With less than two weeks left in the presidential race, fears are
a-flying in lefty circles. Will they actually let Barack Obama
win? Will Diebold steal the election and give it to John McCain
instead? Will martial law be declared so George Bush can be
self-appointed to a third term? Will conservative thugs at polling
places suppress minority turnout in the very swing states where the
minority vote could really make the difference for the Democratic
ticket? Is this shit I’m reading in Rolling Stone about
voter-purging true? Because it’s terrifying. Hold me!

HOLD ON. Yes, assessing the relative merits of the various strains
of liberal election-paranoia is a tricky business. After all, during
the last eight years we’ve seen several liberal fever-dreams turn into
reality (see, for example, Florida Recount 2000 and Iraq War
2003–present). Still, some of the alarm about Election 2008 seems
a bit much.

“There’ll be tampering with voting machines in key states, just
enough to swing it to McCain,” begins a baroque,
every-major-fear-encompassing scenario submitted to Slog (The
Stranger‘s blog) by a commenter named Chip, who continues: “As the
exit polls show Obama leading but tallies don’t match, FOX News will
repeat GOP talking points about how surprising it is that the Bradley
effect is playing such a significant role in the elections. Massive
riots will engulf Seattle, S.F., NYC, and D.C.; they will be suppressed
violently by the U.S. Army. Bush will declare martial law. Obama will
be shot by a lone gunman. McCain will valiantly die while trying to
save him. Palin anoints Dick Cheney to the empty VP slot.”

The threat of all of that happening, exactly as described, is quite
minimal (alert level: green or even sea-foam). Same for commenter Kat’s
feared scenario: “Honestly, I’ve been saying from the beginning, I’ll
just be surprised if we don’t wake up November 5 and Cheney is
president.”

Your paranoia is, of course, your own. So accept, reject, and/or
ratchet up your interior angst as you like—you will
anyway—but if you want to recalibrate your terror levels,
consider the following reality check:

FEAR: From Slog commenter Mac: “A week before the election,
Todd Palin is going to run over Osama bin Laden with his snowmobile in
the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

FACT: Sarah Palin didn’t have a passport until July of 2007.
Therefore, the likelihood that Todd Palin has a passport, knows where
the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is, and is on his way there right now
is extremely low. (Although it’s true that the likelihood of him being
able to run a man over with a snowmobile is quite high.)

THREAT LEVEL: Subgreen.

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: Repeat this mantra: “My life has become
a made-for-TV movie, which at least means it should end shortly.”

* * *

FEAR: Take it away, Slog commenter Anonymous: “There’s a
rumor I heard from my parents that one of Hillary [Clinton]’s people is
suing, trying to prove that Obama was born in Kenya (that he’s not a
natural-born citizen), that he gave up his U.S. citizenship when he
lived in Indonesia, and never got it back.”

FACT: True, the Constitution says one must be a
“natural-born” U.S. citizen to be president. True, too, according to
credible news reports, that a die-hard Hillary Clinton supporter named
Philip J. Berg has filed suit in federal court in Pennsylvania alleging
that Barack Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen and is, in fact, a
citizen of Indonesia. But the Obama campaign long ago provided copies
of his birth certificate to the media, and images of said certificate
are readily available online (not accompanied by images of the actual
natural birth, but it’s the paperwork that counts). Obama was born in
Hawaii on August 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m. And guess who wasn’t born in the
USA? John McCain. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone. (But on a U.S.
military base, which was, technically, U.S. territory.)

THREAT LEVEL: Green.

Don’t worry your pretty little
head about this one.

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: If Obama actually is kicked out of the
presidential race and deported by the INS—well, there’s no way
Hillary was born in Indonesia.

* * *

FEAR: From Slog commenter Daisy: “Bush has already given
himself the power to stop the election. In May 2007, Bush issued
National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive NSPD
51/HSPD 20. This directive suspends constitutional government and
instates martial law in the case of a ‘catastrophic
emergency’…”

FACT: Yes, the directive was issued—for the stated
purpose of dealing with terrorist attacks and such, not for the stated
purpose of canceling inconvenient elections.

