RepubliCORN Dirty Tricks

Voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans

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Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

"I am not a Republican," insisted Karen Ashcraft, 47, a pet clinic manager from Ventura who said she was duped by a signature gatherer into joining the GOP. "I certainly . . . won't sign anything in front of a grocery store ever again."

YPM, a group hired by the GOP, allegedly deceived Californians who thought they were signing a petition. YPM denies any wrongdoing. Similar accusations have been leveled against the company elsewhere.

By Evan Halper and Michael Rothfeld, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
October 18, 2008

SACRAMENTO -- Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.

Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.

"I am not a Republican," insisted Karen Ashcraft, 47, a pet-clinic manager and former Democrat from Ventura who said she was duped by a signature gatherer into joining the GOP. "I certainly . . . won't sign anything in front of a grocery store ever again."

It is a bait-and-switch scheme familiar to election experts. The firm hired by the California Republican Party -- a small company called Young Political Majors, or YPM, which operates in several states -- has been accused of using the tactic across the country.

Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusetts. In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit. Prosecutors in Los Angeles and Ventura counties say they are investigating complaints about the company.

The firm, which a Republican Party spokesman said is paid $7 to $12 for each registration it secures, has denied any wrongdoing and says it has never been charged with a crime.

The 70,000 voters YPM has registered for the Republican Party this year will help combat the public perception that it is struggling amid Democratic gains nationally, give a boost to fundraising efforts and bolster member support for party leaders, political strategists from both parties say.

Those who were formerly Democrats may stop receiving phone calls and literature from that party, perhaps affecting its get-out-the-vote efforts. They also will be given only a Republican ballot in the next primary election if they do not switch their registration back before then.

Some also report having their registration status changed to absentee without their permission; if they show up at the polls without a ballot they may be unable to vote.

The Times randomly interviewed 46 of the hundreds of voters whose election records show they were recently re-registered as Republicans by YPM, and 37 of them -- more than 80% -- said that they were misled into making the change or that it was done without their knowledge.

Lydia Laws, a Palm Springs retiree, said she was angry to find recently that her registration had been switched from Democrat to Republican.

Laws said the YPM staffer who instructed her to identify herself on a petition as a Republican assured her that it was a formality, and that her registration would not be changed. Later, a card showed up in the mail saying she had joined the GOP.

"I said, 'No, no, no. That's not right,' " Laws said.

It all sounds familiar to Beverly Hill, a Democrat and the former election supervisor in Florida's Alachua County. About 200 voters -- mostly college students -- were unwittingly registered as Republicans there in 2004 by YPM staffers using the same tactic, Hill said.

"It is just incredible that this can keep happening election after election," she said.

YPM and Republican Party officials said they were surprised by the complaints. The officials said the signature gatherers wear shirts bearing the Republican symbol, an elephant -- a contention disputed by some of the voters interviewed.

Every person registered signs an affidavit confirming they voluntarily joined the GOP, party leaders said.

"It does the state party no good to register people in a party they don't want to be in," said Hector Barajas, communications director for the California Republican Party.

The document that voters thought was an initiative petition has no legal implications at all. YPM founder Mark Jacoby said the petition was clearly labeled as a "plebiscite," which does nothing more than show public support.

He also said that plainclothes investigators for Secretary of State Debra Bowen, a Democrat, have conducted multiple spot checks and told his firm it is doing nothing improper....


Oh my! The Republicans cheating and committing voter fraud? I thought they were Americans! The true patriots! At least they weren't making up names and submitting them to ACORN reps. This is MORE INSIDIOUS. Creeps. All of 'em.

My two cents.

Wow. I wish the whole campaign had been like this...

McCain, Obama trade jokes, not jabs at NYC dinner

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent 1 hour, 1 minute ago

NEW YORK - John McCain and Barack Obama swapped self-deprecating jokes instead of campaign jabs Thursday night, the Republican saying he had replaced his team of senior advisers with "Joe the Plumber" while the Democrat claimed his own "greatest strength would be my humility.

Said Obama: "Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the planet Earth," a reference to Superman.

McCain joked that Democrats had already begun attacking Joe the Plumber, the Ohio man whom he referred to in Wednesday night's debate, and claimed "that this honest, hardworking small businessman could not possibly have enough income to face a tax increase under the Obama plan."

"What they don't know is that Joe the Plumber recently signed a very lucrative contract with a wealthy couple to handle all the work on all seven of their houses," McCain said, drawing laughter with the reference to his property holdings.

