Targeted voter fraud witch hunts continue:
Last month, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler gave Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett a list of 17 names, all suspected of voting in the November election despite being non-citizens.
Those names were among 155 people identified statewide as possible illegal voters.
But an investigation by Garnett’s office found that all 17 people were citizens and were able to easily verify their status, the district attorney said Wednesday.
Garnett said the outcome shows Gessler’s emphasis on finding ineligible voters and eliminating them from the voter rolls is a waste of resources and politically motivated.
“Local governments and county clerks do a really good job regulating the integrity of elections, and I’ll stand by that record any day of the week,” Garnett said. “We don’t need state officials sending us on wild goose chases for political reasons.”
Garnett said he believes that Gessler referred the names for prosecution because he made a big deal last summer about possible illegal voting in advance of the November election and had to produce results.
Good for Garnett. That’s exactly what happened and he should say so.
You would think there would be something citizens could do to protect themselves from conservatives who make stuff up about voter fraud and then have to cover their asses with these phony investigations.
ranchandsyrup
At least wild geese have been proved to exist.
Belafon
You left the best line out:
Comrade Dread
It’d be real nice if you could sue for monetary damages in the event your vote was wrongly challenged and you were prevented from casting a real ballot.
MikeBoyScout
Also, too from the left coast
Signature Gatherer For Preserve Marriage Washington Faces Felony Charges After Allegedly Faking Signatures on Petitions to Get Ref. 74 on the Ballot
Clearly the threat of ACORN has taken on a new urgency.
EDIT: It’s not clear from the headline or the text, but the referendum was not for LGBT rights, but an initiative to restrict them contrary to the Democratic led WA legislature and WA Gov signed law. It lost.
Hill Dweller
Maddow had a really good segment last night detailing some of the suppression tactics in NC. They’re filling both the state and county boards of elections with crazy people intent on prevent Democrats from voting.
This should be a national outrage, but for the most part the beltway seems indifferent.
schrodinger's cat
OT: Has our blog host posted recently? if so I have missed those posts. Its almost a month since Tunch’s passing, I hope he is OK and not sad.
IowaOldLady
@schrodinger’s cat: He’s bonding with a new cat named Steve, I think. The new kitty is very cuddly but will not use the cat tree because he’s a cat.
Hungry Joe
But all this vigilance is good — it’s scaring away the hordes of illegal voters who in past elections have been crammed into the back of pickup trucks that raced madly from polling place to polling place, where the illegal voters would pile out, unnoticed, and cast their illegal ballots by pretending to be someone who hadn’t already voted and been crossed off the list of eligible voters in the precinct (not sure how they managed that … luck, I suspect), and who wasn’t known personally by any of the poll workers (more luck). You can tell It worked every time because none of them ever got caught.
cmorenc
They simply don’t care whether there’s much, if any at all proof-by-actual-examples that there’s more than a vanishingly negligible number of actual instances of illegal/fraudulent/ineligible people casting ballots in elections; to them the fact that certain particular resented constituencies are voting at all in elections their side is losing is sufficient proof of a broken election system that needs fixing to skew the electorate toward right-thinking kinds of folks like them. They truly believe that except in hopelessly blue local enclaves, the only way a democrat could ever win an elections is by fooling/bribing enough voters to make the election close, and then gaining enough margin to win by importing fraudulent votes, because the majority of sensible, responsible citizens would vote for the GOP in honest elections. And so, they firmly believe that doing all they can to exclude as many of these irresponsible, insensible, corrupt voting demographics as possible from casting ballots is the right thing to do for responsible democracy. Voting isn’t a right, it’s a privilige that should be reserved for responsible, right-thinking folk like themselves, so they believe.
Damn the evidence, they know what’s right.
evodevo
Unfortunately, the death throes of the elephant are going to last a lot longer than seems possible. It’s going to require that a lot of these disenfranchised blocs get out and do some strenuous grassroots organizing, just like they did in the civil rights era. Otherwise, the laws these boobs are going to pass will make Jim Crow look like a cakewalk. Repealing something is a lot harder than it looks.
