September 30, 2004

No Debate

I won't be blogging tonight's presidential debate tonight because I won't be watching it live. Yeah, I know, it's a bit like writing about football for the entire NFL season and post season, but not even turning on the teevee for the Super Bowl. Sorry. But I made a commitment to my wife to participate in a marriage-enrichment seminar and it meets Thursday nights.

Consider this an open thread and post your own reviews and fact-checking.

Voter Fraud: The View From Iceland

Gunnar from Iceland (my bilingual correspondent from Reykjavik?!?) has posted a very good comment to this post regarding voter fraud in America and the lack thereof in Iceland. Read it over a cup of coffee...

Voter Fraud: Nose of the Camel

Sean Hackbarth has news of a rather shocking development in Wisconsin:

In today's Journal Sentinel is a front page story on how important the youth vote is in the election. The story is rather hum-drum. Much more interesting is a caption to this picture:

New Voters Project volunteers gather to be deputized as city registrars. Wisconsin is one of six states targeted by the non-partisan group, which says it has already added more than 100,000 young adults to the rolls here.

New Voters Project is about as non-partisan as Rock the Vote. NVP is a project of the State Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) and George Washington University. The PIRGs are nothing more than Leftist political outfits. More importantly the New Voters Project now has the ability to commit massive vote fraud that could swing Wisconsin and the election toward John Kerry. The Wisconsin Campus Director is Jessy Tolkan. She's had experience with election fraud.

The dirty little secret about registering in Wisconsin is a voter can do so at the polls on Election Day. There is no need to register beforehand. Registration drives only make local officials spend time finding first-time registrants and ask for identification. After that no indentification is needed. Thus a first-time registrant who showed a town clerk their ID does not have to show it again before voting.

There's even a big loophole in same-day registration. The registrant doesn't even need to show any idea if someone who lives in the same municipality vouches for the person. In some cases NVP workers have been deputized to register voters. In other localities they haven't. Those deputized can register voters without local officials checking IDs. They are simply added to the voter rolls.

Because of Wisconsin's lax voting rules here is a plausible scenerio to steal a Kerry victory:

Here's the method to the New Voter Project madness. In Wisconsin, you can register to vote at the polls on Election Day. You have to produce identification when you register. But sending in a phony registration in advance puts you on the voter list before the election. Already-registered voters don't have to show any identification. By putting perhaps thousands of fake names on the voter lists, it will be possible for fraudsters to show up at the polls and simply claim to be the person who was already "registered."

If you wish to help combat Democrat attempts to steal the election through voter fraud, please send watch your local news media for reports indicating an attempt at fraud may be under way, and forward those stories to me at voterfraud-at-gmail.com. Also, you may wish to contact your local county clerk or election supervisor and inquire as to whether they are seeing a marked increase in voter registration, absentee ballot requests, and suspicious or fraudulent registrations. And you may sniff around to see if New Voters Project or some other left-wing organization is conducting voter-registration drives.

Please help me find the answers to the five questions and determine if there is sufficient evidence of a coordinated voter-fraud strategy at work.

And one final request. The immense interest in this project combined with a sustained traffic surge related to the Dan Rather/CBS memogate story has pushed my site's traffic up against my bandwidth limit for the billing month, about halfway through the month. Donations welcomed...

New Mexico Eases Controls on Voter Fraud

NavajoTimes.com:

A decision by the New Mexico Supreme Court on Tuesday will maximize voter turnout on the Navajo Reservation in the Nov. 2 general election, DNA-Peoples' Legal Services Executive Director Levon Henry said Wednesday. The dispute centers on new state laws that require some first-time voters to show identification when they vote.

Voter Fraud Combat Tips

Scary Kerry has put together a very good piece on voter fraud that goes beyond the round-up of news and bloggage I'm providing, and includes concrete advice on how to detect and combat Democratic voter fraud aimed at stealing the election for John Kerry. It's a must-read from the first word to the last.

Memogate: Halberstam Slams Rather

The Nashville City Paper has an interview with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and best selling author David Halberstam, who says he is unsurprised by the recent actions of CBS News and its lead anchor Dan Rather in the memogate scandal.

Halberstam, who will be in town at the main Library Oct. 1- 2 to appear at two programs and also receive the inaugural Literary Award from the Nashville Library Foundation, decried what he called "star journalism."

