http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/13/election-acorn-voter-fraud






Barack Obama and the Democrats are stealing the election. Massive voter fraud is being carried out, even as we speak, by their henchmen, known by the innocuous sounding Association for Community Organisations for Reform Now, or Acorn. Clever bastards.

The only problem? Despite the screaming wall-to-wall coverage of "Democratic voter fraud in 11 swing states" as seen on Fox News and even the once-respectable CNN, none of it's true. None of it.

In just the last week, we've had a phoney stunt raid in swing state Nevada (where Acorn had been cooperating with officials for months, concerning problem canvassers they'd long ago fired); a Republican election official in swing state Missouri tell Fox News that she's being beseiged with fraudulent registration forms from Acorn (in a county where they've not done any registration work since August); a Republican sheriff in swing state Ohio, who, the very next day, suddenly requested the names and addresses of hundreds of early voters (with evidence of exactly zero wrong doing, but lots of Democratic-leaning college student in the particular county, and John McCain's state campaign chair as a partner in the investigation); and a screaming front page headline in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post about a guy who claims he was somehow tricked by Acorn into registering 72 times (but read the article closely to note he says he registered at the same address each time, which, even if true, would allow him - you guessed it - precisely one legal vote.)

It's an old Republican scam, but it's never been carried out with more zeal than this year. The Republicans have been putting so much time, money and resources into the propaganda leading up to this over the last four years, we should have expected no less.

As luck would have it, the Democrats have a man who, as an attorney years ago, actually had the temerity to join the US department of justice in representing Acorn in a successful lawsuit, forcing the state of Illinois to follow the law by allowing citizens to register to vote at the department of motor vehicles. What a scoundrel.

That, of course, was before the department of justice, under George Bush's corrupt command, would itself become politicised by the very Republicans so desperate to keep low-income voters from voting, that they were willing to fire their own US attorneys for failing to bring phoney charges of voter fraud in key swing states like Nevada and Missouri.

So what are the crimes that have caused all the Sturm und Drang on US television and talk radio, and in several otherwise respectable newspapers and even by the McCain campaign itself?

The only actual crime here is that Acorn managed to register some 1.3m low-income (read: Democratic-leaning) voters over the past two years. The rest is, pretty much, just made up.

But in the bloody and desperate trenches of the Republican war on democracy, that's more than enough to kick in a last minute surge of lies that may - with the help of a compliant and lazy corporate US media - wreak enough havoc, scare enough voters, confuse enough people and plant enough seeds to call an Obama victory into doubt on November 4.

If you can't win it, steal it. If you can't steal it, claim the other guy stole it. If you can't claim the other guy stole it (yet), say they're about to and then kick up smoke that maybe someone will believe you. (Heckuva job, CNN.)

Here are the facts. Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic ("fraudulent", "incomplete", et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming "Acorn is committing fraud" know all of the above but don't bother to share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.

You'll hear that Donald Duck, Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse and (new this year) the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team have all had fraudulent registrations submitted in their names. That's true. And we know this, why? Because Acorn told officials about it when they followed the law and turned in those registrations, flagged as fraudulent.

What you won't hear is that federal law requires anybody who does not register to vote in person at the county office to show an ID when they go to vote the first time. So, unless Donald Duck shows up with his ID, he won't be voting this November. You needn't worry, no matter how much even John McCain himself cynically and dishonourably tries to mislead you.

If it quacks like a duck, in this case, it's likely another Republican Acorn voter fraud lie. They haul it out every two years.

Just days before the 2004 presidential election, rightwing whack job Michelle Malkin claimed that Acorn was registering terrorists to vote in swing state Ohio. Problem was, that was a lie.

In 2006, again just days before the election, the new US attorney in swing state Missouri (recently appointed, since the one before him refused to bring such charges), filed voter fraud indictments against Acorn workers in the state. Problem was, bringing election-related indictments that close to an election was a violation of the department of justice's own written policy. And Acorn had nothing to do with it, other than turning in the employees to officials.

Getting the picture? It's a hoax. All of it.

But it's been an effective one, as it's served to distract from very real concerns about tens of thousands of voters who have been illegally purged from the voting rolls in dozens of states, as the New York Times reported in a remarkable front page investigative story. That story followed a report the week before from CBS News detailing still more wholesale purges of voting rolls in some 20 states.

