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"Reporter: Senator McCain's day began with a round of interviews on some of
Miami's popular Spanish-language radio stations. One of the hosts, Enrique
Santos, told McCain he was planning to cast his ballot the next day and remained
undecided.
McCain: We have surveillance cameras, and we'll know how you vote, okay?
[laughter] So, you, uh, I would suggest, if you vote the wrong way, you hire
someone to start your car tomorrow morning. [laughter]
Reporter: That was a joke."Because car bombs are funny!
"U.S. Rep. Dean Heller has been sued in federal court for using Cy Coleman's
Broadway musical hit song "Big Spender" in an ad mocking his opponent Jill
Derby. Coleman's estate, through his company Notable Music Co., filed suit
Monday after sending a letter asking Heller to stop using the song in his
advertisements.Heller has run multiple ads on radio and television using both the lyrics and
melody of "Big Spender" to paint Derby as a liberal spender. Notable Music
Co. sued Heller and his media firm Texas-based Weeks & Co. The suit
alleges that Heller's campaign contacted the estate for permission to use the
song. The estate denied the request, saying they didn't want it used for
political purposes."
Funny, considering he himself is unable to pay off his campaign debts.
"Rep. Dean Heller faces a federal election complaint by a rural Nevada
resident with ties to his Democratic challenger, accusing the congressman of
illegally holding over $273,000 in debt owed to his political consultant from
the 2006 campaign.
The complaint, filed by Howard Herz of Minden. claims that
holding over the debt to November Inc., owned by Mike and Lyndsey Slanker, “is a
clear attempt to circumvent the FEC’s prohibition on corporate contributions to
federal campaigns and is, in my opinion, entirely unethical.”
The Slankers
now work for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is headed by
Sen. John Ensign of Nevada."
"Another example that Wooten likes to share with others regarding his
unethical and illegal hunting techniques involves a wolf hunt where he illegally
chased down the animal with his snowmachine to kill it unfairly."
Since 1929, Republicans and Democrats have each controlled the presidency forNew York Times article
nearly 40 years. ... As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock
market index would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents
only ... Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to
$300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years.
$1,700
under Republicans, $290,000 under Democrats. Not including Hoover (R)
and the Depression, Democrats' results are still six times the Republicans.
"Edmond Mayor Dan O'Neil said Wednesday he plans to secure private funding to
buy out the city's $3,900 commitment to help pay for a 26-inch-tall statue
titled "Come Unto Me" planned for a sidewalk outside a downtown Catholic gift
shop."
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20081015_12_EDMO002744First of all, the city government should not be involved in this in any way, let alone the ones proposing and planning it. But first they wanted to use public funding for it. Sure, they want some piece of art commissioned by the city, go right ahead. But keep it secular AND tasteful. Not that hard, people.
"SACRAMENTO -- The owner of a firm that the California Republican Party
hired to register tens of thousands of voters this year was arrested in Ontario
late last night on suspicion of voter registration fraud.State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California.
Jacoby's arrest by state investigators and the Ontario Police Department comes after dozens of voters said they were duped into registering as Republicans by his firm, Young Political Majors, or YPM. The voters said YPM tricked them by saying they were signing a petition to toughen penalties against child molesters. The firm was paid $7 to $12 for every Californian it registered as a member of the GOP."
"This arrest comes on the heels of recent media coverage of YPM's fraudulent tactics sometimes known as "slamming" - where voters are duped into changing their party registrations, or where their registration is simply changed by YPM without the voter's knowledge."
Evidently they're known for these tactics.
"SACRAMENTO -- Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.
Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.
"I am not a Republican," insisted Karen Ashcraft, 47, a pet-clinic manager and former Democrat from Ventura who said she was duped by a signature gatherer into joining the GOP. "I certainly . . . won't sign anything in front of a grocery store ever again."
It is a bait-and-switch scheme familiar to election experts. The firm hired by the California Republican Party -- a small company called Young Political Majors, or YPM, which operates in several states -- has been accused of using the tactic across the country."
How they did it.
"A dead bear was found dumped this morning on the Western Carolina University
campus, draped with a pair of Obama campaign signs, university police said.
Maintenance workers reported about 7:45 a.m. finding a 75-pound bear cub dumped
at the roundabout near the Catamount statute at the entrance to campus, said Tom
Johnson, chief of university police. 'It looked like it had been shot in the
head as best we can tell. A couple of Obama campaign signs had been stapled
together and stuck over its head,' Johnson said."
"Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown
Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack
Obama, authorities said. …Lynne Steenstra said she thought that the slashings
were scare tactics designed to keep her and others from supporting Obama. Even
though it cost her roughly $120 to get her Dodge Caravan towed and fixed,
Steenstra said the act would not intimidate her from voting. 'It hasn't deterred
us one bit,' Steenstra said. 'It has only encouraged us more'."
"My "Obama 08" bumper sticker was torn off the right rear bumper, a 20-lb rockEvidently drunken Republican idiots can't spell. Why am I not surprised?
was dropped through the back window, 2 stolen Obama yard signs were shoved
through the gaping hole in the window, and a cryptic almost "OBAHA" (or
something...) was scrawled in orange spray-paint on the drivers side front and
back doors and windows."
"WINFIELD, W.Va. -- Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines
changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots
last week.This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported
this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston
Gazette their electronic vote for "Barack Obama" kept flipping to "John
McCain." In both counties, Republicans are responsible for overseeing
elections. Both county clerks said the problem is isolated."
" September 2, 2008
The
Honorable Samuel W. Bodman U.S. Department of Energy 1000 Independence Avenue,
SW Washington, DC 20585
Dear Secretary Bodman,
On June 3,
2008 and July 30, 2008 respectively, your Department issued and affirmed an
order pursuant to Section 3 of the Natural Gas Act that will allow two major
integrated oil companies – ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil – to export 98.1
billion cubic feet of Alaskan natural gas to Japan and other Pacific Rim countries. This order, which will allow the export of as much natural gas as is used by 1.4 million American families in a year, comes at a time when the President had demanded that the moratoria on oil and gas drilling along our environmentally-sensitive coastal areas be lifted and Americans are being warned that their winter heating bills are going to be dramatically higher. The Administration is trying to have it both ways – arguing that we need to drill everywhere because we don't have adequate energy supplies, while finding that we have so much energy that big oil companies can export it overseas and keep prices here at home higher than they would otherwise be."
"Some folks on the library's board of trustees were just a little spooked.
What's that? A real live witch was going to practice his craft at the library on Halloween? In front of children?
Yes, said Linda Puetz, president of the Friends of Sprague Public Library. And the witch, the Rev. Rapid Cabot Freeman, was going to charge admission and donate the proceeds to the library."
"The U.S. government has decided to stop issuing passports to Latinos from the
Southwest with only a birth certificate issued by a midwife as proof of citizenship.The State Department argues that some midwives have falsified records of children born in Mexico and therefore all midwife issued birth certificates are suspect. Between 60-75 midwives since 1960 have been convicted of forging birth certificates for infants they did not deliver or who may have been born outside of the US.
Unfortunately, many of the cases occurred almost 50 years ago and amount to a small percentage of the overall midwife delivered births in the Southwest region. Some 250 midwives operated in Southwest Texas this year alone."
"Olga Rukosyla was sixteen years old. She enjoyed dressing like a punk, and woreThis is why I hate people.
red shoelaces which, to some, signify the famous "Antifa" (anti-facism)
movement.
Indymedia reports that on the 8th of October, Olga was surrounded by three young men dressed, as witnesses say, in typical skinhead fashion. One of them grabbed her hand. She said something angrily to him. This was when the men surrounding her threw her on the ground and literally kicked her to death."
"The actions of Canadian officials contributed indirectly to the torture of three Arab-Canadian men in Syria, a federal inquiry has concluded.
"I found no evidence that any of these officials were seeking to do anything other than carry out conscientiously the duties and responsibilities of the institutions of
which they were a part," former Supreme Court of Canada justice Frank Iacobucci
concluded in his report, made public Tuesday, 22 months after the inquiry began.The probe focused on whether the detentions of Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin and Ahmad El Maati resulted from the actions of CSIS, the RCMP
and the department of Foreign Affairs and whether Canadian consular officials
acted appropriately in the cases."It is neither necessary nor appropriate that I make findings concerning the actions of any individual Canadian official, and I have not done so," Iacobucci wrote.
More from The Toronto Star:
"The Iacobucci report concludes that all three men were detained and suffered mistreatment that amounted to torture as defined in the United Nations convention banning torture.
