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Oct 2012 16

by ChrisSick

In which we further discuss the (many) tactical failings of the President during the first debate, potential paths for improvement of performance, and I repeatedly tell everyone to shut up.

[Name Redacted]: “He’s really got no excuse to underperform in a foreign policy debate. The topic bores Romney to tears. Hell, Ryan backed up Romney’s two Afghanistan positions (we support a 2014 withdrawal while being opposed to having a date for withdrawal) during the debate.”

Sick: “To be fair, he’s never had a reason to underperform in any debate.”

— Message board comments, from “Romney Rising” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, 10/13/12

Well, hopefully, we can put all this sordid business of demoralization and decrying media narratives and poor, poor Jim Leher, firmly behind us. While liberals are again energized heading into the next Presidential Debate, it will surely be instructive to reexamine some of the failures that led to Obama’s defeat and how those dynamics will most likely play out in this next debate.

The first and possibly biggest problem for Obama were the EXPECTATIONS heading into the debate. In my own pre-debate prognostication, I predicted that Obama would play it safe, we wouldn’t see many fireworks, and that Romney didn’t have the skill to execute any game-changing kind of attack. Boy, was I wrong.

Though, in retrospect, I find my own analysis unsurprisingly defensible. Romney had a bit of a history of doing dumb things in debates, not to mention that fact that he doesn’t always handle the whole extemporaneous speaking thing terribly well. Obama, on the other hand, was cited as being “one of the most talented political communicators in modern history” by Romney’s campaign. Sure, it was just a bit of pre-debate expectation-management, but there’s two valuable points there: First, the right were successful in managing expectations down so that Romney’s performance appeared to be a massive upset, contrasted to Team Obama’s failure to do so. Second, such high praise from an enemy didn’t set eyes a’rolling, since so many people — and not just voters, but journalists — want to believe in the greatness of Obama.

In this upcoming debate, the expectations have been significantly changed, and while the conventional wisdom would suggest that Obama must perform significantly better than last debate, thus putting the burden on him, I’d suggest the burden’s actually on Mitt Romney. In the last debate — for the above reasons and others I’ll elucidate on further — the bar was painfully low for him and artificially high for Obama. As far as I’ve seen, the only journalist who actually called it correctly, pre-debate, was James Fallows at The Atlantic. While numerous conservatives argued the debates would change everything, they did it with the same conviction they argued that polls were meaningless and were, rightly, ignored.

This time, Romney will be facing a much more engaged and prepared Obama, and has set a high bar for himself to clear in that first debate. The President, on the other hand, only has to show the fuck up this time, and that may be enough in and of itself to wash away some of the stink of his last performance. If he prepares.

Which brings us to our next point, PREPERATION. Heading into the first debate, Obama seemed to not be very concerned with debate prep. The President, as Fallows notes in his pre-debate analysis, has a million things working against being prepared for a debate that his opponent does not:

“’Just the act of being on the stage with a president is an elevating thing.’ [David Axelrod said] This sounds like a small matter, but through the years, analysis of debate reactions has shown that the public takes a candidate more seriously after seeing him, for the first time, on equal footing with an incumbent president.

He [The President] faces the temptation not to prepare. A president has every reason to postpone or avoid mock-debate sessions. The schedule is full; the necessity to play-act is demeaning; emergencies crop up. And thus a president avoids practicing skills that are indeed different from what he does day by day.”

Obviously, a full-time Presidential candidate — as Mitt Romney has been for most of the last decade — doesn’t have such a challenge, benefits from sharing a stage with the President, and can devote intense focus to debate prep in a way an incumbent president simply cannot. However, having been beaten soundly in his first debate, the President has every reason and no excuse to not prepare seriously for his next two debates with Romney.

The final challenge Obama faces is SUBSTANCE. During the last debate, Mitt Romney finally committed to his post-primary pivot toward the center. He had put it off for so long, that I honestly assumed he wasn’t going to even attempt to shed his Severely Conservative image heading into the general election, much to his detriment. When he picked Ryan, it felt to me — and others — as if he had gone whole hog on the idea that this would be a base election, and all that mattered was enthusiasm and GTOV efforts.

But Romney picked his time ideally, after endless bad press through the end of summer, and having his campaign written off by any number of people (including myself), Romney used the debate to present the new-and-improved Romney version 0.4. A sensible, and sensitive, moderate man, gently — but firmly — correcting the President’s mistaken impressions of him as some far-right-tax-slashing-social-safety-net-destroying-warmongering-fancy-suit.

The performance was fantastic on Romney’s part — even the Obama campaign said so — and totally unmoored from any objective reality. But as I said recently, debate victories aren’t decided by Poltifact after the fact. They’re decided in realtime by the people on the stage. It really doesn’t matter that —according to Poltifact — only 30% of Romney’s statements in this election have been true or mostly true, while over his first term 50% of Obama’s statements have been rated the same.

What matters is what happens on that stage, and Obama has only himself to blame for his loss. Substance should matter, we could most likely all agree, but we can’t seem to agree on something even resembling objective truth, and even as the Tax Policy Center said that Romney’s tax plan will either explode the deficit or raise taxes on the middle class, Romney goes on citing Wall Street Journal editorials by his hired advisors as studies that rebut that claim.

As infuriating as this may be for liberals — and I know it is because many of you continue to insist that Romney didn’t win the debate despite all evidence to the contrary — the fact is that it isn’t the reality that wins debates. Hell, it’s hardly the reality that wins elections. Until he finally appeared to be a viable candidate, Romney was written off. By being on stage with the president he appeared, for the first time, viable. By defeating the President in the debate, he appeared to be serious.

Liberals — and I know a few specific ones right here on SG — who insist that Romney should have his win somehow stripped from him by the Presidential Debate Commission (in, what I imagine, would have to be an elaborate and shaming ceremony) are missing the point. It isn’t anyone’s job to call Romney out on the substance but Obama’s. If he’s lying, Obama is the only one on stage who can meaningfully refute and attack those lies.

In the next debate, Obama’s shown signs (most significantly in his speeches following the debate) that he’s going to be more aggressive in calling him out. Liberals, at least the ones most apt to be claiming Obama didn’t lose last time, are probably hoping for a Joe-Biden-style performance of exasperation and condescension, but I’m relatively sure — like, put-money-but-not-a-lot-of-it-sure — that the President’s team is far too smart to go that route.

For Obama, the path to victory is primarily in relying on his less professorial speaking abilities, and finding a simple and understandable way to point out that the things that Romney says about his own plans simply aren’t true, and — worse — that he hasn’t provided enough specifics to even analyze whether his proposed policies could be true.