That will be the November surprise, when thousands, if not millions show up to vote only to find they are no longer welcome to do so and are forced to vote on a "provisional ballot" which may or may not be counted.

These real concerns of election fraud, such as voting roll purges, electronic voting machines that don't work and so much more that actually matters, have been obscured by the smoke and mirrors and sleight of hand of the Republican party's phoney Acorn voter fraud charade.

And where they can, they'll parlay it all into new photo ID restrictions at the polls (knowing full well that some 20m, largely Democratic-leaning voters don't own the type of ID they'd need to jump over that next Republican hurdle.)

Yet, with all of the unsubstantiated, wholly bogus claims of voter fraud being carried out by Democrats, there remains at least one case of absolutely ironclad, documented, yet still-unprosecuted case of voter fraud that, for some reason, Republicans don't much like to talk about

gypsy wrote:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/13/election-acorn-voter-fraud






Barack Obama and the Democrats are stealing the election. Massive voter fraud is being carried out, even as we speak, by their henchmen, known by the innocuous sounding Association for Community Organisations for Reform Now, or Acorn. Clever bastards.

The only problem? Despite the screaming wall-to-wall coverage of "Democratic voter fraud in 11 swing states" as seen on Fox News and even the once-respectable CNN, none of it's true. None of it.

In just the last week, we've had a phoney stunt raid in swing state Nevada (where Acorn had been cooperating with officials for months, concerning problem canvassers they'd long ago fired); a Republican election official in swing state Missouri tell Fox News that she's being beseiged with fraudulent registration forms from Acorn (in a county where they've not done any registration work since August); a Republican sheriff in swing state Ohio, who, the very next day, suddenly requested the names and addresses of hundreds of early voters (with evidence of exactly zero wrong doing, but lots of Democratic-leaning college student in the particular county, and John McCain's state campaign chair as a partner in the investigation); and a screaming front page headline in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post about a guy who claims he was somehow tricked by Acorn into registering 72 times (but read the article closely to note he says he registered at the same address each time, which, even if true, would allow him - you guessed it - precisely one legal vote.)

It's an old Republican scam, but it's never been carried out with more zeal than this year. The Republicans have been putting so much time, money and resources into the propaganda leading up to this over the last four years, we should have expected no less.

As luck would have it, the Democrats have a man who, as an attorney years ago, actually had the temerity to join the US department of justice in representing Acorn in a successful lawsuit, forcing the state of Illinois to follow the law by allowing citizens to register to vote at the department of motor vehicles. What a scoundrel.

That, of course, was before the department of justice, under George Bush's corrupt command, would itself become politicised by the very Republicans so desperate to keep low-income voters from voting, that they were willing to fire their own US attorneys for failing to bring phoney charges of voter fraud in key swing states like Nevada and Missouri.

So what are the crimes that have caused all the Sturm und Drang on US television and talk radio, and in several otherwise respectable newspapers and even by the McCain campaign itself?

The only actual crime here is that Acorn managed to register some 1.3m low-income (read: Democratic-leaning) voters over the past two years. The rest is, pretty much, just made up.

But in the bloody and desperate trenches of the Republican war on democracy, that's more than enough to kick in a last minute surge of lies that may - with the help of a compliant and lazy corporate US media - wreak enough havoc, scare enough voters, confuse enough people and plant enough seeds to call an Obama victory into doubt on November 4.

If you can't win it, steal it. If you can't steal it, claim the other guy stole it. If you can't claim the other guy stole it (yet), say they're about to and then kick up smoke that maybe someone will believe you. (Heckuva job, CNN.)

Here are the facts. Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic ("fraudulent", "incomplete", et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming "Acorn is committing fraud" know all of the above but don't bother to share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.

You'll hear that Donald Duck, Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse and (new this year) the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team have all had fraudulent registrations submitted in their names. That's true. And we know this, why? Because Acorn told officials about it when they followed the law and turned in those registrations, flagged as fraudulent.

What you won't hear is that federal law requires anybody who does not register to vote in person at the county office to show an ID when they go to vote the first time. So, unless Donald Duck shows up with his ID, he won't be voting this November. You needn't worry, no matter how much even John McCain himself cynically and dishonourably tries to mislead you.

If it quacks like a duck, in this case, it's likely another Republican Acorn voter fraud lie. They haul it out every two years.

Just days before the 2004 presidential election, rightwing whack job Michelle Malkin claimed that Acorn was registering terrorists to vote in swing state Ohio. Problem was, that was a lie.