El Maati, Almalki and Nureddin were, separately, detained and imprisoned in 2001, 2002, and 2003 respectively while travelling in Syria.
All were interrogated and, Iacobucci concluded, tortured at the same Syrian military prison as Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian who was deported by U.S. authorities to Syria.
El Maati was also sent to Egypt where Iacobucci accepts he underwent further torture.
The men claimed their interrogators relied on information that could only have been gleaned from Canadian authorities, and that Canadian security and police agencies were complicit in their mistreatment.But Iacobucci stops well short of indicting the Canadian officials for complicity."
Ok, so if you live in Virginia and you support Obama what does that make you? Massachussetan? (I apologize for the botching of that word)."On MSNBC this morning, McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer asserted that "real
Virginia" does not include Northern Virginia:I certainly agree that Northern Virginia has gone more Democratic. … But the rest of the state — real Virginia if you will — I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain's message.
MSNBC host Kevin Corke gave Pfotenhauer a chance to revise her answer, telling her: "Nancy, I'm going to give you a chance to climb back off that ledge — Did you say 'real Virginia'?"
But Pfotenhauer didn't budge, and instead dug a deeper hole. "Real Virginia, I take to be, this part of the state that's more Southern in nature, if you will."
Thorpe ended the segment noting that Pfotenhauer was appearing via satellite from Northern Virginia.
"Nancy Pfotenhauer, senior policy adviser for the McCain campaign, joining us from Arlington, not really Virginia."
"Alright, I'm just gonna let ya– you'll wear that one," Corke responded. "
"Rusty Lee Freeman, aka the Rev. Rapid Cabot Freeman, has been arrested for
stalking a Norwich teacher.
Freeman appeared in a story in The Day Tuesday,
claiming he was a victim of religious discrimination in Sprague.
The first
selectman, he said, had thwarted his plans to perform a demonstration of
witchcraft for kids and their parents in that town's public library on
Halloween.
But no sooner had the story appeared in The Day than Norwich
police, who'd been seeking him on a warrant since July, arrested and charged him
with second-degree harassment of Kelly Hajduk."
"Esha Momeni, women's rights advocate and a member of the Campaign from
California was arrested on Wednesday October 15, 2008, while on a visit to
Tehran. Momeni who is a photographer and graduate student was arrested in an
unusual and illegal manner after being pulled over on Moddaress highway, by
individuals who identified themselves as under cover traffic police on the
pretense that she had unlawfully passed another vehicle while driving. Esha was
arrested and taken to Section 209 of Evin Prison, managed by the Intelligence
and Security Ministry."
"At a news conference this afternoon, officials said they believe that
Todd's injuries were self-inflicted. Police investigating the report said Todd's
story began to unravel early on and they administered a polygraph test.
Investigators asked Todd to return to the police station today for more
questioning and to help them release a composite sketch of the suspect. When she
did, police say she admitted that she made the whole thing up and that it
snowballed out of control."
"Why there isn't a bigger uproar about one of the world's highest-profile femaleThe Guardian
politicians being subjected to appallingly ugly smears based on her sex."
"U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska was found guilty on Monday on corruptionMajor fail.
charges, a verdict that could endanger the powerful Republican's political
future and help Democrats expand their control of the Senate in the Nov. 4
election."
"Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Senate Republican in history and patriarch of
Alaska politics, was found guilty of felony charges for making false statements.
The verdict could spell the end of a 40-year Senate career for a man who rose to be one of the most dominant figures in the upper chamber and who helped transform Alaska in its 50 years of statehood. The verdict was reached after the jury deliberated since Wednesday and found the 84-year-old senator guilty of failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts from Bill Allen, the former head of Veco Corp., and other friends.
The jury did not seem to buy the explanation from Stevens that Allen showered him with gifts he didn't want and was unaware of, and that he believed the $160,000 he gave to another contractor covered all costs for the home renovations."
"Three Hialeah voters say they had an unusual visitor at their homes last week: a man who called himself Juan, offering to help them fill out their absentee ballots and deliver them to the elections office.
The voters, all supporters of Democratic congressional candidate Raul Martinez, said they gave their ballots to the man after he told them he worked for Martinez. But the Martinez campaign said he doesn't work for them. Juan ''told me not to worry, that they normally collected all the ballots and waited until they had a stack big enough to hand-deliver to the elections department,'' said voter Jesus Hernandez, 73. 'He said, ..Don't worry. This is not going to pass through the mail to get lost.'''