This debate will be interesting, and my prediction — for whatever it’s worth given my last one — is that Obama will be able to successfully fight Mitt Romney to a draw at the very least. He understands the stakes, and has had ten days to analyze his weaknesses, as well as his opponent’s. Failure to achieve at least a draw could potentially be fatal for his election prospects. The polls have dramatically shifted to Romney’s favor, and even though his leads aren’t as strong as the President’s were at their most recent peaks, and there’s even some evidence in outliers that his bounce could be fading, a lot hinges on this debate.

As for me, there’s only 20 days left in this election. If I predict exactly one more debate wrong, I’m giving up the game and switching my major to philosophy, or some other specialization where things actually make sense.

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Oct 2012 16

by Lee Camp

Want some big booty?? Well, if you’re one of the cool kids, you hide your booty in the Cayman Islands so that you don’t have to pay taxes and contribute to the society that made you rich. I recently went down there to try to find out why tax shelters are all the rage, and why Mitt Romney and his friends love them so much. Wanna see what I found out? Check out the video.

[..]

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Oct 2012 12

by ChrisSick


[Source: Mashable]

Hey there, lil’ tyke, wassa matter? Did the President let you down? Break your heart when he blew away his five-point lead in ninety minutes of sad-ass debate performance last week? Well, guess what, your uncle Joe is here to cheer you all up, he’s got a treat for you and its called FACTS.

For the last week I’ve endured nothing but endless triumphalism from the Right and sky-is-falling inanity from the Left. Following President Obama’s lifeless (and bloodless, by comparison) debate performance against Gov. Romney, the polls favored the challenger for the first time since he captured the nomination in June of this year. This resulted in a brutal media cycle that asked such important political questions as “Does the President even give a shit?” and “How bad will a Romney presidency be?

Joe Biden emailed me, personally — along with every one else on the Obama 2012 mailing list — to ask for money and promise me that he had one job tonight:

“I told Barack I have one mission tonight: tell the truth and stand up for what we believe in.”

Well, according to a quick scan of Politfact’s instant debate factcheck, he pretty handily accomplished that. In fact, if all you’re looking for is a quick summary of the debate, here it is:

“BIDEN: Those are the facts, right?

RYAN: This is what politicians do when they don’t have a record to run on…”

Ryan read prepared (and well-worn) attack lines straight from his stump speeches, while Biden laughed himself sick every time Ryan opened his mouth and once actually rubbed his hands together in anticipation of responding while Ryan was speaking. Biden seized FACTS as punctuation for all his points early in the debate, and after looking a little shaky on the Benghazi Embassy debacle, pretty much bludgeoned Ryan to death with them from there on out.

I knew the debate was won by Biden forty-five minutes in as I watched all the conservative Twitter accounts I follow harp on #Bidengrin, which quickly got seized upon by liberals (and myself) as a triumphant tag, so they quickly switched to #Bidenunhinged. Harping on the oppositions facial expressions during the debate is usually a sign that you’ve ceded the salient point ground.

But for a second, let’s talk about this and — hopefully, in the process — put both the debates into perspective. You judge the winner of a debate in one easy way. You turn off the sound and watch the body language and facial expressions. Fucking tragic, I know, that such an analysis matters more than any actual points that get stated or rebuttals delivered, but there it is. As a smarter man than me once opined — the game is the game.

And by such a metric President Obama lost the first Presidential debate about as badly as Congressman Ryan did tonight. Joe Biden was relaxed, comfortable, confident, and seemed to be enjoying himself, while Ryan looked overly-serious, humorless, stiff, more than a little disturbingly dead-eyed.

I spent most of the week following the Presidential debate patiently — okay, not so patiently more than once — explaining to dissatisfied liberals why their firm conviction that Mitt Romney did nothing but lie through his perfect teeth didn’t matter even a little bit. Because the correct response to such a tactic isn’t to stare at your note cards on the podium, it is to do precisely what Joe Biden did tonight, hammer on the facts, corner your opponent in their own words, and never let up.

You don’t win debates because Politifact says you told less lies after the fact.

And despite Biden’s emailed promise to tell the truth, he really only had one job tonight, and that was to create a new media narrative. If early indications that I’m seeing are any sign, he’s successfully accomplished that. Conservatives will tell you — and anyone who will listen, much less believe them — that the moderator was biased (because the President attended her wedding twenty years ago as a guest of her now-divorced husband), that the Veep debate was a draw (already seeing this on TwitteR), or that it doesn’t matter nearly as much as Obama’s performance.

But, an interesting fact is that the initial polling that included post-debate reaction didn’t show a substantial bounce for Romney. The media and most viewers were in agreement that the President lost, and badly. In fact, by the largest margin in history. But it didn’t shift the polls very quickly. The massive shift didn’t take place until after the media narrative coalesced. And you can forget all that “liberal media bias” horseshit. The media doesn’t love a liberal half as much as they love a dogfight race.

Expecting the Veep Debate to change the stakes and dramatically shift the needle in the polls is wishful thinking, at best and outright liberal delusion, at worst. But what Biden may have accomplished tonight is to staunch the bleeding, and — more importantly — change the narrative. The next few days will be highly instructive but thus far, anything is possible as the debates have broken most of the historical precedents for affecting a race.

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Oct 2012 10

by Steven Whitney

From 2000 onward, intentional (and criminal) voter suppression has altered the political landscape on every level – local, state, and national. But from the 2000 Butterfly ballots in Florida that handed Bush the election, the Ohio locked-door counting of votes in 2004 that defeated Kerry, to the approximately 5.9 million votes lost (or stolen) in 2008, the problem has been more insidious and widespread than most of us realize. Most tragically, this happened in America – the country that invented modern democracy, but a nation in danger of becoming a plutocracy in which only money rules.

Just in time for our 2012 elections, award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast – arguably the foremost expert on voter suppression – has released a new book that offers prescriptive solutions to the gravest threat our democracy faces: the suppression and outright theft of votes across the United States.

As the title implies, Billionaires and Ballot Bandits exposes the billionaires (including the infamous Koch brothers) and bandit operatives (like Karl Rove) behind the various plots to reduce minority participation in all elections, from local dogcatcher races to national Presidential choices. These crooks are – as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes in his brilliant introduction, A Hostile Takeover of Our Country – committing treasonous actions that are subverting both the intent and reality of our democracy. So in the book Palast tells you who does it, why they do it, where they do it, who they do it to, the 9 different ways they do it, why they get away with it, and, importantly, what you must do to make sure your vote counts to stop the wholesale theft of up to ten million votes in the coming election

As an added treat, Ted Rall, one of America’s top political cartoonists, has contributed a 48 page comic book insert – Tales From the Crypt of Democracy – that is hilarious, shocking, and right on target.

