WonderfulPessimist.com

Considering DFL Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie believes that ACORN commits voter fraud everywhere but Minnesota, and isn’t worth investigating here, I have the perfect holiday gift idea for our myopically-challenged top election official: Nikon binoculars.

They’re great for bringing the stuff in the distance up-close and visible. Maybe that’s what’s needed for him to see that, yes, even in Minnesota, a group like ACORN can do things wrong and skew election results. Of course, for a guy like Ritchie, as long as his party wins, that’s all that matters… not the actual vote counts, just the outcome… so long as it favors the DFL.

DFL Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has stated that in Minnesota, ACORN doesn’t engage in voter fraud. That’s the definition of insanity. To wit: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

Here’s what the Wall Street Journal wrote on ACORN:

In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained ACORN’s practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.

At least in Nevada, where another Democrat is the secretary of state, they have someone who’s not afraid to take on ACORN for their illegal voter registration violations. Here’s an excerpt on the Nevada ACORN raid, from Fox News:

“Some of them used nonexistent names, some of them used false addresses and some of them were duplicates of previously filed applications,” Walsh said, describing the complaints, which largely came from the registrar in Clark County, Nev.

Secretary of State Ross Miller said the fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team.

“Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won’t be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4,” Miller said.

That’s hardly all. In 2006, ACORN was investigated for voter registration fraud in Washington state, and out of 1,800 registrations, only six — SIX! — were genuine registrations.

So, yeah, we’re supposed to believe Minnesota is the only state in which ACORN operates above-board? I want home theater seating to that asylum commitment hearing!

Just hearing political pornographer Al Franken speak is enough to make a person run away and burn some fat, even if it’s not the best fat burner. But in a recount upon which could ride the potential of a filibuster-proof Democratic US Senate, there’s plenty of nauseating dialogs to be found.

The troubles with the Coleman-Franken recount are numerous. First and foremost is ACORN’s involvement in voter fraud over the past two election cycles. While folks like Secretary of State Mark Ritchie (DFL) would prefer claim ACORN’s not a problem in Minnesota, that’s just too much of a stretch to be believed, considering the group’s been charged with voter fraud in 15 states and rising in the past couple of election cycles or so.

Of course, that’s another problem: Ritchie, a DFL loyalist, worked with ACORN before achieving public office and is not the most neutral of judges on their campaign ethics. Ritchie won the secretary of state’s office by being part of a MoveOn.org effort called The Secretary Of State Project, designed to place radical liberals in those offices to help “massage” election results in favor of the donkeys.

Finally, the ONLY candidate benefiting from late “vote finds” is Franken, which is statistically just about impossible. Pretty soon we’ll be able to change our state motto to, “Minnesota: Land of 10,000 Lakes and 10,000 election fraud votes for Al Franken.”

Well, the battle’s over, at long last; the battle of 2008, at any rate.

With the dust settled, WonderfulPessimist.com wishes to congratulate the victor, Barack Obama. Of course, we still believe he’s the wrong guy, woefully underqualified and determined to take the country in the wrong direction. Yet, as the victor, that’s his prerogative and we wish Barry well.

To be honest, despite all the hours at the espresso machines worrying about an Obama victory, the truth is that a McCain victory would have been worse for the GOP, because McCain was at the top of the ticket, after all, not Sarah Palin. And McCain would have done many of the same things Obama is gearing up for, only it would have been the GOP that took the blame for it all.

So, in an “addition by subtraction” sort of way, an Obama victory, while wrong for the country from a political philosophy point of view, is probably the best thing that the conservative movement could have hoped for.

Rather than being saddled with yet another liberal Republican in the White House, the GOP field for 2012 looks rich with a commodity sorely lacking in ‘08, and that’s genuine conservative candidates. Though four years can change a lot, I certainly anticipate eagerly the potential presidential campaigns of Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal.

Sure, there are still risks that could shut conservatives out; Tim Pawlenty is a mirage when it comes to genuine conservatism, Mitt Romney was the best of a bad field and doesn’t measure up to Palin or Jindal, and there are still threats from Charlie Crist (liberal) and Mike Huckabee (fake conservative who seems to want to be the U.S. Pastor, not the U.S. President) to fend off, but Palin and Jindal are definitely the future of conservatism, if not necessarily the GOP.

One name I can guarantee won’t show up in 2012?

Jeb Bush.

Ever since the last debate and the Joe the Plumber episode, McCain has been narrowing the gap between himself and Barack Obama; top major pollsters, John Zogby and Gallup, now put the race at only +3 for Obama, well within the margin of error.

I’m never a big believer in polls, but traditional wisdom is that, at this point, if the Democrat candidate isn’t up by double-digits, they are running a campaign that is in trouble, since the late swing traditionally goes toward the more conservative candidate in the race. McCain, due in large part to running mate Sarah Palin, just barely qualifies.

