Description:
West Virginia Vote Flipping Caught On Tape (VIDEO)
Huffington Post October 28, 2008 07:45 PM In this disturbing video, the potential problems voting machines could cause on Election Day is seen in stark light.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/28/west-virginia-vote-flippi_n_138729.html
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Woman paints lawn after Obama sign stolen
Wed Oct 29, 2008 at 05:01:33 AM PDT
It's almost funny that they think they can swing the momentum of this election their way by stealing yard signs.
So pathetic.
polls come after this
Luckily there are people like Shannon Bennett. She decided to take matters into her own hands.
After the Barack Obama sign was stolen from her front yard, Shannon Bennett painted a more permanent one with 12 cans of spray-paint and her front lawn as the canvas. "I just wanted to be able to say who I support, without being censored, which is how I felt when my sign was taken," said Bennett. She painted a large, red, white, and blue symbol in the front yard, using her old Obama sign as an inspiration.
This is why I love living in Austin. Even though we're literally surrounded by red counties (although even in Texas things are shifting to purple in some areas) we get artistic, creative people like Ms. Bennett.
Keep Austin weird, indeed!
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Fox's Shepard Smith Forced To Offer Disclaimer After Joe The Plumber Interview
Video Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTymPsuedQU
So, Joe The Plumber was out on the trail with John McCain today, apparently giving the thumbs up to someone in the crowd who felt that an Obama Presidency would bring about the end of Israel. From Raw Story:
The Ohio plumber, who has no license and is actually named Samuel Wurzelbacher, spoke at a McCain campaign event in Columbus Monday. A McCain supporter asked if "a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel." JTP hardly batted an eye.
"I'll go ahead and agree with you on that," Wurzelbacher said.
It's all a part of Joe the Plumber's "Maybe I'm A Foreign Policy Expert, But Anyway, You Should Go Out And Get Your Own Opinions On Things Instead Of Listening To Mine, Even Though I'm Going To Keep Opining If You Give Me Half A Chance, And Anyway, I Don't Even Really Know What John McCain's Position Is On Anything Anyway, And Probably I Should Be Snaking A Sink Trap Or Something, Instead Of Dragging Myself All Over The Country Making Statements Which I Then Sort Of Disavow A Few Minutes Later Anyway, Who Knows?" Tour of 2008!
Honestly, it's like the 24 Hour News has finally reached the 25th Hour or something.
Anyway, five minutes with Joe The Plumber had Shepard Smith so frustrated that the Fox anchor felt compelled to issue a disclaimer, immediately following the segment, pushing back on any notion that Obama would mean the "death of Israel," saying: "I just want to make this 100 percent perfectly clear -- Barack Obama has said repeatedly and demonstrated repeatedly that Israel will always be a friend of the United States, no matter what happens once he becomes President of the United States. His words." Smith later added, "The rest of it -- man...some things -- it just gets frightening sometimes. We'll be right back." I haven't seen Shep this broken up about the state of the world since Katrina.
Meanwhile, let's remember that after a year of trying to figure out what their campaign is about, the McCain camp has basically pinned all their hopes to the avatar of Joe The Plumber, a random dude who says, "I know just enough about foreign policy to probably be dangerous...I have no idea where John McCain's position is...I honestly want people to go out and find their own reasons. I tell people not to listen to everyone else's opinion. I'm not going to have them start listening to mine." His words. Such as they are.
SMITH: Do you think John McCain agrees with you?
PLUMBER: No, that is just my personal opinion that I've come up with by looking into different facts and what I think. That is what my message has been about. I haven't been telling people to go out and vote. Listen, you don't want my opinion on foreign policy. I know just enough about foreign policy to probably be dangerous.
SMITH: That is what I was wondering. I wonder if you think it is dangerous at all for people to say that a vote for Barack Obama is the same as a vote for Israel, if you think that is dangerous for people to start believing. What happens if the polls are right and he becomes President of the United States and people start thinking that this means the death of Israel. Are you worried about what people might do if they actually believe something like that?
PLUMBER: That goes back to what I just got done saying. Some people believe it wholeheartedly. This gentleman I spoke to is Middle America. Therefore...it is very important to him -- important to me, but especially important to this gentleman. He is Middle America and he was able to get on there and make his point, and I agreed with him. I have no idea where John McCain's position is on that. John McCain is his own person, just like I am.