Hernandez said he worries his ballot was stolen or destroyed. He and two other voters told The Miami Herald that the man was dispatched by a woman caller who also said she worked for Martinez. But the phone number cited by the voters traces back to a consultant working for Martinez's rival, Republican congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart.
Martinez's campaign manager, Jeff Garcia, has asked the Miami-Dade state attorney's office to investigate."
"Larry the Cable Guy isn't, you know, an actual cable guy. The reality is that he's not a blue collar redneck either. The hooplehead accent is fake, and his name isn't Larry. He's just a normal stand-up comic named Dan Whitney who, before the ascension of George W. Bush and redneck chic in America, spoke in a non-specific American accent and wore non-redneck clothing.
But a lot of people believe Larry is genuine. Why wouldn't they? When he appears in a movie, he's credited as "Larry the Cable Guy," and, in some sort of freaky Mark
Wahlberg playing Eddie Adams playing Dirk Diggler playing Brock Landers meta-performance, Dan Whitney actually plays Larry the Cable Guy playing various movie character roles. For example, in Witless Protection (get it?), Dan Whitney plays Larry the Cable Guy playing Deputy Larry Stalder. Now sure, he's made a nice career for himself and I don't mean to begrudge him for his success, but it's all pretty creepy, no?Fortunately for America, Larry or Dan or whoever isn't running for president. At least, not this time. Be it Larry the Cable Guy or his Ohio cousin, Joe the Plumber, or their political and spiritual leader, Bushie the Commander Guy, or their newly discovered co-star Sarah the Hockey Mom, it should be obvious to anyone watching that the Republicans have been engaging in a seemingly endless game of dress up, and pretending to be something they're clearly not."
"Law enforcement agents have broken up a plot by two neo-Nazi skinheads to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 88 black people, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives said Monday.Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of ATF's Nashville field office, said the two men planned to kill 88 black people, including 14 by beheading. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community."
"Chad Michael Morisette, who lives in the house, told CBS 2 News that drivers
and bus passengers have been stopping to snap pictures of the macabre scene.
Morisette says the effigy would be out of bounds at any other time of year, but
it's within the spirit of Halloween. He says "it should be seen as art, and as
within the month of October. It's Halloween, it's time to be scary, it's time to
be spooky." "
"A phony State Board of Elections flier advising Republicans to vote on Nov. 4
and Democrats on Nov. 5 is being circulated in several Hampton Roads localities,
according to state election officials. [...] The somewhat official-looking flier
– it features the State Board logo and the state seal – is dated Oct. 24 and
indicates that "an emergency session of the General Assembly adopted the . . .
emergency (voting) regulations to ease the load on local electorial (sic)
precincts and ensure a fair electorial (sic) process." "
"New Jersey police officers arrested five people who were posting political(CNS)
signs, calling them "a bunch of fucking liberals," say the five in Hudson County
Court. The cops added, "It's not your day. We like Bush." "
"Two weeks before an election that could install the first black U.S. president,I've posted some about this before.
scattered ugly incidents have reflected a deep residue of racism among some
segments of white America.
A cardboard likeness of Barack
Obama was found strung from fishing wire at a university, the Democratic
presidential nominee's face was depicted on mock food stamps, the body of a
black bear was left at another university with Obama posters attached to it."
"Two people were arrested and charged Monday afternoon with assaulting
several GOP campaign workers at the campaign headquarters in Galax, Va."
"Tracy Orr sat in the back of the room and prepared to watch her foreclosed home
go up for auction this past Saturday. That's when a pesky stranger sat down
beside her and struck up a conversation."Are you here to buy a house?" Marilyn
Mock said.Orr couldn't hold it in. The tears flowed. She pointed to the auction
brochure at a home that didn't have a picture. "That's my house," she said.…Mock
says she bought the home for about $30,000. That's when Mock did what most
bidders at a foreclosure auction never do. "She said, 'I did this for you. I'm
doing this for you,' " Orr says."When it was all done, I was just in shock.""I thought maybe her and her husband do these types of things to buy them and turn them. She said, 'No, you just look like you needed a friend.' ""All this happened within like 5 minutes. She never even asked me my name. She didn't ask me my financial situation. She had no idea what [the house] looked like. She just did it out of the graciousness of her heart, just a 'Good Samaritan,' " Orr says. "It's amazing." …As for Orr's payments, Mock says, "We'll just figure out however much she can pay on it. That way, she can have her house back."
