Green Party* candidate Jill Stein, who ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2010, has taken the lead for her party’s nomination to run for president against dictator Barry Obama and whoever his Republican counterpart is this November.
According to Ballot Access News and other sources, Stein has won enough of the vote in various state primaries to qualify for matching funds. She is competing for the Green Party nomination with Kent Mesplay and Roseanne Barr, the latter of whom she did a Skype session with to Greens across the country.
Stein does not appear to be on record so far as to prosecuting America’s war criminals, including Obama, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the thugs in their respective regimes guilty of war crimes, but I can’t imagine she would let them off the hook, since it would only reinforce the notion of total immunity for high-ranking lawbreakers – a travesty of justice. (I’ll keep you apprised of this as I learn more.)
FDL’s Jon Walker posted a telling entry regarding the chances of any of the GOP candidates against Obama in November. It’s telling in that the numbers show the race well within traditional GOP election-theft margins.
It wouldn’t be this damned close if Obama governed like a progressive instead of the fascist he is.
Obama won the 2008 election with a large enough margin that not even the normally insurmountable election fraud tactics of the GOP could rig the contest in its favor. This year, however, having governed like the far right Republican he is, Obama could still very well lose to whichever batshit-crazy Nazi-wannabe gets his party’s nomination.
Harry Truman once wrote, “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.” This political truism remains just as solid today as when it was first stated. So why do Democrats insist on blocking this fundamental truth from their thought processes?
It’s because they don’t really care about winning or holding on to nominal power. As the second major political party serving as Wall Street’s lap dogs, their control of government, or lack thereof, changes not one significant policy, does not alter the status quo so much as one iota. That is exactly as Democrats like it, having permanently tethered their prospects to those of their corporate paymasters. They get all the perks of having some measure of political power with none of the responsibility that comes with it, while their alleged opponents get all the blame for policies they support and enable at every chance. Why ruin that by passing and implementing legislation that would deprive their masters, and themselves, of power?
So Barry Obama may not win in November despite the flood of Wall Street cash that is greater than what is being raised by all of his GOP “rivals” combined. He will, of course, have no one but himself to blame. Nevertheless, expect the blame for his loss come November to fall on what passes for the American left.
Who knew? Presidential candidate for the GOP nomination, Newt Gingrich is like the family’s crazy uncle that gets let out for family gatherings and then gets sent back to is room. His recent emergence as the “favorite” for the nomination has met with some harsh criticism and not just from the left. Many of the right wing punditry are not happy with Newt Gingrich’s surge in the polls for the nomination. During Newt’s interview on Face The Nation with Bob Schieffer, he said he would have “activist judges” (translation: judges who disagree with Newt) hauled before Congress to answer for their decisions, if necessary arresting them:
SCHIEFFER: One of the things you say is that if you don’t like what a court has done, that Congress should subpoena the judge and bring him before Congress and hold a Congressional hearing… how would you enforce that? Would you send the Capitol Police down to arrest him?
GINGRICH: Sure. If you had to. Or you’d instruct the Justice Department to send a U.S. Marshal.
I have no idea how Schieffer didn’t react with disbelieving “what?” much like Barbara Walters’ response when Herman Cain said he would want to be Secretary of Defense.
Obviously Newt is off the rails and a couple of former Republican Attorney Generals with some questionable constitutional decisions under their belts think so, too. Former attorney generals Alberto Gonzalez and Michael Mukasey, also a former judge, weighed in on Newt’s judicial lunacy to defy the Supreme Court and, if necessary according to Newt, eliminate the courts that disagree with him all together. In appearances on Fox News they called Newt’s ideas “ridiculous,” “irresponsible,” “outrageous,” and “dangerous”:
KELLY: He wants to see the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals entirely abolished, your thoughts on that?
MUKASEY: Ridiculous. . . . to say that you’re going to undo and entire court simply because you don’t like some of their decisions, when there are thousands of cases before that court, is totally irresponsible. It’s outrageous because it essentially does away with the notion that when courts decide cases the proper way to have them reviewed is to go to a higher court. It’s dangerous because, even from the standpoint of the people who put it forward, you have no guarantee that you’ll have a permanent majority. . . . It would end with having a Democratic majority that then decides to abolish the Fourth Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit. And you go on and on and on. And I guess they could then reconstitute another court. It would reduce the entire judicial system to a spectacle.
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had a similar reaction:
GONZALES: The notion or the specter of bringing judges before the Congress, like a schoolchild being brought before the principal is, to me, a little bit troubling . . . . I cannot support and I would not support efforts that appear to be intimidation or retaliation against judges.
Keep in mind that these two men, supported some if the most unconstitutionally egregious of George W. Bush’s policies, including torture.
Newt Gingrich’s campaign is rapidly imploding, and Ron Paul has now taken the lead in Iowa. He’s at 23% to 20% for Mitt Romney, 14% for Gingrich, 10% each for Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry, 4% for Jon Huntsman, and 2% for Gary Johnson.
Gingrich has now seen a big drop in his Iowa standing two weeks in a row. His share of the vote has gone from 27% to 22% to 14%. And there’s been a large drop in his personal favorability numbers as well from +31 (62/31) to +12 (52/40) to now -1 (46/47). Negative ads over the last few weeks have really chipped away at Gingrich’s image as being a strong conservative, now only 36% of voters believe that he has ‘strong principles,’ while 43% think he does not.
