Will You (Also) Tolerate This?

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

As some of you know, I’m not only American, I’m Coloradan.

Mind you, the South will always be a part of me. It was where I first lived in the US and the place I was naturalized.  The voice in my head has a Southern accent, and I love going back to the South East for cons. But Colorado is where I was meant to be.  We came into Colorado the weekend before Thanksgiving 1993 (it’s been pointed out to me I had 2003 which is both a bit of wild flattery on my age, and my lacking coffee.  I’ve only had one cup),   and just ahead of the Thanksgiving Snow Storm TM which dogged our steps all the way, with the gates clanging shut just after we passed.  And then we crested a ridge above Colorado, and I saw it for the first time, and I knew it was where I was supposed to be.

Which makes sense since, at the age of eight, I knew I wanted to be a writer and live in Denver.  (Of course I thought Denver was by the sea, but we’ll avert our eyes there, right?)

This feeling of belonging has never changed, even though Colorado has changed.  But the most marked change was in 2008 when the legislature flipped dem, and they took the bit between the teeth.

I’ve said before and I’ll stand by it, that there was massive fraud in 12. Unless you REALLY believe 1/3 the people had already voted by mail and forgotten.  People of all ages.  And then there’s this.  I don’t think people willfully forgot voting for Obama.  I think only 45% of them did.  It matches what I saw on the ground.  And heck, that might be inflated.

But apparently it came close enough that it scared them.  The fraud wasn’t easy enough.  They couldn’t manufacture hundreds of thousands of votes as they could in Detroit and Chicago, in California and in Oregon, in Washington, and in the other lovely bastions of Democrat rule.

And so they changed two things.  Now all elections are by mail. And there’s same day registration.

Of course, elections by mail, we’re told, have nothing to do with fraud. The whole purpose of it is not to commit fraud.  Why, voting by mail is good for all sorts of things, like… like… like.  It saves money.  Yes, that’s the ticket. And gives work to printers.

But even with the voting by mail, they’re desperate. You know they’re desperate because every other commercial on the radio is about how Cory Gardner denies Global Warming AND eats Puppy Shakes.

And they need cover, for their massive fraud.  They need to say “A bazillion more people registered on election day!” So…

So yesterday they left this on my front porch.001

Will you look at that? Register the same day! In case, you know, you never wanted to vote, and were seized with a powerful urge on the first day.

What on Earth is this for except as a mask for fraud?  WHO ignores the elections till the day, and then has a desperate need to vote? And is informed?

And, oh, yeah, if your driver’s license doesn’t have the address you have to pinky swear you live there.

This is not a banana republic.  Banana republics have more voting security.  Portugal, a land that is a stranger to organization, a land where anyone queuing for everything instead of jumping into it in a bunch, will be laughed out of the country (yeah, that’s what happened to me) has better voting security than that. You have to register ahead of time.  You have to show your birth certificate or passport.

Oh, yeah, note above, none of this verifies citizenship. Not only that, but it doesn’t say ANYWHERE that you have to be a citizen.  Honest but dumb people might register to vote not knowing that it’s for citizens only.  My son registered to vote with only his driver’s license.

All of these laws, starting with motor voter were to “make it easier” to fulfill your “obligation” to vote.  And no one is supposed to ask if you’re a citizen, because that will hurt the feels of dark people or people with an accent.

First of all, I couldn’t care less about feels.  I care about law.  I’m a dark person with an accent.  I EXPECT them to ask me to prove I’m a citizen.

Believe it or not the right not to have your feelings hurt has never been enshrined in the constitution.

Second, there seems to be this cringing, implicit thought that not letting foreigners vote in our elections is discrimination.

Say what?

A vote is something that pertains to a citizen, who is expected to live the rest of his life in the country, and for whom that vote matters.  Why should people wholly unconcerned with us, working in the country for a few years have the right to tell us how we should be governed?  Why should people who know nothing of our history, our civics, our traditions, have a say?  Do you want to vote/would you vote in another country’s elections?  France? Somalia? Brazil?  WHY?

And then there is this belief that a vote, no matter how uninformed, how misguided is an “obligation” and you should treat them all as precious.  And more votes are always good.

This is what leads to all these “opening” of the vote measures.  The idea that voting should be easier than… buying a bus ticket.  Paying for shipping something at the post office. (Both of whom ask to see ID, at least a long-distance bus.)

Americans have been raised on the idea that a poll tax or a voter test are wrong.  (Are they?  I don’t know.  All I know is that I’ve been told the same.  And of course you can see how it could be manipulated.) And so we are to let anyone vote, with no verification, no security, no proof of citizenship.  Because that’s somehow better.  Even though it’s just as open to manipulation.

(I will note the people who manipulated poll taxes and voter tests to exclude their “enemies” were the democrats, too…  It’s almost like they can’t win without fraud.)

So we’ve run the other way, and now everyone can vote.  They want to teach the world to vote in our elections.

And we have been disenfranchised.  We the real citizens of the state, the ones with skin in the game, who are neither cartoon characters nor bused-in-people.

There are two ways to steal your vote.  One is to deny you access.  The other is to dilute your vote with fake votes till it counts for nothing.

Will we tolerate this?  For how long?  Why doesn’t anyone else realize that under the cover of seeming openness they’re making our votes mean nothing?

And why don’t the clever fools in the Democratic party realize that when you block the ballot box, people will come at you another way?

I’m not calling for revolution.  I’m hoping very much we can avoid it.  I’m exhorting those of you in CO and similarly blinkered states to vote and to vote Republican.  Yes, even if you are a Libertarian.  Vote Republican because the press hates them and will magnify everything wrong they do, if for no other reason.

And vote republican this year, while we can still turn these election rules around.  And do it before they become cemented in place. Even if we have to hold the squishy Republicans’ feet to the fire.

I don’t want to leave Colorado.  Like Thorby in the Sissu, a bit of me has gone into Colorado a bit of Colorado into me.  I am Colorado.  And we can’t keep letting them take states because first time they get a solid foothold they corrupt the voting and it’s game-over.

This is our country.  No one should dilute our vote who isn’t with us for the long haul.  No one should vote who isn’t a citizen.  I’d go further and say no one should vote who doesn’t believe in the constitution and the bill of rights, but I know right now that’s a pipe dream.

The hour is late, the need urgent.  If we don’t fight at the ballot box now, we’ll be taking another step on the road to Boston Commons.

And at some point there will be no return.

UPDATE: Welcome instapundit readers.  (I thought I’d done this already, which tells you how my mind is working. )  Thank you to Glenn Reynolds for the link.

While you’re here look around, but most of all buy my books! (Hey, writer got to eat.)

 

674 thoughts on “Will You (Also) Tolerate This?”

  1. No.

    I will vote Republican where it can make a difference. Here, in the Shenandoah and Virginia. . . it doesn’t. The Republican running for the open House seat is at toss-up status with the Democrat, and she played quite a few dirty tricks on the Conservative candidates. Oddly enough, using same-day registration at a “firehouse” primary that was held dead center of where she was strongest. They’re even in the polls, which means the inevitable voter fraud will hand it to the Dem.

    And Senate ? We’ve have another RINO there, who, conveniently enough, didn’t support the last two conservative tickets here in Virginia, and he’s 13 points down AND fighting a LINO (who spouts Ron Paulisms but talks like a social Democrat) who has gotten 5-8 points in, conveniently enough, the last two elections. And, even more amusingly, his main donor is an Obama Bundler. . .

    1. This is understandable. After seeing how certain candidates were handled in the primary by the “establishment” candidates, I agree with the sentiment.

      It places people who believe in some core principles and values in a sticky situation where there are no good choices at the ballot box. But there may be bad choices and worse choices.

      And action is not only taken in November of even-numbered years.

      So, I concur with our illustrious hostess – vote. Get out and vote. Vote this time for the least objectionable candidate you can, if you don’t have someone you can wholeheartedly (or even half-heartedly) support.

      And some time between election day, when the votes are tallied and counted and winners and losers are clear, start getting together with your like-minded friends and neighbors. There may be more of them than you realize. And there’s plenty of information and training out there on lobbying your congresscritter and other similar types.

      Get organized. Get communicative. Get creative.

      1. In this case, it’s a Futurama election: Pathetic Earthing Number One versus Pathetic Earthling Number Two.

        Either way, nothing much will change. I’d write in a vote on both, but write-ins are only counted in Virginia IF there is no majority winner. . .

        1. You forgot Morbo’s good personal friend, Richard Nixon.
          LOVE that episode. SO many good quotes.

          “How’s the family, Morbo?”
          “NUMEROUS AND BELLIGERENT”
          “Good, Good. Nixon’s pro-war, and pro-family.”

          And the always popular
          “They may be clones, but the differ on key issues.”
          CUT TO TV
          “I say, your three cent titanium tax goes too far!”
          “And I say, your three cent titanium tax doesn’t go too far enough!”

        2. I hear “nothing will change” every time.

          I think it’s part of why things got so bad.

          Given how they nuked the lady who was doing True The Vote indicates that they think stuff will change…..

          1. Another part of how we got here is that people (especially those in tightly contested districts) don’t want to put forth the effort to make sure in between elections that we have good candidates, so they come to election time and go, “Oh, they’re all the same. It doesn’t matter who I vote for.” And in my head I’m going, “Of COURSE it doesn’t matter NOW! You idiots let it happen this way! Get up and do something between times!”

        3. I’m in California… write-ins are not allowed. My options for Congress are a Democrat or Peace & Freedom. Or not voting in that race.

          2. Vote Peace & Freedom. It’ll send a signal to the Dims that they need to move further left, possibly beyond the pale of even Californians. Plus, it doesn’t cost you anything.

      2. Vote this time for the least objectionable candidate you can, if you don’t have someone you can wholeheartedly (or even half-heartedly) support.

        And remember that even if they ARE a functional democrat, they’re still going to give more power to the Republican side– and the press hates Republicans, and will be absolutely nasty in finding anything they do that’s questionable.
        Even if they’re someone who is always “reaching across the isle.” (doing what the Dems want)

        1. This is a very good point. The press will leave the RINOs alone while the Dems are in power, but will start hounding them when Repubs are in the driver’s seat.

      3. I think you missed half of her point as to why to vote Republican, Zach. It’s not that it can always make a difference. It is that, with a Republican in office we can count on the Media to keep us informed of anything wrong that they might do. That alone is a benefit.

        1. Not saying it can always make a difference. Nor did I miss the point re: Media shining a spotlight on one party’s malfeasance the way they don’t on another’s. But media attention should also bring voter activity and engagement and not just during election season.
          And it’s important to stay active and engaged whether there’s a media spotlight or not.

        2. Unfortunately, it sometimes seems that during Republican administrations the media takes up fiction writing.

          1. The media is always writing fiction. Whether they write sunshine and rainbows or vitriol and venom for their fiction depends on the subject, either human or conceptual.

          2. Pish-tosh! The media takes up fiction writing during Democrat administrations, too. They just write a different sort of fiction, such as the idea that “perfectly creased pants” constitute being qualified for the presidency and what level of unemployment represents “normal.”

            1. Or that being someone you would like to sit down and have a beer with* qualifies that person to be President. As I recently heard someone (can’t recall who) say, “I went to high school with a bunch of guys that I would like to have a beer with after work; but most of them would make a terrible President.”

              *It probably wouldn’t be a good idea for Obama to offer me a beer, I would be much to tempted to bust the bottle and go after him with it.

              1. Back when I pursued and drank odd beer, I found a noticable similarity in the bottles used for Australian and Scottish brew: all were unusually large (typically a pint, often a half quart or more*) and comprised of extremely heavy glass.

                My surmise was that they were intended as combat bottles, only to be broken under direst circumstance.

                *See what I did, there?

                    1. True but that happens so seldom as to be virtually unthinkable. At least I didn’t think of it.

                2. And some of those bottles (particularly the half-quart and larger ones) are amazingly hard to break when empty. Yes, I am the designated driver who got first cut-off then kicked out of the bar, for testing the force needed to break various empty beer bottles over a guys head. His idea, I think he thought it would impress the girl with me (it did… with his stupidity, particularly when he offered her the next bottle after I half knocked him out breaking the first one) or maybe he was just drunk.

                  1. Bearcat,

                    He must have never seen the movie “The Gods Must be Crazy” or he would have know how bad an Idea that is.

                    1. Well I’ve never seen it either, but I know I would never ask someone to break beer bottles (multiple) over my head.

              2. It’s been said we tend to elect good heads of state in this country and ask them to be good heads of government. Much of the effort to strip Reagan of any credit (as frex the fall of the Berlin Wall) by saying the good was inevitable the bad wasn’t has credited Reagan with form while denying substance. Some say the political press has consciously supported candidates the press would not have trusted with their own daughters.

                Reagan as president, while visiting in California, would take coffee service to local law enforcement serving as perimeter guards and chat late at night. The source says Reagan came across to him as lonely in the wee dark hours.

      4. Yes. You of course want to vote for the best choice – and sometimes there is no choice that’s even good, and it’s discouraging. Those times, you must vote against the worst choice, not even because your vote will for certain have an effect on who wins, but because it has an effect 1) on the size of the so-called “mandate” therefore a small effect on behavior, and even more 2) on you. If you make yourself comfortable doing nothing, how many other times will you do nothing when it could make a difference? How do you know?

        1. Something else to consider when you’re casting your ballot: even when you know the Dummycheat is going to win, MAKE THEM WORK for the vote. Who knows, if they work hard enough, they’ll probably make a mistake (since dummycritters are allergic to work). Also, if they have to spend heavily to win in a district they normally carry easily, they may not have enough money to spend on a tight race.

          I’m not a fan of rethuglycons, but they’re less inclined to twist the Constitution into a pretzel than the dummycheats.

          Sooner or later we’re going to have to separate into two different nations — one adhering to the Constitution and governing using the rule of law, while the other adheres to ruling by exercising power, legally or not. I don’t like that idea, but it’s either that or civil war. The “progressives” won’t back off, and those of us who believe in the Constitution as it’s written (not as it’s “interpreted”) won’t back down.

    2. Questions: Who will your afore mentioned candidate cacus with? Who will they vote for in Congressional leadership?

          1. That is what annoys me about the “Republicans are just as bad” mind-set. Maybe the Republicans could have chosen a better Speaker than Boehner but to think Boehner is “just as bad as” Pelosi is stupid. [Frown]

              1. The only thing scarier than a frowning dragon is a smiling dragon.

                (Hmmm…I think it’s time to invest in asbestos underwear…)

                1. A smiling Dragon can be safe. It’s when we start wearing “Evil Grins” that you should begin to worry. [Big Non-Evil Dragon Grin]

                  1. What if it’s a Luck Dragon that’s smiling because you’re scratching behind his ears? 😀

                    2. When it’s a lovely lady doing the scratching, it’s a Very Big Contented Smile. Not that I’ll turn down a “behind the ears scratching” from anybody else.

                    1. Silly person — why would you trust a dragon to tell you such a thing? Perhaps he simply doesn’t like his prey all sweaty and adrenalined-up?

                      “Too late to run” depends on how quick you are and how available is a hidey-hole at least as much as it does the dragon’s chops.

        2. There is only one vote you can be truly confident of your representative casting (and not even that if the perp is running disguised as an “independent”): the vote to organize the chamber. In the House, for example, your position demands we believe there is no difference between Boehner and Pelosi as Speaker, or between Paul Ryan and Chris Van Hollen chairing the Budget Committee. This is akin to claiming there is no difference between a donkey and an elephant. Because control of the Senate is in play it is especially worth looking at the committe chairmanships and how they would change:
          Summarized by Rich Galen today at mullings.com/10-23-14.htm
          Reporter Donna Cassata of the Associated Press went through Committee by Committee and looked at who might chair each in a piece published on Wednesday.

          Armed Services
          Current Chairman: Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan)
          New Chairman: Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona)

          Appropriations
          Current Chairman: Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland)
          New Chairman: Sen. That Cochran (R-Mississipppi)

          Agriculture
          Current Chairman: Sen. Debbie Stabanow (D-Michigan)
          New Chairman: Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) assuming he wins re-election. If Roberts loses, then the New Chairman could be Sen. John Boozman (R-Arkansas)

          Budget
          Current Chairman: Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington)
          New Chairman: Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama)

          Commerce
          Current Chairman: Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia)
          New Chairman: Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota)

          Energy
          Current Chairman: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana)
          New Chairman: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)

          Environment
          Current Chairman: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California)
          New Chairman: Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma)

          Finance
          Current Chairman: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)
          New Chairman: Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)

          Foreign Relations
          Current Chairman: Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey)
          New Chairman: Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee)

          Health, Education, Labor & Pensions
          Current Chairman: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)
          New Chairman: Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee)

          Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs
          Current Chairman: Sen. Tom Carper (D-Delaware)
          New Chairman: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin)

          Judiciary
          Current Chairman: Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vermont)
          New Chairman: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)

          1. And I would point out that the “do nothing” House has submitted somewhere in excess of 350 bills that Dingy Harry Reid has refused to allow to go to a Senate vote.
            I would vote for the most egregious of RINOs simply in hopes of snatching Reid out of his catbird seat of power.

