Teapublican Obstruction leads to Fewer Millennial Voters. Was that Planned?

It’s a fair question. Did Boehner and McConnell and all the other Kochsuckers work to cut down on Democratic voter turnout at the same time they stuck it to the Prexy all these years? It’s one way to interpret those falling numbers of Millennial voters:

And for a while, it didn’t look like millennials would need much convincing. As more members of this generation reached voting age, participation among young voters rose. The peak year was 2008 (52 percent). In 2012, the turnout among voters 18-29 dropped to 45 percent.

On top of that, the rate of voters under 30 who could say with certainty that they were registered to vote fell steadily after 2008, according to the Pew Research Center. By 2012, it hit 50 percent — the lowest number Pew has recorded going back as far as 1996.

Ashley Spillane, the president of Rock the Vote, says it’s no mystery why millennials, or any voters, would be turned off from the process: “Politics right now is really disheartening. I think it’s why you see in the polls that young people are not affiliating with political parties.”

Think about it for a second: right before the “Republicans” started their “f*** Obama and the voters he rode in on” campaign, youth voting numbers were frickin’ huge, because the kids believed change was possible. But after 6 years of deliberate Teabagger destruction of change, the youth of America are disillusioned and are disengaging. And Millennials tend to vote for Dems.

Coincidence? In these times? Yeah, right. There is no way to prove it, of course, but in the end it doesn’t really matter whether or not the GOP has been manipulating Millennials on purpose or just enjoying a fringe benefit of their racist, treasonous, corrupt plan to seize power.

It doesn’t matter for two reasons:
Number A: it is wrong to suppress votes, whether it is a primary or secondary goal, and
Letter 2: the way to fight back is to defy expectations, by voting.

Millennials, wake up: you have been played. Strike back by voting against every Repub in every race, every ballot, every election. Vote to show them you are smarter than they think you are. Vote, because they don’t want you to.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Supreme Court “Republicans” are helping to Steal another Election.

Ohio’s stinking “Republican” Secretary of State John (“Yes, the kind that pays for whores”) Husted has finally hit the US Supreme Court jackpot: the five partisan Wingnuts thereon are helping “Republicans” steal yet another election:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The nation’s highest court on Monday granted an emergency plea from state officials to block a lower court’s order expanding statewide early voting days and times.

The court issued its order without an opinion or explanation, noting the court’s liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Kagan would not have granted the stay. Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy voted to grant the stay.

Ohio’s disastrous 2004 election shows the state cannot operate an election on only one day, argued attorneys for the ACLU. In papers filed in Supreme Court on Saturday, they said early voting, including Sunday “Souls to the Polls” events, have become woven into the fabric of Ohio’s democratic process.

“That election [in 2004] resulted in waiting times to vote that stretched into the day after Election Day and failed to provide meaningful access to the ballot for tens of thousands of Ohio voters,” they wrote. “Ohio thus comes to court with dirty hands.”

And the Repubs amongst the Supremes, who illegally installed an illegitimate occupant (Bush the Lesser) to the office of the Presidency, have even dirtier hands. Hands they now proudly display, filth and bloodstains plain to see.

All pretense of legitimacy is now gone, and the Roberts Court has fully revealed its true intent: the permanent takeover of our government by their ideological “soul” mates and paymasters in the GOP. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.

The Teapubbies announced their intention to do so back in the 1970’s. In the Powell Memo, they laid out their plan to seize control of the media, the economy, and the government. Click the link and read it.

The only way, and by that I mean the ONLY F***ING WAY to save this country from the tender mercies of the Rightish Inquisition is for the rest of us to VOTE in this election. Vote against every Elephant on every ballot in every race. Take back the House and keep the Senate.

That way, some actual jurists can be placed on the Supreme Court, replacing the corrupt partisan Repub motherf***ers who just f***ed tens of thousands of us out of our right to vote.

Vote, vote, vote. Take all your friends and family too. Vote while you still can.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Want to change things? Ferguson shows us the way: VOTE, God-F***ing-Dammit.

We won’t get change by rioting. Nor by shooting unarmed citizens. Those are both s***ty ideas. Instead let’s look at one of the first actions taken after the deplorable murder of Mr. Michael Brown: a voter-registration tent.

Yes, that is correct. The majority of Ferguson is black, but due to various disenfranchisement measures, only 12% of that community votes. On the other hand, lots and lots of white people vote, so guess who gets represented in city government? Yep, the people who vote.

