Old EA Message Board

Hi Rad,

I notice this election chart shows a return for Pluto, Ceres and Chiron, all balsamic to their natal positions, Ceres in different sign in a degree almost exact to the current mercury retrograde direct motion.
Besides the culmination and activation of the natal conjunctions, i notice specially the moon and the south node of the moon, could you give additional information to what this archetypes represent in the context of the United States as a nation?

Thank you,
Helena

Hi Helena,

This correlates to the demographic changes in America in which the white people will become a minority in the 2040's which will progressively change the economic structure of the country itself. The current form of capitalism has created an totally perverse and distorted economic reality in that country in which less than 1 % of the population owns and controls just about 90 % percent of the wealth of the nation. The reality that has then created for the other 99% equals a fact wherein over 60% of the people do not have more than 400 U.S dollars in the 'saving's' account: living from paycheck to paycheck. The health industry then reflects these distortions, the big pharma's of that country refuse to develop a vaccine right now for the cornona virus because there is no profit for them for example, and so on at every level of reality for America.

A perfect example of this is the capitalistic pig called Donald Trump: check this out ... https://www.rawstory.com/2020/03/trump-offered-german-firm-large-sum-for-exclusive-coronavirus-vaccine-to-make-sure-it-would-be-available-for-profit-report/

This is what will be culminating over time as the demographics change wherein the economic structure of distorted and perverse capitalism will be replaces with socialistic forms of capitalism exampled in countries like Denmark. This of course is exactly what Bennie Sanders has about. And it is where America is headed. Pluto will be going into Aquarius in 2024 on it increasing march towards the U.S.A's S.Node. This will correlate to a 'quickening' of these changes. This will lead a realty shift wherein the entire structural reality of America becomes more socially equitable for all concerned.

God Bless, Rad

Hi Rad,

It makes much sense. I would not have arrived to the correlation to demographics by myself for sure, and after you mention it never ceases to amaze me the core simplicity of EA and the archetypes, as in this case of ceres in aquarius correlating to fertility/demographic change.
I went back to the chart considering what you say and it all falls now in to this contributive stream with pluto in capricorn 9th (skin color/gender), to ceres, moon in aquarius in the 10th, to chiron in the 11th in aries (healing and dealing with trauma) then being at check-point in the election by uranus 12th squaring the nodal axis. It makes sense enough so we think about EA as always a stream of forces.

Relative to the sad example of a president trying to guarantee profit over a global pandemic when the main wish we should naturally share as humans is for the next door neighbour to be as safe and well as us, it still very inspiring to see cases like this https://www.projectopenair.org, of a researcher who just in a matter of a couple of days joined together volunteer specialists from all over the world with a single appeal and good idea, so that open source ventilators could be developed fast and as needed, for instance printed 3D, to give response to the overwhelming needs of hospitals at this time. He says the project took instantly a life of its own, this is so nice...

Thank you very much Rad,
Helena

P.S. I just realised this open air project developed instantly in these last days when uranus (air) was conjuncted by venus in taurus, wow

Trump, GOP challenge efforts to make voting easier amid coronavirus pandemic

By Elise Viebeck, Amy Gardner and Michael Scherer
WA Post
April 5, 2020

President Trump and a growing number of Republican leaders are aggressively challenging efforts to make voting easier as the coronavirus pandemic disrupts elections, accusing Democrats of opening the door to fraud - and, in some cases, admitting fears that expanded voting access could politically devastate the GOP.

Around the country, election officials trying to ensure ballot access and protect public health in upcoming contests face an increasingly coordinated backlash from the right. Much of the onslaught of litigation has been funded by the Republican National Committee, which has sought to block emergency measures related to covid-19, such as proactively mailing ballots to voters sheltering at home.

"I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting," Trump, who voted absentee in New York in 2018, said at a news conference Friday, offering no examples. "I think people should vote [in person] with voter ID. I think voter ID is very important, and the reason they don't want voter ID is because they intend to cheat."

Democrats and their allies in the civil rights community are also seizing the moment, arguing that the current crisis has created an urgent need for many of the voting policies they have pushed for years, including mass expansion of mail balloting and relaxation of voter ID, signature and witness requirements.

With tense legislative and legal fights underway in three key states - and fresh battle lines being drawn in at least a dozen more - the viral outbreak has intensified a long-running partisan fight over ballot access into a battle now playing out on multiple fronts.

