Oops, I did it again.

Open thread until I get my act together. On the table today? How Anglo-Saxon are you?

Or whatever else you’d like to talk about. Back in full strength tomorrow, promise.

Posted at 8:15 am in Current events |
 

44 responses to “Oops, I did it again.”

  1. Heather said on July 25, 2012 at 8:47 am

    The Jutes, the Picts, the Normans, and the Celts are gonna be pissed!

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  2. brian stouder said on July 25, 2012 at 9:11 am

    How long before Mitt makes a smiling/faux-chortle remark about the outrageous mistreatment of “Ayrian Americans” by this administration?

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  3. Jolene said on July 25, 2012 at 9:14 am

    Seen on Twitter this AM: Today in 2000 George W. Bush picked Dick Cheney to be his VP. They won and everything went terrible. The End. True Story.

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  4. Scout said on July 25, 2012 at 9:21 am

    I have never in my life seen a more tone deaf candidate or inept campaign team. My fervent hope is that the only reason we’re hearing that this race is at all close is because the press needs a horse race.

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  5. Mark P said on July 25, 2012 at 9:24 am

    Jolene, that’s the silliest premise for a book I have ever read. There is no way in hell Americans would vote for a pair like that, assuming they could even exist in this universe.

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  6. LAMary said on July 25, 2012 at 9:50 am

    We Frisians have an affinity for the Saxons, so I’m cool with it. Mitt’s won me over now.

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  7. Julie Robinson said on July 25, 2012 at 9:57 am

    Could the Supremes retroactively vacate their decision in the 2000 Presidential election? That’s a book I’d like to read.

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  8. brian stouder said on July 25, 2012 at 10:09 am

    Could the Supremes retroactively vacate their decision in the 2000 Presidential election?

    A brilliant idea!

    The Supremes could be like the NCAA, and declare that Bush has to “vacate” all his victories from 2000 forward.

    Then, Al Gore would be credited as the 43 president, John Kerry would be credited as the 44th president, and Barack Obama would be our 45th.

    On the upside, Kerry would get credited with the John Roberts appointment (and thus with preserving President Obama’s signature legislative achievement); but on the downside, Kerry would also be “credited” for nominating Harriet Miers (who?), and Samuel Alito.

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  9. coozledad said on July 25, 2012 at 10:17 am

    And did those feet in ancient time
    walk upon Utah’s mountains steep
    and did the planet of Kolob
    Shine down among the idiot sheep

    And did King Arthur find the grail
    afloat upon a salty lake
    And did the virgin queen, in a heat
    her magic underwear forsake?

    Bring me my banks, a-burning gold
    Bring me the wads of cash afire
    Let Anglo Saxons then unfold
    My distressed mom jeans of desire

    I will not cease from mindless talk
    Nor shall my staff say something smart
    Till we’ve Jerusalem built offshore
    with nothing but an eggy fart.

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  10. MichaelG said on July 25, 2012 at 10:23 am

    My people all came from Ireland so I’m not Anglo-Saxon at all. I’m a Celt.

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  11. Dexter said on July 25, 2012 at 10:40 am

    “Mr Romney has pledged to stop Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, threatening military action more stridently than Mr Obama. He said on Tuesday that only a “complete cessation” of uranium enrichment by Iran was satisfactory – a stronger demand than the White House’s.

    “The same ayatollahs who each year mark a holiday by leading chants of ‘Death to America’ are not going to be talked out of their pursuit of nuclear weapons,” he said in his speech.”

    Well, Obama, circa 2003, in a speech which has completely disappeared from any site on the internet, rattled a mighty sabre against Iran, sounding like a mad bomber. Also, Obama has made serious threatening remarks against Iran when he has addressed AIPAC in recent years, so I guess every challenger to obtain residence at 1600 Penna Avenue has to sound strong against Iran.
    However, if Romney surrounds himself by totally wacked-out maniacs as did George W. Bush…it takes only one level of analyzing to see it would be easy for Romney to launch some sort of crazy war against Iran. Can’t you just sense the bottled-up enthusiasm of the Pentagon to go hell-bent against Iran in mad warfare?

