Cknolls

So How Many Voters Can ACORN Sign Up When They Play by the Rules? [Greg Pollowitz] The Seattle Times answers that very question: After King County Elections officials uncovered what would later be described as the most egregious instance of voter-registration fraud in state history, John Jones was summoned to the office of then-King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng. It was early last year and Maleng's office was preparing to file charges against six canvassers who had filled out nearly 1,800 voter-registration cards the previous fall with names they made up using phone directories and books of baby names. Jones' organization, the state chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — commonly known as ACORN — had paid the workers $8 an hour to sign up low-income voters in King and Pierce counties. Maleng, King County's Republican prosecutor who died in May 2007, pulled Jones aside for a man-to-man talk. Maleng told Jones that as a community leader, it wasn't enough for him to admit fault and take responsibility for it: Jones must make sure the mistakes made in fall 2006 never, ever happen again. Last week — as Republican presidential candidate John McCain continued to question the validity of the 1.3 million new voters ACORN has registered nationally for the November election — Jones said Maleng's words are forever burned into his memory. Maleng "said he respected the good work ACORN does but he made it clear that if there were any more problems [with voter registrations], we'd be having a very different conversation," Jones said. Since signing a settlement agreement with King County in summer 2007, the local ACORN chapter has remained under a microscope. For now, it has eliminated its mass voter-registration drives, registering only 500 voters this year compared with the 37,000 it registered for the last presidential election in 2004. Still, Jones said — and state and county officials confirmed — that Washington ACORN hasn't made a single mistake in adding its newest voters to county rolls. "No problems have been associated with ACORN [this year], but you can bet people are watching. They're on a short leash," said David Ammons, a spokesman for Secretary of State Sam Reed. 37,000 in 2004. 500 in 2008. Amazing what happens when you play by the rules.

FWIW: First exit poll of actual American votes from Israel shows big McCain win [Tom Gross] Within the last hour, the first exit poll of 817 Americans in Israel, who attended U.S. election voting events in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening to vote by absentee ballot, has been released. A startling 76 percent of those polled said that they had voted for John McCain. This contrasts sharply with pre-election polls of American Jews in the U.S., which indicate a strong preference for Obama. The exit poll findings of American voters in Israel are all the more surprising because less than one in four were registered Republicans, and 46% of registered Democrats living in Israel said they had crossed party lines to vote McCain. By contrast, the Republican crossover to Obama was minimal – just 2%. The votes are significant as almost half of the 42,000 registered U.S. voters living in Israel come from key swing states including Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In the 2000 and 2004 elections, Israel had the third-largest group of American voters abroad, after Canada and Britain. The exit poll was commissioned by Votefromisrael.org, an independent, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting voter registration and participation amongst American citizens living in Israel. SARKOZY: OBAMA’S STANCE ON IRAN IS “UTTERLY IMMATURE” More than half of the respondents listed foreign policy (including Israel and Iran policy) as the most important factor influencing their vote. Separately, in a poll for the country’s largest newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, most Israelis in general (not just Americans living in Israel) said they would prefer McCain because they are concerned about the anti-Israeli positions of many of the people Barack Obama has appointed to advise him on foreign policy, and because – in the words of French President Nicolas Sarkozy as quoted in Tuesday’s Ha’aretz newspaper – Obama’s stance on Iran is “utterly immature” and comprised of “formulations empty of all content.” In most countries, according to opinion polls, if the local populations had a vote in next week’s American elections, they would choose Obama over McCain. Among the exceptions (where McCain would win) are Israel, Iraq, Georgia and the Philippines (all countries that have had to cope with terrorism).

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 29, 2008 -> 08:37 PM) Daley said in more detail that the 65k is just the ticketed section, and there will also be an unticketed, GA section. Wow, how will they get all those people up here from there. Will each state have their own section?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 29, 2008 -> 03:12 PM) It wasn't quite as big as I thought, but if you take it from top to close, we lost almost 500 points from where this thing started to sell off. We still ended the futures own about 2.5%. 49 SPU points on the 2:50 10 minute bar. UNBELIEVABLE!!!

