Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
There’s an uptick lately in their activity on my own site, as they head to the comment form and enter their…ah…their counterpoints let’s call them. Good, this is an opportunity.
Thought it might be good to get a list going of questions I have never been able to have answered in any meaningful, coherent way, by liberals — anywhere. Maybe I’m not asking these questions right, but it’s more likely that the questions themselves are the problem. The responses consistently lead off into some kind of monologue about “There’s no use discussing such an issue with a person such as this,” or some such…with the ultimate result that the questions remain unanswered. That situation has been going on for awhile, with all ten:
1. What is “middle class”? Specifically.
2. What is “fair share”? Numbers, please.
3. What does it mean to have a “strong” or “robust” or “vibrant” middle class? Does this refer to people in the “middle class” making more money, such that they stop being middle class? How does that work, exactly?
4. How big should our government be, in terms of the resources we allocate for it, per year, per capita…? Is there a limit at all? Should there not be one, especially if the livelihood earned by the taxpayers is to be limited?
5. If a woman has absolute control over her body, and the rest of us have an absolute right to vote in whatever way we see fit, do I then have a right to vote in politicians that will make abortion illegal?
6. I’ve heard several times of this test for premature babies, that if they’re capable of “surviving outside the womb” then fine, they can be people, and if they aren’t then they aren’t. Um, what is the rationale for this? Does this not conflict with that other acid test, that it becomes a “baby” and stops being a “fetus” when it is delivered?
7. This country has gone full-tilt on left-wing big-government solutions before, quite a few times in the last century. So if it works so well, how come the country didn’t say to itself “Golly! That works really well!” and just stick with it? How come we keep doing this sixteen-year merry-go-round of right, left, right, left…President Obama was supposed to be this unstoppable political juggernaut, His luster has clearly worn off, needs all this money raised just to get re-elected — is that what we should expect to see happen, when the left-wing ideas work so undeniably well? Looks to me more like, young voters taking awhile to learn something, learning it, and then being outvoted by the next generation of young voters that need to learn the same things again. How would you explain it? Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, George W. Bush, the midterms of 1994, 2010…this is all Diebold tampering with voting machines?
8. How are voter ID laws racist? What color is voting-legally?
9. How is English-as-official-language racist? What color is English?
10. What is exceptional/remarkable/superior about Hillary Clinton? Nancy Pelosi? Barack Obama? Elizabeth Warren? What are their unique skill sets, and how do these skills benefit the country…or, show promise of providing a benefit to the country? Specifically. Can any one among that whole sorry lot point to a uniquely wise decision that changed the outcome of a situation for the better, that someone else wouldn’t have succeeded in making?
Update: A bit more of a “discussion” proceeds, reminding me of a recurring theme. The theme is that personal opinions, off in Planet Liberal, are very simple things. Therefore, they can be used as metrics. Think of the thermometer you hang outside to tell you how cold it is; ideally, the outside temperature and only the outside temperature drives the reading. Any other variables factoring in would bollux up the measuring process. You can do the measurement because there is one variable working on the readout, one and only one.
Here on Earth where all the normal people live, an opinion comes from many things, to wit: A rational thinking process, a good source of relevant information, personal biases that come from prior experience. You would never think to yourself “I can trust this complete stranger with all kinds of stuff, because he or she agrees with me on X.”
Our left-leaning friends do this — or represent themselves as doing this — without a care in the world about it. And I am reminded of 11 and 12 which I have also posed on occasion, and repeatedly failed in every possible way to extract a rational answer:
11. Is there anybody who dissents from the liberal’s summation, even in just an arcane, nearly-microscopic way, who knows what they’re talking about — actually, scratch that, is such a thing possible?
12. The reverse. Is it possible for someone to agree with the liberal, and not know what they’re talking about. To reach the so-called “correct” conclusion by way of incorrect thinking?
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Oleg Atbashian offered a superb collection of such questions a while back…
http://pjmedia.com/blog/question-insanity-what-to-ask-progressives/?singlepage=true
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/23/2012 @ 13:11I’d also like to know why the guys with a D after their name are always “smart” and the other side is always dumb ? Why is it that the “dumb” guys seem to be more effective at governing?
- teripittman | 07/23/2012 @ 20:00How much of my personal assets do I have to spend “educating” someone on
why “I beg the question…”. How many scripted “push poll” questions must I endure before I simply say “step off”?
I don’t have one of those, there’s no such thing as cold.
I look at a thermometer to estimate how much more/less HEAT there is where it’s situated.
Just the facts ma’am! (tee hee)
- CaptDMO | 07/24/2012 @ 08:18[…] American Dream” “Sunny Makes a Sandwich…Or Does She?” These Hands Questions for Liberals Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Batman “What I Said Was Together We Build Roads and […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/24/2012 @ 10:13Just for fun, I’ll play devil’s advocate for a moment.
1. The people who aren’t poor and aren’t rich. In fairness, nobody can define them, either. Middle class is a term which everyone is expected to understand even if we can’t really define it, kind of like “cold weather.”
2. Wow, hmm…actually even in advocate mode I can’t answer that one.
3. They’ll probably say that it has something to do with a continuously rising standard of living in the middle class, rather than one which has lost X dollars of personal wealth in a recession due to the loss of property values and the rest.
4. Big enough to take care of everyone, I guess. Never mind that isn’t its job.
5. Oh, no, no. Certain things are beyond debate – this is like asking if I have an absolute right to vote in politicians who would violate the 2nd Amendment. (What the heck is an “absolute right to vote” anyway? Voting is not a “right,” but a privilege. Felons don’t have it.)
6. The left’s answer will have something to do with a woman having control over her body while the child’s body is still inside of it. (I’ve tried pointing out that it’s not a tumor, but a human being with a heart and a brain and a soul, to no avail.)
7. If the Right has done such a bang up job, why does the public keep turning away from *their* solutions? (Answer: because the demogogues on the Left convince enough of the public that things could be even better with their ways.)
8. I have no idea. I’d like the answer to that one myself.
9. English was more or less the official language of the last two great colonial powers – the UK and the US, back to back. It’s associated with white people even though the language has since spread to many others who are not, both those who live in those two nations, and those who live in countries that were once claimed by either of them.
10. Hell if I know. See #2.
11. No.
12. People can be right simply because they know how to parrot others who are.
- cylarz | 07/24/2012 @ 11:50#7: Young people. Young, ignorant people.
You’ll notice every cyclical victory for the Left, rides on the coattails of the “young” guy who is the voice of a “new generation.” And the ladeez think he’s teh hawt.
Goes back to JFK.
- mkfreeberg | 07/24/2012 @ 11:55Just as the Jim Crow laws were color-blind, so are voter ID laws. That doesn’t make them not racist.
If you recall (if you ever knew), one of the ways freed slaves were disenfranchised after the Civil War and after the 14th Amendment was by state laws that simply said no one could vote if their grandfathers did not vote. No freed slave, of course, had a grandfather who voted (who was admitted to be a grandfather . . . that a slave woman might have a child by a voting, white master, was never acknowledged, legally).
So no black person could vote under those laws.
Voter ID laws in Texas have been carefully tailored to exclude African Americans and Mexican Americans, and the elderly, especially in urban areas. A large portion of both groups do not have drivers licenses because they do not drive because they do not own cars, and have used other photo identification to validate their voting cards for years. The Texas Lege — probably working with close consultation from ALEC — considered this, and imposed it as a requirement on voters, knowing that a disproportionate number of blacks and browns would be disqualified.
By the way, Texas is one of the few states in the union where there have been voter fraud prosecutions in the past decade. At least 6 people have been tried, and four convicted — all of them for technical violations of addresses, or of voter assistance laws — and not one of them for a violation that could have been prevented by a photo ID. The new Texas voter fraud law did not change a single thing to prevent any of the voter fraud actually found in Texas.
So you tell me: How can a law intended to prevent blacks and browns from voting be anything but racist? Do you really think Texas Republicans are that stupid?