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  12. Connie said on July 25, 2012 at 11:03 am

    Thanks, LAMary, I was wondering what us Frisians were. Though I will note that this map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxons , lists Frisi along with Saxoni and Angli.

    Off to the dentist to get my fallen out filling replaced. Fun.

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  13. MarkH said on July 25, 2012 at 11:07 am

    Good points, Dexter, although I don’t think I’d go so far as to say the Pentagon itself has bottled-up enthusiasm for “mad warfare” againt Iran. I’d be more worried about which administration is in there and who is the secretary of defense.

    In a related issue, did anyone catch Fresh Air yesterday? Military historian David Crist was the guest talking about his book, Twilight War, covering the US relationship with Iran in the last 30 years. Looks to be excellent reading with the takeaway being a completely blown opportunity in the months after 9/11 for the US to forge a positive relationship with Iran. He does not paint Iran in completely angelic terms, and the mindset at the time is understandable. It is very complicated given our complete history with Iran. Crist is employed by the Pentagon has a historian, his father is a Marine general who was commander of CENTCOM in the mid ’80s, so he’s got the cred. Here’s a link:

    http://www.npr.org/2012/07/24/157248254/the-twilight-war-between-the-u-s-and-iran

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  14. brian stouder said on July 25, 2012 at 11:15 am

    Now HERE’s a sort of palate cleanser/thing that makes you say “Hmmmm”: Havaianas (flip-flops) turn fifty!

    http://www.chem.info/News/2012/07/International-At-50-Havaianas-Flip-Flops-are-a-Symbol-of-Brazil

    The story has a surprisingly strong over-lay about social and economic class; an excerpt:

    “Havaianas were almost synonymous with poverty,” said Porto. “They were sold like a commodity, with no investment in design or marketing or innovation, and the whole business model hinged upon selling increasing numbers of pairs in order to drive production costs down.” By the early 1990s, with domestic competitors beginning to eat away at Havaianas’ market share, label executives made a bold, 180-degree shift in strategy. Their plan, aimed at rebranding Havaianas as a fashion accessory, would prove so wildly successful that it has since become a business school case study in marketing.

    And

    Suddenly, middle- and upper-class Brazilians who either wouldn’t have been caught dead in Havaianas or donned them exclusively for the short trek from their beachfront apartments to the sand, were snatching them up in multiple shades for all occasions. Ladies who lunch from Rio’s tony Leblon neighborhood wear them to all-important visits to the hairdresser or even out on dates. Private school scions use them to mark the goal box during beach soccer matches. Moneyed businessmen wear them while walking the dog or out to a high-end “churrascaria” barbecue.

    The popular classes are buying more Havaianas than ever,” said consultant Porto. “Poor people have the right to be fashionable too, and people in this group tend to save up for different models and lots of colors. “They see their bosses wearing Havaianas, they see TV stars wearing them and even foreign movie stars in them, and they feel proud to wear them.”

    Huh.

    Anyway, lots of very pleasant Brazillian beach photographs, too.

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  15. Judybusy said on July 25, 2012 at 11:27 am

    I have a pair of flip-flops I bought in Brazil in 1986–not Havaianas, though. Fun article. I like a little more oomph to my flip-flops, so tend to go to Eddie Bauer for mine….

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  16. Jeff Borden said on July 25, 2012 at 11:44 am

    It looks like the GOP and Mitt Romney are not even going to bother with the racial dog whistle. They’re pretty much just out-and-out calling President Obama a colored guy who doesn’t understand white people because his father was African, while Willard the Windsock has a deep understanding of our Anglo-Saxon ties.

