Standing up against new voter suppression tactics

December 14th, 2011


By Benjamin Todd Jealous


Our voting rights are under attack. In legislatures across the county, misguided state politicians have proposed, and in too many cases have passed, laws that create obstacles to voting. That is why, in honor of International Human Rights Day, we are taking a principled stand for freedom to let the world know that we will not sit back and let our right to vote be taken away.


Over the last 12 months, 34 states have introduced voter suppression legislation, with laws passing in 14 of those states and bills pending in eight. These suppressive laws take many forms, but in each case they disproportionately impact people of color, working women, blue-collar workers, students, seniors, and immigrants.


In some states like Wisconsin and Ohio, lawmakers are limiting access to the polls by cutting or even eliminating early and Sunday voting opportunities. These significant cuts force parents, blue-collar workers, students and seniors who do not have the luxury of a flexible schedule to stand in polling lines for as many as eight hours.


In states like South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Texas, politicians have used the threat of voting fraud to move bills requiring voters to acquire government-issued photo identification before they cast a ballot. However, studies show that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to impersonate someone in the polling booth. Moreover, while states are required to provide photo identification for free, the underlying instruments needed to obtain the identifications, like a certified copy of a birth certificate, can in fact be very expensive. In this way, the new laws become a sort of poll tax for certain individuals.


Other creative voter suppression measures are making their way into law across the country. They include bills stripping voting rights from rehabilitated criminal offenders, eliminating same-day voter registration or voting, and targeted purging of African Americans and Latinos on registered voter rolls.


These attacks on voter participation mimic those used nearly a century ago in the lead up to the Jim Crow era. The lesson we learned then surely applies today - that an attack on voting rights is merely a gateway to further restrictions on our rights, including our right to organize, our right to clean air, our right to negotiate, and even our right to privacy.


Our democracy is too important to allow self-serving politicians to suppress the vote. We must defend our rights. We must have our voices heard.


Benjamin Todd Jealous is President and CEO of the NAACP.

Copyright 2006-2011 The Hudson Valley Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

VOTE

The People who vote win. Vote suppression can change who votes. Zealots vote, do you, do your friends? Fight for automatic voter registration at the age of 18. Fight against voter apathy. Any one who thinks that the religious, conservative voters are winning or gone is commenting on the extent to which they think these people are going to vote as a cohesive group. T-vangelists live in fear and ignorance and they fight with fear and ignorance. Don't be afraid and don't be stupid. VOTE!

Dear Ms Vowell

Ms Vowell, I think you are amazing (I bet you’ve never heard that before). I have watched you on TV and the shit you say cracks me up. I’m just finishing The Partly Cloudy Patriot and I came across something that may explain why I find your writing so comforting.

I doubt that I would have ever bought one of your books. I’m more of a Michener, Tolkien, tome, the more volumes the better, kind of guy. I pick my reading by weight as much as anything else (I got through most of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and I’ll finish it some day). And I like unusual authors, I am waiting for the last three volumes of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events come out in paperback.

While I am waiting for paperbacks to be published and then sold to and resold at Powel’s, I picked up The Partly Cloudy Patriot from my wife’s reading pile. She is waiting to read it on our next airport excursion. I’ll probably go with something non fiction but not one of her American presidents, early American history biographies.

If you have read this far I hope you don’t stop now. Some years back, maybe seven or eight years ago, on or about the 4th of July I came home to find a flag stuck in my lawn, sound familiar? Someone had put flags in every lawn along the street. Most were still standing but some were listing dramatically. Over time, some most were taken in but a few ended up in the gutter. I picked up some but didn’t make it a mission to police the entire street. I should have. The next year it happened again. Disrespect of the flag really increases my blood pressure. The people at the mall, who give out those little flags, on oversized toothpicks, to passing children who then unceremoniously drop them on the ground to be trampled on and then eventually thrown in the garbage, should be jailed!

On the stick holding flag, that I pulled from my front yard, was a business card from a local real-estate agent. I called them and informed them that I thought that not only were they disrespecting the flag by using it as an advertising tool, they were also contributing to the desecration of the flag by treating it as a lawn ornament. And they had no right to believe said lawn ornament would be respected as the symbol of our nation. I also let them know that I would do everything I could to make sure they never represented a household in my neighborhood unless they came and retrieved every flag they had placed. And they better do it before the flags were soiled.

