Actually the Republican are not any worse than the Democrats, both parties are lead by lrich elitists who believe only their way is the right way. They have both fallen so far from their beginning that the only thing shared is their name. Both paries seem to want a nanny state, both parties want to control who votes, bot parties are completely in the game for the power, finally both paries are so corrupt the Mafia is disgusted. Unfortunately to be a god statesman you have to be a little bad. Our two best presidents of the last half of last century were Clinton and Nixon. Our worst president (in function only) was our most honest, Carter. It's gotten to the point where we need to reject both parties completely. The only way we'l become strong again is elect people capable of doing the job, instead of who's most popular. I'm sorry to sound Racist, but Obama has been doing a shit Job, better than Carter did, but still damn lousy. W need to get him out, but i don't think Romney is gonna be all that much better. We need a Rational Anarchist, someone who wants the bare minimum of governement to do the job.
Oh, and you have proof or are you just making this up or repeating something someone else told you? Please do demonstrate that Republicans are not any worse than Democrats. Please show me where Democrats have actively engaged in voter suppression. As for party leadership being led by wealthy elitists, I guess that depends on what you mean by “wealthy elitists”. Both sides have wealthy supporters. What is pretty obvious this election period is that Republicans are getting more corporate money than Democrats. What do you think that corporate money is buying? They share a name? What name would that be? The Republican Party has become more extreme and Democrats have become more conservative. That is what has occurred in recent history. Just what is a nanny state in your view? Is Social Security a nanny state? Is Medicare a nanny state? Is it a nanny state if it allows you to sue for damages in a court of law? And again, if both parties want to suppress votes, then where is your evidence? Thus far only Republicans have actively engaged in voter suppression. Where is your evidence that both parties are equally corrupt? And where is your evidence that in order to be successful you have to be corrupt? In your view Carter was our worst president but that does not make it so. Carter definitely had his faults. But he was far from the worst president. Carter inherited the payback for the oil shocks of the 70’s and the foreign policy errors of the previous two decades. Those were not Carter’s fault although he received the blame for them. Carter’s largest failure was the handling of the hostage crisis in Iran. George Junior has that title of worst president and he certainly was not known for his virtue. George Jr. and his Republican pals took a huge budget surplus and turned it into unprecedented deficits. George Jr. committed the nation to a needless and expensive war, bungled two wars, cut taxes while dramatically increasing spending, and was responsible for the most pathetic job growth in several decades. And let’s not forget, George Jr. and his merry band of Republicans were responsible for leading the nation into another Great Depression/Recession with their deregulation policies. So your "corruption necessary" thesis has a few holes in it. OK. You are just repeating meaningless Republican talking points intended to cover over Romney's lack of leadership. We need a leader, not a mechanic. Popularity is an attribute of good leaderhip. How has Obama been doing a “shit job” exactly? The day Obama was sworn in the nation was running a trillion dollar deficit. The economy was shrinking at a 9% annualized rate and getting worse with each passing month. The nation was losing almost a million jobs a month and getting worse with each passing month and we were facing a potential depression the likes of which had not been seen since 1929. After implementing Obama’s economic policies, we started seeing immediate improvement in the economy. The economy, instead of shrinking at a an annualized rate of 9%, is now growing and has been growing for the last 3 years at a modest 2-3% per year – consistently. Instead of losing nearly a million jobs a month, we have been adding 100-200k private sector jobs month after month consistently. Additionally, President Obama found and eliminated Bin Ladin and most of his leadership team; ended George Junior’s wars and ended the growth in deficit spending, and more than doubled the value of the equity markets. And let’s not forget President Obama’s healthcare reforms which according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, will shave trillions off the nation’s healthcare costs and provide guaranteed affordable healthcare to every citizen - all this in his first 3 years in office. And he faced an opposition party, the Republican Party, whose stated primary mission was to see his defeat and tried to obstruct anything and everything he did regardless of merit or the needs of the nation. Maybe in your world you call that a failure, but I think most people would call that a success. That is an 11 point uptick in economic growth and a million job uptick in monthly job growth since Obama’s inauguration. That is impressive. Show me when any president in the last century that has done something even remotely similar. So yeah given the evidence, your statement does appear to be more than a bit racist - either that or you are grossly misinformed. Just what is a rational anarchist? Isn’t that an oxymoron? There is nothing rational about anarchy. And just what is “ a bare minimum of government”? I would prefer good government regardless of its size. One can have bad small government just as easily as it can have bad large government – just go to some third world countries and see what small government has done for them (e.g. Liberia). There is nothing magical about small or large governments. There is nothing magical about private enterprise either. Magical thinking is something we see all too frequently in people with your point of view. There is no substitute for hard work and there is no substitute for responsible voting and responsible citizenship.
