Hilarious quotes

By Jennifer J. Foster

Politics is serious business. But it sometimes makes people say some seriously funny things.

Take yesterday’s article in the Montgomery Advertiser about the matchup between State Rep. Jay Love and Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright for the 2nd congressional seat.

Retiring U.S. Rep. Terry Everett is a Republican, but given Bright’s conservative views (more on those later), Democratic National Congressional Committee officials believe the 2nd District is ripe for turnover. So the pressure’s on Love to hold serve.

As it turns out, Bright and Love have a bit of a history together. As the Advertiser blared on the jump page yesterday, they both the First Baptist Church of Montgomery!

Oh boy!

What follows is unquestionably one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in print, especially as it relates to political news:

“Everybody will work as hard as they can to make sure the Democrats in Washington don’t get another ally with Bobby Bright,“ Love said.

Love said Bright’s first vote in Congress would be for Nancy Pelosi of California as Speaker of the House.

“That is absolutely the wrong kind of leadership,“ he said.

Bright said Love knows him and, if he is strong, ethical, and mature, knows better than to try to paint him as a liberal, Nancy Pelosi Democrat.

“Jay knows me. He goes to church with me. I voted for him for the deacon board,“ Bright said Wednesday.

They are both deacons at First Baptist Church in Montgomery.

Bright said he hoped Love would not go negative, but added “he already has.“

“I hope he doesn’t stay with that. I would be very disappointed.“

That is hilarious!!!

I wonder if they’ll be politicking at church. Can you imagine those deacon meetings?

Read the rest of the article here.

Voting incentives

By Jennifer J. Foster

Speaking of poor voter turnout, consider the experience of the small Alabama town of Ragland, northeast of Birmingham.

Ragland turned out only 260 of its 1,900 registered voters in the June 3 election.

From the Associated Press:

“It’s atrocious, the apathy that exists in our country today,“ said Mayor Gary Daffron. “It (voting) is one of the few luxuries that we still have in a democracy.“

So, the AP says, while the rest of the state prepared for a runoff expected to set a record for low voter turnout, a group of folks in Ragland hatched a plan: Incentives. Lots of them.

Lemonade. Crackers. Hot dogs. A 10 percent discount at a local grocery store.

Even a raffle that promised cash prizes of $50 to $1,000.

It worked.

The group exceeded its goal of 500 votes, finishing just one vote shy of doubling the June turnout.

Five hundred and nineteen votes out of 1,900—that’s 25 percent turnout, nearly six times the state average.

You guys know how I feel about voting. I hate it when people don’t vote. I hate apathy, because that’s what’s gotten us into the situation we’re in with our government.

Not voting: Bad. Voting: Good.

I appreciate the action this group of people took to address the problem. It’s always laudable when folks get together to tackle their issues as a community.

But this story leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The ability to choose one’s leaders should be its own reward. People shouldn’t have to be bribed to go do their civic duty—especially since so many men and women have gone willingly to sacrifice everything to insure it.

The Montgomery Advertiser had a good editorial about this today.

Turnout among the rest of the state’s registered voters, who didn’t have the lure of freebies, was, to put it bluntly, pathetic ...

Only about 392,000 people voted in the first primary, which was better than in the runoff but still a paltry 15 percent turnout of registered voters. Even that percentage does not take into account the hundreds of thousands of Alabama citizens who are eligible to vote, but who haven’t bothered to register.

So what’s the answer, free hotdogs and raffle tickets for all voters statewide?

We hope not. While it worked in Ragland, there is something demeaning about enticing voters to the polls with freebies. And it is a slippery slope that almost certainly would be abused. For instance, it raises the possibility of one party or the other only offering incentives to get people to turn out in counties with high numbers of their voters. That would skew the results in a general election, and it might well be illegal.

Also, while such tactics may get more voters to the polls, they are not likely to get more knowledgeable voters to turn out. We wonder how many of those voters who were influenced only by freebies actually took time to study the candidates and issues. We’d bet the numbers would be tiny.

To be effective, a representative democracy depends upon the knowledgeable participation of its citizenry in the selection of elected officials. Any time the polls open, there should be more than 5 percent of registered voters present. The turnout Tuesday does not speak well of Alabamians and their commitment to maintaining this nation’s democratic tradition.

Read the rest here.

What do you think? Morally, ethically and legally, how do you feel about incentivizing the vote? Do the ends justify the means?

$23.50 to vote?

