Mockery and Derision

This was so well done, I have to repost it. From Joe Trippi.com:

“Note to GOP – ACORN Was Defrauded and You Know It.
A short history of how voter registration drives got to where they are today.

1. The GOP during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s employed a number of methods to register voters to insure the people they were registering were indeed Republican.

One method was to go through a neighborhood and register everyone who wasn’t registered. Then they would throw out all the voter registration cards of those who had registered as “Democrats” – thereby building up Republican registration.

I am not saying that Democrats were saints. But Democrats did not have to employ this method. Democrats tended to go deep into poor and minority areas such as Watts, or Harlem and could register thousands, even millions, of new voters and only rarely find someone who registered as a Republican. So few that it wasn’t worth disenfranchising them by throwing their registration cards in the trash.

With Democrats registering new voters by the millions in inner cities – Republicans had to keep up by mounting some kind of registration drive - they had to go into suburbs and places where voters were split and they had to find a way to come out of their drives with far more Republicans than Democrats to make it worth the effort. Throwing out registration cards of those who registered as Democrats became on way to do this.

BUT LAWS BEGAN TO BE PASSED TO PROHIBIT THIS PRACTICE – INCREASINGLY THESE LAWS REQUIRED THAT ALL REGISTRATION CARDS HAD TO BE TURNED IN. You could not simply turn in the registration cards that you wanted to turn in – you had to turn them all in.

This is exactly why ACORN had to turn in the “fraudulent” voter registrations cards for Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

2. In order to raise millions of dollars for these registration drives it became important for them to be non-partisan so that contributors would receive the appropriate tax deduction for their contribution to the effort. This meant that once such a drive went into a neighborhood it was required to register both Democrats and Republicans to maintain its charitable or non-profit tax status. Progressives again did not have to worry about this – they could mount non-partisan voter registration drives inner cities – register millions of new voters and vast majorities of them would be progressive.

Republicans had to go to the suburbs and other areas of America that were split in their political allegiances. So they developed a method called “bird-dogging” where a party volunteer would go door to door in a suburb and ask the unregistered if they sided with the GOP or the Democrats. In the early days of these efforts they would literally leave a “tale” such as a popsicle in the yard for a volunteer of the non-profit to find and they would register people in that household. This is how the GOP stayed within the law of registering everyone in an area – turning in all the cards – and still registered more new Republicans. These methods became more modern and targeted with the advent of computers and databases that allow for better targeting than the old “bird-dog” method.

3. How it was ACORN that was defrauded and not the American people (despite the GOP’s cries to the contrary). Progressive organizations began to pay volunteers $1 per new voter registered. This was supposed to encourage these volunteers to stay in the field longer – register more voters and provide a small reward for their effort.
So here is what happened and the GOP knows it. Most of the ACORN workers did their jobs and went out and registered new voters. But some workers defrauded ACORN – simply sitting down at home or somewhere else and filling out cards to make $1 per card – someone could make $100 or $200 per day doing this. ACORN is absolutely correct that it has to turn every one of these cards in – why? Return to #1 above.

Mickey Mouse will not be showing up to vote on election day. A voter registration worker defrauded ACORN by turning in the phony card to make a buck.
All ACORN did was turn Mickey’s card in as required by law.

The GOP is going to question the legitimacy of this election based on this garbage?

I have a prediction Barack Obama is going to win by more votes than ACORN registered.

You can problems with the way ACORN does things, or with the way both sides register voters. Or with how we got to where we are.

But get over it – watch the flood on election day – as the “Obama effect” takes hold and millions of Americans vote for change as looks likely from this vantage point.”

Hey. It’s nice to see you here. No, don’t worry. There’s plenty of space for you here on the bandwagon. You’re not too late.

Oh that? That’s just Ben Affleck. Hey Ben, move over will ya? Give Colin a seat.

Can I get you anything? You must be pretty tired. It’s been a long journey, from the Bush Administration all the way over here. I thought you were gone forever when I saw you at the UN. Guess that turned out to be pretty emberassing huh?

But no matter, you’re here now. You’re safe. We won’t use you as our “token black guy” to show there’s at least one minority in our camp. We won’t dupe you with false intelligence and make you look like an idiot, dragging your name through the mud.

Go on, put your feet up. I think you’ll find the chairs suprisingly comfortable. We raised 150 million in September alone. We can afford a pretty nice bandwagon. So go ahead.