Belafon
@evodevo: I get your point, but I’m pretty sure you couldn’t make Jim Crow look like a cakewalk.
BGinCHI
Voter fraud fraud should be a crime. So should disenfranchisement.
Roger Moore
@IowaOldLady:
Does Steve have access to the outside? Because I can’t imagine a cat using a cat tree if he has real trees to climb. Or other items in the house that are more interesting than a cat tree. BTW, Jake does like and use his cat tree, so it does happen.
Amir Khalid
@IowaOldLady:
Cat? I thought I’d read that Steve was a 6-year-old pterodactyl.
Davis X. Machina
@Hill Dweller: The Beltway all have multiple photo ID, including a passport. Their bosses give them time off from work, or ‘work’, or they are the boss. They probably don’t have lines because of the abundance of machines. If they vote absentee or by mail, they have an intern to witness their signing the envelope, and mail it.
But they probably don’t vote. I doubt they vote. Not-voting would be the ultimate proof of your bi-non-post-partisan bona fides. Not-voting would buff your it’s-all-a-shuck-only-rubes-take-this-seriously cred. — voting’s an ‘us’ thing — and their ‘us’ ain’t our ‘us’, that’s for sure. They don’t have to vote. They have their say much further up the pyramid, where differences can really get made — or not made.
And they’ll prosper regardless of any particular outcome. The differences will only be differences of degree.
As Douglas Adams taught us so many years ago, the Somebody Else’s Problem field is really, really powerful.
IowaOldLady
@Roger Moore: You’d have to ask John about how much outdoor access Steve has. John seems happy with him anyway.
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: He’s posted plenty since then but he’s working on some heavy shit right now.
Davis X. Machina
@cmorenc:
It’s a mirror-image thing.
There are a lot of folks who believe that except in the reddest parts of Dixie, the only way the GOP can ever win an election is the false consciousness of the working class, refusing to see their class interest, who have been cajoled into not voting themselves a decent education, health care, and a world at peace and free of pollution by the power of the mainstream media.
That, and Diebold.
Would that it were so.
IowaOldLady
Last night, Maddow talked about NC’s disenfranchisement of college students. That seems long-term stupid to me. These young people will not forget who made it hard for them to vote. Maybe the Rs assume that young people vote D only because they’re young and will morph into Rs the minute they have to earn a living. That’s much less likely to happen if Rs treat them badly now.
raven
@Roger Moore: Given the recent event why do I think Steve won’t be cruising around in the yard?
Botsplainer
Assange and Wikileaks talk about who they admire…wait for it…and the answer is Ron/Rand Paul and Matt Drudge.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42405_Wikileaks_Founder_Assange-_Im_a_Big_Admirer_of_Ron_Paul_and_Rand_Paul/comments/#ctop
Its a shame that we don’t have a “rolling on the floor and guffawing” smilie here. Libertarian right meets libertarian left, and as it is a combined army of trembling, paranoid white guys who fear vague “what ifs” (since they never face the certainty of oppression of “others”), they find much common cause.
Of course, being white guys, their sobbing panty wetting is taken seriously.
schrodinger's cat
@raven: I haven’t seen any posts from him the past couple of days, so I was wondering.
Chat Noir
@Roger Moore: Jake is adorable — love the picture of him napping on the laundry. He looks like our boy, Hobbes. I love black cats.
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: One, one line post yesterday.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: Jake is beautiful, I did not know that you were a minion of the basement kitteh!
@raven: I must have missed it if it was later at night.
raven
@Botsplainer: And I ask again, how is the pup?
Hungry Joe
@cmorenc: “Then there was the educated Texan from Texas who looked like someone in Technicolor and felt, patriotically, that people of means — decent folk — should be given more votes than drifters, whores, criminals, degenerates, atheists and indecent folk — people without means.”
— Joseph Heller, CATCH-22
DFH no.6
They believe their own lies (well, the rank and file do – many if not most fascists in positions of power know it’s bullshit).
