Tuesday - April 03, 2012
Dirty Pool, As Usual
Felony charges related to election fraud have touched the 2008 race for the highest office in the land.
Prosecutors in South Bend, Ind., filed charges Monday against four St. Joseph County Democratic officials and deputies as part of a multiple-felony case involving the alleged forging of Democratic presidential primary petitions in the 2008 election, which put then-candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the Indiana ballot.
The officials are accused of taking part in a scheme to fake signatures and names on the primary petitions needed to run for president. Court papers say the plan was hatched by local Democratic Party officials inside the local party headquarters.
Among those charged is the former long-time chairman of the St. Joseph County Democratic Party, Butch Morgan, who allegedly ordered the forgeries. He was forced to resign when the allegations were first made public last October, even though his lawyer, Shaw Friedman, told Fox News at the time that Morgan did not do anything wrong.
The St. Joseph County Board of Voter Registration’s Democratic board member, Pam Brunette, Board of Voter Registration worker Beverly Shelton and Democratic volunteer and former board worker Dustin Blythe also face charges.
According to affidavits, St. Joseph County Voter Registration Office worker Lucas Burkett told investigators that he was part of the plan that started in January 2008 “to forge signatures on presidential candidate petitions instead of collecting actual signatures from citizens.”
I guess the ACORN doesn’t fall far from the tree.
The case raises the possibility that the president’s campaign and that of Clinton’s, could have been legally challenged in Indiana if the alleged forgeries were discovered during the race.
Under state law, presidential candidates need to qualify with 500 signatures from each of Indiana’s nine congressional districts. Indiana elections officials say that in St. Joseph County, which is the 2nd Congressional District, the Obama campaign qualified with 534 signatures; Clinton’s camp had 704.
But the signatures, which were certified by the elections board, were never challenged. If the number of legitimate signatures for Obama or Clinton fell below the legal requirement of 500, they could have been bounced from the state ballot. Reports have previously put the number of phony signatures for both candidates at about 150, but state investigators plucked names from the petitions at random and cited only 20 individual alleged forgeries as part of their case. They say their investigation of the petitions continues.
In other words, if either the Republicans, or the government employees tasked with validating such petitions, had been doing their job, Obama may not have been on the ballot in Indiana. Indiana has 11 electoral votes. And news like this makes me wonder two things: 1) what the hell took you so damn long, you should have been on this in 2007; 2) how many other states got faked out as well? Hmm, I wonder if there is a simple DrewSolution here? How about the petition board folks make a few hundred calls at random to those petitioners? And if even 1% deny signing, the whole thing gets dumped. Invalidated. And the party has to do it all over again, but this time they need 10 times as many signatures. And twice as many get checked. And no, the filing deadline date doesn’t move an hour. Get it right, on time, or get out of town.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Democratic campaign treasurer Kinde Durkee pleaded guilty Friday to cheating her clients out of at least $7 million, admitting fault in what officials are calling the largest campaign embezzlement case ever prosecuted.
The longtime bookkeeper for hundreds of political committees entered guilty pleas to five counts of mail fraud. Prosecutors are expected to seek 11 to 14 years in prison time under sentencing guidelines.
Federal prosecutors say the veteran campaign treasurer routinely misappropriated money from the accounts she managed for at least 50 clients, including Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Reps. Linda and Loretta Sanchez, Assemblyman Jose Solorio and Board of Equalization Member Jerome Horton. While the plea agreement pegs the losses at $7 million or more, prosecutors say they expect the total to rise to $9 million to $10 million.
“I recently read a newspaper article which referred to Kinde Durkee as the Bernie Madoff of campaign treasurers, and that may be an apt characterization,” U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner said at a news conference, comparing Durkee’s crimes to a Ponzi scheme.
The plea agreement closes a criminal investigation of what was a decade-long theft of campaign funds from local, state and federal candidates, powerful Democratic political organizations and various nonprofits.
