May 9, 2008
May 09 02:08 Liberal Delusion in the Land Of Conservatives May 09 03:22 Mai Thor: Voting Fraud Is a Racist Illusion May 09 12:54 Rewording the Obama Campaign Slogan May 09 16:10 The Carey Debacle
Liberal Delusion in the Land Of Conservatives
This winter, I had the good fortune of meeting Eric from Liberal in the Land of Conservatives . He's a genuinely nice guy. (Sorry, Eric, I hope that doesn't doom you with your liberal friends.) This week, Eric added a new co-blogger that goes by the monicker of taxpaying liberal . Let's hope that taxpaying liberal's work product improves over his first post , which deals with the question of whether Hillary should drop out or not. Here's one of the things that I objected to:
The tidal wave he was talking about was the primary/caucus turnout. The combination of two exciting candidates and 7 years of the worst President in history, falling home values, foreclosures, Iraq and gas prices meant that the middle class was not going to sit this election out. He was predicting a turnout that far exceeded the already heady predictions of the party leadership. And he was right.President Bush will be treated far more kindly by historians than by today's progressives. That's because true historians fairly consider verifiable facts, something partisan progressives aren't prone to doing.
All GWB did in his 2 terms in office is free 50+ million people from the tyrannical rule of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. He brought the US together with Chirac's France to boot the Syrians out of Lebanon. More countries are democracies now than when President Bush took office.
Calling GWB the worst president in history is laughable from the standpoint that Jimmy Carter, the president who did nothing to stop the global jihadist movement in its infancy, is both the worst president and worst ex-president in history. Instead of stopping Khomeini in his tracks, President Carter practiced the politics of appeasement, thereby enabling Ayatollah Khomeini to embarass the United States militarily and diplomatically by holding our hostages a disgusting 444 days while starting the global jihadist movement.
Here's something else that I found questionable in taxpaying liberal's post:
Just as important is the fact that both of these candidates are great spokespersons for our party. Add the fact that Obama is getting a great lesson in campaigning from Hillary and I see nothing but positives coming from Senator Clinton carrying her campaign to the convention.If Obama is the best standardbearer in the Democratic Party, then they need better standardbearers. Sen. Obama is this generation's Jimmy Carter. Meeting with Ahmadinejad just for the sake of meeting with him is foolish. It won't accomplish anything worthwhile for us but it will enhance Ahmadinejad's authority and prestige.
If Sen. Obama had a better grasp of history , he'd know that. Don't think that people aren't noticing that Sen. Obama's foreign policy initiatives are intellectually vacant. He got hurt when Hillary ran thge 3 AM ad because it played on people's perception that he was inexperienced on that subject.
Another thing that people are noticing is that Sen. Obama isn't decisive or judgmental. That tells people that he isn't a leader.
The Democrats have picked Obama as their standardbearer. He looked unstoppable when he didn't get any scrutiny. Now that he's being scrutinized, he's making mistakes and looking rattled. The halo that Sen. Obama wore has disappeared because people are looking for a C-in-C, not a prom king.
Posted Friday, May 9, 2008 2:08 AM
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Mai Thor: Voting Fraud Is a Racist Illusion
Mai Thor's post at Minnesota Daily would be utterly laughable if it weren't so dangerous. Thor's post concludes that requiring photo ID's before voting is racist. Here's the scariest part of Thor's post:
Our Constitution affords us several rights, including the right to vote. It is unfortunate that many people, especially those who run our courts and make our laws, feel that voting is not a right, but minimize it to some sort of privilege, like having a bank account or going to the liquor store, where conditions and technicalities have to be met in order to participate.Ms. Thor's grasp of reality is faulty at best. First, let's consider this article by WSJ's John Fund :
There is no denying the race factor in the history of photo ID requirements. After the Civil War, the black vote was suppressed by poll taxes and literacy tests as well as other heinous laws known as Jim Crow. Proponents of photo IDs say it prevents voter fraud, when, in reality, voter fraud is an illusion which originated from an era of racism .
Photo IDs are the poll tax of present day America. Today, the group of individuals that are disenfranchised is much broader. Some of these individuals include seniors, low-income people and those who have disabilities.
