by Latoya Peterson

Talking Points Memo – The GOP War on Democrats Voting

Since its inception, TPM has been chronicling the Republican party’s efforts to push bogus or wildly exaggerated claims of vote fraud to suppress voting among predominantly Democratic constituencies like the old, the poor and the non-white. And here we have another installment from the GOP vote fraud bamboozlement file.

Two years ago Texas’ Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott declared war on what he claimed was rampant vote fraud in Texas. He set up a special vote fraud unit and got a $1.4 million grant from the feds for the work.

Now, two years on, courtesy of the Dallas Morning News, we have a run-down of what Abbot came up with — 26 cases.

The details tell the story: All 26 cases involved Democrats, and almost all were either blacks or Hispanics.

Of the 26, 8 appear to have been genuine cases of fraud, two of which were cases of people actually casting fraudulent ballots, as opposed to bogus registrations.

The remaining 18 cases all involved eligible voters casting legitimate mail-in ballots. The ‘fraud’ was that others collected the ballots and deposited them in mailboxes without putting their own name and address on the envelope in which the mail-in ballot was sent. These latter instances were almost all cases involving elderly or disabled voters who could not easily mail their own mail-in ballots. In other words, the great majority of the cases in his meager haul were technical violations that non-politicized prosecutor’s offices most likely never would have pursued.

Mi Destino: fe, cultura, y vida – Catonsville Nine, 1968-2008

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the day when 9 Catholics walked into a military draft office in Catonsville, Maryland took the records of 378 young men who were likely to be drafted. They went out to the parking lot and burned them with homemade napalm while praying the Our Father, The Lord’s Prayer, while they waited for the police to arrest them. They were arrested, became part of a highly publicized trial and became known as the Catonsville Nine. This is exactly what Jon Sobrino, SJ was talking about when he said: “To believe in God is not just to love life but to work so that there is life.” This is an example of having to go beyond what it is proper and acceptable to do in society and follow our hearts and our conscience and really meditate and reflect in asking What Would Jesus (or whoever or whatever it is that you place your faith and/or trust upon) Do?

Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Oppression Olympics (Again)

It had been only days since Obama had been thumped in a state in which life-long Democrats volunteered themselves, on camera, to say that they would never elect a black president, or a Muslim president—which this year seems to just mean a nigger president. It had been mere hours since the story broke about about a guy in Georgia selling a tee-shirt comparing Obama to Curious George. Indeed, Cocco’s own paper had recounted a list of racist incidents that Obama’s campaign had endured which had escaped the media’s notice. That last bit is more an Obama strategy than a media blind-spot. Americans hate complainers, no matter how much justice the plaintiff can marshal. Plus Obama’s whole campaign is basically an away game, and Obama crying racism, would be like Jackie Robinson complaining to the ump in ’47, like Martin Luther King pleading his case to Bull Conner.

But it’s the job of thinker to be equipped with info, and Cocco’s dismissal is of piece with a “see-no-racism’ strategy now being employed by folks who think the best way to show that sexism is still a problem in America is to minimize black folks. White people must take the gold in all things–even in the Olympics of the Downtrodden.

Let me not plead innocent. I spent half my time in college marshaling vital stats in hopes of proving that no one, nowhere, in all of history—not the Jews, not the Cherokee, not the gypsies—had carried a burden as heavy as the lost/found black man hacking his way through the wilderness of North America. Forgive me I was young, and all of us go through this, right? This is what you do when you think all the world’s wisdom has been summed up in the pages of The Miseducation Of The Negro—or The Feminine Mystique, or The Communist Manifesto. But we like to think we’ve grown out of that, that our trips on the Q train through Chinatown, our Teach For America stints in a forgotten ghetto, our volunteer work for the local rape crisis center has broadened our horizon.

Or maybe not. I knew something was up when I saw that icon of feminism, Joe Scarborough, making the case that (white) women had it harder than black men. Cocco’s need to prove that her’s is, indeed, the bluest of blues, is echoed in the ramblings of Joan Walsh, the backward musings of Gloria Stienem, and, in its most primal form, the angry blather of Geraldine Ferraro. It’s becoming a persistent line, that white women have it harder than black men—and a seemingly more persistent line that black women, in fact, don’t exist, unless their needed to prove the original point. The shadow of Shirley Chisholm has been virtually absent from this campaign—except to be quoted by Clinton supporters, knee-deep in an either-or fallacy, and looking to dig a little deeper.

BBC News – Refugees Flee South Africa Attacks

“Stu” escaped from Zimbabwe in January, crossing the border for the sanctuary of South Africa.

Now – fearing for his life – he’s trying to flee back, after a wave of xenophobic violence targeting immigrants in townships around Johannesburg.

“I ran away from the situation in Zimbabwe to try to support my family,” says the 24-year old, who is too afraid to give his full name.

“But it’s better to starve at home than to die here. At least, if I’m back in Zimbabwe, my parents can bury me and see my grave.”

The mob came for him in the sprawling Johannesburg township of Alexandra on Monday night.

“They forced their way into my home with weapons, hammers and bricks. And they took everything I’ve got. The only things I have left are the clothes that I’m wearing. I don’t even know how I’ll get home.”

“Stu” and hundreds of other foreigners – Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and Malawians – are now sheltering in tents provided for them by the Red Cross on the grounds of Alexandra’s police station.

It was at 21.30 on Wednesday night when a group of people attacked Arlindo Nhantumbo, a Mozambican who has lived happily in South Africa for 12 years.

“Ten of them came, with guns, and told me to leave the country. I don’t know what to do, because I have married a South African and we have a five-month-old baby boy,” he says. “I am desperate.”

No one has exact figures of the number of immigrants now living in South Africa, but the Institute of Race Relations believes that there are between 3 and 5 million – equivalent to the country’s entire white population.

And they have become scapegoats for many of South Africa’s social ills – high levels of unemployment, a shortage of housing and one of the worst crime rates in the world.

There has been a spate of xenophobic attacks over the past few years. In 2005 and 2006, Somalis living in the Eastern and Western Cape were targeted.

But the latest wave of anti-foreigner attacks has caused growing concern in the “rainbow nation” which still bears the scars of apartheid, and where some of the country’s poor are worse off than they were before the transition to majority rule.