Here’s what I said:
And you’re asking if that request is met by one post in which you call John Edwards a “douche?”
Honest conservative wanted, must possess rudimentary awareness of scruples and integrity. Fat chicks OK, but no more goddam libertarians! Apply within.
This sentiment applies more correctly to the Democrats, and was outlined brilliantly by Georgia Senator Zell Miller (D) in 2004.
He notes that he didn’t leave his party: it left him:
He was right. Today, the Democrats are spineless children, whining that it isn’t fair. Not fair when someone has ability! We’re all equal; how dare someone’s ability make them prosper. C’mon, everyone, get the standout! Drag him down!
Welcome, kids, to Harrison Bergeon Elementary School. Come in, sit down, and here’s your trophy for being the top student! Yes, yes, all of you get a trophy; no need to push.
I take it that Harrison Bergeron is the only Vonnegut you’ve read? Try* God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.* There’s a lawyer with moist brown eyes who figures prominently in the story. Reminds me of you.
And just to remind: I am not a Democrat, I am far too left for them. Wouldn’t be honest. But if they are so weak, and you are so popularly supported…how come you have to cheat to win?
nm, why fucking bother. You can’t shame a cynic.
First: Whether I’ve said anything on this forum against Democrats doesn’t mean I support gerrymandering.
Second: Imagine the possibility that I don’t get involved in threads that don’t interest me. For instance, I rarely post in Israel threads, since there is little value for me in there because I don’t respect either of their religions. I also don’t post generally in supreme court threads (though I do mention them in other threads) because I don’t care about the daily internecine politics of the court.
Third: The Democrats, as a party, have been largely pushing for the correct policy. The Republicans are pretty much wrong on every single one of their recent stances. Anti-global warming, anti-evolution, anti-taxation, anti-healthcare reform, anti-withdrawing from wars, anti-campaign finance reform, anti-birth control, anti-abortion, anti-immigration reform (other than electrified fences), anti-regulations, and so forth.
The things they are for are generally just as bad. They want to destroy Medicare (change it to a voucher system that will charge the average senior 6.5k a year in additional costs), they want to start a trade war with China, they want to start a shooting war with Iran, they want to cut government spending during an economic recovery… which is something Reagan and Bush never did.
The fact is, that on a left-leaning board, there simply aren’t a lot of options to decry Democrats, since they aren’t doing as much wrong as the Republicans. Dem actions are going to be largely lost in the signal to noise ratio.
If you think both sides are equal, you’re stupid. Or uninformed. You’re neither, so all you can do is argue for that loudly and hope it sticks via misdirection and conflation.
I think the trouble is, since you’ve decided that your side can’t be bad, the other side must, by necessity be just as bad. That’s why you do the, “You do it toooooooo” thing you do. You support the Republicans, so you can’t be on the wrong side, so everything evil a Republican does must be equally matched by a Democrat action!
Except you really and truly reach when you go for some of those.
If you want, right here, to list some Democratic policies you think I’d be against, I’ll go on record as being for or against them. Here’s one to get you started. I’m pro-nuclear power.
That said, you don’t think *douche *is harsh word? If I called your son a douche wouldn’t you bop me in the snoot? I’d say I deserved it.
“In a stipulation agreement signed earlier this month, state officials conceded that they had no evidence of prior in-person voter fraud, or even any reason to believe that such crimes would occur with more frequency if a voter ID law wasn’t in effect.”
And we’re back on track!
But the urban poor are likely to have 1) easy access to public transportation and 2) a DMV or similar office not too far from them. Earlier in the thread I recall reading about how there were all these poor people who didn’t drive miles and miles and miles from a DMV office.
But if the problem is poor people, and there are more poor Whites than poor Blacks, doesn’t that erase the concern? In fact, if that is true, and if there is a tendency for poor Whites to vote republican (it needn’t be as lopsided as the poor Black vote going democrat), wouldn’t the fears that people have of these voter ID laws be misplace. I can see how, to the degree that they would skew the vote, might result in a net gain vote for democrats.
I don’t know. Do you know what the breakdown is among the poor for both Black/White and Urban/Rural?
And of course, everything Zell Miller warned us about in that prescient speech came to pass when Obama was elected and immediately turned tail and withdrew all our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and closed Gitmo and cut military spending and refused to bomb Libya.
Oh, no wait, none of that happened, because Zell Miller’s speech was ridiculously wrong, in addition to be divisive and accusing all Democrats of hating freedom and somehow trying to associate every good thing American soldiers have ever done with the Republican party.
