Showing posts with label african americans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label african americans. Show all posts

Monday, January 20, 2014

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

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Today we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, a floating holiday celebrating the great man's birthday on January 15th. Truly one of the most inspiring human beings ever to walk the earth, and a true humanitarian.

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Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Mandela Memorial: Obama Speaks and Soweto Cheers

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Previous Related Posts:
R.I.P. Nelson Mandela - "He Belongs to the Ages
Obama in Africa: Capetown to Tanzania

~~~~~~~~~~~~

President Obama and every other living President except George H.W. Bush attended the Memorial Service for Nelson Mandela in Soweto, South Africa. Speaking in the rain to a packed stadium, President Obama had the crowd fired up and cheering, as he often does in our own country. His was by far the most dynamic speech. Most of the tributes could have been edited intensely and no one would have noticed. However, Mandela's grandchildren were wonderfully poetic!

Click Here for Complete Text of President Obama's Eulogy

Excerpts:
. . . Mandela understood the ties that bind the human spirit. There is a word in South Africa -- Ubuntu -- a word that captures Mandela’s greatest gift: his recognition that we are all bound together in ways that are invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us.

We can never know how much of this sense was innate in him, or how much was shaped in a dark and solitary cell. But we remember the gestures, large and small -- introducing his jailers as honored guests at his inauguration; taking a pitch in a Springbok uniform; turning his family’s heartbreak into a call to confront HIV/AIDS -- that revealed the depth of his empathy and his understanding. He not only embodied Ubuntu, he taught millions to find that truth within themselves.

. . . Over 30 years ago, while still a student, I learned of Nelson Mandela and the struggles taking place in this beautiful land, and it stirred something in me. It woke me up to my responsibilities to others and to myself, and it set me on an improbable journey that finds me here today. And while I will always fall short of Madiba’s example, he makes me want to be a better man. He speaks to what’s best inside us.

After this great liberator is laid to rest, and when we have returned to our cities and villages and rejoined our daily routines, let us search for his strength. Let us search for his largeness of spirit somewhere inside of ourselves. And when the night grows dark, when injustice weighs heavy on our hearts, when our best-laid plans seem beyond our reach, let us think of Madiba and the words that brought him comfort within the four walls of his cell: “It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”

What a magnificent soul it was. We will miss him deeply. May God bless the memory of Nelson Mandela. May God bless the people of South Africa.












Mandiba's Grandchildren - He Would Be Proud!

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Friday, December 6, 2013

RIP Nelson Mandela - "He Belongs to the Ages"

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Previous Related Post:
Obama in Africa: Cape Town to Tanzania











Must-See Video of Mandela Dancing:








President Obama's Full Statement on the Death of Nelson Mandela:

5:25 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: At his trial in 1964, Nelson Mandela closed his statement from the dock saying, “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

And Nelson Mandela lived for that ideal, and he made it real. He achieved more than could be expected of any man. Today, he has gone home. And we have lost one of the most influential, courageous, and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth. He no longer belongs to us -- he belongs to the ages.

Through his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, Madiba transformed South Africa -- and moved all of us. His journey from a prisoner to a President embodied the promise that human beings -- and countries -- can change for the better. His commitment to transfer power and reconcile with those who jailed him set an example that all humanity should aspire to, whether in the lives of nations or our own personal lives. And the fact that he did it all with grace and good humor, and an ability to acknowledge his own imperfections, only makes the man that much more remarkable. As he once said, “I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”

I am one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela's life. My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was a protest against apartheid. I studied his words and his writings. The day that he was released from prison gave me a sense of what human beings can do when they’re guided by their hopes and not by their fears. And like so many around the globe, I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set, and so long as I live I will do what I can to learn from him.

To Graça Machel and his family, Michelle and I extend our deepest sympathy and gratitude for sharing this extraordinary man with us. His life’s work meant long days away from those who loved him the most. And I only hope that the time spent with him these last few weeks brought peace and comfort to his family.

To the people of South Africa, we draw strength from the example of renewal, and reconciliation, and resilience that you made real. A free South Africa at peace with itself -- that’s an example to the world, and that’s Madiba’s legacy to the nation he loved.

We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again. So it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set: to make decisions guided not by hate, but by love; to never discount the difference that one person can make; to strive for a future that is worthy of his sacrifice.

For now, let us pause and give thanks for the fact that Nelson Mandela lived -- a man who took history in his hands, and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice. May God Bless his memory and keep him in peace.

END
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Monday, November 4, 2013

Remembering Obama's First Presidential Win

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It's good to go back to golden moments like the night in 2008 when the country elected our first African American President. We need to remind ourselves that change may be slow but impossible things sometimes happen in the United States of America.

In 2008, I wasn't blogging about politics and had never heard of Twitter. But I loved Obama the candidate with his glowing speeches that raised our spirits so beautifully. I knew if we as a nation could turn out the vote, Obama could beat John McCain and become the best President we had ever had in this country. And pleasantly, I still believe he is the best and brightest, and certainly one of the nicest Presidents in history. I still think we probably don't deserve him, even some of us Democrats who like to play the blame game as much as the Republicans.

But back in 2008 Sarah Palin and her rabid "Muslin-hating" Tea Party followers scared the living daylights out of the Democratic Party, and spurred some of us to send every spare dollar we had to the Obama campaign. And that made a huge difference. We should probably thank Palin for being herself, for encouraging the racists and libertarians to show up at her rallies, and for speaking so candidly in her nearly unintelligible way. She clinched the election for Obama, because the thought of Palin being a heartbeat away from the Presidency as John McCain's Vice President was too much to bear. Instead we got the amazing Joe "Malarky" Biden, and it was a "Big F***in' Deal." :)

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Thursday, August 29, 2013

