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The Dems Are Faking Suicide

January 10, 2010 By Joan of Snark

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The Democrat-controlled Congress is busy planning how to ram their visions of health care “reform” down America’s throat and the rising backlash against their tactics and, indeed, against their progressive liberal ideology is becoming more and more severe.

So severe, that true to the form of all yellow-bellied selfish cowards, Democrats are turning tail and dropping out of 2010 elections left and right.  And the pious spinning begins.  Among the louder dropouts is the infamous sleazeball Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn).  Perhaps to spend some time licking his wounds at his Countrywide sweetheart-deal-bought cottage in Ireland? 

“I kind of got the feeling that he might not run when he spent so much time working on the health care issues and the credit care issues down in Washington and did not come back to Connecticut to shore up his base,” said John Droney, a Connecticut-based attorney and close ally of Dodd’s who spoke with the senator Tuesday for a few minutes about his decision.
 
Yeah, right.  He seems to forget our flying pigs are waiting patiently in the wings.
 
The real reason that Dodd, Dorgan (ND), Kaufman (DE), and Burris (IL), along with Colorado Governor Bill Ritter are leading the rat charge off the sinking ship is because in the larger progressive liberal Democrat scheme of things, they’re expendable.
 
How can they be expendable when the Democrats need their 60-vote majority in the Senate?  Let us count the ways.  The first answer is contained in three little words:  “universal voter registration”.
 
Simply put, this is a tactic planned by the Democrats that will force – by federal mandate – the states to register everyone to vote. 
In January, Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank will propose universal voter registration. …  It means all of the state laws on elections will be overridden by a federal mandate. The feds will tell the states: “take everyone on every list of welfare that you have, take everyone on every list of unemployed you have, take everyone on every list of property owners, take everyone on every list of driver’s license holders and register them to vote regardless of whether they want to be …” 
 
The problems with universal voter registration are numerous and obvious. Many states’ lists include vast numbers of illegals, including some states which allow illegals to obtain drivers licenses; because many homeowners have more than one home, there will be duplicates; because so many people are on so many separate federal and state government agency lists, there will be duplicates; and because so many lists exist with little or no cross-checking capability, all of these duplicates are likely to go uncorrected. Add to this the fact that Dems hope to extend voting rights to felons, and the whole thing begins to look like a nationwide Democrat voter registration drive facilitated by taxpayers.
 
The second answer is that odious little poster child for all things fraudulent and illegal:  ACORN.  Under investigation in numerous states for their 2008 “assistance” to the Obama campaign, when something as precious as a 60-seat Democrat Senate majority hangs in the balance, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of false voters registered and as many fraudulent ballots cast.  Politico nicely outlined the ACORN problem last year:

Larry Lomax, the chief elections officer in Las Vegas, responded that the group’s claims it had extensive quality controls to catch fraudulent registrations were “pathetic.” He noted that ACORN had hired 59 inmates from a work-release program at a nearby prison and that some inmates who had been convicted of identity theft had been made supervisors. That led some local wags to joke that at least ACORN was hiring specialists to do their work.

ACORN’s second line of defense has been that fraudulent registrations can’t turn into fraudulent votes, as if the felony of polluting voter lists was somehow not all that serious. But that defense goes only a short distance. “How would you know if people using fake names had cast votes in states without strict ID laws?” says GOP Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, who this year won a major Supreme Court case upholding his state’s photo identification law. “It’s almost impossible to detect and once the fraudulent voter leaves the precinct or casts an absentee ballot, that vote is thrown in with other secret ballots there’s no way to trace it.”

Anita MonCrief, an ACORN whistle-blower who worked for both it and its Project Vote registration affiliate from 2005 until early this year, agrees. “It’s ludicrous to say that fake registrations can’t become fraudulent votes,” she told me. “I assure you that if you can get them on the rolls you can get them to vote, especially using absentee ballots.”

…some ACORN affiliates had a conscious strategy of flooding voter registration offices with suspect last-minute forms in part to create confusion and chaos that would make it more likely suspect voters would be allowed to cast ballots by overworked officials. Nate Toller, who worked on ACORN registration drives and headed an ACORN campaign against Wal-Mart in California until 2006, agrees. “There’s no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances,” he told me.