The latest action occurred Saturday in Wisconsin, where Republican lawmakers who gathered for a special legislative session rebuffed pleas from Gov. Tony Evers (D), voting advocates, election officials and even a federal judge to cancel in-person voting scheduled for Tuesday and extend the deadline for mail-in ballots.

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"Republicans in the Legislature are playing politics with public safety and ignoring the urgency of this public health crisis," Evers said in statement Saturday evening. "It's wrong. No one should have to choose between their health and their right to vote."

The RNC is expected to spend more than $10 million on legal battles related to voting this year and is involved in lawsuits in Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, Florida and New Mexico, in addition to Wisconsin.

Party officials said their efforts are driven broadly by concerns that looser rules could lead to fraud.

"Our position is really about protecting the integrity of the process," said RNC chief counsel Justin Riemer, who is helping to coordinate litigation at the state level. "The paramount concern is not on whether they help us win. "¦ Our views on these issues are based on principle."

Some in the party have also publicly acknowledged concerns that higher voter turnout would harm the GOP's electoral fortunes - including those of the president himself.

Late last month, Trump said a proposal by House Democrats to expand mail balloting "had things - levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."

The Georgia House speaker, Republican David Ralston, offered a similar view this week, saying that an expansion of absentee voting would be "extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia."

Later, Ralston sought to clarify his remarks, saying absentee voting is more prone to fraud.

Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said such comments reveal that the "facade" is falling away for Republicans, revealing a "brazen desire to restrict access to voting."

"That's dangerous," she said. "It's just dangerous when we're not even pretending to adhere to our country's core democratic principles. "¦ When those get challenged by our leaders, they erode."

Within the GOP, there is some apprehension that seeking to block attempts to make voting safer during a pandemic could backfire. With millions of Americans fearing for their safety and hoping to vote by mail in upcoming primaries and the general election in November, GOP resistance could thwart their own voters as much as it does Democrats.

"I understand they want to win elections, but it's not clear to me that we gain advantage," said Republican Trey Grayson, the former secretary of state of Kentucky. "I also worry about the signal that it sends because there are people who are bothered by this. We look as a party like we don't care."
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On the local and state levels, efforts to relax rules around voting do not break easily along party lines. Of the 18 states that have taken steps to ease absentee voting in response to coronavirus, many have Republican governors or secretaries of state. And of the six states that have promised to proactively mail absentee ballot request forms to eligible voters, five are deep red.

Still, national party officials have argued that efforts to expand voting access are not needed now in response to coronavirus. They say that could change, depending on the course of the pandemic.

However, voting administrators say they are running out of time to expand mail voting for November.

Tensions are high in Wisconsin, where voters and poll workers have expressed fears about risking their health to participate in Tuesday's primaries and municipal elections. In Milwaukee, election administrators planned to open only five voting sites instead of the usual 180.

Republican leaders have argued that moving the date would sow confusion, but their opponents say Republicans are seeking to take advantage of the low turnout most officials expect on Tuesday to help them win a closely contested race for a state Supreme Court seat.

The Wisconsin Senate's majority leader, Republican Scott L. Fitzgerald, said last year that lower turnout would give Justice Daniel Kelly a "better chance" of winning a new term on the court.

Last month, GOP lawmakers rejected a proposal from Evers to send a mail ballot to every voter and waive photo ID and witness requirements. At the time, Evers did not seek to cancel in-person voting despite health officials' predictions of a wave of new infections across the state during the first two weeks of April.

Republicans are also fighting U.S. District Judge William M. Conley's decision Thursday to extend the receipt deadline for mail ballots to April 13 and to allow voters to forgo a witness requirement if they are unable to find witnesses.

On Friday, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld Conley's ruling regarding the receipt deadline but granted a stay that blocks the counting of ballots with no witness signature. GOP legislative leaders on Saturday filed an appeal of the ruling to the Supreme Court.

Although Conley declined Democrats' and election officials' request that he cancel in-person voting Tuesday, he admonished both Evers and lawmakers for not doing it themselves.

"Wisconsin is obviously the real canary in the coal mine here that we're all concerned about," NYU's Weiser said. "Seeing the breakdown there in the Wisconsin legislature is a warning sign and something that raises significant concerns."

Republicans in New Mexico are staking out similar territory, with the state GOP filing a lawsuit this week to block an effort by county clerks to hold the state's June primary by mail. GOP leaders suggested that the switch would lead to voter fraud.

In North Carolina, Republicans are opposing recommendations from the State Board of Elections to ease absentee voting restrictions, including a requirement for signatures from two witnesses or a notary.