"What they did was very stupid," Halberstam said. "But they have been heading in that direction for a long time. I've always been critical of this whole business of star journalism, where you have a big anchor coming on air and acting as a prosecutor with someone else's reporting. In many instances over the years on that program the reports have been lightly or poorly sourced and the reporting suffers as a result.

Voter Fraud: A Letter From Iceland

From the email:

Dear Mr. Hobbson,

My name is Gunnar Ragnar Jónsson and I live in Iceland. I am a big fan of your blogpage and read through it everyday. I noticed today that you are planning to compile stories of voters fraud regarding the presidential elections in America. I would like to before I go any further thank you that because it will make it a lot easier for people like me to keep track of these stories.

I myself have a blogpage here in Iceland where I write about both domestic and international politics on a daily basis. I have been following the election fraud issue for a while now and have been feeding my readers with stories regarding them. I would like to get your permission to link to the stories published on your page so that my readers may read your writing on the issue and educate themselves on the issue in the process. It would simply be a link in the text I write which would lead them to your archive.

Before I do this I would just like to get your permission to do so.

Best Regards,
Gunnar Ragnar Jónsson

By the way, Gunnar's blog has an Iceland-cool look to it. Next time I'm in Iceland, perhaps we can meet over a cup of coffee.

Voter Fraud: Pennsylvania Reader Urges Vigilance There

Pennsylvanian Frank M. writes

Keep an eye on Pennsylvania. Gov. Rendell wants voter registration at the polls and states if the voting process is not changed (to aid the Dems), the final tally may not be available until December. We already have registration with drivers license application and renewals. It appears voter fraud is waiting to happen openly here in PA.

Voter Fraud Project: A Reader Says Watch For Absentee Voter Fraud

Here is a very good letter that was among the more than 100 emails I've received from readers since starting the Voter Fraud news/bloggage round-up project... Larry H. writes:

Another bombshell that I think is coming, Dems registering voters and filling out absentee ballots at the same time. The Dems will hold these ballots until just before the deadline and mail all of them at once. This would explain the large numbers of absentee ballots purloined this past summer from those states where they can be freely distributed to all comers without signing for them. People have been grabbing whole stacks of these ballots from politician's booths at fairs and community events all year. … The Dems pulled in $300 million from their "independent" 527s for the get out the vote drive instead of using it for ads. If they are willing to spend that kind of money for registration, then they have a plan they think will win. in those states where the voter does not have to go to the county registrar and sign their name to get the ballot, you can bet the workers are carrying as many absentee ballots with them as voter registration forms. … These votes will not show up in the polls, nor will the people that are registering in 10 or 20 or 30 different states.

One way we can catch multiple registration is to compare total registrations to census numbers. in my tiny rural county of 5,237 voters we have around 95% registration of the adult population. in a big city this percentage might sound fishy, but this is a Republican retirement community and has been stable at 90 to 95% for years. expect some Ohio counties to register way over 100% of the census numbers this year. If this morning Republicans in every county call and ask our county registrars what the numbers are to date, we will find lots of interesting discrepancies.

Thank you for your efforts to keep 'em honest.

5129014

Voter Fraud Update

Stay tuned... lots of good stuff in the hopper today. I need an assistant to help me sift through all the emails I've received at voterfraud-at-gmail.com. As soon as each of the nearly 50,000 people who have read my blog this month drop a dollar in the tip jar, I'll hire one...

Memogate: Tentacles

Volokh has a very good post examining yet a third recent example of left-wing bias at CBS. First there was memogate. Next came CBS's story, based on hoax emails, raising the spectre of a draft, in which CBS quoted two women it described as Republicans who were, in truth, liberal Democratic activists. Now comes a CBS story that hasn't even aired yet, but CBS has provided an advance copy to both Salon and MoveOn.org, which is now running full-page ads demanding CBS air the story. Details here.

Are You Registered to Vote?

Message to my Tennessee readers: If you are not registered to vote, click here, print the 3-page PDF file, fill out the form, and mail it to the right election commission address for your county, listed on pages 2 and 3 of the file. Do so before the end of September. If you are already registered, print 10 copies and give them to people you know aren't registered but would most likely vote for George W. Bush if they were registered. And offer to take them to the polls on election day. Thank you. This message will repeat daily until the deadline to register has passed.

