One of the things most overlooked in the 2016 election was that it was the first Presidential Election since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. It is going to get worse and worse.
Bad enough that the Senate is about as unrepresentative as possible;that gerrymandering combined with the unrepresentative house being restricted to 435 members means Dems have to win 6 to 7 % more votes than Reps to take control of the House;future elections may well hinge on who is not allowed to vote.
“From The New York Times:
The Randolph County elections board is scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss a proposal that would eliminate seven of nine polling locations in the county, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. Included in the proposed closures is Cuthbert Middle School where nearly 97 percent of voters are black. “There is strong evidence that this was done with intent to make it harder for African Americans,” ACLU of Georgia attorney Sean Young said. The ACLU has sent a letter to the elections board demanding that the polling places remain open and has filed open records requests for information about the proposal to close the polling places.
This is appalling enough on its face, but the sheer brass it takes to make this kind of decision right out in the open is testimony to the success that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has achieved at rolling back the hard-won blood-gains of the civil rights movement, a project that truly has been Roberts’s life’s mission ever since he was a young lawyer in the Justice Department under Ronald Reagan.
Under the old Voting Rights Act, gutted by the Roberts Court in Shelby County v. Holder, the decision in which Roberts declared the arrival of the Day of Jubilee, nobody would have dared pull a stunt like this. The pre-clearance provisions of the VRA would have kicked in. The DOJ would have been breathing down their necks within the hour.
According to the latest census figures, Randolph County’s population is more than 61 percent of black, double the statewide percentage.The median household income for the county was $30,358 in 2016, compared to $51,037 in the rest of the state. Nearly one-third of the county’s residents live below the poverty line, compared to about 16 percent statewide, according to U.S. Census figures. The closure of polling places will affect those who lack reliable transportation, the ACLU says. Public transit doesn’t exist in much of the rural county, and 22 percent of the county’s residents have no car. People who currently vote at the polling places that would close under the proposal would have to travel an additional 10 miles to vote, the ACLU says. With no car or bus to reach a different polling location, this predominantly black, Democratic county will not be able to fairly vote, ACLU of Georgia executive director Andrea Young said.
It shouldn’t be this easy to do this kind of thing in 2018. People shouldn’t feel comfortable doing it so plainly in the open. It shouldn’t be such a simple job to dress up the evil ghosts of the past in modern clothes and parade them down the rural highways where Winfred Rembert once broke rocks because he “stole” a gun from a white man who was trying to shoot him. The bastards at least should have to work harder for it.”
So it looks like we will go through another fiasco with our dear leader threatening black people who quietly protest during the anthem because they are not loyal to the flag.
Meanwhile, the people who served under that flag have their deranged dear leader screwing up their lives:
“Given what goes on in public, you can’t help but wonder what the hell must be happening in this presidency behind closed doors. Are aides asked to find a sale price for Guam? Are they slow-walking plans for a Trump Tower replica in the White House lobby? How often does the president ask to have a truck event on the lawn?
But occasionally we do get a glimpse of what now passes as Presidential Behavior in a closed setting—for instance, via The Daily Beast, a meeting with veterans’ groups in the Roosevelt Room:
During the course of the meeting, Weidman brought up the issue of Agent Orange, an extremely notorious component of the U.S. herbicidal warfare on Vietnam. Weidman was imploring the president and his team to permit access to benefits for a broader number of vets who have said they were poisoned by Agent Orange.
Trump responded by saying, “That’s taken care of,” according to people in the room.
His reply puzzled the group.
Ah. Here we go.
Attendees began explaining to the president that the VA had not made enough progress on the issue at all, to which Trump responded by abruptly derailing the meeting and asking the attendees if Agent Orange was “that stuff from that movie.”
He did not initially name the film he was referencing, but it quickly became clear as Trump kept rambling that he was referring to the classic 1979 Francis Ford Coppola epic Apocalypse Now, and specifically the famous helicopter attack scene set to the “Ride of the Valkyries.” Sources present at the time tell The Daily Beast that multiple people—including Vietnam War veterans—chimed in to inform the president that the Apocalypse Now set piece he was talking about showcased the U.S. military using napalm, not Agent Orange. Trump refused to accept that he was mistaken and proceeded to say things like, “no, I think it’s that stuff from that movie.”
Did President Good Brain then move on, returning to the topic of the meeting to which he’d granted a slice of his limited presidential time? No, he refused to concede he was wrong and went around the table, polling people on whether the scene in Apocalypse Now features napalm or Agent Orange…..
Obviously, this has some negative consequences for, say, veterans. The Vietnam vet groups in the Apocalypse Now fiasco meeting were trying to improve treatment for vets exposed to Agent Orange. It does not appear they made progress, and Weidman says they now struggle to get the president’s ear at all. One upside of the meeting, however, was it was the last time veterans’ groups had to deal with Omarosa, whom Trump tapped to run point on vets issues when he first entered office. Now a mortal enemy Trump wants to see “arrested,” the former Apprentice was then saying nice things about the president, so he doled out out crucial responsibilities to her for which she was completely unqualified. Apparently, shortly after the Apocalypse meeting, Omarosa simply got bored of her vets assignment and other aides took it over.