In 2006, again just days before the election, the new US attorney in swing state Missouri (recently appointed, since the one before him refused to bring such charges), filed voter fraud indictments against Acorn workers in the state. Problem was, bringing election-related indictments that close to an election was a violation of the department of justice's own written policy. And Acorn had nothing to do with it, other than turning in the employees to officials.

Getting the picture? It's a hoax. All of it.

But it's been an effective one, as it's served to distract from very real concerns about tens of thousands of voters who have been illegally purged from the voting rolls in dozens of states, as the New York Times reported in a remarkable front page investigative story. That story followed a report the week before from CBS News detailing still more wholesale purges of voting rolls in some 20 states.

That will be the November surprise, when thousands, if not millions show up to vote only to find they are no longer welcome to do so and are forced to vote on a "provisional ballot" which may or may not be counted.

These real concerns of election fraud, such as voting roll purges, electronic voting machines that don't work and so much more that actually matters, have been obscured by the smoke and mirrors and sleight of hand of the Republican party's phoney Acorn voter fraud charade.

And where they can, they'll parlay it all into new photo ID restrictions at the polls (knowing full well that some 20m, largely Democratic-leaning voters don't own the type of ID they'd need to jump over that next Republican hurdle.)

Yet, with all of the unsubstantiated, wholly bogus claims of voter fraud being carried out by Democrats, there remains at least one case of absolutely ironclad, documented, yet still-unprosecuted case of voter fraud that, for some reason, Republicans don't much like to talk about

i did not read it all close, but on fox news this afternoon they were interviewing ppl that had been signed up many times, adn said some ppl will be brought up on charges, they even interviewed the guy that picture i put on the board, they have the FBI on the case,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/04/sarah.palin.women.election




Will the real Sarah Palin please stand up?
Palin is being marketed as an American everywoman, but she doesn't have a clue about what women actually want or need


In the hours since Thursday's vice-presidential debate, the punditry class has filled the airwaves and web, parsing Sarah Palin's failure to fail. But what is perhaps most striking is what Palin failed to actually say. Amid all the "doggone"s and "there ya go"s and "Oh, yeah, it's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider"s, Palin neglected to articulate any difference between the McCain-Palin ticket and the current team in the White house.

Joe Biden, even if restrained at the outset, made a strong, forceful case for how the Obama-Biden ticket would be different - far better than Barack Obama himself did in his first debate against McCain. Palin, on the other hand, had all the spontaneity of a grown-up version of Small Wonder, that 1980s robot girl from Saturday night television. In the end, Biden looked like a president. And while both candidates (rightly, I think) shied away from answering the macabre "in the event of the death of your running mate" question, only Biden looked like he would actually be able to assume the job of president in such an awful scenario.

Part of the problem is that Palin isn't being marketed as, nor is she expected to be, a politician. That's all well and good for PTA president, or mayor, or maybe even governor in a state without a huge number of people. But when we're talking about the highest executive office, there need to be a few criteria in place beyond relateability.

Ironically, though, even on that, Palin falls down. She pretends to be a representative of the American everywoman (whoever that really is, I'd love to know – though I guess it has something to do with watching a child play club team sports). Yet outside of talk of theoretical football match side conversations, she had nary an argument about what these women actually need or want – or what women's rights might be in the US circa 2008.

If the McCain-Palin ticket weren't so gleeful about her gender, it might be less of an issue. But they are, they celebrate it, the historic nature of this ticket, the sexism she may be experiencing, and yet there's not much there there, to be colloquial about it. Palin doesn't seem to offer much to women, let alone Americans.

This became particularly glaring when Palin mentioned women's rights in an answering a foreign policy question:

I had a good conversation with [Henry Kissinger] recently. And he shared with me his passion for diplomacy. And that's what John McCain and I would engage in also. But again, with some of these dictators who hate America and hate what we stand for, with our freedoms, our democracy, our tolerance, our respect for women's rights, those who would try to destroy what we stand for cannot be met with just sitting down on a presidential level as Barack Obama had said he would be willing to do.

What exactly did Palin mean by "our respect for women's rights"? It was a curious moment, especially with the brouhaha over distasteful charges for rape kits while she was mayor of Wasilla. Outside of her controversially militant stance on abortion, it's unclear what Palin brings to women specifically. Is it healthcare reform? No. Education reform? Not that either. Is it equal pay for equal work – something relatively uncontroversial? She says she supports it, but McCain recently failed to support the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act.

