Perhaps So

Are John McCain, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin willing to start WWIII over Georgia?

"Perhaps so."

...as "Darth Vader in Training" Sarah Palin said in her first-ever national interview with Charlie Gibson.

She then remarked how she's spoken to the President of Georgia recently about it, making Mikheil Saakashvili the only world leader Palin has ever spoken with.

Period.

How did Sarah Palin, a little-known Alaska governor with no formal channel of communications to Saakashvili get ahold of him? Did she shout across the ocean from that little Alaska island she's busy defending the just-close-enough-to-touch Evil Empire from?

No.

She got the number from neocon Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's senior national security advisor, who until recently worked as a lobbyist for Georgia and other former Soviet bloc countries. Scheunemann was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to accomplish one goal: get Georgia into NATO.

...aka, give John McCain a fast-track to Georgia and its sweet oil deal.

Scheunemann is the right-hand man with John McCain's ear, and the reason that the "maverick" put his beta tape of Top Gun on pause long enough to scream about Russian aggression even before the invasion ink was dry in print.

Make no mistake. Once again, this is all about oil. Georgia has it, and Dick Cheney wants it. He's been there in Georgia this last week y'know, "assessing the situation."

...aka, the oil pipeline.

Karl Rove met with President Saakashvili in Malta about two weeks before Georgia invaded. No doubt Rove gave Saakashvili the go-ahead to strike those pesky breakaway republics and kill six or seven thousand Russians living there whilst the neocons were still able to spin it so it would favor McCain's campaign.

Even Putin said Georgia was created by the Karl Rove neocons to influence the U.S. presidential campaign,and even Putin neglected to mention the "oil pipeline" part, well... because he wants it too.

Of course, Rove would never think of manipulating weak, greedy politicians into another cold war sheerly for short term political gain and some tasty oil rights, would he?

Sarah Palin would never start WWIII over it, would she?

"Perhaps so."

Best,

The Samurai Patriot.

samuraipatriot.blogspot.com

We Are At War

 

We Are At War.

 

No, I don't mean in the deserts of Iraq and Afganistan, although surely that's the case too. I mean here in the streets, living rooms and cyber cafes of the good old U.S.A.

 

As we wake up this morning there is a war waging for the hearts and minds of America. Depending on what you read, the war is going very differently.

 

This war will last less than sixty days and is not about the issues, it is not about grand ideas, it is not about which party is more qualified to lead us, although certainly all that too is at stake.

 

The war is about sustained momentum. It is about what drives it. Character. Most of all, it is simply about PERCEPTION of those two things.

 

The race for the White House has become about how long John McCain can sustain the illusion that he and Sarah Palin have taken over momentum. Make no mistake, it’s an illusion. The race now is the difference between what McCain wants you to believe about the race versus the reality of it. The national polls don’t reflect a winner, they reflect a perceived trend. Obama is winning the electoral college handily, but if perception doesn't shift, that could change.

 

Right now John McCain is trying to guilt the press into accepting his version of the truth. Just as in the primaries much of the crystal ball reading by pundits and polls engaged in theatrics for the benefit of purely some undecided voters in Iowa, all of the histrionics about Sarah Palin and the national polls now are solely for benefit of a few undecided swing voters in OH, NV, NM, MO, and FL.

The entire nation isn't embracing Sarah Palin and John McCain, but if a voter in Taos, New Mexico THINKS that's the case, he or she just might jump on the bandwagon even if the music is a bit off key.


How does Barack Obama combat this? By showing up to a knife fight with a gun. He needs to pull back the curtain and show us Oz's saggy white bottom, exposing the propaganda blow by blow in ways even a fifth grader will get.



Right now, McCain’s gambling everything he's got that the house of cards won't crumble in time.

 You see, McCain plays craps in Vegas, sometimes for up to 14 hours. Right now he's got his whole wad sitting on lucky 6 and he's praying you roll the hard way. He's going negative now in the hopes something will stick while there's still the perception that he’s not a loser. The polls aren't real, they're 1250 shadows of an electorate begging to be real.



Character. The key to victory.

 

With the ad that McCain released recently falsely accusing Obama of wanting to teach five year olds sex-ed, McCain just crapped out. It is the biggest mistake of McCain's reckless campaign. It's the nuke that opens McCain for new-clear retaliation on everything from the Keating Five to he and Palin’s consistent lies on the campaign trail. It takes away any shred of Teflon they had left on the Bridge To Nowhere.


Take the Obama campaign's reply to McCain's sex-ed ad; "“It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls,” said campaign spokesman Bill Burton. “Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why.”



From now on the race is only about whom the American people trust to tell the truth. Do you trust McCain and the GOP?

Anotherwords, Barack Obama will follow the law. McCain won't.

John McCain is telling holdout voters that he's a war hero and that qualifies him to be President. It’s important to note that John McCain is NOT a war hero. He is a war SURVIVOR who deserves our respect and admiration for his service to our country, but simply surviving a horrible situation doesn't give you an automatic pass on character issues and it isn't something you should be allowed to hang an entire campaign full of corporate lobbyists on.



John McCain swore up and down that he would never make baseless character attacks after he himself was slandered viscously in 2000 over his imaginary "illegitimate black child" in ads masterminded by political consultant Tucker Eskew. Yet he recently hired Eskew, the same guy that slimed him and made Cindy McCain cry, to slime Obama with ads starring preschoolers and Paris.

McCain has made it all about his character while not mentioning he has seven major lobbyists running his campaign and that his v.p. is the queen of pork.

Palin.  A fringe right wing radical who's extremist views remain a mystery even to John McCain, whom John McCain has placed into a position of power for short term political benefit at the expense of his country.