The debate is complicated by the fact that those rules were enacted just last year, on a nearly unanimous vote, following an explosive ballot fraud investigation that prompted North Carolina officials to discard the results in a congressional race and repeat the election. Among other irregularities, campaign operatives were accused of illegally collecting, forging and turning in absentee ballots.

In N.C., a surprise: In the end, everyone agreed it was election fraud

"In the very last election, there was fraud that took place. There was fraud here," said the state's Senate president, Republican Phil Berger, in an interview. "What responsible leader would want to go back to the policies that allowed that to take place?"

While some Republicans may be taking advantage of the moment for political gain, Berger said, Democrats are doing the same - and, in some cases, he said, trying to enable fraud for political gain.

Yet resistance to loosening the rules could make it difficult - if not impossible - for some voters to cast ballots at a time when many communities are under orders not to congregate. Voting rights advocates say the risk is profound in urban areas with unreliable mail service, and among African American voters, whose forebears shed blood for the right to vote and who are mistrustful of mailing a ballot rather than feeding it directly into a tabulating machine.

Elderly voters self-isolating with underlying health issues fall into the risk category too, with greater likelihood of struggling with an unfamiliar process or being unable to find a witness, experts said.

The voting challenges created by the pandemic come during a pivotal presidential election that already faces a range of threats, including reported attempts by foreign powers to interfere in the campaign.

The coronavirus first collided with the Democratic primary process on March 3, following the first hints of a U.S. outbreak, when election officials in Super Tuesday states began providing hand sanitizer for voters.

In the intervening month, initial small steps to protect the public's health have given way to primary delays in 17 states and a reinvigorated push by Senate Democrats to offer funding for vote-by-mail systems around the country.

The recently passed stimulus bill included $400 million of funding to support state election officials during the pandemic, a far cry from the $2 billion to $4 billion some advocates say is needed to prepare for November.

Hi Rad,

Thanks for posting that article.

It's disgusting but predictable that Trump and the Republicans are blocking ways of making voting easier during this pandemic period.

In one of the rare times Trump has ever blurted out the truth about anything, he admitted (and of course Republicans are cringing at the fact he actually said it out loud) "...if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."

In other words, if we do vote by mail, the Republicans will have a harder time cheating their way to success.

Even if Pelosi manages to add another vote-by-mail section in the next Coronavirus stimulus bill, McConnell won't sign it. That means the states will be the only ones that can make it happen but, unfortunately, governors in red states won't.

Am hoping people will protest. They can't take to the streets, but they can call their senators, governors and reps.

As usual when it comes to anything to do with Trump, the whole things is a complete s**t show.

Still, since the energy on the planet is in such flux at the moment, it's hard to predict how this will all play out.

Praying that some unexpected good changes come out of this challenging time.

All the best,

Soleil

What Bernie Sanders' withdrawal means for the battle to unseat Trump

on April 9, 2020
By AlterNet

Today, Bernie Sanders announced that he is suspending his presidential campaign. Polls throughout the cycle have consistently found that most Democratic primary voters were looking for a nominee who was best positioned to beat Trump, and were unwilling to roll the dice on a self-identified democratic socialist.

Sanders is asking his supporters to continue to vote for him in an effort to accrue the 25 percent of delegates that he would need to help shape the party's platform and internal rules at the national convention (or whatever remote convention they hold in the midst of a pandemic).
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But this effectively begins the general election season. There are some immediate ramifications.

First, Joe Biden's campaign can begin coordinating messaging and fundraising and list-building with the DNC, at least on an informal basis, prior to Biden's formal nomination. (Some Sanders supporters believe that the DNC has been working with Team Biden all along, but that's not the case.) The Trump campaign has a significant advantage in these areas and the Democrats have a difficult task ahead of them to catch up.

Second, Sanders reportedly enjoys a warm personal relationship with Biden, which was not the case with Hillary Clinton, and he can now start the work of unifying his base with the rest of the coalition. (This will be likely be easier than some believe.)

This will also bring Barack Obama, one of the most popular figures among Dems and Dem-leaners, off of the sidelines.

Biden announced this week that he was moving ahead with the process of selecting a running-mate and potential cabinet members. He will likely announce his VP pick relatively soon. He's said that he wants to select a woman for the job, and most observers think it likely that he'll go with a younger woman of color. This will change the dynamic of the ticket and potentially give the campaign an attack dog who's quicker on their feet than the nominee.