HARRISBURG — A former staffer for an affiliate of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now testified today that the organization was provided a "donor list" from the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in late 2007 for fundraising efforts. Anita Moncrief, a former Washington, D.C. staffer for Project Vote, which she described as a sister organization of ACORN, said her supervisor told her the list of campaign contributors came from the Obama campaign. Moncrief said she has a copy of a "development plan" that outlines how Obama contributors who had "maxed out" under federal contribution limits would be targeted to give to Project Vote, and that it was her job to identify such contributors. Moncrief testified that ACORN and Project Vote were virtually identical. Nothing to see here. Move along...

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Oct 29, 2008 -> 10:27 AM) I believe we test 960 S&P.

Holding All the Cards [Mark Steyn] On the grubby little racket of his online credit card fraud, Senator Obama merely has to run out the clock now. If it's not exposed before Tuesday, no one is going to have any appetite for investigating it once he's won. So he must be relieved that this off-message headline - "Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations" - only gets as far as Page 2 of The Washington Post. (There is an element of art to these calculations: The Obamatron editors in the media want to be able to cover themselves by saying they raised the story, but the trick is to do so at a time and place that prevents it going anywhere before November 4th.) The reporter, Matthew Mosk, filed a bland and perfunctory on the subject a couple of days ago, but he seems belatedly to have woken up and got some of the key points: Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed. "Largely" untraceable? "Potentially" be used? No, they have been used to evade limits. But not a bad start. Here's a glimpse of the scale of the operation: The Obama campaign has shattered presidential fundraising records, in part by capitalizing on the ease of online giving. Of the $150 million the senator from Illinois raised in September, nearly $100 million came in over the Internet. So two-thirds of Obama's record haul derives from a website that intentionally disabled all the default security checks that prevent basic fraud like fake addresses and no-name matches. The RNC chief counsel says: "I think they've made the determination that whatever money they have to refund on the back end doesn't outweigh the benefit of taking all this money upfront..." Lawyers for the Obama operation said yesterday that their "extensive back-end review" has carefully scrubbed contributions to prevent illegal money from entering the operation's war chest. Not true. Almost every fraudulent donation sails through, and real money leaves real accounts. To give to Obama his fellow "citizens of the world" don't even have to pretend to be American. As detailed yesterday, Mr A Hitler of Berlin, Germany is only the most obvious fake donor to make a contribution and receive shortly afterwards a Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome email thanking him for joining the active community of community activists: Dear Adolfe, Thanks for joining this movement... Check out the resources below — learn how you can connect with fellow supporters, organize in your neighborhood, build our national grassroots organization, and stay informed with the very latest campaign news. (In fairness, connecting with fellow supporters, organizing in his neighborhood and building grassroots organizations is not something Herr Hitler needs a lot of help with.) The Fuhrer is only a non-Obama supporter seeking to expose the obvious fraudulence of his online fundraising operation. If you were actively trying to funnel money to the Obama campaign for real, you'd probably choose a less obvious name to hide behind - Frau E Braun, say. Which brings us to the case of Mary T Biskup of Manchester, Mo, who discovered there were scores of small online donations made to the Obama campaign in her name, even though she hasn't given him a dime. They added up to $174,800, which is a wee bit over the $2,300 limit. This very generous donation was not billed to her own card, but to someone else's - meaning (as the Post says) "someone appropriated her name". Ah, but who? And, if just one unwitting front is responsible for 175 grand of the Obama take, how many other Mary T Biskups are there out there?

Will it be Charlie Gibson tonite or Brian Williams on Friday who asks Obama: "Who ordered the anti-fraud protections turned off on your" website? Holds breath....waits....

But I do tell you that if the Democrats win and have substantial majorities, Congress of the United States will be more bipartisan," said Pelosi. Who writes her stuff, GWB?