Just being a woman doesn't make Palin the better champion, and I suspect this is why she didn't elaborate further. Biden, on the other hand, briefly mentioned authoring the Violence Against Women Act. Over the course of his career, Biden's done a whole lot more for women than Palin ever would care to. That's partly because what Palin's folksiness exposes is not so much her "real" American self, as her inability to see beyond her own experience.

But what was real, outside of Palin's "go down to the soccer field" asides? There was no moment more genuine than when Biden had his own real reveal, when his voice broke as he described knowing exactly what it was like to be a single parent, because he had been one, and exactly what it was like not to know whether a child would survive. That catch in his voice caught everyone in the room I was watching the debate with. We all held our breath.

And Sarah Palin? She kept reciting her rehearsed talking points resolutely. She was so programmed, so fixated on keeping her chirpy smile and demeanour and her "can I call you Joe" pep going, that she missed an opening during which she might have actually come across as genuinely empathetic, as opposed to smugly anti-intellectual. Her entire discourse was a laundry list of memorised bullet points. She was completely unable to even have a "lipstick on a pitbull" moment. Her lines about how, oh gee who has time to know all this, the people want change, they want outsiders, fell terribly flat.

Her failure to be the real person she's championed for being made even more egregious her general failings as a leader. Palin completely avoided the conversation on bankruptcy, clearly not having a clue as to McCain's bankruptcy policy. She similarly didn't respond to questions on healthcare, on her own failings, on Afghanistan.

One of my favourite analyses of the night came from Noam Scheiber over at the New Republic. Scheiber mocked Palin's list of pro-Israel statements, which read like a laundry list of everything she'd ever heard anyone ever say about US-Israel policy (including moving the embassy to Jerusalem, a not-uncontroversial topic) juxtaposed against Biden's pithy analysis of how Hamas came to power in the West Bank and Hizbullah achieved legitimacy in Lebanon and tied it all back to the the Bush administration's abysmal Middle East policies.

"No I do not," Palin chirped primly, when the moderator asked whether she also thought the Bush administration had done badly in the Middle East - and in fact she easily, had she been given the authority, or had the confidence, to think quickly could have positioned McCain-Palin contrary to Bush-Cheney. As Biden pointed out, Palin made no effort to articulate how McCain differs from Bush. And, to use his mother's phrase, "God love him," for finally popping a hole in that scurrilous word "maverick" the two of them throw around like a magic cloak.

*

Ohio county seeks fraud investigation of ACORN

By Associated Press | Monday, October 13, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | 2008 Pres. Campaign
CLEVELAND - Election officials in swing state Ohio’s most populous county asked a prosecutor Monday to investigate alleged voter-registration fraud, including 73 registrations obtained from one man by an advocacy group under fire in other states.

The bipartisan Cuyahoga County Board of Elections voted unanimously to ask county Prosecutor Bill Mason to investigate multiple registrations by four people who signed forms at the behest of a community organizing group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN.

One of the new voters, Freddie Johnson, 19, of Cleveland, said he signed 73 voter registration forms over a five-month period. In return, ACORN canvassers gave him cigarettes or cash, about $20 in all, he told WEWS-TV in Cleveland.

Johnson said he was trying to help paid ACORN solicitors collect signed registrations but he didn’t intend to vote more than once.

Two subpoenaed witnesses didn’t show up at the elections board hearing.

The fourth, Christopher Barkley of Cleveland, said he was badgered into signing registrations, even when he told canvassers that he had done so. He said some of the 13 registrations in his name had been signed by him, but not all.

ACORN’s state director, Katy Gall, watched the board’s discussion and said later that ACORN had cooperated with the investigation and would fire anyone soliciting duplicate registrations. She said the organization was proud of its work registering new voters.

The group says it has signed up 1.3 million poor and working-class voters in a mass registration drive in 18 states this year. Some of those registration cards have become the focus of fraud investigations in Nevada, Connecticut, Missouri and other states.

Johnson, who said he didn’t understand voter-registration procedures, was one of four people who were subpoenaed to testify over duplicate registrations. Johnson said after the board meeting that he had been assured by the sheriff’s department that the investigation was aimed at ACORN solicitors and he wouldn’t face criminal charges.