THREAT LEVEL: Blue.

For martial law to work, the public and the military
has to, en masse, accept the situation. It would be a very ballsy
outgoing Republican president who would roll the dice on trying to
declare martial law just because a fellow Republican was defeated in
the presidential race (and do this in the absence of a real terrorist
attack). We aren’t in Burma. Calm down.

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: This is one of those elegantly designed
fears that relies on a presumed motivation that can’t be disproved.
Really, no one except George W. Bush knows whether he’s eagerly
awaiting the chance to abuse the above-mentioned directive on Election
Day. If you think you know his motivations and plans, and you’re truly
terrified, move to Canada, seek therapy, or hang around for a couple
weeks and see if your ESP is really as powerful as you believe.

* * *

FEAR: Often rooted in a familiarity with the work of
voting rights activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and/or investigative
journalist Greg Palast, and even more often rooted in the duo’s report
in the current issue of Rolling Stone, this fear posits the
following: A massive Republican plan to erect barriers to Democratic
registration, purge Democratic voters from voting rolls in swing
states, and challenge legitimate Democratic voters at polling places
around the country will result in a loss of Democratic votes large
enough to swing the election to John McCain.

FACT: Elections can be won this way, and some people will do
anything to win. But, as Kennedy and Palast note in their Rolling
Stone report, this type of chicanery only succeeds in a relatively
tight election.

THREAT LEVEL: Yellow.

This election may not be tight.
Thus, it may turn out that even if the Kennedy/Palast fears are
realized it won’t matter. McCain will still lose to the Obama tsunami.
And, as Dahlia Lithwick has noted on Slate.com, fears about this type of
election-stealing are often overblown. “For the most part, modern
polling-place election-stealing has just not been pervasive or
systematic,” she writes. She also uses the word “boogeyman.”

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: As the PSAs in the New York subway say,
“If you see something, say something.” Vigilance!

* * *

FEAR: Nothing is real; at least, none of these polls are
real—NONE OF THEM. They may say that Obama is ahead of
McCain in most of the big, important swing states, but they are being
warped by the Bradley effect!

FACT: The only indisputable fact when it comes to the Bradley
effect—the phenomenon of voters telling pollsters one thing about
a black candidate and then doing quite another thing in the polling
booth—is that no one has any idea how it will play out in this
election. As you may have heard, there has never, ever, in the history
of United States history been an African American on the presidential
ballot. So, you know, who knows? If you wanted to conduct an experiment
on how the Bradley effect works on a national level, you would create
this election and issue your findings after Election Day. Stay tuned!
(However, to ease your fears: Considerable evidence indicates that the
Bradley effect is a relic of the past, and that the bigger effect on
this election may be the so-called reverse Bradley effect, in which
white voters in conservative places understate their support for
Obama.)

THREAT LEVEL: Yellow.

Could be a problem, could not be
a problem. Nothing to do but call undecided voters and sing “Ebony and
Ivory.”

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: Remember that while rioting may be
alluring, proximity to riots is thought by most medical professionals
to increase your likelihood of physical injury.

* * *

FEAR: The government will stage a fake terrorist
attack—the “Bush nukes San Francisco” scenario, as Slog commenter
toasterhedgehog describes it—and the blame will fall on Muslim
terrorists. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden will release a video praising
Barack Obama as his Muslim brother. And maybe there will be some
martial law involved, too.

FACT: If you believe this is likely, then it’s doubtful
anyone can argue with you. So let’s assume—and this is not saying
it’s a valid assumption—but let’s assume, just for the hell of
it, that this does, in fact, happen. Then the alert level would
be…

THREAT LEVEL: Orange.

Prepare to depart country.

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: Slap self to make sure it isn’t a
nightmare, and then slap self again for not having fled country
sooner.