First, registering illegal immigrants to vote is WORSE than requiring an ID to vote. Hell, i can compltely understand requiring an ID to vote. I mean what the hell is wrong with requiring an ID to vote. yes, voting is a right, a right you must exercise, and part of that exercise is being connected to the governemtn you are voting for. Show me a person who can completely get by in society with some sort of photo ID, and before you start saying Amish they pretty much are their own society. Second, what the hell is up with demonizing corporations? Do you know why this economy is failing? becuas we have demonized every last industrial corpporation and made it more practical for them to go elsewhere to manufacture things. The basis of any strong economy is industry. Yet in this nation we have made it nearly impossible to make a buck and be honest about it. For those of us who have a problem understanding, i mean the current parties only share one thing in common with founders, the frigging name. A nanny state is any state that takes completely moral and ethical decisions away from the populace. A nanny state is a state that fixes a problem by forcing people to do something instead strengthening the economy enough so they can do it. As for voter suppression, I have seen liberal groups heckle republican voters as much as vice versa. Sure this local but it's relevant. As for voter supression, show me one legitimate citizen with an ID that has been denied the right to vote in the last election. Needing an ID is hardly supression. Supression would be more like registering illegal aliens to vote, which fringe Democrat supporters have ADMITTEd to doing. Bringing in an illegal alien to vote cancels anothert citizens vote. So your "corruption necessary" thesis has a few holes in it. Anybody who knows economics knows economy's move in cycles. GWB is no more responsible for our current Depression than Obama. Shit happens, especially with all the regulations the liberal party likes to campaign for on manufacturers. I don't blame any president for a downturn, i blame them for ignoring it and hindering recovery. i blame them for failed foreign policy. i blame them for their short comings. As for inheriting a bad economy, no presisdent inherits a bad economy, they campaign for it. Actually, i'm repeating what we need, I'm politically a Libertine. and a good leader is popular becuase they do good work, Obama is popular becuase he wrote a book that oprah liked. How hasn't he been doing a shit job? He spent time on a Medical Bill no sane person wanted him to work on becuase we were screaming for him to work on the economy. actually i'm informed of the real reasons for the exceeding depressingly slow upswing. Every last bit of the plan he changed failed spectacularly. It might be bad luck, but hey he'd doing just as bad a job as people claim Bush was doing [qupte]Just what is a rational anarchist? Isn’t that an oxymoron? There is nothing rational about anarchy. And just what is “ a bare minimum of government”? I would prefer good government regardless of its size. One can have bad small government just as easily as it can have bad large government – just go to some third world countries and see what small government has done for them (e.g. Liberia). There is nothing magical about small or large governments. There is nothing magical about private enterprise either. Magical thinking is something we see all too frequently in people with your point of view. There is no substitute for hard work and there is no substitute for responsible voting and responsible citizenship.[/QUOTE] never read Heinlein huh? A rational anarchist is a person smart enough to realize that you ned a minimum of rules to fuction as a society. However more than that and you develop a tyranny.
It disenfranchizes people who don't have a suitable ID. Obviously. That's the entire point of it. The voter suppression laws don't accept "some sort of photo ID." They demand specific ones that match other documents in specific ways. Theirs is an American society, and they have the right to vote. Right? That's just preposterous. Get a clue. The Founders were all long dead before there was ever a Republican party. Only the Democratic party can claim to have had Founders as members. "Heckling" is not voter suppression. Most of these voter ID laws have been enacted since the last election, which of course you'd know if you were even marginally informed on the topics you blather about. Nevertheless, there's this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression#2008_presidential_election The voter ID laws currently being pushed by the GOP will disenfranchize tens of millions of Americans. That is voter suppression. Expanding the rolls of voters is the exact opposite of "voter suppression." Bullshit. That the business cycle exists does not imply that the dunderheaded policies pushed by the GOP for years ahead of that did not dramatically worsen the effects of the downturn. Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Maybe if you cram your head far enough up your own ass, you won't ever be confronted with reality. You are manifestly ignorant of pretty much everything at issue here. Sounds like you get all of your information from partisan bullshit outlets.
