Voter ID Laws - Discriminatory or Necessary?

The following text was part of a recent email I received from the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC):

Over the past decade, Republican state legislators have fought to ensure the integrity of elections by passing laws that require voters to present a photo ID before they are permitted to vote.

These laws have been a success in protecting our elections and stopping illegal votes from being counted on Election Day.

But now liberal activists have announced plans to devote over $30 million to overturn voter ID laws passed by state legislators and supported by the American people.

Voter ID laws make it easier to vote and harder to cheat and have been upheld by courts across the country. 

We've heard about this issue many times in the past, but here's one article from 2016 I found in researching this topic:

African-Americans who fought for voting rights during the Civil Rights movement claim the new laws are meant to secure a Republican majority in states with large black populations that consistently vote Democrat. In July, a North Carolina federal court overturned the state’s voter ID law, ruling that it targets African-Americans “with almost surgical precision.”

Question: Do you drive a car, truck, RV, SUV, or any other type of motorized vehicle requiring a driver’s license to operate? You do? So do I! An so do most people of driving age in this country.

This quote above, and here “Nine Southern states have implemented voting restrictions since 2012. Most require voters to show state-issued photo ID at the polls.” caused me to wonder about the real motive behind such a piece. In this article from CBS News, the implication is that there are hundreds of thousands of residents in the southern states who do not have state-issued photo ID; who happen to be black. Really?

Question: Why is this article using the Civil Rights movement of the sixties and linking more recent laws passed by southern states about voter ID laws to it?

Answer: Liberals want to continue the narrative of racism to leverage false claims which have nothing to do with the reason for these new laws, but, more importantly, to continue fostering voter fraud such as multiple votes which have been proven to have occurred. Another reason for such recent laws is because of the massive influx of illegal immigrants who are effectively blending into our society and have attempted, sometimes successfully, to vote in our elections, that’s why!

Notice how the reporters who wrote this short, but obviously biased, article using words like “claim” and phrases like, “… secure a Republican majority…” and “… states with large black populations that consistently vote Democrat.”? These arguments fall apart when one realizes the fallacy of the points made regarding the requirement of state-issued photo ID to be presented at the polling locations in an election.

If there actually are those who do not posses a driver’s license, and they are interested in voting – it would be interesting to know what the actual voter participation of southern state residents actually is – then it wouldn’t be that difficult for them to go to where they could prove legal residence and acquire a state-issued photo ID in advance.

Is that expectation and motivation to protect the integrity of our elections from being defrauded racist, or discriminatory? Of course not!

Funding For the Border Wall?

With the conviction of "El Chappo" in court recently, the question has arisen as to whether Sen. Cruz's bill he's introduced in the Senate of using the seized assets of the convicted drug kingpin's - $14 Billion - will gain momentum, or is even possible.

This concept seems like a logical and sensible solution to the meager amount announced through negotiations between Republican and Democrat representatives tasked to negotiate funds - $1.37 Billion - to avoid a second partial government shutdown this coming Friday.

I suspect that, while it may gain traction in the Senate, once it arrives in the newly dominated Democratically controlled House, it will meet a silent death.

However, if we who support such a concept put sufficient pressure on our representatives, it might cause enough political inertia to create at least some level of dialogue in committee at get media attention; well, at least on FOX News, but not so much on the alphabet channels like ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and PBS.

And, for those who don't believe we have a drug smuggling problem coming from Mexico, I invite you to watch this video:

 
 Hey, at least I'm trying to be positive and hopeful!

Living in the "Brave New World"

I have interacted on and used the Internet since the late ‘80s of Radio Shack’s TRS 80s and Commodore 64 computers. I recall fondly the days when I’d use a land line phone modem to connect. Those days are considered the “Jurassic period” of the Internet’s history now. Over those decades I’ve seen the progression of its growth; from the Netscape browser to the advent of Google and the ever-increasing chip speeds, and water cooled gaming systems to handle the heat generated by them.

