BEFORE: Perhaps I should continue cramming for the Oscars, but with so few linking paths out of "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm", I saw the opportunity to transition over to documentaries. This is one of the trickiest linking things I do, moving from fiction to non-fiction and back, as I have to look for either an actor being interviewed in a documentary (thankfully, they make some docs about actors, singers and such, or often use actors to narrate docs, as this one does) or I could find a historical fiction film that uses archive footage of political figures to set the scene, as "Da 5 Bloods" and "The Trial of the Chicago 7" did. Sometimes I'm aware of this and I can turn it to my advantage, other times, I may only find out about the use of archival footage after the fact.
A big issue for me is that not every filmmaker (or whoever's on staff) takes the time to keep a film's IMDB records completely up to date. A film's budget may allow for the licensing of a ton of news clips, but then the record-keeping may fall by the wayside. It's like Hollywood isn't concerned about the audience members out there who might be watching films in a linked chain. (OK, make that "member", I think it's just me.) So I've resolved to take the time to update the IMDB records whenever I can, partially because it brings order to the universe, but also because anyone who speaks on camera or has their image used in a film deserves credit for that, dead or alive, whether they want it or not.
If I stick a number of docs together on a similar topic (pop music, politics) I certainly increase my chances of keeping the chain alive despite improper record-keeping. But then after I work my magic, there then tends to be so much overlap that I may wonder why I bothered - but bear in mind that this week's chain was put together before making alterations to the credits, so that's why the films appear in a particular order. I had a hell of a time finding another movie where either Rudy Giuliani or Mike Pence (who carries over from "Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm") was credited, but once I did, things seemed to flow together all right.
Historically, today's the anniversary of the Three-Fifths Compromise - April 18, 1783 was the first instance of black slaves in the U.S. being counted as 3/5 of a person, for the purpose of taxation, according to a resolution from the Congress of the Confederation, but this carried over to the U.S. Constitution four years later.
A quick look at the TCM "31 Days of Oscar" for tomorrow, April 19, then we'll see how relevant that little historical factoid is:
7:00 am "None But the Lonely Heart" (1944)
9:00 am "Now, Voyager" (1942) - SEEN IT
11:00 am "Odd Man Out" (1947)
1:00 pm "Of Human Bondage" (1934)
2:30 pm "Of Mice and Men" (1939)
4:30 pm "Oh, God!" (1977) - SEEN IT
6:30 pm "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958) - SEEN IT
8:00 pm "Oliver!" (1968) - SEEN IT
10:45 pm "On the Town" (1948) - SEEN IT
12:30 am "On the Waterfront" (1954) - SEEN IT
2:30 am "One Foot in Heaven" (1941)
4:30 am "One Million B.C." (1940)
6 out of 12 seen, which is essentially a push, but it raises my percentage just a bit, 92 seen out of 219 is a solid 42%, I'll take that.
THE PLOT: This documentary examines how, since 2008, right-wing groups have worked with certain states to make it harder to vote, particularly for minority groups and young people.
AFTER: The other thing about documentaries is that the more I watch, the more it skews my stats toward politicians, newscasters, and late-night talk-show hosts. Ex-presidents have a tendency to be the most-seen people of the year, if I watch too many historical docs, the way the Beatles keep showing up in archive footage if I watch too many music docs. This year, I'm planning to do two documentary chains, one political and one music, so who will have the most appearances this year, when it's all over? I'm thinking now it's going to be Donald Trump and/or Oprah Winfrey, but we'll see.
This film confirms what we've long suspected, that there's been a concerted effort to keep people deemed undesirable from voting, and it's ongoing. While it's been in the works for a long while, most likely it began when white Republicans realized that one day the minorities in the U.S. would become the statistical majority (but, but, what would we CALL them, then?) the panic that ensued left them scrambling for a way to hold on to power. Sure, they could change their policies to appeal to a wider demographic, but that sounds like a compromise, plus a lot of work. So instead they instituted policies to try to keep more people of color from entering the U.S. and becoming citizens, plus other laws that would disenfranchise certain people who were born here (jeez, it's not like there's a physical document that guarantees them the right to vote - oh, wait...) and then when that didn't work, they tried lying to them about having their best interests at heart, and then when THAT didn't work, they started telling "The Big Lie" about voter fraud.
