> | Z, all I had to do was find one to prove that you and CJ were full of it.
>"Exceedingly rare" is no excuse to do away with voter registration. Common sense prevails over "unicorns."
Bullshit. That's the same "logic" that makes us not be allowed to bring water bottles on airplanes and makes millions of whites think that it's OK that New York City police frisks every young black male at least once a year. TrueTheVote spends ALL of its money and time trying to prove "voter fraud" of the kind that identification would prevent, and comes up with one case. That tells me that it's a problem that doesn't really exist. It tells you that we need to institute measures which ultimately will make it much more difficult, if not impossible, for millions of people in this country to vote.
Honestly, this is embarrassing. You don't see the exact mirrors to voting restrictions during Jim Crow? Does "Operation Eagle Eye" mean nothing to you? en.wikipedia.org. That was in 1964, in our parents' lifetimes, and was led by a guy who was on the Supreme Court until less than eight years ago!
There is a clear, very, very, very clear path from the rules that were set in place all along the way from the 1860s on to this, not the very least the races and classes of people it's disenfranchising. And its advocates often admit it! They want the right people to vote. They are deliberately trying to keep Democrats from voting. Are you both deaf and blind?
The reason I went through all of your links yesterday (as well as spending hours upon hours in the past going through Steve's links, which nearly always inevitably end up being BS), was because I was trying to learn something and being open, as abhorrent is this voter registration bullshit is, to find any validity to it at all. But the crap you fed me made me even more confident that your side is grasping at straws, not just on this, but on pretty much every issue, and trying to feed the Americans a shit sandwich on artisan bread.
Republicans are not trying to protect the validity of the vote. They're trying to rig elections by keeping constituencies that don't vote for them from voting because they have a difficulty winning any other way. They say "boogah boogah boogah wetback illegal immigrants voting" because that scares people like you into backing their policies. I want 100% of adults to vote in this country. Fine if that's not important to you, but that's on you.
Republicans are not trying to "preserve" Social Security and Medicare. They're trying to either kill them entirely or use them to enrich Wall Street or pharmaceutical companies. I want everyone in this country to be in a place to be able to retire in their early 60s if they want to, and for them to have a decent standard of living and measures in place to keep them alive and healthy. Fine if that's not important to you, but that's on you.
Republicans aren't trying to make people succeed by "lessening their dependence on government." They're trying to keep their taxes low and make the middle class and lower classes less secure so that they'll work for less money. And dammit, they've done it. Wages are going down in this country. I want everyone that can work in this country to have job that won't kill them, a roof over their head and to know where their next meal is coming from. Fine if that's not important to you, but that's on you.
Republicans don't want to kill unions because they hurt the country. Republicans want to kill unions because they make companies pay to keep workers safer and more secure. But killing unions over the last 50 years has made it so people have worthless 401(k)s rather than secure pensions, decreased pensions if they still have them, and tens of millions of people are about to retire without any clue of how they're going to pay for their lives or won't be able to retire. That's not OK with me, but if it's OK with you, that's on you.
Republicans (and yes, too many Democrats) did not go to Iraq or Vietnam or Afghanistan to preserve democracy. They did do those things for oil, and war profiteering, and to maintain hegemony, and 'cause, goddammit, America's going to tell the rest of the world to "Suck. On. This." (TM Tom Friedman). And millions upon millions are dead because of it. That is a crime and a catastrophe to me. If it's OK with you, it's on you.
Republicans don't really believe that global warming isn't happening or that preventable human activity isn't causing it. They just don't give a shit because giving a shit might mean they have to change the things that make them money, hundreds of millions of deaths in the next couple of centuries and extinction of half the species on this planet be damned. Republicans told us that instituting measures to counteract acid rain would destroy our economy. It didn't, and we've decreased acid rain considerably. To me, that's a huge accomplishment. If you don't care, it's on you.
Republicans doesn't really believe that the minimum wage will increase unemployment. The Wall Street Journal said instituting the minimum wage would basically destroy this country in 1901. This country is still here in 2013. I do believe the minimum wage should be a living wage. If you don't, that's on you.
I could go on through pretty much every important issue, and find conservatives on the wrong side of pretty much every issue. And to the public, to sell their policies, they egregiously pretend that their policies will accomplish the opposite of what they want them to because they know the public wants the opposite of what they want.
I did not start out wanting to believe any of this. This is all doublespeak. It's both insane and utterly cynical.
These are lies. Egregious, bald-faced, lies. And you don't see it, and I cannot understand why.
You want partisanship? You talk about it like it's a bad thing.
Fine. We're on different sides. We don't think alike, we don't speak the same language. My side wants a secure, confident, forward-thinking, and inclusive America. Your side's America is pissing its pants about Communists, Arabs, Muslims, Latinos, and "Obama's sons."
I don't really care about the Democratic Party, but it's the closing thing we have to a liberal party. If being a liberal is being partisan, then I'm fiercely partisan. Apply all of your stupid "Rules of Partisanship" to me. They're nonsense but they make you feel big and right when you're neither.
Political disagreements are OK, and they can be fun on the internet. It's my own psychological deal, but if there's one area I'm really, really thin-skinned, it's racism. I've been on this board for over a decade now, and five years ago, I had only a small number of people here on ignore because I didn't feel like they brought anything to the table and were just noise, and the numbers were roughly equal between conservatives and liberals. But since Obama's been elected, I've had to put nearly every conservative other than you and a couple of others on ignore because I can't take the racism.
Early in the 2008 cycle, I told friends that electing a black President would not cause the level of racism in this country to spike. Well, I was wrong. I mean, maybe it was always there, but since the 2008 election, it's been brought out in ways that appall and shock me. This discussion board oozes racism in a way that I wanted to believe didn't exist anymore. And not just here, but every bastion of right-wing "thought" on the internet.
I've been trying to give you the benefit of the doubt because I know you pretty well at this point and I don't believe that you're racist, but I can't believe that you can't see that pretty much everyone whose side you're standing on here is. And seeing you stand on the side of both the racists here and the ones that devise the voter ID laws that are so blatantly a continuation of the darkest qualities of the history of this country, and blithely throw this "information" which is the aforementioned "artisan bread" baked by assholes who use those qualities to their political advantage both touches a nerve.
I know -- OMG, I PLAYED THE RACE CARD! Whatever, I can't continue to maintain a constant air of civility in the face of this. Enjoy your sandwich.
-Z
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