Remember, this is all about McCain trying to steal the race by creating false perceptions about it, himself and Palin. The most partisan right wing polls and propaganda are also about padding the floor for the jaw drop that might occur should McCain actually win. He needs a narrative to justify his unlikely victory and to prevent a blowback that would make Bush's inauguration look like an episode of Sesame Street. He needs to sell the American electorate a bill of goods so that he can say, "See, wasn't I a genius? I picked Palin and that's why I won."



No John, its not. 



If John McCain wins, it'll be because his shock troops hit you with manipulated facts and figures and meaningless celebrity ala Paris's purse or Palin's glasses.

Beyond that, they're gonna cage votes. They're gonna deliver too few voting machines to minority neighborhoods. They’re gonna get absentee ballots and new registrations thrown out. They're gonna send you to the wrong table to vote so you won’t find your name and take a provisional ballot you can wipe Oz's saggy butt thrice with because your partisan Secretary of State won’t count it.

All politics are local. Election fraud is incremental and its death by a million cuts. Its passing a Jim Crow style voter ID law in Indiana that results in 30,000 seniors staying home because they can't afford health or wealthwise to get out and get an ID. Its handing out a hundred thousand provisional ballots in New Mexico that won’t count because voters too tired from long days at work forget to call their Registrar’s office and check if their voter registration is correct. If you’ve ever moved or had your house foreclosed, be prepared to have your vote caged.


What’s vote caging? GOP affiliated groups will send hundreds of thousands of targeted DO NOT FORWARD letters in order to challenge the votes of any letters that return to sender.  
This worked well in Florida and it’ll work here too.

John McCain and the neocon radicals that have hijacked his party have put principles and country aside for greed. Put nothing past a frightened Bush GOP that may go down in flames of scandal for good if they don't win and cover their messes. 



Do not vote absentee or provisional. Call your County Registrar’s office to check your voter registration accuracy and to find where your early voting place is. Did you know you can vote a month early at the Registrar’s office?

Also check registration at www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php#

To Friends Both Gone and Present

So its September 11th again. 

Seven years ago today, I learned a handful of my finest friends were dead.

I knew my accountant was on United Flight 93 to San Francisco that morning. 

It crashed over a lonely field thanks to a handful of determined Saudi criminals.

My roommate and best friend emailed me from the Borders Books at the World Trade Center the night of September 10th, 2001, saying he'd be back in the Trade Center Tower at 7 AM to get an email address he needed from me on the computer he was paying to use there. He and his mom were in NYC on vacation. 

That next morning I heard a radio report of fire inside the WTC Borders Books, where trapped people beat helplessly against reinforced glass walls. I was on my way home from a store where people were fighting over bottled water and canned beans. 

I had to pull over.

Another best friend of years had called me at three a.m. on September 11th, 2001, less than four hours before the massive tower directly outside his window would fall and turn his apartment into ash and glass strewn rubble. He lived in the October Films apartment across the way from the WTC and was up late writing a script. He called to talk shop and said, at the end of the call, that he'd crash out for sure until noon the next day and nobody or nothing would wake him up.

My neighbor across the hall banged on my door shortly after the Pentagon was hit. Her eyes gleamed with tears and she was trembling. Her husband worked at the Pentagon, in the section hit. I sat consoling this woman that was basically a stranger on my couch as we watched the Pentagon burn. 

Actually we consoled each other.

This is a true story, and it did indeed drive me insane, but at this point is not where the story ended, it is only where it began...

I wrote emails until my fingernails bled all day Sept. 11, 2001, typing perhaps a hundred words a minute for hours on end to various people, writing letters to friends to ensure they were safe and to ensure them I was as well, since I often travelled on business to New York.

Good news came shortly, when my neighbor's wife and I learned her husband called in sick that day and was safe afterall. 

Tears of pain became those of joy. For her.

After frantically calling for hours I finally reached my roommate, who was also lucky. He and his mom were late catching the subway to the WTC and watched the buildings go down with mouths agape outside their relative's front door, across the water in New Jersey. He has a fearsome picture he snapped of what looks like half of Manhattan going up in a mushroom cloud.

As for my writer friend in the October Films Apartment across the street from WTC? Another friend reached him by phone after trying repeatedly before the first Tower's collapse. He thought she was joking and stumbled down the stairs in his pajamas. 

At the front doorway he looked up at the sky falling on him, literally. It was just then that the tower fell. He ran for his life as the concussion hit, throwing some around him down, never to get up. Three hours later, after a gruelling jog through the city, he reached me via IM at a friend's he'd made it to.

As for my accountant on Flight United 93, the plane that crashed before it could hit the White House... I learned that night that she wasn't on it. She'd been in line at the airport to get her ticket when her husband, who works on the East Coast and whom she'd come to visit, had suggested she take a later flight so they could visit and have lunch.

Yes, I was justifiably crazy that first day, as we all were. But it was not my friends' close encounters with death that drove me nuts in the days to follow, it was the knowledge that our entire country lay in the balance, our freedoms, our ideals, everything.

I did not let up my email writing campaign. But my words became an advocacy for calm, writing to every editor I could think of, writing posts to every site I could find. Within a few days I'd made contacts in four different countries. I said over and over, the time had come not to lash out blindly, not to hate universally, not to give in to the fear we all felt, but to breathe, to take a deep breath and not lose the sense of justice and reason and strength our country was famous for in times of trouble. 

The people I knew were lucky, others were not. When I watched George W. Bush pronounce, "I hear you." to the WTC workers at ground zero that first morning, I knew a lot of other people around the world would hear from him too, and not be lucky either.

What George Bush heard was our rage, our bitterness, and our drowning despair. He drank it up like wine and he's been drunk ever since. Mr. Bush and his neocon cronies had just found the rallying cry needed to do pretty damn well whatever they wanted just as dictators for centuries have done.

