All's Fair In Love And War? And, Believe Me, This Isn't Love

I can't over-emphasize how important it is to read the entire piece in the new Playboy entitled Rogues of K Street-- Confessions of A Tea Party Consultant. It's not just about manipulating a bunch of angry and ignorant Glenn Beck fans. (Like Wisconsin and Kentucky enfants terrible and certifiable imbeciles Paul Ryan and Rand Paul, "They may not read much, but they all know their Ayn Rand.) It's about overthrowing what's left of democracy in the United States. He talks about "scaring the crap out of the left," but by "the left" he's talking about the quintessentially moderate middle of the road Obama Administration, as financed and slavishly indebted to Wall Street as any Republican Administration. If that's who we have fighting the progressive battle, we surely are doomed. Forget the asshole personality that comes through as you read the first person account. Just keep in mind he's talking about what he wants to do to our country.

I hold as many meetings as possible over Tanqueray and tonics at the St. Regis hotel on K Street in Washington, D.C. The bar is dark and private, with comfortable couches. Even the gin tastes better there. On weekday afternoons the only people in the bar are foreigners and political consultants long past caring about who actually wins.

"You’re going to see something spectacular," an old friend who has a knack for black-bag operations said as he proudly downed his vodka. "About a month from now you’ll see ACORN explode from within." Right on schedule a video was released that showed undercover conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles getting advice from employees at the Baltimore office of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now on how to smuggle underage El Salvadoran girls into a fictitious brothel.

That’s when I realized this isn’t an average fringe movement. This one is credible, legit and-- for the first time in a decade-- scaring the crap out of the left. In my years as a campaign hack and then as a consultant, I’ve created more than my share of fake grassroots organizations. Some were downright evil but effective beyond expectations. Did you get an automated call from the sister of a 9/11 victim asking you to reelect President Bush in 2004? That was me. Did you get a piece of mail with the phrase supports abortion on demand as a means of birth control? That may have been me too.

Conservatives had been trying to take down ACORN for three decades. Where they failed, BigGovernment.com and my friends succeeded. In one magnificent explosion, a loose group of troublemakers, libertarians and Republicans took its first scalp. Sonja Merchant-Jones, former co-chair of ACORN’s Maryland chapter, told the New York Times in March, "That 20-minute video ruined 40 years of good work."

The ACORN blood tasted good. Shortly after, a core group of about 30 of us convened for the first time. It was the kind of conference call during which no one, except the handful with nothing to lose, offered last names. But it didn’t matter. I’d been around long enough to know many of the people by voice. Most of our talk was devoted to rants about the K Street lobbyists who are ruining the GOP. There I sat, in the quiet corner of a coffee shop on K Street, listening to a conference call beating the shit out of the people who keep me in business.

The cynical among us think it’s a group of peasants with pitchforks controlled by an underground cabal of Glenn Beck, wealthy donors and the guys who killed JFK. But the worst thing I can say about the Tea Party I work for is that it can make lots of noise but can’t win without professional help. I love the irony of helping run this organization from the St. Regis Bar.

...We are tremendously plugged in to BigGovernment.com and its stable of writers. Our news cycle is measured in minutes, not days. Combine the DNA of a flash mob, a news addict and a conservative who feels betrayed by the spending excesses of George W. Bush, sprinkle in some anxiety and you’ve got my people.

The campaign plan for one of the organizations I help uses the phrase black arts when talking about how we’ll win in the fall. It’s not a document filled with dirty tricks but a plan to create a nonprofit organization called Ensuring Liberty Corporation. It uses unconventional methods to get our message out and support grassroots conservatives: "Ensuring Liberty’s relationships run deep into the new media and use of cloud computing and innovation along with the black arts of campaign management. That is not to say that [we] will undertake actions that contravene any legal or ethical principles; however, the use of surprise, investigative journalism and other key experience will allow for rapid deployment of strategies that many candidates simply do not understand or take advantage of during their actual election campaign." Of course, the Tea Party is not as cohesive as anyone thinks. It’s not a party or even an organization. You have to understand the state of the Republican Party to understand how there can still be oxygen in the room for the Tea Party. Bush mangled the GOP brand into a grotesque form that conservatives haven’t recognized in five years.

Conservatives now live in the political-party equivalent of Mad Max. Law and order inside the Republican Party has deteriorated, leaving regional warlords to scavenge over what’s left. The trouble is that some of the regional warlords are nuts or crooks. Among the better-known scavengers is Eric Odom’s Tea Party-related PAC, Liberty First, which I believe will be able to raise and spend millions this fall.

...The mail you’ll see from me this fall won’t have much to say about gays or the unborn. We have new foils, such as the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Leveraging rage about a bailout for mega-millionaires and an $800 billion "stimulus" that has barely moved unemployment below double figures is a cinch compared with explaining why Bobby and Joey’s marriage is bad for America. Designing a thank-you note from an imaginary Wall Street executive to working-class taxpayers is so much more rewarding than most other messaging campaigns. With new variable-print technology, the postcard can be personalized and won’t look as though it was printed overnight at Kinko’s.

Dear [insert name],
I received my Troubled Asset Relief Program check from you and other taxpayers and wanted to personally thank you for your money. I will now be able to keep the third car and vacation home by [insert name of nearby vacation area].
I particularly want to thank [insert name of congressman] for ensuring billionaires like me do not have to worry about petty things like mortgage payments and retirement. [insert name of congressman] has been instrumental in making sure billionaires like me are protected.

Warm regards,
[name of Wall Street billionaire]

P.S. [insert name of our candidate] opposes runaway government spending. He will vote to protect taxpayers, not billionaires like me.

It gets better. Read it all and read it again. And keep in mind, of course that most Republican senators, 34 of them to be precise (including several who are up for reelection in November like Richard Burr in North Carolina, Chuck Grassley in Iowa, John McCain in Arizona, John Thune in South Dakota, Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, Tom Coburn in Oklahoma, and Johnny Isakson in Georgia) voted for Bush's no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout (TARP). And, don't forget that over in the House, where the TARP bailout was originally defeated 205-228 and passed a week later because Tea Party heroes like Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, Joe "You Lie" Wilson, Mary Fallin, Gary Miller, Dan Lungren, John Campbell and, most of all, Randian Paul Ryan were able to "persuade" 26 corrupt Republicans-- like Charlie Dent-- to switch their votes and get onboard the Wall Street gravy train. Obviously that doesn't matter to the people, like our author, who are pulling the teabaggers' strings.

