What's also required is tough regulation of lending and mortgages.
Posted by John at October 13, 2008 04:21 AMLou Dobbs reports on ACORN fraud and Obama's ties to ACORN. I know you guys all say that this won't stick, there's nothing there, etc, but this has me very worried. It sounds like ACORN has been involved in voter registration fraud before (with people associated with ACORN being convicted) and they are now under investigation in several states. In this Dobbs story (it's 9 minutes so I'll summarize), one county in MO (?) got 5000 registration forms from ACORN and the first 2100 they looked through were fraudulent. Many were in the same handwriting (they said the handwriting was the same for the signatures) or had addresses that corresponded to commercial buildings. They set aside the rest so they could concentrate on real registrations. Obama gave $800,000 to ACORN to do voter registration--not sure of the exact connection.
So, even if there's no fraud, Obama gave money to an organization that has had problems with voter fraud in the past and is currently under investigation. How stupid is that? And remember how long it took the swiftboat stuff to catch on and get into the msm? This is starting to happen with ACORN. If it were McCain giving money to this organization, you know we'd be all over it.
So, McCain was to introduce a bold new economic agenda on Monday. Then late Sunday evening word emerged that there would be no bold new economic proposal to throw on the table.
"We do not have any immediate plans to announce any policy proposals outside of the proposals that John McCain has announced."
Then this:
When a local Virginia news station read a quote from the chair of the state's Republican Party, who compared Obama to Osama bin Laden since they both "have friends that have bombed the Pentagon," McCain claimed he didn't have enough information to judge whether the remark was appropriate.
"I have to look at the context of his remarks," he responded. "I have always (always?) repudiated any comments that have been made that were inappropriate about Senator Obama. The fact is that William Ayers was a terrorist and bomber and unrepentant. I don't care about that. But, Sen. Obama ought be the candid and truthful about his relationship with Mr. Ayers."
So, tell me what Obama is suppose to say to satisfy McLiar and friends. That he (at eight years old) thought Ayers was right to bomb the Pentagon, and had he only been older, would have joined the Weathermen. This whole thing has gone beyond being ridiculous.
Hey John, so tell me again how your "going to whip Obama's you know what."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/13/mccains-week-off-to-rocky_n_134067.html
Posted by Judith at October 13, 2008 04:46 AMAt a news conference on Wednesday, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay praised this acorn office for registering about 34,000 for the presidential election with no problems reported. Danforth called on Democrats to help "reign in" ACORN registration practices nationwide, as appeared to had been done in St. Louis.
For everyone who doesn't understand, East Saint Louis is not in Missouri. It is in Illinois. Unfortunately, many confuse this, thinking it is in Missouri.
Paul Krugman wins Nobel Peace Prize in Economics! Congrats on a job well done!
He's one of my favorite reads.
Posted by emal at October 13, 2008 05:23 AMMcCain admitted on Sunday that "the economy has hurt us a little bit in the last week or two." "A little bit?" Well, I guess in your world of wealth, losing "a little bit" is no big deal, but is sure as hell means something to my 87 year old Mother. I have a suggestion. Why don't you take your Wife's millions and retire from public life, permanently.
Re: ACORN. First, it's registration fraud (a misdeamenor) not vote fraud (a felony). You can register Mickey Mouse, but you're not going to the polls and cast a vote as Mickey Mouse. Make sure you use the correct term.
Second, fake registrations -- and mistaken registrations -- are a systemic problem for any group that tries to register voters. By law, groups are required to turn in all registrations, even ones they suspect as fake (otherwise, the group doing the registration could commit fraud by withholding registrations of members of the opposing party, for example). The groups should -- although they are not required to -- flag suspect registrations when they turn them in. ACORN claims that they do this.
However, even if ACORN were intentionally submitting fake registrations the onus is on the local election board to verify the registrations, NOT on the group providing them. Again, this is the law.
So, this "scandal" is just another bullshit meme pushed by the Republicants -- no different than Iraqi WMDs, the Rapture, or supply-side economics.
Vote fraud, on the other hand, is the Republican game. Obama's team says they are going to launch an attack on that today. We'll see how well it gets covered.
Also, quoting Lou Dobbs on ACORN is like quoting David Duke of the KKK on race relations.
Lou Dobbs is the mainstream face of the white supremacist movement. His reports on illegal immigration have the same level of factual content as a Sean Hannity diatribe.
He was caught on video at a conservative convention buying some "Obama waffles" -- with a very racist caracature on the box -- and telling the vendor how he loves them and his wife would love them.
Posted by Anonny at October 13, 2008 07:11 AMCG, Coyote posted this on the ACORN crap.
