a last straw, rehashed...

Eric Alterman's quote of the day from a few days ago sounded familiar:

Quote of the Day: "As frank as I can be," Alabama's GOP chairman said last year, "we're opposed to it because felons don't tend to vote Republican."

So I followed his link, and of course it was from last year's stink. For those of you who aren't from AL or are and just didn't pay attention, Riley had a chance to be the first decent govenor in memorable past in the Camellia State; he had a progressive tax plan ready to help the state take care of the all the crap bush and co. were shovelling down the pike, that was being lauded far and wide as being sensible and well balanced. If you aren't from the lovely state, you may not be hyper aware of the fact that our state very rarely gets positive ink in the rest of the country.

You may also not know that people in Alabama vote. And particularly black people vote.

Legislation had passed to give the right to vote back to felons after they finished serving their sentence. Not really such controversial stuff, until you get such crap as the above quote spits out, which seems fairly honest and blunt until you realize he means '[black people] don't tend to vote republican' and most felons in AL are black.

Being extremely aware ahead of time that this issue would make or break a huge segment of the voting block needed to pass his tax plan and having seen how effectively the Alabama public comes out for yes/no votes on stuff like this and unceremoniously drop kicks idiots who try to insult the voting public's intelligence (ie, siegleman's lottery debacle), he decided to veto the felon vote thing.

and I decided that I was done with a token southern vote and registered up here. I was going to keep my voter registration in AL as a little act of good faith with my troubled homeland since I didn't know how long I would be in New York. But that ended that. It was one insult too many. One more stupid idiot who almost has enough sense to do something decent in the state but who lacks the balls and/or moral fiber to do the right thing when the good ole boys need some assurance that they will forever be allowed to throw wrenches into anything that begins to work in the state.

Eric, this quote is old, but boy does it still piss me the fuck off.