Hysterical GOP hissy-fit headlines we won't be seeing: The case of the crusading conservative fake-investigators

Right-wing master propagandist-pimp Andrew

Breitbart (c) and his protégés, real-life "investigator"-

whores James O'Keefe III (l) and Hannah Giles (r)

by Ken

It's time for another edition -- by quick count roughly No. 1,835,856 -- of our favorite political parlor game, If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot.

Here are some hissy-fit headline we can expect to see not generated by GOP propagandists:

GOP Apologizes for Anti-ACORN Smear Job

GOP pols and propagandists disown

dirty tricksters and their "evidence"

GOP Congress Members Move to Censure Themselves

Over Bogus, Fraud-Based Campaign Against ACORN

Even as star GOP investigative fraudster-slimeball James O'Keefe III's evidence in his anti-ACORN scam unravels, the Rampaging Right's favorite juvenile delinquent of course has more immediate legal problems. It's possible the mental defectives of the Rampaging Right will be satisfied with his explanation for his little band of hoodlums' break-in and bugging of Lousiana Sen. Mary Landrieu's New Orleans office: "The sole intent of our investigation was to determine whether or not Senator Landrieu was purposely trying to avoid constituents who were calling to register their views to her as their Senator." It seems likely, though, that law enforcement authorities will be less impressed. The little thug is apparently an even more inept liar than he is a crusading investigator.

Meanwhile, though, left unresolved is the shitpile of his bogus ACORN "investigation." Interestingly, public attention was diverted from that matter about the time that (a) ACORN was officially cleared of any wrongdoing, and (b) the first people not on the payroll of the right-wing loons to take a proper look at O'Keefe's famous fake-prostitute video determined quickly and easily that it was obviously and crudely edited. You'll recall how quickly the entire right-wing establishment, including its junior wing, the Republican Party, joined in choral screeching denunciations of ACORN.

Our pal Mike Stark has posted a great update ("All You Need to Know About the ACORN Scandal and Who Is Behind It" on Huffpost, "More on ACORN/O'Keefe" on his own Stark Reports) on the GOP's lead crackerjack investigative fraudster-slimeball James O'Keefe, with video of emerging GOP master propagandist Andrew Breitbart.

In the first video below, Breitbart asks me if I’m disturbed by what I saw in the videos.

If he had let me answer, I would have told him that I perceive ACORN’s mission to be helping the underserved. That I don’t understand how helping women out of sexual slavery is something that deserves to be condemned. That what I’m disturbed by is the behavior being demonstrated by those up on the stage that would demonize people trying to make a real difference in people’s lives.

In the end, I think I ruined their little press conference.

Evidently, it hadn’t occurred to them that they might face serious scrutiny. Why, for example, does O’Keefe dress up in the ridiculous pimp garb for the bumpers of the video when he didn’t wear that costume into the ACORN offices? Why is Breitbart attaching his name and credibility to someone that was kicked out of his Rutgers dorm for refusing to cease his use of racial slurs? Exactly why would Breitbart expect an ACORN staffer to call the police on a Congressional candidate trying to rescue a young prostitute from her vicious pimp?

Finally, in the second video, we learn all we need to know.

After hiding behind the lawsuit and using it as a shield to deflect questions they did not want to answer, they refuse to commit to releasing every full and unedited tape they have in exchange for ACORN dropping all of its lawsuits.

If they really wanted the truth out there, why do they need to edit these tapes in the first place? Why aren’t the unedited videos already in the public domain?

Of course it's easy to understand why ACORN drives right-wing mental defectives so crazy. After all, ACORN's mission is to help the economically disadvantaged, which is another way of saying "the poor," and since the RWMDs are all devout Crap Christians, they know that God simply hates the poor, and only put them on earth to be savagely exploited by the rich and would-be rich. As the founder of Crap Christianity, Crap Christ, said, "The poor you will always have to exploit."
And since the poor are by definition, well, poor, the exploitation really has to be ruthlessly savage if it's to yield more than chump change. (In some though not all of the XXXXXX Gospels, Crap Christ also said, "And you know, they really smell bad.")

Some commentators feel that the Right-Wing Rage Against ACORN is actually driven by ACORN's ethics, recalling the voter-registration "scandals" in which not a single admittedly fake voter registration done by ACORN's hired hands led to a fraudulent vote, and that the fake registrations came to light precisely because ACORN fulfilled its legal obligation to report them when discovered to election officials. The theory is that the precedent could be fatal to the whole of Movement Conservatism. Could any Loony Right organization, including the Republican Party, survive the imposition of such a high legal and ethical standard? Certainly all of the GOP's vast network of genuinely fraudulent voter registrations and election riggings would have to be dismantled.

Now, just to bring it all home: Imagine that a right-wing operation -- Andrew Breitbart's, just to throw out a randomly chosen name -- were being investigated for alleged improprieties on the basis of evidence no better than this. How swiftly would national outrage, congressional condemnation and other punishments like attempted defunding be likely to come?

This is a trick question, I'm afraid. There wouldn't be any investigation. Well, why don't we sit back and watch the investigation into the activities of the New Plumbers, Mssrs O'Keefe and cronies. Already we can hear the mental defectives of the Right-Wing Noise Machine screeching about the rush to judgment against their hero, thug wannabe James O'Keefe III. Yawn.


TOMORROW --
If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot, No. 1,835,857:
JUSTICE ALITO FACES THE MUSIC [not]

#

Kirsten Gillibrand Stood Up To The Right Wing Scam Artists Who Targeted ACORN And Landrieu

Scam artist James O'Keefe III with would be hooker Hannah Giles

You've no doubt heard about how the Fox/Republican ACORN scam blew up in their faces today. DWT readers saw the joke in real time, last September when James O'Keefe and his crack team pulled one over on people who love to have something pulled over on them-- especially when it makes progressives look as bad as they are themselves and they imagine everyone else is as well.

