Archive for voter suppression – Page 2

Guest post by David Garber: “If I thought like a cynic… ”

cynical

Another guest post is by our pal and regular TPC contributor, David Garber:

A cynic sees things as they might be and says, is this possible?

I’m glad I’m not a cynic. That’s a tough job coming up with conspiracy theories, blaming others for things that are our own faults. It really would tax my limited brain and my imagination.

If I thought like a cynic, I might look at the efforts of the GOP to suppress vote as a discriminatory action against Latinos, Blacks, Asians, the elderly and any other minority who definitely don’t make up the base of that party. C’mon, you’d have be a cynic to believe that.

And if I thought like a cynic, I might believe that the war in Iraq wasn’t fully justified, that people lied to get us into that conflict for personally gain – neocons, war hawks, anti-muslims, the president and vice President who would generate huge incomes for companies they had personal stakes in.

That would just be so corrupt and irresponsible, that I’m not going to believe that. That kind of stuff is hogwash.

And now Boston. It was a terrorist act, that’s what the news people are saying. No foreign nor domestic group has claimed responsibility. If they had done this, at least in the past, they would have jumped onto this even if they hadn’t done it — just for the publicity. Good thing our responsible and rarely duped press aren’t cynics because they could have come to another conclusion.

What would that be?

Now I’m not a cynic, as I’ve stated, but a possible scenario is that the NRA, facing possible defeat in the Senate, doesn’t want to take any chances. The tragedy at Sandy Hook hasn’t gone away as they had counted on. So if it won’t go away on it’s own, how about giving us something else to fixate on for a short while, then we’ll forget our lost children in Connecticut. The press will always fall for a new shiny object.

Well, let’s hope this possible scenario is wrong. I’m a Boston boy and have special feelings for friends and family back there. But I’d hate for them to be used to diffuse other pressing issues like gun control.

I guess in my weak moment I was thinking like a cynic. Good thing I’m not one.

For the past 25 years, David Garber has been serving as the show runner and or writer on some of television’s biggest hits… Saved By The Bell, Power Rangers, 227, Bill Cosby Show and many other network series. His writing and producing have also netted David two very prestigious awards:the PRISM AWARD and the TV CRITICS AWARD – TV SPECIAL OF THE YEAR. Currently he’s authoring a short story series called “A Few Minutes With…”

What I will not write about today

frustrated10

Sometimes I get so frustrated and/or disheartened and/or annoyed by some of the news stories of the day that I can’t bring myself to write about them. Here are a few recent reports that made my blood pressure hit the roof. I am avoiding delving into them at length out of concern for my physical and mental health.

 

  • Harvard study: “Racial animus in the United States appears to have cost Obama roughly four percentage points of the national popular vote in both 2008 and 2012.”| Must have been all that GOP outreach.
  • Man whose handgun carry permit was suspended after he threatened to “start killing people” if President Obama took executive action on guns — has his gun license back, WBBJ-TV reported| #ProtectingTheFamily #Responsible #YouDontUnderstand #AmericanTradition #SelfProtection

See what I mean? So who’s up for a couple of Margs or a trough of wine?

drunk guide

VIDEO: “In the states, Republicans are still doing everything they can to make [voting] problems worse.”

voter suppression maddow voting rights act neededvoter suppression cartoon

We’ve written countless posts about voter suppression. You can find them here, and this one will be at the very top of that list:

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extreme makeover my ass

So much for the GOP effort to attract more people to their party. What was that about rebranding again?

Rachel Maddow:

The idea of a presidential commission to fix voting problems in this country: You know, as of this week we now know that this idea, which I thought was one of those things you say in the State of the Union that just poof! and goes away forever, turns out it has not been relegated to the remainder bin of big presidential speech making ideas. It is not a low orbit Orient Express a la Ronald Reagan.

It’s actually happening. Yesterday afternoon President Obama  signed an executive order to actually form that commission, AND the Republican co-chair he said he was going to appoint to the commission, Mitt Romney’s campaign lawyer Ben Ginsberg, he is in fact going along with it. The order asks Mr Ginsberg and his Democratic counterpart Bob Bauer to come up with a variety of ways to shorten voting lines and to generally make elections more efficient.It also directs the commission to submit a report to the president within six months.

So that is what is happening at the executive level: An order from the president look for solutions to our country’s miserable voting problems.

Meanwhile in the states, Republicans are still doing everything they can to make the problems worse.

So far this year, Republican lawmakers in 30 states have proposed 55 different new voting restrictions to make voting harder than it already is. 55. This year. Since the election.

Folks at project vote are calling it an onslaught.

How’s that reachy-outy thing workin’ for ya, GOP?

outreach my ass reach out inclusive

“The GOP is hanging on to its old ways thanks to its very skillful management of the vote.”

gerrymandering via Doonesbury

Doonesbury strip by Garry Trudeau

Today’s L.A. Times letters to the editor, because our voices matter:

Re “The GOP’s ‘autopsy,’” Opinion, March 20

Doyle McManus examines the GOP’s problems as it relates to winning the 2016 presidential election. The real problem is not the message but simply the math.

The GOP is hanging on to its old ways thanks to its very skillful management of the vote. Republicans control the House even though they received fewer votes in 2012 than the Democrats. Similarly, they control several state houses thanks to gerrymandered districts. They effectively control the Senate through the filibuster.

But this approach, which ghettoizes the opposition and puts many districts in the GOP column by a few percentage points, creates a house of cards. With just a small shift in key districts, it will all come down.

It is time to change the policies and not just the rhetoric. Republicans cannot maintain their voting advantage forever.

Glen Jansma

Newport Beach

***

With the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq this week, I can only hope that the Republican Party remains divided for a long time to come.

