Here’s your Green Party candidates for president, 2008:

1. Jesse Johnson, 2006 US Senate candidate and 2004 gubernatorial candidate for the Mountain Party in West Virginia (now affiliate state party of the Green Party of the United States); filmmaker.

2. Kat Swift, Kat Swift, Texas Green organizer; former Campus Greens leader; activist with Clean Money San Antonio and San Antonio Democracy Now.

3. Kent Mesplay, 2004 candidate for the Green presidential nomination; former president of Turtle Island Institute; environmental engineer, alternative energy activist; California Green organizer.

4. Cynthia McKinney, former member of the US House of Representatives (Georgia), 1993 to 2003, 2005 to 2007; former member of the Georgia House of Representatives, 1988-1992.

Cynthia McKinney? Stereotypes and smears related to 9/11 aside, her temper, and sense of entitlement, do concern me a little bit. She also (and this coming from someone who doesn’t come close to supporting the Israel lobby) can flirt with the boundaries of something approaching anti-Semitism.

Per the first sentence in the paragraph above, her indulgence of 9/11 “truther” crackpot theories, as articulated when she was in my area, in Fort Worth, in February, also concern me.

But, she’s got name recognition, and as a female candidate, might appeal to Clintonites who have a political brain, as well as anti-Obama anger, rather than Clintonites deluded enough to join a GOP-flacked PUMA group. And, yes, I could accept her as presidential material.

But, let’s also look at the not-so-famous candidates.  

Mesplay, with his background in alt-energy, has a strong “core Green” issue, and one of importance. He favors Instant Runoff Voting (and please, flacks for other alternative voting systems, I know IRV is not perfect; do not inundate me with comments). And, Mesplay, with Blackfoot Indian heritage, also brings minority background to the table.

I have a bit of familiarity with Swift. Clean money is a good emphasis. However, her website has had little updating in months, and, it’s not too much above the amateur level as far as layout, etc.

I know less about Johnson; he’s run for U.S. Senate and the governor’s mansion in West Virginia.

And, for Nader-bashers (not that I'm a Nader-defender), you will note that he is NOT a Green Party candidate. He may continue to run as an Independent, but that's a different thing.

That's my reflection on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Thurgood Marshall is the man who could have, and should have, been named by LBJ as chief justice. There's no way the Senate would have blocked his appointment by refusal to vote cloture, as happened with Johnson's crony appointment, Abe Fortas, who was of course rejected.

SCOTUS would have been a lot different. See my blog for details of alternative history.

Let’s get that clear, after one or two other reader posts here on the heels of his faith-based speech Tuesday

 

First, they’re still unconstitutional, from where this skeptical atheist sits.

 

<b>Public trust</b>(s) as well as public offices are barred from religious tests.

 

And, does Obama even know, for example about Secular Organizations for Sobriety or Lifering Secular Recovery, among the alternatives to AA and NA?

 

Does Obama believe, as does Arianna Huffington, that AA works better, in part because it’s faith-based, than do non “spiritual” treatments?

 

The answer is, yes, Obama does believe that:

Barack Obama depicted faith-based programs as a “uniquely powerful way of solving problems,” especially for substance abusers.

And, if Obama is so “inclusive,” then why does he set up straw men like this:

Barack Obama claims to be “a devout Christian” and asserts that “secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square.”

Finally, I’m not alone, even among people who are not avowed atheists. There’s plenty of skepticism out there:

National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy complained, “I don’t want a progressive evangelical movement any more than I want the conservative one we have right now.”

Quotes from my last blogpost line via Free Inquiry.

(And, no, AA <b>doesn’t</b> work better than other alternatives.)

Leading black Democrats who should know better from ethnic history than to give immunity from illegal wiretapping. One or two theoretically liberal Democrats who weren’t, on this.

 

All part of the 45 percent of Democrats who caved, or, “supercaved” based on how much Kit Bond likes this, all detailed at my blog.

Leading black Democrats who should know better from ethnic history than to give immunity from illegal wiretapping. One or two theoretically liberal Democrats who weren’t, on this.

 

All part of the 45 percent of Democrats who caved, or, “supercaved” based on how much Kit Bond likes this, all detailed at my blog.

Reportedly, Congressional and White House negotiators have agreed to the the basics of a FISA renewal bill that is, in essence, pretty much a warmed-over version of what Kit Bond proposed months ago.

The only diff is that district courts involved with actual lawsuits, and not the FISA court, would make the immunity calls.

More at my blog, including an appeal to Obama to filibuster, should this get to the Senate floor.

Ira Isaacs may be in the middle of the most serious obscenity trial in the U.S. in years if not decades, Judge Kozinski aside.

You can read my take on it as part of my regular Friday SCATblogging series, a takeoff on Friday catblogging by Kevin Drum and others.

Re the star of this week's TPM Cafe, she's a little light in the loafers for her blind support of faith-based programs, even to the point of denigrating stalwart defenders of church-state separation.

I wasn’t in Dallas last year, but two years ago, I joined the protest in front of ExxonMobil’s annual shareholder meeting. Back in town, back to protest.

