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Here, ma'am, allow me to fill out that ballot for you:

A Democratic state legislator from east Arkansas, his father and two campaign workers pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiracy to commit election fraud after federal prosecutors said the lawmaker's campaign bribed absentee voters and destroyed ballots in a special election last year…..[…]…Prosecutors said Hallum and his father, Kent, tasked Carter and Malone with obtaining absentee ballot applications for certain voters and assisting voters in filling out the ballots, "actually completing absentee ballots in some instances without regard to the voter's actual candidate choice."

(emph. mine)

Money quote from the aforementioned Democratic state legislator Hudson Hallum:

"I took some bad advice that led to some bad decisions on my part."

Via Drudge

Watching the speech of BO. Pretty sure he has something stuck in his teeth.

Nice post on Paterson, EBD.

He did a fantastic job on Mackinlay's Rare Old Highland Malt, the recreation of Shakleton's whisky.

Well, we now know that Ontario voters are not prepared to given Dalton McGuinty a majority. We also know that Ontario voters do not see Tim Hudak as an alternative premier. Please see:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/09/06/ontario-byelections.html.

For my part, let me offer my congratulations to the Ontario PCs for yet another stellar election performance, right up there with their performances in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 general elections. Brilliant!

Actually, let me be the first to invite Mr. Hudak to resign as leader and make way for someone who is actually a conservative who means it, who is capable of garnering some attention, and who can articulate a credible and convincing alternative program for the Ontario economy, the Province's finances and the anti-business, anti-growth policies of the Liberals and their NDP fellow travellers.

BTW, the party also needs to re-brand itself. The PC brand is over and needs to be replaced at least by Conservative, or maybe even something else.

You've got something in your glass Brian M.? Don't listen to the entire event alone. Don't do it man.

The whole Ontario PC party needs to be done away with - all those years with John Tory and now this loser Hudak?

Tuned in DNC last night and there was some nun going on about how unholy the Republican Party is. After the floor booing the reinsertion of the word God in the Democratic platform, I wonder what she thinks now.

Tonight I tuned in and got Biden talking about the wonder of the leadership of Obama leading up to the killing of Bin Laden. Amazed his nose didn't get longer and longer.

I am sure most young people are watching the Music Awards tonight and not Obama's speech.

I agree with David Southam and Mississauga Matt. The Ontario voter does not see enough of a difference between a socialist Liberal and a socialist Progressive Conservative.

the one is saying we did everything under the sun but build our businesses....can't stand the man, he's no longer a candidate.... he's the president.

Michael Totten interviews Dr. Sherkoh Abbas, leader of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria.

for the confused souls that think that freedom of speech does not extend past political discourse...

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Crime/2012/09/06/20174946.html

I'm sure the CINO's on this site will have some lame excuse

Know your meme, mirror and empty chair.

Peter Schiff asks Dems if they want to 'ban' profits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=07fTsF5BiSM

h/t Sun News

Bear, you are an idiot. Pretending you are someone else to spread lies about them doesn't now, and never has fallen under what we call free speech. It is now, and always has been slander. If you don't understand that, look the word up in the dictionary.

BareAss Obumhole: Golden forked-tongued messiah spewing a gusher, and the mindless lapdogs feverishly slurping it up.

We're in for a battle yet, folks.

HowTF do you counter the America Can Dance culture? We may be hooped!

Hawkins had the best tweet of the night.

It was blended scotch. He was wise to throw it out.

Agreed Greg! single malt or nothing at all!

Re: Hudak and the byelections

It is truly sad to see what has happened to my old province of Ontario.

I am glad I saw the writing on the wall when I left; unfortunately the same thing is happening again in Quebec. Even the French are leaving this time (the bilingual ones of course). A friend of mine just moved to Calgary and got a job in 24 hours, making more money than he ever has.

Central Canada is in BIG trouble.

greg and Bri need to expand their horizons, there are some fantastic blends, and not all great whisky is Scotch.

That was the same speech he gave last time. I don't think they will see a bounce out of this convention at all. When's the next poll dump?

Don't forget to take Obama's speech within the context that he already knows what the job report is going to say tomorrow morning.

"There will be more tough times"

He's going to get kicked tomorrow and he knows it.

Best line from ace.mu.nu/

"Last night the dems denied God three times before Bubba's c*ck crowed."

RE: Whiskey.