The case of Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher is an object lesson in how Obama and his supporters try to destroy anyone who even inadvertently gets in their way. Once Wurzelbacher was thrust into the limelight after Obama approached him in his driveway, Democrats swung into action to try to discredit the plumber by ransacking records on file with the State of Ohio. These efforts--the ones that have come to light so far--are recounted in the Columbus Dispatch: Authorities in Toledo and Cleveland confirmed today that workers accessed Wurzelbacher's driving record and vehicle information through state computer systems in checks uncovered by The Dispatch. ... The Toledo Police Department announced that a records clerk improperly pulled Wurzelbacher's information on behalf of a reporter for a Toledo television station the day after the Oct. 15 presidential debate. ... Altogether, the Dispatch identifies four separate violations of Wurzelbacher's privacy by Democrats in Ohio's state bureaucracy who improperly accessed his records, hoping to find information helpful to the Obama campaign. This is the worst one: Inspector General Thomas P. Charles also is investigating why the director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services approved a check on Wurzelbacher through the state's child-support computer system. Director Helen Jones-Kelley said that after a "team meeting," she OK'd the check because the department often runs inquiries to check for unpaid child support on people thrust into "the public spotlight." Is that disgusting, or what? They actually held a "team meeting" to decide to spy on Wurzelbacher on Obama's behalf. As it happens, Wurzelbacher doesn't pay child support, but they apparently thought there was no harm in checking. The Director of the Department of Job and Family Services denies that she was trying to help Obama: Jones-Kelley said there were no political motivations behind the check. The Democratic appointee has contributed the maximum $2,300 to the Obama campaign this year, according to Federal Election Commission records. This woman is so full of sh**.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 29, 2008 -> 08:26 AM) I can believe the big snap back, what I can't believe is that we aren't selling off right now. My prediction is a quiet day until 1:15 with the Fed rate cut coming, and then a big (4-5%) selloff at the end of the day. I believe we test 960 S&P.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 28, 2008 -> 10:06 AM) Don't know where to post this, so I will ask here. Has anyone asked McCain if he gave up government secrets while in captivity? And has any outlet reported on his years as a P.O.W.? But we know/knew Bush was a member of skull and bones and he drank and did coke and the like. I'm done continue your charade.

Don't know where to post this, so I will ask here. Has anyone asked Obama if he met Ayers in NY while attending Columbia? And has any outlet reported on his years at Columbia?

QUOTE (DrunkBomber @ Oct 24, 2008 -> 10:48 PM) Everybody knows that, however 90% of people wont acknowledge the significance that has in the current election. They seem to think that Obama got his feet wet in Chicago politics without corruption. That is what is so funny about the Dems saying CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE. But they only mean at the Federal level. Chicago is broke, Cook County is broke, and Illinois is broke. The states' problems can be attributed in part to the Repubs, but the other two solely Dems. Public employee unions are killing govt's on all levels and nobody(DEM) seems to care. Next bailout will be for Calpers and the like.

So killing a father of two and leaving him die is the same as calling 911 about traffic? I love the moral equivalency.

Yesterday we noted the Obama's campaign's acceptance of credit card contributions made via the Internet under false names and addresses in "Who is John Galt?" Many readers wrote to confirm the experiment conducted by our reader under the names John Galt, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Bill Ayers at obviously phony addresses. At the same time, the contributions of "John Galt" and all the rest were rejected without fail by the McCain campaign. How could this be? Mark Steyn and many readers (thanks to all) wrote to explain that the Obama campaign has chosen to reject, and the McCain campaign has chosen to adopt, the Address Verification System, or AVS. It is a simple tool that prevents credit card fraud. As Steyn observed, "the AVS security checks most merchant processors use to screen out fraudulent transactions (and, incidentally, overseas customers) were intentionally disabled by the Obama campaign -- and thus their web donation page enables fraudulent (and/or foreign) donations." Steyn also reported the contribution of NRO reader "Della Ware" of "12345 No Way." Steyn later reported that "Ms. Ware's" contribution was actually withdrawn from her account yesterday. Campaign contributions under false names are illegal, as are contributions by noncitizens. Federal campaign law also limits the amount any one citizen can contribute to the presidential campaign to $2,300. The acceptance of campaign contributions via credit card without AVS protection facilitates illegal contributions. This is what the Obama campaign has chosen to do, and what the McCain campaign has chosen to avoid. Steyn elaborated on this point at the end of the day: n order to accept donations from "Della Ware" and "Saddam Hussein" et al, the Obama website had, intentionally, to disable all the default security settings on their credit-card processing. I took a look at the inner sanctum of my (alas, far more modest) online retail operation this afternoon and, in order to permit fraud as easy as that which the Obama campaign is facilitating, you have to uncheck every single box on the AVS system, each one of which makes it very explicit just what you're doing - ie, accepting transactions with no "billing address", no "street address" match, no "zip code" match, with a bank "of non-US origin" (I've got nothing against those, but a US campaign fundraiser surely should be wary), etc. When you've disabled the whole lot one step at a time, then you've got a system tailor-made for fake names and bogus addresses. By this time "Della Ware" had contacted the New York Times to report her experiment. Here, one might think, is a story. At the least, it provides an important sidebar to the heralded Obama online fundraising operation. Yet when Times reporter Michael Luo wrote it up for the Times's campaign blog, he somehow missed the point. "To be fair to the Obama campaign," Luo wrote, "officials there have said much of their checking for fraud occurs after the transactions have already occurred. When they find something wrong, they then refund the amount." But, to repeat, the Obama campaign has chosen to establish an online contribution system that faciliates illegal anonymous or falsely sourced contributions, illegal foreign contributions and the evasion of contribution limits. Why has it chosen to do so? Why has it not availed itself of the AVS protection that would expose or prevent such illegal contributions? Luo does not grasp the heart of the story. It is a story, however, and an important one. At least Luo reported it. The rest of the Times and its mainstream media colleagues have averted their eyes or turned their attention elsewhere