 

The big item on the shareholder agenda this year is the proposal to split eXXXon’s CEO and chairman of the board positions, to require them to be held by two different people. Current CEO and Chairman Rex Tillerson strongly opposes the move.

 

I had a chance to get interviewed about this, and more general comments on Peak Oil and global warming, for PBS’s Frontline. The episode, whether my comments make the cut or not, is supposed to air in October.

 

The “division of powers” proposal, which most other Big Oil companies have already, got 42 percent a year ago, and with the backing of some 200 members of the Rockefeller family, maybe it will get over the top this time.

More, with pictures, at my blog.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor and the focus of right-wing inflamed controversy smears, including death threats, was on Bill Moyers’ Journal tonight in what will surely be Moyers’ top-rated show for some time.

Wright overall was pretty good, and especially with the “God Damn America” sermon, Moyers did a nice segue/setup.

That said, while Moyers was certainly a sympathetic, and knowledgeable, interviewer, he didn't give Wright a 100 percent pass on his relations with Farrakhan or what he noted Wright mentor Martin Marty called Wright's “rough edges” and “abrasiveness.”

Here are some other observations of mine.

First, I now know more about where Wright gets his “black Jesus” ideas from. Early in the show, a clip from Wright’s church showed him claiming almost all the Bible takes place in Africa.

WRONG.

The Fertile Crescent/Middle East are in Asia. Indeed, “erev” and “assu” or similar are old words in Hebrew and related Semitic languages, and are of course the roots of “Europe” and “Asia.” (The Greek myth of Zeus and Europa was lifted from the Fertile Crescent.)

Wright was right, in many ways, about the “prophetic voice.” I’ve heard preachers both white and black have a voice like that for this-world prophetic justice. Beyond that, as for the church’s slogan, “Unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian,” Wright had the quote of embracing Christianity without abandoning Africanity. That said, the motto was adopted under the pastor before Wright.

“Bad,” and more seriously from my small American minority point of view, came back, though.

Wright, as with Arianna Huffington, whom I blogged about earlier this week, though not so explicitly, seemed to indicate religious belief was necessary to find meaning in and give meaning to life.

WRONG.

And, that’s not just a white atheist guy saying that.

Meet The Infidel Guy, Reginald Finley, arguably America’s top black atheist. I know he would have the same condemnation.

Anyway, Wright then spoke in more detail about the “God damn America” book. First, getting back to that prophetic voice, the voice of people like Amos and Hosea, or the blessings and curses (or conDE/AMNnations, if you will) of Deuteronomy, he said religious leaders are supposed to, per their tradition, challenge government.

Of course, politically and socially conservative white evangelical churches are clueless about that in the pews, in large part from preachers who refuse to engage in such condemnations, unless it’s the hot-button issue of abortion or gays.

But, Wright spelled out the results of that.

When you start confusing God and government … you’re in serious trouble. (It’s like), ‘My government, right or wrong.’

The sermon clip was complete enough to show Wright explaining how the Roman government of Jesus’ time and the British Empire of a century ago both failed, then making a segue to the failures of American foreign policy before coming to the “God damn America” line.

I have a linguistic hair to split, though. Wright would have been better saying “God damnS America” to make that point clear.

Moyers also had Wright talk through the sermon he gave the Sunday after 9/11, where he used Psalm 137 as his text, the famous “By the waters of Babylon” psalm, for those of a Judeo-Christian background. It is called that from its opening line, which sets the words of the psalm on the lips of Jewish exiles in the Babylonian captivity under its King Nebuchadrezzer (the actual name of the biblically misrendered “Nebuchadnezzar”).

Anyway, here’s the last line of that psalm, Wright’s sermonic cornerstone:

O daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us —
he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against a rock.

Wright told Moyers he was speaking to the people of his church who, like many other Americans, wanted revenge after 9/11. He said the psalm showed they had biblical precedent for feeling that way, but that the Bible called people beyond that to growth.

But, one problem, not just of Wright, but of about any Christian minister or Jewish rabbi. The psalm itself ends with that as the last verse. Before a “bible,” or an Old Testament/Tanakh, or even a book called “Psalms,” or even one its five original separate books, was assembled, that psalm was read alone.

As a cry for vengeance.

Later on, Wright mentioned racism in all sorts of holy books, not just the Bible, but also places like the Babylonian Talmud and the Hindu Vedas. (And he’s right.) He also mentioned problematic passages, like the Levite of Judges 19 who has a concubine then abandons her to be gang-raped to death.

But, he ignored something like the holocaust Yahweh himself expressly commanded in I Samuel 15, in talking about Psalm 137.

No, Rev. Wright (and 99 percent of other preachers), your God was originally understood and embraced as a God who wanted vengeance. The author of that psalm understood that.

So, Wright did a pretty good job of selling his theology. And, by that, I mean Christian theology, not just black Christian theology. But, that “prophetic voice” has some devil’s tritone clarion calls.

THAT is what is also in the Pentagon's just-released assessment showing Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs or a real connection with al-Qaeda.

Te biggie, though? The alleged George H.W. Bush assassination plot by Iraqi intelligence in 1993. Alleged -- the Pentagon says no evidence to back this up either.