Advisors to Biden and Sanders have reportedly been talking to each other about a potential Sanders exit for weeks now, and Sanders almost certainly secured some input into Biden's policy agenda moving forward. In an interview with MSNBC last month, Biden praised Sanders' supporters' enthusiasm and said, "We've been talking to Bernie's people. I have respect for them. And I think there ought to be a way we could accommodate his concerns on other matters in terms of everything from people being engaged, to his organization."

The Democratic primaries have effectively been stuck in limbo since the COVID-19 crisis hit, and bringing them to an (informal) end allows the party to start focusing on November. The general election season starts in earnest now.

You can read the Biden campaign's complete statement on Sanders' suspension below.

    Today, Senator Sanders announced he was suspending his campaign. Bernie has put his heart and soul into not only running for President, but for the causes and issues he has been dedicated to his whole life. So, I know how hard a decision this was for him to make - and how hard it is for the millions of his supporters - especially younger voters - who have been inspired and energized and brought into politics by the progressive agenda he has championed. Bernie has done something rare in politics. He hasn't just run a political campaign; he's created a movement. And make no mistake about it, I believe it's a movement that is as powerful today as it was yesterday. That's a good thing for our nation and our future.

    Senator Sanders and his supporters have changed the dialogue in America. Issues which had been given little attention - or little hope of ever passing - are now at the center of the political debate. Income inequality, universal health care, climate change, free college, relieving students from the crushing debt of student loans. These are just a few of the issues Bernie and his supporters have given life to. And while Bernie and I may not agree on how we might get there, we agree on the ultimate goal for these issues and many more.

    But more than any one issue or set of issues, I want to commend Bernie for being a powerful voice for a fairer and more just America. It's voices like Bernie's that refuse to allow us to just accept what is - that refuse to accept we can't change what's wrong in our nation - that refuse to accept the health and well-being of our fellow citizens and our planet isn't our responsibility too. Bernie gets a lot of credit for his passionate advocacy for the issues he cares about. But he doesn't get enough credit for being a voice that forces us all to take a hard look in the mirror and ask if we've done enough.

    While the Sanders campaign has been suspended - its impact on this election and on elections to come is far from over. We will address the existential crisis of climate change. We will confront income inequality in our nation. We will make sure healthcare is affordable and accessible to every American. We will make education at our public colleges and universities free. We will ease the burden of student debt. And, most important of all, we will defeat Donald Trump.

    At this moment, we are in the middle of an unprecedented crisis in American history. There is enormous fear and pain and loss being felt all across the country. There are also untold stories of heroism - of nurses and health care workers and doctors and first responders and grocery store workers and truck drivers and so many others on the front lines of this crisis. Putting their own lives in danger for the rest of us. If we didn't know it before, we know it now: This is the backbone of our nation.

    Our first job is to get through the immediate crisis threatening the public health and getting help into the pockets of America's workers. But we also need to take a hard look at what we need to fix and change in this country. Many of the biggest cracks in the social safety net have been laid bare - from health care to paid sick leave to a more extensive and comprehensive system of unemployment benefits. We will need to address these. Just as we need to address rebuilding our nation's infrastructure. And we all know - the clock is ticking - we don't have a moment to waste in combating the climate crisis.

    As friends, Jill and I want to say to Bernie and Jane, we know how hard this is. You have put the interest of the nation - and the need to defeat Donald Trump - above all else. And for that Jill and I are grateful. But we also want you to know: I'll be reaching out to you. You will be heard by me. As you say: Not me, Us.

    And to your supporters I make the same commitment: I see you, I hear you, and I understand the urgency of what it is we have to get done in this country. I hope you will join us. You are more than welcome. You're needed.

    Together we will defeat Donald Trump. And when we do that, we'll not only do the hard work of rebuilding this nation - we'll transform it.

Hi Rad,

Do you see, either astrologically or intuitively, the November election happening via vote-by-mail?

At  this point, the only way it can be accomplished is to put a provision mandating it in the next coronavirus stimulus bill (if McConnell allows it). After what happened in the Wisconsin primary this past week, it's clear the Supreme Court will block any states' attempts to make voting fair and available to all.

Another potential  problem is the U.S. Postal service is in deep financial trouble (see articles below) and we need them to be fully operational if we're going to do vote-by-mail.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/10/1936160/-Trump-is-trying-to-kill-the-USPS-as-vote-by-mail-becomes-the-best-chance-to-save-our-democracy?utm_campaign=trending

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/10/1936123/-Krugman-what-just-happened-in-Wisconsin-scares-me-more-than-either-disease-or-depression?utm_campaign=trending

Thank you.

