PAVLOVIAN PUTZES

PAVLOVIAN PUTZES: Despite all the Obamamania on Kaua`i, PNN is sticking with our favorite presidential ticket- the Green Party’s Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente.

Voting one’s conscience is hard sometimes. It takes many years of practice just to get accustomed to it but most who stay at it eventually find it hard to do otherwise.

He’s gonna win. We knew- and bet good money- last year that if he survives he’ll be president on January 20. It’s not what he says, it’s how he says it.

He’s got “it”- that thing where, like Bill Clinton before him, it doesn’t matter what he says you have to admit “wow, he’s good”... an inside joke here at the headquarters of the vast international tentacles of PNN.

But in he end Obama is just another war-mongering, insurance-industry-run heath care loving, Wall Street wallowing, oil-drilling politician..

And here in Hawai`i he’s a cinch to get double if not triple the votes of his unworthy opponent.

But McKinney actually speaks to the core of all the issue all Democrats idealize and work toward.

Any progressive voter reading her positions on war, health care, civil rights, accountability and transparency in government, free trade, re-regulation, and even impeachment would jump to support a candidate who holds most of those precepts- especially when compared with Obama’s- and especially in a blind test of affinity.

And unlike Obama, McKinney actually fought for all these things in her six years in congress.

Most of the wide-eyed Obama supporters- and especially the ex-Kuncinich supporters- who reads her positions and compares them with Obama’s will most likely agree more with her.

That’s because they are the things that the majority of people want, all else being equal.

But instead, as always in the Americkan corporate sorry excuse for democracy, there’s no choice and people once again will settle for less... or more likely nothing at all.

Voting your conscience is an acquired skill. It takes personal political will to a break from all the media fed the indoctrination.

It takes courage to ignore the constantly recurring “big lies”. We’ve actually heard people tell us that the two-party system is in the Constitution, so that creating the concept of “spoiling elections” is their reaction to the duopolistically spoiled electoral system.

But if you’re going to vote for McKinney-Clemente- or for that matter Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzales or if you’re a wing nut, Bob Barr- just because in Hawai`i the electoral college lets you do so without consequences, why bother..

Conditional conscience and situational scruples in voting won’t cut it.. In order to start to break that addiction to picking the “least worst”, meaningless gestures that don’t take principles in the first place don’t count.