Bernie’s Folsom Pledge

Bernie's Folsom Pledge - To give convicted and imprisoned felons the vote
Bernie’s Folsom Pledge

Sometimes you’ve got to wonder about Bernie Sanders – wonder to the point of thinking long and hard about revising one’s opinion of Hillary’s DNC stealing the 2016 Democrat Nomination from him. This is one of those times since Bernie made it clear that he wants the Felon Vote.

The question was stark: Would you support enfranchising incarcerated people like the Boston Marathon bomber or convicted rapists?

The answer Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont gave was starker: Yes.

“I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy,” Mr. Sanders said during a town hall-style event on CNN this past week. “Yes, even for terrible people.”

It was a response that seemed designed to appeal to criminal justice advocates, to say nothing of people of color, who are disproportionately incarcerated.

It also immediately touched off the latest policy debate of the Democratic primary: Among the candidates asked about the issue recently were Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Senator Kamala Harris of California and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., all of whom signaled, with varying levels of intensity, that they did not agree with Mr. Sanders.

— Bernie Sanders

Yes, that is Bernie’s Folsom Pledge – to grant convicted murderers, rapists, pedophiles, terrorists, and any all other felons the “right” to vote while they’re imprisoned for their various and sundry heinous crimes.

Then, Bernie has always had a problem with the Black Vote and this is the sort of implicit pandering that might be needed to get him some of it.

What Could Go Wrong?

The Prison Block Voting Bloc - Vote Sanders or else!
The Prison Block Voting Bloc

Let’s forget for the moment that allowing the worst and most vile individuals who have been rightfully cast out of our society to have a say in our society is deeply offensive to America’s normative majority. Let’s also forget for the moment anything and everything about federal elections. While important, the impact of the convict vote on these things is secondary to other, more critical concerns.

No. Focus instead more firmly upon where and when these convicts – overwhelmingly (73%) Democrat – could have a real impact and cause real harm. Focus on the State, County, and Local elections.

Imagine, if you will, the great harm that incarcerated felons could do in those elections, especially ones for: Police Chiefs, Sheriffs, District Attorneys, Prosecutors, and/or Judges. Remember, these are elections with a much smaller electorate and, hence, the population of a prison there could and likely would greatly impact the outcome(s).

Bernie Needs To Stay In His Lane

Voting, be it for offices within each state or for elected federal offices is a matter that is wholly within the purview of each state. The federal government can only step in to prevent certain broad abuses, e.g., denying the “right” to vote based on race (15th Amendment), sex (19th Amendment), or advanced age (26th Amendment). As such, it is grossly inappropriate for any Presidential candidate to weigh in on this matter and to use it as a plank in his campaign’s platform.

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Sarcasm Or Prophecy?

Onion LogoThe Onion has been a source of humor and sarcasm for many years now. It’s also been a bane to many politicians and pundits when they mistook The Onion’s dry and oft-times totally deadpan wit for an actual news report.

Given the normal dryness of their send ups of news and current events, I can understand their mistaking the humor for fact.

A perfect example of this is The Onion’s sarcastic response to Ariel Castro being found hanging in his prison cell on Tuesday night.

Ariel Castro Failed By System

ORIENT, OH—In yet another glaring indication of the nation’s broken criminal justice system, Ohio correctional officers discovered the body of inmate Ariel Castro, a Cleveland man serving a life sentence on rape and kidnapping charges, hanging from his jail cell Tuesday night, prompting strong calls for action from reformers looking to correct America’s failed correctional policy. “What happened to Ariel Castro is symptomatic of a deeply flawed rehabilitation system that provides neither justice nor security, instead allowing countless men and women each year to fall through the cracks,” prison reform advocate John Wolahan told reporters, noting that Castro, who police say was left unattended for 30 minutes at a time by security personnel, was as much a victim of the prison’s negligence as he was of society as a whole. “In a legal system concerned with harsh sentencing and ultra-punitive approaches to justice, the well-being of people like Ariel Castro—those who have to live in the system we created—is treated as a mere afterthought. And I ask you: How many Ariel Castros have to suffer before we realize the machine is broken? His death is something we all have to live with.” Reformers added that the case was especially tragic because prison employees had reportedly seen warning signs from Castro for weeks and took no action.

