unusualmusic_lj_archive | Oct. 15th, 2008

Oct. 15th, 2008

BREAKING: Incident at Philadelphia Obama Office

PHILADELPHIA -- There was a scare Tuesday at the South Philadelphia campaign headquarters of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

The office at 15th and Christian streets was filled with volunteers around 5 p.m. when one of them brought in the mail and opened a letter that had a note and a powdery substance on it that immediately set off alarms.

She notified a supervisor. Then, they placed the letter outside, evacuated the building and called police.

Fortunately, the substance found in the letter was harmless and nobody was hurt. But the incident is still under investigation as a threat, Fox 29's Sharon Crowley reported.MORE

I just got an astounding e-mail from a Republican consultant I know well. He's a guy who's always thought Obama had a "glass jaw," and was always among those agitating for hitting Obama harder.

Recently, he conducted a focus group in an upper-Midwestern state, showing them the kind of ad he thought would work: A no-holds-barred attack, cut for an independent group, which hasn't aired.

I'm just going to reprint his amazed e-mail about the focus group:

Reagan Dems and Independents. Call them blue-collar plus. Slightly more Target than Walmart.

Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he's too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON'T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT...but they STILL don't give a f***. They said right out, "He won't do anything better than McCain" but they're STILL voting for Obama.

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:

54 year-old white male, voted Kerry '04, Bush '00, Dole '96, hunter, NASCAR fan...hard for Obama said: "I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President.MORE

California GOP had Same Voter Registration Problems as ACORN in 2006

Faked names on voter registration forms. Error rates as high as 60 percent. Firing the people responsible for these errors. Investigations launched by local and state police. Sound familiar? This is not ACORN in the 2008 election's final days.

This is the California Republican Party and its contractors in 2006, when the same problems that are now dogging ACORN and providing political fodder for GOP attacks plagued an effort by California Republicans to register 750,000 people.

The details were all spelled out in a series of Los Angeles Times stories, which quoted former California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres saying these kinds of errors are inevitable "when you use private vendors." Even the state's top election official in 2006, Republican Bruce McPherson, was forced to investigate his own party's actions.

These same issues surfaced again last week as ACORN, the low-income advocacy organization which ran 2008's largest voter drive apart from political parties with 1.3 million new voters, was hammered by the GOP for submitting falsified voter registrations. The GOP's attacks have increased and even John McCain is saying that ACORN's actions are proof the Democrats are trying to steal the 2008 election.

...

The only thing ACORN's errors prove is that mistakes in big voter registration drives are inevitable, no matter who conducts them. When you look at all the other problems in the nation's voting systems -- from poorly designed ballots to electronic machines that lose votes cast -- the larger truth is every aspect of American elections is imperfect.

...

But let's put ACORN's errors in perspective. More than 120 million Americans may vote in November. ACORN, which hired 13,000 workers to register 1.3 million voters, had a few bad hires - like any big company.

But unlike the California GOP in its 2006 voter drive, ACORN has a policy of telling local election officials when it believes it has fraudulent registrations. It is required by states to submit all voter applications and urges election officials to prosecute knowing mistakes. The current case against ACORN comes from its own disclosures.
...

Last week, the New York Times reported that states using Social Security data to verify and update voter lists found 2.4 million "non-matches" for existing and new voters this year through September. The Social Security Administration says its data can be wrong 28.5 percent of the time when used this way, Wired Magazine reported in September.MORE

John McCain’s Voter Suppression Committee

Nearly a quarter of John McCain’s “Clean Election and Voter Fraud Committee,” chaired by Warren Rudman and John Danforth, have been involved in GOP voter suppression efforts or unfounded partisan claims of voter fraud. Of the 21 members of the committee, five have been engaging in these shady efforts.

t’s no surprise that Republicans engage in voter fraud. Watch what happened last week when “Clean Election and Voter Fraud Committee,” member Tom Davis tells an audience of reporters at the National Press Club last week that Republicans don’t suppress votes. The reaction? They laughed! A lot!

