The 2012 "Election" thread

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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby Rory » Wed Oct 31, 2012 2:27 pm

JackRiddler wrote:
Rory wrote:Saying that, there are probably more than a few Iranians that aren't too happy at how their leadership has behaved over the last 30 years.


My impression is that most of them by far also don't want to see Iran bombed for any reason. Some things are that simple.


Good, god. Glad we agree on that. Another reason to fight Romney's election.

DrVolin wrote:http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/264935-here-comes-the-landslide

Just for reference, Morris piloted Clinton to the White House, presumably on behalf of the Bushes.


This, from Adam Curtis is interesting re Dick Morris - the man basically sounds amoral. Robert Reich, was not a fan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmUzwRCy ... re=related

go to 3:30:00 to see the Clinton/Morris segment (the whole thing is well worth a watch, tbf
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby ninakat » Wed Oct 31, 2012 3:37 pm

:clapping:

October 31, 2012
Let Real Politics Resume
Enough Already!
by ANDREW LEVINE

With the (likely) reelection of Barack Obama only a week off, do any Obama supporters have anything but lesser evil arguments to offer in his behalf?

The ever loyal Melissa Harris-Perry does. She wrote in The Nation (Nov. 5) that Obama’s reelection will be good for race relations, even if, as she more or less concedes, his “race neutral” policies are, at best, only indirectly helpful to victims of institutional racism. But apart from sophistries like hers, the answer is: no. Obama will likely win for one reason only: because Romney and the Republicans are (or seem) worse to more voters than vice versa.

If you don’t believe me, witness the pro-Obama screeds in The Nation (Oct. 22) or the comments on the upcoming election by New York Review of Books luminaries in the Nov. 8 edition. Or, if you are of a masochistic bent, tune in any weeknight to the Democratic Party cheerleaders on MSNBC. Even Rachel Maddow is at a loss to find anything more cheery to do than riff on the lesser evil argument a thousand different ways.

Romney supporters are lesser evilists too. The difference is that they are more impassioned – because the very thought of a person of color in the White House unnerves them. And if that weren’t bad enough, the interloper has an Ivy League education and his middle name is Hussein. Add a Kenyan father, and an evil demon could not concoct a better recipe for rattling a Tea Partier’s cage.

No doubt, there are a few Obama supporters who can still work up a little enthusiasm for the man; anything is possible. And Romney does have the enthusiastic support of the hyper-rich who want one of their own in the White House, and of lesser rich folk who resent Obama’s rare “populist” lapses, and who complain that they are down to their last millions.

The feelings of these miscreants are easily hurt and they fret that, under “socialist” Obama, they many not be able to go on living in the style to which they have become accustomed. Greedy bastards that they are, they like Romney, and Republicans generally, for their views on marginal tax rates.

In addition, there are scattered pockets of Romney-boosters out on or beyond the fringe. I am especially peeved at the ones who overflow my junk mail box with semi-literate, racist harangues. It serves me right for going to my High School reunion only to find that some of the kids I used to know have turned into geriatric, islamophobic Zionists who like the fact that Romney and Benjamin Netanyahu, “king “of the ethnocrats, formed a close relationship years ago in Boston, while the two of them were learning the dark arts of vulture capitalism.

Those demented souls should be careful of what they wish for. If Romney really does believe the snake oil he professes, they and he will never quite see eye to eye on who the Chosen People are or, for that matter, on where the Promised Land is. But, as long as Romney tows the Likud line, they evidently don’t care.

After all, these are people who make common cause even with evangelicals who look forward to the end time – it should be here any day now! — when the Loving God will rededicate the Holy Land to the people of Israel, the better to smite those among them who refuse to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior.

But voters who identify with the Romneys or whose moral and intellectual capacities resemble Sheldon Adelson’s or my former schoolmates’ are few in number. The vast majority of Romney supporters hate Romney. They hate him for his Mormonism and for his supercilious ways. They hate him for the obvious contempt he has for them. But they support him because – for all the wrong reasons — they hate Obama more.