What Bush did not hear, however, what he was deaf, dumb and blind to, was the call of any great leader, to bring his country together and unite in time of crisis. Instead, over the following months he chose to divide and conquer, just as literally as I had feared. He chose to use the powerful emotional tool he had been handed as a club to his own people.

George Bush, John McCain, and all their ilk know the only tool left to them is fear, right or wrong and they choose the basest, most pornographic bloody emotions they can drudge from the human soul to suit their needs instead of our own.

I advocated then, and I still do now, to keep common sense and courage, to not give in to the temporary security and loss of freedoms George Bush would subscribe on Sept. 11, 2001 and that John McCain has been embracing ever since.

The Patriot Act was passed within days, before most of the Senators admittedly had a chance to even read the whole damndable thing. They would not speak out because of fear of persecution while our Constitution was sacrificed via Cliff Notes. John McCain was one of the boosters. 

It takes strength to speak against popular wishes and justified outrage when it is not politically expedient, as State Senator Barack Obama did when he called Iraq the politically suicidal term, "dumb war."

John McCain was not strong then or now. He was and is... weak.

That night, of September 11, 2001, I walked out of my place in Sherman Oaks and up the main drag on Venture Blvd. There, I found many, many other strangers all doing the same thing. There was such an overwhelming need for community and comfort that night. Anything was possible. We'd all come together as a nation and we all looked to our leaders to lead wisely, to show us a way that would stem the flow of blood that we'd just endured.

I prayed for a leader who could see beyond the red haze of hatred, and I hoped I wasn't alone. 

But even in the soothing presence of so many that were in need of answers, in need of justice just like myself, I could not shake my unease. I stood next to a storefront on Ventura blvd. all decked out with gory Halloween skulls, along with blasted apart limbs exposing grissle and bone beneath latex. Dangling and mangled feet hung from one window in particular that I could not stop staring in at. 

In the window's reflection I could see many cars with screaming people hanging out, honking, waving American Flags as they passed slowly as if to say "you cannot keep us down." There was a traffic jam and it had become an impromptu parade.

It was then I noticed a local news crew. They were interviewing people about their opinions. The question they asked repeatedly; "Should we go to war?" 

The answer, again and again, was "yes." At that point, nobody knew who did it or where they were from. Osama Bin Laden was still just a picture in a suitcase forgotten at the airport. All we knew was that we wanted blood, we wanted body parts in windows for all to see, just like in that macabre display. 

But as I tell my four year old, what we want is not always what we need. 

And we all came to learn that the hard way. 

I noticed the guy being interviewed on camera was a man I knew. I'd seen him at parties in the area and he was a producer for CNBC, a recent AFI grad. Previously I'd thought of him as a sober, analytical type. That night he was wearing a Red White and Blue bandanna, an American Flag tie, and a crudely painted American Flag jacket. He was irate on camera, screaming about how we should be bombing someone for what had been done to us.

I did not blame him. In fact, I felt like hugging him. Yet, in his eyes, I saw everything in that Halloween display come to life. I saw the exact circumstances of the death of liberty, reason and respect. Here was an evil wish from a good man, who was only human, and was hurt, deeply, as we all were. 

Next, the reporter interviewed me, and I told him that I thought it absurd to be calling for some nation or another to be bombed simply because, without knowing if we faced an act of war or a criminal act like what happened via Timothy McVeigh. Was it a nation responsible or a group of criminals? Who knew? I told him to look around at the justified outrage. 

It was great people were coming together, but was it a rush to answers, or madness?

He responded, "Wow, you're the only person we've interviewed tonight that feels we shouldn't immediately be at war."

I responded, "With whom?" and then I went home and cried.

I cried because I could not be sure it wouldn't have been me screaming had some of my best friends not made it out of the situation alive as they just had. It is human nature to take revenge after all.

A good leader should be of a higher nature, and to be uncertain that's not what we had, worried me all the more. 

As I witnessed the events of the seven years since, I've often thought back to the outrage and community on display that night of September 11th. I've often thought of the macabre window where bodyparts were so glamourously displayed. I've often thought of how we all were marketed that bitter cold meal and how so many ate wholeheartedly of it and still do in blind chants of "Drill Baby Drill" and "U.S.A."

When Patriotism is blind... Justice will not be.

Ever since that night, I've waited. I've waited for someone, anyone of public note to start making sense, to start talking logically again. I've waited for someone to rise above the bickering and fear to take a stand.

In 2004, when I heard Barack Obama speak at the Democratic National Convention, I realized immediately I'd found such a man.

Here was someone that could unite us to fight instead of dividing us to do it. Here is someone who can play to our emotions for good instead of ill, in ways and circumstances George W. Bush never has imagined possible. 

The moment I heard Barack Obama's words I knew they were for me, that he understood the anger, the tragedy, the manipulation of emotion and fear, and that he understood exactly how certain other politicians had used it for their own gain. I understood that he, unlike Bush, knew how to diffuse it. He knew how to bring us back to our senses and out of the realm of senseless violence and fear we'd become so comfortable in.

I believed then at that moment, as I do now, that he would one day soon be President of The United States.

The next time a horrible crime like 911 occurs, we will have a leader that is able to look at the situation not as a tool, or a campaign tactic, or as a call to a fictional global war to benefit a greedy few, but as what it is, a national emergency to be dealt with using level headed strength, integrity and the swiftness that comes only from immense character and good judgement.

If only President Obama had been there so few years ago, what a different world we would have today.

We have regained innocence through Barack Obama. I have regained my sense that I am not alone in the world with my thoughts, trapped on a body part strewn street corner for all buyers to beware, watching as a great tide overturns all reason and hope.

The tide has turned. We're turning it now, and we'll keep doing so in honor of all those, in the air and on the ground, in New York, Washington, Afganistan and Iraq and across this whole nation and world, that have given their lives and their limbs so that we can get to where we are, which is the most pivotal point in United States History to date. 