September 29, 2004

Voter Fraud Project Update

Thank you, readers, for the slew of emails (to voterfraud-at-gmail.com) and posted comments providing me links to a variety of news reports and blog round-ups of news reports about voter fraud investigations and allegations around the country. I am continuing to sort through the information and post things to the blog. Many of the posts are beiing back-dated to the date of the news article or blog item I'm linking to, so you'll find them in the Voter Fraud archive.

Over the next few days I will be seeking more such information and attempting to determine if there are any discernible patterns or trends in the data. I can think of five BIG questions that need to be answered:

Are the same organizations involved in suspected voter fraud incidents in various states?

Are the same tactics being employed?

Are supposedly "non-partisan" voter-registration organizations who seem to be involved in some of these election-fraud attempts actually connected to partisan organizations and candidates?

Are the supposedly "non-partisan" organizations seeking to register new voters actually focusing their voter registration efforts in a partisan manner - i.e., are they focusing the vast majority of their outreach efforts in communities, neighborhoods and districts that lean heavily Democratic?

Are voter fraud incidents occuring mostly in "battleground" states, indicating a coordinated intent to influence not just the vote tallies in specific states, but to do so in an effort to alter the outcome in the electoral vote?

Meanwhile, thanks to both Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and Jim Geraghty at KerrySpot for linking to the Voter Fraud project. Also thanks to CrushKerry.com, Jay Reding, and any other blog/blogger linking to this project that I haven't noticed or thanked yet. Feel free to grab the No Fraud! icon above and place it on your blog embedded with the link to the Voter Fraud archive.

The Illegal Immigrant Vote

Joseph Farah has some good questions about the lack of controls to prevent illegal immigrants from voting.

Voter Fraud in New Mexico?

Al Gore beat George Bush by fewer than 500 votes in New Mexico in the 2000 election, and the state is considered a battle ground again this year in the race for the presidency. Which makes this story about suspected voter registration fraud in heavily-Democratic Albuquerque - abetted by the state's top election official's order telling county clerks to ignore a law designed to screen out fraudulent voters - all the more troubling.

Voter fraud targeted
Alamogordo Daily News
Sept. 17, 2004
By Michael Shinabery, Staff Writer
A 13-year-old boy who received a voter registration application in the mail may only be the tip of the iceberg on voter fraud in the state, said New Mexico Rep. Dr. Terry Marquardt (R-Otero/Doña Ana).

On Tuesday, Marquardt was one of three plaintiffs to sue Otero County Clerk Mary Quintana in 12th Judicial District Court. Marquardt, state Rep. Gloria Vaughn (R-Otero) and Green Party candidate William C. Wolfgram from Otero County hope to force the clerk to comply with a 2003 voter registration law.

"The name of this 13-year-old boy in Albuquerque with a fraudulent social security number was supplied, without his knowledge, to the Bernalillo county clerk to register him to vote by a paid voter registration organization," Marquardt said. "(It) highlights the level of voter fraud we are experiencing in New Mexico and this is exactly the reason that 86 percent of New Mexicans favor voter identification and exactly the reason the Legislature passed this legislation."

That legislation, passed in the 2003 session, requires first-time voters to show identification.

"The law states that if the registration form is not submitted in person by the applicant (at the courthouse) and the applicant is registering for the first time in New Mexico, the applicant must submit with the form a copy of current and valid identification," Marquardt said. Many voters are not registering at various party headquarters.

"If the applicant does not submit the required identification at registration he will be required to do so when he votes in person or absentee," Marquardt said.
The dilemma is if county clerks do not flag a voter as a first-time registree when the name is entered into the computer, that fact is lost. When the voter arrives on election day poll workers are unaware ID is needed.

When the law became effective July 1, 2003, Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron began "directing county clerks to ignore the law," Marquardt said.
According to Marquardt, he, Vaughn and Wolfgram "simply are asking the judge to give clear direction" for the clerk to follow the law instead of Vigil-Giron.

Voter Fraud Focused on Battleground States?

J.B. Williams at ChronWatch comments on the rising tide of attempted voter fraud:

The FBI is already investigating wide spread irregularities in ''get out the vote'' efforts led by the Democratic Party. Incidents of multiple voter registration cards being filed using the same address, or addresses that don't exist at all, or by people apparently unaware that their names have already appeared in the obituaries. Apparently, Bill Burkett, Dan Rather, and Mary Mapes are not the only people ready to commit fraud in order to see Bush removed from office. The heaviest activity seemed to be concentrated in the key battleground states. Ohio is an example, where current Democratic voter registration efforts outnumber Republican 5 to 1.