Inspirational ~ The March on Washington 50 Years Ago and Today: Martin Luther King and Barack Obama

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Pic via National Archives Tumblr
The Original Speech by Martin Luther King in Washington, August 28, 1963



Scenes from the Original March, via National Archives:



President Obama, August 28, 2013








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Sunday, July 21, 2013

Marching for Trayvon Martin ~ Change the Stand Your Ground Laws

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source: @urbansoldier33 in Savannah, GA

This weekend, thousands of people in 100 cities are marching or rallying in memory of Trayvon Martin. And on Friday, President Obama made an impromptu, historic and heartfelt speech about race relations in America.












































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And the Children Shall Lead Them

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After the sad week we've had - with the unjust verdict of the Zimmerman Trial and grief for Trayvon Martin - this video of innocent kids without prejudice is a breath of fresh air. And it should give everyone hope for the future because the kids raised today understand the global community differently than any generation. And they are nearly colorblind and vastly more open-minded.

Forward.


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Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Obama in Africa ~ Cape Town to Tanzania


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ABC News ~ Tutu Welcomes Obama
Tutu greeted Obama with a "welcome home" to the continent where his father was born, and pleaded with the U.S. president to be a leader for peace, especially in the Middle East, who can make all Africans proud.

Obama was visiting the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre, an after-school program in a community where many young people are infected with the virus that causes AIDS. Obama praised Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who helped bring an end to South Africa's racist apartheid rule, as "an unrelenting champion of justice and human dignity."

Tutu then spoke of Obama's re-election last fall as America's first African-American president. "You don't know what you did for our psyche," Tutu said. "You won, and we won."

"Your success is our success. Your failure, whether you like it or not, is our failure," Tutu said, reaching out to touch Obama's arm. Obama chuckled and threw up his arms as if acknowledging his fate.

"We want you to be known as having brought peace to the world, especially to have brought an end to the anguish of all in the Middle East," Tutu said. "We pray that you will be known as having brought peace in all of these places where there is strife. You have brought peace and no need for the Guantanamo Bay detention center" in Cuba, where the U.S. has detained dozens of suspected terrorists.

CBS News ~ Cape Town
In an address before an enthusiastic audience of students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, the oldest university in the continent's largest economy, President Obama saluted the progress that has "rippled across the African continent" in recent decades and encouraged Africa's young people to continue pushing forward in pursuit of a brighter future.

. . . "I believe that my own nation will benefit enormously if you reach your full potential," he said. "I'm calling on America to up its game when it comes to Africa."
He cited the pursuit of new trade relationships with African countries and a new initiative to double access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa as evidence of America's deepening engagement.

. . . At the outset, the president's remarks took a somber turn as he recognized the ailing former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, who remains in critical care in a South African hospital, saying Mandela's health "weighs heavily on our hearts."
"Like billions all over the world, I and the American people have drawn strength from the example of this extraordinary leader and the nation that he changed," he said. "Mandela showed us that one man's courage can move the world."

From USA Today ~ Tanzania
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — Welcomed by troupes of traditional dancers, President Obama arrived here Monday to say that he hoped Tanzania would benefit from a regional trade partnership that would improve lives in ways that foreign aid cannot.

"We are looking at a new model that's based not just on aid and assistance, but on trade and partnership," he said, giving as an example ways to help Tanzanians grow their own food and export goods.
"Ultimately, the goal here is for Africa to build Africa for Africans," Obama said. "And our job is to be a partner in that process."

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete praised Obama and his predecessor, George W, Bush, who provided the country with millions of dollars in aid to prevent the spread of HIV, spending that Obama has cut in Africa.











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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Michelle Obama Everywhere!

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source: gimmesomejimmy.tumblr.com

Michelle Obama has been all over the place lately. Last week she appeared on ABC, dancing a series of "Mom Dances" with Jimmy Fallon in drag, LOL. So when Michelle Obama appeared at the end of the Oscar broadcast Sunday night, Republican Heads Exploded all over the country, but especially on Twitter. Most of the comments were along the lines of "Oh no, not again!" - or at least that's the nicest paraphrase.

It's all about jealousy at this point. Not only is Michelle still living in the White House,  with her husband, the Kenyan-Marxist-Communist President of the United States who beat Mitt Romney in a Landslide, but she always seems to be having fun. The GOP, not so much lately.

One thing is certain, we would never have seen Ann Romney doing the "Dougie" on Late Nite TV. I think we can all agree on that.






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Thursday, September 6, 2012

Emanuel Cleaver on Fire at DNC

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This speech, which was part of the Black Congressional Caucus, wasn't shown in prime time and therefore many of us missed it. But I kept seeing tweets about how amazing Emanuel Cleaver was so I tracked it down.

He is on fire, preaching to the choir, and hopefully will inspire! :)

Oh, and he is totally off-script and ad-libbing this!

Cleaver's speech begins at 5:37 on this video:



"Now I greatly respect my Republican colleagues and their ideas. But make no mistake: I am proud to be a Democrat. I am proud to be a member of this great party. And we have, in many instances, been hit: 'They are liberal, they are progressive.'

"Look, if being liberal and progressive means that I care for children and whether they go hungry, color me! Color me a Democrat! If being a Democrat means I'm concerned about our seniors in the sunset of their life, color me Democrat! Color me liberal! After all, we are the ones who protected Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, who fought for fair wages and who ended 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' We are Democrats! And don't you ever forget it!"

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"There is something essential in the human spirit that searches for hope. We are driven by hope. President Barack Obama has been lampooned for speaking of hope; hope for a better America. I want to encourage our president and all of us to continue to hope for an America that remembers, recognizes, and fervently protects its greatness."

"Yes, Mr. President, hope on. Continue to hope, Mr. President. No matter what, Mr. President, you continue to hope! As long as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sits on the throne of grace, hope on! Hope on! Hope on! We are people of hope, Mr. President! Hope on! Hope on! When everything else is gone, hope on!"

