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Jill Stein’s Been Fighting Civil-Unions-Only Dems Since 2002

In 2002 Jill Stein became the first gubernatorial candidate in Massachusetts history to endorse same-sex marriage. Stein pushed the other six candidates, all Democrats, to abandon their “civil-unions" position.

Stein’s stance and robust support from gay rights advocates and gay-friendly newspapers encouraged several other Democratic candidates to take the risk to support gay marriage, too.

Then, in 2004 the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled marriage discrimination was unconstitutional according to the state constitution. What did the 85% Democratic state legislature do? It rallied to AMEND the state constitution so marriage discrimination would be constitutional. After all, their very own John Kerry was running for president as a civil-unions-only candidate. Might be awkward for him coming from a full out pro-gay state. Party cronyism over principles, after all.

Stein was leader of the Green Party in Massachusetts and pushed hard for marriage equality. She accused the civil-unions-only posturing Dems of reducing gay and lesbian couples to second-class citizenship.

Obama’s Job Creation? Lower US Wages Below Mexico/China!

Obama is now promising jobs to American workers. But there is a COLOSSAL catch. Savaged wages and benefits.

Repeat: SAVAGED!!!

Exactly what the one percenters have been lusting after and now enjoy coming to fruition from a DEMOCRATIC President, of all creatures, who has managed to hoodwink the American citizenry into not seriously noticing. You put the rhetorical emphasis on JOBS .... yadda yadda yadda ... then who seeks more reality-troubling negative details as to how this will come about. Who seriously applies individual critical thinking in this hysterical climate of political gamesmanship and mass corporate disinformation?

Apparently our Democratic president thinks he can keep up the big lie beyond his election in November. Sadly, I wouldn't make book against that.

Obama’s plan is exactly the kind of plan Mitt Romney would implement. It’s not a lesser evil plan at all. It is just as evil as what the pro-corporatists Republicans quest after. Easier for Obama to slide it by, of course, given the fog of denial still enveloping an incredibly large percentage of the original 80 million who put him in office. Such a perfect front man for oligarchy. Enough betrayal mojo in him for a whole next term.

My Dustin-Hoffman-Graduate-Plastics' Moment

It happened decades ago. That phone exchange in my parents’ kitchen.

It was not long after exiting my college “Camelot”. The steep plunge from grandiose, myopic college senior to insecure, jobless, debt-ridden returning daughter/enabler whose vision hadn’t included re-filling her parents’ empty nest. What in God’s name had happened to the delicious and adventurous fast-lane to an independent adult life? Somehow I had gotten on a wrong entry ramp and was zooming backwards in time.

I could feel four years of amassed self-esteem relentlessly leaking away with each passing, unemployed day – hour – minute.

Needless to say there was no small spurt of interest one listless afternoon when the owner of a perky, female voice at the other end of the phone identified itself as being from the public relations department of my recent, beloved college.

Apparently someone whom this woman could not identify had disclosed to her that I had a strong interest in acting. I was surprised she would bring that up. Yes, I did enjoy acting. I had acted a lot in high school. But when I had gone to the smallish college only theater majors had opportunities to perform so I had had to give the passion up for four years.

Obama’s 'Hit-Man-In-Chief' Bragging Rights! Really?

Patrick Martin of wsws has posted a provocative article on Barack Obama’s campaign use of the “take out” of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Martin:

There is something particularly degrading about the use of a state killing—in which dozens of heavily armed special ops troops mowed down the fugitive in front of his wives and children—to promote a political campaign. Obama presents himself, not so much even as commander-in-chief, but as “hitman-in-chief,” appealing to the worst social instincts.

snip

In speeches, interviews and a seven-minute web video narrated by former President Bill Clinton, the Obama campaign has hailed his decision to order the commando raid one year ago today on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, while suggesting that Republican Mitt Romney would not have made that choice.

Obama’s S&M (Steady & Methodical) Criminalizing of Dissent

On the Black Agenda Report website Jemima Pierre writes:

Clearly, and methodically, “the US government is preparing for domestic insurrection.”

.... In only three years, the Obama administration and its enablers have established, legitimized, and normalized a national security state apparatus that removes any doubt that domestic policing is a prelude to a totalitarian police state. This apparatus has surpassed the Bush administration’s attempts to expand executive power by crushing the civil liberties of US citizens. And it has done so boldly, with only a few prominent critics, and without so much as a whimper from so-called leftists.

Dr. Jill Stein: Obama Irrational On Marijuana, Medical or Otherwise

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, a physician and public health advocate:

“A win/win solution is within reach if we can just shake off the Bush/Obama past and embrace a rational, effective drug policy for the 21st century.”

