Any Means Necessary (In the 60s, police dogs and billy clubs kept black Americans from the polls.)

The Guardian ^ | October 18, 2004 | Gary Younge

[rightwingintelligentsia]

There is nothing George Bush likes more than extolling the virtues of democracy in faraway places. On October 8, during the second presidential debate, he promised: "Freedom is on the march. Tomorrow, Afghanistan will be voting for a president." Apparently some Afghans enjoyed their new freedoms so much, they voted for the US surrogate, Hamid Karzai, several times over, after the ink used to mark voters' thumbs wore off. By the middle of the day, all 15 of Karzai's challengers had withdrawn. Freedom was not even limping let alone marching.

Back in the US, however, the Almighty seems far less generous. Bush's enthusiasm to export democracy is not matched by his desire to defend it at home. With just a fortnight to go to the presidential election, efforts to obstruct and deny the vote, particularly to black and Latino voters, are intensifying. Forty years after the civil rights act enshrined the franchise in the constitution for African-Americans, freedom is being crippled.

[misterrob]

Ummm, those were democrats who were doing that . Ike sent troops in to open up the schools to black children.

[antaresequity]

The Guardian is the equivalent of Marin's Pacific Sun, or the SF Gate or Bay Guardian in San Francisco...

Yet somehow it keeps showing up in thread after thread here on FR...

As if analyzing a rag read by the unemployed and socialist parasites of Britain will serve us...

Enough already..

[Clump]

I read the whole article. This person has no clue, and offers no evidence of actual disenfranchisement. It is absurd really.

[marty60]

Amazing how they miss the one important fact in this screed. THE EVIL DUMS WERE INCHARGE THEM. Why do you think the South is Republican now. The Dums have always been the biggest racists this country ever have had. They should have been outlawed just like the KLAN.

[AngryJawa]

Funny how these allegations are NEVER backed up by facts, names, details, or corroborating evidence - EVER!

Yet the sheeple eat it right up.

[farmfriend]

Where do they get this fiction?

[infidel29]

Who was in power in southern states in the `60`s and ordered the suppression of black voters? Shhh... it was democrats. Who stood against the civil rights amendment, even to the point of filibustering the bill ad infinitum? ...pssttt... democrats, Al Gore Sr. was the filibusterer Who helped to establish "Jim Crow" laws? once again democrats... What party was instrumental in helping to create the NAACP? REPUBLICANS!..and now you know, The rest of the story!

[Thom Pain]

"Where do they get this fiction?"

Um...I'd Rath^er not say...

[Dan from Michigan]

BULLSHIT.

[farmfriend]

LOL!

[rightwingintelligentsia]

Yes, of course; but if this is the sort of drivel the Guardian feeds its readers on a daily basis, no wonder they're all fired up to badger Ohioans into voting for Kerry.

[ApplegateRanch]

"Forty years after the civil rights act enshrined the franchise in the constitution for African-Americans, freedom is being crippled."

I thought the Fourteenth Amendment "enshrined...in the Constitution," and the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act gave them leverage to get out from under the Democrat's various race-based poll tests used to legally disenfranchise Blacks.

Maybe a Republican sponsored project, utilizing public sources such as contemporary newspaper stories, magazines, and TV footage, to educate younger minority voters as to the facts of just who disenfranchised whom.

Maybe make it required background info for foreign "journalists" also.

[snooker]

The Guardian must not remember who was governor of these fine states. They may want to look up who was it standing in the schoolhouse doors. George Wallace was a dem as were all those other fine confederate flag waving, statehouse flag supporting governors.

Someday the blacks are going to realize they have been had.

Or is it that they just hope no one else remembers the truth. Email ZOT machine set to high.

[nothingnew]

Who is this a-hole Brit who spells Young like tongue? Oi'd like ta biff 'im in the spleeners and crack 'is nog, den mip'da payntry wid 'is buttomflux!

FMCDH(BITS)

[ApplegateRanch]

After re-reading the entire article, I just had to...send the "author" the following email:

---

Mr. Younge,

"Forty years after the civil rights act enshrined the franchise in the constitution for African-Americans, freedom is being crippled. "

It was already in the Constitution, and had been for about 100 years.