- edarrell | 07/26/2012 @ 11:09Self selection process.
- edarrell | 07/26/2012 @ 11:10A large portion of both groups do not have drivers licenses because they do not drive because they do not own cars, and have used other photo identification to validate their voting cards for years.
You don’t need a drive test (much less own a car) in order to obtain a state-issued photo ID card that is accepted everywhere a driver license is. It is issued at the DMV to people who do not want driver licenses or can’t obtain them for some reason. It’s valid ID when voting.
The rest of your post is moot,though I will address this gem you left:
Do you really think Texas Republicans are that stupid?
I think it’s sad that you automatically assume they’re that racist. Maybe they’re tired of illegal aliens, felons, and dead people voting in their elections. Considering what nail biters a few of them have been since 2000, who can blame them for at least wanting to make sure everyone who casts a ballot is actually eligible to do so?
Self selection process.
No, you just assume the guys with the R after their names are stupid because they don’t grasp the “nuance” of the socialist claptrap spewed out by the guys with the D after their names. Wanting to give away public money doesn’t make you compassionate, much less “smart.”
Moron.
- cylarz | 07/26/2012 @ 11:24So you tell me: How can a law intended to prevent blacks and browns from voting be anything but racist?
It would be; problem is, your question is predicated on the notion that two things, that are in reality different, are the same thing.
This is consistently needed, I notice, to make liberal ideas look good. Make different things look the same, or else, make two things that are identical, look like they’re different. If those things are required to make an idea look good, the idea probably is not good.
- mkfreeberg | 07/26/2012 @ 12:32No, you just assume the guys with the R after their names are stupid because they don’t grasp the “nuance” of the socialist claptrap spewed out by the guys with the D after their names.
Darrell has a very long track record of making exactly this logical leap, to the detriment of what there is of his rational-thinking process. Still, we’re always happy he managed to get the conversations going.
- mkfreeberg | 07/26/2012 @ 12:36Why not use the ID that is valid for voting now? Why not IDs that are valid for banking, and getting an education? Why is a special identification card required to vote, a care that several hundred thousands of Texans do not have? As I noted, the state Attorney General had been unable to provide any evidence such cards will prevent voter fraud, after 8 years of trying.
I’m a little nervous when special identification cards are required of people who are almost exclusively from one or two racial groups. Such laws have a bad history of turning things much worse, a history of leading to a destruction of democracy and human rights.
According to the courts, it is impossible to get the required card in 81 of Texas’s counties. In some cases, a round trip of hundreds of miles is required.
For what reason? These people have done nothing wrong. There has been no voter fraud in 99% of Texas counties, and these identification cards cannot stop the voter fraud that occurred.
With Texas’s history of lynchings, genocidal assaults on these groups, and Jim Crow violations of voting rights, why are you NOT suspicious?
We already require the voter identification cards to be validated with a photo identification card — why is THAT identification not valid to vote? You assume Texas has had nothing in place, but that’s not accurate.
No, that wasn’t the consideration. There is no problem with illegal aliens, felons or dead people voting in Texas elections. The intent was to prevent Democratic tending groups from voting, period. The Republicans may not be racist, but they determined that they’d rather be regarded as racist than to do the honorable thing and defend the Constitution and the right to vote.
I think it’s sad you’re not aware of these assaults on democracy. An assault on human rights anywhere is an assault on human rights everywhere, you know? You’re not immune in your state, just because you’re not Texan.
What nailbiters in Texas? Which of those elections was influenced in any way by illegal votes?
Where is the harm that requires taking away the right to vote from 100,000 army veterans, 100,000 navy veterans, and others who have voted for 50 or 60 years?
Why aren’t you tired of people stealing the votes away from Americans? Whose side are you really on?
- edarrell | 07/26/2012 @ 15:44No, that [they’re tired of illegal aliens, felons, and dead people voting in their elections] wasn’t the consideration. There is no problem with illegal aliens, felons or dead people voting in Texas elections. The intent was to prevent Democratic tending groups from voting, period.
[citation needed], to coin a phrase.
After all, I’ve seen you make the same assertion back at your place many times, to express the same passions with similar rhetoric, and this remains an unsubstantiated rumor, nothing more, to the best of my knowledge.
Got a feeling there’s some Republicans living in your head rent-free there.
- mkfreeberg | 07/26/2012 @ 18:13No, that [they’re tired of illegal aliens, felons, and dead people voting in their elections] wasn’t the consideration. There is no problem with illegal aliens, felons or dead people voting in Texas elections.
No problem with this at all in Texas? None whatsoever? In a border state?
See, if you really believed there was no such problem, you wouldn’t have a problem with a law requiring people to go to the DMV and get a fricking ID card in order to prove their eligibility to vote. You know, the same card that they must show to rent a motel room, cash a check, rent a movie from Blockbuster, buy a firearm, or any number of other things. You’d just shrug your shoulders and say, “A solution in search of a problem, but it really won’t change anything. Everyone who votes in elections is already eligible to do so, so I’m not concerned. It will still serve as a bulwark against corruption the electoral process and ensure fair and honest elections.” Instead, you said:
The intent was to prevent Democratic tending groups from voting, period.
Funny how you keep bringing this up. I find it interesting that the groups most inclined to commit voter fraud (illegal aliens, felons, and those casting ballots on behalf of the deceased) *just happen to be* some of the same ones who do, in fact, reliably vote Democratic. Nobody seems to be worried about rampant voter fraud among right-leaning groups like gun owners, military members, evangelical Christians, or business owners.
As I said before, you’re a moron. Either that, or a liar. I’m not sure which is worse, and it probably doesn’t matter.
- cylarz | 07/26/2012 @ 23:50No, none. Eight years our Tea Party AG (a hypocrite of monumental proportion, but that’s a topic for another time) dug around to find voter fraud from illegal aliens — nothing. Nada. Not a single case.
Eight years he dug for felons voting. Not one case.
Eight years he dug for dead people voting. Not one case.
The problem here is your bias, where you ASSUME without any evidence that others are corrupt — jaundiced eye, perhaps? — but the evidence simply does not support your crass assumption.
So there is no need for a new voter identification process. We have no problem that it will solve.
Look through this blog and see how many times Morgan refers to liberals out with solutions seeking a problem. You, our friend, just became one of “those idiots.”
You see, if you were a conservative, you wouldn’t be promoting a bureaucratic, anti-liberty solution to a non-existent problem. Americans don’t assume all other Americans to be criminals until proven innocent — that little Stalinistic philosophy we have happily rejected since we got rid of King George III. [Morgan, you need to do some remedial history work with your crowd here.]
I have no objection to making sure a voter is who a voter claims to be — but Texas already has that system. The problem is in requiring an identification card that cannot be obtained in 81 counties in Texas. The additional solution-in-search-of-a-problem has three knocks against it: There is no problem known that it solves, it creates a new bureaucracy with a not-modest cost, and it disenfranchises 750,000 identified voters who cannot simply motor downtown to get the required identification card, but instead must jump through expensive, multiple hoops to get the thing.
For Americans with a sense of history, the affected groups in Texas raise particular alarms. About 80% of the surviving World War II veterans in Texas do not have the required identification cards, and it would take several weeks to get one that would get them through a voting booth. So your scheme makes it illegal for World War II veterans to vote. A high percentage of Texans over the age of 65 do not drive, either because they didn’t ever drive, or because they have given it up. Under the law, they may not vote without jumping through hoops. Many Texas Hispanics — families who were on the Llano Estacado prior to 1776 — don’t have the proper identification. Women didn’t drive way back then, and in West Texas, thousands of these people live in counties where there is no DMV office. Since one must make the journey personally to a DMV office to get the identification card, they will effectively be deprived of the right to vote.
Remember, there is NOT ONE CASE of voter fraud preventable with an identification card in Texas — so why should we take away the right to vote from any veteran to comply with this needless law?
