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.)