Of course, I still believe most of these polls oversample Democrats, so the danger for Obama could be even more significant than is believed. But ultimately, the only poll that counts in the national vote in November.

See you all at the polls, and on the screen of a Sony Vaio! Happy voting, America!

Former Gen. and former GOP Secretary of State Colin Powell defected from the GOP for good this past weekend, endorsing Barack Obama for president. While not exactly a slim shots spokesperson, Powell’s alliance with the GOP has always been tenuous at best; he cozied up to the Clintons without changing his party alliance in the 1990s, yet consented to serve at W’s Secretary of State during Bush’s first term.

Now, all such alliances with the GOP are null and void as the wishy-washy Powell has endorsed a candidate who, in the last session of Congress, compiled the most liberal voting record in the US Senate. Apparently ideology has little impact on Powell, who has over the years become more addicted to the beltway spotlight than to a particular political ideology.

Oh well. Maybe now the spotlight can shine on other deserving, and far more loyal, members of the GOP.

John McCain hung all his November chances against Barack Obama on Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher last week in the final presidential debate before the November presidential election. Joe the Plumber is the person who questioned Obama at a campaign rally about the effect Obama’s tax policies would have on him if he buys out the business he currently works for.

Obama’s response at the time was that, “we want to spread the wealth around,” a reply that didn’t exactly strike many as a pro-capitalism statement. Since the debate, the mainstream media has begun an all-out assault on Wurzelbacher, researching and publicizing his flaws and failings more thoroughly than they’ve dissected either candidate this political season.

During an appearance on Fox News over the weekend, Wurzelbacher said, “Hopefully they’ll have me to thank for it as far as telling people to get out and find their own answers. That’s where I hope they go with it.”

That’s a bit more ambitious, it seems, than trading Thanksgiving recipes.

Missouri Governor Matt Blunt is living up to his surname. The straight-talking governor has charged that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has made use of Missouri law enforcement officials to, “threaten and intimidate his critics.”

In a press release, Gov. Blunt said:

“St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.

“What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.

“This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.

“Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts - not a free society.”

Yup, you’re reading that right. If you can’t see the truth about Barack Obama after this, you may need to update your Lasik procedure.

Saturday Night Live is a comedy show, and their job is making people laugh. Trouble is, comedy either works well or makes you look like an ass, and a skit on SNL last Saturday was more of the donkey variety than the guffaw variety.

In the skit, apparently meant to poke fun at liberal media bias, guest star James Franco plays a New York Times assignment editor who approves baseless stories against the Palin family. The trouble is the subject matter that SNL chose as a plot device for the skit: they “baseless story” was that Gov. Palin’s husband, Todd Palin, was having incestuous affairs with all of the Palin daughters.

Swing and a miss, SNL: incest isn’t funny. But since it’s off your radar due to the target being a Republican, ask your self this: would you have ran with the sketch if it had alleged Barry Obama had been sleeping with his daughters?

Thought not.

But then, this is what you get when you staff a comedy sketch show with Al Franken and a bunch of liberals with Atlanta resumes and New York addresses.

Is California buying Minnesota’s Senate seat? If Al Franken wins the race, that could very well end up being the case. According to a recent article on the Politico Web site, Franken has raised over a half-million dollars from his Hollywood friends alone, and has raised more money from California than from any other state, including Minnesota.

Last I checked, Minnesota’s Senate sear was supposed to be selected by Minnesotans, not Californians. But then, Franken’s about as much of a Minnesotan as Al Gore, and has spent less time living here than Jessica Lange.

Keep this in mind: a vote for Franken is a vote bought and paid for by Californians when they’re not off on European cruises, not Minnesotans. Can’t we do better than that?

While talking at voters yesterday, Michelle Obama - wife of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack “Barry” Obama - warned voters not to vote for someone because “I like that guy” or, “she’s cute.”

When asked whether she was targeting Alaska governor and GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin with that comment, Michelle replied that she had meant to reference herself with that comment.

One problem there: Michelle’s not on any ticket herself, so her rationalization doesn’t hold water. It was a Palin swipe, like it or not, and you don’t need cell phone amplifiers to hear that signal clearly.

US Senate candidate Al Franken, the angry, partisan liberal Democrat, needs to put his mouth on diet pills. The man who once thought it witty to entitle a book “Rush Limbaugh Is A Big, Fat Idiot” is proving to be a better fit to such charges.

After avoiding his own tax burden in 17 states - something he might never have corrected had he not run for office - Franken has been admitting his desire to raise taxes all over the place. In fact, speaking of an increase in the gas tax, Franken recently said, “I don’t think people would notice it much.”

Just like you didn’t notice that you hadn’t paid your taxes in 17 different states, Al? Please. I guess if you’re not paying taxes to begin with, it really is painless when the rate is raised.