Why are you opposed to WWII veterans having their say? What did they ever do to you, except secure for you your freedom to call other people “morons?”
A credit card rents a motel room in most of the world, including Texas.
Many banks in Texas cash checks for lifelong customers without further identification — and the poll judges know them, too. There is no voter fraud from this population (nor any at all of this type) — why not use this same system at the polls? It works for financial transactions.
Blockbuster is dead in most of Texas (including Blockbuster HQ). They never required a drivers license in Texas — a credit card worked fine.
I don’t kneed another gun. The Colt my grandfather herded cattle with works fine, as do all the other handguns, shotguns and rifles. Maybe some of the neices and nephews need a photo identification to buy a new gun for their car, but we have enough in the family that everybody has one at dove season — so why not allow us to vote as easily as it we are allowed to shoot?
Look around the nation. 750,000 people have been excluded from voting in Pennsylvania — for not a single case of voter fraud.
Patriotic Americans should be enraged that the right to vote is being taken away from veterans, as we are enraged in Texas. I wonder again, whose side are you on? Why does the right to vote hold so little meaning to you? This is how we boot the bad guys out of office, how we have our little revolutions, overthrowing bad government, peacefully. This is America’s core value that you’re saying is not worth much.
Are you a voting American? How would you feel if your right were taken away, and you didn’t learn that until you got to the voting booth? You’d just shrug your shoulders and walk away?
Funny how you ignore the evidence. We had politicians in Texas and Pennsylvania confess this early in the process — their statements are a part of the reasons the courts have stayed the enforcement of these laws in Texas.
In short, we know the intent of these laws is corrupt. Why aren’t you opposed to corruption in voting?
Where do you have any evidence of significant voter fraud by any of these groups? We looked in Texas, and the problems you claim, simply do not exist.
In fact, I’ll wager you can’t provide evidence of significant problems in voting from any of those groups since about 1915, and probably not much prior to that, either.
I find it distressing that people make up stories of voter fraud where there is no such thing in order to rationalize taking away the right to vote from aged veterans. I find that disgusting.
No, that’s wrong — convictions on voter fraud among those groups have established that’s a major problem, in Indiana, Maryland, Texas, and other states. Voter ID laws don’t affect them, and don’t affect that voter fraud.
What you identify is one more way we can tell it’s a racist, party-aimed thing, and not a noble attempt to make voting safe and secure: ALEC’s legislation, pushed by a few deluded gun owners, a lot of so-called evangalical Christians and other hypocritical conservatives, does nothing to eliminate voter fraud from gun owners, current military members (veterans don’t count to conservatives? they’ll be interested to know . . .), evangelical Christians, or white business owners.
Here’s a question for you: Why not allow a business owner to use his occupational permit, or business license, as identification to vote? That would allow 100,000 Hispanics in Texas back into the voting booth, especially among the ranchers . . .
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 06:58Heh. Sorry about the format goof. My response to the unjustified snark starts with “You provide us . . .”
Wonder if he can figure it out.
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 07:00See, to disagree with Ed is to be stupid. Automatically. Nos. 11 and 12 were inspired, in no small part, by him and the followers at his site.
Peggy Joseph is smarter than Charles Krauthammer, in his world. It’s exactly like William F. Buckley said, liberals claim to be tolerant of other views, and then are offended when they discover there are other views.
Also, as you can see, Ed has no understanding of good security practices, none whatsoever. To his thinking, it is bigoted to buy the bicycle lock, or to even think of doing so, when the bicycle has not yet been stolen. That’s a solution in search of a problem, and entitles the progressive wing to the double-barrel Clinton defense: “It doesn’t matter, everybody else does it. And we don’t.”
- mkfreeberg | 07/27/2012 @ 07:13Do you lock up your bicycle in your garage? Seriously?
A fundamental rule of conservatism, and libertarianism, is that government should not regulate or prohibit actions where there is no problem, or de minimus problems.
Voting, and the right to vote, is not a bicycle. Morgan, Messrs. Dunning and Kruger would like to see you, and the ghost of Stephen Toulmin is right behind them. Your analogy is backwards, and still inappropriate.
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 07:44As it happens, it’s in the garage right now. But when it isn’t, it’s always locked.
Now I get what you’re saying, I think, the protection measures should be proportionate. There’s a whole procedural process involved in that, it’s called risk assessment. You place a value on the information assets, in terms of the damage to the organization should they be corrupted, lost, disseminated to the wrong audience…you evaluate the medium through which the asset will be traveling. Based on that you arrive at a protection profile. And there needs to be some compromise between the security concerns, and the ease-of-use.
But, generally speaking, ease-of-use competes with the other, at a disadvantage. It isn’t awarded the benefit of the doubt. If it is, then you don’t really have a security system in place.
Thus it is, here. It’s evident what you want to do, but it isn’t a good idea. Even if nobody has yet successfully thrown a big net over an improper voter, and brought him to the sheriff’s office to present as “evidence” (pretty much the only way it could happen).
- mkfreeberg | 07/27/2012 @ 07:50I didn’t say that. There have been several nets thrown over improper voters, in Texas, Maryland, Indiana, and other places. Voter ID laws won’t touch them.
I keep asking you to look at the evidence. Why are you opposed to fighting real voter fraud?
____
See the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School:
If reality has a liberal bias, does surreality have a conservative bias?
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 08:03There have been several nets thrown over improper voters, in Texas, Maryland, Indiana, and other places. Voter ID laws won’t touch them.
Nor will the padlock actually punish the bicycle thief. Well, unless you hit him with it, but that isn’t the idea.
The idea is to quit making up a bunch of verbal-dexterity squid ink, AND quit complaining about the thirty seconds or so you lose by using it, and just use it.
After all, if people have a right to vote, they have a right not to have that vote canceled out by this improper voting, right? Why is it okay to speculate about racist motives but it isn’t okay to speculate about agenda-driven zealots (we know they’re there, and we know they are) taking advantage of a system that allows them to get away with shenanigans (we know it does, and we know they can)?
- mkfreeberg | 07/27/2012 @ 08:09They also have a right not to have it cancelled out by pseudo-concern over improper voting that manifests itself in a scheme that deprives 100,000 X more people of their votes than could possibly be taken by the improper voting you superciliously pretend to worry about.
Why should the rights of the nutcase outweigh the rights of 100,000 patriots? Again I wonder, whose side are you on?
I’m not speculating. If you have facts, bring ’em. The truth is, the facts show racist and corrupt intent on the side of the law you defend, and no evidence justifying the law.
Wake up and stand for the Constitution for once, would you?
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 08:50Seriously? You usually stand up for the Constitution?
Then can you explain this uncharacteristic departure of yours from defending rights, defending the Constitution, and standing for the more conservative, money-saving, less-government-intrusion philosophy?
What incentive lures you from rationality on this issue, money, or the promise of revenge on “the libs?”
What use is a system to protect individual rights if it can’t protect from an unholy desire for revenge on the part of someone who has differing political views?
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 08:54I’m not speculating.
Yes, you are.
If you have facts, bring ‘em.
I’ve addressed this. You do not wait for a bicycle to get stolen before you realize “Hey, it is possible for thieves to steal bicycles” and start locking it up. You do the common sense thing and lock it up.
I’ve already made the point that liberalism, as we know it in this day and age, consists of opposition to common sense realizations and opposition to common-sense solutions. I’m taking these idle protests of yours to be proof of what I have said.
If the bike is worth something, you lock it up. Especially in a bad neighborhood.
Why do you so under-value this precious, precious bicycle?
- mkfreeberg | 07/27/2012 @ 08:59edarrell is not open to reason. That is the classic definition of a troll (internet).
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/27/2012 @ 09:04Robert, flow the arguments. I made a statement, I pointed out that there is no evidence for the counterarguments.
Reason? Don’t run from it and claim it runs from you, eh?
Can you show us any significant voter fraud, Robert? I dare you. Cite the cases. Cite some I haven’t already.