They were taken aback by my outrage and assured me that they had gotten a ‘very positive response’ from every one else. And to this day they have not advertised their company in my neighborhood by abusing the flag.

Obviously I am not the wonderful writer you are. Thank you for, in part, telling my story with much more depth and clarity then even I have lived. God I wish I could just think your thoughts even if I could never communicate them to another living being. Reading your words helps me think thoughts I didn’t know existed.

Thank you, thank you, thank you,

PS I just found out that you were born on my 11th birthday, sorry.

Home is . . . . . . .....

There is something true and mildly disturbing about your statement ‘country I call home’.  Aren’t you actually European?  You may call this home but whose home is it really?  North America is the original home of an indigenousness people that arrived here, as the first humans to live in North America, thousands of years before our ancestors re-appropriated it.  If any group has the right to call North America home and dictate the customs used here it seems only fair that it be them.  Just like the countries you sited, I think it should be the indigenous people who get to say what’s what.  So I guess you should think about going home, to Europe, but be careful.  Denmark has one of the lowest percentages of professed Christians of all of the European countries (so do Britain and Switzerland).  You could try Poland or Portugal or maybe Italy as they are the countries with the highest rates of people reporting to be Christian but there again you may have a problem, they’re mostly Catholic and that might not work out so well for you.  And of course the country that has the highest rate of professed religiosity, Turkey, wouldn’t work out so well either.  You would be in danger of loosing your life in any Muslim country, you being an Evangelical Christian and all.  They don’t take to kindly to being evangelicaled.  But then it isn’t just the Muslims and Jews and Hindi and, and well it’s just about everybody (over 66% of the world) that you have trouble with.  You can’t even agree with the majority of Christians!  There are the reformed groups and, well there are over 33,000 denominations and then they fight among them selves and strike out to make new congregations (over 3 million at last count) when they can’t resolve their differences.  Bitch and moan all you want but don’t expect sympathy.  Religious people believe they have the right to impose their faith based beliefs upon everyone.  In your case it’s actually part of your calling.  You kinda fail at being evangelical if you don’t.  It ain’t the will of gravity you are trying to enforce, it is something you believe, which is different for each person and like I said originally, I wish personal, faith based belief systems were kept just that, personal and not made public, and defiantly not forced upon others.  Who set you up as the one that gets to tell others how to behave?  Oh yeah, you, based upon what you believe.  Unfortunately you act as if your rules apply to everyone but you.  You whine about others not respecting your personal beliefs but you trample on everyone else’s.  It don’t seem fair Daniel, it just don’t seem fair.  Enjoy………….

What do You Believe?

Life for life’s sake;
     No matter how hopeless you feel.
     No matter how dismal the future looks.
     No one knows what the future will bring.
     Do what you need to do to stay alive.

The rules are made up;
     Rules are made up for a reason. At some point someone thought every rule would be helpful. Because a rule was once deemed to be useful does not mean that it has to be followed or that it is even still necessary. Evaluate rules to see if you agree with their intent and their expected effect and then decide if you will follow them. The problem with rules is that they are written. When rules are part of an oral tradition they can more easily change. They can fade away as they become nonviable.

Laws are always the same and are always obeyed;
     You will always obey the natural laws of time, physics, gravity, motion, chemistry, etc. You have no choice. If you have a choice then it is not a law of nature and it is a rule that was made up. It is a belief.
Beliefs are not laws and beliefs are not absolute.
And beliefs do not have to be obeyed;
     If you do not differentiate between what you believe, and laws that are absolutely true, you are one of the throngs of people who cause and perpetuate the vast majority of the strife, terror and pain that has been and continues to be part of our daily life.

Believing in absolute good includes believing in absolute evil;
     Acting on a belief in absolute evil violates rights. Behavior that does not exist in the hearts and minds does not exist in the real world.

You have a choice;     You can ‘Ohm-m-m’ and smile and proceed or
     You can ‘Gr-r-r-r’ and frown and see where it gets you.
Morality is personal;
     No two people use the same set of beliefs to define what is right and what is wrong. Individual as well as crowed behavior is controlled by a multi layered mechanism where right and wrong overlap.
In units of humanity;
     There is nothing a single individual can accomplish. You do not even exist if you do not interact with others. You only exists for a reason if what you do is acknowledged. You may be able to change yourself and that change may effect others but it is far more likely that you will remain the same and struggle to be the most compassionate person you can be with little or no effect on anyone. And that is all I ask.