That being the case, people are registering black voters (and anyone else too, of course) in order to use the ballot box to change how things are done in that town. If enough of the majority residents of Ferguson turn out and vote, they can get a government that actually represents, you know, the majority of the people. The way democracy is SUPPOSED to work.

The response to these voter registration efforts has been sadly predictable: racist Repubs hate it, and everybody else supports it. Repubs as a rule oppose increasing the voter pool, because they know it doesn’t work for them: higher turnout favors Dems.

We all need to do what people in Ferguson are doing: register to vote, and then vote. Use our power to get the government we want and deserve.

Register. Vote. Every election, every year.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Want to vote in South Florida? Better wear Depends.

That’s because if you have to pee during your six-plus-hour wait to cast a ballot, the bathrooms are verboten. Closed. Not available. No matter how long the line, or if you are elderly, or if the weather is crap (oh, you can’t do that either-no potties for you voter types).
From the article:

Instead, he received a written response announcing that the county would close all restrooms at polling places “to ensure that individuals with disabilities are not treated unfairly,” a January email stated. “[T]he Department’s policy is not to permit access to restrooms at polling sites on election days,” Assistant County Attorney Shanika Graves said in a Feb. 14 email.

This latest voter-suppression effort is, of course, designed to keep the elderly, minorities and working poor from casting their ballots: Democratic voters, in other words. The local Board of Election is pretending that this is a decision based on the rights of the disabled, which is a lie more transparent than a hooker’s blouse. No, it’s Miami-Dade county doing what it does best: rigging elections so that “Republicans” win.

If it’s any comfort to all those voters waiting in long lines to vote this year: no matter the state of the diapers they may have to wear in order to exercise their franchise, they will never be as full of s*** as the elected officials who concocted this, well, crappy idea.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Voter Suppression = Taxation Without Representation

Once again, your Cranky Correspondent has found a brilliant bit of writing (not, alas, his own) to share with you:

Perry, Abbott, McCrory, Walker, Scott and others want to create a permanent non-voting class of Americans. Americans who are expected to pay taxes, but to have no say in how the government uses those taxes. This includes African Americans, students, the elderly, women….and in the case of Texas they have admitted to preventing Democrats from voting. They want all of these people to have no say in how the country/state/county/city is run or who it is run by.The GOP is operating as a voting death panel.

Pay your taxes but never vote.

Isn’t that Taxation without Representation?

I say it’s time for legislation that says if your vote is suppressed – you don’t have to pay any taxes.

Is that brilliant or what? Spread this far and wide: the author is not asking for attribution (a damned shame, because this is f***ing brilliant). Spread it around so people understand that an assault on voting rights is an assault upon our very system of government itself.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

One in the Eye for Those Who Want to Steal Your Right to Vote

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/02/14182503-judge-blocks-pennsylvania-voter-id-law?lite

After a key Keystone State Legislator came out and said that their new Voter ID law would allow “Mitt Romney to win Pennsylvania”, one would have thought that any sane judge would have squashed the law out of hand; obviously, it was politically motivated and a bold-faced attempt to rig an election. But noooooooo.

Instead, there have been expensive and time-consuming hearings, rulings and counter-rulings, media circuses and so on. Finally, yesterday morning, a judge put a stay on part of the PA Voter ID Law. Half a loaf for those who believe in free, fair, and un-rigged elections, but you know what they say about half a loaf.

As an Independent, Mr. Blunt and Cranky really dislikes parties. A lot. He thinks, in fact, that they should be outlawed, because they have turned out to be just as insidious an infection as President Washington warned us about (“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion”).

In this case, one of the parties (“Republicans”) have spent most of the past two years working on behalf of their party’s interest, to the detriment of the nation.The modern “Republican” party bears no resemblance to the party we once knew. The party of fiscal discipline has become the party of Voodoo Economics. The party of minding our own business has become the party of foreign wars of choice. And the party that trumpeted the rule of law has become the party of lawlessness, influence selling, election rigging and voter suppression.

The right to vote is one of the foundational rights of our nation. When one weakens the foundation of a structure, how long can the structure stand? Read President Washington’s words once again, and ask yourself if you really want to vote for people who would take away your rights; using the law of the land to weaken the nation for the benefit of a few corrupt politicos and those who buy them.

Again: “Republicans” don’t want you to vote. They want to take away your right to vote. If you care about your rights, you cannot afford to vote for these crooks.

