When 1,099 Felons Vote In A Race Won By 312 Ballots

In the eyes of the Obama administration, most Democratic lawmakers and left-leaning editorial pages across the country, voter fraud is a problem that doesn't exist. Allegations of fraud, they say, are little more than pretexts conjured up by Republicans to justify voter ID laws designed to suppress Democratic turnout.

That argument becomes much harder to make after reading a discussion of the 2008 Minnesota Senate race in "Who's Counting?", a new book by conservative journalist John Fund and former Bush Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky. Although the authors cover the whole range of voter fraud issues, their chapter on Minnesota is enough to convince any skeptic that there are times when voter fraud not only exists but can be critical to the outcome of an important race.

In the '08 campaign, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman was running for re-election against Democrat Al Franken. It was impossibly close; on the morning after the election, after 2.9 million people had voted, Coleman led Franken by 725 votes.

Franken and his Democratic allies dispatched an army of lawyers to challenge the results. After the first canvass, Coleman's lead was down to 206 votes. That was followed by months of wrangling and litigation. In the end, Franken was declared the winner by 312 votes. He was sworn into office in July 2009, eight months after the election.

During the controversy, a conservative group called Minnesota Majority began to look into claims of voter fraud. Comparing criminal records with voting rolls, the group identified 1,099 felons -- all ineligible to vote -- who had voted in the Franken-Coleman race.

More @ Townhall

Virginia Flaggers Update: Reidsville Road Trip!

Jaime Funkhouser stand guard at the site of the former Reidsville Confederate Monument in protest of the Statue on top the monument not returning to its spot on Scales Street after 101 years.

THIS Sunday, August 19th, the VA Flaggers will travel to Reidsville, NC to stand with our friend and Tar Heel Flagger, Jamie Funkhouser. We invite everyone who is willing and able, to join us as we support Jamie in his efforts to raise awareness of the situation there. For anyone who has ever thought about flagging, wanted to flag, or just wants to get a peek at what goes on, now is your chance to join us on the front lines!

The Reidsville Confederate statue was erected in honor and memory of the brave men who left their homes and families to defend North Carolina during the War Between the States.

Sadly, just 100 years later, after a traffic accident damaged the statue, the statue was REMOVED, under the direction of the very ones charged with guarding the memory of those brave soldiers he represents!

There are those who believe that it is better to avoid any "unpleasantness" that may arise if the Reidsville Soldier is returned to his rightful home.
We disagree.

Jamie has been steadfast in his protest, most often standing alone...in weather ranging from freezing rain to blazing heat. We are honored to have the opportunity to stand with him!

Will you pick up your flag and join us?

We will meet at the circle in Reidsville at 10:00 a.m., leaving Richmond at 7:00 a.m., and plan on flagging until 3:00. Anyone interested in attending, or riding from Richmond, please contact us for more details.

More on Reidsville here:

http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2011/may/24/WSMAIN02-greensboro-man-knocks-head-off-confederat-ar-1059117/

http://www2.godanriver.com/news/2011/aug/14/confedmonument-ar-1236463/

http://www.wxii12.com/Group-Threatens-Lawsuit-Over-Damaged-Confederate-Statue/-/9678472/4461444/-/mio95m/-/index.html

http://myfox8.com/2012/05/23/reidsville-protesters-want-confederate-statue-back/

August VMFA Flagging Schedule:

Wednesday, August 15th: 3-Dusk

Saturday, August 18th: 11-3

Thursday, August 23rd: 3-Dusk

Saturday, August 25th: 11-3

Tuesday, August 28th: 3-Dusk

Saturday, September 1st: 11-3

If you are not on the text alert list, and would like to be, please let us know.

ALSO…save the date! Va Flaggers 1st Anniversary Celebration Picnic will be held Sunday, September 30th. 3-8, with supper at 5:00. More details to follow, but make plans to be there and bring your family!

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Sunday, August 19th: Flagging Reidsville! Join us as we stand with Jamie Funkhouser, forwarding the colors and protesting the removal of the Confederate Monument from the traffic circle in Reidsville, NC. We will leave Richmond at 7:00 a.m., and flag 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. in Reidsville.

August 23rd-25th: Sesquicentennial of the Battle of 2nd Manassas. Va Flaggers will attend the activities on Saturday, August 24th, and forward the colors at the National Park AND the CusterMobile, which is scheduled to be there!

Tuesday, September 4th: The Va Flaggers will be the guest speakers at the monthly meeting of the Isle of Wight Avengers, SCV Camp#14, Smithfield, VA. http://www.iowavengers.com/

Saturday, September 22: 9th Annual Richard "Dick" Poplar Day at 11:30 a.m. Memorial Hill, Blandford Cemetery, Petersburg, Virginia, http://www.petersburgexpress.com/Petersburg_Events.html

Saturday, September 22: 10TH Alabama Marker Dedication Ceremony, 10:00 a.m. Bristoe Station

Sunday, September 30: Save the date and celebrate the Va Flaggers’ one year anniversary with a family cookout at the home of Grayson Jennings. More details to follow.

