Have at it.
Belt and suspenders
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Attorney General Eric Holder plans to deliver a speech on voting rights on Monday at a Martin Luther King holiday rally in South Carolina, a state where just weeks ago his Justice Department blocked a new voter identification law.
Holder plans to attend a rally sponsored by the civil rights group National Association for the Advancement of Colored People at the state capitol building in Columbia, S.C., according to a statement from the NAACP.
That was where lawmakers approved the tough new law that required voters to present identification to cast a ballot, which conservatives argue is needed to help prevent voter fraud.
But critics of laws like the one passed in the state argue that citizens should not have to present identification to exercise their basic right to vote, which they say is unlike requiring identification for privileges like driving.
I think this is great timing, because of the DOJ action in South Carolina, sure, but also because of the national media covering the GOP primary.
The best protection against voter suppression is voter awareness and education. Lawyers and activists are all well and good, but at the end of the day what we need is lots and lots of media attention and lots and lots of energized, informed voters. We’re not going to be able to stay or overturn all of these laws, and there are no do-overs.
One of the things that makes election law different from other regulatory schemes that people encounter in their daily lives is the one-off nature of each election. A voter who is wrongfully disenfranchised cannot remedy that injustice as to that election. There’s only one 2012 election. It won’t be repeated. If a legally registered voter is denied a ballot the best lawyer in the world can’t fix that after the fact.
So, belt and suspenders: DOJ orders and ACLU lawsuits and voter protection people running around with their hair on fire, sure, great, but also big media-heavy events and voter awareness and preparation. Tell voters the rules have changed. Tell voters how the rules have changed. Tell voters barriers have been deliberately set up that they’re going to have to get over. Tell voters to expect the worst and plan accordingly.
We may not be able to get media to stop slobbering over internet luminary James O’Keefe, but we can go around the celebrities and pundits and Tea Party governors and increase awareness among the groups of ordinary voters conservatives disfavor. We can give voters the tools and information they need to protect their own vote, if (when) the lawyers and judges fail.
One more thing, a hopeful thing: this coordinated voter suppression effort really took off in 2006. Six years later, as more and more states adopt increasingly restrictive schemes, we’re finally, finally to the point where it’s national news, and it’s taken seriously. That, all by itself, is huge. Conservatives and their paid mouthpieces have dominated the fake-debate over “voter impersonation fraud” for years. We’ve heard plenty from the voter suppression side. It’s well past time we heard from the voter access side. They think one fraudulent vote is one too many? Well, guess what. We on the access side think one wrongfully disenfranchised voter is one too many. Sounds like a stand-off to me. Let’s have a real debate, where both sides get a microphone.
Some Things Must Be Posted…
…because there is no way I want to miss the Balloon Juice snarkasaurus masticating this:
<div align=”center”><table style=’font:11px arial; color:#333; background-color:#f5f5f5′ cellpadding=’0′ cellspacing=’0′ width=’512′ height=’340′><tbody><tr style=’background-color:#e5e5e5′ valign=’middle’><td style=’padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;’><a target=’_blank’ style=’color:#333; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold;’ href=’http://www.colbertnation.com’>The Colbert Report</a></td><td style=’padding:2px 5px 0px 5px; text-align:right; font-weight:bold;’>Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c</td></tr><tr style=’height:14px;’ valign=’middle’><td style=’padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;’ colspan=’2′><a target=’_blank’ style=’color:#333; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold;’ href=’http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/405930/january-15-2012/colbert-super-pac-ad—attack-in-b-minor-for-strings’>Colbert Super PAC Ad – Attack In B Minor For Strings</a></td></tr><tr style=’height:14px; background-color:#353535′ valign=’middle’><td colspan=’2′ style=’padding:2px 5px 0px 5px; width:512px; overflow:hidden; text-align:right’><a target=’_blank’ style=’color:#96deff; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold;’ href=’http://www.colbertnation.com/’>www.colbertnation.com</a></td></tr><tr valign=’middle’><td style=’padding:0px;’ colspan=’2′><embed style=’display:block’ src=’http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:405930′ width=’512′ height=’288′ type=’application/x-shockwave-flash’ wmode=’window’ allowFullscreen=’true’ flashvars=’autoPlay=false’ allowscriptaccess=’always’ allownetworking=’all’ bgcolor=’#000000′></embed></td></tr><tr style=’height:18px;’ valign=’middle’><td style=’padding:0px;’ colspan=’2′><table style=’margin:0px; text-align:center’ cellpadding=’0′ cellspacing=’0′ width=’100%’ height=’100%’><tr valign=’middle’><td style=’padding:3px; width:33%;’><a target=’_blank’ style=’font:10px arial; color:#333; text-decoration:none;’ href=’http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/’>Colbert Report Full Episodes</a></td><td style=’padding:3px; width:33%;’><a target=’_blank’ style=’font:10px arial; color:#333; text-decoration:none;’ href=’http://www.indecisionforever.com/’>Political Humor & Satire Blog</a></td><td style=’padding:3px; width:33%;’><a target=’_blank’ style=’font:10px arial; color:#333; text-decoration:none;’ href=’http://www.colbertnation.com/video’>Video Archive</a></td></tr></table></td></tr></tbody></table></div>
Have at it folks — and don’t worry, there’s plenty for everyone.