SMITH: Do you think a lot of that has to do with some hateful things that spread all over the internet? After all, Barack Obama has said repeatedly time after time that there is nothing more important that the United States friendship with Israel-- and the United States will back up Israel every moment of every day if and when he becomes President of the United States. He could not have been clearer about it in his positions in speeches, and I just wonder what it is that makes you think he is lying about that.
PLUMBER: [illegible] Actions...I have heard words. I hear words from politicians all the time, but actions [crosstalk] the action that I see is offering to meet with certain enemies of the United States on no uncertain terms --
SMITH: Meeting with Ahmadinejad? That is what the campaign said. Let's put the statement on the screen. This is what the McCain campaign released after you said that at the campaign event today. So that is what they put out. "While he's clearly his own man, so far Joe has offered some penetrating and clear analysis that cuts to the core of many of the concerns that people have with Barack Obama's statements and policies. Whether it is Obama's willingness to sit down unconditionally with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or his plans to redistribute the paychecks of hardworking Americans, there is good reason to question the judgement that Obama would bring to the Oval Office." So that's what they put out, so I guess the fact that he has said it he would meet with Ahmadinejad is something that you have taken to believe would be the death of Israel?
PLUMBER: It definitely does not help the situation. I'm not trying to be dancing around this. I honestly want people to go out and find their own reasons. I tell people not to listen to everyone else's opinion. I'm not going to have them start listening to mine. Go out and get informed.
SMITH: Joe Wurzelbacher on the line with us after a GOP stop, a number of them today.
I just want to make this 100 percent perfectly clear -- Barack Obama has said and demonstrated repeatedly that Israel will always be a friend of the United States, no matter what happens once he becomes President of the United States. His words. The rest of it -- man...some things--it just gets frightening sometimes. We'll be right back
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McCain Support Continues Downward Spiral
Obama Leads by 19 Among Those Who Have Already Voted
http://people-press.org/report/465/mccain-support-declines
Overview
Barack Obama leads John McCain by a 52% to 36% margin in Pew’s latest nationwide survey of 1,325 registered voters. This is the fourth consecutive survey that has found support for the Republican candidate edging down. In contrast, since early October weekly Pew surveys have shown about the same number of respondents saying they back Obama. When the sample is narrowed to those most likely to vote, Obama leads by 53% to 38%.
A breakdown of voting intentions by demographic groups shows that since mid- September, McCain’s support has declined significantly across most voting blocs. Currently, McCain holds a statistically significant advantage only among white evangelical Protestants (aside from Republicans). In addition, Obama runs nearly even with McCain in the so-called red states, all of which George W. Bush won in 2004.
Just as ominous for the Republican candidate, Obama holds a 53% to 34% lead among the sizable minority of voters (15%) who say they have already voted. Among those who plan to vote early but have not yet voted (16% of voters), 56% support Obama, while 37% support McCain.
While Obama’s support levels have not increased much in recent weeks, a growing percentage of his backers now say they support him strongly. Currently, 74% of Obama voters say they support him strongly, up from 65% in mid-September. A much smaller majority of McCain backers (56%) say they support him strongly, which is largely unchanged from mid-September.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Oct. 23-26 among 1,500 adults interviewed on landline and cell phones, for the first time includes minor-party candidates Ralph Nader and Bob Barr. Few voters support either candidate, and their inclusion does not substantially affect the margins of support in the Obama-McCain race.
The survey finds that the proportion of Americans who disapprove of Bush’s job performance has hit a new high in a Pew survey (70%); just 22% now approve of the way Bush is handling his job. Since January, when Bush’s job rating was already quite low, at 31%, his approval mark has declined by nine points.
As disapproval of President Bush’s job performance has edged upward, fewer voters say that McCain would take the country in a different direction from Bush’s. Currently, more voters say McCain would continue Bush’s policies than say he would take the country in a different direction (47% vs. 40%). Just a week ago (Oct. 16-19), voters were divided over whether McCain would continue Bush’s policies or not (44% continue, 45% take new direction).
Favorable ratings for the Republican Party, which rose sharply following the party’s convention in early September, have declined to about their previous levels. Currently, 50% say they have an unfavorable opinion of the GOP, while 40% express a favorable opinion of the party; in mid-September, about as many had a favorable opinion of the Republican Party as an unfavorable one (47% favorable vs. 46% unfavorable).
By contrast, a solid majority (57%) continues to express a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, while 33% have an unfavorable impression. Majorities have expressed positive opinions of the Democratic Party for the past two years (since October 2006).