The two men spoke at the 63rd annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a charity event organized by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York for the benefit of needy children. An estimated $4 million was raised.

The event often draws politicians as speakers and, by long tradition, presidential candidates appear as headliners every four years. In this case, the evening of humor came one night after an intense final debate of the presidential campaign.

McCain lampooned Obama's primary opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as himself.

"Even in this room full of proud Manhattan Democrats, I can't shake the feeling that some people here are pulling for me," he said, before adding: "I'm delighted to see you here tonight, Hillary."

He also said Obama "is ready for any contingency, even the possibility of a sudden and dramatic market rebound. I'm told that at the first sign of a recovery, he will suspend his campaign and fly immediately to Washington to address the crisis," said the Republican, who drew criticism when he suspended his campaign a few weeks ago and flew to Washington during the crisis.

Obama also poked fun at his Democratic National Convention acceptance speech, which he delivered before a crowd of tens of thousands at an outdoor football stadium on an elaborately constructed stage.

"I was originally told we'd be able to move this outdoors to Yankee Stadium," he said of the dinner.

Then, pausing and looking around, he said, "Could somebody tell me what happened to the Greek columns that I requested?"

Both men closed with compliments.

McCain praised Obama for his "great skill, energy, and determination. It's not for nothing that he's inspired so many folks in his own party and beyond," he said of his rival, bidding to become the nation's first black president. "I can't wish my opponent luck but I do wish him well."

Obama said few Americans had served their country with "the same honor and distinction" as McCain, a former Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war for more than five years in Vietnam.

Filmmaking in Rome - Closer Look

Filmmaking in Rome - Closer Look

Ooh! they're raiding ACORN offices! Oh My!

I got an email from an old military vet today - drumming up support for McCain by claiming ACORN is robbing the election (you can listen to fathead Rush Limbaugh at it every day). Here's the text. Forgive the guy's spelling, I guess when you're mad, you don't spell so good:

FW: Exposure To True Informstion Does No Matter Anymore

Please click on the Homeland Security US link below,
obtained from the Northeast Intelligence Network and
E-mailed to me by an American Patriot and war hero.
Kindly watch the entire video and share it; you can
skip the follow on article on ACORN if you care to,
but kindly watch the first video, it has nothing to
do with the election.
Do you think the mainstream media would run
with a story like this just 20 days from a Presidential
election? Exposure to True Information Does Not
Matter Anymore. There is a non-profit organization
that has been found to be illegally
registering voters. Voters have come forward stating
that have filled out multiple registration cards by this organization.

1. Several offices of this organization have been raided and thousands
of fraudulent registration cards have been seized.
2. One of the Presidential candidates used to be an attorney for this
organization.
3. One of the Presidential candidates used to be a trainer for this
organization
4. One of the Presidential candidates campaign gave $832,000 to this
organization.
5. One of the Presidential candidates set on a board with a domestic
terrorist that gave this organization $200,000.

The answer to the question raised above would be YES if it was McCain, but
in this case it is Obama, so like everything else negative regarding Obama,
the mainstream media is silent.

Please click on this link to watch ACORN:
Please follow this link
to watch "ACORN."

AND HERE'S MY RESPONSE:

The site you mentioned in your email is .. well, let's put it this way; loopy. "Exposure to True Informstion Does No Matter" indeed.

The guy who runs this site, Hagmann, has been exposed as a fraud. He's been spewing nonsense about terrorists running around the US for years,. The concept that ACORN, a homeless advocacy group who pays people to register voters, is some kind of terrorist left wing org is nonsense. You can't vote based on registering. John McCain himself spoke at their conference last year. Here's a photograph of John with the ACORN people:
Let's stop bashing the people who register homeless people to vote. 23% of the homeless in our country are Veterans. What's to say they won't vote for a fellow Veteran? If the ACORN people turned their own registrars in because of fraud, then what's the problem? If you sign up to vote as Mickey Mouse, you still have to show your Mickey Mouse ID when you go to vote.

Shouldn't we be worried about how we're going to fix the economy? In the history of the world, there's never been a nation with a bad economy that has been able to wage wars. The economy goes into the ditch, so does the military. How patriotic do we have to be to realize that we need someone in Washington who can fix the economy? If that's going to be Senator McCain, then let's hear what he wants to do.
He may be the person to bring the country out of its tailspin. Palin may be the soldier on the white horse that's going to save us from the Depression. But nothing they've said so far gives me that confidence. Maybe tonight, Senator McCain will "Whip Obama's You-Know-What," although the image of him whipping a black man - even if he's only half black - and not an Arab, "but a decent family man" is unfortunate.

my two cents

Palin As President, Hilarious!

http://www.palinaspresident.com/

Don't forget to try the windows, the bridge to nowhere and turn up the sound.. hilarious.

