• Chuck Thinks Right predicts a November slaughter "of biblical proportions." I may be wrong, but I think we'll still be living after November. We'll just lose the election by a wide margin.

• Krell at MadMike doesn't have to look very hard to discover the failure of American liberalism.

• SJ at RANDOM THOUGHTS seems discouraged at popular mindlessness.

• Max's Dad is developing a disdain for politicians who twitter.

• Jack Jodell at THE SATURDAY AFTERNOON POST gets medieval on would-be Senator Sharron Angle.

• Slant Right's John Houk finds a Muslim in Europe who calls for violence against a bigot. So, naturally, John condemns all of Islam. After all, why use a broad brush if you can't paint everyone with it?

• The World of Doorman-Priest watched a racist demonstration in a Muslim neighborhood in Britain. Protesters seemed disappointed at the bored reaction, although a group of Muslims did gather to pray for the continued health of the Queen. Here in the US, John Houk weeps at the thought.

• Ned Williams at WisdomIsVindicated gets confused. With few exceptions, Democrats want to continue the modest Bush tax cuts for the middle class, yet want to end enormously generous cuts for the extremely wealthy. Ned concludes that Democrats "can't decide." Ned is also confused about where to find another word for "thesaurus."

• Gwendolyn Barry of New Global Myth learns from Glenn Beck's rally that Jesus loves each and every person who hates the right groups.

• Manifesto Joe of Texas Blues wonders about deficit hawks who want to increase spending on war but are willing to slash Social Security.

• James Wigderson is discouraged about unemployment, but not discouraged enough to support the large economic stimulus economists call for.

• Nancy Hanks at The Hankster brings the latest from New York City's political independents.

• Tim McGaha at Tim's Thoughtful Spot takes a closer look at the State of the Union just before the Civil War.

• David Everitt-Carlson of The Wild Wild East Dailies in Vietnam, is really getting into wearing the latest fashions, but on a b-b-budget.

I certainly will take my message in a different venue out to the people of Arizona.

 - - Governor Jan Brewer (R-AZ), September 3, 2010
     On debating her opponent every again, after her televised opening
     meltdown while debating Democrat Terry Goddard

For generations Georgia residents were allowed to vote after their funerals. It wasn't actually voter fraud. It was quite legal. The theory was loved ones of the recently deceased would know which candidate and ballot issues that voter would have wanted to support. The family would cast the ballot. The poll watchers would shake their heads sadly, commiserate with the grieving family and duly record the vote, just as if the dead voter was still alive. Dear old dad... sob... would have wanted it this way.

The practice was ended, in part through the opposition of State Senator and future President Jimmy Carter. Today, if a dead person votes in Georgia, a live person is eligible for prosecution.

So it is everywhere in the country. Voting fraud is almost never voter fraud. Paying a hundred or a thousand voters to march down to the local polling place to cast illegal ballots exposes each of them to being found out and charged, along with whoever puts them up to it. And the penalties are harsh.

My daddy used to say if you're going to sell your soul, always demand at least a million dollars. That was in the good old days when a dollar was worth a dollar and people died of starvation when they didn't have one. Same with voting fraud. You have a lot less risk of getting caught and a lot more votes to play games with if you fiddle with the results after the votes have been cast. So stuffing ballot boxes, or transposing numbers on tally sheets, or counting votes of dead people pretty much happens after the polls have closed and before the vote counting is official. In-person voter fraud just doesn't happen.

Republican Senator Kit Bond, here in Missouri, accuses countless black folks of risking prison each election in order to vote illegally. He wants to require voters to produce picture identification, even those who don't drive. His charges of voter fraud have been disproven by so many investigations his actual motive seems transparent. He wants to put non-driving folks through enough extra steps, enough additional effort, to discourage at least some from voting at all. The image of Kit Bond during the 2000 election is vivid in my mind. After an inept election board forced thousands of voters in the city St. Louis to stand in line for hours, Bond was furious that so many stayed around to vote. They MUST be up to something illegal.

Kit Bond's charges of voter fraud have been picked up by other Republicans. Making it harder for minorities to vote is a pastime more favored these days than baseball. Fictitious voter fraud provokes rage.

Contributor fraud is a different matter. Dead people can't vote in Georgia. But dead folks can, and apparently do, contribute to political campaigns in Louisiana. Senator David Vitter is now accepting campaign contributions from a voter who died late last year. Her husband donated more than the maximum allowed by law. So Vitter and a few conservative political action committees are accepting contributions from his deceased wife.

Requiescat In PACs.

In August of 2004 something unusual happened in Australia. A local ABC broadcast took an American controversy, determined that someone was lying, and kinda sorta reported it. On one side were the conservative funded attacks on the war record of decorated veteran John Kerry. On the other were Kerry and those who watched him in action.

Larry Thurlow had indeed served with Kerry for a few moments, the only attacker who actually saw him in Vietnam. Thurlow's swiftboat was near Kerry's as they came under fire. Thurlow claimed it didn't happen: that Kerry was lying. Certainly, one of them was on the wrong side of veracity.

Jim Rassmann, whose life Kerry saved, said flat out that Thurlow was not telling the truth. It was reported in what had become the standard of neutral reporting: he said/she said, but the juxtaposition of the two versions was compelling. In Australia.

Eventually someone thought to look at documents, and son of a gun, Thurlow was lying. A bronze star had been awarded to Thurlow for the same incident, the one he was insisting decades later never happened. In fact no other accuser had served with Kerry except in the sense that they were in the same war. The "doctor" who alleged he had treated Kerry only for minor wounds never had a glimpse of him. It turned out he was an orderly, not a doctor, at the time, and was in a different part of the hospital.

Most of the media of the day covered the story, not as verifiable truth or lie, but as an on-the-other-hand story of two equal sides. Documentation was available to demonstrate conclusively who was lying and who was telling the truth, but that would have violated political neutrality.

These days, exposing falsehoods is slowly becoming fashionable again. Richard Blumenthal, Democratic Senate candidate misleads voters in Connecticut about his military record. It gets reported as a lie. Mark Kirk, Republican Senate candidate lies to Illinois voters about his military record, his teaching career, policy issues, and his boyhood adventures and it all gets reported as a lie, another lie, another lie, and, holy mackerel, more lies.

And yesterday, the Denver Post dug into claims by Dan Maes, the Republican candidate for Governor of Colorado. It wasn't his charge that bicycles are part of a world wide plot, a secret plan of domination in which the city of Denver is a conspirator. No. It's his boast that he was an undercover police agent 25 years ago, helping to put away drug and bookmaking figures. A reporter asked authorities about Maes heroism. Everyone in charge at the time responded "Huh?" Maes says of his claims "Some people are probably taking that a little too literally." Well, duh.

In a few weeks Republicans will triumphantly put Democratic heads on electoral spikes. But there is some chance some future claims will be reported simply as true or false. Or as Dan Maes so succinctly put it, "Those comments might have been incorrect comments."

It’s all part of this population control mentality that we as humans are the disease. He never said that biking is inherently wrong.

 - - Nate Strauch, speaking for Dan Maes (R-CO), August 5, 2010
     On bikes as an international conspiracy for world domination