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 09:08As I pointed out, the bike is already secure in the garage. Meantime, while you’re worried about making your neighbor lock up his bike in his own garage, your unlocked car just drove away. And what are those strangers doing in your wife’s jewelry box in the bedroom?
Oh, they have voter identification. It must be okay, then.
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 09:10Just this week….
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/25/drug-money-funds-voter-fraud-in-kentucky/
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/27/2012 @ 09:26Perfect example, Robert. In the case you cite, voter identification has nothing at all to do with preventing the crime. People with valid voter ID were selling their votes.
This sort of fraud goes on all the time — and while it’s detectable in some cases, it takes a lot of resources to smoke it out. Of course, the resources to smoke out this real, devastating voter fraud, have been wated this election on voter ID.
Again I wonder, why aren’t you guys worried about real voter fraud, like the kind Robert highlights here? Why are you going after veterans and old people, and letting the crooks off free?
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 11:03To make liberal ideas look like good ones, you make similar things look different, different things look identical, connected things look disconnected, disconnected things look connected…that is what it takes.
Darrell demands evidence, receives it, rationalizes it away…right after Robert points out he isn’t open to reason.
“Voter identification has nothing at all to do with preventing the crime.” Incorrect. Authentication is an essential part of security. “The bike” is supposedly “secure in the garage”…while, at Ed’s insistence, we rely on the honor system. The honor system which is mutually exclusive from having any security worth anything at all.
We live in a molecular world. That necessarily means, if you look close enough, everything has holes. Security isn’t about making the holes go away, it is about elevating the difficulty involved in the compromise of information assets, through accidental compromise or by means of malicious intent by a resourceful and determined opponent. Ed’s arguments consistent entirely of wishing that last part away. Ah, but only here; when it comes to suspecting racism, skulduggery and shenanigans on the part of those who support Voter ID laws, you’ll notice he plays by an entirely different set of rules. Over there, if he suspects something sneaky afoot, it must be so.
Follow the flow of the arguments!
- mkfreeberg | 07/27/2012 @ 11:11“Find me just ONE incident. Oh. Ahhh, ok. Well, find me just two… I mean three… Find me just four incidents and…”
No statistics will ever suffice, because this is about ideology.
So let’s test that against common sense. Terrorist attacks are less frequent than voter fraud., which means we can scrap TSA and Homeland Security.
No, you say? Well that’s because you like government intervention in that area, but you just don’t like the equivalent elsewhere.
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/27/2012 @ 11:25So, the intent in Florida was to keep African Americans from voting. What do you call it, if not racist?
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/27/fla_republican_we_suppressed_black_votes/
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 11:34Oh, caught a bicycle thief in Ohio: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/06/439324/86-year-old-ohio-veteran-cant-vote-after-government-issued-id-is-rejected-at-poll/
Damn vets, eh? What do they want with Morgan’s bicycle? It’s not like the guy earned it, laying his life on the line to protect Morgan’s freedom or anything. “Silly old fool!” you’re thinking: Why did he think is VA identification could count as “government-issued identification?”
Why do you hate veterans so? Shouldn’t they have your gratitude instead, and shouldn’t you welcome their votes?
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 11:50Freeberg closes his eyes and ears to the evidence, claiming all the while to be open to evidence, and reason, sanity and the American flag.
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 11:52Why do you hate veterans so?
Eh, wait just a second…someone presents improper papers and you presume they are “hate”d?
We were just discussing whether you are open to reason. You insist you are, but when we see the kind of logical leaps you think are reasonable, it seems the argument is settled. And not in your favor.
That’s what passes for reason, to you, eh?
And if you bothered to read your own Salon article, you’ll see it explicitly acknowledges your flawed witness has an interest in damaging his (former) party. In addition to which, in his deposition, as far as the article indicates he hasn’t quoted anybody.
Why do you weigh these bits of evidence so unequally, depending on what exactly it is each would prove? Why do you suspect shenanigans with such different criteria in place, depending on what kind of shenanigans are being so indicated? Ah, well, we know the answer to that. Looks like Robert’s right.
- mkfreeberg | 07/27/2012 @ 12:14You’re right, Robert — I should have qualified it: Find us any voter fraud that voter identification will solve. I’ve already pointed out that there are lots of cases that the voter ID laws help hide — and you’ve offered more — but you’ve not found any cases that this law will fix or prevent. Not one.
Can you?
You offered a case where votes are being bought — voter identification won’t solve it. I’ve cited reports on more than 250 voter fraud cases NOT ONE OF WHICH COULD BE REMEDIED BY THE LAW YOU PUSH.
Can you find any problem these laws are designed to fix or prevent, rather than problems they cause or exacerbate? I can’t.
- edarrell | 07/27/2012 @ 12:50From your TP article:
The poll worker rejected the ID because it did not contain an address, as required by Ohio law.
So. A law provides a definition. The definition is applied by the “poll worker.” Liberals on ThinkProgress, then, being Medicators, seek to overturn this with a lot of rah-rah, we’re-so-angry.
It is worth discussing because the leftward-leaning have managed to find an issue on which they can present themselves as being on the side of the vets. Worth discussing in a “man bites dog” kind of way…
But, to the issue you seek to discuss. There is reason and there is emotion, you wish to portray yourself as discussing things reasonably…you take the opportunity to so discuss, and right out of the chute, you present an argument that boils down to “the test, duly legislated and duly applied, must be overturned because our aggravated emotions demand nothing less.” Modern leftism in a nutshell. Medicator mindset illustrated in a single brief paragraph.
A better society, clearly, does not await us down this road. We can’t even expect to find law and order anywhere down this direction. It’s nothing but an endless virtual street march.
- mkfreeberg | 07/27/2012 @ 13:11This is all assuming the story presented in TP is on the up-and-up.
But, they got it wrong.
Nice try.
- mkfreeberg | 07/27/2012 @ 13:18edarrell
I asked a clear question.
There have been no airline incidents since 2001. The few attempts made have been suppressed by passengers, not TSA.
TSA has done nothing except waste money and deprive lower-incomes folks of their opportunities to travel because of the excessive costs.
Tell me you’d be glad to see TSA abolish, and I will grant that you are consistent in your beliefs.
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/27/2012 @ 13:21http://www.askheritage.org/how-does-requiring-a-voter-id-prevent-election-fraud/
And as luck would have it, ran across this item. Love the phrase “fraud denialists.”
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/27/2012 @ 18:35It’s a law designed to steal away the votes of people of color, and the aged. It’s working exactly as the cynical, evil devisers at ALEC predicted.
This guy fought for your freedom, for your right to vote. He’s old now — and because his government-issued identification, which the Rupublican junta in Ohio said was all that was required, did not include his address, they turned him away?
Hey, I said, as did the ACLU, that this was an unholy assault on peoples’ right to vote. You said no. You said it would stop fraud — no evidence it even CAN stop fraud, but evidence across the nation that the law urinates on the flag and Constitution, and steals the votes from veterans especially, people over the age of 65, and people of color.
King George III did nothing more offensive. This sort of fascism was the precursor of a worldwide assault on rights. That you defend this action demonstrates nothing more than your only object is to get revenge against an amorphous band of “liberals” and other people you don’t like.
Stealing votes from veterans is dirty, and any patriot is outraged.
- edarrell | 07/28/2012 @ 04:20edarrell
You claim to protect people from intrusions (photo ID), which you claim do not stop crimes (voter fraud).
But you refuse to protect people from even more dangerous, humiliating and wasteful oppressions (TSA), which do not in fact stop terror.
And you ignore the facts entirely — your bogus link versus my vetted link.
You lose both on comparable principles and on truthfulness. Now you are merely wasting our host’s bandwidth and abusing his hospitality.
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/28/2012 @ 04:44Ed will win the argument, of course. The question is what does he need to do to win it.
Since the evidence, once evaluated with cool logic and common sense, clearly indicates voter ID laws are a good idea, he resorts to outrage. From “This guy fought for your freedom…” onward, it’s all outrage and nothing more.
