Showing posts with label voting. Show all posts
    Showing posts with label voting. Show all posts

  • It's my understanding that, when a candidate admits socially toxic views, the electorate has a way of shutting that whole thing down. -Random voice on the Internet

    Yesterday, millions of Americans did just that. They shut that whole GOP/Mitt Romney thing down. Now the president can get back to the business of running the country while conservatives dry their powder in ovens and check up on their stocks of canned rations, MREs and 7.62mm x 39 ammo (because 5.56mm is for silly cheese-eating UN sissy boys).

    A few observations during Election Day:

    - I was worried that Florida was gonna do what it did in the 2000 election and fuck things up for everyone. As it turned out, Florida didn't even matter. As soon as Ohio came into the picture, the race was over. And as soon as Colorado came into the picture, Ohio didn't matter any more, either.

    - Women were not amused by the GOP's rhetoric regarding their rights, namely reproductive rights. As it turns out, downplaying things like rape and incest while demonizing birth control and abortion tends to make the womenfolk a wee bit pissed - pissed off enough to turn out in force. The end result? A record number of women are now in the Senate, and guys like Todd Akin suddenly have more time to squeeze in a round or two of golf.

    - Despite all of the shady ass attempts to prevent people from voting, whether it be through voter ID laws, faulty machines or passive aggressive attempts at inconvenience, people are going to put in their two cents on who's gonna run the country. Case in point: my own mother, currently getting up there in years, stood in line for three hours just to make her vote count. It probably wasn't as bad as the woman who voted while going into labor. Or the guy who had a heart attack while voting.

    - Hurricane Sandy might have kicked the eastern seaboard's ass, but it wasn't enough to stop them from voting. Good thing those folks did vote, because there's yet another storm headed their way.

    - George W. Bush rode the re-election wave on 284 electoral votes, which earned him a mandate. Why? It just did, apparently. Barack Obama has no mandate, according to Charles Krauthammer, not even with 303 paltry electoral votes. No, it doesn't compute - that's the point. Even if Obama won all 538 electoral votes, nabbed 85% of the popular vote and got the ringing endorsement of the Founding Fathers resurrected once more, he'd still wouldn't have a "mandate."

    - Mitt Romney didn't even have a concession speech on hand. That's how conceited this guy was. Also note that not once did he mention his opponent by name - he just referred to Obama as "him." You could sense he was this close to shooting a peasant pheasant or two just as soon as he got back home to his palatial digs in PA/Mass/UT/Mexico/Mars.

    - Many white Americans are having a hard time reconciling the president's victory with their all-consuming desire to return the country back to whiteness "greatness." Poor Vicky Jackson had already picked out a nice gravestone for her beloved country. I think it's the same one Jimmy Savile's family picked out before they had it ground up and tossed away for appearances' sake.

    - Everyone hates Nate Silver. That's what you get for showing up pundits and making statisticians look stupid.

    - Donald Trump is making great strides towards pushing himself towards total and complete irrelevance every time he opens his mouth. Makes you wish he reserved his bombasticness for The Apprentice. Imagine Gordon Ramsey getting into political commentary.

    - Despite spending a record amount of money on the 2012 electoral campaign, no amount of money could buy the votes wealthy conservatives needed to get their guy into office and their agendas pushed forward. The Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Linda McMahon and many others spent ridiculous sums of money - and now they have nothing to show for it.

    - Obama cried a little, and that's okay.

    - This will more than likely be the last time you hear about or see Mitt Romney. After this, he's done.

    Speaking of which, I spent most of my time on Twitter drinking the tears of distraught Republicans who now have to contend with the aftermath of their hopes and dreams, as well as the added prospect of living with themselves and their own hatred and prejudices for another four years. It's where I stumbled upon Vicky Jackson's baleful eulogizing of the coming Great Dark Epoch. Imagine if these people actually had their way and if Romney had won.

    I also stopped listening to pundits a long time ago. It's a waste of my time and they're not telling me anything that I don't already know or can't find out on the Internet. As a result, no CNN/FOX/ABC/NBC on TV. Just independent and local news sources, Tweets, Tumblr and the occasional foray to CNN.com or ABC.com for verification's sake.

    Okay. Party's over. Bradley Manning's still being tormented to the point of madness in a military prison. Julian Assange is still an enemy of the state. We're still wasting lives and money and futures in Afghanistan. We're still murdering Afghan and Paki civilians at an ever increasing rate by remote control. We're still on the hook for any future failure of a fundamentally unreformed banking system. We're still a prison industrial nation.

    I hate people who do this. I really do. It's annoying as fuck and it should stop. At least those are my first thoughts seeing someone go off on this tangent.

    President Obama is still in office. Keeping him in office was Job One. Now with a bit more political capital, he can now work towards unfucking all of the above, something that would not be happening under a Romney administration. But at least you'd be able to nurse your thumb in a corner over the above. Some people just like doing that and that alone. Remember the concept of "beautiful suffering."