* * *

Has there ever been a presidential election where there was so much animosity, and so little enthusiasm?

Let Romney voters ponder the answer on their own; this late in the game, there is no point trying to talk sense to them.

For anyone of sound mind and decent instincts, Romney is simply not an option. The sorry fact that he is an option for some fifty percent of the voting public is an issue better addressed after the election is over, whether or not Romney voters get the chance to experience voter remorse.

For everyone else, everyone for whom voting Republican is unthinkable, the question is what to do on November 6. There are three options: vote for Obama, vote for Jill Stein or some other third party candidate, or don’t vote at all. For different reasons, they are all bad choices. But a choice must be made.

By now, everything there is to say for and against these choices has been said – ad nauseum.

Lesser evilist Obama supporters have made their case in every imaginable way, exercising all the ingenuity they can muster. Those of us who are unmoved by their arguments have also said just about everything there is to say.

That would include the idea that it is not clear that Obama really is the lesser evil all things considered – because a Romney victory would likely put some backbone back into the Democratic Party and because it would reanimate the Occupy movements – their spirit, if not their form — if the U.S. government and the one percent (or its most noxious sector, the one percent of the one percent) were not just of one mind but of one body as well.

It has also been argued that while lesser evilism may be a sound policy, and while Obama may be the lesser evil, there are thresholds that must be respected, degrees of awfulness that even lesser evilists must not exceed. Inventories of President Drone’s doings amply support the conclusion that he doesn’t meet the standard. I need hardly go back over the evidence; readers of CounterPunch know the litany well. Most pro-Obama lesser evilists do too.

Finally there is the argument that even if Obama is the lesser evil, and even if he hasn’t been that bad or, more plausibly, if it doesn’t matter how bad he has been so long as Romney is worse, lesser evilism must be resisted because it contributes to the vicious cycle that is running American politics into the ground.

Because there is merit to all of these contentions – those that support voting for Obama for lesser evil reasons and those that resist that conclusion — and because there is a consensus on the relevant matters of fact, the debate is probably unresolvable.

To be sure, Republicans seem hell bent on doing their utmost to make the lesser evil pro-Obama case the strongest of the lot. To assuage traditional Republican voters who still have some of the sense they were born with and to win over those vaunted “undecided” moderates, every once in a while – for example, during the third “debate” — Romney does try just a little to etch-a sketch his way out of the Tea Party corner into which he has painted himself. He will likely lose the election because, thanks partly to his own shameless pandering, that has become a hopeless task.

Tea Partiers may come straight out of Morons R’Us, but they are not as easily “neutralized” as the base Obama and his advisors love to diss. They hate Romney already, and it wouldn’t take much to make them turn against him by staying home on Election Day.

Does that make the lesser evil case for Obama stronger than the others? I don’t think so. I think the anti-Obama case is stronger.

I also think that voting Green is a no-brainer for “progressives” who live in states where the electoral votes are already effectively assigned – that is, for everyone not in the ten or so “battleground states.” But I would readily concede that voting for Stein is a futile gesture. I personally will make that gesture; it seems the least bad thing to do in the circumstances. But it is far from a happy choice.

In my view, even not voting is a more plausible option than taking the lesser evil route. The problem, though, is that it isn’t clear what message that would convey; not in a country where so few eligible voters turn out anyway.

That’s one reason to take the third party route. Another is that most voters will have some reason to vote for, not just against, something on the ballot — some local or statewide referendum or maybe even some candidates for local or statewide offices. Since you’re there anyway, and since voting for somebody other than Obama conveys a clearer message than not voting for President at all, my suggestion is just to vote Green.

But I can appreciate how others would conclude differently, and even how the lesser evil option might seem the most compelling.

* * *

The one sure thing is that November 6 will bring bad news. The good news is that is that it will be over soon – and real politics, the kind the broke out in 2011 in Wisconsin and other states where Republican governors took aim at public unions and later with Occupy Wall Street and its many counterparts, can finally resume.