By Jennifer J. Foster

While Obama’s in the Middle East, maybe he can talk with our troops about this:

Millions of Americans abroad, including about 175,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, face chronic timing and technological problems if they try to vote in this fall’s presidential election.

Troubles that caused low turnout in the past will be compounded by 11 late state-office primaries in September or October, which delays mailing absentee ballots. Efforts to expand electronic voting have slowed because of privacy concerns.

“It’s going to be a harder year for our soldiers and military personnel and others who are overseas,“ Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said.

This week, FedEx Express and the private Overseas Vote Foundation unveiled an alternative that’s speedier — and usually costlier for voters — than the snail-like pace of mailed ballots that has beset Americans abroad.

The delivery service can pick up ballots in 89 countries and return them within one to five days for discounted fees of up to $23.50. The service, run by each FedEx region and offered for free in Australia, New Zealand and 12 Asian countries, includes tracking capabilities and confirmation of receipt.

This is an ongoing problem for Americans overseas:

In 2006, about 6 million Americans abroad, active-duty military members and their families were eligible to vote. Fewer than 1 million ballots were requested and about 330,000 cast or counted, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission — a 5.5% turnout rate.

More than two-thirds of the ballots that were not counted were returned as undeliverable. More than 10% of would-be voters missed the deadline.

(For the sake of comparison, remember that the turnout rate for the runoff in Alabama this week was between 4 and 5 percent.)

And since McCain’s already been there three times since the campaign’s been going on, why isn’t he talking about this?

‘Maybe Jackson should cut off his tongue’

By Jennifer J. Foster

By now you’ve heard Jesse Jackson’s apology about wanting to cut Barack Obama’s you-know-whats off because “Barack been, um, talking down to black people on this faith based ...“

Jackson made the comment off camera—but into a live microphone—during an appearance on Fox News Channel Sunday.

FNC host Bill O’Reilly had teased earlier this week that the Channel actually had more than it had made public. In his July 10 “Talking Points Memo,“ O’Reilly said, “We held back some of Jackson’s comments because they weren’t relevant to public policy. If we were trying to hurt the man or the Democratic Party, we surely would have used those comments ... we didn’t run some trash talk that had nothing to do with policy.“

Wow ... worse than wanting to—well, you know—to the Democratic presidential nominee-to-be—who’s black?

What could those OTHER comments be?

Cue Jackson’s OTHER apology, this one referencing comments he made about Obama’s recent speeches about responsibility in the black community. Jackson said Obama was “telling n———how to behave,“ a FNC spokesman confirmed Wednesday.

This is the same Jesse Jackson who, two years ago, called on everyone everywhere to stop using the N-word because “its roots are rooted in hatred and pain and degradation.“

A lot of luck he had with that.

I have never understood the double standard that exists between black people using the N-word and white people using the N-word.

Sure, I’ve heard all the arguments: Context is everything; it’s only a perjorative when used by a white person; the word is a part of the African-American culture.

But it is the same word.

And isn’t the fact that it’s part of the African-American culture the biggest stumbling block to eradicating the word from general use, as a group in Texas tried to do with a symbolic “funeral” for the word last year?

Of course, we have the First Amendment and freedom of speech in this country, so this entire discussion is about what’s morally or ethically appropriate, not what’s legal.

Certain civil rights activists, like Jackson, do themselves and their cause no favors when they talk about equality on one hand and practice inequality on the other.

And Jackson knows it. Watch him writhe through this almost-unintelligible interview with CNN’s John Roberts earlier this week. Roberts asks about the Sunday comments; Jackson references levee breaches, day-care facilities and foreclosures.

No obfuscation there.

Is Jesse Jackson even relevant anymore? Do we even care what he says (unless he’s uttering a verboten racial slur)?

One writer from the Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star says, “Maybe Jesse should cut off his tongue.“

Latoya Peterson, editor of Racialicious.com, says, “If calling an entire group of people the n-word isn’t talking down to blacks, I don’t know what is.“

And as long as we’re talking about Obama’s trip to Europe, read this interesting take on America’s race issues and word-related hubbub from London’s Daily Mail .

Computer issues

By Jennifer J. Foster

So now it’s Friday morning, and I’m still behind ... thanks to a computer failure at 2 a.m. this morning.

I’ll try to catch up over the next few hours.

First off, who among my readers is planning to see—or might have already seen—“The Dark Knight?“

I’m interested in reviews, especially after having read this one from Tom Jarity.

The jury’s out on whether I’ll go see it. Any advice?