    Also remember that saying "fuck the world, I'm getting off" is what led to the awful, awful blood bath that gave the GOP the House in 2010.

    By the way:

    This country has a long road ahead of it. And that's all I'll say about that.










    Wait, did Puerto Rico just become a state?

  • See this man? This is your President. Some of you might not think he's "your" president because he doesn't look like you. Rest assured, he is. Since January 2009, he's done a lot of work keeping this country from hurling itself off the fiscal and socioeconomic cliff and dashing itself onto the rocky shores of austerity and insanity. This is in spite of an entire political opposition that apparently wants the country to do just that.

    Here's all of the things this man has done since 2009, courtesy of The PCTC Blog. The man works hard. He's grayed tremendously since starting this job. That's a sign of stress a hard worker. Vote for this man.


    See this man? This is not your President, although he really, really wants to be your president. That would be a bad idea. He's supported by a political opposition that's dedicated the past four years to pissing on the president's head. They don't like him. They really, really don't like him. But they like this guy. Sorta. At least they like him enough that they're using ballots for playing cards, making them disappear like magic. They reappear in garbage cans. No one knows how or why. Do not vote for this man.

    This man is a consummate liar. He likes lying a lot. In fact, he's lied so much about so many things that people are now wondering whether his ethereal form actually occupies a bizzaro-world where every single one of the man's lies are actually truth. Perhaps he's a very honest man in that world. If you asked this man if he took a poo last night, he'd probably lie about that, too. Do not vote for this man.

    This man isn't all that concerned about the poor, those living from paycheck to paycheck or those barely in the ranks of the middle class. Those are not "people." Corporations are people. This man isn't all that comfortable campaigning around poor people, especially poor people who hate the president for some odd reason. He needs their votes, even if they reek of Natural Ice, Tyson's pre-cooked hot wings and strong flatulence. Do not vote for this man.

    He doesn't like being questioned. Or people looking up his tax information. Or people wondering why he has to keep his money in the Cayman Islands, away from America and all the poor people. When asked why did he give thousands of jobs to poor people in Mexico when poor people in America could have had those jobs, he shrugged, smiled and muttered something about "free markets." He calls himself a "job creator." Most of those jobs involve a 2,000-mile commute across ocean. Do not vote for this man.

    He doesn't like women. Actually, the political opposition that supports him doesn't like women. I'm pretty sure he's ambivalent about them, although he once claimed to have blenders binders full of women. That sounds pretty uncomfortable, but I'm sure it's more comfortable than taking a transvaginal probe to the vagina, or so I've been told. He doesn't like minorities, either. Minorities don't like him, so it evens out. Do not vote for this man.

    If you are a woman, a poor person, minority or any other ordinary American, do not vote for this man. This man is bad and the political opposition supporting him are worse. They are not good people. They will throw the country off the fiscal and socioeconomic cliff and clink wine glasses as the country splatters into bloody chunks on the rocks below.


    This is a ballot box. This is where your vote goes. Yours may not look exactly like this, but that's okay. A nice group of people are supposed to count these and tally up the scores, so another group of nice people can be elected and vote for one of these men. Some people would rather use them for magic card tricks. Others want to keep you away from the box, period. Don't let those people keep you away. Even old ladies are determined to get to the ballot box. Don't get outdone by an old lady.

    Don't stay at home, either. The nice mailman won't pick up your ballots anymore and watching the nice people count votes on TV without your vote being there sucks. Go to the ballot box and vote.

    The above is a public service announcement from Mack Lyons, sole proprietor of Different Day, Same Shit, formerly a Fortune 500 company until someone at Fortune realized it was not an actual company. These things happen a lot.
  • If anyone was looking for an "October Surprise," Hurricane Sandy was it. Even though the storm had been downgraded from a Category 1 hurricane to a mere tropical storm, it was still the worst natural disaster to strike New York City and the rest of the Northeast U.S. in over a hundred years. As of yesterday, over 4.8 million people in over 15 states are still in the dark. Major portions of NYC's subway infrastructure remain flooded. Over a hundred homes in Rockaway burned to the ground shortly after the storm. Places like Hoboken, N.J. not only have to deal with a lack of power, but overflowing sewage and gas shortages, as well.

    This is what the NYC looks like shortly after it was hit by Hurricane Sandy. Pictures say far more than words can.

    After this weekend, there's only a single day standing between Americans and the nearest voting booths -- at least for those who aren't reeling from the devastation. There's plenty of talk about how Hurricane Sandy could tip the electoral scales in favor of Mitt Romney, since not only are many voters in the traditionally liberal Northeast are too busy cleaning up after Sandy, but whatever infrastructure that could have been in place for the elections...well, it might be a bit of a mess, depending on where you are.

    Earlier, both Dick Morris and Karl Rove were crowing over a projected "landslide" for the Republican contender. Post-Sandy, the sight of President Obama "being presidential" and the resulting poll data is making poor Dick second-guess himself. Nevertheless, these are dangerous times and I fully expect the Romney campaign and the GOP to do everything they can to tilt the election results in Mitt's favor, even if he continues to do an outstanding job of eating his own wingtips every second syllable.