When it does, it should be clearer than is was a year ago, to lesser evilists as well as to their critics, that Barack Obama is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

We should all be able to agree too that the old blather about Obama wanting to do the right thing, but being unable (because “we” haven’t done our part to enable him) is nonsense.

We should all realize that while he may not have any principled objection to public sector unions, he’ll do nothing to help them; and that while he may not favor increasing inequality, he’ll do nothing to reverse it.

After this electoral circus, the evidence is overwhelming. Obama will do anything to help himself and he will do his best to help his corporate paymasters, both real and “aspirational.” But that’s all.

We should all be able to agree, therefore, that Obama wants what Romney wants. The one may be more noxious than the other, but they are of one mind.

And so, the task for “progressives” is not, as Obama boosters say, to “guard his back” so that he can finally take up the cause of “hope” and “change.” It’s to do instead just what it would be if Romney were somehow to win – to make it impossible for Obama to pursue the retrograde policies he favors.

This would involve, first of all, giving the Peace Laureate no peace until he actually moves to restrain, not enhance, the juggernaut; and to end, not repackage, the Bush-Obama wars. It would involve struggling to restore the rule of law and the protections afforded by the Constitution of the United States. In those regards, as even lesser evilists know, Obama has been worse even than Bush.

But this is just the beginning. On every “issue” that would have been discussed by our presidential candidates were our democracy not a sham — from climate change and other environmental catastrophes in the making to bankster racketeering and corporate predations – Obama is on the wrong side. Maybe Romney would be even worse; maybe not. Maybe that’s a reason to vote for Obama; maybe not. What is certain is that, in a week’s time, worries like that will become moot. And real politics will become timely again.

That is a point on which pro-Obama lesser evilists and their critics should agree, just as we should all be able to agree on how to think about Obama, and what to do to block or reverse the pro-one percent policies he, like Romney, will promote.

Of course, some of them will remain recalcitrant, taken in by their own sophistries and apologetics. I wouldn’t count on MSNBC pundits getting better any time soon, and the same goes for most of The New York Review grandees. But everyone else, everyone not too invested in the Democratic Party – the pro-Obama Nation writers, for example – should be able to take full measure of the enemy, and to react accordingly.

And so should almost everyone else who will vote for the putative lesser evil next week. The sooner they are all back on board, the better. Romney voters are right about one thing, after all: the last thing we need is four more years of the same.

ANDREW LEVINE is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What’s Wrong With the Opium of the People. He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby ninakat » Wed Oct 31, 2012 4:00 pm

From "The Lesser Of Two Evils"...Why, Obama Isn't That Bad! thread:

Wombaticus Rex wrote:
ninakat wrote:Secondly, I believe if you vote, you have no right to complain. People like to twist that around – they say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain', but where's the logic in that? If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem; you voted them in; you have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote, who in fact did not even leave the house on election day, am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created that I had nothing to do with.”


Great riff but doesn't hold up to logic. He is, at the very least, just as responsible.


Wrong.

October 31, 2012
Obama isn't Hitler, but...
The Banal Evil of Voting
by JOSHUA SPERBER

A 2004 Pew poll showed that while 38 percent of Americans would be reluctant to vote for a Muslim presidential candidate, an even greater percentage (52) would be reluctant to vote for a candidate who has no religion at all. This conviction that “wrong faith is better than no faith” is similar to the belief that underlies much of the liberal discourse on the presidential election. The typical Democrat, at least where I’m sitting, is likely to become far more irate with the non-voter than with the Romney voter. At least Republicans participate, even if they’re on the wrong side. Refusal to participate, by contrast, is deemed an irresponsible and scandalous affront. Fittingly, the liberal argument for voting is premised on a mixture of faith, bad faith, and fear.