Back then Senator Mike Johanns and his right-wing colleagues couldn't wait to jump all over ACORN and smear them with all that Glenn Beck nonsense that so fascinated the mainstream media for a week or three. In fact, on September 14, Johanns' amendment, S.Amdt 2355, "prohibiting use of funds to fund the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) passed 83-7, craven disgraces to the Democratic Party like Evan Bayh, Blanche Lincoln, Arlen Specter, Ben Nelson, Dianne Feinstein, Claire McCaskill rushing to buy into the trumped up demands of the far right as fast and loudly as they could. At that time only seven out of the huge Democratic majority had the intestinal fortitude to stand up and call "bullshit" on this scam-- Roland Burris (D-IL), Bob Casey (D-PA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). That was a pretty gutsy, even heroic, vote at the time-- especially for the only one of the 7 up for re-election this year (Gillibrand) and looking even better today. I wonder how Landrieu feels.

There was another amendment besides Johanns', I want to bring up, this one by lunatic fringe GOP dirtbag, Pete Olson (R-TX), which attempted to honor O'Keefe and his accomplices. Nothing ever happened with it, but Olson did manage to find 31 crazy co-sponsors to go along for the ride: Todd Akin (R-MO), Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), Joe Barton (R-TX), Rob Bishop (R-UT), Jo Bonner (R-AL), John Boozman (R-AR), Paul Broun (R-GA), Henry Brown (R-SC), John Campbell (R-CA), John Carter (R-TX), Howard Coble (R-NC), Tom Cole (R-OK), Michael Conaway (R-TX), John Culberson (R-TX), Mary Fallin (R-OK), closet queen Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Kay Granger (R-TX), Ralph Hall (R-TX), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Steve King (R-IA), John Kline (R-MN), Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO), Daniel Lungren (R-CA), Kenny Marchant (R-TX), cultist Joseph Pitts (R-PA), who today claimed he'd never heard of O'Keefe, Bill Posey (R-FL), Phil Roe (R-TN), Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH), and John Shadegg (R-AZ). Lotta Texas Crazy in that lot! And how did they forget Michele Bachmann and Virginia Foxx?

Anyway, in honor of Gillibrand's foresight and brave stand, I thought I'd share a little clip from Colbert's show with you tonight:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Alpha Dog of the Week - Harold Ford Jr.
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

UPDATE: The Accomplices-- 3 Conservative Activists

Media Matters introduces O'Keefe's partners in crime: all lowlife movement conservatives, Joseph Basel, Robert Flanagan (son of William Flanagan, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana), and notorious right-wing fanatic Stan Dai.

Craven, Cowardly Democrats Let Republicans Drag Them Around By The Nose Again

Does anyone think they would grow a pair if they had a 70 seat majority in the Senate? No, me neither. How about 80 seats?

Huge victory for Glenn Beck! Only 75 Democrats had the guts to stand up for ACORN today when the not-so-hapless Republican minority forced through a motion by GOP crook Darrell Issa (R-CA) to defund the organization. This is so pathetic-- and a true vision of the Republican idea of bipartisanship (even worse, if you can imagine than the rancid kind of bipartisanship corrupt Democrats like Kent Conrad, Max Baucus, Blanche Lincoln, and Ben Nelson are always pumping for). I want to especially congratulate the Blue Dog coalition, Steny Hoyer, and the freshmen we helped elect who see nothing wrong in selling out our allies in a tough time. Here's the list of the ones who didn't sell out:

Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
Xavier Becerra (D-CA)
Robert Brady (D-PA)
Corrine Brown (D-FL)
GK Butterfield (D-NC)
Mike Capuano (D-MA)
Andre Carson (D-IN)
Kathy Castor (D-FL)
Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO)
Jim Clyburn (D-SC)
Joe Crowley (D-NY)
Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
Danny Davis (D-IL)
Diana DeGette (D-CO)
Bill Delahunt (D-MA)
Mike Doyle (D-PA)
Donna Edwards (D-MD)
Keith Ellison (D-MN)
Eliot Engel (D-NY)
Chaka Fattah (D-PA)
Bob Filner (D-CA)
Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
Al Green (D-TX)
Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)
Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
Rush Holt (D-NJ)
Mike Honda (D-CA)
Jesse Jackson, Jr (D-IL)
Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI)
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
Rick Larsen (D-WA)
Barbara Lee (D-CA)
John Lewis (D-GA)
Stephen Lynch (D-MA)
Ed Markey (D-MA)
Betty McCollum (D-MN)
Jim McDermott (D-WA)
James McGovern (D-MA)
Gregory Meeks (D-NY)
Alan Mollohan (D-WV)
Gwen Moore (D-WI)
Jim Moran (D-VA)
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
Richard Neal (D-MA)
John Olver (D-MA)
Frank Pallone (D-NJ)
Bill Pascrell (D-NJ)
Donald Payne (D-NJ)
Jared Polis (D-CO)
David Price (D-NC)
Nick Rahall (D-WV)
Charlie Rangel (D-NY)
Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA)
Bobby Rush (D-IL)
Linda Sánchez (D-CA)
Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
David Scott (D-GA)
Bobby Scott (D-VA)
Jose Serrano (D-NY)
Brad Sherman (D-CA)
Albio Sires (D-NJ)
Louise Slaughter (D-NY)
Pete Stark (D-CA)
Bennie Thompson (D-MS)
Edolphus Towns (D-NY)
Nikki Tsongas (D-MA)
Nydia Velázquez (D-NY)
Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Diane Watson (D-CA)
Henry Waxman (D-CA)
Robert Wexler (D-FL)
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)

Shame on every other Democrat in the House-- even if they are clucking around how this will be "fixed" in conference. I bet Democrats like Harry Reid, Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln are running around trying to make sure they can get a shot at voting against ACORN in the Senate too. Nathan Newman, a friend of mine, made a brilliant suggestion when Issa introduced his poisonous motion, although no one in the House took it up:

Can the Democrats attach an amendment to the motion to defund any federal corporate contractor that has been found guilty of violating a federal law with those funds? That would pretty much kill the amendment in its tracks since the list of corporate felons is pretty infinitely long. The fact that corporations with active fraud histories continue to receive federal funds while ACORN is being defunded based on a video of a couple of idiot employees offering advice that was never actually processed in any financial form is incredible.

Instead we got this kind of messaging from Democrats, only too happy to run back to their constituents and validate right-wing talking points for their own political gain:

"With mounting allegations against ACORN, a public outraged by recent videos, and considering the Census Bureau's recent decision to sever their ties with ACORN, I voted to prohibit any future federal spending on this organization. I too was deeply disturbed by the recent ACORN videos that have been played out over the news and am glad that I had the opportunity today to sever Congress' ties with this organization."

