Here, I will discuss the real voter suppression problem. Unlike ACORN, this has become a cancer that has been forming in our country for the longest time. The problem that I am reffering to is GOP voter suppression. The GOP is a nice term for the house republicans up high on their chairs. The problem that we have with this issue is that the government themselves are suppressing votes.
It has been reported on The Nation, that "A recent report in the New York Times found that in some battleground states, for every new voter registered two other voters have been removed. Colorado, a state experiencing rapid population increases, has seen more than 100,000 voters erased from its rolls." The recent report that they are talking about from the New York Times starts with "Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law." This somewhat proves that the government is trying to fix the polls by canceling out as many swing states as possible, so that there wont be a swing. Without a swing, theres no surprizes and the government can prepare for whats next. But without a swing, wheres the democracy? Where is the basis of what this country has been running on for years?
Really I don't see it, and that, to me, is unconstitutional, and unamerican. What happened to the great patriotic republican party that we all have come to know and love?
Sources:
The Real Voter Scandal
Literary Devices Used in the Book Beloved
In this blog, I am going to be writing about an Honors class assignment, which was to read a good book with a lot of meaning behind it, and the literary devices used in that book to draw out the theme of the story. The book that I read was one called Beloved, by Toni Morrison, a writer with a very unique and interesting style, and I will be writing it assuming that you, the reader, will have at least the general idea of the book's plot line.
I would like to start, by stating what I think is the theme of the story. The theme of the story that I picked up, was the memories might be forgotten temporarily, but they never really go away. It was first pointed out to me in the beginning, during a part where the main character was explaining that "Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world." The literary device used in this quote is character development. Now while that may not be quite so evident at first glance, if you really look at it, you will find what it is really saying. What I see it saying is that even if something that happened in your past, or even someone else' past for that matter, will have some sort of effect on your life. It is also not always direct either, because even if you "forget" what happened in the past, the physical thing will still always be there somewhere, whether it be where the event happened, or locked up under your kitchen sink, some remnant will always be there to remind you if you ever stumble on it again.
One major thing that is stumbled on many times in this book, and should be regarded as a major event in the stories time line, is the death, haunting and resurrection of the character Beloved. The character starts off as a ghost, but you quickly learn that it died as a child in the house, and no one knows why it stays and haunts. The reason this relates to the theme is because the baby gets exorcised out of the house not long after you learn about it, and then comes to life as a real living breathing person in part two of the book. Now the literary device that I found quite profound yet at the same time subtle, was the way that the style of writing changes from part one to part two of the book. In part one, the book keeps an nonrhythmic poem, slightly artistic to the keen reader, but not taking anything away from the main story. But, when the book goes from part one to part two, the book turns to more of a free verse, regular book style of writing. I feel as if this is a literary device that is almost critical to know about, because it is hidden, but it gives the book a different feel, depending on if it is at a positive or negative point in the story. I think that it was implemented very well by the author, and I really do like the way that it was done.
The last literary device that I would like to discuss would be the symbolism within the book. Being half poetry, there is bound to be symbolism in it. The specific symbol I found the most meaningful was the scars on Sethe, the protagonist's, back. It is described in such a manner that is unforgettable. It is described as a chokecherry tree, showing the reader exactly how it looks. Explaining how the roots of the tree grow up into a trunk, then sprout into branches, complete with leaves, sap and the rest of the works on a tree. It helps drive the theme out further by giving yet another vibrant example of a memory that might be forgotten, but will still always remain.
In conclusion, the methods used to bring out the theme of this book focused heavily on character development, yet also included devices such as symbolism and writing style changes.