Soleil

HI Soleil,

Some states as I understand it already have voting by mail. Others may use the absentee ballot a way to create a kind of defacto way of voting by mail. The Democratic party will do all it can to expand upon the vote by mail through legislation that will be met with all kinds of resistance by the utterly corrupt Republican part who is, as we know, dependent on minimizing in every way possible who and how many get to vote at all so as to help themselves get elected/ re-elected. This is one of the core issues all leading the election day in the U.S. that will correlate to the transits in place that potentially manifests is some of the worst kinds of  crisis, confusion, an chaos that I have mentioned before. It can not be overstated.

God Bless, Rad

Hi Rad,

Thank you. Yes, it does seem like we're headed for one of the most dangerous and problematic presidential elections ever. As you said, the crisis, chaos and confusion we may face around this cannot be overstated.

The reason why the Republicans fought so hard in Wisconsin this past week to allow voting to continue in the midst of a pandemic was so they could elect the right wing Wisconsin Supreme Court judge they wanted:

From: How Republicans Exploited the Coronavirus to Steal a Wisconsin Election
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/04/wisconsin-voting-coronavirus/

"Tuesday's outcome seems likely to set the stage for yet another ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court that will advantage Republicans. If Kelly holds his seat and conservatives retain a 5-2 majority, they are poised to issue a ruling in the coming months allowing the state to purge 232,000 voters, disproportionately from Democratic areas like Madison and Milwaukee, from the voter rolls before the 2020 general election."

And, as you know, Wisconsin is probably the most crucial state the Democrats need to win, and the one the Republicans can least afford to lose.

There's still time for action. Am hoping the Democrats will step up.

And am hoping enough disapproval of that evil moronic madman will motivate some of the 100 million who didn't vote in 2016 to participate this time.

All the best,

Soleil

Trump Reveals the Truth About Voter Suppression

The president is the latest in a long line of conservative politicians to see minority voters as a threat.

By David W. Blight
Dr. Blight is the author of "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom."
NY Times
4/12/2020 

On March 30, the Republican id burst forth when President Trump said that the latest congressional stimulus bill "had things - levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." Two days later, the Republican House speaker in Georgia, David Ralston, admitted that an expansion of absentee voting would be "extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia."

And on April 6, the U.S. Supreme Court refused, in a 5-to-4 ruling, to allow additional days for absentee voting in the Wisconsin primary. For years, Wisconsin Republicans have demonstrated that they will do anything to gerrymander and restrict access to voting to stay in power, including now asking citizens to risk their health to vote. Someone should ask Mr. Ralston and the conservative legislators and judges in Wisconsin what they are conserving.

Petitions are now flying around the internet, calling for mail-in voting as has long been practiced in Oregon and other states. Democrats are using Mr. Trump's stumble into truth-telling as a fund-raiser. Republicans are trying to avoid the subject entirely or repeating worn-out claims of voter "fraud."

This eruption has immediate consequences: Americans are about to see how fragile our right to vote really is. Among our many fears is the widespread concern over whether we will have an open and legitimate general election in November. If we are still stuck at home, will we be able to vote? Or will we have to risk our lives by venturing to our local school gym?

With customary ignorance, Mr. Trump has also stumbled unknowingly into history, our long tale of trickery, laws, Orwellian propaganda and violence as ways of keeping the mass of voters from casting ballots. Since the beginning of our Republic, and especially since Emancipation and the stirrings of black suffrage established in the 14th and 15th Amendments, restricting the franchise has been a frighteningly effective tool of conservatism and entrenched interests.

America has a long history of attempts to restrict the right to vote to people with property, with sufficient formal education and, too often, those privileged by gender or race. Political minorities - today's Republican Party, antebellum slaveholders, Gilded Age oligarchs or rural states empowered disproportionately by the Electoral College - have always feared and suppressed the expansion of both the right and the access to the right to vote. There is no Republican majority in America, except on Election Days.

Mr. Trump's rhetorical stumble into truth joins a litany of similar expressions in American history. The creation of black male suffrage was the most contested of all the problems of the early new state governments formed during Reconstruction. Most white Southerners were hellbent on trying to restore white supremacy, especially in voting. Appointed by President Andrew Johnson as South Carolina's governor in 1865, Benjamin F. Perry believed that black suffrage would give political power over to "ignorant, stupid, demi-savage paupers." In North Carolina, the politician William A. Graham believed enfranchising blacks would "roll back the tide of civilization two centuries at least."

