Juan Williams is gobsmacked. That’s a good word for it, when a guy just cannot fathom why his team’s losing, even though the reason is obvious to me. In an article he wrote for the website The Hill, he was expressing his disbelief that the Democrats were losing the “voting rights” issue; that is, the voter ID issue.

Even most black Americans — people who, overwhelmingly, don’t vote Republican — currently favor new requirements for voters to have photo identification. Three-quarters of all voters — people of all races and political parties — favor such laws, according to polls.

The black support for photo identification of voters can only be described as amazing.

Well Juan, it just seems to me that black Americans, overall, seem to highly value their right to vote. That’s not amazing; that’s American. Juan tries to tie the voter ID issue to the poll taxes and literacy tests of yesteryear, but that’s entirely upside down. A poll tax was to prevent black people from voting. Voter ID is to protect black people’s vote. #BlackVotesMatter

One of the reasons used against the idea of requiring ID to vote is that there has been so little voter fraud detected, that this is a solution looking for a problem. Well, the Department of Investigations in New York City recently finished up a report that shows that voter fraud can be pretty darn easy. Worse, we would have no idea at all that it was actually happening.

Undercover agents from the DOI tried to cast ballots as felons or dead people at 63 polling places last fall. Of the 63 attempts, 61, or 97%, were successful. Now, when they voted, they did so with a write-in for a fictitious “John Test” to keep from affecting the vote count. Ultimately, the DOI published its findings a few weeks ago in a 70-page report accusing the city’s Board of Elections of incompetence, waste, nepotism, and lax procedures.

Of the two attempts that failed, in the first case, a poll worker followed the agent outside and the “voter” was advised to go to the polling place near where he used to live and “play dumb” in order to vote. In the second case, the investigator was stopped from voting only because the felon whose name he was using was the son of the election official at the polling place. So basically, we’re talking about a 100% success rate, completely undetectable, with just a few changes in circumstances.

So the Board of Elections immediately got down to business and started coming up with ways to avoid this in the future. Heh, no, of course not. This is government we’re talking about! John Fund, who wrote the article I’m referring to, put it this way. “The Board approved a resolution referring the DOI’s investigators for prosecution. It also asked the state’s attorney general to determine whether DOI had violated the civil rights of voters who had moved or are felons, and it sent a letter of complaint to Mayor Bill de Blasio.”

Yup, they pointed fingers instead of fixing the problem. That’s why the legislature needs to deal with this, so entrenched bureaucracies don’t stick us with a broken system that’s easily gamed. And, as I’ve noted before, when Georgia got its voter ID law, minority participation went up, and higher than majority participation did. A win-win situation, and one that gets around a government board that is too busy with their little fiefdom to do the right thing. Who could be against that?

ObamaCare will require the use of an ID card. Does that make it racist? If not, would requiring an ID card to vote be racist? Or how about this; what if we used the ObamaCare card as a voter ID card? Would heads explode?

I would have thought that, by this time in history, it would be no big deal, but apparently a Cheerios ad on YouTube featuring a black father and white mother was getting so many racist comments that they disabled commenting. Watch the ad and decide for yourself. I find it utterly unobjectionable.

A family down the street from us at our previous house was black & white, and I once heard them referred to by another neighbor as "salt & pepper", which I took as derogatory rather than descriptive (knowing the guy who said it). And we met, through homeschooling channels, a black and white couple that described to us the racism they encountered when, for example, the white wife applied for an apartment and everything was going smoothly for weeks until the black husband showed up to look at the place, and suddenly nothing was available.

This is 1950s/60s stuff. I would have thought we’d have learned by now. But here’s the thing. We still have neo-Nazis, and that 1940s stuff. We still have ideologies and twisted thoughts from, frankly, the beginning of time. We will always have racists. We will always have sin surrounding us. But we can’t think that this defines our culture.

The problem I see now is that being for a public policy like voter ID is equated to hateful comments on interracial couples. Since racism still exists, it is considered the driving force behind so many issues, and stifles actual conversation.

Yes, racism still exists, but not at all like it used do. (Could we have had a black President in the 50s or 60s?) It is a fringe (but, unfortunately, vocal) element at this point. Don’t dilute the term by using it where it’s not warranted.