Before that, it is the launching-pad for the outrage: “It’s a law designed to steal away the votes of people of color, and the aged…” Pure speculation. (In fact, we got on the subject in the first place because of question #8, “How are voter ID laws racist? What color is voting-legally?” …which remains unanswered.)
Look what you have going on here. Ed simply sidesteps logic and reason, his argument is essentially the union-goon argument — “right or wrong, I’m gonna win this thing, because I can invoke outrage” — and the outrage is based on something he made up. “The law was designed to…” Oh, really? I’d ask if you have a link but you already put one up, I pointed out the problems with it, and it says in the link that the guy commenting could have ulterior motives; in fact, it’s difficult to see how he wouldn’t.
Ed does this a lot, and progressives in general do this a lot. They don’t really talk to the person with whom they’re arguing, they just put a lot of stuff out there designed to recruit bystanders who are mental dullards, easily aroused to passion, and haven’t really been paying attention. But look at the absurdness of the rules by which he wins: He wins, automatically, if he can stir up enough outrage, and he gets to simply make things up to stir up the outrage when the evidence does not support it.
His own argument implodes immediately if it is subjected to the “business end” of such rules, instead of being protected by them — Ed, do we get to speculate recklessly on the motives involved in attacking Voter ID laws? Because the “reckless” part wouldn’t fit into it too much…there’s a lot of evidence to support the idea that this is just a way to enable and protect ballot-stuffing. No, we can’t catch anyone in the act. But we have a major political party that seems hell-bent on keeping the “honor” system in place when a lot of people don’t find it so honorable…but…only when its candidates can win with the current system in place.
When that party loses, it suspects all sorts of shenanigans and demands “recounts” until the result is changed. Because of — yup — outrage. Widespread, ignorant outrage.
From the above, one does not need to prevail upon emotion to inspire support for voter ID laws. Logic, reason, and a cool head will suffice.
- mkfreeberg | 07/28/2012 @ 08:03They don’t really talk to the person with whom they’re arguing, they just put a lot of stuff out there designed to recruit bystanders who are mental dullards, easily aroused to passion, and haven’t really been paying attention.
That’s exactly what the Zachariel admitted to doing, when asked why he/it/they were bothering to go around and around with us on the global warming thread.
I think you’re on to something.
- cylarz | 07/28/2012 @ 11:07Definitely on to something. Just don’t be so arrogant as to miss the reflection in the mirror. As not for whom your argument tolls, it tolls for thee.
Best,
Ed
- edarrell | 07/28/2012 @ 11:11It’s a law designed to steal away the votes of people of color, and the aged. It’s working exactly as the cynical, evil devisers at ALEC predicted.
I ask anyone here, in all sincerity — how is it possible to argue this position? I think I’ve “followed the flow” of Ed’s positions. Here’s what I see:
1) It’s a law designed to steal away the votes of people of color, and the aged. It’s working exactly as the cynical, evil devisers at ALEC predicted.
2) There IS voter fraud, but not in Texas.
3) The Texas laws wouldn’t have caught the voter fraud in 2)
4) Therefore, It’s a law designed to steal away the votes of people of color, and the aged. It’s working exactly as the cynical, evil devisers at ALEC predicted.
Now, 2) and 3) are amenable to evidence. We can cite the statute and compare statistics, and Ed actually does this (complete with a bunch of “why do you hate veterans / the Constitution?” pseudo-concern,, i.e. the most obvious tell of a liberal insecure in his arguments…. but that’s a rant for another day). And most of Ed’s posts are focused on exactly these two points.
1) and 4), however, are simply NOT open to evidence. They’re assumptions of intent on the part of the framers of those laws. Ed would never tolerate a similar assertion from the right — that Obama clearly wants to bring down the American free enterprise system and install stealth socialism, say — but since (he feels he has) strong evidence for 2 and 3, he’ll keep hammering away on those as if they somehow prove 1 and 4. Which, again, he’d never tolerate from the right — I have no doubt that he, like our friends the Zachriel, has devoted 100,000 words to explaining the “context” of Obama’s “you didn’t build that” remarks.
An argument that starts with the conclusion is called “begging the question.” We’ve just seen a classic example of how it’s done. That this passes for some kind of knock-down forensic death blow in liberal-land tells us a lot about the cocoon they live in over there.
- Severian | 07/28/2012 @ 11:18In a criminal case this would be a slam dunk. Scienter is clear: We have testimony in Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida that the ALEC-designed laws were fully intended to oppress voting among blacks and browns and senior citizens. Of course, you side-step logic and reason, claiming that the evidence just can’t be correct — all the while failing utterly and completely to make a case that there is any voter fraud that voter ID laws as they are constituted could possibly prevent.
Up is down, you say? Bet you can’t prove it with an appeal to reason and the facts.
I give you the examples of older Americans, veterans who put their lives on the line for your freedoms, and you refuse to be outraged.
Well, yeah, those Jews next door were a problem, the Berliners said — they always seemed to be so busy making businesses, getting educated, and making music. Surely they must be guilty of something. Anyone who carps about protecting their rights — well, you know, they must be up to no good.
How did you guys graduate high school without meeting the history requirement?
- edarrell | 07/28/2012 @ 11:27edarrell
Word proceed from you in profusion, but you ignore my simple and direct question.
You claim to protect people from intrusions (photo ID), which you claim do not stop crimes (voter fraud).
Why do you refuse to protect people from even more dangerous, humiliating and wasteful oppressions (TSA), which do not in fact stop terror?
The only answer is that you can’t face constraints of logic and consistency.
Alas. .
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/28/2012 @ 11:38In a criminal case this would be a slam dunk. Scienter is clear: We have testimony in Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida that the ALEC-designed laws were fully intended to oppress voting among blacks and browns and senior citizens.
Ah yes, Salon…. that bastion of science. And here’s an article from National Review proving beyond a doubt that Obama is was a card-carrying socialist.
Admissible? If not, why not?
In fact, if Morgan will indulge me, let me pose another question for liberals. Not sure how to put this succinctly, but let’s just call it “when is begging the question permissible?”
For instance, I argue that 1) Obama is clearly a socialist. I cite 2) the National Review article above and 3) “you didn’t build that.” Both are matters of public record, reported in media outlets at least as reputable as Salon.com. Therefore, 4), Obama is a socialist.
What, precisely, is the difference between my “Obama is a socialist” argument and your “voter ID laws are racist” argument? Let’s take it as read that I’m a stupid Jesus-thumping racist hater partisan hack who’s right now typing this very sentence at the Koch Brothers’ Fortress of Evil (taking dictation from ALEC the whole time). Still, the questions stand:
Why is the testimony of a disgruntled Republican operative with an obvious grudge against his former comrades ironclad evidence, but a photo of Obama’s New Party card inadmissible?
Why do statements from Republicans that say what you want to hear get taken as gospel, but equally clear statements from Obama like “you didn’t build that” get 100,000 words of “context” and “nuance”?
Remember, we’ve already acknowledged that I’m a stupid racist hater, so you don’t get to use those. Specifics, please.
[and just for the record, let’s note that we’ve hit all the stations of the liberal-losing-an-argument cross:
— pseudo-concern for veterans: I give you the examples of older Americans, veterans who put their lives on the line for your freedoms, and you refuse to be outraged.
— pseudo-concern for the Constitution, with bonus pseud-concern about Republican honor: The Republicans may not be racist, but they determined that they’d rather be regarded as racist than to do the honorable thing and defend the Constitution and the right to vote.
— Godwin: Well, yeah, those Jews next door were a problem, the Berliners said
— Ignorance: How did you guys graduate high school without meeting the history requirement?
All in under 50 comments. That’s got to be some kind of new record.]
