Dying to Vote


 
As voting controversies multiply I think back to origins. I think of a Senator from Missouri and a lady who recently celebrated her 97th birthday in North Carolina.

Her name is Rosanell Eaton. As folks gathered in North Carolina to march to the polls, she stood, worn and feisty, and talked about the days when the poll tax, the tax on those showing up to register, was occasionally death. She and her mother rode in a mule drawn wagon for two hours to the courthouse in 1939, where she was determined to exercise her right to vote. She was confronted by the traditional test, the one given to black folks.

One man, as they were looking at each other again, told me: Stand up straight, against that wall, with your eyes looking directly toward me, and repeat the Preamble of the United States of America.

To everyone’s surprise, she looked the man in the eyes and repeated, word for word, the entire preamble to the Constitution of the United States.

Without missing a word, I did it.

Continue reading “Dying to Vote”

A Little Show and a Lotta Tell

found online by Raymond

 
From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

It seems that Trump and his allies don’t have a problem smearing the FBI to pretend that the investigation of the very real Russian involvement into the 2016 election and his very real (as in, he’s in the White House) benefit from the same, is about some partisan motivation. A telephonic glitch that affected the text messages of thousands of DOJ personnel that was eventually restored, was treated like a ghoulish deep state cover-up. A sarcastic joke between FBI associates about a “secret society” was treated as being quite sinister indeed. But these misleading stories bandied about by Trump fans are little compared to the dopey memo that Trump’s Congressional Renfield, Devin Nunes, wants everyone to see, and no one to see.

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Why Do Pastors Defend and Support Criminals?

found online by Raymond

 
From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

As I wade through the neck-deep filth in the Evangelical gutter gathering information for the Black Collar Crime series, one common event shows up in story after story: that when these criminals are on trial or they are being sentenced for their crimes, their pastors are on hand to let everyone know that the predator pastor was a good person who did a bad thing. Often, these testifying pastors tell judges and juries that the criminal’s good works outweigh any bad that he might have done; that molesting and raping children or sexually assaulting church members is somehow atoned for by the church member’s or ex-pastor’s good works. These so-called men of God even go so far as to ask the courts to grant the convicted offender probation, promising that the child molester/rapist has turned over a new leaf and has crossed-his-heart-hoped-to-die promised that he will never, ever rape, molest, look at child porn, or take sexual advantage of woman. Why do pastors seem so willing to be character references for criminals?

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Both Sides Don’t

found online by Raymond

 
From driftglass:

Jeffrey Toobin confirmes what Dirty Hippies have been saying all along.

From the WaPo:

CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin: ‘I regret my role’ in Hillary Clinton false equivalence

No question about the attack on Clinton, responded Toobin, citing “all that bogus stuff about the Clinton Foundation” — perhaps a reference to the Uranium One story or even to the pre-election reporting of Bret Baier — later withdrawn — that there would be an indictment relating to the foundation.

“And I hold myself somewhat responsible for that,” continued Toobin, a steady presence on CNN since 2002. “I think there was a lot of false equivalence in the 2016 campaign. That every time we said something, pointed out something about Donald Trump — whether it was his business interests, or grab ’em by the p–––y, we felt like, ‘Oh, we gotta, like, talk about — we gotta say something bad about Hillary.’ And I think it led to a sense of false equivalence that was misleading, and I regret my role in doing that.”

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A Step Backward?

found online by Raymond

 
From Infidel753:

One of the tools for evaluating American society’s acceptance of gay people is GLAAD’s “Accelerating Acceptance” report, an annual survey which tests public attitudes across a range of issues. The report’s results have been in line with other opinion surveys in showing a steady growth in acceptance year by year — until the latest one, just released, which shows a decrease in the percentage of Americans with broadly accepting views, from 53% last year to 49% now.

It’s conceivable that this might be just a statistical fluke — 4% isn’t a very big change — but that’s probably not the case, because other results are in line with the change. The percentage of those who say they would be uncomfortable at discovering a family member is gay rose 3%, the proportion of gay people reporting encounters with discrimination is up 11%, etc. These figures represent something real.

Confronted with evidence of inexorable social progress, the enemy likes to use the metaphor of the pendulum — claiming that while attitudes may move in one direction for a while, they inevitably “swing back” to the more conservative position, and the midpoint of the swings doesn’t really move. However, there’s no evidence that changes in public attitudes on social issues really work like that.

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Meet Keith Johnson

found online by Raymond

 
From author John Scalzi:

Over on Twitter, some foolish person posted the following question, which I will replicate here with all grammatical confabulation intact, because it’s necessary for context:

As a straight male, how would u feel about your child having a homosexual school teacher?! Who their around 8hours a day !

This was my response:

As a straight male, the best teacher I ever had was a gay man. Among many other things, he taught me the difference between “there,” “their” and “they’re.” His name was Keith Johnson. I would have been absolutely delighted for my daughter to have known him. I sang at his funeral.

This tweet, boosted by folks like Neil Gaiman, JK Rowling and Nick Offerman, has now been seen by over three million people. So now I would like to tell you a little bit about Keith Johnson, the best teacher I ever had.

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Woman Who Stopped Buying Coffee Still in Poverty

found online For Your Consideration

 
From Reductress:

Despite her best efforts, including not buying her daily coffee, 25-year-old Tyra Manning is still dealing with the effects of intergenerational poverty.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” said Tyra. “I stopped buying my daily $3 coffee from the cafe on my block and I’m still poor.”

Tyra, whose family descended from American slaves, decided to quit buying her very inexpensive daily coffee after hearing the advice of many pundits and baby boomers.

“There were so many articles and outlets reporting that skipping your little daily expenses was the path to overcoming decades of familial economic insecurity,” she said. “So I tried it. I even started bringing my lunch to work every day. Unfortunately, I’m still deciding which bills to pay!”

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