Does that make them un-American? No, the Amish, the disabled, the poor, the folks born in poor rural areas who don't have birth certificates are still Americans and still entitled to vote. Additionally, WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE THAT REGISTERING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS HAS OCCURRED? Where in the Constitution does it say the Amish and similar groups are not allowed to vote? And if you had read and informed yourself you would know that Republican voter suppression efforts go far beyond just requiring a voter ID. What does shortening voter registration hours have to do with illegal aliens voting? Nothing! What does shortening the hours for voting have to do with preventing illegal aliens from voting? Absolutely nothing! And as Quad has pointed out to you, Republican voter suppression laws don’t require just any picture ID. There are many picture IDs that are not allowed by these Republican voter suppression laws. And what do illegal aliens have to do with the arbitrary purging of voter rolls Republicans have been so good at in recent years? Pointing out the fact that corporations are the biggest donors to the Republican Party is far from demonizing them. It is a fact. You are going off the cliff and setting up a straw man when you make this claim. Apparently you have missed the current renaissance in American manufacturing that began under President Obama’s administration. http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/29/return-of-american-manufacturing/ Corporations are necessary for a healthy economy. But so is good regulation. I take it you want a repeat of the Great Recession or the Love Canal thingy or the company store, or the Industrial Revolution thingy when corporations could do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted? Without good regulation, you would not have a dependable modern banking system and without a dependable banking system you cannot have a modern efficient economy. Quad has already addressed this error. Oh, care to get more specific? What state is not a “nanny state”. And how does that make it better? What moral and ethical decisions have been taken away from you by the state? So using your nanny state notion, if a state makes a law declaring that murder, kidnapping, and theft illegal, that would make them a nanny state because the state is making a moral and ethical decision for the its citizens? Back to voter suppression, as Quad has pointed out to you heckling is not voter suppression nor is allowing illegals to vote voter suppression. Denial of the right to vote is voter suppression. That is just a matter of good old Webster’s, using words as they are commonly used and recognized. And neither you nor your fellow Republicans been able to prove that even one illegal alien has voted in recent times. LOL, say what? Economic cycles had nothing to do with the Great Recession. It had everything to do with deregulation, specifically the repeal of Glass-Stegall, and the passage of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act and weakening of the SEC. Your comments here reflect a profound ignorance of not only economics and business but of recent history as well. What matters are the facts, and the facts were presented to you showing some pretty remarkable achievements of the Obama administration. And you promptly ignored those facts. Ignorance is not a substitute for reason. The facts are as previously presented to you the economy is remarkably better today than it was when President Obama was sworn into office. The facts for more than the last century, no president has been able to come close to achieving the accomplishments President Obama has achieved in his first 3 years in office. So the bottom line here is that you have not been able to support your characterization of Obama’s presidency. I am always impressed with what you guys are calling yourselves these days. It changes faster than the weather. Now where is your evidence that President Obama is popular because he wrote a book that Oprah liked? That doesn’t even make any kind of sense even on the most superficial level. What you cannot read? I know you cannot spell. Apparently you missed the whole part about an 11 point improvement in economic growth occurring under President Obama. And you missed the part about the 1 million per month increase in the number of jobs created by the economy each month. And you must have been on vacation when Obama withdrew our troops from Iraq and put us on track to remove our remaining troops from Afghanistan next year. And you obviously missed the part about the finding and killing of Bin Ladin and the killing of most of his terrorist leadership. I suggest you go back and reread my previous post for all the other things President Obama has accomplished during his first few years in office. Would you care to get specific? It sounds like you are just repeating stuff you have heard on Fox or Limbaugh, et al. I have read Heinlein. But what does that have to do with the topic at hand? And just who determines the minimum number of rules for a society to function? And just what constitutes the “minimum” number of rules? And where is your evidence that it is somehow different or better than what we have today?
First of all, I don't like either party. Second I have known many Amish people who have picture ID, my town is near a ordnung, of course most of them don't vote, but still they have ID. A picture ID is twelve dollars and you pretty much need one to have a job, collect foodstamps, or just about anything. As for the birth certificates, you can have one made for relatively cheap. Seeing as how voting is done every other year, the requirements to prove you are a valid citizen are not that bad. Your insults are meaningless. You have attacked a valid, and reasonble law and called it voter suppression. You have yet to prove a single voter was denied their right to vote unlawfully. Your point fails on that basis alone.You're nothing but a Democrat lap dog who's believed every vile piece of slander they produced. You opinion hasn't the weight of a single solitary quark.