            1. Yes – Congress has no hope of pressuring or embarrassing the president to occasionally do what he would not prefer to, so long as the Senate acts as a roadblock.

              1. And the media refuses to mention any of those bills that the House passes.

                Not that I don’t believe many in the House are spineless, but at least some of the time they are spineless in our favor.

      2. Look at Washington– Elected Dems outnumber elected Reps, but the Reps have formed a functional alliance with some independents against raising taxes.

        Man has it pissed off the Dems!

        1. Not so long as the independents siphon off votes from the Republicans. Which, thanks to the chicanery of the new Primary system, isn’t as big of a risk.

          For those of you who don’t know, Washington has a new primary system. Instead of the old system of choosing a party and only voting in that party’s elections (Which makes sense if you consider a primary a party function), and instead of the Open Primary (Where Democrats, confident in their own results, would deliberately vote for the worst Republican opponent in order to poison the ballot), they created a “Best two” primary, where only the top two candidates would get on the final ballot, thus avoiding costly run-offs. Of course, their hope was that one would get to that point where the Best Two were both Democrats, thus shutting out the Republicans and Libertarians, but I’m willing to lay money that they will seek to change the system yet again when they end up with two Republicans on the ballot.

          Fortunately, my mail-in ballot (alas, they’re all mail-in in this state) gives me the chance to vote for Republicans in every race. It probably won’t do me much good, but it’s cheaper than a Lottery ticket and just as likely to benefit me.

          1. The Best Two system sounds good, but in actuality benefits the most organized party. You know the one where “the party” has enough control to force out all potential spoilers.

            1. You do realize that under this kind system there would have been a foot not in history.

    3. I sympathize and wish the fake GOP establishment drones would be demolished in the primaries. Their abuse of conservatives and small-government advocates do not earn them my allegiance. But in the current state of this nation, their votes in the legislature are secondary to who their mere presence puts in the seat of the Senate Majority Leader. We can not hope to turn back any of Obama’s destructive policies, nor hold any of his corrupt underlings accountable, unless the GOP controls the Senate. The GOP can’t even offer amendments to bills! Only rubber stamps for Obama’s incompetence and corruption can be brought before the full Senate. The most egregious judges are automatically confirmed. This has to stop, and if that means electing a few RINO weenies to the Senate, then so be it. And let’s focus on destroying them in the next primary. Also, if they’re getting on in years, we should focus on electing GOP governors to appoint their replacement in case they keel over at the podium one day.

      1. Yes, I was REALLY hoping Mitch McConnell would be beaten in the Primary here in KY this year, but apparently we didn’t field a good enough challenger, because he got something like 80% of the vote, so now I’m stuck with voting for him again.

    4. ya when Sarvis(SP?) first got in the media just talked about the presence of a L on the ticket and what that ment for the R’s (as it was assumed/expected the Conservatives would go for him) but once ya actuly started hearing some of actule thing’s he say’s as opposed to what’s said about him…..the conspiracy rumbling’s start to seam a lot less crazy

    5. That’s pretty much my position.

      When I lived in California I voted almost exclusively for Libertarian candidates–there was no way in the Bay Area that a Conservative Republican was going to get elected, with the exception of a few districts in San Jose.

      When I was eligible to vote in Texas there was no point in voting for the R. president–he was going to take the state, so again free to vote L.

      it’s only in places like Colorado where I will vote for Republicans.

  2. Is it too late to get a Colorado voting guide? [Very Big Evil Grin From the State of Illinois]

    Seriously, I’ll be voting on the 4th and I’ll be voting Republican.

    1. Quinn is edging ahead. I swore I wouldn’t read any pre-election polls, but I couldn’t help myself. I’ll vote Republican, but I’m nagging my kids to move out of state.

        1. Westminster, CO (North-West suburb of Denver) but haven’t been getting any election info.

          Oh, I did live in the Springs for a short time.

          1. When I moved out of my parents’ place and switched counties, voting materials continued to arrive with my name both at my place and at my parents’ place. Voting registration is apparently handled at the county level, and now that I’m back in LA County, my parents no longer get my voting materials.

            On the other hand, I’ve lived at my current location for several years now, and voter mail still arrives for a woman who lived there before I did (I also get *lots* of jury summons for her, which I keep sending them back). And there’s nothing I can do about it as there’s no way for me to deregister her at my address. I know that no one’s showing up to vote as her at the polling place (I tend to vote very late in the day, and can see whether or not anyone has signed in as her), but I’ve no way to know whether someone’s sending in an absentee ballot with her name on it.

            It bugs me.

    3. Nah, just come up here any time, rent a weekly motel and go register to vote.

      Or even just wander around apartment and dorm mail rooms looking for undeliverable ballots. The claim is made that they will compare every single ballot against their records to check the signatures.

      I’d like to be part of that audit group.

      1. As any disparities would constitute evidence (aka proof) of flaws in the system, it seems unlikely they would be reported, eh?

    1. Me too — I was drooling over the idea of a Labrador Lahsi or a Spaniel Shake, perhaps served with a dish of Snickerpoodles.

    2. My slyxdexia kicked in and I read that as “puppy snakes” the first time through, and I thought she was talking about a new pairing in the shifters series… 🙂

  4. Sometimes, though, the Tree must be refreshed. If done early enough, there is less muss & fuss. But I’m afraid the need is getting critical; limbs are drooping from dehydration, leaves are falling from lack of nutrition. And the area around the roots is getting parched.
    I’m not happy with the situation, but it is what we have.

    1. It’s an interesting sentiment — in metaphor.

      The bloody reality is not nice.

      So I’d just as soon keep the fighting in the political arena. I’ve got people I care about in my life, and I’d not see them dead.

      1. Sense of humor aside, I’d as well see the folks I disagree with still among the living, too. And the many, many innocent and clueless who would be swept up in the maelstrom and thrown down with a shattering crash.

        I value the damned miraculous peace we’ve got too much to throw it away on a whim. And that’s what this is, still. A whim. On a grand scale, the corruption, the malfeasance, the shredding of a sacred document and trampling on the rights men and women still bleed and die for, to this day.

        Because if we open Pandora’s Box and let the little demons fly out, they won’t go back easily. This is what irritates me the most about the pendulum pushers- lack of foresight. Those who cry out loudest for revolution in the main have *no* idea what they are tempting with their childish antics.

        1. Dan, I agree, surely.

          But — I see so few people willing to recognize the humanity of the opposition anymore, much less their Americanism. So I appeal to what is loved.

          I’m just worn a little thin on the cartridge box angle. I have a fair idea of the blood, gore and corpses that’ll be left covering the ground in an armed revolution. While I still believe we have the strength as a people to dig out and rebuild after such, I’m in no rush to prove it.

          Though I’m prepared to take my place on the line, I’d really rather stand in line at the poll.

        2. Ordinarily, I would agree; However, my fear is what will happen in a massive change in Congress. I fear Obama, and the rest, will go Bugf–k nuts, and try to ram though as much as they can. Biden desperately needs a “mental health exam.” Obama, Reid, Pelosi, all exhibit dissociative megalomania. *And* they all have power.

  5. I applaud your civic-mindedness and pacific nature in wanting to avoid the next revolution. However, the Republicans are nearly as bad as the Democrats in terms of blocking access. If you don’t believe me, ask any Libertarian (capital “L”) about the maze of obstacles placed in his path by both Ds and Rs working in concert to keep him out.

    No, it’s past time for the revolution.

    You’re absolutely correct about the fact that “when [we’re] blocked at the ballot box, [we will] come at them in other ways”. I’m all for other ways at this point.

    1. Last time I asked a Libertarian (“rational anarchist,” technically) for details to support that claim, his evidence was enforcing the anti-spoiler law when the Libertarian nominee tried to file as a Libertarian, after the deadline, because he’d lost the Republican nomination.

      Every time I’ve asked for background, they get really pissed off that I go and find out the whole situation, and point out parts they don’t like. Or they just ignore it, or demand that I find the evidence for their claim. (A lot of College Libertarians in that sample, but the hard-core Big Ls and various flavors are represented, too.)

      Do you have other instances in mind, and will you give details that can be checked?

    2. A fair number of the RINOs are squishy enough to be disproportionately influence-able – just want to keep their jobs, go along to get along – would you rather see them influenced by a few more conservatives & libertarians elected to Congress, or the same number of vileprogs or re-elected other RINOs? I.e. to make up numbers, 2% more libertarians could probably swing 5% or more of the right-side vote.

      1. With the exception of John McCain, who spends so much time reaching across the aisle he may as well stay there, RINOs will vote with the majority, so we just need to make sure they have a Republican crowd to follow around.

  6. I pause in the process of reading to note:

    Why should people who know nothing of our history, our civics, our traditions, have a say?

    Excuse me, do you mean like those who have been educated in our excellent government schools?

      1. OK, I’m being a bastard here, but that’s nothing new. The way things are going, they won’t have the credentials to survive HERE in a few more years. So be it.

      2. Yes they are stuck, but not just here. Far too many of them will, with the indoctrination that they have been provided, end up pursuing what they have been well taught to believe. They will insist that the government should take care of them. How will they do this? By voting to take away money from their fellow citizens, who were so lucky and selfish as to have some etc., etc.

        So, to your blog’s point: Yes, we do need to vote. Then we need to follow our vote up by demanding accountability from our representatives.

        1. I read an article today where Paul Krugman said we should “Soak the rich” for as much as we can. He was thinking 90% taxes. And this man won a Nobel prize in economics. Well, Barry got the peace prize so there is no accounting for taste.

            1. From what I’ve heard, Krugman’s Nobel is well-deserved. He did some work that was worth awards and congratulations. However, that was quite a while back, and long before he started writing for the NYT.

              It was also long before he worked for Enron…

              1. Someone once pointed out to me that Krugman’s instances of economically-illiterate columns began around the time that he got married, and concluded that the evidence suggests he lets his (non-economist) wife ghost-write his NYT columns. I would not be at all surprised if that were true, considering the economic idiocy that makes its way into those columns sometimes.

                1. I seem to remember at one point he did an article… I think it was supposed to be on how they influence each other… and it ended up being basically “how she tells me I’m wrong and I change what I said.”

          2. ‘Taint secret that you identify as a White Male, so that’s what counts. You’re obnoxious and disliked, did you know that?

                  1. …you make everything so complicated. It’s all quite simple, really:

                    Tell the Congress to declare
                    Independency!
                    Then sign you name get out of there,
                    and hurry home to your three!
                    …They say we may get ebola

        1. I don’t know. I thought I was a Latina until the SJW’s told me I was a white male. Look, I just looked in my pants, and I ain’t got a willie. The answer is obvious “I wuz robbed, I iz being held down 11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

          1. If the Usual Suspects heard that, they’d be torn between gloating that you weren’t a real woman, and wanting to praise you for transcending heteronormative gender identity.

      4. Welcome to the Patriarchy! I hope you have better luck getting the benefits than I have. And I have YET to receive a check from the Koch brothers, dammit.

        1. they’re like the Zionist conspiracy. I shill, I shill, and nothing.
          And my sons call me the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (pronounced Very Wick) and let me tell you RIGHT NOW I won’t be cutting checks for anyone.

          1. Every time I read that [business] is supposed to be owned by Jews and part of the Vast Zionist Conspiracy (TM), I shake my head and wonder how in the h-ll anyone could find that many incompetent Children of Israel. Even using basic population statistics and the bell curve, it just ain’t possible! I mean, Zionists own and run CNN? Gimmie a break.

            1. Now, now, you know them Zionists are sneaky. It’s all a plot to lull you into complacency.

              Oh, wait. That’s not going to work here, the way CNN is run…

            2. And conspiracy? My goodness, of the few I have met and spoken with, not one has had the same opinion as the others! *shakes head* Either it’s a masterful performance, or someone’s been spiking the Kool Aid at the AP water-cooler again…

                    1. (channels ancestry) Well, I sort of can see both sides, on the other it renders one prone to epistemological confusion, through which interstices the–
                      And this is why you should be grateful every day that my ancestors were persuaded to abandon the faith. I’d have gone stone cold academic. Who needs that?

                    1. I didn’t mean that. I meant that we like to argue not that we are confused about eternal truths.

                  1. Two Jews get stranded on a desert island. Three years later, when they are rescued, the rescuers ask about their having built three temples. Oh, says Abe, the first one there, that one’s mine, I go there. The second one, says Shmuel, that one is mine; that’s where I attend services.

                    But what about the third one, ask the rescuers?

                    Oh, Abe & Shmuel chorus, nobody goes to that one!

                3. Ohhhh yeah. A group who says that arguing is their cultural pastime? With stories that have them arguing with God?

                  Me, I’ll sit in the sidelines and watch the debates. At least they’re entertaining!

                  (And heaven help you if you throw in a Jewish Mother into the mix. Oiiii vey!)

                  1. Oh, then you would likely find this worth the seventy-five or so minutes required to watch:

                    The Disputation of Barcelona (July 20-24 1263) was held at the royal palace of King James I of Aragon in the presence of the King, his court, and many prominent ecclesiastical dignitaries and knights, between Dominican Friar Pablo Christiani, a convert from Judaism to Christianity, and Rabbi Nachmanides (whose full name, Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman Gerondi, is often abbreviated as Ramban

              1. Views change, voter concerns shift, and people move – both in and out of the state. That last bit is quite possibly the most significant. People in the US move a *lot*. I’ve lived in Southern California my whole life, but I’m the exception to the rule. And most of the people that I know have moved at least once to an entirely different part of the country.

                1. SOME people in the US move a *lot*. Amongst them me. But- in my current small town, I’m still a newbie, having been here only 17 years now. I’m one of maybe a half dozen or so families that aren’t related to anyone else in town by blood or marriage. That’s still subject to change, dependent on my youngest child. Quite a number of people I know are living in the same home they grew up in, either with their elderly parents or having inherited it upon their death. One thing about the US that a lot of people don’t get, even ones from here. It is really tough to generalize about the people. I’ve run into city people who won’t, will not, are disgusted by the idea of plucking a berry straight off the bush and eating it without it being processed. And people up here who will eat canned stuff if fresh isn’t available, but only if they canned it themselves.

                  I remeber when I first moved here the NY Times editorializing about how Idaho had a disproportionate effect on presidential selection, ending with “What do New Yorkers have in common with potato farmers?” I laughed. It’s the biggest crop in my small town in NY, so the answer is- a lot.

                  1. We have a disproportionate effect on presidential selection? What the heck? We have the smallest number of electoral votes of any state!

                    2. Yeah, California has the most electoral votes of any state in the country, but little influence on the eventual nominees because it’s always one of the last states to hold its presidential primaries. Usually the nominees are already acknowledged by the time my state gets to vote.

              2. I think it started with people who didn’t care for LBJ (hard to believe), and then Jimmy Carter’s energy policies, plus the social justice Democrats getting control of the party sealed the switch. The Rio Grande Valley has been Democrat forever, in part because of the strong machine there (the dead vote in alphabet order in Duvall County) and because of the Mexican/Hispanic votes. Although, apparently a number of those folks are p*ssed as h*ll about W. Davis getting the D governor nomination. Austin, San Antonio, and Houston/Harris County are pretty solid D at the moment, like most giant cities tend to be. Cyn, Texan99, and some other Huns might have more details.

                1. Yeah, here in Austin, the one thing I tell the local D’s I know (including my wife’s lovely grandparents) is that they NEVER should have nominated W. Davis, and recent events (including one I saw today where apparently an appropriated pic of College Republicans was inserted into a tweet saying they were voting for Davis, and another where she claims Abbot would have been against cross-racial marriage DESPITE the fact that Abbot’s wife is Hispanic) have born that out.

                  It’s been just a little bit entertaining.

                  1. In fairness to Ms. Davis, the College Republicans thing may very well have been trolling. Someone posted it on their own Twitter feed, and Davis (or more likely her staff) added it. The account that posted it was later deleted, so there’s no way to backtrack it and figure out exactly what happened.

                    Of course, that still doesn’t excuse Ms. Davis for accusing her opponent of wanting to ban inter-racial marriage (his wife is Hispanic) or hating the handicapped (he’s confined to a wheelchair).

                2. I wasn’t in Texas at the time, but I wonder if anyone cares for LBJ forty years later. He has a park around his homeplace, but the last time we drove by it (a week ago, along the Texas Wine Road {hey, don’t laugh! Texas wineries are where Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino was about four decades ago}) it looked pretty unfrequented. Well-kept, but not exactly jumping. I do recall the comment by Molly Ivins (Yes, I know – total raving lib, especially After the chemo got to her and totally destroyed her sense of humor) who said, IRRC, “We gave you LBJ and your B*stards gave him back!”

              3. Texas was Democratic once upon a time. It was however Southern Democratic. Which was pretty conservative. The South was Democratic because it was the party of Lincoln (President of the Union during American Civil War.)

                Texas has been red since !980. Talking about red and blue states didn’t start until 2000.