    My needle is moving deeply into the red zone on Romney. At first, I thought he was simply a mealy-mouthed coward who would shape shift into any position for political gain. Now, I see him as a vicious liar and the pure manifestation of Bush III. God almighty, Mittens thinks John Fucking Bolton has deep insights into foreign affairs. We are so fucked if this automaton is elected.

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  17. Prospero said on July 25, 2012 at 12:00 pm

    Jolene: Pardon, but Cheney picked Cheney for VP, the assholes robbed FLA with the aid and abetment of the SC, and everything went to shit. And RMoney wants to bring back the PNAC and take orders from Bibi, and blow up Iran. This is a very bad idea. And I’m stuck in Tevas.

    And how bout them Anglo-Saxon Meskins. Willard is an asshole. He’s extablished that. Anglo-Saxon? Sons of Dan were more Spaniards in the works:

    http://www.amazon.com/A-Spaniard-Works-John-Lennon/dp/1568492995

    What an entire buffoon. Somebody is going to vote for this fracking idiot because he isn’t brown? Racist state.

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  18. Jolene said on July 25, 2012 at 12:03 pm

    I think you’re right, MarkH. I don’t think the Pentagon is eager to go to war at all. I think they’re exhausted.

    But I do think Romney projects a simple-minded view of the world that seems largely based on the idea that it’s up to us to decide who in the world can do what and to make them do it. His tendency to bellicosity and his cravenness in the face of right-wing lunacy are not encouraging.

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  19. Suzanne said on July 25, 2012 at 12:09 pm

    I don’t think Mitt R. is a bad guy, per se, just absolutely and utterly clueless about the average American who he does think of as human capital and not much else. If we were worth anything, we’d all be as wildly successful as he is!

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  20. brian stouder said on July 25, 2012 at 12:23 pm

    Suzanne – agreed. My impression is that he’s the classic ‘born on third base & thinks he hit a triple’ sort of guy. He may have grown out of most of his genuinely mean-spirited superior attitudes (thinking of the classmate that he went violently homophobic upon, and his “I’m a state trooper” comedy act), but he’s still profoundly near-sighted in his societal and world view. President Obama has seen the world from the bottom up, while Romney started out at the top, and has simply flown along in ‘business class’ ever since.

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  21. beb said on July 25, 2012 at 12:25 pm

    The thing about the “Anglo-saxon relations” comment is that the speaker probably never even realized there would be two ways to parse that sentence. One that acknowledges America’s long shared history with England and the other the realization that a plurality of Americans don’t actually share that long history. It’s like John Sununu, a man born in Havana to Greek and Palastinan parents claiming that Pres. Obama didn’t know how to be an American.

    Actually they’re nothing alike since one was a gaffe – ie, the accidental telling of the truth – while the other was a baldfaced lie.

    Meanwhile conservatives do themselves up proud with this twitter:
    http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/07/25/asshole-of-the-century/

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  22. LAMary said on July 25, 2012 at 12:33 pm

    Connie, maybe the Frisians weren’t so friendly with the Saxons.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_feud

    Forget it, Mitt.

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  23. Jeff Borden said on July 25, 2012 at 12:35 pm

    Oh my Lord, but James Taranto is a fool. It really pisses me off to have so many fine journalist friends unemployed because of cutbacks and layoffs while sacks of offal like Taranto draw fat paychecks for this kind of misogynistic shit.

    I say this every once in awhile even though my last endeavor at fisticuffs cost me my two front teeth, but damn, I wish someone would punch Taranto in the nose. It would be a base and coarse response, yeah, but to a base and coarse tweet. Instead, he’ll probably get a round of “attaboys” from his peers in bizarro world.

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  24. Jakash said on July 25, 2012 at 1:03 pm

    Prospero,
    If I confess to you here about stealing your line for use in a comment on another blog, does it absolve me of the theft? Well, not the exact line, but the idea. Yesterday, you wrote “That’s even stupider than voting 33 times in Congress to repeal ACA and not once on a single jobs bill.”

