My take on the Georgia voter suppression laws and glimmers of hope, updated 4/6/21

Updated: Colorado Vs. Georgia Voting Laws: What Are The Differences? | Colorado Public Radio (cpr.org)  The MLB will play their All-Star game at Coors Field in Denver as a protest to Georgia's proposed voter suppression laws.  Colorado is considered the gold standard on voter participation laws and there is a very significant difference, per the CPR article. Fraud fears in Colorado?None: .https://www.5280.com/2020/05/no-fraud-isnt-rampant-in-colorados-mail-in-voting-system/ Colorado has mail in voting and it has very effective ways to deal with fraud.  

While the Georgia voter suppression law just signed by their governor made it possible for the state legislature to take over county election officials they did not like, they left Sunday voting untouched. Souls to the polls remained though the faith that vote counts would not be controlled by partisan power grabbers in the legislature got shot to heck. Banning souls to the polls was a bit too obvious of racism as a motivation. Instead, what was more insidious and devious was worse. What the Georgia law did was to ensure future elections would be subject to partisan control from the county to the state level, permitting the state to take over local election boards. Jim Crow South is rising again by centralizing vote counts in the hands of a gerrymandered white-dominated legislature.

Similar laws are being enacted by states with GOP-controlled legislatures and governors from the south to the midwest.   This begs the question:  what is the goal here?  In the South, the former slave states, it is obviously aimed at white control of racial minorities that are destined to become majorities in about 20 years from now.  Is the purpose to slow down any power shift and preserve rule by white rulers as long as possible and in the longer term an attempt to set up apartheid permanently? In the states with small populations of minorities of black and brown is this simply an insurance policy to keep state and local government in hands of the GOP while they lose national power?  In any of these cases, this signals years ahead of racial strife and political instability until these leaders with the apartheid mentality retire and new generations take over. For now, it is pure and simple a power struggle and an ugly one.

  The GOP members held over from the Trump era turn to the iron fist of authoritarianism that enables them to trample the rights of those they govern to keep them from becoming their governors, while the minorities knock on their door demanding the promise of democracy with the rule of the people regardless of race.  The only way to avoid that scenario is for acceptance and power-sharing by the leaders and followers of all sides involved now, but that hope runs contrary to human nature that is by instinct and history tribal. I am not optimistic.

 The glimmer of hope is that constant racial strife is seen as bad for business that is dependent on consumers regardless of race. 80% of the US economy is dependent on consumer spending and the threat of selective boycotts implied, if not publicly stated,.is a powerful weapon. The Georgian minority community has already begun to put pressure on the nationally recognized brand named corporations headquartered in Atlanta. .  Self-interest and the color of money in the commercial sector can become the piper that plays the government tune. Capitalism, with its worts, may save democracy yet in that one state..  In the meantime, the passage of  HR1, now S1, and other voting rights legislation in Congress, is the only quick legislative defense against the Jim Crow laws being enacted in GOP states.  Courts cases being filed will eventually run into the Trump-appointed new majority in the Supreme Court with an uncertain outcome.

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/helping-country-prosper-undocumented-immigrants-003800083.html

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/07/do-states-verify-u-s-citizenship-condition-voting/6480041002/

The Republican Party Is Driving the Nation's Democratic Decline (yahoo.com)

https://www.yahoo.com/news/heres-democrats-sweeping-voting-rights-120419868.html

Registered Republicans Ditch Party After Capitol Riot : NPR

What 9 Extremely Detailed Maps Tell Us About Colorado’s 2020 Election | Colorado Public Radio (cpr.org)

"I don't think 2022 is going to be competitive": GOP voter registration tumbles in Colorado (yahoo.com)

FactCheck.org's Weekly Update (mailchi.mp)

Colorado’s Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney was alarmed by falsehoods about Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems (coloradosun.com)

Tens of thousands of voters drop Republican affiliation after Capitol riot | TheHill

Ron Johnson the ultimate wingnut and Russian tool

Ron Johnson, the ultimate wingnut and Russian tool

Ron Johnson has emerged as the most vocal supporter of both Russian propaganda efforts in the Hunter Biden Ukraine misdeeds claims in the Senate and even an apologist for the violent rioters on the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He has raised himself from an obscure Tea Partiertype and ultra-conservative which has gotten him from Wisconsin to DC.to a headliner of positions of some of the most controversial issues. How did that happen?