              4. Texas has been a “purple” state for like ever. It was always considered one of the “swing states”. Even though it has been primarily red in the Presidential elections since the 80’s, a large portion of that can be attributed to four terms of Texans running for President (if you can’t win your home state, you probably don’t stand nearly as good of a chance as a snowball in hell), and two more terms of a Texan VP. It wasn’t until the last few years that the Texas pendulum has swung far enough red for it to be a state that isn’t considered “open” when not running their own Presidential candidate.

              5. I was still living in Texas when the shift happened. When I was growing up in West Texas, everyone was a democrat, and was, on the whole, conservative. The shift started when George McGovern won the dhimmicrap nomination in 1972. Most Texas democrats could not stand him and either did not vote, or voted and campaigned for Nixon.

                When Carter ran in 1976, most of them came back to the party, but whe he was elected and revealed what he was after he won, damn near all were glad and eager to vote for Reagan. Many switched party affiliation in 1980, including several elected officials. Then, in 1983, after winning two elections as a democrat for Congress, he switched affiliation and won a snap by election as a Republican for the same seat. That caused another bunch of conservative democrats to switch. The state legislature slowly morphed to Republican control over the next 10-15 years and has remained there ever since.

                Texas was democrat because of being on the losing side of the Civil War, but was always very conservative. Most citizens were like my father, who stated emphatically, “I did not leave the democrat party, it left me!” BTW…he loved Reagan….

        2. I read a list of the political donors recently, their reputation is kinda inflated. The Koch brothers donate about 500K a year. (A half million doesn’t go very far, so you probably won’t get a check either) They are number 28 on the list. All the ones that out donate them are Democrats.

            1. No, I got it. Hence the 🙂

              Although I think in your case it would be IABDWMN.

        1. Nah, I clicked on the link which goes to a site for the Boston Massacre, but I’ve been by that spot many, oh, _many_, times and it’s not all that close – about 7 blocks, maybe .3 miles, away – to the Common.

  9. Chris, we’re not going to have a revolution, we’re going to have a descent into sheer barbarism, with no place to run, no place to hide, no place to be safe or keep your loved ones safe. 1980s Beirut in is our future much more than Lexington and Concord, or Antietam and Gettysburg. THAT’S why it is something to be avoided because nothing will be worse.

    1. If we were to have a revolution the likelihood of its producing a governmental system anywhere near as good as our original Constitution and Bill of Rights is next to nil.

              1. While I did actually have to look up the term, my comment was more of a joke. Can you imagine a government run by that guy?

                1. I had been thinking of president Tim Taylor, with vice-president Al Borland, just for the pleasure of a president who could openly demand “More Power.”

    3. Tom, that’s why I’m halfway hoping for a Buckman Event. That’s likely our best alternative.

      Because the Republic is dead, gone, and pretty much down to the bones. . .

      1. Bullshit. Seriously. This country is not now, nor has it ever been, its governing institutions.

        Regardless of how fucked up the .gov is, can we just quit with the giving up and bemoaning the fall of America? At least until the last American falls over dead?

        Nothing that has been done cannot be undone. Human behavior and human institutions are not subject to immutable laws, this ain’t physics.

          1. I would point out that we still live in a country where you can say as much.

            Yes, there is a great deal that is not as it should be. So? What do you plan to do about it? How about standing for office? Or finding someone who is willing to do so that you can support and work for in the next cycle?

          2. Okay.

            And then I’ll do my level best to turn 30 million people into new Americans.

            Because, see, I believe in Americans. I believe in the exceptionalism, and I believe the opportunity outweighs the charity. I believe people have been streaming into this country since its founding because they were seeking opportunity for themselves and their children.

            Though we’re all humans, and we’re all fallible, and subject to temptation I think the American Dream is more powerful than the dole.

            But, go ahead, wrap yourself in the rotting mantle of despair. Roll over and give up. What needs done will get done without you.

            1. Everything has its’ day. Rome had its’ zenith, as did Greece, the Persians, and the Brits. Calling a spade a spade is not despair, it’s reality.

              By the time the thirty million illegals are fully assimilated, it will be 2050.

              And I submit that the America of 2050 will not be recognizable as the America we knew, but as a fraud-supported dystopia of who you know and what groups you’re aligned with. High-tech Feudalism, if you will.

              Me ? I won’t live to see it. I doubt I’ll be around in 2025. So think of me as the “Remember America ? Pepperidge Farms Remembers” guy. . .

              1. No. That’s what they expect. But with the tech revolution, they’re not going to have it their way.
                I’ve been watching the worm turn in England and France(!) and I tell you this — if they do import thirty million people, they’ll be fueling a massacre. Because people have had JUST about enough.

              2. Rome fell — just a bit ago. It’s comforting to look at history and say “See?! This is known! Inevitable! Tide of history! Superficial example of ancient empire = proof!”

                We have not fallen. Nor are we Rome. There is no inevitable historical course into the future.

                It’s comfortable to look about and sigh and say it’s failed and there’s nothing to be done. It’s regrettable, but no need to expend energy, time to mourn.

                It’s comfortable to mourn the passing of an old friend knowing you’ll follow shortly. It’s sad, but I’ll not endure it long.

                Fuck comfort. I’ll give up on this country 2 years after the last of my ashes mingle with the mud.

                You’re not calling a spade a spade, you’re pointing at a deck and declaring you know the order they’re in.

                But these aren’t Bicycle, they’re Magic: The Gathering. You’ll excuse me if I’m unmoved by your certainty.

                  1. If you say so, Sarah. I’ve worked in the belly of the beast, and I really can’t see all that much of a difference between Moscow, 1975, and Washington, 2014. Other than the parades.

                    Then again, as a pessimist, I can only be pleasantly surprised. . .

                    1. While there are way more similarities than I would like to see, they aren’t the same, yet. And most of us don’t live in Washington, nor does, nor has it ever had, the stranglehold on the rest of the country that the Politburo had on Russia. Not saying there aren’t many there that wouldn’t wish it so, and are attempting to work in that direction, but that they aren’t there yet, and that a nail strip in the road will stop them as surely as diving under their wheels with a bomb strapped to your chest.

                      Not saying that I am not willing to die if I have to in order to stop them, but I would much rather deploy the nail strip, I can do that again and again, stopping car after car. If I blow myself up to stop one, I may permanently stop it, but I won’t be there to even slow down the next one.

                  2. I have long thought we more resembled Carthage’s mercantile approach. Sadly, this includes sacrificing babies to Baal.

              1. Josh,

                You and me, man, we’ll convert ’em. If we have to argue them into insensibility in the round robin, we’ll get it done!

                We’re just the guys for it…

                😉

                    2. Mmmm… that’s a lot of cookies.

                      Hang on, I gotta call somebody about adding a room out by the mastodon pens, next to the loading dock (gotta have room to bring in the supplies).

          3. What? Can’t you craft a plausible story line in which 1/2 the Dems, suddenly aware that 30M+ illegals means their expensively educated kids will be living in their basements for the foreseeable future, flip on the voter ID issues, elect a conservative “independent” president, who tells the country & the illegals “any ID issued between and will have no validity until it has been independently verified” ?
            All it would take with the current population of electors is the right kind of non-offending populist-sounding orator (Obama’s real legacy), bribing part of the MSM with benefits that sound like they will help keep print news around a little longer, and you can probably swing enough votes to start a preference cascade.

            1. Voter ID is an issue that routinely gets overwhelming public support somewhere above the 2/3 level. It merely wants a Republican who knows how to make the point effectively (yeah — plenty of those, eh?) and has the courage to stay the course in spite of the MSM headwinds.

              Meanwhile, USA Today reports:
              Obama Administration Released Illegal Immigrants Charged With Homicide
              New records contradict the Obama administration’s assurances to Congress and the public that the 2,200 people it freed from immigration jails last year to save money had only minor criminal records.

              The records, obtained by USA TODAY, show immigration officials released some undocumented immigrants who had faced far more serious criminal charges, including people charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking and homicide.

              The release sparked a furor in Congress. Republican lawmakers accused the Obama administration of setting dangerous criminals free. In response, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had released “low-risk offenders who do not have serious criminal records,” a claim the administration repeated to the public and to members of Congress.

              The new records, including spreadsheets and hundreds of pages of e-mails, offer the most detailed information yet about the people ICE freed as it prepared for steep, across-the-government spending cuts in February 2013. They show that although two-thirds of the people who were freed had no criminal records, several had been arrested or convicted on charges more severe than the administration had disclosed.
              http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/22/immigration-detainees-released-criminal-records/17714925/

              1. Don’t you know? A “charge” is not a “record”. Since they hadn’t been convicted of anything, they were of course low risk.

        3. As long as I draw breath, the Republic endures. It may shrink in geographic extent, to my living room or prison cell, but as long as I live, so does America. And those that don’t like it are cordially invited to go fuck themselves.

      2. Can’t count how many times that has been said before … starting with Jefferson’s defeat of Adams, Jackson’s election, then Lincoln’s, and each of the Roosevelt’s, not to slight Grant, Wilson, LBJ and Clinton.

        In fact, according to many, the Republic went into the crapper with George Washington’s reelection.

        1. Well, I got the impression that there was still hope for “improvement” in that US.

          On the other hand, you’re the author. [Wink]

          1. The possibility of improvement there likely only existed because it had been decades since Buckman left office, so people were able to look back and realize what they’d lost. While Buckman was in office…

            And some of the abuses that he committed (for instance, the pardon of politically motivated murder) will leave an impression on civil society that will never entirely be overcome. Once a bad thing has been done once, it becomes much easier to do it again.

        2. Liberty is often messy.

          There are people who don’t like messy, and these people come from nearly all parts of the political spectrum.

  10. “Vote Republican because the press hates them and will magnify everything wrong they do, if for no other reason.”

    Amen to that. If you are in favor of holding politicians responsible for their actions, you need to do everything in your power to make sure the Republican wins, even if his positions and behavior are exactly the same as a Democrat’s – because the press will cover for the Democrat, and expose the Republican! (Then you can work on getting a better Republican candidate during the rest of the election cycle.)

    2. Hehe, I said almost exactly the same thing further up– nice to see someone else reaching the same conclusion.

      Even if it really, really pisses me off to 1) have a RINO around, and 2) hear supposedly mature conservatives talking like a liberal with the guilt by association thing– zomga, a Republican did this at any point in the last 50 years*, they’re ALL evilz! Totally no difference!
      Except that the Republican was violating the ideals of his group, while the Democrat doing the same is living in line with his…..

      *Yes, I have had it up to here with hearing about “the youth vote” being dang near middle aged, and people in their late 60s considering themselves the baseline. Part of it is reasonable, of course, but for heaven’s sake stop driving people off by refusing to articulate your ideals, or just shut up so people who are willing to actually talk about what they believe can be heard. Great, you think X, Y or Z– but you respond with questions about why with insults and the assumption that people can know what happened a decade before they were born, especially while you’re complaining about how bad schools are and how biased the media is.
      Hm, ranty today. I think I’m tired of political lies, though it is the season.

  11. Let’s turn it around now, in 2014 and 2016. If we don’t, then vote-fraud will become completely institutionalized, and at that point our only hope will be a military coup. I say “hope,” because the alternative will be the death of our representative form of government — a benign counter-coup by the military will be the only way to avoid simply accepting permanent domination by an oligarchy.

  12. I predict Udall and Hickenlooper win by at least 2 points and EVERYONE is surprised like when Bennett won. And yes, it will be because of rampant voter fraud. AT THAT POINT someone had better go back and check the ballots. Because I’m betting there will be places where the number of voters exceed the number of votes. I predict a Dem sweep in CO. And it makes me want to vomit.

    1. In 2008 there was at least one precinct in Philadelphia that had over 100% turn out — it made the news. I believe that nothings was done about it.

      1. It was something like 107%, and they all voted for Obama… you actually think that Eric Holder would check into this?

        2. As I recall, that precinct had recently adjusted it’s boundaries, and the neighboring precinct, which had lost territory to the over – voting one, had abnormally low turnout. If you averaged the two together both were normal.

          1. It will do for an explanation.

            My problem is I grew up in Philadelphia, so pardon me for being jaundiced.

            I heard that they have finally removed the seven Amerindians buried in the Pine Street grave yard before 1776 from the voter roles.

    2. From what I’ve read, this new system is conveniently set up so that you can’t go back and check the ballots. In addition to mailing out a ballot to every registered voter, same day registration ballots are not provisional like they are everywhere else (per a Secretary of State FAQ other issues are required for a ballot to be provisional).

      I’ll be really surprised if there isn’t a Democratic sweep for statewide offices.

  13. > Torby in the Sissu

    That’s Thorby in the Sisu.

    Forget voter registration for a minute – let me see your Heinlein Fan Club Card!

    1. Thorby. Sorry. I read it first in Portuguese which is where it was spelled without an h. I have to check myself before pronouncing Mark Twain or it comes out Mark Tvain. there are things you can’t kick off.

  16. it has always been said that the best way to stop voter fraud is to prove a Republican won a race by using it. You think Al Franken would have gotten away with the “Hey look, we found more votes here in this car trunk” let alone the other “found” votes if he was even a squishy Rino? Only if it had been a run off between him and a real grass roots Republican and they expected him to turn Crist.

    1. Ah yes the Franken method. Keep demanding recounts in a close election until you win then shut it down. As I recall the final count was around 300 or so in Franken’s favor. Apropos of nothing whatsoever I also read that they found over 1,000 votes in that election illegally cast by convicted felons. No way to know which way they voted of course.

      1. They got away with it in electing Gregoire governor in Washington on 2004, so having proved the prototype why not expand the beta testing?

        The felons probably voted Republican, of course, because who better benefits from Law and Order than the professional criminal, reliant on such policies to discourage entry competition from amateur crooks who cannot be expected to maintain standards?

        1. Yeah, that was the GOP’s defect in trial-prep on the Gregoire thing: They could show that convicts improperly voted, but couldn’t make a showing on HOW they probably voted so couldn’t demonstrate an effect on the election outcome.

          1. Gregoire flat out stated on national television that they would “count the ballots until she won.” It took them three recounts, but finally on a hand count (the most open to fraud method) she did win. Forget that she won by less votes than Dino had won by in the previous counts, it was the last one, and therefore the only one that counted.

            I left the state a few months later, and that was the last election that I voted in there, even though they continued to send me ballots for several more election cycles.

      2. Gore tried to do the same in 2008. Fortunately, W. Bush had a solid legal team, and a Florida Sec of State who was willing to stick by her guns when she stated that the recounts would stop on a particular date.

      3. it also helps that when they find “lost ballots” instead of reflecting the percentages in the area they came from, they are almost entirely for Franken.

        1. This is SOP, obviously democrats are absent minded, since they are the only ones who tend to lose their ballots. Or maybe it is plot of the evil patriarchy… yep they are the ones who put those boxes of democratic ballots in that warehouse.

  17. I get the poll tax argument, I just don’t think it applies. The US has a bad record going back a hundred and fifty years on voting rights. Poll taxes were set high enough to preclude black voters during/just after Reconstruction. The original “grandfather clause” was put in place to keep anyone whose grandfather could not vote from voting in the future, etc…

    The difference being that the VAST majority of adults have picture ID in the twenty-first century. The other difference being that the people who are poor and would supposedly be unable to get an ID due to poverty NEED ID TO GET THEIR GOVERNMENT BENEFITS FOR POOR PEOPLE. They already have what they need. In this case, it’s straight up race-baiting.

    Something else that Sarah mentioned in passing that needs to be emphasized:

    In the United States, we have three boxes with which to influence our government: The soapbox, the ballot box and the cartridge box. The soapbox has failed us. The ballot box has been taken away. It’s time for the cartridge box. It’s not my saying originally, but it’s true. Be prepared people. I fear what’s coming, but that doesn’t make it unnecessary.

    1. Heck, in some areas, you have to show ID just to *go into a social security office*, much less get benefits. Yeah that ‘poor people can’t afford ID’ meme is such BS.

    2. “The other difference being that the people who are poor and would supposedly be unable to get an ID due to poverty NEED ID TO GET THEIR GOVERNMENT BENEFITS FOR POOR PEOPLE.”

      I have a problem with that statement, if you are getting government benefits you really aren’t all that poor. You are probably living on higher take-home income (remember most .gov bennies are tax-free, which actually makes sense, since they are tax money in the first place) than a fair number of people who work for a living. And you have a much lower overhead, not having the expenses inherit in traveling to a workplace every day.

      1. Short enough to not need excerptation: Emphasis added.

        Why Do Democrats Oppose Voter ID?
        Sunday, October 19th, 2014 – by J. Christian Adams

        (Editor’s note: J. Christian Adams’ Crimes Against the Republic is available free for a limited time only, exclusively through the PJ Store.)

        Lots of folks think Democrats oppose voter ID laws because they want to cheat and such laws interfere with their plans. That’s an attractive explanation, but it ignores the far more complex architecture of voter ID opposition. Here’s the real reasons Democrats oppose voter ID. Understanding these three reasons will help you decode the whole narrative behind voter ID.

