The Stein for President campaign announced yesterday that it had gained 15 of the 18 delegates up grabs in the South Carolina and Connecticut Green Party state conventions. Dr. Stein has had competition in every one of the thirteen states that’s awarded delegates in the Green Party presidential primary season so far, but has handily won in every one of those states.

The main reason that the Jill Stein for President candidacy has been so successful is that Stein coherently represents the growing progressive set of beliefs that is represented by neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. Stein stands for core American civic values such as liberty, equality and community responsibility.

These values have been demonstrated by Jill Stein with particular clarity on the issue of marriage equality for heterosexual and homosexual couples. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama both oppose the equal right to marry. Jill Stein, on the other hand, has been an outspoken supporter of marriage rights for gays and lesbians for many years.

Preparing for a campaign stop in North Carolina this weekend, Jill Stein remarked, “When equal marriage rights came to Massachusetts, some people panicked, and said that it would destroy traditional marriage. I can definitively say now that all those fears proved to be unfounded. Marriage equality has enriched the lives of thousands of gay and lesbian couples and helped them realize their dreams. It hasn’t hurt anyone. We are all better off for it. Discrimination against caring people is what we should be worrying about.”

Some people have justified Barack Obama’s public opposition to marriage equality by saying that, in secret, President Obama secretly sympathizes with gay and lesbian couples who want to get married. Such legends of Obama’s hidden respect for equality under the law have never been confirmed, however. Furthermore, even if these stories are true, the represent cowardice, not courage. It isn’t the job of the President to secretly favor the recognition citizens’ constitutional rights, sitting in private wishing that someone else would make a change. It is the President’s job to be an executive – to make change happen.

If you support equal rights for gays and lesbians, don’t do what Barack Obama does, privately hoping that someone else will make the change. You have to take your opinion public, and vote for a candidate who isn’t afraid to speak up for what’s right. If you support marriage equality, support the Jill Stein for President campaign.

“We’ve always encouraged young people — take a shot, go for it, take a risk and get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business,” was his advice to American teenagers yesterday.

Mitt Romney’s advice doesn’t fit well with economic reality in the USA. Economic reality is that most new businesses fail. If young Americans take everything they’ve got to start new businesses, nine out of ten of them will lose all the money they invested, and probably create additional debts as well, needing to declare bankruptcy and starting out again far behind their peers.

Mitt Romney doesn’t seem to realize that, even if starting a new business was a reasonable risk, most Americans have not been fortunate enough to be born to parents who have large amounts of money to give to their children. We’ve had years of declining wages, even before the recession, which has wiped out the reserves of most parents.

It’s easy for Mitt Romney to advise young people to take big risks with their parents’ money: He was given millions of dollars at birth by his wealthy parents, and that money earned interest all throughout his childhood. Mitt Romney never had to worry about student loans, and his politically-connected parents could arrange for him to have every advantage. Upon graduating from college, Mitt Romney used his inherited fortune to buy his way into a stable business. He didn’t have to build one from scratch.

Time and time again, Mitt Romney demonstrates that he just doesn’t understand the way that most Americans live. He doesn’t understand the way that the choices of everyday Americans are sharply limited. He doesn’t understand that the barriers to success placed in the way of most young Americans are a consequence of the system set up by members of the One Percent, like himself, to keep money concentrated in the offshore bank accounts of a privileged few.

A person who doesn’t understand these economic realities is unqualified to be President of the United States of America.

The Boston Globe writes that, “the campaign’s internal conversations on the issue focus instead on how to energize gay and lesbian voters in spite of Obama’s lack of clarity on the issue.”

“Lack of clarity” is a generous term for what President Obama is doing to gays and lesbians. Obama is allowing discrimination to go on, and is refusing to speak out against it. Instead, Obama is allowing his previous statements of opposition to marriage equality for lesbians and gays to stand.

Obama won’t even speak on the issue of marriage equality, but his aides expect GLBT voters to believe that he secretly supports their right to marriage equality, and is merely biding his time before he actually does anything about it because he’s afraid of what people will say. What we know of Obama makes it difficult to trust his aides in this suggestion. In the 2008 presidential election, we were told by Obama’s aides that many of the odious policies he embraced on the campaign trail were temporary feints, and Obama would reverse course and do the right thing once he was elected. Obama didn’t change after the election. He went ahead and really did those nasty things he said he’d do if he was elected.