The Role of "Motor Voter" in Enabling Vote Fraud

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby had a good column Sept. 16 on the possibility of widespread voter fraud in New York City. Critics of Motor Voter said at the time that it would open the door to massive election fraud. It's looking like they were right. Jacoby:...

A recent story that didn't get nearly the attention it deserved was the New York Daily News report that 46,000 registered New York City voters are also registered to vote in Florida. Nearly 1,700 of them have had absentee ballots mailed to their home in the other state, and as many as 1,000 have voted twice in the same election. Can 1,000 fraudulent votes change an election? Well, George W. Bush won Florida in 2000 by just 537 votes.

It is illegal to register to vote simultaneously in different jurisdictions, but scofflaws have little to worry about. As the Daily News noted, "efforts to prevent people from registering and voting in more than one state rely mostly on the honor system." Those who break the law rarely face prosecution or serious punishment. It's easy - and painless - to cheat.

I learned this firsthand in 1996, when I registered my wife's cat as a voter in Cook County, Ill., Norfolk County, Mass., and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and then requested absentee ballots from all three venues. My purpose wasn't to cast illegal multiple votes but to demonstrate how vulnerable to manipulation America's election system has become.

It was a simple scam to pull off. "Under the National Voter Registration Act -- the 'Motor Voter Law' - states are required to accept voter registrations by mail," I wrote at the time. "No longer can citizens be asked to make a trip to town hall or the county office. No longer do they have to provide proof of residence or citizenship. In fact, they don't have to exist. Motor Voter obliges election officials to add to the voter list any name mailed in on a properly filled-out registration form. Anyone so registered can then request an absentee ballot - by mail, of course. The system is not only open to manipulation, it invites it."

Voter Fraud "Happens All The Time" In Wisconsin

Blogger Scott Noonan of Electric Commentary emailed me this report from Wisconsin where, he says, election fraud "happens all the time."

My brother (who wrote two posts on what will surely be vote fraud, links forthcoming) and I are from a suburb of Milwaukee, WI. I am now an attorney living in Chicago and he is a law student at the University of Wisconsin. He has noticed the following suspicious activity: Link 1. Link 2.

During the 2000 election I was fortunate enough to have the infamous "smokes for votes" scandal place 2 blocks from my Milwaukee apartment (I lived at 531 N. 18th St. The bribery took place at the corner of 19th and Wells in downtown Milwaukee, just outside of the Milwaukee Rescue Mission, but also in front of the Milwaukee ABC affiliate. Easiest news story that they ever broke. Anyway, here are a few articles about that: Article 1. Article 2.

Finally, I was in law school at Marquette during 2000 and I know that many students voted more than once, because many students bragged about it. They were not caught, but it's so easy to do it in Wisconsin that you would have to be an idiot to get caught. You can register at the polls with some mail, that is all that it takes. Here is a relevant article.

Is Ohio Ground Zero for The Left's Attempt at Election Theft?

It's begging to appear as if Ohio is ground-zero of the Left's attempt to grab the presidency by election fraud. Today's Akron Beacon Journal has this story, headlined Suspicious voter cards are piling up, which says that, "As voter registration cards continue to pour into boards of elections across Ohio, instances of alleged voter registration fraud are growing."

Blogger Charles Rich of Sardonic Views is tracking voter-fraud news in northeastern Ohio, and has been ever since the AFL-CIO sent in some 50 fake voter registration cards in August. Here are links to several recent posts.
Link 1.
Link 2.
Link 3.
Link 4.
Link 5.

Keep an Eye on Colorado

Denver blogger Walter of Walter in Denver recalls his own experience running for state legislature in 2000 and says voter fraud would be rather easy there.

Voter Fraud News Updates

Michelle Malkin has a roundup of voter-fraud news from several states. Stuart Buck notes three news stories about voter fraud in Ohio involving the AFL-CIO, and absentee registration attempts by the "nonpartisan" NAACP's National Voter Fund and an anti-Bush, nonprofit group called Americans Coming Together, or ACT Ohio. The NAACP is not non-partisan, of course. And neither is the AFL-CIO. Here's another news report on voter fraud in Ohio.