    I think that that should be used in a commercial.

    It struck me as a particularly apt distillation of the Republican approach to “governance” these days. State baldly that the #1 priority for 4 years is to ensure that Obama is not reelected. Let the country fester rather than do anything that Obama might propose to make things better. Vote to repeal his signature legislation, but not to do anything to help the economy. Then, rail about how he hasn’t accomplished anything and that the country is in poor shape. Even stupider than their voting patterns is that frighteningly close to half the country is willing to go along with this scheme.

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  25. Danny said on July 25, 2012 at 1:25 pm

    http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/virginia-politics/2012/jul/25/tdmain01-romney-camp-asks-va-to-probe-voter-forms-ar-2081517/

    Mmmm, mmm, mmmmnnn

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  26. coozledad said on July 25, 2012 at 1:53 pm

    Looks like someone been gettin’ they chain jerked plum off by Drudge:
    http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/romney_cries_fraud_on_virginia_voter_registration_campaign.php?ref=fpb

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  27. Prospero said on July 25, 2012 at 2:51 pm

    “I’m a state trooper” comedy act Welp, Barney, That’s kidnapping, and there ain’t no Statute of Limitations on kidnapping. Cuccinelli is fraudulent Danny. GOPers, can’t live with them and can’t shoot them. Chortle, chortle.

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  28. brian stouder said on July 25, 2012 at 2:56 pm

    Cuccinelli is fraudulent

    But, ‘Cooch’ is genuinely interested in extending his political agenda into the lady-parts any female Virginian who visits her doctor with regard to an unplanned pregnancy.

    See, maybe Cooch ain’t a doctor, but he always liked playing doctor, back in the day.

    One would be tempted to call Cooch a dick, but that’s like saying ‘up’ is ‘down’.

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  29. Prospero said on July 25, 2012 at 2:56 pm

    Jakash:

    Jobs, jobs, jobs, right Rep. Oompa Loompa said so. These Messersschmitts are the biggest Fokker Liars that ever lived, and morons believe them because a brown-skinned President is too much for them to take. It is absolutely astounding that anybody believes a word the mendacious GOP says.

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  30. Danny said on July 25, 2012 at 3:39 pm

    Cooz, thanks for unwittingly making my (and the 2 Marks’) point from yesterday very effectively. Even thought TPM is undeniably partisan (compared to the actual newspaper article I linked), here is the money shot.

    Of course, without a signature, those voter registration forms are meaningless and wouldn’t be accepted by elections officials. If someone were to fraudulently sign a form filled out in the name of their pet and send it into state officials — let alone actually show up to the polls pretended to be Fido — they’d be committing a felony.

    Setting all that aside, Virginia actually has a voter ID law, the type of law Republicans say should prevent any dogs from voting in November.

    And everyone knows we ain’t worried about the dogs.

    Game, set, match. Thank you for playing. We have some wonderful parting gifts…

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  31. brian stouder said on July 25, 2012 at 3:52 pm

    Game, set, match. Thank you for playing. We have some wonderful parting gifts…

    What? You’re saying that because Virginia has voter eligibility laws already, therefore no objection can be raised whenever they want to add lots more?
    Is that your argument? The point that the D’s are making, if my poor powers of perception aren’t failing me, is that existing Virginia voter registration law is sufficient to prevent outright fraud.

    But indeed, I may have simply missed the brilliance of your point.

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  32. coozledad said on July 25, 2012 at 4:03 pm

    And everyone knows we ain’t worried about the dogs.
    No. You’re worried about the popular vote. It’s got the Romney camp trying to gently massage razors out of its sigmoid colon.

    Talking Points Memo nailed your boy Duke Cunningham, and along with David Corn and the Boston Globe, demonstrated brother Romney is just another lump in a stream of shit.
    Richmond Times Dispatch has a majority Republican editorial board, and has prominently featured the head of Swift Boat Veterans For Truth in numerous editorials. Until recently, Diane Cantor, wife of “All my money is overseas” Eric Cantor, sat on the board of Media General, the owners of the paper until it was purchased by Warren Buffet.

