New Ohio voter transcripts feed floodtide of doubt about Republican election manipulation!

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
November 25, 2004

COLUMBUS -- A floodtide of evidence of questionable practices in the 2004 election is mounting fast against Ohio Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell and Republican Franklin County Board of Elections (BOE) Director Matt Damschroder. New transcriptions of sworn voter testimony, presented below for the first time, confirm growing suspicions of widespread use of rigged machines. Voters experienced hostility from poll workers, refusal of Republican election officials to follow the law, and discriminatory manipulation of voting machine placement, driving significant numbers of Democrats away from the polls.

The Columbus Dispatch, central Ohio's dominant conservative daily newspaper, which endorsed Bush for the presidency, says Damschroder “has faced criticism locally and across the country from groups that contend an already short supply of voting machines were shifted from Democratic precincts in Columbus to Republican areas outside the city.” read on...

Religion and the Founders

The Founding Fathers were not devout by the standards of many of today's fundamentalist Protestants. To carefully examine writings by the principal framers (Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Washington and Madison) is to note the striking degree to which they all shared attitudes toward religion that would disqualify them as "Christians" in the eyes of the religious right, even though they described themselves as such. All these men emphasized the supreme importance of individual reason and conscience--not ecclesiastical authority and dogma--in shaping personal faith. To be sure, they recognized religion's valuable social role, but the assertion heard so often these days, that America was founded as a 'Christian nation', simply is not true.

The truth may set you free, but not if you're a Republican and the subject is taxes. After all, 95% of American families as promised received a tax cut from the Obama stimulus package. And while three-quarters of Americans support President Obama's proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 to their Clinton-era levels, it turns out that affluent voters, too, chose Barack Obama over John McCain. Making matters worse, a Gallup poll Monday revealed that Americans' "views of income taxes among most positive since 1956."

So as their furious followers head off to their April 15th orgy of tea-bagging, the leadership of the GOP and its amen corner in the right-wing media have instead turned to tall tales on taxes.

Here, then, are 10 Republican Tax Day lies:

1. President Obama will raise taxes on small businesses.
2. The estate tax devastates small businesses and family farms.
3. 40% of Americans pay no taxes.
4. Tax cuts always increase revenue.
5. The GOP is the party of fiscal discipline.
6. Ronald Reagan was the greatest tax cutter of all time.
7. FDR caused the Great Depression, or at least made it worse.
8. Obama's cap-and-trade plan will cost each American family $3,100 a year.
9. Obama's tax proposals will undermine charitable giving.
10. The rich pay too much in taxes already.

For the details behind each of the GOP's Tax Day deceits, continue reading.

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Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

In times of unrest, it's amazing how quickly some people will go to finding some way to scapegoat the least powerful among us. One of the themes reverberating around right wing world is that ACORN and the Community Reinvestment Act are to blame for the sub-prime mess, as this segment on Lou Dobbs echoes here.

It goes back to something known as the Community Reinvestment Act that passed in 1977. The law ordered banks to make loans to low and moderate income people. The Consumer Rights League says ACORN stepped in and used that law to pressure banks to lend to sub prime borrowers, even those who couldn't demonstrate the capability to pay back the loan.

Catch all the barely hidden subtext? It's all these "community organizers" (hmmm....remind me, whose resume has been scoffed at for being a community organizer?) FORCING these poor, hapless banks to lend money to these shiftless low and medium income people, and worse, illegal aliens (Dobbs' personal scapegoat for all things wrong with America). How dare these leftist grassroots groups (tied to the Democratic Party, naturally) cause the ruin of the American financial system with their demands?

It's easy to see how this would appeal to right wingers like Dobbs, Malkin and Savage . Too bad it's not true:

The Community Reinvestment Act caused financial institutions to lend to people who weren't credit worthy. This is crap. The CRA was signed into law in 1977 -- over 20 years before the current crisis. The second problem with this theory is the CRA only applies to banks and thrifts. Most of the mortgage lending during the last boom came from -- mortgage lenders who aren't regulated by CRA. I explained this all in more detail here.