According to this film, it's a 10-step plan, which includes everything from radical gerrymandering to the Voter ID laws, to claiming there are MILLIONS of instances of voter fraud when it's really more like tens. One proven case of voter fraud per one million votes does not constitute an emergency, it's statistically irrelevant. "But, but, how do you KNOW there isn't more voter fraud, if you can't prove that? What about all the cases we don't know about?" OK, sure, we can't prove a negative, we can't prove that there ISN'T more voter fraud, so ultimately we do need some kind of "better" system that will track U.S. citizens, but here's the problem - there are millions of them, and by the time you enter everybody into any kind of tracking system, you'll find that a bunch of them have died and a bunch more of them got born, so there's not enough computing power to keep track of everybody, something we're finding out through the vaccine stats, which are all estimated. Secondly, that sounds very "Big Brother"-ish, to have some kind of tracking system to tabulate all U.S citizens, and it's the kind of thing that Republicans are usually AGAINST, with their cries to keep American government small, and out of people's private lives. If minorities have to register for voter IDs, then so do all the doomsday preppers and conspiracy theorists, fair is fair.
But here's the problem with Voter ID laws, they usually just require voters to have a government photo ID, to be part of the system, which most middle-class white people already are, via a driver's license. For some people, who aren't as well-off, getting a driver's license is a big deal, there's a cost involved, they maybe have to take time off to stand in line at the DMV, they have to GET to the DMV (which could be a problem, if they can't drive there), and then to get that license they have to have a birth certificate or other proof, and some people just don't have that, or they lost it and don't know how to get another copy, which could involve ANOTHER cost. So when you add up the travel costs, time off from work, cost to get the birth certificate and the cost of the license, some people just can't afford to get that all done, which then excludes them from voting - so votes in that state then get cast by only people at a certain income level. But we have laws against poll taxes or there being any costs involved with voting, and then we've got a contradiction on our hands. And then what about people who don't pass the driver's test, for any of a number of reasons? If you can't drive a car, you can't vote? That doesn't seem fair, either. Zero percent of the people who voted for George Washington could legally drive a car.
What is it about Republicans always wanting to game the system? And why are the Democrats so bad at calling them out for it? This is true, in North Carolina there's a state board of elections, which decides issues of availability, like early voting, and also oversees recounts and investigates cases of voter fraud. It's comprised of five people, three from the Governor's party and two from the opposing party. But in 2016 someone in the state senate introduced a bill that would create a bipartisan election board, with eight members, four from each party. Sounds fair, right? Except that the Democratic appointees would chair the committee in odd-numbered years, and Republicans would chair during the even-numbered years, which also sounds fair until you realize that EVERY Presidential election takes place during an even-numbered year. So, essentially, the Republicans would gain control of any challenges to Presidential election results going forward - another power grab.
We're all still reeling from the 2020 election in many ways, when people recall how long it took to count the votes, how long it took to declare Biden the winner, and then we had Trump refusing to concede for MONTHS, which affected the transition time to a new administration, and the constant re-telling of the Big Lie is a direct cause of the Capitol Hill Riots. How many times did they recount Georgia? How many baseless challenges were filed in courts around the country? Thankfully some Republican governors who were in charge of the recounts stepped forward and had a bit of integrity, and were able to certify that Biden won their states, placing personal integrity over party affiliation. This could have easily gone the other way, and the future of the USA could have hung in the balance for longer than it did - all things considered, we got off lucky. We could be in the first year of Trump's second term right now, with little or no progress made against COVID-19 or economic recovery...
This voter suppression really kicked into high gear in 2008, gee, umm, what happened that year that could have scared the Republicans so much? Bunch of racist a-holes couldn't handle seeing an African-American president, right? Babies...your party lost in 2008, suck it up. And 2012, and 2020, and really, 2016, if you think about it. I remember standing in line for hours to vote last October, which meant that people were coming out in droves, from everywhere, just to make sure Trump didn't get elected again. Collectively we had to make sure that it wasn't even close, so there would be no dispute. Still, there was dispute - unbelievable! Biden won by 7 million votes, even though the results aren't determined by popular vote, can they really claim that 7 million Americans committed voter fraud? They couldn't prove a conspiracy among 7 people in the Trial of the Chicago 7, how can anyone possibly prove a conspiracy involving 7 MILLION? As this film points out, if there had been a concerted effort to commit fraud, if they somehow found people willing to put themselves at risk, put on disguises or impersonate a relative in order to vote, get them all around by bus to several different voting locations, which costs money, by the way, for the buses and the gas, and then pay them off to buy their silence? 7 million people? No way, somebody would have cracked by now, or sold their story to the tabloids, so therefore it just. didn't. happen.