Enjoy!

No! Murder is NOT OK.

     When is it OK to believe that someone must die and then take their life? There is the obvious example that all but the most committed pacifist will accept, in defense of ones own life. That is not what I want to comment on.      It bothers me that there are murders, who choose to end someone’s life because that person does not conform to their beliefs, and they do not want to have it be judged as murder. It is not OK to say ‘You don’t deserve to live any longer’ and with that, end someone’s life. But the death penalty can do this, when a person is judged, by a jury of their piers, to have acted unacceptably and is believed to be without any redeemable future. Neither is this what I want to comment on.
     I have my criteria for the appropriate time to end a life that I think has no redeemable qualities, as I believe most people do. But I have never given in to the desire to act on my belief. But I believe that I could end the life of a person who has committed a heinous act. Someone who has done to others such awful things that I choose not to reiterate them here because it makes me uncomfortable just to think of what they have done let alone describe it to you. Yes, I believe I could end the life of these miserable creatures. But I haven’t acted on this belief. Merely believing that it is OK to commit murder is not what I want to comment on.
     There must be at least one person that you have read about or heard of that has behaved in a way that makes you believe that their life no longer serves a viable purpose and that the world would be better off without them. I think most people can come up with at least one example that fits this description. Maybe you couldn’t kill the people you thought of but you can enumerate them. Your thinking of the uselessness of these people doesn’t bother me.
     What bothers me is when I hear that someone, I believe to be worthy of continued existence, is murdered. I want to know, when is it OK to end someone’s life when the person in question has a family and job, friends and is generally thought to be a fine, upstanding person by those that know them best? And It bothers me that not only can this life be taken, it is believed, by the murderer, that their ultimate authority should they believe in one, will give them an enthusiastic thumbs up once they have committed their crime. Now that sounds crazy doesn’t it? But it is done all of the time. And there are published accounts that would lead us to believe that it has been going on throughout recorded history.
     1st Samuel 18:7 “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands“. Don’t you think that at least one of those ’slain’ in this example might fit my description of ‘people who were thought to be generally worthy people by their family and friends’ etc and yet they were offenceably killed anyway, and it was OK! Actually it was more then OK. It was approved of by the All Mighty! And of course all of the infidels must die, that’s common knowledge. And their absolute authority says ‘Go for it, I’ll even reward you’! I find it impossible to believe that all of the infidels deserve to die and be damned for eternity.
     So who’s life can be justifiably ended and not have the act of killing them be deemed murder? Seems like just about everyone’s, if you look at it from the proper perspective.
     What I want to focus on here are the people who believe they have the right to kill because they believe in the concept of absolute correctness. What bothers me is that there are people that believe that there is an unquestionable right and an absolute wrong. It isn’t that there is, or is not, an absolutely correct set of rules, the problem I have is with the people who believe they can know absolute truths. There are no absolutely true beliefs.
     I’m not talking about natural phenomena like gravity, which I hope we all believe in as absolute. You don’t even need to believe in these laws, they‘ll still work even if you don‘t. Let’s just say that some things have to be givens. No one teaches you that gravity is. Gravity just is and every one agrees that it is and you learn to live with it. And all the laws of motion, they always work in the same way in our day to day lives and we come to depend on it. Every one who has ever stepped out in front of a moving vehicle has been hit. And every one that has jumped off a tall building has fallen and most have gone splat. It is nice when you have a human guide to teach you about the natural, absolute laws but you don’t need one. Their absoluteness will teach you about the laws of nature.
     The problem I’m talking about is the belief in the absolute truths that have been made up or, if you prefer, handed down. Absolute rules that were made up to prevent or support ideas and behavior that you would never know about if someone didn’t teach them to you. For every made up rule/law/belief that someone thinks is absolutely true there is someone else that says ‘Oh no you don’t, that ain‘t necessary so‘.
     Time, as we experience it in our day to day life, always goes forward, never backward and it never stops. Now that is absolute.
     If you want to prove me wrong don’t show me the laundry list of unsubstantiated miracles that you have in your coat pocket that say other wise. If you want me to believe that gravity and time are just good ideas and not absolutes in our every day life (we don’t generally travel near or beyond the speed of light) that have been violated again and again by miracles, then give me proof, verifiable, duplicatable proof. Show me the proof. Then do it again. Perform a miracle. Oh yea, you can’t.
     You can not know, absolutely, that the parent, spouse, hard working, devout worshiper, well respected (in their own circles) person you want to murder because they do not fit your definition of righteous, really deserves to be dead. And the voices in your head don’t count. Those voices are not real!
     Consider for a moment what it would mean if we could all agree that all of the questionable, made up beliefs (everything but time and gravity and their peer, absolute, natural laws, that are not disputed by sane people) are not absolute.
     What would it be like if we could agree that there was a time before ‘offenceably killing another human’ was murder. If this time existed and murder was not always against the law then, at some point, an individual decided that it wasn’t such a good idea to end a human life without just cause. And for what ever reason, others were swayed by the power of the logic and from that point on, human life was too important to snuff out per a personal belief, and from that time forward it was against the law and it was called murder. So from that time forward, just because the kid was not yours, you weren’t allowed to off him. ‘He’s not just an animal ya know, he’s human like you. He’s special. Leave him be and we’ll see what use can be made of his life‘.
     Ah, and now humans are special, not just animals to be killed or used for what ever. Not because humans have souls but because humans can makeup and agree to go by rules that don’t necessarily benefit them at the moment. Humans enjoy the rule of law. Humans seek to be self governed. Most humans have an evolved sense of time and an evolved form of symbolic thought. Oh, but you don’t believe in evolution now do you.
     I am not suggesting that all made up rules should be ignored. I am not an anarchist. There are some that should be adhered to, like those that keep you from killing people (not those that explain when it is OK for you to kill people).
     I know, what a concept, rules to protect rights not rules to take rights away!