~~~~~~~

"Hope inspires me to believe that any day now, we will catch up to the ideals put forth by our nation's founding fathers. ... It is our hope and faith that reminds us to pray and also affirms that we must move our feet. It is our hope that tells us our latter days will be better than our former. It is our hope that instructs us to march on!"
(marching in place)
"And march on! And march on, means marching through our communities and to make sure everyone is registered and ready to vote."

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Let me erase some confusion. Let me tell you something. There are people who poke fun at us Democrats. They say we go to far with this inclusion stuff. They say that we have a caucus for tall people and caucus for short people and a caucus for people who don't fit into any other caucus.
But let me just tell you - God did not burden the United States with the diversity of backgrounds, ideas and religions. He BLESSED America with them!

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Saturday, September 1, 2012

President Obama as Clint Eastwood's Invisible Straw Man

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As an English major and bookish person, it's fascinating to me that iconic books are beginning to define the candidates.

For the Republicans it's clearly anything written by Ayn Rand from Atlas Shrugged to The Fountainhead.  John Galt represents the selfish "every person for themselves" attitude that causes the Republican Congress to block or stonewall every social program that might help anyone, and their vision of society is of one divided between successful wealthy people and the slacker rabble who are beneath them.

My posts about the Republicans and Ayn Rand's books:
Ayn Rand and the Politics of Egomania
More on the Ryan and Ayn Connection

For the Democrats, the new book reference, thanks to Clint Eastwood, is Ralph Ellison's amazing book, Invisible Man.

Thursday night at the Republican Convention, Clint Eastwood played out a bizarre ad lib between himself as a typical Republican and an empty chair representing President Obama. While it's easy to laugh and blame the whole thing on the senility of an aging actor past his prime, what he did was quite symbolic.

Obviously the Republicans want Obama's chair to be "empty" - they want him gone from the White House.  Back in April,  the Romneys were asked in an interview what they would like to say to President Obama, they said Obama should just get out of the White House. Get out of the Oval Office - here we come!

Source: The Hill
"Well, start packing. That's what I'd like to say. Obviously we have a very different view. The president, I'm sure wants another four years, but the first few didn't go so well," Romney said.
"His policies have not helped the American people. They have not helped get jobs, they have not helped raise incomes and they’ve added trillions of dollars of debt,” Romney added.
The sentiment was echoed by Romney's wife, Ann, who has played an increasingly prominent role in the campaign in recent weeks.
"I believe it's Mitt's time. I believe the country needs the kind of leadership he's going to offer… So I think it's our turn now," Ann Romney said.