The liberal’s “but you have to vote” appeal frequently begins with a melodramatic condemnation of Obama’s crimes: “I personally find drones to be ABHORRENT,” they claim, while also showing perfunctory disdain for indefinite detention, executive assassinations, global warming, the failure to close “Gitmo,” etc. This ostensible rejection of Democratic crimes is designed to show that your interlocutor is honest, decent, and reasonable. “Yet,” they steady themselves, “even you must agree that Romney would be far worse” – that is, even an atheist has to see that Christ is better than Allah! And if Obama and Romney are doomed to commit the same crimes, then we might as well pick the candidate who is better for things like abortion rights since we have no say in “all those other things anyway.” And isn’t that better than “doing nothing at all”?

The first response to this ubiquitous nonsense is that voting most certainly matters and so, therefore, does non-voting. Voting legitimizes the state and its atrocities in general and perpetuates a very specific type of rule in particular – one in which it is a faith-based given, rather than an urgent and profound political problem, that we have no influence on “all those other things” in the first place.

“Yes, in the long run you might be right that things have to change,” the liberal pretends to concede, but we must “be realistic and do what we can in the here and now. The revolution is not around the corner!” (This is of course disingenuous, as when revolutions develop liberals run the other direction. Nevertheless, let’s take them at their word). Yes, but by voting you are in fact working against radical transformation by sanctioning and thereby strengthening the institutions that meaningful change would necessarily oppose.

“No,” liberals insist, and here their faith severs them from reality. For they are not voting for all those bad things, just the good things, like gay marriage and abortion rights and all those issues that nine unelected people might decide for us (that nine unelected people can make important decisions for us is also just a part of “life” that is to be dutifully accommodated). And this ambivalent-vote mythology requires that you remind them that the ballot does not provide for caveats, asterisks, or policy checklists. That is, enjoying the benefits of voting for abortion “rights” (the Democrats oxymoronically promise to make these rights “inalienable” once they are in position to do so) necessitates that voters simultaneously take responsibility for Obama’s indefinite detentions, kill lists, and “disposition matrix.”

If your discussion with the liberal voter has progressed this far, you can expect to hear something like: “Well, this is why the day after I vote for Obama, I will hit the streets and work to stop all those bad things that Obama does. And you should join me!” And now, because we inhabit a surreal political society, we must ask them to explain the logic of intensifying a problem that they will then ostensibly “try” (how has the left fared with the Obama and Clinton Administrations?) to mitigate.

Perversely, liberals often attempt to shame non-voters with statements like: “If you don’t vote, then you have no right to complain.” But it’s really the voter who has forfeited this right. Voters choose who gets to decide; the content of those decisions is beyond their reach. If anyone needs to shut up then, it’s voters, as they are the ones who have given the president the power to do everything he’s done. And for all the liberal fear of Romney, it is in fact the vote for Obama that would legitimize a Romney presidency if the Republican wins. Merely by entering the game, the poker player waives his right to complain about the outcome after he loses. Liberals’ plaintive cry of “Then what do you suggest doing instead!” evokes a sexual harasser who when exhorted to stop harassing his employees asks, “Then who should I harass instead?”

In fact, when it comes to shame, it might be useful to consider posterity. Historians and moralizers furrow their brows over the riddle of why people voted for certain tyrants. Joachim Fest argues that Hitler, for example, was supported not for his anti-Semitism but in spite of it. And Fest’s conservatism doesn’t negate the fact that there was indeed no shortage of other anti-Semitic parties in 1932 Germany. But, assuming this was the case, are these Hitler-supporters exculpated by the fact that they only liked his economic policies, or perhaps his government’s research programs on cancer? Would any liberal today accept a Nazi-supporter’s explanation that he was not voting for world war and genocide but “against” the Stalinist KPD or only “for” the “good things”?

Of course, Obama is not Hitler. But this does not mean that future societies will not wonder why tens of millions of people repeatedly sanctioned a globally murderous and ecologically catastrophic political-economic system by dutifully choosing and thereby legitimizing its ruler. And it will appear even stranger that those doing the choosing insisted that they had no other choice.