It is just like any other of the lines of BS that come out of the Right. We have to arm ourselves with the true facts to combat the BS that they spread.
Just think of it as every other single thing that you have to educate people to the truth of. They are lying. They always lie.
The truth is that people do not go into the polls and fraudulently vote as someone else or a dead person...this is extremely difficult to do and it just does not happen.
What does happen is that the Right disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of people who are eligible to vote. They purge them from the voter rolls. Intimidate them at the polls. Leave them in line, in the rain, for 10 hours at a time...this is the truth. Hundreds of thousands of people.
You have to ask, why are the Republicans so afraid to allow people to vote?
Posted by Anjha at October 13, 2008 07:38 AMBTW - Fuck Lou Dobbs, he is a racist hack.
Posted by Anjha at October 13, 2008 07:39 AMAnjha, I watched a little of the Sunday shows, and the sick thing was, the "reporters" admitted that they didn't understand what the rules were or weren't sure what the details of the complaints were, but they still kept pretending that somehow thousands and thousands of Mickey Mouses had registered through ACORN. Now, who's going to continue listening to such idiots when they're admittedly uninformed and apparently biased?
Oh yeah. McCain deadenders. Heh, answered my own question.
Posted by iamcoyote at October 13, 2008 07:49 AMYou guys are posting a defense of ACORN from ACORN. Of course they're going to say they did nothing wrong. And the point isn't even that they might have done something wrong. The point is that this is getting legs and Obama is being tied to it. Was there any truth in the swiftboating of Kerry? No, but it got legs and he lost because of it. This is getting legs and we know that when that happens, the truth doesn't matter. Three weeks is a very long time, and I'm very worried about this.
Posted by CG at October 13, 2008 08:22 AMCG, the GOP is terrified because Obama has registered millions of new voters.
Read this and its links.
The GOP thinks that if it spreads these lies and demonizes ACORN then the people will question the votes. This won't happen if A) we win by more than 5 points in the polls and B)the people stand up and demand that their votes are counted.
How do we make certain that people demand that their votes are counted? We educate.
It is imperative that we educate people to the GOPs dirty tricks, their disenfranchisement activities and their lies about ACORN. Their lies are not going to get their people out to vote, in fact they might even convince more people - who are angry about their lies - to get out and vote.
This ACORN crap is to design a pre argument for final counts that are close. We have to make sure that there are no final counts that are close. We have to make sure that we GOTV.
We have to combat this lie jus the same as we combat all of their lies and we have to stand up for communities where disenfranchisement occurs.
Had I known, in 2000, about the shit going on in FL, I would have stood up for the people in FL. Unfortunately I was not paying attention.
This year, a whole lot of us are paying attention. We can raise hell not only for ourselves, in assuring that our votes are counted, but for every single community where things are questionable. We organize ourselves and voters everywhere to demand that this election is not stolen. WE need to be prepared for a fight.
No amount of GOP lies can stop us from fighting. None.
Posted by Anjha at October 13, 2008 09:06 AMRemember, you have to continue to ask, why are the Republicans so afraid of allowing people to vote? Why do they make it so difficult?
Arm yourself with facts. There have been no prosecutions of people frauduently voting. None. Zip. Nada.
Not a single prosecution of someone pretending to be someone else casting a vote.
However, there have been numerous prosecutions of Republicans disenfranchising voters who had every legal right to vote.
What seems like more of the truth.
Ask the people who think their lies are real to provide you with proof of any person who has been prosecuted for voting fraudulently. Just one fucking example. There are none.
Election fraud is the problem. NOT voter fraud.
Posted by Anjha at October 13, 2008 09:16 AMACORN? Let's see. They register low income voters -which includes lots of Blacks and Hispanics...and poor whites but we don't talk about them because they're...well...white. So an organization that registers Blacks and Hispanics has a couple of contract employees who submit some erroneous registrations for a profit. And what do we hear from Ace McCain? "Obama committed voter fraud while registering Niggras and Wet Backs!" And why not. Everyone knows Niggras and Wet Backs caused the mortgage meltdown because of Clinton.
It has legs with racists. But the racists will hopefully get their legs kicked out from under them. The Grand Wizard of the KKK is alive and well. He wears a business suit, owns 7 - 11 homes, married a Cryptkeeper clone, and goes by the name of John Sidney McCain, III. A coward who used his Dad's rank to advance...until his Dad's death in 1981 and the coward had to retire from a military in 1981 that wouldn't advance him.
McCain/Palin 08: Vote republi-KKKon!
Posted by phidipides at October 13, 2008 09:21 AMAgain don't let their myth take hold. Educate yourselves. Educate others.
Truth is a powerful weapon.