Enjoy, and have a nice day!

Requiem for a Rabid Bat

                                       Requiem for a Rabid Bat


     Most people believe in a personal existence that continues after the end of the one we all participate in day-to-day. And they say that if you follow their rules, you too can participate in their version of the after life, and it will be quite nice.
     But then who even wants to live forever? You can not conceive eternity. Your primitive human mind, as advanced as it is, (compared to the mind of a naked mole rat), is incapable of comprehending the never ending. Yes, I know, ‘once I'm in the presence of God all will be revealed to me and that which has been hidden during this life time will be known‘. Uh, then is it really me that goes on after death? Sounds like it would be something else that has all the eternal fun.
     I bemoan the fact that I will not live to see two hundred years. And I can easily imagine a three or four hundred year sentient span. But trying to imagine a life that exists for a thousand years or two; ten thousand, a million, I can't do it.
     No human can imagine staying sane while existing for a million years. And the impossible task of imagining a million year life span is infinitely more achievable then imagining the unbearable pain of eternal existence! I challenge you to think about it, (without shuddering) as best you can. If you dare.
     And who gets to enjoy eternal existence? (As if being sentient forever would be pleasant. Wouldn’t even the most creative essence get bored after while?) Who gets this prize? It depends upon who you ask.
     The more inclusive perspective is, “If you want to go to Heaven, where you will be very happy forever and ever, then avoid evil, repent from your sins, do good in your life on earth, and be sincere in your search for religious and moral truth. Otherwise, you will abide forever in the eternal death of Hell.” And, a more conservative, Christian point of view goes something like, “The people who get to go to heaven are the ones who ‘get right with God’ by beginning a relationship with Him through His Son Jesus Christ.” Or, or, it goes on and on. They don’t agree.
     There aren’t two dogmatists that promote the same definition of faith and the ever after. Each of them believes in a dogma of their own imagining. A fun exercise would be for you to choose the two most compatible dogmatists you can find, bring them together and see how long it takes for them to begin arguing over their differences. If you give this a try you will be surprised at how quickly they agree to disagree, if they don't come to blows first.
     Christians, and I have only picked this minority because it is the one I am most familiar with, think that at least two thirds of the people alive today (those that do not profess to be Christian) will suffer for eternity. And the other third, self proclaimed Christians, will have the quality of their Christianity judged. The ones that get the thumbs up will enjoy an eternity of unimaginable bliss and the rest will suffer with the non Christians. So it seems that the odds of average, yet to be born humans, enjoying an eternity of bliss, are not at all good. Which really doesn't seem fair, when the best predictor of a persons version of religiosity is the religion of one’s parents not a dogma's veracity.
     And when did this sorting of the 'are you good enough' begin? Two thousand years ago, four thousand maybe? Modern humans have been on Earth for maybe fifty thousand years! Did all of the pre Christians have souls? Is the judger going back before Christ, and what about the Neanderthals? Did they have souls? Did the Cro-Magnons have souls? I know, you don’t believe in evolution, your problem, not mine. I just have questions.
     If the humans that existed before the concept of salvation through the acceptance of Christ as Savior and Lord (or you can insert salvation through adherence to what ever dogma you prefer), were sent to either Heaven or Hell, did they all go to hell? Or maybe they were humans without souls, just toss away humans, like first waffles? Or were there different rules for people who lived before dogma? If before Christ, different rules were used to sort the worthy from the damned, why can’t we use the old rules today?
     There is no Hell. There is no Heaven. There is no happily or painfully ever after. There is no soul. You and the rabid bat are born, live and die the same, enjoy.

