One of the conspiracy theories floating around Republican circles says the Obama Campaign is using legal means to try to suppress the military vote. Who’s spreading this rumor? Mitt Romney.
Originally, everyone in Ohio got to vote early, but a recent law restricted early voting for Ohio residents not in the military, but kept it for military voters. Is the lawsuit Obama for America v. Husted (case documents at Election Law @ Moritz) directed at military voters and their special privilege? No. It seeks to give all voters in Ohio the same early voting rights as those in the military.
Issue:
Whether Ohio’s current election law, which restricts early voting in the three days prior to an election on certain voters, violates 42 USCA 1983 and/or the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Details at FactCheck.org.
These kind of non-factual ads are only believed by the base, which makes them even sillier!
Actually, IIRC, the rules allow anyone overseas to vote early, not just those in the military. So, someone who is working for a British bank in London can vote early, but someone working for a US bank in state, can’t.
Now, I don’t know how ex-pats vote, but I can assume that the Rs believe that they are skewed well to the R side.
This reminds me of a birther posting I read the other day which claimed that “Democrats” wanted to keep finance politics out of the first Obama-Romney debate.
When in fact it was three Democrats who spoke out against *restricting* the debate about finance politics to a certain subset (namely, which of a set of proposals the candidate would subscribe to).
So again, “speaking out against limitations” is twisted to “demanding limitations”.
If anybody can point me to similar examples from the left, I’d be happy to see them. Just to see if I have any confirmation bias when I think “typically right-wing” every time I see such distortions.
Love me some factcheck.org!
The base continues to believe it, even after it has been debunked.
A person I know on Facebook posted something about this a couple of weeks ago. When I and several others pointed out that it has been debunked by both Factcheck.org and Politifact, she ignored them and said that she believes her source (which happened to be Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law & Justice).
Today someone I know posted a link which claims that a Gallup Poll this year showed that Obama is the most polarizing President in history. But the poll doesn’t say that. It says that his SUPPORT is the most polarized in history – 80% of Democrats having a favorable opinion of him vs. only 10% of Republicans. And in fact George W. Bush’s support was even more polarized – between 2004 and 2007 there was a spread of about 75% between his support from Republicans and his support from Democrats.
If you can’t convince them with facts…
See, a claim like that just sounds absurd on its very face, without even looking up further information on those polls. Lincoln’s election led to the immediate secession of 7 states and a civil war.
The GOP is quite open about wanting to be relieved of their voting rights. The founder of the Heritage Foundation even mentions this in his speeches. Just recently Doug Preisse said “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban— read African-American —voter-turnout machine” He doesn’t want Black people to vote.
It’s right there for all to see. A Constitutional right being taken away right before our faces.
Yeah, the range of very bold voter suppression efforts in states with GOP governors this year is quite concerning… to say the least!
It really depresses me that there isn’t more moral outrage about this stuff and they can so openly get away with these and various other tactics of stripping rights away from women, minorities, etc…
I like them, too but I don’t waste my time citing them when I argue with birthers.
No claim is too stupid to be believed. The latest birther folly seems to be the claim that “more than 80 countries” have allegedly just filed charges with the International Criminal Court – against Obama, Biden, Pelosi and Michelle Obama (!). I’ve commented on every birther blog where this claim was posted, asking to name just one of these countries. So far, I got crickets, as was to be expected.
I guess the part of their brain that says “He won’t have a second term. He won’t have a second term. He… Just… Won’t… Can’t… Mustn’t… Aaarrrghhhhhh” is working overtime.
I see that exhibited in the claim that President Obama is ruling by Executive Order and that he uses Executive Orders more than any other President.
Here is a summary of EOs to date by President:
President Carter – January, 1977 to August, 1980 – 266 EOs signed.
President Reagan – January, 1981 to August, 1984 – 201 EOs signed.
President G. H. W. Bush – January, 1989 to August, 1992 – 146 EOs signed.
President Clinton – January, 1993 to August, 1996 – 184 EOs signed.
President G. W. Bush – January, 2001 to August, 2004 – 167 EOs signed.
President Obama – January, 2009 to August, 2012 – 134 EOs signed.
When you point this out you get no response.
Yep. That is really the extent of their mindset here, period. All magic thinking based on emotional desires and not at all grounded in reality. Nor do they really care.