Target: the Stealth Wal-Mart
As part of my 99-percenter quiet and probably pointless boycotting of banks and card associations, I have started to pay cash a lot more, and I’ve also been looking at alternate forms of payment. For example, one of the local gas chains issues a card that debits your bank account directly (using ACH). They’ll also give you 7 cents off on gas if you use it (10 cents on Sundays). That takes a few bucks out of the pockets of banks every year, but what’s more interesting is the card I got the other day (pictured above), from Target. This card gives me 5% off every Target purchase. Unlike the gas card, it’s a regular store credit card, so you can carry a balance and pay interest if you want. Every other store charge card I’ve seen is a MasterCard or Visa that can be used in other stores, but this one isn’t–you can only use it at Target. And it’s issued by the “Target National Bank”.
A few years ago, Wal-Mart tried to start the “Wal-Mart National Bank” and were shut down by the big banks and other Wal-Mart haters. Yet here’s Target, quietly running their own bank and issuing their own card at stores where the average family could spend a fair amount of the money they’d otherwise charge on bank credit cards. As far as I can tell, the groups that opposed Wal-Mart haven’t said a thing about Target’s foray into banking.
This is a pattern with Target. They sell the same Chinese crap as Wal-Mart, they’re as anti-union as Wal-Mart, and they’re really no better than Wal-Mart on a number of different measures. But Wal-Mart gets all the hate. My guess is that one reason is that Target is more hip and caters to a more middle-class set of customers, so hating Target would be a bit inconvenient for the haters, who also consider themselves more hip and middle-class. In other words, where would the Wal-Mart haters shop if they couldn’t drive next door to Target? The other reason is that Target, which is headquartered in Minneapolis, is Minnesota nice. They don’t make a big fuss about starting a bank, and they definitely don’t throw down threats about taking over the banking business. Instead, they quietly issue a card that will take millions of dollars out of the pockets of banks, just as they quietly rack up profits doing more-or-less what Wal-Mart does while getting a tiny fraction of the heat.
A Little Sunday History
Nobody’s posted about the video of Marines pissing on dead Taliban soldiers, so even though it’s somewhat old news, I just want to disagree with the idea that the ubiquity of cameras adds a new transparency to war:
First, there’s the new transparency of war. Infinitely more battlefield details get recorded, and everyone has the tools to broadcast these details. So it’s just a matter of time before some outrageous image goes viral–pictures from Abu Ghraib, video from Afghanistan, whatever. These images will make you and your soldiers more hated by the enemy than ever–and hated by civilians who may identify with the enemy, whether because of national, ethnic, or religious kinship.
That’s Robert Wright at the Atlantic, but you hear that kind of thing all the time. I’ll grant that the Internet is faster, and that more cameras exist, but there were plenty enough cameras even in World War II to capture the dehumanization and mutilation of that enemy. The photo at top is of Bull Halsey’s famous exhortation to the troops after Pearl Harbor, and here’s a shot from Life Magazine, May 22, 1944, captioned “Arizona war worker writes her Navy boyfriend a thank-you-note for the Jap skull he sent her”:
There’s an excellent and well-illustrated Wikipedia article on mutilation of Japanese war dead. It went far beyond pissing on corpses.
My point is that this is what happens in war, our society has been exposed to it in the past even without YouTube, and the reason that it’s not commonplace knowledge is that most of the recent chroniclers of WW II chose to ignore it when they created their Greatest Generation hagiographies. If you’re interested in a real accounting of the attitudes surrounding World War II, I’d recommend Paul Fussell’s book Wartime.
Fluff The 1%
Your liberal media is on the job.
Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In
Was asleep for a grand total of two hours before the dogs decided to do their chain barking thing- You bark, now I’ll bark, now we both bark, now you bark, now I’ll bark, now we both bark, hey, wtf were you barking about? I dunno? You? Tag, you’re it. Meanwhile, Tunch scratches the shit out of me running for cover, I wake up and relieve the aged bladder, can’t fall back asleep, and here we are. So I started listening to music:
I can’t remember if I ever told you about the time Todd Rundgren called me an asshole or not. It was in the summer of 87 or 88 back when I was a long hair working as a roadie for a company called SMAVSCO (Sandy Margolis Audio Visual Company) out of Hyde Park, NY, with my best friend Jason Adams, and we were both basically stack monkeys, erecting the speaker platforms and climbing the structures to hang lights. At any rate, one July 4th we ran the sound and lighting for the days events at Woodstock, and after all the shows were over, Jason and I were left, stoned to the bejeezus, to play this pre-planned speech of inspirational jingoistic bullshit over the beginning of the fireworks. I was at the soundboard, running volumes, as the “ask not what you can do for your country” and the “They’ve left the surly bonds of earth” and other quotes from Presidents overplayed the beginning of the fireworks, and this douchebag came up and proceeded to dress me down for playing music and speeches over the sonic booms of the fireworks, called me an asshole, and left. I looked over at Jason and said “Was that the dude from Utopia? WTF?”
It was. So there was my brush with greatness.
Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back InPost + Comments (58)