Notice what he also does in that quote - Mitt blabs a bunch of other things about Obama implying he hasn't done any good for the country and has created all the national debt by himself, which is a lie. In fact, Romney lies nearly continuously in his speeches about what Obama has or hasn't done, and other Republicans are worse. John Sununu and Donald Trump call him "foreign," and the birthers cheer. Sarah Palin says he wants to kill Grandma with a death panel, and everyone waves a flag. It's just rank propoganda and vicious rhetoric that bears no likeness to the truth.

In debate, that is known as creating a "straw man."
From "Fallacy Files":
Etymology:
"Straw man" is one of the best-named fallacies, because it is memorable and vividly illustrates the nature of the fallacy. Imagine a fight in which one of the combatants sets up a man of straw, attacks it, then proclaims victory. All the while, the real opponent stands by untouched.

So we have real Obama, who was born in the United States and has been a really good President for four years, then we have this demon straw man who is just a diabolical fiend, conspiring with his own parents before he was born to become President and drive Tea Party members insane 50 years later.

What Clint Eastwood did with his comedy sketch was to imagine Obama sitting in that chair on stage, in effect creating an "imaginary straw man." How do we know that his vision of Obama was not the real thing? Well, he put words into Obama's mouth that he wouldn't say - our President just isn't going to tell Mitt or anyone else to "F*** himself," which is what Clint implied as a joke. It was just unfunny.

Eric Stetson wrote in an essay called "Attacking an Imaginary Obama"
It is not insignificant that Clint Eastwood pretended that the imaginary Barack Obama he was talking to responded to him with vulgarity. On multiple occasions, he pretended that Obama cursed him with the f-word as a response to his political criticisms. The real President Obama would not do this, of course, because he is a gentleman who speaks in a dignified manner. Republicans like Clint Eastwood cannot stand that. The Obama of their imagination is ghetto trash, the kind of person who would cuss and make his points using vulgarity rather than well-reasoned arguments. They literally imagine him as their image of the stereotypical young urban thug, because the reality of a young black liberal gentleman is too difficult for them to comprehend or accept.

Exactly. The invisible straw man in that chair is not the real Obama.

Hungry Coyote on Daily Kos has a great diary about the disrespect shown to Obama by Eastwood, and I won't try to repeat all of it because I want to actually discuss the literature involved with some quotes from Ellison.

But first let's just look at a quote from MSNBC transcript she has kindly provided, a snippet of discussion between James Lipton of the Actor's Studio and Chris Hayes.

Chris Hayes: . . . he was sitting in a chair. So he was being literally talked; literally, physically talked down to.

James Liption: Down to.

Chris Hayes: Down to, and like a school boy; like an errant school boy, and my executive producer made this point about you know, Clint Eastwood and the RNC should go back and read The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison because actually, there's a whole masterpiece of American literature ... around the experience of invisibility in front of the white power structure for a black man in America. And obviously that was; I don't want to say like that that was obviously the intentional subtext. I think it was not thought out. I just think it was they wanted to have a gag. But the way it reads was deeply, deeply profoundly, profoundly disrespectful in a way that really, I found kind of upsetting.

James Liption: One of the things about this campaign that has fascinated me is the number of jokes that have gone over like lead balloons.

Alex Wagner: yes.

James Liption: I've never heard quite so many jokes that weren't really funny. They're structured like a joke, sounds like a joke; you think you're listening to a joke, except it's not funny.

I think Ralph Ellison would concur - it's unfunny to imagine a black man as errant schoolboy - or "boy" of any kind, especially in the 21st century. The trouble is, the Republicans seem to long for the plantation past with their talk of secession as the answer to all problems, and their denial about America becoming more brown and less white all the time. I think that's why they are desperate enough to let their racism show.

Every time we hear a string of dog whistles in a speech, what the speaker is really just showing you his ideal straw man - a black person who never heard of civil rights, who never went to college, who never wrote a book or owned a house or entered the middle class. In his convention acceptance speech Mitt Romney, like Santorum before him, mocked Obama for being a lawyer, when all three of them went to the same exact Law School at Harvard. That is like making yourself into a straw man, then attacking yourself with just as much ferocity lest someone mistake you for your enemy. It must be painful to go on stabbing yourself that way, but Mitt, Ryan and the others want to highlight differences, not similarities.

African Americans back in the day endured a type of apartheid, restricted to certain neighborhoods, certain jobs, certain schools, certain expectations. Ellison was a man of that time, and as in Kathryn Stockett's recent novel The Help set in Mississippi during the sixties civil rights movement, people were expected to "know their place," to sit in the corner, to look down, and to never speak up. Ironically, that learned behavior of obsequiousness certainly helped the struggle as they followed Gandhi's rules of non-violence and Thoreau's idea of civil disobedience. Brave people were willing to endure anything to change the system, from the indignity of mustard poured over their heads at a lunch counter or being chased by police dogs on a public street or thrown in jail.

And Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel was just one of a number of great American books that influenced social change in the 60s, but given that the Republicans don't see President Obama clearly and Eastwood literally made him the "Invisible Man" on stage in Tampa, here are some quotes from the book that can remind us of the plight of President Obama. No matter what he does, 30% of American won't accept him as a "real American," and many of them will never admit they were wrong. But they are the ones who can't see themselves clearly.

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie extoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.”

“I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.”

“I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied”

"America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. It's 'winner take nothing' that is the great truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many -- This in not prophecy, but description."

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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

"True the Vote" Poll Watchers are Dangerous Vigilantes

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cartoon by Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury


Most ordinary people think of election observers as people who come into third world countries to view elections to make sure the process is fair to all - like Jimmy Carter's UN group. In this country, the history of "Poll Watching" is much more dark, and was originally allowed by states that wanted to suppress the African American vote during the Jim Crow years after Reconstruction.

This year and true to form, the Republican Party wants to use Poll Watchers to intimidate voters in states like Ohio, where Secretary of State Husted is helping the cause by cutting out early voting on weeknights and weekends, prohibiting many minority voters from participating.

Rachel Maddow has done several great reports on "True the Vote," a group formed to allegedly combate "voter fraud" by placing watchers at polling places where they could signal officials if they saw something they thought was a "gotcha" moment.

To give you an idea of what True the Vote is all about, you have to see Their Official Website. It has nothing to do with wanting to make the process fair. It has everything to do with blocking voters from the polls.

Under "Latest News" here is just one article about Pennsylvania Voter ID filled with a sense of palpable disappointment that voters might actually get help in carrying out their right to vote:
The anti-ID crowd continues to have the wind taken out of its sails.
First, Pennsylvania plaintiff Viviette Applewhite gets a photo ID the day after the ACLU’s Voter ID challenge is shot down in court on grounds that the law disenfranchises no one. Now, PennDOT is rolling out its program to provide free voter identification cards to all Pennsylvania voters who can’t otherwise get a state photo ID

Yeah, that's a real bummer. It's too bad the State of Pennsylvania is helping more voters have a chance to vote. That spoils all the fun.

Here's the leader of True the Vote, Catherine Engelbrecht, speaking to her followers. She loves her some Voter ID Laws!!! Basically she is a vigilante bully who believes there is fraud where none actually exists, and she wants to make the process more difficult for everyone. She is an alarmist, and how dare she talk about "civil rights leaders" when some of them would roll in their graves at the thought of an all-white posse looking over an election. Her call for "Election Integrity" is a big dog whistle to the Tea Party because her goal is to favor the white vote over the minority vote.

True the Vote 2012 Summit - Catherine Engelbrecht from True the Vote on Vimeo.

But of course, there is still Ohio, with Tea Party sympathizer Jon Husted, the Secretary of State who is trying his best to do the one-man election body-block. Last week I posted this impassioned speech by State Senator Nina Turner on The Ed Show, expressing the outrage many feel towards Husted as he tries to rig the system against elderly and minority voters.

And Husted has also been busy threatening to fire two Democrats who stood up to him over the new voting schedule.

In a 15-page decision filed Aug. 27, Jonathan Allison concluded that Husted has the authority to remove Dennis Lieberman and Tom Ritchie Sr. from their posts.
“Furthermore, I believe the facts warrant removal and recommend that the secretary take such action,” Allison wrote.“It’s not justice when you already know the outcome of being put on trial,” he said. “A hearing examiner appointed by SOS Husted has agreed with his boss. This is not news.”
Husted spokesman Matt McClellan said the state’s chief elections official will make a decision Aug. 28 on whether to remove the two board members.

Lieberman and Ritchie were called to Columbus a week ago for a hearing in Husted’s office after they backed a motion to open Montgomery County’s early polls on weekends in the weeks before the Nov. 6 election, just days after Husted issued a directive ordering boards to adopt uniform weekday in-person early voting hours, with no Saturdays or Sundays.

. . . “We do not want to return to the long lines, the hours upon hours of waiting that took place in 2004 when J. Kenneth Blackwell was in Secretary Husted’s job,” Lieberman said. “Secretary Husted needs to follow Jennifer Brunner’s model in 2008 that led to a historic voter turnout and abandon Blackwell’s 2004 model that was a disaster and made Ohio a poster child for voter suppression.”

It turns out we have proof that Husted is all in cahoots with True the Vote - he was listed as a "featured speaker" for their Ohio State Summit Meeting, but after Rachel Maddow announced that on her show, he withdrew, to be replaced by Ohio State Senator Bill Seitz.