There is a certain schadenfreude listening to crooks cry about crime. The robbers robbed. The thieves stolen from. Makes me gleefully wonder if Norman Hsu sits in his prison cell, wondering if it was all worth it.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/03/2012 at 07:59 AM
Filed Under: • Crime • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •
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Permalink • simply un-obama-lievable
I think this is another one of those situations where the mask slips, and the true Barry Soetoro peeks out. I don’t even know where to begin on this one. Stupid? Uneducated? Villainous? Egocentric narcissistic tyranny? A fundamentally flawed concept of what America is all about and how it works? All of that, and more. Let’s add in a total disrespect for our time honored system of government, the basest of political pandering, and yet another attempt to spread a meme that is so far beyond wrong that you’d be almost unable to believe that an actual American citizen would even be able to form the thought in his mind. Unreal. And this clueless thug is in charge.
Obama warns ‘unelected’ Supreme Court against striking down health law
President Obama, employing his strongest language to date on the Supreme Court review of the federal health care overhaul, cautioned the court Monday against overturning the law—while repeatedly saying he’s “confident” it will be upheld.
The president spoke at length about the case at a joint press conference with the leaders of Mexico and Canada. The president, adopting what he described as the language of conservatives who fret about judicial activism, questioned how an “unelected group of people” could overturn a law approved by Congress.
“I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” Obama said.
Wow. He just oozes contemptuous stupid from every single pore. Don’t you just love how he implies that shooting down his ramrodded law, crammed down the throats of the American public against our wishes and without our votes, would be tyrannical? Oh, and I’ll get to the “democratically elected” part in the next post, since YET AGAIN it’s turned up that the Dems have been caught red handed rigging the ballots back in 2008.
Unelected judges overturning a law passed by an elected legislature ... gosh, that’s just so wrong. Um, wait. Um, no. Asshat. That’s what the damn Supreme Court is FOR. It’s what their job is. Now, then, and since forever. Did this Indonesian pretender even attend one of these law classes? Did he pass any of the exams, or just mark them “present”? My head is spinning. What nerve. What blatant stupidity. What a douche.
The Supreme Court spent three days hearing arguments last week in four separate challenges to the health care law, which stands as the president’s signature domestic policy accomplishment. A central challenge was over the individual mandate—the requirement that Americans buy health insurance. Critics say the mandate is unconstitutional, and that the federal government cannot force people into the insurance marketplace.
Obama on Monday said that without such a mandate, the law would not have a mechanism to ensure those with preexisting conditions get health care.
“I’m confident that this will be upheld because it should be upheld,” Obama said, describing the law as “constitutional.”
Republican lawmakers slammed the president for his Supreme Court comments. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, accused the president of misrepresenting the implications of a ruling against the law.
“It must be nice living in a fantasy world where every law you like is constitutional and every Supreme Court decision you don’t is ‘activist,’” he said in a statement. “Many of us have been arguing for nearly three years that the federal government does not have the power to dictate individuals’ purchasing decisions. After a national debate on the subject, more than two-thirds of Americans agree that the Obamacare insurance mandate is unconstitutional.”
Nice word Senator Hatch, but like Ron Paul said of Newt Gingrich, you haven’t gone far enough. The entire mandate is based on an extraordinary bending of the already overly bent reed called “the power to regulate interstate commerce”. And the ENTIRE problem of unchecked, unlimited, overbearing federal government is based on that one single decision back in 1937 when Obama’s predecessor, his mentor, his role model, and the other Communist president, FDR, strong armed the Supreme Court by threatening to pack it with another half dozen justices that would toady to him. Because they were old, and thus slow witted, so he was going to help them. Seriously, that was FDR’s publicly stated reasoning. And two justices capitulated, and it’s been downhill ever since. All that “regulate interstate commerce” ever meant was to normalize it. To keep it tuned, and running evenly. Like a clock. Regulated. Look it up, Mr. Scholar. Read the words of the founding fathers, The Federalist Papers, and the Congressional Minutes up to that point in time.
