Arkansas Blog

K if you don't know it yet the majority of people elects politicians to office. That is wise of him.
The majority still rules and there is no way they will vote for anyone who does not see things the way they see them.
He had better not go against the will of the majority or else he will be out on the streets.

Yeah...it took a civil war and a few decades for the majority to quit thinking of black folks as private property. Took 50 years or longer for the majority to figure out women could vote as good as men.

It was way up in the 60s before enough dinosaurs died off that a black man and a white woman could marry. And it will take a few more years of waiting for the old folks stuck in the dark ages to get off the planet so being gay isn't such a big deal.

Someday chasv will fly to the loving arms of Jesus and the world will click one grain of sand closer to being a happy place where all people are free to live their lives as they see fit.

Thank you Governor Beebe for nudging a little closer in the right direction.

>>K if you don't know it yet the majority of people elects politicians to office.<<

Chasv, we realize you haven't much use for book learning and stuff. However a majority of people
rarely vote politicians into office. With a "high" voter turnout being 65% on a good day only
50.1% of that 65% is needed to catapult someone into office. And the 65% per cent turnout is only
those registered to vote which is usually about 70% of people eligible.

Seventy per cent register to vote (during really active times)
Sixty five per cent of the 70% may actually vote on a good turnout election.
Only a slim majority of the turnout vote is needed.

Hopefully you can see how easy it is for 25% of the people to elect someone into office or pass/defeat an initiated act.

With those numbers in mind you can see why it's worth Karl Rove's time and effort to
devise voter suppression schemes like the ones he trained Timothy Griffith to run.
.

Bush goes against the will of the majority over and over, and I don't see him on the streets. He takes pride in not "governing by the polls." Certainly in my lifetime there has never been a president who holds the Constitution and democracy itself in so little regard.

Thank goodness our Constitution protects us from the tyranny of the majority.

He plans to vote against it. But will he actively oppose it? Not likely.

Very few people outside of the Little Rock political elite will even know this unless he is vocal about opposing it.

>>>>He had better not go against the will of the majority or else he will be out on the streets.<<<<

I have a feeling that unless they are of the fundi bent most folks could care less if gays and folks cohabitating foster or adopt kids.
I think the majority of folks, even in a state like Arkansas, are just happy that these kids have a happy, safe place to go.
I truly think that most folks, even in a state like Arkansas, are happy to let folks live their lives how every they see fit and hope that the fundi busy-bodies will just go away and let us have a lottery, all wet counties and allow gay folks to make themselves as miserable as the rest of us in the bonds of (civil or holy) matrimony.

Bravo Bebe for having a pair.

Some rather jagged stones were cast toward the Governor on this earlier in the week, so to be fair he deserves some kudos for stating today that he would vote against this thing. Let's face it: if the elected officials we agree with, say, 70% of the time were as purist as we'd like them to be, they probably couldn't get elected. My dream campaign platform wouldn't get me elected to anything unless the voting pool was gerrymandered to include Fayetteville, Hillcrest, the Heights and the red-light district in Amsterdam.

elwood I am one who thinks that much learning brings too much sorrow. When I was working it was a terrible thing to know a lot because the more you knew the more was expected of you.
But I will say no matter what you do if you don't believe the bible you are ignorant.
If it weren't for the bible men would be n the darkages still.
I wish you people would quit worrying so much about worldly things. Worry about where you'll spend eternity. The time we spend here on earth is nothing compared to eternity.

Excellent.

Looks to me like the Republicans are really running scared as gear up for the next election.

And they're pulling out all the stops early on this time, counting on a whole bag of very dirty tricks to deliver the same old same old vote--the ones among us they count on being stupid enough not to see through the tricks.

In AR, OR, FL, they're revving up the anti-gay this or that vote.

Today, there's a 50-state wide commemoration of the anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima among Catholics. This commemoration is being spearheaded by one of the most right-wing Catholic political groups out there, the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property--a name that pretty well says it all about where that Society's political views go. This group is claiming it is going to "blanket American" with prayer rallies (against abortion, against gay rights, for the religious right, for another round of Republican elected officials).

One of the most absurd tricks of all is going on in the race-car part of the South, where the Republicans are claiming Democratic officials have told those headed to races to inoculate themselves--as some Republicans are saying, against the germs of family values, work-ethic oriented white Southerners.

Funny thing about that latest story. Delve into it, and every report about who issued the original statement (if it was, indeed, issued) urging inoculations, and why it was issued, changes.

I have to admit I'm a bit suspicious. These stories really need to be tracked to their sources.

And we bible belt folks need to wake up and realize we're being played for fools by those using these "family-values" tricks to herd us like sheep one more time into the Republican fold.

I was a bit confused by that bit about the inoculations, Muddlin, until I heard the report just now on "All Things Considered". Seems the Homeland Security Commission was sending delegations to two weekend NASCAR events in Alabama and South Carolina to evaluate how disease outbreaks might be engineered at such gatherings for terroristic intent, and advised them first to be sure they had shots for hepatitis A and B, typhus, diphtheria and I don't know what else--as if they were being sent to a Third World country. NASCAR fans who have heard about it are naturally upset.

Such DC bureaucrats would probably feel the same need for precaution if they were being sent to the Arkansas State Fair. There's no tellin' what kind of epidemic mischief might be spread with those funnel cakes.

Widj, thanks for the update on that strange story.

I agree, if I were a racing fan, I'd feel insulted by the insinuation that anyone coming to the races needs an inoculation.

What's made me wonder about the whole story are two things:

1) Homeland Security is under a federal administration that's Republican, but the reports I've been reading try to blame this whole kerfuffle on the Democrats:

2) And when I logged onto Yahoo this morning, first thing I saw prominently displayed was a picture of Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) prominently displayed beside an article about the NASCAR story.

Bennie Thompson is African-American, of course.

Reports I've read say that he is having committee aides who are visiting health care centers, detention facilities, and other operations where they could be exposed to communicable diseases.

So, here's what I see in the story. It's perhaps silly to have people headed to NASCAR events inoculated.

Unless this part of a larger Homeland Security thing about preventing events in which someone deliberately infects people at a large gathering, particularly one that goes on for several days, draws huge crowds, and involves populations that come and go throughout the country--e.g., a NASCAR event.

I don't know. Seems like another twist on the old race-baiting strategies that have long gotten out the Southern white vote, to blame an African-American Democrat for all of this, with the insinuation that this is another example of beltway elitism viewing Southern working class whites as sub-human.

I'm suspicious that a lot of stretching is being done with this story, to drum up support among those key constituencies that the Repubs need in order to compete in the next election.

Will be interesting to see what other cards we'll see played besides the race card, the gay card, the elitism card. All are fear cards, dependent on the need to drum up hatred.

Fear of terrorism certainly works very effectively, too.

I think we need to be vigilant, we the American public, in this period leading up to the election, since I expect every possible kind of fear and hate that is politically useful to those who want to retain power to be worked up, ever more fervently as the election nears.