EYE have returned! "If you are scared then say you are scared"

So my annual mental health break is over and it's time to jump back on the Donkey and ride. EYE hoped the nightmare would be over by now, but that would mean the Electoral College put our country over their politics and refused to select The Trumpster.  EYE guess it's easier for them to pretend this is the #NewNormal because they sure can't handle the truth.  The fate of our democracy is now in the hands of Congress.  Will they, or won't they certify this farce? Time will tell the truth. 

EYE must admit EYE am afraid to blog, but EYE and more afraid not to blog with the media poised to be Trumps personal propaganda machine.  

Thank you, loyal readers, for continuing to read this blog.  Your support continues to amaze and humble me. EYE will continue to be a voice for the voiceless as long as EYE am allowed.

Remember, this is who and what they are"

All EYE am going to say is if Americans had to accept the 2000 election results, Trump will have to accept the 2016 results

"Republicans think President Obama should only get 3/5ths of his term". #SCOTUS #BlackHistoryMonth2016

There is a mean spirit on the loose.  Remember when Alabama State Senator Hank Sanders (D.Selma) said those powerful, provocative words, and was accused of "race baiting".... among other things?  Well, can you hear him now?

The message is clear: Making America Great Again means purging everyone who isn’t white and Christian.

There can be no more pretenses.  The mean spirit is manifested in Voter ID laws, Republican Gerrymandering, and Citizens United.  

The only thing "unprecedented" about this Supreme Court vacancy is the race of the President who gets to fill it. We see you, Republicans. Elections have consequences.

RedEYE

#BlackHistoryMonth2016

RedEye's Midweek Rundown

Real life and Blogging Life are on a collision course today, as it should be, real life won, so please accept this rundown for your reading pleasure until EYE return.

Donald Trump turns full racist and the other GOP candidates seem like the voice of reason.  Don't fall for the Okey Doke.  This is who/what they are.

So, the  United States Supreme Court that stopped the Florida recount in 2000, and, overturned Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act because Obama ,is poised to overturn one man one vote.

What If Christians were seen like Muslims?  

EYE am just saying....

It's like Deja VooDoo All Over Again....

How the GOP Bought, Rigged, Stole and Lynched the 2014 Election http://t.co/nB7V59Wlvq #pjnet #ccot #p2 pic.twitter.com/WffzfYc3Ed
— Blue DuPage (@BlueDuPage) November 12, 2014

Read all about it.

Now that we have proof Voter ID laws disenfranchised registered voters can we please repeal them?

Mt. Zion Church state history marker near Philadelphia, Mississippi

Fifty Years ago Freedom Summer organizers set out to change the state of Mississippi but they ended up changing our country after a summer of terrorism and fear.

Freedom Summer (also known as the Mississippi Summer Project) was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi, which had historically excluded most blacks from voting. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population.
The project was organized by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations (SNCC, CORE, NAACP and SCLC). Most of the impetus, leadership, and financing for the Summer Project came from the SNCC. Robert Parris Moses, SNCC field secretary and co-director of COFO, directed the summer project.^[1]

All that blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice wiped away with a 5-4 vote, which cleared the way for red, republican controlled, confederate, slave states to enact Voter Suppression, I mean, ID laws.

Less than 48 hours after the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, six of the nine states that had been covered in their entirety under the law’s “preclearance” formula have already taken steps toward restricting voting.

Now that we have proof  positive the Voter ID laws disenfranchised eligible, registered, voters it's time to repeal them.

With Alabama’s voter ID law debuting today, state Republicans are offering a big cash reward to anyone who helps them dig up some voter fraud. But finding voters disenfranchised by the law isn’t difficult, even without financial incentives.
Willie Mims, 93, showed up to vote at his polling place in Escambia County Tuesday morning for Alabama’s primary elections. Mims, who is African-American, no longer drives, doesn’t have a license, and has no other form of ID. As a result, he was turned away without voting. Mims wasn’t even offered the chance to cast a provisional ballot, as the law requires in that situation.