* * *

FEAR: This report, from West Virginia’s Charleston
Gazette and published October 18, ends up becoming what happens
everywhere, to everyone, on Election Day: “Virginia Matheney and Calvin
Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk’s office in
Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican
candidates. ‘When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark
moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain,’ said
Matheney, who lives in Kenna.”

FACT: This happens sometimes with touch-screen voting
machines, but election officials say it’s less statistically
significant to the outcome of any election than human error.

THREAT LEVEL: Red.

If this happens to you, and
everyone around you, and a bunch of zombie-eyed poll workers in
Halliburton Windbreakers tell you there’s nothing to be done, never
fear, etc., then yes, something is very, very wrong.

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: Freak the fuck out.

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

54 replies on “Will They Steal It?”

  1. Please remember, any of you that put any credence in the “birth” document supposedly vetted by Factcheck.org: That document is simply a current-day, computer-generated printout of data that supposedly resides in the databases of the State of Hawaii. Whether this database contains information actually recorded from an original birth certificate or perhaps even from someone’s imagination is impossible to say.

    I have no doubt that the document presented by the Obama campaign and “verified” by factcheck and others is in fact an official document from the State of Hawaii, with data that is correct to the best of their (limited) knowledge. I say limited because again, as a contemporary laser-printed document this is simply a representation of the entries in their databases, not a fully-verified statement of fact gleaned from examination of the actual, original birth certificate created when the birth took place (if, in fact it really took place in Hawaii.)

    I for one will not be satisfied with anything less than the original document from the State of Hawaii’s archives, stating date, place, time, attending physician/nurse, length, weight, etc. Only then can we be assured there is no doubt.

  2. You’re a complete and utter imbecile if you believe that live birth certification is real. Get a clue and think with that thing on your shoulders!

  3. Proof Barack Obama Birth Certificate is a Forgery.
    This is an exclusive exposing the Barack Obama birth certificate as an absolute forgery and it has been in plain sight all along.
    What has been staring everyone in the face is the effects of political correctness and no one has seen it. The beauty of this liberal political correctness is that the person who forged this document got caught in their own trap of affirmative action hyphenated Americans.
    Look closely at Stanley Ann Dunham’s race. Caucasian.
    Now look closely at Barack Hussein Obama sr’s race. It is listed as African.
    That doesn’t seem all that interesting and no one has noticed it until one looks that this is an official document filed in August 1961.
    Most people on the internet and blogging have no sense of history nor in the use of words and it is this lack of sense which is going to bite whoever forged this document.

    Up until 1968, the standard term for all Africans was “negroe”. This fit with the absolute secular scientific teaching of the day which notes the world has 3 races in Mongoloid, Caucasoid and Negroid.
    It was not until the Black Revolution when negroe or negro became a foul description in the late 1960’s and then “black” was demanded by this group to describe them.
    It was not until the late 1970’s when political correctness came into vogue that it ushered in by the 1980’s the term “African” to describe all blacks.
    Whoever forged this birth certificate was not utilizing the 1960’s terminology which a black person would be listed as. They fell instead into a warped year 2000 politically correct description of “African”.
    This is absolutely telling as if you looked at birth records in Prussia centuries ago, those people would be termed Prussian, Bavarian etc… as Germany did not yet exist as a termonology for nation state. If someone was listed as German in 1700, it would be glaring forgery just like the Obama forgery stuns the eyes once one knows what they are looking at.
    One could research the certificates in Hawaii for absolutes, but considering as has been warned in this blog that Hawaii is a Democratic state, has Democratic officials who have been hemming and hawing about this certificate and only upon precise questioning do they start backing down as it means their jobs and prison time if they certify a forgery as real and this is Democratic transplanted son Barack Obama carrying on this charade, could one ever get a clear answer from them unless one looked at numbers of birth certificates to precisely learn how Hawaii was labeling “blacks”.
    If this case it is African, then why is not Stanley Ann Dunham labeled correctly North American after her continent? She though is labeled correctly as caucasian as that is exactly as she is.
    If one still today searches enough death certificates in the 50 United States, you will find listed on them the term NEGRO. Now that is over 40 years since 1961 in Barack Obama’s birth and political correctness has not reached completely into the coroner’s records.
    That fact is scientific and if it still exists today as proof it certainly is the proof from before 1900 in America and past 1960 that all blacks were noted as “negroe” or “negro” on all public records from birth certificates, marriage licenses, passports, driver’s licenses to death certificates.
    Whoever forged the Barack Obama birth certificate got caught in Mr. Obama’s own political correctness.
    In 1961 America, blacks were negroes and not Africans no matter if they came from Africa or not.
    If one cares to examine the Negroe Leagues in baseball where blacks were to “pass” as Cubans to the United Negroe College Fund to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, there was no African at all in any terminology.
    One was negroe on legal documents and “colored” in common usage.
    No pixels in this. No questioning borders and no questions about the researcher’s expertise as negroe is American history and scientific fact just like whoever forged the Obama birth certificate got caught in political correctness in not being able to use a term they were trained to avoid.
    That is a fact. This birth certificate is a fake