Because we ought not even to be considering that aspect of the thing, we are only compelled to do so because the Pubbies have made the move. The Democrats didn’t start this fight.
And the telling point is that all of the problems we see here are easily fixed, if there is the will and the sincerity to do so.
Wow.
So… Ok, the parties are not equal. Sure, I get that. It wouldn’t make sense to find that you had equal criticisms for each.
I’m asking for two. In all your time posting here, you couldn’t find two opportunities for harsh words directed against Democrats. That’s not … That’s just unreal. Sure, you favor their policies more than you favor the GOP’s but c’mon. There was a Democratic Congressman caught with thousands of dollars in his freezer. A Democratic governor sent to prison for trying to sell a Senate seat. Are those policies you favored?
But somehow, all those threads missed your attention too, huh? Not twice in all these posts has it ever crossed your attention to notice something bad a Democrat has done and levy a few harsh words. Thousands of harsh words against me, against Republicans in general, against specific Republicans… and not two instances against Democrats.
Yours is indeed a balanced view. :rolleyes:
In what bizarro world is stuffing dollars in a freezer and selling a senate seat ‘Democratic policies’?
Sure, but at the same time, you don’t get to decide “well, here are some broad statements that are true about my position, so I just kind of automatically win”. There have been two (well, a lot more than two, but at least two) debates going on in this thread, one about whether these voter ID laws are in fact actually good ideas, with lengthy discussions of actual incidence of voter fraud, etc. At the same time, I read some of your posts to basically be saying “hey, this has a claimed rational basis (and I agree that reducing voter fraud, in and of itself, is rational), is constitutional, enjoys popular support, and has already passed, therefore it must by definition be a good and correct law, you all can suck it”, which (to the extent that you were saying that) is, I believe, an overreach. So I addressed that second point. I haven’t said much about the first point, not because I don’t disagree with your position (I strongly do), but because I just don’t feel I have a huge amount to add that others haven’t already added.
As long as you agree that the proposed laws do in fact need to be debated on their merit, and don’t just get some automatic free pass of automatic-win-the-threadiness, then we are in at least partial agreement, at least on the meta-issue. (I still find the issue of “well, there’s a smokescreen of a rational basis, so I’ll just ignore the fairly clear true intent of the legislators” aspect of things troubling, but I’ve run out of energy to discuss it for the moment.)
Why didn’t you ask Lobohan in what bizarro world Edward’s douchebaggery constitutes Democratic policies?
Answer: because you want to help Lobohan.
Now to answer you: who said it was?
Oh, I disagree. I think the government should take steps to ensure that every vote cast by a citizen is not undone by a vote that should not have been cast. Unsurprisingly, you seem to be okay with that.
I think the dude with the fridge full of bribes was a dildo. I think Gov. Otter-head shouldn’t have tried to sell Obama’s seat… or whatever it was he was convicted of. Lying to FBI or whatever.
I also think John Edwards is a scumbag. But the heart wants what it wants I guess.
So what? If you wanted to know my opinion on those subjects, you could have just asked. I’m not overall interested in any of the three. So why is it required that I post in those threads to pooh-pooh these guys in order to prove how even-handed I am?
I have reasonable arguments for any position I take. That’s what makes me reasonable, not spending time pointing at Democrats and going, “Woah, what a shitty Democrat!!!”
You are advocating a stance that would keep thousands of Americans from voting. I’m unaware of any Democratic policy that is more likely to damage America than that.
If the parties were balanced I’d be balanced. As I said, feel free to get me on the record on any subject you want. Unlike you, my positions aren’t based on partisan winning. They’re based on what I think is right.
Sure, but that debate is over.
By that I mean: the debate very quickly comes down to what weight you give the necessity of guarding against a razor-thin election and concomitant uncertainty because of the specter of voter fraud. You and yours can correctly argue that voter fraud is irrelevant when the margin of victory is 100,000 – or even 10,000. But if its 137 votes, then it isn’t an automatic dismissal of voter fraud.
So how important is it to have a framework in pace to assure that fraud occurs, it can be identified and tied to a person in a way that can support a criminal conviction?
That is the debate. Ultimately, this is a matter of opinion – and when we reach that standstill, what happens? My opponents try to insist that I have some burden to convince them, or I can’t have these laws. And that’s the point at which I remind them that I already have these laws.