Must See TV

 "Freedom Summer," which premieres Tuesday at 9 p.m. on PBS. The "American Experience" film captures the idealism that inspired an interracial group of college students to journey to Mississippi for 10 weeks in the summer of 1964 to register African-American voters.

But it also reveals what happened when that idealism collided with the casual brutality of white Mississippians who saw Freedom Summer as a "nigger communist invasion."

Must See Video 
"Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around"

Must read Blog
The Tragic Success of Freedom Summer

Sentimentality has its place, but we risk losing sight of the hard-nosed political calculations that informed and drove the initiative. The architects of Freedom Summer were shrewd, pragmatic veterans of a brutal street fight. They didn’t need the help of 1,000 privileged, affluent white students—not, at least, to register voters. Nor were they asking for reinforcements. Rather, they wagered that if white students from prominent Northern families were arrested, beaten and illegally jailed—as they fully expected they would be—the federal government would finally recognize its responsibility to intervene in Mississippi.

It's past time for our government to intervene so we can have fair and free elections in America  again.

America on Cruz Control Day 7

The GOP infused, media enabled, Tea Party has been planning the government shutdown since last year.  They knew they could count on the Suckers from the Gerrymandered districts to waive their right to have access to quality, affordable, healthcare, while waiving their Confederate Flags.  Republicans take Soreloserdom to a different level.  I wish the democrats had closed down the government until all the votes in Florida were counted in 2001.

Today's Must Read

The "Welfare Queen", The "Homeless by Choice" Reagan's Toxic Legacy

You remember the Welfare Queen, don't you? The welfare queen stereotype (circa 1976) is a picture that some whites still have in their heads about black women.
The Welfare Queen lived very comfortably (after all, she had 35 different IDs and 35 monthly checks from welfare, plus child support), and raised her many children without a husband or partner.  All of the children had different fathers.  The pervasive stereotype was that black women are unwilling to work, unwilling to control our insatiable sexual appetites, and unwilling to better ourselves (because the world, or the federal government to be precise, owes us a living). 

“You and other journalists have a real shortcoming in that you are trying so hard to be fair that you are unfair,” Reid said. “Democrats have had almost nothing to do with the problems here. It’s all Republicans.”

You think?

FreeDon Siegelman Sunday

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman is arguably America’s most high-profile  political prisoner

 

Why is former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman in jail?  I mean, really? Why is it OK for republicans to shut down the government (except for the military industrial complex) unless President Obama delays and defunds a law that was passed by congress, signed into to law, and upheld by the United States Supreme Court, but it is against the law for former Governor Don Siegelman to appoint a campaign contributor to a board?

In 2009, a bipartisan amicus brief by 91 former state attorneys general urged the Supreme Court to use Siegelman’s case to enunciate a clear standard for establishing quid pro quo bribery. Today’s confusion and the resulting prosecutorial discretion chill the exercise of constitutional rights of political participation and can imprison people unjustly.~George Will

You think?

Today's Must Read
Dana Siegelman Interview:  A Glimpse into American Injustice

From Selma, Alabama to Shelby County, Alabama: Mission Accomplished

 President Lyndon Johnson, with Martin Luther King, Jr, Ralph Abernathy and Rosa Parks signing the Voting Rights Act August 6, 1965

"Today is a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield. Yet to seize the meaning of this day, we must recall darker times."

 Is it a coincidence a challenge to section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 falls at the end of Black History Month , in the year 2013, on the same day President Obama unveils a statue of Rosa Parks in the U.S. Capital?