        1. Opposition to Voter ID Is a Base-Mobilization Tool.
        Simply, Democrats and civil rights groups spend millions of dollars opposing voter ID because they are trying to scare minority voters into thinking that Jim Crow is back. If Jim Crow is back, then they better go vote in November. This was made starkly clear to me when I learned that a 3rd grade teacher in a government-run school was telling her students that Republicans were trying to take away the right to vote for black people, so they better get their parents to vote against Republicans. (Yes, that’s another story for another day, and yes I know her name and the school where she still teaches.)

        Fear mobilizes people to vote better than does logic. If you can scare minorities falsely into thinking that they may lose their right to vote if they don’t vote for Democrats, they will vote for Democrats.

        2. Voter ID Opponents Have the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations.
        Leftist opponents of voter ID truly think minorities are less able to function in American life. I learned this when a Department of Justice Voting Section lawyer opposed to voter ID told me he thought blacks were more likely to forget their photo identification than whites were. Their lives “were more disorganized,” he said. This is a lawyer currently still working in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department. This is a perfect example of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

        And it isn’t just one crank lawyer at DOJ. The plaintiffs challenging voter ID and election integrity laws actually hired an expert to testify in federal court in voter ID cases that blacks were less capable of functioning efficiently in a daily routine and photo ID laws have a disparate impact on them. The expert called this idea the “calculus of voting.” For example, they have to take the bus more. Taking the bus, naturally, makes it harder to get photo ID.

        The plaintiffs argue that voting “is largely a product of habit,” and blacks, well, their habits just don’t brook any interruptions to their habits, so they argue.

        This is another perfect example of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Opponents of voter ID are genuinely afraid that forcing blacks to get photo ID will impose a burden on them they just can’t handle.

        3. They Need Money.
        Groups like the NAACP and ACLU are looking to justify their continued existence, decades after they won the fight. Opposition to voter ID helps them fundraise, and pay salaries.

        So next time you wonder why Democrats oppose photo ID, don’t fall for the easy answer. Don’t think it’s because Democrats have organized cheating operations. The real answer is much more sophisticated, and much more sinister.

        1. Notice how vague the leftists’ agendas are. Having brought down segregation and removed their source of legitimacy, they could have gone home and gone into more quotidian forms of goodness — or they could foment new ones, vaguer to make them harder to lose.

  19. There is the book by Hugh Hewitt-If its not close they can’t cheat:

    I believe but can’t prove it that there was massive vote fraud in 2008 and 2012.

    2. I think there is a documentary coming out called Rocky Mountain Heist that describes how the Loving Left took over my state. It looks fascinating and it’s a blue print for how they can do it in other states.

  21. Two items –

    First, a group of international observers visited the US a few years back for the November elections. I think it might have been in 2010. They were shocked by the lack of safeguards against fraud in US elections. This included people from places like Iraq (where voting is a recent addition to the political landscape) and places like Europe (beloved of Progs everywhere). Pretty much everyone else performs basic checks to try and prevent fraud. Only in the US do people throw a temper tantrum when you try and institute the most basic safeguards.

    Second, I understand your sentiments about Colorado. I live in California. It’s my home. I know things here are pretty far gone, but I’m not ready to give up on my state yet. Heck, maybe the drought will get bad enough that all of the freeloaders will pack up and move.

    1. Sadly, human freeloaders are just like any other blight or infestation. They only pack up and move after stripping the land bare of anything of value.

      1. Yeah, but once they’re gone you can always regrow. It just takes hard work – which is something that the freeloaders tend to be allergic to.

      2. Mayhap it is time for some enterprising cartoonist to re-emblem the Democrats as locusts.

        Many forget the origination of the current emblem:

        ourwhitehouse[DOT]org/donkeyandelephant.html
        Thomas Nast is widely credited with perpetuating the donkey and elephant as symbols for the Democratic and Republican Parties. Nast first used the donkey in an 1870 issue of Harper’s Weekly to represent an anti-war faction with whom he disagreed and in 1871, he used the elephant to alert Republicans that their intra-party fighting was detrimental to the upcoming elections.

        However, it was his 1874 Harper’s Weekly cartoon entitled “Third Term Panic” (pictured at right) that solidified the use of symbols.

        Republican Ulysses Grant had been president for two terms and was contemplating a third (it wasn’t until 1951 when the 22nd Amendment limited presidents to two terms). The cartoon depicted a donkey wearing a lion’s skin emblazoned with the words “Caesarism” (an undemocratic attempt to wield imperial power) frightening away an elephant wearing the words, “Republican Vote.” After this cartoon appeared, Nast used the elephant again and again to represent the “Republican Vote.” Eventually the “Vote” fell away and the elephant and Republican Party became synonymous.

        It’s amazing to think that an insult, a war phrase, and dry humor influenced the symbols which came to represent two of the most powerful political parties in the world.

          1. Since He’s a Just God, the question is “what have we done to deserve them”. [Sad Smile]

            1. Eh, as He revealed to Job, He knows a few things we don’t and consequently may permit things that appear unjust to us. However, He really was severe on the friends who claimed they could see that it was just — they had to make sacrifices to atone.

              1. True, but there were times that He punished His people and punished the nations that harmed His people.

                Not saying that He is punishing the US but it is His prerogative to do so if He decides to.

                1. The thought has crossed my mind from time to time regarding the drought here in California…

                  However, regardless of whether the drought has been influenced from On High, the expectations regarding my own actions do not change as a result.

                    1. No, not really. The water from the Colorado primarily goes to SoCal, and the Delta Smelt thing is in the irrigation system in the central valley.

                    3. its not me… its mostly Riverside, Orange and San Diego county… mine comes from up to 600 miles north of me, and boy does it taste like it.

                    4. Not disagreeing but what is a universal rule to make it our water and to retain ownership as water flows. How does the same rule account for their water and its flows?

                    6. Naw, the Delta Smelt get Oregon water, which of course they would be happier without, since they actually prefer shallower, warmer water. But hey, they are fish right? Fish like water, right? And if some is good, more is better.

                    7. iirc, it doesn’t all go to California. We have to split it with Arizona, among other states.

                      Of course, I’m aware of this largely because there have been a couple of newspaper articles over the last few decades mentioning incidents when California takes more than its allotted share of water from the river…

          2. It’s the whole “Free Will” thing. Everybody has the God-given right to royally screw up.

  22. I think people look at voting backwards. Forget about voting FOR a candidate you need to vote AGAINST a candidate by voting for the less terrible candidate that has a possibility of winning.
    Voting for an Independent or Libertarian is effectively a net positive for the Democrat candidate.
    Think if it this way, you are going to be stabbed by your crazy Uncle who has broken into your home, his name is Sam:
    He is right handed, in his right hand is a 12 inch chefs knife (Democrat).
    In his left hand is a 4 inch pairing knife (Republican).
    Voting is grabbing one hand and removing a knife. You can vote Republican which is disabling his right hand and preventing him from stabbing you with the large Democrat 12 inch chefs knife however you still get stabbed with the smaller Republican 4 inch pairing knife.
    Voting third party is picking up the potato peeler and saying I’d rather you stab me with this, he doesn’t care he’s right handed he stabs you with the large Democrat 12 inch chefs knife.
    Not voting is doing nothing with a shocked look on your face, he’s right handed he stabs you with the large Democrat 12 inch chefs knife.
    Elections between parties are where you need to vote for the less bad candidate, if the candidates are equally bad vote for the less bad party because after uncle Sam stabs you he’s going to stab all your neighbors also.
    Primaries are where you need to vote for the best candidate and change the party for the better.

    1. I lived in Louisiana in the New Orleans area. most of the time you end up voting like that. Against someone.
      “Vote for the Crook, It’s Important!” was an actual bumper sticker and the only time I considered voting Dem. The Run Off was David Duke and Edwin Edwards. I know two people who registered solely to vote for Duke … also the only time they ever supported someone other than a leftoid democrat. I also knew several other dems who voted proudly for Duke.
      We got lucky. The crook won.
      Nagin got in because everyone voted against the hand picked successor to Morial the younger, and when he came into office actually did some great things about cleaning things up. Then it went downhill from there, but the sad thing is, Nagin is still one of the best mayors N.O. has had on decades. Bot that he was that good, but all the rest were that bad.

  23. Comment rant rant rant comment. Insert pun here! Rant rant rant. [Shack fist at sky.] Whitty comment.

    Happy face.

    1. This is awesome Josh. Seriously. It’s probably the most intelligent thing I’ve ever heard out of a statist and I’ve debated Ph.D.s with your philosophy.

        1. I stand corrected….

          That WOULD be the most intelligent thing I’d ever heard from a statist if you WERE one.

        2. Sarah,

          I meant to mention this earlier, but we could have started a pool on how long it took Jim to realize I’m not.

          Next time maybe?

          😉

          2. I’d like to state for the record that in this type of challenged I can be bribed to “figure it out” at precisely the right time for myself and a hypothetical partner to split the pot. I’m just sayin’…

            1. Laugh while drinking coffee. Choke. Think of bad pun. Post. Think of cleverer pun immediately.

              2. Complain about lack of warning. Point out necessity of replacing keyboard. Do not take personal responsibility for drinking (coffee? alcohol? whatever…) while reading the posts on this blog. Particularly the posts of some people — you know you are.

          1. Snippy pointing out of Hostess having ended the discussion in a manner you had to have read, with optional pointing out that original comment was such that author could not have seen the order.

                  1. Deliberately misunderstands answer, to argue that you actually agree with the question, according to your answer, you just claim that you disagree. Spends eight paragraphs dissecting your one sentence answer to prove this assertation.

                    1. Shoe-horned Cute Kid Story and/or Wise Family Quote to indirectly make a point without being quite as pointed as she’d like to be.

                    4. Complains about how I’ve never been treated this way before. Flounces out, vowing never to return.

                      Secretly checks back to read the thread.

                1. Drive-by trolling, using long cut-and-paste argument with insults calling everyone idiots by implication. Won’t come back to respond.

            2. Observes that this is very troll-like behaviour. Suggests that by claiming Mary is repeating herself this commenter is inviting the troll hammer to come down.

              2. Suggests that saying that the Host is trollish deserves the Troll Mace.

                Brings the Troll Mace down on RES.

                Of course, since using the Troll Mace without permission is very Dangerous, Drak Flies Away Very Very Fast.

                1. Brings up technical point that it is the Anti-Troll Mace, since the Troll Mace is *points at the giant troll-sized Mace in the corner*

          1. Take tangential remark out of context and turn into strawman argument against original comment.

        2. Points Out that if you ever see a post of Statist Josh’s without a typo I most likely have been hacked.

          Sad face. Hangs head in sham.

            1. Well I already knew Statist Josh is a sham. No way is he really a Statist. [Evil Grin]

      1. Apologize for not having read other comments before posting comments. Blame some activity for missing the thread.

        1. Resurgence of pun volley. Duck flying carp. Resists temptation to write horribly long post.

          1. Off Topic comment about Kate Paulk’s recent post in MadGeniusClub that turned into a discussion of Crazy Humor. [Smile[

              1. Rubs bum (own bum, ain’t stupid). Reminisces about L-O-O-P book. Kicks self for losing it in the move.

                1. Comforts: notes that H-D L-O-O-P book is totally worthy of going on never-ending TBR list.

                  Posts.

                  Realizes long out of print might make reading difficult, thus: comfort probably wasn’t comforting.

                  Chagrined.

                  1. *perks up at the mention of tea*

                    Instigates foodie sub-thread. Expounds upon the savory deliciousness of Southern cooking. Notes that carp are not a native species to the Southern Appalachians… *grin*

                    6. Loses last tiny vestige of doubt regarding the Lane Still Relocation Project.

                      Punches button on phone: “Make it so.”

                    7. Has a quiet laugh as the “Lane” still grows legs and walks away. Taps another mason jar from the private stash two counties away.

                    9. I should make some low-carb chocolate chip cookies, but it’s so sad. It’s all this work and they vanish in seconds. From the cooling rack. I think they’re evaporative.

                    10. Maybe you could ask Wayne if you could borrow the industrial kiln? If you could bake enough to reach the saturation point, they wouldn’t evaporate anymore…

                    12. The Blue Ridge Parkway is quite nice in the fall, y’know… Lots of good restaurants down that-a-way. Some of them even have cookies. *grin*

        2. Wanders in late well after midnight wondering what in the Wide Wide World of Sports is going on?!

          1. I don’t have a kindle at all. Amazon will let me split the cost over five months (I primarily read on the computer, or on my tablet)

            1. I’ve got what they’re calling the Keyboard these days, had it for awhile. My dad’s got the lowest cost current one. Love ’em. I rarely have need of the keyboard, usually using the computer to order books.

              The Paperwhite adds backlighting and a slightly different display, yes? If I was buying one today, I’d probably grab the Paperwhite, for the occasional time when the backlight would be helpful. But I wouldn’t feel under-served with the basic model.

              Much different from reading on a tablet or computer, and I prefer it.

              My unsolicited opinion is go for it.

                1. Hm. That may not be the one dad has. One sec.

                  Nope, his still has the page turn buttons. He also has the “Special offers” version.The ads are on the lockscreen, and I think a banner on the home page, but don’t show up while reading. Saved money and he never notices them.

                  We both have WiFi only, without complaint. There have been a couple of times where I finished a book in a restaurant or such and wanted to immediately download the sequel to read. But — I had another dozen books to tide me over until I reached a WiFi point.

                  Looking at the current 3 options, I’d be tempted by the Paperwhite (backlight) but perfectly happy with the Touch.

                  1. Your dads is the one I have, I got it on “special offer” new for only $29. Before that I read on computer or netbook but the Kindle apps for them tend to be buggy. I far preferred the mobipocket reader apps, and have that on my phone, but getting books in the right format for them, or converting them is a bit of a pain.

                    The Kindle is much easier on the eyes for long periods of reading than any LCD screen, one reason I would be leery of the Fire. Besides I’m a cheap bastage. 😉

                    1. Yeah, that’s what he paid for his at Best Buy I think, on sale.

                      And I’m with you, I wouldn’t get the Fire for an e-reader. I like the e-ink because I spend enough time looking at a computer screen, I wanna read a book on “paper.”

                    2. I have a HP Slate 7 Extreme for a tablet, and don’t *mind* reading on it but the battery life is kinda short to use it for that.

                    3. Kindles do have long battery life.

                      I’d guess the Paperwhite’s backlight would suck down some power, but otherwise…

                      Although, I wonder about the power consumption of a touch screen vs static screen.

                    4. If it’s anything like my Kobo (Their glo is actually a strange transparent front light rather than backlight, I’d be happier if it were more yellow than blue but it seems easier on the eyes than any of the backlight’s I’ve seen. I mention because I odn’t know the different power curves between light types.) If you turn it on every time you read it’ll cost you a day or two of read time out of about twoish plus weeks. So not bad.

                    5. The battery life comparison in the Kindle advertisements is… well not exactly lying, but definitely deceiving. They give the oppositions batter life in hours, then claim the Kindles as “thirty days”. Only read the fine print and that is thirty days of an average of one half hour per day, or in other words fifteen hours. That is probably my single biggest complaint with my Kindle is the battery life, although it is better than most other battery operated reading devices, it is not nearly as good as they imply. And to my knowledge they do not make a cigarette lighter charger for the Kindle.

                    6. fifteen (ish) hours is better than seven (ish)… and any USB cigarette lighter power adapter should work.

                      I went ahead and ordered the paperwhite.

                    9. Well, I don’t get “30 days” but I get more than 15 hours. I’ve been impressed with the battery life on mine. But I can turn the wireless off. Can you still do that on the newer ones?

                    10. The USB slot converters for a cig lighter and a USB cord work fine– our phones, kindle,and two of the three tablets all run off of them. (The kids’ InnoTab doesn’t….but we have a power strip for the lighter that has two power outlets and four USB slots, so eh. And no, I don’t know why they put so much on it when no car can output that much.)

                    11. If you’re not running a laptop from it, and instead have several low-power devices (anything on a USB cord qualifies as low power), then it can power all of them.

                      I like the fact that my Jeep has a built-in 110V jack under the armrest/console top between the seats.

                    13. That’s just because there are still a lot of devices that use proprietary connections.

                    15. Check a walmart or something for something like a “porta-power.”

                      It’s a little battery pack you can plug your small electronics into for more battery life. My mom got one that takes normal batteries, but I saw some that were just a hand-sized lump you pug in to the wall, or to the device.

                    16. I’ve no need for them myself, but I have seen “spare” batteries for sale, apparently able to be charged via USB port and then able to provide their power through that port to another device. I expect storage hours would vary by device, but a couple such batteries might be handy for lengthy travel. And yeah, more weight and likely TSA hassles as well as cash outlays to obtain.

                      A quick hit on Amazon reveals multiple devices, such as PowerGen® 5200mAh External Battery Pack which apparently would effectively double the battery life of your Kindle and currently 60% off at $27.99. As always with such things, consult household IT geeks before making final purchase decisiions.

                    17. Little battery pack/rechargers. You can get another full charge out of some, plus another half or more.

                    20. Ok folks, first immediate review: Baen needs a bulk ‘send toi my Kindle” option instead of one at a time… I have a *LOT* of Baen Ebooks to send….

