Politics Plus

Today is election day.  It may not seem like it, but voters will be going to the polls to decide important issues all over the nation.  I looked for an article that provides an overview of these races, and found none.  However, Rachel Maddow did a wonderful segment that does, so here it is.

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Falling under Rachel’s radar is the primary election for Oregon’s 1st Congressional District.  Because Oregon has the wisdom to have vote by mail with paper ballots for all elections, I cast my vote for Brad Avakian over a week ago, but I will have no problem supporting the winner, because even the least progressive among them is more progressive than most of Congress.  That’s what happens when progressives get behind progressive Democrats and work for them at the grass roots level instead of sniveling that the parties are the same.

Wherever you are, if there is an election in your area tomorrow, please vote.  Voting is both your privilege and your duty.  Were voting not critically important, Republicans would not put so much effort into taking people’s right to vote away.

People who do not vote deserve Republican rule.

Herman Cain has been granted his wish.  Repeatedly he has referred to the accusations against him as a high tech lynching based on claims by women who accused from the shadows.  How he wished he could confront their accusations.  Yesterday a fourth woman did come forward.  If anything, this may be benefiting Cain, because the cacophony surrounding it has drown out all the other stories revealing that Cain is nothing but a shill for corporate criminals.

Sharon Bialek alleged at a news conference today that Herman Cain reached under her skirt in 1997 as she sought help in finding a job.

The Chicago-area mother, described by her lawyer as a registered Republican, urged the GOP presidential candidate to "come clean" and admit how he was "inappropriate" with her and other women.

Bialek’s story was immediately denied by the Cain campaign, which sent out a news release as the woman spoke publicly at a New York City news conference with her lawyer, noted defense attorney Gloria Allred, by her side.

The stories of three other women have been reported by Politico and the Associated Press… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <USA Today>

Rachel Maddow goes above and beyond the call with this report on not only Bialek’s accusations, but also, the other scandalous issues surrounding Cain and his campaign.

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Could it be any more obvious that Cain is nothing but a hired snake oil salesman for criminals?

Governor John Kasich has fully followed the Republican meme of attacking labor at the state level.  But Ohioans fought back and put the Republicans’ draconian anti-union measure on the ballot as Issue 2, scheduled for a vote Tuesday.  Saturday, Sunday and today were the to be the last three days of early voting.  Union members and other working people traditionally use early voting to avoid conflicts between voting and their work schedule.  To block the labor vote Republicans have seized on an obscure provision of a just-passed bill to cancel the last three days of early voting, probably illegally.  John Nichols brought this to light.

…In Ohio this fall, the party faces a serious challenge. Republican Governor John Kasich, a GOP "star" for the better part of three decades, has staked his political fortunes on an attempt to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees while undermining the ability of their unions to function.

The move has proven to be massively unpopular. More than 1.3 million Ohioans signed petitions that forced a referendum on whether to implement the anti-labor law. Polls show that Ohioans are ready to do just that when they weigh in on referendum Issue 2.

But Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State is trying to make it a whole lot harder for Ohioans to cast those votes.

On Friday, across Ohio, county boards of elections shut down early voting for next Tuesday’s election. They did so on orders from Secretary of State Jon Husted. A Republican stalwart,

Husted served as the party’s legislative pointman (rising to the rank of Ohio House Speaker), co-chaired GOP campaigns (including that of 2008 presidential candidate John McCain) and has been closely tied to national conservative groups [Husted delinked] working on issues such as school choice and privatization. While serving in the legislature, Husted was allied with the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, which has promoting Voter ID laws and other rule changes designed to suppress turnout.

Husted claimed a hastily-passed and deliberately vague new state law, which took effect just last week, that early voting was prohibited in the three days before the election. That’s a dramatic change from traditional practice in Ohio, where early voting on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before high-profile elections has been allowed for years — and has permitted tens of thousands of citizens to participate in the process.

The law in question, Ohio House Bill 224, was written primarily to deal with military ballots. Yet, Husted is interpreting it as a bar on early voting. State Rep. Kathleen Clyde, a Democrat who represents Kent, says Hustad is essentially creating his own rules.

"When you take out major chunks (of the legislation, as Husted has)," explains Clyde, "the bill is now unreadable and incomprehensible."

But the confusion has worked for Husted and the GOP. County election officials have, at his behest, shut down early voting across Ohio… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <The Nation>

This Republican assault on voting was done without notice or warning of any kind.  Millions of Ohioans have made commitments to work on Tuesday, based on plans to vote over the weekend.  Now they are in a bind.  I hope they and their employers realize that it is imperative that they take time off work to vote so that that the Republican party does not get away with this foul scheme to suppress Ohioans’ voting rights.  I also hope that there is some law under which Jon Husted can be charged for his crime against the voters of Ohio.

Racism is a minor problem, if any problem at all, within the Democratic Party.  That was not always so, but when Democrats passed the Voting Rights Act, the racist Dixiecrats deserted the Democratic Party.  The Republican party adopted the Southern Strategy and welcomed the racists with open arms.  They have become a key component of the Republican base.  In contrast, The Democratic Party has identified with civil rights to the extent of nominating and electing a black President.  So now that the left has seized on how Herman Cain’s behavior has come home to roost, you can be sure that the reason is anything but his race.  The reaction would it be identical were it, Romney, Perry, or any other nominee.

If you’re Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Brent Bozell, Sean Hannity, and yes, even Herman Cain, you must feel pretty stupid for trying to fool the American people by blaming the reporting on sexual harassment complaints against the GOP presidential candidate on his race.

Cain has tried to make his surprising presidential run to be about anything but race. He has chided other African-Americans for blaming their circumstances on race, has blasted black voters for being "brainwashed" for voting for Democrat, and he has garnered applause from his mostly white audiences by lighting into identity politics.

Yet when faced with the most serious dilemma of his campaign, Cain looked like the boy crying wolf by saying there was a racial element in the reporting of sexual harassment allegations against him while heading the National Restaurant Association. He even tried to invoke the "high-tech lynching" comment made famous by Justice Clarence Thomas when he was going through his Senate confirmation hearings for the U.S. Supreme Court.

But we shouldn’t be surprised. Cain has shown such a racial knee-jerk reaction before. He tried to nail Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart with the racist tag after a comedic bit on The Daily Show. Even other Republicans found his comments to be confusing… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <CNN>

Considering the extent to which the Republican Party opposes virtually every issue important to the African American community, it’s almost surprising that the Republican Party is able to black people, who have so little sense of community that they sell their community out, as Cain and Thomas have.  However, it is not at all surprising that Republicans have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find them.