Nothing can come close to Wiser`s Special Old Canadian whiskey, right out of the 12 oz mickey, that`s wrapped in brown paper, after it has been allowed to sit in the glove box for about two hours.

krauthammer nails obamas speech tonight.

with apologies to Clint Eastwood, the empty chair had more of substance to say than Obama did.

How would you explain to a young person why Tupperware could only be purchased from specially designated Tupperware reps at a party?

Jennifer Granholm just a week too into Barack Obama...

EBL 1:14, there were some like that in the audience at the DNC this evening, and I thought it looked like some people in the films from the Hitler and Stalin eras.

This is what happens when people choose Beelzebub.

Agreed.

Britains unemployment rate is as bad or worse than the rest of Europe and even worse than the US.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2199130/Britains-jobless-cities-How-THIRD-households-completely-work.html

Fun vid EBD.

Check out the language and the certainty by Gwnne Dyer in this article for Newsweek. Government inaction could mean starvation, scientists are in agreement and on and on regarding climate change. Same things we've been subjected to for years. Wait a minute... this is from 1975 and it's about the devastation about to befall us all from global COOLING.

http://bit.ly/X403E

PET Cemetery Report.

"Mr. Bain described himself as a federal Liberal".

...-

"Montreal shooting suspect ‘sick, but never, never violent’"

"Mr. Plouffe added that Mr. Bain described himself as a federal Liberal and invited the mayor several times to attend party events. (Denis Joannette, executive director of the federal Liberals’ Quebec wing, said Mr. Bain is not a party member but that events are open to the public."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/montreal-shooting-suspect-sick-but-never-never-violent/article4522497/?cmpid=rss1&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

James, 11:58p.m. --

Check www.realclearpolitics.com daily. Rasmussen tracking is out daily at 9:00 a.m., while Gallup tracking is out daily at 2:00 p.m. Other polls as they're published.

Mao Stlong* Soral Paner Lepolt.

Ich Bin Ein Glut Im Der Dlaining.

...-

"China Price War Draining Jobs in Germany’s Solar Valley: Energy"

"When Thomas Behling returned to his home state of Saxony-Anhalt in 2006, he was drawn by a job in the solar industry and the chance to participate in Germany’s renewable energy boom. He was fired in July.

Behling’s employer, Sovello GmbH, produced its last solar panel on Aug. 26, sending 1,000 workers home after attempts to find an investor to save the seven-year-old company failed. Next door, Q-Cells SE (QCE), once the world’s largest solar-cell maker, is being acquired by Hanwha Group of South Korea as soaring debt brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. At least 12 German solar companies filed for protection from creditors in the past year.

Their demise, fueled by price competition from China and a cut in German subsidies from April, has hobbled Saxony-Anhalt’s effort to turn a 350-hectare (1.4 square miles) business park near the town of Bitterfeld-Wolfen into Europe’s solar-power nucleus. Even as Chancellor Angela Merkel pins Germany’s exit from nuclear energy on power derived from the sun and wind, a global glut of solar panels is killing the fledgling firms."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-06/china-price-war-draining-jobs-in-germany-s-solar-valley-energy.html

*Ex-Liberal leader Rae's uncle, c/o Red China.

Far be it from me to laud Warren Kinsella, but on this score he is absolutely correct. Please see:

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/08/31/ndp-a-distinct-threat-to-canadian-unity

The guy, Mulcair, is unbelievable: he's political suicide personified. How's that list coming, again?

1. The British criminal.
2. Dutch disease.
3. Under fierce criticism, "clarifies" his position on Dutch disease -- what he really meant was that we needed a carbon tax.
4. Let's give money to bail out Europe.
5. Northern Gateway is dead.
6. Harper not maintaining a balanced economy, favours resource industries.
7. Now this -- Sherbrooke Declaration reaffirmed! The day after Quebeckers outright reject the separatist parties!

If he's the big "moderate" that gets old Broadbent so riled up, why doesn't he, you know, moderate his positions?

And the MSM skates for the guy every day! Are you kidding, me? You think you're fooling us, calling him a federalist when he continues to try to keep the PQ position on life support?

Kinsella's skating for the Liberals is a bit of a not-unexpected eye-roll, but he's actually taking the Conservatives' side in this as well, which is long, long overdue: as William Johnson well chronicles in his biography of Stephen Harper, the real father of the Clarity Act is Harper, not Chretien, who only came to the Clarity bill position after he almost lost the country with a 50% +1 position.

