Rigging the Election, or, Seeing the Elephant

What does science have to do with it?

Hug Hewett, who is not a nitwit, suddenly has had the selfsame “Paul on the Road to Damascus” blinding revelation that all other Republican bigwigs and bigmouths have had: Polling is like evolution — it’s only a theory. And all the “there’s no such thing as global warming” analysis has been brought, conveniently, to bear. Entirely TOO conveniently:

Introducing The New Polling Firm of Madoff, Marist, Quinnipiac and Ponzi
by Hugh Hewitt

After a few weeks spent tracking down and questioning pollsters and the reporters of polls, I can assure the reader that pollsters are the modern-day alchemists. They promise to turn numbers into predictive gold. We’d all like to believe these magical powers exist, but we shouldn’t. The pollsters of 2012 just don’t know who is going to win in November any more than did the pollsters of 1980 know that Ronald Reagan was headed towards a landslide in that late-breaking year.

Which is a lie. Oh, Time magazine ran a scathing piece in the December 1, 1980 issue, but it was horseshit. Look:

They Said It, Not Me

The hypocrisy of these scum never ceases to amaze. The Daily Caller publishes a photo of Kate Middleton’s private parts but covers it up because they’re “moral.” On the other hand, it confirms what I’ve always thought about Tucker Carlson. (Their photo. I haven’t changed a thing).

Well, Tucker, if you say so.

Courage.

Voter Suppression is Real

And here are some of the guys involved in making it happen.

Warning, this is messy. Those who have read my previous investigations will definitely have a leg up on this. But it’s about stealth operatives and voter suppression schemes going back to the 1990s, so strap in.

John Fund signing+selling 2008 revision of his 2004 book at 2009 Sammies

The news today, that a fellow named Nathan Sproul — who has a checkered past in voter registration, shall we say? — had created an astroturf/fictitious business name organization in June that was fired this week by the Republican National Committee and the Florida Republican Party forces me to revisit an old riff I’m almost tired of talking about. But it must, needs, be said. Let’s start with the LA Times:

RNC cuts ties with voter-drive firm accused of fraud
The founder of Strategic Allied Consulting says he formed the company at the Republican National Committee’s request to distance the party from earlier allegations.

By Joseph Tanfani, Melanie Mason and Matea Gold, Washington Bureau
September 28, 2012
WASHINGTON — The Republican National Committee has abruptly dropped ties to a firm running a major get-out-the-vote effort in seven swing states after Florida prosecutors started an investigation into possible fraud in voter registration forms.

Working through state parties, the RNC has sent more than $3.1 million this year to Strategic Allied Consulting, a company formed in June by Nathan Sproul, an Arizona political consultant. Sproul has operated other firms that have been accused in the past of improprieties designed to help Republican candidates, including dumping registration forms filled out by Democrats. None of those allegations have led to criminal charges.

Strategic Allied Consulting was hired to do voter registration drives in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and Nevada, and had been planning get-out-the-vote drives in Ohio and Wisconsin, according to Sproul. Lincoln Strategy Group, another Sproul company, was paid about $70,000 by Mitt Romney’s campaign during the primaries to gather signatures.

In Florida’s Palm Beach County, election officials turned over 106 forms to prosecutors after discovering forgeries and other problems. Officials in other counties are now reviewing voter registration forms turned in by the state GOP.

Sproul said he created Strategic Allied Consulting at the RNC’s request because the party wanted to avoid being publicly linked to the past allegations. The firm was set up at a Virginia address, and Sproul does not show up on the corporate paperwork.

“In order to be able to do the job that the state parties were hiring us to do, the [RNC] asked us to do it with a different company’s name, so as to not be a distraction from the false information put out in the Internet,” Sproul said….