—

Perhaps the clearest look at how fraudulent registrations can be converted into votes comes from Wisconsin. Earlier this year, the Milwaukee Police Department’s Special Investigation Unit released a stunning 67-page report detailing an “illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome” of the 2004 presidential election. 

 It noted many documented cases of staffers for a presidential campaign and an allied 527 group who illegally voted. Those involved in the scheme “represent multiple levels of both the organizations, from upper management to the street level canvassers.” The task force report found many ineligible voters had cast ballots, ineligible felons not only had voted but also worked at the polls, transient college students had cast illegal votes along with day-trippers from nearby Chicago, and homeless voters may well have voted more than once.

 The Milwaukee police report explained just how easy it is to cast an illegal vote without ever being detected., “Michael A. Smith can become Mike Smith, M.A. Smith, or Mickey Smith, depending on the person reviewing the Same Day registration card, and unless a specific allegation is made against one of those name variants, the new name would just be added to the overall database. Even if the new system were capable of discerning the differences in recorded names, the finding would not be discovered until after any multiple ballots had been cast and recorded.” Indeed, the task force found that 1,100 registration cards filled in by voters were declared invalid or untraceable by election officials.

 Another way that fraudulent registrations can be converted into illegal votes is when groups like ACORN either purposely or recklessly sign up visitors from out-of-state or felons who are ineligible to vote. The New York Daily News reported in August, 2004 on how some 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both the city and Florida, what it called a “shocking finding” because it “found that between 400 and 1,000 registered voters have voted twice in at least one election, a federal offense punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine,” and noted that “efforts to prevent people from registering in more than one state rely mostly on the honor system.”

For answer number three, we can’t forget granting amnesty to illegal immigrants.  Aka giving criminals given an easy path to citizenship.  While it has been reported that House members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have threatened to vote against any health care bill that doesn’t allow illegal (criminal) immigrants access, word is slipping out that they’ll back down if they get an agreement from Obama that health care coverage for criminals who “earn” a path to citizenship will be addressed in an immigration bill.  A bill rumored to be already in the planning stages.  Then beholden to their savior, the Democrats are counting on their votes.

But there is a small sliver of hope.  Business Week reports that America’s “misery index” (the sum of a country’s unemployment and inflation rates)  has reached 11.8% and there is no reason to think it will not continue to move higher over the next year.  This is its highest point since May 1991, and more than 3 percentage points higher than its average since then.  It topped out at 22% in 1980 – helping to usher in the Reagan era.

It can be another case where misery loves company.  In this case, the company can be found at the polls.  And in such numbers the Democrats’ attempts to steal any election will be so blatant they are put away for good.

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Filed Under: Eroding Freedoms Tagged With: 2010 elections, ACORN, amnesty, fraudulent elections, Hypocritical Politicians, illegal immigration, universal voter registration, voter fraud

Senate Bites Acorn

September 15, 2009 By Joan of Snark

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It’s about time.

After months and months of reports about corrupt practices by ACORN, including charges of voter registration fraud in 14 states, the Senate voted yesterday to pull the plug on allowing ACORN access to HUD funds.

Do you think the fact that two extraordinary young journalists going from ACORN office to ACORN office posing as a prostitute and a pimp looking for advice on buying a home in order to set up a brothel staffed by underage illegal immigrants and each time finding the ACORN staff giving them all kinds of advice on how to lie on mortgage and business applications and tax returns finally put ACORN’s corruption so out in the open it could no longer be ignored?

 The following is from the official Senate record of yesterday’s vote.  Please note the names of the Senators who voted against the amendment.  Apparently they are of the opinion that ACORN is doing a fine job encouraging the poor and minorities to break the law and that our tax monies should continue to go to fund such corruption.  An “agenda” strongly supported by President Obama, too, we might add.

