Category Archives: Uncategorized

“Demographic Threats” and Voter ID Laws

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

QUESTION: Among Republican-governed states, Idaho, a state which is 0.6% African-American, has one of the looser Voter ID laws in the United States, requiring non-strict Photo ID.

Map of US Voter ID Laws by State, Strict vs Non-Strict, Nov 2016.svg
By Peterljr888 – Vector map from Blank US Map.svg by User:Theshibboleth.
Information from NCSL.org, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

 

Similarly:

  • North Dakota, with 1.2% African-descended population, has strict non-photo ID.
  • Montana, with 0.4%, has non-strict non-photo ID.
  • Wyoming, with 0.8%, has no Voter ID law.
  • Utah, with 1.1%, has non-strict non-photo ID.
  • Maine, with 1.2%, has none.
  • South Dakota, with 1.3%, has non-strict Photo ID.
  • New Mexico, with 2.1%, has none.
  • Iowa, with 2.9%, has none.
  • Alaska, with 3.3%, has non-strict non-photo ID.
  • West Virginia, with 3.4%, has none.
  • Colorado, with 4.0%, has non-strict non-photo ID.

Meanwhile, the Southeastern United States from Texas to Virginia is covered in Voter ID laws ranging from non-strict non-photo (like South Carolina, Oklahoma and Arkansas) to Strict Photo ID (Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia). Similarly, among the 4 Red States in the Midwest with the highest percentage of African-American population, Voter ID laws range from strict non-photo (Ohio) to strict Photo ID (Wisconsin and Indiana).

And today, Missouri’s GOP is succeeding in getting their Voter ID to the same strict Photo ID level as Kansas and Nebraska; Kansas has 5.9%, Nebraska has 4.5% and Missouri has 11.6%.

I wonder if the Republican rush to stricter Voter ID laws correlates to the percentage of the African-American population under their state governance. Is our mere demographic existence as voters that much of a problem to conservative Whites that the GOP would nationally inconvenience even the White elderly, the White college students, and the White disabled at the ballot box just to spite us?

Why are we such a threat to your interests that the Voter Fraud enemy which you have chosen to curb is usually African-American and perhaps a woman? Are we Black people the ones committing all of the possible or real cases of vote fraud which can be counted on your fingers?

By curbing this fraudulent voter, do you feel safer at the ballot box? Are we the cause of your vote fears, and would it be more of a convenience for you if we left your state? Or is it really the Mexican-Americans?

“Everworld” by K.A. Applegate

Uncategorized, , ,

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For a while, I’ve been reading this K.A. Applegate series I found a while back, “Everworld”. I’m on Book 8. A pretty gripping YA book series about four teenagers from Chicago sucked into another universe ruled by old pantheons of gods and monsters by a fifth teen who was born with magic.

However, in Book 7, I don’t think I like how the Orisha are depicted in this. At this point, only Eshu has acted as a character. He is a pursuer who demands animal sacrifice to the orishas from the main characters for entering the orishas’ realm, and basically trolls them by playing with their heads and physics.

Unlike the other pantheons – Norse, Egyptian, Greek, Aztec – only Eshu speaks or shows himself to the reader on behalf of “his brothers and sisters”. Eshu, a trickster orisha who is also the messenger for the pantheon, has no depth for a (demi)god character in this book.

What Unfavorability?

Politics, Uncategorized

Trump, an outsider, has low favorability ratings among people who do not look like himself, but he wins the presumptive GOP nomination with high turnout. Clinton, somewhat of an insider, has low favorability ratings among people who look like Trump, yet holds the lion’s share of pledged Democratic delegates with low turnout.

After #INprimary, #CruzFiorina has dropped out, and Kasich is running on E. The ball is now in the Democrats’ court to pick a presumptive nominee before the convention. And yet, even now, #BernieOrBust/ #NeverHillary letters are being posted on Twitter.

Sanders is running out of time, but the anti-Hillary faction (especially independents who go out of their way to clarify that they have no relationship with the Democratic Party) are demonizing the Democratic Party in revenge for their candidate not being given the treatment which is more favorable to him.

In other words, the Democratic Party was supposed to host a revolution which a majority of Democratic voters ended up voting against. That has not sunk in.

#Lemonade

Uncategorized,

Just finished watching #Lemonade on Facebook.

I wonder if Lemonade is Beyonce’s magnum opus album, or her magnum opus video anthology.

But, going off of the film, this is NOT a pop album. None of this is pop. This is higher concept than her self-titled album. This is her most thematically-compact album to date.

Sasha Fierce, 4 and Self-Titled fit within a thematic trilogy of exploring feminism, beauty, power, love and self-expression in the world. Lemonade is new territory, in which she explores Black womanhood, infidelity, inheritance, pain, anger and appreciation in history.

The pacing is incredibly taut, like a one-hour religious ritual. Everyone, every dancer and guest, is posed exactly as they should be posed, to be canvasses for the story, like they’re dreamy expressions emanating from Beyonce’s mind. But it’s all a process. It goes from reacting to betrayal to reconciling and rebuilding with one’s love.

It goes beyond some mere “Becky with the good hair” to a wider theme of being true to those who you will meet when you wake up: oneself and each other.