Cynthia McKinney
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Cynthia McKinney is a former member of the U.S. Congress from Georgia. She was the presidential nominee of the US Green Party in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections.
She is also a notable conspiracy nut, which tends to raise serious doubts about either (depending on what one wants to believe) the claims of the Green Party to run a grass-roots democratic outfit[1] or the sanity of left-wing activists in the U.S.
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[edit] Electoral history
She was first elected in 1992 but lost her seat ten years later. Critics charged that her undoing came from claiming Bush knew 9/11 would happen but did nothing and getting documents released about the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, but her father Bill blamed it on "J-E-W-S." She got her seat back in 2004 but lost it again when she slugged a Capitol police officer who attempted to stop her from going into a restricted area of the Capitol because he could not see her credentials.[2]
If she had been elected, she would have been the first African American woman, the first woman, and the first Green Party politician to become president of the United States; but with endorsements from the likes of Roseanne Barr and Ward Churchill, who needs a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy™ to sink one's candidacy?
Either way, her political career is probably over.
[edit] Political positions and beliefs
While she has supported many sane and even mainstream causes, she has also put some weight behind quite a few crazier ones. To enumerate:
[edit] Sane
- Supported the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
- Took an anti-war stance.
- Supported disclosure of documents regarding the assassination of Martin Luther King.
- Supported the impeachment of George W. Bush.
- Supported a peaceful solution in Libya during the civil war.
[edit] Crazy
- Believes that the US military shot and killed 5,000 prisoners during Hurricane Katrina and dumped their bodies in the bayou.
- Does not believe that James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK, or that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert F. Kennedy.
- Has claimed that Jeb Bush was running a drug ring out of Colombia while he was governor of Florida.
- Supported the rule of Gaddafi in Libya, including his persecution of the Nafusi Berbers.[3]
[edit] Truther
In 2002, McKinney was widely reported as holding truther views, and to have expressed these views for the Congressional record on the floor of the House of Representatives.
A fellow conspiracy enthusiast, Greg Palast, reported in June of 2003 that none of the media outlets making this claim offered a proper citation of McKinney's alleged statement in the Congressional record. This, he said, caused him to search that record and fail to turn up the quote.[4]
Palast further claimed that McKinney actually made the following statement for the Congressional record: "George Bush had no prior knowledge of the plan to attack the World Trade Center on September 11." Unfortunately, Palast neglected to provide a proper citation of this claim, making it extremely difficult to verify without extensive trawling through the Congressional record.
The following year, McKinney signed on to a 9/11 Truth Movement demand for more answers about 9/11.[5] A year after that, she held a Congressional hearing on the subject;[6] charged that she was promoting trutherism, she responded with a letter saying, essentially, that she was just asking questions.[7]
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ http://www.gp.org/what-we-believe/10-key-values
- ↑ Police report: McKinney hit officer with fist
- ↑ Former Rep. Cynthia McKinney Appears On Libyan State TV
- ↑ Greg Palast, "The Screwing of Cynthia McKinney," June 18, 2003.
- ↑ 9/11 Truth Movement statement, October 26, 2004.
- ↑ Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "McKinney Reopens 9/11", July 23, 2005.
- ↑ Cynthia McKinney et al., Letter to the Editor, August 2, 2005.