These scandalous shenanigans are much worse than Watergate – they are the worst political crimes of our era precisely because they aim to steal the most precious commodity Americans possess – their votes.

Read the interview, then get Palast’s ground-breaking expose on the real voter fraud taking place all across our country. You’ll not only be buying an important book, you’ll be making a vital investment in our democracy.

Steven Whitney: Let’s start with the most famous example in our history: Florida, 2000, Katherine Harris and the Butterfly Ballot. Everybody knows about that, but didn’t the Florida election officials do lot of other shady stuff even before the election?

Greg Palast: You hear about Butterfly Ballots because it’s rich, white folks in Palm Beach with their summer homes that lost their ballots to the butterflies. That’s unusual – they aren’t used to having their votes flushed down the toilet. They aren’t used to getting their chads hung. It’s usually the poorest, blackest folk in Florida. Before the 2000 election, before the butterflies, 94,000 mostly black folk – were targeted as felons, wiped off the voter rolls by a computer drone system. They were accused of being illegal voters. In fact, every one of them was guilty of Voting While Black. The number of actual illegal voters on the list of 94,000 turned out to be exactly zero. None. That’s what elected your President – a program of lynching by laptop, an electronic program against black voters.

Now, of course, things have changed since those dark days. They’ve gotten darker. This year, the felon purge is back, it’s black, it’s nasty. The Republicans have gone back in with the same game. How do they do it? For example, this time around, you’ll see in Billionaires and Ballot Bandits that a Robert Moore commits a crime. Common name, but sneaky Robert Moore changes his name to Bobbi. So Bobbi Moore, a registered voter in Florida, loses her vote. You’ll notice I said Robert Moore/Bobbi Moore loses her vote – so, obviously he had a sex change. Not only that, since he committed the crime in the future, according to the records, it’s a very sophisticated computer program, which seems to knock out black and blue-ish voters, you know, Democrats.

SW: Was it possible back then in 2000 that the Butterfly Ballot became a ruse to distract from all the other purging that Harris and Jeb Bush did?

GP: Not at all. No one gives a flying fuck about black people, especially in the white press. As far as they were concerned, the only thing that ever mattered in that whole race was the Butterfly Ballots…See trophy wives losing their votes is an issue. Black people in Gadsden County, who lost their votes through machine manipulation …Here are the numbers by the way: 178,000 votes were spoiled, that is cast and not counted in Florida. According to the Civil Rights Commission, if you were black, the chance your vote will be lost is 900% higher than if you’re white, and it ain’t just whistling dixie, that’s all over the United States. Officially we had 1.5 million votes cast and not counted in the last election, spoiled as they say. And overwhelmingly, it was a majority black, Latino and hugely, this is an interesting one, Native American. Overwhelmingly Democratic group, concentrated in swing states, there’s nothing new under the sun. America has progressed—our manifest destiny is to fuck the hell out of the Indians.

SW: Well, I think they were born in Kenya, weren’t they?

GP: Yeah, exactly. I wouldn’t mind a Muslim President from Africa because we’ve had these white Christian pricks for so long fucking it up, let’s give someone else a try.

SW: Didn’t John Kerry lose the election in 2004 because of an imminent terrorist attack on an Ohio courthouse?

GP: That was one of the games that was played. And, by the way, remember the kid who was zapped with the taser in Florida — you know, “Don’t tase me, bro!” He was holding up my book. He said, by the way, that he never let it hit the ground even though he was being tased — it was like the flag. And he was yelling at Kerry, “Why did you give up when this author, Greg Palast, said you won?” And by the way, Kerry said, “Yeah, I read the book, Palast is right.” No one got that answer. And, yes, one of the biggest ways that Kerry lost is a rotten piece of shit trick, in other words, something from Karl Rove, called caging. It’s one of the nine ways they steal votes that we have in the book.

Here’s the quick game on CAGING, and what happened to Kerry, and what happened again in Wisconsin with the Scott Walker recall, is that Karl Rove’s operation – and I’m not guessing here – sent out letters to soldiers, to students at black colleges in August, and to Jewish voters in Miami who are snowbirds and go north in August. The letters said on the outside “Do Not Forward.” So the letters came back, that is they’re caged, and then the Rovebots challenge the voters as voting from fraudulent addresses.

If you look in Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, you will see these caging lists. One is nothing but soldiers from the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville. Now Mr. Rove, or “Turd Blossom” as George Bush called him, it was his nickname, Mr. Blossom, why wouldn’t a soldier be at their home base where they’re registered? Well, Afghanistan is one answer.

By the way, if you’re a soldier you’re allowed to vote from under your Humvee. But when those soldiers and those students and the elderly of Zion sent in their absentee ballots, they didn’t know that those ballots were under challenge and that they were thrown in the garbage. Go to Afghanistan, lose your vote, mission accomplished. You like that? That’s what the Rove Operation was doing. I’m not guessing because I have the actual caging lists…It’s not that Rove sends me his confidential evidence of felonious criminality, it’s that we had a friend of mine who owned a website – RepublicanNationalCommittee.org – and because they misaddressed the stuff, the stuff came right into him and he passed it to me. And as Bobby Kennedy, a Professor of Law who wrote the introduction and looked over the evidence, says, this is a “go to jail” crime. These people should be in prison.

SW: Why aren’t they?

GP: Because, it’s a lot easier to break into the vault when you’re the cops. For example, the guy that actually sent out the caging list is a creepy little shit named Tim Griffin who is Turd Blossom’s right claw. Griffin sent out the emails, which is a federal crime — several federal crimes as a matter of fact – and then when a US prosecutor began to grumble and complain, Rove had him fired and Griffin, the prime suspect, the guy who did it, he was named the new Federal Prosecutor. So you literally took the criminal and made him the lawman, gave him the badge. Fired the good guys. And, by the way, I got that information from a Republican Prosecutor, David Iglesias. The reason there’s a picture of Tom Cruise in the book is that in A Few Good Men the Tom Cruise character is based on David Iglesias. So they just got the wrong guy. They got a good man who wouldn’t go along with their racist scam.

SW: In Colorado, when Donetta Davidson removed almost 20% of the voters, how did she do it? And if we can’t put these people in jail, why can’t we make examples of them? Air an ad every day in Colorado informing people that Donetta stole their vote.