What’s more, Obama added on some new rotten policies after he became President. The campaign promises Barack Obama kept were the ones he made to conservatives. The campaign promises he broke were the ones he made to liberals. The idea that Barack Obama is going to turn around and become a different kind of President if he’s re-elected is not credible.

The time for Barack Obama to support marriage equality is now, not after the 2012 election. Obama keeps on trying to placate gays and lesbians, who are upset that he’s helping to deny them their legal equality, by saying that his ideas are “evolving”. So evolve, already, Obama, or get off the pot! You either support marriage equality or you don’t – and right now, Barack Obama does not support marriage equality.

Barack Obama expects gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender Americans to believe that he’s their friend, in secret. Obama just doesn’t want to be seen in public with them, and he won’t stick out his neck to help them. Obama wants gays and lesbians to hush up, and sends his aides out to make promises that they’ll be rewarded, if they just disappear.

What kind of friend is that?

Conventional wisdom asserts that liberals have only one choice: They have to vote for Barack Obama. The Green Party has another idea: They’re well on their way to nominating Jill Stein as their presidential candidate.

Here at Irregular Times, we offer for sale political buttons for any liberal political candidate that catches our interest. What we actually sell, of course, depends on what our readers are actually interested in.

Most of our liberal readers are not, it seems, interested in re-electing Barack Obama President in 2012. In this month so far, Jill Stein campaign buttons have outsold Barack Obama buttons by a ratio of three to one.

These are the consequences of a Democratic White House that regards liberals as pests rather than patriotic citizens.

To some extent, this attitude is responsible. It’s important to take care of obligations. It is kind to consider the feelings of other people. It is noble to contribute to the common cause of society.

However, this Monday morning, it will do you well to remember that the highest responsibility of any person in a free society is to make a contribution that is derived from one’s individuality. We cannot move our work forward merely by adopting the ideas and behaviors of our neighbors in the next cubicle.

This Monday morning, try to put a dash of irregularity into your day at work. Remember the spirit of advice given long ago by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.”

An environmental reign of terror? Really, who is terrified of environmentalists? Corporate executives may be irritated with them, but I don’t think “terror” describes the feeling accurately.

In the Reign Of Terror, French revolutionaries set up guillotines in public squares and chopped off the heads of their political enemies. What are environmentalists doing in the so-called Reign Of Environmental Terror that Rick Santorum keeps talking about? Environmentalists are asking for regulations to protect drinking water, and to preserve clean air so that American children don’t get sick.

Rick Santorum is suggesting that an environmental regulation to prevent toxic pollution is equivalent to a guillotine. That’s just silly. Environmental protections don’t chop anybody’s head off.

Rick Santorum is ridiculous, and so it’s been easy to dismiss him. However, Santorum is a ridiculous man with lots of corporate backing in the 2012 presidential election. We can’t afford to just laugh him off any more. It’s time for people who care about responsible stewardship of our natural resources to join together in a grassroots effort, as environmentalists against Rick Santorum.

The issue should play a major role in the 2012 presidential election for one reason: Barack Obama does not support marriage equality for heterosexuals and homosexuals. Obama stands on the side of the bigots.

In every medium possible, Democrats are sending out messages at a furious pace, saying that we need to stand up for Barack Obama. Barack Obama, however, won’t stand up to the bullies in America. Obama is afraid. He’s too cowardly to stand up against the people who say that gays and lesbians ought to go back into the shadows, and that they don’t deserve equal protection under the law. The President of the United States can’t muster the courage to simply say that if people want to get married, it’s not the place of the government to stand in their way, just because of right wing attitudes about sexuality.

Why? Why won’t Barack Obama stand with the majority of Americans. Why does Obama still refuse to support marriage equality for heterosexual and homosexual couples?

The answer is ugly: Obama wants the votes of Americans who oppose equality. In order to promote his own personal ambitions, Obama is willing to become allies with people who want to spread discrimination across America.

Of course, the Republicans don’t support marriage equality, either. America does have a choice, though. There is a presidential candidate who supports full legal equality for same sex couples, and has done so for years.

Her name is Jill Stein, and she is running for President in 2012 with the Green Party. Jill Stein has this to say about marriage equality for gays and lesbians: “The first step toward national marriage equality needs to be leadership from the head of the federal government. It’s time for President Obama to take a clear stand in favor of eliminating discrimination in this area. When the President says that civil unions are good enough for same-sex couples, he’s putting gay and lesbian couples into a second-class category that encourages continuing discrimination.