At the 420 rally in Denver, Colorado, Dr. Stein addressed tens of thousands of marijuana reform advocates. Dr. Stein declared that one of her first actions as President would be to "order the DEA and the Justice Department to cease and desist all attempts to harass or prosecute medical marijuana clinics or other legitimate marijuana-related businesses that are operating under state laws."

Stein asserted that hundreds of thousands of patients who suffer from chronic pain and cancers are benefitting from medical marijuana. It has been deemed legal in 13 states.

Stein criticized Michele Leonhart, a Bush appointee who Obama has promoted to head of the DEA. Leonhart has been behind the “overzealous” attacks on medical marijuana.

Yanking the BP Disaster Out of the American Memory Hole

It’s been two years. Two years since our collective shock and awe over the worst environmental disaster in American history.

Horrified we watched for three long months as hundreds of millions of gallons of oil relentlessly bled into the Gulf of Mexico.

BP pr handlers and Obama spokespeople asked America to trust that this corporation and our government were seriously responding to the crisis and would do everything possible for future prevention of another such catastrophe.

Here is a stack of resurrected revelations and new revelations about the disaster that we must not let disappear into a national memory hole.

Eleven men died when BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded. (Robert Weissman)

The blowout spewed nearly 5 million barrels of oil and more than 6 billion cubic feet of natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico. (Common Dreams)

BP made a conscious decision not to install a $500,000 safety device that could have prevented the blowout. (Robert Weissman)

Jill Stein: Obama’s Colombian Trade Deal ‘Race to Bottom'

An angry Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein had this to say about Obama’s certification last Sunday of the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

President Obama called it a win-win. No, it's a lose-lose for workers. It's a deadly assault on the freedom of Colombian workers to organize, as well as on the freedom of American workers from unfair competition from workers who make poverty wages because they are violently repressed.

It is a trade pact, explained Stein, in which more than 80 percent of industrial and manufactured products exported from the U.S. and from Colombia will be duty free. More than half of U.S. agriculture exports to Colombia will also become duty free.

Stein:

The U.S. agricultural exports are not so-called free trade but subsidized trade. Many of them receive federal agribusiness subsidies. They will flood Colombian markets, displace Colombian farmers, reduce Colombia's food self reliance, and push farmers and farmworkers into the manufacturing labor market to further lower wages there. The trade deal is job killer for American workers and a wage depressor for Colombian workers.

Obama’s Global Drone Terrorism Shreds Concept of Rule of Law

The nation’s first Black President has taken us on the final descent into international barbarity with his drone offensive. It is a joy stick to Hell. Glen Ford

How can Obamacrats continue to ignore, minimize or even justify Obama’s ever escalating ILLEGITIMATE drone warfare?

Illegitimate war waging is the HIGHEST war crime.

Apparently in this election year, “Shhhhhhhhhhhh.” Don’t begin to call out a Democratic President for throwing out international law for what Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report sees as Obama’s drive for “full spectrum dominance” over the planet. Excuse me for uttering this question but wasn't that what Hitler was ultimately challenged for? When if ever will Obama be?

Not easily in Post-Morality America. Of course not, in the smoke and mirrors “lesser evilism” propaganda for one of the two heads of really one amoral corporate party. Propaganda by big media especially the so-called progressive Obama hucksters on MSNBC leading American lemmings horrifyingly to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the terrorism this United States is inflicting all over the globe for corporate agendas NOW. Instead of panicking people about what will happen internationally if a Republican gets at the helm, why not take a hard look at what Obama is doing internationally?

Jill Stein Champions Santa Monica Pepper-Sprayed Students

Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein issued the following statement April 6, 2012:

Students and other members of the Santa Monica College community were cruelly pepper-sprayed this week for trying to participate in a public meeting about the sky-rocketing tuition costs for public higher education that are about to be imposed on them. They are heroes for standing up for this imperiled foundation of our economy and our democracy.

Specifically the students were voicing their objections to the proposed quadrupling of fees for many summer courses through a so-called "Two-Tiered Tuition" system. This comes in the aftermath of decades of tuition increases across the country which have made a college degree as much as ten times as expensive for students compared to just a generation ago. Most college students are going into deep debt to pay these high costs already, with roughly 30 million students and recent graduates struggling to repay college debt amidst desperately high unemployment rates for recent college graduates.