GP: [laughs] Why don’t the SuperPACs bust the Ballot Bandits? Because they are the Ballot Bandits. That’s why we called it Billionaires and Ballot Bandits. It didn’t say Billionaires versus Ballot Bandits, it’s Billionaires AND, or I should’ve really said Billionaires ARE Ballot Bandits. The guys who run the super duper PACs like Americans for Prosperity, the Koch Brother’s SuperPAC, and American Crossroads, that’s Turd Blossom’s operation, the two organizations together have over half a billion dollars. No one can put in full-page ads every day except for them. They’re not going to bust themselves. They’re not going to say, here’s the crimes we’ve committed, we just thought that you should be an informed voter and know all about it.

Now, Donetta Davidson, I call her the Purge’n General. Yeah, she got rid of 20% of the voters of Colorado, which just made Katherine Harris green with envy. Well, she was already kind of greenish, but green with envy instead of rot. And, Donetta Davidson, instead of being read her rights and marched off to the federal penitentiary for this crime, Bush appointed her as Chairwoman of the US Elections Assistance Commission. They made her basically the Purge’n General in charge of elections nationwide. So that was the example, you steal enough and you get the reward. It’s a sick, sick system.

SW: What happened with the Scott Walker recall in Wisconsin this summer?

GP: I was just up in Baraboo, Wisconsin this week, and in Baraboo Obama won by 28%. That’s a crush, right? And yet, in the recall vote, Scott Walker won it big time. Now, come on, how does that happen? Well, let me let you in on a little secret. The secret is called Themis. Themis is the Koch Brother’s magical vote munching machine. It’s a data mining operation. It does two things. It’s capable first of something that’s creepy but legal. They fill out ballots for their own voters, mail them and tell them to sign it. It’s all perfect so they’re beyond challenge. So their voters are all taken care of basically, they’ve already been voted for if they sign.

Then, the Themis machine is capable of doing all the caging, all the challenging, the purging, and the blocking at the polls to keep away the voters. For example, if I went by the Brennan Center numbers, and these are experts and therefore no one listens to them, but if you do listen to the screaming, screeching, buried experts, 97,000 Wisconsinites, almost all of them students, were barred from voting because they lacked state ID. Even though they had state student ID, that’s not state ID.

But that wasn’t enough for the Themis machine. The Koch Operation, Americans for Prosperity, had its Chief set up a front called United Sportsmen of Wisconsin. United Sportsmen of Wisconsin, which appeared and then instantly vanished after the recall vote, using the Themis machine, were able to identify likely Democratic absentee voters in key recall areas. Because there were also votes, by the way, on legislatures. The Themis machine was able to get the United Sportsmen of Wisconsin to identify Democratic voters, send them letters saying here’s where you mail in your ballot, and here’s the deadline. The address was a phony, it was their own, and the date was after the legal date for submitting an absentee ballot. So, either way, you were fucked like a duck. The Sportsmen basically were hunting Democrats. That’s how it worked. And again, as Bobby Kennedy says – he’s Dean of Law School at Pace University – this is a crime. And it’s a double crime when you add in the fact that most of this is racially targeted.

SW: How many people do you think are going to lose their right to vote this November nationwide?

GP: I can give you the exact number for 2008 which was 5,901,814 — in fact, if you look in the book you can get the real serious point-by-point break down.

SW: Yeah, I’ve got the same numbers for 2008 and 2010.

GP: Here’s the deal, for 2012 we’re looking at double to triple the loss. And it will be highly targeted. We’re going to go from 488,000 absentee ballots, which were cast and not counted in 2008, to having 2 million absentee votes thrown in the garbage…and it will occur, of course, in very targeted areas. The magnitude of the steal in America is very large because we have an electoral system and of course, don’t’ forget, we have something called the United States Senate. Heaven help us. And not my numbers, but the University of Minnesota says that seven Republicans are sitting in the Senate not because they were elected, but because they didn’t count all the votes. So I see that magnified. I can see a complete shoplifting of the US Senate. So how many more than 6 million votes lost this time? I can only guess. My numbers are more conservative than the experts at the Brennan Center, so I’d say 10 million. They would have the number much, much higher.

SW: Will most of those be in the swing states?

GP: Most of those will be in the swing states, but the key thing is that most of those will be in the non-billionaire community. [It’ll be in areas where] the 47% of the lazy ass, dependent skivers that are sucking off the government’s tit – Democrats – live. Remember vote theft is class war by other means. I mean, there’s this whole ugly Ku Klux Klan counting system we have, but it’s really about class.

In fact, my studies were showing that the worst vote theft in some states is actually of the poor white voter. And while it will be in swing states substantially, it’s also because that’s where the congressional and senate races are hot. Like Missouri, like Ohio, that’s where you’re going to see it. Not even so much to swing the presidential election but to swing those congressional and senate seats.

SW: Could you explain what overvotes and undervotes are?

GP: That’s a fancy ass term for getting jacked on your ballot. For example, an overvote is where you vote twice, by accident supposedly, or often by deceptive ballot design, or someone has a reason to cut out your vote. I give an example, a true example, in which I saw ballots when I went down to Florida where in the Black community of Gadsden the ballot said: “write in candidates name.” So people wrote: “Al Gore.” But they also voted for Al Gore by punching the ballot.

Now, according to Katherine Harris, that someone voted twice. The old rule was that the voter’s intent counted. So like, excuse me, can you figure out the voter’s intent if they punch Al Gore and write Al Gore? Is that difficult to figure out their intent? But no, it was thrown out saying they can’t figure out the intent, overvote, it’s out.

Undervote works the other way. You didn’t vote enough. For example, and literally, two old people I know, two elderly people, my parents, okay — they wrote in a candidate’s name, a Democrat, Donna Frye, the surfer chick of San Diego.

SW: I remember her.

GP: And Frye won by a couple thousand votes for Mayor of San Diego in a write-in campaign. But then, after the fact, they disqualified 4,000 ballots, including my parents’, because while they wrote in Donna Frye, they didn’t blacken the bubble next to her name that said that they were writing in her name. Now, one way to figure out whether they wrote in her name was that they wrote in her name, but again, the new trickery that’s being done, now computer aided, they called that an undervote and it was thrown out. This was the problem. So Jesus Christ, don’t fucking go postal on me. Do not mail in your ballot. Shove it down their throats. Walk in with your ballot, even if you have an absentee ballot, take it to your Board of Elections and make sure there’s no problem.

SW: How do these officials get away with it? As I recall, the Voting Act of 1965 is all about the intent of the voter?

GP: Yes.

SW: How do they get around that when the intent is so clear?

GP: How do these guys get away with it? One, they fire the cops and they give themselves the badges, as we saw with creeps like Rove’s right hand man, Tim Griffin.

SW: Right.

