Tag Archives: voter supression

A little on the supremes…

Well…it is decision time at the supreme court and there have been a couple of notable ones that came out today…and they even decided them the right way….first, they struck down the law that the righties passed in Arizona that forced people to prove their citizenship before they could register to vote…one aimed at ensuring that the poor and those that normally vote for dems would be disproportionately affected and the court said no to this blatant voter suppression…good for them…second, they ruled that the practice where big pharma companies pay generic manufacturers to NOT make generic versions of their cash cow drugs when the patents expire…ensuring that the prices stay high are illegal….well, duh….I just don’t get why it takes the supremes so long to come to the obvious….well, at least they finally get some right…geez…

These guys never quit…

Well…I have been waiting for a couple of weeks to work on this one…hoping that the whole thing would die down and be just a bad dream…but, it appears to be even worse than I expected so I need to say something about it. As you know, the repubs lost big in the last election even with all of their efforts to suppress the votes across the country….and since the voter id crap and restricting voting hours didn’t work, we now have the Koch brothers pet organization, ALEC, you know, the guys behind the stand your ground laws that make it legal to murder, figuring out ways to make sure that repubs can win in the electoral college by rigging how the votes are apportioned…going from winner takes all in most states to proportional awarding of the votes…by some formula that would always favor the repubs. In fact, here in Michigan, with the new way of dividing the votes would have given 9 of the 16 votes to Romney where Obama won the state by almost 9 points. That’s the repubs idea of democracy in action…they can’t compete on ideas since the country has moved on past them, but their thirst for power has them willing to subvert the very democracy they say they revere…but that is the repubs…no honor, no honesty, and no intelligence…geez…

One more thing to remember…

Well…have been thinking this aft about what to write about the election and it just jumped out at me from almost all of the platforms…twitter mostly…and the story now appears to be the repubs efforts at voter suppression in the states they control…including Florida and Ohio..to try to make sure the rig the vote, these idiots have been changing the rules on the fly; in Ohio the secretary of state, Jon Husted, has even continued to change the rules in defiance of court orders that compel him to restore the early voting that was available in 2008. One of the things you need to take away form this nonsense is the fact that where there are dem SOS, there are never any problems with voting, in fact, the dems always make it easier to vote…how much more Un-American can you get than trying to make sure some of your fellow citizens won’t get the chance to exercise the greatest right that we have…to vote to elect our leaders? The second part of this story centers on the fact that Romney and his thugs are already putting a strategy in place to delay his defeat by getting thousands of lawyers to challenge ballots across the country and are training “poll watchers” to intimidate dem-leaning voters by stopping and questioning people going into the polling places to vote along with standing over the shoulders of poll workers to try to make sure the process slows down and people will get frustrated and not vote. The only question I have is “what kind of a country do we want?” One where intimidation and shennanigans steal elections or one where the competition of ideas and easy execution of our constitutional rights decides elections? It’s your choice…make the right one…

The one thing you need to remember..

Well…with what is going on across the country today where the repubs are blatantly denying people their right to vote, the one thing you need to remember is who is doing it…in ALL cases it is the repubs that control the voting process in their states…these guys know they can’t win fair and square so they are doing everything they can to fix the election and steal it for Romney…but this is just the latest in the pattern of the repubs cheating every system they come into contact with…cheating to get their kids into the best schools, cheating to allow their cronies in the financial industry to steal money from the rest of us, and cheating to try to make sure the middle class has no voice in their work life by attacking the only voice they have left…membership in unions. So, the one thing you need to remember is which party is the cheater…and it IS the repubs..geez…

It’s reverso Mitt and more shenanigans…

Well…I am so sick of the crap coming out of ole Mitt’s campaign…I have never ever heard of a politician or even a private citizen that has less core than ole Mitt…who lies and lies and lies…in a better world, people would laugh at this idiot and send him back to his house with the car elevator and Bain where he can only hurt the companies that Bain owns, not the entire country…and this latest, where Mitt is on tape saying he would get rid of FEMA and being quite adamant about it in the primaries…but, today, he turns into reverso Mitt and says that he wouldn’t eliminate FEMA…what is it Mitt? FEMA or no FEMA? How did this guy get to where he is…I guess this is just another example of money trumping competence or even honesty. Then, we have the shenanigans in Wisconsin, where the Romney campaign is training thousands of “poll watchers” to go into the poll and mislead people to suppress the vote, slow down the vote so people will go home when they see the long lines that will result. Is there any greater threat to our democracy than the modern Republican party? I’ve never seen this kind of gaming of an election…and if ole Mitt wins…I will never recognize it as legitimate…this amoral idiot is damaging our country to it’s core just to win…again, no principles other than winning…it makes me sick…geez…

A Romney win will be illegitimate…

Well….have had this thought rattling around in my head for the past month or so and thought I’d get it down before I forget to deal with it…what happens if the voter suppression efforts by the repubs work and Romney is elected by a margin smaller than those votes that were prevented by the fake voter fraud laws that have been passed by repubs across the country? To me, it would make his presidency no more valid than Putin’s in Russia where it was clear that much of the vote was fraudulent….what does that say about our country that we no longer have “free and fair” elections but ones that have been rigged by the repubs? With all of the talk from the repubs of their love for the country and our sytems, they obviously are the most un-American party in the history of our country and are the cause of the political dysfunction that we see….no one else is to blame, just them…and, just as the unfounded wars and torture that the repubs supported ruined our standing with the rest of the world, how can we ask or tell other countries to have fair elections when ours are just as rigged as any banana republic….geez….