Johnson told the board that he sometimes would get approached by six or seven ACORN voter-registration solicitors while waiting for a bus. Other canvassers stood 10 feet away while a solicitor approached him, Johnson said.

"They never told me I couldn’t stop signing them," said Johnson, who works selling cell phones. Johnson said he was surprised by the attention his multiple registrations had attracted.

Members of the board, split 2-2 by law between Democrats and Republicans, sent the matter to Mason for investigation. One member, Democrat Inajo Davis Chappell, said the board’s referral shouldn’t be limited to the four new voters in question.

Mason, a Democrat running for re-election in the Nov. 4 election in heavily Democratic Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, will review the matter and consider presenting it to a grand jury, which could return charges in an indictment, said his spokesman, Ryan Miday. There is no time frame for a grand jury presentation, he said.

Gall said ACORN canvassers are paid hourly, not for each signed registration they obtain. If canvassers kept going back to the same person to sign a registration card, "It sounds like people were being lazy," she said.

Any ACORN canvasser who fails to meet the organization’s training standards is fired, she said.

Nevada state investigators last week raided ACORN’s Las Vegas headquarters, seizing documents and computer data as part of a probe into scores of fabricated registration forms, including those signed in the names of Dallas professional football players

___

http://www.reddit.com/r/obama/related/76rjw/obama_acorn_and_voter_fraud_dispelling_the_myths/.mobile

Obama, ACORN, and "voter fraud" -- dispelling the myths!

What the hell is that ..BLOG sites....no thanks

gypsy wrote:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/04/sarah.palin.women.election




Will the real Sarah Palin please stand up?
Palin is being marketed as an American everywoman, but she doesn't have a clue about what women actually want or need


In the hours since Thursday's vice-presidential debate, the punditry class has filled the airwaves and web, parsing Sarah Palin's failure to fail. But what is perhaps most striking is what Palin failed to actually say. Amid all the "doggone"s and "there ya go"s and "Oh, yeah, it's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider"s, Palin neglected to articulate any difference between the McCain-Palin ticket and the current team in the White house.

Joe Biden, even if restrained at the outset, made a strong, forceful case for how the Obama-Biden ticket would be different - far better than Barack Obama himself did in his first debate against McCain. Palin, on the other hand, had all the spontaneity of a grown-up version of Small Wonder, that 1980s robot girl from Saturday night television. In the end, Biden looked like a president. And while both candidates (rightly, I think) shied away from answering the macabre "in the event of the death of your running mate" question, only Biden looked like he would actually be able to assume the job of president in such an awful scenario.

Part of the problem is that Palin isn't being marketed as, nor is she expected to be, a politician. That's all well and good for PTA president, or mayor, or maybe even governor in a state without a huge number of people. But when we're talking about the highest executive office, there need to be a few criteria in place beyond relateability.

Ironically, though, even on that, Palin falls down. She pretends to be a representative of the American everywoman (whoever that really is, I'd love to know – though I guess it has something to do with watching a child play club team sports). Yet outside of talk of theoretical football match side conversations, she had nary an argument about what these women actually need or want – or what women's rights might be in the US circa 2008.

If the McCain-Palin ticket weren't so gleeful about her gender, it might be less of an issue. But they are, they celebrate it, the historic nature of this ticket, the sexism she may be experiencing, and yet there's not much there there, to be colloquial about it. Palin doesn't seem to offer much to women, let alone Americans.

This became particularly glaring when Palin mentioned women's rights in an answering a foreign policy question:

I had a good conversation with [Henry Kissinger] recently. And he shared with me his passion for diplomacy. And that's what John McCain and I would engage in also. But again, with some of these dictators who hate America and hate what we stand for, with our freedoms, our democracy, our tolerance, our respect for women's rights, those who would try to destroy what we stand for cannot be met with just sitting down on a presidential level as Barack Obama had said he would be willing to do.

What exactly did Palin mean by "our respect for women's rights"? It was a curious moment, especially with the brouhaha over distasteful charges for rape kits while she was mayor of Wasilla. Outside of her controversially militant stance on abortion, it's unclear what Palin brings to women specifically. Is it healthcare reform? No. Education reform? Not that either. Is it equal pay for equal work – something relatively uncontroversial? She says she supports it, but McCain recently failed to support the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act.