The Dust Brothers:




UPDATE: Senate Proves Itself As Cowardly As The House... Big Surprise

Reactionary Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns introduced an amendment and senators were tripping all over themselves to show how big and tough and anti-ACORN they are. Only 11 Democrats stood against Fox News' jidah against reason: Dan Akaka (D-HI), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Roland Burris (D-IL), Robert Casey (D-PA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Pat Leahy (D-VT), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).


UPDATE: The Price Of Cowardice: An Escalation Of Attacks... Against Democrats

I hope Jim Webb and Mark Warner are proud of themselves for bending over and taking it from the Republicans yesterday. The GOP made this video (below) in a show of thanks. I'm sure we won't hear much from either senator but at least the SEIU knew how to respond:

"Another prime example of how the right wing is willing to lie, cheat and smear to silence the voice of people who work for a living. SEIU members are janitors, security officers, nurses, Head Start teachers and women and men who go work hard each day in the Commonwealth to make a better life for their families. Ken Cuccinelli could not find a more vivid way to prove that he is not offering what working families in Virginia need right now."

Glenn Beck Keystone Cops Get Totally Played By ACORN-- And Fox Reports The Silliness As News

Its always clown time at Fox

You'll have to take my word for this but when I was growing up, people who sold pot and hash and acid were heroes of the revolution, or at least some were, especially on college campuses... and especially me. The police didn't think so though. They were always trying to arrest me but they were beyond lame. Once from a dorm cafeteria I watched them smash a breaklight on my car so they could have an excuse to stop me when I drove back from NYC . I was too stoned do anything about it and they stopped me when I was driving home about 8 hours later and I had a pound of hash in a brown paper bag on the front seat. They strip-searched the car-- even took off the tires. But they never looked in the bag. Even funnier was that they would have goofy-looking narcs with fake ZZ Top beards come up to me and ask to buy a nickel bag. I wasn't so stoned that I fell for that one... and besides I didn't sell nickel bags.

But when I read how some Glenn Beck goons tried entrapping an ACORN worker yesterday, I started laughing thinking about those two narcs in the ZZ Top beards and the outlandish caricature of hippie outfits. Actually this sting was even better and the Glenn Beck people got totally played-- and took the whole teabagger version of a blogosphere along for the ride... breathlessly.

The head organizer for California ACORN says a new video that appears to show a staffer at the organization's San Bernardino office is fake journalism.

The video, which was posted shortly before 2 p.m. Tuesday on a Web site called Big Government.com, shows a female ACORN employee talking to a man who claims to be a pimp interested in establishing a brothel where underage immigrant prostitutes would turn tricks in order to raise money for political activity.

The woman, identified on the video as Tresa Kaelke, appears on posted footage to be interested in cooperating the plan. However, California ACORN head organizer Amy Schur said the video is a gross misrepresentation of what actually happened.

"In this video, there are two actors who come into our office and who were messing with us. And our employee was messing with them," Schur said.

She said that the complete and unedited video needs to be released to the public.

Schur said that in a moment not shown on the edited video, Kaelke asked the undercover "pimp" if he was joking and then proceeded to play along with the joke.

Furthermore, Schur said that Kaelke will sign an affidavit stating that she was not seriously entertaining the idea of cooperating with an apparent attempt to establish a house of prostitution.

"She (Kaelke) asked if they were joking and asked if they were reporters. They said they weren't reporters and they aren't. This is not legitimate news," Schur said.

By the way Tresa's husband, Ron Kaelke is alive and well, near Barstow. Fox didn't check and they're treating this tomfollery as hard news and reporting it as if it were. Here's ACORN's statement:

Today the videographer James O’Keefe’s hidden camera “interview” with San Bernardino ACORN organizer Tresa Kaelke, airing repeatedly on Fox “News,” including the Glenn Beck show, and on BigGovernment.com, has been caught out in an obvious set of lies and manipulations.
 
When the actors approached Ms. Kaelke with their provocative costuming and outlandish scenario, she could not take them seriously. So she met their outrageousness with her own personal style of outrageousness. She matched their false scenario with her own false scenarios.
 
“They were not believable”, said Ms. Kaelke of the two actors. “Somewhat entertaining, but they weren't even good actors. I didn’t know what to make of them. They were clearly playing with me. I decided to shock them as much as they were shocking me. Like Stephan Colbert does -- saying the most outrageous things with a straight face.” While her sense of humor might not be funny to many people, the fact is that she spun false scenario after false scenario and the videographer ate them up.
 
For example, in response to the set-up by the filmmakers in which they say they are trying get the young woman away from her abusive pimp, she responds that she was abused by her former husband as well (true) and that she shot and killed him (false). He is very much alive and living near Barstow, CA.
 
However, this is taken as the gospel truth, not just in the film itself, but also by several “news” personalities, indicating that no journalistic standards were applied to making the video or vetting it for broadcast.
 
Further, as the actors repeatedly noted how nice she was being, Ms Kaelke responded, also repeatedly, that her "niceness" was just her, not ACORN. “My supervisor would shoot this down like faster than a bat out of hell."
 
When the actors talked about bringing 12-13 year olds in from another country, supposedly because they needed a lot of money fast for a political campaign, Ms. Kaelke said, "You are going to need it for a lawyer!"
 
These exchanges, which do not appear in the edited film put on BigGovernment.com, call into question the journalistic standards of the film and of any purported news organization that chooses to run them.
 
Ms. Kaelke, who did not know she was being filmed, is appalled that her defensive attempts to deal with a troubling experience have been manipulated into an attack on her work helping low- and moderate-income families fight the foreclosure crisis, work for needed health care reform, and face the economic crisis in San Bernardino.

Beck admits he's not a lawyer and he's not a jury; he's also not a journalist. And Fox isn't a legitimate news organization. Fox, a right-wing advocacy group, has been caught in another smear-- and the latest victim is their own credibility. Take a look:

Which Democrats Bought Into Vitters' Anti-ACORN Bait?