The Voting Rights Act effectively attacked persistent discrimination at the polls by keeping close watch, when it comes to holding elections, on those places with a history of preventing minorities from voting. Any changes, from moving a polling place to redrawing electoral districts, can’t take effect without approval from the Justice Department or federal judges in Washington.
But the Voting Rights Act allows governments that have changed their ways to get out from under this humbling need to get permission through a “bailout provision.” Nearly 250 counties and local jurisdictions have done so; thousands more could be eligible based on the absence of recent discriminatory efforts in voting.

Shelby County, Alabama claims it's changed it's evil ways. Between keeping grown people from gambling with their own damn money in Alabama,  Attorney General Luther Strange (yes you read it right) whines the Voting Rights Act is unfair to Sweet Home Alabama.

On Wednesday , the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether there has been enough change that Alabama and 15 other states should no longer be subject to federal approval of any election rules. That approval is currently required under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
Strange likens the provision to asking, "Mother, may I?" He says it's outdated and unfair in the post-Jim Crow South.
"What Section 5 does is impose a burden on our states that really is unnecessary in 2013," Strange argues. He points to statistics that show Alabama is second in the nation, behind Mississippi, in the number of African-Americans holding public office.

Shelby County, Alabama  is Selma, Alabama  in reverse.  Shelby County is one of the fastest growing counties in Alabama,  ranking among the 100 highest income counties in the U.S., compared to Selma, located in the heart of Alabama's Black Belt.

The median income for a household in the Black Belt region was $27,130, and the median income for a family was $35,698. Males had a median income of $32,226 versus $22,021 for females. The per capita income for the region was $15,633.
A July 1, 2007 U.S. Census Bureau estimate placed the region's population at 575,783, a decline of 2.25% since 2000.

If you want to know the inside scoop, resident Blogger Legal Schnauzer writes extensively about the going on in idyllic Shelby County, Alabama. 

It's the Courts Stupid!  This is what some of us tried to tell some of y'all back in 2000.

To better understand how to approach the white moderate power structure, we must first realize how King's criticism of the moderates of his time is not different at all from a criticism of our time.  When King says that "the white moderate is more devoted to ‘order' than to justice" he is clearly referring to both the actions of Bill Clinton and Al Gore after the 2000 Presidential Election.  In a 2001 article called "Civil War 2000" published in The Black Scholar, Charles P. Henry writes:  "Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, reports that his organization begged the Clinton Justice Department to intervene in the voting irregularities that occurred in Florida on Election Day.  Mfume says, ‘the Justice Department turned away.'' After the elections, Mfume asked the Justice Department to hold hearings – ‘the Justice Department just looked away.' Despite the lack of response by Clinton's Justice Department, he was given an ‘image' award by the NAACP in 2001!

In one of the first scenes in the 2003 film, Fahrenheit 9/11, Al Gore and the entire U.S. Senate rather stoically and sternly denied the Congressional Black Caucus their right to challenge the 2000 election results when all they needed was a signature from one senator.  Did they believe they were "keeping order" by doing this?  Also, Al Gore moved assiduously to silence not only the NAACP when they were trying to sue the state of Florida for disenfranchising black voters, he also asked that the Congressional Black Caucus be silent and not be too vocal about the racist disenfranchisement of black votes in the 2000 election.  This disenfranchisement was racist because the company that was hired, Choicepoint, to create voting rolls in Florida, improperly and incorrectly identified a disproportionate number of African-American registered voters as felons.  The Clinton Justice Department and Gore both probably believed that by silencing the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus, and encouraging low media coverage of this disenfranchisement, they were "keeping order." 

So, here we are 13 years later, the Supreme Court who selected George W. Bush, is poised to overturn Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act thanks to another small Alabama county.

Shelby County wants to play the "test case" to insure that certain white politicos will get elected over any non-whites across the South.

Can you hear us now?

Why would Alabama republicans bar outside observers from Alabama Elections?

According to Alabama Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard (r.), Sweet Home Alabama doesn't need none of them there outside agitators coming down here monitoring our selections, I mean elections.  You would think a party so concerned about voter fraud and ballot security would welcome extra eyes and ears at the polling place.