Joshua Sperber lives in Brooklyn and can be reached at jsperber4@yahoo.com
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby beeline » Wed Oct 31, 2012 4:08 pm

^^^^^

So what does Sperber propose that we do? Not vote? Vote Romney? Vote third party? What the fuck. I am sick of hearing people complain about the system and propose exactly zero solutions to the problem. Fuck him and his whining ilk, quite frankly, until he forms a viable third party. But I ain't holding my breath for that to happen? Know why? Those who can, do; those who can't sit around with their dicks in their hands and complain on the fucking internet. Fuck him.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby American Dream » Wed Oct 31, 2012 4:32 pm

http://boingboing.net/2012/10/31/4-year ... aring.html

4 year old is tired of hearing about Bronco Bama, Mitt Rominey, and the elections



Elizabeth Evans says, "This is my four year old daughter, Abigael, after hearing one too many mentions of the election."

"The election will be over soon," Elizabeth tells her child in the video.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby ninakat » Wed Oct 31, 2012 4:40 pm

beeline wrote:^^^^^

So what does Sperber propose that we do? Not vote? Vote Romney? Vote third party? What the fuck. I am sick of hearing people complain about the system and propose exactly zero solutions to the problem. Fuck him and his whining ilk, quite frankly, until he forms a viable third party. But I ain't holding my breath for that to happen? Know why? Those who can, do; those who can't sit around with their dicks in their hands and complain on the fucking internet. Fuck him.


Yeah, I understand your frustration -- it is multiplied across the country it would seem. But in all fairness to Sperber, I don't think there are any solutions. It's a turd sandwich whichever way we go from here. It's called collapse. And yeah, there's gonna be a lot of whining, as witnessed in this thread, myself included. We're all just rats having a race on this sinking ship. Let's go get a drink, beeline.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby beeline » Wed Oct 31, 2012 5:00 pm

ninakat wrote:
beeline wrote:^^^^^

So what does Sperber propose that we do? Not vote? Vote Romney? Vote third party? What the fuck. I am sick of hearing people complain about the system and propose exactly zero solutions to the problem. Fuck him and his whining ilk, quite frankly, until he forms a viable third party. But I ain't holding my breath for that to happen? Know why? Those who can, do; those who can't sit around with their dicks in their hands and complain on the fucking internet. Fuck him.


Yeah, I understand your frustration -- it is multiplied across the country it would seem. But in all fairness to Sperber, I don't think there are any solutions. It's a turd sandwich whichever way we go from here. It's called collapse. And yeah, there's gonna be a lot of whining, as witnessed in this thread, myself included. We're all just rats having a race on this sinking ship. Let's go get a drink, beeline.


Indeed, I'm buying!

I don't know why this touched such a nerve with me; actually, I do: my Mom, and the others that she ran with back in the 80s and 90s, actually did things when they saw injustice: break into GE, destroy guidance systems for ICBMs; break into the Naval base at Groton, CN, and repeatedly ram a Trident with a passenger van; break into missile silos and spill blood--real blood, their own--onto the tops of silos; during Gulf War I, camp out in the middle of the Iraqi desert and stan as human shields between the two armies. Ultimiately, these actions, while symbolic, were futile: but they didn't just sit around and whine about crap. (They did a lot of whining, believe me, but backed it up with at least some action.) And they were willing to do hard time after their arrests and trials. (OK full disclosure: it is fairly amusing, as a thirty year old, to answer the question 'What did you do this weekend?' with 'Visit my 75 year old mother in prison.' Always livens up a conversation).

Arrrrrgh yeah I am pretty frustrated at this point. Still voting Obama though.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby 8bitagent » Wed Oct 31, 2012 5:10 pm

American Dream wrote:http://boingboing.net/2012/10/31/4-year-old-is-tired-of-hearing.html

4 year old is tired of hearing about Bronco Bama, Mitt Rominey, and the elections



Elizabeth Evans says, "This is my four year old daughter, Abigael, after hearing one too many mentions of the election."

"The election will be over soon," Elizabeth tells her child in the video.



