"Let's watch the American Earthlings destroy themselves."

Who else remembers when presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich was kneecapped by the corporate media? During a candidates’ debate in 2007 Tim Russert asked Kucinich if it were true he’d seen a UFO years before. “I did,” Kucinich said. “It was an unidentified flying object, OK? It’s like, it’s unidentified. I saw something.”

Afterwards, Russert and other Beltway journalists pondered Kucinich’s answer out loud and at great length in order to portray him as a kook, as if sighting a UFO was more bizarre than, say, religious beliefs espoused by other presidential candidates.

The truth is that Kucinich was singled out for ridicule because he’s not in lockstep with the corporate interests that own the major news media outlets and fund presidential candidates.

Kucinich isn’t running for president this time, but he’s still saying all the things that make the corporate media and corporate-owned politicians uncomfortable. Yesterday, I read this by Kucinich and thought, damn, I’d vote for him over Barack Obama in a heartbeat:

Today President Obama submitted three free trade agreements to Congress based on the flawed North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) model that has been devastating to our economy, American workers and to labor and environmental standards. Hundreds of thousands of American jobs have been displaced and outsourced as a result of our pursuit of trade policies which are adverse to the economic interests of the American people. My home state of Ohio is one of the top-ten states posting the biggest job losses since the passage of NAFTA.

Unfortunately, the proposed free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama do nothing to address the significant flaws in the free trade model that prioritize the rights of multinational companies over the rights of workers and the American economy. The Korea-US and US-Colombia Free Trade Agreements are expected to increase our trade deficit by over $16 billion and result in the displacement or loss of over 200,000 jobs. This is on top of the over 2 million American jobs that have been displaced or eliminated over the past 10 years as a result of our increased trade deficit with China.

The last thing American workers and our economy needs is more NAFTA-style free trade agreements.