Disenfranchised

When Shirley Preiss was born in Kentucky in 1910, the state did not yet issue birth certificates, and women had not been granted suffrage.

Now, after living 97 years, and nearing the end of her time on earth, the Surprise, Arizona woman finds that she has come full circle. She is every bit as disenfranchised from the political process today as she was the day she was born.
The former schoolteacher is still pretty sharp at 97, pointing out that for someone who once lived in a time when women could not vote, the law is a step backwards. She has voted in every single presidential election since 1932. "I'm a legal American," Preiss said. "I'm born here. Born and raised in America."

So how has this happened?


The Arizona voter I.D. law, one of the most restrictive in the nation, was approved by voters in 2004 and upheld by a federal judge on Monday. The law, which sprang from the fetid, fevered, xenophobic little republican brain of state representative Russell Pierce, requires voters to produce specified types of government issued identification when casting ballots at polling places, and to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote either for the first time or in a different county of residence. Pearce doesn't feel any qualms about the disenfranchised. "To get a movie, you have to prove who you are," Pearce said. "To go rent a car, you have to prove who you are. That's part of life."

Of course, Pearce doesn't acknowledge that one doesn't need to prove citizenship to board a train, cash a check, rent a movie or rent a car. Nor does he acknowledge that there is a significant number of people who don't do any of those things he rattles off as everyday, routine things. Not everyone drives, not everyone travels and I know my grandmother never once in her life rented a movie or showed her ID when she wrote a check.

He insists that the law will protect the integrity of the voting process. (Please, note: that integrity was never in jeopardy, this has always been a solution in search of a problem, an attempt by republicans to eliminate some of the competitions reliable votes, and everyone who isn't an intellectually dishonest jackass or sycophantic party shill knows it, and we are operating from the assumption that the folks who fall into that category aren't reading this blog.)

"You can see my mother's not a national threat," said her son Nathan Nemnich. "Been voting since 1932." Nemnich produced the files documenting his attempts to get her registered.

"A delayed birth certificate," he said. "You have to have witnesses. Everybody's dead.

"When the family tried to get school records from Tennessee, they found out the school no longer exists.

"We're talking about something that is so precious, that right to vote, "said Linda Brown of the Arizona Advocacy Network. "How many hurdles are OK to jump through? How many barriers are we going to accept?"

Her son said his next step will be to call the governor's office for help.

Election experts say that while there is no way to know exactly how many Arizona voters have been affected by the voter suppression effort, but at least 40,000 voter registration applications have been denied since application of the law has been in effect.

Huge swaths of rural elderly voters - the very people who were children or who came of age during the depression and who remember the New Deal and the very real impact those programs had on their lives - and who have had the audacity to live long lives because they received Social Security and Medicare - are the very people most disenfranchised by these craven, cruel, antithetical-to-America voter-suppression schemes. The cynic in me says that is by design. We are fucked again, just like we were 75 years ago, and this time the republicans want to keep us down. Can't have those old-timers fucking up their grand schemes of oppression.

Rudy! Campaign Official Proposes a "Final Solution" for Muslims

And fruit flies, well, I never met a fruit fly that I was ashamed to share genes with,
and I certainly can’t say that about human beings.' - geneticist James Gorman

[UPDATED BELOW - Deady has resigned]

Case in point (Via Greg Sargent):

John Deady, the co-chair of New Hampshire Veterans for Rudy, is standing by the comments he made in the controversial interview with The Guardian we posted on below, in which he said that "the Muslims" need to be chased "back to their caves."

In an interview with me, Deady confirmed that when he made the comments, he was referring to all Muslims. (emphasis mine)

"I don't subscribe to the principle that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims," Deady told me by phone from his home in New Hampshire. "They're all Muslims." (emphasis mine)

So what he is saying is that there is no difference between Osama bin Laden and my naturalized-American citizen health care co-workers Nazifa, Rema and Fatima. To such an assertion, I can only say "what a dangerous idiot."

Asked if he stood by his comments in the earlier Guardian interview, Deady said:

"I most assuredly do. I've been very concerned about this Muslim thing for quite awhile. The average American does not know beans about what the Muslims are about. I am talking about the Muslims in general. I don't subscribe to the principle that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. They're all Muslims."

In the earlier interview with The Guardian, Deady said of Muslims: "We need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people until we defeat or chase them back to their caves or in other words get rid of them."

