As I was saying...

McCain/Palin in a squeaker, global warming is a fraud, Ayers wrote Barry's book, and ACORN is a corrupt organization.

Three out of four ain't bad.

ACORN Nevada

Nevada AG has filed a complaint against ACORN for voter registration fraud stemming from an incentive system for canvassers that required each canvasser to yield a quota of completed registration cards to keep their jobs and cash bonuses for higher numbers of registration cards. Larry Lomax, a county registrar of voters described: "This is individuals ripping off their bosses because they have quotas to make." From the article:

Officials insisted today that the fake voter registrations did not translate into fake voters making it to the polls.

"This is a case of voter registration fraud, not voter fraud," said Miller. "There is no evidence that there was any voter fraud in the last election."

Here was my take on McCain's allegations about ACORN shenanigans in Florida on October 15, 2008:

ACORN operates on a shoe-string budget and has some lazy employees who have defrauded ACORN by taking a paycheck and not doing their jobs. (By all means, root them out and charge those folks with crimes.) Republicans are trying to use this to delegitimize Obama's win. Here's hoping for victories so resounding that this ploy won't work.

Fitzgerald may be asked to stay on

MSNBC is reporting that it's looking likely that Patrick Fitzgerald will be asked to stay on as a U.S. attorney. The story is pretty speculative, so it's too soon to give the Obama administration credit for keeping Fitzgerald. But it's worth keeping an eye on it, if for no other reason than to follow-up on the story that Michael posted regarding Fitzgerald heading up a RICO investigation of ACORN and Obama.

Piedmont A-11 offense

makes the front page of NYT. I tried to tell you about it here, but all you wanted to talk about was Ayers and ACORN. (Photo: two quarterbacks in the backfield, three men on the line, and six receivers split.)

Poll fraud?

McCain is claiming that vote fraud may cause him to lose Florida. How does he explain Obama's lead in polls in Florida? Does he think there's polling fraud going on?

Art Levine at The American Prospect was all over this voter fraud malarky back in April:

In October 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft launched an intensive "Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative" that required all U.S. attorney offices to coordinate with local officials in combating voter fraud. Yet even after the Justice Department declared the war against voter fraud a "high priority," only 24 people were convicted of illegal voting in federal elections between 2002 and 2005 -- and nobody was even charged by Justice with impersonating another voter. (The Justice Department declined to answer questions about more recent fraud prosecutions.) And despite the anti-immigrant frenzy fueling photo-ID laws, only 14 noncitizens were convicted of illegally voting in federal elections from 2002 through 2005 -- mostly because of their ignorance of election law.

ACORN operates on a shoe-string budget and has some lazy employees who have defrauded ACORN by taking a paycheck and not doing their jobs. (By all means, root them out and charge those folks with crimes.) Republicans are trying to use this to delegitimize Obama's win. Here's hoping for victories so resounding that this ploy won't work.

"ACORN makes America special"

Oh, man. Worst campaign in the history of campaigns. Check it out.

If Americans had to pick a single word to sum up the Bush administration, I suspect it would be INCOMPETENT. And it's incompetence, more than anything else, that they want to avoid with the next pick.

Update: fixed the link.

Re: Past Presidents

Best - any affiliated with ACORN.
Worst - any not affiliated with ACORN

Obama's representation of ACORN

I'm going to post this, so we have these facts in mind as we hear about nothing but ACORN this week:

While Mr. Obama did represent Acorn in a lawsuit in 1995, Acorn was on the same side as the Justice Department. The training events involved two hours of work.

AND

In 1995, Mr. Obama was on a team of lawyers that represented Acorn in a lawsuit to compel Illinois to comply with federal laws intended to enhance access to the polls. The team also represented Equip for Equality, a group that promotes the rights of the disabled, and four individuals.

Mr. Davis said that as their lawyer, Mr. Obama had “an intimate relationship” with Acorn “against the State of Illinois and the federal government.”

In fact, the Justice Department was on the same side as Acorn in the lawsuit, as were other organizations, including the League of Women Voters. Those plaintiffs won the case.