    Hurricane Sandy wound up a brief conversation piece between me and a close family member. We both talked about the potential impact it could have on President Obama's re-election chances and how millions of people unable to head to the polls can tip the elections in one direction or another. She thought it would be best to simply postpone the upcoming elections until the bulk of the Hurricane Sandy cleanup work was done. Sandy has already put a damper on early voting in many areas and I can't see how those affected are going to be in any condition to head to the polls -- that is, if there are any polling precincts set up nearby.

    She's not the only one wondering if Election Day should wait. The main problem with any postponement is a legislative one, unless there's some legal gymnastics involved:

    When people go to the polls on Election Day, they aren't voting directly for their choice for president or vice president. Instead, they are voting to select representatives -- or "electors" -- to the Electoral College, the body that actually determines who will be president and vice president.

    The Constitution gives Congress the authority to determine "time" of choosing those electors. In 1845, Congress passed a law that set the Tuesday immediately following the first Monday in November of every election year as Election Day across the country.

    The same law also gives states some leeway in picking electors to the Electoral College. But to exercise that leeway, a state must have "held an election for the purpose of choosing electors," and "failed to make a choice on the day prescribed by law." When that happens, the law says "the electors may be appointed on a subsequent day in such manner as the legislature of such state may direct."

    But the law passed by Congress setting Election Day only allows a state to pick its electors on a later date if it has already held an election on Election Day and "failed to make a choice" on that day.

    So a complete statewide postponement would arguably violate the 1845 law, the 2004 report suggested. But the report also pointed out that the Supreme Court has emphasized the role states play in selecting the presidential electors, so a state might be allowed to postpone an entire statewide vote for president in emergency circumstances like a hurricane or other natural disaster.

    Not only do you have this, but there are many who'd argue that creating an exception to the rule in this one case will open the door to more exceptions and eventual abuse in the future. Then there's the prospect of people complaining over a region and a largely liberal one at that receiving preferential treatment. They'll cite examples like Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that devastated much of the Mississippi River Valley back in 2011. However, those disasters occurred nowhere near the presidential election timetable, not even close.

    I'm torn -- as much as I want to make sure everyone gets the opportunity to cast their vote come Tuesday, I hate thinking about the Pandora's Box that'll get thrown open in the event of a postponement.

  • After working hard to pin a non-existent voter fraud scandal on the Democrats, which led to a wave of voter ID laws in several states, the GOP is now caught knee-deep with its pants down in a voter fraud scandal of epic proportions. Since then, the GOP has scuttled early voter registration in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia, all five being crucial swing states.

     And BTW, it looks like you won't be needing photo ID to vote in Pennsylvania this election:
    In response to a recent state Supreme Court remand, unanimously voiding his previous August ruling, Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson, a Republican, issued his new ruling [PDF] today on the state GOP's polling place Photo ID restriction law. o He enjoined just a part of the law, but it effectively strikes down the most onerous provision of it --- but only for this November's Presidential election. There were also a number of troubling caveats with what he left in place, rather than striking down the entire statute as the petitioners had sought.

    As there has been some confused and confusing reporting on the ruling today, here is where --- barring any additional court challenges --- the law stands at this moment, just over one month from Election Day...

    Voters will NOT have to show a state-issued Photo ID at the polling place in order to cast a normal ballot. Poll workers MAY ask voters for Photo ID, but they may NOT keep them from voting if they do not have one. Voters will NOT have to cast a provisional ballot if they do not have state-issued Photo ID. Hopefully that clarifies the key points of today's ruling, which is being misreported in some quarters. o Also of note, the court refused to enjoin the Commonwealth's tax-payer funded $5 million ad campaign, as written into the statute for the purposes of "educating" the public about the polling place Photo ID requirement (even though it no longer practicably applies for this election.)

    Not what everyone wanted or expected, but it's a start.

    Meanwhile, yours truly awaits tonight's presidential debate. You can check 2012 Election Central for the latest details, including live streaming. As much as it pains me to do so, I'll refrain from mocking him until he starts actually making gaffes on live television. :)
  • Mitt Romney is America's gift that keeps on giving, day after day. First off, the following video footage unearthed by Mother Jones dating back to 1985, detailing Bain Capital's goal of identifying companies with "potential and hidden value," purchasing significant stakes in said companies only to "harvest them at a significant profit."


    The fruits of Mitt Romney's profit harvest:


    Unlike the former steelworker interviewed in the second video, at least Romney does not have to worry about being strapped for cash. From 2005 to 2010, he made a sizable $25,000,000 from his foreign investments and income. The idea of a businessman making a tremendous amount of money from strategic investments and well-placed financial bets isn't a bad thing in of itself, as long as it isn't done in a capricious manner that's directly hostile to American interests...


