That’s McCain & minions for ya, offering scapegoats instead of solutions.

I use to be poor and had to get signatures for referendums in Oregon people get paid by the signature some people cheat and fill in who ever.
Think of it as Enron accounting for poor people.
But notice the GOP never says boo when its Republican causes or the Bush vs Gore Florida recount that was halted.
If there are bad signatures lets get them out. But on election day will the GOP MSM talking heads support us if we want a recount?

One of the applications that was used to highlight what was going on was the name of a restaurant – I would like to see the restaurant vote

Even a blind squirrel Repub finds a ACORN Nut sometimes.

McCain/Palin!

Thanks Jane for this piece. I have been wondering about this issue of how the hell they get the fraudulent folks to show up and vote, but of course nobody in the MSM has mentioned any of this. It is only really being covered to any extent on FOX, so you can always depend on them to manipulate the facts. Like collecting signatures for ballot measures and having so many of them be fraudulent is anything new! I guess all the redistricting the GOP has done over the years to favor their candidates is not really working out for them?

I hate this story most of all. CRA is a program that works and has nothing to do with the current crisis. It’s a classist racist pile of poop. Every time some loon uses the argument their heads should spin around and their pants catch on fire…not too mention the nose problem

Lou Dobbs is disgraceful. Since the market meltdown I have taken to watching CNN again at the end of the day to see what people think. He used to have the 6:00 slot; I remember because the guys at my health club would watch it coming out of the shower. He’s been moved back an hour, and seems to be channelling Rush Limbaugh. I guess this has been going on for some time, but since I never watched, it didn’t bother me. The last couple of shows with this ACORN crap have been disgusting.

Here’s something about Dobbs you should pay attention to. Dobbs is a reactionary populist. It’s obvious from his talk. He’d like nothing better than a Man-on-a-Whitie-Horse to take command of the nation and fix things. We have a word for that: dictatorship. He is shilling for a dictatorship. I don’t know if he knows what he’s doing. Maybe he thinks he should be the dictator. I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

He’s an idiot.

misinformation, republicans? not surprised at all. it is how they control the masses, by controlling the information/misinformation that the masses get

Can’t you just feel the love gravitating to John from Kendrick Meeks’ smile next to him? /s

Thanks, Jane. This is “fraud” that could never occur, yet on a level many orders of magnitude greater, Griffin and his co-conspirators have deleted legitimate voters from the roles in battleground states across the nation. I sure hope Obama’s army of election lawyers is battling every single one of those purgings.

1,794 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

This issue needs to be engaged by the Obama campaign and crammed right up the ass of the fascists…after all, expandin’ the franchise and increasing turnout is at the heart of democracy and the essential point of contrast between Democrats and all other political parties. Make the fascists come out and condemn efforts to encourage citizens to register and in so doing we ken watch ‘em self-emmolate in a pile of toxic rehtoric.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, WE HAVE TO MAKE ‘EM DISAPEAR ROOT AND BRANCH!!!

How many of these faked forms do you think are filled out by Rethugs trying to make trouble?

Yeah the GOP seems to find these forms quite quick don’t they, yet they never find evidence of GOP voter fraud?

Looks like Dana Bash hearts John McCain….that ol’ tandem tire swing is really swayin’ this afternoon on CNN.

Thanks Jane.

digg

That’s because the GOP doesn’t do penny-ante stuff like voter fraud. They go for the much more serious electoral fraud.

Fake names registered to vote do not translate into votes unless you got a fake id and go to a polling place.
Even then I’m guessing that with some of the goofier names that were registered the polling place workers might call the police themselves even if you have a fake id.
The GOP is trying to set up false equivalencies to deflect expected future charges of GOP voter fraud.

The CRA has been in existence for 30 years. No melt down until the last 2 years. Here’s some more evidence:

The “turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic
weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages, beginning
in late 2004 and extending into 2007,” the President’s Working Group on
Financial Markets reported Friday.

So the CRA is responsible for what? Getting poor people into homes that can afford? An bad underwriting standards are responsible for what? A meltdown.

Well they fix the vote counting machines.

And no small amount of mortgage fraud and bank bailouts.

That’s electoral fraud. Anything that rigs the count is electoral fraud. Voter fraud is Ann Coulter knowingly voting in the wrong precinct.

Ayup. Fraud + large numbers = GOP heaven.

Lets use that lets say that only loans to poor people get bailed out by the government.
But no money at all for losses due to leverage on these loans once sold. Lets see any GOPer with cash in the stock market stick to his lame talking points THEN!

I stand corrected:)

it’s ‘drew’ griffin.

also, if you want a sterling example of the quality of his ‘journalism’, it’s worth noting he was THE cnn hysteric who relentlessly accused and filed reports on how a group of hospital workers euthanized patients during hurricane katrina. although arrested, a grand jury declined to indict the accused doctor and nurses.

ACORN people flagged many questionable registrations before turning them in to state election officials,many states require that all forms be turned in ,even the bogus ones. So in many cases ACORN was only following the law.
Besides it’s not the fraudulent registrations that are bothering the right, it’s the legitimate ones,the ones that minority voters fill out .
Just another subtle form of right wing racism!

Besides it’s not the fraudulent registrations that are bothering the right, it’s the legitimate ones,the ones that minority voters fill out .

Bingo.

Just another subtle form of right wing racism!

GOP subtle, that is. Not really subtle.

Don’t forget what Eliot Spitzer and all 49 other state AGs tried to do to stop the Bush admin from allowing the predatory lending feeding frenzy to continue….