GP: Two, one thing about stealing an election is that you basically steal a police department. You’re the cops. There’s no enforcement because you steal the badges. You’re now the Justice Department okay? There’s a couple of other elements too. The Democrats have their hands dirty in this shit too. They’re not nearly as good, but they’re dirty enough, that they’ve got shit stains in their party underwear.

SW: Especially in New Mexico, right?

GP: Especially creepy things like in New Mexico, where you have this massive wipeout of the poor Hispanic voter. A wipeout. Purges, blocking, registrations thrown out, Native American registrations dumped in the garbage, provisional and absentee ballots thrown out. An entire precinct of Native American and Hispanic soldiers, where they claim that there was not a single vote for President of the United States. All these games, pulled off, all that vote blocking done against Hispanic Democrats, by Hispanic Democrats, by the elite. Again, this is a class war issue. People like Bill Richardson — do you know a lot of William Richardson’s who are Hispanic? So you figure that one out. And the Secretary of State, who I’m glad to say is on trial and hopefully on her way to prison for these games, that’s rare, but she couldn’t just steal the vote, she had to steal the money from the voting machine companies as well.

The thing is, the Democrats have their hands dirty, but the victims are always the same. You’ll notice that the Democrats go after Democrats and the Republicans go after Democrats, so it’s always poor defenseless voters who get it in the rectum.

SW: In the book, you detail the nine ways that are most commonly used to purge votes. We talked about caging, you defined that. Didn’t caging begin as a direct mail tool?

GP: What’s interesting is Rove & Company is a direct mail operation, which is why they used the term caging, because that’s used in direct mail. Usually, when people send back checks in the mail the letters usually have to be opened inside a metal cage, literally. That was one of the hints to me that Rove was in the middle of this.

SW: Rove made his fortune in direct mailing.

GP: Yes, and not only that, but the guy who sent the emails, believe it or not, the little criminal Tim Griffin – who by the way is not in jail, he’s in the U.S. Congress right now – I’m the only guy who actually believed [Griffin] when he said he didn’t know what he was sending out. Because Rove doesn’t have his own computer — Rove is a whiz kid with computers. He was the first guy to use computers in elections, which he did for Richard Nixon. While the rest of us were protesting the war, he was wearing a clip-on tie, a white shirt, and with his small, soft hands had all these computer tapes rolling to figure out who to electronically zap.

SW: He was mining databases back then?

GP: Yeah, the first guy to do it…and then working as a protégé to Richard Viguerie, a right-wing freak show [and the pioneer of political direct mailing]. Rove hasn’t denied it and Rove reads all my stuff carefully. I know because the Justice Department got his files and made them public. I said clearly Griffin has said that he didn’t know what caging is and his boss [Rove] doesn’t have a computer, so who sent out those caging lists? Well, golly gee, you figure it out. Now, it could’ve been Griffin’s assistant, a guy named Matt Rhodes. He’s not in jail either, he’s now the Campaign Chairman for Willard Mitt Romney.

SW: What a coincidence. Okay, tell me what TOSSING is.

GP: That’s tossing of absentee ballots. We mentioned that. If you mail in your ballot like my parents did, they throw it out because they didn’t like the size of your ballot, your postage is due, or you didn’t lick it correctly – I kid you not – you wrote the different name on the outside of the envelope than you did when you signed it on the inside, suspect signature. Now who’s suspect in America? And who suspects us? This is the game that’s played. Like I said, officially 488,000 absentee ballots were tossed out on the most cockamamie reasons and 2 million are going that way this November.

SW: Okay. How about computer hacking?

GP: What I call PRESTIDIGITIZING, because while hacking is an issue, I’m not an expert at that. I wanted people to focus on the other problems of computer voting, which is if you want to steal a vote by computer, the easiest thing to do is unplug it…And a favorite in places like Florida is to not give black poll workers the passwords to open the machines. So votes lost in computers, that’s a lot easier than when they play the game of supposedly switching your vote, which is complex and difficult. What’s real easy is for the machine just to go bluey and not record.18,000 votes went bluey in Democratic precincts in a congressional race in which a Republican won by only 500 votes. Katherine Harris’ old Sarasota District. All those votes just disappeared. “Gee, there was a glitch, what can we tell you? They just didn’t show up.” And, go ahead, try to find the fingerprints on that fucker.

SW: Is Diebold still in the middle of this or are there other manufacturers of electronic voting machines that are in on it?

GP: There’s plenty of operators in on the game. Like I say, they were bribing Secretaries of State like the Becky Vigil-Giron of New Mexico. The bribery is rampant and the games are rampant, but like I said, the big thing is the machines not working. Hugo Chavez’ buddies bought one voting company hoping to correct our elections, figuring [Chavez] had a better chance if Americans actually had their votes counted. But again, once they get the machines, they go zap. All they have to do is screw them up so that the votes do not appear. That’s the biggest thing. Precinct after precinct where you see zero votes on hot key offices. Zero votes. And, they go well, “What can we say?” There is simply no way to trace it back.

SW: What about SPOILING?

GP: In Gadsden, Florida, for example, where I saw these wonderful optical reading machines, that’s the best thing you could have, paper ballots that are optically read. In white rich areas, every precinct had its own little reader. If you make a mistake, and you accidentally add an extra mark or forget to vote for an office, you will get a message and you get to revote, correct your ballot, whatever. But in poor black areas, Hispanic areas, Native American areas, where they put in optically read balloting, these areas don’t have the money, just like they don’t have money for good schools, they don’t have money for good hospitals, they don’t have money for good voting systems, and everyone knows it. The ballots go to a central reader and if there’s an error, the ballot simply gets tossed out.

Now spoiling is no joke, we have nearly a million and a half votes spoiled every presidential election. A million and a half, and the chance of your ballot spoiling is 900% higher if you’re black than if you’re white. 500% higher if you’re Hispanic than if you’re white. And it’s statistically insane for Native Americans, how high the spoilage rate is. I have a chapter called “Indians Spoiled Rotten” because their ballots spoil all over the place. Again, because of the crap machines that they’re given, not because they don’t know how to vote.

SW: How about REJECTING?

GP: Oh excuse me, I’m sorry, I reversed these. Rejecting is disallowing absentee ballots. Tossing is throwing out provisional ballots. So just to get the terminology right here. Now what is a provisional ballot? As Lee Camp said in his SuicideGirls rant based on the book, when your name is purged or some bullshit, or you don’t have the right ID, they’ll say, “Oh, take this provisional ballot and we’ll count it later.” No they won’t. Lee said, filling out a provisional ballot is like voting on a fart, okay. It’s gone. Because whatever knocked you out in the first place stays knocked out. If they say you’re a felon, you have a felony record. And in Colorado, they removed all these people with felony records, despite the fact that in most states, including Colorado, you can vote with a felony record. But, forget all that, if they have it dead wrong and they give you a provisional ballot, they’re not going to count that vote, they’ll just say that they can re-register you next time. It’s a placebo ballot. They throw them out. I think it’s going to be big this time because when people go in with the wrong ID they’re going to be handed these provisional ballots so they don’t bitch. So, 767,023 provisional ballots were knocked out last time. Three quarters of a million — watch that double.