The Nuts at ACORN and the Voter Suppression
The situation here is not as it seems. The great republican candidate, Senator McCain, claims Senator Obama, the democratic candidate, has huge ties with the ACORN organization. McCain claims that ACORN has committed one of the largest voting flaws in history. which was by falsifying votes, giving one person an advantage. Ridiculous. The only thing that actually happened was that ACORN employees sent in fake registration forms of their own handiwork in order to keep up with ACORN's standards. Acorns standards, is somewhere around every employee has to register 20 new voters every day. Do you think that is reasonable? There are somewhere over 35,000 ACORN employees working. 35,000 times 20 is 700,000 registrations a day. And this goes on for months at a time. Do you really think that there is that many unregistered voters out there? Some of the stories that I have read include stuff like this "In August 2004, election officials in Albuquerque, NM, discovered that an ACORN employee, Christina Gonzales, registered a 13-year-old boy to vote. This registration was only discovered by the boy’s mother when a voter card showed up in the mail. The card contained an incorrect social security number, a fabricated birthday, and only a partially correct address." from the Employment Policies Institute, and this "Part-time ACORN workers receive one day of training and are paid $8 an hour to collect signatures, according to Kettenring. He blamed bogus cards on cheating and lazy employees trying to make a buck for doing nothing." The problem is the employees, and not the company. Another thing is that ACORN isn't even allowed to get rid of registration forms that they themselves can see are fraudulent. According to Fact Check, "ACORN also says it cannot simply discard suspicious forms on its own, but is required by law in most states to submit to local election officials all the forms its canvassers bring in. ACORN's Whelan told us that its own legal counsel strongly advises that the group do the same in states that don't explicitly require it, because "only election officials are legally able to determine the validity of a voter registration application."" ACORN does claim that it flags the registration forms that appear to be fraudulent before sending them into the government officials, but it doesn't seem to be helping them out a whole lot with the election and John McCain blaming them for the "biggest voter fraud in history"
Sources:
UPDATED: The Real ACORN: Anti-Employee, Anti-Union, Big-Business
McCain makes exaggerated claims of "voter fraud." Obama soft-pedals his connections.
Inside Obama’s Acorn
These Presidential Debates (Again)
Final debate a lagging indicator of reality
The Internet!
Reflection of the Newspaper Project
Here is a link to a revised copy of the newspaper.
Reflection:
Our newspaper project was about the Lincoln Douglas debates. We were supposed to make a newspaper front page telling the story about a specific debate that we were pre-assigned. The debate that we were assigned was the 4th debate, the one that took place in Charleston.
My role in this project was, in a sense, the editor in chief. What I did was organize who was doing what story, and then put it in to the paper. Along the way I helped out some people on what to research and helped edit everyones paper.
The good things that I feel like I accomplished with this project was that I kept everyone on task and punctual with their articles, so we had plenty of relaxing time in the end where some others did not have it. Another good thing was that I was one of the two groups of people that put a newspaper esque background texture, which really pulled the paper together and made it stand out from all of the other papers. The texture also did not hinder the reader in their reading capabilities because of flaws in the texture, like the other paper with a background texture did. I also organized the paper such as a real legitimate paper quite nicely and I feel like it really shows off my talents, as well as flaws, which I will explain in the next paragraph.
The problems that I had with this project were all based off of me not looking at the final product well enough after “finishing” it. The biggest flaw that I still had in it was a border around a text box that ended up cutting through a pull quote, which is a huge mistake on my part and could have been easily solved if I had just looked over the project one last time. Another thing which isn't much of a flaw is that there was a caption under the first image on the top half of the front page, and I feel like it is a bit too pushed away from the image, and should be pushed more toward the image to more legitimize the paper, as far as looks go.
I did more than just edit and put the paper together. Another thing that I did for this paper was search for images of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglass, and help make headlines for the stories with another member of the group. A lot of the work was really laid back, with resources such as pod casts not needing a lot of attention to understand, it was really easy to do research on the subject. Picture searching was also simple, but it was sometimes a little difficult to find an image someone else did not already find yet. Since there aren't very many pictures of Stephen Douglass on the internet, I ended up as one of the 3 or 4 groups that had the same picture of him, but I did end up with a completely original picture of Abraham Lincoln in my article.
