Notably absent is your posting of the answers to those questions.
Yes, I repeated the questions – because each reply post failed to answer them.
Sure, but that’s not the intent. The intent is to point out that regardless of the tone of absolute certainty professed here, the rest of the world is not nearly in unanimity with elucidator’s views. So the message there is only tangentially, “My side is winning.” It’s more directly: your assertions of being right fail, and this is the evidence. It’s not remotely useful to simply continue to aver that you’re right, because a long list of states has rejected that view, as do I.
If all you take from that is “Neener, neener,” it’s because you’re unwilling to take the larger lesson that near-monolithic agreement on the SDMB means very little about how the real world feels.
You realize I myself am a brown man, yes?
How, by the way, did you transform my statement that I possessed a concealed carry permit into the claim that I admitted a “need” a concealed carry permit?
As an aside: how many bridge tournaments have you played?
I ask because I’ve played many, and in thousands of dealt hands I can’t recall a single one in which a bidding “battle” did not occur. I’m trying to picture just how your scenario might have worked.
So you don’t “need” a gun, you just “want” one. OK, I stand corrected. :dubious:
And I’m not sure if your own brownness is relevant. Maybe you’re afraid of blacks. Or whites. Or greens.
This isn’t the first time you’ve pulled the “But I’m Hispanic” card like it’s a big deal. Yeah, some “ethnic” are Republican; so what? Similarly, there are plenty of imbeciles who are Democrat.
A falsis principiis proficisci. Malum quo communius eo peius. Nemo iudex idoneus in propria causa est. Abusus non tollit usum. Et cetera.
You made it relevant when you speculated on my possible fear of brown people. It doesn’t disprove that possibility, of course, but it does helpfully contextualize it.
I like guns. They are masterful pieces of engineering, a craftwork that enables me to place a bullet that’s less than four-tenths of an inch in diameter twenty-five away, and yet reliably inside an eight-inch circle.
You suggest, obliquely, that this preference proves some cognitive difference or defect. I disagree.
Enough to make Life Master in two years, retiring soon thereafter: conversations among the bridge-obsessed were rather too single-issue for me.
I’m sure you know the most virulent “bidding battles” were after the hand and between partners.
ETA: Note that your comments about guns totally ignores your “need” (or “desire”) for concealed carry. This sort of elision or obfuscation is why you’re compared to insincere and slippery eel.
Well, that’s true. This is why I stuck with straight Goren.
No. It doesn’t. Your mention of my possession of a concealed carry permit (not to mention your attempt to transform it into need) was not any kind of a developed argument. It was, instead, a chance to drop the fact into the discussion as though all correct-thinking persons knew, without any need for more detail, just what it proved.
I deny that it proves anything.
When I obtained the permit, Virginia had a “one gun per month,” rule. No person could lawfully purchase more than one handgun in a thirty day period. I had purchased a Ruger GP-100 and then an acquaintance of mine decided to sell his Colt Woodsman, a .22 target pistol I had long desired. He was unwilling to wait for my thirty-day clock to expire;; I was unwilling to violate the law even undetectably by purchasing a second handgun privately, even though no paperwork would memorialize the exchange.
Holders of a concealed carry permit in Virginia were exempt from the “one gun per month” rule.
So what do you imagine my possession of a concealed carry permit proves? What facts, specifically, did I elide or obfuscate by not addressing the concealed carry permit?
One time I was at a Bridge club and our opponents were a married couple. They bid, he was the declarer, she laid down the dummy, and he said, without a hint of sarcasm or irony, “Why didn’t you bid spades like a human being?”. Lovely man.
For one thing, you left your alleged reason unspoken, eager to score a Gotcha!
Even assuming you’re not now indulging in half-truths, let’s not forget that you bragged about your concealed carry in the context of defending the ludicrous assholes who needed to carry heavy armament into a restaurant. But now you’re just a hobbyist who’s not afraid of (green?) people after all.
Slippery, slippery, never volunteering what principles, if any, other than pedantry and legalisms guide you. I still do not know if you admire Karl Rove or finally are conscious enough to know he’s a sleazeball. You implied that the semen stain was a bigger crime than Bush’s Trillion Dollar War against Gog and Magog, and we’re left to guess if you really believe this or not. I don’t if it pleases or saddens you that I’m long past caring.
