From Juliet Lapidos at NYTimes…
Encouraging more participation in the democratic process in a community that feels alienated from political power – hence the demonstrations – seems like an obviously good idea; and one that’s particularly compelling because it’s so simple. Voting is an alternative to protesting in the streets.
And yet, the executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, Matt Wills, denounced the plan.
Mr. Wills told the right-wing website Breitbart: “If that’s not fanning the political flames, I don’t know what is. I think it’s not only disgusting but completely inappropriate.”
On another right-wing site, Red State, Dan McLaughlin also argued that there was something indecent about the registration drive. Ferguson presents an opportunity for “Right and Left” to find “common ground,” he wrote. But “the minute you turn your energies into just another effort to register Democratic voters and fire up the Democratic base in advance of an election,” he argued, “the harder you make it to keep the common ground from vanishing in the fog.”
Who said anything about “register[ing] Democratic voters”?
“Voter registration for #Ferguson residents is at the QT & the crime scene. SIGN UP. Get on the juries, choose your leaders,” tweeted attorney and activist @ReignOfApril. “Voter Registration is a brilliant way to honor #MichaelBrown’s memory. It’s a positive reaction to horrible situation,” wrote @Koursey in reply.
While the city of Ferguson is two-thirds African-American, the vast majority of their police force and almost all local elected officials are not.
“Though whites make up just 29% of the city’s residents,” reports MSNBC’s Zachary Roth, “five of Ferguson’s six city council members are white, as is Mayor James Knowles. And six of the local school board’s seven members are white.”
“We warned people about these kinds of things,” John Gaskin of the Missouri NAACP told Roth. “Who hires the police officers? The police chief. Who hires the police chief? The mayor. Who hires the mayor? Who elects the council folks?”
As the Times’ Lapidos goes on to note, “Mr. Sharpton did not say that the residents of Ferguson should vote for Democrats; he said they should vote, full stop.” She adds: “Isn’t it telling that both Mr. Wills and Mr. McLaughlin make no distinction between voter registration and Democratic registration?”
For the record, Ferguson’s local elections are nonpartisan.
(Separately, kudos to the Times’ Lapidos for describing those two websites for what they are, “right-wing”, rather than usual “conservative”. It must not have been easy to get that past the Times‘ editors, even though it’s completely accurate. Or maybe the paper has changed their previously unhelpful style rules under their new Executive Editor Dean Baquet, along with this one. Either way, truth in reporting there is accurate, a great change of pace and far more helpful to the electorate.)
Actually practicing the right vs. left politics which has come to define bradblog is what’s completely disgusting and inappropriate. I did read through the smear piece to see which Republicans you are refering to and much to my surprise (not) there wasn’t one prominent Republican listed. Just two obscure individuals.
Kudos to Lapidos for having the journalistic inegrity to not denigrate an entire political party and it’s millions of people with an intentionally spreading misinformation headline based on the words of two people.
And shame on Brad for lacking such journalistic integrity.
One can only wonder when the republican party will acknowledge being taken over by KKK ideology.
If it quacks like a duck …
Steve, In my view, you are one of the primary purveyors of right/left politics around here.
You project your shit onto Brad, rail at him for it, and then damn HIM for YOUR own projections. Seen it time and again. Would love to see something different from you, for a change.
WingnutSteve @ 1:
Um…”two obscure individuals”? The head of the Missouri GOP (where this is all taking place)? And two of the biggest Rightwing websites in the nation? All as reported by the NYTimes?! Mmmm..kay. Whatever you need to tell yourself, Steve-o. Apologies that I didn’t ignore what your party and your wingnut websites are doing. I’ll try to avoid the truth in the future, if that helps. Sounds like you’d be more comfortable with that.
By the way, not sure where you keep coming up with this “right vs. left politics” thing. It has nothing to do with “right vs. left politics” (at least not until there is an actual “left” that has any actual place on the American political stage). It is, however, about right vs. wrong, as we’ve long and accurately advertised around here. You’re welcome to choose to be on whichever of those two sides you like, though it seems you made that choice long ago, I’m sorry to mention again here.
David Lasagna @ 3:
Kind of amazing how Steve doesn’t even seem to notice his projection, eh? For the record, I’m old enough to remember when he didn’t do that. But, I’m afraid, he’s been pulled into the dark vortex. Maybe someday again he’ll see some light. Sadly, no longer holding my breath for that though. 🙁
Yes, two obscure individuals. Two individuals whom 99.999% of the population has likely never heard of. Based on the words of those two even the NY Times did not run with a headline so misleading as yours is. A comparison would be if a blog site ran a headline “Progressives want people to get ass cancer and die” because a progressive said that. It wouldn’t be a fair comparison because that was said by a prominent progressive on national network TV and not by a couple of nuts no one cares about. I understand desperation is setting in as November looms closer but as someone who fancies himself a journalist you ought to think about having a little integrity and shelving the deceit.