Those 'Acts" are something else altogether, and were designed to stop Southern DEMOCRATS from misapplying biased 'poll tests' and other forms of voter disenfranchisement; and end Southern DEMOCRAT enforced "separate but equal" segregation, after Supreme Court rulings found it unconstitutional.

It was Dwight D. Eisenhower who federalized the Alabama National Guard to force the DEMOCRAT governor to allow black children into the formerly segregated school...after that same governor reneged on a promise to President Eisenhower that he would use the state's National Guard troops to protect them himself.

(That aside, when did Great Britain start freely allowing "coloureds" and "blacks" (not to be confused with each other in your usage) to immigrate and become Permanent Residents (not simply visit, spend, & leave) in Merry Ol' England? No, not even (or was that, especially not?) Commonwealth Citizens. So stop lecturing while you still only sound like an ignorant, biased fool.)

This not to say that ALL Democrats, even Southern Democrats, were evil or scurrilous people, nor that no Republicans were racially biased or guilty of dirty tricks; but, if you are going to write a piece on this topic, you should have the facts correct; and also include the many acts of Democratic groups also destroying Republican voter registrations in several states; invading, damaging, and even shooting into occupied Republican offices around the country. Of the Democrats systematic attempts to disenfranchise Mr. Nader's supporters, through interminable challenges to his candidacy in state after individual state.

Then, there are other, more sinister, anti-Bush rantings, like this in an official publication of a PUBLIC, State University:

Rationale for Revolution
Portland State University Vanguard ^ | 10/15/2004 | Chaelan MacTavish
http://www.dailyvanguard.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/15/416f745829c7b

Or, from the same paper, another article hoping for...advocating?...violence:

Hoping for disaster
Perilous Pondering

Michelle K. Howa
October 15, 2004
http://www.dailyvanguard.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/15/416f741dde75f

Just harmless students, harmlessly venting? Or, true zealots, advocating real violence, if the election doesn't go their way?

These are not isolated, nor even overly remarkable examples, other than for their venue; they were just the handiest examples.

This year, one does not need to look far to see serious warning flags, and blatantly biased articles like yours, especially when the "facts" are just plain wrong, do not help to calm the already overly roiled waters.

[persnal information removed]

[Billthedrill]

Where do they get this fiction?

In this case, straight from the DNC. The whole "disenfranchisement" ploy is a blatant attempt to cast doubt on the outcome of the election, should that be to Bush. You may rest assured that if Kerry gets in these stories will disappear as if they had never been.

[Minn]

Not a word in all this about the massive Democratic Party vote fraud machine. Just a little bit one sided aren't we?

In Ohio, Mr Blackwell also told election boards that anyone who turned up at the wrong polling station would not be able to cast a provisional ballot (to be verified later).

What exactly is wrong with requiring that people vote where they live? People are electing more than a president you know. How can you have valid city council elections when people vote in wards they don't live in. It's all on one ballot.

The former employee of a company hired by the Republican party to register voters in Nevada says he was told to throw Democrats' registration forms away.

Not reading the news much are you. Maybe your reading has been a bit selective. I can give you several dozen examples of this same thing on the Demo side. Did you hear about the Crack Cocaine for Democrat voter registration scheme, or did you just ignore it? Thought so.

Name one black voter in 2000 that properly registered, properly filled out their ballot and had their vote go uncounted. You can't

Why are rules governing elections, and seeking to insure that the people casting votes are eligible and who they say they are, such a threat to Democrats?

When is the last time a corpse voted Republican? When was the last time a corpse voted Democrat? In every election since 1960.

Why are Republicans capable of registering, getting themselves to the polls and voting their own mind, while Democrats have to bend all types of rules to register voters, coerce and cajole their voters to the polls, and tell them who to vote for, Could it be that Republicans are operating in the true spirit of democracy while Democrats are engaged in corrupt machine politics?

You are right about one thing. Republicans do believe that more voting isn't always better for the republic. Republicans are quite happy when elections proceed without the votes of the ignorant, the apathetic, the clueless, the non-citizen, the felon, and the dead. Democrats, on the other hand, rely on these voters as a large portion of their base.

[sport]

What they are not telling thei is that it was democrats that were doing that. And they are too stupid to learn the truth for themselves.

[jordan8]

The best indication of how an American will vote is race.

The only true sentence in the entire article.