Why be so generous? "She was just so sad. You put yourself in their situation and you realize you just got to do something," says Mock… "If it was you, you'd want
somebody to stop and help you."When she told her husband of 30 years that she'd just bought a home for a stranger, she says his reaction was: "Whatever." "He's used to it," she says with a booming laugh."
"The lawsuit claims that the state is violating the U.S. and Virginia
constitutions by not allocating enough voting machines, poll workers and polling
places -- particularly in precincts with high minority populations -- which
could result in long lines and lost votes.
The Advancement Project, a
national voter protection group, filed the lawsuit late Monday in U.S. District
Court in Richmond on the NAACP's behalf. It asks the state to move voting
machines to precincts most likely to have long waiting lines; keep polls open
for an extra two hours; and use paper ballots in some cases."
"For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama "Barack the
Wealth Spreader," seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is,
at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an
Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it
imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds
finance the government's activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual
check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has
been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to
this year's check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before
she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip
Gourevitch, of this magazine—that "we're set up, unlike other states in the
union, where it's collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the
wealth when the development of these resources occurs." Perhaps there is some
meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it
("collectively," no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of
Karl the Marxist."
"Would you get on a plane with a pilot who has never flown? Would you trust your
child with someone who has never cared for children? Would you go under with a
surgeon who has never operated?"
"To all those who name the name of Christ who plan to willfully disobey Him by
voting for Obama, take warning. Not only is our nation in grave danger,
according to the Word of God, so are you.[...]To those who call themselves by
the name of Christ who ignore what God says about life and marriage, who and are
clinging to a fantasy of economic gain, think again.Obama will use your tax
dollars to kill innocent children, and then he'll take your paycheck and use it
to "spread the wealth around."[...]Be forewarned: If you willfully disobey God
on life and marriage because of race or false hope for the economy, you will
usher in the kind of change that brought the Soviet Union to collapse.[...]If
the word of God matters more to you than your perception of personal gain, Joel
2:12 issues a call to repentance I pray you will heed:
"Now, therefore,"
says the LORD, 'Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and
with mourning'" (Joel 2:12).
Then obey Him in the voting booth and out of it.
If not, do us all a favor and quit calling yourself a Christian."
"[Palin] effectively redefined "terrorist" as "Bill Ayers", and then asserted to
judge whether anyone else is a terrorist exclusively by how closely they hew to
what defines Ayers as a terrorist. Thus, only if one campaigns to destroy public
buildings and innocent Americans (we'll come back to that one) are they in the
same "category of Bill Ayers". That's a wonderfully convenient way of defining
terrorism for Palin, who wants desperately to smear her opponent as a terrorist
sympathiser – not so great a method for the rest of us, who don't have any
investment in defining terrorists singularly by their resemblance to
Ayers.Second, she makes a careful note about the destruction of "innocent
Americans" – a caveat that seems drawn specifically to provide an exception for
people ("real Americans", perhaps) who blow up buildings full of not-so-innocent
Americans. Like, say, women getting abortions."
"Brenda McElmore went to JC Penny's to get her hair dyed black and was
denied service.
According to KTLA, McElmore was told, "We don't do
African-American hair." She was then directed to elsewhere for hairstyling
needs. For McELmore it triggered a time of growing up under Jim Crow laws,
wherein blacks were routinely denied services based on the colour of our
skin. She has since filed suit against JC Penny. The company
responded by sending the
following letter.
"Let me apologize again for the customer service experience you had in our store. As we discussed, our salon receptionist felt that we did not have the technical proficiency... to perform the service you required. She may
not however have expressed this to you in a way that was not offensive. For this I again apologize. Because customer service is ... so important to our company, we would rather not attempt the service if we cannot perform it as required."
Isn't that beautiful lawyer speak for your hair is too nappy and untamable to deal with. The woman wasn't asking for a hair treatment, or a hair style that was specifically Afrocentric, she was asking for a damn dye job. If the salon does not have someone there that can colour hair, then they are not a hair salon."
Honestly, knowing my inside experiences with Penny's, I'm not at all surprised.