              2. I like the paperwhite because if the book grabs me, I can read while Dan sleeps.
                My younger self is deadly jealous. All those mornings of trying tor read by a sliver of light between the curtains, in hotel rooms…

                1. That’s the draw for me. I still need a lamp or summat. If mine kicks I’ll seriously consider the Paperwhite.

                  Until then — I’ll keep a flashlight handy.

        2. I had mine stolen out of my house last week, amoung a bunch of other things.

          I’m *REALLY* irritated at it’s absence.

      3. Finds thread very late due to timezone differences; makes late-to-the-party comment, but discussion has mostly already moved on.

        1. Makes reply to late comment, then immediately goes to bed without waiting for a rebuttal. Vows to check thread tomorrow, but will probably forget.

            1. Are giggles cheaper by the case?

              Also, what are good mixers with giggles? I’ve been told they are very good combined with guffaws to ease the wear and tear on nasal tissue. I have also heard they are good with laughs but should not be mixed with belly laughs less you dilute the effect.

          1. Notes that he gets up in time to have real-time comments with Dr. Mauser, JP, Chester and sometimes Robin if he gets up early. It’s almost like having our own comment thread.

            1. Checks the thread on late afternoon next day (your morning). Goes to make some tea and decides to wash the dishes while waiting for water to boil. Decides to wait until the next post is probably up before looking again because should continue sorting through closets for items to be donated, kept and thrown to trash (some clothes she never wears anymore and a pile of books which have been read – maybe she might manage to throw at least some of the condensed Reader’s Digest novels she found in a paper collection bin back there this time… btw, some bestsellers actually seem to be better in that format).

    7. Point out simple solution to problem that will never be implemented due to too much bloodshed and/or common sense.

  24. ‘WHO ignores the elections till the day, and then has a desperate need to vote? And is informed?’

    Well, I’m not as informed as I would like, but it’s possible I’ll be registering the same day. We moved, our tiny township office has odd hours, and I’m disabled so getting there to register is difficult without some help. Having missed the clerk something like six times now, it’s entirely likely that I’ll be forced to register the same day. (Who posts official hours, while working a paid position, and then just sticks an ‘out to lunch’ note on the window and never shows up for days and days? She doesn’t even pretend to be there or working.)

    I will admit this is the exception to the norm though, and I do agree with your points.

    1. There will always be edge cases that break general rules.

      I would prefer that you be disenfranchised this one election (presumably you and the clerk would be able to meet up once in the course of a year) than have hundreds or thousands disenfranchised by fraudulent ballots.

      1. I would assume that if it weren’t for the time constraints, he could just mail his registration in. That’s how it works where I live.

  25. I wonder whether there be grounds for a 14th Amendment Federal suit, declaring that the “privileges and immunities” of citizens to have their votes counted are abridged by action of the state to negate those properly cast ballots, if only by failing to guarantee the integrity of the ballot.

  26. She’s right about voting by mail being a conduit for fraud. It’s not just about ballot stuffing, either – once they start feeling really secure in their power, they’ll start using various BS methods to reject or outright lose ballots cast from areas heavily populated by opposition voters.

    “Dear voter, your ballot has been rejected due to the following reasons: .. ”

    Ask me how I know. It’s been years since I cast a vote that wasn’t rejected.

    1. Listening to KXL out of Portland.

      Their top of the hour news announced that the highest turn out so far is from the most liberal county…..

  27. It’s racist not to publicize that you have to be a citizen to vote. Crud, I can’t channel the SJWs. But it really, truly, is. We know of a guy (African) who voted on a student visa. He didn’t know any better, see, and the idiot left-libertarian-type told him he should register and vote. So later, when he was eligible to apply for a green card, he couldn’t get one, because he’d voted. I don’t know what became of him and his American wife. Maybe someone better with a turn of phrase than I am can figure out the way to put that it’s racist not to require proof of citizenship for voting because it makes the immigrants ineligible for citizenship if they vote without it in a facebook-functional way.

    As an Idahoan, I know the Republicans are going to take the national offices by a wide margin. So I’ll vote third party on those if there’s a third party running–I like to encourage them. (I did vote for the Dem up north who voted against the Patriot Act. He lost.) State and local elections is where it’s at. I’m seriously thinking of voting for the Dem for Assessor because the Republican incumbent looks to have managed to skate just this side of illegal and that side of abusing his position to his advantage. Sometimes they–the Republicans in Idaho–need a swift kick in the rear to remember they don’t own the elective offices.

  29. Sweetie, you weren’t wrong, Denver used to be by the ocean. Just go rock hounding in the hills west of town and you’ll find all sorts of fossilized sea shells. Your timing was just off by a few million years. A mere blip in the greater scheme of things.

      1. I approve of it because hubby usually isn’t in town on election day. There are lots of other Texans who are out of town on election day.

      2. I approve of it, I would very seldom be able to vote without early voting. Election day tends to land on one of my busiest times of year, when I am often out of state working on that day.

        On the other hand, the way early voting is done here in Idaho is that you go to the courthouse, show your drivers license (or other photo ID) they run down the list of registered voters, make sure you are registered in that county and haven’t yet voted, give you your ballot and point you towards the voting booth.

        1. I disagree with early voting in general, but there does need to be support for some (tightly-controlled) exceptions like your case. I had to take advantage of my county’s early voting once due to a business trip that popped up too near the election to vote absentee. It worked much like you described. It helped that the county board of elections was literally just off one of the exits on the way to the airport.

        2. I think there’s some semantics drift…. “Early Voting” right now is usually used to mean “as a default;” when I was a teen and what it sounds like you have, it was usually used to mean “sort of like an absentee ballot, but on a specific day.”

  31. Pingback: The hour grows late | Republican Club of the Foothills

  32. What’s to keep me from mailing my ballot in, and voting in person? How diligently will they cross-check?

    2. IIRC [citation needed] last election featured several instances of legal voters going to polls and being turned away as having “already” cast absentee ballots.

      Keep in mind that the New Black Panther Party thugs were patrolling outside that 2008 poll to deter poll watchers and other such nuisances.

        1. They did, but Junior, all the poll workers do is check and if the person indeed “voted” before, the provisional ballot is thrown away. That provisional ballot is the sop that kept most people from throwing fits.

          1. In which case a properly written law should state that the mail-in ballot is thrown out.

            Having an eligible voter’s vote thrown out after they showed up at the voting location should be grounds for a lawsuit based on a violation of the individual’s voting rights, particularly if the voter can demonstrate that fraud was involved via comparing the signature on the write-in ballot.

            And if the state didn’t bother to hold onto the mail-in ballot, then the state doesn’t have any proof that the ballot was legitimate.

            1. It’s been a bit since I lived in Colorado, but I thought that this was they way they did it–if you mail a ballot, then vote in person, the in-person vote counts.

              It would be a real shame if the law had changed to give deference to the mail-in ballot.

                1. I’ve only voted in two states but that is the way all ballots were handled in both states I have voted in. The ballot itself is anonymous, but put in a sealed and signed envelope.

                  And yes I suspect this method was specifically designed for fraud.

        2. Often provisionals would not even be processed if the vote margin of victory exceeded the number of provisional ballots awaiting processing.

          2. They apparently do that here with mail-in ballots to reduce election expenses. If it’s not close, they don’t bother counting them.

          3. Much like military ballots, when they hadn’t already thrown them out for not have proper postal marks.

  34. @Jim McCoy … yeah, but just because there were corrupt politicians in the past doesn’t excuse the corrupt politicians in the present. At what point does the past cease to be validation for a current corrupt solution? I am not really arguing here, so much as saying that excuses for corruption are excuses for corruption.

    I know that it is verbotten, but the real solution is to not allow a vote unless you own property / pay taxes. Until we get to that point, we will always have people gaming the system.

    I am very close to moving my family to CO (from bluuueeeee WA). But things like this give me pause.

    2. Fair enough. I already stated that things were different now due to changes in society.

      I can’t get with the property owning aspect of what you’re saying, especially in a country with an income tax and a sales tax. I get the ancient Roman/Medieval European/Early American practice of requiring people to own property in order to vote. You’ve got three problems with that theory in the here and now (and foreseeable future):

      1.) People who don’t own property DO pay taxes. Anyone who goes shopping or has income pays taxes. One of the two primary arguments for property requirements was tax income. It no longer applies.

      2.) Land is no longer a guaranteed income earner. The other major argument in favor of property ownership was that property owners had an income and could not be bribed. In 21st century America, property is less often a source of income than it is a source of debt. Yes, there are exceptions, farmers and developers come to mind, but most people pour money into their property that they can only get out by selling it. Also, a person who is in danger of losing their property/having it foreclosed on is more easily bribed than someone who lives in an apartment that they can afford. The last is just my opinion, so take it FWIW.

      3.) A property requirement would do nothing to prevent voter fraud. It’s not really any harder to forge an absentee ballot with a property owner’s name on it that it is to forge a non-property owner’s absentee ballot. Nor is it any harder to show up and claim to be someone that you’re not, even if they own property.

    3. Rather than a property qualification, since some of us rent for financial reasons, I’d like to see proof of , let’s call it social responsibility, based on employment and bill paying. You show up with your tax return and three months of paid utility bills, and you get your voter registration card. No voter registration card and photo ID, no vote. If you have been receiving state or national assistance for more than X months, no vote UNLESS you are on military disability or have other proof of true hardship (and of social responsibility). Military personnel would only have to show proof of current enlistment (or they could be covered by a blanket waiver while on active duty or deployed with the Reserves.)

      3. There might be good reason to establish standards for disqualification from voting as well..

        Acceptance of Food Stamps is demonstration of willingness to sacrifice liberty for temporary security and should disqualify from voting for duration. Only exception would be for serving military and military disability. Does not apply to Senior Citizens.

        Should officers of flag rank forfeit voting rights?

      4. Military retirement, also. And daughter gets a VA disability payment, due to how the military jacked up her shoulder injury and her wisdom-tooth removal.

      5. Military personnel would only have to show proof of current enlistment (or they could be covered by a blanket waiver while on active duty or deployed with the Reserves.)

        Allows back-door ballot stuffing by 1) allowing illegals to enlist in the reserves, then 2) calling them up for make-work.

        There have been cases of illegals enlisting, usually on a stolen identity, but there’s been a push to let illegals enlist to get automatic, free citizenship. (The legal guys were really pissed, because it was way more streamlined than they got.)

  35. Pingback: Colorado Voter Fraud | Transterrestrial Musings

  36. North Carolina board of elections investigation:
    765 voters with an exact match of first and last name, DOB and last four digits of SSN were registered in N.C. and another state and voted in N.C. and the other state in the 2012 general election.
    35,750 voters with the same first and last name and DOB were registered in N.C. and another state and voted in both states in the 2012 general election.
    155,692 voters with the same first and last name, DOB and last four digits of SSN were registered in N.C. and another state – and the latest date of registration or voter activity did not take place within N.C.

    1. But…there’s no evidence of election fraud. MSNBC told me so!

      Seriously, though, do you have a link for that? I’d like to be able to use that info later on my leftist colleagues.

          1. Jim Geraghty’s “Campaign Spot” blog at National Review Online refers to this story this morning, and tracing through the links delivers this item:
            .
            State elections officials seek tighter security
            Posted April 2, 2014
            By Laura Leslie

            Raleigh, N.C. — State elections officials said Wednesday that they’re investigating hundreds of cases of voters who appear to have voted in two states and several dozen who appear to have voted after their deaths.

            State lawmakers last year mandated the State Board of Elections to enter into an “Interstate Crosscheck” – a compact of 28 states that agreed to check their voter registration records against those of other states. The program is run by a Kansas consortium, checking 101 million voter records. The largest states – CA, FL, NY, and TX – are not part of the consortium.

            State Board of Elections Executive Director Kim Westbrook Strach delivered the report Wednesday to the legislative Elections Oversight committee.

            Strach said North Carolina’s check found 765 registered North Carolina voters who appear to match registered voters in other states on their first names, last names, dates of birth and the final four digits of their Social Security numbers. Those voters appear to have voted in North Carolina in 2012 and also voted in another state in 2012.

            “Now we have to look individually at each one,” Strach said. “Could there have been data error?”

            The crosscheck also found 35,570 voters in North Carolina who voted in 2012 whose first names, last names and dates of birth match those of voters who voted in other states in 2012, but whose Social Security numbers were not matched.

            “A lot of states don’t provide last four SSN, or they don’t have that information,” Strach explained.

            Additionally, the analysis found 155,692 registered North Carolina voters whose first and last names, dates of birth and final four Social Security number digits match voters registered in other states but who most recently registered or voted elsewhere.

            That last group, Strach said, was most likely voters who moved out of state without notifying their local boards of elections. “Those may be voters we need to remove because they’ve left North Carolina.”

            [SNIP]

            “I think the big bombshell today is that you have documented voter fraud that has occurred,” said Rep. Tim Moore, R-Cleveland. “We have over 36,000 people who apparently voted in this state illegally and committed felonies.”

            “Are these coming from particular counties?” Moore asked. “Do you have their names and addresses? Is that public information?”

            Strach said it is not public information. “We’re treating it as a potential criminal investigation until we discern otherwise.”

            “Could it be voter fraud? Sure, it could be voter fraud,” Strach said. “Could it be an error on the part of a precinct person choosing the wrong person’s name in the first place? It could be. We’re looking at each of these individual cases.”
            [MORE: http://www.wral.com/state-elections-officials-seek-tighter-security/13533579/ ]

            Geraghty also cautions against taking the tales of fraud too seriously in his post titled “The Tiresome, False ‘Democrats Will Steal the Election’ Doomsaying” ( nationalreview[DOT]com/campaign-spot/391088/tiresome-false-democrats-will-steal-election-doomsaying-jim-geraghty” ), reminding that “the fear of voting fraud can also turn into a crutch in the minds of Republicans. If every defeat can be attributed to voter fraud, there’s no lesson for Republican campaigns to take from those defeats.” He goes on to question the amount of votes which can be “created” and largely summarizes the argument of “if it ain’t close they can’t cheat.”

            One of the beauties of our Electoral College is that cheating requires coordinated fraud on a truly massive scale, one unlikely to be successfully kept secret. No matter how corrupt Illinois is, it is still only 20 electoral votes.

            1. “One of the beauties of our Electoral College is that cheating requires coordinated fraud on a truly massive scale, one unlikely to be successfully kept secret. No matter how corrupt Illinois is, it is still only 20 electoral votes.”
              ——————–

              Yes… and no.

              The trick is to focus the fraud. You don’t need to illegally swing the vote in all 50 states. You only need to do it in a small handful of states that are polling right about 50/50 for each candidate. Figure out which states show the candidates running neck and neck, and which of those states have the most electoral votes, and you know which states you need to mess with.

              iirc, the last few Presidential elections have effectively come down to the votes of just a few states. For instance, the fight over a tiny handful of votes in Florida decided the 2000 presidential election.

              1. It is somewhat challenging, prior to the election, to determine just which states must be fixed, and by how much. Having assets in place to manufacture the necessary votes is a challenge. All it really means is that the Republicans conservatives need to manage their message to maximize turn-out.

                We also need to stop treating the MSM as if it were the impartial arbiter it pretends to be.

                That is one reason the Progs reacted so extremely to the TEA Party. A thing like that was a serious threat to overturn the apple cart.

                1. The problem with that is that Margaret Thatcher was right, even if you take the really rich states. (Only the very rich can afford such delusions; they are a well known cure for excessive wealth.)

            2. Ah… I may have been in that last category. I only voted in one state, of course, but when I moved back to North Carolina I think I remember looking myself up and finding I had never been de-registered at the old address. Perhaps I didn’t fill in that part of the form correctly, or perhaps there was an error in communication later.

              Or perhaps I am mis-remembering, because when I went to check a few months later in preparation to register correctly at my new address, the old registration was not on record.

  37. The key issue is fraud. If elections are fixed, there’s no reason not to cut throats as per Thomas Jefferson and the right of rebellion. I’m not in Colorado so I don’t have an actual opinion on the situation there. I do know that there’s a technical fix. For what it’s worth, here it is:

    1. Scan every single mail in ballot envelope
    2. send them to the local republican committeeman for them to go over and verify that it’s not a fraudulent ballot.
    2a. When they say it’s not their ballot, video their testimony on the spot and get a lawyer and the police involved, immediately.
    3. Have the dossier of every mailed ballot in that election district sitting in a smart phone/tablet when it’s election day and verify that the people who have voted by mail have been marked down as such so they can’t double vote.
    3a. When people come in and claim that they did not mail that ballot, make sure that they file a provisional vote, take their testimony on the spot, and get a lawyer and police involved.

    10 years ago this would have been unholy expensive. Moore’s law means it’s not out of reach of patriots to safeguard the situation today. By 2016 it will be even more affordable. For those who want technical details, take a look at the Fujitsu scansnap sv600 for a scanner that will pass muster with election officials.

    1. 3a is the only item you could possibly get permission to do, and that’s because you don’t require permission. All the others would get you thrown our of the polling place.