Good morning

1. Forgotten people?
2. Economic growth.
3. Let’s see, asymmetric information is a reason for higher taxation? Like the government has really proved it spends its money wisely.
4. Next target for computer security attacks.
5. Voter ID.
6. Last words of one man, still not as witty as Oscar Wilde, who had the funniest last words I’ve ever heard (“Either that wallpaper goes, or I’ll go. (then he died)”)
7. Why all them great books?
8. Some baseball quips and anecdotes.
9. Religion and the law in Pakistan.
10. Not Maize, Taize.
11. Of culture and evangelism.

Good morning.

1. Scientific method.
2. Some thoughts on the Olympics. And this too, which raises and interesting question … from what cultural change from the Greeks comes our passion for team vs individual sport?
3. Quiet and clean, the Father’s called it dispassion.
4. An Obamacare conversation recalled …
5. and not unrelated, some anticipation of unanticipated consequences.
6. Let’s see the left thinks voter ID is racist … so, will they admit this is also racism by the same token?
7. And the destruction of one argument against voter ID succinctly put.
8. Shape and selection.
9. Perhaps (as I’ve suggested) to stay in the game TSA needs to move to information tech from search tech. Or more likely a combination of both.
10. Horrors! Global warming and its consequences.
11. As usual, lead with a lie ’cause that’s the road to credibility. Seriously, when it’s very cold … that’s weather. When it’s warm … that’s climate. Consistency is king or can any one say “confirmation bias”?
12. Prototype and what will it cost? Seriously.
13. Finally, a better response to the “what policy” suggestion best should come from the Aurora shooting … not guns, but better mental health care.
14. So, riddle me this, how does that fall into the DHS mandate.
15. Of Syria and intervention.
16. 25% of Americans make over 250k per year? I didn’t know that.
17. Talking of horror, the past, and what to make of it.
18. Worship isn’t about feeling good.
19. Ephraim!

Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States, speaking to the NAACP on the racism of voter ID laws.

“Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them,” Holder said in a speech to the NAACP on Tuesday, referring specifically to a law being implemented in Texas. “We call those poll taxes.”

But not just anyone was allowed in to hear Mr. Holder rail against proper identification. The journalists listening to him, in order to get in, had to provide … wait for it … proper identification. So it is racist to require ID, and if so, what if the NAACP requires it? The answer … could get you charged with a hate crime.

Y’know, if you want to rent a movie, buy a beer and cigarettes, or fly on an airplane, you have to have an ID. Are each of them more important than your right to vote? Is that the message Holder and the NAACP are trying to send.

Check out this site for a list of myths about voter ID laws, and why they are indeed myths. And the next time you go to the Will Call window to pick up your tickets to the game or concert, and have to show your ID, consider whether that so-called hassle is worth it to protect your constitutional right to vote.

“I would not have you exchange the gold of individual Christianity for the base metal of Christian Socialism.” – Charles Spurgeon. He had quite a bit to say on economic and political issues of the day, applicable to that day and this.

For those still blaming Bush for our economic situation, Paul Mirengoff reminds us that the housing  market collapse was the main cause of it, and the Bush administration tried to keep it from happening. Democrats would have none of that.

"The New York Police Department, the mayor and the city’s top prosecutors on Monday endorsed a proposal to decriminalize the open possession of small amounts of marijuana…." But the real scourge, Big Gulps, will not be tolerated.

A cautionary tale about hyper-partisanship.

Remember those advertisers that left the Limbaugh show after his remarks about Sandra Fluke? One big one tried to come crawling back, and Limbaugh just said No.

The Obama administration is against voter ID laws, but Michelle Obama herself required IDs to get a book signed. Irony. Meter. Pegging.

Austerity works, when it’s actually implemented. Just ask the European country who’s economy outpaced the average growth in the euro-zone by 500%, and has the only budget surplus there.

Obama actually was a member of a socialist political party while in Chicago. Stanley Kurtz of National Review has the documentation. Where was the mainstream media on this 4 years ago?

In case you heard otherwise, no, the Boy Scouts are not changing their policy on gay scouts and scout leaders.

There have been more casualties in Afghanistan under less than 3 years of Obama than we did under 8 years of Bush. Additionally, in the first 3 years of the Iraq war, we had fewer casualties than two and a half under Obama. This is not to criticize Obama for these deaths; that’s what happen in war. But Reason magazine notes that this raises 2 questions. "First, where are the antiwar protests? And second, where is the press?" The "anti-war" protestors are, as I’ve said before, more anti-Bush (or anti-Republican) than anything else. And the press are tied up trying to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin. It’s a full-time job, y’know.