As Maddow reported, when True the Vote started in Harris County, Texas, the mainly white watchers showed up in African American precincts and intimidated registered voters. The group understood that they were intimidating people - but they seem to think that's okay. Hello Jim Crow!

Talking Points Memo, 2010
Harris County, the biggest county in the state, is where a Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots launched an anti-voter fraud initiative called “True the Vote,” which recruited poll watchers and amped up fears over groups like the community organizing group ACORN.

Chad Dunn, a lawyer who is representing the Texas Democratic Party, told TPMMuckraker a number of witnesses have been interviewed by Civil Rights Division lawyers already. “We’ve gotten a number of reports — quite a few out of the Houston area — that poll watchers, King Street Patriot training poll watchers, are following a voter after they’ve checked them out and stand right behind them,” Dunn said. There’s at least a dozen reports that they could confirm with witnesses, he said. “Interestingly, it’s all in the polling places in Hispanic and African-American areas,” he added.

Terry O’Rourke, the first assistant in the Harris County Attorney’s office, told TPMMuckraker that there have been allegations of poll watchers talking to voters, which they are not allowed to do, as well as hovering over voters as they are waiting to vote. He said the complaints came from Kashmere Gardens, Moody Park, Sunnyside and other predominantly minority neighborhoods of the county.

The action group Colorlines posted an in-depth story on True the Vote:
Catherine Engelbrecht is the founder of both the King Street Patriots and True the Vote, in that order, and only months apart. Name and IRS status appear to be all that differentiates the two groups. The former, a 501c4, is a Tea Party group that lobbies for conservative issues, chiefly election reform; the latter is a 501c3 that takes a hands-on approach to making sure election reform is implemented—Dr. Jekyl and Dr. Jekyler.

The 2008 ACORN “scandal,” where ACORN was found with thousands of falsified voter registration forms, is partially what inspired Engelbrecht to form the King Street Patriots. Even though no fraudulent votes were cast, Engelbrecht’s King Street Patriots lionized the ACORN tale and used it as a mobilizing tool to recruit hundreds of volunteers for 2009 Election Day poll watching, mostly in black and Latino districts. . . .
. . . Only a handful of fraud cases were tried after the election, and none led to full convictions. Still, the King Street Patriots spun off as “True the Vote” and came out again for the 2010 elections—bulkier with more recruits, again at black and Latino polling places. A local Houston newscast noticed the bulge in poll observers and reported, “As the number of poll watchers have increased, so have the number of complaints.” A video True the Vote circulated at the time contained doctored photos of black people falsely pictured as advocating for voter fraud.

True the Vote’s lawyer Kelly Shackelford, of the Christian rightwing organization Liberty Institute, explained away the intimidation complaints this way: “Poll watchers show up for the first time and [the poll watchers are] a different color than them and they just don’t like that.”
 

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Friday, August 24, 2012

"Elect Obama Now" Song Catchy and Old-Timey!

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This is a cute, catchy and pleasantly old-fashioned election song for Obama! And a nice inspirational video to get you jazzed for the election. :)


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State Sen. Nina Turner D-Ohio on Fire Over Voter Suppression

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State Senator Nina Turner, D-Ohio, was on fire on MSNBC's The Ed Show tonight: my transcript

"This is nothing more than uniform voter suppression, make no mistake about it. Ohio and four other states, Ed, have extremely cut early voting hours. And get this - in Ohio and Florida, they cut Sundays. We know exactly who their targets are. And again, in Cuyahoga County, African Americans make up 26% of the registered voters. But during 2008, early in-person voting, they made up 56% of the vote."

"How dare we forget how we got over in this country. How African Americans had to dodge the barks and bites of dogs, how they had to leap over grandfather clauses, and literacy tests, and poll taxes. And here we are in the 21st century with the elections officer who is supposed to adhere morally and legally to expanding the vote, but here he is suppressing the vote."

"And I'm going to tell you something, Ed, if you are poor, working class, middle class, elderly, African American, Hispanic, or a woman, you are SOL (sh** out of luck) when it comes to Republicans. They are making it very clear that they don't care - they are here to oppress, suppress, and they don't care how they steal the vote."

. . . [Governor Kasich] is MIA (missing-in-action) when it comes to this voting issue, and it's a shame.

. . . "If you extrapolate out the date from 2008, with the hours that have been eliminated unilaterally by the Sec. of State, about 200,000 Ohioans will be impacted by that. And if we remember, Governor Kasich beat Governor Strickland by about a 2% margin. Every vote counts and no one should suppress the vote.

And as far as I'm concerned, I don't care if people carry the title of Secretary of State or not - if you are a policy maker in the State of Ohio, if you are someone who cares about fairness and justice, it is all of our responsibility to stand up and tell the truth. And the truth of the matter is, it is Republicans who are suppressing the vote. And oh, by the way, over 180 bills were introduced in states across this country by GOP-led Legislatures. And I wonder why.