For some time since Russian active measures in interfering in both 2020 and 2016 elections, I have wondered what they were trying to do. The usual explanation is that they wanted to weaken democracies like ours. That may be true since that is what happened, culminating on Jan. 6. However, their method is to understand what makes our country tick so well, they can use messages and propaganda to exploit the vulnerability of US politicians and their political followers to grab onto any lie or distortion or a conspiracy theory to validate their thoughts and goals and to further their ambitions. In short, they took Americans to be fools and selfish and craven ones at least. Russia Studied How to Get Americans to Make Mistakes - The Atlantic 

Their methods were exposed in the DNI report recently released.  Key findings #2 in the report was that Russia used proxies to spread the Hunter Biden alleged misdeeds in Ukraine to weaken Joe Biden.  The Russian operatives were named, but in this public version, exact US politician mouthpieces were not fingered.  The release of this report was the same time Ron Johnson made news on his support of the January 6 rioters as not threatening him. The DNI key finding got lost in the press reports how of protest that his comments were racist.  The timing of his inflammatory remarks was interesting and the Johnson-Ukraine-Hunter Biden connection got lost in the flap of racism..Nonetheless, the Johnson-Russia story is hardly a secret.and remains a public record. ICA-declass-16MAR21.pdf (dni.gov)

Per Applebaum: " The Russian security services have now studied us and worked out (it probably wasn’t very hard) that large numbers of Americans—not only Fox News pundits and OANN broadcasters but also members of Congress—are very happy to accept sensational information, however, tainted, from any source that happens to provide it. As long as it suits their partisan frames, and as long as it can be used against their opponents, they don’t care who invented it or for what purpose."  The example she uses is the Hunter Biden flap about alleged wrongdoing in Ukraine to weaken Biden's efforts.  This failed because over one-half of the US population did not take the bait.

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a34042751/ron-johnson-ukraine-joe-biden-investigation-russia/  "On July 4, 2018, Johnson and several other Republican senators were entertained in Moscow by, among other people, Sergei Kislyak, a central figure among the Volga Bagmen and good friend of Michael Flynn, then the Russophilic White House national security adviser. Johnson, who previously had been a harsh critic of the regime of Vladimir Putin, returned from Russia on this trip with kasha failing to melt in his mouth." He carried Russia's water on the Hunter Biden alleged misdeeds in Ukraine as it became the focus of anti-Biden advocates in the media and in the Senate.

After the election of Joe Biden, Johnson jumped on the bandwagon as an apologist for the violent rioters of January 6 claiming he did not feel threatened by them.I note that he did not voice his opinions the rioters were Antifa in some sort of disguise as some of his fellow travelers opined,  but when it suited him he contradicted that claim, inferring the rioters were his compadres and not Antifa or BLM.. His critics called that evidence of his racism.  https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a35828777/republican-wisconsin-ron-johnson-joe-pags-show-capitol-riots-blm-antifa-racist-comment/Ron Johnson says he didn't feel threatened Jan. 6. If BLM or Antifa stormed Capitol, he 'might have.' - POLITICO

Bosnia, the next flashpoint of Russia US conflict...an explainer

 The admission of Bosnia into NATO will be the next flashpoint of conflict between Russia and the US. Russia warned that it "will have to react" if Bonia moves to join NATO. President Joe Biden has a long history with Bosnia, as well as with Russia. Russia sees an opportunity to meddle in the Balkans. and destabilize the southeastern European region by exploiting ethnic hatred. Bosnia shares no boundaries with Russia and, except for Serbia, all countries in the neighborhood already belong to NATO.