But no. To Obama, this law is constitutional because he says it is. And any decision other than that ... well, let’s see how that Joe The Plumber tar brush works on Scalia. Or we could try to Palinize Roberts. Hey, let’s get Spike Lee to Tweet Kennedy’s home address and the NBPP to put a bounty out on him.
PS - Notice that a certain Ivory Tower justice has NOT recused herself from sitting in judgment on legislation that she had a significant hand in creating. Solicitor General at the time, no? Ethics much? ¡Cállate, no es nada!
UPDATE: under the overleaf, a take of a far darker geometry:
Posted by Drew458
on 04/03/2012 at 07:08 AM
Filed Under: • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • Obama, The One •
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Permalink • Monday - April 02, 2012
afternoon dance break
Everybody Polka!!
I’m beginning to love hurdy gurdys almost as much as I love bagpipes. And I’m happy to learn that they’ve made their way into modern popular music ... well, if you define “modern popular music” as “celtic death metal folk music sung in an extinct language”. No, I couldn’t make that one up if I wanted to. Celtic death metal. It’s a big world, and there’s a corner in it for everything. Even celtic death metal, unplugged.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/02/2012 at 03:41 PM
Filed Under: • Music •
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Permalink • The Ginger Zone
Posted by Drew458
on 04/02/2012 at 02:58 PM
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •
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Permalink • But where are the latest poll numbers?
Gosh, when even the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times say it’s bad for the Big O, it must be.
WSJ:
What is happening is that the president is coming across more and more as a trimmer, as an operator who’s not operating in good faith. This is hardening positions and leading to increased political bitterness. And it’s his fault, too. As an increase in polarization is a bad thing, it’s a big fault.
...
From the day Mr. Obama was sworn in, what was on the mind of the American people was financial calamity—unemployment, declining home values, foreclosures. These issues came within a context of some overarching questions: Can America survive its spending, its taxing, its regulating, is America over, can we turn it around?That’s what the American people were thinking about.
But the new president wasn’t thinking about that. All the books written about the creation of economic policy within his administration make clear the president and his aides didn’t know it was so bad, didn’t understand the depth of the crisis, didn’t have a sense of how long it would last. They didn’t have their mind on what the American people had their mind on.
The president had his mind on health care. And, to be fair-minded, health care was part of the economic story. But only a part! And not the most urgent part. Not the most frightening, distressing, immediate part. Not the “Is America over?” part.
Just in case you have forgotten, the Health Care Mandate - It’s Not A Tax™ was all that Obama did for the first year and a half of his occupancy. He gave speeches about it just about every single day. He couldn’t be bothered to talk to the generals who were running the wars he inhereted. He didn’t do anything else. Other than funnel money to his buddies through false “green” development plans. And play golf. And take vacations. But in terms of his actual work, it was all about the Obamacare. So when the Supremes shoot it down, as the audio from the hearing the other day seems to show will happen - his lawyers pretty much got laughed right out of the Court - the American people MIGHT just wake up (or, in a major wet dream the GOP could take the initiative and remind them. Fat chance of that, that would be fighting back and campaigning!) and realize that 3/8s of this guy’s time in office was a total waste of effort, and was entirely foreseeable by anyone, especially someone the media told us about a million times was this vaunted Constitutional Scholar.
WaTimes goes further and makes a list:
The past seven brutal days will go down as one of the worst weeks in history for a sitting president. It certainly has been, without any doubt, the worst week yet for President Obama.
Somehow, Mr. Obama managed to embarrass himself abroad, humiliate himself here at home, see his credentials for being elected so severely undermined that it raises startling questions about whether he should have been elected in the first place — let alone be re-elected later this year.
• Meanwhile, back at home, the Supreme Court took up the single most important achievement of Mr. Obama’s presidency and, boy, was it embarrassing. The great constitutional law professor, it turns out, may not quite be the wizard he told us he was.