Hahahhaa...love it. Even a little kid knows what the two scariest things are about this year's Halloween
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby 8bitagent » Wed Oct 31, 2012 5:15 pm

ninakat wrote:The liberal’s “but you have to vote” appeal frequently begins with a melodramatic condemnation of Obama’s crimes: “I personally find drones to be ABHORRENT,” they claim, while also showing perfunctory disdain for indefinite detention, executive assassinations, global warming, the failure to close “Gitmo,” etc. This ostensible rejection of Democratic crimes is designed to show that your interlocutor is honest, decent, and reasonable. “Yet,” they steady themselves, “even you must agree that Romney would be far worse” – that is, even an atheist has to see that Christ is better than Allah! And if Obama and Romney are doomed to commit the same crimes, then we might as well pick the candidate who is better for things like abortion rights since we have no say in “all those other things anyway.” And isn’t that better than “doing nothing at all”



Fucking nailed it. There's several measures here in California I am adament about voting for(such as GMO labeling) but Im thinking of just leaving the presidential part blank. Was gonna vote third party, but I like the idea of a blank
space.

I like how Trudeau had Bush as simply a trojan helmet with an asterix. I think all the modern candidates, leaders, etc should just be represented by an asterisk denoting which corproate/wall street collective they work for
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby 8bitagent » Wed Oct 31, 2012 5:25 pm

ninakat wrote:The one sure thing is that November 6 will bring bad news. The good news is that is that it will be over soon – and real politics, the kind the broke out in 2011 in Wisconsin and other states where Republican governors took aim at public unions and later with Occupy Wall Street and its many counterparts, can finally resume.


Right here. That Wisconsin protest thing was above all one of the best things I've witnessed when it came to activism. Nothing against OWS, because I love the enthusiasm and youthfulness of OWS...BUT,
the Wisconsin thing...that was inspired and quite necessary. That's where change will come. Not from President Hopey.

Regarding the argument that if Romney gets in, no activism will be allowed and it will be a total fascistic dictatorship....

WHERE are all the en masse young people in the streets protesting the wars and such we saw under Bush? What happened to them? Again, I like what OWS is doing, but where
were all the Bush era protest kids protesting bad foreign policy under Obama? We dont need big scary government gestapo to crack down...we have people's cognitive dissonance to thank for that.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby ninakat » Wed Oct 31, 2012 5:37 pm

Freedom Rider: Obama the Untouchable

Image

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Oct. 31, 2012

Obama supporters who profess an intent to “hold his feet to the fire” may successfully deceive themselves and each other, but this president is no fool. Barack Obama knows that voters have no power whatsoever over him after next Tuesday, that he'll be free to follow his own inclinations, whatever those are.

(more)

+ + + + +

Is This Really The Most Important Election Ever? If So, Then Where Are Our Issues?

Image

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Oct. 31, 2012

It's hard to see how an election is so darn important for black America when the candidates aren't talking about the issues. Which one is the candidate that wants to roll back the prison state, or stop the drug war, or question gentrification? Is there a candidate who wants full funding of public education? A candidate who will cut off troops and military aid to Africa? If not, what are we voting for?

(more)
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby bks » Wed Oct 31, 2012 6:28 pm

DrVolin wrote:http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/264935-here-comes-the-landslide

Just for reference, Morris piloted Clinton to the White House, presumably on behalf of the Bushes.



The presidential election is the subject of large betting pools across the world. Virtually everywhere you look, Obama is between a 1/3 and a 2/7 favorite to win. The over-under point for an even-money bet on the number of electoral college votes Obama will get is 293.5.

Those are daunting odds for Romney. Betting companies are not in the habit of giving money away.

http://www.oddschecker.com/specials/pol ... ion/winner

The well-named Dick Morris is full of his usual shit. A Romney landslide would almost certainly mean widespread election fraud occurred. His poll numbers are completely made up, best I can tell.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 31, 2012 6:50 pm

More Evidence Key Dark Money Group May Have Misled IRS
by Kim Barker, ProPublica, and Rick Young and Emma Schwartz, Frontline Oct. 30, 2012, 7:57 p.m.

This story is being co-published with Frontline, which is also airing a documentary on the group tonight. Check your local listings.