Which brings me to a final point, which I'm sure you're not going to like: the real occupant of Trudeau's space on national unity (with substance added and blah, blah, blah removed) is Harper, not anybody on the opposition benches. While I'm not at all happy with the by-election results last night (which have more to do with Hudak's and the PCs' pathetic-ness than anything else), I do believe that this is a significant element of Harper's strength in Ontario, which can only be further girded by this unmitigated NDP blunder.

As for Quebeckers, whether federalist or for renewed federalism, with friends like Mulcair, you certainly don't need to be all worried about us gun-totin' angry white English-speaking Monarchists in the rest of the country. Might be time to wake up to the dangers at hand and start understanding who your real friends are.

Ken K., after watching the DNC this week and Oblahblah's speech last night, you must be thinking, with sinking heart, deja-vue all over again.

What I've seen over the past few days at the DNC has been disturbing: a whipping up of the fervor of the crowd, like a lynch mob, not so much for their candidates but against their opponents. Partisanship's the usual at a political convention, but this crowd appears to be totally in thrall, like a bunch of zombies, to the idea of Obama as POTUS, even though his record totally stinks and it's obvious that Americans are much worse off than they were four years ago, with no reason to expect the prospects getting any better, despite all the Dems' talk of things having to get better -- that's the "hope" part of Zero's "plan," completely empty, but the crowd went wild.

Last night's speech was full of platitudes and leagues' short on a plan. It was all "I'm the good guy, you can count on me, life's been really tough for me, so feel sorry for me, and vote for me."

Gag.

David Brooks must have heard from the NYT last night that he was being too negative about Oblahblah -- he certainly had a hang-dog look all week as he desperately tried to find something positive to say -- because his verdict was that the DNC was more successful than the RNC. If he and the NYT are correct, we're in so much trouble ...

Charles Krauthammer on Oblahblah's speech:

I was stunned. This is a man who gave one of the great speeches of our time in 2004, and he gave one of the emptiest speeches I have ever heard on a national stage. Yes, it had cadence, and yes, there were deceptions in it. But that is not what is so striking about it. There was nothing in it.

This is a man who believes that government can and should do a lot. There is nothing in here that tells us how he’s going to go from today to tomorrow. ...

http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/07/krauthammer-on-obama-one-of-the-emptiest-speeches-i-have-ever-heard-on-a-national-stage-video/#ixzz25myD5zmA

Can't you find a video of a straight guy drinking Scotch. I guess not.

Dear Mr. _____:

This is in response to your e-mail of August 31 addressed to Kirk LaPointe, CBC Ombudsman, drawing our attention to a CBCNews.ca story posted earlier that day under the headline, “Eastwood’s bizarre speech ignites Twitterverse”. You described it as evidencing CBC’s “anti-Republican bias”. “Why are [R]epublicans lambasted”, you asked, when “Obama has given many ‘bizarre’ speeches”?

While I regret you are once again disappointed in CBC, I must also tell you that your view in this matter is not one that I share. There is no “bias” in the headline or the story.

Let me clear at the outset that, as you will note, the story was written by The Associated Press. While CBC News is responsible for all stories published on its web site, the story was not written by CBC News journalists.

I should also point out that “bizarre” simply means unconventional, odd or unusual. One dictionary defines it this way: “Strikingly unconventional and far-fetched in style or appearance”. As an adjective – as it was used in the story’s headline – it is defined as meaning “odd or unusual, especially in an interesting or amusing way”.

It is fair to say that compared to the other speeches delivered by Republicans at the Tampa convention, Mr. Eastwood’s was “unconventional”, “unusual”, even, “odd”. The message largely was not (Obama’s unfulfilled promises, Romney’s suitability for the job), but the delivery (a conversation with an empty chair, rambling and occasionally coarse) was unlike anything else seen at the convention.

It was a word widely used to describe the speech. The Toronto Star said it was “bizarre” and “baffling”; The Globe and Mail called it a “rambling diatribe”; The Washington Post said it was “wacky”; The Guardian in the UK called it “baffling”; and the National Post and its newspapers across the country used The Associated Press reports, which in addition to “bizarre” and “rambling” described it as “kooky” and “longwinded”.

CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices permits journalists to make judgment calls. In other words, they are free to reach conclusions on their own based on facts. That was the case here. As I noted above, it was a judgment widely shared by other media.

Thank you again for your e-mail.