    But hey, you Yankees go ahead and celebrate Confederate History along with Gubbinor McDonnell.
    I’ll let you in on a little not so secret secret. You might think you’re in that fight together, but to any Confederate worth his robes, a yankee ain’t no better’n a nigra. Worse n’ most’em.
    Just sayin’.

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  33. Danny said on July 25, 2012 at 4:50 pm

    Brian, the majority yesterday were saying that no ID should be required and that to require voter ID was equivalent to voter suppression.

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  34. coozledad said on July 25, 2012 at 5:03 pm

    Attack. Lie. Whine. Lie. It’s not much of a strategy, but I guess it’s a way of life.
    Edroso is right. It’s hard to tell whether these people are lying when they pretend not to understand English, or they’re lying when they say they do.
    But lying? Safe bet.

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  35. alex said on July 25, 2012 at 5:05 pm

    The thing about the “Anglo-saxon relations” comment is that the speaker probably never even realized there would be two ways to parse that sentence.

    beb, I can’t see how that was any accident. Though it obviously wasn’t said for the benefit of the GOP base if it was told to a British reporter, it was still coming from the loose lips of someone steeped in the thick of a deliberate effort to paint the president as someone whose views and very being are “foreign” to Anglo-American interests. It was an accident only in the sense that it was never intended to make waves on this side of the Atlantic.

    And holding up a daily newspaper as nonpartisan is simply ludicrous, Danny. I live in a two-newspaper town where one of them filters everything through the Tea Party meme du jour. Kevin Leininger must be on vacation because by now we should have already seen a column or three about how the Aurora shoot ’em up is all the result of the alleged decline in Christian values, creeping socialism, homos and darkies demanding special rights and the failure of American theatergoers to arm themselves.

    If my life depended on it, I’d take the word of TPM over anything printed in the News-Sentinel.

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  36. brian stouder said on July 25, 2012 at 5:12 pm

    Fair enough, Danny.

    I suppose this reduces to the definition of acceptable “voter ID”. As I said yesterday, it used to be you just walked into your neighborhood polling place, and they recognized you, and that was it – you voted.

    I didn’t like it when Indiana went to the requirement for photo ID, but I could understand that something more was needed, when we have two-week voting windows and centralized voting centers, and the like; all of which being good things.

    The two tests I would insist on, as to whether a new voting requirement law is more suppressive than progressive, are:

    1.Are the new laws and requirements being pushed through within a few months of the next election, with the intention of taking effect in that next election? (This would be a red flag)

    and

    2.Would the new requirement impose any cost (think poll tax) or excessive physical burden on otherwise legitimate voters? I’m thinking here of older people – like my mom – who have voted all their lives, and upon whom the game suddenly changes.

    Traditionally, volunteers go door to door and register voters; I understand that with non-neighborhood voter centers, that model may be in need of an update. But there MUST be a technological answer to this. UPS can deliver millions of packages worldwide, and I can track the progress of any one of them that I shipped, in nearly real-time. Now indeed, UPS does this every day, and we don’t vote every day, which raises the question of expense and ROI and all of that.

    Still, whatever the price, the payback is huge. Surely, we can figure a way to assure that all legal voters get their “one vote”; and if in doubt, still they should vote and that vote could be held, pending confirmation that they are who they say they are.

    We can solve this, I believe, without blithely accepting that we’re gonna disenfranchise legitimate voters.

    Do you agree?

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  37. Rana said on July 25, 2012 at 5:22 pm

    Scout, for a while now I’m been trying to decide which better describes Romney’s team:

    (a) understand how out of touch their candidate is but are incompetent
    (b) inhabit the same bubble as Mitt and think that the offensive things they and he say are perfectly okay

    Regardless, their performance doesn’t give me any confidence in Mitt’s ability to choose competent, effective people who can and will do what’s necessary to run this country effectively.