However, there is one thing about interacting on the Internet which greatly disturbs and annoys me, and, I’m sure, the vast majority of users across the nation. We all know it as “junk mail”. For the typical online user, dealing with these annoyances have been obviously growing futile as we lead and conduct our busy lives of doing business, or even just communicating with family online across the country, or around the globe.

Since I can only speak for myself, allow me to account what my experience has become of late. I’ve subscribed to certain organizations I wish to support, or receive information from. I’m also well aware of the reality of how business on the Internet and in the digital age has evolved and works. Some of these companies, or organizations, sell subscribers' email addresses to other similar type businesses and organizations as a way to make money. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2015 only set rules for commercial emails; whatever the term “commercial” means to the FCC. Hey, I'm all for "free enterprise", but it’s obvious to me that it hasn’t resulted in diminishing junk mail which has been growing at an exponential rate.

As a result, I’ve received “junk emails” from various online businesses or organizations to which I never subscribed. Consequently, I’ve used the “unsubscribe” links, found in very small font size, at the very bottom of a page, to take me off their list. This experience has resulted in the reality that there is a plethora of different “unsubscribe” formats, or designs. Some are immediate, informing the user that you’ve been removed from their list. Others require you to type your email address in to get the desired result. I speak from experience having been a web designer in the past myself. You know the drill because you’ve, no doubt, experienced this yourself.

Yet, my experience with attempting to “unsubscribe” has resulted in getting more new, and unwanted, emails from other previously unknown businesses, or organizations,  to which I never subscribed. My only logical conclusion as to why this happens is that upon unsubscribing from one entity, that entity then takes those email addresses for unsubscribe requests and sells them to other businesses, or entities, which are aligned with their kind of organization, or business. Otherwise, how would that new entity get my email address?

I’m sure there are probably other methods and means by which this happens, but it’s highly annoying to have to take time to deal with these pesky emails – often “click-bait” type ones – which have grown to exorbitant levels lately. I can hear those who might be reading this saying, “What’s your problem, dude, just use the delete button!” I do, but I spend more time pressing delete, than I do reading the ones I want to keep. I’m also aware of the fact that there are those who simply acquire a new email address on another provider to get away from them.

If this practice is breaking a law the FCC, or whichever other federal bureaucracy has regulated, then it’s obviously a lost cause, and very few, if any who engage in selling my email without my consent are being prosecuted and fined, or whatever they do. So, apparently, dealing with these annoyances is merely a fact of life in the digital age of social media and Internet use. And I’ve only restricted my topic to one narrow sector of online use which is now the dominant means of interaction for the vast majority of our nation’s population today.

Instead, our elected representatives, either in our state or nationally, are busy and overwhelmed with so many other priorities that the seemingly insignificant things – like pestering, unwanted emails – grows ever more pervasive to the point in the future when use will diminish significantly by user choice, and significant reduction of commerce on the Internet will result. Then again, with the younger generations not knowing anything differently, they will most likely just accept it as a normal thing in life.

But, when one’s lived during the period through which there was no Internet for the common user, to where almost every appliance or gadget we purchase today is in some way connected to the web, then it blows their mind about the “brave new world” we’ve evolved into. I shudder to think about what's to come!

Liberal Hypocrisy

Great Quotes From Democrats

These are just too good to pass up not posting from an e-friend who shared them with me:
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I really like this. Such great examples of the minds of democrats.
 
You can’t make this stuff up!
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Great Orators of the Democratic Party-
PAST:
"One man with courage makes a majority." ~Andrew Jackson
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" ~Franklin D. Roosevelt
 
"The buck stops here." ~Harry S. Truman
 
"Show me a politician who got rich while in office and I will show you a crook." ~Harry S. Truman
 
"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" ~John F. Kennedy
RECENT:
"It depends what your definition of 'is' is?'' ~William Jefferson Clinton
"Those rumors are false. I believe in the sanctity of marriage." ~John Edwards
"What difference does it make?" (re: Benghazi) ~Hillary Clinton
"I invented the Internet." ~Al Gore
"America is, is no longer, uh, what it, uh, could be, uh, what it was once was, uh, and I say to myself, uh, I don't want that future, uh, for my children." ~Barack Obama
"I have campaigned in all 57 states." ~Barack Obama (Quoted 2008)
"You don't need God anymore; you have us Democrats." ~Nancy Pelosi (Quoted 2006)
"Paying taxes is voluntary." ~Sen. Harry Reid
 