Well at least the Alabama Speaker of the House isn't threatening to arrest monitors observing the election.  Yet.

I could understand their position if Alabama and our country were the model for fair and free elections, you know.... one man/woman one vote, every vote counts, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

To all republicans who said "If you aren't doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about" after 9/11 when Congress passed the Patriot Act, I say, If you aren't doing anything wrong why are you trying to bar outside observers?
 
Deja Voodoo All Over Again?  Must See YouTube.

"One by one African Americans were told to shut up and sit down"

 

Undecided My Donkey

President Obama and Mitt Romney answer questions from undecided voters at the second presidential debate, at Hofstra University on Long Island, N.Y., last Tuesday.Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

Without a doubt President Obama won the last two debates, and any one who claims to be an undecided voter after last nights slap down in the Mouth of the Rat  hasn't been paying attention.  I suspect the so called undecided/independent/moderate voters really are republicans who are ashamed to admit it, but that's just me.

After last night, who is going to vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan besides rich white males who have convinced poor white males to vote against their interest, and old, rich, white, females who don't have to work, no longer need birth control, and can afford to pay for a safe legal abortion if they choose to?  I mean, really?

The segment of the population who has actually been paying attention to what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have been saying on the campaign trail  knows Mitt flip/flopped all over the place on foreign policy.  I don't know about you, but I feel a lot safer with President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in charge of our safety and security than those two.

It's a question of character.  Para quoting Newt Gingrich, anyone who will lie to you to become President will lie to you when they become President.  

Been there.

Done that.

I HOPE there are more voters who love our country more than they hate our President, and I am thankful the United Nations will monitor this election to ensure we have fair and free elections in America too.

See Mama Sally Jump Through Hoops to Vote in the United States of America

In response to my previous post, Why Mama Sally can't vote, my favorite Righty's  offered this ahem solution for my friends 100-year-old maternal grandmother;

Redeye, just read your blog where you talk about your friend’s maternal grandmother possibly not being able to vote in Mississippi. Have your friend, your friend’s mother, your friend’s grandmother, or do it yourself(as long as you get permission to do so) go to the following website: http://www.msvoterid.ms.gov/ , or they can call 1-855-868-3745 and they can help her get an ID free of charge, and it even looks like if she needs transportation, they will arrange it for her.
Also according to the State Department, if she does not have a birth certificate and the state can’t find one, the state must issue her a Letter of No Record. The Letter of No Record then can be sumbitted with other forms of evidence (census record, early school record, family bible record, baptismal certificate) to form proof of citizenship to stand in for primary evidence of U.S. Citizenship.

My question is, why does a 100-year-old woman, or anyone for that matter, who has been voting for years, have to jump through hoops to vote in the United States of America in 2012?

There is no evidence that black/brown/elderly/disabled/college students are showing up at the polls committing "voter fraud", yet Mama Sally's story is proof they are the ones who are adversely affected by the republicans Voter ID laws.

And they want us to sing God Bless America?

Today's Must Read
Voting Wars

Ronald Reagan continues to haunt us from the grave

The same United States Supreme Court that gave us Bush v Gore, and Citizens United  now makes  racial profiling legal as the red state, republicans cheer, and is another reason to put Marco Rubio on the ticket with Mitt Romney.  Snark

The immediate result is that Arizona can continue to harass and detain Latinos even if it can't deport them unilaterally. Naturally, there are limits imposed by the plain language of the bill, but proving that the effect of this section is to create unlawful racial harassment remains to be proven in court.
While that is being litigated, other red states can pass their own Latino harassment laws, and some may do so. This is bad news for Mitt Romney, who upheld the Arizona law as a model for the country.

Waiting for the next axe to fall....

RedEye's Week in Review

What a week this has been full of good, bad, and the downright ugly.

First the good.