  4. First, the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen by Bush and his friends… fact…
    So, to down play such facts… only contributes to them happening again.

    Second… Obama was born in Hawaii… to an African father…
    I think that even way back in 1961… the Hawaiians… whom as you might imagine… were more sensitive to accurate race identification that most mainlanders…Thus… his race was properly stated as African… not negro…

  5. As I understand it, ‘natural born citizen’ means you are born a citizen of the US (although this has never been tested by the courts, of course). If this is the case, however, Obama’s mother being a US citizen would automatically make him a citizen at birth, even if he were born in Kenya, or Indonesia, or Mars…

  6. Battle hardened Iraqi troops are already delpoyed as of Oct 1 from northern command inside the US. For what ? we don’t know yet.

    Wake up and smell the armbands dude…

    BTW the story was broke by Democracy Now, and addressed in a secret congressional meeting held on March 13 2008, which was leaked by real patriotic members of the senate.

    Will it happen ? I have no idea, Is it possible you bet your ass it is.

  10. John McCain wasn’t born in the United States and is not a citizen of this country. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone. That means Palin will be president for sure.

  12. This reminds me of the woman who wrote the book, “The End of Blackness”, (who’s name I can’t recall) who was demanding that Obama be called

    African African American

    because he is descended from an immigrant not a slave.

    Only the descendants of slaves are African Americans.

    And knowing is half the battle.

  14. The real question is: What did the Communist Muslim Terrorists do to Obama to make him the most evil person alive that would eventually run for president to undo all of the great works of the Bush administration? And why, when Obama is such a tool in a Socialist Terrorist Muslim conspiricy, did they name him Barack Hussein? What were the conspiracists thinking?

    This election would be closer if the right wing nut jobs actually made an effort to sound less nutty.

    Of course I wrote the bit about Bush Nuking San Francisco. It was really just an excercise to come up with the darkest thing I thought the Bush Administration was morally capable of.

  17. Truer words were never spoken, tiktok. They could be taking you anywhere on that plane. Don’t you people watch LOST?

    Note to self: ask mother to give me a video of my birth, complete with a wink at the end – a sure sign to my future self that I didn’t fake my own birth.

  18. Oh goodie! I was so thrilled that you ripped apart my contribution responding to your call for content to write about. That was fun! When do we get to do it again?

  22. Berg himself backtracked on the ‘false birth certificate’ claim. Instead he opted to go after the ‘loss of citizenship claim’ because Obama’s mother renounced her citizenship and so Obama is no longer a US citizen. Which is bunk for a number of reasons the major being this:

    Even if Obama’s mother were to renounce her US citizenship it she cannot renounce the citizenship of her child.