Unions hand-picked 6 of the most vulnerable Republican state senate districts to target for recall. They just needed 3 wins to take control. They could only manage 2. Granted, recall elections have been notoriously difficult to win over the years, but if Democrats and the unions that sponsor them can’t get their base energized over their own referendum on alleged "anti-worker" sentiment in hand-picked districts, that doesn’t say much about how the public views them.

Atheists seem to believe that if humanity would just get rid of this archaic religion thing, violence would drop and peace would reign. Just ask Richard Dawkins, Chris Hitchens, or even John Lennon. Yeah, well, how did that work in the Soviet Union, where atheism was essentially the national religion? Or in Europe today, especially Britain, where religion is on the decline?

And speaking of ideas not working, how’s that gun ban in Britain working out for those store owners in the middle of the riots?

Remember the spontaneous "You lie!" outburst by Rep. Joe Wilson of S. Carolina during an address by President Obama about his health care bill? Joe said that after Obama said, "There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally." Well guess what? Turns out Joe was right.

Why do we need voter ID laws? To keep this from happening; overenfranchised Democratic voters. And how about this bit of irony: "While NAACP President Benjamin Jealous lashed out at new state laws requiring photo ID for voting, an NAACP executive sits in prison, sentenced for carrying out a massive voter fraud scheme."

Dale Franks of Questions & Observations has some great points about our economic situation. A couple of paragraphs, from one post talking about the hole we’re in:

And don’t come back at me with some lame "Our GDP:Debt ratio was 120% at the end of WWII" silliness.  Yes it was. And you know how we fixed it? We cut Federal spending from $92 billion in 1945 to $38 billion in 1949. For 2011, 40% of the federal budget was financed with borrowed money: We’ll spend  $3.818 trillion, of which  $1.645 trillion is borrowed. If we funded only defense, Medicare/Medicaid, and Social Security, and interest on the debt, we’d still have a deficit of $673 billion. Just to balance the budget this year—forget paying off any debt—we’d have to cut an additional ~25% from Health, Defense, and Pensions. Follow the link and download the CSV file, open it up in Excel, and run the numbers yourself. The magic number to balance the budget this year is the revenue of $2.174 trillion.

That’s $2 trillion this year, not over 10 years.

And from another post, noting that tax increases alone, even historic tax increases and an incredibly rosy set of other assumptions, aren’t going to do it. Spending cuts, substantial cuts, must happen.

In order to pay off this year’s share of the $61.6 trillion in unfunded liabilities, the government will have to collect $4.261 trillion in revenues.  With an estimated 2011 GDP of $14.922 trillion, that comes to 28.6% of GDP. If we assume government revenues rise to the historical average, the we’ll need the government to take 31.6% of GDP in tax revenues. Happily, because we’re assuming a 3% rise in GDP and revenues for every year over the next 30 years, that percentage will decline slightly every year, until, in 2041, we’ll only need to collect 20.5% of GDP in tax revenues to pay off the last installment, assuming, again, 14.8% of GDP covers the operation of government.  If we go back to the 17.8% figure, then we’ll have to collect 23.5% of GDP in revenues.

Either way, for the next 30 years, we need to collect substantially higher tax revenues than we have collected at any time in the nation’s history, and we have to do it every year for 30 years.

The point being, this is probably not possible, economically or politically. This is how bad our situation is, and how much action we need to take now on spending.

And yet, who gets blamed for trying to bring sanity back to the budget? (Click for a larger version.)

John Fund has a good round-up of the recent Supreme Court 6-3 ruling upholding Indiana’s voter fraud laws.  There was one thing, however, that the justices were unanimous on.

In ruling on the constitutionality of Indiana’s voter ID law – the toughest in the nation – the Supreme Court had to deal with the claim that such laws demanded the strictest of scrutiny by courts, because they could disenfranchise voters. All nine Justices rejected that argument.

Even Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the three dissenters who would have overturned the Indiana law, wrote approvingly of the less severe ID laws of Georgia and Florida. The result is that state voter ID laws are now highly likely to pass constitutional muster.

As much as the Left has tossed that word around (and at times incorrectly), this is indeed a crushing blow to budding Mayor Daley’s of the world.

But read the whole thing.  The case was from Indiana, and there’s a very close Obama connection.  You’d expect him to want to avoid voter fraud, right?

Right?

[tags]John Fund,Supreme Court,Indiana,vote fraud[/tags]