I have a Friday night replacement for McCain

Cynthia McKinney is ready to go!

We might actually get a real debate if just one half of the duopoly had to stand on stage against a third-party candidate.

Over at Washington Monthly, in a comment, Jeff II claims McKinney is as nutty as McCain is clueless. My response:

First, I cut third-party candidates more slack.

Second, other than her degree of indulgence of 9/11 Truthers, I don't consider McKinney "nutty". Maybe "taken with herself," re the Capitol Police pushing incident, but that's something entirely different.

Less "nutty" than claiming "clean coal" actually is; less "nutty" than taking big bucks from the nuke industry while claiming to be tough; less "nutty" than refusing to tie regulatory reform to the bailout.

But, "nutty" is a facile answer to prop up the two-party duopoly, I know. If you have real examples of her being "nutty," feel free to post them.

Which is part of the problem.

Get your Green groove on tonight

Greta Bruner, CSPAN interviewer, has confirmed that C-SPAN will be airing its Cynthia McKinney interview on "Road to the White House" in its usual time slot tonight at both 6:30 and 9:30 p.m. Eastern time. Included will be footage of the Ron Paul event where he supports third-party candidates for president.

In other GP news, it has qualified for November ballot access in Ohio and Virginia. (You will have to write in McKinney and lower-level candidates here in Texas.)

St. Paul police out-Nazi Denver

I’d been meaning to post something earlier in the week, when St. Paul’s finest Brown Shirts actually raided private homes.

Anyway, better late than never to express outrage over the latest police thuggery.

If a would-be President Obama wants to boost his civil liberties cred, he’d do something like promising to cut federal community police funding to cities like this.

But, he hasn’t yet, so, Cynthia McKinney, the opening is yours!

And, with that observation, I’ll still be commenting about the Two-Party Duopoly through election day. Just because I exposed GOP idiocy this last week still doesn’t mean I’ll pull the Obama lever.

Steve Benen gets Obama’s ‘historicity’ wrong

Sorry, Steve, but contra your breathlessness over the alleged historicity of Barack Obama’s nomination …

Cynthia McKinney beat him by a month.

Benen’s exact quote:

Barack Obama, claiming a prize never held by a black American, swept to the Democratic presidential nomination.

Yes, he’s talking about the Democratic nomination to be technical, but, by putting the adjectival clause first, it seems clear to me Benen is referring to the historicity of the moment in general.

And he’s wrong.

A delusional Obamiac tool makes unwarranted progressive voter assumptions

Mike Stark, creator of the “vote no on FISA” subgroup on MyBarack Obama shows his ignorance about progressive voter options:

The progressives who constitute the Democratic Party's activist base learned a lesson from the 2000 election; Ralph Nader will almost certainly not be a factor in the 2008 presidential election because left-leaning voters are not willing to throw their votes away. That said, there is – or should have been – another side to the Nader coin.

The name is “McKinney, Cynthia,” Mr. Stark, and she is the official Green Party nominee for president.

I will NOT consider my vote wasted if, as is likely, it is cast for her.

Hey, Mr. Stark. You’re a tool. An enabler. Deal with it.

McKinney is officially the one

Cynthia McKinney is the Green Party’s 2008 presidential nominee. Democrats, once again take note that Ralph Nader is NOT the official anything of any organized political party.

That said, it looks like Raw Story is deliberately practicing “my Democrats, right or wrong” bias with the picture it used. Don’t tell me there’s not an official AP picture from the convention.

Next, to posters on Raw Story, Talking Points Memo for re-running a 2006 story, etc., Georgia has crossover primary voting; in a district that tends more than 70 percent Democratic, she didn’t lose renomination in 2006 just based on Democratic voters.

Third, there’s a difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. And, she has apologized for past campaign remarks by her father and a campaign manager.

McKinney: ‘I had a place to go when the Democratic Party left me’

Those were among the choicer words spoken in Fort Worth Feb. 10 by former Democratic Congresswoman and current Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney. This is one of multiple posts about the evening.

McKinney noted that, as a Congresswoman, some of the legislation she proposed, along with what she saw as a insubstantial yet substantial issue, a rejected attempt by party consultants to style her up, led her both to be marginalized within the Democratic caucus and to realize she had common issues with Greens.

Among that legislation she proposed was an attempt to ban depleted uranium from use in tank and artillery shells, banning tax breaks for companies moving businesses/factories overseas, and voting reform legislation that would have included instant runoff voting. Not surprisingly, all but three of the above three items were passed by Congress, the last in part because, of course, it threatens the two-party monopoly.

Top issues she mentioned included ending the war in Iraq, ending privatizing of prisons (Amen to that), learning from the success of “people power” in Latin America, and more attention to 9/11 “truthers” (a pet subject of hers, and NO amen to that on my part, especially as it was the second conspiracy theory item I heard at the event).

Other choice quotes:

Referring to the financial side of the two-party monopoly, she said, “We are all the same people. We get our money from the same people.”

On the work involved with doing the right thing, she said. “It’s easy for Nancy Pelosi, to ascend to the highest place (a woman has reached) .. and then say, ‘Impeachment is off the table.’”

Meet another presidential candidate

Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney will be in our area, in Fort Worth Feb 10. It’s at 7 p.m. at Spiral Diner, 1314 W. Magnolia. That’s a Sunday.

Cynthia McKinney to run for President as a Green?

From a Texas Green Party activist’s e-mail list, that’s the word I have. The former Georgia Congresswoman, active in opposition to the Iraq war, a leader in impeachment calls, and strong in challenging the influence of AIPAC over American foreign policy, is being actively courted by the Green Party.

McKinney recently moved to the Bay Area … and registered to vote as a Green Party member.

She would be, in Green Party terms, a great candidate, relatively speaking, in terms of name recognition and political experience. Not sure how much of a backfire personality issues might cause.

Right idea, wrong person doing it

Outgoing lightning-rod Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has introduced a House resolution calling for President Bush’s impeachment.

Great idea, and yes, it’s too bad the Democratic leadership won’t consider such an idea over the next two years, but coming from Miss 9/11 Conspiracy Theory, it’s the wrong messenger.