Could it be because President Barack Obama is an African American? I wonder.


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Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Shocking Poll for Republicans

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Look at the latest ststs targeting the presidential election. Romney isn't doing that well, especially with African American voters - ZERO percent!

I am always surprised that any women would vote Republican, and after the Todd Akin fiasco, I think Romney's percentage of women will fall below 41%.

The NBC/WSJ Poll of Registered Voters
Complete PDF Here

Registered Voters:
Obama/Biden 48%
Romney/Ryan 44%

In Swing States:
Obama/Biden 49%
Romney/Ryan 46%

African Americans:
Obama/Biden 94%
Romney/Ryan 0%

Latinos:
Obama/Biden 60%
Romney/Ryan 30%

Women:
Obama/Biden 51%
Romney/Ryan 41%

On Medicare:
Obama - No Change to system  50%
Romney - Vouchers/RyanPlan   34%
 


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Sunday, August 19, 2012

Ohio's Racist Voting Agenda on Display

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(Unless you are African American and Want to Vote)

What is going on with Republicans this weekend? Are they finally losing all their marbles over the fact that they are going to lose in November? We have Paul Ryan yesterday saying his foreign policy cred is all about voting for war, Todd Akin from Missouri discussing "legitimate" rape, and now this guy from Ohio admitting that the powers that be don't want black people to vote, period, and are doing everything they can to stop it.

I hope this is a trend . . . It can only be good for Obama & the Dems. :)

A member of the Ohio Board of Elections, Doug Preisse, who just voted to ban weekend voting for everyone, now says he did it to stop the "African-American-Voter-Turnout-Machine." Hmm, I didn't know Ohio had one of those, thanks for demanding that they quote you, LOL.

You cannot make this stuff up!

From the Columbus Dispatch
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.”
He called claims of unfairness by Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern and others “bullshit. Quote me!”

Well, he may wish he hadn't been quoted because the internet exploded with people calling for the ACLU and the Defense Department to stop holding back and do something about Ohio voter suppression.

By tonight, Preisse was backtracking somewhat and probably wishing he hadn't sent that email to the newspaper. But these guys just aren't too smart, so he told BuzzFeed several times that the African-American voters are a "political operation." He makes it sound as if Ohio has declared war on black voters, and we all have a right to be ticked off and fighting mad about such talk. :(


Interview with BuzzFeed

In an interview with BuzzFeed, Franklin County GOP Chairman Doug Preisse, a close ally of Governor John Kasich, said his comment — which provoked Democratic outrage — was simply straight talk.

Democrats "are trying to say that I had somehow consciously constrained hours for that purpose," Preisse said. "No, I am saying the opposite, that I am asking the question, and I am indeed questioning how far this process of democratic, small ‘d’, democratic voting process should be contorted to favor a political operation. I don’t think we should go overboard in doing that."

. . . Preisse scoffed at the criticism, telling BuzzFeed of a disputed voting plan put forth by Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, "I believe it should be easy to vote, and I believe that under this plan it is.

"I believe that Republicans and Democrats of good will can have a difference of opinion, an honest difference of opinion here, but I also believe that there is no question that the forces of Obama and the other side of the aisle would love to just throw the barn doors open and have 24-hour voting and just go too far in the other direction," Preisse said. "It seems to me we can have a reasonable discussion about this."

Of Democrats' early voting efforts, he said, "How far should the taxpayers be asked to go to accommodate that political operation? That’s where we’re having a difference of opinion."
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Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Pennsylvania's Voter ID Law: "A Solution in Search of a Problem"


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Pennsylvania has a problem with their voter ID laws, but it's not because of rampant voter fraud as the Republicans want us to believe. In fact, as in most states, everyone agrees that voter fraud is almost non-existent. Yet state legislatures keeping passing laws forcing everyone to get a picture ID or lose their right to vote in the Presidential election this year. This will put the burden mainly on urban dwellers who use public transportation and therefore do not have a driver's license, as well as the elderly who have been voting for years, thank you very much, without a picture ID.

Unlike Florida and Texas, Pennsylvania is not a state covered by Section 5 of the Voters Rights Act which requires preclearance from the Justice Department before voting laws can be changed. Only states that had low voter turnout under 50% in the early 60s were required to follow the preclearance rule. So Pennsylvania will be a test state, and possibly ground-breaking for other "swing" states that might try to suppress the African American vote using Voter ID Laws.

The ACLU is taking the State of Pennsylvania to court, while the Feds are looking into whether the law will impede voting.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Voter ID Fight Heads to Court
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and other groups will spend the next week in Commonwealth Court trying to persuade a judge to grant a swift and immediate injunction. The Republican-controlled legislature passed the law four months ago with the stated purpose of discouraging election fraud.

