The vote counter is more important than the candidate

My Sunday movie was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner released in 1967. Yeah, I chose it because Sidney Poitier is in it. The high power cast includes Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. The plot is simple: On a trip to Hawaii Joanna Drayton, a white woman played by Katharine Houghton in her film debut, fell in love with Dr. John Prentice, a black man (Poitier). They fly to San Francisco to tell her parents. Because of his schedule her parents have only that afternoon and evening to decide whether they’re going to give their blessing. John calls his parents and says he has fallen in love but doesn’t say his girlfriend is white before they’re invited to come to dinner as well. So the movie is about whether they will bless their children or not. I was surprised about one character interaction. Tillie is the black housekeeper who helped raise Joanna. She thinks this Dr. Prentice has gotten above himself, has way overstepped what a black man should be, and she does not want to see Joanna hurt. I’m amused that the page my streaming service has for this movie it has pictures of young Tracy and Hepburn and an old Poitier. After watching a movie I frequently go to IMDB and look it up to see what trivia, quotes, and goofs might be mentioned. In the trivia I learned when filming started Tracy was already terminally ill and Hepburn and maybe the director had to put their salaries in escrow in case Tracy died before his scenes were filmed. Hepburn watched over him and called a halt to his scenes when he began to look tired. The director and cast had to shift to other scenes or play to an empty chair. Tracy died just 17 days after filming completed. Hunter of Daily Kos discussed the latest hoax from the nasty guy. That NG held a rally and during it said, “If you’re white, you don’t get the vaccine or if you’re white you don’t get therapeutics .. In NY state, if you’re white, you go to the back of the line if you want help.” Yeah, that’s a lie. Hunter says it also makes no sense. The Republican base does not want the vaccine and they work hard to make sure no one can make them get it. Hunter had quoted a tweet by Ron Filipkowski who had added, “Trump says white people are being discriminated against on covid treatments.” So why did the nasty guy say it?

The best way to rile a crowd of ignorant racists to take action to "save" America is to fill their heads with claims that the nonwhite Americans around them are taking something from them. Nonwhite Americans are taking the vaccines and the treatments meant for white racists, and not letting white racists have any. It is enraging—or would be, if anyone in the crowd intended to seek out either.

Leah McElrath quoted the same Filipkowski tweet and added:

He’s saying more than that: “Denigrating white people to determine who lives and who dies…” He’s implying Democratic leaders, Black people, and Jewish people (that’s who the “New York” reference is meant to evoke) are killing white people. This type of rhetoric is separated from overt “race war” incitement by only a hair’s breadth. Very dangerous stuff.

Back to Hunter’s post and a second quote from the nasty guy (again through Ron Filipkowski):

Trump tells PA GOP why he is placing an emphasis on Supervisor of Elections races in 22: “We have to be a lot sharper the next time when it comes to counting the vote .. Sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate. They have to get a lot tougher and smarter.”

Yep, he’s bragging the Republican strategy is to replace election officials with partisans willing to overturn a result they don’t like. That is exactly the plan Republicans are carrying out. No one in the party is objecting to that plan. Also, no one is hiding the plan. No one is under any illusion whose votes will be declared improper.

This is the context in which two Democratic senators continue to insist we honor the filibuster, this exact version of the filibuster and none of the historical others, rather than take action to bar anti-democratic efforts to strip Americans of their voting rights. They are accomplices, not fools. They know what is at stake, but each imagines themselves a figure of such great import that the future of the nation hardly matters in comparison.

Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote about a new thing among Democrats seeking to become candidates for the US Senate. They are pledging to vote to eliminate the filibuster. This is true for candidates in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin who have a chance at reclaiming a Republican seat. Support for ending the filibuster has shifted from being a consensus position to being foundational. The filibuster used to be used to block progressive legislation. Now it is being used to block all legislation. Michael Harriot responded to a question about why the voting rights bills are necessary. He gave his top ten reasons: The combined bill restores a part of the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted by the Supremes. It closes loopholes exploiting prohibitions of voter suppression. It restores preclearance – states used to have to get permission to change voting laws so the DOJ could verify they don’t suppress the vote. It allows the identification of new racist places, such as Wisconsin. It recognizes suppression isn’t just in the law – a new tactic is to close polling places in minority precincts. It requires claims of ballot insecurity be proven. It makes gerrymandering harder. It doesn’t depend on the Attorney General (who happens to do very little these days). It accounts for new suppression tactics that will be developed in the future. Harriot wrote another thread confirming that yup, voter suppression is about racism.