The CRA tried to force banks to keep from redlining neighborhoods to keep minorities out...something I'm sure gets right wingers up in arms. And the charge that ACORN was to personally benefit from the bailout? Lies. It was stricken from the bill the Republicans sabotaged yesterday, as this side-by-side comparison of the various bills shows. Admittedly, ACORN has its problems (though related to voter registration and not home mortgages), but as Rep. Keith Ellison says:

The president told the nation that the crisis is due to "the irresponsible actions of some jeopardizing the financial security of all." There are even lies circulating that blame minorities for the crisis through the Community Reinvestment Act. This is factually wrong -- and repugnantly bigoted. In fact, the root cause of the failures today is the ideological rigidity of the Bush administration, and its conservative friends in Congress and on Wall Street who oppose regulation, oversight and corporate accountability. For eight long years their mantra has been "regulation and oversight is bad" and "the free market is good."

But now, when their policies have failed and the chickens have come home to roost, taxpayers are asked to help them out. We have little choice. We cannot let Wall Street fail, because if we do, Main Street fails as well.

Transcripts below the fold

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Eight years ago today, George W. Bush uttered the now broken promise that has come to define his failed presidency. Accepting his party's nomination, Governor Bush promised to restore "honor and dignity" to the White House. But as events continue to show, a more accurate - and ironic - mantra for the lawless Bush White House would be "no controlling legal authority."

At the time it was delivered, Bush's acceptance speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia was an arrogant, deceitful broadside against the Clinton/Gore years. But the very words Bush used to tar Al Gore with the blight of the Lewinsky scandal may now constitute the epitaph for the Bush presidency:

"So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not only uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God."

That hateful address (video excerpts here), of course, was filled with exactly the kind of lies and taunts - the smallness - that came to define George W. Bush.

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A Tiny Revolution: It's repentin' time in heaven. "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

AlterNet: Paying through the nose for gas. Oil companies, speculators and OPEC played their part, but ruinous Bush Administration policies have compounded the crisis.

Radamisto: Strict Constructionist Scalia cites "urban legend" in his dissent on Gitmo prisoners ruling. The Bush administration, realizing that federal judges will now be reviewing their "secret" evidence against detainees, have asked if they can cheat rewrite the evidence.

Talk To Action: Crackpot anti-gay sociologist finds friends in Russia

The Opinion Mill's Sunday Bookchat asks: Are we living in Nixonland or Reaganland? What is the difference between liberal books and conservative books? And what can we do about all these private militias?

Mugsy's Rap Sheet is inspired to attempt compiling a master list of McCain flip-flops and gaffes, which may require several full time employees to keep current. Readers are invited to contribute. A valuable resource for such an ambitious project would be the blogosphere's foremost authority on the fumblin', stumblin', bumblin' McCain, Jon Perr, who already has documented plenty of stupid remarks, idiotic assessments, reversals, backpedaling, chickensh*tery, dumbass predictions, the rare double flip-flop, many out-of-touch moments, and much more.

WARNING: Do not read this op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by Joe Lieberman if you have a heart condition or blood pressure issues, because I promise you, this will make you sick.

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in - a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor - a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

Beat. Head. Repeatedly. Against. Keyboard. But he only disagrees with us on one discrete issue, right, Harry? Glenn Greenwald:

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The Hill asked the other 97 sitting US Senators whether or not they would accept the offer to be #2. Richard Shelby's answer was probably the most, shall we say, colorful:

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) ruled himself out because of disinterest and said McCain would look elsewhere anyway.

“Besides, there was a famous quote about the vice presidency from Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president,” Shelby said. “You should look that up.”

Shelby was referring to John Nance Garner, who served under Roosevelt from 1933 to 1941 and described the job as “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”

See what your Senator said here.

California is staring in the face of a $14.5 billion budget deficit and, lucky for us, the old Arnold Schwarzenegger is back.

I'm kidding. It's 2004/05 all over again.

Our "post-partisan" governor has pushed forward a devastating, mean spirited, wholly unacceptable budget. See, he took the Grover Norquist pledge and said "I do not believe in tax increases". Therefore, his solution to the deficit is to cut funding across the board. Plus he wants to tack on a few billion more dollars on the state's credit card that he supposedly cut up years ago.

Schwarzenegger's budget is Norquist's wet dream. It would have absolutely catastrophic effects on California's educational, health care, and parks systems, among other services. LA Times:

Yet his vision for the state is costly -- and contradictory. Proposing that the state more than double the borrowing voters approved 14 months ago for public works, the governor compared himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt with the New Deal.

Bewildered lawmakers and activists said that reference was inconsistent with his administration's bid to close nearly one of every five state parks.

"I don't think it represents the governor's values," Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) said of the proposed budget, which is intended to close a $14.5-billion gap over the next 18 months.

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