Not one conservative I know – and I know many living here in Joe Arpaio County, AZ (from my baby brother to the neighbors to my boss) – believes that this bullshit about voter fraud is, in fact, bullshit.
To a man (and woman) they believe what they are told – that voter fraud by Democrats is rampant and is the reason Democrats win as many elections as they do, otherwise Republicans would hold many more of the reins of power in our fair land. Restricting voting every which way is the only solution.
Actual facts and evidence (like this deal here in Colorado, and the amazingly negligible instances of prosecuted voter fraud anywhere and everywhere in America) mean nothing. Faith in the tribal belief system is all.
Most of what conservatives believe about the “political” world (very much including “real” world stuff immersed in politics like the science of global warming) is varying shades of bullshit sold to the rubes to keep the power guys in power. Voter “fraud” very much a case in point.
Conservatism is a fucking cargo cult run by a powerful priesthood who very well know they’re running a game.
I fucking hate fucking fascists.
Face
Any way to know for which party those 17 peeps voted? Can I take a guess?
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: Here
raven
@Hungry Joe: Help him. . .help. . .him.
Botsplainer
@raven:
Wondered where you split to.
Eating like a champ, full of oats, and rapidly losing that urge to “mouth” us. He’s super well behaved for the most part.
He still has his moments – left to his own devices, he’d probably eat every shoe in the house even though its clear that he knows he’s not allowed. By and large, though, he’s content to follow us around, lay down and observe quietly while gnawing rawhide.
The wife and I are really reluctant to have that baby tooth dug out – the anesthesia notion really bothers us, and it may have broken off because the adult teeth are really starting to come on strong. Plus, he’s not acting like it’s tender at all. I suspect that his adult fang may be well on its way.
Money isn’t an issue (it is only $150 max) – its the idea he could have an adverse reaction to the anesthesia. I’m looking at other reactions online (some people are adamant about removing it) and asking other people I know.
rikyrah
@Hill Dweller:
it was an excellent segment..
I think my favorite part was the creation of the 9,000 person precinct at a polling place with only 35 fucking parking places.
Because they can’t do any false equivalency bullshyt.
schrodinger's cat
@Botsplainer: We need photos of the puppeh!
raven
@Botsplainer: Ah, cool I’ve had several occasions where I’ve had my pups under and it was fine but I get it.
This seems to he good info on new guidlines
http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2012/04/18/new-guidelines-for-anesthesia-for-cats-and-dogs.aspx
jl
Snipe
” Due to few snipes living in the US, “going on a snipe hunt” is a phrase suggesting a fool’s errand, or an impossible task. It is often used as a practical joke upon campers, and those unfamiliar with hunting, by those more experienced ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe
See, it’s all in the name of good fun.
Hungry Joe
@raven: I’m the bombardier!
Ted & Hellen
What’s great though, is that Democrats, from the White House thru Congress, all the way down to the localest of local office holders, are fighting back and WINNING against the tide of Republican voter suppression tactics and legislation.
Oh, wait…
Belafon
What’s great though, is that Ted & Helen, rather than spending his time online trolling, is fighting against the tide of Republican voter suppression tactics and legislation.
Oh, wait…
aimai
@DFH no.6: Yup, just read the comment thread below the Colorado article and you will find several right wing posters denying the significance of the 17 citizens queried about their citizenship status. They spin the most arcane and hysterical theories for why Gannet is lying (he didn’t really check) the number is not significant (probably there were more), anyway we need photo id (although the point of photo id is different from the point about citizenship and from fraud again) etc..etc..etc…
Botsplainer
@raven:
Nice article – thank you. Seems to be some good info in there.
boatboy_srq
@MikeBoyScout:
If only we could hold all these ACORN-shouters to the same standard.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@evodevo:
This is honestly the bracing fear that I have about shit like this: barring stays of execution, they’ll remain as is and the GOP, if/when they finally cede control, will still have enough power to maintain these shitball laws so things remain fantastically slanted toward them for the near future.
