Governor Rick Perry – Memphis Flyer

Finally, finally, FINALLY! The Memphis Flyer has had the good sense to curb the liberal writings of old men like Tim Sampson and Randy Haspel and change the back page of this paper to something more sensible by adding some female voices. Thank God — and I’m speaking of the God of Christianity who rules this nation and should rule the rest of the world, instead of these so-called prophets like Mohammed — that the paper has finally come to its senses and is now giving voice to women with some conservative values and extremely long necks like mine.

That Sampson guy has been writing his drivel for this paper for 26 years now, and it’s about time he gets limited to write just one piece of garbage each month from now on. I don’t know how you readers have put up with his left-wing musings for this many years. I hope that you will just skip over his soon-to-be monthly “Last Word” column and pay attention to writers like me, who really have something important to add.

Let’s take a look back: Most recently, Sampson verbally defiled pro-American-values crusader Pamela Geller, just because she had the audacity to host a pro-freedom-of-expression art show in which artists and normal God-fearing American citizens were invited to draw cartoons of the Islamic prophet Mohammed at an art gallery in the great, GREAT state of Texas, which (thank God again) gives criminals the death penalty more than any state in the country. They know how to deal with heathens, and I say more power to them.

It’s still a shame that Texas Governor Rick Perry didn’t beat the communist Barack Obama in the last presidential election. Now look where we are: Our taxes are being used right and left to finance food stamps for poor people who are too lazy to get jobs that would allow them to buy their own food and not put the burden on those of us who need to stockpile our millions for when Obama finally destroys the country, which has been his plan all along, because he is a socialist who was not even born in the United States and is, in fact, a radical Muslim from Africa.

Thank God, again, for people like Sarah Palin and me who aren’t afraid to tell the truth about him. Oh, yeah, you’ll be reading much more about this when Sampson’s “Rant” business is sidelined. You better get down on your knees and pray that this new change lasts for a long, long time.

And, no more will you have to be besieged on such a regular basis with his “ranting” about how gay marriage should be legalized in every state or how he thinks voting rights for impoverished blacks and other Democrats are being jeopardized, or his ongoing babbling about how that Soulsville Charter School’s seniors have all been accepted to college for the past four years that it has had graduations — with their inner-city kids receiving more than $30 million in scholarships. To read his biased (because he works there) views, you’d think white kids from wealthy families, who attend Christian-based private schools, don’t achieve anything. It sickens me, and I know it sickens you.

And then there’s the way he goes on and on and ON about how much he loves Memphis and how it’s the coolest city in the world. Give me a break. Most of you reading this live there and you know what a hellhole Memphis is. There’s nothing but crime and people living on welfare there and one black mayor after another. You all know you live in the poorest, most dangerous, most obese city in the United States and that Memphis has nothing to offer upstanding, conservative people of virtue. He thinks places like Wild Bill’s, Ernestine & Hazel’s, Beale Street, and the Blue Worm are all so great, but he never talks about all the great things on Germantown Parkway or the gated subdivisions in the suburbs, where people exercise their God-given freedom to stay away from all that filth that goes on in the city. He and Haspel are just old, white liberal men who are stuck in their hippie days and don’t see the light of what really matters to true Americans.

And speaking of the great Sarah Palin, it is almost criminal the way this paper has allowed Sampson to criticize her for her beliefs, her animal killing, her beautiful and intelligent children, and her stance on American values. She is a true American hero, but to read Sampson, you’d think she isn’t the genius that she really is, no matter what newspapers she reads. And when she says she can see Russia from Alaska, she is telling the truth. She always has and continues to do so on national Fox News, which Sampson also dismisses as right-wing propaganda, which you all know is not true.

So be very, very happy, people, that “The Rant” will be changing soon, albeit not soon enough for those of you who have had to put up with Sampson’s diatribes for so long. I say, so long to him and pay no attention to what he and Haspel write in their new monthly “Last Word” columns.

This column was actually written by Tim Sampson, of course. No conservative publicity whores were harmed in the writing of this column.