Do you want to be Secretary of State again? Oh, I get it. Too soon. Well we’ll talk about that later. Until then, just hang out and enjoy the ride Mr. Powell. It’s good to have you here.

Is anyone else watching this right now? GOOD GORD! It’s almost painful to watch McCain get shellacked like this.

Just like it’s almost painful to watch McCain get outspent 8 to 1 in North Carolina. Almost.

Currently listening to: MONEY by Pink Floyd

Usually I talk politics. But I’m very unmotivated currently. Because Barack is kicking ass and taking names, I’m ironically less motivated. Which is something we all need to be warry of, lest we allow old man river into the White House on accident. But really, every day there’s some new poll, some new development that puts another state into play, makes the Obama Landslide scenario look more and more likely.

States that were, but are no longer, solid McCain: GA, MT, NC, WV, IN, ND, OH, FL, MO, AR. It’s craziness.

But it’s not enough. I want to put the final nail in the coffin on the McCain Parade of Horribles. Which is why the engineers on my staff are hard at work creating an army (about six) of robots. Their about six feet tall, and DON”T WORRY, they wont turn on us. All they’re programmed to say is “I’m a robot! I’m from the Obama campaign and I’m here to take your medicine! Also, I’m part Vietnamese! And Matlock is gay!”

That’s part one. They’ll show up at various McCain/ Palin rallies and terrify him so badly, he wont know what to do. Then, they turn to the crowd and two of the robots (they’re all male) start to kiss. That’ll terrify the crowd so badly they wont know what to do. That’s part two.

Part three hings on Sarah Palin’s reaction. Seeing gay robots kiss? SURELY that’s the final sign of the apocalypse. She’ll be so busy praying her gosh-darn small town America self into a corner she wont have any time to campaign.

And that’s how we make the electoral map look like this:

Well. In a desperate, last gasp move to save his campaign, we’ve all recently seen the McCain camp finally make that eventual leap all shitty Republicans make: character assassination. For a man who said he wants this election to be “a conversation among friends”, the hypocrisy and dishonor of McCain has finally shone through.

Seriously. When people say they hate politicians, they think they’re all crooks, the first person that should come to mind is Richard Nixon. The second should be John McCain.

The campaign has finally brought out their version of an “October surprise”, an association we’ve all known about and has been well documented for years, the association between Obama and Bill Ayers. For those of you that don’t know, Bill Ayers is an original member of the Weathermen, domestic terrorists in the 1960’s who opposed the Vietnam War by bombing federal buildings. Since that time, he’s became the preeminent educational scholar in the Chicago area. And in the 1990’s, Obama served on a board with him that distributed money to Chicago schools.

There you have it. But listen to McCain and his surrogates, and Obama and Ayers ride around Chi-town on a tandem bike wiring bombs and reading Mao. Bear in mind, when general piece of shit Ayers was running around with the Weathermen, Obama was…8.

So as a firm believer in fighting back when campaigns get ugly, let’s talk about some of the McCain campaign’s character issues.

Like when Cindy McCain was addicted to painkillers, and was caught by the DEA stealing them from her own non-profit medical relief organization. And then only admitted this in 1994, to change the story from her husband’s character issues.

When people mention the “Keating 5″ scandal, often they fail to remember that McCain was one of the 5. Accused of improperly interviening on behalf of Charles Keating in the federal Savings and Loan crisis, McCain wasn’t charged with a crime, but was harshly criticized for his “poor judgement” in interviening. Keating donated over $112,000 to McCain over the years, and Mccain and his family often vacationed for free and flew on Keating’s private jet to his private resort in the Carribeann. And then magically, Sen. McCain made the independent judgement that it would be in the interests of the country to have federal regulators back off of Charles Keating when being investigated for fraud.

Next issue: Mccain’s character troubles continued, followed by caribou Barbie.

Let me tell you why that last post makes me so fucking mad. First of all, it comes after hearing about Cindy McCain’s stupid fucking comments about soldiers. And then this, the revelation that due to Bush’s illegal, unconstitutional, and morally despicable wire tapping program of US citizens, soldiers calling home from Iraq were part of those being tapped.

This article doesn’t cover all of it, and I didn’t post the whole thing due to space.

Why the FUCK are we eavesdropping on US soldiers when they call home to their families? Why are we listening to them have phone sex? Why haven’t we impeached and sent the President to federal prison for this?