The Candidates Still Acting Like Children
The Presidential Race of Senatorial Significance
In class, we have been talking a lot about the senatorial race between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. I was assigned in the past week to help fellow students write the frontpage of a (unofficial) newspaper about the 4th debate that Lincoln and Douglas had. This debate took place in Charleston Illinois, and the area was really "negrophobic," or didn't like black people, which really matters with this debate because Lincoln was trying to bring about the end to slavery, even though he claimed the entire process to take over 100 years, and Douglas, who was really for slavery and keeping the United States segregated, claimed to be for a popular vote method, where Illinois would decide with the people whether they want to keep slavery or not.
The Economic Crisis
This coming election day will be a great turning point for at least one group of people, this blog post will be talking about one of those groups. The group that I am talking about is the middle to lower class. According to American Fact Finder, about 60% of all households in America earn between $10,000 to $75,000 a year on average. According to The Washington Post, Obama plans to raise the bracket for high end earners in the United States, making anyone earning $250,000 a year "would pay 6.2 percent in payroll taxes on their entire income."
By CHARLES HURT Bureau Chief
June 14, 2008
Schools Now Becoming More Segregated Than Ever
Whether you know it or not, we are all still segregated in this country. If you can remember, the civil rights movement was fraught with segregation in almost every industry out there, including education. Within the next few paragraphs I will take you, the reader, on a journey through segregation in schools during the civil war, and segregation in schools now.
What Happened Then
One of the biggest cases back in the civil rights movement was of brown vs education, which changed the educational community forever. It all started because the northern supreme court came up with the though of actually making the schools interracial. This is a quote from the first few lines of the court papers “Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment - even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors of white and Negro schools may be equal.”(1)
One revolutionary person that you may know of is a girl
called Ruby Bridges. She was the first black girl to attend an all white school. The school she attended was William Frantz Elementary, New Orleans, and the white population had a huge reaction to this. “Sure enough, people shouted and shook their fist when we got out of the car, but to me it wasn't any noisier than Mardi Gras, I held my mother's hand and followed the marshals through the crowd, up the steps into the school.” says Bridges, in March of the year 2000. She then goes on to talk about what happened that day and the next day.
What's Happening Now
After all of that, we still have problems with racial segregation in schools today, and you could say a big part of it is still based off of racial stereotypes retaining from long ago. According to a recent story from the American Broadcasting Corporation, “Kathleen Brose's 14-year-old daughter was turned away from her neighborhood school in Seattle after the district effectively issued a stark decree: no more white students allowed.”(3) According to the census taken on factfinder.cencus.gov, the white population takes up about 73.9% of the population of the United States of America(4) (with a 0.1 margin of error) and according to a classmate, Jonathan Aguila's blog, "...If you look at the data you would notice that this is mainly because it is based on where you live ... from what I see it is fixed on what is the dominant ethnic group in the state or city."(5). This information is really conflicting with the methods that schools have been undertaking recently. What I am talking about is the fact that schools and colleges alike are undertaking the “Equal Opportunity” method, which is to take in minority students as the majority of their student population.
In conclusion, I believe that this system is futile, because of two reasons. The first is the fact that they are leaving out the majority of the population, and second, it is becoming segregated yet again, which is against the 14th amendment and against what America now stands for.
For more information on Ruby Bridges, find the Ruby Bridges: Through My Eyes documentary at your nearest movie store, or at RubyBridges.com
Citations:
- United States Supreme Court. "FindLaw | Cases and Codes."FindLaw: Cases and Codes. 17 May 1954. 2 Oct. 2008 <http://laws.findlaw.com/us/347/483.html>.
- Bridges, Ruby. "Ruby Bridges."Ruby Bridges . 30 Sep. 2008
- (3) "ABC News: Debate Over Segregation in Schools to Hit Supreme Court Today." ABC News: Online news, breaking news, feature stories and more. 1 Oct. 2008
- (4) U.S. Cencus Bureau, ed. "United States by State -M0201, Percent of the Total Population Who Are White Alone: 2006." U.S. Cencus Bureau. 2 Oct. 2008
- (5)Aguila, Jonathan. "jonathan."jonathan. 2 Oct. 2008. 2 Oct. 2008