    Being out of touch and out of tune with the financial interests of ordinary Americans, what Mittens himself termed as the "47 percent," is a clear indicator of how unfit this man is for the position of the nation's chief administrator.

    Meanwhile, recent polls from the Huffington Post show President Obama comfortably in the lead for electoral votes, 332 to Romney's 191. The president is also on track to sewing up critical swing states including Florida, Ohio, Colorado and North Carolina. At this point, the election might turn into a cakewalk for Obama and an absolute blowout for Romney. That doesn't mean Democrat voters should be complacent and coast as they've done in 2010. There's still plenty of work to be done between now and November 5.

  • In lieu of anything resembling actual content, here's a PSA from Samuel L. Jackson encouraging everyone who's still passive about the upcoming presidential election to please, pretty please, wake the fuck up.


  • Please note the following video. It's a clip of Mitt Romney in an interview with Scott Pelley on CBS' 60 Minutes:


    To start, the Emergency Room was never meant to be a primary means of care, hence its name "Emergency Room." Nevertheless, millions of Americans who do not have access to health insurance due to financial status or preexisting conditions are forced to use the ER when crisis strikes, instead of heading off that crisis with preventative care.

    In short, people shouldn't have to ignore easily treatable ailments until said ailments land them in the ER because they can't afford preventative care. Also note how Romney manages to hand-wave his own universal healthcare solution. He won't burden Texas or other like-minded states with the burden of having to take care of their own citizens for a change. Reassuring, that.

    If this (or any of the long strings of gaffes, shambles and other WTF moments) doesn't prove how out of touch the Mittster is with the rest of the U.S., perhaps this notable story will:
    Romney’s wife, Ann, was in attendance, and the candidate spoke of the concern he had for her when her plane had to make an emergency landing Friday en route to Santa Monica because of an electrical malfunction. “I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.”

    Omit the highlighted portion of that and you get a guy who's just talking off-hand about how concerned he was about his wife's safety. Too bad he didn't. You have to wonder how many times he's been on a Gulfstream staring listlessly out a cabin window wondering why the darn things don't at least slide open like the ones on the tour bus. I can point and laugh at this stuff all day, but I don't have all day. There's plenty of work to be done between now and November 5. Now excuse me while I talk to Lupe Fiasco* about why sitting out this election would be, pardon the pun, a fiasco for him, his fans and this country.


    I feel you, but you're going about the wrong way doing it.

    *Do a Google search and you'll see dozens of stories on Lupe Fiasco's voting stance. What caught my eye was Twitchy's headline for their story: "Lupe Fiasco: I won’t vote until ‘I heal from the wounds of 400 years of institutionalized agony’". Notice that no other news outlet went with this headline. Subtle, real subtle, Twitchy - I see what you're trying to do and how. Come to think of it, this was the same type of shit Breitbart was a pro at doing before his untimely demise. Yet another reason to stay on your A-game when it comes to unadulterated bullshit.
  • In between fighting against the overwhelming stupidity displayed by all of Conservativedom over women's reproductive rights through #TeamUterati, Imani Gandy, the titular "Angry Black Lady," is also on the constant lookout for conservatives stepping over the "Ni-CLANG Event Horizon."

    Wait, what the hell is a "Ni-CLANG"?


    The "Ni-CLANG Event Horizon" is a moment where conservative politicians and just about anyone else who isn't particularly fond of blacks and other American minorities dispenses with the various dog whistles and code words and simply let their feelings known, either deliberately or via Freudian slip. In other words, it's a swift devolution from Lee Atwater's theory on veiled bigotry back to unabashed, open bigotry as once enjoyed in large swathes of the country.

    In short, someone fucks around and calls someone a "nigger" on primetime TV.

    Of course, calling someone a "nigger" is about as fashionable as having someone dragged off the back of a pickup truck - it's just something that no one in polite society would dare ginny up the stones to do, thanks largely to social ostracism and, in the right environment, a swift and solid punch to the face. Unfortunately, conservatives are quickly running out of new code words to use and those dog whistles are getting harder to hear with each passing day. It's just a matter of time before someone, somewhere rapidly approaches the dreaded "Ni-CLANG Event Horizon" and just falls right off the edge.

    Today's post title comes courtesy of Franklin County, Ohio GOP Chairman Doug Preisse. No, he hasn't quite reached that dreaded event horizon just yet, but it's coming on as fast.

    “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine,” said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. “Let’s be fair and reasonable.”

    Sorry, Doug. You're being far from fair and reasonable.

    Ohio is one of several states that are a hotbed of controversy thanks to ongoing efforts to restrict and effectively disenfranchise Democrat voters through various means, from voter roll purging and voter ID requirements to restricting voting hours. After getting caught with its pants down on that latter issue, the state came up with the idea of applying uniform voting rules across the entire state. Seems reasonable, until people found out that the same restrictions Democrat-leaning counties were facing would be applied everywhere. Which brings us to Doug's unfortunate quote.

    So, what's the big deal about voting hours?