Posted by Anjha at October 13, 2008 09:26 AMMcCain Conduct Unbecoming
That's a phrase that should take hold.
Posted by Anjha at October 13, 2008 09:31 AMOK, this idiot on Faux News (someone from the club for growth I think) just made the claim that people in an income range of about $25-$40K will pay a higher marginal tax rate under Obama's plan than exists currently, while at the same time talking about how Obama is redistributing wealth through refundable tax credits. So which is it? If people are getting so many tax credits, how are they paying more taxes, when he's not raising ANY taxes on anyone below $250K.
I think this guy was claiming that Obama is raising cap gains taxes on everyone, which isn't true, and then went on to say that this affects everyone with a 401(k) or IRA. Fucking idiot. He's on there to talk about tax policy. Does he not know those are taxed as ordinary income or is he just lying on purpose?
Posted by CG at October 13, 2008 09:50 AMCG: Yes, the ACORN story might influence some swing voters -- but don't panic. Obama's team has never jumped on these kinds of smears out of the gate, except for a basic response, but they tend to let them simmer a couple days and then wipe them out, often with a turnaround tactic. I expect them to use the introduction of "vote fraud" to launch a serious attack on Republican fraud, and their 100,000+ army of lawyers ready to protect people's right to vote (no, that is not an exaggeration).
And stop watching Fix Noise. Swing voters don't watch it, only the dittoheads who are Rich, Racists, or Rapture-heads.
Posted by Anonny at October 13, 2008 09:57 AMYes, CG, he is lying on purpose. That is what they do. What other choice do they have? They have no ideas. No plans. No honor. No good policies. All they have are lies.
Turn off Faux News and make some calls for Obama. That will make you feel better.
Posted by Anjha at October 13, 2008 10:00 AMAh ... just when the daily tracking polls might get you down Gallup comes to the rescue, showing a +3 gain for Obama since yesterday up to 51-41 nationally. That means Sunday must have been huge for Obama (and bad for McCain) since Thursday, which dropped off the 3 day average, was already a good day for Obama.
Of course, there is no reason to believe Gallup is better than the others -- just that when the polls are moving slightly in opposite directions then there is no clear trend in either direction, which is good when your candidate is up an aggregate of +8.
Gallup also is starting to publish their likely voter model, and to their credit is publishing both the traditional LV model and a new LV model based on trends in the 2006 election and the primaries. In the traditional Obama is up +7 51-44, in the new LV Obama is up +10, 53-43. Either is huge at this point.
Posted by Anonny at October 13, 2008 10:18 AMThanks Anonny and Anjha. Faux is the only cable news network I get, so I flip it on when I want to see what's going on. It's good to see what the other side is up to also. But yeah, I need to stop watching it.
The links about ACORN are helpful. I'm going to post them on another message board where there are some undecided voters and this issue has come up.
Posted by CG at October 13, 2008 10:20 AMAt the debate, I'd like to see the moderator ask this:
"Senator McCain, your health care plan is aimed at reducing employer-based health care plans (the group market) and increasing people buying health care on the open market (individual market.) Would you be willing to purchase your own health insurance on the open market under your own plan?"
I'm sure he prefers his employer-provided, government-provided health care plan. As far as I can tell, he's enjoyed government-provided health insurance his entire life.
Posted by CG at October 13, 2008 10:28 AMAs far as I can tell, he's enjoyed government-provided health insurance his entire life.
This is absolutely true CG. I saw an interview where he was asked about this and he, of course, went to the POW well and said "there was a period in my life where my health care was not very good."
What he failed to mention was that during this time, he received health care because he told the Vietcong that he was the son of an Admiral. He told them in order to be taken to a hospital.
He has received health care paid for by the taxpayer his entire life. His daddy and granddaddy were govt employees, as was he, his entire life.
In addition, the man who said at the most recent debate that "SS will not be available in the future at the same levels it is now." This, from a man who is worth 100 million and is collecting SS now (at full benefits.)
McCain gets 30K a year in retirement and disability benefits from the military.
60K a year in SS.
175K a year in salary from the Senate.
All of this while he is worth 100 million.
Never once has he offered to return a raise or stop taking SS payments.
This from a man who has repeatedly voted against raising the minimum wage.
John McCain is a fraud and a liar and a dishonorable POS.
A couple of hits before I go:
Remind people who is responsible for their 401K statement.
Email people about the Real McCain.
In addition, Obama is right now unveiling his new economic plan.
watch it live now, top right side of page.
Posted by Anjha at October 13, 2008 10:53 AMSign the Petition to count our votes.
We have to combat the Right Wing attacks.
Posted by Anjha at October 13, 2008 11:47 AM