Saturday, October 27: Guided bus tour of Stuart’s ride around Richmond. Sponsored by Edmund Ruffin FireEaters Camp 3000, SCV.

Susan Hathaway

Va Flaggers

It only requires half a brain to play

Via Knuckledraggin' My Life Away

The Most Divisive Campaign in American History

Via WRSA

In 1980, when President Reagan asked Americans, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago", it was still possible to campaign on a theme as simple as the job performance of the other guy. But now, 32 years later, the campaign hinges on a much more fundamental split among the voting population.

Romney appeals to voters who are dissatisfied with the last four years. Obama appeals to voters who are dissatisfied with America.

This basic gap was obscured in the 2008 campaign by the window trappings of inspiration. Among all the plastic pillars and stolen quotes from poets who stole them from sermons, it was harder to see that the underlying theme of the campaign was dissatisfaction with America. But in 2012, Obama can no longer run as a reformer or an optimist.

The coalition that he committed to last year is a coalition of those who are unhappy with America, not in the last four years, but in the last two-hundred years. Its core is composed of groups that fear democracy and distrust the will of the people. There is no optimism here, but a deeply rooted pessimism about human nature and the country as a whole. It is the Democratic Party's coalition against democracy.

After 2010, the numbers were crunched, and it was clear that Obama and the Democrats could not win a mainstream campaign. Instead, they targeted narrow groups, stirred up conflicts over issues aimed at that group, whether it was union pensions, racism or birth control. There was no more pretense of a national election, only a frenzied rush to polarize as many groups as possible and join them together into an acrimonious coalition, not so much for anything, as against Republicans.

There isn't any inspiration here. Just paranoia over everything from gay marriage to abortion to racial profiling to illegal immigration. A dozen illegal benefits being handed out with the explicit threat that they will be lost if Romney wins. A dozen mini-civil wars being stirred up to divide Americans and set them at each other's throats for the benefit of the Obama campaign.

From Occupy Wall Street to Wisconsin, from Trayvon Martin to Chick-fil-A, the goal of these manufactured conflicts has been to divide and conquer the electorate by emphasizing group rights over individual economic welfare.

Obama can't win on the economy. He can't win on foreign policy. He can't win on any aspect of his administration. All he can do is stir up violence and then promise to heal the country in his second term while winking to all the representatives of the grievance groups. It's not a new game, but the Democratic Party has never played it quite this baldly in a national election. And if it succeeds, then national politics will have finally been reduced to the level of a Chicago election.

More @ Sultan Knish

The String Wart Revolutions

Via WRSA

Velociworld
VERBATIM POST

With the summary firings of virtually the entire general staff of Egypt's armed forces Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has locked up power for the Muslim Brotherhood. That supposedly benevolent power-sharing, much bruited about on gossamer wings by western pundits, is so much obvious khara. We now have another Islamist state in the Near East. One that controls the Suez Canal, a 165-mile border with Israel in the Sinai, and the tenth largest armed force on the globe. Didn't see that coming when Lara Logan was being repeatedly raped in the street by mob-crazed Egyptian "enthusiasts."

Now all Israel needs is for a similar Islamist coup d'etat in Syria, where our feckless foreign policy has done nothing to influence the outcome of Baby Assad's assured demise. Facebook and Twitter and YouTube don't premise a democratic revolution anytime, or anywhere. They merely make sharing the real-time horrors of mob violence and government bloodletting a more democratically shared experience. What's been happening in the Arab world has not been a Velvet Revolution, or a Green Revolution, or an Orange Revolution, or a Cedar Revolution. It's been a series of String Wart Revolutions, the Libyan, Egyptian, and Syrian strings each more grotesque than the last.

The Suez will be the most interesting short-term issue. Transit of the canal has been notoriously corrupt since its creation, regardless of the reigning authority. Huge cash payments still move one's vessel to the front of the line. Now cash may not be enough. It is relatively easy for the United States Navy to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. How does one ensure the Canal stays open and safe? The British and the French surely won't help us do it after the 1956 debacle.

But hell, what's the big deal with the most vital seaway on the planet? Everyone can just Vasco da fuckin' Gama around the Cape of Good Hope. Probably only adds 12 days transit time. Each way. And oil is cheap, right?