Why is it of concern that the president of Bosnia currently is from the Serbian part of the country? He opposes joining NATO, The presidency of Bosnia revolves every 8 months between elected representatives of three ethnic groups. There is a long and complicated history. For centuries and in the recent history of the bloody wars in the 1990s (famous for the term "ethnic cleansing)", Serbians have been allied with Russia, sharing both religion and alphabet. There are three predominant ethnic groups in Bosnia and the civil war included an attempt by Serbians to rid the Bosniak (Muslim) ethnics from the country. The Ottoman Turks occupied the area for 500 years leaving a large Muslim population in the area.. The result of the civil war was to harden geographic divisions and attitudes, while still remaining in one country. Ethnic Serbians dominate the northern part of Bosnia.. In the southern area, the Bosniaks (Muslims) are the dominant ethnic group and they share uneasy power with the less numerous Croatian Catholic ethnics. Between World War, I and the early and mid-1990's, Bosnia was a province in Yugoslavia.. The bloody civil wars resulted in the breakup of Yugoslavia. The 1990s war became a humanitarian crisis and US involvement was the result of pressure from the US Senate led by Republican Bob Dole and then-Senator Joe Biden to force a reluctant President Bill Clinton to provide air cover and support of UN attempts to end the conflict. The bloodshed ended in the Dayton accord, the Ohio site of the negotiations hosted by the US... Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, died of natural causes while on trial in the Hague, accused of his role in supporting the Serbian Bosnians. My late husband's family roots were in Bosnia; I first visited Bosnia as a junior year abroad student in Berlin traveling there in 1959 and have returned so many times I have lost count.

Fomenting ethnic and racial conflicts both in Europe and in the US is a Putin specialty. .Apparently, he sees weakening western democracies, exasperating existing conflicts within countries as a way to advance Russian influence. A report, written in the waning days of the Trump administration by intelligence services and. released in March about Putin's interference in the US 2020 election documented Russia's attempt to stoke racial divisions in the US to help Trump get re-elected. https://www.dni.gov/.../assessments/ICA-declass-16MAR21.pdf . See page 2 . Russia Studied How to Get Americans to Make Mistakes - The Atlantic

NEWS.YAHOO.COM

Russia warns it will 'have to react' if Bosnia moves to join NATO

The challenge of getting our first Americans vaccinated against COVID 19

I grew up in eastern Oklahoma, a short drive from the tribal seat of the Cherokees. Neighbors near my block were Osage, and 2//3 of my Muskogee (Creek ) elementary school classmates were registered on a tribal roll.. mostly Cherokee and some Choctaw. In grade school, we were taught Cherokee history from the Cherokee perspective. The most famous Cherokee was Sequoia (Geroge Guess, his English name, after which the famous trees were named. These were city folks, well integrated into the modern anglo culture, but back in the hills east of us, the foothills of the Ozarks, lived most of the tribal members., Osages were in the hilly country near Tulsa to the west, as well. They were rural and scattered, and many were still speaking their tribal languages. That was in the mid to late 1940s...only a 100 years since their great grandparents were force-marched in the 1840s on the Trail of Tears from Southeastern US to Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). Their sin was becoming civilized in the white men's ways and they were occupying and farming land coveted by the White majority lusting for expansion into tribal lands suitable for growing cotton. They were called the Civilized Tribes, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Creeks. Muskogee was the location of the Indian Agency.. the federal government..for the 5 tribes. The Osages near Tulsa had wisely maintained mineral rights in their oil-rich tribal lands but the Five Civilized Tribes engaged in agriculture and hunting and oil was not abundant. Per this interesting article, 70 years later there are many still living the old ways and face challenges in the attempt of tribal leaders to get them vaccinated against COVID 19 My father was a transplant from Colorado, sent there to manage Southwestern Bell's telephone service for northeastern Oklahoma, and I have treasured my early life in Indian country. I am sure it shaped my sympathy for those who had been treated unfairly.

NEWS.YAHOO.COM

Plenty of Vaccines, but Not Enough Arms: A Warning Sign in Cherokee Nation