Take the bill the GOP-controlled Legislature passed, which would require voters show a form of official ID or a utility bill; another bill would end Philadelphia's bizarre practice of locating over 900 polling places in private venues, including bars, abandoned buildings and even the office of a local state senator. City officials admit their voter rolls are stuffed with phantoms. The city has about as many registered voters as it has adults, and is thus a rich breeding ground for fraud.Let's also examine this post by Stefan Sharkansky , in which Sharkansky quotes from a Washington Post op-ed by Michael Waldman and Justin Leavitt of the Brennan Center . Here's one of Leavitt's and Waldman's assertions:
But the notion of widespread voter fraud, as these prosecutors found out, is itself a fraud. Firing a prosecutor for failing to find wide voter fraud is like firing a park ranger for failing to find Sasquatch. Where fraud exists, of course, it should be prosecuted and punished. (And politicians have been stuffing ballot boxes and buying votes since senators wore togas; Lyndon Johnson won a 1948 Senate race after his partisans famously "found" a box of votes well after the election.) Yet evidence of actual fraud by individual voters is painfully skimpy.Here's another assertion:
Before and after every close election, politicians and pundits proclaim: The dead are voting, foreigners are voting, people are voting twice. On closer examination, though, most such allegations don't pan out.Here's Sharkansky's reply:
During the 2004 election here, the dead voted , foreigners voted and people voted twice . What difference does it make if some, or even most, such allegations don't pan out? Many cases of illegal voting have been exhaustively documented and corroborated with database records , ballot envelopes and other physical evidence, and election worker anecdotes. Enough in all to have conceivably changed the outcome of a gubernatorial election.Other than the documented proof, the most stunning part of Sharkansky's post is how much Leavitt's and Waldman's op-ed sounds like Thor's. Leavitt's and Waldman's op-ed is titled "The Myth of Voter Fraud" while Thor only uses that sentence in her post.
Let's re-examine the planned voter fraud here in Minnesota in 2004:
Among the well-funded and supposedly independent groups supporting John Kerry in the campaign is Americans Coming Together (ACT). ACT has taken notice of Minnesota's special vulnerabilty to vote fraud and organized a sophisticated effort to exploit it in a manner that violates Minnesota law. In Minnesota the Bush campaign has come into the possession of the following email from ACT to its Minnesota volunteers:That's before we get into ACORN's voter fraud activities :Election Day is upon us. You are confirmed to volunteer with ACT (America Coming Together - http://www.actforvictory.org/) on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov 2.
We will be creating name badges that include your Ward and Precinct information for each of the thousands of volunteers that day to make it easier to find a volunteer to vouch for a voter at the polls.
I am emailing you to request your street address, city and zipcode. We've already got your other contact information, but your record in our database does not include this information.
You can save us time on election day by replying today to this email with this information, or give us a call at [phone number with St. Paul area code].
In order to get your badge correct, please reply by Thursday.
Thank you for your help and cooperation. See you on Election Day!
Four people have been indicted on charges of voter fraud in Kansas City, officials said Wednesday.I did a little follow-up on these ACORN employees. Here's what I found:
Investigators said questionable registration forms for new voters were collected by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that works to improve minority and low-income communities.
The four indicted, Kwaim A. Stenson, Dale D. Franklin, Stephanie L. Davis and Brian Gardner, were employed by ACORN as registration recruiters. They were each charged with two counts.
- Franklin pled guilty in February to filing false registration forms.
- Brian Gardner pleaded guilty in March, 2007.
- Kwaim Stenson will stand trial in July, 2008.
- Charges were dropped against Stephanie Davis when investigators found out that Carmen Davis stole Stephanie Davis' identity. According to the article, Carmen Davis also goes by the name Latisha Reed.
Carmen Davis, who also goes by the name Latisha Reed, was accused of using Stephanie Davis's Social Security number while employed as a voter registration recruiter for ACORN in August and September of 2006. Ms. Davis/Reed allegedly caused three false registration applications, all in the name of the same person, but with different addresses, to be filed with the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners.Thor's claims that voter fraud is a myth propagated by racists hoping to disenfranchise minority voters is the real myth. As you can see, there's more than abundant proof of voter fraud convictions. That moves it beyond allegation. That makes it a finding of fact beyond a reasonable doubt. In fact, those people that pled guilty can't even appeal their convictions.
Thor can spin it any way she wants but irrefutable facts are irrefutable facts.
One final thing: the Constitution gives every UNited States citizen the right to vote. It doesn't give citizens the right to vote multiple times, nor does it give non-citizens living in the United States the right to vote. On that, the Constitution is extremely clear.
Posted Friday, May 9, 2008 3:24 AM
Comment 1 by Lady Logician at 09-May-08 12:36 PM
She lays out a great case that the law discriminates against the elderly and disabled but she does not offer ANY proof that it discriminates against race. In addition, the MN law actually PROVIDES protections for those who are here and able to vote LEGALLY!