      1. Step one is not done at the polling place but rather every day at the county board of elections. You essentially file a FOI request for all ballots that came in that day, set up your scanner (with battery power sufficient for the work day) and scan them as you go, refusal yields a call to the police and to the press. I’ve been in that room before. You might not be the only guy there.
        Step two requires cooperation with your local republican party. If you can’t get that, your real fix starts there by running sufficient committeemen to get a majority.
        Step three requires your team to have judge credentials at every polling station and possibly every precinct (depends on how they run in Colorado as this sort of thing varies). You start off with the head person at the precinct in charge of voting and say “person X has voted already but it’s not marked. How do we ensure that they’re not double voting?” and give them a chance to explain themselves. If they do not explain themselves, again, you call in the lawyers.

        This strategy is the honest voting equivalent of the full court press. It won’t be perfect. It also won’t allow 1/3 of a precinct to get their votes stolen.

  38. Might stop by tonight:
    Thursday, October 23
    6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
    Cabela’s
    10670 Cabela Drive
    Lone Tree, CO 80124
    (303) 625-9920
    for an NRA Get out the Vote meeting. Rumor says there will be a chance to get the T-shirt. Springs meeting was last night. Last election there was lots of food left to take home.

  39. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we need to make ‘political corruption’ a defense against charges arising out of violence against state actors. It’s foolish to leave the policing of government corruption in the hands of corruptable government. And it doesn’t work.

    Such a law would work about like laws allowing for a plea of self-defense – not a ‘get out of jail free’ card at all, and not an incentive to casual violence.

    To be passed by an Initiative, or after the revolution.

  40. I would point out that in Washington state two years ago, all of the Democrats won the election, including Obama, but all of the ballot initiatives (such as an income tax) supported by liberals were defeated 60/40. Maybe the real Income tax proposal was worse than a 60/40 defeat, but it does show that lots of people voted for Democrats and voted for conservative policies. I doubt many of those were fake ballots.

    1. It’s fairly normal with fake ballots to fill in only the headliners and leave the rest blank. I don’t remember WHERE in PA, though I’m sure someone here will, Obama won 120% of the vote, BUT most of those ballots were voted president only.
      Consider the time to produce votes en masse, do.

  41. If I were Philosopher King, I would:

    a) Make everyone come to the polls on Election Day minus those who get an absentee ballot or who are too infirm to make it there.
    b) I would have voters take a quiz with 5 questions from the Citizenship Test. Don’t score 80%…? Your vote is not tallied.

    I’m sure Democrats would approve of this because of the general ignorance of Republicans, conservatives and libertarians.

  42. For whatever it’s worth, I’ll be voting for Weh down here in the sticks. I find it disappointing, and a little disgusting, that the Albuquerque Journal would say, in essence, “Yes, Udall tried to gut the First Amendment, but we’re sure he means well and will find more constructive causes to support in the future.” Sorry, no. Some things ought to end your career as a politician, and force you do to things like clear minefields in Third World hell holes if you want to win some modicum of respectability in your old age.

  43. If I were King for the Day, I would mandate that you be able to tell me where all legislative authority is vested by the Constitution; who has the power to declare war; what rights are protected by the First, Second, and Fifth Amendment; what “few and enumerated powers” means; and who Joe Biden is, before you are handed a ballot.

    But.

    1) The Democrats would never allow me to disenfranchise most of their base this way.

    2) I would never trust anyone else to come up with a neutral political literacy test, one not gamed to exclude people with the “wrong” views, so I suppose I shouldn’t expect anyone else to trust me either.

    Unfortunately, this means we are doomed.

  44. Don’t know which Heinlein book it was in, but it is good advice to vote against the worst candidate. Any democrat is a bad choice this time.

    1. One of the bits of wisdom in The Notebook of Lazarus Long as printed in Time Enough for Love.

      “If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.

      If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it that truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires.”

    2. Our Republican Assessor has definitely–matter of public record–had the assessed value of his apartments lowered below what he then sold them for. He is accused of having acted as a real estate agent during the hours he was paid as Assessor. To top it off, the local real estate agents association has accused him of threatening to raise the assessed values of their own properties if they endorsed his opponent. Being ornery Idahoans, they promptly did endorse his opponent and called the local rag up to publicize the matter.
      Political party affiliation is, alas, no guarantee of right actions, and if the Republican party allows such individuals to carry their banner, then may the Democrats obtain those offices. Of course, the Republican Party here has been engaged in a comedy of errors since last spring, but one would think they could manage to pull their support from such an incumbent and find some other to endorse regardless.

      1. The opportunists will adhere to whichever party gives them a chance at power (Exhibit A: Mayor Bloomberg.) The main difference is that one party repudiates most of its scum while the other party first denies they’re scum, then claims they’re only minor scum, and finally insists that everybody is scum.

  45. Daddy Warpig here. Pardon the rudeness, Mrs. Hoyt, but I’m here to make a request.

    I’m looking to interview a writer about the SJW fight in SF/F (Evil League of Evil, travails of publishing non-PC in the mainstream, etc). It’d be for an episode of my geek-ocentric talk show, the Kick Ass Geek Cast:

    https://www.youtube.com/user/DaddyWarpig/videos

    It’d be for about 15-20 minutes. If you’re interested, you can contact me at daddy.warpig@yahoo.com or @daddy_warpig on twitter.

    Again, apologies for the rudeness of petition. I didn’t know how else to contact you. Thanks for taking the time.

    1. Did you ask Larry Correia? He’d be a great person to interview. Sad Puppies campaign and etc.

      1. I did send a tweet to him (@monsterhunter45), but there has been no response, yet. I’d love to have both Sarah and Larry on the show, on different days. I’ll just wait for his response.

        (Sarah has graciously and kindly agreed to be interviewed. This is much appreciated.)

        1. And yet, despite her graciousness, I had to cancel the interview, because a small (but expensive) piece of equipment broke.

          I thank Sarah for her willingness to donate her time, and regret having to pull out. (Not at the last minute, though. I’m not a barbarian, beard aside.)

  46. Pingback: Why Are There So Many Democratic Senators? | Extrano's Alley, a gun blog

  47. To anyone who won’t vote out of disgust with the process, or some idea that “they are all the same so it doesn’t matter”, or some other sorry excuse:

    If for no other reason, you need to vote to counter THIS–

    Detroit NAACP Seeks Voters in Jail With Regisration Drive
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-23/detroit-naacp-seeks-voters-in-jail-with-regisration-drive.html (–typo is in the actual URL)

    The opposition CLEARLY sees the need to vote. And they are spending money and effort to get as many votes as they can.

    I’m sick to death of hearing from people who WON’T vote. It is your right and DUTY to do so. People have DIED so that you have that opportunity. We’ve fought wars and spilled our precious blood so that others get the opportunity YOU get for free, and you would thumb your nose at their deaths and sacrifices. It takes almost no time and almost no effort on your part, but you’d rather stomp your foot and suck your thumb in a pointless “protest” THAT NO ONE WILL EVER BE AWARE OF. In the mean time, our opponents are LAUGHING.

    If you’ve given up on the ‘ballot box’ and are waiting for the ‘cartridge box’ WHY WAIT? What exactly will be your trigger point? We’ve already got the whole police state, with the current administration (and past ones) openly violating the clear law of the land. When will you put up or shut up?

    I would like to give it one more try before condemning my kids to a life of violence and early death. I don’t want that for your kids either.

    If it comes to violence, then it comes. But I don’t want to get there without trying EVERYTHING possible first, so cut the self righteous crap, hold your nose and pull the lever.

    zuk

    1. I wait because I can’t do it alone. My trigger point will be when numbers have increased, some of the military has been recruited and we have a chance at winning.
      And, for the record, I will be voting. I always do. I just don’t expect it to make things any better.

      1. Well, you did and I did (and my wife is a geek) and a lot of people I went to college with did (and they are ALL geeks) and several self identified geeks here have so the odds are good. (but the goods are odd)

        2. We’ve got three running around so far, the geek-and-half-geek couple we know is six months from trying for a third (they were going to have “alright, one….” and then found out they like THEIR kids) and the hardcore geek that introduced my husband and I, and his even more hard core wife, have been trying for years. A lady I know who wrote for WoW Insider is trying hard.

          For that matter, my mom was an original Tolkien geek, and her dad would’ve been a Mad Scientist if he hadn’t looked like a Tolkien dwarf. (A week after the place he worked got one of those purple ink type copy machines, he was fixing it.) Only mercy kept us from having geeky names. My husband’s father and his stepmother are both hardcore computer geeks. (Mostly hardware focused, but some programming.)

          Seems to me the biggest limit on married geeks having kids is health problems, not desire for kids.

  48. We have to do this fast, within the next couple of years. Otherwise, the system will tip over to permanent vote-fixing — and when that happens, there is no longer any moral argument against letting whoever commands the most physical force ruling.

    1. Yes. EXACTLY. And when a system tips over into permanent vote fixing, it’s no longer a representative system. things like famines and camps are suddenly on the table.

  49. Wow, you’re a Portuguese! I live in SE Mass where everyone is a Portuguese, even if you got off the Mayflower.

    Dave Rosa is a Portuguese who thinks just like you, but in less flowery language. He’s also an Iraq War veteran. Hes running for state senate. Hit the link in my name to help him out.

  50. I live in Kansas. There are many many things I dislike about our Governor, and the ghods know we have some wacko legislators, but they -did- pass a “proof of citizenship” for voter registration (birth certificate or passport or naturalization document, and if you’re a Kansas born citizen, the birth certificate data is linked to your drivers license, so showing your DL or state non-drivers ID automatically green lights your registration.)
    They also, apparently, have successfully passed a voter ID law that gets past the constitutional challenges of the GHH. And we don’t have vote-by-mail. Well, we do, but you still have to request a mail ballot just like always.

    But then, voting isn’t an obligation, it’s a privilege.

    2. Yes, but Kansas isn’t in one of the states with VRA-mandated monitoring. Those are the states that are having so much trouble passing voter ID.

  51. There is hope still for California if this is the Dems’ best hope for Feinstein’s seat:

    Michelle Obama urged to run for California seat in Senate
    By Richard Johnson
    Michelle Obama is being urged by her husband’s true believers to move to California when she leaves the White House and to pursue the US Senate seat expected to be vacated by Dianne Feinstein in 2018.

    The oldest member of the Senate, Feinstein, 81, has strongly suggested this will be her last term, Richard Turley will report in Orbmagazine.com on Thursday.

    The first couple haven’t said where they’ll go when Barack Obama leaves office in 26 months, but Los Angeles is the leading contender.

    “Barack could golf year-round, and Michelle could emerge from his shadow after 20 years and retake control of her own life,” a person familiar with their thinking told Orb.
    [MORE: http://pagesix.com/2014/10/22/will-michelle-obama-go-into-politics-next/ ]

    1. If she did run for that seat, then someone up in the Bay Area would be *pissed*. No clue who is likely to take Feinstein’s seat, but I can almost guarantee that it’s going to be another Bay Area idiot.

      Somewhat ironic that the bulk of the population is in the Southern part of the state, but all of the state-wide political offices are held by Bay Area residents.

      1. The scary thing is, I’m not sure who would be more of a nut – Michelle Obama? Or Barbara Boxer?

        Feinstein (who got her political start by bathing in Harvey Milk’s blood) is the California Senator who sometimes actually adopts sensible positions on issues.

      2. So it didn’t work to get Hillary elected President, now they’re going to try with Michelle? I kind of feel sorry for those women: their party seems to think they aren’t good enough to win until after their husbands, or to imply that by voting for the wife you get another term of the husband.

        1. Don’t know about Michelle and Barry, but the major flaw in vote for Hillary and get Bill idea is that IMO Hillary won’t let Bill get near the levers of power. IMO Hillary will tell Bill that “I’m President now and you’re not. Sit back and be First Gentleman”. If Bill did so, Hillary might also turn a blind eye toward Bill’s girlfriends. [Evil Grin]

          1. If? Hill’s been turning that blind eye for forty years. Any anger you heard about that was real was about the consequences, not the crime.

            1. It’s only fair. She turns a blind eye to his girlfriends and he does the same with hers.

                1. Hilary’s Aid “Girlfriend” married a Weiner so that proves that we were can’t be true.

                  🙂

                    1. What? I thought she married “Weiner”??? Not a beard?

                      My statement needed to be read with air quotes along with a weak and a nod.

                      😉

                    2. Plus correction:

                      Hilary’s Aid “Girlfriend” married a Weiner so that proves that [rumor] can’t be true.

                      😉

      3. But at least she can now be proud of her country, since it apologized to her for making her a rich spoiled black princess by electing her husband twice to the Presidency. Mind you, she’s not actually proud of her country — she just reserves the option. Maybe if we make her Dietician-In-Chief-and-Heir-Apparent-to-the-Emerald-Throne-of-Oz, she’ll finally be happy?

        1. THAT woman will NEVER be happy. It’s the consciousness that she’s been pushed above her deserts that eats her. She has a sneaky suspicion that maybe it’s NOT all about race, and it fuels her hatred.
          I could enlighten her, I could. That essay of hers from college? Either of my boys writing like that in fifth grade would have been locked in a room with a dictionary and references until he improved.

  52. 850 voters in NYC are officially 164 years old
    By Carl Campanile
    A single Bronx voter listed in official records as being 164 years old led Board of Elections officials to review their files — where they turned up another 849 New Yorkers who were supposedly alive when Abe Lincoln was president.

    The stunning discovery came after The Post reported last week that the birth date of Luz Pabellon, a spry 73-year-old who has been living and voting in The Bronx since the 1970s, was recorded as Jan. 1, 1850.
    [MORE: http://nypost.com/2014/10/22/850-people-officially-over-164-years-old-nyc-board-of-elections/ ]

  53. I told my sister that if she didn’t vote, she forfeited her right to complain. 🙂 Not true, of course, but that’s one of the things that motivates me.

  54. Your description of how you felt on arriving in Colorado reminds me of how Sarah Beaumont felt on moving to Denver in Michael Flynn’s first novel “In the Country of the Blind”. Originally published in Analog as a series of novellas and then in 1990 by Baen (revised hardback edition published in 2001 by Tor). “purple mountained majesty”

    Will be voting R but don’t think it will matter much here in Texas. Davis’s goober-notorious campaign is a real wreck of a good clown car.

    1. Yeah. I know of two yellow-dog-Democrats who are voting against W. Davis and for anyone else with a pulse and a (D) after their name.

      1. The Davis campaign looks like it’s being run by a Republican mole. Or she really is politically suicidal.

        2. Politically suicidal. I heard a recording of her talking. Her accent resembles that of a California Valley Girl, thereby triggering about fifteen different “dislike” responses.
          And I’m not even Texan, I can’t imagine how they’re reacting.

  55. A mail-in vote is an unsecured vote. A man can force his wife to fill in a ballot the way he wants, or he will beat her. A boyfriend can steal a ballot from his GFs mailbox and send it in for her. There is absolutely no guarantee of privacy whatsoever.

    The mail service can fail to deliver your ballots in time. Interfering with mail delivery is trivial. There is absolutely no guarantee that your ballot will be cast.

    If you steal someone’s ballot in CO, and forge two signatures on it, the ballot won’t even be checked for a signature match.

    Colorado needn’t even bother with an election with rules that lax. It’s citizens should sue the state for an unconstitutional interference in the right to vote.

    3. Worse, they apparently mailed mail-in ballots to everyone in CO, so alll you’d need to do is troll dorm or apartment building trash bins around the Universities, gather all the discarded ballots, and vote like aa Chicago Democrat (over and over and over).

  56. Last time I looked, while my US passport does have a photo, it does not include any residence address, so were I to schedule a visit to my wife’s cousin in Colorado Springs and wander by the local registration venue, apparently I could register to vote in Colorado elections.

    My FAA pilot’s license, on the other hand, does list an address, it does not have my photo, so anyone could use it.

    And as far as a utility bill, give me an example, half an hour with photoshop, and a laser printer and I’ll have one too.

    Note that all of the above are better than what we have out here in CA, where it’s actually illegal to ask for ID at the polling place, and to register you need only fill out and mail in the paper form – no ID ever required.

    1. Pennsylvania passed a voter ID law before the 2012 election. After a court challenge, a judge ruled that while the law was constitutional, it had been passed too close to the election, and voters didn’t have enough time to get the required ID. So poll workers were required by the new law to ask for ID, but couldn’t actually keep someone from voting if the person claimed not to have one.

      A commenter over at Ace of Spades who is apparently located in Pennsylvania reported seeing someone at a voting location who was asked for their ID. The individual who was asked, apparently not realizing that the ID was completely optional, instead left the building, got in their SUV, and drove away.

      1. Something new here in Illinois is that I was able to change my driver’s license address when I renewed my driver’s license on-line. That also changed my voter’s registration. Oh, I’m within walking distance of my new voting location. [Smile]

  58. Even if you hate the Republican that is running, you have a duty to vote for him just to narrow the Democrats’ cheat margin. In fact, I only go to vote (I hate them all) to vote Republican and narrow the cheat margin.