Former Alabama Congress Critter Artur Davis(the latest delusional puppet of republican racial propaganda) is taking his jigging skills to the republican party like a good House Negro.  I pity the fools at Left in Alabama who fell for the Okay Doke. Although their track record for endorsements appear to based on the image the candidate projects, rather than the content of their character, it tends to makes me suspect of any democratic candidate(s) they endorse.

 Sorry.

It's always a good thing when a jury tells the Department of InJustice to go Dick Cheney themselves.  North Carolina has the kind of juries I wish we had instead of the juries we have.  I thought President Obama said he was going end Scooter Libby Justice?  I guess that's hard to do when the TeaPulblicans are blocking his Judicial Nominations.  Strike that, they are blocking the ones they don't agree with.

I'm just saying...

Now for the bad, Mitt Romney, President Obama and Casey WARdynski vie for who can hurt public education the worst.  Of course I am a dumb, ignorant, racist, n-word who was kicked of of Left in Alabama because I was incapable of logic based argument, just because I  dared point out segregated public schools are illegal.  It's too bad Romney, Obama and WARdynski don't realize there is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Finally the U-G-L-Y, how do republicans plan to steal the 2012 elections?  The same way they did in 2000?

Remember?

Today's must read

Edwards Charged With Wrong Crime. 

It's Presidents Day in America!~Correction

Aren't we lucky to have 4 former Presidents living among us as we celebrate Presidents Day?  Although two out of the 4 weren't my first, second, or even third choice, and I disagreed with practically everything they stood for, I respect the office of the President.  It's too bad TeaPublicans can't, or won't, give the office of the President an iota of respect as long as it's occupied by President Barack Hussein Obama.  You would think he sent our troops to war based on dead wrong intelligence and was selected by the Supreme Court or something.

Since Presidents Day occurs during Black History Month, it's only fitting to acknowledge the fact 8 former Presidents were slave owners.   Slaves not only built the White House and the United States Capitol, but they were also forced to slave inside the White House. This was during the time when whites wanted the government to take care of bluh people.    

I am sharing this Open letter to President Obama from RobM I found in the comment section in the afternoon open thread at Jack&Jill Politics

President Obama
I am sending you $1 today. This is not a donation to your Presidential reelection bid. it is a request you buy me a lottery ticket the next time it reaches $100 million. I have no problem splitting it w/ you and voluntarily paying %30 in federal taxes.
I am sure you are looking at this w/ your W-T-F face the First lady has seen after you come down from talking to PM Netanyahu and are asked to walk Bo. The one where you are thinking I'm been listening to it now I have to go clean it up!
Hopefully, you have gotten past that and are reading the rest of this. I am asking because you know you have to be the luckiest man alive. You are running for re-election after dealing w/ a racist American Taliban and media assault that can not even admit you came into the job w/ the worst possible fires on the stove short of the stove going nuclear on you. You belong to a party that can't organize itself to have a press conference to announce a policy w/o sounding like they are cleaning up after Bo; eyweeww! you have opposition for the job in tow men. One isn't liked by anybody but those w/ money. In fact, he can't even win an election w/o cheating(Maine and Iowa). and now in his 3rd home state, he has to bring in Donald Trump to help beat the Ayatollah. Two, the other is a card-carrying Ayatollah who believes you worship trees. I'll bet there are members of your own party begging you to come campaign in their district just so they can look good by the company they keep, though I doubt they'll let you in the house w/o putting away the silver.
So as you can see there is solid proof you are the luckiest pol ever. I would just like a piece of that change.

PS if you don't want to go to acknowledge this letter by buying a ticket could you at least tell me if this series of numbers work; 3/12/47 & 5/10/58. They are Mittens and Lil' Ricky's birth dates.

We the People can't win for the Media

If the media were liberal we wouldn't be in this mess. What liberal media do we have? Other than 1 hour each of Ed Shultz, Keith Olberman and Rachael Maddow when are true liberal voices seen or heard? Three hours out of 24 is not fair or balanced.