Obama-McCain Matchup
Coming out of the party conventions in September, Obama and McCain were running even. As the campaign enters the final stretch, Obama maintains a solid lead over McCain, with few significant changes since mid-October among key voter groups.
In mid-September (Sept. 9-14), McCain held significant advantages among those earning more than $75,000 a year, white evangelical Protestants, whites who have not completed college, and white men. Today, he maintains a significant advantage only among white evangelical voters, and has lost the lead or seen it shrink in most other categories.
For example, among voters earning $75,000 a year or more, McCain held a 53% to 39% advantage in the Sept. 9-14 survey. Now, Obama leads by 52% to 41%. After the conventions, McCain held a 52% to 38% edge among white voters. Today, he and Obama are running evenly at 44% each. In September, McCain held a 56% to 34% advantage among white respondents with some college education. Now, the candidates tally 46% each.
Meanwhile, the latest survey shows Obama continuing to dominate among his core support groups. Nearly seven-in-ten voters younger than 30 (68%) say they support the Illinois senator, compared to 24% who say they support McCain. Among women, Obama leads by 20 points (54% to 34%).
Fewer See McCain Taking ‘New Direction’
Since last spring, American voters have been divided over whether McCain would continue President Bush’s policies or take the country in a new direction, should the Republican nominee become president. In the current survey, however, a plurality of voters (47%) say the Republican nominee would continue Bush’s polices while four-in-ten say McCain would take the country in a new direction.
Independent voters have become substantially more likely to say McCain would continue Bush’s policies (37% in mid-October, 48% now) than to say he would take the country in a new direction (50% in mid-October, 38% now). By comparison, there have been no significant changes in opinion among Republican voters or Democratic voters: The vast majority of Republican voters (74%) say McCain would take the country in a different direction, while nearly as many Democratic voters (69%) say he would continue Bush’s policies.
Who Would the Candidates Favor?
Half of voters say that, if elected, McCain “would do too much for wealthy Americans.” Far fewer – just 17% – believe that Obama “would do too much for African Americans” if he is elected. These opinions are largely unchanged since mid-September.
Whites who have not completed college are more likely than white college graduates to say that Obama would do too much for blacks (24% vs. 8%). Nearly half of whites (46%) who have not finished college say that McCain would do too much for the wealthy.
Among all white voters, 19% say, if elected, Obama would do too much for blacks; roughly twice as many (39%) say that McCain, if he is elected, would do too much for the wealthy.
Who Are The Undecideds?
A week before the election, nearly one-in ten voters (8%) remain undecided in their choice for president and there is little to suggest that these voters will move strongly to one candidate or the other on election day.
When undecided voters are asked whether there is a chance they might vote for McCain or for Obama, only 14% indicate a preference for one candidate over the other (7% for McCain and 7% for Obama). More than three-quarters (78%) of the undecideds continue to express uncertainty: about three-in-ten (29%) say they might vote for either of the two candidates, while almost half (49%) say that they do not know if there’s a chance they might vote for either Obama or McCain. The remaining 8% say they will vote for neither candidate.
Undecided voters are less educated, less affluent, and somewhat more likely to be female than the average voter. Nearly half of undecided voters (48%) say they attend religious services at least weekly, which is same as the proportion of McCain supporters. Fewer Obama supporters (31%) say theyattend religious services at least once a week.
On most issues, the positions held by undecided voters fall between those of Obama and McCain supporters, although they are somewhat more similar to McCain supporters on the issue of illegal immigration. Overall, these voters are more likely than supporters of either candidate to say they don’t have an opinion about most issues.
Undecided voters do clearly distinguish themselves from supporters of both McCain and Obama in their lower levels of participation and interest in this election, and partisan politics in general. A majority (51%) of undecideds do not identify with either the Republican or Democratic parties and fewer than half (48%) report having voted in the primaries this year; by contrast, 63% of both Obama and McCain supporters say they voted in a primary.
Fewer than four-in-ten undecided voters (37%) say they are following news about the election very closely. By contrast, majorities of both Obama supporters (56%) and McCain supporters (55%) say they are tracking election news very closely.
Results for this survey are based on telephone interviews conducted under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates among a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults, 18 years of age or older, from October 23-26, 2008 (1,125 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 375 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 127 who had no landline telephone). Both the landline and cell phone samples were provided by Survey Sampling International.
The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race/ethnicity, region, and population density to parameters from the March 2007 Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. The sample is also weighted to match current patterns of telephone status and relative usage of landline and cell phones (for those with both), based on extrapolations from the 2007 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the sample.