    34 U.S. states allow early voting. It's a good way for those who otherwise wouldn't be able to show up at the polls on Election Day to cast their vote (i.e. deployed military personnel, etc.) During the weekday, voting is restricted to 8am - 5pm, unless evening voting is allowed, which stretches on to about 7pm. Night and weekend voting allows those who are usually at work during weekday hours to come out and vote early at their convenience.

    Not everyone can take off from work for the day or pop into the nearest precinct during their 30-minute or 1-hour (if you're lucky) lunch break. Eliminate night and weekend early voting and you have a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't be able to vote at all. Oddly enough, many of those folks usually vote Dem. Funny how that works out.

    I have to digress - it's not just about keeping those dangblasted ni-CLANG from voting. It's about Republicans doing whatever they can to win. That's right, folks. The GOP's star candidates for the presidency are so milquetoast that the only way they can eke out a win is to outright rig the vote in their favor. Since not even the U.S. Supreme Court can tip the scales their way, Republicans are pushing effort after effort to deny those who would most likely vote Democrat the right to do just that. If that doesn't tell you how desperate these morons are, practically nothing will.

    I've always thought the GOP's ultimate goal was achieving a one-party state, damn the consequences and damn the ideals of what this country is supposed to stand for. The political cap-peeling of Don Siegelman and the rest of Alabama's powerful Democrat movers and shakers was an unsung canary in a flooded coal mine. This election, shit is gonna get real with each passing moment.

  • Der Spiegel has a comprehensive article on President Barack Obama. While it mainly focuses on his perceived failure to "deliver," it also hits upon why the president hasn't been able to achieve much in the way of a Democratic agenda, from GOP obstructionism as election strategy and a polarization of political lines at the expense of those in the "center" to political apathy and frustration. It's a far more thorough read than anything you'd get from other outlets in the U.S., which is a damned shame.

    It also hits upon something I haven't been able to articulate until now: the growing number of people who say they're "done" with Obama because he hasn't given them what they wanted. The below is the perfect counter to all of the talk of how Obama hasn't done this or that for whatever reason, given that many people fail to look at the political realities before deciding to ditch him on the grounds of political idealism:

    To fairly judge his presidency, one has to go through the list of his kept and broken promises. Based on that criterion, Obama's performance falls within the "above-average" category when compared to the 11 US presidents since World War II. It is a modest success, the kind that many politicians would welcome. But it cannot seriously be enough for Obama.

    And despite a long list of achievements, it's never enough. People have expected so much from one single human being that when he proves to be just as human as the rest of us, they become absolutely crestfallen to the point of disavowing their support for him.


  • - Greeks are headed to the polls to cast votes that could not only affect their country's future, but also that of the Euro and the European Union. The country is in deep fiscal shit and the biggest issues are the possibility of pulling Greece out of its fiscal death spiral vs. the possibility of setting the country adrift, at the risk of sinking the entire union:

    There is no mechanism to kick Greece out of the euro, and the two leading candidates say they have no intention of taking Greece out voluntarily. Greece could be forced to fend for itself if the European Central Bank decides that it is a fool’s errand to keep replenishing Greek banks that have no collateral or credibility. But the bank’s job is to protect the euro, and it has repeatedly argued that contagion from an exit by Greece could outweigh the costs of keeping it afloat.
    Historically speaking, inflating its way out of fiscal jams has been Greece's go-to solution, but it doesn't have direct control over the Euro, which leaves that option a non-starter unless they bow out of the union for good and return to the Drachma. In the end, it's up to the European Central Bank, or more pointedly, the Germans, to decide if and how to resolve the financial crisis without putting the rest of the European Union in hock.

    - When was the last time you saw a white guy get randomly frisked in Manhattan? Never? So it's understandable that people are a bit miffed over approximately 630,000 black and Hispanic men being stopped and about half that number being given the once-over. Yesterday, Al Sharpton held a 200+ gathering ahead of a planned Father's Day rally against "Stop and Frisk." A similar rally was held days ago by the Staten Island NAACP.

    "Stop and Frisk" is a flawed policy that does little to prevent crime but a lot to not only antagonize the community, but also to perpetuate unfounded beliefs about black and Hispanics in regards to criminal activity.

    Here's a lovely comment from "jimbo-2648066":

    If the good reverend is on one side of an issue, I am automatically on the other.

    I bet he'd make a great NYPD officer </sarc>.

    - Mitt Romney predicts he will end the Democratic Pennsylvania winning streak. Good luck with that. Although with Tom Corbin at his side, there'd probably be enough Dem. voters kicked off the rolls and enough machines rigged or "malfunctioning" to make that happen. Meanwhile, Ron Paul struggles to show that he's very much still in the game.

    - The President has put the brakes on deporting illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children:

    Under the new policy, people younger than 30 who came to the United States before the age of 16, pose no criminal or security threat, and were successful students or served in the military can get a two-year deferral from deportation, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said.
    A two-year deferral, and yet Republicans are crying about "unconstitutional overreach" and how this sets the stage for a general amnesty. Yes, let us ignore how the previous president also proposed sweeping changes in how immigration policy was handled.