For the love of God, let’s drop the pretense that the President did NOT directly lie to the American people about going to war in Iraq. He did. They knew for a fact Saddam did not try to acquire yellow cake uranium in Africa. They knew there was no connection between 9/11 and Iraq. Yet they still said it, still lied and when they couldn’t lie, purposely used old intelligence to trump up their case for war.

Since 2001, the President knowing it was illegal set up a program to wire tap the phones of millions of citizens without a search warrant. There is no plausible deniability here. He knew about it, was advised it was illegal, and then authorized it. And kept it going until 2007.

We all know the many failings of the Bush admininstration. And I am not some fire breathing liberal, and have been skeptical of impeachment for a long time. But given those two massive examples, we know that the man is a criminal. And given the information today, that American soldiers were among those wiretapped, I don’t want to sit on the sidelines about this anymore.

We need to set the example to the next President that you can’t break the law. And we need to do it now, while it’s still a relevant example for people to see.

I know it’ll never happen. But we all need to have a dream.

From Salon.com:

“

Major shock: Eavesdropping powers abused without oversight

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

In the most unsurprising revelation imaginable, two former Army Reserve Arab linguists for the National Security Agency have said that they routinely eavesdropped on — “and recorded and transcribed” — the private telephone calls of American citizens who had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism.  The two former NSA employees, who came forward as part of journalist James Bamford’s forthcoming book on the NSA, intercepted calls as part of the so-called “Terrorist  Surveillance Program,” whereby George Bush ordered the NSA in 2001 to eavesdrop on Americans’ calls in secret, without first obtaining judicial approval as required by the law (FISA).  That illegal eavesdropping continued for at least six years — through 2007.

The two NSA whistleblowers, Adrienne Kinne and David Murfee Faulk, were interviewed by ABC News’ Brian Ross.  Kinne said that “US military officers, American journalists and American aid workers were routinely intercepted and ‘collected on’ as they called their offices or homes in the United States.”  He also said his co-workers “were ordered to transcribe these calls.”   Faulk told Ross:  ”when one of my co-workers went to a supervisor and said:  ’but sir, there are personal calls,’ the supervisor said: ‘my orders were to transcribe everything’.”   He said that the intercepted calls included highly personal and intimate conversations and even phone sex.

When Ross showed Kinne a video excerpt of George Bush insisting to the nation that only those with links to Al Qaeda were eavesdropped on as part of his illegal spying program, the following exchange occurred:

ROSS:  Kinne says she listened to hundreds of Americans simply calling their families …

KINNE:  Personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything having anything to do with terrorism. It was just personal conversations that nobody else should have been listening to.

ROSS:  President Bush has reassured Americans again and again:

GEORGE BUSH:  It’s phone calls of known Al Qaeda suspects making a phone call into the United States.

KINNE:  I would say that that is completely a lie  —  I would call it a lie — because we were definitely listening to Americans who had nothing to do with terrorism…

ROSS:  Kinne says she intercepted, recorded, and transcribed conversations with the military, journalists, and Red Cross and aid workers.”

Fair warning: these next two posts will be angry, and in all likelihood poorly written and irrational. Sorry. I’ll return to my Shakespearean self sometime tommorow.

A little about me: I rarely get angry. For any reason. At a bar, in traffic, what have you. I don’t get into fights, I don’t yell. And for the most part, I legitimately don’t care what happens to me. But I do care what happens to other people. Especially people I care about.

And I don’t like that old campaigning pasttime, the righteous indignation people pretend to feel when candidates make a controversial remark. But for some reason, this isn’t pretend, and I can’t let it go. Cindy McCain, in a very recent interview, said some very fucking stupids things about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and who gets it.

Let me be clear. I don’t think she’s a bad, sinister person. I just think she’s very fucking dumb. Excerpt to follow:

“Q: You met your husband after his POW days. To what extent is that still with you - or is it a part of history?

McCAIN: My husband will be the first one to tell you that that’s in the past. Certainly it’s a part of who he is, but he doesn’t dwell on it. It’s not part of a daily experience that we experience or anything like that. But it has shaped him. It has made him the leader that he is.

Q: But no cold sweats in the middle of the night?