    (I know he’s talked about how good he is at firing people. Has he ever said anything about his hiring skills?)

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  38. alex said on July 25, 2012 at 5:22 pm

    The GOP voter suppression effort takes many forms, not just voter ID laws. But when no less a conservative rag than Forbes weighs in on it acknowledging that an ID law is a deliberate effort to disenfranchise, I don’t think you can dismiss it out of hand as some liberal fantasy.

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  39. Sherri said on July 25, 2012 at 6:13 pm

    Voter id laws aren’t about preventing fraud, because there’s no evidence of fraud occurring. Besides, if you wanted to commit fraud, illegal voting is a pretty inefficient way of doing it. Much easier and more effective to attack the electronic voting machines, which are often physically poorly secured and vulnerable to hacking in a variety of ways. As has always been the case, from the beginning of the republic, how the votes are counted matters more than who voted. To learn more about how this worked in 1800, I suggest Edward Larson’s “A Magnificent Catastrophe.” To learn more about how it works now, I suggest verifiedvoting.org.

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  40. Danny said on July 25, 2012 at 8:11 pm

    Alex, good article. It looks like the jury is still out for a while as to how effective the state efforts will be to get people qualified in the neighborhoods that would be most affected. Stay tuned. It is silly season…

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  41. Danny said on July 25, 2012 at 8:19 pm

    Sherri, just because one can’t point to stories of fraud, doesn’t mean that the government doesn’t have a responsibility to put in place reasonable measures to ensure the integrity of the vote. Basic voter ID requirements are reasonable and should not be considered suppressive nor onerous.

    Reasonable people should be able to agree on this, yet every year this comes around, the fringe loonies get hold of it and we have the same old belly-aching and pissing & moaning. Unbelievable.

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  42. Sherri said on July 25, 2012 at 9:01 pm

    Danny, you’d be screaming bloody murder if the government went around solving problems that didn’t exist in other contexts. Voter fraud is a problem that didn’t exist, and while maybe you don’t think voter ID requirements should be considered suppressive or onerous, the fact is, they are intended to be both suppressive and onerous. That is the only reason for them existing.

    I’m all for putting in reasonable measures to protect the integrity of the vote. I just believe in attacking problems where the biggest impact is, and illegal voting isn’t anywhere near the biggest impact. I’m happy to discuss reasonable measures for securing electronic voting machines, for example; that’s a way to commit wholesale election fraud, rather than small scale retail election fraud. But companies that make electronic voting machines also donate money, and securing their machines cost them money, so that’s not going to happen.

    The thing is, illegal voting isn’t that hard to detect. Screwing with the machines, on the other hand, can be very difficult to detect.

    I’m not a fringe loony, just someone who worked in software for a number of years.

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  43. coozledad said on July 25, 2012 at 9:07 pm

    Reasonable people? Like John “don’t mind the tears, it’s just the Ambien and Jack Daniels” Boehner, or Bobby “Out Jezebel!” Jindal?

    I think Stevie Smith said it best:
    There is a face I know too well,
    A face I dread to see,
    So vain it is, so eloquent
    Of all futility.

    It is a human face that hides
    A monkey soul within,
    That bangs about, that beats a gong,
    That makes a horrid din.

    Sometimes the monkey soul will sprawl
    Athwart the human eyes,
    And peering forth, will flesh its pads,
    And utter social lies.

    So wretched is this face, so vain,
    So empty and forlorn,
    You well may say that better far
    This face had not been born.

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  44. Linda said on July 25, 2012 at 10:55 pm

    Hey Danny, here’s one for the jury that is still out: a voter registration place that is open every fifth Wednesday of the month in Wisconsin, and others that are open once a month. But these hours are clearly to keep crooks from stealing elections, right? In a pig’s eye.

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