near the school, his father away in Kenya and his mother pursuing studies in anthropology. None of the 40 classmates interviewed for this article — one-tenth of his class — saw the inside of that apartment, nor had any idea that Obama came to Punahou only by the grace of financial assistance with the tuition — $15,000 a year in today's dollars.

In class, he excelled in debate and composition.

Darin Maurer was amazed at what Obama could get done just over lunch at home. "This was before computers, and he could sit with a typewriter and put down a term paper pretty fast, then head back to school and hand it in."

. . .

Afro! Black nationalism! He talked… and typed!

(gasp! shudder! shake!)

Obama may have written that in his book, knowing that people who buy books in the U.S. eat that stuff up. But even if it’s all true, so what? All this tells us is that Obama was a very smart, very thoughtful and very precocious high school student. But you knew that already.

Punahou School was founded in 1841 for the children of Congregational Missionaries in Hawaii. Way back in 1851, the school opened its doors “to all races and religions” (about a hundred years before certain famously “liberal” schools in the Eastern United States, but I digress).

Today, this coeducational school enrolls over 3,750 students. It is non-sectarian but retains its Christian heritage.

What’s so terrible about all this? Leave it to the MSM that never questioned what the hell Andover was doing with an obvious dummy like George W. Bush, to try to make it into something ugly.

The Times published a picture from the school yearbook:



The caption says: “A 1976 photo from the Punahou School yearbook shows ninth-grader Barack Obama-- front row, fourth from right -- with his class.”

The kid looks cool. Were you that cool in the 9th grade? I, myself, was a total geek . So, the kid went through changes in adolescence. So what? That’s what kids do in adolescence!

Nobody worries about the “angst” of the very self-righteous Rudolph Giuliani growing up in a large extended family that included cops, criminals, firefighters and Mafia hoodlums.

Nobody worries about the “angst” of John McCain, Navy brat born in the Panama Canal zone and the son of Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. For all we know when McCain wanted to be an artist. It’s not hard to imagine McCain experiencing "angst" being pressured to go to Annapolis and be a big war hero.

Richard M. Nixon grew up a poor kid in Southern California and nursed a seething hatred of Eastern “liberal” elites to the end of his days. Too bad the know-it-all media never asked questions about the destructive and self-destructive consequences of Nixon’s “angst.”

My dear wife does not agree with my FLAME-ON about this article. She says if all the talk about Obama raises the consciousness of a lot of clueless folks about the perniciousness of racism that's a good thing.

I respectfully disagree. Want to have a serious discussion about U.S. Sen. Barack Obama for president? Talk about the issues and the man’s philosophy.

Want to have a serious discussion about racism and the “economic troubles that flow” from the U.S. Establishment? Bring it on