Just being a woman doesn't make Palin the better champion, and I suspect this is why she didn't elaborate further. Biden, on the other hand, briefly mentioned authoring the Violence Against Women Act. Over the course of his career, Biden's done a whole lot more for women than Palin ever would care to. That's partly because what Palin's folksiness exposes is not so much her "real" American self, as her inability to see beyond her own experience.

But what was real, outside of Palin's "go down to the soccer field" asides? There was no moment more genuine than when Biden had his own real reveal, when his voice broke as he described knowing exactly what it was like to be a single parent, because he had been one, and exactly what it was like not to know whether a child would survive. That catch in his voice caught everyone in the room I was watching the debate with. We all held our breath.

And Sarah Palin? She kept reciting her rehearsed talking points resolutely. She was so programmed, so fixated on keeping her chirpy smile and demeanour and her "can I call you Joe" pep going, that she missed an opening during which she might have actually come across as genuinely empathetic, as opposed to smugly anti-intellectual. Her entire discourse was a laundry list of memorised bullet points. She was completely unable to even have a "lipstick on a pitbull" moment. Her lines about how, oh gee who has time to know all this, the people want change, they want outsiders, fell terribly flat.

Her failure to be the real person she's championed for being made even more egregious her general failings as a leader. Palin completely avoided the conversation on bankruptcy, clearly not having a clue as to McCain's bankruptcy policy. She similarly didn't respond to questions on healthcare, on her own failings, on Afghanistan.

One of my favourite analyses of the night came from Noam Scheiber over at the New Republic. Scheiber mocked Palin's list of pro-Israel statements, which read like a laundry list of everything she'd ever heard anyone ever say about US-Israel policy (including moving the embassy to Jerusalem, a not-uncontroversial topic) juxtaposed against Biden's pithy analysis of how Hamas came to power in the West Bank and Hizbullah achieved legitimacy in Lebanon and tied it all back to the the Bush administration's abysmal Middle East policies.

"No I do not," Palin chirped primly, when the moderator asked whether she also thought the Bush administration had done badly in the Middle East - and in fact she easily, had she been given the authority, or had the confidence, to think quickly could have positioned McCain-Palin contrary to Bush-Cheney. As Biden pointed out, Palin made no effort to articulate how McCain differs from Bush. And, to use his mother's phrase, "God love him," for finally popping a hole in that scurrilous word "maverick" the two of them throw around like a magic cloak.

*

that sounds a bit biased, ,, i dont have time to say all i wanted, but the radical islamic muslims are not after us because of bush, but because we are not one of them, as u can see in the london parade,they hate everyone that is not one of them,, they have an endless supply of suicide ppl to carry bombs, and trucks filled with explosive, they are in syria, lebenon, iran, iraq , pakastan, afganistan, they will not cease, ur grandchildren and there grandchildren will have to defend against them , they have but one goal kill non muslims, one good thing is we have kept them busy over there, and they have not had the capacity to strike here again, but left alone they will, we have killed seveal leaders in the past weeks with preditors with hell fire missles, in northern pakastan and one raid on the ground, with special forces, this will be decades and will still be going on, we can only hope, we can keep them off our shores, as we have done since 9-11.. but as one leader is killed one will always take it place, its will not end, i feel for my grandchildren, as they will have to defend against this war, of radical islamic extreamist for decades,

gypsy wrote:http://www.reddit.com/r/obama/related/76rjw/obama_acorn_and_voter_fraud_dispelling_the_myths/.mobile

u know better than to post crap like that, tyler will not leave that stuff here, think gypsy, think,

u dont have to post old debate news on palin, we saw the debate,, and dont get so worked up, obama most likely will win, as in the swing states he leads, so calm down, u can get worked up when its our time to slam the president, and with obama, well lets just say, there will be plenty of ammo, to make fun of him, take care, its only politics, of course of tyler would carry around a maCcain -Palin sign, up and down the road it might help in florida,, tyler says

Group Admits Mistakes, Defends Work
ACORN is Under Fire For Submitting Fake Voter Registrations

Oct. 14, 2008— ABC News


A prominent voters registration group admitted today that it fired some of its workers for falsifying voter registrations, but said it helped authorities to identify the phony voter cards and that its efforts shouldn't be tainted by the fraudulent activities of a few workers.

The group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), has come under fire for submitting applications of dead people, the name of a fast food restaurant, and the entire roster of the Dallas Cowboys football team.

The incidences of fraud in the ACORN registrations has become embroiled in presidential politics. The campaign of Sen. John McCain has tied the ACORN effort to Sen. Barack Obama, who once represented ACORN.