“What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.
…
In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.”

We don’t hear much about this on our dear MSM, do we? We need to start spreading the word as a push back against these ACORN smears.

So the CRA is responsible for what? Getting poor people into homes that can afford? An bad underwriting standards are responsible for what? A meltdown.

The banks sold those loans to get them off their books so they could loan more money banks need x amount of dollars in cash for x amount of money in loans.
The banks loaned this money to hedgefunds which the hedgefunds bought with money the banks loaned them.
The hedgefunds were given $20 and more for every $1 of collateral they had regular Americans do not get these terms!
Ninja loans are what the GOP is talking about No Job, No income, No assets however I am unaware of any law that forced the banks to make these loans.
I do know that since the banks were breaking the loans apart and selling them the banks were not going to get stuck with those loans.

Sweet Jane!

I think we Dems went through the “Is the Vote Counting Fixed?” fear back in ‘06, when it turned out that, despite everyone’s bad gut feel, there were no Major Election Day issues, and the Dems actually exceeded expectations in terms of results.

Of course, We were about 5 years into the Beatdown by that point, and We didn’t really have much to lose, beyond the last shred of hope.

But, for the Goopers – who stepped out on the slippery slope with their leaders while they were On Top – I’m certain it must feel to them like it’s all Going to Hell.

Too bad for the BushCo Loyalists – who are trapped in the Fear that comes with the Conformity Mentality – that they don’t have an Oasis of Community, a watering hole of principled dissent, like the Lake, where they can feel safe to express themselves – and, when neccessary, shout down the Status Quo in favor of Better, More Effective Ideas.

You and Christy and Emptywheel – and all the great FDLers – have kept the faith and tended the Flame of Freedom – fueled by the Rule of Law – through many dark and howling nights! Your service has been a Fearless Example of Modern Day Heroism!

We can’t thank you enough!

Ian up over at the Mothership

I think what’s really bothering the right ,is that they see the end of the Reagan era.
The conservatives have held power now for nearly 3 decades,they’ve developed a sense of entitlement,and they are not going to let go easily.
The house of cards they created is crumbling around them,and it scares the hell out of them!

Let’s consider a hedge fund that is invested in a handful of widely-held large cap stocks. Many components of the Standard & Poor’s 500 are levered several times their annual operating earnings, so let’s say a fund manager’s stocks have an average of 3x leverage at the corporate level. Then let’s assume that the manager applies 3x leverage at the portfolio level. This actually seems conservative given that we have read about several large funds using double-digit leverage ratios in recent years. Next, let’s assume that a handful of large funds-of-funds (levered at 2x) comprise the investor base of the fund. Since funds-of-funds often charge their own layer of fees, they are encouraged to lever as well. Finally, the individual people that invest in funds-of-funds often lever up themselves. We will assume an individual levers at 2x.

TH 1

So when you do the multiplication math above, the leverage ratio of investor capital to assets from top to bottom is an astonishing 36-to-1. This means all you need is a 3% average drop in portfolio earnings and corresponding drop in portfolio value and some select end investors could be wiped out in the daisy chain of leverage as seen below.

http://seekingalpha.com/articl…..-you-think

At the link should be a chart I hope this helps anyone with questions. Also I say 20 to 1 because I like to understate things and then I surprise people with how bad it really is.

Citizen radiofreewill:

Indeed…tell it like it is, Citizen, testify!! But in the last 148 years the “Flame of Freedom” has NOT been fuled by the rule of law but by the blood of patriots and common citizens and those who would be citizens!

I made a note earlier, but here it is again…Please give Laura Ingraham some tranquilizers to calm her rant on this topic. Clearly she was not born in 2000 or 2008. For her now, the Ohio Sec of State is the Big Hero to prevent voter fraud; guess he got some how to practice in ‘08. She wants a RICO action to protect our voting system. Did she say a word about Florida? Or 2008? Oh, NO? Well, please do not miss her ranting indignity about Acorn et al. Telling McCain to be sure to raise this issue in the Wed debate. Well that’s good; he can talk about his visit and support and friends he met. So, thank you for your timely piece. Send it to her to relieve her vapors.

Wow. Very well said.

Good article, Jane. Though, I’m not sure how Ockham’s Razor applies here. What are the two competing explanations with respect to which considerations of parsimony apply?

Y’know, I have that special coating on my eyeglasses for use in front of a computer monitor. So, is it just me or does McCain’t seem to glimmer in this picture?? Or maybe he’s glistening? /s (;>

Neither Griffin, Dobbs or any of the other dithering idiots on the right have bothered to explain how, if some drunken frat boy shows up and registers to vote as Clark Kent, it’s going to result in a “stolen election.”

Someone also needs to explain that NOT turning in Clark Kent’s form would be illegal. ACORN must turn in all the forms they get, and they ALWAYS sort them into piles: screened and likely valid; screened and possibly incomplete; and likely bogus. Clark Kent’s form is probably in the likely bogus pile.

ACORN calls the attention of the Board of Elections to the likely bogus registrations, but they cannot BY LAW decide not to turn them in.

THAT would be voter registration fraud — choosing which forms to discard is up to the Board of Elections, not the registrators.

These GOPs make me sick. How many synonyms are there in the American political lexicon for “We hate people darker-skinned than ourselves?” Because these Rovian twits — Tim Griffin on teevee, really??? — are running out. They’ll need to speak very plainly about what actually bothers them soon.