LL
Comment 2 by Phidippides at 09-May-08 02:36 PM
I don't think that her case for "discrimination" against the elderly or disabled is very solid. How many of these people have no form of ID whatsoever? How do they obtain social security benefits, benefits for senior housing, or anything else from the government or any other organization without an ID? Is she saying they coast along in the cracks of society without anything of the sort yet they are still going to be desirous of doing their "civic duty" by voting?
Rewording the Obama Campaign Slogan
Sen. Obama's campaign slogan has been "Change You Can Believe In" seemingly forever. I've been thinking that that slogan needed changing since he was exposed as an old-fashioned politician. I've finally figured out what a new, 'truth-in-advertising' slogan would say. Thanks to Jack Kelly's column , and Captain Ed's post , I think the new slogan should be "Inexperience We Can't Afford." Here's what I'm referring to:
In defending his stated intent to meet with America's enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: "I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did."I spoke about Obama's victory speech here , at which time I ridiculed Sen. Obama's statements. Sen. Obama sounds just like other Democrats when he says that we need to bring the troops home from Iraq and that we need a surge of diplomacy.
That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit.
I assume the Roosevelt to whom Sen. Obama referred is Franklin D. Roosevelt. Our enemies in World War II were Nazi Germany, headed by Adolf Hitler; fascist Italy, headed by Benito Mussolini, and militarist Japan, headed by Hideki Tojo. FDR talked directly with none of them before the outbreak of hostilities, and his policy once war began was unconditional surrender.
FDR died before victory was achieved, and was succeeded by Harry Truman. Truman did not modify the policy of unconditional surrender. He ended that war not with negotiation, but with the atomic bomb.
It's time for Sen. Obama to understand the worthiness of what I call the Reagan Principle. You'll recall that President Reagan didn't get into negotiations on arms control treaties until he'd scared the daylights out of the Soviets. He didn't believe in having summits just for the sake of having summits. His strategy proved right when the Soviet Union collapsed after briefly toying with what's best described as limited freedom, aka glasnost.
Let's remember the lesson UBL took from our leaving Somalia too early. Here's what bin Laden told ABC's John Miller:
"Our people realize[d] more than before that the American soldier is a paper tiger that run[s] in defeat after a few blows," the terror chief recalled. "America forgot all about the hoopla and media propaganda and left dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat."Sen. Obama's foreign policy is driven by a pacifistic mindset. It isn't informed by learning history's lessons.
That's the type of inexperience we can't afford in wartime.
Posted Friday, May 9, 2008 12:55 PM
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The Carey Debacle
I've written a fair amount about Al Franken's irresponsible behavior recently. Admittedly, I haven't written much about the things that are happening at MNGOP headquarters because I've paid more attention to national issues than local issues. Fortunately, the Lady Logician has written an excellent post about Ron Carey's, and MNGOP's problems here . I'm hoping that Chairman Carey heeds Cindy's wise advice:
Now I fully comprehend that Chairman Carey is not running for Senate and AL Franken is, however the average voter is not going to make that distinction. The average voter is going to see these stories and they are going to say that the MNGOP is just as guilty as Franken...thus negating any messege inroads we activists might have made!This is one of those instances where the MNGOP hasn't learned their lesson about being transparent. These days, transparency is imperative. People notice when a person or organization isn't meeting its commitments.
The ball is in Carey's court. If he were smart, he would release the audit PUBLICALLY and immediately and he would drop the tax issue and move on to talking about why voters need to vote for Norm Coleman (as opposed to against Al Franken). Senator Coleman has a record that Republicans can be proud of...a record that has frustrated Conservatives for sure, but for the large part has been a good representation of ALL MINNESOTANS. Rather than leaving that important story just to bloggers (like Gary Gross and myself) he needs to be talking about that and leaving the attack pieces to the blogosphere - where it can be done without damaging the candidate or the party. Right now, Chairman Carey, your actions are damaging the entire Republican ticket! For the Senator's sake, until you get the MNGOP's house in order, please stop trying to help us.
Carey's not publishing the audit allows the DFL to call us hypocrites. It also helps them say that don't think that what's good for the DFL's goose is good for the MNGOP's gander. That won't help us with moderates, independents and undecideds. Publishing the audit, followed by a press conference explaining the results of the audit, will make this issue disappear.
Conversely, I'd offer this other bit of advice: Don't send anyone out to spin this. That only compounds the problem because it looks like we aren't interested in accepting responsibility for our actions. That's precisely the wrong signal to send, most importantly because it isn't the right thing to do but also because it doesn't project a flattering image of us.
Posted Friday, May 9, 2008 4:10 PM
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