Community organizers: dangerous to criminal Republican banksters

Yesterday the Republicans-- all of them-- united around their fear and loathing for community activism. One of their more extremist members, David Diapers Vitter (R-LA), whose idea of activism is dressing up in a diaper and getting spanked by high-paid call girls in Washington DC or New Orleans, introduced another frivilous amendment to the Stimulus Bill, S. Amdt.107. The purpose is no prohibit "direct or indirect use of funds to fund the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)." It was rejected, but just barely. Just barely? Have a dozen confused Democrats joined all the Republicans in supporting Vitter's red-meat-for-Limbaugh nonsense. The Democrats:

Max Baucus (MT)
Evan Bayh (IN)
Robert Byrd (WV)
Kay Hagan (NC)
Ben Nelson (NE)
Jon Tester (MT)

America's most vicious xenophobe, CNN hatemonger Lou Dobbs, along with some of the trashiest and most deranged and bigoted far right GOP propagandists sounded the alarm for the nation's paranoid reactionaries. Virtually nothing in her screed is true:

ACORN, you may recall, is the left-wing activist group with longtime ties to community organizer-turned-President Barack Obama. The nonprofit, which now takes in 40 percent of its revenues from American taxpayers after four decades on the public teat, has a history of voter fraud, corporate shakedowns, partisan bullying and pro-illegal immigration lobbying.

...Talk about subsidizing failure. These are the same activists that helped sow the seeds of the subprime meltdown. They aggressively played the race card and pressured banks to loosen standards, throw out down payments and lend to some of the nation’s riskiest borrowers. Now, these mobs protest across the country, disrupt foreclosure auctions, threaten bank executives and accuse lenders of, yep, racism for lending to those riskiest of borrowers.

This is the Republican mindset and above are the names of the six Democrats who bought into it. I'm ashamed for Robert Byrd and Jon Tester. The other 4 are really just Republicans anyway and it makes perfect sense that they would vote against the interests of working families. Dick Durbin (D-IL) tried showing these sad excuses for Democrats how to stand up to a barrage like this from right-wing extremists. Clearly, it isn't enough to just elect Democrats. That whole "more Democrats" idea is bankrupt. BETTER Democrats is the only way to go. Had Schumer not intervened in the North Carolina primary, we would have had Jim Neil standing with Dick Durbin (and Chuck Schumer), not Kay Hagan standing with Jim DeMint, Miss McConnell, Rush Limbaugh and David Diapers Vitter.

Can McCain Still "Win?"

Sure... just watch:



And it isn't just Rove. It's an across the board Republican Party strategy. People who interfere with voting rights should be tried for treason and, if found guilty, be subject to the death penalty. A few dead Republican creeps and it won't keep happening. And, yes, it's that important. Watch how they're trying to cover up their own voter fraud by demonizing ACORN:

Did McCranky lie last night? But of course! Hey, it's what Young Johnny does -- and he knows it

by Ken

As I've made clear, I didn't watch the debate. As I also expected, I've also been unable to avoid the "highlights."

And I realized that one major reason I can't watch a McCranky "debate" is the fondness for what Keith Olbermann the other night referred to as his "phony umbrage," the manufactured hysteria he goes into when he has no substantive issue and instead pretends that his deep-rooted personal honor has been outraged -- as if the useless sack of poop still has any vestige of honor.

He does it whenever he lies about Senator Obama's foreign policy or tax plans, for example, or when he pretends that he has tried to be some kind of "reformer" on financial issues. And as I watched those clips, I thought of the point I made in my post last night about the film Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story:

Now it wasn't news to me that politicians lie. What was news is that everybody involved on the inside of the electoral game understands that people lie all the time. It's so normal that it's taken for granted. Only we poor schlubs on the receiving end of the TV feed aren't in on the game.

Last night, for example, there was that moment of bad dinner theater when the Crankyman went into a whopper frenzy special even for him, blithering about ACORN attempting to perpetrate the greatest threat to democracy in history.

The simple, undisputed fact is that not one single "fraudulent" vote can or will be cast as a result of ACORN's voter-registration efforts. Even a second's actual thought -- which is to say a second more than Senator McCranky has devoted to any issue in this campaign -- will tell you that if "Mickey Mouse" or "Tony Romo" fills out a fake registration card, in order to pad the registration gatherer's daily output and thereby increase his/her meager pay, there is absolutely zero chance that "Mickey Mouse" or "Tony Romo" is going to show up at the polling place attempting to vote.

THE ACORN RED HERRING

ACORN in fact has taken the lead in identifying of problematic registration cards it gathers. By law it has to submit all registration cards gathered; it isn't allowed to make judgments of validity, which the law apparently prefers to leave to duly authorized election officials. And there are documented cases, as in Nevada, of officials simply discarding the cover sheets in which ACORN officials called attention to problems.

Ironically, in fact, ACORN is being punished for its own vigilance. The organization itself has a practice of calling attention to problem registrations in its cover submissions. The reality is that the level of problem registrations is on the low side for paid signature-gathering -- lower, say, than is customary with Republican petitions to get their patented democracy-diminishing propositions on the ballot in California.

The truth is that ACORN is doing extraordinarily important work, attempting to register eligible voters whom guardians of the rich like the Crankyman would rather not see vote -- notably poor ones, and especially racially "different" ones. Let the states or the federal government undertake the job of registering all eligible voters, and ACORN can devote its energies to other matters.

Now this is important, so let me say it again: Not one single "fraudulent" vote can or will be cast as a result of the defective ACORN registrations. Registration fraud is a totally separate issue from vote fraud, and the kind of registration fraud we're talking about here, which has to do only with padding the rolls, simply cannot translate to vote fraud, because there is never any intent to have the bogus registrants vote.

The entire issue is designed (a) to manufacture a conversation diversion and, perhaps more important, (b) to cover the all-too-real and all-too-massive programs of vote suppression and stealing in which the Republicans have engaged in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Apparently we can look forward to even worse actual election-rigging to even more of the same this time around, and will have to hope that the higher level of awareness will provide some protection.

The only reason I've gone into this matter is to bring my Lee Atwater lesson into the discussion,

Of course McCranky knew he was lying. Of course McCranky knew he was lying. Of course McCranky knew he was lying.

He wasn't misspeaking or misguided. He was, as I put it in my head to last night's post. lying his fool head off. And he did it, does it, because, as I suggested last night, he thinks voters are morons.

You see how long it takes to set out even this very simple version of the reality of ACORN's voter-registration work. The lie is much simpler than the truth and, alas, is thought by the liar to be readily received by his/her target voter.