Scared Conservative

Liberals, Conservatives May Have Different Brain Structures


Latest Neurology News

FRIDAY, April 8 (HealthDay News) -- Opposing political views may linked to differences in brain structures, a new study suggests.

Researchers at University College London found that liberals tend to have a larger anterior cingulate cortex, while conservatives have a larger amygdala.

Based on what's known about the roles of these two areas of the brain, the structural differences are consistent with previous studies that found liberals are better able to cope with conflicting information and are more open to new experiences, while conservatives are better able to recognize a threat and more anxious when faced with uncertainty, according to team leader Ryota Kanai and colleagues.

The study appears online April 7 in the journal Current Biology.

"Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual's political orientation. Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure," Kanai said in a journal news release.

But it's not clear whether political preferences and other personality traits influence brain structure or vice versa. It's possible that a person's experiences can change brain structure over time and, of course, many people change their political views during their lifetime, Kanai noted.

He also warned against reading too much into these findings.

"It's very unlikely that actual political orientation is directly encoded in these brain regions," Kanai said. "More work is needed to determine how these brain structures mediate the formation of political attitude."

-- Robert Preidt

Copyright © 2011 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

SOURCE: Current Biology, news release, April 7, 2011

Work until you Die

I believe that this is a sad truth; if the rich conservatives have their way the majority of the youth of today will work until they die and the rich seem to be winning.  I'm sorry and I will do what I can for those closest to me. For the rest of you, good luck.  I hope someone is looking out for you too, because you can't depend upon the government to have your back if something goes wrong.

dF

You do not have the right to your own set of facts

I am a huge supporter in the belief that each individual has the right to their own beliefs, ideas, and feelings.  My personal belief is that no two people have the same set of these personal attributes.  I even believe that it is quite impossible for two people to fully embrace an identical set of beliefs, even identical twins.  Having our own set of beliefs is part of what makes us human, individuals.  We are not of one mind or one point of view.  We can interpret beliefs any way we like but when it comes to established facts that are generally agreed upon by the scientific community, it’s not up to interpretation. Gravity is not just a good idea that you interpret as you wish, even if it can not be fully explained.  Nor are the rest of the laws of physics and chemistry and you guessed it even evolution.  Plate tectonics, uh, it’s a fact, just ask the poor people of Haiti et all.  Only the out of touch fringe (or devious entrepreneurs of hidden agendas) decry facts.  Part of the base value of education is to help us to understand agreed upon facts.  It facilitates scientific endeavors of all kinds.  If we were allowed to hold mutually exclusive sets of facts it would be very dangerous to, let’s say, drive to the store.  You just can’t be allowed to have your own set of facts.  Facts are not up for interpretation, it’s too dangerous for the rest of us but beliefs, go for it.  It’s not just a good idea to formulate your own set of beliefs, you really shouldn’t be espousing someone else’s beleifs.  How could you possibly know who you are if you did?

When will it all end?

The true measure of how prejudice we are can be found here; what percentage of genetic material does a person have to have in them for them to be labeled black? There is no hope of true racial equality until there is only one race. A symbolic marker on the road will be the death of the last blue eyed person and the passing of their memory. It can not come too soon. And if it comes to pass that another race becomes dominant it will be interesting to see how the Chinese deal with it. I don’t expect it to go well.