In Southern history, when the law wasn't on the side of voter suppression, intimidation, fraud and murderous violence served as ready alternatives. As the historian Carol Anderson writes in her brilliant book "One Person, No Vote," the techniques of voter suppression in the 19th century were conducted with "warped brilliance" and were "simultaneously mundane and pernicious," whether by requiring voters to interpret bizarrely complex written passages to prove literacy, in fail-safe grandfather clauses or through allegedly race-neutral poll taxes. Today's vote suppressors are no less pernicious, sporting earnest outrage at the fraud they cannot find.

As many Americans broadly came to embrace the defeat of Reconstruction in the South, viewing it as a futile, even unnatural, racial experiment, historians at the turn of the 20th century declared black suffrage the great demon of a "tragic era." Writing in 1901 in The Atlantic, the historian William A. Dunning, whose work helped define a generation's interpretation of the post-Civil War era, wrote of "The Undoing of Reconstruction."

In Dunning's polite brand of white supremacy, black voting during Reconstruction - which for a while brought political revolution and hundreds of black elected officials to the South - was a curse and a historical blunder. The "political equality of the negroes," he maintained, went too far and necessitated a counterrevolution to roll it back.

Dunning never used our modern term, suppression. He called it "pressure applied by all these various methods" to reduce the black vote. Indeed, the "undoing" of Reconstruction could be measured, as Dunning celebrated, in the large reductions of black voter turnout in Southern states. Votes were not suppressed; they simply "disappeared," he said, like bad weather.

In the 1884 presidential election compared with that of 1876, the black vote declined from 182,000 to 91,000 in South Carolina, 164,000 to 120,000 in Mississippi and 160,000 to 108,000 in Louisiana. As the Jim Crow system descended on Southern life, black voters became increasingly "extinct," Dunning wrote. Dr. Anderson documents this "voter mortality rate" by the early 20th century: Between 1896 and 1904, registered black voters in Louisiana plummeted from 130,000 to 1,342, and in Alabama from 180,000 to 3,000. Today's Republicans can only dream of such numbers, but they need only fractions of those counts to succeed. Their trickery matches their challenge. We should not mince words: Voter mortality is their goal.

Fueling Dunning's confidence about Jim Crow's control over voting was the coup and bloody massacre committed by white Democrats in Wilmington, N.C., in the election of 1898. The largest city in the state, Wilmington had forged a black majority and a successful black economic and political leadership. White Democrats found black rule and economic success unbearable. In a vicious white-supremacist campaign led by a Confederate veteran and congressman, Alfred Waddell, whites used lies, intimidation, cartoon journalism and racial terrorism to take back control first of the city and then of the entire state. Organized mobs, energized by grievance and racial hatred, violently overthrew the election.

In rousing speeches, Waddell made their "duty" clear to the mobs of Wilmington. "This city, county and state shall be rid of Negro domination, once and forever," he shouted at an election-eve rally. "Go to the polls tomorrow and if you find a Negro voting, tell him to leave the polls. And if he refuses, kill him! Shoot him down in his tracks!" The mob roared and raised their rifles in the air. On and after Election Day, 15 to 20 people were murdered in the immediate uprising, while hundreds of black women and children fled into nearby swamps. About 1,400 fled the city during the next 30 days.

Generations later, the right to vote never seemed so important and newly triumphant as on the day President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in the early spring, and the heroic march that it inspired; a brave and persistent civil rights movement; liberal Democrats joined by a key cadre of moderate Northern Republicans in Congress; and a converted, dedicated former segregationist in Johnson, who embraced his most important historic moment - all of this made the act possible. But it became law against the same resistance and rhetoric left over from the past.

W.B. Hicks, the leader of the white-supremacist Liberty Lobby, told Congress: "If the president's law is passed, the South will disappear from the civilized world just as surely and certainly as Haiti did in 1804." Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina trotted out numerous notorious segregationists to testify before his Senate Judiciary Committee. Leander Perez, the Democratic leader of a Louisiana parish, invoked the Dunning school vision of Reconstruction. The bill "was worse than the Thaddeus Stevens legislation during Reconstruction," he said. "It is inconceivable that Americans would do that to Americans." The new power of the Voting Rights Act empowered the Justice Department to scrutinize any changes to voting laws and practices (so-called preclearance) in seven states and other regions of the country with especially notorious records of denying the franchise.