It's an issue for people who have problems presenting an ID. Not everyone in America lives like Beaver Cleaver's mom and dad. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! No, all the unlawful votes will be counted and the lawful ones will be denied. Scares me to death. You mean like Watergate? No, sorry you said slander: you mean The Swift Boat Commitee? No, that has passed out of the right wing conscience, which lasts about 2 seconds: you mean the Birthers? I take umbrage at that remark. I should warn you, I consist largely of quarks.
The obvious It should be noted that or neighbor LoRaan is operating according to the theory that what is already on the record does not actually exist.
Oh sure where have I heard that before? You just support and vote Republican. But you are not a Republican. After George II, it has become fashionable to not call one’s self a Republican. But actions and words speak louder than any name you want to lay on yourself. I don’t know where you live. But some people do not have IDs for all the reasons previously given. Your ignoring them doesn’t make them go away. Additionally, as I and Quad have pointed out to you Republican voter suppression efforts go far beyond just a voter ID. A statement of fact is not an insult. It is a fact. I just love how you ignore the many things that do not fit with your point of view and pretend those inconvenient facts do not exist. Here is some reality for you. You came in here making some pretty wild accusations and you have not been able to even support one of them with evidence or reason. You are reduced to name calling and setting up straw man arguments. I again challenge you to support all of the claims you have made and answer the questions that have been put to you. Are you big enough to admit your errors?
You have to present these ID's to get voter's registration. This alone should quell any argument. So in your mind unlawful votes are people with ID and lawful ones are illegal immigrants and resisdents of cemetaries? I admit that parties make mistakes, but you're comparing a crime to the passing of a law So?
Hey i vote whichever presisdent i think will suck at the job less. I voted for Clinton both times, if you don't have ID how do you work? You need that to hold any job. If you don't have ID how did you apply for Welfare ? You need it there. How do you prove you are not a transient? How did you get a mortgage or apartment? How did you get your utilities hooked up? You cannot function in mainstream society without an ID. So your reasoning is BOGUS. What fact? I have not seen a real fact from you yet. Just suppositions that are Democrat talking points. Haven't made any in this arguemtn yet, unlike yourself.
Good for you. Now how about supporting your wild ass claims? As has been pointed out to you several times now, Republican voter suppression laws require specific kinds of ID. Not all employers require the specific forms of ID required by Republican voter suppression laws. Nor do you need the kind of ID required by Republican voter suppression laws to get an apartment or to purchase a home or to open an account with a utility. Two, you completely and repeatedly ignore the fact that Republican voter suppression goes way beyond voter ID laws as has been pointed out to you on many occassions. Ignoring fact and evidence is the only way you can rationalize your positions – just like you ignored all of the other non-ID related voter suppression legislation. You were asked, repeatedly to prove your many wild ass claims and to answer the questions that have been repeatedly put to you and you respond with this incoherent crap. I again challenge you to support your claims with evidence and reason.
Brief Updates Brief Updates Republican voter suppression efforts in Florida and Texas are failing in the courts: • Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that he would permanently strike Florida's voter registration restrictions. • Texas suffered the second hit in a week this morning when a three-judge panel ruled against the state's photo ID requirement for voting. Another panel of federal judges, earlier this week, threw out the state's redistricting plan. Both decisions relied heavily on the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Having requested a decision by the end of the month, so that the state could move forward enforcing the law, Texas now intends to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.____________________ Notes: Hinkle, Robert L. "Indicative Ruling on the Motion for a Permanent Injunction". League of Women Voters of Florida v. Detzner. August 28, 2012. BrennanCenter.org. August 30, 2012. http://www.brennancenter.org/page/-/Democracy/VRE/FL_injunction_082912.pdf Schoenberg, Tom. "Texas Voter Photo-ID Law Thrown Out by U.S. Judges' Panel". Bloomberg Businessweek. August 30, 2012. Businessweek.com. August 30, 2012. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-30/texas-voter-photo-id-law-rejected-by-u-dot-s-dot-judges