"Bill is the greatest husband and father I know. No one is more faithful, true, and honest than he is."
~Hillary Rodham Clinton (Quoted 1998)
"You have a business. You didn't build that. Someone else did!" ~Barack Obama (Quoted 2012)

And the most ridiculous gem of wisdom, from the "Mother Superior Moron": "We just have to pass the Healthcare Bill to see what's in it." ~Nancy Pelosi (Quoted March 2010 )
(As one Doctor said: "That is also the perfect definition of a stool sample.")

Beyond a doubt, the greatest statement of all was made by Democrat House Speaker Sam Rayburn at the first Congressional session after Ted Kennedy was caught, on camera, having sex with one of his aides on the deck of his yacht .... "Ah see that the good Senatuh from the great state of Massutwoshits has changed his position on off-shore drillin'."
 

AND THE LATEST FROM THIS DYSFUNCTIONAL BUNCH IS: "My fear is if North Korea nukes us, Trump is gonna get us into a war." ~Maxine Waters (Quoted 2017)

How Do We Fix Our Immigration Problem?

The email below from Sara Carter's web site reports today how our current "2nd Chance" negotiations for funding our southern border wall are going:

Dems Making Entire Country a Sanctuary

Negotiations over securing and building a border wall have reached an impasse Sunday as bipartisan talks are failing and both sides are edging closer to a government shutdown this Friday. Further, Democrats are pushing to weaken Immigration and Customs Enforcement, proposing drastic limitations on detention beds and weakening the agencies effectiveness to hold criminal illegal immigrants, said Tom Homan, former ICE Director. “The Dems proposal will result in tens of thousands of criminal aliens and other illegal aliens that are currently detained pending a court hearing or removal to be released into our communities,” said Homan.

READ MORE

Gee, from reading that last sentence, it's just common sense to understand why so many law abiding citizens are buying personal defense tools - guns - to protect themselves. Oh, wait a minute, the liberal/socialists are working 24/7 to make it illegal for us to do that. Hmmm... who's side are they on?

It appears the liberal/socialists are hell-bent on transforming this nation*, which everyone comes to because of its opportunity, to one which is just like the country they fled from; a hell-hole with little to no opportunity and the elite as the only ones with the privilege to use all the conveniences everyone used to have. Didn't the politburo in the U.S.S.R. have that before it collapsed?

But, many people either don't understand, or are wrongly convinced, that those who support the president's desire to build a wall along parts of the southern border are completely racists, anti-immigration people. Not true at all! Let's take a look at the immigration facts which are key factors of this crisis situation by watching a 5.5 minute video just produced by PragerU which explains this in a clear, balanced, presentation about why reforms to our immigration system need to be negotiated in Congress; something the liberal/socialists refuse to do.

Why are they refusing to discuss and negotiate? Simple; Pres. Trump is in the White House and is proposing getting this issue dealt with. After all, the liberal/socialists have been successful at getting the past several presidents to do nothing about it. Please, keep contacting our elected members of Congress and demand something be done!
* Need proof of what I say? Check this video clip out!

American Exceptionalism

On Rush Limbaugh's Open Line Friday radio show, he spoke in the third hour about American exceptionalism and gave a monologue about his thoughts on it. We who were alive during this era he speaks about can relate totally. I share this also because it connects with what I stated in my post about how my students 10 years ago were already expressing similar ignorant attitudes about the past; making my point about how education - especially accurate history - is becoming frightening. I realize this is a long read, but it is SO worth taking the time, that I had to share it here for those readers who may have not caught it:

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You know, American exceptionalism is often mis-defined and misunderstood, and I want to once again take a moment to properly explain it.  Any time you use a phrase like “American exceptionalism,” some will have a knee-jerk reaction as though you’re bragging.  “Oh, you Americans think you’re better than anybody, huh?  Well, screw you!”  That’s not at all what it means.  American exceptionalism is simply an acknowledgment that America is the exception in a world of tyranny, a world of poverty, a world of bondage [slavery].