Mr. B & C

The War on Voting

Yes, yes, yes, sorry, but there’s another one. We’ve had The War on Poverty, The War on Cancer, The War on Women, jeez, can’t we lay this meme down and waterboard it to death? Nope, folks, not yet. This war is bigger than most, and yet has been mostly ignored by the media. But it has drastic and far-reaching consequences for us all.

The right to vote has been a matter of contention since the founding of the nation – there have always been those who favored a more inclusive policy and those who wanted to make it more exclusive.  Today it is the Republicans who favor fewer voters and Democrats who favor more voters, and they apply those philosophies in their daily activities.

Vote purges: Republicans favor this, because it limits participation without getting in people’s faces. It usually spun as “making sure (felons, illegal aliens, or whoever is being demonized at the moment)” don’t vote illegally”. Democrats tend not to favor this, because it limits participation by those who move frequently, have fewer resources, etc. Plus, it wastes time and money that Dems would rather use for things Dems like.

Voter ID laws: Dems HATE these, at least partly because part of their core constituency (poor folk, minorities, the elderly) don’t always have a photo ID, or the means to get one. Repubs love Voter ID laws, for the exact same reason.

Redistricting: This one often gets missed, but is pretty huge. By drawing districts to favor one party over another, key groups of voters find their influence diminished, their polling places made less accessible, and sometimes subjected to so much confusion that they cannot cast a vote at all.

“Cost Savings” and “Efficiency”: These get pulled out in order to save money for state and local gummints. These also tend to create the greatest problems for elderly and poor voters, who need the “expensive” early/absentee/accessible voting options in order to be able to, well, cast a feckin’ ballot. Mostly done on purpose by Repubs, sometimes done mistakenly by Dems.

The key point: whether you lean Repub or Dem, the Dems are on your side in this one area at least: they want you to be able to vote if you want to.  This writer suggests you do so. As Pogo once said, “I want you all to get on out there and VOTE!” When asked for whom to vote, Pogo shrugged that off.  “As long as you vote, you can’t go wrong.” Words to live by, and reason enough to make sure no one takes away your right to do so.

Mr. B & C

Bitch-Slapped Sacks of S*** of The Week – Texas Legislators

It’s not often that a state gets the Judiciary Smackdown dropped on them twice in the same week, but those wiley Republican coyotes in Texas have felt the Acme Super-Dooper Bitch Slap Kit whack their corpulent cheeks in such wise this past week. In a state that is trending towards fewer white voters, the white legislators are trying every trick in the book to hold onto power, even as they become what they despise (a minority group).

First, their Voter ID law got flushed down the pooper because it, well, discriminated against everybody who isn’t white and financially secure. “Naughty, Naughty” said the court as it pulled the chain and sent the law swirling down into the sewer.

Then their Redistricting Plan got like treatment, for the same reason. The courts said “I can NOT believe this s***, and pulled the chain again. Swoosh, swirl, buh-bye to the crooked white guy laws.

This is yet another example of the corrosive effects of party politics on the nation. In order to hold onto power, a political party (the ‘Phants in this case) lied, cheated, and broke laws left and right. They could have spent the taxpayers’ money on roads, bridges, cops, or useful things like that; but because their party is more important to them than the people, they wasted their constituents’ hard-earned on gerrymandering and voter suppression.

Rarely has a group of individuals been more worthy of being bitch-slapped, and twice within a few days at that. It warms the cockles of this blunt, cranky old heart to see an entire state party get taken down in such a brutal fashion.

Mr. B & C

P.S. Ohio got two judicial bitch-slaps this week, too, for the same partisan horses*** behavior. But Ohio gets a lot of crap in this blog already, so Texas got the headline. One must share the Blunt and Crank around every once in a while, n’cest pas?

Ohio GOP: We Don’t Want Black People to Vote

Yes, they actually said that. And they said it in a reliably Republican newspaper, to boot: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/08/19/fight-over-poll-hours-isnt-just-political.html , so we know it isn’t some liberal Donkey putting words in the Elephant’s mouth. Oh, and the ever-so-classy Doug Priesse cursed while he said his racist piece, and urged the reporter to quote him as having done so.

As a descendant of two populations that were oppressed minorities in their countries of origin, this really burns Mr. Blunt and Cranky’s gerbils. How can anyone support a party that admittedly uses racism as a political tool: that violates civil rights laws at every level of government in order to gain more power and money for itself; and that says so openly, without even a hint of embarrassment?