Got that? “Sproul said he created Strategic Allied Consulting at the RNC’s request because the party wanted to avoid being publicly linked to the past allegations”

Minor Incongruity of the Day

Karl Rove is full of it. But we never realized JUST how full of it Mr. “Yellowcake” actually was. Listen:

Rove: Obama’s Biggest Opponent Is the Truth
Voters expect Mitt Romney to blow the whistle in the debates.
By KARL ROVE
The Wall Street Journal

When George Stephanopoulos asked Mitt Romney in a Sept. 14 “Good Morning America” interview what he’s learned about President Obama as a debater, the former Massachusetts governor replied, “I think he’s going to say a lot of things that aren’t accurate.”

If Mr. Obama’s debate performance mirrors his campaign, Mr. Romney’s prediction will be dead on. To get a sense of how comprehensive the president’s assault on the truth has been, consider some of his false claims in recent speeches and ads….

Right. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is actually the Mahatma Gandhi; the invasion of Iraq was like totally justified; Mark Twain isn’t funny and mice love cats.

For Whom The Poll Tells

Ask the next question.

Don’t Let Bogus Polls Depress You

Rush Limbaugh

RUSH: Folks, there are a couple of polls out there today that are just outrageous. One is the CBS/New York Times poll. The other is the Washington Post poll. I’m telling you: They are irresponsible. They are designed to do exactly what I have warned …

This is what is roiling the Rightiesphere right now: Don’t believe them lying polls! Now, the predictable response from the Left and Middle has been to sort of chuckle at an act that seems — except for the disquieting fact that the highest levels of Rightopia are joining in the bray — delusional at best, or even a psychotic break with reality.

And that is where you’ve got to ask the next question.

Guitar Pix, Old Licks and Music Tricks

After a long night’s writing, as I finish this, singer Andy Williams has died at the age of 84. Vaya con dios, Andy. I’ll spare him and you the Mancini puns. This seems an appropriate way to honor his passing. (And no, I have no idea if we’re related.)

An anniversary story that my guitar demanded I tell, else it will gently weep for weeks, and —  in my experience – there’s nothing worse than a weepy guitar.

cartoon originally appeared in The Comic News, 1996

I was playing my guitar tonight when it came to me: forty years ago, I bought my first guitar at Music Villa in Santa Fe, on St. Michael’s drive, for fourteen dollars.

I probably got gypped. It was a steel-string no name monster, with action a full quarter inch above the fretboard, but it kept me playing and that hasn’t stopped, with one exception. The finish was wrecked, so I got some paint stripper and for two days out in the garage at Siringo Rondo South (there is a Siringo Rondo East, where the street doglegs ninety degrees, but no West or North). After sanding it down and refinishing it, that was my guitar for awhile. My brother still has it (called “the old guitar”) but no one, to my knowledge, is crazy enough to play it.

But the story starts about a month earlier, as I spent the next to last summer I’d ever spend at my Aunt’s house in Omaha.

The Scratch-Off Candidacy

Listening to Mitt Romney’s interview with CBS and reflecting on his campaign, it becomes all to clear that his mantra is “trust me” and that he promises, if you buy a pig in a poke, all your porcine dreams will come true. But that’s really an analogy from another time and another place.

What he’s REALLY saying is that he’s a lottery scratch-off.

You know (if you’re of a certain mind-set) that you’ve got a chance at getting what you want with Romney, but he won’t tell you if you actually will. Buy me! the Romney lottery ticket calls. And THEN you’ll find out.

And then scratch off the plastic goop over the numbers and see if you’ve won.

click for larger

Your odds of winning are quite high — except that in the fine print and if you know anything about math or statistics, you’d realize it’s a sucker’s bet.

But there are a lot of people who buy scratch-offs anyway.

Good luck with that.

Courage.

A Preview of the Presidential Debates

I watched the Mitt Romney “interview” last night on 60 Minutes. And I knew that it was a preview of the Presidential Debates. Romney kept doing “number” points — a debate trope that suggests he’s been working with his coaches, perhaps some from Old Jesus University (as you’ll see below).

Shake the Etch-A-Sketch enough times, and this is the 
picture that people end up with in their memories …

Then, today, he went out and said that Anne Romney’s plane would have been OK if there were windows you could open on them.  (After an endless series of “Reboots” the latest one evidently involves, Mitt Romney, Aerospace Engineer, but who can keep track as they roll by?)

