The Holy Grail, the lost Ark and voter fraud
by Capt. Fogg
One of the problems with the religious neurosis is that it seeks the sanctuary of belief so avidly that evidence for a thousand demons and a thousand thousand plots spring forth from the minds of believers, like Athena from the head of Zeus. As with the Great Reagan's invented "welfare mother" who lacked only actual existence to be an example of the abuse he believed in, the prophets of the Republican cult, as we see in the closing scenes of Recount, can see voter fraud issuing like a stink from the unwashed minorities they believe compose the Democratic base. It's easy to turn their crimes into virtues when they are seen as efforts to contain a greater evil; greater because it's done by the other, the heretic, the minority, the smelly brown tide kept at bay only by the heroes ofelitism Liberty: the Republican Faithful.
So it is that the Republican struggle against the dragon of "Liberal" voter fraud remains as Dahlia Lithwick (Newsweek June 2, 2008) dubs the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Indiana's voter ID law: a solution in search of a problem. The problem is creating evidence of significant incidences of inellegible voters casting ballots and as these would undoubtedly be voters with accents and little money, casting ballots for Democrats.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing of "flagrant" examples, included a 140 year old New York mayoral election and a single Washington incident in 2004. No mention was made of the disenfranchisement of perhaps 50,000 Florida voters in 2000.
Will the Indiana photo-ID requirement keep legitimate voters from participating in elections? I won't indulge in the willful confusion of possibility with probability. I simply don't know that it will or won't. I don't know how many indigents or elderly shut-ins simply don't have passports or Drivers licenses or State issued photo-ID cards. I do know of one very visible case in Palm Beach Florida where the evidence is iron-clad, but the prominent Republican polemicist who committed it wasn't prosecuted. I will venture a guess that some 85 year old black woman from Indiana who doesn't drive a car would be turned away at least and made into a criminal at worst, under the same circumstances. We shall see if voter ID laws are one more tool of repression and authoritarianism in due time. There's no appeal possible from the decisions of a Supreme Court stuffed with Republican activists anyway.
Cross posted from Human Voices
One of the problems with the religious neurosis is that it seeks the sanctuary of belief so avidly that evidence for a thousand demons and a thousand thousand plots spring forth from the minds of believers, like Athena from the head of Zeus. As with the Great Reagan's invented "welfare mother" who lacked only actual existence to be an example of the abuse he believed in, the prophets of the Republican cult, as we see in the closing scenes of Recount, can see voter fraud issuing like a stink from the unwashed minorities they believe compose the Democratic base. It's easy to turn their crimes into virtues when they are seen as efforts to contain a greater evil; greater because it's done by the other, the heretic, the minority, the smelly brown tide kept at bay only by the heroes of
So it is that the Republican struggle against the dragon of "Liberal" voter fraud remains as Dahlia Lithwick (Newsweek June 2, 2008) dubs the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Indiana's voter ID law: a solution in search of a problem. The problem is creating evidence of significant incidences of inellegible voters casting ballots and as these would undoubtedly be voters with accents and little money, casting ballots for Democrats.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing of "flagrant" examples, included a 140 year old New York mayoral election and a single Washington incident in 2004. No mention was made of the disenfranchisement of perhaps 50,000 Florida voters in 2000.
Will the Indiana photo-ID requirement keep legitimate voters from participating in elections? I won't indulge in the willful confusion of possibility with probability. I simply don't know that it will or won't. I don't know how many indigents or elderly shut-ins simply don't have passports or Drivers licenses or State issued photo-ID cards. I do know of one very visible case in Palm Beach Florida where the evidence is iron-clad, but the prominent Republican polemicist who committed it wasn't prosecuted. I will venture a guess that some 85 year old black woman from Indiana who doesn't drive a car would be turned away at least and made into a criminal at worst, under the same circumstances. We shall see if voter ID laws are one more tool of repression and authoritarianism in due time. There's no appeal possible from the decisions of a Supreme Court stuffed with Republican activists anyway.
Cross posted from Human Voices
Labels: Death of Democracy, Republicans, voting
posted by Libby Spencer at 9:34 AM
10 Comments:
Other than John Paul Steven having been appointed by Jerry Ford, I think implying that he's a Republican activist is a bit ludicrous.
Oh, and are there really no welfare mothers anywhere? My sister-in-law's best friend is a single mother of three who receives food stamps. There's nothing wrong with that. She needs them. But she is a mother on welfare, or, as Reagan simplified it, a "welfare mother."
Well I guess we do have you to kick around some more.
Stevens, of course, isn't a one man court and one anecdote doesn't reflect anything but your attempt to pull statistics out of your ass.
Yes, I know Stevens isn't a one-man court, but he is arguably more left than Breyer and Ginsburg and he's the only justice you even mention when you talk about a Court packed with Republican activists. Don't worry, though. I know you mean Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas.
As to pullling one statistic out of my ass, well, there are counteless cases of welfare fraud in this country. That is NOT to say that the number of legitimate cases of people needing welfare does not outnumber the fraud cases, but to categorically say there's no such thing as a welfare mother is totally disingenuos.
Oh, and Nixon lied in 1962 about not being around to kick any more. Remember? He became the POTUS!
POTUS, PUTZ -- what's the difference? You're not going to argue that Nixon was a victim of the "Liberals" are you?
Easy to say countless - countless isn't a number, but then you're putting words in my mouth again so that you can use the argument you have rather than the argument you would need.
Reagan gave a specific example of a specific "welfare mother" in an oft quoted speech. No such woman existed. Now how would you treat a Democratic candidate who made up facts like that and used them to drum up anger?
Don't you have some kind of job to go to, or whatever people like you do during the day?
No, I'm unemployed, white, bitter, angry, with a gun in my left hand, a Bible in my right hand, and getting ready to beat up some illegal immigrants and, finally, becoming more hateful of people who are not like me.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Oh wait, you knew it! You mean you knew I was unemployed? But wait, I'm TDN, a congenital liar. I actually AM employed and make $450,000/year, BEFORE taxes. I'm an executive at a company that gives people good jobs and a good health care program. If Obama gets elected and raises both individual and corporate taxes, we'll hire fewer people, becuase my salary needs to be grossed up, so that I come out with the same net, so I can afford my Lexus and fancy Buick, as well as my swimming pool and the kids' private school educations. Plus, private clubs that exclude people like the Obamas, with the exception of a token or two. As my father used to say to me years ago -- "You can do anything you want; you're free, white and 21." Where have the good ol' days gone?
Modesty forbids a reply in kind, but impressing me with your middle-classness is a bit of a gaffe, n'est ce pas? I was only making a joke.
I'm in a really good mood today now that the yen has weakened to 105 and nothing can spoil it.
Enjoy your Buick.
Thank-you. Enjoy you gas-guzzling Corvettes. Oh, Lenin didn't much like the middle class either.
Well the Vette gets about 29 on the highway. My yacht gets about 0.8 mpg.
Yes, typical communist I am, unless you can find some other bogus category, but really I don't give a shit what you think or say and you seem incapable of any real discussion and you're not funny, so I don't think I'm missing anything by ignoring you henceforth.
Post a Comment
<< Home