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.

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!

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.”

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.

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!

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.

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.

I hate to sound like someone who sides only with the producers, but AMPTP has a point when they say that the terms under which they settled labor agreements with the WGA, DGA and AFTRA earlier this year were made under better financial conditions in the economy, so expecting a deal better than those is a position that simply doesn’t make sense for SAG to demand.

Still, if a Federal negotiator gets involved, don’t be surprised if the threat of a second Hollywood strike in less than a year has major political fallout, especially in an election year; not only in the state of California, but also potentially at the Federal level. Could this be the Democrats’ October surprise? Don’t bet a lot of Starbucks coffee against it.

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.

“You have the former Chairman of Goldman Sachs asking for 700 billion dollars, and in his initial request, asking for it in such an un-American way that I think he should have resigned. I think Paulson has terminally misunderstood the nature of the American system. Not just no review, no judicial review, no congressional accountability. Give me 700 billion dollars, 700 BILLION dollars! ‘I’ll be glad to spend it for you.’ That’s a centralization of power that is totally un-American.”

Perhaps Paulson could be let back into the community if he wore a magnetic bracelet that tracks his whereabouts.

However, the vote unexpectedly went awry on Monday and was headed toward defeat at 227 against to 206 in favor, when Speaker Pelosi suspended the vote to twist the arms of straying Democrats and try to swing the vote back in favor of passage.

With everything from promises of committee memberships to threats of DNA testing on the table for Pelosi, the failure of the measure with her party in the majority is only the latest humiliation for the Speaker, who has lead the House of Representatives to the lowest-ever approval rating in modern US history, and failed to achieve any accomplishments of note in her two years in power.

This is despite US Gulf Coast crude production still ramping up following Hurricanes Ike and Gustav; presently, 57 percent of oil and 53 percent of natural gas production from the Gulf Coast region remains shut down; as these facilities ramp back up, a further tumble of gas prices is expected, which could bring oil as low as around $80 per barrel over the next 30 to 45 days, which could be low enough to see US pump prices dip below $3.00 per gallon for the first time since early 2008.

In other words, things are looking up; however, in the long term they will only stay stable at these lower levels if offshore, shale and ANWAR remain on the table to increase US production in the near term, and the push toward fuel and energy alternatives remains at the forefront of US priorities.