Jill Stein speaking in Monument Square, Portland Maine

I love Maine and hate elitist dinks from away who run crap magazines

Open letter in response to this, from my friend Rob Korobkin:

Dear Person Flipping Through Vex Magazine,

The conflict over the future of Congress Square is NOT - as the noxious know-it-all New York elitist fuck-head Mort Todd would have you believe - a battle between people living on the street and the "good" citizens of Portland. It's a battle between greedy investment bankers from Ohio who want to buy up the big open public space at the center of our fair city and sell it off to a multinational hotel conglomerate who would kick us ALL off of it and throw up an ass-ugly building so rich yuppies from away can drink $15 martinis, eat Sysco pigs-in-blankets and listen to shitty commercial pop music - and those of us who actually live here and would prefer not to lose our park.

Yeah, we know Congress Square is a concrete hole in the ground with few benches and even fewer trees - but, god damn it, it's OUR concrete hole in the ground! We're not saying we think it's perfect as it is - we're saying we'd rather keep it this way, for now, than lose it altogether. Even in its current form, it's still a wonderful place for outdoor punk shows, juggling, steel drummers, art sales and taking little kids to ride tricycles. We want to see it improve and become a fun place where everybody in Portland and beyond is welcome to hang out and enjoy being downtown. And, yeah, by everybody, we mean kids on skateboards, immigrants, families, travelers, seniors, people who don't always have a roof over their heads, you know, everybody! That's what it means to have a community.

This is Maine - we aren't pretentious twerps - our state was built by loggers and mill workers who didn't need sensitivity trainings in political correctness to know that communities like ours only get a say in the decisions that affect us when we stick together. As long as we're squabbling with our neighbors, saying nasty things about people down on their luck and staying buried in our own little rabbit holes - nobody in Power will give a shit about us.

If, on the other hand, we want to live in the kind of world that we can feel good about bringing children into, we need to start coming together and saying things like, hey, there's a fairly large, centrally located piece of land at the center of our city that has the potential to be a really nice public space. If we worked together and used some of those municipal dollars coming out of our rent checks, parking tickets and property tax payments, we could do something awesome! The city budget is about 160 MILLION dollars a year - that's our money, and we have every right to spend at least a little bit of it on making our city as pleasant as possible for us to live in. Whatever happens to the square, it should be a decision that we make together as Portlanders - not one that gets made for us by fat cat business interests looking to make money off the hospitality industrial complex. We have zero obligation to be "hospitable" to anybody who doesn't respect us and our city.

Or we could just be assholes. We could print condescending comics that depict how funny it would be if we all ganged up on Portland's street population - many of whom are veterans suffering with trauma and mental illness the likes of which most of us can't even imagine. We could turn our neighborhoods against each other, devolving our entire public discourse into a pathetic mishmash of chest-thumping and bleating, completely ignoring the very real threat that global institutions of private capital pose to our independence and basic liberties as a free city of hard-working, open-minded Mainers. The choice is yours.

Save Congress Square!

The Democratic Party is irredeemable and unreformable

Cynthia Dill's run for US senate is a prime example

If you run into people who think that running as a Democrat is a good way to seek reform at the national level, tell them to follow this race in Maine: Cynthia Dill for US Senate.

The DSCC (Democratic Party Senate Coordinated Campaign) doesn't even mention Cynthia Ann Dill or that she won the primary of the Maine Democratic Party in their write up about the race.

Instead the DSCC chooses to talk about how the corporate-funded independent with ties to clearcutting... is an "Obama supporter."

Well first, I'm not an Obama supporter, because I don't support incinerating women and children with drone strikes, and I don't support the executive branch having the authority to assassinate people, or keeping a "Kill List."

But let's just put that aside for a second.

This just goes to show how completely corrupt the DNC is. Why is that the case? Why are they backing a corrupt, millionaire independent over a politically progressive woman that their own Party nominated through the democratic process?

Well, I would say that they are concerned with winning, but that's not true. If that were the case, they'd be dumping DSCC money into Dill's race, which they are not. And besides, the past 20 years show that they have made a pretty successful career out of chronically losing -- losing on the agenda front, losing on the congressional seats front...

Could it have something to do with the fact that Dill states that she is opposed to PACs and supports amending the Constitution to eliminate corporate personhood? (Thereby pulling billions of dollars out of the industry that is politics.) I think you'd be on the right track there. They are not concerned with policy. They are not concerned with the well being of the average American. They scapegoat the republicans, and willingly step aside on key issues that they should be digging their heels in on.

I have a theory that because Cynthia Dill is a real progressive, is opposed to the NeoLiberal agenda of Bush and Obama, that the DNC is pulling the rug out from under her because she would show how corrupt the DNC is. She would potentially be a thorn in their side. This is what I learned the hard way back in 2007 working on Dennis Kucinich's presidential campaign. As Howard Beale said in the film Network, "I have seen the face of God."

Since then I have Registered Green, haven't looked back since. If Cynthia Dill were to have registered Green, we might not have had a giant political machine to push behind her with, but she'd at least have the formal backing of the party that she is registered with at a National Level.

The DNC is beholden to corporate money, wall street, the war machine, and that's it. They are irredeemable, unreformable, and corrupt beyond repair. Your time would be better served walking away from them, and building an alternative.

Robomney vs Jill Stein

If both major party candidates suck equally, for the same reasons, why vote for either of them?

JillStein.org

DONATE: ‪http://bit.ly/7OwKc2‬‬
FACEBOOK: ‪http://bit.ly/1OtiqI‬
TWITTER: ‪http://www.twitter.com/punkpatriot‬
STORE: ‪http://punkpatriot.etsy.com‬

Photo Caption Contest

Here's your source photo:



And here is a link to I can Haz Cheezeburger's LOL builder: build it and they will haz cheeseburger

Here's a couple to start things off.






I'm sure you can do better. Send your entries to punkpatriot411 [at] gmail [dot] com

The winner wins something good, but not something awesome (sorry, I'm poor).

Running for Office- Episode 3: Cutting Turf & Stupid Ballot Access Laws

Dog Shit NOT Death Threats!

Maine Green Independent Party 2011 State Convention: Sarah Bigney of the AFL-CIO