In addition to Davis, who has a history of openly discussing subtle voter suppression techniques, the committee includes

* Cameron Quinn, who was a director of the Republican voter suppression front group, the American Center for Voting Rights.
* California Secretary of State Bill Jones, who has long fought for ways to make it more difficult for people to vote.
* Susan Molinari who cried wolf about voter fraud in 2004 and 2006, only to find her allegations proven false.
* Larry D. Thompson who hired Bradley Schlozman to work in the Justice Department where he approved Tom Delay’s redistricting plan, GA’s modern “Jim Crow Law” and pursued politicized indictments against ACORN in MO.

...

( Lets consider one Cameron Quinn, for example. )

Sound familiar? The article also point out:

cachet would be used to support the passage of onerous voter-identification laws that depress turnout among the poor, minorities, and the elderly—groups more likely to vote Democratic. Where the Bush administration may have failed to nail illegal voters, the effort to suppress minority voting has borne more fruit, as more states pass these laws, and courts begin to uphold them in the name of beating back waves of largely imaginary voter fraud.” The article notes: “the group would claim that the amount of such voter fraud is hard to quantify, because it is after all illegal conduct, hidden from the public. Given this great potential for mischief, and without evidence of actual mischief, allegedly reasonable initiatives such as purging voter rolls and requiring ID seemed the natural solution.
MORe

Via: Crooks and Liars:

Why the media can't see the trees for the ACORNS

I don't think there is a journalist covering the ACORN matter who doesn't know with a great deal of certainty that there is a substantial difference between fictionalized voter registration forms and real voter suppression and election fraud. The former are easily identified and never result in fraudulent voting. No one covering these stories believes that someone is going to show up at the polls this year and say, "My name is Mickey Mouse."

A few bad-apple, low-paid canvassers who take jobs registering voters will turn in fraudulent forms. In this case (as in most) it appears the bad registration forms were identified by ACORN and turned over to authorities in accordance with the law.

The media attention granted the right-wing attacks on ACORN begs the question: why does it seem to be a greater sin to be suspected of voter registration mistakes than to publicly engage in voter suppression efforts? MORE

THAT LYING, DISHONORABLE PIECE OF SHIT JOHN MCCAIN!

And Sen. Obama, clean coal doesn't fucking exist and offshore drilling is a fucking waste of TIME AND MONEY, dammit.

What the FUCK is up John McCain insinuating that Obama doesn't know what he is talking about when McCain is the ignorant jackass here? The fuck with accusing Obama of taking down the Columbian free trade agreements? REALLY??

OH MY GOD FUCKING JOHN MCCAIN IS LYING AGAIN!

ANd BOb Schieffer? You have fucking good health insurance. SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT CUTTING IT. What you don't think the economy won't suffer if people get fucking sick and can't go to fucking work? When ppl lose their fucking houses due top health care costs? Suppose I'd actually had fucking leukemia one year ago? Were YOU gonna pay my fucking health insurance? Or my fucking hospital bill? Are you gonna fix my fucking knees now? So I can actually walk for five minutes without finding my knees aching like hell? FUCK OFF, you out of touch ....

~~Obama? Very few people cavalierly do fucking abortions. STOP fucking demonizing us~~.

vee_ecks corrected me on this. Apparently cavalier was used to describe the sorry state of sex ed. And I firmly agree with that. Misheard. Sorry. Partial birth abortions are also under the right to privacy get your nose out of our business. I do like sex ed., and nice with the right to privacy.

John McCain please fuck right off with your compassion. Hands OFF my body, thank you.

Education? I'm not impressed. The school syllabi need to completely revamped,. our public schools need to be upgraded, I'm not so sure about charter schools. Obama, but not radical enough.

Sarah Palin's child has DOWNS, senator McFlaky, not autism. you mean to tell me that you can't get your running mate's child's illness right?

What

vee_ecks says with regard to school vouchers

And if McCain expects me to believe that he will not apply a litmus test to Supreme Court Justices? He is probably smoking some high grade. And I want some to help me relax after hearing him dismiss the health of the mother exception on partial abortions.