Yes, this is sarcasm but is it also prophecy? Doesn’t it sound exactly like what one might expect any of the various enemies of law, order, and American judicial and penal systems could be expected to claim in the wake of a monster’s suicide in prison?

The true irony is that the article, intended as sarcastic humor, sounds exactly like what the Liberals and Progressives can be expected to say about Castro’s death. They, after all, don’t believe in punishing non-White Collar criminals and have nothing but hatred for America’s penal system and little but sympathy for creatures quarantined within it.

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Eating Jim Crow

Michelle Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, is exactly what most Americans would expect it be after reading the title or seeing the cover of the book. It’s a well-crafted and articulate piece of extreme race-baiting and grievance-mongering that totally and utterly ignores reality, the antisocial, criminal, and self-destructive behaviors of the “Black Community,” and the negative consequences they suffer as a direct result of those behaviors.

The New Jim Crow is one those uncommon situation where one can judge a book by its cover.

In The New Jim Crow, Alexander systematically argues that America’s judicial system “operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.” The War on Drugs, she contends, has created “a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society.” Mass incarceration, and the disabilities that come with the label “felon,” serve, metaphorically, as the new Jim Crow. She further posits that “Race plays a major role-indeed, a defining role – in the current system, but not because of what is commonly understood as old-fashioned, hostile bigotry. This system of control depends far more on racial indifference (defined as a lack of compassion and caring about race and racial groups) than racial hostility – a feature it actually shares with its predecessors.”

The underlying flaw in her work and her thesis is that Mrs. Alexander willfully ignored the reality that Blacks per capita commit far more crimes than any other cultural group in America. If they being wholesale disenfranchised, and they are, it’s by their own devices and not due to any Jim Crow-esque government conspiracy of control over their population. She, like most race-baiters, Black apologists, and purveyors of “Social Justice,” always seem to see the enactment and enforcement of laws as a “lack of compassion and caring about race and racial groups” when Blacks, due to their apparent propensity for criminality, are disproportionately impacted by those laws.

To follow Alexander’s logic to it’s natural conclusion we would have to declare all laws pertaining to violent crime – except, of course, any instance where the crime is White-on-Black – as racist and strike them from the books as Blacks commit approx. 50% of the violent crimes in the US despite being only 13% of the population.

However, I will without reservation concede one critical point to the author.  The sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine has been proven to serve no purpose and to have been a reactionary measure that needs to properly reach its sunset.

~*~

Contrary to what one might expect, I do suggest that Americans read Michell Alexander’s work. The New Jim Crow is very well written and researched. Because it is so and because it shows exactly how professional race-baiters will match facts to their own agendas, biases, and false postulates, its an important work for Americans to read.

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An Obama Cultist

Like most cults, street gangs, and virulently nonnormative subcultures Obama cultists wear a uniform in order to “flag” their identities to others.

An Obama cultist in its natural setting
An Obama Cultist Displaying His Fashion Sense

This can, at times, lead to some odd combinations of fashion. Then again, these combination might not really be that odd at all, just not ones that Americans would find pleasant or chic.

On the brighter side for the nation, this is one Obama cultists who probably won’t ever be voting again, at least not legally.

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Not So Fun Fact

Obama-illegal-immigrantsA not so fun fact of the recent 2012 Presidential Election is that Obama lost in every state that requires a photo ID to be produced before voting but narrowly “won” in several key states that did not require such ID. Conversely, Obama lost in every state that requires a photo ID to be produced before voting. That, combined with the plethora of other voting irregularities in the 2012 elections, does not look very good.

Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania total 66 electoral votes between them,don’t require voters to identify themselves, and have large population of unfranchised residents.

“Interestingly” the 66 66 electoral votes these states would, if added to Romney’s total of 205 electoral votes, would have given him 271 electoral votes, enough votes to win even without Ohio or Florida Romney, two other states without voter ID requirements and which had serious discrepancies in their voting results.

The above are the facts of the matter. That is all that they are, facts. What conclusions one draws and what actions one takes based upon those conclusions is a personal moral choice.

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