by Smitty

Does anybody understand the meaning of this buffoonery from E.J. Dionne, Junior? Emphasis mine throughout the post.

Rigging the 2012 Election

WASHINGTON — An attack on the right to vote is under way across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging. But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.

The laws are being passed in the name of preventing “voter fraud.” But study after study has shown that fraud by voters is not a major problem — and is less of a problem than how hard many states make it for people to vote in the first place. Some of the new laws, such as limiting the number of days for early voting, have little plausible connection to battling fraud.

These statutes are not neutral. Their greatest impact will be to reduce turnout among African-Americans, Latinos and the young. It is no accident that these groups were key to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 — or that the laws in question are being enacted in states where Republicans control state governments.

How, precisely? How would it follow that treating the identification requirement to vote as similar to, say, checking in for a flight (as distinct from clearing the TSA), reduce turnout?

Paradoxically, the rank partisanship of these measures is discouraging the media from reporting plainly on what’s going on. Voter suppression so clearly benefits the Republicans that the media typically report this through a partisan lens, knowing that accounts making clear whom these laws disenfranchise would be labeled as biased by the right. But the media should not fear telling the truth or standing up for the rights of the poor or the young.

Wait, E.J.: shouldn’t you establish that voter suppression has occurred, prior to connecting that dot to any major party? Oh, yeah: that would be an example of an honest argument. Given that you are sort of without fact #1 to stand on, it more logically follows that you’d not bore your reader with those pesky ‘fact’ things.

Sometimes the partisan motivation is so clear that if Stephen Colbert reported on what’s transpiring, his audience would assume he was making it up. In Texas, for example, the law allows concealed handgun licenses to work as identification, but not student IDs. And guess what? Nationwide exit polls show that John McCain carried households in which someone owned a gun by 25 percentage points but lost voters in households without a gun by 32 points.

Stephen Colbert is a comedian; do you normally accept his show as fact, E.J.? And what a crappy correlation==causation argument you have here. Could it be that student identification is insufficiently rigorous? Can you check in for the aforementioned plane flight with a student ID? I would be generally surprised if you could.

In part because of a surge of voters who had not cast ballots before, the United States elected its first African-American president in 2008. Are we now going to witness a subtle return of Jim Crow voting laws?

Given the systemic intellectual dishonesty of your post, Dionne, it strikes me that the greater threat to the integrity of the vote is from the Left, which, having spewed such inflammatory lies as contained in your column, will be forced to back up the lies with various acts of propaganda.

Whether or not these laws can be rolled back, their existence should unleash a great civic campaign akin to the voter registration drives of the civil rights years. The poor, the young and people of color should get their IDs, flock to the polls and insist on their right to vote in 2012.

Why, yes: yes, they should. Legally. They call these events ‘elections’.

If voter suppression is to occur, let it happen for all to see. The whole world, which watched us with admiration and respect in 2008, will be watching again.

Taken slightly out of context, as snarky post as this, the last paragraph almost seems a threat. But E.J. is a swell guy, and he would never do anything less that fair, balanced, honest, honorable, morally sound, and highly respectable. We just have to make sure the little green men don’t get too near his polling place.

On the other hand, Legal Insurrection, looking on the bright side, figures it might allow time for a vacation.

by Smitty

Check out the new collaboration of two of my favorite bloggers, Little Miss Attila and POWIP.
They call it Conservative Commune. I admit the second word has more appeal as an imperative verb than as a noun, but I admire the two so much as writers that I’ll just blogroll them and subscribe to their feed in any case.
Now, get over there and get your doggone blog on, readers!

by Smitty

Thanks, Jim Hoft:

The media has yet to uncover Barack Obama’s college transcripts, but they are already questioning Michele Bachmann’s record as a foster parent.