Escobar: War Porn & US Snuff-Films Using Real Populations

It may seem insensitive to blog about the evil savagery of war (called out profoundly in a recent article by Pepe Escobar) on Easter weekend, when millions of Christians are celebrating the death and resurrection of the extraordinary unconditionally open-hearted historical figure of Jesus Christ. However, to me it seems particularly appropriate considering most American citizens' (reflecting their amoral leadership’s) capacity to talk the talk of religious sentimentality and their incapacity to walk the spiritual walk role modeled by Jesus.

Commitment to promoting universal love, cooperation and partnership? Little evidence of such commitment in the United States.

Scott Peck in his book People of the Lie writes about sociopathy as well as the battle between good and evil. At one point he implores his readers to keep “a gentle place of shelter for Jesus in their hearts.”

Clearly Jesus has been massively forsaken by Americans.

“Whatever you do to the least among us, you do unto me.”

Certainly not words Americans heed. No gentle place for Jesus in the hearts of darkness of most Americans, whether leaders or plain old average citizens, when it comes to the welfare of foreign fellow humans.

Stein to Obama: Don’t Deny Half America Sinking Into Poverty

Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein calls out the Obama administration that the transfer of wealth to the 1 percenters is still happening despite statistical spin over minimal incremental number shifts in jobs reports. Growing citizen impoverishment continues despite election pr-hype from both of the legacy parties.

Stein is offering a serious Green New Deal to loosen and eliminate the merciless grip of greed of the 1% dooming the balance of the 99% not there already, to a life of poverty. Stein accuses both Democrat and Republican leaderships of coaxing the citizenry to ignore the unignorable at its own peril.

Stein warns citizens to be especially wary of Obama spin today on the 2012 first quarter federal jobs report. After all, she points out, we are facing down three decades of “flatlined wages and purchasing power” for American workers as CEO incomes continued to obscenely shoot upwards. The “Stolen Decades” began in the 1980s and they are in no way ending under the present administration Stein declares.

The Continuing Crucifixion of Bradley Manning

Manning’s case has become a waning sideshow, kept alive only at the periphery of our mainstream attention span by a very vocal support network, and not surprisingly, the foreign audience. But as Madar points out, "ignorance is not just a matter of information supply, but of demand." Today’s Americans care less about "the truth," much preferring celluloid rebels and the formulaic black and white tension of The Lorax and The Hunger Games to the ethical and moral complexities associated with flesh ’n blood risk takers and truth-seekers. "The paucity of public-spirited citizens speaks poorly of American rebelliousness," writes Madar. Kelley B. Vlahos, “The Passion of Bradley Manning”

Bradley Manning is being “crucified” for our sins.

For the sins of us American citizens, many of us of limited courage, conscience and/or consciousness.

He is also being persecuted -- the torturous “killing of the messenger” -- for the appalling and vast sins of the amoral rulers of this country, who are responsible for gratuitous (although they don’t consider them gratuitous if there are corporate profits involved) massive deaths and massive suffering of human beings around the globe.

Green Party's ‘Doctor’ Stein: Hippocrates not Hypocrisy

Dr. Jill Stein is the Green Party front runner for President.

She is a graduate of Harvard Medical School.

She has over 25 years' experience as a doctor.

Dr. Stein campaigned for single payer health care when she ran against Mitt Romney for governor of Massachusetts in 2002.

When asked about the mandate and Obamacare she explained that whatever the outcome determined by SCOTUS:

…, Americans will still be stuck with an expensive, ineffective health care system that fails to provide quality health care to all Americans.

snip

The mandate that every American buy expensive, inadequate health insurance is a scheme developed by Republicans and foisted on the nation by Democrats. The winners are the health insurance companies. A Stein administration will make health care a right while eliminating the enormous waste, bureaucracy and negative health impacts of the current health insurance mess.

Justice for Trayvon Martin in Spite of Not Because of Obama!

The following are provocative excerpts from two columnists of Black Agenda Report calling out Obama and the black political class for not doing right on behalf of black Americans and, in particular, not being seriously committed to finding real justice and reform for such tragic cases as Trayvon Martin’s.

Margaret Kimberley in Freedom Rider: Obama and Trayvon Martin:

So Obama does what he has been doing for years now. He is the black but not so black man, and all black people are worse off because of his success. If there is justice for Trayvon it will be in spite of Barack Obama, not because of him.

snip

The “master of marketing and fakery” was compelled by circumstances to appear concerned about his least favored people: young Black males and their families. President Obama’s most loyal constituents, who usually ask nothing of him, were demanding both an emotional and a substantive response to the Trayvon Martin killing. This was “all very problematic for the president, whose political success is the result of distancing himself from black people at best, and vilifying them at his worst moments.”