As Ari Berman shows in his excellent book on the modern history of voter suppression, "Give Us the Ballot," the Voting Rights Act has enjoyed many bipartisan renewals since the 1960s. Even the George W. Bush administration, in 2006, after long trying with its Justice Department to engineer new ways to restrict voting in the guise of protecting the "integrity" of the ballot and firing U.S. attorneys who would not pursue voter "fraud" cases that did not exist, buckled under huge public pressure and supported the renewal of the act.

But since Shelby v. Holder in 2013, in which the Supreme Court struck down the crucial preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act, and even before that in other court challenges, a new era of Republican schemes of voter suppression has emerged. The party, increasingly dominated by conservative whites, has demonstrated not only its id but also its deepest fear: the loss of power in the face of demographic change it cannot control.

Mr. Trump's newfound opposition to mail-in voting (having voted by mail himself in the past), claiming it is an invitation to fraud, is just one more example of the latest turn in the Republican obfuscation of reality. An "epidemic of fraud" stalked the Texas election system, claimed its attorney general (now governor) Greg Abbott, in 2005. In 2011 and 2012 alone, before the Shelby decision, 180 new voter restrictions were created in 41 states, and 27 specific laws were enacted in 19 states, nearly all controlled by Republicans.

Mr. Berman called this process "Old Poison, New Bottles." And he's right: Conservative voter suppression has always emerged in perceived crises and necessitated new variations on old lies about the threats of blacks or other marginalized groups to "civilization" or social "order," or the "liberty" of the powerful. After the 2008 election, the Republicans paid lip service to a new inclusivity; the Obama coalition scared them. But the Tea Party, financial conservatives and Trumpian white nationalism have driven them instead into a spiral of moral panic and voter suppression.

When Trump stumbled into this history, he linked the crisis of his profound failure to manage a pandemic with the recurring challenge of how to conduct fair elections with the ballot truly free. We have many diseases to conquer. Lies and cunning sustain voter suppression in its many forms. Only truth and fierce political action can reveal and defeat it.

David W. Blight is a professor of history at Yale and the author, most recently, of "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom," which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for history.

Hi Rad,

Thank you. Great article.

Yes, Trump is only the latest in a long line of conservative politicians to see minority voters as a threat. But I think he is unique in that he is a sociopath and racist and pathological liar and conman and narcissist and mentally disturbed individual and authoritarian would-be king in a way no other president has been.

The question is, what are the Democrats in Congress going to do about it? How long will we keep allowing this? So far, I just don't see the appropriate level of outrage or awareness of upcoming danger in members of Congress or in the American people.

I just hope what happened in Wisconsin this past week acts as a giant wake-up call.

Speaking of Trump's mental instability, here is a good article about it written by psychiatrist Bandy Lee, who authored/edited a a book about it:

Trump's Pandemic Is Our Cuban Missile Crisis
And He's Bungling It Badly. The Time to Intervene is Still Now.

https://www.dcreport.org/2020/04/11/trumps-pandemic-is-our-cuban-missle-crisis/

Some excerpts:

"He will continue to push for the maximal number of deaths possible."

"Without intervention, the president's psychological disposition was always to cause a massacre."

" His method is classic psychological abuse: "I do not care what the reality is.  I am going to push my will on you, and you are going to accept it, even if it is to your death."  He does this to the media, Congress members, his followers, and the general public.  Soon, it will become: "I do not care what the election laws are.  I am going to push my agenda on you, and you are going to accept it, even if it is to the country's demise."  And the more the country has been abused, the more it will accept this without condition."

Am praying we can somehow stop this dangerous madman...

Peace + blessings to you and to all,

Soleil

Maybe there is some hope in America ...

MSNBC's Morning Joe laughs out loud at "˜stupid' Wisconsin GOP after pandemic election stunt backfires

on April 14, 2020
RAW STORY
By Brad Reed

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough started cracking up on Tuesday while discussing the Wisconsin Republican Party's humiliating loss in an election for the state's Supreme Court.

Even though the GOP had refused to postpone last week's election amid the pandemic in the hopes of suppressing voter turnout in Democratic strongholds, liberal judge Jill Karofsky nonetheless handily defeated incumbent conservative Daniel Kelly after many voters across the state risked getting infected by COVID-19 to exercise their constitutional rights.