In 53 days we can and must get to the place that is called change.

The planes missed not just my friends that day, but us all. 

Fate gave us another opportunity to make a future where planes will never fall from the sky again.

Take it. 

Best,

The Samurai Patriot.

The  barackobama.com  website has a link here     https://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php# 

to check you registration status for all states!

A GRAND UNIFICATION THEORY OF VICTORY

A Grand Unification Theory of Victory

We are at war.

No, I don't mean in the deserts of Iraq and Afganistan, although surely that's the case too. I mean right here, on the streets, kitchen tables, cafes and blogs of the good old U.S.A.

As we wake up this morning there is a war going on for the hearts and minds of America. Depending on what paper or magazine you read, the war is going very differently. There are factions at work on both sides in the press, the polling industry, the entertainment industry, that are fighting a deathmatch before our eyes. One side may not survive, and they both know it.

This war will last less than sixty days and is not about the issues, it is not about grand ideas, it is not about which party is more qualified to lead us, although certainly all that too is at stake.

The war is about sustained momentum. It is about what drives it. Character. Most of all, it is simply about PERCEPTION of those things.

The race for the White House has become about how long John McCain can sustain the illusion that he and Sarah Palin have taken over momentum. Make no mistake, its an illusion. The race from this point forward is the difference between what McCain wants you to believe about the race versus the reality of the race. The national polls do not reflect a winner, they reflect a perceived trend. Obama is winning the electoral college, but if perception doesn't shift, that could change.

John McCain hopes that you and more importantly Barack Obama will panic. He hopes that you will do his bidding to make illusion of victory translate to the reality of it. As I type this he is trying to guilt the press into accepting his version of truth. He doesn't need to convince the entire nation or even the entire main stream media of the country is swinging his way.

 

No. He just needs to cast enough doubt. Just as in the primaries much of the crystal ball reading by pundits and polls engaged in theatrics for the benefit of purely some undecided voters in Iowa, all of the histrionics about Sarah Palin and the national polls now are soley for the benefit of a few undecided swing voters in OH, NV, NM, MO, and FL. The entire nation isn't embracing Sarah Palin and John McCain, but if a voter in Miami or Cincinnati THINKS that's the case, he or she just might jump on the bandwagon.
 
How do we combat this? Or better, how does Barack Obama combat this? By being blunt. By showing up to a knife fight with a gun. Obama needs to be more blunt than any candidate for President in U.S. history. He needs to pull back the curtain and show us Oz's saggy white bottom. He needs to expose the propaganda blow by blow in ways even a fifth grader will get.

We need to do the same.

Some of the most partisan polls and lies are also about padding the floor for the jaw drop that might occur should McCain actually win. He needs a narrative to justify his unlikely victory and to prevent a blowback that would make Bush's inauguration look like an episode of Sesame Street. He needs to sell the American electorate a bill of goods so that he can say, "See, wasn't I a genius? I picked Palin and that's why I won."

No John, its not. 

If John McCain wins, it'll be because his shock troops hit you with manipulated facts and figures and meaningless celebrity ala Paris's purse or Palin's glasses. That'll work to a point to confuse, demoralize and create a lemming effect in a few swing states. Beyond that, they're gonna cage votes. They're gonna deliver too few voting machines to minority neighborhoods. They're gonna send you to the wrong table to vote so you get a provisional ballot you can wipe Oz's saggy butt a second time with.

All they need to do to win is suppress voter turnout enough so that their propaganda narrative can allow them a shot. They have none otherwise. Its worthy to point that out.

Its also worthy to point out that they can't steal the election outright. There has never been one person pulling the strings in one grand scheme, its death by a thousand cuts in local races, and the perps have to guestimate voter turnout, which they may underestimate thanks to our unprecedented involvement getting out the vote.

But Sarah Palin will not gain McCain the White House. That's political propanganda, smoke and mirrors. A distraction that drives as many people away as she does to McCain. If you really examine the actual polls thats what you'll find. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/09/poll-madness-mccain-takes_n_125158.html

The truth of the matter is that the GOP can't sustain Sarah Palin. They're trying to beat the information black out clock that's running out on her. Right now, McCain is simply gambling everything he's got that the house of cards won't crumble in the next 57 days or so.

You see, McCain plays craps in Vegas, sometimes for up to 14 hours at a time. Right now he's got his whole wad sitting on lucky 6 and he's praying you roll the hard way. He's decided to take his campaign completely negative NOW in the hopes something will stick while there's still the perception that hes not a loser. He's made the race about perception of character and this is a fight that he can and must lose.

Character. It is the key to victory.

If you haven't already, figure out your soundbite replies to the flimsy ties to Ayers and more importantly Wright. You'll be hearing from them both as the slime machine spits them back out.

With the ad that McCain released last night accusing Obama of wanting to teach five year olds sex ed, when in reality the bill in question was to ID sexual predators, McCain just crapped out. It is the biggest mistake of McCain's already reckless campaign if it is smashed down correctly. It's the nuclear strike that opens McCain for attack on everything from the Keating Five to his blatant and consistant lies every day on the campaign trail. It takes away any shred of teflon Palin had left as well.

It gives Obama an excuse to go hard on character issues. Take the Obama campaign's reply to McCain's sex ed ad; "“It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds,” said campaign spokesman Bill Burton. “Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why.”

See what the campaign is smartly doing here? "A father of two young girls." They're phrasing in ways people will get emotionally and they're playing hardball on McCain's character. Have some faith in the campaign's response here. We should follow this lead. Bigtime.

Today will bring some serious accusations back and forth and this contest will be from now on only about whom the American people trust to tell the truth.