SW: Okay. How about ERRORS? Now, you talk about government clerks making mistakes. Is some of this intentional and some of it just human error?

GP: The answer is yes. It’s what I call vulture opportunism. I think 1 in 12 names are input wrong. You know, you fill out those forms and some knucklehead has to read it, you have sloppy ass handwriting, so they get your name wrong when they input it. And, it turns out that it’s especially unusual names like Mohammad or, in California, a lot of Filipino names and hyphenated names and Hispanic names with the funny accents on them and stuff. So they get it wrong. But they know who’s getting fucked on these errors and they don’t notify anyone. You don’t know until you show up that you lost your vote or that your ID doesn’t match the name they inputted. I mean, in Arizona we had Juarez spelled with a ‘W’ so people lost their votes because you know, their ID didn’t say Juarez with a ‘W’…I mean Paul Maez, his name was knocked off and he’s the Elections Supervisor in Santa Miguel County, which is a very poor Hispanic area. I asked why that happened and he said, “The answers on the down low.” That’s all he would say.

SW: What is EJECTING?

GP: We have a chapter called “Nuns on the Run” where I go through the case of the 10 nuns who didn’t have their driver’s licenses in Indiana, which has the worst ID law. It’s a good thing they didn’t because one of them was 98 years old. They’d been voting in the same place for decades. I understand this ID law is to prevent voter fraud, however, there has not been a single case, not one, of a nun or anyone else voting fraudulently, stealing someone else’s ID. See, the whole point of ID is to say, “I’m the person whose name is listed there.” No one does that crime because you absolutely get caught, you absolutely go to jail. You’re insane to do that to vote for a school bond or even to vote for Hillary Clinton or Ron Paul. No one does it. That’s why we don’t have those cases.

SW: On August 12th, the Carnegie and Knight Foundation report was released. After examining thousands of documents from 2000 to 2010, and looking at 600 million votes, they found only 10 cases of alleged in-person voter fraud. Those were just alleged and no there were no convictions. So, these two very bi-partisan foundations together said that voter fraud is virtually non-existent.

GP: As I point out in Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, Tova Wang, who’s from the Century Foundation, was asked by the Elections Assistance Commission to analyze voter fraud and she found only 6 cases a year. 6 million voters are knocked out a year to stop 6 cases of voter fraud a year! So she says you’re more likely to get hit by lightning. I actually calculated that you’re 60 times more likely to get hit by lightning then commit voter fraud.

SW: Okay, how about STUFFING?

GP: I left stuffing to Bobby Kennedy. That chapter is written by the Professor. He goes through the good old-fashioned stuff of cranking in the votes after the election is over to change the outcome. He just took a simple case, Don Siegelman of Alabama. By the way, most times it’s paper but sometimes, like in this case, it’s by computer. That’s very helpful because then there’s no trail. Don Siegelman was reelected Governor of Alabama by several thousand votes. Then, in a Republican area, the courthouse was sealed. They said a mistake was made, they had a recount of votes and they got something like 8,000 votes that they suddenly found overnight that had switched and Siegelman lost. There was no record of how this happened. No one was allowed to observe this so-called computer recount, or question why it took all night. Just a bunch of Republican officials locked in a room. And when Siegelman bitched, which you’re not supposed to do… Siegelman decided to scream bloody murder, and so he was arrested and today he’s in a federal penitentiary. Because they always have files on these guys. Everyone has a file, and they pulled it out on him. He still refuses to concede. He says, “I’m Governor. I was elected. I’m not giving up.” ….So what happened is, they kept him out of office by good old-fashioned stuffing.

SW: Okay, now. Where does lying come in? I’m talking about trying to convince ex-cons that they aren’t allowed to vote when in fact they are.

GP: The ex-con con is what I call BLOCKING. It’s part of the stopping of registration of legal voters. You know, one way is to make it illegal by simply arresting members of the League of Women Voters for having clipboards in public or something, which, basically, Florida tried to do. It was very effective. Black and Hispanic registration has dropped in America by 2 million since the last election. 2 million fewer black and Hispanic voters. Because we know fewer Hispanics have come in to the country and fewer are becoming citizens, is that right? No.

So, what’s happened? One way to block voters is to convince them, and even some minor officials, that they can’t vote when they can. The biggest unrepresented vote in America is not the youth vote, it’s not the Hispanic vote, it is the ex-felon vote. If you served your time in the United States of America, except for six old Jim Crow states, in 44 states, if you served your sentence, you can vote. You don’t become a non-citizen. You have to basically be in jail or under probation to have your vote removed in most states, and in most states even not on probation. You have 16 million ex-cons in the United States for committing crimes like doing a little blow and being poor. Obama did a little blow but he wasn’t poor. Or having a little J but not inhaling. That’s Clinton because he was at Oxford, so he’s got the Oxford elite exemption. So, remember, we’re not talking about people who have committed crimes, we’re talking about people who’ve been caught comitting in crimes in America, and those are two different categories – 46% are black and a lot are Hispanic, and that’s knocking out 16 million voters.

Here’s the interesting thing. Something the Democratic Party never mentions, and they should, which is that 88% of voters who go to prison come out Democrats. 88% come out Democrats. It’s16 million voters, you do the math. If the Democrats would stand up for these voters, they could never lose an election, but they won’t. In fact, it’s the opposite. They will take anyone that looks like a felon, in other words, black, BLA as they say on the Florida Voter Forms, and the Democrats let them be labeled felons and whistle at their shoes. It’s sick….And Obama, by the way, has nothing to say about that.

SW: We covered the nine ways they suppress the vote, could you go through for me the seven prescriptive solutions that voters can do?

GP: Yeah. One is don’t go postal. I just told you, they throw the crap in the garbage. I mean, you think these guys even want your vote, a bunch of partisan sharks and you’re going to mail it to them? Come on, get real. Second, vote early because when they fuck you around and say that Steven is a criminal, you can go back and say, well I served my time so I can still vote. Three is register and re-register. I know you think you’re registered. You voted last time, what’s the problem? The answer is, don’t be a schmuck. They’ve knocked out 22 million people in the last 2 years. Let me repeat that: 22 million people purged. That means you better get online and check if you are still registered. County Clerk or a Secretary of State’s office, get your name and get your address and make sure that your name is not spelled with an ‘F’. Okay.