Just make no mistake. Consider the new whopper in Young Johnny's repertory, his claim that he has repeatedly rebuked McCranky-crowd members who say inappropriate things. In fact, as far as anyone knows, he has done this exactly once, clearly in response to weeks of rising demands that he ferchrissakes do something about the rising tide of violent rhetoric among his audiences -- a direct result, of course, of the mood of hatred he and his running mate the Danger Moose have been fomenting.

Once. And that was only in response to rising levels of national outrage. I don't believe for a second that Young Johnny really believes otherwise. He just thinks there's no price to be paid for lying. Is he right?


CONFIDENTIAL TO WINGNUT LURKERS AND TROLLS

You do realize that Young Johnny thinks you're dumber than doody, don't you? Of course, it probably doesn't bother you, since you're used to being led by the nose by frauds and phonies and outright crackpots who, for their own personal reasons, lie to you and then feed the delusions they've planted, on the assumption that you're so stupid, you'll never catch on.

You're led by people who either are nuts themselves (and really aren't in touch with reality) or else hold you in utter contempt, ridicule, and loathing, and consider you perfect tools for achieving their nefarious goals.

You do know that, don't you?


WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE DEBATE?
(NOTE: YOU'LL FIND HOWIE'S TAKE IN THE COMMENTS)

As you may have gathered, Howie is traveling today, and so isn't positioned to offer his perspective on the debate. [Oops, not so! Check it out in the comments section. -- K] Feel free to share yours in the comments.


SPEAKING OF THE DEBATE, ARIANNA HUFFINGTON'S
GOT A GREAT POST UP:

"McCain's Losing Strategy: Double Down on the Anger"

#

The GOP Would Rather Steal The Election... But De-Legitimizing Comes In A Close Second

Yesterday two of the smartest people I know, Digby and People For the American Way president Kathryn Kolbert, took the cable media clowns to task for blowing up this whole ACORN situation into a context-free Republican propaganda opportunity. Fox News should now change its name to Acorn News and even MSNBC is failing in its duty to explain that these trumped up charges are an integral part of the Republican Party's 2008 last ditch attempt to steal the election.

Look, Republicans across the country are neck deep in corruption-- from NJ extremist Scott Garrett being caught playing footsie with lobbyists and not paying his state and federal taxes to Republican operative James Tobin being indicted today for election tampering in New Hampshire. The Republican Party is involved in a systematic attempt to disenfranchise African American voters in Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and Michigan. As Digby astutely pointed out today, the genesis of the whole Bush Regime Department of Justice scandal involved the refusal of Republican appointees in the U.S. Attorneys offices around the country to go along with trumped up charges about voter fraud (against ACORN and similar groups). It looks like the media is less discerning and picky. It was a Karl Rove operation then and it's a Karl Rove operation now.

Today, they've trotted out Village Wise Man John Danforth, who almost certainly gave the entire village a collective thrill up their legs. He is a high priest of bipartisan seriousness and if he says there's a problem with voter fraud I have little doubt that the establishment will immediately start fulminating about it despite the fact that Karl Rove and the GOP have been up to their necks in vote suppression for years. Danforth and Rudman (also on deck to help) wouldn't lie. They are "above politics" don't you know.

Their full blown propaganda campaign of the moment is aimed at furthering several different related goals. The first is to freak out the local registration offices, many of which are run by small town bureaucrats who are either subject to the propaganda or are GOP partisans themselves. They want to create a feeling of chaos around the voting processes and call the absentee ballots into question.

The second is to intimidate voters into not participating and making it difficult for those who do. They want people to believe that they will be grilled and scrutinized when they try to vote and perhaps make lines long and the process so arduous that people will give up.

Third, if the election is close, they will challenge its validity in court. After all, that worked like a charm in 2000. But barring that-- and it looks like it won't be close enough to do that-- they are laying the ground work to delegitimize the victory. That is an essential tool for rebuilding their movement and creating justification for the kind of character assassination and obstructionism that is their specialty.

If Ann Kornblut on MSNBC a few minutes ago is any indication the press sees this as a "both sides do it" sort of thing. Democrats complained about Bush vs Gore and vote caging and phone jamming and the vote suppression program in Ohio over the past two very close elections. Therefore, it's equivalent that the Republicans would complain about voter fraud and ACORN. The difference, of course, is that vote suppression was so inculcated in to the republican governing apparatus that they fired the US Attorneys for failing do their bidding and bring false voter fraud cases. That should be just a little bit of a heads up about who's doing what here.

The media needs to talk to Iglesias and McKay and some of the others involved in that scandal to remind themselves about the kind of systematic pressure that was brought to bear to effect the outcomes of elections during the Bush years. It might just wise them up to how absurd this hissy fit about ACORN really is. (But I doubt it ... )

Meanwhile, McCain's lobbyist brigade (i.e., "the campaign") is preparing him for the debate tonight with a kind of training video he can watch on Cindy's private jet)

Endorsement Season Has Begun-- And It Looks Very Bad For McCain

McCain acknowledges he has no chance to win the richest of all electoral prizes, California's 55 electoral votes. Although he's occasionally flown into the state to collect checks from wealthy reactionary donors, he doesn't bother campaigning in the Golden State. And the first congressional district, which includes the lush, rolling hills of the Napa Valley wine country has gotten so Democratic in its voting habits (PVI is D+10) that this once GOP bastion doesn't have any serious Republican electoral efforts.

The local newspaper in the Napa Valley, the Napa Register, was around even before McCain was born, even before the former slave states that all support McCain decided to secede from the Union. They have finally broken through the 15,000 circulation mark and they are hoping to reach 20,000 before the End Times. This weekend, the Napa Register was only one of two papers in the country to endorse John McCain and Sarah Palin-- they like their "experience"-- while 16 endorsed Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The other paper that endorsed McCain was the Wheeling News-Register (circulation 18,500). Right now 27 newspapers have endorsed Obama and 11 have come in for McCain, not counting unconstitutional infringements by church publications.

