OHIO – Judge Rules New Voting Procedure Illegal

The Ohio Secretary of State has set up a situation in which a person can register to vote and vote via an absentee ballot at the same time.

Talk about a recipe for fraud!!!

Well the GOP challenged it in court, but the court said that it was legal…  then the voting began, and the only office verifying that the people that were voting were eligible was Brunner’s and they were refusing to release the eligible voter lists to anyone else, including the county elections boards!!!

So the GOP freaked (DUH!) and went to court again…

And so now from The Columbus Dispatch

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is breaking federal law by not giving county elections boards the chance to determine whether new voter registrations are fraudulent, a federal judge ruled tonight.

It is hard to imagine a public interest more compelling than safeguarding the legitimacy of the election of the president of the United States,” said Judge George C. Smith of U.S. District Court in Columbus, in upholding the Ohio Republican Party’s request for a court order.

Smith, appointed by President Reagan, said the Help America Vote Act requires states not only to verify the identity of newly registered voters with the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the federal Social Security Administration, but to provide counties with the names of new voters whose records did not match.

Brunner’s office had been doing the verification but had not made the names available to county elections boards. The judge gave her a week to comply….

Brunner’s office said she is filing an immediate appeal with the 6th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals.

Smith said speed is necessary because next Thursday is the deadline to challenge absentee voters; on Oct. 25 elections workers can remove ballots from envelopes that contain the only identifying information about who cast them.

He specifically cited questionable activity of one group that registered thousands of new Ohio voters: the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.
Ohio Republican Party Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine said the ruling spoke volumes about Brunner, a Democrat.

“Her refusal to comply with federal law raises serious concerns about her ability to objectively oversee this election. It’s especially troubling in light of her connection to ACORN and that group’s stunning confession this week of fraudulent registration activity happening right here in Ohio,” he said.

Republicans say Democrat Barack Obama has “strong ties” to ACORN, serving in the past as an attorney and “leadership trainer” for the group.

CT Supreme Court – Gay Marriage OK’d

Yahoo

Connecticut’s Supreme Court ruled Friday that gay couples have the right to marry, making the state the third behind Massachusetts and California to legalize such unions through the courts.

The ruling comes just weeks before Californians go to the polls on a historic gay-marriage ballot question, the first time the issue will be put before voters.Connecticut’s court ruled 4-3 that gay and lesbian couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry under the state constitution. It was a logical next step for a state that was the first to voluntarily pass laws affirming and protecting civil unions.

Good for them!  It is about time these people had a right to the same privledges everyone else does.  The government has no right deciding what people do in their personal lives, or how they choose to live it.

And hell, it doesn’t change my life one bit… what the hell do I care?

Obama Magic… The Best Snark I Have Read In A While

RCP

And now, America, we introduce the Great Obama! The world’s most gifted political magician! A thing of wonder. A thing of awe. Just watch him defy politics, economics, even gravity! (And hold your applause until the end, please.)

To kick off our show tonight, Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don’t pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he “cut” zero? Abracadabra! It’s called a “refundable tax credit.” It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don’t. Yes, yes, in the real world this is known as “welfare,” but please try not to ruin the show.

For his next trick, the Great Obama will jumpstart the economy, and he’ll do it by raising taxes on the very businesses that are today adrift in a financial tsunami! That will include all those among the top 1% of taxpayers who are in fact small-business owners, and the nation’s biggest employers who currently pay some of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Mr. Obama will, with a flick of his fingers, show them how to create more jobs with less money. It’s simple, really. He has a wand.

Next up, Mr. Obama will re-regulate the economy, with no ill effects whatsoever! You may have heard that for the past 40 years most politicians believed deregulation was good for the U.S. economy. You might have even heard that much of today’s financial mess tracks to loose money policy, or Fannie and Freddie excesses. Our magician will show the fault was instead with our failure to clamp down on innovation and risk-taking, and will fix this with new, all-encompassing rules. Presto!

Did someone in the audience just shout “Sarbanes Oxley?” Usher, can you remove that man? Thank you. Mr. Obama will now demonstrate how he gives Americans the “choice” of a “voluntary” government health plan, designed in such a way as to crowd out the private market and eliminate all other choice! Don’t worry people: You won’t have to join, until you do. Mr. Obama will follow this with a demonstration of how his plan will differ from our failing Medicare program. Oops, sorry, folks. The Great Obama just reminded me it is time for an intermission. Maybe we’ll get to that marvel later.

We’re back now. And just watch the Great Obama perform a feat never yet managed in all history. He will create that enormous new government health program, spend billions to transform our energy economy, provide financial assistance to former Soviet satellites, invest in infrastructure, increase education spending, provide job training assistance, and give 95% of Americans a tax (ahem) cut — all without raising the deficit a single penny! And he’ll do it in the middle of a financial crisis. And with falling tax revenues! Voila!

Moving along to a little ventriloquism. Study his mouth carefully, folks: It looks like he’s saying “I’ll stop the special interests,” when in fact the words coming out are “Welcome to Washington, friends!” Wind and solar companies, ethanol makers, tort lawyers, unions, community organizers — all are welcome to feed at the public trough and to request special favors. From now on “special interests” will only refer to universally despised, if utterly crucial, economic players. Say, oil companies. Hocus Pocus!

And for tonight’s finale, the Great Obama will uphold America’s “moral” obligation to “stop genocide” by abandoning Iraq! While teleported to the region, he will simultaneously convince Iranian leaders to peacefully abandon their nuclear pursuits (even as he does not sit down with them), fix Afghanistan with a strategy that does not resemble the Iraqi surge, and (drumroll!) pull Osama bin Laden out of his hat!

Tada!

You can clap now. (Applause. Cheers.) We’d like to thank a few people in the audience. Namely, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who has so admirably restrained himself from running up on stage to debunk any of these illusions and spoil everyone’s fun.

We know he’s in a bit of a box, having initially blamed today’s financial crisis on corporate “greed,” and thus made it that much harder to call for a corporate tax cut, or warn against excessive regulation. Still, there were some pretty big openings up here this evening, and he let them alone! We’d also like to thank Mr. McCain for keeping all the focus on himself these past weeks. It has helped the Great Obama to just get on with the show.

As for that show, we’d love to invite you all back for next week’s performance, when the Great Obama will thrill with new, amazing exploits. He will respect your Second Amendment rights even as he regulates firearms! He will renegotiate Nafta, even as he supports free trade! He will.

WSJ: The Media Actively Supports Obama

WSJ

The single constant in the eternal election remains the media, whose activist role no one will seriously dispute. To point out the prevailing (with honorable exceptions) double standard of reporting so favorable to Mr. Obama by now feels superfluous — much like talking about the weather. The same holds true for all those reports pointing to Mr. Obama’s heroic status outside the United States — not to mention the cascade of press analyses warning that if he fails to win election, the cause will surely be racism.

None of this means that the media’s role will go unremembered — who will forget MSNBC news, voice of the Obama campaign? Never has a presidential election produced more fodder for the making and breaking — or tainting — of reputations.

The same is true of news sources making far greater claims to fairness. So it was only slightly startling to read a New York Times forecast (Sept. 22) about the presidential debate to come in which reporter Katharine Q. Seelye declared, ” . . . Mr. Obama should expect Mr. McCain to question his credentials for the job at every turn — and to distort his views, as Mr. Romney insisted he did.”

More at the link…

And I must tell you…  My cohorts and I have been screaming this for well over a year now.

Bout time som

Thursday Night Funneh

from thedirty.com