    Remember, today is Father's Day. Try giving your dad something a bit more substantive than a cheap tie and a box of cologne. Ladies, today isn't a good day to press your "baby daddy" about that back child support, either.

  • The 2000 Presidential Election was a watershed event. Not just because it pitted one Albert Gore, Sr., Democrat nominee and Vice President to outgoing President Bill Clinton, against one George Walker Bush, Jr., Republican nominee, son of former president George Herbert Walker Bush and then-governor of Texas, but because of the effect it would have on voting, politics and future elections. It also demonstrated the sheer desperation of one party to attain and preserve power at all costs.

    As a "swing state" packing 25 (now 29) electoral votes, Florida remains one of the most contested battle grounds in the presidential election. It's literally one of those states that could "go either way," puns unintended. On that election night, Bush was trailing Gore by nine electoral votes, with 37 still up in the air. 25 of those belonged to Florida, 5 to New Mexico and 7 to Oregon. Whoever tallied the most votes in Florida was guaranteed to walk away with the entire presidential election sewn up. If that outcome was neck-and-neck between the two candidates, any sort of irregularity or outright fraud could tip the scales in the other candidate's favor, allowing him to take all 25 electoral votes.

    The clusterfuck that ensued on election night was years in the making. In 1998, the state of Florida passed a law to combat voter fraud. The state also signed a $4 million contract with a private firm to create a master list of names to be purged from the voter registries, with the aim of removing duplicate registrations, deceased voters and felons who were legally prohibited from voting. Of course, the process itself turned out to be a complete clusterfuck -- many voters were incorrectly identified as felons. In a state that, at that point, had 31 percent of the black male population unable to vote due to criminal convictions, that was a big deal.

    These purges most likely played a significant role in the then-Republican nominee's comfortable margin of approximately 100,000 votes, at least until the counts from Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties started pouring in. By the time Gore conceded to Bush, the Republican's vote margin dwindled to bare triple digits, prompting a recount by officials, Gore's retraction of his concession and a renewed effort by Florida Secretary of State and Bush campaign co-chair Katherine Harris to make sure those manually counted votes came out in Bush's favor. Between the reported electronic ballot fraud, butterfly ballots, hanging chads and stories of outright voter disenfranchisement, it took a Supreme Court decision to declare a winner. In a 5-4 decision, the court decided to grant Bush's request to halt the recount while the tally was still in favor of the Texas governor.

    The state of Florida, like many of its fellow southern states, has a long and rich history of voter disenfranchisement, and it looks like it's going to happen again.

    According to the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, eligible voters will be removed from the voting rolls as a result of the massive voter purge ordered by Governor Rick Scott. “It will happen,” Mary Cooney, a spokeswoman for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, told ThinkProgress.

    Late last year, Governor Scott ordered his Secretary of State, Kurt Browning to “to identify and remove non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls.” Browning could not get access to reliable citizenship data. So Scott urged election officials to identify non-U.S. citizens by comparing data from the state motor vehicle administration with the voting file.

    That process produced a massive list of 182,000 names, which Browning considered unreliable. The Fair Elections Legal Network, which is challenging the purge, noted that database matching is “notoriously unreliable” and “data entry errors, similar-sounding names, and changing information can all produce false matches.” Further, some voters may have naturalized since their driver’s license information was collected.

    Deja vu all over again. The GOP has found that the best way to secure important elections is to stymie the voting and registration efforts of those most likely to vote Democrat: college students, blacks, Latinos and even elderly individuals with long-standing Dem allegiances. 91-year old Bill Internicola and Maureen Russo can both attest to the efforts being made by a largely conservative political structure. Imagine a natural American citizen who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and earned a Bronze Star for his troubles being told by his state that he's not American and therefore, can't vote.

    Scott's shenanigans are well-known to the state of Florida. This is the same guy who decided to order mandatory annual drug testing for welfare recipients and state workers, at $35 a pop. He also hatched a plan to move low-income and elderly state residents into managed-care plans. Private healthcare provider Solantic stood to gain plenty from all three efforts. When the good governor's ownership of this company was revealed and his ethics questioned, he transferred ownership to his wife, Ann, described as a "a homemaker involved in various charitable organizations." In other words, not only is Ricky a creepy looking bastard, he's also an ethically bankrupt creep.

    The U.S. Justice Department is stepping in by ordering a halt to all voter registration purge efforts. So far, all 67 of the state's election supervisors are complying as ordered. Too bad Ricky's being a bit hardheaded, not unlike a particular someone who was being equally hardheaded:

    "The Florida Secretary of State is being recalcitrant," said Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of The Advancement Project, a Washington-based voting rights advocacy group that last month asked the Justice Department to investigate. "He wants to move forward despite federal notice of illegality and supervisors of elections' refusal to purge voters. He should just quit it."