Framing the race emotionally has to be done because the undecideds left aren't looking at the issues or they would have picked a side by now. Saying Obama is a guy who's single mom was on food stamps, who grew up without privilege, a guy who passed up 700 corporate jobs to help the unemployed, to be a civil rights attorney and a constitutional law professor, is stronger than any fact or figure about any issue in the minds of those holdout voters.

Barack Obama will follow the law. McCain won't. The answer is in their characters and we can provide the imagery Obama needs. Because its the truth.

John McCain is telling those holdout voters that he's a war hero and that makes him qualified to be president. Its important to note that John McCain is NOT a war hero. He is a war SURVIVOR who deserves our respect and admiration for his service to our country, but simply surviving a horrible situation doesn't give you an automatic pass on character issues and it isn't something you should be allowed to hang an entire campaign on.

John McCain swore up and down that he would never make baseless character attacks after he himself was slandered viscously in 2000 over his imaginary "illegitimate black child" and yet he hired the same guy to slime Obama that had slimed him. Saying so does far more to damage McCain than anything else that could be said to those swing voters. This works because McCain himself has made it all about his character. POW POW POW. MAVERICK MAVERICK MAVERICK.

McCain and Paln are no mavericks, they're sidekicks. Yesman to corporate and GOP interests, which are one in the same.

The way to attack Palin is by informing people about her record at odds with her words, her habitual lies about it, and her extreme views, all in the context of McCain; "Here's Palin, a fringe right wing radical who's extremist views remain a mystery even to John McCain, whom John McCain has placed into a position of power for short term political benefit at the expense of his country." Leave it at that. Moving on.

Remember, this is all about a few hundred thousand people in those swing states. Its also about McCain trying to steal the race by creating false perceptions about it. The polls aren't real, they're 1250 shadows of an electorate hoping to be real.

This is about more concrete stealing. There's election fraud going down in those swing states, happening now, bigtime, and if the campaign doesn't address it, this thing will be far more of a nail biter than it has to be.

Our efforts to register voters may overwhelm the fraud like Chinese paratroopers throwing themselves at the machine guns, but do we want to gamble on whether there are more troops to sacrifice than bullets?

Election fraud is an issue I can only hope and pray the campaign is paying attention to because if they don't, Obama is Al Gore all over again. Its not something we'll se at the polls, it's invisible because many people with inaccurate registrations will vote absentee or provisionally and never know their vote has been challenged because they never checked. Its incremental and its death by a million cuts. Its passing a voter ID law in Indiana that results in 30,000 seniors staying home because they can't afford health or wealthwise to get out and get an ID.

How do we address something as shadowy as election fraud? Tell every voter to check that their registration is valid and have them do it NOW. The campaign has the soapbox to get the word out for 57 more days. I've been saying this for two years and too many people look at me funny because they don't believe it could happen in America.

Do you really believe every major race since 2000 has come down to 10,000, 5000, 500 votes in a few states? Are we THAT evenly divided? 

No. John Webb won Virginia by such a narrow margin of a few thousand only because the GOP slightly under-estimated the amount of voter turnout they needed to cage by sending hundreds of thousands of DO NOT FORWARD letters in order to challenge votes when letters came back. Same with Gore and Kerry and a host of others. The statistical odds of so many close races are blowmind. If voters would have checked, they could have challenged the challenge.

If new voters literally didn't cross a T, if they didn't dot an I, their registration may be thrown out, especially if they live in a vulnerable state with mostly Republican election boards like OH or NV or NM which has a history of such events. Hell, three members of the OH election board were tried and convicted of election fraud after the debacle of 2004 yet the main stream barely heard a peep about it.

Yesterday I wrote the campaign to suggest they do a PSA for both established voters and new ones asking them to please, please, PLEASE check their voter registrations to make sure its accurate. Otherwise they may show up at the polls to find they're not on the rolls and to be innocently handed a provisional ballot that is a waste of paper because their most likely Republican Secretary of State will opt not to count them. 

Hell, I personally know six people who's registrations had been tampered with on Super Tuesday and thus weren't allowed to vote. I saw a hundred such cases as a poll monitor, and that was in two Pasadena precincts! What do you think its gonna be like in Ohio?

I would suggest everyone reading this check their voter registrations and inform every person they meet from now until November fourth to do the same. The GOP is relying on voter laziness to skate by.

I would also ask every person reading this to contact the Obama campaign and force them to run PSAs on the issue of checking EXISTING voter registrations as well as new ones for accuracy and ask their friends to do the same.

Gregpalast.com wants to run psas that you can donate to on the issue of election fraud. I highly recommend his site. Greg's a respected American reporter for the BBC that works with Robert Kennedy Jr. and I also cannot recommend his book "Armed Madhouse" enough if you want to know precisely how election fraud is being done around you NOW.

All of this, the whole enchillada, boils down to one thing. John McCain is a politician displaying a lack of honor and the neocon radicals that have hijacked his party have even less so. He's a man who has put principles and country aside in favor of short term poltical gain at any cost. We should put nothing past him and a frightened Bush GOP that may go down in flames of scandal for good if they don't win and cover their messes. 

That one simple fact, that McCain is not the man that once earned our respect, that he clearly has lost his honor in a desperate, reckless grab at power which by default will protect criminal elements in his own party, will tie every other issue together.

It is the grand unification theory of victory.

We have 57 days. 

If you can, I would suggest getting to a swing state either online or in person because the best way to win a revolution is to show up. The swing states deserve every microscope and voice we can raise.

Voters can check their registration at  barackobama.com. There's a link here   https://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php# 

to check you registration status for all states!

Best,
 
The Samurai Patriot

EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ELECTION FRAUD BUT WAS AFRAID TO ASK.

EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ELECTION FRAUD BUT WAS AFRAID TO ASK.