The majority of the Talking TeeVee Chatter Heads push the gop talking points. Example;

Howard Dean was just being interviewed on MSNBC about the tax cut package and long term deficits. He was making the basic point that upper income tax cuts do little to stimulate the economy and do add to the deficit and long term national debt. He was knocking it around with MSNBC's Chris Jansing when all of a sudden, Jansing exclaimed: Wait, since when are progressives the ones who believe in fiscal discipline and deficits?

Then we have Leslie Stall's soft ball interview of the Rep. John Bohner on 60 Minutes.

It's a shame CBS didn't show the famous video of Boehner tap-dancing around the time he was caught handing out tobacco bribes on the House floor. He may not have been compromising his principles, but what he did was far more egregious than what they're lynching Charlie Rangel for... FAR MORE EGREGIOUS. Even if it is the ultimate in DC common ground.

We can thank the Media Consolidation Act for the sad, sorry state of today's media and for our sons and daughters being sent to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The media is used to scare the American people, or as Faux News says, distort what we decide. The media promotes selective amnesia.

People on Madison Avenue make a boatload of money figuring out how to sell crap to a bunch of people who don’t need it. I mean really do you need a 500.00 cell phone? The wing-nuts have brought those same tactics to politics and the media. They have used branding to not make the country completely conservative, just more conservative than it was 30 years ago. So now the center is no longer the center. You now have Dems espousing former wing-nut positions as if they were now mainstream and rational.

Is the Obama compromise a setup?

I think this White House has underestimated the wrath of a scorned base. I think what this White House and President failed to realize is that while he is the President of those who didn’t vote for him, he owed it to those who did vote for him to stand up for the issues they elected him to stand up for. Those who did not vote for him will never vote for him. Does he think that if he passed all of the Republican agenda that they would not run a challenger against him in 2012? The progressives have for the last two years been waiting for this White House to fight for something. It began with the stimulus package that was too small and loaded with concessions to the wing-nuts and still did not get a single wing-nut vote. Then we had health-care reform where everything was bargained away before the negotiations even begun and progressives thought at least they would fight for the public option which didn’t happen. And of course we had financial reform and again no fight.

Is President Obama afraid the media will portray him as an angry black man like they did Rev. Jeremiah Wright and scare the Bejeezus out of white folks? You know, I could understand white folks being scared of black folks if black folks had enslaved white folks for hundreds of years and had a documented history of violence towards white folks, but the truth of the matter, it's the other way around, so what are white folks scared of? They have all the privilege and the power.

Where is the diversity in the mainstream media? And NO, so called black conservatives don't count because all they do is say publicly what whites say privately. Rush, Beck and the other right wing Lords of Loud flood the public airways with misinformation.

The mainstream media yawned and marginalized Senator Bernie Sander's moment of truth.

The infamous White House/GOP tax cut deal will likely pass both the Senate and House next week and then become law. But Bernie Sanders has opened a Pandora's box of illumination that will vex the feckless, ever-retreating White House and the grossly hypocritical Republicans for some time to come.

The past is prologue.

As we pass the 10th anniversary of the Bush v. Gore decision—technically yesterday, December 12—it is interesting to note how much of our current political predicament can be discerned in the events of those days. The Bush-Gore election illustrates three key points about today’s political and media environment:

* Conservatives fight harder and dirtier for what they want than progressives.

* The mainstream media gives conservatives a pass for acting and speaking in their own political interest while criticizing progressives for the same thing.

* Conservative commentators recognize few if any boundaries in their willingness to demonize progressives, with virtually no corollary of any kind among progressives.

Quoting Democratic Alabama State Senator Hank Sanders

We see things and think they are unfair. We think they are easy to correct. We try to correct the injustice but one thing leads to another and another. Sometimes other injustices occur in the process. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

It's the media, I won't say stupid, because we aren't stupid, the media must think we are stupid.