tagged w/ Don't "Move Along"!
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Professor Jonathan Turley said there is an "uncanny similarity in term of timing," drawing a comparison with voting scandals shortly before the previous two presidential elections.
by: David Edwards and Andrew McLemore
The McCain campaign's allegations of voter fraud "look like" an attempt to suppress voting in battleground states, said a professor of George Washington University.
Professor Jonathan Turley said there is an "uncanny similarity in term of timing," drawing a comparison with voting scandals shortly before the previous two presidential elections.
"I think it is fair to say that some of these challenges do look like suppression efforts," Turley said in an interview on MSNBC. "So I think there is really grounds to be concerned here."
The allegations of voter fraud made by the McCain campaign about ACORN and Sen. Obama's alleged connections to it sound similar to another scandal during President Bush's administration, said Robert Bauer, a lawyer or the Obama campaign.
"This is an astonishing repeat of the kind of toxic intrusion of politics into the lawful administration of justice that we saw during the U.S. attorney scandal," Bauer said. "We're seeing a repeat of that."
The Obama campaign asked Friday for a federal investigation into whether the Bush administration and the McCain campaign have been illegally working together to spread "unsupported, spurious allegations of voter fraud."
The campaign's attorney wrote the request to Attorney General Michael Mukasey after learning from an Associated Press report that the FBI is investigating the controversial organization ACORN, Bloomberg reported.
In Wednesday's final presidential debate, McCain insinuated that Obama is involved with the organization and claimed it is attempting to sway the November election.
"We need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating maybe one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy," McCain said.
Democrats and Barack Obama have attacked the controversy as ridiculous political mudslinging, the Associated Press reported.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN, has championed liberal causes since 1970. This year, ACORN hired more than 13,000 part-time workers and sent them out in 21 states to sign up voters in minority and poor neighborhoods.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow suggested the McCain campaign's allegations are an attempt to reduce the turnout of newly registered voters, most of whom are Democrats.
"To keep turnout low, prevent votes from being counted and scare voters into thinking there are massive voting shenanigans and that their vote won't count anyway," Maddow said.
The MSNBC host cited a comment from Steve Schmidt, McCain’s chief strategist as an implication of their plan.
"The scenario for winning for us is a narrow-victory scenario," Schmidt said in an interview with The New York Times.
This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast October 17, 2008.
Professor Jonathan Turley said there is an "uncanny similarity in term of... more
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By Mike Farrell
"You really do hate America!" This was the parting shot from a man I had just debated on a television show shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Because hes a notorious right-wing blowhard, I laughed it off as the raving of a crackpot in extremis.
Little did I know.
Soon, those of us who opposed the Iraq war, torture, "extraordinary rendition" Guantanamo, spying on innocent Americans and other illegal tools in the Cheney/Bush black bag began to hear variations on that theme from people one would have expected to know better. And its gotten worse as they've become more desperate' or do the depths to which we've fallen suggest a fault line in America's culture?
Only a short time ago, we dissenters were called 'Saddam-lovers', ;America-haters' or, when they really wanted to cut deep, 'French!' But that usually came from the relatively unhinged, like my debate partner. Today, similar imprecations fall readily from the lips of media bloviators while the hoi polloi lurches toward lynch-mob tenor with screams of 'traitor' 'terrorist' and 'off with his head'; insults not aimed at lowly actors but rather at the man who could be the next president of the United States. Worse, they are winked at and ignored, or even defended and embraced by some of those from whom we expect better.
As one in the crucible of this volcanic yet potentially transformative moment, John McCain, who claims to put 'Country First', 'should reread the novel';The Ugly American. Sarah Palin can watch the movie.
Fifty years ago, Eugene Burdick and William Lederer's book exposed the boorish behavior some of our citizens exhibit while abroad, warning that a 'mysterious change seems to come over Americans'; when they are amid people and cultures seen as different. While the ensuing half-century proved those in developing countries to be neither less intelligent, less capable nor less interested in improving their lives than human beings elsewhere, this breed of Americans, inclined to 'isolate themselves socially' per Burdick and Lederer, seems to have turned inward, chanting 'USA, USA!'
As the world prospered behind their backs, those affected by this insular strain of American nationalism metastasized into swaggering jingoists full of Cold War machismo, content to wave the flag and 'Go for the gold.' For them, the collapse of the Evil Empire proved the world's sole superpower could do as it damned well pleased: 'We're No. 1' baby! Anybody who doesn't like it should get the hell out of the way.
'[L]oud and ostentatious'; per the book, this parochial group bequeathed its 'mysterious change' to generations of Know-Nothings who stuck to their own, seeing 'difference'; as a threat. Dumbed-down by television and wary of anyone lacking sufficient fervor for their triumphant “Christian nation,” they made those of different color, heritage or belief into 'the other'; a practice encouraged by coded appeals to racism from their would-be leaders. With Nixon's 'Southern strategy' and 'silent majority' setting the stage, Reagan's 'welfare queens' and Bush the First's 'Willie Horton' spread the contagion while conferring it legitimacy.
Embraced as true conservatives and stoked by hate-radio millionaires, these changelings seduced the Republican Party, laid claim to the flag and launched a 'culture war'. Adopted by anti-government hucksters, empire-seekers and profligate free-marketeers, they divided the nation with a God and Country ethos that declared the Bible inerrant, reviled homosexuality, 'permissiveness' liberalism and critical thinking, denied women equal rights, and children any at all, and cowed the media into submission.