We in America don’t often stop, if ever, to think about this because we’ve never experienced anything other than America.  But the history of humanity is primarily a history of poverty, as opposed to prosperity.  It’s a history of tyranny, dictatorships, suffering, bondage.  I’m not making this up.  I mean, that is the way in which most people who have lived on earth since the beginning of time have not experienced the life we as Americans take for granted.

We’re the only country that has a charter indicating and enshrining that the very existence of citizens and human beings is in a state of God-created freedom.  That charter, that Constitution was written by brilliant people whose primary objective was to keep it that way.  They sought to keep it that way — the focus on individual liberty and prosperity and freedom, pursuit of happiness — by limiting the role of government in day-to-day existence.

The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, specifically lay out what government cannot do.  The Constitution does not say what government can do.  It does not empower govern-ment in certain ways over people.  The Constitution reserves the premise of individual liberty and freedom for the people and gives the people the freedom and the opportunity to choose those who will govern them or lead them or what have you.

Most of the people in the world have never gotten close to being able to live under such circumstances.  In virtually all other countries in the world, the governments are the focus, and everything revolves around government.  Now, we’re trending that way. Don’t… I’m talking about our founding, and this is what’s so crucial is to maintain that. Our founding’s under attack, our existence as a free nation is under attack, most seriously from internal forces now.
The only thing that saves us, the only thing that has saved us over generations is education, a proper education of the Constitution, of our founding, of our country.  Why.  Why it was founded the way it is. How did the United States come to be? What did it take for the United States to come to be?  None of that’s taught anymore.  Instead, America is taught as inherently racist and unjust and immoral.  You know the drill.

I don’t know how many generations that we have now, but it’s a minimum of two and probably more, who have grown up not having the foggiest idea of the greatness of America.  You know when Trump did his State of the Union Address Tuesday night and he singled out the World War 2 heroes? How many young people do you think had the slightest idea what he was talking about when he talked about storming the beaches of Normandy and the concentration camps?  Look.  It’s a long time ago.  And for people our age, you and me, we were taught this growing up.
Our parents did all that — and kids today, their parents didn’t.  And if they’re not taught it, if there’s no reverence for it, they’re not gonna ever know it. And, as such, they’re not gonna have any respect for it.  And the same thing about Constitution, the origins of the country and what it took to become the United States.  How did it happen?  Okay, we declare independence from a tyrannical king in the United Kingdom, Great Britain, and we fought the Revolutionary War, and then we had the Civil War. Do people really know what it took?

Do they really know what was sacrificed by the people that built this country, who designed it?  They don’t.  Not enough do.  As such, there isn’t any reverence for it — and when you replace the reverence with the idea that the nation was founded in sin and injustice, well, then everything becomes threatening.  I worry about it.  I worry that this country can only survive as long as the people who live in it understand what it is and have almost a reverently appreciation for it, because it is so unique.

It hadn’t been done before. It’s never been done.  It was never even tried before.  The closest you could say that anybody even tried would be the 1500s with Magna Carta but that was basically just a charter that was not significantly implemented on a widespread basis, but it had the same principles as the Constitution.  Now all that’s out the window and it’s been replaced by an education, indoctrination — whatever you want to call it — that’s just sickening.
And this is why I take all this very seriously.  It’s such a God-given opportunity to be an American.  It’s such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be taken advantage of, to be maximized.  It’s worth protecting, it’s worth fighting for, and it’s always been under assault. Since the founding, it’s been under assault.  You stop and think, this always… I mentioned this a bunch of times, and it just… It still mesmerizes me.
That a piece of paper and the reverence, respect for a piece of paper, the Constitution, is all that stood in the way of this country becoming a tyranny. That every president elected – there may be a few exemptions — but every president elected meant the oath of office when he took it and worked hard to defend and protect the Constitution, a piece of paper. A piece of paper doesn’t have an army. If the president wants to overthrow the United States or run a coup, the Constitution’s an inanimate object.