And because of the group's focus on minority or low income voters, Republicans have long connected the group's voter registration drives as benefitting Democrats.

"ACORN is tampering with America's most precious right. There has to be a full and complete investigation," McCain said during a campaign stop in Florida.

"Given the extensive relationship between Barack Obama and ACORN, our campaign also feels that Sen. Obama has a responsibility to rein in ACORN's efforts and to work aggressively against wide-scale voter fraud," the McCain campaign said in a statement today.

McCain's running mate Gov. Sarah Palin told Rush Limbaugh on his radio show today "this ACORN stuff is unconscionable."

Obama told reporters in Ohio that he is not connnected to ACORN.

"First of all, my relationship to ACORN is pretty straightforward. It's probably 13 years ago when I was still practicing law, I represented ACORN and my partner in that representation was the U.S. Justice Department in having Illinois implement what was called the 'Motor Voter' law, to make sure that people could go to DMV's and drivers' license facilities to get registered," Obama said.

"There is an ACORN organization in Chicago," Obama continued. "They have been active. As an elected official, I've had interactions with them. But they are not advising our campaign. We've got the best voter registration and turnout and volunteer operation in politics right now and we don't need ACORN's help."

ACORN held a news conference today to answer its critics.

Kevin Whelan, a spokesperson for the nationwide group, admitted that in some states some of its workers had "decided to pad their hours" and sent in duplicative or faulty registrations but that the "vast, vast majority" of its workers did a "great job."

"There is no evidence that these false registrations lead to false attempts to cast a ballot," said Kevin Whelan a spokesperson for the nationwide group. Whelan said ACORN tries to independently verify applications and that by state law "and good judgment" it turns over all its applications to election workers, even those it has flagged as potentially problematic.

Some of those registration cards have become the focus of fraud investigations in Nevada, Connecticut, Missouri and at least five other states. Election officials in Ohio and North Carolina also recently questioned the group's voter forms.

The group claims to have some 13,000 workers that have registered 1.3 million citizens to become voters in 2007 and 2008, and could not immediately provide the number of workers it had fired in connection to the collection of faulty voter registration.

Election workers in Lake County, Ind., have turned up at least 2,000 registration cards it says are fraudulent and clog the system. John Curley, chairman of the Lake County Republicans said ACORN "Is bringing in massive amounts of registrations that are mostly phony."

One application was delivered in August and signed by a Jimmy Johns of 10839 Broadway. The application is signed and dated, but calls to the phone number listed on the application reveal that it is for a Jimmy Johns restaurant. A waiter at the restaurant said there was no Jimmy Johns at that address, adding, "It's a huge chain of restaurants."

Curley also provided an application for one Levy McIntosh of Gary, Ind. He said McIntosh is dead and provided a reporter with the death certificate on file with the same address listed on the voter application.

The date of birth on the two different forms varies by two years.

But ACORN and other voting registration groups fought back forcefully today.

"By raising the issue of voter fraud," said Miles Rapoport of the voting rights group , Demos, "a serious disservice is being done to the election process itself."

Rapoport claims that Republicans are using the issue to "divert attention" from other voting issues such as untrained workers, absentee voting problems and machines that aren't working correctly.

The issue of voter fraud has long divided down party lines. Some claim that voter fraud is not at all a significant problem because there have been few convictions of voter impersonation.

Dan Tokaji, an election law expert at Moritz College of Law says, "You'd have to be a complete idiot. It's high risk, low reward."

Tokaji says that voter fraud is "rare" and that Republicans are "trying to use the ACORN story" to raise fears of fraud and "make it more difficult for people to vote."

But Heather Heidelbaugh, a Republican lawyer based out of Pennsylvania, says that democrats often limit the definition of voter fraud to voter impersonation. "The broader definition of voter fraud includes voter registration and absentee ballots."

"I don't' think voter impersonation is a rampant problem," she says. "It would be very difficult to walk into a voting place and impersonate someone." But she says that it bothers her when people say voter fraud doesn't exist.

"I bristle when I hear that it doesn't exist," she says. "If ACORN or groups like them flood election division offices with thousands of fraudulent registrations, each one of them has to be checked and it means the chances are that a valid registration won't be process because of time restraints. Therefore the legitimate voter would be denied the ability to vote."

ABC News' Jake Tapper and Teddy Davis contributed to this report.
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