SW: Right.

GP: Number four, vote unconditionally, not provisionally. Don’t take one of these placebo ballots. Don’t vote on a fart. Five, occupy Ohio, invade Nevada. What I mean by that is, get your ass in gear, okay? Show your shit, do your thing. Martin Luther King took a bullet for the vote. You can take a bus. You can do something valuable. The revolution will not be digitized. Go to where the votes count. If you’re in a non-swing state, though look at those congressional districts, it’s not just about the presidency. And I don’t care whether you’re for Obammy or Mitt Romney, this is not a partisan issue, this is about protecting ourselves from the Ballot Bandits. Number six is date a voter. As I say, voting, love and bowling should never be done alone. There’s all kinds of reasons for that including when they jack you around that you have people with you. It’s always easier to stand up when you’ve got people watching your back. Because sometimes people complain and they get busted. And also convince your friends, your frienemies, whatever, to show up and vote.

I don’t want to hear any crap about it doesn’t matter, they’re going to steal my vote. Fuck you, okay? I’d take your name off my list, don’t read my books, you’re not getting a ride in my car – I’m not going to let you date my ex-wife. I don’t want to hear from you with that crap. It’s not about the candidates. It’s about this thing that we have fought forever for. As Jesse Jackson said, “Marched too long, worked too hard, died too young.” If you haven’t put those three things on the line, then you definitely don’t have no right to talk about whether we should vote or not.

Seven, make the democracy demand no vote left behind. The election is November 6th. I want to see your ass at BallotBandits.org on November 7th, because we’re going to review whose vote was stolen where. Even if they reelect Obama, that’s not the issue, you need to know which votes were stolen and believe me, how many congressional and senate seats were swiped, whether or Obama wins or not.

When Obama won in 2008, it doesn’t matter when 6 million votes are stolen. That’s sick business, and it’s got to stop, and we have to demand that the votes be counted. If Don Seigelmen is ready to go to jail because he said the votes should be counted, shit let’s do it. We saw this in Serbia, we saw this in Peru, we’ve seen people in the Ukraine, people stand up and say, you can’t steal the fucking election, not from me. That’s it. So, we have to stay with it. That’s the Seven Demands, that we don’t shrug our shoulders and do an Al Gore.

Visit BallotBandits.org to buy the Billionaires & Ballots Bandits book and/or download the 7 Ways to Beat the Ballot Bandits poster for free.

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Oct 2012 09

by Sandor Stern

Dear Republican Friends,

Regarding Your Candidate…

I know that following the first presidential debate you are feeling pretty good about your candidate. He won hands down on style and energy, but as for substance? If you are a conservative who followed Romney through the Republican Presidential debates where he touted his belief in all of your policies and positions, were you not alarmed over his new declarations? Perhaps you have become inured to the constant shape shifting of your candidate. In 1994 when he ran against Ted Kennedy for the senate, he was a moderate in a state that has always supported moderation in its candidates. He even supported Roe v. Wade. He was still a moderate when he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. He even promoted and signed into law the state’s Healthcare Act. Perhaps you can forgive him for that because it was being promoted by your own conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation. And perhaps their support for that private insurance plan was motivated by the fear that a Massachusetts legislature that was dominantly Democrat might veer towards a universal public health care plan. But the plan signed by Romney stands as the model for “Obamacare” – a plan anathema to your core beliefs (which have apparently changed since 2002). So the question to be answered is this: was the Romney who debated Obama, the ultraconservative you nominated? And, if so, will he remain in that guise through a presidential term in office? For you moderate Republicans who would savor a shift towards your position, will he actually make that shift if elected?

In judging a person running for President it seems paramount to view substance. In this case substance encompasses words, deeds and party platform.

As for words: following the debate, fact checkers logged 27 lies in Romney’s 40 minutes of speaking. That’s a lie in less than every 2 minutes. That’s astounding even for a man who has demonstrated an enormous appetite for lies throughout the course of his political career. Even back in 2002, when he ran for Governor of Massachusetts and was required by law to be a resident of the state, he lied until confronted by evidence that he lived and paid taxes in Utah. This man has flip flopped more times than a trout in the bottom of a fishing boat. Here’s just a few examples culled from the many:

  • On January 4, 2009 he supported the stimulus package but on September 28, 2011 he said he never supported it.
  • In 2009 he said that President Obama was copying his healthcare ideas and he was glad to hear it, but on October 18, 2011 he said Obamacare is bad and he will repeal it.
  • In June 2011, he said “I believe the world is getting warmer and humans contribute to that,” but five months later in October, 2011 he said, “We don’t know what is causing climate change.”
  • In March, 2002, he said he would not sign a “no tax” pledge, but in October 2007 he said he was “proud to be the only candidate for President to sign the tax pledge.”
  • In December, 2009, he said TARP ought to be ended, but in June, 2010 he said “TARP kept the financial system from collapsing – it was the right thing to do.”
  • In January, 2008, he said, “I’m not willing to sit back and say too bad for Michigan, too bad for the car industry” but in June, 2011, he stated, “That’s exactly what I said – let Detroit go bankrupt.”

As for deeds: Romney had a political life of four years. Although he touts his success as Massachusetts Governor, the facts don’t support him. His one major success or failure (depending on the political points he can score) was the healthcare plan. More than two thirds of voters are happy with the plan, yet for most of the Republican nominating season, Romney shied away from the topic. It wasn’t until the Presidential debate that he crowed about how he worked with Democrats to pass the legislation. With a legislature heavily stacked with Democrats who wanted healthcare legislation passed, how hard was his path? But kudos, it was passed under his governorship. As for bipartisanship, Democrats, who were legislators during his term, tell a different story. Romney used a bully pulpit approach towards promoting his agenda, staging well organized media events to appeal directly to the public rather than pushing his proposals in behind-doors sessions. Though he rails against tax hikes, during his tenure fees were raised for driver’s licenses and gun licenses. Cuts in spending put pressure on localities to raise property taxes from 49% to 53% of revenues. Cutting $140 million in state funding for higher education led state run colleges and universities to increase fees by 63%. The combined state and local tax burden rose during his governorship. By the time his term was over, Massachusetts ranked last among the 50 states in job creation. He left office with an approval rating of 34%, ranking 48th of all U.S. governors.

As for party platform: I assume you are happy with your party platform of 2012. Or have you read it? Let me refresh your memory.

