*Stories passed along courtesy of Philomena at americaspartynews.com

By Jon N. Hall
American Thinker

A Doonesbury cartoon on a recent Sunday contained a distillation of a current talking point among progressives: "Question: What fraud? Voter fraud is close to non-existent!"

Progressives think that if they make the above claim as though it were an indisputable fact, it will become a fact.  All they have to do is repeat the claim over and over again until it sticks.  To wit:

An editorialist for The New York Times asserts: "There is almost no voting fraud in America."

At the Center for American Progress[*], Eric Alterman writes: "Members of the mainstream media often give too much credence to empty claims of 'voter fraud.'"

At the Brennan Center for Justice, we read: "Allegations of widespread fraud by malevolent voters are easy to make, but often prove to be inflated or inaccurate."

In The Nation, left-wing firebrand Katrina Vanden Heuvel alleges: "Voter fraud -- the impersonation of a voter by another person -- is extremely rare in the United States."

An uncouth gal for Daily Kos writes: "Some [Republicans] acknowledge that voter fraud is essentially non-existent."  (Who are these Republicans?)

At Mother Jones, we read: "While Republicans have argued such rules are necessary to combat 'voter fraud,' examples of the kind of in-person voter fraud that might be curbed by such requirements are miniscule."

At Slate we read: "Large-scale, coordinated vote stealing doesn't happen."

A lady at Think Progress writes: "Like conservative state legislatures across the country, Maine Republicans have been pushing a Voter ID law, ostensibly to prevent non-existent voter fraud."  (Italics added.)

A blogger at Media Matters writes: "Instances of actual voter fraud are very rare."

(There may be a subliminal message in there somewhere.)

The above claims are as absurd as a big-city mayor claiming that last night, no cases of wife-beating occurred in his fair city because, well, no one reported any to the police.

Question: how is a poll worker manning a voting station supposed to know that a voter checking in to vote is about to commit voter fraud -- if that voter is registered?

Read more at American Thinker ... 


*Center for American Progress: Shut Up Conservatives Through Election Fraud

Doo Doo Economics blog

During a 12/9/11 CSPAN covered "Presidency of Barack Obama" event, panelists including former Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter made the case that progressives need to stop the conservative movement through election fraud. Conservatives must be beaten in the 2012 election "when they have 9% unemployment and every external factor in the economy working in their behalf, if they got stomped or even beaten in this next election then they're going to have to" reconsider their beliefs. Alter added, "They won't make that assessment until they get beat.  But they won't get beat if people are waiting for somebody else to do it."

These comments followed a discussion on opposing sane voting procedures. Paul Glastris, Washington Monthly editor in Chief, disdainfully commented that "Part of the problem is that for the average person, the average voter, the idea that you need a drivers license to vote doesn't seem all that outrageous...You and I might know that there is little to no actual voter fraud..., but to the average person to be careful about voter fraud doesn't strike them as a stretch."

Faiz Shakir, Vice President of the far left Center for American Progress injected vitriol into the subject. Shakir smugly fumed that there is "a callousness on the right of how we approach the franchise of voting. If people aren't allowed to vote on voting day, that's OK with them (Conservatives). Certain populations, students that can't vote, elderly that can't vote, that's alright." Shakir continued that what is needed is to "find a way for them to have voted...the vote is counted and then we ensure that the person who cast that vote was a proper person."

Yeah, right count them all then check if they are valid. 

Read more at Doo Doo Economics ... 

_ Newsmax

By Gary Cohen

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says the Muslims he knows are "peace-loving and America-loving individuals."

At a campaign event in Cedar Rapids Friday, the subject of how to handle the threat posed by radical Islam was raised.

Read more on Newsmax.com: Romney: Islam Is a Peace-Loving Religion

_Tom Hoefling

I’ve been saying for a long time that the Republican Party has become a party of political bookies.

I guess Romney just proved it in spades:

Romney seeks $10,000 bet during GOP debate

_Market Ticker

by Karl Denninger 

There, I said it.

Many years ago, when a political contribution of the maximum legal size meant much more to me than it does now, I donated to Newt's "army" in recognition of his effort toward Contract With America.

What I got was "The Screwing of America."

Let's go down the list shall we?

We did not get:

• All laws applying to the rest of the nation applying to Congress (insider trading anyone?)
  
  
• An independent and complete audit for fraud, waste and abuse, nor was anything done about it.
  
  
• Commitee staff was not cut.
  
  
• Tax increases did not require a three-fifths majority.
  
  
• There was no balanced budget, which was promised.
  
  
• The Education Department was not abolished, as promised -- it in fact doubled in size.
  
  
• There was no end to baseline budgeting.
  
  
• There was a broad-based tax reduction.
  
  
• There was some reform of welfare -- but in the succeeding years it simply shifted elsewhere in the entitlement "stack."

Now Newt will undoubtedly claim that all he promised was to bring the bills to the floor.  That he accomplished.  But a leader who promises broad-based reforms must actually get them enacted in order to claim success, not simply vote upon them.

On any objective measurement you care to use, Newt failed.

Further, and far more importantly, in 1994 both houses of Congress were placed in the hands of Republicans on the back of these promises for the first time since 1953.  He thus had a bicameral legislature that was entirely his with which to press the agenda.

What sadly followed the 1994 "sweep" was an orgy of government debt as soon as a Republican President was elected to office in 2000 and an unprecedented expansion of government reach that in many ways exceeded the excesses of FDR's "New Deal" and Johnson's "Great Society."  Indeed, it is entirely fair to state that the only reason it didn't happen earlier was that Bill Clinton was President and was able to stonewall some of the attempted expansions!

Any sort of claim that Gingrich was in some way an architect of smaller government or even brought a halt to the expansion of government spending is a bald lie.  Yet Newt continues to spread this factual fallacy wherever he goes, arguing that he's a "conservative."  He's lying - not only did the dollar amount of government spending not decrease neither did the slope.

Read this story at market-ticker.org ...