I’m sure your 7th-grade debate coach is still proud of you. The rest of us are increasingly sickened that we’ve wasted time engaging you.
Well… you learn something new every day. OK, I withdraw my insinuation.
(Note, by the way, that there’s not some magical principle of equality of political douchiness that states that for any given type of political malfeasance, the current Republican and Democratic establishments are guaranteed to be equally guilty of it. But I do agree that this particular attempt to paint the Democrats as more virtuous than the Republicans was based on a faulty assumption.)
Noted, and of course this post places you in the rarified category of people on the SDMB who understand that they can concede a point – even a point important to their overall narrative – without conceding the entire narrative, or bursting into flame.
You keep bringing this up… I have never suggested that you should abandon the Republican party over this issue. Nor have I suggested that you should look at these laws and say “well, I thought I supported the idea of voter ID, but now that I see the actual laws, I guess I don’t”. Rather, the reaction that I IMAGINE you having when I fantasize about “winning this argument”, to the extent that this argument could be “won”, is something like “I think voter ID is, in and of itself, valuable, and I continue to be a staunch Republican supporter, but there’s enough stink of corruption around this particular SET of voter ID laws, in this context, in this day, that I can not in good conscience support them. Instead I will continue to agitate for voter ID as part of a more comprehensive pattern of laws to ensure voter confidence, with appropriate safeguards, etc etc etc”. Nothing in that requires you to abandon either your party affiliation or your overall principles.
My position is slightly more subtle than that… which is that I judge them more harshly than face value BECAUSE of the motives surrounding them, because I believe that motive is important. An example I mentioned once before is that I’m generally all in favor of freedom of the internet, but a law that was at least vaguely in line with the net freedom principles I support but which was proposed by a legislator who was trying to make it easy for child pornographers to escape prosecution would be a law I would not support (or at least consider not supporting), for reasons other than the pure text of the law itself.
So there was a discussion a while back about a poor old lady who went through a massive hassle but eventually was able to get the necessary paperwork in order to vote. I look at that and have two reactions:
(1) she’s just the most extreme case that made news coverage, there’s no reason to think that whatever troubles beset her didn’t also beset someone else who had even more compounding issues, who did not get made into enough of a news item that politicians popped up to help her out, and thus never did succeed in voting
and
(2) the amount of obstacles put in her way WERE extreme and impermissible. “You must have voter ID” is (I suspect) one of those things that has a logarithmic scale of burden… for 95% of the public, it’s literally zero additional burden. For another 4% or so it’s a very minor burden, one that I wouldn’t object do. For another 0.9% it’s a medium burden. Etc, etc, etc. (Clearly here is a place where some really good studies would be useful so we actually had some data.)
So you agree, I believe, that there is SOME additional burden imposed by voter ID laws, but you claim that it is not impermissible. Do you agree, however, that it is (at least potentially) disparate? Even if it’s on average 15 minutes of extra work per voter once in the next 4 years (or something) do you think it’s likely that the average burden is larger on democratic-leaning voters than republican?
Also, if we surveyed 1000 voters who had not had ID beforehand and had at least attempted to get it in order to vote, and we took the 5 that had the most trouble and hassle, do you believe that however much trouble it was for those 5 worst cases would still be a permissible burden?
In the most recent congressional elections far more votes were cast for Democrats than for Republicans, yet Republicans easily won a majority of seats. So if everyone does it equally, that suggests that Republicans are much better at it.
“Uniquely”? There’s a middle ground. I don’t think anyone in this thread has claimed that Republicans are the only ones capable of venal political opportunism, dirty tricks, or anything of that sort. But it’s also entirely possible that, for whatever reason, current Republican national politicians are, on average, more “scuzzy” than current Democratic national politicians. It’s also possible that they’re similarly scuzzy but Republicans are, for some systemic reason, better at it. And it’s also possible that I just can’t see due to the mote in my eye. But my point is, it’s meaningless for you to say “Democrats aren’t PERFECT, therefore everyone is the same”. And in this particular thread, we are debating a particular scuzzy (even by your admission) act taken by Republicans. Given that that particular act is unusual enough that it’s worth having a thread about (note that we don’t have a 120 page pit thread entitled “I pit that one GOP guy who made a negative attack ad” because even though a lot of us think that attack ads are bad, they’re so common as to be not worth mentioning), there’s reason to believe that this is NOT an action that “everyone does”.