After hearing that Wisconsin Republicans are now accusing Democrats of trying to "rig" an election that the GOP insisted had to happen amid the pandemic, Scarborough burst out laughing.
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"In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, "˜Stupid is as stupid does,'" Scarborough said. "In this case, stupid would be the Wisconsin Republican Party, [which] forced people to go out and vote in the middle of a pandemic, believing that it would lower turnout and would elect a Republican so they could purge voter rolls."

Guest John Heilemann similarly mocked President Donald Trump for personally endorsing Kelly and claiming that his endorsement would put the conservative judge over the top.

"Stupider is as stupider does," Heilemann quipped. "In this case, stupider was Donald Trump."

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUHK468thBg&feature=emb_title

Hi Rad,

Thank you. Great to see that the Republicans' dirty tricks in Wisconsin failed. Trump's pick for the Wisconsin Supreme Court went down in flames. Maybe now 223,000 voters won't be purged from the voter rolls in Wisconsin.

By the way, here's a great (but long) piece on McConnell by Jane Mayer, which fleshes out how power-hungry and sociopathic he is, and even though he apparently calls Trump "nuts" and says he can't stand him, he continues to enable him in every way :

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcconnell-became-trumps-enabler-in-chief

How Mitch McConnell Became Trump's Enabler-in-Chief:
The Senate Majority Leader's refusal to rein in the President is looking riskier than ever.

All the best,

Soleil

Obama endorses Biden for president to "˜heal' America

on April 14, 2020
By Agence France-Presse

Barack Obama endorsed Joe Biden's White House bid on Tuesday, saying his longtime vice president can unify and "heal" a nation struggling through some of its darkest moments.

The formal backing by perhaps the most popular politician in America is the latest shot in the arm for Biden's surging candidacy, and a further sign that Democratic leaders are rallying around the party flagbearer ahead of November's election.

"Joe has the character and the experience to guide us through one of our darkest times and heal us through a long recovery," Obama said in a 12-minute video filmed at his home in Washington and released online.
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"I believe Joe has all the qualities we need in a President right now," Obama said, calling his choice of Biden as running mate in 2008 "one of the best decisions I ever made."

The 77-year-old former vice president and Democratic stalwart is the party's presumptive nominee to challenge Donald Trump, after his lone remaining rival Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race last week.

The leftist US senator from Vermont endorsed his former rival on Monday, saying it was time for Americans of all political stripes to "come together" in support of Biden.

Two-term president Obama also praised Sanders as a champion of progressive ideas, a passionate candidate whose energy and enthusiasm inspired young voters by the millions.

And he said it was time for those progressive supporters to help defeat the Republican incumbent.

"Right now, we need Americans of goodwill to unite in a great awakening against a politics that too often has been characterized by corruption, carelessness, self-dealing, disinformation, ignorance, and just plain meanness," Obama said.

"To change that, we need Americans of all political stripes to get involved in our politics and our public life like never before."

- Special bond -

Obama's endorsement comes as Biden and Trump have been forced off the campaign trail by the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

Under typical campaign conditions, such high-profile support would be followed by Obama's appearance at a major rally alongside Biden, generating major national buzz and prompting a deluge of campaign donations.

But it remains unclear when, if at all, on-the-ground campaigning will resume in 2020.

Obama forged a special bond with Biden during the eight years the former Delaware senator served as his vice president, awarding him the presidential medal of freedom in January 2017.

But thus far in the 2020 race the nation's first African-American leader had largely flown under the political radar, preferring Democrats battle for the nomination without his interference.

While publicly neutral, Obama did play a role in persuading Sanders to end his campaign and endorse Biden, The New York Times reported.

And despite his silence he was given a starring role in multiple campaign advertisements by Biden, Sanders and other candidates as they scrambled for advantage ahead of key statewide primaries such as those on Super Tuesday on March 3.

At campaign events and debates Biden made sure to show he is running as Obama's heir, routinely highlighting the partnership with his former boss.

But Biden had made clear from the start that he would run for president on his own terms.

"I asked president Obama not to endorse," Biden said back on April 25 on the day he launched his candidacy. "Whoever wins this nomination should win it on their own merits."

Obama's endorsement comes relatively early in the race compared to 2016.

That year he waited until June 8 to endorse Hillary Clinton, who had clinched the Democratic nomination against rival Sanders two days earlier.

All,

Here is the link to listen to Obama's endorsement of Joe Biden. For all of those who live in America, and all others no matter where you live, listen to this for it will allow you to here and FEEL in your Soul the difference between true evil in the form of Trump, and God/ess in the form of Obama.

Here is that link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQF-ZjKu5Mo

Goddess Bless, Rad