(Trump, incidentally, is the same guy who joked that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases in 1970s New York was his “personal Vietnam,” and that he deserved the Congressional Medal of Honor. He avoided the actual draft on five separate occasions.)
This is in line with recent revelations, via fantastic reporting from ProPublica, that the Department of Veterans Affairs was basically being run out of Mar-a-Lago by three members of the president’s country club. Nothing says you love and care for the vets—something Trump says often—like turning over their issues to unaccountable private citizens who never served in the army, two of whom had no medical background whatsoever. Oh, and Omarosa.
It’s almost like electing a guy who knows nothing about anything and cares less—except about who’s praising him right now—might not be the best way to tackle this nation’s issues.”
Well, they got what they wanted, most of the white veterans at least.
“U.S. veterans, who broadly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election, have remained positive about the job he is doing as president. In April, 54% of those who have served in the military approved of his job performance. Trump’s job approval among the overall public was just 39%, according to the same survey, which was conducted using Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel.
Both younger and older veterans gave higher approval ratings for Trump than did younger and older adults overall. Nearly half of veterans ages 18 to 49 (46%) approved of Trump’s job performance, compared with only 31% of all adults younger than 50. Among those 50 and older, nearly six-in-ten veterans (58%) supported Trump, while about half of all older adults (49%) said the same.
The same pattern held for level of educational attainment. Approval of Trump was higher among both college-educated veterans and those with no college degree than it was for these groups among the public as a whole.
The April survey found that 98% of veterans who identify as Republicans approve of Trump; among Democratic veterans, the share was just 10%. Among the public overall, 86% of Republicans approve of Trump, compared with only 9% of Democrats.
Still, the demographics of military veterans are a factor in Trump’s higher approval ratings among this group. Compared with the public as a whole, veterans are more likely to be male, white and older – all demographics in which support for Trump tends to be higher.
Roughly nine-in-ten veterans are male (92%) while 8% are female, according to Census Bureau data from 2015. Nearly half of veterans in the U.S. (49%) are ages 65 years and older; this age group makes up just 19% of the public overall. And veterans remain more likely to be white than the public overall: Roughly eight-in-ten veterans (78%) are white, compared with about two-thirds (65%) of all adults.”
One of the things most overlooked in the 2016 election was that it was the first Presidential Election since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. It is going to get worse and worse.
Bad enough that the Senate is about as unrepresentative as possible;that gerrymandering combined with the unrepresentative house being restricted to 435 members means Dems have to win 6 to 7 % more votes than Reps to take control of the House;future elections may well hinge on who is not allowed to vote.
“From The New York Times:
The Randolph County elections board is scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss a proposal that would eliminate seven of nine polling locations in the county, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. Included in the proposed closures is Cuthbert Middle School where nearly 97 percent of voters are black. “There is strong evidence that this was done with intent to make it harder for African Americans,” ACLU of Georgia attorney Sean Young said. The ACLU has sent a letter to the elections board demanding that the polling places remain open and has filed open records requests for information about the proposal to close the polling places.
This is appalling enough on its face, but the sheer brass it takes to make this kind of decision right out in the open is testimony to the success that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has achieved at rolling back the hard-won blood-gains of the civil rights movement, a project that truly has been Roberts’s life’s mission ever since he was a young lawyer in the Justice Department under Ronald Reagan.
Under the old Voting Rights Act, gutted by the Roberts Court in Shelby County v. Holder, the decision in which Roberts declared the arrival of the Day of Jubilee, nobody would have dared pull a stunt like this. The pre-clearance provisions of the VRA would have kicked in. The DOJ would have been breathing down their necks within the hour.
According to the latest census figures, Randolph County’s population is more than 61 percent of black, double the statewide percentage.The median household income for the county was $30,358 in 2016, compared to $51,037 in the rest of the state. Nearly one-third of the county’s residents live below the poverty line, compared to about 16 percent statewide, according to U.S. Census figures. The closure of polling places will affect those who lack reliable transportation, the ACLU says. Public transit doesn’t exist in much of the rural county, and 22 percent of the county’s residents have no car. People who currently vote at the polling places that would close under the proposal would have to travel an additional 10 miles to vote, the ACLU says. With no car or bus to reach a different polling location, this predominantly black, Democratic county will not be able to fairly vote, ACLU of Georgia executive director Andrea Young said.
It shouldn’t be this easy to do this kind of thing in 2018. People shouldn’t feel comfortable doing it so plainly in the open. It shouldn’t be such a simple job to dress up the evil ghosts of the past in modern clothes and parade them down the rural highways where Winfred Rembert once broke rocks because he “stole” a gun from a white man who was trying to shoot him. The bastards at least should have to work harder for it.”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a22758991/georgia-close-black-polling-places-county/
So it looks like we will go through another fiasco with our dear leader threatening black people who quietly protest during the anthem because they are not loyal to the flag.