    Florida is among a small number states, mostly in the South, covered by Section V of the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 law that reinforces voting rights guaranteed in the Constitution. In five Florida counties and other states, election officials have a history of such of egregious and creative efforts to suppress black and Latino votes that any changes in voting–related policy or procedure must first be approved by the Justice Department or a panel of federal judges, Browne Dianis said.

    Florida failed to get clearance for its purge or its methods to identify the people the state suspects are non-citizens.

    My mother always told me a hard head leads to a soft behind. If Ricky decides to continue with voter purges in defiance of a federal order, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder should be ready to break out the switch/paddle/belt/Hot Wheels race track/that wooden spoon your mamma keeps hung up on the kitchen wall/etc. If the state of Florida is allowed to continue without any consequence, you can expect other states to follow suit. There's no way Holder can appear to look even the least bit weak on this, lest it set bad precedent and make the Justice Department look toothless when it comes to defending voters' civil rights.

    One idea I had that would really drop a steaming load of shit into the state's corn flakes is taking away the majority of the state's electoral votes. I'm not familiar with how that would happen, but yanking 20 of Florida's 29 votes would not only make the state's efforts in rigging the election for a GOP win moot, it would also send one hell of a message -- that you can't get away with this shit without suffering dire consequences. This is one area where I want to see President Obama walk on stage with his big-boy pants on.

    With a milquetoast nominee on board and scores of crazy "true believers" at the helm, voter disenfranchisement is practically the only card left in the GOP's reelection deck. Well, that and scores of emoprogs who are really, really fed up with the president not being the Magic Negro™ they expected him to be. Rigging the vote is practically the only way that a guy like Mitt Romney can sail through the elections and into the presidency. Oddly enough, this isn't being talked about much on the mainstream media. Something about zombies taking over and eating faces instead of brains.

    Left to their own devices, the GOP would very much like to rig democratic elections in their favor and if possible relegate the Democrats to a rump party that's about as effective at getting the vote out as those Socialists and Americans Elect guys. The natural inclination of the GOP is towards one-party rule.

    He who controls the ballot box controls the election. Don't forget that. And don't count on the Supreme Court to straighten this mess out at the last minute. We've already seen how that worked out before.



  • “This is not a billy club... This is not a fire hose…. This is not Jim Crow…. My parents and my grandparents can tell you what a colored-only water fountain tasted like. They could tell you what a colored-only bathroom smelled like..." "...this tiny little thing that doesn’t wound, that has no sharp edges. To call photo ID a degradation of human rights is not only something that is so fundamentally wrong, but is something my parents would not even recognize…. That [claim that ID requirements violate human rights] is the old tactic of telling us the very opposite of what it true.”

    The above quote belongs to former U.S. Representative Artur Davis. Just recently, the ex-legislator from Alabama turned in his Democrat card, pledged his allegiance to the GOP and loaded up the U-Haul for a one-way trip to Virginia. Not to be too hard on the man, but I suppose seeing his governorship chances go up in smoke after seeing every black Democrat worth their salt stand by Ron Sparks was a bit too much for the man to bear. In fact, he practically swore off politics after being hung out to dry by "his own people." Since he wasn't too keen on listening to their wishes in the first place, it wasn't much a loss for the Dem team.

    Black Americans across Alabama smelled a rat. It cheesed Davis off to no end that he couldn't lead his fellow black constituents around like the pied piper, no matter how hard he tried. He's politically shrewd, but as David Schraub points out, he also seems infatuated with how the bottoms of his own feet taste. His shrewdness is often balanced out by decisions that leave you going, "what the hell was this guy thinking?"

    One of those decisions is his support of voter ID. On the face of it, voter ID seems like a relatively harmless and well-intentioned idea that anyone would be crazy enough to oppose. Who doesn't want to make sure there aren't any corpses or absentee ballots lying around to tilt an election? After all, pretty much everyone has some form of photo ID on them, don't they?

    As it turns out, not everyone has a voter ID. Many states don't require one and if you've been to your local DMV, you may have first-hand knowledge of how painfully byzantine the entire process of getting any sort of ID is. And it gets worse if you happen to be down and out on the street. If you're a homeless guy who has an urge to do his patriotic duty and vote*, you might be hard-pressed to have a copy of your birth certificate on your person and having a new copy made usually entails finding a reliable mailing address and paying a fee, two things that don't come easy to anyone living on the street. Of course, those on the right would probably dismiss those concerns as "whining."

    Personally, I believe ol' Artur to be wrong about voter ID being harmless. It all comes down to who the many voter ID laws currently benefit and how they're affecting current voters today.



  • If you want to keep up with the pending status of Voter ID laws and other legislation pertaining to voting rights and voter suppression, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law now has an interactive "Map of Shame" available on their website for your viewing pleasure. Just hover over your state to get information on pending bills and current voter identification requirements.
  • All throughout human history, the poor have always been everyone else's punching bag, boogeyman or chamber pot. These are people who were unfortunate enough to be born into poverty, or unfortunate enough to fall into it thanks to events out of their control or in a few cases, by their own hand. When most people think of the poor, they see people who've gotten where they are because of the latter, because they were simply "lazy," "unmotivated," "not smart enough" or "too busy looking for handouts." This is the Calvinist conservative view that's prevalent in these United States, pushed by wealthy captains of industry and media who want people to believe that being poor is an absolute failure of human character and that the poors are an affront to others around them.