Of long term interest is the perfervid religiosity. The Mubarak regime fell in shockingly short order. Now the street crawlers have their blood up, and a nodding accomplice in the palace. They won't be satisfied thumping some Sudanese or Ethiopians on the noggin. They'll be wanting to thump some Jews. Now, the supposedly well-trained Egyptian army couldn't even protect itself from the street crawlers, and I doubt the street crawlers, armed with some new-found hardware, would pose much of a threat to the Israelis.

But it is a distraction, when Israel must look east. They may not wish to divert conventional resources to the Sinai when Iran is on the menu. If the Sinai gets swarmed by ten thousand hooligans they might just glassinize it. Remember the Six Day War? This would be the Two Hour War.

Most importantly, what can we do to diffuse the instability an Islamist Egypt poses? I suppose the real question is what Obama will do with the situation to further his short term political goals. And the only answer I keep coming up with is start the damned thing.

A Book Report

Enlarged.

My Friend, NAGO And Drew Dix, CMOH Winner

A few weeks ago, while on the road, HH6 and I stopped to do some shopping at a local thrift shop (a favorite past time). Amongst the other items she found, HH6 found a couple of books for me. Most notable of these, thus far, is a book I read decades ago, in junior high or high school, on the Vietnam conflict.

"Silence Was A Weapon: The Vietnam War in the Villages," by Stuart A. Herrington, is a study of the author's experience as a young military intelligence Captain in the Phoenix Program. Because of the relevance of this book to the subject of this blog, I'm going to take the time to quote some excerpts, and interject my own commentary on why any specific excerpt is relevant, and how it ties into the resistance side of the spectrum, versus the counter-insurgent's.

As COL. Herrington (as an interesting historical note, now retired Colonel Herrington's audit of Abu Ghraib was one of the primary causes of the public exposure of the abuses that were occurring there. As will be seen below, his experiences and the abuses he witnessed in Vietnam led to a career-long disgust with torture and "enhanced interrogations.") points out in the preface to his book, the views he expressed were "offered with the sincere hope that they will assist in clarifying why the well-intentioned efforts of our country to win the "hearts and minds" of the South Vietnamese people ended with the ignominious departure of our ambassador from the roof of his embassy in an evacuation helicopter."

(Critical Note: This article is not intended to portray myself as an expert on the Vietnam War. While I have, for obvious reasons, studied the shit out of it, I was not there. I can only look at it, through the prism of history, based on the recollections and reports of those who were there. So, as I critique things that occurred, it is not intended to belittle or badmouth the veterans who went, most often poorly trained for the conflict they were entering, and did the best they could under the circumstances, often with Olympian results that belied the piss-poor preparation they were given. While the argument has been made, accurately, that U.S. forces smoked the shit out of PAVN and VC forces every time they faced them on a conventional battlefield, that is not the same thing as saying "we won the battles and the politicians lost the war." In reality, the PAVN and VC learned from battles like the Ia Drang and the Tet Offensive. Yes, the U.S. military can leverage our technological might and monkey-stomp the fuck out of any conventional force on the planet. The difference is, with few exceptions, such as SF, the U.S. military is terribly hide-bound and unable to look back to the Founders and remember the lessons of UW, while the PAVN and VC had no institutional pride to overcome. They adapted to the threat they faced, and mastered UW. We have a lot to learn from them and other irregular forces that the U.S. and other large, conventional militaries of the world have faced over the last four or five decades. That is my goal with book reports like this. Expect more of them. --J.M.)

More @ Mountain Guerrilla

Paul Ryan: Embarrassing Obama

How sweet it is!

Radio Vietnam

Via Billy

A mix of pop, rock & R&B filled the airwaves in harmony along with a new heavier rock & roll just starting to take off and all sorts of poets protesting. It was the sounds that defined a nation during the Vietnam War. Sound clips from Good Morning Vietnam, Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill, Adrian Cronauer, Presidents Nixon & Johnson speeches as well as AFVN announcements are part of the broadcast.

For all the upcoming events on Radio Vietnam, please be sure to regularly check the Programing Schedule!

Swing by the Facebook page and watch selected videos and more!

The System

Via Fight The Power

And your point, cartoonist at the Miami Herald? That the government is always so lily white that the militia is not necessary? Fail.

White House Yanks Anti-TSA Petition from Website

For a former community organizer, President Obama certainly seems to support anti-democratic activity with zeal—from his disproportionate use of Executive Orders, to this most recent action:

According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center,

At approximately 11:30 am EDT [Thursday], the White House removed a petition about the TSA airport screening procedures from the White House “We the People” website. About 22,500 of the 25,000 signatures necessary for a response from the Administration were obtained when the White House unexpectedly cut short the time period for the petition. The site also went down for “maintenance” following an article in Wired that sought support for the campaign.

The Wired article is also well worth a read, “Court Demands TSA Explain Why It Is Defying Nude Body Scanner Order.”

More @ The Independent Institute