Misc Commentary For 9/24/04

— You know, it’s easy to understand why so many people get bent out of shape about whether or not electronic voting is secure or not, but have you ever noticed that very few people — well, very few liberals at least — seem to be bothered by this sort of thing

“Beyond requiring applicants to sign a pledge on voter-registration forms affirming that they are U.S. citizens, there is no way to prevent the nation’s estimated 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens from casting ballots in November, area elections officials said.

…Dan Stein, president of the D.C.-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, said relaxed voting regulations and the ability to register to vote through the Department of Motor Vehicles allows illegal immigrants to get a form of legitimate identification.

“There are huge fraud problems out there,” he said. “There’s no safeguards on it.”

He also said those groups pushing voter-registration efforts this year don’t check to see if registrants are citizens. This flaw has the potential to “corrupt” the political system, he said.

“Aliens have already shown they are willing to break U.S. law to come here. Why should we expect them to not vote?” Mr. Stein asked. “In a system where virtually no effort is made to ensure integrity, we’d be naive to say it isn’t going on. You only need one vote to swing an election.”

It’s too late to do it for the 2004 election, but the GOP should really push to make sure our elections are secure for 2006. And that means not only making sure electronic voting booths are secure (open source software would go a long way towards insuring that’s the case), but preventing fraud by asking people for ID when they vote. The left will oppose that of course because they undoubtedly pick up millions of extra votes across the US each election via fraud, but making sure our elections are honest and transparent is vitally important.

— It goes without saying that I’m not a big fan of Teresa Heinz Kerry, but I do have a certain measure of sympathy for her. I mean imagine that you’re Teresa Heinz Kerry.

….You’re married to a US Senator, you have more money than you can spend in one lifetime, and you’re fairly happy with your pampered, jet-setting life.

But then, your husband runs for President and you have to play the dutiful wife. That means you have to spend more than a year on the campaign trail, doing campaign events, giving speeches, pressing flesh at fast food restaurants, and all the while, the relentless glare of the media spotlight is on you.

And let’s face it, unlike Laura Bush who’s the “perfect President’s wife,” you’re a net liability to the campaign. You say dumb things all the time, a lot of people don’t like you, and partisan Republicans who view you as a snobby, unlikable, elite say nasty things about you on a regular basis.

How unfair that must seem. I mean, you’re not the one running for office, right? You’re not another Hillary Clinton, who’s dying to get her hands on the levers of power in Washington. Heck, as a matter of fact, if you had your druthers about it, you’d be out on a yacht somewhere with a bunch of friends from Europe. Life was so much better before John ran for President…

Like I said, I don’t particularly like Teresa, but I really get the feeling that she never wanted to be in this position to begin with…

Bill Burkett is apparently a little cheesed that bloggers sniffed out his fake memos…oh, I’m sorry…he says he didn’t forge them; a mystery woman no one else can track down did. Anywho, Burkett is claiming that the White House secretly coordinated with bloggers to knock down the memos…

“Burkett also accused the White House of using the blog community to launch a “kill the messenger campaign” against him after the documents were made public.”

Lol, I wish the White House was coordinating with bloggers. If that were the case, then they could “coordinate” out some interviews with Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz. Karl Rove, if you’re out there, it’s not too late to hook a blogger up!

— Some people believe John Kerry when he says that he’ll be able to get other nations to do the dirty work for us in Iraq because he’s a liberal who gives the impression that he wouldn’t mind licking a few Old European boots.

However, I can’t think of a politician in a recent memory who has been ruder or more insulting to the allies we do have than Senator flip-flop. He refers to the countries that are sending their soldiers to fight and die beside of US troops in Iraq as the “coalition of the coerced and the bribed”. His shrewish sister is running around in Australia at his behest telling the Aussies that it’s a mistake to be allied with us because we’re “endangering” them. Then Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi addressed Joint Session of Congress and not only does Kerry not bother to show, he in essence called the Prime Minister a liar and sends his senior adviser Joe Lockhart out to gratuitously insult Allawi as a “puppet of the United States”.

Kerry has behaved disgracefully and irresponsibly, spitting in the face of our real allies, all in an effort to impress nations like France, Spain, and Germany that have proven that they can’t be counted on in the war on terror. What a disaster Kerry would be as President…

***Update #1***: The WAPO, in an article about political ad buys, notes that…

“Kerry’s campaign has moved ad money out of states once deemed competitive (Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Arizona and Colorado), but for now considered in Bush’s column.”

4 things…

1) Given the minimal impact John Edwards has had on the election since his selection gave the campaign a tiny bounce, I wonder if Kerry is wishing that he had selected Dick Gephardt for his veep? Not that Gephardt is a world beater or anything, but he might have been enough to deliver Missouri’s 11 electoral votes to Kerry.

2) Most of these states that Kerry is ceasing ad buys in aren’t a big suprise, but Colorado has been really tight and the Democrats had high hopes for Missouri. So, to give up both of those states really stings.

3) The number of states that went for Bush in 2000 that Kerry has a chance of winning in are really starting to thin out now and Florida (along with its 27 electoral votes) has become particularly crucial. If Kerry loses Florida and/or Pennsylvania, I don’t think he can win the election.

4) There’s also one possible nightmare scenario — think Florida 2000 part deux — on the horizon. Bush is almost sure to take Colorado again, along with its 9 electoral votes.

However, there’s a measure on the ballot that’s designed to split Colorado’s electoral votes “on the basis of the popular vote” and it’s supposed to be retroactive so that it would apply for this election.

That’s a really dumb idea which would make Colorado irrelevant to future elections because in practice no candidate would ever be able to win more than one electoral vote in what is a fairly evenly divided state.

Oh and can you imagine the political battles & court challenges if states like Texas, California, & New York tried to ape what Colorado is doing in future elections?

It would be a nightmare.

Moreover, this could cause particular problems this year. I say that because if Bush were to win Colorado, this ballot Amendment passed, and Bush lost because of it (which is not out of the realm of possibility), there’s a 100% chance that this would be fought all the way up to the Supreme Court since it’s retroactive.

Did I say it would be a nightmare yet? I did, but it’s worth repeating…

*** Correction: ***: While John Kerry’s sister made her comments to an Aussie paper, she made them from the US, not from Australia. That means she was not “running around Australia” when she tried to undercut our alliance with Australia….

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