Dear Friend and Reader:
WHOEVER SAID “Patriotism is the last bastion of scoundrels” never took into account the last bastion’s lead-up men: 1) Saving your political ass in the face of utter defeat by blaming someone else to distract people from your screw ups, and 2) Using that same distraction to steal votes from your opponent.
Here today, after former Weatherman William Ayers and Joe the Plumber, we give you the next in the series of distractions and scapegoats: the dastardly ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), whose horrific crime against American democracy was to promote it by registering new minority and low-income voters.
New Democratic voter registrants, particularly young voters and minorities, have increased substantially over this last year, not coincidentally in the wake of the Obama candidacy. ACORN, along with unions, local Democratic party chapters and the Obama campaign, have been instrumental in growing the base of registered voters nationwide.
The attack on ACORN by John McCain during Wednesday night’s final debate with Barack Obama — claiming it “may be destroying the fabric of democracy” should give you a clue as to the smoke screens and brush fires the Republican Party are instigating, which also includes an FBI investigation, to delegitimize and prevent a possible Obama victory two weeks before the November 4th election.
Former US Attorney David Iglesias, fired by the Alberto Gonzales Department of Justice for refusing to comply with administration pressure to try phony voter-fraud cases, says the current ACORN investigation is a “scare tactic” by the Republicans.
David Iglesias was no partisan. Iglesias is a registered Republican who happened to take his job seriously, and was canned by the Rovian White House for doing so. You can read the full article from Talking Points Memo in the post below.
As to our sources, I have nothing but the most profound respect for Josh Micah Marshall and Talking Points Memo, which received the coveted George Polk Award earlier this year for their coverage of the politically-motivated US Attorney purges conducted through former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ office. If there’s anyone to trust on the validity of these stories, its Josh.
Stay awake.
Yours & truly,
Fe Bongolan from San Francisco
I’m utterly amazed when I read/hear about these rabid attempts to prevent legitimate Americans from ever getting to vote. I shouldn’t be, but – can’t help it – I still am. After volunteering to make (relatively) random calls for the Ky. Dem. Party this week, I can attest to the violent hatred some of our frightened and frightening citizens feel. Not to mention the wall of denial they hide behind which prevents any normal discussion of politics and equality. This (1st) opposition between Saturn and Uranus is nothing short of a war of minds/mindset and fraught with emotions, which is always the case, isn’t it?
The Uranus part and the Saturn part of the divisions aren’t clearly “them” or “us” to me. Sometimes I identify with the Uranus side of course, but sometimes I find myself part of the Saturn in Virgo side, as in performing the service of making the structured phone calls with script, and yet speaking to the (sometimes) volatile and emotional and incoherent people I reach has to be the Uranus in Pisces side.
Eric is so right when he has said that we (Americans) have been asleep, and some folks just don’t like to be wakened. I pray for the brave people who work for ACORN and hope no lives are lost while we struggle to break free of the tyranny of injustice.
What we KNOW is these allegations of vote fraud emerge from the dirt every election cycle like a four-year cicada. They typically conflate “voter registration fraud” with “vote fraud” and stir up visions of dead people, or more popular these days, illegal aliens, casting thousands of fraudulent ballots for a candidate.
Many, many of these flawed registrations — to the extent they exist — are no attempt at fraud at all. They are often folks who want to make sure they are registered. They are folks who moved and unaware they could indicate merely a change of address.
In other cases faulty registrations are more of a joke, filling out a card for “Jive Turkey” or “Mickey Mouse.” Finally, some of the bad registrations are the result of a worker filling out multiple registration cards from names in the phone book.
While I do not consider registration or voting a joking matter, or condone real fraud, it is highly unlikely boards of election will actually register these names, and if Mickey Mouse shows up at the precinct, he will not have ID for Mr. Mouse at the Magic Kingdom. Thus, registration mistakes, or registration fraud does not become vote fraud.
There were four — FOUR — bonafide cases of ATTEMPTED vote fraud in the state of Ohio in 2004. The cases were prosecuted and NONE resulted in fraudulent votes. Thank goodness the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) put an abrupt end today (10/17/08) to the GOP’s latest attempt at disenfranchisement in Ohio.
Death threat, vandalism hit ACORN after McCain comments
More on this Story
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — An ACORN community organizer received a death threat and the liberal activist group’s Boston and Seattle offices were vandalized Thursday, reflecting mounting tensions over its role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote next month.
Attorneys for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now were notifying the FBI and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division of the incidents, said Brian Kettenring, a Florida-based spokesman for the group.
Republicans, including presidential candidate John McCain, have verbally attacked the group repeatedly in recent days, alleging a widespread vote-fraud scheme, although they’ve provided little proof. It was disclosed Thursday that the FBI is examining whether thousands of fraudulent voter-registration applications submitted by some ACORN workers were part of a systematic effort or isolated incidents.
Kettenring said that a senior ACORN staffer in Cleveland, after appearing on television this week, got an e-mail that said she “is going to have her life ended.”
A female staffer in Providence, R.I., got a threatening call from someone who said words to the effect of “We know you get off work at 9,” then uttered racial epithets, he said.
McClatchy is withholding the women’s names because of the threats.
Separately, vandals broke into the group’s Boston and Seattle offices and stole computers, Kettenring said.
The incidents came the day after McCain charged in the final presidential debate that ACORN’s voter-registration drive “may be perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history” and may be “destroying the fabric of democracy.”
McCain’s comments provoked a response from ACORN.
“I would not say that Senator McCain is inciting violence,” Kettenring said, “but I would say that his statements about the role of this manufactured scandal were totally outlandish. We would call on Senator McCain to tamp down the fringe elements in his party.”
McCain’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Kettenring said that ACORN had received growing amounts of hate mail in recent weeks, but “the campaign debate sort of tipped it over to a scary point, where raising allegations of voter fraud went from a cynical campaign ploy to really inciting racial violence.”
Since McCain’s remarks, ACORN’s 87 offices across the country have received hundreds of hostile e-mails, many of them containing racial slurs, Kettenring said. “We believe that these are specifically McCain supporters” sending the messages, he said.
The e-mail to the Cleveland employee was traced to a Facebook Web page in the name of a Baltimore man. It featured a photo of a McCain-Palin sign.
Kettenring said that the bulk of the e-mails had been either “flat-out racist” or had racial overtones. Most of the group’s 400 members and about 80 percent of the 13,000 voter-registration canvassers are African-American or Latino.
It’s unclear whether the alleged threats violated federal law, but Jonah Goldman, the director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonpartisan, nonprofit legal organization that battles discrimination, argued that the Voting Rights Act should apply.
“A real concern is the impact that these terrible acts have on the people who registered through these registration drives,” Goldman said. “Legitimate, eligible voters who sign up through these registration drives may be understandably intimidated and choose not to show up at the polls, and the Voting Rights Act prevents voter intimidation.”
Letter from Obama Campaign to AG Mukasey Concerning Voter Fraud Probe
10-17-2008
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/Obama-Mukasey/