It’s all about speaking truth to power, where ‘truth’ is drivel and ‘power’ means whoever the owner of the media dogs has directed these rabid bitches to attack, in this case Representative Bachmann.
This blog means no disrespect to the honest female dogs of the world by comparing reporters to them; merely a figure of speech.

by Smitty

Not only can I not attend Right Online, I can’t even upload the picture of BlogProf looking like he’s about to pick up Stacy McCain and shotput him across a hotel lobby.
Not that he would actually do that, mind you: I was merely engaging in a bit of hyperbole to tease you into following the link.

by Smitty

The title of this post is absolutely not snark. If there is one unintended consequence of the blogosphere, it is to point out that there are a few lawyers: Professors Althouse, Volokh, Reynolds, and of course Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, who are worth their salt. The other 98%, perhaps not so much.
Check out the new site.

by Smitty

From “Can This Presidency Be Saved?”, emphasis mine:

President Obama still has a shot at convincing voters that the GOP would make things worse, but his administration has not just lost control over the direction of the economy. It has lost control of the discussion about the economy.

With a maximally bloody-minded view, precisely two stooges would render the above statement true. The effective question is whether sufficient voters can be duped into supporting the policy of failure, which has failed. This blog would like anyone who wishes to vote for BHO again to shout ‘Jehova’* once you have exited your polling place:

Why did the stimulus fail? What did the President learn from this failure and what will the President try next? The White House has been so busy bobbing and weaving it has not communicated a simple, clear story about what went wrong and what happens next.

The stimulus failed because capitalism is what succeeds. The administrations non-grasp of this simple truth, and systemic, willful refusal to revisit the false basis for its fundamental assertions, mark it and anyone benighted enough to support it as abject fools.

These and similar blunders have two things in common: they are unforced errors, and they undercut the President’s ability to present himself as a visionary leader who both understands where the country is headed and has a plan for meeting the obstacles in our path. He frequently appears surprised by events, and over time confidence in his leadership is leaking away.

What Mead calls ‘unforced errors’ are the simple fruit of false beliefs and assertions. The quack or snake oil salesman is only successful insofar as the steady supply of dupes continue to suspend disbelief. When was the last time a total fraud ever recovered? Can’t think of any.

Americans are realistic enough to understand that the breakdown of the blue social model is a messy process and that perhaps no president can deliver a pain free transition to the next stage. But what they aren’t hearing from President Obama is a compelling description of what has gone wrong, how it can be fixed, and how the policies he proposes will take us to the next level.

More fundamentally, Americans are realizing that to have ever expected such vaguely divine output from any human being or government is pure crap. Jig’s up, and it proved a mindless 4/4 disco beat anyway. Obama lacks the wisdom to grasp that his weltanschauung is false.

Mead concludes:

The longer the President fails to dominate the discussion about where this country is going the more his authority will erode. In the end, a failure to define the problem and outline a convincing solution will hurt more than what now appears his likely failure to regenerate healthy economic growth by the next election.

He may have only one chance to get this right. A failed attempt to define the problem and control the discussion would further fuzz the President’s image and reinforce the sense among many voters that the man is not up to the hour.

The Obama Presidency can still be saved, but only if the President becomes the kind of inspiring and effective leader these tough and uncertain times demand.

That is much, much harder than it looks.

No, he’s jumped the intellectual shark. Unfortunately, he’s still got to land, and will lay economic waste to the country while doing so. I hope he lives decades to come, and grows to realize the depth of the contempt people hold for his ideas.

*Update: As pointed out in the comments, the name English name for YVHV should likely end in an ‘h’. Even if somebody did register http://www.jehova.net/.

by Smitty

Allahpundit is a great blogger, but “Video: Sign the petition to ban job-killing ATM machines” tramples a peeve of mine. If you decode the acronym, you now have ‘automated teller machine machines’. Similarly, the new military ID is a Common Access Card, or CAC. As you might expect, people call it a CAC card. Gaaah! On a related note, please do not ‘reply back’ to email from me. A simple reply is sufficient.
The consideration of all for the content of what they are writing and saying is greatly appreciated.

by Smitty

This blog would like to tout two State Senate races in Virginia. I’m only a month late mentioning Bryan Rhode, who is running in the 22nd Senate District. I went to school with Bryan’s brother Rob, who is an outstanding American if there ever was.
Closer to the Potomac, Tito ‘the Builder’ Munoz is running in the 36th Senate District. I met Tito while campaigning for Patrick Murray in 2008, and esteem the gentleman highly. Hat tip to just a conservative girl.
Recall, the task of recovering the country from Progressive rot takes effort at all levels of government. Props to Rhode and Munoz for undertaking the effort to run.