The Scoreboard, of Sorts The Scoreboard, of Sorts Jamil Smith offers an overview of recent activity in the GOP's War Against Voters: If there was a contest to see which Republican lawmaker can most obstruct the vote—and given the way they're going about it, you'd think at least a case of Bud was riding on this—I'd have thought that the leader in the clubhouse was named Rick Scott, or Tom Corbett, or maybe even Nikki Haley .... .... Haley and the state are trying to resurrect their law in federal court, after it was struck down late last year due to concerns that it discriminated against black voters. In fact, part of the testimony this week, per McClatchy Newspapers, involved the author of the law admitting that he had responded favorably to a friend's racist email in support of the measure. Racial bias was also the reason why courts interceded on efforts to restrict voting rights in Governor Rick Perry's Texas this week. First, a three-judge panel in a federal court ruled that the redistricting plan Perry signed discriminates against Latino voters. Ari Berman of The Nation, in his report, teased the fact that Texas' voter-ID law was also under the scrutiny of the Justice Department. Perry lost on that, too, earlier today, when another three-judge panel (he is having bad luck with those this week) rejected that voter-ID law .... .... So while the leader in the voter-suppression clubhouse may have been Perry earlier this week, he's back down to zero. So may be Governor Scott of Florida, whose voter-registration purge was halted by a federal judge pledging to end it permanently. That said, he's brought Democratic registration in Florida to a comparative standstill, so perhaps the jury's still out, no pun intended. With Haley also taking an L currently, perhaps we'll consider Corbett the leader at the moment, since Pennsylvania's voter-ID law got the green light from courts about two weeks ago, and remains for now alive and well. The details are actually impressive; it's a damning decision in Texas v. Holder: Texas bears the burden of proving that nothing in SB 14 "would lead to a retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise." Beer, 425 U.S. at 141. Because all of Texas's evidence on retrogression is some combination of invalid, irrelevant, and unreliable, we have little trouble concluding that Texas has failed to carry its burden. Significantly, however, this case does not hinge merely on Texas's failure to "prove a negative." See Bossier Parish I, 520 U.S. at 480 (internal quotation marks omitted). To the contrary, record evidence suggests that SB 14, if implemented, would in fact have a retrogressive effect on Hispanic and African American voters. This conclusion flows from three basic facts: (1) a substantial subgroup of Texas voters, many of whom are African American or Hispanic, lack photo ID; (2) the burdens associated with obtaining ID will weigh most heavily on the poor; and (3) racial minorities in Texas are disproportionately likely to live in poverty. Accordingly, SB 14 will likely "lead to a retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise." And if we combine the courts considerations regarding voter identification with the spectacular redistricting debacle— Texas Republicans not only failed to grant new power to minority voters in the state, they also took away vital economic resources from minority Democratic members of Congress. Reported the court: Congressman Al Green, who represents CD 9, testified that "substantial surgery" was done to his district that could not have happened by accident. The Medical Center, Astrodome, rail line, and Houston Baptist University — the "economic engines" of the district — were all removed in the enacted plan. The enacted plan also removed from CD 9 the area where Representative Green had established his district office. Likewise, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who represents CD 18, testified that the plan removed from her district key economic generators as well as her district office. Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson of CD 30 also testified that the plan removed the American Center (home of the Dallas Mavericks), the arts district, her district office, and her home from CD 30. The mapdrawers also removed the district office, the Alamo, and the Convention Center (named after the incumbent's father), from CD 20, a Hispanic ability district. No such surgery was performed on the districts of Anglo incumbents. In fact, every Anglo member of Congress retained his or her district office. Anglo district boundaries were redrawn to include particular country clubs and, in one case, the school belonging to the incumbent's grandchildren. And Texas never challenged evidence that only minority districts lost their economic centers by showing, for example, that the same types of changes had been made in Anglo districts. The only explanation Texas offers for this pattern is "coincidence." But if this was coincidence, it was a striking one indeed. It is difficult to believe that pure chance would lead to such results. The State also argues that it "attempted to accommodate unsolicited requests from a bipartisan group of lawmakers," and that "[w]ithout hearing from the members, the mapdrawers did not know where district offices were located." But we find this hard to believe as well. We are confident that the mapdrawers can not only draw maps but read them, and the locations of these district offices were not secret. The improbability of these events alone could well qualify as a "clear pattern, unexplainable on grounds other than race," and lead us to infer a discriminatory purpose behind the Congressional Plan. The same analysis applied to the state Senate and state House maps as well. "Texas has failed to carry its burden that [its redistricting plans] do not have the purpose or effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act," the court wrote in its conclusion. An interim map drawn by a federal court in San Antonio in February will be used for the 2012 election. (Berman) —it becomes pretty clear what is going on in the Lone Star state. And, of course, what is going on with conservatives and voting rights. Berman suggests that the Texas redistricting plan and voter identification law "in many ways embody the conservative response to the country's changing demographics. Instead of courting an increasingly diverse electorate, Republicans in Texas and elsewhere are trying to take away political power from minority voters and make it harder for them to vote." Well, duh. They're conservatives. ____________________ Notes: Smith, Jamil. "This is a bad week to suppress voters in Texas". Melissa Harris-Perry Blog. August 30, 2012. MHPShow.MSNBC.com. August 30, 2012. http://mhpshow.