Meanwhile, election officials in Lansing, Michigan, are investigating an apparent large-scale election fraud possibly attempted by the liberal Public Interest Research Group, according to today's Lansing State Journal. The LSJ reports that the Lansing city clerk's office "is sorting through thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms that have been turned in recently.

Voter Fraud: Florida, San Francisco Too

Suzanne C. of Phoenix sent me links to a number of stories from around the country about voter fraud and highly-questionable voter registration practices:

5 ballots in mayor's race linked to the dead: Number is small, but analysis shows S.F. system lacking - San Francisco Chronicle, March 1, 2004.

Anna Greggains said she remembers filling out an absentee ballot in last year's mayoral election, and records from the San Francisco Department of Elections show that her husband, Arthur, did the same - which would be unremarkable, except that Mr. Greggains died in May at the age of 83. "I don't know who did it,'' said Greggains, 87, audibly shocked at the possibility. "I know I didn't do it.'' She said she does not recall even seeing a ballot arrive at their longtime home in his name.

A Democratic group crucial to John Kerry's presidential campaign has paid felons - some convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary - to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives in at least three election swing states. America Coming Together, contending that convicted criminals deserve a second chance in society, employs felons as voter canvassers in major metropolitan areas in Missouri, Florida, Ohio and perhaps in other states among the 17 it is targeting in its drive. Some of the felons lived in halfway houses, and at least four returned to prison.

GREENSBORO, Ala. - Dozens of absentee voters in the Aug. 24 Greensboro municipal election had vacant addresses or had suddenly changed from a county to city address. t least 40 people, for example, applied for absentee ballots with addresses between 1108 and 1138 Ward Street - a block filled with several small mobile homes, The Tuscaloosa News reported in Sunday's editions.

ORLANDO - Local politicians call him the absentee ballot king. Before each election, Ezzie Thomas appears at the homes of hundreds of black voters and picks up their absentee ballots. … But now Thomas' tactics in the spring Orlando mayoral election are at the center of a controversy that once again has put Florida elections in the national spotlight. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated Thomas, closed its case, then reopened it. Now the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights are investigating the FDLE investigation.

TALLAHASSEE -- Teastie Fowler's name is signed to a petition to repeal the high-speed rail amendment in March, but it's not likely she actually signed it. She's dead. Miami-Dade officials rejected Fowler's and seven other signatures because the voters were dead when they purportedly signed. Those are among thousands sitting in reject piles in county election supervisor offices across Florida as obvious forgeries, duplicates or nonregistered voters.

Help Me Spotlight Election Fraud

HobbsOnline needs your help. As of today I have added a new category to the blog - Voter Fraud - and wish to fill it between now and election day with stories from around the country documenting incidents of election fraud and attempted election fraud.

In reference to yesterday's post spotlighting a story of attempted election fraud by a worker for the group Tennessee Citizen Action, I received an email from a former Nashville election commission member who wrote, "The Motor Voter law that was passed in the 1990s makes voter fraud much easier, especially now that an ID cannot be asked for at the polls. Additionally, it is much harder to purge inactive voters from the registration rolls. In some counties there are more registered votes than adults of voting age. This is a serious issue..."

Indeed it is.

All blog entries related to election fraud will be archived at this web page as a handy centralized resource guide.

I have set up a special GMail account for this project, voterfraud-at-gmail.com.

If you spot a story about election fraud, please send an email to that email address. The email should include the source of the story, the date the story ran, the Internet link and a brief summary. Bloggers, if you have blogged a story about election fraud, please send me the link.

As Hugh Hewitt says, If It's Not Close They Can't Cheat, but they will try to cheat. You can help stop them.

UPDATE: Thanks to a link from Glenn Reynolds to this post, the response has been fast and furious in the first few hours. I've received a slew of emails with articles, links, etc., and of course a lot of links and info in the comments below. I'll be posting them as fast as I can. I'll be back-dating the blog-posts to the date of the news article or blog post that I'm linking to, so those may not show up here on my home page, but will appear on the Voter Fraud archive page. If you publish a blog, a direct standing link to the Voter Fraud archive page would be useful for calling your reader's attention to it.

