In this video clip posted on the Netroots Nation YouTube channel, Netroots Nation 2011 keynote speaker Van Jones delivers the fiery last few minutes of his speech.
He humorously invokes “Popeye” cartoons, quoting, “I’ve had all I can stand! I can't stands no more!” and encourages attendees to stand up to the smears and hate-mongering spewed daily by Fox News.
Jones, who joined the White House Staff in March 2009 as Pres. Obama's environmental adviser on green jobs development, resigned in September 2009 after the rightwing media and blogosphere echo chamber ginned up calls for his ouster in over his past statements and activism.Jones issued two public apologies in the days preceding his resignation, one for signing a petition in 2004 from the group 911Truth.org that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war" and the other for using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said of Jone's resignation on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Van Jones decided was that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual." The president does not endorse Jones's past statements and actions, "but he thanks him for his service," Gibbs said.