    The Immigration and Nationality Act (which came to be in 1952, before Obama was born) states:
    Parents cannot renounce United States citizenship on behalf of their children. Before an oath of renunciation will be administered under Section 349(a)(5), persons under the age of eighteen must convince a U.S. diplomatic or consular officer that they fully understand the nature and consequences of the oath of renunciation and are voluntarily seeking to renounce their citizenship. United States common law establishes an arbitrary limit of age fourteen under which a child’s understanding must be established by substantial evidence.

    This means that Obama would have had to apply, petition and be granted to have US Citizenship renounced with his mother.

    Further there is no constitutional, statutory, or judicial provision prohibiting a U.S. citizen from holding citizenship of another country at the same time, or requiring a dual national to relinquish either his U.S. or his foreign citizenship. This especially holds true for those UNDER the age of eighteen where in order for loss of nationality to occur, it must be established that the naturalization was obtained voluntarily by a person eighteen years of age or older with the intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship.

    Again, Obama’s momma getting some Indo fever and moving his ass to another country and nationalizing him when he has no other options doesn’t seem entirely voluntary. He also never petitioned for any of this shit and was naturalized because Indonesia laws are extreme. He didn’t do these thing voluntarily and I don’t know where Berg is pulling random ‘documents/facts’ from, they’re bullshit.

    In any case Obama is safe.
    That was long a pointless, I’m wasted.

  24. You’re right! – Dahlia Lithwick and I have no reason to pay attention to “overblown” fears that our votes will be stolen – being that we are white and in urban areas. Tell the people who are wrongly and purposely being purged from voter rolls that – “For the most part, modern polling-place election-stealing has just not been pervasive or systematic.” WTF? Have you been asleep for the last decade? But you’re right denial is the best remedy!

  25. Hey, all of you “Obama’s birth certificate is false” numbnuts — How the hell, did Obama go back in time and falsify (in newsprint) his BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT in the local newspaper? (Not just on the microfiche, but in the actual newspapers, oh conspiracy nuts.)

    Did his grandparents know thru psychic means that he would one day be running for president and then plant a “false” birth announcement, 40 odd years back?

    Oh conspiracy experts of paranoia, please riddle me THAT one.

  26. judybrowni, these would be the same people saying Obama is ‘claiming’ to have been a constitutional law professor.
    This election’s REALLY bringing the nutcases out of the closet. But hey! Light kills germs! ^_^

  27. My My look at the wingnuts

    You all need to chill. If Obama was NOT legal to be Pres McCain would be screaming it at the top of his lungs. SO if McCain and the RNC are satisfied that Obama can be Pres then so am I

  28. Incidences of electronic voting malfuntions (often in the form of “vote flipping” from the democrat choice to republican) have already been reported in West Virginia & Tennessee: http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/the-electronic-voting-machine-glitches-begin/
    as well as Texas: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6559

    These are suggested courses of action to take if it happens to you (from Emily Levy of VelvetRevolution.us):
    -Call poll supervisors to observe the problem
    -Fill out a problem report
    -Refuse to vote on that machine
    -Request that the machine be taken out of service
    -Get a serial number of the machine if possible (may be unlikely in many cases)
    Tell other voters not to vote on that machine
    -Call county/town election office
    -Call local reporters
    -Call voter problem hotlines (eg. 866-MYVOTE1 and 866-OUR-VOTE)
    -Contact bloggers and Election Integrity websites.
    -Raise holy hell.

    Also, use a cellphone camera if you have one to document incidences of machine malfunctions or voter intimidation.

  29. You know all of you who have a problem with Barak Obama and where he was or was not born are missing the larger issue (and are most likely racist). I for one do not give a flying fuck where he came from. I would rather vote for someone born on Neptune than have that vicious harpy of a hockey mom anywhere near the White House.