Ah, but that doesn’t include Obama’s secret Executive Orders!
Although I don’t know how you enforce a secret order without telling someone.
Secret Police?
that sounds like fun! What is the charge, do our birther friends say?
and do they even accept that the ICC has jurisdiction?
LOL! Excellent point.
But then again, that just points to the endless self-contradictory hypocricy of Birthers and other hate-based conpiracy paranoids. None of their BS is thought through at all. It is simply emotional comfort food for their sad and twisted little lives.
I mean seriously, look at the current state of Birtherism, where Xenophobia is one of the dominant themes and where most of them subscribe to a simplistic jingoistic mindset of “USA good, rest of world = socialist/communist/furriner = just plain BAD”…
…Yet in their desperation to hate Obama, they constantly fly off to fifth-rate online tabloids like “Pravda Online” and “Candadian Free Press”…
…And Orly keeps petitioning various international bodies with her nonsense too…
So yeah, these sad little hate-based pea brains don’t think anything through at all and therefore, their actions will always be full of endless contradictions and examples of blatant hypocricy, that only they themselves are too blinded in self-delusion to notice. Which is why there is little daylight between a true conspiracy nut / cult member and Poe’s Law… true parody can barely compete with their own twisted and illogical, hole-filled insanities…
I just can’t wait to see what happens if he does get a second term.
No. This guy.
Well, there is his secret Army which is training in FEMA camps.
LOL! I vaguely remember those Hanna-Barbara characters from my youth…but their names escape me.
Expect a lot of increased whiney demands for secession…
Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole
Ah yes, Secret Squirrel! Up there with Top Cat, Grape Ape and Hong Kong Phooey!
Actually, now that I think about it, if Obama does get a second term, I’ll bet you anything that Birthers cry “election fraud” and advance the claims that millions of illegal aliens without IDs voted for Obama.
They need to come up with some new excuse to pretend it didn’t really happen. They no longer have the ACORN bogeyman to kick around…although I still hear some of them pathetically continuing to use it…
I just wanted to point out that I’ve always suspected that the real reason that the nonsense myths of Birtherism didn’t ramp up until AFTER his election, was BECAUSE the election results were NOT at all close…and therefore, these various types of bigots needed to come up with some other excuse for their cognitive dissonance of seeing the first black President elected by our populace. I think many of them just refused to believe it was even possible, until it actually happened…
…and at that point, the realization of it so disturbed them that they had to invent all these myths to comfort themselves and pretend that it “didn’t really happen” and that they could come up with some magical way to invalidate and make the whole chapter of history just go away…
From what I’ve seen, the right-wing motto seems “conservatism cannot fail, only YOU can fail conservatism”.
For people prone to accuse their opponents of being “communists”, it’s a remarkably communist mind-set of the Mao’s Cultural Revolution era.
In this case, it means that Obama cannot be elected so other factors must be found to explain why he is the WH: brown-skinned people, jews, communists, muslims, the French, reptoids, etc.
Not just that – they also want to make sure it won’t happen again, ever, or at least in their lifetime.
That’s why you don’t just see the “Obama is ineligible” myth, but also the “when this is all over, the Democratic party will be dead (and we will have GOP presidents for the next 100 years)” delusion.
That’s the one thing that shines through their cognitive dissonance – even though most of them must inevitably believe that the GOP is “in on it” (which is the only logical explanation within their bizarro world why no Republican takes on the eligibility issue), you never hear them say “both parties must go” (well, some of them say that, but that’s the fringe among the fringe).
Good points. I always appreciate getting your outside perspective, as there are aspects that I can easily overlook and miss, without that exterior angle of view. I’m glad that folks like you, Keith, Paul, Magic, etc. continue to take the time from living over there to pay attention and cover how you see things over here and how our stuff is playing over there.
All of you, our international regulars here, do us a great service in providing those broader perspectives and sometimes, I feel I learn the most from what you all have to say.
So I just want to take a moment to raise my glass (chamomille tea at the moment, it is an early workday morning over here right now, after all) and toast all of you for your time, efforts and contribution! You folks really are part of the magic of what makes this site such an essential, informative and enjoyable must-stop destination of my day! 😉
Thank you that’s very sweet of you to say this.
We’re having a bit of a heat wave here, so I’ll raise my glass of icy cool peach “sirop” back at you! 🙂
Wow, again, great insights here! I think you are really on to something, which ties into the whole broader agenda of the current GOP makeup.