This may be the most important email you get this election. Pay attention. Keep it and read it when you have fifteen minutes. But don't wait too long.

We're going to talk about the white elephant in the room, the fact that a bunch of our votes may not count if we don't act now. If we don't devote attention to this in our volunteer duties, we will lose. Two sentences added to the end of a phonecall or random conversation can win this election.

"Have you checked your voter registration lately?" and "Do you know where your early polling place is?"

Early voting IN PERSON is the key, not absentee. Most cities have polling booths open days ahead of the election in at least one central location. You can show up a few days ahead of time, find your name on the rolls and then cast your vote. If there's a problem you can still make changes to your registration or file a complaint so others know a problem exists BEFORE November 4th.

VOTING ABSENTEE CAN BE DANGEROUS. If your vote was challenged shortly before the election because your house was foreclosed and the GOP challenged your address at the last minute, you will not know you are not on the rolls. Soldiers in Iraq or otherwise overseas vote absentee and their votes often didn't count in 2000 and 2004 because DO NOT FORWARD letters sent to their house in the States on behalf of the GOP, friendly little reminder letters, have been returned to sender and the GOP has used them to challenge the vote of some poor grunt that may take a piece of shrapnel to protect somebody else's freedom to vote. 

That grunt may die on a sandy battlefield never knowing his own right to vote was just challenged because he had to vote absentee.

Also, if its a Republican County and there are Republican poll workers sorting the mail there when your ballot comes in absentee, they could very easily toss in the trash anything that looks like its coming from a Democrat. Absentee only works in SAFELY Democratic districts we shouldn't be worrying about anyway.

Have I mentioned how important it is to learn how to become a poll worker?

How does the GOP poll worker that signed up to work the polls while you were watching Seinfeld know who's absentee ballots to toss in the trash? 

Duh.

They looked at the name.

If the name sounds like John Smith, they may seig heil it as a good old boy white male Republican and let it through. If its Tanisha Jackson, or Maria Ramirez, Or Fundi Abdul Han, they would figure its a minority leftist insurgent, AKA a Democrat, and throw it out.

In some counties, absentee ballots are even marked on the distinctive envelope "DEMOCRAT". 

Way to go slick.

Speaking of dummies, some people are even dumb enough to actually mark their party affiliation on the absentee ballot. I'm sure that will get past the hands of some unbelievably lucky Republican poll worker or mail thief with no scruples and a bone to pick.

I got a lot of this information out of the book "Armed Madhouse" by Greg Palast, a well respected American BBC reporter who is partnered with Robert Kennedy Jr. He's done his homework. You can find "Armed Madhouse" at the library or Borders and its all pretty well documented in those pages. 

In his book, Greg suggests as I do that early voting, IN PERSON, is the key. I would suggest getting the word out to as many groups as possible about this. This needs to be distributed in the real world by real people, not just on the internet. PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW WHERE EARLY POLLING PLACES ARE. I'm not writing this to pass notes to my buddies, I'm writing it for the elderly couple in Indiana, the young turks in Ohio, and the middle aged taco vender in New Mexico. I'll let you translate it into something more suitable to get to those areas.

The people affected by this problem probably don't have the internet anyway. For 56 days we have a national organization that can get to them. 

If we do nothing, we do it at our peril.

I don't have time to post the information on every group but a few of us could if someone is willing to start devoting time to this. We should also petition the obviously distracted and busy Obama campaign to do the same.

Nothing is more important as an issue, especially if you live in a swing state and especially if you live in an area that trends minority and Democrat, as those are the easiest to target for fraud due to the names.

Make no mistake, the GOP IS cheating. The poll results that have just come out as being skewed Republican in USA Today, Rassmussen and others are a foreshadowing of shady things to come. They're manipulating the polls to influence swing votes who believe mistakenly there's a GOP bandwagon to get on and to set us up for a possible loss. It is not a coincidence that every major election comes down to a few thousand or hundred votes. We are not that perfectly bipolar in our views across the nation.

Want to know more? Keep reading.

Other ways the vote is stolen? The privatized voting companies, who trend Republican because they're corporate, (don't ask me why we privatize our vote, or why one of John McCain's campaign managers tried to by Diebold, the biggest offender that also makes ATMs, just after he go the nomination.) 

These private companies will deliver too few or too old manual voting machines (not electronic) to minority neighborhoods. Rickety machines will break early in the day or if there's not enough to begin with they will create long lines. At various times I've voted in Republican districts where I ALWAYS breezed through in twenty minutes. I've also voted in minority neighborhoods where it took me three hours. 

Go figure.

People wont want to wait long periods and they'll go home or be forced back to work without voting. I don't know how we do it, but someone should be checking amounts of voting machines and quality of voting machines delivered to heavily minority areas. Really the campaign should be doing this or we should make them. Don't assume I am forwarding this information to the campaign or that they already know. I was shocked by the lack of knowledge on behalf of the Obama campaign when these issues occurred Super Tuesday. The response I got was, "we're going to file a complaint."

Somehow, that didn't work for Gore or Kerry. If we wait for the powers that be to act, we'll be waiting another four years.

The most frustrating and illusive way the vote is stolen is by electronic vote. Although usage of electronic machines is down because of problems that create miscounts that have surfaced publicly, (The new Secretary of State in California just decertified them shortly before the primary) electronic machines still represent 30 percent of the total machines nationwide, which is a huge margin. Most importantly, Ohio is still using them even though they admit that they lost at least 2000 votes in 2004. The real figure is probably in tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds. (The race was won by a Bush margin I believe less than ten thousand votes.)

In 2004, in one precinct in New Mexico, registered voter population 900, entirely Hispanic and heavily Democrat, where the Catholic church did a massive get out the vote drive to transport people to the polls from all over the rural area in school busses, there were 925 votes cast on the Diebold electronic machines. EVERY VOTE was either for BUSH or none of the above. Kerry didn't receive a SINGLE vote. 