- Severian | 07/28/2012 @ 12:00I didn’t say it was an intrusion. I pointed out — as has been done in court — that the procedures don’t protect against voter fraud, so they are absolutely worthless to do what you want to do, while at the same time clogging up the polls with problems so that poll judges are prevented from stopping real voter fraud. I’ve worked hard to avoid pointing out the hypocrisy of your view, assuming that you just hadn’t seen it before — but now I wonder if you’re being intentionally hypocritical, knowing that no one else writing here will call you on it.
It’s not that there is an intrusion. In Texas, one must present legally valid identification to get a voter registration card, and photo identification is the usual method. Thereafter, verification at the polls is done by signature, which is a thousand-year-validated part of common law and codified law in the English speaking world. You’ve offered no reason to abandon our Anglo-Saxon law on these issues.
The issues are that the new procedures deny the right to vote to Americans who have done nothing wrong, and who in many cases have performed valuable services to our nation. For every case of voter fraud prevented, if we concede these laws could stop any, which is way beyond the evidence you or anyone else has presented, then there are 500,000 Americans kept from voting for every case of voter fraud. Do you claim that one vote can sway an election? The evidence your side has presented in court documents that the laws will sway 500,000 elections for every one swayed by fraud.
Seriously. You guys can’t be that math challenged. Preventing 500,000 people from voting correctly — the guy in Ohio was trying to vote for Mitt Romney, by the way — is more dangerous that NOT stopping one case of voter fraud.
But again, you have not, nor has anyone in ten years of trying, provided evidence that voter identification laws do ANY good. They do not stop ANY voter fraud. The laws are completely and utterly worthless as tools of good.
But they do prevent lots of African Americans and Mexican Americans from voting. They prevent lots of older Americans and veteran Americans from voting.
Why do you guys hate Americans so? Why are you willing to urinate on the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of veterans to “get” a non-existent case of voter fraud? What ignorance could drive such animus? You refuse to look at the facts. Is it really that you don’t know, or that you really have an animus against these people? You keep refusing to look at the harms done. Why?
Nice bait and switch there, Robert.
I’ve said nothing about TSA. You impute views where they have not been stated, in error. You conflate the right to travel with the right to change our government — you obviously do not regard the value of the American revolution as highly as your right to get to Cancun.
The two issues, TSA work to secure the safety of transportation, and work to secure vote legality, are in comparable in any rational way.
Your bogus claim that there is a problem with voter fraud, your completely fictitious claim that there is any problem in voter fraud that voter identification cards and yellow-star wearing can solve, versus the documented cases in court showing the new voter ID laws are impossible to comply with and prevent hundreds of thousands of people from voting in several states (750,000 in Pennsylvania, 750,000 to a million in Texas for two examples in court). Your bogus claims versus the facts.
Four Pinnochios for that. Your unprincipled attack on veterans voting is founding in complete fiction — that is, a cesspool of lies.
I didn’t come in here calling people “moron” for no good reason. My apologies if you misread those posts as mine. They weren’t.
- edarrell | 07/28/2012 @ 12:01Oops: “incomparable,” no space.
- edarrell | 07/28/2012 @ 12:08I love this guy!!!! Seriously: here we have a fellow who no doubt believes that confiscating the hard-earned property of “the rich” is simple fairness, wailing about “unprincipled attacks on veterans voting” and the ignorance of Republican voters.
And this is classic:
Why do you guys hate Americans so? Why are you willing to urinate on the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of veterans to “get” a non-existent case of voter fraud? What ignorance could drive such animus?
Oh fie, fie and shame!!! Have you no decency, sirs? Have you no decency?!?!?!eleventy!!!
- Severian | 07/28/2012 @ 12:09Cheap dodge, edarrell.
You say it’s too burdensome to find simple photo ID to vote, when that will stop fraud as I have documented.
BUT you are fine with the gross intrusions of TSA which really are useless (unlike photo IDs).
Janet Napolitano hurts the little guy far more than any anti-fraud measures
The comparison is that you work to an agenda, not intellectual consistency or honesty.
Alas.
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/28/2012 @ 12:13Love the Henry VI reference there, Sev. And “virtue junky” deserves a patent application.
- mkfreeberg | 07/28/2012 @ 15:23No, I was talking the testimony the courts have accepted in the Texas and Pennsylvania cases.
Why can’t you claim you’ve got equal evidence that Obama’s a socialist? Because no court has accepted such evidence as probative.
- edarrell | 07/28/2012 @ 17:23edarrell
Invincible ignorance.
No proof will ever satisfy you.
So I can only repeat the test of (in)consistency, which you fail by not answering.
You claim it’s too burdensome to find simple photo ID to vote, based on the further claim that the ID would not reduce fraud..
BUT you are fine with the gross intrusions of TSA which really are demonstrably useless .
Simply admit that you hate the TSA as much as you hate voter ID. Then I will agree you are logically consistent. And as an incentive, logical consistency at least comports with the possibility you might be correct.
Whereas wallowing in inconsistency (hate voter ID but love TSA) means you are necessarily, structurally, wrong.
Are you able to follow that?
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/28/2012 @ 19:07Because no court has accepted such evidence as probative.
Interesting….. so now the standard is that a statement must have been entered into a court record before it counts?
Is that seriously what you’re claiming?
Maybe you and Zachriel should debate “global warming,” Between their endless cut-and-paste and your constantly shifting standards of evidence, we should be able to hit 1000+ comments in short order…..
[I know, I know…. you’ll come back with something about how of course it doesn’t have to be entered into just any court, but if it were…. and then I’ll say “probative of what? That article you linked said the guy was up on corruption charges; what were the electoral consequences of that decision (if in fact it played out as you imply, and I notice there’s no followup here)?” &c &c &c. And around and around and around we’ll go again. But it’s obvious that you’re just a virtue junkie, here to get your fix by lecturing us eeeevil Rethugs on moral niceties. Have we no shame?! and so forth. But since I’m a libertarian about drugs… have another hit, brother. Whatever gets you through the night, I say].
- Severian | 07/28/2012 @ 21:25The more I think about this, the more asinine it seems. There are laws against speeding. Yet, some people still drive faster than the law allows. Therefore, speed limits are racist.
Or, better yet: The legal age of majority is 18. At eighteen, you can vote for president, buy a firearm, join the military (or be drafted)…. and yet you cannot legally purchase a beer for another three years. It is thus possible to turn 18, get drafted, be legally invested with the internationally-sanctioned power of life and death (complete with a government-issued assault weapon), complete a combat tour, get wounded, come home, vote out the bastard who sent you over there to lose a limb…. and still not be able to purchase a legal beer for another year and a half. And to top it all off, if I were to buy a beer for one of these heroes, I’d be hit with fines, maybe even jail time.
What is this, I ask you, but a clear conspiracy against those young veterans who put their lives and limbs on the line for our freedoms? Why are we not outraged!!1!!1!! (!!1!) at this gross miscarriage of justice?
Ed wonders how we got through high school without passing history. I wonder how he gets through his day without the slightest grasp of basic human psychology. Even if there were a conspiracy against under-21 veterans drinking, the public arguments in favor of the law, at least, would have to be sufficiently persuasive for several dozens of people to vote in favor of it — either that, or the backroom deal-cutting and arm-twisting would have to be so egregious that several dozens of people — along with several more staffers etc. per person — would be willing to risk the ruination of their careers and lives should the real reason for their vote ever get out (and, of course, the sure knowledge that any staffer who blew the whistle would be endlessly lionized by a scandal-hungry media). It’s either that, or the measure got through on a straight party-line vote, with no debate or dissent, in the middle of the night, thanks to a conspiracy in a one-party state that went all the way to the governor…..
So, too, with voter fraud. Let’s assume Ed’s right, and that there is a cabal to deprive blacks of their voting rights via crooked “anti-fraud” laws. How, then, does one explain the stupendous incompetence of the Florida Democratic party? It’s literally incredible — I simply cannot believe that ever Dem politician in the state isn’t talking about nothing but this, all day every day. If such a conspiracy existed, and if there’s proof — found probative in a court of law, let’s stipulate that for Ed’s sake — then this is a major federal civil rights violation that could, and should, bring down the entire Florida state GOP apparatus, and taint the national party for a generation or more. Election results should be voided, and some major elected officials, possibly including Governor Booooosh!!!1!!1, should go to jail. Where are the lawsuits? Where is the huge media circus? This is the kind of journalistic coup that would put Deep Throat to shame. It’s a potential career case for literally anyone who takes it up.