Kay
@DFH no.6:
It was sold. Think about it, though. Voter impersonation fraud is based on the idea that a person walks into a polling place and impersonates someone else. There would be thousands of reports. There would be hundreds of reports each election day, because it’s so fraught with peril. What if the real voter is standing behind them? What if the real voter has already voted or comes in 5 minutes later? Have you ever even heard an anecdotal story like that, where it had happened to someone? Yet, with all that, they managed to get all these people to just believe it happened, and in big enough numbers to swing a national election.
Roger Moore
@Chat Noir:
Given your nickname, I’d expect you’d approve. I think I’ve discovered the secret to having cats and laundry get along: I wash the cat’s blanket at the same time as the rest of the laundry and put it on top of the basket. That way, even if he decides to sleep on the laundry before I can put it away- and what cat doesn’t want to sleep on a basket full of freshly washed laundry- he’s only getting cat hair on his own blanket.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon:
OK, this Gessler guy needs to get back to his job at the Octoplex. Time to change reels.
burnspbesq
@aimai:
Boulder is a well-known nest of eebil godless hippies. Of course the DA is lying, he’s one of them.
ETA: And the Daily Camera is part of the conspiracy too. It knows where its advertising revenue comes from: eebil godless businesses that cater to eebil godless hippies.
Villago Delenda Est
@IowaOldLady:
All that matters is the next election.
2016 is in the unimaginable future. Don’t even bother to get them to consider 2028 or 2040.
The short term mentality of the MBA rules all now.
Bill Arnold
@Comrade Dread:
It would be more just if the person responsible for the wrongful disenfranchisement could be criminally prosecuted for the disenfranchisement. If wrongful voting is criminal, why isn’t wrongful disenfranchisement?
Frankensteinbeck
@Botsplainer:
That sound must have been MC’s head exploding.
DFH no.6
@Davis X. Machina: I’ve found over the years on these various blog-things that I have agreed with your commentary on just about everything (which means you are almost always right, of course) but in this case I think you are making a false equivalence.
As perceptive as your assessment of this lefty idea that “they vote against their own self-interest, the fools!” is, it’s a numbers thing, I think. And something more, too – what is real and what is not.
It’s based just on my own personal experience and what I read and hear, true, but I think belief in Democratic voter fraud (or at least the potential for such fraud) is very widespread on the right. So much so that the vast majority on the right accept the nonsense that voter fraud is a serious problem that requires solution (like voter ID, etc.). And nonsense it surely is – no where are Democrats winning elections via fraud. No where. It’s just not true, at all.
On the other side, I don’t think it’s nearly as widespread a belief on “the left” that Republicans only win elections outside the Confederacy because dumbass lower socio-economic (white) people have been tricked into voting against their self-interest.
And I think there is, actually, more than a kernel of truth to that notion (i.e., a not-insignificant number have bought into the lies from the right and, having thus been “tricked”, do in fact vote for worse situations for themselves and their families in favor of the already rich and powerful, whether they recognize the truth of that or not. You know, something like Jay Gould’s adage about half the working class. He was on to something there way back when).
And Diebold? Vanishingly fewer “lefties” believe anything along those lines compared with, say, rightwingers who absurdly believe Obama is not a natural-born American.
So sure, some “lefties” can sometimes be out of touch with reality. I know some of these people.
But there’s really no comparison with the right on that score. Not even close.
Belafon
@Bill Arnold: There’s one more argument for a voting amendment.
burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
Can’t wait to see their reaction when App State cancels classes and sets up a shuttle bus system to get students back and forth to the polling place.
Punchy
The Purity Party Faction strikes again. Notice it’s a young Republican who supports gay marriage. Now once she’s booted, I’m sure she’ll have nothing but great things to say to other young’ins about the GOP.
GOP Outreach, 2013 edition.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Bill Arnold:
It’s a matter of conflicted philosophies. “Better to trample a hundred innocents to punish a guilty man” vs. “Better a hundred guilty men go free than to punish an innocent.” And because they’re basically the law now, the GOP gets to say ‘fuck your innocence, we say there’s fraud about, and you don’t get shit to say about it when we accuse you’. The courts could end up involved, sure, but we know where the end game has been leading in the Supremes.