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/30/13573339-this-is-a-bad-week-to-suppress-voters-in-texas Tatel, David. "Opinion". Texas v. Holder. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. August 30, 2012. MSNBCmedia.MSN.com. August 30, 2012. http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_U.S. news/Life/120830_texas-voter-id.pdf Berman, Ari. "Federal Court Blocks Discriminatory Texas Redistricting Plan". The Nation. August 28, 2012. TheNation.com. August 30, 2012. http://www.thenation.com/blog/169602/federal-court-blocks-discriminatory-texas-redistricting-plan
Crossroads: Lies, Votes, and Reality Crossroads: Lies, Votes, and Reality Perhaps it was an issue that didn't register on many people's political radar; it certainly didn't carry the punch Republicans had hoped for. Recently, conservatives tried out the rhetoric that President Obama was trying to hurt the voting rights of the military. The issue was Ohio's attempt to curb early voting for everyone but the military, an issue the Obama administration disagreed with. Lori Robertson of FactCheck.org explained: Mitt Romney wrongly suggests the Obama campaign is trying to "undermine" the voting rights of military members through a lawsuit filed in Ohio. The suit seeks to block state legislation that limited early voting times for nonmilitary members; it doesn't seek to impose restrictions on service members. In an Aug. 4 Facebook posting, Romney called the lawsuit an "outrage," and said that "if I'm entrusted to be the commander-in-chief, I'll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them." He painted the court filing as an attack on the ability of service men and women to vote: "The brave men and women of our military make tremendous sacrifices to protect and defend our freedoms, and we should do everything we can to protect their fundamental right to vote." Conservative blogs and opinion pieces have also misrepresentedthe case, claiming in headlines that President Obama was suing to "restrict military voting." A fundraising email appeal from a group called Special Operations Speaks — which wants to "remove Barack Obama from the White House" — wrongly says that Obama "deploys army of lawyers to suppress military's voting rights," claiming that "Obama needs the American military to not vote, so he has set out to make it as difficult as possible for them to do so." But that's not what the Obama lawsuit aims to do at all. In reality, the suit asked the court to protect early voting for all. The attack line suggesting Obama is hostile to military voters ignores the actual legal arguments and depends on the idea that the judge in the case might, somehow, split the decision by finding for equal protection of voters and in doing so decide to curtail military voters to match the rest of Ohio. It does not matter to the attack line that the Democratic bloc in this legal fight aimed to "restore for all voters access to early voting through the Monday before Election Day". But even after Robertson's fact-check, which appeared on August 7, conservatives continued to push the line. On August 20, John Fund reiterated the argument, entirely overlooking the legal rhetoric. Compare Fund's later argument to Robertson's fact check: The National Guard Association of the United States, AMVETS (American Veterans), the Association of the U.S. Army, and twelve other military organizations have asked that the Obama lawsuit be dismissed. With all of this negative publicity, you'd think that Team Obama lawyers would retreat. But they are not retreating. Instead, they are marching into a fight they are ultimately doomed to lose. Apparently, as with their opposition to voter-ID laws, they have concluded that all they have to do is throw enough legal bombs: Some of them will detonate, hamstringing election laws they think will hurt the president's chances for a second term. (Fund) • • • The lawsuit challenges last year's legislation in Ohio on the grounds that the unequal treatment of different citizens violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Fifteen groups representing members of the military — including the National Guard Association, Marine Corps League and the Military Officers Association of America —filed a motion to dismiss and a motion to participate in the case on the side of the state of Ohio. Their beef isn't with the Obama camp's intent, however, but with the equal protection argument and how a judge may react to it .... .... The motion to intervene, quoting court cases, says a court could decide to pull back the early voting deadline for military members, rather than extend it for nonmilitary residents, in order to establish equal treatment .... The Obama camp, DNC and Ohio Democratic Party filed a memo supporting the military groups' motion to participate in the case. That memo reiterated that the Democratic groups didn't want to change the way military members could vote. Plaintiffs' memorandum in support of motion to intervene, Aug. 3: Plaintiffs seek to restore for all voters access to early voting through the Monday before Election Day. Neither the substance of its Equal Protection claim, nor the relief requested, challenges the legislature's authority to make appropriate accommodation, including early