Son of Memogate

RatherBiased.com has caught Dan Rather's CBS News once again collaborating with anti-Bush partisans leftists and using phony documents create and broadcast a story aimed at undermining the Bush re-election campaign. Read the entire report from RatherBiased.com. It's a damning indictment of a "news" organization run amok.

Meanwhile, don't miss RatherBiased's collection of dozens of memogate-related cartoons.

September 28, 2004

Tennessee's Compromised Legislature

The Center for Public Integrity has released the results of a year-long examination of the personal financial disclosures of state lawmakers in Tennessee and nationwide. Looking at disclosures for lawmakers from 2001, the CPI says that nearly 24 percent of Tennessee lawmakers sat on a legislative committee that had authority over the lawmaker's professional or business interest.

Nearly 9 percent of Tennessee legislators in 2001 had financial ties to businesses or organizations that lobby state government. And 19 percent of lawmakers received income from a government agency other than the state legislature.

The CPI information about Tennessee lawmakers is online here, and if you're not from Tennessee you can find your own state's information via that link as well. I wrote an op-ed, published Jan. 3, 2003, in The Tennessean, proposing a reform that would make Tennessee's legislature more trustworthy. You can read it here.

The Blogosphere Bites Back

Big Media columnist Steven Levy calls bloggers "ankle biters" and the blogosphere is biting back. Good thing there are doggie jammies: Are these ankle-biters the new mascot of the blogosphere?

Ad Sale

If you had placed an ad on HobbsOnline Sept. 1, it would have been viewed almost 1.7 million times by now, and would have been seen by more than 40,000 people. It's not too late to place an ad and reach this blog's fast-growing audience. Place an ad on one of the three Blogads ad strips for one month ($40-$65 per month) and your ad will run an additional two weeks for free. Just place the ad before the end of Thursday, Sept. 30, and send me an email mentioning this post. Offer good even if you wish to delay running the ad until later than Oct. 1, so long as the ad is placed by the end of September.

Skinning the Cat

George Miller has some thoughts about Cat Stevens Yusef Islam, Salman Rushdie, and the internal conflict besetting "moderate Islam":

If Muslims continue to demand the right to sentence blasphemers to death, they might at least be gracious enough to accept that they may occasionally appear on government “watch lists” as potential murderers. And yes, they may occasionally be detained at the airport.

Voter Fraud in Wisconsin Has Ties to Democratic Party

The Milwakuee Journal-Sentinel reports today on a probe into attempted voter fraud on a grand scale in Wisconsin involving an organization called Project Vote, which claims to be a non-partisan organization. What do we know about Project Vote? It's national leaders have extensive ties to the Left and to the Democratic Party. Here is an excerpt from the newspaper story...

A group that says it has registered 30,000 voters in southeastern Wisconsin could face a criminal investigation because of voter registration applications that may have been filed fraudulently.

Acting Racine City Clerk Carolyn Moskonas said Tuesday she will ask the district attorney's office to investigate at least six voter registration applications filed by Project Vote.

That non-profit organization, which also has filed scores of Racine applications that contain bogus addresses, has fired its Racine-area coordinator because of problems with the filings.

Moskonas said that in each of the six potential fraud cases, the people named on the Project Vote applications told her office they had not signed the forms and had not been contacted by any voter registration drives.

"It was kind of scary," Racine Affirmative Action Officer Jerry Scott said about seeing his name and apparently forged signature on one of the six applications. He was already registered to vote and also registers voters as a volunteer.

"I'm a firm believer that your name is one thing about you that is sacred and it should be protected," Scott said. "Someone forging your name and your signature - I think there should be some pretty strict penalties for that."

Denise Peterson said she also was outraged that her name and signature and those of her husband, Terry Peterson, also were on forms that she said they did not complete or authorize.

Scary Stuff

Iran is moving closer and closer to having The Bomb. Nukes. Mad theo-fascist Islamic clerics with nukes and a jihadist desire to wipe Israel from the map. Oh, and they sponsor, fund and ideologically and rhetorically support Islamist terror organizations worldwide. And they hate America. And their nuke facilities are said to be dispersed, hardened, and difficult to take out, making the airstrike option very iffy.

John Kerry's solution is to give the Mad Mullahs of Tehran nuclear fuel if they promise not to build bombs. If you think that sounds insane, you're right. Belmont Club outlines the difficult choices and the dangers that lay ahead for the United States in dealing with Iran.