Paul’s ascendancy is a sign that perhaps campaigns do matter at least a little, in a year where there has been a lot of discussion about whether they still do in Iowa. 22% of voters think he’s run the best campaign in the state compared to only 8% for Gingrich and 5% for Romney. The only other candidate to hit double digits on that question is Bachmann at 19%. Paul also leads Romney 26-5 (with Gingrich at 13%) with the 22% of voters who say it’s ‘very important’ that a candidate spends a lot of time in Iowa. Finally Paul leads Romney 29-19 among the 26% of likely voters who have seen one of the candidates in person.
Iowa is no predictor of who will get the nomination and the caucuses are an undemocratic form of voting with no absentee ballots and very low voter turn out but Iowa is a predictor for early primary states. However, the recent harsh criticism from right wing politicians and pundits may keep Newt out of the Oval Office. Poor crazy Newt. Back to your room.
Now that Newt Gingrich has formally tossed his hat into the 2012 ring, the GOP will have to determine for itself how willing it is to forgive a candidate with serious flaws. It remains to be seen whether the former House Speaker’s role as resident bomb thrower and agitator will endear him to more than a specific audience. If he is to be taken seriously, Gingrich will need to radically reinvent himself. One cannot easily make a silk purse out of this sow’s ear. Any effort to cozy up to Evangelical voters is bound to register only as cynical posturing, à la John McCain in 2008. Gingrich is neither a contrite, nor humble person by nature, a quality true to far too many who seek expanded powers. It could be argued that any Presidential campaign is a vain endeavor, but Gingrich has never been the sort of person to disguise his ambitions or the ways in which he has consolidated influence.
GOP Hair Apparent by Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune, Buy this cartoon
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Note: Sections 1-4 contain dozens of additional editorial cartoons and commentary. I’m not sure why but I was getting the below error when trying to post the complete diary. Check out the remaining portions of the diary at Daily Kos.
java.sql.SQLException: Incorrect string value: ‘xC2x8CxC2xA9=1…’ for column ‘extendedText’ at row 1
Note: I kept getting errors about text being corrupted while trying to post the complete diary. This is only half the diary. There are many more sections and editorial cartoons in this diary that I posted over at Daily Kos.
Christine O’Donnell by Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com, Buy this cartoon
Christine O’Donnell is fast becoming the face of the Republican Party. Her campaign slogan is — to put it in Marxist language — power to the people. Or, something like that. To quote an oft-used phrase on the internet(s) and one used frequently on this blog, “Teh stoopid! It burns.”
Time permitting, I will try to post Part II of this diary later on this week.
Note: Due to a deluge of editorial cartoons over the past week or so, I’m going to, time permitting, post Part II of this weekly diary in the next few days. In addition to some of the issues covered in this edition, I’ll include more cartoons on the floods in Pakistan, the withdrawal of combat U.S. forces in Iraq, and Rupert Murdoch’s $1 million contribution to the GOP.
Ed Schultz: This wasn’t flippant, Grayson just took it to them ‘by the rules’. And he doesn’t have to apologize to nobody for anything. And you know what, there are a lot of Lefties around this Country, in their living rooms tonight saying, ‘YES! this is how you got to handle these folks!’
The Republicans are demanding an apology for the same reason they are offering Amendments about Czars — They have nothing to offer in the Health Care Debate!
[…]
Ed Schultz: Congressman Grayson do you take anything back?
Alan Grayson: Absolutely NOT! — the people WHO should be apologizing are the Republicans — they’re the ones who should be apologize for dragging us all through the mud here, while we are just trying to improve Health Care in America.
Breaking news of the latest right-winger incited to commit acts of violence in support of the most virulent political party since the Nazis. A Kansas abortion doctor was gunned down in cold blood today in a Wichita, Kansas church, just another example of how these religious fanatics that dare to call themselves Christians would make Jesus puke were he return to earth tomorrow – then the same bastards would crucify his liberal ass. Here we have yet another example of the sort of mayhem that unstable, armed-to-the teeth freaks are capable of when their buttons are pushed by the malignant filth the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the rest of the house propagandists for the American fascist state. Nothing is sacred to these miscreants, murdering their whole families and then committing suicide is commonplace, the same houses of worship that they claim to be places of sanctity are now legitimate shooting galleries, shit some lunatic right-winger not long ago dressed up as Santa Claus and massacred a houseful of former relatives including children. A terminally diseased political philosophy breeds this type of scum and they should all be subject to euthanasia for the good of society. If you consider that to be overly harsh just imagine how many of these human time bombs that you in your normal daily doings encounter, they hate liberals, gays, minorities and even going to the grocery store becomes a dangerous endeavor when surrounded by them.
You. Yeah, you. You pontificating white males (so unrepresentative of the vast majority of your fellows in race and gender) that think that one bloody word in one speech years ago, a membership to an organization with a Spanish name and a decision upholding a city’s move to limit its liability and scrap a bad test because its results uniformly favored one racial group over another one…
…get real.
You think that Judge Sotomayor is worse for the country than the Confederacy winning the Civil War? You seriously believe that Victoria Woodhull, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony would have locked arms with you in protesting her nomination to the Supreme Court?
You believe that if Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today he would be on the Sunday talk show circuit talking about how she’s a “reverse racist”?
