McLaren wrestles with whether to vote or not, (and I think for the first time in writing) comes to the decision to vote. Regardless of whether you agree or not, it’s a good read.

Lately some of my friends and I have been discussing the virtues of voting McKinney or Nader as opposed to simply writing in Jesus on the ballot. Any thoughts? How will your vote reflect your conscience regarding a government that regularly empowers the rich in this world to become richer at the expense of the poor? How will your action this November change the world? Remember––a non-vote can be an act of subversion or a passive apathy.

Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

“Although the Nader/Gonzalez and Green Party platforms have many similarities, we are not competing for votes, but instead we are allies joined in a common struggle to tap the huge and growing numbers of millions of unsatisfied voters who want to vote for something better than the lesser of two-evils. The more progressive voices and choices, the more widespread will be the definition of freedom as participation in power.

- Ralph Nader (press statement)

Cynthia McKinney: “And when I got to Washington, I saw that public policy is really made in a room at a table. There were real seats at the table. Well, imagine what has happened to public policymaking now. There is a real room with a window and a door, and there’s two seats at the table. The window is for us to look through, while our representatives make policy for us, so we can see what they’re doing. At the table, one seat is for the Democrats, one seat is for the Republicans. Now, we don’t know who did it, but one of them put a lock on the door and slipped a key to the corporate lobbyists who can come and go at will and whisper what they want to Democrats and Republicans, and the result is that we the people, who pay for those seats and determine who sits in them, want one thing, but because the corporate lobbyists can come and go at will, our values get overridden and our representatives give us something else. That’s how we end up with everyone saying they’re against the war and occupation, but war and occupation still gets funding. That’s how we end up with everyone saying they’re against illegal spying on innocent people, yet end up with a telecom immunity bill being signed into law. That’s how we end up with everyone saying they’re in favor of universal access to healthcare and no one supporting what the physicians, nurses and healthcare really want, and that’s a single-payer healthcare system in this country.”

- Cynthia McKinney [2008 Green Party Convention acceptance speech]

Greg Boyd just posted a mini review of the soon-coming book by Steve Russell, Beachy theologian extraordinaire. I’m eagerly awaiting its release.

This will either make you nauseous or ecstatic depending on what your conscience is arranged around.

An Obama-McCain-Nader-Barr-McKinney debate would be less crowded than most of the Democratic or Republican primary debates, and much less crowded than the debates in the last French presidential election. But it would still be sufficiently energetic and ideologically diverse to boost the quality of the presidential dialogue and give America something closer to a genuinely democratic discourse.

And to think it’s all Juno’s fault. Wow.

This article highlights just a few of the growing number of things that make me uncomfortable about the direction Obama is taking his campaign and on the way he will lead America when he is sitting in the Commander-in-Chief chair.

Some of the things that concern me the most:

• His approval of the Supreme Court ruling regarding the second ammendment.
• His support of ethanol instead of a more sustainable fuel.
• He supports criminal execution in certain cases.
• Javan Lapp points out that it seems as “if his ‘we will talk it out with enemies’ is falling by the wayside.”
• His ridiculously blind semitic support including his call for an undivided Jerusalem controlled by Israel.

This article points out that it was only recently that Obama began his treacherous flop to the center. Progressives, beware. Stay tuned for more.

As many of you know, I’ve been increasingly disappointed to the sake of disillusionment with Obama these past weeks beginning with the Rev. Wright betrayal. Black Agenda Report points out some very good things about Obama that should be obvious but unfortunately aren’t as Obama is fast becoming the newest Washington slick-willy.

I’m leaning towards Cynthia McKinney…a Washington rebel that signed her political death sentence by refusing to accept without question the official story regarding 9/11.

“McKinney, whose last act in Congress was to submit articles of impeachment against George Bush in 2006; who courageously questioned the White House version of events before and after September 11, 2001; who acted as a one-person conscience of the House Armed Services Committee, speaking out against corporate and military mega-theft under both Clinton and Bush; who has with amazing consistency always placed principle above her own personal and electoral fortunes, is at this juncture in history the only vehicle through which progressives can both register their outrage at Obama and begin the process of rebuilding a mass, Black-led movement for real social change. (Ralph Nader cannot, for reasons of temperament and race, achieve such dual purposes.)”

This shot was taken in Grenada; it was the last picture on the roll and I nearly didn’t get the shot. I’m glad I did, though. It makes me happy.