It's the same way with the vaccine - right now the U.S. has administered about 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, and (this is an estimate because Big Government doesn't have a supercomputer tracking everybody) they say over half of all adults have been vaccinated now, or about 40% of the population overall (this second stat includes kids). Great progress, but what about vaccine fraud? Shouldn't we be more vigilant about people trying to game the system, jump the line, and get vaccinated too early? Well, no, for several reasons. First off, everybody who gets vaccinated is a plus, even if they jump the line, that's still one more person who's protected, who can't get COVID, and that protects everyone else in the long run. Secondly, while there have been people caught trying to jump the line, it's like TWO people, those two Florida ladies who dressed up like grannies and got caught. Two people (let's be generous, say maybe two hundred who snuck by across the country, or even two thousand) - what's that compared to the 200 Million doses administered in the last four months? Statistically, it's darn near irrelevant. Should we stop all people from getting shots until we have a system in place that will prevent fraud? Of course not, because there's a damn pandemic going on, and we need as many people immunized as possible, in the long run.
Yes, voter ID laws would prevent the statistically insignificant number of fraudulent votes from being cast - but they'd prevent THOUSANDS more people from being able to vote, people who are U.S. citizens, who are willing and able to vote, but just can't get it together to prove their identity and have a proper license by the day of the election. Since it's believed that most of these people vote the Democratic party line, that's why Republicans are so keen on these restrictive laws. With the Democrats in power right now, it's time to think long-term, reduce gerrymandering and start taking away these processes that are allowing those in power to remain in power unfairly. Should 10,000 Latinos who live near each other be made part of a district with 100,000 whites in it, so they can't vote as a block on issues that are important to them? Didn't we JUST have a census, and can't it be used to make things fairer overall? Like, why do we have square states and square counties, but voting districts in some of the weirdest shapes possible?
This is another film that's available for FREE on Tubi and IMDB.com - and it couldn't be MORE relevant to our current political climate. The U.S. elections have come to resemble a leaky roof - nobody needs to fix the roof when it's not raining, and then when it is raining, nobody is able to fix the roof. There are FOUR DAMN YEARS between elections, and then for some reason everybody's too busy for three of them, and then in the fourth year nobody can fix it because there are primaries going on. Voting machines that don't work, disputes over absentee ballots, early voting, and now all this shite over voter ID, purging the rolls and removing ballot boxes. I can't go through this all again.
Also starring Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "Only Lovers Left Alive"), Justin Alferman, Todd Allbaugh, Matt Angle, William Barber, Steve Bell, Randy Burkhead, Kristen Clarke, Mike Colona, Elijah Cummings, Jay De Lancy, Margaret Dickson, Rosanell Eaton, Pamela Elliott, William Frey, Cassandra Gould, Dan Gould, Jon Harris, Richard Hasen, Gerald Hebert, Dale Ho, Mike Hyers, Sherrilyn Ifill, Chris Jankowski, Ron Klain, Kris Kobach, Chris Kromm, Justin Levitt, Molly McGrath, Mark McKinnon, Jane Meyer, Zack Moore, Janice Patterson, Myrna Perez, Manuel Rodriguez, Mindy Silva, Darrell Volkman, Michael Waldman, Karen Wilson-McKoy, Michael Wines,
with archive footage of Bill Clinton (last seen in "Whitney"), Hillary Clinton (last seen in "Shine a Light"), Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Martin Luther King (ditto), Brian Kemp, Jared Kushner, John McCain (last seen in "The Report"), Stephen Miller, Reince Priebus, Michelle Obama (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Barack Obama (also carrying over from "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm"), Donald Trump (ditto), Melania Trump (ditto), Gretchen Carlson, Fergus Cullen, Chris Cuomo, Steve Doocy (last seen in "Bombshell"), Brian Kilmeade (ditto), Alex Jones (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), George Stephanopoulos (ditto), Chris Wallace (ditto), Aasif Mandvi (last seen in "Drunk Parents"), David Muir (last seen in "Whitney"), Lawrence O'Donnell (last seen in "London Has Fallen"), Scott Pelley (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Gregg Phillips, Shepard Smith (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), Samuel Alito (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Stephen Breyer (ditto), Elena Kagan (ditto), Anthony M. Kennedy (ditto), John G. Roberts (ditto), Sonia Sotomayor (ditto), Clarence Thomas (ditto), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), Antonin Scalia (last seen in "RBG"), Amy Coney Barrett,
RATING: 6 out of 10 Supreme Court rulings
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