New signs emerged Monday that a controversial nonprofit may have misled the Internal Revenue Service not only about its political activities but also about support from a purported donor.

Western Tradition Partnership, or WTP, sent the IRS a letter in 2008 asking the agency to expedite the group's request for recognition of its tax-exempt status. The letter said that without it, the group's principle donor, Jacob Jabs, would pull a planned grant of $300,000.

But Jabs, who runs Colorado's largest furniture retailer, said on Monday he had never pledged money to the group, and never even been in contact with them until press stories appeared naming him.

"I think they just grabbed my name out of a hat to forward their agenda," Jabs told us. "I know nothing about the group, never heard of them, never have heard of them until the last few days, and I did not, absolutely did not, commit $300,000 to start this company." (Jabs also spoke with the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, again denying any connection to the group.)

Although operating at the state level, WTP has won national attention for its attempts to fight campaign-finance restrictions. It successfully sued to overturn Montana's ban on corporate spending in elections, extending the provisions of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision to all states. It has also sued Montana investigators over the state's ruling two years ago that the group is a political committee and should have to report its donors.

Documents obtained by Frontline on WTP offer a rare look into the inner workings of dark money groups, tax-exempt organizations that can accept unlimited contributions and do not have to disclose their donors for political ads.

On Monday, we detailed how some of those documents pointed to WTP actively shaping the campaigns of candidates for state office in Montana. The documents, found in a meth house near Denver by a convicted felon in late 2010, indicate possible coordination between candidates and outside groups. Outside groups and candidates are not allowed to coordinate.

Social welfare nonprofits like WTP are allowed to engage in some political activity, but IRS regulations say they must have social welfare as their primary purpose. ProPublica has extensively reported on how some of these nonprofits, known as 501(c)(4)'s after their section of the tax code, appear to exploit gaps in enforcement between the Internal Revenue Service and election authorities so they don't have to disclose where they get their money.

As ProPublica and Frontline have previously reported, when WTP applied for recognition of its tax-exempt status, the group also told the IRS under penalty of perjury that it would not directly or indirectly attempt to influence elections. Yet even before its application, the group sponsored mailers that criticized politicians in the 2008 Republican primary.

The IRS approved WTP's tax-exempt status three days after it received the group's request for expedited review.

Jabs said he only first spoke with WTP earlier this month, after seeing reports that he was the primary donor. Jabs said he reached a WTP official, Athena Dalton, who signed the IRS letter citing him. According to Jabs, Dalton told him she was WTP's secretary and had been instructed to send the letter by two other WTP officials, Christian LeFer and Dan Reed.

"I did talk to Christian LeFer," Jabs said. "They basically admitted they used me to get their 501(c)(4) status." Jabs said he also contacted Reed, who did not call him back.

In an email responding to a ProPublica question about Jabs, LeFer wrote: "Your facts are wrong, I 'admitted' no such thing; that doesn't even sound plausible. Further, what significance this issue might hold escapes me. I don't discuss donors, and I can see that your story line does not need my help."

Reed did not respond to a phone call.

On Monday, LeFer also confirmed the documents found in a meth house were stolen from his wife's car and belonged to him and his wife, Allison. The documents included material from outside groups and candidates, and communications between LeFer and candidates. There were surveys of candidates by outside groups and drafts and final copies of mailers marked as being paid for by the campaigns.

LeFer, described as WTP's director of strategic programming in memos in 2009, said in an email that the boxes of documents were stolen in Colorado in June 2010.

"These stolen documents appear to be a mix of those from my consulting and volunteer work and from my wife's independently owned and operated mail and printing shop," wrote LeFer, whose wife runs a company called Direct Mail and Communications in Livingston, Mont. "Both my wife and I have scrupulously endeavored to avoid any possibility of illegal coordination.

"The stolen documents, which were in the process of being transferred to storage when the theft occurred, have been mingled to infer that the work of two separate people is in fact the work of one person and therefore improper. This is false." (Here is LeFer's full response.)