It’s a piece of paper that for over 250 years has been respected simply because it exists. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to throw it away and to try to turn this country into something it was not founded to be, and some presidents have made half-baked efforts at doing so. But never full-fledged. The fact that we have survived this long is a miracle to me, given humane nature and given the history of the world.

Most people expect to be controlled by government. Most people expect to be hemmed in by the authorities. Most people expect to go through life being told what they can’t do. But only in the United States are you limited in what you can do by yourself. Only in the United States are the limitations individual citizens face self-imposed. You have a dream and you want to be whatever you can be, you live in the place to try to make it happen. The only person stopping you is you.

Something as simple as “I don’t want to move.” Okay, if you don’t want to move, then maybe you’re limiting your chances. But that’s up to you. Well, slowly and surely we’re creeping into this same set of circum-stance where people live in daily fear of, quote, unquote, “the authorities.” And they live in fear or are being shamed by the woke segment of society, political correctness running amok.

I have a grave concern and I think it’s all due to the fact that our education system has been corrupted and great damage has been done to it on purpose so that there is as we grow and get older less and less and less understanding and appreciation for the true uniqueness and greatness of America. Because if that hadn’t happened then all these other internal, external threats would not pose nearly as big a consequence or set of consequences as they do.
If we had proper education, just basics, the Green New Deal would be laughed out of existence by virtually everybody who was exposed to it. Instead, the Associated Press is trying to treat it as reasonable and sensible and is out trying to sell it, and in doing so, they’re lying about what it is.

The lack of education extends to way too many places. This journalist, his name is Matthew Iglesias. And I don’t know where he writes. If it’s Vox or one of these Millennial places, Slate. I’m not sure which. But here’s the tweet. “It’s weird to me how often JFK’s ‘let’s put a man on the Moon’ idea is cited as a success story — it cost tons of money, was driven by Cold War hysteria, and turned out to be useless to the point that it’s been decades now since anyone’s bothered to go.”

Do you realize how ignorant that is from beginning to end? And I’m being charitable calling it ignorant. “Let’s put in a man on the Moon cited as a success story, it costs tons of money, driven by Cold War hysteria.” He’s referring to the fact that the Russians, the Soviets put a satellite up there called Sputnik, and that made us all paranoid. We were afraid that we were gonna be annihilated by a nuclear bomb launched from space, so we had to get up to speed in the space game to keep up with the dastardly Soviets, who people like Mr. Iglesias thought were harmless. “And turned out to be useless to the point that it’s been decades now since anyone’s bothered to go.”

Now, he can only think this if he has had absolutely no proper education about that era. I remember when I was a teenager, a man named Shorty Powers of NASA came to Cape Girardeau. They were in the process of selling everybody on the space program. NASA was doing nationwide PR. Somebody in our little town had enough pull to get somebody from NASA to come in and do a speech, a presentation.
And my father was fascinated with space. He was a pilot, so he took me to this thing. And one of the aspects of Mr. Powers’ presentation was all of the technology that was created out of necessity for the space program to put a man on the Moon, to keep human beings alive in little bitty capsules in outer space, the things that were necessary to invent to make that possible had ramifications throughout everyday American society that led to the enhance-ment of our quality of life, that led to the opportunity for prosperity.

Now, yeah, they would have probably happened immediately, but to say that the space program was a waste of money because it was simply a Cold War paranoia is ridiculous. How about the invention of the CAT scanner, computer microchips, cordless tools, freeze-dried food, including Tang, insulation, memory foam, satellite broadcasting, interstellar communica-tions, scratch resistant glass and lenses, smoke detectors, water filtration.

The list is endless. Things that the space program had to invent to sustain life that found their way into everyday life in America and eventually found their way into everyday life as cheap as needed for as many people to be able to — The idea that the Moon program, the space program has been a total waste of money and a bust could only be stated by some-body who’s not been taught the true meaning and the true value of such pioneering experimentation.

Somebody who’s been taught what a waste of money it was to oppose communism. That’s the root of this. We had no business opposing the Soviets. The communists weren’t a threat. That’s what today’s liberals think, and that’s what yesterday’s thought.