Can you say "machine error"?

There was no paper trail as these votes were beamed directly to the companies corporate headquarters. So Democrats drove miles in schoolbusses to vote "none of the above" or for Bush... I guess.

I talked to an IT tech. What happens is electronic machines can be "accidentally bumped" to change the touch screen radius, skewing the totals so some people may vote for Bush instead of Kerry because Bush has a touch radius on the screen bigger than Kerry. There's no paper receipt so you'll have no idea if the machine sent in a mistake.

Provisional ballots. Suck. If you get a provisional ballot in a swing State, count on your vote not counting. Sometimes Republican poll workers will stand smiling at the door and ask where people live, to direct them to either the green or orange table where they'll be on the rolls. 

Only, in reality, sometimes they'll direct anyone that is minority or who looks bohemian or younger or just plain angry to the wrong table, so you won't find your name on the rolls and you'll be handed a provisional ballot that will not count because the most likely Republican Secretary of that swing State will rule NOT to count provisional ballots almost automatically. They only count provisionals in razor close votes, and if they haven't counted thousands of them yet, perhaps not even realizing the amount there, how will they ever know its close?

They won't. PROVISIONAL BALLOTS DO NOT COUNT!

Switching people to provisional ballots is also the purpose of why so many Democrat voters registrations get switched "magically" to Republican or Independent. I personally know six people this has happened to, and as a poll monitor I witnessed or heard secondhand of at least another 100 minority voters in just TWO precincts in Pasadena that were furious because their registrations had been switched without their knowledge and they were denied the right to vote in the Democratic primary. They were told gladly that they could vote for McCain or Romney... if they wanted.

Why bother changing a Democratic registration to Republican, you may ask?

Why? So that when voters show up on the day of the vote, their registration isn't listed where they think it will be, and again they'll be handed a worthless provisional ballot. Poof. No vote. I guess nobody thought to check under R for Republican.

When I told the Obama campaign about the many lifelong Democrat voters being turned away as being magically Republican in a Democratic primary, they were rightfully furious. Campaign workers said, "Those people should have been handed provisional ballots!"

Uh... did I mention the problem with those yet? 

How does the anyone accomplish this amazing magic of registration switching and why does it happen to a few Republicans too? I remember on Super Tuesday night, the news even did a fluff piece on a, heaven forbid, REPUBLICAN, who had her vote registration switched in the primary. Hey, are the Democrats pulling something too?

I don't think so. I'd guess this lady probably is just a whale watcher and she got caught in the same net the Democrats that lost their vote did.

A whale watcher? What do I mean by that?

Well, all these magic flips of registration may have occurred months or years ago and voters were too lazy to check and see if their registration is still what they think it is. Independent groups loyal to the GOP have operatives canvass neighborhoods or hang out on college campuses. Y'know the guys with the petitions to save the whales or approve that new Indian Casino? Next time you sign one, flip to the last page. If there's a faded carbon copy there, it could be a voter registration change form, or transfered to one, and you sign it, they'll send it in and request your registration be changed to Republican or Independent. 

The Republican on the news crying about how her registration was switched probably thought that she was saving the whales when she signed that form in the parking lot at Wallmart. Come to think of it, she did LOOK sort of liberal. Well, the result was that the form got sent in somehow to change her to a liberal on paper at least.

You think you're saving the whales and instead you're saving the GOP. 

The angry would be whale watchers I met on Super Tuesday that had their registration changed weren't cheated by the DNC or Greenpeace in 2008, they probably didn't even bother to vote in 2004 or 2006 and their vote was stolen a long time ago by Karl Rove or someone else in a local race and we were just feeling the effect in the massive voter turn out caused by Clinton and Obama. 

We can assume all those people that were turned away have fixed their registration by now, right? 

Hmn.  Big assumption. I'll bet money they're still working ten hours and then watching Sienfeld over a pizza instead of stressing about it. We better mention that the next time we make a volunteer call or have a conversation somewhere, huh?

Dealing with forms and government agencies scares people. They won't bother to check. I talked to girl who's registration was switched to Republican years ago and she's never been brave enough to figure out how to switch back so she can vote in a Primary. Some people actually think they'll get in trouble with the IRS if they call. Heck, beurocracy scares me too. 

I know in Los Angeles you can check your registration at lavote.net, but for the rest of the country, I don't know. Thats up to you to figure out.

Rule 1 in election fraud; All politics are local. Even in a Democratic state, a Republican district may create election fraud. Why did those Precincts in Pasadena have so much magical registration flipping? Who cares, this is sunny Democrat California, right? 

Wrong.

I live in a Republican Distict that has a lot of tight local races. These people were frauded to keep a local hack in office, not to rig a Presidential campaign, but the result is just the same.

When it comes to election fraud, the thing to understand is that its death by a thousand cuts. There is no one grand scheme. Yes, Karl Rove did approve thousands of names on caging lists, (voters to be challenged by first class mail being returned) The email was titled "RE: CAGING LISTS" and sent by Rove's protege Tim Griffin from his Washington office. Little Timmy was under investigation for vote caging until Bush fired the prosecuting US Attorney and gave GRIFFIN the U.S. attorney's job, uh, until Griffin resigned the day Greg Palast outted the story to Rep. John Conyers who swore to investigate (no joke, you can find the actual lists CC'd to Karl Rove in the latest version of "Armed Madhouse" Greg Palast's book.) The lists were sent accidentally to rnc.org instead of rnc.com, or something like that, and thus they were sent to a spoof site instead, who handed the emails to Palast. Oops.

But that was just part of it.

All the GOP in general does is look at any way possible to keep the amount of people voting down as much as possible. 