Continued at link...By Mike Farrell
"You really do hate America!" This was the parting shot... more
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Joe the Plumber? More like Joe the Keating Family Operative
Questions: Why is Joe the Plumbers ties to Charles Keating being ignored by mainstream media? Why havent they told ordinary Americans about his ties to Charles Keating? Would Joe the Plumber get the traction if people knew about his connections to the Keating family? Do they really think Joe the Plumber is being used by John McCain by accident?
Sounds like a Karl Rove strategy to me. Done in plain sight.
By David Neiwert Thursday Oct 16, 2008 8:59am
I guess it's no wonder John McCain was so happy to use "Joe the Plumber" as a debate prop last night -- he's a partisan Republican who also happens to be a member of McCain's old friends, the Keating family.
From Martin Eisenstadt:
Turns out that Joe Wurzelbacher from the Toledo event is a close relative of Robert Wurzelbacher of Milford, Ohio. Who’s Robert Wurzelbacher? Only Charles Keating’s son-in-law and the former senior vice president of American Continental, the parent company of the infamous Lincoln Savings and Loan. The now retired elder Wurzelbacher is also a major contributor to Republican causes giving well over $10,000 in the last few years.
Now I guess we know why Joe is telling the press that Obama is a "socialist" and that the Obama tax plan "infuriated" him. After all, it would hit families like the Keatings and their minions the hardest.
Not to mention that Obama's economic-recovery plan would put the crimps on influence peddlers like McCain's old friends, the Keating Five.
But he sure made for a good one-day story.
Joe the Plumber? More like Joe the Keating Family Operative
Questions: Why is Joe... more
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast - Drinking the ACORN Kool-Aid: How Cries of Voter Fraud Cover Up GOP Elections Theft
Virtually the entire mainstream electronic media drank ACORN Kool-Aid this month brewed up by the Republican National Committee. Almost no one seriously challenged John McCain's comical assertions that ACORN, a grassroots voter registration group, "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."
While the Republicans had the distracted media searching for links between Obama and ACORN, RNC operatives were busily completing one of the most massive voter suppression and purging efforts in American history, stealing hundreds of thousands of Democratic votes across the embattled swing states and striving to arrange chaos and endless lines at the voting booths next week.
First the facts about ACORN. Months ago, we obtained, as part of our investigation for Rolling Stone magazine, the Republican's list the GOP alleged were the very worst cases of vote and registration fraud by ACORN and similar groups. We went through the names the GOP asserted were "obviously, undeniably and clearly fraudulent" voter registrations.
First, there was Melissa Tais, a dubious ACORN registrant. Her two voter registration forms show, admittedly, suspiciously different signatures. Republicans suggested Melissa was part of a massive fraud to allow Democrats to vote twice.
They were wrong. Ms. Tais, a Cerrillos, New Mexico, waitress, told us she had signed one form on a table and one form holding the paper in her hand. Hence, a second, wobbly signature.
Then there was Patricia White, who Republicans claimed was a fictitious voter. When we filmed her at home in Albuquerque, she seemed real enough.
And so on, through the entire GOP list -- not one fraud. And these were their best cases out of the five million "illegal voters" who Republican leaders claim have infiltrated America's voting rolls.
The overblown histrionics about ACORN do not surprise those of us who have been watching the RNC's election manipulation antics. For eight years White House operatives have been trying to gin up press stories about voter fraud. David Iglesias of New Mexico was one of seven U.S. Attorneys fired by the White House for their refusal to bring voter fraud prosecutions. "We took over 100 complaints," from the GOP, he told us, "We investigated for almost 2 years, I didn't find one prosecutable voter fraud case in the entire state of New Mexico."
Iglesias, a McCain supporter, has, for the first time, leveled a new and serious charge: Despite finding none of the 200 voters guilty, he says the White House nevertheless ordered him to illegally prosecute baseless cases against innocent citizens, just to gin up voter fraud publicity. His refusal, he says, cost him his job. "They were looking for politicized -- for improperly politicized US attorneys to file bogus voter fraud cases."
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast - Drinking the ACORN Kool-Aid: How Cries of... more
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With reports of voting problems rife in the media, and instances of vote flipping seen in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas, elections watchdogs are on their toes for any more foul play.
In spite of their activism, 50,000 voters have been lopped off Georgia's rolls.
CNN's Abbie Boudreau and Scott Bronstein reported:
College senior Kyla Berry was looking forward to voting in her first presidential election, even carrying her voter registration card in her wallet.
But about two weeks ago, Berry got disturbing news from local election officials.
"This office has received notification from the state of Georgia indicating that you are not a citizen of the United States and therefore, not eligible to vote," a letter from the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections said.
But Berry is a U.S. citizen, born in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a passport and a birth certificate to prove it.
Berry is one of more than 50,000 registered Georgia voters who have been "flagged" because of a computer mismatch in their personal identification information. At least 4,500 of those people are having their citizenship questioned and the burden is on them to prove eligibility to vote.
Experts say lists of people with mismatches are often systematically cut, or "purged," from voter rolls.
The Associated Press reported that federal judges have order Georgia to stop using Social Security Numbers and driver license numbers to verify voters' immigration status.With reports of voting problems rife in the media, and instances of vote flipping seen... more
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