SubscribeIndeed, the U.S.-attorney scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales began when the White House fired federal prosecutors who resisted political pressure to drum up nonexistent cases of voting fraud against Democrats. "They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments that would scare these alleged hordes of illegal voters away," says David Iglesias, a U.S. attorney for New Mexico who was fired in December 2006. "We took over 100 complaints and investigated for almost two years — but I didn't find one prosecutable case of voter fraud in the entire state of New Mexico."RIF.
Some worry that if Barack Obama loses and there is suspicion of foul play in the election, violence could ensue in cities with large black populations.It may be more than black populations...
3.1.2 Insufficient grounds to reject ballotsIf they can't tell who you voted for, the ballot is invalid. If you didn't use a cross to mark your ballot, or filled in the whole circle, or your X left the circle? You're fine. And since you brought it up, the simple "check the circle beside the candidate of your choice" system is far more transparent and difficult to screw up than electronic voting systems or anything involving punchcards. Granted, this is partially due to the huge number of decisions Americans must make in every election, versus the simple "elect one person" of the Canadian system, but still.
A ballot should not be rejected by a judge simply because it was: (...)
marked where the mark extends outside the circle to the right of the candidate's name [304(3), DRO Manual]
Groeling found that, with varying degrees of statistical significance, CBS, NBC and ABC showed what Groeling calls a pro-Democrat bias. For instance, CBS was 35 percent less likely to report a five-point drop in approval for Bill Clinton than a similar rise in approval and was 33 percent more likely to report a five-point drop than a rise for George W. Bush. Meanwhile FOX News showed a statistically significant pro-Republican bias in the most controlled of the three models Groeling tested: its Special Report program was 67 percent less likely to report a rise in approval for Clinton than a decrease and 36 percent more likely to report the increase rather than the decrease for Bush.What this means is that the CBS, NBC, and ABC results were not statistically significant at the 0.05 level, the usual measure of statistical significance, the Fox News results were. The conclusion is that Fox News shows statistical evidence of bias, and the others do not, even though the observed data were in a direction consistent with bias. So, no the link doesn't don't pull your bacon out of the fire.
Passed in 2002, HAVA [Help America Vote Act] was hailed by leaders in both parties as a reform designed to avoid a repeat of the 2000 debacle in Florida that threw the presidential election to the U.S. Supreme Court. The measure set standards for voting systems, created an independent commission to oversee elections, and ordered states to provide provisional ballots to voters whose eligibility is challenged at the polls.In a nutshell: Republicans create a "voter fraud" boogeyman, and then toss up barriers that block demographics who typically vote Democratic, which is implemented on a local level (e.g., "In California, a Republican secretary of state blocked 43 percent of all new voters in Los Angeles from registering in early 2006 — many because of the state's failure to produce a tight match. In Florida, GOP officials created "match" rules that rejected more than 15,000 new registrants in 2006 and 2007 — nearly three-fourths of them Hispanic and black voters.")
To justify this battery of new voting impediments, Republicans cite an alleged upsurge in voting fraud. Indeed, the U.S.-attorney scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales began when the White House fired federal prosecutors who resisted political pressure to drum up nonexistent cases of voting fraud against Democrats. "They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments that would scare these alleged hordes of illegal voters away," says David Iglesias, a U.S. attorney for New Mexico who was fired in December 2006. "We took over 100 complaints and investigated for almost two years — but I didn't find one prosecutable case of voter fraud in the entire state of New Mexico."
The Bush administration's main point person on "ballot protection" has been Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department attorney who has advised states on how to use HAVA to erect more barriers to voting. Appointed to the Federal Election Commission by Bush, von Spakovsky has suggested that voter rolls may be stuffed with 5 million illegal aliens. In fact, studies have repeatedly shown that voter fraud is extremely rare. According to a recent analysis by Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voting crime at Barnard College, federal courts found only 24 voters guilty of fraud from 2002 to 2005, out of hundreds of millions of votes cast. "The claim of widespread voter fraud," Minnite says, "is itself a fraud."
Shortly before the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Paul Weyrich — a principal architect of today's Republican Party — scolded evangelicals who believed in democracy. "Many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo goo' syndrome — good government," said Weyrich, who co-founded Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. . . . As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." [Emphasis added]
Has there ever been a U.S. political race in which the world seems so emotionally invested?
Take this comment on the BBC website, in which the writer extols Mr. Obama's virtues before worrying that his very success "may well sink him in the last minute."
It's amazing how many people I know here are carrying on the same conversation. "You think he's safe now?" one worried friend asks. She doesn't say Mr. Obama's name. She doesn't have to.
I know most of you don't give a shit, but I just thought I'd let you know; if John McCain and Sarah Palin win the next presidential election, or manage to steal it without a fight, the rest of the world is WRITING. YOU. THE. FUCK. OFF.You realize you just convinced a dozen readers to vote for McCain, right?
A Day in the Life of Joe RepublicanAnonymous or Lois Carneiro, depending which Tacomagal you ask, I suppose.
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.
All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.
He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.
If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.
Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans.
The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.
He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."
Judging from the disturbing developments of the last two months, the verdict seems clear. Forget the self-reckoning and self-repairing--the Republicans seem intent on self-immolation.Pfft. Whatever, comrade. Since when does Forbes know anything about business?
McCain and his allies are now openly calling Obama a socialist because he wants to raise the top tax brackets back to their Clinton-era levels (when the country enjoyed the greatest peacetime expansion in our history) and provide a cut in the payroll tax to middle class workers.
These digs about a Democrat who has raised more money from Wall Street than his Republican opponent and been endorsed by notable red diaper babies like Warren Buffett, former Federal Reserve Chairman and Reagan appointee Paul Volcker, Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl and Google CEO Erik Schmidt? These attacks from a Republican Party whose president just called for nationalizing much of our banking system and whose nominee endorsed that same extreme government intervention in the marketplace?
« Older As the U.S. election approaches, you're getting fi... | Leadership for the 21st Centur... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
I know most of you don't give a shit, but I just thought I'd let you know; if John McCain and Sarah Palin win the next presidential election, or manage to steal it without a fight, the rest of the world is WRITING. YOU. THE. FUCK. OFF.
Signed,
The Rest Of The World
posted by you just lost the game at 7:48 AM on October 22, 2008 [9 favorites]