When SCOTUS decided Shelby v. Holder, the court's most virulently anti-voting rights justice just happened to be Chief Justice John Roberts. He basically said: "Because the preclearance formula successfully stopped racists from being racists, we can't say they're still racists. "Let's get rid of the formula that stopped racists from being racist. And since the DOJ won't have anything to judge racism (except the ENTIRE HISTORY OF AMERICA), they should stop judging racists until Congress creates a new racism formula" He wrote that down on paper! But of course, maybe they were right. Maybe those places had changed. Maybe racism was over and poll taxes were a thing of the past. So, what happened? Within 24 hrs, Texas passed a voter ID law that constitutional scholars called "racist AF." ... By the time next national election in 2016, guess which places had new voting laws? The "formerly" racist places. Now, here is the thing: The Shelby v. Holder (and a lot of other rulings) are based on widely-held assumptions: 1. That a thing is only racist if its INTENT is to discriminate–the EFFECT doesn't matter. A lot of people believe this (It's John Roberts's entire legal philosophy) ... The EFFECT of the actions is what matters. The second concept is: 2. Racism is a thing of the past. Maybe you can name an example where this country achieved racial progress because white people collectively said: "Let's do better." I can't. ... See, the Shelby v. Holder (and many other recent SCOTUS rulings on racial discrimination) were decided on the concept that the EFFECT of a law can be racist as long as it wasn't created with racist INTENT They have literally redefined racism by making it unprovable

. From another Harriot tweet: The Texas GOP tweeted “If you can wait in line for hours for testing... you can vote in person.” Others pointed out the image used in that tweet is from a testing site in New York City, not Texas. Also, many who are eligible to vote can’t wait in line for hours. Harriot added (and provided evidence):

BTW: this tweet by @TexasGOP is SPECIFICALLY aimed at Black people. White people don’t wait in line to vote.

Forrest Wilder of the Texas Monthly quoted Asley Huseman of Vote Beat:

Travis County Clerk's office says that as of today, their office "has rejected about fifty percent of applications for ballot by mail that have been received for the March 1, 2022 primary election," due to changes to ID requirements made by Texas' new voting law.

Wilder added:

About 11% of Texas voters cast their ballot by mail in 2020, so if this rejection rate holds, we are talking a pretty significant number of voters who could be disenfranchised.

Alexandra Martinez of Kos Prism discussed the state of abortion clinics in Oklahoma and Kansas. They have gotten a big influx of patients from Texas after that state essentially banned abortions. But now, in addition to more patients, they are having to deal with staff out with COVID. Some clinics have had to close, which they work real hard not to do. I mention this post because of this little bit showing the size of the problem:

In 2017, Texas provided about 55,000 abortions, meaning there are about 1,100 Texans per week now who are no longer able to get care and have to travel to surrounding states.

On this Martin Luther King Day, Lauren Floyd of Kos reported on a database created by the Washington Post that identified which members of Congress owned slaves. There were 1,700 of them. This was at a time when the Senate had fewer than 100 members and the House had a lot fewer than the current 435. An example is a speech about slavery that Sen. Daniel Webster gave in 1850. Of the 106 members listening 45 owned slaves. Between 1789 and 1807 more than half of the members owned slaves. Slavery and racism were present at the foundation of our country and lawmakers wrote it into our laws. Judd Legum, who writes Popular Information about politics and power, discussed Ronald Reagan and MLK Day and something conservatives continue to do.

Reagan assured [New Hampshire Gov. Meldrim] Thomson that the King holiday would be based on "an image" of King and not the "reality" of King. Reagan proceeded to use a false image of King to justify defend his attacks on anti-poverty programs, and civil rights enforcement

Legum quoted an excerpt from a previous column in Popular Information:

In the years that followed, Reagan crafted a false image of King, claiming that King would have supported policies that he stridently opposed. In a 1986 radio address, Reagan invoked King to defend his attacks on affirmative action, anti-poverty programs, and civil rights enforcement:

We are committed to a society in which all men and women have equal opportunities to succeed, and so we oppose the use of quotas. We want a color-blind society. A society, that in the words of Dr. King, judges people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Back to Legum’s thread:

Republicans falsely claim that King advocated for a "colorblind" society by ignoring everything he's said, save for 35 words in August 1963. The idea that King did not want people to talk about racism or address racial inequality is absolutely absurd

Kos of Kos had such fun with a post full of pro-vaccine memes that he created another and will turn it into a weekly post. Warning, because of the recent promotion of piss as an antidote to COVID there are a lot of references to it in this collection. Of this bunch my favorite shows an image of a smartphone and a needle and syringe. The caption:

One of these things changes your behavior. It contains a microchip which constantly records wherever you go and everything you do or say. The other is a lifesaving vaccine.