Rather, let's go back to the working assumption some of us have had for more than a decade... the al-Sabah ruling sheikhs of Kuwait set the whole thing up.

MOre on my personal blog.

Political activists, under the banner name of  Re-create 68,
want to bring at least part of the activist, idealist, political flavor of 40
years ago to this year’s Democratic National Convention inDenver.

Barbara Rivera wants to “stand for peace” on behalf of the U.S. Department of Peace and Nonviolence.

 

Duke Austin hopes to hold a five-day “this is what democracy looks like” rally with the Students for Peace and Justice.

 

Adam Jungk proposes to set up a Tent State University. Barbara Cohen applied for a “festival of democracy”; her husband, Mark Cohen, for a “celebration of democracy.”

 

They’re just five of the people who submitted more than 200 applications to occupy 14 centrally located Denver parks during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The catch is, they are all associated with the same group: Re-create 68.

 

City officials will draw names in a park-permit lottery today, and say the multiple applications look like ballot stuffing.

So? They’re playing the system and winning. If official Democratic Party orgs, or food vendors, lose out, tough.

 R-68’s Glenn Spagnuolo, who also filed for a permit for “The Free Speech Zone” as an individual, and who freely admits knowing Duke, Adam, Mark and the two Barbaras — and, in all, as many as 40 other applicants friendly to his group — says it's the city that’s not playing fair.

Agreed. It sounds like Denver is trying to bland out the convention.

For more skeptical left-liberal blogging on a variety of issues, visit my blog.

Short answer, for those of you familiar with the developing story,
appears to be No, we apparently can’t put Rush’s pilonidal cyst behind
bars for recreational fun for some some Ohio criminals named “Bubba.”

Whether you are familiar or not with the story, read on:

Truthout reports Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) is investigating GOP crossovers
voting in the Ohio Democratic primary. In Ohio, doing a temporary party
change for that reason (Ohio primaries are semi-closed or semi-open,
depending on which way you look at it) is a criminal offense, and Rush
Limbaugh (and Laura Ingraham) encouraged exactly such behavior.

However, the law applies only to actual voters. And, Ohio's statute on conspiracy does not extend as low as a fifth-degree felony.

Read my blog for citations on the relevant Ohio laws.

So do the voters who thought they were getting
straight talk about Iraq and other issues in 2006 from Congressional Democrats,
not  weak whining about President Bush that
would be swatted out of the lane by anybody taller than 5-2.

“The American people are still waiting to hear the straight talk we deserve,” Sen. Robert Menendez said in the Democrats’ weekly radio address. “Instead of making more sweeping claims of victory, as he did this week, it's time for the president to face the reality of the situation we're in.”

Why don’t YOU tell the American public the truth, Sen. Menendez?

 

Why don’t you bluntly tell them:

• That we cannot establish a democracy in Iraq, even if we had more troops than we do there now?

• That you are still afraid of being labeled “defeatist”?

• That Afghanistan, as well as Iraq, is probably “lost”?

• That al-Qaeda doesn’t hate us because we drink, let women vote, etc., but because we write blank checks to Israel and have troops occupying Arabia?

 

I could list more, but that’s enough for starters.

Earlier
this week, I blogged as to whether or not it was time for Hillary Clinton to
close up shop on her campaign, whether before or after the Pennsylvania
primary (assuming she doesn’t have a earth-shaking victory, if any, there).

Now, as I note, the question is what happens to her after 2008?

Per the in-depth Politico story and other items linked
there, I noted that:

• Her campaign is essentially broke, including the fact that Barack Obama could outspend her 2-1 in Pennsylvania and still have $9 million on hand to drop on North Carolina, given their current finance numbers;

• She would have to do 60-40 in the vote in remaining primaries AND 2-1 in currently unpledged or yet-unnamed superdelegates;

• The release of White House logs from her years as First Lady have put the lie to her claims to have been ardently anti-NAFTA.

So, with all that in mind, assuming she doesn’t get the nomination in 2008, what happens to Hillary Clinton’s political life, future and plans after this summer?

 

Speculation 1. If Obama wins in 2008, that puts her next chance of a presidential run in 2016. And, as women like Geraldine Ferraro, or plenty an older Hollywood actress, would surely, and rightly, tell us, ageism has a sexism bias to it.

 

In other words, a 68-year-old Hillary Clinton ain’t going to get the nomination, and not just because she will even more seem to be a link to the past and not an “agent of change” in 2016.

 

Speculation 2. If Obama loses, a lot of intra-Democratic navel-gazing will probably point the finger at her, and quickly. Her 2012 nomination chances might not be “none,” but they would be “slim” indeed.

 

And, would she stay in the Senate, under either speculation? Her seat comes up for re-election in 2012, which would bollix things up more if Obama loses in the general this year.

 

Or, what if Obama wins? Does Clinton get a primary challenger, backed by the Obama White House, in her 2012 Senate race?

 

Hence, the almost desperate quality of her recent campaigning, most recently exemplified by the Slickster questioning Obama’s patriotism.

 

Huffington Post has more on Bill Clinton as desperation surrogate.

 

For more skeptical left-liberal blogging on a variety of issues, visit SocraticGadfly.