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Hannity's Soul-Mate of Hate
By Max Blumenthal
June 3, 2005
This year a man named Hal Turner sat before his computer at his suburban home in North Bergen, New Jersey, posting bomb-making tips on his website, hailing the firebombing of an apartment containing "Savage Negroes" and calling for the murder of immigrants. "When enough illegal aliens get killed they will stop coming to the country!" Turner wrote.
Turner was once a prominent activist in New Jersey's Republican Party. To area conservatives, he was best known by his moniker for call-ins to the Sean Hannity Show, "Hal from North Bergen." For years, Hannity offered his top-rated radio show as a regular forum for Turner's occasionally racist, always over-the-top rants. Hannity also chatted with him off-air, allegedly offering encouragement to Turner as he struggled to overcome a cocaine habit and homosexual leanings. Turner has boasted that Hannity once invited Turner and his son on to the set of Fox News's Hannity and Colmes. Today, Turner lurks on the fringes of the far right, spouting hate-laced tirades on his webcast radio show. Hannity, meanwhile, remains mum about his former alliance with the neo-Nazi, homing in instead on the supposed racism of black and Latino Democrats.
A former moving company manager and real estate agent, Turner cut his teeth as the Northern New Jersey coordinator for Pat Buchanan's quixotic 1992 presidential campaign. He was an aggressive self-promoter who found a platform for his views on the radio show of Bob Grant, which was broadcast by ABC's flagship station, New York City's WABC. Grant was a pioneer of right-wing radio and, incidentally, a hysterical racist. In March 1995, according to the media watchdog FAIR, Grant entertained the call of a promoter for the neo-Nazi group National Alliance who billed his mission as the "support of European males." "I don't have a problem with the National Alliance!" Grant twice declared. Less than one month later, the Oklahoma City Federal Building was blown up by a white supremacist who said he was influenced by the plot of National Alliance founder William Pierce's pulp novel, The Turner Diaries. Grant insisted on his show for days afterward that Arabs were responsible for the bombing.
WABC came under enormous pressure from the NAACP and other civil rights groups to dump Grant. He had called Haitian refugees "subhuman infiltrators"; remarked that the United States contained "millions of subhumanoids, savages who really would feel more at home careening along the sands of the Kalahari or the dry deserts of eastern Kenya"; and often promoted "The Bob Grant Mandatory Sterilization Program" for minorities. In 1994, after a group of African-American clergy members issued a plea for sponsors to boycott Grant's show, Turner, at the time a frequent voice as a caller on Grant's show, organized a pro-Grant rally in Trenton, which was attended by numerous members of the white supremacist Nationalist Movement. Two years later, WABC finally gave Grant the boot.
WABC tapped Sean Hannity to fill Grant's seat in the broadcast booth. For Hannity, who had spent his career in the wilderness of the right-wing radio circuit, the gig was like a dream. "I'd grown up listening to Bob Grant...one of the most entertaining hosts I'd ever heard," Hannity wrote in his 2002 book, Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism. Hannity started out as a broadcaster at the liberal University of Santa Barbara. "But it didn't last long.... The left-wing management had a zero-tolerance policy for conservative points of view. And I was promptly fired," Hannity wrote. "They didn't like the comments one guest made on the show," he added, without specifying what those comments were. From there, Hannity was hired by the right-wing WVNN in Huntsville, Alabama, and then by WGST in Atlanta, where he filled in for his friend, the "libertarian" broadcaster Neil Boortz. By the time WABC brought him on board, he was already co-hosting Fox News's newly minted Hannity and Colmes, which, as of May, was America's second-rated cable news show, with 1.3 million households viewing each night.
On WABC Hannity inherited Grant's fan base of angry white males, who listened to his show in the New York City area. Hannity recognized his audience's thirst for red meat, racist rhetoric. However, he knew that if he wanted to avoid Grant's fate, he needed an air of deniability. When "Hal from North Bergen" began calling his show, Hannity found he could avoid the dangers of direct race-baiting by simply outsourcing it to Turner.
During an August 1998 episode of the show, Turner reminded Hannity that were it not for the graciousness of the white man, "black people would still be swinging on trees in Africa," according to Daryle Jenkins, co-founder of the New Jersey-based antiracism group One People's Project. Instead of rebuking Turner or cutting him off, Hannity continued to welcome his calls. On December 10 of the following year, Turner called Hannity's show to announce his campaign to run for a seat in the US House of Representatives from New Jersey, and to attack his presumptive opponent, Democratic Representative Robert Menendez, as a "left-wing nut."