It’s worth noting that, in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision that took a wrecking ball to one of the pillars of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, new voter identification laws have spread throughout the South like kudzu. Certain states whose past actions indicated voter suppression, and were thus obliged to pre-clear any changes in election laws with the federal government, were freed to harness the old partisan mules and plow that rotted field. The surge in states voting to make major changes in voting laws looks like a map of the old Confederacy, including the recent additions of Alabama, Virginia, and North Carolina.

Every week, another rebel state makes a symbolic secession from the union, in defiance of the federal government’s desire to uphold the right to vote. Only hours after the court’s decision. Governor Rick Perry of Texas announced that the strictest voter ID law in the country, which had been blocked by the government, would become effective “immediately.” In turn, last week the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas. Attorney General Eric Holder stated, “We will not allow the Supreme Court’s recent decision to be interpreted as open season for states to pursue measures that suppress voting rights.”

So, you may ask, “What’s the big deal? You need a photo ID to do everything from cashing a check to buying cigarettes. Besides, I’ve always presented my identification at the polls.” The facts are that before the 2006 mid-term elections, no state ever required a voter to produce a government-issued photo ID as a condition of voting. In the past, a driver’s license, a student ID, a utility bill, or any other proof of address was sufficient. The new voter ID laws sweeping the South require that voters obtain a special photo ID, given either for free or with a fee to recipients by the government to combat “voter fraud.” Critics say the laws disproportionately affect minorities, the elderly, and lower-income groups, because obtaining new, official state-approved voter ID cards can be a burden to those without transportation. Even free, state-issued IDs require a birth certificate, which costs $25 per copy and is often difficult for the elderly to locate. Many states eliminate the right of college students to vote on their own campuses, forcing a trip to their home state in order to exercise their franchise. For poor and minority voters, it’s the return of the poll tax, plain and simple.

A 2007 New York Times study found that in the previous five years, there were 86 convictions of voter fraud. The new laws are an antidote looking for an illness. Voter fraud today isn’t committed by some ward hack trying to register the dead; it’s done by voting machine irregularities and tampering by election officials. In presidential elections dating back to Clinton, there have been proven incidences of the miscounting of absentee ballots or the wholesale discarding of provisional votes, not to mention Bush v. Gore, the Super Bowl of vote tampering.

Do you remember the last election, when a state legislator in Pennsylvania bragged on camera that the commonwealth’s new voter ID law would deliver the state to what’s-his-name Romney? Minority voters turned out in droves. Out of the 30 states recently enacting changes in voter ID laws, all of them, with the exception of Rhode Island, have been introduced by Republican-led state legislatures. That includes the distinguished statesmen in the Tennessee House — the same ones who thought it was a good idea to allow guns in bars. If you don’t believe the intention of these laws is voter suppression, just watch the zeal of the GOP officials announcing the changes. And it’s not just voter ID laws: States under Republican control are reducing the number of early-voting days, reducing voting hours on Election Day, and eliminating Sunday voting, the day that many Southern African-American churchgoers traditionally have gone to the polls.

The Tea Party sticklers for fiscal responsibility conveniently discard that philosophy when it comes to disenfranchising black voters and resurrecting a new type of Jim Crow. Of course, a huge new government bureaucracy dealing with the creation and distribution of state-approved voter ID cards could certainly be a job creator and a stimulus of sorts. Of the estimated 21 million citizens without a government-issued ID, the great majority are Hispanics, African-Americans, and the poor. That’s enough to alter an election.

In 2012, a federal court found Texas’ voter ID law and redistricting plans to be discriminatory against particular racial and language groups — in other words, Democrats. After the recent Supreme Court decisions, the rulings of the federal court were thrown out. So, Texas Republicans are free at last. Recalling the long lines of people determined to cast their votes in the last election, regardless of restrictions, the foolish, Limbaugh-listening fundamentalists attempting to hold on to their dwindling political power by rigging the game will probably ignore the warnings of Colin Powell. The former defense secretary said, “These kind of procedures [which] make it likely that fewer Hispanics and African-Americans might vote … are going to backfire.”

There aren’t enough angry white men to go around anymore. Of course, the Supreme Court’s decision leaves it up to the legislative branch to determine which states are to be covered by the Voting Rights Act in the future. Considering the current, do-nothing Congress, any bets on who makes the list?

Randy Haspel writes the Born-Again Hippies blog, where a version of this essay first appeared.