Meanwhile, the people who served under that flag have their deranged dear leader screwing up their lives:
“Given what goes on in public, you can’t help but wonder what the hell must be happening in this presidency behind closed doors. Are aides asked to find a sale price for Guam? Are they slow-walking plans for a Trump Tower replica in the White House lobby? How often does the president ask to have a truck event on the lawn?
But occasionally we do get a glimpse of what now passes as Presidential Behavior in a closed setting—for instance, via The Daily Beast, a meeting with veterans’ groups in the Roosevelt Room:
During the course of the meeting, Weidman brought up the issue of Agent Orange, an extremely notorious component of the U.S. herbicidal warfare on Vietnam. Weidman was imploring the president and his team to permit access to benefits for a broader number of vets who have said they were poisoned by Agent Orange.
Trump responded by saying, “That’s taken care of,” according to people in the room.
His reply puzzled the group.
Ah. Here we go.
Attendees began explaining to the president that the VA had not made enough progress on the issue at all, to which Trump responded by abruptly derailing the meeting and asking the attendees if Agent Orange was “that stuff from that movie.”
He did not initially name the film he was referencing, but it quickly became clear as Trump kept rambling that he was referring to the classic 1979 Francis Ford Coppola epic Apocalypse Now, and specifically the famous helicopter attack scene set to the “Ride of the Valkyries.” Sources present at the time tell The Daily Beast that multiple people—including Vietnam War veterans—chimed in to inform the president that the Apocalypse Now set piece he was talking about showcased the U.S. military using napalm, not Agent Orange. Trump refused to accept that he was mistaken and proceeded to say things like, “no, I think it’s that stuff from that movie.”
Did President Good Brain then move on, returning to the topic of the meeting to which he’d granted a slice of his limited presidential time? No, he refused to concede he was wrong and went around the table, polling people on whether the scene in Apocalypse Now features napalm or Agent Orange…..
Obviously, this has some negative consequences for, say, veterans. The Vietnam vet groups in the Apocalypse Now fiasco meeting were trying to improve treatment for vets exposed to Agent Orange. It does not appear they made progress, and Weidman says they now struggle to get the president’s ear at all. One upside of the meeting, however, was it was the last time veterans’ groups had to deal with Omarosa, whom Trump tapped to run point on vets issues when he first entered office. Now a mortal enemy Trump wants to see “arrested,” the former Apprentice was then saying nice things about the president, so he doled out out crucial responsibilities to her for which she was completely unqualified. Apparently, shortly after the Apocalypse meeting, Omarosa simply got bored of her vets assignment and other aides took it over.
(Trump, incidentally, is the same guy who joked that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases in 1970s New York was his “personal Vietnam,” and that he deserved the Congressional Medal of Honor. He avoided the actual draft on five separate occasions.)
This is in line with recent revelations, via fantastic reporting from ProPublica, that the Department of Veterans Affairs was basically being run out of Mar-a-Lago by three members of the president’s country club. Nothing says you love and care for the vets—something Trump says often—like turning over their issues to unaccountable private citizens who never served in the army, two of whom had no medical background whatsoever. Oh, and Omarosa.
It’s almost like electing a guy who knows nothing about anything and cares less—except about who’s praising him right now—might not be the best way to tackle this nation’s issues.”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a22757152/donald-trump-apocalypse-now-veterans-meeting/
Well, they got what they wanted, most of the white veterans at least.
“U.S. veterans, who broadly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election, have remained positive about the job he is doing as president. In April, 54% of those who have served in the military approved of his job performance. Trump’s job approval among the overall public was just 39%, according to the same survey, which was conducted using Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel.
Both younger and older veterans gave higher approval ratings for Trump than did younger and older adults overall. Nearly half of veterans ages 18 to 49 (46%) approved of Trump’s job performance, compared with only 31% of all adults younger than 50. Among those 50 and older, nearly six-in-ten veterans (58%) supported Trump, while about half of all older adults (49%) said the same.
The same pattern held for level of educational attainment. Approval of Trump was higher among both college-educated veterans and those with no college degree than it was for these groups among the public as a whole.
The April survey found that 98% of veterans who identify as Republicans approve of Trump; among Democratic veterans, the share was just 10%. Among the public overall, 86% of Republicans approve of Trump, compared with only 9% of Democrats.
Still, the demographics of military veterans are a factor in Trump’s higher approval ratings among this group. Compared with the public as a whole, veterans are more likely to be male, white and older – all demographics in which support for Trump tends to be higher.
Roughly nine-in-ten veterans are male (92%) while 8% are female, according to Census Bureau data from 2015. Nearly half of veterans in the U.S. (49%) are ages 65 years and older; this age group makes up just 19% of the public overall. And veterans remain more likely to be white than the public overall: Roughly eight-in-ten veterans (78%) are white, compared with about two-thirds (65%) of all adults.”
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/26/u-s-veterans-are-generally-supportive-of-trump/
uncontrolled typing is a symptom………
if 49% of veterans are >65 while the US is 19% >65 then a whole lot of the population which is over 65 never served in the US military……
I can make no other conclusion from those two percentages.