Amendment Number:  S.Amdt. 2355 to H.R. 3288 (Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010)

Statement of Purpose:  Prohibiting use of funds to fund the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

YEAs —83
Akaka (D-HI), Alexander (R-TN), Barrasso (R-WY), Baucus (D-MT), Bayh (D-IN), Begich (D-AK)
Bennet (D-CO), Bennett (R-UT), Bingaman (D-NM), Bond (R-MO), Boxer (D-CA), Brown (D-OH)
Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Cantwell (D-WA), Cardin (D-MD), Carper (D-DE)
Chambliss (R-GA), Cochran (R-MS), Collins (R-ME), Conrad (D-ND), Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), Dodd (D-CT), Dorgan (D-ND), Ensign (R-NV)
 Enzi (R-WY), Feingold (D-WI), Feinstein (D-CA), Franken (D-MN), Grassley (R-IA), Hagan (D-NC)
Harkin (D-IA), Hatch (R-UT), Inhofe (R-OK), Inouye (D-HI), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE)
Johnson (D-SD), Kaufman (D-DE), Kerry (D-MA), Klobuchar (D-MN), Kohl (D-WI), Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), LeMieux (R-FL), Levin (D-MI), Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR), Lugar (R-IN), McCaskill (D-MO), McConnell (R-KY), Menendez (D-NJ)
 Merkley (D-OR), Murkowski (R-AK), Murray (D-WA), Nelson (D-FL), Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR), Reed (D-RI), Reid (D-NV), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rockefeller (D-WV)
Schumer (D-NY), Sessions (R-AL), Shaheen (D-NH), Shelby (R-AL), Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (D-PA), Stabenow (D-MI), Tester (D-MT), Thune (R-SD), Udall (D-CO), Udall (D-NM)
Voinovich (R-OH), Warner (D-VA), Webb (D-VA), Wicker (R-MS), Wyden (D-OR)
 
NAYs —7

Burris (D-IL)
Casey (D-PA)
Durbin (D-IL)
 Gillibrand (D-NY)
Leahy (D-VT)
Sanders (I-VT)
 Whitehouse (D-RI)

 
Not Voting – 9
Burr (R-NC), Byrd (D-WV), Coburn (R-OK)
 Graham (R-SC), Gregg (R-NH), Hutchison (R-TX)
 McCain (R-AZ), Mikulski (D-MD), Vitter (R-LA)

You might want to contact your Congress critters about ACORN continuing to apply for more federal funds (read:  our hard-earned tax dollars).  Clarice Feldman notes at AmericanThinker that the “ACORN Institute has filed two separate applications with the Commerce Department. One in the amount of $3,172,042 and the other in amount of $2,999,903.”  They want to “facilitate broadband in disadvantaged populations”.

Or, as Clarice so aptly put it, set up “…multistate brothels trafficking in underage minors from Albania?”

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Filed Under: Truth In Reporting Tagged With: ACORN, corruption, HUD

SEIU President Brags About Power, Unwittingly Bares Corruption

May 14, 2009 By Joan of Snark

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“We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama — $60.7 million to be exact — and we’re proud of it.”

I wonder if anyone has ever told Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that pride goeth before a fall?  The Las Vegas Sun recently interviewed Mr. Stern and it’s a fascinating, though decidedly chilling look into “entitlement mentality” and the greed and corruption that inevitably results when power and influence replace original good intent.  With the use of some mighty fine weasel words, Stern makes it clear that the SEIU has paid for their place at the White House table and, because of Obama’s resulting debt to them, will not let anything stand in their way. 

And when you understand that the SEIU is nothing more than the flip-side of ACORN (though with more and more of this coming to light they are going to great pains to try to hide it), this, of course, means the loss of freedom for workers in America, as well as the continuing loss of jobs when business after business is run into the ground by union demands that cannot be met.  (Remember that service workers are far more expendable than those who perform skilled trades.)  But all the while, those at the top of the unions, who have no qualms about skimming union dues for their PAC efforts to gain perceived power and influence, will live fat and happy.

Just like Jimmy Hoffa.

For as Stern notes himself, “It’s been a historical failure of the labor movement, that egos get in the way of what’s best for the membership.”