Let me put it even more simply: For there NOT to be a gigantic stink about this, one of two things must be true. Either
1) the conspiracy does go all the way to the top, including every state GOP official and their entire staff; along with pretty much the entire media, local, state, and national, since only Salon.com seems to be on the case; every civil rights group in the country has to have completely dropped the ball (or been bought off); and the entire state and national Democratic party has to be so thoroughly incompetent that nobody in the entire organization can capitalize on the mother of all own-goals;
or
2) the ex-GOP official cited in the Salon piece is a crank with a grudge, and everybody involved knows this, and Ed’s just being hysterical because he’s a virtue junkie cruising by here to get his sanctimony fix.
- Severian | 07/29/2012 @ 04:53I first discovered Ed when he “refuted” the notion that President Obama’s cabinet was lacking in real-world business experience. Like a good studious scholar, I took him at his word, uncritically, at first, but then the stupid in me spoke up…and I was compelled, like all stupid people, to, put some more work into it and uh, take in some more information…
I was surprised that after I read every word of every biographical sketch of all the Obama cabinet members, there was very little by way of factual presentation to change the initial impression…just lots of rhetoric, much like what you see here. Lots of paragraphs of it had to do with how hard it is to be a lawyer — it’s really, really hard. And this should count as “private sector experience.” The author of the original piece he was attacking, had made the mistake of tabulating the total cabinet experience with law firm work carrying zero points of private-sector experience…our friend Mr. Darrell apparently got hold of him about it and nailed him to the wall about it, and the author seems to have at first come up with some compromise formula that awarded 0.4 or 0.5 points to lawyers, then a short time later his magazine withdrew the piece entirely.
Since then, I have seen this is a consistent pattern in Ed Darrell’s arguments: There is some “urban legend” floating around which, in actuality, has a great deal of truth to it; and, just like they teach you in law school, Ed finds some weakest-point within it, some chink in the armor he can perhaps re-shape into a big gaping hole by repeated application of pressure…there follows a bunch of dreary monologues, as you see here very thick with passionate rhetoric and very thin on logic — and the “armor” around these monologues is riddled with chinks and big gaping holes, itself, but what of it…
And I’ve eventually concluded something about his objective. He wants to present counterarguments that are unreal, and yet persuasive; contradictory to common sense, but people feel obliged to follow along nevertheless. I think his ultimate fantasy is that people should march off in the wrong direction a good distance, and after a great deal of earth has been traveled say to themselves “Wait, what are we doing? How did we end up in this direction? That Ed Darrell guy who made it seem like a good idea, he must be really, really smart!”
It is measurable that he works by emotion and not by reason, in spite of the appearances he presents. If you distance yourself from any & all seductive rhetoric, from both sides, and methodically walk through all of the relevant facts, applying common sense and staying away from the hyperbole…Obama’s cabinet is the least experienced in the private sector, out of any presidential cabinet, since Eisenhower if not before…and…we should have voter ID laws if we care about the integrity of our elections. But never fear. Ed Darrell and his ingenious methods of contradicting simple, common sense, will make it look like something different…and, give the guy props, it is rather impressive in its own way, he does a fairly good job of it.
I think he spent too much time in law school. He probably has talents that could be applied, constructively, if only they were applied to constructive things. Perhaps he’s seen enough colleagues and peers make a living off of reality, and has decided he’s gonna show ’em a thing or two by fighting that reality. There are quite a few people like this, in this day & age. They seem to be saying “Why should I do anything to help out reality, what’s reality ever done for me??”
- mkfreeberg | 07/29/2012 @ 07:03Morgan, you’re not the only one to believe you’re right despite the facts. It’s a serious problem for pilots, especially those who land on aircraft carriers.
It’s not that I spent too much time in law school (odd as hell claim). I think you haven’t spent enough time trying to run an agency to make it work. I think you’ve not done enough business turnarounds. Perhaps you’ve never been in court with all the marbles on the line, or worse, trying to make your lawyer understand the process so your lawyer can make the case in court. Perhaps you’ve never gardened, perhaps you’ve never relied on the weather for a crop that will make or break your family. Perhaps you’ve never had a failing business that’s your fault, or a failing business that was no fault of yours. Maybe you’ve never had to decide which arterial bleeding case was most serious, knowing that if you made the wrong choice, at least one would die.
I don’t know why you seem to lack the practical knowledge that informs rational decisions.
By the way, the fellow who started that “not much experience in Obama’s cabinet” meme recanted after he read my analysis and a couple of others.
I find it remarkable how you look at the facts that contradict exactly what you’ve argued, and call them “emotion” instead. To you, it’s not the fall from the climbing rock that injures the woman, but the “emotion” of that last few inches before she hits the ground.
You live in a ghostly world of bizarre, almost sci-fi “what ifs.” What if there really were a problem with voter fraud? In that way you’re really like an advocate of intelligent design I know, a guy who argues that public schools can and should be teaching intelligent design. “What if there were science to back intelligent design?” he asked. Then he built half a career on that what if, never pausing to see that the answer to his question was, “there ain’t no science there.” Sort of like asking, “If pigs could fly, would the FAA be justified in regulating pig farms?” and then proceeding to write regulations for pig farms from the FAA.
Pigs ain’t the only things whizzing by you guys here.
- edarrell | 07/29/2012 @ 07:44I rest my case. Lots of rhetoric…meanwhile, Question #8 remains unanswered.
And I’m altogether unsure how one saves a crop upon which one’s family depends, by conjuring up out of thin air the idea that voter ID laws were designed to disenfranchise minorities.
Thing I Know #330. A man who doesn’t know the difference between a fact and an opinion, is not to be trusted in delivering either one of those.
- mkfreeberg | 07/29/2012 @ 08:09Here’s an article on the pragmatic efforts to comply with Texas’s voter identification law. The state has already had to pay some millions to try to get up and running the apparatus to get the ID cards to voters in something like a timely fashion.
Remember, there never has been a case of voter fraud in Texas that voter ID could stop:
http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/texas-dps-office-locations/
- edarrell | 07/29/2012 @ 08:21“Remember”? You’ve already made that point, and Severian & Robert schooled you on it. Now you just want to reiterate it? If you knew what that looked like, you’d stop it on your own.
There’s a rather obvious point here you’re not getting: Your method of argumentation doesn’t work with simple things. Were you to come up with a needlessly complex new method for adding numbers together, flawed or not, and say “add twenty-five to twenty-five, but use my new method to do it”…and, when I follow it, it produces a sum of, say, 12 rather than 50…anybody who is faithful to the truth is going to say, the answer is 50 and Ed’s new method of adding numbers together is either so much nonsense, or we can’t follow it, either way we’re not using it because we know the answer is 50. It seems you’ve become rather accustomed to arguing cases in front of jurors who are idiots, who can be told “do your thinking the way I tell you to…and trust me…I’m a lawyer arguing for one of the sides in the case you’re deciding.” You meet up with people who already have some established ways of figuring things out, before you tell them how, and you haven’t a clue how to deal with them.
If there’s no other way to make sure people are who they say they are, and there’s no argument against it other than the-democrats-don’t-like-it, then we need voter ID. And you can recite prose all you want about “perhaps you’ve never run a business, perhaps you’ve never lost a court case, there’s no such thing as too much law school” — but when people work with reality, one lesson becomes clear: Good logic will only arrive at the correct result, it won’t actually shape the result, if it goes that far then it isn’t good logic. And thus far, that’s the kind of logic you’ve used to oppose voter ID: “Think it out the way I tell you to”…and, when we indulge you on this, the first thing we must recognize is that valuable assets must never be protected against compromise or theft, until it can be PROVEN that they’ve already stopped theft, and in the absence of that, the asset must remain unlocked and protected by nothing save the honor system.