Even anti-semites like Sean Hannity's Andy Martin admit Obama's Christian!

October 13, 2008

The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama

By JIM RUTENBERG NY TIMES

The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”

That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background. Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, “I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her.

Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs. But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government. An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.” Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases. Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors. “Everybody uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.”As for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”

When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on “Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact. It was not Mr. Martin's first turn on national television. The CBS News program "48 Hours" in 1993 devoted an hourlong program, "See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits," to what it called his prolific filings. (Mr. Martin has also been known as Anthony Martin-Trigona.) He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.

He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine. In the 1990s, Mr. Martin was jailed in a case in Florida involving a physical altercation. His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack — updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases — amazes those from his past.

“Well, that’s just a bookend for me,” said Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, whom Mr. Martin sued for refusing to support him. Mr. Slade said Mr. Martin was driven like “a run-over dog, but he’s fearless.” Given Mr. Obama’s unusual background, which was the focus of his first book, it was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy.Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii.

Theories about Mr. Obama’s background have taken on a life of their own. But independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind up at Mr. Martin’s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004. Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Mr. Obama’s heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including “Obama Nation,” the widely discredited best seller about Mr. Obama by Jerome R. Corsi. Mr. Corsi opens the book with a quote from Mr. Martin.

“What he’s generating gets picked up in other places,” said Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who has investigated the e-mail campaign’s circulation and origins, “and it’s an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time.”Ms. Allen said Mr. Martin’s original work found amplification in 2006, when a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Mr. Obama as a secret practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Mr. Martin, the article circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Mr. Obama had attended “Jakarta’s Muslim Wahhabi schools. Wahhabism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging jihad on the rest of the world.”

Mr. Obama for two years attended a Catholic school in Indonesia, where he was taught about the Bible, he wrote in “Dreams From My Father,” and for two years went to an Indonesian public school open to all religions, where he was taught about the Koran. Mr. Sampley, coincidentally, is a Vietnam veteran and longtime opponent of Mr. McCain and Senator John Kerry, both of whom he accused of ignoring his claims that American prisoners were left behind in Vietnam. He previously portrayed Mr. McCain as a “Manchurian candidate.” Speaking of Mr. Martin’s influence on his Obama writings, Mr. Sampley said, “I keyed off of his work.”

Mr. Martin’s depictions of Mr. Obama as a secret Muslim have found resonance among some Jewish voters who have received e-mail messages containing various versions of his initial theory, often by new authors and with new twists. In his original press release, Mr. Martin wrote that he was personally “a strong supporter of the Muslim community.” But, he wrote of Mr. Obama, “it may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel.” He added, “His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles.”

Yet in various court papers, Mr. Martin had impugned Jews. A motion he filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case called the judge “a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.” In another motion, filed in 1983, Mr. Martin wrote, “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.”In an interview, Mr. Martin denied some statements against Jews attributed to him in court papers, blaming malicious judges for inserting them.But in his “48 Hours” interview in 1993, he affirmed a different anti-Semitic part of the affidavit that included the line about the Holocaust, saying, “The record speaks for itself.” When asked Friday about an assertion in his court papers that “Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome,” he said, “That one sort of rings a bell.”He said he was not anti-Semitic. “I was trying to show that everybody in the bankruptcy court was Jewish and I was not Jewish,” he said, “and I was being victimized by religious bias.”In discussing the denial of his admission to the Illinois bar, Mr. Martin said the psychiatric exam listing him as having a “moderately severe personality defect” was spitefully written by an evaluator he had clashed with.

For instance, he said, he did not necessarily ascribe to a widely circulated e-mail message from the Israeli right-wing activist Ruth Matar, which includes the false assertion, “If Obama were elected, he would be the first Arab-American president.”He said he had at least come to “accept” Mr. Obama’s word that he had found Jesus Christ. His intent, he said, was only to educate. Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

Sean Hannity claims Senator Obama is guilty by association for being on a board with Chicago Citizen of 1997, the same year as the board, William Ayers. Gee, doesn't that make Sean Hannity an Anti Semite? The truth about Andy Martin reveals the truth about Sean Hannity - a blowhard full of innuendo and general creepiness, because his premise is based on racism and anti-semitism. Hannity defending having Andy Martin on his show for a half hour "HE ALLOWS ANYONE ON WITH A DIFFERENT POV," and used Al Sharpton's name as an example. Got news for you Sean; Sharptaon ain't no Andy Martin. Thanks for giving an anti-semite legitimacy on your show - who's next - the separationist from Alaska, Vogler? Oh, sorry, he's dead from fooling around with a bomb. Or maybe Sarah's Palin's husband, a card carrying member of that party for seven years? Hey, who's palling around with terrorists who want to bring down the nation?