Romney Doesn’t Understand Why You Can’t Roll Down Windows On A Plane
Annie-Rose Strasser / ThinkProgress

… On Monday, Mitt Romney offered a remedy to the problem that caused his wife’s airplane to land prematurely last week: Allow passengers to roll down the airplane windows.  —  Ann Romney’s plane was grounded Friday after the main cabin filled with smoke…

While this was rightly derided,  this didn’t stop at least one blog from taking up the cudgel to claim that YES, MITT ROMNEY IS RIGHT!!!! I keeds you not:

LEDE: The Blind Attempt to Lead The Blind

Mooselini, Wasilla’s most famous blunder, busses the Romney campaign through her discoverer’s magazine, little Billy Kristol’s The Weekly Standardud:

Palin to Romney-Ryan: ‘Go Rogue’
“America desperately needs to have a ‘come to Jesus’ moment…”
9:19 AM, SEP 22, 2012
BY DANIEL HALPER

In a statement to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin offers some advice for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, this year’s Republican ticket for president and vice president, respectively.

“With so much at stake in this election, both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan should ‘go rogue’ and not hold back from telling the American people the true state of our economy and national security,” says Palin. “They need to continue to find ways to break through the filter of the liberal media to communicate their message of reform.”

Palin also suggests that Romney and Ryan can be responsible for an epiphany on this country’s fiscal standing. “America desperately needs to have a ‘come to Jesus’ moment in discussing our big dysfunctional, disconnected, and debt-ridden federal government” …

Epiphany? Do we REALLY think Miss Wasilla used that word? Cacophony, perhaps. But “epiphany”?

We get it, Sarah. Really we do.  Your mentor and pimp*, Kristol, shares your fear that you’re retreating into irrelevance and that your fifteen minutes have elapsed.

The Deathscort at the Abortuary

It’s timely again. And, many times I’ve wanted to reference it, but the Blogger DOT com platform was clunky and unstable, which was why, after three tries, I migrated the blog to WordPress in 2007. Since you can only see this in an Internet Explorer tab, I’m migrating this post here.

click for larger image

Once upon a time, I guarded all of Southern Oregon for a Woman’s Right to Choose, one day a week …

This originally appeared on Saturday, October 01, 2005

RED MASS or, THE DEATHSCORT AT THE ABORTUARY

He rather looked like he’d been caught in a time warp, circa 1973: the “Prince Valiant” disco haircut; navy blue dockers, not yet threadbare; a seeming Ralph Lauren knockoff or second shirt, navy blue with a “USA” emblazoned across the chest, American flags on both (white) collars, and “USA” across the back. There was a small flag-embroidered patch on his left shoulder, at the bicep/deltoid interface. He wore cheap, brown loafers.

He was of indeterminate age, except that he was somewhere in his thirties, perhaps. He was holding his pamphlets and shuffling slowly back and forth across the driveway with a whippet-thin woman, her rosary beads in hand — the beads were cheap, plastic, pseudo-jewels — her lips were constantly moving, soundlessly; there was a stack of seemingly-hand-collated pamphlets, with a sepia-tint photo of an aborted fetus lovingly paper-clipped to each one in her other, non-rosary hand. Her face was furrowed with deep worry lines, and a sort of perpetual expression of having just bit into a lemon, thinking it had been an orange.

And they didn’t like me.

Mitt’s Fictional Tax Return to Post Today – UPDATED

NOTE FROM TRUSTEE BRAD MALT
Brad Malt / Mitt Romney for President

This morning, Gov. and Mrs. Romney filed their 2011 tax return with the IRS.  At 3:00pm today, the Romney for President campaign will be posting the 2011 return online.  —  The complete 2011 tax return, with full schedules, statements, and attachments …

Some tax facts:

Mitt Romney has three years to file amended tax returns without penalties. That is the law.