Mega-fail.
- mkfreeberg | 07/29/2012 @ 08:35Thanks for your confession. I’ll try to remember that next time I deal with simple things.
In the meantime, here are more facts for you to reject:
- edarrell | 07/29/2012 @ 08:42When your opponent turns to arguments by analogy, it’s because they’ve realized they’ve lost on the facts.
I’m not arguing for a new math to calculate 25+25. I’m asking you to add 2+2, by whatever proven method you choose.
- edarrell | 07/29/2012 @ 08:44Right, and when I do, not only do I get 5…but you seem to be unnaturally proud that your method produces an answer that is not 4.
Real problems do not get solved this way.
So ONE MILLION in caps, eh? Hey, without such laws in place, how many people are voting who should not be? I suppose with your extra-special method of thinking things out that I’m supposed to adopt for my own purposes, I must presume zero until it’s absolutely positively proven to be something else. Thanks Ed, I’ll stick with common sense. Some folks were done with middle school quite awhile back, and we don’t re-invent reality at the very first insult from someone.
- mkfreeberg | 07/29/2012 @ 08:49Zero, according to Pennsylvania’s AG, defending the law.
- edarrell | 07/29/2012 @ 10:02When your opponent turns to arguments by analogy, it’s because they’ve realized they’ve lost on the facts.
Well, either that, or in this case, it’s that the facts don’t prove the claim you’re trying to make — factual oranges in an argument about apples, if you’ll permit another analogy (or must that be entered into a court record somewhere to count as well?).
I’m going to do with you what I did with the Zachriel, and though I confidently expect the exact same result, I am nevertheless a man of science and must test my hypothesis. So: let us hereby stipulate, for the sake of argument, that ONE MILLION (!!! zomg) voters were prevented from voting by PA’s law, and that ZERO (double zomg!!!) cases of voter fraud were detected.
So the Pennsylvania law sucks nuggets. It’s the worst piece of legislation ever put to paper by a deliberative body. Now, if that were your argument — that PA’s law is useless, and that the PA legislature is a bunch of morons — this stipulated piece of evidence would go a long way to making your case.
But that’s NOT the argument you’re making. Your argument, in your own words, is
and
You’re not arguing “voter fraud is a problem; the PA and TX legislatures tried to pass a law correcting it, but screwed the pooch.” You’re not even arguing “voter fraud isn’t a problem at all.” You’re explicitly arguing that such laws are explicitly designed to disenfranchise brown people.
Which is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. How does your ACLU make this argument? It’s charming that they found a “a feisty 93-year-old African-American great-great-grandmother who uses a wheelchair,” who “once marched with Martin Luther King, Jr.,” and who “has voted in almost every election for the past 50 years and cast her first vote for president for FDR.” That’s just the kind of touching resume that causes hearts to bleed everywhere (and slams that virtue fix right into the main vein). But that’s where the details end, isn’t it? We know all about Ms. Applewhite and her touching tale, but of those additional ONE MILLION (paging Dr. Evil), how many were African-American? Here the stats fall strangely silent (and you helpfully cut-and-pasted the whole piece, so there’s no further “context” to be had).
Lest you be tempted to miss the point yet again, let me quote the greatest orator of modern times: Let me be clear: I can find a wheelchair-bound African-American grandmother equivalent for any policy you care to name. The existence of a Ms. Applewhite does not prove that a million other completely dissimilar people are being denied policy X, let alone that the denial is a deliberate conspiracy by a political party.
Those are extraordinary claims, which, if true, would require thousands if not millions of people to be active participants in the scam. See, for example, your Florida GOP story. No followup there, eh? Even though this cat seems to imply that these discussions went on at official party meetings…. which, if so, there are probably transcripts of the fucking things, on Republican party letterhead. Smoking-gun proof of the biggest electoral scandal in modern American history, and yet, only you and a Salon.com reporter dare to speak truth to power.
But hey, at least you’ve given us a good new name for this kind of question-begging, point-dodging maneuver: The Ms. Applewhite. Why is it that pretty much all liberal arguments boil down to Ms. Applewhites these days?
- Severian | 07/29/2012 @ 10:37edarrell
Fate works in mysterious ways.
I keep challenging you to show us you are consistent. And now it seems I struck on the perfect example.
You refuse to admit if voter ID is intrusive but ineffective, then TSA is intolerable and worse than useless.
Now, we learn why you refuse to be consistent. Seems that TSA-parent HHS is about to become the tool of oppression in case Obama loses…
“DHS gears up for civil unrest prior to presidential elections ” http://rt.com/usa/news/dhs-unrest-gear-283/
No wonder. For your agenda voter-ID is bad while TSA is good!
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/29/2012 @ 13:13Even the cartoonists get the facts right:
- edarrell | 07/29/2012 @ 16:33http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/ben-sargent-gets-to-the-truth-on-voter-identification-litigation/
edarrell
Cartoonists on the left are polemicists who cannot write.
So your “visual editorial” is just that, an opinion.
At least we know you can write…
By the way, will you finally write that you agree — if voter ID is not good, then TSA is downright terrible?
Or are you still looking forward to the Homeland Security camps?
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/29/2012 @ 16:59With the Pulitzer Prizes to prove it, in Sargent’s case.
Sargent isn’t leftist, he just tells the truths — and, as Truman observed, you think it’s hell, or polemics.
- edarrell | 07/30/2012 @ 05:16edarrell
Stop dodging and distracting, ed.
You STILL won’t admit it ! If voter ID is intrusive but ineffective, then TSA is intolerable and and outright damaging.
You can’t. Your agenda requires that you hate legitimate ID laws but endorse coercive statist intrusions like TSA.
PS: You mean the Pulitizer like the one to Walter Duranty, for hiding Soviet mass murder? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor for the details of his despicable efforts.
- Robert Arvanitis | 07/30/2012 @ 06:01[…] resoundingly fail to do so, are virtue junkies. The term means exactly what it seems to mean. You discuss the merits and possible pitfalls of a voter ID law with them, and things get strange when you ask […]
- The Vampire Problem | Right Wing News | 07/30/2012 @ 07:56[…] resoundingly fail to do so, are virtue junkies. The term means exactly what it seems to mean. You discuss the merits and possible pitfalls of a voter ID law with them, and things get strange when you ask […]
- The Vampire Problem | Washington Rebel | 07/30/2012 @ 08:11[…] Recent Memo For File CLXV Virtue Junkie Goes to Chick-Fil-A Vindicated New Skyfall Trailer Memo For File CLXIV The Vampire Problem Rubber-Banding a Watermelon “C’Mon Man, I’m Serious” Memo For File CLXIII I LOL’d at 3:07 The Other Point Ross’ Research Even Squirrels Know How to Store Nuts The Fact Checker Will Come Get You The Banana Czar The Enthusiasm “Lazy American Dream” “Sunny Makes a Sandwich…Or Does She?” These Hands Questions for Liberals […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/02/2012 @ 09:09http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/03/2930855/inside-the-shady-world-of-ballot.html
So it begins. Organizing and getting prepared to steal the election in key states, in this case Florida.
Got to love free enterprise — now even absentee ballots have a market price.
- Robert Arvanitis | 08/04/2012 @ 13:58[…] telling Disney they can’t build an enchanted castle in his area? Pop! And as to the third, what the heck is “fair share,” exactly? Pop! So you see, not only are the progressive positions based on emotion, but measurably […]
- Memo For File CLXV | Washington Rebel | 08/12/2012 @ 06:14[…] telling Disney they can’t build an enchanted castle in his area? Pop! And as to the third, what the heck is “fair share,” exactly? Pop! So you see, not only are the progressive positions based on emotion, but measurably […]
- Memo For File CLXV | Right Wing News | 08/12/2012 @ 06:16