Candidates have confirmed that LeFer worked with Direct Mail. They have also said LeFer was an adviser on their campaigns.

There is also other evidence LeFer worked with the firm.

On Tuesday, a woman named Elizabeth Sheron said that when she briefly worked for Direct Mail in 2010, LeFer welcomed her to the company. She provided us a check from Direct Mail and an email from LeFer in which he asked her to elaborate on her abilities and experience. LeFer also wrote that he hoped to increase the membership of one of his social welfare nonprofits to 250,000 people in two years.

Sheron said she did work for Direct Mail, WTP and other related groups. “They kind of had you involved with every project…no matter who was paying you," she said. “I was paid by Direct Mail but I was doing stuff for other groups." Sheron worked there only briefly before quitting.

In an email, LeFer said he didn't think it was useful to try to recall “snippets of information from years back." He said if reporters sent “the entire file of materials you have and you want to discuss at a later time, please do so."

The documents from the meth house eventually landed in the office of Montana investigators, who couldn't do much with them because they couldn't definitively prove they were real, or how they ended up in a meth house.

On Monday, a lawyer for LeFer confirmed them by sending a letter to Montana authorities explaining that the car was stolen from a homeschooling conference in Denver. The lawyer said the documents were stolen property and “evidence regarding the criminal investigation of the car theft in Colorado." The lawyer also said the documents contained sensitive information, and demanded that the documents be turned over to LeFer.

Montana investigators have sealed access to the documents, saying that now that someone has asserted ownership, they are unable to further discuss or release them until a court rules on the matter.

Western Tradition Partnership is now known as American Tradition Partnership. So far this election season, the group has advocated for candidates in Montana's Republican primary, putting out a press release announcing that 12 of those candidates won. It also has launched a newspaper called the Montana Statesman, which claims to be the state's "largest & most trusted news source," to be the state's "only non-partisan newspaper" and to have been founded in 1889.

A second edition of the purported newspaper was mailed to voters in Montana last week. Like the first edition, the 12-page paper contains many articles attacking Steve Bullock, the Democratic candidate for governor who as attorney general fought the partnership's lawsuits against the state. One on the front page accused him of being soft on child molesters.

Other stories attacked the state auditor, a Supreme Court candidate and the secretary of state.

On its website, the group describes itself as a “no-compromise grassroots organization dedicated to fighting the radical environmentalist agenda."

In a statement responding to the story Monday by ProPublica and Frontline, American Tradition Partnership, or ATP, said it had not coordinated with candidates. "I have never met or spoken to virtually all the candidates on the ballot," wrote Donny Ferguson, the executive director of the partnership and the editor of the Montana Statesman, on the Statesman website.

Ferguson also said the law was always on the group's side, and that the nonprofit had always obeyed every applicable law. He denied that the group told people how to vote. “ATP does not, and never will, tell voters which candidates to vote for," he wrote. “ATP speaks on the issues, informing voters where candidates stand and of their public records."

The IRS defines political advertising much more broadly than election authorities, asking whether social welfare nonprofits directly — or indirectly — engaged in campaign activities.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby DrVolin » Wed Oct 31, 2012 7:15 pm

bks wrote:The well-named Dick Morris is full of his usual shit. A Romney landslide would almost certainly mean widespread election fraud occurred. His poll numbers are completely made up, best I can tell.


Exactly. I don't expect a landslide, but at this point I expect a Romney win. Not widespread fraud, but very targeted fraud as smalll as possible to ensure the outcome.
all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

--Guns and Roses
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby barracuda » Wed Oct 31, 2012 7:47 pm

American Dream wrote:4 year old is tired of hearing about Bronco Bama, Mitt Rominey, and the elections


Another whiney non-voter opting out of the election process. Doesn't she know this is just a vote for Romney?

DrVolin wrote:I don't expect a landslide, but at this point I expect a Romney win. Not widespread fraud, but very targeted fraud as smalll as possible to ensure the outcome.


The media has maintained the illusion of a close race for a reason.
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