It is also my responsibility to inform you that if you are not satisfied with this response, you may wish to submit the matter for review by the CBC Ombudsman. The Office of the Ombudsman, an independent and impartial body reporting directly to the President, is responsible for evaluating program compliance with the CBC's journalistic policies. The Ombudsman may be reached by mail at the address shown below, or by fax at (416) 205-2825, or by e-mail at ombudsman@cbc.ca.

Sincerely,

Esther Enkin
Executive Editor
CBC News
Box 500, Station “A”,
Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1E6

Cc. Kirk LaPointe, CBC Ombudsman

Wonder how much Clinton is being paid to prop up the Obama campaign? I am pretty sure money is the only reason he would prostitute himself like this. Last time around Clinton was quite emphatic that he was pretty sure Obama was not capable of delivering (his judgement was correct here, so why the about-face?, and I believe there is a fair bit of animosity between the Clintons and the Obamas. Clinton would know what a lightweight Obama is. Maybe he has just given up on the whole political process. Politics has become pretty ugly in the States.

batb - the reports on Obama's last night's acceptance speech, which I did not watch, are that it was an empty fizzle. What else could it be?

Obama is psychologically disconnected from the real world; he lives entirely in a virtual realm of his words. Obama's words have no connection to the real world of facts, data and people. His world is the imaginary, as described and authored by him.

Therefore, he's superb at describing this imaginary realm; as in his 2004 convention speech, his 2008 campaign speeches. All about the imagined world. Hope, change, the amorphous dream world. But they are functionally, realistically, empty.

Obama has never lived in or connected to the real world of work, facts, data. During his time as the editor of the Harvard Law review, he edited no articles, wrote no articles or introduction, he left it all to others and would show up every few weeks merely to chat. As Community Organizer he didn't go into the streets; he remained with his Words exhorting others to go into reality. As a member of Senate, he voted 'present'.

As president, he left all policies, all program development entirely to others. He himself had no interest in how an imaginary utopian health care would translate into fiscal and operational realities of the real world. He has no ability to see how his stimulus would work - so that it devolved to Pelosi and Reid who used it to pay off the public service unions and retain public service jobs. And so on.

Now, Obama cannot give a speech about the realities of jobs, unemployment, the debt, for these exist in the real world and he is unable to connect to that real world. He is reduced to the imaginary realm which is actually shrinking, as less and less people become part of His Imaginary World. In 2008, many people wanted to Live in Obama's Imaginary World. Now, fewer are drawn to it.

But Romney still has to fight against the lure of the Imaginary World of Obama. He has to lay out specific steps in the real world of obtaining the realities of reducing the debt, jobs, employment, health care, etc.

LindaL, I suggest that Clinton had no choice. Clinton's focus is on 2016 and Hillary.

If he had refused to give a speech, the Democratic Party would have vilified him as turning his back on the Party. If he downgraded Obama, the same result.

Clinton therefore had nothing to lose. His speech was less about Obama and more about the 'magic of Clinton' - and it worked as such. After all, think about it. The Clinton era has become the default era of the Democratic party, much like the Reagan era of the GOP.

Imagine how an egoist like Obama is being presented as, IF he succeeds, THEN, he'll return the US to the magic-era-of-Clinton. Not the era of Obama. The era of Clinton.

So, for Clinton, it was a campaign speech for 2016.

PMSH has closed the embassy in Tehran and expelled Iranian diplomats from Canada...it's probably nothing...

syncrodox, good for PM Harper. Iran's allies in Canada, the NDP and public service unions, will not be happy.

O'narcissist Who?
...-

"Canada's jobs growth blows past expectations"

"The Canadian economy created a surprisingly strong 34,300 jobs last month, reversing a similar loss in July — and outshining weak job numbers south of the border"

...-

"Democrats show no love for Canadian oil in election platform"

http://www.financialpost.com/index.html

LindaL, Clinton will definitely be handsomely recompensed for his shout-out for Oblahblah. The Clintons do nothing for free.

More to the point: What will Zero owe them?

Agreed Ken, they are gonna be really unhappy when the bunker busters begin to drop...

The good readers of this blog are helpful in adjusting the results of polls like these. I think this poll is in need of some help.
http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2012/09/04/vote-should-solar-and-wind-power-be-subsidized/

syncrodox
"PMSH has closed the embassy in Tehran and expelled Iranian diplomats from Canada...it's probably nothing..."

So what's about to hit the fan? The Israelis wouldn't give advance notice so are we seeing the start of Obama's re-election campaign?