We noted here and elsewhere the astonishing degree of fraud that has fueled Barack Obama's record fundraising. The ultimate instance of Obama-fraud was achieved by a reader of The Corner: So I went to the Obama website this afternoon and clicked on the "Donate" button. I used my real MasterCard number (but was not asked for the 3 digit security code). Used the following information and it was accepted... First name: Fake Last Name: Donor Address: 1 Dollar To Prove A Point City: Fraudulent State: AL Zip / Post: 33333 Email Address: [email protected] Phone Number: 2125551212 Employer: Mainstream Media Occupation: Being in the Tank And incredibly, my $5 donation was ACCEPTED!!! I then went to the McCain site and used the exact same information (and WAS asked for the 3 digit security code for my MasterCard). There, my contribution was rejected with the following message: "Your transaction was not approved for the following reason(s): Invalid data", and then: "We have found errors in the information that you have submitted. Please review the information below and try again." Is this how he raises record amounts? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's another Enquirer story: http://www.nationalenquirer.com/sen_joe_bi...celebrity/65619 Thoughts?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 22, 2008 -> 11:31 AM) BSC? I'm not familiar with that acronym. Bear Stearns.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 21, 2008 -> 02:11 PM) And in this case, someone whose bank actually looked pretty good, relative to the others. The only question I would ask him at his confirmation hearing: How much BSC counter-party risk were you(JPM) exposed to at the time of their demise?

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Oct 22, 2008 -> 06:49 AM) Is Pelosi the "maverick" who is going to reform government and cut wasteful spending? No this is the Nancy we know: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s home district includes San Francisco. Star-Kist Tuna’s headquarters are in San Francisco, Pelosi’s home district. Star-Kist is owned by Del Monte Foods and is a major contributor to Pelosi. Star-Kist is the major employer in American Samoa employing 75 percent of the Samoan workforce. Paul Pelosi, Nancy’s husband, owns $17 million dollars of Star-Kist stock. In January, 2007 when the minimum wage was increased from $5.15 to $7.25, Pelosi had American Samoa exempted from the increase so Del Monte would not have to pay the higher wage. This would make Del Monte products less expensive than their competition’s. Last week when the huge bailout bill was passed, Pelosi added an earmark to the final bill adding $33 million dollars for an “economic development credit in American Samoa.” Pelosi has called the Bush administration “corrupt.” She should know.

FWIW, NRO is reporting from a variety of sources that Jamie Dimon has agreed in principle to be Obama's Treasury Secretary.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Oct 21, 2008 -> 09:25 AM) Well, that would reveal that she didn't really give birth not so long ago... can't let that cat out of the bag. Since no green, I'm sure you will source this S**tty post. And if not, keep it in the Dem thread.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Oct 17, 2008 -> 01:10 PM) How much money do you generally need to do a CD? Usually $500 minimum. But higher amounts for the larger yields.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 17, 2008 -> 09:58 AM) I wish I had 1/100th of the investment knowledge that Buffet has. I try to follow his advice often, and got myself back into the market with my "side money" on Monday. It's not a lot right now (only $1k), but its something. My parents got themselves out of the market about 9 months ago. Not terrible timing considering where we've gone over that period, but now the problem is convincing people like to reinvest now. Bank it in a CD. Rates will be low for at least a year and returns on stocke too will be weak. Bear markets chew you up and spit you out. I would go no longer than 2 year cd's and try to get as close to 4% as possible.