Now substitute “citizens” for “membership” and “President” for “labor unions”….

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Filed Under: Hypocritical Politicians Tagged With: ACORN, Andy Stern, Obama union ties, SEIU

The New Democratic Math

April 3, 2009 By Joan of Snark

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It’s no wonder the President and Democrats in Congress can’t come up with a balanced budget.  In their hazy world, they replace all a “1” with a “3”.

We’ve watched this “new math” play out through ACORN’s attempts at voter registration and the help they give their members navigate paying their mortgages, and in the way cabinet nominees to calculate the taxes they owe, then yesterday it was reported that Democratic campaign organizers proudly collected a very large number of signatures supporting the President’s budget.

Unfortunately, when you take a closer look, it turns out they made THREE COPIES of the documents they handed to Congress and added up the tnumber of signatures on all the copies to come up with their final, reported number.

There’s inflation for you.

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Filed Under: Truth In Reporting Tagged With: ACORN, Congress, Obama budget support petition

Enough Is Enough: Energy, ACORN & HR 1388, Tax Cheats & Illegals, And The Supreme Law of The Land

April 2, 2009 By Joan of Snark

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It’s time to stop.  Just stop.

Every day we learn more and more about selfish idiocy that created the big problems directly affecting all of us.  The new administration has taken great advantage of the situation- taking control over things that are fundamentally and Constitutionally not their responsibility.  AND WE HAVE LET THEM.

Oh, sure, some people are speaking out, but this administration continues to call them names and make fun of them.  It seems that most of the population sits and stares stupidly at their dwindling 401k funds, wonders if they’ll be able to continue to pay their upside-down mortgage, then wonders if they’ll even have a job tomorrow.  Some sit there with their hands out, looking for Pater Obama to give them something for nothing.

In today’s news, it is being reported that Congress is unveiling their latest proposal for an “energy bill“.  Pay attention – it’s all about leading us into cap and trade and in the end raising the cost of EVERYTHING that we, the people, use – and eat – every single day.

Yesterday, the Department of Transportation released a report outlining new fuel economy standards.  These are on top of the increased fuel economy standards put in place in 2007.  So while on the one hand we bail out the auto companies and the President replaces CEOs, on the other hand they are adding inordinate costs to the auto makers.  Costs that the consumers will not recoup for some 8 years (if at all).  In effect, “President Barack Obama directed the Department of Transportation” to set the automakers up to fail.

Last Friday, the Senate killed an amendment to the National Service Act (H.R. 1388) that would exclude funding for ACORN.  Yes, ACORN will continue to reap massive financial benefits from the federal government, despite their never-ending illegal activities – ranging from outright voter registration fraud to breaking and entering.  Funny that you don’t hear very much about all this, isn’t it?  The more I read about them, the more I feel I need to go take a shower; it’s hard to understand why the media keeps ignoring tabloid-worthy after tabloid-worthy problem, though after all the campaign donations ACORN made, it’s easier to understand why Democrats simply deny it.

And in what is becoming old news, or perhaps simply business as usual in this new administration, yet another cabinet nominee, House and Human Services candidate Nancy Sebelius  is revealed to have somehow not paid all her taxes.  (Senator Grassley doesn’t think this is a big deal.  Please tell me that’s an April Fool’s Day joke.)  Just like all the other failed nominees, she is a poster child for the “rich” – the very same folks the administration asks to be “patriotic” by paying more taxes.  Congessional liberal leaders like Feinstein, Kennedy, Kerry, Kohl, Pelosi, Rockefellar are all mulitmillionaires, yet get their panties in a bunch about Wall Street bonuses and pass ex post facto laws to stop them.  While they and their Congress brethren hand out “traditional” bonuses – made up of our hard-earned tax dollars, of course – to their own employees.

We also have a little “human interest” story.  Another lawbreaker getting a break, and using the excuse of our administration-derided health care system as justification:

Barack Obama’s Kenyan aunt lost her bid for asylum more than four years ago, and a judge ordered her deported. Instead, Zeituni Onyango stayed, living for years in public housing.