It’s also time for the President to stop enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act and bring a challenge to its constitutionality before the courts. DOMA is denying equality of federal benefits to legally married couples based on nothing more than their sex. The Obama Administration has admitted that DOMA is unconstitutional, but they are not acting as if they take that conclusion seriously. On a matter that does such harm to people, words without action are not enough.”

It’s a matter of simple self respect. For gays and lesbians to vote for a presidential candidate who won’t support their legal equality as American citizens is nothing more than a form of self loathing. LGBT Americans are going to get legal equality when they vote for candidates who support legal equality. That makes Jill Stein an excellent choice in 2012.

For that reason, we’ve added three new button designs to our collection of Jill Stein for President campaign buttons:

LGBT for Jill Stein

Lesbians for Jill Stein

Gay Men for Jill Stein

Now, the primary elections are coming on more quickly, and the pace can make it difficult to keep track of what’s really going on. Today, the Republicans have caucuses in Nevada, where, although Romney is expected to win because of a high Mormon population in that state, the other GOP candidates will be able to pick up some delegates to the Republican National Convention as well.

Then, on Tuesday, there are caucus elections in Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota. There will also be caucuses held in the state of Maine throughout the week to come.

After that.. well, take a look at the primary election calendar below:

Climate change is the most serious problem we face. Yet, Obama won’t even try to do anything about it.

That’s not cause to give up hope, however. There is another presidential candidate environmentalists can consider, one who won’t capitulate to the Republican ideology. Her name is Dr. Jill Stein.

In her own State of the Union Address, Stein warned that delay in confronting the root causes of global warming creates a national security risk. “At the recent UN climate conference in South Africa, the Obama administration worked to delay international agreements on carbon emissions until 2020,” she pointed out. “This delay will allow critical climate tipping points to be passed that will accelerate warming to the point it cannot be controlled. As renown NASA scientist James Hanson puts it, delaying action to aggressively lower carbon would mean game over for the climate and therefore for civilization as we know it.”

Yesterday, Stein repeated the warning, saying, “We’re running the campaign now because if you follow the science there we don’t have four years to wait. I mean, we don’t. We really have to start tackling this now. It’s really important for the climate and it’s time that people put their politics where their values and science argue they ought to be. I think Obama supporters are really having a rude awakening right now.”

Barack Obama is not going to promote the environmental policies that we desperately need right now. Instead, Obama is helping the oil industry begin yet more offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Voting Democrat won’t do. Of course, the Republicans are not a reasonable alternative. So, in 2012, the responsible vote is a Green vote. Of all the Green presidential candidates, the most effective, the most responsible, and the most clearly planned is Jill Stein.

If you truly believe in protecting the natural environment upon which our prosperity and security are founded, then vote Jill Stein for President in 2012.

Cut, cut, cut!

Then, Newt Gingrich discovered that the voters of Florida wanted some pork barrel spending on big NASA projects. Gingrich wanted the votes of people in Florida, so that he could defeat Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential primary to be held there next Tuesday.

So, Newt Gingrich came up with a new promise: Gingrich promised that, if he is elected President, he will have the federal government build a huge permanent colony on the Moon, a base for a new human community that would… collect Moon dust. What’s more, this Moon base would be built in less than eight year.

One thing Gingrich hasn’t been able to explain is how, with the space shuttles out of commission, with the Department of Education destroyed, and with spending on science slashed to a fraction of its previous levels, the federal government could possibly get a permanent human colony on the moon in just eight years. Gingrich hasn’t shared the math that explains how this big government project of his can take place while Gingrich reduces taxes and cuts the size of the budget deficit.

Remember when your mother warned you against trusting people who promise you the Moon? I hope the people of Florida remember that advice, because that’s exactly the maneuver that Newt Gingrich is trying to pull.

So, Newt Gingrich wants to be President so that he can build home for himself on the Moon? Fine. Let’s give it to him. Only, let’s not make him President of the United States of America. Let’s make Newt Gingrich President of the Moon, and then have the Russians ship him off on a Soyuz rocket to serve out his term there, in a capsule on the side of the crater, the ruler of all he can see.

Newt Gingrich for President of the Moon… also available as a tshirt, not made on the Moon, but by American Apparel, right here in the USA.