  59. Funny vote fraud story: when I was in college the first time, on election day in 1992, the college set up jars for jelly beans. You checked your name off the list, then went across the commons and dropped a jelly bean into the jar for the candidate you supported. Except someone kept eating all the Perot votes! Wouldn’t have made a difference, but the senior in charge of the project was pretty miffed.

  60. Vaguely related anecdote.

    Was at the school yesterday because Current Youngest was given an award for fluent reading, and at the end we all stood and sang the Australian National Anthem (the short version.)

    Housemate, who had accompanied me there to make sure if I fainted, I at least wouldn’t crack my head against something hard, said something along the lines that he was happy to see that the Australian National Anthem was still being sung. Some of his friends in the US have been griping that there are pushes to have the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem no longer be used in American schools, because it’s ‘insensitive to the people who aren’t from the US.’

    I boggled.

  62. As there were so many people “re-activated” after years and years, it is obvious that voting cards are being delivered to people who aren’t those on the card. And without massive and intensive oversight, there’s nothing to stop someone from receiving said card and saying “oh, hey,” signing someone else’s name to it and returning it.

  63. The problem with this is that he doesn’t use his index finger to adjust his glasses:

    HT: Jim Geraghty at NRO’s Campaign Spot
    nationalreview[DOT]com/campaign-spot/391042/ouch-businessweek-calls-obama-too-cool-crisis-management-jim-geraghty

  65. This (very) scary story from Colorado does fill in one more blank in the giant national crossword puzzle “Change!” has been.
    Obama’s revolution / counter-revolution [1] reversed the Reagan revolution in national politics and [2] reversed the Clinton revolution within the Democratic Party.
    We (basically) know “Change!” meant that, now. (Right?)
    But Bill Clinton’s revolution pulled his Party to the right (or the middle) just enough to tolerate candidates who were conservative / moderate enough to get elected, and still liberal enough to get nominated… making Clinton President soon after.

    So, if Obama’s “Change!’ has undone most of that — just how is it that his “new” (old, 1960s-ish, guessed-at in a few places like “Four Horsemen of the Obamaclypse”) Democratic Party expects to get anyone back in the White House, once the Obama new-model gleam has worn off its finish?

    Cheat like a typical Chicago-machine “community organizer” might, it seems.
    From sea to shining sea, when and where possible, from 2008 on.
    Don’t bother trying to please the people; just swindle ’em instead.
    (Not even my perceptive friend in her above-mentioned ’blog dreamed of that one.)
    However…

    October 23, 1956, Hungary: Imre Nagy’s revolution rises, and falls under the tanks.
    October 23, 1989, Hungary: Communism hits the dustbin of history anyway.

    If America no longer has (under current management) what it takes to really lead, can’t we at least agree we still have what it takes to follow countries like Hungary, Poland, Bohemia/Slovakia, Romania, etc. — maybe even today’s Ukraine?
    And if not — why not, and what can we do about it? What did they have we don’t, and where can we go to get it (back)?
    We could always ask for advice, on how to grow a democracy in difficult times… or even follow those who once followed us.

  67. Pingback: Hoyt has it right. « gregormendelblog.com

  68. The electronic voting machine fraud in Chicago has me concerned. It would be extremely easy, if the people changing things are smart enough in how they go about it, to fix an election in a way that is completely undetectable.

    The voting machines where I live don’t create any paper record at all. It’s all purely electronic, and what goes into the database doesn’t need to have anything to do with what is displayed on the screen. Just include some logic that flips a vote with a certain random chance proportional to how far behind even the “winning candidate” is.

    Sure, you could go hunting for this sort of behavior, though clever programmers can obscure its operation.

    Once the elections are fixed, that’s it. There are no political solutions to our problems anymore. It’s either violent revolution or learning to live with a world of corrupt oligarchies.

    1. No human system can be error free, nor proof against tampering, so the whole voting racket relies upon our faith in the integrity of those operating it. The “calibration” error in Chicago is an excellent example of this principle as there are few who raise even an eyebrow upon hearing of a Chicago voting machine casting ballots for the Dems regardless of what the voter does.

      It is interesting to recall 2004’s outraged Progtard cries of “Diebold!” prior to Bush’e reelection.

      1. My solutions is that Electronic voting machines should actually be devices that print out a properly filled out ballot that is both human and machine readable.

        1. Or of course we could fill out the paper ballot ourselves (because if it just prints one out for you, and still files electronically, how are you to know it is electronically filing the same thing it is printing out physically?). Sure you can commit fraud with paper ballots, but there is at least a physical record available, and if we decide we can’t trust the electronic voting machines and still need a physical record; why should we waste all the money on the electronic machines at all?

          1. The problem with paper ballots is people often fill them out wrong (see hanging chads), so on the one hand, I do like electronic voting machines because they can completely clarify someone’s choice. On the other hand, they are terribly vulnerable to all kinds of chicanery. Paper ballots printed by them though, which can be read by the voter before being turned in to make sure they are correct, and then read by the scantron machine, would be much harder to fake out. So I’m talking about not taking ANY counting from the electronic machine.

            1. Remember 2004 when the crie du jour on the Left was “DIEBOLD!!!!” Should have used that to pass ballot integrity laws that actually did what they claimed to (unlike Dem-pushed reforms after their Florida Failure* in 2000.)

              *I punched #2; they told us to punch #2!

            2. Ah! As you suggest this would mean that anyone wanting to manipulate the vote would have a greater problem. You have the initial electronic vote count made as votes are taken. Then you have the scanning of prints which are made, and hopefully fully checked by the voter before turning in. The the two counts should match up – if there were no glitchs in the machinery or lost ballots. Not impossible to game, but much harder.

              1. And the paper ballots could have an encrypted mark printed on then that encodes the machine serial number and the ballot data, including a date/time stamp, making it much harder to forge paper ballots.

    2. Once the elections are fixed, that’s it. There are no political solutions to our problems anymore. It’s either violent revolution or learning to live with a world of corrupt oligarchies.

      The plus side is that there would also be very little legitimacy for the government in power, so successful coups would become culturally possilbe. The minus side is that there is no guarantee that the leader of a successful coup will restore the Republic, and even if he does, he will have just proven that Presidents can be made and unmade without reference to the ballot box, so the gates now would gape open for Caesar.

      1. Jordan,

        “he will have just proven that Presidents can be made and unmade without reference to the ballot box, so the gates now would gape open for Caesar.”

        What the…

        That we have went from Thomas Paine and The Declaration of Independance too…

        1. This is what’s happening, yes. The Democrats are fools, and in their folly they will bring down the whole Republic.

          1. Jordan,

            You missed my point. The check against abuses in power is not found in a ballot box, a government finds it’s legitimacy in the consent of the governed.

            See, the Bug’s Life video I post earlier.

            See, Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience.

            Caesar can only rule if those around him allow it.

            Et tu Brute?

            The final arbiter of any political dispute is always force. Most people compromise their principles and their desires before it gets to that point. All government has is force, and to lies in the background of all political decisions.

            Is this worth fighting and dying over.

            Live a life of principles not of expediency.

            1. Yeah, I know, but here’s the problem …

              One of the big intangible assets of the American Republic is that it’s never succumbed to a coup or rebellion. Hence, Presidents expect that they can govern with lawful authority, those who want to gain power expect that they must do so by mostly-lawful means. This sets the parameters of political action, and reduces would-be coup plotters or rebels to “extremist lunatics” in popular awareness.

              Once we’ve suffered a successful coup — even the best kind of coup, a coup staged with the support of legislative and judicial leaders to check a coup-from-above — the rules will have changed. It will then take a long period of legitimate government, with no more successful rebellions, for the lesson to be forgotten that Presidents can be made or unmade by means other than elections. Probably around 80-88 years (a full Strauss-Howe generational cycle).

              The same thing goes for rebellions. The last major fears of genuine rebellion in America died out during the 1930’s — a full cycle after the American Civil War (after the American Revolution, the Civil War was a genuine rebellion!). And even a moraly-valid successful rebellion will destablize the Republic.

              The problem is that there are numerous stable points for a Republic. Less of them are functional republics than dictatorships. The Roman Empire still used mostly-Republican forms for centuries after the Republic had fallen — it wasn’t until the Crisis of the Third Century that the last hopes of the Republic died forever.

              So I would much rather see Obama go down by impeachment, and the Democrats by election, than by coup or revolution. The problem is that the window for electoral defeat is closing due to massive election fraud — if we can’t turn this around in 2014-16, then the only good way out may be coup or revolution — and then the Republic will probably go down to Empire within another 40-80 years.

              1. If Ye love stability more than liberty then crouch and lick the hand that feeds you. And may posterity forget you were ever our comrade.
                To paraphrase Samuel Adams

                1. Because the redefinition of words is so common, don’t forget what he spoke of as liberty:
                  Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.

                  A simple definition I’ve heard of liberty is the ability to choose to do what’s right.

                  1. ….which, when you consider which side likes to try to make systems where it’s impossible to choose to do bad (as opposed to minimizing consequences to those who can’t choose) is kinda freaky.

                    1. I see this as the result of the general political pendulum in our system. None of the parties have ever been perfect. Liberty is a balancing act. You have to have stability, but the reigns have to be loose.

                      When a group who has risen to power seriously oversteps itself — because it has become more of a power block than an advocate of a real position — they will inspire other citizens who fear loosing what they see as important about liberty enough to unseat it.

                      Whatever group that gains power will eventually become out of line. It is made up of humans, therefore it is imperfect and subject to blind spots. As such it will work to correct the mistakes of the former and protect the causes it views as most essential. People will forget that there was probably a reason that the prior group initially worked for the causes it did. (Don’t tear down the hedge rows — next great wind there will be nothing to block them.) Finally, once a group becomes ascendant it attracts the power grabbers, who really don’t care about the politics so much as the ability to be the ones on top. Nastiness ensues.

                    2. Balance. Moderation. Prudential judgement. Trying to account for several, contradictory, interests. (If there wasn’t an interest in something, then there wouldn’t be any demand for it– and we can’t even pretend that there’s even a very large number of utterly illegitimate interests. Every time I think I’ve found one it turns out to be something so basic that nobody thinks about it that’s been exaggerated. )

                    3. That “seriously” in “seriously oversteps” is important.

                      “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed”

                    4. I did not mean to suggest revolution, original or otherwise.

                      I believe that our present system was built on the concept of checks and balances in part to deal with the nature of people. I meant to suggest that within our present system there is a pendulum of opinion that plays out.

                      I would have to be convinced that the people/party that had taken control had so totally broken the system — such that it would no longer be possible to make the government answerable to the people outside of rebellion — before I would advocate considering extreme measures.

                      As I have stated before, I believe that the chance of ever gaining such a government as established under the Constitution after another revolution would be next to nil.

                    5. “You have to have stability, but the reigns have to be loose.”

                      I see what you did there. 🙂

                  2. I would more define it as the ability to choose what’s right FOR YOU. As we all know your mileage may vary

                    1. I would more define it as the ability to choose what’s right FOR YOU.

                      Ah, the old liberty/libertine issue.

                      Don’t want to refight that just because some folks can’t accept that there is objective right and wrong, especially when they always have to try to reverse engineer a standard when the conversation gets going, and it all ends in tears and torn hair.

                    2. What is the subjective difference to me between the average SJW dictating to me what’s right and you dictating the same? It’s all dictating. Thusly a violation of my god given rights.

                    3. By that argument, what right do you have to tell them they can’t? After all if it is up to them to decide what is right for them, you have removed all your own grounds for protesting when they decide bossing you around or stealing from you is right for them. At that point you have tossed right and wrong out the window and anything goes.

                    4. If they believe truly they are right I cannot stop the from the attempt lest I become the tyrant I so despise. I however will do my level best that the attempt be not successful. The inadvisablility of the attempt be the argument, not any silly man of straw you throw up to becloud the issue. I will be free to do what I consider right to the nest of my ability! I will brook no interference in this be it by one great tyrant or a thousand petty ones.

                    5. jselvy,

                      Without balancing and giving equal weight between your rights and the rights of others you risk becoming the tyrant you despise.

                    6. I so believe that was implyed in the first few sentences of the post you quoted. I can and will answer only for myself. To attempt to answer for or allow my actions to recklessly impact others is anathema.

                    7. Your emotional reaction has no bearing on if something is right or wrong, and you apparently can’t tell the difference between the recognition of an objective fact and a personal preference being dictated.

                    8. I have to quibble here. The problem, these days with the argument of ‘right for you’ is that it has come to mean ‘nothing can be wrong’. Which is one of the roots of the problem. There is that which is right and that which is wrong. We understand them imperfectly, but that does not alter their nature any more than a cat skeleton becomes a dog skeleton because it is miss labeled at a museum.

                      Too often ‘right for me’ is an excuse for not taking consequences or responsibility for being wrong, which is not freedom. Freedom has consequences. I don’t know how you meant it, so this may be a miss aimed point.

                    9. “I pays me money and takes me chances” just like any other adult. The consequences of my decisions are mine to deal with. I’m getting real tired of folks on both sides of the divide presuming to know what’s best for me. You have no idea who I am or the price I’ve paid for my liberty. I’ll defend it zealously. I offer you the same courtesy of dictating to you.

                    10. Wyrdbard,

                      Agreed rights and responsibilities go hand in hand.

                      Thomas Jefferson at the end of his life was asked for his definition of liberty and this was his response.

                      “Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law,” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.”

                      – Thomas Jefferson

                    11. I think we just agreed on something political. Would you like a snickerdoodle? :). (mind boggling a little, not intending to be snarky)

                    12. Wyrdbard,

                      🙂

                      We’ve aways agreed on the basic. We just disagree on what roll, if any, the government/State should play in promoting the public welfare.

                      You seem to have lumped me in with the irresponsible.

                      😉

                    13. I have no doubt of your willingness to take responsibility for yourself… I just lack your faith that a sufficiency of everyone ELSE will feel the same. 😉

                    14. By that argument, the tyrants are in the right because they are choosing what’s right for them. No, you must choose what is right even when it’s the very opposite of what’s right for you, or no society can last.

                    15. If your society can only survive by dictating every aspect of my life, the books I read, the games I play, the food I eat. Then madam let it crumble! I will dedicate my every effort to destroying such tyranny over the mind of man!

                    16. Is it Liberty for you if I believe that it is “Right For Me” to kill you?

                      Sam Adams had a different view of “what is Right” than most moderns and I believe that I could more easily live with his view of “what is Right” than I would live with more “modern” views of “what is Right”.

                    17. Albeit I grew up as a child of the 60s ‘It felt right at the moment’ or ‘It seemed right at the moment’ or, simply, ‘I want it’ are, to me, insufficient reasons. One needs a greater overriding body of principle as a guide.

                    18. If you truly believe it is right to kill me then no power on earth can stop you from the attempt. But I warn you sir, be good, be fast for I will defend myself.

                    19. Well Sir, you seem bound and determined to make yourself disliked by everybody, so all I’ll say is that you have to sleep sometime.

                    20. “If your society can only survive by dictating every aspect of my life,”

                      Hyperbole much? No, telling you that you must not do some things is hardly dictating every aspect of your life.

                      “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

                2. In real life, stability is the necessary precursor of most freedom. Life in the inner city in the 1970s was not a marvel of freedom because the cops were cowed before the people — or rather, that subset known as violent criminals.

                  When push comes to shove, you have to choose. The wise do their best to avoid that. To paraphrase Edmund Burke, “But before the price of [stability] is paid, one ought to be pretty sure it is real liberty which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at no other price.”

                  1. The original is a good bit different:
                    “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

                    Puts me in mind of the folks who run schools and hold that the person who resists an assault is the one that “starts” a fight or argument– not the one that attacks. Without resistance, after all, everything is calm. Tranquil. Uncomplicated.

                    1. Or the way some politicians attack their opponents as “divisive” because they decline the opportunity to “bend & spread.”

                  2. There is always the temptation, at such times, to quote Franklin about “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” … but the people who do so tend to overlook the meaning of the word deserve in that phrase. I don’t know about you, but I, for one, am glad to live in a world in which I do not get what I deserve.

                    The sad fact of the matter is that, living in a universe of constraints, we are called upon to balance Stability and Liberty, the Sweet & Sour Sauce which makes civilization worthwhile. Too much of one makes a society cloying and oppressive, too much of the other makes it acrid and biting.

                    And because our tastes vary according to our palates, our hormones, our sinuses and the wines served with the meal, the balancing must be constant.

                    2. Ain’t it funny how people tend to glide over some words as if they were simply in there for the spacing?

                    6. Ah, then please accept my regrets over the induced depression. As my intent in hauling the hoary adage before the crowd was for its mockery, your comment was entirely apropos.

                3. After Twenty or so Revolutions within as many years happening in the Name of “Liberty”, I’d think most people would start wanting more Stability. [Sad Smile]

                  1. What’s more stable than a prison? Get thee hence, but do not require that I join you. Otherwise dragonslaying might become the order of the day.

                    1. If you attempt to destroy the stability that others have built and prefer to live in of their own free will, then you deserve death or worse.

                    2. So now you are the arbiter? You would mete out death? You would apply your own ideas of justice to all? You are a warrior for justice! Meted socially!
                      You sir are an SJW!