My suggestion: a military strike, but one designed to take out the Iranian government itself, not the nuclear facilites. And by government I mean the faux-democratically elected Iranian parliament itself. If it could be done in a single barrage of missiles. Madmen can't build bombs and use them if they're dead. And the attack, if it succeded, would open the door for the tyrannized but pro-American population of Iran to rise up, mop up the remnants of the regime, and hold a real electon.

And please, before you accuse me of being bloodthirsty or suggest that I am proposing we murder hundreds if not thousands of Iranians who would surely be killed in such a strike - elected officials, bureaucrats and nearby civilians - please realize that if the Mad Mullahs of Tehran ever use a nuke against Israel, or provide one to terrorists to use against us, or merely threaten to do so, we will have to kill all of them. The sooner we have a day of reckoning with Iran, the lower the body count will be on both sides. Taking out the Iranian government, if we could do it, would be the most moral thing we could do to end the Iranian nuke crisis.

Attempted Democratic Voter Fraud

Allegations of voter fraud are under investigation in heavily Democratic Nashville.

About 200 "citizens" who don't exist registered to vote in Davidson County for the Nov. 2 presidential election and now the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is investigating the person who submitted those forms on behalf of Tennessee Citizen Action (TCA).

The false cards are believed to be the work of a temporary employee hired by Tennessee Citizen Action, a consumer advocacy group working to push voter registration. Voter registration fraud is a felony.

TBI spokesperson Jennifer Johnson confirmed Monday that District Attorney General Torry Johnson asked her department last week to investigate the incident and that investigation is ongoing.

Remember: If It's Not Close They Can't Cheat. Friday is the last day to register to vote in Tennessee. See this post for details on how to get registered in Tennessee.

UPDATE: You're welcome, Hugh. Four sold so far...

Help Defeat Liberalism's Poster Child in Tennessee

This is a winnable race for the Republicans. If you have $10 or $25 to spare, could you please make a donation to the campaign of Dr. Jesse Cannon and help the Republican Party elect an Africa-American doctor of conservative conviction, core values and integrity to replace the current House Speaker of the Tennessee legislature, Jimmy Naifeh, who long ago stopped representing "the people" and started representing left-wing special interests. Naifeh blocks pro-life legislation, advocates for an unconstitutional income tax, tirelessly pushes for higher taxes, and favored legislation giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants who can not prove their identity. Unfortunately, you can not donate online to Dr. Cannon, but here is a web page providing the mailing address for donations.

September 27, 2004

Kerry: I Was For The First Gulf War After I Voted Against It

John Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" story is a lie about something that happened did not happen nearly 36 years ago. But more recently Kerry claimed, falsely, to have been at the signing of the truce at Safwan, Iraq, at the end of Gulf War I. Ed Morrissey has the details as the blogosphere smokes out the proof that Kerry lied. [Hat tip: Michael Williams].

Short version: Kerry, in a televised interview in 2001, said, "I was in Safwan. I went there when the signing of the armistice took place at the end of the war." But the armistice was signed in a tent at Safwan on March 3. Because Iraq is several hours ahead, it was still March 2 in Boston. Where, various news articles show, Kerry was.

But, to me, that's not the most interesting part of the transcript of the 2001 interview. To me, there are at least two shockers in this excerpt of the interview:

KERRY: Bill, let me tell you, I was all for our following through at the end of the Gulf War with the Kurd uprising. And I thought it was a great betrayal, in a sense, that we encouraged them verbally. We gave them forces. We gave them weapons. We encouraged them and said we were with them. And then we pulled out at the last minute because the Kuwaitis and the Saudis and others were unsure of what might follow.

O'REILLY: Yes, that was a classic mistake. But if you arm the Kurds in the north of Iraq, you're going to alienate one of our most valuable --

KERRY: I didn't say necessarily the Kurds. There are other members of the opposition. There are people who are outside the country prepared to go in. There are others inside the country. And I believe - I mean, I was in Safwan. I went there when the signing of the armistice took place at the end of the war.

And I remember seeing that land, which lent itself in my judgment, considerably to the creation of almost an enclave, which I thought we should have done then. And I think is one way to begin to approach things now, but there are other possibilities. The important thing is that Saddam Hussein and the world knows that we think Saddam Hussein is essentially out of sync with the times. He is and has acted like a terrorist. And he is engaged in activities that are unacceptable.