Frankensteinbeck
@DFH no.6:
I think an important thing to understand here is that ‘self-interest’ is not just material or financial. Conservative voters are voting for their social and emotional self-interests.
Davis X. Machina
@DFH no.6: It’s a difference of degree only, and I’d argue the difference is less than you think.
Difference of opinion is what makes horse-racing.
I might be encountering a non-representative sample of Democrats, because of the miracle of the internets, where normal people are under-represented. But on the internets, I’d say both betrayal narratives are equally prevalent. This board, God help us, skews normal by comparison, contents of the pie shop excepted.
burnspbesq
There’s been a second private action filed in the Middle District of North Carolina seeking to roll back the recent anti-voting-rights legislation.
http://www.news-record.com/blogs/north_state_politics/article_b6bea670-0430-11e3-9cd4-001a4bcf6878.html
The article includes a link to Sen. Hagan’s letter to Holder asking that DOJ get in the game.
Mnemosyne
@Botsplainer:
I think the question to ask your vet is if there’s a chance of infection if you decide to wait for the adult tooth to come in. If there is, you should probably take your chances with the anesthesia and have it removed, because an infected tooth can cause all kinds of problems well beyond the tooth itself.
Chris
@cmorenc:
Depending on the person, it’s either that or they realize that honest elections can result in non-Republicans winning, but they think that non-Republicans winning is so horrible that the other side shouldn’t be allowed to vote anyway.
What kind of people vote Democrat, after all? The children of illegal immigrants, who shouldn’t be citizens in the first place. The Muslims, who’re all plotting to destroy America. The 47% who don’t pay taxes, who really shouldn’t be allowed to vote because they have no skin in the game and they’ll just crash our economy by continuing to vote themselves more welfare money. The sodomites and women who’ve had abortions, who should both be in jail anyway if our laws were still based on the Bible like Thomas Jefferson wanted. The young people, who might technically be adults but are really too young to know what they want anyway…
… the fact is that if Democratic voters are restricted from voting, that’s a good thing. Democratic voters are dangerous. They’re going to destroy America. Some of them are actively trying to, others don’t realize they’re doing it, but it all adds up to the same thing. Keeping them from voting may be skirting the edges of technical legality – although really, what does that even mean in a world where activist judges have rewritten the laws to empower the illegals and the Islamofascists and the “takers” and the sodomites and the abortionists and the hippies? But it’s the right thing to do. It’s saving America. Just like getting our hands a little dirty by supporting Pinochet saved Chile from a Marxist nightmare. And all these other countries where we did it, too. It’s for their own good. At some point, you’ve got to set the law aside and do what you know is right.
cleek
i so hope the NC Dem party is able to pump up the outrage, come next November. seems so far away, i fear people will be bored with it by then.
cmorenc
@Davis X. Machina:
The HUGE substantive difference is that:
1) progressives and democrats are NOT trying in any way whatsoever to prevent or suppress red-leaning voters from voting, regardless of location or demographics.
2) conservatives and republcans ARE AGGRESSIVELY trying by every means whatsoever to prevent or suppress blue-leaning voters from voting, most especially targeted by location or demographics.
The equivalence you cite above is of itself somewhat true, but TOTALLY IRRELEVANT to the efforts by the GOP to deliberately, selectively inconvenience and disenfranchise as many minority, student, and other blue-leaning voters as they can possibly accomplish and get away with. NOWHERE in the country have progressives or democrats attempted to disenfranchise GOP voters.
TaMara (BHF)
@Belafon: Gessler should be impeached. He wasted a ton of money challenging Obamacare and he screwed around during the entire 2012 election.
And I think now he wants to run for Gov.
DFH no.6
@Kay: I’ve tried pointing out the logic of this to some of my dear fascist acquaintances and relations. How, exactly, could such fraud actually be pulled off?
It’s goddamn absurd. It’s just such a mind-bogglingly stupid thing to believe in.
