Lost everything in the recession? Foreclosed? Homeless? Well, now you’ve lost your vote too – Republican ratfuckery in Michigan, from the Michigan Messenger via the estimable Attaturk:
The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Mich., a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the coming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.
“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed…
Carabelli is not the only Republican Party official to suggest the targeting of foreclosed voters. In Ohio, Doug Preisse, director of elections in Franklin County (around the city of Columbus) and the chair of the local GOP, told the Columbus Dispatch that he has not ruled out challenging voters before the election due to foreclosure-related address issues.
Now, why ever might they want to do that?
The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters.
There you go.
But of course being Republicans there’s always a particularly vicious and venal little twist:
…the McCain campaign’s Michigan headquarters is located in the office buildiing of Trott & Trott, a law firm that specialized in foreclosures, whose founder is a major Republican fund-raiser.
Sarah Palin’s sudden rise to political prominence reminds me sharply of Nicole Kidman’s fanatically ambitious smalltown US weathergirl in the sadly underrated movie “To Die For”.
She’s a solipsistic provincial beauty queen who backstabs, (literally and metaphorically), manipulates and double-deals her way to power and fame on the back of anyone she can use to advantage:
Watch this:
That is scarily like.
Suzanne Stone (Maretto) knows exactly what she wants. She wants to be a television newscaster and she is willing to do ANYTHING to get what she wants. What she lacks in intelligence, she makes up for in cold determination and diabolical wiles. As she pursues her goal with relentless focus, she is forced to destroy anything and anyone that may stand in her way, regardless of the ultimate cost or means necessary. To Die For (1995)
Family friends, colleagues, husbands; it matters not. All that matters is that she gets what she wants. The trouble is her lies become so blatant and so obvious there has to be a reckoning.
So far Palin’s narrative matches the movie too. She’s got everything she ever wanted and now she’s a rigged election and a flatlining EKG away from the presidency. We’re building up to the big denouement.
In the movies Kidman’s lies and manipulations begin to catch up with her. However, unlike ‘Suzanne Stone’, Palin can’t just physically get rid of inconvenient obstacles and people (not that that hasn’t been known in gubernatorial politics before) – there are laws against that sort of thing. But she may well be thinking she can up and off back to the frozen wastes when it all gets too difficult.
If her fallback position is to drop out of the race, return to Alaska in a blaze of almost-was-vice-presidential glory to reign as the undisputed Matriarch and Bitch Queen of all Wasilia, then she’s got another think coming. The thing about shitting on people on your way up is that unlike in the movies, you’ll see them again on the way down.
Enough of the drama
Submitted by Sylvia Plath (not verified) on Fri, 2008-09-05 08:23.
There are those who say that we should fully support McCain just to get Palin and her “me first” dramas out of here so that the Karl Rove, Republican machine can groom her into what they want, which may include fresh dialog on ANWR and America First populist rhetoric. Many think that she help us more in that way. Yes, perhaps, but only if for once she takes the advise of others over her stubborn “don’t tell me what to do” attitude. There are those who said in 2006 that an “R” is an “R” and when the Republican party fully supports her to help her to Juneau, she would be beholding to the Republican party. They (we) were wrong in 2006. Why would she conform to expectations of a party now? McCain needs to dump her now. She needs to come back here and face the music of the mess she has left us. Is she planning to jet off to media star status land and expect zombie rat Frank Bailey take the blame and consequences for her? Or will she blame Todd or others? Expect anyting from her as she advances herself. We as citizens must not expect her to do the right thing. We must make her. Or else, Thomas Paine will be rolling in his grave.
And that’s a Republican supporter.
It’s always satisfying when the villainess gets their comeuppance in the movies, but it doesn’t happen so often in real life. Usually they just walk away and die quietly and comfortably in bed after a lifetime of treating people like crap. This time Palin may well get hers, if pissed off Alaskans have any say in it.
Can it really be 31 years ago? For those youth who think they and they alone invented clubbing and getting out of your head, and for those like me who were there (and for those who just pretend they were there) here’s Wigan Casino as it was, from the 1977 documentary, This England:
I’m going to watch this over and over and see who I recognise. Looks like half the lads I went to school with were there.
Damn, I want my misspent youth back so I can misspend it all over again; only this time I’ll make sure to cop off with the bloke with the floppy fringe. Or I did I actually do that? It’s all gone so hazy….