I think you’ve hit on the connective tissue behind not just the GOP’s infamous “permanent majority” agenda (as prominently pushed by folks like Newt, Rove, Rush and Luntz), but also the conservative & WASP fears of a world that is too quickly changing from what they knew…
There are very real and hard to avoid major demographic changes in our makeup here, which are for the first time in our history, getting close to the point of shifting the establishes “balance of power”. We are already fairly close to the tipping point, in which only suppression tactics (or worse) can forstall this. Which is one of the reasons you see such an alarmingly intense (and fairly open) effort on the right to do just that. As they have become a party increasingly driven by WASP tribalism, they keep going further down the path towards xenophobia and bigotry, instead of embracing inclusion.
What started out as Reagan’s “Big Tent” party movement, turned out to simply bring the wrong tribalistic elements into power…causing a reverse of the whole “Big Tent” concept in the first place. A small contingent of their loyal party following are “tolerated” by the rest, merely as convenient tokens, not as true equals. Quite frankly, I really don’t get why these “token” groups haven’t fully grasped this yet… “Stockholm syndrome”, I guess…
The other key elephant in the room (pun intended) of where this stems from, is connected directly to how extremely conservative evangelical religious zealotry operates and festers within cultures. Enough cannot be said of how much that really is the impetus behind much of their mindset and the crazy and alarming behaviors we are seeing from the GOP these days.
Such rigid black and white thinking and the need for puritanical control of a follower’s will, leads to attacks against independent and critical thinking and everything that can lead to it, including education, science and modernity itself. The increasing pace of technology and availability to access alternative sources of information is a threat to their control mechanisms. Hence, the sharp increase of attacks on all these fronts and the need to try to discredit any source of information within their follower’s minds, that is outside of their full control. Many of the RW think tanks, propaganda outlets and alternative media/education sources we increasingly see are simply a product of this direct intent.
From that angle, the zealots have reason to fear an approaching demographic “tipping point” shift too. A current article from the BBC discusses that trend shift:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19262884
So, when you tie all these factors together, it becomes more apparent that the political rhetoric on the right about “taking back their country” and viewing this upcoming election as the “most important election in our lifetimes” and a “must win battle for the soul of America” is not simply hyperbolic rah-rah fluff at all. No, this is one area where they are deadly serious and worried about the “writing on the wall” of various demographic shifts and therefore are becoming increasingly determined and desperate to take any “ends justify the means” methods they can get away with, in order to try to stop it and regain/maintain control…
You’re welcome!
Where I live in Ohio, our relative heatwave seems to have finally passed and we’ve finally seen a healthy dose of rain in recent days. Today and this weekend looks to be quite pleasant and the grass has finally returned to a more healthy green instead of lots of sickly brown and I can look forward to mowing in late afternoons again, instead of waiting until late evening for it to be cool enough to do so. Then again, our weather here has been milder and kinder than many areas of the country, where the heat and drought have been much more extensive. So I’m really grateful for where I live and can’t imagine what this summer has been like for a lot of the folks in the South and particularly, the Southwest.
And we all remember who predicted a 1000 year rule….
The last week has been brutal here — in the low 90s F, which is highly unusual. It’s a mass of hot air from North Africa. Few people have air conditioning (generally not needed) which doesn’t help.
We live in an old stone house so when it gets into the 70s at night, we open every window and let in the cool air, and close everything around 9:15 am, when it starts warming up. Still, after a while, even the stones end up absorbing residual heat…
The vacationing Brits love it. But you know the sayings about mad dogs and Englishmen…
Well, the guy succeeded in part:
Roman salute (used as Schicklgruber salute) – illegal in Germany.
Swastika (thousands of years of use in Asia) – illegal in Germany.
First stanza of the German national anthem – never sung at official events, singing in private marks you a Nazi sympathizer
Greek aestheticism – associated with Nazi propaganda movies (Riefenstahl)
Letters “SS” – not used in license number plates on cars as in “K-SS 1234”.
Whatever he touched has become tainted forever.
(On the other hand, the “Law on Legal Advice” (Rechtsberatungsgesetz) – that was enacted with the primary objective of keeping Jews out of the legal professions – is still used to allow giving legal advice to others to professionals only.)