LURCHING FORWARD...INTO THE PAST

"How many bubbles are there in a bar of soap?"

Say what?  That probably sums up the response of thousands of African Americans when they were confronted by questions such as the above iconic example in the Jim Crow South...literacy tests were part of the tactical disenfranchisement of almost all potential Black voters, along with poll taxes, property requirements and plain ol' physical intimidation.  Not a pretty picture which necessitated the passage of voting rights legislation in the 60s, laws still on the books regarding some Southern states.  But voter suppression is back...and not just in the South!

An old axiom of politics is to never let a crisis go to waste, and this truism far precedes Rahm Emmanuel...I heard it cited in PoliSci courses in the 60s.  This is a case of an invented crisis....voter fraud that doesn't exist.  The Bush Admin made a lot of noise about it after 2000, which is funny in itself given the mess in Florida and the fact that they took office after losing the popular vote by 500,000 votes:

"A major probe by the Justice Department between 2002 and 2007 failed to prosecute a single person for going to the polls and impersonating an eligible voter, which the anti-fraud laws are supposedly designed to stop. Out of the 300 million votes cast in that period, federal prosecutors convicted only 86 people for voter fraud"

Read more:  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-war-on-voting-20110830

This attack on voting rights is curiously aligned with the election of republicrite governors in the wave election of 2010.  Well, waves roll in, waves roll out...and the republicrites, led by infamous Hativist Kris Kobach of Kansas, do not want to see a repeat of 2008.  Their solution?....target the demographics of the Obama victory....African Americans, Hispanics, Youth & targeted elderly...they ain't going after Grandma in the suburbs, but if she lives in a public retiree facility in Philadelphia, she's fair game.  Onerous photo ID laws which involve cost, time and fighting thru an inept bureaucracy...reduction of early voting, particularly on the Sunday before election day when Churches traditionally bring voters to the polls in buses & vans...purges of voters rolls where voters have to prove their continued eligibility rather than the other way around...all designed to do one thing, as admitted by a Pennsylvania official...reduce the vote and allow Republicrites to win close elections, including Romney-Ryan!

I could go on, but in the interest of brevity, let me register my reaction....DISGUST!!!  That a major political party could return to so cynical  an agenda, so immoral in intention, so blatant in execution ought to give all decent folk pause...do we really want to go back?