Suppressing 2012 Vote; Steve Jobs

07 October 2011 |permalink | email article

One emerging aspect of the 2012 general election is a new report showing that five million voters could be disenfranchised with a multi-level attack aimed at a new voter restriction laws across the nation.

This week the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is going with an online called the 2012 Election Protection Project, “designed to “raise awareness and fight back against partisan attacks on voting rights.” The program includes ads on several online platforms including Twitter, Facebook and Google which direct visitors to online petitions. Last August the DSCC asked the Dept. of Justice to use its Civil Rights Powers to stop the new law in Florida.

Romney and the Conservative Right

The Values Voters Summit, promoting political aims of the religious right, holds a weekend forum in Washington which aims to energize social conservatives and test the fidelity of GOP candidates.
Bryan Fischer, with the American Family Association, will speak. Harsh statements on his radio show have associated gay rights groups with terrorists, arguing that gay men and lesbians be barred from public office, American Muslims should be banned from the military, and Mormons, let alone Muslims, should be barred from First Amendment protections because they are reserved for true Christians. Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney, a Mormon, is scheduled to speak before Fischer, directly raising the question of religious tolerance.

Steve Jobs and Politicians

The cultural gulf, between Mr. Job’s America and the one our political leaders inhabit, is largely generational, and it goes a long way toward explaining the enthusiasm among younger voters for Barack Obama in 2008. Mr. Obama’s campaign, conceived outside the party establishment and built on a platform of online membership, felt like a high-tech reimagining of politics. . . . It’s safe to say that Mr. Obama no longer Inspires much of that, at least partly because whatever futuristic governing vision he might have had ran smack into economic realities and into the orthodoxies of both parties’ aging establishments.” Matt Bai, The New York Times

Quotable

“While everyone was fumbling around trying to find the formula, he had the better instincts.” – Steve Wozniak, who started Apple in a Silicon Valley garage with Steve Jobs in 1976.

“So what do I make of Cain’s (meaningless) rise in the (meaningless) polls? It is meaningless. And a sign of how badly Republicans are still floundering in their search for a candidate. Cain is a genial, harmless dodo who thinks running a country is just like running a business. But it isn’t.” – Roger Simon. Politico’s chief political columnist.

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