The modern GOP is so far from the party of this writer’s youth that he has taken to thanking God that he left the party in 1976. A party that lies, cheats and steals is sadly normal; indeed, such has been the case throughout much of recorded history. Not for nothing did President Washington warn us against allowing parties to take hold here in America.

But this is far different from the “normal” corruption and pocket-stuffing to which Americans have become resigned. When a party bases its ideology and actions on racism, they join a select (and rightly vilified) group of political organizations: like the Nazis, for example.  Every racist-centric party is the object of contempt and its members despised, as well they should be.

So, if you are an Ohio Republican; think carefully about your membership, and what your money and efforts are supporting. Do you really want to support an organization that openly avows its intentions, and then acts in the clear light of day to steal voting rights away from African-Americans (among others)?

If the answer is no, welcome to the ranks of independent thinkers. If the answer is yes, you are a racist, a supporter thereof, or both.  Yes, it sounds kinda harsh, but that’s reality.

Your choice: cast off the metaphorical chains that bind you to a party full of bigoted, money-mad, power-hungry scumbuckets; or stay in the Republican party and help to put chains back on black people.

Oh, and black Republicans? You’re the worst of the bunch, helping to oppress your brothers and sisters for your own selfish reasons. My people suffered from traitors among our own population, and had words for traitors like you. Words in English, Basque, Gascon and Gaelic: but you already know what kind of scum you are, so we’ll let your own words fill your heads and break your hearts. Hopefully your own knowledge of your perfidy is sufficient to do you the injury you deserve, and inspire you to look beyond your greed and self-love, and (maybe)  make you a part of America the beautiful once again.

Mr. B & C

Ohio’s Secretary Of State: Everything and Everybody Everywhere is Exactly the Same at All Times

Stand in a cornfield. Now stand in downtown Columbus, OH, at Broad and High. Mr. Blunt and Cranky bets you can see a difference. But John Husted does not.

Drive a new Mercedes around I-270. Now sit in a COTA bus on the Near East Side, say along Parsons Avenue. See a difference? Yep. But John Husted does not.

Be a retired individual with loads of free time and enough money. Now be someone who has to work two or three jobs to get by. See a difference? Of course you do. But John Husted does not.

You see, Husted the Hustler has decreed that each and every location in Ohio shall be limited to a certain set of days and hours on which voters may cast ballots before the election, regardless of local factors. So if you are in, say,  Henry County, there aren’t all that many voters, and many of them are retired or live in small towns and  farms close to polling locations, so the limitations aren’t going to cause much of a problem.

But if you are in Cuyahoga County, there are gazillions of voters, many of whom are poor, work crazy hours (if at all), have limited transportation options and may not be anywhere near a polling location. There will be lines, hassles, and the limitations will cause huge problems, and likely suppress the votes of many citizens. Husted sees no difference between 100,000 people trying to get into a building, and 100 people trying to get into a building. Guess he’s never been to an Ohio State game, eh?

Note that Henry County has lots of Republicans, and Cuyahoga has lots of Democrats. Note further that this pattern of limitation by party is consistent across the state. The Secretary of the State of Ohio is using the false premise “consistency” to rig the vote in favor of his party, which is (no surprise) Repubs.

As pointed out by the League of Women Voters, consistency of hours does not translate into equality of access. As pointed out by von Clausewitz, the map is not the terrain. Mr. Husted most assuredly understands both points, and  knows full well that his real motivations (partisan skullduggery) do not match his stated ones (high-minded consistency); so he is fighting hard to keep his slimy strategy alive until, say, November 7^th or so. Thus far, the Republican Legislature and Courts are doing their best to help him steal yet another election. The motherf***ers.

At one time, Mr. Blunt and Cranky must confess, he had hopes for Mr. John Husted: compared with  the blatantly partisan and corrupt Ken Blackwell, it seemed that professionalism might become a trend once again in the SOS’s office. And certainly, ol’ Johnny said a lot of good things and did some non-partisan things when first he took office.

Note to blogging self: stop with this silly hoping for an ethical Ohio Republican crap. It’s even dumber than hoping for the Tribe to win the Series, or the Browns to win the Super Bowl. None of the three will ever occur, and much heartbreak can be avoided by simply accepting that reality. Mr. Husted has shown himself to be just as much of a corrupt, partisan, election-stealing scumbucket as Blackwell, but far smoother and less overtly offensive.

Ohio, once again, our state can become a laughing stock (as it did in 2004); or we can kick some nuts and take some names. It’s up to us, the voters, to get out of our easy chairs and put on our steel-tipped cowboy boots.

Mr. B & C