  30. up until at least 911, if you were born in another country and one parent was a u.s. citizen, you were a u.s. citizen.

    michael collins, apollo 11 command module pilot, was born in rome, italy. he is an american citizen.

    we wouldn’t have let a ‘foreigner’ pilot the first manned mission which resulted in the first human footsteps on the moon.

    if obama’s birth certificate was fake, he wouldn’t have gotten this far. the right has showed virtually no evidence of intelligence in the past eight years, but they would have nipped this one in the bud long ago if such were the case.

    they can smell threats–real or imagined–from light-years away.

    obama wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  32. If Obama has nothing to hide why won’t he put a certified copy of his long form birth certificate on his campaign website? I mean it only takes one day and $12 to get it from the State of Hawaii.

    You people are in a state of denial if you won’t ask yourself the simple question “Why does Obama refuse to release a copy of his long form birth certificate which allegedly exists in a vault in Hawaii?”

    Obama could put this whole thing to bed with that one simple act. Millions upon million of Americans now know of his refusal to produce the document and that casts doubt in many minds about his honesty and desire for transparency. The refusal can’t possibly be good for his campaign. So what exactly is on that birth certificate, if it even exists, that would cause him to think that releasing it is worse than hiding it?

    Ask yourself. This will eventually come out. You can’t get a passport without a long form birth certificate. You can’t even get into Little League Baseball without a long form birth certificate.

    The truth is probably that Barack Hussein Obama has been travelling abroad using an Indonesian passport right up to the day he was issued a US diplomatic passport by virtue of being elected a U.S. senator.

    Forewarned is forearmed. The truth about the long form birth certificate will come out either before or after the election but in any case before a President-elect Obama can become President Obama on January 20th. The constitution doesn’t demand that a *candidate* for president be qualified under the constitution. It does demand that a president-elect be qualified before assuming office. Obama will have to produce that long form birth certificate before being sworn into office.

    And by the way, Berg’s lawsuit is just one of eight. Seven others have been filed in seven other states. The state lawsuits are demanding that the secretaries of state in those states do their job in ensuring that names appearing on state ballots are qualified to be on the ballot.

  34. “They” won’t have to steal it – Obama is “they”! Once our saviour is installed into the White House he’ll be tested – as Biden guarantees and Powell and many others predict. Look forward to more economic crash, staged terrorism, war, poverty, and martial law than you ever imagined under President Obama. Vote Cynthia McKinney 2008 for revolutionary change! Or anyone but Obama/McCain.

  36. I don’t care about anything other than stopping McCain/Palin from getting into the Whitehouse.

    If it was Osama Bin Laden himself running on the Democratic ticket, I’d still vote blue.

    The GOP has had eight years to redeem itself from its long-lasting legacy of incompetence at best and pure evil at worst. Yeah, they’re never gonna do it.

  37. Wow.. the amount of crazy on this page is astounding. What do you people do all day, google for Obama articles so you can spout your crazy conspiracy-theory warbgarble all over the internet all day long? Please, spare us. Nobody gives a fuck about how insane you are.
    Do yourselves and everyone else a favor — when you get that health care under the Obama Administration, take it & get your heads checked out.
    Seriously.
    You need it.

    To stay on-topic, I think the whole election-stealing stuff is a little overblown, but you can’t help it if people are a little more than guarded about the whole situation, given the last 8 years. This time, there are too many people who are aware of the problem and will be taking all necessary steps to protect their votes. As long as everyone does their part to protect their own vote, I think we’ll be alright.

  38. Richard…if the birth certificate is not an original, and just a printout of information in the database, is it possible that at some point between the actual birth and now Hawaii updated its database, say by doing a bulk search-and-replace of the term “Negro” with “African”?

  39. Just wanted to throw out there that military people are not zombies, we are capable of thinking critically, and we swear to serve the Constitution, not the President. If Bush tries to do something as blatantly unconstitutional as trying to use the military to seize power from his freely elected Democratic successor, I don’t believe the military will support him. Senior military officers, in particular, certainly will not.