  • It will ban abortion even if pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. That includes opposition to government funding of abortion and contraception, opposition to embryonic cell research and cloning.
  • It strongly opposes any affirmative action to bring more women into the workforce and opposes women in combat.
  • It strongly opposes same-sex domestic partnership benefits, defines marriage as between one man and one woman and seeks a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage, opposes homosexuals serving in the military, believes states should not recognize gay marriages from other states.
  • Strongly opposes more federal funding for health coverage and favors the repeal of Obamacare.
  • Strongly favors privatizing Social Security, and wants to give workers the choice to invest their payroll taxes.
  • Strongly favors reforming Medicare with a voucher system.
  • Strongly favors teacher-led prayer in public schools, limiting the role of federal government in education, favors parents choosing schools through vouchers and promoting school choice and home schooling.
  • Strongly favors the death penalty, mandatory three strikes sentencing laws with harsher sentences for serious crimes and an absolute right to gun ownership, including the right to obtain and store ammunition without registration and no gun licensing.
  • Strongly opposes replacing coal and oil with alternatives.
  • Strongly opposes making taxes more progressive, favors tax cuts including corporate tax cuts and repeal of the inheritance tax.
  • Strongly opposes illegal immigrants earning citizenship, favors making E-verify mandatory nationwide and opposes any amnesty.
  • Strongly opposes stricter limits on political campaign funds, favors repealing McCain-Feingold, favors no contribution limits and favors photo ID in order to vote.

This is the platform of a party that cries out against big government. If you know and accept it then I assume you don’t see nor care about the hypocrisy. You want the government out of your lives in the essentials of health and ageing and education but you have no problem with the government in your bedroom or your house of worship. And this is the platform you believe your candidate will stand upon if elected President. Will he? Should he? And given what we know of him through his words and deeds and his acceptance of this platform, is this the character of a man you really want presiding over this country?

Just asking.

Your inquisitive friend,

Sandy

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Oct 2012 05

by Nahp

A column which highlights Suicide Girls and their fave groups.


[Yesenia Suicide in Vesuvian]

This week Yesenia tells us why she gets the warm and fuzzies with Cute Overload.

Members: 1,200 / Comments: 7,459

WHY DO YOU LOVE IT?: I can always count on the posts in this group to make my day better. It is impossible for me not to smile, giggle, and have my heart melt when I browse the threads in Cute Overload. It is packed with cute photos and videos of animals, kids, and other cute things. There is a video someone posted of a blind kitten playing with its first toy, a jingly ball, and it nearly made me tear because it was so cute! There is a sticky thread dedicated to posting photos of your own pets, and another for posting baby pictures of yourself. Many members start their own threads to discuss a particular cute video they found online.

DISCUSSION TIP: Post anything cute! It can be something you saw online, or something you took a photo/video of yourself. The cuter the better!!

MOST HEATED DISCUSSION THREAD:
I don’t think there are any heated threads. I would be surprised if I found one.

BEST RANDOM QUOTE: Pretty much anything a child says, and there are plenty of those videos in the group.

WHO’S WELCOME TO JOIN?: Anyone is welcome to join, and once you do, The cutest thing I saw today… is always a good place to start.

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Oct 2012 04

by Greg Palast

What the hell happened? Did Barack have a fight with Michelle? Was it nicotine withdrawal? Do really rich guys just scare you, Mr. Obama?

Dear Mr. President: As a journalist I don’t take partisan sides, but I do take America’s side. And as Commander-in-Chief, you simply cannot fall asleep in the saddle.

I mean Commander-in-Chief in the Class War. The war of the billionaires against the rest of us.

You were asked, “What is the role of government?”

You seemed stumped. Lost…

When Mr. PBS Bumblebrain asked you the difference between your views and Gov. Romney’s on Social Security, you said, “You know, I suspect that, on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position.”

Really, Mr. President, REALLY?

Romney says that if you’re 38 or 54, it doesn’t matter that you’ve paid into Medicare and Social Security all your life, you don’t get the insurance you paid for. You get some stinking voucher, some coupon that says, “Here’s a hundred bucks kid, go buy a gold watch.”

Who exactly is going to take a voucher to provide health insurance to a 72-year-old with asthma, in a walker and prostate problems?

Governor Romney said, with that smirky, smarmy grin, “I’d assume I’d rather have a private [health] plan.” Gee, Mr. Romney, could you give me the number of your insurance company and tell them to take my “voucher”?

Mr. President, you gabbled on about the Cleveland Medical Clinic and its “best practices.” Who the hell cares, Mr. President? There are people bleeding out here, LITERALLY BLEEDING, who now can get health coverage because of ObamaCare. For all its failings, it saves lives, saves homes from foreclosure caused by insane medical bills – only recently, the number one cause of foreclosures in America.

Can’t you even defend the one thing that’s worth a damn and has your name on it?

Romney’s wife has MS. That’s sad. But what’s tragic is that there are millions in America with MS who couldn’t get insurance because they have this prior condition—and are not married to an investment banker demi-billionaire.

I don’t care that you couldn’t seem to defend yourself tonight, Mr. President. That’s a Democratic Party headache. What I resent, what gets me furious and angry, is that you didn’t defend ME. Me and my family.

When Romney says he defends small business, let me tell you, I have a small business. I don’t need a tax break – hell, like most small businesses, we don’t make money. We need health insurance. We need government loans.

When Romney says government never does anything cheaper than the private sector, Mr. President, don’t you know that it was government mortgage agencies that funded America’s middle class homeownership? That’s what government did – and licked Hitler to boot.

When mortgages were privatized, we were thrown at the mercy of the Banksters.

(And why the hell did you, Mr. Obama, bring up that right-wing canard that banks just gave out mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them – blaming sub-prime predatory mortgage crimes on the victims. Sounds like you agree that 47% of Americans are leeches.)

Maybe it’s true that you, Mr. President, are actually just a hollow man, a creation of PR consultants and rich donors, a Ken-doll of repeating lines about “Hope,” “change” and “this country thrives when the middle class thrives.”

The truth is, you were ready to raise the retirement age for Social Security and cut back-room deals with drug companies. Maybe in the end, progressive policies are just a marketing niche you’ve found to cover aimless ambition and a yearning to compromise.

If someone drilled a hole in you, could we blow in and play you like a flute? Or is there some substance, some hard core of principal that couldn’t break out tonight because it was imprisoned by advisors who told you to play it safe, play it in a coma?

Mr. President, if you can’t explain why you are the Commander-in-Chief in this class war against the billionaire bandits attempting to seize our government, then get off the horse and let someone in the saddle who can ride.

***


A version of this story originally appeared on the The Mudflats.

Greg Palast is the author of the recently published New York Times Top 10 Bestseller Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, which is available via Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Indie Bound. Author’s proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

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