voting during the period in question, for military voters, their spouse or dependents. The question before the Court is whether, in the circumstances of this case, the State of Ohio may arbitrarily and without justification withdraw from all other Ohio eligible voters the same right they previously had to vote the weekend and Monday before Election Day. (Robertson) So even though the Democratic side of the argument was clearly spelled out in the memoranda, conservatives continued to push the exact opposite argument. It really is hard to find an explanation for this other than the proposition of desperate conservatives lying through their teeth in hopes of finding some sort of traction with voters. One wonders, then, how conservatives will deal with the Democratic victory in federal court: A federal judge today sided with President Barack Obama's re-election campaign and ordered Ohio to allow early voting on the three days prior to the Nov. 6 election to all voters. U.S. District Court Senior Judge Peter C. Economus ordered Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted not to enforce a state law passed last year that closed that window to in-person early voting to anyone but members of the military and their families. "This Court notes that restoring in-person early voting to all Ohio voters through the Monday before Election Day does not deprive (military) voters from early voting," wrote Judge Economus, a Clinton appointee. "Instead, and more importantly, it places all Ohio voters on equal standing. "The only hindrance to (military) early voting is the Secretary of State's failure to set uniform hours at elections boards during the last three days before Election Day," he wrote. "On balance, the right of Ohio voters to vote in person during the last three days prior to Election Day—a right previously conferred to all voters by the State—outweighs the State's interest in setting the 6 p.m. Friday deadline." (Provance) Perhaps the conservative fixation on a fantasy is some sort of neurotic outcome; in one of the stranger twists in the Republican War Against Voters was the acknowledgment that this was about throwing the election. Darrel Rowland explains: Husted said he based his decision to bar weekend hours after consulting with local elections officials, many of whom were concerned about cost. But Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, told The Dispatch that "we would make that work" if directed to stay open until, say, noon the Saturday before the election. Of course, such decisions are at least as much about politics as policy. "You would almost have to be as blind as a bat not to see the politics," said Anthony, former chairman of the county Democratic Party. "Listen, call it what it really is." "What it really is" to many Republicans is simply an attempt to help President Barack Obama win re-election. "I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine," said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. "Let's be fair and reasonable." (Boldface accent added) It's actually important to consider the implications of what it means to "contort the voting process". After all, there was a voting process in which people were allowed a certain period of early voting. Then Republicans aimed to limit that period of early voting for some voters, but not all. The Democratic counterpoint is that everyone should have the same early-voting period. Which is actually more contorted? One standard that applies to all voters? Or two standards, admittedly intended to reduce African-American voter turnout? Are Ohio Republicans really down to cynical racism? Seriously, is that the Party's grand strategy for victory? ____________________ Notes: Robertson, Lori. "Fact check: Obama not trying to curb military early voting". USA Today. August 7, 2012. USAToday.com. August 31, 2012. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politi...t-check-obama-ohio-military-voting/56859922/1 Fund, John. "Military Voting Rights Under Fire in Ohio". National Review. August 20, 2012. NationalReview.com. August 31, 2012. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/314434/military-voting-rights-under-fire-ohio-john-fund Provance, Jim. "Federal judge orders Ohio to allow early voting on 3 days before Election Day". The Toledo Blade. August 31, 2012. ToledoBlade.com. August 31, 2012. http://www.toledoblade.com/State/20...rly-voting-on-3-days-before-Election-Day.html Rowland, Darrel. "Voting in Ohio: Fight over poll hours isn't just political". The Columbus Dispatch. August 19, 2012. Dispatch.com. August 31, 2012. http://www.dispatch.com/content/sto...ight-over-poll-hours-isnt-just-political.html See Also: Economus, Peter C. "Opinion and Order on Preliminary Injunction". Obama for America et al. v. Husted et al. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio Eastern Division. August 31, 2012. Blogs.DixCDN.com. August 31, 2012. http://blogs.dixcdn.com/capitalblog/2012/08/obama-suit-decision/
Excuse me but yes Employers do require specific forms of ID and even combinations of ID's to prove you identity. And as of yet I have not seen a SINGLE "ID to Vote law" that has made any requirement other than a State of Federal Photo ID. aka Driver's License, State ID, Federal Firearms License, Passport... You know the VERY same id's that ALL Employers prefer you have. You haven't provided a single shred of evidence that the laws are meant to do anything other than keep illegal-immagrants from voting and reduce voter fraud. Hey, all I know is when I checked the county court records my Grandfater voted Democrat last three major elections, which was kind of amazing since he died nearly 28 years ago.
