This meme is neither “breaking” nor a credible example of voter suppression or systemic racism, despite many activists around the country from LeBron James to Hillary Clinton highlighting it.
-The Kentucky primary was supposed to be in May, so it’s already been delayed due to the pandemic. Both the Democratic governor Andy Beshear and Republican Sec of State Michael Adams have worked together to allow it to happen with some significant changes.
-For a variety of reasons, it wasn’t possible or desirable to have all the normal polling sites open due to COVID-19. Many locations were small and cramped, and elections are primarily manned by volunteers, most of whom are over age 60 in KY and at high risk for the virus. KY wanted to avoid what they felt were debacles in WI and OH.
-So the locations were severely limited, essentially down to one per county. In some of the larger counties, the polling sites are large convention centers or football fields. But while the locations were limited other options were expanded.
-All registered voters in Kentucky could request an absentee ballot through an online portal without a notarized signature, a major shift. In addition, in-person voting was expanded for an entire week, since June 15.
-So far, Kentucky is on pace for a record primary turnout. As of Monday, 973,807 Kentuckians had either requested an absentee ballot or voted in person. This doesn’t even include any turnout from today. 503,400 ballots had already been received in the mail, and election officials estimate 90% of absentee ballots issued will be sent in. For reference, the highest primary turnout ever was 922,456 in 2008.
-As Adams said, “If the governor and I are both suppressors, we're doing a terrible job because we've got the highest turnout we've ever seen.” He also had harsh words for outside activists, “I am worried that know-nothing, angry people from New York and California will call us and they'll block out people from rural and urban Kentucky who are trying to find out where to go vote. That is voter suppression."
-The governor also had strong words. “We've had mail-in voting for the first time in our history. I think that's the opposite of voter suppression. We've had no-excuse early voting for the first time in our history. I think that's the opposite of voter suppression. We've had 170,000 people have their voting rights restored, which is I think the opposite of voter suppression. Now, that doesn't fit in Twitter very easily."
-Louisville NAACP President Raoul Cunningham, a longtime civil rights activist in the state and who also sits on NAACP’s national board, said "I was concerned if the African American vote would be suppressed, but I really don't think it will be.”
-The meme shows Mitch McConnell grinning at the bottom, but he’s likely indifferent to this. He’s not facing any serious challenge in his primary. The contentious race is on the Democrat side, with Amy McGrath and Charles Booker squaring off. Any supposed voter suppression wouldn’t be helping Republicans beat Democrats, but Democrat against Democrat.
-To believe this is an example of systemic racism, one must ignore that this election was thrown into turmoil by COVID-19, and make the (frankly racist) case that black people are less capable of requesting and filling out absentee ballots or finding their way to a polling place during an entire week. But this doesn’t appear to be the case at all as it looks to be a record turnout for both the state and for the spotlighted urban Jefferson County in Louisville.
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/elections/kentucky/2020/05/19/louisville-primary-2020-jefferson-county-officials-defend-1-poll-site/5220141002/
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2020/04/24/coronavirus-kentucky-mail-voting-allowed-2020-primaries/3019216001/
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/22/kentucky-officials-refute-primary-voter-suppression-claims/3235183001/
As with the leftist freak out over “banned books” this is not banning books, it’s still easy to get Harry Potter and bookstores should be able to limit whatever books they want for whatever reason. But not only does it show a double standard, the rationale is far less justifiable than removing certain content from school libraries. At least there the justification was the content of certain books are inappropriate for children, clearly not every book should be available in a school library. Here, there’s no argument about the content they just don’t like the author’s politics!
Because news came out about his letter to the FBI, revealing he was a nutcase. The letter was rambling and incoherent, claiming he was trained by the US military off the books, and that Walz had instructed him to kill Amy Klobuchar so he could run for Senate. None of it made any sense (Walz is not running for Senate) and none of the assassinations made any sense, even in a diabolical way.
Nearly all of his hit list was Democrats (including Walz) and abortion clinics, but he was supposedly working for Walz?! Plus, one of the guys he killed wasn’t even on his list, and others were no longer in office or deceased. None of it makes sense from any coherent angle.
Basically, it appears the guy was mentally ill and neither the left or right can use the incident to push their agendas anymore, so the story was dropped.
This is so dumb. First, this means LA began as Spanish land founded to support Spanish missions (i.e. colonialism). Which contradicts their entire premise. But the reality is that Los Angeles is a quintessential American city.
▪️When the US acquired California in the 1840s, LA was a small town of less than 2,000 people. It was basically nothing. It became large only after the gold rush and the railroads completed in the 1870-80s, which brought thousands of new settlers and a booming commercial center.
▪️But LA had a major issue limiting its growth, no water. It wasn’t until Mulholland found a water source and built an aqueduct down from Northern California that LA had the infrastructure to grow into a major city.
▪️Then, a combination of oil, real estate and the film industry caused it to boom in the early 1900s. Post WWII, industries like aerospace continued its spectacular growth. Calling this “Mexican land” is a brain dead take. Neither the Mexicans, Spanish nor ...
