Minnesota's Election and Obama Disciples

So this is the first disputed ballot on record so far (Full Story). Al Franken's campaign has challenged this ballot and wants the canvassing board to make a decision. Here's where this process is screwed up. The canvassing board now has to decide on the "intent" of the voter. I think any reasonable person would say this voter's intent was to vote for Coleman. But I say tough crunchies. If you're too stupid to fill out a ballot that cannot be read by the scanner, I'm sorry, you've lost your right to vote. Who's to say they won't find a ballot that looks just like this one except in addition to the marks next to Coleman the circle next to Al Franken is perfectly filled in. Now what do you do? Give that one to Al? So on one ballot a bunch of scribbles in a circle is counted, on another ballot its not? That's ridiculous. This whole voter intent business is way to open to partisanship.

Next, I wound up on the Zogby International website today after hearing about a poll they conducted and got absolutely railed for by the media. The poll was conducted by John Ziegler and a group that is putting a documentary together to show the media's effect on the 2008 elections. You can see the following video and the poll results on their website. This is absolutely disheartening. I know its not just Obama supporters, but the fact that our electorate is this clueless is scary. Not surprising I guess when these people answer that they get their "news" from Bill Mahr, Jon Stewart, and the BBC.

Another News Grab Bag

Its been a few days since I posted anything and like usual there has been a flurry of interesting articles, so here goes. I'm going to skip any attempt at debriefing the articles since the titles are pretty self explanatory. As you might tell, I'm a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, hence all the links to articles from them.

Detroit Meltdown

• Let Detroit Go Bankrupt - NYTimes
• Obama's Car Puzzle - WSJ

Big Government

• Washington Is the Problem - WSJ
• Why Spending Stimulus Plans Fail - WSJ
• A Monument to Government Power - WSJ

Global Warming!!!

• The World Has Never Seen Such Freezing Heat - UK Telegraph

One comment about the previous article. Dr. James Hansen is the father of global warming hysteria. The fact that one his spokesmen said, "that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with," is absolutely ludicrous. The GISS is admitting that their data "may be" crap, and in fact was in this case, and that they have no way of validating it. Yet it is used by the UN's IPCC group to pertetuate the myth. I'd laugh if it wasn't so freaking sad (i.e. taking money out of my pocket). Here are a few other miscellaneous articles I found interesting as well:

• Mischief In Minnesota?
• Is Now the Time To Buy Stocks?
• Obama and Missile Defense

Correction, Its $5 Trillion

I am continually baffled that the American people turn to the government for anything. As I've said a hundred times before, the government is horribly inefficient and wasteful, not to mention corrupt. Take the $700 billion bailout. In the six weeks since the bill has passed no one has been named to fill the independent oversight posts. Nor have any of the required monitoring reports been filled out. That's great, so not only are they blowing taxing payer money, but there is no oversight as to who or what receives it. Its becoming obvious that the Fed and the Treasury are giving money to businesses that were never intended to get a bailout 2 months ago. Atleast the House Minority leader John Boehner is raising a stink about it.

But that's not even the worst of it. Our $700 billion dollar bailout is actually looking more like a $5 TRILLION bailout (another report). I honestly don't know what to say anymore. I'm convinced the American people are stupid, there is no other way to explain why we allow these shenanigans to go on.


James Garfield, 20th U.S. president
Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature.

Florida Has Nothing on Minnesota

Being a resident of MN I am smack dab in the middle of the Coleman/Franken recount debacle. This is, without a doubt, the shadiest process I have ever seen. As you may recall Coleman had bested Franken by a mere 725 votes on election day. In Minnesota whenever a race closes within 0.5% it triggers an automatic recount. By all means that is a good thing and an appropriate thing. The problem is that this process is rife with corruption. By Wednesday night, that lead had shrunk to 477. By Thursday night, it was down to 336. By Friday, it was 239. Late Sunday night, the difference had gone down to just 206 -- a total change over 4 days of 519 votes. Here are just some things that have happened since last Tuesday:

• For the entire state, all 4130 precincts, a total of 486 changes were made to the Presidential, House, and State House races. So that is all the changes for all the races in all the precincts. Al Franken, however, has alone received 519 additional votes from just 3 precincts! This of course is not impossible, but the statistical probability of this is astronomically small.
• A Ramsey County judge ruled in favor of Al Franken in allowing late absentee ballots to be counted. The law states that absentee ballots have to be delivered by end of day on Nov. 4th. In this case they weren't. If the absentee ballots were sent out late initially by the government a case could be made for allowing them to be returned after Nov. 4th. But there is no indication that the ballots were sent out late. This ruling now allows any "lost" absentee ballots that now show up to count. Amazingly and against all probability, every single absentee ballot found so far has been for Al Franken.
• MN has a canvassing board that is responsible for recounting all ballots by hand and determining voter intent. The board is made up of 2 MN Supreme Court Justices, 2 District Court Justices, and the Secretary of State (who has connections to ACORN). Local officials will look at a ballot and if Al's name is circled or underlined or anything other than what it's supposed to be, one of the local officials can say, "hey, I think this ballot is a vote for Al." The other local official can disagree and now it gets sent to the MN canvassing board. So now these 5 people (3 of which or Democrats) will determine voter intent. We can't determine our Founding Fathers intent they say, but apparently we can determine a voters intent. So what happens if a ballot has the circle filled in for Coleman AND Franken? How do we determine the "intent" on that one? The whole process is ridiculous.
• One county election official in Mt. Iron, MN, went back and updated his totals to include an extra 100 votes for both Obama and Franken. The claim is that at the end of the day the official was tired and forgot to type in the results correctly. Again, to be tired and make a mistake is understandable. Where I see the problem is that he made the exact same typo for 2 different races. The statistical probability that he would make the exact same mistake on two separate races is well beyond reason.

One other problem we have in Minnesota is same-day voter registration. I have not heard one single argument in favor of this that can hold any water. So please, anyone who can tell me why same day voter registration is a good thing I'd like to hear it. The downside of same-day voter registration is that you can have massive amounts of voter fraud. If you are required to pre-register then your name goes on the books with the election officials. With same day registration its not. So now election officials can say, "Oh wait, we found all these extra ballots that we didn't turn in." Then they can claim they were all same day registrants that forgot to sign the rolls and there isn't a single thing you can do to stop them. I just don't see how the benefits of a same day registration program can outway the potential for fraud.

No Pay for Obama Workers

You know the old saying that sometimes "life is stranger than fiction." Well, this may fall into that category, but I don't really see it as strange. This is pure, 100% unadulterated irony. Apparently redistribution of wealth isn't so much fun when its not the "rich" getting nailed. I can't make this stuff up.

• Obama Decides to Garnish Canvasser Wages

By The Numbers: The Impace of Tax Increases

This is courtesy of the Heritage Foundation:

$2.4 Trillion: The overall tax increase faced by American families, seniors and businesses if President Bush's tax cuts expire.

$1,716: The average tax increase for over 100 million Americans if tax cuts are allowed to expire.

$2,034: The average tax increase that will hit 17 million seniors if President Bush's tax cuts expire.

8.3 Million: The number of jobs created after the tax cuts of 2003.

$91 Billion: The cost of reinstating the Death Tax

$17.2 Billion: The amount of spent in 2008 by Congress on frivolous "pork" projects that use taxpayer funds to reward local special interests and pressure groups.

44 Million: The number of married couples affected by the Marriage Penalty before it was reduced by President Bush. These families will be hit hard once again if the Marriage Penalty is reinstated.

$1,480: The average cost in 2000 for couples punished by the Marriage Penalty.

$108 Billion: The reduction in the federal deficit in 2005 thanks to economic growth sparked by Heritage-backed tax cuts.

$2,084: The average tax hike 42 million American families with children will see if President Bush's tax cuts expire.