As to David, I do very little projecting here. If I (rarely) agree with something like the picture from Ferguson of last week I comment. Other than that I simply point out a few of the numerous instances where Brad is either violating his own rules by spreading disinformation as with this headline or making a complete joke out of his ridiculous right vs. left claim. You know who I am, you know what I believe, I don’t make stupid elitist claims of being holier than thou and then promptly ignore it as Brad does.
What are they worried about. Aren’t they using electronic voting machines? It’s not as if they actual vote count would ever be made, is it?
WingnutSteve. Poor, sad, WingnutSteve:
I’m really not sure why I even bother with these responses, Steve. I know they mean nothing to ya. But you seem like such a sad, tortured, confused and, mostly, conned person, that I really do for sorry for you, and how you’ve been played, so I keep on trying. You’re here after all, and have been for years. So surely you know something is wrong with the nonsense you’re being sold elsewhere.
First, perhaps a better way to explain what David was trying to say to you about projection, is better described as the presumption that others actually think the way you do. It’s telling that you wrote: “I understand desperation is setting in as November looms closer”. Why? Because until you wrote that, November hadn’t even occurred to me as an entity one way or another. So, there is neither desperation, nor even a “loom[ing]” sense of November as an entity at all — or there wasn’t, until you mentioned it, and then I realized, “Shit. Here we go again soon enough. What completely predicatable, recurring deja vu of an electoral mess will we have to slog through again this time?”
You’ve been around here long enough, that I’d have thought you’d know by now that I don’t much care who wins or loses in November, as much as I want to make sure that whoever wants to vote gets to vote. And whoever does vote, has their vote counted, counted accurately, and in a way that they can know their votes have all been counted accurately. That’s true for Republican, Democratic and “other” voters. And that — at least to me — has nothing to do with this Right/”Left” paradigm you have become so seemingly obsessed with.
In short: “November looms closer” is pretty much meaningless to me, other than for the reasons I just described — though hadn’t even thought about until you pulled the phrase out of your ass, as some kind of charge or explanation for something I do, have said or written or…whatever.
BUT, the fact that you even think “November” has that kind of meaning to me (or any meaning, really), does seem to say a lot about you, and where your head must be at right now. “November” means something to you, it seems, so you are presuming it means something to everyone else — or, at least, to me. You think in terms of “November”, so obviously, everyone else does too! Projection.
Second and lastly, I now understand that you seem to be upset about my headline, because you think it’s “misleading”, because not every Republican who ever lived feels the same way, and, presumably reveals what a partisan, leftwing, Democratic, liberal, progressive political hack I actually am. Thanks for clarifying what you found upsetting about that headline.
True, I could have said “The Head of the Missouri Republican Party, Two of the Biggest Republican Websites in the Country, Along With Fox ‘News’, Rush Limbaugh, and Many Other ‘Obscure’ Republicans Call Ferguson Voter Registration Drive ‘Disgusting, Completely Inappropriate'” — But that’s a bit unwieldy.
So, instead, I went with: “Republicans Call Ferguson Voter Registration Drive ‘Disgusting, Completely Inappropriate'”
Looks like other Left-wing, progressive, Democratic, liberal websites must be feeling “desperation…setting in as November looms closer” too. One of them was even was partisan and “misleading” enough to open their article on this matter, with this similar, “disgusting and inappropriate” claim in their very first sentence!:
Wow! What a bunch of leftwing, progressive, Democratic partisan hacks those folks at Breitbart.com are! How dare they be so misleading and “completely disgusting and inappropriate”! They must be desperate as November looms closer!
By the way, though I haven’t read all 1307 comments on the article at that totally “obscure” website, I didn’t notice any comments from you there complaining about how “misleading” and “desperate” they were to push their partisan liberal Democratic progressive agenda by “denigrat[ing] an entire political party and it’s millions of people with… intentionally spreading misinformation” about this story.
Weird. I must have missed it.
Brad I can honestly say I’ve never typed in the breitbart url in my life. The few times I’ve been to that site was following a link, usually from here. I really don’t care what they say there, they are not part of my world. Bradblog is part of my world, kind of like a mole or something, just won’t go away. And I do care how things are portrayed here. I think the politics of division is the single biggest problem America faces today. I see a bright and energetic young guy who has a blog site which is focused on another of the biggest problems we face, election integrity. This should be a win win situation, this should be a site everyone who cares about our elections would want to visit. And then I see the misleading headlines such as this one, I see divisiveness, I see a guy alienating a good percentage of his potential audience. And I get disappointed because in my opinion you are exacerbating the problem, which ensures you will never realize your full potential. America is full of left/right wing bloggers and talking heads. You have a gift, my wish is for you to use it for the greater good instead of an ideology. My apologies for losing my temper on this thread, I should play nicer. Peace…
WingnutSteve said:
If fighting to ensure people can participate in their own representative democracy and calling out, by name, those working against it and them — yes, even if they are Republicans (as is usually the case) or Democrats (as is occasionally, if still too often the case) — is “an ideology”, then I suspect your wish may go unrequited.