  40. Richard – read the comments above you. The stigma against the word “negro” is so strong that of course database records would be changed! It’s as simple as using the “find and replace” function.

  41. What is actually going to lose the election for Democrats this year is the fundamental belief that Obama has a “lock” on it…this hubris is leading various Democratic groups to advocate that Dems in so-called “safe states” vote “Green” or Nadar or Independent.

    How does anyone know which states are “safe” enough that few hundred thousand Democrats voting another way won’t move these states into play? Doesn’t anyone remember 2000 or 2004 when the Republican candidate was such an incompetent dunce that a few thousand Dems voted Nadar/Green/Independent?

    For the last 9 months Obama’s acolytes have been telling Hillary supporters that Obama doesn’t need our votes, that the Democratic party doesn’t need our votes. Now we’re hearing that Dems shouldn’t bother vote Obama in ‘uncontested’ states. Won’t it be ironic if McCain were to win because California, New York, Washington, Oregon, etc. fell from the blue-side because of a couple hundred-thousand votes away from Obama?

  43. To vote or not sez:

    “For the last 9 months Obama’s acolytes have been telling Hillary supporters that Obama doesn’t need our votes.”

    Citation?

    Also, it’s Nader, not Nadar.

    Also, you have no idea what you’re talking about.

  44. This kind of crazy is like 1992 all over again. I think the nutwings perpetuate this stuff to hamstring duly elected presidents who might otherwise deal with issues and problems while in office. I imagine we’ll be hearing this and more for the whole of the next administration. Hope Obama can keep it zipped and above board.

  45. I think Acorn and the mainstream media and the other billionaire funded orgs will finally outsteal the Republicans with this election. The Democrats have been trying to steal it but havent been as successful as the Republicans.
    The fact that these ridiculous scenarious on the same level as a rightwing survivalist nutcake is believed by mainstream liberals says a lot about the movement.

    You can say any contradictory thing you want and theres an argument to be made. Terrorist attack? They did it. No terrorist attack? Pure hype to scare people. Economy does well? Smoke and mirrors. Economy tanks in the usual recession? Its a depression caused by them.

  46. To Diogenes, William Dupree, and “Richard” – please post your birth certificates so that we know you are legitimate human beings. Probably not as easy as you would like us to think, eh?

    Also, Richard, as I’ve read the same screed word for word on at least two other blogs today, you don’t have an “exclusive” of anything.

    You have nothing.

    So, as the Republican party themselvesstated over and over in 2000 and 2004 to those of us who questioned those mishandled vote counts: Get Over It.

  48. I’m glad someone on the left is at least attempting to calm down their raging paranoids. Long over due.

    Look I’m as republican as
    anyone in the GOP, and if,… if Obama wins I’ll tell you exactly how we’ll handle it.

    We’ll take a deep breath, then step aside. Letting democracy work as it should. We won’t like it, will be resentful of an in the tank media that in effect handed Obama thousands of hours of free advertising while squelching anything that could derail him. But we are Americans, same as you.

    There will be no coup’, no last minute takeover.

    We’ll honor the system.

    but we expect the same in return.

    A president Obama would be a huge question mark, even for the millions who think they know his vision.

    President Bush would handle the transition with grace, wishing Obama luck, and offering prayers for wisdom on his behalf.

    That is my party,

    If you can truly see us as neighbors who just disagree, rather than some form of fictional mythic nazi’s waiting to cart you away.. Look, my wife, and her entire family are bluedog democrats, there is no reason to fear us as some of you do.

    I want to convert you to my view, not force you.

    How Obama or McCain handle a defeat is the key. If we can’t shake hands after, and at least try to pull together, what kind of future is that?

  49. We stole the election fair and square in 2000 and 2004. In the event our tactics fail in the ’08 actual election, our back up plans are in place. Judges bribed, thugs outside prominent probressive activists, plans to shut the power grid giving us time to recast the polls. Worry not.

    Sigh, just in case dear reader, not all of this is true, sigh.

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