Whatever. Honestly I think Obama should do what FDR did just prior to World War II; he made his opponent in the race his Secretary of the Navy. I say ask John McCain to work in your cabinet as Secretary of the Navy. It would do a lot to help heal the wounds that the right wing has inflicting on this nation, and if the Bill Clinton years were any example, will continue to do so while Obama serves in office, doing everything in their power to make his term fail. So much for patriots.

My two cents.

Obama is secretly a radical 60's leftist communist Muslim

I found this unusual missive out on the net...





"Not sure if you're aware of it, but John McCain was secretly born in Panama, but that doesn't make him a Panamanian. Yes, it's true that Bill Ayers and Tom Haydn did everything in their power to stop a war in Vietnam that was thousands of innocent lives, a war that even our old pal Bob McNamara now claims was wrong.

So is Ayers the terrorist? While Bill Ayers and Tom Haydn were running around trying to get our nation out of a good war, poor John McCain was busy crashing five, no six airplanes before being shot down and tortured in prison. And what was Obama doing? Being 8 years old is no excuse. He wasn't out there doing the hookilau, or the hula, or whatever kind of Hawaiian rap music he was probably doing. I have it on good authority, that secretly Obama (not Senator Obama, he doesn't deserve to be called a Senator because after all, he's only been there for two years!) is part of the black muslim underground, the PStone rangers from the South Side of Chicago, just posing as a half white man - that whole nonsense about his mother being white, did you know that in Puerto Rico if your mother is white and your father is black you're considered white? Thank God he's not from Puerto Rico as well!

This guy claims to be from Hawaii and raised in Oklahoma was really secretly born in Kenya where he was not only a Muslim, but a black P stone rangers Muslim, raised by Farrakhan and every afternoon he bows down to Mecca when not working in Congress. I know he claims he was raised a Christian, and it's in all his school books and public records that he's a Christian, but he sounds Muslim!

Oh, wait a second, are you saying that Islam and all the Muslims can be genetically traced back to Abraham the father of the Christian religion?Wait a second, are you saying that Jews and Christians and Muslims can trace all their religions back to the same person, Abraham, who had one line of his family go on to found the Hebrew religion, and another son who went on to found Islam? That's crazy! That would mean that it doesn't matter if someone is a Muslim or a Christian! That's like saying something crazy like we're all from Africa - that we can trace all our genetic history back to "dark continent" - because at some point in time our ancestors all came from Africa. That would be crazy.

That would be like saying it doesn't matter what the color of someone's skin is, or whether their skin has melanoma, or has too much melonin - or that it doesn't matter what happened back in the 1960's, because that war was wrong and its over, and there's no point beating that horse when the economy is falling around our ears on a daily basis and 90 year old women are shooting themselves to avoid being evicted. And now that communist Chief of Police of Cook County has taken the outrageous step to order his officers to stop evictions! Doesn't he respect the law? Or the banks law?

Doesn't he know its more important to get to the bottom of whether or not Bill Ayers, who was given the title Mr. Chicago by the city in 1997 for all his civic duties, is still running perverting black P stone nation muslims on the south side of Chicago? You mean the the Black P Stone nation, that now has members in Congress now, is secretly behind this rise to power of this .. half hawaiian, half kenyan, half harvard, half Cubs fan, half White Sox fan running for office?

I just don't get it. Why would the American people, after seeing the first two debates, and hearing Sarah Palin actually speak in an interview, suddenly start switching their votes to this guy who is not American, or at least not the kind of American that the founding fathers envision.. or that Thomas Jefferson envisioned - besides the fact that Jefferson fell in love with his slave Sally and had a bunch of kids by her - What was he thinking? Of a future America with his kids by Sally running for President?

Why are all these folks switching votes? Don't tell me they think we're going to go back to the failed economy of the Clinton era? God forbid! As our fearless leader Dick Cheney once put it "Deficits are meaningless!" Why doesn't Obama just go back to Hawaii or Harvard or wherever he came from? And while they're at it, just declare Martial Law and get this election over with???"

There's no accounting for wacky Republican vitriol.

My two cents.