*snip*

The ACLU is suing on behalf of 10 Pennsylvanians who do not have driver's licenses and who contend that the photo-ID requirement violates the state constitution, depriving them of their right to vote.

In legal papers filed last week, the civil liberties group says that those 10 are the tip of a human iceberg, that as many as a million or more Pennsylvania voters lack the types of photo ID that the law requires.

The ACLU included in its filing a surprising concession from state officials: a written stipulation that the state cannot pinpoint any instance of the kind of voter-impersonation fraud the new law aims to prevent.


The state stipulated that it is "not aware of any incidents of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania," and has "no direct knowledge of in-person voter fraud elsewhere." State officials also said they would offer no evidence that "in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of the photo ID law."

Talking Points Memo: DOJ Investigates ID Law

In a three-page letter sent to Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele on Monday, DOJ requested state data on registered voters as well as the state’s list of individuals with driver’s licenses and ID cards.

Additionally, DOJ requested information on the state’s efforts to educate voters about the new law as well as documents and records supporting a March 14 statement from the office of Gov. Tom Corbett (R) which claimed “99 percent of Pennsylvania’s already have acceptable photo IDs.” (The state’s own data did not support that figure.) Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez requested Pennsylvania send the information to federal authorities within 30 days.

Pennsylvania has said that over 750,000 voters lack an adequate form of voter ID, a number greater than President Obama’s margin of victory in the state in 2008. One top Republican even said the voter ID law would help Mitt Romney win the state. As TPM reported, the public relations firm contracted to educate the public about the new voter ID law is stacked with Republicans.

Good discussion of this story on Hardball yesterday:


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Thursday, July 12, 2012

Romney Brought A Black Entourage to the NAACP

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You can't make this stuff up. I saw this on the Ed Show last night and was staring at the TV in disbelief, and because it is such a strange story held it until today to see if more information was available.

According to NAACP members on the ED Show, Romney brought his own entourage of African Americans to the convention, either bussed or flown in. You can see the original article and video below, but here is the new information from this afternoon:

MSNBC ~ Romney Brought in Black Supporters
The Romney campaign Wednesday night denied to Lean Forward that it brought in supporters to cheer during the candidate's speech to the NAACP, as several attendees have claimed. But one prominent black Republican told us she was invited to the event by the Romney campaign, and another African-American conservative said he was urged to go by people connected to the campaign.

"I was invited by Governor Romney," Lt. Governor Jennifer Carroll of Florida, a Republican, told Lean Forward in a phone interview Thursday afternoon.

Asked who paid Carroll's way, her office referred Lean Forward to the Romney campaign's press office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

. . . Niger Innis, a conservative activist, told Lean Forward Thursday that he was encouraged to attend the Houston speech by friends in the NAACP, as well as "some folks that were aligned with the Romney campaign," declining to elaborate. Innis said he paid his own way.

. . . The TV host Roland Martin, Hilary Shelton of the NAACP, and the radio host Mark Thompson all have claimed that the Romney campaign brought in supporters to the speech. Shelton said on MSNBC Wednesday that the goal was "to provide the cheering for [Romney]." Thompson said the supporters served as "applauders for his applause lines."

Andrea Saul, a Romney campaign spokeswoman, told Lean Forward Wednesday night that Shelton's claims were "not true." Asked Thursday about Carroll's statement that she attended the speech as a guest of the Romney campaign, and Innis's that he was urged to go by people connected to the campaign, Saul did not immediately respond.

No joke, folks. Romney is one weird candidate. If he brought in people to clap and support him, maybe they were also the ones booing him on cue as well. Honestly - it begs the question. The whole thing stinks to high heaven, if you ask me.

From The Ed Show Blog

Romney said today that after the speech, at which he was booed for saying he'd repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, he met with black leaders who told him they support his policies but are afraid to do so publicly.

But on The Ed Show, (Hilary) Shelton said those were likely people brought in by the Romney camp "to actually provide the cheering for him."

"Quite frankly, the campaign actually gave me a list of African-American VIPs that they brought into the NAACP meeting," Shelton told Ed Schulz. "So we were aware that they had people brought in specifically for the campaign. So I'm sure those were the ones they sat down with, because quite frankly none of the rank-and-file NAACPers met with him."

Indeed, despite the boos, cheering can be heard at various points during the speech, including when Romney criticized President Obama over the economy and education.

Shelton said that none of the people Romney met with were active NAACP leaders, and that Romney's referring to African-American conservative politicians like Niger Innis who "was brought in from New York."

Pressed by Ed Schultz about whether Innis and the others were actually members of the NAACP, Shelton said: "They're bringing people in that they know will support his agenda from other places, that aren't active with the NAACP. These are people who are brought in to actually provide the cheering for him, so there will be some support along those lines."

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