You are talking to a stone wall, elucidator. Remember, “there are none so blind as he who will not see.”
So were those exact words drivel when you posted them?
How does it happen, elucidator that your uncited reasoning is to be accepted as “nothing anecdotal,” when you are willing to dismiss the uncited reasoning of others?
People relocated at the behest of their employers are less economically advantaged? Really?
I have no idea what point you think you proved.
Bricker, when you have a moment, could you offer even a brief opinion of my post #5471? Assuming you disagree, a few sentences about why you disagree would be appreciated. Thanks!
Not to mention 5462
I don’t think he proved anything, but I think it’s clear the point he was trying to make.
Earlier you said this:
[QUOTE=Bricker]
But not enacting a law does not mean that the law was considered and found to be undesirable. The law may not have been proposed. It may have been proposed in committee but sidelined for lack of time and interest. It may have been unfunded in a year when budgets were tight. No valid conclusion can be drawn.
[/QUOTE]
All of those are, essentially, random factors, that could apply to legislatures of either party. Septimus is noting that the chances of such random factors resulting in the actual party vs. party breakdown we have in reality, would be extremely low… low enough that a different, non-random cause for the partisan disparity is a near certainty.
But you see, it’s all those *other *Republicans whose motives are nefarious. His own are pure.
Sure, I doubt that it’s completely random. But from “non-random” to “nefarious” is a fair journey,
It’s clear that as a general rule, Democrats are less interested in any steps that might serve to cull voting rolls. That does not transform any steps to cull voting rolls into maliciously intended plans.
I disagree. An equally plausible – but not, I imagine, equally palatable – explanation is that the laws were not considered (or enacted) out of fear that their enactment would be a loss of Democratic votes.
Wow. We’ve always known you were a pretentious hypocrite, but, previously, my calling you “stupid” was intended as hyperbolic. Now I realize that you really are of substandard intelligence, unable to follow a simple train of thought.
Let me break it down for you.
I called attention to Virginia’s plan to strike hundreds of thousands of voters from their rolls, and wondered if it was the work of sinister GOP operatives.
You declaimed that 25 other state made a similar decision and, with your typical pretentious bombast, suggested that they couldn’t mostly be sinister GOP operatives.
So I performed the obvious arithmetic, and concluded that the state breakdown in your list would have been more evenly distributed 99.78% of the time, if party alignment was by chance.
LOL. Try again, dolt?
ETA: Thanks for posting the list, which helped refute your blather. I see you’ve responded, but in a way to admit your list lacked the use you made of it.
Ah. So we have two possible sides of the same coin:
- Culling transient voters is a neutrally valid thing to do, and Republic legislatures do it for benign reasons, while Democratic legislatures fail to do it because it would hurt them.
or
- Culling transient voters is a partisan-motivated thing to do, and Republic legislatures do it to gain unfair advantage, while Democratic legislatures forbear because of its unbalanced effect.
And yet, despite the fact that Republican legislatures, in many of the very states you list, have engaged in numerous other patently partisan efforts to suppress opposition vote (curtailing early voting, closing polling stations, etc.) – despite that fact, which you have even admitted, you believe that (1) above is more likely than (2)?
Do you see how a neutral observer might scratch their head at that?
The problem with the argument above is that you have tied provable, or at least probable, statements to less provable or probable ones.
How about:
(1)(a) Culling transient voters is a neutrally valid thing to do
(1)(b) Republic legislatures do it for benign reasons
(1)(c) Democratic legislatures fail to do it because it would hurt them
Now I can respond to each proposition, in stead of being forced into the false dilemma that there is one answer for the string of propositions you have tied together.
(1)(a) : Yes
(1)(b) : Probably not
(1)(c) : Probably so
And for 2:
(2)(a) Culling transient voters is a partisan-motivated thing to do
(2)(b) Republic legislatures do it to gain unfair advantage
(2)(c) Democratic legislatures forbear because of its unbalanced effect
Answers:
(2)(a) : No
(2)(b) : Probably so
(2)(c) : Probably not
Here’s another way to look at it:
The U.S. is facing grave problems:
[ul][li]Continued reckless and behavior by too-big-to-fail banks, without public benefit.[/li][li] Malfeasance by other big players, e.g. polluting Koch Industries.[/li][li] Rising health costs; need for something like ACA.[/li][li] Wars in Iraq, Crimea, Syria, and elsewhere.[/li][li] Need for immigration solutions[/li][li] A working-class that has fallen back to relative prosperity of pre-New Frontier levels.[/li][li] Mounting debts and deficits[/li][li] Irrational under-funding of important government agencies, e.g. VA[/li][li] Continued pollution and CO2 emission[/li][li] Increasingly irrational , gridlocked government[/li][li] et cetera[/li][li] et cetera[/li][/ul]
If I were a legislator of the rational ilk, I would hardly know where to start against this morass of problems.
GOP legislators have no such dilemma. Despite all the grave problems rationalists want to address, the GOP’s highest priority is electoral advantage, whether fraudulent or not.
Trouble is, you can use that argument on ANYTHING. If the GOP actions are unethical and antidemocratic, then they’re unethical and antidemocratic regardless of how important the issue is, and if they’re not, well, then they’re not.
I think there’s a more subtle argument you could make along the same lines, which is that if the GOP motivation was what they claimed it was, then it would be such a trivial issue that we would expect them not to actually be spending time on it; but if their true motivation were “scuzzy”, then it would not surprise us that they would address this issue. Trouble is, Bricker already admits that many of the GOP legislators had scuzzy motivations, so arguing logically that they did so doesn’t really get us anywhere, at least as far as arguing against Bricker is concerned.
That was precisely the argument I intended, not knowing it was “more subtle.” I often neglect to fully connect the dots in my posts (leaving me at a loss against a pedant like Bricker since he will seize on any missing dot, or misused word, and feel he’s “refuted” a post, while ignoring its intent.)
Anyway, it seems all of us (including Bricker) are in agreement: Much of the GOP’s motives are “scuzzy” but Bricker supports them anyway.
Sort of like the getaway driver for an armed-robbery gang, proudly asserting that he didn’t tell his friends to pull the trigger, but eager to keep their company as they continue their crime spree.
(And watch the hyper-literalist Brickbat repeat the truism that GOP legislators, however scuzzy or evil, are not “criminal” until convicted of a crime. I’m still waiting for him to denounce Karl Rove, if he can.)
Not a true claim at all. Although I certainly don’t accept your list as either properly prioritized, nor all of your items as problems (i.e. need for an ACA), you’re wrong to claim that the “GOP’s highest priority is electoral advantage.”
Most of the issues you identify are federal. The Voter ID laws are creatures of the local states. And in neither in the US Congress nor any of the states can you make the case that the highest priority was passing any such laws…because they passed other laws first. And if that’s not the objective measure of highest priority – you tell me what that measure is, and how you determined it.
Please let’s avoid vague answers along the lines that you can just sense it.
I’m sure a list of more urgent and compelling issues could be compiled for any state now implementing or contemplating modifications to voter rules.
About Oregon:
- The last time a Republican won a state-wide vote was 2002.
- We have vote-by-mail, ID’s are never checked at the post office.
- Either we have, or are working on, a policy of NOT checking immigration status for driver’s licenses.
- It’s beautiful here, come visit often, just leave the U-Hauls at home.
Just wanted to clarify.
How’s your voter confidence level?
Of course.
But Bryan – surely that statement is true for any major legislative body? I’m not aware of any single state, provincial, or national government that wouldn’t fall victim to the same criticism: why are you working on E when more urgent issues A, B, C, and D exist?