By this time, according to Jenkins, Turner and Hannity had bonded off-air. In 1998 Hannity received an anonymous e-mail linking to an AOL discussion board on which Turner had allegedly confessed to a cocaine problem and alluded to past homosexual trysts. Turner (or someone claiming to be Turner) wrote in an August 4, 1998, Google discussion forum that Hannity called him to clear the air: "Just last week, Sean phoned me at home from his job at FOX News to continue a conversation we'd begun earlier while he was at WABC," Turner wrote. "Sean advised that one of you sensitive souls sent him an e-mail about 'revelations I had made' here on the internet. He told me it was obviously and [sic] attempt to 'poison the water.' " Turner continued, "I told him that I've done things I'm not proud of, and had dark times in my life; and those experiences helped shape the way I live today...the right way. He [Hannity] laughed and commented that he knew the feeling." Turner added that such chats with Hannity were "not unusual," often occurring while Hannity held his calls during commercial breaks.
Jenkins told me that while he and a group of antiracism activists demonstrated against a July 17, 2003, National Alliance meeting in Elmwood Park, New Jersey, which Turner attended, he encountered Turner and asked him about his relationship with Hannity. Turner claimed that he and Hannity would talk by phone and even recounted that Hannity had once invited him and his son on to the set of Hannity and Colmes. "In my view," says Jenkins, "I think Hannity has helped Turner out quite a bit. I'm willing to bet most of the conversations they had consisted of them talking shop."
But Turner and Hannity's relationship collapsed in 2000 after the Hudson County Republican Party endorsed Turner's primary challenger, Theresa De Leon, an accomplished businesswoman and dark-skinned Latina. "I had never judged people on their race, not prior to that point," Turner recalled in a February 23, 2003, article in the Bergen County Record. "And there I was, on the receiving end--in America--of a decision that I wasn't good enough because I was a white male." Turner finished last in the primary, just as Hannity was hitting his stride as a major Fox News personality. When WABC's screeners began blocking Turner's calls, he realized he was no longer of use to Hannity.
So Turner took matters into his own hands, purchasing a time slot on the eclectic shortwave radio station WBCQ. For more than four years, Turner unleashed a barrage of hate speech at his perceived enemies--"bull-dyke lesbians," "savage Negro beasts," "filthy mongrels," etc. In 2003 Turner said US District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow was "worthy of being killed" for ruling against white supremacist leader Matthew Hale in a trademark dispute. The day after Lefkow's husband and mother were found murdered on February 28, Turner penned an article for the far-right chat room Liberty Forum outlining tips to help white supremacists avoid scrutiny from federal agents. "So what can we, as White Nationalists (WN), expect as a result [of the killings]?" Turner wrote. "Frankly, a SHIT STORM!" Turner was eventually visited by FBI agents, though when a suspect was arrested, he had no organizational links to white supremacist groups. By this time, Turner had quit the Jewish-owned WBCQ because, as he told the Associated Press, he saw Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and realized he "could no longer do business with Jews."
Today, as one of America's most recognizable broadcast personalities, Hannity vehemently denounces racism as he sees it. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Hannity demanded time and again that Al Gore fire his black campaign manager, Donna Brazile, for her comment that "we're not gonna let the white boys win." Two years later, during California's gubernatorial recall election, Hannity repeatedly attacked Democratic candidate and Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante as a racist for refusing to renounce his association thirty years prior with the Chicano student group MECHA. Yet Hannity is silent about the racist affiliations of favored guests like Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, Mississippi Republican Governor Haley Barbour and former Republican Congressman Bob Barr, all of whom have spoken before gatherings of America's largest white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens.
Hannity remains silent, too, about his relationship with his former friend, the neo-Nazi Hal Turner. Whatever he thinks about Turner's politics today, Hannity views his career as a uniquely glorious phenomenon--right-wing hate radio as the American Dream. "This is America, after all," Hannity wrote in Let Freedom Ring. "Whatever you think, you're free to say it out loud--as long as you're prepared to defend it. And if you get lucky...someday you might even get paid for it.
“Obama!” Bush exclaimed, according to Obama’s account of the meeting in his second memoir, “The Audacity of Hope.” “Come here and meet Laura. Laura, you remember Obama. We saw him on TV during election night. Beautiful family. And that wife of yours — that’s one impressive lady.”