    It's already bad enough that many people wholeheartedly believe the poor shouldn't be given a hand-up, at least not with their "taxpayer dollars." And now a gentleman, in the loosest sense of the word, now wants the poors to be kept from exercising a right fought for throughout American history:

    Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?
    Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.

    Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

    You can understand why Matt is vexed over attempts by the "left-wing" to register poor people -- the poor tend to vote Democrat, as the Dems represent the best chance of enacting social programs that help raise the poor out of poverty so that they won't have to stay...well, poor. Of course, there are those who are likely to abuse these programs, but the specter of fraud as envisioned by conservative interests pale in comparison to the number of people these programs may help and their overall effectiveness in lowering the percentage of people living in the U.S. who are in poverty.

    These same people are less likely to vote for the GOP, thanks to the historic zeal shown when it came to dismantling these same social programs. Seeing the GOP shower considerably wealthy individuals and corporate interests with tax breaks, incentives and other freebies under the guise of "motivating job creators" and "getting America back on track" while telling the poor to "get off their asses and get a job" leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth. There's nothing wrong with getting a job, except the job market is sparser than Death Valley and the jobs that are found offer minimum-wage work with double or triple the workload and zero health benefits. And there are single parents, elderly and infirm who may not be able to swing holding down those jobs, at least not without making some serious sacrifices.

    The last things conservatives need are 1)successful social programs that fly in the face of everything they stand for, and 2)a larger base of faithful Democrat voters who recoil at the very mention of the GOP. By keeping the poor out of the equation, the playing field is tilted farther towards the favor of the GOP. Republicans are similarly vexed about black and Latino Democrat voters -- the only faithful voters the GOP can count on are avid Fox News viewers, elderly whites and Tea Party supporters. The elderly whites are a dying breed and Tea Party supporters may be a step or two away from breaking out - or being thrown out of the GOP.

    As more people join the ranks of the poor due to the fallout of the current economic recession, there grows the possibility of the GOP being set on its hindparts by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who will vote into office those who represent the best chance of helping them get out of poverty. Needless to say, the conservatives just aren't those people.

    In affect, Vadum claims the poor people are the wrong people allowed to vote. This same argument was hashed out over allowing women to vote, and then it was hashed out again over allowing blacks to vote. Now the "Motor-Voter" statues allow "anyone with a pulse" to vote. And apparently conservatives are afraid that these groups will work in concert to keep the idea of GOP predominance in democratic voting a far-fetched and rather silly idea.

    So who should be the "right" people allowed to participate in what could be said as one of the best public institutions in modern history? As one commentator at the American Thinker pointed out, only white males who owned property were allowed to vote prior to around 1850. At the time, blacks were, at best, 3/5ths of a human being and white women were just their husbands' or fathers' property. These days, we have corporate entities that are considered "people" in the eyes of the law. These "people" are considerably better-heeled than their white male landowning predecessors, with a greater amount of political clout. Going by Vadum's point, the only people who are fit for casting a ballot are the corporate "people," with small consideration made for "small business owners" who hold their allegiance to the GOP and attempt to behave and think like large corporations. These are the same business owners who could easily be knocked into poverty themselves if their businesses are pushed out of competition by larger corporations or if the owner suffers a number of personal or business setbacks.

    Another commentator at the same blog had what he apparently thought was a "noble" idea:

    I agree completely with this article and have a simple solution to fix it. Every person's vote is weighted according to how much they paid in taxes.   Everyone gets a default value of one.   So of that evil CEO paid $750,000 in taxes, his vote would be the equivalent of 750,000 voters who paid nothing.   No skin in the game, no say is how the real world works, but we would give them a small say.   (Non-shareholders get NO votes in the dealings of a business).   This would be "fair" and serve "justice" as those footing the bill would have the biggest say in what is done with THEIR money.
    And this is how the concept of "1 man, 1 vote" flies out the window. On the other hand, those corporate entities would love this very idea, as "democracy" is now weighted heavily towards the interests of those who have the most money and the most resources. All you have to do is throw a little bit of "tax skin" in the game in order to have it rigged in your favor.

    Or this could be a diabolically delicious way to get corporations to finally pay their fair share of taxes. Set up that default value of one, but continue raising that equivalent value every fiscal year. If 1 CEO's vote equals those of 700,000 non-tax paying schmucks, raise that equivalent to 14,000,000 the next year, and then...wait, that's a horrible idea.

    The poor are considered unfit to cast a ballot, yet the captains of industry and media can cast as many as their heart desires. This is how nations are transformed into oligarchic institutions and banana republics.
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