Nate Silver, as cited, put the figure of suppressed voters at about one to two percent. For a guy so anxious about close elections, that’s a pretty cavalier attitude.
Oh, wait, you guys got your own polls, don’t you?
Which a perfectly interesting question, and one which I would be happy to discuss at length, but does not really address the specific question at hand, which is whether you, Bricker, not only believe that proper legal and constitutional procedure was followed in the passing and enacting of these ID laws (which you apparently do), nor whether you believe that it as least possible to come up with a justification for these laws (which you apparently do), but whether you think that promulgating and supporting those laws was the RIGHT thing to do. Are you proud of the Republican party for its actions in this situation?
Why is that the specific question at hand? Does my personal feeling about a law have the slightest bearing on its proper enactment? Why hasn’t anyone asked me about my personal feelings for the laws concerning abortion, or the minimum wage, or capital gains tax rate? What possible relevance are my personal feelings, when I am one of millions of people each with slightly different ideas about each of these issues?
Because laws are made by legislators. Legislators are elected by voters like you. Voters like you have at least three ways they can “support” or “oppose” existing or contemplated legislation: 1. just by their vote (like you say, not very effective, but better than nothing); 2. by doing things like communicating with your elected representatives, joining or contributing money to pressure groups which do this, etcc,; 3. by trying to persuade friends, colleagues, and others to do #1 and #2 in the way you do, in various fora – like the SDMB, for example.
You don’t HAVE to do any of this. But it’s common enough a thing to do, especially on boards like this, that it isn’t unreasonable for us to expect someone like you, who has devoted hours upon hours on a particular subject, in a way which supports a particular kind of legislation, would actually care enough to “support” it in other ways, like #1, #2, or #3.
But if not, hey, no worries.
Is there anyone left who still sees a distinction between how **Bricker **is responding to this thread and how Starving Artist/NoLittlePlans (same guy using a sock; no idea why the mods haven’t jumped his ass for it) is responding in the Paterno thread? It’s equally futile to try to engage either one. It’s always the same Rain Man repetition, hoping to convince themselves that the facts aren’t what they are, and that the laughter they hear is misdirected. But they’re both beyond any hope of persuasion, and you make the attempt only for your own amusement.
The partisan hacks we will always have with us, as long as there’s an Internet. But the overriding fact out in the real world is that they have lost comprehensively on this and so many other issues, and will continue to lose comprehensively, and that’s what matters. The ankle-nipping by the socially disconnected or simply slow to learn, such as the Bricker/Shodan/Clothahump/Sam Stone faction, really just doesn’t matter.
Starkers and Bricker? No comparison is possible! Starkers is like a chess patzer, a wood pusher, where** Bricker** is like the Cuban master Copacabana, gifted with sublime rationalization and a semantic sophistry that is staggering in its complexity! He can leap from a shaky premise and perform twists and turns on three axes and six dimension to drop nimbly upon his absurd conclusion, all with a straight face!
And hypocrisy! No, seriously, there is no comparison, Starkers presents minor and ill conceived inconsistency, but Bricker builds massive monuments to the hypocritical arts, monoliths that stretch from horizon to horizon and tower into the clouds, all resting on a foundation of soggy cardboard and toothpicks! Bricker’s hypocrisy is breathtaking, as majestic as the Alps, where poor Starker’s constructs fall apart when a butterfly sneezes!
In the arcane arts of hypocritical rationalization, Bricker is Da Vinci, Starkers is merely Rube Zoidberg!
At this point it would be a bit ridiculous to try to say that this trainwreck of a thread is “about” any one particular facet of the larger issue, but at least one recurring subthread is liberals complaining about the Republican actions not because they are illegal or unconstitutional, but because they are scummy, scuzzy, sleazy, and wrong. So since a lot of people in this thread are making that point, and you are (I’m sure you would agree) spending a lot of time in this thread arguing with the liberal majority, it’s hardly surprising that your personal opinion of the scummyness/scuzzyness of those actions is something we’re curious about.
In any case, I repeat my question… what is your personal opinion of the issue and the Republican actions in it, not concerning their legality, but their morality. If someone asked you to list 10 things the Republican party has done or stood for in the past 10 years that you agreed with, that made you a proud Republican; and 10 things the Republican party had done that you disagreed with, that you personally wished they hadn’t done, which list would the voter ID issue be more likely to be on?
If you can extract evidence from him of a broader sense of morality, or understanding of the concept, than “It’s legal!” (in this context) or “The Pope says so!” (in others), you’ll be the first. Good luck.
Trying to persuade people by saying the idea is a poor one?
Or declaring that it is illegitimate?
One adjective missing from the list is “illegitimate,” as in you can’t do thus-and-so.
I don’t engage some who simply says these tactics are scummy, scuzzy, sleazy, or wrong. If someone says you can’t do the act in question, though, I do.
My personal opinion is not relevant. And it’s none of your business.
I find it hard to see the difference between illegal and illegitimate, as you’re using it… and I don’t know if you’re talking about a specific case in which someone described the voter ID issue as “illegitimate”. I don’t think it’s a particularly well defined word, so I don’t really see your point.
So… you have absolutely zero disagreement with the positions that I repeatedly espoused throughout this thread, then? Because, boy, it sure seemed like you disagreed with me, and I’m pretty sure I never described these laws as illegal. Or else I disagreed with you, which means that someone wasn’t communicating what their actual position was clearly.