                    3. This thread seems to be drifting afield of the actual philosophical positions I believe the commenters hold.

                      Perhaps inflamed passions are distorting things? Heat waves make things blurry…

                    4. Well, I’m getting seriously annoyed at a certain person. [Sad Smile]

                    5. I understand. My impression in general is buttons have been pushed and productive discussion has been swamped by rhetorical flourish.

                      Perhaps everybody would be better served with a place/time appropriate cold beverage and a breather?

                      Offered humbly. A certain draconic personality has aided me in the past with a timely knock on the head…

                    6. My philosophical position Dan’s emotions:

                      1. In the end I must face my Gods and answer for my life alone. No pleading that others said and did will save me.

                      2. In order to be free to persue the most correct life for me, others must be free to do the same.

                      3. A priori restrictions are symptoms of a common fallacy that all men are evil.

                      4. Without the ability to choose what is right, free will is wasted.

                      5. A choice with no alternatives is no choice at all

                      6. I have no right to interfere in your decisions until they measurably impact me. The converse is also true.

                      7. No amount of peace and stability is worth conceding this precious gift.

                      That’s it. The basic libertarian manifesto as unique to me.

                    7. Consistent with what I’ve understood from you in the past.

                      Clear and concise. Now perhaps a breather?

                    8. jselvy

                      # 6 is the responsibility that Wyrdbard was advocating that you rejected.

                      You have the obligation to not trample on the rights of others which does limit your ability to live your life as you see fit.

                      This is what was being pointed out to you.

                    9. Why should so base a fact need be overtly stated except as used as a stepping stone to further tyranny “for my own good.”

                      Other facts that should not need be stated:
                      Water is wet
                      Alaska is cold in January
                      Odds in casinos favor the house
                      Night is dark
                      SJWs of all stripes think they know what’s best for you

                    10. jselvy,

                      Because these truths are not as self-evident as the FF thought.

                      You have to reiterate them to each new generation or they are lost until discovered a new.

                      You can not advocate for liberty alone. If you do to many then see it as just an excuse to do what ever they want.

                      If you are to advocate for liberty then you must also advocate for self-governance and personal responsibility.

                      Let’s not build a foundation on only one leg.

                    11. Personal liberty without personal responsibility is a null concept.
                      It cannot happen in the wild the gods of the copybook headings will destroy those whose try.

                    12. Ok, you understand that. However, in order to effectively communicate with others, one must consider how one’s words will be interpreted by them. It’s unlikely that the commenters here actually believe that you were advocating for what would essentially mean a free-for-all; they were more likely pointing out how making the bare statement that you originally did was fodder for misunderstandings which would include interpreting it that way.

                    13. If I was misunderstood, I apologize for not being clearer. It was an honest mistake. As ladies and gentlemen of no little intellect, I presumed the hun would understand so basic a concept and take it as a given. That is if we are arguing in good faith and not just to be contrary for its own sake. Which I believe is called “trolling.”

                    14. And it is occasionally necessary (and desirable) to clarify the ‘givens’ for the lurkers and drive-bys.

                      Else someone of unsavory character might pull a comment lacking context and trumpet it as illustrative of the community. Then we’d have to be mean to them, and that would be regrettable.

                      Really.

                      Somebody would feel regret.

                      Maybe that guy, over there, in the corner.

                      😐

                    15. What? that guy in the corner — Regret Jones* — him? He’s praying somebody will feel him, and I don’t think he much cares who.

                      *One of the Jones boys.

                    16. Yep, “personal responsibility” is an unknown idea for too many who talk loudly about “personal freedom”. [Frown]

                    17. jselvy,

                      The point of Copy Book Headings is to teach these truths so the youth do not need to learn things the hard way.

                    18. Agreed, and thus why with all the Kipling here abouts, especially recently, I felt no need to reiterate so basic a truth.

                    19. P.S.

                      jselvy,

                      It’s the assumptions that we know were the other guy is coming from or what he means that get us in trouble. Trust me I know learned the hard way on this very blog.

                      If something I said is unclear all I can do is try to make it clearer.

                      This why I was trying to explain the other sides point of view.

                      😉

                    20. I understand your position. The Founders founded a Constitutional Republic, not a libertarian one.

                    21. They did their best but the Hamiltonians wouldn’t let them.

                      I propose a compromise. I will be bound by the chains of the constitution if, and only if, the law pollution that is the US Code and the overabundance of unanswerable agencies be dismissed with prejudice.

                    22. I will be bound by the chains of the constitution if, and only if, the law pollution that is the US Code and the overabundance of unanswerable agencies be dismissed with prejudice.

                      Nobody is forcing you to be bound by the constitution. You are perfectly free to leave and thus free yourself from it.

                    23. So you’re saying you don’t want to be rid of out of control federal agencies and laws that control every aspect of your life right down to the type of lightbulbs you use and how your toilet flushes?

                    24. So you’re saying you don’t want to be rid of out of control federal agencies and laws that control every aspect of your life right down to the type of lightbulbs you use and how your toilet flushes?

                      As is obvious from the direct quote, your chosen ransom demand was not being weighed.

                      You are not forced to be bound by the “chains” of the constitution– you can leave.

                      If you do not, if you CHOOSE to stay and yet willfully violate the explicit agreement, that is YOU choosing to set yourself up as exactly the tin pot tyrant you are so free to accuse others of aspiring to be.

                      You made an ultimatum, you live by it. Don’t try to foist responsibility for your choice off on others, especially not when supposedly advocating choice, responsibility and liberty.

                    25. I do live by it. I am in accord with the constitution. I ignore those unconstitutional laws that I may. Of course I can argue for liberty till I’m blue in the face bit those raised to love their chains will never understand.

                      I offered compromise not an ultimatum. You choose not to compromise. That you choose your chains is sad.

                    28. Various bits also apply to other gov’ts, but basically yes.

                      That does a nice job of limiting those who want to use it for their chosen utopia, no?

                    29. That is if we are arguing in good faith and not just to be contrary for its own sake. Which I believe is called “trolling.”

                      Hey now, I resemble that remark!

                    30. “So you’re saying you don’t want to be rid of out of control federal agencies and laws that control every aspect of your life right down to the type of lightbulbs you use and how your toilet flushes?”

                      No, I believe what she is saying is that none of that is a part of the constitution.

                    31. No she invited me to leave if I didn’t accept it all part and parcel. I understand some folks fear being free and others cannot even conceive of true liberty but I cannot and will not tolerate being fed dog food and being told it’s finest sirloin.
                      I bled for the constitution. I have even read what I swore to defend. I’m telling you that any resemblance between the current US government and that governing system described in the document in coincidental at best.

                    32. Actually if you reread what she said, she invited you to leave if you didn’t accept the constitution, she never said anything about you having to accept the non-constitutional laws and regulations you brought up as a strawman argument.

                4. Without “stability,” there is also no “liberty.” What point is there in overthrowing one tyranny, to institute a worse one, or restore a Republic that is so shaky that it collapses within one’s lifetime?

                  1. Mel Gibson’s The Patriot revived the Mather Byles question: “Which is better – to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?”

                    If Hundom ever takes up a Debate Day, in which we are tasked to take affirmative or negative sides, the issue — Be it affirmed: it is better to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away than by three thousand tyrants one mile away — might be worth taking on.

                    Alternatively, as Gordy Knott* might say: depends on the tyrants, don’t it?

                    *Full name Gordian, bastard offspring of Wyoming Knott.

              2. Jordan,
                I’m not necessarily recommending a rebellion/coup but I think our Presidents/legitimate government would rule better if they had a fear of such.

                You said, ” It will then take a long period of legitimate government, with no more successful rebellions, for the lesson to be forgotten that Presidents can be made or unmade by means other than elections.” like that is a bad thing. If that lesson was not forgotten overbearing government would at least be a lot less OPENLY overbearing, because they would rightfully fear that if they veered to far from the will of the people they would unseated, and fixing elections would just cause the people to use other means to unseat them.

  69. Pingback: Four Reasons to Hold Elections on Election Day | Enjoyment and Contemplation

  70. For those who think it makes no difference which bunch runs the Senate, keep in mind that the majority choses the staff and sets the parameters for the number-crunchers:

    ”[N]ow a new analysis from the Senate Budget Committee (SBC) Republican staff provides even more evidence that the ACA will widen future deficits, not narrow them. What’s interesting about the SBC staff assessment is that it is based on CBO’s own numbers and analyses.”
    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/391004/reestimating-obamacare-james-c-capretta

  71. Pingback: News of the Week (October 26th, 2014) | The Political Hat

  72. I’m surprised no one has linked to this yet:
    “Could non-citizens decide the November election?.

    How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.

    Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.

    We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted.

    .

    The elections are pretty much already rigged.

    And as for those talking about the “third box”, it’s just as useless and futile as the other two; any attempt at armed insurrection or secession witll be crushed utterly. The disparity in (technological) superiority of weaponry and logistics is simply too large to be overcome. Nor will there be a coup; our military’s officers have been selected for political reliability for too long. Violence against the Left is suicide; further, it would provide them an excuse to crack down on the rest of us.

    No soap box, no ballot box, no bullet box. The Left always wins.

    1. Twisty — those are small percentages of a small percent, insufficient to sway many elections, particularly as those illegals are not uniformly distributed (illegals voting for Dems in NY, NJ and CA are not going to tip many elections.)

      Your assertions are not supported by very much in the way of logic or data. Historically the Left’s victories have all been illusory.

    2. Oh good LORD. Take a Valium like a normal person.
      You’re absolutely right. The left always wins. This is why all of the Eastern block is still under soviet rule, and Portugal after 78 became a soviet satellite with no appeal, and the Roosevelts have become our very own Jung family.
      The world is North Korea!
      You want to stop fighting, do it, but don’t demand that free men and women buy into your cowardice. Some of us have fought communism before and know it for the paper tiger it is.
      PFUI.

      1. Some of us have lived IN the Eastern block. I will tell you that firsthand, living free is BETTER than having lived in the Eastern Block. Something in how even the air smelled better, and a lack of this odd miasma of oppression, felt and as tangible as smog…

        Well, of course the East wasn’t all that interested in conserving nature so that smog-feel probably wasn’t imagined at all…

      2. Take Somalia. It was a socialist state. Now it’s a failed state. and life in Somalia has improved by many metrics since it failed.

    3. Twistedone is an apt name.

      If it’s pointless then why are you wasting your time telling us?

      “Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”
      – Robert A. Heinlein.

      The point of life is to live it, and if you are to worried about loosing it, you are going to be to busy to live it.

        2. If he thinks such defeateist twaddle can move us, then he don’t know us very well, do he?

          We will activate the Omega 13.

          1. Darn! I never thought of watching this for my birthday! I could have actually convinced my wife to watch it with me, even if she did grit her teeth the whole time.

    4. Don’t worry about the Generals, worry about the Seargants, those are not selected for political reliability but for actually getting the job done. Ask any veteran and they will tell you who runs the armed forces.

      Last I checked most of us were Americans, your doom and gloom, give it up and don’t bother to fight because we’ll just lose, sermons might be well received by the French; but we’re the bastard stepchildren that grew up knowing that we are going to have to fight for anything we want. But no matter how much they might look down on us, if we don’t give up and as hard and dirty as we have to, we can have about anything we want bad enough to be willing to fight for.

      1. Heh. I would like to be there when he says his line about “our military’s officers have been selected for political reliability” to Colonel Kratman or some of the other serving Barflies.

        What he misses is the large number of veterans who, ‘though no longer serving, take their oaths to the Constitution seriously.

        1. I believe the good Colonel has stated several times that Colonel is about as high as you can rise in the ranks, before having to become political/play politics.

          1. He and many others — but there are still far more colonels and retired colonels than there are generals, even in our swelled head top heavy military.

            And it ain’t the generals that get the real work done, is it?

            1. For the day to day runnin’ of the military machine Lt. Col and Col is about as high an officer as you’ll ever need. And a lot of the best military leaders retire about there for reasons noted.

              Also worth noting: the politicized leadership of the military is far outnumbered by the working folks, officer and enlisted. Somewhat less tolerance for political BS in those people. If somebody’s under the impression that the trigger pullers don’t know and understand the character of their leadership — ? Hmph. Okay.

        2. It’s right, sort of– there are a lot of politicals, and the percent gets higher the further up you go.

          Thing is, as folks have pointed out slightly differently, when you spend your time building up your political value, you don’t build up a really good relationship with the folks you’re supposedly leading, so others do.

        3. The Oath has no expiration date. And any honest analysis of likely threats to the constitution if forced to conclude that the largest of these is the US government. There is a reason that the VA and DOJ have been busy little beavers trying to strip veterans of their second amendment right without legal entanglements.
          The resistance is fulite line is horseshit. If that were true, the Iraq and Afganistan conflicts wouldn’t have taken a weekend. One man defending his home is worth ten paid invaders.

        4. As to veterans, that’s what “Vigilant Eagle is for. The DHS and FBI are watching, ready to nip in the bud anything “threatening”.
          And, yes, there are some in our Armed Forces (all Colonel or lower, as others note) on our side. However, my experience is that they clearly skew older. The younger cohorts seem, to me at least, increasingly to hold that the Constitution they’ve sworn to defend is whatever nine people in robes say it is, and are willing to be used against anyone DC and CNN declare “domestic terrorists.”

          Add to this that the Left are very good at judging the optimum pace for “boiling the frog”; always careful to keep things slow enough that people generally adapt (or die of old age and are replaced by younger folks who grew up with the status quo; “Progress”, like science, often proceeds one funeral at a time), or at least, not fast enough to provide a clear casus belli.

          (I’d like also here to point to a similar debate I had in the comments of this Nick Land post, and the many works I cited, including Dr. Armin Krishnan’s “War as Business: Technological Change and Military Service Contracting” (in short, if the military splits into two sides, whichever one gets Lockheed-Martin et al on their side wins, and only the Treasury Department can afford their bills), Max Boot’s “Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present” (summary WSJ article here, Brent J. Mcintosh’s legal article “The Revolutionary Second Amendment“ [pdf] (“The federal government can now muster war-waging capabilities that, though they might be used only at a terrible cost in Ameri- can lives, could not be overcome by even the most determined of popular uprisings.”), COL (RET) Kevin Benson and Dr. Jennifer Weber’s “Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A “Vision” of the Future“, and Colonel Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., USAF, “Revolt of the Masses: Armed Civilians and the Insurrectionary Theory of the Second Amendment,” 62 Tennessee Law Review 643-677 (1995) [PDF].

          1. Twisted,

            Fuck Lockheed-Martin.

            Our Military would do well to remember the adage, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

            1. Josh,

              I know folks at Lockheed-Martin, let’s just say that those who think those employees are going to trot down Twisted’s path are paying attention to the wrong signals. Much like the assumption that the military will fall into lockstep with a tyrant.

              Though, I fully support your sentiment. 😉

    5. One thing touch upon by others, I wish to expand.

      You state that you believe that the elections are rigged. You have determined that the left always wins and there is no hope in apposing it. If everyone took that attitude that would certainly be true.

      I am sure the left would like it if we just admitted it. Maybe we could all hurry up and admit it, then we could then dispense with all the expensive, irritating and intrusive campaign commercials, phone calls and mailings, so that would be a silver lining.

      This makes me think of bits of from Joseph Heller’s Catch 22:

      .“From now on I’m thinking only of me.” Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: “But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way?”
      “Then,” said Yossarian, “I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn’t I?”

      “Let someone else get killed!”
      “Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?”
      “Well then I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn’t I?”

      and finally:

      Yossarian — the very sight of the name made him shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, suspicious, fascist and Communist.

  73. Moved down for room.

    jselvy
    I do live by it. I am in accord with the constitution. I ignore those unconstitutional laws that I may. Of course I can argue for liberty till I’m blue in the face bit those raised to love their chains will never understand
    does not work with:
    I will be bound by the chains of the constitution if, and only if, the law pollution that is the US Code and the overabundance of unanswerable agencies be dismissed with prejudice.

    You offer the “compromise,” but you also state the ultimatum: if, and only if.

    Yet you then claim that you are in accord with the constitution.

    Additionally, you make obviously false and– if they weren’t so pathetically, obviously irrational– insulting accusations against those who don’t loudly declare your rightness, or heaven forbid point out the only one forcing you to be “bound by the chains of the constitution” is yourself, by not leaving. You even attack the guy that’s on your side when he points out that you are violating your own standard.

    You flatly declared that the only way you would follow the constitution is if we “compromised” and did what you want.

    Take a wild guess how folks here feel about threats to get their cooperation, regardless of if the thing they’re being asked to do is good or bad.

      1. Aw, but… I just finished loading the muskets… My cantankerous mood was finally primed… I had the grapeshot loaded… Too little sleep… The slow matches are right… My dander was up and everything. I was finally ready to go.

        Sigh…

        Kicks rocks…

        Dagnabit.

        >

        1. Dagnabit yes! I just carefully composed a response and read it out loud to The Spouse to see if my arguments were clear. The Spouse informed me that the disscussion had been called. 😦

          Sigh…

          Kicks rock further down the road.

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