McCAIN: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. My husband, he’d be the first one to tell you that he was trained to do what he was doing. The guys who had the trouble were the 18-year-olds who were drafted. He was trained, he went to the Naval Academy, he was a trained United States naval officer, and so he knew what he was doing.”

 Fuck you, you ignorant, elitist Stepford wife. First of all, it’s certainly not in the past. Part of the reason I can’t stand you people is because you’re husband shamelessly exploits his service for his own political benefit. So when your husband can’t go ten minutes without mentioning Vietnam, it’s not in the past.

But most importantly, there’s the second answer. I know you’re not the one running for office, but you still play a huge role in politics and in an administration as a potential First Lady. I can’t imagine Laura Bush saying something fucking dumb like that.

I’ve been to Iraq twice. And luckily, very luckily, I’ve never had a problem with PTSD when I’ve come back. But it has nothing to do with age (I was 18 when I went the fist time). And it has nothing to do with training or some admirable personal quality like “guts” or “courage”.

PTSD happens to people who’ve been in combat, and there’s no rhyme or reason to who suffers with it. And 1 in 3, 1 in 3, soldiers come back from Iraq with it, which from what we know are similar statistics for returning vets from every war.

One soldier in my battalion killed himself in the last month (he was 38 I believe, not 18). When we first came back a few months ago, one of my very good friends in my unit tried to kill himself. Last deployment, another very good friend tried to kill himself when we came back. And I have no idea how many others have sought treatment for PTSD/ depression, since the Army finally keeps that stuff confidential. 

They all fought for their country and risked their ass every single day. They all “knew what they were doing”. And whatever they’ve had to go through when they came back had nothing to do with age or training or some deficiency on their part.

So don’t ever fucking suggest otherwise about anyone I’ve served with, or anyone from Vietnam. You’ve never had to deal with coming back from a war, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, and you’re clearly too dumb to know that.

Fuck off, and go back to your 7 houses, 13 cars, and false sense of understanding. I don’t want to hear it anymore.

Do the proverbial ends justify the proverbial means?

It’s an age old question, and I’d like to know for sure. Of course it wont change my ever evolving opinion on the matter, but I’d at least like the know whether I’m a bastard or not.

Personally, I think they do and they don’t. Clearly what Palin and her supporters did, calling for the death of an opponent, should be out of bounds. See also: voodoo, witchcraft, fisticuffs, flimflammery, tomfoolery, hornswoggling, and giving the stink eye.

But what IS the line? Is distorting the truth alright, if you really believe your side is right? Is smearing someone?

What if something is true, but in poor taste. Is it alright to say your opponent used cocaine? Or cheated on their wife? Or had an abortion?

 It’s a strange question. But it is the darker side of politics, and it’s an interesting moral question I’ve been asking myself. I’ve been reading a book on the Kennedys, and right now JFK is running for President. The Kennedys are throwing cash around like nobody’s business, some of it even legally. Is that right?

I don’t know. What if Nixon had been elected and we had 8 years of him. Gore ran a relatively positive campaign, and we’ve had 8 years of the worst Presidency in our history. What if he had done some smear, run a more negative campaign and won it? Would it have been worth it?

On the surface you might say no, it’s CLEARLY not worth it. Your integrity is more important. But most people on the left thought Bush was an idiot in ‘99, and they turned out to be right. And we’ve lost a lot of lives because of it. Of course if Gore had won we wouldn’t be in Iraq, the Department of Defense would be disbanded, and the Pentagon turned into a carbon nuetral hospital for Dogs. But that’s neither here nor there.

The point is that elections matter, and people’s lives depend on it. But what moral liscence does that allow? I don’t know. I’ll never know for sure. But I do know that McCain cheated all over his first wife, and has a gay dinosaur for an uncle. That last part is untrue. The first part isn’t. And he’s a warmonger who will in all likelihood get more Americans killed than Bush.

I know I don’t feel bad about saying that. Should I? You tell me.

From Talking Points Memo:

Who They Are, What They’re About
So we have McCain today getting his crowd riled up asking who Barack Obama is and then apparently giving a wink and a nod when one member of the crowd screams out “terrorist.”

And later we have Sarah Palin with the same mob racket, getting members of the crowd to yell out “kill him”, though it’s not clear whether the call for murder was for Bill Ayers or Barack Obama. It didn’t seem to matter.

These are dangerous and sick people, McCain and Palin. Whatever it takes. Stop at nothing.