When you add overly improvisational and passionate neocon poll workers to the mix, overly creative neocons working to approve registrations within the local parties, and some whacky new laws like the "VOTER ID" laws in Indiana and other states that will disenfrancise thousands of people simply because they're working two jobs and don't have time to go get a new I.D., or they're too elderly to get out of the house and get an I.D., or they can't pay the fee, if there is one, which amounts to a Jim Crow poll tax, well, that can ad up.

Thats why the Democratic party fought the voter I.D. laws and the GOP screamed to the rooftops about illegal aliens voting twice. (What illegal alien is even going to show up when they're afraid they're gonna be deported anyway?) Y'know how many people were charged with vote fraud in the last eight years, after Bush's task force on it? 

Five. 

And I'm sure those were probably trumped up. Oh wait, it was six. I almost forgot Anne Coulter.

Bottom line, find out where early polling places have been set up in each district and spread the word locally. Every volunteer at every Obama phonebank to a swing state should be at the end of the call telling voters to check their registrations before they vote with enough time to fix problems, and to vote early, IN PERSON, at early polling places.

I'm no supergenius expert here, I got all the information either by just reading some articles factchecked online or directly out of Greg Palast's book "Armed Madhouse." Its a book I highly recommend everyone get in the next few days and read, at least the chapters on stealing the vote. You can go to gregpalast.com to learn a bit more about the issue.

Dont assume I'm forwarding this information around. I took the time to compile it so you wouldn't have to spend a week reading Greg's book and so you can share it. Please, forward this information to anyone you know who cares about the right to vote, especially if they live in a swing state or Republican district with tight local races. We can short circuit this problem if we inform voters to simply check their registrations, vote early and vote in person at established early polling places.

Voting absentee is not the best solution, and neither is waiting until November 4th to figure out if your vote has been lost six months beforehand.

Make no mistake. This is a war for the future of this country and it will be won in the fine print.

Most importantly, most importantly of all, is DO NOT DESPAIR.

Hopefully you are still reading and not hanging from the rafters by now.

When I first heard all this information, my immediate reaction was to throw up my hands and say, "What?! Why bother to make an effort to vote if there is massive evidence out there of all this fraud."

I read the book "Armed Madhouse" before Barack Obama decided to run for the White House. I went into this effort knowing all the information I just gave you, and yet I have canvassed for Obama in two States, I've made hundreds of phonecalls, and I've made an award winning ad that played nationally for free.

Why? Why did I choose to support Senator Obama and work my ass off, putting my life and career at times on hold, when I knew what I know?

Because the GOP wants us to despair and stay safely on your computer bitching, or at home eating pizza.

Because from the start, from even before the start, I knew that Barack Obama was the only possible candidate that can surpass any effort to cheat the American Electorate. I knew that Barack Obama could do what he has done, that he could motivate the American people, and that there's nothing more dangerous than a motivated electorate. Barack Obama represents our best chance at taking our country back from the criminals that stole it in 2000 and 2004. 

And the GOP has known it all along too. 

Well, you see, its precisely because of all our efforts that stuff like vote caging isn't going to work. Elections can only be frauded if people aren't paying attention. In a war, you sacrifice some brave troops to the machine guns in order to overwhelm the machine gun nest. Not all the votes have to count, but there needs to be enough of them cast that they overwhelm any effort to cheat. 

Why haven't we heard more outrage from our leaders on this issue? Why isn't Obama screaming from the rooftops about it the way that Dennis Kucinich did after New Hampshire in the primary? And hey, whatever happened to Dennis's appeal for a recount in New Hampshire?

Trust me, Obama comes from Chicago. He understands vote rigging. I believe he's on it. Think about it. That's why he's running the tremendous ground game he is. If Obama was to come out and say anything about possible election fraud in a way that was picked up by the main stream press, not only would he look like a fringe candidate, as Kucinich unfortunately but bravely did, he may also actually supress voter turn out. You'd get a lot of people that would say, "what's the use, my vote isn't going to count, why should I bother?"

We don't want to foster that impression, either in our own minds or others. We MUST, MUST, MUST educate ourselves on these matters so that we can fight them. We MUST, MUST, MUST, put enough fear in voters to get them a bit angry and make them check their registrations even if they believe them to be valid, but we MUST NOT cause despair.

The turnout in this election will be historic. Chances are that our months of voter registration drives already are going to overwhelm any chance at election rigging in at least most states. But all it takes is one State like Ohio or Florida, that is why we must concentrate our efforts in those swing States and be careful how its discussed with voters. We don't want to turn them off.

We're simply informing them about how to check their registration just to prevent any unforeseen problems that might be lurking because maybe they haven't ever bothered to check before. If you sound like a conspiracy theorist, they'll ignore you. Be practical when they say, "Oh, I'm not worried, I know my registration. I got my sample ballot." Then you just tell them, "Yes, but its worth a call to check your registration anyway. Last minute errors have been known to cost votes. Better safe than sorry".

Words to live by. Better safe than sorry.

Distribute this far and wide please. 

P.S. I'm listening to radio as I type this. The talk radio host on Air America 1150. In Madison Wisconsin, Democrat voters are apparently getting unsolicited absentee ballot applications that are mailers apparently from JOHN McCAIN'S campaign. These mailers misinform voters to send applications to the wrong office in the wrong city to recieve their ballots.

 (They're probably not really from the campaign, but they're from an Independent group with enough GOP funding to mess with the absentee vote. Try googling the story as told on Air America radio at 11:10am.)

I will say it one final time. VOTE IN PERSON AND VOTE EARLY. FIND YOUR EARLY POLLING PLACES AND SPREAD THE WORD.

Best,

The Samurai Patriot

Voters can check their registration at  barackobama.com. There's a link here   https://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php# 

to check you registration status for all states!