(Empasis added, more in sorrow than in anger)
By which he implies that the data presented herein to that effect is suspect, but without taking on any burden to prove. I had been wondering how he would address the GAO’s report, and apparently, this is it.
Can’t prove it, don’t say it. Insinuate it, and slide smoothly away. The boy is as slippery as a catfish in a barrel of motor oil!
No suitcase? Did he walk? Did he sleep in a gutter? Did he have an education?
It’s amazing that even when lead to the bright, clear water, you’re too stupid to drink.
Wow, an apartment. How poor of you.
Wow, how lucky for you.
Lucky for you, that someone of your limited ability could find a way to prosper.
If you’re innately talented, that is luck you sickening piece of shit. Innate talent is like height. Having it or not, is based on luck. Jesus you’re not that sharp.
Hard work and training can maximize chances of success. They don’t introduce opportunity where there is none.
See above.
The vast majority. I guess if you see it all the time it must be true. Wait, you think crackers turn into God, in your mouth. Maybe, your perceptions can be clouded by your preconceived notions?
Doubtless, much of endemic poverty is based on bad decision making. Because good decision making is a skill, and some people never have the opportunity to learn it.
I’m certainly luckier than you, because I don’t have to live in the miasma of sneering contempt and unearned arrogance that wafts up from your jowls. <3
Look, Lobo, a man’s personal history is neither here nor there. God knows, he gets on my nerves, but I have my limits. I don’t give a fuck who his father was, how he got here, or whether he defends the comfortable and privileged because he is one of them or just wants to be.
Who he is here is all that counts, and that is bad enough.
Not entirely accurate. If it were, Election Day would be a required national holiday and voting would be mandatory.
The correct statement is: The purpose of democratic representative system of government is to select the person who the majority of those deemed by society to be eligible * and interested enough to make a reasonable effort to vote and empower him to determine policy in the hopes that such a person would be most likely to decide in a way that benefits the most people.*
Sure. As long as we remember that “eligible population” means “eligible and interested enough to make a reasonable effort to vote.”
Sure. As long as we remember that “eligible population” means “eligible and interested enough to make a reasonable effort to vote.”
Not quite. Step 3 focuses only on the optimal result of the election. But a further optimal result of the overall system must be: that the participants thereof trust that the system is delivering results in accord with its precepts.
No – because ** “eligible population” means “eligible and interested enough to make a reasonable effort to vote.”**
I have no doubt his father was a good enough person. Well, if Bricker is any evidence, his father might have been the Red Skull from Marvel Comics.
But far from denigrating the father, I’m suggesting that Bricker’s situation in life is the result of thousands upon thousands of things falling just so. And that someone slightly less lucky than his father would have stayed in El Salvador and had a little chance at the American dream.
When you attribute all your success to your own hard work, it’s easy look down on the less successful.
Merely a suggestion. Freak freely.
Yes, i am – because the so-called “suppression” is not the result of an unreasonable burden. I have previously referred to this as the “voodoo” illustration: if someone were to announce that anyone daring to vote Democratic would be the subject of a voodoo curse, and even if you then proved to me that the Democrats had lost measurable votes based on the fear of this voodoo curse, I would remain unconcerned, because the refusal to cast a vote based on a fear of voodoo is not a concern society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.
I’ve explained why I am not concerned about “suppression” of votes by the operation of Voter ID laws: because votes lost because people can’t get themselves to obtain free IDs are not reasonable.
I don’t care what arguments might have been made by others. Let’s say you find a Republican who says, “My chief pride in Voter ID laws is that blacks and poor people won’t be able to vote!”
What does that prove?
I am defending my arguments, and i am defending the extant Voter ID laws. I am not defending some random shit someone else said.
That’s fascinating, and thanks for sharing your view.
But I don’t share it.
That’s a tautological argument: it defines luck so broadly as to be meaningless.
Yes, I’m “lucky” that a meteor didn’t hit my toe and leave me with only nine.
The problem with that absurd definition of “luck,” is that you employ the fallacy of equivocation – you use the word to suggest a different sense when you downplay the necessity of ability and work.
Thank God liberals aren’t in charge of more stuff.
Definitely an addition to** Bricker**'s Greatest Hits. Classic!
But not my favorite! My favorite is the argument that we don’t know how much voter fraud there is, but there is scads of it. The reason we don’t know is because we don’t have laws to prevent it, therefore, it is not prosecuted. But if we did have such laws, then voter fraud would be prevented, then we still would have no evidence of it. But then it would be because crafty CASA volunteers and activist radical ACORN cadres would be stymied!
More leaps of faith than a conclave of Catholic kangaroos!
This gibberish made me laugh.
There is an underlying sentiment there I might sympathize with in another time and place. Unfortunately, in post-rational America, a better description would be
“eligible and riled up enough by the Fox-Limbaugh-Koch Brothers lies to go vote the niggers and gun-grabbers out of office.”
Says you. It seems to me to be just another iteration of past attempts to suppress voters of certain stripes.
Was paying a poll tax an unreasonable burden? How about literacy tests? “Moral character” tests? It seems to me the same argument could be utilized for these requirements – that a voter who was truly interested in voting would be able to overcome these barriers.
That the motivation of that official is ignoble. If multiple Republican officials have made similar statements, then that’s the beginning of a pattern. If we have a bunch of these statements occurring shortly after a major Republican defeat in which minority turnout was significantly higher than in the past, then we have a pattern that suspiciously aligns with sketchy political motives.
Basically, I want to fight the Republican officials who want to suppress black votes. Some of them have outright stated that this is what they want, perhaps in more friendly language. I oppose these politicians. If you support them, I oppose you on this issue. And in my view, it’s a moral issue – just as opposing Jim Crow laws was a moral issue.
And we’re unlucky it didn’t hit your posting finger. 
Not even a little, mon petit Brick.
America currently has terrible social mobility: Socioeconomic mobility in the United States - Wikipedia
You’re pretty likely to die the same social strata you’re born in. So yes, transcending that limit, like I did, and like you say you did, is pretty lucky.
Because of your delusional arrogance and lack of empathy, I find that sentiment unsurprising.
As a thought experiment, if this was an effort by a Democrat to make thIngs a just a teensy bit more difficult for, say, a rural district known to vote Republican (nothing extreme, nothing 99% of sufficiently interested voters couldn’t overcome), would he also be a treasonous cockbag?
By the way, how much of Bricker’s success does he attribute to, y’know, God? That’s pretty much the definition of luck.
Hey, he spends plenty of time grovelling to get that good fortune.
Fortunately, the burden can be quantified by Maisler’s Theorem.
No, it can’t: i just made that up. There is no way of objectively quantifying the reasonableness of a burden.
So some other system will have to be used to agree upon a solution, since you and I disagree about the reasonableness of the burden at hand.
And luckily we already have such a system, and it has been used to reach the current solution.
Well, lucky for him he was born Catholic so his groveling will get results, not like them hellbound heathens what ain’t got Mother Church lookin’ out for 'em.
Unlike liberals, I am governed by standards.
If this were an effort that impacted conservatives, I’d feel precisely the same way.
“Well, they only have themselves to blame for burning in Hell. The pope was out there with the truth the whole time.” —* Libertarian Jesus*