Now, in a case that puts the president in a tough position both personally and politically, Onyango’s request is being reconsidered under a little-used provision in U.S. immigration rules that allows denied asylum claims to be reheard if applicants can show that something has changed to make them eligible.

Such as the ascension of her nephew to the presidency of the world’s most powerful country.

Onyango’s reasons for seeking asylum have not been made public, and her immigration hearing will be closed at her lawyer’s request.

Onyango’s lawyer, Margaret Wong, may also argue that she needs to stay in the United States for medical reasons. Onyango, who has been photographed walking with a cane, has some kind of a neurological problem, said Mike Rogers, Wong’s spokesman.

All these things upset me to no end.  But awareness is only the first step.  Action must be the second.  Honestly, folks, we don’t have to take this lying down.  There is power in numbers and it is imperative that everyone who cares about stopping the dangerous direction in which the administration is taking this country raise their voices in loud and insistent protest.

When was the last time you told your elected representatives to stop the bullshit…errrr…stop the madness?  If you need to find them, go here.  Tell them you’re tired of their hypocrisy.  Tell them you don’t want the government to be running the private sector.  (Put an “i” for “I won” in the word “run” and you get “ruin”.)  Tell them you don’t want bailouts and handouts.  Tell them you want less government, not more.  Tell them to get themselves out of the way of our Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms and allow capitalism and the free market to do what they have always done – help we, the people, create the opportunities to pursue our individual, unique happiness.

Frankly, all current government programs and most of its operations should be eliminated.  Collectively, our federal taxes should fund only the military and the national infrastructure.  Government’s only business is to oversee that we all play nicely in the sandbox together.  Private enterprise  is not the government’s business.  Government doesn’t belong in our factories, in our boardrooms or bedrooms, or on our car lots.  Government doesn’t exist to pay anyone’s medical bills or to insure they have a cell phone in their pocket.  If states or local municipalities want to fund such things, then let the people who make up that state or municipality pay for it.  Let them reap their own benefits but not subject the rest of us to the expense of their failures.  Simply put, this “minimalist’ government is what the Founding Fathers gave us in the Constitution.

Go back and read it.  The Constitution is the “supreme law of the land” and, as such, gives the federal government only the powers “necessary and proper” to:

  1. Collect taxes
  2. Regulate interstate commerce
  3. Coin money, regulate currency, set standards of weights and measures
  4. Declare war
  5. Raise and maintain an army and navy

It explicitly denies the federal government:

  1. The writ of habeas corpus cannot be suspended unless in cases of rebellion or invasion, when deemed necessary to national safety.
  2. No bill of attainder or ex post facto law can be passed.

Everything else falls to the states, per the 10th Amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”)  Such sovreignty was by design in order to avoid the problems inherent in a central, all-powerful seat of government.  (Think North Korea.  Think Venezuela.  Think Iran.)  The individual states, like the people of the United States, are to be seen and treated as equal but allowed to operate individually.

Note for the record that the taxes on AIG and other bailout bonuses can be interpreted as ex post facto law.  Meaning, they are passed and encompass something that has already occurred.  This would be similar to a state deciding to institute the death penalty and then executing people serving a life sentence for a crime that would fall under the new law without due process.

I don’t know if it’s ignorance or laziness or a combination of both that has put so much garbage into the American definition of government, but in the same way some shout that AIG and the auto companies should be allowed to go into bankruptcy, so, too, should our government be stripped down and reorganized.  The power, the control, must be returned to the people, to the states, but I fear wresting it from the smarmy, greedy hands that now sit in Congress and the White House will prove very, very difficult.  For to do this would require great courage in terms of personal responsibility.  We would each have to face our individual failures and unfortunately it is always so much easier to blame someone else than look in the mirror.

But if the buck doesn’t stop here, just where does it stop?

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Filed Under: Eroding Freedoms Tagged With: 10th Amendment, ACORN, ACORN and Obama, HR 1388, less government, national service act, obama's fascist agenda, obamas illegal aunt

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