When I asked Deady to elaborate on his suggestion that we need to "get rid" of Muslims, Deady said:

"When I say get rid of them, I wasn't necessarily referring to genocide. What I was referring to is, stand up to them every time they stick up their heads and attack us. We can't afford to say, `We'll try diplomacy.' They don't respond to it. If you look into Islamic tradition, a treaty is only good for five years. We're not dealing with a rational mindset here. We're dealing with madmen." (emphasis mine)

When I asked Deady if this was also a reference to all Muslims, he said: "I am talking about Muslims in general."

Giuiliani said that if the remarks were true Deady would be dismissed. (I would refer the campaign to video of Deady making the comments on camera that can be seen here) but so far...crickets.

Now - if anyone made a comment like that, but replaced Muslims with Jews the entire country would be up in arms and demanding the man be committed for psychiatric evaluation. But since apparently it's okay to hate Muslims and advocate for their demise, no one seems to care.

Good grief the GOP has gone collectively insane. What started as a pushback against (the utterly stupid) political correctness movement has devolved into a race to the bottom in who can be the most outrageous and hateful abuser of their American free-speech rights.

Deady can say shit like this - but I can also call him a genocidal maniac and a threat to the American way of life. I am embarrassed that this batshit insane, bloodthirsty, barbaric jackass ever wore the uniform of this country. In fact, I hang my head in shame at any association with this subhuman piece of shit at all.

Like us life science types say - I never met a fruitfly I was embarrassed to have a genetic link to - humans, though, are a different story entirely.

UPDATE: Saturday afternoon, MSNBC reported that John Deady has resigned as the New Hampshire co-chair of Veterans for Rudy.

Reached at his Bedford, N.H. home Saturday, Deady would not say whether he was pressured to resign. “This is not going to go any further with me,” he said. “I’m way beyond my depth with you people,” before suggesting reporters contact the campaign’s press office.

State Chairman Wayne Semprini said in a campaign statement Saturday that Deady resigned from his volunteer position.

The comments come at an interesting time for Giuliani, who has been actively courting support from veterans in recent days. He held three events for veterans in earlier this week in Florida before traveling to Iowa Friday.

Mr. Deady would have been well served if, in high school, he had read and taken to heart the wisdom of Finley Peter Dunne's Irish pub owner Mr. Dooley, who, in several books, dispensed wisdoms and hard truth from behind the bar of his southside Chicago tavern. The one that springs immediately to mind in this case is "Politics ain't beanbag: 'tis a man's game, and women, children 'n' pro-hy-bitionists had best stay out of it." (Add outclassed, un-thinking ideologues to that list, Mr. Dooley.)

I could almost feel sorry for the poor old fool if not for the fact that I know this about him: If he had three wishes, one of them would be to extinct a billion people. And I have no empathy for anyone with such evil in their soul. May all of the hate-filled assholes like him publicly expose themselves for the bigoted, jingoistic fascists they are, that we may mock them and drive them back into their caves.

Why Yes! I am a Bitch!

And you know what else? I am damn proud of it.

If you read this blog, you know that I am not prone to suffering fools gladly, and I really, really hate me some stupid. I have no qualms whatsoever about calling a moron a moron and a frothing fuckwit a frothing fuckwit. I mock, I scorn, I deride, I chide. I chastise, humiliate and skewer. I'm not prejudiced, I pretty much hate every damned body.

Any woman who aspires to any sort of responsibility or leadership role in her professional life needs to embrace that term and make it her own, because if it isn't get hurled at her openly, it will be sniped behind her back. That's just how it is.

And the Republicans are the chickenshit party that lacks the balls to say it to a woman's face.

Remember 1984? Babs "Republicunt" Bush called Geraldine Ferraro a "rhymes with rich" and then in 1995, the slimy scumbag Newt, via his white-trash mother called Hillary a "rhymes with witch" (but that was Connie Chung's fault...however, she's a bitch too...) And now, at a McCain rally we have a well-appointed looking older woman rising to asked Mad Jack Insane "How do we stop the Bitch?"

I detect a pattern of cowardice - these manly men of the wide stance and the public bathroom solicitation and the adultery - send women that look like someones Nana to hurl the epithet that would get them torn limb-from-limb if they uttered it themselves, so the yellow-bellied fuckers don't. They hide under grandma's petticoats instead.

Now - here is my question...Who do you want to send to negotiate with our adversaries? The sniveling wimps who can't face down a girl without their mommies help? Or the brassy bitch who scares them shitless?