It was this party that took us into war with a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, had no weapons of mass destruction and where more than 4,000 American lives would end up being lost. And for what? Is America any safer?

Republicans should hang their heads in shame this week, and I hope that their embracing of the “tea party” leads to the GOP’s demise for once and for all.

Scott W. Hughes

Westlake Village

Documents were deleted from WI GOP redistricting computers, per court filing

tweet weigel gop redistricting gerrymander

Previously I posted WI officials subpoenaed over missing computers, docs involved in redistricting that benefited Republicans:

The subpoenas are being used to force GOP officials to reveal where the mystery computers, external hard drives, discs and documents are located, and the groups who are making these demands want the answers under oath.

It’s been months and months, but the state of Wisconsin never told the plaintiffs, who want to search said computers, where the computers were, and made every effort to block them from finding out, so now the Dems are playing hardball. They want those documents, and they want them now.

Republicans who control the Wisconsin legislature. Wisconsin’s governor is the one and only GOP “rising star” Scott Walker. Of course, Walker, along with the legislature, approved redistricting maps that benefited their party

It isn’t clear who deleted these documents, but– call me crazy– I’m guessing it wasn’t a Democrat.

Via JSOnline:

Madison - Documents were deleted from state redistricting computers last year even after a lawyer for the Legislature told lawmakers’ aides to preserve all records on the computers, according to documents filed Wednesday in federal court.

Nine hard drives were recently given to groups suing the state because of questions about whether legislators and their attorneys had turned over all the documents they had been ordered to provide. One of the nine hard drives was unreadable and the outside of it was dented and scratched, which suggested its metal housing had been removed, according to affidavits in the case.

In addition, some of the hard drives had a program installed on them that could remove electronic data and hide the fact that files had been deleted, according to the filing. So far, however, a computer expert has not been able to determine if the program was actually used.

JSOnline goes on to say that a “panel of federal judges ruled last year that two Assembly maps on Milwaukee’s south side violated the voting rights of Latinos. The court put in place new maps for those districts but not others, meaning the Republican-friendly maps were largely preserved.”

And the fun never ends under Scott Walker’s watch. Stay tuned.

Doonesbury speaker boehner voter suppression gerrymandering

Doonesbury– GOP “soul-searching”: “It’s time to get serious and double down with state-by-state election rigging!”

gop rebrand

doonesbury gop reinvention

Garry Trudeau nails the GOP “reinvention” hypocrisy. The Republican Party has no new ideas, so they continue to rely on dirty tricks and voter suppression. RNC Chair Reince Priebus now wants to play hero with minorities GOP hasn’t wanted to touch with a 10-foot car elevator, yet the GOP defaults to rigging elections in order to affect election outcomes.

And as Paddy posted earlier, Paul Ryan thinks he can get Obamacare repealed.

See how they’ve changed? The only “rebranding” they’ve done is cosmetically, with a few new words, but when it comes to policies and attitudes, well, let’s just say that so far, most of the 71% of Latinos who voted for President Obama will be unimpressed.

new and unimproved

VIDEO: VP Biden speaks at annual “Bloody Sunday” commemoration of 1965 Selma to Montgomery bridge march

biden selma Alabama voters rights

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NBC: Vice President Joe Biden speaks in Alabama at the annual commemoration of the Selma to Montgomery bridge march of 1965.

“We saw in stark relief the rank hatred, discrimination, violence that still existed in large swaths of the nation.”

“What all of you did that day, and the next, and the next, and the next, allowed America to… begin to see the potential that actually existed maybe, maybe for the first time.”

“What happened at the bridge generated a lesson that was absolutely clear… it was palpable… There’s courage to stand up to moral imperatives of the day… saying the right thing… But there’s a different kind of courage standing and looking at somebody who has a club in his hand, and you KNOW… The courage to look evil in the eye.

“… Believing that although the cost had been high, victory was inevitable.”

We owe Jesse Jackson… We owe John Lewis, and so many more. We owe all of you a debt that we can never be fully repaid.”

“I wonder how many people remember what the fight was about… But today you say… it was about the right to vote, nothing else. Just the right to vote. It wasn’t about the right to go to ‘somebody’s school’… Most everybody already thought by ’65 [the right to vote] was pretty settled.”

“You walked out of the doors of the… church… that’s why, in spite of the certain knowledge that you’d get beaten, you stepped your foot on that bridge and defied and ultimately defeated those voices of prejudice. That’s why you did it. Because you know and every American knows… that without the right to vote, there’s no right guaranteed, and you can’t count on anyone else voting your interests. YOU gotta vote your interests.

“You broke the back of the forces of evil. …. That march didn’t end in Montgomery. You know it continues today.

“Never did I think 40 years earlier that I’d be standing on that platform [with Pres. Obama]. Things have changed, they’ve gotten better, but folks, there’s still a lot more.”

“In 2011-12, we were preparing to run for re-election. 40-41 states passed 180 laws to restrict the right to vote. 180 laws. Some more pernicious than others. We saw it with state legislators working to end same day registration, cutting back early voting, requiring voter ID where no fraud was ever shown, restricting voters registration drives… Here we are, 48 years after all you did, and we’re still fighting? In 2011, ’12, and ’13? We were able to beat back most of those attempts, but that doesn’t mean it’s over.”

Strom Thurmond voted for re-authorization, and yet it’s being challenged in the Supreme Court of the U.S. as we stand here today. Legislators in a number of states are looking for new ways to restrict and make more difficult for African Americans and other minorities to vote.

“Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act… We can’t let our guard down.”

“Here’s what John said [at the National Democratic Convention]… He said, “They’re changing the rules. They’re cutting polling hours and imposing requirements intended to suppress the vote. Too many people struggled,” he went on to say, “And die to make it possible for every American to exercise their right to vote. We have come too far together to turn back.”

Please watch all the way to the end.