You need to reread what I wrote. As previously disproven, employers do not require all of the IDs you have listed here. A Social Security Card is acceptable Id to employers. A Social Security Card while acceptable for employment is not an acceptable voter ID card per these Republican voter suppression laws. Many voter suppression laws don’t allow student IDs – which are photo Ids. Additionally, employment is not a requirement to vote. As previously pointed out to you, many people are retired or disabled or going to school, so they are not in the workforce. Again you need to reread. But perhaps you might better understand a video clip. http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/karoli/shameless-republican-brags-about-voter-id-w Now you are lying. How individual voters cast their vote is secret. We have secret balloting in this country. When ballots are cast, they don’t have an individual’s name attached to them. So there is no way for you to know that your grandfather voted for Democrats in the last three major elections. Smile, you have been caught in a bald-faced lie. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
So you are implying that people who do not - or cannot - work, should be deprived of their democratic franchise? Otherwise, what is the relevance of comparing this voter suppression effort to the documentation required by wage slavery?
This Is How Important It Is for Republicans Fixing the Vote: This Is How Important It Is for Republicans How important is it for Republicans to tilt the playing field in November? A federal judge ordered Secretary of State Jon Husted on Wednesday to personally appear next week at a hearing about his reluctance to restore early voting the weekend before the Nov. 6 election. Judge Peter Economus, whose ruling Husted has resisted, scheduled the hearing on Sept. 13 in the U.S. District Court in Columbus. Economus set the hearing after President Barack Obama's re-election team filed a motion Wednesday requesting the court to enforce its order to restore in-person early voting during the final three days before the presidential election .... .... Husted prohibited all 88 county election boards from setting early voting hours during the last three days before the election, despite Economus' ruling last Friday. Husted said it would be premature for elections boards to set hours because he has appealed Economus' ruling. A Husted spokesman said Wednesday that the secretary of state's office did not think the directive conflicted with the judge's order. (Guillen) So let's get this straight: A federal judge rules in a case and issues an order. Secretary Husted doesn't like the ruling, so he instructs every county in his state to ignore the directive of a federal court. But a spokesman from Husted's office says the Secretary did not believe such a directive conflicted with the order. Okay, first question: Are Republicans really that stupid, or is it just Secretary Husted? Second question: A judge gives you an order; you turn around and tell your employees to ignore that order. But you don't think that instruction conflicts with the order. Really? What happened to the Republican Party that was the party of law and order? Oh, right. Justice. It might be hyperbole to say that Republicans were the party of law and order while Democrats were the party of justice, but liberals have long looked to justice instead of any pretense of law and order. And, sure, the Democrats have become more of a law-and-order party, as evidenced in 2007 when they buckled on FISA, or presently in the Obama administration's pursuit of whistleblowers as crooks. But Republicans have not flipped to become the party of justice. Secretary Husted seems to be of the attitude that if he doesn't like the law, the law can just go screw. I think it was in the '90s, though I won't speculate the source for the possible indignity of being wrong in saying it was G. Gordon Liddy ... er ... um ... whoops. Anyway, I think it was in the '90s that I first heard the right-wing assertion that if you don't like the law you should just disregard it. And, sure, I thought that was pretty extreme; it's far too generic a principle to count as civil disobedience. But this? Husted doesn't make sense. One standard for all Ohioans is apparently much more complicated than multiple standards for various segments of the population. That's the first part. And then suggesting that willfully defying a direct order from a federal judge doesn't conflict with the judge's order? What is Husted smoking? Crack? No, really. I could not possibly get so stoned that I would be able to say, with a straight face, that defying a direct order from a judge does not conflict with the judge's order. True, there are times I might think about defying the law, and even occasions when I do. But I cannot recall ever being so high that I would say that my willful defiance of the law does not conflict with the law. This is how important it is for Republicans to rig the vote. Seriously, if Husted wants to plead insanity, I'll buy it. ____________________ Notes: Guillen, Joe. "Ohio's Secretary of State Jon Husted must appear in federal court to explain delay in restoring early voting". The Plain Dealer. September 5, 2012. Cleveland.com. September 6, 2012. http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2012/09/ohios_secretary_of_state_jon_h.html
