The Juno Factor

Isn’t it ASTOUNDING how, as soon as the Republicans are themselves caught displaying the frailities and foibles — like drug addiction or sexual excess – that they constantly condemn in others, they suddenly become raving liberals?

Why Is This Girl Smiling?

Why should we care when an utterly unqualified Vice Presidential candidate suddenly and proudly presents us with her knocked-up teen daughter as an anti-abortion and pro-abstinence (!) role model?

Why Is *This* Girl Smiling?

The case for ignoring this whole mess is perhaps best put by Brian Alexander of MNSBC:

War in Iraq, economy imploding, energy transformation finally on America’s agenda, income disparity threatening the social order, cynicism infecting every corner of American life, a tectonic shift to a multi-polar world, a collapsing educational system, and you want to make the pregnancy of a 17-year-old a political issue?

Well… yes! Because the Republican Party – led by the fascist wing of Pat Buchanan and others like him — made, over the past two decades, their savage culture war on everyone private morality the defining aspect of contemporary politics, from Monica Lewinsky’s stained dress to  Elliot Spitzer’s blazing crash and burn. Their cries of pseudo-moral outrage overwhelm the sustained and sober thought necessary for Americans to deal rationally with any of the problems enumerated above — or to realize that the Repugs themselves, least of all Sarah Palin, haven’t a clue about how to solve any of it.

The tragedy behind this farce is that there really is a qualified candidate for President who does have ideas about what to do about our problems, but because of a total media blackout, you may not even have heard of her. She is Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party and she is the perfect embodiment of the Ten Key Values the Greens espouse:

• Grassroots Democracy
• Social Justice
• Ecological Wisdom
• Non-violence
• Decentralization
• Community-based Economics
• Feminism
• Diversity
• Responsibility
• Future Focus

(We apologize to the Christian Right that “Chastity” is not among them.)

Please check out Cynthia’s website. Go sane! Vote Green!