Doesn’t matter – many believe that Democrats are fraudulently winning elections all over (Richard Daly’s Chicago is alive and well across the land, it seems) despite zero evidence of such a thing happening. I’m told about completely ridiculous things like bus-loads of “blacks and illegals” brought in, though never specifically where, exactly. And about ACORN, of course.
Some of the better educated and intelligent ones (like my boss) refuse to address your very salient points at all, and simply turn to that whole phony bullshit about “well, you need an ID to cash a check or fly on an airline, don’t you?” and the overwhelming need to protect the sacred act of voting from any potential fraud. And why in the world would I be against that?
While talking about this topic I was asked, in a pointed and even threatening way by a couple of Teatard assholes at my BIL’s birthday party last October, why I hated white people. I tan fairly well (here in the AZ sun) but I am, in fact, pretty obviously white (German and Irish extraction, mostly). Race-traitor, apparently.
Did I mention how I fucking hate fucking fascists?
TaMara (BHF)
@Roger Moore: That is one adorable cat. One of mine is black, but she’s really more mink colored. When the sun shines on her, it’s the most luxurious color.
Boots Day
@Villago Delenda Est: Gessler is the butt who announced, just after his election as Secretary of State, that he would continue to work for his law firm while in office, because the Secretary of State’s job just didn’t pay enough. As I recall, he was eventually talked out of that little scheme.
Botsplainer
@Mnemosyne:
I know – I’m thinking about that. It is troubling because he said it is definitely a possibility.
Davis X. Machina
@cmorenc: True, that particular difference right and left is manifest, but here it’s irrelevant, because that’s not what I was claiming.
Paragraph in question, and quoted, begins ‘A lot of people believe….” and it was beliefs I was addressing. Both delusions can, and are, widespread, without acting on both delusions being equally widespread.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@DFH no.6:
You know what the most mindboggling part of this all is? How, when you corner these people on their believes, they come out and say that not having an ID should disqualify you from voting to begin with, because of all the things you need to have an ID for. This is just head-hurting for 2 reasons.
1) None of the things they tend to cite, like airline travel, car ownership, alcohol retail, etc., is a RIGHT in the same way voting is.
2) The fact that they’re so adamantly against things like a National ID because, you know, ‘fuck your gov’t’, despite believing that not having an ID means you’re a failure as a citizen and therefore don’t count or deserve to count.
IowaOldLady
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: Have you ever asked if these folks think we should all have a national ID card? I’d be curious what they answer.
Older
@Comrade Dread: Wouldn’t this be slander, in any case? I mean, he is accusing these people of a crime, asserting that they voted or attempted to vote illegally. Couldn’t they demand some kind of penalty?
Belafon
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: I was going to make point number 2 as well. Someone ought to point out that all driver’s licenses are now part of a national database.
Woodrowfan
if you press hard enough they’ll just admit they don’t think everybody has a right to vote. that only “some people” should vote…
scav
I hope Saint Peter hauls them all out of line and asks for their long-form ID at the Pearly Barbed Perimeter Fence ‘n’ Checkpoint. Claiming they wanna meet and live with their sainted Mama on the other side isn’t enough to get your anchor snuggled into Abraham’s Bay anymore.
DFH no.6
@Davis X. Machina: It is a difference of degree, yes, but I think the difference is quite large, while you think it is not.
Which of us is right about that? Well I vote yours truly, and I imagine you vote that way, too.
And there really is something to “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”, while, conversely, there is nothing at all to this voter fraud bullshit.
That last is pretty important, I think.
Ruckus
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Are you trying to tell me that conservatives are hypocrites?
Frankensteinbeck
@DFH no.6:
This is what real tribalism looks like. Your counterarguments don’t exist. They don’t reflect the tribe’s interests, so they are either obviously false or completely nonsensible. Rights for Other People don’t exist. It’s not just that the Other doesn’t deserve rights, the idea is alien. Rights are something the tribe has. Narcissists cut this reasoning down to themselves. Either way, they don’t have to counter your logical arguments, don’t have to think things all the way through. Your attempt to portray there being another side is gibberish.