Let’s put it this way… if the position you truly hold, and have represented, is “I make no claim about the ethics or scuzziness of these actions, and will frequently insert disclaimers to that effect lest confusion arise, but do believe that they are legal and constitutional, for purely legalistic reasons X, Y and Z… responding only to people who make claims about their legality”, this thread would be about 40 pages shorter.
It’s certainly none of my business, I agree, in the sense that I don’t have any RIGHT to know it. At the same time, it’s far more my business than, say, details about you and Mrs. Bricker’s sex life, or your net worth, or your home address, or things of that sort. It’s certainly in no way inappropriate for me to ask about it, in the context of this thread.
And it’s certainly relevant, in that a LOT of people in this thread (projecting my feelings onto the liberal hive mind, here) (using the phrase “liberal hive mind” ironically) certainly have the IMPRESSION from your posts that you believe that the Republican actions are in fact ethical and non-scuzzy, and have responded with great volume and emotion based on that impression, and if that impression is wrong, we’d sure like to know that… not to mention that it’s curious that so many people (again, projecting) ended up with the same mistaken impression.
I suspect a lot of people reading this thread read posts like this one:
And those posts did a great deal to form their view of what I was saying.
What I have said is that the actions being motivated by scuzziness or other ill reasons is simply not relevant when a valid, neutral justification for them exists.
:smack: :rolleyes: 
Oh! So your only value added to all these threads is your objective legal wisdom, hunh?
Good to know. I can set you to Ignore without fear I’m missing anything.
That’s foolish. My personal opinion is just one of hundreds of millions of registered voters. My legal opinion may certainly be colored by my outlook, but it’s also the result of years of experience and training.
Sure, although of course there’s a chicken/egg issue there as to how Lobohan got that impression in the first place.
Yes, we all clearly understand the point you’re making about the LEGALITY of the law. None of us are saying “we’d like to know Bricker’s opinion of the scuzziness of the law, because then we will take that one person’s opinion and use it as evidence in a supreme court case” or anything like that. I just don’t understand why you seem so shocked at the idea that people would be curious about your personal opinion, or why you would think that that was irrelevant. This is the SDMB… presenting and defending our opinions about things is what we do. And that’s particularly true in the BBQ pit where you don’t go to start threads like “legalities of situation in which a law is passed with one stated justification but there’s evidence that another justification is motivating it” or “I believe that laws that affect elections need to meet a higher standard, and here’s my argument why” or anything like that; instead threads here are like “that guy over there is a stupidhead”.
So I ask again, not because you have an obligation to answer, but because I’m curious and asking people about their opinions is what they do on the SDMB… do you think that supporting and proposing these ID laws was ethical/moral/good or scuzzy/scummy/unethical.
And we’re saying it isn’t a valid justification if 1. The problem doesn’t exist to any real extent, and 2. The solution actually makes the problem many orders of magnitude worse.
As for the quote, your conduct in this thread has done little to disabuse me of my initial take. You even cackled madly at several points.
You accused without evidence several of us in this thread of only wanting to suppress Republican votes. Positively Rovian, that.
In short, your conduct in this thread has been vile. So playing a round of, “Lil’ ole me?” may make you feel better, but it isn’t convincing anyone who has read this thread. You take glee in these laws because they give you partisan gain. Or you thought they would.
Is this the pain talking, Bricker? Does it hurt that those lazy bums voted anyway?
Lobohan has in the past claimed that I wanted to see poor people die. I don’t believe there’s any real mystery about how Lobohan goes about parsing my words.
The people that did so may have had a wide range of motives. Some if them were undoubtedly scuzzy. Beyond that, I refuse to speculate.
Are you talking about these words:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12041602&postcount=246
In the past you have accused me of not giving the context to that quote. Note that in that thread, this is the last post you make. You make no effort to clarify your thoughts. That post is in response to this:
Now as I recall, you later said something along the lines of if it costs 100 million dollars a day to keep a 99 year old man alive, we shouldn’t do that. But that isn’t really evident from your first comment. And frankly, given your propensity to lie when you think it will help an argument, I find no reason to credit it.
So, in any case, I didn’t parse you badly, you did a shit job of explaining your laughably hypocritical and un-Christian beliefs.
Let me see if I’ve got this straight.
This thread has 3000 posts, a large portion of them by you, and we’ve come to the nearly-unanimous conclusions that
[ul][li] voter fraud was never a threat[/li][li] the suppression efforts had partisan purpose[/li][li] Republicans may or may not be “scuzzy”[/li][/ul]
Many of your contributions have been to answer a question which no one asked: Yes, the Ohio legislature has the authority to change Ohio law. (Sorry you felt the need to waste your time clarifying this; I don’t think anyone was in doubt, but a ‘please type “definition:legislature” at the Google prompt’ would have sufficed.)
So, after 3000 posts, we finally learn that you may or may not have an opinion on the topic we’ve been debating, but that if you do it’s none of our business!
I hereby invite you to submit a simple paragraph, preferably of 25 words or less, without snark or gibberish, summarizing what you think your contribution to this debate has been.
To skewer the inexcusably silly idea that you get to decide what legislatures can and cannot do, what standard of proof they need before taking action, and indeed any other crap that amounts to you declaring yourself Septimus I, Ruler of All.
“Yes, the Ohio legislature has the authority to change Ohio law.”
But they can’t impose a Voter ID requirement? Or they can?