Let’s tackle voter fraud again…

Well…with the heating up of the controversy over the repub sponsored voter I.D. laws across the country, I thought I’d throw a few new facts that have surfaced over the past couple of days. First, let’s remember what the purpose of these laws are…they are to suppress the votes of people that are likely to vote for the dems…the poor, minorities, and college students, and, in Pennsylvania, that leads to almost 800,000 people (almost 10% of the voters in the state) that will not be able to vote under the law signed by their thug governor Chris Christie…and, if you are at all confused by the repubs public cries of widespread voter fraud, you just have to listen to Romney’s campaign chair from Pennsylvania who crowed to a crowd of Romney supporters that the voter I.D. law will ensure a Romney victory in the fall. I want people to remember what the truth is behind the numbers of recognized mis-voting….the Bushies did a study looking at 5 years of elections across the country and only found 86 cases…yep, 86 cases in the hundreds of millions of votes cast and even some of those were just people who voted that were not eligible for that election. So, the facts are that there is no voter fraud in the US and these laws are just another example of the repubs trying to rig another election that they can’t win on merit or ideas…when are we going to wake up to this nonsense and toss these un-American bums out? Geez…

Something weird and surprising here in Michigan….

Well….I have been vegging it out today in the heat but I do have to comment on a weird occurrence that happened a couple of days ago here…as you probably know, across the country the repubs have been passing new laws aimed at “voter fraud” but whose true purpose is to suppress the votes of those Americans that tend to vote for the dems since the repubs can’t win on their ideas. That same thing was happening here in Michigan using the model laws that have been dreamed up by ALEC…the extreme right wing organization that gave us the “stand your ground” laws that have been responsible for hundreds of deaths across the country. But, there was surprising thing that happened here after the repubs passed bills to do the same thing…our governor vetoed them…yep, my jaw dropped too when I read about it….it is the first time that a repub governor had the guts to go against the party lockstep and lies that led to those laws. I am starting to get a grudging respect for Governor Snyder…even though he has gone along with the righties many times since he was elected and I don’t agree with any of them….this time he did what was right for all of the people of Michigan, not just those who voted for him. So, thank you Mr. Snyder…keep doing what is right…not just for the political right….

Voters may still have rights…

Well…it has been a heartening week if you believe that the right of the people to vote should not be able to be abridged by the lunatics on the right who believe that taking away basic rights is a justified tactic to steal elections. In three cases this week, the courts, both state and federal, have invalidated laws put in place by the repubs requiring that some sort of ID is necessary for people to vote; invariably affecting the poor and minorities and suppressing the vote that normally goes to the dems. In Texas, the repubs there cited the “rampant” voter fraud as the justification for disenfranchising over 600,000 poor people who don’t have the required ID’s, but, this “rampant” fraud was actually 50 cases over the span of 10 years…yep, 5 cases a year shows that this was a blatant attempt to fix the elections for the repubs but the court saw through this nonsense and stopped it….the same for a law in Virgina whose purpose was to do the same thing…keep the poor from voting by instituting what was, in effect, a poll tax, by charging these poor folks 22 bucks for these id’s…something that was outlawed with the end of the Jim Crow era…but these guys just can’t give up trying to discriminate and fix elections since it is becoming more evident all the time that it will be the only way they can win. In Wisconsin, the repubs tried to do the same thing with another of these laws that was written by ALEC…the Koch brothers legislative arm who have been writing legislation for the repubs that will further their radical, right-wing agenda and that the lazy repubs can pass to mollify their base. I’m just glad that the checks and balances that are built into our system worked this time….but, remember, this is more of the illegal nonsense you will see if these thugs get returned to office or if you vote for the repub in the presidential election…geez….

Let’s go double dipping…

Well….it didn’t take long for the business and investment community to react to the debt bill by laying off thousands of workers and starting a huge selloff in stocks….what these idiot tea partiers have done is drive this country back into recession by their nonsensical budget cuts in a time of economic weakness…and I will predict right now that this dip is going to be just as severe as the super recession was and it looks like the prospects of me ever finding a job has just disappeared as business is going to sit on their money and not hire since demand is going to plummet. What excuse are the tp’ers going to make up when all of their beliefs on the economy are shown to be wrong? That the cuts weren’t big enough? Idiocy is still idiocy….and these people have the corner on it…what are their corporate masters going to do when their business is hurt deeply by this crap?

The second thing I wanted to talk about is the effort by the Koch brothers and their minions to steal the recall elections in Wisconsin by sending fake absentee ballots that have the wrong date of the election on it. Yep, that’s true…the repubs are using their favorite tools to steal elections in plain sight in Wisconsin…voter suppression with the fake enforcement of the new voter ID law (that doesn’t take effect until January 1st) and misleading voters to keep them from the polls. Haven’t we, as a people, had enough of this nonsense yet? We do need to take our country back from the thugs in the repub party that sanction this stuff. Geez….