On the same side as the U.S. Justice Department. Traitor.

Barry promises that ACORN will "help shape agenda"

of his administration. Does that bother you? [Ace]

UPDATE: Allah thinks it's not as strong as it appears.

Fitzpatrick RICO investigation of Barry and ACORN?

Unsubstantiated rumor that I should pass on:

There IS a RICO investigation of ACORN and the Obama campaign underway - this has now been established by the mainstream media. Right now it’s rumored here in Chicago that Patrick Fitzgerald is heading it (confirmation on that has not come yet). There is a lot of activity in Chicago right now, with a lot of IRS agents looking into the finances coming in and out of this city, and across state lines (this was established on Monday when the GOP issued emergency press releases that much of Obama’s campaign contributions could very well be illegal foreign contributions - what appears to be deliberately poor record keeping designed to hide the true identities and monetary sources of online donors is at issue here). We see in 15 states now that ACORN is being busted for attempted voter fraud, and for fraudulent, illegal voter registrations in the hundreds of thousands, if not a million. The article below states, and we have confirmed this with people who know for sure, that the people who gathered evidence of Obama’s fraud and voter intimidation techniques during the primaries against Hillary Clinton are sharing everything they have with the Republican Party and the federal government. [Ace]

More ACORN and Barry

Barry gave ACORN $800,000 this year:

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's campaign distanced itself Thursday from its $800,000 payment linked to the liberal ACORN organization, which is under investigation in several states where it is suspected of filing fraudulent voter registrations.

Federal Election Commission reports show ACORN-affiliated Citizens Services Inc. got $832,598 from the Obama campaign for get-out-the-vote work during the primaries. [Geraghty]

Voter Registration and ACORN

I don't know enough about ACORN to defend it, but I do see the potential for them having been set up. As I commented, it would be illegal for ACORN or anyone else to toss out completed voter registration forms, even if they suspect that they're not legit.

From the ACORN press release:

"Over the past year, ACORN has worked hard to help over 80,000 people in Clark County register to vote. As part of our nonpartisan voter registration program, we have reviewed all the applications submitted by our canvassers. When we have identified suspicious applications, we have separated them out and flagged them for election officials. We have zero tolerance for fraudulent registrations. We immediately dismiss employees we suspect of submitting fraudulent registrations.
For the past 10 months, any time ACORN has identified a potentially fraudulent application, we turn that application into election officials separately and offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual.

Election officials routinely ignored this information and failed to act. In early July, ACORN asked to meet with election officials to express our concerns that they were not acting on information ACORN had presented to them. ACORN met with Clark County elections officials and a representative of the Secretary of State on July 17th. ACORN pleaded with them to take our concerns about fraudulent applications seriously. One week later, elections officials asked us to provide them with a second copy of what we had previously provided to them. ACORN responded by giving election officials copies of 46 "problem application packages," which involved 33 former canvassers.

On September 23, ACORN had received a subpoena dated September 19th requesting information on 15 employees, all of whom had been included in the packages we had previously submitted to election officials. ACORN provided our personnel records on these 15 employees on September 29.

Today's raid by the Secretary of State's Office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than discredit our work registering Nevadans and distracting us from the important work ahead of getting every eligible voter to the polls."

Maybe Barry will "answer"

these new revelations by Stanley Kurtz. Barry and Ayers, while at Woods and CAC, funnelled lots of money to ACORN. ACORN pressured banks to make these crappy loans. When the banks balked, saying that Freddie and Fannie wouldn't buy the loans bc of their stricter standards, ACORN went to the Dems in DC and pressured them to loosen the standards. That is the genesis of this whole mess. Plus Barry was a "trainer" at ACORN, was tight with the Chicago bigwigs at ACORN, and filed suits on its behalf against Citibank and others to force them to make crappy loans.

Just a guy in my neighborhood??? No wonder Barry lied.

Does any of that trouble you?

How about the fact that ACORN is regularly investigated and indicted for voter fraud? Should a presidential candidate be tight with these people? Only if he believes what they believe.

ACORN

and Barry are hip-deep in this mess.