The other California papers that declared this weekend were the Fresno Bee, Sacramento Bee, Contra Costa Times, the Monterey Herald, and San Bernardino's staunchly Republican <Sun. But the big bonanza for Obama came from the battleground states where he picked up major support from the Toledo Blade, the Dayton Daily News, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times, the Muskegon (Mich.) Chronicle, the Lehigh Valley (Pa.) Express-Times, Springfield (Ohio) News, and former Bush-backers the Wisconsin State Journal. So why the early rush to endorse Obama from these crucial battleground state newspapers-- even before Wednesday's final debate? Let's see what some of them have to say in their own words, starting with Ohio:

The Dayton Daily News called McCain's campaign "disappointing" as he abandoned maverickism for party orthodoxy.

More than his opponent, he has run a relentless stream of commercials that have been discredited by nonpartisan fact-checkers. (Last week, all his ads were negative.) He has articulated no vision for the country other than to suggest that it should believe in him as an individual, as a war hero of independent judgment. His selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate was stunning. She is shockingly lacking in presidential qualifications. Some of Sen. McCain's most enthusiastic supporters have been forced to admit this. Her defenders say her resume compares well with Sen. Obama's, but it does not… [I]n a time of change, Sen. Obama is the more promising leader. With his agile mind, often pitch-perfect judgment and preternatural calm and self-confidence, he seems built for the job of sorting through this thing, if anybody can. The nation faces a choice that looks more and more like a choice between the future and the past. It has never been one to shrink from the future.

The rest of the papers in Ohio had similar messages. The Springfield News Sun said that it's "time for a change and that change cannot be delivered by the Republican candidate who has voiced no real split with the policies of the Bush years." The influential Toledo Blade focused on the economy: "To be sure, the path to recovery won't be easy for the next president. There are ominous signs that the economy will continue to falter before confidence can be restored in the financial system. The leadership required to contain and reorder the economic mess created by eight years of heedless deregulation will have to be both inspired and inspiring. We believe the person best equipped by temperament and intellect to firmly grasp the reins of government and guide it safely forward in these uncertain times is Barack Obama."

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette took a much broader view about the utter and dismal failure of Republican governance in general, calling for a president who will break with the past:

But this election is not just about the shortcomings of Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin and the failed legacy of a philosophy that they seek to perpetuate under the hastily erected banner of maverick. It is about the strengths of Barack Obama, whose rise to prominence is not a fluke or national infatuation but the consequence of his remarkable skills-- a keen intellect, noble intentions and the wit and grace to express them in ways that have inspired millions across the country. He has a rare gift exactly suited to the fearful times-- he knows the language of reassurance and hope.

Also in Pennsylvania, the Easton Express Times is going to Obama not just because of McCain's shortcomings but because of the promise they see in an Obama Adminsitration: "[H]e has demonstrated a cool head in troubled times, because he inspires confidence and because he is conducting an above-board campaign. The next president isn't going to be able to deliver on much of anything that requires new spending. He will have to be a deft, recession-fighting strategist, to avoid being this century's Herbert Hoover. He must end the Iraq war. Obama has the firmer timeline and commitment on this."
The St Louis Post Dispatch isn't kind to McCain and his deceitful and shameless campaign: "Over the past nine months, Mr. Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, has emerged as the only truly transformative candidate in the race. In the crucible that is a presidential campaign, his intellect, his temperament and equanimity under pressure consistently have been impressive. He has surrounded himself with smart, capable advisers who have helped him refine thorough, nuanced policy positions. In a word, Mr. Obama has been presidential. Meanwhile, Mr. McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, became the incredible shrinking man. He shrank from his principled stands in favor of a humane immigration policy. He shrank from his universal condemnation of torture and his condemnation of the politics of smear."

You know it's all over for McCain when he's even attacking Republican propagandists like Bill Kristol for being tools of the liberal media. So while legendary former North Carolina basketball Coach Dean Smith has endorsed Obama, McCain is desperately spending his time trying to deny how closely he worked with ACORN to move forward his pro-corporate immigration bill. When right wingers try making a case that Obama has ties to this nefarious group or that, they love yammering on about ACORN. Let's see what they say about McCain's ACORN connections. And they still want to connect Obama to Osama-- after all look how similar the name is (more than enough "evidence" for the Republican base-- but the only actual al-Qaida supporter in American politics is a close McCain ally, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who actually trained in a Taliban camp in Afghanistan and has been their biggest booster in Congress. I don't hear McCain or Fox denouncing Rohrabacher. Can you imagine if a Democratic congressman had been involved with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan the way Rohrabacher was! Of course, there is so much else wrong with this guy that his Taliban connection is only one of dozens of reasons McCain, devoid of the proper character or temperament to be president, should cut ties with him. Watch:

Desperate Republicans Have No Intention Of Going Down To Defeat With Either Dignity Or Honor

It has finally dawned on Republican Party leaders that they are in the middle of Desperationland. Easy enough to sneer and say they earned it-- and more-- but desperation is leading them down some unhealthy paths, unhealthy for all of us.

Republican office holders are aware that McCain's coattails are not just negative, but positively toxic. The three special election House candidates he campaigned for-- all in very Republican districts-- all lost in upset elections. GOP strategists are starting to whisper the word "landslide," and they mean a Democratic one that could leave the Republicans with impotent rump caucuses in both houses of Congress.

Everywhere, Party leaders are starting to finally realize the trouble they're in. Asked if McCain could win Wisconsin, former Republican Governor and McCain friend Tommy Thompson claimed it isn't impossible but when he was asked if he's happy with his friend's campaign, he said "No; I don't know who he is." And that's a feeling that people all over the country are having about McCain, who has tried to do everything he could to make Americans feel that he's someone they know and trust-- no one does-- and that Obama is "not one of us" and scary and different and unknown. It's almost funny when it comes from Sarah Palin who no one but Alaskans and a few religious extremists ever heard of before a month and a half ago.

Several party leaders said Mr. McCain needed to settle on a single message in the final weeks of the campaign and warned that his changing day-to-day dialogue — a welter of evolving economic proposals, mixed with on-again-off-again attacks on Mr. Obama’s character-- was not breaking through and was actually helping Mr. Obama in his effort to portray Mr. McCain as erratic.

Former McCain colleague and ex-Missouri Senator John Danforth said “This is a year where everything that could go in Obama’s favor is going in Obama’s favor. Everything that could go against McCain is against him. It’s absolutely the worst kind of perfect storm.”