There is no such thing as an absolute right. There may be the power to do something.
But by all means keep playing that game. It WILL have a long term cost.
Your side convinced me that an unbroken line of elections in which I voted for some Republican candidates was a mistake. One that won’t be repeated for at least 20 years.
Whoa, steady up, there, hoss! I understand that your firm and unyielding stance on liberal hypocrisy demands that you renounce, denounce, and condemn such sordid skulduggery in no uncertain terms! But are you sure you’re not overdoing it?
“Some, perhaps most…indefensible…”? Wow, that is some harsh stuff there, really tearing them a new one! Heck, its just one more little spoonful of contempt and discouragement, and those people are used to it, have decades of experience! If a guy is trying to swim out of a sewer, what difference does it make if you piss on his head a little? Most likely won’t even notice!
But I don’t agree that whatever “stink of corruption” is around them is sufficient to stop supporting them, because, again, I measure support on the actual law, not the motives of those who passed it.
That makes no sense to me. If the net freedom principles you support also make it easier for a child porno producer or consumer to avoid prosecution, then there’s a tension between your principles, and you have to resolve it by either clarifying your principles or weighing them against each other and deciding which is the more compelling.
Your approach leads to the absurd case that you would support a given law, but then oppose the identical law after the heretofore hidden motives of the legislator came to light. Or oppose the law, but then support it after news reports confirmed that the initial impression was wrong, and the legislator was not interested in making it easier to escape prosecution.
You’re welcome, of course, to choose whatever reasons you wish to support or oppose legislation. But I don’t think that approach is remotely valid.
No matter what process exists, there will be someone whose personal situation places them at the extreme margin. The unlucky person who breaks her ankle the night before Election Day and can’t get to the polling station – we don’t demand that her local city services transport her in an ambulance to the polling station. So, yes, there will be people who had obstacles that they chose not to overcome, and that’s a feature of life.
I don’t agree that the obstacles in her case were extreme and impermissible. But I do agree, as I suggested in my response to (1) above, that your logarithmic scale (actually, I think it would be an asymptotic scale) is the correct model.
We just don’t agree on where to draw the “impermissible” line.
Yes. But that’s because any burden – weather, time off from work, availability of support system to drive you and you broken ankle, ID requirements, any burden at all – falls disproportionately on the poor. Since the poor vote more reliably Democratic, there is a disparate impact, but it’s a side effect of ANY impact having a disparate impact on the poor. That’s a corollary of having a system of wealth.
Yes. I’m willing to be convinced otherwise, but I have not heard of any actual case yet that involved what I’d call an impermissible burden.
No. It suggests that if you spread things out evenly, you don’t get many districts in which racial minorities are the majority. The side effect of drawing districts to ensure grouping of racial minorities so that they have a voice that doesn’t get drowned out also ensures the imbalance discussed: you amplify racial minority voices in a given district and at the same time ensure more districts have Republican tilts.
Of course – because there’s no real way to distinguish the practice of using attack ads. Here, you’re trying to distinguish Voter ID laws as a particular way to influence voting, separate and apart from gerrymandering, or from “walking around money,” or any of the sleazy practices more common to Democrats. This is a useful tactic for this discussion, but an arbitrary division.
I don’t say that literally everyone is the same – but I do say there is no basis for Democrats to valorize their behavior with respect to the overall issue – when they have the power and the circumstances permit, they are just as willing tu use that power to tip the electoral scales to their advantage.
But wait…back when you were rolling around on the floor, pissing and moaning about the wretched behavior involved in the Massachusetts Massacre, did you bring in equivalence? Like, “Yeah, but the Republicans would do the same thing if they had the chance”? Don’t think so, let me look it up…
Search, search, search…Why, no, no you didn’t. Well, sonofagun! I guess this equivalence thingy is a new addition to your armory of moral criteria. When did you find out about this, today? Boy, that’s handy as hell, isn’t it! Just when you needed it the most, it pops up!