Waldo
@Bill Arnold: Amen to that! Fraudulent voting and fraudulently preventing someone from voting are in effect the same things.
PIGL
@DFH no.6:
boatboy_srq
@Bill Arnold: Indeed.
Isn’t it curious (going back to MikeBoyScout’s comment) that these volk, in order to protect the sanctity of the legal vote, feel compelled to break the law to pursue their agenda? There are days when I think the entirety of the Tea Party movement was a nothing more than a (flimsy) shield for all the expected illegal acts they’re compelled to commit to “restore Ahmurrca” – or at least the the septic, dystopic vision of Ahmurrca the Teahadists cherish.
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: There’s also, among the Reichwing, the simultaneous convictions that a) since they’re Right (meaning correct as well as Conservatist), any right-thinking Ahmurrcan will automatically agree with them, which they then use to convince themselves that the Left is wrong on some fundamental psychological level; and b) that the pollsters are wrong about the makeup of the electorate and they really are still in the majority. These things, taken together, convince them that if the Dems win, then it’s because there’s some vast conspiracy by lefty crazies (rather than re recognition of voting one’s interest on the part of an increasingly-varied electoral base) because nobody they know would cast a ballot that way.
Gene108
@Kay:
I think, from conservatives I’ve met, they want to believe in the conspiracy theories about voter fraud because they know it helps their side win.
At some point you end up with a contingent of true believers, who see the lie as reality (like some Birthers).
boatboy_srq
@PIGL:
No, no, no. For their removal from society to truly have meaning, they’d need to be inhibited at conception. Condoms and/or the pill, or the morning-after pill at the very latest. Otherwise there’s nine months that they’d be “pre-born” and beneficiaries of (and fodder for) anti-choice extremism.
charluckles
@DFH no.6:
Hear, hear. Living in Colorado is getting pretty damn interesting. The struggle between the old conservative rural Colorado and the new more liberal urban Colorado is really starting to cook.
If you want to hear a bunch of mealy mouthed nonsense from them ask them how being for a hugely wasteful government program that intrudes on the rights of their fellow citizens is consistent with their expressed belief in limited government.
DFH no.6
@Chris: Damn but you spelunked right down into the fascist mind there, didn’t you? Well done.
In the words of that great American poet, Jim Morrison: “squirming like a toad”.
You know what a lot of this gets down to, IMAO?
The flaw in the empathy circuit that is at the core of the conservative mindset.
Many conservatives can not imagine what it is like for poor, elderly, non-white or otherwise disadvantaged people (and good lord do they hate that term “disadvantaged”).
And even if they can imagine that, they don’t care. Hell, even if they are poor, or elderly, or (very occasionally) non-white, or otherwise disadvantaged. They still identify with the aristocracy (the “deserving” class of right and decent people – Calvinism, I suppose).
“I got mine, fuck you” and “devil take the hindmost” are the bedrock foundations of conservatism. The entire edifice is built on those pillars. Everything else is secondary.
Roger Moore
@boatboy_srq:
They’re obeying a higher law, the dictates of Jeebus (or Ayn Rand or Teh Constitushun, to the extent they’re distinguishable). The flimsy laws of man must be broken, and can be broken with a clear conscience, as long as it’s serving the higher purpose of protecting America for Americans and defending The Invisible Hand Of The Market.
Bubblegum Tate
Two wingnut comments about early voting today that I really enjoyed. First:
Second:
Yea, they’re really not into that whole “people getting to vote” thing all that much.
karen
@Hill Dweller:
Not indifferent. PURPOSELY not covering it.
Gravenstone
@TaMara (BHF):
Ah, the Republican plan; failing upward!
karen
@scav:
I’d settle for them all dying from the brain eating amoeba in Florida.
karen
@cleek:
If they still have the right to vote that is.
Chris
@DFH no.6:
Flawed empathy e.g. lack of empathy for anyone outside of what they define as The Tribe. And the belief that they should be relegated to a lower position, since Not Being In The Tribe is pretty much the biggest sin there is.