The campaign itself is as confused, dysfunctional and erratic as the candidate. There's conflicting advise coming from every direction, poll numbers that look less and less likely to turn around and criticism from state party leaders who see their own fiefdoms in jeopardy because of McCain's inept performance. Endangered GOP incumbents like Gordon Smith of Oregon and Lee Terry of Nebraska are starting to take out ads that look like they're trying to distance themselves from McCain and tie themselves to Obama. McCain and his advisers blame his reputation for running a gutter campaign on everyone but themselves-- even on some of his own supporters who they call "nuts." McCain doesn't want to be identified with the "nuts" and he seems to have hoped Palin could placate them. But the party itself is almost nothing but nuts now. One far right extremist who runs the Colorado GOP, an unsavory and corrupt Dick Wadhams, best known as a kind of junior Karl Rove, is demanding that McCain needs more mud, not less. He thinks the campaign-- even in the face of the economic collapse threatening families all over the country-- must be all about Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers. The nuts love hearing about them.

So what's the game plan for the next 24 days? I think the media has scared the McCain camp away from depending on blowing up and antichrist argument and taking it out of backward hellholes like Lynchburg and into places where normal people live like Florida, Virginia and Ohio. So how is he going to try to win in post-medieval parts of the country. Steal it of course.

They're already setting up the backdrop by screaming ACORN, ACORN, ACORN, as though it had any relevance to anything-- other than GOP paranoia and projection. Just the way FactCheck.org found McCain's pie-in-the-sky claims about a conspiratorial relationship between William Ayers and Obama "groundless, false, dubious... and malicious," the hyped up slander of Acorn is being debunked as well. Adam at Progress Illinois is doing great work to get behind the media-generated hysteria that McCain's camp is demanding. He absolutely tore CNN's sensationalistic and completely misleading report to shreds on Friday.

CNN's Drew Griffin took his network's Special Investigations Unit to Lake County, IN yesterday in an attempt to document election problems in the area. Did he discuss the active and legitimate voter suppression campaign taking place there, in which local Republicans are blocking early voting in three Democratic leaning cities? Not at all. Instead, he focused on faulty registration cards submitted by the current bete noir of the conservative movement, the community organizing group ACORN. What's worse, his report (and most other media accounts) grossly misrepresented the intent and professionalism of ACORN's registration efforts

.
While McCain and his allies at Fox have persuaded lazy journalists that ACORN has been up to something nefarious by turning in fake registration forms, they never mention that ACORN is required to turn in all forms they collect and that ACORN has been flagging the suspicious ones for the registrars. Only a Republican trying to muddy the waters and set the stage for an argument that "everybody" cheats, would claim that there is some kind of equivalency between systematically disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters in Democratic leaning areas of battleground states and someone turning in a registration form claiming to be Babe Ruth or Richard Nixon. Can anyone with a straight face claim that "Babe Ruth" or "Richard Nixon" is going to try to vote in November? Or what about 7 year old O'jahnae Smith? Are Republicans worried that she's going to show up on election day and demand to vote? Believe it or not, the Wall Street Journal had a calmer and more reliable report.

Meanwhile, though, the Republican Party apparatus has moved into high gear to actually steal the election, as we reported last Wednesday. Last week the NY Times reported on illegal efforts in Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina to remove eligible voters from the rolls. Republicans have already been challenging military voters in Virginia and Montana, although when their scheme was discovered and exposed in Montana they quickly backed down.

StealBackYourVote.org suggests 7 steps to protect yourself from GOP voter suppression

STEP 1:  DON'T DON'T DON'T mail in your ballot!! Absentee ballots are often not counted for the weakest of reasons. Furthermore, there are new rules in many states that you must photocopy your ID and send it with the ballot. However, they often don't even tell you that. So hundreds of thousands of absentee votes will not be counted for this reason.

STEP 2:  VOTE EARLY ...VERY EARLY! Many states are already allowing you to vote. Do it NOW. That way if you're not listed on the voter roles, you have plenty of time to get your complaint heard.

STEP 3:  REGISTER AND THEN REGISTER AND THEN REGISTER! There is a TON of purging of voter rolls going on. It's not enough to think you're registered. Double check twelve times. You can check online at www.votersunite.org. Once you're done with that, go register. ...Then go register.

STEP 4:  DO NOT FILL OUT A PROVISIONAL BALLOT if your vote is challenged!! In 2004 the Republicans challenged a ridiculous number of voters. The voters were then told by a sweet little lady at a table that their "provisional ballot" would be counted, BUT IT WON'T. Don't listen to the little old lady!! DEMAND that poll judges make the judgment ON THE SPOT. Demand a call to the supervisor of elections. If you have to, go home and come back with a better form of ID.
If you need help, call ELECTION PROTECTION at 1-866-OUR-VOTE. And help those around you when you're at the polling place. Look for people having trouble. Call the number for them. Tell them not to fill out a provisional ballot!

STEP 5:  STEP AWAY FROM YOUR COMPUTER!  Walk out your front door and get active!!  Volunteer to help with the campaign. Or ignore the campaign and do something on your own. It's as simple as printing out these ELECTION PROTECTION steps and leaving them at people's doors. Hell, you could hand them out outside the polling places. Don't sit still or this election will be stolen. And go to a swing state if at all possible.

STEP 6:  FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS VOTE WITHOUT FRIENDS!  Don't go to vote alone. Bring friends!! Lots of them or only one of them. Make it a date. Arrange to have lunch with everyone after you vote. Whatever it takes. And have your election protection phone number WITH YOU (1-866-OUR-VOTE).

STEP 7:  IT AIN'T OVER 'TILL IT'S OVER! If the election is indeed stolen, don't throw in the towel! The day after is CRUCIAL! Three words need to be chanted over and over again: COUNT EVERY VOTE. For example, in 2000 Al Gore lost because of a Supreme Court decision that was 5-4 against him. Imagine if he had won that court decision. But if half of America had not chanted COUNT EVERY VOTE after election day, we would never have gotten to the Supreme Court. Half of America could've thrown in the towel on election night, but thanks to people in the streets, it was fought to the end.

And if you think the idea of GOP dirty tricks exaggerated, please treat yourself to the amazing Lee Atwater documentary. Atwater wrote the playbook for Karl Rove and Steve Schmidt. Watch the trailer

As for how McCain and his media allies are twisting ACORN into a scandal they can use for cover for their own plans... take a look at the kind of coverage this made up "news" has been getting: