Cynthia McKinney speaking in Chicago tonight

Someone I've been blogging a lot about lately, Cynthia McKinney, will be in Chicago tonight. Cynthia McKinney is running for president under the Green Party banner.

From an Illinois Green Party press release:

During her swing through Chicago, McKinney will speak at a fundraiser
held a Decima Musa, 1901 South Loomis (19th & Loomis), in Chicago's historic Pilsen neighborhood. The event will be held Friday, Dec. 14, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

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At an event last week in Carbondale, Ill., McKinney was endorsed by 2006 Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney, who earned the support of over 10 percent of Illinois voters in that campaign.

"I have long felt that Cynthia McKinney was a Green at heart," Whitney commented recently. "Unlike most Democrats in Congress, Cynthia has long been a principled, tireless advocate for peace, civil rights, and the fundamental right of the people to vote and have their vote count – accurately. She has long been a fighter against corruption, injustice, environmental destruction, the imperial presidency and the corporate aristocracy in this country. Her voting record was impeccable. She was, and is, a true representative of the public interest."

Eventually Whitney will regret those comments, in my opinion. The posts below should explain why.

Related Marathon Pundit posts:

Moonbat McKinney visits her home planet: "Truther" World
A bleak day in Carbondale, Illinois: Salukis lose, McKinney arrives: UPDATED
Georgia's Cynthia McKinney Parkway may be headed for the exit ramp
Police brutalizer Cynthia McKinney to lead protest of police brutality
Uh-oh. Green Party candidates multiply in Illinois
Still in the 1960s: 2008 Green Party convention coming to Chicago: UPDATED

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A bleak day in Carbondale: Salukis lose, Cynthia McKinney arrives

Yesterday in a cold rain, the Southern Illinois University Salukis lost a close game to Delaware in the Football Championship Subdivision semifinals.

There was more sad news in Carbondale Saturday: former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) was in town.

McKinney, to the delight of many Democrats, has switched her party affiliation to the Greens--and to my amazement they seem glad to have her. She's now a presidential candidate, for the Greens of course.

Former socialist Rich Whitney was the Green Party candidate for governor last year--the Greenies who chime at Marathon Pundit deny it, but Whitney received 10 percent of the vote last November because of the tremendous disatisfaction of the two major party candidates, Democrat Rod Blagojevich and Republican Judy Baar Topinka. "Blago" won, but now has approval ratings lower than those of President Bush--who's not very popular in Illinois--I like him though, and so do a lot of my friends.

Topinka's image never recovered from a bruising primary battle, and she couldn't match Blagojevich's fundraising haul.

McKinney is of course the same woman who slugged a Capitol Hill police officer, then blamed the whole thing on racism. In 2001, she said that President Bush had prior knowledge to the 9/11 attacks. In the past she surrounded herself with anti-Semites--including her father.

She even pulled the race card on Al Gore, stating in 2000, that Gore's "Negro tolerance level has never been too high."

Here's what Rich Whitney had to say about McKinney yesterday, all quotes come from the Southern Illinoisan:

Cynthia McKinney is the best candidate to represent the Green Party in 2008.

Also..

When most fellow Democrats stood down in the stolen elections, Cynthia McKinney was one of the few who stood up.

And...

She may not have known it until recently, but she belonged in the Green Party all along.

There's good news for the Democratic Party though. Here's what McKinney said about her former party:

My values are not represented by the party I used to be a part of.

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Julie Schmitt (Green) running for 20th District seat on the Kane County Board

I live a stone's throw from Mayor Schock's incredible growing Elgin so I'll be watching Schmitt's race closely. Stories about her here, here, and here.

If Schmitt chucks some of the Green's Bush-derangement-syndrome and instead hit on themes of development and growth out here, she could advance the Party....

....at least with me.

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Ill. Green Party seeks to remove white supremacist from ballot--but what about McKinney?

An odious turd named Richard B. Mayers of Berwyn has filed the necessary papers to be placed on the Green Party ballot in the 3rd Congressional District. Mayers is a white-supremacist and if he wins the primary over Jerome Pohlen, who is endorsed by the state Green Party, Mayers will appear on general election ballot of the district, which encompasses Chicago's Southwest Side and parts of the western and southern suburbs.

The Chicagoist has a rundown on Mayers here.

Naturally the Greens want nothing to do with this trash, and want him off the ballot.

The Decatur Herald & Review has an odd article about Mayers and the Greens objections--but without saying what's so objectionable about Mayers.

"We don't want him on the ballot because of his past activities" is what Illinois Green Party spokesman Patrick Kelly said.

However, as bad as Mayers is, if his--to use a famous Nazi badgering technique--"papers are in order," the Greens can't kick him off the ballot because of his hateful views.

Bad in my opionion, but not as awful as Mayers is Cynthia McKinney, who will be on the Illinois Green Party ballot. McKinney, the first black congresswoman elected from Georgia, surrounds herself with race-baiters. Including her father, her bodyguards, and her campaign manager.

Before he assumed his title of Savior of the Earth--something Green Party members care about, Al Gore was a presidential candidate. During the 2000 campaign, McKinney complained that Gore's "Negro tolerance level has never been too high." Donna Brazile, an African American woman, headed Gore's campaign in 2000.

This YouTube video shows McKinney playing the "racial profiling card."

The Greens however don't seem to mind McKinney appearing on the Green Party ballot a a presidential candidate.

There was one objection made with the Illinois State Board of Elections about McKinney. It was made by Richard B. Mayers.

Can't we all just get along?

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Uh-oh. Green Party candidates multiply in Illinois

One year minus a day ago, Rich Whitney won just over 10 percent of the vote as the Green Party candidate for governor of Illinois. A former official of the Socialist Labor Party, it's a very safe bet that most of the people who backed Whitney last fall did so as a protest vote, knowing little about his stand on issues.

Why? Dissatisfaction with the Democratic and Republican candidates. The incumbent, Rod Blagojevich, won re-election despite an ethically challenged (and that's being nice) first term as governor and the general belief among Illinoisans that the first Democratic governor in a generation did little to fix the state's long-term fiscal problems--other than utilizing temporary fixes.

For his lack-of-efforts since winning reelection, The approval ratings for "Governor Elvis" are so low, they're below President Bush's in blue Illinois. "Blago" is now subject to a nascent recall drive, although there is no mechanism--yet--that allows recall of state officials

The Republican candidate, Judy Baar Topinka, never recovered from a brutal Republican primary, and in my opinion, Topinka's heart wasn't in the race, and the voters responded accordingly.

So that's how Whitney got his 10 percent last year.

But what hath the Green god wrought?

Well, Whitney's relatively high vote count makes the Greens an established party in the Land of Lincoln. That means the Greens can field candidates for ward and township committeemen, and unlike independent and other minor-party candidates, the Greens don't need as many petition signatures to qualify to appear on a statewide or local-office ballot.

And the Green Wave showed its strength yesterday.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

The Green Party is supposed to be a bastion of of anti-war, pro-environment independents who don't sit in back rooms smoking cigars.

But when the smoke cleared at the Cook County Clerk's office Monday, 23 people had filed to run for Green Party ward committeeman.

Many more filed to run for everything from Metropolitan Water Reclamation District to U.S. Congress. Some Democratic candidates in close elections fear Greens will siphon votes from them, allowing Republicans to win.

"If that does happen, in most cases I'm not going to lose any sleep over it because most of the Democrats we're dealing with here are . . . hard to distinguish from Republicans," said Rich Whitney, whose 10 percent showing as a Green candidate for governor last year won the party its current ballot status as an established party. "We're not in races to spoil. We're in them to win. I think some of these races are going to be winnable."

Let's focus on Whitney's "hard to distinguish" comment. Sometimes that's true between Democrats and Republicans, particularly in Illinois. The 1998 gubernatorial race between Glenn Poshard and the to-be-imprisoned tomorrow George Ryan comes to mind.

What do the Illinois Greens offer? Are they the, "Hey, I've got some newspapers to drop off at the recycling center" types? Or are they something more sinister?

It might be a reach to call disgraced former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney a Green Party member, but a few weeks after she indicated that she wouldn't run as the Green Party's candidate for president next year, she made appearance for two Green candidates, one in South Carolina, and one in Syracuse, New York.

The Palmetto Scoop has a run-down on McKinney's bizarre political career.

Here's what South Carolina Green Party official Gregg Jocoy has to say about McKinney:

I know Cynthia McKinney will bring an entirely new and energized group of people to our side.

That'll be interesting and I'm looking forward to the blogging opportunities the Green Party will offer me.

But there is more to the Green Party than Cynthia McKinney's involvement. The Massachussets branch is known as the Green Rainbow Party, and in August they had a convention, as Solomonia reported. That get-together turned into a racist, Islamist, anti-Semitic bash.

Oh, Cynthia McKinney showed up too.

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Send in the clowns: 2008 Green Party Convention coming to Chicago

And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.
Send in The Clowns, lyrics by Steven Sondheim as sung by Judy Collins.

Chicago will be home to a national political convention next year--that of the Green Party.

Until a few days ago, I thought such a gathering would be peaceful shindig of Dennis Kucinich vegan-types.

Perceptions and stereotypes can be wrong sometimes, as I blogged here last week.

But not always, as AP reports:

To Green Party members, bringing the convention to Chicago is significant for another reason: Next year is the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago that saw clashes between police and anti-Vietnam War demonstrators outside.

This time, (Green Party spokesman Patrick) Kelly said the anti-war protesters will be inside a political convention nominating the Green Party's candidate.

Sheesh, can't the Left get over the 1960s? Even Barack Obama, who was born the same year I was, 1961, gets mired in that decade, based on some passages of his Audacity of Hope.

Folks: The 1960s ended 37 years ago.

But some Greenies want to bring the country back to the early 1860s. Commenter Michael Pugliese directed me to a Joshua Frank article in the Atlantic Free Press. It's not just bicycle riding Vegans, or as Solomonia discovered, Islamists and anti-semites who've infiltrated the Green Party with a "the clap," but crazies on the from the extreme-right as well.

From Frank's article:

Green delegates from Tennessee have recently advanced a proposal which they call "Moving the Money from Wall Street to Main Street." Certainly sounds innocuous enough. Tragically the delegates from Tennessee based their proposal on a presentation made to the Green Party delegates at their convention by a woman named Catherine Austin Fitts.

Ms. Fitts, a Republican, was Assistant Secretary of Housing in the administration of George Bush Sr. and now supports libertarian causes. Why was Fitts invited to talk to the Green Party about banking issues? Nobody really knows. Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the associates of Catherine Austin Fitts is Franklin Sanders, a leading thinker in the extreme right-wing Constitution Party. Sanders is also chairman of the Tennessee chapter of "The League of the South", yes, from the same state of the Green Party delegates who offered the proposal in the first place.

The League of the South is quite an outfit. They advocate the ideology of "kinism", and would outlaw racial intermarriage and non-white immigration, expel all "aliens" (including Jews and Arabs), limit the right to vote to white landowning males over the age of twenty-one, and re-institute black slavery. The Green Party is about to adopt a proposal based on the philosophy of people like Fitts and Sanders. One has to wonder who would influence these guys if they were savvy enough to win elections.

Man oh man, the Green Party's slogan should be, "If you're nuts, your one of us." And this Clown-a-palooza is coming to Chicago.

Related Marathon Pundit post: Illinois gov race--Rich Whitney: What is Green once was Red

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Where'd the Greens go?

Anon 6:33 wrote,

Put Greens in elected office and they will actually have the spine to legalize gay marriage.

and got me googling around since Illinois Democrats have proposed some pretty sweeping programs and curious what Greens had to say.

Their Website shows Sustainability was the theme of their recent March meeting in Normal.

Sustained obscurity seems the case. No spine's need for that, and strange for a left party when McKenna's out there calling for Revolution.

From his email,

People in this state are hungry for reform and Republicans in Illinois must be ready for a new Republican revolution – The kind of revolution where we no longer accept the status quo – Where we no longer accept a government that spends more money than it takes in – Where we no longer accept a government that doesn’t respect or protect the family – Where we no longer accept a bloated, corrupt government that puts the needs of the Governor’s cronies before the needs of hard working middle class families.

Revolution, working families: maybe Citzen McKenna's figured out the Illinois GOP must be the Party of Sam's Club,

So today's Republican party should be in favor of helping recent immigrants get ahead and slowing the flow of illegal labor--in favor of providing a helping hand to the hard working poor and cutting subsidies to the idle and shiftless--in favor of a tax policy that favors the working class and the productive rich. Above all, it should be in favor of limited government, and in favor of using government's considerable power to shore up the institution that makes a limited government possible--the beleaguered but resilient American family.

Illinois needs revolution, not sustainability, for we've sustained plenty -traditional and non-traditional families alike- with little reform in sight.

Update: Sustainablity must be the new progressive frame. It's sure not a fighting Liberalism of Paul Douglas: build; don't sustain.

xp Bill Baar's West Side

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