By most accounts, Mr. Obama and his stuttering lawyers were all but laughed out of the courthouse. They were even stumbling over softball questions lobbed by Mr. Obama’s own hand-picked justices.
t was as if you lumped Hurricane Katrina and the Abu Ghraib abuses into one week for George W. Bush. And added on top of that the time he oddly groped German Chancellor Angela Merkel and got caught cursing on a hot mic. Even then, it wouldn’t be as bad as Mr. Obama’s week. You would probably also have to toss in the time Mr. Bush’s father threw up into the lap of Japan’s prime minister. Only then might we be approaching how bad a week it was for Mr. Obama.
Not that you will see any trace of embarrassment in the face of Mr. Obama. He has mastered the high political art of shamelessness, wearing it smugly and cockily. Kind of like a hoodie.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/02/2012 at 01:35 PM
Filed Under: • Obama, The One •
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Permalink • Your Daily Islamic Stoopid
In the mooselimb world, wives and children are chattel, not much different than livestock. The women can’t do as they please, go out in public alone, yadda yadda, you know the drill, jizzlam sux.
“Obama killed bin Laden”. Yeah right, he did it by not getting in the way and being kept out of the loop, and only begin dragged in off the golf course at the last second, while somebody else faced the danger and did the wet work. We’ve all seen that war room picture; he didn’t get any briefing notes or even a seat at the Big Folks table. “Squat here sir”. Click. But whatever. Our “ally” Pakistan, claimed no knowledge that OBL was living in their country for years, though they were very quick to hand over our busted stealth helicopter to the ChiComs, and were very quick to arrest anyone who may have spilled the OBL beans and charge them with treason. Such an ally. Now they’ve done it again ...
A Pakistani court has sentenced three of Usama bin Laden’s widows and two of his older daughters to 45 days in prison for illegal entry and staying in Pakistan. Each of bin Laden’s relatives also received a $110 fine. They were sentenced at a hearing in the Islamabad safe house where the family members are currently staying.
Mohammed Amir Khalil, a lawyer for the family, says Monday’s verdict gives his clients credit for time served, and that he does not plan on appealing the decision.
Khalil said the family members were formally arrested on March 3, so they will serve another two weeks in prison and then will be deported with their children. He did not say where they would be deported.
Islamabad was outraged by the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden because it was not told about it beforehand. Pakistani officials have said they had no idea the Al Qaeda chief was in Abbottabad, something many in Washington found hard to believe because his compound was located close to Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point.
...
Bin Laden lived in five safe houses over the course of nine years while on the run in Pakistan and fathered four children—two of them born in government hospitals, according to al-Sada’s interrogation report
Looks to me like the guy who does the Pakistani certificates of live birth used to work in Honolulu. Obviously he never reads his own work, like the box where it says “fill in father’s name”. I wonder if those 4 kids qualify as natural born citizens of Pakistan?
Posted by Drew458
on 04/02/2012 at 01:16 PM
Filed Under: • RoPMA •
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Permalink • Govt Caused Panic In Britain
Petrol retailers: Government intent on creating fuel crisis
The Government was accused of creating a fuel crisis due to its advice over how to prepare for a potential tanker driver strike.Representatives of petrol station operators said that the Government action could see forecourts run dry within days.
Petrol sales soared by 45 per cent yesterday, after the Government suggested people should stock up on fuel as a “precaution” against a possible strike by tanker workers over the Easter weekend.
Francis Maude, the Cabinet Secretary, today told drivers they should make sure they have enough fuel in their vehicles and “maybe a little bit in their garage as well in a jerry can”.
However, both the AA and firefighters have now called on him to withdraw the advice, because of the risk of explosions in garages.
There were secenes of long queues at petrol pumps in Liverpool, Preston and Kent, while pumps ran dry in Wilmslow, Cheshire, and Llandudno Junction in North Wales.
And the news was immediately full of stories of sick people dying because the ambulances couldn’t fuel up, and other stories of foolish people getting horribly burned by trying to decant gas from one container to another in their kitchens, by candlelight, while smoking. This lead to ‘Elf & Safety and their fellow do-gooders on the fire squad warning people not to store gas in their houses, on top of their furnaces, inside their fireplaces and so forth ... because your typical Englishman is just too stupid to understand that gasoline burns really well. And the press is chock full of pictures of people topping off, and filling up their plastic jerry cans (in the UK gas jerries are green) along with jam jars, oil bottles, and every other kind of improper container. Plus the requisite photos of endless lines at the pumps, and the “no petrol” signs up at the forecourts (gas stations are called forecourts over there). And there is no strike, and there is no actual shortage of fuel.
The Government’s emergency plans to deal with a national petrol shortage are not “fit for purpose” because forecourt staff have not been trained and have no idea how the plans should work, petrol retailers have warned ministers.
The ‘National Emergency Plan - Fuel’ will be enacted by the Government if there is an official petrol shortage. It will see up to 700 of the UK’s 8,500 forecourts designated as ‘official’ stations with instructions to prioritise sales to the emergency services.
However RMI Petrol, the trade body that represents independent petrol forecourts, has today written to Energy Minister Ed Davey warning him that the Plan is inadequte and full of “flaws”.
Petrol retailers argue that the Plan is so secretive that they will not know if they are a designated station until an emergency is actually called. They say that staff have not been trained, the plan has not been rehearsed, and they have not been told who to prioritise petrol to.
Retailers also argue that having only having two or three ‘official’ outlets in each city will lead to far longer queues at forecourts as motorists scramble for the available petrol. The retailers argue that any available fuel should be shared equally between all stations.
Earlier stories told of the Army being called up to drive the tanker trucks - “petrol lorries”. The problem is, that the government came up with this whiz-bang plan, but didn’t bother to tell anyone about it. So now we have the guys at the pumps - who I am sure are catching hell from the motorists - crying that they weren’t properly trained or let in on the plan. “Nobody told me nuttin” as some of might say over here. I wonder if the thousand or so soldiers on the call-up list knew they were on it, or if they even know how to drive one of those rigs or pump the fuel?
I’ve been following this situation for a couple of days now. I think the correct term is “a right proper cock up”. I have not seen anything that says that it is all just a test run of their emergency preparedness plan, but it’s obvious that the government is getting a huge windfall in taxes. Taxes probably account for 70% or more of the fuel prices in the UK. So, was this all just a mistake? “Loose lips sink ships”? Or was it a planned move to a) outrage the public fully against the driver’s union a few weeks ahead of any rumored strike; and/or b) a quick way to bring in mountains of cash to refill the nearly empty tax coffers?
It’s a fair question. I have also not heard anything about the minister who made the original announcement getting the sack. I would think “causing needless public panic” would be a firing offense even for their government, wouldn’t you?
The other rumor is that next week the fire brigades will go around to everyone’s sheds and garages and start handing out fines for improperly stored petrol and fuel hoarding. Sweet.
So let’s all have a chuckle at the Daily Stupid in the UK. But stop and think for a minute. Their leader and our leader seem awfully chummy, and we’ve seen so many times before that what happens over there happens over here, and vice versa. Their unhinged left isn’t much different than ours. And the petrol crisis, deliberately or accidentally manufactured, is still a crisis. A bit of a National Emergency. The kind which gives governments all sorts of “temporary” yet extraordinary powers if they feel like it. And last week’s news here was that Teh Won just did another one of his end-run Executive Orders that give him and the rest of the government even more emergency powers. Makes me wonder if this whole thing is a trans-Atlantic Beta Test.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/02/2012 at 12:35 PM
Filed Under: • Oil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Prices •
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Permalink • Sunday - April 01, 2012
Chess Problem #809
Again, the theme here is attraction. White to move and win.
1. ?
Taken from Combination Challenge by Lou Hayes and USCF Senior Master John Hall (2520)
Graphics courtesy of Exachess.
Posted by Christopher
on 04/01/2012 at 06:59 PM
Filed Under: • CHESS •
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Permalink • Five Most Recent Trackbacks:
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