Forgive me for saying so, but I'm confused. There is no consistency to Kerry's views on Iraq and Saddam. In 2001, he said "[Saddam] is and has acted like a terrorist." But today he says Iraq is not part of the War on Terror.

In 1991, he opposed war with Iraq when war with Iraq was both a real possibility and an urgent national security necessity, but a decade later he looked back and decided he was "all for" extending a war that he opposed starting in the first place.

One of two things is true: Either John Kerry was lying in 2001 about favoring the U.S. backing the Iraqi rebels in a proxy war in 1991, or in 1991 John Kerry watched the U.S. military win a smashing victory in a war he opposed, so he jumped on the bandwagon and became in favor of the U.S. waging a proxy war against Saddam via Iraqi rebels.

But such a proxy war would have violated the narrow U.N. mandate - to oust Saddam's forces from Kuwait - under which the U.S. had gone to war against Saddam in the first place. And we know how Kerry feels about U.N. mandates: They're like American Express traveler's cheques for the U.S. military - don't leave home without them.

My guess is that, had the first President Bush tried to fight a proxy war against Saddam via the Iraqi rebels back in 1991, Sen. Kerry would have loudly opposed it. His whole history argues so. We know Kerry's views on the Vietnam War. And we know that in the 1980s he met with the Communist dictator of Nicaragua and declared himself opposed to the United States backing of the contras, though later events proved the contras represented the true aspirations of the majority of the Nicaraguan people.

Sen. Kerry, I think you were going for easy points in that interview three years ago. It sure is easy to be "for" a hypothetical war to oust a terrorist dictator 10 years earlier - you get to score political points for being anti-Saddam without having to actually do anything to get rid of Saddam. Maybe that's called "nuance."

UPDATE: Cross-posted at RedState.org.

Tangible Progress

General David H. Petraeus reports from Iraq on the "tangible progress" being made in rebuilding Iraq's police and security forces to better battle and defeat the terrorists there.

Aid and Comfort

From Cox & Forkum.

You Do, Too

As soon as they perfect these...

Over the past few years, NASA has quietly shifted some of its attention from space exploration to the space right over our roofs. Not only is NASA developing its own flying cars, but it's also working on a collision-deterring navigation system that could make skyways safer than highways.

Cutting Al Qaeda Down to Size

This would be the most interesting article you'll read today about the war on terror, if you click the link, that is. Read the whole thing while remembering that John Kerry's (current) position on the War on Terror vis a vis Iraq is that we should have focused on hunting down individual al Qaeda personnel and cells instead of taking down terror-supporting regimes like Saddam Hussein's.

Kerry Likens Terror War to a War He Fought Against

CrushKerry.com, a must-be-read blog between now and election day, notes that John Kerry has blundered again in his discussion of the war on terror. How so? Kerry compared it to the Cold War.

He claimed that: "The war on terror is as monumental a struggle as the Cold War." We agree with him that this war is every bit as monumental as the Cold War, but anyone who knows how John Kerry tried to "fight" the Cold War should be very afraid of his Presidency and how he will go about how he will fight the war on terror (of which Iraq is a major part). Let's take a walk down memory lane shall we?

The main problem with Kerry's analysis is that his record shows that he really didn't try to "win" the Cold War, as much as he tried not to make the Soviets mad at us. At nearly every crucial turning point during the Cold War, John Kerry opposed nearly everything that led to our victory in it, which was led of course by the great Ronald Reagan. he should avoid any mention of the Cold War, given that he was on the wrong side of it throughout his career.

Click each image to enlarge a page of the 2-page memo.

Volunteering for Danger

Tim Worstall does the math after digging up this bit of information...

The F-102 claimed the lives of many pilots, including a number stationed at Ellington during Bush's tenure. Of the 875 F-102A production models that entered service, 259 were lost in accidents that killed 70 Air Force and ANG pilots.

Both men served honorably during the war. Only one came home and slandered his comrades afterward. And only one spent two decades in the U.S. Senate voting to gut the military at the height of the Cold War and voting to reduce funding for our intelligence services even after 9/11.

Thank You

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From Southern Rock to Hip Hop

Interesting story from music journalist and critic Ron Wynn in today's Nashville City Paper:

Journalist and