Like I’ve said before, I don’t know how much of this is Calvinism but the fundiegelical/Protestant “faith not acts” belief is the biggest religious tie-in, IMO. It holds that since all humans are flawed, imperfect and fallen, the only thing that matters is whether you’ve “accepted Jesus as your personal lord and savior” – which translates in plainspeak to “joined our church/tribe.” Does a lot to destroy your sense of moral objectivity.
Roger Moore
@TaMara (BHF):
Good luck with that. I get the impression that Hickenlooper is unlikely to leave office for anything but term limits or a cabinet position.
scav
@karen: Nice thing is that we can easily achieve both our dreams sequentially.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
No, no, no.
You change the law to do what’s right. Never forget, Die Endlösung was perfectly legal under Reich law. Godwin’s Object made sure that the niceties of legality were observed at all times as his regime advanced its agenda. Every four years, like clockwork, the Enabling Act was renewed by the Reichstag.
Perfectly, meticulously legal. Monstrous, but legal.
I Heart Breitbartbees
@Bill Arnold: I agree. For now, if they really want to push it, the best they can do is a charge of fraud, and that charge probably wouldn’t stick. Even “Tail Gunner” Joe McCarthy never actually produced a list of names. Way to go above and beyond the accomplishments of those who came before, though both are/were clearly drunk on their own power and getting high off the sound of their own voices.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: Agreed. Yet somehow they think they can use the same laws they broke to afflict the rest of us – and any of us suggesting that we’re following the same Higher Calling they are doesn’t hold water. Curious, that. I’ve been around the Reichwing enough to get that the Laws of Men don’t carry the same weight that certain others do, but you would think that they would be smart enough to realize using them as a cudgel against those of us who do think they matter would be less useful when the converse is less cudgel than featherduster.
@Villago Delenda Est: So, by that logic, the Teahadists’ disdain for state/federal laws they don’t like isn’t merely monstrous, but lazy as well? I like the suggestion – it hits them in the PWE as well as the subverted-religious-symbol – I’m just making sure.
DFH no.6
@Chris: What you call “fundiegelical/Protestant” is Calvinist in its theology and doctrine.
Assemblies of God, Pentecostals, Baptists, and sundry related sects (including “unaffiliated” mega-churches and such) that together make up most of what is American fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity are essentially Calvinist (whether directly in line back to Jean Calvin himself or not).
“Faith, not works” yes, which was the main doctrinal beef with Catholicism.
The notion of the “elect” of God is prominent, with the corollary (often denied, but there nonetheless) that proof of such “deserving” status under God’s grace can be shown by earthly success (i.e., wealth and power).
Only a small minority of people can be in God’s special “called out” group to be saved, so empathy for the vast majority of condemned humanity is given little importance (in actuality; whatever any tenet may say otherwise).
Sermon on the Mount Jesus may be given lip-service, but it’s the moralistic, judgmental, “fire and brimstone” God who’s going to give all the unrepentant and unsaved sinners (i.e., most of us) what they deserve (eternal punishment) who they really love and worship.
They especially love the sheep and goat verses, too, because they think they’re the sheep and all the rest of us goats.
It’s pernicious, and has rightly been tagged as “toxic” Christianity.
There’s a reason it fits so well with modern movement conservatism.
Woodrowfan
@Chris:
With Liberal Christians that’s often taken as a lesson not to judge others harshly. “We are all sinners so who are you to reject the other person. God accepted you despite your sins, so you must accept others despite theirs.”
Villago Delenda Est
@boatboy_srq:
A snippet from The Phantom Menace
“But my lord, is that legal?”
“I will make it legal.”
I Heart Breitbartbees
@DFH no.6: Glad I woke up. I’m a recovering ex-Republican in a deep red part of a deep red state. Red? Wasn’t that a color associated with communism? Why are Republicans communists?
Ken Pidcock
In Pennsylvania, we know the answer: Fewer than none.
boatboy_srq
@Villago Delenda Est: INDEED.
SO: David Koch, or Rupert Murdoch, as Palpatine in the SW:E1:TPM remake?